by Jo Spurrier
She craned her head to meet his eyes, but something in his face seemed to satisfy her, for she lay back with a sigh. ‘Any sign of trouble?’
‘No, none. It’s all quiet.’
‘Quiet as the grave,’ she muttered.
He could feel her power running high, though it was a jittery, thready thing, an iced-over stream rather than the deep, wide current he was used to. It made his nerves jangle in sympathy. His ribs itched and ached, and he scratched them absently before he realised that it wasn’t his sensation, but an echo from Sierra. There was no power behind it — at least, none that he could gather — but this close, he could feel the pinch of the stitches, and the dull sting of the quill in her side.
‘Do you want anything? Tea, some food …’
She shook her head. ‘No. I just want to be well again.’
‘Sirri, you need to rest. I know you don’t want to hear it. Believe me, when I was wounded I wanted to strangle anyone who said those cursed words, but it’s the truth. Rest and healing go hand in hand.’
‘I know,’ she growled, still plucking at the knotted fringe, ‘but I can’t. Every time I doze off, I think I feel them coming. I have to be ready.’
He started to reach for her hand, but the chair was too far away, the bed too wide. Instead, he shifted to sit beside her, kicking off his boots and stretching his long legs alongside hers, leaning on her pile of cushions as he caught her hand and held it. ‘By the Black Sun,’ he said, ‘there was a time I could have made you feel better. I wish I could do it now, I truly do.’
Her hand had grown tense and stiff as he pulled it away from the cushion.
‘Do … do you truly mean it, Issey?’
‘What? Of course I mean it. I wouldn’t lie to you, Sirri.’
‘Even if I’m feverish and ill, and you need me well again?’
He leant close, catching the perfumed scent of the soap she’d used to wash her hair. ‘Especially then.’ He heaved a sigh. ‘I wish we could go back to what we had. If I could wind back the months —’
She stirred against him. ‘Don’t say that. Fires Below, going through it once was bad enough. I couldn’t face doing it again.’
‘No, that’s not what I mean. Sirri …’
‘You told me. I remember. But …’ she trailed off. Her hand had grown tense again.
‘But what?’ he said.
She didn’t answer, and he leant forward to peer at her face, to see if she’d gone to sleep. No, her eyes were open, dark and shining in the lamplight. She met his gaze briefly and then flickered away.
‘You told me,’ she said, ‘but your words say one thing. Your face, your hands, your power … they say another. You said you forgave me, but you’re still angry, Isidro. I can feel it.’
‘I’m not …’ He broke off with a sigh. ‘I’m not angry at you. At the time I couldn’t think straight, I was out of my mind. You did what you had to do. Fires Below, if I could forgive Rasten for what he did, why wouldn’t I forgive you?’
‘But you are still angry. Don’t try to deny it, I can feel it in the way your heart’s beating.’
He looked down at her small form, swamped by cushions and furs. ‘You truly are feverish.’
‘Curse you, don’t change the subject.’
‘Alright, then. I am still angry. I just don’t know at what.’
‘If it’s not me and it’s not Rasten, then who?’
‘I don’t know. I just know that I’m still furious that I lost my arm, that I have this tainted power, that these cursed scars on my back still sting sometimes …’ That they tied me down and raped me, he thought, in the silence of his skull. ‘Maybe it’s Kell I’m still angry at.’
‘Maybe. That makes sense. I still hate him. Sometimes I sit back and think about how the axe felt, the sound his skull made when it hit … it helps, sometimes.’
No, that’s not right, Isidro thought, biting his lip. He never thought back to that moment, never called upon it for comfort. What did that mean? If it wasn’t Kell, then who was owed this bundle of fury beneath his heart?
‘Look, forget about him,’ he said, slipping an arm around her shoulders. She let her head tip against his shoulder, and her hair tickled the bare skin of his neck. ‘He doesn’t deserve any space in your thoughts. Think of something else, something calm and peaceful. There’s got to be something more worthy of your time.’
She sighed, softly. ‘You’ll think I’m a fool.’
‘I won’t, I swear.’
‘You remember the night you came to me after I joined your camp, when we had to flee with Rasten on our trail. You made me forget him, forget about all of it.’
He remembered. ‘We made each other forget,’ he whispered.
‘I was so afraid. At the time it was all I could think about. But now, looking back … what I remember is how it felt to have your arms around me.’
Her head was heavy on his shoulder, and her voice was growing softer, drowsy. ‘What about that night in the Spire?’ he said. ‘After the battle, when we were together again? You and me, Mira and Cam …’
‘Yes, by all the Gods, it felt so good. It felt like I could do anything. Issey …’
‘I knew it was rash, Sirri, I knew it was too soon, but I loved you then and I love you now. I’m sorry I haven’t shown it as I should.’
She made no reply, but she was warm and soft against him, her head lolling on his shoulder. Her breathing had deepened. She was asleep.
He kissed the top of her head and looked down at her, her small form swallowed up under the bulky furs. He tended to forget she was so small and so young. In his mind, she loomed as large as a mountain, as solid as the earth. The words he’d said so often — she’s tough, she can take it — they were true, he’d never deny it. But that wasn’t everything she was, and for too long he’d used it to tell himself that she couldn’t feel pain, or sorrow, or regret. He’d forgotten that when he first fell in love with this woman who’d blown into his life like a storm, he’d loved her softness as well as her strength.
He didn’t sleep, though he stayed there for some hours with her curled up against his side. In the end, it was the stiffness in his arm and shoulder that forced him from her bed. He couldn’t afford to have his one good arm laid up by spasming muscles when the attack came.
He slipped out through the curtains, and almost stepped on Alameda, curled up on a mattress-pad beyond the screen. She roused with the swiftness that only young folk could manage and gathered up her bed to take his place.
Everyone else was asleep. Cam and Mira were on one bed, Anoa and Ardamon on another, and they had weapons near to hand.
Isidro went back to the common room to free up his cramped muscles. A few mage-lanterns had been left glowing, and by their dim light he saw Rasten in the corner with the dogs.
He started to pace, rolling his shoulders to loosen them. He was weary, but not weary enough. When he closed his eyes, he saw her on the table, still and pale, with the bloody knife in her chest.
He could remember it so clearly now, what she’d meant to him in those long, dark days of winter. She’d promised him freedom, salvation, refuge — it had seemed too good to be true. They’d known each other for only a few short weeks, but what did that matter? It was no less real for being brief. And when she left …
It wasn’t just her, Isidro thought. Cam was lost, too. Everything we’d worked for was falling apart … The hope he’d dared to feel had crumbled into ash. The pain had been blinding. It cast him headlong into a black pit, as dark and cold as the mountain depths. It wasn’t Sierra’s fault, she’d made the best choice she could, but for a long time he’d hung the responsibility on her small shoulders. He’d been too blinded by pain to see that she was blameless.
Afterwards, he’d refused to see the scars she bore from it, to show her the compassion she deserved. For months he’d been mouthing those useless words, words with their own chill cruelty: She’s tough, she can take it. Why had it taken seeing her wit
h a knife between her ribs to break through the wall of ice he’d built between them?
He raised his hands to his face, forgetting for a moment that one of them was just a cold claw of iron.
‘Isidro?’
As a soft voice called out behind him, he spun to find Delphine’s door open. She stood in the doorway with yellow lamplight streaming around her, her face lost in shadows.
She came towards him on silent feet. ‘Is everything alright?’ she murmured. ‘Is it Sierra? Has she taken a turn for the worse?’
He shook his head. ‘She’s sleeping, at last.’
Delphine laid her hands upon his arm. There was ink on her fingers again. He was glad to see it. She didn’t seem like herself without ink stains somewhere on her skin. ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ she said. ‘But something’s bothering you.’
He glanced towards Rasten. All he meant by it was to check that their voices hadn’t woken him, but he saw at once that Delphine had misread his glance. She wrapped both small hands around his forearm. ‘Come on,’ she mouthed, drawing him back towards her rooms. ‘Come inside.’
He hadn’t been inside her rooms before. How had that happened? But of course he hadn’t. He’d been as cold and distant to her as he had been to Sierra.
Her rooms were comfortably appointed, with a pair of couches, a desk and shelves and a salvaged carpet on the floor. The doorway to the bedchamber was screened with an embroidered curtain. There was a box of stones lying on the desk, he noted, as Delphine closed the door. ‘It’s good of you to let him be here for Sierra’s sake,’ she said.
Isidro shook his head. ‘It’s not that, Delphi. He doesn’t bother me anymore.’
She tilted her head to study him, sceptical, and he sighed. ‘Fires Below, you used to know when I was lying. Can’t you do it still? I’m telling the truth.’
‘So you are.’ She blinked slowly, like a cat. ‘But something is. Bothering you, I mean.’
He settled onto a couch, rubbing his eyes. ‘You’re up late.’
She seemed to sag at that. ‘I suppose so. I couldn’t sleep. I was thinking about the other tight spots I’ve got myself out of …’
‘The enchantments you always carry,’ Isidro said, and she nodded.
‘They’ve saved me twice so far. I’ve taken a leaf out of Vasant’s book, and made myself a cache.’
He looked up to meet her eyes. ‘That’s a cursed good idea.’
‘I thought the chances of being able to reach it in a crisis seemed small, but since I couldn’t sleep anyway …’
‘You might be cut off, it’s always a risk. What if you made more than one? You could put one in the bedchambers for us, or out in the common room. The workrooms, too.’
Delphine nodded. ‘A job for tomorrow.’
She’d moved towards him when she closed the door, but now she’d halted in the middle of the room, hands clasped in front of her belly. It seemed an awkward thing to do, but then, abruptly, Isidro realised what he’d done in fobbing off her concern. ‘Oh, by all the Gods …’
She started forward again. ‘Issey.’
‘Delphi, I’m truly sorry, for everything I’ve done.’
She snorted. ‘Oh, and what have you done?’
‘What have I done? Delphi, I abandoned you in the ranges. I got you with child and I left you. As we marched back from the west, I kept as far from you as I could, and since Ilya was born, I’ve shirked my duty as a father. By all the Gods, back in the Spire, I … I used you to keep myself sane.’
She came towards him and settled her hands on his shoulders. ‘You say it like a confession. I’m not a fool, I knew you were still in love with Sierra. We talked about it, remember?’
‘I … to be honest, I can scarce recall that time.’
She laid a hand on his cheek. ‘I suppose that makes sense. You were in a bad way. Is that what’s bothering you? You feel you took advantage of me? Because I can say for a fact that you didn’t. If anything it was the other way around. Or is it that you strayed from the woman you loved? I didn’t think that’d be an issue for one of your folk, what with your marriage traditions and all.’
Isidro shook his head. It was probably underhanded by the usual measure, but Sierra would never blame him for it, not after she’d done the same with Rasten. ‘It’s not that.’
She sat beside him, her hands on his knee. ‘Then what?’
‘I … I don’t know, Delphi. I truly don’t know. I feel like I’ve been wearing armour for so long it’s grown into my skin. I want to go back to what we had — what I had with Sirri, with you. It’s like I can see it on the top of the next ridge, but I can’t find the trail that leads me there.’ He closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘When I talked to her, I remembered how she used to make me feel. I want that back, I’d give anything to have it back … and with you, too. When Sirri and Cam were gone, I felt like I’d lost myself, but you put me back on solid ground. I miss it, Delphi. I miss you.’
‘Issey, I’m right here.’ There were tears in her eyes. ‘And I’ll be here, when you’re ready. But you’re still healing. You’ve come such a long way, but it will take time … you have to be patient.’
He shook his head. ‘We don’t have any time left.’
She sighed. ‘Perhaps. It’s out of your control, either way. Don’t dwell on the past, and don’t fret over what’s been done. You did what you had to do to survive. Perhaps it wasn’t perfect, but there’s nothing you can do about that now. Even if you did fail, you can forgive yourself for it and move on. By the Good Goddess, you’ve forgiven Sierra, you’ve even forgiven Rasten, so why can’t you forgive yourself?’
He just stared at her. He felt hollow, drained, unable to speak or even think.
Delphine took him by the hand and tugged him to his feet. ‘Come on, Issey. You look exhausted, and you must be heartsick after what’s happened today. Come and lie down. You can’t stay on this couch, it’s not nearly long enough. Things will look better in the morning.’
He let her draw him to his feet, but then he snaked an arm around her shoulders and pulled her close, pressing her against him and dropping his head to bury his face in her stiff, dense curls.
Scant hours later, he came awake with his heart pounding.
He sat up in Delphine’s bed, looking around wildly. His skin prickled, and every hair on his body was standing on end.
Quietly, he slipped out of bed and began to dress.
Delphine woke as he was pulling on his boots and heaved herself up, rubbing her eyes. ‘Issey, what …?’
He shrugged into the shoulder-harness, buckling the straps around his stump. ‘Stay here,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Stay with Ilya.’ The baby was awake, too, snuffling in her cradle. ‘I’m just going to have a look around.’
Her eyes grew wide at that. The last time this had happened, Kell had come for him. As Isidro slipped out of the chamber, he glanced back to see her reaching for her boots.
He couldn’t have said what had awoken him, but all his nerves were sharp and jangling. The same sense that had roused him back on the eastwards march had a hand around his throat again.
Out in the main chamber, the air felt different, somehow prickling and alive. Isidro heard the huffing of the dogs’ breath, and the tic tic of their nails as they paced.
Then, he felt a stirring of the air and raised his hand, letting power flare around his forearm and fist.
‘It’s me,’ Rasten said, his voice the barest whisper. ‘Something wrong?’
‘What woke you?’ Isidro said.
‘You did. I felt your power flare … I think that’s what it was.’
‘And the dogs?’
They were both near the main door, and in the darkness, one of them voiced a soft growl.
‘Maybe it wasn’t you,’ Rasten murmured.
Isidro started towards the door. ‘Stay here,’ he said. ‘Guard the door. Rouse the others if I send word.’
He caught one of the hounds by the c
ollar and pulled it with him through the door, while Rasten summoned the other with a quiet word.
The guardroom was quiet, but crowded. Ardamon had doubled the guard, and as Isidro emerged they scrambled up to salute him. ‘Problem, sir?’
‘Any sign of trouble?’ Isidro asked.
The guard looked faintly bewildered. ‘No, sir. It’s been dead quiet.’
By Isidro’s side, the dog pricked its ears towards the other end of the chamber, and gave another low growl.
The men moved instantly to alert.
‘I need a squad of ten,’ Isidro said. ‘The rest of you, don’t move from this door.’
The captain designated the men with a sweep of his arm, and they formed up at Isidro’s heels. The moment he opened the door, the dog took off with a snarl, hackles up as it bolted into the darkness.
With a hasty curse, Isidro summoned a mage-light. ‘After it,’ he snapped, and took off at a run.
He could sense the intruder even without the dog’s echoing growl. There was power in the air, only a weak thread of it, but a trail sharp enough for his Sensitive’s senses. As he ran, he felt a tickle in his mind as Rasten made contact, watching and listening.
Then, up ahead in the darkness, there came a great thump and a man’s voice bellowed in pain. The growl changed tone. The dog had the intruder in its jaws, shaking him like a rat. Isidro felt a sudden blaze of heat through his shoulder, an echo of pain … and a current of power he couldn’t quite grasp. It slipped through his fingers like smoke.
The blood-red glow of Isidro’s mage-light crept ahead to show a man face down on the floor, the dog on his back, tearing at his shoulder.
At the sound of feet swiftly approaching, the figure went still, and Isidro felt power flare.
Watch out, Rasten hissed inside his head.
Isidro didn’t bother to reply — he just flung out his left hand and launched a bolt of power, a thin, fine thread that speared through the mage’s gathering power, and with a wrench Isidro stripped it away.
But he wasn’t fast enough. This was no untried novice. By the time he moved to counter, the enemy mage had already launched his attack. A burst of power hurled the dog from his back and boiled over, filling the passage with fire — or would have, if Isidro hadn’t stolen away half his power.
