by Claire North
“Your Medj sounds like a character.”
“They worked in sewage treatment before getting spiritual. Really good priest, terrible gossip; you know how it is.”
Then there was the smell of the sea, brown reeds of scrubby grass, rolling, broiling clouds and salt-washed stones. The old bridge between the mainland and Kirrk had crumbled centuries ago. Only a few iron stands remained, testimony to our ancestors’ mastery of water and metal. The gullies through the white cliffs where the roads had run still cracked the land in an unnatural geometry. The sound of the seabirds squabbling on the cold breeze was like the conversation of old aunts at the hearth, amicably arguing over how to season their supper. We took a boat out to the island, a single triangular sail the colour of sunset sand, oars and a tiny motor that ran on stinking seaweed oil. Warning lights flashed to the right to keep people away from the tidal tubes hidden beneath the waves, which supplied power to the towns around. The lights to the left were subtler, gentle yellow, marking the beginning of the kelp farms that spread all the way along the coast, feeding their slippery harvest to the biovats, resin wells and livestock troughs across Magyarzag.
As we neared the island, I could see the starscape of a town, built on the bones of that which had gone before, pressed into the place between curving bay and rising cliff. A creature rose over the harbour mouth, made of woven ancient fishing net, plastic flakes and polished driftwood, rusted container and the bent spines of the crab pot. Jaws gaping, a tongue of rotting fibres hanging down its lips – a monstrous monument to the kakuy of the sea, a raging creature of unkind storms and recovered bones. We drifted past it, into the shelter of a spit of sand which stilled the rocking water and brought with it the smell of fish, salt, yeast and grain, as well as the sound of music and human voices, as if the barrier between rough ocean and gentle sea were a solid wall dividing the universe. Figures moved on the beach, torchlight scraping the pale sand. Our pilot waved to them; a man waved back, and as we pushed up onto land someone called out in a manner so much like the chattering of the birds that for a moment I wasn’t sure if it was a human or a creature of the sky that spoke. Then the pilot answered in a language of the island, and Merthe said: “Ready, not-a-priest?” She held out one hand to help me scramble off the boat, steading me as my feet adjusted to the soft shifting sand of the beach, cold salt rising as I sank a little in the spongy line between sea and earth.
I looked east and saw the first glimmer of dawn light, thought I might be sick. I had not felt sick at sea. “Is Yue here?” I asked.
“Taaq will see you as soon as you’re settled, I’m sure.” I thought I saw a little pity in her face, and wondered if she understood just what the letter in my pocket meant. I followed her up the beach, towards a scrubby shore and the lights of the town, guided by torchlight which increasingly grew dim against the rapid rising of the eastern sun, its light curving off a mirror sea.
“We can get you something to wear; would you rather inquisition robes or do you—”
Merthe’s words cut short as, from round the corner of the nearest whitewashed, squat house, a group of men approached, black against the town’s light. I could not clearly see their faces, but I saw something familiar in their motion, in the set of shoulders and the swagger of limbs. Merthe adjusted her weight, pushing her chin forward and growing larger in the space she occupied, until our two groups met like the foaming place where river flows to the sea.
“Good morning,” she proclaimed, flat as skimming stone, before anyone of the group of men before her could speak. “Can we help you?”
“Thought we would see the dawn. Say thank you to it, and all that.”
A voice, smiling in the dark. A man stepped to the front of the crowd. Or rather, one leg stepped, and the other followed, supported by a long cane topped with a heavy handle around which his fingers curled as if he would claw the world itself in his fist. The handle was black wood, carved into the head of the wolf – or rather, not the wolf but the kakuy that had worn the wolf’s form when he lay upon the snowy mountain, all tooth and blood.
The man did not step again, but held his ground, as if to move more than one limb at a time before the eyes of strangers might expose his limp, the dragging weight of his body tilted to one side; as if by remaining stationary, I would not see it, nor know him.
“New arrivals?” he asked, and one of Merthe’s escort had turned her torch towards the man’s chest, politely avoiding shining in his eyes, so that only through the reflected glow of illumination could I see the contours of his features, greyed out shadow driven away from the hook of his brow.
“Tired arrivals,” Merthe replied. “I’ll wish you good morning, kin of sky and earth.”
“Colonel.” A little nod of his head, not a bow, nor an acknowledgement of enmity. Merthe steered me past him with one hand in the small of my back.
I met Georg’s eyes as we passed and felt his gaze on my neck all the way into the rising glare of dawn.
Chapter 34
In the first light of day, I see a figure praying, head bowed to the rising sun.
He seems a mirage, a strange anomaly bowing first to the east, then to the west, as if thanking the fading dark for the quiet that night had brought. Then we get a little closer, and I see it is Pav Krillovko, remember Georg asking him – do you brush your teeth in charcoal?
If he sees me, he does not know me. In a way, that makes me proud.
A room in what might have once been a fisherman’s shack.
A bed, a blanket.
I barely sleep, and in my dreams Georg is there, leaning on his walking stick, watching me, inside my mind, back inside my mind, he never left it after all, he will never be washed away.
I wake a little before lunch to tea, beans and fish.
Eat alone.
Wash in cold water. The bathhouse is carved into an overhang of stone above the sea, both salt and fresh water, tiny green crabs scuttling away below.
The robes of the inquisition feel grotesque upon me; an invitation to strike me down, a target on my back. I yearn for a disguise, some sailor’s garb with which I can smuggle myself off the island.
Merthe, who perhaps has not slept, meets me at my bedroom door. Says: “Sleep well, sea-kin?”
I have never been kin of sea before; never sailed across the ocean. I wonder if the pirates between here and the west are really as bad as all that. I wonder if the Anglaes still shoot refugees on sight.
“Yes, thank you,” I lie.
She nods, and does not believe a word of it, and takes me to see Yue.
Krima and Yue have a shared office tent of inflated spider silk and woven straw mats. Tables have been unfolded, cables run in from the portable solar panels on the hill above, supplementing the isle’s tidal supply. Krima stands surrounded by a small cluster of empty chairs, as if her deputies have been smuggling every different kind of stool to see if one might stick, in an attempt to alleviate her pacing.
“Oh. It’s you,” she proclaims, as I am ushered through the thin, soft flap into the translucent interior. “Another fucking game.”
Yue has availed herself of a seat, but she rises as I enter, stands bolt upright, takes me by the elbow, says: “I’ll handle it,” which earns nothing but a snort from Krima.
Leads me outside into the salt-spinning wind.
Blurts: “It was not my intention. I did not… but they will not talk until… it’s Georg. He has influence, he has… he’s planning something. I did not want to. But he insisted. He said that the peace negotiations will only continue if you are here. I know it’s nonsense – a power play, nothing more. But Jia says it’s too important for us to… I’m glad you’re here. Thank you for answering my message.”
I replied: “I came of my own free will.”
“Why?”
Hesitation, bewilderment. “Because you asked.”
She flinched. It seems absurd that a woman in her position should fail to understand her power, let alone regret it. “You’ll be accompanied
at all times. Krima is too angry to talk about it, but she does understand the… the risk we are exposing you to. She does. She can seem difficult sometimes, but she’s not what she… the second you want to leave, you can.”
“Thank you.”
For a moment, an old, thin woman tries to push through Yue’s skin, pressing out from every part of her like fungus from the fallen tree. Nothing will help now, she screams. You’re all fools to think it. Then Yue – the one I know – smiles, and nods, but even she can’t quite manage to be reassuring.
In the low afternoon of fading winter, I walked along the edge of a low white cliff as the wind thumped in off the sea. Turn your face to it, and the sheer force of air filling your lungs is a gasp, a moment of contraction as your body struggles to exhale. The smell of salt clings to skin and hair, but not five metres away there is a little gully where white flowers grow and rabbits bound away, and it is another season, another world.
On the east side of the island, the smell of ocean, the great kakuy of the seas answerable to no man, the many-tentacled kraken risen again with a mouth of serrated teeth laid out in rows – fed, they said, on the thousands who died fleeing the water wars, fatted on plastic and microparticles, grown black on spilt oil and scarlet on rust. On the west, the smell of humanity; animal dung spread out across the turned soil, a few pellet fires burning in ancient stoves, gutted fish, fresh kelp, algae vats churning out polymers and proteins; the building blocks of this island’s little industry. There are kakuy even in the slim waters between the island and the mainland – the snow-white dolphin that rises up from the passing pod with eyes of sapphire; the great blood-red crab that all have seen and none can catch, which scuttles sideways across black stone and fears neither bird nor man.
It is a good place to talk peace, this island. The heretics point at the fallen bridge and remind the pious of the great things that man can do with steel and piston. The pious close their eyes, as the sun rises over a reflective sea, and remind the heretics that salt water will triumph over even the most ingenious of engineering, in the end. It is just a question of perspective.
Inland a little from the sea, a hearth, set apart from the others. It has whitewashed walls and a gate around which generations of small hands have pressed seashells and stones of spotted scarlet and deepest black, pebbles of polished plastic and glass harvested from the ocean, forming a mosaic frame of the island’s history through which visitors must pass. It has three grey olive trees within the main courtyard. There is a bicycle stand, empty, and a shrine to the kakuy of the nearby beach, where incense does not burn. The hearth has two floors, solar panels on the roof turned away from the prevailing wind, a bathhouse from which drifts the sound of splashing water and the sharp smell of mint. Everywhere there are Brotherhood men, and many are armed. They carry eight-shot pistols on their hips, and a few carry hunter’s rifles, five shots a clip. Jia’s hearth will doubtless have the same weapons, and the Medj will be there now, arguing as to the ethics of declaring canon plans for faster, deadlier weapons, thirty rounds to a magazine, automatic and semi-automatic firing, the kind of gun you just wave in the general direction of the enemy and damned be the consequences.
The Brotherhood always had a fondness for uniforms, for a sense of belonging to a tribe, but now they are really getting into their military garb, grey-brown camouflage and hats worn on a funny angle, creating a shared pride in their clothes, their swagger, their guns, their glares. These men will not be happy until there has been a war; Antti has spent too much time making them believe that war will make them men, will make their lives matter. The inquisition made me think much the same thing about being a spy. They stare at me, and some know who I am and spit at my feet, and others just stare and hope I can see my own death played in crimson across their corneas, a grotesque, slow-motion film in which they are the stars, driving bayonets between my ribs, holding me down with metal while I thrash around like a butterfly on a pin.
A door is opened. The kitchen is hot, smells of cardamom and pepper. A flight of stairs spins tightly upwards, past more armed men, to a sliding door of heavy, old wood, knots black and popping.
“Wait here,” says a man who has trained all his life to be a fighter and now will prove it the only way he can.
We wait.
Ten minutes.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
Yue paces up and down, snaps: “Where is he?” Does not get a reply.
Twenty-five.
“We’re going,” she barks. “Ven!”
The man who has been guarding the passage nods at this, as if he has finally heard the correct password; turning to the door, he knocks three times then heaves it back. Yue stands, quivering with indignity and rage. I put a hand on her arm, the nausea I had felt since stepping into this place briefly fading in the face of her fury. “It’s fine,” I murmured. “It’s just a game.”
For the briefest moment, I thought Yue might cry, and was astonished. Then she straightened up, stuck her chin forward, and marched into the room like a conquering queen.
Georg sits, alone. He must have been sat here the whole time we were outside, waiting. The hearth has fat, stiff cushions. He perches on a low stool instead, hands on his thighs, eyes half-closed as if in prayer, the leg I stuck a knife in extended long. On one wall of the room hangs a painting, not particularly good, of the great kakuy of the ocean rising from the ancient garbage patch, caught in a shaft of slightly ominous orange light breaking through black storm clouds. On the floor are faded rugs of woven wool, and the shutters are closed, thin afternoon light slipping through the gaps in the old wood to create prison bars of amber across his feet.
Georg’s stick, carved with the wolf kakuy of the mountain, leans against his chair. One cushion has been set on the floor, a tray of tea between us, untouched, the cups waiting to be turned. Georg opens his eyes fully as we step inside, barely looks at me, gives Yue a fluttering glance.
“Taaq – you can wait outside.”
“I will stay.”
“I think you will go. Why don’t we ask Kadri?” His head half-turned as if the weight of his eyes moving to me were a physical force, a powerful blow. I felt the hot flush of a child caught between two squabbling parents, no hope of being right.
“Yue,” I muttered, “I’m fine.”
She stiffened, glowered at Georg, spoke to me. “I’ll be outside. You can leave whenever you want.”
“I know. Thank you.”
She let herself out, heaving on the door as it creaked closed again, sealing us into gloom.
Georg waited for it to thunk shut, then smiled, gestured at the tea. “Do you mind?”
I turned over the cups, poured for us both, passed him a vessel, one hand circling the top like a hook, the other supporting the base with two fingers, a half-bow of shared drink offered. He took it in the same manner, rolled it around the palm of his right hand, sipped. I picked up my own, smelt the familiar fragrance of his favourite brew, barely wetted my lips with it, put the cup back down, waited. I was used to waiting for Georg.
He drank again, smiled, seemed to enjoy the taste, finished his cup, laid it down, poured himself another, did not drink.
For a little while we sat there, he and I, like an old couple that meets twenty years after the embarrassing breakup, a little wiser, a little more circumspect. The idea made me want to laugh, and laughter seemed better than the sickening fear I’d felt since setting foot in this place, since Merthe had come to Bukarest. Perhaps I smiled, and he saw it and asked: “Amused?”
“I suppose I must be.”
“Good. Humour is a blessing. I never thought you had much.”
“There was never very much to laugh at, working for you.”
“True. I should have rectified that really. I have been told that I can be unapproachable, as an employer.”
I rolled the teacup between my hands, old stoneware and fresh heat. “We never did have time for a proper debrief.”
“If you
are going to complain about your office chair, or suggest we should have put on… complimentary chanting classes” – his lips curled awkwardly around the words, struggling to find the ludicrous fripperies of other men – “then please, feel free to put your concerns into writing.”
“Your recruitment methods left a lot to be desired.”
“My… ah, the business with your thumb.”
“The execution of a man in the cellar was also an unexpected career hurdle.”
“You refused to do that; I found that very convincing. A good spy would have done whatever was necessary to finish the job. A coward would have fled and never come back. You were neither. I struggled to work you out, Kadri… Ven. I realise now how vulnerable that made me. My intellectual curiosity – my vanity, even – overcame my common sense. Thank you for that lesson.”
“How’s your leg?”
“A useful reminder. How’s the cut across your chest?”
“It was superficial, although the scar will be a story.”
“Someone taught you how to fight.”
“A little. There wasn’t much combat on the syllabus, but we covered the basics of pure blind panic, extraordinary stress and moving your feet a lot.”
“This is all very un-priestly.”
“On the contrary, there is an ancient legacy of monastic orders taking up weapons, usually to fight to protect their economic superiority, very occasionally for theology, and often as a performance art for fundraising purposes.”
His laugh was a single high bark, delighted despite himself.
“How’s the war going?” I asked.
“Oh, you know. The defeat of our enemies is inevitable. All this,” a loose wave round the room, the sea inhaled, “is just fluff and faff to buy us diplomatic leverage – and to allow us to re-write our plans. Well done, for that. If you hadn’t been caught, you could have made a real difference.”
“It’s a little too early in this conflict to judge the difference people make, isn’t it? Here you are. Buying yourself a little time with this diplomatic farce, because your invasion plans are now framed on Jia’s walls. Do you have a new assistant yet?”