The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  ‘You’re moving much better, lately,’ said Noon. She gestured to his arm. ‘Are you . . . getting used to them? The scars?’

  Tor shrugged. ‘No choice really.’ Seeing her look away, he cleared his throat. He knew that she still felt responsible, even though he no longer blamed her – if she hadn’t destroyed the parasite spirits in Esiah Godwort’s compound, they all would have died there. ‘It eases, although the cold makes everything stiff.’

  ‘I’m sorry, there has been so little time lately. With Vostok and the others, and everything else.’

  Tor held his breath, half fearful that naming the dragon would summon her.

  ‘You should not feel . . .’ He stopped. Now he found he couldn’t meet her eyes. ‘That’s to say, it makes no sense for you to be beholden to me. You don’t owe me, and . . .’ He sighed, looking back at her face. Her eyes were very dark. ‘I cannot demand it of you.’

  She grinned then, suddenly, and much to his own annoyance, he felt his heart beat a little faster.

  ‘I never really said, but it was never a chore. Not at all. I never would have thought I would be gladly giving up my blood to an Eboran monster,’ she grinned a little wider. ‘But I actually grew to like it. You know. A little.’

  He could see that she was blushing, and he grinned back at her.

  ‘In that case, I have a very passable bottle of Reidn wine in my rooms?’

  Tor considered taking her hand but then thought better of it. Even so, they walked with more haste than was normal through the winding corridors, and as they caught each other’s eye at the door, they laughed together a bit. Inside his suite, a few lamps had been lit and there was half a bottle of wine on the table alongside a half-eaten meal – he couldn’t remember leaving that, but then he’d never been particularly fastidious – and the place looked cosy.

  ‘Noon.’ He turned towards her and hesitantly put his hand on her waist. She turned her face up to his, quite serious now, and he remembered gently biting her wrist in the cave, when they had faced down the wolves and everything was so cold. All the teachings of the House of the Long Night seemed to have fled him for the moment. ‘Noon, I wanted to tell you—’

  The dry cough from the other side of the room made them jump apart as though they’d been pinched. Tor spun around, ready to ask what business anyone had to be lurking in his rooms, when he saw a familiar figure in the shadows. He closed his mouth with an audible snap.

  Vintage brushed herself down, deliberately not looking at them, but there was no missing the smirk on her face. ‘My darlings, am I interrupting something?’

  ‘Vintage!’ Noon leapt across the room and almost barrelled the older woman over with the force of her embrace. ‘You came back! I mean, you came here! Why did you come here? Do you know . . .? Have you seen . . .?’

  ‘What Noon means, Lady Vincenza, is that there’s an awful lot to tell you.’ Tormalin crossed the room in a few strides and took Vintage’s hand and squeezed it, before pressing his lips to it briefly. He grinned at her. ‘You are not going to believe some of the nonsense we’ve been through.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not?’ She swatted at his arm, but she was grinning too, and her eyes were shining a little too brightly. ‘I’ve been through some fair old shit myself, you know.’ She reached up suddenly and, putting her arm around his neck, pulled him down into a fierce hug. ‘Tormalin, I am so glad to see you well. And, frankly, alive and walking about. When I left you both . . .’

  ‘I was missing half my face, yes. Thankfully, I don’t remember much about it, and Noon has helped me to regain some of my strength.’ Noon shot him a look for that, and he cleared his throat. ‘But why did you leave us? Injured, half dead, and in the house of a man mad with grief. Plus, I must tell you, Esiah’s wine cellar was not what it could be.’

  Vintage sighed. ‘Let’s sit down, shall we? We’ve a lot to talk about, and my arse is still sore from all the walking.’

  ‘I cannot believe that I have lived to see such a thing. I just cannot.’

  Once everything had been told as well as it could be, Vintage had demanded to see all the war-beasts, so they had walked together to the Hatchery, where Aldasair still waited with Jessen to see if the smaller pods were close to hatching. Vostok was there too, having returned from her own jaunt around the hills, and was now tolerating Vintage’s close examination of her wings, her feathers, her scales and horns. She seemed to have very little fear of the dragon, although she did keep pausing to bow to her.

  ‘You, my lady, are more beautiful than I could ever have imagined. The paintings and statues do not do you justice.’ Vostok dipped her head at this flattery, looking pleased. ‘And you say you have never been this form before?’

  ‘Not quite so, no,’ said the dragon. ‘A griffin, a great bird, and a dark dragon with wings like a bat, once.’

  ‘Extraordinary. Just extraordinary.’ Vintage paused in her examination to wipe at her eyes. ‘Oh, you must forgive me. I just never thought . . . All these years learning about you, you see. All these years looking at dusty old sketches and images carved in the sides of old temples, and here you are. If only, my darling, we did not have to meet under such unfortunate circumstances.’

  ‘You say you were inside the Behemoth when it started to wake up?’ Tor was standing with his arms crossed by one of the unhatched pods. Noon had seen him look for Kirune instinctively when they’d entered the hall, then just as instinctively pretend that he was doing no such thing.

  ‘Yes.’ Vintage straightened up, although she didn’t quite turn away from Vostok. ‘I have to tell you, my dear, I very nearly shit a brick. Everything started humming with energy, and parts of it started moving. It was repairing itself, would you believe that?’ She shook her head slightly. ‘To think, that all that time they were simply dormant. Nanthema and I barely got out of there before the whole thing sealed us away forever.’

  ‘And your companions? When will we meet them?’

  ‘Bern has gone to fetch them,’ said Aldasair softly. ‘Nanthema, and the boy, Eri.’

  ‘You will let me draw you, I hope?’ Vintage looked from Vostok to Jessen. ‘I am not a great draughtsperson – not nearly as good as my distant cousin Rolda, anyway – but I will make a brave stab at it. I could easily make it my life’s work, drawing you.’

  ‘Vintage, we probably don’t have time for that.’ Noon crossed her arms over her chest, then realised she was mirroring Tor, so she put her hands in her pockets instead. ‘The worm people could attack at any moment. We need to figure out what we’re going to do next. We have four war-beasts, when normally there would be at least a hundred, and only Vostok remembers how to fight.’

  ‘Of course, my darling. But just think, all of us together again, I’m sure we can figure it out.’

  There was a soft exclamation at the other end of the hall. Bern had appeared with the Eboran woman and the child. The boy was the one who had cried out, but the woman Nanthema had her hands pressed to her face, her eyes streaming with tears.

  ‘Nan, come and see them!’ Vintage was beaming.

  The woman called Nanthema came slowly down the hall, walking softly as though, if she moved too swiftly, the war-beasts might shimmer and break apart, revealed to be pieces of a dream after all. Her hair was long and dark, like Tor’s, and it was loose over her shoulders. A pair of eyeglasses were hooked into the top of her shirt, and they winked in the lamplight. The boy was slight and sickly looking, his red eyes almost lost in shadows, and curiously he carried in his hands a heavy and awkward-looking bucket.

  As they approached, Jessen suddenly stood, her big bushy tail straight as a brush.

  ‘Another one comes!’ she said, her normally quiet voice shockingly loud in the Hatchery. Noon frowned, wondering what the big wolf could mean, and then she spotted the war-beast pod rocking back and forth in its silk nest. It was one of the smallest, one that she had privately decided would bear them no beasts, but it was moving violently, and even the surface of it was begi
nning to split as the creature inside tried desperately to get out. Eri and Nanthema were just passing it; the woman stepped back, clearly alarmed, but the boy neatly put his bucket down on the marble floor – it had a cloth over it, Noon noticed for the first time – and went to the pod. Later, Noon would think about that moment often; Eri had gone as if summoned. As if his destiny was reaching out to him.

  ‘I am here to witness a hatching!’ Vintage was ecstatic, almost elbowing Tor out of the way to see as they all gathered around, but the boy Eri was there first. Without hesitating, he knelt on the floor and began to pull away chunks of the silvery pod material, the thin muscles in his arms bunching with the effort of it. The clear fluid ran over his hands and soaked his ragged shirt; the sharp green smell of apples filled the room.

  ‘The boy,’ said Tor. He met Noon’s eyes, and she saw him shrug slightly. ‘Should we . . .? I mean, shouldn’t someone else?’

  ‘Who else?’ said Vostok, who was looming behind them. ‘He is a son of Ebora too, Tormalin the Oathless.’

  Tor grimaced at that, but Noon saw that it was too late anyway; already there was a sizeable hole in the pod, and a taloned foot was reaching out of it, grasping for whoever might be outside. Eri took a hold of it immediately, and Noon felt her stomach turn over. It was so small, this new beast. Would it even live?

  With his free hand Eri pulled at more of the casing, but it was already falling apart. The creature inside it wriggled and stretched, a confusion, for the moment, of wet fur and limbs. One wing popped out as if on a spring, and it flapped back and forth wildly.

  ‘Hello, friend,’ said Eri. His voice was shaking. ‘I’m here to help you.’

  The war-beast slithered out of the remains of its pod onto Eri’s lap, and once again Noon wondered at how small it was. No bigger than a large dog, it had a long, foxy face, rather like Jessen’s but narrower, with oversized pointed ears, and it was covered in fur that was somewhere between the colour of ash and gold. With another tremor of shock, Noon realised it wasn’t far off the colour of the boy’s hair. The beast had feet like an eagle, and there were patches of copper-coloured scales on its forelegs and rump, while its wings were leathery and brown.

  ‘Unusual,’ murmured Vostok. ‘I have not seen such a form for many Rains.’

  ‘Incredible,’ said Vintage. She had clasped her hands in front of her chest, and there were tears freely running down her face, although she was grinning as merrily as Noon had ever seen. ‘What is she? A type of griffin? Another subset of the winged wolf?’

  The war-beast coughed, and flapped its wings once, almost knocking Eri over, but the boy held on to the creature fiercely. They were both now liberally covered with sticky pieces of the pod material.

  ‘Greetings, newest sibling,’ said Jessen. ‘We’ve been waiting to meet you for a while now.’

  The small war-beast turned to look at her, blinking eyes that were like big blue marbles, but it did not speak.

  ‘Here, let’s get you cleaned up.’ Aldasair touched the boy’s shoulder hesitantly. ‘I’m sure we can find some new clothes for you, Eri. You look like you’ve been living in those for years.’

  For a moment the boy looked blank, as though remembering something he’d rather forget, and then he hugged the beast all the tighter.

  ‘He’ll come with me, though. We’ll stay together now.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Vostok. ‘That is your purpose.’

  ‘Our new war-beast guest is small enough to stay in a room with you,’ said Aldasair. He did not see how Tor winced at that statement. ‘Come, I’ll show you where you can sleep, Eri.’

  The boy got up then, reluctantly putting the new beast down on the marble floor, but immediately the creature pressed itself to his legs so closely that when they made to leave the hall behind Aldasair, Eri almost tripped over the beast several times. He paused and retrieved his bucket as he went.

  ‘So, five war-beasts now,’ said Noon into the silence that filled the Hatchery at their departure. ‘That’s got to make our odds better, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Or, we’ve got four war-beasts and one more mouth to feed, and we’re having enough trouble feeding everyone in this palace as it is,’ said Tor. He saw the look Noon shot him and he raised his hands apologetically. ‘He’s barely big enough to carry our bags, Noon.’

  ‘But he’ll grow, right?’ Noon turned to Vostok and Vintage, who were wearing oddly similar expressions of consideration. ‘You’ve all grown a little since you were birthed from the pods, it’s just that he’ll have more catching up to do.’

  Vostok rumbled in the back of her throat before answering. ‘Yes,’ she said, although she sounded far from certain. ‘Food, exercise, stimulation. They should all help our newest sibling.’

  ‘Good, fine. Tor, we will just have to find more food. We all will.’

  12

  This section of the gardens had once been glorious. Aldasair remembered lawns lush with colour; flowers of blue, red, purple, and miniature trees with blossom of pink and yellow. They were the summer gardens, so it was to be expected that they didn’t look their best when winter had barely left them, but neglect had done far more damage than an inappropriate season. Still, the grass was thriving now that the frosts were largely gone, and Eri and the new war-beast did not seem to care for the lack of flowers. They tore across the lawns, chasing each other and rolling in the dirt – Aldasair had found clothes for the boy, which were now well on the way to being ruined, but it was difficult to feel sad about that. The room from which he had looted the items had been much sadder, after all.

  ‘Run faster, little brother!’ called Sharrik. He stood with Aldasair and Bern, his blue feathers almost luminous in the sunlight. ‘He is nearly catching you!’

  ‘How do you know he’s a he?’ asked Bern.

  ‘The scent. Although it makes little difference to us.’

  The new war-beast had yet to speak. Instead, he seemed to communicate through a series of bashful head butts, all of which were directed towards the boy. As they watched, the new beast jumped into the air and almost took off, beating his bat-like wings once, twice. He hovered up there for a moment, and then Eri jumped up and caught him. They barrelled to the ground together. The boy’s laughter was like birdsong on the air, light but brittle.

  ‘Where is Jessen?’ The two were running off out of sight, and without stopping to discuss it, they moved to follow them, Bern pausing to pick up the bucket. Vostok had indicated that they should keep an eye on the newborn for now, just in case he should suddenly become ill or weak.

  ‘She has gone to hunt,’ said Aldasair, feeling a slight constriction in his chest as he did so. Jessen did not enjoy hunting, and she was aware that was a failing in herself, but they needed more food – there was no way around it.

  ‘Hunting!’ Sharrik immediately began to bristle, the feathers standing along his great muscled neck. ‘Why am I not hunting? I shall hunt!’

  ‘If you are going, at least let me remove that harness. You’ll be better off without the weight.’ Bern made to reach for him, but Sharrik whipped his head out of reach and with a few beats of his enormous wings, rose into the air.

  ‘I shall bring back an entire herd!’ he declared, before launching up and away. The wind from his wings battered them for a moment, and then he was gone.

  ‘By the stones, I don’t think he listens to a word I say.’

  ‘He’s like you.’ Aldasair smiled, and then added, ‘He wants to help, I mean. He’s eager to be of assistance.’

  ‘You mean he’s eager to show off,’ said Bern, but he was smiling faintly too. ‘Well, if he can find game around here, he’ll be lucky. We’ve all been out and looked, further and further every day – Tor and Noon are flying south now, over the mountains, but the further they go, the more energy they use up, and I’m not sure that does us any good. Even Noon’s giant bat has been bringing back the odd rabbit, although I’ve not seen her for a while.’ He sighed, and then lifted the bucket. ‘A
nd what is this about, exactly? It barely feels like there’s anything in it at all.’

  Aldasair lowered his voice. ‘Eri will not go anywhere without it. An emotional attachment of some sort, something from his home he cannot let go of.’ For a time they stood and watched as Eri and the war-beast attempted to climb a small tree. ‘The human woman Vintage found him sitting by the road, and it’s clear he hasn’t been eating properly for some time. He may have experienced some sort of trauma and he won’t speak of his family. I think he may have been alone for a long time. That can do strange things to a person.’

  Bern looked at him, his eyes nearly as green as the fresh grass. Aldasair found that he was holding his breath, uncertain what he wanted Bern to say next, but then the big man turned away. ‘Time heals,’ he said eventually. ‘That’s what my father always says, anyway. Time, and the company of people who . . . care for you.’

  ‘Your people have nearly all left. Did you not wish to go with them?’

  Bern smiled again. ‘And leave Sharrik? I know it’s not your custom for humans to bond with war-beasts, but I’m afraid that ship has already sailed.’ The big man cleared his throat. ‘The great oaf has become quite dear to me.’

  ‘There’s nothing that says the war-beasts have to stay here.’ Aldasair clasped his hands behind his back, carefully not looking at anything. ‘Our old rules, the way things used to be – all of that is dust, Bern. You and Sharrik could go wherever you wanted. Finneral must also be in need of protection.’

  Bern put the bucket down. ‘Why are you saying this, Aldasair?’

  ‘I don’t know, truthfully.’ He thought of Jessen, hunting somewhere far away. He could feel her, like a knot of tension in his chest, and knew that she was not enjoying herself. ‘I don’t know why I say anything, half the time. Part of me thinks it was easier when I didn’t have anyone to talk to, when the corridors of the palace were silent and we were quietly slipping into death, I . . .’ He pressed his fingers to his forehead. ‘You should ignore me.’