Chapter 9
It took me an age to pick my way painfully up the slope.
My palms and soles were raw from the climb, my muscles screaming, my nightshift sodden and heavy. In the distance, the Shearwaters disappeared into the castle, no doubt to enjoy a sumptuous breakfast. My stomach growled, but I ignored it, pressing onward.
The base of the Orha’s thin tower came into view, three figures outside it, two short and one tall, dressed for the day in their violet livery.
Tigo had a hatchet resting against one shoulder.
Rhianne shaded her eyes against the rising sun, her face screwed up, wincing, as she watched me approach.
Mawre, standing slightly apart from the others, had her arms folded tightly over a fringed navy shawl.
I balled my fingers into fists, more to hide the tremors in them than anything, and slipped on my mask: that stony schooling of my features that was second nature after my training at Arbenhaw.
“I’m sorry he put you through that,” Rhianne said, taking me in.
“We saw everything from up there.” She nudged her chin toward the top of our tower—the steps must have spiralled all the way to its pinnacle.
“I knew he was angry about what happened with Zennia, but I didn’t think he’d… ” She shook her head, gave a shrug.
Tigo surveyed me, his brows pinched together. Reticence and concern fought for dominance in his expression.
“I’ll dry those,” said Mawre, gesturing to my wet nightclothes. “You should go up and change. I’ll wait downstairs.”
I appreciated that none of them fussed. Grateful to escape their gazes, I hurried up the steps and donned some dry workwear, wringing my nightshift out over the basin. The smell of brine made my insides turn over as it hit me just how close I’d come to drowning—like Zennia.
Downstairs, Mawre took the sodden pile and left. Behind her, Tigo and Rhianne still lingered. Rhianne had been hissing something to Tigo as I descended.
“I brought some breakfast from the kitchens,” she said suddenly. “It’s not much, but I thought…well, that you’d need it after all that.”
My jog to and from my room had left me lightheaded, and my stomach burbled, giving me away. I nodded warily and followed her down into the cellar. Tigo leaned his hatchet against the wall and came down behind us, like a watchful chaperone.
Rhianne’s cellar room was surprisingly cozy, with a crackling fire, brightly colored wall hangings, a circle of mismatched, tired-looking chairs, and a narrow, blackened stove on which a kettle was already boiling.
“If it’s any consolation,” she said, handing me a plate, “he’ll probably ignore you now, like he does with us. Just keep your head down, get all your work done…”
I perched in one of the armchairs with my food: slightly stale bread with butter caked on it, dried fish, a hunk of cheese going hard at the edges.
“D’you think it was all his idea?” I said. “You don’t think the siblings helped him plan it?”
Tigo folded his wiry arms.
“Vercha, maybe,” Rhianne said quickly, “but definitely not Catua.” Rosy spots bloomed on her cheeks. “She hates anything like that. Orha mistreatment. Actually, she’s quite progressive.”
“Emment only returned in the early hours,” said Tigo. He’d moved to the stove and was clinking cups around, tense shouldered. “He wouldn’t have had time to confer with his father. And Llir certainly wouldn’t have been involved.”
I frowned. “I think he was. Llir, I mean. He mentioned at the dinner that we’d already met, then ended up practically telling Rexim about yesterday…”
Rhianne dipped her head over the tea Tigo handed her. From the way she carefully avoided my eyes, I guessed he’d told her what happened on the causeway.
Tigo paused a moment, then placed my tea on an end table. “As I said, Llir wouldn’t have had a hand in something like that.”
I quirked an eyebrow skeptically. “What’s his problem, anyway?” I ventured. I had so many questions, I couldn’t keep them from spilling out. “He seems to have taken against me from the start. And he stalks around the place like the weight of the world’s on him…”
I caught Rhianne flicking her eyes at the Mudmouth.
“If you mean Llir’s lecture on the causeway,” said Tigo shortly, “he was right that it’s foolish to be ignorant of the tides.”
My face warmed as I dropped my gaze to my tea. I hadn’t had a chance to look at his tide tables.
“And if you really must know, he and I were on the mainland yesterday to sort out the latest of Emment’s gambling debts.”
I glanced up, surprised, but Tigo had his back to me, busying himself with the breakfast things. “The Brigant, of course, would never go himself, though he seems happy to keep covering his eldest son’s ‘expenses.’ And he won’t send his daughters or any other servants. He doesn’t want them to know.”
“Though we all do,” put in Rhianne.
“So if Llir seemed preoccupied…” After a pause, Tigo shrugged. “The boy has his challenges, like any of us.”
I swallowed the scoff that threatened to spill out of me. What true challenges could someone like Llir have? Born into luxury. The freedom to go anywhere. All his whims catered to by servants like us.
“Fine,” I said. “But something’s going on with Emment. There was something wrong with him up on the cliffs, and it wasn’t just the hangover. And I ran into him on my way back here last night. He was drunk, but as soon as I said who I was, it was like a shutter came down…”
Another fleeting look between them.
“He hasn’t been the same since the accident,” Rhianne said tentatively, keeping one eye on Tigo. “He was out there, after all. Saw…saw her drown.”
“Wait,” I said, dropping a crust onto my plate. “What?”
A few seconds of silence, then Tigo sighed heavily. “Zennia accompanied Emment to Port Rhorstin so he wouldn’t have to row; so the crossing went quicker. The accident happened on the way back, at night. Big waves, he said. They got into trouble.”
Rhianne had paled and was fiddling with her mug. “He was shaking harder than I’ve ever seen anyone…Got us all up, made us go out there looking…”
“You searched for her?” I whispered, thinking of the bay: its miles-wide vastness, its deep, choppy waters.
“Didn’t find anything,” Tigo murmured. “But that’s no surprise. She’ll be out east by now, I expect. At rest.”
His words left me cold and oddly comforted at the same time. “I didn’t realize someone had seen,” I croaked. “She’s really gone.”
Tigo nodded, his gaze far off. Rhianne, however, still looked jittery.
“We should go,” she said to Tigo, eyes darting to the doorway. “It must be getting on for seven by now.”
“I’ll be there soon,” I said, getting up to rinse my cup.
The two of them seemed stiff shouldered, closed up.
I often sensed a remove when people were with me, when they detected that strange frosted glass between us.
But I didn’t think the Orha’s reserve was born from that.
It seemed to stem from suspicion, from things still left unsaid.
The gambling, the accident—all that was no doubt true—but I got the impression Tigo had used them as a cover, to try to put down my prying about the brothers.
For something about the Shearwater family nagged at me.
There were secrets on this island. And I found myself hungry for them.
—
I didn’t have long before Miss Haney would miss me, but I couldn’t bring myself to face the day just yet.
My limbs throbbed as though I’d been churned in a barrel.
I trudged up the steps to my third-floor room, the sea breeze whistling through the cracks in the windows, and lay on my bed, staring up at the ceiling.
The revelation about Emment and Zennia hung over me, a shadowy cloak stifling the tiny part of me that had secretly hoped my friend might just have survived. But Emment had seen her drown. They’d searched and hadn’t found her…
She wasn’t hiding. She hadn’t run. She was truly gone.
I lay there gazing at the wall above my bed, watching the way the light pooled in its crevices, the nooks and crannies between the rough stones.
As I did so, a memory came to me suddenly: standing tiptoe on my bed at Arbenhaw, a week or so after we’d been moved to single rooms. Tapping on the stone and hearing Zennia tap back.
Hissing through a crack, “Are you there? Can you hear me?”
I blinked, my pulse sounding louder in my ears. A tingle ran over the skin on my arms. Clambering up, I peered into the clefts in the wall.
Some were mere cracks—too thin for what I sought—but others were slightly crumbled and gaping. Feeling at once fevered and foolish, I stretched up, ran my fingers across them.
And then, with a twang in my chest like a bowstring, I saw it: something pale in the blackness. Something that looked a lot like paper, rolled up tight and pressed into a fissure.
I scrabbled, picking at it, easing it out. I told myself it would likely be nothing—a blank page stuffed there to keep out a draft, or a lover’s letter from a previous inhabitant.
But when I finally drew out my prize and carefully unrolled it, smoothing the creases, my heart began to bang against my ribs. For writing covered the sheet of paper. And some of it was in a code I recognized.
I jumped down, ignoring the jar in my muscles, and ran to the window, where light speared in. Now I could see the writing more clearly. Or, rather, the lines and numbers and shapes.
It had been one of the first things we’d done in lessons, after I’d finally realized we were friends.
A code, concocted in total silence, achieved by sneaking glances at each other’s papers.
We weren’t permitted to speak in lectures, but we were allowed to sit side by side.
Eventually we could have secret conversations just by inking symbols in our margins.
There was only one person who could have written what I’d found. My fingers shook as my eyes roved the paper, easily translating the code—into a letter.
13th Illir, Bower Island
Corith,