Storm. Sarah Driver
hovers in front of his face and his filmy eyeballs scan the air for me, using her light. ‘There you are!’ he huffs. ‘The ghostway spat this out for you.’ He hands me a tightly wrapped scroll sealed with a splodge of blood-red wax.
I blink at him, startled that I’ve found my way back to the door of my chamber without even noticing.
We slip inside the chamber and I snap open the seal. ‘What’s it say?’ jabbers Sparrow impatiently.
‘Gift me a chance!’ Sitting on the edge of my bed, I smooth the letter flat on my knees. Before my eyes, the runes tremble and glow moon-silver. Sparrow scrambles closer.
There are only three words etched into the parchment. Read in private!
As soon as my eyes drink them, the bright silver runes disappear with a small cracking sound, leaving a faint trace of smoke.
Then others appear. ‘It’s from Yapok,’ I whisper, realising how relieved I am to hear from the Skybrarian’s apprentice after so long. Then I remember the lemming and look quickly around to make sure no slitherers are watching from the walls, before reading Yapok’s scrawled silver runes.
The Skybrary stands strong, and we are safe enough for now. The Skybrarian and I have been travelling to seek out new manuscripts for the collection – he says we don’t have to hide so much now that the Sky-Tribes are returning.
We’ve been tracking some names of people who are known to protect books – in crowded bazaars, secret libraries, back-alley bookshops and grand houses.
And I’ve made a new discovery. I wanted you to know because of your quest. Some of the war manuscripts I’ve been looking at – I think they have much older runes hidden underneath the text.
My mind reels. Underneath?
I think I could find something helpful if I can just see beneath the writing, long enough to reveal the truth. But every time I manage to scrape away the newer runes, a strange symbol, like a strangling vine, bleeds upwards through the parchment, throttling the old runes.
Anyway, it feels like progress. I’ll write again if I discover any clues about the Crown.
A shiver ripples up my spine, as a picture of a strangling vine coils in my mind. I turn to Sparrow. ‘We’ve got to take matters into our own hands.’
I make my way to the sawbones’ nest and steal a pan of squidge ink and some brittle old scraps of goatskin and scratch my message into them.
Time’s come for a Sneaking of our own. I call a secret youth’s Tribe-Meet. Honour this law: no full-growns. Bone-crypts, after lamps out. Come if you’re brave enough.
I slip into dormitories and stuff the notes under the pillows of the biggest blabbermouths on the mountain – the kids that can’t turn down a challenge. Then I wait.
The day drags on for ever. I’m a bundle of nerves. My mind keeps straying to the seed I’ve sown. When it’s time to bed down again, I pray to all the sea-gods that my note is enough.
Then down, down, down through the murk I slip, Thaw riding the air by my side.
I scurry down to the bone-crypts, until the crushing weight of Hackles hulks overhead. The crypts are deeper than even the draggle caves, but off in a different direction. I step through an archway sculpted from thighbones and stare around. Thousands on thousands of Sky-folk shoulder blades, collarbones, fingers and toes, and piles of staring skulls boom their chalky death into the tomb-chamber. They’ve been arranged in ornate patterns to honour the dead. I feel a grin melt across my face. If we have to plan for the end of the world, this is a proper place to do it.
I settle down to wait. Thaw stays close, and I try to stroke away her frights.
But soon, I’m praying for something to move. Cos no one comes, and the cold prods my bones. Lamps must be out by now! I chatter to Thaw. Where are they? Sparrow ent even here – and he said he’d bring the kids from his dorm.
Gods. He’d better not have broken his neck on the way down here. I said I’d help him find his way, but the stubborn too-soon just said lemme be !
My eyelids are growing heavy when slowly, one by one, ghoulish shadows wisp through the thighbone archway into the crypts. My gut turns hot and tight. Thaw shuffles her wings and puffs a belch of fright into the gloom.
‘I could be at Hackles the rest of forever and still never learn all its secrets,’ lisps a Wilderwitch girl called Ibex, with hair shaved to her skull and the stubble dyed bruise-blue.
Relief whumps through me.
‘Quiet!’ shushes someone from the gloom.
‘Hope we won’t be here forever,’ mutters Ermine, from somewhere to the left of me.
‘Don’t fret,’ I husk, making him startle halfway out of his skin. ‘Soon, we rove.’
‘Mouse!’ whispers Hammer. ‘Don’t do that!’
‘I was just saying,’ says Erm, to cover his frights. ‘Aren’t you creeped out of your pelt down here?’ He scowls. ‘Just me then.’ His gaze burrows under my skin. Then he tips back his head and stares at the underside of our world.
‘I’m frighted, too,’ says Sparrow.
‘I never said I was frighted,’ spits Erm, crossing his arms.
‘This is the one who left the notes,’ Lunda tells the kids that’re trotting after her. She fixes her eyes on my scar. ‘The pearl-fisher that talks to animals.’ She stalks towards our group with a lantern raised in her hand.
My heart drums and my blood kicks for a fight. Part of me wishes I never invited her – but she’s gonna be useful.
‘Oh, you’re Sea-Tribe, aren’t you?’ asks Ibex. ‘How fascinating! I’ve never even seen the sea!’
I gift her a grin.
But Lunda chuckles coldly. ‘I’m not sure I’d call roving sea-creepers a Tribe ! And I’ve no idea why we’re giving them shelter-feather in our sky-fortress.’ She’s goading me for a brawl. A brawl I realise I’ve been thirsting for.
‘Don’t think this girl walks alone, will you?’ snarls Hammer, who’s got my back along with Ermine and Crow.
‘Aye, and she’s got more than little boys standing up for her,’ says Crow. Someone snickers. Hammer’s fine black brows quirk together in a frown as he rounds on Crow.
‘Boys fighting over her, huh?’ scorns Lunda.
‘Your words are dust to me,’ I say calmly. And I am ready for the next battle.
Thaw-Wielder chats straight into my head. ArmLAND!
For a beat I watch myself from above, through her eyes. It’s the strangest feeling, like there’s a wormy cord threading out of my belly and connecting me to my hawk. I unfurl my wrist and she drops onto it, out of the immense nothing yawning over and around us, like someone high up has dumped a bucket of feathers and claws and quickness into the air. Even Lunda gasps as Thaw resettles her feathers, twitching her head around at them all.
I smile. These kids are starting to know something about my fierce.
‘I’m not fazed by your tricks,’ says Lunda. ‘Soon, you will be dust, too. Only the strongest will survive this Withering.’ Her words wreath from her mouth like pale spekters.
I push my face into Lunda’s. ‘Either rest your jaws, or say that again – if you dare.’ I can feel my magyk pulsing in my blood and in my gut and in my dark-gulping eyes. I could do anything in this beat.
‘Mama says that’s not how girls should act,’ quavers Ibex.
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