by Shannon Page
“That’s wonderful,” Sian replied. “And is there something in that closet of supplies that we can use to roast those mussels? I may lose consciousness from hunger soon.”
“Well, I don’t know. Let’s go see.”
As it happened, there was an empty wooden box just larger than Sian’s hand, in which some other, long-vanished supply had been contained. It took them very little time to pry more of the omnipresent mussels from the channel rim, and when they pressed their powder flare against the wooden box, it produced just enough heat to set the wood ablaze — in a sullen, smoldering fashion. They piled their stash of mussels into it and let them cook as it burned down. When there was nothing left but charcoal underneath their stack of now-gaping shells, Sian reached down to nudge one up, tossing the hot little morsel back and forth between her hands until it cooled enough to pry further open. She scooped the bit of flesh inside it eagerly into her mouth, and made a face. “They can’t have tasted this way at Escotte’s.”
Arian tried one next, and grimaced too. “Perhaps they’re better raw. They were certainly more artfully seasoned when Viktor used to cook them for me. I’m … not sure these have been fully roasted, actually. That may be the problem. Sadly, we are out of wood.” She looked thoughtfully around. “We could try holding our powder flare directly to the meat …”
“And add sulfur and who knows what else to this grim recipe?” Sian asked. Arouf would have known exactly how to cook these creatures. Alas. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to put the flare out prematurely by shoving it into a wet shell. How long do they last, anyway?”
“Half an hour, perhaps. We have five more now, which should extend our light supply considerably. And there will surely be more such caches on our way.”
Sian heaved a disappointed sigh. “Well, if it’s these or starve …” She took another mussel from the pile. If they died of poisoning here, well … then they wouldn’t have to worry any longer about running out of light.
“Think of them as an acquired taste,” said Arian, reaching for another shell herself. “I hated caviar the first few times. Now I just adore it.”
Sian scooped, and swallowed, trying not to taste at all, unable to imagine ever liking such rubbery little balls of fishy slime. Still, it was surely nourishment. Her body needed fuel.
When they had finished eating, they got up and started off again. Before long, the shallow water they’d been sloshing through for so long retreated back into its proper channel, to Sian’s extreme relief. Her bare feet had started to both look and feel like days-dead fish.
As a third powder flare followed their second one, the tunnel began to turn more often, then to branch. At each such intersection, Arian found another of the inscrutable maps, and occasionally diverted them into some different passageway, to keep them traveling in the right direction. Twice her choices led them to dead ends. Blushing, Arian just led them back to the last intersection and took Sian the other way.
To Sian’s relief, the mussels they had eaten did not make them sick. But they’d made a very modest meal, and her hunger began whispering again before much time had passed. Though the watercourses they followed were quite brackish, they’d found lots of freshwater seeps running down the tunnel walls along their way, so thirst, at least, had been no problem. Less happily, while there seemed no shortage of tunnel maps now, they all proved either unaccompanied by supply lockers, or the lockers had been raided and left empty. Arian had still not found another stash of powder flares when their last one began to sputter.
“I guess we’ll have to use another glow float,” Arian conceded. “We can’t be that far from our goal now, I suppose.”
This was fine with Sian. The glow float’s light was better, and she breathed much easier without all that sulfur smoke the flares had cast behind them as she followed Arian.
On and on and on they slogged. In time, Sian followed Arian almost without thinking anymore, just trudging, trudging … Her limbs grew ever heavier. Her eyes kept wanting to close. She wondered if perhaps it was already evening in the world above, though she didn’t think it very likely. She could walk almost the length of Alizar in less than a day up on the surface, and these under-ways seemed much straighter than the winding streets and patchwork bridges she relied on there. Still, she wondered where they were, and when, if ever, they would finally reach their destination, whatever that might be, and how Arian would know it when they did.
The second glow float had begun to wane when Arian paused suddenly ahead of Sian, blinking in surprise at a side tunnel angled steeply upwards. “I … think this is it,” she said.
“This is what?” asked Sian.
“Our exit.”
“From the tunnel?” Sian felt sure she must be misunderstanding.
“I think so!” said Arian. “As you see, it’s very different from the others. I could hardly be mistaking it, could I?”
“You’re not asking me, are you? I have no idea what we’re looking for.”
“Well, let’s go up and find out!” She turned to Sian. “Have you got the last glow float?”
Sian reached into the pocket of Het’s cape and pulled it out. “Should we light it yet? The other one’s still got a little life in it, I think.”
“If I am right,” said Arian, “we should have more than enough light now. If not … Well, I’m tired of living in the dark, aren’t you? We’ll just exit wherever this comes out, and make the rest of our way to Home across the surface. Very carefully, of course. But I’m quite certain this is Apricot, at last.”
Sian’s budding excitement was extinguished all at once by a dreadful thought. “Are we going to have climb another waterfall?”
“Oh, of course not. I have never seen another entrance like the one on The Well. The egress here is concealed in an abandoned warehouse, if I’m not mistaken.”
Sian sighed with relief. “Then why are we standing here?” She handed their last glow float to Arian, who shook it as she turned to light their way.
This tunnel contained no water at all. But it was not an easy climb either, or a short one. Hours, it took, or seemed to. They had resorted to their hands and knees well before their last glow float began to dim. Sian watched it nervously, hoping desperately that Arian had not miscalculated, or mistaken some tunnel to nowhere at all for the exit she’d intended. When they came at last to a square, vertical shaft lined in solid stone, and Sian saw the iron rung ladder ascending its side, she buried her face in both sandpapered hands and groaned.
“Sian? This is the end,” said Arian.
“I knew it,” Sian murmured. “I knew we would get lost and die down here.”
“What? No, I mean, we’re here! Just raise your head and look.”
Sian raised her eyes, and realized that Arian had put the float away. The pale light around them came from up above now. She shuffled forward and stood inside the shaft, gazing up at dazzling light streaming through a grate not twenty feet above their heads. She had to look away, so painful was the glare. Had her eyes become so accustomed to the darkness that even the dim light inside a warehouse was this blinding?
“It’s just a little climb this time,” said Arian. “Shall I go first, or would you prefer to?”
“You’re the leader here.” Sian smiled at her, abashed now at her lack of faith in Arian.
Arian virtually scrambled up the rungs, then paused at the top, looking through the grate. “That’s odd.”
“Is everything all right?” Sian asked, a few rungs beneath her.
“I’m not sure.” She fumbled at the edges of the grate. “As I said before, it has been a long, long while since I was here … Aha!” Having found a latch, it seemed, she released it and swung the grate open on rusty hinges, then clambered out.
Sian climbed after her, and emerged, wincing, not into a warehouse, but into an alley that debouched onto a set of docks. It was late afternoon at least, or later, judging by the sunlight’s low slant. The air was warm and heavy with fish odors, people s
mells and smoke. A fair amount of it. Someone must be burning refuse — or there was a lot more industry on Apricot than she remembered. She heard shouting in the distance, and the ever-present prayer lines. “Out at last,” she sighed. “But where’s your warehouse?”
“Well, it’s likely been torn down.” Arian looked around. “I was a fool to think the world would not have changed much in two decades.”
Sian still blinked painfully as she joined Arian in gazing about, trying to reconcile what she was seeing with her own knowledge of the island of Apricot. It seemed bigger than she remembered, and far more crowded. “Where exactly are we?”
“East shore,” Arian said, pointing at a little island further east. “That’s Toad.”
Sian tried to adjust her perspective, but … “Arian … This isn’t Apricot. We’re on Malençon. The eastern edge of Malençon!”
“Don’t be absurd!”
But Sian knew she was right. Beyond the row of tumbledown shacks they stood beside, people milled about on crowded docks. Very familiar docks. “My daughter lives not far from here, Arian. That’s not Toad, it’s Crux. See, there’s the curving roof of the Suba estate.”
“It can’t be! We can’t …” Arian looked near tears. “We’ve gone entirely the wrong way!”
“It … seems so,” said Sian.
“But — I followed all the markings! We should have crossed The Well, gone under Meaders and Bayleaf and Toad, then come up on Apricot!”
“Well, I’m afraid we haven’t …” Sian said gently.
“We’re needed at the Factorate House! We should have been there yesterday!”
Sian glanced nervously around. This alleyway was somewhat concealing. No one was paying them any attention yet, but if Arian kept on this way, they would be noticed very soon. “Arian. Calm down. We’ll fix this.”
As Arian began to cry, Sian pulled her into an embrace. “It’s all right,” she whispered, stroking Arian’s hair. The faintest breath of ginger rode the sultry air as Sian’s fingers grazed the back of her friend’s neck; a small cloud of despair filled Sian’s heart, then dissipated.
The Factora-Consort’s weeping slowed and stopped a minute later. She disentangled from Sian, and took a small step back to gaze at her with mixed embarrassment and gratitude. “I’m all right now.” She wiped quickly at her eyes.
“Good.” Sian smiled at her. “So …”
“So, we are on the wrong side of Alizar, entirely.” Arian shook her head. “We couldn’t have gone farther astray if we’d tried.”
“We must not have been oriented right. From the start.”
“Or I didn’t understand the maps as well as I imagined.”
“Well, at least no one should be looking for us here.”
Arian gazed down at herself. Freda’s filthy, ragged, water-ruined dress, her hair bedraggled, dried mud and rock dust instead of cosmetics. “Indeed. They would not see me even if they were.” She looked up and grinned at Sian. “And you’re no prize yourself, Our Lady of the Bare Feet.”
“I imagine not. And if we’re staying up here, I must find some sandals. The streets are going to be far less gentle than the tunnels were.”
Arian looked down at the docks. “We should just go find a boat and … oh.”
“What?”
“The streets are not gentle here at all.” Her tone had darkened; Sian followed her gaze.
A band of heavily armed soldiers marched along the waterfront, scattering people before them. Sian noticed more shouting from a few streets away, and … “Was that … cannon-fire?”
“Hide,” Arian whispered.
Sian rushed into the shadows of a stand of trumpetvines growing between two nearby shacks. Arian gave the soldiers another quick look, then fled to join her.
“They wear no family colors that I recognize — including ours,” Arian whispered. “They could be Lord Colara’s, but if they bear insignias, I can’t see them from up here. And … I can think of no reason that anyone’s guard should be patrolling Malençon.”
“Are they looking for us?”
“I don’t want to find out. Do you?”
“So … back to the tunnels after all?” Sian asked, her heart sinking.
“No. We can’t. It took us most of a day just to get here; it would be double that to backtrack all the way to Apricot — assuming that we didn’t just get lost again. We have no light left, and no food still.” Arian sat thinking a moment, as the soldiers passed the end of the wharf, then turned onto a street and marched away. “We must go see if the streets are all so heavily patrolled, or if those men just happened to be passing by.”
“All right.” Sian was dubious. Both she and Arian looked up as yet another boom sounded in the distance. Why would anyone be firing cannon here on Malençon — or anywhere in Alizar, for that matter? Perhaps that wasn’t what it was at all. She glanced down at what seemed a little market of some kind down near the end of the wharf. “Wait here. I’ll be right back.”
Arian reached out and grabbed her arm. “What are you doing? We mustn’t separate.”
“My lady, I cannot put you in danger too …”
“Danger? You say this to me now — after all we’ve been through? Have you some power to keep me out of danger, cousin?”
Sian shook her head.
“And please do not revert to all that ‘my lady’ nonsense. I must be Freda here at least as badly as anywhere before. Besides, I think we’re very far past all that by now — in private anyway. Now tell me, what do you intend to do?”
Sian looked miserably at her feet. “I didn’t really want to steal sandals in front of the Factor’s wife, Freda. Even if we are past all that.”
“Oh, for all the …” Arian muttered. “Are you experienced at thievery?”
“No,” Sian admitted.
“What if you’re caught? Then all of this has been for nothing. Do you have some reason to believe you’ll even find sandals down there somewhere? All I see are docks and a tavern and a fishmonger’s storefront.”
Sian took another glance at that supposed market, and realized that Arian was right. “I was just going to check.”
Arian looked down at Sian’s feet, and sighed. Dry mud coated them, nearly to her knees. “I see no need to risk it,” she said, leaning down to unbuckle one of her own quite ruined sandals. “Here. One is better than none.”
“What?”
The Factora-Consort held out her sandal. “We can lean on each other if we have to. I’d rather wear one of my feet down than risk either of us being jailed for stealing just now. Especially in a port crawling with armed men.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I can and am.” She shoved the sandal into Sian’s hand. “Put it on.”
“I … thank you.” At least one of her feet might not be cut to ribbons now by the time they got to Home.
It was awkward going, but as they left the alley and started down the street, they saw no more patrols, though other signs of discord seemed disturbingly abundant — shops and taverns boarded up, quite hastily, it appeared; no children playing in the streets; a gang of grim young men moving furtively ahead of them, as if expecting something, or someone, unpleasant to show up at any moment. Arian shook her head. “Something has gone very wrong, I fear.”
Within mere minutes, Arian hobbled to a stop, and gave Sian an exasperated look. “This was not a good idea.” She reached down to remove her remaining sandal. “We look ridiculous, which is hardly safe if we are trying to avoid attention, and we’ll just both go lame as quickly this way.” She handed the second sandal to Sian. “Just for a little while,” she rushed to clarify as Sian opened her mouth to object. “We can trade them back and forth at intervals. That way, both our feet will get to rest from time to time. Until we find some sandals that seem safe to steal, anyway,” she added with a crooked grin.
Sian did not bother arguing this time.
As they crossed the narrow edge of Malençon to the southwestern
waterfront, Sian gazed out across the bay at what she first took for a rising column of cloud in the orange evening light. Then she stopped walking. “Is that smoke?”
“Yes.”
They both stood, staring, in the shadow of a tall mangosteen tree.
“It’s Home,” Arian said miserably. She resumed walking even faster — as if she might be able to run straight there.
“You can’t know that,” Sian protested, following. “It could be coming from any of the islands in the channel. We can’t even see past Cutter’s. Not from here.”
Arian stumbled, clearly even less accustomed to bare feet than Sian was by now, then put a hand to her belly. “I’m so hungry, I can’t think straight anymore.”
“Listen, Arian. My daughter lives here, just past that peninsula. She and her husband will know what’s going on, and we can get a meal there. There’s no point rushing back across all the islands fainting from hunger without any notion of what we’re even heading into.”
“No! No more delays! Can’t you see? We have to get there!”
“They have a boat.”
Arian turned to look at her. “How large?”
“More than large enough. They’ll loan it to me.”
Arian stared out across the water at the rising column of smoke again. “All right.”
“What else should I have done, Maleen? She’s completely run amok. You haven’t been there to see. You don’t know.” Arouf fell silent, tired of speaking to his daughter’s back as she stared out the window at her son and husband in their yard, guarding the house from looters. He shook his head, unable to believe any of the things happening around him now. When Maleen just went on staring out the window, he asked, “Are you even listening?”
“Yes, I’m listening.” She turned impatiently to face him again, shifting the sleeping baby to her other shoulder. “I’m just not believing anything I hear. You filed a legal complaint? Against Mother?” She gestured crossly at the window behind her. “Has someone tampered with the islands’ food supply? Is that why the whole world has suddenly gone crazy?”
“You’re calling me crazy? Your mother is the crazy one! That’s what I’m telling you!”