Shadows (22 page)

Mara looked up; the sun indeed blazed almost directly overhead. “We're lost, in other words,” she said.

“We're in the ocean west of Aygrima,” Chell said. “So we're not
lost
lost. But where we'll intercept land again . . .” He shrugged.

We could miss the Secret City altogether!
The thought made Mara feel sick. She had to know what was happening there, had to know the results of her folly . . .

But however much she felt she
had
to know, the world did not order itself so that she
would
know: land remained defiantly out of sight.

“You must be hungry,” Mara said, focusing on one thing she could do something about. She rummaged in the locker for food. There were two fillets left of the smoked fish they had stolen from the village where they had acquired the boat, and she handed one to Chell and took the other herself. “That's all of it.”

He nodded as he bit hungrily into it. “Another reason we have to get to shore,” he said. “But at least we still have water. You can go a long time without food.”

Mara swallowed her own fish in three bites and nodded bravely, though her stomach growled as though demanding more.

They sailed on. As the sun began to set, Chell adjusted their course accordingly until they were sailing directly away from it. By nightfall there was still no sign of land, and Chell turned into the wind, bringing the sail ashiver, and then came forward to lower and loosely stow it.

“We're stopping?” Mara said in alarm.

“I have to rest,” Chell said. “And sailing in toward an unknown shore in the dark is as good a recipe as I can imagine for disaster.” He was rummaging in the locker now.

“There's no more food,” Mara said. Food had been much on her mind all day.

“I'm not looking for food,” Chell said, his voice muffled by his head-down position. He straightened suddenly. “I'm looking for this.”

Mara could barely see it in the dim, fading twilight. It looked like a canvas cone, open at the narrow end, attached by three cords to a length of rope. “Is that for catching fish?” she said hopefully.

“No,” Chell said. “It's called a sea anchor. I'll stream it over the bow and it will keep the boat pointed into the wind overnight so we aren't swamped while we sleep.”

“Oh,” Mara said.

Chell suited actions to words, and sure enough, the bow of the boat swung around into the wind. Then he drank from the water barrel and stretched out on the floorboards. “Nothing to do until morning,” he said, and his voice already sounded sleepy. “Get some rest.” A moment later his deep, regular breathing proclaimed he was doing as he had instructed.

Mara lay down next to him and pulled the blanket over both of them. The warmth of his body was welcome, but . . . distracting. It brought back disconcerting memories of the hut. She decided not to think about that supremely embarrassing moment and concentrate instead on what would happen when they got to the Secret City . . . but those thoughts weren't much more comforting. In the end she just lay there, staring up at the stars, brighter and nearer, it seemed, than she had ever seen them before, and waited for sleep to come.

When it did, at last, it was blessedly free of nightmares, and she didn't wake (stiff and sore and very, very hungry) until the stars had vanished and the still-clear sky was once more full of light.

Chell was in the bow, his back to her, and when she realized what he was doing she lay back down and closed her eyes until she heard him come back into the stern. Then she looked up at him as he began loosening the ties on the sail. “Good morning,” she said.

“Good morning,” he said, glancing back down at her. “A good breeze picking up. We'll make land before you know it.”

Mara nodded and sat up, wincing a little. Chell raised the sail, left it shaking in the wind, went back to the stern and began hauling in the sea anchor, drops of water shining like rubies in the red glare of the morning sun as they fell from the dripping rope. Once he had it aboard, he settled himself at the tiller once more, pulled in on the sheet to quiet the sail, and set a course toward the sunrise. “Wind is almost dead astern,” he called to Mara. “Stay in the bow. If it shifts she could jibe.”

Mara didn't know what a “jibe” was, but she needed to go into the bow for a personal reason anyway. She clambered forward, out of sight from Chell behind the sail, took care of that immediate and pressing need, and then settled down to keep a lookout. She feared they would be sailing all day again, but in fact no more than an hour after Chell raised the sail she saw a low line of gray-green on the horizon and shouted, “Land ho!”

“Good,” Chell said. “Sing out if you see any rocks or shallows.”

Mara nodded and peered ahead, but saw nothing until they were so close in to the gray cliffs, still in shadow as the sun climbed beyond them, that she had to crane her head to look up at the spiky trees clinging to their tops. “Ready about,” said Chell, and Mara turned to ask him what that meant just in time to see him put the tiller over. The boom swung across, and the sail began to pull again as they headed north once more.

The gray cliffs slipped by. Mara studied them, looking for anything she recognized. They could have been the cliffs just south of the Secret City . . . or they could have been cliffs a hundred miles north of it, for all she knew.

Then, late in the morning, she saw smoke rising above a particularly prominent headland (they had already sailed around several smaller ones) that blocked their path due north. She pointed it out to Chell. “It could be from the Secret City,” she said, but even as she said it, she realized she was wrong: the headland south of the City was much less prominent than this one. “No,” she said. “No, it couldn't. It must be a village.” And the nearest village, Stony Beach, she remembered, was a full day's journey by horse south of the Secret City.

Chell nodded. “We'll land this side of the headland, then,” he said.

“Land?” Mara stared at him. “But that will just slow us down!”

“Not as much as growing weaker from hunger,” Chell said. “We need food.”

Mara opened her mouth to protest, but at the mention of food her stomach growled violently, and she shut it again.

The cliffs had become more broken as they sailed north, and just south of the headland Chell spotted a tiny cove with a narrow strip of shingle. He lowered the sail and they rowed in toward it, crunching aground about ten feet offshore. Together they jumped out and pulled the boat higher up. Mara discovered to her alarm that the ground seemed to be moving under her feet. Chell, who was tying the boat to the nearest tree, glanced up at her and laughed. “Don't worry,” he said. “Your land legs will come back soon enough.” He looked up the slope to the north. “Looks climbable,” he said. “Let's go see what we can see.”

They labored in silence up a rocky slope studded with a few wind-twisted pine trees. At the top they slowed, and crawled the last few feet until they could look down into the cove beyond.

Sure enough, there was a village, and a fairly sizable one: fifty or sixty houses, and some larger buildings near the center of the town. Only a couple of boats were tied up to the three wooden piers. “Probably out fishing,” Chell said softly. “That will help. Fewer people around.”

Mara, peering down at the village, saw something that made her stiffen. She touched Chell's arm. “Look,” she said. “Over there, just on the edge of the woods.”

Chell glanced that way. “Looks like a building burned down.”

“Not just any building,” Mara said. “The Maskmakers' shop.”

He gave her a skeptical look. “What makes you say that?”

“Because I know who burned it,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted.

“The unMasked Army,” she said. “They raided it to get the tools I needed to make counterfeit Masks, and burned the shop to cover their tracks. This is Stony Beach. It's the closest village to the Secret City . . . but it's still a full day's ride.”

“Less than that sailing,” Chell said. “If we can sail straight up the coast.”

Something else Mara had been told when she'd first arrived in the Secret City came back to her. “I don't think we can,” she said slowly. “I asked once why no fishing boats ever came offshore of the Secret City. Hyram said there are all kinds of rocks and shoals between the Secret City and here. We'll have to go out to sea again and then back.”

Chell shook his head. “Keltan will have made it back before us,” he said. “I don't see how we can beat him.”

“I just hope he and Edrik beat the Watchers,” Mara said miserably.

“It doesn't change anything right now,” Chell said. “We still need food. And I think I see where to get it.” He pointed off to the left, where a house stood apart from the rest, its back close up against the slope of the headland they had climbed. “There's no smoke rising from that one, so maybe nobody's home. And we can get up to its back door without being seen. Come on.”

Mara followed Chell as he wriggled back down behind the ridgeline. They hurried along it until he thought they were just the other side of the headland from the lone house, and then climbed up again. He'd judged it well, Mara saw as they peered down again. The house lay below them and a little to their right, and there were trees between them and the village.

They picked their way cautiously down the slope, and came up to the house from the west, keeping a close eye on the windows to make sure no one looked out: but the house seemed safely deserted.

The back door was closed but not locked. “Keep watch,” Chell whispered to Mara, and slipped inside.

Mara crept down to the corner of the house and took a cautious look toward Stony Beach. What she saw made her breath freeze in her throat.

The village, deserted half an hour before when they'd first looked into it, now teemed with people: black clad, black-Masked, armed, armored, and mounted.

Watchers!

Mara jerked her head back and pressed her back up against the rough wood of the house's wall, gasping; then she spun to the door and jerked it open. “Chell!”

Chell, busily filling a bag with the contents of a cupboard in the tiny kitchen, gave her a startled look. “What is it?”

“Watchers!” Mara said. “The village is full of them!”

Chell went to the window and took a quick look, then spun. “Time to go!”

They hurried out and started back up the slope. Mara, panting in Chell's wake, hoped desperately that the woods were enough to hide them. No shouts rang out and no Watchers galloped their way, so it seemed that they were. On top of the ridge, they hurried back to their old vantage point and took another look.

The Watchers were going in and out of houses, returning with bags much like the one Chell carried. Silent women stood by like statues, holding on to crying children. “What are they doing?” Mara said.

“Provisioning,” Chell said. “At the expense of those poor villagers.” He glanced at her. “Just like we did.”

Mara felt a pang of guilt. It couldn't be an easy life in a remote fishing village like this. Who knew how much hardship they had just caused the man who owned the house they had raided, who would return from fishing to find his cupboard bare?

At least he won't be alone
, she thought as Watchers emerged from yet another house carrying supplies.
And he'll blame the Watchers.
But that didn't really make her feel any better about it.

“Let's get out of here,” Chell said. “Those Watchers are heading to the same place we're trying to get to.”

Mara nodded. They scrambled backward from the ridge and then turned and hurried down the slope to the boat, throwing the provisions on board and pushing off. Mara's feet took another soaking and she wondered miserably if they would ever be either dry or warm again.

It took them a long time to reach the tip of the headland, zigzagging back and forth into the wind, a slow process Chell called “tacking.” Mara quickly learned that “ready about” meant the boom was about to swing over, and to shift her weight from one side of the boat to the other as needed.

By the time they reached open water and were able to sail due north again, the sun was well past the zenith and sinking toward the west. But there were hours of daylight left yet, which meant they were fully lit and fully exposed to the village as they sailed around the headland and turned toward their destination once more. Still, they were far enough out from it that they would only be an anonymous fishing boat . . . she hoped. All she could see, as she looked back down toward Stony Beach, was a low cluster of roofs and the smoke that had drawn them to the village in the first place.

Twenty minutes later they had sailed past the tip of the next headland and the village . . . and the Watchers, if they were still there . . . were lost to sight.

The food—dried fish, smoked fish, dried berries, hard cheese and harder bread, plus a couple of bottles of sour wine—was hardly a feast, but Mara thought she'd never tasted anything so wonderful. Feeling comfortably full, she almost enjoyed the afternoon's sail through bright sunlight over glittering, friendly waves; probably would have, if not for the frantic feeling that they were already too late.

That feeling intensified when Chell once more insisted on streaming the sea anchor overnight. She would have preferred to keep sailing, but again, he shook his head. “You yourself told me there are dangerous waters along the coast between Stony Beach and the Secret City,” he said. “Getting ourselves drowned won't help anyone . . . especially us!” But at least he had sailed until it was almost too dark to see, and they were on their way again at first light.

Chell kept them as far out to sea as he could without losing sight of the coast altogether. More than once he pointed out places where the waves churned over shallows, or splashed white in the sunshine against distant rocks. Mara understood the necessity, but still she fretted that they would sail past the Secret City altogether.