Jag pushes open a door on level fifteen and we’re in a room full of pipes and greasy machinery.
‘In here!’ he whispers, and pulls us into a gap in the piping and pushes us behind a large metal tank until we’re wedged against a wall in the dark. ‘It’s a secret shortcut.’
A group of people go past and he pulls us out again, and we run along a metal walkway that twists and turns in and out of the machinery, and there’s light ahead. A hatch in the wall. Jag leads us out onto a gangway that runs along the outside of the ship. It’s shady out here, and the smell of grease mixes with the smell of salt and above us is the top edge of the valley, and greenery and trees. Far above that the last of the light is leaving the sky.
Soon we’re on the next ship over and heading upstairs again to get to the deck and we keep running and ducking across decks and gangplanks to the next ship, and the next area, heading out to the far side of the ships where we left Licorice.
Saleesi takes the lead again, guiding us into and out of markets full of stalls so fast we’re left dodging round people to keep up with her. She’s jus’ a flash of faded blue shirt tail between the busy hips and legs of overly tall people. And me, I’m watching her and looking back to make sure Jag is keeping up with me. Stuck in the middle, head flicking back and forth, and finally it happens. No blue shirt tail. But we gotta keep going, in the direction I think and hope is the right way.
We pass through a fancy restaurant and I remember what Saleesi said. Look like you’re going somewhere, and no one will stop you. So I pick my head up and look at the far end of the restaurant, and stride quickly through like I’m going somewhere. A hand shoots out from a table and grabs me by the shirt, pulls me in so fast I lose my footing, and I’m face to face with Gerra!
‘Let me go!’ I say and fling myself away. Jag has very smartly ducked behind a crowd of people who is standing nearby talking so he won’t be seen. He’s peeking out.
Gerra hauls me back to face her. I give her an eyeballing, this woman I was gonna make a friend of by sticking to like a tick. This woman who don’t speak my language but thinks I’m not to be trusted. This woman who knows I don’t belong here. She’s got a walking stick beside her, and she grabs it with her other hand and stands up so she’s towering over me, and her gold headband glints in the hanging lights of the restaurant.
‘We was nice to you,’ I say, and my anger’s boiling up in me like one of Ma’s thunderheads.
Saleesi arrives waving her big knife and yelling in that Valley of the Sun language. And Jag steps out from around the people, who’ve all backed away from Saleesi.
Saleesi looks like she wants to slash Gerra.
‘No!’ I tell Saleesi, and put my body between them. ‘Put your knife away.’
Saleesi grumbles and sticks the cutlass back in her belt.
Guards run through another part of the restaurant, heading somewhere, looking around. Jag gasps and ducks. Gerra looks over at them too, and when I spect her to lift her hand and wave and call out, she sits back down on the chair and looks from Jag to me.
‘Tell her we din’t have nothing to do with her sister’s death,’ I say.
Saleesi tells her.
‘Tell her she has to remember how it happened or the wrong people is gonna take the blame,’ I say.
Saleesi does.
‘She got knocked onto the rocks near the jetty at Jacob’s Reach, but they din’t mean for her sister to die. Ask her does she remember the trees that got cut down? The trees with symbols on them?’
Saleesi says it, and I lean over the table and dip my finger in the dark sauce on Gerra’s plate and draw on her fine white table cover the zigzag I seen on the cut-down tree, MW. ‘M for Aunty Meryn,’ I say.
Gerra stares. Then she nods, pushes me off, and says some of her words. I grab Jag’s hand and we run.
