Courtland got up and walked toward me. I dearly wanted to take a step back, but I thought I’d fare better with him knowing I wasn’t frightened of him, so I stood my ground.
“Listen,” he said once he was uncomfortably close, “we’re not expected back, so if we lose a member no one will be surprised. We can do this with you or without you. Do it our way, and it’s a heap of cash and certain life. Do it your way, and it’s certain death and no cash.”
“Kill me and Violet’s dynasty goes all to Blue.”
“I think I’m okay in that respect,” said Violet, patting her stomach. “If I marry Doug on Sunday night no one will look too carefully at the calendar.”
I could feel my heart sink. “Two grand up front,” I murmured, suddenly realizing what was going on.
“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Tommo. “As your father will no doubt attest, I am a fine negotiator. With the High Saffron excursions sporting a one hundred percent fatality rate, he was wise to at least make something from you. And he gets a grandson—even if he can’t ever tell anyone. Don’t judge him too harshly. It was his best option. And he got deMauve to agree in writing that the boy would be called Eddie.”
I didn’t know what annoyed me more, being threatened with death or having my own father sell our Chromatic heritage without my knowledge. Dad must have shown Violet the ovulating shade, too.
DeMauve had gotten a lot for his money.
“He didn’t know about the not-going-to-High-Saffron plan, did he?” I asked.
“No,” said Tommo, mustering a shred of decency. “As far as he was concerned, it was simply the deMauves hedging their bets against your disappearance.”
It was consolation of sorts. At least I knew my father’s actions had been fiscal rather than personal.
There was a long pause in which we all stared at one another.
“So what’s the deal?” asked Violet, who was growing impatient.
Courtland was bluffing. He wouldn’t kill me in front of Violet. She’d have leverage over him at every single future Council meeting and would never keep something this serious under her hat.
“There’s no deal. I’m going on.”
“You Russetts!” screamed Violet. “So nauseatingly self-righteous!” She folded her arms and glared, not at me but at Courtland and Tommo. “Honestly, boys, I thought you said you’d gotten this all sorted out.
If I get into trouble over this, I’m going to really make you burn when I’m head prefect.”
“We had sorted it out,” explained Tommo meekly. “We just hadn’t thought Russett here would be such a party-pooper-prefect’s-pet.”
“Then I’m bailing on this monumental farrago,” remarked Violet as she came rapidly to a decision. “I think I’ve just twisted my ankle and am unable to proceed.” She looked daggers at me. “And if you commit the discourtesy of surviving so I have to marry you, I will strive to make you unhappy for the rest of my life.”
Violet got to her feet and shouldered her bag before turning to face us. “What’s our story?”
“Simple,” said Courtland, still staring at me. “We stopped here for a break, and you stumbled on the way out on some rubble, then headed back.”
“What if Russett blabs that this was all a merit scam?”
“Don’t worry,” replied Courtland, “he’ll come around. Won’t you, Eddie?”
“All I want to do is to complete the expedition,” I said, staring back at Courtland. “Other than that, I don’t give a ratfink’s bottom.”
“There,” said Courtland, “he agrees.”
And Violet walked off at a brisk pace without another word.
“This is all very well,” said Tommo once we had gathered up our belongings, “but this means we actually have to go to High Saffron!”
“What’s the matter?” asked Courtland. “Frightened?”
“Too bloody right. I think I might have twisted my ankle, too—or something.”
“You’re coming with us,” said Courtland in a voice that didn’t invite contradiction. “You got us into this stupid mess, so you can certainly see it through.”
“Right you are,” said Tommo without enthusiasm, “overjoyed.”
“We’re moving out,” I said. “The next rest break is in an hour.”
I saw Tommo and Courtland exchange glances. If Tommo had gone with Violet, I would have felt disagreeably ill at ease. Courtland was capable of almost anything, but not, I reasoned, with Tommo about. Toady that he was, Tommo could stand to earn serious merits for snitching on Courtland if he tried anything stupid. Even so, I knew I would have to be careful.
Before leaving, I wrote on a sheet of paper torn from my exercise book that Violet had turned back, added the time, signed it and laid it in the middle of the road with four stones stacked in a pyramid on top of it.
We walked out, and I mused to myself that this expedition was much like any other I had been on—full of arguments, and running anything but smoothly.
On to the Flak Tower
3.6.23.12.028: Ovaltine may not be drunk at any time other than before bed.
The going was harder and the road less distinct as we trudged on. It didn’t look as though vehicular traffic had moved down this way since the Perpetulite spalled. Much of our time was spent wending our way through thick rhododendron to avoid the occasional yateveo, and trying to keep to the track as best we could. At times the heavy canopy made the forest so dark that it was almost impossible to see. At one point I lost the path of the old road entirely, and only picked it up again once the forest had thinned out and been replaced by open grassy moorland.
I walked with a sense of heightened nervousness, but relaxed as soon as I heard Courtland and Tommo talk about mundanities. Tommo asked him if grass looked yellow to him, and Courtland responded by saying that all green looked yellow, since it was the only component of green a Yellow could see. After about half a mile of open ground and a slight incline, we came across the lumpy remnants of a village, the only aboveground feature a stone meetinghouse that was almost consumed by two yew trees. I checked the time and sketched a plan of the village in my notebook. On one side of the crossroads was another deeply rusted land crawler swathed in brambles and coarsened by a heavy overcoat of lichen, its tracks now choked with a profusion of primroses, celandines and meadowsweet. Although similar to the Farmall crawler we had seen earlier, in that they shared the commonality of tracked locomotion, this was considerably larger and more heavily built—the outer shell was fully four inches thick in places. It was also badly damaged. The vehicle looked as though someone had attempted to turn it inside out; the steel was jagged and split like a shattered pot. “Can we take a break?” asked Courtland. “Five minutes, then.” I walked across to examine an old mailbox, almost consumed by a mature beech that had grown around it. The small door had split with the force. I opened it easily, and amid the abandoned birds’ nests and dry leaf mold I found the remnants of things that had been posted but never collected. A glass pendant, a few coins and a wireless telephone in remarkably good condition.
“Whoah!” said Tommo, pointing in the direction we had just come. “I just saw someone!”
“Claptrap,” replied Courtland, with slightly less confidence in his voice than he might have liked. “There’s no one out here but us.”
“They were just next to that tree over there, peeking over the wall.” He pointed at a dilapidated section of wall about thirty yards away, back in the direction from which we had come.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“Clear as day. Do you think it might be . . . Riffraff?”
We all looked at one another. Even Courtland appeared ill at ease, despite his usually brash exterior.
“Only one way to find out,” I murmured and sprinted up the road toward the wall and looked over. In the field beyond I saw a couple of alpacas, which stared at me with a bored expression and went back to their grazing. There was no one visible, but the gorse-pecked hill offered an abundance of good hiding places. There might have been a hundred Riffraff for all I knew, and my stomach turned uneasily. I stood there for several minutes listening and staring, and after hearing and seeing nothing, returned to the crossroads.