Chapter Ten

Fliss slept for an hour before the slapping of waves on the hull woke her. She pulled on her shoes and went on deck. Instead of sailing upriver, Mutch had gone west to the sea, using a river mouth away from the outlying parts of the city.

A crosswind was blowing and the scow was side-slipping in the waves. It carried no light. The sky was rich with constellations, and Mutch, at the wheel, stood black against them. Zizz was working the sail and Minnie, signalling Mutch with shrill whistles, kept watch in the bow. Poddy was snoring in the deckhouse.

Fliss made her way along the sloping deck. ‘Why are we going this way?’ she asked.

‘Want to be captain?’ Mutch said.

‘Upriver’s fastest, isn’t it?’

‘It’s where they’ll search. They’d have us in half a day. This way we’ll be round the south side of the delta soon after dawn. If no one sees us.’

‘Why there?’

‘Fishing village.’ He shrugged. ‘Two or three huts. They’ll strip old gutty here —’ he patted the wheel —‘then take her out and scuttle her.’

‘Scuttle?’

‘No evidence, Fliss. It’s Carp territory, but Carps will want to know where we are just as much as Morisettes.’ He touched her shoulder. ‘I know we’re in a hurry, but it’s the best we can do. They’ll hunt us. After knocking down their statue and grabbing those two — the Morisettes will be as mad as hornets.’ His teeth gleamed in the starlight. ‘We’ll get them running in all directions. Good tactics, Fliss.’

‘How will we get to the wall?’

‘Carefully.’

‘The Old One’s dying.’

‘Careful but fast. If we can.’ She heard him repeat it under his breath.

Minnie whistled from the bow. ‘Keep to the pointer,’ she called.

Mutch adjusted the wheel.

‘Get some more sleep, Fliss. It’s hard work tomorrow.’

‘When do you sleep?’

‘Soon. Poddy’s as good on the wheel as me.’

‘And I’m better,’ Zizz said, coming from the boom. ‘Put your head down, Mutch. You too, girl, you’re in the way.’

Mutch grinned. ‘Zizz is captain.’

‘Been working scows half my life,’ Zizz said. ‘Go and wake Poddy. Tell him he’s on sail.’

‘I can do what Minnie’s doing,’ Fliss said.

‘Sleep, girl. Grab it while you can,’ Mutch said.

She woke Poddy and went below. Keef, in one of the lower bunks, was weeping in his sleep. She had left a lamp burning with a low wick and saw Lorna, ghostly in the half-light, tending him.

‘His burns are hurting,’ Lorna said.

‘Anton Morisette did that?’

‘His way of trying to keep him awake. Minnie gave me some oil to stop them hurting.’

‘It doesn’t seem to be working,’ Fliss said.

‘I’m keeping him asleep. It’s the best I can do, but still he hurts.’

Fliss saw Keef’s mouth straining to cry out. She went to her own bunk, wet a cloth from her water flask, and wiped his brow and cheeks. The cold seemed to soothe him.

‘Thank you,’ Lorna said.

She sees with something that aren’t eyes, Fliss thought. ‘Is the Old One all right?’ she asked.

‘He doesn’t talk any more, but I’d feel it if he died,’ Lorna said. ‘Will you tell me about him?’

‘He’s so old it’s hard to believe. And he holds up the wall. But he can’t much longer.’ She told Lorna all she knew about the Old One, but said, ‘I think you know more than me. I don’t know what the wall is or how it got made.’

‘Nor do I.’

‘But he said you can hold it. And nobody else.’

‘I still don’t know.’

‘How do you talk with him?’

‘I don’t know that either. I’m not a witch, Fliss, or a magician. Nor is he. We think at each other, that’s all. I was lying in my bed one night and I heard his voice. He said —’ Lorna gave a small laugh — ‘that he’d been wandering around and he just came across me.’ She was silent. ‘After a while he became my father.’

Fliss was jealous, but pushed it away. ‘He’ll tell you what the wall is.’

‘I hope so.’

‘It won’t be easy holding it up.’

Lorna was quiet again. Fliss heard her breathing.

‘Are you frightened?’ she asked.

‘I’m terrified sometimes.’ She reached out and took Fliss’s hand. Hers was soft, and Fliss’s hardened by work and cold from her time on deck, but they fitted together in a friendly way.

She’s a girl, like me, Fliss thought. But I wonder what she sees when she can’t see.

The scow turned into an inlet hidden behind a spit growing mangroves on its seaward side and scrub where it met the coastline. Three men were waiting by a cluster of huts. The rising sun threw their shadows over the pocked mud. Fliss recognised one of them from Morisette Square — the knifeman who had killed the guards. She began to understand how well-organised Mutch was, how many men he could call on — began to feel it like an undertow in the sea or a tidal change in the river — and saw how he put himself and all those with him in danger by saving Lorna. But it was not for Lorna, it was for the wall. Whatever he was planning, however many men followed him, he needed the wall so Morisettes and Carps and the rest of the Families would keep their attention fixed on it while he … What was he planning? Revolution? She scarcely knew what the word meant, saw it as something like the river, swelling up. And she thought, Not me. I’m saving Lorna and the wall, that’s all I can do. I’m helping the Old One. But she felt an almost equal loyalty to Mutch. In the beginning, at least, they wanted the same thing.

Two men half lifted Lorna to one of the huts. They tried to help Keef, but he pushed them away and plodded knee-deep in mud to firmer ground. He sat in the sun at the back of the hut, warming his face, and drank the water Fliss brought him in a dipper.

‘Keef, we’ve got to walk today.’

‘I’ll walk,’ he said.

‘Keef … what did they do to you?’ It was the wrong question, but she wanted to know, wanted to share; they had spent so long together, and done so much, and she wanted to bring him back from where he had gone.

‘Not they,’ he said. ‘Anton.’ He looked at her. ‘I saw you there when I killed Goook.’

His satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. The rest of his face did not seem to be his. The mark of a whip-stroke was raised and red on his cheek, crossing the scars left by the starving women. There was a burn, deep and raw, under his chin, and broken teeth showed when he smiled at killing Goook.

‘Then they — then Anton did this to you?’ She touched his face, but he jerked away, yelping with pain.

‘He did it, then she—’

‘Lorna?’

‘She made me sleep. I don’t need her doing that to me.’

‘She was helping you, Keef. Keef, she’s safe.’

‘I don’t need it. I can … I’ll take her to the wall, like I promised, that’s all. Then Anton and me …’

‘Mutch and his men will take her. We’ll all take her.’

He took no notice, closed his eyes, sat quiet a long time. At last he said, ‘I went to the house. Despiner House. Where I grew up. And it was closed. The gates were locked. There was a Morisette seal on the gate. A Morisette flag on the roof. The guard saw me. So I ran. I hid until I could get in the crowd.’ He looked at her. ‘I’ll never run again.’

‘You won’t have to, Keef. We’ll be safe at the wall.’

‘My name’s not Keef, it’s Kirt.’

‘All right, Kirt.’

‘I’ll take Lorna there. Then I’ll come back and kill him.’

‘Ah, Keef. Ah, Kirt.’

‘There’s got to be Despiners. There can’t be just Morisettes.’

‘Kirt, no. We’re safe. Mutch saved us.’

‘I’ll pay him.’

‘Keef …’ She did not bother to correct herself.

‘You, too. For what you’ve done. When I’ve killed him. Then …’ He nodded.

Pay her? Pay Mutch? She saw how far he had gone away. Anton Morisette had dragged him deep. She had felt friendship growing with Keef on the road and river and as they hid in Galp, and it was good. He had gone back to Despiner now, even more than he had been. He had turned into someone with only Despiner left.

I’ve got to get him back, I want him back, she thought.

Mutch came out of the hut.

‘Time to move.’ He looked at Keef. ‘Can you walk?’

‘I can walk.’ Keef climbed to his feet. ‘I’m taking my sister to the wall.’

Mutch looked more closely. ‘We’ve got a donkey cart. She’ll ride in that.’

‘Donkey cart?’ Keef said.

‘We’ve got clothes for you. You can walk beside her.’ He spoke carefully, without emotion.

‘I’ll pay you. I’ll see you’re paid. When I’m …’ He could not make his words go any further.

‘Pay me by getting to the wall,’ Mutch said. He looked at Fliss. ‘Fliss?’

She heard his unspoken question and nodded, meaning she would watch him and look after him.

They went around to the front of the hut, where the donkey cart waited. The men who had helped them ashore were working on the scow. Already they had taken down the mast — ‘So anyone out at sea won’t see it sticking over the spit,’ Zizz explained.

Minnie brought Lorna out of the hut — Lorna in peasant clothes, with loose shoes that hid her twisted foot and a cloth hat covering her hair. Minnie had rubbed dye on her face, making it yellow. She had wrinkled her eyelids with dark lines, closing them not with blindness but age. Lorna was an old woman, hands yellow, her humped shoulder pushed out of shape by a lifetime of work. She stopped, feeling somehow that Keef was near; went to him with shaky steps on the uneven ground. For a moment he did not know her, then he gave a cry — love, rage, horror all in one.

‘Who did this?’ He swung round. ‘Who did this to my sister?’ — reaching for the place where his knife should be.

‘Boy!’ Mutch said. He took Keef’s shoulders and forced him to his knees. ‘You want another spell in the Morisette dungeons? You want to dangle by your neck in Morisette Square? You and your sister? If not, keep your mouth shut and do what you’re told. Hear me?’

Keef struggled, but Mutch kept him on his knees. ‘I know what you’ve been through. You can have more of it. Or you can come with us. But if you do that, you do what I say.’

Keef bared his teeth, he was ready to shout, but Mutch shook him, making him cry out with pain. ‘You’re hurting, boy. They catch you, you’ll hurt more. Now — see! Look around.’ He took one hand off Keef’s shoulder and swept it at Poddy and Zizz and the knifeman. ‘They’re the ones who saved you. They got you out of it. And two others who didn’t make it. They’re dead. And her, Minnie, look at her. She’s got a Despiner slave brand on her shoulder, but she saved you. And she’s the one who painted your sister so we can get her to the wall. And you, too, if you’re coming. You want to come?’

Keef said nothing. He could not speak. At last he nodded his head and made a sound of assent. Lorna stepped past Mutch and helped him to his feet.

Thereafter, on their long walk to the wall, on rough paths through marshland and forest and scrub, on cart tracks skirting grain fields where slaves and drafted villagers worked, on back roads around villages and plantations, through Carp and Krohn and Dight territory, and wastelands where no banners flew, Keef kept at her side as Fliss or Minnie led the donkey cart, and the others — Mutch, Poddy, Zizz and the knifeman, Jak — appeared and disappeared, always two ahead and two behind. They avoided Morisette villages and towns, and Morisette territory as far as they could, although detours sometimes lost them hours of time. At night they camped away from the roadside, as far inland from the river as they could get. Minnie and Fliss built a fire and cooked food, and Mutch and the others slipped in one by one to eat. Fliss slept easily, knowing they were out in the night.

There was no hunt. Jak and Zizz drifted through towns, picking up gossip. There was little about the fugitives; the talk in taverns and markets was about the fall of the Despiners, the triumph of the Morisettes, and the way they and the other Families were carving up Despiner property and grabbing their land. ‘They’ve got a corpse and they’re feeding. They haven’t got time to chase runaways,’ Mutch said.

‘The Morisettes will chase,’ Minnie said.

Anton will chase, Fliss thought.

They kept the gossip away from Keef, but somehow he learned. Zizz brought back the tavern boasts of a man who had seen the Despiner family dragged from their Galp house by Morisette constables. They were put in closed carts and driven away, and their house was ransacked then boarded up and barred, with the Morisette seal on the gate. Another man claimed to have seen the closed carts troop slowly through a southern village in the dead of night. They turned into the yard of an abandoned house on the outskirts and the Despiners were dragged out, the patriarch and his wife, their children and grandchildren. (‘Minus them,’ Zizz whispered, indicating Lorna and Keef, quiet on the other side of the fire.) They took them down in the cellars and shot them one by one until there were no Despiners left. Then they closed the cellars and burned the house down. ‘Ha!’ Zizz said.

‘There’s no need to whisper,’ Keef told Fliss next day. ‘I know my family are dead.’

‘Does Lorna know?’

‘She knows.’ He grimaced at Fliss. Perhaps it was meant to be a smile. ‘But I’m not dead. Nor is she.’ He did not seem to mind that no one called him Kirt.

He’s alive only for one thing, Fliss thought, and she knew that Anton Morisette lived for that, too, and somewhere was following, or waiting up ahead, like an animal in the trees or a creature in a cave, crouched and waiting to spring out — and Keef was the same. Once she had thought she was getting to know him, when they were on the road and on the river and he had wanted so many things, not just revenge. Now that he was simple, and had only one thing on his mind, she found she did not know him at all. He seemed not to see Lorna any more, except sometimes to glance at her and value her as Despiner.

She sat with Lorna and Minnie by the fire one night, feeling its warmth on her face.

‘What does fire look like?’ Lorna said.

Fliss tried to say — yellow, red, twisting, leaping, eating up the wood — but did not feel she was saying anything Lorna would be able to picture in her head. Lorna felt the warmth, heard the hiss and crackle and the falling of embers, but beyond that, in some way, she must see, there must be a picture, not just blackness, a black night.

‘Keef has got a fire in his head,’ Lorna said.

‘He’s got Anton Morisette,’ Fliss said. She took Lorna’s hand to comfort her. ‘But you, too. He still loves you.’

Lorna smiled sadly — an old woman smiling, a young woman underneath smiling, too, and crying perhaps. ‘He walks beside me, but he’s not there. He’ll know me until he puts me behind the wall. But I’m only another person now. He knows I’m not a Despiner any more.’

‘You’re his sister. He loves you.’

Lorna shook her head. ‘He’d like to. He’d even say he does. But there’s only room for Anton Morisette.’ She turned her face from the fire. ‘I try to talk with him the way we used to, but there’s no space for me. I can’t try much longer, Fliss. I can hear someone whispering.’ She turned back. ‘I think it’s the Old One. He’s telling me to hurry. No words. Just hurry. So Kirt, my brother — I can’t …’ She made a helpless gesture at him across the fire.

Minnie, on her other side, had been listening. ‘Mutch thinks we’ll get there in two more days. Poddy went up ahead. It’s forest all the way to the wall. He’s good in the forest, my brother.’ She glanced guiltily at Lorna — the word ‘brother’ might upset her — and hurried on. ‘He says we have to turn off the road. It joins the military road, where the Morisettes took their cannon, so we can’t go there. But in the forest we’ll have to climb and then we get to cliffs. The wall winds along the top. Don’t worry —’ she squeezed Lorna’s hand — ‘we’ll get you up.’

Minnie had grown fond of Lorna, in a gruff way at first, yet, as the blind woman had grown sadder, with a kind of maternal tenderness. She would never serve a Despiner, not with their slave brand on her shoulder, but she would help Lorna as a friend.

The women talked more easily, grouped at the fire. Poddy and Zizz were scouting in the forest. They would sleep there tonight and come into camp in the morning, with news, Fliss hoped, of an easy path up the cliffs. Mutch had not appeared since midday, when he and Jak had left for the Krohn-dominated town of Slegg on the military road to see what they could learn. Morisettes and Krohns sometimes worked together, while Carps and Dights had been closer to Despiners.

The fire fell to embers. Fliss began to worry. Mutch always came in. He had never been this late.

‘He’ll come,’ Minnie said placidly. And like a shadow moving out of deeper shadow on the other side, Mutch appeared. He sat down, wordless, and Minnie picked up wood to lay on the fire.

‘No.’ Mutch stopped her hand.

‘Trouble?’ she said.

‘Some. It’s fixed. But we need to get out of here early.’

‘Jak?’

‘I sent him back to Galp.’

‘What happened?’ Fliss said.

Mutch looked at her a moment, then nodded, accepting her. He had a way of seeing her as a girl before he let her change into a woman. ‘The word is the wall’s falling down,’ he said.

‘It’s not,’ Minnie said flatly. ‘Poddy and Zizz saw it yesterday, way off on the top of some cliffs. It was kind of blinking, they said.’

Mutch shrugged. ‘Every man in Slegg thinks he’s an expert on the wall. They say it’s bending, getting lower.’

‘Lorna will know,’ Fliss said. She thought she would know, too. The closer they got, the more aware of the wall she became. She felt it like warmth on her face and seemed to hear it like a bird calling in the trees.

Lorna had her face turned away from the embers. Perhaps she was hearing the same sound. ‘All I hear is hurry,’ she said. ‘But it won’t fall. It will just go away when the Old One dies.’

‘What does the lowering mean?’ Mutch said.

‘It means he’s dying. And he mustn’t die until he tells me what to do. That’s why hurry is the only thought he can make.’

She put her hand on Minnie’s shoulder. Minnie helped her up and into the little low-pitched tent where she slept.

Keef spoke suddenly from the other side of the fire. ‘Were there Morisettes in Slegg?’ He was shadowy in the dying light, but the scars on his face picked up a red glow.

‘No Anton Morisette, if that’s what you mean. No Morisettes at all. They’ve passed through, half their army. The Krohns gave them — ha! — right of way to get to their cannon. They heard about this lowering, so they’re going to try it again. They’ve got their big chief with them, Porl Morisette.’

‘The man who wants to be king,’ Minnie said, coming back.

‘So Anton will be there,’ Keef said. His eyes gleamed the same red as his scars.

‘Word is they’ve cut Anton loose. He’s like a wolf that’s been driven out of the pack.’ Mutch grinned at Fliss. ‘A wolf who limps. But he’ll be around somewhere.’

‘He’ll be at the wall,’ Keef said.

‘They’ll all be at the wall. They want you. You, too, Fliss. They think you know what the wall is and how to get through, and they want to wring it out of you. They don’t know Lorna is the one they should go after. They just want to hang her up high.’

Keef nodded. ‘If they want me, I’ll let them find me. As long as Anton’s there.’

‘He isn’t,’ Mutch said shortly. ‘Go hunting him if you want. Two wolves. You’re a good pair. But I’ll tell you, boy, if the Morisettes get you in their dungeons again, you’ll tell them everything you know.’

He meant that Keef would not only tell the Morisettes what he knew about the wall, he would tell them about Mutch and the men who followed him, the women, too. The risk Mutch had taken had put him in a trap — and the only way out might be … Fliss turned away from it. But thought, Where’s Jak? If Keef went hunting Anton Morisette, was it Jak he would find waiting in the dark?

Mutch was watching her. He shook his head slightly.

‘What happened in Slegg?’ Minnie said.

Mutch drank from his flask and wiped his mouth. He turned his eyes on Keef a moment. ‘There’s Morisette spies there. One of them spotted me. They shouldn’t know me, but they do. So they must have seen me in the square. That was the risk.’ He shrugged. ‘Bad luck for him he didn’t know Jak.’

‘Dead?’

Mutch made a sound of disgust. ‘I went down an alley so he’d follow. Jak followed him. Too much killing, Min.’

‘Jak’s all right?’

‘He enjoys himself. I’ve sent him back to get the groups disbanded. We’ve got to … fade away for a while. But after that …’ He brooded for a moment, then stood up and kicked dirt on the embers. ‘Early start,’ he said. ‘The day after tomorrow we’re at the wall, if it’s still there.’ He looked at Keef, almost invisible over the dead fire, and took Fliss aside. ‘Minnie will look after Lorna. You watch him. Stay close. If the Morisettes get hold of him …’ He shook his head.

‘He’ll stay until Lorna’s at the wall. After that …’

‘Stay close,’ he repeated. He went off to his sleeping place in the trees, while Minnie looked in Lorna’s tent.

Fliss found her way to Keef and sat beside him. She felt for his hand. It was hard, resistant, but she kept hold of it.

‘Keef?’

He made no reply.

‘Keef, when we’re at the wall, come through with us, please. We’ve got to take her all the way to the Old One.’

‘You can take her. I’ve done what I said I’d do.’

‘You can’t fight a whole army.’

‘There won’t be an army. Just him and me. He’s hunting me. I’m hunting him. We’ll know where to meet.’

‘They’ll get you, Keef. After you’ve killed him.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll get away. I’ll go back to Galp. I know who I am. I’m Kirt Despiner.’

Fliss saw Minnie, half-visible in the starlight, slip away from Lorna’s tent to join Mutch in his sleeping place. She pulled Keef’s hand. ‘Keef?’

‘Too late,’ he said. ‘It’s best if you don’t come near me, Fliss.’

She drew away and felt in her pocket, took out what she found there, and slipped it into Keef’s.

‘What’s that?’ He pulled it out, but could not see it in the dark.

‘Something Minnie gave me, to use if I got caught. Just leave it there. Please.’ She knew what he would say — it was not the Despiner way, a Despiner fought to the end, some nonsense like that. ‘You don’t have to use it. Put it back, Keef.’

He threw the twist of paper at the dead fire. Fliss crawled after it, and when she turned found him close behind her.

‘You’ve insulted me,’ he hissed. ‘You people don’t understand. We are — us. We’re Despiners.’

‘And the Morisettes are …?’ she said.

‘Morisettes. Stay away from me. Watch me if you have to, but don’t come near. We’ll get to the wall and then —’ he swept his hand flatly — ‘it’s over.’ He vanished into the dark.

Fliss put the twist of paper back in her pocket.

‘Ah, Keef,’ she said sadly.