Marilyn Todd - Scorpion Rising

'Suppose we found another way to talk?' The youth's eyes danced as he flicked his fingers. 'No one can overhear that.'

'Holy heaven!' Her eyes turned to saucers of horror. 'Where did you learn to talk with your hands?'

'From watching you.'

'Oh, Pod, if they ever find out you can cipher-'

He silenced her protests by placing one finger gently over her lips. 'Tomorrow,' he whispered. 'Tomorrow afternoon, when everyone'll be busy with the solstice preparations.'

Even from behind the rock, Claudia could see the girl was shaking and she did not think it was from fear.

'Very well, then,' Sarra said at last. 'If you're sure?'

'I'm sure.' The youth placed a light kiss on her lips, then another, then a longer, much deeper one. 'But you have to admit,' he said, finally pulling away, 'I've picked up your sign language pretty well.'

He gesticulated a few more words with his fingers and despite herself, Sarra laughed. 'I suspect you meant to call me an angel, but you've just labelled me an old bat! This,' she said, swishing her fingers, 'is the cipher for angel.'

She was still smiling as she disappeared round the curve in the path, trailing her spray of white roses and quite oblivious to the fact that those blooms which had survived the crushing embrace had lost at least half of their petals. Several minutes passed before Pod finally tore his eyes away from the empty track, yet when he turned round, Claudia noticed that the expression in them was harder than granite.

So then. Pod was a free man, she thought, watching him sprint off down the path to make up for lost time. Another point she would need to raise with Gurdo, but since the spring's belligerent guardian wasn't here, she decided to wait on a wide flat rock beside the stream that was surrounded by iris and willow. Out of sight, beyond a bend in the river downstream, the babble of women washing laundry mingled with midsummer birdsong, while the gurgle of water glugging round rocks merged with the droning of bees. And yet, as she lay face up to the sun, there was little peace in Claudia's heart.

I know.

She'd found the note the minute she returned from Santonum, and whoever wrote it hadn't bothered to flip the hinge of the wax tablet shut. They'd wanted her to see the message straight away — but who knew? What did they know? And how could they possibly know that Claudia was investigating Clytie's death? Yet:

I know, the note read. I know.

Two little words, but enough to chill her through to her marrow. Keeping secrets was not always wise. In fact, in a close, tight-knit community such as this, where mysteries were mandatory and rituals inscrutable, and where conspiracy already bubbled, knowledge could be a dangerous thing…

'We used to sit and make daisy chains on this rock,' a small voice piped up. 'In fact, until Clytie died here, it was our favourite spot.'

Spinning round, Claudia came face to face with the same beautiful flaxen-haired trio that Swarbric had castigated for climbing trees.

'Clytie died here?'

'You can still see the stains from her blood.' The little novice pointed to a series of smudges in the porous white limestone. 'I'm Aridella, by the way.'

'Vanessia,' the oldest one said, bobbing a curtsey.

'And I'm Lin,' said the one that was all blue eyes and dimples. 'It means pool.'

The girls were so alike that Claudia supposed it wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that three of the women had picked the same fair-haired hunk to father their children.

Since the Hundred-Handed held none of the usual concepts of individual possessions and family bonding, believing in communal ownership, she saw no reason why this philosophy shouldn't extend to the men they took to their beds, since share and share alike was the College's ethos. But sharing can't always be easy, she thought. Not where emotions are concerned.

'We'd come down after tutoring,' Aridella said, and an image of four little girls lying face down on the warm stone flashed before Claudia's mind. Three little blonde heads plus a brunette in her father's image pressed tightly together as they giggled and chattered, swapping jokes and homework in the manner of little girls everywhere.

'At least, when we weren't in detention,' Dimples muttered, with a roll of her enormous blue eyes.

A quick glance at the rope dangling from an alder over the stream brought back memories of the flaxen-haired trio dropping out of the oak tree, their skirts tucked into their knicker cloths, their knees grubby and skinned.

'Aren't novices allowed to have adventures?' Claudia asked.

'Officially, no,' Vanessia said, taking one of Aridella's plaits and tying it neatly. 'We're supposed to devote ourselves to the Wisdom, because it's our holy obligation to learn Nature's lore and store the knowledge inside our hearts.'

'It's our purpose for this reincarnation,' Lin added earnestly.

'But provided nobody gets to hear about it-'

'You mean Beth?'

'Any of the Hundred-Handed,' Vanessia said, tugging the second plait into order. 'We're accountable to them all, but providing they don't catch us in the act-'

'And no one reports us-'

'And as long as we still learn our lessons-'

'- then nobody minds.'

'You must miss Clytie a lot,' Claudia said, but instead of three blonde heads nodding in unison, a shutter came hurtling down. Vanessia dropped the plait without tying the ribbon and the girls stared at their feet.

'Don't you?' Claudia prompted.

'Yes, miss,' they chorused in a dull monotone.

'Of course, it was a long time ago.' Three months at their age must seem like a lifetime. 'But I wonder… do any of you remember Clytie slipping out that particular night? Perhaps you saw someone talking to her the day that she died?'

Three pairs of eyes stared steadfastly at the ground, then Lin muttered something about not feeling well and going to bed early, while Aridella couldn't remember anything about it at all.

'It was just a normal day,' Vanessia said, shrugging one shoulder. 'What's to remember?'

'I don't know,' Claudia replied. 'But since the spring equinox is one of the four big events in your calendar, and considering novices play a major role in the festival, I thought something about it might have stuck in your memory. Apart from the fact that your friend died.'

Vanessia's lower lip trembled. 'I must have got the days muddled up,' she said, and the other two nodded eagerly, desperate to grasp at the lifeline.

'Me, too.'

'And me.'

As one they turned and belted back across the meadow, and Claudia reflected that it wasn't simply the one life that had been destroyed on the spring equinox. Three others had been shattered as well — but then wasn't it always the way? Wasn't it bloody well always the way? Staring at the rock where she'd sat without even sensing its tragedy, Claudia hugged her arms to her chest. What happened here, Clytie? What were you doing so far from the College, and at night all on your own? Who on earth lured you away from the compound?

Without warning, Claudia was suddenly the same age as Vanessia. It was a warm day, warmer than this, and she was returning home to the apartment that her father had left four years before. A day like any other, she recalled. No money, no food, no furniture even, since that had been sold so her mother could drink herself into the oblivion that was all Claudia had ever known. Oh, yes, a day like any other.

The sound of the slums reverberated across time. The bawling, the yelling, the barking of dogs. The unmistake-able stench of boiled cabbage, stale sweat and, above all, hopelessness that was trapped in the air. Slipping in cat pee, tripping over broken toys, she is climbing the six flights of stairs the same as she has done every day for the past fourteen years of her life. She opens the door, calls out hello, receives nothing back in return, which is no great surprise. Her mother is always dead to the world before noon. What is unusual, however, is finding her mother surrounded by blood, blowflies and the stink of cheap wine Unable to control the shuddering, Claudia tugged at a clump of bright yellow trollius and laid them at the place where a twelve-year-old girl with her whole life ahead of her had bled to death from the same wounds she'd seen herself, a long time — a lifetime — ago.