by Spurrier, Jo
Garzen answered after a moment’s hesitation. ‘She needs the bracelets off to treat the burns, but there’s no clasp. Can’t pry the links open. Looks like pure gold, but it ain’t. Not soft enough, see? We’ll have to cut it, and hope we don’t do more damage than we have to.’ He gestured at his leather tool roll laid out beside him, a haphazard collection of scavenged equipment.
‘There’s a small chisel in my old carving set that will do it,’ Isidro said. His gaze fell on the girl’s face — her lips were pink now, but most of her face was hidden beneath a cowl Rhia had folded over and pulled down to cover her eyes. What little of her face he could see was puffy and swollen. ‘Snow blindness?’ he said.
‘Yep,’ said Garzen. ‘Got herself frosted, too, but it don’t look like it’ll go to frostbite.’
‘Lucky,’ Isidro said. Frosting was the mild stage of frostbite, where ice crystals formed in the skin, but didn’t do enough damage to turn it black and necrotic.
Isidro swayed and had to put his left hand out to catch himself. ‘The tools are in my kitbag; would you mind finding them yourself?’
Garzen looked him up and down and nodded. ‘I’ll see to it. You sit yourself down, lad.’
Cam was sitting beside the stove with an empty satchel and an odd selection of gear spread out around him. He half rose when Isidro settled clumsily beside him. ‘Are you hungry? We kept a bowl for you.’ He picked it up from where it had been keeping warm beside the stove — fish fried in butter with yesterday’s soggy beans. ‘Garzen and Eloba had more luck with their lines than I did with mine.’
Isidro looked at the greasy mess and shuddered. ‘Later, maybe,’ he said and put it out of sight. ‘Any sign of soldiers out there?’
‘None, either southern or Slaver. I heard an avalanche and thought it was the cursed sorcerer for a moment …’ Cam shook his head with a wry grin. ‘The hills are quiet as a tomb and the only sign of people I found was her.’ He nodded to the sleeping figure. ‘This is her gear. I’m trying to work out where she’s come from.’
‘Leave it be,’ Garzen said from across the tent. ‘It’s cursed rude to go through a stranger’s gear — and her a guest at that.’
‘Well, of course it sounds bad if you put it like that,’ Cam said. ‘It might be days before she can talk. We know she’s on the run and we’ve taken a risk by taking her in. We’ve got every right to find out who she is and what she’s running from.’
Garzen looked unhappy, but he didn’t argue.
‘Well, Issey, what do you make of this?’
The bag itself was nothing more than a scrap of blanket cinched into a pouch by the carrying strap. Cam had spread the contents out beside it — an empty water-skin and a tinderbox with a few charred scraps of birch bark that looked as if they might once have wrapped bars of pemmican. It grew stranger after that — two mismatched daggers, a pair of bracelets set with ugly green stones wrapped in a bit of rag, a book held closed with tooled leather straps, and two swords in their scabbards, an awkward shape and bulk to be carried easily in the bag.
‘Loot, maybe?’ Isidro suggested as Cam picked up one of the swords and slid it out of the sheath.
‘Difficult to sell,’ Cam said, examining the blade by the light of the stove. ‘It’s good Mesentreian steel, hard to come by out here. You’d get some awkward questions when you tried to get rid of it. What do you make of the pommel stones?’ He turned the hilt with its polished cabochon towards Isidro and raised one eyebrow in a silent question.
Isidro glanced around to make sure no one was watching and pressed his palm against the stone, closing his eyes to block out any distractions.
It was no secret that he carried the taint of power; it was a matter of public record. His name and lineage were inscribed alongside those of other tainted children in the records of the temple where he’d been tested as a boy, there for anyone who cared to seek out the information. He preferred not to advertise the fact. Cam knew, and so did Rhia, but they would no sooner mention it than they would bring up any other shameful episode from a friend’s past. The others tended towards superstition and Isidro was far from sure they would treat the matter with the same discretion. Especially now that it seemed bad luck dogged their every step.
Isidro dismissed those thoughts and emptied his mind. There was a tiny pool of energy within the stone: it fluttered and prickled against his palm, like a moth cupped in his hands. The dull grey stone flickered with minute iridescence at his touch. ‘This one’s a witch-stone,’ he said. It was a common enchantment, meant to detect folk like him. He leaned over to touch the other, and found it cold and dead. ‘The other’s a fake.’
Cam held the two side by side and examined them closely in the meagre light. ‘I’ll never understand how you can tell. They look the same to me.’
Isidro shrugged. ‘It’s probably just as well. If you’d shown the taint, Valeria would have had you drowned like an unwanted pup.’
‘No doubt you’re right,’ Cam said. He set the swords aside and picked up the book. ‘Now this is odd. If you’re escaping from a Mesentreian camp into the worst blow we’ve seen this winter, why would you pick up something like this? It’s too cursed heavy to carry far, if nothing else.’ The book was as long as his forearm and as thick as the breadth of a man’s palm. The spine and cover were unmarked and it was closed with leather straps and clasps that wouldn’t come loose, no matter how Cam pried at them. That was a disappointment: he would have welcomed the distraction of a book — or anything, really, to pass the time.
As Cam gave up and set the book aside, Isidro looked over the rest of the gear and picked up the bracelets. The dull green stones were set in gold in the Mesentreian style, with stylised leaves forming the settings and the links. They were jade, and good quality despite their murky colour.
The stones were lens-shaped and the setting left the reverse faces uncovered, so the gems would always be in contact with the wearer’s skin. Isidro turned the bracelet over in his hand and the polished surface of the stone brushed against his palm. It stung like a fly-bite and he dropped it, biting back a curse.
Across the tent, Rhia glanced up from tending to the girl’s burns and frowned with concern. His hand numb from the shock of contact, Isidro shook his head and waved her back to her patient.
Cam had seen it all. Cautiously, he picked up the other bracelet and turned it over in his hands, looking from Isidro to the links and back again. ‘What is it?’
‘Warding-stones,’ Isidro murmured. ‘Cursed strong ones, too.’
Everyone who carried the taint was required by law to wear one. Humankind was never meant to possess this kind of power, or so the lore said. It was an accident of nature and of the Gods, a corruption of the natural order. Folk like him were said to have brought the power with them by accident, when they journeyed from the realm of the spirits to be born into flesh. Those born with power couldn’t help the way they were made, but they were dangerous, whether they meant harm or not. Left unchecked, their power would cause havoc and destruction, spread disease and bring disaster down on the people around them. If worn for long enough and paired with the rituals and prayers prescribed by the priests, the warding-stones were supposed to extinguish the spark of power entirely.
It had never worked for Isidro, but then he’d never worn the stone willingly. His first one had been presented to him at the Children’s Festival, an event held every year in the spring, when every child between the ages of six and twelve was tested for the taint. In every temple in Ricalan, the priests marked out a ritual circle with lines of coloured chalk and set the sacred stones around it, while all the children living under the temple’s remit would take their turn standing at the centre of the circle. If he or she carried the taint, the stones would light up like candles, the child’s name and parentage would be marked in the temple records, and the child would be given a warding-stone, with the command to wear it until death.
Isidro was eight winters old when the stones lit up in his presence. It
had come as no surprise — his birth mother carried the taint as well. In the home temple of his father’s clan, Elza had always gone first into the circle, both to test the priests’ preparations and to demonstrate to that year’s crop of children there was nothing to fear. She had worn her stone until the day she died in a hunting accident, when Isidro was twelve.
Isidro set the stones down and unconsciously wiped his hand against his thigh. Just holding the things made him feel as though he was suffocating, as though his mouth and nose and ears were stuffed with wool that threatened to choke him with every breath. As a boy, he’d taken the wretched thing off at every opportunity, until his kin, in desperation, had tied the cord so tight he couldn’t slip it over his head. Once his father had died and there was no one left to enforce the rule, Isidro had thrown the cursed thing away for good.
Cam knew all this. The nursemaids who had raised him in his mother’s court used to threaten him with sorcerers if he misbehaved. He had grown up with a Mesentreian’s attitude towards mages, but he set that aside when it came to Isidro.
‘Valeria had a set like this,’ Cam said, examining the gilded links. He only ever referred to his mother by her name. If pressed he would grudgingly acknowledge their kinship, but nothing more.
Garzen stood, stretching his back, and then came over to them with the two ruby bracelets dangling from one hand. ‘Ye Gods, but they’re ugly things,’ he said, squinting at the murky jade. ‘These aren’t much better.’ He held up the bracelets he had cut free. ‘They must be worth a cursed fortune, but I can’t say I care for the taste of him what made ’em. Well, at least they’ll be worth a bit to sell. Put them with the others, will you, lads?’ He dropped them into Isidro’s palm and turned back to help Rhia finish cleaning and binding the burns.
When the stones touched his skin they flashed with a sudden, vicious heat; it took all his will not to curse and drop them. The enchantment inside the stones was a fierce, angry thing, and it lashed out at his touch. For an instant, it felt as though he’d grasped a live coal, but only for an instant, and then it was gone. His skin felt scorched. It left no mark, but Isidro had a fair idea of exactly where the girl’s burns had come from.
‘Those burns on her wrists …’ he said. ‘Any idea what caused them?’
Garzen cleared his throat. ‘Well, it’s a funny thing, but looks like those bracelets did it. Couldn’t have, of course — there’s no way to heat them up that wouldn’t have burned her worse. Maybe they’d tied her up with rope and she held it over a flame to free herself? That’s probably it.’
That wouldn’t match the pattern of the burns. Isidro caught the end of one of the bracelets between his thumb and forefinger and let it dangle, glowing sullenly in the lamplight. This was an enchantment he hadn’t come across before. A Mesentreian priest could have made them, perhaps. Or maybe the one who locked them around her wrists had enough power and influence to convince Lord Kell to make them.
He handed the bracelets to Cam, who took them with a low whistle. ‘Someone’s going to be spitting that she walked away with these.’ He put them with the others, all wrapped up in the scrap of cloth, and began to pack everything back in the bag, but when he went to put it at the foot of the newcomer’s bed, Rhia waved him away. ‘Not there. She is still weak. I don’t want those cursed stones near her.’
‘They’re just witch-stones, Rhia.’
‘No matter! Put them over there.’ She pointed to the part of the tent where the miscellaneous gear was stacked. ‘You have few mages in this country, Cammarian. You are lucky to have so few. I have seen strong men die of trifling wounds because they would not let their curse-stones be taken away. Even witch-stones sap strength.’
Cam shrugged and put the bag as far away as he could from the sick beds laid out head-to-head. ‘Is that far enough?’
‘No. Throw them into the sea. That will be far enough.’ Rhia gave a weary smile. ‘That will do, though. For now.’
Sierra held herself perfectly still. The soft noises of night were all around her — the sighing breaths of people asleep in their furs and the comforting crackle of the fire within the stove; but her heart was beating fast and she had to work hard to keep panic from taking her over.
She couldn’t see. That was the worst part. A thick blindfold covered half her face and she didn’t dare raise a hand to explore it. Her hands were by her sides, pinned down beneath a weight of fur, and the burns around her wrists kept a dull throb in time with her pounding heart. Her whole right arm throbbed from knuckles to elbow, as though she’d sprained or wrenched it.
The last thing she remembered was huddling beside the tiny fire in the rough shelter beneath the branches of a spruce. With hot food in her belly she’d been warm for the first time in days and had fallen asleep not caring that she would probably never wake. Better to die free than spend the rest of her life as Kell’s pet and Rasten’s plaything.
But now she was alive, warm, awake … and what? A prisoner? She’d thought she was heading east when she left the king’s encampment, but in the midst of the blizzard the blasting wind was her only sense of direction. The fact that she was still alive told her she hadn’t stumbled across an Akharian legion. The Slavers didn’t tolerate mage-talent among their captives. They would have cut her throat at once.
She was too far north to have strayed into settlers’ lands, and if the king’s men had tracked her down she’d be back in Kell’s hands already. What did that leave? She could have been found by the outlaws who haunted these hills, or by the men the Wolf Clan sent to hunt them. Or perhaps some country folk had come across her while checking their trap-lines …
If she’d been brought in from the cold by ordinary Ricalanis, they’d feel duty-bound to hand her over to their ruling clan once they found out what she was. If she’d been picked up by one of the outlaw bands, they’d likely try to keep her for themselves, as they did with the women they captured on their raids. By the Black Sun, she ought to hope it was the bandits who’d found her — so many had died at her hands already that it seemed foolish to have qualms against spilling more blood, especially that of the murderers and thieves who made up the outlaw bands.
If an ordinary family had picked her up, she might have to shed blood to escape them anyway. Stop it, Sierra told herself, just stop thinking like that. I’ll cross that river when I come to it. All her dreams and hopes had been focussed on escape for so long — now that it had come, she didn’t know what to do next. All she knew was that she had to keep moving. If Rasten didn’t track her down, then it would be the Akharians snapping at her heels soon enough. They couldn’t be far away — she’d escaped while Kell and Rasten were attending upon the king in a discussion of strategy while the invaders massed on the far side of the river valley. For all she knew, the legions and their mages had already met the king’s men. What if the Akharians came upon her before Rasten hunted her down? Sierra clenched her fists at the thought, but then with a shuddering breath forced herself to relax them before her power could spill. If they came, she would fight with all she had, but the Gods alone knew if her power would be enough. She was untrained — Kell had seen to that — and if they were anything like her old master they would flatten her with one blow. But Kell only spoke of the empire’s mages with disdain, so perhaps she would stand a chance. Only by meeting them would she be sure, but she’d rather be well away from here by the time the Slavers came. Wherever here was.
Supposing she could avoid Rasten and the Akharians, she had no one to turn to, no family and no kin. For all she knew, her parents were dead, and had been for two years, ever since the night Kell had tracked her to the ruined temple where they’d taken shelter and pinned her there with Rasten and a contingent of the king’s guard.
Her family had sacrificed all they had to protect her, giving up their kin, their lands, their herds, everything. When stories began to spread of the herder-girl’s strange powers, they picked up what they could carry and moved along again, uprooting seven adul
ts and half a dozen children, all for her sake.
Kell would have found them no matter what; Sierra knew that now. Her mothers and fathers had thought they were protecting her from the priests, or from a mob that would tear her apart for what she could do. It had never occurred to them that Kell himself would come for her and by the time they realised the danger, it was too late. Two of her fathers had died that night in the ruined temple — and after all this time, she still wasn’t sure which two — and one of her mothers was bleeding to death when Kell sent Rasten to deliver his ultimatum: surrender now, and he’d spare the rest; resist, and he’d slaughter the lot of them.
Even then, she’d had no faith that he would keep his end of the bargain. But what else could she do? If Rasten outmatched her, Kell was a god compared to her fledgling powers.
Once she was in chains, Rasten had drugged her to keep her from giving them any more trouble, so for all she knew, the rest of her family had been put to the sword the moment she was too insensible to feel it. If they had survived, they would have gone into hiding to protect the children they had left. Everyone knew the taint of sorcery ran through families and there would be some who thought it best if the bloodline that produced Kell’s new apprentice ended there. Even if they had survived, and she was able to find them, she couldn’t bring herself to seek them out. They couldn’t protect her and they’d suffered enough for her sake.
Thinking of them brought tears to her eyes; they stung beneath the mask. Sierra bit her lip to keep from sobbing. Don’t think about that, she told herself. Just focus on the problem at hand.
Slowly, slowly, she eased one hand out from beneath the heavy furs and raised it up her face, expecting at any moment for it to be halted by chains or rope, but nothing checked the movement as she lifted her hand from the blankets. In the months that had passed since Kell left his dungeons to travel with the army, she had never been free of the chains for so long. Without them, she felt strangely light, as though she could just float away.