‘Is it dead?’ Carmyn whispered. ‘You haven’t killed it?’
‘Here it comes,’ he answered. ‘Here comes the impression.’
Mhani didn’t know what he was looking at that she wasn’t: he seemed only to be watching the mouse, but with the visor over his face it was hard to be sure what he was seeing.
‘Aha,’ breathed Carmyn. ‘There it is. It’s … beautiful …’
She opened the brackets and gently lifted the mouse.
‘It’s alive. I think. But it may have struggled too hard.’
‘It’s gone into shock,’ he told her. ‘They don’t usually live long once they’ve passed that stage.’
Mhani could hear the tears in Carmyn’s voice as the man put down the mouse on the table. ‘But … but … you said we wouldn’t harm it.’
‘We didn’t! We can’t help it if the thing resisted. Look, Carmyn—’
He had started towards her with a conciliatory gesture, but the Fire House flared with red light and the sound grew louder.
And louder.
And louder.
And louder.
The two humans clutched each other in panic. The mouse on the table stirred. It crouched, nose twitching. It seemed to Mhani that the mouse had a tiny sideways canny smile on its face.
The Fire House shook like some gigantic musical instrument.
I should never have come here, thought Mhani. But she thought it too late; much too late.
A Poached Egg
Ajiko planted both fists on Devri’s desk.
‘She could be in trouble,’ he said. ‘She’s been up there a long time, hasn’t she? For all you know she could be dead.’
‘She’s not d—’ As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Devri knew he’d been tricked into admitting he’d spoken to Mhani since Ajiko’s last visit.
‘Give us the key.’
Devri swallowed and shook his head. Ajiko’s hand shot out to grab him by the throat again, but Devri leaped back, warier than before.
‘I’ll fly you from the battlements, Devri. I’ll make you wish you were a poached egg. The key. Now!’
Devri quivered behind the desk. He would not betray Mhani.
‘Sir!’
Tiemen reached into the fountain and withdrew something shiny. ‘Here’s a key, sir …’
Mhani’s eyes were crossed and she was saying words no one knew. Saliva glistened on her lips and chin, whenever anyone moved she flinched, and she kept covering and uncovering her face with her hands.
‘You are a disgrace,’ Ajiko said to Devri. ‘How could you let this happen? How many days has our country been without a monitor system? Look at the Water! Even I can tell this place is a mess.’
‘I’ll start getting things in order immediately,’ Devri said. Thinking it was the sort of thing the general would like to hear, he added, ‘I could not disobey Mhani’s instructions.’
‘You should have!’ Ajiko exclaimed. ‘Couldn’t you see she was insane? Ah, never mind, Devri. Just get her out of here.’
Devri went along with Hanji and a couple of guards, to make sure that Mhani would live. When they carried her down to her bedchamber a mouse ran across the passage, and Mhani began wailing and then singing a song of lamentation. Hanji had Ajiko’s soldiers place her on the bed; then he dismissed them and left the room himself. Worried, Devri trailed after him.
‘Shall I fetch the healers?’ Devri asked. ‘Has anyone seen Soren?’
‘I will take care of Mhani,’ Hanji said in a kindly tone. ‘You have done enough.’
‘But where should I go? What should I do?’
‘Lose yourself,’ Hanji said. ‘If Ajiko has no Seers, he will not be able to use the Eye Tower.’
‘But if he doesn’t use the Eye Tower, how will we control our armies? How will we contact the king?’
Hanji gave him a sadly tolerant look, as if he were an idiot or small child. ‘Go on, Devri! Do not let Ajiko find you. There are many hiding places in Jai Khalar.’
‘But I want to stay with Mhani.’
‘I will take care of her. You’ve done well. Now look after yourself.’
‘Hanji—’
The section of floor Devri was standing on shot upward, and he found himself in the aviary with his ears ringing. No one seemed to be attending to the birds. They were screaming and hostile. He wondered when they’d last been fed and decided to let them out. They didn’t appreciate his help any more than Mhani or Hanji had done: they flew at his face and he had to throw his arms up over his head and run for cover, bleeding from multiple scratches and feeling wholeheartedly rejected. He returned to his room, curled up, and went to sleep.
Ajiko would have been jealous if he’d known the Seer was sleeping. He was tired and perplexed and now even the defeat of Mhani brought him no satisfaction. As he paced the Eye Tower waiting for the Seers to come and clean up the Water, he wondered whether it wouldn’t really be better to consult with Hanji, but the old man had vanished and there was little chance of catching him as long as he was busy removing ferrets and bumblebees and those damned mice.
The general had not been sleeping. Refugees swarmed through Jai Khalar. It was bad enough for the veteran inhabitants that the Citadel misbehaved more often than it functioned properly, but for the strangers who had never set foot in such a place before, Jai Khalar caused untold grief. Ajiko had made some effort to collect the fighting-age men who came straggling in and to keep them ready for action after he debriefed them. They were not a large contingent, the majority of the homeless being women, children, and the old.
Civilians bored Ajiko, especially when they had a way of being always underfoot. It was not easy to maintain discipline in such a social environment, and as furious as he was with Mhani for locking herself up in the Eye Tower and refusing to come down, there were times when he would have liked to do the same. The reports had come back from Wolf Country at last, borne on foot and on horseback by witnesses. The events they described, if they were true, would represent the greatest military revolt in Clan history. Mhani, curse her, might well have been right when she suggested his own troops had turned on him. Last night he had gathered together all his maps and plans and burned them on the training ground. He had instructed Sendrigel to offer whatever was necessary to keep the outraged Hezene in check; but it was impossible to get anything done quickly without the Eyes. So, as much as he might like to rest, he had to be here, in a position to send and receive the messages that had been delayed by Mhani’s breakdown.
The young Seer Soren looked half-asleep as he stumbled into the Chamber of the Eye. ‘Hann has sent me, General Ajiko. Will you pardon me while I put the Water in order?’
Ajiko waved him through. ‘It’s about time,’ he said. ‘Show me my troops.’
For all the accounts of Clan officers taking their soldiers out of position and killing anyone who objected, no one had been able to tell him where all the rebel troops had gone. Until he knew where they were, and what they held as his objectives, he could not act. And he was frustrated after weeks of inaction.
Soren avoided looking at him directly. The Seer went to work right away, yawning slightly as he began to scan the messages recorded in the Water. ‘Something’s amiss,’ he told Ajiko, who bristled at the ridiculous understatement. ‘Look in the Water.’
The Water was all white, and an image within the whiteness showed a battle in progress.
‘Where is that? Who’s fighting?’
The Seer was too nonplussed to answer, but Ajiko could see for himself: it was Quintar’s Company, looking more or less as they had eighteen years ago.
‘What does it mean?’
‘I don’t know. Mhani. I … let me see if I can fix it.’
Ajiko turned his back on the pool. ‘The whole business disgusts me,’ he said. ‘Bring me some useful information or we will close the Tower completely. How much damage Mhani has done already, I shudder to think.’
‘But, sir … We mustn’t close the
Tower. Hanji said—’
‘Hanji is the seneschal. Let him worry about the bed linens. Show me my armies – or else.’
Pallo’s Grandmother’s Beard
It was dark and cool in the narrow passage in the stone.
‘Thank you,’ Istar said awkwardly to Pentar, but there was no time for talk. Xiriel was soon leading them into a rough cave and thence up a long shaft laddered with metal rungs.
‘They’ll get up that cliff without ropes,’ Pallo said. ‘It’s not such a hard climb.’
‘I know,’ Xiriel called over his shoulder. ‘Move as fast as you can.’
The inside of the island was a maze of tunnels and chambers. Xiriel was making decisions about which way to go every five seconds. There was no time for anyone to argue or even pause to consider the way.
‘They’ll never find us now,’ Pallo said. ‘Unless we’re going in circles …’
They eventually climbed all the way to the top of the island, emerging from beneath a broken slab into a ragged dawn dulled by cloud. They could hide behind the damaged stone walls that laced the top of the island and make their way around without alerting the dozen or so Pharician guards who prowled the ruins. Istar was beginning to enjoy herself again; the Pharicians hadn’t been too clever, so far.
‘If we can just lose these ones following us, we may be all right,’ Istar said.
But Pallo was pointing over the mainland, across the sea plateau, which was now slightly below them. Some miles distant to the northwest was a dark smudge on the landscape that had not been there before.
‘What on earth’s that?’
‘I don’t know,’ Istar said. ‘Let’s just find the next bridge and go. The Pharicians are bound to notice us sooner or later.’
But there was no next bridge. As they learned when they performed a covert search of the top of the island, the Pharicians had been trying to make a bridge to the nearest of the adjacent islands. One of their boats had impaled itself on a rocky outcropping below, a testament to their failure. Several of them had gathered on a disc of white stone above the ruined boat, where the original Everien bridge was meant to extend.
‘They don’t understand how to do it,’ Xiriel said.
‘Do you?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, after what we did yesterday, we can’t very well send Pallo in to offer our assistance, can we?’ said Istar caustically.
‘There’s more than one way,’ Xiriel told her. ‘For one thing that island to the left is fairly close. We can probably get there. We’ll go back underground and find a different bridge.’
‘Not underground again,’ Pallo moaned as Kassien went off amid the rubble to look for a way back into the island.
‘If we stay here they’ll find us sooner or later,’ Pentar said.
‘We could take them, and then Xiriel would be free to extend this bridge.’ Istar was feeling spunky again after her near escape at the boat; but the others looked at her sceptically.
‘I hope you’re kidding,’ said Xiriel. ‘The ten swords we were meant to have isn’t much, but without them what chance have we got? Pallo couldn’t fight off a puppy, I’m a Seer, and you’re a woman.’
‘Not by law.’
Pallo’s voice cracked. ‘Istar, will you remove your head, give it a good soak and put it back on properly? You can’t hope to defeat so many. Nobody admires you more than I do, but if you don’t calm down you’re going to get us all killed. You’re not your father any more than I’m Tarquin the Free.’
Istar knew he was right, but at the sound of Tarquin’s name her blood lit on fire.
‘I should have challenged him while I had the chance.’
Xiriel gave a bark of laughter. ‘He would have taken your sword, cut off your braid, and spanked you with it before you could say “girl-child”.’
Istar glared at the Seer, speechless with rage.
‘Don’t tease her,’ said Pallo.
‘I’m not teasing her. We can see some of the past in the Eyes. I have seen Tarquin before he was Tarquin. I don’t know how much he has changed, but in those days the least of his men was worth a dozen of Kassien. And Chyko was worth twenty.’
‘You’ve Seen my father?’
He averted his eyes.
Before she could press him, Kassien came around the corner.
‘There’s another shaft going down. I think it goes to a different section of the underground than where we came up.’
He led them stealthily among half-ruined walls and dark pits to a hole in the stone like a moss-grown wound. They could see the beginnings of a steeply pitched flight of stairs leading down into darkness.
‘We can’t risk a light yet,’ said Kassien, and plunged into the tunnel. Xiriel went after him readily enough, but Pallo ducked behind Istar and then kept a hand on her shoulder as they left all light behind. There was a metallic, unnatural smell that reminded Istar of the Fire Houses, and always the amplified sound of the sea, distorted like a breath blown too close to the ear. Suddenly Kassien turned and grabbed Istar’s hand, pulling her past Xiriel and down the stairs until they reached a wide landing and a gust of warm wind hit them, indicating the presence of a larger space. She bumped into Kassien in the dark and he steadied her, still keeping in contact with her with his hands. It distracted her.
As they had been crossing the sea plateau, Istar had worked on convincing herself not only that Kassien would never desire her, not really, but also that he was not worth the trouble anyway and would fail to match up to her expectations in the long run. But now finding herself in his immediate physical proximity, her attitude began to soften. Even if he didn’t really want her, that didn’t mean it was all over. Maybe, some day, there would be a sudden, unexpected encounter between them, a feast of passion after which she could coolly go her own way; or maybe something would happen to make him see her in a new light; or maybe he didn’t know what he wanted, only thought he did but would be proved wrong in the end, or would mature, or change, or … something.
She had no business thinking about any of this, of course. In the back of her mind something in her marvelled that she could be so preoccupied with the question of Kassien’s affections at a time like this, when all her resources ought to be focused on the task at hand. And then she decided that that was the difference between herself and the others; they could put aside their emotions when they needed to, and she, it seemed, could not. Or maybe she was just stupid.
And then it occurred to her that if she was thinking about Kassien and what was between his legs, she was spared thinking about what fate she was leading the other four towards, and whether she was ready for it.
‘Feel along this wall,’ Kassien was saying, placing her hands on the surface and moving them for her. She felt incisions like writing in the smooth wall, which was warmer than the surrounding stone. Then her hand passed across something soft, like cool flesh. She inhaled with a hiss. ‘Xiriel, come and touch this.’
Xiriel hummed from the bottom of his throat as he passed his hands across the surface. ‘It’s a door, and it’s covered with Everien symbol-writing. I might be able to do something with – wait, what’s this?’
A gentle light flared, and Xiriel’s silhouette could be seen in the flow of his Knowledge-light. He plucked a broken dagger from a seam in the wall and handed it to Istar. ‘Someone has tried to come this way,’ he said.
‘It’s Pharician,’ Istar said.
‘They’ve jammed the door,’ Xiriel muttered, and then gasped as the sound of steel-shod boots rang in the stairwell above them. The Knowledge-light went out.
‘Get back against the walls,’ Istar hissed. ‘Wait for my signal to strike.’
Torches sliced the darkness as the Pharicians barrelled down the stairs, talking among themselves. ‘These Everien tricks are mind-breaking,’ one of them said to the other. ‘I wish I could understand how to open the door.’
Her back was flush against the wall, but Istar knew the torches would sweep
over all of them and catch the shine of their armour. She let them descend, two steps, three steps, four … she willed herself not to panic. The Pharicians would not be expecting to find anyone in this tunnel. She must wait. They came down eight steps and Istar leaped out, drawing her sword and shouting, ‘Now!’
As her sword went between the ribs of the first Pharician. it occurred to Istar that if Lerien had not declared war on Pharice yet, she had done so now. Pentar and Kassien flanked her on either side, chasing the surprised Pharicians back up the stairs.
‘Don’t let them escape,’ Istar cried, and turning to the one Pentar was fighting, knocked him down and cut his throat. She did this easily: fighting the Slaves in the mountains had put a fine edge of ruthlessness on her, and she was out to prove herself against Pentar, anyway.
Kassien was not so brutal. He disarmed his man but did not deliver the killing stroke. Instead he stood over his vanquished opponent for a long moment.
‘Tie him up,’ Istar spat. ‘And gag him. He’s too dangerous if he brings the rest down on us.’
Kassien did so, and Pentar went to the top of the stairs to be sure no more were coming.
‘Hurry, Xiriel,’ Istar said, stepping over the bloody bodies and into the pool of illumination where Xiriel had returned to his examination of the door. Pallo was giving her a frightened look, but she ignored him. She was jumping inside her skin as Xiriel calmly pored over the incisions in the wall.
His hand lit up and he pressed it into the wall.
‘Pallo, press on that Eye symbol,’ Xiriel said.
Water could be heard rushing somewhere beyond as a section of the wall yielded beneath Pallo’s hand. They were in a rough passage through which a stream flowed into thin blue light. Steam rose from its waters.
‘Pentar! Kassien!’ Istar called, stepping into the cavern. ‘Hurry and get through here. Xiriel, can you shut it behind us?’
The Company of Glass Page 36
