Deeplight Read online

  After what seemed like an age, he passed a bold white streak in the rock and realized he was only a third of the way along the ledge. He was going too slowly, he knew with queasy horror. The longer he took, the greater the chance that Jelt would be spotted. Fighting every instinct, Hark started to move faster, no longer pausing to check every foothold. He could do this, he would do this. He –

  He could not tell what betrayed him. A loose rock, a wet sole. Suddenly he lost his footing. The ledge scraped up the side of his leg and hip, and bruised his hands as he vainly snatched at it. And then his wet fingers found a grip on a twist of young tree, and his other hand in a little crevice, while his feet flailed and slid against sheer, wet rock.

  The tree was too weak to hold him. He could see it buckling, its bark splitting, its white fibres stretching.

  It would give and drop him. He was seconds away from a different story, one that he would never get to tell.

  You know that kid Hark?

  No. Which one is he?

  Skinny. Runty. Lies a lot. Well, he fell off a cliff last night. Smashed his head in. They only found him after the fish had had him for a day.

  And someone would tut, or grunt, or give a short snort of mirth. And that would be it. End of story.

  No! he thought, something stubborn and desperate rising in him. No! I’m the hero! I’m the scabbing hero!

  He took his hand away from its feeble grip on the crevice and fumbled for the sling at his belt. All his weight was on the other hand now. He could hear the crackle of the tree tearing and could feel his grip slipping.

  With a desperate lunge, he threw out the length of the sling so that it tangled in a sturdier tree a little further up. Chancing everything, he let go of the tree and snatched at the trailing end of the sling. He caught it – held it – pulled himself up until he could get one arm over the trunk of the tree, then slowly, painfully hauled himself back on to the ledge.

  He lost valuable seconds sitting with his grazed cheek against the wet rock, shuddering and trying not to be sick.

  ‘Hero,’ he whispered defiantly, his eyes stinging. It was only when he gingerly stood up again that he realized his sling was nowhere to be found. He had no time to search for it, and it had almost certainly fallen down to the rocks far below. Hark scrambled onwards hastily, with bruised hands and knees that now shook.

  When at last the overhang yielded to stars, he scarcely dared believe it. He clambered up the little chute, and found himself blinking on a dimly lit headland, purple as a dead man’s vein. There was the beacon tower itself, a stone column with a cage-like metal structure raised above it. At its crest was fixed the metal housing of the lantern, with its great round lens. To his relief, there was nobody in sight.

  Hark sprinted over, feet slithering on the wet undergrowth. He snatched up a rock and threw it up towards the top of the tower. It arced in the right direction, but fell short and clattered down the tower. His second attempt was no better. Without his sling, he couldn’t hit the lantern.

  He glanced across to the other headland. If Hark didn’t extinguish this light, Jelt would stay in his hiding place near the other tower. Sooner or later, a patrol would come by, and something would happen . . . to Jelt, or to somebody else.

  So, he told his imaginary audience, I realized there was only one thing I could do . . .

  Exhausted and shaky, Hark ran over to the tower and started to climb.

  The stone part was easy enough. The mortar was weathered and cracked, so there were toeholds between the stones. But when he reached the metal, everything got harder. He had to twist his arms and legs around the wet metal poles and shimmy up slowly, using the rusty places for grip. The governor’s men used ladders to light the lanterns, then took them away with them to stop anybody else climbing the tower.

  When Hark reached the very top, he scrabbled open the metal housing, yanked out the lantern, and let it fall. It plummeted, smashing thirty feet below. The liquid within splashed over the stone base, little mauve ghost-flames dancing over them before going out. Ten seconds later, the beacon on the other headland flared and then went dark. Jelt’s sling had done its work.

  So he must still be alive. Now he can run away, and so can I . . .

  Hark was scrambling back down the tower when he saw a cluster of orange lights jogging their way towards him.

  The governor’s men reached the base of the tower and surrounded it while he was still on the metal frame, arms and legs wrapped around a crossbar. He hung there, catching his breath, feeling the cold in every cut and bruise.

  He would be telling a story after all, it seemed. Not in a tavern among friends, but right here and now, in the rain, with lanternlight in his eyes.

  It would have to be a really good story. And above all, it would need to be one in which Jelt did not appear.

  CHAPTER 2

  It was a popular night for getting arrested, as it happened. When Hark was hauled back into town, it turned out that the governor’s dungeon was already full. Instead, Hark was dropped into one of the ‘overflow’ cells, a square-edged pit with heavy wooden bars criss-crossing above. Half of it was covered by a canvas, which kept out some of the rain, but the earth floor had already dissolved into slick mud.

  Hark spent a cold and miserable night in this hole, wondering whether Jelt had been caught or killed. An hour after dawn, the bars were lifted away, and he was hauled out of the hole. A lot of the governor’s men were around, looking armed and bored, so Hark didn’t develop any fanciful notions about running for it and trying to scale the courtyard wall.

  Instead, he tried to put a brave face on it as he was washed down with bucketfuls of cold water, and handed some drab, dry clothes to put on.

  ‘Why the luxury treatment?’ he asked through chattering teeth. ‘Am I getting adopted by nobility?’

  ‘Better than that,’ said a guard wryly. ‘You got your big moment at the Appraisal this morning.’

  Hark felt his heart flip over. Of course there would be an Appraisal this morning. Rigg had guessed as much. The remains of the Lady would be auctioned off quickly, before there were more attempts to steal them. But godware was not the only thing sold at the Appraisal. Things were moving much faster than Hark had expected, and he was not ready for it.

  He had known that he wouldn’t have a trial, of course. On Lady’s Crave, a criminal case was handed to one of the governor’s Justices, who listened to the guards and decided on the spot whether they’d been right to arrest you. You only got a trial if the Justice thought the guards had messed up, or if a powerful person was willing to vouch for you.

  However, he had thought that he might be interrogated. When you were face to face with your questioner, you could get a sense of what made them tick, tell them the story they wanted to hear, maybe cut some sort of deal . . .

  . . . but apparently that wasn’t going to happen. The cells were full, so the governor had decided to clear them out and earn what he could from them. The prisoners would be Appraised and sold.

  Hark was hurried through the marketplace and up the hill with a dozen other prisoners. At least none of them were Jelt, and he didn’t recognise any of Rigg’s people either, so they had probably all escaped. He wasn’t dead yet either. He had to keep his brain sharp. Despair was a numbing poison. The moment you decided the worst was inevitable, it was.

  A casually thrown stone hit him in the ear. He flinched but didn’t look round – no point in letting the next hit him straight in the eye socket. He swore, but didn’t take it personally. He had thrown stones at captured criminals now and then, not through malice, but just because he could.

  It had never really occurred to him not to just because some day the person in chains might be him. In fact, he had always known deep down that some day it would be him, and that stones would be thrown at him, so it had seemed natural to make the most of it while he could be the thrower instead of the thrown-at.

  It hurt, though. He was glad he didn’t know who had thro
wn it. If it had been someone he knew, that would have hurt more.

  Hark’s mouth grew dry as the parade of prisoners drew nearer to the Auction House at the top of the hill. It had loomed on the skyline over Hark’s entire life, but he had only been inside a few times.

  The large, old building was deliberately misshapen, its roofline bulging and deformed, its windows ragged crevices like rips in the stonework. This was as it should be, because it had been sacred in its time. In its great hall, the island’s priests had lived, passed their decrees and chosen their sacrifices. How else should it look? Even so long after the death of the gods, everyone still knew that the sacred was twisted. There was a beauty that belonged only to the gods, and it was a knot in your eye, your gut, your mind . . .

  When the governor had taken over the island, by the simple, honest method of having lots of armed men and declaring that he’d done so, he’d been too canny to take the great building at the top of the steps for his residence. Instead, he’d had a clean, white house of brick built not far from the docks, with a protective surrounding wall. He’d understood that the old priests’ hall was a link to a sick past. It was beneath him.

  Therefore, he’d had it converted into an auction house. There were petty auctions every week, selling off salvage, ordinary cargoes and confiscated goods. An Appraisal day was a grand auction, a chance to buy ships and submarines, the finest luxuries, prime godware . . . and criminals. Lady’s Cravers were fiercely adaptable. Nowadays, the only thing they could boast more of than other islands was crime, but they had found a way to make money out of even that.

  Today Hark would be put up for sale. That was bad enough. But if there were no decent bidders, he was doomed.

  In theory, slavery was forbidden within the Myriad. However, if you were judged guilty of a crime, as Hark had been judged, you could be sold as an ‘indentured servant’. All the islands of the Myriad respected the indentures. If they did not, how could they buy criminals for the jobs nobody wanted? The worse your crime, the longer the time you had to serve. If you tried to run away, you could be caught and dragged back to your ‘owner’, who might punish you or sell you to someone worse.

  There was always someone worse.

  The great hall was designed to make people feel like ants. You knew it as soon as you walked in. It was too open, too vast, its vaulted ceiling too high, the windows too narrow and lofty, the shafts of light from them too meagre. Even the two dozen rows of benches put out for auction buyers filled only half the hall. Human crowds were lost in it. Voices rebounded oddly, the echoes sounding higher and more startled than the original voice. Hark imagined them floating, aghast, up into shadows.

  The governor had done what he could. The walls of the hall were now covered in white plaster, but here and there the damp had caused some to fall away, showing glimpses of the old red-and-black frescoes underneath. A dozen looming iron candelabras now cast light at the human level, but could do little about the cavernous murk above.

  The room bore too many scars of its past. In the middle of the floor, there had once been a large, oval hole full of seawater, in which priests and sacrifices had been ritually cleansed. The governor had arranged for it to be filled with cement, but you still knew it was there, the new russet tiles obvious against the surrounding grey stone flags. Just as obvious was the series of slight, worn depressions that led up to it from the door, and then passed on beyond it to a distant arch. Centuries of sacrifices had been made to follow in the exact footsteps of their predecessors, until the pressure of all those bare feet had worn away stone.

  Hark felt as doomed as any sacrifice, but of course he was not led along those fateful indentations. Instead he and the rest of the chain gang were taken round the side of the hall, so as not to interrupt the auction of some boat called the Kindwind. They were made to stand in a gaggle, not far from the auctioneer’s pulpit and the great abacus used to show the current bid.

  As the auctioneer droned on, Hark tried to get a feel for the audience. His spirits sank even further.

  It was a sluggish, early morning crowd. Most people there were napping, chatting or reading. The first few rows of benches were crammed, but he guessed that many sitting on them had probably just come early so that they’d have a good seat for the Abysmal Child sales later in the day. They wanted a piece of the Hidden Lady, or at least a glimpse of her.

  He caught himself looking for familiar or friendly faces among them, even though he knew that there probably wouldn’t be any. There was no sign of Jelt, of course. He was probably lying low somewhere with Rigg’s gang. Hark didn’t blame his friend, although Jelt’s absence did make him feel lonelier.

  As Hark watched, bidding for the Kindwind came to an end. One last reluctant raise of the hand from the audience. One last bead rattled along the abacus to show the new bid. The auctioneer made a lacklustre appeal for more interest, then declared the boat sold.

  ‘Next, an auction of indentured criminals,’ called the auctioneer from his perch in the old pulpit. It was carved so as to look eerily molten, stone dribbles seeming to creep upward, as if obeying an inverted gravity.

  The chained gaggle was brought forward. For a mad moment, Hark wondered what would happen if all the criminals bolted for the door as one. He felt sure he knew the answer, though. Up in the lofty gallery he could see some of the governor’s men, the round copper bottles of compressed air gleaming on their wind-guns. They were lounging and yawning, but they would probably become a lot more alert if the goods on sale decided to make a break for it.

  He scanned the audience with desperate eyes. Most of them didn’t even look up. Some glanced at him, but then their gaze slid towards the older, stronger-looking criminals instead. To their eyes, Hark probably looked like a scrawny scrap that could be of no use to them – nothing but a waste of food and lodgings, and perhaps an untrustworthy one at that.

  Most people in the front row were watching the criminals and the auctioneer with careful attention, but that was to be expected. By unspoken consent, the front bench was left for the sea-kissed so that they could lip-read more easily and see the under-clerk responsible for announcing lots in sign language. Continenters who obliviously flouted this hidden rule could never work out why everyone then made a point of treading heavily on their feet as they passed, or leaning forward to breathe cheroot smoke into their faces. At the moment, no foot-stamping seemed to be happening, so presumably everyone at the front was sea-kissed.

  After a moment, Hark noticed that one of them was staring straight at him.

  It was a girl of about Hark’s own age, or perhaps a little younger. She was short, dark-haired and skinny, with large eyes and an uncomfortably intense gaze. What caught Hark’s attention, however, was the dappling of freckles that covered her face, arms and neck. Only one family was that freckled.

  That must be one of Rigg’s daughters. What’s she doing here? Why is she staring at me?

  For a wildly optimistic moment, Hark wondered if she was there to bid for him on behalf of Rigg’s gang. It was an empty hope, however. The governor had been known to arrest people he suspected of buying the indentures of their accomplices, so nobody did that any more.

  No, she’s here so that I know that Rigg’s people are watching me. If I squeal on them now, they’ll know. This girl is a warning.

  With a sinking heart, Hark recognized a couple of scarred faces a few rows further back, observing him with a speculative eye. They were dealers in the auction dregs, waiting to pick up the unwanted criminals for a song and sell them on as galley minions. Anyone they bought would spend the whole of their indenture in the murky belly of some boat or submarine, chained to their oar. Many did not survive, and those that did came out with crooked limbs, weak eyes and broken minds.

  Next to them was a tall man with a fashionably square beard and a good coat. One of the other criminals recognized him and muttered that he was the owner of a mine on Malpease, who sometimes bought young criminals who could fit through peri
lously narrow gaps. This didn’t sound much better than the galleys.

  ‘First lot!’ called the auctioneer. ‘Hark, no other name. The crime, breaking two of the beacon lanterns last night. Three years.’

  ‘Three years?’ exploded Hark, involuntarily. The shrill echo of his voice spiralled up and up until the shadows ate it. He had feared that it might be one year, but three . . .

  I’ll be broken by then, he thought desperately. I won’t survive in the galleys that long. He was to be made an example of. The governor must have taken the vandalism as a personal slight.

  Don’t give up, he told himself sharply, amid the rise of panic. You’re not dead yet. As he was detached from the chain gang and pulled forward, he tried to keep his breathing under control. There’s got to be someone else!

  ‘Does anybody have any questions for the prisoner before the bidding?’ asked the auctioneer, with the blunt air of someone who had a busy schedule ahead. Most of the buyers had already turned their attention back at their catalogues. ‘No? Then—’

  ‘Can I give my defence first?’ Hark interrupted desperately.

  ‘You’re not on trial, boy!’ called the auctioneer, and there was a ripple of laughter.

  ‘But they don’t really know what I did!’ Hark’s heart was banging. ‘They don’t know why I did it! They don’t know how!’

  Oh please, come on! Somebody take the bait! Hark’s gaze darted over the assembly, looking for hints of interest.

  A husband and wife at the back, frowning in his direction and whispering. Were they interested, or just disapproving?

  A middle-aged woman in a good-quality jacket of brown wool, fiddling with what looked like a monocle on a chain. She was watching the proceedings with half-closed eyes, like a theatregoer waiting for the play to start. Or was she just half asleep?

  Two men in sealskin coats from the Northern Myriad, laughing together quietly, and glancing his way. Even if Hark was a joke to them, could he use that to win them round?