by Jen Williams
The woman raised her hands, palms facing out. ‘I brought you here, Noon, because you woke up the Aborans’ Seed Carrier with your clever fire, and I wanted to see who would do that.’ She paused, and grinned. ‘Wasn’t quite enough to power it up, but I bet it gave those old fools a shock.’
‘That thing on Origin? You mean you know about that place, what it was?’
‘Come on, let’s go outside. Things make more sense under the sky, I think.’
Noon followed the woman through the castle, her mind racing. Back out on the sand, some of the clouds had cleared from the horizon to reveal the sun on its way down, filling the small bare patch of sky with orange light. Stretching away in front of them was an apparently endless desert, although Noon thought she could see the shadows of mountains to the west. The aura that surrounded the woman’s head seemed to grow in the daylight, stretching out and collecting other colours, a corona of rainbow lights. Noon found she had to look away from it.
‘Did you see the things that lived inside the Seed Carrier, Fell-Noon?’
‘No. I mean, there were monsters, and I killed those, but the people? I saw one of them, and Tor told me it was long dead, like it was a ghost of itself. And it didn’t like me very much.’
The woman laughed hugely at that. ‘I bet it didn’t. I knew those people once. Travelled with them. Dusty, self-important. Boring. They thought what they were doing was so incredible.’ She raised her arms and spread them wide, as if indicating the landscape around them. ‘But they knew nothing about the worlds they played with.’
‘You’re – you’re not human, are you?’
‘No. Well, this bit is.’ She reached up and lightly patted her own cheeks, not seeming to care that the skin on them was loose and yellow. ‘This flesh. But otherwise, no.’
Noon thought of the strange surface of the Seed Carrier, etched with symbols and lines that she hadn’t understood, yet had found oddly compelling. She thought of how her winnowfire had sunk into the skin of it, running around patterns in the surface as though it had always been meant to do so. The faces in the alcoves, laughing . . .
‘I brought them here, and then I left them,’ continued the woman. ‘I’d had enough of that. Of being tethered to their ship, a thing for them to use. I was tired of the coldness of the outer-black, the long spaces. All that nothingness tastes the same, you know? A world tastes different. All over.’ She grinned again.
‘I’ve no bloody idea what you’re on about.’ Except that Noon had a horrible feeling she did. Tor had told her about the Aborans, the beings that had spoken to him even though they were long dead; how they had travelled to Sarn over unimaginable distances in some vast sort of ship, and then how their means of powering their ship had left them somehow; had left them stranded on the island that would eventually be Origin. A memory came to her in sharp relief: the way the Aboran called Eeskar had reacted to her – or had reacted to her winnowfire. He had been angry, and afraid. As though she had personally betrayed him somehow.
‘You can do better than that, Noon,’ the woman said, mildly enough. ‘I know for a fact you’re good at figuring things out.’
‘You’re not human,’ Noon said. ‘You came here with the . . . people who planted Ygseril and created the Eborans, but you’re not one of them. Somehow, you are . . . you’re winnowfire.’
The woman laughed again, delighted. ‘I love that word for what I am. You see? This is why I had to get out of there. Words and skies and chairs and feet and – here, look at that.’
She pointed out across the dark sands to where several shapes were moving in the distance. It was a small herd of four-legged animals that Noon had never seen before. They looked a little like shaggy goats with long necks, and they had black-and-white piebald coats.
‘I’ve seen them in pictures, in books,’ said Noon. ‘My mum used to – Is this the Singing Eye Desert? Is that where we are?’
The woman nodded. ‘That’s right. Isn’t it something?’
The thought of maps and her mother’s books made Noon think of Vintage. What would she say about all this? The memory of sitting in Esiah Godwort’s kitchen rose up – their cobbled-together meal of potatoes and preserves, the strange quiet of the mansion, and the knowledge that Tor was upstairs, unconscious. She had been half out of her mind at the time, with both guilt and the strange new voice in her head, and talking to Vintage had been like reaching for a lifeline while drowning.
‘There were people,’ she said quietly, ‘people a long time ago who thought that the winnowfire was a gift. That it was sacred. They worshipped a woman, or a goddess, I suppose. They called her She Who Laughs. That’s you, isn’t it? I mean, assuming that I’m not leaking my brains out on a beach somewhere, having one last weird dream before I die.’
The woman turned to her. Her smile now looked satisfied, almost smug. ‘See? I knew you were good at figuring things out.’
‘Wait, wait. This still doesn’t make any sense. If you’re She Who Laughs, the, I don’t know, goddess of winnowfire, then why do I also have it? Why do all those women in the Winnowry have it? And what are you doing out here in the middle of nowhere? Why are you an old woman?’ Noon pinched the bridge of her nose; she felt perilously close to passing out. ‘And why do you keep saying I’m good at figuring things out?’
‘Ah, well, you see . . .’ the woman held up one hand, and then sighed. Green fire was crawling over it, spreading rapidly as they watched, up her arm and across her shoulders, while a similar sleeve of flame covered her other arm.
‘Wait, what are you doing?’ Noon took a hurried step back.
The fire raced up over the woman’s face, meeting the crown of emerald flame on her head, and abruptly she was burning all over; not the dirty orange flame normally born by the touch of witch’s fire, but a green that grew brighter and brighter by the moment. The woman tipped her head back and lifted her arms, as though she were standing in a particularly pleasant patch of sunlight, and her body began to break apart into pieces of swirling white light.
‘Stop it!’
But it was too late. In a flash of shimmering green, the woman was gone. Where she had been standing was a small, sad pile of grey ash, and a blackened skull that looked like it had been sitting on the desert sands forever. Once again, the place was filled with an eerie silence, and a breeze began to scatter the ashes. Noon glared down at the remains, her arms rigid at her sides.
‘You have got to be fucking kidding me.’
Chapter Fourteen
Yurt fires were terrible things. Rare, but not unknown. An old family yurt, the walls built from layers of deer fat and horse hair – a new layer applied for each new betrothal – and an untended fire. They were feared because they could go up so fast, and because you might not know about it for some time. If the people inside were asleep, taken by the smoke, they could be caught in their own private inferno for some minutes, and all that those on the outside would see would be the thick stream of black smoke escaping from the small hole in the top. Then, eventually, the yurt would collapse in on itself, releasing a huge gout of flame. A fire that burns in secret, a lethal conflagration that you only discover when it’s too late to save anyone.
I thought about yurt fires a lot today. One of the young girls, a Fell-Jereen, has been quiet for some time, listless almost. I tried to talk to her once or twice, tried to engage her attention with talk of purgings and Tomas (not great subjects, I know, but we are limited here) and she only looked at me with dull eyes, as though I were not really there. She did not resist being taken to and from the furnace, patted her face with the ashes without complaint. She was, to the sisters, a model fell-witch, but it worried me all the same. Something was burning underneath.
Today, she lunged for Father Isles as he was leading her from her purging, and by chance made contact with his naked face. She drained him in a moment and directed a great blast of fire at the nearest sister.
When Fell-Jereen was captured she was raving, her face wet wi
th tears and marked where she had tried to claw herself. She swore she would kill us all, that she would burn us all to soot and piss on what was left, that she would do it to Tomas too if she could . . . She was taken to see Mother Cressin. Later, I saw her body laid out on the sand, her lips blue and her hair and clothes soaked through. She will be buried in an unmarked grave, somewhere on this little sandy island – where all of them will end up eventually. And I will join them, no doubt.
Look for the darker smoke, is what my once-father used to tell me. The hidden fire.
Extract from the private records of Agent Chenlo
‘Not that I’ve ever seen or heard of, no.’
Aldasair nodded politely. All day he had slowly made his way around the part of the palace given over to the fell-witches, asking questions and receiving mostly blank looks. The first woman he had spoken to had been older, in her sixties at least – reasonably aged for a human – and he had been half certain she would have heard of such a thing, but as soon as he attempted to describe what had happened, her face had gone very pale.
‘Has someone exploded? When? Who?’
Realising his mistake he had begun to backtrack, insisting that all was fine, that he was simply collecting information. The woman had been shaken by his words, and now he was being careful to hide that particular question amongst other, less upsetting ones. ‘We know so very little about it in Ebora,’ he told them. ‘Eborans have never been blessed with the witch flame, after all.’
And although he had had several very interesting conversations, he hadn’t found anyone who had ever heard of a fell-witch causing her own explosion, and no reports of anyone actually vanishing in a storm of their own green flame. What had happened to Noon remained a mystery.
He thanked the last woman and made his way back to the courtyard, where Bern and Sharrik waited for him.
‘No luck?’
Aldasair shook his head. ‘And I don’t believe it was such a great idea to ask them, after all. I’ve clearly upset some of them, and many are suspicious. Eventually, they will notice that Vostok has returned to Ebora without Noon.’
‘And are we keeping that a secret?’ Bern looked better than he had done in days, but then he always looked better when he was near Sharrik; the great griffin seemed to lend him some of his own strength.
Aldasair shrugged. ‘It would be such a blow to them. She has become something of a hero, as much as she tried to ignore it.’
‘It is a blow to us,’ rumbled Sharrik. ‘The witch was a mighty warrior. Almost as mighty as I.’
‘We may as well chuck it all in.’
They all turned at the sound of Tor’s voice. He leaned against the entrance to the courtyard, his long black hair hanging in his face. His clothes were creased and crumpled, as though he’d slept in them.
‘Tormalin, we mustn’t give up hope.’
‘Really? Mustn’t we?’ He smiled and came down the low steps towards them. ‘I can’t think of any particularly compelling reasons to feel especially hopeful right now. Noon is dead. Vintage has gone to Jarlsbad, probably to get herself killed by a maniac. Vostok is too angry to be of any use to anyone. And although the Jure’lia are meant to be broken, apparently they are still entirely capable of causing plenty of trouble.’
Aldasair sighed. ‘You have been drinking.’
‘Tell me I’m wrong, then. Bern, tell me how I’m wrong – except I’m not, am I? Word has already reached us that the Jure’lia went back and destroyed the other settlements on that coast.’
‘It’s true, the worm people are lively again.’ Bern reached up with his good hand and pulled his fingers through the thick feathers on Sharrik’s neck. ‘But that’s not the whole truth. I can feel them – broken stones, I can feel them all the time – and I can feel their pleasure at the destruction they’re causing, but the queen wasn’t there. It was just Hestillion.’ He glanced uneasily at Tor, who shrugged.
‘That matches up with what I saw in your head, doesn’t it? My sister taking command of a pair of Behemoths. We thought we’d finally had some luck and managed to deal the Jure’lia some lasting damage, but instead my sister has lost her mind and decided to resurrect them herself.’ He pushed his hair back from his face. ‘I’ve half a mind to find a decent tavern and start drinking. Perhaps I can be unconscious by the time the spider-mothers come to pull us to pieces.’
‘My cousin,’ Aldasair took his arm and squeezed it, ‘you tried running away before, remember? It wasn’t the solution then either.’
Tor gave a short bitter bark of laughter. ‘And I thought things were bad then. What an idiot I was.’
‘You are sad about the witch,’ boomed Sharrik. ‘We are all sad about the witch. But she was a being crafted for war, and she would want us to fight, Tormalin the Oathless.’
Aldasair winced. They all felt, on some level, the special bond Tor and Noon had, and they had all very carefully not mentioned it – yet Sharrik was not especially blessed with tact. Something about Tor’s posture changed, and he turned his face away from them, but not before Aldasair saw the expression of pain that passed over it.
‘If you want me, I’ll be drinking heavily somewhere. Enjoy your fight, cousin.’
The Trick river dwindled and then grew again underneath them, becoming fat and wide and slow; becoming the Ember, with its famous orange and red stones glinting just below the surface. From there the river headed directly into the patchwork lands of Jarlsbad, so Vintage and Chenlo simply followed it. Their days were filled with the sound of wings and the whistling of the wind, their nights with the quiet crackle of a campfire, the soft wheezes of Helcate’s snoring.
Their first hint of Tygrish, the kingdom supposedly captured by Tyranny Munk, was a small settlement amidst the yellow grassland. It was circular, its walls made of white stone and reaching up to the sky, while to the north of it sprouted a great land bridge, also made of white stone, reaching out across the tall grasses. Within the walls was a collection of tightly packed buildings, including a few with the green conical roofs so associated with Jarlsbad. This place was a small satellite of Tygrish, and following the graceful land bridge, they soon flew over another; this one was a little larger, and in the golden morning light Vintage could see men and women below looking up at them in wonder. Tiny figures on the land bridges paused in their hauling of carts and sacks, faces turned upward.
‘The grasslands are so dangerous?’
The question was shouted across from Chenlo, who was leaning over her bat’s shoulder to get a better look at the land bridge. As they journeyed into Jarlsbad it was possible to see many of them in the distance, tall elegant structures looking as delicate as lace against the hot blue sky.
‘Wild-cats!’ Vintage shouted back. ‘Worm-touched and lethal. The lands around Jarlsbad are infamous for them, and this far to the south it is preferable to avoid travelling directly through the grasslands if you possibly can. Hence, the bridges.’
‘They are very beautiful.’
Vintage looked up in surprise, but Agent Chenlo had already turned away. It was possible to see where all the land bridges were heading to – a great sprawling city to the north, a place of shining towers topped with green and blue domes and spires. It was nowhere near as large as Mushenska, or even many of the other Jarlsbad kingdoms, but there was no denying that Tygrish was impressive in its own way. As she watched, a number of small shapes peeled away from the tallest tower – they looked like moths from this distance, but Vintage had a good idea what they were.
‘The welcoming committee are on their way!’
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
The light across the plains was clear and bright, bringing everything into sharp focus, and it wasn’t long before Vintage could make out the furry hides of the giant bats approaching them, and the serious faces of the women in their harnesses. She forced herself to sit back and adopt a relaxed posture – or as relaxed as she could manage, this far up in the air. Nevertheless, she found her hands had
balled into fists around Helcate’s reins, and her head was full of a forest night not so long ago; when she had followed Tyranny’s little gang into the woods and nearly been murdered for it; when Nanthema had betrayed her.
‘What will they do?’ she shouted across to Chenlo. ‘What if they try to turn us away?’
‘If they take their orders from Tyranny, then there’s no telling what they will do.’
‘Well, if they try to blow us out of the sky, they’ve got a surprise coming.’ Vintage leaned down and scratched Helcate behind the ears. ‘Haven’t they, my darling?’
There were four Winnowry agents, three hanging back while one came forward to address them directly. She had short, red curly hair and the fair skin on her cheeks and nose had turned a shining pink under the hot sun. At first glance she looked, to Vintage’s eye, unspeakably young, but as she drifted closer it was possible to see a fine network of scars across her hands and arms, as well as a ragged slash of white scar tissue across one cheek. Her eyes were narrow and suspicious, but she smiled as she spoke.
‘Agent Chenlo! You’ve come to join us? Seen some sense at last, have you?’
‘This is not what I would call sense, Agent Kreed. We’re here to see Tyranny. Where is she?’
‘You think you can just waltz up and demand an audience?’ Agent Kreed showed her teeth in something that fell quite short of a smile. ‘You’re not in charge anymore, and Tyranny is a queen. She has a war-beast at her command.’ At that the young woman glanced at Vintage, who smiled and waved. ‘This is a restricted air space. What do you want?’
‘We’re here on Eboran business,’ called Vintage. ‘This is Helcate, and you have one of his siblings hidden somewhere in Tygrish. He’d like to meet them. I think that’s fair enough, don’t you?’
Agent Kreed’s smile had vanished. ‘We wish you no harm, and certainly no harm to . . . Helcate, but due to the current Jure’lia situation, Queen Tyranny has ordered the borders of Tygrish closed.’ She pushed her carroty hair away from her forehead, revealing the crude bat-wing tattoo. ‘That includes sky borders. You must leave.’
