by David Hair
I won’t.
‘And for your brother’s life too, of course,’ Mara added maliciously.
Her defiance collapsed. She would do anything to keep Timi alive.
Outside the tent, a circle of armed men were fanned about her, facing inwards. Her eyes went first to Gurvon Gyle, whose face was tense.
I have nothing else. I have just led the soldiers of my family into slavery and my Jhafi allies into a death-trap. What remains?
‘This is her?’ A high-pitched, arrogant voice rang across the little glade. ‘I say, Gyle, I rather think you oversold her, don’t you?’
Her eyes went to Francis Dorobon.
He was clad in quartered blue and white, a golden lion rampant in the centre of the pattern. He had one of those faces she loathed: handsome, but clearly on the verge of running to fat as soon as he decided exercise was beneath him. Perhaps being a mage he would be immune to that, but somehow she doubted it. His big chest and proud head loomed over her. Blue eyes, flaxen hair and a cruel mouth. The beginning of whiskers, cut to some elaborate Rondian fashion.
She didn’t curtsey as Francis Dorobon walked towards her but stood stiffly, her eyes going past him. There was a stout, matronly woman she recalled from when she was young, during the brief earlier reign of the Dorobon family: Octa Dorobon, the matriarch of that line. Cera’s father had killed her husband. Her florid face held a look of grim satisfaction. A younger and female version of Francis stood beside him, his sister Olivia, already plump from good living. Beyond them hovered Alfredo Gorgio, his face unable to stop smiling. With him was his eldest niece and female heir, Portia Tolidi, a pale beauty with a thick tangle of curling auburn hair. She’d been hovering close to Francis Dorobon.
Looks like she’s already got her claws into him, she thought grimly. Portia was accounted one of the beauties of the realm. But she had also helped Tarita survive the massacre in Brochena last year, she remembered. The thought gave her hope, though right now there was nothing but disdain on every face except Gyle’s. His was unreadable.
‘Kneel, Nesti,’ Francis snapped as he circled her, his eyes appraising her.
She remained standing. ‘It is not right for a queen to kneel.’
He nodded thoughtfully, as if considering her words, then he lashed her across the face with the back of his hand. She staggered as the world tilted, but somehow she kept her balance. Her cheek throbbed and the inside of her mouth began to bleed, the flesh gashed on her own teeth. I won’t cry. And I won’t rukking kneel.
‘She may have some spirit,’ Francis remarked, as if appraising a horse he might mount.
Isn’t that the plan?
She blinked away tears and met his gaze, refusing to cower, even when he raised his hand again. He dropped it, smirking. ‘She is not badly made, I concede,’ he said. ‘But she is no beauty.’ He glanced at Portia Tolidi with lusty eyes. The redhead looked away coyly.
‘As a wife, she has great value,’ Gyle chimed in. ‘Kings are permitted mistresses; we all know that.’
‘The Nesti are broken. A Gorgio alliance is worth much more, and Portia is pure Rimoni,’ Alfredo Gorgio protested, bartering his kin as if she were nothing but a clause on a treaty. Which she probably was, to him. Francis’ hot eyes said something different.
‘The Nesti are far from broken. This force was but a third of their strength,’ Gyle countered, but then Octa Dorobon’s voice boomed out over the gathering, silencing everyone. Cera saw Francis cringe at the sound of her voice, his shoulders hunching.
‘Rimoni are little better than these mongrelised Javonesi polluted by mudskin blood,’ Octa stated. ‘My son will marry a Rondian pure-blood. You overstep yourselves, gentlemen,’ she told Alfredo and Gyle together. She waddled forwards and grabbed Cera’s chin roughly. ‘This mudskin bint is not worthy of my son. But she will make a useful hostage.’ Her eyes went back to Portia Tolidi. ‘Do what you like with that creature.’
Eyes flashed from stony faces as the allies reconsidered their friendships anew.
I am already consigned to yesterday. Cera looked at Gyle and then away. Now what? she wondered.
12
The Zain Monastery
Mount Tigrat
The southernmost mountain of the central range stands serene above the desert plains, its peak crowned in snow throughout the year. The Jhafi say that the old gods, the pagan deities supplanted by the Amteh Faith, dwell on the peak of Mount Tigrat still, forgotten by men but unable to die. Others say it was the earthly throne of Markud, the King of Heaven. The afreet are the maggots that burst from his corpse, left behind when he ascended to the sky.
ORDO COSTRUO COLLEGIATE, PONTUS
Brochena and Mount Tigrat, Javon, Antiopia
Shaban (Augeite) to Rami (Septinon) 928
2nd and 3rd months of the Moontide
The first couple of days after the attack by Magister Sindon and his Keshi mages had been spent recuperating under the protection of Mustaq al’Madhi: days and nights of sleep and healing, punctuated by intense conversation. Elena had told the Jhafi crime-lord all she dared: that Cera was under the control of Gurvon Gyle and the palace was a nest of Rondian mage-spies, and the march north might be more dangerous than anyone suspected. Unfortunately, Gurvon had not shared any details with Sordell – perhaps he’d been subconsciously wary, knowing Elena might be a prisoner inside her own body, but she was cognisant of whatever Sordell knew. The problem was that Mustaq himself was now isolated from the Jhafi leadership. Gyle had sniffed out and slain all of Mustaq’s agents in the palace except for one. Tarita had been the one to reveal Gyle’s presence and set in train the assassination attempt by Sindon’s men. Elena shivered in fear for the little maid if she were caught.
She’d managed to stabilise the young assassin she’d captured, though he’d not yet regained consciousness, even after two weeks. The venom Mara had set in his veins was horribly virulent, a gnosis-augmented poison that would have killed most people in seconds, but the young man had the gnosis himself, so perhaps unconsciously his body fought back. She’d laid a Chain-rune on him however, unwilling to risk him waking early and uncontained. She intended to question him before determining his fate.
The danger of Gyle tracking her down meant she could not linger in Brochena. Fortunately, she’d left her windskiff, the Greyhawk, hidden in one of Mustaq’s safehouses, so when she was ready to move, she provisioned it with gear and lentils, grain, some spices, coffee and tea, then laid her captive in it. It was Darkmoon, the brief time when Luna hid her face. Stars dusted the skies like a diamond-encrusted coif about a woman’s face. She kissed Mustaq’s cheeks, thanked him again, and took to the air, flying east towards the mountains.
One thing Gurvon had always encouraged his agents to do when on assignment was to find and develop a refuge, a place to flee to if things went bad. Don’t tell each other where it is, in case they are forced to reveal it, he’d tell them. Don’t even tell me.
It was good advice, and it had saved her life before. Her refuge here in Javon was perched high on the slopes of Mount Tigrat. It had once been a Zain monastery, abandoned when Amteh fanatics among the Jhafi had butchered the holy men, who preached that physical and spiritual perfection was as important as love of God, and promulgated an extreme form of asceticism. Such teachings pleased neither the Sollan drui nor the Amteh Godspeakers, but the Zains were accomplished healers and learned in other useful skills – especially engineering and architecture – and that was usually enough to persuade rulers to let them be, though occasional atrocities took place from time to time, as had happened here. Such was the lot of a pacifist sect in hostile lands.
Over the past four years, she’d periodically taken the Greyhawk to the monastery and worked there for a day or two, storing food and fuel,
repairing the inner walls and the old well. It was below the snow-line in summer, but not winter. The exterior walls still looked decrepit, and a pair of mountain lions dwelt there at times, but it was perfect for her. The old communal baths were fed by a stream that ran through fire-heated stone hypocausts: the chimneys were vented back beneath a waterfall to conceal any trace of smoke. Hundreds of monks had once dwelt there, living mostly in a maze of underground chambers, but there were higher rooms too, well-lit by sunlight. The silence was as chilling as the air, but it spoke to her.
She reached it well before dawn. The young man had not moved during the flight, but his breathing was strong and regular. The venom was almost gone from his system, but she had kept his awareness suppressed, maintaining the coma until she was ready to have him wake. She knew that she would probably have to kill him, and that troubled her. They shared enemies, but she suspected he was Hadishah-trained, and to those fanatics any white person was a devil.
Greyhawk caught the winds gracefully, banking and swooping on the monastery like a bird of prey. Elena steered towards the lower courtyard, which had a carved entrance leading to the underground caverns. Bats and night-birds squeaked and scattered as she landed the skiff delicately.
The wind moaned softly in the broken battlements like a contented lover. The air was cool but not yet cold, warmed by the last of the late summer heat. She heard one of the mountain lions cough and looked around; there she was, atop a wall, staring down with undisguised hostility. She sent a warning. The first time she’d encountered the pair, she’d given them a non-lethal beating; now they knew to give her a wide berth. The female yowled softly, discontented, but padded away. She heard the male growl and sensed them climbing up to the eastern slopes. She was master here, and even the great cats knew it.
The first few hours were filled with housekeeping as she settled in: wheeling the skiff into the cavern and re-covering the entrance with debris; adding her cargo to the stores, all the while taking a mental inventory. There was enough food for three to four months, if she was to feed two people for the entire period, though that wasn’t her intention. She’d revive the boy and question him, then either kill him, or maybe leave him somewhere faraway to fend for himself.
She moved the young man last, using telekinesis to float his stretcher through the corridors and into one of the monastic sleeping cells, his gnosis locked away. There was something odd about his aura she’d not seen before, though the realisation that the Hadishah now had magi didn’t surprise her, once she’d thought it through. Magi were the ultimate weapon; it was only natural that the Hadishah would seek to recruit gnosis-users somehow. She laid him on the sleeping cot she’d readied and left him there, locking the door behind him. I’ll deal with him later, she told herself. As she left, she removed the blocks to his mind that were keeping him in the coma, allowing him to awaken in his own time.
As the sun rose, she felt both energised and also conscious of exhaustion. The rays shot through the gaps in the land and kissed the slopes of the mountain with gold. She watched the lavender light burst across the darkling skies and a wave of illumination broke across the shadowed land. Her perch high on the mountain looked southeast, over the arid plains where the Jhafi herders eked out their existence. The nearest city was Riban, more than forty miles away, well out of sight. She chose a room in the highest remaining tower, despite the windows overhung with dead vines and the dry stench of bird droppings. She would deal with those tomorrow. The vines were sultana-grapes, but the fruit had already been devoured by the birds. She set her bedroll against one wall, unbuckled her weapons and lay down.
It took about a minute, and then it hit her:
The months of being a prisoner in her own body; the loathsome feeling of having another use her flesh. Sordell had spoken with her tongue, walked with her legs, shat from her bowels, pissed from her bladder. Once he’d even pleasured himself experimentally, taunting her as he did so. Their vicious mental duel had been harrowing, as she’d staved off the necromancer’s attempts to destroy the last vestiges of her consciousness. Equally galling had been the knowledge of her own failure, not just to penetrate Gurvon’s schemes, but to see the change in Cera. She’d blindly walked into that final betrayal, at the hands of the girl she’d thought of as a daughter.
First she shook and then she started retching before it all turned to tears, a flood of tears such as she’d never cried in all her life. Water was her element, and she let it run from her eyes, purging the pain and terror with the waters of her body. Never again, she swore.
She could not sleep, not yet. She longed for alcohol – a residue of Sordell’s addiction – but refused to succumb, going instead to the baths. She didn’t bother to heat them, though the mountain water was stagnant, and frigidly cold. She stripped, waded in and immersed herself, then she took the soap and scoured herself. Her shoulder was scarred where Sordell had allowed her to be wounded, but it was just another scar. She scrubbed at her flesh until she almost bled, trying to cleanse away every last trace of the presence of Sordell. It was futile, she knew that. Mysticism, the gnostic art associated with healing the mind, was what she needed, but self-healing one’s own mind was not possible, and there was no one else she could trust to do it for her. Sordell’s possession of her was just something she would have to live with, until time smoothed away. If even time could do that.
When the cold finally hit her, she emerged and dried herself, then wrapped herself in a blanket, returned to the tower room and lay down. Despite the frenzied cleansing, she still felt awash in Sordell’s filth.
I’m going to make them all pay: Sordell, if he’s still alive. Gurvon: oh yes, absolutely. It’s been far too long, my lover. And you too, Cera Nesti. I pity you, that Gurvon found your weak spots and turned you against me, but I won’t forgive you …
She closed her eyes, and called on all the internal discipline and dispassion that had once carried her through all the horrors of the Noros Revolt and used it to ease the immediacy of her fear and hatred. She let her passions go still, stared into nothing, trying to anchor herself again.
Here in Javon, during the years spent protecting the Nesti children, she had changed from killer to protector. It had taken those four years to relearn how to laugh without sarcasm or malice, to care without calculation. Olfuss Nesti had shown her how a ruler could be honest and uncompromised. Fadah his wife had shown her that motherhood was a gift, not a burden. Solinde reminded her that life could be fun, and Timori had shown her the beauty of innocence. But of them all, it was Cera she cared most for, the one she loved. And it was Cera who had betrayed that love.
And then there was Lorenzo, her all-too-brief romance. The man who had been guide and gatekeeper on her road back to being a fully-formed human being. She’d begun to fantasise where their relationship might go … and now she’d never know.
Her imagination conjured a crossroads in the desert. To her left, she saw her old self, clad in a cloak the colour of clotted blood: the Elena who’d been Gurvon’s lover, ruthless and withdrawn, sarcastic and hard. That Elena could survive this war and do what had to be done. She would snuff out her conscience again and take to the underworld. She’d kill and torture and maim until every enemy was dead, or she was caught and hanged. She’d fight until the end.
But I don’t want to be her again …
She turned slowly at that crossroads and looked the other way. Another Elena stood to her right. She was walking away, wrapped in a shadowy cloak. She didn’t know where she was going, only that it was away. Life was hard, too hard, and it meant nothing in the end. All ended in dust.
No. I cannot walk away from this mess. What we do must mean something, even if only to those who follow us.
She opened her eyes and was back in her chamber, staring into space.
I’ll find another way. I’ll not lose myself in hatred or despair. I’ll become the person Lorenzo was teaching me to be. I’ll fight, but I’ll not cut out my own heart to do so.
/> *
The first thing Kazim remembered was that ghastly beetle emerging from the mouth of Elena Anborn. And running. Maybe he shouldn’t have, but he’d never seen such a thing, and the sudden horror had overcome him. He still shuddered at the image. More memories returned: the realisation of pursuit while venom turned his limbs to jelly. He’d been too slow. Elena Anborn’s blow had smashed the world away.
He cautiously closed his eyes, but found only darkness. For a few sickening moments he thought he was blind, until his sight recovered enough to make out a dim line of pale illumination. Eventually he realised that it was light from beneath a closed door.
He groaned and clutched at his shoulder, the one the snake-arm of Mara Secordin had bitten. It was bandaged and it ached, but it felt functional. There was no other wound, but he felt stiff as an old man. He sat up slowly, realising that his bladder was full to bursting. He pushed a blanket aside, them fumbled about until he found a bucket and relieved himself. The stink of piss filled the tiny room.
Cautiously, he tried the door. It was locked. Then, recalling his reluctant lessons from Sabele, he tried to use the gnosis to unlock it. Nothing.
He felt both terror and relief. Have I lost it? Am I no longer a mage?
Then he reached deeper and realised that it was still there – but it was barely discernible, tremendously weak. And he couldn’t reach it. Something forbade it – another’s spell?
For some reason he thought of Gatoz, blackmailing him into swallowing the maid Wimla’s life, and took a perverse pleasure in being denied the gnosis. I’ll not take another life into my own, he vowed.
He hammered his fist against the strong, iron-bound door. ‘Hey? Hey?’ Anyone there?’ There was a slot, but only someone outside could open it. He fell silent, waiting, until he heard soft footfalls approaching. Then the slot slid open and he confronted steely grey eyes that bored into his. They were surrounded by pale skin, sun-burnished. Elena Anborn. When she spoke, her voice had a rough burr to it, as if her throat was lined with sandpaper. He glimpsed an ugly scar across her throat as she stepped away, where someone had slit her throat, a wound she’d somehow survived. He stared, remembering the hideous beetle that had crawled from her mouth. Part of him expected her mouth to open and the insect to emerge again.
