Wolf Tide Read online

  WOLF TIDE

  A Novel

  by

  CATHERINE FOX

  Copyright © Catherine Fox, 2013

  Catherine Fox has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form and by any means, without prior permission.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  For my sisters, Grace, Ruth and Hilary, with love.

  CHAPTER 1

  A shout in the night: ‘Open up!’ Then a fist on the door. Bang-bang-bang! ‘Open up! It’s the Guard!’

  Anabara lurched awake. More hammering. She snatched up her wool robe and stumbled downstairs.

  Five officers burst in. Cold night clung to their uniforms. Nets. Iron stunning poles.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Stand back.’ A grey-haired one flashed a badge. ‘Border Control. Requesting access to your property. We’ve an illegal alien cornered out the back. Go upstairs, please. Now. Could be dangerous.’ He opened the stairs door.

  ‘But—’

  He thrust her through. ‘Now, Ms Nolio.’ The door closed behind her.

  For a moment she stood in the dark stairway, heart galloping. She could hear them in her yard. Shouts. Over there. Quick! That’s it, close in. Net! Net! Net!

  Dear God, what was out there? Some kind of feral Fairy criminal? She fled up the stairs to her room, got back under the quilt. More shouts. What if it overpowered them and broke in? She turned the lamp on to keep fear at bay. Please, please let them catch it.

  Suddenly a scrabbling overhead. It was on her roof! Anabara bit back a scream. Her eyes locked on to the porthole window in the roof. It doesn’t open, it’s too small, nothing can get in!

  A hand, clawing. Oh dear God! And a face. A tiny pointed face.

  No! It was a child. A Fairy child. For a second the black eyes stared into hers. Alien eyes from a different reality, stranger and wilder than any hawk’s. Then the creature was wrenched off the roof, nails scratching down tiles. Gone.

  A cheer from the yard below. Back-slapping. They were trouping through her house. Job done.

  A child. Anabara pressed a hand to her mouth. Five men armed with nets and irons to hunt down a child? She felt sick.

  ‘Ms Nolio?’ a voice called up the stairs. ‘All finished now, thanks.’

  She trembled as she made her way back down, knees buckling on each step.

  It was the grey-haired Guard. He saw her face and put a hand on her arm. ‘Sorry, love. I know, I know. Rough business.’

  ‘But it was a child, Officer!’

  ‘Routine precaution. Could have been an assassin using a cloaking charm.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous! How likely is that?’

  ‘Still, safety regs—got to comply. But we got the parents earlier, so yes, in all probability it was a genuine child.’ He gave her a little squeeze. ‘We’ll have her back with Mum and Dad in no time, safe and sound, so don’t you fret.’

  She snatched her arm away. ‘Don’t patronise me, Officer! I know you’re going to deport them.’

  He looked at her, blew out a sigh. ‘Well, let’s not get into all that now. It’s been a long night. Sorry to drag you out of bed.’

  ‘Don’t try and fob me off! They’re refugees, they—’

  ‘Now, now.’ He had his hand up. ‘If they want to cross, they have to go through the proper channels like everyone else, or we’d be overrun. No,’ he made for the door. ‘Not getting into it with you now. I’m just doing my job. Goodnight, Ms Nolio. Thanks again for your co-operation.’

  Co-operation? It felt like collaboration.

  She shut the door after him and went back up to bed. It was a long, long time before she fell asleep. And when she finally did—that dream again. The one where she’d put the baby in the cellar and forgotten about it. And now it was too late, she knew it must have starved to death.

  She lurched awake once more, cold with sweat. Dawn. Pale light through the porthole. In the distance a shrine bell. Gulls keened. A mule cart rumbled past. The city was waking up. Slowly her pulse returned to normal. She stared up at the window. That tiny face. Those black eyes. There was nothing she could have done for it. Nothing. But it still felt like a betrayal.

  Anabara opened the top half of her door and looked out across the narrow cobbled street. The houses opposite leaned on one another like drunken sailors. Washer-wenches clomped by in clogs. A pedlar toiled up hill, pack swaying. She stuck her head out and craned up. Bright autumn sun, clouds racing in the blue. On every chimney pot in Larridy the wind flutes sang of the long gone sea. Forget the dream, she told herself, forget the Fairy. It’s an amazing morning to be alive on, to be seventeen years old with the whole of your life ahead of you. Be happy! Shirts snapped on a hundred lines. The smell of starch and blueing crept up the hill from the washeries. Then from high up on the city isle’s summit she heard the Minstery bells chime for Morning Prayers. Be happy, be happy.

  But how?—when in her hand was a final reminder from her counsel, demanding an insane, unpayable sum? She gripped her spiky bronze hair. Even at fifty gilders and hour, how could she possibly owe him that much? The dream rushed back at her. Oh, for heaven’s sake! She didn’t even have cellar, let alone a baby to abandon in it!

  No, but she had a cupboard under the stairs where for months she’d been shoving her paperwork without even looking at it. All those case notes she’d never got round to writing up. The red-edged bills and menacing letters from the bank, from the Revenue men. Yes, that’s what the dream was about; triggered by the trauma of last night’s horrible arrest, no doubt. She was such an idiot—she really ought to get on to the filing. Except that now it had turned into the folktale Boagle-man. She’d got to the stage when she was too scared to look. So long as you didn’t look, there was still a faint possibility it was still all right. That the baby was alive and well…

  Tscha! Idiot. She made herself face it. Say she actually was bankrupt. Say she’d spent the last of her inheritance from her parents, that the bailiffs came and took everything, and her landlord threw her out. Not like she’d be homeless, was it, not with the hordes of relatives she’d got. And she could always join the City Guard. Chief Dhalafan would fast-track her application. She could carry on being a detective, only this way she’d have security. Regular income. Colleagues. A pension. She could challenge Border Control policy from the inside. Look: going bust could even be a good thing, in the long run.

  The bells chimed on. Be happy, be happy.

  Instead furious tears welled up. Anabara kicked her door. Blue paint flaked off. Dammit. They were all going to say I told you so. You’re far too young. It’s man’s work. Oh, if only cousin Linna hadn’t left. They’d made such a good team. But Linna wasn’t coming back any time soon, not with a baby on the way. Dammit! I refuse to be a failure. I just need a big job with a nice fat fee to get me back on my feet. Then I can hire an assistant to sort the cupboard out, and everything will be fine.

  But sh
e still couldn’t shake off her dream, or her sense of guilt at not helping the Fairy child. It felt like she’d walked through a cobwebby tunnel and the strands were still sticking to her face. The chiming stopped. In desperation she fell back on an old childhood habit. She asked a boon of St Pelago.

  I’ll go to Prayers, promise. Just send me a job. Please, send me a job. And send me a man while you’re at it, she added. (Well, no harm in asking, was there?)

  Her hand was still making the threefold sign—forehead, lips, heart—when the messenger appeared.

  She heard the boots first. Watched him swagger round the corner. Offcomer of some sort—around 18 or 19, a student from up in the Precincts. Tall. He wore the grey uniform like he was strutting in satin britches. She’d never seen him before. New intake. Probably strayed down here for the legendary washer-wench friendliness. Anabara pretended to study her counsel’s bill so he wouldn’t catch her staring.

  The striding boots halted level with her door. Waited. The baker’s sign creaked. A gull mewed.

  Then he clicked his tongue as if she were a horse. ‘Hey! Pretty girl.’

  Up went her chin. She slid the letter in her pocket.

  His eyes were black as any Fairy’s and twice as bold. Some tribal plainsman, judging by the accent. He approached. ‘May I see your titties?’

  She gawped. ‘No, you may not!’

  ‘No? A man loses nothing by asking. The worse you can do is refuse, hey?’

  ‘Well, you’ve obviously not met many Gull women!’

  ‘No, never. But you don’t look like a Gull, I think.’ He rested an arm on her door, stuck his head through and looked her up and down. Then he shook his head. ‘You have golden eyes, true, but you are too small, too dark for a Gull.’

  She wasn’t about to explain her mixed blood to this buffoon.

  ‘Is it true you can fly? Yes? Why you don’t talk to me, hey?’ He leant closer still. Close enough for her to catch his musky smell. She stood her ground, tried to stare him down. ‘Kiss me,’ he whispered.

  She coloured. ‘Tscha!’

  At this he laughed. Strong white teeth in his tanned face. One of the front ones was chipped. She could see holes in his earlobes where rings had been stripped out. Where was he from? He spoke Commons fluently enough. ‘You live here all alone, pretty girl? Why you have no husband, no father to protect you, hey?’

  ‘I don’t need protecting,’ she snarled. ‘I can look after myself, mister!’

  ‘She’s fierce!’ His laugh rang out in the street again. ‘Come, since you are not in the mood for kisses, you may give me directions. I’m looking for…’ he drew a letter from inside the breast of his shirt, ‘one Anabara Nolio.’

  ‘That’s me, clown.’ She jerked a thumb at the sign overhead. Nolio Investigations. ‘Here, give.’ She twitched the letter out of his fingers. The envelope bore a black seal: the Minstery triple rings and gull.

  ‘Is from Doctor Scholasticus,’ he said. ‘He says, come quick-quick.’

  Anabara broke the seal and skimmed the circumbendibus prose. It was indeed from the scholasticus. Newly appointed, she’d not met him yet. Tendered herewith most cordial greetings. If he might humbly prevail upon her. Utmost importance. At a time convenient to her, present herself in the University library. A matter most pressing. He remained in all things her obedient etc. In other words, quick-quick.

  Anabara seized a jacket and left her house, banging the door behind her.

  ‘Why you don’t lock your home in the big bad city?’ the messenger asked.

  ‘The door’s charmed.’

  ‘Charmed!’ He stepped away in disgust. ‘By a Fay?’

  ‘Excuse me?’ She rounded on him. ‘We don’t say that. We say “person from the Fairy Nations”, you racist bigot.’

  ‘Ah, I did not know this.’ He raised his hands in mock surrender. ‘Don’t hurt me, I beg! But what can I say? My countrymen, we have no dealings with these “Persons from the Fairy Nations”. To us, their ways are unclean, perverted.’ He set off up the hill at a slapping pace.

  She tried to rein in her rage. Not fair to take it out on him. Plenty of Larridy folk shared his views.

  ‘So,’ he waited for her to catch up. ‘You could fly up to the top, hey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why don’t you?’

  She pointed to the No Flying sign.

  ‘Hah, rules!’ he scoffed. ‘You keep the rules, Anabara Nolio? Like a good girl? Why you no fly up the hill?’

  Lord, if I had a gilder for every time I’d had this conversation. ‘Why don’t you run up?’

  ‘Is very steep. Even for me, athlete that I am, running up this hill is hard work.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Ah, but if I could fly, then I would be always flying.’

  She didn’t bother to reply. In a minute he’d try and goad her into giving him a demonstration. They all did.

  His boots clumped over the cobbles. They followed the old Skuller road as it snailed its way up the hill towards the Precincts. ‘They say that Gulls get fat and lazy,’ remarked the messenger.

  And there it was: the goad.

  ‘Then they can’t get off the ground. So maybe you’re getting lazy, Anabara Nolio? And fat?’

  ‘How dare you!’ She halted by the narrow cut that sliced the hillside clear to the summit, where they hauled the barrows in olden times, now replaced by steps. ‘Fat? I can outrun you, any day, athlete!’

  He laughed.

  ‘I’ll prove it!’ She pointed to the zigzag ladder of flights. ‘You go the quick way—up the Fairy Teeth, there—and I’ll go the long way. And then we’ll see who’s fat and lazy!’

  ‘Done!’

  ‘Done! Ready, go!’ She set off like a hare.

  At the next bend she slowed to the Isle-dweller’s steady swinging pace. Skuller Road brought her back past the cut twice more, where she heard the sound of his boots pounding the Fairy Teeth, each time higher, more distant. Finally she dawdled her way across St Pelago Plaza towards the stone gatehouse of the Minstery Precincts.

  The messenger stood under a chestnut tree by the marble drinking fountain, arms folded. His shirt was wringing wet. She was betting he’d had his head in the trough.

  ‘Hello!’ she called. ‘Looks like you won.’

  His dark eyes burned. ‘You are a bad woman, Anabara Nolio. You make a fool of a stranger.’

  ‘Welcome to Larridy.’ Offcomer, she didn’t add.

  He spun on his heel and strode off. That was when she spotted it. Unmistakably, in his cropped fair hair was shaved the spiral of a Minstery novice.

  Tscha! The first interesting man she’d met in months, and he was embarking on three years of celibacy.

  She watched till he was out of sight. Then came a little spurt of panic: if this was how her prayers for a man were going to be answered, what kind of job was the Saint planning to give her?

  CHAPTER 2

  Anabara hesitated in front of the library. She’d spent half her childhood in the Minstery Precincts. This was the first time she’d ever felt nervous up here. She squared her shoulders. I am a warrior from a long line of warriors. On both sides of the family. What can the scholasticus possibly want of me that I cannot achieve? Bring it on.

  She found him in the great round reading room. A tall black-skinned Galen. He looked as stiff and lean as a new broom.

  ‘Ah, Ms Nolio.’ He shook her hand. ‘So grateful to you for coming. I may have a job for you. You deal in security issues, do you not?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘Excellent. Well, the simple fact is this—the security in this library is totally inadequate!’

  adequate! adequate! adequate!

  Anabara glanced up at the ceiling. Hey, that wasn’t a real echo, it was a piss-taking mimic charm! Some student pranksters must have put it there. Had the scholasticus worked it out yet?

  She assumed her most business-like manner. ‘So, what’s the problem, exactly?’
/>   ‘Well, for a start, this is not a lending library, yet it seems clear to me that books are being borrowed willy-nilly.’

  Willy-willy-willy! sniggered the echo.

  The scholasticus glared up at the vault.

  Anabara could feel eyes watching all round the reading room. Students at desks, students behind shelves, up on book ladders, leaning over gallery rails. The stained glass figures in the cupola windows were probably watching too.

  The scholasticus gestured. ‘Come along!’

  -long, -dong, -schlong!

  Her footfalls sounded on the tiled Round Room floor. The scholasticus moved softly, barefoot of course, his long grey robes whispering. He waved her through a door and shut it behind them. They emerged into the library cloister. Sunshine streamed down into the central courtyard where water tinkled in a porphyry fountain. A leaf drifted down from the cherry tree.

  ‘That bloody echo. Forgive me, but I can’t hear myself think in there. If your company can deal with that as well, so much the better. You employ someone from the Fairy Nations, I take it? Excellent.’

  They turned the first corner and continued along the west side of the cloister.

  ‘Needless to say, you came highly recommended,’ said the scholasticus.

  Her heart began to patter with excitement. Money, big money. Please, St Pelago.

  ‘And as we will be demanding your full time and attention, we are prepared to pay double your usual rates, to remunerate you for any loss of business that might arise.’

  She managed to smile graciously, not punch the air.

  He rubbed his bony hands. ‘So. Essentially, our goal is a complete overhaul of library security. Initially, what we require is a far-reaching and thorough report into how things stand. And book retrieval. Volumes have, it’s clear, gone missing.’

  ‘Have you tried advertising a book recall, no questions asked?’

  ‘Yes, I’m considering an amnesty,’ he said, as if he’d rather boil the culprits in oil. ‘With all due respect to my honoured predecessor, you cannot run an historic library like a gentlemen’s club!’ he burst out. ‘Nobody’s done a stock check for generations. We have literally thousands of irreplaceable books and manuscripts! Many of which are currently propping open student windows, for all I know! Some of the realm’s earliest charters are housed in the underground Stacks! Furthermore—’