Deeplight by FrancesHardinge

Author:FrancesHardinge
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Macmillan

CHAPTER 23

When Coram and Hark gabbled out their report, Rigg was incandescent.

‘She jumped in the sea?’ Rigg hissed.

‘Maybe she’s cured?’ suggested Hark. It was worth a try.

‘Little vixen!’ Rigg exploded. ‘Coram, get the boats out after her, find her, and drag her out of the surf! Tie her up if you need to!’

There was something reassuring about Rigg’s anger. She at least seemed to have no doubt of Selphin’s survival. Hark hoped she was right.

‘You can’t keep doing this,’ Kly said when Hark staggered in, half an hour late. ‘And I can’t keep covering for you. What’s wrong with you?’

Hark had a story to explain his lateness, of course. It was a good story, involving a run-in with a visiting scavenger gang. Today he couldn’t make the tale dance, and he could see that Kly was barely listening.

‘Every time you say you’re sorry, it sounds like you mean it,’ Kly said at last. ‘Every time I tell you that you could lose everything, I think it’s sunk in. But it hasn’t, has it? Or maybe it just keeps on sinking, and vanishes into some bottomless hole in your head.’

Hark felt a weight in the pit of his stomach. You wore people out like shoes. You didn’t mean to, but you did. This was what it felt like when the sole started getting thin.

He had promised himself that this time would be different. He wouldn’t waste the chances offered by Vyne, Kly, and Sanctuary. It was happening again anyway, and this time he couldn’t walk away, or make plans for when he was kicked out. Exhausting everyone’s patience would destroy him.

‘You’re covered in dust,’ said Kly wearily. ‘You can’t go into the halls like that. Clean yourself up before you put your robes on.’

In the dorm room, Hark dunked his face in a bucket of water to clear his head.

‘It’s not my fault,’ he told the drab, empty walls.

It wasn’t his fault if Selphin was drowned. She probably wasn’t, of course. Hadn’t Rigg said she was a good swimmer? But even if she had drowned, he wasn’t to blame. He’d tried to stop her jumping.

It’s not my fault. And I’m not going to think about it any more.

But of course he did. He kept thinking of her face at the promontory’s edge. He remembered her utter terror, even as her will locked into place behind her eyes. Jelt could let go of his fear at will. Selphin clearly couldn’t, but she’d jumped anyway, right into the sea that she thought was waiting to kill her. What kind of a freak could make themselves do that?

‘She’s not just mad,’ Hark muttered under his breath. ‘She’s . . . frecht.’

He was suddenly incredibly angry with her for having no bend or compromise in her. People like that died, usually sooner rather than later.

Hark slammed down the bucket and felt cold water slop over his feet. Somehow she had put thoughts and doubts in his head, and he couldn’t get them out. He could

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