by Jen Williams
Behind her, the door opened, and Reis strode into the room. She kept her face forward, staring at the wall like a good soldier.
‘Commander Xinian,’ he walked round to the other side of the desk. He didn’t look at her, instead poking at the maps and papers. ‘The dust has settled a little, so perhaps now you can construct some good reasons as to why you thought it a good idea to bring two agents of the gods to Whittenfarne and give them access to our most dangerous artefact?’
Xinian breathed in slowly through her nose. Control … ‘Master Reis, with respect, that is not what happened here. I have already filed a report – it should be on your desk there. Possibly under a soiled plate.’
Reis snorted and sat down heavily in his chair. ‘Save me the time and the insolence, Commander. Spit it out.’
Xinian drew herself up to her full height. ‘Sir, we were warned of a plot to disrupt the Citadel plan and of an agent of the gods called Estenn, who intended to steal the Red Echo and use it against us. The mercenaries who brought this information to me were in pursuit of this woman for their own reasons, mainly because she had murdered an associate and stolen their property. We proceeded to Whittenfarne to check that the Red Echo was still safely under lock and key, while Silvain accompanied two of the group to Poledouris. When I arrived, everything was as it should be.’ She paused. Reis was pushing the remains of what looked like a roast chicken around a dirty plate. His fingers were covered with grease. ‘However, we underestimated the Estenn woman. She arrived here and broke into the artefact room, after having murdered two of the guards there. The mercenary known as Wydrin Threefellows went after her, but was unable to stop her. In the struggle, Lord Frith was mortally wounded and the agent we know as Estenn left the island. By means of a carapacer, it appears.’
The silence drew out. Reis pulled a leg off the chicken and began to chew at it noisily, as though he were a dog eating scraps under the table. Xinian pursed her lips, trying to ignore the rising tide of dread in her belly. She couldn’t remember ever having seen Reis eat in his own quarters, certainly not in the middle of a meeting with a subordinate. The only sounds in the room were the wet smacks and gristly pops as he made his way through the meat. Her anger, she realised, was swiftly being replaced with desperation.
‘Archmage,’ she said eventually. ‘Do you understand what I am telling you? This Estenn is an agent of the gods and she now possesses one half of the Red Echo. We must contact Poledouris immediately, and send a show of force after her.’
Reis pulled a bone from between his lips, sucking away the last traces of meat. How long had it been sitting there, she wondered? Nothing in the room smelled fresh.
‘You hear how it sounds, Xinian. Your story is ridiculous.’
She ignored this. ‘I sent you a message, sir, from Krete, warning you of this. Did you not receive it?’
Reis waved a hand dismissively. ‘This is a serious lapse in judgement from you. I’d never have thought it, but even the best must fall eventually. I thought you had the backbone to be my second in command. Perhaps I have also had a lapse in judgement.’
‘Reis!’ Xinian took a few steps towards the desk, and then pulled herself back. ‘Master Reis, even if you don’t believe me, and I do understand that it sounds outlandish, even if you don’t believe me, we must get reinforcements to Ashbless Mountain now. One half of the Red Echo is loose, and she’ll be going for the second half next. We have to take steps.’
‘It’s no longer your concern, Xinian. I am taking you off active duty.’
For a few seconds, Xinian could say nothing at all. Reis was concerned with the debris on his desk again. He picked up an elderly piece of boiled potato and squeezed it between his fingers, covering his hand in mush. She took a step towards the desk, slowly.
‘The agent Estenn arrived the same time you did,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Someone gave her a key for the artefact room. Only myself, Selsye and you have a key to that room. The agent left in a carapacer, flown by a mage.’
Reis looked back up at her. He was smiling, and there was a tiny piece of chicken skin stuck to his lower lip. It was that, even more than the look in his eyes, that chilled her blood. Such a precise man, such a fastidious man. A soldier to his bones. What was this thing sitting at his desk?
‘Get out of my sight, Xinian,’ he said mildly. ‘The concerns of this war are no longer your concerns.’
Xinian nodded. As she left she glanced at the bone figures of the gods. The twin wolves stood at the front of the group, watching her with their hollow eyes. She slammed the door on her way out.
67
Sebastian awoke slowly, holding on to the sense of warmth and well-being for as long as possible. There was sunlight on his face, and the scent of a garden. There was a warm body pressed against his side, and gradually memories from the night before filtered through. He opened his eyes.
‘Oster?’
The god lay next to him in the grass, a serene expression on his face. His stubble was thicker than it had been the day before, and there was a grass stain on his shoulder. Sebastian elbowed him, and he grunted.
‘What?’
‘We have to talk about this. About what we’re going to do.’
Oster half opened his eyes. ‘I am not so interested in talking at the moment.’
Despite himself, Sebastian half laughed. ‘Our problems are still the same as they were yesterday.’
‘And yet somehow they seem less important.’ Oster looked at him frankly. ‘You have so many scars, Sebastian. Do you think that I will, in time, have scars?’
‘I think everyone does.’ Sebastian sat up, mainly to distract himself from the warmth of Oster’s skin. In the morning light the god looked more human than he’d ever done before, more real, and the sight shook him. ‘Your sister will know we have done this.’
‘If she tries to hurt you, I will destroy her,’ said Oster easily. ‘Come, lay back here in the grass with me.’
‘You’re not listening, Oster. As fine an invitation as that is, you have to think now. Y’Gria wants you to help her kill the mages, and the rest of humankind. The longer we stay here, the less time we have to save them. We have to go, and soon.’
Oster sat up. ‘Go? Go where?’
‘To Ashbless Mountain. We may already be too late, but from there we can join up with Wydrin and Frith again, and track Estenn down.’
‘I do not wish to go anywhere.’
Sebastian looked at him. ‘But … you can’t …’
‘Y’Gria is my family. This is where I belong. She and the others, they may not be perfect, but they understand me. They are helping me to understand myself.’
‘May not be perfect?’ Sebastian climbed to his feet. ‘They are murderers.’
Oster shook his head. ‘I knew that you wouldn’t understand.’ He stood up, moving with his usual liquid grace. There were leaves stuck to his back with sweat. ‘Why is this? How can we share what we have shared and you still do not see it? I must learn who I am from them. It’s not something I can walk away from.’
Sebastian looked around. His shirt was crumpled and hanging from a bush. He plucked it up and began to shrug it on.
‘Family are just a starting point.’ He paused, thinking of Ynnsmouth and his mother, a handkerchief tied around the lower half of her face. How she had let him walk past, and not said a word. ‘By Isu, you have to let them go. If I’ve learned anything …’ He turned back to Oster, suddenly much angrier than he’d realised. ‘They’re not your family, Oster, they’re just cruel ancestors, who should be nothing more than a footnote in history.’
‘But they’re not,’ said Oster, stiffly. ‘You brought me to this place, and the Spinner died, and this is what I have. It’s all I have, Sebastian, and I will not walk away from it.’
Sebastian retrieved his trousers, and slipped them back on. ‘Then I must walk away from you.’
Frith sat on one of the benches in the crowded dining room. He had his head bent low, ap
parently intent on the bowl of soup in front of him, his hood pulled down as far as it would go so that his white hair was hidden. The pain in his chest, incredibly, had gone from a stabbing agony to a painful throb. Selsye sat next to him, her head up, tense. Joah had promised them a distraction, although Frith did not know the details of it.
‘Look, he’s coming back.’ Selsye sat up. ‘Be ready to move.’
Joah wound his way around the benches, a studied look of innocence on his face. He paused next to Selsye.
‘Greetings, Mistress Selsye. I have some interesting results from our last experiment. Would you look over them with me?’
‘Joah! Of course, of course.’ Selsye stood up from the bench, giving Frith a swift poke in the side as she did so. ‘It would be instructional for our new student here to see how we work. Come along, Eustace.’
Under his hood, Frith grimaced. They walked swiftly towards the tall doors on the far side of the room. Just before they got there, a terrible shriek rose up from the centre of the dining hall. It was a lonely, maddening sound – the call of a ghost in a moonlit graveyard. Unable to stop himself, Frith turned back to look.
With a deafening crash the central table flipped over and a strange black shape boiled up, a cloud of liquid ink. It was marked here and there with glowing red patches, and as he watched it seemed to twist into a variety of shapes – for a brief moment he saw a great angry cat, a beetle with huge flexing mandibles, an eagle, hooked beak opened wide. It slashed madly at the men and women around it, and all the mages were scrambling to their feet, bound arms outstretched. Spells began to fly.
‘By all the gods!’
‘Come on,’ hissed Selsye, ‘we won’t have long.’
They left at a pace, leaving the crash and roar of a magical battle behind them.
Xinian marched down the hallway, fist clenched at her side. When she reached the cell, the guard outside it looked horrified to see her. He took an involuntary step backwards.
‘Commander Xinian,’ he stammered. ‘I wasn’t told you were coming. I mean, that is to say, you no longer have access. You’re not—’
‘I’m here to question the prisoner. She has caused me all manner of trouble, and I would like some answers,’ she said. ‘Do you truly intend to keep me out? Do you think you could?’
The guard shook his head. ‘With all due respect, Commander, I have been given my orders.’ He stood up a little straighter, and inwardly she admired his nerve. ‘I cannot let you in this cell.’
At that moment there was an echoing shriek. Nothing human could have made such a noise and still be heard deep within the bowels of Lan-Hellis. A few seconds later, several magical alarms went off at once. Xinian brought her withering gaze back to the guard, who was staring up the corridor in confusion.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘that sounds serious. I imagine you need to go and see what that is?’
He opened his mouth, then thought better of it and charged up the corridor. She could already hear the sounds of fighting coming from above. Xinian placed her hand over the lock and summoned the word for Fire, focussed down to the size of her palm. After a few moments, molten metal dripped down the door, and she kicked it open.
Wydrin Threefellows waited for her, poised as if to pounce. Xinian held up her hand.
‘Not so fast, mercenary. I am here to help, believe it or not.’
For a few seconds Xinian thought the woman was going to charge her anyway – there was a feverish light in her eyes that didn’t look entirely rational – and then some of the tension went out of her body. Save for a livid red mark on her cheek the mercenary looked pale, and winnowed away somehow, as though some vital piece of her had been removed. She stared at Xinian without a trace of her normal good humour.
‘What’s going on?’
The noise of the alarms had increased, and now the unmistakable sounds of a magical battle were floating down to them. Whatever Selsye had cooked up, it was good, but they had a sizeable number of the world’s best mages here, and it wouldn’t take them long to put things right.
‘No time for questions. We’re getting you out of here, and we’re leaving the island.’
Wydrin nodded once and stepped out of the cell, blinking against the light from the oil lamps. Xinian reached into the bag she was carrying and pulled out Wydrin’s sword belt and a long hooded cloak.
‘Quickly, put these on. And stay close behind me. Keep your mouth shut until we get outside.’
Wydrin strapped on her sword belt, and something seemed to return to her – some small spark of fire. She shrugged on the cloak and pulled the hood up.
‘How are we getting off Whittenfarne? One of your carapacers?’
‘We seem to have run out of those,’ said Xinian sourly. ‘We are arranging other means. Now, follow me.’
68
As she stepped out onto the cold black stones of Whittenfarne the chill wind cut through Wydrin like a knife. She pulled the cloak Xinian had given her closer. In the cell she had lost all sense of night and day, but now she could see that it was late evening, the crescent moon hanging in a largely clear sky like a discarded sickle. Xinian had led her down deserted corridors, a disgruntled look on the commander’s face as the sounds of a pitched battle grew fainter the closer they got to the doors. Whatever it was that Selsye had done, it was still going on – the slit windows of Lan-Hellis showed flashes of yellow and purple fire.
‘Quickly,’ snapped Xinian. ‘We can’t leave from the western dock in case someone sees us and reports back to Reis, so we have to get to the northern coast, and it’s not a pleasant walk at the best of times.’ She paused, and looked more closely at Wydrin. ‘Will you be able to walk?’
Wydrin glared at her. ‘I’m walking now, aren’t I?’ In truth, she felt better than she had in a while. The poor food and the darkness, the grief and the frustration had conspired to reduce her somehow, but she was still here. And now she was free, with her sword back at her side. Her vengeance wouldn’t be denied for long.
They set off across the rocks. Xinian waited until they were a good distance from the looming presence of Lan-Hellis before she produced a small ball of light from between her fingers. Whittenfarne became a ghost world of grey and black, jagged rocks looming like nightmares to every side. Wydrin curled her fingers around the hilt of Frostling, and imagined plunging the blade into the soft flesh of Estenn’s neck, the skin parting, the blood surging up and flowing over her fingers. The thought kept her warm. With her other hand she touched the burn mark on her cheek.
It was still full dark when they reached the coast. A slim little ship with a snarling dog figurehead was waiting for them, and they boarded in silence. Xinian exchanged a nod with a heavily scarred woman whom Wydrin took to be the captain, and they moved off into the night, the sea slapping rhythmically against their bow. Wydrin settled on a bench, her head down. She would need to find a whetstone and some oil soon. Her weapons needed tending to.
Eventually, Xinian sat down with her. As they drew away from Whittenfarne the mists flooded in, and the mage’s bald head was dotted with beads of moisture. She ran a hand over her scalp and flicked the water away.
Wydrin looked up. ‘Are you planning to take this tiny ship all the way to Relios?’
‘We’re just getting to where we need to be to pick up our next method of transport.’ Xinian grimaced and lowered her voice. ‘What a gods-cursed mess. Half of me wants to dump you in the sea right here and turn this ship back towards Lan-Hellis.’
‘This isn’t over,’ said Wydrin. ‘And I think you know it.’
‘Yes, well.’ Xinian ran her hand over the smooth stump on her other arm. The strips of silk she had tied up both arms were damp and clinging to her skin. ‘We’re meeting the others on an island called Umbria. It’s on the very outskirts of the Nowhere Isles, barely a part of the archipelago at all, in truth. From there we should make good time to Ashbless Mountain and we’ll catch this Estenn of yours before any more damage is done.’
‘The others?’
‘Selsye, Joah and Frith. They left the island from the western dock – Selsye is still in the Archmage’s good books, after all – so they will get there before us. It seemed prudent to leave Whittenfarne separately. Less chance of us all being caught.’
For a moment the whole world seemed to pitch from one side to the other. Wydrin wrapped her fingers around the bench beneath her, willing everything to be still while a wave of deepest despair swept through her like a sudden black tide. The mark on her cheek burned as though she had been freshly branded. Did she have to hear his name everywhere too? Wasn’t the pain she already carried enough?
‘Frith,’ she said. There didn’t seem to be enough air in her lungs to get the word out. ‘Frith is dead.’
Xinian’s eyes grew suddenly wide. ‘They didn’t tell you?’
‘Didn’t tell me what?’
‘Selsye had trouble enough getting messages to me, and there hasn’t been time – Lord Frith lives, Wydrin.’
It was a knife in her heart. Distantly, she thought she could hear her mother laughing. What’s worse than grief, Wydrin? Hope.
‘Do not play with me, Commander.’ Wydrin touched the hilt of her dagger. ‘Or I will open your throat in the belly of this ship. I saw him die. They stood me in that room with those mage bastards and they talked about him as if his death were nothing but a footnote.’
Xinian shook her head. ‘I think I prefer you with a sense of humour. He didn’t die, Wydrin, although it was a close thing. They hid him away and healed him, and then kept his survival a secret. It saved him from the dungeon.’
‘They … healed him?’
