The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  But he didn’t listen to it and he didn’t see the houses on both sides of the street; he only saw the heart leaping from the Legless Lion’s chest. Three times in three days. What was happening to him?

  At least he had put the heart back. That was more than he could say for the previous animal, a White Bear, which had bolted from the butchery, glowing blue and all, before he had been able to catch it.

  Not wanting to face his uncle, Isandor had slipped that heart in his pocket where it had remained for the rest of the day, beating its steady warm rhythm against his thigh. At home, he had slid his chest from under the bed, creaked open the lid, and added the heart to a jar in his collection. Legless Lions, other White Bears and Tusked Lions. All pulsing with life.

  He didn’t understand; he didn’t even want to understand.

  Whispers around the Slums went that if the Eagle Knights found any evidence of icefire, they would take you away and kill you.

  Isandor didn’t want to be taken by the knights. He wanted to be a knight. To fly on the back of a great bird. To show his mother that he could look after himself. To show the world that cripples could ride just as well as complete people.

  A few weeks ago, he had been so close to this dream . . .

  The street opened out into a square. In one corner, a merchant family was packing wares onto a sled. Their bear, a scrawny animal with matted fur, waited in the harness.

  Across the expanse of slippery ice, the windows of the meltery glowed with warm light. Patrons sat at tables, silhouettes raising large mugs to their lips.

  Tied to a rack outside stood an eagle. Brilliant white, with a gleaming riding harness on its back. Isandor knew that eagle. For three glorious days, it had been his. It tossed its head and snapped at the reins. A young man Isandor also knew jumped up and tried to catch the dangling straps of leather.

  Isandor whistled softly, stretching out a hand. “I can help.”

  The bird calmed, and the young man grabbed the reins before turning to Isandor. “You! Filthy cripple! Get away from my bird.” Carro was barely old enough to be let inside the meltery to drink, yet his face was red from bloodwine.

  The bird hissed, lifting its head high above Carro’s, threatening to drag him up.

  “Stop that, I said! Just stop it, stupid bird.” Carro yanked on the leather straps and the eagle hissed more, its wings half-outstretched.

  “Give the reins to me. I can handle him.” Isandor whistled softly and held out his hand, hobbling a few steps closer on his wooden leg. He met the eagle’s orange eye.

  “You will do no such thing.” Carro was so close now that the warm waft of his breath stroked Isandor’s face; it smelled of bloodwine. “You are a filthy cripple and you should never have been let anywhere near him. I still don’t understand how you managed to trick the Royal Recruiter into letting you in with the apprentices. Just as well a real knight knew what you really are.”

  “You’re only an Apprentice-Knight.”

  Carro lashed out and grabbed the front of Isandor’s cloak. “Dare say that again!”

  Isandor shielded himself with his arms. Once, he had stood up to Carro’s bullying quite well, but Carro had grown much taller and stronger in the past year.

  “I am a Queen’s Knight. I have seen Queen Jevaithi, kissed her ring and sworn to serve her. I hate you. You spoiled my bird with your whistles. I don’t even know why that whore of a mother of yours left you alive. Ha—was that because you were not even fit to be fed to the eagles—” He gave a sudden cry and then a strangled gasp, and then his furred boots scuffled in the snow and lifted right off the ground.

  Isandor uncurled his arms from his face and raised his head.

  A mountain of a man stood behind Carro, at least two heads taller than him, a thick arm snaking around Carro’s neck.

  Carro was kicking backwards, his feet failing to find purchase, trying to prise his fingers between the skin of his neck and the man’s arm. “Let me go. I’ve done nothing!”

  The giant didn’t speak. His eyes were hard as stone, deep as the sea. No emotion flickered across the marble face. Not a sigh crossed the closed lips. Not a trace of colour marked the blue-white skin of the arm. A touch of frost dusted his hair, and when he breathed, no steam puffed from his nostrils.

  Carro’s lips had turned purple. He shivered uncontrollably. “P . . . put me . . . d . . . down. You’re . . . c . . . cold.”

  “Enough,” came a deep man’s voice from somewhere behind Isandor. “Put him down.” Another man, this one of warm flesh and blood, stood in the street, his arms crossed over his chest. Black hair tied in a ponytail flowed over a cloak of the finest blue fur. His face, the skin weathered, bore gold tattoos. A glint of silver, the Queen’s amulet, flashed around his neck. One of the nobility.

  The giant let go of Carro’s throat. Carro stumbled a few paces away, rubbing the skin in his neck. The eagle followed meekly.

  “I see,” Carro snorted when he was at a safe distance. “Another one of your mother’s customers.”

  “I would watch your words, boy.” The nobleman made a gesture and the blue giant inched closer to Carro. Part of the giant’s chest shimmered.

  A heartless man.

  “Icefire!” Carro shrank back, fear in his eyes. “You know you could get killed for that? The Eagle Knights will—” His eyes widened. His gaze flicked from the stranger and the blue giant to the open sky over the roof of the meltery and the Mayor’s house next to it. The eagle clicked its beak and pulled at the reins. Carro hissed a whispered command. “Kneel! I’m going to tell the knights.”

  The nobleman chuckled. “Yes boy, you leave.”

  Carro pouted his lips for a whistle, but no sound came out.

  The nobleman laughed. “You do it, boy.” His eye met Isandor’s. Before Carro could protest, Isandor gave a clear whistle.

  The eagle crouched. Carro put one foot in the stirrup and swung his other leg over the bird’s silver back, for now ignoring the fact that eagles were only supposed to listen to whistles given by their riders.

  With a whoosh of wings the eagle rose, just clearing the roof of the meltery. It gave a plaintive cry.

  “Good riddance,” the stranger said.

  Isandor glanced at the blue giant, who now sat on the driver’s seat of a sled packed with chests and furs. A single shaggy bear shook itself, making bells on its harness tinkle. “It’s easy for you saying that. Carro lives close by and he is an Eagle Knight. When you’re gone tomorrow, he’ll come back with a couple of adult knights. He was right about the icefire; it’s forbidden.” He knew he sounded self-righteous, but once, he had been close to becoming an Eagle Knight, and he liked to think he lived by their rules, forgetting about the heartless animals, forgetting about his glowing fingertips.

  “That fop won’t be back if I have anything to do with it.”

  Isandor squinted against golden patterns on the man’s face. Up until now, he had agreed with Carro. Nobles came to the Slums for shady business. Visiting his mother was one of those things they did. But now it dawned on him that this man might be different; this man showed interest in him. “Who are you?”

  In answer, the man pushed back his sleeve. The sky-light gleamed on two golden rods, extending from the man’s elbow. At the end, they joined in a “wrist” of black stone, where he had a pair of crab-like pinchers.

  Isandor stammered, “You are . . .” He touched his wooden leg. In all his life, he had never come across another imperfect person. His mother liked to remind him that children born imperfect were left on the Floes for the wild beasts, untamed White Bears or the Legless Lions. Not even the knight’s riding eagles would dine on such contaminated fare.

  Why had he been kept alive, he had often asked. And she had said
because someone pays for it. He had a feeling he had just met that someone.

  The man gazed into the sky over the roofs of the market square, where Carro’s eagle had faded to a tiny dot. “My name is Tandor, and I’m a Traveller. Come.” He held out his good hand.

  * * *

  With a surety of pace and a strength belying his wrinkled skin, Tandor led Isandor to the sled. Luxurious furs covered the seat, offering enough space for two. Bales of fur and travelling chests had been strapped to the back. The bear’s leather harness gleamed with shiny spots that came with having seen much use. As Isandor stepped into the sled, a tingle went through him. He told himself that through long periods of travel, metal sleds such as this one built up charge in their frames, which could be released when a person stepped in or out. This was true, but he also knew that this tingle was something else, something forbidden. At the same time, he was not going to give up a ride in a real sled.

  Tandor told him to sit. He settled next to Isandor and covered their legs with fur.

  The blue giant jumped in the front seat and took the reins. The bear needed no cues; it loped into action.

  The sled’s runners swished through the street perpetually covered with ice. Tinkling bells told the common folk to get out of the way, which they did without once looking up.

  One did not look a nobleman in the eye, since it could be seen as rude, and since nobles came to the Slums only on shady business and relaxed when everyone pretended to ignore them. A nobleman at ease was not difficult to rob, so the arrangement was in everyone’s favour.

  But the people in the streets seemed to be positively looking away as if the sled and its strange occupants didn’t exist. Isandor squinted at the bear’s bobbing back and saw what ordinary eyes could not see: fine tendrils of golden light snaked out from the metal loops in the harness. They raked the street as far ahead as Isandor could see, sending out feelers and pushing aside people with a—for them—invisible hand, or creating little stirs and sounds to make people look away.

  Icefire! And this man dared use it? Wasn’t he afraid to be found out as cripple and punished?

  “Tell me boy, what have I to lose if they did find out?” Tandor said, as if he had read Isandor’s thoughts. “I’m a Traveller. I live neither here nor there. If I stay somewhere long enough to annoy someone, I move on.”

  The sled shot onto the top of a hill that gave them an uninterrupted view of the snow-swept white plain beyond the boundary of the Slums. On the horizon, the jagged peaks of the City of Glass reached towards the heavens, the palace tower protruding from the cluster like a broken stick. That’s where Queen Jevaithi looked down upon them all.

  Once, Isandor had seen the Queen, soon after her coronation. He’d been selling meat in the city for his uncle when there was an enormous ruckus in the street. Eagle Knights rushed past, shoving everyone aside. Then her sled came past, pulled by no fewer than six bears. She sat in luxurious furs, a tiny wisp of a girl, barely older than him, silken hair flowing over her shoulders. A fraction of a second and their eyes had locked in that crowded street, hers green as jade, sad as a lost bear cub. At times, he still dreamed of those eyes.

  “Have you been to the City of Glass?” he asked.

  Tandor laughed. “Poor boy. The world is much, much bigger than you can see. I’ve just come from the lands to the North.”

  “Is it true the plains have colour there?”

  “All colours you can think of, boy, but mostly green.”

  With all the will in the world, Isandor could not imagine that. “The snow is green, too?”

  Tandor laughed. “It doesn’t snow there.”

  “Not at all?”

  “No, not at all.” Tandor’s face looked much more friendly when he laughed and Isandor relaxed.

  He recognised the streets and by now was reasonably sure of where they were going, and he wished they would never get there. He wished this man would steer his sled towards those marvellous Northern lands. Somehow, too, he felt disappointed. Part of him had hoped that Tandor was above requiring the services such as his mother provided. Those men were usually fat and dripping with jewellery. Their voices spoke of boredom with life, not about travel and interesting things.

  But the sled slowed and stopped before the familiar blue door, before the familiar front room window, its blinds permanently drawn to hide the activities within.

  Isandor said nothing, neither did Tandor. The blue giant hadn’t spoken a word since Isandor had first seen him. He jumped off the driver’s seat and tied the bear’s reins to a lamp post and then sat back down in the seat to wait. A drizzle of snow settled in his hair.

  Tandor took Isandor’s elbow and led him to the blue front door. It started snowing in earnest.

  With flurry of snowflakes, Isandor opened the door. A waft of smoke hit him in the face. Mother was burning dung bricks. That meant she had a customer whose delicate nose would not be subjected to the smell of fire-brick made from the offal of the slums and sold by rubbish collectors.

  As Isandor and Tandor entered the tiny hallway, stamping snow off their boots, the door to the sitting room opened. Isandor’s mother came out, a thin cloth wrapped around her swollen breasts and round belly.

  She almost ran into Tandor, froze, looked up and gasped. “What are you doing here?” The light from a candle cast flickering shadows over her face.

  Isandor cringed. She didn’t even make an effort to make herself presentable, or to hide what she did. At the same time, it registered somewhere in his mind that his mother knew Tandor. Another disappointment. He had thought better of his companion.

  Tandor ignored her state of undress. “The obvious.”

  From the puzzled look on her face, Isandor could see it wasn’t obvious to his mother and neither was it to him.

  She tucked the cloth closer under her arms. Goosebumps marked the skin on her shoulders. “Are you taking the boy?”

  “Did I say that I was?”

  “No.”

  “Then that answers your question.”

  She glared at him a bit longer, then stuck out her chin. “I’m not ready for your breeding plans.”

  Tandor traced his pincer-claw over her swollen belly, spreading golden fire. “I can see that.”

  Isandor shivered.

  His mother stumbled back against the wall, her eyes wide. “Please don’t do that. I’m sorry. I can explain . . .”

  “No need. You will go to the palace tonight.” The golden glow spread over her belly; she winced. “Go back in that room to your miserable customer and tell him to leave.”

  “You can’t make me do that. I need his money.”

  Tandor spat on the floor. “Pah. I pay you to be ready when I come, to carry the child of my wishes. Not for you to be greedy and sell yourself to all the noble men of the City of Glass.”

  “I’m a fertile woman. If I’m not carrying, people start asking questions.”

  Isandor agreed with this. In the slums, few women could bear children, but amongst the nobles of the City of Glass, that number was fewer still. That’s why they paid his mother.

  Tandor spat again, this time the swat landed on her belly. “Noble men’s spawn. I hope it’s a useless boy.”

  “I don’t care what it is. They pay.”

  “I pay, too. The next man you have will be one of my choosing.”

  “He had better be a noble, because your pay alone is not enough to cover the rent.”

  “You’re disgusting. Come, boy. While your mother jerks off some desperate noble, let’s go and have a talk.” Tandor’s claw-hand grabbed Isandor’s upper arm. He stumbled after Tandor to the only other room in the house.

  * * *

  The tiny bedroom had no
fireplace and the air inside was still and intensely cold. Ice-flowers filtered the light that came in through the window into a lifeless blue. A pitcher of water on the table had frozen solid.

  Isandor sank down on the matted fur cover of his bed. “Why do you know Mother?”

  “She’s fertile. Who doesn’t know her? She’s birthed seven fertile girls in her life.” Tandor stood in front of the window, the wan southern light silvering his steaming breath as he spoke.

  Seven? That many? Isandor had lost count of the number of times his mother had been to the birthing room in the palace. Whenever she came back, he would get a new pair of trousers, or a new cloak. Second hand, of course, but better than his old ones.

  “I had a hand in many of those births.”

  “Why?”

  Tandor said nothing, but extended his clawed hand from under his cloak.

  Isandor swallowed hard. Tandor was trying to breed imperfects? Under the Queen’s and Eagle Knights’ noses?

  Something connected in Isandor’s mind. “Are you my father?”

  Tandor whirled around. In two steps, he was across the room. The pincher-claw grabbed the collar of Isandor’s cloak so tight that he could barely breathe. Isandor uttered a strangled, “Hey!”

  Up close, the gold tattoos on Tandor’s face looked frightening. Come to think of it, why did he have that sign of nobility? Certainly, nobles wouldn’t pay for imperfect children if they didn’t even want boys? An imperfect boy at that?

  Tandor let a tense silence lapse, in which all Isandor heard was the roaring of blood in his ears. Then he relaxed and let go of Isandor’s collar. Isandor slumped on the bed.

  “Alright, since you haven’t heard of me, I will tell you, once, and once only. Moreover, you will never speak of this.”

  Isandor nodded, nervously.

  “My mother had the courage of a bear pup. When I was born imperfect, rather than give me up, she ran away to the northern lands where she had heard people do not mind imperfects. In time, she found a family, and married a travelling merchant and lived in comfort. But my mother was always a learned lady. She collected old books, and as a boy, I became interested in them. I read that imperfects are special people in that they have icefire, and that they need to be in the vicinity of the City of Glass to use it.”