There were nine girls in the class, aged between twelve and sixteen, some from wealth and some from nothing but all of them fabulously bright. She’d given them uniforms in the hope of erasing their differences, but they came through anyway. The rich ones arrived immaculate, dresses pressed and hair neat. The canal girls had dirt on their hems, and brought runny noses and lice.
‘You all know how to do this,’ she told them. She pointed to a simple diagram, representing an open-topped barrel sitting inside a larger vat. ‘You have some of the proportions of the two chambers, and you know how much water is being poured into the barrel. Work out how much you can fill the barrel before it overflows. Then you can work out how high the water will rise in the vat. If you do it step by step, it’s quite straightforward.’
It wasn’t straightforward. It was difficult, and that was the point. She’d left out vital information to hamper them, and it was easy to forget the barrel’s displacing effect when calculating how much had overflowed. She hadn’t told them how to account for that, so they’d have to stretch themselves to succeed, to reach into the unknown a little. In her lessons, as in life, they’d often find themselves dealt a hand that was less than fair. She’d teach them to overcome a disadvantage any way they could.
The silence of urgent thought filled the classroom. Outside, the sun was shining, but inside it was cool. The walls were panelled with heavy dark wood, and the air smelled of libraries and learning. Mara watched her charges and fought down a familiar frustration. Making them understand was the easy part. Getting them to raise their voices was the real battle. She wanted them to be reckless, to theorise wildly, to guess at what they didn’t know. Mostly they only answered when they were certain they wouldn’t risk disapproval. Kadelina had been with her three years and still didn’t dare to be wrong.
Jinna flung up a hand. Keen little Jinna was always the first to puzzle things out. Mara looked past her to Vania, the youngest, sitting quietly with her tangled brown hair half-hiding her face.
‘Vania,’ she said.
‘I don’t know,’ Vania said.
‘Yes, you do. Try.’
She did try, and she figured it out in the end, but it took some time and Mara had to walk her through it. Jinna kept her hand up throughout. With every new hesitation, each mistake and misstep that Vania made, Mara saw Jinna becoming more impatient. She had the solution. She couldn’t understand why no one wanted to listen to her.
Get used to it. There’s a lot more of that ahead of you.
When their lessons were over, the girls made their way out of the classroom, laughing and chattering. Jinna still wore a scowl, but she said nothing as she passed Mara, who was sitting at her desk reading some paperwork. Mara would rather she complain than suffer in silence, but she could only expect so much. A lifetime of submission and low expectations could not be quickly undone.
‘Vania. Stay behind a moment.’
Vania froze, her eyes full of terror. She was a gawky and gangly twelve-year-old, caught up in the first rush of adolescent growth, and she walked with the manner of someone expecting a beating.
‘Don’t be alarmed, child. It’s nothing bad.’
That scarcely seemed to reassure her. She glanced enviously at the others as they left. They gave her sympathetic looks and began to speculate about her detainment as soon as they were out of sight. Mara waited until the clamour of footsteps on the stairs had receded, then beckoned Vania to stand before her.
‘It’s come to my attention that your father has been unable to find work for some weeks.’
Vania looked at her feet and nodded uncertainly. ‘He’s a builder, Mistress. All the new buildings, they want them Krodan-style. My da don’t know how to do that.’
‘Doesn’t know,’ Mara corrected automatically.
‘Doesn’t know,’ repeated Vania.
Mara produced a folded letter, sealed with her mark, and held it out. ‘Take this to Marron the butcher at the Shacklemarket. He’ll give you meat and groceries for your family. I won’t have one of my pupils coming to class too hungry to work.’
Vania took it, bewildered. ‘Thank you, Mistress,’ she said.
Mara returned her attention to the papers on her desk. Vania belatedly realised she’d been dismissed, and slipped away.
Her paperwork done, Mara straightened the desks and set the classroom in order, then left and locked it behind her. The room was a hired space in a building otherwise filled with clerk’s offices, a printmaker’s and an artist’s studio on the top floor. The setting was conveniently central, near enough to the canals that the poorer girls could get there on foot, far enough away that the wealthy families wouldn’t balk at sending their children there. She taught here nine days a week; Jorsday and Festenday were rest days. She had little to thank the Krodans for, but she did admire their work ethic, and the Krodan week – five days work, one of rest, four of work, one of rest and worship – appealed to her more than the old Ossian week of four-two-three-two, which had always struck her as excessively lax.
Outside in the street, the noise and bustle of Morgenholme were waiting for her. Carts creaked by and birds fluttered among the gabled roofs of South Heights. A pie-seller had parked his cart on the corner, hawking his wares to passers-by. A group of laughing Krodan men emerged from their lunch at the beer-hall down the road. Two finely dressed ladies browsed a confectioner’s window, shading themselves from the afternoon sun with parasols. Clia was waiting with the carriage on the other side of the cobbled street, hunched in the driver’s seat. Mara looked for a gap in the traffic, but before she could cross she was hailed by a man nearby.
‘Your pardon! Be you Mara of Whitherwall?’
She regarded him with immediate suspicion. He was a man of low means, ragged at the edges and smudged with dirt, though he’d evidently done his best to smarten himself up. That and his deferential tone told her he wanted something. Her eyes went to the young boy at his side, waifish and wide-eyed.
‘I am,’ she said stiffly. Over the road, Clia sat up, alert and ready to intervene.
‘Your pardon, your pardon. They say you’ve a school, that you teach children rich or poor, an’ you don’t ask no coin for it; but you only teach them’s what’s they call exceptional. My boy Lud, he—’
She held up a hand, interrupting him. ‘I think you’ve been misinformed.’
The man looked confused. ‘You don’t teach no school?’
‘I don’t teach boys.’
A desperate look passed across the man’s face. ‘But Lud ’ere, ’e’s gifted! Speaks four languages and he ain’t yet eleven! Reads better ’n anyone. Ask him anything and he’ll recall it, clear as if it were a moment ago.’
‘Well, good! With such talent, no doubt he’ll rise above the circumstances of his birth,’ she told him. ‘At worst he’ll find work as a translator, but likely he’ll do better than that. Many masters would be glad to take on such a prodigy, and he may even find his way to the Glass University.’ She couldn’t help the harsh tone that crept into her voice as she went on. ‘Meanwhile, fully one half of the population will never go to the Glass University, never be schooled to their potential, never be allowed a job with any status outside of a narrow few allowed them because they are seen as suitable to their nature. Your son, Ossian and lowborn though he be, has the world at his feet by comparison, and there is a long line of children more disadvantaged who will pass through my doors before he will.’
The man stared at her, confused. He was dimly aware that he’d been told off but he wasn’t sure why. She’d never had the knack of talking to uneducated folk.
‘I wish you good fortune,’ she said. Then, without looking at the boy again, she crossed the street.
‘All well?’ Clia asked, eyeing the man and his child, hand near her sword. It crossed Mara’s mind that she needed to renew the permit soon. Just another thing to add to the calendar she kept in her head.
‘Peace, Clia. He’s no threat.’ She watched the man
walk away dejectedly, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. The sight made her sad for a moment and she wondered if she’d been too hasty, but she brushed the thought away. Sympathy was a finite commodity in a world such as this.
‘I will take a walk, I think,’ she told Clia. ‘Meet me by the Arcolid at twelfth bell o’ day. The time until then is yours.’
Clia didn’t have a face made for gratitude. She smiled little and always looked serious. Mara liked that about her.
It was a fine autumn day, the sun was pleasantly warm and the Sisters were waxing in the west. Lyssa was a pale pastel marble made paler by the bright blue sky; Tantera loomed ghostly and glowering.
Mara strode briskly – she did everything briskly – the heels of her shoes clicking on the cobbles as she headed through the streets of South Heights. Her mind was busy, thinking over tomorrow’s lessons, plotting the best route to her destination, worrying about what she’d say when she got there. As she walked, she observed how the shadows thrown by chimneys onto rooftops became distorted by the angle of the sun, and wondered how to turn shadow-casting into an experiment for her pupils. A fat pigeon scudded past and she decided to obtain one to learn how such a bulky bird flew. A man sneezed nearby, and Mara wondered why sneezing made her feel so good afterwards, and if that feeling could be replicated chemically without the inconvenience of spraying mucus everywhere.
Her mind turned and turned, never quiet. Even in sleep – which she needed little of – she dreamed vividly and often woke determined to investigate something she’d imagined while unconscious. Long ago, she’d come to realise that not everybody was like her, that the minds of most were not full of restless curiosity and calculation but rather with bovine meanderings interspersed with lengthy periods of vacancy. She pitied and envied them at the same time. There were moments when she thought it might be a relief to be so benighted, to be free of the frustrations and cares of intellect. But she might as well have wished she were a cat.
The traffic thickened as she approached the bridge and she was forced to the side of the street by carts and carriages. At the mouth of the Promise Bridge, the denizens of the Canal District swarmed up from below. They were poorer folk than the occupants of South Heights, living in the rank alleys at the foot of the hill. There, streets of tumbledown houses were mazed with narrow waterways that flooded whenever the river burst its banks, and rats were as numerous as flies.
Mara joined the crowd, threading through the crush towards the bridge. Merchants in finery mixed with toothless hags and bookkeepers walked with sewer-men. She looked around and wondered if there was a similarity between the way crowds moved and the way swarms of insects did.
Finally the bridge came into sight. Broad, long and high, it stood on great pillared arches of stone that strode down the hillside into the water and over to the narrow green island that rose from the Cay like the ridged spine of some slumbering riverbed leviathan. Sovereign’s Isle had been the seat of Ossian monarchs for centuries, but no monarch ruled there now.
At the entrance of the bridge, standing to either side, were two towering statues: King Farril the Sound and his queen Elidia of Trine. Farril was holding his hand out towards his wife and looking across at her, as if to direct the viewer’s attention that way. Elidia was bent slightly, arms spread in a gesture that said This is yours, for the Promise Bridge had been her gift to the people of the city.
And what will I leave? Mara thought as she passed beneath the statues, and a shadow fell on her heart. Who will remember my name when I’m gone?
The story of the Promise Bridge was well known among the poor folk of Morgenholme. Farril was but a prince when he fell in love with Elidia, daughter of the High Thane of Trine, who was visiting Farril’s father at the palace. Elidia had observed on her visit that there was a bridge linking the north side of the river to Sovereign’s Isle, but those on the south side had to cross the river by boat. The rich occupied the north bank, living in orderly beauty among the imposing ruins of the Second Empire, while the south bank was chaotic and dangerous, the province of the poor. Elidia was kind of heart and ever a champion of the weak, so when Farril asked for her hand in marriage, she agreed on one condition: that he build a bridge to the south, so all might cross to Sovereign’s Isle. Farril was horrified at the idea of common folk tramping past the royal palace in their hordes, but Elidia said it would do him good to be reminded how the meanest of his subjects lived. So Farril promised her the bridge, and when they were married, he kept that promise. Elidia had become one of Ossia’s most beloved queens.
One day, Mara said to herself. One day they will build a statue to me, too. And I will leave something greater than a bridge behind.
But she’d become gloomy, and her bravado did little to cheer her. Every day the sands of her life ran thinner and the window of opportunity narrowed. While the Krodans ruled Ossia, her voice would never be heard. And there was no sign of that changing any time soon.
Unless, she thought. Unless …
A banner had been hung across the bridge, displaying the crests of Prince Ottico and Princess Sorrel of Harrow. Tomas and Toven stood to either side, one holding a book, the other a blade. A feverish excitement had gripped the city as the impending celebrations neared. A week’s holiday had been declared to welcome their Lord Protector, eleven whole days of revels, beginning on the day of the wedding. It was a level of generosity unheard of under the Krodan regime.
They were buying Ossian hearts with a celebration while they put a Krodan in place of their murdered queen and the Ember Blade in his hand. It was cynical and obvious, and Mara was depressingly certain that it would work. People had short memories and thirty years was long enough for the complacent to get used to anything. But Mara hadn’t forgotten, and she wouldn’t celebrate. The day the Emperor’s son was welcomed as their Lord Protector would be the day Ossia embraced her own slavery.
Across the bridge, Sovereign’s Isle was festooned with flags and banners. The plazas were aswarm and a festival was setting up in King’s Park, which would be opened to the public for the celebrations. Mummers performed before the gates of the royal palace and vendors peddled exotic sweetmeats in the shadow of the House of Aspects, the greatest shrine to the old gods in all of Ossia. The Krodans hadn’t dared to tear that one down yet, but it was only a matter of time.
Mara passed them all with barely a glance, heading across the island to Pastor’s Bridge, and thence to the north side of the river. At the top of the hill were the Uplanes, where the rich dwelled among the towering edifices of a lost empire. Her business was lower down, in Clockcross, the craft district. There, artists and artisans toiled beneath the Horolith, the mysterious ancient timepiece which had somehow survived the ruin of its makers, and still kept perfect time a millennium after it was built.
Braden’s cooperage was a plain wooden building on a street facing out over the river. Mara paused at the door, gathering herself. I will not ask, she told herself. I do not wish to know. Then she pushed the door open and went inside.
The workshop was busy and cluttered, stacked with staves and metal hoops, apprentices working at tables in between. A barrel was being toasted by the open window, the interior dancing with firelight thrown by the brazier inside it. The air smelled of warm wood, sweat and sawdust.
‘Braden! Customer!’ one of the apprentices yelled as he saw her. At the far end of the workshop, a thickset man with a bushy black beard looked up. He laid aside the hammer he’d been using to knock dents from a hoop and came over, dusting his hands.
‘Mara,’ he said gruffly, with a respectful nod.
‘Braden.’
A moment of awkwardness. The big cooper was always uneasy at the sight of her these days. It brought his loyalties into conflict. ‘This way,’ he said at last, gesturing towards the back.
She followed him through the workshop and out into a small yard which held a cart, a tiny stable and a few storage sheds. He unlocked the smallest and opened it, inviting her inside.
‘Finest oak from the forests of Trine,’ Braden said. ‘Carthanian iron on the hoops. The crests are copied perfectly. It’d take a master craftsman to spot the difference.’
‘A fine job,’ Mara agreed. ‘And at such short notice. My heartfelt thanks.’
‘The boys did some, but I finished them on my own. Didn’t want them knowing what we were making. Any of this comes back to me, they’re not involved.’
‘It won’t,’ Mara assured him. ‘I’ve told no one.’ She circled one of the barrels, peering at it as if she could see inside. ‘They’re exactly as I asked?’
He moved over to show her. ‘Two separate compartments inside. The central compartment is about one-third the volume. That’s where you put your wine. There’s a bung in the bilge so you can taste it, another in the head for the spigot when you’re ready to serve.’ He slapped the barrel with his palms on either side. ‘The other compartment sits against the sides, two chambers, connected across but sealed off from the central part. That one you can’t pour from.’
‘So how do I fill it?’
‘There’s a tiny bung behind the Amberlyne crest.’ He tapped the emblem on the head of the barrel. ‘I’ve left ’em loose so you can get to ’em. You’ll need to glue ’em down when you’re done.’
‘So if the first compartment is full of Amberlyne, anyone drinking from this barrel will suspect nothing amiss?’
‘Aye, till it runs out and they realise the barrel is still more than half full. Reckon that’ll raise their suspicions right enough.’
A question hung at the end of his words. She didn’t answer it. He gave her a long look, then asked it aloud.
‘So what’s the game, Mara? Fill the second compartment with water? You buy one barrel of Amberlyne, sell it as three?’
The Ember Blade Page 53