Quarantine was a cell, half underground, in a bunker. Or maybe it was the cellar of a building that had fallen down. Maybe a police station. Maybe an old army barracks. It was quite a distance from the mooring with the red sails, although you could see the masthead and the settlement next to it from the windows of the cells on one side of the bunker. There were six cells, three on each side of a hallway, facing each other.
The distance from the settlement was on purpose. It was quarantine. They didn’t want to catch whatever I might be carrying. If I was infectious. Which I wasn’t, of course.
They made me walk ahead of them as they shouted instructions, guiding me through the trees and into the edge of the old overgrown town towards the bunker building. Then they dismounted, and the bowmen made me walk down a flight of steps and then one made me stand as far as possible from himself as he opened a barred gate and stepped away as I was ushered through it by the other. They made me go to the far end of the hall before they approached the gate and re-locked it.
The six cells all had heavy doors with slits in them so jailers in the old days could have looked in on the inmates to see how they were doing.
Don’t you close those doors, said one of the bowmen, his voice indistinct as he backed up the stairs. You close them, you’re stuck for ever because we don’t have the keys. Use the toilet in the end cell on the right. The old drain’s clear but you flush your business away with a bucket
of water.
Wait, I said. What are you scared of?
Not scared, he said. Prudent. Last visitor but one brought a plague killed three people. Fucking Freeman… You’ll stay here a month; we’ll see if you get sick. You’re still alive after that, we’ll be happy to let you join us.
He doesn’t want to join you, said a voice from the deep shadows in one of the cells I had taken to be empty.
The voice sounded tired, disappointed in me, and chillingly familiar.
He just wants his bloody dog, it said.
I turned and peered into the gloom. His beard split in a thin smile, showing me a flash of white teeth.
I told you to go home, Griz. I did warn you.
Brand. I felt winded and couldn’t speak for a moment. I heard the door at the top of the stairs slam shut and then the noises of the horsemen leaving.
Brand didn’t get off the cot in his cell. And he didn’t say anything else.
I went into the cell across the hall from his and sat on the cement ledge staring at him, framed in the two doorways. It felt like a lot of time passed in silence then, and maybe it did. But eventually all that silence seemed to be sucking the air out of the cells, and talking seemed like the only way to keep breathing.
Where’s Jess? I said.
She’s fine, he said.
Where is she? I said.
Took the chart, he said. That’s how you got here, right?
Where’s my dog? I said.
You find another boat? he said. Is that it? But then—how likely is it you found a boat that was ready to sail? You find a boat these days, you got to cannibalise twenty more to get enough lines and sails and tackle that work to make it go. No. You didn’t find another boat. You walked.
He got off the cot and came and stood in the slant of light falling across the doorway and looked at me closer. He shook his head and grinned.
I wanted to kill him. I don’t like violence. I think violence is a kind of stupidity. But right then, for that grin, I think I could have killed him.
You’re a tough kid, he said. Stubborn. I mean, you’re like an irritating little cough I can’t seem to get rid of but I give you that. You have my admiration.
I don’t want it, I said. I just want Jess.
Jess is a commodity, he said. A bitch that can have pups is a rare thing.
Bitches have puppies, I said. It’s what they do.
No, he said. No, that’s not so.
I glared at him some more.
You walked across the mainland? he said.
I didn’t nod.
Never saw a pack of wild dogs, did you? he said. Strange that, no?
I shrugged.
Sure we talked about this back on your island, didn’t we? he said. The Baby Busters put some kind of poison out for the packs of hungry dogs they got scared of once the population got small enough, and that poison messed with the bitches’ ability to have pups. Least that’s what I heard.
The thought made me look away. It had the nasty finality of an unwelcome truth. I felt ashamed of being human.
Dogs were with us from the very beginning. And of all the animals that walked the long centuries beside us, they always walked the closest.
And then they paid the price. Fuck us.
Maybe the Gelding wasn’t an accident. Maybe it was just desserts.
That’s what makes her a commodity, he said.
What’s a commodity? I said.
I knew. Sort of. But I wasn’t sure he did. And I wanted time to get my thoughts together and get away from the sad thought of the millions of dogs that must have wondered why they couldn’t have litters any more.
It’s something you trade, he said.
And you’re a trader, I said. When you’re not being a thief.
Sometimes, he said, nodding. Mostly I’m just a traveller. I don’t meet enough people to trade with.
But you meet enough to thieve from, I said.
Do I? he said.
Yes, I said.
That converter. For the wind turbine. The one I came to trade with your dad, he said.
What about it? I said.
You came aboard my boat, he said. Like a thief yourself. No invitation. Took my chart.
That’s different, I said.
You see that converter while you were there? he said.
I let the silence suck a little more air from the room as I thought.
I wasn’t looking for it, I said. It was dark.
You didn’t see where I left it on the beach on your island then, he said.
I stared at him. He grinned some more and then shrugged magnanimously.
I mean, fair enough—you came after me like your arse was on fire, so you probably didn’t have time to have a good look around, he said.
But, I said.
And you were well asleep while me and your dad were still up talking by the fire, he said. So you don’t really know what deals were done. Do you?
Dad would never have given up Jess, I said. Jess is my dog.
Sure about that, are you? he said. Sure your dad would never make a deal where he sacrificed one thing to save a bigger one?
Jess is mine, I said. She’s not anyone’s to trade.
Okay, he said. If you say so.
Liars lie. That’s what they do. That’s what he was doing. Lying, and in so doing trying to make me lie to myself. Trying to make me not trust my family. Liars lie by cutting you loose from what you thought was so and persuading you this other thing they are waving in front of you is the new truth. You will have come across many liars in your crowded world. I expect you knew this from the get-go. I imagine you were prepared for them, and knew how to deal with them. I hadn’t met a liar until Brand sailed into our lives. But I already knew this about how they work and what they feed on. Liars want you off balance and alone, so you can drown in self-doubt.
Brand already had me halfway there before I noticed what he was doing.
If you’re doing so well, I said, what are you doing in here?
That, he said, is a good question. But before I answer it, you answer my question. Man to man. Are you going to try and kill me?
What? I said. His directness had again winded me.
You’re glaring at me like you are going to leap at me at any moment and it’s a small enough space we seem to find ourselves in, and we should get this out of the way, otherwise it’s going to be exhausting. So I’ll ask again. Man to man. Are you going to try to kill me?
You’re bigger than me, I said. And violence is stupid anyway. And you stole my dog. You didn’t kill my family.
I paused for a moment and wondered if they had recovered. I had after all left them distinctly vomitous and grey-faced.
So? he said, blue eyes glittering.
So, I said. Man to man? I won’t kill you.
He nodded.
Okay, he said. Well, that’s reasonable if we’re to be locked up in here for a while.
Especially if you give me back my dog, I said.
He didn’t quite know what to make of that. He decided to hang a smile on it, but it hung a little more lopsided than normal and I had the satisfaction of knowing he wasn’t quite sure of me.
So what are you doing in here? I said.
It’s as they said, he said. A lone traveller, a Freeman came through carrying a disease that raised boils in the armpits and killed three of them after he left and went north.
This had to be the same traveller John Dark had told me about. The one who caused la pest, the Freeman whose key I wore round my neck.
So the Cons have decided anyone from outside has to sit in quarantine and not be ill for a month before they let them into the compound, he said. That’s why they were wearing the masks and scarves. They don’t want to breathe our air until they know we’re clean.
The Cons? I said.
Conservators, he said. It’s what they call themselves. They’re not the nicest people in the world. They don’t have much of a sense of humour. They have a mission instead. But though they don’t travel much now, they are great traders for the few of us who go about the world.
What’s their mission? I said.
They want to conserve the human race, he said. They want to repopulate the world. They want to fix what has changed because they think that “changed” is the same as “broken” and that the glories of what once was must always be better than the excitement of what might be in the future. Great breeders they are, and they want to put the clock back, and there’s no telling them it can’t be done. They’re stubborn—like you. But with less heart.
That was typical of Brand. Unsettle you and then slide in a compliment to make you trust him a little bit.
And that was never a good thing to do. As I was about to find out. Again.
Forewarned is not always forearmed. Sometimes you spend so much effort looking out for the trap you know is there that you miss the other one you didn’t know about.