by Joseph Lallo
“Quite likely.” Although she didn’t know this for sure. It wasn’t important. The future would bring whatever it would bring.
He blew out a breath.
Loriane asked again. “Would you want some?”
He nodded, once.
At that moment the door clanged. Loriane turned.
“Tandor!”
His hair was wet, with frozen chunks of ice, and hung down the sides of his face in dirty strings. A dark stain marked his cloak and blood had dried up in a scratch across his cheekbone.
He wasn’t looking at her, but staring at the young Knight.
“What are you doing here?” He spat the words out like broken teeth.
“Tandor,” Loriane protested. “That’s not how you treat—”
Tandor strode across the kitchen and grabbed young Knight by the collar of his cloak. “You let him escape!”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, sorcerer!” The Knight’s eyes bulged.
“Oh yes, you do, or you would not be sitting here with your face bloodied up. You let them out of that warehouse, didn’t you? And then you found that your friend wasn’t your friend anymore?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” the Knight shouted.
“Hey, no fighting in my kitchen!” Loriane yelled, but the men paid her no attention.
The Knight scrabbled for his belt. He pulled out a long metal stick and jammed the point in Tandor’s chest.
Tandor froze, eyeing the glittering crystal that pushed into his shirt.
The thing wasn’t sharp at all, but Tandor let the young man go, his eyes wide. “It was you with the sink?”
“It was me.” He let the staff sink ever so slightly.
Tandor’s eyes roamed the young man’s face. “Oh, I see.”
“I don’t see, Tandor,” Loriane said. “I don’t see anything at all apart from the fact that you’re bothering my patient—”
“Loriane, he is—”
“I don’t care who he is. The Healer’s Guild made me pledge that I would help every sick or injured person who comes to my door. Get out and make yourself useful. Go upstairs and see if you can talk some sense into that girl of yours.”
A brief smirk went over the young Knight’s face.
Tandor pulled the Knight’s collar tight with his golden pincer hand. “Don’t even dare say it.”
Loriane rolled her eyes.
Oh, why did men get so hung up about their dicks or lack thereof?
Tandor looked down. The Knight had the staff once more directed at his stomach. What was that thing?
“You think you’re so smart with that toy, don’t you?” Tandor snorted.
The Knight pressed his lips together. Blood was again running from the wound on his forehead.
“I’ll get you, sorcerer.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Tandor grabbed the young Knight’s wrist in his pincer hand. Pushed him back into the one of the posts that supported the sleeping shelves. He lazily withdrew a something from his pocket, a long metal barrel with a wooden handle. He pointed it at the Knight and poked the metal into the soft skin under his chin.
Loriane had only heard of the Chevakian powder guns, but she was sure this was such a thing.
The Knight’s eyes widened.
“You should have known that you can’t surprise me,” Tandor said.
The boy swallowed hard. He clutched his staff.
Tandor laughed. “Ah, we are a coward, aren’t we? Why don’t you go and tell your Knights that the game is over? The game is over for everyone.”
“Now stop this idiocy in my house!” Loriane yelled. “Tandor, leave him alone so I can treat him.”
Tandor laughed, defying the Knight to make another comment. He didn’t.
Loriane finished with the young man in silence, while Tandor leaned against the pillar. In a very demonstrative way, he took two bullets from his pocket, jackknifed open the barrel and slid the bullets into the magazine.
The young man gave him nervous glances. As soon as Loriane finished bandaging the wound, he jumped up.
Tandor clicked the barrel back into place and pointed the gun at the Knight’s back while he ran to the door.
The door shut.
He had forgotten his ichina.
Tandor laughed. “If all else fails, a Chevakian powder gun will kill. Bang, bang.”
Loriane whirled at him. “Tandor, are you crazy? What is this stupid behaviour about? That young man missed out on some important treatment because of you.”
He smiled, but that only made her fury greater. The Knight was an angry young man, who might do silly things without treatment.
“He’ll be fine.”
“How do you know that? What do you know anyway? Why shouldn’t he come back here with a bunch of Knights to question me? You haven’t lived in the city for years. Things have been different ever since Maraithe died. She had the Knights in hand, but Jevaithi is much too young. They don’t listen to her, and from what I’ve seen, they shelter her from the people. She hardly goes out, and the Knights just do whatever they want, so if they want to come back here and burn down my house, they will. I can tell you that. And it happens to people, I can tell you that, too. You know the merchant Merro—”
Tandor smiled. “Jevaithi is gone.” Then he started laughing. “Jevaithi is gone with that boy of yours. I saw them fly off on his eagle. Towards the mountains. Bye, bye.”
“Isandor?”
By the skylights, Tandor had gone mad.
“He was kicked out of the Knighthood for being Imperfect, to be imprisoned in the palace, but he escaped everyone, even me. He took Jevaithi from under their noses.”
Tandor laughed, the sound a strange shriek.
Loriane had never heard him laugh, not like this. “Tandor, what’s wrong with you?” He was telling lies, wasn’t he? He was crazy; something had flipped in his mind.
“What’s wrong, what’s wrong?” Tears ran down his cheeks. “We’re all going to die. That’s what’s wrong.”
Loriane’s heart thudded against her ribs, but she forced herself into calm.
“Of course we are going to die. Life is a terminal illness.” And you seem to suffer badly.
“Loriane.” He crossed the kitchen to her and scooped her in his arms. “Loriane, I love you.” He bent forward and pushed his mouth on hers. His tongue met hers, hot and passionate. “There. I’ve said it. I love you, I love you.”
Loriane pushed him away. “You’re drunk.” But she didn’t smell any liquor on his breath.
“Now you’re going to tell me what all this is about, or . . .”
“Or what?”
“It’ll be morning soon enough and I’ll have Knights on my doorstep, by which time you’re long gone. I need something to tell them. What happened? What did you do? What am I going say?”
“Loriane, calm down.”
“No, Tandor. I don’t understand why you had to threaten him. I don’t. You can’t just come in here to create problems for me.”
“Have I ever left you with a problem?”
“Are you kidding? My whole life is a problem of your making, starting with that baby you brought me. Who is Isandor, Tandor, why is he important to you and why have you never told me?”
“I mean a problem you can’t handle?”
She snorted. “One day this whole game of yours is going to fall apart. Whatever game you’re playing. And we’re all going to suffer for it.”
There was a scream from upstairs.
“By the skylights, Myra.”
Loriane thudded up to the sleeping shelf. Tandor remained halfway up the stairs.
Myra was on her hands and knees on the floor, rocking from side to side. She glanced up between sweat-soaked strands of hair.
“I hate you.” She spat out the words.
Loriane wasn’t sure who she meant. Both of them, pr
obably. Doubts about the father of the child re-surfaced. Tandor hung around Myra too much not to have involvement, and he still hadn’t told her why he had taken the girl with him, rather than hidden her somewhere else. He’d lied to her. The child was his after all.
Why, Tandor, why? She looked at his handsome profile in the glare from the stove. She loved him, she hated him. It was time for her to break with him, stop waiting for him to make sense to her.
“Tandor, stop whatever silly games you’re playing and give me a hand. Hold her.”
His eyes widened. “Hold her?”
“He’s not . . . holding . . . any part . . . of me,” Myra panted. Her voice was hoarse.
“Then sit still. I’m going to examine you, and if you hit me again, I’m going to belt you so hard your head is going to hurt worse than the rest of you. Understand?”
Myra nodded, but a pain took over. She rocked, and moaned and cried. Loraine washed her hands, cringing as her own belly tensed up. Stupid girl, by the time it came to the hard work, she would have no energy left.
“Girl, shut up. You’re not going to get that child out by screaming. Now sit still.” She crouched on the floor, awkward because of her own belly. Myra was crying.
She slid her hand inside the girl’s softness. The womb tensed up. Myra screamed.
“It hurts, it hurts.”
“Shut up. It’s not that bad.”
But then she probed with her fingers and felt that it was bad. By the skylights, she should have checked earlier.
“Tandor, do you have that sled and driver handy?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“The child is facing the wrong way. I need to take her to the palace.”
Tandor’s eyes widened. “The palace?”
In one hit, his face had lost its madness.
Chapter 25
FIRE LIT UP the sky. Flapping flames reached over the rooftops, spreading foul smoke in the air. People ran through the street, mere silhouettes in the dusky Newsun night. Some carried sticks as weapons, others had their faces covered.
Carro walked through the dark streets alone, cold air biting through his cloak. His face hurt, his muscles hurt, his head hurt. He’d fled Mistress Loriane’s house without the medicine, but he could hardly go back.
He was sure that the man in Mistress Loriane’s kitchen was the same he’d hunted earlier that day. Who was he, and what was he doing there? He might be dressed up as a noble, but this was no noble of the City of Glass. The man spoke with a Chevakian accent.
Carro knew he should find Rider Cornatan urgently and tell him of this man, but on the other hand . . . Mistress Loriane had said that ichina would help stop the confusing memories. Surely there would be some ichina at the medical post in the festival grounds. The post was closed, but it was only a tent and he could easily get in. Taking medicine he needed wasn’t stealing, was it? He’d rather no one else found out about it. It was a medicine for women and he had seen his sister prepare it many times. It never worked for her. But his sister was only his half-sister, wasn’t she? Born from a different breeder. And what was wrong with him didn’t have anything to do with a girl’s ability to conceive, did it? Or rather—by the skylights, Korinne. She had probably taken it and was now waiting until she and her father could come to his door to claim their prize. He didn’t want the care of a child. His Knight’s stipend would never pay for a house and a wife, and servants. A Knight couldn’t very well live in the Outer City either.
And he just didn’t, didn’t, want that sort of thing. Knights, especially Senior Knights, often paid families to look after their children, since most didn’t marry. However, they were from noble families and had money, and they had lineages and inheritances to look after. He was only Carro, and no one cared about any brats of his.
Then you should have thought about it before you acted. He could almost hear his father’s voice. His father was right, but his father was a jerk, and Carro would rather die than accept any help from the man.
Was that how he himself had come about? His father had been careless during the Newlight festival, but didn’t care, didn’t want him, got him anyway, and now Carro was about to do the same to a child of his? Rejecting a little boy whose only wish was to be liked?
A strange thought occurred to him: what if Isandor got Jevaithi pregnant? Isandor had no money at all; he didn’t even have a family. Oh, that would be priceless, with all the Knights drooling over her and all the speculation of who would father Jevaithi’s children. And then the Knights found she would have the child of a dirt-poor boy from the Outer City, an Imperfect at that. Hilarious.
Carro chuckled, then he started laughing. He laughed and laughed and couldn’t stop laughing.
A man stopped and asked if he was all right, but Carro couldn’t see him. The street, the people, the limpets, the orange sky above all blurred into streaks of light and dark. Tears of freezing water bit into his cheeks.
“Yes, yes, I’m all right,” he said and the man left.
But he wasn’t all right, wasn’t he? He was crazy, damaged, sick. A common Outer City healer could see that.
He moved through the streets with the flow of the crowd, under cover of darkness. The air resonated with angry voices. People looked at him from the corners of their eyes. Young men in black formed little groups and spoke to each other in low voices. In a street nearby people were shouting. In an alley between two limpets, he caught a glimpse of a blazing fire and lithe silhouettes running away from a patrol of Knights.
Carro jammed his hands in his pockets and bent his head, hoping not to attract any attention.
Who were these people coming out in support of the Imperfects? Why were there so many of them? Did this mean the entire Brotherhood of the Light and all their pupils supported Thilleians? That they were Thilleians?
He had read of the time before the uprising against the king, when the common people stirred against those who held all power. There had been hordes of looters in the streets, demanding for the king to come out of the palace. The people had lynched the king’s guards, hacked them to death and cut them up into pieces.
Something like that could easily happen again.
* * *
Carro slumps on the table. Rows and rows of numbers dance before his eyes. He could put his head on the book and sleep. All night, he’s been sitting here. His fingers are cramped, his toes frozen.
One mistake in his additions, and he can start over. The figures never add up. Income and expenditure never balance. Records are missing or incomplete. One complaint to his father, and another book is added to the pile. No dinner until he’s done.
He wishes that his father, like normal fathers, would hit him. Punishment by accountancy is cruel, slow, mind-numbing and in the unheated warehouse, incredibly cold. His hands hurt. His feet hurt and he is beyond shivering.
* * *
“Hey, watch out where you’re going!” a man shouted.
Someone bumped into Carro, a hard knock of a shoulder against his upper arm. Carro just stood there, gulping breath.
Carro mumbled an apology, rubbing his arm. One way or another, he must get the ichina to stop those spells.
If he left it too long, he was going to be expelled from the Knighthood, and he would have no other option than to go back to his family.
He felt himself sliding into another vision and had to steady himself against a lamp post. It was getting so bad recently. He was mad, not fit for duty. He was—
“Hey. Carro, isn’t it?”
Carro looked up, into the grey eyes of one of Rider Cornatan’s private hunters, Farey. He was out of uniform, wearing a cloak as dark and sleek as his hair. He raised his eyebrows at the bandage on Carro’s face.
“I . . . I was looking for my patrol,” Carro stammered, his tongue feeling like an overcooked piece of meat. He was still struggling to hold onto the present.
The eyebrows rose further.
Carr
o squirmed. This man had the ability to make you feel uneasy without saying anything. He added, “They fled.”
“Real brave hearts, huh?”
Carro nodded, and looked aside. He knew what Farey would think of him: weak, unfit to command even a bunch of Apprentices. He had to punish the lot of them, and punish them hard.
“We . . . encountered some enemies . . . invisible ones.” It seemed such a lame story, at least when facing this strange and very unnerving man.
“Ah.”
It was too dark, but Carro thought a look of bemusement crossed Farey’s face. His eyes glittered with mirth. Something in his smile made Carro shiver, not because he was cold, but because . . .
Both times when he had been to Rider Cornatan’s bathroom, there had been more men than women, and both times, he felt the hunters considered Korinne a floozy who didn’t belong there, and who was merely a plaything for a child.
Real Knights didn’t play with girls, they played with other men.
Carro’s heart thudded. What had Farey come to ask him?
“I’ll . . . have to punish my patrol for running away.”
“Yes.”
“What about you?” He barely knew what he was saying. All he could see were Farey’s grey eyes, intense and amused.
“My missions are always simple.”
“Oh?”
“I was looking for you.”
Carro’s heart jumped. He saw Farey in Rider Cornatan’s bathroom, his lean and muscled chest, his olive skin—
“I was asked to save your arse, and get you out of here before those riots blow up.”
* * *
A nursemaid.
Farey had come as nursemaid. Rider Cornatan thought he needed a minder. He thought Carro was soft; Farey thought Carro was soft.
Carro paced in the empty hall, up, down, past the pathetic members of his patrol, whom he had dragged out of the dormitory.
He was still shaking from his encounter with Farey and the flight back through the freezing night air. He was shaking with anger, at himself, at his stupidity, at everyone for playing games with him.
“You stupid idiots,” he yelled. “You left your commanding officer like a bunch of screaming girls.”
