Gullstruck Island

by Frances Hardinge

  Prox had never known happiness like this.

  It was like a sort of fever, in the sense that he could not think outside it. Clocks spun their gleaming hands until they blurred into golden discs. Prox ate and drank what he found beside him but tasted nothing.

  Only after working at his desk for fourteen hours at a stretch did he sometimes notice the cramps in his back, the iron clamp behind his eyes. He would stand and pace, pausing automatically before the mirror. He ran his fingers down the senseless leather of his face, but now he no longer saw himself, nor remembered what he was supposed to see. Looking away from the mirror, he would see that somebody had scattered stars carelessly like corn outside the window, and would long to rake them into lines.

  It had waited for him all his life, this challenge. There was not a second to waste on doubt. The scrolls on his desk were wands he could wave to drag towns across valleys, fell forests, erect bridges. It was not the power that dizzied him. It was the stature of the problems and disorder facing him that filled him with a battlefield glow.

  You took hold of one problem, and found that another was knotted to it. Now that the Lost were dead, organizing things was so slow. News took so long to reach everyone. Camber was the magical exception, of course. In his calm, orderly way – somehow information always seemed to find him first.

  The death of the Lost had left the merchants in chaos. Nobody knew how to buy and sell from other towns. Whole granaries of food rotted in some places, while elsewhere people starved. But, looking into this, Prox started to realize how little food there really was on Gullstruck.

  ‘We’re looking at a harsh winter.’ He was speaking to himself, but was not surprised when he received an answer.

  ‘It was looking bad even before the Lost died.’

  It no longer seemed strange to Prox to find that Camber was standing right behind him. Camber seemed to have moved into Prox’s mind, his voice now ringing like one of Prox’s own thoughts.

  ‘The new camp for the Lace will be the very devil to feed,’ Prox continued. It was his latest brainchild, a large and permanent camp to replace the scattered temporary stockades where the Lace prisoners were currently being held.

  ‘Not necessarily.’ The map of the camp slid away from beneath Prox’s fingers, to be replaced by another, a map of Spearhead. ‘It rather depends where you build it.’

  And the stubborn problem that Prox had been wrestling in his mind slid into place with a click and all was well. The blank, lush upper slopes of Spearhead stared back invitingly. Clear the jungle there, and you’d have farmland ready for use, a plantation in the making. Spearhead did not have the King of Fans’ eagles, Sorrow’s landslides and barrenness, nor Crackgem’s earthquakes and geysers. And yet this land lay completely unused . . . why? Oh, of course, the old superstitions about Spearhead returning to wreak vengeance. It was criminal to waste that land, and if the workers had no choice but to tend the land there . . .

  ‘It’s the only way to feed the Lace camp,’ he said under his breath. ‘We can’t have them starving.’

  ‘It’s the only way to feed everyone,’ said the other voice, weaving in among his thoughts. ‘There are too many of us, living and dead. Between them, the dead and the volcanoes have all the best land. We cannot rob the dead – so that leaves the volcanoes. Some farmers have already started tilling the lower slopes – with the help of the Lace we can make use of the upper.’

  ‘But . . . they can’t all work the plantation. What about the old, the crippled, the very young?’

  ‘They can be found other, gentler, duties.’ A long, delicate finger tapped a point much further down the mountain, a large shaded patch marked ‘Ashlands’. ‘The spirit houses must be cleaned, offerings made, candles lit. And if families are divided, then the strong adults will be less likely to rebel for fear of what will happen to their parents and children. There will be less bloodshed. This is kinder.’

  ‘Yes . . . yes,’ murmured Prox, but he hardly knew what he was saying. Already his imagination was designing stockades, rotas, roll calls.

  He worked until the stars tired of waiting for him to order them, and went out one by one. He worked while the sun rose, peaked and started to descend. When it distracted him by peering into his room he walked to the window and stared nonplussed at the parade of tiny figures struggling along the brow of the hill towards the distant Spearhead.

  He blinked hard until he could make out their arms and legs, the heavy baskets of candles and incense on their backs, the brushes, hoes and brooms in their small hands.

  ‘Mr Camber, why are there children on that hill? Did I order any children?’

  He needed sleep, he realized. He could tell by the way colours changed after he blinked, and the way that Camber’s face seemed to rise like steam without actually moving. The constant throb of pigeon coos from the neighbouring loft distorted in his ear, and he almost thought he heard voices in them.

  ‘They’re just part of the Lace project, Mr Prox. You remember? In a time of emergency it is all important to have the support of the ancestors, so due tribute must be paid to the dead. The advantages of a workforce that can attend to the tombs full time . . .’

  ‘Oh yes, that was it. Mr Camber, do my eyes seem bloodshot? There are blots in front of everything, and somehow those children look very . . . small.’

  ‘Lace children often do,’ Camber remarked calmly, watching as Prox peered into the mirror. Camber drew the shutters closed, and the vista of the struggling children was crushed to a sliver and then extinguished.

  ‘You should rest, Mr Prox. Go and sleep the sleep of the just.’

  And yet, while Minchard Prox slept, things were happening across the island which he had not guessed at as he reshaped the world with his pencil.

  What did he dream? He did not dream of a Lace man with a cool smile and black velvet brows trekking through hidden jungle paths with a marked map in his pocket. He did not see this man showing his tattoo at a sliver of lighted doorway and being shown into a back room where a gigantic woman with dreadlocks and widow’s arm bindings was waiting for him, larger than life and very much alive. He did not see them planning until dawn, voices low and eyes bright as knives.

  He saw nothing of the bird-back messengers that ran through forest and swamp, moonlight dappling their stilt-legged shapes, carrying word to the scattered Reckoning.

  In the nights to follow, there would be consequences. But compared to the great project that obsessed Minchard Prox, these events were small, and he would not notice them.

  Camber, however, noticed everything.

  There had been a sudden fire at a courthouse in Port Hangman, in which it was supposed that the chief clerk had perished.

  The magistrate of Haleslack, who had always insisted on hunting wild turkeys in the forests before dawn, had apparently fallen prey to a jaguar, to judge by the tattered state of his abandoned cloak.

  Robbers had become bold and broken into the house of a merchant in Simmerock, stripping it of all valuables. The merchant himself was missing and the worst was feared.

  The High Custodian of the Ashlands at Chillford’s Drop had apparently absconded with the coffers of money for the upkeep of the Ashlands.

  Four disappearances in as many nights. Four of Camber’s contacts. He could not imagine it to be a coincidence.

  Worst of all was the reported testimony given by the seven-year-old daughter of the missing merchant’s housekeeper.

  . . . and I heard a squeak like a door so I went to shut it so the rats wouldn’t get in and there was a giant lady with snakes for hair and a big club in her hand but she told me she was just a nightmare and I should go back to bed and wait to wake up . . .

  The local authorities had made nothing of this story and seemed ready to believe that it had been the girl’s dream. But Camber knew better.

  Dance. This was the work of Dance, which meant it was the work of the Reckoning. But how did the Reckoning know where to strike?

 
; Somebody somewhere has noticed me. Somehow my finger has left a mark, my foot has left a print.

  I have been seen.

  Even as the thought rolled through Camber’s mind, it brought a certain sense of recognition, of inevitability.

  It was the same feeling he had experienced when he learned that Lady Arilou, Jimboly’s so-called ‘oozy-brained’ Lost, had escaped from the cove of the Hollow Beasts. The same feeling that had struck him when he discovered that she had not fled up the Coast of the Lace, but had dared the volcanoes and turned up unexpectedly in Mistleman’s Blunder. A sense of a glancing blow against another will.

  Camber had taken great pains to terrify Gullstruck with the idea of a deadly Lace conspiracy. He had depicted Lady Arilou as its calculating leader, and then the dreaded Reckoning as its scorpion sting, capable of striking from darkness without warning. Now he faced the alarming possibility that this story might actually be true.

  Then there were the other worrying reports. Whole Lace villages had started disappearing overnight before the bounty hunters could find them. There were rumours of a secret trail, by which Lace who were willing to dare the hazards of volcano and jungle could make their way undetected away from the Coast of the Lace and off towards the east. If this was true, perhaps the Lace had found themselves a stronghold, somewhere for Lady Arilou to rally her supporters.

  Lace. Trying to pin them down was like grabbing a fistful of eels. Slithering, unaccountable, endlessly elusive. Even their names could not be pinned to paper, for they were musical imitations of natural sounds, never meant to be written, never meant to outlive those who had heard them spoken.

  What could he do? Strike back. Strike back hard. End forever this terrible sense that perhaps he, even he, was being watched, was being seen.

  Quickly he wrote a letter, and the next day a pigeon fluttered into his loft with an answer. It was in scrawled and spattered letterings and was marked with the inky footprints of a flickerbird.

  Sir,

  Did like you said and told blue man to look for Lace trail, follow them east to their secret hidey-hole. Found a family trudging through jungle, slow and easy to follow. All simple as slurping out an oyster – they never knew we were there.

  Led us straight back to Jealousy. One little word me and Ritterbit go mopping. Send word to me at Palm Point on Jealousy road.

  He was still reading the note when a second pigeon alighted on the perch beside the first. The letter it had brought was also unsigned, but again the handwriting was well known.

  Most Honoured Sir,

  You promised me that nothing more would be required of me, and that nobody who knew me would be left with a name. Now I find both are untrue. You ask me to act as your spy once more, looking for signs of Lace in Jealousy, and when I do so I see that a man from my own village is alive and well and walking through the craftsmen’s district, working alongside a boy who carries the signet ring of the Superior himself.

  I hear rumours that they have been seen walking on Crackgem, and talking to the Sours. Furthermore, all of a sudden everybody knows that there are blissing beetles at the Beacon School.

  Worse still, common talk has it that the Superior is collecting Lace. Some even say he is building a private army of them. If anyone guesses my ancestry, I will surely be dragged to his Stockpile. You must move me somewhere else. I call on you to honour your promise.

  It was Jealousy, then, that had become the secret Lace power-base. Worse still, it seemed the Superior of Jealousy was involving himself on the side of the Lace. This was a terrible blow.

  How had it happened? What had the Superior been told to win him to the cause of the Lace? Camber could report the Superior for obstructing an Ashwalker and ignoring the official edicts issued by Minchard Prox, but if Lady Arilou had been able to tell the Superior something incriminating, then the Superior might respond to official charges with some devastating accusations of his own.

  With a sigh Camber borrowed a little of Prox’s paper and wrote an answer to the first letter.

  He walked back to the map of Gullstruck and spent a few moments in quiet scrutiny. Then he placed his thumb over the town of Jealousy, just to see how the map looked without it.

  All of this is done because it must be done, he reminded himself, for the sake of the island. Compelled by habit he set about wiping the quills, laying the papers exactly where Prox had placed them, erasing even the tiniest hint of his own presence.

  Perhaps he himself could learn something from the Lace after all. Did they not also work hard to make sure that they left no footprint, that posterity did not know them? Some heroic deeds lived on in story, but the names of the heroes were forgotten. Camber had a private theory that in time all such tales were told as stories of the Gripping Bird. The Gripping Bird was nobody, he was a thousand men, he was the place stories went when they were lost. But, Camber realized, he was doing something very similar.

  Gullstruck would change – was changing – and already Camber had decided that the glory for this should go to Minchard Prox. He had surprised himself with a real affection for the younger man. There was, he reflected, a greatness that came only with a certain kind of blindness. Prox had a mind that clung to order, a world of properly folded napkins, account books, modes of address when meeting a duchess. Papers were his servitors – he could make them perform and pirouette.

  Prox’s brain was a pleasure to manipulate, a strange mix of fire and precision, logic and madness.

  History shall not remember me, Camber reflected, and the thought filled him with a melancholy calm.

  That night, the moonlight saw a single bird-rider sloping exhausted down the road towards Jealousy. His rounded, naturally sunny face was marked by fading bruises and traces of tiredness.

  Tomki was passing a shamble-shack when a chorus of throbbing coos caught his attention. There was a congregation of pigeons inside the shack, he realized, pushing their beaks through the wooden lattice at the front. Even as thoughts of roast pigeon chased across his mind, he heard a loud long whistle and realized that he was not alone. A raggle-tag, loose-limbed woman was bounding down the slope towards him, a piece of parchment in her hand.

  ‘Hail Brother Gripping Bird!’ she called out cheerfully in Nundestruth. The rider looked down at his long shadow and laughed. The silhouette of rider and steed greatly resembled a giant bird with human arms, just like the legendary Gripping Bird. ‘Pleaseyou lend star for light lantern belong-me? Tinder damp.’

  Tomki grinned, found his own tinder and lit the candle in the woman’s lantern. In the candlelight her bandanna became red, and a piece of the night frayed away from the rest and flickered about her head, its tiny tail opening and closing like a fan.

  ‘Thankyou well, Brother Gripping Bird.’ A grin of tin and garnet. ‘Where travel?’

  ‘Jealousy.’ A sigh.

  ‘Ah, travel Jealousy also. But Brother Gripping Bird no reach Jealousy before dry season, if draggle so.’ The woman drooped her head, imitating the elephant bird’s weary pace for a few steps. ‘Why so slug-foot? Someman wait there for hang you?’

  ‘Close.’ Tomki gave a rueful grin. ‘Somegirl. Need say sorry. Lastime see girl, slap me goodbye.’

  ‘Ah . . .’ The lantern was raised to illuminate Tomki’s bruised face. ‘Blackandblue you, no kind girl. Listen, forget love, bird belong-you droop and drop. So stop. Rest bird. Sit twinsome here talk awhile. Thisere road lonely, company better.’

  ‘Travel lone?’ Tomki dismounted, and led his wilting bird to the roadside.

  ‘No lone, but lonely.’ The woman gave a jerk of her head up the hill. ‘Other sleep upthere. Companion, no company. No talk, no smile, no laugh.’

  And so the two strange figures sat cross-legged by the beknighted road as the stars brightened above them, chatting as if they were the oldest of friends. Only when the boy roused himself and continued on his way did the lanky woman unfold her new letter and pore over its last paragraph once more by the light of her lantern.<
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  ‘I enclose a message from our Lace friend, who has become frightened. Frightened people sometimes make mistakes. Save our friend from making mistakes in any way you can. In the meanwhile . . . Jealousy is yours.’

  Jimboly’s grin opened like a ravine.

  25

  Thief of Threads

  Until the moment she found the message in her hand, Jimboly’s week had been very dull. For one thing, her blue-dyed travelling companion was not a great one for conversation, and since Jimboly had no intention of leaving the chirruping to the birds this meant that she had been forced to supply both sides of the dialogue. She had tried to rile him into responding by delivering his lines in a range of squeaky voices. Most of the time he had ignored her. Occasionally he had glanced her way without malice, as if calculating how he would skin her to cover a drum.

  ‘Half a mind not to let you join in the fun, my darling.’ Jimboly’s smile glittered like a dragonfly conference. The surviving Hollow Beasts were clearly hiding in Jealousy – she no longer needed the Ashwalker to track them down. The next moment, however, her expression became pensive. Perhaps he could still be useful. ‘What do you think, Ritterbit, do we need the blue boy?’

  She smiled at the tickle of Ritterbit’s feet against her collarbone.

  ‘You’d peck him up, wouldn’t you? He’s a thread worth playing with. All right ittle-rittlebit, we’ll peck him.’

  Morning brought a good strong breeze, so Jimboly had no trouble following her nose and finding the hollow that Brendril the Ashwalker had chosen as a makeshift bedchamber.

  Generally there was nothing Jimboly liked better than creeping up on dozing people, but Brendril seemed to make a practice of sleeping with his eyes open, which took a lot of the pleasure out of it. Jimboly was not afraid to approach the living or the dead, but it was unfair of him to leave her wondering which of the two he was.

  She picked up a piece of twig and flicked it at his face. ‘Wake up, the day’s as pretty and blue as you are.’