by David Hair
Ever since she got here, she’d been more than praying, for she had begun to think that if magi and Souldrinkers were real, then surely the gods could hear her. She prayed not just with her words, but with the gnosis too: she called upon heaven with her voice and her mind, sending her prayers up, into the heavens, willing the gods to be real and to come down and find her child.
But the only answer thus far had been heaven’s silence.
Finally she had cried and prayed herself into numbness. The only sounds were distant ones, from the river and the city outside. She rose and and turned to leave – as the statue of Makheera-ji moved, and she froze in shock.
The statue had blue skin and six arms, and snaky black tresses. Fruit and knives and a cup and other symbols of power were held in her hands. Her eyes of burnished gold caught the lamplight and gave back more. Those eyes pierced Ramita through, burning into her heart, as she stepped down from her pedestal and glided towards her.
She fell to her knees, mouth opening and closing until finally she whispered, ‘Makheera-ji?’
The statue laughed, and changed again, to an utterly unexpected face and form. ‘If you wish to speak to me, use my real name,’ she said. ‘Call me Corinea.’
Southern Kesh, on the continent of Antiopia
Rami (Septinon) 929
15th month of the Moontide
Ramon Sensini poked a finger into the tiny hand of the infant in his lap. She was gurgling blindly, her rosebud mouth blowing kisses into the air. The little hand batted at his finger, then gripped it, and he felt tears well up and tried to blink them away. I have a daughter.
‘Ooo, look at the big brave man who doesn’t cry,’ Severine teased gently. It was the fondest she’d been for months, let alone the last few hours, during which she’d screeched abuse at him for ruining her body and implanting the creature that was about to kill her as it ripped its way out.
‘I love you,’ he said, to her and to the little piece of them both lying in his lap.
They were in the kitchen of an abandoned farm house they’d found on the march towards the Tigrates. The tiny building was now at the centre of the Southern Army’s camp. He’d been preparing to go and view the Vida Bridge when Lanna Jureigh had shouted into his mind,
So he left Seth to handle things for a while.
The next twelve hours had been among the most harrowing of his life, and that included the battle at Shaliyah. He’d seldom felt as truly helpless as he had here. He had no healing-gnosis, nor knowledge of what to do, so all he could do was bathe Sevvie’s brow whilst whispering words of encouragement and soaking up her abuse. He didn’t mind her words – he’d had worse, and for worse reasons – but the helplessness was agony.
Occasionally he thought of Cym and tried to picture her going through this, and then decided he’d rather not. A mage pregnant to a Souldrinker … what did that even mean? Thinking of her led to thinking about Alaron, and wondering if his hapless friend really was somewhere in Lakh. The Alaron he knew could barely leave his front door without tripping over his laces. And what the Hel could he hope to do with the Scytale in Lakh? I bet it’s that Lakh girl pulling your strings! She’ll have you wrapped around her little fingers. He beamed at his daughter. Girls can do that to a man. You’ll learn that too, little one. You’ll practise on me.
He heard boots outside and looked up as the scout Coll came in, struggling to avoid looking at Severine, who had her body covered but was otherwise not at her glamorous best.
‘Sir? I have a message.’
Ramon held up the child. ‘I have a daughter.’
Coll forced a quick smile, and said, ‘Congrats, Magister. Ma’am.’ He bobbed his head at Severine, then thrust a piece of paper at Ramon. ‘From the General, sir.’ He saluted and hurried away, probably worried that he’d be given the baby to hold if he stayed.
Ramon noted that his daughter was still making divine little kissing movements with her tiny mouth. ‘She’s hungry again,’ he commented, giving her to Severine. They shared a look, a moment of warmth, then while she put their child to her breast, Ramon gave his full attention to the note.
It was brief, just ten words that changed everything:
The Inquisitors have destroyed the bridge at Vida. Come quickly.
Southern Kesh, on the continent of Antiopia
Rami (Septinon) 929
15th month of the Moontide
Zaqri of Metia hunched over the cooking fire, turning the roasting partridges on a spit. The hillside was far above the net of campfires of the refugee camp, three miles down the valley. He’d had to leave, now his heritage had been revealed to the refugees. Though the legions had gone, Salim’s army was still days away and those left inside the pen were reverting to the laws of beasts.
Cym lay on the other side of the fire on a dirty blanket, sipping an astringent tea, her deep-set eyes and narrow face rendered gaunt and ancient by the flickering firelight. She’d spent days in a sweating, torrid delirium and he was certain she would have been murdered for what she was if he’d not managed to get her out. He couldn’t begin to guess what she was going through. He’d been terrified of infection, but the legion’s healer, a patient, gentle Rondian women called Lanna Jureigh, had cleansed her before the army left. After that, Cym’s life had been in his hands, some measure of payback for the months she’d spent tending him when he’d nearly died. It felt like they were always paying off debts to each other and he was sick of it.
After they’d eaten, he studied her face, and decided she was ready for the conversation they had to have. ‘Cymbellea, why? Why kill our child?’
She turned her head away. ‘You know why.’
‘It was my child – you had no right—’
‘It’s my body and I have every right. And you killed my mother.’
‘Do you think that killing our unborn child makes that right?’ he snapped. ‘How can you think that?’
‘A life for a life,’ she replied, ‘that’s what the oath of vendetta states. It doesn’t try to balance the worth of those lives.’ Then she paused before saying, ‘There is a war going on, and my friend is lost in Antiopia with the greatest treasure on Urte. I need to be able to run and fight, not waddle around like a cow. And I didn’t want your child anyway.’
‘You’re my wife! You can’t make a decision like that without my consent.’
‘No, I’m your mate. I don’t really know what that means, but you know under what circumstances I agreed to be such a thing. I am not beholden to you for every action I take. You say you love me: but if you don’t support my choices, it’s not me you love, just some idea of me you’ve conjured in your own head.’
Her harshness stung him, making him wonder what it was he actually loved in her – no, it was still there, that tenacious vivacity, the coltish vibrancy … but it was being filtered through bitterness right now.
‘Perhaps I don’t know you at all, Cymbellea. I thought you were someone who loved life, but you’ve just killed our child.’
‘Rich, to be condemned by a Souldrinker. How many lives have you taken lately, Dokken?’
He looked away. Is she right? He didn’t know any more. Didn’t know anything. Let Pater Sol or Kore or Ahm work it out. It’s beyond me. For a moment he missed Ghila and the simple, uncomplicated anger that had fuelled her; it had made her explicable and knowable – then he recalled that her lack of mystery had been one of the things he’d been impatient of. Compared to Cym, Ghila had been made of clay.
Is it the mystery of love or the love of mystery that keeps bringing me back to you? The old Rimoni lament had it spot-on. I don’t know the answer to that either. ‘So, what do we do now?’
‘We?’ She looked at him.
He nodded slowly, solemnly. ‘Yes, we.’ It might take years to forgive her; it might never happen. But he was sworn to her: pledged and mated. They needed each other, even if she didn’t yet recognise that fact. And he had no other reas
on to go on: she was all that was left.
She looked at him thoughtfully, her face shrouded by black hair and shadows. She seemed carved out of moonlight; Mater Lune come to life: Queen of Magic and Madness.
‘I’ll be able to get up again tomorrow,’ she said at last. ‘The Keshi are coming, and your people are with them – leaderless, if what Ramon said about Arkanus is true. And Seth Korion’s name will see us given audience with the Sultan, Ramon said.’
‘How will that help your friend Alaron?’
‘I don’t know, but we are so far behind the chase now that we need to try anything to catch up, even if that means using Salim or your people to help find him.’
He breathed deeply, in and out. As plans went, it was pretty desperate. ‘The Keshi lock up magi in breeding dens. And I’m packless, with no standing among the Brethren any longer. The Keshi would take the Scytale off your friend and kill him without remorse.’ He shook his head. ‘It is not a good plan.’
‘Do you have a better one?’
Hytel, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Rami (Septinon) 929
15th month of the Moontide
Queen Portia Tolidi screamed as if sound alone would drive the child from her body. Her maids and midwives clustered on the far side of the room, scared of the uncontrolled winds that ripped through the chamber, tearing the shutters from the window frames and rattling the furniture, and the light that was seeping from her fingertips. They had been warned that the queen had been cursed with the dreaded gnosis of the magi, but they’d never seen anything like this before and they were utterly terrified. Only the presence of the Sollan priest in the corner gave them the courage to stay in the room.
Every time the queen’s contractions paused and the magic died down they would scurry in and swaddle her in wet cloth and bathe her brow – then flee as the next crisis of labour began.
Alfredo Gorgio had not touched her since the day she’d emasculated him. She had no idea if she could restore him even if she wanted to, but the hint that she could was enough to have him bowing and scraping and doing her bidding in an eye-blink. That all she really wanted was to be left alone made that easier; he wasn’t forced into any corners and neither was she. Hytel continued to produce its tribute of metals and stone to be shipped south, and Dorobon magi visited occasionally and gave her rudimentary lessons in the gnosis. Alfredo concealed his humiliating injury so no one except the two of them knew – she guessed his wife and the girls he victimised were just grateful to be left alone.
‘Sol et Lune,’ she gasped as another burst of agony wracked her and she felt something begin to tear her in half at the hips. She was completely exhausted now, and no light flared, no winds blew or threw furniture about, so the midwives took heart and came forward to swamp her in reassurance and firm, gentle hands.
‘Breathe,’ they told her, so she breathed. ‘Push,’ they ordered, and she pushed, and then, ‘Stop,’ they said, and she paused and breathed in deeply until they commanded again, ‘Push …’
The baby came easily in the end, in a gush of blood-smeared flesh and fluids that soaked the bedclothes and her thighs. When the child wailed, her heart burst. ‘It is a boy,’ someone told her. ‘A little boy.’
Some part of her had assumed that she would hate it, that she would physically and mentally reject it, because hate was her most powerful emotion and this creature had been planted in her by him, and it was enemy and it was alien.
But Francis is dead now. I’m a widow. I’ll never have to be anyone’s whore again.
So instead of hate, she felt a strange ambivalence as she took in her child’s knowing eyes and serene face. She recognised him as a piece of herself as well, and quite unexpectedly, love of the little being came flooding into her and filled her, through and through like purest light.
Lybis, Javon, on the continent of Antiopia
Rami (Septinon) 929
15th month of the Moontide
Gurvon Gyle felt Elena Anborn’s hand touch his shoulder, the first physical contact they’d had since his capture. ‘Wait here,’ she said softly, her eyes on the far end of the bridge.
He followed her gaze. Perhaps Rutt Sordell would try something, though he doubted it; Rutt didn’t have the imagination. At the far end, he could see a dozen men and a wagon. Rutt Sordell’s ‘Guy Lassaigne’ body was easy to see: he was the only one in battle-mage robes, surrounded by mail-clad legionaries. The bridge was over a ravine outside Lybis – he remembered crossing it on the first day of his trek into the mountains, with Arnulf Rhumberg and his men. They were now just ash in the lamiae’s valley, or strips of smoked meat in their larders.
He shuddered.
It was three weeks since he’d fallen into Elena’s hands, but they’d not spoken again. She refused to engage in conversation, though she’d visited him every day, to ensure he was still penned and that her Noorie lover’s Chain-rune held. It did: he could feel it constraining him so thoroughly that he was beginning to wonder if Rutt would be strong enough to break it. They fed him, and let him wash in a cave-pool, but he’d not been allowed near a razor and the stubble irritated his sense of self. He’d not had a beard since the worst days of the Noros Revolt. The last week they’d returned by paths through the mountains that were far more direct than those he’d found on the way in, just he and Elena, her Noorie and a handful of lamaie. The snakemen were out of sight, but he knew they were close by.
Looking at Elena now, he was sickened by how damned well she looked. Her blonde hair had been bleached almost white by the sun, and she was letting it grow. Her skin was brown and healthy, her face freckled and youthful. Her body was toned and limber – age was certainly not biting yet, showing only in the crow’s feet at the corner of her eyes and a few lines on her brow.
‘He’s half your age, Ella,’ he commented, glancing back at Kazim Makani.
‘Gurvon, I can still gag you,’ she said coolly.
‘He’s a Dokken, for Kore’s sake! He’s leeching off you! He’s killing you slowly!’
‘Mmm. Yes, I feel so deathly at the moment. I’m just wasting away.’ She snorted dismissively. ‘Come on, Gurvon, you can do better than that! Where’s that old snide magic gone?’
‘We made plans,’ he reminded her. ‘We dreamed together—’
She spat over the parapet. ‘Plans to rob and kill undeserving victims. I’ve moved on.’
‘You’re going to fight for a treacherous little bint who’s already sold you out once. You’ll never be able to trust her. She doesn’t care about her little brother – he was never anything more than a pretext. She only wants the power – she got a taste for it and she’ll never let it go. You’ll see.’
He watched, smiling inwardly, as these words struck home. She really did want to able to trust Cera Nesti.
That old snide magic.
She stomped away, then came back and snarled, glaring at him, ‘Listen well, Gurvon. These are my last words to you. Get out of Javon, because if you stay, you will die. The Javonesi are going to take back what is theirs and you’re not going to be able to stop it happening. So if you don’t want to waste the lives of the last few sentient beings who still trust you, you’d better run.’
Before he could respond, she stalked onto the bridge. At the far end, the wagon lurched into motion, carrying all the gold he and Rutt had managed to collect. It sickened him to be giving it away, but at least it meant he kept his head.
He’d tried telling Elena that it wasn’t about the money. ‘That’s just one way we keep score,’ he told her.
She’d smiled and told him that was fine: he was losing fifteen thousand to nil.
He spat sourly over the parapet and prayed Rutt didn’t cock up this exchange. He had a lot to do to win this game.
It’s never over, Elena … It never will be, until you’re a corpse.
*
Elena peered at the pallid mage driving the wagon. Different body, same bastido, she decided. ‘Rutt. I’d recognise
you in any body.’
The face twitched with the telltale tick of someone imperfectly controlled by a scarab. ‘This body’s pure-blood, Elena,’ he replied. ‘I’ve upgraded.’
‘I bet you miss your real body, though. All your normal senses are distorted, aren’t they? Taste, touch, smell – they all feel second-hand, don’t they?’ She fixed him with a hard smile. ‘I hear Betillon’s arrived in Brochena.’
Sordell flinched, as she knew he would. Someone in Rykjard’s legion had panicked when they’d lost contact with Gurvon and Rhumberg, then some Imperial informer had got wind of the crisis and now the Butcher of Knebb was in Javon. He’d flown in with a legion of Kirkegarde, and direct orders from Lucia to take over.
The phoney war is over. Thank Kore I got Timori out. Gurvon had wriggled and pleaded, but he’d been forced to concede both the money and the boy-king in the end. I just wish we could have given Kekropius something for all he’s lost. All she could promise him was that their existence would be very delicately raised, and she’d ask that the lamiae be given their own lands and left alone.
‘Sure, the Butcher’s in Brochena now,’ Sordell sniffed. ‘But we’ve got Endus, Adi, Hans and Staria in play. Betillon might think he’s in charge, but he won’t be for long. Either way, we’ve got magi everywhere, and you’ve got what? Two? You’re doomed, Elena.’ He looked towards the far end of the bridge. ‘Let me see the boss.’
‘Of course.’ That was the arrangement: an inspection of the goods before the exchange. ‘Don’t do anything silly, Rutt. Kazim is ten times the warrior you will ever be.’
‘I will conduct myself correctly. See you do the same,’ Sordell snapped.
Elena watched him carefully as they crossed, then approached the wagon. If I was pulling some kind of stunt, there would be men in the wagon, crouching in the boxes, or even clinging to the underside. But there was no trace of gnostic activity, and no interlopers. Elena ran a hand over the flanks of the horses, scanning them too, because you really couldn’t be too careful. Only then did she turn to the two young Nesti, huddled in the back.
