Jane Higgins - The Bridge

The bearers of the body stepped off the Mol; that’s when I saw there wasn’t one body, there were five. We turned to follow them, me and Fyffe and Jeitan and about ten thousand other people. I held Fyffe’s hand and stood still, letting an old man and woman go ahead of us, and a guy with a toddler on his shoulders, and a woman with a small girl. By then I couldn’t see Jeitan anymore. We’d worked our way to the edge of the procession and now it flowed on without us, carrying its song and its dead away to whatever end they made for militants killed in war. I nudged Fyffe, and we slipped into a narrow space between two shacks and wound our way upriver.

After about half an hour of threading through crooked alleys that had no pattern to them we’d traveled beyond the shantytown into a more ordered set-up of streets. The houses were two- or three-storey terrace blocks, like haunted versions of houses over the river: walls were cracked and growing moss and ivy; windows were shattered and boarded up; balconies were rotted through, trailing greenery, and clotted with rubbish.

We tried listening at doorways and peering in windows but everything was dark and quiet. After about an hour flitting from house to house like a couple of ghosts, we sat down in a doorway. ‘How will we find him in this?’ said Fyffe.

There was silence all around us as though the whole of Southside had clamped its mouth shut on the secret of where Sol was. As we sat there, I got to thinking the place really was haunted, that everyone had gone over the bridge and into the city and left us behind with the dead. The dead were here because they’d been brought over in a Crossing, so here is where they had to stay. And as we walked we’d meet them round a corner or see them opening a door or watching from a broken window. And maybe we’d see our own dead too: Lou with his face half burned away and Bella, pale and bloody, wandering the streets.

I woke up with a jolt. The streets were still dark and empty; I was still sitting in a doorway. Fyffe was asleep on my arm. We were still famished. Still beat. And now I was seriously spooked as well; the cold crept like a spider between my shoulder blades. When raised voices came from somewhere nearby, it was almost a relief. I woke Fyffe. ‘Stay here. I’m going to check it out.’

‘No – but—’

‘I’ll be back in two minutes, promise. Don’t move.’

I edged down an alley between two housesand came out into a lamplit patch of broken, weedy pavement – and a fight. A guy and a girl, both about my age, were swinging at each other, feet and hands flying. My fault, then, that when I stumbled in he took his eye off the ball – off her foot, in fact. It swung through the air and smashed into his temple. He grunted and folded onto the ground. She spun around with the momentum of her kick and landed in a crouch.

She was black, like the singer at the bridge. Her hair was wound in a million braids and her clothes were the same as the singer’s – black tunic, baggy trousers. She flicked out a knife and glared at me. ‘I didn’t need your help.’

I backed away. She stood up, swayed, and waved the knife at me. She had a cut lip and a bruise rising on her cheekbone. The hand that wasn’t holding the knife was dripping blood. She said, ‘I am Lanya. I am a Pathmaker.’

I dredged my memory for Breken: Law and Lore – Dr Mercer (RIP, probably) – and found something about a pan-religious ritual for the dead. She stepped closer and I was about to turn and bolt when I spotted a board on the ground behind her with food on it: two strips of what looked like fish, flatbread, and a jug of something. A feast, in other words. The girl saw where I was looking and jerked her head at the boy. ‘Coly brought it. He wanted me to eat and dishonor the fast. But I am a Maker. He will not stop me. You will not either.’ She pointed the knife at me and came a step closer.

I held up both hands and said, ‘You’re bleeding.’ Which worked, because bleeding clearly wasn’t in her plan. She looked at her arm and swore. She swore the way Bella used to swear, in a sing-song voice that was as much for her audience as for herself.

Then she breathed deep and said, ‘Have you been at the Crossing? Has it begun?’

‘Hours ago.’

She swore again.

I said, ‘I’ll fix your arm, for the food.’

‘Who are you?’

‘No one. Arm. Food. What d’you say?’

The boy moaned. She glanced back at him. ‘Yes. Hurry!’

‘Put the knife away first.’

She grinned. White teeth. Shrugged a where’s-your-sense-of-adventure? kind of shrug, but she folded the knife and pocketed it. She sat on the ground near the light and the food and held out her arm. ‘Hurry!’

I hefted the jug, sniffed at it – water with a splash of wine. I took hold of her wrist, lightly, watching her. She was trembling, adrenaline still running. I said, ‘Hold still,’ and poured the water over her arm. She hissed. On her forearm below the elbow was a cut as long as a finger, not deep – the blood was already thick and slowing.

‘Fight with knives often, do you?’ I said.

‘Never. It’s forbidden.’

‘Oh. Okay. And this is?’

‘A scratch. That no one will see.’

‘Does he still have a knife?’

‘No.’ She smiled and nodded towards a pile of rubble and rubbish at the back of one of the houses. A groan came from the boy. He was hauling himself to his knees, swearing. He stared in our direction and seemed to have trouble focusing. I hoped he could see four of us at least. He snarled something like ‘You shit,’ to me, and ‘Whore,’ to her, then staggered upright.

We were on our feet. She had her knife in hand and he was groping for his, but he couldn’t find it. He pointed a finger at her, then at me, but whatever he wanted to say was lost in a mixture of concussion and fury. He wandered a drunken path over to the rubbish pile, kicked through it for a few minutes muttering, but soon gave up and staggered away.

She sank down again and I went back to fixing her arm.

She watched me. ‘Are you an outcast?’

‘What?’

‘You said you were no one, so I thought you had been cast out.’

‘Oh. Uh… no.’ I filed that. Being ‘cast out’ must be some kind of official punishment. Outcasts became nobodies – forfeited their identity, maybe.

‘Where are you from?’ she said.

‘Gilgate.’

‘Why are you here?’

‘Looking for someone.’

‘Who?’

‘Do you have something I can bind this with?’

She untied the red bandana from her neck. ‘Who are you looking for?’

‘No one you know. Is that too tight?’

She shook her head. ‘You can know this – that I wouldn’t know this person?’

‘I have a pretty fair idea, yeah.’

‘If you’re not an outcast, what are you called?’

I ripped the end of the bandana in two with my teeth and tied it off. ‘Done,’ I said. ‘Someone should look at it though. It might need more than a bandage.’

She shook her head, braids flying. ‘You looked at it.’

‘Yeah, but I’m no one, remember.’ She smiled with more curiosity than was healthy. ‘Can I eat?’ I asked. She stood up, bowed, murmured something in Breken that I didn’t understand, and took off back down the alley. I don’t know if she noticed Fyffe peering round the corner.

We fell on the food: white, flaky fish and new-baked flatbread. It was gone pretty quick; I could have eaten the same again, twice. It was good to have ballast again – feet on the ground and head connected to the rest of me. I grinned at Fyffe. ‘Better?’

She smiled back. ‘Much. But what now? This place is so big.’

‘What we need is some intel on local traffickers,’ I said. And our own private army would be handy.