The Copper Promise

by Jen Williams

  ‘You will be my next sacrifice, old girl.’

  Still holding Holley over his head, Fane marched towards the edge of the cliff. Crowleo shuffled backwards rapidly, taking cover behind a pile of firewood. He watched from behind split timbers as Fane walked to the very edge, a few feet away from the first of the Sheer Steps.

  ‘Forgive me, Bezcavar, for these old bones I offer you now,’ he said. ‘I promise you fresh blood next time.’

  And with that he threw Holley off the cliff.

  30

  By the time they left the vault the storm had broken, and it took Frith a few moments to realise that the darkness hanging over the Secret Keeper’s house in the far distance was not just the remnants of heavy clouds moving over it.

  ‘Smoke,’ he said, and then repeated himself, raising his voice over the roar of the wind. Sebastian, who was carrying several large sacks over one shoulder, lifted his face to the far cliff edge, and frowned, a worried crease appearing in the centre of his forehead.

  ‘One of us should have stayed behind,’ said Wydrin. She had taken the gold they were owed, carefully wrapping the coins in strips of cloth so that she wouldn’t clink when she moved. ‘I doubt that’s an accident.’

  ‘Can you see anyone there?’ asked Frith, knowing that Wydrin had sharper eyes than he had.

  ‘No one,’ said Wydrin. From her tone it was clear she wasn’t sure if this was a good or a bad sign. Frith moved to the edge of the bridge. There was a new sword at his belt, a thicker blade than his old rapier, but just as flexible and deadly. His hand gripped at the pommel convulsively.

  ‘We must hurry,’ said Sebastian. ‘We may still be able to help them.’

  They headed out into the rain, Frith leading once more with the viewing glass held out in front of him. He soon found it was harder going back; the wind pushed at them like a belligerent child, as if its dearest wish were to see them plummet to the rain-whipped trees below, and he kept having to pause and use the inside of his cloak to wipe the glass clear of moisture. Behind them, the thunder gave voice to rumbling protests and the air smelled sharply of salt.

  By the time they finally reached the cliff’s edge the rain had moved on elsewhere. Instead of the fresh air normally found in the wake of a storm there was the sour stink of sodden ashes.

  ‘The bastards,’ said Wydrin. She paced angrily, like a cat in a cage. ‘I’ll have their guts for this.’

  The Secret Keeper’s house was not completely destroyed – the storm had stopped the flames before they brought the entire place down – but the front of it was ruined and black, and every window was smashed to pieces, the sills thick with soot. The grass around the house glittered, the scattered remains were all that was left of the magical glass artefacts it had housed for so many years. Tools and equipment had been dragged out of the stone workroom and those that could be broken were strewn across the grass.

  ‘They had very little patience,’ came a voice from behind them. Frith turned, his hand back on the pommel of his sword, and saw Crowleo walking towards them. The young apprentice was soaking wet from head to foot. He joined them by the house, not quite looking any of them in the eye. ‘I have found her difficult in the past, yes. Cantankerous, obstinate. The rights of an old woman, she used to say, were to be cantankerous and obstinate.’

  ‘Crowleo,’ Sebastian put a hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you all right? What happened here?’

  ‘It is obvious what happened,’ said Frith. ‘Fane and his men came here seeking me.’

  ‘She’s dead, you know,’ said Crowleo lightly. His eyes were wet. ‘Holley wouldn’t tell them where you were, because she was an obstinate, blind old fool who –’ He blinked rapidly. ‘She is dead, and everything is destroyed save for some small pieces I managed to salvage. And this.’ He untied a contraption of leather from his belt and offered it to Wydrin. ‘I believe it is what you asked for. She wanted you to have it, I think.’

  Wydrin took the object and briefly held it up to her face. Two discs of blue glass covered her eyes.

  ‘I … thank you.’ She began to root around in her coin purse, but Crowleo waved a hand at her tiredly.

  ‘She won’t be spending the coin now, and I don’t have the stomach for it.’

  ‘What happened to her, Crowleo?’ asked Sebastian.

  ‘Fane threw her off the cliff,’ he said, and there was the tiniest tremor in his voice. ‘He cut himself first, and said that Holley’s death was an offering to Bezcavar.’

  Wydrin made a small noise of disgust.

  ‘Bezcavar,’ said Frith, the corners of his mouth turning down. ‘I am beginning to think I have seen the name. In my father’s library. A demon cult out of Eastern Relios. Demon-worship might explain the abilities of Fane’s henchmen.’

  ‘And then they burned the house and smashed everything inside,’ continued Crowleo. ‘They left. I was hiding –’

  For a moment Frith thought the young man was going to faint, but Sebastian kept a steadying hand on his shoulder.

  ‘She told me to hide, and what could I do?’ Crowleo shrugged. ‘There was just me, and you were far away.’

  They were all quiet for a moment. The wind, still playful in the wake of the storm, moved through the grass, doing little to dissipate the stink of ashes.

  ‘We should have been here,’ said Sebastian. ‘There is so much we should have done.’

  ‘They will pay.’ Wydrin patted her daggers again, as if reassuring them. ‘I will spill blood for this.’

  There was no hope of retrieving Holley’s body – the forest at the bottom of the cliff was thick and wild, and busy with scavenging animals – so instead they built a cairn in her memory. Wydrin found some lumps of old molten glass in the stone workroom, and placed those amongst the stones too, so that it would glitter with the sunrise and sunset. Crowleo seemed pleased with that, and even offered her a watery smile.

  When they were done it was full dark, and they huddled around a fire, still trying to get warm from the soaking they’d taken earlier in the day.

  ‘I will go far away,’ said Crowleo. Wydrin had been sharing a flask of rum with the boy and he looked a little calmer now. ‘Take what I know of the Secret Keeper’s teachings and start again somewhere else.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Frith abruptly. ‘You will do no such thing.’

  He saw Sebastian glare at him and ignored it.

  ‘Why would I stay here?’ said Crowleo. He didn’t sound angry, only perplexed. ‘There is nothing for me here.’

  ‘We need you to get back into Pinehold,’ said Frith. ‘And we will need your help once we are in there, too.’

  ‘Back to Pinehold?’ Now Crowleo looked alarmed.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Frith, nodding grimly. ‘I will need to use some of the equipment in your mistress’ workshop, assuming it is still serviceable.’ He cleared his throat and looked at each of them in turn, wondering if they would trust him this far. ‘And I intend to see that monster suffer, as your mistress suffered, as my family suffered.’ He picked up a handful of dirt, thick with ashes. ‘It is time Fane answered to his own demons.’

  31

  The Thirty-Third sat on the floor with the Ninety-Seventh, a pile of books between them. Somewhere in the room beyond, the Twelfth was rummaging through shelves and making the occasional sound of delight.

  This was a town called Moritos. It had large brick buildings and a big market square, and to the north of a wide river there were lots of grand houses, with smooth white bricks and little gardens full of fruit trees. Outside the brood army were putting the populace to the sword, but the Thirty-Third, the Ninety-Seventh and the Twelfth had made their way to the big houses, knowing somehow that if they wanted words, this would be the place to find them. An hour or so ago a group of their sisters had come to the doorway, wishing to break things and start fires, but the Ninety-Seventh had sent them away, claiming this area as their own. The Thirty-Third had seen the confusion on their faces and felt uneasy. Sooner or l
ater someone would notice.

  ‘Here, look.’ The Ninety-Seventh pushed an open book into her lap, a claw pressed against a picture of a man in armour. The Thirty-Third scanned the page; it appeared to be an account of a war that took place many hundreds of years ago, across the Yellow Sea. ‘This is what he is, isn’t it?’

  She didn’t need to ask who.

  ‘Our father is a knight,’ she said, and paused at the odd tightening in her throat. What was that feeling, exactly? ‘He carries a sword, like we do, and wears armour.’

  ‘Sometimes I think I hear his voice,’ said the Ninety-Seventh. She traced her claw around the picture. ‘Not like how we hear her, thunder in the blood and here,’ she touched her head, ‘but quieter.’ She touched a hand to her heart.

  ‘I hear him too.’

  The Twelfth strode back into the room with an armful of books. She was grinning.

  ‘Some of the words are beautiful,’ she said. She tried to open one book and dropped half the others on the floor. ‘Look, look. See here? This one.’ She spread the pages for her sisters. ‘Ephemeral.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked the Thirty-Third, but already her mind was filling with images and feelings, none of them quite solid or certain.

  ‘There are others, see. Woebegone, ennui, daffodil, crocus!’

  ‘They are lovely,’ agreed the Ninety-Seventh.

  ‘I want to keep these words with me,’ said the Twelfth. She tried to gather up all the books and dropped them again.

  ‘Tear out the pages?’ suggested the Ninety-Seventh. The Thirty-Third frowned. Somehow she felt their father wouldn’t approve of that.

  ‘No,’ said the Twelfth, who apparently felt the same. ‘I will make them my name. You will call me Crocus from now on.’

  ‘Crocus?’

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed the Ninety-Seventh. ‘We don’t even have names, do we? Not truly. The Ninety-Seventh, the Thirty-Third … these are positions, they don’t mean anything. Especially not now we are out of the birthing pits.’

  ‘I want to be Ephemeral,’ said the Thirty-Third. Again there was that tight feeling in her throat. It was important, suddenly, to claim that word for herself, with all the soft images and feelings it provoked.

  ‘That is a good name,’ said the Twelfth, now Crocus, clearly pleased she had been the one to come up with the idea. ‘Ephemeral, my sister.’

  ‘Oh!’ cried the Ninety-Seventh. She gathered all the books to her in a panic and began to leaf through them frantically. ‘However will I choose?’

  ‘They must be our secret names, though,’ said the Thirty-Third. She caught hold of her sister’s hand and squeezed it, before glancing up at the newly named Crocus. ‘We must not tell anyone.’

  ‘No,’ agreed Crocus. ‘They will be our secret words, for us alone.’

  The sisters chose their names while the town of Moritos burned, and a dark shadow moved restlessly above the clouds.

  32

  Dreyda touched the taper to the curls of paper in the fire-font, and watched as they spat and hissed into warm, orange life. The scent of spices, fruity and dry on the back of her tongue, briefly filled the room and she thought of her temple back home. There, she would have a hundred fire-fonts, and they would be kept blazing at all times, so that the sick and weary would be kept warm, and see the words that were painted on every spare surface. In here, the outbuilding she’d convinced the blacksmith to rent to her, she could only afford two fire-fonts. Most of the space was needed for sickbeds, and the small bags of powder she’d brought all the way from Relios were feeling lighter all the time. She had to be sparing.

  A low moan distracted her from the sudden bout of homesickness, and she went to one of the beds. The man lying there was running a high fever and had managed to throw his blankets off again. The end of one arm ended in a bloody stump bound in insufficient bandages, and the red threads of infection were curling their way up past his elbow and were well on their way to his shoulder. She would need to make a decision soon, she knew that. What was an arm, if traded for a life? But the man was delirious, and all her attempts to get him to understand had failed. Dreyda pressed a damp rag to his forehead and murmured soothing words.

  There were nine people in her makeshift surgery now, and she expected more to arrive tomorrow. Not all were victims of Yellow-Eyed Rin’s knives or Fane’s own strange enthusiasms; some were simply malnourished or ill with common diseases that should have been treatable, but they had long since run out of those medicines. If Fane’s men would just let her out to roam in the Blackwood she could collect some of the supplies they needed …

  A timid hand touched her bare arm.

  ‘Regnisse? There is another one here to see you.’

  Dreyda turned to see one of the young women who occasionally helped her to tend the sick. Alice’s own brother had suffered in the Tower, his arm flayed from the elbow to the ends of his fingers; tricky work, but Yellow-Eyed Rin apparently had a great deal of patience. The girl had come in with him to help out, and stayed to tend the others too.

  ‘Show them in.’

  A figure wearing a thick hooded cloak stepped out of the shadows. Dreyda couldn’t see the face under the hood, but it was clear what the problem was. She pointed at the great bulge pushing at the robes.

  ‘You’re with child, girl?’

  Dreyda had become very familiar with the people of Pinehold in a relatively short space of time – it was all a part of spreading the words to those yet to be enlightened – but she knew of no one who was so heavily pregnant.

  The figure pushed back her hood and grinned at Dreyda.

  ‘You must help me, Sister,’ said Wydrin, patting the bump with apparent affection. ‘You won’t believe the amount of trouble I’m in.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ hissed Dreyda.

  They had retired to a space at the back of the makeshift hospital. It reeked of old vegetable smells; potatoes, turnips, carrots. The young woman looked less bedraggled than when Dreyda had last seen her; at some point recently she had washed the dried blood from her hair and pulled on a new shirt under her leather bodice. There was an air of energy about her too.

  ‘You’re not listening,’ said Wydrin lightly. ‘There are tunnels under this town, and I need you to help me locate the entrances. Then we’re going to take these bags,’ she pointed at the pair of sacks that had made up the bump under her robe. They both smelled faintly of chemicals. ‘And use the stuff inside to leave a trail. I don’t understand how it works myself, but I’ve seen the bombs that Frith made before and they were certainly effective. The first place we need to find is—’

  ‘Enough!’ Dreyda held her hands up for quiet. She glanced at the words etched in ink across her knuckles. Peace. Faith. Kindness, in the old language. ‘You have questions to answer first, child. Your friend with the white hair, who is he? What is he? He burst into flames in the middle of the market and killed seven men, and ran away unharmed.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call him a friend as such, more a nuisance. A pretty nuisance, maybe, but—’

  ‘Wydrin!’

  The Copper Cat sighed.

  ‘He is the lord of this land, just like Sebastian said. The great big idiot. Big pair of idiots, if you ask me.’ She scratched the back of her head. ‘Look, Lord Frith employed us to help him search the Citadel in Creos.’

  ‘The mages’ Citadel?’

  ‘That’s the one. We thought he was after gold and silver, like any normal person would be, but he found a magical lake, and now –’ She paused, clearly wondering if she should be telling the priestess any of this. ‘Now he carries the power of the mages within him.’

  Dreyda snatched up the young woman’s arm. Distantly she was aware that she was squeezing hard enough to leave a bruise.

  ‘That is not possible, child. You lie.’

  Wydrin shook her off with a scowl.

  ‘And how else do you imagine he produced those flames? He’s done other things, too. Healed my fractu
red arm, for one, although he seems to do little else of use.’

  ‘But the power of the mages –’ Dreyda’s mouth was dry. Inside her chest her heart was thrumming like a wasp in a jar. ‘They all died, so long ago.’ She saw Wydrin’s quizzical look and her voice became sharp with impatience. ‘Don’t you understand, child? My order have studied the words of the mages for hundreds of years. These words!’ She pulled up her sleeve and brandished her arm at Wydrin. It was laced with blue ink, as intricate as the patterns on a butterfly’s wing. ‘We have only the words. The power is long gone! And now you’re telling me it’s back?’

  ‘What I’m telling you,’ said Wydrin, ‘is that we have a way of killing the rabid dogs that are infesting this town. You said to me that I looked like the sort of person who has seen trouble, and doesn’t mind dealing some in return. Well, here I am, ready to cause some mayhem. Are you going to help me? I know that you want Fane and his scum gone.’

  In the room beyond the door, someone cried out in pain. Dreyda heard Alice’s soft voice murmur in response, and the cries turned to quiet sobs. The fire-priestess took a slow, deep breath, remembering the words of peace and calm. There would be time enough later. For now she must do the duty of a Regnisse.

  ‘I will help you,’ she said. ‘But you must promise me that I can speak with this Lord Frith, when all else is done.’

  Wydrin grinned and nodded, apparently pleased to be promising something on Frith’s behalf.

  ‘Oh, absolutely. Just don’t blame me if he’s tight-lipped. Our princeling is hardly free and easy with his secrets, believe me.’

  Dreyda pursed her lips. That would have to do.

  ‘Very well. What is it you have here?’

  ‘First of all, a map.’ Wydrin pulled a roll of parchment from within her robe and spread it on top of a crate. The oil lamps in the storeroom cast only a dirty, buttery light, so that Dreyda had to peer closely to see the faded black and green lines. She recognised it immediately: the square of the market in the centre, the long road that ran from the south gate to the Queen’s Tower at the north of the town, and the buildings to either side. Some of it was not accurate, leading her to believe that it was a very old map, but most of the heavier stone buildings were there. And in green ink there was another set of lines apparently drawn over the map of the town. ‘Pinehold,’ said Wydrin. ‘And in green you can see the tunnels that run beneath.’