by Lucy Hounsom
‘These carts,’ Kyndra said quietly, struck by the obvious. ‘Is there space to hide, say, a person?’
Irilin smiled slowly. ‘Why don’t we wait and see?’
While Irilin covertly checked on the Murtans’ progress as they loaded the cart, Kyndra leaned against the black stone and wondered what she would do when she reached the town. Her few coins wouldn’t buy her a cabin on an airship, but perhaps there were caravans heading east who’d let her work for food and passage.
‘Where will you go?’ Irilin whispered.
‘Home,’ Kyndra answered immediately. ‘Somehow.’
Irilin reached into her pocket and pulled out a small bag. ‘Here,’ she said, handing it to Kyndra, ‘you’ll need this.’
Kyndra squeezed the bag and metal clinked. ‘Iri,’ she said, staring at the young woman with wide eyes. ‘You can’t give me this.’
‘I thought I just did.’ The novice folded her arms. ‘Take it, Kyn. Buy some clothes as soon as you can. You look like a beggar under those robes and you’ll have to leave them behind here.’
‘Iri, I can’t take your money.’
‘Don’t be silly. I’ll be given more next month.’ She grinned. ‘Anyway, what would Shika and Gareth say if they found out I’d let you go off with nothing?’
Kyndra sighed. ‘You’re going to have to tell them goodbye from me.’ She glanced down at the bag of coins and then up at the young woman. ‘Thank you, Iri,’ she said sincerely. ‘For everything.’
With Irilin’s good luck ringing in her ears – luck she couldn’t believe was still with her – Kyndra crouched under the cart’s tarpaulin, uncomfortably squashed between small sacks of gold ore. There was probably enough here to rebuild Brenwym twice over and the thought had crossed her mind to stash a few nuggets away. But she wasn’t a thief, she told herself, firmly squashing the temptation. And besides, she was richer than she’d ever been in her life, thanks to Iri. As if to punish her for being greedy, the cart’s wooden wheels jolted over every stone and Kyndra winced, feeling wholly like the ragged stowaway she was.
She could only guess at the cart’s progress. At first it trundled upwards at a steep angle, leaning always to the right. Then – when she couldn’t take any more of being crushed by a particularly knobbly sack – it finally levelled out. She didn’t know when they crossed the chasm, or when they reached the outlying farms. But when the tarpaulin grew sweltering under the sun, Kyndra knew that they’d left the shadow of Naris behind.
And though she was hot, thirsty and cramped, it was as if a fist uncurled from around her heart, letting the blood flow freely for the first time. She licked the sweat from her top lip and smiled.
Perhaps another half-hour passed before the cart rocked to a halt. Kyndra listened, but all she could hear were the sundry dealings of townsfolk. Where was the driver? She waited, but no hand came to unhook the tarpaulin. Kyndra took a chance and lifted up a corner. She was in a small, paved courtyard, enclosed on three sides by the stout Murtan buildings she remembered. Two doors stood open, black under the sun’s glare. It was a late, bright afternoon, though clouds were massing in the south.
Muscles knotted and tingling unpleasantly, Kyndra eased out of the cart. No sooner had she gained her feet than a shout struck the stone courtyard and a man darted from one of the doorways. Kyndra didn’t stop to think. Clutching Irilin’s money bag, she broke into a run, hoping she looked like nothing more than a beggar on the scrounge.
Unfortunately, in neat, prosperous Murta, beggars were not a common sight. Dressed in rags that barely covered her healing flesh, Kyndra knew she cut a conspicuous figure. Despite Irilin’s advice, she couldn’t bring herself to waste coins on clothes, especially not when she saw an airship tied up at the dock. Kyndra weighed the money bag, wondering whether it might buy her a swift passage out of here. It wouldn’t be long before the Wielders discovered her missing. She quickened her pace.
The streets of Murta welcomed her with smells of frying meat, wood smoke, tar and the distinctive musk of livestock. Occasionally she caught the fresh, subtle scent of new leaves. She tried to keep to the smaller lanes, but it seemed everyone’s door was open. A skinny man with a broom was doing his best to chivvy some hens, and half a dozen children cluttered the other side of the path with a game. Kyndra opened her mouth to ask them to move, but after several startled glances that took in her battered appearance, they darted to one side, eyes downcast.
By the time she reached the steps to the airship dock, she was sweating and her heart thumped a protest in her chest. Kyndra forced herself to climb slowly, ignoring the stares she attracted. Men and women briskly passed her and a procession of handcarts creaked up a wooden slope to her left. The dock was laden with produce, some spilling out of barrels and sacks. Kyndra looked automatically for the balls of wool she’d seen in Sky Port East, but it didn’t seem that the Valleys had made it this far west. She smiled at the airship bumping gently in its berth – it looked just like the barge Argat had so disdained.
Scanning the deck for a quartermaster, Kyndra spotted a boy. He stood with his back to the railing, staring out at the country east of town. Kyndra moved closer. The boy wore dark woollen trousers – unsuitable in this sun – a shirt and short boots. His hair was blond and hung to his shoulders, but the wind whipped it up in a tangle of strands. Kyndra stopped, the breath catching in her throat.
As if sensing the gaze on the back of his head, the boy turned. Blue eyes blinked at Kyndra before they widened, mimicking the shape of the boy’s astonished mouth.
The Valleys had made it west after all. She was looking at Jhren.
23
Shock rooted Kyndra to the spot. She couldn’t stop staring at the boy who stood just steps away, dressed in those familiar Dales clothes. Jhren, too, stood unmoving and it seemed an age passed before Kyndra managed to cross the space between them.
Jhren made a strangled, incredulous sound. Still staring, he raised his hand dream-slow above the rail and Kyndra reached out and took it. ‘How?’ Jhren said and then he laughed. ‘I can’t believe it.’
Kyndra found herself laughing too. Jhren’s mirth caught her up just as it always had done and for a moment nothing between them had changed. They could have been back in the cellars of The Nomos or crouching behind Ashley Gigg’s house, up to their usual tricks, or racing – afterwards – cackling over the fields, drunk on their own daring.
Then the music of the dock reached a natural crescendo and broke the illusion. Kyndra stared at Jhren with the shadow of all that had happened in her eyes and pulled her hand back.
‘I’m here on trader’s business,’ Jhren said a touch importantly. Then he sobered. ‘The Breaking’s disrupted trade from Sky Port North to the Eversea Isles. It wasn’t just Brenwym that got hit. So many people have poured into the capital that the Assembly are thinking of closing the gates.’ The speech had the ring of repetition about it. ‘We’ve been scouting out new markets,’ Jhren continued, ‘and when we heard talk of a town that imports nearly everything, Aunt Hanna wanted to make some enquiries.’ He blinked and seemed to take in her battered appearance for the first time. ‘You look terrible. What happened to you?’
Kyndra’s initial tide of shock had receded, leaving behind a jumble of feelings. ‘Jhren,’ she began and saw a ripple cross her friend’s face. ‘Sorry,’ she amended hastily, ‘Huran—’
‘I prefer Jhren,’ the boy said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. He didn’t look at her.
‘Oh. I thought that—’
‘Everyone calls me Huran now,’ Jhren said a touch bitterly. ‘It was just odd, hearing you speak my name again.’
Kyndra stared at him, picturing a blond-haired boy coming from a tent crying, ‘I am Huran!’ She remembered Jhren’s delight, his shining eyes, his pride. What had happened to strip that away?
‘Things have changed since you left,’ Jhren said.
‘Are Reena and Jarand … ?’ Kyndra faltered as the smile withered on Jhr
en’s face.
‘Fine,’ Jhren said shortly. He gave her a sidelong look. ‘But Brenwym was burned to the ground. There’s nothing left.’
Kyndra swallowed the pain his news caused her. She’d seen the fires for herself. Feeling a prickle between her shoulders, she turned, but there was no one watching. New urgency seized her. ‘Jhren,’ she said, leaning in closer, ‘help me get away from here.’
‘Why did you do it, Kyndra?’ Jhren spoke with a slow despair that sent a chill through her blood. ‘Why did you break the Relic? Why did you run away?’
‘I didn’t,’ Kyndra said. ‘You were there, weren’t you? You saw what happened.’
‘I saw you go with that witch,’ Jhren said, his face darkening. ‘I saw you leave your parents as they stood watching your home burn.’
‘Then you must know that Brégenne healed—’ Kyndra broke off. She didn’t have time for this. ‘Please, Jhren. I can explain everything later, once we’re away.’
‘No,’ Jhren said. His hands shook, as if they wanted to ball into fists. ‘You have no idea what it’s like now, what you’ve done. Our home is gone, and it’s because of you.’ Something glittered in the corners of his eyes, tears or rage, Kyndra didn’t know. She stared at Jhren, stunned, ice creeping through her at his words.
‘Is that what you believe?’ she asked eventually. ‘Is that what everyone thinks?’
‘Are you saying it’s not true?’
Words tumbled inside her, words of denial, of anger. There were so many, she couldn’t speak them – each wanted to be the first out of her mouth and they tripped each other up in their efforts. Beneath the silence that ensued from this soundless struggle, the ice worked through her. Why deny it? Jhren was right. She had broken the Relic and she had run away. No matter that neither was the complete truth. She looked at the boy who was once her best friend, unable to speak.
‘I thought so,’ Jhren said. Sadness tempered the disgust in his voice. ‘I don’t pretend to understand why you did it, Kyndra. I know those people stood against you, but you didn’t have to run.’ He met her eyes. ‘You didn’t have to run.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Kyndra said quietly. A peculiar emptiness drained her of feeling and she began to see a chasm between them, like the one that separated Naris from the world. She stood on one side, Jhren on the other. Perhaps Jhren saw it too and that was the source of his sadness.
‘Is this about your father?’ the boy asked suddenly.
‘What?’
Jhren lifted an arm, swung it at Murta. ‘This … whatever this is. Whatever you’re doing here.’
It was the last question Kyndra expected. ‘Why would you say that?’ she asked, perplexed. ‘I never knew my father.’
‘Which is why you’re here,’ Jhren finished. ‘You’re of age now. Why wouldn’t you want to know what became of him?’
Kyndra shook her head, feeling like the whole conversation was happening to someone else. ‘I don’t care what became of him,’ she snapped. ‘Jarand’s my father now. And I don’t have time to talk, Jhren. I need to go.’
Jhren’s eyes narrowed. ‘Why? What have you done?’
‘It’s too long a story. When does this ship leave?’
‘You’re not getting on this ship.’
Kyndra took a step forward. ‘It’s up to the captain,’ she said, raising her bag of money. ‘And I doubt he would turn down business.’
‘I said no.’ Jhren seized her arm. She flinched in his grip, remembering their quarrel on the stairs. Jhren was breathing heavily. The boyish ugliness in his face didn’t suit him and Kyndra had never seen it there before.
‘Why?’ she asked, shooting another anxious glance over her shoulder. ‘I want to come home. Isn’t that what you want too?’
Jhren gazed at her. There was something else now, something in his look besides bitterness. ‘No,’ he said slowly, letting go of her. ‘That’s not what I want.’ He paused. ‘It’s not what Colta wants.’
Kyndra felt that familiar stab of betrayal. ‘How do you know what she wants?’
‘Because we’re to be married. When I return.’
The world slowed, so that Jhren’s words hung against a still backdrop. ‘What?’ Kyndra said.
‘You heard me.’
The present returned, so swiftly, so vividly that Kyndra’s head spun. She put a hand on the dock’s railing. ‘It hasn’t even been two months,’ she heard herself say.
‘You don’t know what it was like for Colta, losing her Inheritance. It meant everything to her. For a while I was scared she would go off alone and I would never see her again.’ Jhren looked once more to the east, as if his eyes could penetrate the leagues that separated him from the Valleys. ‘I couldn’t let that happen.’
‘So she … so she said yes?’
Jhren returned his gaze to Kyndra’s face and nodded.
Kyndra felt cold. It wasn’t the rising wind that chilled her, though it blew straight through her ragged clothes. She realized now that a part of her had always believed she might marry Jhren one day. She remembered him that afternoon on the stairs, offering her a future. She had shaken him off, furious that he saw her as helpless. But what if she hadn’t? What if she’d let him speak? Would he perhaps have ended the conversation on one knee – and what if she’d said yes?
Kyndra covered her face with her hands and squeezed her eyes shut. All these years and she hadn’t seen it. I don’t care about Colta, he’d said before she ran from him. Jhren had loved her, she had rejected him and Colta – consumed, perhaps, with jealousy – had denounced her to the town.
But Colta need not be jealous any more. Jhren was hers. This was the real reason he wanted to stop Kyndra going home.
‘Jhren,’ she said, dropping her hands. ‘Please let me come back with you. You can marry Colta. I won’t interfere.’
Jhren’s cheeks flushed. ‘I can marry Colta?’ There were tears in his voice. ‘How can you say that to me? I don’t need your permission. I don’t need you to tell me—’
‘I’m sorry, Jhren,’ Kyndra interrupted. ‘Please. I don’t have much time. They’re coming for me.’
Jhren opened his mouth to retort, but the words never arrived. Instead his gaze shifted to stare at something beyond her.
Kyndra spun around. A dark figure, cloaked and hooded, strode across the dock, scattering Murtans like a game of pins. The cloak billowed out in the wind, revealing familiar golden robes beneath. Women gasped and yanked children away by their collars. Grown men stumbled back, arms raised as if to ward off a demon.
Panic took Kyndra. She wouldn’t go back there, not now, not when escape was so close. She could still get away before the Wielder saw her. She could hide aboard the ship. She launched herself at the rail, hooked one leg over it and swung the other off the dock. It was at this point – frightened, desperate and only precariously balanced – that Jhren pushed her.
She could see black rock. Black rock, a cloak’s hem and boot heels moving steadily back and forth. She was being carried, slung over someone’s shoulder like a sack of grain. One of her wrists hurt, but the pain in the back of her head was worse. She reached up and gingerly touched the spot. Already an alarmingly large lump swelled beneath her hair.
‘As long as you’re awake,’ said a voice tersely, ‘you can walk.’
Kyndra’s feet met solid ground and her head gave an angry throb. Memories were returning, but not fast enough. It took her several long, befuddled moments to realize that she was standing on the bridge that spanned the chasm to Naris and looking at Nediah. And several more to realize exactly what that meant.
‘No,’ Kyndra gasped, once again in the cold shadow of the mountain. She made to turn back, but Nediah caught her.
‘Don’t make me use it,’ the Wielder growled. ‘I don’t want to restrain you, but if you try to run off, I will.’
‘Why, Nediah?’ Kyndra asked roughly. ‘Why can’t you let me go?’
‘You’re a fool,’ the Wielder said thro
ugh clenched teeth. ‘I made your mother a promise to keep you safe and you almost saw that promise broken.’ He seized her arm, pulling her on across the bridge.
Kyndra struggled. ‘Then why are you taking me back to die?’ she cried.
Nediah turned to look at her. Clouds had blown up from the south and rain slid down the Wielder’s bare, fierce face. ‘I’m taking you back before the Council discovers you’re missing,’ he hissed. ‘At least, this way, there’s a chance you might survive. Why give them a legitimate reason to hunt you down?’
Kyndra looked at distant Murta, veiled behind a drizzling sheet. Rain slicked the near lip of the chasm and streams trickled through little gullies in the rock to fall spinning out of sight. The weeping sky washed her clean of hope. ‘What happened to my head?’ she asked bleakly.
‘When that boy pushed you, you lost your balance. You fell and hit your head on the edge of some crates.’ Nediah’s grim expression flickered. ‘I’m beginning to wonder why I waste time healing you.’
‘Jhren,’ Kyndra muttered under her breath.
‘A friend of yours?’
‘Not any more.’ Kyndra dropped her eyes, watching the bottomless chasm pass to either side, as Nediah dragged her on across the bridge. A scant hour ago, she’d been full of joy at her escape. She’d put the mountain at her back and consigned Naris to her past forever. But then, inexplicably, Jhren had come and told her she could never go home.
‘Wait.’ Nediah stopped walking and held up a hand. ‘Did you hear that?’
The sound came again and this time Kyndra did hear it: a murmur of thunder. Apprehension seized her – she recognized that thunder. She’d heard it before on another night of rain in another place. The murmur grew to a continuous rumble. And now it wasn’t just in the sky, but thrumming through the stone beneath them. Nediah frowned at the small pebbles skipping across the rock and took a few steps forward.
There was a mighty crack – and they were hurled from their feet. Kyndra rolled and found herself face to face with a sick, endless drop. She scrambled backwards, palms sweating. Part of the parapet had fallen away. ‘What was—?’ The rest of her sentence was lost in a series of sonorous booms immediately followed by a flash so bright that it blinded her. When she blinked her eyes open, spotted with after-images, she cried, ‘Nediah!’ and flung out her arm to their left. ‘There!’
