Deeplight

by Frances Hardinge

  “Do you want his ear clipped?” asked the clerk.

  Hark gave his owner a desperate look of appeal. A notch was often cut into the ear of serious criminals. Once you had three notches in your ear, your next arrest meant a quick trip to the gallows. So far Hark had managed to avoid a clipping.

  “No need for that,” said the doctor.

  Hark meekly held his tongue until the clerk had left. It was time for a change of tone, he decided—a little timidity to soften up his new owner. He risked giving her a small, rueful smile.

  “I’m really glad you bought me,” he said, with a deliberate break in his voice. “Thank you. I . . . I thought I was going to the galleys.”

  “Yes, you did, didn’t you?” The doctor pushed her hands into the pockets of her long brown coat. “Well, I thought I’d let you sweat a bit, you slippery little snake.” She laughed aloud at Hark’s expression. “Oh, don’t give me that seal-pup look. That story of yours was a reeking heap of tripe, wasn’t it?”

  Hark could have protested, but his instincts stopped him. Instead, he met the doctor’s eye.

  “Yes,” he said. “Right down to the last scrap.”

  “That’s what I thought,” she said. “That’s why I bought you. You’re a good liar, and I have need of one.”

  The freckled girl waited outside the Auction House and watched.

  At last she felt a shift in the crowd. Heads turned. Necks craned. Faces dipped closer to each other, mouths fluttering in whispers. Bodies pressed forward toward the side door of the Auction House, obscuring her view. She quickly clambered up onto the sloping roof of a bellows house, earning only a glance from those lining up to fill their air-bottles.

  A gang of porters had emerged from the side door carrying heavy crates, while armed men kept gawkers and chancers at bay. These had attracted the greedy curiosity of the throng. Only the freckled girl’s sharp eyes noticed the two figures who slipped out a few seconds later. There was Hark, the bought boy, trailing behind his new owner with a hangdog look.

  The girl followed the little procession at a distance and watched the boy, the woman, and the crates depart on a small, gray-sailed sloop. After the crowd had thinned, she slipped down to the quay and approached a sea-kissed dockhand she knew. He respectfully greeted her by the name she now preferred, a hybrid of two different signs: Big eyes. Sudden storm.

  When he had answered her questions about the boat and its destination, she went back to her mother to report.

  Did the boy give us away? asked Rigg.

  He didn’t mention us, signed the freckled girl, but he really likes to talk. His rambling tale had annoyed her. Even with her level of skill, reading lips at that distance was tiring, particularly when the boy twitched his head this way or that to answer people’s questions. Filling in those gaps in the conversation through deduction, over and over again, had become draining and irritating after a while.

  What did you make of him? signed Rigg, narrowing her eyes.

  Slippery, answered her daughter, after a moment’s thought, using a sign like that for “eel.” The Myriad sign language had grown from the signs divers used to communicate underwater, and this showed sometimes.

  If he tries to sell us out, we know where to find him, signed Rigg, and shrugged.

  I don’t like his friend, either, the girl added suddenly.

  You don’t like anyone, her mother replied dismissively, and only a little unfairly. We’ll see how he shapes up. He did well enough last night, didn’t he? We got what we wanted.

  The smuggler ran her fingers over the large, dark sphere that lay on the floor of the cellar, the scare-light glimmering on its seaworn, godware surface.

  Chapter 4

  Three months later, on the highest point in Sanctuary, Hark sat watching the newly risen sun spilling its silver onto the sea.

  A dip in a crenellated wall offered the perfect seat. Around and below him clustered gables, bow-backed ridges, blunt towers, and skeletal belfries, their weathered slate slick with the morning dew. The early morning mists were lifting, revealing low, scrubby hills on all sides. Nest was always a wild, lonely island, but at dawn it seemed almost ghostly.

  “Planning your escape?”

  Hark jumped, even though the voice and the joke were familiar. Sure enough, when he turned, he saw Kly, the Sanctuary foreman, grinning up at him from the hatch.

  It was a routine joke, but as it happened, Hark had been hungrily watching the bright sails of distant ships. They were sailing south, toward his beloved Lady’s Crave. In a few hours, they would see its double-humped outline, the great chimney of the glue factory almost as high as its hills. Then they would pull into the harbor, his harbor, where the gulls and black kites circled over a forest of masts, the docks full of market shouts, excitement, and the smell of tar and spices . . .

  “Always,” he answered with a grin.

  Kly looked pointedly at Hark’s comfortable perch. The stocky, middle-aged foreman wasn’t exactly a bully, but he liked to feel in the ascendant. He would smile at a bit of cheekiness, but rein it in unexpectedly now and then to show who was boss.

  Hark took Kly’s hint and climbed down from the wall. He dusted down his yellow robes and picked up his abandoned broom and pan.

  “Don’t take too long up here,” Kly added, as he turned to leave. “We need you to help serve breakfast.”

  Hark got back to cleaning out the gutters but couldn’t resist a few glances at the panorama.

  The mists had now lifted entirely. Sanctuary’s roof offered the best view on the island. The ominous, old building squatted on the top of Nest’s highest hill, in majestic isolation. Hark could look out in all directions and see exactly how much nothing the island had to offer. No towns, not even a village, just occasional small buildings dotting the gray-green scrubland. On any other island in the Myriad, the hillside would have been cut into terrace farms so as to put every inch of it to use. You never wasted land. Here, however, the slopes were virtually untouched, with just a few footpaths running like creases.

  Even though Hark could see the faint shapes of other islands on the horizon, Nest felt solitary and remote. The busy sea-lanes carried the steady stream of shipping past it without stopping. Nobody fished in its waters. No scavenger gangs fought over its beaches. Nest had once been too holy for common feet, and now it was shunned as a sour reminder of the past.

  Nest was so named because it had been the place where young acolytes had undergone their training and initiation, where they had “hatched” into full-blown priests. There were no acolytes desperate to train at Sanctuary now. The “nest” would never hold fledglings again.

  Instead, Sanctuary had been put to a different purpose. Once the gutters were clear, Hark hurried down to his other duties.

  Has it really been three months? he thought as he hustled along the dark and narrow corridors. He had grown so used to Sanctuary now. He no longer got lost in its rabbit warren of passages. These days he barely noticed the smells—the damp odor of the old building, the acrid, fatty smell of soap, and the nerve-tingling reek near the baths. At first, he had felt like the airlessness and quiet would choke him. Now they no longer bothered him.

  Well . . . perhaps the quiet did still get to him sometimes. Its clammy hopelessness soaked into his skin if he wasn’t careful.

  In the kitchen, busy cooks boiled eggs and fried great pots of sliced sea wrack, the rubbery brown ribbons of weed turning a succulent emerald green as the hot fat touched them. Hark joined the other yellow-robed attendants in ferrying platters of hot food to the great dining hall with its high-vaulted ceiling.

  In ones and twos, all over the hall, Sanctuary’s residents sat waiting for their breakfast. Quietly, patiently, passively. Many of them still wore the brown, ceremonial robes that no longer had any meaning.

  The priests.

  Hark had heard of Sanctuary when he was growing up on Lady’s Crave, so he had been horrified when Dr. Vyne told him where he would be working out
his indenture.

  That’s where they keep the priests! The old, crazy ones whose minds broke when the gods died!

  Not all priests had fallen apart after the Cataclysm. Some had managed to build themselves new lives. Others, however, had been devastated at losing the reason for their existence. Sanctuary had been turned into a haven for those priests who could no longer look after themselves, a retreat from the cruel, incomprehensible, godless world.

  Hark had pictured a madhouse, full of gibbering, capering figures with wild, white hair. The reality proved to be quieter and stranger. Not all the Sanctuary priests were old, as it turned out. The youngest of them had been acolytes when the gods died and weren’t much older than Kly. Some of the older ones were confused, but you could still talk to them most of the time. Nobody ran around naked or set fire to anything.

  Nonetheless, during his first week working in Sanctuary, Hark had hated his new life.

  The deluge of new duties from dawn to dusk had been a nightmare. The other staff had quickly realized that he was the newest, smallest, and lowest in the pecking order and that he could be sent to sweep floors, clean privies, fetch water, and scour grates. He was out of step with the rhythms and rituals of the place and had to keep getting people to explain things to him. He’d never been a servant before, so he kept making mistakes and breaking things.

  Some of the priests had lost their hearing through age or from descending into the depths, but they were nothing like the sea-kissed Hark had met before. Some had ear trumpets of a sort he had never seen. They didn’t wear ear-studs, and none of them seemed to understand sign language, even when he tried a few signs from other islands. Most of them had retreated from the world right after the Cataclysm, he realized. They hadn’t seen the Myriad turn to deep-sea salvage, or the sea-kissed become common, or sign language spread through the archipelago. When they couldn’t understand Hark, these priests tried to get him to write things down for them. When he stared at the paper and pencil with helpless misery, they usually got frustrated and called for the Sanctuary scribe instead. Hark had been useless, exhausted, out of his depth, and in trouble with everyone.

  It felt strange and claustrophobic to be indoors so much of the time. He was used to being able to run, yell, and climb at will, bracing for the buffets of the wind, with the wild gray sky above him. Now his world had a vaulted lid on it, and he had to keep his steps slow and quiet.

  The priests themselves made him uneasy, too. They were secretive, as if they had folded in on themselves, like the wings of dead insects.

  Some of them had Marks, because of their many trips down into the Undersea to talk to the gods. A few of the mutations were particularly startling—a cloudy left eye twice the size of the right, or a fleshless little finger that still flexed and bent to its owner’s will. However, that wasn’t what bothered Hark. He had seen Marks just as strange among the sub salvage crews on Lady’s Crave.

  What really gnawed at him was the feeling of hopelessness in Sanctuary and the sense that everything around him was old. Even the priests who were only middle-aged seemed older than they should be. They had lost something that would never be given back. They were ghosts of themselves, clinging to a memory of a past life.

  It was Hark’s nature to snatch at hopes and look for chances. Sanctuary whispered that chances could run out. Sometimes you didn’t achieve your dreams, you just got old or shattered and that was it. You were washed up on life’s brutal shingle, a soft, broken, helpless thing.

  So run away, said the imaginary Jelt-voice in Hark’s head. Hark couldn’t imagine Jelt sticking out such drudgery for more than a day. Where was Jelt now? Jelt hadn’t been one of the convicts at the Appraisal, so presumably he hadn’t been caught. Hark had nightmare visions of Jelt showing up at Sanctuary and trying to “rescue” him. Jelt wouldn’t do something that reckless, would he? No, apparently not. Days passed with no sign of Jelt. Hark wasn’t sure whether to feel relieved or hurt.

  Hark knew that if he did run away, he would be caught. Dr. Vyne would be angry and would sell him on, and he would find himself in the galleys or the mines after all. In spite of that, by the end of the first week he had almost felt ready to take the risk.

  Almost. All that stopped him were his conversations with Dr. Vyne. They reminded him that he hadn’t been bought just as a drudge. She had another mission for him.

  “You’re a clever little weasel,” she told him. “You’ll find your feet soon enough. And once people take you for granted and aren’t paying attention, you can get on with your real job.”

  She had plans for him, too.

  “Some schooling would make you more useful to me. Well, we have three years to work on that. I’ll have somebody start teaching you your letters.” She had smirked to see Hark’s eyes shining.

  Reading makes your brain soft, Jelt had always said. You live in the world, or you live in a book. You can’t do both. And what’s in those books anyway? Just a load of rot written by fat saps who never learned anything the hard way. What’s the point of them?

  In Jelt’s mind, illiteracy was a badge of honor. Whenever Hark remembered that, his excitement felt disloyal.

  But he was excited. None of his friends on Lady’s Crave could read. Reading made you useful and respectable. Reading made you look smart. It gave you toeholds in your upward climb, and Hark had always known it.

  So Hark hadn’t run away. He had held on, day after day. He had found his feet and kept his wits about him. He had learned and adapted.

  There is always hope. There are always chances.

  “Pale Soul?” Hark swooped in with a smile and a big platter of sea wrack. “Your breakfast.”

  Like all his fellows, Pale Soul had taken a new name on joining the priesthood. His suited him better each day. He was gray-haired and gray-skinned, and all color seemed to have drained out of his gaze.

  “Is it time?” he asked Hark, in a tone of timorous urgency. “Is it time?”

  Hark had never yet found out what Pale Soul meant when he asked this, and he wasn’t sure that Pale Soul knew, either, but he had learned by trial and many errors the best way to soothe his worries.

  “Not yet,” Hark told him calmly. “Just be patient a bit longer, eh? It’ll be all right.”

  These words had the usual consoling effect, and Pale Soul consented to eat.

  “It’s not time yet, Flint,” he agreed conversationally. As far as Hark could tell, “Flint” was an acolyte Pale Soul had once known. Like the rest of the Sanctuary staff, Hark wore old yellow acolytes’ robes, which were supposed to make the priests feel more at ease.

  “No, that’s right,” answered Hark. “But we’ll be glad we waited, won’t we?”

  The old man gave him a peaceful, fragile smile, and Hark felt a small glow of satisfaction. He continued passing out the platters of food to the other priests. He knew who liked an extra sprinkling of wild mallow, who was too proud to ask for assistance in eating, and who would grab his sleeve so that they could list their latest grievances or theories.

  “Hark, you’d better serve Moonmaid,” muttered one of his colleagues.

  Hark was still at the bottom of the staff pecking order, but the others had grudgingly acknowledged his gift for dealing with the “difficult” priests. Moonmaid, an icily withdrawn old female priest, sometimes stole sharp things and had once tried to stab Kly in the eye. She didn’t like or trust Hark, but at least she tolerated his presence.

  He patiently dissected her food before her keen gray gaze, telling her what each ingredient was. At last she pointed to a particular chunk, and he ate it to show that it wasn’t poisoned. This was their usual ritual, and it satisfied her.

  “I know what you people want from us,” she remarked in her clear, deep voice and picked up her spoon to eat. No answer was expected or required.

  Hark had always been good at winning trust, but he’d never had to keep it before. Back in Lady’s Crave, he’d usually found a mark, talked his way into their purse,
and then made himself scarce before he could face any consequences. Occasionally there had been a longer con, where you spent days or even weeks working on someone, as if they were a chicken you were fattening for the pot.

  This was different. He’d never spent so long learning about a group of people, hearing of their lives, and teasing out their secrets until he knew exactly what to say to them.

  In a sense, this was a long con, too, the longest con he had ever played. But the strange thing was, sometimes he caught himself enjoying his daily work. He liked being good at it. In fact, he had even allowed himself to like some of the priests. Just a little.

  There’s no need to feel guilty, after all. They don’t have to know why I’m so keen to listen to them. It’s not like I’m hurting them, is it?

  “Where’s Quest?” Hark asked, noting that one padded chair by the window was empty.

  “He’s weak again today,” muttered another staff member. “He’s still in his room.”

  “I’ll take his breakfast to him,” Hark volunteered quickly, grabbing another platter and cup.

  “Change the bandage on his leg while you’re there!” one of the other attendants called after him.

  The room Quest shared with two other priests was decked with rugs and wall hangings to keep in the warmth. The old man had been tucked under several layers of blanket for good measure and propped up with a small hill of cushions.

  Quest was lean and long-limbed. His face had a gouged look, deep and bitter lines cutting curves into his cheekbones and brows. His expression brightened when he saw Hark, becoming slightly more watchful and amused. Hark found his own spirits lightening, too.

  Unlike the other priests in Sanctuary, Quest had not suffered a collapse in the face of a godless world. He had apparently made a life for himself on Siren for twenty years after the Cataclysm, only joining his fellows in Sanctuary after his health declined.