by Jo Spurrier
That’s not the point, Isidro thought.
‘Isidro … you cannot help what has befallen you. You have done your best.’
She laid a hand on his arm, and at that touch, the power building within him boiled over. He tried to clamp down on it, but it was a futile effort — between the tension in his muscles and the harsh jangling of his nerves, he stood no chance. He jerked back as power flowed through him like molten glass and spilled from his hand, a swarm of black serpent-like strands, tinged with bloody red as they swarmed up his arm.
Rhia threw herself back with a yelp of sudden fright, her eyes growing wide. With a silent curse, Isidro tried to reel it in, but clenching his fist only gave it more strength.
Power rose in his throat, threatening to choke him. Even if he could have found the words to explain himself, he knew he was past speaking. Instead he turned on his heel and left, kicking the door open and sending it bouncing off the wall.
In the hall beyond he almost walked into Sierra — she must have felt his power flare. She gave him a wide-eyed look, but stepped back as he stalked outside into the chill winter air.
It took him hours to bring his power back under control. He found a sheltered spot beyond the edge of the village and tried to meditate as Delphine had taught him, but his power was like a vicious beast on a chain, full of boundless energy that craved release. It set steam rising from the damp rocks around him, and wilted the winter grass at his feet. By the time he tamed it, the sun was sinking and he was surrounded by twenty feet of scorched earth and blackened grass.
It left him exhausted, but he was still not game to go back to Cam’s cottage, not until he heard footsteps coming towards him through the gloom. ‘Issey?’
It was Cam’s voice drifting through the air. Isidro turned to find him with one of Delphine’s lanterns hanging from his fist. Isidro didn’t realise how stiff he was until he tried to move.
‘Are you going to sit out here all night?’ Cam said.
The idea had a certain appeal. He wouldn’t have to face Rhia again, or Delphine. ‘It’s a thought,’ he said.
Cam came around the section of broken wall and settled beside him. ‘Rhia’s upset. She didn’t realise she was pushing you too hard.’
‘She wasn’t to know what it’d do. Fires Below, I never know myself what’ll set it off.’
‘Is it getting any better?’ Cam asked.
‘Hard to say. The spills are less frequent now, but they’re stronger.’ He rubbed at the back of his neck, and sighed. ‘And I’ve run out and left you to deal with this news …’
‘Don’t worry about it. You need to look after yourself.’
Isidro tossed his head with a hiss of annoyance. ‘What’s the situation?’
‘This Makaio claims he doesn’t want Akhara to have Ricalan’s forests and mines. It seems the empire can’t meet its own appetites, and his nation has been filling the gap. But if Akhara can keep our reserves …’
Isidro nodded. ‘That makes sense. Or it’s a plausible lie, at least. Do you believe them?’
Cam paused. ‘Sirri thinks they’re playing us.’
‘She might be right.’
‘Mm. The emissary offered to set up a meeting. If they mean to keep Mira and the others as hostages, they’re taking a cursed big risk letting Sirri get close.’
‘Unless they have a plan to deal with her, too.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So what are you going to do?’
Cam gazed off into the dark fields around him. ‘I set up the meeting. We’ve arranged to meet in two days on the coast. I said we’d move to the next village tomorrow and set out for the meeting the day after, but I mean to ride straight there. If he’s playing us, we’ll take him by surprise.’
‘If he’s deceiving us, Mira and the others won’t be there.’
‘True, but it seems we’ll have a way to know,’ Cam said, and pulled something out of his sash — a stone the size of a hen’s egg, roughly carved and set in a metal fitting with a chain. ‘One of Delphine’s old students defected and joined Mira’s service, and she made this for Rhia to pass on to us. Delphine says it’s some kind of homing device paired with a stone the other lass carries. When it’s activated, it ought to lead us to her like a game of blind man’s bluff. If Mira and the others are being kept elsewhere when Makaio comes to meet with us, we’ll know.’
Isidro took the stone. He could feel the power in it, but only just. ‘That must be Alameda,’ he said. ‘She always was a clever one.’
‘That’s what Delphi said.’
Isidro handed it back. Just like Mira to have a fallback plan. ‘And if this prince takes offence?’
Cam scowled. ‘If he expects us to blindly trust a man we’ve never met, who has the lives of Mira and my son in his hands, then he’s too great a fool to be any good to us anyway. If he’s a reasonable sort, he’ll understand.’
‘Sounds fair. It’s all in place, then?’
‘Mm. I sent a rider ahead to have fresh horses waiting for us. Delphi will have to halt at that point — she can’t make that distance in her condition. I’m leaving Madric and a contingent of mages as well as a good number of men to guard her.’
Isidro nodded.
‘I wanted to wait for you to come back before I set it all up, Issey, but time was running short —’
‘You didn’t need me. Just as well, really. Lately I’m not exactly reliable.’
Cam was silent at that. ‘I’d rather have had you there, all the same,’ he said finally. ‘But you do what you need to do, Issey, and the rest of us will manage.’
Isidro scraped his hand through his hair. ‘By the Black Sun, I’m so sick of this, Cam. I just want to be back to normal. I hate leaving you to handle everything on your own. Scaring Rhia like that. Leaving Delphine to deal with the baby by herself. It’s not good enough. I … I’m letting everyone down.’
‘The hell you are. Look, this last year’s been cursed hard on you —’
‘It’s been hard on all of us!’
‘You more than most.’
Isidro looked down at his left hand resting on his knee, and the vacancy where the right should have been. ‘I’m never there when you need me. I got Delphi with child and left her to fend for herself. And Sirri … Sirri …’ When he thought of her, the words wouldn’t come, but he had to swallow hard against the lump in his throat. He still couldn’t decide how he felt about her. It changed too much from day to day, from moment to moment. Sometimes he remembered how it felt to wrap his arms around her and feel her power rise up within her. But sometimes he could only think of the day he’d woken to learn that she’d abandoned them all to give herself to Rasten, and cursed near led Cam to his death in doing so. He knew why she’d done it, now — he’d made the same choice when he’d let Kell capture him, but that knowledge didn’t lessen the pain he’d felt on finding her gone, on realising that he’d failed to protect her from what she’d endured at Kell’s hands. It didn’t ease the sense of abandonment.
And then he’d abandoned her in turn. Those dark days in the Spire had been an agony of despair, when the world turned bleak and hopeless and the future offered only pain. The only way he could deal with it was to cut himself off, to turn the pain into anger and sever the ties between them. There was nothing he could have done to help her, and so he’d simply abandoned her to her fate.
And then, after Delphine had given all she had, to keep him afloat, he’d done the same to her.
‘She’s been through a lot, too,’ Cam said, softly. ‘Her wounds are still healing, same as yours.’
Isidro wrapped his hand around a chunk of rock in the broken wall, and squeezed it until his knuckles ached. ‘I loved her so much, but after she left, I couldn’t bear it, and I made myself turn away. I want to go back, Cam, but I just can’t find the path. Every turn I take makes me more lost. I’ve abandoned everyone I care about, everyone who cares for me … what kind of a man does that?’
Cam sighed.
‘Listen, it’s … it’s like being lost in a snowstorm. You can call for your friends, search for them in the ice and the wind, but the time comes when you’ll die if you stay out there any longer. Sometimes, all you can do is find shelter and wait it out. You have to save your own hide, and let others worry about saving theirs.’
‘But the storm’s past now. It’s been past for months.’
Cam clapped him on the shoulder. ‘No. Since you woke up for the battle, it’s been more like weeks, and the storm raged for the better part of a year. You’re expecting too much, too soon, Issey. Ever since this started last winter, you’ve never truly had a chance to recover. It’s caught up with you at last, that’s all. Don’t be so cursed hard on yourself. Now, come back to the house and have something to eat. We’ll be up and on the road at first light.’
Delphine was already in her furs when they returned — she tired easily these days, with her time drawing near. Sierra was lounging on her own bed, reading a letter from Mira. She barely glanced up when they returned and she spent a long time simply staring at the page without moving.
To assuage his guilt, Isidro sat up through the evening, reading through the envoy’s letters and missives. Mira’s letter went through everything that had brought her to Makaio’s hospitality, and Isidro detected no hint of suspicion in her words. That was reassuring — Mira was a politician born and bred, and anyone so well trained in deception would pick it up in others.
When he retired, long after the others were asleep, he snuffed the lamps and made a small mage-light to guide him, only to find that someone had left a sack atop his blankets. He was mystified by it until he reached inside and found a collection of leather straps, and felt a fresh flush of guilt. He’d spoken to the harness-maker only a few days before — the fellow must have taken time away from his other duties to get the work done. Or used his free time, which was worse. It was just a whim, too, far less important than maintaining the gear the army relied on. Isidro shoved it deep into his packs, along with the other components he’d been tinkering with since his mind came back to him in the blood-soaked hills.
Exhausted by the hours spent taming his power, Isidro slept easily at first, only to find himself pulled inexplicably awake in the early hours of the morning.
People were moving around outside, readying horses and gear for the day’s march. He went to the outhouse and on his way back inside glanced up at the sky to measure the turning of the stars. Morning was approaching — they’d be on the road in a few hours.
He tried to sleep, but it wouldn’t come, and Isidro found that his mind and eyes kept tracking to his packs and the harness he’d shoved there.
He gritted his teeth, and rolled away from it. He shouldn’t have indulged himself on the wretched thing. He should have spent the time and effort on mastering his power, on being the right-hand man that Cam needed.
Isidro thumped his pillow. Now, if he didn’t use it, it’d be a waste of materials as well as time.
In the pit of his belly, coiling around his spine, his power began to seethe and rise, reacting once again to his tension and anger. He drew a deep breath, and started to push it down. No, he told himself, not now. We can’t afford to delay half a day while I wrestle with the beast again.
Cursing, he sat up and reached for his bags. He pulled out the two sacks, the one with the harness and the other with the rest of his cobbled-together device, and took them through to another room. Inside, he slid the bolt across to lock the door, and then tipped out the contents of his sacks.
The harness-maker had done well. The leather was fine and supple, the stitching strong. It made a figure-eight of leather straps, joined with a brass ring. One side was a plain loop, but the other was augmented with a y-shaped fitting cut from the same supple leather, the end of which buckled onto a cuff lined with soft buckskin.
From the other sack, Isidro took a rough contraption of metal and hardened leather. At one end was a split hook joined by a hinge with a lever and a stout spring. The metal shaft below it was covered with a sleeve of hardened leather, ending with a cuff that fastened with a buckle and tongue. The whole thing was cobbled together out of scraps and he’d sewn the buckle himself, with his one good hand and a thread of power. It was that slow and frustrating process that had convinced him to talk to the harness-maker.
Isidro pulled one final component from the sack — a bowstring chewed by rats at one end. One of the archers had discarded it, and he’d snatched it up when no one was looking. Then, he drew a deep breath and pulled off his shirt.
He passed the sound end of the bowstring through the harness’ ring and looped the cord through it. Then, he buckled the figure-eight around his shoulders with the ring at his back. The plain loop passed under his left arm, while the one with the cuff went around his right. He buckled the cuff around his bicep and then reached for the metal contraption.
He pushed his stump into the cuff and winced as the scar protested, and then gritted his teeth to pull the straps tight. There was not enough of his arm left below the elbow for the device to sit securely, especially as heavy as it was, and he’d attached two more straps to the cuff, each one hinged with a small brass ring. Two buckles on the upper cuff received the straps, and transferred the weight of the device to his upper arm and the shoulder harness.
Once the buckles were fastened, Isidro made an experimental swing of the arm. It felt very strange; clumsy and unwieldy.
The last thing was to attach the bowstring. It took some contortion, and in the end he grabbed the thing with his left hand and lifted it over his head to thread it through a loop on the back of the harness and then another on the upper cuff. Two more took it across the leather sleeve, down towards the hand, and then he had to pull it through a small hole at the tip of the lever. But the hole was too small to thread it easily, the frayed end of the bowstring unravelled as he tried to thread it through. As he fumbled and dropped the string with a curse, he heard someone pause in the hall outside.
‘Issey?’
Isidro went very still. That was Cam’s voice. A hand tried the door, and the bolt rattled against the housing.
He held still for a long moment before reaching out with a sigh to open the door.
Cam slipped inside, frowning. ‘I wondered where you’d got to.’
‘Still checking up on me, are you?’
‘Of course. I —’ Cam broke off when he saw the contraption, and his eyes grew wide.
Isidro clenched his teeth. Part of him felt ashamed by it — shouldn’t he just accept the hand was lost? It was a crude device, pathetic, really. The only reason he’d made the cursed thing was because once the idea had struck him, the only way to get it out of his head was to do something with it.
Cam gave a low whistle, and circled around him to inspect the whole setup. ‘I’d wondered what the harness-maker had dropped off. Did you come up with it yourself?’
‘Not exactly. One of those books Delphine found had a sketch. Once I saw it I couldn’t stop thinking about it.’
‘Does it work?’ Cam said.
‘Can’t tell yet. Need to get this blasted cable through the lever …’ He tried to raise the thing to show him, but it was too heavy. The short stump simply didn’t allow him enough leverage. Isidro felt his heart sinking as he lifted it with his left hand to show Cam the thumb-lever. Perhaps it wouldn’t work, after all. But then, he’d suspected from the first that it was a waste of time.
Cam snatched up the end of the string and peered at the lever. ‘Alright, then.’ He cut off the rat-chewed end, licked his fingertips to moisten it to a point, and threaded it through the hole. ‘How tight does it need to be?’
‘I … I’m not sure.’
After some trial and error they narrowed it down — as Isidro extended the arm, the string pulled taut and hauled back on the thumb-lever, forcing the two arms of the split hook open. By pulling the arm back in, the tension was released and the spring pulled the two hooks closed again.
; At first, Isidro was so focused on seeing the device open and close that he didn’t notice he could flex the elbow without much strain — the bowstring was taking some of the weight, he realised, transferring it to the harness around his shoulders.
Cam tied off the string and cropped the excess away, and Isidro picked up his shirt. The linen cloth dangled effortlessly between the two hooks. It took him a moment to figure out how to release it again, until at last by twisting his torso and flexing his shoulders he made the hooks open in front of his face. ‘By the Black Sun,’ he said, ‘it works!’
Cam clapped him on the shoulder. ‘Of course it does. Anything you put your mind to is bound to come together. Let’s get some breakfast. I want to be on the road in an hour.’
Isidro looked down at the shirt in his hand, and the harness across his shoulders. He’d only thought to try the thing out. He hadn’t meant to wear it. But … it worked. It was only an experiment, a whim. He’d never imagined wearing it in front of others, explaining it to them …
But who said he had to explain a thing? He was the king’s brother, after all, and since he’d returned to his senses he’d become known for being volatile and erratic. No one outside his own household would dare question him. Isidro shifted his grip to the hem of his shirt, and shook it out ready to pull on over his head.
‘Alright,’ he said to Cam. ‘Let’s go find your wife and son.’
When her wagon bumped to a stop, Delphine heaved herself out of her nest of cushions and called for Nikala, her midwife and maidservant. The woman clambered over the back of the driver’s bench to help Delphine to her feet. ‘What do you wish, madame?’
‘I need to talk to Cam. Help me down, please.’
With Nikala on one side and the driver on the other, Delphine clambered down into the muddy road.
Her back was a mass of knots from the bumping of the rutted roads. Her hips ached too, but not as badly as they had when she’d last tried to ride in a saddle. The past few days, before they’d set up this wagon with its padding and oilcloth cover against the rain, Sierra had rode by her side every step of the way, taking the pain with a constant touch.
