Quest SMASH

by Joseph Lallo

  “The young boy you brought yesterday woke up this morning,” Rider Cornatan said.

  “Oh?” Carro didn’t know what else to say, but obviously there would be something of great meaning following this statement otherwise Rider Cornatan wouldn’t have insisted on seeing him here in this very public meltery.

  “He said that when you came out of the Brotherhood building a blue man attacked you and the other Knights.”

  “I can’t tell. I didn’t see anyone. I used the staff as you said I should, but I saw nothing. I just grabbed the boy as soon as I could.”

  “Yes, you did well. But, according to you, the two Knights were killed by something that snapped their necks. Something you didn’t—or couldn’t—see.”

  The voice quivered with meaning. Intense blue eyes met his.

  “You mean a servitor?” His voice was barely more than a whisper.

  A chill crept over his back. He should have realised it earlier.

  “That’s what I mean, indeed,” Rider Cornatan said. “The Brothers have confirmed that they have the Knights’ bodies, but they’re hesitant to cooperate with our investigation. I think they know more than they’re willing to say.”

  “But how can servitors exist?” His books had spoken of the slave-servants of the old king. They had no will, and did everything their master wanted. They could not be killed except when their master died.

  “There is only one way: there has to be a Thilleian in the Outer City. One who is strong and has the capability to make servitors.”

  Isandor. Carro’s heart jumped.

  * * *

  Isandor runs through the street, holding out a box . For you, Carro. It’s your birthday.

  Carro stares. He doesn’t have birthdays. His father made him work this morning. In the warehouse. No heating. No one said anything about a birthday at breakfast.

  He takes the box. Opens it up and finds a book inside, a fat volume with a leather cover and thick, yellow pages. Doesn’t know what to say. He’s turning eleven today. You shouldn’t do that, Isandor.

  Why not? You’re my friend.

  Embarrassed, by someone who has so much less than he.

  * * *

  “But anyone . . .” Carro swallowed, hoping Rider Cornatan wouldn’t notice his lapses in attention. “. . . any sorcerer who can make a servitor is very powerful.” He didn’t think Isandor could do that, but what did he know, maybe he could.

  “We must find this person.” Rider Cornatan’s eyes fixed his with uncomfortable intensity.

  Carro looked down at his empty cup, bloodwine churning in his stomach. Once it came out he had been friends with Isandor, what would that mean for him? Back to his father’s warehouse? Death by accountancy?

  Not that. Never that. He’d kill himself first.

  “Did you enjoy last night?” Rider Cornatan’s voice sounded far off.

  Heat crept into Carro’s cheeks. “Yes, I did.”

  “There were some elite young Knights invited, a special team of mine. Did you have a chance to have a word with Farey?”

  The olive-skinned Knight who had been staring at him in a most embarrassing way.

  “I did. We didn’t say much—”

  “Farey never says much. I’ve asked him to keep an eye on you. He leads a group of elite hunters. They scout out rogues that flee the city and spies to our lands. I was thinking that with your flying skills, you could possibly join them.”

  “Hunters?” They were special units of highly-trained men. Jobs that attracted whispers and rumours.

  Rider Cornatan drank. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “I think you could make a valuable contribution to our search teams. I wouldn’t rule out rapid promotions. You, boy, are destined to do well.”

  Carro didn’t think so.

  “No, don’t look like that. I think it’s time you showed leadership. It’s one thing to tag along with a group of others, but you need to learn how to give commands.”

  He? Give commands?

  “I notice you’re not wearing your Learner’s badge.”

  “I . . .” Carro stammered. “Some of the Apprentices will tease me. They’re already saying that I have no right to be here.”

  “Ha—and you let them say that to your face?”

  Carro shrugged. What else could he do? “Apprentices are not allowed to fight. I’ve already been punished too much for that. Fighting will just make the mocking worse.”

  Rider Cornatan put a hand under his chin and forced him to look up. “Boy, take it from me: men never mock those they fear. I am giving you the means to hold power over your peers. You are a Learner. You outrank them. They should fear you.”

  “But . . .”

  “If they don’t fear you, punish them for their insolence, and punish them hard. I can assure you: if you do it well, you only need to do so once.”

  “I’m not sure I—”

  “Yes, you could do it. Tell me, you don’t think you deserve being bullied by these cowardly boys?”

  Bullied? How about raped? “No, but—”

  “There you go. You don’t deserve it. Those boys are insulting you. You are worth more than ten of them. You know that, Carro. Promise me you will do the worst you can imagine to anyone who defies your orders.”

  Carro nodded, his cheeks glowing.

  The man was the opposite of his father, giving him compliments where he deserved none.

  “You’re very quiet today, boy.”

  “I’m . . . a bit tired.”

  Rider Cornatan laughed. “You would be. By the way, Korinne was most insistent in asking if you were available to come again tonight.”

  Korinne, asking for him. Offering herself to him without being asked. Did she like him after all?

  He nodded again. “I will be there.”

  “Very well, boy. That’s the sort of thing I like to hear. Lift your chin and make sure none of your peers tell you what to do. You obey your superiors, and no one else. You understand that?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Rider Cornatan hesitated, as if he wanted to say something else, but thought the better of it.

  Chapter 17

  TANDOR KNELT in the snow in the shade of the alley, tugged off his glove with his pincer claw and put his hand flat on the hard, icy ground. In the feeble blue light of not-quite dawn, the area around his fingers glowed with a few specks of gold before winking out.

  Yes, Ruko had come this way. The trail was half a day old at least, but Ruko had been here.

  There were footsteps behind him, and voices of women. Tandor rose quickly and pressed himself to the wall on one side of the alley. The women walked past, casting Tandor strange looks that said, what is he doing here at this time of the day?

  Tandor waited until the women had disappeared from view and continued down the alley, kneeling and touching the snow. With each step he walked, and each time he looked up at the sky and saw it had lightened, his despair grew.

  Ruko was in trouble somewhere, or he would have returned long ago. It meant that someone out here could see Ruko and had a means of injuring him.

  To add to that, picking up Ruko’s response became ever harder with the increasing strength of icefire.

  Golden strands now frequently crackled through the air, escaped from the matrix that normally held its power.

  The breeze carried the sounds of cheers, shouting and music. At the festival grounds, the common folk were watching the races. As yet, they were blissfully ignorant of the increased level of icefire, but that wouldn’t remain so. The Heart was coming into its full power soon, and he had recruited not a single servitor to help him channel that raw energy. There were limits even to how much icefire the citizens of the City of Glass could stand without becoming ill.

  Ruko!

  A flutter of icefire responded, the tiniest of pulses.

  Ruko?

  The wind sighed through the alley, an exhaled breath of pain. The
connection was weak. Ruko was injured and he was close.

  The sound of children’s voices drifted from the other side of a high wall at his back. Tandor couldn’t make out the words, but the conversation held an edge of tense-ness, the voices curious, more than just children at play.

  He crept along the wall until he came to a gate, which judging by the amount of snow piled up on the ground, was always open. It led into a walled courtyard surrounded on three sides by a building with a columned facade. Made of mountain marble, the building was ancient, because it was a long time since any marble had been brought from the border with Arania. It was also a long time since anyone had used the inscriptions which graced the building’s facade. Tandor remembered learning the formulae off by heart. How to calculate the power of icefire at different points from its source. How to predict how many people could handle a certain amount of icefire, how to calculate how far the temperature would drop with increased power. How to convert icefire into heat and light. How had he hated those lessons with his mother.

  A door opened in the rightmost wing of the building. A bearded man dressed in black came out, leading a group of children across the courtyard. Some were crying, some held the man’s hand.

  The Brotherhood of the Light. Named not after the sun, but after the power of the Heart.

  On the far side of the courtyard, two men came into view, heaving a large object between them that looked suspiciously like a body covered with cloth. There was another one already on the ground.

  A little boy came out of a door onto the veranda, but was ordered back inside with a sharp command. Both brothers in black stood silent, balling their hands against their chests. One of the men went inside, but the other hesitated and glanced at a heap of snow against the courtyard’s wall. Icefire leapt from the air, a single strand which forked like lightning. It shattered into golden diamonds, which rained down onto the snow mound.

  The young man didn’t react to the light spectacle, but Tandor had no illusion that he could see it in some form. The Brothers of the Light had been the old king’s spiritual order. Further back in history, the order had served as a handy depository for idle noble sons, including princes with minor claims on the throne. As such, many of its current members would have traces of Thillei blood. This Brother’s Thilleian blood had located Ruko.

  Bless the boy. Weak and injured as he obviously was, he’d gone and buried himself under the snow. Now all Tandor needed to do was wait until the courtyard was empty.

  * * *

  Loriane shut the door to the inner chamber of the limpet behind her. She crossed to the table and set down her tray.

  Myra sat cross-legged on the mat in front of the stove. The fierce glow from the fire gilded the folds of the girl’s thin night gown.

  She didn’t look up or open her eyes. Her hands on her knees, she sat there, counting and breathing slowly.

  Loriane sat down and watched for a while. Maybe there was hope yet to prepare her for the birth. Her spot-bleeding had stopped overnight. Loriane might have a few days to teach the girl some relaxation routines.

  She felt guilty about not being able to help at the festival anymore, but if she was honest with herself, Loriane didn’t mind losing out on treating drunken louts.

  Myra opened her eyes. “Was that better?”

  “Much better,” Loriane said. “Now if you can take that off, I can examine you, before Tandor comes back.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No.” If she sounded snippy, she meant it. “Does he think I have nothing to do but pamper him?”

  “Tandor doesn’t pamper—”

  “What do you know?” Again, too angry. Loriane looked away, ashamed to have let herself go.

  “I’m worried about him,” she said to the room in general. “He comes here, he does whatever he wants. He makes promises. He disappears.”

  “Does he keep his promises?” A lot of anxiety hung in the girl’s question. What had Tandor promised her?

  “Usually.” Loriane heaved a sigh. “Come, lie down here. After that we better make sure the washing is dry and we have all those oils poured in jars.”

  “I didn’t think being a midwife was so much work,” Myra said.

  Myra slipped off her nightgown and lay down on the couch as Loriane indicated.

  “Oh, preparing the medicines is just a small part of the job. You don’t even know about the times I get called out in the middle of the night and have to stay all of the next day as well.”

  She grabbed her basket of supplies and kneeled awkwardly. Her own belly was getting in the way of this job. She rummaged through and then realised the bottle of disinfecting oil was empty. By the skylights. She had more, but she had left it in the tent at the festival grounds.

  “All right, this will have to wait.”

  The girl stared at the basket, her eyes wide. “What were you going to do?”

  Clearly, no one had ever examined her. By the skylights, had anyone looked after this girl? Did the people in Bordertown just let women have their children—and die giving birth—like beasts?

  Instead, she probed the girl’s belly. The womb tensed up under her touch, hard as rock.

  Myra gasped. “It hurts, it hurts.”

  “Yes,” Loriane said and withdrew. “You know what I think? I think your pains have already started.”

  “I’ve . . . I’ve been having cramps all day.”

  “That will be it.”

  “Is that all?” She sounded too relieved.

  “No, it’s not.” Loriane rose. She really needed that disinfectant so she could examine Myra inside.

  Myra pushed herself up. She was trembling when she reached for her gown and hesitated putting it on. “Or do you want me to leave it off?”

  “We’re not getting to that stage so soon. That will be a while yet. You better do some more of those exercises I gave you.”

  Myra nodded and wriggled back onto the mat, crossed her legs and went on with the breathing exercises.

  Loriane studied the girl’s shape. The weight in her belly restricted movement of her spine, which she held at an uncomfortable curve. Her shoulders and hips were narrow, with not a scrap of meat on them. Loriane hoped, for all she was worth, that the father of the child was not too broad or big-boned. Myra was heavy for her thin frame, and a gentle start to the process like this often meant a protracted and painful birth, especially in young girls.

  “Loriane, how many children have you had?”

  “This is my tenth.”

  “Ten?” A stunned silence. “I don’t know any woman at Bordertown who has had that many.”

  And lived to tell the tale, Loriane added in her mind.

  “When is your child going to be born?”

  “Soon.” Should have been a few days ago.

  Another short silence.

  “I’ve heard that women in the City of Glass . . . sell their children.”

  “Noblemen pay fertile women to have children for them if their wives aren’t fertile. Many of them are barren.”

  “Why?”

  “They say it’s to do with icefire. It may not kill us as it does with the Chevakians, but many of us can’t have children.”

  “Yes, icefire so strong here. I’ve never seen it like this before.”

  Loriane studied the girl’s face. She had forgotten that one of the attributes of being Imperfect was the ability to see icefire. Even when Isandor was still at home, he had avoided this very subject. She couldn’t see icefire, not a single scrap of it.

  “Someone paid for your child?” Myra asked.

  Loriane nodded. She thought again of Yanko, and how much she doubted the child was his, and how she had no idea whose it could be. She hadn’t been with a man except Tandor a tennight earlier, but just last night she had seen again how he lacked the necessary equipment to do the job.

  She glanced at Myra. Was there a way Tandor could have gott
en both Myra and herself pregnant, even though he was no longer a man?

  Yeah, that was wishful thinking. Admit it, woman, this man has got you by the scruff of the neck.

  Loriane rose, rubbing her belly.

  Now if Tandor would come back, she could send him out to get some disinfectant from the tent at the festival grounds.

  Unless . . . She eyed his traveller’s chest, which he had left open next to the bed. His thermals lay over the chest’s contents. Whenever he visited, she usually gave him a few things from her practice, to use on his travels. He might still have some disinfectant.

  She lifted the woollen underwear from the chest. There were clothes, neatly folded, and stacks of old books. A basket made of tough leaves unknown to the southern land contained an assortment of stoppered flasks, jars and boxes with foreign labels. She rummaged through the selection, recognising—she thought—ointment for cuts, syrup for upset stomachs and pills, but the latter were labelled in a language she didn’t recognise. By the skylights, he even had face paint and perfumes. Did men use such things in the northern lands? There was a large jar with a wooden stopper that she had seen many times before, and the sight of it, with Myra watching, made her blush. Tandor brought this jar to her bed at night. It contained a gel which, when rubbed across certain sensitive parts, made those parts much more sensitive and made certain activities more pleasurable. She tucked that one away quickly. But: no disinfectant.

  Tucked in the deep corner of the chest stood a jar made of clear glass with an elaborately-carved stopper. Clearly an item from an apothecary. The jar was heavy. The glass felt warm under her hands. There was pink fluid inside in which floated a fist-sized sac of soft flesh. A bundle of tube-like veins sprouted from the top, waving gently in the eerie bath.

  The sac pulsed of its own accord.

  Loriane stared at it, feeling sick. The pink sac was a human heart.

  What had Tandor said again? That Ruko was restored in return for something he had traded? His heart? The old king used to do things like that.