People— lived here., for sometimes Effie would spot lights on the shore. Occasionally fbev passed oihei rivercraft shallow skiffs and one-seat longboats putted by gaunt — looking men and women wrapped in boiled skins and beavers fur. Waker and his father offered no greeting to their fellow boatmen. Effie guessed they were in the Graylands by then. She and Chedd didn't talk much about Clan Gray anymore. Eggtooth's words had thrown a large damp blanket on the subject She could no longer argue against Chedd's crazy notions of human sacrifices and bog baiting. She'd even started thinking that she and Chedd would have been better off if they'd been pirated by Eggtooth. You could stab a pig.
She wasn't so sure about half-things. Leaning forward, she touched Chedd lightly on the cheek. "What's wrong?" she murmured as quietly as she could.
Chedd shook his head. They were both aware that Waker's father was behind them, watching their every move. It was so dark now that you could see only the few feet of water beyond the boat that were illuminated by the bow lamp. Chedd made a small motion with his right arm, flexing it as if he was warding off a cramp. Something plonked into the water nearby and as it did so Chedd murmured over his shoulder to Effie, "It's like ghosts."
For her own sake just as much as Chedd's Effie Sevrance decided she was going to stay calm. She decided this very firmly, nodding her head. Whatever Chedd perceived—and she believed he perceived something—was probably not unknown to Waker and his father. They knew these waters. This was their clanhold. And unless it happened to be one of those special nights that came around once or twice a year when all sorts of spirits and dead things were permitted to walk the earth for reasons that were unclear to Effie—then this was a normal occurrence. It didn't mean it was good—Waker was paddling like a fiddler playing a particularly fast and difficult tune—but it didn't mean there was any reason to panic.
No reason at all.
We are Gray and Stone Gods fear us and leave us be. Repeating part of the Gray boast didn't help. So she tried the Blackhail one instead. We are Blackhail, first amongst clans. And we do not cower and we do not hide. And we will have our revenge. That was more like it.
Waker and his father executed a series of sharp turns that zig-zagged the boat around an island of woody rushes and steered them away from the main channel. Soon the rushes began closing in. They formed fences oi either side of the boat, rising as tall as ten feet, bristling and pale flattened in places and crushed in others. They stank like meat broth turned bad. Effie scrunched up her shoulders and brought her elbows to meetfeoss her chest. She did not want them scratching her. Festerers, that's what Drey would have called them.
Both Waker and his father sat. Waker ceased poling completely, but his father began a tilling motion with the paddle, gently keeping the boat in motion. The channel narrowed and the rushes created a tunnel around the hull. Rush heads scraped against the gunwales, rustling and scratching, bending and snapping off. A sting of pain on her cheek told Effie she had been stabbed, and as she raised her hand to bat the offending stem away she spotted the dim glow of lights reflecting in the water. The sight of them made her gulp. They were a deep, unearthly green.
Waker grunted something to his father, and the old man took his paddle from the water. Effie turned to look at him and she watched as he cupped his hands around his lips and issued a deep whooping noise, like a crane. A second passed and then the call was returned from two separate locations. Waker's father grinned at Effie as she turned to track them.
"Feed the dog a bone. Girlie's coming home"
Suddenly the reed stands cleared and water opened up ahead. Effie saw rings of green lights burning just above the surface. Waker stood again, but before he resumed poling he glanced over his shoulder at Effie and Chedd. A man checking on his cargo, Effie thought. She hoped Chedd had stopped feeling the ghosts. Behind her, Waker's father began rummaging noisily through a sack. Effie tried to resist thinking about what he was up to but in the end she could not bear it, and looked round.
It took her a moment to understand what she was seeing. Waker's father was combing his near baldy head with a pickax, dragging the scant and greasy hairs back one by one. He had a mean and victorious look in his eye. Effie began work on her best, most withering glare— the man truly was insane—and then the missing piece of the puzzle fell into place. The memory of Waker's words from a month earlier burned through her brain like drops of acid. "Tomorrow I put leg irons on you. Once they are on there is nothing in my possession that can remove them. I carry no ax strong enough to cut the chains or no pick with the correct hore to punch out the pins."
She had believed hiim She and Chedd had believed them. She had lost her love and nearly died because of those chains. And he had still kept them on her. Foolishly she had thought there was some honor between them and that after Waker had pulled her from the water she owed it to him to be a good passenger. She had owed him nothing. He and his father were kidnappers, and if she and Chedd had thought there was a possibility of freeing themselves from the chains they would have tried an escape. Chedd Limehouse and Effie Sevrance would have given it a go. The master faker and master gamer could have cooked something up.
Effie felt betrayed. And stupid. And suddenly very afraid. She and Chedd were going to be fed to the bog.
Waker's father waited for full comprehension to dawn's on Effie's face and then carelessly tossed the pickax in the water.
Facing front, Effie tried to breathe away the tightness in her chest. She should have snatched the pickax from him and put it through his eye. More soberly she wondered if she would ever tell Chedd. Was there any point? Only if the fish decide not to eat us.
A fortress of bulrushes encircled the open water that contained Clan Gray's roundhouse. Dark paths led through the tangle of hard canes like mouse cracks in a wall. Waker completed punting the boat through one such crack and they floated into the shallow lake. Giant rings of green light burned just above the water. Effie could hear the hiss of marsh gases and smell the methane. The Gray roundhouse was a black hump in the center of the lake. Massive torches circled it, their stands twenty feet high, their heads shaped like giant beehives. The same eerie green flames that flickered above the water burned at the top of each torch.
The roundhouse sat on an island of oozing mud shored with stones, bird skeletons, muskrat bones and a basketwork of canes. Wooden landings and causeways extended out from the main structure, supported by pilings for the first few feet and then left to float upon the lake. Ladders woven from canes and rushes led below the black water. Rafts and other shallow craft were tied to mooring poles. Some poles sticking out from the lake had iron baskets lashed to them; Effie could not see what was inside them.
Gray's roundhouse was not round; it was an octagon made from rotting cedar planks and marsh mud baked into clinker. Part of it looked to be sinking. Bands of square windows ran along its upper stories but all of the shutters were closed. Some had been boarded up. A few had been sealed with metal bars. Weeds were growing from softened sections of roof timber and a snarl of chokevines was threatening to overgrow the clan door. "Buckets of mother-mud!" Chedd whispered with feeling. Effie had never heard that particular curse before but it seemed to sum things up.
A man and a woman floating on a basic raft of lashed logs moved to intercept the boat. The woman had a scrawny coon hat perched on her head like a bird's nest—she was the one doing the poling. The man was sitting cross-legged. He was wearing muskrat furs dyed green, and his skin was mottled like a newt's.
"Way-Ker" he said, turning the name into two separate words and seeming somehow to disparage it. "What birdies have you brought us today?"