Zenith (15 page)

They watch a white cargo ship steal across the netherworld sea. It steers a careful path between the small islands and rooftops of the drowned city and docks at the foot of one of New Mungo’s vast towers. Candleriggs hugs her cloak around her and glances at the weathervane. ‘A bitter North Wind. It’ll be a hard night out on the ocean.’

Let her not sink
, Fox prays.

There is no point in pretending any more. Candleriggs is as worried as he is. She knows when he has met Mara and when he hasn’t. She can tell by his mood.

‘She didn’t come again tonight,’ he says quietly.

‘Ah.’

Candleriggs’s face sets like stone as she turns back to the fire.

The crescent moon and the sailing ships blur as unwanted tears burn in his eyes. Fox scrubs them away.
The whole world carries echoes of Mara. He is beginning to feel haunted by her in this lonely place. She’s there in the crescent-moon halo that peeks through the towers and the ships on the weathervanes. Her presence ghosts the bookstacks. Sometimes he thinks he hears her sigh or whisper as she leafs through a book, though he knows it’s only the wind and the birds. The white ships that dock in New Mungo remind him of her. She even called to him through the words of the book he almost burned.

Something tugs at his memory.

Fox unseals the waterproof wallet attached to his belt. He takes out a piece of thick, pulpy paper he almost forgot he had. Just before she left, Mara gave him Gorbals’s netherworld poems. He picks up the lantern. The clumsy charcoal scribbles are hard to make out in the flickering moonmoth light.

THE STARS ARE NIGHT DAISIES

TRAPPED IN HIGH BRANCHES

Fox looks up through New Mungo’s sky tunnels to the sparkling heavens above. A smile breaks on his face as he sees what the Treenester poet saw. The writing is rubbed and faded in places but three words jump out at him:

PLAY PEEKABOO MOON

Fox stares at the words, breathless. Then glances up at the moon playing peekaboo between the sky city’s towers. It has given him the glimmering of an idea. Has Mara left him the very clue he needs to kickstart his plans?

Watch over her
, he begs the moon. His heart beats hot and fast as he puts on his godgem and leaps into the Noos.

Thin moonlight lands on a battered sign wedged between two rocks. Mara can only just read the faded letters.
Tikerak
. She sounds out the strange word under her breath. Even whispered, it has the same harsh crack as her captors’ whips.

Her hands are bound tight, her feet tied just loose enough to let her walk. If she doesn’t move fast enough, if she stumbles, the sting of the whip lands on her back.

They walk in a hobbling army of threes then they are made to sit on the ground for what feels like hours. Ruby is on one side of her, Molendinar on the other. The dark lifts at last but a cold blind fog has engulfed them and Mara still can’t see where they are. All she knows is that there are rocks and pebbles, strands of frozen seaweed, underfoot. The thunder of the waterfalls is a faraway growl. She can’t make sense of what is happening.

‘Pollock was right,’ murmurs Molendinar. ‘The lights were a trap.’

Now Mara understands. The stone giants lured them to the false harbour lights and the lights lured them on to
the rocks. The ship was wrecked and they’ve been captured by their wreckers.

Is everyone safe?

She searches for Rowan’s shaved blond head and finds him. Gorbals’s darker head sticks out above the rest. She tries to make out heads and faces in the fog, mentally ticking a list of who is here, safe, if not sound. Caddie, Fir and Tron are bunched together. She can’t see the urchins, but she can hear Hoy yelling an indignant ‘oy!’ every time a whip lands on him. What about Wing, her own special urchin? Is he safe? Little Wing, who once saved her. Wing is a wiry survivor, as all the urchins are. Surely he’ll be all right? She can hear Pollock muttering frantically behind her and Possil whispering back. Mara scans the mass of heads yet again. Where’s Broomielaw and baby Clay?

Mara earns a whip sting as she looks over her shoulder.

‘Broomielaw?’ she whispers to Molendinar.

The answer is a sob.

The ice wind is bitter. Mara shivers, gripped by a deeper chill. Broomielaw must be safe. She would have saved little Clay if it took her last breath.

‘Pollock?’ Mara hisses over her shoulder, not caring if it earns her another crack of the whip. ‘Broomie and Clay?’

The whip stings her ear but she hardly feels it; she cannot believe what Pollock is saying.

Lost
.

Pollock’s eyes look bruised. His mouth is set hard. He can’t mean it. But his face tells Mara he does.

Broomielaw and Clayslaps, Pollock’s baby son, are lost.

Mara could lie down on the ground and weep, but there’s no chance of that. She is hauled to her feet, bound
to the march of this bedraggled army. Even if she stopped, the others would pull her along whether she liked it or not.

Molendinar gives another sob. She and Broomielaw are as close as sisters. Mol helped deliver little Clayslaps into the world.

‘We’ll find her,’ Mara whispers. ‘Broomie would never let anything happen to Clayslaps. They’ll be all right. They’ll have washed up somewhere.’

‘She can’t swim.’ Molendinar forces the words through chattering teeth. ‘Candleriggs made us all learn but Broomielaw wouldn’t, refused to get in the dirty water.’ Mol gives a hard laugh. ‘You know what a fusspot she is, everything has to be spick and sp—’

A deer clatters across the pebbled shore.

‘No tok!’

The deer rears up as it pulls on its harness and a whip cracks over Molendinar’s head. Mara turns and sees the stocky, hard-faced herder on the deer is a woman.

‘Our friend—’ she begins, hoping that a woman might be kind, but she’s wrong. The woman kicks her so hard she falls, almost pulling Mol and Ruby down with her. Ruby yanks her to her feet as they are herded on to a fleet of long, narrow skin boats.

‘Merien?’ croaks Mara. She’s crammed hard against Ruby. ‘Is she—–?’

Ruby nods to a boat that has already pushed out from the shore. ‘I thought I saw her. I’m not sure.’ Her mouth twitches and Mara realizes with a shock that Ruby is close to tears.

‘She took me under her wing. All my family died,’ Ruby murmurs.

Mara hesitates. ‘So did mine.’

For the first time, Ruby glances at Mara without her usual sneer.

Mara returns the glance with surprise. It’s a truce of a kind. And something more. Mara is sure she saw a softening of Ruby’s sharp eyes. Being human, thinks Mara, is maybe all they have left.

An oar lands on Mara’s lap and she obeys the signal to row almost without thinking, as the others do. As the boat pulls away from the shore they pass the bruised white hull of their ship, keeled over on the rocks. It looks almost peaceful, as if it’s only resting awhile. As they leave it behind, Mara glimpses its name for the first time.

Arkiel

How many others from the
Arkiel
are lost? Mara looks over at the other boats, feeling sick. Lost, she tells herself. That means they could have washed up somewhere. Her mind reels back from the word
drowned
.

They row in and out of fog drifts. Suddenly they enter a clear patch and Mara can see where they are.

It’s a vast fjord. Mountains loom high on either side and far in front, enclosing the channel of sea. The boats make a winding route through ice floes, islets and skerries, the rocky humps of land that clutter the fjord. Their precarious journey through the fjord is like a giant pinball game, thinks Mara, and she glances across at the back of Rowan’s head. Her arms are aching from the oars, but Rowan was grey and trembling with exhaustion on the ship. What state is he in now?

Beside her, Molendinar is scanning every islet and skerry, desperate for a sign of Broomielaw and baby Clay. Alongside them, a long boat is heaped with booty plundered from the
Arkiel
– all the stuff the urchins looted from the museum in the drowned city. There are swords,
spears, shields and axes, bits of armour, musical instruments, jewellery, engines, cogs and wheels and microscopes and compasses, jars of pickled brains and, sitting atop the huge pile with a crown on his head, Scarwell’s stolen apeman.

The waterfall thunder grows louder, so loud it seems to thrum in the bones. The boats slow up as they approach a wide, rocky bay.

Mara stares around her, sullen and furious. No one knows where these people are taking them, why they’ve wrecked and captured them or what they intend to do with them, yet everyone is mindlessly doing what they’re told.

There must be thirty refugees in this boat alone. The handful of whip-cracking wreckers are well outnumbered. Surely, even with tied hands and feet, if all the refugees act in a surge . . .

Mara spots a gun in the belt of a wrecker. But do they all have guns? She glances at each one in turn, but can’t be sure. How many bullets does a gun hold? If they overpowered their captors quickly enough, they could turn the guns on them.

They are close enough to struggle ashore. All Mara needs to do is shout at the top of her voice and rouse the others, command them to fight.

But they won’t trust me. Not after I’ve landed them here in this mess.

She looks around and catches the eye of one of the men from the
Arkiel
, tries to hold his glance but he looks away. Mara takes a breath, opens her mouth.

‘Don’t you dare.’ Ruby’s voice is murderous.

‘Mara,’ Molendinar whispers on her other side. ‘Have you lost it?’

‘I’d say so,’ grunts Ruby, and kicks Mara so hard she almost yelps.

Mara kicks back. ‘There are a lot more of us than them,’ she hisses. ‘Why are we acting like lambs?’

Molendinar looks puzzled. ‘Your backpack,’ she whispers.

Mara feels as if she is falling through the floor of the boat.
My backpack
. It’s not here. How could she not have noticed? She’s kept it with her ever since she left her own island.

‘All your precious things,’ murmurs Molendinar.

Mara can’t speak.
Where is it?
She tries to remember when she last had it. It must have been wrenched off her when the ship went down, when she was thrashing about, struggling to reach the surface of the sea. Her arms follow the movements of the oar, though she feels ill with shock. Her backpack has the cyberwizz zipped inside, safe and watertight, though what good is that if it’s lost on the seabed, along with the wrecked ship?

It’s her only connection with Fox and it’s gone. Mara feels sick to her soul.

Mol squeezes her hand, hard. ‘It’ll wash up somewhere. So will Broomielaw and Clayslaps.’

Guilt stings Mara. The loss of two precious people is much worse than the loss of her cyberwizz, she knows it is. Yet deep down she knows she can survive their loss because she has survived even worse, the worst there is: the deaths of the people closest to her in the whole world. Losing Broomielaw and baby Clay and even Fox is not worse than that. And Fox is still alive; it’s only her connection with him that’s lost. But to lose him and know he’s not dead; to know he’s out there, forever unreachable – how will she bear that? She has imagined them an ocean
apart yet together always, meeting on the Bridge to Nowhere, no matter what the future may hold.

‘Mol, I can’t bear—’

‘No tok!’

The wire whip cracks across her back but Mara hardly notices. Hopelessness has fallen upon her like a rock.

They have steered into a rocky enclosure, a rough harbour cluttered with boats. The wreckers begin to mass the refugees on to a shore stacked with boulders. Mara sees Molendinar mouth something at Gorbals as they are herded across the shore.

Gorbals stares, stumbles, almost falls.

‘
Broomielaw? No
. . .’

The words hang frozen in the air. Mara closes her eyes but not quick enough. Gorbals looks as if he’s just stepped off the edge of a cliff.

Torrents of icy water crash from the mountains, frothing the sea in the bay. Some waterfalls are so high their beginnings are lost in cloud. A ray of sun shoots through the mist and lands with a flash among the waterfalls. Another breaks through, then another. The rays merge into one broad, strong sunbeam that begins to burn away the mist.

Mara stares at the flashing mountain that looms above. Peaks jut into the sky in violent exclamations of rock.

She hears Rowan behind her, a crack of amazement in his voice. ‘Up there, are those – they can’t be . . . doors?’

Doors?
Mara looks up and blinks.

The mountain is studded with them. She studies those nearest the ground. Their cracked and faded colours have a metallic sheen. And now, as the blur of mist burns away, she can make out what seems to be stone dwellings, each one fronted by a door, carved out of the rock face. There
are more doors set into mounds of rock, stone-built versions of the igloos pictured in her Greenland book, perched precariously on ledges all over the mountain. Mara screws up her eyes and sees that each stone mound is wrapped in chains. The stone igloos are fastened to the mountain by chains.