by Claire Merle
At the heart of a vast sprawl of stone buildings, campfires, skin-homes and winding streets looms the huge closed market, built from the black rock mined in these parts. The Pit, as I have heard Tug and Brin refer to it, rises above interlocking squares and lopsided taverns, a windowless monster.
In the mind-world, it flashes and flickers with bright swirls of color—memories surfacing and crashing against each other. The vast number of minds crammed together overwhelms me. In another sort of world perhaps the effect would be beautiful, but in a realm of thieves and criminals the chaotic clash resembles a battlefield of motion and pain.
“So,” Kel says. “How exactly are you going to save us?” He scowls, jaw locked, mouth pursed. I meet his gaze, sadness heavier than water filling up my lungs. When I do not answer he pulls his hand from mine. It's like a slap in the face.
I want to tell him I'm waiting for the right moment. That we have to stay positive, we have to believe that a window of opportunity will open for us. Timing is everything. But what if there are no opening doors, only doors closing behind us, and each time one closes we are shut further inside this dark, hellish world?
Tug unbound us after the incident with the King's soldiers. He suggested, as though the idea had just come to him, that it would draw less attention if it appeared we were a family hunting together. Kel would just have to keep his eyes down. When I said, for the sake of credibility, he should return my bow and knives, he confiscated my water ration. Brin proposed they skin the wildfowl, take only the furs and abandon the sled and carcasses.
Our captors are nervous, travelling light, ready for anything. Every time I've so much as twitched in the last three hours, Tug has been by my side, ready to stomp out mutiny.
During our trek here, they speculated endlessly on the presence of the King's soldiers so far north, when it is (apparently) well known that the King is south, embroiled in war on the Etean border. For all their guesses, they never came close to the truth. The soldiers search for the King's son, Prince Jakut, who came north last summer and whose escort was found slaughtered not far from here before the long-sleep.
“You think the King's army is there?” Brin asks. The four of us stand on a ledge of the mountainside, gazing at the steep drop below. It is the first time since they unbound us that Tug has allowed Kel and me to stand so close together.
“No,” Tug says. “They might send spies into the Hybourg, but there'd be a full-blown riot if the army tried to ride through it.”
In the moonlight, I take Kel's gloved hand. He wraps his little fingers around my knuckles and twists.
“They're going to sell me,” he hisses.
My muscles clench and my breath grows faster. If Tug and Brin take us straight to the Pit, in less than an hour, Kel may be bought by some rich lowlife, and I will never see him again. I eye the knife in Tug's belt. The two men are staring down the mountain, absorbed by their reflections on what is going on in the Hybourg. My eyes flit to the wolf dog, head poking out from the top of Tug's rucksack.
Perhaps this is the window, and I need to give it a shove to get it open. Once we are in the town, we won't have two adversaries but thousands. Every man down there would maim, fight, perhaps even kill to get their hands on a prized glitter-eyed child.
You've run out of time, Mirra. It’s now or never.
The tiredness in my limbs vanishes as adrenaline surges through my body.
“Tug,” I say. My voice sounds like a strangled squirrel. “Tug,” I repeat. He turns, wariness already dancing in his eyes. I edge towards him. “You don't need Kel. You could let my brother go, just sell me. I'm worth a fortune.”
He observes me coldly. “Please,” I beg. “Please, Tug.” I let the desperation I have kept mostly hidden slip into my voice. He turns back to the view of the Hybourg, as though the sight of me is too pitiful to behold.
That moment is all I need. I lunge for the wolf dog, seize her by the scruff of the neck and yank her from the bag. Tug spins, reaching for his knife but he has not anticipated the dog move.
I leap away, moving to the edge of the cliff. The dog is too large to dangle over the sheer drop, so I cradle her in my arms.
“Step back, Mirra.”
“Let Kel go before the mutt has another accident.” The wolf dog starts paddling her back legs. Carrying her with my injured arm is hard enough, without the extra struggle.
“You can't help your brother if you fall off the edge of a cliff.”
“Get going, Kel.” I glance around and catch the look of shock in my brother's golden-flecked eyes. “Get going!”
He moves towards the slope, tentatively at first, then with more speed. In response, Brin crosses to intervene, but Tug holds out an arm to stop his associate.
I lock gazes with Tug, while dipping into Kel's mind. Through the blurry haze of panicked thoughts I see him scrambling up a rocky slope. Run, Kel. Run!
“You're sending him to his death,” Tug says. “A cold, frightened, lonely death, if he is lucky. Ripped from limb to limb by savage, hungry beasts, if he is not. Now let the dog go before we have to scrape you both off the rocks below.”
Frustration and disappointment crush me. I have been patient. I have waited four days for Tug to make an error, to let his guard slip, to find a way through the fortress of his mind. And now I'm forced to desperate acts.
“You don't need Kel. I'm worth a fortune.” I repeat the words over and over, but Tug is right. Kel won't get far by himself.
I hold out the wolf dog. Tug hooks her up, swings her over his shoulder, and drops her into the rucksack as though she were a kitten. I move away from the cliff edge as Brin swaggers towards me. I take a deep breath, trying not to be intimidated, but his fist rises and fires towards my face.
The next thing I'm aware of is the cold and the pain. I blink at the night sky. Stars twinkle. For a moment I have no idea where I am. The world seems beautiful, quiet and frozen.
Kel's anguished cry shakes me back to reality. Everything beautiful vanishes.
Brin curses in the distance. “Stop kicking or I'll knock you out.”
I struggle to sit up. My hand reaches for the enormous lump beneath my eye. A little way off, Brin twists Kel's arm, dragging him back down the hill. My brother shouts until a palm clamps over his mouth. Then he stops struggling.
Beast-face's only weakness is the stupid wolf dog. I should have thrown it from the cliff just to show him he doesn't control everything. Even now, he stands with his back to us looking at the Hybourg, as though our scrabble for freedom is so insignificant, it doesn't even bear watching through to the end.
I hug my arms around my chest and shiver. Snow has gotten into my hood, and a wet patch presses into my back. I clamber to my feet.
I cannot bargain the information about the King's soldiers searching for the missing Prince of Caruca. I don't know if it is of any value to Tug, but if he suspected I knew something, he would simply beat it out of me, or hurt Kel until I revealed what I've hidden. A diversion to free Kel is pointless. I need to escape with him, but with Tug pre-empting everything I do that's next to impossible.
I have run out of time. The only option left is to offer cooperation during my own sale, in exchange for information concerning Kel's buyer. Tug doesn't care what happens to us after he has been paid—whether Kel and I escape our new masters is not his concern. But he will have difficulty raising a good price for me if he cannot prove I have the sight. And besides the dog, the only thing he cares about is coin.
I fight a sinking feeling, hold a chip of snow to my swollen cheekbone, and hope Tug does not hold a grudge against me for threatening his precious wolf dog's life, for the second time.
Eight
We slink through backstreets of the Hybourg, Tug and Brin with their knives drawn, Kel and I wedged between them. My brother trembles and in the occasional flicker of firelight I catch sight of the new bruise on his face. I am terrified too. Behind these crowded walls, inside cramped homes built from th
e same black slabs as the giant market pit, there are more minds than fish in a river.
The relentless fragments of memory disorientate me. It is difficult to focus on the real danger; men who pass by hunched under the weight of giant hemp bags; the occasional group of gamblers gathered around dumpster fires, smoke twisting on the crisp air and cloaking their movements.
Beneath the smoke lingers an acrid, burning stink that sticks to my nostril hairs. Along with the animal dung and the dirty water coursing in drains, it is enough to make me clutch my stomach, and breathe through my mouth. We curve into a long street of tilted houses, and are met by the thunder of running boots echoing off the close walls.
Five boys appear from the shadows, tearing towards us. The oldest is about my age, the youngest smaller than Kel. Tug crushes Kel and me against a wall and Brin jumps to his side to conceal us. The boys fly past hollering and screeching before they whip into an alley and vanish, slapping boots and voices vanishing with them as though they have been swallowed into another world.
A ghostly silence hangs on the air, broken a second later by two men running up the street, shouting obscenities. They blunder past, knives glinting, fury in their eyes and their voices. My ears thrum with blood. I press Kel's head against me, feeling more naked here without my knives than in the forests and outlands.
I have not been near a town for nearly six years, since Kel was born. My yearning for a life beyond Blackfoot forest has grown with every passing long-sleep, but this is not the sort of place you can relax for one minute. This is not the sort of place anyone would desire to go.
Tug eventually allows Kel and me to breathe again by removing his crushing bulk. We hurry down the street, following Brin into an empty tavern with one torch burning in the arched doorway.
If Tug intends to take Kel straight to the Pit and leave me with Brin, I have only moments to bargain. But before I can do anything, Brin pushes Kel towards a wooden stairway while Tug greets the innkeeper. Relief pools out from my stomach making my arms and legs limp. I want to hug Kel and cry. Instead, I reach for Kel's hand as he hovers before the first step.
“It's OK, Kel,” I say. “They're just stairs.”
Brin bustles us up, then Tug arrives with the key to the room, and we all enter. One double bed, a fireplace, a bathroom. The bare essentials, but Kel has never been inside a room before and his face opens, fascinated and afraid. Tug checks the window and closes the wooden shutter. Both men unload their packs. Brin sets about tying Kel to the bed frame.
“You think anyone saw his eyes?” Brin asks.
“We'll soon know one way or another.”
“How are we going to get him to the Pit?” Brin finishes with Kel's hands and ties his feet, linking the rope so that Kel cannot stretch out. Tug picks up the dog and strokes its muzzle. Its tongue lolls, and it's panting though it's been riding in Tug's backpack.
“The same way we've made it here so far,” Tug says.
I keep my head lowered, trying to decipher if Beast-face is treating me differently after my stunt with the dog. If anything, he seems to pay less attention to me than before. He's seen what I've got and it doesn't stack up to much. But if I can get him to believe taking me to the Pit is in their interests, I could find valuable information about the man who buys Kel.
“I can warn you,” I say.
Tug's wolf-like eyes gleam at me. “About what?”
“Anyone following us, lurking in side alleys, planning an ambush.”
Brin's gaze slides towards Tug and he shakes his head. Brin does not trust me. But it's more than that. He is still afraid of my talent, refusing even to bind me, though he has finished with Kel.
Tug puts the dog on the raised bed and ties my ropes himself. He jams my wrists together, fibre biting into my torn flesh. Then he stops, breath tickling my nostrils as he scrutinizes me. Heat rises to my cheeks. His gaze seems to say he knows what I'm thinking—my reasons for going with them to the Pit. I might be the one that can trawl his mind, but he is the one that sees straight through me. Once I am bound, he picks up the dog and the men leave, locking the door behind them.
At least he didn't refuse to take me. Perhaps he's considering it.
“I'm thirsty,” Kel says.
“I know.” He must be hungry too. We have only eaten scraps for days. I scoot up beside him. There is not enough free rope to circle my arms around him. He leans against my side. I rest back against the bed frame and lie my head on his. The two of us, exhausted, half-starving, fall asleep almost at once.
I am poked and shaken towards consciousness. My body aches, my head pulses where Brin's fist met my face. It's like someone stuffed my cheek with small buds of snow cotton that push up into my eye. And the memories. The memories are draining. Even in sleep, the violence, blood and duplicity of the Hybourg has seeped into my dreams.
That shaking again.
“Mirra, wake up,” my brother whispers. I raise my eyebrows, hoping my eyelids will move up with them. Prisms of light swim across my vision. It is day. How long have I been out of it? I scramble to sit from where I'm lying in a fetal position, feet and hands still tied to the bed frame.
“Hey, Bud,” I croak. The bruise on the side of his forehead where Brin struggled with him has turned a purply-blue. His skin is paler than ever, and moon shadows have formed under his bright blue and gold swirling irises. He stares at the floor near the door. There is a tray with two full bowls of white flaky slop. It has been purposefully left out of our bound-up reach.
Wood crackles in the adjoining washroom, the sound of a fire being lit with damp sticks.
“Which one?” I whisper.
“Tug,” Kel whispers back. Tug must be boiling water for the tub. I wonder how long he intends to leave us waiting. It is punishment for my defiance yesterday and Kel's attempted escape. Or it is simple logistics. He cannot unbind us to eat and wash at the same time. Perhaps our needs don't even enter the equation.
The tantalisation of food so close by, and not being able to reach it makes every passing moment torturous. Worse because we do not know how long we will sit here before Tug concedes to let us eat. Not wanting to give the Beast-face satisfaction in such torment, I turn my thoughts to Kel. Somehow, I will make Tug pay for the tattered hope and agony on my brother's small face. Somehow, Tug will regret the day he ever crossed us in Blackfoot forest.
As the anger simmers, I remind myself that every second I have now with my brother, might one day be a second I would kill to get back. I push down the resentment and raise my bound hands to remove my lodestone.
“I want you to have this, ” I say, twisting and fumbling to undo the thread. My trusted lodestone has been with me for five years. “Rest it on a leaf in a river and it will always turn so one end faces north.”
My brother's eyes flick up from the porridge. “Why?”
“Because.”
“No point.” Despite his protests, I place the leather string over his neck, and hold it with my teeth to tie it. “You're my north now,” I say, tucking it inside the fur of his parka. “Wherever I go, I'll always be heading for you.”
Scowling, he turns his shoulder to me and fixes his gaze back on the food.
A sound of splashing water comes from the washroom. We both grow still. Tug exits amid a faint haze of lavender and mint. He kicks the tray towards us. The porridge slops down the sides of the wooden bowls. My brother stretches as far as his rope allows, grabs the bowl within reach and starts gulping. If I twist to the end of my ties, I could inch the tray close enough to take the second bowl. But Tug's eyes are glued to me. I have the impression I'm being tested for something I can't pass. I stare back, heart pounding in my chest. The wolf dog is no longer with us, I realize. And if it hasn't survived, I am to blame.
My body twitches as the hunger claws at me. I resist until Tug grunts, wanders across the wooden floor and closes the washroom door behind him. Manoeuvring myself as close to the porridge as I can get, I stretch out my fingertips and to
uch the tray. Easy now. I twist the wooden board across the ground. Finally, I can wrap my palms around the sides of the container. With shaking arms, I raise it to my mouth. The gruel is cold and tasteless, but it's like sunshine on my dry, cracked lips. I attempt to drink slowly. Kel grabs the tray and mops up where the mush spilt. He is licking and licking though there is nothing left, only wood splinters to prick his tongue.
“Here,” I say, giving him my half-drunk slop. He takes it without hesitation and I watch him guzzle it down, regretful to see it go. But after all these years of taking care of my baby brother, the gesture is instinctive and seeing him eat makes me feel better.
A faint shimmer of warmth oozes from the washroom, along with the smell of burning pine. The fire has taken. In the fort where my mother grew up, they had fires beneath the clay floors to heat the baths and the bedrooms. But I know from our cottage in the town we moved to when I was seven, after my glitter eyes had settled, and from my father's memories, in most places bath water is boiled, then poured into a tub.
A loud rap at the door makes Kel and me jump. A splash comes from the washroom, followed by the sound of wet feet slapping on the wood floor. Tug appears with a fold of material around his waist. His broad arms and hairy chest drip water. Wavy hair hangs around his tattooed, unshaven face. He walks to the door, knife handle curled in his fist.
“Who's there?”
“It's me,” Brin says. Tug's shoulders relax and he steps aside. Brin enters, emptying a large thread sack on the bed. I strain to see what he has brought. A gray dress, a pair of boy’s trousers, a tunic, and a brassiere which is far too big for my flat chest. They mean to dress us up and sell us as prize objects to rich, scheming merchants. The idea sends invisible bugs crawling across my skin, but it will have its advantages. A wealthy man who believes I am a helpless, dainty shadow weaver, waiting to be bent to his will, will not pre-empt me the way Tug can.