by Lian Tanner
Within the blink of an eye, the river went from peaceful to roaring. The ferry, which was really just a barge with a pole at each corner, began to spin and jerk at its ropes. Its crew leapt for safety just in time, but a sack of grain, not yet secured, splashed into the water and was whisked upstream.
The water curled up the banks, higher and higher, louder and louder—then fell back with a groan.
The main bore was past. It was time for the crossing.
“All aboard!” cried the ferryman, before remembering that only the Devouts and their prisoners were taking this particular trip. He coughed a couple of times to cover his mistake, shook his head at the waiting crowd, then bowed obsequiously to Brother Bartle. “If you’d care to drive onto the ferry, sir. Mind the edges. And hold on tight; there’s always ruffles to come, not as bad as the main bore but tricksy all the same.”
A murmur rose, beginning with the old woman and spreading in all directions, as people realized that the Devouts weren’t going to change their minds and that everyone else would be left behind, no matter how important their business. It was an ugly sound, not quite loud enough for Poosk and his men to hear. But the ferryman’s hands patted the air behind his back, as if to say, Don’t make a fuss. We don’t want trouble.
If it had been broad daylight, the crowd would probably have done as they were told. But night had fallen, and the old woman’s tiny protest seemed to have made people bolder than usual. That shiver of excitement ran through them again, and as the oxcart inched down the long bank toward the ferry, lit only by a couple of flickering torches, the crowd followed.
Is this change? thought Gwin. Is this the beginning of an avalanche? And for a heartbeat or two she wondered if she should grab the pigeon back from Petrel.
But a few people pushing forward on a riverbank wasn’t the sort of change Hob meant, and she knew it. There were small rebellions like this every year in West Norn, and they all ended badly. The only real question was whether Gwin could take advantage of this one.
She edged away from the other children, then bent over Wretched and stroked his ears. “You’ll have to stay here,” she whispered. “Stay with Rain; you like her, don’t you?”
The dog whined and pressed closer.
“I’d take you with me if I could,” whispered Gwin. “But I can’t. We’ll come back for you, once Nat and Papa are safe.” She swallowed. “Stay here, Wretched. Stay!”
She had almost caught up with the crowd when someone seized her arm. “Where are you going?” demanded Petrel. “You’ve got an idea, I know you have. What is it? How’re you gunna get on that ferry?”
Gwin didn’t answer. Farther down the bank, the murmur of protest was swelling. The ferryman patted the air harder than ever, his eyes wide with alarm. Cull turned around at last and saw the crowd pressing forward, almost within reach of the cart. His face grew thunderous, and he raised his cudgel in what was clearly a threat.
The people at the front came to their senses and tried to stop but couldn’t. Those behind them were pushing and shoving, still driven by that dangerous sense of excitement.
Then, inevitably, someone slipped on the muddy bank. He managed to scramble up again before he went under the wheels, but Cull leapt to his feet with a shout and began to lay into the man with his cudgel. The mule brayed and kicked, the man screamed for mercy, and everyone else surged one way and then the other, trying to escape.
As the noise reached a crescendo, Gwin tore away from Petrel’s grasp, dived past the mule and slipped beneath the oxcart.
When she and Nat were small, they used to play under the cart, clinging to the struts and braces, or scratching at the boards until Mama declared, laughing, “I do believe we have an infestation of mice.”
It was those same struts and braces that Gwin grabbed hold of now, swinging her feet up as the cart rolled forward above her. It wasn’t an easy position to hold, not with the cart still jolting down the long bank, and the shouting and cursing all around her. But she didn’t move, even though her whole body ached with exhaustion.
There was a thump and a jerk as Spindle stepped onto the ferry, then another thump as the cart followed. Gwin eased her hands into a better position.
The ferryman wasn’t taking any chances with the hostile crowd. As soon as the mule was on board, he slammed the back of the barge into place, bolted it shut and shouted to his crew, “Lay off quick now. Banks away. Poles to portside.”
The ferry edged away from its mooring.
“Watch the bow,” cried the ferryman. “Mizzle, Bosh, get round here! There’s the first ruffle.”
As the ferrymen labored, and the ruffles nudged at the barge in a testing sort of fashion, Gwin took one hand off the strut and scratched twice at the boards above her head. So quietly that only a boy who could hear the world breathing would notice.
There was a heart-stopping pause, then something scraped out a reply. A toenail. Once. Twice.
Gwin swallowed. Nat knew she was here.
“Hey-up, here comes the next one,” cried the ferryman, and the barge began to jerk and tilt.
Spindle snorted. The mule stamped uneasily. Brother Poosk said in tones that were a little too high and tight, “Note that I did not sign your piece of paper. If anything happens to us, your wife and children will suffer, I guarantee it.”
The ferryman cleared his throat. “It’s always a risk, gracious sir, crossing before the ruffles are done. If you and your men could come over here and help us watch out for logs, I’d be most grateful.”
For far too long, the Devouts didn’t move. Gwin clung to the bottom of the cart, hardly daring to breathe.
Go! she begged silently. Go and watch!
But it was not until something thumped against the barge and spun away into the darkness, that Brother Poosk cursed and climbed down from the cart, followed by his two men.
“Downstream side, sirs, if you please,” said the ferryman. “That’s where the danger’ll come from.”
The Devouts edged over to the downstream side of the barge. The crew were on that side too, with their poles. The water fretted and surged.
As the ferry began to shake more violently, Gwin dropped to the deck and crawled out on the upstream side of the cart, next to the mule.
She knew she didn’t have long. As soon as the ruffles were past, Poosk and his men would return to the cart. Papa and Nat—and Hilde—must be freed before then.
She went straight to Papa, who had his back to her. He flinched when she touched him, but then his fingers tightened briefly over hers, and he shifted so she could get at the knot that bound his wrists.
Gwin was so wound up that when a small paw patted her hand she almost cried out. She stared at Mister Smoke, who had appeared out of nowhere and was teetering on the edge of the cart.
Mister Smoke, whose mechanical boy she had betrayed.
“You takin’ the cap’n with you, shipmate?” he whispered.
Gwin almost said yes. She was taking Hilde, so why not take the mechanical boy as well and make up for that useless betrayal?
But then she saw the lights looming on the far side of the river and realized that they were already more than halfway across.
Panic flared up inside her. “I won’t have time,” she whispered. And she turned back to Papa.
The rat darted in front of her. “You gotta take ’im, shipmate. You’re the Singer.”
“No, I’m not. Get out of my way.”
“That’s the worst of them, sirs,” cried the ferryman. “Just a couple more to go, then you can rest.”
Gwin’s heart thumped frantically against her ribs. She shoved the rat to one side. She didn’t see where it went, but even as her fingers tore at Papa’s ropes, the mule began to bray in protest, as if something—or someone—had pinched it.
The sound brought Bartle spinning around. In the light of the torches, he saw Gwin, and with a shout he leapt onto the cart with his cudgel raised.
Gwin thought she heard a smal
l voice say, “Sorry, shipmate, but the cap’n and the Singer gotta stay together.”
Then Bartle’s cudgel clouted her across the temple and everything went dark.
CHAPTER 21
THE FIRST TO FALL
“She got away from me,” Petrel said bitterly. Scroll was perched on her shoulder now, head tucked under wing. “I think she made it onto the ferry.”
“Then Brother Poosk will catch her,” said Fin.
“Not if she is hidden,” murmured Rain, her eyes dreamy and unfocused.
Sharkey looked at her. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.” And Rain started to sing the Hope song again, very quietly, as she’d been doing on and off all day. “How tall the tree, the first to fall…”
“There’s her dog,” said Petrel, pointing.
The dog trotted up to Rain and collapsed on her feet with a sigh.
“Then she’s on the ferry all right,” said Sharkey. “She’s gone after her parents and her brother. Question is, will she muck things up for us? And for the cap’n?”
“How far ahead of us will they get?” said Fin. “If there are more shortcuts, I don’t know them.”
Petrel turned to one of the villagers, who was scowling across the water. “’Scuse me. D’you reckon the ferry’ll come straight back, once it’s dropped that lot? Will it make a second run tonight?”
The man shrugged. “We all need to get across, and ferryman’ll want our fares.”
“Will you wake us when it comes?”
“Don’t worry, I’ll give you a nudge.” And the man went back to watching the river.
“You’re not going to sleep?” said Sharkey.
“Can you think of anything better to do? I ain’t shut my eyes for a month—least that’s what it feels like.” Petrel yawned and lay down on the muddy bank, with her head pillowed on her arm and Scroll tucked in beside her elbow.
I’ve had worse beds, she thought, and there’s no one trying to kill me. Not right at the moment, anyway.
Rain curled up beside her, still singing under her breath. The dog turned in circles, then squeezed in between the two girls. It stank, but then so did they all.
Sharkey and Fin stood for a little longer, trying to pretend that they weren’t about to fall over from sheer exhaustion. But before long they lay down too, on either side of the girls.
Petrel closed her eyes—and opened them again. “Where d’you think Scroll’s been all this time?” she whispered to Fin. “She’s too well fed to have been hiding in a cave with Mister Smoke and the cap’n.”
“I do not know,” replied Fin. “Does it matter?”
Rain’s quiet voice drifted between them. “The trunk is gone, the root still lives…”
“Mmm. Prob’ly not.” Petrel smoothed the pigeon’s feathers with gentle fingers. “Wish I knew how shipfolk are going against the Citadel. I bet they’re showing those Devouts a thing or two.”
“If the attack went ahead.”
“Course it did, Fin! Shipfolk ain’t gunna just walk away and forgive what happened, and neither are Sunkers. Who knows, maybe the Citadel’s fallen already. Maybe Brother Poosk’ll get there just in time to hand over the cap’n to Krill and Dolph. Wouldn’t that be good?”
Fin shook his head. “The Citadel will not fall so easily.”
On Petrel’s other side, Rain suddenly sat bolt upright. “I have it!” she cried.
Folk up and down the bank stopped talking and turned to stare at her. Rain blushed and lowered her voice to a whisper. “The Song. I know what it is about. At least, I—I think I do.”
Petrel, Fin and Sharkey sat up and crowded closer. Rain whispered, “The captain said it was a code, remember? Which means we have to read behind the words. So the first to fall could be”—she hesitated—“I might be wrong. If we follow my idea, we might make things even worse.”
Sharkey rolled his eyes. “What is it, Rain?”
“I think it is the Grand Monument.”
“Never heard of it,” said Petrel.
“It is an important memorial,” said Fin.
Sharkey said, “It’s on the coast road, where Poosk tried to trap me after Rampart was sunk. It might’ve been important once, but there’s nothing there now except a huge pile of stones.”
Rain nodded eagerly. “It is where the Great Cleansing started. Don’t you see? Where it started. There was a building there, and now there is not. The first to fall!”
“I spose it could be,” said Petrel, nibbling her thumbnail. “But what’s the point of it if there’s nothing there except stones?”
“There is nothing we can see.” Rain’s eyes were growing brighter by the second. “It must be hidden, so the Devouts would not find it. The trunk is gone—that’s the building that used to stand there. The root still lives. Which means that some part of the building remains, though we cannot see it.”
Petrel desperately wanted Rain to be right. We’ve got nothing else, she thought. Aloud she said, “So we have to get the cap’n there?”
“Yes.” The excitement vanished from Rain’s eyes, and her voice faltered. She glanced at the river, where the dark shape of the returning ferry was just coming into sight. “Somehow, we have to get the captain there. And the Singer.”
* * *
Dolph should’ve been asleep; instead, she was watching the Citadel. “Those gates just ain’t going to open, Missus Slink,” she said gloomily. “For all the good it did, we might as well not have bothered with the rat army.”
“It’s the water,” said Missus Slink. “We should’ve done something about their water.”
“I suppose it’s too late now?”
“Aye, lass. I crept back in two nights ago, just in case, but they’ve got that well so closely guarded even I couldn’t get near it.”
All around them, night sentries strode up and down, or gathered in small groups, talking quietly. When a couple of them passed Dolph and Missus Slink, they nodded, and one said, “Got any more clever tricks up your sleeve, Dolph? Going to get us out of here before next winter?”
Dolph grinned in a halfhearted fashion and leaned against an empty barrel. “I should go to bed, Missus Slink. No use sitting here night after night. I should—”
Somewhere to their right, a man shouted.
Dolph shot upright, with Missus Slink clinging to her shoulder. Another shout—and there on the face of the Citadel was a sliver of torchlight that hadn’t been visible a moment ago. The gates were opening.
Dolph grabbed her knife and banged out a message on the barrel, in general ship code. Gates opening. Gates opening!
All around her, sentries were bellowing the same thing, but the clanging of the barrel rose above them all. Within seconds, every single crew member of the Oyster was on his or her feet, with the Sunkers only a few steps behind.
By the time the first Devouts set cautious foot outside the Citadel, with flaming torches to light their way, there was an army wide awake and ready to accept their surrender.
Except they weren’t surrendering.
Dolph was one of the first to realize. “Stay back!” she cried. “Don’t rush ’em, they’ve got bratlings with ’em.”
So they had. Every brown-robed man pushed a bratling in front of him. And every bratling, however small, had a knife at its throat.
Krill shoved his way through the crowd to stand beside Dolph and Missus Slink. “We should’ve guessed they’d try something like this,” he growled. “I’ve been chatting to the townsfolk; this is how the Devouts keep ’em in order. They take away their bratlings for Initiates and servants, and if anyone steps out of line, it’s the bratlings that suffer.” He shook his head in disgust. “Even Albie’d never pull such a low trick.”
“But what do we do?” asked Dolph. “We can’t just let ’em stroll past. We can’t let ’em escape.”
“What d’you suggest, then? Rush ’em, and see every one of those bratlings murdered?”
“They’d do it too,” said M
issus Slink.
“Aye, they would,” growled Krill. “Look at their faces.”
It was only the second time Dolph had seen the Devouts up close. The first time had been when they’d attacked the Oyster, months ago and thousands of miles away, and so much had happened since then that the main thing Dolph remembered was how quickly the Devouts had scuttled away when they saw the captain.
They weren’t scuttling now; they didn’t have the strength. Some of them limped; others wore bloodstained bandages. One man, close to the front, rode in a wheeled chair, with a protective cordon around him.
Every one of them, man and bratling, showed signs of hunger. But the Devouts’ faces were still grim with purpose, and the bratlings looked as if they had fallen into a nightmare and didn’t know how to wake up.
As they came closer, someone behind Dolph cried out, “There’s my Dovesy! Dovesy!”
One of the smaller hostages sobbed in distress. A townswoman pushed past Dolph and fell to her knees, crying, “Gracious sirs, don’t hurt her, I beg you!”
She might as well not have spoken. The Devouts stumbled past her, four abreast.
“Where are they going?” whispered Dolph. “They must know we’ll follow ’em.”
“Maybe there’s food somewhere,” said Krill. “I’ve heard they collect it from the villages every quarter. Maybe it’s on its way. And if they’ve got food and hostages, I’m not sure what we can do.”
The Devouts drew level with the watching army, and shipfolk and Sunkers fell back with a groan and let them pass. The mountain of food that the rats had stolen from the Citadel was still where it had been dropped, and although Krill had been feeding the townsfolk from it for days, it looked no smaller. When the Devouts saw it, they surged toward it, snatching up bacon, biscuits and salted herring, and stuffing them into their mouths, then filling their arms with whatever they could carry. They seized water bottles from the camp too, and bedrolls, and loaded them onto the bratlings.
The watching army groaned again, and so did the townsfolk, but there was nothing they could do. Even Admiral Deeps wouldn’t order an attack, not when the lives of so many bratlings were at stake.