Cuckoo Song (43 page)

I don’t want to fight you, Mr Grace, but if I have to I will. I will. I won’t let you hurt Pen.

The tailor frowned a little, then turned his back on the shadows and hurried to Charles’s side. He winced as he examined the older man’s injuries.

‘Charles, old chap, you’re going to need a doctor,’ he said gently. ‘Dot – will you go with him? I don’t think the poor fellow can stand by
himself.’

‘What about you?’ asked Dot, her face alight with concern.

Mr Grace stooped and picked up one of the Besiders’ coats. It trembled and fluttered in his hand like a captive bird.

‘Forty Besiders have just arrived in Ellchester,’ he said grimly, ‘and it’s clear that they are setting up a stronghold in this city. I have to find out where it is, Dot.
If we don’t locate it and destroy it, who knows how many more of the creatures will turn up here next week, or the week after?’

‘What are you planning to do?’ Dot helped Charles to his feet. Her face was a picture of anxiety, admiration and trust. Just for a fleeting moment, Trista’s mind seesawed, and
she could almost see Mr Grace and the world as Dot saw them. The next instant Trista was back to her own perspective with a thud.

Mr Grace slowly slipped on the coat. It brindled a couple of times, then settled. Occasionally it spasmed a little, its colour turning patchy like scuffed velvet.

‘You heard the creature, Dot. Some guides will be here soon, to lead forty newcomers to the Besider stronghold. Let’s hope they do not know the new arrivals by sight . . . and will
simply be looking out for strangers in eye-baffling magical coats.’

Chapter 40

From the shadowed doorway, Trista and Pen watched as Dot helped Charles limp away. Mr Grace carefully smothered the brazier and then stalked away into the night in his
twilight-coloured coat, his footprints neat and straight like a dotted line on a dress pattern.

‘I feel sick,’ said Pen in a tiny voice. ‘I think I might
be
sick.’

Trista found her hands were pressed to her own chest, perhaps in search of scissor holes.

‘He just killed them.’ Her own voice sounded breathy and lost. ‘He didn’t have to kill them.’

‘I didn’t
like
them.’ Pen’s face made crumple-shapes and her eyes were shiny. ‘But . . . they were scared . . .’

‘. . . and they didn’t hurt anyone,’ finished Trista. ‘Not until everybody attacked them.’ Her mind was still playing the scene over and over. ‘Perhaps that
old man
did
want to hurt Dot – Mr Grace seemed to think so. But sometimes Mr Grace is wrong. He was wrong about me.’

‘What do we
do
?’ whimpered Pen.

Trista drew in a breath, then found she had no words to fill with it. What
could
they do?

If she did nothing to stop Mr Grace, what would happen? If he succeeded in infiltrating the Besiders, and found his way to their haven, he would stop at nothing to destroy the stronghold and
everyone in it. If she warned the Besiders about him, though, she would almost certainly be signing his death warrant. And how could she contact the Besiders without giving herself away to the
Architect?

‘I don’t know, Pen,’ she answered faintly. ‘I don’t know.’

Trista looked at her not-sister, at her small, round, crumpled face, the dusting of snow in her hair, her stocky legs trembling with the cold. Everything became a lot simpler.

Maybe later I’ll end up choosing sides in the big fight, but saving people comes first. I have to free Sebastian’s soul and let it escape from the snows. And I have to save my
other self.

I have to save Triss.

For Triss’s own sake, and for Piers’s and Celeste’s sake. For Violet’s sake, so she doesn’t get sent to prison for murder. For Pen’s sake too, or
she’ll grow up knowing she caused her own sister’s death. And for my sake, so that – whatever happens – my life will have mattered.

She closed her eyes, and focused on the thought of Triss’s fragile voice on the telephone. Triss, with her hints about the frog, her terror of being buried alive.

Buried alive . . .

Trista opened her eyes again and was dazzled by the excited whirling of the snow.

‘Pen – I know where the ride is heading! I know where the haven is, where the Architect is taking Triss!’

‘What?’ Pen’s curiosity burned through her misery. ‘Where?’

‘It’s not the Underbelly. You heard the Besider lady – it’s somewhere new, people have only just started moving in. It’s the
new railway station
. Of course
it is – we’ve been so
stupid
! And that’s where the Architect is planning to bury Triss alive too.

‘It’s shaped like a pyramid, Pen. Pyramids are
tombs
. And tomorrow morning, your father will be in charge of the Capping Ceremony, lowering the point on to the pyramid
and sealing Triss in.
’ Trista’s blood throbbed with certainty. The Architect would not have been able to resist the twisted elegance and irony of that solution.

In Pen’s dark, horrified eyes, Trista finally saw realization dawn. At long last, Triss was no longer the threat, the twist of conflict in Pen’s gut. Triss was the frog, hearing the
deluge of earth on the lid of her box-coffin.

‘Pen,’ Trista said quickly, ‘I need you to do something for me. It’s difficult, but really important. You have to go home. You have to find your father, and tell him that
the Architect is taking Triss to the station. If he doesn’t hear anything of her or me by tomorrow morning . . . then I’ve failed, and he needs to find a way to stop the ceremony. He
could tell everyone . . . that the station caught fire, or there’s a dog trapped inside – anything to stop them lowering the cap.’

‘But he never listens to me!’ protested Pen.

‘He will this time!’ insisted Trista. ‘Everybody else will try to calm you down, and take you to doctors, and give you Ovaltine and tell you to have a nice night’s sleep.
But you
must
talk to your father, whatever happens.’

Pen cast an open-mouthed glance over her shoulder at the snow-draped streets. She looked painfully small, and Trista felt a pang at sending her away through the city by herself at night. But the
Old Docks were becoming more dangerous by the moment.

‘You could come with me!’ Pen exclaimed. ‘If we know where the Architect is taking Triss, you don’t need to chase them after all—’

‘Yes, I do,’ Trista interrupted gently. ‘You saw how hard it was to get into the Underbelly! Once the Architect hides Triss in a secret part of the station, how would anybody
ever find her? I have to try to rescue her
before
he can do that.’

Trista pulled off her blanket and wrapped it around Pen’s head and shoulders, so that she looked like a small nativity-play figure.

‘If you get lost or scared, find a policeman, or tell somebody to hand you in for the reward,’ Trista advised. ‘I didn’t want to send you home before, in case Mr Grace
hurt you – but right now he isn’t at your house. He’s
here
.’

‘I’m not scared,’ said Pen with shaky ferocity, under her blanket robe. ‘I’m
never
scared.’

‘I know,’ said Trista. Their hug was quick, cold and damp. ‘Go on then! Quickly!’

Of ran the short blanket shape, like a robust little ghost, feet slithering on the fresh snow.

Goodbye, Pen.

Trista was alone. She felt cold and strangely light, as if Pen’s presence had been a warming but heavy overcoat. She stepped out of her borrowed shoes without even
thinking about it, and left them lying pigeon-toed in the alley.

The snow burned her soles with its cold, and she was alive, alive, feeling every second. She opened her mouth and tasted the flakes, feeling her tongue tickle and her teeth ache.

Now there’s nobody to judge me, to tell me about myself. Nobody to impress, nobody to disappoint. Now is the time I find out who I am.

She searched the brazier for the Besider lady’s coat, just in case there was still enough of it for her to wear as a disguise. There was nothing left, however, except for some charred
shreds and a smell of burnt feathers.

She scaled the front of a boarding house, leaping up from sill to sill, and found a skulking point between the chimney stacks. The chimneys were hot with smoke, taking the edge off the chill,
and she could watch the street without being silhouetted against the sky. There she settled to wait, crouched like a slender-limbed gargoyle, her damp hair feathered with falling snow.

From her high vantage, the snow was a wide white shoal, ever changing, flickering with each shift of the wind. She watched as it relentlessly heaped on sills and doorsteps, weighing down
gutterings with gentle malice until they threatened to crack.

Now and then, Besiders would drift down this street or that in ones or twos. None of them seemed to notice her. Their prints in the snow were misshapen, some leaving double grooves like tracks
left by deer, or score-marks from tails dragged across the snow’s crust.

The human inhabitants withdrew, as if they sensed the strangers. Sound gradually died in the riverside public houses. No clatter of hoofs or stutter of engines interrupted the settling silence.
The snow accepted its dominion.

Distant church chimes announced the passing of time, but their voices sounded muffled and bewildered, like nightwatchmen who had lost their bearings in the blizzard.

As the darkness deepened, other boats arrived at the jetties, the snow flurries parting for them like gauze curtains. There was a little ferry made of walnut shells, its cobweb sails almost
tearing under the weight of the snowflakes. Next came a crooked white coracle, its rim jagged so that it looked like half a broken eggshell. Cold on their heels came a raft of painted poles, bound
together with mouldering ribbons and crowded with grey-clad, silent children.

Every time Trista blinked, there seemed to be more Besiders clustered in the street, mutely waiting in the cloud-coloured coats. Soon they were huddled along every jetty, the base of every wall,
in every doorway. A few lighted easily on nearby rooftops, folding wings away like umbrellas or preening them with toothed beaks.

When midnight approached, Trista could
feel
it. The snow whirled with its breath. The chill intensified as its shadow stretched long over the city. All over the Old Docks the Besiders
raised their heads to stare into the darkness, and gave a long, drawn-out hiss of excitement.

Elsewhere in the city, church bells released a muted jumble of chimes. Trista barely noticed them. Her gaze was upon the jet-black tram that had suddenly, impossibly, surged into view, gliding
down the rail-less road.

As it drew level with the jetties, it halted in a heartbeat without needing to slow. The twin trailer cars behind it came to the same unnatural stop without shunting each other.

When they were not moving, they looked eerily ordinary. Both tram-car and trailer-cars had corkscrew steps at both front and back. Through the windows of the trailer cars, Trista could make out
the usual wood trim and advertisements for hand soap. As with commonplace trams, they had open cabs at both front and back, so they could be driven from either end, and soulful, round
headlights.

No oilskin-clad driver stood braving the bitter wind, however. There was nobody manning the tram’s controls at all.

Half of the Besiders poured on to the trailer cars, finding seats inside the lower saloons or scaling the spiral steps to the open air ‘balcony’ seating on the upper level. Others
gathered around the doors, twitching with eagerness.

The doors of the tram-car itself did not open, nor did anyone make a bid to board it. Just for the fleetest moment, Trista saw the Architect at one of the lower windows, waving a gloved hand
with gracious regality. Beside him was a shorter figure, face pale under her hat . . .

Ting, ting
. The tram sounded its bell, a crystal note eerie in its mundanity.

Without warning, the tram was in motion once more, snaking away through the docklands with dizzying speed. The Besiders who had not boarded the trailer cars surged after it, like a tide of
grey-brown floodwater, bobbing and leaping. From all the surrounding rooftops figures took to the air, some spreading wings like ribbon-cloaks or skeleton leaves, others springing light as fleas
from roof to roof.

Taking a deep breath, Trista sprang from her hiding place and joined them.

The first leap was nearly her last. She had not appreciated how treacherous the snow would make the roof slopes. The white layer slithered away under her weight, so that she lost her footing and
nearly plunged to the cobbles below. A timely snatch at a chimney steadied her though, and she continued, landing on all fours each time so that her thorn claws could sink into thatch or the gaps
between tiles.

Ahead, the tram took a sharp right away from the river and directly towards a row of houses. Without effort, it ran up the front of the nearest house, drawing the trailer cars after it, then up
on to the roof, leaving two frayed grooves in the snow. There the tram and cars changed course again, speeding away along the row of roofs, tilted sideways by the tiled slope. A grey, half-seen
mass of figures followed them, like a fog of giant gnats.

Trista gave chase, trusting to instinct, toe and claw. She felt her hair stream with each leap, the wind chilling her clenched teeth. Her heart beat hard but did not seem to matter, like a loose
oddment rattling in a forgotten drawer.

She barely saw the other members of the ride, but they were all around her. Their wings beat in her ears. Her feet scuffed their forked and twisted tracks across the rooftops. Occasionally she
caught a flash of lichen-coloured eyes, or teeth bared in a grin of fellowship. She tasted snowflakes and realized that her mouth was open, that she was laughing.

All at once it felt like a game. The tram weaved this way, that way, and she matched it, increasing her speed. She was a kitten chasing a twisting piece of string. She focused all her energy and
strength, and pounced.