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I couldn’t answer. More than once, she’d proved that she was willing to risk her life to protect me. It seemed petty to complain that she didn’t also give me her friendship.
‘I didn’t mean to see your dreams,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t help it. You don’t know what it’s like, being a seer.’
‘You’re not the first seer,’ she said, and she walked away. ‘I doubt you’ll be the last.’
*
It was dawn, two days later, when the bards came. We’d made camp just a few hours before, at a spot Zoe and Piper knew. It was a forested hill overlooking the road, with a spring nearby. Since The Ringmaster’s ambush we’d been edgy, flinching at every sound. To make it worse, for two days it hadn’t stopped raining. My blanket was a sodden load, dragging my rucksack until the straps chafed at my shoulders. The rain had thinned to a drizzle when we arrived, but everything was soaked and there was no chance of a fire. Piper took the first lookout shift. He spotted them in the tentative dawn light – two travellers making their way along the main road, in the opposite direction from where we’d come. He called us over. I’d been wrapped in a blanket in the shelter of the trees, and Zoe had just returned from a hunt, two freshly-dead rabbits swinging from her belt.
The newcomers were still only small figures on the road when we heard the music. As they drew closer, through the thinning fog we could see that one of them was thrumming her fingers on the drum hanging by her side, sounding out the rhythm of their steps. The other one, a bearded man with a staff, held a mouth organ to his lips with one hand, exploring fragments of a tune as they walked.
When they reached the point where the road curved away, they broke with it, instead heading up the hill through the longer grass, towards the woods where we sheltered.
‘We need to leave,’ said Zoe, already shoving her flask back into her bag.
‘How do they know the spot?’ I asked.
‘The same way that I do,’ Piper said. ‘From travelling this road many times before. They’re bards – they’re always on the road. This is the only spring for miles – they’re heading right for it.’
‘Pack your things,’ Zoe said to me.
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘We could talk to them, at least. Tell them what we know.’
‘When are you going to learn that we need to be more cautious?’ Zoe said.
‘In case word gets out?’ I said. ‘Isn’t that what we’ve been trying to do? We’ve been trying to spread the word ever since we left the deadlands, and we’re getting nowhere.’
‘It’s one thing for word to get out about the refuges,’ Piper said. ‘Another for word to get out about us, and where we are. If it had been Zach, and not The Ringmaster, who found us the other day, we’d all be in cells by now, or worse. I’m trying to protect you, and keep us all alive. We don’t know who we can trust.’
‘You saw what happened at the refuge,’ I said. ‘And there are more people turning themselves in every day, thinking it’s a haven. We could stop them, if we could spread the word about what really happens there.’
‘And you think two strangers can do it better than us?’ Piper said.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We need people who travel without raising suspicion. Who draw a crowd to hear them wherever they go. People who can make the news catch on, so it starts to spread by itself.’ An Omega bard could count on a welcome at any Omega settlement, and an Alpha bard could expect to be hosted at any Alpha village. Bards were the roaming memory of the world. They sang the stories that would otherwise be buried along with their subjects. Their songs traced the love stories of individuals, and the bloodlines of families, and the history of whole villages, towns, or regions. And they sang imaginary tales as well: great battles and fantastical happenings. They played on feast days, and at burials, and their songs were a currency accepted all over the land.
‘Nobody’s listening to us,’ I said. ‘They listen to bards. And you know how it works. Songs spread like fire, or plague.’
‘They’re not exactly positive things,’ Zoe pointed out.
‘They’re powerful things,’ I said.
Piper was watching me carefully.
‘Even if we can trust the bards, it would be a lot to ask of them,’ he said.
‘Give them the choice,’ I said.
Neither Zoe nor Piper spoke, but they’d stopped their packing. The music was drawing nearer. I looked back down the hill to the pair approaching. The bearded man wasn’t leaning on his staff; instead, he swung it loosely in front of him, back and forth, sweeping the air for obstacles. He was blind.
When they reached the edge of the woods, Piper called a greeting to them. The music stopped, the sounds of the forest suddenly loud in the new silence.
‘Who’s there?’ called the woman.
‘Fellow travellers,’ said Piper.
They stepped into the clearing. She was younger than us, her red hair plaited and reaching all the way down her back. I couldn’t see her mutation, though she was branded.
‘You heading north, to Pullman market?’ the man asked. He still held the mouth organ in one hand, the staff in the other. His eyes weren’t closed – they were missing altogether. Below the brand on his forehead, the skin stretched uninterrupted across his eye sockets. His hands had extra fingers, unruly offshoots from every knuckle, like a sprouting potato. Seven fingers, at least, on each hand.
Piper avoided his question. ‘We’re leaving tonight, when it’s dark. You’ll have the clearing to yourselves.’
The man shrugged. ‘If you’re travelling at night, then I shouldn’t be surprised you don’t want to tell us where you’re headed.’
‘You’re travelling at night, too,’ I pointed out.
‘Night and day, at the moment,’ the woman said. ‘The market starts in two days. We were delayed at Abberley when the flooding swept the bridge.’
‘And I always travel in the dark, even if the sun’s shining.’ The man gestured to his sealed eye sockets. ‘So who am I to judge you for it?’
‘Our travel’s not your business,’ said Zoe. The woman stared at her, and kept staring, taking in Zoe’s unbranded face, her Alpha body. I wondered whether my scrutiny of the bards had been so obvious.
‘True enough,’ the man said, unflustered by Zoe’s tone.
He and the woman moved to the centre of the clearing. He didn’t take her arm, but guided himself with his staff. Watching him negotiate the unseen world reminded me of how it felt to be a seer. When I’d navigated the reef, or the caves under Wyndham, my mind had been groping the air for directions, reaching out before me just as the bard’s staff did.
He settled on a fallen log. ‘One thing I don’t understand,’ he said. ‘If you’re travelling at night, you’re avoiding the Council patrols. But you don’t move like Omegas.’
‘One of them’s not an Omega,’ said the woman, shooting another look at Zoe.
‘She’s with us,’ said Piper quickly.
‘It’s not just her.’ The blind man turned to face Piper. ‘It’s you, too.’
‘I’m an Omega,’ Piper said. ‘Our companion here is, too – your friend will tell you that. The other lady may not be an Omega, but she’s with us, and isn’t looking for any trouble.’
‘What did you mean, they don’t move like Omegas?’ I asked the man.
He swung his head to face me. ‘Without eyes, you get good at listening. I’m not talking about hearing the sound of a limp, or crutches. That’s the obvious stuff. But it’s more than that. It’s the way Omegas walk. Most of us sound a little slumped. We’ve all copped enough blows, missed enough meals, to keep our heads low. Most of us, you can hear it in our steps: we don’t step high, or wide. We drag our feet: a little bit of shuffling. A little bit of flinching. The two of them,’ he gestured towards Piper and Zoe, ‘they don’t sound like that.’
I was amazed that he could tell so much just from the sound of their movements, but I knew what he meant. I’d noted the same thing when I met Piper for the first time on the island: the unabashed way that he held himself. Most people on the island had begun to shed the diffidence that the mainland stamped on Omegas, but Piper wore none of it. Even now, thin and with the knees of his trousers blackened and fraying, he moved with the same loose-limbed confidence as he always had.
The man turned back to Piper. ‘You don’t move like an Omega, any more than the Alpha lady does. But if you’re on the road with an Alpha, I’m guessing your story’s not an ordinary one.’
‘You heard what they said: their story’s not our business,’ said the woman, pulling his arm. ‘We should go.’
‘Surely we’ve covered enough miles for a rest?’ he said, planting his staff in front of him.
‘Why are you so keen to stick around?’ Zoe asked him. ‘Most Omegas keep well clear of us. Of me, anyway.’
‘I told you,’ he said. ‘I’m a bard. I collect stories, the way some people collect coins, or trinkets. It’s my trade. And even a blind man can see that there’s a story here.’
‘It’s a story we can’t share with just anybody,’ said Piper. ‘It’d mean trouble for us, as you well know.’
‘I’m not one to talk to Council patrols, if that’s what you mean,’ said the man. ‘Even a bard gets a hard time from the Council these days. They’re no friends of mine.’
‘There’s talk that the Council wants to stop Omegas from being bards at all,’ the woman added. ‘It’s all the travelling around that they don’t like. They like to keep tabs on us.’
‘I’d challenge the best of the Alpha bards to play as well as me,’ said the man, flourishing his extra fingers.
‘The soldiers would have your fingers off if they heard you say that,’ said the woman.
‘We’re not about to tell them,’ said Piper. ‘And if you can keep quiet about having seen us here, I don’t see why we can’t camp together for the day.’
The woman and Zoe still looked wary, but the blind man smiled.
‘Then let’s make camp. I could use a rest. I’m Leonard, by the way. And this is Eva.’
‘I won’t tell you our names,’ said Piper. ‘But I won’t lie to you, at least, and give false names.’
‘Glad to hear it,’ Leonard said. Eva sat next to him and began pulling their things from her rucksack. She had some nuggets of coal wrapped in waxed paper and still dry.
‘Fine,’ said Zoe. ‘But we need to cook quickly – we’re still too close to the road to risk a fire once this fog’s cleared.’
While Piper stoked the fire and Zoe sat sharpening her knives, I joined Leonard on the log.
‘You said the others didn’t move like Omegas.’ I tried to keep my voice low enough that the others wouldn’t hear. ‘What about me?’
‘You neither,’ he said.
‘But I don’t feel like them. They’ve always been so –’ I paused. ‘So sure. So certain about everything.’
‘I didn’t say you were like them. I just said you didn’t walk like other Omegas.’ He shrugged. ‘Girl, you’re hardly here.’
‘What do you mean?’
He paused, and gave a laugh. ‘You walk like you think the earth begrudges you a space to plant your feet.’
I thought of the moment after Kip’s death, when Zach had found me slumped on the platform at the top of the silo. The air had been so heavy. If Zach hadn’t begged me to run, to save his own skin, I doubted I’d have managed to drag myself upright and leave. All these weeks and all these miles later, I hadn’t realised that I was still hauling the weight of the sky with each step.
CHAPTER 7 (#ulink_2302597a-8bfe-51a8-99b8-ec209a08c8e8)
We ate the rabbits, as well as some foraged mushrooms and greens that Eva pulled from her bag.
‘Are you a seer as well?’ I asked her while we ate.
She snorted. ‘Hardly.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. Nobody wanted to be mistaken for a seer. ‘I just couldn’t see your mutation.’
Leonard’s face had turned serious.
‘She has the most feared mutation of all,’ he said. ‘I’m surprised you haven’t spotted it already.’
There was a long pause. I scanned Eva again but could see nothing unusual. What could be more feared than being a seer, with its promise of madness?
Leonard leaned forward, and gave a stage whisper. ‘Red hair.’
Our laughter startled two blackbirds, that took off, screeching.
‘Look more closely,’ Eva said. She turned her head to the side and lifted her thick braid. There, nestled into the back of her neck, was a second mouth. She opened it briefly, baring two crooked teeth.
‘Only shame is that I can’t sing out of it,’ she said, letting her braid drop. ‘Then I wouldn’t need Leonard for the harmonies, and I wouldn’t have to put up with his grumbling.’
When the fire was extinguished and the sun risen, Leonard cleaned his hands carefully before he took up his guitar.
‘Can’t get rabbit grease on the strings,’ he said, weaving his handkerchief between his clustered fingers.
‘If you’re going to be making a racket, I’d better keep watch,’ said Zoe. ‘If anything comes along the road, we’ll need to see them before they hear us.’ She looked up at the tree above her. Piper dropped to kneel on one knee and she climbed, without speaking, on to his bent leg, balanced for a moment with a hand on his shoulder, and then jumped up to grasp the branch. She swung herself upwards, feet pointed and body tucked. I could see what Leonard had meant, when he’d talked about the way she and Piper moved. The ease with which they inhabited their bodies.
When I envied Zoe, though, it wasn’t her unbranded face I coveted, or her confidence. Not even her freedom from the visions that shredded my mind. It was the way that she and Piper moved together, without even speaking. The closeness that didn’t require words. There’d been a time when Zach and I had been like that, long before we were split, and before he’d turned against me. But after all that had happened since, the intimacy of that shared childhood seemed as distant as the island. It was a place to which we could never return.
Eva took up her drum, and Leonard’s right hand plucked at the strings, tickling the music out of the instrument, while the fingers of his left hand moved more slowly.
He’d been right, I knew, when he’d told me that he’d heard my hesitant footsteps. I’d been taunting my body with cold and hunger. Avoiding every consolation, because there would be no consolation for the dead I’d left in my wake. But this music was a pleasure that I couldn’t dodge. Like the ash that had plagued us in the east, the music would not be denied. I leaned back against a tree and allowed myself to listen.
It was more noise than we’d permitted ourselves for weeks. Our lives had become so muted. We crept at night, wincing at the breaking of twigs beneath our boots. We hid from patrols, and talked often in whispers. We were at risk, every moment, until it began to feel as though sound itself had become something we had to ration. Now, even the most flippant of the bards’ songs felt like a small act of defiance: to hear the music ringing out. To permit ourselves something more than bare survival.
Some of the songs were slow and sad; others were raucous, the notes sizzling and jumping like corn kernels in a hot pan. Several had lyrics bawdy enough to set us all laughing. And when I glanced away from the fire, I saw that even Zoe’s feet, hanging from the branch high in the tree, were swinging in time with the music.
‘Did your twin have the talent for music as well?’ I asked Leonard, when he and Eva stopped for a drink.
He shrugged. ‘All I have of her is a name on my registration papers. That and the town where we were born.’ He fished the worn sheet of paper from his bag and waved it at me, laughing. ‘They can’t make up their minds, the Council. Can’t do enough to keep us separate, but then they make us carry our twins around in our pockets, everywhere we go.’ He traced the paper as if he would feel the word under his fingertip. ‘Elise, it says. That’s what Eva tells me – she can read a little. But that’s my twin’s name, on there somewhere.’
‘And you don’t remember anything about her at all?’
He shrugged again. ‘I was a baby when they sent me away. That’s all I know of her: those marks on paper, that I can’t even see.’
I thought again of Zach. What did I have of him, now? I had been thirteen when I was branded and sent away. Not long enough for me, and too long for him. During my years in the Keeping Rooms, he’d come to see me, but only rarely. When I’d last seen him, in the silo after Kip and The Confessor’s deaths, he’d seemed fevered, frantic. He had been hissing, cut loose, like the electric wires that Kip and I had slashed.
When the next song started, my mind was still lingering in the silo with Zach, hearing again the tremor of terror in his voice when he’d told me to run. Eva had swapped her drum for a flute, so it was only Leonard’s voice tracing the words. It was mid-morning, the sun through the trees casting stripes on the clearing. It took me a moment to realise what Leonard was singing about.
They came in dark ships
They came at night
They laid The Confessor’s kiss
On each islander’s throat with a knife.
