A Solitary Journey

by Tony Shillitoe

  Meg saw a maze of lines and names. ‘How do I get there?’

  ‘Take a conveyer. He or she will know where it is.’

  ‘What is a conveyer?’

  The girl laughed, revealing perfect white teeth behind her pink lips. ‘Your country must be a very strange place,’ she said, as she walked from behind her desk towards the entrance. ‘Come on. I’ll get one for you.’

  Meg followed the girl into the street, which was already busy with people and carts and, as on the previous day, the weather was perfect—mild and clear. The girl waved to the driver of a small horse and open four-seater carriage who waved back before urging the horse into action to complete a quick U-turn in the traffic and pull up outside Mother’s. ‘Where can I take you?’ the woman driver asked.

  ‘Do you know Farcastle Walk, up North?’ the girl asked.

  The driver smiled. ‘I’ve got friends who live nearby. I can find it.’

  ‘How much?’ the girl asked before Meg could speak.

  The woman looked Meg up and down, lifting an eyebrow. ‘Out-of-towner?’

  ‘Come to find family,’ the girl replied and winked at Meg.

  ‘Let’s make it—let’s see—make it two notes,’ the driver offered.

  Meg reached into her bag, but the girl grabbed her arm and said, ‘Not yet. You only pay when you get what you’ve paid for. Up you go.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Meg said.

  ‘My name’s Shar,’ the girl told her. ‘I hope you find your children.’

  Meg smiled and repeated her appreciation. Then she climbed into the carriage behind the driver and was whisked into the traffic, fascinated by the experience and excited to have so easily found the factory where her children could be waiting.

  The Winding Road to the castle and the plateau cliff were both familiar and changed to A Ahmud Ki as he ascended. Passing carriages and wagons carried people who looked at him as a curiosity, being one of the very few people actually walking the road. The road was narrow, as it always had been, but it was cobbled like the city streets, and drains ran along the edge shielded by a white picket fence that looked out of place. He had walked all morning from Mother’s, heading north and catching glimpses of the castle plateau between the buildings, but never recognising a familiar place, until he reached a wide street with a sign identifying it as the King’s Way. Again, nothing was familiar, as if even the road had changed course over time, until he reached an intersection near the plateau base that branched into what he remembered was the Winding Road. The sign called it Bretan Way, but A Ahmud Ki knew where it led.

  At the summit the road expanded into a space at the castle gates where a host of carriages and wagons were parked, some attended by drivers, and at the castle gates stood four men in Peacekeeper uniforms. The sight of the Peacekeepers unsettled A Ahmud Ki, but he controlled his nervousness as he approached the gates. A small door was open through the base of one of the massive wood-and-iron castle gates attended by an older man with greying hair in a dark-blue uniform who addressed A Ahmud Ki with, ‘Just by yourself, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ A Ahmud Ki answered and went to step through, but the attendant touched his arm and said, ‘It costs three notes to join a tour, sir.’

  A Ahmud Ki glanced down at the attendant’s hand on his arm, until the attendant removed it, but sensing movement behind him he glanced over his shoulder to discover the four Peacekeepers watching closely. To the attendant he said quietly, ‘And if I don’t want a tour?’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but the castle is government property and we don’t allow people to wander through at will,’ the attendant explained. ‘The next tour is due to leave shortly, if you want to look through the castle, sir.’

  There was a time, thought A Ahmud Ki, as he fished three Andrak notes from his pocket, when I could come and go from here as I pleased, and no one would dare touch my arm. ‘Where do I wait?’ he asked. He followed the attendant’s instructions and entered a small courtyard purpose-built behind the gates where a group of eighteen people were chatting and pointing to aspects of the castle wall architecture. So they intended for him to follow the crowd like a sheep through the place he knew like the back of his hand? As soon as I can, he decided, I’ll lose them and find my way for myself.

  ‘We’ve only got thirty children working here now,’ the factory foreman explained as Meg searched the rows of bobbing heads. Metal and wooden machinery clanked and whirred and the air stank of chemicals and pulped wood. ‘Some of them are foreign kids. They don’t speak Andrak.’

  Meg’s heart raced. ‘I’m keen to see the foreign children,’ she said. ‘I’m looking for children who were bought as slaves.’

  ‘Are you from the government?’ the foreman asked, his bushy black eyebrows knitting pensively.

  The idea of lying flashed through her mind, but she shook her head. ‘I’m looking for my children,’ she said.

  The foreman’s expression changed, his brow furrowing with irritation. ‘Can’t let you go stirring up the children with that notion, lady. You’d need the boss’s permission to go looking in here.’

  Meg looked down at the man, conscious that his balding forehead contrasted with his bushy eyebrows. ‘I’ve come to find my children. You go find your boss if you want, but I’m going in.’

  The foreman stepped in her path as she went to enter the factory and he signalled to three men lounging along the wall. They straightened and sauntered towards the door. ‘Now listen, lady. If you’re not from the government and you’re not a buyer you’ve got no reason to come inside. If you want to keep your pretty looks intact, you move on. All right?’

  ‘Where’s your boss?’ she demanded.

  ‘Mister Rekasa wouldn’t be interested in discussing what you’re here for. He’s bought his slaves and he intends to get his money’s worth from them. You can’t blame him, can you?’ The foreman grinned with false charm and his three henchmen chuckled.

  ‘If you’re looking for a man later, gorgeous, I’m not busy after work,’ offered one henchman, a solid man with steely black eyes and a shaved head, and he winked and blew a kiss. She flashed through her repertoire of spells, seething with anger, her will demanding to see the children now that she was so close, but she gritted her teeth and walked away from the white tin shed inscribed with the company name in red-and-yellow lettering, ignoring the men’s lewd jeers following in her wake. Killing the rat-catcher in Port River had been a terrible mistake. Magic was not for killing people. Didn’t I make that promise a long time ago? she reminded herself. But another voice within chastised her. Your children are here. No man has the right to stand between you and your children.

  Nothing remained of the old Andrakian castle, the palace or its grounds as he remembered. He knew Mareg’s attacks destroyed Thana’s old buildings, but he assumed Dylan would have engineered the rebuilding of the palace after he had trapped both himself and Mareg in Se’Treya—unless Mareg somehow managed to evade his prophesied death at Dylan’s hands. No. This new world showed no signs of a Dragonlord’s imprint—no magic, no sense of a greater power than the power of mortal humanity. The castle was abandoned, according to Luca, seven hundred years ago. The guide leading his group stopped the party at a closed doorway and addressed everyone as she did at selected points in the palace tour. ‘These doors once led into the throne room of the original Bretan palace that stood here a thousand years ago in the reign of the mythical King Dilun of Andrak.’

  It was Andrakis, A Ahmud Ki corrected irritably.

  ‘The castle was abandoned around the thirty-second century because of the Great Plague and in fact most of the original city was burned to the ground to stop the plague spreading. Then an earthquake in thirty-three- twenty-two caused the centre of the plateau to collapse in on a fault that existed at its core and the old palace and most of the grounds were destroyed. Beyond this door is a chasm that drops a hundred spans at its deepest sections. Apparently the ancient kings dug hundreds of tunnels under the castle without rea
lising that each new tunnel was weakening the plateau’s geological structure. In the end it simply fell in on them.’

  The party chuckled at the guide’s flippant explanation, but A Ahmud Ki was appalled. ‘Are any of the old tunnels or caves still surviving?’ he asked.

  The guide, a plump blonde woman in a tight dress the same dark blue as the uniform worn by the front gate attendant, peered over the party at the stranger and replied, ‘No. Excavators in recent years have tried to dig up artefacts from the past with varying degrees of success, but they all confirm that the heart of the plateau is nothing but compressed and collapsed rock and earth.’ She directed the rest of her comment to the wider party. ‘One strange phenomenon out of the collapse is the flow of Dragon River. It springs from the heart of the plateau, but it hasn’t always flowed. The oldest Bretan records refer to it so we know it existed in ancient times, but after the thirty-three-twenty-two earthquake the river dried up for almost two hundred years. Then it suddenly began to flow again about five hundred years ago and has become the jewel of our parklands and water system and sustains the growth of our beautiful city.’

  A Ahmud Ki let the woman prattle on about recent history and the redevelopment of the castle as a tourist attraction. If the old throne room had been beyond these doors, then he finally had a sense of where he was, but if the tomb of Mareg’s brother, the Dragonlord after whom the old nation was named, was really buried in the plateau’s collapse then there was nothing here for him to retrieve. His only remaining hope was that his black tower still stood in the old palace gardens. No one could have entered it in the ensuing thousand years and a mere earthquake wouldn’t have shaken its foundations. ‘What about the black tower in the palace gardens?’ A Ahmud Ki asked, interrupting the guide. ‘Do we get to see it?’

  The guide’s startled stare warned him that his question made no sense to her. ‘I’m sorry, sir, but there’s no black tower anywhere on the grounds. You must be confusing this castle with one somewhere else.’ She waited for him to explain, but when he looked away at the doors instead she finished her talk and led the party on through a section converted to a museum.

  Meg studied the children from the window that let light through the angled shed roof. She pretended to leave after the confrontation, but patiently waited in a nearby alley until the men guarding the factory stopped emerging from the door to check the street. Whisper was restless in her bag so Meg cautiously let the rat out to sniff around and relieve herself. Looking, Whisper informed her abruptly before darting along the narrow alley into Farcastle Walk, much to Meg’s consternation. She went to the corner and peered out, checking that none of the guards were present at the paper factory before searching for Whisper, but the rat had vanished and a guard was visible in the factory entrance, so she waited until Whisper returned, bounding along the ground towards her. Found, the rat said. Come. She led Meg to the street. No one was in the factory doorway. Come, Whisper urged and raced straight across the street, dodging a horse before disappearing under the gap of a cooper’s shop entrance. Meg checked the factory again before following Whisper’s course, but halted outside the door. The rat’s head appeared under the door. Come, Whisper urged, and disappeared. Reluctantly and warily Meg opened the door.

  Inside was a room of higgledy-piggledy boxes and barrels that smelled of freshly sawn wood, but she froze when she heard voices and footsteps. ‘That consignment for Lammers ready?’

  ‘Had it done two days ago. Thought you’d be here then.’

  ‘You know what it’s like. Bosses think they own the place.’

  ‘They do, Curtin, they do.’

  Meg sank against a pile of cured planks and listened as the men chuckled and talked business, but they walked through the room into another part of the building without coming near her. Whisper appeared at her feet. Come.

  The rat led her through another room, this one with benches and cutting implements, one strange machine hissing steam in the corner, and into a hallway, stopping at a ladder that rose to an opening in the ceiling. Up, the rat informed her and scaled the ladder frame. Meg glanced along the hall, listening, before she followed Whisper. The next level was in the roof of the coopery, but Whisper was running towards another opening that led outside judging by the daylight streaming in. On the roof was yet another ladder up a wall to the adjoining building roof which was two arm-spans higher, and eventually Whisper led her to the window on the paper factory roof.

  She saw the foreman walking along the rows of children who were busy at a variety of roles—pulping, stirring, extracting, pressing—and the three guards had returned to lounging against the wall as if that was all they did each day. The angle and height from the roof made viewing the children difficult and the factory light was dull, but she observed them carefully, one by one, searching desperately for two faces—Emma and Treasure—faces she hadn’t seen for almost two years.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  She watched him pack his small leather bag and wished there was something she could say to convince him to stay, but that conversation was already finished. He had returned from his exploration of the city in a foul mood, telling her that there was nothing for him in Lightsword. ‘I’m going north,’ he said. ‘There’s one place where I can still find what I need.’ He didn’t even ask about the outcome of her search for her children, as if now that they were in his homeland he was obsessed by his need only.

  ‘How many days?’ she asked, as he buckled the bag. ‘Three there and three back. Add at least one for the time I need there. And if there are any weather problems it will take longer. I’ll be back in less than ten days if it goes according to plan. That should have given you time to search the other factories.’ He hoisted the bag and headed for the door. ‘Are you coming downstairs?’

  She followed him along the hall and down to the foyer where Shar greeted them from her desk. Luca waited at the entrance. ‘I’ve organised a conveyer to take us to the park. The dragon egg is ready,’ he said as he opened the door for A Ahmud Ki. ‘I’m sorry about your children,’ he said to Meg as she followed A Ahmud Ki through the door.

  ‘I’ve only just started,’ she told him as they reached the conveyer. ‘There are a lot of factories.’

  Luca smiled and took her hand. ‘Be careful. It’s a big city and there are people who can’t be trusted, especially around beautiful women.’ He kissed the back of her hand, which made her blush.

  She looked up at A Ahmud Ki who was already seated in the conveyer. ‘I’m sorry,’ he mouthed, but aloud he said, ‘I’ll see you in a few days.’

  Luca climbed in beside A Ahmud Ki. ‘We’re ready!’ he called to the driver and the carriage pulled away. Meg watched until the conveyer was lost in the traffic before she returned to her room, scooped up Whisper, sat at the window and stared across the cityscape, wondering where her children could be.

  ‘I’m from the government,’ she brusquely informed the short, squat woman at the desk of the cotton factory, eyeballing her with her green eyes. ‘I need to see that your papers are all in order under the new laws.’

  ‘We don’t have any slave kids,’ the woman replied, although the trepidation in her voice suggested to Meg that she was lying.

  ‘Then you won’t mind taking me on a tour of the factory,’ Meg said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The woman went red in the face as she said, ‘Look. We don’t want any trouble with the government, lady. All right? We had slave kids, but we sold them on.’

  ‘When?’

  The woman shuffled and looked askance at a pile of paper on her desk. ‘Maybe six months ago.’

  ‘Who to?’ Meg demanded, moving deliberately towards the paper pile.

  The woman stepped sideways and put a hand on the papers. ‘Lady, you know how things are. I can’t just go telling you stuff that people don’t want the government to know about. You understand, don’t you?’

  Meg’s spine tingled. The woman yelped and lifted her hand from the papers because they’d caught fi
re and she screamed as she pushed the pile off her desk onto the floor. ‘Fire! Help! Oh in all of the hells’ names, help!’

  Meg ignored her pleas and pushed through the door into the factory, avoiding the men running to extinguish the fire. When a quick glance confirmed there were no children working on the factory floor, she returned to the smoke-filled office, again ignoring the people madly stamping on the paper embers and splashing water over the wooden floor, and left.

  Shar had convinced her to use the guise of a government official. ‘No one knows who works for the government these days—there’s so many of them. Just walk in all brassy and demand to see their papers, and most of them will go crazy trying to help you, especially over the slave law.’ She grinned. ‘It even goes crazy here when the inspector comes to check that we’re keeping a clean and orderly business. Bosses don’t like government inspectors. They can close down their business.’ Shar even told her what to buy to wear. ‘Government women wear the same dark green as the Peacekeepers. That’s the government colours. That and dark blue. Get a dark green dress, don’t put on any make-up, tie your hair back and you’ll get away with it. Believe me.’ So she believed Shar, bought what she needed, adopted the disguise and tried it on another paper factory in the north-eastern sector, and it worked. In three days she visited thirty-seven factories posing as a government official checking on the abolition of slaves and every factory let her check their credentials—until the woman in the cotton factory acted as if she had something to hide.

  Keen to avoid attention because people were already heading towards the building, having heard screams and seen smoke spilling from the office window, she strode briskly away from the factory, turned the first corner and walked on, glad to be among people who were oblivious to the unfolding events one street away. There were no clues to the whereabouts of her children at any factory. The first place she visited—H R Papergoods—was the only one in the city known to have used exotic child slaves in recent times. Several factories that bought slaves before the law change had already released them to freedom, although many former slaves now worked on the factory floor to earn an income. The remaining factories rumoured to still be using slaves turned out to be legitimately using prisoners from the ongoing Ranu war. The trail of her children had gone terribly cold. She couldn’t even conjure dreams to give her direction. Her heart was sinking like the late afternoon sun.