Chasing the Valley (3 page)

I follow the boy's pressure on my arm, sloshing through the stink until we're round the corner. The tunnel opens into a sort of intersection between pipes. It reminds me of an old song, about meeting the devil at the crossroads to sell your soul. But I doubt even the devil would be keen on sampling the aroma of Rourton's city sewers.

I hear Clementine's voice next. ‘Who are you?'

I squint, trying to make out faces in the dark. There are three other kids here: two blonde girls, about sixteen years old, and a scruffer boy whose freckles are visible even in the flicker of Radnor's lantern.

The freckled boy, of course, is the pickpocket Teddy Nort. The girls are twins, almost identical. Hair falls in golden curls over their neck-scarves. They wear a pinkish stain on their lips and their fingernails catch the light with sparkles of bronze polish. Richies. They look like they belong in a High Street boutique, not crawling around the sewers like a couple of scruffers.

‘I'm hiding from the bombs,' I say, trying not to look too nervous. Sometimes, to avoid a fight with another scruffer, it helps to pretend you're more confident than you feel. Walter once told me we're like fighting dogs: it's better to raise your hackles than tear a hole in each other's necks. ‘I was working late, so I missed curfew.'

Silence.

I know what they're up to. They want me to get nervous, to rush to fill in the silence and give something away. But I refuse to budge. I clench my fists behind my back. Then I pick one of the blonde girls and stare at her, waiting to see who'll blink. The girl bites her lip and looks down.

‘Right,' Radnor says. ‘And why the hell should we believe that? This sewer system is huge. The odds of you just stumbling across our meeting are –'

‘She's a spy!' says the more forceful twin, Clementine. ‘The king's hunters must be onto us. They're sending undercover operatives to catch us before we leave the city!' She raises a horrified hand to her lips. ‘They'll make an example of us, won't they? They'll use our executions to scare the rest of the city into obedience.'

I glare at her. ‘I'm not a spy, all right? I swear it.'

Radnor crosses his arms. ‘Prove it.'

‘How?'

There's another pause, as everyone tries to dream up some means to test me. Eventually, Teddy Nort gives his lips a thoughtful twist. ‘How'd you know about our meeting?'

‘I was hiding –'

‘No, you were eavesdropping.'

I hesitate, weighing up my options. I've never been much good at lying, but I've heard Teddy Nort's a master at it. If there's one thing I've learned on the streets, it's not to bet against a gambler at his own game.

‘All right,' I say. ‘Look, I swear it's just an accident I found you. But I was working at the Alehouse when the bombs started. There's an old scruffer called Walter. You might've met him if you work the bar scene –'

Radnor cuts me off. ‘Yeah, I know him.'

‘Well, Walter told me about the meeting tonight. He said he wanted to join your crew, but you only wanted teenagers. And when I stumbled across you down here, in the sewers . . . you can't blame me for being curious.'

The others exchange glances.

‘Why teenagers, anyway?' I add. ‘You know you'll never make it to the Valley. Hardly any adult crews survive, let alone teenagers.'

Teddy grins. ‘Yeah, but we're fresher, aren't we? The new generation. We're gonna take down the king's hunters like they're toddlers scrapping in the Rourton gutters.'

I stare at him, unsure whether he's serious. It's hard to tell with people like Teddy, who use bravado as their de facto language. He could be sending up Radnor's control act, or he could be just as cocky as his words suggest. Then he winks, and I know he's fooling around.

‘You must have a plan,' I say. ‘You're too young to have proclivities yet – or at least, too young to reveal them. How are you going to cross the forest or get up through the mountains without being caught . . .?'

‘We
've got a
plan,' Radnor says. ‘But I'm not sharing it with some random girl who just happened to gatecrash our meeting.'

‘Gatecrash, eh?' Teddy perks up. ‘Like a party? This place could do with some entertainment. I wasn't totally kidding about the mud wrestling . . .'

‘Oh, for heaven's sake,' Clementine says. ‘The last thing we need is another filthy scruffer around. Can we just dispose of this girl and get on with it?'

I scowl. That's all we are to the richies: filth and rubbish, things to be dumped in the backstreets and ignored. To be fair, though, she's got a point about me being dirty. There hasn't been a decent rainstorm for days, and – even on the nights I snare a bed in a cheap boarding house – I rarely have access to a shower.

‘Why are
you
part of this, anyway?' I ask her.

‘Yeah, I was wondering that too,' says Teddy Nort. In response to my questioning look, he adds, ‘I only got sucked into this suicide mission about twenty minutes ago, so I'm just as confused as you.'

Radnor scowls at him. ‘Sucked into a suicide mission? You
begged
me for a spot to save you from that manhunt, Nort. You said it was time for me to cough up and repay my –' He stops abruptly, as though he's just remembered that he has an audience. ‘Anyway, you can't stay in Rourton now.'

Teddy shrugs, and offers me another cheeky wink. ‘Meh. Sucked into a crew, on the run from the guards, what's the difference?'

I roll my eyes. He's such a ridiculous figure, puffed up with winks and bravado and hands that can nick a richie's coin purse in seconds. There's a moment's pause before I remember my original question and turn back to the richie twins.

‘So,' I say, ‘why are you two so keen to risk your lives on a refugee crew?'

The quieter twin opens her mouth, and I half-expect the squeak of a mouse. But to my surprise, there's a solid ring of determination in her voice. ‘We don't want to live here any more,' she says. ‘We want to escape, just like the rest of you.'

Teddy snorts. ‘Oh, come off it. I bet you eat breakfast off golden platters. What've you got to run away from?'

Clementine turns upon him with a furious sneer. ‘None of your business, scruffer boy. We're offering a great deal of money for our places on this crew, which is more than I can say for
some
people.'

‘All right, keep your knickers on,' says Teddy, holding up his hands. ‘If you've got a gold platter phobia, I'm not gonna judge. Never liked gold much myself, you know. It's bloody heavy to lug around when its previous owner is chasing you down High Street.'

I feel the corners of my lips twitch, but Radnor doesn't look too amused.

‘That's enough, Nort. And you,' he adds, turning to me, ‘you're not wanted here. Clear off and find another spot to hide from the king's firecrackers, won't you?'

‘No,' I say firmly. ‘I want to join your crew.'

Silence.

Clementine gives a derisive laugh. ‘Oh, you've got to be joking.'

‘Why not?' I say. ‘You've only got four people. Everyone knows the best balanced crews are made of five.'

‘We've already got a fifth member,' says Radnor. ‘And you'd better clear off, or he'll smash your face in for trying to steal his spot.'

I squint down the tunnel. Have I somehow missed another figure in the dark? No, there's only the four of them: Teddy, Radnor, Clementine and her quieter twin. I can hear each of them breathing, harsh and hollow, in the stench-thickened air.

‘Who's your fifth member?' I say.

‘None of your business.'

‘Look, I can be useful.' I take a deep breath. ‘My name's Danika Glynn, and I'm a scruffer like you. My parents died when I was a kid – I know how to live rough on the streets. I've got skills. I could be useful.'

I glance pointedly at the richie girls, hoping Radnor and Teddy will know what I mean. Those girls' only contribution will be money, but scruffers have more diverse skills. What good is money, anyway, when you're on the run in Taladia's wilderness?

‘Skills,' repeats Radnor.

‘I'm an illusionist,' I remind him. ‘You saw what I did in the tunnel before.'

Silence.

‘An illusionist?' says Teddy Nort, looking eager. ‘Really? Oh man, you should've joined my pickpocket gang! We'd get rich with an illusionist. Imagine what we –'

‘Forget it,' says Radnor. ‘Just being an amateur illusionist isn't enough to buy you a spot on my crew. What other “skills” have you got?'

I hesitate. ‘Well, I can climb walls pretty well. I can scrounge, too, and I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty.'

‘We've already got those skills,' says Radnor. ‘We've got scruffers on the crew and we don't need another mouth to feed.'

‘I can get my own food.'

Radnor laughs coldly. ‘Out there, in the wild? You're a city scruffer, not a traveller.'

I open my mouth to retort, but close it again. He's got a point. I've never been outside Rourton's walls. The only real trees I've seen are decorative, growing in the richies' front gardens. And even those are pruned into unnatural shapes, wrinkled and disfigured by the city's pollution.

Of course, I've seen trees sprout from alchemy bombs. They can shoot up in mere hours, unfurling roots across the rubble to ensnare their victims' corpses. But I doubt this memory will equip me for trekking through a real forest.

‘What about you?' I say. ‘You haven't been outside Rourton either, I bet.'

‘
We've
got a plan.' Clementine sounds, if pos­sible, even haughtier than before. ‘I wouldn't expect some­one of your status to understand, but it's amazing what you can achieve with a little economic leverage.'

‘What are you gonna do, bribe a tree?' I say.

Teddy Nort snorts, then hides his amusement by faking a coughing fit into his sleeve. I suppose he isn't keen to alienate himself from the rest of his crew. That's fair enough, really; if I were about to risk my life on a long, perilous mission with only four companions, I'd do the same. Of course, the point's moot, since
I've
alienated myself from Clementine already. It isn't looking likely that I'll escape the city with this crew, but I figure it's worth one more try.

‘I thought you were keen on being fresh,' I say, ‘being the new generation. Why not try a crew of six
instead of five?'

‘She's got a point there,' says Teddy. ‘And come on, Radnor – she's an
illusionist
! I've been looking to recruit one for years . . . Imagine the pranks she could've played on richies while I nicked their diamonds.'

Radnor shakes his head. ‘We've already got a crew of five.'

‘Well, who says we can only have five?' says Teddy. ‘Can't hurt to shake things up a bit more. And hey, the guards won't suspect us if we look too big to be a refugee crew.' He grins. ‘Maybe they'll reckon we're licensed traders or something. I'll be the richie merchant and you lot can be my servants. It'd make the trip a lot more fun.'

I try to imagine Teddy Nort, of all people, as a licensed trader. All I can picture is him stealing coins from his customers' pockets.

‘Don't be stupid, Nort,' says Radnor. ‘We've already got a good plan, and we're not screwing it up at the last minute for the sake of some random scruffer girl.' He glares at me, then points down the tunnel. ‘Get out of here, and don't even
think
about following us.'

I want to argue with him but it's pointless now, because Radnor has decided he doesn't want me. Even if I manage to bargain my way onto the crew, I doubt we'd make it out of Rourton alive, let alone all the way to the Valley. Crew members have to respect each other, without any backstabbing or distrust, if they want to survive.

‘All right,' I say, in the poshest richie accent I can muster. ‘Send me a wire if you change your mind. My address is in the golden directory.'

It's a stupid jab at Clementine, of course, because only the wealthiest richies can send or receive telegraphs – and I don't have
any
address, let alone one in the golden directory. I know I'm being immature, even as I say it. But it's enough to make Teddy Nort grin, just for a minute. I can't help feeling pleased that at least one of them seems to want me on the crew.

Then I head off down the tunnel, sloshing muck up my legs with every step. There's no point making friends with Teddy Nort – not when he's about to flee the city. I keep remembering Radnor's comment:
‘We're not screwing it up at the last minute.'
It sounds like the crew is leaving soon, maybe even tonight.

And if that's true, it's a solid bet they'll be dead by morning.

 

 

 

Back up on the streets, I follow a shadowed
alleyway. There's no point thinking about the refugee crew. They don't want my help, and they don't want me. Full stop. End of story. Like everything else about life in Rourton, it's better to make myself forget.

The bombing's over now. I hear voices in the distance, and the crash and crumble of damaged walls collapsing into dust. Smoke pours up into the night, bathing Rourton in a sea of starlit grey. It stinks of ash and scorched debris.

The smell of fire brings back too many memories. Another night. Another bombing. My feet like lead upon another street.

When I was little, my mother told me stories of the Magnetic Valley. It's forbidden to speak of it, but everyone knows – everyone whispers its name in hope. That's what Walter's folk song was about, his drunken ramblings in the Alehouse as the bombs began to fall. Now, the words come back to me: a taunt of dreams that can never come true.

Oh mighty yo,

How the star-shine must go

Chasing those distant deserts of green . . .

The Magnetic Valley is where refugee crews run to, where our dreams carry us on the darkest nights, in the coldest alleyways. It's a boundary of green meadows, a doorway into another nation that lies beyond Taladia. In the Valley, the king's magically powered planes and war machines are as useless as toys. Its hillsides are lined with magnetic rocks, which interfere with magic.

And according to our legends, the nation beyond is a paradise. It's one of Taladia's only neighbouring lands where our king has not waged a war. I don't even know the name of the country, but if even half
the stories are true, I'd give my right arm to live there. Supposedly there's enough food and warmth and shelter for us all. The people's leaders don't bomb them, don't send hunters to pursue them through the wild. Beyond the Valley, I could be safe. Safe, for the first time in my life.

But for now, I'm just a scruffer in a city of flames.

As the smoke thickens, my eyes start to water. I reach into my pocket for my handkerchief – a shred of stolen fabric from a clothing factory's scrapheap – but it's disappeared. I must have dropped it in the sewer somewhere. I wipe my eyes on a sleeve, but the grit feels like sandpaper. I haven't had a chance to wash my clothes for ages. So I pick up the pace and try to ignore the dribbles running down my cheeks.

At one point, there's a scream. It's a few blocks away, so I can't see the source, but it sounds husky: an old woman, perhaps. Has she returned home to find her house gone, her family lost amid the blood-streaked rubble? Maybe an alchemy bomb has replaced her home with wild flowers or a lake of rippling silver. There's wailing now, a chorus of grief as her neighbours take up the call. I grit my teeth, grind each foot into the cobblestones and try to ignore them. There's nothing I can do to help.

I hesitate at the intersection. I don't know which way to turn. It's too late to find a bed in a hostel tonight; they all lock their doors at curfew. The thought of a night on the streets – now, when the world is a blur of death and flames and screams – is enough to turn my stomach. I can't do it. I can't stay here and listen to my family die over and over again.

There's another scream, this one from the opposite direction, and I make up my mind. My encounter with Radnor's refugee crew has cemented something in the back of my skull. A feeling I never knew was brewing there . . . not until now, on the intersection of Rourton's alchemy-bombed roads. I can't do this any more.

I
refuse
to do this any more.

I refuse to spend my life in this grimy city, scaven­ging for food and sleeping in doorways. I refuse to reach my eighteenth birthday here, to be conscripted into King Morrigan's army and shunted off to fight on behalf of the monarch who killed my family.

I'm going to escape from Taladia. I'm going to find the Valley. And if Radnor's refugee crew won't take me, I'll do it alone. Tonight. This is my chance. The city is in an uproar. People are battling fires, searching for their families, or – if they're lucky – cowering in bunkers and waiting for dawn. Any obedience to the monarchy's curfew has gone out the window and no one will notice a scrawny teenage girl. If there were ever a perfect night for escaping Rourton, this is it.

I have no real possessions, beyond what I'm wearing. The clothes on my back and my mother's silver bracelet, which is secured up high above my elbow. It's a liberating thought. It means that I've got nothing to worry about or protect, nothing to retrieve in the jumble of a post-bombing frenzy. No possessions, no friends, no family. I can head straight for the city walls and make a good start on my journey before the night ends.

I cross the intersection and start towards the edge of the city. There's a thick plume of smoke and ash to my left, so I veer towards it. If anyone is looking out their window, hopefully they'll assume I'm just a local girl running home to make sure her family survived. In all this haze, it would be hard to make out the ragged clothes and unwashed hair that mark me as a scruffer.

Closer to the city outskirts, I see more signs of the bombs' destruction. There's a huge crater in the middle of a road, where white snowflakes fall upwards and melt into the dark sky. A few streets later, I stumble across what used to be Rourton's library. The building is gone, but broken books and papers flock like seagulls in the night. Thorny vines unfurl across the rubble so fast that I can actually watch them grow. I stumble forward, searching for signs of survivors, but of course there's nothing. No one ever survives an alchemy bomb.

There's nothing I can do.

The night my family died, the bombings were caused by a woman from Gimstead, a smaller city west of Rourton. She managed to whip a few dozen scruffers into an attack on their city's hunter headquarters, trying to steal some food for the poorer children. Three guards were killed in the raid – alongside five or six scruffers. The whole block ended up on fire, and a lot of valuable paperwork was lost. Criminal records, court reports and the like.

The palace can't let that sort of thing go unpunished. That's the sort of thing that sparks more than fires. It sparks courage. Revolt. Maybe even revolutions. And so King Morrigan sent his bombs to punish every city north of the wastelands.

I understand why the woman in Gimstead did it. It was a cold winter and people were starving. It must have been hard to watch the king's hunters on patrol, wolfing down bread and casserole. I might have done the same thing, if I were cold and desperate and brave. But this doesn't stop a part of me from hating that woman, whose lust for food got my family killed.

In the early days, when I was just adjusting to life on the streets, I used to lie awake behind a stack of rubbish bins and hope that the bombs got her too. Then I would hug my torso, hating myself for thinking it, and wait in silence for the night to end.

 

When I reach the wall, the sky's still smoky.
I keep my head bowed low, hoping to shield my face. The wall is imbued with picture spells: a magical surveillance system for the city's edges. If you act too suspiciously, your picture can later be gleaned from the alchemical recording – and sooner or later, you'll swap city walls for prison bars.

The easiest way to escape Rourton is to join a licensed trading crew. Then you can travel legally out the gates in a cart carrying pots or food on the way to another city. But a scruffer girl like me has better odds of flying to the moon than finding employment with traders. They'd think I was a crook: a pickpocket like Teddy Nort, hoping to steal their wares.

That leaves two options. Under the wall, or over it.

Going underneath is impossible. The wall's foundations were strengthened by people with Earth proclivities, who coaxed the ground to swallow a barrier as deep as it could go. The wall has stood for hundreds of years, and will doubtless last for hundreds more. I don't have the magic to fight against that. I don't even know what my own pro­clivity is yet, let alone how to counter someone else's.

Lately, I've sensed an odd itching at the back of my neck and down my spine. It must be the start of my markings, as I move towards adulthood and my proclivity begins to emerge. But until it fully develops, I have about as much magic as a five-year-old. Nothing that could bust through a wall of magically enhanced stone.

So I can't go through the gate and I can't get under the wall. That leaves one option: going over the top. I know that it's been done before, so there must be a way. Somehow, while the smoke's still swirling, I've got to find it.

On this side of the wall, I can only hear shouts and wind and the crackle of flames. But on the far side, if I strain my ears, I can just make out a faint chirping. Crickets. I recognise the sound from the city market. Sometimes traders sell them, for the times when you're starving enough to eat anything that might pass as meat. Now, though, their chirps don't sound like food. They sound like freedom.

I begin to climb. There's no time to worry about the wall's picture spells. By the time they identify me, I'll either be free or dead. The wall is made of huge stone bricks, each half a metre tall. They're roughly hewn, split by trenches and valleys that must seem an entire continent to the ants upon their surface. The valleys are too shallow for my fingers to grip but there are gaps in the mortar, worn away by decades of neglect. The king prefers to fund guards and weapons, not bricks and mortar. On a normal night, this wall would be crawling with guards, infesting the turrets that punctuate the wall every hundred metres. They'd stare up and down with metal binocu­lars and carry rifles on their shoulders. On a normal night, I'd be shot from this wall in an instant.

But this is not a normal night. Half the turrets are deserted – even the king's own guards are afraid of bombs. Perhaps they were given prior warning, or simply fled when they spotted the biplanes approaching. The guards who remain are too far away to make out a shadowy figure upon the bricks. Their spotlights are focused inward, highlighting the spectacle of Rourton's burning streets.

About four metres up the wall, I stop to take a breath. It's hard, sweaty work, even in the chill of a northern night. The smoke might be a good disguise, but it's also hot and gritty. I continue climbing. One, two, one, two. My lungs throb in time with the upward swing of my limbs. Scruffer kids are good at climbing, since we often need to make quick getaways. It's illegal to sleep in people's doorways and the richies are allowed to get rid of us however they see fit. We're just vermin to them. Scooting up the side of a building can be your only hope to escape a whack from someone's fireplace poker – or worse, their proclivity.

The wall begins to shake. For a wild second I think it must be another bomb – that the planes have returned and our city is under attack again, just when survivors are gathered outside to assess our losses. Then I realise. This vibration isn't the wild crash that comes from a bombing. It's a mechanical rattle, like power travelling along a wire.

Someone is opening the city gate.

I whip my head around, staring along the wall. I'm high enough to see over the roofs of nearby buildings, and I can just make out the gate through the smoke. It's a vast slab of iron about a hundred metres away. As I watch, squinting through the haze, it trundles out towards the world beyond. What are they doing? Why are they opening the gate at this time of night? I shift my weight, trying to fight the growing numbness in my fingertips. There's a group of figures near the gate. The guards are easy to pick out, because their copper breastplates gleam beneath the streetlights. The others, I realise quickly, aren't just normal traders. They're foxary riders.

That explains why the guards are willing to let them out at this hour. Foxary riders mean trouble and I bet the guards will be glad to see the backs of them – especially with all the chaos caused by the bombs. Foxaries are great, coarse beasts that resemble massive foxes but are ridden like horses. They were created decades ago after someone with a Beast proclivity mated different creatures together. With breeding, magic and a bit of illegal experi­mentation, he created the first foxary. Originally they were used to pull wagons and carts, inspired by sled dogs in the far north. Then some crazy trader decided to mount them directly.