The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  They were away from the open grass and passing down through the neat rows of flowering bushes, all the branches heavy with unopened buds. The leaves were waxy and green, and gave off their own sharp scent. Vintage made a note to find out what these plants were, and if an oil could be extracted from their leaves.

  ‘Jessen is afraid. She feels trapped. Blind even. Helcate thinks that she cannot see the sky. Sharrik is afraid, but he is also angry. He longs to fight something.’

  Vintage’s stomach turned a slow somersault. She had assumed that it would be Noon and Tor in trouble, because they had ventured out over the Barren Sea, but instead it was the friends she had sent to Finneral – together, for their own safety. Abruptly she wanted to kick something, but her leg was too stiff.

  ‘Aldasair? Bern?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Eri shook his head slowly. ‘Helcate cannot feel them. But then, he can’t feel them usually, so maybe that’s all right?’

  ‘Yes, let’s hope so.’ She squeezed the book under her arm. ‘This situation in Finneral must have been worse than I thought. How long would it take a messenger to get to us, if there were bad news? Weeks perhaps, or if they sent a bird . . .’

  Eri looked up at her with wide eyes. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry.’

  She did her best to smile at him. ‘Oh don’t listen to me, I’m rambling. We shall have to send our own message. It will take a while, but that can’t be helped.’

  ‘Kirune is scared too,’ said Eri.

  This time Vintage’s stomach dropped like a stone. She pursed her lips, and forced herself to speak calmly.

  ‘Kirune?’

  Eri nodded. ‘Helcate says that Kirune doesn’t like anyone to know how he feels, but it bleeds through anyway. He panics, he doesn’t understand what’s going on.’

  They were nearly back to the palace courtyard. The plains folk and the people from all across Sarn were as busy as ever, men and women back from hunting, or greeting new traders. She saw some of them look over towards them, their eyes automatically seeking out the war-beast, and she saw that sunny look of awe on many faces. They would be wondering where the others had gone, and what was she supposed to tell them?

  ‘Right. The contingent from Jarlsbad have beautiful messenger birds, sleek, lethal predators, every one of them. I’m sure we can ask a favour of them.’ Vintage looked around the packed square, seeking them out. ‘The trick will be not letting on that there’s a problem.’

  ‘We shouldn’t tell them?’

  ‘No, my dear.’ Vintage looked at the boy and was seized with an impulse to ruffle his hair. She reminded herself that not only was he centuries older than she was, he was also a teenage boy who might find such things embarrassing. ‘We’ll have to keep it to ourselves for now. Things are under control here. People are bringing us food and supplies, happy in the belief that they’re aiding the fight against the worm people. Without that structure, we would be in a lot of trouble indeed, and if they should find out that the war-beasts are in real danger, it could be disastrous.’ She took a slow breath. Nanthema was there, across the square, walking away from the caravan that Tyranny and Okaar had travelled in. ‘I will have to tell Nan, at least,’ she murmured.

  ‘We could take the message!’ Eri reached out and patted Helcate’s ruff of fur. ‘We can fly to Finneral, if you give me a map. And explain it to me, maybe.’

  The small war-beast sat up straighter. ‘Helcate!’

  ‘Oh no, my dear, I can hardly send you into a danger we don’t yet understand.’ She saw the flash of disappointment that crossed Eri’s face, so she smiled to lessen it. ‘And I need you both here. You are Ebora’s last defence. It would be a great help if you could speak to the Jarlsbad leaders for me, though, ask if we might kindly borrow one of their messenger birds.’ Eri might only be a boy, but he was still an Eboran, and Vintage guessed that being asked by him would be more impressive. Plus, they would assume it couldn’t be a dreadfully serious message if a supposedly teenage boy was asking them. ‘Could you do that for me, Eri?’

  The boy nodded briskly. ‘Easily.’

  He sped off, with Helcate close on his heels. Vintage adjusted the crutch so that it sat more comfortably under her armpit – her ankle, she told herself, was feeling better every day – and set off in pursuit of Nanthema, who was heading back inside the palace. The woman was walking slowly, apparently in deep thought, but they were still some way down one of the vast corridors by the time Vintage caught up with her.

  ‘Nan? A word.’

  She quickly ran through what Eri had told her, watching the Eboran’s face as she did so. This section of the palace was largely empty, the sounds from the campsites outside drifting in through the tall windows, but Vintage kept her voice low anyway.

  ‘The boy says this?’

  ‘He does. We’ll send a message by bird, and hope we hear something soon. What else can we do?’

  Nanthema frowned. ‘So the boy has a true bonding with his war-beast, and the beasts themselves have bonded with each other. I doubt it is a true connection, as the fully formed war-beasts of old would have had, but nevertheless that is interesting. I have always wondered how such things worked.’

  ‘Nan, I think you’re missing the main meat of what I told you there.’ Despite the empty corridor, Vintage lowered her voice further. ‘Jessen and Sharrik are in trouble, and Kirune as well, by the sounds of it. Which means Noon, Tor, Aldasair and Bern could all be in serious danger.’

  Nanthema turned slightly, and the cold daylight filled the glass of her spectacles, turning them into opaque white squares. Her eyes hidden and her mouth solemn, it was hard to know what she was thinking. The silence stretched out between them.

  ‘Well? Aren’t you going to say anything?’

  Nanthema grimaced slightly, as though Vintage had interrupted her from admiring the view out the windows. ‘You don’t like what I have to say about these things. That we shouldn’t be here at all. That these war-beasts are a mistake.’

  ‘A mistake? How can they be a mistake? They are here, your tree-god birthed them, they are real!’

  ‘I wish you could understand.’ Nanthema moved away from the window and her crimson eyes were visible again. They glittered oddly. ‘I really wish you could see things as I do, but I suspect that you are just . . . too human.’

  Vintage drew herself up to her full height, ignoring the twinge in her foot. ‘If I were feeling especially spiteful, I might say something about you being too Eboran, but I have known some Eborans in my time, Nan. Dear, confused Eri, and quiet, compassionate Aldasair. And Tor, a vain layabout with a high opinion of himself and a tendency to avoid responsibility, who still came back here when he thought there was a chance he could save his people. And if I am too human? Then I shall take that as a compliment.’

  With that she turned and walked back down the corridor. The crutch made a loud, rhythmic rapping against the marble floor, but she was glad of it, as it broke up the icy silence from behind her.

  41

  It was, Hestillion thought, like some sinister ceremony.

  The queen had taken them to the same enormous chamber where she had been creating her odd, flying humanoids, but she had expanded it to accommodate Celaphon and his bulk. The flying men and the wizened little homunculi that brought Hestillion her food and took away her waste all waited in silent rows, lined up by the flesh walls, while in the centre of the chamber a huge shallow pool of steaming white liquid waited. Hestillion pulled her furred vest closer around her chest, feeling cold, although she was quite sure the temperature hadn’t changed.

  ‘Celaphon, you will get in.’ The queen still carried the shard of crystal in her hands.

  ‘And then what?’ asked Hestillion. The blank faces of the flying men were unsettling. Celaphon, meanwhile, was stepping into the pool. It was deeper than Hestillion had guessed; he sank in up to his belly, vapour rolling off him in waves.

  ‘Then we . . . graft the crystal onto him. The fluid allows us to ma
ke changes – as we made changes to the others.’ She gestured with her long fingers to the figures standing at the wall.

  ‘Changes,’ echoed Hestillion flatly. ‘Will it hurt?’

  ‘Yes, we would imagine it is very painful.’ The queen paused, turning the crystal over and over in her long hands. ‘We feel a connection to all of our extensions, but it is possible for us to make that connection dim. And these others,’ she nodded to the flying men and the homunculi, ‘they do not always have mouths to scream.’

  With that cold thought nestling in her throat like a small lump of ice, Hestillion turned to watch Celaphon in the water. He was looking around with every sign of curiosity, but she guessed from the way he was holding his head away from the liquid that he did not like the smell of it. With the black horns bristling from his head and neck and the thick, fibrous plates lining his back, he looked very little like the small, feeble dragon that she had torn free of the pod – yet in his fastidiousness she could see a shadow of that past self.

  ‘Watch closely, Lady Hestillion Eskt, as you will be next.’

  The queen strode over to Celaphon and a small platform grew out of the floor, long and tapering with a flat surface at the top. She put the crystal on it carefully, and then held out her arms to the war-beast. Slowly, the dragon lowered his head, and she placed her hands to either side of his enormous jaws. She should have looked small in front of him, or at least diminished somehow, but she did not. She looked powerful.

  ‘Trust me, Celaphon,’ she said, and she pushed his head under the steaming liquid.

  Hestillion bit her lip, certain that Celaphon would rise back up, roaring and outraged, but he meekly stayed where he was, his thick neck leading straight into the pool. The queen’s hands began to work quickly, kneading the scales on the dragon’s broad forehead. To Hestillion’s surprise – and no small amount of horror – they began to move, as though they rested on top of a malleable paste instead of flesh and bones. There was a rumble from Celaphon, but it sounded more like an exclamation of surprise than a pained outburst. When the queen had arranged his flesh to her liking, she plucked the crystal from the platform and placed it in the hollow she had made. The reaction was immediate – Celaphon’s entire body shuddered, and a noise came from under the liquid, a terrible, strangled roar that forced a storm of air bubbles up to the surface. But he did not pull his head away from the queen’s grip, and she continued her work without a change on her mask-like face. Hestillion edged forward, wanting to get a better view, and watched as the queen methodically pulled red flesh and black scales back around the edges of the jagged crystal.

  Celaphon had stopped his guttural roaring, but he still shuddered in place, sending sharp waves through the white liquid, which lapped at the edges of the pool with increasing violence. Where it spilled, however, it was absorbed into the floor and was gone in moments.

  ‘Nearly there, my sweet,’ murmured Hestillion. The crystal was almost in place – it was not a smooth fit, jutting from the dragon’s forehead, but the scales were closing up around the edges as if it had always been there. No blood, thought Hestillion.

  ‘There.’ The queen stepped back, and Celaphon raised his head – slowly, as though it weighed more than the rest of him. The crystal rose from the centre of his forehead in a series of jagged peaks. ‘Now let me just . . .’

  The Jure’lia queen reached up and tapped the crystal with a single finger, once. It flickered, light racing across the surface, and Celaphon staggered, as though he’d been struck by something much bigger than himself. Mindful of the hissing waters, Hestillion leaned over the edge of the pool to place her hands on his shoulder. His scales were hot under her fingers, and he was trembling.

  ‘Celaphon? Are you well? Talk to me?’

  ‘There is so much,’ he said. ‘Endless, a line, a thread. Passing back through . . . great emptiness. But I am caught on the end of the thread.’

  ‘Calm yourself,’ said the queen. ‘You are part of us now, and what you can feel is the line of our lives, stretching back to the very beginning. This is a connection, is it not? What you were looking for?’

  ‘Crawling, noises, skittering.’ Celaphon began to shake his head, whipping it back and forth. ‘Darkness, heat, no air, no air, I can’t breathe.’

  Hestillion rounded on the queen, panic thick in her throat.

  ‘What have you done to him?’

  ‘We have given him what he wanted.’ The queen was watching Hestillion closely, her eyes narrowed. ‘It is an honour beyond anything experienced by anyone on this world before. He sees what we are, truly. A connection to something greater. Isn’t that what you once sought?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  The queen tipped her head to one side, as though Hestillion were a curious insect doing something unexpected.

  ‘Do you not?’

  Hestillion turned back to Celaphon. ‘My sweet one, please, are you all right?’

  The dragon had grown very still now, and there was a new light in his pale eyes. He looked away from her, at the fleshy walls and the rows of silent Jure’lia servants. Not one of them had moved during the grafting process.

  ‘I can feel it all. Is this what they feel?’

  ‘Who, my sweet?’

  ‘My brothers and sisters.’

  ‘What they feel is less,’ the queen cut in sharply. ‘The bond that we have, now, Celaphon, is eternal. And now, we will rest and then gather another shard. Lady Hestillion Eskt, born in the year of the green bird, it is your turn.’

  The pain was not so terrible, if she did not focus on it.

  The Jure’lia queen had reduced the size of the pool before Hestillion climbed down into it, and she lay with her face turned up to the ceiling, waiting as the pale water soaked through her clothes. It did not burn as she had thought it would, but the scent of it was stronger and that was unpleasant, at least partly because she could place it: the smell of silt at the edge of a cold running river, or the smell at the back of an old wardrobe full of clothes long since forgotten – it was both yet neither of these. It was the moving that was distressing. When she moved, her body moved too much. As though her bones stayed in one place, but her flesh moved an extra inch or so. She thought of herself as a reflection caught in moving water, parts of her being sliced away in ripples of light. It was best, all in all, not to move.

  ‘Are you ready?’

  The queen crouched over her. Somewhere, out of sight, Celaphon was at the back of the chamber. He was quiet, coming to terms with the new sensations he claimed to be feeling.

  ‘Why do you ask me, truly?’ Hestillion could see the queen’s face, hovering white above her. ‘You could force this on me.’

  ‘But I do not.’ The queen paused, appearing to correct herself. ‘We do not. You can walk away from this connection, Lady Hestillion, but we will not offer it again. We think you have some idea what it means.’

  ‘Yes, it might kill me. And it is at the very least the final severing of any ties I have to Ebora, and to my brother. They will not have me back after this.’

  But it was also a connection to the power that Celaphon wielded, a chance to help him become what he was meant to be. It was a way to understand the Jure’lia fully, and to be a part of the future they were building for Sarn: an alien future, yes, but one perhaps where she could continue to live. And regardless, there was no way back now, no path that led back to the sunny palace gardens, laughing with her brother and her cousin. All of that was closed off to her, forever. She realised the queen was waiting.

  ‘Oh, just do it,’ she said tersely. ‘If you can.’

  The queen’s long arms arched over her, clutching in one hand a new shard of blue crystal; she had retrieved another, while Celaphon and Hestillion waited in the eerily silent chamber. Her free hand settled around Hestillion’s neck, curling around it as snugly as a scarf. The queen’s skin was dry and hot.

  ‘Do not move.’

  With one finger from the hand stil
l holding the crystal, the queen pressed against Hestillion’s breastbone. She felt a moment of pressure, uncomfortable yet not quite painful, while the pale waters shifted and lapped around her body. Then, the finger sank in, as easily as if Hestillion were made of uncooked dough – yet still there was no pain.

  ‘I don’t understand, how are you doing that?’

  ‘Not moving includes not talking,’ said the queen. She moved the finger in slow circles, drawing out the hole she was creating, making it larger. From her awkward vantage point, Hestillion could not see the interior of the hole, but her heart was beating harder and harder, and she half feared to see it rise up through it, a desperate purple muscle, finally abandoning her.

  Happy with the aperture she had created, the queen took the blue crystal and began to sink it into Hestillion’s chest. Watching it, she felt a sudden terrible urge to laugh; giggles jammed in her throat, threatening to spill out, and she grimaced with the effort of keeping them in. Roots save me, what have I done?

  With the crystal in place – it protruded almost two inches from Hestillion’s breastbone – the queen began to push the flesh and skin around it back into place. Now, there was pain, and Hestillion gleefully seized on it, cherished it; anything to stop this dreadful need to laugh.

  ‘Where is my blood?’ she said suddenly. She felt like she’d had several glasses of wine on an empty stomach.

  ‘Be quiet,’ replied the queen, although without any heat. Her head was down, intent on her task – long fingers the colour of swamp moss patted and cajoled flesh and skin, patting them into place like pieces of clay. ‘There, it is done.’

  And then, without a word of warning, she pressed on the crystal and it winked with sapphire fire. In the first instance, Hestillion felt a shaft of agony impale her through the chest, instantly stopping her breath and expelling every other sensation. In that moment, she knew she must be dead. Her vision turned black at the edges, turning the chamber into a place of shadows. Then that pain moved out through her body, shooting to the tips of her fingers, crackling across her eyes, the lobes of her ears, the soles of her feet. Everything tasted blue, and then . . .