The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  ‘Salt monsters. Fine. And what is this place? What are your salt monsters protecting?’

  ‘That is more complicated, child.’

  ‘Well, I’ve been savaged and pulled into a giant green tube, so I would appreciate some answers, no matter how complicated they are.’ He took a deep breath, ignoring how badly his head was spinning. ‘And I’m four hundred years old. I am hardly anyone’s child.’

  ‘Come. First, we must stop the black blood.’

  The figure turned and walked away, heading straight for the smooth, green wall of the chamber. Tor hesitated, watching the swishing of the man’s robes through the pool. Keeping his eyes on the man’s back, he briefly dipped his fingers into the silvery water and tasted it; it was not Ygseril’s sap. The disappointment of that held him in place for a few agonized seconds, and then he began limping after the man; it seemed that the only way he was likely to get out of here was with someone else’s help. It looked as though his new friend was about to walk straight into the smooth green expanse, when the wall ahead of them split open as though someone had just struck it with an axe blade. There were fibrous threads hanging from the place where the wall had split, and the sharp scent of foliage grew stronger.

  They stepped through into another chamber, only this was long, and the walls leaned towards each other until they came together in shadows that loomed far above their heads. In the centre of the room there was a spindly structure, a thing of spirals and curves and more fibrous threads, which curved off to meet the wall on the left. As they drew closer, Tor realised it was a staircase of sorts.

  When the man led them to the bottom of it, Tor was dismayed to see that the thing did not look sturdy at all – in fact, he doubted it would take his weight, let alone the combined weight of him and the man with four arms.

  ‘I do not believe I can climb that, friend,’ he said, gesturing to his leg.

  The man peered at his leg again, as though he had forgotten what one was. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, ‘but I cannot help you. It is stronger than it looks, this structure, and I promise that there is help beyond it.’

  Tor opened his mouth to reply, when the man seemed to shatter and break apart in front of his eyes. It was as though he were a reflection on the surface of a pond, and someone had tossed a rock, sending all the pieces of him into fractured bits. And then just as quickly, the pieces rearranged themselves until once again the man was a solid figure in front of him, his long fingers still interlaced.

  ‘As I said, I cannot help you,’ he repeated, as though this explained everything. ‘I cannot touch you. What is your name, child?’

  Tor swallowed. It had to be the blood loss. Had those salt creatures some sort of poison on their saliva, like some Wild-touched monstrosity?

  ‘Tormalin the Oathless,’ he said, before pressing his lips together. They were starting to go numb. ‘I am Tormalin. What is your name? Who are you? What are you doing on this island? You can’t ignore all my questions forever.’

  ‘Tormalin, follow me.’

  Despite his better judgement, he did. The strange man flowed up the erratic staircase as though it were barely there, while Tor pulled himself up by grabbing a hold of the twisted pieces of greenish material. It was solid enough under his weight, although every awkward step caused a fresh wave of blood from the punctures on his leg, and he could feel the blood from his shoulder wound trickling down the centre of his back.

  When eventually he reached the top, he followed the man through a dark opening into a wider room, much smaller and closer than the cavern they had been in. In here, roots, just like those in Micanal’s underground excavation, sprouted from the walls, alongside several large oval-shaped objects that Tor took to be mirrors, although their surfaces were a deep, dark red.

  ‘Come here and rest yourself, Tormalin the Oathless.’ The man gestured to the walls. ‘And you will be healed.’

  Tor did not move. ‘How? What is going to happen?’

  ‘I do not believe you would understand if I told you. Stand here, against the tendrils.’

  When Tor still did not move, a flicker of impatience moved across the man’s face – as alien as his appearance was, Tor found he recognised that emotion well enough. ‘Tormalin, you are dying as I look at you. The children here are strong, but not invulnerable – surely you have learned that by now?’

  A wave of light-headedness moved through his body. Thinking of Kirune, and wondering if the cat had escaped and if he had, if he’d fetched Noon, he walked over to the wall and the things the man had called tendrils.

  ‘With your back to them, please.’

  Tor did as he was told, the tendrils making uncomfortable knots against his back, and then waited. Nothing happened. He glared at the strange man, but he simply stood and fiddled with the thick cuff of his robe, removing some invisible grain of dust.

  ‘Well?’ snapped Tor eventually. ‘You were the one who told me I was about to drop dead. How is this supposed to be helping me?’

  ‘It is doing its work,’ the many-limbed man said mildly.

  Perplexed, Tor looked down, to see several green tendrils sticking up through the material of his trousers, all bunched around the area where he had been bitten. They were moving slightly, as though they were underwater weeds caught in a current. He could feel nothing there but the pain of the bite, yet they had clearly wormed through his flesh. There was, he could just make out by turning his head slightly, a similar gathering of tendrils just under his collarbone.

  ‘Oh.’ He looked away hurriedly, swallowing down the wave of bile that threatened to close his throat. ‘I . . . what is this?’

  ‘It will close your wounds.’

  The man stepped back, and all around him, the red mirrors shimmered with a light source Tor could not see, and then faces began to appear in them – similar to the man who stood before him, with their smooth noses and bulbous, inky eyes, although each had a different collection of coloured marks across its skin. One that Tor could see had braided its white hair, while another wore a chain of some dark material flecked with red.

  ‘Eeskar.’ One of them spoke, and its voice sounded to Tor as though it came from a very great distance. ‘Another one comes? So soon?’

  ‘Yurn, the incident you think of was many turns ago,’ replied the man who had brought him to the chamber, who Tor assumed must be Eeskar. ‘You are poor at watching the times.’

  ‘I do not remember it,’ said another of the mirrors. This was the one with the braids, and its voice was higher and softer than the others. As Tor watched, the image seemed to shatter and re-arrange itself, just as Eeskar had done. ‘They are small, are they not? And unfinished, somehow.’

  ‘Degradation,’ said Eeskar, sorrowfully. He bowed his head slightly. ‘Of us, now, and of the seed, then. We cannot expect endless successes.’ He straightened up again, turning to look around at all the mirrors – the faces followed him as one. ‘That is why there are many seeds. You know this.’

  ‘It seems a waste,’ said the one called Yurn. ‘Such material, turned into this. A shadow, an echo of what it should be. Of what we are.’

  ‘Were. What we were,’ said Eeskar, sternly. He looked back to Tor, and to his surprise the man smiled, his huge doe eyes creasing at the edges. ‘Yes, they are small and weak, a ripple cast by a mighty rock, but they are still a delightful simulacra. Not a success, no, but neither is it a thing to look on with disgust.’

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ muttered the one with the braids.

  ‘Who are you?’ The strange conversation had almost made him forget his wounds, but now that Tor spoke he could feel a tightness in his leg and shoulder that was replacing the pain. Whatever the tendrils were, they were succeeding. ‘What is this place? You have to give me some answers!’

  ‘Always questions,’ said Yurn, dismissively. ‘The last one asked questions, and it didn’t like the answers, but still they ask.’

  ‘Tormalin the Oathless,’ Eeskar lifted all four of his arms, the
thick sleeves falling back to reveal limbs that seemed to have too many elbows. ‘We are the beginning of you.’

  43

  Another empty room, another sad collection of shadows and dust.

  Vintage paused in the doorway, taking the opportunity to lean there and rest for a moment. Micanal’s journal was wedged firmly under one arm, with the crutch under the other, and various bits of her were aching to retire to her rooms for the night, but it was so difficult to sleep when so much of the palace lay empty for her to explore. And, of course, Nanthema could well be in her rooms. Just lately the atmosphere between them had grown thick and charged, like the air before a storm; when they were together, she half expected the light to take on the strained, yellow quality of sunshine before a cloudburst.

  Cautiously, she shuffled forward into the semi-dark. The emptiness of the palace had surprised her at first. Only a handful of the humans had chosen to take up suites in the palace, with most choosing to camp in the gardens instead. She had asked Bern about it – had Tor objected to humans cluttering up his ancestral home? Did Aldasair not want strangers poking around the Eboran furnishings? Bern had smiled a little, looking oddly apologetic, and then he had explained that many of the humans who had made the long journey to Ebora were convinced that the palace must be haunted, or cursed. You have to remember, he said, that to most of these people the Eborans were near mythical creatures, unknowable beings who had turned into monsters and thirsted for human flesh. At best, they think it’s unlucky to sleep in their vacant beds.

  Vintage had shaken her head at that, and Bern had grinned. ‘As a woman of science, I reckon you find those sorts of attitudes frustrating,’ he’d said.

  Standing in one such abandoned chamber, it wasn’t so difficult to imagine the place was cursed. Vintage put Micanal’s journal down on a nearby table, and looked around. This place had been an artist’s studio once, and there were wooden easels crowded at the walls, hunched together like uneasy skeletons. On another table towards the window there was a murky collection of glass jars, one with an extremely ancient paintbrush sticking out of it. Seeing those, her heart quickened in her chest, and with trembling fingers she opened the journal to a page she had marked with a strip of leather. This was Micanal’s studio – one of many, actually – with what were likely his very own tools, just lying scattered about. Forcing herself to take it all in properly, she scanned down the page to the entry that had brought her here.

  I went to the summer studio today. I have been avoiding it, for it is so close to the Hatchery and I have found it difficult even to walk in that part of the palace. But I am the only one who uses it now, and I feel some strange pull towards the old places, as though they are ailing relatives I should be caring for in these final days (of course, all my true blood relatives save for Arnia are dead). I don’t know if I meant to do any work there, or if I simply meant to clean it up, but when I got there I found a woman I did not know, crouched in the corner of the room, as if hiding from the daylight. I have made a brief sketch of her in these pages, from memory.

  Her feet were bare. She sat with her arms over her head, and from them I could see that she had the flux, oozing red cracks in chalk-white skin. From between her arms she looked up at me, deep shadows around her eyes. I surmised from her clothes that she was not from the palace, or even central Ebora, but one of the outer settlements near our borders. Her feet, as I looked more closely, were dark with dirt and blistered. I must admit, I felt a tremor of shock that such as her had come so far, and then somehow crept so deep within the palace. And to here, this place that was mine.

  I asked her what she was doing here. She told me, haltingly, that she had come to the palace because she was dying, and she wanted to be near Tree-father when she died. Wanted to be on his roots, if she could.

  A wave of revulsion closed my throat. Have we not done enough? Has Ygseril not suffered enough? We dare to bring our diseased selves into his presence, to rot on his sacred roots?

  She continued speaking in her dry, broken voice, ragged from coughing. She had made it this far, she explained to me, but was too exhausted to go any further. She had never been to the palace before, and she kept getting lost. Outside, it was possible to see Tree-father, but once she was within the twisting corridors she had become confused. Perhaps I could help her. Carry her there. Her time was short.

  I said no more to her, and left. I have not been back.

  Vintage closed the book, and looked to the corner nearest the window. She could imagine the woman easily enough – the sketch included by Micanal was a brief thumbnail, but extremely evocative – crouched in the dust, her feet sore and bleeding. She would have gone to the window to see if she could see Ygseril, but the room was facing in the wrong direction – there was only a garden, one of hundreds dotted around. She could imagine Micanal too, straight-backed and imperious, looking down on this woman who had invaded his sanctuary. It made her frown.

  Was this why they had left? The presence of illness in the palace had become too difficult to avoid, in the end, so they had sought to outrun it. Just like Tor.

  Gathering up the journal, Vintage left, walking back out into the corridors without much sense of where she was going. What sort of people were Micanal and Arnia, truly? What sort of situation had she sent Tor and Noon into? More disappointment and sorrow seemed likely. She was so caught up in her thoughts that she very nearly walked straight into Tyranny Munk, who was standing in a corridor gazing up at painting that stretched lengthwise for a good ten feet or so.

  ‘Lady Vintage! You made me jump. Have you seen this? I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.’

  ‘I’m sorry, my dear, I was miles away.’ Vintage turned to study the painting. It was a stormy landscape, depicting a great stretch of broken grassland, with dark mountains brooding in the distance. A war was raging there, thousands of figures frozen in violence, but the far end of the canvas was rough, and scratched here and there with charcoal marks. The painting was unfinished. ‘I had thought all the big paintings and artworks had been squirrelled away, but this has been left out. How interesting.’ She peered closer at the tiny figures, and realised with a slight lurch of her stomach that it depicted the Carrion Wars – humans were being torn apart by tall figures in shining armour. Splotches and smears of crimson, tiny faces contorted in pain. ‘It is by Micanal the Clearsighted. I imagine this must be one of the pieces he was working on when he left, and some poor soul has framed it and put it here, unfinished as it is. He really was truly revered here.’

  ‘This must be worth a fortune.’ Tyranny met her eyes and grinned. ‘Don’t worry, it’s much too big to hide under my shirt. It’s a fairly grim subject too, what do you—’

  They both turned to look up the corridor as a flurry of shouts broke the silence. Voices raised in demand, and outrage, then a shout of warning. A moment later, Vintage heard the distinctive sound of sword against sword.

  ‘What is that?’ Tyranny was frowning.

  ‘Sarn’s arse, it’s coming from the Hatchery. Come on.’

  Vintage moved off down the corridor as fast as she could, the crutch clattering a din on the marble floor. Tyranny Munk came close on her heels. When they turned the corner to the wider passageway that housed the Hatchery doors, Vintage was alarmed to see a small but violent battle taking place outside them. Immediately, she spotted the guards Bern had assigned to watch the Hatchery, a pair of Finneral warriors with stones in their hair and their distinctive short swords in their hands; facing off against them was Sen-Lord Takor and three of his soldiers. All were still standing, but the clamour of sword against sword was deafening, and the Yuron-Kai were known to take hand-to-hand combat very seriously. As she watched, one of their soldiers slammed a Finneral woman against the wall, hard enough for Vintage to hear the flat crack as her head hit the stone.

  ‘What is going on here? What, in the name of Sarn’s broken bones, do you think you’re bloody well doing?’

  ‘They tried to
force their way inside the Hatchery!’ shouted the other Finneral guard, his voice tight with outrage. Sen-Lord Takor stepped back and met Vintage’s eyes, letting his soldiers continue the fight without him.

  ‘There is nothing but chaos here,’ he snapped in his accented plains speech. ‘If you will not let us in, we must force our way in and take what we need.’

  ‘You will do no such bloody thing!’ Vintage patted her belt, only to remember that of course she hadn’t brought her crossbow with her – she hadn’t thought she would need it. ‘Tell your men to step down, Sen-Lord Takor, or you can consider yourself at war with Ebora, and at war with me, and I promise you, at least one of those is a bloody dangerous thing to be.’

  ‘What Ebora?’ Sen-Lord Takor snorted – it was, Vintage guessed, as close as he came to laughing. Behind them the fight continued. The Finneral guard who had shouted had taken a punch to the face, and his nose was bleeding freely. Vintage felt a surge of anger. ‘Ebora is long gone. What’s in that room should be given to those able to do something with it.’

  ‘How dare you! How dare you accept our hospitality, and then start a bloody brawl in the corridor!’ In her anger, Vintage took a moment to curse Nanthema. If she had made herself more visible, taken more of an interest, they could well have avoided this situation. ‘I will not have it, sir. I will not!’

  She turned to ask Tyranny to go and get more help, but the young woman was already moving towards Sen-Lord Takor, her hands held up in a placating gesture.

  ‘Lord Takor, I understand your frustration.’ She walked up to him casually enough, not looking at the curved sword he held in one hand. ‘It’s a bad situation all over. But you have to think about it another way.’ She placed a hand lightly on his upper arm, just as though they were friends chatting in a bar. ‘You see, just down that corridor, there’s a painting . . .’ She pointed with her other hand, and obviously confused, Sen-Lord Takor looked where she was gesturing.