And then the wind brought a curl of something different to her nose – a scent Dawara had not smelled in more years than she could count. Her mouth dropped open in surprise.
A Melitan.
One of these humans was an islander. Her hearts thundered in her belly, pounding hard and strong, making her feel sick and dizzy. The old instincts roared inside her – the urge to run, to hide, to fight… But there was more. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, trying to filter the smells. Beneath the leather and the sweat and the tang of metal, she could detect the scent of a human she knew. The human who had taken her power.
Or – not quite. She frowned, wrinkling her face as she thought. Not quite, but close enough. Kin, perhaps.
The humans had reached the ground now. They were walking through her city, lights held high, like glow-worms with legs. She allowed herself a chittering laugh at the idea and immediately regretted it; one of the humans stopped dead, holding out a hand to the others. It spoke, its human language sounding like splintering bones in her ear, and the group came to a halt. One of the humans held up its light in her direction and she flinched as it shone directly into her eyes. Dawara knew enough about hunting to know that she had given herself away.
She bolted, moving faster than she’d ever done in her life.
“There!” said the rigger, pointing into the darkness. He turned to the ringmaster, his lantern held high. “Eyes, Mr Quinn. It must be this creature o’ yours.”
“Let’s not be too hasty, Marlowe,” Quinn said, though Bastjan could read the delight on his face. “We don’t want to rush into things, after all. We want the beast to think of us as friends.” Bastjan snorted and Quinn looked at him. “Now, now,” the ringmaster murmured. “Let’s remember we’re a team.”
With that, Quinn strode past him. The others followed, laden down with tents and lanterns and cooking equipment, ready to make camp for the night. Bastjan glanced back at the ship and noticed, again, the three round protuberances on the metal elephant’s back, painted to look like the balls a circus elephant might use in their act. He squinted more closely and saw the small window set into each one. The pods, he thought. He gulped, feeling the chill of the night air trickling down around his collar.
“You! Thing! Get over here,” the ringmaster ordered. “Come and help, boy, or you can sleep in the rubble.”
Bastjan scowled, making his way to the others. There seemed to be a discussion taking place about where to make camp. Eventually it was decided that half the team would stay behind and maintain a lookout, while the others would continue, as long as their lamps held out, into the Silent City itself.
“You’re with me,” the ringmaster said to Bastjan, thrusting a lamp into his hands. “Let’s get moving.”
Four of them set out, Bastjan, Quinn, Lahiri and Hubert, their footsteps quiet on the mossy ground.
“Remarkable,” Quinn said, holding his lantern high as they walked. The ruins all around them loomed in the lamplight, huge stones covered with impenetrable markings – rows of incised dots, precisely carved. Some bore swirling patterns which made Bastjan’s eyes ache as he tried to follow them. All were covered with weeds and roots and ivy. Occasionally, the stones were marked with black stains, like soot, or the traces of long-ago fire.
“What is this place? Ahyuk,” Hubert asked. Bastjan looked at him. His eyes weren’t fearful, exactly – Hubert was used to staring down lions. But he was wary, like a threatened animal.
“The Silent City. My late wife first told me about it, though I’ve supplemented her fairy stories with some actual research more recently,” Quinn said. He glanced at Bastjan, who pretended to ignore him. “The race of creatures who lived here, the Slipskins, once inhabited this whole island. But when people arrived, gradually the creatures were pushed towards the coast – hunted, of course. Occasionally, so the stories went, the shapeshifters among them would take revenge – snatching children, drowning sailors, that sort of thing – but they were no match for human weapons.”
He paused, swinging his lantern this way and that as he decided which track to take. “Eventually, the last dregs of their race were driven here, into a long-ruined place built some time in antiquity. The locals placed the wall around them in the hope they’d just die, quietly and without fuss. It was believed they were extinct, but my late wife saw one in her childhood. From what she said, the creature appeared to be alone, living in the ruins. No mention of it appears in any of the books I’ve read, so it’s likely this creature is the last one. And now it’s here, waiting for us.”
Lahiri adjusted his backpack. “And it’s a shapeshifter?”
“Not at present,” the ringmaster answered. “But we plan to give it back that power.”
“Is that wise?” Lahiri asked, in a quiet voice.
Quinn chuckled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’re well prepared. It’s nothing we can’t handle.”
They walked for some time in silence until, up ahead, Lahiri’s lamp began to sputter out. Without his light, the group began to walk a little closer together – all except for Quinn, who strode ahead with his own lamp held high. Bastjan found himself hurrying after Hubert, suddenly afraid of what might come nipping at his heels. Eventually, they turned a corner into an open space, walled off by a ring of ancient stones. The stones were crowded and falling against one another like crooked teeth, each of them decorated with the dotted, swirling markings. The ground was covered with a net of vines and weeds, and the circle was barely big enough to turn a wagon in. The ringmaster began to stride across it, slinging off his backpack as he went.
“Perfect spot for a bivouac, men,” the ringmaster called. “We’ll continue at first light.”
Muttering, Hubert followed his boss. Lahiri followed too, casting a fearful glance at the sky. And Bastjan, every step feeling like lead, joined them.
One by one, the men had fallen asleep. Bastjan had pretended to, but he wasn’t the slightest bit tired. This was the quietest place he’d ever known; sounds seemed to vanish before they had a chance to be heard. There were no animal noises, no insects buzzing, no fluttering birds or rootling creatures. It set his teeth on edge.
Beside him, Quinn began to snore, gently at first and quickly growing louder. The ringmaster was lying on his back, his feet crossed at the ankle and his hat perched over his eyes. His hands were folded behind his head, propped up on his backpack – which meant his jacket pockets were unguarded. Even so, Bastjan hesitated. He’d never tried to pick a pocket before and he was afraid of his clumsy fingers.
If Alice were ’ere, she’d ’ve ’ad the job done three times by now, he told himself, flexing and relaxing his hands.
Sucking hard on his lower lip, the boy crept towards the sleeping ringmaster and, as delicately as he could, he lifted the flap of Quinn’s pocket.
With the other hand, he slid his fingers inside until they met the cool hardness of his mother’s box. Barely daring to breathe, Bastjan pulled it free, clutching it against his chest as he picked up a lantern. Then, with one last look back at the men, he hurried into the darkness of the Silent City.
His feet stumbled over rocks and roots as he walked, and his lantern did nothing except make the darkness seem even more overwhelming. All he could see, when he looked up, were leaning slabs of stone bigger than two tall men standing on one another’s shoulders, each of them decorated with the strangely beautiful markings. Once, the light of his lantern caught a face carved on a slab, its teeth bared, and he barely stifled a yell.
No matter how far he walked, or how many turns he took, there wasn’t a single landmark he could use to orient himself. He turned. Far behind him, smaller now, was the tethered ship still bathed in its bright light, but he had no idea how he was going to get back to it. He jumped as a fat raindrop hit him on the cheek and the ship rocked slightly on its moorings in the strengthening wind. The storm’s comin’.
“C’mon,” he whispered. “I got to find you before the others do. Come out!” He st
opped for a moment, closing his eyes as he thought through his half-formed plan. He would find the Slipskin, give it back its bracelet and hope that, somehow, he could ask it to transform into something that could fly, something that was strong enough to pull the door away from the pod containing his friends… It’s got to work, he told himself. There was no other way of freeing Crake, Alice and Wares, and getting them away from here.
Bastjan kept walking. Look fer water, he thought, remembering his mother’s map and the pool she’d sketched in the centre of the city. It might be near water… He lifted the lantern, looking through the curtain of rain, but he’d barely gone ten steps when he felt his boot catch on something in the undergrowth. It sent him sprawling and he flung out his hands without thinking. The box flew in one direction and the lantern in another. Bastjan cursed his own clumsiness as he got to his hands and knees. The ground was dotted with holes and his heart thudded with the thought that the box might have fallen into one.
If so, it’s gone fer good, he told himself, squinting into the darkness as he crawled towards his fallen light. He held it up, scanning the ground before him for the box. There it was, sitting right on the lip of one of the chasms. Somewhere close, he could hear the gurgle of trickling water, like an underground stream. The lamplight shone into the chasm, gleaming on the fast-moving water below.
Bastjan inched towards the box, careful not to dislodge any loose stones that might send it tumbling, and eventually he closed his fingers around it. He let his head fall on to his arms as he took several deep breaths. Then he got to his feet.
He’d just finished edging his way around the chasm when he heard it – a sound, in the Silent City. A sound not made by him.
Somewhere close by, something moved – something slick, and sleek, and shining-wet. Then that something hauled itself out of a pool and stood before him, its teeth bared.
Bastjan dropped to his knees and put down his lantern. He fumbled his mother’s box open and his fingers, numb and nerveless, found the bracelet and held it high. Immediately, his head filled with splitting pain – shouting, blades shining, the terrible tearing pain of loss. His lungs began to tighten, feeling stiff inside his chest; he fought the sensation, forcing his breath in and out.
“Please,” he gasped, barely able to hear his own voice through the roaring inside his head. “Please! You gotta help me!”
A moment passed as they peered at one another through the falling rain. Then, the Slipskin pounced.
The cub had been foolish to leave its pack, especially when it was so loud – and so bright – that she would have been able to track it anywhere. She had followed unseen, slipping through the underground waterways as the cub had stumbled through the city, holding its light high. It had allowed the glow to play over the faces of the Old Ones and had run its fingers across the star maps. Finally, it reached the pool at the city’s heart.
Its Melitan blood sang to her, but it was Melitan mixed with something else – something different, not of the island. It made her uneasy.
The grown humans had not hunted her and she did not know why. There were far more of them than there were of her but one cub alone, especially so far from its pack, outnumbered nobody. When the cub drew near, for a few careless moments she stopped thinking about the grown humans, and she stopped wondering where they were, and she stopped listening for their footsteps. She hauled herself out of the pool and stood before the cub, ready to attack – but the cub did not run.
Instead, it fell to its knees, its hands in the air. One of them still held the light and she frowned at it. The cub placed the light slowly and carefully on the ground and then held its hands up again.
On its face she saw fear mixed with something else – something that felt like desperation and a plea for help. Dawara stopped, puzzled. The cub slowly reached into the coverings around its body and drew out something flat and shiny, which it broke open. Then the cub pulled something free. Dawara saw it was the Relic, the wind making it twist and spin, and her hearts beat faster.
The cub said something Dawara could not understand – the words were like stones in its mouth. But as it spoke she heard something deeper – she heard the whistle of its breath, the sticky sound of the air trapped in its lungs. She heard its fear and sorrow and anger, and she knew its rage was not for her.
Her gaze hopped between the Relic and the cub’s pale face, its eyes too round and too big. Dawara forgot to remain watchful, forgot about everything except the Relic and how much she wanted it.
She looked at the cub. Its arm trembled with fear as it held out the Relic, but still it did not run.
And then she leaped, reaching for her power, her Relic, woven from her mother’s hair and the hair of all her foremothers, as far back as anyone could remember – but the crack of a weapon sounded nearby, sending her sprawling, and there was a crushing pain in her leg. She looked down to see a ferocious-looking barb protruding from her calf. Her pale pink blood gushed out of the wound, running into the soil of her city, trickling between its fallen rocks and dripping into the caverns far below.
Hands grasped her, pulling her across the stony ground, away from the pool. Dawara tried to fight, to crawl and claw her way back towards the Relic, but it was no use. The hands were too many and too strong and the pain in her leg was much too great.
Her hearts raced sickeningly fast as a bag was placed over her head. She tried to bite at the hands that placed it there, but the human fingers were covered with thick gloves and the voice in her ear, though still speaking the cracking, terrible language she could not understand, was warm and soothing. She breathed heavily through the throbbing agony in her leg, blinking in the darkness, trying to understand. Then she felt herself lifted off the ground, and something hard and cold going around her wrists and ankles, something that bound her. Something she couldn’t fight.
Dawara howled and somewhere close by she heard the sound of the cub, its wails long and loud.
“I gotta say, nice try,” said Marlowe, the rigger, as he dragged Bastjan along the airship corridor. Bastjan’s stomach lurched with the movement of the airship as it flew and also with anger and guilt; the sight of Quinn’s triumphant face as he’d pulled the bracelet from Bastjan’s fingers still danced, mockingly, in his mind’s eye. “But I mean, you’d no idea you were bein’ followed, did you? Not a clue.” He paused to chuckle.
Bastjan made no reply. Instead, he focused on looking for anything he could use as a weapon and trying to quell the flood of ice-cold rage in his brain.
“And it wouldn’t surprise me if someone had a little accident over the Midsea, dropped you lot right in it,” came Marlowe’s sneering voice again, this time accompanied by the jingle of keys. “Very easy thing to do you, y’know, pressin’ the wrong button up in the cockpit and releasin’ an escape pod by mistake. No, wouldn’t surprise me one tiny bit. There are controls to fly it, o’ course, an’ enough power to get yourselves to land, maybe, but that’s no good to youse lot. You need to ’ave a clue what you’re doin’ first.”
Bastjan’s eyes slid to the man’s free hand, where a ring of keys – one of which had to unlock his friends’ prison – were dangling. They clattered their way up a short flight of metal stairs and turned a corner. As soon as they did so, Bastjan knew his time had run out. At the corridor’s end were three doors, each with a thick round window set into the top – the pods. Now or never, Bastjan told himself.
Marlowe held Bastjan tightly by the collar, but the boy’s arms were free. As Marlowe fumbled one-handed with the keys, Bastjan lunged forwards and grabbed hold of Marlowe’s nearest leg. Before the man could react, Bastjan buried his teeth in his captor’s thigh, biting down hard. Marlowe yelled and swore, and the keys dropped from his hand as he struggled to pull Bastjan’s head away. Without missing a beat, Bastjan hooked his foot around Marlowe’s other leg, yanking him to the ground. He hit the metal floor with a resounding clang.
Bastjan scrambled to his feet, stopping only to grab the ring
of keys. “Crake!” he shouted as he began to run. “Crake! You there? Alice!”
Distantly, like it was coming from the bottom of the sea, Bastjan heard the sound of barking. He strained his ears as he ran, trying to figure out which pod it was coming from.
“You little brat!” roared Marlowe, from behind. “You’ll pay for that!”
Bastjan ignored him, focusing on the sound of Wares’s bark. He dropped to his knees before the keyhole of the left-hand pod. As quickly as he could he checked through the keys, trying to guess which one might fit, all the time painfully aware of the rigger limping down the corridor behind him.
No sooner had he felt the correct key click and turn in the lock than the door was hauled open from the other side. Bastjan looked up to see Alice, her face rigid with terror. In her hands she held something large and red.
“Duck!” she shouted, and Bastjan did as he was told.
Alice threw the thing she had been holding as hard as she could. It was a heavy metal fire bucket, which smacked the pursuing Marlowe full in the face. He hit the floor with a thump, out cold. The bucket landed beside him, sand spilling everywhere.
Bastjan was still staring at the unconscious rigger when he felt himself pulled into a fierce hug. “What on earth?” Alice gasped into his ear. “How are you here?”
“He was goin’ to put me in there with you,” Bastjan said. “Where’s Crake?”
Alice released him and stepped back, letting Bastjan look further into the escape pod. Crake was slumped against the wall, still looking dazed from the blow to his head. He saw Bastjan and tried to smile. At his feet stood Wares, his tongue hanging out and his tail flicking back and forth so quickly it could barely be seen.
“Come on,” Bastjan said, hurrying into the pod. “We’ve got to get out of ’ere.”
Alice rushed to Crake’s other side. The children slotted themselves in beneath the strongman’s armpits, doing their best to haul him to his feet. Crake tried to help, but he was worryingly unsteady. Almost as soon as the children got him upright, he stumbled heavily against the wall of the pod.
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