Quest SMASH

by Joseph Lallo

  “The sorcerer wants you to come with him.”

  The girl squeaked. “Go with him? Like this?”

  She spread her arms. She was a thin, mousey thing with a fine-featured face, narrow shoulders and slender arms. One of her sleeves flapped empty below the wrist. While there might have been an element of beauty to her, Tandor’s gaze was drawn to her swollen belly. It was hard to believe a female belly could stretch that much and still be part of her.

  Tandor repressed feelings of discomfort. “My lady friend in the City of Glass is a very good midwife. She will look after you. Certainly a country girl like yourself would like to see the marvels of the City of Glass? You would like to buy some nice dresses from the city’s best merchants, and go to the Newlight celebrations?”

  The girl’s eyes widened. “The Newlight celebrations? In the City of Glass? See the games? People competing from all over the land?”

  “That’s what I think I said, yes.”

  “Oh Da, it doesn’t sound so bad. Can I go?”

  Ontane snorted, and then shrugged. “I suppose your mother . . .” He shrugged again and met Tandor’s eyes. “This, uhm, lady friend of yours . . .”

  “Mistress Loriane, one of the city’s midwives.”

  “And what if she . . . if it happens on the way? I’m guessing he doesn’t have any experience.” Ontane nodded at Ruko.

  Tandor repressed a shudder. “Look at it this way: the Knights will be back. If they find her here, you will never see her again. If she comes with us, there will be a good chance that you’ll see your grandchild. Anyway, my lady friend tells me that such . . . women’s things have a habit of happening safely by themselves.” He was groping for words. By the skylights, every word spoken delayed him further, with the chance that this dreaded thing would indeed happen before he got to Loriane’s house. He’d heard a woman’s birth screams once, while he stood, powerless, hidden between stuffy clothing in a dressing room. Oh my love, if I knew I’d do that to you.

  “It’s all about your daughter’s safety,” he said, pushing away those memories.

  “Hmph safety. I want your guarantee that you’ll bring her back here alive and healthy, not blue and cold like that ghost over there.” Ontane raised a warning finger, the nail chipped and blackened from work.

  Tandor met his piercing eyes. Ontane wasn’t stupid. He knew that Tandor would have to turn Myra into a servitor if she was to be useful to him.

  “She will be back here as you know her.” Once he had control of the City of Glass, all the power of its Heart would be his, and he could return her in the original state. “Are we agreed then?”

  Ontane fixed his gaze on his daughter, who smiled at him. “Please, Da?”

  “Right then,” Ontane muttered.

  “Oh, thank you.” She gave him an awkward hug.

  Over his daughter’s shoulder, Ontane mouthed, two-seventy.

  Two-sixty, Tandor mouthed back.

  Ontane’s face twisted into a snarl, but he didn’t protest. “You’ll be the ruin of me.” He hawked and spat in the snow to seal the deal. “Go get your things then, girl.”

  Tandor put his attention to securing his luggage to the sled.

  Promises, promises. His life hung together with promises. Once he had established himself in the City of Glass, there would be no more promises. He raised his eyes to the sky. Not even to you, Mother.

  Chapter 3

  CARRO PICKED UP the cup from the merchant’s table, feigning interest. A mother and a daughter had come to the stall and the mother had asked if the merchant had any good sets of tableware for sale, and she had unwittingly saved Carro from doing what he dreaded.

  While her mother spoke to the merchant, the daughter studied the items on the table, a dusty collection of bric-a-brac, the sort of things that remained after grandmother had died and all her relatives had scavenged her possessions.

  The girl was nervously winding a thin strip of leather with a gull’s tail feather attached around her fingers. One of the newly blooded virgins.

  She let her eyes roam over Carro’s shorthair Knight’s cloak and the straps of his riding harness, which dangled from underneath. Her expression was one of fear or interest; he couldn’t decide which. He knew her vaguely, like he knew most people here, or they knew him. His stomach churned. He did not want to do this, not in the safe haven of his childhood.

  He glanced over his shoulder, between the crowded stalls, the garlands of yellow paper hung from their canopies, and the steady stream of patrons that tottered out of the meltery, faces red from bloodwine. All the signs that the Newlight festival was in full swing.

  The Junior Knight Captain leaned against the wall, the map in his hands. He was looking straight at Carro.

  “Can I assist the dear sir?”

  Carro started. The mother and daughter had left.

  “Uhm . . .” He put down the cup he was still holding.

  The merchant was a middle-aged man, his short-cropped hair and beard more grey than black. Age had lined his face, but his eyes were clear and blue. He wore black. Everyone in the Outer City knew what that meant.

  “Oh, it’s you.” The man smiled. “I had been wondering how you were getting on with the Knights.”

  “Very well, thank you.”

  “You know that all of us in the Outer City are proud of you?”

  * * *

  Carro stands at the stall; the table has suddenly become a lot taller. The cover of the book feels rough under his fingers. He opens it, marvelling at the beautiful print on pages of glossy paper. The book’s scent floats on the breeze, releasing the smell of fifty years of hiding in a musty cupboard.

  I want this one, he says.

  The merchant reaches across the table. He wears a short beard, black, the same colour as his clothes. It’s the colour of the Brotherhood of the Light.

  The merchant says, I don’t think your couple of foxes of pocket money would pay for that. He eases the book out of Carro’s hands. Besides, I don’t think you want to be seen with this. Your father would whip you if he knew you had it.

  Carro shivers. His father would, too. His father doesn’t like the Brothers. It’s illegal to possess anything that belonged to families who supported the old king. But he promised his friend Isandor. And the book is so beautiful.

  Carro puts his hand in his pocket and closes his fingers on the gold eagle, the metal warm and heavy against his leg. It’s not his money, well, some of it is, but most of it is his friend’s. He takes it out and puts it on the table.

  He says, I want the book.

  * * *

  “You’ll be flying in the race today?”

  Carro gasped. The words of the past were still on his lips. I want the book. He blinked at the merchant, who was waiting for a reply.

  “Oh—uhm—the race. Yes, I will.” His heart thudded. He hated how he had these spells where he drifted off into his memories.

  “So you’re here to visit your parents?”

  Carro glanced over his shoulder again, where the Junior Knight Captain was still looking at him, drumming his fingers on the side of the sled. No way to get out of this. He closed his eyes and sighed.

  “No. I’m afraid I’m on patrol. Do you have any illegal items?”

  The merchant took in a sharp breath. His eyes widened. No, he hadn’t expected that either, after Carro’s history.

  Carro ploughed on, speaking rehearsed words with a tongue that felt like tanned hide. “You can give illegal items to me now, and there will be no fuss. If I have to call my Captain . . .” He shivered. The merchant might tell the Captain that he had sold Carro some of those illegal items.

  “No, no, you needn’t do that.” The man rummaged in the space under the bench and retrieved a box with a dusty assortment of bric-a-brac. There were some forks, silver, richly stamped with the crests of the old families, the Thilleian house. There were metal stands for lights—the silver globes gone of
course—a couple of sheets in neat print. Carro ran his finger over the paper, feeling the raised profile of the ink. Familiar. His books were like that. The old people used to have machines that melted ink onto the paper. The books that were still under his bed in his father’s house, the books Carro hoped no one would find.

  Carro took the box, meeting the merchant’s eyes. He cringed with the anger in the man’s expression. “I’m sorry, but I’m asking every merchant.”

  “Sure,” the man said, his voice stiff. “You know this sort of stuff turns up every now and then.”

  “You should hand in any illegal material as soon as you get it.” Carro hated his own words.

  “I hadn’t gotten around to doing that.”

  All lies. Carro wanted to hear no more, lest the merchant dig up uncomfortable truths from Carro’s past. This was enough warning, for both of them.

  * * *

  Seated on a mound of snow, with his peg leg sticking out awkwardly into the narrow alley, Isandor opens the book on his knees. His skinny fingers trace the writing. He whispers, Wow. A lock of glossy hair falls over his shoulders.

  A real diary from the time of the old king, Carro boasts. The best he had. You should have seen his face when I showed him the money.

  You’re a real hero, Carro.

  Carro smiles. No one else calls him a hero.

  Who wrote this? Isandor has a dreamy look on his face.

  The king’s court historian. Carro bends forward and flicks the pages, trying to ignore his numb and cold fingers. Heroes are not cold.

  Wait. Isandor stops Carro’s hand. There is a drawing on the page with many lines leading from one box to another. Look at this. It’s a map of the city with this thing they call the Heart.

  The Heart? There is no such thing. Carro feels uncomfortable. His father has spoken of this thing once and he’d seen it when he flicked through the book.

  It is the Heart, Isandor says. It says so in the book. It’s a machine under the palace. They say it’s the source of icefire. Isandor raises his head. His eyes are distant. You know this book sings?

  Sings? Carro shivers.

  Yes, can’t you hear it?

  Carro shakes his head. What song?

  There isn’t a song. It’s like the band in the meltery. The music just plays on and on, but no one takes any notice of it until it stops. That’s what it’s like.

  Carro shrugs. It’s strange. Then again, Isandor has Thilleian blood, Carro is sure about that.

  The old king only needed to reach into the air and icefire would spark from his fingers. He would kill people with it. Old people still tell the stories.

  * * *

  Carro carried the box across the marketplace to the sled, repressing memories unlocked by the musty smell. Other merchants, all people he knew, followed his every move. Stone-hard looks on stone-hard faces. He wanted to scream that it wasn’t his choice to do this job, that he’d been told to do it, that the Knights with him were all older and hated him, that . . .

  He dumped the box on the luggage tray of the sled. The Knight Captain strolled to the sled and rummaged through the contents in a bored fashion.

  “Another load of old junk,” he drawled. “You know, we’ve collected so many light stands over the past few days, one wonders where the lights are.”

  Carro didn’t meet his gaze. The silver light globes were always gone by the time these items came to the market. Even if the lights had been complete when the merchant obtained the items, he would know better than take the globes to market. They were worth a fortune, those bulbs that needed only icefire to glow.

  The merchant hadn’t given up everything he had, Carro was sure of that. He had just hoped that by going to the Brother’s stand first, he would have spared the man a more thorough inspection.

  No such luck.

  The Captain flicked his fingers and pushed himself off the sled.

  The other two Knights of the patrol moved towards the stall. One spoke, but they were too far away for Carro to hear. The merchant shook his head. Then the second Knight grabbed the edge of the table and turned it upside down. Pots and plates flew everywhere, shattering on the frozen ground.

  As Carro had suspected, there were more boxes underneath, ones that held far more damning material than the few stands and leaflets he had collected. He could see the spines of books and items of clothing in black and silver: the colours of the Thilleian house.

  “You said you inspected that one?” The Knight Captain raised his eyebrows at Carro. “Are you Apprentice puppies capable of anything?”

  Carro clenched his fists. The Brotherhood merchant was looking straight at him.

  “I thought you would actually be of some use to us here,” the Captain continued. “That’s why I asked your Tutor if you could come. You did weasel your way into the knighthood from this slum, didn’t you?”

  Carro shrugged.

  “Answer me when I ask you a question.” The Captain slapped Carro in the face. “And look at me when I’m talking to you.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Carro met the man’s eyes.

  “Then go and carry all that rubbish onto the sled.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Carro set off to the ravaged stand, past the yellow garlands that seemed to mock him. His cheek stung, but he resisted the urge to wipe it. Every merchant and many of the market’s customers were looking at him. Carro, the pride boy of the Outer City. Carro, the son of a lowly merchant who had made it into the Eagle Knights. Carro, who had come back to betray his own people.

  “I want that merchant watched,” the Knight Captain said behind him to another member of the patrol. “See who visits him and what they bring, or buy.”

  Chapter 4

  THE SLED swished to a halt at a spot where a mound of snow broke the monotony of the plain. Tandor peered into the low sun, which trailed long shadows over the snow. Little diamond-like specks twinkled in the powdery surface untouched by man or beast. At the horizon, the sky faded from pink to the most delicate of blue. The tall buildings of the City of Glass were mere specks in the distance, glittering needles that reflected the sunlight in their glass facades. What tranquility, what incredible beauty. This was home, this was what his heart had been denied all those years his mother had forced him to live in the dust and noise of Chevakia.

  “What are we doing here?” a whining girl’s voice said. The bundle of furs that hid Myra from view stirred. Her head poked out.

  “Enjoying the view,” Tandor said. He’d grown wary of her complaints. Her back hurt, her head hurt, she was cold, she needed to piss. “You asked for us to stop somewhere you could piss behind a tree. Well, there aren’t any trees on this plain as you might have noticed, so it will have to be a stack of ice instead. Here you go.”

  He jumped down from the sled, his footsteps creaking in the snow. The cool air that charged his lungs made steaming puffs of mist when he exhaled.

  He unlashed a net from the back of the sled and took an ice pick and a shovel.

  “What are you doing with those?” Myra asked.

  “Some big business.”

  She wrinkled her face, but pushed herself up awkwardly. With a bit of luck, she would go for a walk to the other side of the mound.

  “You’re welcome to watch.”

  “You’re not just creepy, you’re disgusting.”

  “At your service, lady.”

  She sniffed, let herself down from sled with a wince and waddled off. Good.

  Tandor positioned himself so that the peak of the snow mound and the glittering buildings of the City of Glass aligned. His gaze tracked the barely perceptible line that marked the shore of the Frozen Sea, the flat plain of the iced-over bay to his left, soft undulating snow-covered hills on his right.

  Yes, he was at the place the diary had described.

  He glanced around, checking if Myra had gone. Ruko stood at the sled, glaring into the light. The bear fidgeted
, shaking its shoulders and jiggling the harness. Steam blew from its nostrils. Ruko patted its back, to which it responded with an angry snort.

  Tandor glanced at Ruko. You deal with it.

  Ruko gave Tandor his usual fuck-you look and flicked his hair out of his eyes. Tandor had tried to cut it, but the boy wouldn’t let him near. With every step they came closer to the City of Glass, Ruko grew stronger. He had heaved huge blocks of ice out of the sled’s path with his bare hands. He had run after the bear when it got it into its mind to chase after a group of gulls and he had dragged the bear back by the scruff of its neck. Tandor had needed a lot of icefire to make Ruko let go of the bear.

  Tandor swung his ice-pick up above his shoulder and drove it hard into the mound. Ice chips flew in arcs of glittering diamonds. Two more hits and the point of the pick hit a hard object under the snow with a “ping”.

  Good. He was definitely at the right place. The secret had not been disturbed. There was hope yet.

  A few scrapes with the shovel later, he had unearthed a door handle, a few more and the rest of the door had become visible, a plain metal surface, pitted and weathered over time. Tandor stuck the pick and shovel in the snow and yanked at the handle. It wouldn’t turn.

  He gathered strands of icefire from the air—much stronger this close to the city—and directed them at the door. Steam hissed. The metal vibrated and glowed. He yanked at the door again and this time it opened. Cold and stale air spilled out of the dark maw.

  The bear gave a low growl, lifting one corner of its dark lips.

  Tandor let his hand stray to the Chevakian powder gun he carried in his belt. Icefire oozed from the door, against which the gun was of course perfectly useless.

  He felt a stab of anger at having shown such a basic Chevakian reaction. All his life he’d lived in the blasted foreign country. It had corrupted him.

  He had even known that there was supposed to be a field of icefire here.

  This was not the time to hesitate or make silly mistakes. He’d best hurry up before the nosy girl came back. If the past day was anything to go by, she’d be asking plenty of questions already.