nowhere to run
“I should let you get some rest,” Kit decides. I don’t want him to leave but can’t think of anything to say that will delay him. He lets himself out quietly.
I edge to the window and watch him from above. It’s barely raining now, more mist than anything. Opal Alley’s deserted.
The brief look he casts around is enough to send me ducking back. If ever a person was obviously shifty, it’s Kit. An invisible fist squeezes my heart.
And, just like that, I’m not tired any more.
To hell with sleeping. I hurry down the stairs and limp off after him.
He’s up to something, I know he is – something to do with the Reedstones. He walks at his normal pace – not hurrying, not dawdling. At each turning I worry I’ll lose him, but I don’t dare close the gap. Somehow, he’s always there in the distance when I round a new corner, a solitary figure cut by moonlight.
Until he isn’t. The juncture feels vaguely familiar. I stop to get my bearings, squinting at the options – dark walls, dim alleys and deserted yards.
Silence. Broken only by an irregular dripping. He could have gone any of three ways. I choose one at random, though the tired frustration creeping up my legs is starting to get the better of me.
It funnels on to the river path, further west than I thought, just upstream of Settler’s Bridge. The inky river reflects a ghost bridge, rippling in a ghost sky.
I trace the ripples back to where they lap against the first stone abutment, then gaze up at the blocks of pocked grey masonry, over the parapet.
My quarry looks down at me. I didn’t hear him, but he must have heard me in the end. It’s too far away to see his expression in this murk, but I don’t doubt it’s some species of indignant glare.
I slog up the bridge to his side. Embarrassment makes me curt. “If you’d tell me about your secret Reedstone jobs, I wouldn’t be trying to find out like this.”
“I’m not on a job, Mor.” He’s not angry. If anything, his voice sounds sad. He’s holding a bottle of wine. “I’m visiting the old public yard.” He gestures to the opposite bank of the swollen river with his bottle, and I know why he’s sad. All my self-righteous anger froths away.
This is where Kit’s parents were buried. “Suppose you’d rather be alone?” I say awkwardly.
“Not if your company’s going.”
I grab it like the peace offering it is, walking silently beside him to the north bank.
The Skøl prefer not to be buried. They don’t consider it an efficient use of land. One day they’ll choke on efficiency. Mostly they burn their dead and scatter the ashes.
But my people, and Kit’s – we remember our ancestors.
They’ve built over most of the old public graveyard and removed the few remembrance stones that were here. Only the section sloping down to the river’s been left to grass – too prone to flooding. The river’s high tonight. It’s been high for a few weeks, tide regardless.
We stand on the terrace closest to the water without actually being submerged.
“My mum and dad used to bring an offering every year for the Odasha Sava,” Kit tells me, shielding a long match from the wind as he strikes it. Odasha is a Xan celebration for giving thanks to their gods, held at least twice a year. I thought it involved honey and griddle-cakes, but perhaps that’s the summer one.
Kit doesn’t try to burn anything with the match, just holds it pinched between finger and thumb and shields it from the wind until it shrivels to nothing.
“Were they both buried here?”
“Near there.” His chin indicates a part of the bank closer to the bridge that’s already submerged as he levers the stopper from the wine.
The public yard was only ever for poor people. Graves on this stretch weren’t expected to hold their dead long from the sea.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him.
He crouches to pour the dark liquid slowly into the soil. Soft words in his first language float around us, his low voice serrated.
I wish I had a candle or something to offer beside my own silent prayer.
I remember the cut on my finger. I pick surreptitiously at it until a few drops of blood drip to the ground. I don’t know if Kit’s gods care for blood offerings, but they say the old Crozoni gods did.
You think you have nothing to give? Think of your veins, fat with blood.
“Come on.” He nudges my elbow. “You’re asking for trouble, staying out like this. Let’s get you back.”
“You don’t have to come,” I say feebly, glad of his company.
I’m especially glad when we’re back across the bridge and a sudden noise disturbs the night.
Wood banging. The high-pitched squeal of branders’ whistles, shattering glass and the telltale elektric fizz of prods. A raid, streets away, but sound carries in the still air. We hurry into the night, until the sounds behind us fade.
My voice shakes when I say, “I wish you’d trust me enough to tell me what work it is the Reedstones have you doing.”
“Of course I trust you. If I keep things from you, it’s for your own good.”
“Doesn’t feel like it.”
He keeps my arm as we walk on. “They sometimes ask me to steal documents from certain people.”
“What for?”
“They think the way to undermine the Skøl powers that be is to expose their corruption.”
I blink. “Undermine the powers that be? But they’re scoffing at the same trough. They’re rich and elite, aren’t they? Like Auntie and Uncle Oh-So-Charitable Weapons Moguls.”
“The Reedstones are not the Stings,” Kit says. “Course they count on that association. Goldie and Glister know they’re privileged. But they’re not fans of the way things are done – the Registry, repayers, all of it.”
“Really?” I raise a brow. “And what are they doing about that?”
“Well, Skøland’s whole identity as a nation – as a nation that eats other nations – is about how morally upright they are. How civilized. How squeaky clean. Bringing light to the darkness. The Reedstones think if they’re shown to be otherwise – if their leaders are shown to be corrupt – they’ll fall.”
How idealistic, I think. “And have they found evidence of corruption?”
He frowns. “Small fry. They’ve used it to blackmail certain officials into releasing prisoners or giving less harsh sentences. Information in kind, that sort of thing. Not that they tell me everything, of course.”
“So the lock-making business is just a front?”
Kit smirks. “Well, it makes the pigeons easier to pluck. GR Locks is a very popular supplier of security.”
Locksmiths who sell security to the very people they’re planning to spy on and steal from. I’m reluctantly impressed.
“How in the world did you meet people like the Reedstones in the first place?”
“Goldie and I chose the same place to steal from one night,” he says with a grin. “She admired my work.”
I don’t want to be shocked, but I am. “So you were properly stealing already? Before you met them?” I say quietly. I know before the Cull he had that reputation – stealing to scrape by – but I didn’t think he’d kept going, or ramped it up by the sounds of things, after the Scarlets bought him.
“I wasn’t clever as you when I was your age,” he says. “I used to think if I stole enough I could buy my life back. But the Reedstones have something bigger in mind. Rebellion. Fighting back. Revolution, one day.”
“Is that possible?”
He plucks a big ivy leaf from the wall we’re walking past and twirls it by the stem. “I don’t know. But nothing in this life’s ever as permanent as it feels. Change is the constant.”
I sigh. Change hasn’t been good to me.
“When things are this bad,” Kit goes on, “big change looks better and better.” I watch the leaf spinning, dark on one side, light on the other.
“And Goldie and Glister want big change?”
Kit’s voice is cautious. “So they say. They have their fingers in a lot of pies. They deal in art, artefacts, antiques. Anything that brings them into contact with the great and good, so they can poke around from the inside.”
“Wait. Art trade? Was it the Reedstones who sold my drawings?” My frustration flares again. If people like that say my art’s worth money, does their word give it worth? These Skøl elites who’ve always had wealth and influence, playing at rebellion like a game. It’s easy to dream of change when you’ve never been told no in your life.
Kit tosses the ivy leaf to the ground and gives a small nod. “As a favour to me. They didn’t keep a cut. Goldie and Glister are … hard to describe. But they’re not like you think.”
“They’re genuine rebels, then?” I ask. “Revolutionaries?” It seems so unlikely.
“Maybe one day,” Kit says softly. “If it’s not all a delusion.”
I think of the branders’ station I drew earlier … the Artist prone, flanked by his torturers. The only Skøl I’ve seen who fancied himself radical.
Venor will make an example of him. The Reedstones may soon change their tune.
And we’re back at the bakery already. The drizzle’s back too. Kit stops, and we look at each other in the glass.
My colourless reflection swims before me. Is my face shaped like Ma’s? Is that why she’s the one person I can’t draw? She’s never there in my memory cave, or if she is, she’s lost in the background. A blur behind Char, or Enca, or Eben. Like the ghost of a ghost.
My amber eyes are a distraction. How did I never notice how much I look like her?
I think of that winter night, of taking Clomper from the Glassworks, riding her along the byway. Going and not coming back. More silly fantasy. You can’t run away when there’s nowhere to run.