Free Angel Arias by Marianne de Pierres Page A

tunnels. We’ll be safe.’
    Naif was soothed by his calm. On Ixion he hadn’t been like that. Or maybe the beads and the pods had robbed him of it. Whichever, she was grateful for it now. And grateful that he’d come. Without him, her courage may have deserted her on the beach.
    Liam’s head and shoulders reappeared through the hole. He dangled his arm down. ‘Come.’
    Markes lifted Naif so that she could grasp the boy’s tentacles. He curled them around her wrists and pulled her roughly to the surface. Markes followed, able to climb most of the way himself.
    When he was safely through, Naif began to absorb the soft light, grey walls and the strong smell of fish. She saw old wooden racks and sagging shelves covered in a layer of salt and grime. Without having been in one before, she knew this was a place to dry fish and salt it down for storage.
    In the Seal compound they ate fish every ninth day and on the tenth they fasted. Her brother Joel had hated Fastday. He always said that the Gods they gave thanks to had never done anything for him so why should he go hungry for them.
    His blasphemy always made her nervous, as if the Grave Gods would hear and take retribution on him.
    Perhaps they had.
    As she looked around now, though, the shelves held only a handful of fish and a scattering of ragged clothes and other food scraps. One other item caught her eye: a square, dark object with knobs on the front and a broken dial. Naif had seen similar ones before in the Seal prayer rooms, and Joel had hidden a smaller version of the same in his bedroom under the floorboards. It was a radio. He’d listened for the Angel Arias on it, and known which night the barge would come in.
    The Ixion code was embedded into the song at a frequency that only the young people, with their sharper senses, could hear. So Naif had listened for it after Joel had gone, and been ready. Without Joel’s radio she would not have known.
    Naif heard a movement and looked away from the radio. A group of strange young people shuffled into the room and stood in the circle of light streaming in from the high windows. Each one, like Liam, had some kind of deformity.
    They stared at Markes and Naif with a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. Liam stood next to a girl who looked quite normal, except for one of her hands, which was a slick, black colour and the scaly texture of a bleetle’s back. Markes seemed too shocked to speak, so Naif gathered her wits. ‘Thank you for helping us.’
    The group exchanged glances but no one spoke.
    She tried again. ‘Liam said that Lenoir brought you here.’
    Nothing.
    Frustration knotted in her chest and she tried to unwind it. It was harder to do that now that she was no longer totally governed by her Seal upbringing. Her emotions came more freely since her Enlightenment; Lenoir had healed her as she lay dying but his act had bonded them and more. The Seal within her had been buried that day and she’d emerged as another person, as if some gate inside her had opened that could never be closed again.
    ‘I am Glev. Tell me where you go?’ said the girl next to Liam suddenly.
    ‘Grave North,’ said Markes.
    ‘Why?’
    Naif gave Markes a warning glance but he deflected the answer to her. ‘I accompany my friend, Naif.’
    Glev’s suspicious frown shifted to Naif.
    ‘Liam said that you are here because of Lenoir? Do you all know him?’ asked Naif.
    Most of them nodded but Glev watched her intently.
    ‘Well, Lenoir and I are bonded. I seek information that will . . . help him. And others.’ Not the truth exactly, but not a lie either.
    ‘You?’
    At any other time Glev’s incredulity might have been insulting, but Naif’s only concern was that the girl believed her.
    ‘I was injured and he saved my life. Now I seek to help him. There are things I must learn here. There is trouble on Ixion. Lenoir is in danger.’ If they thought she was here against Lenoir’s wishes then they may turn on her and