The Harvest Tide Project (2 page)

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Emos Harprag sat quietly in the passenger seat of the wagon as he was driven into the town of Rutledge-on-Coast to see a dead man. The oil-powered engine took up the entire front half of the vehicle and belched smoke into the air over his head, stamping its sooty mark on the sky. It was still early in the morning, and Peddar Murris drove the wagon at close to its top speed down the empty, winding streets. Emos was slightly amused and curious about his friend's urgency. Murris was normally eager to talk but today he was quiet and pensive.

He had said little about why he had come all the way out to Emos's farm, asking only that the Myunan come back with him to Rutledge, but it had something to do with a dead body they had discovered. Some poor soul who had been murdered, his corpse dumped where it should never have been found. Emos would not have considered himself an expert on the dead. He had trouble enough relating to the living, and there were constables in Rutledge whose job it was to deal with such crimes, but Murris seemed to think he was needed.

Emos Harprag was a lean man of average height, with long, grey hair and a solemn, almost sad expression. His face was mature, but had few lines, as was common in Myunans. The triangular tattoo that he bore on his face attracted little attention in Rutledge-on-Coast, but it marked him out as an exile to Myunans everywhere. Because of his past, he could never live among his own people again.

As they turned onto the road that led down to the docks, the esh came into view and Emos could smell the tang of sessium on the breeze. Rutledge was on the coast of Braskhia, and like most of the other coastal towns, had made its life from the esh – for there was no water off the coast of Braskhia, at least none that could be seen. Stretching from the docks to the horizon was an ocean of gas, white with a warm yellow tinge, which lay like a blanket of cloud over everything east of Rutledge. The gas was called sessium, and it was so heavy it sank through air to lie thickly on the ground. The sea of sessium that stretched out before Emos's eyes was called the esh and the people of Braskhia had made their living from it for as long as anyone could remember.

‘The body's still aboard the
Lightfoot
,' Murris grunted, referring to his boat as he steered the wagon around the end of a warehouse and turned left along the docks. ‘We didn't want to move him until you'd had a look at him. Bring a dead man down off a boat and soon every busybody in town will be hanging around wanting to know who he is. We figured it would be best to find out what we can about him first, before tongues start wagging. There are some odd things about this corpse … and odd things do seem to be your speciality.'

Esh-boats lay at anchor in the harbour or moored to the docks. With three hulls and an array of masts, each one was lighter and more complex than any ship made for travelling on water. Murris drove past a number of different kinds of vessel before bringing the wagon to a skidding halt at a jetty that led out to a fishing trawler.

Peddar Murris was a stocky, jovial man with a bushy moustache that travelled down his cheeks and up to meet his sideburns. Despite the fact that as chief engineer on the
Lightfoot
, he was literally responsible for the lives of the crew by maintaining the hydrogen in its sealed hulls, Murris was a relaxed and mellow-natured man. But his face was troubled now, as he led Emos along the jetty and up the gangplank. The Myunan experienced the brief feeling of vertigo that he always got when stepping onto the deck of an esh-boat; he could feel the shifting swell of the gas beneath the hull. The captain waved his pipe at them from the bridge above and gestured at them to wait. The eshtran was on the deck in front of them, giving the Last Blessing to the dead man.

According to Braskhiam beliefs, a man had to meet his god with pure air in his lungs, and the eshtran, a Braskhiam priest, was administering that final breath with a small
bellows
. After he had muttered a few words, he slipped the bellows into a scabbard on his belt and made a sign with his hand from his chest to his mouth and back again. Murris walked over with Emos, both of them covering their noses and mouths against the smell.

‘Don't mind the way the arms and legs are broken,' Murris told the Myunan. ‘The healer says that was done after he was dead. It probably happened when his body got caught on
the boat's anchor. This man suffocated.'

He held up a breathing mask and section of hose; the hose had been cut with a knife or other sharp tool. The man was also wearing a safety harness on his hips and the rope from this too had been cut.

‘Definitely murdered,' Murris added, confirming Emos's unspoken thought. ‘He'd been diving in the esh and
someone
cut his air hose and safety line. He was left to die down there, out past Crofter's Point. He didn't have a hope of making it to land. The healer reckons by the extent of the rot that he's been down there nearly two weeks. Things rot slow in the esh. It was a chance in a million that he caught on our anchor. Someone killed him and left him where they thought he'd never be found. But it's what he was doing diving out there in the first place that has us puzzled. Apart from the fishing, there's nothing of interest out there, just weeds and rocks. Nobody who has any business bein' on the esh wastes their time diving off Crofter's Point.'

‘Well, something down there must have been important to him.' Emos studied the bulging eyes and bluish skin. The man's tongue was protruding slightly and his lips were blue. Esh creatures had been taking nibbles out of him and there were open wounds, but no blood to speak of. His flesh was swelling as it decomposed and his clothes were tight on his body. The boots and harness were of a military style, but this man had been frail, and wore a long beard; he was no
soldier
. The rest of his clothes were simple garments. The knees of his trousers were dirty as if he had done a lot of kneeling and his jacket had pockets full of folded sheets of parchment. Emos unfolded a couple. They contained crumbs of soil. He checked the corpse's hands.

‘He has earth under his fingernails – not the mark of a man who works out at esh,' Emos remarked.

‘That's not all,' Murris added. ‘He had a satchel around his neck when we pulled him in. Have a look at this.'

One of the men brought out the bag, handed it to Emos and stepped quickly back. Like others among the crew, he seemed uneasy around Myunans. Emos was not bothered; it was still better than the treatment he received from his own people. He unbuckled the satchel and opened the flap, emptying its contents onto the deck. He frowned. There was a trowel, an auger, a gardening fork, a small pair of shears and some more soil samples. There was also a sheaf of notes on parchment.

‘None of us can read them,' Murris told him. ‘They're in a language we've never seen before.'

‘Actually, I think you have,' Emos replied. ‘It's Sestinian, but he's used shorthand, a type their scientists use for making quick notes. These are measurements for things like fertiliser, moisture levels, temperature … but what was this man doing walking around at the bottom of the esh?'

‘That's what we'd like to know,' Murris said. ‘And why did someone feel the need to kill him?'

‘Well,' Emos shrugged. ‘Judging by this, he was involved in nothing more mysterious than gardening, if in a slightly unusual location …'

He stopped. One page in particular appeared to have been written in haste, as if the man was excited or upset. There was one last line scrawled across the bottom of the page. Murris looked over his shoulder.

‘What does it say?' he asked.

‘It says, “How many people will die?”'

Emos looked up at Murris.

‘This might be something we need to know about.'

Emos Harprag lived on his small farm in Braskhia, a day's walk from Rutledge-on-Coast, having given up the nomad life of a Myunan and settled down to make a living raising crops and livestock. The land was fertile and was also close enough to the esh to see the Harvest Tide every year. He had been exiled from his tribe years before, and his only contact now with the Myunans was the occasional, discreet visit from the Archisans: his sister, her husband and their two children. Sometimes they left his niece and nephew with him to stay for a few weeks. It was good for the children to experience a different way of life, and Emos was not the type to back down from a challenge.

It was late in the day when Murris left him back to his gate and waved him goodbye. They were both troubled by what they had seen and the ominous warning in the dead man's notes. With his mind mulling over the mystery, it took him some time to notice that there was no sign of his niece and nephew. From somewhere, he could hear the faint sound of a cat wailing.

The tapestry on the wall of his travel room was crooked. Breath hissing through gritted teeth, he opened the hidden door and hurried down the steps. Lorkrin and Taya had entered his studio. He should never have left them alone in the house for so long. A valuable sheet of ancient Parsinor curses shrieked from the floor at the bottom of the stairs. He silenced the hex by licking his finger and thumb and
pinching
the torn ends together. He soon discovered that the little
maggots hadn't stopped at damaging the scroll. They'd made off with one of his transmorphing quills. He stormed back up the stairs and slammed the door shut behind him, his
normally
impassive face tensed in fury.

Emos packed his tools and some other essentials in a backpack, locked up his farmhouse and set out to track them down. He knew they would run, but he had tracked and killed more cunning prey than them and he would see them punished before the week was out.

They had left in such a hurry that they had not even
bothered
to try to hide their trail, so he followed at a fast pace, his eyes, ears and nose seeking out any sign of Taya and Lorkrin, but his mind occupied with what he had seen in Rutledge that day.

The mix of the dead man's military and peasant
equipment
, the notes made by someone with a scientific
education
, the way he had been murdered in cold blood – it was all very strange and, as Murris had said, Emos was fascinated by strange things. Whoever this man had been, he had
carried
some terrible knowledge, and it was probable that someone had killed him to ensure his silence.

He reached a fork in the road, one way leading east towards Rutledge-on-Coast, the right turn leading west to Hortenz. Emos followed the faint tracks in the dust up the left-hand fork, but they soon disappeared. He sighed,
studying
the hedges on either side, then backtracked and headed up the road to Hortenz where he soon came upon their trail again despite the fading evening light. They were going to have to do better than that.

Hortenz was big and loud on the morning of market day. The market was in full swing and the voices of traders
competed
with the sound of engined wagons and various animal noises. Taya and Lorkrin walked down a street past a woman selling bottled smells, and a tanner's stall, and through a rendacrid auction. The huge, hairless, slug-like creatures sat bloated and sleepy and ready for slaughter, and buyers wandered among them trying to decide which would give the best meat. Taya was leaning in to pet one when her brother grabbed her, pulled her down off the fence and in behind some crates. He put a finger to his lips and pointed. There, in the throng of people milling around the market, was their uncle.