The metal warmed to Nefer’s Virnrayan fingers and would’ve done what he wanted if his left arm hadn’t got in the way.
It was high summer. The hearth glowed in the smithy, and the silver swirled in the crucible. It looked a bit like Trid’s eyes, which were watering with embarrassment.
“Nefer,” I shouted over his hammer, “Don’t turn a blind ear––”
“Turn a deaf ear, idiot,” said Padlimaird. He banged a pliers on the counter. There was a silver ingot stuck to it.
“Deaf’s the only kind of ear he’s got.” I punched Nefer in the side.
“What, now?” Nefer looked down. “And me stake boomin like a ripe old tower bell––” He saw Palimaird. “Ghast, Paddy! Hold ’er over the fire like the sensible boy you ain’t, but don’t use yer foot to pull––”
The silver burned through the bottom of Padlimaird’s shoe. He broke the pliers free and knocked over his brazier. Charcoal dust choked the air and blackened Trid’s feet, and Wille chose that moment to haul two sandbags through the doorway. The dust cleared. The sandbags dropped to the stone. Wille looked down at Trid’s sandals.
“A human boy with dirty feet, sir? Stepped right out of protocol with them feet, m’boy. They’ll be after you with soap, scourges, and clean linen, but don’t worry––we’ve plenty of hiding places. How bout in them acid vats?”
“Wille,” I said, “leave off chopping down the tree before he’s had a chance to provide shade.”
“Why, then,” he switched to Gralde, “what kind of seed would grow into a tree like that?”
I spoke in the common tongue. “That concerns Nefer and not you.”
“Oh?” said Nefer. “Let’s hear it then.” He lit his pipe and sat down on his old stool in the space of three seconds.
After the success of my leg I’d decided Trid was a worthy medic, and I persuaded him to re-set Nefer’s left arm. I forgot about persuading Nefer.
“A doctor?” Nefer said. “In’t healing a woman’s job?”
“If people were less stupid”––Trid suddenly found his voice––“they’d find caring for people is something everyone ought to be interested in and anyone can do.”
Nefer scratched his neck and looked my way.
“Trid’s successful at whatever he tries.” Trid’s ears glowed like the tongs around the crucible.
“Alright,“ Nefer said. “I’’ll give it a go.” He looked over at Wille and Paddy. “Can ye look after the shop while I’m incapacitated?”
“Can I take a step up, Nefer?” cried Wille in Gralde. “I need a staunch income to support me family. They’re multiplying like rabbits.”
Nefer choked on pipe smoke. “Got yerself into a problem?”
“Not just me.”
In an expression of ‘utmost admiration’, Wille had landed Sal with an unborn child, and they’d decided to wed. I didn’t know what to think. Anyway, by the time late summer arrived I had other things to think about, like the growing contingent of soldiers from Omben.
***
“The Queen’s become nervous. They say she’s ill with it,” said my brother Tem.
We were sitting on the shore in the shade of an overturned schooner. The afternoon sun was so fierce I’d ripped the tunic off and gone for a swim; and when Tem found me he’d dropped a pair of knickers on my head. They were red canvas and much too big, and I tied them around my waist with a piece of string. Now they were covered with damp sand I’d scraped from a hole.
“Of course the Queen’s become nervous,” I said. “I’d be nervous too, tryin to feed ten thousand bloodthirsty foreigners.”
“She invited them here, Reyna. She’s nervous about Lorila, especially Dirlan. The millitary keeps growing over there, because the Lorilan Ravyir keeps giving that idiot, Caveira, troops, because Herist keeps recruiting more over here, and I fear it will end in war.” Tem plucked at a sand creeper. It shriveled beneath his talons. “I don’t know what to do. Situations like this don’t spring up on their own. Someone’s plotting something. And more frustrating, Caveira started it, but Lorila can’t afford a war––”
“I don’t know if Caveira started it.”
“What?”
“I dunno.” My hair fell over my eyes. “What do you want me to write for you?”
“You’re hiding something.”
“I’m not.”
I could’ve explained how Herist and Caveira were in collusion, but there was much I didn’t understand about all this. And Andrei still commanded my loyalty for a reason I couldn’t place.
“How did Faiorsa get hold of all them big Ombenelvan men?” My mouth tightened with self-loathing.
“She’s promised them something. Something they really want. If she doesn’t give it to them I don’t know what they’ll do.”
“What do you mean?” I drew my legs up to my chest, which had suddenly become cold. “Tem, what’s she promised? What if she doesn’t give it? What’ll happen?”
He stepped back and shook sand off himself, and the ship groaned behind him in the wind.
“Either she’ll give it to them and we’ll have to support them and folk’ll starve this winter, or she won’t give them anything and the troops may leave. But more likely they’ll stay, still after what she promised, and we can forget about rule by Evenalehn, because Evenalehn shan’t risk the ill will of the Southern Confederation, particularly Miachamel and Omben, and Norembry will be sucked under Southern rule via the Ombenelva.”
“God, Tem. What are they after? What’s she promised? Our souls?” I piled sand onto my knees.
“Oh, no. She has something far more valuable.”
“Tem!”
“Have you heard the rumors? About the weapon, the Aebelavadar? ”
I had, on dimly lit streets and in the backs of taverns. Aebelavadar was a Simargh word; it meant an incomplete soul lacking a predetermined end. A human. But Aebelavadars weren’t strictly humans, and through history there had been many Aebelavadars.
The Aebelavadar that Tem was talking about was rumored to be a beautiful and powerful weapon. And apparently it belonged to the Queen.
“It’s true?” I said. “She has it here? How’d she get hold of it?”
“I’ve no idea. But the Ombenelvan government wants it. To placate a god, I’ve heard.”
“Great. So she’ll use it to pay for the Ombenelvan soldiers?”
“Maybe.”
“But then they’ll stay and we’ll go to war with Lorila? What’s Lorila ever done?”
Tem snorted, insofar as an egret can. “Besides flattened their Elde for centuries? Nothing that calls for invasion.”
“We’re in a pretty pickle.”
“Yes.”
“Why––” I picked sand out of my hair. “D’you suppose she wants to go to war with Lorila?”
“Seems like it.” He said this in so light a manner I suspected he was especially anxious about it. “Lorila is weak, ideal for invasion––but it was a duke of Lorila that started the troops race, and am I watching the wrong men, do you think? Should I be over in Lorila, rather than here?”
I suddenly felt very alone. “Stay here. You’re needed here.”
“For now. The letter––It’s about a hanging next week. But you won’t want to hear it, and neither will the White-Ships. It’s to do with the Ombenelvan men, and it’s only the beginning of worse. The garrison has it in for Nat Breldin and two others at dawn a week from today, did you know? It’s their third attempt for Breldin, but this time they have to let them go through with it.
“Wait,” he cried as I leapt up, slinging sand from my lap. “Hold it.”
“What’s got into ye?” I cast the parchment away. “I can’t tell them to do that.”
“There’s a reason. Listen to me, please, before you start crying. Now sit down––there’s a good girl––and let me tell you why. The Ombenelvan military hold an annual––sacrificial ceremony, if you will, to satisfy one of their deities. Orshinq, it’s called. The god they hold responsible for their military victories. The sacrifice must be a criminal guilty of treason, desertion, and the like: all threats to a martial system believed to be divinely ordained. Are you still with me?”
“No. Must they bring their nasty ceremony over here? Nat Breldin and them are Noremes. They ain’t fit to be Ombenelvan sacrifices.”
“Reyna, I wish the whole world thought so sensibly. But what matters to the Ombenelva is that they get traitors, no need to worry which government scratched the mark of treason into their arms. The mercenaries were intended as security, but the Queen hasn’t surrendered the weapon, and it’s touch-and-go with unpaid soldiers. Do you understand what might happen if the city rises against the ceremony of your ten thousand bloodthirsty foreigners next week? I fear a massacre over the death of three. Please write what I have to tell you.”
Mordan delivered the letter the next day, and afterwards I steered clear of the quay and its streets. I didn’t fancy an encounter with Wille, whose belligerence had probably multiplied threefold at Tem’s letter, or Hal, who knew something about where the letter had come from.
***
On the day of the executions, my curiosity overwhelmed my good sense and I wandered toward the square with the apple trees. My nettles had been gathering in the lough, and every few minutes I had to stop and fight the ache from my fingers and nausea from my stomach.
The light shone dim through a thin drizzle, and the lamps hissed. The estuary was hidden behind a wall of fog. Ombenelvan soldiers gathered in the middle of the square, their black cuirasses and red cloaks dim in the half-light. Normal folk walked quickly by with a drawn hood or wooden face.
The fog crept closer, stifling, horrible, and I looked at the gallows and stopped. There were no gallows. Stakes, rather, three of them, with faggots bundled round so they looked like three besom brooms. The stakes were empty, yet.
I turned away. “A burning.” My stomach squeezed––not with the usual nausea. “Did he know?”
“He didn’t,” said Floy. “He couldn’t have.”
A few Elde, half-hidden in the gloom, were writing on the shop windows with muddy rags. I ventured close to them, but not so close as Floy.
She flew back to my shoulder. “They’ll get themselves into trouble,” she said. “Think now’s a good time to threaten them. Padlimaird’s over there. Maybe you can talk sense into him.”
I wasn’t optimistic. Even so, I walked over and stood behind Padlimaird and another boy with a tightly drawn cowl, and watched as they painted a window with mud. ‘Break the bastards,’ read the caption above a skillfully drawn caricature of an Ombenelvan officer, and then the human’s name: ‘Magira Quyporel’. The other windows were similar, except the names were, ‘Gratra Chureal’, ‘Perchevor Herist’, and someone else I couldn’t make out.
Magira Quyporel’s stomach wasn’t quite vast enough for Padlimaird, who reached forward and painted a loopier line into the glass.
“Look what you’ve done, mongrel.” The boy in the cowl shoved Padlimaird aside. “Destroyed perfectly expressed sentiment and demolished a priceless work of art.”
“No, just weighed it down a bit.” Padlimaird snapped the boy’s stomach with his kerchief. “Gonna be smashed to pieces, anyway.”
“But folk’ll have to look at it till then––”
“Max Garvad,” I said, “what in the seven hells are you doin?” Both boys jumped and turned round.
“Just having a bit of fun.” His eyes shone gold through the hood.
“Fun?”
He must have seen my face, really seen it, because he looked down at his shoes, properly abashed; I saw that he was fingering a smooth, green stone.
“What he means is he wants to be useful to the side in the right,” said Padlimaird. “And if he’s lookin fer fun, too, where’s the harm?”
“Right there, Paddy––” I began, but just then Wille tore round the corner with a bucket of water. Sal came close behind with another. Wille’s slopped over the sides as he poked at Padlimaird’s chest.
“Quebbits told me you had a head full of suet. Turning the death of liberty into a carnival.”
“We wasn’t looking fer fun,” yelled Padlimaird. “We’re risking our heads.”
“You’re risking a lot more heads than just your’n,” Wille said.
Sal set her bucket down. “Come help us draw water, Padlimaird.” She took Wille’s hand. “Some excitable fellow’s set the ice house alight. Thought he was gonna flood the city.”
Wille addressed Padlimaird more kindly: “I won’t thrash you if you mop this window up and come help us.” Padlimaird scowled. Wille continued, “And this job in’t half so stinky as when some coward flooded the city long Crewald and them canal ways. But we put things to rights with lots of willing folk. More folk is less labor. You should come too, Lally. Nobody will see you. It’s foggy.”
I scowled with Padlimaird.
“And what about the other scoundrel?” asked Sal, wringing her soaked skirts and taking up her bucket. But Max had disappeared.
Sal and Wille left Padlimaird with a bucket of water and a few shreds of Sal’s petticoat.
Padlimaird scraped away an M and threw his rag into the bucket. “Hasn’t even said his vows and he’s already acting like an old wet fart.” He walked jerkily away, and I doubled over in a bout of nausea.
When I righted myself he’d disappeared around a corner, and the dizziness traveled to my head so that all was confusion for the next few seconds. A low horn sounded far off, muffled in the fog, or maybe it was a moan; and I jumped a foot in the air. All four windows had shattered behind me. Heart leaping, I glanced through the window, saw the smooth, green stone.
I stepped away from the glass. “Aloren,” Max called, “get out of there, idiot.” I should have taken his advice, but my head was ringing and I looked around for him––and a big grey dog jumped onto my shoulders. I pushed him away, and Floy was there, picking at the dog’s nose and eyes.
He snapped at her. Scared, I batted her behind me, and the dog pushed me into the shop door. Someone called something, some foreign word, and the beast stood guard before me with hot breath and raised hackles.
A thick man in a black cuirass grabbed my hair, pulled me against him.
“Obid,” he snapped at the dog, who in turn snapped at my legs. I stopped kicking. Omben soldiers made a dark circle around us, and I ground my heel into the human’s boot. His grip tightened painfully. “Anger ill becomes you, little dove.” He pushed me towards the shards on the pavement as if to grind me against them; but Floy got at his nose, and the dog turned from me to leap at something else. I twisted away.
“Call off your dog,” said a man. I knuckled sweat from my eyes and made out Max fending off the dog with his cloak, and Andrei behind him, struggling with his horse’s leads. Max fell over backwards. Sandal jolted the leads from Andrei’s hand, and Andrei pulled a dagger. “Call him off or I’ll rip out his throat.”
The man barked at his dog, and the dog shrank and crawled to his side. He kept tight hold of my hair, and Floy hid in the collar of my tunic.
“He’s a hangnail,” she said, “with perfect timing.” I told her to shut up.
The man eyed Andrei’s broach; his posture tightened, looked almost resentful “She was breaking windows.”
Andrei wiped rain out of his eyes, looking at the glass. “You broke these?”
I forced my face into a blank. Max climbed to his feet. “No, she didn’t,” he said loudly, half to Andrei and half to the soldiers. “I saw the ones who did.”
My captor coughed, and shoved me forward. “Nonsense. Look at her hands.”
“What?” Andrei took one up and dangled it in front of him. It was ragged and oozing, as usual. “Give her here,” he said. “This one’s wanted specially, and you’re not familiar with the system.” The officer gave me a lecherous look, as though he were indeed familiar with the system, and Andrei took my hair from his fist. “If you’d excuse us––Max,” he yelled over his shoulder
“Yes?”
“There’re little insurrections popping up all over the square, probably. Would you take the horse and put them down before more people die?”
“Aye, m’lord,” said Max cheerfully, and he prodded Sandal before him out of the crowd of soldiers. They scattered at the officer’s word, and Andrei shoved past him and dragged me down a side street by my hair.
“Max broke that window, didn’t he?” he said. “This is strike three.” He trapped me in a corner. “So we’ll stand here until you give me a explanation for this––this silently reaping the consequences of other people’s idiocy.” He crossed his arms. “We’ve got all day.”
I turned around and studied the threads of water darkening the wall. Floy’s claws ran over my feet.
“What should I tell him?” I asked her.
“Damned if I know.”
I bent over to retch, turned to face him, wiped my mouth, and said, “Piss off.”
But he just stood there, his jaw ticking. “You think I had a say in it,” he said, “pleasing the Southerners. That’s impossible, though, because I’m not sixteen yet.” His voice cracked. “I know nothing. And it’s driving me to distraction, see, because I’m on the outside of everything, losing sleep, because of you, mostly. You’re so dumb you cause me indigestion––and this!” He held up and looked at my forearms, and his face took on a color that roiled my stomach. “What is this from?”
I looked past him––at Wille Illinla, who was lugging his bucket from the harbor. Water sloshed over his pants. He marched over and poured the water over Andrei’s head.
It crashed on the pavement, ran down the gutter, and there was a short silence.
“Thought I wasn’t wet enough?” said Andrei.
“It did put a damper on things.” Wille clobbered Andrei in the left eye. The street corner was ill lit, and I don’t believe the boys recognized each other even after Andrei recovered enough to punch Wille in the stomach. Wille staggered into the wall.
“Thank you,” Andrei said, “for doing your utmost to keep me clean and fit.” He blinked rapidly with his left eye. “Now do let me finish my conversation with this block of wood.”
He walked back to me, hair dripping over his face, and continued right where he had left off: “You never tell me anything. You never tell anyone, and you never––It’s as if you think it’s horrible or wrong coming to your own defense, talking about yourself, even. But you’re stubborn as a bad smell and very loud, so I don’t get it––why do you act like half a person?” He turned to Wille, who had sat down against the wall and was watching interestedly. “You know her, obviously. Have you ever heard her do it?”
“Do what?”
“Defend herself.”
“She can’t.” Wille rubbed his jaw.
“Why?”
“I dunno. In’t allowed to say that either, I suppose.”
Andrei chewed on his tongue. I stepped out, but he held me against the wall.
“Then say this, Aloren.” His eyelid looked very swollen. “Do you really want me to piss off? Did you want to be smeared into the pavement back there? Raped by a bunch of drunk rubes? Your hand cut off? If that’s so, you’d better make yourself scarce, because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, stand by and watch you be tormented.”
His hand fell to his side and hung there. I thought I might laugh at him.
Instead my face crumpled. I turned into the dark of the corner and sat. Neither of them looked away, so I pressed my head into my knees, and felt the tears come. Big tears, running down my nose and into my mouth. I took gulps of air, and to my great shame, wept heartbrokenly, harder than I had in three years.
I smeared my tears with the back of a hand, and when Wille couldn’t find it in himself to watch anymore he climbed to his feet, I thought, to leave.
Instead, he walked over between us, knelt down, and lifted my chin.
“I’ll always come to your defense,” he said. “Until you can. And even then I’ll still do it, cause you’ll be so out o’ practice you’ll be telling folk you’re the one strangled the big owl with my bootlaces, when it’ll really’ve been me did it.” He grabbed my wrists and swung me to my feet. And then, clicking his tongue at Andrei, he walked back the direction he had come with his empty bucket.
Andrei had resolved not to look me in the eye. He moved his hand very slowly, until it disappeared inside his cloak. He pulled out a handkerchief and gave it to me. It was wetter than my face.
“I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “I wanted to ask you––” He broke off with an ironic look. “I need your help stealing something.”
“Ghast, Andrei,” I said immediately. “This is an awfully one-sided relationship.” He shoved me, and must have miscalculated his strength because I went running backwards. “Stealin?”
“Stealing something back.”
“From who?” I ran a hand over my sticky face.
“Daifen.”
“Who’s he?”
“The former Chancellor.”
“Oh.” I remembered now. “He tampered with laws about weapons. Folks’ right to carry weapons.” I remembered writing that letter to Ederach. “And the garrison confiscated em.” I put my hair out of my eyes, and said sharply, “Which led to organized resistance.”
“If you’d call Celdior’s raid on the armory organized.”
“It was stealing something back. And they hain’t been re-confiscated.”
“You strike fear in me,” said Andrei, smiling. “But isn’t that more because Ederach questioned the law?”
“Ederach’s dead.” I sighed, wiping my runny nose. “No one’s left to question anythin. Opens the way for more organized resistance.”
“There’re quieter ways of getting what you want.”
Rain slid down my back, and I moved under an eve.
“That’s what Daifen thought, and the Queen, and Herist and Caveira. All you courtiers think alike.”
He shrugged. “Then there’s little difference between a courtier and a thief.”
I couldn’t decide if he was lowering himself to my level or raising me to his.
“What’s Daifen stolen?”
“You’ll help?”
Neither of us answered the other’s question, and after setting a later date to meet up and connive, we parted in the rain, which had begun to pour.