Gullstruck Island

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Shut the door! Shut the door!’ Jaze’s voice from down the hall.

  Too late. Even as the Stockpile tried to force the door shut, half a dozen shoulders arrived to heave against it from the other side. The gap bristled with hands, knives, feet, elbows. Helplessly, Hathin watched as it started to gape once more.

  Then something changed in the tone of the combat outside. The Stockpile all felt the change, and tensed to it, but could not understand it. They stared into the dark mirrors of each other’s eyes and listened as the baying outside was suddenly punctuated by sharper, higher cries of surprise and betrayal. The door lurched, buffeted against the defenders’ weight, then the clustering hands and feet were withdrawn and the door crashed to. The nearest Lace quickly flung down bars, drove home bolts. The door shook and jolted a few times, and then there was a pattering of receding steps and the cries took on a watery distance.

  A battering at the door. ‘Open up!’ It took a moment for Hathin to realize it was Jaze speaking. ‘It’s me – open the door!’

  When the door swung open, Hathin’s heart jumped as a stream of unfamiliar people burst in, drawn knives and bone coshes in their hands. However, instead of setting upon the flinching huddle of families, the newcomers scoured the room, hurried to windows or posted themselves like guards by the door. It was a moment before she was calm enough to recognize Marmar, Louloss and others she had met on that first night in the Wasps’ Nest.

  ‘Any of them make it in here?’ Jaze hurried in, clasping a bloody arm, Therrot a step behind him.

  The Stockpile roused itself from paralysis and shook three dozen heads. Two bear rugs humped themselves ominously, and the frightened faces of small Lace children peered out from under them.

  Hathin stared down the passage beyond the door. It was a mess of broken vases, bloody palm-prints and hastily abandoned clubs. Not a single rioter, however.

  Jaze allowed himself a smile. ‘Funny, they lost their taste for a fight once they were trapped in a narrow passageway between a locked door and us. As soon as they saw an opening, they fled for the wall again.’

  The calls in the passage were more distinct now.

  ‘. . . he’s not in the ballroom. You two – any sign of him?’

  ‘Nothing in the minstrel’s gallery . . . anybody see which way he . . .’

  Marmar caught Hathin’s questioning glance.

  ‘We weren’t the only ones to follow that mob over the back wall,’ he said quietly. ‘I saw an Ashwalker vault in and vanish among the figs. And now we can’t find him.’

  While most of the Reckoning continued their search for the Ashwalker, much to the confusion of the Superior’s guards, Hathin learned the reason for the Reckoning’s well-timed appearance. As it turned out, the maker of this miracle had been Tomki.

  ‘He tipped us off,’ explained Louloss, the head-carver. ‘He’d stayed with us a few days but was returning to Jealousy on Dance’s orders. Half day’s ride from the city he ran into a woman on the road. He’d never met her before, but he’d seen that little wooden head I’d carved to your description, and when he caught sight of a flickerbird on her shoulder he realized that this was Jimboly the tooth-puller, the crowd-witch.

  ‘So he stayed to chat with her, and found out that she was heading to Jealousy, travelling with an Ashwalker, and that she’d heard that Jealousy was “Lace-infested”. Apparently he had half a mind to ride straight back and warn you all, but the nearest Reckoning safehouse was closer, so he rode there like fury for reinforcements. By the time he got there, he’d nearly shaken his brain loose with galloping. His bird flopped right down, drank half a lake of water and hasn’t let him on its back since.’

  Hathin felt a twinge of remorse as she imagined Tomki tumbling exhausted from his resentful bird.

  ‘What in the name of . . . ?’ The Superior had just appeared in the doorway to the trophy room and stood boggling at the scene before him. ‘How . . . ? Who . . . ? Who are all these people?’

  ‘They’re . . . They are yours, sir.’ Hathin gingerly advanced, feeling self-conscious in her use of Doorsy before so many Lace. ‘They’re your Lace Stockpile.’

  ‘What?’ The Superior’s jaw wobbled about for a few seconds like a cork on a stream. ‘What – all of them? How can we possibly need this many to push barrows up the mountain?’ Hathin could only hope that he had not noticed the weapons being tucked away as he entered, or the suspicious number of people with covered forearms. ‘Where did you even find them? And what are they all looking so happy about?’

  Hathin’s spirits wilted before the prospect of explaining the Lace smile to someone with such a short attention span for the living. But the Superior was already occupied trying to shoo a pair of Lace children from riding his stuffed gazelles.

  ‘All right!’ he was shouting. ‘All right, these people can stay for now, but no more, you understand! Not a single Lace more!’

  So it was perhaps just as well that neither the Superior nor his guards noticed when Dance of the Reckoning arrived with the dusk and let herself in through the kitchens.

  27

  Death Dance

  Nothing was to be found of the Ashwalker. He seemed to have melted into the palace like a drop of ink losing itself in a glass of water. By dusk, everyone said that he must have left as silently as he arrived. Yet an air of unease remained.

  Hathin had no doubt that the Ashwalker who had been spotted must be the same one that had hunted her all the way from the coast. At the back of her mind she had always known he would return. Her only consolation was the fact that Arilou at least was safely tucked away in the Sour village. And yet, unreasonably, she felt that Arilou could not be really safe without Hathin herself to watch over her.

  Hathin felt a fear of herself as she walked the nocturnal passages, the clap of her boots on the marble tiles too loud for her liking. She had started the Stockpile, and now the fates of dozens of innocents, even the fates of Dance and her Reckoning, all seemed to be teetering precariously on that one small decision, like an inverted mountain perched on its peak. How had it happened? Her revenge quest seemed to have taken on a very strange shape.

  As she clipped through the passages figures detached themselves from the shadow to give her a small, lazy raise of the hand before concealing themselves again, so that she would not be startled by coming upon them suddenly. Despite their hell-for-leather run to Jealousy, many of the revengers had chosen to eschew sleep and stand watch throughout the palace that night in case of trouble.

  It had seemed best not to bother the Superior with this plan. He had been flabbergasted enough at the discovery that his personal stash of Lace had increased to an army of nearly fifty souls. If he found that his Lace were leaking out of the trophy room and lurking fully armed in corners of his palace, Hathin felt that he might be downright upset.

  In the ballroom Hathin found Dance, but only because she knew to expect her. Dance sat there alone with the patience of a mountain, her slow-blinking stillness rendering her unobtrusive despite her size. Around the room marble biceps bulged, painted armour gleamed and woven horse haunches flexed as the dead dukes paraded their victories on wall and pedestal.

  Hathin took off her hat and sat down next to Dance, feeling like a rowboat beside a ghost galleon.

  ‘I expect,’ Dance said quietly after a few moments, ‘that your Stockpile have told you about the secret trail? It runs from the coast through the jungles and marshes all the way to Jealousy. Among our people, the whisper is spreading that in Jealousy there’s a haven. Right now there are probably dozens of Lace on the trail, all on their way here.’

  Hathin swallowed and said nothing.

  ‘Whatever we choose to do, it is too late to stop them coming. Wave after wave of them will arrive.’ Dance rolled her shoulders slowly, easing out cramps. ‘What has your Superior promised? How sure is his protection?’

  ‘I . . . don’t know.’ Rather hesitantly, Hathin explained the peculiar nature of her agreement with the S
uperior. It sounded flimsy and foolish in the retelling.

  ‘We have two choices,’ continued Dance. ‘The first – we can all leave Jealousy, and abandon the town to this crowd-witch Jimboly. Scatter ourselves like sparks, so we can’t be stamped out easily. Take as many of the Stockpile with us as we can, and leave them on the Obsidian Trail to fend for themselves. The other choice – we stay. We make this the haven our people want, a headquarters for pursuing your quest and a new base for the Reckoning. We gamble everything.

  ‘If we choose the second . . . the Reckoning won’t take to it easily. We’re hawk-soldiers, we stoop, strike and fly. We don’t stand guard like dogs. Our strength has always been that daylight only borrows us – we come from darkness and return to it again, and nobody knows where to find us out. If we choose to remain here – we might as well be standing by a great pyre like the Beacon School.’

  ‘It’s . . . If we could stay here a little longer . . . perhaps the Sours can get more information out of Arilou. It could help us find out who our enemies are . . . or why . . .’

  Dance turned her head slightly and looked down at Hathin.

  ‘Those little children in your Stockpile, do you know their names?’ Dance listened as Hathin falteringly recited a few names, then quietly interrupted. ‘Don’t learn any more of them. They’re becoming too real to you, and their protection is not your quest. If the Reckoning leave tomorrow, we take you with us.’

  ‘Tomorrow! But—’

  ‘Hathin . . . thanks to you and your sister we now know how our enemies have been trading messages with each other so quickly. And we have been having interesting conversations with four very frightened men who never thought they would find themselves our guests.

  ‘They’re all officials.’ Dance sounded neither outraged nor surprised. ‘All Doorsy men, instructed to report on Lace and Lost activity. They claim they did not know that the Lost would die, but they admit on the night of the deaths they were ordered to stay away from their local Lost and find themselves alibis. What is remarkable is how little they do seem to know. They do not even know the identity of their immediate leader. But they all seem certain of one thing. He is an agent of Port Suddenwind.

  ‘Until now, we’ve been thinking ourselves faced by two bands of foes. On one hand, the secret killers of the Lost. On the other, the forces of law and order. Now we have to face the fact that they may be one and the same. Small wonder this woman Jimboly turned up at the same time as the Ashwalker.’

  Hathin’s skin went cold. Was it possible? If Port Sudden-wind was behind the murders of the Lost, then what hope did she or her friends have? Powerful enemies. Men with warrants and Ashwalkers at their fingers’ ends. Perhaps even the ‘Lord S’ mentioned in Skein’s journal was one of them. Lord S will return when the rains end or soon after. Return for what? Another grand strike? Another wave of deaths? What had poor Bridle tried to warn against before he died? She had nursed some frail hope that once they’d unravelled the mystery she and Arilou could prove their innocence to the authorities, stop the Lace being used as scapegoats and complete her quest by having the culprits brought to justice. If the authorities were the true murderers, then even this was hopeless. The butterfly wing on her arm suddenly seemed absurd. How could a twelve-year-old Lace fugitive avenge herself on the government itself?

  ‘Dance – was there nothing else the pigeon men could tell you? Did they know anything about the lists in Skein’s journal, or who “C” might be?’ Hathin could not quite keep a touch of desolation from her voice as Dance shook her head. ‘Well . . . they must have had orders from their leader from time to time. What did he ask them to do?’

  ‘They did receive orders, yes. In particular, they were told to gather carpenters, masons and mining experts to be transported west in secret. Also gunpowder, picks, shovels . . . everything you would need for a mine. But these supplies were not delivered at the usual mining outposts. They were taken to the Coast of the Lace and then north somewhere. That was all they knew.’

  They still had no answers.

  ‘One of our prisoners told us something else,’ continued Dance. ‘He seemed very sure that there is a Lace spy working for the organization. And that is the other reason that your Stockpile troubles me. They are all Lace, and all strangers.’

  Hathin was silent for a moment. The suggestion of a spy again called up the phantasmal image of her village filing into the cave of death, but for one furtive figure . . .

  ‘Dance,’ Hathin said carefully, ‘the Lace spy might not be a stranger. Jaze . . . Jaze thinks that someone else from the Hollow Beasts might be alive. Someone who told Jimboly about the escape route through the caves. Someone who didn’t die because they were expecting the attack. A traitor.’

  There was a long silence.

  ‘If there is such a one,’ rumbled Dance at last, ‘and we find them . . . they are yours.’

  ‘Mine?’ The marble tiles chilled Hathin’s bare calves.

  ‘Yours. Whatever happens to Jimboly and her masters, it is fitting that you are the one to take away the traitor’s name.’

  Hathin felt as if she had promised to leap a ravine, and had just now halted breathless at the precipice, feeling her stomach tumbling down and away towards water-chilled rocks.

  ‘Dance . . .’ She could barely squeeze out a whisper. How could she tell this giantess that the Reckoning had risked all for nothing, because she, Hathin, could not bring herself to crush even a cockroach? The revengers were her only friends – how could she see their eyes cool as Eiven’s had when Hathin had failed to find a way round the Lost Inspector’s tests? How could she be less than they expected? ‘I . . . I will take the traitor’s name.’

  Dance put out a hand and rested it on Hathin’s boot. For a moment Hathin thought it was a gesture of acceptance, camaraderie. The next instant, however, she noticed the sudden tension in the older woman’s posture, and heard what Dance had already heard, the tiniest metallic creak from the next room.

  Dance’s eyes were plum-blood moons. There was barely a sound as she stood, and Hathin realized that her feet were bare. The painted veins on her arms wove darkly, as if rivulets of blood had trickled down from her shoulders and then dried.

  The tall woman stooped, carefully lifted the lid of an ottoman and pointed within. Hathin obediently climbed inside and took the weight of the lid on her hands as Dance lowered it so it wouldn’t click shut.

  The lowered lid allowed her a sliver of vision, and through it Hathin saw Death walk into the room, man-shaped but midnight blue. Her first thought was that he must be searching for Arilou and herself, and she watched bewildered as his steps took him in the direction of the door that led to the Superior’s quarters.

  The Ashwalker was halfway across the ballroom before he seemed to sense Dance. Hathin saw his head turn to look towards her, and the tapestry behind her fluttered as Dance launched herself from the wall.

  From one of her hands drooped a wood-handled club. As she circled the Ashwalker she let it twirl slightly, so that the loose leather bandage around it unwound itself and spiralled on to the floor, revealing a long row of obsidian blades jutting from either side of the long wooden shaft that formed its core.

  With a lurch of her heart, Hathin realized that she was looking at something that few had seen since the time when the Lace were purged, their priests executed and their temples left to ruin. Once in a long-dead time elite companies of black-feathered Lace bearing such weapons would have hissed out of the darkness to storm strangers’ camps and carry off prisoners for sacrifice. The obsidian blades were volcano teeth, and blood shed by them was drunk by the mountain.

  Rings of white appeared around the Ashwalker’s dark irises as he stared at the weapon. He was a head shorter than Dance, but his form seemed to drink light out of the dim hall. Now there were two figures slowly circling one another, one muscular and momentous, the other slender and deadly as a garrotte wire.

  They swung into battle like leaves on a water ed
dy, and Hathin knew suddenly why Dance had been given her name and why she had no other title. There was a stillness even in her swiftness, a rolling agility as if she was a sea thing underwater. She was a dance. Each time she swung her weapon, the air buzzed between the obsidian blades with a sound like a dozen people humming.

  The Ashwalker was also a dancer, but one full of hummingbird-like darts and retreats, a sliver of steel gleaming in each hand. Hathin held her breath and watched a waltz older than the ballroom, older than the dukes it honoured.

  The pair vanished behind a pillar, and Hathin heard a rending, a thud, a release of air. When they reappeared at the other side, one of the Ashwalker’s knives was too dull to catch the light, and new dark rivulets were coursing down Dance’s arm. Only then did Hathin remember that although Dance had killed an Ashwalker previously, he had been river-dunked first, washed of his powers.

  The Ashwalker made a brief lunge, which Dance seemed to dodge, but then Hathin heard the tall woman give a low growl in her throat and saw a dark patch forming on her thigh. When the moon started to peer its way in through one of the high windows Hathin could see that both combatants were leaving stained footprints on the white marble tiles. Those of the Ashwalker were faintly blue, but Dance’s were red.

  Only as the Ashwalker slipped across a stripe of moonlight did Hathin realize that Dance’s broad swipes had not missed entirely. The serrated teeth of her sword had missed skin but caught cloth, and his garments now sported rents and ragged tufts like feathers. That was why the indigo was marking the tiles. Dance was losing, but the Ashwalker was at least perspiring.

  An image flashed into Hathin’s mind – a blue figure crouching beneath his waxed parasol on the volcanic hillside, hiding from the rain . . .

  There was a raised gallery that ran along the wall behind her, some ten feet above the ballroom. And on the gallery were small shrines to the ancestors, complete with offerings in ornate pots. Perfumes. Wines. Water.