The Poison Song

by Jen Williams

  Aldasair returned with Bern, both carrying supplies. Bern, who had regained some weight in the days since their return, stood over Tyranny for a moment, frowning, before throwing a thick blanket over her shoulders. Aldasair gave her a cup of water, which she immediately drained.

  ‘It’s the worm people, of course it’s the fucking worm people.’ Tyranny looked into the bottom of the cup. ‘They came, three of their ships, but we were ready. I wasn’t about to let just anyone walk in and take my kingdom from me, so I’d been preparing our army, and my guard, to meet any threat.’ She looked up at them, her pale-blue eyes defiant again. ‘And I had a war-beast. Of all of Jarlsbad, Tygrish was best defended. I knew, I knew we could hold them off by ourselves, we would be the first to do it, to show that humans are strong – I’ve never needed anyone else.’

  ‘And how did that work out for you, Tyranny?’ Vintage sighed. ‘Sarn’s bones, I never took you for an idiot, but here you are, by the skin of your arse.’

  Tyranny scowled. ‘Three ships,’ she continued. ‘We got into positions. We readied ourselves. Our walls are high, my people are brave –’

  Tor exchanged a look with Vintage, who had raised her eyebrows. My people.

  ‘There was no dragon?’ he asked. ‘A huge, dark dragon?’

  Tyranny looked annoyed that she had been interrupted. ‘A dragon? There was no dragon. We fought well, and I think we gave them a bit of a shock, you know? To start with. They thought they could just walk in, sweep us aside, and they were wrong. But –’ she swallowed hard – ‘the ships moved. They went to where we were weakest, and they rained their fucking shit all over us. And then, when Windfall and I were in the sky, someone came out to fight us, one to one.’

  ‘The queen?’

  ‘No, it was a bloody Eboran of all things. Some woman wearing this weird flying armour, all made from the same stuff their crawling bugs are made from.’

  Tor held himself very still. He could sense both Vintage and Noon looking at him, but he kept his eyes on Tyranny.

  ‘An Eboran was wearing Jure’lia armour?’

  ‘Yeah. She had knives inside it, and a kind of flail, and she attacked me and Windfall directly, trying to beat us out of the sky.’

  ‘Then what happened?’ asked Noon.

  ‘One of the ships moved above us, and she ordered it to puke its nasty crawling things all over us. They were everywhere, crawling and biting and –’ Tyranny shuddered, even more of the colour seeping from her face. ‘They tried to eat Windfall’s eyes, and they were so fast, so fast. I had to – I reached inside the hole they’d made and pulled them out again, the bugs. Pulled them out of her head and blasted them, but I couldn’t save her eye.’

  In the corner, Windfall gave a high, piercing cry. ‘Inside my head,’ she said, her voice harsh. ‘I felt them inside my head.’

  Kirune went over and sat next to the war-beast, his huge bulk resting just next to her wings, and Windfall’s alarming sobs quietened again.

  ‘By the roots, you are lucky to be alive,’ said Aldasair softly.

  ‘The rest of Tygrish wasn’t so lucky,’ said Tyranny. ‘We fell towards the ground, and that’s when they swarmed us. All our armies, my guard, all chewed up and eaten by the worm-people filth. We got outside the city walls and hid in the long grass, and I . . . I thought Windfall was dying. The noises she made, the pain she was in. I felt it.’ Tyranny touched her breastbone with her fingers. ‘I felt it here, too. I thought I was going mad. I kept touching my own eyes, because I thought I had been blinded too. But she lived. We both lived.’

  ‘War-beasts are hardy,’ said Vintage. ‘What happened then?’

  Tyranny shook her head. ‘I’m not sure how long we were in the grass for. I don’t know how we didn’t get eaten by the Wild-cats there, unless they were all frightened off by the worm people. We were feverish I think, I lost time, and then eventually I realised we weren’t dead, and that was when Windfall started talking about coming back here. I wouldn’t. I told her that Tygrish was our home, that there was nothing for us in Ebora.’ Tyranny ran a hand through her closely cropped hair. ‘She’d never even seen it, for fuck’s sake. It’s a dead city full of relics.’

  ‘Relics you stole,’ added Vintage.

  ‘I said no. I said, we’ll find shelter nearby, someone to help us. And then we got up in the air again.’

  A small silence filled the courtyard. Tor pressed the back of his hand to his mouth to conceal a wince; a new flash of pain was slowly burning its way through his chest, uncurling down his arms. All at once the very act of standing up seemed too much, but he kept his back straight. There wasn’t time.

  ‘Tygrish was gone. The towers had been pulled down into rubble, the houses and the town squares, the markets and the streets – all gone, all lost under varnish. The walls had been broken down too, the land bridges shattered. And no one there. No movement from anywhere. It was just – gone.’ Tyranny lifted her hands and looked at them, as though the glittering city of Tygrish had been cradled in her palms just moments before. ‘Windfall began shrieking then, “Ebora! Ebora!” over and over, but I told her to shut up, that there were closer places, better places, places with humans in them, so we flew west, seeking out the rest of Jarlsbad but . . .’

  Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Sarn’s bloody bones,’ muttered Vintage. ‘The kingdoms of Jarlsbad have stood for hundreds of years. Are you telling me they are gone? All of them?’

  ‘From Tygrish to the Kerakus Sea is a wasteland,’ said Tyranny. ‘Even the land has changed. The grasses have become marshland, where the rivers have been stopped. We saw no one, no animals, not even anything Wild-touched.’

  ‘Thousands of people, it must be,’ said Vintage weakly. ‘Hundreds of thousands of people, wiped out by three Jure’lia ships.’

  Wiped out by my sister, thought Tor. A ripping pain shot down his forearms, and he pictured his skin splitting open, oozing the dark red pus of the crimson flux. He clenched his fists, and put the vision from his mind.

  ‘So you came here.’

  ‘What else was I supposed to do? It’s the only place Windfall would go, and at least we knew people here. I –’

  Okaar appeared at the door, his thin face a shade paler than it had been. He went and stood in front of Tyranny, although the woman shrank away from him.

  ‘If you are here, where is my sister? Where is Jhef?’

  Tyranny turned her head, not looking at him. She looked, to Tor, as though she might cry again, but when she spoke her voice was tight with anger.

  ‘I don’t know! I don’t know where she is. If she had stayed with me, she would have been safe, I know that, but her bloody loyalty to you meant she was forever keeping just out of reach.’

  ‘But she was in Tygrish?’ Vintage came forward and put her hand on Okaar’s shoulder. Tor suspected that she too thought the assassin was on the verge of striking Tyranny. ‘And Nanthema too, I assume?’

  ‘I don’t know where they are. Yeah, they were in the palace, as far as I knew but –’ She shrugged, and shook her head. ‘There was no palace left. Nothing could have lived through that.’

  ‘And to think Nan wanted to leave Ebora because she felt it wasn’t safe. Because there were too many bad memories here.’ Vintage looked ill. ‘What a stupid loss.’

  ‘You as good as killed my sister!’ Okaar shook Vintage’s hand off and slipped a long thin blade from within his jerkin. Instantly, Windfall struggled to her feet, screeching a warning even as her jaws fell open to reveal the boiling blue light at the back of her throat. Tor pushed Okaar back none too gently and stood between him and the queen of Tygrish.

  ‘That’s enough,’ he snapped. ‘We haven’t got the time for this.’ He turned to Vintage and the others, seeing his own worried expression reflected in their faces. ‘What does this mean for us?’

  As ever, Vintage knew exactly what he meant. ‘We know Hestillion was not at the Jure’lia cave when we were there. I suspect that the a
ttack on Jarlsbad was happening at roughly the same time we destroyed the queen’s eggs. And, my dear, it does sound as though your sister was in charge of it.’

  ‘Then there are three Behemoths still out there,’ added Noon. ‘That’s what we’re saying, isn’t it? Three worm-people ships that weren’t in the cavern when we burned it down.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ snapped Tyranny.

  ‘Three ships, it seems, can still cause a lot of damage,’ said Aldasair, ignoring Tyranny. ‘But the odds have levelled out a little, I would say.’

  ‘Have they? Hestillion has proven herself to be a far more lethal commander than the Jure’lia queen.’ Vintage looked at Tor, her face grim. ‘Will she come for Ebora, Tor? Will she seek to wipe us out? Once Ygseril has gone, the war-beasts will be no more.’

  ‘You ask me as though I should know what my sister wants.’ He swallowed. The pain in his chest was becoming hard to ignore, and a fine sweat had broken out across his back and forehead. ‘When we were children she would have given her life to bring the tree-father back, but now? I stopped understanding Hestillion a long time ago.’ He pressed one trembling hand to his throat – the pain was searing its way up his neck now. It was like drowning. ‘Excuse me, I just have to –’ He turned and headed for the doorway, intending to get out of their sight. ‘I just need to –’ Desperately he staggered forward, his eyes on the darkness of the corridor, but the strength that had been in his legs just moments before drained away and he fell down into the dirt, pain reverberating through his body like a struck bell.

  ‘Tor?’

  He heard Noon’s voice, frightened and close, and felt strong hands on his shoulders, and then everything was lost in a rising tide of pain and heat.

  Chapter Forty-five

  ‘You must be the biggest fool I have ever known, and it has been my dubious lot in life to know a great number of fools, Tormalin the Oathless.’

  Vintage was fussing over the bandages on Tor’s left arm, her face set in an expression of forbearance. Noon found herself unable to look away from his right arm, which was currently bare of the coverings Tor had been using to hide his illness from them. There was a series of red lines there, like livid veins, and the skin around them was turning chalky and white. They had taken his shirt off, and to their mutual horror had discovered another small patch of the affliction, just over his breastbone. Tor himself was asleep, or he had been; at Vintage’s strident tone his eyelids were flickering, and he groaned.

  ‘Oh there you are, darling. With us now, are you?’

  He opened his eyes. ‘Where am I?’

  ‘Where am I? Really? You can’t think of anything better than that to say?’ Vintage shook her head. ‘How about, “Hello, Vintage, I am a prize idiot”? Or, “I am sorry I chose to hide from you information that would obviously be vitally important to you, because my pride is apparently more important than your feelings or the well-being of our home”?’

  ‘You’re in my room,’ said Noon. She touched his shoulder, worried that perhaps he wouldn’t realise she was there. ‘In my bed. We’ve changed your dressings. Why didn’t you tell us, Tor?’

  He lifted his bandaged arm and peered at it. ‘You did a better job than I did, anyway. Not easy to bandage your own arm, you know.’ He sighed. ‘What would be the point in telling you? Or do you crave more disasters?’

  ‘Stubborn,’ snapped Vintage. ‘I used to think it was a charming quality of yours, but it turns out it is spectacularly unhelpful.’

  ‘If I’m stubborn, Vintage, it’s because I learned it from you.’ Tor groaned and pulled himself up a little. ‘Blessed roots, I ache.’

  ‘We’ve called for all the healers,’ said Noon. ‘They’re gathering supplies now, and then they’ll want to examine you.’

  Tor chuckled weakly. ‘You know as well as I do that there is no cure for the crimson flux – it’s killed enough of my people for us to be sure of that – and this is no time to be lounging in bed.’

  He made to get up, and Vintage pushed him roughly back down.

  ‘Shut up. You don’t get to tell us anything for now, you idiot.’ Noon realised that Vintage was close to crying, and she felt a cold hand close around her own heart. If Vintage was so desperate – optimistic, cheerful Vintage – then surely there was no hope at all. ‘You’re going to bloody lie there and let them poke you about and apply their salves, and you’re going to do it with good grace and humour.’

  She made a show of straightening his sheets, then marched over to the door. ‘I’ll go and see who’s ready to poke you about. I have asked them to bring their biggest, pointiest needles.’

  When she had closed the door, Noon turned back to Tor.

  ‘She’s about as angry as I’ve ever seen her. What do you think you were playing at?’ She bit her lip briefly and savoured the pain; a distraction from the sorrow. ‘Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Noon, you knew this could happen. It’s practically inevitable.’ He sighed and looked down at the marks on his arm. ‘Kirune knew. I made him promise not to tell the rest of you. It’s a distraction, and roots be cursed, we don’t have time to be distracted right now. What happened to Tyranny and Windfall? Do we have any more news?’

  Noon shook her head. Tyranny was being kept in a room under guard, while Windfall had been accepted by the other war-beasts – she was with them now, being shown her rightful home and legacy.

  ‘We’ve not heard anything else. Aldasair sent more fell-witch sentries out to the borders and beyond, to watch for any worm-people activity, and Bern is asking anyone who arrives in Ebora for news. I’m not sure what else we can do for the moment.’

  ‘We can get ready for war. That’s what we can do.’

  ‘You’re right about that, at least.’ Noon slipped a small sharp knife from her belt and held it up so that Tor could see it. ‘I don’t know anything about healing, and it’s possible the healers will be useless, but I do know what helps you.’

  He smiled ruefully, but there was a hunger in his eyes. ‘The thing that doomed me in the first place.’

  ‘And as you once told me, what difference can it make now?’

  She held her arm up and cut it in the way that he had once showed her. Bright beads of blood grew across her skin, and without needing further prompting, Tor bent his head and drank from her. With her free hand, she smoothed his hair back from his forehead.

  ‘Take what you need.’

  His arm circled around her waist, pulling her closer, and Noon was forcibly reminded of the time they had spent in Esiah Godwort’s house; when she had laid down next to him day after day to give him her blood, to bring him back to consciousness. It had been a nightmarish time – she had been so convinced that he would die, that she had killed both him and Vintage with her tainted ability – but it had also been the first time she had felt close to him. They had walked in dreams together, shared memories and shared blood. Feeling the press of his mouth against her skin again was, despite everything, a joy.

  There was a series of knocks at the door, and Tor broke away. There was a smear of blood on his lips, and his eyes were brighter than they had been in days.

  ‘Tell them to go away,’ he said, his voice husky. ‘I have everything I need here already. Noon, if you are with me . . .’

  ‘All you ever had to do was ask.’ Noon picked up some of the spare bandages. ‘But you know that if you don’t let them in, Vintage will kick the door down.’

  Chapter Forty-six

  Treen ran to the top of a dune and looked down across the river-scape. The ants were on the move, and she’d never seen so many above ground at once before. They swept over the clay, turning it into a living carpet of red, black, brown and orange bodies, all shiny and hot under the sun. Moving slowly amongst them were the loaded sleds of Deeptown, each one piled high with food, belongings, furniture and people.

  ‘How far do we have to go, do you think?’

  She turned to see Tchai, o
ne of the young ant herders, his broad shoulders glistening with sweat. Like she had, he had grown up with the ants, learning how they moved, how they spoke to each other, and how to talk back to them, and, like her, she could see that he was worried. To move all the ants at once like this was to invite all sorts of trouble – stampedes, a break-off colony, sudden fights, or attacks from the various predators that skulked their way around the flats.

  ‘The pathfinder thinks we need to get out of the sight of the Dead Woods if we can.’ She caught the sceptical expression that passed over Tchai’s face, and she shrugged. The Dead Wood was a thick, dark smudge on the horizon, spreading in both directions as far as they could see. ‘I know. But you saw the smoke. You heard what the Eboran warriors said. And you have heard the same noises, felt the same tremors. Deeptown isn’t safe.’

  In recent days, Deeptown had been shaken by strange movements in the earth. Four tunnels had collapsed, killing a father and his two sons, as well as two ant herders, and the ants themselves had grown increasingly skittish. They were sensing something the humans couldn’t, Treen was sure of it, but although the pathfinder had spent many hours trying to get some sense out of them, all she could tell was that they were scared. Very scared. And then there had been the noises, heard above ground, when everything was still.

  ‘Being under the sky for this long isn’t safe,’ said Tchai. ‘And where are we running to? There’s nowhere else like Deeptown. You see anywhere else?’ He gestured to the flat orange landscape in the distance. Aside from the wide, shallow rivers that cut through it here and there, it looked suspiciously featureless. ‘When we stop to rest, the ants will panic. You know this as well as I do.’

  Treen bit her lip. ‘What do you suggest we do, then, Tchai?’

  ‘We should have stayed,’ he said immediately. ‘We have supplies and bolt holes, enough to last for months. We should have sealed up our entrances and let whatever horrors are coming roll over us.’

  ‘The pathfinder talks, we obey,’ she said, although in her heart she remained uneasy. Like all of those born and raised in Deeptown, she felt safest when there was several feet of thick, clay-packed earth above her head. Being above ground when there was the threat of predators made her feel vulnerable and exposed. ‘But also,’ she added in a quieter voice, ‘we watch and wait. Perhaps we need to make ourselves scarce for a few days just to be safe, and then, when things have quietened, we’ll go back. Deeptown will still be waiting for us.’