He turned and quit the room, piqued at her continued hostility. It was not as if he had personally done anything wrong. And he had apologised about the Rites. He felt misunderstood, maligned.
Her voice followed him out into the corridor, a hushed, angry murmur mixed with the sound of water sloshing against the sides of the tub.
‘You say you don’t know what’s happening. You say you’re leaving Argos. But you’re a slaver, novice of Argos. Bound or not, you’re a collaborator. That’s as bad as murder. You kill our hope. People in the colonies sell their children for a bit of water, water like this that you bathe in and then throw out. If you can live with the knowledge of that, go ahead. Leave. Find your fortune.’
He fled, her reproach biting at his heels.
6
He made it back to the seminary with time to spare before the noonday meal, though he no longer laid much store by the feat and greeted the cheers from his friends when he arrived at the table with barely a nod of acknowledgement. He was spared their questions for the moment. To mark the occasion of the Festival the students would eat their lunch in the company of the professors, and as Tymon slid into his usual seat a hush fell over the rows of boys in the refectory. Eighteen priests, starched and collared in their holiday robes, filed through the doorway and took their places at the specially constructed high table to one side of the room. Father Fallow presided at the head of the party. Though the occasion was not as formal as the Rites banquet that evening, the students were still expected to behave with decorum. The boys waited in unaccustomed silence until the Dean was served. When he took up his fork the meal proceeded in a subdued murmur of conversation.
The good Festival food was wasted on Tymon. He had no appetite and could not concentrate on what was said at his table. None of the subjects that preoccupied his classmates—neither the Rites, nor the evening’s festivities, nor even the Guild Fair—interested him any more. All he could think of was the red-haired pilgrim and what she had told him. Her fierce powerlessness haunted him throughout the meal. She seemed to stand over him as he ate, chiding him for every drop of water and every morsel of meat, making even the frogapple sauce tasteless. Worse still, her high moral tone was interspersed in his memory with the vision of her standing half-naked in the bathhouse. It was infuriating. He picked miserably at the contents of his plate, deaf to his friends. His budding pleasure in the holiday was obliterated.
The girl’s last comments in particular had the sharp sting of truth. The term ‘collaborator’ pricked his conscience painfully. With that one word she had upset his careful calculations, sent his stratagems tumbling like a stack of cards. He almost hated her for it. He would have loved to mull over his getaway, to organise his escape the next day as if nothing had happened, but that illusion was shattered. She had called him a coward. She had condemned him for wanting to run away from his problems. He argued with himself that she must be a mad fanatic. He reasoned that he was only one person, that he could not remedy all the injustices of the world. But it was useless. His peace of mind was gone. He was old enough, and just wise enough, to understand that the girl had taken a terrible chance in coming to Argos. If a foreigner meant nothing to an Argosian then a foreign woman was less than nothing, an object to be used and abused. Despite his resentment, the idea of what would be done to her once she was discovered turned his stomach. What could she possibly hope to achieve in passing herself off as a pilgrim? Did she really believe she could take on the seminary, alone and unaided?
‘Well, what are you going to do about it?’
Wick’s eager whisper broke through his thoughts. Tymon realised that his four table companions were gazing at him expectantly.
‘About what?’ He frowned in confusion. ‘Sorry, Wick, I wasn’t listening.’
‘I said,’ breathed his friend, peering with exaggerated caution towards the professors’ table, ‘that you, of all of us, would have a decent plan ready for tonight. But now I’m not so sure. You’ve been spending far too many hours in the Prayer Room. It’s affecting your mind!’
Piri sniggered and Bolas stifled a guffaw. Tymon shot a pleading glance at Wick, but the other boy only smiled innocently.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Do you have an idea for the prank or not? We’re counting on you to come up with a surprise for our white-necked friend.’ He jerked his chin towards Father Rede.
‘The prank?’ Tymon’s relief was tinged with irritation. For once, schoolboy high-jinks left him cold. ‘Surely that’s for underclassmen?’ he snorted contemptuously. ‘Why are we still doing this?’
‘We figured you’d be pleased to get your own back on Rede,’ protested Bolas. ‘He’s been tough on you all year. I say give him what he deserves.’
‘He isn’t worth my time.’
‘Oh, face up, Ty,’ scoffed Wick. ‘We all know you hate Rede. Now be a man and do something about it.’
‘That’s right,’ put in Piri, huffily. Tymon’s disparagement of younger students had not been lost on him. ‘Don’t play holy, bound-boy. We know what you’re really thinking.’
‘Make yourself feel better,’ urged Bolas. ‘Tell us how you’d like to make the old toad pay.’
Tymon had avoided looking directly at his tutors ever since they had arrived in the refectory. Now he lifted his reluctant gaze to the group at the high table. The pilgrim girl’s accusations rang harsh in his memory. It proved surprisingly difficult to reconcile her story with the humdrum reality he had known since childhood, and imagine the stuffy, fussy professors capable of coldblooded murder. The seminary Fathers were quite simply too dull for such intrigues. Even the members of the Priests’ Council seemed incapable of ruthless action. The five old men sat only a score or so feet from Tymon, their frail shoulders bowed beneath bulky silk robes. With their scrawny necks and flounced green cowls they reminded the boy of a line of hunched, balding, green-feathered birds. They passed plates of food to each other and made shrill remarks about the weather, hardly a formula for the massacre of innocents. The reviled Rede sat some distance from that august company, at the foot of the priests’ table, his low grade obvious even to the students. Father Mossing, by contrast, was seated in the place of honour, Tymon noticed—at the Dean’s right side. The plump priest’s bandaged wrist was conspicuous even under the puffed sleeve of his robe. He offered Fallow a tidbit from a bowl, taking care to expose his damaged hand as if to draw attention to the injury for his own advancement. The boy felt a surge of revulsion.
‘Set that crazy pilgrim on him,’ he muttered. ‘See how he likes being the one who’s Eaten for a change.’
The comment fell like a dead weight into the silence and his companions gawped at him in surprise. The impossibility of confiding in his friends, of telling them ‘what he was really thinking’ came home to him. He was as isolated as the pilgrim girl, in a certain sense. All he could do was smile feebly and shrug off the remark as a joke.
‘Let’s go for something a bit less lethal, shall we?’ observed Bolas. ‘How about barley-mushroom in his wine?’
Piri shook his head. ‘He doesn’t drink. No one drinks in the Eastern Canopy—they only pray.’
‘They pray for something to drink,’ Bolas pointed out, evenly.
‘Jar-weed in his smokes, then,’ suggested Wick.
‘He gave up smoking last Tree Festival,’ answered Piri, again. ‘He gives up something or other every damned-to-root festival, to make up for the sins of his pale-face friends.’ He darted a venomous glance at Tymon. ‘Us poor little underclassmen already figured that out.’
Tymon made no response to the gibe. He felt a fool for his previous comment and had resolved not to be drawn into the discussion again. He shifted restlessly in his seat as the others, reiterated Rede’s many shortcomings. The lunch was dragging on for an eternity. He stared at the green plumes dangling from the Dean’s ornate hat. Could there not be a way to pursue his dreams and solve his moral dilemma at the same time?
When the idea dawned on
him, he clenched his fists under the table in frustration, berating himself for not thinking of it before. He would take her with him, of course. He would liberate the prisoner, free the bird, unlock the cage. The new notion possessed him completely. He did not know what circumstances had compelled the Nurian girl to sign away her freedom, but he felt that his self-respect, his honour, even his manhood depended on giving it back. He would smuggle her out to the workshop that very night: Galliano would whisk them both to safety in his machine. In this wild burst of optimism, he had no difficulty imagining that the scientist would drop all his personal plans to deliver the foreign girl to a safe haven. Lantria would be a logical destination. The fact that his own private ambitions agreed so thoroughly with the mission of mercy did not strike him as questionable. He was more concerned with ways and means.
He fell to pondering how best to contact the pilgrim girl, how to separate her from her keepers and spirit her out of the city. He knew that the tithe-workers would be down on the air-harbour that day in their own special enclosure, to watch the Sacrifice. This was his chance to pull off an escape. He doubted whether the guard mounted on the pilgrims would last through the night’s celebrations. There would be a moment, there must be, when all the townsfolk were eating and drinking and the Nurians were left to themselves on the quays. His eager ruminations soon spiralled into fantasy. He saw himself slipping wine to the inebriated guards. He considered disguises, filed down bars, mulled over forged offers to buy the pilgrim girl’s freedom. He imagined leading her on a breathless getaway through the moonlit vinefields to Galliano’s workshop. The thought of her grateful smile as they whirled off at dawn in the air-chariot, just in time to evade capture, gave him a happy thrill. He had actually begun planning their subsequent itinerary when a remark from Bolas distracted him.
‘Maybe Ty is right,’ the prefect complained, rather too loudly. ‘Set the crazy pilgrim on the old crank. There doesn’t seem to be much else we can do.’
‘Well,’ said Piri, comfortably, ‘it’s too late for that, I’m afraid. I hear the lice are being shipped out straight after the Rites. No time for tricks.’
‘What? Straight after? Where to?’ Tymon started to life in a panic, his daydreams evaporating.
‘The southern Tree-mines.’ Piri gave a smug smile, pleased to display his greater knowledge. ‘I suppose it won’t be straight after, really, because of the holy day. But they’ll be sent to the cooler tonight and packed off tomorrow, first thing. Remember that breakout a few years ago, after the Rites? They don’t want that to happen again. Fletch told me. His father leases a mine to the Council, so he’s got all the facts.’
‘He can keep them,’ noted Bolas, ‘if it doesn’t help us with Rede—’
He was interrupted by the sound of scraping chairs at the high table. Fallow had risen from his place, followed by the rest of the Fathers. The ordeal of lunch was almost over. Silence descended once more on the dining hall as the students scrutinised the Dean’s progress, eyeing him while he strolled unhurriedly across the room, conversing with Mossing. The boys would not be allowed out to join the celebrations on the quays until the Head of the College had retired. Several times Fallow stopped in his tracks and bent towards the other priest, nodding at this or that comment, as if he enjoyed deferring the moment of release. Each time he did so, the whole cavalcade came to a shuddering halt behind him.
Tymon could sense the mounting frustration of the students. If any member of the Council was capable of murder, he thought gloomily, it would have to be Fallow. Seldom had power in the city, both political and religious, been so concentrated in the hands of one man. The Dean had certainly put paid to his own fantasies of liberation with the early shipment of the pilgrims. Tymon had no doubt that it was his choice to send the tithe-workers away so soon; the decision bore Fallow’s usual hallmark of ruthless practicality. When the Dean’s lanky figure had finally passed through the doors, followed by the Fathers, a collective breath of relief escaped the youths in the room.
The time had come at last. The boys burst from the dining hall with a shout, barrelling through the Priests’ Quarter and out into the city streets in an excess of high spirits. A giddy hour of independence stretched before them, an official amnesty before they would be required to return to the College pavilion on the quays in preparation for the Rites. They arrived at the level of the gates to find them thrown wide and festivities already well under way on the air-harbour. A tumult of voices rose from beyond the city walls. The gatehouse itself was a bottleneck for the Festival throng, and the students were forced to slow their pace, mashed uncomfortably close to each other in the oppressive vault. Peals of disembodied laughter and music drifted through the tunnel, accompanied by the sharp odour of grilled meat. It seemed to Tymon that the smell of burnt flesh emanated from the crowd itself, cooking in the confined space.
He chafed at this new delay. He had one chance, one opportunity to contact the pilgrim girl, and there was very little time left to accomplish his goal. He knew that he had to speak to her on the quays before the Rites, or not at all. He had to gain her confidence and work out a plan before she was herded back to her prison, then onto a dirigible the next morning. The whole affair was complicated by his status as a Green Year student. Today, of all days, contact with the foreigners was strictly forbidden him. The more he considered the problem of communication, the more insurmountable it seemed. Even his green robes worked against him, clamouring his identity to the world. He speculated whether he might slip the girl a written note, and realised that he had no idea whether she could read. No one else could be relied upon to act in his stead. The idea of asking Galliano to help him was out of the question. The old man’s distaste for official ritual kept him away from public events and it was most unlikely that he would attend the Festival. Tymon briefly considered seeking Wick’s assistance, but abandoned the notion when he remembered his friend’s light-hearted attitude to the life-wagers. Wick would not understand. He had no recourse but to talk to the pilgrim girl himself. He had found no solution to his obstinate problem by the time he squeezed out of the tunnel and fought his way into the congested space beyond.
Chaos reigned on the city docks as the good citizens of Argos pushed, paid, harangued and bullied their way to the Festival stands. The east side of the air-harbour had been equipped with bleachers of plain lightwood to accommodate the common folk, while the wealthier spectators and certain institutions such as the seminary held private boxes and pavilions on the west end. Guild merchants and government officials rubbed shoulders with farmers and labourers in the scramble to find seating; Tymon saw high-born ladies hoisted into the air by their servants, lifted over the heads of the Festival-goers like ships’ cargo. He dropped surreptitiously behind the rest of the seminary group, intending to give his friends the slip in the confusion, and scrutinised the heaving throng on the boardwalk for any sign of the pilgrims. He made out the official heralds for the Rites, a set of sombrely dressed individuals equipped with trumpets, hardwood gongs and drums of bound hide standing a short distance from the gates. But the tithe-workers were nowhere to be seen. The spot usually reserved for them, a slatted enclosure under the trunk-wall resembling a pen for animals, was an empty patch among the eastern bleachers. He would have to seat himself nearby, find some piece of sacking or cloth to throw over his bright robes, and wait for them to arrive.
He allowed the last of the chattering novices to disappear ahead of him into the crowd. But just as he was about to slink off towards the east quays, a hand took firm hold of his elbow and Wick’s familiar enthusiasm crisped his ear.
‘Here you are. Finally! I’ve been looking all over for you. Come on, we’ve got someplace to be.’
Despite his energetic protests, Tymon found himself being led inexorably towards the private booths and the wrong end of the air-harbour. His friend appeared to have a secret objective in mind, for he cautioned Tymon to silence with much in the way of theatrical flair, a finger at his lips. Fina
lly he motioned him through a doorway to one of the stalls.
‘I’ve never seen a fellow so reluctant to get a break,’ he sniffed, aggrieved, as they stepped into the empty space under the booth.
‘It’s not a break if we’re caught,’ hissed Tymon. He glanced nervously at the stairs leading up to the viewing balcony.
‘You’ll thank me soon enough for bringing you here,’ replied Wick. His voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. ‘First, I’ve been meaning to ask: are you going through with it tomorrow? Are you still leaving after the Rites?’
Tymon fidgeted with impatience. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ he sighed. ‘I’m not wasting two more years on the priests. Now can we go?’
Wick grinned. ‘Calm down, you’re flapping about like a girl. Yes, we’ll go.’
Instead of exiting the booth, however, he made for the balcony steps, whistling loudly.
‘Make sure you come and see me during the banquet. I have some important news for you,’ he threw over his shoulder. ‘It might change everything. We can’t talk here, though. Come on, the others are waiting for us.’
‘What, in a private box?’ Tymon stared after him, aghast. ‘Won’t the owners be angry?’
‘We are the owners, cloud-for-brains,’ Wick answered. ‘I told everyone at lunch, but you were in cloud-world and didn’t hear me.’
With a twinge of jealousy, Tymon remembered that his friend had ready access to the world of privilege symbolised by the private booths. The stall probably belonged to Wick’s family. There was nothing for it but to accept the invitation; the pilgrims were not yet in evidence on the quays. As he clattered up the narrow steps, he wondered what news the other boy had to tell him. He feared that circumstances would prevent him from ever finding out.
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