Broken City

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty

It looks so different from the other times that I have seen it, so sober and disorderly, completely at odds with its usual air of pristine elegance and gaiety.

“Aunty Deet!”

I hear Carris’s voice, loud against the surrounding quiet and make my way to where she’s sitting on Jan’s lap.

“Where have you been, Deet?” asks Jan, the customary airiness of this greeting conspicuous by its absence. Looking down into her taut face I see her eyes, feverish and uncertain.

“I went to see, Tom, off,” I hesitate. “I was surprised not to see you there.”

“I didn’t want to see, Rye off with tears,” her voice is brusque and determined and I see the tears in her eyes.

“Charlotte, why don’t you sit down here between me and Roydon?”

We settle ourselves into place and Roydon, seeing that Charlotte is on the verge of tears, tries to cheer her up—I hear him asking her, with a mischievous glint in his eyes, why the sea roared.

“I had a quick word with, Ryder, before he left—he told me to tell you he loves you.”

For a second Jan remains stock still and then with a sudden dry sob she cradles her head in her hands. Carris slips from Jan’s knee and I see Clare pull her into her arms as I pull Jan against me and smooth her hair back from her face.

“Janny, don’t—please don’t.”

Jan’s shuddering sobs only continue.

“What am I going to do, Deeta?” her voice cracks. “What will I do if he doesn’t come back?”

Clare is sitting on the other side of Jan and as she hears this utterance her startled eyes meet mine questioningly, but before either of us can say anything my mother appears before us and, almost dragging me from my place next to Jan, she slides her arm around her youngest daughter asking her what’s wrong. I feel someone’s hand one my shoulder and turning, find that my father has also left the chair he was occupying next to Uncle Jep to see what all of the commotion is about.

From the look on his face I know that he heard Jan’s words.

“If who doesn’t come back, Deeta?” his voice is a little stern and I see the anxiety in his face.

“His name’s Ryder,” I begin and I see both the sternness and the anxiety ebb away a little.

“And who is Ryder?”

“He’s an Andak—in fact he’s Tom’s brother.”

My father pushes me into the chair opposite Jan.

“I think you’d better explain, Deeta.”

“You remember me telling you that when we first got here, we were taken to holding rooms? Ryder gave that order because he saw the locket Tom gave me and recognized it, he knew that there was a chance that someone else might recognize it too and he didn’t want anyone else to know. At that point he was under the impression that Tom and Dec had been kept prisoner by our tribe—”

“Why did he think that?” asks my mother.

“Because that’s what K—someone told him,” I correct myself hastily. “And we knew that someone in Tom’s tribe was killing the Andak brothers. At that point we thought it was an Andak brother, because we couldn’t see that anyone else had a reason to want them dead. Due to…misapprehensions…on both our side and his, we didn’t trust each other at first. But he looked after us the whole time, he protected us even though looking back we must have been driving him crazy,” I pause momentarily. “In any case he took quite a fancy to Jan right from the start, I think he liked her spunk and I’m pretty sure that the feeling was mutual.”