by Paul Stewart
‘So you feed the wyrmes?’ Micah asked.
‘Guests to Deephome come in all shapes and sizes,’ said Cara lightly. ‘And the prophet welcomes them all.’
Thirty
‘That sure was tasty,’ said Micah. He patted his stomach. It was hard and round, like a small pot at the base of his ribs. ‘I ain’t had corncakes and syrup in a long while.’
‘Barley,’ Cara corrected him. ‘It grows wild on the eastern slopes of the valley. We harvest it in early halfwinter. And we have our own millstone for grinding it to flour.’
Micah nodded, once again impressed by the ingenuity and resourcefulness of the Deephomers.
The pair of them were seated in the eating chamber, side by side on a bench at the table farther from the entrance. The cavern had been full when they’d arrived, but it had emptied out. Eli had scarcely touched his food, and had excused himself before Micah had a chance to ask him where he was headed. Now the servers were clearing the tables and swabbing them down, while the tardier diners were scurrying off to attend to whatever chores they’d been allocated.
Micah watched a young couple over by the entrance. The man was square-jawed and so tall his grey cloak barely reached to his knees; the woman had long dark curls that coiled down from beneath her tight bonnet. They were each politely trying to usher the other one out through the entrance before laughing, holding hands and leaving together.
‘That’s brother Elijah and sister Ruth,’ said Cara, following Micah’s gaze. ‘They’ve both been tasked with laundering the clothes.’
Micah smiled, one eyebrow raised. ‘Don’t look like they got too many objections to working together.’
Cara blushed. ‘The dullest of tasks can be made joyful,’ she said, avoiding his gaze, ‘with a willing helpmate.’
Micah was tempted to smile again, at her earnestness, at her innocence. But he did not. Instead, he nodded, his expression equally serious. ‘And is there a dull task that I can help you with, sister Cara?’
Cara’s face relaxed. She climbed to her feet and stepped over the bench.
‘Actually there is something,’ she said.
‘The trick with a blackgage,’ said Cara, as she gripped the paring knife tightly, ‘is to slide the blade … all the way round the outside of the rind without … without …’ She paused, and Micah watched her graze her lower lip with her top teeth, frowning with concentration as she worried at a stubborn bit of skin – and finally broke through. ‘Without cutting into the fleshy part inside.’
The fruit was one of dozens that had been laid out in a deep wooden box, with straw separating the layers. Cara had explained to Micah how they were laid down green and left to ripen, and that it was her job now to preserve them.
Perched on his low stool opposite her, Micah watched her turn the fruit over in her hand. The pair of them were sitting opposite one another in a small alcove to the right of the store chamber. A bucket of water with a rope handle stood between them; the wooden box of fruit to one side and a large earthenware pot to the other. Micah had neither heard of a blackgage, nor seen anything like it. It was purple-black and a tad larger than his clenched fist. There were ridged hoops in the rind which, when the light caught them, formed stripes down the bulbous body of the fruit, from the stalk at the top to the tassel of fibres at the bottom.
‘Looks like a fine and delicate skill,’ Micah observed, watching Cara’s hands as she continued the incision, cutting carefully round to where she had first dug the point of the knife in.
A strand of auburn hair had fallen loose from her white bonnet, and she paused to push it back into place with slender fingers. Then she looked up, and Micah was struck once again by the startling duck egg turquoise of her eyes.
‘That should do it,’ she said. She clamped both hands round the ends of the fruit, gripped tightly, then gave it a sharp twist. With a soft grating sound, the two halves of the thick outer rind turned in different directions and came loose, and Cara deftly removed the soft pale orange fruit from inside. There wasn’t a scratch on it. ‘Perfect,’ she murmured, sitting back and smiling.
The kithgirl’s skin looked so fresh and soft, Micah wanted to reach out and brush her freckled cheek with his fingertips, and he held her gaze for longer than he’d intended. It was his turn to blush.
His nose twitched at the smell the fruit gave off, which was citrus and musky. He edged his stool forward and tried to concentrate.
‘Now all we do is wash it,’ said Cara. She dunked the fruit into the bucket of water that stood on the floor between them. ‘Bottle it.’ She pushed it gently inside the pot. ‘And when it’s full, we’ll add liquor and spices, and seal it up. Long as there’s no nicks or bruises, pickled blackgage’ll last for years.’ She selected a second fruit from the box and handed it to Micah, together with the paring knife. ‘You care to try?’
Micah took the fruit in his left hand, the knife in his right, then jabbed the point of the blade into the rind. It barely penetrated. He tried again, and with the same result, then laid the paring knife down.
‘If it’s all the same to you,’ he said, sweeping aside the Deephome cloak he was wearing and pulling his hackdagger from his belt, ‘I’ll use this.’
The knife felt good in his hand. It was well balanced. The blade was thin and slightly chipped, but razor sharp, and the worn handle was moulded to his grip. He looked up at Cara, to see her staring back at him, her eyes wide.
She gestured toward the knife. ‘We have no need of weapons in Deephome,’ she said.
‘I don’t think of it as a weapon,’ said Micah, flicking the knife up into the air, then catching it again. ‘I think of it as a tool.’ He smiled. ‘Like your paring knife.’
‘And that?’ She pointed at the catapult tucked into Micah’s belt.
‘Why, that’s just a wyrmebone catapult,’ said Micah, looking down. ‘I made it myself.’ He grinned. ‘I could show you how to use it. If you’d like me to.’
‘A catapult,’ Cara repeated. She pushed the strand of hair back off her face, her gaze fixed on the catapult. ‘Made it yourself,’ she said, and there was admiration in her voice. ‘Well, brother Micah, whether we get the chance to try it out or not is going to depend on just how long it takes us to bottle up all these blackgages.’
‘Then I guess we better get started,’ said Micah.
This time, with his hackdagger in hand, he scored a line into the rind that was clean and even and deep, but not too deep. Then he gripped the fruit at both ends, just as he’d seen Cara doing, and twisted. The soft fleshy ball of fruit came away, and he rolled it round the palm of his hand.
‘Beautifully done,’ said Cara, looking up from her own half-finished fruit, and Micah bathed in her obvious delight.
‘Beginner’s luck,’ he said modestly, then took another of the fruits to show that it was not. ‘Sister Cara,’ he said slowly, as he drew the blade through the thick rind, ‘can I ask you a question?’
Cara hesitated. ‘Of course, brother Micah.’
‘Eli found clothes in the tunnel,’ he said. ‘The one you said led to an equipment store …’
He didn’t look up, but he was aware of Cara’s eyes on him. She was sitting very still.
‘They were kith clothes,’ he went on. ‘Heavy wyrmeskin hacketons. Stout boots …’
‘And your question?’ said Cara softly.
Micah continued peeling the fruit. ‘Who do the clothes belong to?’
Though his head was down, concentrating on the incision he was cutting through the rind, Micah saw that Cara kept looking up at him. Short stolen glances, time and again. He continued working at the blackgage, not looking at her, waiting for her reply.
‘There were some kith,’ she said at length.
Micah paused.
‘’Bout a year and a half back. Somewhere twixt halfsummer and full as
I recall.’ She frowned. ‘Seven of them. Four men. Three women …’
Micah picked up another of the purple-black fruits.
‘We welcomed them, as we welcome all travellers to Deephome, but …’ Cara’s face clouded over. ‘They … they did not want our hospitality, only to help themselves to our stores … And worse.’
‘Worse?’ said Micah, gripping his hackdagger tightly.
Cara was silent for a moment, head down, eyes focused on the fruit in her hand. She shuddered, then gathered herself, and when she looked up, her face was radiant, a smile on her lips. ‘But my father protected us,’ she said brightly. ‘He told us to gather in the great chamber and he told us to sing loudly, to the glory of Deephome and to the Maker. And that was what we did.’
She shook her head thoughtfully, the knife pincered in her fingertips. Her eyes gleamed with fervour.
‘Oh, Micah, you have never heard such a wonderful sound as our voices rising up and echoing round the air. Singing together, as one. Powerful. Exultant …’ She fell still and fixed Micah with her intense gaze. ‘Then my father went out of the store chamber and told the kith to leave,’ she said. ‘And they did.’
Micah frowned. ‘Just like that?’ he said. ‘Leaving their jackets and boots behind?’
Cara nodded. ‘They were worn and useless,’ she told him. ‘My father gave them new clothes, and wished them well. As he always does.’
‘You mean there have been others?’ said Micah.
Cara nodded again, her eyes sparkling. ‘The weald is a wild and dangerous place. You know that yourself, brother Micah,’ she said solemnly. ‘We welcome all to Deephome, but those who wish to harm us, my father tells to leave, and they do.’
‘Always?’ said Micah.
Cara smiled. ‘Always,’ she said.
Thirty-One
‘Micah!’
Micah turned at the sound of his name, to see Eli striding across the store chamber towards him. The cragclimber was dressed in his heavy wyrmeskin jacket, and his battered wide-brimmed hat was pulled down low over his eyes. He wiped crumbs from around his mouth with the back of his hand.
‘Where is she?’ he asked.
‘Cara?’ said Micah, looking up from the jars of pickled blackgages he was patiently stacking on a crowded shelf. ‘She’s getting her cloak.’ He nodded out through the store chamber towards the steps that led down from the top of the stockade.
Cara herself appeared a moment later, a heavy grey cloak toggled at her neck, and a dark red hat covering her white bonnet. She observed Eli with curiosity for a moment, then returned his smile.
‘Do you mind if I join you on your watch, sister Cara?’ he asked her. ‘Only I’ve a mind to take a look outside myself. You leaving now?’
‘When brother Abel gets back,’ Cara nodded.
Just then, a stocky bearded figure appeared at the top of the stockade, the long curved horn slung from its strap over one shoulder. He straightened up, shook the snow from his cloak and started down the stairs. Cara went to meet him.
‘Greetings, sister Cara,’ he said.
‘Greetings, brother Abel,’ she replied. ‘A quiet watch?’
‘A quiet watch,’ Abel confirmed. He reached up and rubbed the snow from his beard, then unshouldered the horn and handed it to Cara. ‘But a cold watch,’ he added. ‘I swear that fullwinter wind has teeth.’
Cara nodded. ‘And anything to report?’
‘Yeah,’ he said, then laughed. ‘My prodigious hunger.’
Cara patted him amiably on the arm, then turned to the cragclimber. ‘If you’re still set on joining me, brother Eli, I’m about to depart,’ she called from the foot of the steps.
Eli nodded grimly and marched out from the arched entrance of the store chamber and over to the stockade to join her. Micah watched him for a moment, then set the jars of blackgages aside. Pulling the heavy homespun cloak up at the back to form a makeshift hood and wrapping it tightly round him, he hurried to the foot of the stockade staircase. Eli and Cara turned and looked at him.
‘Well, I ain’t fixing to stop here on my own,’ said Micah.
Cara smiled and Eli nodded, and the three of them climbed the wooden steps. They’d been swept of snow and salted, but freshfall was already mottling the dark boards. At the top, Cara, then Eli, climbed over the pointed stakes of the stockade wall and made their way down the rope ladder on the other side. Micah went last, and was shocked by the intense cold that snatched his breath away. The frozen rope of the ladder made his fingers throb, and his boots slipped on the icy rungs. At the bottom, he readjusted the cloak and clutched it to his chest with clenched fingers, then he trudged after Cara and Eli, who were already setting off up the steep northern side of the valley, following the trail of footprints that Abel had left in the deep snow.
A thin mist hung in the air, turning the snow-covered trees that clung to the steep sides of the chasm into eerie silhouettes. They crested the first ridge, and the swirling wind snarled and snapped. The trail steepened sharply, and soon they were above the mist. From the slategrey gash of sky above them thick snow fell as large ungainly flakes that stuck to them like wet feathers.
The incline steepened further, and their progress slowed. Vertical rock was to their left and a growing drop to their right. After five minutes of steady trudging, Cara came to a halt on a jutting snow-capped rock. Eli and Micah stopped beside her, and the three of them surveyed the valley which cut down below them, then rose up ahead, steep and snow-clogged. Micah could just make out the dim glow of the lamps at the stockade in Deephome, smudged by the mist.
Above them soared the sides of the valley, sheer and vertiginous. The daylight was already beginning to leech from the sky beyond.
‘We’ll stand sentinel here,’ said Cara. ‘Till the cold begins to bite, then move on. It isn’t wise to stop still for too long in such conditions.’
The jutting rock was the first of several vantage points where Cara stopped. The next time was at the turn of a rising crag. The time after that, beside a tall pine, piebald with patches of snow, that grew at an angle from the side of the valley. And later on, as the subdued daylight grew dimmer still, on a flat slab of rock with a view down over a frozen waterfall. The snow was thin beneath their feet, and Micah guessed that Abel must have stood in that selfsame place, idly kicking the clods of snow off the rock and into the drop below.
Each time she stopped, Cara would raise her spyglass to her eye and survey the valley up ahead.
‘I check for flashes of colour against the snow,’ she said. ‘Or movement.’ Cara lowered the spyglass, her gaze still fixed on the head of the valley. ‘A few weeks back, there was a woman. She had stumbled into the haven, but her strength must have failed her before she got down as far as Deephome. She was still breathing when I found her, and I got her back, but she died soon after.’ Cara sighed softly, wisps of breath fluttering from her lips. ‘Sometimes the Maker’s will is hard to fathom.’
They tramped on up the rising valley side, and were not far short of halfway to the top of the haven when Cara turned sharp right and headed down through the trees. Micah went with her, relieved that they were climbing no further, for though it had stopped snowing, the higher they went, the stronger the wind became. It howled and whistled through the stiff branches; it cut through his clothes. He hated to think what it must be like up on the exposed plateau above.
Ahead of him, Cara ducked down beneath a prominent ledge of rock. She sat down on a bare boulder in its shade and looked up expectantly at the others. Eli and Micah exchanged glances, then, stooping low, followed her.
‘This is the last sentinel point,’ Cara told them. ‘It was from here I spotted your approach yesterday afternoon.’
‘And we’re glad you did, Cara,’ said Micah with feeling, pulling his cloak tightly round him and sitting down. ‘Ain’t we, Eli?’
The cragclimber grunted, his gaze directed at the sky, and Micah could tell he was attempting to calculate their chances if they left the shelter of the haven in weather like this. He must have concluded that they were slim, for he shook his head and turned his blue eyes on Micah.
‘So where were you this morning while I was checking our kit for our onward journey?’ he asked.
‘I … I was helping Cara out,’ Micah said. His face reddened, and he hoped the cragclimber would not make some wisecrack that would make it redder still.
‘We pickled fruit,’ said Cara. ‘Blackgages.’
‘Blackgages?’ said Eli.
‘They got thick skins,’ said Micah. ‘Sort of a purply-black colour on the outside, but a pale orange once you get ’em peeled.’
Eli smiled strangely, his eyes distant. ‘If they’re what I think they are, then Jura used to call them sweet lemons, for that was their taste.’
‘That’s right,’ said Micah nodding, ‘like lemons dipped in honey.’
‘Why, Micah!’ Cara said, and she placed a hand on his arm. ‘I suspected the blackgages were disappearing. You were meant to be bottling them, not eating them …’
‘Just a couple,’ said Micah, smiling guiltily, enjoying the feel of her delicate fingers. ‘Ones I accidentally nicked with the blade.’
‘Pah,’ said Cara, her eyes twinkling. ‘There weren’t no nicking, save for on purpose.’ She turned to Eli. ‘I have never seen a person more dextrous with a knife,’ she said. ‘And quick. Why, we completed in three hours a task that would normally have taken me all day.’
Eli pulled himself back from his thoughts. ‘Good to see you’re helping out, Micah, lad,’ he noted. ‘After all, we ain’t no den squatters, expecting hospitality for no return …’
‘I know you’re not, brother Eli,’ said Cara. ‘For if you were, my father would have asked you to leave.’
Eli did not answer. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the base of the frozen waterfall below them. Slowly he climbed to his feet, pulling his spyglass from inside his jacket as he did so. He put it to his eye and focused on the frozen pool to which the icy stalactite of the waterfall was fused.