The Poison Song

by Jen Williams

  ‘It’s her, isn’t it?’ he spat. He wasn’t wearing any shoes, and his bare feet looked like ugly sea creatures against the sand. ‘That fucking lunatic has come home.’

  ‘Come home with a dragon,’ said Chenlo faintly. The last agent had been chased from the sky. ‘What did you think would happen?’ Taking advantage of their distraction, she turned the full contempt of her gaze on the fathers and sisters gathered behind her. ‘Sending Tyranny O’Keefe, of all people, to steal from Ebora? To steal the kin of, Tomas save us, actual fire-breathing dragons? As if Fell-Noon didn’t have enough reason to hate the Winnowry already.’

  Eranis looked at her blankly, just as though he hadn’t been present in the many discussions where Chenlo had argued, again and again, that their plan was outrageously risky. She opened her mouth, unable to resist giving them another piece of her mind, when the dragon dropped down towards them. The fathers and sisters scattered, most running down across the sands, with a few heading back to the furnace. Chenlo stood her ground, wincing against the winds that battered her as the great white dragon landed in the courtyard, outside the enormous doors to the main Winnowry building. All those women, she thought, with a surge of terror, cooked alive in their cells.

  ‘Wait! You must wait!’

  Fell-Noon turned, and Chenlo was reminded of how young the rogue witch was – barely older than the novice agents she had been training. She was wearing strange Eboran clothes, and the bat-wing tattoo on her forehead, a twin to Chenlo’s own, looked out of place, as though someone had scrawled it over a painting of a mythical figure in a book.

  ‘What must we wait for?’ asked the dragon.

  Chenlo blinked. She knew, of course, that war-beasts could speak, but actually hearing that fine, cultured voice, being regarded by those burning violet eyes . . . that was something else.

  ‘Please,’ she held up her hands, too aware that such an action from a fell-witch was almost always a threat. ‘Please, Fell-Noon, the women in there have done you no harm. I know you must be angry . . .’

  ‘Angry!’ The young woman grinned wolfishly. ‘You don’t know the half of it, Winnowry dog.’

  ‘I urge you not to strike those who share your own miserable past!’

  At this, Fell-Noon looked faintly puzzled. She shook her head.

  ‘I’m not here for them,’ she said.

  With that she turned away from Agent Chenlo and she and the dragon moved closer to the enormous doors. She raised her arms, fingers spread, and an arc of green fire, so bright it was nearly white, burst from her hands. It hit the wood and iron of the doors and seemed to burn all the brighter, until Chenlo had to turn away, the heat and light crisping her hair and skin.

  Such winnowfire, she thought, as the stench of burning wood and melting metal reached her. It burns hotter than anything I’ve ever seen.

  There was an odd, crumping noise, and where an enormous door had stood for hundreds of years there was suddenly a gaping hole, wreathed in flames turned orange and red. Hot pools of molten metal snaked across the sand and grit towards her boots, and hurriedly she stepped out of the way. The dragon and her rider stepped through into the echoing space beyond.

  ‘Are all human structures so miserable?’ asked Vostok.

  Noon shrugged, distracted. They stood in a part of the Winnowry that she had only seen once before; on the day they had brought her here, when she was eleven years old. It was generally known as the processing office, where girls, often very small ones, were made ready for their lives of imprisonment. Their clothes would be taken, along with any other possessions they might have on them. Clingy parents or relatives were removed and sent out a separate door, and the girls were told the rules: you will not touch another person, flesh to flesh, unless you are given permission; you will give the remainder of your lives in service to Tomas the Drowned, the figurehead of the Winnowry’s tyrannical order; you will work to heal the breach your very presence has made on the world; you are an abomination, and you will never forget it.

  It was a dark and forbidding space, empty of any comforts or windows. There was the wide stretch of the foyer, and a line of doors on one side, where the Winnowry sisters kept their records and documents. In the centre of the space was a driftwood altar, where the girls were stripped and washed, and anointed with pale, powdery ash before being dressed again in the clothes of the Winnowry. Looking at it, Noon felt a fresh surge of rage close her throat.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Vostok, her voice lower than it had been. ‘I have not felt such turmoil within you before, bright weapon.’

  ‘It’s this fucking place. It brings everything back.’ Noon took a deep breath and held it for a few seconds. Somewhere, beyond this processing space, she could hear a great number of women – talking, shouting. They had heard the tower being smashed, had likely heard the sisters’ and fathers’ panicked exclamations. Some of them had probably even seen Noon and Vostok arrive through their tiny, smeared windows. ‘It’s like . . . it’s like a trap is hovering over me, waiting to put me back into my cell.’

  Vostok tipped her long head to one side. She took up much of the space, looking like a great marble statue against the black walls.

  ‘Nonsense. This place could not hold you now. You will always be free. Remember why you came here.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Noon climbed down from Vostok’s harness, and stalked over to the nearest door. She threw it open to find a room oddly like a kitchen. An alcove sheltered a blackened stove, and a great steel bucket containing long, pale branches of wood sat to one side of it. There was a huge sieve on a table and a great clay bowl underneath. It was, she belatedly realised, where they burned the wood to make the powder they covered the fell-witches with. Cowering behind the table was a pair of sisters, one still wearing a blank silver mask.

  ‘You,’ Noon addressed them tersely, ‘get me the keys. For the cells. Hurry up.’

  The woman with the bare face cringed, but the one with the mask came around the table towards Noon, the heavy cudgel held in one hand.

  ‘Abomination!’ she spat. Her eyes, just about visible through the eye slits of her mask, were wild. ‘What have you done? What poison have you leaked into the world with your selfishness? In Tomas’s name, I command you to repent! You must be purged, child.’

  ‘Idiot. You’re all so bloody stupid it hurts.’ Noon lifted her hand and sent a blossom of winnowfire towards the woman, who danced backwards abruptly, letting out a little shriek. ‘Did you forget we can do this?’ She sent another small fireball, faster this time, and it landed on the woman’s wide skirts. In seconds she was aflame, throwing herself onto the floor with a series of desperate screams. Noon watched her trying to douse the flames for a moment, a tight feeling in her throat, before she turned to the other woman.

  ‘The keys?’

  The woman nodded rapidly and led her to another room. It was well-lit and neat, with over a hundred iron keys hung on the walls, each carefully labelled.

  ‘Give me the keys for the bottom-most cells on the south side.’ When the woman hesitated, Noon shook her head. ‘I don’t have to burn you alive, you know, I could just feed you to the dragon.’

  The woman turned white, and pressed a set of five keys into Noon’s hand. As she did so, Noon touched her face with her free hand, draining the sister’s life energy, and she dropped to the floor in a faint. ‘This is the end of it all,’ she said to the woman’s unconscious form. ‘I’m ending it all here.’

  Back in the foyer Vostok was amusing herself by standing across the hole that had once been the front doors. There were Winnowry agents out there as well as a handful of sisters and fathers, and every time they drew closer to the building, Vostok would lower her long head and shoot great spears of violet flame towards them, scattering them all back. Eventually, Noon knew, they would gather their remaining agents together – perhaps calling back those who were in Mushenska too – and make a more determined assault. She did not have much time before everything be
came a lot more complicated.

  Letting Vostok continue to hold the front doors, Noon went to the passage that led to the prison. This was the heart of the Winnowry. Here she found a pair of novices, young men who inevitably reminded her of Lusk, the novice who had helped her escape, so long ago. They were easily persuaded to unbolt the doors before they ran off and locked themselves in one of the office rooms. Taking a deep breath, Noon pushed the heavy iron doors aside, and stepped into the gaping space beyond.

  It was bigger than she remembered, and strange. To her left, the southern bank of cells began, reaching up and up into the echoing void, a spindly web of steps and platforms rising with them. To the other side were the northern bank of cells, and there she could see women, all of them standing at the bars with their faces raw and shocked. The same set of grey clothes, over and over, the same crude bat-wing tattoo on the broad plane of every forehead. She wondered what she looked like to them. High above everything, crouched in the ceiling, were the huge water vats, which the sisters would turn on the witches if they got out of line. A shocked silence hung in the vast space, so heavy that Noon almost felt it as a pressure against her face.

  ‘Who are you?’ someone called down from the uppermost cells, and the shout shattered the silence into chaotic pieces. Someone else shouted, from much closer, ‘She’s Fell-Noon! The rogue witch!’ and then someone else cried, ‘But she’s dead! Agent Lin killed her, they said so.’

  ‘Listen!’ Noon raised her hands and shook the set of keys. ‘We’ve got to be quick. I’ll open the five nearest cells, and then those women can go to the lock room and get the rest. You have to let yourselves out.’ There was a rising cacophony at this, and Noon found herself shouting over them. ‘The way is free, for now! Help each other, and be fast.’

  With that she turned to the nearest cells, and ignoring the look of shock on the woman’s face, rammed the first key home and turned it. Throwing the door back, she nodded to the woman. ‘Go, down the corridor. It’s the room with the door left standing open. Start getting the keys! This is your only chance.’

  The woman nodded and fled, and Noon moved onto the next cell, then the next. A great roar was filling the prison as the women clamoured to be freed, and Noon found that her hands were shaking. It had never been this loud in here; before, the women had always been afraid to be loud.

  ‘Go,’ she said to the woman in the fifth cell, just as the first one was coming back, her arms full of iron keys.

  ‘There’s a fucking dragon out there,’ she said, her voice faint.

  ‘Good, brilliant, very observant. Can you do this? Can you get them out?’

  The witch was joined by the others, and they began taking the keys from her arms, set expressions on their faces. Satisfied that she’d done what she could, Noon left the echoing space behind, relief surging through her, and headed back to the foyer. Vostok had broken through part of the wall to give herself more space to target the agents, who were keeping out of her reach on the backs of the giant bats.

  ‘Bright weapon?’

  ‘Nearly done!’

  Finally, Noon headed for the Sea Watch tower, arming herself with a fresh supply of Vostok’s life energy as she passed by. Through another set of doors and out into the small stony courtyard that existed between all of the towers. Paved with grey slate and dotted here and there with bat guano, it was as miserable a place as Noon had ever seen. Sometimes, women were left out here overnight as a punishment, with no protection from the rain and the cold.

  ‘Fucking place,’ she muttered, feeling a shiver work its way down the back of her neck. The Sea Watch tower was the official name for the space where the Drowned One kept her rooms; you were sent to her chambers only if you had been especially bad, or if Mother Cressin had taken a particular interest in you. At the bottom, Noon blew the doors off their hinges and stepped inside. It was all too easy to imagine the old woman crouched at the top of the tower like some ancient, wrinkled spider, smelling of old salt and watching over her precious Winnowry. The spiral staircase within was lit periodically with oil lamps, and the sea-wards side of the tower was punctured with tall, narrow windows, yet the place remained gloomy and damp. At the very top she paused, eyeing the door with some unease. It stood open, just a crack, so that she could see a tiny slither of the room beyond. Had she ever seen it partly open like that? She thought not.

  Cautiously, Noon moved onto the landing, her hands held in front of her. Just as she’d decided that Mother Cressin had already fled, the door crashed open, revealing the sizeable form of Fell-Mary, the old woman’s personal bodyguard. A wall of green flame shot towards Noon and she half dived, half fell back down the steps immediately behind her. Several old wounds cried out in indignation, and she bellowed a few swear words.

  ‘It’s over!’ she shouted. ‘The women are freeing themselves, and there will be boats arriving for them soon. It’s over.’ There was silence from the landing. ‘Fell-Mary, you don’t have to babysit that awful creature anymore.’

  Still there was silence. Noon poked her head around the corner, only to see Fell-Mary bearing down on her, her enormous hands reaching for her throat. This time, she lunged forward and grabbed the woman, skin against skin, and for the briefest moment felt the tug of a strong fell-witch trying to pull her life’s energy from her.

  Bad idea. I’m stronger than you.

  Putting everything she had behind it, Noon tore the woman’s life force out of her body, easily batting aside her own feeble attempt to do the same to Noon. At once she was filled with that vital, buzzing force, so much of it that her fingers tingled, while Fell-Mary collapsed to the floor, her eyes rolled up to the whites.

  ‘I bloody told you,’ she said, aggrieved. From within the room, there came a dry, rasping sound – the Drowned One’s idea of laughter.

  ‘Come in, Fell-Noon. Let me see what you’ve become.’

  Noon summoned a pair of fiery gloves around her fists and stepped into the chamber. It was as cold and as miserable as she remembered. Narrow windows looked out across the grey sea, bare pieces of furniture made from driftwood were scattered to the corners, and a huge iron and glass tank filled with seawater dominated the room. The smell of salt was overpowering.

  ‘The rumours that have come over the Bloodless Mountains are true, then.’ Mother Cressin sat in one of her driftwood chairs, her skin the same chalky pallor as the wood. She looked wizened and tiny, a half-formed thing found under a rock, and for a moment Noon felt a sense of unreality threatening to overwhelm her. Why had she ever been frightened of this small, defenceless, cruel woman? She herself was the weapon, after all. ‘You belong to the Eborans now. Do they know what they’ve let into the heart of their world?’

  Noon came fully into the room. Distantly she could hear the roar of Vostok’s fire, and the shouts of men and women. Soon, the boats she had paid for in Mushenska would be arriving at the small jetty, and she would need to be there to lead the women to their freedom. Time was getting away from her.

  ‘I’m giving you one chance to leave now. Get out and go. Get one of your agents to fly you away on a bat, or swim for it, I don’t care, but your time here is done. This whole shit show,’ she gestured around the room, taking in the entirety of the Winnowry, ‘is over. I’m ending it now.’

  ‘So you are truly ready to unleash evil on this world? For hundreds of years, the Winnowry has been the thin barrier between the abomination of these fallen women, and the sanctity of the outer world. In Tomas’s name, we have kept them hidden and safe, given them a chance to make up for what they are, and cleansed Sarn of their taint. You end that, and you will tear this world apart, and all for your own demented pride.’

  ‘I don’t give a shit about any of that fucking nonsense. Because that is exactly what it is – nonsense you and all the nasty little people who came before you made up to justify the torture and exploitation of women.’ Noon laughed, a sour bark of amusement. ‘Using us to make your drugs, offering tiny scraps of freedom
to the women who would work for you. It’s just so fucking obvious. You couldn’t even come up with any good reasons! Oh, some man said it once, he was half mad from being drowned but, sure, let’s found an entire order of misery on his say-so!’

  The Drowned One stood up, her feet encased in papery white slippers. The faint mocking expression had vanished, and there were two points of pinkish colour on the tops of her cheeks – the first time Noon had ever seen any colour in that dour face.

  ‘The fell-women are dangerous,’ she said, her voice low and tight with a boiling fury. ‘They kill, daily. They are a threat to every normal man, woman and child, and they are a threat to themselves.’ She straightened up. ‘You yourself are the best possible example of that, Fell-Noon. How many people did you kill at the tender age of eleven?’

  ‘Stop it.’ The dark space in Noon’s memory opened up as if summoned, a yawning pit she did not wish to go anywhere near. ‘Leave now, Cressin, or I will kill you.’

  ‘Can you still smell it, in your dreams? The boiling meat of everyone you’d ever known or loved? Do you see their smoking corpses when you sleep?’

  Without knowing she was about to do it, Noon raised her arms and released Fell-Mary’s life energy in a solid ball of green fire. It shot across the room and exploded against the tank of seawater, which shattered with a deafening crash. Water surged across the chamber, rising briefly to the tops of Noon’s boots. Glass glittered everywhere, and the black iron frame of the tank was a twisted thing, black and misshapen like a body when it has been burned down to its bones – no, don’t think about that. Mother Cressin had been knocked to the ground with the violence of it, and was bleeding from a number of tiny cuts. She was a shrivelled white and red thing, her colourless hair sodden and clinging to her neck and forehead.

  ‘I’ve let you talk for long enough,’ said Noon. She could hear a gentle trickling noise as the escaped water made its way down the spiral staircase. ‘All of this shit has been going on for long enough.’