Joy at an Execution
Drops of rain flecked Ellie’s face. The children rushed by and she stared and wasn’t sure any of it was really happening.
Castion squeezed her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, Ellie,’ he said, ‘but this must happen. The Vessel has to be killed before the Enemy can use him to take its own physical form. Once that’s done, it might be decades before it claims another Vessel. Years of peace and safety.’
‘I need to go!’ Ellie cried, breaking into a run.
‘Ellie,’ Castion yelled. ‘You don’t want to see this!’
As Ellie raced down Orphanage Street, other city folk appeared in doorways, throwing on coats and scarves. Everyone was smiling. Overhead, fireworks erupted in the cloudy night sky. Ellie was dismayed at the sight of them – they were fireworks she’d designed, exploding in swirling, corkscrewing showers of gold and silver.
‘Oi! Wait for me!’
Anna crashed after her. ‘Put this on,’ she said, draping Ellie’s coat across her shoulders. It was almost dry now after spending the day by the boiler.
‘What do I do, Anna?’ said Ellie. ‘They’re going to kill him.’ She patted her trouser pockets. ‘Oh no, I forgot my keys!’
There was a clinking of metal. ‘Here they are,’ said Anna.
‘Where were they?’ Ellie said, relieved.
‘In your trousers. Five minutes ago, anyway.’
‘Anna! I’ve told you to stop pickpocketing me! And stop smirking too, this isn’t funny – an innocent boy is going to die!’
She picked up her pace. The dark streets seemed much more menacing than usual, their cragged spires and chimneys like broken bones. Children skipped and danced in the drizzling rain. Stifling clouds of smoke filled the alleyways as vendors tossed fish into pans of burning oil, racing to turn a quick profit. As Ellie and Anna neared St Ephram’s Square, the crowd grew thicker. Ellie tried to squeeze through but kept treading on people’s feet.
‘Hey, watch where you’re going!’
‘Careful!’
Ellie stood on tiptoe, but failed to see over the shoulders of the people around her. She had no idea how many there were – she felt like she was stranded in an infinite sea of revellers. They smelled of tobacco and wine, their breath coiling over their heads. At last Ellie pushed forward into the square, where a pile of logs sat atop a high platform.
The bonfire.
Ellie’s head spun; she didn’t know what she was going to do when she reached the bonfire. She just kept going, nipping between boisterous sailors and smiling old women and parents with children bouncing on their shoulders.
‘Ellie!’ Anna called. ‘Ellie, slow down!’
She was bigger than Ellie, and seemed to be having a harder time weaving through the crowd. She was less reckless too – already Ellie’s cheek burned from where she’d been bashed by an elbow. She shoved and ducked and the pile of logs grew taller and taller overhead.
‘Hello.’
Finn was standing next to her. There was a smudge of soot on his face and he had a spanner in his hand. His cheeks were rosy and he looked even more pleased with himself than usual.
‘What are you doing?’ Ellie whispered.
‘Helping!’ Finn said cheerily. ‘I’ve got everything planned out, you see. Gosh, look how happy everyone is! Almost seems a shame to spoil their fun.’
‘I told you, Finn, I don’t need your help.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because your help always comes at a price!’
‘Well, it’s not like you have a choice. Unless . . .’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless you want him to die? Now listen, I was watching when they built that platform –’ he turned the spanner over in his hand – ‘and I’ve got it all figured out. Imagine the greatest magic trick you’ve ever seen – this will be even better.’
‘Finn, I told you, I –’
‘Don’t need your help,’ he said, imitating her in a childish voice. ‘Saints, you’re so boring, Nellie. Fine, just let me know when you change your mind.’
And he turned and darted into the crowd. Ellie watched him go, and was so distracted that she failed to notice two men gripping each other and jumping so gleefully that they crashed into her and knocked her to the ground. She fell on to all fours, smacking her head on someone’s knee on the way down.
‘Ellie!’
Warm hands lifted her, and her heart leapt as she caught the familiar smell of Anna’s blue jumper.
‘You’re going to get yourself killed,’ said Anna, hugging Ellie firmly as if to stop her running off again.
‘We have to do something!’
‘We can’t do anything!’
There was a sudden, jubilant, deafening roar from all around that could only mean one thing – Seth was being brought out.
‘Anna, I need to get on your shoulders!’ said Ellie. Anna grumbled but knelt down, and Ellie clambered awkwardly on to her back.
‘Ow, you’re pulling my hair!’ Anna complained. She stood up, and Ellie rose above the heads of the crowd, the icy wind biting her cheeks. A firework illuminated the entire square, revealing just how many people there were: ten thousand at least, spilling out in every direction across the square and into the streets beyond. Ellie felt sick at the sight, like she’d opened a cupboard to find a nest of woodlice within.
Then, Ellie saw the doors of the Inquisitorial Keep swing open. A procession emerged.
At its head was the drummer, a brawny man with beaters the size of a blacksmith’s hammer in each hand, the drum strapped to his front. Then came the High Inquisitor – an old man in a long black greatcoat – followed by a host of other Inquisitors, including Hargrath. Behind them came a cage carried by four guardsmen. The crowd cheered and hissed, flecks of spit filling the air.
Inside the cage was Seth.
Ellie bit her fist. Seth’s skin was bruised and cut. His hands were bound to an iron pole, and they’d hosed the whale blood off him and dressed him in a tattered pair of trousers. He was awake, though barely – his eyes were half closed and he looked at the crowd as if in a dream. Twenty crossbows were pointed at him.
The cage was hauled up the stairs of the platform to the peak of the bonfire. The drumming continued. The crowd fell silent.
Seth blinked. He seemed to be waking up, and stood tall inside his cage, arms tensed like a cornered animal. In the glow of the torchlight, Ellie saw tears flowing freely down his cheeks. He must have realized he was surrounded by madmen. He must have realized he was alone.
He lurched forward, baring his teeth, and hundreds of people in the crowd screamed. Hargrath calmly pulled his dart-pistol from his pocket. He fired, and Seth grunted. His head drooped and the crowd sighed in relief.
The High Inquisitor climbed the platform, to stand at the base of the bonfire. He was so old that his skin was stretched like a mask across his skull. He paused for breath, then spoke in a rasping voice that echoed round the square.
‘In the name of the Twenty-six Saints and Their Most Holy Inquisition, I pronounce you Vessel, corrupt and diabolical host to the Great Enemy of Humankind, and sentence you to die.’
Ellie hugged her stomach, her fingers trembling. A desperate impulse crept in, her thoughts flashing like lightning. She wanted rid of this feeling. She looked around, and found Finn quickly, easily recognizable by his shining golden hair. He was hanging from the statue of an angel at the edge of the square.
He was looking right at her.
Ellie toyed with the hole in her coat sleeve, nervously pushing her thumb through it. She took a deep breath, burying her lingering doubts.
Then she nodded.
Finn grinned, leaping down from the statue and skipping into the crowd. Ellie waited, counting the moments in painful heartbeats.
But nothing happened. One guardsman stepped towards the bonfire with a burning torch, holding it to the kindling at the bonfire’s edge. It caught, and orange sprites of fire danced up the wood, sending off wisps of curling smoke. Ellie
dug her nails into her palms. The crowd held their breath in anticipation.
Then there was a hiss, and a ripple of bangs like cannon shots. Fireworks streaked upward round Seth’s cage, spurting showers of sparks into the crowd with a sound like rushing water. The noise became deafening, the thundering blaze so bright it appeared as a single column of blinding light, like a star being born at the centre of the crowd.
Ellie couldn’t see Seth’s cage through all the light. Somehow, Finn had managed to slip fireworks inside the bonfire. A young man barged past Anna as he tried to flee, and Ellie was forced to slide off her shoulders before they both fell.
Without warning, the light vanished all at once, leaving a thick blanket of smoke that rolled out into the crowd, filling the square with coughs and panicked cries.
‘Secure the cage!’ roared Hargrath somewhere close by. Ellie tried to waft away the smoke around her, eyes watering.
Please, please let him be gone.
‘Watch out!’ someone cried.
The fireworks had set the logs alight, and now the flames were spreading. Hargrath leapt up one side of the bonfire, climbing to its peak. Ellie clenched her teeth. Hargrath hauled himself to the top just as the last of the smoke cleared.
The cage stood with its door hanging open.
It was empty.
Ellie sank gratefully into Anna’s side. She felt suddenly exhausted, like all the substance had gone from inside her.
‘He’s escaped!’ someone cried.
‘NO!’ screamed another.
A woman next to Ellie scooped up her wailing child, pleading for the sailors behind to let her through. A bottle was dropped and crushed underfoot. There were shouts and screams as the crowd was seized by panic, lurching like a herd of startled sheep.
Anna huddled close to Ellie, frightened by the change in the crowd. Ellie grabbed her hand and gripped it tightly.
‘It’s okay,’ she said, summoning the strength to move. ‘We’ll be okay. Come on, let’s go.’
All around, children were crying for their parents. An old man tripped and was sucked down beneath the press of bodies. Three pale Inquisitors raced by without stopping to help. Ellie rushed Anna from the square, into an alleyway so narrow their arms brushed the sides. They squeezed by a preacher, staring vacantly at the bonfire like a man in a daydream. He dug his hands into his hair, and terror poured into his eyes.
‘The Enemy!’ he cried. ‘THE ENEMY WALKS AMONG US!’
From the Diary of Claude Hestermeyer
There is some great commotion in the City tonight. I can hear fireworks and shouting. Smoke rises above the rooftops. I have locked myself away in my office for some peace and quiet – I feel compelled to record my experiences of being the Vessel. I am a scholar after all, and this is a unique opportunity to further the learned community’s understanding of the Enemy.
After our first encounter, I was shaken. I have lived my whole life being afraid of the Vessel, like any good citizen, but now I am the Vessel, I can’t see any reason why people should fear me. I’m not strong, I’m certainly not in the best of health, despite being only twenty-five, and I’m not nearly so clever as I like to pretend.
Two days after the funeral, I was sitting by the fountain in St Ephram’s Square, staring up at the statue of the Enemy on top of the Inquisitorial Keep. Then I realized the actual Enemy was sitting right next to me.
‘So, nobody can see you but me?’ I said to him.
‘That’s correct,’ he said.
The Enemy looks just like Peter. Reading back over my diary, I see I first described him as cold and distant, but that must have been the shock, because this Peter is just as warm as I remember the real Peter being.
We went for a stroll to the burnt-out Warrens, where gangs of ragged children were play-fighting in the ruins. I tried to imagine what the Warrens might have looked like before the Great Fire, when the Enemy set light to a vat of whale oil, stalking through the streets, killing hundreds of people as the fire drove them from their homes.
‘You’ve been kind to me so far,’ I said, watching a flock of gulls wheeling above us. ‘But I know how this works. You won’t stay inside my head forever. I know you’ll eventually assume a form of your own, emerging from my body. And I know I won’t survive the process.’
‘And how do you know that?’ said the Enemy.
I laughed. ‘Because that’s what always happens! The Enemy is a parasite. Like one of those crook wasps that lay their eggs inside other insects.’
‘How poetic.’
‘The egg hatches, and the larva feeds off its host, until eventually it grows large enough to kill its host, then spreads its wings and flies away. But . . . I don’t feel like you’re feeding off me.’
‘Maybe the stories are all wrong,’ said the Enemy. ‘Maybe I’m not so evil as everyone says.’
I shook my head, pointing around us to the crumbled husks of three hundred little buildings.
‘The evidence is against you there, I’m afraid.’
It Walks Among Us
The bell of the Inquisition tolled above, a cold, heavy sound that startled roosting seagulls into flight. Doors banged, keys rattled, heavy bolts thudded into place. Children were hushed, shutters were closed. Prayers were muttered to the saints. High overhead, a cloud of firework smoke drifted across the rooftops, hiding the moon from view. Ellie and Anna scurried across the cobblestones, splashing through puddles. The streets were a blue-grey haze of mist and rain.
‘He just . . . vanished,’ said Anna. ‘He must be the Vessel. How else could he have got off that bonfire? Unless –’ She looked at Ellie in horror. ‘Oh no, you didn’t –’
Ellie’s throat tightened. ‘Of course not,’ she said weakly. Anna couldn’t know – she couldn’t.
‘You did, didn’t you?’ said Anna. ‘The fireworks were exactly your style – you found some secret passage beneath the square and used the fireworks as a distraction and broke him out the cage and –’
‘Shh!’ Ellie hissed, glancing at the tenement flats around them. Who knew who might be listening from behind locked doors? ‘I was with you the whole time, remember?’ she whispered. ‘And I was in the workshop all afternoon.’
But Anna didn’t look convinced. She stared across the street, at the cramped, dismal-looking coal cellar next to the orphanage, its door hanging from its hinges. She sighed. Her eyes were big and glossy in the moonlight.
‘You would tell me if you were up to something, right? I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.’
Ellie nodded, and felt a painful stab of guilt. Anna was her best friend but there were some things she could never know about. Finn was one of them.
‘I’m tired. I should go to bed,’ Ellie said. It was true – she felt like she would collapse at any moment.
Anna looked her up and down. ‘Yeah, you look terrible – I think you’ve caught a cold. I told you to dry off after Hargrath dropped you in the sea. Why don’t you sleep in the orphanage? It’s much warmer than your freezing workshop.’
Ellie hesitated.
‘You wouldn’t have to use your old room,’ Anna continued, seemingly encouraged. ‘Emma’s got lice and they’ve quarantined her in a room by herself, so there’s a free bed next to mine. But there’s no lice in it now!’ she added hastily.
Ellie shook her head. ‘Thanks, but I’ll be better in my workshop.’
Anna glumly dragged her toe through a puddle. ‘Knew I shouldn’t have mentioned the lice,’ she muttered. They hugged goodnight, and Ellie squeezed Anna more tightly than she would normally have done.
Ellie was still unlocking the workshop door when she noticed two guardsmen walking up the street towards her.
‘Um . . . hello?’ she said nervously.
‘Eleanor Lancaster?’
‘Yes?’
‘Lord Castion’s asked us to stand watch outside your workshop tonight.’
‘Oh. Why?’
‘He didn’t say.’
Ellie scowled, wondering how much Castion had paid them. He was probably worried that Seth would come looking for her. She muttered a goodnight, then slunk inside, heaving the door closed and slamming the heavy bolts into their latches.
‘I have to find him,’ she whispered, fiddling with the hole in her coat sleeve. She fished out a match from her pocket, lit the whale-oil lamp hanging by the door, then darted across the workshop, weaving in between workbenches, towers of books and piles of scrap metal. She bounded towards the door of her bedroom, flinging her coat on the back of a chair and tying her hair back. Escaping her workshop without the guardsmen noticing would be no problem – there was a door in the basement that led to the sewers. First, though, she needed some sort of disguise, so she could move through the City unrecognized. She lit another lamp by her bedroom door, then stepped inside.
Seth was lying unconscious on the floor.
Ellie scrabbled for the doorframe, a hand to her mouth. He was still dressed in ragged trousers, his black hair wild as ever. His feet were scratched and dirty and the bruising on his chest and face looked terrible up close: angry blotches of red and purple. Ellie looked over her shoulder, fully expecting to find Finn lurking somewhere in the workshop, waiting to surprise her. But she couldn’t see him anywhere. She gazed back at Seth in amazement, until a sharp instinct pressed in on her.
He was in her bedroom.
She had to get him out again.
She bent and tried to lift him, but he was much too heavy – the moment she had him up, her whole body was wrenched back down. Ellie eased him to the floor, none too gently, his head lolling towards her. His face was startling – his large, closed eyes and wide cheekbones giving him an appearance that was almost feline. She slid her arms under his, his trousers rustling as she strained and heaved and dragged him across the floor. She hauled him out of her room, sweating already, and his eyes opened.
They caught each other’s gaze, and it was like they’d both woken from a nightmare. Ellie fell backwards, smacking against a workbench. Seth leapt to his feet, breathing heavily. His eyes darted round the workshop, pausing on the skeleton of the giant turtle, on the mountain of books clustered at the centre of the room, on the harpoon gun, its sharp point glinting in the lamplight.
Orphans of the Tide Page 5