Akisi shrieked again, certain he was about to die.
The bottom of the boat rested gently on the shingle underneath and tipped slightly to one side. Elenya looked around and sighed. ‘That appears to be that.’ She stood up, stepped overboard and waded the rest of the way to the shore.
Without her weight, the wood tried to rise in the sea. Va unhitched the oars and wedged the blades under his seat. He got out too, and the hull lifted clear of the bottom. He felt in the water for the painter, and having found it drifting backwards and forwards like a frond of seaweed, he put it over his shoulder and started dragging.
When the rowing boat became grounded, Va cut Akisi’s leg bonds and made him walk. He then pulled the boat clear of the sea and tipped the water out onto the stony beach. The book flopped out, a heavy, wet lump.
Akisi instinctively stepped towards it, and Va growled deep in his throat. ‘It’s not yours, thief.’ He let the boat fall back and picked up the jet black bundle.
‘Any idea where we are?’ Elenya searched the sky for clues.
‘Between An Cobh and An Rinn.’ He walked further up the beach and onto the edge of the scrubby marshland, cut by a hundred riverlets. He got out the map he’d taken from the tower and shook it so that it opened.
‘What’s that?’ asked Elenya.
‘Something I took from Akisi.’ He passed it over.
She held it up to the first light of the sun. ‘I’ve seen better drawings made by children. I’m assuming this bit here is Aeire. This is the other landmass we skirted crossing from Frankland. That’s supposed to be an island too, yes?’
‘Is this to scale?’ Va turned his head to make better sense of the lines. ‘Ask him.’
Elenya waved the map at Akisi, who sat and shivered in the poor shelter provided by the boat. ‘Where did you copy the map from?’
‘The book. Not this one. Another one.’
‘Another one. How many did you steal?’
He hung his head. ‘Two.’
‘What did you do with it?’
‘Sold it.’ His head came up again. ‘I had to eat, didn’t I?’
‘You really are a little shit, aren’t you?’ Elenya turned the map upside down. ‘He took it from another of the books. And before you ask, he sold it for food.’
‘Where?’ Va was suddenly agitated.
‘I don’t know yet. If you want, I can go and hold his head under the water until he tells me. Or not, and he drowns.’
‘No, don’t.’ He took the parchment from her. ‘Have you seen a pre-Reversal map before? They look wrong, so this might be of limited use.’
‘This is the Inner ocean. The emperor’s lands are to the north, so that’d be at the bottom of the map. And look, he’s marked a route from down here on the coast, up this squiggly line to this bay here.’
Va turned the map the right way up again. ‘The Caliphate is here, to the south and west. Mother Russia is south of there again, off the map. This is his escape map. Find the point furthest from his emperor, and go there.’
Elenya bent down and wrung the water from her skirts. ‘It’s day. We ought to think about getting away from here. Ardhal will be out, looking for his man.’
‘We need to leave this island, get this book back to the patriarch and find the one Akisi sold. Then we must retrieve the ten remaining ones from the emperor of Kenya, wherever he is.’
‘That should be straightforward enough,’ said Elenya, her voice tightening. ‘After all, getting the first one was a piece of piss!’
Va bared his teeth and growled like a wolf. ‘You can go home if you want. I will not rest. Now get Akisi on his feet. We’ve a walk ahead of us.’
She cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘You, Kenyan. Up.’ Then to Va: ‘Where are we going?’
‘To see a man about a boat. A man called Rory macShiel.’
They took the boat across the mouth of the river and started the climb up the valley. Solomon Akisi followed reluctantly, alternately pushed and pulled when his speed dropped below what the two Rus thought acceptable.
Halfway up, during one of his frequent rests, he spotted a group of horsemen on the wrong side of the estuary. He opened his mouth to call out, and felt something sharp prick his neck.
‘Crouch down, Akisi. And if you make a sound, I’ll stick you like a pig and leave you to bleed.’ Elenya put her other hand on his shoulder and showed him the way to the ground.
The horsemen wheeled around aimlessly, then one of them spotted the abandoned rowing boat on the far shore.
‘I should have set it adrift,’ said Va. ‘Fortunately the river’s too wide for them to cross.’
‘The nearest bridge could be just upstream.’
‘It doesn’t mean that they’ll come back here. They might take the road, or follow the river.’
‘What would you do?’
‘Split up and cover as much ground as possible.’
‘Which is what they’re going to do. They’re not stupid.’ She watched the men ride off inland with renewed urgency. When they were far enough away, she pulled her knife away from the African’s throat. ‘Careful how you go, Akisi. The cliffs are high, and you might trip.’
They gained the top of the hill and started along the edge where the land met the sky. The sea boomed below, and the wind whipped up the sheer rock face.
‘Cold?’ asked Elenya of Akisi.
‘Miserably so. Cold, hungry, tired. I need to rest again.’
‘We don’t have the time. If you want to stay warm, walk faster.’
‘Why are you doing this to me? Him,’ said Akisi, jabbing his tied hands at Va, ‘him I can understand. He’s a fanatic. Nothing else is in his head. But you – you’re not like him at all and I don’t see why you’re helping him. You could have a much better life than this, I’m certain.’
‘You understand nothing at all,’ she said, ‘because you’ve never felt what I feel about him. He is my sun, and I revolve around him whether I choose to or not. I might hate myself for it, to be used in such a way by someone who swears never to return my love. I help him because I can’t help myself.’
‘You’re mad.’
‘You pointed that out to me earlier. But I won’t take your pity. Where he goes, I follow. And for the moment so do you.’
She pushed him on again, to where Va was waiting.
‘We’re here,’ said Va.
Akisi stopped sharply. ‘It’s An Rinn. Why did you bring me back here?’
Va scanned the church, the collection of houses, the windmill. ‘I can’t see any of Ardhal’s men below.’
‘I won’t go,’ said Akisi. He dug his heels in.
Elenya spun the knife in her hand. ‘If you’re worried that they’ll find out you killed their priest; they already know.’ She kicked him in the gut, then threw him down the slope.
A boy sitting in a tree spotted them coming. They saw him climb down and race along the road and through the village as fast as his legs would carry him. As he passed, people came out of their houses, and after looking at each other, they shielded their eyes and looked up the steep slope to the east.
CHAPTER 25
RORY MACSHIEL HAD a harpoon, and looked as if he wanted to use it. He only hesitated because of the presence of Va and Elenya.
‘You dare come back here, Solomon Akisi? After all that you’ve done?’
Akisi looked surprised, shocked even, at the reaction of macShiel and the half-dozen other men behind him.
‘My friends, I can explain everything.’
Incensed, macShiel made to stab the Kenyan, and was dragged back at the very last moment by Brendan macFinn’s father. The point of the spear brushed Akisi’s chest, forcing him back against Va.
‘Let go of me, macFinn – you hate him just as much as I do,’ macShiel managed between the flurry of arms and legs. ‘What did you do, Akisi, put your fingers around his neck and squeeze the life out of him? Then bashed his brains out with a rock while he was helpless?’