by Jane Higgins
Back west, across the river, a light blazed in the middle of the city, where everything else was black.
‘I think it’s their command center,’ said Lanya. ‘The Citysiders – Witch Hill, it’s called. It’s come on at this time the last three nights. What do you think it means? Does it mean they’re back in charge? The Commander said there’d been a hard battle for it. Maybe they’ve retaken it.’ She watched it like a drowning person watching the land. ‘What’s it like?’
‘What?’
‘The city. You were scavenging over there. What’s it like?’
‘It’s a war zone.’
She turned and looked at me. ‘It won’t always be. When we’ve won it, things will be different. We’re going to throw open the bridges and smash the prisons and bring home the prisoners. There’ll be hospitals full of medicine, and markets full of food, and banks of fuel cells for the taking. And we won’t make the Citysiders slaves, even though that’s what they did to us. But we’ll punish their army. We’ll make them grovel and be sorry and they’ll be shamed because, unlike them, we’ll be just and honorable. And everyone will have enough to eat and children won’t die in the winter, and old people will be warm and fed.’ She smiled at me and her eyes blazed. ‘When we’ve won it.’
‘And you think that can happen?’
‘Yes! Don’t you?’
I turned back towards the township. ‘I’m going to look for this coffeehouse.’
‘Tell me what you did over there,’ she said, catching up with me. ‘Tell me what you saw.’
‘Later. Another time. Can we find Goran first?’
‘There you go, running away again.’
‘What?’
‘You run. Every time we get near you, away you go.’ She jogged backwards in front of me. ‘If you’re only a stray, where did you learn to read and write? And why aren’t you fighting in a squad in Gilgate?’
‘Look out,’ I said. A little knot of people was gathered around a fire across the road. Lanya turned round and walked beside me, still talking. ‘And how do you know about that window with the saint and the birds? That marks you as an easterner, which I wouldn’t have guessed to look at you because you’re too dark. But your name does too, I suppose – if you’re a Nikos or a Nikolai. Are you? All right, not telling. Tell me this though: why, in the name of all that is holy, do you swear like a Citysider?’
‘How do you know what Citysiders swear like?’
‘No one here would blaspheme like you do – even in someone else’s Rule. Do that in some people’s hearing and you’ll be lying in a gutter with a knife in your back before you know what’s happened. You should know that. Why don’t you know that?’
‘So it’s different in Gilgate, so what?’
She turned in front of me and put her hands out to stop me. ‘Don’t do it here. Don’t. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, all right.’
But she didn’t move. ‘I don’t know who you are, Nikos or Nikolai or whatever your name is. And I don’t know why you’re here. Or what you’re hiding from – or who. Maybe you’re just afraid to fight – you’ve come to the wrong place if you are. But I do know this. You should tread with care. People here like to know what side everyone’s on. And no one can tell what side you’re on, because no one knows who you are and you never say.’
‘Maybe I’m just on my side.’
‘Maybe you are. But at the hearing you didn’t turn me in for my knife fight. Which you would have if you were looking out for you and no one else.’
I walked around her but she danced back in front of me. ‘One more thing!’
‘What?’
‘If a patrol comes by they’ll ask for papers. Do you have papers?’
I did, as it happens, have papers. But they were a thousand miles away in whatever was left of the school safe. They’d be ash and atoms now.
‘So I’ll vanish if a patrol comes anywhere near,’ I said. ‘Is that all?’
She smiled. ‘For now.’
‘You’re enjoying this.’
Her smile got wider. ‘It is better than sitting in barracks listening to another lecture on basic words and phrases of the enemy.’ She walked on. ‘What are you going to say to Goran?’
‘No idea.’
‘You should have asked Levkova for help.’
‘She has troubles of her own.’
‘Shall I ask her for you?’
‘No!’
‘You don’t look very keen. You’re more a behind-the-desk person, I think – than in the field.’
‘Thanks. You’re a great help.’
‘Look! There’s Gantry Lane. That must be it.’
CHAPTER 28
The coffeehouse was a low, concrete building lit from inside by candles and noisy with laughter and music. We peered through a cracked window. The place was wall-to-wall people. ‘What if we meet someone who knows about the hearing?’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to be in Gilgate by now.’
‘Don’t worry. You’re not important enough for the Council to have notified anyone down here about you. And even if people know about the hearing, they’ll only know that some Gilgate low-life has been sent packing. They won’t know what you look like.’
‘Okay,’ I said. ‘You ready?’
‘I’m ready,’ said Lanya. I pushed open the door. People grumbled at us as we shouldered our way in, and after about six steps we reached a waist-high slab of wood that was the counter. The air was thick with smoke from a fire smoldering in a grate, and from whatever dried weed people were sucking on. You could probably get high from just standing there breathing. And whatever it was they were drinking, it did not smell like coffee. In one corner a singer was crooning, Freedom’s hour is comin’; set your feet to walk her path; freedom’s hour is comin’; set your face for her return…
‘Help you squaddies?’ A heavy, gray-haired man pushed past us, fingers clutching empty mugs. He clattered the mugs into a sink and peered at us from under bushy eyebrows. ‘Well?’
‘I’m looking for Goran,’ I said. ‘Got a message for him from up the hill.’
‘He’s out the back.’
We followed the direction of his thumb into a yard. A fire burned in a brazier and three men and a woman stood around it. The woman checked out our squad clothes and made room for us. She was the first richly dressed person I’d seen in Southside. She had thick, black hair falling to folds of fabric around her shoulders. Gold in her scarf and on her fingers shone in the firelight. She swayed in my direction. ‘You’re a ways from barracks, soldier boy. Night on the town is it, before you march off all brave over the bridge?’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘Something like that.’
Lanya said, ‘We wanted to see the light come on, over the river. Have you seen it?’
One of the men, fortyish with a patchy gray beard, said, ‘Who’s lightin’ it, that’s what I’d like to know.’ He raised a flask in the direction of the Hill. ‘To the uprising! Long may it last. And let there be gold,’ he took the woman’s hand and kissed her rings, ‘for the victors.’
The door opened behind us and two men stumbled out, laughing and shouting. ‘Goran! Got any more? We need more, right now, this minute, this very, very minute.’ Graybeard let go of the woman’s hand, said, ‘One minute,’ to her, and moved quickly to the men.
So, this was Goran. I watched him shut the newcomers up. He was weedy, with a pale, lined face, thin, graying hair and beard, and long fingers. He made my skin crawl. He wrapped his arms around the men’s shoulders. ‘Boys, boys, boys. Warmer inside, yeah?’ He steered them back inside.
One of the others by the fire, a square, solid younger man, watched them go and grunted. The third one, older, with a pinched look and an ingrained scowl, said to us, ‘You been over there yet?’
‘Soon,’ I said. ‘Next week, maybe.’
He looked me up and down like I was a disappointment but what could you expect, youth these days and all that. ‘You’re not from here.’
He held up a hand, the stump of a hand with just a thumb and an index finger, gnarled and twisted like a tree root. ‘See this? City blew it off. I sat in one of their stinking prisons for two years. Lost my fingers. Damn near lost my fuckin’ mind. You get the chance when you go over – you do the same to one of them, yeah? Anyone’ll do.’ He grabbed my wrist and stuck my hand out above the fire. ‘You hold them down. You take your gun.’ He pointed his stump, like he was taking aim. ‘You blast it off. Fingers, everything. Tell ’em you’re doing it for Sett Rorkin. Got that?’ I pulled away from him. He stuck his stump back in his pocket and grinned at the fire.
The woman said, ‘You pay no attention to old Sett here.’ She put a hand on my shoulder and breathed ‘shine in my face. ‘I’m sure you got plans, don’t you, love? Off to seek your fortune? Nice lad like you deserves a bit of fortune. What about your girl? Taking her with you?’ She patted my shoulder and peered back towards the coffeehouse where Goran had gone. ‘Time for you kids to be on your way back up the hill. Off you go. Fight a good fight, now, won’t you.’
The old guy, Sett, grabbed my arm as I turned to go and waved his stump in my face. ‘Remember! A hand for a hand.’
We pushed our way back through the crowd inside and came out onto the road. A breeze came fresh off the river and we breathed deep. ‘Horrible man,’ said Lanya. ‘Horrible people. Why would your friend know these people?’
‘Let’s get out of sight,’ I said.
We crossed the road to where a mangled dredge had been abandoned and settled in to wait for Goran to head for home. Lanya leaned on the riverwall and looked across at the city, dreaming, I guess, of future glory. I sat on the ground and watched the coffeehouse.
‘You might wait a long time,’ said Lanya. She sat down beside me. I thought about suggesting she go back up the hill, but I was fairly sure what she’d say to that. She hugged her knees and laid her head on her arms. Her braids fell across her long dancer’s neck. For all that she buzzed with energy, when she sat still, she sat still. She looked up at me with a smile, then fixed her eyes on the coffeehouse, watchful and intent, as if it might vanish at any moment.
I said, ‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘No. You didn’t answer mine.’
‘Sina fell in with some bad company, that’s all.’
She smiled sideways at me. ‘I’m sure that’s not all. But ask away.’
‘Who’s Kasimir?’
Her smile vanished. ‘Who’s been talking about Kasimir?’
‘Vega. Tonight at Levkova’s. Everyone went quiet.’
She nodded. ‘That’s his son. Married to Yuna – did you meet her?’
‘Yeah. What happened to him?’
‘Kas was arrested in a raid two years ago. Their little girl wasn’t long born and Yuna was sick. Kas was pulled off the street. They took him over the bridge and put him in the Marsh. Our people offered a suicide switch to get him back.’
‘A suicide what?’
‘Switch. Kasimir, in exchange for a city spy held over here.’
‘Why’s it called that?’
‘They don’t tell you anything in Gilgate, do they. We’re not supposed to call it that, but everyone does. A suicide switch is when they wire up the ones being exchanged with belts of explosives and each side carries the other’s trigger. So, with Kas, one of our men went over to verify that it really was Kas they were sending back, and he got to hold the trigger for the city spy being exchanged. The same for the city – they sent a triggerman here and he took the trigger for the explosives on Kas. So the triggermen go to the middle of the bridge and supervise the exchange.’
‘That is barbaric.’
‘It keeps everyone honest. You don’t end up with squads from both sides on the bridge and there’s no danger of snipers taking out one of the hostages because the other one would be blown sky high if that happened.’
‘What happened with Kas?’
‘They’re supposed to deactivate the triggers once the prisoners have been exchanged in the middle of the bridge, but the city spy got to the exchange point, grabbed his own trigger and blew himself up. I don’t know why. Shame, perhaps. Or perhaps he knew what they’d do to him once he got back. Kas was caught in the blast. He didn’t die straight away. Yuna and the Commander got to say good-bye, at least.’
Insane. Brutal. War. What did I expect?
We watched some people leave the coffeehouse, calling to friends inside, cursing at how cold it was outside.
‘What about you?’ said Lanya. ‘Who’ve you lost?’
‘Parents.’ I said it without a second thought, without all the hesitations and reservations that came with that admission at school. Where’s your mother? Who’s your father? Why don’t they come, call, visit, take you away for the summer? But here, the assumptions all ran the other way.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You?’
‘No. No one. Still have parents. Still have brothers. Also grandparents, aunts, and cousins. The aunts are not pleased with me. A disgraced Pathmaker brings dishonor on a family, as they keep reminding me. But my parents believe me, that Coly was playing Remnant’s game.’ She glanced at me. ‘They don’t know about the fight. Do you have aunts or cousins?’
I shook my head. ‘Sina is as close to family as I get.’
We watched the coffee house for a while, and at last crowds of people started to spill out of it.
‘There!’ said Lanya. Goran and co. were leaving in a flurry of farewells. We fell in with the scattering of late-night folk and followed them east along the river road. They stopped at a crossroads where some cookshops were hoarded together and a crowd was waiting outside for kebabs and stuffed pocket-bread. The air was smoky from the frypans; the spice of it caught in my throat and made me hungry and sick together. But our quarry didn’t stop for food. They worked their way through the crowd, greeting people as they went, and Sett – Stumphand – lifted a bag from some poor dupe waiting for his fry-up. They headed into an alley running down beside the cookshops. Once they’d turned a corner, we went after them.
We were walking on gag-inducing sludge through a tunnel of shack walls stuck together, badly, in a jigsaw of corregated iron and wooden slats held in place by nails half banged in and bent at crazy angles. If I put my hands out I could touch both sides at once. Our only light came from cracks in the walls where lamplight bled through, and from the moonlit strip of sky above us.
We followed Goran’s group around a corner into another alley exactly the same. Then another. And another. As we made our way through a maze of twisting, narrow spaces we fell into a pattern of one of us going ahead and watching for where they turned next, then beckoning to the other. They weren’t hard to follow – they were in high good humor, or maybe they were just high. They stopped at last beside a tall wire fence with a padlocked gate. Goran let them all in, glanced up and down the alley, then locked the gate and disappeared inside.
I started towards it, but Lanya grabbed my arm. ‘No, no, no. Wait! What are you doing?’
‘Taking a look.’
‘Listen to me! They’re dealers. And with a fence like that, they’ll be traffickers as well. There are people in there they don’t want to let out. If you try to get in, they will kill you. And you don’t even know if Sina is there.’
‘It’s all I’ve got. I’m just gonna look. I won’t go in.’
‘Ask Levkova for help.’
‘I’m just gonna look.’ I shrugged off her hand and walked up to the fence. Inside it I could see three shacks and a larger, more solid building behind them. A lantern hung from the porch of one of the shacks and lit the groundspace in front; it was scratched and scuffed where someone had tried to grow something, or bury something. A washing line draggled rags between a rainwater barrel and a latrine. No signs of life.
Around me the alley was dark and quiet.
I figured that Goran and his team would be snor
ing by now; they’d been drunk enough. If the fence could hold my weight, I could get in and take a look around. I hated the thought that Fyffe might be in there. Was probably in there, since she’d followed this man, then disappeared. I couldn’t leave without looking.
The fence was tall. I could’ve reached the top of it at full stretch if my ribs had been working properly. I put a hand on the wire lattice, gripped it, shook it lightly. It felt solid enough. I gripped a fence pole, pushed a boot into the lattice, and hauled myself up. The fence creaked. I froze. Looked around. Couldn’t see anyone. Grasped the top of the fence pole. Pulled myself up another few feet. Nearly there.
A hand grabbed my ankle and someone hauled hard on my coat. I crashed onto the ground. Pain exploded in my ribs. A man dragged me upright and stuck his arm round my neck, just about lifting me off my feet. I gagged and tried to struggle but the pain had left me gasping.
A knife, sharp, cold and to the point, pressed my cheek. ‘Well,’ said a voice in my ear, ‘Look what we have here! What are you doin’, soldier boy?’
‘Nothing! Just looking.’
‘Nope. Don’t believe you.’ The knife pressed harder; I felt blood trickle down my face. ‘We don’t like to be spied on. It ain’t good for our peace of mind. You could lose an ear or an eye at this point. With this point.’
He laughed at his joke. ‘As a message to other snoopers. Hold still – or it’ll be both.’
Stupid. Stupid to think that traffickers would leave themselves unguarded. I tried to see the knife, afraid of what it would do next. I was thinking, hoping, that maybe he’d take me inside. It would make it worth getting caught if I could find Fyffe. But he sounded as if he’d rather carve me up there in the alley.
‘Which is it to be?’ he said. ‘Ear?’ He flicked the knife point at my ear lobe. I tried to slow my breathing. Tried to think. The blood was pounding in my head. ‘Eye?’ He drew the point from the corner of my eye across my temple. I tried not to flinch in case he slipped. ‘Choose!’ he said.
Then he grunted, his legs went from under him and we collapsed on the ground. Lanya was shouting, ‘RUN!’ I scrambled up and raced after her down the alley.