by Spurrier, Jo
Inside, the tent was warm and cosy. The stove, resting on a tripod of notched green sticks inside the entrance, was just large enough for one small pot, which bubbled away at a merry simmer. A small pile of firewood sat next to it. Her furs were spread out within arm’s reach of the stove, but with only a light blanket for a cover. The tiny stove would need to be fed throughout the night and with a light blanket the chill would wake her sooner than if she slept bundled in furs. If the fire died out completely, she would have to rouse herself to start it again from flint and steel, growing wide awake and thoroughly chilled in the process. By sleeping lightly and waking more often she could simply reach out and shove a few more sticks into the fire without ever properly waking, and get a better night’s rest.
Already sweating beneath the weight of his coat, Isidro settled cross-legged on the spruce and shrugged it off, letting it fall in a puddle around him. The space was so small he sat very close to her, close enough to feel the warmth from her skin. The stove door stood open and in the ruddy firelight Isidro could see Sierra’s shirt was loosely tied and unbelted, her skin damp and her hair freshly combed. He’d come upon her just as she had finished bathing, he realised, and the bustle of activity was her getting dressed before letting him in.
Sierra turned away, rummaging through her kitbag at the foot of the tent to find the book. In daylight, her hair was a lustrous blue-black, but now it reflected the firelight in a ripple of red. The curve of her neck and shoulder as it disappeared under the collar of her shirt was so exquisite it made his heart lurch and he tried hard not to think about what she might be wearing underneath.
Stop it, Isidro told himself, just stop it. True, she was beautiful and fascinating, but he was still a broken man, a cripple. Once he may have been a man with something to offer any woman who caught his eye, but those days were over. Now he was a liability, as helpless as a child and utterly unable to contribute to the daily life of his companions, let alone able to survive on his own.
But there was at least one thing he could offer her in return for what she’d given him. All the education and study that had seemed so useless in the past could at least be of some value.
Sierra set the book between them and then rummaged through the sack by the stove. ‘I think I’ve got a lamp and a bit of oil here, too, somewhere …’ She spoke quickly, almost tripping over her words, and a fat blue spark spluttered to life in the palm of her hand and chased itself around her fingers for a moment before vanishing up her sleeve with a buzz, like an angry hornet.
His mind still full of hopeless longing, it took a moment for her words and their strangeness to sink in. The light from the stove might be enough to fumble around in, but any real activity in a tent after dark in a Ricalani winter required a candle or a lamp of some sort.
‘Don’t worry about the lamp,’ Isidro said. ‘Just use what you were using before I interrupted you.’
Sierra froze, and then very slowly turned back to him. Another miniature bolt of lightning burst from her fingertips, but this time it arced across to the stove and hung there crawling restlessly over the metal. Her eyes were narrow and suddenly wary. ‘Most people are frightened of what I can do,’ she said. ‘You’re not, and yet you have more reason than most. Why is that?’
Isidro shrugged. ‘The priests keep saying that mage-craft is evil, but I’ve never seen evidence to prove it.’
‘Kell and Rasten didn’t convince you?’
‘You can kill a man with a sword, too, but I don’t hear people saying that everyone who can wield one ought to cut off his hand to keep from harming others. It’s not the power that’s evil, it’s what you do with it.’
Sierra smiled. When her face was impassive it was an icy mask, but a curve to her lips gave her a wicked, mischievous grin that transformed her in an instant from ice to warmth. ‘I bet the priests in the Owl Clan’s lands are relieved not to have you as the head of their clan.’ She cupped her hands together with a small frown of concentration and blue light streamed between her fingers. When she opened her hands a tiny globe of light floated above her palm. As soon as she released it, it began to drift as though it was dragged along by some ethereal current. With a waft of her hand, Sierra nudged it back, but it soon drifted again, bumbling along the roof of the tent like some ungainly insect.
‘Pesky things,’ Sierra said. ‘Rasten can make his stay where he puts them, but mine always want to move.’ She caught it again and brought it back, trapped between her thumb and forefinger.
Isidro couldn’t keep from staring. He’d seen sparks created by rubbing a lump of amber with cloth or fur, just like the ones Sierra shed when she was nervous. It worked best during the driest days of winter, unlike real lightning, which usually came in the humidity of summer. One day one of the Owl Clan’s grizzled old warriors had told him about balls of lightning that floated through the air just like this creation of Sierra’s. ‘Can I touch it?’ Isidro said, leaning forward for a better look at the globe pulsing between her fingers.
‘Ah … I’m not sure. Rasten always could, but anyone else who came too close to one would get zapped.’
‘Zapped?’ Isidro said.
Sierra just grinned. ‘You’ll see. Try it if you want — it’ll sting, but it won’t do you any harm.’ She released it and the hovering ball floated to the roof before bumbling its way towards the foot of the tent again.
Isidro gingerly cupped his hand around it before steeling himself and closing his fist. The sphere hummed, a buzz so low and quiet it was barely audible but as his hand closed around it the sound swelled to a growl, an angry hum somewhere between the whirring wings of a large insect and the crackle of a fire, then it burst with a zap and sent a shock spearing through his fingertip and down his arm. Isidro yelped and the light vanished, plunging the tent into darkness.
Lost in the gloom, Sierra began to giggle. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I shouldn’t laugh. Really, I thought you’d be able to touch it. You have an affinity for power.’
Isidro was sucking his finger when she made another light and she frowned at him. ‘It didn’t burn you, did it?’
‘No, no,’ he said. ‘It just stung, like you said. Here, let me try again.’
‘I don’t think —’
Before she finished the sentence he’d closed his hand over hers and felt the glowing ball pulsing against his skin. It was neither warm nor cold, but had a peculiar sensation that was at once both prickly and slippery, and when he squeezed it, it yielded slightly before forcing his fingers apart again.
‘Well that’s odd,’ Sierra said, sitting back on her heels. ‘Usually people can either touch them or they can’t. Mind you, only a handful of folk have ever tried.’
Isidro released the ball and caught it again, still with no reaction. Then, in the spirit of investigation, he touched the ball to the chimney pipe. It stuck there as though it had been glued in place.
Sierra gaped at him. ‘How did you do that?’
‘Well, I think it must be something like Black Sun’s Fire. Last night it was crawling all over the spearheads and the swords. It must have an affinity for metal.’
Cupping her hands, Sierra made another sphere and stuck it beside the first. Laughing, she made another and another until the chimney was clustered with them like a branch crawling with fireflies. ‘Ye Gods, you don’t know how much easier that’s going to make everything. Earlier, I was trying to hold one between my teeth just to keep the wretched thing still long enough to see what I was doing.’
‘They never bump up against the chimney on their own?’ Isidro said.
Sierra shook her head. ‘Fire gives off some kind of power of its own. It’s not something I can use, but it creates a current, of sorts. You saw it yourself. They always tumble away from it. If I release one outside, it’ll float up like a spark from the fire until it gets out of range and winks out.’
‘Fascinating,’ Isidro said, and she shot him a sidelong glance, heavy with suspicion. ‘No, really,’ he
said. ‘It’s fascinating. I never knew people could do things like this.’
She looked down and reached for the book. ‘One day you might wish you’d never found out.’
Sierra felt a flush creeping over her face.
Isidro smelled of wood smoke, leather and spruce. The scent swept over her like an antidote to the foulness that had been ground into her senses in Kell’s service, the stench of blood and shit and terror that filled the dungeons. It stirred a rising heat that seeped through her, feeding the crackling pillar of energy along her spine. All the loneliness, the fear and despair that had been dragging at her was swept away by a tide of … of what?
She’d felt lust before, of course she had, back before Kell had found her. Awkward fumblings with boys her age had left her perplexed — they seemed to bear no resemblance to what the other girls talked about, nor to the soft murmurs and moans she’d heard from her parents’ furs in the night. She’d thought that was lust, but it was like a candle flame to the heat growing inside her now.
She wanted an end to the loneliness — a distraction, however brief, from the dread of knowing that Rasten was on her trail, maybe as little as a day or two behind. She wanted to feel in control and take something for herself, just this once. Most of all, she wanted to feel his hands on her skin, his lips against hers and the weight of him above her.
‘Sierra?’
Sierra shook herself. He’d been speaking and she hadn’t heard a word he’d said. Their eyes met and his gaze dropped to her lips, parted a little from her quickened breath.
Sierra leaned forward and kissed him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him, as though she were drowning and he was her air. His good arm found its way around her back and he turned to spare the broken one while still pressing her body against his. Where they touched, her belly to his, her breasts against his chest, Sierra felt the heat spread. Her power surged and erupted in a dazzling tangle that swarmed around them both and filled the tent with flickering blue light.
Surprised, Isidro broke away, and Sierra reluctantly let him go. He was aroused, though, she could feel it. Her power fed from pleasure as well as pain, though it was the latter she had grown most familiar with over the last few years. Kell was a sadist through and through and rape was a weapon he took particular joy in wielding. If this situation felt odd, it was because she was so used to experiencing pain mingled with Kell’s perverted pleasure — to feel arousal alone seemed strange and unfamiliar, but to her it felt like the first gulp of fresh air after being locked in a room full of smoke and stench.
‘Sierra,’ Isidro whispered. His pupils had dilated to deep and gaping depths but his hand was on her shoulder, gently but firmly keeping some distance between them. ‘Sirri, I —’
‘Just kiss me,’ she said, half demanding, half pleading. In a few days’ time when Rasten found them, Isidro and his comrades would all be dead and she would be in chains again. Kell would have no fear now of breaking her with hard use as he had done to Rasten — she was already too strong to be easily controlled.
She couldn’t speak of that, though — Isidro wasn’t like Kell and Rasten, excited by such things, and she needed him too badly to risk turning him away. ‘Just kiss me,’ she repeated. ‘Please, Isidro. I want something for myself, just this once …’ She leaned in again and this time he let her reach him. When he kissed her back, his hunger was equal to hers, so full of need it left her gasping. His frame was painfully lean, but as his arm pressed against her back, it seemed to her she could feel the memory of the man he had been, before Rasten and his club had brought him down.
He drew her forward into his lap and she wrapped her legs around him and ran her hands over his shoulders and down his back. He stiffened as she slipped her hands beneath his shirt, and when her fingers found the rough and tender scars she remembered why. ‘I’ve got them, too,’ she said, reaching for the ties of her shirt, ‘though they’re not as grand as yours.’ She let the fabric slip from her shoulders and twisted around to let him see the neat row of white points marching in ranks across her shoulders and along the backs of her upper arms. Frowning, he ran his fingertips over them and Sierra shivered.
‘How?’ he said.
‘On the rack, with steel needles,’ she said. ‘First time I broke Kell’s rules.’ She pressed herself against him, as much to distract herself as to divert him from her words. His arms tightened around her and when she felt the rigid length of him straining against the cloth between them she rocked her hips against him with a moan, letting her power spill in a swarm of lightning crackling over them both, covering them in a brilliant veil of light.
The tent had grown cold, but Sierra radiated heat like a hearthstone. All her lights had winked out once she fell into a doze, nestled into the crook of his good arm with her dark, lustrous hair spread out across his chest.
He was thirsty. Isidro knew there was a pot of water by her stove, but he didn’t want to disturb her and make this moment end. It was, he had to admit, probably the last time a beautiful woman would ever invite him to her furs.
A narrow band of light from the stove door fell across her. Sleep softened the lines of her narrow face. The wariness, the hunted look that haunted her throughout the day were gone, and he was struck by how young she was. The world was cruel to take a woman so young and so perfect and leave her so devoid of hope she would bed a near stranger just to feel alive, to feel some human warmth. To not feel so lost and alone.
Isidro kissed her forehead and, as gently as he could, he eased himself from beneath her and left her on the folded jacket she was using for a pillow with the fur pulled up to her chin.
Shivering in the cold, Isidro found his shirt and wrapped it around his hand and then gingerly sought the stove door, meaning to build up the fire and give him enough light to find the water. Instead of the latch he found the handle of the pot and clumsy in the darkness he knocked it off the stove. It fell into the woodpile with a clatter and a hiss of steam as the water splattered over the hot metal.
With a gasp of panic, Sierra sat up, snatching the blanket around her as her power erupted, surrounding her in a nimbus of flickering blue light.
‘Only me,’ Isidro said, kneeling naked and shamefaced on the spruce. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.’
She pressed a hand to her chest and sagged with relief. ‘I swear, my nerves are strung as tight as a drum.’
Isidro reached for the pot but all the water was lost, draining down into the snow beneath the spruce. ‘I’ll fetch you some more water.’
‘You don’t have to —’
‘It’s alright.’
Sierra opened the stove with a wad of rags to protect her hand and fed a few splints of wood into the flames. Isidro cast around for his clothes and reluctantly began to dress. Suddenly shy, Sierra huddled back beneath her blanket and watched him.
Isidro felt conscious of the scars on his back, prickling in the cold air, and gritted his teeth. They were ugly things. Rhia’s skill had kept them from growing into raised knots of proud flesh, but even flat, they were livid and angry, as though they held some memory of the hot iron Rasten had dragged over his skin. He yanked his shirt over them and Sierra winced.
He pulled his boots on and shrugged his way into his coat, then took the pot and crawled awkwardly out of the tent. ‘I won’t be long.’
Outside it was so dark he almost went back for a lamp, but stopped himself when he remembered he had no way to carry it. Instead he huddled deeper into his coat and followed the trampled path past the horses and down towards the river where Cam had chipped a hole through the ice and down to the water beneath.
The horses raised their heads, and one nickered to him on the way past, but he didn’t have a hand free to give them their usual scratch of welcome.
He thought of Sierra and the way she’d clung to him, the feeling of her hands on his shoulders and his back, the desperate hunger in her kisses. She’d been feeding off him, he was sure of it, but that w
asn’t all that had happened. He would have thought himself in no condition to satisfy a woman — he was too weak and too wasted for that. Even if he’d had the strength to perform, the exertion should have left him prostrate. He felt a little weary, perhaps, a pleasant kind of tiredness, but nothing like the exhaustion it should have caused. He could have sworn that while she was feeding off him, she was also radiating that power back.
In a week she would be gone and he’d likely never see her again — and that was if everything went well. At the worst Rasten and Severian’s men would find them and they’d all be slain or captured. Isidro knew he should walk away from her and let this first time be the last. He was crippled, a wasted man, and there was little room for someone like him in a world where a man’s worth was in his hands and the strength of his back. Without a family to support him, the best he could hope for would be to live in a temple off the priests’ charity, along with the halfwits and the mad and the other scraps and remnants of society. In another time he might perhaps have found a place serving one of the clans as a tutor or a clerk but that was impossible for a fugitive. The price on his head was higher than ever and no clan would risk its position to shelter him. He would end up little more than a beggar, counting out the days until Severian’s men finally tracked him down. The memory of Sierra in his arms would be as much a torment as a comfort.
‘Isidro?’
Isidro realised he was standing on the ice with the waterhole at his feet. The surface of the water had frozen over, and there were lynx tracks in the snow around it where the beast had come prowling to investigate the disturbance. Isidro turned and saw Cam a dozen paces behind him.
‘What are you doing out here?’ Cam said, his voice soft.
Isidro held up the pot. ‘Fetching more water for Sierra.’