covered with two inches of snow. He reached over the side to push it away.
Two hands grabbed his shoulders, toppling him backwards. He lashed out. His elbow contacted-something- someone. A cry was stifled. The return blow, hard and fast, caught him in the ribs. He wheezed. A hand clamped over his mouth, halving his air. He struggled and wrenched the wrist away-a surprisingly thin wrist-but his assailant already had an arm against his throat and was dragging him backwards. Vikram reached around and punched behind him. The blow returned a muffled grunt. They were at the edge of the boat. Vikram tilted backwards and he realized his assailant was using Vikram’s own body weight as an anchor.
They tumbled overboard together, hitting the water with a compact splash. Vikram went under. The cold immersed him. His lungs seared with salt. He broke surface, gasping. Snowflakes poured onto his face. Arms wrapped once more around his chest and a voice whispered in his ear, “Quiet now. We’re getting you out.”
The cold was paralysing. He could not find the energy to speak, let alone fight. The assailant’s legs kicked under him with strong movements. He was towed steadily away from the boat.
One moment he was looking at the boat, the next a billowing sphere of flames. A fiery cloud blossomed-it seemed to hang, for a few, infinite seconds-and then a shower of sparks rained over the surface. Hot ash sprayed Vikram’s face. He did not think to wipe it away. He barely noticed his assailant hauling him into another vehicle. He was staring, mute, at the spot where his boat had been. The backs of his eyes prickled, and he felt a rush of sadness.
“Lie low,” whispered the voice again. “You were being followed. They will come to see what has happened.”
It was just a boat. He knew that. Vikram turned his head away from the destruction and saw his opponent’s face in the last of the firelight.
“Ilona?”
Incredulity wiped out anything else. The girl, Nils’s girl, was crouched low inside the boat. It was a tiny boat, and Ilona was inches from Vikram. She spoke urgently.
“Tell me Vikram, this is very important. They will be using you to find us. There was probably a tracker on board your boat. Is there one on you?”
“Ilona, what the hell are you-”
“Are they tracking you, Vikram?”
“Yes. Yes of course they are. Back of the neck. You can only feel it if you know it’s there. It’s like a disc…”
He pulled down his scarves and felt the cold thrill against the patch of bare skin. Ilona took something out of a pocket. He felt her gloved fingers push against his neck before the air numbed his skin to all sensation.
“What are you doing?”
“Dampening it. Done.” She pulled the scarves back up. “Keep low.”
“Where are we going?”
“The unremembered quarters.”
“Why are we going there?”
“That’s where Adelaide is. Don’t worry. Nils is there.”
“Nils? What’s he got to do-”
“No more questions, Vikram.”
Ilona began to row. His journey continued in silence. The shock was impacting on him now, physical and mental. Fate was playing havoc with his soul tonight. He felt sick.
Every few towers, Ilona eased into an offshoot waterway and stopped.
“Look.” She pointed. Vikram saw the dull shadow of a patrol boat crawling past. Searchlights arced from their prows.
“If a searchlight comes over, get in the water,” Ilona muttered. “These days they shoot dead bodies for fun.”
The night had come alive at last. The blizzard was pierced by intermittent gunfire. Muffled by the snowfall, it was difficult to pinpoint from where the sounds came. Vikram was full of questions, but all of Ilona’s concentration was on the boat. The air felt choked with halted conflict.
He saw Mikkeli, perched on the end of the coracle, her feet trailing in the water. She was made entirely of snowflakes and foam.
Keli? Is that you?
Oh, I’m here Vik. I’m with you every step of the way. Always have been.
Stay with me, Keli.
But she didn’t speak again. Soon she too drifted away from the raft, and the faint plash of Ilona’s oars in the snow-filled night was the only proof that they were both alive.
“Ilona? Is Drake safe?”
“Yes.”
“What about-”
But she wouldn’t know Shadiyah, or Marete and Hal, or Hella, or old Mr Argele.
They were approaching the unremembered quarters. Not even the shanty-boats or the dealers came here, only the dregs of destitution. These quarters were cursed.
“We’re here,” said Ilona.
The crooked tower loomed overhead, an absence where the snow did not fall. This was the one they said was inhabited, not by people, but by something else. The one that had burned. He imagined the ghosts clinging to the walls, their hands like suckered amphibians. He thought he heard them whisper. About him? To him?
There was no decking. Part of the wall was broken and the sea surged inside. Ilona steered the boat through the gap. Inside, the sound of her oars echoed back at them and water ran off the walls in small streams.
How could he possibly get Adelaide out without a boat? And shouldn’t Linus have known that the rebels would find the tracker?
Ilona rowed through the flooded rooms until they reached the stairwell. She switched on a torch and secured the craft to the rusting rail.
“This way. We’ve blocked the other stairwells, this is the only way up.”
Vikram followed her up the crumbling steps. The water logged in his upper clothing was beginning to freeze and he crackled when he moved. Every step was an effort. Ilona held the torch in front of them. They progressed slowly. Everywhere Vikram looked the building was falling to bits. Black powder fell away when he brushed the walls. Despite the freezing temperature, the smell of stale dead things reached his nose. Preserved carcasses of half-eaten animals lined the steps. Ten flights up Ilona’s torch flared on a man sitting bolt upright, his eyes wide and accusing but no life left in their gaze.
They kept going past the corpse. Vikram’s muscles were trembling with fatigue. He lost track of the floors and was disorientated by the time Ilona said, “This is us.”
She knocked on the door. There was a pause, then an answering knock from the other side. Ilona replied with a more complicated pattern. Vikram heard the sounds of furniture shifting and then the door scraped open.
“Vik!”
Something hard and furry flung itself at him. He disentangled himself from the pair of arms and found himself looking at the dark eyes and slightly squashed nose of Drake. She was grinning from ear to ear. His answering smile was wobbly with relief.
“I told you he’d make it,” Drake flung back over her shoulder. “Get inside, Vik, you’re freezing.”
The room was dark except for the torchlight and the glow of a heater, around which the others were gathered, bulked up in shapeless layers of wool and hide. Ilona went straight over to Nils. He lifted his hand to his shoulder and she squeezed it and Nils said something to her Vikram didn’t hear. He recognized Rikard, the guy Drake had said hello to that night in the bar. So there’d been something to it after all, or there was now. There was a third man that he did not know.
Rikard and the stranger were staring at Vikram openly, but Nils did not look at him.
“Hi, Nils.”
“Vik.”
For a moment, the tension between the two men was like salt on a wound. Slowly, Nils stood up and crossed the room. Nils hesitated. Then he lifted his arms and engulfed Vikram in a hug.
