The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1)

by Larke, Glenda

  He placed his right hand palm to palm with mine. Awareness recognising Awareness. Kinship. I recalled the way I had felt about the Lance of Calment… Yes, there had been a strange sort of comradeship there, for all that we had done our best to kill one another. But it had nothing to do with being two of a kind; Tor Ryder and I were sea-trout and lake-salmon: kin that swam in different waters.

  He laced his fingers into mine. ‘Be warned, Blaze. If we take the natural step forward from here, you’ll never be able just to walk away without a backward glance. Not the way you could walk away from someone like Niamor.’ (Great Trench, was there anything he didn’t know?) ‘Love me now and there’ll be ties between us that will last forever.’

  I knew he was right.

  I shivered, afraid, desiring. I think I saw the beginnings of grief then, just as he did. ‘It would be madness,’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed.

  The boat was still, fixed in a sea so smooth it could have been oil in a bowl. The pearldrop lights of the fishing boats radiated pathways of gold across the surface of the water, seemingly solid enough to walk upon. I couldn’t believe we were having this conversation.

  I reached out and began to unbutton his shirt. My eyes misted—and I never cried. ‘It won’t be worth the pain it brings,’ I said.

  ‘Yes it will,’ he promised.

  And it was.

  ###

  A hint of a breeze shivered the sail, puffing it out a little, and I stirred in the arms that held me. Strong, gentle, loving arms. Tor Ryder’s arms. I tried out the name, to see how it would sound, to revel in the rich tones of it…

  ‘Mmm?’ His murmur was a caress.

  ‘Nothing. I just wanted to hear your name.’ In the space of a single night I had become another person. I hadn’t fallen in love—not quite, but I had learned to love. I, who had never loved anyone in thirty years of living.

  Tor Ryder of the Stragglers, one-time rebel enemy. Syr-aware. Lover. A man far too upright for me…

  And Flame of Cirkase, sister-woman, Syr-sylv. Someone I wanted to call friend. A woman whose courage made me ache with admiration. Whose courage shamed me. Whose actions made me look at myself and see things I didn’t want to see.

  I felt a wave of sick suspense wash over me. What was I doing? Neither of these still-embryonic loves would be easy to bear. And why Tor? Why not Niamor, who was surely more like me? I thought of the dark-eyed Quillerman: a self-serving man, kind and caring—but only when it suited him; a man more inclined to laugh at life than to be inspired to change it for the betterment of others. With Niamor I could have laughed, had fun, forgotten my troubles for a while as I had done with others before him…so why not him?

  In my heart I knew the answer, of course; with Niamor there would have been something lacking. For all our similarities, with him I could never have felt any link of kinship. With him, there would never have been any depth. As there never had been in the past with all those others. But Tor… Tor was offering me something wondrously new and profound…

  Even so, part of me was a reluctant lover. Something fundamental within me was being challenged by this love, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to acknowledge it. In fact, all of this was far too sudden.

  I drifted off to sleep rather than think about it.

  When I awoke, Tor was gone from my side. I raised my head to find him sitting in the stern, motionless, staring out over the sea with sightless eyes, all his senses turned inwards to a place where I could not follow. He was gone from me as surely as if he’d left the boat.

  I felt as cold as Calmenter snows.

  I looked away from him towards the shore. We had drifted further out to sea and were in among the fisher fleet. Their lanterns gleamed only dimly now as the sky lightened. The golden paths across the water had gone. I could hear the sound of voices and laughter coming to us from the fishermen as they hauled up lines, pulled in nets. I lay back, to look up at the mast just visible in the pre-dawn light. A bird was sitting on the crosstree, a creature too small to be one of the usual seabirds. I eyed it uneasily; it looked like that pet of Flame’s. I wondered how long it had been perched there. It cocked its head to one side and I suddenly felt very naked. I pulled the blanket up over my body. ‘Scram,’ I said. ‘Go tell her I’m all right.’

  If I hadn’t known better, I would have said it laughed as it flew away.

  Tor surfaced, his face still a mask, but his voice was a meld of curiosity and amusement. ‘Do you always talk to birds?’

  ‘No. Only some. What’s odd is that they seem to understand—sometimes. Tor?’

  ‘Yes, my love?’

  God, the shiver at those words! ‘Who are you?’

  ‘A wanderer of no particular address and no particular wealth. Presently employed as a baby-sitter.’ He moved back to my side, to slip an arm around me, to become mine again.

  ‘Baby-sitter?’

  ‘Of a kind. Although the baby doesn’t realise he’s being sat.’

  ‘Ransom Holswood?’

  ‘Ah, you know his real label? Yes, that’s the lad. Holdheir of Bethany. And a real shrimp-brain at times. I still can’t imagine what he thought he was doing coming to Gorthan Spit; I think he must have seen himself as a Manod hero going off to give succour to the godless of Gorthan Docks. Only thing is, after a couple of initial traumatic forays, he’s been too scared to do anything except sit in The Drunken Plaice and feel sorry for himself. By the time there’s a ship out of here, I may just be able to persuade him it’s time to go home.’

  ‘You’re working for the Holdlord?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking,’ he said casually. Too casually. ‘His father doesn’t want to force him home; that would make him resentful. On the other hand, he doesn’t want him to come to any harm either, so I was sent to keep an eye on him. That was easily enough done when he went to the Keeper Isles, but it’s not so easy here.’

  He was lying, or at least not telling the whole truth, and I knew it. I knew him too well— We’d only just met, but there were parts of him I knew as well as I knew myself…

  Now that Tor had jogged my memory, I seemed to recall hearing that the Holdlord had ranted quite forcefully about how his son was going to be dragged back to do his royal duty. The Holdlord of Bethany was no more a kind-hearted father than the Castlelord of Cirkase.

  I suppose I should have been upset that Tor lied to me, but somehow I wasn’t disturbed. I, who had never entirely trusted anyone in my life, trusted him. The lie didn’t seem to matter. It seemed that love could change a lifetime of wariness into reckless disregard for even elementary caution.

  Love makes fools of us all.

  I said, ‘Unjust, Tor. You want to take the errant Bethany Holdheir home, but you don’t want me to do the same thing to my errant Cirkasian Castlemaid, who is also an Islandlord’s heir.’

  He rolled over and nuzzled my breast. ‘There’s a difference. She’d go back to become a pawn of Keepers and wife-prisoner of a foul pervert. Ransom’s another story. He wanted to be a Menod patriarch. But it was palpably obvious to everyone except himself that he wasn’t suited to the job. I’ve high hopes that he’s realised that, now that he’s seen how the godless live in Gorthan Spit.’ He chuckled. ‘Gorthan Docks has been a terrible shock to Holdheir Ransom.’

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested in restoring a royal heir to his hereditary position. Wasn’t that what the Calmenter revolution was all about: the peasantry ruling the land instead of royalty?’

  ‘An over-simplification and you know it. However, I’ve mellowed since those days. I don’t think rebellion is the answer any more. Change will come naturally if only the Keepers would stop propping up the corrupt in the name of liberty, and using their damned sylvmagic to do it. Ransom’s a Manod. Menod don’t like Keepers and their reactionary ways—once he’s Holdlord, there’ll be hope for Bethany at least, especially if he has a Manod teacher of calibre to straighten out the kinks in his thinking.’

  I stir
red uncomfortably. ‘Do you hate the Keepers that much?’

  ‘I don’t hate them at all. I just think there are better ways of living than under the system they promote. In Bethany’s case, a Manod ruler would be a change for the better.’

  He sounded almost disinterested, but there was still something in what he said—or perhaps in what he had not said—that touched me with cold. I changed the subject; there were some trails that were best not followed. Cowardly, I supposed, but I didn’t want to start arguing about politics when we’d only just made a beginning. ‘Why the dunmagic attack on Ransom?’

  ‘I don’t know for sure. It could be simply because he is one of the Menod. It could be because he’s a tactless idiot who says the first thing that comes into his head without considering the feelings of those he’s speaking to. It could be because this dunmaster is a nasty piece of work; I think he enjoys giving pain. And who better to give pain to, than a Manod? Ransom was too obvious with his prayers, at least before the lovely Flame entered his life.’ He smiled faintly. ‘Since then, the prayers have been relegated to a position of lesser importance. As for Flame’s kidnapping, that may have been in revenge for her cure of Ransom. Dunmagickers don’t like their work thwarted and I imagine he worked out who was to blame.’

  ‘Have you any idea who the dunmagicker is?’

  ‘No. He’s too clever. The Keepers are looking for him too, I suppose?’

  ‘I suppose so. Anyone that strong must be a danger to them. But they don’t take me into their confidence.’

  He rolled over on to his stomach and propped himself up to look at me. ‘Why do you work for them, Blaze?’ I heard the seriousness in his voice. This was the man I had seen in the taproom; the man who sometimes found little humour in the realities of life. ‘They aren’t worthy of your service. They are so damned arrogant. They have appointed themselves the guardians of the Isles of Glory, but who told them we wanted a guardian? They think their way of life is the ultimate in living and it never occurs to them that it’s flawed. You must have lived in the Keeper Isles, you know what it’s like. If you’re a sylvtalent and Keeper-born, then you’re rich and powerful. But God help you if you’re peasant-born with no sylvtalents. Oh, I know that they say anyone can rule in the Keeper Isles, and they have elections to prove it, but you heard Wantage’s story. And have you ever met a Councillor who wasn’t a sylvmaster? You can’t even be elected a village headman unless you have sylvtalent! Whenever a nonsylv tries to be elected to anything, he loses, just as Wantage’s friend lost. And he never realises why. But we do, don’t we, Blaze? You and I and Wantage know because we can see their spells… We can see the magic they use—to ensure an election victory, a good sale, an advantageous deal… Sylvtalents rule and grow rich; common folk grow poorer and more impotent day by day. That’s the system the Keeper sylvs would have the rest of the Glory Isles believe is so wonderful. That’s the system they tout as being the epitome of equality and liberty and right. Huh!’ He was almost spitting his contempt.

  ‘That’s only half the story,’ I protested. ‘You don’t mention what they have achieved on the Keeper Isles: the great cities, the coastal and riverine transport systems, the paved tradeways, the schools, the printing of books, the hospitals. The way the arts have flourished under the patronage of the rich: the literature, the drama, the poetry, the artworks. The sheer wonder of living in a place like The Hub—’

  ‘Try being poor in The Hub,’ he said tartly.

  ‘I have,’ I replied, even more tartly. ‘But if you have drive, you can climb out. I did.’

  ‘Only because you had Awareness. Without that, you might well still be starving in a gutter because they wouldn’t let you climb out. And you’ve hardly joined the elite of the Keeper Isles even now. Blaze, can’t you see what they are like? Can’t you see how they try to manipulate us all? Oh, I’m sure you’ll start talking about what they’ve done for the stability of the Isles of Glory—but what is the cost? We’re all becoming dependent on them. And then, if one of us steps out of line, they tread on us like we were bladder wrack on the beach to be popped underfoot.

  ‘When Xolchas Stacks dared to buy grain from Bethany where it was cheaper, instead of from the Keeper Isles, the Keepers stockpiled the guano that was the Stacks main export—bought up all the stocks for three whole years—then released it all on to the market at once so that prices plummeted and the Stacks were bankrupted because they couldn’t sell there own guano. Then the Keepers moved in and bought the place up. The people of Xolchas Stacks are economic slaves to The Hub now. That’s just one example of what happens to people who go against the Keeper Isles. Blaze,’ he repeated, ‘such people aren’t worthy of your service.’

  ‘Tor,’ I said quietly, ‘I don’t serve them because they are worthy. Or because their causes are worthy either. I serve them because they offer me a chance of citizenship. Because the Keeper Isles are the only place—besides Gorthan Spit and similar hellholes—where I can find semi-legitimate employment. You don’t know what it’s like to be a non-person. To be a—a nothing, simply because of an accident of birth. Despised and despoiled because you’re a halfbreed, not one thing nor another. I’ve been spat on and raped and beaten and robbed because I was a halfbreed. I’ve been starved and reviled. Besides Keepers, the only people who ever offered me friendship were Menod, but they also told me to suffer this world with dignity because I’d find reward in the next. That’s not good enough for me.

  ‘The only people to offer me a way out in this world—to offer me anything at all that was real—were Keepers. Oh, I know it wasn’t any kindness of heart that made them make the offer; it was because they find Awareness a useful talent sometimes, and there are very, very few Keepers with Awareness. It was because it’s handy for them to have a non-Keeper agent they can send to other islandoms on Keeper business. If I make a mess of things, no one can blame Keepers: it’s all the fault of a citizenless halfbreed. I know they need me, I know they use me, but I take money from them for my services. So the Calmenter rebellion might have been a mistake on my part (not that I had much choice in those days), but much of what I’ve done for the Keepers has been worthwhile. I helped to clean up Fis on the Bethany Isles, where there was a dunmagic enclave, you may remember. I assassinated the dunmaster who ruled Porth Island in Mekaté. Five years back I was one of those who stopped the dunmagickers who ran slaves from Gorthan Spit to the Spatts. It was I who uncovered that school for dunmagickers in Mekaté. I was the agent who tracked two kidnappers from The Hub to Fentower and returned the Keeper sylv children they probably intended to subvert to dunmagickers.

  ‘While I work for the Keeper Council, I can—at least unofficially—live in the Keeper Isles. I can buy a decent life. With money, with my Calmenter sword, with my Awareness, I’ve finally earned respect. It may be grudgingly given, but at least no one spits on me any more. Don’t ask me to turn my back on the Keepers and be noble, Tor. I can’t do it. I’d lose everything I have worked so hard to gain.’

  ‘You think I’m a self-righteous bastard.’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Yeah. Sorry. It’s easy for someone like me to preach; I had it simpler. I just hate to see you working for Keeper sylvs. They are cold-eyed sharks.’

  ‘They’re not so very bad.’

  ‘They’re a lot more dangerous than you know. Blaze—marry me.’

  ‘What?’ The word was half laugh, half incredulity.

  ‘Marry me. I have well-placed friends in the Stragglers. Perhaps I could get you citizenship there by virtue of marriage. You are obviously half-Souther anyway. It’s worth a try.’

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. It was hardly a romantic proposal, but he meant it, and not just because he wanted me to have citizenship either. I shook my head. ‘Tor Ryder, where have you been all your life. No one ever marries a halfbreed.’

  ‘It’s not actually illegal.’

  ‘No, but it’s damn foolish. A halfbreed spouse is a heavy liab
ility. And you must know that—that there are…other reasons why a halfbreed makes a poor wife. And an even worse husband.’

  ‘Shit.’ The expression on his face was one of black rage. ‘The bastards made you barren?’

  By way of answer, I slid the blanket down and showed him the savage brand on my shoulder blade, the mark that told what had been done to me. The deep scar had puckered in the years since I had received it, but the symbol was still clear enough: an empty triangle, a sign of barrenness, of infertility.

  ‘Keepers did that to you?’ he asked, his voice thick with loathing.

  I nodded. ‘If it hadn’t been them, it would have been someone else.’ How many times over the years—in how many islandoms—had I been forced to show the brand, to show the proof that I was no longer whole, no longer capable of having children? It’d happened so often it had come not to matter; it was just part of being a halfbreed. Few people tried it with me any more anyway; a Calmenter sword and the look in my eye made the question seem unwise. I shrugged and added, ‘There’s not a nation in the Isles of Glory that will tolerate fertile halfbreeds. Unless they are royal-born, of course.’

  Thirteen years old and held down on the physician’s table by Keeper doctors. Half-conscious, crazed with pain, ripped apart by their hands as they inserted the cet leaves that would cauterise my insides, make me less than I had been. Many girls didn’t survive. Perhaps male halfbreeds were luckier; their operation might have been more drastic, but few of them died of it.

  And then, just when I thought I’d had all I could bear, they rolled me over on to my stomach with their foul hands, they held me down, they took up the branding iron— I still remember the sight of it: the dull red of the triangle just out of the coals. I still remember the smell of my own flesh burning. I still remember.