44
on the sand
“You’re going to bark, you useless bitch. You’re going to sing. I know you helped him escape. You were creeping around Venorhome with that savage from the tavern, weren’t you? I know those witches helped you. They’re helping you still, aren’t they? Tell me where he is.”
Witches? Venor was raving. I rubbed my wrists raw worrying at the ropes, but I held my tongue. If I didn’t talk, I couldn’t say something to regret. Silence buys time.
“I know you had him in that filthy pub. Riddled with makkies, isn’t it? Rats to a dust-heap. Where’s he got to, girl?”
He must have slapped my face a dozen times.
“I don’t know.”
“Useless tramp.”
When the figurehead moved from the front of the boat, I started crying again.
It was Felicity Greave.
“Just answer him so we can all go home.” Her soft, reasonable voice was like oil after Venor’s screeching. But shame swallowed me whole. Shame over my tears. My ignorance.
“If you’ve brought me here to kill me, get it over with.”
“Don’t be a child.” She rolled her eyes and rubbed her fingers over her forehead as if I was the one giving her a headache.
“Why would you do this, Felicity?”
I think of Felicity sitting beside Venor that day Ruzi performed his music – but laughing, genuinely, at the one about the washerwoman hanging her cruel boss. Felicity mopping her stew bowl with bits of bread and bending over the Portcaye Post to explain something to me. Rolling her eyes at Venor with me.
“The money’s good,” she replied.
“Just for money?”
“Money is life.”
Of course.
“Doesn’t your precious Gazette pay you enough?”
She looked at me almost pityingly. “I don’t work there, Mora. Try to keep up.”
She’s a bounty hunter, I realized.
“You’ll never get the bounty on Zako,” I spat, still reeling.
“You really think you’re better than us, don’t you?” Her blue-grey eyes flashed with anger. “You have a lot of growing up to do.”
“I don’t know where Zako is, and if I did, I’d never hand him over.” I stabbed my bundled hands in Venor’s direction. “He’s a little boy!”
“He attacked me,” Venor said. “I am more than a person. I am a position. A symbol.” His even voice was more chilling than his raised one – full of quiet menace.
“That’s not why you’re after him though, is it?” I challenged. “It’s because he knows. He heard something you didn’t want him to hear. He heard your wife say those things about your Life Record and the forensic science and how you’re like the Kellins – frauds.” Venor’s face was going red. I looked to Felicity, to see if anything was landing, but I couldn’t read her expression.
I kept on. “Plus she thinks you’re disgusting. What did you do to make her say that? What disgusting thing would you kill a little boy over?”
Felicity’s jaw loosened briefly, but she snapped her face flat. Venor’s slitted eyes examined Felicity, and he started to say something. Stopped. Then he laughed, turned to me and began again. “I don’t know what you’re on about, thick-skull. Desperate ravings won’t save you.”
“Felicity, didn’t you look into the note about his Life Record?” I demanded. “There’s something really wrong with it! Something criminal!”
She looked at Venor, chin high. “I don’t investigate magistrates! They don’t break the law. They are the law.”
He gave her a curt nod as the red slowly drained from his face.
She turned back to me and smoothed down her shirt. “That anonymous note – I knew it was you.”
“Where is this note?” Venor snarled.
She went to retrieve a leather case from the front of the cabin. It tinkled when she opened it. Out came my anonymous letter. I caught a glimpse of the big letters at the end, HIS WIFE KNOWS, before Venor deftly twitched it out of her fingers, crumpled it and threw it overboard.
She licked her lips and came closer to me. “Missus Scarlet was so pleased with that portrait you did of them. She passed it around at breakfast that day. I noticed you’d written on the back, so I had a look again to compare the hand. Your lettering is so distinctive, and you didn’t even try to disguise it! How stupid do you think I am?”
“Enough time-wasting,” Venor interrupted, emphatic.
I took a breath and focused on Felicity. “You’re helping a bully. He’s violent. He’s dangerous, Felicity. He’s just a brander in a fancy coat. You said it yourself.”
“I said no such thing.” Felicity tossed back her plait but shot a wary look at Venor.
“He gave me this limp,” I told her. “Almost killed me. And you think you can trust him? You think you’re walking away with twenty thousand krunan? You think he won’t—”
“I think that’s more than enough on that subject,” Felicity cut me off. She darted another look at Venor, who was watching me, eyes narrowed.
Then Felicity drew an envelope from her pocket. “The boy sent you this in the post. Receiver pays. Well, I intercepted the note and fetched it this morning…”
It was another letter from Zako – to me, this time.
“But we can’t make head nor tail of his nonsense.” I noticed Venor’s hands were balled into fists.
“What’s B and T?” Felicity demanded. “Is it a place? People? Are they helping Zako?”
I tried not to laugh. She and Venor were chasing down two fictional characters from a book one of them had fired to ashes. “I don’t know.”
She turned to Venor. “It’s time for the serum.”
Seer-em. Not a word I knew, but it had me imagining all sorts of things.
Venor’s thin lips pulled into a smile. Felicity picked a small glass vial with a cork stopper from her case. It looked like the medical vials the Glassworks produce, thin, brown-tinted.
Liquid moved inside sluggishly.
“Here’s what will happen,” she explained. “You drink this, answer our questions, then sleep like a brick for a day and forget this whole unpleasantness. Really, we should have done it an hour ago, but I worried about the danger to your health so soon after the other drug. A sentimental mistake.”
“I’m not drinking anything.”
“If you’re not a liar, you’ve nothing to fear.”
“For all I know it’s poison.”
“Drink.”
Venor drew closer. “Drink it,” came his quiet, terrifying voice, “or we’ll cut you open and throw you over. The kraits will find you in no time. They’ll smell your stinking blood in the water.”
“Go and hang,” I started to say, and Felicity held the vial to my lips, tipped it into my mouth.
It tasted vile, decaying. I spat most of it out.
Felicity made a noise of irritation and produced another vial. This time, the bearded man pinched my nose and tilted my head back.
“Drink it,” whispered Felicity. “Or else you’ll get another dose.”
I swallowed it down. Warmth settled on my chest. I felt myself smiling. The man released my nose and the sea air whistled when I inhaled. Pheeeee! I laughed. I couldn’t stop. Then I gulped air too fast and couldn’t breathe. My fingers started to tingle. I needed to breathe, but the air wasn’t going in.
Blackness swallowed me.
I woke as the sun went down, confused, again with the odd sensation of jumbled time. I licked my lips – salt. They’d splashed me with seawater to revive me, but I couldn’t see them. I was still on deck, head aching, my hands tied in front of me, useless as hooks on arms dead as wood.
She said I wouldn’t remember, but I did.
Snatches of conversation reached me from the other side of the boat.
“It’s not a precise science,” Felicity said. “People react to different medicines differently.”
“I’m not paying you for imprecise,” Venor replied. “If she doesn’t sing, you’re both no use to me. People should be useful, Greave. Or they should be dead.”
Felicity started towards me, and I struggled to sit up. Prickles of sensation dragged thorn-like through my limbs, and a vomit of laughter erupted from my throat, uncontrollable.
“Welcome back.” Her face was inches from mine.
Behind her, I could see they’d hauled the boat around. I leaned against the cabin still, but now I faced the shore. We had returned – sort of. The Portcaye wall was a thin, dark ribbon behind the river emptying into the ocean. Vanishingly tiny, and lit only by the last reflected light draining from the clouds. Waves churned white to the north, near the sandbank over the old wreck of the Eventide. We were still far out. The cabin cast a weak shadow to the edge of the boat, but it was banished when Felicity lit a lantern.
Venor stepped up behind me.
“What’s my name?” Felicity began. I felt utterly compelled to answer. The serum she gave me – it had me in its grip.
“Felicity Greave.”
“Opal Alley.”
“Where’s Zako Taler?”
“I don’t know.” Truth.
“Is he alive?”
“I hope so.”
“Did you steal him from the magistrate’s estate?”
I could feel the strange urge to tell her, building, relentless. You can’t steal a person. Whose estate was it? You don’t know. Six years ago it was a Crozoni family farm. And before? “No.”
“Did you hide him in the Lugger?”
“No.” The Scarlets did that.
“Did you plait that dog’s fur collar?”
“I did.” He taught me how.
“And buy those glasses from the junk shop?”
“No.” Ruzi did.
She squints angrily. “But you must have some idea where Zako is.”
“Somewhere in County Portcaye,” I blurted, helpless to hold my tongue.
“How do you know?”
“The post office told Kit.”
“Does Kit know where he is?”
“No.”
She read from Zako’s letter, still holding it so I couldn’t see it myself. “Thought you might get my clues before… Third time lucky! What does he mean, third time lucky? And clues before?”
“What did the other two say?”
“Just that we shouldn’t worry. Said he was living off the land. That he was happy on his island.”
“What island?”
“It’s a game he’s playing – like he’s in a story.”
“Oh, she’s useless,” Venor spat.
Felicity looked at him, over my head, new ripples of worry wrinkling her habitual cool.
She looked back at me. “What does he mean, B and T?” she probed. “Who are they?”
I tried to fight the compulsion. I clamped my mouth shut on a swelling dizziness. “Blenny and Tornelius.”
Felicity groaned.
“Who are they?” Venor asked.
“It’s an old children’s book,” she told him. “Pre-Registry.” She turned back to me. “What island is he on? There’s no island where he’s marked it on the map.”
“I told you, it’s just a game,” I say.
Venor grunted angrily, and Felicity shot him a look that was definitely frightened.
“What’s a … wirlpowl?” the Crozoni sounded awful in her mouth.
“He means a whirlpool,” I choked out. “A twist of water, like a drain in the sea that swirls round. A maelstrom.”
“Is there a maelstrom in the seas about here?”
“No. He’s pretending.”
She asked me about Crozoni words for wolf, for oysters, for Eventide, asked where they could find its wreck.
He’s sent the same clues as before, I think.
“Enough!” snapped Venor. He gripped Felicity’s elbow and drew her aside, behind me. “The bitch doesn’t know anything. We’re getting rid of her and going back.”
The bearded man stepped over my legs to tug some rigging at the back of the boat.
I closed my eyes.
“Wait a minute,” I heard Felicity hiss. “She won’t remember a thing when the serum wears off. We can knock her out again and leave her on the sand. We agreed.”
“She’s outlived her usefulness,” Venor said.
I opened my eyes and watched the bearded man’s hard little eyes following the conversation behind me. The darkness grew thicker, but his eyes glistened like wet stones. He nodded almost imperceptibly – to Venor, I suppose – then he hooked one enormous hand under the ropes binding my wrists and practically carried me to the edge of the boat.
His other hand clasped a knife – glinting, flicked open. It looked small in his bucket-hands. But I didn’t doubt it was enough to bleed me before I drowned, more than enough to lead a swarm of sea kraits to their supper. Blood like a map, running in every direction in the water. Behind us, Felicity and Venor were still arguing.
“Please,” I whispered to the man, trying to find his marble eyes. I could barely see his skin behind the thick beard and shadow. But something flickered across his face. He looked back to Felicity and Venor again.
“We don’t need to hurt anyone; she’ll forget—”
“I pay you, woman, not the other way around,” Venor said.
“Lose your boots, girl.” The words whispered through his whiskers so only I could hear. “Kick them off.”
I did what he said. He picked at the ropes around my wrists until they began to loosen under his thick fingers. I could feel tears spilling from my eyes again – like they did when I first saw him, looming in the light.
“Slash her and get her in the drink!” Venor’s voice rose behind us. The man’s knife flashed and the rope slipped off my wrists, sinking into the water.
“There’s no need!” cried Felicity Greave. Too late.
“Don’t fight the rip. Look for the fires.” The man’s voice was soft in my ear. Then he raised it and added a sinister chuckle, “Don’t mind the kraits.” He pushed me in.
I slid like a seal, down into the suck of cold that shrank my clothes tight against my body until they were worse than useless – deadweight.
“Get her back!” Felicity’s shrieks were muffled by the water.
My trousers pulled, but I kicked through the cloying cold away from the boat and its lanterns. Their voices floated after me. I didn’t try to parse meaning. I rolled to look back at the boat, picking at the soaking knot securing my belt.
Felicity’s pale face squinted after me. She didn’t see me. I was too far – hidden in the dark water. I peeled the trousers off and let them sink.
The big shadow of the bearded man moved slowly up the deck, adjusting the sails. Their fluttering canvas harnessed the gentle wind, thwup, and the lugger trotted off.
A black swell lifted me. I bobbed, going nowhere. I’d no idea of the tide schedule, but I didn’t feel a pull. It could have been slack tide – when it’s on the turn. Going out, or in.
I used to fancy myself a good swimmer, fancy I’d been out far. Suddenly I found myself over a mile out. I looked for stars, for the Fivemonth Moon – anything for direction. No light penetrated the cloud.
I took stock. Cold and thirsty but not hungry. Head pounding but alert. Wrists chafed but not bleeding.
I turned to the direction I remembered as the shore. Darkness. Then I saw them, tiny pinpricks flaring to my right. Not where I’d thought to find them.
The fires looked impossibly distant, but I struck out in their direction.
I tired. The fires loomed no larger. My breath grew laboured, my arms anchor-heavy. Something touched them. The same something, like slimy fins, brushed my legs. My already-bursting heart skipped faster for several beats.
It was just weed, I realized, untethered seaweed.
Was it going out? Was it being pulled with the tide away from the shore? I knew in my bones I couldn’t swim against the tide. Instead of panic, I filled with anger.
These days I’m always angry, a background buzz. But this was another level – molten, crawling up my ribs. Who knew I could feel anger thick enough to chew?
I poured it into my arms, into each stroke of my legs, even the right one, so ungainly on land, but here it served. It was weaker, but I didn’t feel the old ache.
More weed touched me, and I realized we were travelling together. The tide was on the flood, not the ebb, the waves carrying us to shore.
The anger went, just like that. Another feeling took over, vast and joyous.
I wasn’t myself.
Feelings tossed me up and down like the waves. It was that drug that tasted like death. I was still drunk.
Joy filled me like a jug, sleepy and honeyed. Just float on your back. The sea will carry you home. I rolled, watching the front of my blouse billow, light and bubbly. Cold water tugged gently at my hair, pulling it into flat, weedy ribbons.
A memory swelled up like a song. It was the year after she died and a year before everyone else did. Pa took us away down the coast, a few hours’ journey, and we stayed two nights in Kellerton. I was ten. Enca and Eben were eight – mine to look after that day on Kellerton sands. Father stayed with Char, building turtles and tunnels.
The sea was blue-green, the sand like powder. We met a boy with three old donkeys. Father said we could ride if we wanted, so off we went, trying to race up the dry bit of sand on these stubborn, sinking, wobbly creatures. Eben almost fell off. They were slow as anything, and so loud. Enca had a pocketful of pear drops they tried to bribe their donkeys with. The donkeys snuffled pear drops at a casual amble. I leaned round the neck of mine and coaxed it on to the harder sand near the waterline, before racing off – well, racing in a relative sense – peering back at my sisters dropping behind.
The memory swamped my spirits. I thought of the girls bent towards each other, trying to clutch hands from one donkey to the next, calling to me, breathless with giggles. Their donkeys both stopped – wouldn’t budge for love or pear drops. Their high laughter was cut up and carried in pieces by the wind, cacophonous against the sound of the waves.
Then I could hear waves on a beach again. My arms and legs, even my breath shook. I swam awfully, kicking my legs like a palsied frog, pulling with reeds for arms. When I turned over to look again, the fires on the beach were nearer, but another current had me, bearing me out. A riptide. I didn’t feel drugged any longer. I knew what to do. I swam along the shore, away from the fires and the pull of the rip. Then I let the waves have me. It was dark on the stretch where I landed, sand blessedly solid between my toes.
Portcaye’s familiar wall loomed. My own weight hit like a hammer. Then the cold. I tried to avoid the small sunken rocks, most of them jagged, but I stumbled on one, fell and cut my knee on another. It didn’t hurt at all. The kraits would love this, I thought, pushing my leaden body up beyond the strandline.
I looked around for Pa, like he might be waiting for us again on the sand.