Deeplight

  What aspects of yourself would you fight to protect as if you were fighting for your life?

  ‘Look,’ Hark said, ‘I don’t know if it was right! You shouldn’t ask me, anyway. I make really stupid decisions. But I’m glad the gods are dead. I’m glad we’ve been making windows and bridges and medicines out of them. I’m glad we’re free, even if we do stupid things with the freedom sometimes. Maybe sometimes there isn’t a right thing to do. Maybe there’s just lots of wrong answers, and you have to pick one you can bear – something that doesn’t break who you are. Maybe if you hadn’t tried to kill the gods, you wouldn’t have been Quest any more.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Quest gently, and smiled a little, as if the thought were a kindly one.

  A few hours later, Quest, the arch-traitor and mastermind of the Cataclysm, left the world quietly in his sleep.

  We have to tell everyone the truth about everything, signed Selphin, a few days after Quest’s death. It can’t hurt your priest friend now.

  Selphin’s recovery had taken longer than Hark’s, because she had been close to the god-heart for several beats while it was empowered by the Undersea. Even now, she was pale under her freckles.

  Hark and Selphin’s conversations had changed. One of them would launch head first into the subject in their mind, the way you did with old friends. They had both fought a god in the Undersea. Nobody who hadn’t could quite comprehend them any more. Their mutual understanding was a relief to both of them, like countrymen meeting in a foreign land.

  We should talk to the governor first, Hark replied.

  He won’t see us, Selphin signed doubtfully.

  She was wrong. The governor responded to their message within a day. Three days later, the pair of them were on Lady’s Crave, drinking tea with him in his private residence.

  From a distance the governor had always looked very imposing in his brightly coloured coat, with his white beard cut to sharp edges. Meeting him face to face, Hark was surprised to find that he looked a lot like a squirrel – an old, fat, clever squirrel, with a mean mouth and a tolerant eye. He wore velvet, as a governor should, but his good boots were scuffed with use, and Hark fancied he was carrying pistols under his coat.

  ‘I was already hoping to talk to you both,’ the governor said, and then smiled at them with narrowed eyes. ‘What are we going to do with you?’

  This was ominous. It made them sound like problems to be solved.

  ‘Give us both lots of rewards?’ suggested Hark hopefully. ‘And . . . set me free from my indenture?’

  ‘Mmm,’ said the governor, and gave a twinkle that could have meant anything. ‘Well, I think we can get rid of that indenture of yours. I’m confiscating all of Vyne’s possessions right now, and that includes you. In her note, she did ask for you to be set free anyway.’

  ‘What’s going to happen to her?’ asked Hark. He still hadn’t untangled his feelings about Vyne. She was callous, irresponsible and definitely a little mad. For her own selfish reasons, however, she had opened up his life and shown him new possibilities.

  ‘Is that the voice of misplaced loyalty?’ asked the governor. ‘Don’t worry, she’s far too useful to drown in the harbour as a traitor. I’ll need to keep an eye on her, though, so . . . I’ve decided to put her up for indenture for the next fifteen years, then buy her myself at the Appraisal.’

  ‘Someone else might bid for her,’ said Selphin. ‘The League, or someone worse.’ She had been speaking aloud and lip-reading since entering the governor’s house, rather than asking for the conversation to be in sign. Hark hadn’t asked her why, but he suspected that it had something to do with pride and the intimidating nature of the occasion.

  ‘Oh, they won’t,’ said the governor, and ate another honey cake. ‘So . . . your rewards.’ He looked shrewdly at Selphin. ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t keep the submarine.’

  ‘Submarine?’ Selphin looked confused.

  ‘I can’t let your gang keep the wreck of the Screaming Sea Butterfly,’ said the governor pleasantly. ‘Your mother sent you here to ask for that, didn’t she? I’m sorry, but she needs to hand it over. It isn’t salvage if there are living crew aboard when it’s pulled up. The sub belonged to Vyne, so I’m confiscating it with the rest of her property.’

  Selphin was slowly shaking her head.

  ‘I’m not in my mother’s gang any more,’ she said flatly.

  This was news to Hark. He had noticed that Selphin seemed sullen and out of sorts.

  ‘She found out I betrayed the gang,’ she continued, in the same cold, matter-of-fact tone. ‘So she disowned me. I’m not a member of her gang, or her family. You’ll have to talk to her about the submarine.’ Selphin kept her eyes clear and defiant, but her voice wobbled towards the end.

  ‘I see,’ said the governor, frowning slightly. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’ Oddly enough, it sounded as though he meant it. ‘Do you want me to talk to her on your behalf?’

  ‘No,’ said Selphin, almost before he had finished the question. Hark had to bite his tongue to stop himself saying anything.

  ‘So why are you here?’ asked the governor.

  Between them, Hark and Selphin told him about the true nature of the gods, their human core, and the great, mad beasts they had become when they grew too large. They told him about Quest, and the way in which he had caused the Cataclysm.

  By the end, they had the governor’s undivided and decidedly startled attention.

  ‘Are you sure of all this?’ he asked, but did not sound scornful. ‘You heard it all from a single old priest, who is now dead?’

  ‘He wasn’t confused,’ Hark said quickly. ‘He was clear as ice. And I bet there’s more proof in the Sanctuary archive.’

  ‘We want to tell everybody,’ said Selphin firmly, as if she could overwhelm the governor’s money, power and status by strength of will. ‘Everybody in the Myriad.’

  The governor pursed his lips and thought for a long while.

  ‘That . . . is a lot to take in all at once.’ He sighed. ‘I shall try to be honest in return. Do you know what rumours are flying around already?’

  Both shook their heads.

  ‘Everybody knows that the League tried to raise a god,’ said the governor. ‘The League has some powerful enemies now. We governors don’t agree on many things, but none of us want giant mutant crabs turning up and taking our islands away. The League’s reputation is mud – they won’t find it so easy to recruit or get funding after this. Also, everyone knows that the newly raised god was killed by Lady’s Cravers. That news spread like measles. It’s an open secret that the two of you were involved. Many people assume I had something to do with it too. Of course, I’ve officially denied having a secret god-glass submarine fleet for the defence of Lady’s Crave against all human and divine attacks.’

  ‘So now everyone thinks you have got one,’ said Hark promptly. ‘Are you going to build one? Is that why you want to keep Dr Vyne alive?’

  ‘No, definitely not.’ The governor chuckled. ‘The Butterfly is a typical Magdala Vyne project. Dazzling execution, terrible idea. The sound knocks people out! It melts nearby god-glass! The sub’s almost impossible to pilot, and the wings rip like jelly! No, I really don’t want a fleet of those. But –’ he raised a finger – ‘an imaginary fleet of them could be incredibly useful. I don’t think anybody will be attacking my islands any time soon, do you?’

  ‘The other governors might try to build their own if they think it’s possible,’ pointed out Selphin.

  ‘I’m sure they will! They’ll spend time and money on sound-powered god-glass submarines, before finding out how impractical they are.’ The governor was visibly trying not to laugh. ‘Then they’ll deny having elite secret fleets, so everybody will assume they’ve got them too. Think of that! Dozens of imaginary god-glass submarine fleets, strung out along the Myriad, protecting it!

  ‘The League thought we needed new gods to protect us from invasion,’ he went on. ‘But I think
our new reputation as god-killers will be a much better deterrent, don’t you? Would you want to invade a people who have mastered mysterious technologies and can kill a full-blown god at four hours’ notice?’

  Hark was starting to see his point.

  ‘What I am saying,’ the governor explained, ‘is that I am managing the spread of numerous rumours right now. The fascinating information you have just given me will fit in rather well with them. But it would be better if you let me circulate it. My reach is greater than yours, and I have been doing this for a long time. I am very good at it.’

  Hark looked at Selphin and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged.

  ‘All right,’ he said.

  ‘I’m glad that this turned out to be such a pleasant conversation,’ said the governor, helping himself to another cake. Hark wondered how unpleasant the conversation might have become if he and Selphin had given the wrong answers.

  The governor probably wasn’t a good man. It would probably be better to have a ruler who didn’t sell people or bend his own laws. For the moment, however, this man was perhaps just the best of the wrong answers available.

  Since neither Hark nor Selphin had really considered what they wanted as a reward, the interview ended shortly after. Selphin blurted out something about money, or passage to one of the continents. Hark surprised himself by stammering that he still wanted to learn to read, and asking if he could keep his job at Sanctuary for now.

  ‘Why don’t you both think about it for a while?’ the governor said as he showed them out. ‘There’s no hurry.’

  Selphin was tired out after lip-reading such a long conversation, so she headed back to the boat. Hark suspected that she was also finding it painful to be on her precious Lady’s Crave, now that she had lost her home there.

  He promised to meet her later. Then he went in search of Rigg.

  Hark asked the right people and found the smuggler captain. She was with Sage and Coram, up on the hillside above the harbour, not far from the place where Jelt had first introduced them. Rigg saw him approach and held up a warning finger.

  ‘You,’ she said, ‘need to stay out of my way, or I’ll regret letting you live.’ She started to turn away.

  ‘Rigg,’ Hark called out, ‘I want to talk to you about Selphin.’

  She turned to glare at him. Hark had the strangest feeling that she had grown shorter since their last meeting. She seemed to be looking at him differently now, as well. Perhaps it was because of the snaking white mark down the middle of his scalp, and the halo of rumour hovering around him. Maybe she also sensed that he wasn’t so afraid of her now.

  She was dangerous, of course, but there were different kinds of fear. He’d dodged mighty waves on the surface of the Undersea. He’d been squeezed almost insensible by a god. Now he looked at Rigg and saw a human being – angry and loyal, loving and cruel, stubborn as granite.

  ‘There’s nothing to say! She betrayed the gang!’ snapped Rigg.

  ‘She spotted a threat to the gang and tried to deal with it!’ Hark retorted. He had brought that threat to the gang, and maybe he would pay for that, but he would worry about that later.

  ‘She should have dealt with it by talking to me! She didn’t even tell me there was a relic!’

  ‘You’d have locked her in a room with it, wouldn’t you?’ Hark charged on, before she could interrupt. ‘I saw what that heart did to my friend Jelt by the end. Selphin was right to want it far away from you all. All right, so she found a way of saving you that she knew you’d hate. So what? Isn’t that exactly what you were trying to do to her?’

  There was an intake of breath from Sage and Coram. They looked like an audience at a bear-baiting.

  ‘That’s different, you cocky little vermin!’ Rigg glowered at him. ‘I’m the leader of this gang! And I’m her mother!’ Pause. ‘I was her mother,’ she corrected herself.

  ‘You’ll always be her mother!’ Hark could sense it properly now, the savage, unquenchable love beneath the battle of wills. ‘You’re just like each other! You’re both carved out of the same freckled rock! Stubborn, proud, angry all the time . . . Rigg, she is you.’

  ‘There are codes!’ snapped Rigg. ‘What would people say if I took her back now?’

  ‘They’d say, “We’d better not mess with that gang – even the kids kill gods before breakfast,”’ replied Hark.

  Sage gave a muffled snort. It was the first time he’d seen her show any sign of humour.

  Rigg turned to glare at Sage, but the scarred woman responded with a sequence of signs. Hark couldn’t understand all of them, and he guessed that the crew had developed some private slang.

  He got the gist, though.

  You won’t lose face, Sage was signing. You’ll look weaker if you let her go.

  Rigg showed no sign of buckling, but when did she ever? You could wreck a ship against that face, thought Hark. Yet she was letting Sage talk. Perhaps she was even glad that somebody was trying so hard to talk her out of her decision.

  Sage glanced at him occasionally. There was a sign she used now and then, a bit like that for an eel, but in a snaking motion over her head. Eel-over-head? Hark caught Sage’s nod towards him as she repeated the sign, and remembered the snaking pattern on his scalp.

  It was his name now, he suddenly realized. He had a sign name. He’d never had one – a lot of people who weren’t sea-kissed never got one. You had to be given one by a sea-kissed. But now he had one. He felt a huge surge of surprise and pride. It made him feel more real.

  The only sea-kissed whom he could imagine wanting to name him was Selphin. If Sage knew a name that Selphin had invented, then that meant the two of them were still talking to each other. Selphin still had friends in the gang. Rigg would be tough to talk round, but it looked like he wouldn’t be doing it alone.

  ‘When did you grow a spine, anyway?’ Rigg growled at Hark.

  ‘Eels always have spines,’ he answered. ‘They just bend a lot.’

  Deals were made stealthily, as was the way on Lady’s Crave.

  Rigg suddenly acquired a brand-new skimmer sub, some diving equipment, and a licence to dive for salvage in certain prized areas. Such things weren’t as exciting as a god-glass submarine, but at least they didn’t come with the lasting enmity of the governor.

  She also reacquired her youngest daughter. Anyone who talked as though there had ever been a rift between the two of them received blank, menacing stares from the rest of the gang until they agreed that they must have been mistaken. Selphin could be seen striding with Sage and her sea-kissed friends through the harbourside, revelling in her ominous celebrity.

  To the lasting confusion of her mother, Selphin could also sometimes be seen swimming in the shallows.

  ‘I just told her that I wouldn’t make her go in the sea any more,’ complained Rigg. ‘And the next day . . . this!’

  She’s like you, Sage told her, echoing Hark. Force something on her, and she’ll fight you till the world burns. Best let her do things her own way.

  Meanwhile Selphin stood hip deep in the water of the sheltered bay, watching the sparkles on the little waves as they butted her playfully and passed her by to chase their foam up the beach. She dragged her lace-patterned left hand through the top of the waves. There were so many colours in every wavelet, so many gleams like chipped gems. Foam glistened and fizzed cold against her palm.

  She took a deep breath, and was full of the moment and the sky. There was so much – the terns and the gulls up above, the slick red backs of the crabs racing for the pools, the giddy little boats tipping their red sails out in the distance, the shacks up the hillside, the scavenger gang watching to make sure she wasn’t there to forage . . .

  I beat you again, she told the sea, her beloved enemy. We saved everyone from you, and we survived. I’ll keep beating you, you’ll see. I won’t let you kill me. But you can’t make me live in fear of you, either.

  With her toes she gripped the shingle of her beloved island. Her ga
ng was hers again, and the warmth of that belonging was like the sun on her skin. Things were not the same as they had been, and they never would be. Selphin’s crew-family could no longer see her as the little kid they had watched grow. Now their affection was mixed with the same wary respect they showed storms, whirlpools and Rigg. Nobody talked about Selphin as Rigg’s successor, but Rigg and Sage had taken to beckoning her over when they discussed plans for the gang’s expansion.

  Perhaps there were worse fates than becoming a smuggler queen. Selphin smiled up at the sky, knowing that Lady’s Crave was hers, hers, hers . . .

  There had been a long debate about how much the old priests should be told. Could they bear to hear that their carefully guarded secrets were spreading through the Myriad? Or that Quest, their friend of decades, had been a traitor in their midst? While the staff agonized over this issue, somehow the priests managed to hear about it anyway. Rumour is like sand. Once it is blowing about, it is very hard to keep it out of anywhere.

  Some of the priests were bitterly distressed by the news. Others took refuge in denial and refused to acknowledge it.

  After the initial shock, sorrow and rage, however, many of them started to talk. For decades their oaths and habits of secrecy had kept their tongues under seal. Now that all was lost, they had nothing more to lose.

  In particular, they talked to Hark.

  He had been nervous about returning to Sanctuary. After all, he had fled its halls after driving most of the priests to frenzy with the god-heart. Besides, he knew that he was different now. He was no longer the same desperate-to-please boy who had pretended to be cheery and harmless to keep everyone off guard and at arm’s length.

  The other Sanctuary staff didn’t know how to treat him. He was no longer indentured, he was Marked, and rumour hung above him like a storm cloud.

  The priests, however, opened up to him like flowers. They saw the weaving white mark in his hair, and perhaps even the Undersea reflected in his eyes. There was an unspoken understanding. He and they were bruised veterans from the same war, even if they had not been on the same side.