Angel Arias Page 9

  A terrified moan slipped from Naif’s mouth and she barely registered the dead cart that rolled up to the gate.

  The lead warden turned to her, lifting his prodder menacingly.

  Before he could use it, a commotion started alongside them. One of the horses from the dead cart began to whinny and buck against its harness, flinging clods of manure in their direction. The wardens scattered to avoid being hit. The horse then reared and plunged towards them.

  Markes grabbed Naif’s hand and hauled down on the gate lever. As the segments of the gate squeaked apart they ran through. She glanced back at the cart and saw Liam’s face peering out from beneath the axle.

  ‘Come on!’ cried Markes.

  He ran so quickly that she lost sight of him around a street corner. Markes!

  The wardens blew their whistles and Naif panicked, ducking into a closer laneway which twisted off in a different direction. She heard the wardens’ whistles following Markes and kept moving away from them.

  But after a few streets she stopped and looked up at the rooftops. Markes had said to go to the prayer space under the northern arch.

  She tried to calm herself. The whistles had not come closer. She was safe for the moment.

  In one direction she saw an arc of light rising above the buildings. That must be the arch. She began to walk towards it.

  Gradually, she began to take stock. The homes she walked past were grand, though not as elaborate in design as Ixion’s spired and columned churches. They seemed to have more grace and style than the stark, grey, flat-roofed homes in Seal South. Mostly two storeys, their frontages were well lit by large, ornate lamps. Some of the lamps took the shape of sacred dolmen, while others were wrought iron and fashioned as sets of praying hands. The light bled through the fingers in slivers, striping the gardens and the street.

  Naif kept to the deep shadows and when she found an alcove that housed an iron message box, she knelt down behind it to rest and think.

  First, she unbuttoned the top of Toola’s coat. The temperature was many degrees warmer here. She remembered the freezing long winters in the Seal compound and how she’d shivered through her lukewarm baths. Why was it that the Seal Superiors thought the cold made you a better, purer person? Why did they believe pain and discipline were the only way to be worthy? Now that she had lived on Ixion, those rules seemed so . . . harsh. Pointless.

  As her panic subsided, Naif realised she was thirsty. It was a long time since she’d shared food with Liam and Glev. And she’d only eaten a tiny portion of seaweed anyway.

  Liam must have followed them from the crypt, she thought. He’d scared the horse to stop the wardens taking them. If he hadn’t done that . . . Naif sighed. Liam had been right. They shouldn’t have walked the streets. Even at night.

  She wished she could tell Suki that the boy she’d exchanged blood with had saved them. Her friend would have been proud of Liam, and would have scolded Naif and Markes for being so cowardly about using the dead cart.

  And now Markes and she were separated.

  The wardens would guard the gate and search all night for them now that they knew they were inside the wall.

  Almost as she had that thought, the whistles started up again. Joel had told her that the wardens had their own code. At the moment the whistling was three shrill, short sounds to signal that a search was on. But that would change if she or Markes was found.

  Naif got to her feet and scanned the dark skyline. A dim and unhappy moon had risen above the arch, silhouetting it against the night. She must get there quickly before the hounds found her.

  Drawing Toola’s coat tighter, she hurried onward, only slowing her pace when a charabanc rolled by. No one hurried through Grave streets at night, especially during prayers and when the whistles were blowing.

  Every step she took was filled with fear. Had the hounds scented her? Where was Markes?

  One street she took turned into a blind alley and she had to retrace her route. As she reached the entrance again, hounds ran past along the opposite side of the street, the stiff, upright shapes of the wardens following on foot.

  She shrank back against a garden wall. She even thought for a moment to jump it and hide among the bushes in the sparse garden, but she feared being trapped there.

  Instead she slipped out of Toola’s coat and waited until a small charabanc pulled by a pair of grey horses rolled past. She darted out and hitched Toola’s coat to the back tray and then ran back to her hiding spot. If the hounds had her scent then hopefully that might confuse them.

  When the carriage had passed out of sight, she hurried on.

  As she got closer to the north section of the wall, the large residences with neat gardens slowly became narrow shopfronts sandwiched against each other like parcels wrapped in brown paper.

  It struck Naif as she hurried past them that uniformity was part of Grave. On Ixion the churches were as different as the clothes the Ripers gave them to wear. Here it was as though the Grave Elders feared diversity, not just in thought, but in appearance as well.

  They can’t control my thoughts, Ret. Nor can they control yours. Make your own decisions. Make you own choices. Joel had said that.

  But look where her own thoughts and choices had brought her. What am I doing back here, Joel?

  She pictured her brother with his sword. And Charlonge, helping Ruzalia. And Rollo and Suki. What would happen to them all if she didn’t find out the truth?

  And what will happen to us all if I do? Will I be able to do anything with what I learn? Or will I still be as I am now? Running. Scared.

  She stopped, dizzy, and leaned against a shopfront. Taking deep breaths made it worse so she slowed her breathing and swallowed to wet her dry throat. This was not the time for doubt. The arch loomed close, only a few streets away now. She must get there before the hounds came back.

  The whistles sounded again; much closer this time. She straightened and began to run. There was barely anyone on the streets here as the shops were all closed. Exhaustion made her legs and chest heavy. But she wouldn’t let it claim her yet.

  She turned into an alley, looking for a shortcut.

  A blind end again.

  She turned and ran back. The whistles were only a street or two away at most.

  Panicked memories flooded her mind. The obedience strip. The warden watching her; his sneer, his morbid interest, the way he probed the skin of her thigh with his instruments.

  Those thoughts gave her strength. She would not be caught.

  She burst into the empty prayer space just ahead of the wardens. Across the square she could see a Barbour’s shop. The Clockmaker’s was next door; a sign swinging outside, and behind it another building, long, narrow and high, with lights in the windows.

  Straight across the prayer space would be quicker, but she’d be exposed. Making a quick decision to remain in the shadows, she ran around the perimeter, sticking to the cover of the shopfronts.

  When she was halfway around, a figure stumbled into the open.

  Markes!

  She opened her mouth to call out but hounds surged after him, barking with excitement. The lead hound caught Markes by the ankle and he fell, crying out in pain.

  The wardens were only a heartbeat behind, riding in on the back of a sled pulled by two huge beasts. Unlike the tracking hounds, these had ugly malformed heads and haunches the size of a cart horse. They propelled the wardens across the square to where Markes lay.

  One of them dismounted and whipped the scent hound across the back with his prodder, so that it let go. Then he jabbed his weapon at Markes, who screamed and began to spasm.

  Naif wanted to go to him. Dearly. He was in agony, writhing on the ground, and she wanted to rage at the wardens, make them stop. But they would just do the same to her.

  She forced her feet onward, keeping low against the dark stone of the buildings and moving as quickly as she could towards the Clockmaker’s.

  By the time she reached the swinging
sign, the wardens had lifted Markes onto the wheeled sled. Their conversation drifted across the prayer space as they made plans. Some would keep searching for her while the others took Markes back for questioning.

  Back where?

  Two of the wardens whistled up the scent hounds and began to walk in her direction while the sled turned and sped away.

  Naif slipped down the narrow gap between the side of the Clockmaker’s and the Barbour’s. The tiny alley joined another and then curled around the back of a large family residence. Naif glimpsed columns and a front door with an ornate iron knocker lit by a coal-powered torch.

  This must be it!

  ‘Over here! Near the Barbour’s. The hounds have something.’ A warden’s shout drifted to her. The hounds had picked up her scent.

  Heart racing, she ran away from the house and out onto a wider street lined with more homes.

  She found a coal grate, slipped off her shoes and forced them through the gaps. Then she retraced her exact steps to the corner of the house, where she ran and vaulted up onto the low stone wall.

  There was a large pond in the front garden surrounded by pale dolmens. Biting her lips, she slipped down into the cold, murky water and waded through it to the other side.

  There she climbed onto the sturdiest looking dolmen and jumped from it onto the porch, sprawling as she landed. Scrambling up quickly, she ran to the door and knocked.

  It opened so quickly she wondered if someone had been standing there waiting.

  ‘Can I please speak with Emilia?’ she asked the young boy.

  He poked his head outside and listened to the sound of the approaching hounds.

  ‘Please,’ said Naif desperately, glancing over her shoulder. ‘I need to come in.’

  He glanced down at her stockinged feet and then back at the ragged veil and odd clothes. ‘Em’s reading. We don’t take visitors after dark.’

  ‘Please,’ whispered Naif again. ‘I need her help. I’m a friend of Markes’s.’

  ‘Markes! But he . . .’ The boy looked over his shoulder. ‘Come in, but for fross-sakes be quiet.’

  He grabbed her arm and pushed her into the middle of the coat-stand by the door.

  ‘Jarrold? What are you doing?’ asked a brusque voice.

  ‘I heard hounds, Father. I wanted to see.’

  ‘Shut the door and get on with your studies.’

  ‘But it’s bedtime.’

  ‘Do as you are told, boy.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  Naif heard the door clunk shut and footsteps walk away from her down a wooden corridor.

  Outside the hounds were frenzied, some close to the house and others further down the street. Dropping her shoes through the grate had thrown them.

  She stood in the dark, smothered by fur and hardly daring to breathe. Long, long moments passed while she waited. Then suddenly a hand thrust through the jumble of coats and seized her wrist. The boy pulled her back into the corridor. Standing next to him was a thin girl in a white nightgown. Long braided hair hung over her shoulders and her expression was strained and wary.

  Emilia?

  The boy put a finger to his lips and beckoned Naif along. She followed them.

  The boy had removed his slippers and moved silently on bare feet, like his sister. They took her up some stairs to a loft that was divided into two rooms. The room on the left was clearly the boy’s; it was littered with clothes and a muddy set of bolla. The girl’s room was neater, and a row of seashells sat arranged in order of size in a line along her window ledge.

  Naif felt a jab of surprise. Where had she got such things? Their oily bay did not offer up seashells, only seaweed and broken bits of reef-rock.

  The pair ushered her into the girl’s room and closed the door quietly.

  ‘Sit down.’ The girl pointed to the single chair pushed back from the desk on which open books and an ink jar sat neatly. Why did she have books? How?

  The pair settled on her bed. ‘Father won’t come for another hour, but if anything happens you go in there,’ said the boy. He pointed to the coal hutch next to the fireplace. ‘It’s empty. Emilia’s chimney is blocked.’

  Naif nodded. ‘I’m Naif.’

  ‘Jarrold,’ he said in a way that instantly reminded Naif of Joel. There was no fear in his manner, only confidence and curiosity. Joel had been that way until Father had disciplined him. Unlike Joel though, he was stocky and broad, his neck already thick even though he was still a boy.

  ‘You are brave, Jarrold, to help a stranger,’ said Naif.

  He shrugged. ‘I like Markes.’

  ‘Hush, brother,’ hissed Emilia. ‘Don’t use his name.’ She looked paler than ever in the bedroom light and her voice trembled. ‘What do you want? Where is he?’

  ‘We came back to Grave together but got separated at the gate. The warden caught him in the square in front of your father’s shop.’

  ‘Did they know he was coming here? To me?’

  Naif shook her head. ‘I’m not sure. Maybe they would guess so.’

  ‘What about you? Did they see you?’

  ‘I left my shoes outside another house and walked through the water to confuse the hounds.’

  ‘The hounds I heard were chasing you?’ Emilia shuddered.

  Naif nodded.

  ‘Don’t be so scared of everything,’ Jarrold scoffed at his sister.

  ‘And don’t be so foolhardy. This girl you let in, she’s wanted by the wardens.’ She stared at Naif accusingly. ‘Why are you here? You can’t stay long.’

  Naif wet her lips. ‘Could I have some water? I walked from the Old Harbour.’

  ‘The Old Harbour?’ exclaimed Jarrold. ‘You must be starving too.’

  Naif nodded.

  He disappeared into his room and returned with a half-finished cup of milk and some thick sugar cakes. ‘It was my supper, but I’d had enough anyway.’

  Naif took the offering gratefully. She drank and ate quickly while Emilia sat on her bed and twisted the ends of her bedcover in her hands.

  ‘We’ve come from Ixion,’ Naif began as she swallowed the last of the heavy dough. Her stomach felt better for it and some of her exhaustion faded. ‘And we need your help.’ She watched Emilia’s guarded expression. ‘Mar . . . he said you would help us.’

  ‘How could I help you? Why would I? I don’t know who you are or what you’re talking about.’

  Naif chose her next words carefully. She sensed the girl was on the verge of giving her up to the wardens searching outside. ‘I don’t wish to bring you trouble. But I’m desperate. My friends . . . many young people like us on Ixion . . . will be hurt if I don’t help them.’

  ‘That’s their fault for running away.’ There was a tinge of bitterness to her words.

  ‘There are guardians on Ixion called Ripers. Have you heard of them?’ asked Naif.

  Emilia shrugged but Jarrold nodded energetically. ‘It talks about them in the confetti.’

  ‘I told you not to read that,’ snapped Emilia.

  ‘The Ripers watch over the Ixion runaways and enforce their rules. But we’ve learned that they’re not what they seem to be. They have been seen here on Grave, talking to the Elders.’

  ‘Here?’ Emilia was so startled that Naif wondered if she’d been lying about not knowing of the Ripers.

  ‘Markes thought that you might know something of this. He said that your father was an Elder and that he sometimes told you things.’

  ‘Em?’ Jarrold’s tone was full of expectation.

  ‘I – I – don’t know anything.’

  ‘Is there a way – could you find out?’

  Emilia shook her head but Jarrold took her hand and tugged it.

  ‘Go on, Em. You can get anything out of Father. Find out where that special meeting is.’

  ‘A special meeting?’ Naif felt a little surge of energy.

  ‘You talk too much, little brother.’

  ‘Emilia, please. Terrible things are happening on Ixio
n. Young people like you are fitted with badges which shorten their lives,’ said Naif.

  ‘Shorten?’

  Naif nodded solemnly and showed them her palm. The badge was as black as a deep bruise.

  Emilia pulled free from Jarrold’s clasp and stared at Naif.

  ‘I know your face,’ she said. ‘You’re the Seal who ran away, aren’t you? The one who escaped wearing the obedience strip. I saw your face on the bulletins.’

  Naif didn’t like where this was going but Jarrold chimed in and cut Emilia short.

  ‘That was you? Everyone talked about that for weeks. The wardens rounded up your family and anyone who knew you. Took them to the Holding House and questioned them. A girl died from it. They said she had a weak heart or something; that her own guilt caused her death. But I think they tortured her.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘Can’t remember her name. Jool or Torta or something.’

  ‘Toola? Toola Raspart?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Emilia. ‘I know the name now that you say it.’

  Toola!

  A wave of darkness threatened to overcome Naif. Toola had died because of her. Like Krista-belle on Ixion. Like Mesree. She wanted to curl into a ball and howl. But she couldn’t. Not if she were to finish this. Not if she were to help those still living. Instead, she curled her fingernails into her palms until they hurt and forced herself to stay calm.

  ‘You know her?’ asked Jarrold.

  ‘I . . . yes . . .’

  ‘They made an example of you,’ he continued excitedly before she had to explain. ‘Made sure the whole of Grave knew about it.’

  Naif didn’t want to be known – least of all in Grave. ‘What is this meeting between the Elders?’

  Emilia stared at her. ‘It’s meant to be a secret. And I still don’t see why I should tell you.’

  Naif wondered if the girl’s hostile reaction was caused by resentment. Markes had left her behind to go to Ixion. She was still angry with him.

  ‘Don’t be such a frossing cow, Em,’ said Jarrold baldly. ‘You were mad for Markes until he left. Would’ve done anything he asked.’

  His sister flushed and shifted her gaze to the empty fireplace. ‘What would you know?’

  ‘I saw you go with him unchaperoned into the shop. You never did that with the others.’