by P. J. Fox
Hart touched her shoulder, and pointed up. They were just shy of the gate. Following his finger with her eyes, she saw a row of wicked-looking iron points suspended directly above them. The bottom of a second gate, but one that when released would drop straight down.
“They’re at either end of the tunnel,” Hart said. “The idea being that once an enemy goes within the gates can be dropped, trapping him. Like a caged rat,” he added.
Darkness swallowed them.
Isla was acutely conscious of Hart’s words as she moved forward into the tunnel. It seemed long, impossibly long. And it smelled, too: of damp and lichen and horse. Small doors on either side, little more than dog gates, led into the guardhouse towers themselves. Isla wasn’t alone but she might as well have been; strangely, all conversation had ceased. And apart from her and Hart, everyone else rode single file. The only noises were the clopping of hooves, the rolling of cart wheels somewhere behind her and the steady drip, drip of water from somewhere far above.
Hart pointed again, this time to a series of holes. Black against black, alien eyes winking in a perpetual twilight. “Murder holes,” he said softly, unconsciously respecting the same mutual contract that bound the rest of them to silence. Whatever it was, here, Isla realized, he felt it too. They all did.
She suddenly felt warmer toward her brother, even as the implications of what he’d said horrified her. Murder holes? What were those?
Answering her unasked question, “There’s a passage above us, connecting the two guardhouses. The guards operate the gates from there, and once they’ve enclosed the unfortunates they use these little access hatches to dispose of them. With arrows, sometimes with boiling oil.”
Boiling oil? Isla was horrified. She—she’d known that war was serious business and that men died, had made fun of innocents like Rowena for not understanding, but she knew now that she herself hadn’t understood. Isla had a good imagination but the sheer brutality of what this architecture suggested was beyond comprehension. To kill a man from a distance with an arrow was one thing, but this? She suddenly had a very clear image of Tristan, standing over the groveling form of the would-be king.
War wasn’t armies facing each other from a distance. War was personal.
“What?” Hart asked.
Isla had meant to answer him by telling him that she was scared. That all of a sudden—or maybe not so all of a sudden—she wasn’t sure about her new home. Or about her intended husband. Instead what came out was, “I don’t understand you. You’ve changed, Hart—you don’t even sound the same.” He’d never used phrases like enclosed the unfortunates before. Isla turned away, flustered and embarrassed. She didn’t understand herself, lately. Or her reactions to things.
“Isla,” Hart said, somewhat reproachfully, “I’m not a stupid man.”
“I know that I just—I mean—”
“I never had the opportunity to learn.” His tone was bitter. “Not like you, or your sister.” Forgetting, for the moment, that Rowena was his sister, too. “I never had tutors, though I wanted them.” He barked a short, unpleasant laugh. “Bastards aren’t worth the investment, you see.”
Isla realized that she’d never even considered the point. That Hart might want to learn, might have harbored the same thirst for knowledge that she had. And, studying his face in the gloom, she saw that he’d realized that she’d realized. Guilt was like a hand around her throat, choking out her words. And then Hart spurred his horse on ahead, and was gone.
FORTY-TWO
Moments later she was out in the sunshine, blinking against the glare.
Rose was laughing with one of the carters. Mica was howling. Rowena, somehow ahead of her now, was deep in conversation with Apple. Hart was deep in conversation with Callas and her father was still asleep. One of the grooms had led him through the barbican.
She had arrived.
The peaks were roofs now, not mountains. Slate, topping more buildings of the same gray stone. Gray on the ground, gray on the walls, a mixture of straight lines and perfectly engineered curves. There was no green anywhere. She felt like she’d fallen into one of the dwarf mines out of legend, with no means of telling that she was outdoors except for the occasional gust of fresh air.
And it was fresh, blowing fitfully and ruffling her cloak about her. This must be a city of fifty thousand people, and yet there were none of the smells plaguing their small manor back home. The rich, sweet-acrid tang of pine needles, the smell that was simply the mountains. From somewhere down a side street, the smell of smoking meat. Of fires, too, burning in grates, releasing fragrant pine smoke into the sky above.
But no stomach-turning stench of congealed urine, or rotting feces. No sickly, musty stench of death. And no, she saw, looking down, dead animals in the gutters. The gutters, rather, were cobbled like the road and clean.
The road itself sloped gently upward, as it curved. Isla saw shop after shop, displaying a wealth of different goods. The shops themselves weren’t so different from the ones she’d known in Ewesdale: broad windows functioned as sales kiosks, their shutters opening down to form counters on which choice items could be displayed. The larger shops also offered a door, by which customers might enter to see more. In Ewesdale, such shops were rare; most people, if they sold anything at all, sold directly from their homes.
The vast majority of goods could only be purchased on market days, when people from all over the area converged on the square and set up booths. Some came straight from their farms, selling from the back of their wagons. Others, most prosperous, had something more like a peddler’s cart that they used.
But here, all the stores appeared to be enormous. Expertly carved and vibrantly painted signs gave clue to their wares for the illiterate: booksellers, bookbinders, calligraphers, contract negotiators. Ink sellers, potters, glassblowers, weavers, and merchants of other people’s weaving. So much fabric, jewelry, shoes, and fine dinnerware Isla had never seen in her life. She’d never before imagined such a place—everything was for sale!
Above the shops were the apartments of their owners. In Ewesdale, rare was the building that exceeded two floors. Most only had one. Here, the shortest had at least three. In stark contrast to the bland expanse of stone, their shutters were vibrant riots of color: blue, green, yellow, even orange and red stood out like flowers in a field of ash. Most of the windows, Isla saw, also had window boxes. In summer, with their herbs and flowers in full bloom, they must be quite a sight.
Shutters opened and a woman leaned out, beating at a braided rug with some sort of flanged stick. She paid no attention to Isla and her companions, nor indeed to any of the other hundreds who thronged the street. She was undoubtedly used to this never-ending, pressing crush of people—an idea that Isla found obscurely horrifying.
She’d never seen so many people in her life.
And then they entered their first square.
Ahead of her, Rose squealed in delight as a minstrel leaned down from his stilts and blew fire at the cart on which she was riding. He smiled benevolently, and she clapped her hands. A few feet away, a troupe of young men were juggling. Behind them, a cart with a sign advertising smoked meat—in the form of a plaque carved and painted to look like a ham hock—had been set up. Its owner swatted at one of the jugglers, a permanent frown carved on his own face.
There was bread for sale, and vegetables. Not much of a selection this late in the season, but still a goodly amount: root vegetables, mostly, and squash. Things that only grew during the true fall, when the soil had begun to cool.
If she thought she’d seen crowds before, nothing prepared her for this. People—so many people—wandered from stall to stall, or stood haggling at each other over heaped displays. Merchants of every possible nationality, dressed in every possible manner of clothing displayed velvets and silks and potions—bottle after bottle of potions—that Isla couldn’t even begin to guess at let alone name.
She realized that she’d stopped, staring. How long she’
d been there, as unmoving as a statue, she didn’t know. No one paid attention to her, much, which was a relief; in Ewesdale she would’ve been a spectacle but here she was just one of thousands and each of those thousands too busy to notice—or care—about one girl.
A familiar presence halted beside her. “You are…losing your companions,” Eir hissed.
“So much the better,” Isla replied without thinking.
“Your brother is a…fine specimen. He has a finely turned haunch.”
Isla’s gaze flickered back to the smoked meats cart and she felt her stomach turn.
Eir laughed. “Not…that kind of eating,” she said.
Isla turned. “You can’t possibly mean that you’d—”
“Oh, but I have.” Eir grinned wolfishly.
Isla, snapped out of her reverie, jerked on Piper’s reins and turned her back toward the road. Eir, still emitting that low, rasping noise that passed for laughter among her kind, followed. Isla had no idea where she’d come from or how long she intended to stay, but for the time being found herself surprisingly grateful for the company.
Past the square there were more shops, only now interspersed with taverns and cafés. Isla was so intent on taking in her surroundings that, for awhile, she didn’t realize what it was that seemed…off. But then the answer came: there were no cathedrals. No churches of any kind. Which—of course there weren’t. The North didn’t have the church.
She thought again of Hart, leaving that night.
And Eir…? They’d…? She’d known her brother was no celibate but—really?
Poor Hart. And all this time Isla had thought of herself as so empathetic. That her brother might want to be anything more than an ale-swilling buffoon had never even occurred to her. That his indifference might be just as much of an act as her own had never even occurred to her. After all, he was a man and so in her eyes free to do as he wanted.
What a fool she’d been. What a callous little fool. She’d speak to him when she got the chance—whenever that was.
Undoubtedly after they reached the castle.
That they were about to arrive—would, indeed, do so within the hour—still seemed unbelievable. They’d been on the road for so long, so achingly long. And before that, the time between Tristan’s departure from Enzie Hall and then finally, finally hers had felt like a lifetime. Her memories of the time she’d spent with him seemed, indeed, like someone else’s memories. The happier, more innocent thoughts of a different girl.
She was acutely aware, again, of the fact that she hadn’t bathed. That she must smell like Hart, after he’d been rolling with pigs. What would happen to her when she arrived? Would Tristan even be there? Lately, she’d grown worried that he might not be. She’d heard the horror stories—she’d discovered that once she was engaged, everyone wanted to tell her horror stories—about grooms disappearing just as their brides were arriving, being late for their own weddings, even about last minute switches between grooms.
The girl who, her betrothed having died, was forced to marry his younger brother. Or older brother. Sometimes much older brother. Of discovering, too late, that one’s groom was far more interested in his catamite than in the attentions of his bride—or any woman.
Isla knew that she knew nothing about Tristan—not really. Only what he’d shown her. She knew nothing about his home, or his life there. About whether he kept a mistress. Unconsciously, she fingered her ring. She’d poured everything into this single hope that, once she got to Darkling Reach, things would be better. But looking around herself now, she felt more alone than ever. Nothing here seemed familiar: not the houses, not the people.
There was a casual brutality, an indifference in how they reacted to one another. At home, people hadn’t been very nice, either—but the quality of their uncaring had been different. Highlanders accused each other of cheating with their spouses and stealing sheep. Their grudges were personal, and abundant. Here, Isla got the sensation that neighbors would just as soon kill each other as look at each other and all without giving the act a second thought. Not because they hated each other but because they simply didn’t care.
She thought back to the guard, pulling that man off his horse.
To the vendor, casually cuffing the juggler.
To her own betrothed, eating Alice because he could. And to prove a point. To test her.
It hit her, then, that she’d almost certainly never see Ewesdale again. A thought that should have been obvious but that, even so, she hadn’t allowed herself to have. In some part of her mind, she knew, she’d thought of this as a trip. A jaunt to see Tristan, the man she loved and on whom she’d pinned all her hopes. And then what—home again?
In some part of her mind, yes.
She supposed she imagined Tristan coming back with her. To fix the problems at the manor. To live a life with her that involved more trips to the orchard, and more walks under the stars. Except…the manor wasn’t her concern now. In agreeing to marry Tristan, she’d become irrelevant to its existence. Whether it prospered or failed, the question to which she’d devoted her entire life so far, would be decided by others.
She had to stop thinking of Enzie as home because this…this strange, unwelcoming place was home.
FORTY-THREE
Isla didn’t realize how high up she’d gotten until she glanced through a break between two houses and saw—nothing. The houses had grown steadily larger as they’d advanced, becoming less and less row houses and more and more tiny manors in their own right: with yards, sometimes quite large ones, and even outbuildings. There were no shops up here, although she’d spotted the occasional tavern and what—what appeared to be a brothel.
Built like a traditional home, perhaps that of a very prosperous merchant, all that gave it away was the overabundance of visitors. And the fact that Isla, scarcely able to believe her eyes, had seen a man fondling a woman’s bare breast in the garden. There were such places in Ewesdale, of course, but they occupied the upper rooms of taverns and were best avoided. Hart had told her once that he couldn’t decide who was more to be pitied: the women—and occasionally men—who worked there or the poor fools who were their customers. Yet these women, and men, appeared to be enjoying themselves.
There was nothing of the vacant-eyed slattern in the woman Isla had seen, waiting to do her business and die. She’d been laughing, and clearly enjoying herself. And she, in her fine silks, was far cleaner than Isla. Her hair shone and her face was like rice powder.
Isla adjusted her cloak and looked away. Seconds later, curiosity overcoming her better judgment, she looked back. And that was when she saw the sky: open, vast, and terrifying. And, very far beneath them, the panorama of the spreading valley. Fields that from this height looked no larger than checkerboard squares. This must be how the birds felt, lost in space with nothing above or beneath them but air.
She felt her head spinning, as the world almost seemed to tilt. She dug her fingers into Piper’s mane, afraid that she’d fall off. She felt Eir’s steadying hand on her shoulder. “The heights are…difficult for some, at first.”
Vertigo. Eir was speaking of vertigo. And of something Callas had mentioned, the week previous: that up into the mountains, the air thinned. Those who weren’t used to living so high above the ground sometimes had trouble breathing, until they adjusted.
Or died, whichever came first.
“That…that’s a brothel,” Isla managed.
“Yes. The House of Aeval, goddess of pleasure.”
“And this…people allow this?”
Eir stared at her blankly. “Why would they not?”
Isla made a hopeless half-gesture, but said nothing. Where to begin? In the West, and certainly further south within the kingdom, such things were expressly forbidden. And while Isla harbored no love for the kind of repressive regime that produced—and rewarded—men like Father Justin she was still shocked. Shocked by, if not the outright immorality of such a thing, then the sheer otherness.
&n
bsp; She found herself wondering, too, if Tristan would prefer such women.
She stared out at the world beyond. This brave new world, that was now her world. Far in the distance, across the floor of the valley, the rest of the mountain range marched on. She wondered what had happened, to carve this swath of flat space between them. Like the mountains were merely figured in clay, stepped on in part by the foot of some giant and squashed flat. His footprint would be the valley. But the mountains’ march wasn’t a straight one; instead they curved around the valley, protecting and insulating it from the outside. And then there was this massive tor, to which she clung, and beyond that…Loch Addanc and the end of the world.
She couldn’t fathom who would want to make their home up here, so separate and alone. The steepness of the road and the knowledge that one was literally poised on the edge of a mountain were frightening in the best of times; she hated to think what things would be like in bad weather. Hooves slipping on wet pavement, snow packed down into thin sheets of black ice…more than one rider must have pitched forward onto the cobbles and broken his neck. This particular day was nice enough; the weather had held and the breeze was, if still chill, then warmer than it had been. But all Isla could think of, still, was that sense of dreadful isolation. Of being trapped here, in one of these houses, in the snow.
They must lay in provisions for the winter, she rationalized. Still…winter, Isla understood now, symbolized to her an ending. A closing in: of options, and of opportunities. Once winter came, she’d be trapped. And in more ways than one. She’d chosen to throw her lot in with a dark prince of winter and now she wondered, far too late, if she didn’t have too much sun. If, trapped in the bowels of this ice-blasted place, she might not wither and die.
