| |
It’s a warm, bright day when we depart Sapphire. The procession has been arranged to end in a city called Fitzville, where we draw our largest crowd since Cornan. We drop off Ghita and a few others, then head for a large, orange borehole in the centre of the river. I’m on the fourth vessel, which means I get to enjoy more of the party atmosphere as the first three boats sail into the orange window and disappear.
“Here we go,” Inez says, stepping up beside me.
“I hope we make it back this way again,” I murmur.
She grunts.
“You still haven’t told me much about the plan,” I note.
“There’s plenty of time for that,” she says.
“Don’t you trust me?” I ask.
“Of course I do,” she replies, “but Cindy asked us not to discuss the finer details with you until closer the time of action.”
“Cindy doesn’t like me, does she?” I say sourly.
Inez sighs. “She likes you fine, but she doesn’t fully trust you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have brought me,” I say without any bitterness. “If you’re having second thoughts, I could head back to London. I’m still feeling lousy for bailing on George and Rachel, without telling them I’d be gone for so long.”
“What about Orlan and Argate?” Inez asks.
I shrug. “I’d take my chances with them. I mean, I have to go home eventually, right? I can’t stay with you forever.”
“I suppose not,” Inez sighs, “but I don’t feel like this is the time for you to bail. You’re part of our plans now, and I’m glad to have you on the team.”
“Really?” I blink.
She nods. “I wouldn’t have made it to the palace without you last year, and I’ve a feeling I might need you again. I don’t care what Cindy thinks. As the rats would say, you’re my tail, and I don’t want to head into this without you.”
I’m not sure how to respond to such a simple statement of faith in me. I feel quite overwhelmed. Fortunately, while I’m searching for the words to express how much her belief in me means to me, we pass through the borehole, and our conversation is forgotten as our attention focuses on the dramatically different landscape.
The first thing I notice is that it’s gloomier, and the light has taken on a brittle quality. There are thick, grey clouds in the sky, and the rays that penetrate them seem to emerge caked in mist, casting a bluish tinge over the world. And that world is a world of ice, cold white plains spilling off into the distance, dotted with the occasional snow-whipped peak.
The river of blood is flanked by a pair of natural rivers, with just a tiny sliver of land on either side separating the ruby-red ribbon from them. Water isn’t common in the Merge, so you don’t get many lakes, seas or rivers. These are easily the largest rivers I’ve seen, wide and gushing, dotted with chunks of ice the size of cars and trucks, being swept along in a dancing white rush.
The chunks must have broken off from the icy banks on the far sides of the rivers, whose layers look as if they’ve built up over the course of many centuries. (Although in the Merge, where devisers manipulate the land, they could be the work of mere months.)
There are some houses set back from the bank to my right, built out of large black bricks, with blue slate roofs. There are no windows – at least not on the ends facing our way – but I guess there are slots or holes that aren’t visible from here, because as the last boat crosses, doors open in a number of the houses and people approach the edge of the icy water.
As I watch, the locals cast off their clothes and strip down to swimming trunks, then dive into the water and swim towards us.
“They’ll freeze,” I gasp.
“Topazers don’t freeze,” Inez snorts. “They’re built for the cold.”
I worry for the swimmers, despite Inez’s reassurances, but they’re obviously at home in the chilly water, cutting through the angry white waves and dodging or slithering over the chunks of ice like seals.
They’re far faster than any Born swimmers, and sometimes, when one clambers out of the water to scurry across an icy chunk, they’ll hurl themselves several metres into the air before diving deep beneath the surface, to emerge seconds later to roars of approval from the other swimmers.
The Topazers break as they draw near to the river of blood, a few heading in the direction of each boat. As they’re doing that, the steers guide their rafts in close to the sliver of land, holding just shy of the ice. I reach out and break off an icicle, then press it to my tongue, testing if it’s the same as ice back home.
“Did you think it was flavoured?” Inez asks.
“In the Merge, anything’s possible,” I respond.
“At last you’re learning,” she laughs, and breaks off an icicle of her own to suck. “It’s delightful, isn’t it?” she says, running the tip of the icicle across her lips. “The devisers worked very hard on the water in Topaz. Their aim was to create a liquid as pure as any you’d find in the Born, but I think they came up with something even better.” She sucks on the icicle, then discards it. “Don’t drink too much,” she warns me, “or you’ll have to pee in the river.”
I get rid of the remains of my icicle and return my attention to the Topazers, who are now standing on the land beside the river of blood. They leap aboard the boats, one at a time, laughing and howling as they jump.
A woman lands next to Inez and me and I have a chance to study her up close. Her skin’s covered in flesh-coloured scales, and there’s a film over her eyes, ears and nostrils that looks like Clingfilm. And on her throat... are those gills?
The woman catches me gawping. “Not seen a Topazer before?” she asks.
“No,” I say.
“We’re some sight, right?” she chortles, and breathes in and out, demonstrating that the layers of flesh on her throat really are gills.
“We’re not all like this,” a man says, stepping up next to the woman. “Gills aren’t common, and although many have scales, few are as thick as ours.”
“I’ll never understand why the others don’t adopt thicker scales,” the woman frowns. “They’re so beautiful and practical.”
The man and woman head for the end of the boat, where the other Topazers are introducing themselves to the coaches. Once they’ve done that, they start taking the names of our players, to broadcast to the crowds.
When they’ve finished collecting names, they dive back into the icy river and swim downstream. The steers allow their boats to glide out into the middle of the river of blood and we set off that way too, but the swimmers are moving faster than us and soon disappear from sight.
“Where’s the city?” I ask as we drift along.
“That way,” Inez says, pointing off into the distance. “Niffelheim’s a massive zone, and the city’s surrounded by vast, icy wastelands. It will take us most of a day to get there.”
“Why didn’t we cross closer to it?” I ask.
“All the teams start off in the outer reaches of the zone,” Inez says. “It’s the way it’s always been done.”
As we float on down the river, Inez moves from boat to boat, picking up the four players who’ll hide within her from this point on. Hugo, as Logu, is one of them, and he’s the real reason she’s doing this, so that he can hide from unravellers, though the rest of the team believe it’s a tactic dreamed up by the coaches.
I accompany Inez, curious to see how it works. Although I drew Ghita out of her last year, I’ve never seen a camel accept a cargo. Others are intrigued too, and quite a crowd gathers on the boat where she winds up.
Inez focuses on Hugo and the other three. “Ready?” she asks, and they nod. Inez puts her index fingers to her temples, then starts pulling faces similar to those she pulled on the bridge in London the first time I saw her, twitching her nose, squinting and widening her eyes, twisting her lips. Half a minute later the flesh of her forehead shimmers, and ripples of white light flicker through it. “You first,” she says to a woman called Maureen, one of the four due to hide inside her.
“What do I do?” Maureen asks nervously.
“Put your hand on my forehead,” Inez says, and Maureen follows orders.
“Is this like scanning a barcode?” I ask.
“Yes,” Inez says, as Maureen steps back and Hugo takes her place. “It lets me assign them to a specific zone, and easily extract them whenever I please.”
“Did the idea for barcodes originate in the Merge, then?” I ask.
“Of course,” Inez smirks. “Pretty much all their best ideas begin with us.”
“The Born are catching us up,” a man called Hector laughs as he replaces Hugo.
“But they’ve a way yet to go,” a woman called Elizabeth smiles as she steps forward to be scanned, the last of the four.
“Right,” Inez says, pulling more faces. The light in her forehead fades and she undoes the lower buttons of her shirt to reveal her stomach. She runs an index finger round her belly button five times, then covers it with her hands. When she slowly pulls the hands away, a yellow halo of light is revealed, which widens the further apart she stretches her hands.
“Try that,” she says to Maureen, and the woman approaches cautiously.
“It doesn’t look wide enough,” Maureen says, staring at the light.
Inez moves her hands further apart. “Now?”
Maureen gulps. “Are you sure this is safe?”
“Let me go first,” Hugo says, smiling at Maureen.
“Thanks,” Maureen says, stepping aside.
Hugo hurls himself forward and vanishes into the light.
“You next,” Inez says to Maureen.
“Is it a soft landing?” Maureen asks.
“Like falling into a bath of feathers,” Inez grins.
Maureen still looks uncertain, but then Olivia steps forward. “Is there a problem?” the captain growls.
“No,” Maureen says. “I’m just...”
“You’re worried about the unknown,” Olivia says understandingly. “You haven’t done this before and it scares you.”
“Yes,” Maureen says.
“There’s no room for fear in my team,” Olivia says softly but sternly. “This is the first time in hundreds of years that we’ll be facing teams from the other realms. There’s no telling what tricks they’ll have up their sleeves. We have to be ready for the unknown. More than that, we have to embrace it. If you can’t, this is the time to make your excuses and return to Sapphire.”
Maureen stares at Olivia, her face whitening. Then she scowls. “You’re right. I’m acting like a coward. I won’t do it again.”
Then, to a cheer from her teammates, she throws herself forward and disappears into the light. Hector and Elizabeth quickly follow suit, then Inez brings her hands together and pulls one last set of faces. As the light fades, she runs her index finger round her belly button again, but in the opposite direction this time, and when that’s done, she buttons up her shirt and smiles briefly at the spectators.
“All done,” she says.
Everyone disperses, spreading back out between the six boats. I stay with Inez, mulling over what I’ve seen.
“When I pulled out Ghita, it was from your chest,” I remark.
“Different zones are linked to different parts of my body,” Inez explains.
“Will Logu and the others be comfortable?” I ask.
“It’s a sizeable zone,” Inez says. “Plenty of space to train and keep fit. Lots of mushrooms too, so they won’t go hungry.”
“Does it feel weird?”
Inez shrugs. “It’s strange when they’re going in and coming out, but I don’t feel anything once they’re inside. It’s not like they’re bouncing about in my stomach. The zones aren’t physically inside me — I simply serve as a link to them.”
“What if they want to get out before you release them?” I ask.
“Sometimes I set up an escape route,” Inez says, “a way for a person to bypass my control and exit early, but that’s rare, and I usually only do it if I’m dealing with someone who’s paranoid about being trapped.”
“What if you died while they were in there?”
Inez rolls her eyes. “When did you become a journalist?” she snaps.
“I’m just curious.”
She looks around to make sure nobody’s listening, then whispers, “I don’t know. No one does. Maybe the people die, or stay trapped in the zone forever.”
I stare at Inez with horror. “It’s a good job you didn’t share that with Maureen.”
“I never share that with any of my clients,” Inez says, then thumps my arm. “So shut up and stop asking questions already.”