Windsinger

by A. F. E. Smith

‘You know you mean the world to me,’ he said as Art walked through the door, torn between love and utter despair. The tears gone from his eyes, only to lodge as a hard ball in his throat. Art stopped and looked back at him.

  ‘I know, Milo. That’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?’

  Days passed. Miles spent all the time he had in his laboratory, despite Art’s obvious worry, but he couldn’t get any further forward. He had nothing more than an imperfect prototype, and he couldn’t even duplicate that. He was failing. He was failing everyone.

  He tried to get some sleep, but even that eluded him. Every time he lay down, the same doubts began circling like hungry vultures. He was doing the wrong thing. He was doing the right thing. Whatever he did, people were going to die. Eventually, those thoughts always drove him out of bed and back to the laboratory, mind slow with exhaustion and hands unsteady. And, once again, he would fail to achieve anything worthwhile.

  Finally, he went to see the physician.

  ‘I need something to help me sleep,’ he told Gil. ‘Perhaps I should brew it myself, but I do not trust myself to get it right …’

  ‘Certainly.’ The young physician gave him a searching look. ‘Is there something on your mind?’

  Cold fear hit Miles, for a moment, before it receded into equally chilly relief. Gil didn’t know anything. The question had been far more general than Miles’s guilty conscience had made it out to be.

  ‘I am concerned, that is all,’ he said. ‘If it comes to war …’

  ‘We must all hope that doesn’t happen.’ Gil turned to grab a bottle from a nearby shelf. ‘In the meantime, let’s try this. I’ll make it up for you at what I guess to be the correct dosage, but it’s bound to need adjusting. Sleeping draughts are tricky to get right.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Miles watched in a daze as the physician mixed his ingredients. Medicine was far more impressive than murder, he thought stupidly. It proved nothing, to kill a man. A man was no more than flesh and bone, and flesh and bone were easily severed. By far the harder task was keeping a man alive.

  ‘It shouldn’t be that difficult, in your case,’ Gil said with a quizzical glance. ‘But by the sound of it, you’re in urgent need of this draught.’

  Miles realised he had spoken at least some of his thoughts aloud. For all he knew, he could have incriminated himself through sheer exhaustion … yet the physician’s expression remained calm. He must still be safe. By now, he could barely remember why that mattered.

  Mumbling his thanks, he took the sleeping draught from Gil’s hand. Then he returned to his bedroom, swallowed twice the recommended dose, and sank into the first deep sleep he’d had in days.

  The formal declaration of war arrived by airship and was carried up to Darkhaven by four messengers. Ayla met them at the gate herself; it seemed the right thing to do. The foremost messenger read the declaration aloud in two different languages, in a voice that trembled ever so slightly, whilst the other three ranged themselves behind him, shoulder to shoulder as if they expected her to attack them. No doubt that was what they said of her in Sol Kardis, now: that she was mad and murderous, just like her brother had been. The end of a line that had descended into uncontrollable bloodlust and must be destroyed. She confounded their expectations by listening silently and receiving the rolled-up parchment with grave courtesy. Then she stood and watched them as they descended the hill, until they blurred into smears and she realised her eyes were brimming with tears.

  She had expected this moment ever since the Kardise party had left the tower, their ambassador’s body wrapped in linens for its journey back to their homeland. She’d known the flimsy evidence she had to offer for her innocence – an overheard conversation, a resealed bottle, a murdered servant – was not enough to convince them. Yet somehow, having seen it coming didn’t make it any easier to bear now it had arrived.

  ‘Are you all right, Lady Ayla?’ Tomas was behind her, with a handful of the Helm. She blinked the tears back before turning. She had to be seen to be strong, now more than ever.

  ‘Fine.’

  He scanned her face. She could see in his eyes how much he wanted to comfort her, but he wouldn’t touch her. Not in public. In this situation he was her Captain of the Helm, not her husband.

  She wanted her husband.

  ‘I do need to consult with you, Captain Caraway,’ she added. ‘On the matter of the forthcoming war.’

  Tomas nodded. He dismissed the Helmsmen with a few quiet words, and the two of them climbed the steps to the lookout post above the main gate. Tomas directed the sentry to go off duty, before taking Ayla’s hands in his.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked again, softly. She managed a smile.

  ‘I could be worse.’

  ‘You don’t have to pretend with me, love.’

  She shook her head. ‘I have to. I have to keep pretending all the time. Because if I let the fear in, I won’t be able to push it back out.’ She gripped his fingers, and added in a voice that she couldn’t quite keep from shaking, ‘Though I would like you to hold me, for a while.’

  He drew her closer without a word. She rested her cheek against his shoulder, closed her eyes, and breathed deeply. Be strong. Be strong.

  ‘It’s not inevitable, even now,’ Tomas said. ‘War is a slow process. There’s still time to find the evidence we need to convince the Kardise of your innocence before anyone has to die.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Ayla said, though she doubted it. The investigation had made very little headway in all this time; whoever was behind the ambassador’s murder had planned it too cleverly to be discovered. Still, she saw no reason to deprive Tomas of his hope. ‘But we need to fly our troops to the border, all the same. The reinforcements we’ve already sent won’t be enough against the full Kardise army. And I …’ She swallowed, hard, against the sudden lump in her throat before concluding, ‘I have to go there myself. Tomorrow.’

  As close to him as she was, she felt him tense; yet like her, he seemed determined to speak calmly and quietly of the things that could destroy them. ‘Yes. I’ll talk to the weaponmasters, call up the warriors. Everyone is already prepared. Most of the Helm will stay here to defend Darkhaven, of course, but I’ve spoken to the ten of them who will be your personal guard …’ He paused, before adding softly, ‘I wish I could go with you.’

  ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘But I need you to stay here. For the children, and for Darkhaven.’ Someone has to protect them if I die, she didn’t need to add. They’d talked about it often enough before.

  ‘They’ll be safe here,’ Tomas said. ‘And you’ll be safe, too. You have Miles’s collar.’ He hesitated. ‘I know you want to protect the whole of Mirrorvale, but if it comes to it, fall back to Arkannen. This city was built to break invaders.’

  Ayla doubted he even heard the shade of eagerness in his own voice. He didn’t want the Kardise army in Mirrorvale, of course he didn’t – yet at least, if it happened, it would give him an active role to play in the defence of his country. She knew it fretted him that he’d be sitting here in Darkhaven while she went to war.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I should have lied. If I’d thought more strategically when the Kardise made their accusation, instead of focusing on my own innocence –’

  If anything, he held her tighter. ‘I can’t blame you for that, love. Perhaps for the overlord of Mirrorvale it was foolish, but for yourself it was the right thing to do.’

  ‘That’s just it,’ Ayla muttered. ‘What I want for myself doesn’t matter. I have to be overlord of Mirrorvale all the time. The truth isn’t worth a war, is it?’

  Tomas said nothing to that. Maybe there was nothing he could say. Instead, he simply repeated, ‘It’s not inevitable.’

  ‘Even so.’ Reluctantly she pulled away from him, gathering herself together, taking on a new form from the many she’d had to inhabit during her life. Not daughter or mother or lover or friend. Not even overl
ord. Warlord. ‘I think, now, the time has come for us to behave as though it is.’

  That afternoon, amongst all the final preparations for a war she didn’t want to fight, Ayla spent as much time as she could with her children. That night, she and Tomas barely slept, turning to each other both for solace and in the knowledge that there might not be another night to come. And in the morning, she Changed into her other form, and set a course for the Kardise border.

  SIXTEEN

  The day after Sol Kardis declared war on Mirrorvale, a woman walked right up to Zander in the streets of the fourth ring.

  ‘Kardise scum,’ she hissed at him. And spat in his face.

  A couple of days after that, Zander began to notice a change in his cohort of rich young pupils. There were whispers, sidelong glances, insolent comments spoken just softly enough that he couldn’t be sure he’d heard them – until, finally, one boy responded to a mild rebuke by calling him filthy Kardise vermin and storming out. The rest of them simmered down a bit after that, but his lost trainee never returned, and the tension never fully dissipated.

  A few more days after that, Zander and Penn were down in the first ring when they noticed a street vendor being hassled by a group of young thugs. While the two of them hesitated, unsure whether to get involved, snatches of the conversation drifted over to them through the noise of the crowd. Or not so much a conversation, really; the vendor himself said nothing, just bowed his head and gripped his tray as if protecting his wares were all that mattered.

  Traitor.

  Warmonger.

  Go back where you came from.

  At that, Zander started forward without further conscious thought, only to find Penn keeping pace with him. The sight of a Helmsman’s striped coat was enough to subdue the little mob; no doubt Penn’s height and broad shoulders helped, as did the hilt of his sword at one hip and the butt of his pistol at the other. While he was busy sending the miscreants on their way, Zander approached the street vendor. Easy to see, now, why the youths had picked on him. By the colour of his skin and the cast of his features, he could have been Zander’s older brother.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Zander asked. The vendor’s gaze flicked up, then quickly back down again.

  ‘Sod off.’

  ‘I just wanted to … I mean, I’m Kardise too, so …’

  The man’s head lifted again, a scowl touching his features. ‘I’m not Kardise. I’m Mirrorvalese.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I –’

  ‘Just stop talkin’ to me, will yer? Anyone sees us havin’ a chat, they’ll think we’re plottin’ a murder.’ He turned his back on Zander and began to walk away, flinging a glare over his shoulder. ‘A pox on you and your bloody country.’

  Zander hadn’t planned on telling Ree any of it – and knowing Penn’s disinclination for gossip, he hadn’t expected any word of it to reach her from that quarter, either. Yet this was obviously one of those things that Penn considered important enough to talk about. Zander had barely taken two steps past his own front door, that evening, when Ree arrived in a flurry of indignation and demanded to know who had been making trouble for him.

  To start with, he tried to make light of it. He’d known it would happen, and so had she. No point making her feel as though she had to protect him as well as perform her duties for the Helm. Yet as a joke, it was a poor one – and soon enough, the litany of incidents emerged in a great tumbling rush of pent-up words. The way people looked at him, now, as if they suspected him of being about to kill them, or were trying to work out how best to kill him. The way conversations died away when he entered the mess hall, and rose up again when he left. The way people avoided touching his hand or meeting his gaze.

  ‘It’s like I’m contagious,’ he said finally. ‘No-one sees me any more, only the disease I’m carrying. The disease of being Kardise.’

  ‘It’ll stop,’ Ree said. ‘I’m sure it will. Just as soon as the war is over.’

  He shook his head. ‘For the Mirrorvalese to turn on us that quickly, that violently … it makes me think, maybe they hated us all along. Why else would they be so unable to separate a country from its individual descendants? Maybe they never looked at me and saw a person. Maybe they always just saw a Kardise boy.’

  ‘I see you,’ Ree said softly. ‘I know that’s not much to set against the rest of it, but it’s all I have.’ She took his hand, gripping it tightly. ‘I wish I could do something to stop it, Zander. I wish –’

  ‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘It’s not all right.’

  ‘No.’ He glanced down at their interlocked fingers, and felt tears sting his eyes. ‘Don’t let go, Ree.’

  It was all he could manage, but she squeezed his hand as though she understood. ‘I promise.’

  As she did each day at dawn, Ayla-as-Alicorn walked through the camp and let herself be seen. She was their greatest weapon and their best protection; everyone knew that. Her presence each morning gave the soldiers of her army – the Helmsmen, the weaponmasters, the warriors trained in the fifth ring – both reassurance and courage. Unlike the councillors of the Kardise government, who thus far had kept themselves shut away from the battle and let their army do the work, she had to be there all the time. Fighting alongside her people. Fighting for her people. That was what being overlord of Mirrorvale meant. That was what she gave her subjects in exchange for their obedience.

  ‘Lady Ayla.’ They always stopped as she passed. Ducking their heads, awe glimmering in their eyes. Helmsmen who’d been openly scornful of her in her father’s day – warriors who wouldn’t have lifted a finger to prevent her from being unlawfully incarcerated for murder, six years ago – they all loved her. It would have been satisfying, were it not for the fact that it had taken a war to bring them to it.

  Good morning, she always told them, and watched them shiver as if she’d sent a thin sliver of ice straight into their hearts. They feared her as much as they loved her. And that was how it should be.

  She’d spent most of her time in Alicorn form since arriving at the border, returning to human form only to eat and sleep. It wasn’t that she couldn’t eat as an Alicorn, but it was easier to feed a woman – even one with a Changer appetite – than a giant winged horse. Perhaps it would have been safer for her to remain in her stronger creature form to sleep, but that would have required even more energy, and her collar kept her safe no matter which form she was in. Besides, she’d found she didn’t sleep well as an Alicorn. On the one night she’d spent out on the plains in creature form – because neither the campaign headquarters nor the camp’s tents were large enough to hold her – she’d found herself overly alert, waking at the slightest sound. Maybe she’d spent too long in her human skin when she was younger. Maybe her senses in Alicorn form were just too sharp. Whatever the reason, the only way she could get any sleep was to Change back into human form and curl up in her bedroll in the darkest corner of her quarters, imagining herself home.

  Her quarters were located in one of two small forts that faced each other across this section of the border between Mirrorvale and Sol Kardis. Much of the rest of the border consisted of steep, rocky hills – not completely impassable, but more suited to stealth raids than to the open march of an army. Those hills had been the site of many clashes between the Kardise and Mirrorvalese patrols, yet any large force that tried to approach the same way would soon become strung out in single file along the steep slopes and narrow, winding tracks – easily spotted and picked off by the Mirrorvalese who manned the watchtowers. Thus for an invading Kardise army, the only viable route into Mirrorvale was the Whispering Plain, the one place along the border where the hills tapered down into flat grasslands. That was where both the road and the canal from Sol Kardis entered Mirrorvale, and where the checkpoints were located for travellers by foot, horse or boat. Each checkpoint included a compact but sturdy oak fort, usually housing border guards and any travellers who needed somewhere to stay the night. Now, though, the fo
rts had become the headquarters of two opposing armies, with the soldiers’ tents spreading out beyond and behind each fort like mushrooms rising after rain – and between them, the plain of dry, yellow-green grass. The battlefield.

  Not that it had seen much use as yet. The war, so far, had been blessedly slow. There had been skirmishes, mainly involving the scouting parties from each side who had been sent out to assess the size and position of the opposing army; yet for the most part, the two sides had reached a standoff. Sol Kardis and Mirrorvale had been sniping at each other in small, undercover raids for so long, they’d forgotten how to do anything else. The Kardise were too wary of Ayla’s creature-self to mount a full-scale assault, fearing the loss of too many men. She had encouraged that wariness early on, moving close enough to their front line to let them shoot her and allowing their bullets to bounce harmlessly off her skin. It had stung, but she’d remained there long enough to show them she was uninjured, before lunging towards the riflemen and scattering them like a flock of startled birds. For her part, Ayla kept her army on the defensive, hoping for as little bloodshed as possible. She was still holding out for a miracle. She was still holding out for the war to end.

  Because the truth was, once the Kardise overcame their reticence, she wouldn’t be able to keep them back for long. The smaller Mirrorvalese force would be overwhelmed by superior numbers, even with all the skill of the fifth ring on their side. Even with Tomas’s plan to train and send more warriors as rapidly as possible. Even with an Alicorn. She didn’t have twenty other Changer creatures to call on, as her ancestors might have done when the Nightshade line was thriving. She only had herself. And although she was the hope and pride of her army, she knew she wasn’t enough.

  That was why she had gathered some of the patrolmen and women to the battlefront, leaving the rest to protect the borders as they usually did – since it would be no surprise if the Kardise tried to sneak a raiding party through the hills while everyone’s attention was focused on the main army. The patrolmen were the best resource she had: years of hostility with the Kardise meant they were well placed to predict the enemy’s movements and give her valuable intelligence about the terrain. Not only that, but they carried firearms, and had done for years. Guns might be illegal in most of Mirrorvale, but it would have been unwise to extend that to the people who had to face them as a real threat on a daily basis.