Quest SMASH

by Joseph Lallo

  Carro met the sky-blue eyes and then dropped his gaze, the wrinkled but powerful face etched in his memory. He pushed himself up from the chair. How had he ever thought he was meant to be sitting here?

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Stay seated.”

  “I’m sorry I got in a fight. I’m sorry I hit Jono.”

  “Forget Jono.”

  “Sir?”

  “If Jono works hard and holds up the Knights’ ethic like his father, he might get somewhere. For now, he’s insignificant. Did you really think that’s why I wanted to talk to you?”

  “But I did start a fight. I’m not always very nice.”

  Rider Cornatan chuckled. “None of us are. If we were nice all the time, we would never get anywhere.” He stopped in front of the dais, meeting Carro’s eyes with his light blue ones. “The old king, for example, was a dreadfully mean person, but he was so powerful that even his family didn’t dare disobey him. At the very end, he locked himself in the palace and sent his son and his daughter-in-law away. He said it was for their safety, but it was to distract the guards, so they were killed while he himself stayed in the palace.”

  Carro remembered the story, but he had thought the king had sent his family away and stayed in the palace as ruse, so that they could flee safely and that the unborn heir to the throne would survive. But he didn’t dare disagree with Rider Cornatan’s version. In fact he hardly dared breathe. Why did the Supreme Rider mention this?

  “You know the story?”

  “I do.”

  “Because you read the books.”

  “Yes.” Carro looked at his knees. He wasn’t sure if it was a reprimand. No one read those books in the City of Glass.

  There were steps on the floor, and a hand touched his arm, weathered and wrinkled.

  “Don’t be shy. I’m impressed with you.”

  “Sir?” This visit was starting to puzzle him more and more. No one had told Carro he was impressed. No one. Ever.

  Rider Cornatan smiled, and he looked more like a favourite uncle than a feared leader.

  “I’ve brought you here, because I need you for a special mission.”

  Special mission? “Sir?” Doubt hovered in his mind again. He was only an Apprentice. What did he know that would make him eligible for a special mission?

  “You haven’t noticed I’ve already sent you on some unusual tasks?”

  “You mean—when you . . . I went with the Junior Knights to the markets?”

  Had Rider Cornatan selected him for that task? Carro felt sick. By the skylights, what was this going to be about? Who was he going to betray now?

  “That was just a small job, that you handled well, I heard.”

  “Wasn’t that because I am from the Outer City? That’s what I thought.”

  “It was, but it was also because you are a very special young man, although I don’t think anyone has mentioned it to you yet.”

  “Special?”

  Rider Cornatan nodded.

  Special as in good-special or bad-special?

  “Come, boy, I’ll show you something.”

  Carro rose from the cold stone chair, his head still reeling. Something very odd was going on here. There had to be a catch somewhere, there had to be.

  Chapter 13

  RIDER CORNATAN led Carro through a corridor made of dark stone into another room, also illuminated with the same eerie green light. The polished black marble on the floor contained the shapes of leaves and many-legged creatures such as Carro had never seen. The room was bare except for a table in the middle.

  On a table lay a variety of things Carro surmised must be weapons. Long sticks of metal, glinting in the emerald light that radiated from the walls. On the end of one of the sticks was a glass bulb with many carved facets.

  Carro wanted to ask about it, but Rider Cornatan strode past the table and pressed a panel on the opposite wall. At his touch, an entire section of stone slid aside to reveal a hidden room.

  There were four men in the room, two of them grey-haired Senior Knights in uniform. They stood near a stone chair similar to the one in the room where Carro had waited. On this chair sat a man in black, his hands and feet tied down by leather straps threaded through rings on the armrests and base of the chair.

  The second-hand merchant who sold the books.

  His eyes widened when they met Carro’s, betraying an expression of utter panic. He was sweating, his face pale.

  The man showed no signs of torture, but there was a strange apparatus on a table behind the chair. The last man wore a green protective suit with a helmet. The dark visor showed only his eyes. He was laying out snaking leads and sharp metal implements on the table with a heavily gloved hand.

  Carro’s knees felt weak. Oh, by the skylights. Was this all his fault because he’d betrayed the merchant? His dagger burned against his thigh. He felt like grabbing it and cutting the merchant free.

  Rider Cornatan was talking to the Senior Knights.

  One of them said, “Is that the boy?”

  Rider Cornatan nodded, and his expression turned hard, as if he defied anyone to comment.

  “You see, boy, what we’re trying to do here is something very new. You will witness our first true application of knowledge we’ve acquired over the last few years. The Thillei have been saying it for a long time—”

  “The Thillei? But I thought there weren’t any left—”

  “No visibly recognisable ones, no, but there are those who still practice the Thillei ways, and we might as well call them by their name.”

  Carro whispered, “The Brotherhood.” He didn’t dare look at the merchant.

  “Very good.” Rider Cornatan smiled first at Carro, then at his Senior Knights, as if he had proven a point. “Whatever can be said about the ways of the old king, the truth is that he had a vision for this land. When the Knights took over, they, naturally, abandoned his plans, but it has not been to the benefit of our land. Our people are poor. We no longer trade with our neighbouring nations. Instead, they laugh at us, and have erected barriers at their borders. They wish to ignore us and cut us out as if we were a festering sore.”

  He turned back to Carro, more intent than before. “It is said that because our land is frozen, we have nothing to offer, but that is a lie. We have much, and it has been right under our noses all the time. The power we call icefire can be used to drive machines that do incredible things: dig the ore out of the ground and make it into useful things, heat the caverns under the city and grow exquisite crops, then build fast trains to take produce to the borders. We have everything we need: we have water and we have unlimited energy. Why should we deny it exists?”

  “But . . . but . . . that was what the old king did, and he became so powerful that he no longer needed his people, and he started turning them into mindless machines, the servitors.”

  Rider Cornatan chuckled. “Yes, that is the version commonly told at dinner tables, and it is also the very thing that has been holding us back. It’s the belief that everything the king did was bad, the belief that we couldn’t possibly use icefire differently and better. The power of icefire is ours. We have been blessed with it, and we should use it if we want to get ahead.”

  Carro realised why the sudden emphasis on confiscating illegal material: the Knights didn’t want to burn it; they wanted to use it. That brought a whole new perspective to his own situation. He’d read about the old days—and the Knights considered that a good thing.

  “Now of course re-starting fifty-year-old plans is not easy, but we’ve made some breakthroughs, one of which I’m about to show you. But I’m wondering, since you are doing so well, could you tell me what is the great weakness in our plan?”

  All eyes were on Carro, as if this was some sort of test.

  “Uhm . . .” He wanted to say I don’t know but that would never do. “I . . . don’t know much about icefire. I can’t see it.”

  �
��Exactly!” Rider Cornatan smiled. “Most of us are unable to see or work with icefire. But there are those who can.”

  “Does that . . .” Carro swallowed. His gaze flicked to the merchant, who was sweating more than ever. “Does that mean you want the Thilleians back?”

  “No. Their powers can be turned to true evil. Once infected with the sense of power, they tend to become corrupted. But we can learn from them.”

  “But the powerful ones were all killed.” And at the same time, his mind squealed Isandor.

  “Exactly. And that is where this man comes in. Go ahead.” He motioned to the suited man, who pulled some metal frame from the table. It went over the chair to cover the merchant’s head in a lock, with plates fitted to both sides of his head so he couldn’t move it. The pale green light showed the man’s face sheened in sweat. Another suited man had come into the room while Rider Cornatan was speaking. He stuck a very thin needle into the skin of the man’s forearm. It had a soft balloon of fluid attached, which he hung on a stand.

  The merchant struggled at first, but quickly gave up, and a stupid look came over his face, his tongue lolling out. A dribble of spit tracked down his chin. Carro’s stomach lurched.

  The suited man then dragged the table with the strange machines so that it stood in front of the chair. With click of a handle, he brought a light to life. There were two beams, which he adjusted so each shone into the merchant’s eyes. His eyes had gone wide, the pupils wide open.

  He started speaking.

  At first, his voice was a barely audible mumble, made harder to follow by drool dripping from his flaccid bottom lip, but gradually words formed.

  “. . . no money . . . no money. Have to pay the landlord . . . Sorry, dear, but the Knights came and took all my stock. Now I can’t sell it to the collectors. I have no more money, dear. Yes, I remember that man. He came to me before. He bought some books . . .”

  Carro clamped his hands behind his back. The merchant was going to mention him as purchaser for illegal items, and that was why he was here.

  “I have . . . no more books, but the stranger has lots of money. I tell him . . . I will tell him about the boy, the one who’s Imperfect. He wants them, the Imperfects, you know. He pays lots. I can pay the landlord, dear. I’m sorry . . .”

  The man blinked and then his eyes fell closed. The beams of light tracked over his cheeks, no longer focused on his eyes.

  Carro’s heart thudded against his ribcage. He was going to be punished for not letting the Knights know about Isandor, who had to be “the boy” the merchant referred to.

  The suited man turned off the light and released the plates that pressed against the merchant’s head. The merchant collapsed forward into the chair, gasping. He made a kind of huuh-huuuh sound while holding out a trembling hand as if trying to grab something he couldn’t reach. The green-suited men were busy with their machine, and the Senior Knights spoke softly to each other, as if no one else was in the room.

  But the man was still going huuuh-huuuh-huuuh and Carro wanted to do something about this whole awful business, but he didn’t know what, and meanwhile the gasping and the huuuh-huuuh intensified, and the trembling hand looked like some sort of insect clawing at the chair’s arm rest.

  Carro couldn’t stand it any longer. “Can you help him, please?” His voice sounded high and young.

  “Take him away,” one of the suited men said, muffled inside the suit.

  Carro wasn’t sure if he was the “him” referred to, or the merchant. The other suited man went to the chair and tried to untie the merchant’s wrist straps, but he was leaning too hard into them, so he pushed the merchant back. As he did so, the man arched his back and with an explosive huuuuh projectile-vomited. It went all over the suited man’s helmet and face mask. The suited man swore, and dragged the merchant out of the chair, out of the room, leaving a foul-smelling trail on the floor.

  Carro felt sick.

  “Come.” Rider Cornatan’s voice sounded far off. “We’ll leave the staff to clean this up.”

  He sounded so matter-of-fact, as if seeing people in this sort of distress was normal to him. He led Carro out of the room, gingerly stepping over the vomit trail, while Carro still heard the huuuh-huuuuh in his mind. He was used to brawls, and fights, and fellow Apprentices drinking themselves stupid until they spent all night puking their guts out in the bathroom. He had never heard anything so desperate as this man.

  It was all his fault.

  Meanwhile, Rider Cornatan kept speaking.

  “As you are probably aware, since you helped inspect this man’s wares, we had this merchant watched. He wears the black of the Brotherhood of the Light, but no longer lives in the compound. It seems he has taken a wife, and he is desperate to get someone to pay for the privilege of using his son. The child was born Imperfect, and his wife rejected it. The boy has lived with the Brotherhood ever since. The merchant passed the knowledge of this boy to another man, a visitor to the Outer City. He paid two gold eagles for the information, and vanished. At the moment, the boy is still in the Brotherhood compound. We are going to get him first. And that is where you come in.”

  Carro stiffened, alert now.

  “You are familiar with the Outer City. No one will find it odd to see you wandering around the streets.”

  “So . . .” Carro swallowed. “You want me to go to get this boy, while some sort of stranger is also after him?”

  Rider Cornatan chuckled. “Of course I’m not going to let you go out without help. Let me show you something else.” He walked to the table with the weapons in the other room.

  Carro followed him, his head reeling.

  * * *

  It’s cold in the lawkeeper’s office. The room is bare with just a bench along the wall. There is a tiny window that lets in a meagre beam of bluish light.

  Carro sinks down on the bench. Cold and shame bites through his trousers. This is where criminals sit.

  Carro’s tears run across his cheeks like icicles.

  Isandor says, Don’t worry.

  It’s easy for him to say. Isandor’s mother comes to pick up her son. There is an officer with her.

  The merchant has put in a complaint, he says. He wants compensation for goods broken.

  Oh, why did they have to play with boomerangs so close to the market? Why did the boomerang have to hit the merchant’s sled full of glasswork?

  Isandor’s mother puts an arm around her son’s shoulder. Isandor looks up at her with his big blue eyes. I’m sorry.

  She says, Don’t worry. I know things sometimes break when you play. Her voice is warm. She smiles at the officer and the man smiles back. She radiant, glowing and pregnant, one of the city’s best breeders. I’m sure we can come to an arrangement with the merchant.

  They leave the room, their backs disappearing into the corridor.

  Carro’s parents won’t be so kind.

  No dinner, no oil for his lamp, and his books taken away from him, and that is if he escapes the whip.

  He waits. It’s cold in the room. The feeling inside him is even colder. No one is ever going to come for him. His parents are going to leave him here.

  * * *

  Rider Cornatan had turned around, giving Carro a concerned look. “Are you feeling ill?”

  Carro’s heart jumped a beat. “No, no, I’m fine.” He tried to push away lingering nausea from the smell of vomit and the hazy remains of the memory, and the realisation: the recurring memories were getting worse.

  How long before he had an accident while his mind was off somewhere else? How long before someone discovered and declared him unsuitable for service? Declared him insane?

  Rider Cornatan’s expression wasn’t convincing. “You looked out of sorts for a bit. Not an advocate of medical procedures?” He glanced back at the room with the chair, where the wall panel was just sliding shut again, and two Junior Knights were mopping the floor.

  “No, no. I
’m fine.” A drop of sweat trickled down Carro’s back.

  “Good, then have a look at this.” Rider Cornatan gestured at the strange contraptions on the table.

  They were definitely weapons of some description. Eagle Knights used crossbows and poisoned arrows, or in close combat, swords or daggers. Carro reached out for the staff with the shining stone, but withdrew his hand, casting a glance at Rider Cornatan. Touching it wouldn’t be very humble. Stupid that he had even thought he could touch these weapons.

  Rider Cornatan laughed, his eyes gleaming with pleasure. “You like that, boy?”

  “Yes.” Carro hated how his voice sounded too innocent. His father always said boy and never used his name.

  “Take it.”

  Carro picked up the staff. The metal felt warm, almost alive, in his hands.

  “Try some blows.”

  Try blows? Where? Rider Cornatan didn’t expect to be sparring with him? He was an old man.

  “Stand over there.”

  Apprehensively, Carro went to stand where Rider Cornatan indicated, in the middle of the room. To his dismay, the Supreme Rider threw off his cloak and grabbed another staff off the table. While he strode across the room, the eerie light made his white hair almost green. He took up position opposite Carro, his legs apart, as if he was about to start a sword fight.

  Rider Cornatan ran his hand over the metal rod of the staff. There was a noise like lightning.

  Icefire! Rider Cornatan did know he couldn’t see it.

  “Yes, boy. That surprises you, doesn’t it? Thought we had forgotten that the curse that taints our land can be used in more ways than one?”

  He thrust out with the staff. A line of dust lifted from the floor.

  Carro cried out, turned and tried to run. What sort of defence did he have against icefire?

  “Use the staff!” Rider Cornatan’s voice grated like stone on stone.

  Carro grabbed the staff in both hands, but had no idea what to do with it. Dust now crackled all around him, making his nose itch. He swung the staff into thin air, like a blind man swordfighting.