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.
A female voice shouted above the rest. “Liis! Over here!”
Leaning over the handrail from the floor above was the girl with the black tooth. Drake. Liis yelled back and Adelaide located her guide again. She wasn’t far ahead. Adelaide pushed through to her, relief welling, and together they joined Drake. People streamed from above and below, funnelling into a corridor.
“Early raid,” Drake panted. “We better get over the bridge. They’re already at level thirteen.”
“I’ve got me ma and all,” said Liis, gesturing below. In the moving crowd Adelaide saw the gaggle of mother, the boy and the two children. Liis’s mother had the bundle of bedding strapped to her back.
Drake gripped Liis’s arm.
“I know, I know, it’ll be alright, just make sure you get over, they mustn’t find anyone in the network.”
Liis waved at her family. “This way!”
Drake dove into the corridor. Liis followed Drake and Adelaide followed Liis. It was the lightest part of the tower that Adelaide had seen so far. Then she saw that the people in front were framed against a doorway. The light was coming from outside. They were going out of the tower, and there was no glass, no shuttle lines or enclosed bridges.
The queue in front of her dwindled in short bursts. There were twenty people between Adelaide and the exit. There were five. Then two. Liis was no longer in front. She gasped, tried to turn around, and was knocked forward. She was in the doorway.
Before she knew what was happening, her feet had stepped out onto an impossibly narrow metal catwalk. The wind whipped her hair out of its hood. She clutched at the rails and found two slack plastic ropes. She was wobbling on a rail in open air fifty floors above surface.
The bridge fed into the tower opposite. People in front of her were walking sure-footed along the metal. It
