Aren looked at the floor and despaired. How could it have turned so fast? How could it be over, when it had just been about to begin? Garric was gone, betrayed by his closest friend for the second time in his life, and with him went all hope of seizing the Ember Blade.
Aren picked through the rubble of the night, looking for hope and finding none. There was no telling how much Keel had revealed to the Iron Hand. They couldn’t even send someone in Garric’s place. The whole plan was compromised.
Were they already strapping Garric into a chair in some torture chamber? Would his thirty years of struggle be rewarded with agony and death?
For Keel, whom he’d once thought a good man, he felt only black loathing. No wonder Klyssen had been willing to let Aren go. He knew he had a second traitor in his ranks if the first one failed. Aren had believed himself clever in escaping the Iron Hand, but the overwatchman had another card up his sleeve the whole time. It made him sick to think of how effortlessly he’d been outplayed.
How could Keel have done that to Garric? How?
But then, Aren knew how. He’d been a hair’s breadth from doing it himself.
‘I thought …’ Vika began, and then stopped. There was desolation on her face. ‘He was the champion … The one to seize the burning blade …’ Ruck folded her ears down and whined as Vika shook her head in disbelief. ‘Were the Torments ever talking to me at all? Or was I talking to myself all along?’
‘Grub talks to himself sometimes,’ the Skarl offered helpfully.
‘Oh, shut up!’ Cade snapped.
Aren sat in a window nook in an empty room, his knees drawn up to his chin, hugging himself. There was no lamp or lantern here, no rugs or hangings, nothing but a stack of battered mattresses in the corner. He was on the top floor of a tall old house, high above the street. Beyond the window was the river where Sovereign’s Isle glittered in the night, as did the lights of the south bank beyond. He gazed through the glass, seeing nothing, in a state of perfect misery.
There were voices below: Mara and Wilham arguing. Wilham’s people thumped up and down the stairs, banging doors and holding urgent conversations. Garric’s capture had stirred them up like an ants’ nest. Aren and the others were ignored in the chaos, so Aren had slipped away, hoping to clear his head.
Alone at last, he’d stilled the clamour in his mind, but in its place he found a void, a numb vacancy of thought. Garric was gone. The Ember Blade was gone. Even his father was gone; it was as if he’d died all over again last night. Doggedness was a part of Aren’s nature, but he’d been knocked down one time too many. This time, he felt like staying there. Because what was the point of getting up again?
He heard the door squeak open, casting a lopsided oblong of lamplight across the floorboards from the corridor. By the shadow it contained, he knew it was Fen. She came in, closed the door and sat at the foot of the windowsill, her back to the wall beneath him.
‘What are they saying?’ he asked.
‘Some talk of staging a rescue,’ Fen said. ‘Wilham won’t allow it. We don’t have the numbers to storm the Iron Hand headquarters, even if we could be sure he was there. Others want to hunt down Keel, to find out what he told them and make an example of him. Mara frets about the girls in the class she can no longer teach, and the servants she can no longer protect.’
‘And the Ember Blade?’
She shrugged. ‘No one’s mentioned it. It was Garric’s plan, not theirs.’
Aren felt nothing. Her words tumbled into the space inside him and were swallowed. For a long time, there was silence.
‘You probably noticed I’m afraid of heights,’ Fen said at last.
‘I noticed.’
‘I never told you why.’
He waited. He had the sense that she was gathering herself.
‘After Ma died,’ she began, ‘my da was different. You never saw any two people who loved each other more. Losing her broke him, and there was never joy in him again. The day we buried her, he told me I had to learn to look after myself. He’d take me out into the forest and up into the mountains, and leave me to find my way home. I had to survive on my own for days at a time. I was eleven or twelve … I don’t know. It went on for a few years. Once I got sick out there and nearly died. Once I was almost caught by a bear.’
Her tone stirred Aren from his despair. Fen had never spoken so openly before. It was like that night in the sanctum in Skavengard, waiting for the beast. In her darkest moments, she reached out.
‘Don’t lean on anyone or anything, Fen. Not no place or person. That’s what he used to say. Elsewise, when they fall, you’ll fall with ’em. He really meant himself. Don’t lean on me, because I don’t plan to stay. But I never heard what he was saying. After Ma was gone, he was the only person I knew. All the tasks he set me, I did only to please him. I lived for the times when we’d do things together.’
‘He was your father,’ said Aren. ‘You just wanted to be with him. I know how that feels.’
‘One day, we headed out east towards the mountains. Where the land steepened, he chose hard routes and we had to climb. He went ahead of me each time, and at the top, he’d reach down to help me up. Twice he did that. The second time, I saw the disappointment in his eyes, the grief … But I didn’t see it for what it was … I had no idea …’
Her voice wobbled. She might have been crying, or trying to stop herself. Aren couldn’t see her face; she was sitting below him with her back to the wall. Without thinking, he let his hand dangle down next to her. She reached up and took it just as absently, her fingers folding around his, gripping tight.
‘The third time …’ she said, her voice dull with remembered pain. ‘The third time he dropped me. He did it on purpose, to show me. Sometimes we’re so casual about putting our lives in each other’s hands, and he … He wanted to show me the danger. So he let go.’
Her grip tightened on his hand, and he knew she was falling again, that she’d always be falling.
‘I broke both legs,’ she said. ‘Lay there screaming. I thought it was an accident, expected him to save me. But he never came. So after a while, I stopped screaming, because there was no point. I’d only attract wolves and bears.’
‘How did you survive?’ Aren asked quietly.
‘I crawled home.’
I crawled home. Aren couldn’t imagine the agony contained in those three short words. The pain of dragging two shattered legs behind her, for hours, for days, perhaps; the kind of pain that made it easier to lie down and die. All the while knowing that her father had dropped her on purpose, and that she had no choice but to go back to him. Where had she found the strength to carry on?
‘He was there when I got home,’ she said. ‘Drunk, but not so much that he couldn’t put me on a cart and take me to town. The healer set my legs so they wouldn’t mend crooked, and I had to rest at home for a long time. A long time. My father fed me. He owed me that, I suppose. But I never spoke another word to him in his life.’
She sniffed. So she was crying, then. He imagined the tears he couldn’t see and his chest tightened. His feelings of betrayal towards his father must have been nothing compared to hers. Yet still she hadn’t given up, still she’d kept on going, until one day her path crossed his. That thought shamed him. What right had he to wallow in misery, when she had a greater claim to it?
‘What happened to him?’ he asked.
‘He stayed till I was fit again, able to walk and hunt. Then one morning he walked out into the forest with no pack, no supplies and no weapons. He never came back. I never looked for him.’
She wiped her cheeks with her free hand. Her voice was steady now.
‘He’d wanted to end himself ever since Ma died, but he couldn’t go till he knew I would survive on my own. In his way, I think he tried to make it easy for me. So it wouldn’t hurt so much when he was gone. He did the best he could …’
Aren stared out at the city, a heavy weight on his heart. No longer was he numb. It was impossib
le not to feel, with her hand in his. He wondered how much cruelty the world could hold. How many other stories like hers were out there, hidden behind darkened windows, kept secret by doors and walls? How many men who beat their wives near to death, how many starving and neglected children, how many who planned treachery against those they professed to love? Weighed against that, his own despair seemed a small thing. He had life, strength and liberty. If his dreams had come tumbling down, well, at least he’d been allowed them in the first place.
He found himself becoming furious. How could Fen’s father give up on his child like that? Perhaps he thought it an act of love to delay his suicide, but to Aren’s mind it was cowardice. He’d always intended to abandon her, and had only instilled that lonely philosophy so he could die with a clear conscience and avoid the harder road of carrying on.
Now she’d been let down again. She’d put her faith in Garric and his cause, and Garric was gone, betrayed. Just when she was learning to trust others, her father’s ghost had returned. He didn’t think she’d trust again, after this.
His despair felt false and indulgent now. He was angry, and he turned that to strength. He wasn’t giving up today, and nor was anyone else.
‘Come on,’ he said, pulling her up. ‘On your feet.’ He swung his legs off the sill and dropped to the floor.
‘Where are you going?’ She sighed wearily. Her eyes and nose were red, but they were dry. ‘It’s done, Aren. Garric was the one with the plan.’
‘Then we make a new plan!’ Aren said. ‘We still have Yarin’s notes, don’t we? And we still have time till the wedding. Garric saved my life more than once, and I’m damned if I’ll count him lost just because the Iron Hand have him! Damned if I’ll give up this chance to take back the Ember Blade!’ He put his hand on her arm and held her gaze, so she could see he was in earnest. ‘And I’m damned if I’ll let you think your father was right. There are people in this world you can believe in, Fen. You can believe in me.’
He burst through the door, carried on a wave of new conviction, and as he stormed downstairs, he found courage in his certainty. Consequences meant nothing in his mind. He’d do anything rather than passively accept his fate.
‘Aren?’ It was Cade, coming up the staircase from the first floor with Grub behind him. Aren swept past, too focused on his purpose to stop. Cade and Grub exchanged a glance and followed him.
‘Mudslug mad about something,’ Grub said with a grin as Fen caught them up.
The safehouse was chilly and sparsely furnished, all bare boards and stone. It was a temporary place for people passing through. The largest room was the basement, where a plain wooden table was scattered with jacks of ale and heels of bread. A dozen men and women sat around it by lanternlight, more standing against the walls. Vika was among them, leaning dejectedly on her staff, Ruck at her feet. Orica and Harod were there, too. She looked worried while he showed nothing at all.
Mara and Wilham, both seated, were arguing as Aren came in.
‘At least send someone to the vintner’s yard to take Garric’s place!’ Mara said. ‘If Keel had told the Iron Hand about the cart, the ambush would have been at your rendezvous and they’d have arrested you, too. Whatever his reasons, the evidence suggests he was careful to betray no one but Garric. The risk is worth taking to get somebody inside Hammerholt.’
‘And who’d go?’ Wilham asked, with a smile that was more of a sneer. ‘None of my people. Garric knows little of our operations in Morgenholme, but even a little is too much. I will not send someone who could supply the Krodans with the rest of it. No. We cut our losses and retreat. There will be other chances to strike at the Krodans.’
‘But not like this! Never again like this!’ There was desperation in Mara’s voice.
‘I will not retreat!’ said Aren as he walked into the room. ‘Nor will I leave Garric to the Iron Hand. Thirty years ago, the people of this land refused to fight because they were too afraid of losing what they had. We must not make that mistake again. This is our best, perhaps our only chance to knock our overlords from their pedestals.’
He swept the room with his gaze, meeting scornful amazement with defiance. Most looked amused; they saw only a self-important boy with a surfeit of opinion. But he was their equal, and he stood his ground.
‘Do any of you even know who Garric is, this man you’re so eager to abandon?’ he demanded.
‘A man who should choose his friends more carefully,’ somebody quipped, to general laughter.
‘He is Cadrac of Darkwater!’ Aren shouted over their mirth. ‘He is the last Dawnwarden, the only living guardian of the Ember Blade. That is who you would cast aside!’
Vika cried out in anguish, and it was her reaction, more than his words, that sobered the room. But while the others were shocked, Aren saw Wilham’s grin turn angry, and he realised that Wilham had known.
Murmurs ran around the room and he saw doubt on some faces. Aren was loth to reveal another man’s secrets, but he hadn’t been sworn to silence, and he couldn’t think of another way to save Garric. Secrets had got them into this mess. It was time for a little honesty.
‘Is it true?’ one of Wilham’s men asked.
‘Ask him,’ Aren pointed at Wilham, whose smile was now a rictus of hate.
‘Wilham?’ said a woman at the table. ‘You knew?’
‘I didn’t know for sure,’ Wilham told them, but he wasn’t firm enough to be convincing. ‘I heard tell the Krodans were hunting the last Dawnwarden, and that he’d been at Salt Fork, but I didn’t pry further. If Garric had wanted us to know, he’d have told us.’
‘If he’s a Dawnwarden, we must save him!’ said a man at the back of the room, and there was a chorus of agreement around him.
‘No!’ said Wilham, surging to his feet and slamming his hand down on the table. ‘Do you think the Krodans would take a Dawnwarden to some shabby local jail, with drunken guards we could bribe or overpower? He’s a great prize for the Empire! Likely he is halfway to Hammerholt by now, where he will languish in the most secure dungeon they have until such time as they decide to execute him! Would you dash yourselves against the walls of that fortress to get him back?’
‘I would,’ said Aren. His mind was racing but his voice was calm. ‘Mara, you have Yarin’s plans. You said there was an urd structure underneath Hammerholt, and waterways that lead from the lake. Can you find us a way in?’
‘If there is a way inside, I will find it,’ said Mara.
‘And if there is none, we will enter by the front gate. There will be hundreds of people going into and out of that fortress every day. There must be a way to smuggle ourselves in. And not just one of us this time. All of us!’
He was excited, and saw an answering excitement in his friends. He might not know how they’d do it yet, but he knew they could, and the others were beginning to believe it, too.
But Wilham laughed in contempt. ‘Brave words and heroic fantasies. This is life and death, not some game of knights with wooden swords. Leave the thinking to the adults, boy.’
‘And who are you to me?’ Aren replied with equal contempt, killing the smirks on the faces of their audience. ‘Where were you when we defeated the beast of Skavengard? Where were you when we faced Krodan dreadknights, not once but three times? Were you hiding away then, as now? You’re not one of us. If you don’t want to help, stand aside.’
What remained of the mirth in the room was gone, replaced by cold silence, and a touch of fear. No one spoke to Wilham the Smiler that way.
Wilham’s smile turned murderous. ‘You’ve quite the mouth on you, whelp,’ he said. There was a ring of steel as he pulled his dagger from its sheath. ‘You need to learn some manners.’
Aren’s courage faltered at the sight of the blade. Swept up in his own enthusiasm, he’d misjudged the danger, failed to see the killer’s heart inside this baby-faced man. And here in Wilham’s safehouse, surrounded by his people, the only law that applied was his.
Perhaps
Wilham meant to cut his throat, or take an ear, or merely give him a scar on his cheek for his impertinence. Aren never found out. Wilham lunged forward, his blade flickering in the lamplight, and his arm was caught by a strong hand around the wrist.
‘I think not,’ said Harod, towering over the smaller man. ‘As the young master says: you are not one of us.’
Wilham’s eyes blazed and his cheeks flamed red, but Harod was immovable, projecting such fearless strength that it was impossible not to be intimidated. Wilham looked around, expecting someone to come to his aid, but not even his own people wanted to see a young man hurt for the crime of being passionate. He’d lost the room in his rage, and he saw it. He snarled and pulled free with a curse, throwing his dagger point down into the table.
Look at them, Aren thought. Look how the mere mention of a Dawnwarden inspires them. What, then, could the Ember Blade do?
Wilham’s men were torn between fear of their leader and their desire to go to a Dawnwarden’s aid. Aren believed some of them would join him if he asked, but that would be a direct challenge to Wilham, and he’d pushed far enough.
‘Wilham,’ he said, holding up his hands. ‘I spoke hastily, and I apologise. Fear leads to careless words, and I am scared for my friend. You are right to be cautious, and I know there is much at stake. I do not ask you to risk your people, only that you do not hinder us, and perhaps you’ll be gracious enough to render us what aid you safely can. We are all on the same side.’
Furious as Wilham was, he was canny enough to see the way out Aren offered him, which would allow him to retreat with his pride mostly intact.
‘Would that Keel was as loyal to Garric as the rest of you,’ he said. He glowered at their audience, reasserting his authority over them. ‘Be about it, then. It’s foolishness, but your lives are your own. We will give you what help we are able, but we will not go to Hammerholt with you, for you go to your deaths.’
The Ember Blade Page 68