Borderlands (24 page)

‘We're new recruits, sir,' Radnor says. ‘From Castenith, up in the nor–'

‘Didn't ask for your life story.' The man's voice is unpleasant and nasal, like he's got a needle threaded through his nostrils. ‘I asked for names and cards.'

We recite our false names and offer our identity cards. I hold my breath at first, afraid that the guard might check our proclivity tattoos. But he doesn't even seem to think of it. He just glances at our cards, nods, then waves us onto a waiting rowboat. In fact, it's not until he reaches the twins that we have a problem.

‘Says here your surname's Godram,' he says to Clementine, holding up her card. Then he holds up Maisy's card, and squints from one twin to the other. ‘But yours is Jessup.'

The twins freeze. I do the same, halfway into the boat and halfway out. I almost overbalance, but manage to get a grip on myself and slip onto my seat beside Radnor and Teddy. My heart pounds. I knew we'd overlooked something. I knew we'd made a mistake somehow, that it couldn't be this easy . . .

‘You look like sisters to me,' says the guard. ‘Sisters with different surnames.'

The twins are pale now. It's noticeable even in the moonlight: the wideness of their eyes, the slight opening of their lips. Clementine looks ready to bolt.

Finally, Maisy opens her mouth. ‘We are sisters, sir. But I'm married, you see. That's why I changed my surname.'

The guard frowns at her. ‘You look a bit young to be –'

‘It's the custom up north, sir,' Maisy says. ‘And I wanted to marry my sweetheart before I was sent away . . . I mean, before I joined the army. If something should happen, you see, and we'd never had a chance to –'

The guard softens a little, and nods his understanding. ‘I see.' He glances between the twins one more time, then gestures for them to scurry aboard.

A minute later, we're pulling away from the shore. My palms sting like crazy, gouged by my own fingernails. I still feel like my heart will explode out of my chest. That was close. That was too close. If Maisy hadn't been so quick at dreaming up a lie . . .

‘We need to start planning better,' I whisper, leaning close to Teddy. ‘That could've been it.'

He nods, but doesn't respond. We can't speak freely here – not with a guard at the helm of our boat. The boats here don't work through alchemical juices; I guess we're too close to the Valley to risk it. So we have to rely on the guard and his oar, which looms rhythmically above our heads in the dark.

‘Quiet bunch, aren't you? Most new recruits are damn near wetting their pants by now. Heading down into those tunnels . . . Don't envy you, I'll tell you that.'

The guard plunges his oar into a deep stroke.

‘Bloody big lake, this one,' he adds. ‘My sergeant reckons it's as deep as a sea.'

I glance at him. This guard is a burly man: short and thick, with biceps the size of my calves. Is this what he does all day? Row soldiers back and forth across the lake, from the borderlands to the army base? The idea makes me uncomfortable. He must be an expert on his fellow soldiers by now – how they talk, how they react, how they behave. But we're not acting like a troop of fresh soldiers. We're scared fugitives: silent and skulking in the dark.

‘It's all very new, sir,' I venture. ‘I don't know what to say.'

The man chuckles. ‘Ah, you'll get used to it. A few days of digging them tunnels and you'll be cursing your head off like the rest of 'em.'

As our boat moves forward, the dam wall grows closer. Its kindred runes gleam beneath the stars. My lungs constrict. This is why Lukas left. He left to sacrifice himself for the sake of some stupid markings on the wall. Did we mean so little to him that he was willing to throw us away, throw his life away . . .?

I know I'm being selfish. But the resentment ferments in my gut, and I find myself kneading my fingers to keep my anger under control. Anger, yes, but also hurt. Hurt that Lukas didn't tell us what he'd seen. Hurt that he left only a note to say goodbye.

And another kind of hurt. A worse kind of hurt. The kind of hurt I haven't felt since the night my parents died.
He's not dead
, I tell myself.
He's not dead, Danika
. If Lukas had killed himself, the runes would already be broken.

But if he's not dead, then where is he?

Teddy nudges me. ‘Hey, look at that.'

I follow his gaze back across the lake. I frown. Another boat is coming up behind us: a shade upon the water. There's just enough moonlight to see that it contains only two passengers. Two women, I think, although I can't make out their faces in the dark.

‘That's a small platoon, isn't it?' I ask our oarsman.

He shrugs, glancing back at the second boat. ‘Might be a couple of scouts returning from patrol. Sometimes an officer sends 'em back to report if they find something.'

I nod, but there's an odd feeling in the pit of my stomach.

The army base fills a rough expanse of land, largely hidden by a ridged shoreline. All I can see of its lower section is the smoke and light that rises, drifting, behind the ridge. Further back, the camp spills up the slope of a nearby foothill.

From a distance, the higher camp looks pockmarked, like the artisanal cheeses I'd see in Rourton deli windows. But as we approach, moonlight sneaks out from behind the clouds and I can't quite hold back a gasp. The pockmarks are holes: tunnels of darkness falling back into the hillside.

‘The catacombs,' Maisy says.

‘That's right,' says our guard. ‘You'll be spending a fair whack of time down those holes.'

Around the tunnel entrances, the hillside is dotted with activity. Camp fires blaze like pinpricks of light. There are huge tents of heavy canvas, but also wooden shacks, which I guess must be for the officers. The closer we get the more detail I spot: shadows moving in front of the fires, the sound of raucous laughter, the clink of bottles and crackle of flames.

After weeks in silent wilderness, all I can do is gawk. It's like an entire city has sprung up on this site. It reminds me of the night market in Gunning – but instead of criminals and smugglers, it's home to soldiers. They're armed, and they're trained to kill.

If they find out who we are . . .

Our guard pulls the boat up close to shore. ‘This is it,' he says.

We clamber into shallow water. I angle myself carefully as I leave the boat, keen to hide the smudge of my proclivity tattoo.

‘Report to the Registry Building,' the guard says, pointing up the slope behind the ridge. ‘At the top of the hill. They'll sort you out with a tent and work roster.'

Radnor nods. ‘Thank you.'

The guard pushes out with his oar. A moment later he's gone – just a shadow passing back across the lake.

I turn to my friends. They stare at me, stiff with anxiety. All our plans involved getting into the army camp. Now that we're here, the task before us seems almost impossible. This isn't a tiny target like the airbase. This is a huge, sprawling mass of people, and until we know their protocols, we'll stick out like scruffers on High Street.

‘Well, we can't go and register,' I say. ‘That's way too risky – what if they look at our necks?'

‘What's the plan?' Clementine turns upon Radnor. ‘You're the one who was so keen on wrecking these tunnels. Don't you have an idea how to do it?'

Radnor waves his hand. ‘I just have to . . . iron out the details.'

‘I'll take that as a “no”, shall I?'

‘Come on,' I say, before they can start arguing. ‘We can't just stand here on the shore – people will get suspicious. Let's have a look around.'

Behind the ridged shoreline, the camp is low. Even lower, perhaps, than the water of the lake. If not for the ridge, these soldiers' knees might be taking a permanent bath.

We settle back into single file. A moment later we're trekking through the camp site, ducking between tents and trying to look confident. But after forests and mountains, wastelands and borderlands, the cacophony here is overwhelming.

There must be hundreds of soldiers. They move between tents, they squat around camp fires. They drink, they laugh, they shout. I haven't heard this many voices in weeks. There are so many accents, so many faces. We pass a spindly girl, a squat boy with a ponytail, and an older sergeant with wrinkled brown skin. A pasty girl with a golden earring, and a dark young man with attractively rumpled hair. This army is not just conscripted from isolated northern cities like Rourton, but from every corner of King Morrigan's empire. So many faces, so far from home. My body seems to have forgotten how to move in a crowd; I'm acting like a calf at the meat market. Every shout and smashing glass makes me twitch.

Calm down, Danika,
I tell myself.
Don't let them see you're jumpy.

It's one thing to tell yourself to be brave, but it's another to make your body listen. Radnor looks just as twitchy as I am, although in his case I suspect it's more fury than fear. His lips pull back in a constant snarl, as though the very existence of this army is a grievous insult.

Teddy looks calm – the calmest of our group, in fact. His face is bright, and he smiles the eager smile of a new recruit. But he carries his hands by his side, and a faint tremble betrays how he's really feeling. Back in Rourton, people said Teddy Nort could charm the purses out of richies' pockets. I guess this is his chance to put those acting skills to the test.

The twins walk with spines like planks, their eyes darting back and forth as though the entire army might rise up and shoot us at a moment's notice. The frightening thing, of course, is that it might well happen. If anyone's recently come from a major city, one with wanted posters plastered on the walls . . .

No, it won't happen. I can't let it happen. No one would think to connect the dots – not with us here, in these uniforms. We're not wanted fugitives. We're just another crew of harmless newbies, marching up to register our names. Clearly not a danger to anyone. No one should pay us any attention . . .

‘Hey!'

I flinch. A skinny young man runs towards us, waving an arm. ‘Hey, are you newbies?' His olive skin and accent remind me of traders from the south-west.

‘Sure,' Teddy says. He steps in front of us and extends a hand to shake. An easy smile spreads across his face. ‘I'm Thompson, and these are my friends from Castenith.'

The young man shakes his hand. ‘Great. We need all the help we can get around here. I can take you to the Registry, if you want?'

I exchange a glance with Teddy, who doesn't let his smile slip. ‘We're right, thanks,' he says. ‘There was a bit of a queue up there before, so we thought we'd take a look around to kill some time.'

‘Oh, right,' says the soldier. ‘You shouldn't really be wandering around without registering, so –'

‘The guard up at the tent told us we could,' Teddy says, without missing a beat. ‘My uncle's a big man in the army, you know: made lots of friends back in the northern command.'

‘Oh,' the soldier says. He looks a little uncertain, but rallies himself. ‘Well, I guess the Registry queues've been long for the last few days. If they told you it was all right . . .'

‘Absolutely.' Teddy extends his smile. I privately think he looks a little deranged at this point, but the soldier seems to buy it.

‘Guess that's all settled, then,' he says. ‘I'm Private Mitcham, by the way. My squad's resting over by that fire there, so I'd better get back –'

‘Can we join you?' Teddy says.

Private Mitcham looks a little taken aback. ‘I don't know if –'

‘It's really good to meet you, Private,' Teddy presses. ‘I'll be sure to tell my uncle about the brave young soldiers I've been stationed with.'

Private Mitcham swallows, and the lump in his throat practically somersaults. ‘Well, I guess you could have one drink with us. My squad prides itself on making newbies feel welcome.'

I suspect Private Mitcham's barely squirmed his way out of ‘newbie' status himself. He can't be more than eighteen – nineteen at the absolute most. But he's keen to make an impression, and he stiffens into a formal march as he leads us to his squad's camp fire.

‘Are you sure this is a good idea?' I whisper.

‘Nope,' Teddy says. ‘But if we're gonna get ­information about this place, I reckon camp fire chat's a decent way to go looking for it.'

Private Mitcham introduces us to the rest of his squad: a gang of similarly young and gawky soldiers. They sit around their camp fire with bottles in their hands, sipping beer and toasting chunks of bread over the flames.

I relax a little when I realise most of them are drunk; more beer spills into the fire than bread, and the alcohol causes little explosions of flame to spurt up into the night. Whenever this happens, the soldiers roar with laughter and lean back to avoid the blast. One young woman is missing her eyebrows – perhaps the victim of an earlier beer blast.

‘Newbies!' she cries, and throws up her arms in welcome. ‘Taladia be . . . be praised. We nee . . . need more workers on this . . .' She waves a hand, searching for the right word. ‘On this dig. Thing.'

We take our seats around the edge of the fire. I find myself squished between Clementine and a boy with a metre-long rifle strapped across his back. He leans forward in a drunken haze, and the rifle's barrel almost whacks me across the back of the head. I hope like hell that the thing's not loaded.

‘That bad, huh?' Teddy says. ‘The digging, I mean.'

The girl nods fervently. ‘Oh yes, terrible. Just . . . just terri . . . terrible.' She raises a finger and points vaguely into the darkness. ‘All these tunnels, all full of . . . all full of dark.'

‘Private Riley, get a grip on yourself,' says Private Mitcham, embarrassed. ‘Thompson here's got an uncle in the military command.'

Riley's eyes widen. ‘Ooooh. Am I s'posed . . . supposed to be impressed? Well, guess what, mister?' Her bottle of beer slips from her fingers and smashes. ‘I'm
not
. I'm sick of mil . . . milly . . . military command. I'm sick of the dark, and the tunnels, and the . . . the sound. All the time, the sound, the sound . . .'

A few other soldiers nod. The boy beside me leans back again, shifting the angle of his rifle. I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding.

‘Riley's got a point,' the boy says to Private Mitcham. ‘That sound . . . it ain't right, Mitch, and no mistake. It messes with your head when you're down there all day.'

Private Riley spills forward, reaching out her arms as though to hug him. ‘That's right!' she squeals. ‘The sound, the sound, always the sound . . .'

One of her friends grabs her before she can trip into the camp fire. There's a bit of shoulder-patting and murmuring ‘there there' as they pull her back into her seat, and her head lolls onto a comrade's shoulder.

‘This sound, then,' Teddy says slowly, turning back to Mitcham. ‘What's she talking about?'

Private Mitcham's face is a little red. ‘It's nothing. I mean, it's annoying and that, but we're coping with it. Those of us what don't drink all our beer rations in one night, anyhow,' he adds, with a pointed glance at Riley.

‘It's a sound in the catacombs?' I say. ‘Down in the dark?'

Mitcham nods. ‘It's the old machinery, is all. There's a cavern of old clockwork for controlling the water flow and that. The engine room, our sergeant calls it. Hundreds of years old. Captain says it uses heat from the earth to keep the alchemy going. All the way back from when they drained the Valley.

‘But it makes these awful clanking noises, you see. Echoes up through all the tunnels. There's been rumours that it's the sound of ghosts. Evil spirits, monsters in the dark . . . the soul of the prisoner in the Pit, even. Some people fancy he's still down there, haunting the catacombs.'

Mitcham pauses to take a swig of beer. The fire crackles. In the silence, I suddenly remember Quirin singing the third verse to the smugglers' song:
‘From the prisoner's pit to the sky . . .'

Mitcham shakes his head. ‘Hope your uncle don't mind me saying so, Thompson, but the sooner we get this job done the better.'

I exchange a glance with my friends. ‘If this machinery's so noisy, can't they just turn it off?'

‘Nah. It's still working, you see – still keeps pumping so the water doesn't flow back down into the tunnels. Whoever set it up, they knew what they was doing.' He pauses, struck by a sudden thought. ‘Didn't you see none of them outlets on your way here?'

‘Outlets?'

‘Outlets for the pumping system. It pumps back up into the borderlands, you see, to keep the tunnels dry.'

As he speaks, I'm struck by a memory. A torrent spewing up from the earth, spilling its guts into a nearby river. A roar, an eruption, a rush of wild water. At the time, Radnor dismissed it as a quirk of the borderlands – but now, I realise, it was more than just alchemical pollution.

‘So if the engine room stopped working,' I say slowly, ‘you'd have big problems.'

Private Mitcham nods. ‘Whole tunnel system might flood, for all we know. No one knows what all them little levers are for.' He shrugs. ‘Anyway, that's why we're stuck with the sound. And that's why I say there's no point moping about it.' He throws a glare at Sergeant Riley. ‘And we should just get the job done quick.'

I look across at Teddy, who returns my gaze. This is it. This is our chance to destroy the tunnels. If we can somehow reach this engine room . . .

‘Well,' Teddy says, ‘it was nice to meet you, Private Mitcham. I'll be sure to tell my uncle what a right kind chap you were, showing us the ropes.'

‘You're leaving?'

‘Gonna check on the Registry queue,' Teddy says. ‘No, no – don't get up. We can find our own way, I reckon. You've already been generous enough.'

It takes another minute to convince Mitcham that we don't need an escort to the Registry, but eventually we're threading our way back into the throng. The recruits' camp fire disappears behind us: just another speck of flame among a hundred more the same. We weave between soldiers, stroll around tents and keep up our facade of confidence.

Finally, I spot a hiding place – a cluster of abandoned tents, dark and alone. I'm guessing their inhabitants are away on a night shift; this part of the camp is silent, as though an entire platoon has left for work. Even the camp fires are out. The only lights are external lanterns: one adorns the front of each tent, marking their location in the dark.

Cautiously, I peer into the closest tent. ‘In here.'

The tent itself is plain: sleeping sacks, a cheap candle, a couple of knick-knacks from home. We don't dare light the candle, but at least the external lamp provides a smidge of watery light. I sit on the floor beside a ragged old teddy bear, and give its head a surreptitious stroke.

‘Right,' Radnor says. ‘We've got two options. One: we destroy the dam to flood the whole Valley. Or two: we shut down the engine room to just flood the tunnels.'