Frances Hardinge - Cuckoo Song

‘Maybe she’s found the Architect already,’ Pen suggested with grim relish. ‘Maybe her racketeer friends are shooting him with their guns.’

‘She never said her friends were racketeers, Pen.’

‘She never said they weren’t,’ Pen pronounced with complete confidence, ‘so that must mean they are.’

Not-Triss wished she could share in Pen’s optimism. Her own head was full of fearful images of Violet being apprehended by the police. Now, with the clarity born of a few hours’ sleep, she started to understand how completely Violet had made herself a fugitive. For the first time, she wondered what would happen to Violet if Not-Triss fell into a heap of leaves and sticks and the real Triss was not rescued. ‘Triss’ would last have been seen leaving with Violet – seen by Mr Grace, Violet’s landlady and her ‘ladies’. What if everybody decided she had done something terrible to Triss, and sent her to prison?

‘Violet… doesn’t know what we know.’ Not-Triss felt guilty uttering the words, but they needed to be said. ‘She thinks she has to have a plan because she’s the adult, and she wants to look after us. But we know more than she does, so we have to have our own plans too.’

‘What sort of plan?’ asked Pen suspiciously.

‘You still remember how to call the Architect on the telephone, don’t you?’

Pen’s face became stony. She scowled at the book in her lap.

‘Listen,’ said Not-Triss. ‘The Architect wants to help his people by finding them secret havens. All your father wants is to get Triss back safely. Maybe… Maybe if we can talk to the Architect, we can set up another bargain. He hands back Triss, and your father carries on building places for the Besiders to live.’

‘But that won’t stop you dying!’ exclaimed Pen. ‘Anyway, we can’t trust the Architect! He’s tricky, and sly, and…’ She trailed off, looking very young.

‘Maybe we won’t need to,’ Not-Triss said quickly. ‘It’s just something to try if we run out of other plans. And… I could always call him instead of you.’

‘Don’t be silly!’ Pen rounded on her. ‘I’m not a baby, Trista!’

A few seconds passed before Not-Triss realized what Pen had called her.

‘What?’

Pen scowled at her, clearly readying herself for an argument.

‘You’re Trista now,’ she declared. ‘I decided while you were asleep. I saved your life, so I decide who you are, and you’re Trista.’

It hardly seemed worth retorting that the life Pen had saved was unlikely to last the week. Instead Not-Triss sat in silence, hugging her knees.

Trista.

She was not sure what she thought about a name that meant ‘sad’ in French, but it was a name, a name of her own. It did not give her a little sting of guilt and pain, the way it did each time Pen called her ‘Triss’. And it was a good deal better than ‘Fake Triss’.

‘All right,’ she said quietly. ‘I like Trista. I can be Trista.’

‘Well… good.’ Pen looked grudgingly satisfied. ‘If… If you behave, maybe I’ll let you keep that name.’

‘What are you doing?’ asked the newly named Trista, trying to peer at the exercise book.

‘I’m making us disguises.’ Pen showed her the front cover. Across it was written ‘Ruby Wiles’ and below that ‘St Rainbow School for Girls’. ‘That man who wants to burn you will try to catch us again. But he’s not Father, so he has to prove we’re us, so we need to prove we’re not. We need things marked with our names, to show we’re somebody else.

‘I’m Ruby now. And look at this!’ Proudly she opened the book to show scrawled squiggles and additions. ‘I even put some sums in this one, with red-pen crosses for the teacher. Now if I say I’m Ruby and show people this, they’ll believe me. We need to get something for you too though.’

She hesitated, then from her lap she pulled a fragile-looking necklace of little wooden beads strung on to a length of cotton. She spent a few minutes scribbling on the beads with her pen.

‘There! Put this on.’ The necklace was placed in Trista’s hand. In careful, clumsy letters the name T-R-I-S-T-A was spelt out across the middle six beads, one letter per bead.

‘Thank you,’ said Trista, and felt herself warm very slightly to her sad, awkward, made-up name.

To Trista’s great relief, Violet returned just as the sun was descending towards the foothills on the other side of the Ell. She took Trista’s renaming in her stride and launched into her own report.

‘The bad news is that nobody I’ve spoken to seems to know of the Architect, or anybody matching his description. The cinema that nearly ate Pen is closed and boarded up now, so that looks like a cold trail. Some friends of mine are looking out for his Daimler, but that’s a long shot.

‘There’s good news as well though. I had a look at all the evening newspapers – the Crier , the Ell , the Custodian , even the Wetherhill Herald – and there’s nothing in them about the two of you. I dropped into the library to check the morning papers too. Nothing. I don’t know whether your father’s gone to the police, but he hasn’t gone to the press. At least we won’t have half the city looking for you. I can probably risk driving you through town, if we’re careful.

‘The even better news is that I’ve tracked down a friend who owes me a favour. We should be able to hide out at his tonight. And… there’s more that I want to talk to him about. Get ready – we’re going out.’

Violet glanced at Trista, then performed a double take. ‘Trista, what happened to your socks – and your legs?’

Trista was searingly aware of her dress’s ravaged seams and missing buttons, and the fresh scratches on her bare shins. She dropped her gaze and hugged herself in haunted, guilty silence.

‘Oh.’ For all the softness of that syllable, there was a world of realization in it.

‘I’m sorry,’ whispered Trista.

‘No,’ said Violet quietly. ‘It’s… It’s not your fault. I should have… never mind.’ Trista dared to look up and found Violet regarding her with a small, grim, weary smile. ‘I suppose this is likely to keep happening?’

Trista shook her head miserably. ‘I don’t have anything else that belongs to the real Triss, except my dress. The underwear’s too new—’

‘You can’t eat underwear!’ exclaimed Pen in horror.

‘After the dress is gone,’ Trista finished quietly, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do.’

Violet chewed her lip and frowned, as if thinking hard.

‘We’ll come up with something,’ she said at last. ‘But next time you start to feel hungry, let me know.’

They found Violet’s friend standing on a corner in Dressmaker’s Lane, a dingy thoroughfare not far from the river. There was something middle-aged about his stoop, and the aimlessness of his stride. When they drew nearer, however, Trista realized that he was not much older than Violet. He wore a dark brown flat cap, and a dun-coloured jacket over his shirt and grey wool waistcoat. His hair had been cut recently and badly.

Looking at him, Trista knew that something had gone wrong with him, though she could not tell what it was. He had a good sort of a face, broad-jawed with wide-spaced eyes, but something had been knocked out of kilter. His gaze went everywhere. His mouth was tense and very slightly open, as if he was waiting for the right moment to say something important.

He gave Violet a nice smile. It came and went like a flash of winter sunshine. A moment later it was quite gone, and his face looked lost without it.

‘The Belle of the Ell,’ he said. His tone was odd. He didn’t sound as if he was flirting or being gallant. It was almost as if he was introducing her to somebody else.