by Matthew Ward
He stifled a wince. Direct. Sidara was seldom anything but, and tiredness made her more so. “I called for help, remember?”
“You should have done it sooner. Viara wanted to, didn’t she?”
“Who told you that?”
Old suspicions flared. Both simarka and kraikons were fuelled by the same magic running through Sidara’s veins. A weaker, less versatile sort, but close enough kin that she could command them – at some distance, and without the aid of the lionhead amulets by which proctors had once achieved the same miracle. Few of those proctors now remained, and fewer amulets, hunted down and destroyed by the Crowmarket.
While the vanished amulet-bearers could only issue commands, Sidara glimpsed what the constructs saw, and caught snatches of what they heard. By anchoring herself in a particular one – blinding herself to others – its senses became fully her own.
Rumour persisted that the whole notion of anchoring was High Proctor Ilnarov’s invention, and readily perpetuated by Sidara. That her view from the Panopticon encompassed a great deal more than stolen glances. Certainly the wealthy avoided discussing weighty matters in front of a construct as assiduously as the unabashedly criminal, and whether or not the eyes were aglow – the tell-tale that Sidara had anchored her presence within. Or at least wanted onlookers to believe so.
She sighed. “No one told me anything. But I know you, Altiris. Leaping into things with both feet, and never a thought for the consequences. From the very first day we met.”
He bristled. Truth cut deep. Truth always did. She’d saved his life that day, giving of her light to drag him free of the Raven’s clutches. A debt he could never repay. “I knew what I was doing.”
“Clearly that isn’t so, or Viara wouldn’t have had her head split open.”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“Really? What would you have done if Jaspyr hadn’t happened by?”
Altiris had long since abandoned telling simarka apart. Dents and scratches aside, they sprang from a common mould. “I’d have carried her somewhere warm and sent for help.”
She rose from the table, half a head taller than him, and as waiflike as at their first meeting. “And the others?”
The ambushed Drazina? As if they were his responsibility. “I—”
Sidara waved him to silence and went stock still, blue eyes drowning in gold.
Altiris glanced away, staring through the icicle-hung window to the mansion’s gravel driveway and its crisp covering of snow. For all that Sidara’s gift was a miracle, beholding it made him uncomfortable. Her magic diminished him in a way that bloodline or wealth could never achieve. She commanded Lumestra’s sunlight. What was one upstart southwealder with a sword beside that?
A tremor crept up Sidara’s arm. Lips thinning to a slash, she gripped a chair’s upright beneath whitening knuckles.
Back in happier days, soon after the Lord Protector had entrusted her with the city’s constructs, she’d confessed the difficulty of anchoring from down among the stone and shadow of the streets, rather than the Panopticon’s lofty eyrie.
But whatever her failings, Sidara didn’t give up on something merely because it was difficult.
After what seemed for ever, the glow faded from her eyes. She sagged. “Sorry. A housebreaker over on Middle Row. He put up quite a chase. I handled it.”
Altiris winced. Time was, a housebreaker would have stood his sentence in jail, or as an indentured labourer on some distant farm, or quarry. Whoever Sidara had just handled would be lucky to escape with unbroken bones. One did not simply walk away from a simarka. “Is everyone all right?”
“Yes. As they should have been last night.”
There it was. The tone that claimed authority despite parity in rank. That proclaimed she’d always be his better, however much Altiris knew she didn’t believe it. Or hadn’t used to.
“I had a duty.”
“Really? Because unless Josiri tells you otherwise, your authority stops at Stonecrest’s gate. In the streets, it’s the constabulary, or it’s me. If you see something, it’s your duty to tell me, not play the hero because you feel you’ve got something to prove.”
Altiris’ cheeks burned. “I’ve got something to prove? This is the first time I’ve seen you outside the Panopticon in weeks.”
Swaying, she waved a dismissive hand. “You’re as bad as Viktor. Lumestra’s light sustains me.”
The old argument beckoned. The pointless, circular argument. But Altiris was too tired and frustrated to care. “Maybe it should sustain someone else. You hated that your mother wouldn’t let you use the light to heal others. Now you can, and instead you’re wearing yourself thin acting as an army of lawkeepers. You could be helping people! Or do you prefer to have them looking up to you? A Lady of Light enthroned in her Tower of Stars?”
Spots of colour touched pale cheeks. “I am helping people!” Aware she’d shouted, Sidara dropped her voice a notch, though lost none of her fire. “For the first time in my life, the streets are safe.”
It wasn’t an honest picture, for even Sidara’s attention couldn’t be everywhere. Some places were as desolate and deprived as Dregmeet had ever been, the streets trod hurriedly for fear of never leaving. “Then what happened to me last night? Did I imagine that?”
“You were only ever in danger because you chose to be,” Sidara said icily. “I think that was my point.”
And just like that, she’d won. It wasn’t her fault that she acted as she did. Others made it necessary. He made it necessary. It wasn’t true, of course – or not wholly so – but it was damn hard to argue against. So instead Altiris seized on something carefully unspoken during his report at the King’s Gate watch house. He’d held it close even when Captain Tzila had arrived, hotfoot from the palace to hear a repeated account. No easy thing beneath the empty stare of her sallet helm, but he’d drawn strength from the memory of his identification papers being checked no less than three times. Even though it had long been decreed that all Tressians carry them, rather than just indentured southwealders, some northwealders still found ways to express their distaste.
“Sidara, Hawkin was there. She’s back in the city.”
Triumph faded to shock, then hardened to determination. “Then that’s where I should be.”
Sidara made it two steps to the door before exhaustion finally lost patience. She took an involuntary half-turn as her left leg folded beneath her, and flailed for purchase on a battered cabinet.
Fortunately, Altiris had read the signs, and caught her about the waist and shoulders. Somehow, he kept his balance – for all her slenderness, Sidara was not without weight – and stood bowed with her hands locked about his upper arm and neck, as if he were dipping the world’s least coordinated dance partner – a title to which she was not without claim.
A glower born of embarrassment softened. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Their eyes so close – closer than they’d been in some time – Altiris couldn’t escape the small tell-tales of line and vein that spoke to more than weariness, but to long and sustained fatigue. For all Sidara’s claims that her magic allowed her to function beyond the norms of sleep, she was a candle burning bright from both ends. Determined to safeguard others as she’d been unable to protect her parents, whatever the cost to herself.
Pride and pity fought for mastery.
“I’ll always catch you,” he replied softly. “Always.”
For the second time that morning, Sidara softened almost to a smile. For the second time, it didn’t quite get there. “You see? You can find appropriate words, when you try.”
Altiris caught something in her expression not seen for months. A reminder that, though she’d never said the words, she regretted their estrangement as much as he. Just a glimpse, before composure returned.
With more dignity than grace, she pulled free and regained her footing. Unable to pass him to reach the door, she stood just beyond reach, arms folded and back to the kitchen table. “But
from what I hear, your silver tongue’s been getting a lot of practice. Does Viara know just how much?”
“It isn’t like that. She wanted to ask my advice, that’s all.”
“Oh, I’m sure. And we both know you can never say no to a blonde, don’t we?” Sidara stepped closer, tired eyes unblinking as they met his. “I’m returning to the Panopticon. I’m going to find Hawkin. And I don’t need you trying to protect me.”
Ironic, then, that the argument had begun – at least in part – because of her own overprotective instincts. But Altiris didn’t rate his chances of finding another string of appropriate words to make her understand. So he said the only sensible thing, which was nothing.
The kitchen fell to silence, save for the dull crump and scritch of boots on the gravel beyond the window.
Still, Sidara didn’t make any move for the door. Was she thinking, as Altiris was, what a terrible shame it was they knew each other so well, and yet so struggled to understand one another? Or was she hoping he’d attempt to stop her, and thus spare her the bruised pride of admitting she was too far gone to achieve anything?
The outer door creaked open. Constans slipped inside. He made play of stamping snow from his boots and stared at them in mock surprise.
“Oh, am I interrupting another quarrel? Alas.”
The siblings had ever been stark opposites. Sidara, tall and fair; generous with herself and thinking only of others. Constans crept like a shadow into proceedings, and like a shadow one never knew precisely what he concealed.
Sidara scowled at him. “We’re not quarrelling.”
“Really?” The corner of Constans’ lip curled into something Altiris suspected he thought appropriate to the moment’s wit, but in truth merely looked sly. “Then something else must have set the birds to flight just now. A ghost, perhaps. Or maybe Kurkas was singing, and I missed it. Let me guess? You’re angry that your southwealder bungled things last night?”
Altiris clenched a fist behind his back. His heritage was too often wielded as insult. Even in their fiercest arguments, Sidara never used it thus. Constans, on the other hand, delighted in doing so, though always denied it when challenged. Brave, for a boy not yet of age to thus needle a man several years his senior, but Constans had never lacked for a particular kind of courage.
“What do you want, Constans?” The icy tone Sidara had earlier wielded against Altiris had nothing to the one now mustered for her brother. Shades of the woman who’d once fought a duel for a southwealder’s honour. “You keep insisting this isn’t your home. As a guest, it’s proper you be escorted from the gate and received at the main door.”
He spread a hand across his chest. “I did see the gate guard, as it happens. A tragedy that they didn’t see me. And do I need reason to bask in my sister’s radiance?” When no one took him up on the conversational gambit, he shrugged. “Father wishes to see Josiri.”
Sidara’s expression soured further, as it always did when Constans referred thus to the Lord Protector.
Altiris hurried to speak before she could. “I’ll tell him. Where, and when?”
“The palace. Noon.” A smile haunted the corner of Constans’ mouth. “Do you think you can remember all that, or should I accompany you to make certain?”
“I said I’ll tell him.” Altiris met the irreverent gaze and held it long enough for Constans to glance away. Any victory that morning was welcome… and maybe he could garner a second. “And where should I say you’ll be, Sidara? If he asks, I mean.”
A twitch of her cheek revealed that she’d caught the deeper meaning. “In my chambers. Sleeping. The rest of it…” She sighed. “The rest will wait.”
A glance at Constans. A shake of the head. An implicit warning to say nothing of Hawkin Darrow. A promise easily given, as Altiris had no intention of telling Constans more than he had to.
“I’ll be sure to relay the message.” He let his gaze linger on Constans a heartbeat longer. “You saw yourself in, so you can see yourself out, can’t you?”
Three
The crowds had thinned by the time Josiri set out from Stonecrest, the snow trampled to mush by the morning’s bustle, and bitter woodsmoke mingling with the sweet, rich scent of horse dung.
Even after nearly seven years at Stonecrest, Josiri still couldn’t quite believe how loud the city contrived to be. It would be different tomorrow, when families flooded to church and priests recounted tales of how Second Dawn had rescued humankind from the cold clutches of the Dark. But today, the streets resounded with the rumble of wheel and the clatter of hoof. The ebb and swell of a thousand voices speaking at once, seeking to be heard: dockers, mill workers, processions of black-robed, holy serenes hurrying to dawnsong services and columns of marching soldiery. Stark contrast to a childhood lived in the now-vanished market town of Eskavord, followed by long years sealed in his ancestral home of Branghall at the orders of an equally extinct Council. There, Midwintertide’s approach had ground everything to a halt. Here, the city barely paused to draw breath.
“I wish you’d agreed to a carriage,” said Altiris.
Josiri sidestepped an oncoming cart and stifled a yawn born of too many late nights and early mornings attending to constabulary business. The young lieutenant had clung stubbornly to his side since leaving Stonecrest, vigilant for pocket-dippers, coshmen and the belligerent.
“You worry too much.”
“Yes, lord,” came the stiff reply.
The lad possessed a good, loyal heart. But he bore every error like a mortal wound. Pride kept a man rigid, but made him brittle, as Josiri had learned on the hardest of roads. With grey hairs creeping among the blond, he hoped never to repeat the lesson.
He spared a glance for Anastacia. In a street where every other soul was gloved and muffled against the cold, she glided atop trampled snows in a red silk dress – ankle-length, but leaving forearms and shoulders bare – and the unbound tresses of her white wig flowing behind. Heavy boots were her one concession to the elements, and those for grip, rather than warmth.
But then, a divine serathi surely felt little in the way of cold, and definitely not with her spirit trammelled by a body of unfeeling alabaster porcelain, jointed by dark leather where limbs flexed. The swirling gold patterns inlaid in her kiln-fired skin gleamed in the winter sun. Almost as bright as her obvious delight at the stares her immobile, beatific face drew from gaping passersby.
“My mother walked the city streets all the time when she was on the Council,” said Josiri. “She always believed it better to be one of the people, than above them. How can I do less? And we both know it’s last night that’s really bothering you.”
Altiris scowled. “I walked straight into a trap. The perpetrators escaped. Boronav could’ve been killed. It should bother me.”
“I wonder what the head of the constabulary thinks? Oh, wait. That’s me.” Josiri sighed. “I read the reports. The attackers were organised. One of the survivors claimed the leader bewitched him.”
The twitch of Altiris’ lip lent credence to the suggestion. “It’s probably true.”
[[Bewitched?]] asked Anastacia, her smoky black eyes no longer lost in the curiosity of the crowd, but now intent on Altiris. Her singsong voice held, as ever, a trace of mockery. [[Whoever would possibly believe such a tale?]]
“There was something about her, Ana.”
For all that no worldly power could convince Altiris to use Josiri’s personal name, he displayed no such obstacle with her. That tradition offered no ready title helped. She wasn’t Lady Trelan, for they weren’t married. Mistress implied impermanence and a hint of scandal… not that the latter would have troubled her any. Consort implied subservience wholly lacking. And her surname, Psanneque, wasn’t really a name at all, but a grim joke played by old jailors, proclaiming her an exile. This, at least, was true.
[[What manner of something?]] The mockery was gone, replaced by sharp interest.
“A song. Whispers on the edge of hearing. Voices calling
without words. I think…” He hesitated, but forged on. “I think I blacked out for a heartbeat.”
Josiri pulled him aside and into the lee of a boarded-up townhouse. The crowd flowed on past with nary a glance. “Blacked out? That wasn’t in your report.”
Altiris grimaced. “It didn’t seem important.”
Josiri considered. More likely, he’d been embarrassed. “You should have mentioned it. Details matter.”
[[Was she very beautiful, this singer?]] The amusement returned to Anastacia’s voice, but Josiri had known her too long not to recognise the seriousness beneath. [[Did she dazzle you?]]
“I don’t remember. Truly I don’t. Only her eyes.”
With a thoughtful noise, Anastacia turned away, the matter apparently forgotten. Josiri had known her too long to be fooled by that, either. But he’d learned the hard way that she’d share her thoughts only when ready. And the conversation had already strayed beyond what was appropriate for a busy street.
“I’m sorry,” Altiris murmured. “It won’t happen again.”
Instinct tempted Josiri to chastisement, but with passing years he’d come to distrust such urges. He’d lived too much of his life fearing his mother’s disapproval. Even long after she’d embraced the Raven – out of pride, naturally. Fear of failure paralysed like no other.
“Yes it will. You made a mistake. Maybe several, but they were small, and are now corrected. There’ll be more, because there always are.” He paused, waiting until he was certain of the lad’s attention. “Can I offer you some advice?”
“Always, lord.”
“Atoning for errors past is honourable, even healthy. Until it becomes obsession.”
Altiris snorted. “So you’re also telling me I’m an idiot?”
No need to ask who’d beaten him to it. “Those aren’t the words I used. Nor do they hold the same sentiment.” He glanced over his shoulder, but Anastacia was nowhere to be seen. “You want folk to look on you with respect – to see a hero – because that will make sense of everything. But it doesn’t work like that. Actions in the light don’t matter half as much as those taken in the darkness, where no one will ever know.”