The Harvest Tide Project Read Free Page A

it was all very strange and, as Murris had said, Emos was fascinated by strange things. Whoever this man had been, he had carried some terrible knowledge, and it was probable that someone had killed him to ensure his silence.
    He reached a fork in the road, one way leading east towards Rutledge-on-Coast, the right turn leading west to Hortenz. Emos followed the faint tracks in the dust up the left-hand fork, but they soon disappeared. He sighed, studying the hedges on either side, then backtracked and headed up the road to Hortenz where he soon came upon their trail again despite the fading evening light. They were going to have to do better than that.

    Hortenz was big and loud on the morning of market day. The market was in full swing and the voices of traders competed with the sound of engined wagons and various animal noises. Taya and Lorkrin walked down a street past a woman selling bottled smells, and a tanner’s stall, and through a rendacrid auction. The huge, hairless, slug-like creatures sat bloated and sleepy and ready for slaughter, and buyers wandered among them trying to decide which would give the best meat. Taya was leaning in to pet one when her brother grabbed her, pulled her down off the fence and in behind some crates. He put a finger to his lips and pointed. There, in the throng of people milling around the market, was their uncle.
    â€˜How did he find us so fast?’ she gasped. They had walked late into the night to reach the town before they had slept; their uncle would have had to walk all night, tracking them in darkness to catch them up so quickly.
    â€˜He hasn’t found us yet,’ Lorkrin whispered. ‘But what are we going to do?’
    Taya spotted a grate in the ground not far from them and nodded towards it. They crept up to it, and between the pair of them they were able to lift it up. There were some iron rungs in the wall below it and they climbed down these, closing the grate above them. They found themselves in a sewer. Taya pinched her nose and grimaced.
    â€˜I thought the smell was from the rendacrids farting. If I’d known …’
    â€˜Let’s wait here for a bit, until we decide what to do. At least it’s safe,’ Lorkrin muttered, peering up through the grate. ‘He can’t stay up there forever. We’ll hang around until it’s dark, and then go.’
    â€˜All right then.’ His sister searched around for a clean place to sit down. There wasn’t any, so they walked down the tunnel a bit until they found a more open area with large pipes running across the floor and two support columns in the middle, Taya sat down on one of the pipes and rocked back and forth, thinking to herself. They were in awful trouble , and as usual it was Lorkrin’s fault. Feelings of guilt about Uncle Emos’s scroll gnawed at her conscience. She didn’t say anything, because her brother would only laugh. He always said she only felt guilty when she knew she was going to get punished.
    Lorkrin wandered down the length of tunnel to a junction where the path ended. A stream gurgled along a brick-walled gully in the middle of the tunnel, filled with things that Lorkrin did not want to think about. It emptied into a river that flowed through the junction. The only light in the sewer was from the grates spaced out in the arched roof, so he was careful where he put his feet. After a while, he got bored and went back to his sister. She was scraping her name on one of the support pillars with a stone.
    Lorkrin was struck with a thought. Unrolling his tools, he pulled out the quill he had taken from their uncle’s studio.
    â€˜Hey!’ He held it up to his sister. ‘I wonder if we can get this to work.’
    Taya’s eyes went wide:
    â€˜What are you doing with that? Weren’t things bad enough without you going and stealing something as well?’
    â€˜I didn’t steal it. I just took it by accident.’
    â€˜Oh,