The Ember Blade

by Chris Wooding

  ‘What’s this?’ he said, his face falling a little.

  ‘Keel!’ Mariella cried, knocking back her stool as she surged to her feet. She flung her arms round his neck and kissed him, hard and hungrily. He forgot everything in the white heat of her. It was all so right: the smell of her skin and hair, the way she fitted in his arms, the way she wanted him. Past and future faded away, and there was only sensation, and nothing else.

  The sound of a stool scraping along the floor jerked him from bliss. He opened his eyes and there was Fluke, dark and sour, wearing that half-scowl of disapproval Keel knew so well. His younger brother was stockier than he, broader of face. Once he’d styled himself whaler-fashion, as Keel did, with a strip of long hair down the centre of his skull and shaved elsewhere; but he’d been a landsman for many years now and his black curly hair had grown out thick all over.

  ‘Brother,’ he said in greeting.

  Keel let go of his wife and embraced him without enthusiasm, because form demanded it.

  ‘It’s good you’re back,’ said Fluke.

  ‘It’s good to be back,’ said Keel. Neither of them sounded quite sure if they meant it.

  Fluke grunted, as if the business of his brother’s sudden appearance had now been concluded and there was nothing more to be said on it. ‘I’ll let you catch up, then,’ he told them. ‘Reckon I’ll head back to the farm.’ He patted Keel on the shoulder, as if in consolation. ‘Come see me after, eh?’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ said Keel.

  Fluke gave Mariella a meaningful look, which Keel didn’t much like, and sloped off.

  Keel rounded on his wife. ‘Well, this is some homecoming.’ He didn’t want to get angry but it was happening anyway. Fluke’s presence had spoiled his grand entrance and he felt foolish.

  ‘Don’t,’ said Mariella. ‘He comes over for breakfast after he’s fed the animals and I like the company in the morning. Makes the place feel a little less empty.’

  He heard the resentment in that. Things were already sharpening between them. He knew where that would lead, and it wasn’t anywhere he was keen to go. With some effort, he reined himself in and tried to dismiss the spectre of his younger brother.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said, laying his hand on her arm. ‘It was just a surprise.’

  ‘Did you expect me to be here on my own, staring at the door like a good wife, waiting for the day you choose to return?’ She didn’t respond to his touch. The passion of a few moments ago had gone; she’d remembered her grievances.

  ‘Of course not. Forget all that. I’m back.’

  Still she didn’t melt. ‘And how long are you back for?’

  He felt his heart sink a little. She had to ask that, didn’t she?

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, removing his hand.

  She said nothing in reply. There was frost in the set of her shoulders. Joha, he’d only just walked in after months away! Couldn’t they go back to the kissing? Couldn’t she be happy to see him now, without complicating it with talk of the future?

  He stepped away, feeling unwanted, out of place in his own house. Things had been moved and changed in his absence. Mariella had a new tablecloth; there was a new pot on the sill. Someone had repaired that broken chair; Fluke, no doubt. The thought irked him. Likely his brother’s coin had paid for the tablecloth and pot, too. Every time he returned, this seemed less like his home.

  He dug into his pouch and dropped the bag of coins on the table. There! Let her see that he could provide, too.

  Mariella looked down at it. No gratitude there, of course. He shouldn’t have expected any.

  ‘It’s not much, but it’ll see you through the winter,’ he said, his voice tight as he fought the unmanly urge to sulk.

  She raised her eyes to his, and there was a bleak sadness there that sent tendrils of dread wrapping round his heart. He thought of Fluke’s meaningful look as he left, and suddenly he knew its cause.

  ‘Where’s Tad?’ he asked.

  Tad’s room was dim with the curtains drawn. A floorboard creaked beneath Keel’s boot as he came in and he cursed softly. He always forgot about that floorboard.

  He remembered the smell of this room more than the sight of it: the clean, healthy scent of boyhood. But the air was musty now and reeked of convalescence. In the bed, tucked up to his neck in blankets, was Tad; or, at least, a sallow approximation of him. His eyes were closed, the sockets dark, and his breath bubbled as he pulled it in and out.

  The sight of him was a shock. It was hard to see him so changed. Keel looked away, needing a moment to gather himself.

  Mariella had come in behind him. She slipped her hand into his.

  ‘It’s his lungs,’ she said. ‘He’s got the grip.’

  The grip. Keel had known from the moment he stepped into the room, but the confirmation sent a wave of weakness through him nonetheless.

  ‘How?’ was the first thing he could think of to say.

  ‘Off the boats? Some merchant from the Rainlands? What does it matter?’ She sounded washed out, resigned. He wasn’t used to that tone from her. ‘He’s had it since Aspects’ Day, or thereabouts.’

  ‘He’s been like this since Latespring?’ Keel hissed, appalled.

  The accusation in his voice awoke her temper. ‘What should I have done?’ she hissed back, snatching her hand away. ‘Should I have had old Ganny write you a letter? And what would he use as an address?’

  Keel bit back a reply. You could have tried. You could have found me. But she couldn’t. He wasn’t anywhere to be found. He was furious at himself, not her.

  He stared at his boy, listening to the moist wheeze that came with every breath, the tide of his life, in and out. It didn’t feel real.

  ‘What does Podrey say?’ he asked.

  ‘Little of worth,’ she replied. He knew what she thought of the town herbalist. Everyone thought the same. ‘He prescribed some weeds which did nothing. I went to another herbalist, and another after that, and each gave me something different and all of it was useless. In the end, Fluke sent for the Krodan doctor from Harlsbeach.’

  Keel felt something curdle in his gut at that. It was his job to provide for his family. Who gave Fluke the right to bring in the squareheads? Wasn’t the Ossian way good enough?

  Once again, he stopped himself before he could say something he’d regret. Seemed like he was always doing that round Mariella. Just being near her turned him into a stroppy boy.

  If he was honest with himself, in Fluke’s shoes he’d have done the same. Difference was, he wouldn’t have had the money. His family couldn’t live on what he brought back, and if it weren’t for Fluke’s charity, they’d starve. The only way he’d have been able to afford a Krodan doctor was by begging his younger brother for help. Every moment he spent in Wracken Bay, he was reminded of that.

  ‘Don’t you want to know what he said?’ Mariella said, when he didn’t ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. No. I don’t want to hear it.

  ‘He said we need to take him somewhere the air is drier. Away from the coast. He needs the care of a proper doctor, a Krodan doctor, not some quack who’ll serve him root stew and call it medicine. And he needs some kind of device … It’s like a helmet that he puts on, like a mask … There’s a contraption that makes vapours from herbs and he breathes them …’ She tailed off. ‘I don’t understand it all. Fluke can explain it better than I.’

  Keel’s heart sank further. He didn’t need to hear Fluke explain it. They’d never have that kind of money, and moving away would be nigh on impossible. Even buying the permits was beyond their means. Just one visit from the doctor would have cost Fluke more than he could spare; regular care was out of the question for all but the richest Ossians. Krodans had access to doctors for free, paid for by the Empire, but that courtesy didn’t extend to their subjects.

  A drier climate. Doctors. A vapour mask. Might as well try to pull the moons down from the sky.

  ‘What happens if we can’t?’ he asked
grimly.

  ‘You know what happens,’ she whispered, and her eyes glittered with tears. ‘Within a year, the doctor said. If he was strong, he’d last longer. But he’s never been strong.’

  Tad’s breathing changed then, and he snorted and stirred.

  ‘I’ll get him some broth,’ said Mariella.

  Keel almost reached out to stop her, but she was gone too suddenly. What would he say, anyway? Don’t leave me alone in here! How could he? She’d never understood that part of him, the way he feared himself and dreaded solitude. He needed the company of others to stop his thoughts turning inwards, devouring themselves and him with them. As a young man, he’d stared into that abyss more than once, that terrible place where joy and ambition became pointless and he was surrounded by the cold profundity of death. Time and toil brought him out of it, but the experience had left its mark and he never wanted to go back. Better to distract himself; better not to dwell on things.

  He’d found that distraction in the camaraderie of sailors, in Mariella’s love, in a friendship with Garric that was more like brotherhood. And given the choice between following Garric or staying in Wracken Bay with his family, it was the lure of the road that decided it. Routine led back to the darkness. He needed to make the world new every day.

  He stood awkwardly by the door, watching Tad struggle up from sleep as the void billowed in his mind. He tried to push it back, but he didn’t know how, and

  eyes tendrils mouths with teeth like hooks and the smell of it was like

  He crushed his eyes shut, mashed them with the heels of his hands as if he could press out the memory of the beast of Skavengard. The others had glimpsed it in silhouette, protected from its horror by blinding light. But he’d looked into its ungodly eye and seen the foul intelligence there. He’d been scorched by the force of its mind. He hadn’t slept since without seeing it, and it ambushed him during his waking hours as well.

  Skavengard had marked them all, but none so deeply as he. He’d glimpsed the nature of the things that lurked beyond the Shadowlands, the vast and hungry entities that stirred in their prison beneath Kar Vishnakh, the Citadel of Chains. How could anything be the same after that?

  ‘Da?’

  He took his hands away from his face. Tad’s eyes were open, his head turned to one side on the pillow. His gaze was clear and steady, and he had that half-puzzled, half-curious expression on his face.

  The sight of his son shredded the darkness in his mind. He was a father; he wouldn’t greet his son with weakness.

  ‘My boy!’ he said, and a smile came easily to his face. He opened his arms wide. ‘I’m back!’

  There was no smile from Tad, no happiness at his father’s return. Keel’s arms wilted under that calm regard; his enthusiastic greeting felt forced and theatrical now. Keel had always wanted a son he could knock about with, one who’d be pleased with the rough, bluff parenting he’d learned from his own da. But Tad hated romping, and found manly humour bewildering. Not for the first time, Keel wondered how he and Mariella had managed to create a child that was nothing like either of them.

  He sat down on a stool next to the bed and pushed Tad’s hair back from his forehead. ‘Your ma tells me you’re not feeling well,’ he said.

  ‘Sorry, Da.’

  ‘Nothing to be sorry about. Even the strongest man can be felled by illness. Evric the Red spent half his youth abed, but he went on to unify Ossia after the Fall, conquered the barbarian warlords and began the Age of Kings. He was the first to wield the Ember Blade in four hundred years, after everyone thought it was lost. The Dawnwardens had been keeping it secretly all that time, waiting for someone like him. How about that? Not bad for a feeble boy.’

  Tad just looked up at him. Keel stroked his head gently and felt himself pierced by a cold shard of grief. His helplessness frightened him. He didn’t know what to say or do. How was it possible to love somebody so, and yet be strangers?

  ‘Have you had adventures?’ Tad asked.

  ‘I have. All over the country. We faced many perils, me and your Uncle Laine. High seas, Krodan soldiers …’

  Monsters, he thought, and it flashed through his mind again, black tentacles squirming down the corridors, a dozen mouths gnashing behind them.

  ‘Ma says you’re fighting to save Ossia. That’s why you’re always away.’

  Something twisted in his chest at that. Yes, that was the story he told. Sometimes he even believed it himself.

  He heard Mariella on the stairs. ‘Here’s your ma now,’ he said, relieved.

  She came in with a bowl of fish broth and a brave smile for them both. Tad struggled to sit up against the headboard, so Keel helped him. Even that small movement appeared to exhaust him, and he slumped there limply, wheezing.

  ‘Can I?’ he asked Mariella, holding out his hand for the broth.

  ‘He can feed himself,’ Mariella said. ‘Just give him a moment to rest.’

  ‘I want to,’ said Keel, quietly insistent.

  Mariella handed over the bowl. He filled a spoon, blew on it, held it up for his son. ‘Some of your ma’s broth,’ he said. ‘Make you strong again, eh?’

  Tad opened his mouth and accepted it like a baby. Keel filled the spoon again. He felt Mariella’s eyes on him, but he wouldn’t look up at her. He was afraid she’d see the pain in him, the feeling in his chest as if he was splitting open from the inside.

  ‘I’m here now,’ he murmured as he fed another spoonful of broth to his son. ‘I’m back.’

  Later, when Tad was asleep again, they made love in a hot tangle of blankets and limbs. The first time, it was desperate, savage, driven by their need to be together after so long apart. The second time, they were gentler, lingering as they rediscovered each other’s bodies, finding old flaws and new scars.

  Afterwards, they lay together, her head on his chest while his gaze roamed the ceiling, tracing familiar whorls and cracks in the beams. They, at least, were the same as they’d ever been. With Mariella in the circle of his arm and the sweat cooling on their skin, he didn’t need to think further than the walls of their bedroom, and everything was perfect.

  It didn’t last, of course. Soon she began to talk, to tell him of what had passed in Wracken Bay while he’d been away. Grievances between neighbours; Abna’s boy running wild; bad fishing due to summer storms. Little Espy had got herself with child and wouldn’t say who the father was. Keel listened and nodded and tried to ignore the feeling that his soul was shrivelling with every new tale. The same names he’d known all his life, the same petty gossip, none of it worth a whale’s fart to anyone outside their little town. While he’d been trying to start a revolution, she’d struck a deal with a fisherman to shave a few bits off the price of her weekly shop.

  He wanted to care, because she cared, but the best he could do was pretend. Even together, they were so far apart, and the distance was only increasing.

  ‘Jadrell’s worse than ever,’ she was saying. ‘He styles himself a lord, as if that has meaning any more, and he treats us like we’re serfs of old. Everyone knows how he keeps his title! His father did well out of the invasion, but Jadrell’s done better still. Seems like every month another building or farm falls into his hands. He owns half the town now.’

  ‘Collaborator,’ Keel muttered angrily. Lord Jadrell was news he could care about. He’d love to put a sword through that treacherous snake. He and his father had been brazen in their support for the new regime, and plenty of Ossians in Wracken Bay had gone to the camps and gallows because Jadrell had whispered in a Krodan ear. The only crime most of them were guilty of was owning something Jadrell wanted.

  ‘He’s got his eye on this place, too,’ Mariella warned. ‘And your brother’s farm.’

  Keel saw through that one. Jadrell didn’t care about some insignificant cottage or one barely prosperous farm. He felt the last of his inner peace fade away as he prepared for the inevitable argument to come.

  ‘Where’s Laine, anyway?’ she asked, cir
cling towards her point. ‘Or Garric, now, is it? Why’d he change his name?’

  ‘Because Laine’s a dangerous name to bear these days. He’s down in the town, seeing to business.’

  ‘Securing your escape, no doubt,’ she muttered.

  He sighed. Must we do this again?

  Mariella was determined they must. ‘Haven’t you done enough for him?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t you tired of following him about? Let him fight this crusade on his own.’

  ‘I don’t do it for him. I do it because it needs doing. So people like Lord Jadrell can’t take our house from us just because he knows which Krodan arse to kiss.’

  ‘That’s not why you do it,’ she said, and rolled off him.

  He turned onto his side, too, facing the other way, and pillowed his head with his arm. It was a grey day outside and the bracken was stirring on the hill.

  ‘You need to stay,’ she said quietly.

  ‘We need money,’ he said. ‘A lot of it. I can’t make that kind of money in Wracken Bay.’

  ‘No!’ She rolled back again with a rustle of blankets and sat up, her fingers clutching his shoulder. ‘No, don’t go again! Tad needs you. Fluke will give you a job on the farm, he’s said he will all along.’

  ‘Ha! And suffer his judgement every day of my life? I’m gods-damned if I’ll be employed by my little brother. If I stayed, I’d go back to the boats.’

  ‘And then you’d only be away a month at a time, instead of whole seasons. Quite an improvement that’ll be,’ she said sarcast­ically. ‘I want you here, Keel. I want to wake up with you, I want you to be there for our son.’

  ‘I have to do something!’ he cried, flinging off the covers and sitting up. ‘I won’t stand by and watch him die!’

  ‘No. You’ll turn your back so you don’t have to.’

  The defeat in her voice was the worst of it. He wanted her to scream and shout, to pound him with her fists. Not to give up like that. He couldn’t go on if she gave up on him.