expression showing stubborn resistance.
‘We don’t have to go.’
‘If we don’t, they’ll send marshals to fetch us.’
Kestrel stood up slowly, staring with extreme hostility at the messenger.
‘Do what you like to me,’ she said. ‘I don’t care.’
‘Me?’ said the messenger, aggrieved. ‘What’s it got to do with me? All I do is carry messages. You think anyone ever explains them to me?’
‘You don’t have to do it.’
‘Oh, don’t I? We live in Grey District, we do. You try sharing a toilet with six families. You try living with a sick wife and two thumping great lads in one room. Oh no, I’ll do my job all right, and more, and one fine day, they’ll move us up to Maroon, and that’ll do me nicely, thank you very much.’
Maslo Inch was waiting in his spacious office, sitting at his broad desk. He rose to his full imposing height as Hanno and Kestrel entered, and to their surprise, greeted them with a smile, in his high grand way. Coming out from behind the fortress desk, he shook their hands, and invited them to sit down with him in the circle of high grand chairs.
‘Your father and I used to play together when we were your age,’ he told Kestrel. ‘We sat together in class, too, for a while. Remember, Hanno?’
‘Yes,’ said Hanno. ‘I remember.’
He remembered how Maslo Inch had been so much bigger than the rest of them, and had made them kneel before him. But he said nothing about that. He just wanted to get the interview over with as soon as possible. Maslo Inch’s white clothes were so very white that it was hard to look at him for long; that, and his smile.
‘I’m going to tell you something that may surprise you,’ the Chief Examiner said to Kestrel. ‘Your father used to be cleverer than me at school.’
‘That doesn’t surprise me,’ said Kestrel.
‘Doesn’t it?’ said Maslo Inch evenly. ‘Then why am I Chief Examiner of Aramanth, while your father is a subdistrict librarian?’
‘Because he doesn’t like exams,’ said Kestrel. ‘He likes books.’
Hanno Hath saw a shadow of irritation pass across the Chief Examiner’s face.
‘We know this is about what happened yesterday,’ he said quietly. ‘Say what you have to say.’
‘Ah, yes. Yesterday.’ The smile turned to hold Hanno in its steady shine. ‘Your daughter gave us quite a performance. We’ll come to that in due course.’
Hanno Hath looked back at the smooth face of the Chief Examiner, and saw there in those gleaming eyes a deep well of hatred. Why? he thought. This powerful man has nothing to fear from me. Why does he hate me so?
Maslo Inch rose to his feet.
‘Follow me, please. Both of you.’
He set off without a backward glance, and Hanno Hath and Kestrel followed behind, hand in hand. The Chief Examiner led them down a long empty corridor, lined on both sides with columns of gold-painted names. This was such a commonplace sight in Aramanth that neither father nor daughter looked twice at them. Anyone who achieved anything noteworthy was named on some wall somewhere, and this practice had been going on for so long that virtually no public wall was spared.
The corridor linked the College of Examiners to the Imperial Palace, and emerged into a courtyard at the heart of the palace, where a grey-clothed warden was sweeping the pathways. Maslo Inch began what was clearly a rehearsed speech.
‘Kestrel,’ he said, ‘I want you to listen to what I say to you today, and look at what I show you today, and remember it for the rest of your life.’
Kestrel said nothing. She watched the warden’s broom: swish, swish, swish.
‘I’ve been making enquiries about you,’ said the Chief Examiner. ‘I’m told that at school yesterday morning you placed yourself at the bottom of the class.’
‘What if I did?’ She was watching the warden. His eyes looked down as he worked, and his face looked vacant.
What is he thinking? Bo would know.
‘And that you said to your class teacher, What more can you do to me?’
‘What if I did?’
Why does he go on sweeping? There’s nothing to sweep.
‘You then went on to indulge in a childish tantrum in a public place.’
‘What if I did?’
‘You know of course that your own rating affects your family rating.’
‘What if it does?’
Swish, swish, swish, goes the broom.
‘That is what we are about to find out.’
He came to a stop before a door in a stone wall. The door was heavy, and closed with a big iron latch. He put his hand on the latch, and turned to Kestrel once more.
‘What more can you do to me? An interesting question, but the wrong one. You should ask, What more can I do to myself, and to those I love?’
He heaved on the iron latch, and pushed the heavy door open. Inside, a dank stone tunnel sloped downwards into the gloom.
‘I am taking you to see the salt caves. This is a privilege, of a kind. Very few of our citizens see the salt caves, for a reason that will soon become evident.’
They followed him down the tunnel, their footsteps echoing from the arched roof. The sides of the tunnel, Kestrel now saw, were cut out of a white rock that glistened in the dim light: salt. She knew from her history that Aramanth had been built on salt. The Manth people, a wandering tribe in search of a homeland, had found traces of the mineral, and had settled there to mine it. The traces became seams, the seams became caverns, as they tunnelled into a huge subterranean treasure-house. Salt had made the Manth people rich, and with their wealth they had built their city.
‘Have you ever asked yourself what became of the salt caves?’ said Maslo Inch, as they descended the long curving tunnel. ‘When all the salt had been extracted, there was left only a great space. A great nothingness. A void. What use, do you think, is a void?’
Now they could hear the sound of slow-moving water, a low deep gurgle. And on the dank air they could smell an acrid gassy smell.
‘For a hundred years we took from the ground what we wanted most. And for another hundred years, we have poured back into the ground what we want least.’
The sloping tunnel suddenly opened into a wide underground chamber, an indistinct and shadowy space loud with the sounds of moving water, as if a thousand streams here disgorged into a subterranean sea. The smell was unmistakable now: pungent and nauseating.
Maslo Inch led them to a long railing. Beyond the railing, some way
