The Killing Light

by Myke Cole

  “But the Traveling People do not believe in Palantines, Heloise. I don’t believe in them. We are with you because we believe in you. Because we believe that you, and only you, can change … this”—she swept her arms in a wide circle—“and that is greater than the finest knife-casting in the world.”

  “Please, Xilyka,” Heloise said, suddenly biting back tears. “Stop.”

  Xilyka’s expression shifted. “Heloise, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean…”

  “No, it’s fine. It’s just that … I have my father trying to make me into his little girl. I have every other villager trying to make me into a Palantine. Everyone wants me to be something, Xilyka. And … I just don’t want you to … I need someone with whom I can just be…”

  “Heloise,” Xilyka finished for her, “and that is who you are. Enough lofty talk, then. Let’s gather up these onions. They’ll be glad of them back in camp, and might be we find enough out here to direct other foragers.”

  “I’d like that,” Heloise said, “but I’m so thirsty.”

  “Don’t eat snow,” Xilyka said, “only makes you more thirsty, and if you’re not careful it can make you sick.”

  “Any stream out here’ll be frozen.”

  Xilyka brightened. “Have you ever licked an icicle hung from a silver oak?”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever licked an icicle at all.”

  “You must! In winter, the bark weeps sweet sap into them. Come on!”

  She turned and led Heloise on again, and Heloise followed, grateful for the sudden return of the light feeling, for putting that heavy talk behind them, even though she had not had the answer she sought.

  Xilyka went to the base of a tree that looked much the same as any other, reached up for a fat icicle hanging from a sagging branch.

  “It doesn’t look silver…” Heloise ventured.

  “It isn’t now. I will bring you back here in the moonlight someday, when the snow is gone, and you will see.”

  Heloise warmed at the thought. “I’d like that.”

  Xilyka searched around for a fallen leaf, then reached up, wrapped it around the icicle’s base, and snapped it off. “There you are.” She passed it through a gap in the machine’s frame. Heloise released the shield’s control strap and slid her arm free, took hold of the icicle by the leaf. It was so clear that Heloise could see right through it, Xilyka’s beautiful face suddenly layered with the tiny white flaws in the ice, as if she lay at the bottom of a river.

  “Give it a taste,” Xilyka said.

  Heloise let herself sag in the chest strap, bringing her head down far enough to allow her to reach the icicle up to her mouth. The cold was sharp against her tongue, almost painful, but so refreshing that Heloise didn’t mind. It was much sweeter than Heloise had expected, nearly as cloying as the sugar candies her father had bought her on market days, mixing with the cool water as the ice melted and began to drip into her mouth. She pulled the icicle back to swallow …

  … And found she couldn’t. She tugged, gently at first, then harder. “Thilyka!”

  “What’s wrong, Heloise?”

  “My thongue! Ith sthuck!”

  Xilyka laughed so hard that she doubled over, leaning against the machine’s leg. “By the Wheel, I am sorry, Heloise. I forgot that can happen. I’m a fool.”

  “Halth! It won leth gah!”

  “Wait a moment, sometimes it just takes time.”

  Heloise waited as long as she could stand. “Thilyka. Ith wonth leth gah. Wat thoo I thoo?”

  The words sent Xilyka into another gale of laughter. “I’m sorry, Heloise. You just sound so silly!”

  “Sthtop lathing ah me an halth!”

  “We need hot water.”

  “Were ah we goinh a geth hah waher?!”

  Xilyka was quiet for a moment. “I have an idea. Can you come down a bit?”

  The thought of exposing herself outside the machine made Heloise’s heart race, and she froze.

  “Heloise, it’s all right. I am not asking you to come out. Just get as low as you can, all right? I think I can help.”

  Heloise swallowed the panic and slumped down, bending her knees and letting the chest strap climb into her armpits, the machine bending slightly at the waist in response.

  “Perfect,” Xilyka said, “here I come.”

  She scrambled up the machine’s knees and wriggled under the breastplate, forcing herself into the driver’s cage. She slowly wormed her way up, Heloise pressing herself into the leather pad behind her to make room. She could feel Xilyka’s hips pushing against her own, their shoulders touching, as the Hapti girl pressed herself into a driver’s cage built to hold a single person. At last, Xilyka’s face was level with her own, pressed so close that Heloise could feel the soft curls brushing her cheeks, could smell the sweet tang of her breath. Their foreheads pressed together so tightly that Heloise could feel a dull ache forming there. Her heart raced again, much faster than it had at the thought of coming out of the machine. Her legs felt suddenly weak; she was painfully conscious of how she must smell, searched Xilyka’s face for signs of disgust, but Xilyka only grinned back at her. What is she doing?

  “Now, hold still, Heloise,” Xilyka said. “This is going to be the funniest thing if we both wind up getting stuck.”

  And then she was pressing forward, stretching out her own tongue, running it over Heloise’s own.

  The world vanished. Heloise was vaguely aware of a tide rushing up from her toes and engulfing her entire body. It was urgent and hungry and it devoured all her senses, leaving her aware of only the tiny point where Xilyka’s tongue touched her own, shining in her mind like a single, glorious star.

  She had no idea how long she stood there, her legs liquid, her body held upright by the machine’s chest strap, her head foggy and spinning, drowning in delight. When at last she emerged, blinking, back into the sunlit world, her tongue had returned to her mouth, freed from the icicle’s grasp. “Oh…” she managed. “It worked.”

  “Yes,” Xilyka husked, still painfully, deliciously close. “I suppose it did.”

  They stood like that, staring at one another, Heloise too frightened to speak, worried that if she did it would be stupid and would ruin the moment, would make Xilyka climb back out of the machine.

  Xilyka looked as if she might say something, but stopped at the sound of voices calling, feet crunching on snow. Her face twisted. “It seems your menfolk have found us.”

  “Yes,” Heloise said, “I … I suppose you should climb down now.”

  Xilyka had an easier time climbing back out, her hair brushing Heloise’s lips as she went. When, at last, she emerged from beneath the breast plate and back onto the snowy ground, Heloise shivered. Though the canopy held off most of the snow and the tree trunks broke the wind, she was somehow colder than she’d ever been on the open road.

  4

  CAUGHT OUT

  Beside the Order is the Imperial court. They are nobles born and bred, rich and titled families going back to before their so-called veil was drawn shut. The Order and their Pentarchs are the supreme authority in the Empire, but the nobles of the court truly rule alongside them. The Order is busy with their mad rituals, their obsessive hunts for wizards and the devils they supposedly let into the world, leaving most of the day-to-day administration of the Empire to the secular court.

  —Letter from the Third Sword to the Exchequer of the Free Peoples of the Gold Coast

  Heloise walked back in silence. She did not blame Barnard, Wolfun, and Onas for following her, but their arrival brought back all the hardship she had briefly left behind, as surely as if they had carried it with them. She could feel the hint of joy she had just known drifting further and further away with each step they took back toward the army, and she grappled with a sudden, insane desire to turn and run back into the woods again.

  Sir Steven was waiting for them when they emerged from the woods, arms folded across his chest. Leahlabel stood before him, making wide gestures
of her arms as she argued with him.

  Sir Steven spurred his horse toward them as soon as they appeared. “What were you thinking?”

  “Are you all right?” Leahlabel asked as she hurried after.

  Heloise nodded, but not before Onas said, “She is fine, Mother.” As if you had anything to do with that.

  “Fool of a girl!” Sir Steven pounded his fist on his saddlehorn. “Were you not listening when I told you we must make haste?”

  “They were gone less than a quarter-candle,” Leahlabel said. “If we cannot spare even that, then we are truly lost.”

  Sir Steven purpled. “I’ll not be lectured on warcraft by a Kipti trader. If the Emperor’s cavalry catch us out on open ground, you will be praying to your precious Wheel to save you, and all because this girl”—he stabbed an angry finger at Heloise—“needed a moment alone.”

  He was right, Heloise knew, but the loss of her moment with Xilyka made her angry. “You didn’t have to wait for me,” she said. “I would have caught up.”

  Sir Steven opened his mouth to say more, but Barnard shouted him down. “You are addressing a sacred Palantine, and you will keep a civil tongue in your head.”

  Sir Steven’s knights stirred at that, hands moving to their sword hilts, reining their horses around to face the huge tinker. Barnard hefted his hammer, widened his stance. One of the knights lowered his lance, and Sir Steven slapped it up. “There is no time!” He spun his horse and began trotting back toward the army, bellowing at the serjeants to get the men marching. He spared a glance over his shoulder at Heloise, and shouted, “You’re all mad!” before disappearing into the throng of his troops.

  “You must not let him yell at you,” Barnard said. “Do not forget that you are a Palantine.”

  Anger spiked, so hot and sudden that Heloise struggled to form words. “What is the good of being a Palantine if I can’t find my father?”

  “Even Palantines yield to the Emperor’s will,” Barnard said. “You will find your father in His time, your eminence. That, I promise.”

  They walked toward the head of their column. Heloise could feel the eyes of the villagers on her. Had they seen her panic? Flee into the woods? What would they be thinking of her now? The snow had let up during the night, leaving a landscape of glittering diamonds. Heloise would almost have had the snow back, if it meant the wind would stop. It scoured everything, sending the canvas tops of the wagons flapping, stripping the soft snow from the frozen crust and sending it stinging into the villagers’ faces. Heloise watched them shivering, felt her stomach twist at the sight.

  “Look at them! They don’t have enough food. They don’t have the right clothing. The woman from Seal’s Rock said her people thought that I would feed them, because I was a Palantine.”

  “You are a Palantine,” Barnard said. He stood stiff-backed and straight, his eyes blazing. The fire in them made him look a bit like the Order fanatic who had taken her eye, Brother Tone. The thought chilled her.

  “What good is that? Tell me, how do I feed these people? How do I get them clothes? Do I pray the Emperor makes it rain bread?”

  Barnard locked eyes with her, as if through the force of his fanaticism he could make her believe. “I hope, your eminence, that the day will come when you see yourself as all of us see you.”

  If that day comes, Heloise thought, then you will have traded the Order for something just as wicked.

  The horn sounded from Sir Steven’s column, and Heloise could hear the serjeants shouting at their men to get moving. With an audible crunching of snow, the Red Lords’ column stepped off to resume its punishing pace.

  “Your eminence,” Barnard said, “we must go.”

  Heloise’s eyes fixed on the shimmering light in the distance behind the army, her heart pounding. “What if he’s back there, somewhere?”

  “The boy said they rode north, your eminence,” Wolfun said.

  “You must trust Sir Steven,” Barnard said. “He knows his business.”

  “You just called him a heretic yesterday,” Heloise said. “Asked if we should go our own way.”

  Barnard spread his hands. “Aye, and the Emperor spoke through you to correct me. His will is in all things, your eminence. As the wind stirs the flower, sending its seeds forth to take root, it is an easy thing to miss if your eye is not fixed on it. I was wrong, and I am glad to be given this chance to learn and to be better.”

  He cast a nervous glance toward the Red Lords’ column. Already the knights at the fore were disappearing into the wind-driven sprays of snow. “Your eminence, we must go.”

  It took an act of will for Heloise to rip her eyes from the light on the horizon and turn them to her waiting column. Most did not know that her father had been taken, and if they did, what difference would it make? They followed her to fight the Order, not to protect her family. My family is my army now, and it will be until we have finished this. The thought made her chest tighten, so she added a new one: I will find you, Father. I am so sorry.

  Heloise met Xilyka’s expectant gaze. The Hapti girl had made a petition of her, and Heloise had promised to honor it. She nodded and Xilyka raised a spear to unfurl the banner on its end, letting the wind take it, the forked pennant tails snapping in the strong wind. Heloise turned back to Barnard now, feeling the fire in her single remaining eye. “If we win, if we stop the Order and free the Emperor from their wickedness, then we will do it not because I am a Palantine, but because we came together to fight as one people.”

  Barnard looked up, the color draining from his face. “What … what is that?”

  “It’s us,” Heloise said, then turned to the column, raising her voice. “We come from all across the Empire, and even from beyond its borders! We are from Lutet and Lyse and Frogfork and the Shipbreakers! We are from the Gold Coast! We are from the road, with no home save where we build our fires! But we all have this one thing—that we have had enough of the Order! We are red people and Traveling People and settled people—all people. One people. The people. Forward together!”

  Silence.

  Had she expected them to cheer? Their spines to straighten like Barnard’s? The crowd did indeed look like Barnard, their faces just as shocked, their eyes just as angry. The villagers cast hateful glances at the Traveling People, who huddled in the drovers’ chairs of their wagons, shivering against the cold. Heloise spied Helga at the front of her village, all swaddled in their snow-dusted sealskins. The old woman shook her head and looked at her feet. Heloise heard the low growl of the Red Lords’ horn again, the thundering of footsteps and hoofbeats as their column lurched forward.

  Time to go.

  Heloise turned, the silence buffeting her like a wind, and began to march. Behind her, the creaking of the Traveling People’s wagon wheels, the crunching footsteps of the villagers on the snow, even the dull hoofbeats of the few horses sounded sullen.

  She heard brief snatches of muttering borne on the cold wind. “… not march beneath a Kipti wheel.” “… red as Old Ludhuige’s blood!” She wanted to turn and shout at them, but what good would it do? They might revere her as a saint, fear the power of the war-machine, but neither fear nor reverence could banish their distrust of one another.

  She could feel the ill glow of the light on the back of her neck, the absence of her father like a phantom limb. She was shocked to find herself missing Sigir, the Maior of her village who had turned traitor and tried to kill her. She hated him, of course, but he had known how to lead, both a village and an army. He would have been able to counsel her on what to do about her father without employing Barnard’s blinding faith.

  They had marched in silence for no more than half a candle when one of Sir Steven’s outriders galloped up and reined in beside them. His horse was lathered and his surcoat torn. A long cut ran from his temple to the corner of his mouth, still bleeding. “Heloise Factor, the First Sword summons you to his … Apologies, he asks that you attend him at the head of his column.”

  As
he spoke, the horns sounded and the Red Lords’ army drew to a halt. She could hear blades clearing scabbards, archers stringing bows.

  “What is it?” she asked the outrider.

  The man looked around her. “Apologies, but it is a war council, and it is not our custom to…”

  “Tell me!”

  He swallowed. “We have found the Imperial army. They are reinforced, dug in on the road north, and offering battle. We must decide how to engage them if we wish to win through to the capital.”

  Her stomach turned over. “But … but Sir Steven said we had four days…” She remembered the First Sword’s words. Their strength is in their Order and their knights. Horsemen all. If we bottle them up in a city, they are near useless. If we face them in the field … I will admit I do not like our chances.

  But the sinking in her gut competed with a second, more urgent emotion. Relief. Father.

  The man reined his horse around and pointed toward the head of the Red Lords’ column. “Attend Sir Steven there with your advisers as quickly as you can. We must decide the order-of-battle.” He dug in his spurs and galloped away.

  Heloise gestured to the banner snapping in the wind above her head. The news made her feel hope for the first time since the council in Sir Steven’s tent. “We fight as one people. I will take two advisers and two guards: one each from the villagers and from the Traveling People.” She raised her voice as everyone around her began speaking at once. “… And I am not arguing. For my advisers, I will take Wolfun and your mother, Onas.”

  Xilyka did not speak, but Heloise could feel her anger. “I will bring Mother Leahlabel at once,” Onas said.

  “Thank you,” Heloise said. “For my bodyguards, I will bring Xilyka and Barnard.”

  “Heloise, no—” Onas began.

  “I said I am not arguing,” Heloise cut him off. “The Sindi will be represented by Mother Leahlabel, and the Hapti by Xilyka.”

  Onas’s cheeks colored. “What of the Brock? What do I tell Mother Andrasaia?”

  “You know your own people…”

  “The Brock are not my people! I am of—”