“Well. Well I’m glad it went off alright, that’s all I can say. And I’m glad it’s all done and finished.”
Kat lowered the rod. “Finished? Oh no, Demion. This was the test run. He needs one hundred and eighty that are exactly the same as this. They have made six.” Fret was inspecting the rest with the Tyn and the foundrymen. Grudging words of respect were being exchanged. “So the process must be repeated thirty times all told.”
“Katriona!” Demion said in dismay. “I know we agreed that—”
She placed a rough, leather-clad finger to her lips. He fell silent.
“Before you charge the dracon, dear husband, let me tell you how exactly much he is paying us...”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
The Elder of Alu-mal
REL PACED THE battlements of the Glass Fort, passing a brazier, around which huddled three men. The pocket of warmth around the fire was welcome but brief. Rel entertained the notion of tarrying to force some feeling back into his fingers, but he feared that if he ever stopped he would not get going again. There were a number along the wall. Another would come soon enough.
Everything at the Glass Fort was built to inhuman scale. The ramparts were no exception, wide enough to drive two coaches down side by side. Why the Morfaan had made everything so big, there was a point of contention for the magisters. The last Morfaan were no bigger than men, and their devices and buildings elsewhere were generally sized accordingly. Not at the Glass Fort. A wooden platform had been installed to run alongside the parapet. On this were the men and their braziers and their misery. Rel’s feet tocked dutifully along it, each step counting off a half a second. He sank deeper into his fur, although in the face of such cold the benefit it gave was inconsequential. He thanked whichever leftover god might be listening that at least the night was still. Black clouds drifted with sinister purpose over the desert, edged in the Red Moon’s glow. The grasslands were a pale block, shocking next to the desert’s blackness. In the dark, it was the grassland that appeared lifeless, not the black sands, for over there in the unfathomable distance lights played. Ripples of green lightning that chased each other over the ground. Spirits were the obvious explanation; Rel glumly thought it probably something worse.
Railhead was a cluster of brash artificial lights between, an island of life in a world of the dead. The sounds of the small town reached him in odd bursts: a snatch of song, laughter, shouting, the barking of dogs. Spots of fire and glimmer shone out in the desert, the water stations and guardposts of the railway strung out in the dark. At night they shook off their earthly nature. Isolated between the dark of the sky and the dark of the sands they appeared stars, the dotted belt of a fallen constellation.
The air was exceedingly cold. The steppes were dry. Despite the chill no real snow fell on the desert or steppe. All water was frozen from the sky, its dryness tormented the nose and breath turned instantly to clouds of ice. Rel had let his beard grow, for it took some of the shock from breathing away. He looked dreadful, a mountain man, hairy as a backwoods Tyn.
Looking out over the black sands at night filled him first with melancholy, then with dread. A view that during the day appeared majestic took on an altogether more sinister aspect after dark. At breakfast, one could always tell who had duty watching the wastes the previous night. They were quiet, round-eyed, lost in thoughts they could not or would not articulate. The dreams that followed a night on the wall were black ones. When Rel was upon the battlement, he saw his posting for the punishment it was.
He stopped midway between two braziers and stared outward. None of them were supposed to spend too long by the fires. The heat was comforting but the light made a man blind.
Movement caught at the corner of his eye. He turned instinctively toward it. He saw nothing, and was about to resume his pacing vigil when a light emerged from a fold in the land.
“Light!” he called. “There’s a light coming from the north. Bring me glasses!”
Men reacted instantly. Feet thumped on wood. A pair of sentries came to his side and handed him a pair of field glasses. The metal of their rims was painfully cold against his face, and so he held them no longer than he needed to, enough to see that there were three men, one carrying a lantern on a pole. Already riders from the post down at the base of the rampart were heading out to intercept the travellers, their dracons sluggish in the chill. He pulled the glasses from his face. When he put them up again, the light stopped. Dracons circled it. A shouted challenge drifted up. Rel risked the field glasses again. The dracons croaked and screeched. The watch officer dismounted.
“Looks like they are friendly,” said Rel.
The light moved to the base of the road to the fort. “They’re coming up,” he said, handing his glasses back to the soldier. “I’m going down to see what the fuss is about. I’ll be sure to let you know what’s what, if I am permitted.”
“Aye captain,” one said. The other of them nodded, his teeth chattering too hard for him to speak.
Rel ran down the wooden stairs laid over the Morfaan originals—so large only the Torosans could use them. The courtyard was full of running people, the alarm triangle rang. “Someone’s coming in!” Veremond called as he pelted past. “They’re opening the gates!”
“What’s the occasion?” Rel called. This was cause for concern, the gates were never opened at night.
“I don’t know. I’m going to fetch the major.”
Rel walked briskly to the gatehouse. The courtyard was a safe haven from the unrelenting attention of the Black Sands. Illuminated by firebowls on tall stands and lights from the fort’s odd slit windows it was an almost human place. But already the gates were drawing back, opening the way for the desert to resume its scrutiny, and Rel’s relief was short-lived.
Dracons pranced in, heads tossing, eager to be running. Behind them came two of the garrison on foot. Between them were the three men Rel had seen on the plain. They were flat-faced, leathery, with narrow, down-turned eyes and broad noses. One was much older than the other two. They were not of a type or nation Rel was familiar with. They babbled fretfully in a language no one understood. Rel moved forward and tried to calm them, but they would not be calmed. They grasped his forearms.
“Murthu, murthu, murthu!” one said over and over.
“Murthu? What is that?”
“I don’t know!” said the watch lieutenant. “He won’t stop saying it!”
“Lucky you, Zhinsky is here, and Zhinsky knows their speech.”
Major Mazurek swaggered into the pool of light before the gates.
“What are they saying?” said Rel, trying unsuccessfully to shake the man off.
“Changeling,” said Zhinsky.
“A changeling? Like a wolven?” said Rel.
“A man who turns into an angry dog? Pfah!” scoffed Zhinsky. “That is nursery talk. No, this is much worse, mainly because it is real. Now shut up! I am listening. This mountain tongue is hard to follow.”
Zhinsky spoke with the three men. They all spoke at once. He held up his hands, and when that did not work he shouted a single word. The men stared at him, blinking in fright. And then they told Zhinsky their story.
Within five minutes, Zhinsky had the colonel out of bed.
REL, ZHINSKY AND Deamaathani stood around the colonel’s desk. The office was frigid. Low-ranking soldiers were lighting the stove in the corner, but it was far too small to warm a room of that size.
“There will be a breach,” said Estabanado. He was unshaven and still in his nightclothes, a vast, quilted dressing gown wrapped around him. He yawned expansively and poured himself a drink. This time he offered Rel one, giving him also a tumbler each for Zhinsky and Deamaathani. Through numb fingers the glass was treacherously slick. Rel put one hand beneath the tumblers and watched them closely as he handed them out, lest they slip from his grasp.
“Breaches in the wall of obelisks are rare but not unheard of. It is our duty to investigate. I want you to go, captain.”
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“I will go with him,” said Zhinsky. “The village, Alu-mal, is isolated, one of the furthest from other inhabited lands. It will be useful for my government to have me visit.”
Estabanado nodded. He had grey bags under his eyes. He was not pleased to be woken at this hour, and not concerned about making it clear. “As you wish. Your facility with the mountain tribe’s language will be useful.”
“And merchant boy is still green as fresh grass shoots, we don’t want him dying!” said Zhinsky. He winked at Rel.
“No. I suppose not. Take a quarter squadron. No more.”
“Changelings can be dangerous,” said Zhinsky.
“It is all we can spare. If there is a breach, then there might well be other incidents we must attend to closer to home.”
Estabanado unrolled a map and weighed it down with a glass weight. “Where is it?”
Zhinsky tapped the map. It was a long way north of the Glass Fort.
A crooked line marked the border between sand and steppe, veering out from the mountains the further one went north or south. Estabanado ran his finger along it. “A lot of ground to cover, but check the obelisks en route. I’ll send out other groups to the south in case the breach is there. Magic is infuriatingly unpredictable. What is your opinion, captain-warlock?”
“A shapeshifter,” said Deamaathani. “How interesting.” He rolled his glass between his hands. They were a lighter blue than his face, almost as pale along the ridges of his fingers and on his palms as Rel’s skin. He looked cold, but he always did. “I have no experience whatsoever with them.”
“Do you not study such things at the university?”
“Of course,” said Deamaathani. “But three paragraphs in a discredited bestiary does not amount to experience.”
“Zhinsky?” said Estabanado.
“I have never seen one,” admitted the major. “There are many stories on my side of the mountains, more on this. None of them are good. This is the first I have heard of one in my lifetime. Some dismiss them as legendary.”
“Apparently they are not.” Estabanado sat down and stared dolefully at the map. “A skinturner.”
“We should be careful. On Magister Decatur’s scale, they rate a five in terms of relative peril,” said Deamaathani.
“There’s a scale?” asked Rel.
“Of course,” said Deamaathani.
“What does it go up to?”
“Twelve. A rating of twelve being a manifest god of the old powers. So you have an idea of what we might have to face. The remaining gods are lesser creatures. Eliturion and the Duke rate an eight and a seven respectively,” he added helpfully.
“That is not encouraging,” said Rel. He sipped his brandy. The coldness of the liquid bit him, then the heat of the alcohol hit.
“It is not,” agreed Deamaathani. “And the information this rating is based upon is questionable at best. Mathematics are only useful when rigorously questioned, I find. It is best not to accept anything regarding this creature at face value.”
“Warlock, can you perform a sending to Perus? An incident of this gravity demands that we inform our superiors,” said Estabanado.
“I can, but I will need a day to recover,” said Deamaathani. “Sending a message that distance is difficult.”
“You may have it. You will depart at first light the day after tomorrow. The villagers may stay here until you return. If it’s all a load of dracon’s shit they’ll answer for wasting my time.” He sucked down his brandy and hissed inwardly through his teeth. He looked at the map, towards the west where it ended, then beyond, off the table towards Perus. If the map had continued onward at that scale, Rel reckoned the Maceriyan capital to be somewhere over by the colonel’s bookcases.
“If there’s one good thing to come out of this,” said Estabanado, “it is that they might send us more men.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
A Confluence of Cousins
A LOBSTER, HALF a ham, a half wheel of strong blue cheese. Fruits, steamed vegetables, small dainties expertly baked. These were the dishes set between Trassan and his aunt, Cassonaepia Kressinda-Hamafara.
Vast was the first word that came to Trassan’s mind whenever looking at her. Round as a ball, she was a floatstone merchantman vessel plucked from the Lockside and swaddled in organza. Her dress was a size too small for her, parts of her anatomy Trassan really did not wish to see spilled dangerously from it. Her chins were numerous, nose small and upturned as a pygmy sow’s. She smiled often but falsely, the expression never reached her eyes. They remained hard and calculating.
“Your father,” she was saying, although in actuality Cassonaepia said nothing, but shouted everything at an ear-splitting volume intended to quell dissent to her opinions. These were often erroneous, and just as often outright lies. Cassonaepia did so like to be right about everything. “Your father!” she repeated, belting out the second word with even greater emphasis. “How is he?”
Fat hands plucked at a lobster claw ineffectively. She glared at her footman who hurried over to dismember it. He exhibited signs of nervous exhaustion. All her servants did.
“Oh do stop fussing!” she snapped at the man as he arranged the meat for her. He beat a hasty retreat. “You will like this, Trassan. It was made by Ouseaux, the best chef in the city. Maceriyan, he is. A Perusian, a Perusian! Simply the best. I won’t have anything else. Absolutely not. The best!”
“That’s right dear,” said Uncle Arvell.
“Be quiet you silly little man,” she snapped. “What’s the use with agreeing with me on every matter like that? I can say it for myself.”
“My father is very well, aunt. Better than many physics expected.”
She puffed up at being called aunt by Trassan. He was the scion of a noble house, and Cassonaepia cared very much for appearances. She wore the name with great pride, like a prince’s mantel. She was notorious for mentioning her relationship to Gelbion loudly and often. “There you are, there you are!” she said. “Haven’t I always said, better to rely on natural healing. Better that than the mutterings of magisters. Bring the dead on you, snip snap! And the physics. They are worse! You cannot trust those quacks, you cannot! Kill you dead as soon as cure a cold. Best avoid it. Didn’t I always say that? Didn’t I always say? Arvell, Arvell!”
“Yes dear,” said her husband. Arvell Kressind-Hamafar was brother to Gelbion, but two more dissimilar men one could not hope to meet. He was as meek as his brother was bellicose. A pale, thin man, insubstantial seeming, as if his wife’s cruelty had flattened the spirit out of him in the same manner as a roller flattens steel in a mill, mercilessly and automatically. He smiled nervously, then stopped, then started again, searching his wife’s face all the time for guidance as to what he should be doing. He flinched as she scowled at him.
“Yes dear!” she repeated sharply. “See, Trassan, what level of conversation I have to put up with here! Look, I say Arvell, what I have to put up with.”
“Yes dear,” began Arvell.
“Oh do be silent, you stupid man! Can you not see that Trassan is in the middle of talking. Is that not so?”
Trassan was not, but his aunt never let the truth get in the way of her pronouncements.
“Such a nice boy. Look at him! Working with Arkadian Vand. I often say to the ladies how clever you are, Trassan! How rich you must be. How rich! Such prospects, such a catch! How goes your wooing?”
“I don’t know about wooing,” said Trassan. He smiled sheepishly at his cousin Ilona, at the other end of the rectangular table, where she was seated facing her father at the table’s head.
“I know! I know! Everyone knows! You are to wed Vand’s daughter? A good match. A good match!” she said. Her habit was to shout the second word of these repetitions. Conversation with her was arduous. “I am sure she is slim! And beautiful! Not like me, oh no, so sad. Oh, no more, absolutely not! I was quite the sylph in my earlier days, but even though I eat like a bird my boy, a bird, I cannot fit
into my bridal gown any longer.”
Trassan tried his best to keep his eyes from her plate. Between her barking, the woman had demolished half of the cheese, each knife-full larded onto sweet biscuits. She waited for Trassan to say she was not as large as she insisted. He managed a tactful mumble to that effect.
“You see! Manners my dear! Manners! You would do worse, Ilona, than to find a good, rich man like Trassan.”
Ilona gritted her teeth. She was as slim as her mother was fat, as spirited as her father was broken. If she had not been, she would have been driven insane long ago. “Yes mother,” she said.
“He’s the boss, chop. The boss, chop!” Cassonaepia bellowed.
“It has been a long time since we last saw you, Trass,” said Ilona. She smiled impishly at him. “Why do you avoid visiting our lovely home?”
“I wouldn’t say I avoided it,” he said. Wouldn’t say, but he did avoid it. Nobody wanted to spend time with Cassonaepia if it could be avoided. “I am terribly busy with the ship. We must be ready to sail in spring.”
“I read a book—” began Ilona.
“And of course, we can all believe what we read in those, can’t we?” whooped Cassonaepia derisively. “I prefer to put stock in my own eyes. My own eyes!” she bawled. “Isn’t that right?”
“Yes, yes it is dear,” Arvell agreed meekly.
“Tell me about this book, Ilona,” Trassan said, mindful that Cassonaepia was drawing in another huge breath.
“A book of polar exploration, by the Oczerk adventurer Rassanaminul Haik.”
“I know the one, I read it myself.”
“I hope you have done more preparation than that,” Ilona said.
“I am sure he has, dear!” hollered Cassonaepia, annoyed that the centre of conversation had moved from her.
Trassan ignored her. “Yes. Of course.”
“You’ll be leaving in spring when the ice breaks?”
“That is the plan. The ice does not recede, to the best of current knowledge, until the beginning of summer, but it is a lengthy voyage to the deep south. We intend to arrive as the ice thins, allowing us through. Where it does not part, the engines and prow of the Prince Alfra should force a way for us.” Trassan warmed to his subject, despite the banging headache his aunt’s monologues had given him. He placed one hand flat upon the other, pushing the lower hand down. “Our engines are so powerful, and the weight of the ship so great, that I believe we shall be able to break our way through. Floatstone ships cannot do this. They become snared in the ice and cannot move until it breaks again, or they are carried toward the heart of the Sotherwinter by the gyres of the ice and are trapped there forever.”
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