Snakehead (7 page)

The people obeyed without protest; they must have been glad to get some fresh air. We cleared the dining room, and the kitchen-yard crowd trooped after them, Palikari and I politely encouraging the stragglers. Dicty took a lamp from the high table to the bar, and looked over Kore’s shoulder.

“You can read and write?” said the boss softly.

She barely glanced at him. “Yes … Please excuse me, Papa Dicty, I’m trying to remember the meter, one more line …”

“That’s a strange kind of script. Who taught you, my dear?”

Her hand was still flying. “It’s a new kind of writing. I worked it out: I use different symbols to mean
sounds
, not things. It’s much better. You can use it for poetry, not just accounts. You can use it for any language you like.”

“Great Mother,” said the boss.

He sat down hard on a bar stool, as if someone had knocked him on the head.

Kore dropped her stylus and leaned back, wringing her hand: it must have been aching. Moumi, Pali, Anthe and I crowded close. We looked at the little dancing marks, and then at each other, in blank astonishment.

We kept accounts at Dicty’s, with the usual signs for different kinds of goods. We stored our yearly figures on
clay tablets, and we thought that was pretty special. We knew of Eygptian writing, of course. But no one,
no one
could read and write in the islands these days—not this way, setting down thoughts and ideas. For us the skill had been utterly lost since the Great Disaster. It was rare beyond price,
anywhere in the Middle Sea
.

The king of Serifos was the first threat that leapt to my mind. If he found out about this! But even then I knew that Polydectes was not the danger.

“Great Mother,” said Dicty again, in a hollow tone.

The tallyboards were rough, flaky scraped wood. They weren’t meant to last; we used them for kindling when they were done with…. I could not make Kore’s marks stand still. They seemed to whirl, and melt into each other. It was like a language so foreign it sounds like water running, or the twittering of birds.

Papa Dicty was frowning, thinking hard. He stood up again.

“Could you read what you have written, Kore?”

“Of course.” She began to speak, slowly, her eyes on the board.

It was astonishing, and
eerie
. I felt the hairs rise on the back of my neck. She got through the first, ominous lines of the funeral song, then she looked up and saw us all standing there openmouthed. I saw the horror dawning on her face.

She had given herself away. She had revealed a secret
that marked her like a shining brand. Was that what made her look so terrified?

“You had to do it.” Anthe took her hand. “You couldn’t help it,
I
know.”

“Here
, what’s this caper?”

It was Mando. She’d been sitting there on her stool all along. The singer got up and trod heavily across the room, mopping her dripping mascara with a table napkin. “What’s that on those tallyboards? Some kind ’er spell? What are you all looking at? Has this girl stolen my song? Lemme see. How’s she done that?”

The funeral song was not Mando’s property. It was older than the ocean. It had different words on every island, even for every singer. But on Serifos nobody was allowed to sing “Dark Water” the Mando way unless she taught them; and she was very choosy.

“No one can steal your songs!” cried Papa Dicty, sweeping the tallyboards out of sight. “The girl knows a few lines of the lyric. Why not, most people do. It’s your glorious art that makes the song! But listen, Mando dear, I was thinking. I want to make you an extra gift, to celebrate a superb performance. I’ve decided I will tell you the recipe for my wheat ribbons,
and
I’ll give you a ribbon press.”

Mando seemed to expand. Though she dressed like a farmhand when she wasn’t singing, she was said to be extremely rich. She made sure she got paid, but the fame her shows brought meant far more to her. Papa Dicty’s
wheat ribbons! What news to tell the crowd! She bowed, with dignity, then took his hand and kissed it. The harsh, blunt farmhand accent vanished.

“Papa Dicty, you truly honor me. Well, well. I think I
was
in good tone tonight. May I excuse myself, gentlemen and ladies: I must go to my audience.”

Mando left us, like a court lady’s very solid ghost. Kore came out from behind the bar, and drew a deep breath. “I can’t stay. I’ll have to leave. But I
will
explain.” She walked quickly, chin up, out into the yard. Anthe made a move to go after her.

“Don’t,” said Moumi. “She’ll tell us the truth. Let it wait until morning.”

“I’d better join the people on the terrace,” sighed Papa Dicty. “Or it will look strange, and impolite to the singer. There’s a good chance that nobody noticed what Kore was doing, or understood what they saw, and a good chance that Mando will only remember the wheat ribbons. Let’s hope that’s the case.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Moumi.

The three of us stayed where we were. Palikari whistled, shook his head, reached for shot cups and poured a steadying tot of Kitron all around. Anthe downed hers at a gulp. Her hair, too curly to be tamed for long, was coming out of its stylish ringlets. “Why did she say,
I can’t stay?
Does she think we won’t protect her? I don’t understand why she’s terrified. She can read and write, it’s a wonderful thing!”

“It’s
too
wonderful,” said Palikari grimly. “There were
informers in here, there always are, and I bet they were watching our mystery girl. She’s given herself away. Someone will know who she is, a girl who can read and write: as good as if she’d shouted out her real name (whatever it is). The king is going to demand that we hand her over, like a piece of loot. He’ll force us to defy him, and you know what …?” He stopped, set his teeth, looked at the floor and muttered, “Maybe it’s high time!”

“Did she say it’s a
new kind
of writing?” I asked.

No answer. The lamps were dying, so we could barely see each other’s faces. Moonlight from outdoors spread cold white sheaves across the floor. There were eyes in the dark, down beside the hearth. The spirit that lived there had curled up into a quivering ball of limbs, like a threatened spider.

My friends wanted me to face up to the king of Serifos, before he could strike the first blow. I couldn’t blame them if they thought I was afraid of Polydectes, the way I was reacting to this new crisis. But I wasn’t.

It wasn’t the king who would take Kore from me.

I could see things other people couldn’t. I could see hearth spirits and water nymphs. Now I knew, like thunder after lightning, why I had felt that strange fear as I saw her driving away with her stylus. It wasn’t because my darling possessed a dangerous, covetable skill. I had seen the finality of doom in her eyes when she looked up from the tallyboards where she had written the “Dark Water” song.

She was god-touched. And tonight, in this room, in the flickering lamplight, her fate had tracked her down.

K
ore did not explain herself. When I came down at first light, she was helping Koukla and the maids clear up after the big event. At the household breakfast table, after we’d served our guests, she made an announcement. “I am sorry for what happened,” she said (as if she’d broken a tray of crockery). “I regret my outburst. Please forgive me and let’s not speak about it.”

“That’s all right, my dear,” said the boss. “Could you pass the honey?”

Papa Dicty didn’t speak either. He spent most of that morning with Mando, teaching her the wheat-ribbons recipe. Then he asked me to help him in the furnace yard, and we made a press for the singer as promised. I was bewildered by his calm; he’d seemed so
staggered
by
what Kore could do. But it came to me that he’d been strangely quiet since the night she arrived. Or since we’d come back from our last trip to Naxos—I wasn’t sure which was more significant. The boss had said nothing, done nothing about the threat we all saw—except that he’d moved the refugees, immediately, just on a rumor. He was waiting for something. What was he waiting for?

I didn’t ask. Part of me didn’t want to break the silence.

Palikari was convinced there would be trouble. “I’m not laying blame,” he said darkly. “All right, maybe no informer spotted her last night, but look at the staff who went home. Any one of them could have overheard us, and
talked
by now, not meaning any harm, just gossiping. The waitresses, the maids, the undercooks. What about Koukla and Kefi? A runner can reach the High Place in an hour; the king’s bullies could be on their way!” Kefi was our timid mule boy, Koukla our stalwart laundry-woman. They were
family;
the fact that he’d think of distrusting them showed how upset Pali was.

“My dear Palikari,” said Papa Dicty, “I hear only one person talking carelessly, and it’s you. Set your mind at rest. The king, as you rightly say, knows very quickly what’s going on in Seatown. If he’d wanted to kidnap our new waitress, he’d have been here long ago.”

Pali was not convinced. Kore was no longer just a mystery fugitive. She was treasure, and the king would snatch her from us. As far as Palikari was concerned, the only
question was whether we could expect a sneaking raid, or a full frontal attack.

I knew he was wrong, but he infected me. I was full of itchy alarm.

The singer left us. Seatown’s own musicians brought a chariot decked in flowers to fetch her away (really a handcart: no one in Seatown possessed a chariot, or the horse to go with it). They harnessed themselves and hauled her, with more sweat than romance, through cheering crowds, to set her on her way. The festival continued, and two days passed. Then Dicty sent me to check on our caïque, which was kept for us by a loyal friend, in a cove up the east coast.

We weren’t supposed to maintain a seagoing vessel. That was why Papa Dicty had given up his fishing boats and moved into the taverna business. Polydectes didn’t want the boss to have independent means of leaving the island, or of sending for allies. But though we’d made a show of doing everything the king asked, of course we had an arrangement, in case we needed to leave Serifos in a hurry. I set out in the cool of the morning, taking Dolly with me, and using the public mule track. We went to one of the east farms, where I left the mule with our steward and cut across country on foot.

Before noon I’d reached the two-hovel “fishing village” where our friend Bozic kept the boat for us. He was a Mainlander, but not an Achaean. He came from far to the
northeast. He was a bit of a smuggler, but trustworthy. We agreed that he would bring her to the coves north of Seatown, where there were plenty of places where a small vessel could lie hidden. We went over the signals, and the plans that had been worked out long ago. Then I ran back to the farm, where I picked up Dolly and a load of fresh peas, soft fruit and leaf vegetables.

We walked home at a mule’s pace through the summer evening. My shoulders were prickling for arrows … but it might still be a false alarm. I’d been sent to prepare our escape route before, and the danger had passed.

Not this time.

Koukla met me in the kitchen yard, in tears, with the news that Anthe, and Palikari, and Kore had
all three
disappeared. They’d been gone for hours, they must have been taken by the king, they must be dead!

“Where’s the boss?” I demanded. “Where’s my mother?”

“They’re indoors, Perseus. The shock, it’s been too much for poor Papa, his head’s turned, he’s behaving as if nothing’s wrong!”

I rushed indoors. The boss was working as usual. He told me at once that Kore was safe. She’d been “missing” since midafternoon, but it turned out she’d gone to visit the Enclosure. Holy Mother had sent word that that’s where she was.

“What about Pali and Anthe?”

“Ah,” said the boss. “Now that may be a problem.”

We were surrounded by the clamor of the busy kitchen. Waitresses hurried from the dining room, shouting for squid, honey-baked mullet, wheat ribbons with lobster sauce, greens in lemon and oil. The spit boy shot up to Papa Dicty’s station, sweating and red in the face. Dicty inspected a platter of roast meat slices, approved it with a nod; the boy sped to deliver it to the undercook who was making up orders.

“I’d like you to look for them, Perseus. They’ve been gone too long, and they told no one where they were going. Take Kefi, so you can send him back with a message if need be. You might go upstairs a little way. But no farther than the cemetery.”

Upstairs
meant the way to the High Place. That road was forbidden to us. The boss was as good as telling me to break the truce. I felt as if I’d been dunked in ice melt. So this is it, I thought. This is really it. I saw the island of sand, long ago: Serifos gouged by warfare. I thought of the darkness rushing in….

“What if I don’t find them? Or if I meet opposition?”

“Then you come back. Before I forget, was all well with our friend?”

He meant Bozic. “Yes. All’s well, no problems.”

The boss smiled at me. “Off you go. Don’t make trouble if you don’t find it.”