by Marc Secchia
“Oh …” the girl almost wailed, and then collected herself with a curse that would have made a soldier blush. “I forgot! Sorry …”
“Real men do cry,” he hissed between gritted teeth.
“I see. I will pause.”
So she did. Jakani imagined that much of her life must be like this. Tytiana spoke. She acted. No nuance shaded her actions – or, was that a fair judgement? Who was the person gripping an untouchable lamko’s flesh with her bare, ungloved hands? Who was prepared to stitch his wounds without fear of whatever deathly pestilence might lurk in his bloodstream, and as if that were not enough, had Dragon-charged taboo into oblivion by further asking his name? Apparently this woman did everything by sheer force of will, and cared little for what she set ablaze in the doing.
He shuttered his eyes rather than be caught glancing at her bosom, expanding with each breath just inches from his face. He felt her start as his eyelashes tickled the palm of her hand. Why this awareness of her proximity so exquisite and overwhelming? He felt … inebriated. Giddy. Why else would he be acting like such a –
Before he could consider the matter further, Tytiana flared back into character, “Well, you are dumber than a hound, and the stupidest Dirt Picker ever to walk Helyon’s orchards, if you think I don’t care to know an immigrant’s worth! What kind of a person do you take me for, anyways?”
Rich? Spoiled? An arrogant, uncaring brat born into a life of unimaginable privilege and luxury? He said none of these things. Best just keep biting the tongue. Safer.
“Huh. You assume too much, Dirt Picker. Are you always this forthright with your opinions?”
“Uh …”
“You may answer without fear.”
Now she was acting the aristocrat, and they both knew it. However, she was also the one holding the needle.
Jakani said, “I am usually far more circumspect.”
“Afraid?”
“No.”
“Explain yourself.”
Possible replies wafted through his overheated brain. Her hair had just brushed against his arm! Jakani plucked rather haplessly for the first answer that crossed his mind. “It is not my place, o Choice of … not my place to voice opinions. It is not encouraged.”
“And how does that make you feel?”
Sick to the pit of his stomach. Powerless. Wary of this woman. He retorted, “Are you always this intense, o Choice – ouch.”
For that sally, he earned his second stitch. It already hurt less than the first, but Tytiana made sure he knew it was payment for his comment. “Have to keep the rumour mongers in business,” she said afterward. “So, how unlucky were you to draw this assignment?”
“Choice Tytiana, it was not drawn by lots.”
Aye, he knew she had burned through seventeen servants in five weeks. No-one pleased her. He could not imagine why, could he? Such a tame kitten!
“Oh?” The needle stabbed again. The flame was back. “Best start answering my questions, Dirt Picker, or I shall be forced to stoop to coercion. You do not want that. Contrary to what you will have heard, I do not appreciate the silent, uncomprehending service of resentful hearts. The truth is that I prefer lively intelligence and servants with whom I can lock wits as Dragons lock talons.”
Ah, and how many of those might she have found of late? The entire estate was terrified of her. Even he was surprised he had survived thus far. Therefore, honesty?
“This is my punishment.”
“Punishment?” She barked out a laugh that told him much. “What a naughty boy you must’ve been. Do tell.”
“Not much to tell,” Jakani said mutinously. “I punched an overseer in the nose for whipping my father unnecessarily. At least, I felt it unnecessary. He did not agree.”
He wondered if the heiress was disappointed in this admission. He had shamed his father, yesterday. Those white-lipped, very slight grunts of pain as the sadistic overseer laid open his father’s back merely for the sport of it – how could he not defend, or react, as his father’s agonised snarl had made clear? Jakani called it love. His stiff-necked father called it disobedience and dishonour.
Both were right.
Tytiana finished her stitching in silence. He wondered if this amount of knowledge, which barely scraped the tip of the Island above the Cloudlands regarding the life of a lamko, was more than this precocious, ridiculously moneyed teenager had bargained for.
After affixing a bandage to his cheekbone with rather more patience and care than he had expected, she said, “Keep it clean. Eleven stitches. Something for a boy to boast about, eh?”
She carefully moved the several steps back to the workbench. He studied his toes, wondering if he was relieved or bereft to feel able to breathe again.
His eyes wandered once more against his better judgement or willpower to resist, taking in the surprising narrowness of her waist, drawn in and emphasized by the tight, jewelled leather belt set with inlaid rubies in a pretty pattern depicting intertwined lilies. Seething spiders! Yet she moved with a kind of tensile strength that reminded him of the arm of a defensive catapult he had once seen at one of the war stations. Her flaming hair was extraordinary, wreathing her face in tight whorls and cascading down her back like flame incarnate.
Obviously, his father’s brand of wisdom was impossible to follow.
The stick. Pick up her stick, you uncouth mud head!
Without turning to address him, Tytiana added, “Tell anyone I touched you, boy, and I’ll have your ears after I deny every word.”
Jakani swooped for the stick, stood, and bowed formally from the waist in the Eastern way, as his father had taught him. It was a far cry from the fluid Helyon bow, but since she was now packing away her equipment with deft, no-nonsense movements, she did not see.
He said, “O Choice Tytiana, would you instruct me in the required …” His voice trailed off in puzzlement. “What’s that noise?”
Both gazed up through the broad crysglass panels as a whistling sound rapidly escalated from the North-West quadrant. Tytiana and he cried out and flinched as an immense Green Dragon came hurtling over the arboretum at full battle speed, its huge leathery wings briefly occluding the suns and snapping furiously in the wind as it manoeuvred. Wheee – KRACK! The Dragon was flying so low that its passing tail slapped the top of the structure with a sharp report. By the time Jakani registered what had happened, the Green had already raced away over the low hills and out of sight.
Huge!
Simultaneously, numerous large shards of glass cascaded toward the frozen pair like a curiously musical, tinkling waterfall.
In that instant, all of his father’s warnings never to reveal his martial arts skills flew through Jakani’s mind just as fast as that Dragon had appeared and vanished, and were discarded. Tytiana was in danger. She’d be shredded. The tall redhead had only just begun to realise the peril, to turn and duck and cry out, but he saw faster and farther than her. React! Counter-strike! In that instant preceding conscious thought, Jakani gathered himself, took three running stutter-steps, and launched into the air to execute a spinning high-kick that whipped first his left leg up past her head, then scythed the right higher still – hyaaiii-hai! He thumped one huge sliver of glass aside with his left foot and shattered a second with the edge of his right foot, showering her workbench rather than her person with lethal fragments.
He landed lithely beside the heiress. Balanced. Ready. Twirling the gorgeously carved walking stick in his hands, Jakani swatted aside one last stray shard of glass – ker-ting. Perfect execution, perfect finishing posture.
Aye, that felt good!
Tytiana, untouched, her violet eyes huge with fright, exclaimed, “You were amaz –”
GRAAA-BOOM!!
A low thunderclap of sound reached them. Black smoke exploded into the air in the distance. Near his home.
There was a time like an endless inhalation, a sense that reality had just receded from him like the Moons-tides shifting the Cloudlands
away from Helyon’s low shores, as Jakani’s brain tried to make sense of what he had just seen. All the bravado he had felt at landing a flawless double-kick leached out of his feet into the soil as he processed the location of that Dragon’s attack. His home was that way. Five miles. Just five. The Dragon couldn’t have flown that far that fast, could it?
That beast had been shifting …
He threw a stricken look at Tytiana. “My home – family …”
“Go.”
He almost didn’t hear her. “I –”
The ashen girl punched his shoulder. “Blithering idiot! Go!”
Tossing the stick in her direction, he ran. Jakani’s bare feet slapped the soils, the hard paths past the orchards, the tops of stone fences and wooden gates he did not bother to open. He raced through the rich, redolent fields of Helyon, negotiating the gently rolling hills and dales of the great estate that his family had served for forty-six years at high speed, knowing that the column of oily black smoke that smudged the otherwise perfectly blue skies was right over his home. He just knew it.
* * * *
To her vocal annoyance, Tytiana found herself bundled toward the dank underground shelter beneath the sprawling manor House just as soon as she stepped foot in the front entrance. Her father was in a towering rage, for once with good reason. He was kicking messengers left and right as he demanded answers. One thing stuck with her, a messenger boy who blurted out, “It was just a few serfs, Master. Two or three. A Dirt Picker family.” Her father grunted, “Good. No damage to the orchards?” “Very little, Master.” The lord and Master of the House boomed, “Hah! Excellent. Let me know when it’s safe to inspect the trees. I shall go myself.”
Her heart twisted inside her chest. That might be the boy’s family he was talking about. A few Dirt Picker lives were clearly less important to her father than his precious trees.
She felt dislocated, trapped between the memory of gold-tinted eyes and the reality of prejudice rampant in this room. How could she not have seen … because it always had been so? Because every aspect of her growing up had instilled that reality into her, as if she breathed bigotry and discrimination for oxygen? What a pile of stinking, useless excuses!
Juzzakarr was a towering yet thickset man whose neck appeared to sink into his massive shoulders. He kept his long blonde hair laced back in a military plaited queue, and wore the House crimson as his colour of choice. Today’s outfit was polished black half-boots with baggy crimson trousers tucked into their tops, a crossover-style silk shirt which buttoned diagonally from the right shoulder, and a sweeping crimson fur cloak completely out of keeping with the dry season heat.
Upon spying her entrance, Juzzakarr roared, “Downstairs with you, tardy daughter! Keep those expensive heels cool – ha ha ha!”
He laughed, but there was no shred of joviality in his tone. Seeing no point in protesting, Tytiana carried that strange, unaccustomed discomfort in her chest as she struggled down the long, narrow stairway into the underground bunker, where her sisters immediately gathered around and mobbed her with hugs. Ugh. Stairs were always a pain to negotiate with her stupid wooden foot, but this reception was more than worth it.
Besides, she was not the complaining sort. Mostly. Just the burn-their-backsides sort.
Little Sariaki, five years old, sprinted over to clutch her big sister’s waist in an impulsive hug. “Tyti! Missed you!”
“Hey, lovely ragamuffin,” Tytiana smiled, returning the hug favour.
Zihaeri reached out to ruffle her hair fondly. “Flames you very much, Miss Flame-Head, for turning up late as usual and making us all worried. Father pleased to see you?”
“Aye.” His prize asset was safe.
Blonde Zihaeri was shorter than her by a couple of inches but also three years older, and she took big sister duties very seriously indeed, especially since their mother had passed away from haemorrhaging after Sariaki’s birth. Responsibility might as well have been her middle name. She was also a gifted scholar who did not have the habit of drawing frustrated groans of incomprehension from their tutors. No, she was their pet.
Shy Quiraeli hung back, of course, but Tytiana was not about to let her get away with that. She was a classic Helyon beauty even at twelve, all willowy height and perfect blonde hair of the perfect shade, and more than one potential suitor meant for the wavy-haired redhead had, upon spying her, sighed in Qui’s direction – and promptly been clobbered out of the House for his trouble. Occasionally, a hard jalkwood stick made a useful weapon. To her credit, Quiraeli was beautiful inside and out. She evinced not the slightest hint of vanity. In her case, that would have been an understandable vice. She was also an exceptional harpist and singer – another reason for a sigh – and possessed the knack of deflating their father’s rages with a well-placed quirk of one eyebrow.
Outrageous!
Tytiana squeezed her sister breathless just for the fun of it.
“Oof,” Qui complained politely. “Get off. You’re like a furnace.”
“There is more than a hint of body odour down here,” Tytiana observed, not inaccurately. The little-used chamber, perhaps a disused wine cellar, was crowded with fearful people who had clearly run to find hiding, and it had not smelled particularly pleasant to start with. “Not yours, of course. You smell like lilies of the pond.”
Quiraeli giggled, “You’re silly, Tytiana – oh! Oh …”
“Lamp’s out of oil,” someone called out of the sudden, complete blackness.
“What ralti-brained simpleton brought down a nearly empty lamp?” Tytiana hissed in outrage. Of course, she managed to pick the second the whole underground room went silent as people reacted to the onset of darkness, so her voice carried to every corner.
Invisible glower!
Sariaki piped up, “We have Tyti. Tyti glowy.”
“Hush, child,” rapped one of the tutors.
“No, seriously,” said Zihaeri, in her ‘this is very serious and you had better be listening’ tone of voice. “You’ve just turned into a glow-in-the-dark sister.”
“What?”
“Told you so. Tyti all glowy!” Sariaki announced to a whole roomful of relatives, servants, and just about every House functionary who was not important enough to be upstairs.
Tytiana was speechless, realising that she could see her sisters’ faces around her by virtue of the ruddy glow created by none other than herself. It was like faint candlelight playing all over her skin, not burning or flickering, just a steady, inhuman glow that most definitely had no place being anywhere near any person’s … well, person. She rubbed her bare arms frantically, but failed to move or change the phenomenon in the slightest. “Ah, alright … this is weird. Anyone know what’s going on?”
“Even her hair’s glowing,” someone observed.
“Holy Fra’anior!”
“What a freak.”
“Woe, the curse ascendant –”
“Shut your chattering traps! I’m not a freak!”
The darkness seemed to embolden people. Suddenly she heard ‘candle girl’ and ‘sorceress’ and ‘– never liked that mutant, and now I know why.’ The babble swelled into a formless, deafening, terrifying beast that roared in her ears as she swivelled around and around again, frantic now, beating at her limbs and hair and face but nothing seemed to change the eerie radiance that lit the chanting, chattering maelstrom of hate that tormented her senses. Shadowed noses became hooked beaks. Lips like gleaming slugs spitting obscenities. The nightmare of sound, heat and helplessness roared on and on, her in the epicentre.
She was fire. Fire was in her. Rising. Burning like the sweetest, most intoxicating wine, and she no longer knew if she was screaming or laughing as the deep ruby glow swelled …
Suddenly sallow white lantern light bobbled down the stairs, bleaching her colours. Tytiana sensed the strength leave her limbs in a great rush. She slumped against someone – upon Zihaeri’s shoulder, and slipped farther, and now she felt Quiraeli stagger beneath
her weight as the slight girl crashed to her knees. Sariaki was wailing nearby, clasped in a nanny’s arms.
An explosion of volcanic realisation rallied her. “Him!”
“Him … who?” Zihaeri puzzled. “Shh, Sariaki. She’s alright now. See? Tell her you’re alright, Tyti!”
“That obnoxious Dirt Picker! It was him. It all started with him, and my kitten laying an egg –”
“An egg?” said Zihaeri.
“Aren’t you listening? Am I speaking Island Standard? My tiger laid an egg, and … well …”
“Poor thing, she’s gone quite, quite crazy,” Nanny Lyriana clucked. She had looked after the four girls since Tytiana could remember. Like many Helyon matrons of her fifty-plus years and important station, she seemed to be comprised of equal parts duck down and iron.
“I swear it’s true, Nanny!”
“You’re just overwrought. Poor dear.”
“Overwrought? I’m furious!”
This was what had always been inside of her! Not so much the temper as this real, pulsating, living fire! How had she ever mistaken this sensation for a mere quirk of her untameable personality? Tytiana the Red – in the very flesh. How would she ever live this down?
“Now, sweet love, you’re all tousled and feverish. Just look at your poor hair sticking up all in a frizzy bush. Lie down here. Someone fetch me a cool cloth!”
“I’d rather dunk that freak in a bucket of ice,” a voice muttered nearby.
“He did this. I’m going to … ooh, murder is far too kind a word for what I’m going to do to that imposter,” Tytiana insisted, all the time wondering how it was that she was suddenly so shaky? Had the boy poisoned her with his touch? Was he responsible for the abrupt intensification of this ardent and exquisite inner burning, which so consumed her very sanity, it had begun to leach out of her skin? Aye! Had he not called her ‘the radiant’? It was all a devious plot! What mere lamko could kick aside glass panels a foot or more above her head?
She had to warn father!
Sariaki’s fingers touched hers. “Tyti?”
