Dark Heart (Husk)

by Russell Kirkpatrick

  Sautea led Mustar and Arathé to cover near Tipper Bridge. The three Fossans watched, guilt-ridden and sorrowful, as their fellow villagers were bound and transferred to waiting ships. Slowly and with many gestures, Arathé told the two men what had been done to her, and what had happened to her family when she sought their help. Mustar vowed to help her stay free and find her family, but Sautea asked them to consider something far more important: warning the Fisher Coast that the Neherian fleet was coming.

  They waited with increasing impatience until darkness offered them the cover they needed, then took the smaller and least damaged of Noetos’s two boats. It was a decision fraught with risk, but Sautea and Mustar were excellent sailors and kept close to shore. They could not keep pace with the fleet, but they could skip past them when the Neherians hove to in Farsala Sida’s shallow harbour.

  And, as they did, the storm began stalking them.

  It was a small thing to start with, battering them with fresh northerlies as they tacked east and west, trying to hug the coast. At the same time, the far side of the storm gave the Neherian fleet, sailing in deeper waters, easy passage northward. Every day the three Fossans tried to gain the next village before the Neherian fleet, and every day they failed. Every night they expended more energy than they could afford to pass the fleet, only to repeat the misery the next day. And every day the storm kept pace with them.

  The storm then began attacking them—or, at least, that was how it seemed. Rain clouds tracked them northward, dumping prodigious amounts of water into their boat. Thin waterspouts would drift into their path, forcing them to seek shelter. They were peppered with hail the size of eggs, and their pale grey days were illuminated only by the lightning that walked across the water as though quartering their location.

  No natural storm, then. Its path was too calculated; its position designed to minimise their progress while maximising that of the fleet. On top of this, it sucked at them as though drawing from their essenza. Perhaps it was; perhaps magicians from the Neherian fleet manipulated the weather against the small boat. Why not just crush them? It takes a much greater magic to move the wind than to strike openly at a target, Arathé had been told during her time in Andratan. What sort of magician lacked the presence to attack them directly?

  During the long, exhausting voyage they wondered what had happened to the Fossans. Had they been thrown overboard? Unlikely. Transported south to Aneheri to begin a life of slavery? Possible, but if this was replicated at every village along the Fisher Coast there would soon be no ships left in the fleet. Most likely they were piled in the vessels’ holds, suffering the vicissitudes of a stormy sea journey. North or south, they were still prisoners.

  But this led to the question the three Fossans debated through the cold nights. Why would the Neherians wish to depopulate the Fisher Coast? Surely even a conqueror needed subjects to work the fields and tend the machines of civilisation? Apparently not, if the fleet’s behaviour at Fossa was typical of what was happening along the coast.

  And one other thought exercised their minds as they struggled against the storm with failing strength. Why had the Neherians been seeking Noetos?

  Well, Arathé had reflected as she finished her tale by describing their final run into Raceme, borne like a leaf on the wind of the now giant storm, at least now I know why. Not that she could tell Sautea and Mustar the full story. The latter would be crushed to learn his famous and respected father had been a Neherian informant.

  Who could anticipate their parents’ pasts? Arathé and Anomer had known their father was different from other fathers in Fossa. He knew much more than other men, and there were hints in his words of lands and experiences far from the sheltered harbour that constrained Fossan lives. The man was shrouded in a twenty-year silence, refusing to answer any direct questions about the details of his own childhood: where he had been born, what conditions had been like growing up, and what had happened to his family. The things any normal family shared; things that became part of family history. But nothing had led them to expect a history as exotic and painful as that which their father had finally, reluctantly, described to them.

  How did she feel about this history? Anomer was angry, she knew that. Deeply angry that he, the rightful heir of Roudhos—the rightful heir given that Noetos was the Duke of Roudhos—had been kept ignorant. Part of his identity had been stolen: her brother had a right to be angry. What would it have cost the man to have told his family? Was he worried that loose talk would bring the Neherians down upon them? As it turned out, they had been known. The Neherians had come anyway. And the inescapable fact was, had Noetos told his family of his origins and title, Opuntia would likely still be alive.

  Alive, but frustrated. Arathé was realist enough to recognise that. To have been a duchess by claim but not by right; that would have been too much to bear.

  ‘It’s not really his fault,’ she signed, meaning her father, and provoking a growl from Anomer. She raised her eyebrows. If he knew how much like our father he sounds when he does that, he’d tear out his tongue.

  ‘Not his fault?’ Anomer did not try to read her mind—they allowed each other too much respect for that—but he stared at her as though trying to intuit her thoughts. ‘Had he remained true to the cause, we might well now be living in luxury in Aneheri.’

  ‘Brother, there is so much wrong with those words I don’t know where to begin.’

  He grimaced and his shoulders dropped. ‘I know. It was our grandfather who turned his back on the rump of Roudhos. He might well have made a moral decision, though it’s hard to see how staying loyal to the Neherian cause could have cost more lives. And had Father stayed in Aneheri he would never have met Mother. Better for them undoubtedly, but not for us.’

  ‘But you’re not happy about it.’

  ‘Are you?’

  ‘No. I’m confused. I didn’t see Mother die. It feels as though we left her in Fossa, and if we returned, she would be there waiting for us.’

  ‘I saw her die. I helped bury her. She died as a result of our father’s flaws: impatience, selfishness and an unwillingness to share his burdens with others. He never thinks to trust anyone. He is always alone in a sea of people.’

  ‘Perhaps if we had seen what he saw, we might feel the same.’

  ‘Dear sister, I saw our mother run through by a Recruiter’s blade because our father would not surrender. How can you think I suffer less than he does?’

  ‘Would you carve up a room full of defenceless people to have your revenge?’

  ‘Not even to save Fisher Coast would I do what our father did,’ Anomer said. ‘I would have found some other way.’

  ‘So. How do we live with this man?’

  ‘Live with my father? As much as I love him dearly, there’s no living with him.’

  ‘You’re right,’ she signed, her hands drooping with fatigue. More sleep, I need more sleep. ‘There is no way this can end well, is there?’

  ‘No,’ Anomer said. ‘None at all.’

  ‘Want to talk to you,’ said a voice, a woman’s voice, as someone shook Arathé’s shoulder. ‘Wake, please. I need to talk.’

  ‘Leave her alone.’ Anomer came to her rescue. ‘She needs to sleep.’

  ‘I need more than sleep,’ Arathé said, using more voice and fewer gestures than normal. ‘But sleep is a necessary beginning.’

  ‘Sorry,’ the woman said awkwardly, as though the word was even less familiar than others in the language she struggled to use. One of the southerners, one of Duon’s companions. Lenares. ‘Sorry. But we must talk.’

  ‘Very well,’ Arathé signed to Anomer, who translated for the persistent woman. ‘I’ll hear your words.’

  ‘You…’ the woman searched for the word, ‘you crossed, met, the hole in the world.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Arathé signed to her brother.

  Neither do I, he responded.

  ‘Don’t use the mind language,’ Arathé said. ‘We’ve used the power
enough recently to bring that storm down on our heads.’

  ‘Do you mean the storm that afflicted Raceme? With the whirlwinds?’ Anomer asked the southerner. ‘Is that what you mean by the hole in the world?’

  ‘The storm was the hole,’ she said. ‘The hands of…’ Again she struggled for the correct term. ‘Power. God. Gods.’

  ‘I’m not sure whether she means that any storm is a “hole” or that this particular storm is the hand of a god,’ Arathé signed to her brother. ‘Interesting, though, that she sees the storm as important enough to talk about. She obviously doesn’t think it is natural.’

  Is it just me, or does she seem a little…simple?

  ‘She speaks our language after a fashion. Do you speak hers? Who is the simple one?’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ Anomer said out loud. No, I mean she seems…differently focused. Look at her. She hasn’t relaxed for a moment. No small talk. I’ve never seen eyes so intense—not even yours, big sister.

  ‘We need to hear your story, Lenares,’ Arathé said, in her combination of speaking and signing.

  To her astonishment, the southern woman signed back. ‘Yes. I will tell you my story.’

  ‘She’s picked up your language so soon?’ Anomer said. ‘How is that possible?’

  ‘I am special,’ Lenares said. ‘I am special,’ she signed, shocking them both.

  ‘You are,’ the siblings said together.

  First she gave them her story, a rambling affair lasting hours. The big black man called Torve joined her an hour or so into her telling, his eyes hooded, saying nothing other than to offer them food. The girl told an outlandish tale of another land, far, far to the south, of a race of men—races of men—the brother and sister had never heard about. The story took two parts: the thread of movement, telling who went where and did what; and the underlying revelations as to her own personality and her special gift. Both threads captured Arathé’s imagination.

  ‘You see things as numbers?’ Anomer asked, also clearly entranced. ‘What numbers am I?’

  ‘I am watching you, and your sister, since we came here. You glow like sleepy fire. You are both made up of many numbers, but four hundred and ninety-six is your central number. This a special number because—’

  ‘Because it is perfect,’ Anomer finished dreamily. ‘Because it is the sum of its divisors. One plus two plus four plus eight plus sixteen plus thirty-one plus sixty-two plus one hundred and twenty-four plus two hundred and forty-eight. All beautiful numbers.’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’ The girl leapt to her feet and jumped up and down excitedly, her language lapsing in the moment. ‘How know you this? You are cosmographer?’

  ‘When he was a child he sat on the floor and wrote out lists of numbers on parchment,’ Arathé signed. ‘He never wanted to go outside and play.’

  Anomer laughed. ‘I still love numbers, but my father made it clear I was not to waste my life on them. He said the world had enough scribes.’

  ‘Not enough cosmographers though! I am the only one left.’

  The girl tapped her chest. Which, Arathé noticed, was well proportioned. In fact, the girl was quite a beauty, despite her obvious travel stains and some curious burn scars on her cheeks. Anomer’s cheeks turned faintly red: he had noticed too.

  You blush prettily, my brother.

  He ignored her, and cleared his throat. ‘So we have a perfect number. What does this mean?’

  ‘All parts of you are in perfect proportion,’ Lenares said.

  Anomer’s blush deepened, and Arathé barked a strangled laugh. The girl realised she had said something inadvertent and tsked in impatience.

  ‘Of you, the real you. Inside you. Your thinking, your strength, heart, all nine parts in balance.’ She frowned, and leaned closer to him. Disconcertingly close, invading his personal space as though she had every right to be there. ‘Or they were; but not now. The boy here is thinking and not glowing. Thinking bad—bitter?—thoughts. Such thoughts will damage his heart.’

  ‘You can see this how?’

  ‘I cannot tell you how. There are not the words even in my tongue-speak. But you,’ she swung around to address Arathé alone, ‘have another number in your head, and it does not belong there. Like Duon. The same number. It is a palindrome, one hundred and ninety-one. The number of the worm. You and Duon both have worms in your heads.’

  They tried to get Lenares to expand on this revelation, but had little success. The girl seemed piqued at this, unreasonably angry, and Arathé wondered again at her brother’s initial assessment of her as simple. Perhaps. But Arathé knew enough from the link between Duon and herself to realise the strange southern girl had uncanny knowledge, and she wished to explore it further. But the girl’s reluctance baulked her. Perhaps when Duon returned.

  Eventually they managed to get Lenares back to her story, and she described a vast army gathered by a cruel emperor for the purposes of a northern conquest. The cosmographers were part of this army, and the girl digressed again to explain their role in Elamaq society. After several tangential remarks, she told them how Captain Duon led the army north into an ambush and destruction, from which only four people escaped. These four wandered and were eventually snatched up by a hole in the world, then deposited in Raceme just as the whirlwinds ceased.

  Hands of the gods. Holes in the world. Storms…

  Arathé wondered.

  She wondered about a storm that seemed to behave as if it had intelligence, or was guided by someone powerful. That herded herself, Mustar and Sautea, confining them to the coast and driving them into Raceme. That reached down to inflict whirlwinds on Raceme, targeting herself and anyone mind-speaking her.

  She wondered about a hole in the world that herded a great southern army into an ambush. That drove the handful of survivors north into a place called Nomansland, then reached down a godlike hand and plucked them into its open throat.

  She wondered. She wondered why, if she was as clever as her tutors had claimed, it had taken her so long to begin putting things together.

  You and Duon have worms in your heads.

  Worms. Planted by someone in Andratan. Drawing the attention of powerful magical beings, called the Son and the Daughter by Lenares. Undoubtedly southern inventions, labels for things the southerners did not understand, but that there was a reality behind the superstitious beliefs Arathé didn’t doubt for a moment.

  Worms that speak. A voice that worms its way into our heads, gaining our attention, guiding our thoughts and actions. An apt description, Lenares.

  The southern woman was undoubtedly strange, but Arathé found herself liking her. More, respecting her. There was not the slightest hint of magical ability in the girl, but she had an otherworldliness about her, a level of intensity that appeared to give her insights at least as valuable as magic. She seemed to have few social skills; instead, she showed herself willing to interrupt others, to override them, to disregard their feelings as unimportant in the quest for what she considered truth. This was the unintended but clear subtext woven throughout her story: she was special, and because she was special she was disliked and laughed at. In response she behaved directly, which those around her mistook for obnoxiousness. Yet what Lenares wanted most of all was to be taken seriously.

  Don’t we all, Arathé thought, reflecting on her father.

  Which thought reminded her. Leaving Anomer to talk with Lenares and Torve, Arathé focused on her father’s thread, still burning brightly in her mind, and that of Duon, a pale star beside that of her father.

  Are you making progress? she asked them.

  Of a sort, came Duon’s answer in his slow, gentle thoughts. We were just about to bespeak you. I’m still limping, and your father is being driven to distraction. We have a small problem, you see.

  Oh? What is it? Can we help?

  Well, yes, not help so much, but be mindful. We think we’re being followed.

  You ought to be a match for anyone following you. Just let me know what w
e can do for you.

  Her father’s gruff sending overrode Duon’s thoughts. No match for what appears to be the entire Neherian army, girl. They’re catching us with every step.

  ‘It’s more than a limp,’ Noetos growled, sparing a glance at Duon’s trailing leg. ‘You’ll be fortunate not to lose it.’

  ‘Let me try to put some weight on it…Ah! What ought I to have told them?’

  He leaned back into Noetos’s shoulder, jabbing his makeshift crutch fiercely into the ground.

  ‘The truth. That you’ve smashed your leg to pieces, slowing us to such a degree our pursuers are likely to catch us before we reach the others.’

  ‘It’s not smashed to pieces, friend Noetos, just broken in a couple of places.’

  ‘Of course. Though “broken” seems an inadequate word to describe that, friend Duon,’ Noetos said, indicating the grey skin of the man’s shin. ‘Months to heal, especially if your nameless magician continues to hide himself.’

  ‘Then leave me, as I ask,’ Duon countered. ‘I’ll hunker down somewhere. Someone can come back to get me later.’

  ‘Dig yourself a hole and cover yourself over with dirt. That’ll save anyone returning.’

  What was the point in this discussion? Noetos had told Duon he would not be abandoned, and that was that. Anything further was a waste of the breath he needed to help the southerner.

  The two men had discussed leaving Duon behind when they’d caught sight of Raceme from the top of a limestone ridge. A line of glittering sparks led out from the Water Gate, pointing up the north road; the reflection of sunlight on steel. Someone had taken charge of the army, after all. Noetos had hoped the decapitation of the Neherian leadership would have sent anyone remaining with aspirations home to consolidate their position, but it had been a forlorn hope.