‘And if I agree to this, you’ll tell me where he is? Right now?’
‘And have you arrest Cade and the others, too? Forgive me, but I have a hard time believing you’d let them go again. My faith in Krodan promises isn’t what it once was.’
It was all Klyssen could do not to grind his teeth. He wasn’t supposed to be negotiating with a prisoner. ‘Then what do you propose?’ he said.
‘Set me free. I’ll tell them I was lying low in the city; they’ll believe that. Tonight, Garric intends to go into the ghetto.’
‘Why?’
‘It doesn’t matter. He’s going. You’ll have men waiting. I’ll lead him to them. Only Garric. The others won’t even know what happened.’
And Cade will never know what I did for him. Because if he did, he’d never speak to me again.
‘You have a couple of hours at most before they decide I’ve been captured,’ said Aren. ‘That’s not counting the time it would take to assemble your soldiers and get there. I can’t hold out against your tortures for ever, but I reckon I can hold out long enough.’
‘Can you?’ asked Klyssen. ‘Would you like to find out?’
‘Would you?’
There was steel in his gaze, enough that Klyssen believed him. When Aren set his will to something, it wasn’t easily broken.
‘Let’s say I release you,’ Klyssen said. ‘Why would you not simply go back to them, warn your friends and disappear?’
‘You’ll just have to trust me. As I will trust you not to hang me when this is done.’
‘Not good enough.’
‘It’ll have to be.’
‘No. I’ll have Garric one way or another. If not today, then some other day. But I won’t have you run off and make a fool of me. So you need to convince me, otherwise you stay here, and there is no deal. You will not like our hospitality, I guarantee.’
Klyssen’s gaze bored into him. Aren shifted in his chair. The overwatchman was determined that he wouldn’t have it all his own way, and Aren saw he wouldn’t flex on this. Now it was his turn to give something up.
‘I hate him,’ Aren said at last, and it felt so very true. He’d have died rather than give up any of the others, but Garric was a price he could pay, if that would save the rest.
‘Why?’
‘I hate him for causing all of this. I hate him because he hates me.’
‘And you don’t know why he hates you, and that makes it worse,’ Klyssen surmised. ‘Yet still you follow him. So I must ask again: what did he say to you?’
‘He didn’t say anything,’ Aren murmured. All the confidence had gone out of him now. In its place was naked resentment, the burning thwarted anger of youth. ‘He showed me instead. Made me believe. I hate him for that most of all.’
‘You admired him.’
‘I thought he could make a difference. I thought I could.’
‘And now?’
Aren looked away. ‘Your man didn’t catch me. Ossians did – my own people. So what’s the point? You said it yourself: the smart player wins the peace. I want to go home. I want it back how it was.’
‘And Garric?’
‘Damn him. Enough lives have been lost on his account, my father’s included. He’s not worth mine.’
Klyssen nodded to himself, a finger against his lip, considering.
‘If you deliver Garric,’ he said at last, ‘your lands will be restored and the stain wiped from your family’s name. You and Cade can live in peace. But listen hard, Aren: if you betray me, I will catch you, and I will take the price of your treachery out of your friend’s hide. You will watch as he is tortured to death over many days. Then I will start on you.’
He paused to let that sink in. Aren was in no doubt that he meant it. They’d ridden their luck too far already. Death and failure were all that awaited them if they carried on. The Iron Hand were everywhere, and they had not only dreadknights on their side, but most of Ossia, too, bound to them by fear. What could two boys from Shoal Point do against that?
I wish we could go back to how it was, Cade had said to him in the Shacklemarket. Well, Aren had found a way. They’d go back to the time before Fen, before Garric, before they were imprisoned and disgraced. Back to simpler days, when they were friends without conditions or complications, and they had no notion of the hells the world held in its hollows. They’d go home.
‘Do we have an accord?’ Klyssen asked.
Aren held up his hands, raising his manacles until the chain was taut against the ring in the floor. A gesture that said Free me.
‘Your father would be proud of you,’ said Klyssen, and he drew a key from his pocket.
72
Orica’s fingers shifted and slid across the fretboard, searching for the right shapes to frame the melody her voice described. Her eyes were closed, words drawn up from a well of sadness and anger deep within her, emotion given form by lips and lungs and tongue.
He said, ‘I see no clouds, and the waves are not high.
Your omens mislead you, your bones fall awry.’
But the seer said, ‘Sire, not all storms come from the sky.
There are depths to which you cannot see.
‘The tide is returning, and coming right soon.
It brings with it those you have sent to their doom.
There’s a wolf in the waves who yet howls from its tomb
And the fallen keep long memory.’
Then the king said ‘You lie! For this land is my land!
Passed on to me by fate’s bloodied right hand.’
‘But sire,’ said the seer, ‘though you think you command,
Your rule is but fleeting here.
‘There are elder things yet than the god you obey
And none may lay claim to this soil, try you may.
For this land will be here after you pass away
And its children will still persevere.’
As she reached the end, she faltered, the spell of the music breaking. Something wasn’t right, something didn’t ring true. She let the notes fade and tried to determine what it was.
‘That is a dangerous song to sing,’ Mara observed.
Orica opened her eyes. She was sitting cross-legged on a stone bench in a granite-flagged nook amid Mara’s expansive gardens. Harod was at her side, as ever, companion and guardian both. Orica hadn’t heard Mara approach. Behind her, the house towered against a blue sky grilled with cloud.
‘If someone were to overhear you, they might mistake it as something other than a ballad of a long-dead king. They might think it a warning to our new rulers,’ Mara continued. ‘A call to arms, even.’
‘Can a bard be blamed if her words are misinterpreted?’ Orica asked, with a small smile. She put out a hand as Harod drew breath to come to her defence. ‘Peace, Harod. I suspect a call to arms would not find disfavour in this house.’
Indeed, after two weeks with their mysterious saviours, it would take a blind woman not to see they were plotting against the Empire. She’d guessed it from their furtive conversations even before the dreadknights appeared. But Orica was comfortable with secrets, and she let them have theirs.
Harod had urged her to leave them behind as soon as they reached Morgenholme, saying they were risky company to keep. He believed that no one else could be trusted, that he alone could protect her. Since the events at the Reaver’s Rest, Orica wasn’t sure that was true.
Just a few days, she said, so as not to wound his pride. Let us see how the land lies.
Since then, she’d learned that the ghetto had been emptied of Sards, and the land lay bleak and bare indeed.
‘I think my song has become too melancholy,’ she said, and she knew then why it had felt wrong to her. ‘It was intended to inspire. Somewhere in the crafting, it has lost its hope.’
Mara considered that, studying her thoughtfully. ‘Do you play castles?’ she asked.
‘I know how, though I’ve no great skill.’
‘Will you play with m
e? It’s something of an obsession of mine.’
‘It would be my pleasure,’ said Orica. She looked up at Harod, who understood at once.
‘I will practise my forms,’ he said, laying his hand on the blade at his hip. Then he bowed to Mara. ‘You have an excellent garden, milady. My thanks for your kind hospitality.’
‘Honoured guest, thy presence is thanks enough,’ Mara replied in flawless Harrish.
‘And thy knowledge of the tongue of my homeland does thee great credit,’ Harod replied, and bowed again, deeper this time. Then, with a last glance at Orica, he left.
Orica packed up her lute and they walked back to the house together. A cool wind rustled the trees and stirred the flowers lining the paths. Birds hopped and fluttered in the afternoon sun. Orica sensed that Mara had something to ask her and was intrigued. It might help her choose which way she should go next. The world had a way of providing new paths, if you knew where to look for them. The Aspect who watched over her people was Prinn the Ragged Mummer, and she was a trickster, apt to disguise opportunities as setbacks and vice versa.
They made small talk as they headed to the parlour, where the castles board was waiting. Mara didn’t make for easy conversation at first – unlike most Ossians, she found the art of speaking about nothing a little difficult – but she warmed up when Orica got her onto the subject of her school. Orica couldn’t help but admire her passion, or notice the anger underneath. She spoke of the girls as if they were her daughters, taking pride in their achievements and bearing the blame for their failings. She reminded Orica of the cwellith, the teacher-mothers who travelled among the caravans of her people.
Mara’s housemaid Laria – a sallow young woman with a red birthmark across much of her face – served wine while Mara reminded Orica of the rules. As they set to playing, it soon became clear that Orica was outclassed. She lost half a dozen of her best pieces in an ill-advised assault across the river. Her attempt at a counter-attack was met with a wall of archers and trebuchets occupying the high ground, and she was decimated.
No matter. Her defeat had been inevitable, and it wasn’t about the game, after all. This was only a stage for Mara to play out the proposal to come. It was the way of Sards to look beneath the surface of things. To her people, face value held no value at all.
‘Garric told me how you met,’ Mara said as she slid an assassin into an area of the board where it would serve no purpose that Orica could see.
‘Harod and I owe him much for his aid,’ Orica said. ‘Without him and his companions, we would have been arrested by now, and likely killed.’
‘I understand you let him use your cart to get to Wracken Bay, and you lost it there, along with many of your possessions.’
‘The Ragged Mummer plays her tune and we cannot but dance,’ said Orica. ‘The Aspects give and they take away.’
Mara said nothing to that, her eyes on the board as Orica pondered her next move. ‘He also told me why you were travelling to Morgenholme.’
‘It was no secret. I sought my relatives, and now I learn they have been moved on again, if they were ever here at all. I despair of finding them.’ She didn’t try to keep the disappointment and grief from her voice. A Sard was never ashamed of honest emotion.
Mara looked sympathetic. ‘What will you do?’
‘That is the question I’ve been asking myself,’ said Orica, sliding her remaining giant towards an unoccupied castle on the far left of the board, where there was a break in the line of blue counters that signified a ford in the river. ‘Should I head east in search of them, with few supplies and no transport, while all around me Sards are being plucked from their homes in their hundreds? Likely I would not last a week. Should I go elsewhere, then? Perhaps to Galtis, where we could live off my music and I could forget the plight of my people?’
‘Except, of course, that you wouldn’t.’
‘No,’ said Orica darkly. Because how could she live with not knowing? Her whole race was being rounded up and removed from Ossia, taken east to an unknown destination and an uncertain fate. Slavery? Death? Her mind shied from the possibilities. It beggared belief that this could happen in a civilised land, that thousands of people could just disappear, with hardly a murmur from those they’d once lived alongside.
The thought made her furious. Didn’t Sards belong to Ossia, too? Didn’t they walk the same earth, breathe the same air? The people of this land enjoyed their craft markets and performances, stole Sard fashions and fantasised about the mysterious lives they imagined Sards had. No doubt there were plenty who were concerned and sympathetic, Ossians and Krodans alike. But when it came to it, no one spoke up for them.
Mara moved a piece and took one of Orica’s. ‘If you choose to leave the country, I can provide transport and safe passage to the border. If you choose to go east instead, I can at least give you a cart and horses, and supplies to replace those you have lost.’
‘You are very generous,’ Orica said neutrally, keeping the suspicion from her voice.
‘Generosity is giving what you cannot easily afford. Garric’s debts are mine, and you should be compensated for your losses.’
‘Tsss. He saved our lives. But I accept nonetheless, with thanks.’
‘I would ask only that you both stay with me until I can make the necessary arrangements. You will, of course, be well looked after.’
‘I see,’ said Orica. ‘Until after the wedding?’
Mara smiled wryly. ‘It would not be safe to travel until then. The roads are heavily patrolled.’
‘How could I refuse such hospitality?’ said Orica, and wondered if she was really being offered a choice. Mara had just confirmed that whatever the plan, it would happen at the wedding, and Orica and Harod knew enough to sell them out to the Krodans if they chose to. Mara didn’t need to worry on that account, of course, but Orica understood the need for caution. Trusting strangers was an idiot’s game.
Mara picked up an ivory draccen and flew it across the river. ‘There is a third way. Stay and fight with us.’
Orica met Mara’s eyes across the castles board. ‘I am no warrior,’ she said.
‘Nor I, but not all wars are won by force of arms. I have heard your song, Orica. We share the same dream.’
Orica sat back, the game forgotten for a moment. She hadn’t expected this. Until now she’d avoided prying, but if she was to make a choice here, she needed to know what manner of people they were.
‘Why do you fight, Mara? You have wealth and comfort. The occupation has been kind to you.’
It was meant to provoke. Mara almost rose to it, but caught herself at the last moment. She gave Orica a tight smile. ‘I was born to privilege, it’s true, but my family’s wealth was modest. I will tell you how I bought this house and obtained such riches as I have. Maybe then you will not think the occupation has been so kind.’ She sipped her wine and waved at the castles board. ‘But take your turn, please. I can’t bear to leave a game unfinished.’
Orica moved another piece, and Mara talked as they played.
‘I was considered something of a prodigy in my youth. I devoured books and learned languages so I could read more. Knowledge came easily to me. I had read Tekaput’s Disquisitions by age seven, mastered Ith-kilian’s Uncertain Formulae by nine. I built things, and designed what I could not build. I ran rings around my tutors in rhetoric. And I played castles, a lot. It was my unquestioned destiny to go to the Glass University, to invent wonderful things and to solve the insoluble. My name would echo through the ages, as loud as Tekaput or Chalius or Jessa Wolf’s-Heart herself.’
She paused, and her eyes narrowed.
‘Then came the Krodans. I was no longer allowed to study, or to take meaningful work. For years I suffered this and sought to work within their system. I was special, I thought. Surely if I tried hard enough, they would notice? But they did not. I am a woman, after all. The Acts of Tomas and Toven says that a woman of ambition is a greedy thing, a malcontent unwilling to play he
r role in society. But still I designed and invented, still I calculated and dreamed. I had no choice. Only death would have stopped me.’
Orica was barely paying attention to the board any more, but Mara’s conversation didn’t appear to distract her from the game one bit. She moved with the same precision and speed of thought whether she was talking or not.
‘Finally I could bear it no longer. I had a friend who lost his leg below the knee fighting the urds during the Sixth Purge. He was a fool, caught up with dreams of joining the Knights Vigilant, but that is by the by. He came home wounded, with a crude peg in place of his shin. I saw how he suffered with sores from that ill-fitting peg; I saw how people treated a proud man like a beggar just because he walked with a crutch. So I designed a new leg for him, from leather and metal, that imitated the movement of the bones and muscles in a human foot. With a little practice, he could walk again unaided.’
‘That is miraculous,’ said Orica. ‘I have seen such devices. Rare and expensive, but amazing nonetheless.’ She frowned. ‘But—’
Mara raised a finger. ‘Ah. There you see. He urged me to show my invention to the world, to help others like him. But I knew no one would allow such an invention, if it came from a woman. I would be cried down and shamed, and a year later an identical device would appear, built by a man. Yet I could not just keep it to myself. My workshop and study were already crowded with discoveries I had been forced to hide away. I had thought of publishing some anonymously, but …’ She spread her fingers helplessly. ‘But I was still that little girl who dreamed of being immortal.’
‘That is no bad thing to dream,’ said Orica. ‘It is something we have in common, I think. I would have my music played in a hundred years, a thousand. That would be my immortality. But, like you, I face certain obstacles of birth.’
‘Then don’t make my mistake. I was determined to take what control I could, so I approached a man I knew well – a man I trusted implicitly – and put a proposition to him. He would pretend to have invented the device and take a cut of the proceeds, but the lion’s share – almost all of it – would come to me. I swallowed my ambition for the good of my fellow folk and gave the credit to a man.’
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