The Severed Land by Maurice Gee

Author:Maurice Gee [Gee, Maurice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780143770251
Publisher: Penguin Random House New Zealand
Published: 2013-04-08T00:00:00+00:00

For the rest of the day Fliss kept to streets by the wharves, moving all the time, trying to look as if she was busy on an errand. Here, there was an equal mix, black and brown and white, and a mix of slaves and freedmen, workers and porters and overseers, all in a hurry, all shouting, joking, yelling orders, a few singing happily or dolefully. A beggar played a tin pipe on a corner. He noticed Fliss with his quick eyes and took a step towards her. She hurried away. Was he an informer, a policeman, a spy? Was he Morisette? Once these had been Despiner wharves. Now the blazing sun emblem was gone, torn down in some places, leaving strips of rag, and no new emblem had taken its place. She sensed uncertainty all around. The city was waiting to lurch or slide into a new shape. The Despiners were fallen; the Morisettes and the others — Carps, Krohns, Loaders, Dights — were ready to grab; and she thought, It will be the Morisettes, there’ll only be one. There was no sign yet, but some of the labourers were whistling the Morisette song as they lumped their heavy loads from barge to warehouse.

Towards sundown she worked her way back to the seat where she would meet Keef — still the quick-moving servant in her freedwoman garb. There she let herself rest. She drank water from her flask and ate the baked tuber that had cooled in her pocket since she had bought it at a wharfside stall.

The sun went down. Keef did not come. The buildings around the dusty yard threw shadows across her seat. ‘Keef,’ she whispered, angry with him one moment, fearful the next. She gave him another ten minutes, but had no way of knowing when they were gone. A lamplighter worked his way towards her.

‘Get home, lassie. There’s grabbers about.’

She hurried away. But where should she go? She waited a few moments at the end of the street, outside a lamp’s circle of light. Keef would come this way — but she knew he wasn’t coming, she knew. They had him. His family, who would punish him for their fall. Or the Morisettes. Either way … She could not think. Two things were fixed in her mind: they had Keef, and she was alone in Galp.

Move, she told herself. You know this town. She knew places to go, if they were still there. She knew people, too, if they knew her. But would they be any use — thieves, thief masters, beggars, dippers, pimps, mudlarks, bait-girls, too, drain-sliders and wall-men? She shook her head. Not them. The woman Lorna. That was why she was here — to find Lorna and take her to the Old One. With or without Keef, that was her job.

First, she must see this woman in her cage, and follow and see where she was kept.

She went west and south, through lanes and alleys mapped in her head, making for

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