The navigator (7 page)

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Owen kept his eyes closed, allowing the fear to subside. His heart was beating wildly. When he finally opened his eyes he saw the Sub-Commandant, Chancellor, and Contessa. There were others standing behind, but it was the still form of Cati that brought him to his feet.

"She will recover," Contessa said. "They attempted to freeze her, but they did not succeed."

"No thanks to him!" the long-haired man said angrily, stepping forward. "He took Cati across the river to deliver her into the hands of the Harsh."

"He tried to shield her from them, Samual," Pieta said, her voice ringing across the space between them. "She would now be frozen forever if it was not for him."

"It's a trick," Samual said. "He's trying to fool you!"

"That is enough, Samual," Contessa said, and a dangerous light burned in her eyes. "The young man has just escaped with his life. Now is not the time."

"I saw what happened," Samual said slowly and deliberately. "I saw what happened when his foot touched the water! He couldn't hide the agony on his face."

No one said anything. None of them would look at Owen except the Sub-Commandant, who fixed him with a level, gray-eyed stare that revealed nothing.

Cati stirred. Her eyes seemed dulled and milky, and when she spoke her voice was weak and her breath hung in the air in frozen clouds, the way warm breath does in cold air.

"I... I... could not move. I was so scared. I followed

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him ... I followed him to his mother's house. He carried me. He saved me."

Her head slumped back again. Contessa looked grimly satisfied, as if any question about Owen had been decisively answered. The Sub-Commandant swept Cati up into his arms and walked away swiftly. He did not look back.

"I must make up my mind about this," Chancellor said heavily. "I will sleep on it."

Samual looked as if he would say something more, but instead turned on his heel and stalked off into the darkness.

"Owen needs rest," Contessa said. "This has been the longest day of his young existence, Chancellor. He has been bereft and thrown into another world. His life has hung by a thread this past hour."

"All I did was look for my mother," Owen said, trying to keep his voice steady. "There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"

"No, Owen," Chancellor said, "but do you understand that we are all in great danger? None of us can do what we want, even if your mission is as important as looking for your mother. Do you understand?"

Owen nodded slowly. The cold breath of the Harsh was still fresh in his head. He knew that this wasn't a dream. He shivered. No one had ever wanted to kill him before.

"He will want to go back to his Den," Contessa said,

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"but I don't think he should be on his own. He has enemies that he does not yet know about."

"I'll go with him," the bearded man said. "On my way back I can deal with the sentries that allowed the boy and the girl to walk right through the lines." He grasped Owen's hand. "My name is Rutgar. I am the sergeant here, head of the military, such as it is. Come with me."

Owen felt Chancellor's eyes on him as Rutgar steered him toward the path away from the river. The journey back to the Den seemed endless, but each time he stumbled Rutgar caught his elbow. He was too tired to talk, but Rutgar seemed to understand this, although he muttered to himself under his breath as he walked, about the sentries who had allowed Owen and Cati to slip through their lines.

Rutgar knew exactly where the Den was. "There's not one stone of this riverbank I don't know," he said. "Do you think that this is the first time I've had to defend it? Go on and sleep. You'll be looked after tonight."

"I don't want to be watched," Owen said faintly. Rutgar studied him for a minute.

"All right, then," he said. "My men will watch the paths around your Den--and they'd better watch them properly this time, to make sure nothing gets in and you don't get out again." He sounded angry, but as he spoke he clapped Owen on the back. "Go in and get to sleep. You'll need your energy." Owen nodded quickly and ducked into the Den. Rutgar looked after him thoughtfully, then turned away.

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In the Den, Owen collapsed on the old sofa. He pulled the sleeping bag over him and kept his clothes on. There was a cold feeling lurking in his bones, but before he could think about the Harsh and their icy terror, tiredness overcame him and he slipped into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Down at the river all was quiet. A sentry called out and another answered in the dark. They did not want to be caught out again. One of the sentries appeared at the end of the fallen log, examined it, and walked on. All was still. Then a shape detached itself from the shadows underneath the trees on the Workhouse side of the river. Keeping low to the ground, the shape moved toward the trunk, looking at first like an animal and then like a human figure hunched under a cloak. It clambered onto the end of the log and then, moving in a fluid and seamless way, crossed the river, slipped off the end of the log, and disappeared into the field beyond. As it did so, a fine lace of ice formed along the edge of the river where the water met the bank. And as the figure disappeared with no more than a rustie into the darkness, there was a whispering noise as the ice melted and dissolved back into the black water.

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Owen woke early the next morning and ran straight to the Workhouse without even a drink of water. He ran up the stairs and into the main hallway. Even though people were busy, moving with purpose, he saw more than one curious glance cast in his direction. He found the stairway that led to the kitchen, and he plunged downward. When the stair opened out into the kitchen he found it calmer than the previous day. The great ovens were glowing and many huge pots were simmering on them. He saw Contessa and he half walked, half ran over to her. She turned to him. Her face was grave but she spoke before he did.

"Cati will recover, Owen. I think you saved her. But only just. I had to put her back to sleep in the Starry. She

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was frozen to the very core of her being. I am surprised that you were not. Perhaps you have a special resistance."

"I was cold," he said. "Freezing."

"The cold they emit is not just physical, Owen. It freezes the very quick of you. Your soul. You're very strong."

"Strong," said a voice. "You'd be good and strong, maybe. But maybe they had fair cause not to freeze you. Them ones could have had cause to spare you."

Owen turned to see a tall, thin youth with a solemn face. His trousers were torn and on top he wore something that might have been a shirt at some time but now was so ripped and dirty that it could have been anything, and was certainly no protection against the cold morning air. When Owen looked down he saw that the boy's feet were bare.

"Wesley," Contessa said sharply, "I won't have malicious gossip repeated in my kitchen."

"It's what people do say," Wesley said, but he grinned in a mischievous way and stuck out his hand. Owen took it and Wesley shook his hand vigorously.

"Wesley," he said. "I do be one of the Raggies. I brung fish for the lady Contessa."

Owen looked down for the first time. There were perhaps twenty boxes of fish on the ground around them, bringing with them a smell of the sea.

"I have an idea," Contessa said. "There are those who wish to ask you about last night, and their thoughts are not kindly for the moment. You would be better out of

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the way. Would you take him to the Hollow with you, Wesley?"

"I will, lady."

"I want to see Cati," Owen said.

"She is asleep," Contessa said, suddenly seeming taller, her eyes glittering with a dangerous light. "Are you not listening?"

"Come on," Wesley said cheerfully, pulling at Owen's sleeve, "before the lady do devour the two of us." Contessa didn't say anything and her eyes were like stone, but as they walked away with a chirpy "Cheerio, lady!" from Wesley, Owen thought he saw the ghost of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

Wesley walked quickly, even in his bare feet, and Owen had trouble keeping up. They left the Workhouse and Wesley started on a path that followed the river down to the sea, curving toward the town and the harbor. At first Owen fired questions at Wesley, but the boy only turned and grinned at him and pressed on even harder. They came to the place where a new concrete bridge had crossed the road between the town and his house, but there was no bridge and no road. Owen climbed up the riverbank. Despite everything he had been told, he still expected to see the familiar streets of the town.

The town was there, but with a sinking feeling Owen saw that it looked as if it had been abandoned for a hundred years. The houses and shops were roofless and windows gaped blank and sightless. The main street was a strip of matted grass and small trees, and ivy and other creepers

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wrapped themselves round broken telegraph poles. Where new buildings had once stood there was bare ground or the protruding foundations of older buildings. The rusty skeleton of what had once been a bus sat at right angles in the middle of the street. A gust of wind stirred the heads of the grasses and the trees and blew through the bare roofs of the houses with a melancholy whistling sound.

Owen slipped back down the riverbank. The town was starting to crumble back into time, taking with it the memory of the people who had once walked its streets. He remembered what Cati had said about living things growing young but the things made by man decaying as time reeled backward.

"Never pay no mind," Wesley said gentry. "That's just the way it is now. All them things can be put right if we put old Ma Time back the way she should be, running like a big clock going forward. You just stick with us. We'll put all yon people back in their minutes and hours, and Ma Time, she'll put us boys back to sleep again. Come on," he said, lifting Owen to his feet, "let's get on down to the harbor."

This time Wesley walked alongside Owen. The water in the river got deeper as they approached the harbor and Owen found himself veering away from it, which Wesley noticed.

"That's what I heard," he said, with something like satisfaction, "that you can't abide the water."

"Who told you that?" demanded Owen.

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"They was all talking about it," Wesley said, "that the new boy, Time's recruit, did fear the water."

"I don't like it too much," Owen said.

Wesley rounded on him sharply, his face close to Owen's, his voice suddenly low and urgent.

"Do not be saying that to anyone. No one. Do you not know? I reckon not. The Harsh cannot cross any water--not fresh nor salt--and the touch of it revolts them unless they can first make ice of it. If any see you afeared of water, they will think you Harsh or a creature of the Harsh."

Owen remembered how the long-haired man, Samual, had reacted when he had seen Owen's foot touch the water. "I think they know already," he said slowly.

"Then it will be hard on you," Wesley said, "it will be fierce hard."

"You don't think I'm one of the Harsh, do you?" Owen said. His voice trembled slightly, but Wesley just threw his head back and laughed.

"Harsh. You? No, I don't think you're Harsh. I think you're like one of us, the Raggies. You been abandoned and the world treats you bad, and even though you ain't as thin as Raggies, I do know a hunger when I see it."

Owen didn't expect the harbor to look the same and he wasn't disappointed. The metal cranes were twisted and rusted. Most of the sheds had gone and the fish-processing factory was a roofless shell. The boats were still tied up, but it was a ghost fleet. The metal-hulled boats lay half

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sunk in oily water. The wooden boats had fared better and some of them still floated, but the paint had long faded from them, and their metal fittings had all gone.

"It's like they've been abandoned for twenty years," Owen said.

"Longer than that," said Wesley. "Ma Time, she goes back more fast than she goes forward."

Thinking about time made Owen's head hurt. He looked back the way they had come. He could see the slateless roofs of the town, then a white mist where the Harsh camp was, and beyond that, the mountains that hemmed the town into this little corner of land, their tops white with snow. He saw that Wesley was making for the area of run-down warehouses that was always referred to as the Hollow. As they got closer, going out onto what Owen knew as the South Pier but which now seemed to be a causeway over dry land, he saw that the buildings had not changed at all. There were five or six stone-built warehouses with empty windows in the front of them. Owen thought he could see rags or cloths in each window. As he looked, many of the rags started to stir, and then it dawned on him that each one was a child or young person dressed the same way as Wesley. A shout went up from them and Owen thought that there was dismay in the sound. As they closed in rapidly, he saw that they were looking out to sea. Wesley said something under his breath and climbed the parapet of the South Pier. Owen followed.