Chapter Six
A wave of noise and smoke hit me as we walked back into the bar. The pub had packed out during the afternoon we’d spent at the shooting range.
Neve hooked her arm through mine as we jostled through the throng of people to where the barman was struggling with the three-deep crowd of patrons. She shouldered through a straggly group of men, grabbed two thick glasses of something frothy-looking and led me to a booth-style table.
As we threaded our way across the room, I saw the entrance to the storage room and made a mental note of its position. I’d need it later.
Because obviously I wasn’t staying here. I’d stumbled into a place where people thought they had superpowers, and okay, the thing that girl in the storage room had done with the ball of fire and ice had been pretty impressive, but…no. Just, no.
On the other hand, I wasn’t stupid enough to think that I could outrun Neve. I needed to pick my moment carefully.
I slid to the end of the bench and scanned the room from underneath my fringe, trying not to make it look like I was gawping. The only pubs I’d ever been to were the types that had restaurants and a beer garden attached. This place was more like the kind of joint Vikings went to celebrate a particularly successful day of raping and pillaging.
Just as I was trying to calm the watery, breathless feeling in the pit of my stomach, plates of food of the hearty-stew-and-dumplings variety were slammed down in front of us. ‘I ordered for you; I hope it’s okay,’ Neve said over the noise and clamour. It totally was. I hadn’t eaten since the previous night and my stomach felt like it was digesting itself.
The vegetables in the stew looked like they’d been chopped with an axe and the meat looked mysterious, but as I helped myself to a piece of bread the size of my arm, I decided that I didn’t care; I was starving and it was delicious.
So loud was the sound of my chewing that I almost didn’t notice when, midway through cramming a large piece of bread in my mouth, someone sat down on the bench next to me. I looked up to see a man of about twenty or so watching me eat with amusement he didn’t bother to conceal. His skin shone dark brown in the lamp light and his closely-cropped black hair and perfectly sculpted goatee and sideburns framed his jawline in a sharp point. His looks and coiled-spring stance reminded me of a panther and his clothes looked like he’d had them made on Saville Row. If I had to guess a profession by judging him purely on his clothes, I certainly wouldn’t have pegged him as a soldier. Maybe a gigolo. Or an aftershave advert model.
The hilt of a sword was sticking out of a scabbard worn crossways across his back. Like Neve and Oriel and a few of the other patrons, he was sitting in a pub with a sword. In a pub. With a sword.
Self-conscious under his frank gaze, I chewed quickly and swallowed the huge mouthful of food while his dark eyes danced in merriment.
‘Don’t stop on my account,’ he chuckled. ‘Goodness me, don’t they feed you in the Sanctuary?’
Neve helped herself to more stew from the pot. ‘Raelthos, could you not be a dick for, like, three consecutive seconds?’ She pointed her fork between me and the newcomer. ‘Roanne, Raelthos. Raelthos is a paladin, too. He’s going to be helping us get Owen back.’
‘And you must be Roanne Harper,’ Raelthos said, holding his hand out. I wiped some stray breadcrumbs onto the side of my new trousers and took it. ‘It’s an honour to finally meet you.’ He pulled my hand towards him and grazed a kiss on my knuckles. I nearly burst out laughing.
Neve’s lip curled. ‘Seriously, Raelthos. Three seconds.’
‘I see you’ve already met Neve.’ He released my hand and drew a silver case from inside his coat, extracting a thin black cigarette. ‘And Oriel, too, I should imagine,’ he said, glancing across the room with that same amused smile.
I followed his gaze to where Oriel stood at the bar scanning the room, while a girl standing next to him chatted animatedly. She stood a head or so shorter than him and her scarlet dreadlocks were scraped together in a ponytail that bobbed as she gestured. The short gap between the tops of her thigh-high boots and the hem of her leather skirt was covered by fishnet tights.
Oriel’s gaze flicked up to me. He held my eye for a couple of seconds before breaking out into a grin. I looked away quickly. When I looked back to Raelthos, he was laughing softly to himself.
‘Ah! And here’s Kallista.’ Raelthos gestured with his cigarette towards the person who’d just walked over carrying a glass. It was the sulky girl from the storage room.
When she clocked me, her doll face pulled down into a sullen frown as if she was being forced to stand in the rain. Without a coat. She looked across the table towards Neve, who sat up slightly straighter with a hopeful smile, and her scowl deepened. Deciding that the spot next to Raelthos was the least objectionable place to sit, she slumped down, slamming her drink down in front of her and folding her arms across her chest.
‘You’re a soldier?’ I blurted in surprise. Kallista stared at me like she couldn’t quite believe what I’d just said and I winced. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean it to come out like that. We met earlier. Um, in the storage room? You were all about the magic tricks; I just didn’t have you pegged as a soldier type...’ I trailed off under her stare.
‘Remind me who this is again,’ she said to the table at large, gesturing vaguely towards me with her finger.
Raelthos frowned at her. ‘Kallista, don’t be unpleasant. You know perfectly well who she is.’ The shrug Kallista gave made it clear exactly where remembering the newcomer’s name ranked on her list of priorities.
I looked down at the drink in front of me, steeled myself and took a sip. It tasted like my dad’s homebrew, but it was thicker, much more concentrated; a sharp hit of alcohol stung the back of my throat and I had to stifle a cough.
Just then Oriel appeared. He edged round the bench and, reaching round me, slid another glass onto the table. It was cloudy beige and I peered at it, trying to work out what it was. ‘It’s apple juice,’ he murmured in my ear, and I smiled gratefully as he took a seat next to Neve.
Undaunted by her snub, I decided again to try and chat to Kallista. Now I’d had a chance to let it sink in properly, I’d come to the conclusion that the thing I’d seen her do earlier, with the ball of fire/ice, was possibly the coolest thing I’d ever seen in my life.
Racking my brains, I tried to think what kind of conversational opener Chec would use in this situation. Compliments. She’d definitely start with compliments.
‘That was a really cool magic trick you did earlier,’ I hazarded. Kallista gave me a dead-eyed stare and the uncomfortable silence that followed told me that, somehow, this had been the wrong thing to say.
‘Er-’ Oriel looked like he’d been caught in the headlights of a truck.
‘It’s not really-’ Neve began.
‘It’s not magic,’ Raelthos interrupted quickly, ‘What Kallista and I do. Our Blessings are really just another natural ability. For instance my physical muscles give me the ability to run, talk, and sit down, while my mind gives me the ability to do this.’ He stopped talking and for a second I wondered what he was going to do. Then, to my alarm, he started to fade from view, until I could see straight through him to the back of the booth, leaving just the faintest outline of a person to remind me where he was. Like a human Cheshire cat.
‘Show off,’ Oriel said.
‘Jealous,’ Raelthos countered. He turned back to me, fading back into view. ‘We are mortal beings, Blessed by the gods, and for this we give daily thanks, for it is our Blessings that qualify us to become paladins of the Protectorate.’ He spoke purposefully, like a preacher, and across the table Neve nodded, mock-seriously.
Kallista gave him a sour, pious look. ‘We are lucky actually, Raelthos.’ She turned to me, addressing me directly for the first time. ‘After all, at least we’re not Zeroes.’
‘Zeroes?’
Her lips curled up in a smile. ‘People from the Sanctuary. People like you.’
‘Kallista...’ Oriel’s voice held a warning note.
Kallista looked at him, eyebrows raised challengingly, the ghost of a smirk still on her lips. ‘What? It’s true, isn’t it?’
They glared at each other for a few seconds. Kallista broke first, looking away, her face falling into sullen lines like a black cloud covering the sun. Still glowering at Oriel, who had turned to say something to Raelthos, she drained her nearly-full glass in one long swig, slammed it back down on the table and stared at it, her hands in her lap.
Neve’s glance flicked her way and her eyes widened. ‘Kallista, you’ve finished your drink. Let me get you another,’ she said, half rising from her seat.
‘No, thank you,’ Kallista said stiffly, not looking at Neve.
‘Really, it’s no trouble,’ Neve smiled.
Kallista looked up from her glass and stared at Neve with pure loathing and in a dangerously soft voice, said, ‘I’d rather drink my own piss.’
Silence fell over the table like a bucket of water. Neve looked like she was about to burst out crying, Kallista with her hands clenched in her lap looking furious. I kept my mouth firmly shut and tried very hard to turn myself invisible.
Eventually Raelthos leaned back in his chair, struck a match against his boot and lit another black cigarette. ‘Well now,’ he said, lighting it and taking a puff. ‘Isn’t this awkward?’
‘Shut up, Raelthos,’ Kallista said wearily. Raelthos smirked, and sat back taking a long drag on his cigarette.
The silence hung oppressively in the air. Eventually, I couldn’t take it any longer. I drained the remainder of my apple juice and turned to Neve. ‘I think I need to hit the sack.’ And by ‘hit the sack’, I obviously meant ‘escape back home’. ‘Um, where are we sleeping tonight?’
‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, getting up. Bugger.
Neve was quiet as we walked out the back of the pub, skirting tantalisingly close to the door of the storage room, and started up a set of steep wooden stairs. ‘You and I are sharing,’ she explained, giving me a tired smile. ‘I hope that’s okay. They didn’t have many rooms left when we got here.’
The room was surprisingly nice, with scrubbed wooden floors, bright blue curtains at the window and a huge bed. ‘I promise I don’t hog the covers,’ Neve said. The bathroom’s just along the landing, if you want to use it.’
She started unbuckling the straps of her scabbard and toeing her boots off. ‘I’m sorry she was so rude to you,’ she said quietly, not looking up.
It was pointless pretending I didn’t know who she was talking about. ‘It’s okay,’ I said, and really it was. These people were going to be in my life for a very limited time. Why should I care what they thought of me? Besides, she’d been a damn sight ruder to Neve.
‘We all asked her to be nice. Or at least if she couldn’t be nice, just to not be nasty. She knows how important this mission is. How important Owen is.’ She didn’t look round at me, just pulled more knives than I thought it would have been possible for one person to carry out of various slots in her trousers and tunic and stacked them up neatly next to her sword. ‘She’s under a lot of pressure. Her family… Her father’s very high up in the Senate. He puts a lot of pressure on her to be the best soldier, the best Psion, to have perfect control over her Blessings.’ Boo hoo, I thought. ‘And if you think that sounds bad, you should meet her mother. Constantly on at her to meet a boy, settle down, produce loads of little Psions.’
Neve, now sans weapons, lay back on the bed, crossing her arms under her head. ‘Would you believe me if I told you we used to be best friends?’ She looked over to me and caught my astonished expression. She smiled wryly. ‘True story. Up until last summer we were inseparable. You wouldn’t think so now, eh?’
‘What happened?’
‘We fell out,’ she sighed. ‘Quite spectacularly. I’ve apologised like a billion times, but she just won’t-’ She shook her head. ‘She’s a girl who knows how to bear a grudge.’
I nodded. I’d only been in the same room as Kallista for about two hours, but I could totally see that about her. ‘What did I do to piss her off?’
Neve gave a small laugh and curled over onto her side. ‘You exist. That’s reason enough for her.’
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