‘No,’ Lenares said shyly, and bit her lip. ‘I also like…this.’ She reached out a hand and took his.
It was just a touch. She had held his hand before; it was nothing compared to what those he’d spied upon at the Emperor’s command had got up to. Nothing at all. But he found his whole body inflamed by the feel of her skin on his. Her touch signalled her complete openness, her surrender. An image crossed his mind, and he began to realise the peril they were in. Ask her a question, he thought. Get her talking; much safer than what might otherwise happen.
He cleared his throat. ‘Are there two Houses of the Gods or just one?’ he asked her. Inane, he knew, but the best he could come up with. He did not let go of her hand.
‘One,’ she answered dreamily, her fingers interlacing his. ‘But it can appear in many places. I think there are sacred places in each of the three continents, places where the gods once met, and they took their House with them to each meeting.’
‘Once met?’
‘Once, but no more. The Father was driven out by the others many years ago, and now the Son and the Daughter quarrel. There are no more meetings.’
‘Quarrels are such terrible things,’ Torve said. ‘People driven apart often because of the most trivial disagreements.’
‘Why should people fight? Why don’t they just tell the truth to each other?’
Torve knew Lenares did not intend to wound, but her words hurt nonetheless. ‘I tell as much of the truth as I can,’ he said.
‘I know,’ she replied.
‘Your numbers don’t tell you everything,’ said Torve, moving as close as he was able to the secret she seemed unable to penetrate. He willed her to see.
‘I know,’ she said again. ‘In Talamaq I lived such a small life, spending every day with the same people, that my numbers served to describe everything. I thought I knew all there is to know. But out here there is too much, far too much to understand.’
‘And you have no centre.’
‘I don’t need one,’ she said.
His heart fell. ‘What do you need?’
She must have known what he wanted her to say. Their hands were clasped tightly, they had edged close to each other so their legs touched. She looked into his eyes and said what only Lenares would say in a situation like this.
‘Nothing. I have finally realised I need nothing.’
Torve sighed. He knew they were fortunate, that her habit of telling the truth protected them from disaster. Yet he wished she had been willing to play the game of words, to go just a little further along the road to destruction, so that he could cry ‘Stop!’ So that he could be the strong one.
‘Kiss me,’ she said.
The camp stirred. Duon raised his head, woken from a short nap. From what he could tell, it was early afternoon. Dryman had returned from one of his unexplained wanderings; the man now slept beside him. Seems like the first time I’ve ever seen him sleep.
The men of Raceme had woken him. They filed back into camp, returning from their latest foray into Raceme with their heads down, clear disappointment on their features. There was no need to listen to their reports. It was clear that the invaders had consolidated their hold on the town.
‘Sentries up on every part of the wall,’ the men said, shaking their heads. ‘Guards on the gates; archers stationed on the Cavalier, above Suggate and the Water Gate, and all along the groyne of the harbour. No way in.’
‘There must be a way in,’ the women said. ‘The Neherians found a way, after all.’
‘Yes,’ said the men, ‘but see how they were equipped, and look what it cost them. Even then they would have failed but for the storm. We have neither their equipment nor their numbers, unless you expect the women and children to march unarmed against them. And the weather is clear.’
‘Is there not one among you brave enough to try to win back our homes?’ asked the women.
This angered the men. ‘You saw our bravery. We risked their arrows and their swords to spy out the city. But it is not our city any more.’
‘Then where are we to go? How can we leave our sons and daughters behind, unburied, unmourned?’ The women began to cry bitter tears.
The burly red-haired man stood before them. ‘This is what we do,’ he said. ‘We go north. We leave Raceme to the rats for just a little while. Let them get fat and complacent. We regroup, find some willing friends, and then we return to drive the rats out. What better burial gift could you offer your dead than that?’
The men muttered at this, but the women saw the sense of the red-haired man’s words. ‘We go north,’ they said. ‘For a little while.’
Captain Duon settled back on his haunches. The sun had begun to descend, and still Dryman slept on. Why should Duon wake the man? He knew the mercenary would want to be informed, but it was his own fault he slept, since he had been up most of the previous night prowling about.
All around, the survivors of Raceme broke camp with a minimum of fuss, despite the demands of crying children and a number of injured men and women. Duon tried to estimate how many people were on the hill: five thousand at least, maybe more. The red-haired man was right. There was nothing even this number could do against a well-prepared enemy, especially without the element of surprise. Perhaps if another storm was to come…but Duon knew little about the weather in these parts; and hadn’t the cosmographer said the storm had been unnatural? Unnatural enough, at least, to disgorge them into the city at the moment it had been destroyed.
They could stay here on this hill no longer anyway, as he doubted there was much, if any, food left in the Shambles. And the longer they remained, the greater the chance their conquerors would send out a sortie against them. Someone, somewhere, would surely offer them shelter.
Finally Duon could wait no more. People were leaving the hill in groups, all moving north. Oh, how he wished he could leave the hateful soldier sleeping there, to wake alone on an empty hillside—or better, to be captured by the Neherians. He wished he were the sort of man who could take his sword and cut open the mercenary’s throat. But he’d seen the threat in the other man’s eyes, and knew that if the attempt failed he’d never outrun the man’s vengeance.
‘Dryman,’ he said, shaking him by the shoulder. ‘Time to wake.’
The mercenary moved from deep sleep to fully awake in a split second.
‘Where is everyone going?’ he asked, a scowl on his face. ‘Why have you waited so long to wake me?’
‘I’ve been busy preparing, as you instructed. You said nothing about being woken.’
The man was on his feet and at Duon’s throat in an instant. ‘Don’t shave the ends with me,’ he snarled, his hand under the captain’s chin. ‘You have neither the wit nor the strength to deal with me, boy.’
The man’s voice thundered like a storm, and a dreadful weight settled on the captain’s shoulders. Duon thought about nodding, but noticed the gleam of a knife in the soldier’s hand and thought better of it.
Dryman took silence as acquiescence. ‘Where are the Omeran and the halfwit?’
Duon spread his hands. ‘I thought you sent them on some task.’
‘They were tasked to prepare for our departure. They should be here. He had better not be…no, he wouldn’t. Couldn’t.’ The man shook his head, but his eyes narrowed. ‘Go and find them, Duon.’
Again Dryman treated Duon as his servant. The mercenary could do it because there was something about him that must be obeyed. I am a captain, the leader of the Emperor’s great expedition. Who is this soldier?
Duon nodded respectfully to the man, resolving as he strode away to speak to Lenares about him. Perhaps if they put their heads together they could bring the man down somehow.
It is not only a matter of pride, Duon told himself. This man is dangerous, and has his own agenda. Despite his arguments, and no matter what may be done to me or my family, it is my duty to return to Talamaq and humble myself before the Emperor. But I will not humble myself before this man.
He closed his mouth over hers, and drew in her breath. Months of travel, weeks of deprivation and days of fear had done nothing to sour it; he had never tasted anything so sweet. She pressed herself against him. He could feel the swell of her and fought to maintain a degree of control.
But what could he do—what could either of them do—against the power they had unleashed? The threat of discovery, of death, was not sufficient to prevent Torve from raising his own hand to her face and touching her skin, her hair, with all the tenderness he possessed. The body has its own language, he acknowledged, closing his eyes to savour every sensation. Listen, Lenares, as I speak to you. As my body loves yours with its own language.
They clung to each other, moving slowly, tentatively, desperately afraid of hurting and being hurt, while taking pleasure where it was offered. After a time he opened his eyes to find hers, less than a hand-span away, focused intently on him. Lustrous, deep, pupils wide open.
‘There is more, isn’t there,’ she said, her breathing fast and shallow against his neck. ‘More for us to explore. Do you know what it is? Will you show me?’
His heart rose into his throat.
‘Yes,’ he said thickly. ‘I have witnessed what comes next. I will show you.’
Duon made two careful circuits of Shambles Hill, but saw no sign of the cosmographer or the Omeran. He took the opportunity to talk with a few of the remaining Racemen, but none had seen his companions recently. He did not think to speak with the women, who would have been able to tell him of a man, and a woman with hot eyes, who had left some time ago in obvious pursuit of the oldest magic.
Curse the man!
Duon meant Dryman, not Torve; after all, how could an Omeran be held responsible for what he did? Especially since the Emperor had sent him away north with the expedition, and therefore freed him from the obligation to obey his master?
And why had the Emperor done that? In what way was the Omeran’s presence necessary? If there truly were supernatural entities involved in their tale—and how could Duon doubt it, given the voices in his head, and the way in which they had been ripped from their own lands—why had they selected the Omeran for survival when thousands of more useful men had been slaughtered?
He had not asked enough questions, it was clear, allowing instead the flow of events to take him. This was not the behaviour of a commander. He would gather together his band—his, not Dryman’s—and the questions would be asked, and answered.
Duon crested the brow of a small hill and the ocean came into view. The northern seas were just as he remembered: cool, blue-green and inviting, so unlike the treacherous southern ocean. He imagined himself fleeing, running away from Dryman and the remnants of his expedition, finding an empty beach, building a shack and spending his days fishing. A fantasy, he knew, but one that made far more sense than continuing north. Not, he reminded himself, something a leader could entertain.
His eyes narrowed, and he shaded them against the sun with his hand. Something was moving below him. Somebody struggling—no, fighting. Duon drew his blade.
No, he corrected himself, as the cynical voice in his head began to chuckle. Not fighting.
I have a fever, Lenares told herself. Torve had infected her with something, it seemed; her skin flushed hot under his hands. She didn’t care where he put them. No, she did care, she wanted him to put them on her private places. I am sick. My body is no longer under my control. Yet the delicious sensations coursing through her at his touch felt nothing like fever.
The merest touch from another person was normally enough to enrage her. Her body was hers, and people were supposed to stay well away from it. But there were parts of her, secret places, now longing for his touch.
She had never experienced numbers like this before. Skin on skin, love open to love. She felt herself slowly drawing towards an inexplicable, unguessable completion.
Simply noticing a small scar under Lenares’ chin undid Torve.
Had he thought it through—had he known something of the emotional aspects of the physical expression of love—he might have anticipated this. As it was, the sight of the scar landed like a blow to his stomach. Perhaps the scar was the legacy of some deeply traumatic event, or the result of a careless injury, its cause already forgotten. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that Torve suddenly saw not Lenares, his beloved, but the poor woman trapped by the collapsed building back in the city. He saw that woman’s bleeding body, saw it respond to his touch in an entirely different fashion from the one beneath him now.
Different, but so similar. Shortness of breath, flushed skin, sweat, inarticulate groans, uncontrolled movement. The idea that he was tormenting Lenares took hold of him, and he could not shake it. His hands moved over her, his mouth again found hers, then moved away as he fought himself a moment longer; but the images of all those he and his master had tortured swam before his eyes, and his desire vanished like a startled bird.
‘Torve?’ she said, her voice rough with her longing. ‘What is it? What is the matter?’
He pushed himself up on his hands, rolled off her and straightened her tunic. Oh, Father, Son and Daughter, what have I become?
‘I…’ He could not explain. Would never be able to explain. The Emperor had ruined everything.
‘Oh!’ Lenares said, rolling away from Torve and finding a sitting position. He turned to follow her gaze, and saw a man on the hill behind them. His stomach clenched.
‘Captain Duon!’ Lenares cried.
Her innocence was so obviously feigned it took Torve a moment to realise she had spoken to someone, another moment to acknowledge who it was, a third to seize the excuse this offered him—No need to explain now, she’ll assume I saw Captain Duon coming—and a fourth to understand that Lenares had been engaged in uncharacteristic deception. She was trying to keep their liaison—their almost completed liaison—a secret.
Contrary emotions swirled in his breast. Relief, regret, guilt, horror and confusion at war within him. He was aware enough to realise that this incident might make it impossible for him to love anyone; that perhaps, now the association had been made, he would always be unable to separate the act of love from the act of torture. But he had no way of erasing the miserable memories infesting his mind.
It was as though, having discovered at her hands he was human, the knowledge had been stripped away.
Oh, life was so cruel.
‘Dryman is very angry with the two of you,’ Captain Duon said as he approached. Torve sensed the effort the man put in to keep his voice even, to keep his distaste at what he’d seen from the surface.
‘Is he here?’ Torve asked. Impossible not to ask. ‘Has he—did he see?’
The captain came over and pulled Torve to his feet. ‘He saw nothing, he knows nothing. And the less he knows, the better you, I and your…and the cosmographer, will be. Do you understand me? I will say nothing to Dryman about what I’ve seen, even though I have a suspicion he might not like to hear what half the remnant of his army has been getting up to with each other. And in return you will say nothing to him about anything I might do.’ Captain Duon licked his lips, then cocked his head, as though listening to something. ‘It is very important we don’t allow ourselves to be commanded by this man. We must keep our own counsel. He’s not to be trusted. I have no hard evidence for this, not yet, but I know it to be true.’
‘He is evil,’ said Lenares. ‘There is something false about him. He does not add up.’
Torve almost laughed at Lenares’ use of the cliché, then realised she meant the phrase literally. Dryman’s numbers didn’t create a full picture for Lenares to
read; he was able to keep part of himself hidden from her. As long as she worried about this, as long as she worked to unmask Dryman, she was dangerous to him.
Captain Duon nodded at Lenares’ words, clearly paying them respect.
‘Very well, Captain, we will respect your confidences as you respect ours,’ Torve said, looking to Lenares for confirmation. His breathing had returned to near normal, but the blood still pounded through his body, a pulsing recognition of what he had so nearly done. A growing regret had begun to overwhelm his relief. He knew he wished to share everything he had with Lenares, and realised he might never have another opportunity to do so.
Lenares nodded, and put her soft hand in his. It was all he could do not to cast it away. Sorrow settled on him, sorrow so deep it threatened to engulf him. Beside him the girl sighed, and the sound she made was the sound of a tortured soul’s last breath, the sound of death.
CHAPTER 5
THE HEIR OF ROUDHOS
DUON RETURNED TO DRYMAN with Lenares and Torve in tow, and the defensive, cryptic answers he was forced to supply put the mercenary in a foul mood. It seemed likely that, had the Omeran and the cosmographer not been there, Dryman might have struck Duon with his fists, or even his sword.
Duon could have predicted what happened next: the incident suddenly became his fault. How, Dryman said, could one expect an Omeran and a cosmographer to act in the interests of the Emperor? If there was a problem, Dryman said, it was with the fourth member of the expedition. The gods had weeded the Emperor’s great army, and had left Duon with his life. Ought he not show his gratefulness by pulling his weight?
‘You will now take responsibility for the cosmographer girl,’ Dryman said. ‘You are not to let her out of your sight. Watch her night and day. If I want to know when she bleeds and how many times she has made water, you must be in a position to supply me the details. She is an important part of our Emperor’s plans.’
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