The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  From the corner of his vision, he noticed Farius rising. “I’m sorry, uhm, Sady, but I should be at the gate. I’ll ask Orsan to come and take you back—”

  Sady held up his hand. “Just leave me . . . for a bit.” He took a shuddering breath.

  “As you wish.”

  Farius scurried out, and Sady leant over the table, tears streaming over his face. It was a blessing for young men to be so unacquainted with grief that they felt embarrassed by the sight of an older man incapacitated with it. Suri, Lana, the young boys who used to love him and were now prickly adults. Milleus, who was still missing, who he should go and find instead of being Finnisius’ pissing post.

  He should never have challenged.

  He should have kissed Suri, or Lana.

  He should have brought Milleus home with him.

  There was a gentle touch on his shoulder. Loriane.

  He turned aside, meeting her blue eyes, sincere, with not a skerrick of shame or embarrassment in them. She reached out and wiped a tear from his cheek, and said something, her voice soothing. The corners of her mouth turned up.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  She repeated, “Thank you.” It sounded close enough.

  Then she rose, and, like Lana would have done, poured him tea.

  Sady patted the book. “Tonight, we start.”

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  TANDOR HAD no idea how long he’d been in that cell when there was a sound of footsteps, and more unusual—voices—coming down the stairs at the far end of the corridor. A light came closer. Someone holding a torch and shining it in each of the cells. Soft voices, in Chevakian. At least one man and a woman.

  “This is the one,” a man said. The glow of the torch showed a guard’s uniform, but not one of the regular prison guards.

  A light was directed into Tandor’s face. His eyes saw only white. He tried to scramble into a standing position, but his hands were still tied and his side was too sore from where the guard had kicked him. His pants were soggy and wet and the skin underneath felt raw.

  Someone stuck a key in a creaky lock. A bolt slid back with a metallic clang. The door opened. That was new. The prison guards only shoved the food into the cell using a long stick.

  “Phoo, he stinks.” This was a woman’s voice.

  A man laughed. “What did you think?”

  They came in, and shut the cell door behind them.

  “How are we this morning?” another male voice asked in a mockery of friendliness.

  “You’re here to interrogate me.”

  “Good guess.”

  The guard slid the torch into the wall bracket, and slid a light sock over the flame, making the light spread more evenly.

  Now Tandor could see who had entered: a guard, a man in the grey robe of the court and a woman wearing a light blue medical outfit. She had brought a bag which she had set on the bench against the side wall. She was taking things out and setting them on the wood. Glittery, shiny things with sharp points.

  A chill crawled up Tandor’s spine. “Whatever you have me here for, I didn’t do it.”

  “You had a knife and blood all over you. The court will decide if that is enough evidence.” But evidence never held much sway with the Chevakian courts. Someone was dead, so someone had to pay the price. Now that four people were dead, the price would be so much quicker. Chevakia didn’t have large or many prisons for a reason.

  The man stopped opposite him. “But we want to question you about something else.”

  He glanced at the woman and the array of metal instruments in the tray, one of which a glimmering needle.

  Tandor’s chill increased. Some of the Chevakian poisons messed with your mind. There was way too much in his mind that could do a lot of damage to him, his mother or her cause.

  The woman took a bottle with a clear fluid and filled the syringe from it. She tapped the reservoir to rid it of bubbles.

  No, please.

  She approached and knelt in the straw next to him. She was young, but with a hard set to her mouth. How many prisoners had she killed?

  He flinched when she touched his arm, but it was only to wipe the skin clean.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “We need some answers.”

  “You could just ask me.”

  She smiled, as if she enjoyed hearing the fear edge his voice. “The only reason you haven’t already been trialled and sentenced is that we need to know where the missing baby is. What you say now may be important for your sentence. If you speak the truth, the court may give you a more lenient sentence.”

  Yes, like hack his head off with an axe instead of hanging him? “If you release me, I can go and find this baby for you.”

  “Wouldn’t you like that?” She gave a mock laugh and held the syringe up to the light. A drop of poison glittered at the sharp point of the needle.

  Tandor flinched involuntarily.

  “Where is the child?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t touch it. I didn’t touch the others. I didn’t kill them—argh!”

  Quick as lightning, the woman had jammed the needle into his arm, and she held it there with one hand while pushing the plunger down with the other.

  A sharp, tingling pain spread from his upper arm.

  “What is it? It hurts.” Already, he started feeling light-headed. “Argh, what is this for?” Part of some new Chevakian torture method? Sweat ran down his back.

  She put a cup-like device over his nose and mouth. It had a soft rim that sat snug on his face and sealed it off from the outside air. The inside smelled stuffy. He tried not breathing, and turning his head away from the thing, but the guard came to stand behind him and held his head still. He kicked with his feet, but that brought the pressure back on the manacles holding his upper arms and they hurt so much that he forgot that he wasn’t going the breathe and he screamed inside the mask. The poison made his mouth burn. He yelled and coughed, and coughed some more. Strings of phlegm coated his lips.

  “What do you remember of last night?” the woman’s voice sounded far off. His vision had gone funny, his tongue tingled.

  “I don’t know.” Tandor closed his eyes to stop the world spinning around him. “I know nothing, do you hear? I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill anyone. I have never killed anyone. It was the monster.” Chevakian didn’t have a word for dacon.

  “What monster?” the female voice came from far away.

  By the skylights, he hadn’t meant to say that. Why was he speaking Chevakian anyway? Weren’t you meant to return to the language of your birth when layers of consciousness were stripped away?

  Tandor struggled against the tide of dizziness, feeling himself being pulled away. He coughed, and the burning in his throat increased. He tried to shake his head away from the mask. “Take that thing away from me.” He coughed again, big hacking coughs. He couldn’t stop coughing.

  The woman said something, and her companion withdrew the mask. Tandor drew deep wheezing breaths.

  But the world he saw was not that of the dank prison cell. He was outside, in a field under a threatening sky.

  He was Ruko, and he came to a halt at a ridge top that overlooked a patchwork of farm plots, roads, hedges and a scattering of houses. A wall of smoke hung at the horizon, black roiling clouds that hid the presence of the beings within.

  He knelt in the dirt and pulled his dagger from his belt. He held the weapon out before him on flat outstretched hands. Strands of icefire danced along the blade. It was so strong here.

  He balled his fist at the horizon. “What are you waiting for? Come and avenge what’s been done to you.”

  For a mo
ment, the clouds parted, and revealed a giant figure made of orange flame within. Yes, they were here.

  First Ruko pulled his shirt over his head. Then he took off his pants. Last, he unstrapped his artificial leg. He bundled these things together and flung them downhill, towards the fire. “Sisters and brothers, I am here. Time has come for revenge!”

  A shrill voice cut through the roar of the wind and popping of fire. “Come to me!” His girl. She was there, amongst the inferno. She was here.

  The ice-cold wind buffeted his naked skin. It pimpled into goosebumps. The power, the majesty of it. And he was stuck in this stupid half-baked body. The girl had done a piss-poor job of turning him back into a young man. The stupid women then did an incomplete job of freeing him of the sorcerer’s hold. The sorcerer was still inside him somewhere. He longed to sever those links forever. Life was better when he didn’t have a heart.

  He gripped the dagger more tightly, his hands trembling. The touch of icefire aroused him to the point of pain. Strands of blue whipped out from the menacing clouds and stroked his skin like a long-forgotten lover. He longed to jump into that ecstasy.

  Could he do it?

  He eyed the dagger again. In this form, he could never survive being swallowed by that cloud. In this form, his gratification would be a short one. Like the male spider, he’d risk his life to have sex once, and be eaten by his mate. That was not how he wanted to die.

  Deep breath in, and he plunged the dagger into his own chest. Pain lanced through his body. Blood flowed over his hands, rivulets of it running over his naked chest, into his pubic hair. It hurt, it hurt, and it was so good. He lifted the blood-stained dagger and stabbed again, deeper this time. Blood dripped onto the ground and pooled around his legs. Icefire crackled along the edges of the puddles. He watched in in a pain-filled haze, the dagger buried into his chest up to the hilt.

  “Come to me!” he screamed, his voice hoarse.

  They came, towering figures made of icefire, with hollow eyes burning with anger. Smoky hands reached out of the wall and grabbed him. Drew him within. She was there. Her fiery body engulfed him, dug into his chest to lift out his heart, dripping, and still beating. She flung it away. He would never have a need for it again.

  He looked into her fiery face and said, “I’m yours.” He grew and became one with the fire, and one with her. They tumbled over the countryside, eating up farms and forests and crops in the wake of their fight of love. And then he found release, and they lay, exhausted next to each other while flames digested their loot. With each breath, she grew fatter and rounder and more glowing and powerful. When the little flames had burnt all they could burn, she clambered to her feet in the middle of the blackened earth. She was enormous, her belly huge and gravid. She spewed a gout of fire that engulfed him with its power, and spewed again, and again, great globs of fire that moved, grew little legs, and coalesced into little fire people. She spewed and spewed, and the little people grew. Hundreds, thousands of them.

  Tandor fell, and fell through darkness. Wisps of mist rushed past him, shards of voices, people screaming and calling out for him.

  He screamed.

  The dank prison cell returned, and immediately before him, the face of the woman in the light blue medical suit.

  Reality returned. Ruko had joined his kin. They were on their way to avenge what had been done to them. They were after him, and the Knights.

  “Interesting,” she said, and she straightened. And then again, “Interesting.” He had no idea what she found interesting.

  He looked up at her, his vision dimmed with pain.

  “Let me go.”

  She laughed.

  “Let me go, or you will all die.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m serious. There is a great wall of evil coming this way.”

  She ignored him and started packing her things. Then she rose and nodded to the guards. They left the cell, locking the door behind them.

  Tandor screamed after them. “Let me go. Let me go.”

  A rough voice came through the darkness. “Hey, new guy. We all tried the madman trick. Didn’t work.”

  Chapter 15

  * * *

  LATE IN THE afternoon, when the light filtered by the cover of clouds was fading, a handful of people gathered on the windy hillside on the eastern fringe of Tiverius. Women, mostly, those Lana had maintained contact with during her life. Her sister, a middle-aged woman with a heavy brow, and a cousin Sady remembered sitting in the kitchen at times. Only six of them to watch the bier, with the cloth-covered body, be swallowed by flames in the fire pit, standing a bit further away than usual, because the wind was particularly fierce and carried gouts of flame up the fire pit wall each time the wood popped.

  The funeral celebrant from the Central Tiverius morgue—Sady made sure she got the best one—was unused to ceremonies with so few attendants. She seemed awkward, glancing from Sady and Orsan on one side to Lana’s family on the other.

  She spoke the rites. A woman Sady didn’t know had tears running down her cheeks. How had she known Lana? The other women were glaring at him.

  He stared at his hands, clasped before him. He felt too empty even to cry. He remembered the times—too many to count—that he’d come home late and he and Lana had sat in the kitchen. They’d talked about the doga, about Destran, about the weather.

  They had never talked about her. He had known so little about her life. The celebrant spoke of a warm woman, with time to help everybody. Who had Lana helped, other than him or people in his household? Sady had no idea.

  He had accused Milleus of being distant, but he was just as bad. Worse maybe, since he had never attempted to share his life with anyone, but had expected his household to serve him and him alone. Who was he to judge his brother’s marriage? What made him remotely suitable to run the country? He was not. Even Viki, in all his inexperience, was doing better than he was. Sady had failed everyone in his personal life, and only did a marginal job of running the doga.

  The wind whipped Sady’s hair. In the city down the hill, the clock tower played its regular tune, and then the bell rang, twice. It chilled him.

  He remembered the sonorics warnings as they had been drilled in to him when he was young. There was a children’s rhyme based on it.

  Once rings the bell and we stay inside,

  Twice rings the bell and school is out,

  Thrice rings the bell and we find the shelter,

  But when it rings all the time, we run.

  They should be inside on this day.

  When the ceremony was finished, Sady and Orsan left with the small group of women. Past the walls that held little alcoves which contained the ashes of many great Tiverians of the past. Somewhere out there was the han Chevonian alcove, with the remains of poor Eseldus, and the remains of his parents who had such great hopes for both of them. They’d seen Milleus’ rise as proctor, but had never seen how he was deposed.

  The truck waited outside, and before climbing in, Sady turned to Lana’s sister.

  “Be well. I’m sorry we have met again under such sad circumstances.”

  He was not prepared for the vicious look in her eyes. “You should be sorry.” Her voice was full of venom. “My sister looked after you with everything she had, and what do you do? Invite strangers into your house who kill her.”

  “It wasn’t—”

  “Just stop your politician’s talk, all right? Barely a month into the job, and you’re just as bad as the rest of them. Empty promises, excuses for sitting on your backside. Leave us in peace, and don’t pretend that you cared for her, because you didn’t.”

  Sady felt like shouting, Woman, I’ve been working for my country and my eyes are about to fall out! But
that would only sound like a complaint. He had volunteered for the job, and in case he needed reminding, he had to ride the cart he bought, because there was no money for another one. And time could not be wound back.

  The constant demands on his time, the constant crises. And now people were starting to accuse him. His time in the job would be short indeed.

  He left quickly for the comfort of his truck.

  On the way back, Orsan sat, silent, opposite him. Sady was painfully reminded how not even Orsan was a true ally. Orsan would never reveal all he knew. Working for the doga, he would be privy to other senators’ schedules and appointments. All those people meeting at Lady Armaine’s house. Why were there so many influential people in a setting that was almost worship? He bet Orsan knew who they were.

  His household had been violated, his brother was still missing, despite the fact that the mire of the Ensar Road refugees was almost cleared up, and all people housed in the city or camped in a field next to the Balloon base. Milleus’ absence was like a hole inside him.

  Spending resources on trying to find him would be considered inappropriate. Ensar itself was still not responding. If Milleus had been too stubborn to leave, he would now be dead.

  The truck stopped at the house, and Sady could hardly carry himself up the stairs, he was so exhausted. Mentally, emotionally. He hoped that Farius had been able to find another housekeeper, and that no more crises had erupted since he’d left the house.

  When he opened the door, it was to voices from the living room, which Sady hardly used these days. There was also a sound suspiciously like the banging of a hammer. Sady went into the room, where he found Farius and the southern man Ontane. Farius balanced precariously on a ladder in front of the window while hanging up what looked like a curtain rod.

  “Oh, good afternoon, Sady,” Farius said. He held a hammer.

  “What in all of mercy’s name are you doing here?” asked Sady, spotting on the floor a pile of old carpets which, judging by the musty scent, came from the store room. Some of those were from Milleus’ old house, before he moved to the farm.