“What?” Garith almost shouted.
Raffa told him about the foxes and the sheep, the stoats and the chickens. His attempts to imitate the animals by gestures probably would have been funny if the conversation weren’t so serious. When he talked about the weevils he made tiny crawling motions with his fingers, then mimicked voracious eating.
“Shakes and tremors,” Garith said, his lips pale.
“There are so many animals,” Raffa said, spreading his hands wide. “They must be planning something bigger. We have to stop them.”
Garith put his hands on his head in a gesture of despair. For what seemed like a long time, he didn’t move.
Finally he brought his hands down and put his clenched fists on the tabletop. “Senior Jayney meets with Da almost every day. A little after sunpeak. They talk in the yard outside the laboratory.”
Jayney was in charge of training the animals and was surely privy to the Chancellor’s plans. Raffa had previously eavesdropped on the two men from a small room off the laboratory’s entrance. But that was back when he had the run of the pother quarter.
Now there was no way for him to get into that room without risking his uncle seeing him. He thought of the yard outside the laboratory. There was nowhere to hide; it was a wide-open space.
But before Raffa could voice these doubts, Garith spoke again. “They all think I’m useless,” he said, his expression fierce. “We’ll see just how useless I am.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
GARITH returned to the laboratory. Raffa followed a safe distance behind. He circled to the far side of the yard and ducked behind the low stone wall. Peering out cautiously, he saw Garith emerge with a broom. Garith began sweeping, moving toward where the wall opened out into the lane.
Raffa found a chink to look through. A short time later, he heard a wagon in the lane and saw Jayney at the reins. Raffa had seen him only twice before, but he was easy to recognize, with his full beard and sturdy build.
Jayney reined the horse, jumped down from the seat, and called out, “Hoy!”
Uncle Ansel came out of the laboratory. Raffa’s breath caught in his throat. It was the first time he had seen his uncle since leaving Gilden.
A tide of sorrow . . . then a surge of anger. Each as strong as the other.
Sorrow, because his beloved uncle had betrayed him by sending the screaming owl to stop him and Kuma from escaping with Roo. Anger, because Uncle Ansel was helping the Chancellor—no, not just helping: Uncle Ansel was leading the work of creating infusions to dose the animals.
How could Uncle Ansel be so blind to the Chancellor’s evil? He had once told Raffa that her support of apothecary work was providing the opportunity to expand the limits of their art—to experiment and invent and create in ways never before possible. But how much was that kind of potential for achievement worth? Surely not the misery of so many animals and people.
As the two men greeted each other by matching palms, Garith kept sweeping. Step by step and sweep by sweep, he worked his way closer to them. The men took no notice of him, but Raffa knew exactly what his cousin was doing.
He was lip-reading!
The conversation was not a long one. Raffa saw that Jayney appeared stern and unsmiling. Uncle Ansel looked like he was objecting to something; Jayney made a dismissive gesture. Then both men got into the wagon and departed.
Raffa rose from his crouch so Garith could see where he was. Garith looked around, then darted out of the yard to join him.
“The slums,” he said, panting. “I’m almost sure they said—send the animals into the slums. To get rid of all the Afters.”
For what seemed like an eternity, Raffa couldn’t even comprehend what Garith had just said.
Finally his brain started working again. “The Afters? Garith, I’m an After, on Da’s side! Why?”
“They didn’t say why.” A pause, a flicker of doubt in Garith’s eyes. “But—but they can’t be talking about people like you and—and your family. They’re probably starting with the slums since so many Afters live there.”
The slums. Raffa had been in the slums that very morning. The girl he had seen, with the bag of wheat—
“That’s why they were asking so many questions!” he exclaimed.
He told Garith about the grain handout, and the questions being asked of the slum dwellers. “They’re trying to find out which families are Afters. That has to be it!”
“Jayney said something like ‘Not quite ready, but soon.’ I believe him—everybody’s on edge lately, and Da’s been working all hours.”
Soon? How soon? It doesn’t matter—as long as it’s not today, Raffa told himself, because I’m going to free the animals tonight.
“Listen,” he said to Garith. “The scarlet-vine infusion—I need to talk to you about it.” He explained that he would be giving the animals an antidote to cure them of their addiction, and that he had to make sure the animals would not be dosed again with the scarlet vine afterward. It was a complicated explanation, requiring a lot of repetition and gestures, but finally Garith seemed to understand everything.
“I have to get rid of all the vine clippings,” Raffa said. “Will you help me?”
He saw Garith’s brow furrow into worry lines and immediately regretted asking for his help. There was surely a limit to the number of times his cousin could stand being put in the terrible position of choosing between his father and Raffa.
“No,” Garith said. “It wouldn’t take longer than a blink for anyone to notice if the vine disappears. I have a much better idea.”
Raffa’s eyes grew wide.
“Da doesn’t let me make the infusion anymore,” Garith went on, “but I’m the one who takes it out to the yard every day, for Mannum Trubb to pick up. I’ll make a cinder. He’ll dose the animals with that . . . and no one will ever know the difference.”
A cinder. Garith meant that he would make a fake infusion and substitute it for the real one. It was an old family joke: a “cinder” was something both harmless and useless. Cinders the cat, who had once lived in Raffa’s home, had been a terrible mouser.
“Better than good—brilliant!” Raffa crowed. He laughed in sudden and utter delight, because he knew it could work: He had used the same “cinder” strategy to help free Roo. But Garith didn’t know that; he had come up with the idea on his own.
Raffa held out his hands toward Garith, palms flat and together. Garith clapped his own hands around them, and Raffa could have jigged for joy to see the glint back in his cousin’s eyes.
While Garith began work on the cinder, Raffa made his way back to the underground passage to wait for Trixin. He sat down with his back against the wooden ladder and didn’t know he had fallen asleep until someone nudged him awake.
“You should take better care. What if I’d been a guard?”
It was Trixin! He’d know that voice anywhere—impatient, with a sharp edge, and still it made him smile. He rubbed his eyes and stood to greet her.
“The lump’s gone,” he said.
The last time he had seen Trixin was when she had whacked herself on the head with a board to help him during his escape from Gilden. The blow had been hard enough to raise an immediate lump on her forehead.
“I’ll have you know it was days before it went down,” she said with a sniff.
She had a candle stub in one hand and his rope in a coil over her other arm. As she handed the rope to him, she looked him up and down. “You’re a good bit skinnier than when I last saw you,” she said. “How did you manage to get here? There are placards with your picture. I’ve seen at least two of them.”
Placards here in Gilden, not just at the ferry landing. Not good news, but important for him to know.
“Why did you want to see me?” Trixin went on, not waiting for him to answer her question. “I have to get back. I can’t trust Jimble to put the little ones to bed. He’ll have them up all night.”
Raffa didn’t reply at once; it was hard to know where
to start. “How much do you know about . . . about what they’re doing with the animals?”
“Not much,” she answered—a little too quickly, he thought. “I’m still working mostly with Senior Vale in the laboratory. I don’t go to that—that place very often.”
“Did you know they sent foxes and stoats to attack Kuma’s settlement?”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “It was Kuma’s? Is she all right? Where is she?”
Raffa stared at her for the merest instant, then looked down at the ground to cover his surprise. She knew about the attack. She just didn’t know where.
“Yes, she’s fine,” he said, then explained about Kuma going off to see to Twig. “But at the settlement there were crows, too. They ruined the grain stores, so now everyone’s worried about not having enough to eat. Including Kuma’s family, and they have a lot of kids.”
Trixin looked stricken. “I didn’t know,” she whispered.
What else didn’t she know? Was she aware that the plot was targeting Afters? It struck Raffa then that he had no idea whether Trixin’s family were Afters or not. They lived in the slums, or, rather, they had when he first met her, but not everyone in the slums was an After.
Should he ask? He needed to know . . . didn’t he?
Raffa opened his mouth, then closed it again.
It had never mattered to him before. Not just about Trixin but about anyone. What mattered was if they were friendly or kind or funny or a hard worker or any of a hundred other things. Trixin had proved her friendship more than once. She had earned the right to the truth, no matter what her family’s background.
“Trixin, they’re targeting Afters. That’s why they picked Kuma’s settlement—because most of the people who live there are Afters. But I think it was sort of a test. What they really want to do is clear out the slums.”
Trixin’s eyes had narrowed while he was speaking. “Afters! Wherever did you hear such nonsense?”
“Jayney and my uncle were talking, and—and, well, Garith has gotten pretty good at lipreading.”
She looked uncertain for a moment, then tossed her head. “I don’t believe it for a minute. He must have gotten it wrong. Jayney has a beard like a rat’s nest—you can’t even see his mouth.”
It seemed that she had already made up her mind, and he knew how stubborn she could be. How could he convince her?
“Okay,” he said. “Say that maybe we’re wrong. . . . Don’t you want to know for certain?”
Trixin began pacing up and down the passage. “Jimble says he took you by the house,” she said, in what seemed an abrupt change of subject.
“Yes . . . um, it’s nice,” he replied with a puzzled frown.
“That’s right,” she snapped. “A lot nicer than our old place. And did you know that I’m one of the only tendants given meals from the kitchen? The Chancellor arranged for that! Brid and the twins have milk to drink every day. And my da—he’s not a night slopper anymore. . . .” She stopped and turned away.
He understood then what she was saying. She couldn’t help him—couldn’t risk losing her job, because her family’s well-being depended so much on her.
Silence filled the passage. The longer it lasted, the further away Trixin seemed to be moving from him, even though she was standing still.
Finally she turned back and spoke to him without meeting his eyes. “There’s something you don’t know, something that happened here in the winter. About two months ago. All three of the little ones took ill—the twins and Brid. That’s the way it happens, they get ill and then they get better, one after the other.”
Although baffled once again, Raffa sensed that what Trixin was saying was important to her, so he waited for her to go on.
“But this time, it was the dread wheezes. I can’t even tell you how awful it was. They coughed and coughed and coughed, and then they’d wheeze and croak and gasp for air. A horrible noise . . .” Trixin shuddered at the memory. “Jimble and I were up all hours with them. Da helped during the day, but nights he had to go to work or he’d be dismissed. It got so bad, I thought . . . I thought we might lose Brid.”
Raffa recalled his afternoon with Trixin’s siblings—all of them hale and healthy. “But they’re fine now,” he said. It was a question, not a statement.
Trixin looked him in the eye. “Finer than fine,” she said. “Thanks to your parents.”
“My parents?” Raffa almost screeched in surprise.
She nodded. “Your da made infusions for them. Then he and your mam came and fetched all three of them to the apartment, and nursed them there for nearly a week, so Jimble and I could get some sleep, we were half-sick ourselves. Your mam sat with them for hours over a lyptus-steam basin. I could have bought infusions from the pother stall at the market, but nobody else would’ve done what they did for us. Camma and Cassa might have gotten better on their own, maybe, but they saved Brid’s life, sure upon certain.”
The lyptus wreath at Trixin’s house—it was one of Mam’s! Raffa felt a jumble of emotions: relief for Trixin’s family, pride in his parents, and the ache of missing them renewed. “I’m glad,” he said quietly.
“It’s them I owe, not you,” she said, in her usual blunt matter. “But they wouldn’t have been here in Gilden if it weren’t for you, which I suppose means that it is you, in a way. So here’s what I’ve decided. I don’t know what you want me to do, and I don’t care.”
His heart sank and he started to speak, but she glared at him, as if daring him to interrupt her.
“I’m going to tell you what I will do: I’ll keep my eyes and ears open, and whatever I find out, I’ll let you know somehow.”
Spying.
She was offering to become a spy.
“Another thing,” she went on, “I don’t ever—ever—want to know what you’re doing. Don’t breathe even a word of it to me.”
Raffa was almost awestruck: She had come up with a way to help while still protecting herself and her family. But he didn’t want to think about what would happen if the Chancellor should find out.
“That’s fair,” he said.
“Fairer than fair.”
Raffa held up his hand toward her, to match palms. It was not something he usually did. It was something grown-ups did.
She flattened her hand against his for a solemn moment. Then she used the same hand to rap him on the head once with her knuckles.
“Yow!” he said, rubbing the spot, which really did hurt.
“Try using a board next time,” she said, and they both laughed.
The conversation continued, following Trixin’s rules. Raffa asked questions without revealing his plans; she answered without asking why he wanted to know.
“How do the animals get fed?”
“Depends on the animal. Which ones?”
He thought a moment. “The foxes. And the stoats.”
“All the meat-eaters are fed fish.”
“How often?”
“Twice a day, morning and evening.”
“The fish come from the river?”
“And the Vast, of course. You’re the country lumpkin—don’t you know where fish come from?”
“Sorry. What I meant was, How do the fish get to the compound?”
“By wagon. From the northern ferry landing.”
“You said evening. Is it sunfall yet?” Here, underground, it was impossible to tell the hour.
“Nearly,” Trixin replied.
“So there will be one more feeding today?”
“Yes. In a couple of hours. The wagon makes the delivery, and the animals are fed straightaway. I guess they don’t want a big pile of dead fish hanging around the compound for very long.”
“Is everything there still the same as before?”
“Since you left? They’ve built more sheds. And there are four guards on duty now, day and night.”
Raffa groaned. More animals and more guards . . . as if things weren’t hard enough already.
Trixin’s fee
t shifted restlessly. “Is there anything else you need to know? I have to be getting back.”
How to do this without getting caught, Raffa thought. But that wasn’t something he could ask her.
“I guess not,” he said slowly. “I just . . . I wish I knew Gilden better. And I wish Kuma would get here. I don’t think I can do this alone. But I can’t wait for her, either.”
“Hmph,” Trixin said. “You should have thought of that before.”
Things were adding up far too quickly. The number of guards patrolling the slums. The grain giveaway and census, which seemed to be a way of determining which families were Afters. Garith’s discovery that the project’s goal was to target the slum dwellers.
Raffa tried to keep panic from boiling up inside him: The attack on the slums could happen any day now.
He couldn’t wait for Kuma to arrive. He had to release the animals that very night.
Trixin gave him the candle stub and a few matches. Without a light, she would find her way out by keeping one hand on the passage wall; both she and Jimble knew the turns by heart. Raffa watched her leave, envious of that particular skill.
Get the antidote powder into the food supply. . . . That much he had figured out. He wondered if he could climb into the fish wagon undetected, as he had with the load of compost. He sighed. Compost and dead fish: It was turning out to be a day of bad smells.
But that strategy hadn’t even really worked the first time. The driver—Fitzer—had known he was there. Raffa couldn’t risk the same thing happening again.
Somehow he would have to be in two or three places at once. He’d have to stop the wagon, distract the driver, and get into the wagon bed.
He sat there for what felt like a long time, unable to come up with a solution.
Finally he couldn’t bear to sit still any longer. I’ll have to get back to the ferry landing, so I might as well go there now. He stood up, equal parts discouraged and determined. Maybe an idea would come to him as he walked.
He began making his way through the passage, thankful for the candle. Even so, it was slow going, his footing unsure in the unsteady light. One hesitant step at a time, he reached what he hoped was the halfway point.
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