I felt a rush of impotent fury, the desire to seize the messenger and crush her in my hands. I needed to know. Wit and Skill, I reached out to her. Please!
‘Stupid Fitz!’ She spoke the words aloud. Without warning, she leaned away from Per and darted her beak at my face. Lifting my hand defensively was a reflex. She seized my hand in her silver bill and clung to my sleeve in a battering of wings. We did not connect as cleanly as Nighteyes and I had but I spied through a tiny crack in her bird-mind. A glimpse of a little girl’s battered face, blue eyes wide, her cheek bruised. I scarcely recognized her. Bee’s anxious voice. ‘A way out is a way in! Tell Per! Where the waste goes out from the castle!’ And then an incomprehensible view of the castle and the waters surrounding it, as if viewed from the tallest tower or the top of a mast. It moved and my stomach lurched as Motley showed me what she had seen when she flew over the castle. The roof, the guards pacing there, the cottages in the walled garden, more guards, and then a swooping view of the waters around the castle. Little fishing boats bobbed and cast nets, avoiding the shallows created by the outgoing tide. A plume of greyish-brown water in the sea, as if a rain-swollen river had debouched into it. ‘A way out is a way in!’ Bee’s words echoed again, and then the bird released me, dropping to the sand at our feet.
‘Motley!’ Per cried and stooped to gather her up.
I looked at their anxious, puzzled faces. I didn’t smile. It was too slender a hope to support a smile. I spoke the words in a shaking voice. ‘Per. Bee told Motley to tell you, “a way out is a way in.’’ I gathered air into my lungs. ‘We have to get ready.’
We didn’t go back to Paragon. I sent Motley back to the ship with a simple message. ‘Please wait.’ I hoped she would remember to deliver it.
The inn room we rented was cheap and bare, and all the noise came up through the floor. We lay on the floor, our grand clothing serving as our beds, and fruitlessly tried to sleep. The inn was finally silent when we rose. ‘Leave anything we won’t need,’ I told them. Spark folded all the clothing and gave the stack a fond pat as if saying farewell. Spark had adapted the firepot belt to ride high on my back. The pack containing the Silver and firebrick was secured below the belt. I gave Lant my Buckkeep cloak. ‘Bring this.’ He nodded. On our way out, I ghosted through the kitchen to steal a pot of grease. I raked ash away from the banked cookfire and mixed it generously. Then I caught up with the others waiting on the shore.
We spoke little as we greased our hands and faces with the ashy blend. I had cautioned them that sound carries clear over water. I checked my hidden pockets. I saw Spark making a similar check, and Lant as well. Overhead, there was a full moon, casting more light than I liked over the water. The tide was ebbing. By early morning it would bare the causeway. But that was not our destination.
The retreating tide had left us pockets of packed wet sand and squidgy strands and bulbs of kelp underfoot over a rocky beach. Per fell once, cutting his palms on barnacles exposed on the wet rocks. He made not a sound, but pressed his bloody palms to his belly and held our hurried pace. I had never done anything to deserve such a lad. I looked out at the sea and thought of El, the harsh god of those waters. I had seldom prayed, but that night I offered El both my prayers that he would spare those who accompanied me, and curses for him if he took them from me.
We followed the water out as it ebbed. The stink of low tide surrounded us. The land shelved out gently and I quickly understood why Brashen had chosen to anchor in the deepest part of the harbour. The retreating waves bared rocks and sand usually immersed in saltwater. Small crabs scuttled among the wet stones. I caught the flash of a fingerling stranded in a tide pool.
We caught up with the ebbing waves. ‘Now we get wet,’ I warned the others.
‘Been wet before,’ Per replied gamely.
We waded out, trying not to splash. I heard Lant make a small sound as he took the step that filled his boot with water. And deeper we went, pushing against the water that rose past our knees, our thighs and then our waists. Waves slapped against us, as if to push us away from our goal.
The pristine white island of Clerres Castle had slimy green roots. I halted us when we were still in darkness, a good distance from the towers and their archers. As the Fool had warned, stone basins of oil functioned as lights along the island’s shore. We huddled and stared.
‘We must move slowly. We cannot splash. Whisper as little as possible.’ In the darkness, I could barely see their nods. ‘We need to move as close to the edge of the island as we can, below the level of what the guards can see in the shore-lamps. It will be a long slog. This is a gamble. We may or may not find what we seek. We may fail, but we will try this. If you wish to turn back now, I will not think less of you. I have to go on.’
‘Such an encouraging speech,’ Lant muttered.
Per snickered and Spark said, ‘I’d follow him into battle.’
Per said, ‘Let’s just go.’
The castle had been built on a peninsula of land, and those who had cut it free to make it an island had not cut so deep that some waves did not break white against the barely exposed rocks of the old land. We draped ourselves in the blue cloak to be an amorphous shape on the water. Lant and I were in the lead, holding the cloak’s edge clutched tight so that only our eyes were exposed. Behind us, Spark had her hands on Lant’s shoulders and Per held my belt. In step we went, in a bizarre dance, slowly, attempting to make no sound. I doubted that the guards in the towers heard our soft whispers.
‘There’s a low bit here. Watch your footing.’
‘There’s something in my boot.’
‘Ssh,’ Lant hushed them.
Talk ceased. We caterpillared on. The waters continued to recede. Wet white rock peered out beneath wigs of seaweed and barnacle. The water grew shallower as we approached the castle’s shoreline. Closer and closer we crept as I navigated by the brief glimpse Motley had given me of the waters around the castle. In thigh-deep water we followed the steep rocky shore of the island. Chiselled cliffs loomed high above us, and above them the watchtowers looked out and over both land and sea. The steep angle of the sheer cliffs hid us from the guards slowly pacing the perimeter wall above us. The tide was still ebbing.
‘Now what?’ Per breathed.
‘Now we follow our noses,’ I warned him.
We pushed on. The cloak became a dripping bundle in my arms. Every shifting stone underfoot, every harsh breath sounded loud in my ears. The lights of the shoreside town behind us dimmed as we slowly circled their stronghold.