Heartland

by Lucy Hounsom

  Kyndra felt another pulse of unease. Perhaps it was the mercenary way in which Ségin spoke, but she sensed something hungry in the words. Glancing around at the eager, firelit faces, she wondered whether they’d exchanged one kind of captivity for another.

  11

  Outside Skar, Acre

  Hagdon

  The connection hissed so badly that it almost obscured the emperor’s voice. General Hagdon doubted he’d be able to use the receiver again. As stores of ambertrix dwindled, the whole of the empire’s carefully built infrastructure was falling apart. There was barely any power left in the little box and it had been one of the last remaining in New Sartya. The emperor had its twin. He flattened his palm harder against the glowing metal plate, striving to catch the Davaratch’s words. ‘Iresonté has informed me … tolerate another failure, General.’

  Hagdon ground his teeth. ‘May I know what she reported?’ ‘… this rivalry, Hagdon. Iresonté tells me … everything she could to warn you, but you refused to listen.’

  ‘Sire,’ Hagdon said, unable to keep his fury down, ‘she’s lying. She betrayed us, deliberately alerted the dualakat to our presence. She locked the damn gates, penned us like cattle. I was relying on the aid of the stealth force. Without the element of surprise, we were slaughtered.’

  ‘… did you not hear me? You will put this rivalry aside.’

  Hagdon clenched his fists.

  The emperor continued. ‘Captain Iresonté … orders with regards to Khronosta. She informs … cannot be trusted not to interfere.’ The connection momentarily improved. ‘Now, report on the situation with the rebels.’

  How had Iresonté convinced the Davaratch of her innocence? If only Dyen had seen his attacker, but the stealth force had covered their tracks well. Hagdon had no proof; even those of his men who’d survived attributed the failure of the mission to the dualakat’s decision to fight instead of run, as they always had before.

  ‘We’ve tracked them to Skar,’ he said, trying to focus on the matter at hand. ‘It appears the Defiant are sheltering the outlanders. I am still unsure of their motives.’

  ‘But you’re certain this group is from Rairam?’

  ‘That’s the story they told in Asha. They described the Sundered Valley accurately and claimed to have braved its dangers. And –’ He hesitated. ‘They seem unusually strong for aberrations, Your Majesty.’

  He could almost feel his emperor’s excitement. ‘I want them extracted, Hagdon, and brought to me.’

  ‘They may prove uncooperative, especially after days spent with the Defiant.’

  ‘Iresonté has a man inside that base. Get her people to contact him. Find out what he knows.’

  ‘Yes, sire.’

  ‘If the outlanders refuse to surrender, threaten to destroy Skar. They owe a debt to the Defiant. It will be interesting to see whether they decide to pay it.’

  ‘What if they don’t?’

  ‘You have artillery. Reduce the base to rubble.’

  Hagdon swallowed. ‘And if the outlanders surrender?’

  ‘You know better than to leave an enemy behind you, General. It is high time the Defiant paid for the men they have slaughtered.’

  ‘But there are—’ He was going to say “women and children”, but what was the point? The Defiant had made their ambitions clear. They were enemies of the empire, enemies who wouldn’t hesitate to take Sartyan lives, be they military or civilian. Still, the order twisted Hagdon’s insides like bad meat. He’d seen too much killing to want to order more.

  ‘And, General—’ The receiver pulsed, the pale blue of the ambertrix that powered it fading to grey. Hagdon watched it wisp out like smoke on the wind, taking the emperor’s voice with it. He sighed, not a little relieved.

  Iresonté herself was gone from camp, following up a Khronostian lead in the Beaches. Hagdon went in search of her second, a copper-skinned Azakander from lands south of the Red River. Fiercely loyal to Iresonté, the woman treated him to an unfriendly stare. No doubt she was under orders to report on his activity. ‘How swiftly can you get a message to your contact in Skar?’ he asked.

  ‘How swiftly do you need a response?’ Her tone, at least, was civil.

  Hagdon straightened the scabbard at his hip. ‘Immediately.’

  ‘An hour,’ she said.

  ‘Give him our position. Tell him to meet me here.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘He would be exposing himself to discovery, General.’

  ‘Iresonté chooses her agents with care.’ He gave her a cold smile. ‘I’m sure he’ll find a way.’ He watched as she moved off to converse with another member of the stealth force. They were a tight-knit, tight-lipped unit and no one save the Davaratch was fully informed of their members or their methods. Who knew what kind of people Iresonté had working for her.

  It wasn’t until long fingers of shadow crept out of the gullies that the agent arrived. Hagdon raised an eyebrow at his age – only a boy, perhaps fifteen, with amber eyes and a collared coat. The boy bent his head. ‘Apologies, sir. I had to wait for my watch to begin before I could leave Skar.’

  ‘I take it as a matter of course that you weren’t seen?’

  ‘I wasn’t seen,’ the boy said quietly.

  ‘Tell me of the outlanders. I know Ségin took them in.’

  He nodded. ‘They say they’re Wielders – like those in Solinaris.’

  Hagdon stared at him. ‘Wielders,’ he said flatly.

  ‘It’s true, general,’ the boy insisted. ‘I saw one of them heal. Owen’s arm was all but hanging off, then the Wielder touched it and the skin just sewed itself up.’ There was a certain hunger in his face. ‘He used golden light.’

  ‘All right,’ Hagdon said, slightly disquieted by the boy’s expression. ‘Did they talk of Rairam?’

  ‘Yes, and they claimed the Wielders had survived the fall of Solinaris.’

  Hagdon let go his breath in a long sigh. So Rairam had indeed returned. For a moment, all he could see was the emperor’s black eyes, full of visions of the lost continent, the great prize stolen from his ancestor so long ago. There would be a reckoning. ‘What do they want?’ he asked heavily. ‘Did they share their plans with Ségin?’

  ‘They say they were tasked with coming to Acre, to find out what they could. Ambassadors of a sort.’

  ‘Tasked by whom?’

  ‘They didn’t say, General. Rairam’s leaders?’

  Hagdon found himself plucking at the tunic he’d donned in lieu of his armour. It felt unaccountably tight across his shoulders. ‘Ambassadors. In so small a number … perhaps that’s the truth of it.’

  ‘There’s something else,’ the boy said.

  Hagdon left the tunic alone. The boy’s amber eyes were darting over the ground, as if searching for a dropped trinket. ‘Speak, then,’ he said.

  ‘One of the girls.’

  Hagdon touched his scratched cheek ruefully. ‘Did she have blond hair?’

  ‘The redhead,’ the boy clarified. ‘She has markings she doesn’t want anyone to see.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I notice things. She pulls her sleeves over her hands so often that I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. I think it’s to hide the marks. If you look at her face, you can see others. They’re faint, but they’re there.’

  Hagdon frowned. ‘Maybe they’re scars.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘What else could they be?’

  The boy shook his head. ‘I don’t know, general. I just thought it was worth mentioning. Despite the fact that she’s young, the others sometimes treat her as if she’s the one in charge.’

  It could be nothing, but ‘nothing’ had a tendency to bite when you least expected. Hagdon stored the information away. ‘You’ve done well,’ he said. ‘You’ll supply me with the correct route through the gullies.’

  For a moment, the boy’s eyes blazed with some suppressed emotion, but he glanced at the red banner that snapped above the camp and the fire
faded from them. ‘I will draw it for you,’ he said hollowly.

  Hagdon signalled for Carn to bring him paper and ink and waited while the agent sketched out the means to destroy the Defiant. When he was done and the map was carefully folded in the pocket of Hagdon’s tunic, the boy bowed. ‘Permission to return, sir?’

  ‘A battle is a hard place to distinguish friend from foe,’ Hagdon said to him. ‘I will not give the order to attack unless the outlanders refuse to surrender.’

  It was a lie. The Davaratch wanted the Defiant gone and Hagdon had dedicated his life to carrying out his emperor’s wishes. But he’d seen the fire in the boy’s eyes and heard his hollow assent.

  Any loyalty could be tested.

  12

  Skar, Acre Kyndra

  She woke, sweating and shaking, from a dream of blood.

  It coated everything, slid down her naked body to collect at her ankles so that she stood in a growing red pool. And where it flowed over her skin, it ignited the marks with which the sky had branded her on the morning Kierik died – when she’d inherited the power of a Starborn. The stars were buried in her flesh, dark suns that whispered their chill advice. Tyr gloried in her bloody fists, in the way the soldier’s body had broken open like overripe fruit.

  ‘No!’ she gasped and sat bolt upright. The fire was beginning to curl out of her pores, but she’d woken in time to stop it and no one had seen. No one except Irilin.

  The young woman sat with her back to the rough wall, watching her warily.

  Kyndra ran a clammy hand through her hair, flinching when she saw the constellation of Tyr glowing softly on her palm. She closed her fist and forced herself to breathe calmly.

  ‘This place reminds me of home,’ Irilin said, nodding at the rock walls, the low ceiling. ‘The passages winding through stone …’ She trailed off, but it was more than she’d said to Kyndra in days.

  ‘Where’s your real home?’ Kyndra asked her tentatively.

  Irilin’s face was in shadow. ‘Ilbara, the highlands.’ She paused. ‘I don’t like to think about it.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I left it behind.’

  Kyndra took a deep breath. ‘I know you blame me for Shika.’ She forced herself to meet Irilin’s eyes. ‘I blame myself too.’

  Irilin didn’t say anything for a long time. ‘I know,’ she whispered finally. ‘And I’m sorry … for what’s happening to you.’

  Kyndra wanted to look away, but she didn’t, even though it hurt to hear someone else voice her fears aloud.

  ‘I shouldn’t have hesitated,’ she said. ‘It was selfish of me. If I’d acted as soon as the wraiths attacked, Shika—’

  ‘Selfish to want to hold on to who you are?’

  ‘It was my responsibility to protect him … to protect all of you.’

  A little colour came into Irilin’s face. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Shika and I made the decision to come with you.’ She looked away.

  ‘Do you want to go back to Naris?’

  Irilin shook her head. ‘It’s done now. There’s nothing for me there, not any more.’

  ‘What about Gareth?’

  ‘Gareth was always able to look after himself.’ A tear slid down Irilin’s cheek; she brushed at it angrily. ‘What will I say to him?’

  There was a tightness in Kyndra’s throat. No words seemed enough. They lapsed into silence and Kyndra wrapped her arms around her knees.

  Selfish to want to hold on to who you are?

  I’m still me, she thought fiercely. I’m Kyndra Vale and my mother’s name is Reena and my father’s name is Jarand and I grew up in the best of places – Brenwym with its crooked streets and whitewashed houses. My friends are Jhren and Colta and they’re getting married soon.

  And that was where it all unravelled.

  Jhren and Colta weren’t her friends any more, Brenwym had been destroyed and Jarand, despite her most fervent wishes, was not her father. Her real father was a madman who’d killed thousands, who had stopped a war and hidden a world. Her father was Kierik, the Starborn, and he lived on inside her head.

  If Kyndra could have cried, she’d have buried her face in her knees and sobbed. Instead, her eyes were dry and her heart was harder. She wanted to tell Irilin that she would fight as long as she could, that she would hold on to all the thoughts and feelings that were Kyndra. But she feared that, eventually, a day would come when she wouldn’t understand what having a friend meant. She wouldn’t be able to fight it any longer.

  Would that it were now, Austri whispered.

  It was past midday when Kyndra woke again. She hadn’t found sleep until dawn, and her eyes were sandy, her mood black. They’d been in the Defiant base for two days and still Ségin hadn’t made good on his promises. She went in search of Nediah and discovered him with the others in the main chamber speaking with the rebel leader and a young man. Mura was there too. ‘Some can throw fire,’ the girl was saying. ‘Not your fire –’ she waved at Nediah – ‘normal fire.’

  ‘What Mura means is we cannot make fire from nothing,’ the young man said. ‘We have to have a source.’ He looked about fifteen or sixteen and was dark-haired, amber-eyed and slender. He wore a tunic that was almost a coat with a high collar and elbow-length sleeves. Black gloves covered his hands and wrists.

  ‘Tava and his sister, Olial, are aberrations we rescued from a Sartyan wagon last year,’ Ségin said. ‘They were bound for Parakat, but thankfully we got to them in time.’

  Tava looked at the floor. ‘I won’t forget it,’ he said.

  ‘Show the Wielder what you can do.’

  The boy nodded and walked over to the fire banked against the baked stones of the oven. He reached in and swiftly palmed a coal, holding it for just a moment. Then he dropped it back and turned to face them. When he opened his hand, a flame danced there, crackling like a torch.

  Mura let out a squeal and clapped happily. Tava smiled at her and then met Nediah’s astonished gaze. The boy tossed the flame from hand to hand, split it in two and then three, juggling them all before letting them merge once more. He shrank it until Kyndra thought it had gone out, but then he spun and fire erupted from his boots as he went into a fluid series of kicks and jumps.

  Finally, panting, Tava straightened and the fire flickered and died.

  There was a burst of applause from the rebels gathered in the chamber and Kyndra found herself clapping along with them. Only Kait looked unimpressed, leaning against one wall, her arms folded. Irilin was watching too, unsmiling, but not as blank-faced as usual. She stood a little away from Kyndra, carelessly plaiting a lock of hair that hung over her shoulder.

  ‘Amazing,’ Nediah said. ‘How long have you been able to do this?’

  ‘A few years,’ Tava answered. ‘But I cannot do as you do.’ His gaze was hungry. ‘How do you make your fire?’

  ‘The sun,’ Nediah said simply. ‘The source of all fire.’

  Tava’s eyes went round. ‘You can touch the sun?’

  ‘And I think you can too,’ Nediah answered, ‘with a little training.’ He turned to look at Kyndra. ‘These so-called aberrations might well be Wielders, but they’ve never been shown how to touch the Solar or Lunar powers. What else can you do?’ he asked Tava. ‘Is your sister the same?’

  Tava shook his head. ‘She doesn’t need to use fire – she can make her own. But it only works at night.’

  Irilin perked up at this; she even gave Tava a fleeting smile. ‘Might we meet her too?’ Nediah said.

  ‘Olial is resting before her watch,’ Ségin informed him. ‘She’ll be up in a few hours.’

  ‘I can heat water,’ Tava said, going back to Nediah’s previous question. ‘And I can do a few things with earth – move stone and stuff.’

  ‘Impressive,’ Kait remarked drily.

  ‘So,’ Ségin said with what Kyndra considered a poor attempt to hide his interest, ‘you believe you could train the aberrations? Make them more powerful?’

  ‘I wou
ld certainly like to meet the rest of them,’ Nediah answered and then seemed to regret his enthusiasm when the rebel leader’s smile widened. Kyndra mistrusted that smile. The same hunger she’d seen the other night was there again. She could guess what he was thinking. If Nediah could teach the aberrations to unlock their full potential, the Defiant would have the makings of a contingent of Wielders to fight for them.

  ‘That’s not the reason we’re here,’ she said loudly and winced as her words cut through the chamber’s excited chatter. ‘You promised us information, Ségin.’

  ‘Of course,’ Ségin said, turning his smile on her. ‘And I mean to keep my promise. Lanan! Bring the maps here.’ The named man hurried away, returning a few minutes later with a cylindrical leather case.

  ‘Come.’ Ségin gestured them over to a wide table covered with papers and ink. He shoved a bundle onto the floor and shook the maps out of their case. Tava passed him weights to pin down each corner and then went to stand quietly against the rock wall, amber eyes watchful in the gloom of the alcove.

  As Kyndra peered at the unfamiliar territory, she felt a presence at her shoulder; Medavle had come seemingly from nowhere to stand behind her.

  ‘This charts north-eastern Acre,’ Ségin said. ‘We’re roughly here.’ He jabbed his finger on the right-hand side of the map, over an illustration of twisting upright stones. ‘You say you came through the hoarlands.’ He moved his finger up and further east. ‘These mountains mark the boundary where Rairam used to be.’

  ‘The same mountains north and south of Naris,’ Nediah said, leaning in to inspect them. ‘Astonishing.’

  ‘Where does the emperor live?’ Kyndra asked and the temperature around the table dropped considerably.

  Ségin’s lean face turned hard. ‘The city of New Sartya in the Heartland. A long way west of here.’

  Kyndra studied the map, her gaze lingering on a city called Cymenza. She felt a little thrill at the name, recalling it from her book, Acre: Tales of the Lost World. And there was Calmarac. On the night she’d met Brégenne and Nediah, she’d told a bald lie about the inn’s wine being Calmaracian. The memory brought Brenwym to mind … and Reena and Jarand. Kyndra felt her heart clench.