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  When the weather got really bad, he started a snowman competition for the kids.

  It wasn't long before Jack who runs the Beer Hut offered him a bed in his shack. Nobody wanted our wonderful Ryder to sleep on a stinky old mattress in the travellers' huts.

  Jack's daughter, Bonnie, was well pleased. She said she was going to pretend she'd had a bad dream and slip into his bed in the middle of the night, but I don't think it worked out, 'cause when Laurel asked her she pretended she never said it.

  In the spring Ryder announced that he was heading south for summer, and there were more tears, more demands on him to promise he'd be back in the autumn.

  We held his goodbye party in the Beer Hut, and my brother Gale pleaded to go with him.

  "I'm sorry, mate," Ryder said, clapping him on the back. "You want to go off on the road―fine, it can be a good life, but what if something happened to you? How would I explain that to your mum and dad? I'd love to have you along, but I say we wait a couple of years, till you're a bit older, and then we'll talk about it again."

  He was right of course, but just for a moment, before he said all that, I noticed him draw back, with this wary expression on his face.

  It was like he thought, shit. No freakin' way.

  I thought about it, afterwards, how clever he was; he made everyone love him but kept them at a distance.

  After he left, there was a lot of restlessness, particularly amongst the younger men. They all wanted to be Ryder. A group of them marched up to the city centre and acted out a half-arsed protest, complaining that we should be allowed to leave Blackthorn as and when we pleased, but Lieutenant Parks soon shut that down.

  "You want to bugger off for a few weeks―fine, off you go. But when you come home you'll be sleeping in the long huts and joining the back of the queue for jobs, same as any other traveller."

  Now Ryder's back, and everyone in Shackers' End is walking around smiling, and saying that life is bound to get better, at last.

  "Our knight in shining armour," Mum says, as we open the door of the Beer Hut and see him standing there in his leather criss-cross guards' tunic, with its thick belt and holsters for knives, and the quiver on his back for his arrows.

  He's accepting slaps on the back and drinks, and making sure his traveller-guard mates are included in the fun, too―Chase and Raven, and Astra, a tall, totally cool black girl who looks awesome in her guards' belt and some great boots with laces that wind round her legs. Makes me wish I could be a guard instead of a stupid pastry cook, but they'd never let me be one.

  I stand back. Ryder's totally boss, but I find that I don't want to slobber all over him like everyone else. It's because of that look on his face when Gale asked if he could go travelling with him. I've pictured it a few times since, but I'm not sure if it's got worse in my mind, 'cause that can happen, can't it?

  I talk to Chase and Raven instead. I fancy Chase, but there is no way on earth I'm having a thing with a traveller. Folk who do, always look all dumb and lonely when their love buggers off in the spring. I'm careful, anyway, about men, 'cause I don't want to get pregnant. That would just be shit.

  Laurel's always got a crush on someone. Hope she doesn't get pregnant; I don't want a baby in our one room.

  I notice that Star is straight in there with an offer of a bed for Ryder in her and Joe's shack. From the look on Joe's face, I don't think she asked him if he was okay with it.

  I leave early. I'm on chicken and mushroom pies tomorrow, and if I've got a hangover the raw chicken makes me want to puke.

  Couple of days later I'm up early, way before Joe comes round. He's the knocker for Logside; he starts his rounds at six every morning, knocking on all the doors to wake us up, then he goes round a second time in case people like Laurel have fallen asleep again.

  I'm on my way back from the shower block, feeling good; the sun is up, the sky is hazy blue, and I can still smell a bit of left-over summer in the air. There's no one much about yet, and I'm walking between the rows of cabins, enjoying the feeling of the grass on my bare feet, when I hear someone shouting my name.

  It's Ryder, lounging against the door of Star and Joe's, holding a mug of something hot; I can see the steam.

  I smile and wave. "Hiya! Nice morning, yeah?"

  "Double nice!" He stretches his arms out, spilling some of his drink. "I feel glad to be alive!"

  He does look hot in his guards' tunic, I have to say, and the early morning light makes his hair look even more golden.

  "D'you wanna see something?" he asks.

  I laugh. "Depends what!"

  "Nothing like that." He gives me his big, lovely smile, and I get a wink, too. "I found myself a real prize―I thought you might like to be the first person to see it."

  Thora, Snowdrop and all the rest of them would be like, ooh, Ryder's singled me out, lucky me. I just shrug and say, "Okay."

  I follow him into the shack; he's on his own 'cause Star gets up early to do the milking, and Joe's still out knocking. I stand in the doorway while he rummages in his backpack. He pulls something out, and at first I can't see what, 'cause there's not much light inside.

  "Look."

  He holds it up. It's a beautiful silver cup. It's dirty, but he's cleaned a bit of it, so I can see it's silver.

  "It's a chalice," he says. "I found it in a cupboard in a church―one of the few still standing. I'd like to keep it to drink out of, but someone might steal it."

  "Yeah, they would." I turn it to the light in the doorway, and take a close look. It's lovely, with little designs scratched into the surface; Ryder tells me it's called etched, not scratched.

  "I was thinking of taking it to the Hut tonight, to show people―Star said that a few of them are interested in the old religions, and there's hardly anything left of them, now. Christians used these to drink wine out of, to represent the blood of their god."

  "What did they want to drink his blood for?"

  He thinks for a moment. "If they drank the wine in a special ceremony it meant that they'd agreed to accept him into their bodies and souls. Does that make sense?"

  I nod. "Yeah, it does. Yeah." I like to learn about old world stuff. "You could take the cup to the Hut. But don't show it to anyone else, 'cause Governor North will want to nick it off you. He loves treasures from the old world."

  Ryder grins. "Artefacts."

  "Yeah?" I like new words, too. "I've never been inside an old church."

  "They're wonderful places. You feel at peace, when you're in them. I'd love to show you the one I found this in."

  I say, "They wouldn't let us go. Be awesome to see it, though."

  I learned a bit about the old religions at school. Before the Fall, people believed in gods who lived in another world separate from ours, that we can't see. They thought these gods watched over them, and that after they died they went to their gods' world, but when the Fall happened most people said they could fuck right off 'cause they'd let everyone die, and that was more or less the end of it.

  Now when you die you get a grave in the spirit field, and your family plants a tree there so your soul (or spirit) grows with the tree and a bit of you stays alive, which is much better than being sent up in the sky. I don't know if it's true about spirits being in the trees, but it's nice because you can sit by them and talk to the people you loved. We go there to talk to my little sister, Morning, who died when she was only six, in the bad flu outbreak in 2132.

  Bad times.

  If the old gods were still here I'd have told them to fuck right off, too, because what sort of scumbag would let our little Morning die like that?

  Shackers only get one tree per family. When the next one of us dies they'll dig up Morning's grave and put us on top of the bag with her skeleton in. It's gross, but it's that or have the body burned, which would mean the soul would have nowhere to go.

  Morning was born at four a.m., but Mum said everyone's kid who's born in the early hours is called Dawn, so she called her Morning inste
ad, which is much prettier. Evie is short for Evening, 'cause―well, you get it. My brother Gale was born on a dead windy night. My friend Jay says Mum and Dad are 'a bit literal'.

  They're not my real mum and dad. My birth mum was a traveller. She was only sixteen when she had a one-off with some guy who was only seventeen himself. It was just one night on the road, after a summer night's booze-up. Couple of days later he went his way and she went hers, except she had little old me to keep her company for the next nine months. Had me in a field. A couple of months later, she brought me to South Gate market and said she couldn't look after me, and Mum and Dad took pity on her.

  She hadn't even named me; she just called me 'Baby'. But she told them when I was born, so I would know my birthday. Seven at night on the first of May, 2118.

  I don't know owt about my real parents apart from their names. She was Rain and he was Silas. I think about them now and again. Don't suppose I'll ever meet them, though, so I don't do my head in about it.

  Anyway, the old gods―I do think about them, 'cause all those millions of people who were clever enough to make aeroplanes believed in them.

  I wonder if they're all still there, watching us and waiting for us to forgive them for letting all those people die.

  Ryder says, "That church is a few miles past the east perimeter in a little village called Ellerby. You know Byron Lewis, the guard?"

  "Yeah. He's okay, not like some of the others."

  Ryder nods. "I used to talk to him sometimes, last winter, when I was on lookout. He goes out and about on patrol, to see what's going down outside the walls. I'm thinking, maybe he could get permission to take a few of us out. Sunday after next―I'm on duty this week."

  "That'd be great―but he'd need to ask Lieutenant Hemsley, and he'll say no, 'cause it's too dangerous."

  Ryder holds his hand out, and I pass his artefact back to him.

  "I bet I can get him to say yes." He grins at me. "We could say it's an educational trip―or that you, Laurel and Gale want to train as guards, so we're giving you a taste of what it's like outside the wall."

  "Don't say that, he'll think you're a head case―they'd never let us be guards."

  He laughs. "Well, okay, maybe not, but don't I always make stuff happen? You, me, Byron, Gale, Laurel―and I'll see if Star and Joe want to come too." He puts the chalice away and bounces up. "You leave it to me!"

  Ryder walks me back to my shack, on his way to Lookout 10.

  I look up at the lovely blue sky. "D'you think the old gods are still there?"

  "I dunno. P'raps they've given up on us and are looking after slimy purple aliens on another planet, instead."

  I laugh. "I wouldn't blame them, 'specially if they know about the governor and Lieutenant Slovis. What about the trees, though―d'you think dead people's souls are really in them?"

  Ryder slings his arm around my shoulder just as Snowdrop walks past; she gives me a filthy look. Stupid bint. I hate all that shit.

  "I hope so," he says. "I think there has to be something else apart from this life, or what would be the point?"

  "Just to be happy now, I suppose."

  He gives me a squeeze. "Even if you're a shacker in Blackthorn, eh? I agree. Life's what you make it, isn't it?"

  I may not go silly over Ryder like the others do, but he really is amazingly cool.

  Chapter 5

  Lieutenant August Hemsley

  One week later

  As expected, the villages of Boltwick and Mulgrave are at war.

  The bad summers have exacerbated existing grievances between them and, for some weeks now, the guards patrolling the nearby territory have returned with news of smouldering hostility; sadly, it has now ignited.

  Of course, the inclement weather affects Blackthorn, too, but not so badly, because our laboratory staff use knowledge from the past to improve the likelihood of successful crops: heated growing tunnels, good drainage, fertilisers and weevil repellents. Without these, the chilly rains, frosts in May and lack of sunshine have proved nothing less than disastrous for less advanced communities.

  When food is scarce, domestic unrest becomes an inevitability.

  Boltwick is the richer of the two villages, with more habitable dwellings and more men and women to work the land and tend the animals; thus, they have more to eat and trade. Trouble erupted when a Boltwick wife was caught taking food to her hungry Mulgrave lover and his young daughters. Alas, her husband is―or was, as I believe is now the case―one of Boltwick's leaders; one festering resentment led to another, and all hell is now let loose.

  Houses are ransacked and burned, grain stores emptied, animals stolen, and the weak fall victim to the strong.

  The affairs of these communities are their own, and we do not interfere, but such unrest affects Blackthorn, because hungry, homeless outliers become travellers clamouring at our gates for jobs, food and safe harbour.

  Once alerted to the disorderly rabble arriving at South Gate, I went straight to Wolf for guidance.

  I found him reclining on the sofa in his public reception room, an arm over his face, his left leg raised on cushions; he's been having problems with pain and numbness in that leg, and fatigue, generally, though this is known only to his closest servants, and we are sworn to secrecy.

  A king must maintain a show of unfailing strength to his subjects.

  I knocked on the open door and coughed. When he failed to respond, I said, "Excuse me, sir―we have a problem with the outliers from Boltwick and Mulgrave. The gathering at South Gate has become a crowd, and more are joining it by the hour. Please could you confirm how you would like me to proceed?"

  Wolf can become irritated if asked to solve problems that he considers the job of his lieutenants, but irritation becomes anger if our decisions do not reflect his wishes. One has to tread a fine line; I like to think that, over the years, I have become attuned to his likely reactions.

  I know when to laugh, when to agree, and when to keep quiet.

  He sighed loudly, and sat up, rubbing his leg.

  "Fucking shitbags," he muttered. "What am I supposed to do, feed the fucking world?"

  I knew this minor outburst was caused by the problem at South Gate and his leg, rather than my request, so I said nothing.

  "Have you spoken to Ward?" he said eventually.

  "I have, sir. He said we can spare a little, as he's sent out more hunting and fishing parties to supplement our stocks, and so far they've had great success."

  He reached for a glass on the small table at his side, drank long and thirstily, and said, "Okay. Get the hospital kitchen to make up packages: enough bread for two days, a bit of cheese, and a bottle of fresh water apiece. No more than that, or word will get around and we'll have the world and his fucking wife at the door―if we can catch rabbits, so can they. Get four guards to distribute, then send 'em on their way. If they get abusive or demanding, kill one. That should make the situation clear."

  "Consider it done. I did wonder, though―Ward suggested giving jobs to the strongest, and places in the travellers' hut. As a display of your magnanimity, of course."

  "Do any jobs need filling?"

  "Not really. We've employed enough travellers to take the places of those incarcerated―"

  He growled, rubbing that leg again; a breeze floated in through the open window, blowing the thin, muslin inner curtain aside, and for a moment the sun highlighted his face. He looked tired; he has begun to look older than his thirty-nine years.

  "I'm not running a fucking refugee centre. They had their chance; any one of them could have come to live here, years ago. Committed to the city of Blackthorn. They wanted to be independent―well, fuck 'em. This is where independence gets you: fucking hungry. Get it sorted, Hems."

  I bowed my head and left the room, to obey his orders without further discussion.

  I was born to serve.

  My mother told me this often, when I was a child. I was born under the astrological sign of Virgo, she said; the
sign of the meticulous and dutiful.

  I have no belief in astrology because I cannot see the logic in it, but Ma read many books on the subject.

  "If you'd been born a week earlier you'd have been a swaggering, dramatic Leo, but you hung on until the sun moved into Virgo. Your instinct is to honour and serve."

  She named me August after my birth month. As a word, 'august' (au-gust) means distinguished, venerable, of a fine social class. All my mother hoped I would become, by serving those of a higher station.

  I was Ma's little Gus when I was small, but Ma died eighteen years ago, and there is nobody left to call me anything but Hemsley. My father died when I was small, in a fight with an outlier; I don't even remember what he looked like. I have a sister called Holly, who left Blackthorn after Ma died, to work as a guard at Central, but I have not heard from her for some years; I don't even know if she is still alive. Once or twice a year we would send letters to each other via the messengers that travel the country, but I had no reply to my last one, some five years ago now.

  I have no wife and children. This is through lack of opportunity rather than design, but as I have never experienced interest from any suitable―or indeed unsuitable―party, I wonder if my destiny is to be married to my job. It is straightforward, whereas close relationships are complicated, or so it has always seemed to me when others talk about them. I derive comfort from certain day-to-day routines; I understand that families interfere with such practices.

  When I was a trainee guard, I wondered what it would be like to be swaggering and dramatic. Just on the odd day, here and there, when I observed the casual attitude of other guards towards their jobs. I used to try, sometimes, to fit in with them, but as I grow older I understand myself better. Ma was right. I was born to be of service to those in power, who provide for and protect the weak. I execute my given tasks with neither fuss nor question.

  Because I was diligent, trustworthy, intelligent and well-read, I rose through the ranks with ease. I was promoted from perimeter guard to Falcon North's small coterie of personal guards when I was just twenty-one; I would accompany him on matters that required delicacy of interaction, and guard his house, now occupied by Wolf. I became a second lieutenant just before Falcon's heart expired, and have honoured his son with the same unswerving dedication, resulting in my elevation to lieutenant five years ago, when I was thirty.