The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (9 page)

Tor and I paid for our drinks and went on up the stairs.

The name of the Keeper was Wantage and he had obviously been primed to expect me. When he took my hand in his in greeting, I felt the roughness of an artisan’s skin and a glance around the room was enough to show me the nature of his business: he was a shoemaker. All the paraphernalia of his trade, including several pairs of unfinished shoes, was there.

‘Wantage used to live in Margreg,’ Ryder said, naming a port on the north coast of the main Keeper island. ‘I’d like him to tell you his story.’

Wantage produced a tepid drink of weak barley water for us and we sat down. ‘I don’t know why Tor wants me to tell you,’ he said. ‘There’s nothing much special ’bout me. Can’t say I’ve led much of an exciting life neither; not compared to his anyways. I’m just a shoemaker. Born in Margreg, raised there. My Da was a shoemaker, my Ma helped out in the workshop too. Was a good life,’ he added softly. He rubbed the back of his neck as if he didn’t quite know what he was supposed to say.

‘Wantage is one of us. He has Awareness,’ Ryder said.

The shoemaker nodded. ‘Tor got me out of the Keeper Isles. That’s how we met, a couple of years back. He saw me safe to Gorthan Spit after the trial.’

‘The trial?’ I prompted, when he fell silent.

He drew his hair back and showed his left earlobe. It had been cut away. ‘Had my citizenship revoked. I was found guilty of treachery.’ I was beginning to find Wantage interesting after all. A citizen could be exiled for any number of things, but treachery to one’s islandom was the only crime for which citizenship could be permanently revoked, and it rarely happened.

‘I always looked up to those with sylvmagic,’ he said. ‘Always thought that they were our protectors, keeping us safe from dunmagickers, ordering our world for our benefit, and all. Never begrudged them what they had: thought it was justice that they were richer than us ordinary folk. Mind you, fellows like me didn’t meet them all that often. I made boots for working folk mostly, not their fancy kind of slippers, not kidskin pumps and all.

‘When I was a nipper in my father’s shop I saw my first sylvtalents. They were just walking down the street, and they seemed to glow with silver-blue. I thought they were the most beautiful people in all the Isles. That was when I found out that not everyone saw them the same way I did—there were no Awarefolk around our parts. You know how rare Awarefolk are among the Keeper-born. So I shut up ’bout what I could see. Never did talk to no one about it much; only my family and my closest friends ever knew I had Awareness.

‘Well, in time my Da died and I took over the business. I had a friend who owned the shop next-door; a tailor, he was, and as fine a man as you ever did come across. But he was a complainer, and he didn’t like the way we was taxed. We always seemed to be paying over money for some reason or another. For me, there was a tax on leather, a tax on thread, a tax on the number of lasts in my shop, a tax because I owned a shop, a tax on the food we bought, a school tax cos I sent my youngest brother to the dame-school—tax on every darn thing you could think of. Well, I reckoned it weren’t so very bad; after all, there was roads to be paid for, and the docks to be repaired and all those other things the people in The Hub did for us, like anti-pirate patrols. They had to have taxes to pay for them, right?

‘But Glock—the tailor, you know—he didn’t feel that way. He thought there was too many of them taxes and too many rich sylv folk, and so when there was an election for Townmaster of Margreg, he decided he was going to stand. It was unheard of for someone who wasn’t a sylv to be Townmaster, you know. No nonsylv had ever tried. But that didn’t stop Glock. And he had lots of friends, and lots of people felt the same way he did. So, before you know it, it looked as though he might win, and Froctor, the sylvtalent who was standing agin him, was hopping mad.

‘Don’t know whether you know this, but they always invite the candidates in to have a look at the way the votes is counted—to make sure there’s no fiddling, you see. And the counting men, they are well-known men of the town: burghers and such. Respectable folk. Well, Glock asked me to come along with him to watch the count. Do you know how you cast a vote in the Keeper Isles? Each candidate is represented by a colour and when you go along to vote you are given shells of different colours. You drop the shell that matches the colour of the candidate of your choice into the voting box and discard the shells you don’t want into the remainder box.

‘Well, when I went along to see the count, that’s when things went all wrong for me. You see, I could see what was happening. The sylvs, they were changing the shells. With magic. There were two candidates for this election: Glock, who had purple winkles, and Froctor, with pink cockles. The counting men, they’d empty out the shell box on to the table in front of them, and to them, most of the shells were cockles—pink cockles to match Froctor’s colour. But I knew they weren’t really—they were purple winkles, cast for Glock. What I
could
see was that they were all tinged silver. It was magic that made them look like pink cockles to everyone else. Even I could see a bit of pink, although they still looked like winkles to me. Them sylvs were standing there watching the count with smirks on their faces; they never dreamed that there was one of the Awarefolk anywhere in Margreg to see the truth.

‘Even then, you know, I thought it was just Froctor and maybe a couple of his pals who was to blame. I thought the others couldn’t have known—after all, sylvs see the results of anyone else’s magic as reality, don’t they? I mean, to them, them winkles of Glock’s really would have looked like cockles. Well, to make the story shorter, I made a fuss. I complained to the outgoing Townmaster, and he told me I was a liar. And something in the way he said it told me that he had known all along… But there were common folk who did believe me, and there was trouble, although nothing came of it. There wasn’t even an inquiry. So I went to The Hub. I was stupid, I suppose, but I felt betrayed. They were
sylvs.
They were supposed to be better than the rest of us. They were the people we looked up to, our heroes. They shouldn’t have behaved like that.

‘I was…
ashamed
for them. Can you understand that? I thought I had to go to The Hub, to tell the Keeper Council what sort of people had power in Margreg. Thought it was my duty as a citizen.

‘But they said I was a liar, an—an inciter of riots. Told me to go home and keep my mouth shut. But I wouldn’t. They tried to bribe me, and I flung the money back in their faces. I was horrified. Everything that I had thought to be true was a lie…’

He shook his head sorrowfully, and his voice was so choked he couldn’t continue. It was Tor who said, ‘In the end the only way they could silence him was to have him stand trial as a traitor, to blacken him as a liar and an agitator. They used false evidence. False witnesses—all sylvs. His citizenship was revoked, his business taken from him. He was permanently exiled from the Keeper Isles. Made a nonKeeper for telling the truth.’

Tor Ryder was watching me closely as he spoke, as if wanting to see my reaction. I still had no idea why he had wanted me to hear the story. I said, addressing Ryder, ‘He would have been killed for less on some islandoms.’

‘Yes,’ Wantage agreed sadly. ‘But we are supposed to be better. We are Keepers.’ He hunched up over his drink and didn’t look at me again.

Tor Ryder and I left together shortly afterwards, and we walked back to
The Drunken Plaice.
My hand hovered close to my sword hilt all the way back. Ryder, the shrimp-brained idiot, still wasn’t wearing a sword, but we were a formidable couple anyway, too formidable for the petty criminals of the Docks to want to touch. The only person who dared to approach us was a beggar, a man who obviously hadn’t washed his body or his clothes in a year or two. He was drooling in a half-witted way and I suspected that he was another victim of the policy—followed by most of the islandoms of the Isles of Glory—of dumping the mad and the incurably sick on the Spit. Ryder dropped some money into his outstretched palm and he sidled away, giggling.

Somewhere along the way I asked Ryder why he’d wanted me to meet Wantage.

‘I thought it might make you think,’ he said obscurely.

I was still more puzzled. ‘Why should it make me think? He didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know already, at least in general.’

I glanced across at him as I spoke and caught a look of sadness on his face. He asked, ‘Doesn’t that kind of duplicity worry you?’

‘Why should it? They can’t deceive
me!
Besides, for the most part sylvs are better qualified to rule than people like Glock the tailor anyway. Dunmagickers have never gained control of the Keeper Isles as they have from time to time elsewhere, and it’s only because sylvs rule there. So what if sylv methods are underhand—their skills are put to good use once they are in power. There are rules governing the use of sylvmagic, and they are usually obeyed. If Froctor had acted alone, he would have been found out and severely disciplined. He must have acted with the approval of the Council.’

He stared at me, expressionless. I felt rather than saw his disappointment, and didn’t particularly care. I hadn’t asked for his approval.

He changed the subject and started to talk about his home, the Stragglers. It turned out that I had once passed through the small town that was his birthplace and we chatted about that, swapping tales of the delicious grilled lobsters they sold in the marketplace, and the way the hills tumbled down to the sea…

We said goodnight in the dark passage outside my room. I couldn’t see him, but I was very much aware of him, of his maleness. I half expected him to touch me, to give some sign that he was not averse to sharing my bed, but he neither said nor did anything. I didn’t know whether I was disappointed, or merely piqued. Part of me was a little afraid of him, of the edge to his humour, of the dark brooding quality in those sea-blue eyes of his.

He was an enigma, and enigmas are dangerous.

###

I woke to the sound of pounding at my door a mere half an hour or so after I’d fallen asleep.

I unsheathed my sword, went to unbar the door—and found the last person I had expected: Noviss. Or maybe more accurately, Ransom Holswood. He tumbled into my room, flapping like a stranded fish. ‘Please, you’ve got to do something,’ he said. ‘It’s Flame—she’s disappeared. Something
terrible’s
happened.’

I sheathed the sword; I couldn’t believe this wild-eyed youth was any kind of danger to me. ‘Suppose you start at the beginning?’ I suggested, and closed the door behind him.

‘She went to—’ he began, then blushed, stammered and finally mumbled something I couldn’t catch.

‘She what?’ I asked, making no attempt to hide my exasperation. There was something about Noviss-Ransom that brought out the worst in me.

‘She, er, went outside. To the, er, privy. And she didn’t come back. I, um, waited. She had been, um, in my room. We were, er, talking, you know.’

‘Yes, I know.’ The dryness of my tone went right above his head.

‘I went down to look for her, but she’s not there. She’s not anywhere! You’ve
got
to do something.’

‘Great Trench below, I don’t
have
to do anything. I’m not her nursemaid! Maybe she just felt like going for a stroll. She’ll be back in the morning.’

‘But she
said
she was coming straight back.’ He clutched at my arm. ‘Please, I don’t know what to do—’

I sighed and refrained from asking why he didn’t look for her himself. The answer was obvious: he was scared silly of being the target of another dunmagic attack. It was also obvious I wasn’t going to be allowed to sleep until I had made an attempt to find the errant lovergirl, so I said, ‘All right, all right. I’ll go downstairs and have a look. Stay here until I come back.’ I buckled on my sword, put on my boots and left him there. He was still flapping in agitation.

The stink of dunmagic hit me the moment I stepped out of the back door of the inn. I would rather have shoved my nose in a case of rotting fish than have breathed in that vileness, but I had a look around. There were unpleasant tongues of red fluttering across the dirty grit of the yard. I’d almost decided I was not going to find anything that would tell me what had happened, when I heard what sounded like a snuffle from the fuel shed where the dried seaweed for burning was stored. I went in, sword drawn.

Tunn and his mangy pet were lying on top of the weed, wrapped in a blanket that was more hole than cloth. He had his hand clamped over the beast’s nose, but its tail was thumping hard.

‘It’s only me, Tunn,’ I said. ‘Blaze. I’m looking for the Cirkasian woman. Have you seen her?’

His eyes were wide with fear. He nodded and the rush of words that followed was close to gibberish. Once I’d slowed him down, it was slightly more intelligible. The story was not, however, one that I enjoyed hearing.

The dog-cum-lurger had heard Flame and had woken Tunn—the shed evidently doubled as the tapboy’s bedroom. The boy had pressed his eye to a crack in the shed wall and had seen her doubled up in the yard as if in terrible pain (‘lik she git pokt middet in wit spittin’ hot roastin’ spit’ was the way Tunn put it). She had been rolling on the ground clutching her middle. Tunn had been about to go and see what was the matter when he’d realised there was someone else there, standing off in the shadows by the wall. It had been too dark to see properly, but he’d thought it was a man. Whoever it was, they hadn’t done anything except watch as Flame writhed in agony. Tunn, understandably, had been scared and had decided to stay put. Flame had finally stopped moving and had just lain there on the ground, whereupon the man had dragged her into the shadows. He’d spent some time there, but it was too dark for Tunn to see what he did to Flame, which, I guessed from his account, was probably just as well. A few minutes later the fellow had left the yard and gone out into the street.