“She’s right,” Lucian said. His eyes were fixed on James in a dead stare. Alex had fixed him with a look all too similar.
They see right through me. They know.
James was at a loss for words, mouthing openly. He thought he might end up standing there forever when Alex spoke up suddenly.
“You saw those sacks. He was a scavenger. Probably figured there was a whole lot of loot in Radden; nobody plunders No Man’s Land. I found James in a cottage on the outskirts of the county. His parents were gone but there was everything there you needed to know everything about them. He was probably just trying his luck, seeing if he could gain some leverage over us, make a quick buck.”
“How could he know some baby grew into Pigeon Boy, here?” Lucian said.
Alex’s confident smile flickered. “You’d be surprised how many people know his name. And the wind can carry names a long, long way.”
“Thanks to you in no small part,” James said. He tried a smile, but Alex’s face flickered even more, almost a twitch.
Is he mad at me? Did I just upstage him?
Nobody had ever come looking for someone besides the Messiah.
Nevertheless, the group visibly relaxed, the tension melting away. They watched the cart disappear into the distance, bouncing and jostling between the heads of wheat until it was nothing but a blur under the sun.
Lincoln and Agatha looked shamefaced. “Sorry to scupper the negotiations in Newquay’s Moon,” Lincoln said.
“T’was us who asked Lucian to call ya back,” Agatha said.
“We didn’t want to take any chances.”
Alex shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. We did what we needed to do. Malverston agreed to our terms. We have full access to their lands and the outlying provinces. They’re even open to bulk trade with us, in time. It wasn’t ideal timing, being pulled away, but … mission accomplished.”
“You’re sure?”
“We’ll have to grease the wheels along the line to make up for bouncing from his preening party. But then again, it might just help us if he thinks he has one over us.”
James thought of Beth again. He wondered if she and her sister were in hiding right now, whether they had left Malverston inflated enough to quell his mean streak. He nodded along with Alex, but couldn’t bring himself to say anything. He wasn’t sure how he felt. The vision was still buzzing in his mind like a swarm of locusts.
Lucian was looking at him. “The guy was really a fake?” He looked troubled. “Damn. He was good. He had me fooled.”
“Crazy as crazy gets,” James said. For a moment, as he said it, he believed it. But he knew it was a lie; something had changed in him. Even now, he felt a strange sensation building in his lower body: an itch, an insistent prodding, pointing like an arrow away from the courtyard. He shook himself.
Lucian cursed. “He duped us. It sounds stupid but … he said some weird things during the night. Stuff about you being different, about you playing a part in some cosmic jigsaw puzzle. Babble, most of it, but there was something to it. It all sounded very … big. It was almost like he thought you had something to do with the End.”
The family turned and headed inside, turning their attention to the deal with Malverston.
James leaned confidentially towards Lucian. “That’s impossible.”
“Stranger things have happened.” Lucian gestured to the horizon, at the crumbling skyline of Nottingham, as though James could need reminding that, twenty years ago, over six billion people had vanished without a trace.
Yes, it was crazy. But so was everything about the world they lived in.
*
They sat down to a lunch of bread, cheese, and a stew of potato, mushrooms, wildflowers, and an exotic slurry of various meats—a creation of Agatha’s which Lincoln referred to as jungle stew. By the time they reached the table, stomachs were growling audibly, and the mysterious traveller was forgotten.
For a time there was silence under the roof thatched by their own hands, and they ate as only people who know the dangers of real hunger can eat: methodically, savouring every crumb and drop with unwavering gusto. The wood burner beside the table was small, and when they had dragged it from the wreckage of an old barn conversion a few miles away, it had been little more than a bucket of rust. But Lincoln had taken it into his workshop and set to it