Angel Arias (15 page)

The carriage creaked and juddered as Lenoir pushed it to its limits. How foolish of him to think that Eve and Clash would stay hidden from the Night Creatures. And how little he needed any trouble they might bring. Brand would use it against him.

Yet he could not let harm befall Naif’s brother. He cursed the bond which demanded that he protect Naif’s loved ones; cursed the threat that it placed him under. Never had he been so torn.

Finally, the carriage settled to rest. He stepped out and listened. Inside Agios, the music peaked and lulled, and in the lulls he heard the shouts of the revellers.

He’d hosted a party for Naif here and had the uthers make her a splendid gown; another foolish and indulgent act for which he drew the scorn of his clan.

And yet he had no regret. Seeing Naif dressed with such elegance, her face enthralled by the marble and gold beauty of the basilica, had brought to him a pleasure that he had not felt in an age of memories. Her innocence and her strength blended in an exotic mixture which he found tantalising.

He circled the church under moonlight, searching the paths for signs of disturbance. His brothers watched him from the bushes. This was where he had fought Leyste and killed him. Their blood was spilled on this ground.

Help me
, he called to them.

You’ve forsaken us.

I seek balance.

Forsaker! Forsaker!

Where are the young ones who call themselves Dark Eve and Clash?

Forsaker!

I command you to tell me!
Lenoir thundered.

Their resistance fell away; there were not enough of them here to deny his power.

The Grotto. The Grotto. The Grotto.

He sped to the top of the rock stairway that led to the Grotto and then stopped. The door at the bottom would bring him out in full view of the amphitheatre.

Unsure of what awaited, he considered what else to do. The monks from Ixion’s past had once cleared a tunnel to a more discreet entrance into the amphitheatre. He changed direction and ran lightly along a lesser path to a prayer hutch.

The Night Creatures shrank away as he passed, still cowed by his anger. It would not last, he knew. Others would come, and with more of them their bravado would return. Much of the time, his brothers thought as one mind and drew strength from numbers. Like at Danksoi. The clan had driven them back in the end, but they were unsettled still, wanting change.

Lenoir opened the trapdoor in the prayer hutch. The disused passage was surprisingly clear of debris, as though someone had passed though it recently. Did the young ones know of this? Or had Brand discovered it?

He emerged into the amphitheatre where the tunnel’s end was disguised by a waterfall of moonflower creepers. The scent of the blossoms was strong and sweet and distracted him momentarily. The creepers had been everywhere on Ixion when they had first arrived here but their blooms had diminished as though the Ripers’ presence had poisoned the delicate plant.

Lenoir slid aside a swathe of creeper and stared down at the stage. A Riper lay there, secured by thick tether and surrounded by a group of three young ones with weapons.

Lenoir tested the air. It was Tanel
,
a rogue, who’d sided with neither Brand nor him when the clan had split. Lenoir could smell his sweat and taste the acrid flavour of his fear.

He stepped past the curtain of flowers and leapt down the roughly cut ledges with blinding speed.

‘Stop!’

Clash and Dark Eve turned, startled, clubs and sharpened sticks in their hands. The other young one, though, never shifted from where she held a rough-made knife to Tanel’s throat.

‘Lenoir,’ said Clash.

‘Free Tanel,’ said Lenoir. ‘Or suffer.’

‘No!’ said the knife carrier.

Lenoir studied the young one who refused him. Her clothes were torn and her skin streaked with dirt and moisture. Blood had congealed on her neck and at her wrists. She was unfamiliar and yet something of her tone tripped a warning in him. Her hand, which held the knife to Tanel’s throat, was perfectly still.

‘What brings you to this, baby bat?’ he said more gently.

‘He – hurt – her,’ cried a voice from behind him.

The boy Naif called Rollo stumbled to stand by the girl’s side. He carried his own stick and was panting, having run down from the gate at the top of the amphitheatre. ‘He took her from outside Danksoi and brought her here where no one would look. We came and freed her.’

‘How did you know where she was?’

‘The uthers showed us,’ said Dark Eve.

Lenoir stiffened. ‘The uthers?’

‘The rope is made by them. Strong enough to bind even you, Lenoir,’ said Dark Eve.

Lenoir resisted kneeling down to finger it. He could see the complex weave.

‘You might have saved our lives at Danksoi, but we won’t let your kind abuse ours. Brand tried it with Naif, and others before,’ said Clash, ‘and now this.’

He raised his own stick above Tanel’s head, a vicious twist to his mouth.

‘Even Ripers can be ended,’ added Dark Eve.

‘Tanel?’ whispered Lenoir. ‘Explain.’

The rogue Riper twisted against his bonds but they held fast and tight. ‘I was hungry. I needed sustenance,’ the Riper gasped.

Lenoir frowned. ‘Why did you not go to Varonessa for food? The young ones are not to be touched. That is our arrangement.’

‘
Not to be touched!
You mean not to be touched
too early.
Not until you’re ready to let those
things
in the dark suck us dry,’ spat the girl with the knife. ‘Let’s gut them both, I say.’

‘Suki,’ said Rollo, clutching her free arm. ‘Steady.’

Suki! Naif’s friend
. Recognition struck Lenoir like a blow. A growl tore loose from his throat. He wrenched the stick from Clash’s hand and stabbed downward at a sharp angle, piercing Tanel’s throat under his chin. As he pulled it back out, blood pumped from the wound in great pulses.

Tanel opened his mouth to speak but only a gurgle escaped. His body went into spasms, straining against the uthers’ rope, and then eventually became still.

The young ones stood in shocked silence, even Suki.

‘That is what it is to kill someone,’ said Lenoir hoarsely.

Rollo was the first one to find his voice. ‘Lenoir . . . why?’

Lenoir stared at every one of them in turn. ‘It’s what you wanted, isn’t it? Death to a being who has lived thousands of years. That will happen to us all if we don’t feed on you. We will die. ’

‘You cannot scavenge our life to save yours,’ said Dark Eve gravely. ‘We will fight you to the last, to stop you from doing that.’

‘Then prepare yourselves,’ he said grimly. ‘Because that is what it will be.’

A
wild throb of anger pierced through Naif’s exhaustion, making her jerk upright.

‘What is it?’ asked Jarrold.

She pressed her hand to her stomach and prayed for the intensity of the emotion to abate.

Lenoir? What’s wrong?

But the Riper didn’t speak in her mind.

Instead, she was forced to answer Jarrold.

‘A pain,’ she gasped. ‘Perhaps I twisted something climbing.’

‘Hunger, more like,’ said Jarrold. ‘Can you make it?’

She nodded but let him help her up the stairs and down a dusty hallway to the kitchen.

‘In that cupboard,’ he said.

She opened the shuttered door and found some objects wrapped in brown paper: dates, some dried apple and a greasy cheese round that smelled slightly off.

While she gathered the food Jarrold opened the back door and leaned out. When he straightened he had a bucket in his hand.

‘Bit mucky from the roof run-off but it’s water.’

He came back and tipped some of the water into her hands so she could wash them.

She returned the favour and when he’d finished, Naif spread the parcels out on the bench. They drank the rest of the water and pinched off pieces of cheese to put with the dried fruit.

After they’d eaten enough, they put the remains back in the cupboard. Jarrold led Naif up the corridor then, and stopped at a door.

‘Keep low now. Sometimes the wardens watch these areas with their eyeglasses.’

She followed his lead by dropping to her knees and crawling over to the window. Peering up out of one corner, he pointed past the churned soil and roughly built fence erected to separate this end of Deope from the rest of the city, to an ugly, square building crowned by a large cross. From their vantage they could only see the roof as it rose above the houses on the opposite side of the fence. ‘That’s it.’

‘The Holding House?’

‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘See the spires alongside it? That’s the market tents. Em will be there now with Mother.’

Naif looked up into the sky. The sun, though behind a thick layer of cloud, seemed to be almost at its summit. It had taken them all morning to get here.

‘Will the Holding House be guarded?’

He nodded. ‘Probably. But I can make some trouble in the markets and they’ll come to sort it out. You might be able to get past them.’

It seemed the best idea and was clearly one he’d already thought about. ‘It’s dangerous. What if they catch you?’

‘What if they catch
you
?’

She took his point. ‘We need to get some clean clothes. People will notice us.’

He shrugged. ‘How? These places are empty. There’s nothing left.’

‘Maybe some clothes have been forgotten.’

Jarrold yawned, sleepy now after eating. ‘We could look, I s’pose.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Naif. Her energy had returned quicker than his. But then, he had lifted her most of the way up.

‘If you go out the back door, you can go from house to house without being seen. But stay away from the front of the houses. If they’re watching and see you, they’ll send the hounds in.’

‘I won’t go far.’

He took a deep tired breath and she noticed he was nursing one arm.

‘Did you hurt yourself?’

‘No.’

Naif let it go. Jarrold, like Joel, wasn’t the kind to admit to an injury.

‘Will you watch the Holding House?’ she said.

‘Uh huh. And you watch your step. You can’t tell what’s safe around here. Stay off anything that’s mouldy or damp.’

Naif crawled back to the corridor where she stood up and glanced back at him hunkered against the window.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘I just wondered . . . why are you helping me?’

‘Don’t you think you can trust me?’

She didn’t reply but kept up her steady questioning stare.

‘I want to leave with you when you go,’ he said.

‘With us? Why?’

‘Just because . . .’

‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘I do.’ His face took on a stubborn set. ‘I’m leaving this frossing place, and I’m never coming back.’

He turned his whole body away from her so that his chin was resting against the window ledge.

Naif sighed. She would argue with him later.

Jarrold had kept to the sides of the corridor when they entered the house, so she mimicked his route on the way back. She crept along slowly, placing one foot carefully in front of the other and testing each step. It took her an age to reach the back door, then the back fence, then the tree whose roots had penetrated so far below the surface, and finally, the narrow high gateway to the next house.

This home was much the same as the one she’d left; two storeys of dust and rotting wood. She could smell the damp earth below rising up through the floorboards, and all the cupboards had been stripped bare, leaving only traces of rats. No clothes.

She threaded back through the yard of the house in which Jarrold waited, and crossed to the opposite yard. This house was much the same, though she discovered an extra loft at the top of the stairs, like the one in Emilia and Jarrold’s home.

At the back of the loft, tucked next to a thick wooden vertical beam, she found a blanket chest. Inside it was an old coat and a set of curtains, forgotten by the owners.

The coat was for a child but was just large enough for her small, light frame. She slipped it on and bundled up a curtain to take back to Jarrold, thinking he could drape it around his shoulders.

As she walked carefully down the stairs, she thought she heard a faint shout. Jarrold? She felt a tremor and a sudden sense of urgency filled her. She must get back!

Halfway across the yard, she stepped into a small pothole and her foot stuck. As she tried to lift it free, the hole became wider beneath her moving weight. The sides collapsed and she was plunged to her waist, the moist dirt compacting around her.

No!

She became very still, not wanting to deepen the sinkhole, and looked for something she could use as a lever. The yard was littered with bits of wood and stones from a ruined outdoor baker.

In the warmer months, Grave residents liked to cook their meat outside to keep their homes cool. The roughly cut ovens were made of rock and held in place by a wooden frame. The stones on this one had crumbled away leaving only the joists.

If she stretched to her right, she might just reach one of them. But she would only get one chance. The movement would likely make the sinkhole widen. Already she could feel the soil loosening beneath her feet.

Images of the dark emptiness under the hidden bridge filled her mind.

She wanted to call Jarrold for help. But what if someone heard her? What if there were wardens close by? If they sent in the hounds, they would both be captured.

Jarrold had done so much to help her already and there might be more sinkholes. He could fall in one as well.

I can get myself out of this.

Bundling up the curtain she still clutched, she threw it towards the broken oven, hoping to hook it on something. It slipped, so she tried again. This time it snagged on nails in one of the joists.

She began to pull. At first, nothing happened except that pain radiated up her arms and across her shoulders from the strain. But Naif knew how to deal with pain; knew how to endure. She continued with dogged determination.

Slowly, her body shifted, breaking the soil’s grip. Hand over hand she worked her way along the curtain, praying that it wouldn’t tear free from the nails. Jarrold would be wondering what was keeping her. And now she’d ruined the very clothes she’d gone looking for.

As her legs began to pull free, the sinkhole gave way further, the soil sliding in tighter. She started to drop again and only her grip on the curtain kept her from disappearing down beneath the ground level.

Giving one final, desperate pull she felt her legs come free and she was able to scramble over the lip of the hole. She caught a quick breath and scrambled up onto the frame of the baker. The earth began to rumble.

Without looking back, she climbed over the fence and ran for the house. Once inside, she called for Jarrold as loudly as she dared. When he didn’t answer, she raced to the front room.

He wasn’t there but a handful of dates lay scattered on the floor, and there were scrape marks in the dust.

Hounds!

It looked as though they’d dragged him out.

She crouched down, exhausted and shaking again, not knowing what to do. A sound leached through the floor like an old person in pain but deeper, louder than a human could be; a groan so deep and desperate that she wanted to clap her hands over her ears. The floor began to shake.

Naif sprang up. Which way should she go? Front or back? Before she could decide, the floor between her and the back door buckled. Panicked, she ran for the front, heedless of who might be watching the street.

As she reached the gate of the neglected garden, the whole house began to subside, screeching and jarring its way into the huge sinkhole opening up beneath it.

Naif kept running, past the other houses on the deserted strip and in the direction of the marketplace and the Holding House.

A crowd had collected on the fenced-off edge of Deope, drawn by the noise and the tremors.

Someone called to her that there was an opening in the wire so she scrambled over the ruptured cobblestones and hurled herself through it. Hands reached out to catch her as she fell down.

‘Are you all right, love?’ said one person.

‘What in Grave’s name are you doing in there?’ said another.

‘Where are your parents?’ Another.

Thankfully their attention was soon reclaimed by the collapsing house and she slipped away.

Whistles sounded, shrieking above the noise of the subsidence, and from where she stood, peering between the shoulders of others, she saw wardens arriving on sleds.

The crowd parted for them and they stopped at the hole in the fence. One of the wardens dismounted and set the hounds free.

They burst through, yelping and running in frightened circles over the rough ground, confused by the noise and conflicting smells.

Naif slipped behind a large woman holding a baby and made her way to the back edge of the growing crowd. Hugging her filthy coat tight, she headed in the direction of the Holding House.

She found it, one street away from the market, as Jarrold had said. Hiding behind a stand outside the paper merchant’s shop, she watched the outside intently. Several wardens ran from the building towards Deope leaving just one on guard and even he had left the door to walk halfway along the street.

Naif circled back behind the merchant’s and found the lane that led to the back of the Holding House. Then she crept along the far side and turned the corner towards the front door, praying the warden wouldn’t turn.

A short distance away, the sinking house still screeched and rumbled. The sound disguised the noise she made opening the heavy door to the Holding House. She shut it quickly behind her and stopped still, holding her breath, listening for a warning shout.