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**This gripping, page-turning fantasy adventure follows a dangerous quest through a divided world.**

From the high reaches of a tree, Fliss watches the soldiers attempting yet again to break through the invisible wall. Amid the explosions, a drummer boy tries to escape. As he is about to be shot, Fliss reaches through the wall and pulls him to safety. But Fliss is dismayed to find she has saved an overfed rich boy. She is even more dismayed to learn that she must accompany him back through the wall on a special mission to rescue the Nightingale.

The world they have to travel through is a perilous one, full of predatory thieves, slave masters, beggars, dippers, mudlarks, drain-sliders, spies and wall-men. It is a world where the ruling families are caught up in a lethal power struggle. Will Fliss and the despised drummer boy learn to trust each other? Who is the Nightingale? And will they all make it back alive?

## Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Follow Penguin Random House
_For August and Florence_

## Chapter One

From high in the branches Fliss watched slaves dig trenches where the wheels of the cannon would rest. Their overseer strolled back and forth, coiling his whip. A sergeant from the foot platoon lounged on a grassy slope, smoking his pipe. Now and then a trooper unslung his rifle and aimed at Fliss in her tree, hoping to see her flinch and lose her grip, but he did not fire. Although she was in range, no bullet could reach her: no cannon ball or fire-throwing machine, no wind or weather. Nothing could break through the wall. Last summer the Morisettes had made a balloon that carried men high into the air, but though it climbed to the place where clouds piled up it could not pass over. Two had been lost before they gave up, sliding along the invisible barrier until the balloons tore open and the riders in their gondola tumbled to the ground.

The new cannon was their biggest weapon yet. The eight-horse team could scarcely move it up the hill, though men cracked whips endlessly over their straining haunches. Today was the last day of their agony. An hour would see the cannon slide into place. And then, Fliss supposed, some important man would come, general or governor, riding a white horse, with officers on black horses at his back and a troop of foot soldiers marching to a drum. Fliss had seen it before. Two summers ago, when the Despiners had held the Stewardship, an army of slaves had piled barrels of gunpowder against the wall. The invisible fabric undulated as the wind breathed, making the tower of barrels rock. And the explosion, when it came, spread up the wall and rolled back in a wave, licking at the general and throwing him from his horse. Fliss had laughed, seeing the man roll like one of his barrels down the hillside. When the smoke and dust had drifted away, the wall was untouched. Smears of soot slid down and settled on the ground on the other side.

The Morisette cannon would do no better. They must be hoping the weight of the ball would carry it through. Then they would build more guns and break the wall down. Fliss smiled at the thought. Another general would raise his hand and let it fall and end up rolling in the mud.

She ate her midday meal of fruit as the cannon rolled into place. She sipped water from her gourd, watching the general and his officers mince their horses up the hill. An important man, this one, with feathers on his hat. A troop of soldiers followed, with two drummers leading the way. The general — perhaps he was a governor — officers and soldiers all wore the gaudy uniform of Morisette. Even the drummer boys had its symbol on their jackets: a cupped hand from which coins poured like golden water. It made Fliss sick to see it. She had bowed her head and cupped her hands to that imagined stream a dozen times daily as she moved about the streets of Galp in the starved life she had led before running for the wall. Days of hiding, then nights of feeling her way through unfamiliar towns, of creeping into the dawn and finding a hole in some warehouse or waste pile or plantation shed.

The seasons had come and gone three times since she had fled, and the forests north of the wall had the freshness of a new spring. South, on the flatlands, brown plantations spread ten leagues wide at the sides of the river. Harvesters would be in the trees, tapping new gum. That had been her mother's job until she had sickened and died. Her father was dead, too, there could be no doubt of it. He had been taken for the mines before Fliss was born. Men did not last long in the mines. Who was he? Fliss did not know. Some man, her mother had said. Half the men of Galp had been taken for the mines, and the women for the plantations.

Fliss would not cry. It was old stuff. She would sit in her tree and yawn at these Morisette soldiers as they dragged their useless cannon up the hill. Just sitting here she defeated them.

The gun settled into place. For a moment its black mouth pointed at her and she felt herself shrink. It looked as if it wanted to swallow her — and then she laughed. Its barrel was as thick as the trunk of her tree, but size was nothing, and gunpowder nothing, and the wall, thinner than the cloth of her shirt and made of — made of nothing — would not even know it had been attacked.

She watched a pair of soldiers ram powder into the cannon's breech. Half a dozen slaves with ropes and pulleys lifted something wrapped in sacking from a cart. The soldiers pulled the sacking off, exposing this new thing that would break the wall — a giant arrow, she thought, with a polished head thick at the base and sharpening to a point. Behind the head was a bulb that must be filled with more gunpowder. Fliss saw what the weapon was meant to do: the sharp head would tear a hole in the wall; the bomb fixed to it would explode and widen the hole so soldiers could pour through.

Fools, Fliss thought. She hoped the cannon would explode and kill them all — then hoped it would not. The slaves would die, too.

She wondered if she should climb down and make her way home and tell the Old One about this new attack. But he would only smile a little and close his eyes and go back to sleep, so she stayed where she was. Smile and sleep was all the Old One ever did. Should she tell Shoo? But Shoo would shrug and say, 'Will they never stop?' Shoo could be just as annoying as the Old One.

Fliss made herself more comfortable. She watched the officers getting ready, and wondered why these men had to make a ceremony of everything. The drummer boys were beating out a noise she could only imagine — it would be like the rumble of stones tipped off a cart. The officers had their mounts in a line behind their general, who sat on his white steed with his sword — such a weak little thing, like a kitchen knife — raised over his head. Fliss wished she could see his face. It would be puffed up with importance. A man with a burning torch was standing ready by the cannon's breech.

Fliss put her fingers in her ears, but after a moment took them out. Noise, explosions, wind, weather, nothing came through. Believe, she thought.

The general struck down with his sword as though striking off someone's head. The soldier with the torch touched it to the rounded back part of the cannon — its bum, Fliss thought.

The black tube rocked on its wheels. Its mouth bloomed like a flower, and Fliss, trying to see everything, saw nothing clearly, it happened so fast. There were two explosions of flame and smoke, one at the cannon's mouth, one at the wall. Smoke surged like muddy water and engulfed everything — the cannon, the men, the horses, the drummer boys — while on Fliss's side the trees stirred lazily in a breeze blowing from the north, and a few birds, alarmed at the sudden red thing flattening and spreading in the place where they could not fly, fled shrieking into the forest.

The general's horse galloped out of the smoke, the general clinging to its neck. A few men, bent almost double, came out. More horses ran, rearing and kicking as sparks landed on them. Fliss saw two slaves running. Go, she thought. The smoke began to clear. Dimly she saw the cannon, with soldiers trying to form up behind it, and officers off their horses, gathered about the general, who had dismounted and seemed to be shouting. The cannon stood ready, smoking at its mouth and still pointing at the wall, but there would be no more shooting — not today. The wall was unchanged. A few drifts of sooty smoke showed where it stood. They crawled on its surface as though they were tired.

'Ha,' Fliss said, and looked again to see if the slaves had escaped. They vanished into the scrub that crept up to the wall east of the cannon. She was happy for them, and then sad, because they had little chance of getting away. Slave hunters would come with dogs to track them. They would be whipped, or perhaps executed as though they had been responsible for the failure of the gun. She had seen executions, seen too many. Everyone had been forced to watch as prisoners who had tried to kill the Morisette patriarch, or the Carp or Despiner one, were tied across the mouths of cannons and blown to pieces. Fliss closed her eyes and bowed her head. She sat a long time without moving.

When she looked again the soldiers had formed up. The white horse had been calmed and the general was mounted. The officers surrounded him as though he were in danger — and suddenly one of them raised his arm and opened his mouth with a cry Fliss could not hear. She looked where he was pointing, away from the scrub hiding the slaves, along the hill on the other side, where smoke from the explosion still coiled in the trees.

A flash of red caught Fliss's eye — someone moving fast there, trying to keep hidden. There was no chance of that — the red and yellow uniform made him shine like a lantern in the night. It was one of the drummer boys. He had seen his chance to slip away while everyone was staring after the slaves.

The sergeant gave an order, and four men dropped to their knees and raised their rifles. Fliss saw the muzzles puff and saw the boy fall to his knees. But it must have been at the whistle of the bullets, for he was up and running again before a second squad could take aim. He found a depression in the ground, threw himself into it and started crawling.

The general waved his arm. His face was enraged. The soldiers stopped firing and two of the officers spurred their horses along the slope. Fliss saw the boy rear up and throw a look behind him. He jumped to his feet and ran again. The horsemen found a clear path and closed on him rapidly.

Fliss climbed down fast. She jumped from a low branch, running as she landed. She ducked and side-stepped through undergrowth lapping the wall until she found a place where the ground was clear. She felt the barrier with her mind, breathed the wall into herself, approached with a nod of familiarity, and, still, after three years, a stirring of fear in her blood. The ground on the other side was covered with yellow weed. One of the horsemen was picking his way along. She stepped back, hiding in the undergrowth. He had gleaming teeth and a waxed moustache with pointed ends. He stared down the slope, watching (Fliss saw it in her mind) the drummer boy scrambling towards him. The other horseman must be herding him up. The man drew his sword and flicked it casually in the air. He wet his thumb and touched the point.

The horse became aware of Fliss. It rolled its eye but, well trained, stood without moving. The officer was bending forward, looking down the slope. She could no longer see his face. He flexed the wrist holding the sword.

Then she saw the boy's face, slack with exhaustion. It seemed to come up from the ground at the horse's feet. His hands gripped the edge of the bank he had climbed. In the instant she saw him he became aware of the man on the horse. She saw his cry, saw rage transform his face. He spat at the horseman.

The man stepped his horse forward and raised his sword for a downward slash. Fliss chose that moment to move. The horse was still aware of her. She burst from the undergrowth, arms spread wide, and ran at the wall, flung herself at it and felt it bend and hold her and then, just as easily, push her back.

The horse shied. Its front feet broke the clay at the edge of the bank and slid down. The rider struggled one-handed to pull it back, then dropped his sword and hauled on the reins with both arms. The boy was as quick as a forest cat. He scrambled on to the even ground, grabbed the sword and stabbed its point deep into the horseman's thigh. The man screamed and lost control of his mount, which slid out of Fliss's sight, raising a cloud of dust above the bank. The boy looked around wildly. He had no way to go — a horseman below him, another urging his mount through scrub further along — and Fliss saw four soldiers closing in along the side of the wall.

The boy swung around and looked at Fliss. He forgot the wall and ran for shelter; and the wall bounced him softly back so he fell on the seat of his trousers. He sat there, astonished, then howled at the wall — some ugly word, Fliss supposed. He looked at Fliss, shouted at her, then spun around, half crawled, half scuttled, peered down the bank. He put down the sword, broke off a lump of clay and threw it at something down there. Dust puffed beside him. The soldiers along the wall were shooting. The boy scrambled back, saw the sword where he had dropped it, crawled on his belly and grabbed it, then ran at the wall — and again it bounced him back. He screamed and attacked it, trying to slash his way through. He was like a wasp in a bottle, Fliss thought, there was nowhere to go.

'Don't hit it,' she cried, 'that's no good.'

He slashed at her. He punched her, but the wall pushed his fist away. Fliss stared into his face. It was agonised, bloody with scratches from the scrub. Hatred poured out of him the same way as sweat. She did not want to watch him die, and began to turn away.

No, she saw him shout. He began to claw the wall with his free hand.

'You can't,' she said. 'There's no way.'

He dropped the sword, beat the wall with both hands. The horseman he had wounded reared up from the bank behind him, still mounted. Blood from his thigh darkened his horse's side. He steadied the animal and drew a pistol fastened to his saddle. His face was red with rage, yet he took his time, tormented the boy by aiming slowly, sneered a word at him, and the boy, spread-eagled on the wall, straining with his heels to kick himself backwards, hollowed his chest to take the shot.

Fliss remembered coming to the wall three years ago. All day long she had tried to find a way through. The wall did not mind her. It almost seemed to stroke her, but always, all through that day, it had pushed her back. She had knelt and rested her head on it. She was going to die against this friendly barrier. Tears rolled from her cheeks as she whispered, 'Why?' As if in answer, a hand reached from the other side and pulled her into a different world as though pulling a fish from the sea. It hurt — one jolt of agony — but the face smiling down at her, the hand stroking her face, cured her pain. She had gasped and smiled back, knowing that at last she was safe and she was free.

All right, she thought, if Shoo could do it, I can too. She put her hands on the wall and felt her fingers tingle. 'Please,' she said.

The horseman held his shot. He was watching her, grinning at her. She smiled back at him and slid her hands through and felt the sticky air on the other side. His mouth gaped. Then he shifted his pistol from the boy and shot at her. She felt a pressure on her forehead like a finger's touch and saw the bullet trickle to the ground. For a moment she thought of poking her tongue out at him. Instead she took two handfuls of cloth beside the boy's epaulettes and pulled him, worked him like a sack of grain, to safety. She heard a whisper as the wall repaired itself. The boy screamed with pain and jerked himself free. He fell heavily on his back. She saw the pain die on his face as he plunged into sleep — the same sleep Shoo had let her fall into for a night and a day after pulling her into the bushes so her hunters would not know how she had vanished. The boy lay unmoving. She waited to see him breathe, and at last his chest heaved and he gave a sigh and sank even deeper, smiling a little.

Fliss looked down at him and did not like him. He was too well fed. There were no hollows in his cheeks. Meat and gravy, that's what he's been eating, she thought. The first time she had run, at the age of eight, she had been starving, and the lean-to behind the Despiner factory in Galp had been so cold that the slave children who slept there had to huddle in a mass to keep warm on winter nights and the big ones pushed the younger ones to the outside. She had run to save her life. This boy had not known anything like that.

He worked his mouth a little as he slept, tasting the different air on this side of the wall. Fliss felt like pushing him back.

'Fatty,' she said, prodding him with her foot.

The horseman had dismounted and regained his sword. He was jabbing at her wildly. His companion rode up and shot his pistol at her face. Soldiers arrived and fired a volley with their rifles. She wondered how to show her contempt for them — turning her back seemed the best way. She unslung her gourd and drank a mouthful. What now? she thought. The boy was safe, but she had better tell Shoo so that something could be done with him when he woke. She liked the idea of leaving him sleeping easily, less than an arm's length from the men trying to kill him. The soldiers were fixing bayonets on their rifles; the horseman with the wounded leg and the waxed moustache was pissing at the wall, but all he was doing was splashing his boots. Stupid, she thought.

She left them there, the soldiers stabbing at the wall and the cursing horsemen, and walked home through the trees, stopping only to fill her gourd at the stream. She washed her hands, washing off the boy, and dried them on her shirt.

It did not seem strange to her that she had been able to reach through the wall. It seemed like something she was meant to do.

## Chapter Two

Shoo showed no surprise when Fliss told her about the boy.

'Yes,' she said, 'the Old One told me someone was coming.'

'When? How could he? That boy's just someone who ran away. If I hadn't been there he would have been killed.'

'So it seems. But you _were_ there, and you reached through. I hope you asked the wall politely.'

'I didn't ask, I just did it.'

'Well, don't think you can do it again.'

'What if someone else comes? I can't let the soldiers shoot him.' She thought of the slaves who had escaped. With any luck the hunters would forget them now they had the boy to think about.

'What are the soldiers doing now?' Shoo said.

'Probably getting a ladder to climb over,' Fliss said. 'Or digging a hole underneath. Maybe they're getting their big gun.'

'There's no under or over with the wall. Guns won't work either, no matter how big.' Shoo finished her work at the stove, looked at Fliss and put her offhand manner aside. 'You sat up there all day?'

'It's easy enough,' Fliss said. After being alone all day she wanted to be with Shoo, but did not want to be questioned. Knowing was what she wanted, and knowing from the Old One, but you did not go into his room until he called.

'When I came here, did you know? Did the Old One tell you?'

'Questions,' Shoo said, and smiled.

'Well, did he?'

'He told me someone was on the way.'

'Me?'

'Just someone.'

'And this stupid fat drummer boy is "someone", like me?'

'Is he fat?' Shoo said.

'He's big, that's all. He's never been hungry.'

'Lucky boy. Put the bowls out, Fliss. I want to eat before the Old One calls. You'll have to feed him tonight. I want to go and see what this boy looks like.'

'Why? He's nothing.'

Shoo shrugged. 'It's a while since I saw someone from the other side.'

'You'll see plenty of them. Soldiers. Generals even.'

'Come on. Bowls.'

They ate, and Fliss rinsed and dried the bowls while Shoo fetched a flax mat and a blanket from her room.

'What are those for?'

'The ground's damp,' Shoo said. 'And it's cold. If he's going to sleep two nights and a day he'll feel like an old man when he wakes up.'

'Poor him.'

'Come on, Fliss. If the Old One said someone was coming...' She did not finish but cocked her head. 'He wants his dinner.'

'I didn't hear.'

'Because you didn't keep your ears open. Go. He wants you.'

Fliss took the bowl and spoon and a wrung-out cloth and went into the Old One's room. No matter how much she might grumble about having to serve him, she never approached without a feeling of awe, without hesitation in her step as she got ready for his difference. She put the bowl and spoon on the table by the oil lamp and wiped his face and hands with the cloth.

He smiled his thanks. She raised him a little against his pillow and fed small spoonfuls of broth into his mouth, thinking this was how you fed a child, wiping its chin, catching dribbles. But he was old, so old. She did not know how many years people of his kind might be expected to live. She had asked Shoo but Shoo did not know, or said she didn't. 'As many as they need, I suppose,' she had said, and turned away as though afraid. The Old One needed many more. Without him there would be no wall. But how could he live for ever? Even in the three years Fliss had known him he had shrunk.

He closed his eyes to signal he had had enough. Fliss put the bowl and spoon aside. She turned the cloth inside out and wiped his face, careful to find a cool patch for his eyes, careful to keep her fingers soft. He liked the coolness, and, she believed, he liked her washing him almost as much as Shoo. Liked to be lifted by her into his chair — he was so light, dry bones, a paper skin — while Shoo changed his bedding. It was the way you cared for a child — but a child who could say words in your head and show you whole centuries of time, and show you, when he had somehow taken strength from Shoo's care, and her care too, the wall stretching from sea to sea and all the lands that lay between.

She looked at his small face, smaller than a child's. His eyes were open again after her washing, still and bright and fixed on her. She answered the question she heard in her head.

'Yes, he came. I don't like him. He's... fierce.'

—Fierce? came the question.

'He tried to kill the man hunting him. Do we have to bring him here?'

—Fliss, he began. He had trouble naming. His people, when they were a people, went without names.

—Fliss, I felt him coming. I know how he's made. We can't always choose. He will do.

'What for?'

—Shoo will tell you. She's gone to him. Perhaps he will...

Did he smile? Could the Old One smile?

—... grow a bit less fierce. Leave me now. I need to think. Two things at once is like eating too much — which this boy does.

He was smiling. It gave Fliss the courage to ask: 'Think about the wall? About me — and...?'

—Yes. The boy.

'Me and the boy?' It frightened her. Not because the Old One was planning. He did not plan. He was seeing. He was knowing.

He motioned with his hand, asking her to settle him lower in the bed. She covered him with the sheet that was all he ever needed and whispered goodnight. Sometimes she was tempted to put her lips gently on his forehead, but never did — breaking through from his strangeness to that sort of familiarity was something she could not manage. Instead she put two fingers on his forehead and whispered again. He moved one hand — perhaps goodnight in return, more likely go away. She lowered the wick in the lamp, making him recede into the dark which, with closed eyes, was where he mostly chose to be. So he could think? So he could dream? The two were the same, or perhaps one slipped into the other, the way he smiled, the way he frowned.

Fliss went out quietly and rinsed his bowl and spoon.

Shoo had not come back. Fliss raised the lamp wick. She was tired after her day of sitting on the bony branch where it met the trunk, with her legs wrapped round and one hand holding on. It wasn't just sitting. And watching wasn't just watching; it was getting knowledge and facts and storing them, and it was wondering, and worrying as well, even though she knew the wall would not break. It was remembering. And imagining. She made stories sometimes, sitting up there, watching that ugly world on the other side — how she would go there, how she would drive the Families out... Tiring, depressing. Sometimes she spat with anger. And now, after all that, she wanted to go to bed. But even more she wanted to know what Shoo had to say about the boy. And what the Old One had meant: her and the boy.

She sat at the table, picturing him. Big, strong, quick. Not fat, just muscular. Fierce, like the soldier on the horse. He was ready to kill, eager to kill. And then his fright as he clawed at the wall, trying to escape. It was a child's fright. So he was somewhere between a man and a boy. Fifteen years? Probably sixteen. She paused. That was too old for a drummer boy. She had seen them often enough, marching in parades in Galp. They were ten, eleven, twelve. So this boy...? He was being punished, she saw it suddenly. He was being made to feel unworthy. He must have been one of those young officers, boy officers, like the one with the new moustache who had tried to kill him, who pranced their horses behind the patriarch's carriage in parades. So he had done something wrong... Fliss smiled. Serve him right. And if he ran, and if they were willing to kill him — there had been something personal in the face of the Morisette horseman swishing his sword — then perhaps his whole family was in disgrace. She liked that, too. One of those puffed-up families losing everything. Perhaps the Despiners, who owned the cotton mill where she had crawled in the innards of the machines, picking waste. Oh, wouldn't that be good! Fliss clapped her hands. She sat at the table, making stories of revenge. But after a while grew tired of it, and afraid. Her and the boy?

What had the Old One meant?

She went to the window and saw Shoo's lantern coming through the trees. Shoo's figure was ghostly, lit up in her face but dark everywhere else. Shadows flickered where the light fell. Nothing to be scared of, Fliss thought, there's nothing out there. On this side of the wall there were only bears and cougars to worry about, and they kept further north. She shifted the kettle onto the heat, making it sing as Shoo came in.

'He's heavy.' Shoo put out her lantern and flopped down. 'I could hardly roll him. Tea? Good girl. He's too old for a drummer boy, Fliss. They're punishing him.'

'That's what I thought. He looks like a Despiner.'

'Then he's fallen a long way. I took his jacket off for a pillow. His shirt had blood on it. They've been flogging him.'

Fliss shivered. She had seen floggings. No wonder he ran. But flogging was for commoners and slaves, not Despiners — or Carps or Krohns or Morisettes or Dights, whichever he was. He had done something terrible and maybe brought his whole family down.

Fliss looked at her hands. She had touched him. Touched a Despiner. You weren't even supposed to look at them, just lower your eyes and shrink and be nothing. She found it hard not to be afraid of what she had done. She remembered his pink skin, his hair the colour of wheat, and looked at her hands, her arms, black like earth newly turned, and pulled around a braid of her hair — black as night — and it reassured her. It was hers, it was her. She wished she had let him die on the other side. Despiner or not, he wasn't right. She was right. Black and brown.

'They're going all over the wall with torches, trying to find the place you pulled him through,' Shoo said.

Fliss yawned.

'And they're digging. And climbing up ladders.'

She smiled instead of yawning.

'And every now and then one of them shoots the boy. They've made a fire, too, right up against him. They're seeing if the heat will go through. I pulled him away and they didn't like that. Shot at me, ha! Mimed what they'd do when they caught me.' Shoo looked tired suddenly. 'Nasty brutes.'

'What did you do?'

'Ignored them. I'll have another cup, Fliss. Then I came away. Left him sleeping.'

'He'll get a fright when he wakes up.'

'We'd better be there. Oh, and I found this hidden in one of his boots.' She showed a plain leather sheath holding a knife. 'Those long boots they wear.'

'Jackboots.'

'I thought he'd better not have it when he wakes up.' She put the knife on a shelf. 'Now —' she sipped her tea — 'tell me what the Old One said.'

'Nothing really... He said you'd tell me.'

'Ah,' Shoo said. 'Well.'

'So it's bad? He wants me to do something?'

'Fliss, listen. The ones who were here and the ones who came—'

'I've heard that plenty of times. I know all that.'

'Not quite.' Shoo drank and fell quiet. Usually she was full of words when she told the story. Now she was hesitant and afraid.

'Go on then,' Fliss said.

Shoo reached out and took her hand. 'You've been here, how long?'

'Three years. You know that.'

'I've been here all my life, up here in the north.'

'I know—'

'I was born in a village like... over the hill. So were my mother and father, and their mother and father, and back as long as — you couldn't count it, Fliss.'

'And the People were here even longer, yes, you've told me.' She nearly went on 'But me, Shoo, me and the boy?', but realised Shoo's voice hadn't taken on the sing-song rise and fall she usually told the story with, when 'now' and 'then' ran into each other without break or change. This time was different. Shoo had something new to say.

'They lived in the forests, Fliss, and we never saw them. We were in our villages and we left each other alone. But we learned the things they knew, just a little bit. We heard them whispering in the trees — "no" and "yes", no more than that — and they taught us how to live in this land. We came here, Fliss, but we didn't —' she made an eating sound — 'we didn't gobble it up.' She gestured south, to the other side of the wall. 'We didn't kill it.'

'No,' Fliss whispered.

'The invaders came and started killing it, and everything else. Your people down there, they saw it.'

'We had stories too. We told stories.'

'How they were friends at first and made all sorts of promises—'

'And brought good things we'd never seen—'

'And more and more of them came in their ships, and they brought soldiers and made forts and took all the land that they called empty. The first ones called themselves the Families and claimed it all—'

'The Despiners and Morisettes. The Carps and the Krohns. They made us slaves, Shoo. It was our land but they turned it into theirs.'

'They found gold and then the black stones that burn. They found the trees that made the gum. They found the flowers that made the smoke that floats you into dreams. They found everything—'

'But we knew all about that,' Fliss cried. 'I've heard old people talk about it. Gold was for making pretty things, and we knew the stones would burn and make us warm. The flowers were for when you were sick. Shoo, what does the Old One want me to do?'

Shoo took no notice. 'The People in the trees watched it all. They kept on living in their old way. And we, my people, we kept on. We thought we were safe up here in the north where there are only mountains and valleys and the sea. The Families didn't come. They stayed down on the plains. There was still land to fill up with plantations and factories and towns. Explorers came north, of course they came, and looked at us and went away. There was nothing here they could turn into money. Not yet.'

'Yes, Shoo,' Fliss said. She had heard it all before.

'But then...' Shoo nodded.

'I know. Land was what they wanted in the end. They wanted it more than gold. More than gum—'

'Empty lands. My father heard one of them say it one day. "These empty lands," he said. And soon after that another lot came. And on the high hill over there — the People didn't have a name for it, they didn't use names, but we call it Sunset because the evening sun—'

'Shoo, please, what do I have to do?'

'On Sunset they dug a hole and put in a pole and they pulled a flag to the very top. A sun all right, shining away, and under it six gold coins in a row.'

'The Rule flag. The Families when they join together,' Fliss said.

'And when we said "Why?" they said the land was empty and they claimed it for Rule. They stole our land. As easy as that, Fliss.'

'They do it because they can. Because they've got soldiers.'

'So... we went into the trees and told the People.'

'And they already knew.'

'They'd known what would happen since the first ships came with their —' she struggled — 'with their smiles and their promises. Their guns and their shovels for digging up gold. But we went to tell them, my parents and the others, and I was there. I was a girl, this high —' she held her hand as high as the table top — 'and we could only find one of them, an old one like this old one —' a gesture at the bedroom — 'and all he did was nod and turn away, but there was a wind that went through the trees like a sigh, and full of sadness, so they all knew. The gold seekers, the gum tappers, the factories, the soldiers were coming up here. Up from the plains, Fliss, into their forests. Our forests, too. The trees go on, Fliss, for hundreds of leagues, higher all the time, up where the mountains start, where there's only snow and ice. Rule wanted all of it. Empty land, they said. And we were nothing. They told us we weren't using it. And the People, the tree people who have been here for ever — if Rule knew about them, they'd have said they were animals living in caves.'

Shoo's eyes were wet. She wiped them and looked in her cup, but nothing was there. She pushed it away. Shoo had never told Fliss this much. Fliss had never heard about the flag. There was nothing on Sunset except the evening sun lighting up the forest and the round rock dome.

'We waited until the ones who put the flag up had gone, then we went out and chopped it down. It was all we could do. It was our way of saying no, it's not empty land, we live here. We live in our valleys. We live with the trees. Then all we could do was wait for them to punish us. And they came. Soldiers on horses, in the night. They burned the village closest to Sunset. My village, Fliss. They shot all the men. My father, yes him. They shot the boys who were almost men. Next day they put up another flag. They left a troop of men guarding it.'

Shoo paused. She was good at stories, good at raising her voice, going slow or fast, whispering and pausing. But whispering now was the only sound she could make. 'That same night, Fliss, a dreadful silence fell. Not just the silence of the night. We heard it and we were terrified. It was the silence of the People, Fliss, as they drew back inside themselves and made there whatever it was they made.'

'The wall,' Fliss whispered.

'They were deep inside, and joined together, and they made a silence as deep as nothing. For all that night there was nothing. The soldiers at the flag pole, they heard it. They were even more afraid than we were.'

'What did...?'

'What did they do? They ran away. They left their rifles and they ran back through the trees, crashing around, yelling with fright. That was the only sound that night. They ran away down the hill.'

'They'd be shot when they got back. For desertion,' Fliss said.

'In the morning we went out. There was nothing to see. The flag was still flying on Sunset. Nothing was changed except the soldiers were gone. Their tents were still there. Some of the wagons were there, but no horses and no men. We followed the way they'd gone, along Sunset to where the land falls down to the plains, where the forest stops. Everything was the same as it had always been; we saw the big camp of soldiers down by the river, and further off the plantations and the factories for gum and the smoke in the air. But the silence kept on. The birds didn't sing. It even seemed the wind didn't blow. And as we stood and listened and waited — because it was in the air, Fliss, the thing that was going to happen — we heard, we heard —' she swallowed — 'a clap of thunder, all alone. It didn't roll or rumble or keep on. We heard the sound of two hands brought together in a way that changed our world. We knew it, Fliss, but we couldn't see it. All we saw was a shimmer along the length of the hill in time with that single noise, but we felt our bodies jerk although we never shifted, as though the noise and shimmer was in ourselves and something had turned over inside us. And then it was finished and nothing was changed. The birds started singing. They sounded joyous, Fliss. The breeze blew. The trees rustled. Nothing was changed...'

'Except?'

'We didn't know. We didn't find out the wall was there until... I was after blackberries. I hadn't had my breakfast and I was hungry. So I went from bush to bush, picking them, while the women talked and argued, trying to work out what had happened. They still thought the soldiers would come back and they'd kill us all — until they heard me, Fliss. I screamed. There was a bush with fat berries in the rocks where the land sloped down and I ran to pick them, and something held me. It held me like a hand, soft and warm, and strong too, so strong, and it pushed me back, just a little, and I couldn't reach those blackberries and I screamed with the fright of it. The others came and they were pushed back, too, and we saw a bird clinging to something, high in the air, flapping its wings against something that wasn't there, and then it flew away, shrieking with fright. And some of us ran away, too, and some tried to push and break and batter the wall down — but you know it, Fliss, you know the wall.'

'Yes.' She felt she knew it better than anyone.

'After a while we began to see — we began to hope — that if we couldn't pass through from this side, the soldiers from Rule wouldn't be able to pass through from theirs. And then someone said, and we all said, "It must be the People. It was the People. They've made a wall." Because who else could it be? So we went to find them. And we couldn't. It was always hard, but if you needed them one would be there, sooner or later. But now — we hunted everywhere, and we explored the wall, looking for them. We went right along its length, from sea to sea. We saw how far it went — we saw how it went out into the sea from the way the gulls flew, and how they tried to fly up high and still they couldn't go over. But no People. The People were gone.'

'They were dead,' Fliss said flatly.

'Yes,' Shoo whispered, 'they were dead. All of them. I don't know what the wall is. I've thought and thought and I don't know. I've asked the Old One—'

'He wasn't dead.'

'No, he wasn't. One left, Fliss. One left alive, to hold the wall. They put all their strength in him, one man, to hold the wall, and so they had none left to keep themselves alive and they died. He's the last of the People.'

'When did you find him?'

'We didn't. He came to us. He walked out of the forest one day, long after we'd stopped thinking about the People, although we knew they must be the ones who had made the wall. We asked him but he wouldn't say, and he wouldn't say what it was. All he said was that he had to be near it, so he could wait...'

Fliss waited, too, but Shoo had fallen silent. She did not want to say what came next.

'Wait for what?' Fliss said.

Tears sprang in Shoo's eyes. 'Fliss, you know you are my child. I never had a child of my own. But you are my child.'

'Yes, Shoo, I know. And you're my mother. And I love you. But — wait for what?'

'For you to come.'

'Me?'

'For whoever was coming from the other side. The Old One felt you coming.'

'What for, Shoo?'

'I don't know. I don't know what he wants you to do.'

'But I've been here three years. And he's old. I think he's dying.'

'Yes, he is. But he'll stay alive long enough...'

Fliss waited. 'What for?'

'This boy. He waited for you. Then he waited for him. So...'

'For us together?'

'Yes.'

Fliss had nothing to say. There was a question, but she saved it. She thought of the boy instead, with distaste. Cruel, she thought. Savage, she thought. And a Despiner, although that was a guess. She did not want anything to do with him.

'Us,' she repeated, and swallowed bitterly.

Shoo reached out her hand, calloused with work, and took Fliss's smaller one inside it. Fliss curled her fingers. She wanted nothing more than to live quietly with Shoo for the rest of her life. And I will, she thought. But first something heavy and dangerous had to be shifted.

'So what does he want "us" to do?'

Shoo tightened her grip.

'I don't know what. He hasn't said. But I do know where.'

Fliss knew as well, instantly. There was only one place that would cause Shoo so much fear and grief. But for Fliss it was fear of a real not an imagined place. It held darkness and pain, things she knew.

'Down there. Rule. He wants me to go there.'

'Yes. Through the wall.'

Fliss gave a smile as dark and cruel as that other side. She withdrew her hand from Shoo's.

'Me and the boy.'

## Chapter Three

Shoo went out early the next morning to see that the boy was all right.

'Sleeping,' she said, when Fliss asked.

'Are the soldiers still there?'

'Still there.' It was all she would say. In the night she had hardened herself. There would be no more tears, no explanations.

She doesn't want to make me soft, Fliss thought. So I won't be soft.

She waited for the Old One to call. But he called Shoo and she fed him his morning broth. Fliss went out. She walked in the trees, away from the wall. There were things she might gather — fern shoots, berries — but she ignored them. Let Shoo do it. If nobody wants to talk to me I won't talk either, and I won't work. But she settled herself down and went back in mid-morning and did her chores. She knew that Shoo could not behave in any other way or love and fear would overcome her. It was the Old One who made her angry.

She heard the whisper of her name in the afternoon. She approached the bed, and although his eyes were closed he said, 'Don't be angry, girl. It can't be any other way.' It surprised her that he spoke directly, not inside her head.

'I'm not angry.'

'Oh, you are. You are punching me with all your might.'

'No.' She picked up one of his hands. It was as light and dry as dead twigs. She placed it on top of the other. That was the way she thought of him — serene. No agitation in his hands.

'Are you going to tell me now?'

'Not yet. Easy, child. Leave anger for the boy.'

'Will he be angry?'

'Oh, he will. He'll try to kill you.'

'But I saved him. Why would he kill me?'

'You can run. You can climb. And he'll be weak. After a while he'll get used to you.'

'Why would he kill me?'

'He's used to killing. And you'll be the first thing he sees. Don't get too close. Let him calm down. Then bring him here. Do it gently, child. You'll be nothing to him.'

'Why will I?'

'Because you're black, and the only black people he knows are servants and slaves. He'll treat you badly, you know that.'

Fliss did know it. She had not been a servant but a slave child, which was worse, and in the streets she had seen how fine ladies and gentlemen, Despiners and Carps and Krohns and Morisettes and their underlings — their agents and retainers and grooms and ladies' maids — had treated black servants. Some of the gentlemen carried thongs called flickers and used them to sting orders — do this, do that — on bare arms and shoulders instead of speaking.

'Do you really need him?' she asked.

The Old One sighed. Perhaps it was a laugh. 'Yes, him. If he keeps his temper he will do. Besides...'

Fliss waited but the Old One had finished.

'Besides what?' she said.

'I'm tired now, Fliss. Sit by him when the sun comes up. That's when he'll wake. Take him some food, he'll be hungry. Water, too. And be careful. Bring him here, even if —' was that a smile? — 'you have to make him chase you.'

More questions would be useless. Fliss went out.

If the boy has a temper, she thought, so do I. Wait and see.

She slept and woke that night, slept and woke, and had the stove alight, water boiling and porridge heating before Shoo rolled from her bed. Shoo had softened again. She dropped a handful of dried berries into the porridge. She stroked Fliss's hair back from her eyes.

'He doesn't want me to go. Just you and the boy.'

'I'm taking my knife,' Fliss said. 'If he tries to kill me...'

'He'll hardly be able to stand up after a day and two nights. His muscles will be like... porridge, and his joints...' She made a sound like a creaking door.

'Good,' Fliss said. She tied half a melon and some berries in a cloth. She took an empty gourd to fill with water on the way.

'How long is he here for? Where will he sleep? Not in our room?'

'I've put some dry moss and fern in the shed.'

'For a Despiner?' Fliss made a cawing sound of amusement.

'If that's what he was. He's not any more.'

'What's a Despiner? A turd wrapped in silk. We used to say that. A Morisette was a maggot in jam.'

'Fliss, it's late.'

'Yes, I'm going.'

She let Shoo hug her, then started out, walking easily among the half-seen trees. Her feet knew the turns in the path. She knew exactly how long it would take to reach the wall. The boy would wake at sun-up. She would watch him as the light came from behind the hills and lowered into the darkness of the plains. She liked to see dawn flicker along the wall. It seemed to make a pause. It takes a breath, Fliss thought. It doesn't really want to go down there.

She stopped in the underbrush at the edge of the clearing where the boy lay. Another step and she would see him — and what she wanted was to run away. Why did the Old One force her to do this, what right had he got? The answer was waiting in her head. For the wall. She did not know how or why; all she knew was when. When the sun came up, when the boy woke. When she took him to the Old One, when he told them what to do. These 'whens' went on for ever. They went on into the dark.

The sky began to lighten. She saw rays of sun shoot across the sky from the hilltops and light begin to press into the dark, forcing it away. It sparkled for a moment on the wall and then the wall became unseen again.

Fliss saw the boy where Shoo had rolled him. He was shapeless under the rug she had spread on him. The light touched his face, and she thought: too white, sour milk. Beyond him on the other side of the wall four soldiers were sitting around the embers of a fire. Their heads turned in unison at something down the slope and they sprang to their feet, kicked earth on the fire, straightened their jackets and caps, and stood with rifles shouldered, at attention. Two officers on horses rode up. Fliss recognised the one the boy had stabbed with his own sword. Just as she had seen Despiner in the boy's face, she saw Morisette in this man-boy — a thick-bridged nose, eyes that glistened like yellow jewels, lips out-thrust like an open purse. Ugly, she thought, and too white, like the boy, but with hot red in his cheeks, as though he lived in a permanent rage. She did not know which was worse, Morisette or Despiner. Morisettes were crueller, most people said, but Despiners were more proud and arrogant.

The man dismounted. He tried to stride but had to limp past the soldiers towards the boy. He was younger than Fliss had thought — perhaps no more than twenty, perhaps even less. The limp made him furious. He pretended it wasn't there. Somehow he sensed the wall and stopped two steps short. He wasn't going to lose face by bumping into it. Instead, he shouted something, angry and loud. No sound came through, but rage found a way, for the boy stirred under his covering. And suddenly he was awake: Fliss saw it in his stillness. He leapt like a cat, throwing the rug aside and clawing at his hip for a knife or sword. He landed on his feet, facing the wall, and two of the soldiers shot at him. He flinched, then understood and made a screech of derision. He had no weapon at his side, so he turned his screech at the man facing him and stepped forward to spit. Although he had leapt from the ground, an animal reflex, Shoo had been right: after his long sleep his muscles were porridge, and he staggered sideways, then backwards; his knees gave way and he collapsed like a loosened puppet at the feet of the man on the other side.

Fliss laughed. The officer — the Morisette — laughed, too, and shouted some word — a sneering one from the look on his face. She did not want to share amusement with him, so stopped herself and watched the boy struggle to his feet. He stood swaying, making fierce inarticulate sounds. She was sickened by them both. Their rage, their stupidity, seemed to suck everything in — herself, the trees, the stillness — and make it less. She wanted to turn her back and walk away.

The boy picked up Shoo's rug and threw it at the officer. He tore out tufts of grass and threw them. They slid down the wall. He made frustrated cries, then suddenly was still. She saw an idea take him. Shoo had folded his jacket under his head. He picked it up and threw it at the officer's face, but it slid to the ground. He ran after it, better now, getting his muscles back, and spread it on the grass, with the Morisette emblem, the open hand, plain to see. He stood away from it in his white shirt and red trousers and black boots — small-boyish, Fliss thought. And small-boyish in his actions too. He opened the front of his trousers and pissed on the Morisette emblem. She saw the urine, warm from his long sleep, steam in the forest air. Stupid, she thought.

The Morisette did not think so. Red with fury, he hacked at the boy with his sword. It bounced off the wall. He yelled at the soldiers and two of them fired at the boy, then all four charged at him, stabbing with their bayonets — and he stood easily, finishing his piss. Their frenzy lasted only for a moment. The Morisette stopped hacking. He stood the soldiers in line, raised his sword, brought it down, and the four men started singing, while he stood facing the wall, chest puffed out, sword across his heart, his other hand saluting.

How pathetic, Fliss thought. One of them pisses and the others answer with their stupid song. She knew the words, had heard them too often, and almost seemed to hear them through the wall:

> Glorious Morisette, bringer of prosperity,
>
> Bestow your peace and plenty on us now...

She turned away and slipped further back in the underbrush. She did not want to see their mouths mouthing, their eyes, drunk with pride, glistening in the morning sun. The sun was meant for better things.

Fliss waited until she thought it might be over; but no, the boy had pulled his trousers down and was showing them his backside. She waited again, listening to birdsong and feeling the breeze on her face, then looked again; and he was turning his head about and seeing at last where he was, and shrinking a little from it and not knowing what to do. He pulled up his trousers. He seemed smaller.

She stepped out from the underbrush.

'Would you like some breakfast?' she said.

He made a startled huffing and a sideways step of surprise.

'You're the one...' He meant that it was she who had pulled him through the wall.

'I've got some fruit. You should drink some water first.'

He stepped at her. 'How did you do it? How do I go back there and kill him?'

'You don't,' she said. 'You eat first, then you come with me.'

He felt for the knife in his boot, dug for it, yelled with rage. 'You took it. You stole my knife.' He made a rush at her.

She stepped away and laid the bag of fruit on the ground. 'Somebody probably took it while you were sleeping.' She found a flat place for the gourd. 'Yell out when you've finished. I'll come back.'

Again he rushed, clumsy from his sleep, and she evaded him again.

'You're a Despiner, aren't you? Despiners are thick in the head.'

'Slave,' he panted. 'I'll have you whipped.'

'How? If you can't catch me?' She slid into the ferns at the edge of the clearing, circled round and peered at him from the other side. He took a step one way, then another, made half-starts but did not know where to go. He was like a bear at a bear-baiting, not knowing who to fight or who his enemies were.

The men on the other side of the wall still watched. The Morisette sat down to rest his leg but kept his sword unsheathed — his useless sword. They're all as bad as each other, Fliss thought. But she wondered what the boy had done to earn such hatred, and to hate so much.

He picked up the gourd, flipped the lid back-handed at the wall and gulped the water until it was empty. He took the half-melon from the bag, scooped out flesh and swallowed it half-chewed; scooped again. He ate the berries she had brought, and stood with juice dripping from his chin — waiting, Fliss understood, for a servant to bring a cloth and wipe him clean. She laughed inside herself. He would learn.

He wiped his chin with the back of his hand. He wiped his hands on the grass. Fliss stepped out.

'If you've finished we can go,' she said.

He looked at her as if he would charge again, but held himself back.

'You're one of these people who live in the forest?' he said.

'Yes.'

'It's Rule land. Rule claims it. So you do what I say. Do you have a name?'

'Do you?'

He made an angry sound. 'Slave,' he said. 'That's what you are. Black as an ink slug. I found you and I claim you. I'll name you too. Slop's your name. Come here, Slop.'

Fliss smiled at him. She had known years of this sort of treatment. The wall stood between her and it. She felt sorry for him.

'If you stay out here alone you'll starve,' she said. 'I'm going now. You'd better follow. And bring your gourd.'

Her calmness, her steady voice, widened his eyes and made his face flush.

'Gourd,' he said as though it were a word he had never heard. He raised his boot and crushed it into the ground.

Fliss kept her anger in control. She might have shrieked and clawed him. She had spent hours cutting that gourd so the lid fitted tight on the bowl. Still in her even voice, she said, 'You shouldn't have done that. Now you'll have to drink out of your hands.'

'Slave,' he answered. 'Get my jacket and wash it.'

She looked at the garment, sodden by the wall. 'I'm tired of this. Are you coming? If not, starve.' She turned and walked into the ferns and heard him shout at her to come back. She kept on straight, flicking her way past fronds and branches. His yelling spiralled after her, followed by a crashing of undergrowth. She stopped. You did not break things that were alive, not unless there was no other way.

'Stop smashing things,' she said as he came into sight. 'They belong here, you don't.'

'What?'

'You're on this side of the wall and you don't smash everything you find.'

'Bitch,' he panted. 'No one tells a Despiner what to do. Take me somewhere I can talk. Where's your headman?'

'There's no headman. There's an Old One. I'm taking you there. Then you can talk as much as you like.'

'Old one? What's that?'

'You'll find out.' She started off again, and heard him panting and still crashing behind.

She found her usual path and followed it to the stream that wound down to Shoo's house. When he came into sight she said, 'If you want to wash you can do it here.'

'Don't tell me what to do.'

'You smell bad. I thought some water might help.'

He started a retort, then stopped and seemed to smell himself.

He washed his hands and face at the stream; stripped off his shirt and boots and trousers and stepped into a deeper part. She saw that he liked the coldness as he waded to his waist — and saw that his nakedness did not trouble him. She was nothing, a piece of furniture, not a person. He was probably used to steaming baths and maids to soap and dry him. In some mansion, she thought, and sneered at Despiners. A pool in a stream was better, the forest was better.

He dried himself with his shirt and pulled on his trousers and boots.

'You'll have to go back for your jacket. We haven't got any clothes for you.'

'I'm not wearing that. It's Morisette. I'll shit on it next time.'

'How did you get in Morisette clothes if you're a Despiner?'

'They put me in their army. To humiliate me.'

Fliss understood. She had watched Despiners and Morisettes for most of her life. She had a sudden stricken feeling of being dragged to their side of the wall, and she jerked free by turning and walking away.

'Hey,' he cried.

She took no notice.

He ran after her. 'You stop when I say.' He grabbed her shoulder and tried to force her onto her knees. Fliss made a cat leap. She had grown up in the streets, fighting for food. She caught the boy on his throat with the side of her hand, and as he choked rammed her heel into his hip, sending him sprawling into a sickle thorn beside the path. He lay for a moment, sucking in breath, clawing it in, then he tore his way free from the thorns. 'I'm going to kill you,' he croaked.

He would try but she would not be there. She vanished into tall ferns on the other side of the path, thinking, whatever the Old One wants him for, he won't be any good.

Something changed. She heard his grunt of surprise. Heard Shoo's voice: 'Stand still, boy.'

'Who—?' he managed to say, half-strangled.

'Get back in the stream. Wash that blood off yourself.'

'Nobody,' he managed to say. 'Nobody tells—'

'I need to put something on those scratches. Otherwise you'll be crying half the night.'

'Woman,' he said. 'Out of my way. I'll—'

'What? You're on the wrong side of the wall to talk about killing. Fliss,' she called.

Fliss stepped out from the ferns, and Shoo said sharply, 'Stand still, boy. And tell me your name. Unless you want to go on being "boy".'

He closed his eyes. Drew in a long rattling breath. Changed something in himself by an effort of will. Somewhere in his training had been 'self-control'. He found the place.

'I am Kirt Despiner. I am third in my line. You are slaves, but...' he struggled, made himself go on, 'I am on your side of the wall, as you say. So, for the moment, I will do as you say.'

'Good,' Shoo said. 'And just so you understand how things are...' She motioned Fliss to speak.

'Wash off your blood,' Fliss said. 'Then put on your shirt and follow us.'

Kirt Despiner obeyed.

## Chapter Four

He looked at the creature in the bed. This? he thought. I have to talk to this?

He moved a little closer. Its head on the pillow was as bare and wrinkled as an old apple, with a skin not black like the slave girl's, but yellow and brown. And those things curled up on its chest — Kirt's mother's pet monkey had paws like that. It wasn't human, this 'Old One'. It had two bright eyes that seemed to smile — a monkey smile? He should have brought a handful of nuts.

'No, Kirt,' it said in a voice not much louder than a whisper, 'not a monkey. I'm like you. We just travelled on different paths.'

Kirt went closer. I could kill it with one hand, he thought.

'You think a lot about killing. You'll have to stop that.'

It was reading his thoughts. He might have to kill it.

'How do you do that?' he said.

'I listen. It's no trick. So...' It caught two or three breaths as though speaking was an effort. 'Kirt Despiner. She told me you were coming to the wall.'

'Who told you? No one could tell you.'

The thing in the bed closed its eyes. Was it sick or was it tired?

'The woman who whispers from far away.'

'Told you what?'

'Don't ask questions, Kirt. Just let me say my two or three words. I have to keep my mind on the wall or it will fall down.'

The creature was mad. There was no way the wall would fall. It had stood for forty summers and forty winters while armies bombed and burnt it. Kirt knew in his bones it would never be broken. Although he hated admitting it, there was something cleverer and stronger than Rule — cleverer (it was forced from him) than Despiners. But here was this thing, animal or human, claiming that it controlled the wall. How? Some piece of primitive magic? Monkey shit, he thought.

Yet the girl had pulled him through. And now she and the woman had brought him here. She had saved him to meet this 'Old One'. I'll kill it, he thought, and kill the woman, too, and get out of here.

He would drag the girl back to the wall, learn the way to come and go, then find his way past the Morisettes to Galp. He would restore his honour. He would free Lorna. He would free himself from Anton Morisette and lead an army back and destroy the wall. He saw it all: saw it as explosions and the clashing of swords and, at the end, the hauling up of the Despiner flag... But first...

Kirt took a step towards the bed.

—Stop, Kirt, the Old One said. The voice was in his head.

Kirt found he could not move. He made a sound of fear, then of rage.

'I would like to spend a long while teaching you —' it spoke aloud now — 'and let you learn the way Fliss has learned, but there's no time.'

'Let go of me,' Kirt managed to say.

'I will if you promise not to kill me.'

'Yes,' he managed again.

'On your honour as a Despiner?' The Old One seemed amused as it spoke.

'Yes. On my — on my honour...'

'As a Despiner.'

'As a Despiner.'

Kirt felt the hand holding him lift away. Now, he thought, do it. He forced me, so my honour is intact.

'Kirt,' the Old One said, 'stop again.' There was no compulsion this time. 'With every word you make me speak you shorten my life. Perhaps —' it smiled faintly —'you mean to kill me in that way.'

The thing... no, more than thing, it had proved that. The Old One was not afraid for itself. Kirt felt some of his contempt slip away. I need to find out more, he thought. I need to know how to get through the wall. And I need to stop thinking, because it can hear.

He took a step closer to the bed.

'All right. But why me? And how did you know I was coming?'

'The woman who whispers told me. She told me you were a drummer boy—'

'The Morisettes did that. I'm not a drummer boy, I'm a soldier.'

The Old One's whisper seemed more tired. 'It's no matter what you are. She told me—'

'Who? How did she know?'

The Old One closed its eyes. Kirt thought it had gone to sleep and he moved a step forward, to shake it, or maybe strangle it.

—Stop again, the voice said in his head. —Let me think.

In a moment the eyes opened. 'Time, you see, Kirt, time runs out. So we must go faster than I want. The woman who whispers is called Lorna.'

'That's my sister. Lorna's my sister. How can she whisper to you? She's in Galp.'

'Ah,' the Old One sighed. It closed its eyes again.

It'll die before it can tell me, Kirt thought.

'No, not yet,' the Old One said. 'Tell Fliss to come in. I want to say it to both of you.'

'What's she got to do with it?'

'Then I can sleep and dream the wall. If you were up there now, you would feel it trembling.'

Mad, Kirt thought. They're all mad. But the wall was real. And the girl Fliss had pulled him through.

She's nothing, he thought. Let her hear.

He opened the door to the kitchen. Fliss and Shoo were sitting at the table.

'It... he wants you,' he said to Fliss, and when she had come into the room Kirt shut the door and kept close behind her.

'Fliss,' the Old One whispered.

She turned on Kirt angrily. 'You've tired him out.'

'I tired myself,' the Old One said. 'I'll sleep soon. And sleep for as long as you are gone.'

'Where gone? Where am I going?' Fliss said.

'There's a woman who whispers to me, and I whisper to her. She lives in Galp. Her name is Lorna.'

'My sister's Lorna. Is she the one?'

'She must come here. You—'

'If it's my sister, she can't come,' Kirt cried. 'The Morisettes have got her. She's locked up.'

'Fliss, you will go, and Kirt with you, and find Lorna and bring her here.'

Kirt was speechless: that he should go with her and not the other way round; that he was told to go anywhere; and that Lorna, his sister, should be brought to the Old One like a package.

'There could be other Lornas,' Fliss said.

'No. It's Despiner. No one else can use the name,' Kirt cried. 'No other Family. And if any slave tried, my father would hang her.'

It was true. Fliss tried to remember a Lorna anywhere and could not — except there was a whisper of a Despiner girl named that. She had something wrong with her and was never seen.

'Why locked up, Kirt? She whispers only faintly now,' the Old One said.

'That's Morisettes. Anton Morisette. He keeps her. It's the law...'

'Go on.'

'She's his. And he doesn't want anyone seeing her, so she's in a locked room all the time. And she'll die there.'

'She's told me none of this.'

'Why should she? You're — you're...'

'A monkey?'

'A slave. You're nothing. Why would a Despiner tell you?'

'But you will tell, Kirt, because I need to know. Why locked in?'

Kirt felt a pressure compelling him. He wondered how much it weakened the Old One.

'Our father betrothed her to Anton Morisette. Anton didn't want her, but his father said marry and he had to obey. It was to make our two Families stronger than the others — the Carps and the Loaders. The Krohns. The Dights. All the rest. Joining the Despiners with the Morisettes, it would make us like kings, my father said. And that meant Lorna.'

'Why didn't the Morisettes want her?' Fliss said.

'Slave,' Kirt hissed at her.

'We heard, out on the streets —' she exaggerated it, sneering at him — 'she had something wrong with her.'

—Both of you, stop, the Old One said. It froze Kirt as he raised his fist.

—Be still.

They waited.

'Now,' he said at last, 'tell us, Kirt. What's wrong with your sister?'

'She was born with a hump on her back. One of her feet is twisted —' his eyes grew wet — 'so it hurts her to walk.' He turned away and wiped his eyes. 'And she's blind.'

'Ah,' the Old One said, 'she hasn't told me that.'

'But she doesn't care. She's never cared. She's always happy. She's quiet and by herself, but she's happy. My father didn't want anyone seeing her, so he kept her locked up, just with a maid. And my mother never saw her, she never wanted to.'

They were quiet in the room, until the Old One said, 'But your father wanted her to marry a Morisette.'

'She's the only daughter left. The others are married, so it had to be her. They chose the youngest Morisette, Anton. He spends his time drinking and whoring, and having slaves whipped — he likes to watch. They put him in the army; he can kill as much as he likes there. It's like Lorna with my parents — the Morisettes try to keep him out of the way.'

'I've heard of him,' Fliss whispered. 'He hunts runaway slaves like hunting pigs.'

'He didn't want Lorna. He said it would be like marrying a blind ape. But what your father says is what you do. They told Anton he didn't have to bed her. He could keep her out of sight and have as many whores as he wanted. The main thing was, join the Despiners and the Morisettes. So they drew up deeds—'

'Why didn't they marry you to a Morisette girl?' Fliss said.

'They would have if there'd been one. They're like us, not enough girls. So it was Lorna. And Anton said yes, he would marry the ape as long as he didn't have to see her.' Kirt's anger turned to triumph. 'Lorna said no.'

Fliss understood the insult. In the world of the Families the patriarchs ruled. Women never said no.

'What did they do to her?' she whispered.

'They followed the law. Refuse your chosen husband and you become his property. You're his slave. Even with that she still said no. So I helped her escape. The night before Anton Morisette sent for her.' Kirt turned away so that Fliss and the Old One would not see his face. Fliss wondered if it was to hide tears in his eyes. 'I love Lorna,' he said. 'I'm the only one.' He wiped his eyes but did not turn round. 'I heard about her when I was small and I wanted to see her. So I followed her maid one night. I went to the locked room. I got in. The maid let me. She said Lorna was waiting for me. She knew I would come. And I saw her. And I loved her.'

Kirt turned around. 'She's blind. She's hump-backed. But she's beautiful. I love her better than...' He choked.

Fliss and the Old One said nothing, and after a pause Kirt went on: 'I kept going back. The maid let me in. She would have been whipped. And Lorna told me who we were. We were twins. We were born together. And because she was blind and hump-backed they locked her away and said there was only one child. They —' he smiled grimly — '"caused her to be forgotten".'

'And she lived all those years with no one?' Fliss whispered.

'She had me,' Kirt said.

'And her maid.'

'Yes. And her maid.'

'When you escaped, how did they catch you?'

'Lorna said we had to go to the wall.'

'Ah,' said the Old One.

'So I hired two men and I bribed the gate man. We got out; we had a cart and we got away into the streets.' He shook his head as though shaking something out. 'The Morisettes were waiting. The men I hired had sold us to the Morisettes.'

'You don't have to go on,' the Old One said.

'They took Lorna and locked her up — another locked room. And because I had helped her, Rule, the Rule Council, put me on trial. I was sentenced to spend five years in the Morisette army. As a foot soldier. But Anton Morisette...'

He closed his fists, he could not speak.

'Made you a drummer boy,' Fliss said.

'Drummer boys are twelve, not sixteen. I'm the best horseman, I'm the best sabre fighter the Despiners have ever had. I can wrestle. I can—'

'What happened to the maid?' Fliss said.

'Who?'

'Your sister's maid?'

'The Morisettes hanged her. I can—'

'And the gate man?'

'My father hanged him. But what's important—'

'Is you.'

'No, it's Lorna,' Kirt cried. 'That's why I waited for my chance to get away. Anton Morisette knew I would. He was waiting. He wanted to kill me. But when the cannon fired I saw my chance. I was going back to Galp to save Lorna.'

He flung himself about the room, seized the end of the Old One's bed and shook it. 'You brought me here. You've got some plan.'

'No plan,' the Old One said. 'But I want her. And she wants to come.'

'She'll be safe here. They can't get her here.'

'That's not the reason,' Fliss said.

'Lorna isn't worried about herself,' the Old One said. 'She needs to be here so the wall won't fall down.'

'Why would she care about the wall?'

The Old One was tired. 'Ask her when you get there.'

'And how would she stop it?'

'Ask her.'

Fliss went to the bed and took the Old One's hand. 'You need to sleep.'

'Yes, I do. Fliss —' he seemed to shrink, she seemed to hear thin blood rustling in his veins — 'you and Kirt, I want you to go to Galp and bring Lorna here.'

'How?' Kirt cried.

'I don't know. She doesn't know. But start soon. Time is...' He closed his eyes, and Fliss felt a whisper cross her mind as he called Shoo. She heard his tiredness, and how close he was to sinking away and not coming back.

Shoo came into the room. She went to the bed, picked up the Old One's hands and held them for a moment, then laid them down.

'He'll sleep now — and maybe he'll wake up. I don't want either of you in this room again.'

'Shoo, I didn't—' Fliss began.

'I know. Come and kiss him. It might be the last time. Then wait in the kitchen.'

'Hold on,' Kirt said. 'I want to know what's happening. Wake him up.'

'Get out, boy. In the kitchen. Now.'

He opened his mouth, got nothing out. No black person, no servant, man or woman, had ever spoken to him like that.

Shoo pointed at the door. Now, she mouthed.

Kirt turned and blundered out.

Fliss kissed the Old One's brow, stroked his hair, and followed.

## Chapter Five

Fliss scouted the wall daily.

The cannon, pulled back to a safe distance, fired its futile shots as fast as the men could load. Anton Morisette was gone, but soldiers still probed the wall where Fliss had pulled Kirt through. Kirt's jacket lay where he had thrown it. She gathered dead leaves and covered it up. The soldiers on the other side watched her tiredly. She saw how badly they wanted to go home.

Shoo went to the village below Sunset and came back with clothes for Kirt. He objected to the rough trousers and worn jacket, but was pleased to be rid of his drummer-boy pantaloons and shirt. He argued against having to take Fliss with him, but Shoo said, 'How long do you think you'd last? She knows places you've never been. Have you ever been in the stews? Have you ever slept in a hovel?'

'This is a hovel.'

'He wants to ride in on a horse, waving a sword,' Fliss said. But she felt little hostility toward him. His bravado was a way of hiding his fear, which equalled hers. The other side of the wall terrified her. She could taste it, smell it, feel its darkness. Cruelty came sniffing there like a stoat. Kirt's fear might have a different cause, but in the end fear was the same. She saw how it took him suddenly, as it took her, and how he pushed it back with boasting and sneering. She had no bravado. And did not have the other feeling that drove him on — his love for his sister. When he stood still suddenly or turned away, she knew he was remembering her. He was still a Despiner, but it softened her dislike of him.

All this time the Old One slept, and half-woke while Shoo fed and washed and potted him like a child. On the fourth day Fliss came in to say goodbye. He did not wake. She tried to believe he would be here when she came back. If he was not, the wall would be gone.

She held his hand for a moment and felt its faint warmth, which she carried in her own hand as she and Kirt started on their journey.

Kirt carried a wooden staff that doubled as a weapon. His story, if they were questioned: he was a Carp soldier cashiered for insubordination — Carp because Despiner or Morisette would be dangerous. He knew enough about the Carps, a Family that had over-reached itself in its greedy strivings, to get by. His only possessions were the clothes on his back, the slave he had bought with his severance pay, and the cooking pot and sleeping mat she carried on her back. He had been looking for work on the plantations, but there was nothing for a man raised as a gentleman — he had to be a gentleman because of the way he spoke. Now he was heading for Galp to try his luck there.

Fliss wore a slave smock Shoo had stitched. Her feet were bare. There were two worn blankets rolled inside the mat on her back. It would be a journey without comforts, but that was nothing new. She had to walk three steps behind her master. That was harder.

Each carried a satchel of food and a water gourd. And Fliss had a stone knife hidden in her smock.

Shoo came with them as far as Fliss's tree. She wept, embracing Fliss, then hardened herself. 'If you don't come back, I'll know you're dead.' She shrugged and twisted her mouth. It meant the wall would be down and everybody dead. She turned to Kirt. 'And you,' she said, 'you might need this.' She took his knife and sheath from inside her smock. 'Try not to use it too much.'

He drew in his breath, narrowed his eyes. 'You took it.' He made an effort, controlled himself, accepted the knife and pushed it inside his belt. Instead of thanking Shoo he made a formal bow.

'You'll have to stop doing that down there,' Shoo said. She went away.

Fliss and Kirt travelled west on the near side of the wall, into country where there were no patrols on the other side. They climbed a wooded slope and crossed the overgrown road leading to Sunset. Far away, down towards the plains, ravens circled.

'That'll be those slaves who ran. What's left of them.'

'I thought slaves were property. You whip them, you don't kill them,' Fliss said.

'Not Morisettes.' Kirt tightened his face. 'They'll tell my father I ran like a slave. Do you know how much face we'll lose for that?'

'Who cares?'

'Ever since the Families came, the Despiners have been first. Morisettes were nothing—'

'You're not Despiner, you're a cashiered soldier. Anyway, what's your name now? I can't call you Kirt. It's Despiner.'

'Master to you.'

She kept her patience. 'I'll stay Fliss. There are hundreds of those. Did you have a groom for your horses? What was his name?'

'Keef.'

'All right, you're Keef.'

He did not like it, but swallowed it down like something bitter.

'Keef,' he muttered.

They went across the foot of broken cliffs and over rock-falls. Kirt was awkward in the bark sandals Shoo had made him. He was putting off wearing the cut-down boots shaped from his drummer-boy jackboots. 'They're Morisette,' he scowled when Fliss told him to change.

'Wait till your feet get sore,' she said.

They made their camp by a stream running close to the wall. No fire. They ate fruit and grain cakes and cold baked tuber.

'Meat on the other side,' Kirt growled. 'And slaves eat what they're given. Remember that.'

They shared the sleeping mat, each wrapped in a blanket. Soon Fliss would sleep on the ground while Kirt had the mat on his own. She tasted her old life, sour and thin and cold.

In the morning they washed in the stream and drank and ate, keeping only enough for their first day through the wall. There were no grain cakes, no forest food once they were down on the plains. They drank and left their gourds. Somehow they would have to get flasks. Steal them, Fliss thought. She hoped she had not forgotten how.

Light came over the hill and the wall made its morning shimmer. Nothing moved on the other side.

'I'll go first and help you,' Fliss said.

'No. I'm first. I'll do it myself.'

'It mightn't be safe—'

'I said, I'll do it. You follow.'

Fliss shrugged. Let him. Going back through the wall didn't make you sleep, but it could hurt in different ways, Shoo said. It depended on what was in your mind.

Kirt turned his back on her. He faced the wall as though it were an enemy, squared his shoulders and punched his fist straight through. Fliss saw that it stung him, but he would not pull back, not with her watching. He took a marching step, stepped across — and fell to the ground on the other side, his face wide-mouthed with screaming she could not hear.

Fliss jumped through — a jolt, that was all — and knelt beside him, taking his hand.

'Kirt. Kirt.'

He jerked away as though her fingers burned. 'No,' he whimpered. He began to cry.

She softened her voice. 'Kirt?'

'It cut me in half.'

'It's over now. It's finished.'

'I should...'

'Kirt?'

'I should have let you help me.'

She put her arm under him and helped him sit. 'We're through. Hear the cannon? We both got through.'

'It didn't hurt that bad before.'

'And it won't again. You weren't ready. Kirt, we've got to move. We're too much in the open.'

'Yes. Yes.' He tried to stand, stumbled, almost fell, and she steadied him and led him away from the wall. They took shelter in a scrub-filled hollow where the rocky hillside fell away. The air felt no different on this side, yet distantly they heard the cannon boom. It brought the true difference home to her. Cruelty, darkness here. And danger all around. Her years of safety were over.

She wanted to go back. Would the wall let her? I'll know when we get here with the blind girl — a thought that unrolled the world of Rule like a filthy mat. Galp was more than a hundred leagues away. How would they get there? How would they ever get back?

There were roads heading south from the plantations. There were streams tumbling down from the highlands. They joined and made small rivers, and when these met on the plains they made the great river Spool that curled and twisted lazily on its way to Galp. There, half a league wide, it cut the city in two and poured its filthy waters into the sea — and swallowed them back and poured them forth, endlessly. Barges drawn by oxen unloaded raw gum and bales of cotton at the factory towns ringing the city. Fliss knew all this. She had heard stories, too, of a new kind of boat, far bigger than the barges. It had a fire in its belly, burning coal, and this fire turned paddles that drove the boat through the water. Kirt would know if it was true, but she did not want to ask him. All she knew was that the river Spool was busy with boats, large and small, and that it flowed down to Galp. Her life on the streets had taught her that the best place to hide was in a crowd. It was the best place to steal, too. And the river went where they had to go.

'Kirt, we've got to work out what to do.'

She had said it before, but he had brushed her aside. She should have said 'you', not 'we'. Now perhaps...

'Yes,' he said.

'We'll have to stay away from the roads the army uses.'

'What we've got to do is get to the river,' he said.

It surprised her. He had been thinking, not just telling himself how important Despiners were.

'We can follow a stream down,' she said, 'but there's no food for me to find in these gorges.'

'We can buy it,' he said.

'What with?'

He felt in his pocket. 'This.'

It was a silver coin, thinned with use, but still showing the Morisette open hand.

'I kept it in my boot for when I got away. I'll change it for groats or pence. Enough here...' He shrugged. He had little knowledge of small coins.

'We'll have to go into towns.'

'We'll have to anyway. They're all down the river, both sides.'

Far away the cannon rumbled again.

'The army road is east, so we'll go west and get on the plains. My story's all right down there, but no good up here.'

She agreed and they started down the stream. Kirt's life as a drummer boy had hardened him. They followed the banks, climbing and sliding. They scrambled over boulders where the gorge narrowed, waded through pools with water up to their chests, holding their food satchels over their heads. Soon the cannon's noise was left behind. Late in the morning they reached an opening out of the hills. The stream stopped tumbling and flowed between slopes of grass heavy with seed. Quails sprang up and whirred away.

'Birds make me hungry,' Kirt said.

They ate more of the forest food, leaving only a grain cake each, and walked on by the stream. A rough path came in from one side and ran beside it. In these open hills there was no way of hiding, so Kirt walked boldly and Fliss, without being told, fell behind. Slave and master now. She saw how Kirt fell into it naturally. He began to whistle a tune. 'Carp tune,' he said over his shoulder. 'Despiner ones are better.' He was beginning to enjoy himself.

Where the stream ran out of the hills he threw away his bark shoes and put on the cut-down boots. Stepping stones led to a wagon track on the other side. A small boy stood watching them. He was wearing a scrag of cloth around his loins and carried another cloth, weighted with something, in his hand.

'Stay there, boy,' Kirt called.

They crossed the stones. The boy lowered his head submissively.

'Master,' he whispered.

'What's your name?'

'Jin,' he whispered again.

'Where do you live?'

'Up there,' shifting his free hand.

'Who with?'

'Gran.'

'Mother and father?'

The boy looked blank. He was as thin as sticks. Hollow-faced. Half-starved. Fliss felt in her smock for the grain cake she had saved.

'Keep still,' Kirt barked at her. 'Boy. Where's the nearest town?'

The boy made a hand movement the other way.

'How far?'

He did not understand.

Fliss said softly, 'Jin, how far to the town?'

He pointed at the sun, moved his finger down the sky. Mid-afternoon.

'Shelter there? A place to sleep?'

Jin shook his head.

'So,' Kirt said. 'Boy, what's in that cloth?'

Jin tried to hide it behind his back.

'Boy?'

'Quail eggs,' Jin whispered. He moved a step away.

'Stand still. Show me.'

The boy was terrified but shook his head.

'Come here.'

Again he shook his head.

Fliss said, 'He's taken all morning to find those.'

'What?' Kirt looked at her in amazement.

'If you take them he'll starve. He's starving now. Jin.' She went towards him. 'No, don't run.' She took the grain cake from her pocket. 'Here, take it. Now run. I won't let him catch you.'

The boy snatched the cake and was away, quick as a hare.

'Are you mad?' Kirt said. He came at her with his hand raised.

Fliss stepped back. 'I can run just as fast as him.'

'What?' His face was furious, a Despiner face.

'If you hit me you'll never see me again. You can save your sister by yourself.'

'We needed those eggs. He can find more.'

'Maybe not. We'll steal if we have to, but not from people like him.'

'You're mad,' he said.

'And you're a Despiner. You'd better stop being one if you're going to travel with me.'

He made a hissing sound. He might still hit her, but she saw his mind working: he could not afford to lose her.

'All right,' he said at last. 'But keep behind me. And keep your mouth shut from now on.' He started off, but turned and said, 'And if I want to take something I'll take it, so don't interfere.'

They travelled west on the cart track, meeting no one. The town the boy had told them of was three sagging hovels, long abandoned. At nightfall they were still on the dry fringes of the plain. It stretched south, while hills stood black against the sky in the north. There was nothing else except the stars. Each was the home of a goddess or a god. They fought and mated in the sky — fought in storms, with thunder, mated in the long, warm nights. Fliss believed none of this. She was happy that this night was warm. As for her companion — they had better be friendly, short of mating.

When he grudgingly offered her half of his grain cake, she accepted. They drank from the stream and slept as they had done the night before.

Next morning they walked hungry. The stream joined another and turned into a flow that might be called a river. On the far side a woman flung a net for fish. She made no answer when Kirt called and did not look up from her work.

Kirt fumed and Fliss was almost sorry for him. She was pleased to see him learning lessons all the same. Here was another. 'Town,' she said.

'Where?'

'See that brown haze. That's smoke from chimneys.'

'Ha,' he said, meaning he would have seen it for himself.

It was an hour's walk, and the town no more than twenty houses, most of them no better than the hovels they had seen the day before. Fliss fell behind. She saw Kirt adjusting from a boy into a soldier down on his luck. His clothes looked the part, his cut-down boots were scuffed and unrecognisable as Morisette ones, but there was nothing he could do with his youthful face except look surly. There was a fuzz of hair on his cheeks — his first beard growing. That helped a little.

The brown haze came from smoke over houses that were warped and sideways bent and broken-roofed. But smoke meant stoves and stoves meant food. Fliss smelled a bread smell. It made her mouth water.

'There's no men here,' she said.

'Where are they?'

'Taken for the plantations. Rounded up.'

'So we can...'

She saw what he meant: there was no need to buy food, they could take it. She shook her head.

'I can't change this,' he said, showing her the silver coin. 'There'll be nothing worth more than a groat.'

'We'll barter.'

'What with?'

'We're not going to cook. We'll give them the pot.'

'Give?'

'For bread. That's all we'll get here.' She saw women watching from doorways. 'Tell me to take it off. I'm your slave.'

He turned to the nearest doorway. 'Woman. Come here.' He hooked with his finger.

A woman came out slowly, stepping with bare in-turned feet. She kept one arm behind her, holding back a skinny child.

'Bread,' Kirt said. 'We want bread.'

'No bread,' the woman said, shaking her head. She was thin, stooped, hollow-cheeked, and her eyes had a haunted, unseeing look.

Other women began to creep from doorways. Girl children followed, as bony and worn as their mothers.

'We can pay,' Kirt said. 'You —' he beckoned Fliss —'show her that pot.'

Fliss took it from her back and showed the woman, who looked at it without seeming to see and shook her head.

'No bread.'

'I can smell it,' Kirt said. 'Two loaves. You women —' he turned to them — 'this pot for two loaves. Get them now. You can argue about who owns it later.' He took the pot and put it on the ground. 'Tell them,' he said to Fliss.

'It's a good pot. Clay. You can share it,' Fliss said.

It did not interest them. The strangeness of it struck her, and she saw suddenly where they were looking — her calves, her rounded arms, her neck and cheeks. A child reached out and pinched her thigh.

'Kirt, run,' she said. 'Kirt,' she screamed.

He had seen it, too. He jumped sideways, dropping his staff and grabbing his knife. He slashed with it. Fliss had been quicker and was away, with only a child hanging onto her. The women boiled over Kirt. All she saw was torn, dirty cloth, stringy hair, screaming faces, and above them Kirt's arm and bloody knife. She flung the child off, grabbed hair and arms and waists, threw women aside, kicked and tore.

Kirt burst free. His face was raked with scratches and his shirt torn from neck to waist. The women were too exhausted to follow. Those who had fallen sat in the dust and started to wail. Others dragged a fallen body towards a house. The girl children advanced with begging hands, but fell behind as Fliss and Kirt ran up the street.

'Animals. Animals,' Kirt panted.

Fliss could not speak. She cried as she ran, tears running warm as blood on her face.

'Animals,' he repeated. 'Wipe them out.'

'Who made them like that?' she managed to say.

He rounded on her. 'They've got a body now. They'll eat that.'

'Who,' she said, 'who came and took the men? Who took the boys?'

'What?'

'Despiners, that's who. Morisettes.'

'Not Despiners. This is Krohn country.'

'What's the difference? There's no bread there. They wouldn't have any seed to plant. That was grass seed we smelt. That's all they've got.'

'They've got each other. I'll bet the children taste good.'

Fliss stopped.

'Walk ahead, Kirt. I don't want to walk with you.'

Further up the wagon track Kirt washed his bleeding face in the river. Towards nightfall the narrow flow joined a wider one that had a broken jetty angling out. A small hut stood at the head. No one was there.

They slept that night in the hut and walked on, hungry, as the morning sun turned the river red.

All right, Fliss thought, that was yesterday. Today we've got to be friends again.

She caught up and walked at his side.

'Morisettes round up men. So do Krohns. Not Despiners,' he said.

'All right, Kirt.'

'We've got more sense.'

'All right, I said. Is this the Spool?'

'It'll flow into the Spool.'

'Will there be a town there?'

'I thought you came through this country.'

'I was further west. I kept in the trees.'

He grunted and was quiet, trying to accept her friendliness.

'We've got to work together,' he said.

'Yes, we do.'

He was quiet again. 'There should be a town at the confluence. A proper one.'

'Confluence?'

'Where the rivers join.'

'How soon?'

'Before we starve to death, I hope.'

They walked on beside the river. Light rain fell, then heavier, making the track muddy. There was no shelter.

Kirt muttered, for himself to hear. 'Not Despiners. Not me, anyway.'

Fliss heard. 'All right,' she answered.

They kept on walking through the night. The rain stopped. When the sun rose they saw, in the distance, the brown haze of another town.

## Chapter Six

Days of trudging, of crouching in deck space on a barge or scow. Kirt had been a soldier, but had not known hardship or discomfort like this. The scratches on his face festered and the skin around them itched until Fliss took him to an old woman in a shack at the back of a river town. She smeared the wounds with a paste smelling of fermented leaves that soothed them and would, she promised, take the infection away.

'No more pretty boy,' she cackled, patting him.

'What did she mean?' he asked when they were outside.

'You'll have scars,' Fliss said.

'On my face?'

'Wherever they scratched you.'

Once he had wanted duelling scars. His older brothers had them. Now he was scarred by women he could knock over with one hand. He swore, then laughed, which hurt his face. Scars would be a good disguise when they got to Galp.

'Only two groats left,' he said. Time passing worried him because of Lorna, not because of the Old One and the wall. The wall had been an insult all his life. It could fall for all he cared. But Lorna locked away by Morisettes... 'We've got to go faster.'

'We've got to get money,' Fliss said. This town, the largest they had been in, gave her their best chance yet, but she had lost confidence in her thieving skills. If she was caught, she would be dead by nightfall. Hangings were a sport in these river towns.

They came to the waterfront. Scows were loading tubs of gum and cotton bales. They had deck space for passengers, but Kirt's two groats would not get them on board. They were barely enough for the food they needed. Fruit and food and cheap clothing stalls, grog shops, weapon and tackle shops lined the street. Men and women bustled about — stall-holders, bargemen, cart men, itinerant merchants, some followed by a burdened slave, some leading or riding a mule. Abject, starving dogs slunk out of range.

Fliss kept behind Kirt. She had to play her part, the tired, beaten slave of a man who had nothing else. She kept her eyes down.

Kirt jerked his head for her to catch up. He thrust out his hand for the water flask they had bought, playing his part, too. She took it from her belt and offered it. He drank and wiped his mouth. She looked at him, a question, and he nodded. She poured a little water into her hand and sucked it into her mouth, not letting her lips touch her master's flask.

'I'm going to rob one of those stalls,' he said softly as she drank.

'No,' she said, equally soft but more urgent. He would be caught, he had no skills, all he would do was snatch and run. 'I'll do it. I know how.'

'Fliss—'

'Play your part.' She was angry. 'Tell me to put down my load.'

His face hardened. Whenever she opposed him he wanted to slap her. But he obeyed, motioning her to put it down.

'Now stay and watch it. I'll be back.'

She slipped into the stream of people and made her way to the junction of two streets, where it thickened and slowed down. There were shouts up ahead and yelps of pain. Fliss knew instantly that some important man was coming and that his servants were flicking people out of the way with their quirts. She waited for a glimpse. The servants, bright in their livery — Carp, she saw — cleared a path: and here was the man, thin, tall, smiling slightly, pleased with himself. He had a curling lip he could not control.

Fliss made her plan in an instant. She shrank against a wall, nudging a black and yellow cur she had noticed there. 'Pardon, brother,' she whispered. The dog — thin-ribbed, hollow-bellied — slunk away. 'Be safe,' she whispered, knowing she betrayed him. She sprang into the crowd as the Carp official passed, safe in the pocket his servants made. People lurched as she jarred into their backs. 'Mad dog,' she shrieked. 'Mad dog.'

A frightened yell went up. The bite of a rabid dog was certain death. The crowd plunged like a falling wave across the street, sweeping the servants aside, taking the official under its crest — and Fliss was first, sliding across him, probing with her fingers, and then was away as he fell. She fought her way on, wriggling through gaps, and bounced off the wall on the other side of the street. She worked her way along it, found a dark lane running to the water, and scuttled — be a crab, she thought — as far as the muddy bank, where she ploughed knee-deep to a cobbled ramp. She crept up four-legged between upturned dinghies. Another street, a horse trough — she washed mud off her legs. The sense of direction she had learnt on the streets of Galp came to her aid. Up here, down there. She went unerringly back to the place where she had left Kirt.

He wasn't there. Her bundle was gone. Fliss looked around helplessly. Fool, she thought, Despiner, he'll do something wrong. Then she saw him breaking back through people watching the disturbance. That was all it was now, the 'mad dog' gone. And a Carp official trampled. His servants would be flogged for that.

'Where did you get to?' Kirt cried angrily.

'Where did you? Come on, we've got to get out of here. They'll be rounding people up.' She took her bundle from him and shifted it to her back. 'Go first. You're the leader. Out.'

Kirt saw her fear and urgency. He led the way.

'Down a side street,' she hissed.

'We should have stayed. There was a stall tipped over. I got a handful of nuts.' He showed them. 'I would have got more if I didn't have you to worry about.'

'Good. Nuts. I'm hungry.'

They reached the wharves again. Kirt sat on a bench against a warehouse wall. Fliss squatted at his feet.

'It was a riot,' she said. 'A Carp official got trampled. They'll be questioning people up there.'

'We might have got some food if we'd stayed.'

'Kirt, I'm going to give you something. Don't look at it, just put it in your pocket as if you don't care. We'll have a look when we're further away.'

She took it from her pocket and felt its weight, and smiled slightly as she gave it to him.

'What?'

She wished he would stop saying that all the time. She would start calling him What if he didn't.

'In your pocket. Now wait a while. Have a nut.'

His eyes wanted to be wide and narrow at the same time — at the weight, which he knew instantly, and at the tone she took with him.

'Good,' she said, 'now keep it there. Let's get downriver and find something to eat.'

They walked several blocks, Fliss in her submissive, down-headed way, Kirt marching stern-faced, seething and elated by turns. They found a bench behind an empty warehouse. The river banks were empty, although lightermen downstream rowed back and forth to waiting scows. Fliss squatted at Kirt's feet.

'Give me some nuts, I'll crack them.'

She busied herself — good nuts, fat and fresh.

'Now see what we've got.'

It was a purse, no bigger than Kirt's palm, stuffed with coins, silver in one pocket, gold in the other. He glanced inside, made a quick eye-count, then buttoned the purse and slid it into his pocket.

'Sovereigns,' he said, controlling his voice. 'Ten, I'd say. And halves and quarters. No groats.'

Fliss grinned at him. 'Carp officials don't know what groats are.'

Kirt's eyes gleamed. 'Pity he wasn't a Morisette.'

Or a Despiner, Fliss thought.

She tore pieces of rag from the tail of her smock and Kirt tied the larger coins so they would make no sound. He kept a few silver ones to rattle in his pocket. 'Enough to get to Galp,' he said. They turned the Carp purse inside out, hiding its crest. Fliss filled it with small stones and threw it in the river.

They walked for the rest of the morning, the river beside them and the town spreading out the other way. Kirt bought cheese and baked tubers for Fliss and some ribs of roasted mutton for himself. They ate as they went along, putting distance between them and the robbery. There would be whippings, perhaps a hanging. Someone must be punished: Carp dignity, Carp law, demanded it. Fliss apologised silently to the victims. At least, she thought, we've got enough now, and smiled a little sourly at Kirt, untroubled, ahead. She was pleased to have a reason for walking by herself.

A shag skimmed over the water, heading for the far shore. Another sat on a rock, drying its wings. She liked shags. They flew alone and asked for nothing.

Two days on they found a scow loading at a jetty by a small town. Kirt bought deck space for Galp. They found a place forward, away from the boom, and Fliss laid out the sleeping mat to claim their place. She was careful to be servile, and made herself lower her eyes when her 'master' spoke. Kirt found it harder to play his part. He was used to having people step out of his way.

The river Spool was tidal for the last fifty leagues of its length, but the tides were lazy and seemed hardly to move. Mangrove swamps spread down from a fringe of black trees. Small villages, isolated huts, stood on the shore. Crabhunters moved along the banks, scooping in the mud, while men threw nets into the shallows and pulled them in with a few fish flapping in the mesh. The river gave a poor living. The country's wealth came from the gum and cotton plantations stretching unseen beyond the trees, and it was wealth only the great Families shared. As the river flowed on, Fliss sank deeper into her old life. She felt herself shrinking, becoming watchful and cunning and afraid, and both hated and welcomed it. If they were going to survive she had to be Fliss the thief, Fliss the creeper in shadows, Fliss the slave. She sat at Kirt's feet, tired of it and sorry for herself, but alert to everything, and sorry for Kirt, too, afraid for him. The changes he had to make were greater than her own.

Night came sudden and hard but the scow kept on, showing her masthead lamp and guided by fires that slaves kept burning on the shore. The river was more than a league wide. The crier in the bow kept up a monotonous whoop, warning other boats. In her days on the streets, Fliss had learned to sleep through noise. Now she found it harder.

The other passengers were a band of mummers and acrobats, judging from their baggage of masks and costumes and clubs, who played a complicated dice game in the light of their lamp, and a man in a worn cloak and hood who had spoken to no one as he came on board and now slept quietly in the darkest part of the deck. Two deckhands kept aft with the steersman. They and the crier in the bow were the whole crew, even though the scow was large.

Midnight. The mummers were passing a flask around and growing raucous. Fliss saw the caped man stir and caught the gleam of his eye as he turned his head in their direction. He rolled over, settled himself and slept again.

Fliss slept, too, uneasily, the crier's whoop sinking her and raising her by turns. A voice woke her. It seemed beside her ear even though it spoke to Kirt. It took her a moment to understand.

'... nice little slave girl, sir, and you don't seem to be using her.'

'What?' Kirt said as he woke — that word again. He seemed to be dragging heavy weights into her world. She already had her hand on the butt of her knife.

The mummer, the chief mummer, stood half bowing in the lamplight.

'Earn yourself a few groats, master. We're all gentlemen, we'll use her easy. Good as new in the morning, I promise.' He wheedled, rattling his pocket. 'Silver piece if you like. Good money for one night.'

She had not known Kirt could move so fast. He seemed to spring like a cat with a lighted coal dropped on it. He rose straight in the air and landed on his feet, drawing his knife at the same time. He had it pricking the mummer's throat before the man could move.

'Back,' he said, 'move back.'

The man retreated. His mouth shone wetly in the masthead light and his eyes started leaking.

'Now, master,' he managed to say.

The other three had risen, but Kirt hissed at them, a hiss like a tree cat, and they froze. He pricked with his knife, and a spot of blood appeared on the mummer's throat and started to slide.

'Go back, you dog, to where you came from. If any of you move for the rest of the night I'll come and kill you one by one.'

Wrong, wrong, Fliss thought. He was speaking like a Despiner.

'No offence, master, no offence. Nice little slave girl, that's all. Thought you might be in that line of business,' the mummer gabbled. He backed away, keeping his hands lifted from his own knife, and sat down with his troop. They were younger men, fit from their trade. Fliss saw their eyes gleam as they turned up their lamp. They murmured among themselves, sending hard looks at Kirt.

'Kirt, sit down. Keep quiet,' she whispered.

The man in the cloak had woken and turned to watch. He rolled over and came to his feet.

No, she thought, he's one of them. She slid her knife out and held it along her thigh.

'Keep away,' Kirt said, flicking his own knife from palm to palm. It was a knife-fighter's way of showing his skill and he did it with ease.

The man had taken several steps. He stopped and smiled. He raised his hands away from his sides, showing them empty.

'No, boy, I'm not a knifeman. Put it away.'

He folded back his hood, revealing his face.

'Just a traveller like you. I'll sit myself down for a bit. Easy, boy, easy. Otherwise —' he nodded at the mummers — 'we might have some blood on the deck.' He raised his voice to the men on the other side. 'That right, boys? Blood on the deck? We don't want that.' He watched them amiably.

Fliss watched him, ready with her knife. Was he after something or was he a peacemaker? His words and smile said one thing, but there was a sense about him of strength held in and quickness held in check. He looked about thirty, or maybe forty — she could not tell; had friendly eyes and a friendly mouth. Were they true? Her Galp life had taught her to look for lies. A scar gleamed high on his cheek, diving into a beard that he kept hacked short. A retired soldier, she thought. They could sometimes be the worst.

'No one asked you to sit down,' Kirt said. He kept his knife ready.

Stupid, stupid, Fliss thought. One fight was enough.

'Well,' the man said easily, 'it's a good spot here. Now, boy—'

'Don't call me boy.'

'—those jugglers over there, they're not done yet. Shouldn't challenge them. Just say no politely. You've made them want your little slave even more. But if I sit here —' he spread his hands — 'no blood on the deck.'

'Who are you?' Kirt said.

'Mutch is my name. Soldier once but not any more. You've been a soldier, boy. Easy now. You pull that knife too easy. Put it away.'

'Don't tell me what to do.'

'All right, I won't. But I need your name if you don't like "boy". And the name of your slave —' he grinned — 'who tells you what to do.'

'What?'

'He's Keef. I'm Fliss,' Fliss said.

The man kept grinning — not clever, not mocking, but with amusement. 'Keef, eh? Is that why you call him Kirt?'

'That's a joke,' Fliss managed to say.

Mutch grinned wider. 'So, Keef. And Fliss. Both quick with a knife. I'd put yours away, too. What is it, woodland knife?'

'You ask too many questions,' Kirt said.

'It's stone,' Fliss said. 'I made it.'

'Clever,' Mutch said. 'Keep it hidden. They see a slave with a knife in Galp they'll cut off your hands. You, too, Keef. They'll want to know where you got a Morisette knife.'

'I won it. I took it,' Kirt said.

'Good for you. Keep it hidden now.'

He settled himself easily, with his back against the rail. The scow was tacking across a wide curve of the river, keeping the breeze in her sail. They heard the boom creak, then thump into place, and the crier call more urgently.

'Can't say I like boats,' Mutch said. 'If we sink I'll thank you to hold me up. Swimming's a trick I never learned.'

His friendliness seemed real, but also he was finding them out. He knew their names already. He knew she was no slave. He had seen her stone knife and picked Kirt's for Morisette.

'So, Keef, you got out of the fighting trade. That's a good move.' He touched his scar. 'Luckier than me. Though you've got a few. New ones, eh? Fighting cats? Hey, easy.' He put up his hands. 'I was with the Krohns. Who were you?'

'Why?' Kirt said, flat-voiced, unfriendly.

'No reason. Just passing the time. Despiner I'd guess, from the way you talk. But those boots you've cut down, they look Morisette to me.'

'I've been with both.' Kirt had control of himself. He sat down. 'And now, I'll thank you, I want to sleep.'

'A soldier grabs his shut-eye when he can. Tell your slave —' he winked at her — 'tell Fliss she can sleep, too. I'll watch those juggler boys. I think they're done.'

Fliss nodded, partly to herself, partly to Kirt. All things weighed, they had better trust him. The friendliness in his eyes seemed genuine, and somehow the anxiety lying behind it was reassuring. He had weighed things, too, and was taking a chance. Her street instincts worked. Trust him. There was also the fact: they could do nothing else.

She lay down and pulled her blanket over herself.

'Keef,' she said, not playing slave any more, 'do what he says. Get some sleep.'

He looked as if he would rebel, then gave it up.

The scow lumbered into another tack. She braced herself against the boat's lean. There was nothing to do but wait for Galp. Galp was a greater threat than the mummers. She saw Mutch work his shoulders and settle himself. He was a man, she thought, who would sleep quickly and wake just as quick. For a few moments she hunted in him for something that lied. Was he too easy, too friendly? And why had he helped them? A man like him would know the rule: stay out of it. Yet he had ambled across and taken control as easily as gentling a horse. Trust him, she thought.

Kirt turned over to face her. He had not put his knife away but kept it naked in his hand. She shivered as she thought of what he had saved her from. She saw him trying to work things out. He was wanting to whisper and plan. But she was tired, bone tired — and sorry for him, but tired of him, too.

Let him stay awake. It won't do a Despiner any harm.

The scow made another creak, and Fliss rolled with it and arranged herself more comfortably. She went to sleep.

## Chapter Seven

The mummers disembarked at Daktown halfway through the morning. They made throat-cutting gestures at Kirt as they left. He gave a cold smile, taking their hostility as a tribute.

Fliss watched him anxiously, seeing how much she had to do to turn him into Keef. Keef, she told herself, from now on Keef.

A tidal surge slowed the scow. She tacked endlessly, thumping and groaning. Several times she stalled as other craft, heading upriver, ran across her bow. The deckhands yelled insults back and forth.

Mutch sat apart, ignoring Keef and Fliss now that the mummers had gone. He ate a crust of bread from his satchel and drank from a flask — maybe water, maybe not. He edged a little closer as the scow stalled again.

'What I reckon is, walking would be quicker. You want my advice—'

Fliss stopped Kirt — stopped Keef — with her hand.

'It's free.' Mutch smiled. 'We get him to put his dinghy down and row us ashore. He'll do it for a groat each. You got two groats?'

'No,' Keef said.

'Yes, Keef, we have. He's right. These scows slop around waiting for the tide. Let's go ashore.' She knew from her thieving days that coming into Galp on foot was safer than the docks, where no one landed unseen.

After a moment, Keef nodded. 'But when we're ashore we go our way, you go yours.'

'Same way,' Mutch said, 'but —' raising his hands to stall Keef — 'whatever you say. I'll walk slow.'

The deckhands lowered the sail and winched the anchor down. The steersman locked his wheel.

'I'll go talk to him,' Mutch said.

'Two groats, Keef,' Fliss said.

Keef fished in his pocket and handed Mutch the coins, paying him, Fliss thought, as though he were a servant.

The dinghy landed them at a fishing jetty low on the water as the tide reached almost full. A man rushed from a shed and demanded payment. Mutch gave him a groat, refusing more. 'I can see we're getting close to Galp,' he said. Then he seemed to change from easy friend into one more alert, sensing dangers that had not been there on the river. He looked at them as though they might be useful, or might not. He led them off the jetty to a wagon track running west to the outlying districts of Galp, which made a sullen line across the horizon.

'I've got business in Galp, so I'll be away. But before I go — I don't know who you are, but I know you're running. Maybe away from something, maybe towards. Something in Galp, eh? Take my advice: when you get there, find the shadows. You know, don't you, Fliss? My guess is you can move in the dark. Keep an eye on him. And you — Keef — keep your mouth shut and your knife in your shirt. You know how much a Morisette knife is worth? You might as well pull out a purse full of sovereigns.' He gave a grin and winked at Fliss. 'Good work, girl. And Keef, keep your hood up. Where you're going, a Despiner face, even with a few scars — easy, boy, I'm not a spy — but I heard the story of a Despiner lad the Morisettes got hold of and turned into a drummer boy. He got away, through the wall, some say — which we all know can't be done.' Mutch grinned. 'Those Morisettes would give a lot to get their hands on him. So keep your hood up and think twice before you open your mouth and you might get where you're going. Best advice I can give you: do what your slave girl says. You mightn't like it, but she's your best chance.'

Since Mutch had said 'drummer boy' Keef had seemed to shrink. Now he turned away with an angry scowl. 'Come if you're coming,' he said over his shoulder to Fliss, and walked away along the track.

Mutch held Fliss back. 'Fliss, you know Backport?' he said softly.

'I've been there. Mudtown, we called it.'

'We?'

'Just we.'

Mutch nodded as though she had pleased him. 'There's a tavern, lighterman's place. The Hungry Shag. You need me, go there. Not the door, go up the lane at the side. Find Old Minnie. Say my name.'

'Yes,' she said.

'And don't tell him.' Mutch nodded at Keef, who had stopped and was looking back impatiently. 'All right?'

She said yes again. Mutch smiled. 'And as a favour to me, if anyone asks for Mutch, say the river got him, he forgot he couldn't swim.' He shouldered his bag and walked away down the track, giving Keef a nod as he went by.

Fliss and Keef followed until the track angled into scrub on the river side. Mutch was gone when they came out several minutes later. Slow walker? Fliss thought. Was everything he said a joke?

Losing him seemed to put them in danger, but Keef became more cheerful. The track joined the wagon road leading into Galp. Huts and houses stood in the fields, some with chained dogs guarding them. Workers, many of them slaves, cut green crops and dug tubers in the long rows that stretched inland. They loaded them in wagons for the early-morning trek to the markets in Galp. Fliss knew the wagons and knew the crops. She had scavenged round the markets and knew the lanes and byways leading in. With every step she began to feel more at home on the muddy road, among the carts and wagons and the market women trooping back from the city after work. She tried to think of Shoo and the Old One and the forest, but could only keep her mind on them for a moment among the thickening traffic. Now and then they overtook a dray loaded with bales of cotton or tubs of gum. The horses, the same breed as those that had pulled the Morisette cannon up to the wall, strained the heavy wagons through the potholes and slippery corners of the road, while the draymen cracked their whips at walkers slow to move out of the way. Each wagon bore the Morisette symbol on its side. Upriver from Galp was Morisette land.

Light rain began to fall and darkness came down fast, but still the traffic — carts, wagons, walkers — went on. The fields gave way to houses, hovels, taverns, storage sheds. The river came in sight again, running sluggish and oily with the tide. Bars of light ran into it from lanterns and gaslights in the houses and streets.

Fliss knew where they were, but Keef was lost. She kept close behind him, worried he would somehow betray himself. But he had grown cautious among the heavy wagons and trudging workers. He seemed to recognise the need to be quiet, to hunch his shoulders, make himself smaller and attract no notice, although his mouth made an angry twist at the Morisette symbol.

They stopped at a tavern and bought mugs of beer and ribs of cold mutton. It was the first time Fliss had tasted meat since passing through the wall. She made herself eat. She must be no different from anyone else. She hoped people would take her for a freedwoman servant, not a slave. A freedwoman could go places a slave could not, although she must still appear servile. Eyes down, mouth shut — her black skin allowed her nothing else.

Later in the night they found a doss-house. Keef slept on a bench against a wall and Fliss on the floor beneath it. Servant was a loose term in this place. They were kept awake by the sounds of rutting and crept out at dawn into the streets. Keef was quieter still. But he seemed to have a new determination.

'We'll find a better place tonight. We've got enough money. You can't...' He did not finish but she saw he was concerned for her as much as himself.

'We need different clothes,' she said.

'Yes. Nothing...' Again he did not finish. He meant, nothing a Despiner might wear.

They turned away from the river into a market where working people shopped. Fliss knew it from her street days. She saw no faces she knew, but kept her own covered, even though three years had changed her from the starved child she had been. For a moment she felt lost. Had she changed too much? Keef, now that he was Keef, seemed easier than her. He found a stall selling used clothing and changed behind a canvas wall at the back — clean trousers, shoes worn but not down-at-heel, shirt and cap and jacket that a junior clerk might wear. She was surprised at his cleverness — to appear like someone who had lost caste and was climbing back. It would help explain his voice and his freedwoman servant. He beckoned her and let her choose clothes. She changed behind the wall, getting rid of the sleeping mat in a hollow at the back. They must look as if they belonged.

Keef gave a curt nod as she came out. He started off briskly, as though on business. When he spoke to Fliss he kept a frown on his face. Her own clothing was used like his, but clean and warm. She wore cloth sandals with hide soles and knew she looked exactly like what she was meant to be — a freedwoman servant, one of the lucky ones who earned a few groats for her work.

They sat on a bench in a dusty square and ate what was left of their food. Although enclosed by buildings, each was aware of Galp stretching away — the river and wharves, the port with the workers' houses and dormitories behind, the slums and stews running inland to the factory belt. And south on the coast Fountain, a town within the city — wider streets, green parks, business houses, town houses where merchants, lawyers, agents, administrators lived, keeping their servants and carriages and their respectability. Beyond and above, on the promontory called Steeps officially, but Up There in the popular tongue, the Families had built their mansions. Fliss remembered glimpsing them as a child, their gleaming roofs half hidden in trees, their Family pennants licking like tongues.

All this surrounding them, and what to do next, where should they go? Find Lorna? Lorna seemed unreal to Fliss, a story she had heard and now could scarcely recall. She pictured her as skinny and bent, with bony fingers and blind milky eyes, and could not think of her as someone who might save the wall. How could that happen? But when she remembered that they must bring this woman to the Old One before he died, the urgency of their task came flooding back. It was about the Old One. They were doing it for him.

'Where will she be? Up There?'

'The Steeps? No, somewhere in Fountain. The Morisettes own half of it, there's hundreds in that family, they've got houses everywhere. And warehouses at the port and river. They've got their own prison. Their own gallows.' He frowned, remembering perhaps that the Despiners had them, too. 'They'll keep her in Fountain. Locked up.' Then Fliss saw him become unsure. 'But if they want to show her off, maybe they'll keep her Up There.' Anger mounted in him, he could not keep his hands still. 'They'll have her working in the scullery, something like that. Or carrying out their piss pots. Where they can laugh at her. Beat her, too. Anton will. Not in a prison.'

'No, Keef—'

'You don't know the Morisettes.'

'She's blind. She can't do those things. Anyway, wouldn't they —' she tried to imagine it — 'wouldn't they dress her up? Make her into a kind of pet? Keep her where they can see her and torment her like that? Or make her a lady's maid? Make her dress them up. Or sing for them. You said she could sing. Their tame Despiner.'

Keef made a whisper of denial, almost of despair.

'Listen,' Fliss said. 'The market women gossip, the slaves gossip. Wait for me. I'll find out where she is.'

'I'll find out from my family. I'll go there.'

'You're an outcast, Keef. You ran away and disgraced them. Wasn't there a contract? You didn't serve your time.'

He shook his head as though he wanted to shake it off. She saw his frustrations pulling him this way and that.

'Keef, I'll go. Wait here.'

'I'm not waiting.'

'Then come. But keep separate and keep in sight.' If they lost each other in this teeming city they might never meet again.

She walked into the market and found a place to squat — like a dog told to stay, she thought, and for a moment her eyes filled with tears as she remembered her life with Shoo, behind the wall. Suddenly a cooing voice was at her ear.

'What's the matter, my pretty? Has someone been beating you? Oh, I can see you're free, but a hard master, I'll be bound.' It was a smiling woman, neatly and cleanly dressed, although too expensively for this workers' marketplace. And too sweet in her face.

'Dearie, I can give you better work. Hard masters are no good. If you'll just slip up that arcade —' an unlit cave behind Fliss, with boarded-up doors, broken cobbles and piles of rubbish — 'you'll find an open door and a bit of something to eat. A nice change of clothes, too, that'll make you prettier, eh?'

Fliss knew this game, and she looked around for the woman's helpers. Two men, lounging. If she went into the arcade she was lost. They would be fast — through the open door, a gag, cords, she would be a bundle in a cart, and she knew where it would take her... She came out of her crouch and was up against the woman in two steps, close and casual, with her stone knife bare in the folds of the woman's dress.

'Piss off, mother, and take your curs.' The language came out of her past. She tasted it with pleasure. 'Or I'll tumble your guts.' She had seen a Morisette gift-taker working his way along the stalls. 'One shout to him —' the woman knew what she meant — 'and you're dog's meat. So run, "my pretty", and choose your coneys better.'

'Little slut,' the woman hissed, and was gone. Abducting free women was a hanging offence.

Fliss stepped behind the gift-taker. The woman would not come back with a Morisette official and his protectors nearby. The man moved along the stalls, smiling in a genial way, pausing to chat, and the stall-holders made their usual pretence of friendliness as they handed him his coin, silver or gold. There was no other way to get Morisette protection. It happened in every district — Krohn, Despiner, Carp, and those where the smaller Families held sway. She saw two Morisette constables strolling behind, keeping an eye on each transaction.

The gift-taker stopped at a stall selling live hens, which lay dispirited in their willow cages. The stall-holder, dispirited, too, roused herself enough to smile as she handed over her 'gift'.

'Bad morning, mother? No sales?' the man inquired.

'Enough for life and comfort, master. Thanks to the Open Hand,' she added quickly.

'Ah, yes,' the gift-taker said, 'the Hand. Always there to help, mother, always there to help.' He was not ready to go, but nodded at her hens. 'Your birds don't sing,' he joked.

'Not so sweet as yours, master. Your pretty one in her cage. When do we hear her again?'

'The cart comes to the square tonight.' He grinned. 'The only sweet Despiner voice you'll ever hear.'

'Ah, they croak like frogs, those Despiners. But that bent one, her eyes might be gone but her tongue still works.'

'Like yours, mother, but not so busy,' the gift-taker said. He nodded and walked on. The woman made as if to spit on the ground behind him but saw the constables watching and wiped her mouth.

Fliss eased her way into the passing crowd and went back to the seat where she and Keef had eaten. Eyes lowered, subservient. She wondered how long she could keep it up. Keef approached behind her. She felt his eagerness as he sat down.

'What is it? What did you hear?' he said as she squatted at his feet.

'There's jackers working,' she said.

'Jackers?'

'Slave stealers. They take freedwomen, too. We can't go back through the market. They might grab me.'

'Fliss, I saw you listening to something.'

She could not think of any way to soften it. 'They're showing your sister in Morisette Square. In a cage. They make her sing.'

'No. They can't.' But she saw the idea take hold of him. 'Lorna wouldn't,' he said.

'Is she pretty? Can she sing?'

'I told you that. She's beautiful. And she sang all day.'

'And she's blind. And she's bent.'

'She's got... One of her shoulders is twisted, that's all.'

'He said "Despiner voice".'

'They can't, Fliss. They can't do that. And Lorna would sew her mouth up first.' He was almost crying.

She felt his love for his sister and it made her want to hug him.

'The Morisettes can do anything they want in their own places. And Despiners are... they're not Despiners any more.'

'She wouldn't do it.'

'What if it's for someone she loves?' Her maid? But they had hanged her. Her father and mother? But they were already disgraced and couldn't fall any further. That left her brother, Kirt, who was now Keef. 'What if it's you? They tell her they caught you when you ran. No one will believe you went through the wall. They tell her they'll kill you if she doesn't sing.'

He began to deny it — 'Nothing would make her —' but stopped and gritted his teeth, his eyes lowered. 'If she thought they had me — and they told her...'

'Keef, listen. He said the cart's coming round tonight. They'll take it through the streets the way they do with prisoners for hanging. We'll see if it's her.'

'If it is...' He could not go on. No boasting, no wild scheme. She could not see the boy in him any more. 'What do we do till then?' he said.

'Keep moving. Walk in the crowds. Make it look as if we're going somewhere.'

'I want to go to the Steeps.'

'What for?'

'I might find out something. Talk to someone.'

'You'll get caught.'

'If I go to our house — servants know everything. They'll say where she is.'

'We know already. She's in some dungeon, some hole down here. And tonight they'll put her in a cage and make her sing. I can't go up there, Keef, free or slave. I'm black.'

'You stay here. We'll meet at sundown. Have you got some money?'

For a moment she thought, So he's still a boy, I'm better without him. She rattled the half-dozen groats in her pocket. 'Go then. If you don't come back...' She had nothing to finish it with.

'I will.' He started to move off, but stopped. 'Stay safe, Fliss. Watch out for —' he struggled with the unfamiliar word — 'jackers.'

She watched him walk away, head down, a clerk on his master's business, his worn satchel in his hand. She followed him. She had nothing else to fill her time.

He kept to busy streets, and she saw how he forgot who he was supposed to be and then remembered — walked like a Despiner, then became a clerk. In the wider streets where the gentry had their houses she fell back. She had sometimes scouted here in the night, creeping and scuttling in back alleys and delivery lanes, but in these paved streets where carriages rattled by she had no place. But two things she saw: in Despiner Square, once as important as Morisette Square, no people were about, no pennants flew, and the fountain at the centre was dry; and on First Families Parade, the great porticoed Despiner town house was closed — no footmen at the door, no porter waiting on the steps. She saw how Keef hesitated and made himself go on. Then she attracted stares from doormen and porters and a threatening gesture from a servant with a cane, and she turned back and hurried away.

'Be careful, Keef,' she whispered.

For the rest of the day Fliss kept to streets by the wharves, moving all the time, trying to look as if she was busy on an errand. Here, there was an equal mix, black and brown and white, and a mix of slaves and freedmen, workers and porters and overseers, all in a hurry, all shouting, joking, yelling orders, a few singing happily or dolefully. A beggar played a tin pipe on a corner. He noticed Fliss with his quick eyes and took a step towards her. She hurried away. Was he an informer, a policeman, a spy? Was he Morisette? Once these had been Despiner wharves. Now the blazing sun emblem was gone, torn down in some places, leaving strips of rag, and no new emblem had taken its place. She sensed uncertainty all around. The city was waiting to lurch or slide into a new shape. The Despiners were fallen; the Morisettes and the others — Carps, Krohns, Loaders, Dights — were ready to grab; and she thought, It will be the Morisettes, there'll only be one. There was no sign yet, but some of the labourers were whistling the Morisette song as they lumped their heavy loads from barge to warehouse.

Towards sundown she worked her way back to the seat where she would meet Keef — still the quick-moving servant in her freedwoman garb. There she let herself rest. She drank water from her flask and ate the baked tuber that had cooled in her pocket since she had bought it at a wharfside stall.

The sun went down. Keef did not come. The buildings around the dusty yard threw shadows across her seat. 'Keef,' she whispered, angry with him one moment, fearful the next. She gave him another ten minutes, but had no way of knowing when they were gone. A lamplighter worked his way towards her.

'Get home, lassie. There's grabbers about.'

She hurried away. But where should she go? She waited a few moments at the end of the street, outside a lamp's circle of light. Keef would come this way — but she knew he wasn't coming, she knew. They had him. His family, who would punish him for their fall. Or the Morisettes. Either way... She could not think. Two things were fixed in her mind: they had Keef, and she was alone in Galp.

Move, she told herself. You know this town. She knew places to go, if they were still there. She knew people, too, if they knew her. But would they be any use — thieves, thief masters, beggars, dippers, pimps, mudlarks, bait-girls, too, drain-sliders and wall-men? She shook her head. Not them. The woman Lorna. That was why she was here — to find Lorna and take her to the Old One. With or without Keef, that was her job.

First, she must see this woman in her cage, and follow and see where she was kept.

She went west and south, through lanes and alleys mapped in her head, making for Morisette Square where, the story went, the first Morisette, a slave trader, had pitched his tent in the jungle hundreds of years ago. Soon, in wider streets, she was moving with a crowd — workers and their wives, women with babies slung over their breasts, men with children riding on their shoulders. Older children dived among the legs, hunting each other, and swaggering troops of apprentice boys elbowed people out of their way. No slaves. Few freedmen and freedwomen, few black faces. Fliss kept herself small; she shrank in the way she had learned. Now and then she heard the words, 'Despiner Nightingale'. The moving crowd was in a cheerful mood, as though heading to a mummers' show or a hanging. 'Singing bird,' she heard, and 'Sweet Despiner', mockingly.

The wide square was thronged. A gilded fountain shaped like a hand rose in the centre, trickling water from its fingertips. The Open Hand. Symbol of Morisette bounty. Soldiers kept a space clear around it; and soon from the other side of the square Fliss heard shouts, commands, cheering, and saw, riding above heads, a cage mounted on a cart with gum-sheathed wheels. It was gilded like the fountain. It flew the Morisette pennant from a pole on its fluted roof.

Fliss took her chance, easing through the crowd, worming through, as people rose on their toes to see. The cage advanced from the other side, drawn by blinkered horses trained to ignore the shouting. Troopers rode ahead and on each side, guiding the cage into the space by the fountain.

Fliss used the time to work her way to the side where the Hand opened out. The wagon would stop where the crowd was thickest. She tightened her hood over her face and closed it with her fingers, leaving only space for her eyes. But she was, she thought, invisible. The only one these people would see was the woman in the cage.

The wagon creaked to a stop. The horses blew and snorted and were still. In the cage, behind gilded bars, a woman sat on a throne. Her dress was richly embroidered. She wore a filigreed crown. It was a mockery that did not affect her. She listened calmly to the crowd. No anger, no disgust. Voices jeered and hooted, a hungry sound. No fear either. She was tired but trying not to show it. She turned her head at shrieks and catcalling, and smiled to show she wasn't afraid. There's some way of seeing, Fliss thought, that isn't with your eyes.

A man stepped through the squad of soldiers facing the crowd. He was big-bellied and big-chested, with a wide red mouth and pumped-out cheeks, and eyes that sparkled with delight. Fliss had seen him before, a famous man, the Morisette crier, named Goook for the great bellow he commanded silence with. His helper unfolded steps at the side of the cart, and he mounted and swept off his broad hat. His wide mouth curled into the shape of a trumpet. 'Gooo-oook,' he roared, and the sound rolled like a wave across the square and swept back from the buildings all around. The great cannon at the wall could not have roared louder.

The silence that followed was like the sudden coming of night, although from somewhere came a sound like a cry of grief.

The woman in the cage heard. She turned her face, seemed to gaze, whispering to herself.

'Friends,' said Goook, in a whisper of his own — a whisper like a tidal surge — 'friends one and all. We stand tonight beneath the Open Hand, which pours its glorious bounty on us all. On us _all_. Friends, the great Maker in the Sky has placed us in the favour of his servant, the Morisette, that Family unrivalled, unequalled in our land, and the Open Hand rewards us on this night with a song of obeisance from one whom I may call the only sweet Despiner...'

He went on, but Fliss did not hear. All her attention was on the woman in the cage. Her white eyelids stayed closed, and yet, and yet, she _saw_. Not the shape of faces, something else. Her concentration showed it. Aware of some external force or being. Fliss followed her blind gaze, ran her eyes along the string it made — and there was Keef. His face was as white as road dust, and streaked with his fading scratches; his eyes were deep and pleading, his mouth set in a silent cry of grief. He was at the front of the crowd, where it bent around the fountain. Laughing people pressed on either side. Keef stood plain to see if they had eyes. But their eyes were on Goook as he wound up his speech.

Fliss felt something pressing on her face. It was like soft fingers on her cheeks, forehead, mouth, probing behind her eyes, inside her head. Her look went darting back to Lorna. The woman was 'looking' at her. Fliss felt herself held for a moment in Lorna's awareness, and then as suddenly released. The blind eyes looked nowhere. They locked the woman back into her darkness. But what had happened? Fliss had no time to find out. Goook turned on the steps and flung an arm at Lorna, while the other dampened the noise of the crowd.

'So, my pretty Nightingale, sing. Sing, my sweet Despiner. Gladden our hearts with the Morisette song. Rise from your nest now. Bring yourself forward. You are free to flutter, little birdling. Sing to the glory of the Open Hand.'

He unhooked the top half of the cage door and flung it back. He put his hand in and beckoned Lorna. She rose painfully, a hand on each arm of the throne. Fliss saw how bent and twisted she was — one shoulder high, the other low, so that her arm hung lower on that side even though her shoulder was humped. She took a step. That was uneven, too, on her twisted foot. The crowd drew in a rushing breath. Then, as one, it laughed. Lorna smiled. She took another step. She was frail. Under her coloured clothes she was as thin as a bird. But Fliss saw how beautiful she was. Her face was calm even though reddened — someone had painted her for her performance — her features perfectly formed, high in the cheekbones, high in the forehead, rounded and dimpled in the chin: a beautiful woman, though trembling a little in her mouth.

She approached the half-door as Goook retreated down the steps. His hands kept up their movements, one hushing, the other encouraging. The crowd obeyed, fell silent. Lorna reached the door and placed her hands on it. She swayed a moment, seeming to stare over the crowd. Goook lifted his hands as though lifting her voice and tipping it over the upraised faces. She took no notice of him. She smiled a little. Then she raised her head and seemed to bare her throat; and she sent a long, steady, beautiful cry across the square, as strong as Goook's bellow for silence and more clear; and the crowd made a single unified gulp of disbelief. It was the first note — commanding silence — of the Despiner song of self-praise.

Fliss understood. There would be uproar, pandemonium, and in the wild disturbance Keef might slip away unnoticed. He would have no chance if she sang the Morisette song — no one must move during that. They must stand with uplifted faces and one hand raised in imitation of the Hand.

But Lorna had misjudged. Goook was enraged. He lumbered up the steps, hands outstretched, and seized Lorna by the throat as she sang the first words of the song. He started to shake and throttle her. And Keef pushed between the soldiers holding back the crowd, ran crouched, hand clawing at his side, jumped the last yards, landed on Goook's back, and plunged his Morisette knife into the man's chest.

The crowd lurched, broke, screamed, and Fliss, lost in it, could not see. She was bumped and heaved, she fell and was trampled for a moment, but clawed her way up, climbed someone's body, stood again and darted, wriggled, slid towards the cage. There, in a space kept clear by the soldiers, Keef stood pinioned, arms forced behind him by two soldiers, while a third pulled his head back by the hair, baring his throat. Still he managed to look at the cage, where Lorna, hands on the door rail, had pulled herself halfway to her feet. Fliss could not hear what they cried to each other. She could not see Goook, but saw someone holding Keef's knife high. It ran with blood.

Beyond them a horseman forced his way through the crowd, striking left and right with a flattened sword. The soldiers parted and let him through.

Fliss recognised Anton Morisette, the man Keef had wounded by the wall. The soldiers forced Keef round and the two faced each other, faces competing, Keef's in rage, Anton Morisette's in hatred. He swung his sword, slicing it in front of Keef's eyes, a half-inch short. Swung it again, closer, forcing Keef to blink and try to jerk away — and that seemed to satisfy Anton. He lowered the sword a moment, then raised it and touched the point against Keef's throat. He looked around, half-smiling, at the crowd. They screamed at him to kill, kill, to avenge Goook. He pressed a little harder on Keef's throat and blood trickled down. Fliss could not see Anton's face, but everything about him, the thrust of his head, his lean in the saddle, showed pleasure and eagerness and control. At last he withdrew his sword and the crowd uttered an 'ahh' of disappointment.

Anton worked his horse around to face the line of soldiers and the people they held back. He raised his sword, and the silence was instant. He smiled.

'I should let you have him,' he said.

'Yes. Yes. Give him to us. Give us the Despiner,' men cried and women shrieked.

Slowly Anton shook his head. 'I have something better.' He smiled again. 'I have a hanging.'

'Aah,' sighed the crowd.

'I have two.'

'Aah.'

'Come here tomorrow night. Come at this hour. We shall raise the gallows where he stands now —' Anton swung his sword-arm back — 'this Despiner who was once my drummer boy, this coward who ran, and who murdered our good friend Goook. We shall hang him high.'

The crowd roared its approval. Anton silenced them.

'And beside him, to keep him company, his fair sister, the Nightingale. If she won't sing our song we'll make her do our dance.'

Again they roared.

'Put him in with her,' Anton said.

The three soldiers forced Keef up the steps. They did not open the half-door but threw Keef over. He rolled on the cage floor, half-rose and stumbled to Lorna, who struggled to raise herself on her arms. They held each other. They sat together, facing the crowd, like two children lost in a forest.

Anton Morisette gave orders. A troop of soldiers formed around the cage. Others lifted Goook's body and carried it away.

The giant horses strained and the cage moved.

'To the Deep,' Anton cried. 'Let them spend their last day weeping at each other in the Dark.'

He rode ahead. The cage moved out of the square, with the crowd baying behind it.

Fliss did not follow. The Deep, the Dark: the names meant the same, were interchangeable — the strongest dungeons in the Morisette prison.

She waited as the crowd dissolved around her. Then she made her way out of the square towards the wharves and Mudtown beyond. She could not think of any other place to go.

## Chapter Eight

There was no name, just a sign hanging over the door — a white-breasted shag with an eel in its beak. The river banks were dark, the tilted boats on the mudflats empty, while the few lights beyond, from scows and schooners waiting for the tide, made no more than pinpricks in the night.

A hum of voices came from The Hungry Shag. Fliss watched from the darkness. The doorway was inviting. She watched several men come out and others go in — watermen, lightermen, one better dressed, a tallyman. Careful, she thought. She crossed the road, went further on, then doubled back and found a covered lane leading down the side of the tavern — the sort of place homeless men slept. Dark shadows stirred as she went along. A hand clawed her ankle but she kicked it away. Further on, a lamp shone over a doorway. She shielded her face with her hood and knocked softly. A shuffling inside, a voice: 'Who's there?'

No names. 'The girl from the scow, for the man who arrived yesterday.'

Silence from inside, then the door opened a crack. 'Let's see your face,' a surly voice said.

Fliss put her hood back and a single eye examined her. The door opened wider — enough for a cat, Fliss thought. 'Inside, girl. Quick. Don't dawdle.'

She squeezed into a dim passageway, heard the door click shut and a chain secure it.

'Scow?' the woman said. She was not much older than Fliss, dressed in the same sort of shift and loose, flopping shoes.

'He said I should ask for Old Minnie,' Fliss said.

'That's me.'

'But...'

'Not old? It's their joke.' She gestured at a closed door where, several rooms away, the muted roar of drinkers sounded. 'Old Minnie was my Ma. She's dead, so I'm Old Minnie now.' She sent a bitter glance at the door. 'Who's this "he" who told you to ask? Say it quiet.'

'Mutch,' Fliss said softly.

'Hmph. He said you'd show me a knife.'

Fliss pulled out the hidden knife and showed it.

'Stone?'

'Stone.'

Old Minnie felt its edge, then looked at her sourly. 'Where's the stupid one?' She grinned. 'Your master?'

'The Morisettes have got him.'

Old Minnie hissed. 'Anyone follow you? Follow you here?'

'No. I was careful.' She was getting impatient. 'He said to come. So here I am. Where is he? Tell him my name. It's—'

'No names. I don't want to know it. Follow me.'

She led Fliss away from the tavern noise. The corridor turned and passed rooms Fliss guessed were empty. A crack of light showed under a door at the end. Old Minnie opened it and put her head in.

'Girl with a stone knife,' she said. She pushed Fliss inside and closed the door with a soft thud. Her shoes slapped away down the corridor.

Three men were at a table lit in the centre by a lamp: one Old Minnie's brother from his face, one a quick-eyed fellow with a nose bent sideways in a way that made him whistle when he breathed. The third was Mutch. He did not look pleased to see her.

'Yes, girl? You in trouble?' He looked at her closely and pushed away the half-full mug in front of him. 'Bad?' Then, 'Wait,' he said as she started to speak. 'Poddy, check the alley. You came up the alley?'

'Yes.'

'Anyone there?'

'Men sleeping. Drunks.'

'Poddy.'

The man who looked like Old Minnie went out.

'Now, Fliss. Where's the boy?'

'The Morisettes have got him. They're going to hang him tomorrow night. And his sister.' She felt a tear trickle on her cheek and swiped it away angrily — grieving for Keef, but furious with him.

'Did you tell him about this place?' Mutch said quickly.

'You told me not to.'

'All right.' Mutch nudged Poddy's chair with his foot. 'Sit down.'

Fliss sat in the chair and poured the story out: Keef going Up There to his Despiner House, then being in Morisette Square where Lorna would sing, and her song, and Keef killing Goook ('Stupid boy,' Mutch said under his breath, while the man with the crooked nose grinned and said, 'Good boy'), and the crowd surging at Keef and the soldiers holding him while Anton Morisette rode up.

'You know Anton Morisette?' Mutch said sharply.

'I've seen him before, when I lived in Galp. He hunts slaves and kills them.'

'Did he hunt you?'

'I was a Despiner slave.'

Mutch studied her. He knew there were things she was hiding.

'So, they're hanging them tomorrow night?'

'Yes. Both. She started singing the wrong song.'

'Good,' whispered the man with the crooked nose.

'We can't save them, Fliss. Not in a crowd, in Morisette Square,' Mutch said.

'I thought...' She looked at him hopelessly.

'Because I helped you once I'd do it again?'

'You said to come. The Hungry Shag, you said.'

The door opened and Poddy came in. He shook his head at Mutch — nothing in the alley — and frowned when he saw Fliss in his chair. He leaned against the wall.

Mutch sat thinking. He reached for his mug and drank it empty. 'Let's hear the rest of your story, Fliss.'

'There's no rest.'

He shook his head. 'Start when you were a slave. Have you got a brand?'

'No. I was in the cotton mills. I ran because I was starving — and cold.'

'How old?'

'Eight. Nine. I never knew my birthday.'

'Despiners brand at ten,' the man with the crooked nose said. Poddy, by the door, rubbed an ancient burn scar on his shoulder. Mutch took no notice.

'What then?'

She waited a moment, meeting his eye, then looked down. Start with her street life — that was safe. She told it simply: getting in with a band of mudlarks, then with a gang of dippers run by a man called Ogle. ('Ogle's dead. Carps strung him up last year,' Poddy said.) She stayed until she was thirteen, and she was good at it. ('Bet you were,' grinned the bent-nosed man, clapping his hand on his pocket as though she might dip there.) But she was good at listening, too, and she learned that when Ogle thought his girls were ready he sold them to brothels.

'So I ran again,' she said. She described her flight northwards, her starving and stealing, her walking in streams to escape slave-hunters and their dogs, her sleeping in barns, in gum huts, under upturned boats, and climbing into the highlands and reaching the wall, where — she lied — she had stayed, living in the woods, scavenging, foraging for food. She found her knife there, lying in dead leaves—

'Stop,' said Mutch.

Fliss fell silent.

'Go back to when you get to the wall.'

'I told you.'

'No, Fliss, you didn't. If you want me to help you...' He spread his hands and shrugged.

Fliss put her arms on the table and laid her head on them. She closed her eyes. No sound then except the bent-nosed man's whistling breath and, behind her, Poddy scratching his back on the frame of the door. Mutch tapped his fingers on the table.

Trust him, she thought — although he was less friendly now. She thought of the Old One lying on his bed. He was waiting, waiting — until he died. The wall would end then, when the Old One ended. Unless... She felt little rushes of hope, but they turned aside, trickled away. There was no way open. Unless this man... He had others with him, he had help. And if she told him everything, what harm could it do? Nothing mattered if the wall came down. What had he — what had Mutch said? 'If you want me to help you...'

Fliss looked up. 'I got through the wall,' she said.

'Nah,' said the bent-nosed man.

Poddy said, 'Ho.'

'Shut up, both of you,' Mutch said. He nodded at Fliss to go on.

'I didn't know I was going there, I was just running. There were slave-hunters down in the valley. Black girl running, that was enough. I heard their dogs. They got my scent. Then I saw the wall. It was shining. It was like water, but it had colours. And it just went up and out of sight. But I could see trees on the other side. So I ran along it. I didn't touch it, I was scared. But the dogs, they were yelping, they were getting close and I knew they'd kill me. So — I touched the wall, I put my hand on it, and it didn't hurt. It was soft and sliding, my hand went in —' she showed how far — 'and wouldn't go any further, it slid along. I pushed and pushed but I couldn't go through, and the dogs were closer and men were shouting back and forth, behind me and in front, and one was coming up the hill, so I was trapped. So — I just lay down against the wall. It was a little bit warm.'

Mutch nodded his head as if agreeing. She looked at him with disbelief. Had he been there, had he felt it?

'I — I lay with my back on it and it felt friendly, and I thought maybe the dogs would be frightened and run away. I closed my eyes. And then I felt something touch my arm and when I looked down it was a hand. I think I screamed. I saw a woman through the wall. The way it moved made her move, too, like under water. She was saying something, but I couldn't hear. She held my arm tight so I couldn't pull away and she told me _stand up_ with her other hand. So I stood and she put her other arm through and held me by my wrists and pulled me onto the other side.'

'Nah,' the bent man whispered.

'What did it feel like?' Mutch said.

'Warm, a little bit. And...'

'Hurt?'

'Not much. It was like hitting your funny bone.'

'What then?'

She told him: the woman whispering, 'Don't sleep. Not yet,' pulling her into the trees so the hunters would not see them, and holding her while she cried. They hid themselves and watched, the dogs going mad, some squealing with terror — 'I couldn't hear them but I could tell' — and one digging madly in the dirt to find her. The slave-hunters yelling at each other, pushing each other. One clubbed the wall with the butt of his gun. 'Then she let me sleep. I slept for two days.'

'The slave girl who went up in smoke. I heard that story,' Poddy said.

'Didn't believe it,' the bent man said. 'Still don't,' he whispered.

'What was the woman's name?' Mutch said.

'Shoo.'

'Black? White?'

'Not as black as me. Brown.'

'Had she got through herself or was she born there?'

'She was born there.'

'How long ago was this?'

'Three years.'

'And you've lived there with this woman?' She did not want to talk about the Old One. 'Tell me, Fliss.'

'I lived with her,' she said carefully. She described living with Shoo. She described being happy. She told Mutch about the village through the trees and the people who lived there. He listened with hooded eyes and a twist on his mouth.

'You probably told lies better when you lived on this side,' he said.

'I'm not lying.'

'All right, you lived there with this Shoo. I guess that's true. But what about the bits you're leaving out?'

'What bits?'

'How would I know? Tell us about this Despiner boy.'

'His name is Keef.'

'Maybe Keef. Maybe Kirt. Where did you find him?'

'They were hunting him. I was watching and I pulled him through the way Shoo pulled me. He slept all right. I didn't stop him. He slept for two days.'

'I heard the Morisettes made him a drummer boy.'

'Yes.'

'So he was at the wall when they tried their cannon?'

She nodded.

'Tell us about the cannon. Did it work?'

'No. The flame rolled back and knocked the Morisette general off his horse.'

Poddy laughed.

'Keef saw his chance and tried to get away. They caught him by the wall. He wounded Anton Morisette. They were going to kill him, so I pulled him through. It... hurt him more than it hurt me.'

'So he got away. And now he's come back.'

'To save his sister.'

Mutch reached down by his leg and lifted a tin jug. He filled his mug. The bent man filled his, and Poddy came from beside the door and took a full mug back.

'Drink, Fliss?' Mutch asked.

'No. I've got this.' She put her water flask on the table. She wanted to keep a clear head. But she was tired, so tired. What she wanted most was to sleep.

'Did you know, Fliss,' Mutch said, 'there's no Despiners left? Oh, they're alive — the Morisettes haven't killed them, not yet. But they've gobbled them up. No Family Despiner. One down.'

'How?' Fliss managed to say.

'They got too greedy. Tried to push the other Families over like dominoes. And their girl, this Lorna, she said no to Anton Morisette, and the boy helped, so, the law — it's sacred, Fliss, can't break it, it's been there hundreds of years, the old men made it in the jungle when they got here — so the Morisettes, they reached out their hand —' Mutch reached out — 'and they crushed House Despiner, like this.' He closed his hand. 'They're big now. They'll look at the Carps next, and the Krohns. They'll gobble them. What we're seeing is an oligarchy turning into a monarchy.'

Fliss did not know those words.

'But not yet, Fliss. We don't want them doing anything yet.'

The other men grunted their approval.

'Are they free up there, behind the wall?'

'Yes.'

'No Rule? No Families?'

'No.'

'No slaves? People starving?'

'No.' She was tired of this. It had nothing to do with Lorna or Keef or her.

'Fliss, that's what we want here. But we want the wall to stay there and the Morisettes to be scared of it. It keeps their mind off us.'

'Who...?'

'Just ordinary people who want to stop being slaves.'

'You're not—'

'We're slaves of a sort, Fliss. And we're going to stop it. But first — tell us what you're here for.'

She was tired. Mutch would keep on all night. She was afraid of him, but she liked him, too. He was better than Morisettes and Despiners and Carps.

'The wall is going to fall down,' she said.

'Hey,' said the bent man. Poddy stood up straight from the wall.

Mutch did not even blink. 'I heard it's starting to flicker.'

'When did you hear?'

He took no notice. 'So I went up to have a look. Looks like it's —' he demonstrated with his hand — 'wobbly. I've watched the wall a long time.'

'Wall-watcher,' Poddy said.

'I don't think it'll fall down. It'll... fade away.'

'Yes,' she said.

'As if it's getting too old to go on.'

'Yes.'

Mutch drank and wiped his mouth. 'So what's wrong with it?'

'There's...' She shook her head. They would not believe her. 'There's an old man — a sort of man — who holds it up.'

'Nah,' the bent man said.

'Shut up, Zizz,' Mutch said. He nodded at Fliss: go on.

'He's dying.'

'What's his name?'

'We call him the Old One.'

'A sort of man?'

'He's one of the People. You've heard of them? He's the last one left.'

Mutch let out a little breath, part surprise, part understanding. 'I've heard of the People. I don't know whether I believe in them. Lived in the forest up there? No one ever saw them?'

'Yes.'

'And they're all dead?'

'Except the Old One.'

'And now he's dying?'

'He's so old. All he eats is broth. He can hardly lift his arms.' She felt tears trickle again. 'But...' She could not go on.

'He holds the wall?'

She nodded.

'And when he dies?'

'Yes.' She wiped her eyes and tried to take the cap off her flask.

'Here.' Mutch pushed his mug across the table. 'Mouthful of this. Go on, drink it.'

She took a mouthful and almost choked, it was so strong. But it warmed her and she felt it lift the sadness off her mind. She uncapped her water, swallowed a mouthful to soften the taste.

'Carp wine,' Zizz said. 'Girls only get one sip.'

Mutch silenced him with a look. 'The People,' he said. 'How did they make it, Fliss?'

'I don't know.'

'Magic,' Zizz said.

'No, not magic. They just —' she shook her head —'they just knew how.'

'They dreamed it,' Mutch said.

'No. It's not a dream. It's real. You've touched it. But it's only there because it's in the Old One's mind.'

Mutch nodded. Maybe he believed her, maybe not. 'But he didn't make it?'

'No. They all did.'

'And it killed them,' Mutch said — a statement not a question.

'Yes. They died. They died quickly after that. They saved their land...'

'From Morisettes and Despiners and Carps,' Mutch said.

'And they left it with the Old One to hold. He's held it ever since.'

'What is the bloody thing?' Poddy said from the doorway.

'It's a wall,' Mutch said flatly. 'Doesn't matter what sort, as long as it keeps the Morisettes busy.'

So that was it, Fliss thought. Keeping the Morisettes busy. He had no interest in the wall apart from that.

But he surprised her, looking at Poddy. 'It goes right across, east to west, and then up the coastline, north on both sides, and across the top past all the mountains. Right round. Keeps it all safe. Keeps these Family muckers down here out. They can't get in by sailing round. They can't dig under. They've tried. It goes down. And one old man, eh —' turning to Fliss — 'in his mind?'

'Yes.'

'And he's dying?'

'Yes.' Tears again. She wiped her cheeks. 'I don't know how he stays alive.'

There was silence for a long time. Even Zizz seemed to breathe more softly. Mutch stared into his drink, and at last took a gulp.

'So —' his eyes on Fliss — 'what did he send you here for?'

'Nothing. Nothing. I came with Keef to save his sister.'

'I wish I believed you,' Mutch said. Then after a while: 'We can sit here all night, Fliss.'

She wanted to tell him. More than that, she needed to. He was her only chance to save Keef. Save Lorna.

'Until it falls down,' he said.

'It won't,' she said. 'If we can...'

He waited.

'If we can get Lorna. He sent us for her.'

It surprised him. 'The Despiner woman?'

'Yes. He talks to her. He used to. He's too weak now. But she's like him. He's been waiting. He's been listening all his life for someone like her. There's no People left. It's got to be...'

'She can hold the wall?'

'This is dogshit,' Poddy said.

Mutch raised his hand, gently now, for silence.

'Do you believe it?' he asked.

'If he says so. The Old One.'

'How?'

'I don't know. She — she must have the same sort of mind. He's "talked" with her. He's listened. And he told us to bring her.'

'Dogshit,' Zizz breathed.

'Maybe. But we should ask her.'

'Ah, Mutch,' Poddy protested.

'Easy, Poddy.' He held him quiet with a raised finger, and said at last, 'All I know is, we need that wall.'

Fliss felt a kind of collapse in her — relief and overwhelming tiredness. She could not think any more. Someone else would do it. All she needed was to sleep. She put her head on her arms and closed her eyes. Heard Mutch's voice: 'Get Minnie, Pod.'

The door opened and closed. She felt a woman's arm lifting, leading; saw a corridor, a lamp lighting the cavernous way, saw a bed in a corner, felt something warm thrown over her; and, far away, heard the click of a closing door...

Then it was morning...

## Chapter Nine

... and there was Minnie shaking her. 'Wake up, girl. Things to do.'

A basin of cold water, a rag to wash with. Another corridor, leading further away from The Hungry Shag. Minnie in a kitchen, ladling maize porridge from a pot, fetching a jar of honey to sweeten it. This was a different Minnie. The slattern was gone. She was quick and curt and hard-eyed, a woman with no time for talk or pleasantries.

'Wash it. Over there,' when Fliss had finished her porridge.

Fliss rinsed her bowl in a tin tub on a bench.

'Where's Mutch?'

'Gone. You'll see him tonight.'

'Where?'

'Where I take you.'

'Are they—'

'No questions. Finish your drink. And fill your flask. You and me have got things to do. Take one of those.' She pointed at two canvas sacks lying in a corner.

Fliss hefted one and slung it over her shoulder. 'Heavy.'

'It might be the lightest thing you lift today.'

They went into an alleyway at the back of the kitchen. It was unpaved, uncobbled, and slippery with thrown slops and water from drains. Minnie led Fliss through a maze of alleys, across a rope-maker's yard, along the side of a tin-smith's workshop, and brought them out on the river side, in the bustle and roar of loading and unloading. Here they were a working woman with a sack and her helper trudging behind. They went on as the river widened towards its mouth. Wharves and jetties gave way to mangrove swamps and rickety bridges sagging over side-creeks. The tide was high. In some places the water slapped the bottom of the planks. Minnie put down her sack.

'Drink,' she said, swiping midges away from her face. She took a hard biscuit from her pocket and gave it to Fliss.

'Where are we going?' Fliss asked. She could tell from the smell of the bundles in her sack that they were food. Bacon was there and salt fish. Fresh bread, too. And meat, from the lumpy feel of it. 'Who's this for?'

Minnie finished drinking. 'Us,' she said, wiping her mouth. She sighed. The walking had softened her temper. Or perhaps, Fliss thought, she was happy to be away from the tavern.

'When?'

'Maybe never if things go wrong. You brought some trouble with you, girl.' She brushed sweat from her eyebrows. 'But I'm glad something's happening at last. Can you row a boat?'

'I've never tried. I can swim.'

'Might have to do that.' Minnie grinned. 'Mudlark, were you?'

'Not long. I was...' There was no need to hide things from this woman. 'I was a dip.'

'Good one?'

'I never got caught.'

'You wouldn't have any skin left on your back if you had. Come on. Ways to go.'

Mid-morning. A track above the tideline ended at a creek fringed with mangroves. Minnie hauled a dinghy through the trunks and floated it. Fliss put the sacks in the bow and clambered into the stern seat. Minnie flicked the oars, spinning the dinghy like a water beetle, and sent it scudding down the creek and out onto the river. A battered old scow lay anchored hard against the mangroves. She looked as if she hadn't sailed for years — a chained wheel, a grey sail roped lumpily on the boom, a mast with an amputated top. No name on the peeling curve of the bow.

A boy about ten years old appeared from the deckhouse. He was skinny, ragged, spotted with scars from some disease, but quick and eager, holding the dinghy while Fliss lifted the sacks on board.

'Did your dad bring the other stuff?' Minnie asked.

'It's all in there,' the boy said.

'Stow this. Quick.'

The boy hauled the sacks into the deckhouse.

'Right. Jump in.'

He climbed into the dinghy and Minnie rowed back into the creek. 'Now scat,' she said.

The boy started along the track.

'No talkee,' she called after him.

He turned around and made an angry scowl and a fingerjerk of contempt.

'Hey, Jed, you done a good job,' Minnie said.

He bent his finger, cancelling its message, and disappeared into the mangroves.

'He's good,' Minnie said. 'Now, you. Can you find your way back?'

'Yes. Where?'

'Not The Shag. There's no more Shag. Clean yourself up, then get to the square, watch the hangings.'

'Hangings?'

'There might be. But maybe not.'

'What do I do there?'

'Be early. Get near the gallows. Poddy and Zizz will be there, not together. You're a good dip, eh?'

'Yes.'

'Get near them. Then—' she felt in her pocket and brought out three small twists of paper — 'put one in Poddy's pocket, one in Zizz's. No one sees.'

'What are they?'

Minnie grinned sourly. 'Just a thing to swallow. Works quick. Won't hurt as much as they'll hurt if they get caught.'

Fliss swallowed. 'All right.' She got out of the dinghy. 'And one for Mutch?'

'You won't see Mutch.'

'You gave me three.' Then she understood.

Minnie nodded. 'I guess you'll be staying?'

'Yes.'

'It's no good me saying get out of there?'

'No.'

'Then it's for you.'

'Yes. All right.'

'Don't get in the way. And when it's over —' she gave a grunt of uncertainty — 'come back here. Fast as you can or we'll go without you.' She shook her head. 'You know how to bring trouble, girl.' She spun the dinghy and rowed away.

She likes trouble better than being Old Minnie, Fliss thought.

Back at the wharves she washed her face and arms at a pump. She washed mud from her cloth shoes and dried them for half an hour in the sun, watching labourers work and clerks mark their tally sheets. She was aware of the twists of paper in her pocket. They clung together like a nest of spiders. One for her. She would be as dead as Keef and Lorna hanging on a rope.

She spent one of her groats on bread and cheese, then, timing herself by the afternoon sun, made her way towards Morisette Square. It was sunk in shadows when she arrived; lamplighters were at work, but the Hand, high over the fountain, glowed in a last ray of sunshine coming between houses.

The gallows were in place: black timber, white rope. The nooses hung side by side, like serving spoons on a scullery wall.

People were gathering — the same as the night before, it seemed to Fliss. Workmen, tradesmen and their wives, children riding on their fathers' shoulders, old people in carts pushed by hired boys. Here and there carriages flanked by footmen edged into the crowd, with ladies at the windows holding nosegays and posies to keep out the stink of the crowd.

A troop of soldiers guarded the gallows. Two were fixing the Morisette flag on a pole bolted to its side. Fliss had been at hangings. The best times for dipping were when the trumpets rang out and the flag went up, and later when the hangmen kicked the stools from under the victims. You could empty a dozen pockets then.

She moved slowly, eyes darting, looking for Poddy and Zizz, careful not to brush against anyone. There were people who would strike out at a black girl, or mock her and turn her into sport. But most were happy and eager, and she passed unnoticed. Poddy, black like her, would have to be careful.

She saw him on the far side of the fountain, hooded and wearing a baggy coat that made him look fat. She worked her way towards him casually. His eyes flicked over her and away. He turned side on, staring as though at something across the square. She brushed past and her fingers, nipping a twist of paper, were in his pocket and out and scratching her face as she walked on, not here at all but looking for someone — who now had to be Zizz. Where was he? Close or buried somewhere in the crowd?

Close, in a good place for watching the condemned cart arrive — but where the edge of the fountain obscured his view of the gallows. There must be a reason. Mutch would have placed his men as carefully as pieces on a game board. Where was Mutch? And the others, there must be others. Three men could not snatch a woman and a boy in a crowd like this, in front of a troop of soldiers.

A cry of approval, almost of greed, went up, and grew and shrilled as whistles and home-made shriekers joined in. The hangmen were mounting the platform, one at each side. They were in costume, like mummers, but halved down the middle, shining, rippling with red and yellow — the Morisette colours — on one side, tar-black on the other, for death. Their eyes, their teeth, gleamed in their masks. Each stood wide-legged and with folded arms beside his rope. Assistants placed a stool, square and exact, beneath each noose.

In the uproar, Fliss slipped the second twist of paper into Zizz's pocket. He was cheering like the rest of the crowd. She eased away. Where should she stand? Zizz, she decided. Close to Zizz. He was nearer the gallows than Poddy.

A trumpet sounded close at hand and the crowd grew still. The brass wail came again from the street leading from the Morisette prison into the square. A mounted soldier appeared, with the Open Hand standard held high. The condemned cart was coming. 'Morisette, Morisette,' the crowd chanted. Fliss saw ecstatic faces all around. She knew the opinion: Despiners might be grand and solemn, but no one put on a show like the Morisettes.

Four soldiers marched behind the standard, their ceremonial headgear — tall hats with red and yellow feathers — bouncing in time with their step. Now, Fliss thought. It had to be now. Once the procession turned into the square there would be no chance. She counted in time with the beating of her heart — now, now — wondering at the same time why Poddy and Zizz had waited by the gallows when they should be over there.

The crowd noise deepened to a subterranean roar. Then shrieks of glee rose above it. Four black horses, plumes nodding on their heads, drew the condemned cart out of the prison street. Anton Morisette led the way on his white horse. Behind him walked a drummer, beating a single note. Mounted soldiers, red and yellow, rode on each side of the cart, which had none of the grandeur of the one that had carried Lorna the night before. No fluted roof, no roof at all, just plain wooden rails, and wheels sheathed in iron not gum. Inside? Fliss darted from side to side but could not see Lorna or Keef. A knot of people stood in the centre, hiding them.

Now, she pleaded.

The crack of gunshots answered, so sharp they seemed to cut into her. Anton Morisette's hat flew from his head. Behind him a horseman slumped forward in his saddle.

Fliss ran backwards and forwards but the people in front of her made an unbreakable wall. She felt for her knife: she would stab her way through. A hand fell on her shoulder and clamped tight. 'Stay.' It was Zizz. He moved away. She saw Poddy through a sudden gap, closer to the fountain, fingering a button on his coat.

The cart? She hunted for it, found it for a moment, lurching on, making waves of people as the horses knocked them aside. Anton, leaning sideways on his mount, had one hand locked on the bridle linking the front pair and seemed to be pulling the team along. Blood ran through his hair and down his face.

The cart broke free and reached the gallows. Lorna stood in the centre, supported by a woman on either side; and Keef was there, wearing a prisoner's gown belted in the middle. Two men held him on his feet. His head lolled like a drunk man's.

Fliss felt herself falling, falling away. She had believed. Now, disbelief. There was no rescue.

Two more shots sounded by the street entrance. Anton dropped the bridle and swung around. Shadowy men moved in the windows of a darkened house. They fired again and disappeared as he screamed orders. The soldiers at the gallows and those by the cart ran in formation, knocking people aside with their rifle butts.

Anton and his horsemen surged after them; then came a new roar as the front of the house blew out and debris rained on the crowd. And Fliss saw the plan at last. No soldiers at the gallows: they were trapped in the crowd, which seemed to slide backwards and forwards and tangle and swirl as men grabbed their wives and women their children, all trying to get away in different directions. Others stood dazed, immovable. Half the troopers had been thrown from their terrified horses and the others, even Anton, were struggling to calm their own.

Now, she thought. Now. She fought her way towards the cart.

The men holding Keef kept him upright by his arms. The women with Lorna stood so close they seemed to hug her. She could not see Poddy and Zizz in the people milling about. And where was Mutch? The house with its front blasted off was burning now, but they would not be there when Lorna and Keef were here.

Then Zizz! There he was — at the cart, uncoupling the team while a man Fliss had not seen before held the lead horses still. And Poddy now, running, trailing a rope that unwound from under his coat, and throwing it in an easy loop over the fountain statue, and running again and hooking it — the hook gleamed like a tooth — to the swingletree behind the rear horses.

Two men climbed onto the prisoners' cart. Mutch! Mutch at last. He took the women holding Lorna, one in each arm, and threw them over the rail; bundled Lorna in his arms; ran to the front rail — while the other man, quick, so quick, was at the guards supporting Keef. Fliss saw the double flash of a knife, and they fell. Keef fell, too. He crumpled, and the man dragged him to the rail and heaved him over.

One of the hangmen fled, ripping off his mask. The other gave a roar and jumped down from the gallows platform. He ran to the cart where Mutch was handing Lorna down to — who? Minnie! The hangman seized Lorna, tried to tear her away — and Fliss, without thinking, ran at him, low and fast, and speared her knife into his back. The hangman fell to his knees, then slumped on his belly with a sigh, and seemed to sleep.

The horses were straining. Poddy and Zizz lay on the backs of the lead pair, urging them, leaning along their necks and shouting in their ears. The rope about the statue tightened. It pulled against the Hand. But the Hand did not want to fall, it seemed to pull back. The horses strained, and a crack like a gunshot sounded at the statue's base. It tipped and the whole of it fell, toppling like a tree. It shattered the stone surround. Water poured into the square and slid under people's feet, making them run sideways and skate and fall.

Mutch ran with Lorna in his arms. Minnie had thrown a cape over her, hiding her face and the belted shift she had worn on the cart. 'Woman hurt. Way. Way,' Mutch shouted. People took no notice. Some were wandering, going in any direction, confused by the chaos. Others ran with arms out, heading for exits. Men hauled their wives, women pulled their children. Lorna was not the only person carried. No one took any notice of her and Mutch, or of Poddy and Zizz, hauling Keef. A carriage with the driver flogging his horses lurched by. Footmen ran in front of it, lashing people out of the way with their quirts. Poddy and Zizz dragged Keef around its back, losing ground. Fliss caught up with them. She ran behind Keef. His feet, bare for the execution, bounced on the cobbles, but Poddy kept his head safe, lifting it by the hair.

They neared the side of the square away from the fighting. Fliss heard hooves behind her, another carriage. But no, a single horseman, high in his stirrups, coming fast. He had them in sight. Anton Morisette. He had his horse in hard control, stepping it through the crowd, striking a path for himself with a flattened sword.

A cart pushed by a boy was in his way. It tipped and fell on its side, spilling an old woman on the cobbles. Anton Morisette cursed. Beyond the cart he sighted the men dragging Keef. He saw Keef's face and gave a shout. 'Hold him. The Despiner.' Still the cart held him back. He thrust his sword into its scabbard and drew his pistol. Poddy and Zizz were blocked by fallen people, with Keef stretched behind them on the ground. They looked back helplessly as Anton aimed. He had a clear shot. His horse, well trained, stood motionless.

Fliss jumped forward. Her knife was out, sticky with the hangman's blood. Again she used it like a spear, thrusting not stabbing. It dug into Anton Morisette's thigh, almost in the spot where Keef had stabbed him at the wall. Anton jerked in the saddle and lost his aim. Howling, rage overriding pain, he turned to Fliss; saw and recognised her face as he must have seen it, uplifted at the wall, as she pulled Keef through. Snarling, blood-streaked, he shifted his pistol round. Fliss was too fast, already moving. She stabbed her knife into the horse's rump. The animal squealed and reared, and Anton's pistol went off as he struggled not to fall. The horse bolted, scattering people, with Anton slipping sideways in the saddle. Had he fallen? She could not be sure.

Poddy and Zizz worked their way clear. She saw them making for the mouth of a covered lane between two houses. There was no sign of Mutch.

She ran again, weaving in and out, entered the lane, slid through the people clogging it and came to a wide street. A small unmarked carriage, little more than a cab, waited on the far side, with its horse trying to skitter away from the people streaming by. Mutch was lifting Lorna to Minnie inside. Poddy hefted Keef, and Minnie hauled him in. Zizz slammed the door.

'Wait,' Mutch said. 'You. Fliss. In you go, quick.'

He gave her a push that tumbled her on top of Minnie. The carriage set off with a clatter of hooves.

'Don't climb all over me, girl,' Minnie said.

'Where's Keef? Is he all right?'

'He's sleeping,' said a voice from the corner.

'Lorna. You're Lorna. They've been torturing him.'

'They beat him. They burned him. There were things they wanted to know.'

'About the wall?'

'Yes. The wall. So I put him to sleep.'

'You can do that?'

'With people I love.'

'And kept him sleeping?'

'I didn't think he'd want to know he was being hanged.'

The carriage passed under a lamp and Fliss saw Lorna's face. She was smiling, but her cheeks were wet. Keef's head lay in her lap, where she cradled it against the jolting of the cobbled road.

'It's a good trick, but you'd better wake him now,' Minnie said.

'Soon. Thank you for saving us.'

'Thank Mutch.'

'And thank you — Fliss? You're Fliss?'

'Yes.'

'I'm sorry you had to kill a man.'

Fliss wondered what she should say. No trouble? It did not seem bad to her to kill a hangman.

'Too much gab. We haven't got away yet,' Minnie said.

Fliss kept quiet. There were things she had to ask Lorna, but they could wait. Empty streets rattled by. After a while the softer noise of mud and sand.

She wondered how Mutch and Zizz and Poddy would get to the scow. She would not feel safe if Mutch was not there.

'Is he coming? Mutch?'

'He'd better be,' Minnie said. Fliss could feel her grinning. 'He's my man.'

Fliss did not know why this pleased her so much. She laid her head on Minnie's shoulder.

'Tired, girl? There's more work yet. Sleep when you're back at your wall.' She turned to Lorna. 'You'd better wake your brother. There's no one to carry him.'

'He's awake,' Lorna said. 'But he'll start to hurt soon.'

'He can rest on the scow. He's got to walk now.'

The carriage stopped, the door opened and the boy Jed looked in. Behind him was a man holding a lamp.

'Quick,' Jed whispered. 'Tide's going.'

Fliss jumped out while Minnie lifted Keef from Lorna's lap. It took a moment to get him down. He was only half-awake, mumbling and groaning. Fliss supported him.

'Keef,' she whispered.

'Where...?' he groaned.

'We're going on the river. Lorna's here.'

The carriage turned silently on the soft ground.

'Give him to me. Take her,' Minnie said. She half guided, half lifted Keef into the waiting dinghy.

Fliss took Lorna's hand.

'There's mud.'

'I can feel it,' Lorna said.

'Dinghy.' She guided Lorna to the seat. Keef was sitting on the bottom. Lorna found his shoulders and held them.

'Lorna,' he whispered.

'We're safe. Fliss and Minnie saved us.'

'Not safe yet,' Minnie said. She rowed out of the side-creek, with Jed keeping watch in the bow, and in a moment the dinghy bumped along the side of the scow. Jed scrambled onto the deck and came back with a hooded lantern. Clumsily they got Keef and Lorna on board. Jed rowed away, and Minnie led them down steps into the belly of the scow. The lamplight showed rough bunks, each with a blanket. Dimly seen in the bow was a small galley. A low door in the stern hid a washroom, or perhaps, Fliss thought, a place for hiding people. She saw how goods could be piled in front to hide it. Keef, half-blind in the dim light, felt his way to a bunk. He slumped down. 'Lorna?'

'I'm here.'

'I'm sore.'

'I know.'

'Anton was asking how I got through the wall. He was burning me.' He swallowed. 'And now I'm here.'

Lorna made him lie more comfortably. Her touch was so sure, Fliss found it hard to believe she could not see.

'I put you to sleep. Remember how I could do it when you were young? You should sleep now.'

Minnie had gone back on deck. She hissed Fliss's name down the hatchway. Fliss climbed up, pleased to leave brother and sister alone.

'Get the sail ready while I unlock the wheel.' She brought another lantern from the deckhouse. 'Soon as Mutch is here we're away.'

'Where?'

Minnie shook her head. 'Wherever he says.'

Fliss unbound the ropes holding the sail to the boom. She wondered if she should try to haul it up.

'Leave it,' Minnie said. 'Get out something for us to eat. There's meat and bread in the sacks.'

Fliss looked into the hold as she passed. Keef seemed to be sleeping and Lorna, too, lay on a bunk. She let herself into the deckhouse and broke chunks of bread from a loaf and tore lumps of meat from a haunch. Her knife which had killed a man was no good for cutting food any more. A barrel stood in a corner. She sniffed it. Wine. She found a jug, half filled it and stood it on the table. She found mugs and a plate and took food into the hold, grinning a little as she went. Rough wine, cold meat, barley bread: no fit meal for Despiners.

'Keef. Lorna,' she whispered.

'He's sleeping.'

'Won't he need food?'

'When he wakes up. You eat, Fliss. I'm not hungry.'

'I'll leave it on this empty bunk. Can you find it?'

'Kirt will. I'll wake him soon.'

Fliss heard sounds on the river, a whispered word, and felt the bump of a dinghy on the side of the scow.

'Mutch is here,' she said. 'Someone will be down soon.'

She hurried on deck. Mutch, Poddy and Zizz were hauling the dinghy onto the scow. Minnie laid the oars inside.

'Food in the galley,' she said.

'No time yet. Got to get away.' Mutch touched the back of Minnie's neck as she stowed the oars. She grinned up sideways in return.

'They all right below?' he said to Fliss.

'He's sleeping. She's watching,' Fliss said, hearing too late that 'watching' was wrong.

'Lazy bugger,' Zizz said.

'Leave them now. We'll talk later.' Mutch gave a tight grin at Fliss. 'Nice work with that knife. Keep it sharp. Now let's move.'

'Where to?' Minnie said.

'To the wall. If they don't catch us.'

'Ahh,' Zizz groaned.

'Bloody cakewalk,' Poddy said.

## Chapter Ten

Fliss slept for an hour before the slapping of waves on the hull woke her. She pulled on her shoes and went on deck. Instead of sailing upriver, Mutch had gone west to the sea, using a river mouth away from the outlying parts of the city.

A crosswind was blowing and the scow was side-slipping in the waves. It carried no light. The sky was rich with constellations, and Mutch, at the wheel, stood black against them. Zizz was working the sail and Minnie, signalling Mutch with shrill whistles, kept watch in the bow. Poddy was snoring in the deckhouse.

Fliss made her way along the sloping deck. 'Why are we going this way?' she asked.

'Want to be captain?' Mutch said.

'Upriver's fastest, isn't it?'

'It's where they'll search. They'd have us in half a day. This way we'll be round the south side of the delta soon after dawn. If no one sees us.'

'Why there?'

'Fishing village.' He shrugged. 'Two or three huts. They'll strip old gutty here —' he patted the wheel —'then take her out and scuttle her.'

'Scuttle?'

'No evidence, Fliss. It's Carp territory, but Carps will want to know where we are just as much as Morisettes.' He touched her shoulder. 'I know we're in a hurry, but it's the best we can do. They'll hunt us. After knocking down their statue and grabbing those two — the Morisettes will be as mad as hornets.' His teeth gleamed in the starlight. 'We'll get them running in all directions. Good tactics, Fliss.'

'How will we get to the wall?'

'Carefully.'

'The Old One's dying.'

'Careful but fast. If we can.' She heard him repeat it under his breath.

Minnie whistled from the bow. 'Keep to the pointer,' she called.

Mutch adjusted the wheel.

'Get some more sleep, Fliss. It's hard work tomorrow.'

'When do you sleep?'

'Soon. Poddy's as good on the wheel as me.'

'And I'm better,' Zizz said, coming from the boom. 'Put your head down, Mutch. You too, girl, you're in the way.'

Mutch grinned. 'Zizz is captain.'

'Been working scows half my life,' Zizz said. 'Go and wake Poddy. Tell him he's on sail.'

'I can do what Minnie's doing,' Fliss said.

'Sleep, girl. Grab it while you can,' Mutch said.

She woke Poddy and went below. Keef, in one of the lower bunks, was weeping in his sleep. She had left a lamp burning with a low wick and saw Lorna, ghostly in the half-light, tending him.

'His burns are hurting,' Lorna said.

'Anton Morisette did that?'

'His way of trying to keep him awake. Minnie gave me some oil to stop them hurting.'

'It doesn't seem to be working,' Fliss said.

'I'm keeping him asleep. It's the best I can do, but still he hurts.'

Fliss saw Keef's mouth straining to cry out. She went to her own bunk, wet a cloth from her water flask, and wiped his brow and cheeks. The cold seemed to soothe him.

'Thank you,' Lorna said.

She sees with something that aren't eyes, Fliss thought. 'Is the Old One all right?' she asked.

'He doesn't talk any more, but I'd feel it if he died,' Lorna said. 'Will you tell me about him?'

'He's so old it's hard to believe. And he holds up the wall. But he can't much longer.' She told Lorna all she knew about the Old One, but said, 'I think you know more than me. I don't know what the wall is or how it got made.'

'Nor do I.'

'But he said you can hold it. And nobody else.'

'I still don't know.'

'How do you talk with him?'

'I don't know that either. I'm not a witch, Fliss, or a magician. Nor is he. We think at each other, that's all. I was lying in my bed one night and I heard his voice. He said —' Lorna gave a small laugh — 'that he'd been wandering around and he just came across me.' She was silent. 'After a while he became my father.'

Fliss was jealous, but pushed it away. 'He'll tell you what the wall is.'

'I hope so.'

'It won't be easy holding it up.'

Lorna was quiet again. Fliss heard her breathing.

'Are you frightened?' she asked.

'I'm terrified sometimes.' She reached out and took Fliss's hand. Hers was soft, and Fliss's hardened by work and cold from her time on deck, but they fitted together in a friendly way.

She's a girl, like me, Fliss thought. But I wonder what she sees when she can't see.

The scow turned into an inlet hidden behind a spit growing mangroves on its seaward side and scrub where it met the coastline. Three men were waiting by a cluster of huts. The rising sun threw their shadows over the pocked mud. Fliss recognised one of them from Morisette Square — the knifeman who had killed the guards. She began to understand how well-organised Mutch was, how many men he could call on — began to feel it like an undertow in the sea or a tidal change in the river — and saw how he put himself and all those with him in danger by saving Lorna. But it was not for Lorna, it was for the wall. Whatever he was planning, however many men followed him, he needed the wall so Morisettes and Carps and the rest of the Families would keep their attention fixed on it while he... What was he planning? Revolution? She scarcely knew what the word meant, saw it as something like the river, swelling up. And she thought, Not me. I'm saving Lorna and the wall, that's all I can do. I'm helping the Old One. But she felt an almost equal loyalty to Mutch. In the beginning, at least, they wanted the same thing.

Two men half lifted Lorna to one of the huts. They tried to help Keef, but he pushed them away and plodded knee-deep in mud to firmer ground. He sat in the sun at the back of the hut, warming his face, and drank the water Fliss brought him in a dipper.

'Keef, we've got to walk today.'

'I'll walk,' he said.

'Keef... what did they do to you?' It was the wrong question, but she wanted to know, wanted to share; they had spent so long together, and done so much, and she wanted to bring him back from where he had gone.

'Not they,' he said. 'Anton.' He looked at her. 'I saw you there when I killed Goook.'

His satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. The rest of his face did not seem to be his. The mark of a whip-stroke was raised and red on his cheek, crossing the scars left by the starving women. There was a burn, deep and raw, under his chin, and broken teeth showed when he smiled at killing Goook.

'Then they — then Anton did this to you?' She touched his face, but he jerked away, yelping with pain.

'He did it, then she—'

'Lorna?'

'She made me sleep. I don't need her doing that to me.'

'She was helping you, Keef. Keef, she's safe.'

'I don't need it. I can... I'll take her to the wall, like I promised, that's all. Then Anton and me...'

'Mutch and his men will take her. We'll all take her.'

He took no notice, closed his eyes, sat quiet a long time. At last he said, 'I went to the house. Despiner House. Where I grew up. And it was closed. The gates were locked. There was a Morisette seal on the gate. A Morisette flag on the roof. The guard saw me. So I ran. I hid until I could get in the crowd.' He looked at her. 'I'll never run again.'

'You won't have to, Keef. We'll be safe at the wall.'

'My name's not Keef, it's Kirt.'

'All right, Kirt.'

'I'll take Lorna there. Then I'll come back and kill him.'

'Ah, Keef. Ah, Kirt.'

'There's got to be Despiners. There can't be just Morisettes.'

'Kirt, no. We're safe. Mutch saved us.'

'I'll pay him.'

'Keef...' She did not bother to correct herself.

'You, too. For what you've done. When I've killed him. Then...' He nodded.

Pay her? Pay Mutch? She saw how far he had gone away. Anton Morisette had dragged him deep. She had felt friendship growing with Keef on the road and river and as they hid in Galp, and it was good. He had gone back to Despiner now, even more than he had been. He had turned into someone with only Despiner left.

I've got to get him back, I want him back, she thought.

Mutch came out of the hut.

'Time to move.' He looked at Keef. 'Can you walk?'

'I can walk.' Keef climbed to his feet. 'I'm taking my sister to the wall.'

Mutch looked more closely. 'We've got a donkey cart. She'll ride in that.'

'Donkey cart?' Keef said.

'We've got clothes for you. You can walk beside her.' He spoke carefully, without emotion.

'I'll pay you. I'll see you're paid. When I'm...' He could not make his words go any further.

'Pay me by getting to the wall,' Mutch said. He looked at Fliss. 'Fliss?'

She heard his unspoken question and nodded, meaning she would watch him and look after him.

They went around to the front of the hut, where the donkey cart waited. The men who had helped them ashore were working on the scow. Already they had taken down the mast — 'So anyone out at sea won't see it sticking over the spit,' Zizz explained.

Minnie brought Lorna out of the hut — Lorna in peasant clothes, with loose shoes that hid her twisted foot and a cloth hat covering her hair. Minnie had rubbed dye on her face, making it yellow. She had wrinkled her eyelids with dark lines, closing them not with blindness but age. Lorna was an old woman, hands yellow, her humped shoulder pushed out of shape by a lifetime of work. She stopped, feeling somehow that Keef was near; went to him with shaky steps on the uneven ground. For a moment he did not know her, then he gave a cry — love, rage, horror all in one.

'Who did this?' He swung round. 'Who did this to my sister?' — reaching for the place where his knife should be.

'Boy!' Mutch said. He took Keef's shoulders and forced him to his knees. 'You want another spell in the Morisette dungeons? You want to dangle by your neck in Morisette Square? You and your sister? If not, keep your mouth shut and do what you're told. Hear me?'

Keef struggled, but Mutch kept him on his knees. 'I know what you've been through. You can have more of it. Or you can come with us. But if you do that, you do what I say.'

Keef bared his teeth, he was ready to shout, but Mutch shook him, making him cry out with pain. 'You're hurting, boy. They catch you, you'll hurt more. Now — see! Look around.' He took one hand off Keef's shoulder and swept it at Poddy and Zizz and the knifeman. 'They're the ones who saved you. They got you out of it. And two others who didn't make it. They're dead. And her, Minnie, look at her. She's got a Despiner slave brand on her shoulder, but she saved you. And she's the one who painted your sister so we can get her to the wall. And you, too, if you're coming. You want to come?'

Keef said nothing. He could not speak. At last he nodded his head and made a sound of assent. Lorna stepped past Mutch and helped him to his feet.

Thereafter, on their long walk to the wall, on rough paths through marshland and forest and scrub, on cart tracks skirting grain fields where slaves and drafted villagers worked, on back roads around villages and plantations, through Carp and Krohn and Dight territory, and wastelands where no banners flew, Keef kept at her side as Fliss or Minnie led the donkey cart, and the others — Mutch, Poddy, Zizz and the knifeman, Jak — appeared and disappeared, always two ahead and two behind. They avoided Morisette villages and towns, and Morisette territory as far as they could, although detours sometimes lost them hours of time. At night they camped away from the roadside, as far inland from the river as they could get. Minnie and Fliss built a fire and cooked food, and Mutch and the others slipped in one by one to eat. Fliss slept easily, knowing they were out in the night.

There was no hunt. Jak and Zizz drifted through towns, picking up gossip. There was little about the fugitives; the talk in taverns and markets was about the fall of the Despiners, the triumph of the Morisettes, and the way they and the other Families were carving up Despiner property and grabbing their land. 'They've got a corpse and they're feeding. They haven't got time to chase runaways,' Mutch said.

'The Morisettes will chase,' Minnie said.

Anton will chase, Fliss thought.

They kept the gossip away from Keef, but somehow he learned. Zizz brought back the tavern boasts of a man who had seen the Despiner family dragged from their Galp house by Morisette constables. They were put in closed carts and driven away, and their house was ransacked then boarded up and barred, with the Morisette seal on the gate. Another man claimed to have seen the closed carts troop slowly through a southern village in the dead of night. They turned into the yard of an abandoned house on the outskirts and the Despiners were dragged out, the patriarch and his wife, their children and grandchildren. ('Minus them,' Zizz whispered, indicating Lorna and Keef, quiet on the other side of the fire.) They took them down in the cellars and shot them one by one until there were no Despiners left. Then they closed the cellars and burned the house down. 'Ha!' Zizz said.

'There's no need to whisper,' Keef told Fliss next day. 'I know my family are dead.'

'Does Lorna know?'

'She knows.' He grimaced at Fliss. Perhaps it was meant to be a smile. 'But I'm not dead. Nor is she.' He did not seem to mind that no one called him Kirt.

He's alive only for one thing, Fliss thought, and she knew that Anton Morisette lived for that, too, and somewhere was following, or waiting up ahead, like an animal in the trees or a creature in a cave, crouched and waiting to spring out — and Keef was the same. Once she had thought she was getting to know him, when they were on the road and on the river and he had wanted so many things, not just revenge. Now that he was simple, and had only one thing on his mind, she found she did not know him at all. He seemed not to see Lorna any more, except sometimes to glance at her and value her as Despiner.

She sat with Lorna and Minnie by the fire one night, feeling its warmth on her face.

'What does fire look like?' Lorna said.

Fliss tried to say — yellow, red, twisting, leaping, eating up the wood — but did not feel she was saying anything Lorna would be able to picture in her head. Lorna felt the warmth, heard the hiss and crackle and the falling of embers, but beyond that, in some way, she must see, there must be a picture, not just blackness, a black night.

'Keef has got a fire in his head,' Lorna said.

'He's got Anton Morisette,' Fliss said. She took Lorna's hand to comfort her. 'But you, too. He still loves you.'

Lorna smiled sadly — an old woman smiling, a young woman underneath smiling, too, and crying perhaps. 'He walks beside me, but he's not there. He'll know me until he puts me behind the wall. But I'm only another person now. He knows I'm not a Despiner any more.'

'You're his sister. He loves you.'

Lorna shook her head. 'He'd like to. He'd even say he does. But there's only room for Anton Morisette.' She turned her face from the fire. 'I try to talk with him the way we used to, but there's no space for me. I can't try much longer, Fliss. I can hear someone whispering.' She turned back. 'I think it's the Old One. He's telling me to hurry. No words. Just _hurry_. So Kirt, my brother — I can't...' She made a helpless gesture at him across the fire.

Minnie, on her other side, had been listening. 'Mutch thinks we'll get there in two more days. Poddy went up ahead. It's forest all the way to the wall. He's good in the forest, my brother.' She glanced guiltily at Lorna — the word 'brother' might upset her — and hurried on. 'He says we have to turn off the road. It joins the military road, where the Morisettes took their cannon, so we can't go there. But in the forest we'll have to climb and then we get to cliffs. The wall winds along the top. Don't worry —' she squeezed Lorna's hand — 'we'll get you up.'

Minnie had grown fond of Lorna, in a gruff way at first, yet, as the blind woman had grown sadder, with a kind of maternal tenderness. She would never serve a Despiner, not with their slave brand on her shoulder, but she would help Lorna as a friend.

The women talked more easily, grouped at the fire. Poddy and Zizz were scouting in the forest. They would sleep there tonight and come into camp in the morning, with news, Fliss hoped, of an easy path up the cliffs. Mutch had not appeared since midday, when he and Jak had left for the Krohn-dominated town of Slegg on the military road to see what they could learn. Morisettes and Krohns sometimes worked together, while Carps and Dights had been closer to Despiners.

The fire fell to embers. Fliss began to worry. Mutch always came in. He had never been this late.

'He'll come,' Minnie said placidly. And like a shadow moving out of deeper shadow on the other side, Mutch appeared. He sat down, wordless, and Minnie picked up wood to lay on the fire.

'No.' Mutch stopped her hand.

'Trouble?' she said.

'Some. It's fixed. But we need to get out of here early.'

'Jak?'

'I sent him back to Galp.'

'What happened?' Fliss said.

Mutch looked at her a moment, then nodded, accepting her. He had a way of seeing her as a girl before he let her change into a woman. 'The word is the wall's falling down,' he said.

'It's not,' Minnie said flatly. 'Poddy and Zizz saw it yesterday, way off on the top of some cliffs. It was kind of blinking, they said.'

Mutch shrugged. 'Every man in Slegg thinks he's an expert on the wall. They say it's bending, getting lower.'

'Lorna will know,' Fliss said. She thought she would know, too. The closer they got, the more aware of the wall she became. She felt it like warmth on her face and seemed to hear it like a bird calling in the trees.

Lorna had her face turned away from the embers. Perhaps she was hearing the same sound. 'All I hear is _hurry_ ,' she said. 'But it won't fall. It will just go away when the Old One dies.'

'What does the lowering mean?' Mutch said.

'It means he's dying. And he mustn't die until he tells me what to do. That's why _hurry_ is the only thought he can make.'

She put her hand on Minnie's shoulder. Minnie helped her up and into the little low-pitched tent where she slept.

Keef spoke suddenly from the other side of the fire. 'Were there Morisettes in Slegg?' He was shadowy in the dying light, but the scars on his face picked up a red glow.

'No Anton Morisette, if that's what you mean. No Morisettes at all. They've passed through, half their army. The Krohns gave them — ha! — right of way to get to their cannon. They heard about this lowering, so they're going to try it again. They've got their big chief with them, Porl Morisette.'

'The man who wants to be king,' Minnie said, coming back.

'So Anton will be there,' Keef said. His eyes gleamed the same red as his scars.

'Word is they've cut Anton loose. He's like a wolf that's been driven out of the pack.' Mutch grinned at Fliss. 'A wolf who limps. But he'll be around somewhere.'

'He'll be at the wall,' Keef said.

'They'll all be at the wall. They want you. You, too, Fliss. They think you know what the wall is and how to get through, and they want to wring it out of you. They don't know Lorna is the one they should go after. They just want to hang her up high.'

Keef nodded. 'If they want me, I'll let them find me. As long as Anton's there.'

'He isn't,' Mutch said shortly. 'Go hunting him if you want. Two wolves. You're a good pair. But I'll tell you, boy, if the Morisettes get you in their dungeons again, you'll tell them everything you know.'

He meant that Keef would not only tell the Morisettes what he knew about the wall, he would tell them about Mutch and the men who followed him, the women, too. The risk Mutch had taken had put him in a trap — and the only way out might be... Fliss turned away from it. But thought, Where's Jak? If Keef went hunting Anton Morisette, was it Jak he would find waiting in the dark?

Mutch was watching her. He shook his head slightly.

'What happened in Slegg?' Minnie said.

Mutch drank from his flask and wiped his mouth. He turned his eyes on Keef a moment. 'There's Morisette spies there. One of them spotted me. They shouldn't know me, but they do. So they must have seen me in the square. That was the risk.' He shrugged. 'Bad luck for him he didn't know Jak.'

'Dead?'

Mutch made a sound of disgust. 'I went down an alley so he'd follow. Jak followed him. Too much killing, Min.'

'Jak's all right?'

'He enjoys himself. I've sent him back to get the groups disbanded. We've got to... fade away for a while. But after that...' He brooded for a moment, then stood up and kicked dirt on the embers. 'Early start,' he said. 'The day after tomorrow we're at the wall, if it's still there.' He looked at Keef, almost invisible over the dead fire, and took Fliss aside. 'Minnie will look after Lorna. You watch him. Stay close. If the Morisettes get hold of him...' He shook his head.

'He'll stay until Lorna's at the wall. After that...'

'Stay close,' he repeated. He went off to his sleeping place in the trees, while Minnie looked in Lorna's tent.

Fliss found her way to Keef and sat beside him. She felt for his hand. It was hard, resistant, but she kept hold of it.

'Keef?'

He made no reply.

'Keef, when we're at the wall, come through with us, please. We've got to take her all the way to the Old One.'

'You can take her. I've done what I said I'd do.'

'You can't fight a whole army.'

'There won't be an army. Just him and me. He's hunting me. I'm hunting him. We'll know where to meet.'

'They'll get you, Keef. After you've killed him.'

'No,' he said. 'I'll get away. I'll go back to Galp. I know who I am. I'm Kirt Despiner.'

Fliss saw Minnie, half-visible in the starlight, slip away from Lorna's tent to join Mutch in his sleeping place. She pulled Keef's hand. 'Keef?'

'Too late,' he said. 'It's best if you don't come near me, Fliss.'

She drew away and felt in her pocket, took out what she found there, and slipped it into Keef's.

'What's that?' He pulled it out, but could not see it in the dark.

'Something Minnie gave me, to use if I got caught. Just leave it there. Please.' She knew what he would say — it was not the Despiner way, a Despiner fought to the end, some nonsense like that. 'You don't have to use it. Put it back, Keef.'

He threw the twist of paper at the dead fire. Fliss crawled after it, and when she turned found him close behind her.

'You've insulted me,' he hissed. 'You people don't understand. We are — _us._ We're Despiners.'

'And the Morisettes are...?' she said.

'Morisettes. Stay away from me. Watch me if you have to, but don't come near. We'll get to the wall and then —' he swept his hand flatly — 'it's over.' He vanished into the dark.

Fliss put the twist of paper back in her pocket.

'Ah, Keef,' she said sadly.

## Chapter Eleven

The forest grew as thickly as a jungle. An understorey of creeping ferns blocked the way for the donkey cart, so they abandoned it and left the donkey browsing. In time, Fliss thought, it would wander to the nearest town, where someone would find it and put it to work. She wished it a kind master as she patted it away.

Poddy and Zizz used saplings and cord to build a litter. They carried Lorna, while Mutch and Fliss scouted ahead. She knew forests better than the men — was more alert to animal sounds and silences that meant danger. Once she held Mutch still as two charcoal-burners went by. From high in a tree, she spied the smoke of their camp and was able to lead their party in a loop around it.

On the second morning, when the mists had cleared, she climbed again and saw cliffs ahead, yellowing as the sun spilled down. She strained to see the wall and at last caught a flicker like a trout-flash, like a wood-parrot's wing, and felt a warmth spread through her — the Old One was alive and she was home. She heard Mutch hissing from the ground, calling her down, but she stayed a moment longer, looking at the cliff for a way to climb. A fold in the rock went almost to the top. Would there be handholds in there? And the clinging bushes, how much weight would their roots support? Hers perhaps, but what about Poddy and Mutch? She climbed down, told Mutch the wall was flickering in ways she had never seen, but it was alive, still alive. And there was a sheltered way, though getting Lorna up would be slow, and maybe too hard, and if the Morisettes had watchers in the forest...

'Show me.'

She climbed the tree again, ahead of him, until the cliffs came into sight. He stared at the fold, not liking its crooked line. 'Might do, might not,' he said.

A distant sound, a rolling boom, passed like a wind through the treetops.

'They're using their cannon,' he said.

They strained to see, but no puff of smoke showed in the mat of trees running west. An iridescent ripple moved across the piece of wall they could see.

'It's getting weaker,' Fliss said. 'We've got to go up the cliff, Mutch. There's no time to find an easy way.'

'They'll be watching, but the cliff runs back a long way west. They'll be spread thin.' He shook his head, meaning no and yes at the same time. 'It's a chance we'll take.'

They reached the foot of the cliff before nightfall. Zizz and Poddy used the last of the light to dismantle Lorna's litter and turn it into a sledge with runners underneath. Zizz had a coil of rope in his pack. He cut two lengths and fixed loops for handholds on the front. He and Poddy would haul Lorna up the cliff.

They ate cold food and slept; woke in the dawn to the rumble of the cannon far away. Minnie bound Lorna to the narrow sledge, using strips torn from blankets, broad enough not to cut into her. Fliss scouted a path while the men carried the blind woman to the foot of the fold. Then Mutch sent Fliss climbing ahead. She found easy handholds at first. Water had scoured the fold into a runnel. Before the wall, people had used it for a way to the highlands. She saw their marks carved in the stone. But small hardy bushes, bristling with thorns, had grown there since. Their roots gripped like claws — that at least was good. She used her knife to cut several, making an easier path for the sledge. In the end, would it be too hard? Poddy and Zizz, Mutch and Minnie, maybe even Keef would have to haul and push in the steepest places. Where the fold twisted they would have to ease the sledge round like a log, with one of them working over a drop. She climbed back to report to Mutch.

They had brought Lorna a quarter way up, higher than the tops of the tallest trees, yet it seemed to Fliss they had come no way at all. Mutch felt the same.

'We won't get there by night,' he said.

'And it gets harder,' Fliss said.

'Untie me,' Lorna said.

'You can't climb. It's too steep.'

'I'm not going to climb. Tie me on your back. There are three of you. Take turns.'

'Four,' Minnie said.

'All right, four. You can pass me back and forth like a baby in a sling. I'm as light as a baby.' She tried to smile. 'I might even go to sleep.'

'It might work,' Minnie said. 'With one of us pulling from in front and two behind in case someone slips.'

'Faster than this,' Zizz said.

'Good,' Mutch said. 'Where's Keef?'

'He went back,' Poddy said. 'Reckoned someone might be following. Couldn't stop him.'

'Ha!' Mutch said. 'Good riddance,' he added under his breath.

Minnie made a sling from the blanket on the sledge. They bundled Lorna the way peasant women bundled their babies, but left her legs free to go around the carrier's waist. Mutch lifted her, and Minnie tied her tight on Poddy's back. Fliss saw how it pulled her humped shoulder forward and straightened her spine, hurting her. Lorna laid her head on the mat of Poddy's hair. 'Go fast,' she whispered.

They climbed again, Fliss ahead, Minnie in front of Poddy, pulling him by the hand in places where he could not heave himself up, Mutch and Zizz behind. The cliff bent inwards, forcing the fold into a curve and widening its exposure to the forest. Fliss felt as if her back was naked. She looked out over the trees, saw a distant flash, and three heartbeats later heard the boom of the cannon rolling along the cliff face. Something stung her cheek hard, like a dagger-fly. She slapped at it and drew her hand away wet with blood. She searched the rock in front of her. Nothing — no fly, no spitter beetle — but a white scar in the weathered rock. Bullet mark. Fresh.

Another sting, a shriek this time as the bullet ricocheted away — then Mutch's urgent call: 'Fliss, quick!'

She slid back around the curve, narrowing her view of the forest.

'Marksman,' Mutch said. 'We're sheltered, but he'll shift round and open us up. Zizz.'

'Right.' Zizz was gone.

'I'm going, too,' Fliss said.

'No.'

'I'm the best tracker. And Keef is down there.' She was almost frantic for Keef. He would go after the marksman, and he had only his knife.

'All right. Be quick.'

She went down fast, grabbing handholds, and overtook Zizz in the scrub at the bottom of the fold. Keef was gone.

'The little bugger's after him,' Zizz said.

Fliss looked back up the cliff, working out the path of the bullet and where the marksman might be.

'This way.'

She ran half-crouching through the trees, Zizz at her back. There was no time for caution. The shooter would be down from his tree and finding a place that opened up the fold.

They heard a shot close by.

'He's shot Keef,' she cried.

They sped through the trees, Zizz going wide of Fliss to make a harder target. Branches thrashed her. Her knife was in her hand, but she had no memory of drawing it.

Keef!

He was in a clearing, crouching over a body. He sprang half around, knife ready. 'Ah,' he said and went back to his work.

Fliss ran at him, grabbed him. He shook her off. The dead man was on his back. His chest was soggy with blood; and blood from his forehead had run into his eyes.

'Keef, what...?'

He finished, stood up and grinned at her.

'That'll show them,' he said.

He had cut the letter D in the man's forehead.

She stepped back from him. Zizz, at her shoulder, said, 'Shit, boy.'

'I got the other one crawling out of his tent.' Keef made a throat-cutting jerk of his hand.

'So who got you?' Zizz said, looking at blood on Keef's shoulder.

'He had a pistol. I finished him before he could reload.'

'Keef, let me look.' She touched his shirt where the blood seeped through.

He jerked away. 'Don't touch me.' Grinned again. 'It's not my knife arm. Get Lorna up the cliff, that's your job.'

'Any more of them, boy?' Zizz nodded at the dead man.

'No more. Two dead Morisettes.'

'Come with us now, Keef,' Fliss said.

'I'll catch up. I've got to put my mark on the other one first.' That same grin, gleaming in his scarred face.

'Come on, Fliss,' Zizz said.

She turned and went with him. Left Keef. They reached the cliff without talking, climbed without talking.

'Two. Both dead,' Zizz told Mutch.

'Keef's all right,' Fliss told Lorna, although she did not think he was Keef any more.

They went on, Poddy carrying Lorna, then Minnie taking over. Keef caught up with them as they reached the top. It was late afternoon. Fliss pushed through the scrub and seemed to feel the wall as she approached, a kind of rippling on her skin, half-warm, half-cold. She came to it: a different wall, not invisible any longer. It seemed to dance. Undulations, red and blue and white, ran through it like waves. She touched it with her hand and felt it sting, then soften, as if it needed a moment to be sure of her.

Mutch and Poddy cut the scrub clear as they came through. Each laid a finger on the wall and jerked away, Mutch hissing with pain and Poddy swearing. They made a path for Minnie, while Fliss hacked a space at the foot of the wall.

Minnie arrived, bent almost double. She untied the knot at her waist. 'No,' she told Mutch as he tried to help. She knelt carefully, loosened the blanket and let Lorna slide to the ground. Keef crouched by his sister, but Minnie snarled, 'Get away.' She opened her flask and wet Lorna's lips.

Lorna was already coming awake. Something else was waking her. She struggled, she sat up. She turned her blind eyes to the wall. Her face relaxed, easing its lines of pain. She smiled and her eyes opened, deep blue, an ocean, with pupils that would never see, although in some way, Fliss thought, they saw the colours in front of her.

Keef stepped back. 'Lorna,' he called, uncertain, not knowing his place with her any more, and she turned to him and found him with her blind eyes, and seemed to speak silently, and touch him perhaps, for his hand rose to his face as if to feel something there — then she turned back to the wall.

'Minnie. Fliss,' she whispered.

'Don't go yet,' Minnie said.

'It needs me.'

So they helped her to her feet and step by step to the wall, where she freed herself and held out her arms. The wall made an 'mm' of satisfaction, the sound a mother makes to her child. It leaned towards her. She laid her hands on it. She shimmered like a firefly opening its wings; stepped into the wall; and the lights darted like a school of fish and whirled around her.

Lorna passed through. She turned, limping still, and knelt facing the wall. She showed no sign of the pain that Fliss and Keef had felt, or of falling into their long sleep.

Minnie said, with tears in her voice, 'She'll never come back.'

'No,' Fliss said.

'Can we go through?'

'I've got to. We have to get her to the Old One.' She put her palms on the wall. It stung less than before. She pushed her arms in, pushed them through, and felt cool air on the other side.

'Minnie?'

'It's going to hurt me.'

'Come with me. I'll hold your hand.'

Mutch overheard. 'No, Min. You're not going. We got her here, that's all we had to do.'

'You — you can come.'

Mutch shook his head. 'It would burn me to ashes.' He took Minnie's face in his hands.

Fliss drew her arms from the wall and turned away as they spoke. Lorna waited kneeling on the other side, her hands in her lap. Her eyes were closed again. She seemed to be talking silently with the lights darting in front of her — or maybe with the Old One, Fliss thought. Zizz was scowling at the wall. Poddy had turned his back to it and was mumbling something, perhaps a charm against magic.

Where was Keef?

She found him halfway along the track the men had broken, sitting in a hollow in the scrub.

'Has she gone?'

'Yes. She's on the other side. She's waiting.'

'Who else is going? You?'

'And Minnie, I think. Keef, you can come. I'll pull you through like last time.'

'No,' he said. He raised his hands. They were rusty with dried blood. 'It wouldn't let me. Anyway, I've got things to do.'

She eased into the hollow and sat beside him. 'Keef, don't hunt him. You'll kill each other.'

'I'll kill him. And then...'

He did not know. She touched the place where the blood had dried on his shirt. 'Get your arm fixed, Keef. Minnie can do it before she goes. It'll hurt worse.'

'Everything hurts. It's the way things are. But at least —' he gestured with his good arm — 'we got Lorna here. It's a Despiner wall now.'

'No, Keef.'

'It's Despiner.'

'Lorna isn't. She never was.'

'Aach.' A sound of disgust. 'Get away from me, Fliss. Anyway, I'm going. I'm finished with this. I know where Anton will be.'

'Keef—'

He pushed her aside and struggled out of the hollow, using his unwounded arm. She followed and tried to hold him, but he shook her away with a hiss of pain. She went close again, put one arm around him and slipped the twist of paper holding the poison into his pocket. It was the only cure she could think of for his pain. He jerked free again, angrily.

Keef, she said silently, in your pocket. I left you something.

He lurched away from her, reached the cliff edge and slid backwards into the fold where it began its fall to the forest. She had no doubt that somewhere not far away Anton Morisette was also finding his way to wherever it was they would meet. Nothing can stop them, she thought. His face disappeared as though going under water.

Fliss went back to the wall.

Mutch was shouldering his pack. Zizz was ready. He grinned at Fliss. 'I'd have you at my back any time.'

Minnie was hugging her brother. Poddy was crying. She whispered to him, rubbed his cheeks dry with her hands. Mutch drew Fliss aside.

'Can you get them to this Old One all right?'

'Yes. Tomorrow.'

'Minnie? She'll be all right? She'll be happy?'

'She'll like it.' She did not know, but it seemed the right thing to say. 'After The Hungry Shag,' she said.

Mutch gave an amused sniff. 'Listen. You'll come one day—'

'No.'

'There's not enough for you over there—' gesturing at the wall.

Fliss was silent.

'There's enough on this side. You can help us. No —' he stopped her — 'we're only starting. I don't have to tell you. And we need you, Fliss. So...' He waited for a moment, but she said nothing.

'I don't think they'll need you here —' Again the gesture at the wall.

'They will for a while,' she said.

Mutch smiled and nodded. 'When you come—'

'I—'

He stopped her again. 'When you come, don't go near The Shag. The Shag is finished. Go round the back of the inlet, where we took the scow. Say your name. Show your knife. That'll be enough.'

He put an arm around her, squeezed her for a moment, let her go. Smiling, he said, 'We'll meet again. And if we find Keef going down, we'll help him if we can. If not...' He shrugged and turned away. 'Poddy. Zizz.'

They went without looking back.

On the other side of the wall Lorna had climbed to her feet. She faced them, hands inviting and a question on her face.

'Yes, we're coming,' Fliss said, although Lorna would not hear.

Minnie was ready, determined not to show she was afraid. 'This might be worse than getting branded.'

'I'll go through first,' Fliss said. But she wondered how easy it would be for her. Perhaps with the wall so weak... She had the sudden shrinking thought that she had killed a man and it might reject her. Or would it make her fall asleep again? There was no time for that. She had to get Lorna to the Old One.

'I'm going now,' she said. 'You follow.'

She pushed her hands into the wall and felt only the coolness she had felt before. It grew into a tingling... an itch... a scalding that made her shriek.

Lorna, on the other side, took her hands and drew them towards her, and Fliss's heart gave an enormous thump and seemed to turn over in her chest; she split in two, became two people, who came together again like two hands grasping each other, with a sound like hands slapping on her thighs; and she was free and on her knees on the other side.

Lorna held her hands a moment longer. 'No sleep,' she said. 'You don't need that.'

She turned to Minnie and stepped easily to her through the wall. She took Minnie's hands, and Minnie, shrinking, curling sideways, making herself small, let herself be guided in among the swarming lights, but arrived howling, her mouth a cavernous O. She clung to Lorna and would not let her go.

'Minnie, you're all right. The wall said yes. It let you through.'

'It hurt me,' Minnie sobbed.

'It's over now.'

'I'm never going back. Never.'

Lorna held her, calmed her, stopped her from sleeping. They turned their backs on the wall and went into the forest. Lorna walked with Minnie helping her. Fliss led. After the climbing and the ordeal of crossing, it was easy. They went on until dark, then slept beside a forest pool.

In the morning Fliss foraged and brought back fruit and berries to eat. They drank water from their cupped hands.

Minnie carried Lorna on her back for much of that day, while Fliss found easy ways in the upland forest. She headed towards the eastern flank of Sunset, glimpsing it now and then through widely spaced trees. At mid-afternoon she found the path she had worn in her years of visiting her tree. If she had been alone she would have knelt and laid her palms on it, but she only said, 'There's a stream in a few minutes. We can drink again.'

'Shoo is coming,' Lorna said.

'What?'

'I've been talking with the Old One. I can hear him better now. She's coming.'

'Is he all right?'

'He's waiting. He's — he's poured all of himself into one cup. We have to go fast.'

They drank at the stream, then went on, Minnie unsteady with exhaustion and Lorna exhausted with pain. Soon they saw Shoo hurrying up the track. Fliss ran to her. There was time for no more than an embrace.

'The Old One's sitting up. He said he had to sit. And Lorna — where's Lorna? He says the wall is closing its eyes.'

She and Minnie locked their hands to make a seat, and between them carried Lorna while Fliss ran ahead. She reached the cottage, sped through the familiar room, opened the door, found the Old One propped in the bed where Shoo had left him. His eyes were closed, the lids like Lorna's after Minnie had painted them — old, so old.

He whispered, 'Fliss?'

She lifted his hands from the blanket. She kissed his brow.

'Yes, me. And Lorna's here. We brought her.'

Slowly the Old One opened his eyes. 'I feel her.' He squeezed her hand — was that thank you? — and closed them again.

She heard the women coming. Looked at him for the last time. Did not watch as Minnie and Shoo guided Lorna through the big room, but went into the garden and looked at her plantings. She touched leaves that had not been there when she had left.

'So,' she said.

There was nothing else to say.

## Chapter Twelve

In the morning they found Lorna sleeping in the chair by the Old One's bed. She held his hand loosely. She had closed his eyes before she slept.

Shoo gave a wail of grief, then stopped it with her hand. Fliss drew back and closed the door.

By mid-morning men and women had gathered from the village. They had felt him die, they said. Some had been to look at the wall. The lights that had danced inside were gone, the shifting bands of colour had floated away. The wall was soft to touch, invisible, unbroken and — they smiled — for ever, as the People had made it in the beginning. They did not know who the New One was but they thanked him and would leave him ('Her,' Shoo said), leave her here, if that was what she wished ('She's sleeping now,' Fliss said), and come to thank her once a year on this day. And now, the headwoman said, they would take the Old One into the northern forest and lay him under the trees and cover him with leaves as the People had done with their dead in the old days. If animals came and took him, that was in the nature of things.

Shoo and Fliss wrapped the Old One in a blanket, and the villagers placed his body on a bier made of saplings and carried him away. Lorna still slept in her chair.

She woke in the afternoon and ate a breakfast of porridge as if it were morning. She smiled and said yes when Fliss told her the villagers had taken the Old One. Although the same, she was different: rested and easy. Fliss longed to ask her what the Old One had said, what he had told her to do. She wanted to ask if it was hard holding the wall and if there was anything she could do to help. She had half imagined that Lorna would lie in bed as the Old One had done and — she tried to think how to describe it — keep her mind on the job; but Lorna said she wanted to help in the house and work in the garden and walk in the forest.

'I'm not going to be useless, Fliss.'

'But you're holding the wall.' And you're blind, she nearly added.

'Oh, that,' Lorna said, meaning both.

She wasn't grieving for the Old One. Fliss wondered if she thought of Keef; she had loved him so much. There were places in Lorna where, Fliss thought, she would never go.

Minnie came out, and all three walked a little way on the path to the village, Lorna seeming almost to see, and moving with less pain on her twisted foot.

'Are you all right?' she asked Minnie.

'Yes,' Minnie said.

They seemed to Fliss to be talking in some code, so close they had grown. It left Fliss out. They don't need me, she thought. I don't think I've got a place here. She had been a girl in this house and garden and among the trees. Was girlhood over?

The next morning she went to look at the wall, choosing to see it first from her old seat in the tree. She thought about Keef as she went along, how he had been all Despiner at first and how on their journey to Galp he had begun to change as if each day in his new world of — how should she put it? — of other people — chipped little bits of pride off him until — she smiled, recollecting — until he seemed free of his hard shell (almost) and (almost, again) newborn. And then had come his pain and loss and humiliation, and he was Despiner again, or something worse. She knew, with her own feeling of loss, that he would never come back. She knew he would die.

As she came closer to the tree she began to feel she was walking towards him, as if the path she was on led her back in time and forward to an ending. That, she thought, was stupid. And then, suddenly, it was not. She remembered the last thing he had said: 'I know where Anton will be.' That could only mean a place both of them knew. A place where they had fought before.

Fliss ran. She reached the tree. It was the same — trunk, branches, handholds. People grow too fast, trees do it properly, she thought as she climbed. She reached her seat, and saw no wall. Renewed, it was invisible again.

The land on the other side fell away to the plains. The river shone once, a silver loop. Far away westwards the mat of gum plantations stretched out before giving way to green forest and black jungle. And here, almost at her feet, and wavering on its surface with a dislocation that meant it stood on the far side of the wall, was the ledge where Keef and Anton had fought. Empty, flat, tufted with brown grass. On her side lay the Morisette jacket Keef had defiled. Some small animal, mole or wildcat or racoon, had scraped off the leaves she had covered it with. Its colours had darkened to grey-gold and a red that was almost black. Pale grass curled from under it.

She looked across the gully and down the slope to the great cannon. It poked its open snout at the wall and flashed red and poured smoke as it sent another shell on its flight. The recoil rocked the cannon back on its wheels, and as it settled the loading troop took up its useless task again, working in the smoke that rolled back from the wall.

Fliss watched for a while and then became aware that men standing on a knoll at the back of the cannon were watching her. One had a spyglass aimed at the tree. A man on a white horse cantered up to him. Straining to see through the wall, she recognised him — a face she had seen in processions in Galp: bulging eyes, swollen lips, wattled jowls. Porl Morisette, the patriarch. They must have thought their cannon would break through for him to have come so far. She swallowed dryly, almost tasting his ambition. What had Minnie said? The man who wanted to be king. She felt herself shiver.

Porl Morisette reached down and snatched the spyglass from the officer. Aimed it, and Fliss covered her face. She did not want him looking at her. When she took her hand down, she saw her mistake. He was not looking at her, but watching the ledge — watching his son. Anton Morisette clawed his way over the lip, rose to his full height and brushed himself down. He took several steps, limping still, flung a contemptuous glance at his father by the cannon, then raised his face, widened his mouth and howled.

Fliss could not hear the words, but knew them: Kirt Despiner, come out.

Keef burst from the place where he had waited. How long had he been there, hiding in that patch of scrub? He sprang out in his torn clothes like a mangy cat, mad and starving and deadly. Came at Anton Morisette head on and found him ready. Both men were cats: they sprang and twisted, with screeching mouths. They had no pistols or swords. Each had a knife.

Fliss had seen fights in Galp — territory fights, fights over women — but nothing so savage and quick and filled with hatred.

Blood sprayed from Keef's wounded arm as he raised it to block Anton's knife. Blood sprang from Anton's shoulder as he took Keef's counter-blow. His knife looped from his hand and Keef kicked it away; and then, crazily, flung his, too, and they tore at each other one-handed, each with a useless hanging arm. On and on they fought, gouging at eyes, digging in each other's wounds, rolling, biting, twisting, until Fliss could not tell them apart.

Keef was stronger and not as deeply cut. He heaved Anton around and rode on his back, with his good arm locked around Anton's throat. Anton jerked and spun. They fell together, rolled on the ground, a strange, ugly, hump-backed animal. Keef's arm tightened, and somehow he willed his wounded arm into life, bringing it up and locking it hard across the other. Anton thrashed his legs, dragging himself and Keef to the side of the ledge. Then his movements grew tired; his unwounded arm gave up its clawing. He gave a shudder and grew quiet until there was no life left in him. Keef lay there a long time with the dead man in his double grip.

At last he freed Anton, freed himself, and stood over the body, not knowing what to do.

Fliss was shaking. She held hard to her branch. Closed her eyes. She did not want to see Keef. She no longer knew him. But when she looked again he had wandered away from Anton and was feeling the wall, probing it one-handed. His wounded arm, used so savagely, hung at his side, useless again. The wall ignored him. It made no spark or flash of colour.

He can't come through even if I help him, Fliss thought.

Keef turned away. He made a helpless gesture with his hand. _He knows I'm here._ He smiled at her with the rueful smile she had seen once or twice on their journey to Galp. Then he sat down, put his back to the wall and closed his eyes.

Keef, she pleaded, don't die. And then she screamed: 'Keef, they're coming! Run!'

A dozen troopers with Porl Morisette safe in their midst sped along the ledge between the wall and the drop. A minute, even less, they would reach the wider place where Anton's body lay and where Keef waited. He had no strength to run. He had no weapon. Slowly he stood, sliding his back up the wall. He leaned his head on it and closed his eyes.

Fliss dropped down the tree from branch to branch. She reached the wall as the men surged into the wider space. They stopped, opened a passage, and Porl Morisette rode through and looked down at his son's body. He nodded. Two troopers dismounted. They dragged Anton's body to the edge of the cliff and threw it off.

Fliss slipped through the wall and stood at Keef's side in time to hear Porl Morisette say, 'See, Despiner. He wasn't my son. He disobeyed me. You didn't kill a Morisette.'

Keef made no answer. It did not matter to him any more. He took Fliss's hand.

'The wall won't let you through. Why is that?' Porl Morisette said.

Again, Keef did not answer.

'We'll have your secrets out of you, never fear. And know the names of the rebels who took you from the square.'

'No,' Keef murmured.

'Oh, yes. And the girl? She can pass through. But we don't need her.' He turned to the trooper beside him. 'Kill the girl.'

The man was taken by surprise. He fumbled, getting his pistol out. Fliss had time to say, 'Keef?'

'Yes,' he said.

She slipped back through the wall as the man fired. The bullet struck where her head had been, and rolled, a black teardrop, to the bottom.

Rage fattened Porl Morisette's mouth. He struck the trooper back-handed on the throat. He shouted and swung his arm around, pointing at Keef, who had, tiredly, taken the twist of paper from his pocket. Keef opened it one-handed, raised his eyes to Porl Morisette, smiled at him. Spoke. Fliss never knew what he said.

Two troopers had dismounted. They rushed at him. Keef dipped his tongue into the paper and brought it out coated with red powder. Drew it back. Seemed to savour the taste.

He fell as the troopers reached him.

Died easily, with his face calm.

Fliss did not stay to watch Porl Morisette's rage. She ran back along the path, stopped to wash her face and hands in the pool, felt the water sluice away the ugliness and death she had seen, and walked on, weeping for Keef.

Shoo came hurrying up the path. She flung her arms around Fliss, gasping with relief. 'You're all right. I thought you, too...'

'What's wrong?'

'Lorna. She felt him die. She said, "My brother's dead," and she locked herself in her room. I thought you as well...'

'I got away,' Fliss said.

## Chapter Thirteen

Lorna stayed in her room for the rest of the day but came out in the evening. She and Fliss walked in the garden. They talked about Kirt, and Fliss told Lorna how he had died.

'He was tired,' she said. 'He was ready. I think he wanted to stop being... who he was.'

Lorna nodded. She had a way of saying nothing that might, Fliss thought, get irritating after a while.

'Shoo is going back to her village,' she said. 'She always said she would when the Old One died. But you'll still have Minnie.'

'I love Minnie and she loves me. But she'll love her baby more.'

'Ah,' Fliss said. That was what Minnie had told Mutch at the wall and why he had no longer tried to stop her passing through. Who would want a baby down in Galp?

_Who would want to be down in Galp?_ She would think about that.

'Will you stay with us until the baby's born?' Lorna asked.

'When will it be?'

'After winter. In the spring.'

'I'll stay if you'll tell me something,' Fliss said.

'What's that?'

'Tell me what the wall is. The Old One must have told you.'

'Yes, he did.' Lorna thought for a while. 'But I still don't know. Not exactly. It's real and it's not real. It's an idea. It's a thought.'

'But it's there, isn't it? Because I can touch it.'

'Yes, it's there. The People made it, thought it — it's the same thing. Then they died, because...'

'It used them up?' Fliss said.

'The wall is them, it's all their minds together. But they left one behind.'

'The Old One. How lonely he was.'

'He held the thought. But Fliss — it's not really a wall, it's something broken. It's a break in time.'

Fliss did not understand.

'They poured themselves into the wall, and then they shifted it less than a heartbeat forward in time. So small you can never measure it. And that's why...'

'When you pass through you feel as if you're broken in half and put together again.'

'Yes.'

'So, they're in the same time as us down there on the plain, but the wall is in the future?'

'Yes. By —' she smiled and repeated it — 'a heartbeat.'

'And nobody, and nothing —' thinking of cannon balls and bullets — 'can get though, except...'

'People the wall knows in some way, people it wants.'

Fliss thought a while. 'That's clever,' she said. 'But what do you do? Don't you have to think about it all the time?'

'No. Some of the time. Then I put it to sleep like a baby. It's sleeping now, somewhere in the back of my mind.'

'What happens when...?'

'I die? If I haven't found someone else, time —' she thought for a moment — 'no, that bit of the future in the wall will close up. Like that.' She clapped her hands.

Fliss turned it over for a long time. She lay awake thinking in the night, while the wall slept in Lorna's mind. She supposed that because the People made it, only people who were a bit like them could pass through, but the crueller and greedier you became — the more people you killed, or whose lives you stole and used for yourself — the harder it became. Even with someone helping, it was hard. If I go down there I'll never come back, she thought. She thought about going to help Mutch.

_I've got the whole winter to decide._

_And think about the wall coming down._

_You can't cut a whole land in two. Not for ever._

As she drifted into sleep she seemed to see the mending going right and going wrong. Good people, bad people mingled in her mind: Anton. Porl Morisette. Goook. She saw the mob in the square, screaming for death. And what was Keef, what was Mutch, what was even Lorna in the end?

And what was she?

When she slept, these questions went away. She dreamed of trees and sunny clearings and shady places. She dreamed of Minnie's baby.

That was good.

## About the Author

Maurice Gee is one of New Zealand's best-known writers for adults and children. He has won numerous literary awards, including the Wattie Award, the Deutz Medal for Fiction, the New Zealand Fiction Award and the New Zealand Children's Book of the Year Award. Maurice Gee's junior and young adult novels include _The Fat Man_ , _Orchard Street_ , _Hostel Girl_ , _Under the Mountain_ , _The O Trilogy_ , and _The Salt Trilogy_. Maurice lives in Nelson with his wife, Margareta, and has two daughters and a son.

#### Salt: Volume 1

When Hari's father, Tarl, is taken as a slave and sent to the mine known as Deep Salt, from where no worker ever returns, Hari vows to save him.

Pearl's destiny involves marriage that will unite her family with that of the powerful and ambitious Ottmar. But Pearl has learned forbidden things from Tealeaf, her maid, and will never submit to a subordinate life.

A long journey through the badlands towards Deep Salt finds Pearl and Hari united for a common cause.

#### Gool: Volume 2

Sixteen years have passed since Pearl from Company and Hari from Blood Burrow defeated the tyrant Ottmar. Now their children, Xantee and Lo, face an even more dangerous foe. The beast is called Gool, and it is one of many destroying the mountains and jungles of the world.

Xantee and Lo set out on a dangerous mission that takes them through the jungle and over mountains to the ruined city, and on to Ceebeedee, where a terrifying clash with the cruel rival leaders and lurking Gool awaits them.

#### The Limping Man: Volume 3

When Hana's mam chooses to swallow frogweed poison rather than die in the great witch-burning in People's Square, Hana flees the burrows before she too is taken. Deep in the forest she meets Ben, son of Lo, and the two journey back to the burrows to find a way to destroy the Limping Man before his evil consumes the world.

#### The Halfmen of O: The O Trilogy Volume 1

Susan Ferris and her cousin Nick are summoned to the beautiful land of O in a last-ditch attempt to save the planet from cruel Otis Claw and his followers, the evil Halfmen, who have lost every trace of human goodness and kindness.

#### The Priests of Ferris: The O Trilogy Volume 2

Susan and Nick return to the world of O, which they had saved from the evil Halfmen, only to discover that a hundred years have passed and O is now ruled by cruel and ruthless priests.

#### Motherstone: The O Trilogy Volume 3

Susan and Nick are leaving the magical land of O, the scene of _The Halfmen of O_ and _The Priests of Ferris_. But even as they prepare to step back to Earth, strange and evil forces reach out to ensnare them. For Susan and for the Motherstone there is one final, frightening task.

#### Under the Mountain

Rachel and Theo Matheson are twins. Apart from having red hair, there is nothing remarkable about them — or so they think. They are horrified to discover that they have a strange and awesome destiny. Only the Matheson twins can save the world from the terror of what is under the mountain.

#### The Fire-Raiser

Kitty Wix is knocked over as a strange loping figure is seen fleeing the burning stables. But who is the 'fire-raiser' and why is he creating such terror? Kitty has her own suspicions, and so do other children in the town. When the crazed man with fire in his head strikes again, the children find themselves in terrible danger.

#### The Champion

It is summer 1943 in a small New Zealand town, and a wounded American soldier is coming to stay with 12-year-old Rex and his family. Rex is full of expectations, but from the moment Jackson steps down from the bus there are surprises — and how could anyone predict the dramatic events which will unfold in the days to come?

#### Orchard Street

Some very strange things are happening in Orchard Street. Ossie's dad is doing something illegal under the house; everyone is talking about the waterfront strike; adults are behaving in odd ways towards each other — and Ossie is falling in love. As he moves out of the safety zone of childhood, Ossie begins to understand that life will never be predictable again.

#### Hostel Girl

Ailsa is fascinated with the love life of her beautiful, aloof roommate, Gloria. When Gloria begins to receive menacing love letters from an anonymous writer, the girls realise he must be watching her — day and night. As she struggles to protect her friend from the complexities of obsessive love, Ailsa finds an unexpected ally.

#### The World Around the Corner

When Caroline discovers an old pair of spectacles in her father's junk shop, she has no idea how important they are. Even when she puts them on and sees things very differently, she doesn't guess that the safety of another world depends on them.

#### The Fat Man

Colin Potter is a skinny boy, hungry for chocolate. Herbert Muskie is enormously fat, hungry for revenge. A dramatic encounter down at the creek forges an unhappy alliance between the vindictive man and the fearful child. But who is the fat man and why does he hate the people of Loomis? What guilty secrets are hidden in the past and why are Colin's parents such special targets?

##### PUFFIN

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia
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Puffin is an imprint of the Penguin Random House group of companies, whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.

First published by Penguin Random House New Zealand, 2017

Text © Maurice Gee, 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Cover and text design by Kate Barraclough © Penguin Random House New Zealand
Cover photographs by Mercy_C_M_H and nizha2/Thinkstock

A catalogue record for this book is available from the National Library of New Zealand.

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-14-377025-1

## THE BEGINNING

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# Contents

  1. Cover
  2. Title Page
  3. Contents
  4. Dedication
  5. Chapter One
  6. Chapter Two
  7. Chapter Three
  8. Chapter Four
  9. Chapter Five
  10. Chapter Six
  11. Chapter Seven
  12. Chapter Eight
  13. Chapter Nine
  14. Chapter Ten
  15. Chapter Eleven
  16. Chapter Twelve
  17. Chapter Thirteen
  18. About the Author
  19. Copyright Page
  20. Follow Penguin Random House

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  1. Table of Contents
  2. Beginning of book
  3. Appendices

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook