“You see a light — the slightest light — you tell me,” said the western girl, keeping her voice low. “And if you hear talking and all. That’s the one thing about them skadi.” She spat the word with venom. “They make one hell of a racket — always know when they’re coming.” She added, more bitterly, “Guess you don’t need stealth when you got guns.”
“I’ll keep my ears open,” Adelaide promised. The stars knew she had her own reasons to keep her distance from the Guard. Skadi. She practised the word in her head. In the darkness the watch-girl would not see her lips moving.
It gave her an idea. She rubbed her gloved palms silently over the floor, and then over her face. She didn’t want to think about what was on the decking floor, but she was sure it had dirtied her face.
“They haven’t done this tower yet,” said the girl. “They might tonight. If they come we’ve got to shut this door quick. Ain’t no locking from inside but we got a good warning system. Kind of relay thing.”
“Do the boats come past here often?” Adelaide asked. She could not remember Vikram ever telling her about an alarm system, nor, now she thought about it, of patrol boats going through the western waterways so regularly.
“This neighbourhood there’s one every hour or so,” said the girl. “But they’re getting more often since the greenhouse. You must have been lucky not to meet one. Horrible things. I hate the way they sort of glide by, you know, as if they wasn’t really there.”
“Skadi,” said Adelaide, putting enough contempt into the word to cover, she hoped, any mistake in pronunciation.
“Yeah.”
Waves lifted the decking. Spray landed on Adelaide’s nose and cheeks.
“Have you been on watch long?” she asked.
“Three hours. I’m relieved soon. Gets a bit lonely, you know, but someone’s got to do it. I volunteered.” The girl spoke proudly. “They wanted people who were involved, y’know, last time, but I said I wasn’t old enough last time and you got to start somewhere. Fifteen, ent I? Got a good pair of ears. Heard you, didn’t I? And you got a good quiet boat there. Why were you out so late anyways?”
“I’m looking for my brother. He’s disappeared.”
The girl gave her arm a sympathetic squeeze. “Everyone’s gone disappeared round here. Gone off to take a crack at the skadi, has he?”
“I think so.”
“My little bro’s talkin’ about joining Maak’s people — y’know, Maak. Ma’s got a hell of a time keeping him in. I know how he feels. Sometimes I want to go and join up myself but a knife ent much use against one of them. Not if you only use it once. Reckon I’d be good at stealth work, though.”
Something had happened since Adelaide had been locked up, something nobody had told her about. Home Guard boats belonged on the border, not in the western quarter, not unless there had been violence. What was the greenhouse? Who was Maak? Further questions would betray her ignorance, and her background, but the watch-girl seemed friendly, eager to talk, if Adelaide could find the right angle.
She was about to ask the girl if she knew about Vikram’s aid schemes when they were interrupted.
“Who are you yakking away to down there?”
Adelaide sensed the girl swivel around.
“Oh Drake, hey, this is — y’know I never got your name.”
“It’s Ata.”
“Ata. I’m Liis. She got caught out after curfew.”
“You better hole up here till morning,” said the newcomer. “I wouldn’t risk the bridges now, wind’s getting up.”
“Is, isn’t it?” Liis exclaimed. “I heard people saying a Tarctic’s on the way.”
“A Tarctic?” Adelaide was shocked into speech. She hadn’t bargained on being in the west when a Tarctic struck.
“—’s what they say.”
Liis got to her feet and Adelaide mirrored her. Her hearing was becoming more acute. They went inside. The woman called Drake flicked on a penlight. It seemed brighter this time. Drake smiled. One of her front teeth was completely black.
“She can crash with your folks, Liis?”
“Sure, she can!”
“Great. Good job, girl. You get some sleep now. Night, Ata.”
A creaking lower lift carried them the first twenty-five flights, juddering all the way up. Adelaide was relieved when they got out and groped their way up the lightless stairwell for the next three floors.
“Mind if we sit out here a minute?” Liis asked when they reached her door. “I need a smoke.”
“Sure.” Adelaide perched next to Liis. She heard the rustling of paper as Liis rolled herself a cigarette.
“Do you want one?” Liis asked.
“Please.” Goran had taken all of her cigarillos, which might have been useful here, if only to make contacts. In the flare of the lighter, Adelaide saw Liis’s pale face, the outline of a scratched and chipped door, the stairs pouring away into the blackness. She lit her cigarette. It tasted cheap and dirty but there was a rough sweetness to it, an end of day sweetness. Her lips tingled. She could imagine Axel sitting here, in the nameless dark, only his horses still bright enough to see.
“You know, sometimes I get dead scared out there.” Liis’s voice was a tiny whisper. “Sometimes I get thinking, if I died out there, no one would ever know how, or what happened to me or anything.”
Adelaide put an awkward arm around the girl’s shoulders. Through the layers of clothing, she could feel how thin the girl was.
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
Adelaide slept deeply and woke with a jolt. She did not comprehend, at first, where she was — strange faces, people jumping to their feet — a lot of people, more than she had thought a room this size could contain when her head hit the floor last night. Shouts volleyed between them.
“What the hell!”
“What was that—”
“Was that an explosion?”
“—’s the fucking skadi.”
The room vaulted into action. Adelaide scrambled out of the folds of her blanket, heart racing. A man lifted his shirt and checked a knife was at his belt. A woman — Liis’s mother? — gathered together all the bedding. A boy held them in place whilst she yanked them together with her belt. Two smaller children poised by the doorway, wide awake and alert. Liis stuffed things into a rucksack; newspapers, clothes, a pair of boots. Nobody asked who Adelaide was. Nobody cared.
“Ata — grab the other bag,” Liis said breathlessly.
Adelaide picked up the drawstring bag. It was lighter than she expected. In a matter of seconds, the room had been stripped to its peeling walls.
The boy opened the door and peeked out. From further down the tower came the sounds of invasion: people running up and down stairs, heavy boots, doors slamming, crashes and yells as doors were kicked in.
“Shit, they’re early,” said the boy. The woman shook his shoulder.
“Come on, move up.”
Adelaide followed Liis’s family, or friends, or room-mates, through the corridor and into the stairwell. This morning it was patchily lit. As they progressed upwards people were opening doors, peering blearily out. Some, like Liis’s group, had already got their belongings together and were also moving up the tower.
Congestion built up, noisy and incoherent. Adelaide had never seen so many people in one space. Their faces were hard and dirty, frightened. Within a couple of flights, she was separated from Liis’s friends and could only see the girl herself, blue hat bobbing in the crowd a little way ahead. She lost Liis momentarily, panicked and shoved forward. Where were they all going? No-one had said, because everyone knew — everyone but Adelaide.