Catherine Fisher - The Lost Heiress

Rule of the Watch

CLOSE UP, THE WATCHHOUSE was immense, a squat, ugly building of black brick, dumped in the forest. All around stood its defenses; a fence of spiked logs, a ditch, and one drawbridge, lowered now, for the children to straggle across.

From his hiding place under the thorns, Raffi watched them forming up in lines, many staggering under the weight of logs and kindling; even the smallest children had their arms crammed full. There were three guards; two laughing and joking together, the last calling up to someone at a window. None of them were watching the trees.

Carys nudged him sharply, and was gone.

He hoisted the wood bundle up against his face and stumbled out behind her, his heart thudding like a hammerbird’s knock. The sense-lines snagged under his eyelid; he knew Alberic’s hunters were only yards behind.

And still he couldn’t believe what he was doing.

“Line up!” Someone shoved him; he kept his head down, praying numbly. Children closed in behind. Quickly they began to walk.

The branches were heavy, but they kept him hidden, and the boy next to him didn’t even glance across. There was no talking, no pushing. In the silence he could even hear the leaves falling, and the whistle of an oat-piper far off in the wood. Then wooden planks were under his feet; the children’s boots rang in hollow echoes. They were crossing the drawbridge.

Glancing up, he saw the archway gaping over him, a great mouth, one lantern hanging from it like a single tooth. This was it. He didn’t know any passwords, any rules. Carys would get in, but they were bound to find him, drag him out, beat him. He closed his eyes.

She jolted against him. “Stay close.”

The arch swallowed them. He sensed it over him, felt suddenly small, as if his personality had shrunk, become crushed. Defiantly, miserably, he mumbled the Litany.

The smell of the place was overpowering. Old musty rooms, stale fat, a smell of fear, long-enclosed, as if the windows were never opened. And it was bitterly cold.

As the line shuffled on, he glanced at Carys; to his surprise he saw something like hatred on her face. She moved up to him, but before she could speak the line halted.

Ahead the children were chanting numbers to a boredlooking woman on a stool; then one by one they disappeared through a doorway. Nervously Raffi waited his turn.

“Next,” the woman said, not looking up.

He had decided what to say.

“N-nine one four,” he stammered, then walked on fast, in case she raised her eyes from the page and looked at him. In seconds Carys was behind him; there was no outcry. It seemed to have worked. In relief he breathed his thanks to Flain.

They found themselves going down a dim stairway; at the bottom was an evil-smelling cellar where the children were stacking the wood. Their silence scared Raffi. They didn’t laugh, or joke, or even smile. And he saw how they all watched one another, slyly, as if none of them were friends, or to be trusted.

Carys pulled him gently by the sleeve, then turned and marched out of a different door. Trying to look calm, he followed. She looked as if she knew where she was going. Through a warren of crypts and cellars, up some stairs, then into a corridor where the roof leaked. Opening the first door on the left she peered in, drew her head out, and nodded.

They slid inside, and closed the door tight.

It was a storeroom. Barrels were stacked against a cracked wall. The hearth was a drift of wind-blown ashes.

Raffi breathed out slowly. Then he said, “I can’t believe we’re in.”

She went over and knelt on top of the barrels, rubbing dust from one pane of a tiny window. “Keep your voice down.”

“Will they come in here?”

“It’s unlikely.”

He looked at her back. “How did you know about it? How did you know your way?”

Cold suspicions moved in on him like eelworms, but she turned and stared at him contemptuously. “Don’t be stupid, Raffi. These places are all the same—if you know one, you know them all. The Watch pride themselves on that. Wherever you go, always the same. One big family.”

She turned back to the window, but he still watched her. Quietly he said, “So you knew this room somewhere else?”

For a while he thought she wouldn’t answer. Then she said, “It was the one I spent hours in at Marn Mountain. I had it all worked out. The rotas were easy to alter—everyone thought I was in some other class. I kept food here, books, all the things you weren’t allowed. I did it for years, till they found out.”

“What did they do to you?”

“They promoted me, of course.” She turned and grinned at him. “In the Watch, the slyer you are, the better. You look shocked.”

“I just . . .” He shook his head. “I always assumed you liked it.”

“Liked it!” She spat viciously into the ashes. “These places are hell, Raffi! You’ve got no idea. Come up here.”

He climbed up beside her. She rubbed the spot on the window wider, and looking through it he saw a grim courtyard, with a high spiked wall. Children huddled around. Some sat in groups, others ran to keep warm, but there was still little noise, except from one end of the yard where a group silently watched three boys beat a smaller one, punching him in the face and stomach while he sobbed. Raffi stared in horror. “Why doesn’t someone stop them?”

Carys smiled grimly. “It’s probably a punishment. Look.”

Two Watchmen were standing behind the crowd, their arms folded, laughing. One shouted encouragement.

Raffi turned away. He was white with anger. “No wonder Galen hates the Watch. How can they make the children punish each other?”

“They don’t make them. They volunteer.” She climbed down and sat beside him.

“Volunteer!”

“You get better food. And credits on your workcard. The more of those, the better you do. I’ll bet Braylwin collected plenty.”

“What about you?” He stared at her. “Did you ‘volunteer’?”

“Sometimes.” She said it softly, looking away from him. “They teach you how to use people here, Raffi. I never realized that until after. To hunt and lie and lay traps but never to care. And you have to survive, you have to get through it somehow. Have you ever thought of what happens to those who don’t?”

Numb, he shook his head.

“Well, they vanish. It’s said they’re thrown down the Pits. The Watch has no failures.”

In silence they heard a bell ring, far off in the building. The scuffles stopped outside. Then Raffi said, “Where do we look for her?”

“We don’t, yet. At five bells they all parade in that yard for name-check. Then you’ll have to see if she’s there. You haven’t told me how you know what she’s like.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. Then what?”

“From where she stands in line I’ll know where she sleeps. But listen. If I get caught, you don’t know me. Understand? You just walk by. One of us has to get her out.”

“I can’t,” he muttered.

“You can. You’d better. Because if you’re caught, that’s what I’ll be doing.”

He didn’t know whether to believe her or not.

All afternoon they stayed hidden in the cramped storeroom, except that every hour Carys led him out through a maze of corridors, walking quickly, looking at no one, coming back to the room when the patrol would have looked in and passed on.

“The sweep, we call it. Two men check every room in the whole house constantly. It took about an hour at Marn. You have to time it just right.”

Bewildered, Raffi sat on the floor. The place upset him. He dared not send out sense-lines; they touched things that made him feel sick. Odd noises and cries echoed in the building; he had glimpses of desolate classrooms, like the one in his vision. He felt trapped, totally cut off. “And if we find her,” he said, “how do we get her out? Or help Galen?”