The City of Woven Streets

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The wave has washed me onto a rocky landing. Rain fizzles into the silent landscape. I listen to the ache swelling and receding in my body. The pain throbs behind my eyes as I force myself to sit up. I run my hands along my limbs, feel my torso all over, and roll up my sleeves and trouser legs. My skin is covered in bruises and contusions, but nothing feels broken. Water drips to the ground and runs away in vein-like rivulets as I wring it from my clothes. I clamber to a low squat first, then to my feet. The ground does not tilt and my bones do not crumble. I take a few cautious steps.

I am alone on the landing.

Flood-borne jetsam is scattered around me: roof tiles, shards of glass, pieces of wood, a battered pewter cup. A shoe, no larger than a child’s foot. I remember Mirea and grief pulls at my guts. I push it away, somewhere it can wait until I can let it come. I pick up the cup and put it into my pocket. I will need to find water.

The return route to the House of the Tainted is cut off. The doorway and the upper part of the staircase have survived, but only slightly further down the roof has caved in. The edge of the sea has pushed straight over and through the tall wall, and in many places the structures have suffered damage. The other end of the house, which lies further from the sea and where the male prisoners live, remains standing. Silence hangs over everything. The heaps of stone rest still.

The sea is a landscape of grey and green, rolling closer and drawing away again. I walk along the wall enclosing the landing and see narrow slices of the city. Most houses are where they used to be, but some look like the island has tried to shake them off its back. At first glance the House of Webs looks undamaged in the distance, but then I see something has shifted. The change is small, nearly imperceptible. The wall meets the ground at an angle that is almost the same as before; the new shape of the hill could be only a whim of light and shadow. Yet every time I look again I am more certain that it is not.

The Tower stands tall as ever. The air gondola routes running to it and the House of Webs have collapsed, and at least three others too: the sky is devoid of the lattice of cables. I cannot see the streets from here, but I imagine the scenes taking place on them. People collecting the remnants of their possessions amid the devastation. Others crying, screaming or staring into the distance. Some lying still, perhaps, and even next to them you might not know if they are dead or alive.

I hold back a shiver and a sob. There is time for those later. I cannot stay here, and I can only think of one place to go.

Eventually I find a rusty iron ladder where the wall ends. Underneath is a vertical drop where the cliff runs into the sea. The ladder does not reach all the way down, but leads to another, narrower landing jutting out from the rock. It is clearly intended to be used only in extreme emergency or not at all. The rungs are far apart, covered by thick rust and the second one from top hangs loose.

I grab the wall, climb over it and drop myself onto the top rung.

I need to stop on each rung to draw deep breaths, but eventually I am on the landing below. My muscles tremble all over. I lie down on the cold rock, until I feel able to stand again. A steep, barely passable path leads away from the landing. I follow it. It winds down the side of the cliff and towards the small houses scattered along the slope. Some of them seem beaten by the flood, but here the water has receded.

Further down in the city the streets will have turned into tendrils of the sea. The water will have swallowed the pavements and ground floors, and buildings will stick out like teeth. Every opening between houses is a canal now. I consider my options. To get where I want to go I must cross a distance of twenty blocks at least, maybe more. I might be able to wade some of the journey, but the place itself lies on lower ground, closer to the sea.

I will need some kind of boat or raft.

This part of the island is so far from the city that it is almost like a tiny village. It does not take me long to find what stands for the village square, and there is what I am looking for. The deep-green water pump is decorated with a forged-iron sun. I pump the handle a few times. Water spurts out. It is clear, not muddled by the flood. I rinse the cup and drink until I am no longer thirsty.

The few houses stand dark and still. I do not hear words or footsteps. I begin to wonder if everyone has fled further up the hills, but a strong scent of burning seaweed wafts in the air. I scan the grey sky: smoke from a chimney paints a trail across it. The rain has stopped. Mud smacks under my boots as I cross puddles and streets barely wider than paths.

After a brief search I find the source of the smoke. There is a yard behind the house, a mess of piled stones and crooked bushes and weary wild herbs. There is also a boat.

It is small and the paint has peeled off, and the wood used to construct it was probably felled long before my parents were born. But it is still a boat, and it is mounted on a skewed cart on wheels. It would be easy to move to the edge of the water.

The back door of the house is open. White steam puffs forth from the inside. I hear clattering of dishes. I smell boiled seaweed and grains, and realize I am extremely hungry. I crack the side gate open and step into the yard.

A short man emerges, bony and olive-skinned. A bald spot grows on the crown of his head, his boots are in need of repair and he is carrying a steaming bowl in his hands. He stops in his tracks when he sees me.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ I say. ‘Could I possibly borrow your boat, please? I promise I will return it as soon as I can. I will even pay for it.’

It is not too big a lie. I intend to bring the boat back with some compensation.

The man stares at me and says nothing. I take a step towards him. He hurls the bowl at me, but misses. It lands next to me on its side. Cooked grains and seaweed broth pour out.

I take another step, trying to look as friendly as I can. The man recedes towards the door, then turns, runs back in and slams the door shut. I hear the sound of a key being turned in the lock.

I look at the food remaining in the bowl. I wipe my hand on my trousers and ladle the rest of the grains into my mouth with bare fingers. Only a handful remains. I carry the bowl onto the doorstep.

My knuckles hurt as I knock on the door.

‘I would just like to borrow your boat,’ I say. ‘Please.’

‘Go away,’ the man says from the inside.

I see a curtain part slightly on the small window next to the door. I try to peer in. It is hard to see anything. There is no light inside the house. The window glass reflects a white-and-grey sky, and the rocky hill behind. And my own face.

That is when I understand.

The tattoo is clearly defined on my forehead, the skin around the mark red and swollen.

‘Take your plague elsewhere,’ the man says. His voice is caught in the rigid old stone-and-wood structures, warped by them.

I look at the boat. I look at the locked door. I look at the boat again.

It is not smooth gliding. The vessel is barely even a skiff. It rocks and tilts and rotates, and one of the oars is missing. I use the remaining one for punting the boat along, although it is a mere stub compared with a proper pole. For a moment something underwater scratches the bottom, and I wait to see if water will come seeping through. But despite its infuriating shape and tiny size, the skiff seems well enough put together, and my feet do not get wetter than they already are.

Staying away from the busy neighbourhoods is not difficult. Few people wish to live near the House of the Tainted, and in this area the northern shoreline of the island – considerably changed after the flood – is all but abandoned by former inhabitants because few tolerate the stench and fumes from the Ink Quarters. Just in case, I pull my hood down to cover my forehead.

The angle of the light behind the clouds has changed by the time I eventually reach the abandoned house where Janos, Valeria and I used to meet before we talked to Irena. As I expected, the ground floor is underwater. I paddle clumsily around the building with my one oar and find the same thorny vines that cover the door we used before, now half-drowned. I push them aside with my oar. There is a window behind: it looks barely large enough for me to climb through. I tear a piece off my trouser bottom and use it to tie the skiff to a hook rusting in the wall. The ancient wood of the window frame is swollen shut, and eventually I have to break the window with the oar to be able to get in. I arrange the vine to cover the boat: it may not fool anyone who comes close, but from a distance, at least, it will conceal my vessel and my way in.

Everything smells of dampness, and the planks feel fragile under my feet. I stay at the edges of the room. I try to find a place where I will not need to move too much. At the centre opens a hole where the steps began once upon a time. If I dared to go closer, I might see the lowest steps of the wide staircase underwater, leading nowhere. I might see the pages of abandoned books floating in the weightlessness of water.

My body is heavy. I curl down on the floor and place the oar next to me. The corners of the room are growing darker. I have nothing to give me light. My forehead stings. My throat is sticky with thirst. I wonder if I should go out in search of food and water before nightfall, or wait until dawn. I do not dare go. I may not find my way back in the dark. I stay.

Someone cries out in the distance, a bird or human, I cannot tell. Shadows spin closer. I hold onto myself and onto what is left of the world I know.

Darkness has rested in the room for some time, when there is a knock on the window pane. I grab the oar and get to my trembling feet. A hood-covered figure pushes its head through the window, halts for a moment and vanishes. A leg appears, then a whole body. I stay in my silent corner and raise the oar. The figure that has entered the room reaches a hand out through the window. A lantern floats into sight, bright orange and holding a live fire.

‘Eliana?’ a voice says.

I think I recognize it. The figure steps closer, steps back when the floorboards give a little, then steps closer again with more caution. It places the lantern on the floor and removes the hood.

I lower the oar.

‘Some people might consider showing their faces before approaching terrified runaway criminals in abandoned buildings,’ I say.

‘And some people might be happy that they’ve been found at all,’ my brother replies.

Shriek-like laughter pours from me and draws tears with it.

‘They are,’ I say. ‘Very happy.’

Janos takes another wary step nearer and I close the distance. He pulls me into a wide hug. He smells of ink and soap, and just a little of sweat.

‘Are you hurt?’ he asks and steps back. I feel his eyes skim over my forehead. They make an attempt to look away but return to the mark.

I remember Mirea’s downturned face, her fingers scratching the rash on her instep. I see her swimming away from me, turning herself into a story I will be able to tell one day, but not yet.

‘Mostly just bruised and starved,’ I say. ‘Do you have any water?’

Janos takes a skin from his belt and hands it to me. I drink.

‘There’s more in the boat,’ he says. ‘Finish it, if you need to.’ He pushes a hand into his pocket and gives me a piece of bread wrapped in cloth. ‘And eat this.’

I do. The bread is soft and crusty, no older than from this morning. I could choke on it and die content. Janos watches me.

‘There will be food where we are going,’ he says. I hear a smile buried behind his concern.

I hand the skin back and wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. Janos studies my face.

‘So that’s where they kept you,’ Janos says, and I feel his gaze on the tattoo of the Tainted. ‘I suspected as much.’ His fingers brush my forehead. I start. The touch is light, but it burns the raw skin like a firebrand.

‘How did you find me?’ I ask.

‘A message was delivered an hour ago,’ he says. ‘The House of Words is mostly intact, but we’ve been moving scriptures all day long, building a makeshift library on the roof. The messenger looked like he had journeyed to the continent and back in search of me.’

‘What did the message say?’

‘Only that you were alive and had escaped the House of the Tainted. I couldn’t think of anywhere else to look for you.’

‘Where did the message come from?’

‘I don’t know,’ Janos says. ‘There was nothing else in it. But I doubt it was sent from the House of Webs. Its foundations were damaged in the flood, and the City Guard are moving the weavers away. There is probably no one left there.’

I remember the strangely tilted silhouette of the house on the hill, a crack in the landscape.

Moth had said she knew who I was. Could she have been working with the Dreamers without me knowing it? But if that were true, why did she not help me sooner?

‘How long was I gone?’ I ask.

‘Two and a half months.’

That corresponds with the rough track of days I have been keeping. All that sky-gazing, every memorized moon phase was not wasted, after all.

One question has been scorching my throat since Janos removed his hood. I have to ask.

‘Have you found Valeria?’

A shadow deepens on Janos’s face, then dissolves into light again. I cannot tell if it is the lantern-flame growing fainter and brighter, or something else.

‘We still don’t know what happened to her,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

The words are slow, deliberate. He must have known I would ask. I breathe in the meaning.

Valeria has been missing for two and a half months.

‘I spoke to your house-elder after you disappeared. After I received your note.’ Janos’s voice is calm, calmer than I would like it to be. ‘She claimed to know nothing. That you had simply left.’

‘Weaver?’ Anger rises in me, bitter as bile. ‘She’s lying. She showed me a way out of the House of Webs, knowing it would take me to the House of the Tainted. I’m certain she had something to do with Valeria’s disappearance.’

Two vertical lines appear between Janos’s eyebrows.

‘Don’t you believe me?’ I ask.

‘I do,’ he says. ‘But why would she have done it?’

‘The Council must have pressured her into it somehow,’ I say. ‘I just don’t know why.’

We stare at each other without answers.

‘Are you certain Valeria was not in the House of the Tainted too?’ Janos asks.

Moth’s words surface from my memory. She’s not here. But she could have been lying.

‘I didn’t see her there the whole time,’ I say.

My mind wants to create a way out for Valeria, a hundred ways out. I see her flee the House of Webs and hide in an abandoned building, stealing her food from the market. I see Valeria assume a different identity, take on another name and find work as a weaver, or perhaps a net maker. I see her buy a place on a trading ship somehow and leave the island. I believe in all these scenarios, and any others that will help her survive. Yet under them lies another possibility I cannot deny.

‘Do you think she’s alive?’ I ask. I have thought the sentence many times, but speaking it aloud wrenches my heart.

Someone shouts in the distance. Janos turns his head and looks towards the window.

‘We should go,’ he says. ‘It’s getting late. The city may be restless tonight, with looters coming for the broken buildings.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘Somewhere safe,’ Janos says and picks up the lantern from the floor.

I note that he did not answer my question.

After long, quiet canals and distant lights moving in the thickening dark, we stand in a sheltered and shadow-filled space, and Janos opens a door into a shaft. It is wide, made for something larger than humans, and iron rungs descend into its deep maw.

‘You’ll need to climb down,’ he says. ‘Do you feel strong enough?’

I do not.

‘Yes,’ I say.

But the drop is long, and we are going underground. I imagine water, flood. Entrapment. Some of it must show on my face, because Janos says, ‘This place is entirely flood-proof, if that’s what you’re thinking about. Place your hand on the wall.’

I do. Its murky surface is not cold enough to be metal and not warm enough to be wood. It is not coarse enough to be stone, and it resembles something I recognize, something like…

‘Glass,’ I say. ‘Why are the walls made of glass?’

‘To keep the water out,’ Janos says. ‘This is one of the two entrances, which are both higher than floods have ever reached. The space we are about to enter is enclosed in a thick shell of glass. There is no crack for the water to seep in.’

I turn to look at him.

‘Who built this?’ I ask.

‘We don’t know,’ Janos replies. ‘We think it may have been the Web-folk.’ He nods towards the rungs. ‘Do you want to go first?’

I say nothing, but he sees my face.

‘I’ll go first,’ he says.

The lantern light hovers on the walls, shifting and swinging with Janos’s movements. He climbs down much faster than I do. His boots hit the rungs below me. I squeeze the ladder with tight fingers, and my breath dangles dense and thorny in my throat. Eventually my feet meet the floor. I kneel to brush it with my hand: it really is made of glass. It is scratched and dusty and has lost whatever polish it may once have had, but it is beautiful nevertheless, the colour of dark seawater and stones slickened by it. I think of the Glass Grove, of the few traces left behind by the Web-folk. What did they wish to hide from when they built this?

Janos leads me to a thick metal door with a heavy knocker on it. At first I mistake the shape for the sun of the Council. But as I look closer, I see it is slightly different, and the rays are surrounded by an oblong outline. Janos knocks five times. A similar knock responds from the other side. Janos repeats the knocking once more.

‘Don’t be scared of what happens next,’ he tells me. ‘You’re safe here.’

A peephole opens in the door.

‘Identify yourselves,’ a voice says from within.

Janos places his palm into the peephole.

‘Approved,’ the voice says after a short moment. ‘What about the other one?’

‘I will guarantee her,’ Janos says. ‘She’s my sister.’

Slowly the door opens. Janos looks at me and steps in, carrying his lantern. I follow.

It is almost entirely dark in the room. I see a pale woman holding a glow-glass, a sphere of dim speckled-blue light. At the edges of the room I sense human shapes, unmoving, watching. The gatekeeper swings the glass back and forth. The pendulum movement wakes the algae, and slowly the light spills wider around her. In the dark the marks begin to glow white-bright, forging a chain around the space. Janos turns his palm upwards, and I see the mark shining on it, too.

An eye with the sun in the centre. The invisible tattoo of Dreamers.

The tattoos glow like eyes turned towards me. A flame bursts to life in the room, catches the core of a torch and grows. Hands move to light more fires. A tall, dark-skinned man carrying a torch steps forth towards us. Behind him, I notice a short woman with a birthmark on her face watching us intently.

‘This is your sister, then?’ the man asks.

‘Yes, this is Eliana,’ Janos replies.

The man steps closer and lowers the torch towards my face. I feel the heat from the fire. I have been cold so long that its ripple on my skin is pleasant until it turns scorching.

‘I’m Askari,’ the tall man says. He nods at my forehead. ‘You’ll need something for that.’

I raise my fingers to my brow. The stinging has grown into an aching burn.

‘It’s best if you don’t touch it,’ a familiar voice says. ‘Leave it to a professional.’

Between two torches the shadows part and Alva walks towards me. She has changed her white coat for a brown jacket, and my eyes catch the tattoo on her palm before her fingers fold around it. She stops before me and regards me.

‘You will need a bath,’ she says. ‘And a hot drink. Eimar, is there any soup left?’ Alva shouts over her shoulder to a robust red-bearded man.

‘I’ll go and have a look,’ the man says and walks away, presumably in the direction of the kitchen.

Askari stares at me, then turns to whisper something to the woman with a birthmark. She gives me a look and nods. Askari straightens his back and speaks again.

‘Are we to understand,’ he says, ‘that you have been to the House of the Tainted and escaped?’

‘Only because one of the guards helped me,’ I say.

Askari and the woman glance at each other.

‘Unusual,’ the woman says. ‘We would like to hear more about it.’

Alva places a hand on my shoulder. Askari stands silent for a moment, as if considering what to do. Then he says, ‘I believe Eliana will better be able to tell us the whole story once she’s had some food and sleep.’

The room is still. Everyone waits. The woman watches me in silence. Eventually she nods. Alva gives a slight nod back to the woman and Askari.

‘Come with me,’ she says. ‘Let’s see about that bath and the soup.’

I follow her along narrow corridors that every now and then open into circular rooms in different sizes. In one of the rooms through which we walk, three Dreamers sit at a table. One of them is turning his hand in the light of a bright glow-glass. No tattoo is visible on his palm. Another one dips a sponge into a glass bowl with a jelly-like substance in it, and the third is brushing jelly on his palm. The tattoo of the Dreamers begins to fade as the jelly touches it. The man holding the sponge looks up as we pass them, and I recognize his face. The memory becomes clear: the man I saw at the Museum of Pure Sleep on the day of the Ink-marking, the tattoo that disappeared.

He turns to say something to the other man, who is waiting for the jelly to dry on his skin. His face is familiar too. It takes a little longer for it to take a place as part of the memory.

The guard who stopped the scar-handed man in the museum.

My thoughts fill the holes in the scene, the hidden spaces I did not see at the time. The scar-handed man, perhaps taking an urgent message to the museum guard who secretly worked with the Dreamers already back then. The museum guard who noticed the Scar-handed had forgotten to cover his palm tattoo. Perhaps the guard had some jelly with him just in case; perhaps the Scar-handed gilded his palm with it in the empty moment between the visitors before the next group stepped into the room, led by the guide.

I glance behind me as we walk out of the door. I see the Scar-handed look at me, and I wonder if he has recognized me too. Alva notices my gaze.

‘The palm is a tricky place because the solution covering the tattoo wears off quickly,’ she says. ‘I have tried to improve it to make it waterproof, but the raw materials are difficult to get.’

She opens a door to a dim room where bathtubs are lined up against the wall.

‘I will arrange some hot water for you,’ she says.

I collapse on the floor and close my eyes.

I sit on a stool wearing garments that are too big but clean. My limbs rest languid and the long soak in the hot water has left my head foggy. The space is more a cupboard converted into an emergency room than an actual room. The shelves are as tall as the wall and stacked to the ceiling with glass jars and small sachets that emit a faint scent of herbs. Alva dips the corner of a towel into a steaming pot of strong-smelling brew and begins to gently pat my brow with it. I start with pain, when the cleansing brew touches my skin. Alva pulls back and hits her elbow on the edge of a shelf.

‘I do miss my old working space, I must admit,’ she says, rubbing her elbow. ‘You’ve allowed that to get bad. Don’t touch it!’ She brings the towel to my brow again. I squeeze my hand into a fist and feel my nails bite into the skin of my palm.

‘How long have you been here?’ I ask.

‘I left the House of Webs over a month ago,’ Alva says. ‘I reckon they will have found someone to replace me by now.’

‘Why did you leave?’

I watch Alva. Her eyes move quickly, her mouth looks for the words.

‘After you disappeared, your brother got in touch,’ she says. ‘He… convinced me. That I would be more use here.’

There is a little more colour on her face. It might be just the steam from the pot. I decide not to draw any conclusions yet.

‘So you don’t know what’s happening in the House of Webs?’

‘Not since I left,’ Alva says. She presses my forehead lightly with the dry end of the towel. ‘Dreamers have people in many places on the island, but no one in the House of Webs.’

‘Do they get caught often?’ I ask. I remember how the number of prisoners grew in the House of the Tainted over the past weeks.

‘More often after the City Guard understood the connection between the algae-light and Dreamer tattoos,’ Alva says. ‘There’s been an increase in places that have glow-glasses.’

Yet another thing clicks in place. I remember the taverns we visited in disguise with Janos and Valeria, and my wonderment over how many new glow-glasses had appeared in the city.

‘Aren’t you afraid that someone who has been caught will reveal this place to the City Guard?’ I ask.

‘Every day,’ Alva says. ‘The base has already moved several times. We will have to do so again soon.’

The thought of Valeria has remained as a spark inside me. Alva folds the towel over the lip of the pot and places the pot on the floor. She reaches for a jar on a high shelf.

‘Janos told me that you still don’t know what happened to Valeria,’ I say. My voice feels bruised when I speak her name.

Alva’s arm continues its movement, but her back freezes for a short moment. I cannot see her face. Then she moves again, turns to me with a dark glass jar in her hand.

‘That’s true,’ she says. ‘We don’t. I’m sorry.’

She opens the jar. I recognize the scent rising from it.

‘You haven’t given up on looking for her, have you?’ I ask.

Alva’s eyes follow her hand into the jar.

‘Of course not,’ she says.

My arm prickles. I pull my sleeve up and scratch my skin.

Alva raises her gaze and freezes.

‘Pull your sleeve back up,’ she says.

I do. Alva wipes the ointment on the edge of the glass jar, places the jar down and leans closer. She looks at my arm and turns it in such a way that the light of the glow-glass falls on it.

‘Have you had this for a long time?’ she asks and points at the blotch of rash on the crook of my arm.

‘It appeared after a couple of weeks in the House of the Tainted,’ I say.

Alva takes a magnifying glass from her pocket which she brings close to my arm. The edges of the lens distort the rash, turning it convex, but the centre shows it more clearly: it is formed of small purple dots.

‘Do you have rash elsewhere?’ she asks.

‘On my legs and ankles.’

‘May I have a look?’

I roll the trouser bottoms up. Alva studies my ankles through the magnifying glass.

‘Did many in the House of the Tainted have rash?’ she asks.

‘Everyone,’ I say.

‘Where did the water used for washing come from?’

‘We didn’t wash often,’ I say. ‘But we spent a lot of time in the sea. The prisoners are used for collecting blood coral.’

Alva lowers the magnifying glass and pushes it back into her pocket. I can almost see her shaping sentences in her mind to write them in her notebook.

‘Did you see anything unusual in the sea?’

‘Mud. A few dead fish.’ Then I remember. ‘A rust-coloured sediment floated around the coral reefs. Not everywhere, but especially in the shallows where we would dive.’

Alva’s expression turns more alert.

‘How far from the island?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know exactly,’ I say. I try to tell apart the days that have blurred and faded into one in my memory. ‘Sometimes hours away. Why?’

Dark worry visits Alva’s face. Yet she pushes it away and grabs the ointment jar again.

‘Let’s talk about that later,’ she says. ‘Now you must rest.’

She is right; sleep is already brushing my eyes, and my thoughts are drifting apart like mist over the sea.

‘Do Dreamers have someone working in the House of the Tainted?’ I ask.

Alva looks at me, surprised.

‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘The security is too tight. We know very little about what happens in there. That’s why Askari and Tirra wish to speak to you.’ She begins to rub the ointment on my forehead. It soothes the hot stinging on my skin. ‘Why do you ask?’

I remember Moth pressing the key into my hand, showing me the way. Telling me Valeria was not imprisoned in the House of the Tainted. The stare, the sincerity of which I did not dare to be certain.

‘I simply wondered,’ I say.

Alva closes the ointment jar and hands it to me.

‘Use this for a few days,’ she says. ‘There may be others who need it, but your brow is currently in a worse state than anyone else’s tattoos.’

I accept the jar gratefully and push it into the pocket of the too-large jacket. We sit in silence for a while, I on the stool, Alva on the floor leaning her back against the wall.

‘I still mean to find her,’ I say quietly.

Alva’s mouth tightens, as if to seal something within, and softens again. She does not seem to have noticed the shift in her expression, but it remains as a ghost in my mind.

‘I’ve arranged a hammock for you in the women’s dormitory,’ she says. ‘There is also a spare blanket. I’ll come and show you.’

As I press my head down on the pillow and wrap the blankets around me, I wonder if there is something they are not telling me, but sleep comes soft like warm water and all thoughts drift away.

The round room is lit by dim glow-glasses, and four tattoos stare at me from chairs arranged in a circle. Above them I watch the shifts on the faces of Alva, Janos, Askari and the woman with the birthmark, who introduced herself as Tirra. I tell them about the day I left the House of Webs, about Weaver and Lazaro and Biros. I say nothing about Spinner, or the underground grotto where her ancestors sleep in their amber shells, because that cannot be of importance to them, and I wish to keep it as mine alone. I tell them about the House of the Tainted: the tattoos, the guards, the ships and the coral. I can see that only some of it is news to them. As I speak, I begin to feel as if my words are rain against a glass wall. They shatter and pour down to the floor without making a mark.

When I have finished, they are all silent.

‘You’ve been through a lot,’ Tirra says eventually. ‘Thank you.’

‘Is there,’ I begin, and stop. This room is strange to me, and there is something behind their silence that is tall and wide and heavy. ‘I mean to say, could I ask what has happened while I was away?’

Alva’s eyes move. She does not quite give a quick sideways glance at Janos, and Janos does not quite respond to it.

‘Is there anything else I can do or help with?’ I continue.

‘Not for the time being,’ Askari says. ‘But I think it would be fair to give you an update.’ He pauses and looks at Tirra, whose mouth grows taut, then softens. She gives a slow nod.

Askari turns back to me.

‘Dreamers working in the Ink Quarters have begun to alter the composition of the tattoo ink according to directions from Alva and Irena.’

I notice Janos looking at Alva. He is probably unaware of the smile that lifts his face for a moment. There is admiration in it, and more.

‘But it will probably still be months until enough people will begin to get their dreams back,’ Askari continues.

I remember the original plans we had for the timing when we first began to talk about the possibilities with Janos, Valeria and Irena.

‘Are you aiming for the next Word-incineration?’ I ask.

‘We were,’ Janos says, ‘but we are getting worried about how much longer we can wait. Yesterday’s flood caused a lot of damage on the island.’

Their faces are serious and weary. I have thought about the same thing. The island may not be able to take another flood.

‘We still wish to use the contents of the codex to convince people to leave,’ Askari says. ‘But we may have to proceed faster than intended.’

‘Leave, you say,’ I reply. ‘It would take a lot of ships to carry everyone. How would you do that?’

‘There are enough ships on the island,’ Askari says. ‘It’s a matter of getting people on those ships, and getting the ships’ crews to work for us. We are almost ready. Our work didn’t begin three months ago, or even a year ago.’

Tirra places her hand on Askari’s, and he quiets. I wait until I am certain he will not say more.

It is a strange realization, and one that brings a faint wave of shame with the understanding. Valeria, Janos and I may have come across the codex, but we are pebbles on a wide and far-stretching shore, not the moon that will turn the tide. Without us and the codex, Dreamers would have found another way to proceed. They may have been dreaming of a new future for the island when we were not even babies in our cots yet. And they have known me for less than a day; there is no reason why they should trust me with their most important plans.

‘I understand,’ I say. ‘But I want to continue looking for Valeria. How long do I have?’

‘It is time,’ Tirra says, not to anyone in particular.

Askari turns to look at Alva and Janos. Janos shifts on his seat and I see two lines appear on his brow. Alva takes a deep breath.

‘Time for what?’ I ask. A tight knot is forming inside me, pressing at me like a fist from within.

‘Eliana, after you disappeared, we looked for both of you everywhere,’ Alva says. ‘Dreamers all over the island, in the City Guard, in places where they would hear things. Nobody knew anything.’ She pauses to take another deep breath and glances at Janos, who places his hand on her arm. ‘Then, three weeks ago, a woman was found in Halfway Canal. She had been in the water for some time.’

The fist inside me clenches tighter. Its knuckles are sharp, like broken glass. I cannot hear this.

Janos gives Alva’s arm a quick squeeze.

‘She was Valeria’s age and size. She had red hair and pale skin.’

‘There are other red-haired women her age on the island,’ I say. My voice is hollow, made of shards that will fall apart at any moment.

Alva looks at me and there are tears in her eyes.

‘I went to see her. It was her.’

‘How can you be certain?’ I ask. The words break, they fall into the wind and are swept into the sea with everything else.

‘She’d been in the water for a long time,’ Alva says. ‘But I saw her tattoos. She had your name tattooed on her palm. Eliana, Valeria is dead.’