A Solitary Journey (43 page)

Meg picked up the rectangular papers. Dull maroon in hue, they had words and numerals inscribed and a picture of a map like the one A Ahmud Ki was studying. ‘Is this money?’ she asked.

‘One hundred notes,’ he confirmed. ‘You can count them if you want.’ He smiled with a toothy grin and rubbed his thick nose on the back of his hand.

Outside the moneylender’s shop, A Ahmud Ki led the way across the market street towards a stone building called the Whale and Mermaid. They entered to find a small hallway with a glass window and a young woman with bobbed brunette hair sitting behind the glass. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked in a thin voice.

‘Rooms,’ said A Ahmud Ki. ‘How much?’

‘Fifteen a night,’ the girl replied.

‘That’s expensive,’ said Meg, pulling out her wad of notes.

The girl’s eyes widened. ‘With that much you could probably stay half the year.’

‘But you said fifteen a night?’ Meg reminded her.

‘Fifteen pieces,’ the girl corrected. ‘You’re not Andrak are you?’

‘No. From Shess.’

‘Ten pieces make up a note,’ the girl explained. ‘A night costs you one-and-a-half notes. How long do you want to stay?’

‘Three nights,’ said A Ahmud Ki.

‘Then that’s forty-five pieces. Or four-and-a-half notes,’ the girl explained. ‘And you have to sign in.’ She held out an autoscribe.

‘Two rooms?’ Meg inquired.

The girl glanced at them and said, ‘Nine notes then.’ Meg counted out the notes, wrote her name on the paper with the autoscribe and the girl handed her two keys. ‘Rooms eight and eleven. Up the stairs and turn right along the corridor.’

Inside room eleven, Meg discovered a narrow, comfortable bed with a dark emerald spread, a dark wooden bedside cupboard and matching wardrobe, a pewter wash bowl mounted on a pedestal with a porcelain spout pointing into it, a mirror, and a strange wooden seat on a porcelain bucket attached firmly to
the floor. Lanterns were secured to the walls like the strange seat to the floor, but she couldn’t see an oil container for them or a lighter. A window opened into an alley a storey below.

She explored the room. When she pressed the lever on the spout water flowed into the basin and out through a hole in the base into a pipe that ran into the floor. ‘What magic is this?’ she whispered and pressed the lever again. When she realised that the small black plug could stop the water running straight through to the pipe she filled the bowl and washed her face and neck, refreshing herself. As she wiped the water from her face a knock at the door interrupted. ‘Yes?’ she asked. The door opened, admitting A Ahmud Ki. ‘Have you seen this?’ she asked, pressing the water lever.

He smiled. ‘And the shit box,’ he said, pointing to the wooden seat perched on the porcelain box. ‘You piss or shit in it, push that little lever on the side and it all washes away.’

Meg stared at the shit box. ‘Is that true?’

‘Try it,’ he challenged and when he saw her cynical expression he added, ‘Just press the lever and watch what happens.’

She followed his instructions and watched the water pour in and vanish down yet another pipe. ‘What magic is in this place?’

‘It’s not magic,’ he said. ‘It’s an invention.’

‘But where does all the water come from and go?’

‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘This is not the world I knew. Everything is changed and strange. When I looked at the map of Central Andrak in the moneylender’s, hardly any place has the same name. I recognised the Ureykyeu Mountains, but it’s spelled differently, and towns called Amat and Anedya, but nothing else has the old names.’

‘It has been a thousand years,’ she reminded him.

‘I have to get to The Great—to Lightsword,’ he said, correcting himself. ‘The sooner the better.’

‘Why is it so important?’

‘It’s who I am that is important to me. Like I told you, there’s a fortress hidden under the old castle. If I can get in there, I can find things that—’ he stopped and shrugged. ‘I just need to get there,’ he added, and smiled.

T
he last slave sales were held early last year,’ the elderly man explained, his wrinkled features hiding his emotions. ‘The government passed the Slavery Abolition Law forbidding any further slave trade in Central Andrak so the trade is over.’ He shook his head and pursed his lips. ‘Cost a lot of good jobs that decision did. I’m the only employee here now and all I do is keep an eye on the sheds and tell people like you what I just did.’

‘And the slaves? What happened to them?’ Meg asked, her eyes roving over the rows of wooden cages in the shed.

‘The law only stopped the importing and trading of slaves. Those who were slaves before the law was passed are still legally slaves until they’re freed. It was the government’s way of protecting the investments of citizens who bought slaves before the law came in. Of course, they’re encouraging slave-owners to gradually rehabilitate their slaves. Central Andrak doesn’t want to be seen as a place where human beings are exploited. That’s the government line, anyway.’ He spat a green lump onto the wooden post. ‘Excuse me, lady—smokeweed. Can’t stop chewing the stuff.’

As he fossicked in his trouser pocket for another wad, he reminded Meg of old Samuel who used to smoke. ‘If I was looking for child slaves brought from Western Shess in the last three years, where would I start?’

‘That’s easy,’ the old man replied. ‘There’s records kept on who bought what slaves. It’s tedious reading, but you might find what you’re looking for there. At least it would be a good start.’

‘How do I get to the records?’

The old man chuckled and jingled the keys on his belt. ‘For the right price, these keys unlock anything.’

The right price turned out to be fifty notes which she handed to the old man before she followed him through the shed to a small dark office at the rear. He unlocked the door and flipped the light switch, a device that had startled Meg the previous night in the stay-house. Neither she, nor A Ahmud Ki, understood how the switch made the light work, but they spent time playing with the switch in her room and then in his, fascinated by the Andrak invention. ‘Haven’t seen a light switch?’ asked the old man when he saw her staring at the light.

‘They’re in my room at the stay-house,’ she replied. ‘We don’t have them in Shess.’

‘New here, too,’ the old man told her. ‘The lights run on gas. Comes through those little pipes you see running up the wall. There’s a sparker in the globe and when I flip the switch the sparker lights the gas and we have a light. They have them along the main streets as well. Means people can walk around safely at night.’

‘Who made these?’

The old man chuckled. ‘Don’t know. One of the inventors. They’re always making something. This one’s taking a little time to perfect. Gas isn’t stable. There have been explosions and fires, but people like them enough to take the risk. I like them.’ He shuffled to a
wall of large drawers and studied the labels. ‘When do you say these children were sold here?’

‘I’m not exactly sure,’ she answered, ‘but it has to be some time in the last two years.’

‘I’ll open the four-thousand-and-two and four- thousand-and-three records. That’s about when you think they came here.’ The old man unlocked two drawers and slid them open. Each the length of an arm, they were full of papers. ‘This is what you’re looking for. You can take your time. I’m not expecting anyone to come in here. It won’t be easy, lady. There are a lot of records and they probably don’t have the slaves’ names accurately, but you never know.’ He nodded to her and left the room with Meg staring at the drawers.

The afternoon sun slanted through cracks in the Slave Markets shed’s iron roof and crept into the office where she sat on the floor in a pile of sorted papers, crying. She’d searched the records over and over without finding any clues to provide a direct link and was left with one possibility: a factory in the capital city to where a hundred slave children were sent a year previously. Her tears flowed because she couldn’t find Emma and Treasure’s names—only temporary names assigned by the slave traders. The bastards who stole her children, sold them and bought them even erased their birth names. And she wept at the records that numbered the children who perished on the ocean voyage—five hundred and thirty-nine in the year of trading from the Western Shess invasion—dying from unregistered causes as numbers only. Did Emma and Treasure survive the perilous journey?
They survived,
she told herself.
My dreams confirm that.
She returned the files painstakingly to the drawers and left the dusty space.

As she closed the office door dogs barked and the shed door creaked open. A black shape scampered
along the wooden floor towards her and leapt, and she caught Whisper mid-flight.
Bad,
the rat warned,
Hide,
as she tried to wriggle into Meg’s shirt. She steered the rat in, the fur pressing against her breasts as two large black dogs loped into view. They headed for her, so she held out her hands and said, ‘Settle,’ forcefully, but they came on with cruel intent, snarling, their hackles up. A man trailed the dogs followed by the old man who let Meg into the shed.

‘Hey!’ the dog handler yelled. ‘Back down!’

The dogs came within three paces, teeth bared, and separated to circle her. She knew the strategy. Dingo packs cornered kangaroos with the same strategy outside of Summerbrook, circling and worrying the animals until the kangaroos’ exhaustion gave the dingoes the edge to make the kill.
What spell will stop them, but not give me away?
she considered quickly.

‘Back!’ the dog handler bellowed. ‘Assassin! Crusher! Back!’

The dogs cowered reluctantly and skulked towards the handler, growling and staring malevolently at Meg. Under her shirt, Whisper was silent and still and Meg folded her arms protectively across her chest.

The dog handler grabbed the collars of his dogs, saying, ‘Apologies, lady. The boys saw a rat and went the chase on him. They don’t normally give bother to people. They were just after a rat.’ He smiled, revealing a row of broken brown teeth. ‘I’ll wait until you’re outside and then I’ll let them loose after the rat. Big one it was. Biggest I’ve seen for a long time.’

Meg smiled curtly, assessing how she could get past the dogs and their handler with Whisper secreted in her shirt. The old man pushed past the handler, shaking his head. ‘I’m sorry about that. I was just coming back to see if you’d found what you were looking for when the dogs came belting through.’

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Enough. I wasn’t expecting this.’

The old man glared at the handler. ‘Theo, take your bloody animals aside and let the lady through.’

The handler blinked and nodded, pulling at his dogs with brutal determination until his biceps bulged angrily. ‘I’m shifting them, Darcy, all right? They’re onto something. You can’t blame them for that.’ He wrenched the dogs back so that Meg could pass, but as she skirted them one dog broke from the handler’s grip and leapt. The impact knocked her backwards against an empty slave cage and as the dog’s claws raked down her chest, stomach and legs it closed its frothing jaws on her neck. Exploding in heated panic she willed the dog off. The pressure of the jaws eased, the weight against her vanished and she slid to the floor. Through her miasma of fear and the stench of burned dog hair and flesh she saw the handler’s shocked face. He was yelling while he restrained his second dog, its teeth bared as it struggled to get at Meg—or at something to her right.
Whisper,
she remembered, and glanced right to find the rat crouched, halfway through the cage bars. The dog ripped from the handler’s grip and went for Whisper, but the rat slipped through the cage bars, avoiding the snapping jaws while the dog strained vainly to get at her. Meg pushed to her feet, aware of the blood pouring down her chest from the teeth punctures and the claw gouges, glared at the dog handler and hissed, ‘Get
it
out of here!’

‘What did you do to my dog?’ the handler yelled, his fear palpable.

She glanced down at the charred corpse, looked back at the handler and screamed, ‘Get it out!’

‘My dogs are my livelihood, lady,’ the handler argued, tears welling, his voice becoming manic. ‘I can’t feed my family without my dogs!’

‘Then save this one,’ she ordered, still shaking from the shock, feeling faint from the blood loss.

‘You can’t go around killing dogs to save a
rat!
’ the handler declared. ‘You just can’t do that.’ He pulled a thin, pointed metal stake from his belt. ‘Rats are filth, lady. Filth,’ he continued, hysteria rising with each word. ‘You can’t kill a man’s dog to save a rat!’ He lifted the stake menacingly. ‘You owe me, lady.’

‘Get back,’ she warned. The dog’s snarling and snapping increased and the wooden cage cracked.

The handler moved and pressed the stake against her chest. ‘Get out of the way, lady!’ he yelled, his eyes glittering with anger. Realising that she was not intending to step aside, he pushed, but as the stake point pierced Meg’s blood-stained shirt and skin the handler’s face contorted. He dropped his weapon and staggered back, clutching his chest and gasping for breath, and his eyes widened as she reached forward to prod his chest with her finger. He made a strangled yelp before he collapsed with a gurgling scream, his legs thrashing against the floor. She turned her attention to the remaining dog and invaded its mind to find writhing images of hatred and killing swarming through the animal’s psyche. Mustering her energy, she pushed through the images and replaced them with overwhelming fear—images of a whip and heavy boots. The dog yelped and bolted, and the shed fell silent.

Meg kneeled and held out her hands to Whisper, crooning, ‘Come on. It’s all right.’ The rat squeezed between the cracked wooden bars and climbed into her embrace, and started licking the blood on her cheek, making Meg laugh. As she lifted Whisper to her shoulder she surveyed the carnage and whispered, ‘What have I done?’ The old man was gone. Realising she was in danger, she lifted the rat from her shoulder
to the floor and headed for the door, but as she reached it she heard voices beyond.

‘I’m telling you what I saw. She killed him with her finger.’

‘You should stay away from the booze. You say she’s still in there?’

‘I think so. She hasn’t come out.’

She recognised the old man’s voice. The other was a stranger, but he clearly intended to find her. ‘We have to hide,’ she whispered.

Follow,
Whisper urged and ran along a cage row. Meg followed, turning a corner behind a tall wooden screen as the shed door opened. Whisper stopped and sat up to sniff and listen, and Meg heard boots thudding on the floor sounding like there were more than two men.
This way,
the rat ordered and disappeared under a collapsed pile of boards and logs.

No,
Meg projected, seeing the small hole into which Whisper vanished. She peered around the screen, but couldn’t see anything, only hear voices.

‘She did
this?’

‘I saw it,’ the old man declared. ‘The dog caught fire when it jumped on her.’

‘Search this place. Carefully.’

So they were hunting her already in this new land.
Why does it have to be like this
? she wondered in despair.

Here.
Whisper was perched on a fallen log beside a larger hole in the wood pile.
Here,
the rat reiterated. Meg squeezed in, trying to make as little noise as possible, terrified the men would hear her scrape against the wood. The gap under the pile barely accommodated her and she couldn’t turn, only lie on her stomach, facing in. The wood slid behind her.
Where are
you? she asked. There was a faint scampering of paws and Whisper appeared in a cosy gap to her left where she sat up and began preening.

Meg heard footfalls twice as the searching men approached and passed the pile.
I’d look in here,
she thought.
It’s an obvious place to hide,
but no one stopped or poked the pile. She held her breath when she thought the searchers were close and she wondered if she’d left a blood trail from her injuries.
Footprints,
she wondered.
They’ll see them in the dust.
Hiding was becoming a permanent part of her life—it was
becoming
her life—so keeping still for an extended time wasn’t difficult, although it was incredibly tedious. She waited, envious of Whisper who curled up to sleep when she finished preening as if there was nothing dangerous in the world. Then tiredness committed treachery and she fell asleep, only realising it when she opened her eyes to find the light trickling into the wood-pile, like Whisper, was gone.