The map was right. That was the first thing Wick noticed, and it bothered him before he knew why.
They went into the Thornwood at first light with Petrie’s bread in their packs and Nell on the top yard wall, not waving, just watching, with her slate against her chest. Ten yards in, the village was gone. A hundred yards in, the morning was gone too, and there was only the grey underwater light that came down through the black oaks, and the mist that never lifted, and the briar.
The briar grew in arches. Long curved canes as thick as a wrist bent over the old path from either side and met above it, so that the company walked all morning down a tunnel of thorns with the mist lying along the floor of it like milk in a trough. Seven walked at the back and shed, and the gold leaves lay on the white mist behind them, and Wick kept looking back at the trail of them, because it was the only proof they had come from anywhere.
He walked with the map.
Quill had drawn the Grey Hounds’ route as a dotted line, and every half-mile there was a note in the fine scholar’s hand: fallen tower, east. Stream with two stones. Oak split by lightning. And every half-mile there it was. The tower, a stump of grey Carrovan masonry with a root through its door. The stream, two stones. The oak, split. He knew what it felt like when a tide table was right, and this was right, every line of it, and he had never heard of a map that was right in a wood nobody went into.
“He said he’d worked on it all his life,” Oswin said, when Wick mentioned it. “Old surveys. Carrovan records. Archivists are very, hmm, thorough. It’s practically a disease.” He had Pip out on his palm and was turning the bent wing back with a tiny screwdriver, one hair’s breadth at a time. “There, Pip. Nearly. — The Grey Hounds had the same map, I expect, or one like it. That’s how they got where they got.”
“Where did they get?”
“Well,” said Oswin. “That’s the contract, isn’t it.”
They found the camp a little after noon.
Ilsa found it. She came back along the briar tunnel at a jog with her face set, and said, “Captain,” and nothing else, and Brakka went with her, and the rest followed.
The tunnel opened into a clearing. Somebody had cut the briar back, long ago, in a rough ring thirty paces across, and the stumps of the canes had gone black and the mist lay in the ring undisturbed, and in the mist were the tents.
There were six. They had been good tents once, oiled canvas on ash poles, the kind a company bought when it had money, and now they were rags. The canvas had rotted off the poles in strips and hung in the mist like washing. Iron pots sat in a dead fire-ring with a year of rust on them, and a bucket, and a boot, one boot, lying on its side where somebody had kicked it off and not come back for it.
Nobody said anything for a while.
Then Brakka put Auntie’s head on the ground and leaned on the haft and said, “They left in a hurry. A company that walks out takes its pots, Sprat. These were carried off. Or they ran.” She looked round the ring with her tusks showing, not in a grin. “Spread out. Touch nothing you don’t have to. Oswin, the fire. Ilsa, the edges. Seven—”
“I will look at the dead,” said Seven.
It had seen the cairn before any of them. It stood on the far side of the ring, in the lee of a black oak: a heap of grey stones as long as a person, carefully made, and a helmet on top. A good steel helmet with a grey hound’s head stamped on the brow and a dent in it the size of a fist.
Seven went to it and stood with its head bowed, and a leaf fell, and lay on the stones.
“Sabine Roux,” said Brakka, who had not moved. “Grey Hound captain. I drank with her once. She sang worse than me.” A pause. “Nobody sings worse than me. She was close.”
Wick stood in the middle of the ruined camp with his hands at his sides and did not know what to do with himself.
He had thought about this moment for fifteen months. He had thought it would be an answer. It was six rotten tents and a boot, and the fear came up in him so fast and cold that he had to count, one, two, three, the tent poles, four, five, six, because he could not look at the cairn, and on the fifth pole his eyes stopped.
It was scratched into the ash, at the height of a man’s shoulder, with a knife-point. Weathered now, grey, but deep.
A wave. Three notches. And under the wave, a bar.
He was across the clearing before he knew he had moved.
“Sprat?”
He had his hand on the pole. The scratches were under his fingers, and he knew them the way he knew his own name. The wave was Aldo’s wave; he had always made it with a flick at the end, like a hook. Three notches. A bar.
Hidden here. Look at the foot.
The foot of the pole went into leaf-litter and the leaf-litter went down into the black earth, and he was on his knees digging with both hands, and there was nothing, and he dug wider, and there was nothing, and then his fingers found the root. A great black oak root, as thick as his leg, running under the tent, and where it humped out of the ground there was a hollow under it, and in the hollow, wrapped in oilcloth, tied with cord, was a book.
He sat back on his heels with it in his lap.
The company had come up round him, quietly. Ilsa was nearest. She did not say what is it. She looked at the pole, and at his face, and said, “His?”
“His.”
“Open it, then.”
He could not, at first. His hands were shaking and the cord was knotted hard. Ilsa took it without a word, cut the cord, unfolded the oilcloth, put it back in his lap, and stepped away.
It was a thin book, cheap paper, bound in boards. The pages had gone wavy with damp but the ink had held. And the hand on the first page was Aldo’s hand, the hand that had written back Thursday on scraps under a stone for four years, cramped and slanting and impatient, with the sixes that had bellies.
He read it aloud. He did not decide to. It was the only way to keep his voice steady.
Day 1. Marched. Fifteen of us. Roux says it’s a salvage job, Carrovan ruin, dig out what’s there and bring it back for the client. Good money. Too good, Marta says. Marta says that about everything.
Day 4. Greystep. Stone-cutters. Friendly enough. One old woman told Roux the stone’s been “singing wrong”. Roux laughed. I didn’t.
Day 6. The camp. The map’s good. Too good, Marta says. Shut up, Marta.
Day 9. The client’s man came. Vosk. Half his face is leather and he breathes like a bellows and I would not turn my back on him in a bathtub. He’s got his own crew, thirty, masked some of them, with picks. We’re not digging out a ruin. We’re digging down. Roux asked what for. Vosk said what we’re paid for.
Day 12. Roux went to see the client. He came to the camp at night, in a hood, in a carriage, on a track nobody knew was there. He never showed his face. Roux says he pays in old crowns, the heavy ones nobody honest uses, and that the whole carriage stank of camphor. She says he talked about the Carrovans like he’d known them. She says he asked if any of us were weavers.
I didn’t say anything.
Day 20. Roux’s dead. The shaft came in. Four others with her. Vosk didn’t stop digging. We buried what we could.
Day 23. Marta was in the second shaft when it went. I heard it go. I was on the lip, and there was a lamp-wake, Ember, somebody’s lamp, and I didn’t think. I caught it. I did the thing Mam said never to do, and I held the roof up with it long enough for them to drag her out, and then I fell down.
They saw. Vosk saw. He looked at my hands and he smiled under the leather.
He knows what I am. He’s sent for the client.
Day 24. They’ve started chaining us at night. Not the Hounds only. Two Greystep people came in on a cart yesterday and they’re chained too. Vosk says the client wants “listeners”. I don’t know what he means. I know it’s bad.
I’ve hidden this. Three notches, a bar, like the post. If anybody finds it, it’ll be you, Wicky, because you’re the only one who’d know to look, and if it’s you, then you came, and you shouldn’t have.
Go home. I mean it. Whatever they offered you. Whatever they said about me.
Go home.
Wick stopped reading because there was nothing more to read. The next page was blank. So were all the pages after it.
The mist lay in the ring.
“Camphor,” said Oswin, in a very small voice, and looked down at his own coat, and then up, as if he were afraid someone would accuse him. “I mean. Lots of things smell of camphor. It’s a solvent. It’s in half the—”
“Chests,” said Wick. His voice came out flat and strange. “Camphor-wood chests. On the roof of a black carriage. At the landward gate.”
The fire-ring ticked as it cooled.
“A woman paid us,” said Brakka, slowly. “Hot hands. And her man at the Crossing.” She straightened up off Auntie’s haft. “A hood. Old crowns. Talks about the Carrovans like she knew them. Well. The Ashborn have their own ideas about Carrovan ruins; the Archivist said so himself.”
“Then why would she try to buy us off?” said Ilsa.
“To keep the Sprat out of her wood. Then she couldn’t stop him coming, so she tried to take him on the road.” Brakka’s face was hard. “Especially the boy. She said it to my face.”
Wick held the journal in both hands. He asked if any of us were weavers. He thought of Veyra Sel’s hot hand on his chin, turning his face to the light, looking at his hands. He thought of her mouth tightening.
“He’s alive,” he said. “Day twenty-four. He was alive on day twenty-four. Chained. That’s fifteen months ago, but he was—” He stopped. “They wanted him for something. Vosk sent for the client. You don’t send for the client about a man you’re going to kill.”
“No,” said Seven, from the cairn. “You do not.”
It came across the ring to him, slow, and crouched, and looked at the journal in his hands, and then at him, and it smelled of wet earth so strongly that he could taste it.
“Little flame,” it said. “He held up a roof with a lamp-wake. I could not do that. He did it afraid, and alone, and for someone else.” It touched the page with one long finger where the ink said they saw. “Whoever wants Kindlers in this wood wants them badly. It is not only you they want.”
Skritch fell out of a tree at dusk.
They had made camp at the edge of the ring, as far from the tents as the briar allowed, and Oswin had a fire going and was arguing with it, and Wick was sitting against the black oak with the journal inside his shirt where it would stay dry, when a branch cracked overhead and something small and wet and furious came down through the leaves in a shower of twigs and landed on all fours in the middle of the camp with a thump.
Ilsa had a knife out before it had stopped bouncing.
“Don’t,” said Wick, and was on his feet.
It was Skritch. The torn left ear, the tin button on its string, now muddy, the ribs. He was thinner than he had been on the pier stair, his fur matted with burrs, a long scratch down one flank, and he crouched in the firelight with his whiskers flat and his black eyes going from face to face to Brakka’s enormous face and back, and said, very fast:
“Skritch isn’t stealing. Skritch isn’t stealing, Skritch was up the tree, big-folk, up the tree since before the sun, waiting for the right one to come down to and the right one’s him—” one paw stabbed at Wick ”—him, the one who didn’t kick Skritch, and Skritch would have come down nicely but the branch broke, squeak true, the branch broke—”
“Since Saltmire,” said Wick. “You’ve been following us since Saltmire.”
“Since the pier.” Skritch’s whiskers twitched. “Skritch said he owed. Skritch said.”
“I saw you. At the first waystation.”
“Skritch saw you see.”
Ilsa had not put the knife away. “Captain, it’s been pacing us four days. It’s seen the chest—”
“Haven’t touched the chest!” The fur round Skritch’s neck went up. “Could’ve. Didn’t. Skritch is good at chests.”
“That’s not the reassurance you think it is.”
“Enough.” Brakka had not stood up. She sat by the fire with Auntie across her knees and gave the Skitter the look she had given the red seal on the contract, the weighing one. “Why’s a drain-rat in the Thornwood? Skitter don’t leave the water. I’ve been in Saltmire twelve years and I’ve never seen one past the landward gate.”
Skritch’s whiskers went flat. All the way flat, against his face, and he sat back on his haunches and looked, suddenly, very young and very far from home.
“Warren left,” he said.
“Left where?”
“Left the drains. Left Saltmire. The whole warren, Tally and all. Moon before last.” He wrapped his tail round his feet. “The cold came up. In the Low Streets. Came up slow, and the water went wrong, no fish, no nothing, and then the little ones started going Quiet. Just going. Sitting in the cold and not coming back.” His voice had dropped to a whistle. “Skritch said tell up-top. Skritch said, big-folk should know. Tally said big-folk don’t listen and big-folk brand us. Tally said Skritch is loud-mouthed. Tally put Skritch out.”
Wick thought of nine scratched marks going down a cellar stair, each one more ragged than the last, and said nothing, and felt his face go hot.
“So Skritch followed the warren anyway. A long way off, so Tally wouldn’t see. Out of the drains, up the old water-roads, under the ground, under the river—” he waved a paw vaguely ”—a long way. And the warren came out here. In an old big-folk water-place under the roots. And it’s worse here. There’s a no-no under this wood bigger than anything, and the warren’s stuck between it and the cold behind, and they don’t know which way, and they’re hungry, and Skritch can’t go in because Skritch is put out.” His whiskers trembled. “So Skritch came back up, and the first big-folk Skritch found on the road was him. The one who didn’t kick.”
He looked at Wick. Everybody looked at Wick.
“I didn’t kick you,” Wick said, stupidly.
“No,” Skritch agreed. “So.”
There was a silence in which the fire popped.
“Captain,” said Ilsa, “it’s a thief.”
“Yes.”
“It’ll have the chest open the first night we’re all asleep—”
“Probably.”
“Then—”
“The Sprat let it go,” said Brakka. “On the pier. He had the Watch fifty yards off and he let it go, and it followed him into the Thornwood on the strength of it. Four days on a promise. That’s more than most people manage in a lifetime.” She looked at Wick, not at Ilsa. “The Sprat’s choices weigh, Quire. That’s Ledger. He made this one. It’s his to carry.” Back to Skritch. “You eat what we eat, rat. You touch nothing. You sleep where I can see you. And if you ever call me big-folk to my face again I’ll hang you up by that button. Clear?”
Skritch considered her for a moment with his head on one side.
“What does Skritch call you?”
“Captain.”
“Captain,” said Skritch, trying it. His whiskers came up a quarter of the way. “Captain. Captain, Skritch is very hungry.”
Oswin, without a word, held out the pot.
Later, when Skritch had eaten enough for a Skitter twice his size and was curled asleep by the fire with his tail over his nose, Wick sat against the oak with the journal inside his shirt and looked at the Skitter and thought about Currents.
“Tide,” said Seven, beside him, as if he had asked. “Every one of them. They are made of water and they carry it. You will feel it if he ever does anything with it. A damp sheen. A shell at the ear.”
“He hasn’t done anything.”
“He swam under a river to follow you. He has done a great deal.” Seven was looking at the fire. “You did not tell Brakka about the marks on the cellar stair.”
Wick’s stomach dropped. “How did—”
“You went down before dawn with a candle. I was on the roof. You came up looking as if you had seen the end of something.” It was quiet. “You keep things. It is a habit. One day it will cost you more than it costs tonight. I say this because I am fond of you, and because I am a tree, and trees have seen a great many boys keep things.”
“I’ll tell her.”
“Yes. Tomorrow.” Seven’s dark eyes turned to him. “Tonight, tell me why your hand is in your pocket.”
He had not noticed it was. He took it out. The song-stone came with it, grey and smooth, and he held it in his white palm and thought, for no reason he could name, of camphor: of a lozenge burning on his tongue at the Lanterns’ table while an old man talked about Aldo. He put that away. It did not fit anywhere, and he had enough in his hands.
The stone was humming.
Not a bee in a jar. Louder. A steady grit-buzz in the bones of his hand, like a wasp trapped against a window. And as he held it, with the fire crackling and Skritch’s small snores going and the mist lying white in the ruined ring beyond the light, it changed.
It went cold, from the middle out, the way a pond freezes, until it was a thing of ice in his hand and the hum had sunk to a note so low it was not a sound at all but a pressure in his jaw. The wrong song. He closed his fist on it.
“Seven.”
“I feel it.”
Out beyond the fire, in the mist, where the rotten tents stood in their ring, something moved.
A shape in the white, there and not. Then another, on the far side, by the cairn. Then the first again, nearer, and the fire bent toward it as if a door had opened somewhere, and the flames went from yellow to orange.
It was circling the camp. Slowly. Without any sound at all.