The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

  Tobias looked at them thoughtfully. Seen the young prince a couple of times at a distance, not been overly impressed with him then. The queen you could tell must have been stunning, for a woman of her age. Lord Gaeve the queen’s cousin had seemed a normal enough kind of bloke, for a nobleman, although you had to admit what Tobias assumed had been his wife had a face like an ill-favoured horse.

  Funny, how things went.

  People were hanging round the bodies, staring up at them like he often did. He’d assumed they were mourning them, at first. Loyal and heartbroken. Possibly even refuseniks of the new regime. Then the birds’ pecking had dislodged some of Elayne’s jewellery, and he’d realized his mistake.

  The town had been snow-bound since the first day of Sunreturn, twinkling pretty and clean. People went out on sleds or skated down the frozen waterways; the court had ridden out, the second night of the feasting, to hold a dance on the ice. Not much of a man for ice and snow himself, Tobias, being Immish born and bred and feeling the cold more than he liked now, but gods it was beautiful. He’d watched some girls out skating on the river and that had been a very fine sight.

  The ice could break any moment and kill you. Sharp as knives and cold as death and brittle as the bones of a man’s skull. The girls skating so fresh and pretty and innocent. They knew. All of them.

  “Stop looking at them.”

  Tobias turned around. A woman. Familiar looking. He blinked. “Raeta?”

  Well, she was from the Whites. And everyone and their dog seemed to have turned up in Morr Town for Sunreturn, to drink, fuck and try to catch a glimpse of the new king.

  “Five times, you’ve come up here to have a stare at them. Not that I’ve been counting. They’re dead, Tobias. They’re of no interest to you anyway.” She stepped towards him. Looking better than she had on the ship where he’d last seen her, when he was sailing merrily into Morr Town to tell old Illyn his son was still alive, mainly because she’d been able to wash her hair and change her clothes sometime in the last month. Wearing the nice thick warm cloak she’d got off the merchant they’d neither of them ever heard of or met.

  “I told you your future’s a nasty thing, Tobias. Told you you’re bloody lucky, too.”

  “Oh, I’m lucky. I only got two ribs broken and my left arm twisted and half the skin ripped off my bloody legs.”

  “Better than drowning.” She gestured at the gateway. “Better than that.”

  “He’d do worse than that to me.”

  “‘He’?”

  “Don’t act all arch and innocent to me, woman.” What am I even doing talking to you like this? And I can’t just—Came out unstoppably anyway, like sneezing: “How about I buy you some lunch?”

  “You want to buy me some lunch?”

  “Oh, I’m lucky all right. You remember that bag of gold thalers you could smell on me? Can’t you smell them still?”

  “I can’t smell anything beyond burning.” Smiled a cold smile. “I gather our new king rather likes the scent of smoke.”

  “Oh, yeah. Smells better than whale shit and salt water, though. Just about. Anyway: lunch?”

  A moment’s thought. Her eyes actually twinkled. “My inn or yours?”

  They walked slowly back down into the town. The masked-horned-pitch-wielding-setting-fire-to-things blokes were already out in force, staggering around threatening to set fire to passing women if they didn’t give them a kiss. A glare from Raeta and they lurched off across the street. “Kissies or flames, girls! Kissies or flames! My good big stick to keep the demons away!”

  “Everyone in this bloody place seems to like the smell of smoke.”

  “So he’ll be a good king, then.”

  Tobias’s inn was near the Thealeth Gate, pleasantly far from the sea. A poorer bit of the richer bit of the town, away from the harbour, looking out onto the wheat fields and woods of Thealan Vale, a good long hike off the bulk of Malth Elelane that you could almost pretend you couldn’t see it if you kept your eyes fixed the right way. Not a rich inn, but not a particularly bad one either. Needed somewhere decent with decent food and a decent bed when you had stab wounds, burn wounds, crushed by rocks wounds and a lungful of bloody burning salt water to recover from. Gods knew what he’d swallowed while nearly drowning. He was certainly pretending he didn’t.

  Something on top of it all that was oddly, painfully akin to a broken heart. All my life and all I’ve done with it, and I’m here and the world’s fucked itself and the boy’s a frigging king.

  Outside the inn, more masked men were prancing about, seemed to have managed to set fire to someone’s front window and were frantically trying to beat it out. Kept falling over, having to haul each other up again, the buckets slopping burning pitch about. A woman stood and screamed at them. A man who might have been the householder sat half naked on the opposite side of the road laughing, snowflakes settling on his fat bare chest. Heavy flakes swirling downwards while the sparks swirled up. Soot stained faces. Sweat smell. The shadows of horns and talons lurching back and forward. Someone shouting “kissies or flames!” Inside the inn, a woman was crawling across the common room floor with her skirts over her head showing off her arse. Two men wrestled until one fell over with a crack. Voices roared out a song about the king and his big big sword. Nice, respectable place.

  It’s barely past midday, thought Tobias. I haven’t even had lunch yet.

  “Very nice,” Raeta said. Sounded genuine. They went up to Tobias’s room, Tobias ordering a jug of hot beer and two bowls of stew to be sent to follow them. Let the innkeep think what he liked about Raeta. He’d crapped himself in front of her. She could probably cope with sitting on his bed.

  “You think? Had a room in an inn right out on the other side of town near the sea for a while. Stayed for free the first night and all after I limped there dripping wet with bloody seaweed in my hair. Until being a hero of Morr Bay suddenly stopped being something to tell people about. Stroke of luck they kicked me out, actually, seeing as the storm dismantled the place two days later and everybody staying there died.”

  Raeta laughed. “You’re lucky, see?”

  A girl entered with a tray. She gave Raeta a quick look, grinned at her feet, left. Way too classy for him, the girl was probably thinking. Unless he pays damned well. Downstairs, a burst of enthusiasm for the king’s peerless ability to disembowel people. His cloak was red as widows’ eyes, apparently. And his subjects sang like crows.

  “What do you want, then, Raeta? Been following me. Been hanging around Malth Elelane looking at me looking at dead things.”

  “You smell of guilt, now, too, Tobias. Blood and gold and guilt.”

  “Anyone who smells of blood and gold smells of guilt, Raeta. Stop pretending to be some witch thing.”

  “You feel like you killed them. The queen. Prince Tiothlyn. The king even, maybe. The old king. The dead one.” Not even a question. Tobias shut his eyes. Tiothlyn had screamed so loud people had heard it through the walls of Malth Elelane. They’d looked kind of alike, Ti and Marith.

  He’d seen King Marith a few days before, from a distance, pulled himself back into the crowds with a panicked fear he’d be seen. Riding down Sceal Street to the harbour to see the storm damage, mounted on a huge white horse the size of a fucking bull with that horrible stinking vomit-inducing cloak waving behind him that everyone else seemed to think was terribly dramatic and kind of stylish if you were that way inclined. The people had cheered their heads off but there’d been an undercurrent, a frightened thing underneath. The shadows had crawled around the boy and over his eyes. I fought for him, Tobias had thought dazedly. I marched in his army. I seem to remember jumping around shouting “Hail to the king!”

  I mean … what the fucking bloody fucking fucking fuck happened back there on Third?

  “I feel like I killed, them, yeah,” he said.

  “I won’t ask why. Got the oddest feeling I somehow know. Lots of good new stories going round, the Deed of the New King what k
illed a dragon and sacked a palace and carried off the most beautiful woman what ever lived to spread her legs for him five times a night. Some Immish blokes in the background there somewhere, looking on applauding him.”

  “So much my hands bloody ached. They mention the time he puked on my boots?”

  “Not in the version I heard. Hardly noteworthy, either. He’s puked on the boots of half the innkeeps of Morr Town.” She sipped her beer. Bitter, tang of herbs that the heating made worse: Tobias saw her mouth pucker slightly, then a slight smile that she liked the taste. “Medicinal” might be a good word for it. “Cleaned the palate.” They seemed to like bitterness here too. The steam softened her face. I don’t desire you in the slightest, he thought, but I think I kind of trust you more than anyone I ever met apart from Skie.

  Worse luck for you, then, Raeta, woman.

  “How’s your ma?” Tobias asked. Try to talk about something more pleasant than kingly vomit while we eat.

  “She died. That’s why I was visiting her.”

  Good one, Tobias. “I’m sorry.”

  “No you’re not.”

  “Look, a bloke can be a right fucking bastard sword for hire and still feel sorry someone’s ma died, yes?”

  Raeta barked out a laugh. “Yes.”

  “So how’s your brother?” Not dead too, oh please, he thought, the moment he’d said it.

  “Well enough. Sailed off back to Immish just before all this blew up. Got a nice new ship cheap as cheap to go sailing off in too.”

  “Yeah? Lucky for him.”

  “He thought so. Called the ship Another’s Luck, in fact.” She spooned a mouthful of stew, didn’t look as pleased with it as with the beer. No accounting for taste. It had salt pig and beans and lumps of stale bread in it and was about the only good thing he’d come across since setting out for Sorlost. Looked up at him. “You’re, what, forty, Tobias?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You’ve been a sword for hire for, what, your whole man’s life? Twenty years and more? Twenty-five?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So how many years you got left, you think, before you can’t do it any more and some younger man spills your guts out in the dust?”

  Bitch. “Not long. Not the state I’ve been left in by things recently. Five years, maybe. Maybe less. Maybe more.” Two years tops, he thought, with his aches and the way everything was turning to shit. Then I’m dead meat chunks, like the whale at Skerneheh docks.

  “Not much else you can do with your life, I’m guessing, except kill.”

  Bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch. “I’m a bloody good weaver, actually, I’ll have you know. Lovely silk velvets, I could make you.”

  “Yeah?”

  Looked down at his calloused weather-bitten scarred fingers, the thumb of the left mangled flat somewhere, shaped so they curved mostly to fit the hilt of a sword, ached all the time. “Yeah.”

  “You want to do something more with your life than dying, Tobias?”

  “Is there anything to life apart from dying, Raeta?”

  She sipped her beer and spooned up her stew and smiled at him. Lumps of pig meat. Smoke. Dead dragons and dead soldiers and dead babies and dead whales. Prince Ti in lots of little soggy bags.

  “You want to help me kill the king, Tobias?”

  Chapter Twenty

  Happiness. Sorrow. Hope. Despair.

  Lan stood in the snow at the gates of Morr Town, looking up at the walls.

  She who had seen Sorlost in the golden desert, the White City of Alborn rising on five hills above the Iannet marsh, she should not now find Morr Town imposing. And the last time she had been here, they had all been alive. But still it caught in her heart, to see the high stone walls, the open gateway, the red cloaks of the guards, the central tower of Malth Elelane shining, Eltheia’s diamond blazing at its height to call the ships of the Altrersyr kings to their home. The Tower of Joy and Despair indeed. Unchanging. Unchanged.

  The snow was heavy, thick piled against the city walls. The guards stamped in the snow. A blue tinge to their faces. At least they had furs. Looked bored, also, stamping and eying the road. Very few people about, in heavy snow, a day after the end of Sunreturn. No reason to be coming or going. Nothing grew. Nothing was alive. One of the guards yawned, showing a red mouth. Steam on his breath huffing out. He stamped again, shaking his head. The snow at his feet was trampled down brown hard muddy ice. The same men who had been there yesterday, and the day before.

  Three days, she’d come to the gate, steeled herself to go through, failed. She was sleeping in a broken-down barn an hour’s walk outside the town. The snow had come two days after she left Ru, blowing up out of nowhere, such a long walk ahead of her, icy fingers and frozen toes, crawling on through the cold. She should have turned back. Gone back to shelter, and she worried about Ru in the snow with the village girl supposed to be tending her. The winter was a cruel mother, devouring her own children; the poor folk left out offerings, in the hope she would be contented in her hunger and let them and theirs be. Lan had stopped in a farmstead where they had let her sleep in a hayloft and eat their bread in exchange for scrubbing the floors of the place clean, until she could bear the work no longer, set out again. So cold. Such slow going, step after painful step. Bent double sometimes, like an old crippled woman, snow stabbing her face. A battle. She could have gone back to Ru, and she worried about Ru. But if she went back, she would never leave. It was horribly cold in the barn, snow blowing in through the broken walls, frost creeping up the floor and the walls, Lan burned the timbers of the barn for warmth, starved in the cold, her hands shook. Red open sores on her hands with the cold. She could not go back. But she could not go into the town. She reached the gates and could not enter. She began to walk back again towards the barn. I am dying, she thought. She thought of Ru without her skin. Proud.

  The guards moved aside as a party came out through the gateway. Great beautiful horses, rich furs, armed men around a woman on a cream and gold horse. They came closer. Lan stopped. Without thinking she stepped up towards the horses. Thalia in black furs stared down. A guardsman shouted at her to get out of the queen’s way. Kneel in the snow. The horses came on. Lan stepped backwards again, afraid of the horses and the guardsmen.

  For the first time, afraid of horses and armed men. She began to edge back off the road into the snow.

  Thalia said, “Halt.” The horses stopped. Lan sighed with relief, began walking again back to her barn.

  A man’s voice shouted, “Halt, the queen says! You! Halt. Kneel.” Lan started. Held still and rigid, then went down on her knees in the snow. Cold. Oh, so cold. She began to shake.

  Thalia rode the horse up carefully. Looked down with her sad, lovely face, white snow in the dark tendrils of hair. Some kind of joke in it, remembering the first time they met, Lady Landra on horseback looking down at this desperate pitiful thing. Saw and felt that Thalia remembered too.

  “Get up.”

  Lan rose, trembling. I broke you, she thought. I hurt you. I took your skin away.

  But he loved you. He shouldn’t love you. He loved Carin.

  Thalia said, “She’s frozen. Garet, give her your cloak.”

  Confusion. Someone not particularly happy at the order. But a thick fur was folded round her, warm and soft as weeping, fragrant with wood smoke. She stood staring. Thalia stared back. All this a reversal of how things had once been.

  “We cannot stay standing here,” said Thalia. She looked around at the guardsmen. “Someone take her up on their horse. You, Brychan.” The man nodded, unhappy and confused. They rode on, turned the horses off onto a track leading down to woodland white with snow. Lan sat wallowing in the smell of horse and fur. So very painfully, afraid. But impossible to her mind that Thalia should harm her. All this is a dream, she thought. Nothing real. Nothing had been real since Malth Salene burned. Or since her brother died. The smell of horse and fur and the movement of the horse’s shoulders was real
.

  They came into a little clearing in the woods. Very still and silent: the woods all around Morr Town were king’s land where no one came. A bower of beech limbs had been built in the centre of the clearing. Young trees, brilliant copper leaves still clinging to the branches, rimed in silver-white frost. The trees around the clearing were white birches, trunks whiter than the white snow, white enough to make the skin on Lan’s hands itch they looked so dry. Painful as bone.

  “Here.” A man helped Thalia dismount. Went to help Lan too. Lan slid off easily with a snort of disdain she knew was foolish.

  Thalia said, “Take the horses. Wait on the track.” Brychan looked at her, uncertain; he is half in love and in lust with her, Lan thought, he worships her. The blue eyes widened. Brychan nodded. The men left them alone. Thalia gestured to the bower.

  Warmer, for a moment, relief at being out of the wind. The strange metallic rustle of the leaves. Shadows. White snow light on the fur of Thalia’s cloak.

  “You survived,” said Thalia.

  “Will you tell him?”

  A sigh. “No. I will not tell him.”

  “He killed Tiothlyn.” The rumours had run along the roads, the prince and the queen dead after torture, nailed up alive on Malth Elelane’s walls, sacrificed like horses on the old king’s grave. Even without the rumours, Lan would have been certain. If Marith was alive, Ti must now be dead.

  Thalia’s face narrowed. Cold sad fear. Grief. A faint, ghost smell of blood.

  “He … That was Selerie’s doing. He … He did not want that to happen. Not as it did.”

  “He got drunk and cried about it, I suppose?” A harsh attempt at mockery in Lan’s voice croaking out strangled. Lan thought: I do not fear you, woman, whatever you are, any more than I fear him, whatever he is. See how much I scorn him? But she shivered. The blue eyes flickered, all the hairs on the back of Lan’s neck rose up like she heard a hawk scream.