T H E I S L A N D
Chapter One
drink out the storm
Kel Boon did not like magic. He knew all the arguments — it’s as natural as breathing; Noreela gifted it to us; it’s the language of the land — but it was something he did not understand. And in his time serving the Core, things he did not understand had usually ended up terrifying him, at the very least. At the other extreme, they had tried to kill him. So he used magic, as much as anyone in Noreela used it, happily leaving its manipulation to the Practitioners. But he did not like it.
Strange, then, that his best friend and lover was a witch.
Kel looked at his latest carving, sitting back and stretching the ache from his muscles. He’d been working on this piece for two moons, picking a moment here and there between commissions, or spending more time working on it when paid projects were sparse. He made a scant living selling his carvings; he could afford to eat, drink and keep a roof over his head. His craft would never make him rich, but he was fine with that. Rich meant visible.
Lately, he’d had plenty of time to work on this, his own very private sculpture. When it was ready, he’d give it to his love, Namior Feeron. It would be his gift to her on the day he proposed marriage.
It was good. Namior’s love of the cliff hawks that lived and hunted along the coast had meant that Kel’s choice of what to carve for her was easy, and the hawks’ own particular grace, charm and mystery made the task a pleasing one. He had completed the basic form and was now working on the detail, trying to capture the bird’s light elegance in the weight of wood. He’d chosen a hunk of wood from a young wellburr tree’s higher branches; light and solid, beautifully grained, still rich in natural oils. His climb to cut the branch had been an adventure in itself, and Namior had asked how he’d gained such bruises and grazes on his legs and stomach. He told her he’d been involved in a drunken scuffle at the Blue Ray Tavern. You fool, she’d said, already starting to kiss the bruises better.
Kel brushed wood dust from the hawk’s eyes, grunting in satisfaction. A good afternoon’s work. He stood and began tidying his work table. A blanket went over the carving, just in case Namior called on him unexpectedly, and he oiled and sharpened each of the chisels, blades and files he’d been using. Then he wrapped them in greasecloth, rolled them together into their leather pouch and tucked them beneath the table. The wood shards he swept by hand into a bucket and threw onto the unlit fire. When burned, the wellburr wood would freshen his rooms and fill the air with an exotic, spicy smell.
He looked once again at the unfinished carving, given ghostly shape by the blanket. He imagined the blanket moving, the sculpture screaming like an attacking hawk, venting violence through every pore. Closing his eyes, he breathed deeply and listened to the first gust of wind outside.
Something whistled behind him, and for a moment he thought it was the breeze finding its way beneath the door. But the thick curtains over his windows and door were still, the candles around the walls flickering only slightly, and then he knew what was making the noise.
Namior called it a voice carrier. It was a machine. She’d insisted on him taking it, rebuffing his objections, because he lived at the top of Drakeman’s Hill, and she was sometimes too busy to climb all the way up there to see him.
Another breath of wind rattled the front door in its frame, and candlelight shivered in sympathy.
The machine whistled again.
“I’m coming,” Kel muttered, but he smiled. It would be good to hear Namior’s voice, and he hoped they could arrange to meet that evening.
Kel crossed the room to a curtained alcove in the corner, and behind the curtain sat the voice carrier. It glowed softly, emitting the whistle from tiny holes in its chalky shell, and it had risen a hand’s width from the shelf, floating in the air as though Namior’s intention made it lighter.
He reached out and touched the small machine, cringing at the slight warmth that bled through its exterior. It almost felt alive. As his fingertips made contact the whistling stopped, and he heard the expectant silence he was used to.
“Namior,” he said. She was cruel; she always waited for him to speak first.
“Kel the wood chopper.” Her voice came clear and sharp, almost as if she was in the room with him. From instinct he glanced around, just to make sure. And as usual, he was alone.
“How are those mad old witches you insist on living with?” he asked.
“Listening.”
Kel was silent for a moment, eyes half closing as he considered exactly what he’d said.
“I’m fooling,” Namior said.
“Wait until I see you,” he whispered.
Namior laughed. “You and which army, exactly? But Kel, my mother and great-grandmother sense a storm coming, and they think—”
“It’s uncanny, how they can sense a storm just by listening to the wind, and seeing storm clouds boiling overhead.” He stepped sideways and pulled a curtain to one side, looking out over the rooftops of the village below. “And observing the white-crests out to sea.”
“A real storm, Kel!” Namior said. “A surger. High tide, big waves, heavy rain, like something you’ve never seen since you’ve been here. Trakis and Mell want to go to the Dog’s Eyes, drink out the storm and defy nature. Will you come?”
“I’m a sculptor and a tortured artist. Do you really think I want to use bad weather as an excuse to drink?” He always felt it strange talking to a glowing, floating machine, so as usual he had his eyes closed as he spoke to Namior this way. And that helped him picture what she said next.
“Of course. Followed by me bringing you to my rooms and examining your greatest sculpture.”
Kel smiled. “It needs oiling.”
“I’m up to the task, I think.”
Kel opened his eyes and looked around his rooms. The curtains at the door and windows were shifting now, candles dancing in excitement, and the wind and rain beat at the walls. “Sounds like the world’s ending out there,” he said.
“Well, you will live at the top of Drakeman’s Hill.”
Kel glanced back at the hawk he was carving for Namior, and once again tried to imagine her face when he revealed it to her at last. “You’re welcome to live with me up here.”
Namior was silent for long enough for it to become uncomfortable. Training, Kel thought. Mother, great-grandmother … a whole family of witches.
“See you at the Dog’s?” he said at last.
“I look forward to it,” Namior said, and the machine stopped glowing and settled back down.
Kel closed the curtain on the voice carrier and stepped back, smiling. She might be good at avoiding certain questions, but Namior was also adept at saying exactly what she meant. I look forward to it, she had said. Five words that drove away the cold, and made Kel feel warm all over.
He shrugged on a heavy coat, a scarf, and a hat made from furbat skin, and strapped a knife to his belt. Storms reminded him of that terrible night in Noreela City. With every blink he’d hear the screams and see the children dying, and if there was lightning it would imprint those memories on his mind even more harshly. He’d once told Namior that he hated storms, though he could never tell her why, and she had laughed as she asked why he chose to live next to the sea.
Same reason why I fell in love with a witch when I don’t trust magic, he’d responded. I’m a man of contradictions. She had smiled as though he’d made a joke, but he often spent deep moments considering this, and thinking that he’d been hiding for so long that he no longer knew himself.
Pavmouth Breaks was a fishing village on the western shores of Noreela. It was built on either side of the River Pav where it merged with the sea, extending up the slopes of the valley on both sides: a gentle rise to the north, with a slow fall to the sea; and a steeper rise to the south known as Drakeman’s Hill, ending with a sheer cliff into the sea on that side. The harbor was natural, enclosed and expanded centuries before with a long, curving stone mole projecting out into the sea. The river was spanned by bridges in two places. The first, oldest stone bridge stood closest to the sea at the harbor throat, while a mile upriver was the newest crossing known as Helio Bridge—a hundred steps high and half a mile across, spanning between the sides of the steepening valley inland.
Namior Feeron lived in the northern part of village, her family home perched on the shallow hillside and built so that it had views both out to sea, and across the narrow river mouth to the south. From Namior’s room on the roof she could see way up Drakeman’s Hill, though Kel Boon’s rooms were hidden from view by other buildings. Still, she liked to sit at her window sometimes and imagine him descending those steep paths and steps to reach her.
She’d climb, but that sometimes seemed too eager. Eager sends them away, her mother told her, and she should know; Namior’s father had sailed west with nine others two moons after her birth, never to be seen again. Give them a chase, her mother would say. And sometimes, give them a catch.
Namior stared out at the darkening, rainswept village, feeling violence in the air of the storm yet to come, and she knew that tonight she would be happy giving Kel several catches.
Her mother and great-grandmother were in the main downstairs room, gathered about the groundstone, still scrying to see whether they could assess the coming storm more accurately. They’d excused Namior when her nose started to bleed — she still had much to learn about magic and its gentle, deep manipulations — and her mother knew that soon she would be going out. I’ll take care, she had told her, and her great-grandmother, blind in one eye and deaf in one ear, had said in one of her less troubled, saner moments, Find a secret each day, and in a few years you may know him. Namior knew that her great-grandmother did not approve of Kel Boon. Eyes the color of blood, she had once complained. But like all witches in the Feeron family, past and present, Namior was blessed with freedom and gifted with choice.
A machine drifted up the narrow path below her window, reaching out jointed metallic arms to relight oil lanterns that had gone out, and turn up their flames. She saw rain patter down in a hundred spots across its grey stone hood, and it sped up as though to escape the downpour.
She should dress. Kel would not be down for a while, but she’d like to be at the Dog’s Eyes before him. Trakis and Mell would be there already, downing Neak’s stormy brews and debating whether to spend some of their hard-earned on the Ventgorian wines he kept in his cellar. A storm like this seemed to raise the village’s blood; partly excitement and partly, she suspected, the idea that they were defying nature. The sea would rise, the rain would fall and the wind would blow, but Pavmouth Breaks clung to the coast, boldly facing the tempest and waiting for morning to arrive.
She frowned, remembering her great-grandmother’s sickness that afternoon. Her mother had administered ceyrat root, but it had perturbed them, and set a chill in the air that Namior had still not shaken. The old woman was subject to periods of madness—she called them her crazes—brought on by age and the stew that time made of the brain, and such a sickness was usually the beginning. She’s just old and ill, she thought. Bad meat for supper yesterday. Too much scrying.
A blast of wind gusted in from the west, and Pavmouth Breaks seemed to shudder beneath its force. Namior stood and moved back from the window. The glass flexed slightly, distorting the village, and warping her own reflection so that she looked to be in pain. She turned away and went to wash and dress.
Namior descended the twisting staircase at the heart of the house. She’d changed from her loose witch’s robe to a pair of tight canvas trousers, soft sheebok-wool shirt and a long leather coat, and she felt ready for the night. She could still hear her mother’s voice chanting softly as she sat by the groundstone, and she slowed to listen to the words. There was something not quite right, and it took Namior a dozen heartbeats to figure out what that was: her great-grandmother was silent.
“Namior,” her mother whispered. “Come down; come in.”
Namior descended the last few stairs, not surprised that her mother had been aware of her presence. The two women had sat around the groundstone for most of the day, her mother touching surfaces smoothed by hands for decades, gathering strength from the land’s magic, and using that strength to try and discern things yet to happen. Namior’s senses still felt heightened from the time she had spent with them. Noises rang inside her head, and she could smell the anger of the sea.
Her great-grandmother sat across the room from her, huddled down in a mass of blankets. She twitched and mumbled in her sleep.
“Sit,” her mother said, patting the floor cushions beside her. Namior sat cross-legged and lowered her head, paying respect to the groundstone.
“Storm’s getting harsher,” Namior said.
“Yes. There’s something …” Her mother shook her head, setting her many earrings jangling.
“Wrong?”
Her mother nodded. “A blank spot in the storm. There are waves and rain, breakers smashing the shore, and a water spout farther along the coast that may touch land.”
“I saw most of that, too,” Namior said, and she felt a brief flush of pride in her expanding abilities. They exhausted her — if it were not for the lure of Kel, she would be happy staying in and sleeping for the evening and night — but they also excited her. Her mother and great-grandmother knew that, and they encouraged it, though the older woman was always the one to urge caution. Life’s too short to rush, was one of her favorite sayings, and it had taken Namior a long time to see the sense in that. Life was short, so she needed to do things right.
“And we should have seen more,” her mother said. “There’s something missing. A weight. Something out to sea.”
“A weight of what?”
Her mother frowned, staring at the groundstone. “I’m not sure.” Then she smiled. “Probably just the storm stirring the magic. It happens sometimes, especially when there’s lightning.”
Namior looked at the groundstone — as high as her chest, planted deep in the family home generations before, polished and smoothed by centuries of her ancestors’ contact — and she almost reached out again. But there was still a gentle throb behind her face, and her nose prickled at the thought of communing with the land’s magic again that evening. A dribble of blood ran down to her top lip.
Her great-grandmother shuddered awake and looked up. “No more for you tonight, Namior,” she said, her voice weak and tremulous.
Namior nodded, dabbing the blood away.
“Don’t go too far,” her mother said, leaning in close enough to kiss her daughter’s cheek.
“Only the Dog’s Eyes,” Namior said. “Kel is coming down.”
“There’ll be damage to clear up in the morning,” her mother said. “Stay in the heights, away from the harbor.”
“I will.” Namior was becoming unsettled by her mother’s concern. “You know I can look after myself.”
The woman nodded and smiled, but her eyes were still clouded by whatever was missing. Namior could hear it in her voice, and she was unused to the sound of fear. “You’re a good girl,” her mother said. “And you’re growing to be a great witch.”
“I’ll be away,” Namior said, glancing pointedly at her great-grandmother then back to her mother. “Don’t forget you both need sleep!”
She felt them watching her as she left the main room and stood in the hallway behind the front door. Closing the hall door was almost a relief. Alone again, listening to the wind batter the door in its frame, hearing the whistle of a machine rumbling by, she cast her mind back to her own visions from that afternoon. She had sensed a storm coming, as had they all. She had seen the waves and rain, boats swaying and bobbing in the upset harbor, and cloaked shapes pushing against the wind as they navigated the dark streets, steps and winding paths of Pavmouth Breaks. She had not been aware of any absence; no void where there should be something; nothing to disturb.
She sighed, hoping that her great-grandmother would not descend into one of her crazes.
“I’m still young,” she whispered. She touched the stone charm that hung around her neck — a shard from the same rock that had gone to make her family’s groundstone — and breathed in the energy it gave her. “Still young, and I trust their word.”
Vowing to be careful, she pulled the door open and went out into the storm.
Stay in the heights, away from the harbor, her mother had said. But upon leaving their house and taking the short, cobbled path down to the wider street, Namior looked right, down the small slope towards the harbor, and in the dusky light she saw the sparkling glare of spray as the sea struck the mole.
Storm’s not anywhere near its height, she thought. So she turned right and walked along the hillside, heading towards a lower path from which she knew she would be able to view the whole harbor. It wasn’t every day a storm like this came in, and Namior revelled in the power of nature.
The path curved slowly around the hip of the hill, exposing itself to the sea winds, and with every step Namior felt the power of the gale increasing. She hugged the jacket close across her chest and lowered her head. It was raining so much now that the water was not draining away fast enough, and her feet sloshed, leaving a wake like small boats. She winced as a gust of wind threatened to unbalance her, driving rain horizontally against her face, stinging her exposed skin, soaking her trousers. Yet still the storm felt young, and she sensed that it had yet to find its rhythm.
She walked on, passing a couple of people going in the opposite direction. They offered her a brief nod, and she nodded back, unable to identify them in their storm gear. Their faces were covered. They could have been anyone.
The path sloped down towards the harbor, and once it was free of the buildings crowding it, Namior could hear the roar of the sea as it broke against the land. It was immense, shuddering through the ground and into her feet as well as shaking the air. She paused in the lee of a tall retaining wall to watch, sheltered from the worst of the rain but still with a good field of vision. Waves broke against the mole and pushed their spray right over, and the water of the harbor itself was in turmoil, tossing boats against each other. The front was awash, the swell lifting against the harbor wall and occasionally surging across the ground. She could see a few hardy people struggling here and there, dashing from one building to the next, but mostly the streets were sensibly deserted.
Worse to come, she thought, and for the first time she felt the twinge of concern she had seen in her mother’s eyes. There would be broken boats to fix when the storm had spent itself, and perhaps more.
She turned and hurried back up the hillside, and when she drew level with the narrow path to her house, a transport machine rolled down the street towards her. It stopped before her and lowered itself on wooden wheels, and she climbed onto its back, touching the control stone beside the metal seat and casting her thoughts. The machine turned, trailing limbs stroking the ground as it drew power from the land, and started along the hillside towards the Dog’s Eyes Tavern.
When Kel Boon entered his favorite tavern, a score of faces turned his way. He smiled and received a dozen smiles in return, but some of the older men and women barely nodded. He’d only been here for five years, and it would take a lot longer than that for him to become one of them.
Such was the atmosphere in a small fishing village. Even on a day like today, when the skies were opening, the sea was battering them and the rest of the world felt very far away, Pavmouth Breaks’ residents feared the stranger.
His attention was grabbed immediately by the small tone-bone band playing in the large window bay. There were two men and a woman, the same, three who regularly supplied music in the tavern in return for drink and food. And though he’d heard much of the music before, it never failed to stir his soul. The woman had caught a fresh whistle fish today, and she had it draped across her lap, stroking its scales and passing her fingers across the many bony protuberances on its back and sides. A whistle fish took days to die out of water, and its death sounds could be manipulated into hoots, clicks and whines. The two men played a variety of instruments, ranging from a whalebone harp to a large hollow bone around which much legend had been built. No one knew where it came from, but these were fisherfolk; there were a thousand tales of its origin, and all of them true.
“Kel!” Trakis called from a smoky corner. The big man stood and waved his arms and Mell, sitting beside him smoking a pipe, nudged him in the ribs.
Kel looked around quickly but saw no sight of Namior. Maybe those witches had held her back, after all.
“You look like a drowned furbat!” Trakis said. As Kel drew closer, his friend’s face grew stern. “You need ale.” He strode towards the bar.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Mell said. “You’re dripping on the table.”
Kel stepped back and shed his coat and hat, hanging them on a hook set into one of the tavern’s many rough timber columns. It was one of the oldest buildings in Pavmouth Breaks, so the landlord Neak said, and he also claimed it was home to the most wraiths. Kel always smiled when he heard Neak telling that to a visiting fisherman or a newcomer to the village: Most haunted place in Noreela! Kel had visited a dozen places in Noreela City itself that also laid claim to that dubious title.
“No Namior?” Mell asked.
“She’s coming. I spoke to her earlier.”
“Storm from the deepest Black,” Mell said, taking another draw on her pipe. She gasped, then exhaled a stream of pure green smoke. “You can almost hear the wraiths screaming in the wind.”
“No wraiths out there,” Kel said, perhaps a little too harshly. “It’s just weather.”
Mell nodded and stared at him a little too long. Out of everyone in Pavmouth Breaks, she seemed most suspicious of his past. Sometimes he thought she could see deeper than he knew.
Trakis returned and lowered a tray of drinks carefully to the table. Four jugs of Neak’s Wanderlust ale, and a tall, dark bottle. “I’m splashing out,” Trakis said. “Tonight it’s us against the world.”
“A militiaman who can afford Ventgorian wine,” Mell said admiringly. “You must be corrupt.”
“Eat sheebok shit, fisherwoman.”
Kel raised his jug and offered his squabbling friends a toast. “Us against the world.” He drank, closing his eyes as the initial bitter taste changed into something sweet and wonderful. Neak swore that he brewed naturally, without the help of magic or machines, and Kel believed him. Nothing that tasted so good could be so false.
The tavern door opened, conversation stopped and Kel joined with everyone else in looking at the newcomer. Namior Feeron entered, slamming the door behind her and shaking water from her long hair. She spied Kel immediately and smiled. As she came across to them she swapped greetings with most of the tavern’s patrons, and Kel looked away. Seeing how well she knew this place sometimes stung him, because he also knew how much she wanted to get away. She was desperate for travel, exploration and adventure. She craved to see to see Noreela City, Pengulfin Heights, the islands of The Spine that curved out from the north of Noreela, and she even dreamed of a journey far enough south to see the dangerous mountain ranges of Kang Kang. But every time she mentioned this, Kel Boon told her no. He was staying here. I’ve had my adventure, he would say, and however much she pressed, he could tell her no more. That was the dark space between them—a gap which seemed, at present, unfordable.
“The harbor’s mad,” Namior said even before taking a seat. “Boats are crashing about, and some of those waves are breaking over the mole.”
“There’s been worse,” Mell said. She had been a fisherwoman for almost eighteen years. She’d been involved in three wrecks, seen two friends drowned and one taken by sea creatures, and nothing seemed to disturb her anymore. At almost forty — just younger than Kel, and two decades older than Namior — Mell had lived enough to fill many lives. We’d have such tales to tell each other, Kel sometimes thought. But if he wanted to stay here in Pavmouth Breaks, he could never speak of his past.
Not if he wanted to stay alive.
“And what do you say, young witch?” Trakis asked Namior.
Namior’s eyes darkened for a beat, then she smiled. It lit up her face. “My mother says there’s to be a waterspout just along the coast.” She glanced at Kel, the smile slipping so slightly that he thought he was the only one who noticed.
“I’ll drink to that!” Trakis said. He raised his mug, and the rest of them joined him in toasting the storm.
Namior sat on a bench close to Kel, and it only took one mug of ale before she pressed herself against him. He slung his right arm loosely around her shoulders and drank with his left. She looked at him frequently, her ale-tainted laughter a welcome addition to the tavern’s underlying noise. Kel drank slowly; he had never enjoyed the sensation of being drunk, and the loss of control it brought on. But he had always enjoyed watching Trakis and Mell drink together, and tonight both of them were truly on form. Conversations turned to bickering, bickering to full-blown arguments, and then they would hug each other, laughing and swearing undying friendship. Kel supposed this was a tavern filled with such people, but these were special because they were his friends.
The door opened occasionally, letting a sample of the storm inside to blow out candles and spatter the wooden floor with rain. Whoever stumbled in was subject of the tavern’s appraisal, and more often than not they would have stories of how the storm was progressing. Waves fifteen steps high, they said, battering the mole and smashing boats against the harbor wall. Rain so heavy that some of the paths up to Drakeman’s Hill had turned into impassable torrents. “Looks like I’m definitely staying with you tonight,” Kel said at this, and Namior’s hand squeezed his thigh, remaining there afterwards.
The evening turned to night, though daylight had been stolen long ago by the thundering clouds. Lightning flashed at the tavern’s windows, followed soon after by the rumbles of thunder. The heart of the tempest was almost upon them.
Kel knew that Namior saw this as an adventure. Whatever had troubled her earlier had been melted away by the Wanderlust ale and fine Ventgorian wine, and her smile was a pleasure, her laughter a welcome song.
But with each flash of lightning, as though the space between blinks was another world, Kel was taken back to that night in Noreela City.
“One day you’ll learn to pack your fucking weapons properly,” O’Peeria says, grabbing Kel Boon’s belt and tugging him to her. The Shantasi woman runs her hands across his body, beneath his cloak, around his belt, loosening and tightening straps and webbing, shifting knife sheaths a finger’s width, lengthening the string on throwing star strings. Kel raises his arms from his sides and watches her, enjoying the opportunity to examine her face while her attention is elsewhere. She’s beautiful, in a harsh way, her pale skin set off against her long dark hair like day against night. He looks down at her own weapon-clad body, lithe and strong.
She passes one hand between his thighs and adjusts the straps of his sword scabbard. Pausing, she glances up, her eyes darker than the Black. “If I feel your cock growing hard, I’ll cut it off.”
Kel goes to say something, but he’s not entirely sure she’s joking.
O’Peeria stands, grabs his shoulder and shakes. Kel stumbles and leans to the left to avoid falling over. None of his weapons makes a sound.
“Good,” the Shantasi says. “A Core agent should know how to wear his weapons, at least.” She turns and heads for the door, sweeping her hair over her right shoulder and tying it in place. That way, it won’t interfere when the time comes to fight.
“O’Peeria,” Kel says. She turns and stares at him. She’s been his lover, and she swears that she’s his friend, but she’s a hard woman. And with all they’ve been through he’s never found a way to get close.
Kel shakes his head. “Doesn’t matter.”
“You ready?” O’Peeria says, raising her eyebrows.
“Yes.” Kel’s voice is quiet, and he cannot meet her gaze.
“Sure, Kel? Are you fucking sure? This is killing stuff, tonight. No more fun and games. We’ve been watching him long enough, and the Core wants him dead. So are you ready?”
“Yes,” Kel says, more firmly this time. He looks over O’Peeria’s shoulder at the door. Beyond lie the night time streets, alleys, parks, squares and secretive buildings of Noreela City. “I’m ready.”
O’Peeria smiles, and not for the first time Kel thinks that he might love her.
By midnight, she will be dead.
The thud shattered one of the Dog’s Eyes’ windows, cracked floorboards, and shook the door in its frame. It knocked several wine bottle from the shelf behind the bar to smash at Neak’s feet, struck at Kel’s ears, and sent a heavy shockwave up through his feet and spine.
The rain and wind did not lessen — with the smashed window, the noise from outside increased — but for a few beats after the thud, the interior of the tavern was almost silent. It felt as though the ground itself had moved.
“What in the Black was that?” a soft voice said. The thought spoken, a ripple of surprise ran around the tavern, and a beat later most people were on their feet and heading for the door.
“That wasn’t wind,” Namior said.
“And no wave, either,” Mell added.
Trakis raised a mug and drained it of ale, then stood and nodded at the door. “Shall we?”
Kel felt a sudden chill of fear—a realisation that nothing was safe. His world—anyone’s world—could be opened up and taken apart at any time. He had liked Pavmouth Breaks when he first arrived, and over the years he had grown to love it, but he always knew that safety and contentment were merely thin veneers camouflaging the random cruelties of the world.
“Kel?” Namior said. She had remained close to him, and now he saw that strange look again, the one the others had not noticed before.
“What is it, Namior?” Mell said.
Namior looked at her two friends, then across at the broken window. Raindrops spat in. A dozen people had gone outside by now, but none of their voices were audible above the storm. “My mother and great-grandmother … they were worried, that’s all.”
“And you?” Kel asked.
She shrugged. “I’m still young. Felt nothing. But if they’re worried …”
“Then so are you,” Mell finished for her. Namior nodded.
Trakis placed his mug gently on the table. None of them drank.
Someone burst back into the tavern, her hair made mad by the wind and rain. She wiped water from her face and Kel saw her eyes, the mixture of excitement and fear driving them wide. He’d seen such a look many times, and he knew exactly what it meant: she had seen something she had never seen before.
“Something’s coming!” the woman said. “Out to sea, something out there, dark and big and fast!”
“What is it?” Mell asked.
“Don’t know. Something.”
“Come on,” Kel said. He grabbed Namior’s hand as the four of them headed for the door, skirting around the woman who evidently no longer wished to see.
“The ground’s still moving,” Trakis said as he pulled the door open and stepped outside.
And it was. Kel paused for a beat and felt the vibration entering his feet and transferred up through his bones, and when he pressed his teeth together it felt as if they could shatter. From behind came the musical rattle of wine bottles clanking together. From ahead, the sounds of the storm, and whatever else it had brought.
Namior squeezed his hand. She was outside now, arm outstretched, and he was suddenly desperate not to let go of her.
“Come on!” she shouted. “They’ve gone up the hill behind the tavern to see better!”
Kel realised that, other than Neak and the windswept woman, he was the only one still inside the Dog’s Eyes. He stepped out into the storm.
Namior was aware of the wildlife that existed in and around the village, and she was also used to rarely seeing most of it. So when something ran over her foot she squealed, unheard in the gale. And when she looked down, pools of light cast from the Dog’s Eyes windows were speckled with dashing shadows. Rats ran uphill; swarm lizards dashed so quickly that they looked like smudged of shadows; a dog growled past. And around her head, what she had thought at first were leaves blown by the wind were bats, soundless and terrified.
Namior suddenly wanted to be back at home. Her mother was there, and her great-grandmother, and they had seen something more than the storm tonight—something absent. Climbing the steps beside the Dog’s Eyes, and then the steep banking at the rear of the tavern, and finally mounting the flattened observation area where patrons sometimes drank on hot days and Neak occasionally held flat-ball tournaments, it was the absentness that disconcerted Namior the most. If they’d sensed something more, perhaps she would not have been so afraid. More could be dealt with, seen, challenged. But nothing could be done with nothing.
Mell and Trakis were already up there, leaning on the wall and staring over the harbor and out to sea. Namior held on tight to Kel’s hand, desperate not to let go, and he ran up the steps behind her, drawing close.
“What is it?” she shouted before they had even reached the wall. She shouldered in between Trakis and Mell, while the watchers shouted words that the wind stole away. Rain was driven at them across the rooftops of buildings further down the hill, and the water had a slightly smoky taste when it hit Namior’s tongue, as though it had picked up chimney smoke.
Kel stood behind her, held her arms and looked over her shoulder.
“Nothing,” Namior said, because when she looked out to sea, that was what she saw.
Down in the harbor, waves crashed against the mole and harbor wall. At the base of the cliffs to the south, the sea smashed, boiled and foamed like a diseased creature, striving to gnaw into the land. Beyond the mole were violent white-crests, waves breaking and rolling and building again, surging in towards the village and promising chaos. And past the waves, out to sea, where clouds flashed but no lightning danced at the horizon, a wall of nothing seemed to be growing in the darkness.
“What is that?” Kel shouted.
Namior shrugged, comforted by the feel of his hands on her arms.
“End of the storm,” Trakis shouted. “Sea growing calm.”
“No,” Mell shouted, and Namior listened because the fisherwoman was wise to things of the sea. “Everything’s about to get worse!” Mell looked up at Trakis, then across at Namior and Kel. When she next spoke it was no longer a shout, but still they all heard. “We should be safe up here.”
“A wave,” Namior said, dreadful understanding dawning at last. The thud, and now the wave. She’d heard of places far to the south, near Kang Kang, where the ground sometime shrugged, cracked and turned over. Groundshakes, they were called, though many people thought they were the result of fledge demons deep underground collapsing another seam of that strange drug.
Mother, she thought.
“They’ll be fine,” Kel spoke into her ear, saying exactly what she wanted to hear. But how could he be sure? Namior glanced along and down the hillside at the chaos of rooftops, paths and courtyards, trying to place her house. It was slightly lower than the Dog’s Eyes, and closer to the harbor. Lower and closer … to that!
She could not look away from the wave for long. It was a blankness on the horizon, a tall dark space above the foam-capped waves and below the boiling sky. And it was coming closer, making itself known at last.
The ground shook. The air was filled with the taste of the sea. And a roar was rising, building quickly as the sound of this incoming disaster found the land and announced itself.
They could only stand there and watch. Namior thought of all the people she knew who would likely be down in the harbor area; friends who lived there, others who worked through the night dealing with the day’s catch. They’d have felt the thud and now they would hear and see the wave. But for them, it was already far too late.
She closed her eyes, but she had to look again.
There was a flash of red lightning across the horizon, as though the flesh of the sky had been slashed.
With a roar greater even than the wave, the water in the harbor surged out to sea, leaving fishing boats resting on their hulls and the pale shapes of sea creatures thrashing in their exposure to the night.
And then the wave came in.
