by Danie Ware
Jade’s gaze flicked from Feren’s wounds, to Triq’s closed fist, to the empty rings at her belt – she carried no weapons in his presence. Water dripped from her as though she was melting, black puddles seeped across the stone.
“They’re real, Warden.” Ress’s hands twitched, as if he ached to treat the boy himself. “Not a day’s ride from here – though it’s taken us a little longer.”
Larred Jade did not turn to look at him. “What evidence did you bring?”
“For Gods’ sakes...!” Triqueta curbed a flash of temper. Being out of the rain and the wind and the wet, she was welcoming the desert flame back to her heart, the passion of her people in her blood. “I had it between my thighs, Larred, a thing of muscle and fury and death. I didn’t stop for mementoes.”
“We’ve brought evidence,” Ress said calmly. “Your people will tell you – look at the boy’s wounds and tell me you know what made that hole.”
The apothecary nodded, though he was intent on his work and didn’t speak.
Rain scattered on the window. Somewhere deeper in the stone walls of the building, the wind had found a crack and now it keened like a lost thing.
The draught stole across Triq’s wet shoulders and raised the hackles on her forearms.
Know what made that hole.
Monsters.
She was still shivering.
Jade spun on his heel and faced Ress full-on, his expression as cool and dark as the stone of his walls.
“You’re known as a rational man, Ress of the Banned. You’re telling me this tale is true?”
Ress shrugged. “Didn’t believe it either – not ’til I was defending the boy.”
“So what would you have me do?”
“Name of the Gods!” Triqueta wanted to grab him, shake him, pull the images from her mind and force him to see them, rip him open, make him feel what she had felt. “Muster! Your cavalry should – !”
“My cavalry’s going nowhere, Triqueta. Your scarred friend took her injured horse down to the stables –”
“You said you wanted evidence.” Triq’s tone was tart.
“Don’t interrupt me again.” Jade was getting angry. “Lots of things have claws, and lots of things make holes. The boy’s hurt’s serious and I’ll tend it, of course, but we’re on Watch.”
“Why the rhez d’you think the herds have moved?” Triq’s exasperation rang from the stone. “There’s a new predator carving out territory, it doesn’t take a member of the Banned to tell you that. There’s also someone still being held, a Xenotian teacher, and we can’t just –”
“Harvest time is almost upon us, Triq! The autumn is coming and the grass is changing colour. In only a few halfcycles the little death will be upon us. The grass will all die and the soil will be bare until the spring. I need every spare man, woman and child I’ve got to ensure the survival of my livestock, my farmlands, my people and my city – I don’t have the forces to spare! The pirates –”
“Larred, don’t be a –”
“Enough!” The Warden’s loss of patience clanged loud and sudden, it caused Feren to mutter, his eyelids fluttering. “This is my city, Triq, my love and hope since Varya died. I’ve got no children – Roviarath is everything to me.” The wind keened under his tone. “I’m the heart of the Varchinde, and what you’re telling me is crazed.”
Something in his voice was helpless, frustrated, caught. Triq said softly, “If this is the love of your life, Larred, then defend it.”
The apothecary coughed, said softly. “The boy’s infection is critical, Warden. I’ll need to open the wound.”
His face troubled now, shadows of the rain on the window speckling his skin with doubt, Jade nodded.
Ress said, “Warden Jade, you’re facing predators and piracy with inadequate defences – I understand. But against the things we’ve fought?” He gestured at the grotesque, blackening swelling of Feren’s hip. “They’ll rip everything in their path to bloody pieces. We have no idea where they’ve come from or the size of their force – no idea what they want. They’re not just animals. You should find them, before they find you.”
Triqueta noted that Ress said nothing of the Bard’s nightmare fears – this was hard enough.
Jade shook his head as if to dismiss the idiocy of it all. “You’re suggesting these – things – have some sort of plan?”
Feren gasped and spasmed as the blade lanced the wound. Blood and pus soaked the apothecary’s fingers, the boy’s skin, the soft sheets of the pallet. A sharp, metal smell cut through the air.
Gore began to drip onto the floor.
Triq swallowed a mouthful of bile.
Jade was agitated, pacing. “Ress. I’m no warrior – and I’m no fireblasted gambler. If we don’t gather enough grass, we all die. The pirates know this too – their attacks redouble at this time of the return. And the bweao...” He tailed off, his gaze seeing through and past the troubled, sweating apothecary. “This isn’t Fhaveon. I can send a bretir for more force, but even assuming the Lord Foundersson heeds the message, it’ll be five days before I have a response and a full cycle – twenty days at least – before any help reaches me. I need the warriors I have.”
“So – what?” Triq spat at him. “You’ll do nothing? Abandon the girl and hope it all goes away?”
He smiled, mirthless. “I’ll make you a trade, Triqueta – you bring me information, and I’ll mobilise. I want numbers, forces, deployment, tactics. I want to know what they are, what they want and how they plan to get it. I want to know where they are and where they came from – exactly the threat that they’re offering.” He watched the sheets under Feren deepening to a black smear. “My forces are limited – but I can risk one strike. If I know exactly where to hit and how hard. I’m going to play a game, I need to know the rules.”
“For Gods’ sakes, Larred – !”
“In return –” Jade held up a long finger “– I’ll despatch the bretir to Fhaveon and brief my patrols to observe – but not engage. I’ll look for information on the girl, and I’ll heal the boy. If I can.”
Ress said, “Thank you, Warden.”
“Thank you, my horse’s arse.” Triqueta was barely clinging to her temper. “You want to know what Feren saw – !”
“I want to hear the account from him, yes.”
“Is that your payment? Information? You soulless mercantile bastard.”
Jade’s face set white – for a moment, he was lost for words.
“Warden?” In the silence, the apothecary’s tense question fell like a pebble and rolled across the water-stained floor. Ress turned.
Jade stood like a carven statue, watching Triqueta. After a moment, he said, “So in your world of reckless gambling, Triq, tell me.” His voice was as tight as a rope. “What would you do?”
“I’d send out every mounted fighter I had, find the leader of the herd and pull its fireblasted guts out.” A trickle of rainwater ran down her cheek, circling the opal stone. “Slowly. Along with some critical questions about its mates. The Fayre’s like a willing virgin, Larred, her thighs wide open. Grass harvest or no, you could find yourself...” She paused. “What?”
“Isn’t that just like the Banned? Act first, think afterwards?” There was a ghost of a smile on Jade’s lips, humourless and angry. “Did Roderick take any action, frothing idealist that he is? Did he ride after the missing girl himself? Perhaps Syke’s sending a war-Banned?” His grin was sharp edged; he didn’t wait for an answer. “Or did he send you here to make me do it for him?”
Her anger skidded to a halt.
A cursed hard man to fool.
The truth clamped like a hand over her mouth, she couldn’t move, couldn’t think of a thing to say. The accuracy of his shot had knocked the passion straight out of her and now she was gasping, casting about her for anything with which to hit him back. “The scouts attacked us on the way, Syke doesn’t...”
But Jade was nodding, smiling to himself.
S
he tried again, almost childish. “We’re twice the fighters you are!” But she realised even as she said them that the words had been a mistake.
“Yes,” he said, “you are. I make no effort to deny it.”
Feren’s thin scream made Triq shudder, she gave a half-panicked glance to see that both the city apothecary and Ress were now fighting to staunch the bloodflow from the boy’s hip. A tide of thick scarlet soaked cloths and skin, flecked faces with dots like fragments of horror.
She could smell the blood. The wind still keened and rain scattered against the window, as if it sought entry.
The boy was going to die.
One last try. “Please Larred! Don’t let them do this to anyone else!”
Jade faltered, faced by the same view, the same blood tide. He raised a hand. Upon his little finger, the wrought terhnwood-fibre ring of the City caught the rocklight and glittered. He said, “Do you really think that I’d do nothing?”
What? “I don’t understand...”
“I’m a soulless mercantile bastard, Triqueta. I won’t spare the forces of my city to chase down a figment. But what will I do?”
“It’s not a figment...!”
Ress’s voice said, “We’re losing him.” There was an edge of fury in his tone, and Triqueta wondered, slightly stupidly, if the city apothecary had cut an artery or something.
Jade said, “No one else needs to suffer like that. Tell me, Triq, what am I going to do?”
Soulless mercantile bastard.
I’m a merchant, not a warrior and not a fireblasted gambler.
Roviarath is everything to me – I’m the heart of the Varchinde.
What will I do?
The realisation congealed and dripped like the rainwater from her hood, like the blood from Feren’s wound.
“You’re going to hire me – us – to scout for you.”
“You, yes. I trust your passion. But your scarred companion lacks a Banned-trained mount and Ress, forgive me, is no warrior.”
Triqueta said, “Hey, I’m no coward, but I’m not riding out alone.”
“You won’t have to.” Larred was grinning like a Varchinde predator. “Ah, Triq – have you not realised the one thing that tips the scales here, the thing your monster hasn’t bargained for?”
What?
Her bafflement must have shown, because Larred was starting to laugh. “If you could pick any one mercenary warrior, in the entire Varchinde, to hunt this beast of yours down... who would it be?”
She blinked, baffled.
Feren was fading now, his arms lolling from the pallet, his expression slackening lax. Blood soaked the pallet under him, the apothecary’s hands to the wrists. Ress was fighting, still fighting, for his patient’s life.
But the boy’s face...
His crazed orange hair, his growth of beard.
Oh, by the fireblasted Gods...
For a moment, an older face, harder and battle scarred, overlaid her view of the boy’s dying expression. Her blood sang his name, even as the memories flooded through her mind and body, sparking to a thrum between her thighs.
Feren gasped, an inhalation of hope.
Triqueta said softly, “Redlock.”
Ress was sweating, shaking his head in denial – he’d carried the boy to safety, just for him to lose his battle in the clean, cool air of the hospice.
Hope.
Jade watched the boy’s final moments, and his expression was troubled. “Faral ton Gattana, Redlock. Arguably the only warrior in the entire Varchinde who’s cursed hard enough to face this thing. Not to mention avenging the death of his kin.”
Triq said, again, “Redlock.”
“He’s here – came into the city yesterday morning. You might want to go have a word.” Jade grinned. “Scout for me, Triqueta – tell me what I’m facing. Give me time to gather the harvest and expect reinforcements from Fhaveon. And then I’ll call muster.”
Damned canny bastard.
Ress swore again, his voice catching as though on the verge of tears. The apothecary was slicked with gore across his chest, his chin.
Feren gasped, his hands fluttered as if he heard his cousin’s name and reached out to grab it. His last word was “please...” before the Count of Time came and took him away.
And the air in the hospice was still.
15: THE COUNCIL
FHAVEON
Roderick sat silent. His hands twitched in his lap like reluctant strangers.
At his right shoulder, a pincer-faced military escort. Below him, the descending white tiers of the Theatre of Nine. At their base, a long carved table, flanked by eight cloaked figures, four down either side. The ninth figure, at the table’s head, was the direct descendant of Saluvarith the Founder, Demisarr Valiembor himself, Lord of Fhaveon and Master of the Varchinde.
The Council had convened, and the Bard’s presence was requested.
Demanded.
Below Roderick, the nine figures were hooded, their faces concealed. Above them, haloing both the table and the tiers of seats, the wall was carved into a great stone mural – the tale of Fhaveon’s construction, and of her battles for survival.
The Theatre of Nine was astonishingly beautiful.
Once before, he had come here – some forty returns ago when he had faced the Lord Foundersson Nikhamos with a plea to take a tan of soldiers to Rammouthe Island, to search for answers there.
But his search had failed, his escort had been savagely slain, he himself had survived the magharta only because of Rhan’s immortal, elemental friendship. The Bard did not feel welcome here. The rocklights were cold, the quartz fragments dull. Eyeless sockets no longer reflected the glory of the city’s completion – they held the deaths of the soldiers who’d died to protect him.
Died screaming.
Standing in here made those screams seem suddenly very recent.
His hands knotted at the echoes. Beside him, his escort twitched. No, whatever beauty may lay outside the white amphitheatre of the Council; in here the Grasslands’ blood flowed cold. This was not a room of celebration, it was a room of business – its sanctity tinged with fear.
Aside from the Bard and his escort, the rings of tiered seats were empty.
Roderick’s nervousness was rising, he willed his hands to stillness. From Ecko to monsters to unexplained fires to the stone creature that had fallen from the wall – there were too many fears, too many implications, now lurking behind his presence here. They were overwhelming. However cold it may be, the theatre was where the decisions of the Varchinde were made, and he had one chance, one voice, one hope of making himself understood...
They’ll lock you up!
Was he crazed? Really? Down through all the long returns of his search, there were times when he had asked himself if the world’s fear had been only a nightmare, if the thing that he ever sought was only in his mind.
Maybe Ecko was right, and none of this was real.
Maybe they had to fight anyway.
There were monsters out there, and the wall of the city had come to life. A part of the past had crumbled to dust at The Wanderer’s very doors. And though Ecko was missing, the Bard would not give up his hope.
To doubt – to doubt now – would indeed be madness.
Pressure flickering through his skin, he sat quiet.
Waiting.
And the voices floated up through the cold like mist.
“It seems we’ve got a rather... serious piece of business, my friends.” The Lord Demisarr had a slight hunch, his head twitched, birdlike. As he put his hood back, Roderick saw the early grey that threaded his tied-back blonde hair. “A threat to the very lifeblood of the city, it seems. Ah, Rhan?”
At the head of his side of the table and at the Foundersson’s right hand, Rhan’s power and presence were a relief – he was the only thing that brought life and light to this chill room. Above Rhan’s head, a carved creature plummeted, burning, through the sky and then rose and fought for the city’s
survival.
“I’ve been out as far as Ikira and Teale,” he said. “The fires are scattered, spontaneous and unexplained. Enough of them, and they will threaten the harvest. Runners have been sent to the closest farmlands.”
Roderick had seen the damage for himself – craters and black ash, the soil hard baked, cracked as though from some colossal impact. The fires were completely random – there was no pattern or purpose that he could understand.
After a pause, Rhan said, “I believe the fires to have an elemental cause.”
His words caused a ripple of shock about the table.
“Love of the Gods, Seneschal!” At the Foundersson’s immediate left sat a small, taut man, his cloak marked with the pennon-on-spear soldier’s insignia – this was Mostak, Demisarr’s younger brother and military commander of both the city and the Varchinde itself. He was similar in features, yet a clear gaze and a solid jaw had replaced the flicker of his brother’s nervousness. “At this time of the return, fires are commonplace. Their cause is pure idleness. I will send a man to each manor to ensure that the farmers watch their crops, and that we are secure against any failure of tithe.”
“A necessary contingency.” Beside Rhan sat a man of massive height and breadth, typically Archipelagan. His hair was the colour of metal and his features were haughty and strong enough to be cruel. The force of his presence made him appear to sit at the table’s centre. This was one of the single most powerful figures in the Grasslands – Phylos, Merchant Master, lead voice of the Terhnwood Harvesters’ Cartel and the ultimate controller of the Varchinde’s cycling trade. Rhan had spoken of him many times – and always with distrust.
“These things can be controlled,” Phylos said, “before they escalate into idiocy.” The last word was a thrown weapon. Phylos’s gaze flicked sideways to where Rhan sat. Dismissed him. “The Cartel will send runners to each manor to accompany the soldiery and carry news of increased city tithes. We must be secure.”
Something about Phylos’s look to Rhan sparked Roderick’s nervousness to real fear. Already, Rhan’s carefully structured plan was being diverted by selfishness, by a tangle of old tensions and conflicting priorities, by personal differences and political strivings, by desires so far from his own... He was beginning to understand why the Council couldn’t help him.
