The fragment of wood bounced off Brendril’s temple. He sat up smoothly, showing no sign of anger, then stood and readied his travel pack. As usual he took pains to make sure that Jimboly and Ritterbit were on the sun-side of him, so the flickerbird would have no chance to snatch threads from his shadow.
‘I’ve brought you a titbit.’ Jimboly fell into her lanky barefoot stride beside him. ‘Better than bread. Even better than rat pie. It’s a titbit of news – listen. The Superior sent you away from Jealousy. Want to know why he did that?’
Brendril slowed and stopped. He turned to look at Jimboly. There were crumbs of earth on his cheek and in his eyelashes, but he did not seem to have noticed. For the first time in two days he spoke to her.
‘Yes.’
Jimboly grinned. ‘He’s hiding your prey. That’s why all these ragamuffin Lace are creeping to Jealousy. He’s set up his own little camp for them to skulk in. There’s even a couple of Lace running around town carrying his signet ring. Lace from the Hollow Beasts, they say.’
Once more Brendril started to walk, his tireless lope taking him in the direction of Jealousy. He did not look at Jimboly, but she knew he was still listening.
‘Running around bold as a beacon. Nothing to fear – like they had protection. That’s how it sounds to me, but what do I know, you’re the –’ Jimboly had to execute a lolloping skip to keep up with the Ashwalker. ‘You’re the bloodhound, you tell me what it looks like.’
Without apparent effort, Brendril’s lope slipped into a leaping run, and soon even Jimboly was struggling to keep pace.
‘Commission in your pocket!’ she gasped. ‘Gives you the right to cut through anyone who gets between you and her, doesn’t it?’ Out of breath, Jimboly gave up and stooped to lean her hands on her knees, while a scrap of night sky leaped and bounded along the rugged route towards the town.
‘Oh, we’ve set him rolling like a rock down a ravine. There’ll be no stopping him now.’
Jimboly set off again at a more measured pace, for she did not have the Ashwalker’s relentless energy. For hours the road rolled past beneath her jaunty stroll. Only as the road dipped and Jealousy came into view did her steps start to caper and dart, as if she was herself a flickerbird. As she entered the outskirts her black eyes flitted to and fro looking for threads, threads that she could tangle and pull.
A group of seven-year-olds playing. This was a thread.
One gilded weathervane in a street of stark thatch. Also a thread.
A group of bored, scarred men whose stares clung to passers like hot tar. A Bitter Fruit soupery. A stall full of good-luck charms. All threads.
Jimboly’s jaunty walk faltered and altered. She started to hop. Hop left-and-forth, hop right-and-forth, to and fro and ever on, leaving a zigzag of prints behind her. Soon the children she had seen stopped their game of dirt-chequers to stare.
‘Ankle broke?’ called out the boldest in Nundestruth.
‘No.’ Jimboly laughed and pointed at her tracks behind her. ‘Want folk think person got two left foot walk down road.’ Her laughter was a disease, and the little gang immediately caught it. Soon that part of the street was empty but for the tracks of a woman with two left feet, and the prints of her six similarly afflicted children.
In their secret den in the hollow under the stilted granary, the gang showed Jimboly their treasure trove of little thefts and findings, bird skulls and bodice pins and broken goblets. And Jimboly’s quick fingers also sorted through the other scraps they offered her – tattered pieces of overheard conversations, shiny shards of gossip, mouldering patches of rumour.
Out of the ditch with straw in her hair, fastening some new bronze pins into her kerchief. Hop-hop, hop-hop, down the street with Ritterbit’s tail flish-a-flash.
She paused to pore over the stall of good-luck charms. She ran the tips of her fingers over a line of wooden bells, painted with spirals and eyes, and whistled regretfully through her teeth at the bubbles in the paint.
‘It is just the heat,’ the woman at the stall said quickly. Jimboly smiled at the woman’s thick-tongued Doorsy, a sure sign of a businesswoman trying to sound respectable. ‘Look, the bubbles have not ripped, they are still holding the good luck in.’
‘That is no ordinary heat.’ Jimboly prodded them. ‘You’ve used good paint here – ordinary heat would not blister it.’ The woman opened her mouth and closed it again, not wanting to disagree. ‘That’s volcano breath, that is. I’ve seen it before, back west. When a volcano gets bored with just rumbling and starts taking interest in a town, then it leans over and breathes on it. And at first the only signs are yellow fringes on some of the leaves, and a couple of chickens laying eggs baked in the shell, and good-luck charms rippling in the heat. But when the volcano leans closer for a good look . . .’ Jimboly gave a grim laugh. ‘Then everyone notices it, all right.’
‘Wait!’ The woman looked distressed as Jimboly moved away. ‘Aren’t you buying anything? Where are you going?’
‘You think I’m staying in this town with Lord Crackgem breathing down on it? You will leave as well if you’ve a spoon of sense, and quick.’
As Jimboly walked away she noticed the woman staring nervously towards the volcano, then pushing some of her wares into a shoulder-yoke bucket. She seemed to be readying herself to run rattling from the town if the mountain made one false move.
Jimboly lingered long enough to push one of her new pins into the door of the house with the gilded weathervane, then strolled on, fingering the painted bell that the stallholder had been too flustered to reclaim from her. She walked up to the bored-looking loiter of men, calling a greeting as cheerily as if she knew they had been waiting for her.
It took only five minutes for her to prove to them that they owed her a drink, and a mug of rum and crushed pineapple was brought to her. She dipped her smile into it, and then gestured with her head towards the charm stall.
‘What do now luck leave town?’
What did she mean?
‘Mean luck lady. Overthere stall. Lady got gift. Got sight. Sense illthing before happen. Lady say go runoff, leave town. Say volcano angry with town.’
‘Angry? Why mountain angry?’ Seven or so accusing stares were levelled towards Crackgem, followed by a series of half-reverent, half-defiant warding gestures.
Jimboly shrugged, then narrowed her eyes. ‘Back west, angry mountain sign of Lace whisper, Lace fireup mountain. But Jealousy too east. No Lace here, eh?’
One halting description of the Stockpile later, and Jimboly was staring at them bug-eyed as though she had never heard of such a thing before.
‘Superior protect Lace here?’ She gave a long, low whistle. ‘No wonder mountain angry. If Lace got powerful friend, wager Lace gather here long time. Wager many, many Lace in town. Look around. Lookout folks got strange accent. Lookout folks got more money than should. Lookout house got pin stuck in door – sign Lace safe haven. Findem easy . . .’
And away strolled Jimboly, sipping through her grin from her borrowed cup, and pausing now and then to push a pin into a door. At the Bitter Fruit soupery she halted and her smile slipped from her face, leaving her looking pained and uncertain.
‘You hear about the fight up the street?’ She slipped into the Bitter Fruit dialect, her tone rapid and urgent. ‘Couple of bounty hunters saying the Lace are all disguising themselves as Bitter Fruit. It’s getting out of hand – these hunters have started pulling people out of their houses and smashing up their stalls. The neighbours sent me to call the guards, but I don’t know where to find them . . .’
The stallholder paled, left the stall in the hands of his children and ran off down the street. Oh, so that’s where the guardhouse is, thought Jimboly as she continued walking.
Outside a forge she found a monkey tethered to a hook on the wall by a rope. It hobbled over on its knuckles when she held out a palmful of crushed pineapple, and its blush-coloured fingers delicately scooped the pulp into its mouth. Doped by rum, i
t did not notice Jimboly cutting its rope and slipping a noose about its tail.
People erupted from their houses as a tawny ball of screech and snarl bounded off walls and stalls, knocking pots, rolling bowls, scattering ducks.
‘What go pass? What matter monkey?’
‘Monkey got bell tied to tail, look!’
The monkey swiftly vanished from sight, and Jimboly strolled through the suddenly full streets, asking everyone she met what the fuss was. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed the raised voices drawing in people from other streets, adding to the confusion. Her erstwhile drinking companions arrived, and quickly became the centre of fierce debate.
‘. . . pins in doors . . . volcano breath . . . Lace . . . Lace . . .’
Jimboly tugged at a sleeve. ‘I just arrived here – why’s everybody gathering? Is it true that there’s going to be a march on the Superior’s palace?’
‘What?’ answered the first dozen people she asked.
‘That’s what I’ve heard,’ answered the next dozen.
‘Yes – didn’t you know?’ came the answers at last. ‘Are you with us?’
‘I’m just an outsider,’ said Jimboly. ‘But I’ll come along if you want me.’
She sauntered in the midst of the crowd, rubbing her palms as if at a well-stoked fire. Ah, she thought when the road widened and she saw a whitewashed and gabled house ahead, so that’s where the Superior lives.
Jimboly looked all about her, and then up at the roofs. And, sure enough, perched amid the dust-coloured thatch she spotted a familiar inkblot of a figure.
‘About time he spent some time following us, isn’t it, Ritterbit my gobblesome?’ Jimboly fell back in the crowd, then climbed up the pedestal of a statue of the first Duke of Sedrollo. She settled between the stone duke’s great buckled shoes. From the side streets the Superior’s men were pouring in and completing the confusion of the march.
On his roof, Brendril saw Jimboly wave across at him and point towards the Superior’s palace. He did not see her as a woman. She was a great voracious flickerbird with a jewelled beak, pulling loose threads of souls and tangling them together. He respected her as he might a scorpion or a precipice.
But most of his thoughts were upon the palace, iced with marble peacocks and stucco suns. He did not know whether the Lady Arilou could be found inside. But he did know that somewhere within the palace was a man – a man mistaken. A man who thought he would stand between a fugitive and an Ashwalker. A man who thought his heart was beating. A man who did not understand that he was nothing but ash.
26
The Superior’s Stand
It was during lunch that Hathin heard Mob baying at the palace gates, and suddenly sensed the fine cracks in the yellowing ivory of her sanctuary. It was one voice at first, but a rabbling roar of them soon followed, like a landslide triggered by a solitary rock.
The palace was suddenly full of running feet. A valet ran in and whispered furiously to the Superior.
‘What? At the gates?’ The Superior’s face took on a hopeless look. What was he to do if even the living were determined to spoil his lunch? ‘No. Yes. Wait. I shall talk to them.’ He felt gingerly at the wires that supported his elaborate moustaches.
‘Can I recommend that you do so from the balcony, sir?’ suggested the valet.
Having changed his dressing gown for an oversize silk-lapelled frock coat, and his lace morning cap for a full-bottomed wig, the Superior ascended to the first floor. As the shutters were opened for him, angry noise poured into the room.
‘What’s wrong with you?’ The Superior stared at Hathin, who had doubled into a crouch and was flinching at each raised voice. Nobody and nothing could stop Mob. She could not speak, but in her wide eyes the Superior seemed to see something of the blind white panic that filled her mind.
‘Here.’ He held aside a fold of the curtain. ‘Hide in this if you must.’ She gratefully hid herself in the curtain’s folds, and he let it fall around her.
Through the worn places in the curtain, Hathin saw the Superior step forward on to the balcony. There was a surprised hush, and then the sound from the street instantly became deafening.
‘Citizens of Jealousy – Citizens of – this is ridiculous. You, sir, in the white waistcoat, kindly stand next to me and do my shouting for me. Tell them that their Superior stands before them, and that he will not bellow to a rabble like a fishmonger. They must choose one spokesperson.’
As his instructions were called out the Superior drew himself up as if to prove his Superiority. Strangely Hathin thought this made him look all the smaller and more frail. His words, however, did seem to cause some confusion. Clearly the crowd was not sure who its leaders were. But then a voice from near the back pealed out with gull-like clarity.
‘Hey, Bewliss, speak Doorsy, don’t you? Bewliss, everybody! Push man forward!’
A broad-shouldered young man was pushed forward amid slaps on the back, but Hathin’s eye had lodged not on him but on the person who had called out, the person who now playfully punched his shoulder and whispered into his ear. The velvet of the curtain smothered Hathin’s croak of horror.
A red bandanna. A grin studded with coloured stars. A bird on a string, with its tail ever in a flick-knife twitch. It was Jimboly. And suddenly her appearance had a dreadful inevitability.
‘We want the Lace!’ came the cry in a rough-cut Doorsy, amid a chorus of approval. ‘We want an end to them quarrelling with the mountains and making soup out of our children and squeezing the strength from our goats and making our wells dry up. We want the Stockpile.’
The Superior murmured in the ear of his spokesperson, who listened, nodded, then repeated his words more loudly.
‘The Superior has no intention of handing over his supplies to a riotous multitude. Within Jealousy, wrongdoers will be punished by process of law, not in the street. Anyone who tries to do so is a simple murderer.’
‘Don’t fiddle with the velvet, child,’ the Superior murmured quietly as the roar of protest rose, and Hathin realized that she was clutching the folds of the curtain tightly. ‘You are fretting loose my great-grandfather’s crest.’
The crowds in the street knew that they outnumbered the Superior and his men five to one. What they did not realize was that they in turn were outnumbered by the thousands of ancestors who stood behind the Superior, watching to see that he did not disgrace their line. What was the threat of a few brute moments with a cosh-carrying mob compared to the danger of an eternity of steely disdain from a thousand high-born relatives?
‘My good girl, kindly stop quivering. Get yourself to the Lace quarters . . . and have all my Lace brought into the main building. Put them in the trophy room – we will be better able to protect them there.’
Hathin ran to the Stockpile to find the Lace readying themselves for fight or flight. Enough of the cries outside the walls had been overheard for panic to set in. Jaze, who had arrived back in Jealousy a couple of days earlier, was already giving curt orders. The Stockpile’s numbers had now swollen to about three dozen, including some entire families.
Hathin stared mutely at the terrified smiles of the children, and the gulls above sounded like Jimboly’s laughter. Hathin had made things easy for Jimboly and her friends, gathering all these Lace in one place when they might have scattered to the winds . . .
Grim and desperate resolution was legible in the faces of Therrot and Jaze as they shouldered children and shepherded the terrified gathering out of their hut. A few of the young men had skinning knives out and wore dazzled looks as if they were already running through imagined fights in their heads. The stragglers were halfway across the courtyard when there were shrieks, and Hathin turned to see heads and shoulders appearing over the courtyard wall.
The Lace broke into a sprint, but bottle-necked at the door of the main building. The Superior’s men had all been drawn to the front of the palace, and there was nobody to call to as figures hauled themselves over the wall and dr
opped into the garden.
All thought was burned away by brute terror. Everything was animal – the gaggle of Lace turning its knives and teeth outwards, their young in the middle, while the attacking figures lurched in like wolves. Somewhere in the crush a little child gave a scream, a white, raw, naked sound like a gash of chalk. Therrot turned to face their attackers, brutally shoving Hathin behind him.
She was caught in a crush of tall bodies and did not see the first blow struck, but she felt the crowd flinch one way, then surge the other like wild water, nearly dragging her off her feet. The screams striped her mind and confused her, and it took a while for her to realize that one of the screams was hers.
‘Get inside!’ she was screaming. She could feel the crowd yielding as the Stockpile looked to flee down the side of the palace wall, into the bushes, towards the walls. ‘No! Everybody inside!’ She could just glimpse the Jealousy men grappling some of the Lace away from the group, trying to break up the defensive line.
Oh no, thought Hathin. Oh no, no, no you don’t, Jimboly. Not again. Not this time.
A blunder of fists, a snick, a cry, and then a wary space opened suddenly around Jaze and his knife. Through a gap between shoulders Hathin saw a brutish-looking local go down in a flurry of Therrot.
‘Everybody in!’ Hathin’s voice found a space in the noise and seemed to galvanize the crowd. Suddenly the Lace were not tug-of-warring to and fro, they were pushing through the door into the dim-lit hall.
‘Follow me! This way!’ Hathin stooped to scoop up a small child whose parents’ arms were already full of infants, and ran as fast as she could down the mosaic-floored corridor. The vaulted passages had no idea what to make of children’s screams, the patter of wicker shoes, frightened cries in Lace, and they threw the sounds back in confusion.
The Lace fugitives erupted into the great trophy hall, their entry watched by stuffed deer, peacocks and dust-matted jaguars’ heads. The hall had a heavy oak door with black iron bolts. But when to slam it? Should they wait for all the Lace to be within, or should they close it after the children and the old, and leave the rearguard with no retreat from the growing mob? Hathin’s heart plunged as she realized that Therrot was nowhere to be seen.
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