The Heir To The North

by Steven Poore

  A tiny corner of her mind was rational enough to tell her she had suffered worse at Norrow’s hands. This was nothing. There was no real strength behind the strike. Marko hadn’t had to move around all his life, hauling his possessions along steep trails from town to town.

  A boy could hit me harder than that.

  I could hit him harder than that.

  She was rolling back onto her feet, blinking the bright lights from her vision and looking for her staff. Marko had half-turned away, waving another pair of men towards him. He was eager to humiliate her, to gain revenge for that encounter in the tavern. And it wouldn’t end there. She knew that her body – maybe her life – now hung in the balance.

  Cassia grasped the end of her staff and pulled it towards her, staggering upright as though she was dazed, scraping the wood against the stones. At the same time she looked around and tried to judge whether she might be able to call for help. But the crowds of the day had disappeared, vanishing like mist, and only the whores and the drunkards still populated the square. There were no city guards within sight. Even if they were called to the scene, they would arrive far too late.

  So I’m on my own. Again.

  Fear, panic, distress, coalesced inside her, hardened into a core of iron anger. And now she had a target.

  Marko turned back to her, his fist drawn back to strike her again, to beat her into submission. “This time you won’t run, bitch.”

  “No,” she agreed. Her grip shifted down the staff. As she set one foot forward against him, she felt her body relax. Fluidity. Speed. Use your opponent’s size against him.

  Marko came at her. She batted his forearm away, pushed around to the opposite flank, and smacked the end of her staff against the back of his knee. His leg gave way, and Cassia swung back around to attack his unprotected right side. She jabbed his midriff and landed two solid blows before he keeled over with a cry.

  That cry was echoed by the other two men, approaching at a run. Cassia had not forgotten them. She sidestepped away from Marko and reset her stance.

  Both were shorter and less bulky than Marko, though they showed the same symptoms of a dissolute lifestyle. The nearest looked ready for a fight; the other was hanging back.

  She stepped into the first man’s path, forcing him to rebalance in mid-step. Meredith had done this to her so many times she knew how to see it coming. Marko’s friend did not. The staff caught him square beneath his chin, and the force of his momentum almost jerked the weapon from Cassia’s hands. The man crumpled into a heap on the flagstones.

  His companion paused. His hands were raised, but more defensively than anything else. When she took a half-step towards him, he bolted.

  Marko had come to his knees, wheezing and clutching at his side. His expression blazed, cruelty replaced by murderous anger. “Bitch.”

  Without thought, she altered her grip and brought the staff around like a two-handed sword. Marko’s head snapped back and he hit the ground with a horrible crack.

  All she could hear was her own breathing, sharp and raw against the faint echoes of chants inside one of the temples. She turned in a full circle, poised to charge at another opponent, but there was nobody left to stand against her. The nearest figures were the whores, scattered across the temple steps, curious enough to watch, but not enough to come any closer. There were other people at the edges of the square, some shouting and pointing in her direction.

  She looked down at the two sprawled forms. Neither one moved, and she could not tell if they still lived. A vision of the hillside below the Antiachas rose unbidden into her mind – men lay bloodied and charred, their limbs twisted in the air like lightning-struck stumps. Oh mercy, I did this. Oh, mercy.

  Warm spots of blood shone dark on her back of her hand. She wiped it against her cloak and the blood smeared, staining skin and cloth alike. The shouts were getting louder. If she stayed here, she would have to answer for this assault. My word against his. If he lives. And even if he does, who would believe me?

  There was strength yet in her body. She ran on, outpacing the cries from behind her, not allowing herself to think of what might still lie ahead.

  q

  The docks were still busy. Even in the small towns of the north-east coast people stopped after sundown and retreated to the warmth of their homes. Business could always wait for the dawn. But that did not seem to be true in Hellea.

  This tide, at least, was set against her. Her progress slowed to a crawl as she forced her way through the streets. The last time she had passed through this district, she’d had the advantage of height and a horse, and people had moved out of her way. Now they only noticed her if she trod on their feet. She clutched her staff close and skipped into a fleeting gap in the crowd, then flinched as a man shouted in her ear, loud and angry. For a moment she feared the pursuit from the temples had caught up with her at last, but the shout was a curse, rather than a hue and cry.

  She was losing time. With every heartbeat she imagined Meredith and Baum stood at the prow of a ship, drawing away from the quays and disappearing into the gloom of the Castaria, hard on the trail of the Betrayer. But they might still be there – the crew might not have cast off – she could get there in time. If only everybody would get out of her way.

  At last she made the broad street that fronted the docks. The grain barges left from the eastern end of the docks. Baum had already told her that from there other ships left for the ports of far-away lands. Stromondor, Galliarca, Kalakhadze . . . she had seen the ships of those countries before, moored along the Northern coasts. They had mesmerised her. Now she spared them less than a glance as she hurried along the quays, only enough to be sure that Meredith did not stand tall on the deck.

  And there, at the end of the docks, where the bay of the city curved around and became too shallow for such great vessels to be moored – there sat the grain barges.

  Or they should have done.

  The quays were empty. A few labourers rested there, slumped against mooring posts, sharing wine from chipped jugs. One or two glanced up at her breathless arrival. But the barges had gone. She could not even see their silhouettes out on the water. They were long gone, and her headlong dash through Hellea had been for nothing. She stumbled to a halt and collapsed onto her hands and knees. Her world felt as dark and hopeless as the eastern horizon.

  All of her strength, all of her anger and desperation, evaporated into nothing, draining from her like the blood of a slaughtered animal.

  First her father, then the scholar Karak. And now Baum and Meredith too. They had all abandoned her.

  She thought that the tears, when they came, would never stop.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The hand that fell upon her shoulder was as unexpected as it was gentle. At first Cassia did not even realise it was there. When at last she registered the warmth and the weight, she lifted her head a fraction to see a man stood at her side. The Emperor’s guards, she thought miserably. They had come to see justice done for her attack on Marko and his friend.

  She did not rise, but tightened her grip on her staff. If there was no future for her in Hellea, at least she might direct some of her anger against the men who had been sent to seize her.

  “What are you doing here, girl?”

  The voice was familiar enough to make her hesitate. There was precious little light here. The last vestiges of daylight had ghosted from the sky and the dockmasters had taken their lanterns with them, so the remaining labourers drank and conversed in the dark, but she recognised the shape of the man’s face and the way his shoulders hunched forwards.

  “Arca?”

  “You must be lost,” he said. He sounded weary but, for once, she could not hear the slurred tones that poor wine lent his voice.

  Cassia nodded, to herself as much as in agreement. “Yes. I think I am.”

  “They waited for you for as long as they could,” Arca said after a long pause. “But the tides beat them.”

  “You saw them, s
ir?”

  “Aye. Best get up from there, girl. There’s better places to be miserable.”

  She levered herself to her feet and allowed Arca to use her arm for support as they made their way back along the dock. As they passed a couple of open tavern doorway Cassia thought she could see an odd cast to Arca’s face. Like before, when he had told her of Malessar’s scroll case, he seemed lost in the past.

  “Were they angry, sir?”

  “Hmm?” Arca blinked and shook his head. “No. Perhaps. I never could tell. He was impatient. And the young one . . . hard as stone. I would not get on his wrong side. If I’d had a company with him – and three, maybe four, just like him – I might still be a soldier . . . Hah, that’s what you think. Shut up. Shut up.”

  Startled, she almost pulled away from him, but the invective was not aimed at her and Arca fell quiet abruptly.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, to break the awkward silence.

  “Near here. A small place.” He twisted around to regard her. “You’ll do, but pull your hair in. And don’t talk to anyone.”

  Her fight with Marko and her flight through the city had loosened her cap. She tucked her hair back under it and tugged at her tunic and cloak so the cloth fell more loosely over her body. They had come to a low door set in the wall of a waterfront tenement on the waterfront. Beyond was a long hallway, masquerading as a narrow room. There were benches down one side, and a bar at the far end. Some of the benches were occupied, but the men were little more than shadows slumped against the wall in the dimly-lit room.

  Arca moved past them and drew Cassia to one of the empty benches. “We’ll not be disturbed. I spent three whole days here once. Nobody said anything to me.”

  It was not hard to believe. Cassia let herself drop onto the bench. It felt as though she was surrendering herself to fate at last.

  Arca lowered himself slowly, with a hiss of pain. They sat in silence for an age, the harsh rasp of Arca’s breathing gradually easing. Cassia strained to make out the murmur of conversation from the closest benches, but the voices were muffled and slurred. She gave up the effort, closed her eyes, and let the evening pass her by. That was what Arca had brought her here for, she thought, to give her space of her own. He was trying to help her in the only way he knew.

  “You won’t be able to stay here,” Arca said eventually. She turned her head. She could barely make out the shape of his face against the light from the door.

  “But . . .” she hesitated, coughed, and lowered her voice. “But you said . . .”

  “No, girl, not that. I don’t mean that. I mean here. The city. Hellea. I know you got into the library. But you won’t be able to do that much longer, will you?”

  How did he know about that? Did everybody know? He had to have guessed though, as he had told her the story of Malessar’s missing scroll case to begin with. But he was right. She knew that disguising herself as a boy would not work for much longer.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what to do. I thought they needed me to record their tales. I thought I was part of their company. I thought Meredith . . .” She let the words tail off, rather than voice her most private fantasies. That was all they were, in the end. The fantasies of a stupid girl. Baum had bought her, and now he had discarded her. Her eyes flooded with tears again, and she wiped them away with one sleeve.

  “Maybe you should go home,” Arca said. There was kindness in his voice, but he sounded as though he was talking to a wayward child. “Back to the North.”

  Cassia shook her head. “No. No. Never back there.”

  She couldn’t go back there. Not on her own. For one thing, she did not know the route back up the Emperor’s March. Summer was well over now, and winter would not be long in coming. With no shelter, blankets or thick clothing, it was rank stupidity to head north in the autumn months. And her father was up there, somewhere. She could easily imagine encountering him outside the first tavern she came to. It would not be pleasant. The humiliation she felt already burned hard at the base of her spine.

  Arca was silent for a time. Cassia forced herself to stillness. There must be something she should be doing, something that might correct her course and lift her from this pit she had stumbled into. But no matter how she tried, she could not bring anything to mind.

  Arca started to speak again, but Cassia had to strain to hear the words. It took her a moment to realise he was talking to himself. “There’s a way, you say. There’s a way. But it ain’t a good one. I can’t do that. You say that, but it ain’t right. Not right. No, you can’t call me that. I’m not that. Never was. I proved that, didn’t I? Proved it. Damned near killed me too.” He broke into a fit of coughing. “He’ll never know. Ha.”

  She waited, but Arca seemed to have forgotten she was there. Drained and exhausted by her earlier flight, she was on the verge of falling asleep when Arca gripped her elbow and tugged her back into wakefulness.

  “Listen to me,” he said. His tone was taut, his bony fingers dug painfully into the flesh below her elbow. “I think you might catch them up, if that’s really what you want to do?”

  She didn’t stop to consider the question. “How?”

  “Those barges stay close to the shoreline, and they make frequent stops between here and Corba, where they take on more cargo for the coastal towns. You could catch them, if you can find a place on one of the ships leaving tomorrow morning. One of the sea-farers.”

  Cassia sat back with a sigh. “Sir, no captain would take me as a passenger. Not a girl on her own.”

  “Perhaps not,” Arca agreed, “but there’s always ships that need crew. I could find one for you. You could sign on with one and jump ship at Corba, before the barges arrive.” He hesitated. “But you don’t have to. It would not be easy.”

  Ocean-going ships. Other lands. The thoughts struck a chord in her mind and she searched back, piecing together something that evaded her. “A ship,” she murmured. “There is a ship. Tomorrow morning – a ship for Galliarca.”

  It was a slender thread of hope, and she struggled to keep it from overwhelming her. She felt Arca’s gaze upon her, though she could not see his face in the dark. Somebody had lit a lantern at the far end of the tavern, but the light, smoky and guttering, did not reach this far up the room. She wondered how she might approach the ship’s captain, the phrases she could use, and how she might recommend herself. It wasn’t easy; she had no experience to draw upon.

  What can I do aboard a ship? Coil ropes? Climb the mast? Take the oars? That last thought was so absurd it brought a smile to her lips, but it vanished quickly as she ruled herself out of task after task. The crew would laugh at her efforts.

  She wondered if she could plead directly to Karak. Would he listen? He had listened to her stories, and he had helped her get into the library, but this was something different. It was her best chance though. Even the ship’s captain would listen to such an eminent passenger.

  So . . . how to snare Karak’s attention? What could she offer to a scholar?

  “Stories,” she breathed. That had to be the answer. It was all she could think of. Karak knew the Call to the North; he was interested in tales as much as histories. Their friendship had bloomed quickly once they began to share the different versions of tales they both knew. That was her way aboard his ship. And from there to Corba . . .

  But one step at a time. Stories . . .

  She thought she knew the very one.

  “Arca, are the city’s gates still open at this time of the night?”

  He grunted. She had to shake his shoulder and repeat the question before he would answer. “Open? Hah, they never close, girl. But why? You’ll never catch them by road.”

  “I need to find some open fields,” Cassia said, the words rushing from her as the idea rose into her mind straight from the old verses. “Or an orchard. Yes, an orchard. That’d be best. And I need some small offcuts of wood – almost like kindling.”

  “What good will that
do?”

  “Wait and see.” Cassia felt her spirits lifting. At last, there was something she could do. Something worthy of her father’s creaky tales of heroics, perhaps even of Gelis and Renn the Fair.

  q

  The night was a rushed affair, and Cassia got no rest. Her thoughts spun far too quickly for her to think of closing her eyes, no matter that every movement was a truly monumental effort by the time that the sky showed the first signs of dawn.

  If there was a cry raised against her, she did not hear of it. Perhaps she had managed to flee the temple square before anybody got a decent look at her. Perhaps Marko and his friend had not yet regained consciousness, or maybe they had preferred to walk away from the whole affair, ashamed they had been bested by a mere girl. In any event, Cassia was not stopped when she passed through the Summer Gates, even though the guards frowned at her and wondered aloud where a young boy might be headed at such a late hour.

  Hellea had spread far beyond the walls that once contained it. The streets were wider here, the houses had fewer storeys, and some were surrounded by walls and fences. Cassia had started to worry about finding her way back into the city when she finally reached the fields and orchards Arca had described. Beyond the silhouettes of the last buildings, the world vanished into utter blackness. She realised she had become used to the press of tenements and temples around her, and the empty night sucked at her soul, causing her to shiver.

  There was no time to waste. She left the road, prowling along the length of the last wall until she reached a point where she could wedge her toes into the cracks between the stones, and hauled herself up onto the top. Pear trees stood below her in regimented lines, like the mustering of a legion. She nodded in satisfaction – the orchard might be a little too tidy for her liking, but it was also so large that, at this end, she would never be seen from the windows of the house.