by Jen Williams
‘No!’ Mother Cressin raised her hand, and it was holding a curved shard of broken glass. ‘I will not die in the flames of an abomination.’ And in an awkward, painful movement, she ran the lethal shard across her own neck. The wound opened up like a second mouth, and a great surge of blood poured down the front of her rough-spun shirt, turning it crimson in an eye blink. She made some pained, gargling noises, one hand patting at the new hole in her throat as though she was unsure how it got there, and then she lay back against the black stones.
Noon stood for a moment, watching the puddle of blood as it mixed with the seawater and glass – whirls of bright crimson, seeping into the cracks of the Winnowry stone. All those years of fear and anger, and the woman was finally dead. Eventually, she turned her back on the whole mess and made her way down the stairs, taking care to step over the inert form of Fell-Mary, whose own clothes were now sodden with escaped water and blood.
‘Go.’ Noon stood up in Vostok’s harness, addressing the small crowd of fathers, sisters and Winnowry agents on the bleak stretch of sand. Behind them, a small ramshackle fleet of fishing boats were crowding the jetty while a long line of women waited to be taken away from the island. Looking at them briefly, Noon caught a mixture of expressions on their faces: joy, confusion, terror. ‘The Drowned One is dead –’ she ignored a handful of cries at this – ‘and there’s nothing left for you here. The Winnowry is finished.’
‘You murdered our sacred mother.’ It was a tall man with a gingery beard, his face smeared with soot. Noon recognised him as one of the fathers who had regularly escorted her to the furnace. ‘This is a dark day for Sarn, a very dark day.’ He shook his head mournfully.
‘She took her own life, if you must know.’ A thought occurred to Noon. ‘What happened to Novice Lusk, the novice who was in the chirot tower when I escaped this shit hole?’
‘He died. During . . . questioning.’ This was from one of the older agents she had briefly spoken to earlier. To Noon she looked to be around Vintage’s age, although she had a thick bolt of white threaded through her long black hair. She was tall and held herself without fear – Noon could feel Vostok’s reluctant approval – and there was a tattoo of an eagle at her throat; a much finer piece of work than the crude bat wing on her forehead. Dimly, Noon recalled the people of Yuron-Kai who had arrived, with many other humans, at the Eboran palace. This woman had been taken a long way from her home. ‘Fell-Noon—’
‘That’s not my name. Don’t call me that.’ Noon gestured to the women filing onto the boats. ‘Don’t call anyone that again.’
The woman nodded once, accepting this without argument. ‘Noon, of Ebora, I’m sure the women you have freed are grateful, but you have to understand . . . they have no homes to go to, no jobs.’ She paused, clearly trying to think of a way around the problem herself. ‘There’s no shelter for them tonight, no food in that city. They have no money to pay for it! Their families will likely not have them back, and most of Sarn harbours no love for fell— for these women. For us. Where will they go? What will they do?’ She brought her hands together, and clasped them in front of her in an oddly formal questioning gesture. ‘You have given them their freedom, Noon of Ebora, but they do not yet have their lives.’
Noon stopped. She wanted to look again at the women climbing onto the boats, to see for herself whether they were truly joyful, or whether they were now realising that she had released them into an uncertain future – but to do that would be to let the agent know she also had her doubts. Instead, she lifted her chin, and pressed one hand to Vostok’s scales. The dragon’s affirmation and certainty was a balm.
‘The Winnowry has money, doesn’t it? All that akaris you’ve been selling, you can’t tell me there isn’t a room in that place somewhere stuffed with coin. Use it, for once, for their benefit. And tell them to come to Ebora,’ she said, lifting her voice to address the entire crowd. ‘Sarn might not love them, or want them, but Ebora has more wisdom than that.’
With that, she let Vostok leap up into the air and take flight, pleased with how the shivering group of sisters and fathers quailed at the movement. The agent, however, the one with the eagle at her throat, did not flinch, and Noon could not help noticing that she watched them go with a thoughtful expression on her face.
‘What now?’ asked Vostok. ‘You have won a great victory here today, bright weapon.’
‘Yeah.’ Noon nodded, narrowing her eyes against the sea wind. ‘It was a long time coming.’ But privately she kept returning to the agent’s questions, and the sound of blood trickling down cold stone steps. ‘Let’s go home.’
Chapter Two
Fell-Almeera
A new girl came in at the gates today. Like most new girls, she walked with her head down, her shoulders slumped. I could see from my place in the courtyard that she was shivering, although it was a warm day. The sisters and the agents with her did not seem to notice, and she was taken through to be given her new clothes, and to be instructed in her new rules. Be quiet, do not get angry, touch no one, do as you are told.
Her name is Almeera, and she is from Talrisan, a kingdom of Jarlsbad. I will add further details to this record when I know more.
Almeera is twelve years old, she had a mother and a father, and two younger brothers. When she talks of these two brothers, she cries. The ability only manifested in her recently, within the last year or so, and she is so frightened of it, sickened by it almost. You can tell she is afraid of her own self now, holding herself away from others in case the ability manifests without her say-so. I am on hand during her initial meeting with Mother Cressin, and Almeera tells the old woman that she had nightmares about accidentally hurting her little brothers; that she saw them screaming in her dreams, their smooth brown skin bubbling up like pig fat in the fire. Mother Cressin nods and tells her that she is corrupted, that she is a vessel of evil and a stain on the world, but that if she does as she is told, she can help heal the wounds she has created.
I watch Almeera for a few days. She is quiet and makes no attempt to talk to the women in the cells around her, and even as I am frustrated with her for this, I become annoyed with myself; she is a child, taken from her family. Perhaps in time she will grow stronger and find some anger inside herself, but for now I fear I can do nothing for her.
Here are some details about Almeera of Talrisan, that I was able to uncover from the agents who collected her from Jarlsbad: her mother makes beautiful, colourful pottery that they sell from a shop that is also their home, right on the town square; in the yard of this shop is a place where old clay has spilled, and, once, Almeera and her brothers pushed their hands and feet into it – their marks can still be seen in the hardened clay; the sign on the shop is a bright yellow bird. Things to remember about Almeera before she was Fell-Almeera.
Extract from the private records of Agent Chenlo
Hestillion stood on the broad back of the corpse moon, surrounded by a thick and stifling darkness. High above, an unknowable distance away, was a slither of light, and this was what she focussed on. It looked like a narrow crack, hardly wide enough to push her fingers through, but she knew that the Jure’lia ship she stood on and all the other remaining Behemoths – broken and confused as they were – had passed through it, into this underground place. She shivered, despite the warmth.
‘How are you feeling now, sweet one?’ Her voice in the utter silence was a pebble dropped into a silent pool. Her words rippled outwards, returned to her distorted by the uneven walls with their alcoves and hidden spaces. In the darkness, a shadow moved. The longer they stayed down here, the better Hestillion was able to see in the dark, and Celaphon’s great blocky head swung into view. He had found himself a ledge on the stone walls large enough to accommodate his considerable bulk.
‘I feel ill,’ he said. His silvery white eyes were the brightest thing in the gloom. ‘I feel ill all the time.’
Hestillion nodded, her hand stealing up to rest against the blue crystal protruding
from her chest. Through it she could feel the constant presence of the worm people, like hot hands against her skin. ‘I know. I feel it too. This conflict –’ She paused, uncertain how to describe the sensation. She felt as though she kept losing her footing, as though the ground were shifting under her constantly, and in her chest her heart would beat with sudden violence at random moments. If she reached out along her connection to the Jure’lia, the feelings would only grow worse – all was discord, all was confusion. Celaphon, with his own crystal resting in the centre of his head, could feel everything she could, with the added pain of his own mutant body. ‘It’s tearing them apart.’
‘Tearing us apart,’ said Celaphon. The big dragon shifted on his perch, and Hestillion heard the gentle rain of debris as a small avalanche of stones and grit fell down into the space below them. ‘How will you fix it?’
Hestillion rolled her eyes, confident that Celaphon would not see it. ‘I? How will I fix it? Not everything is for me to fix, sweet one.’
The dragon grunted. ‘You are the clever one, little green bird.’
Uncertain whether to feel flattered or patronised, Hestillion looked back to her feet, and ordered the oily skin of the Behemoth to peel back for her. After a moment it did, revealing a grey tunnel into the interior, softly lit by the glowing fronds that grew straight out of the walls.
‘I will go and talk to her again.’
‘Good,’ said Celaphon. The lights from within had blinded her for a moment, and the dragon became a disembodied voice somewhere to her left. ‘I will stay here. The air is fresher.’
Inside the corpse moon, everything was too quiet. The ever-present hum, which Hestillion barely noticed these days, stuttered and clanged, growing louder and stopping, or becoming a vibration strong enough to turn Hestillion’s feet numb inside her boots. The frond-lights flickered often too, occasionally turning off entirely, or even, on a number of unsettling occasions, sinking back into the pliable walls.
As she made her way to the centre of the Behemoth, she thought of Celaphon’s words: tearing us apart, he had said. Although Celaphon was a war-beast born from the branches of the great tree-god Ygseril, he was now wholly a creature of the worm people; the queen of the Jure’lia had fed him, nurtured him, and when his body was sufficiently twisted, had embedded the blue crystal into his flesh and joined him to their great web of minds. And where her war-beast went, Hestillion must follow.
The wall in front of her spasmed open, revealing the enormous blue crystal that was the heart of the Behemoth. Kneeling in front of it, her mask-like face rapt, was the Jure’lia queen.
‘You are still here, then,’ Hestillion pointed out. When the queen didn’t reply, she strode across the chamber to join her in front of the crystal. A familiar image flickered within its depths, but she ignored it, looking down at the queen instead. Her amorphous, almost humanoid body was folded and creased in on itself, her long fingers – each fully as long as Hestillion’s hands – neatly intertwined in her lap. ‘You must come away from it now. Can’t you see? Things need to be fixed.’
The queen nodded, but she did not move. ‘But it is all broken, Hestillion Eskt of the corpse moon. Can you not see it? Can you not feel it, in your heart?’
‘I can, actually.’ Hestillion grimaced, pressing one hand briefly to her breastbone. ‘I feel like I might drop in a swoon at any moment, and it is most disagreeable. Celaphon, too, feels this illness. It is time to – to snap out of this funk.’
‘Funk.’ For the first time, the queen lifted her head and looked at Hestillion. The smooth white planes of her face were streaked with a watery, greyish fluid. ‘What is funk?’
Hestillion shook her head. ‘We must repair! We cannot hide here forever, can we?’
Slowly, the queen rose to her feet, unfolding like some elaborate paper confection such as Hestillion’s mother had made when she and Tormalin had been children. ‘We have always done so, before,’ said the queen, towering over Hestillion. ‘When we battled you in the past, and found ourselves pushed back by your creatures and your people, we would retreat, underground, and slowly we would grow ourselves anew, to be ready again.’
‘Except you’re not doing that, are you?’ Hestillion tried to control the sharpness in her voice, and failed. ‘Because of this,’ she gestured to the crystal, and the new, strange memory contained within it, ‘you sit in the ground and rot instead.’
The queen twitched, as if struck, then reached out one long finger towards the crystal. ‘We do not understand it,’ she said. ‘How can this displace what we are? How can this be strong enough?’
Reluctantly, Hestillion turned back to the crystal. Within it, there was a shimmering image of her home in winter. The Eboran palace could just be glimpsed in the background, the shining gates standing open, the plaza crowded with people. Humans, she corrected herself. Humans dressed in thick furs and gloves and hats, while their strange lurid tents and travelling vehicles were dotted around. And in the middle of this chaos stood, of all people, her cousin. Aldasair Eskt, wearing the old-fashioned blue frock coat that she had seen him in often enough, a dusty moth-eaten thing he had been ludicrously attached to. In the vision he looked lost, his auburn hair tumbling over his shoulders and an expression of faint perplexity on his face. As usual, when she saw her cousin, Hestillion was filled with the urge to grab him and give him a good shake, but this was just a memory, placed within the crystal by the human man Bern Finnkeeper. Once, the crystal had held something quite different – a memory of another world, almost too alien to look at; a memory in the great chain of memories that had held the Jure’lia together. The human man had inserted his own memory and broken that chain, throwing them all into disarray.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Hestillion. ‘You’re the one who joined the human to the Jure’lia when we took him prisoner. Do you see now how that was dangerous?’ The queen tilted her head slightly, and Hestillion moved swiftly on. She didn’t wish to remind the queen that it had been her who had led Bern and Aldasair to freedom, afraid as she had been that they would turn Celaphon against her. ‘What’s important is that you banish this memory that is hurting us, and restore the old one. Can you not do that?’
For the first time in weeks, the queen seemed to come back to herself somewhat. Her eyes narrowed, and her fleshless lips pressed together.
‘It is not so simple, Hestillion Eskt. We can banish it, but the memory that the crystal once held is gone. When the human pushed his own memory on it, it ceased to exist.’
‘You can’t replace it with something else?’
The queen looked perplexed. ‘Like what? That unique memory of a long-ago world is lost, I cannot simply replace it. We cannot.’ All the previous solidity seemed to drain out of the queen’s form. ‘Besides which, we must know why this memory,’ she reached out to the crystal, ‘is so strong. So solid. It vexes us.’
‘Well, this . . . disruption is vexing me.’ Hestillion crossed her arms over her chest. ‘We have crawled down into this hole, and it appears we are simply rotting here, and you will not do anything to stop it. Celaphon and I did not join ourselves to the Jure’lia to be so easily defeated. Do you know what we have given up? What we have sacrificed to stand with you?’ An image of the Eboran boy Celaphon had killed during the battle over the Tarah-hut Mountains briefly threatened to disarm her completely, but she pushed it away. ‘We have kept our side of this pact. Now you must fight too, queen of the Jure’lia.’
With that she turned and left the chamber, heading for her own quarters while her heart thundered in her chest.
Chapter Three
Fell-Marg
Fell-witches are very rare, yet Mushenska seems to produce more than its share of them. It’s as if the city creates them in defiance of the black towers that lurk across the sea from it. Today, we took a girl from a wealthy merchant family – a strange and delicate situation. Three of us were dispatched to take her in, with a sister assigned to add, I suspect, an extra layer of respe
ctability. The parents were anxious we were not seen from the street and let us in through the back of their sizeable house (I have to wonder what are they planning to tell people? That their daughter has gone to stay with distant family? That she has gone to study at a college in Reidn? How long do they imagine they can keep up that pretence, especially when she never returns?). Their daughter, Marg, was fifteen and defiant. I knew immediately that she would give us trouble, and steeled myself while the parents greeted us with tea and fruit.
(The families we must take fell-witches from have many varying reactions. Most are sad, many are frightened. A distressing number are, as mine were, disgusted and ashamed. A few, like Marg’s parents, seem keen to treat it like an everyday, normal transaction. Their daughter could be starting a new job, or they could be selling an item of furniture. The clues to their distress are in tiny things: shaking hands, smiles that hang on the mouth a touch too long, a sweaty forehead.)
The moment came when Agent Lin indicated that we must leave. The girl Marg slapped a hand around her mother’s wrist, drained her to unconsciousness in a moment, and then threw a ragged swirl of winnowfire at us, which was easily avoided. To my surprise, she jumped for the window (we were two storeys up) but it seemed there was an awning below that caught her fall.
A chase then, through a busy Mushenskan street – so much for discretion. The girl did not get far, and no one was hurt, although there was a stall of cabbages that will not see market day again. Marg was drained and trussed, and we left without further delay. Agent Lin was not happy, but I reminded her: our concerns are to be for the Winnowry and our charge, not for disgruntled parents.
Marg is an interesting prospect. Spirited, angry, but possibly too willing to take risks. The Winnowry might sap the anger from her in any case. We shall see.
Some details about Marg of Mushenska: she looks strikingly like her father, tall and dark with thunderous eyebrows. She has no siblings. Her favourite fruit is the pear – her mother asked if she could send some on, when she was settled (as if this were a boarding school). She collected seashells, and had several in her pockets when we took her down. I threw them into the sea as we passed over on our bats.