Ebony Hill (7 page)

“I’ll stay,” I tell him. “I can’t fight but I can,” my voice falters, “I can do other things.” Even as I claim it I wonder whether it’s true. If Esha was alive I’d simply offer her my help. Without her … I shake my head. My friend Merryn on Dunnett taught me how to set a bone and make healing tonics, but I doubt those are skills with much application against guns and bombs.

Ronan begins to fiddle with a basket of onions, turning them so that their papery necks all face upwards in tidy rows. “Are you still glad you came to Vidya?”

I hesitate, wondering how Esha’s death has changed the answer I might give. Perhaps it hasn’t. “I couldn’t stay where I was,” I say at last, not quite answering. “The islanders would have killed me for harbouring a stranger. For harbouring Dev.”

“He told me,” Ronan says.

I feel betrayed. But why should I, when I’d have told Ronan anyway? “What was Ister like?” I counter.

Ronan shrugs. “Like this. People fought to get control of the things they thought mattered: the power plant and harbour and roads. It went on a long time. By the end all
that mattered was food so they fought over that.”

“Is that why you left?”

His silence stretches out a long time. I catch my lip between my teeth, wondering whether I’ve intruded too far. His nails have peeled their way into an onion and the sharp tang of it bruises my eyes.

“We didn’t leave till later,” he says at last. “If it hadn’t been for the fighting, we wouldn’t have needed to; we’d have been all right. But my father—”

His words dry up. Impulsively I lay my hand on his wrist. The tendons jump beneath my fingers. “He was trying to save our breeding stock.” He drops his hands to his sides.

An awkward silence hums around us, tight as walls closing in. “No one wins in wars,” Ronan says finally.

“So, why fight?”

His shoulder jerks. “What choice is there? Everyone got drawn into it on Ister. We had no alternative; we had to defend what we had or starve. It’s the same here. Vidya can’t survive without the farms. The city couldn’t feed itself. Sooner or later, war reaches everyone.”

I’m amazed he’s seen so much, so clearly, when I’ve been in Vidya two years and scarcely seen anything beyond my own nose. Saice comes in, and tries to hide her surprise at finding us there. My blush must make her think there’s more to it than there is, and Ronan doesn’t help by scuttling off like a mouse caught too far from its hole.

Trying to regain my composure, I make my offer of help and Saice leads me to the nursery, explaining what
we need to do to convert it to a hospital ward.

There’s a queasy tug in my belly as I help replace toys and clothes with bandages and medical supplies. As I remake the beds I wonder whether Ronan is right: that war reaches everyone, harms everyone, irrespective of who wins. But if he is, then where does that leave us?

Lynd, the head of Decon, is wiry and short, tight-mouthed, hard-eyed. When she leads her team into the kitchen she barely spares us a glance. “Where’s Brenon?” Her voice suits her, harsh and tight.

“Truso’s office – along the hall on the left,” one of the women tells her.

Lynd nods to the men and women with her – seven of them – and they slump around the table. The cooks roll their eyes – they’ve just finished feeding the second shift of fieldworkers – but Saice beckons me with a tilt of her head and we begin ladling soup. The Decon unit accept it gratefully. I wonder when they last ate a proper meal.

I look them over surreptitiously as I lay out spoons and bread. The weapons they have strapped across their backs are unfamiliar – the length of a rifle but with a wooden cross-spar a third of the way along. The men and women themselves look tired but not bloodied, not as if they’ve been in battle. My relief that there’s been no more killing – yet – is swallowed in a yawn.

Saice takes a stack of plates from my hands. “Go to bed, Ness. It’s late, and you’ve already done a double shift. You’ll wear yourself ragged.”

I could tell her there’s a reason why I push myself so hard, why I pleaded with Truso to let me join the field crews, why I volunteered my help in the kitchen even after a full day’s work on the farm. We’ve all more work than we can manage. Truso’s resistance to my offer was ultimately tempered by practicality. My motivation was no less practical. As I trudge towards my room, it’s with the hope that exhaustion will allow me more sleep than I’ve managed the last two nights.

Lynd’s voice snakes from Truso’s office as I pass. “… left a team split between the two. Security up there was practically non-existent.” Her tone is disparaging. “They say there have so far been no indications of trouble, but if the paras plan to attack the other hill farms, they’re not likely to broadcast their intentions in advance.”

“They know what they’re doing,” Brenon confirms. “Farra estimates at least twenty-five dug in at Summertops excluding patrols, plenty of hardware, perimeter well secured. Sightings of two prisoners, both female.”

I hurry on. I don’t want to be caught eavesdropping, nor to hear about the prisoners. The last thing I need is more images to add to those that already trouble my nights.

The dorm is dark when I reach it, the gentle sough of breath telling me the others are already asleep. Quiet as I can, I slip out of my clothes and slide down between the blankets. The bed to my left is empty. The girl who slept
there left this morning for Vidya, together with her two young brothers and pregnant mother. Two other women went with them, one with a babe not yet out of arms, the other shepherding all six of the youngsters Saice and I evicted from the nursery. With their escort of scouts, the jigger was full. I was relieved that it saved me from making a decision, and facing a battle with Truso.

Over our evening meal someone whispered that the report Brenon sent with the evacuees carried a request for another unit of scouts – or two units. The debate on whether this was good news or bad – more scouts to protect us weighed against the assumption that we’ll need them – ended without resolution when four of Brenon’s sentries slumped into the empty seats beside us.

I stretch out on my back and knead an ache in my shoulder. I don’t know how Home Farm would house sixty more scouts, let alone feed them, or who’ll do the planting if Truso keeps on with his plan to despatch half the community back to Vidya. I wonder if Brenon has thought it all through. Or Ronan. Despite one eye still being swollen almost shut, he insisted on joining the field crew today. We were assigned to different crews so we had no chance to talk.

Pulling my blankets tight to shut out any draught, I turn my thoughts determinedly away from Ebony Hill and Brenon and Ronan and Vidya. Instead I unfold a memory: my cousin Sophie sitting in a field of ripening rye, one hand over her mouth and her eyes wide with wonder as Ty showed her a nest of blind and naked field mice. How old were we then? Ty must have been seven,
Sophie six. Aunt Tilda was maybe less harsh in those days – with Sophie at least. I turn the memory to keep Tilda’s squint-eyed scowl from intruding and look for Uncle Marn, stooking wheat on the far side of the field. Late summer. There were larks – I remember their song. Tilda had one of her headaches; that’s why she’d sent us out of the house. It had been Ty’s idea to find mice to show Sophie. The ache in my back and shoulders becomes the ache of late summer harvests, and the tiredness that tugs at me, the tiredness of Tilda’s constant chores. As I drift into sleep I hear the shriek of a gull and see Sophie turn her face seaward, searching.

Muffled sounds wake me. I turn in my bed and they stop, but only for a minute. I sit up. “What’s wrong?”

It’s Tanlin who’s crying. She draws a ragged breath but doesn’t answer.

“It’ll be all right,” I whisper. “The scouts know what they’re doing.” My mind registers how the platitude echoes Brenon’s overheard words.

“It’s not that.” She sniffs. “Truso says I have to go back to Vidya tomorrow, as soon as the jigger returns.”

“Don’t you want to?” Tanlin is only twelve and has cried herself to sleep the last few nights.

“My sister is at Dales,” she says. “She went with our father last week. He said he’d take me next time because it wouldn’t be fair to leave Mam all on her own.” Her voice quivers. “I don’t want to go without them.”

Sliding out into the cold, I feel my way to her side. “They’ll be all right.” I sit on the edge of her bed, nudging
up against her hip. “I heard Lynd say the invaders haven’t gone anywhere near Dales or Pinehill, but that she left a whole Decon crew with them, just in case.”

Tanlin turns over to give me more space. “If they’d brought Sia back with them, we could have gone to Vidya together.”

Last week, cheerful banter had provided the backdrop to the plodding work of planting. Today, it was muttered talk of who would go back and who would stay, of the bereaved, of those who had family at Summertops. “What does your mother think?” I ask Tanlin.

“She says I’m to go and she’ll wait here for Sia.”

“That sounds a good plan.”

“She says we might have to walk because the jigger is for babies and old people and there might not be room.”

“Would you mind walking?”

“Not really, except for where the line runs above the dead town. It gives me the shivers.” She has mastered her tears.

“Me too,” I tell her.

“One time, we stopped to visit the people who live in one of the little settlements by the sea, the one just before the first tunnel. We gave them a sack of grain in exchange for a hen, but Mam told me to let the hen loose before we left. She said they had little enough. Their baby was sick and there was a boy who showed me a hut he’d built. You could smell the sea from his hut and it smelt nicer than it does in Vidya.”

My words catch in my throat, as if a breath of Vidya’s
tainted air has settled in my lungs. I don’t want to go back. The strength of my certainty startles me. Tanlin blows her nose.

I pat her shoulder. “You’ll need a good night’s sleep if you have to walk all the way to Vidya,” I say.

“Will you be coming too? Truso said all the girls would be going.”

I shake my head. “I have to stay and help Saice. You might be able to stop on the way and see the little boy and the baby.”

“And the hen.”

“And the hen.”

In the morning I’ll tell Truso my decision.

Once Tanlin’s breathing has settled I creep back to my bed. There’s no reason I can see why Truso shouldn’t let me stay, and Ronan too. We can both work in the fields, and with the scouts here, his fears of an attack are surely lessened. If it does happen – I chase the notion from my head. I don’t want to dwell on the possibility, not now, in the darkness, with the memory of Esha hovering so near I feel that if I stretch out my fingers I’ll find her hand.

Tired as I am, sleep eludes me. I stare wide-eyed into the dark. Eyes open or closed, the night is equally black. Tanlin’s fear for her sister, and its easy resolution, taunts me. Do my own family lie awake at night and weep for wondering what’s become of me?

Turning onto my side I curl my knees to my chest and search for some mundane topic to occupy my brain: the settlement Tanlin mentioned. There was a sheet metal fence defending a ramshackle assortment of buildings.
And a hen, a nondescript buff, its comb limp and pale – perhaps that was Tanlin’s. I sieve my memory for details. The sprouting of lean-to shacks is nearly rebuilt in my mind when a sound outside disturbs me.

A sound that doesn’t fit. I don’t expect the night to be silent, but – my breath catches. Repeated, the short, percussive noise sounds like a rifle shot, muffled but distinct. As if I’m hearing it through water, as if… I sit up.

Silence.

The claustrophobia of night, of the unknown, of dread, pinches at my throat. I will my ears to hear more. In the house below, something moves.

Slipping out of bed I reach for my clothes. As I stumble into my trousers, a voice, muzzy with sleep, queries me. “What’s happening?” Bedclothes rustle as one of my room-mates climbs closer to wakefulness.

The room is so dark I have to find the door by touch and fumble over it, searching for the latch. “I’ll find out. It’s probably nothing,” I whisper, and snick the door behind me.

The window above the stairs lets in the faintest shadow of light. I walk towards it down the hall’s creaking length, till my hand finds the polished wood of the newel post, my fingers tracking up to the first angled flourish of the balustrade.

Hairs prickle on my neck as I lower my foot into the pool of night that lies below. The house is silent. When I reach the square landing at the stairs’ midpoint turn, the shadows seem to shoo me back. I push my way past
them, ignoring such a fancy. The fourth stair beyond the landing creaks beneath my cold toes. My pulse thunders loud in my ears.

From the foot of the stair I angle across the hall, hands extended, the door to the kitchen waiting in my mind. My questing fingers find the doorframe. I grope for the latch but before I find it, a callused hand slides across my nose and mouth, an arm wraps my torso.

I struggle but my breath is crushed within me. A warmth against my cheek heralds a whisper, close by my ear, almost too quiet to hear. “Not a sound.”

The arm around me eases slightly but doesn’t let go. With gentle pressure the hand across my mouth turns my head so that I see the gleam of eyes. One winks. Deliberately I raise and lower my chin. The hand lifts, freeing my nose and mouth so that I can suck air into my grateful lungs.

With a firm pressure the scout directs me away from the door, pushing me along the wall till I nudge up against a heavy wooden cabinet. A wisp of light shows me a hand, palm flattened before my face in a “stay there” gesture. Before I can respond the hand withdraws into the blackness an arm’s-reach beyond my face.

For a long time we stand in silence. I listen for my companion’s breathing, but can find no sound to strain from the weight of darkness. Then, quiet as the scratch of a mouse, comes the chafe of metal against metal: the door latch!

A narrow rectangle of dimness appears, widening as the door opens. Backlit against it, shadow on shadow,
a figure slides through. There’s a blur of movement, a quick grunt and someone lurches against me, shoving me back against the wall before slumping down at my feet. A second shadow appears and this time the struggle is longer, noisier. A sharp click and indrawn hiss of breath precedes a rush of movement and the hall has a suddenly crowded feel. My ally must be outnumbered, I think, but I’ve no way of helping, or even telling where he is. Which he is. Unless …

Sliding down the wall I trace the outline of the body in front of me. To my relief the man’s clothes are unfamiliar, their texture rough, with an odd assortment of flaps and buttons. My questing fingers find an arm, a hand, something cold and hard: a metal tube abandoned by his fingers. Gingerly I slide it out of harm’s way behind the cabinet. The man – the body – hasn’t moved. At his waist I locate a series of leather pouches. One holds a knife. The grip, as I slip it free, fits snug in my palm.

Holding the weapon like a talisman I squint into the dark. It yields no sense of how many assailants we’re facing, nor how many defenders there are.

The wall is cold against my back, the stranger inert at my feet. Though my brain urges me to shout for help, my throat refuses to release any sound. I’m gagged by the silence of the men around me, by the faint grunts and thuds as they grapple while, directly above, the community sleeps oblivious. Or perhaps it’s the risk to myself that stoppers my tongue.

Disgust at my own cowardice flutters like a moth in my chest. I draw a breath against it. All I have to do is
reach the stair. Once there – but my fear-addled brain refuses to divulge the information I need: where Truso sleeps, where the scouts are housed. My breath comes in gasps as panic tramples through my veins.

I press one hand against my chest. I won’t let it. Once I find the stair, I can call for help. Forcing my knees straight I begin to sidle along the wall. I’ve gone no more than a few steps when someone slams against my shoulder. I flinch, but the wrong way. Something connects with my cheek, a rainbow of sparks swoops through my brain, and whatever cry for help I might make is lost on my tongue.

Light stabs at my eyes and sizzles around my joggled brain. Something heavy lies against me, crushing me flat against the wall.

“We barely held them,” a voice complains. “A day earlier and they’d have caught us napping, well and truly. How many more do they have to throw against us?” The light comes from a single lantern, its swaying sending shadows leaping wild across the walls.

“We’ll know more when I get the full report from Decon. How’s Farra?”

Through the ache in my head I become aware that the man whose weight pins my torso has begun to move, one hand creeping stealthily towards his hip. My heart begins to thud – it’s a wonder he doesn’t feel it. Across his shoulder I glimpse Truso bent low over the stairs. My mind surges ahead, the stranger’s intent acid-etched. A vision of Truso collapsing, a dark hole at his temple,
tightens my grip on the stolen knife.