The Harvest Tide Project by Oisin McGann Read Free Book Online

searching for somebody. It could be our sewer rat. We need to get that quill off him before they catch him.’
    Taya sighed and turned her gaze back towards the house.
    ‘I think they’ve settled down for the night. He won’t be coming out of there before dawn,’ she murmured. ‘This is all going so wrong. Uncle Emos is going to find out what we did and Ma and Pa will keep us in peeling potatoes and turnips for the whole summer.’
    ‘If we’re lucky,’ Lorkrin snorted. ‘All over a pen.’
    ‘Do you think this is why transmorphing’s banned?’ Taya wondered aloud.
    ‘Probably. If we can collapse a sewer by accident, think about what somebody like Uncle Emos could do on purpose.’
    That thought silenced them both. After a while, they pulled blankets from their bags and covered themselves up; the night was becoming colder. They would have to take turns to stay awake if they were to catch the man when he came out of the house, but neither of them wanted to offer to take first watch. In the end, they both fell asleep.

3 T HE S OLDIERS AND THE S CENT -S ELLER
    It was dark in the laboratory, and Groundsmaster Hovem was glad that he had made this discovery after all the others had finished for the night. The glass tank before him was the width of a man’s outstretched arms on all four sides, but reached up to the ceiling, hidden in the shadows high above him. It was one of thirty in the building. The tanks were the centre of the project; its success would be decided in one of these glass columns. No, Hovem thought, its success had been decided. What he saw before him in the glass vessel was the end of the project. And it would be the end of more than that. He had known it would happen eventually. The people here may have been ignorant of the ways of the world, but where the ways of plants were concerned, they were geniuses.
    ‘This is the tank that Shessil was working on?’ he asked, already knowing the answer.
    ‘Yes, Mr Hovem,’ the young lab assistant replied. ‘Isn’t it fantastic?’
    ‘Yes, lad it is. It is fantastic.’ Hovem gazed into the misty contents of the vessel.
    With Shessil gone, this tank contained the only key to the completion of the project. He had delayed making a decision about this for some time. A message should have been sent to Rak Ek Namen immediately. He drew in a deep breath and grimaced.
    ‘Lad?’
    ‘Yes, Mr Hovem?’
    ‘I think you’d best fetch me an axe.’
    When the axe had been brought, Hovem muttered a brief, but sincere prayer to Everness, the god of greenery, and hefted the heavy handle over his shoulder. Waving the young man away, he swung the axe back and slammed it into the side of the tank. The glass exploded outwards and sluiced down in razor-sharp sheets and splinters. Hovem dived for cover, almost making it clear. A long triangular shard plunged into his back and pinned him to the floor. By the time the distraught lab assistant had gathered his wits enough to rush forward and help, the Groundsmaster was dead. Lanterns were being lit all over the building and the guards were on the scene, standing over the debris, unsure of what to do. They stayed there and kept everyone else back. They had no thoughts on what had happened; they would simply stop anything else unusual happening until somebody in authority arrived.

    The land known as Sestina, one of the union of countries ruled by the city-state of Noran, was the home of the mollusc called the ornacrid. This large creature, a close relation to the snail, could weigh as much as a small pony. It had a shell not unlike an armadillo’s armour, but thicker and invulnerable,with joints to allow its huge, soft body to move about. The head that protruded from the front of its shell was frog-like but with eight light-sensitive stalks instead of eyes. Ornacrids were harmless and docile; they fed on grass and leaves, and their slow movement meant they were feared by no one.
    It was unfortunate, then, that an empty