LOADING
Tam runs through the market and hides the girl in Pell's drum shop. Pell recognises her goggles and goes quiet.
Straight on from chapter 1: the silent square, the half sun low behind the bell tower. The WARDEN CAPTAIN lifts his free hand. Every grey helmet turns toward the crate.
Warden captain says: "Take them. Both of them."
Warden captain says: "Alive."
Vela, goggles back down, not looking at the captain at all.
Vela says: "Run."
Vela kicks the crate out from under Tam. He drops, arms flailing, clutching his split drum to his chest.
Tam says: "Whoa-"
The crowd breaks all at once: stallholders scattering, baskets in the air, a goat loose somewhere.
Sound: "KRASH"
Vela vaults a fish counter. Tam scrambles after her on hands and knees.
Tam says: "Wait! My sticks!"
Tam's hand snatching two drumsticks out of a puddle of ice and fish scales.
Two Wardens round the stall, polearms first.
Sound: "tin tin tin"
The FISHMONGER "accidentally" tips a whole tray of eels across the stones in front of them.
Fishmonger says: "Oh no. My eels."
Sound: "SHLOOSH"
Both Wardens skidding, legs everywhere.
Tam, running past, grinning back over his shoulder.
Tam says: "You're still off-beat!"
Fishmonger says: "Go!"
Vela sprints into the open middle of the square, straight into full sunlight. Her steps falter.
Her hand over her goggles, teeth clenched.
Vela thinks: "Can't see. Too much light on the stone."
Tam grabs her wrist and swerves her left.
Tam says: "You don't know the way. I do. Hold on."
They run past the centre of the square: a weathered stone statue of a woman with no face, one hand raised, holding a single drumstick.
Tam says: "Left at the Striker!"
Vela glancing up at the faceless statue as they pass under its shadow.
The stone drumstick in the statue's hand, worn smooth by a century of weather.
The two of them ducking into a narrow alley between tall round towers.
The alley: washing lines, stairs, a canal glinting at the end. Long gold shadows make the alley half dark.
Vela slows in the shade, lifting her goggles a crack, breathing.
Vela says: "Better."
Tam looking back at the alley mouth.
Tam says: "They'll check the canals first. Everyone runs to the canals."
Tam, proud.
Tam says: "So we're going to a shop."
A crooked shopfront on a quiet canal street. Drums of every size hang outside like fruit. A painted sign: a drum and two crossed sticks.
Vela, flat.
Vela says: "A drum shop. You're hiding a drummer in a drum shop."
Tam already pushing the door open with his shoulder.
Tam says: "It's the last place they'd look. Because it's so obvious."
Vela says: "That's not how looking works."
Inside: dim, warm, hides stretched on frames to dry, shavings on the floor. Only thin gold slits of light through the shutters.
Vela pushes her goggles up onto her forehead. Her silver-grey eyes open fully for the first time. Relief.
At the back, PELL at a workbench: old, broad, half-blind, scarred knuckles, tapping a drumhead with a small mallet.
Sound: "tok. tok. tok."
Pell, without looking up.
Pell says: "You're early. Did they finally pay you to stop?"
Tam holds up the split drum like a dead pet.
Tam says: "She landed on it."
Pell squinting at the drum, then at the hole.
Pell says: "From where?"
Tam says: "The sky, mostly."
Pell.
Pell says: "Then the sky owes me a drumhead."
Pell finally turns his head toward Vela.
Pell sees the goggles on Vela's forehead. The mallet stops in mid-air.
The smoked glass of the goggles, dark as night, with fine star-marks etched on the rims.
Pell's face. The joke is gone out of it.
Pell says: "..."
Tam, oblivious, talking fast.
Tam says: "Pell, listen, the Wardens came to the market and they were looking for people who hear things-"
Outside, through the shutter slits: grey robes passing on the canal path.
Sound: "tin... tin... tin..."
Pell moves faster than an old man should, swinging a big drum-drying rack aside to show a trapdoor.
Pell says: "Down. Both."
Tam and Vela dropping into the dark, Pell's foot pushing the hatch shut.
Under the floor: a low hide store, the two of them crammed between rolled skins, light coming down in stripes through the boards.
Vela, close to Tam's ear, whispering.
Vela says: "Who is he?"
Tam says: "Pell. He's my... he makes drums."
Through the boards: a Warden's boots step into the shop.
Sound: "tin"
Tam's lips moving. He is counting under his breath.
Tam thinks: "One, two, three. One, two, three."
Upstairs, a WARDEN with his helmet on, looking around the shop.
Warden says: "We're looking for a boy with a drum."
Pell, mallet in hand, waving at a wall of a hundred drums.
Pell says: "Pick one."
The Warden, unamused.
Warden says: "A drummer. Sixteen. Loud."
Pell.
Pell says: "Sixteen and loud is every boy in Halfsun. Buy something or let me work."
The Warden's eyes moving slowly over the floorboards.
Down in the dark, Tam's eye through a gap in the boards, sweat running.
Sound: "thum"
The Warden turns and goes, the door banging behind him.
Warden says: "If you see him, ring the tower."
Pell says: "I'll ring it twice."
The hatch opens. Pell's hand comes down. Tam takes it and climbs out.
Tam, grinning, dusting himself off.
Tam says: ""I'll ring it twice." That was good. You're getting funny."
Pell ignores him and helps Vela up. He does not let go of her hand right away.
Pell says: "Starhold glass."
Vela, wary.
Vela says: "You know it?"
Pell, turning his back, picking up Tam's split drum, running a scarred thumb along the torn edge.
Pell says: "I know it's a long way from the dark."
Tam between them, looking from one to the other.
Tam says: "Pell. She counts the same number I do. The exact same."
Pell's hands go still on the drum.
Tam, excited, pushing on.
Tam says: "She's counted it for three years. From the stars! And today it's one thousand, two hundred and-"
Pell's knife slicing the old drumhead away from the frame in one clean stroke.
Sound: "SHRRK"
Tam stops mid-word.
Pell, back still turned, shoulders heavy in the thin gold light.
Pell says: "Whatever she told you, forget it."
The dim shop: Pell at the bench, Tam frozen, Vela watching the old man very carefully. A hundred silent drums on the walls.
Art made with AI tools, lettered and laid out by hand.
