22
I am jolted awake by someone shaking my arm. ‘Silver,’ Imrin’s voice hisses as my eyes shoot open and flash from side to side. We are in the tunnel and I have fallen asleep.
‘What time is it?’ I mumble.
‘Late. Come on, I have something to show you.’
I struggle to come to my senses as Imrin leads me out of the passage from the girl’s dorm into the tunnel on the boy’s side. As he closes the door, I realise I have never been in here before, though it is much the same as the other one.
On the floor are rolls of paper. I have become so used to doing everything on screens that I had almost forgotten the pencils, pens and paper from when I was young. They seem somewhat alien. Imrin flattens out one of the rolls and tells me to look. My eyes feel heavy as I struggle to focus.
‘What is it?’ I ask.
‘I started mapping out as much of the castle as we know about.’ He points to a spot. ‘This is where we are. I’ve guessed some of it, like the position of your dorm, but you can help with that, obviously.’
There is excitement and pride in his whispers. I rub my eyes and yawn, then take a proper look. Slowly the lines and shapes swarm into focus and I can see what he has created.
‘The floor below us is over here,’ he says, scrambling for something in the darkness as I continue to look at what’s in front of me. The lines are slightly wobbly but it is easy to see where everything goes.
‘We should mark the cameras on,’ I say.
‘Good idea.’
Together we draw the cameras we can remember and, on paper, there seems far fewer than it feels there should be.
‘It could have been us …’ Imrin says, not mentioning Lumin’s name.
‘I know.’
‘It got me thinking about how, if we are really going to do this, we have to plan so much better. Last time, we could have run into anyone on those stairs, or the platform, but we were reckless because we wanted to get away.’ Imrin points to the map. ‘This can help us plan where everything is. We can mark the doors, windows, cameras, places where the Kingsmen congregate and everything else. We might end up with little more than we already have but it’s better than nothing.’
He is right on both counts; we probably will end up with nothing extra but as long as we’re careful, it can’t do any harm to properly plan. It also allows me to finally get a bearing on where our corridor with the window might actually be.
As we fill in as much as we know, there are still huge gaps in our knowledge. We have no idea what the medical bay is like, or the dungeons. Areas around the Minister Prime’s offices, the section behind the main hall, where we assume the King lives, and plenty of other corridors are unknown too. Despite that, it does feel as if we are actually doing something worthwhile.
Imrin has an excitement to his voice that I find hard to share.
‘Before we do anything, we are going to have to find a way to contact our families,’ I say. ‘Remember what happened to Lumin. I don’t want that happening to Colt, my mum or … anyone else.’ I nearly mention Opie’s name but stop myself in time.
Imrin nods. ‘Perhaps through doing all of this, we’ll find something we didn’t know about before? Besides, would your mother really want to know this is how you’re living? If we can find a completely safe way of getting out, we can figure the rest out as we go along.’
I’m not as sure as Imrin, but it doesn’t seem the right time to shoot him down.
‘There is something else I’ve been thinking about too,’ he adds. ‘It occurred to me when we were in the hall with …’
‘… Lumin. You can say his name.’
‘With Lumin. I thought about the Kingsmen. There were only four of them that whole time. How many have you ever seen together?’
I think about what he’s saying and it dawns on me too. ‘Maybe seven or eight?’
‘Exactly. There are the people who run our areas; your Porter guy, the one from the kitchens and presumably others in charge of key areas – but they’re not fully trained and armed like the ones who guard the doors. So let’s say it’s not eight, let’s double it, triple it – that’s still only twenty-four or twenty-five. Plus the Minister Prime. Not many, is it? And that’s a maximum.’
‘There could be lots more.’
‘Maybe, but where are they? Think about our first night when there were thirty of us. How many guards were there? Six? Wouldn’t that have been the night to give us a big show of force?’
‘I guess …’
‘Or the night where the King was looking for his champion? There were only four guards and they all gave their swords away.’
I try to think if there were any others waiting in the wings but, apart from one standing behind the King in the box, there wasn’t anyone. ‘But if there are so few of them, why would they give their weapons away? Any of the boys could have turned on the guards and overpowered them with the swords.’
Imrin is already ahead of me. ‘Only if you had an idea that you had a chance. Besides, it was new and frightening. None of us knew what to expect – we are all so used to people disappearing and others like Wray being killed that we’ve fallen in line.’
I stare at the map thinking over what Imrin is saying. It almost ties into what Porter told me earlier in the day. Could it really be true?
‘There must be more Kingsmen …’ I’m trying to convince myself more than Imrin but he sounds confident.
‘There probably are – they are out and about in the main cities. This place is pretty secure, isn’t it? Think how many exits we’ve come up with – the train tunnel in and out and the obvious main doors at the front. All you have to do is man those. Think how easily we made our way through all the corridors. We went the long way around to avoid the cameras but there were no Kingsmen. Perhaps there are other exits through the King’s quarters or the dungeons – we don’t know – but that’s how you could make something look far more secure than it actually is. Meanwhile, the bulk of his men are off in the cities and towns. How many have you ever seen around Martindale?’
I don’t even have to think. ‘There were loads on Reckoning day, but only one or two apart from that – and not all the time. Sometimes, we would go weeks or months without seeing any.’
‘Exactly, which is the same as where I come from. But think of what we see on screen – armies of Kingsmen. They probably do exist, just not here. Everyone assumes there are huge numbers of people ready to fight for the King because that’s what we’re always shown. But we’re always shown what a brave, bold person he is too and we know the truth of that.’
I tell Imrin what Porter told me about people still fighting, but that only supports his point that the King may have an army that are off fighting elsewhere.
‘I suppose that could be why there are so many cameras,’ I add. ‘If you had enough men, you wouldn’t need them. It’s easier to have one person, somewhere, watching them and then direct Kingsmen to where they’re needed, rather than have guards on every corner.’
‘Or maybe you don’t even need the one person – there might be an electronic control. Have you ever heard of anything?’
I tell him that Porter told me I was asking something dangerous when I came up with that exact question.
Imrin sounds suspicious. ‘Why did he tell you all of that?’
‘I don’t know. I think he was upset over Lumin.’
I tell Imrin the rest of what Porter told me but it only makes him more sure that he is right. I am not as convinced as he seems but it is somewhat comforting to think it could be true.
‘How do you think Lumin is doing?’ I ask after Imrin has rolled his maps back up.
His enthusiasm seeps away and I hear him gulp. ‘Not well …’ His words slip away before he adds something, softer than before. ‘Can I show you something?’
‘That depends on what it is.’
Imrin laughs gently with no real feeling, then he pulls his top over his head. His torso isn’t as skeletal as mine but it is covered in horizontal red marks and slim slices through his skin.
‘What happened?’
‘Working in the kitchen is a dangerous place when you have knives, hot pans, cutlery and an angry Kingsman.’
He starts to expand but I shush him, not wanting to know the details. I trace the outline of the marks with my fingers as he winces at first but then relaxes slightly, holding his stomach taut.
‘Does it hurt?’
‘Not as much as it did.’
‘Why didn’t you show me before?’
Imrin jumps slightly as my cool fingers slide across the warmth of his belly button. ‘I don’t know. I guess I wanted to keep something to myself.’
‘You can tell me anything you want.’
My words sound hollow, as I know I haven’t told him about Opie, but he apologises for something he doesn’t have to, compounding my guilt.
As my fingers rest on him, our eyes meet and I realise he is still in pain. Before I know what I am doing, my lips are on his, my hands sliding around to his back as I pull him towards me. He flinches as our stomachs bump together but it instantly becomes a giggle as I feel his fingers clasping my back. The way he touches me, holds me, feels so natural that I almost forget where I am before I hear him whispering delicately in my ear that we need to be quiet.
After that, the rest of the night is a blur until I wake up in my bed the next morning realising that, for the first time since I arrived at the castle, Opie hasn’t been in my dreams once.
Spurred on by Imrin’s ideas the night before, I throw myself into work the next day, at the same time trying to take advantage of any moments Porter is not around to watch over me. Despite the way he opened up to me, I’m not ready to trust anyone more than I have to.
When Porter disappears into the back lab for a few minutes, I raid the supply crate, pocketing a couple of tiny parts and a screwdriver which I don’t think will be missed. After he leaves completely for the afternoon, I spend ten minutes removing the back panel from my thinkwatch – the first time I have done so since leaving Martindale – switching one of the parts for a newer one from the crate, and then putting it back together. Even though my fingers don’t seem to want to work as quickly as I try to force them to, I finish in plenty of time.
That evening, I spend a short while sitting with a stillmute Jela, brushing her hair. She doesn’t let anyone else near her and, as far as I can tell, hasn’t spoken a word since returning. She hasn’t been assigned to work anywhere and spends each day in the dormitory, I assume doing nothing.
I softly whisper in her ear the things that are most vivid to me from the outside. ‘In Martindale, there is this huge field just past Mrs Cusack’s house,’ I say. ‘In the winter it is frozen over but, as it gets warmer, it is completely taken over by wildflowers that stretch as far as you can see. Most of them are this purple colour but there are reds and blues too. There is a period of maybe a week or two just after they flower where the smell drifts across the whole village. You’ll see all the younger girls with flowers in their hair and loads of people will decorate their windows with the petals.’
Jela angles back towards me as I gently brush through a knot. ‘Do you have anything like that?’ I ask, not expecting, or getting, a response.
‘On the other side, there is this huge wooded area,’ I add. ‘There used to be a lake in the centre but it is empty now. There is this area of trees and bushes that links the village to the lake where I reckon I know every twig and branch. I call it the gully. If I closed my eyes now, I could talk you through it. I have seen some of the trees grow – they’re younger than me. The bigger ones will drop seeds and then the next spring, you will see these little saplings that get covered in leaves and mulch the next time it is autumn. Do you have anywhere like that which makes you so happy you don’t even have words for it?’
Another knot, more silence.
My memories are more reassuring for me than anyone else as I continue speaking gently into her ear. ‘It’s strange because everyone loves the summer when it’s warmer, but my favourite time is at the end when autumn comes. You have these wonderful rain storms when it is dry one moment and then, in what seems like no time, the clouds roll in and empty themselves all over you. My friend runs for it most of the time; he doesn’t like it – but I love those first few drops that hit you on the head, and the noise as they start to fall slowly and then build into a giant crescendo of sound, bouncing off the trees and the ground. Then your hair becomes plastered to your head and you have to pull it away from your face to see what’s going on. My mum is always messaging my thinkwatch, asking where I am, but she already knows the answer. And then, when I turn up a bit late, she always says the same thing: “You look like a drowned rat, Silver Blackthorn”. She’s been telling me that since I was four years old.’
The memory makes me giggle and it is only then that I realise my nose is blocked and there are tears running down my face. The hairbrush is on the bed but I don’t remember putting it down and one of my hands is resting on Jela’s hips. She hasn’t shaken me away.
‘I like rain too,’ she says, almost too quietly for me to hear.
I place my other hand on hers and whisper in her ear that one day, somehow, I’ll take her to Martindale so she can feel my rain and visit my woods. As I stand to return to my bed, I realise at least three or four of the other girls have been listening. None of them says anything as I walk past, but the way one of them is dabbing her eyes tells me that I’m not the only one who is missing home.