The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  Mercy, I’m a coward. Yes, he knew. In a way, he was afraid to find out what the youngsters’ crime was. He liked them. He didn’t want anything to happen to them. If he found that they’d stolen things or harmed people, he would feel betrayed. Yet, something in him told him that he really should find out why they were important enough to warrant search parties.

  Pfa—Nila was probably just a rich man’s daughter. And children were valuable enough in the City of Glass.

  But, the little voice argued, the rich nobles of the City of Glass don’t control the Eagle Knights. Each were a class of their own; he knew that much about their strange society.

  The Lady Armaine used to wrangle invitations to doga functions; she used to shadow him at dinners, holing him up in dark corners while pressing her ample cleavage under his nose. Yeah, no goddess, that one. A power-hungry snake, more like. No doubt she revelled in all this renewed attention on the south. He could almost hear her voice. I am a southerner. I know what is going on in my country. No, she didn’t. She’d left over fifty years ago, and hadn’t travelled there since her son ended up spending some time in a southern dungeon as teenager.

  He only shivered at the thought of what she would do to Destran, the spineless gasbag. What was she telling him now? Oh, it’s only a temporary flare. No need to do anything. Knights in the border provinces? Don’t worry, they’re just looking for some dangerous criminals. No harm will be done to anyone.

  Why wasn’t this district crawling with Chevakian soldiers?

  Mercy. He should go into the towns and do something, instead of hiding here with the refugees and the outcasts.

  They’d been travelling all day and had seen not a single official or soldier. The people could be forgiven to think that Tiverius didn’t care.

  In fact, Milleus was sure the doga didn’t care. From what Sady had told him, they were far too busy fighting for their political survival. The people of the district would be disgruntled and support him, ride all the way to the capital with him and march into the doga . . .

  Pfa, what nonsense. You’re an old man, Milleus han Chevonian.

  They ate and Nila announced she was going to sleep. She looked tired, too. Milleus still couldn’t shake the feeling that she wasn’t well.

  Isandor got up to accompany her to the tent, his arm around her shoulders. She leaned into him and let him caress her. Milleus guessed Isandor would probably not come back to the fire either. Last night, Milleus had gone to sleep in the van trying to block the soft noises from the tent.

  But soon after the youngsters had gone into the tent, the flap moved and Isandor came back out. The flickering glow from the fire danced over his face. Was it a trick of the light, or had the ungainly black hairs on his chin increased? Maybe he should lend the boy his barber’s razor.

  Milleus held out an empty cup, for tea, but Isandor shook his head. “You watch when we sleep. I get up in the night and watch you.”

  Milleus frowned.

  Isandor cast a quick glance at the van with the southerners.

  “It’s all right,” he said. “I think they’re just refugees. None of them look like full-blood southerners.”

  “The Eagle Knights use elite teams called hunters. They’re mostly halfbloods and other outcasts from the City of Glass. They are the most dangerous soldiers the south has.”

  The intensity in his eyes made something click for Milleus. All of a sudden, he understood what Isandor had done. “You’re a deserter.”

  Isandor squinted and let the silence linger for a few long seconds. Then he said, “Of a kind, yes.”

  Milleus thought he knew the kind. He was well-familiar with armed forces and what superiors sometimes did to men they didn’t like. With his wooden leg, Isandor would fit the bill of someone these tyrants loved to pick on. He fought to repress a shudder.

  “Is that why they’re after you?”

  “They want to kill us,” Isandor said.

  “These foreigners don’t look dangerous.”

  “No.” Isandor’s eyes were intense; they said I think they could be.

  “All right. I’ll watch them.”

  Isandor nodded in that intense way of his and went back into the tent.

  Milleus sipped from his tea and stared into the fire. One piece of the puzzle put into place. Isandor had been an Eagle Knight apprentice, or whatever they were called. That’s why he knew so much about military strategy.

  A brief thought crossed his mind, What if he’s a spy? but he discarded that just as quickly. Certainly, a spy would never flaunt that type of knowledge. Nor could he see any government, not even the dictatorial south, appointing mere teenagers as spies.

  That left the enigma of the girl. Because Nila wasn’t her name. What did she have to hide?

  Their voices and rustling of blankets were soft in the tent. They really were very considerate. And anyway, how much did you need to hide that you were in love?

  He sighed. Saw Suri at the dining table a few days before she took her own life. One bright look, a smile. Not at him, but Sady. What was going on between them? He’d asked her.

  So it’s fine for you to see prostitutes and it’s not fine for me to have a friend?

  It was not the same, and she wouldn’t see that. If she wanted a playboy, whom she paid, that was fine, but his own unmarried brother . . . She refused to say whether or not she ever slept with Sady. That is just such a ridiculous question, Milleus. You don’t understand how ridiculous. His best guess was that her refusal to answer the question meant that meant she did.

  And Milleus had . . .

  Jealousy was an ugly emotion. There was no excuse for what he had done, for what he would have to forget. The marriage had been bad from the start. He should have known the moment she became reluctant to be touched. He should have let her go, but he’d never wanted to push her. He should have . . .

  He’d expected her to run out on him, find another man, but kill herself?

  “Mind if we join you?”

  Milleus started at the sound of the young male voice.

  The young father stood there, holding a lute. The young woman, the toddler’s mother waited just behind him.

  Milleus shrugged. “Sure. Sit down. Want some tea?”

  The young couple sat down and introduced themselves. They were from one of the towns they had passed through and underway to Tiverius, because the man had family there.

  “It’s much safer to go there than stay in Ensar,” the young father said. “If anything happens, do you think the doga would let it happen to the capital?”

  His eyes met Milleus’ and Milleus felt uncomfortable, but there was no suspicion on the man’s face. He was possibly too young to have remembered the glory days of Proctor Milleus han Chevonian.

  Milleus shrugged. “Politics don’t interest me much.” Liar.

  The subject changed to travel experiences, and then goats. The young man played his lute, and the music drew three of the foreign youths to the fire. There was a lanky young man with olive skin who had to be Aranian, an adolescent youth with curly golden hair but hazel eyes who had to be a Chevakian half breed. The third person turned out to be a young woman with silky black hair and intense blue eyes. Under a too-wide shirt of thin material, her figure was thin, androgynous. She moved with the grace and stealth of a sabre-cat. Milleus didn’t doubt the strength of those corded muscles. But her eyes were wide and held a kind of innocence that only came with youth. She was gorgeous in every way.

  The young father sang and the foreigners shared bottles of a heavy, sweet liquor. Milleus felt drawn back to the pleasant memories he had of camping in this glade. In those days, there had never been any women, but the southern woman seemed to fit in perfectly. She laughed with th
e boys, she swore enough to colour the ears of a soldier, she drank like them—straight from the mouth of the bottle—and her deep sensual voice carried a promise of living fast and dangerously, like a man, like a soldier. The golden-haired youth had a huge store of bawdy jokes, and in between passing the bottle, they laughed themselves silly.

  The more he drank, the more Milleus looked at the sleek-haired beauty. She returned his glances, secretly, over the shoulder of her hawkish Aranian friend. Milleus wasn’t used to drinking so much anymore, and somewhere in the back of his mind a voice told him to get out before there was trouble and go to sleep. The voice sounded like Suri, who used to be angry with him when he was drunk. Mercy, when he was drunk he used to do stupid things. Like force her into his bed. It was a wonder those two useless sons of his weren’t born with alcohol in their veins.

  He rose, so unsteady on his feet.

  “Look, I better go to bed. ’s a long day t’morrow.” He couldn’t even talk properly anymore.

  He stumbled to the van. Remembered vaguely that we was supposed to stay awake to guard the tent. What for? These half-southern youngsters were just louts.

  They haven’t told you who they were and where they’re from, the little voice in his head said.

  “Ow, mercy, sh . . . shuddup.” He put his hand on the door of the truck’s cabin. All right, he’d guard the truck. He’d just sit in the cabin and—

  —the pale-skinned woman slipped next to him, bottle in hand.

  “Don’t go yet.” Her voice was deep and sultry, unlike any woman’s he had heard before. She leaned against the truck and tipped the bottle to her mouth. A rivulet of moisture ran from the corner of her mouth down her chin, over her neck.

  The firelight gilded her thin blouse and the merest of curves underneath. A nipple, hard and erect, pushed the fabric.

  Something stirred in him.

  Milleus tried to shake himself out of his stupor. You’re seventy-one years old and you’re drunk.

  “Why don’t you come with me?” She flicked a glance in the direction of the forest.

  Beyond the glow of the fire, tree trunks stood as dark sentinels.

  A few moments of unattached passion. He had plenty of money, and she needed it. Come to think of it, that was probably how the four of them survived. She’d been scouting him out all night. Since the young father made an unlikely customer, she had set her eyes on him.

  Mercy.

  He should go to bed if he knew what was good for him. Go to bed and listen to Isandor and Nila’s lovemaking for much of the night.

  He shook his head. “I’m an old man, twice the age of your usual customer, I bet.”

  She gave a crooked laugh. Her blue eyes were intense.

  “You’d be surprised,” she said. She trailed her fine-boned but wiry hand over his arm. He shivered, feeling the blood stir inside him.

  “I think you had better go and bother a younger man.”

  “Really?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Don’t fl . . . flatter me.” His voice was unsteady from the drink, but his crotch glowed pleasantly.

  “I like older men. I think you could show me a thing or two.”

  Oh woman, where do you think I’ve been the last ten years?

  On the farm with the goats, that was where. He hadn’t been near a woman for a long time, had no idea if his body was still up to the task, but it might, it just might.

  Who would care, really, if he spent his own time and own money on a bit of pleasure? The goats wouldn’t eat any less, and Isandor and Nila wouldn’t know. He was meant to watch the southerners, and he was just watching them very closely. Even if the youngsters did find out, they might realise that not just young people had fun.

  “Come.” She pulled his hand. Milleus stumbled a few paces, swaying, and then regained his balance. Mercy, it had been a long time since he’d been this drunk. She draped her body cat-like against his. Warm and smelling of female perfume. It wouldn’t take long, oh no, it wouldn’t, he could feel it, he still had some fire in him.

  “Ow, let’s go, then.”

  She gave him a mischievous smile.

  He hooked his arm in his, and drank another good swig from the bottle. She offered it to him; he took it and gulped the burning fluid. Oh, his whole body was throbbing most pleasantly now.

  But somehow, in his drunkenness he registered that she was pulling him towards their van, and he vaguely remembered that he vowed to keep an eye on Isandor and Nila.

  “No, no, Lady. I have a nice van. There’s a lot of . . . room inside . . .”

  “I have all my oils in the wagon. I’ll give you a good rub.”

  But Milleus wasn’t interested in a rub. He wanted to . . . hell, he wanted to fuck her hard, not care about decency, and wake up the youngsters with the noises they had plagued him with.

  “Let’s just go in the forest.” From there, he could keep an eye on the tent; he’d promised Isandor.

  “All right.” She gathered up her shoes.

  Holding her hand, he led her between the trees. He stopped a few paces in, pushed her against a tree trunk.

  “No,” she whispered. “Not here. I don’t want my friends to see. They can’t know what I am.”

  Oh, rubbish. Everyone knows what you are. “Your friends are drunk as anything. Just stay still. I won’t take long.”

  In one movement, she pulled her shirt over her head. “Catch me.”

  She jumped a few steps and he chased after her, and managed to get hold of her arm.

  He pulled her into a close embrace in the shadow of the tree trunk. She panted, arching her back, undoing the fastening of her trousers. He slid his hands over her skin, breathing the scent of her hair. The muscles on her belly were firm, her breasts soft. Blood roared in his ears. It had been so long . . .

  A branch cracked behind him.

  Milleus gasped, suddenly wide awake.

  Hang on.

  Somehow, her catch me game had taken him far enough in the forest that he could no longer see the tent, where his two southern fugitives lay asleep.

  “Wait.”

  “What?” she said. She was stark naked, and the firelight gilded small breasts. “Come on, I’m waiting for you.” She pulled his arm.

  “Gotta check something.” He shouldn’t have left the fire.

  He yanked himself free, and ran, half-stumbling through the forest.

  The tent was silhouetted against the firelight. He couldn’t see anyone near it, but a shadow stood beside the foreigner’s van—the fourth member of the southern group, the young man who hadn’t come to the fire.

  Milleus ran, all effects of alcohol banished from his mind.

  “Isandor, Isandor!”

  He reached the tent, at almost the same time as a dark figure rushed out. The man crashed into Milleus and swore, or so Milleus presumed, because he didn’t speak Chevakian. Milleus thought it was the Aranian youth.

  Then there was Isandor’s voice, also not in Chevakian. A knife flashed. Someone screamed and a second figure ran from the tent, his head wrapped in a headscarf. An engine started up.

  Nila came to the tent entrance holding a flapping candle. “Milleus? Who was that?”

  Isandor scrambled out after her. He opened his clutched fist in the pool of light cast by the candle. There was a handful of fur in bloodied his palm. “Knights.”

  Nila clasped her hand over her mouth. “They cut you.”

  “It’s nothing.” Isandor wiped the fur on his trousers. His gaze was on the edge of the forest where the foreign van no longer stood. “They were not here to capture us. They were here to kill us. I woke up because there was a noise. I saw the knife.”<
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  “Who were they? How did they get in?”

  Isandor met Milleus’ eyes.

  Milleus felt heat rise to his cheeks. Yes, he was supposed to have been watching. And just as well one of the foreigners stepped on a branch. “I was in the forest—” And then he felt like he needed to explain. “Taking a piss.”

  Isandor frowned. “With a woman?”

  Milleus looked over his shoulder. The foreign woman was gone, of course, but Isandor would have seen her.

  Isandor’s blue eyes met his. Then he gave a wolfish smile. “Oh.”

  Oh indeed. Milleus didn’t know whether to feel stupid or victorious. Had he been near the fire as he ought to have been, nothing would have happened.

  “It’s not safe here,” he grumbled. “I’ll sleep in the tent with you.”

  He went to get his mat and lay down, after stopping for a good spew behind a tree. Mercy, he’d feel like a wet dishrag tomorrow morning.

  Somewhere in the dark beyond his vision Isandor and Nila kissed and whispered to each other. Milleus pulled his bedding over his head, irritated that the itch inside him had not been stilled.

  He lay staring into the dark until silence returned and still couldn’t sleep. His mind churned.

  He’d been stupid. Not just about a silly pair of pretty eyes, but about everything he cared about, and everyone who cared about him.

  And he had grieved over his sour marriage and Suri’s death far too long. He might well have another twenty years of fire left in him. Seventy-one was old, but he wasn’t dead yet. If he was still up to misbehaving himself, he could be useful to someone. He would have to go and fix the mess Destran had made, find out what foreign spies were doing here, and why there had been two attempts on the youngsters’ lives. When all that was sorted, he would go to a matchmaker to find himself a woman. Not too young, mind because he didn’t want any more children.

  Tiverius then, it was.

  Damn you, Sady.