Deeplight

by FrancesHardinge

  Hand under hand, he let himself rapidly down the chain, surrendering to the downward pull of gravity and loyalty. As he sank, Hark let the breath out of his lungs slowly, so very slowly.

  Colours dulled and cooled. More water leaked into his helmet, tickling icily at the nape of his neck and the front of his chin. The air in the helmet was being squashed by the insistent pressure of the deeper water. There was a pain inside Hark’s ears, which eased only when he swallowed hard.

  A few bubbles hurried past Hark from below, filling him with dread.

  Staring down the length of the chain, he could just make out the indistinct shape of the bathysphere. It lay among jagged fragments of broken cliff and black twists of mangled metal, their outlines woolly from the sediment clouding the water.

  Down, down. His lungs were empty, and he took a breath that smelt of pitch. Out of the silt haze, a long spear of metal suddenly loomed, the swell carrying him towards it. He wrapped his legs around the chain just in time to stop himself being impaled. Something scratched a line across his bare back.

  Down, and Hark’s bare feet came to rest on the sphere. He peered through one of the windows, but it was too dark inside to see anything.

  What was that shadow in the sphere’s upper flank? A dent. A deep dent. At its centre was a ragged, dark puncture.

  Hark swam down and grabbed the door crank.

  I bet you could undo the crank if you had to, goaded Jelt’s remembered voice.

  Hark braced his feet against the rock. Gripping the crank handle with both hands, he yanked at it with all his might. The handle was immovable as stone. He clenched his teeth, closed his eyes tight, and yanked again, putting all his will into his muscles.

  He gasped another panicky breath and strained again. A tiny shift – yes! He heaved again, galvanized by panic and hope. The crank was turning, very stiffly. The effort forced him to take breath after breath. The air in his helmet was growing stale. At last the crank turned freely, and the hatch came loose.

  Hark yanked open the door. Within, he could see a murky person-shape drifting, arms spreadeagled. Its back had settled in the base of the sphere, its limbs afloat.

  Sinking means drowned, thought Hark, feeling sick. Lungs full of water.

  And then, just as despair closed on Hark’s heart, something happened.

  A pulse. A physical tug that he felt in every nerve. A ripple of strange light.

  During that pulse, the drifting body of Jelt suddenly flailed. His legs kicked, and his hands clawed the water, as if he were trying to swim to the hatch. The pulse passed, and Jelt spasmed, twitched, and fell still.

  Hope reared its pitiless head. Hark stared around desperately, looking for the source of the ripple. It had come from further down the long slope, amid the bewildering tumble of broken things. Hark swam down past a half-buried diving bell, the prow of a sagging skimmer sub, a peeling wooden figure head . . .

  There! The pulse came again, hitting Hark in the chest like a fist. This time he saw the water shimmer and distort above a crack between two rocks. He swam over and peered in.

  Beyond the black spines of sea-urchins lurked something bone-pale and round, about the size of a grapefruit. As he watched, it clenched for a moment, then released, sending out another shockwave.

  Hark squeezed his hand into the gap, trying to avoid the spines, and gripped the yellow-white object. He pulled it out, scraping his knuckles, then swam back to the bathysphere.

  If you can make Jelt un-drowned, you’re coming with me.

  He reached in through the hatch, caught at a trailing hand, and pulled hard. With difficulty, he dragged Jelt’s lanky frame out through the tiny doorway, then wrapped one arm tightly around Jelt, holding the strange orb against his friend’s side. He was chilled by Jelt’s vacant expression, his open mouth.

  The air in Hark’s helmet was turning to poison, but Hark took one last deep breath of it anyway. Then he shook the rocks out of his pockets. Tore loose the gorget. Pulled off his helmet. Kicked off from the ravine floor. Fought his way up, up, dragging the dead weight of his friend.

  Help me, Jelt.

  Hark felt the strange orb shift like an animal in his hand. Jelt’s body jerked, kicking out as well so that they rose faster.

  The surface was too far, almost too far, tantalizingly close, arm’s length, there – Hark’s head broke it, and he took a deep breath. Then a small wave hit him in the face and made him choke. Hark changed his hold on Jelt to keep his friend’s head above water, and flailed his way towards the rocky ledge of the overhang cave.

  By the time Hark had laboriously dragged his friend up on to the ledge, he was exhausted, his arms weak and aching. Hark rolled Jelt over so that he was face down, but with his head turned to one side, mouth and nose away from the puddles. Jelt was so heavy. Drowned-heavy. Cold, too, like clay.

  What else did you do when someone was near drowned? Press them hard in the back – that was it. Squeeze them like a bellows, so the water came out, and they drew air in.

  Hark nestled the mysterious orb against Jelt’s neck in the blind hope that it might help. Then he pressed both hands hard against Jelt’s back and shoved downwards with all his weight. Again. Again. Again. A little water dribbled out of Jelt’s mouth, but he still wasn’t breathing. His skin looked blue.

  Perhaps it was too late after all. Maybe Hark had only imagined Jelt’s strange, lifelike frenzies of motion. His body could have been swaying in the water’s swell.

  In daylight, the ball’s yellow-whiteness gleamed. There were hundreds of tiny holes in its surface, each perfectly round. The inside of each hole seemed ragged, perhaps toothed.

  It was godware. It had to be.

  ‘Wake up, Jelt!’ Hark whispered, his throat feeling choked. ‘You were right – there was godware down there! But you can’t gloat at me if you don’t wake up!’

  Jelt did not wake up.

  Hark shoved and shoved at Jelt’s cold back, but he could feel tears of anguish and self-hatred stinging at his eyes. His bruised temple and kicked ribs didn’t matter any more. All he could think of was Jelt taking punches for him; Jelt ‘finding’ their first bottle of rum, and sharing it with Hark one long summer night on the beach; Jelt outpacing him as they ran from a theft, then stopping to wait for him and help him over a fence.

  Brothers. That was what Jelt had called the two of them, while he was lashing out in bitterness and hurt. Brothers. If Jelt wasn’t family, then who was? What did anyone else matter?

  Why hadn’t Hark jumped straight into the water as soon as the bathysphere plummeted? Why had he stood there like a daydreamer, letting those precious seconds slip away, while his best friend was drowning below?

  ‘Come on!’ he whispered. ‘Come on!’

  The orb shifted.

  For a moment it flexed and contracted, imperceptible seams sliding over each other. The tiny holes briefly closed like mouths, and there was a faint grinding, like shells against rock.

  The pulse came again. Not as forcefully as it had underwater, but Hark could still feel it. A knock in the breastbone, a throb in the blood.

  Jelt jerked violently. His mouth and eyes opened wide, and then he shook with violent, choking coughs. He retched, gasped, spat. His wet hair slathered his cheeks, dangled and dripped.

  Hark backed away a little, nauseous with relief. Jelt was still in the world after all, blueish but alive. Hark felt his dread and grief start to ebb. Soon he would be embarrassed about them.

  ‘I told you we shouldn’t use that thing.’ Hark couldn’t stop his voice wobbling.

  Jelt would probably have a defiant answer to that later. Yes, there would be a ‘later’, it seemed. For now, however, his only response was a long, retching vomit of seawater.

  CHAPTER 12

  The journey back from the Strides was long and slow. The skiff was more difficult to handle now that Hark was the only one paddling. Jelt lay wrapped in a blanket, mute and grey-faced, one hand curled around the bone-coloured orb.
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  Hark talked and talked, even though he couldn’t spare the breath. Silence was a dark, cold place that stole your breath, and in which everything floated. Hark knew he was being annoying. He wanted Jelt to snap and tell him to shut up. He wanted to force Jelt to be his usual moody self.

  Jelt said nothing. Now and then, Hark felt the orb pulse. It was less frequent and intense now, but it still made him feel like a string being twanged.

  At last, Hark guided the skiff into the narrow inlet where Jelt had left her before. Jelt didn’t make any move to get out. Instead he plucked at the damp folds of his shirt.

  ‘There’s something . . .’ Jelt murmured hoarsely. ‘I can feel . . . something . . .’

  With clumsy fingers, Jelt peeled up his shirt, revealing his right flank. There was a deep, dull grey groove in his side. A wound, Hark realized, his skin crawling. A long gash, as bloodless as a slice in a slab of raw pastry.

  The rip in the side of the bathysphere, thought Hark. There must have been a sharp edge inside, and Jelt was thrown against it . . .

  But then where’s the blood? It looked like the wound you might find on a drowned corpse, washed out and colourless.

  ‘It . . . itches,’ said Jelt. He reached out and prodded at the pale, swollen skin near the wound. A single bead of clear water bulged in the gash, and leaked out to run down his stomach.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Hark reflexively, trying not to wonder why Jelt was bleeding seawater. ‘You need to wrap something clean around it.’ He swallowed hard, trying to convince himself that such measures would help. ‘You better keep hold of that,’ he added, tapping the orb in Jelt’s grip. ‘It’ll sort you out. And then when you’re better, you can sell it.’ He gave a grin that hurt his mouth. ‘Don’t forget to save half the money for me.’

  Jelt blinked slowly and painfully, as if finding the daylight too bright.

  ‘Jelt.’ Hark had to say his friend’s name a few times before Jelt looked at him. ‘Are you going to be all right here?’

  ‘Do I look all right?’ growled Jelt. He did not.

  ‘Listen, Jelt . . .’

  ‘You’re going,’ said Jelt, with leaden incredulity. He stared emptily at Hark. There were dogs that stared at you that way sometimes, sodden with heat and half mad with hunger. They didn’t hate you, but they had sharp teeth and a great numbness inside them, and there you were.

  Hark glanced up at the sun, gnawing his lip. He had watched it edging higher as he was paddling back to Nest. He had already been out far longer than the permitted three hours.

  ‘I don’t have any choice!’ Hark said desperately. ‘If I don’t get back, they’ll send somebody to find me. They mustn’t see us together!’

  The look in Jelt’s eye made Hark feel sick. He felt like a coward and a traitor for wanting to leave his friend at death’s door so that he could scamper home and grovel to his new masters . . .

  He hadn’t saved Jelt. Jelt wasn’t saved yet. He was sick and too weak to stand. He might lie there in the boat till he died. But if Hark stayed, how could he make anything better? He wasn’t a doctor. He wasn’t anything.

  ‘There’s a scavenger living in a shack on the next beach,’ Hark said, clutching at straws. ‘I could run to him and ask him for help.’

  ‘A scavenger?’ Jelt glared at him. ‘So he can knife me and steal the godware?’

  Dunlin had never struck Hark as the robbery-and-murder type. Then again, you never knew how people would react when a fortune in godware was within reach.

  ‘What do you want me to do, Jelt?’ Hark blurted out.

  ‘Just get me to that cave up there,’ said Jelt. He said it with a slight shake of his head, a tone of weary disgust. It left Hark feeling that this was the least Jelt could expect from a friend, the very least. Hark smothered his panicky sense of urgency and helped Jelt out of the boat. They struggled up the beach, Jelt’s feet heavy and sloppy on the rough stones.

  Inside the tiny cave, Hark lowered Jelt down to sit on a broad slab. At least Jelt would be out of the sun and above the tideline. He brought Jelt’s water bottle and damp clothes from the skiff, and draped the latter over stone ledges. All the while, he was watched by Jelt’s hard, expressionless gaze.

  What if Jelt really couldn’t move? What if he just lay here, with no food and hardly any water, unable to get help?

  ‘Look . . . I can get you some bandages from Sanctuary. Some medicine too, maybe. l’ll probably be able to get out again in a day or two—’

  ‘What use is that?’ Jelt’s voice had no force, but it was full of husky venom. ‘A day or two? Don’t even bother, all right? That’s what you want me to say, isn’t it?’

  Hark suddenly imagined picking his way down to the cove in a couple of days’ time and finding Jelt’s grey-faced corpse in the cave. He blew out his cheeks, furious at himself, his life, and Jelt.

  ‘I’ll try to sneak out tonight and come back here,’ he said, sickened by his own words. ‘I can’t make promises. But I’ll try.’

  Hark stumbled back into Sanctuary sodden and exhausted. He knew that his best bet was to sneak into the building and busy himself with chores in an obscure corner. That way, he could pretend innocence when confronted. I’ve been here for ages! I didn’t know I had to report in when I got back!

  As he drew near to Sanctuary, however, he saw Kly standing outside the only unboarded entrance. Worse still, he was not alone.

  ‘Oh, great,’ muttered Hark, recognizing the blue uniform of the tall man standing beside the foreman.

  Members of the Vigilance League were always easy to spot. Even their street ranters wore dark blue coats, a sash scattered with dots, and a silver braid or ribbon sewn on to their hats. Recently, the richer members had taken to wearing smarter versions of this outfit, modelled on the uniforms that some continental military officers wore. Although the League wasn’t an official force, a few of them had even started giving themselves military-sounding titles.

  The ‘captain’ currently arguing with Kly was the one that Vyne and Hark had privately nicknamed ‘Captain Grim-Breeches’. He was stationed at the Leaguer outpost on the northern tip of Nest. Usually he only came south to see Dr Vyne at the keep, but occasionally he turned up at Sanctuary, and his visits were guaranteed to put the foreman in the worst possible mood.

  ‘All I am asking for is a chance to look around!’ the captain was saying. ‘If the priests are being treated as well as you say, then you have no reason to stop me!’ He had thick, black brows. His cheeks twitched and puckered when he was annoyed, which he usually was. Hark wondered whether anger was something he put on with his uniform, or if he’d bought the outfit to give his anger shape.

  ‘This isn’t a zoo!’ growled Kly. ‘We don’t let people wander in to gawp!’

  ‘I have gifts for them,’ insisted the captain, ‘and I want to make sure that they receive them.’ A leather-bound box lay by his feet.

  ‘Nobody wants your books and pamphlets! It’s my job to see that folks here are left in peace!’

  The Leaguers had visited with similar demands before and had always been rebuffed by Kly. According to Sanctuary gossip, the League had been putting pressure on Vyne to fire him. So far she had apparently defended her foreman, insisting that he was just following her orders. Now the Leaguer captain had turned up in person, presumably to throw more oil on the fire.

  Hark could easily guess the Leaguers’ real reason for objecting to Kly.

  Most islands on the Myriad were a riotous jumble of accents, skin colours and dress styles. You couldn’t always tell where somebody was from straight away, but sooner or later, you usually worked out who was a Myridden and who was from one of the continents. Continenters had funny beliefs, made weird mistakes, didn’t know sign language, and got seasick. As far as Hark was concerned, it didn’t really matter, it was just something to laugh about. People like the League, however, didn’t find the presence of continenters funny at all.

  When Hark reluctantly approached, Kly sei
zed upon the distraction and dragged Hark aside by the collar.

  ‘Where the reeking sun have you been?’ The foreman’s face was thunderous. ‘And why are your trousers soaking wet?’

  ‘I was coming back on time!’ Hark protested. ‘Then . . . I slipped and fell in a rock pool. Knocked myself silly for a bit.’ He knew he must look bruised and battered, and could only hope a story of a fall might cover it.

  ‘Fell in a rock pool?’ Kly glared at him. ‘Do you think I’m stupid?’

  Hark swallowed drily. No, Kly wasn’t stupid. He braced himself for the next question. Have you been in a fight?

  ‘Is this what happens when I put trust in you?’ said Kly fiercely, shaking Hark by the collar. ‘You decided you could push your luck, didn’t you?’ He gave Hark a hard cuff about the head.

  ‘Hey!’ shouted the captain. ‘Leave that boy alone! He gave you an explanation!’

  Hark bit his lip hard to stop himself swearing. The last thing he needed was the Leaguer captain taking his side.

  ‘This is none of your business!’ Kly bristled.

  ‘That’s the indentured boy, isn’t it?’ said the captain. ‘I am sure Dr Vyne would not appreciate you battering her property.’

  Hark flushed and gave Kly a small, anguished grimace. It’s not my fault, I didn’t ask him to get involved! This look wasn’t wasted on Kly, who slowly released Hark’s collar.

  ‘That’s better,’ said the captain, who clearly thought that he had won a small victory.

  ‘Go and change into some dry clothes,’ Kly told Hark more quietly, ‘then help this . . . gentleman . . . carry his “gifts” back to his boat. Make sure he doesn’t accidentally leave them behind.’

  Hark hastily sprinted into Sanctuary, now unsure whether getting caught in the crossfire had helped or hurt him. At least Kly didn’t seem to have noticed Hark’s injuries yet. Maybe they weren’t too obvious after all?

  As Hark changed his clothes, he quickly examined himself for bruises, and was surprised to find no sign of any as yet. The places where Jelt had kicked and hit him didn’t feel as tender as he had expected. Remembering the cruel metal prong that had scraped along his back underwater, Hark ran his hand over the place that had stung. His fingertips found only smooth skin, with no trace of a scratch.