by Spurrier, Jo
Sirri!
She hated it when he used the intimate form of her name. There was nothing she could do about it — they were intimates, after all. It was only a matter of time before Kell captured her again and they would be as intimate as two people could be, entwined together in blood and pain.
What do you want, Rasten?
His reply, when it came, was hesitant. I … I just wanted to know if you’re alright.
I’m fine, she replied. How’s the shoulder?
It’ll heal. What about your lover’s arm?
A wave of anger sent the power breaking over her naked skin, filling the tent with rippling blue light. For a moment neither of them spoke, but Sierra could feel his attention still fixed on her. Pain was of no importance to Rasten. He thought nothing of inflicting or receiving it. Any normal person would want to spare those they loved, but to Rasten the concept was inconceivable. Pain was unavoidable.
More than anything else right now, she didn’t want him thinking about Isidro. What do you want? she said again.
She felt him draw a breath, as though steeling himself for something difficult. Little Crow, we need to talk.
I have nothing to say to you.
Perhaps not, but you do need to listen. Sirri, you have to know that Kell will never stop hunting you.
Sierra pressed her head back against the furs. So, he was doing this to hound her, to keep her exhausted and fearful. Anyone who shelters me will suffer and decent folk will drive me off with stones and spears. I know this tale, Rasten.
Good. Then you understand that you can’t go on like this for long.
Sierra laughed silently, but the giggle that echoed down the line to Rasten had an edge of hysteria to it. You want me to give myself up? Rasten, you’re either mad or you’re desperately trying to avoid whatever punishment Kell will use to reward your failure —
I can take whatever Kell gives me, Rasten said evenly. Sirri, just listen. I’ve been watching you grow, but until last night I didn’t realise how far you’ve come. I’m not sure I could take you alive and your power is still growing. But if Kell comes here it will be a different matter. You’re powerful enough for his purpose — if he captures you again, he’ll break you like he did me and he’ll see to it that you’re not capable of running again. You’ll be a slave for the rest of your life.
And you woke me up to tell me this?
Just listen, Sirri. You’ve no shortage of power and it’s growing every day you use it, but you lack the training and the skill you’ll need to stand against Kell. For now he’s pinned down by the Akharian army and he’s given me permission to stay here in the east until this wound heals and I can bring you in. I can help you, Sirri. I can give you the training you’ve been denied. I can make you so powerful that Kell won’t be able to break you down.
Rasten, I am not going to give myself up. I’d sooner die than go back.
Then Kell will hunt down and slaughter everyone you come into contact with. Your crippled lover and the prince will die slower deaths than you can imagine. He will keep them alive just to torment you, but if you come home, he’ll be so focussed on you they’ll be able to slip away.
And why would you let that happen after what Isidro did to you?
Because I don’t care about them. There’s only one thing I care about now and that’s you. I need you. I can’t do this on my own. I need you to help me destroy Kell. It’s the only way, Little Crow. It’s the only way we’ll ever be free.
Sierra lay awake for hours after Rasten left her in peace. It would be beyond foolish to trust him. It had to be a trap. He had never rebelled against Kell, not in all the months she had known him. Rasten loathed his master’s lusts but he would not resist, no matter what Kell inflicted on him. It sickened her to think what he must have suffered to bring him to that point … and that he was right: Kell would subject her to the same treatment.
He had to be lying. There had never been so much as a hint of this plan, of such a deep thirst for revenge.
But there wouldn’t be, would there? Kell punished any intransigence with swiftness and brutality. Rasten would have learned long ago to police his every thought and expression, but he couldn’t trust her to do the same. Even with the restraints Kell had chained around her wrists she couldn’t control herself. Every peak of anger and emotion sent her power roaring to the surface, overwhelming her control. And she had barely been tested with Kell’s darker lessons. The few times she had earned a punishment on the rack had been minor compared to the rituals Kell performed on his sacrifices, but they had left her so traumatised that she had never pushed against his bounds again. The needle scars on her back prickled at the memory. He wouldn’t have trusted her with his secret before she had been tested — so why trust her now?
If Isidro were here, she could talk it over with him. He would listen to her rambling fears and recollections and offer his own dry and detached opinion. Or would that be asking too much of him, to talk this way about the man who had tortured and crippled him? She had never told Isidro just what sort of life she had shared with Rasten, but not because he wouldn’t understand what it had been like for her. She didn’t want him to have to understand. His path was hard enough without having to muster compassion for the man who’d crippled him.
She couldn’t tell Cam, either. His situation was difficult as it was, as he tried to walk the line of diplomacy between her and the Wolf Clan. She would not put him in a position of having information that would allow the Wolf Clan to condemn her.
Beneath it all, gnawing at her like a snake coiled amid her vitals, was the fear that Rasten was right. Kell would never give up. The only way she would be free was if he were dead.
Ardamon set a hard pace as they rode south from the temple and, within half a day, Sierra was forced to admit that leaving Isidro behind had been the right decision. Ardamon’s men were all well rested, but she, Cam and Rhia had already spent the last week cramming as much distance into each day as they could. By the time Ardamon called a halt on the first evening, Sierra’s head was swimming with exhaustion.
No one came out and told her she wasn’t welcome in Mira’s tent, where Cam and Rhia laid their bedrolls. One of Mira’s serving-women simply came and said her tent was ready, guiding her to a tiny structure set up some distance from the rest of the tents of the heir’s escort, where the sentries would be able to keep watch on her throughout the night.
Solitude was something most Ricalanis found uncomfortable. Everyone, from the poorest peasant to the chief of the wealthiest clan, spent most of their lives surrounded by friends and kin, and rarely went out alone even when hunting and trapping. Two wives and two husbands was generally considered to be the smallest stable family unit and Sierra had grown up with twice that number, as the eldest of nearly a dozen siblings.
Her first months of solitary confinement in Kell’s dungeons had been an agony of loneliness and fear, but since then Sierra had grown accustomed to being alone. With her bedding laid out and coals glowing in the little stove, Sierra was simply too weary to care if she slept alone or with company.
Mira’s women had left a dish of food on the corner of the stove to keep warm but she was also too tired to eat. Sierra managed to hang her socks and boot liners from the ridge-pole to dry before she wrapped herself in her furs and slept until Mira’s servant returned to wake her in the morning.
If Ardamon was setting a hard pace, then Rasten was driving his men unmercifully. After the speed they’d been setting to chase Cam’s little party, they would be feeling the effects by now, and Rasten himself was in constant pain. Sierra could feel it occasionally when exhaustion made his control falter and his senses spilled into her with a rush of heat and power. But when Ardamon’s scouts returned to the main camp on the second evening of the chase their news was grim. Rasten and his men were still hours ahead and had maybe even gained a little time.
The problem, Cam explained to her, was that his horses were the best the king could provide, bred from a mix of tou
gh little Ricalani ponies and the longer-legged, swifter southern breeds, whereas the Wolf’s best horses had gone with the war-leader’s army. Ardamon’s men had been equipped for little more than a brief jaunt through safe territory, not a chase like this.
Sierra had another concern, one she hesitated to share even with Cam, now her only ally. Since they’d left Isidro behind she had no source of power other than the healing cuts and burns on Cam’s chest. Rasten had no one to feed from, either — she could tell from the brief slips of his shields that his power was running low. He could take another sacrifice from among his own men if the situation demanded, but to do that too often would tempt mutiny. She knew he would be on the lookout for another warm body to bleed for power.
The thought was very much on her mind on the morning Rasten’s trail led them to the doorstep of an isolated farmstead. The sight of it made Sierra feel sick to the pit of her stomach.
The house was ancient and run-down, almost buried beneath the drifting snow heaped against its walls. It was not abandoned, however. A flock of goats had run from the horses’ path as they approached and a string of frozen fish dangled from the eaves. There was no smoke rising from the chimney, but the stove-wall that heated a Ricalani house was usually fired only twice a day.
As Ardamon led his men closer she saw the door was newly splintered and broken, but had been forced back into the frame and wedged closed. Ardamon’s captain, Dreshavic, dismounted to knock on it with the hilt of his sword. For a long time there was no answer and Sierra began to fear the worst. No family would let one of their number be taken by Rasten and his men without putting up a fight. If he had been here, she doubted they would find anyone left alive.
While Ardamon and Mira conferred with their captain, Cam guided his horse over to Sierra. ‘Can you sense anything from inside?’
‘No. There’s no one wounded in there, I’m sure of that.’
‘But is there anyone alive?’
She shrugged, helplessly. ‘I can’t tell, not with all these people around …’
Mira slipped down from her saddle and led her horse up to the doorway. ‘Hello the house!’ she called, her high, clear voice ringing through the cold air. ‘Mirasada of the Wolf gives you greetings! Is anyone there?’
For a long moment, there was silence. Sierra held her breath. Then with a groan of rusting hinges the door opened just enough for a man to peer out. A moment later it opened fully and he came a few cautious paces outside with a spear in one hand and a battered old shield on his arm. ‘It’s the Wolf!’ he called out to those inside. ‘Bright Sun be thanked, the Wolf warriors are here!’
The chamber was warm, but the woman who spoke was wrapped in a heavy fur. She was still in shock, Sierra thought.
‘He was here yesternight,’ the woman said. ‘Him and all his men.’
There were six adults living here and eight children Sierra could see, the eldest a sturdy boy of about twelve. The children were still pale and frightened and stared in silence at the newcomers.
Ardamon had wanted Sierra to stay outside but Cam insisted that she join them in the main hall. She knew Rasten best, after all, and she might be able to explain what had happened here.
‘I was here on my own watching the children.’ The children were lined up beside her on a bench, the nearest, a little girl of about three, huddling under her arm. The child carried the taint. Sierra could sense the power in her the moment she walked into the room, but it wasn’t the sort she could draw upon for herself. It was a peculiar sensation to have a hint of power coiling around her but out of reach.
She carefully kept her attention on the woman. She was some years older than Sierra, her face lined and weathered, with a sprinkling of grey in her hair. ‘The others were out trapping, or bringing in the goats, and it was just me an’ the little ones when they broke down the door and charged in. The men threw me on the floor and tied my hands behind my back before I even knew what was happening.’ She raised a hand to brush a strand of hair back from her face and Sierra noted the fresh red welts encircling her wrist. ‘I thought it was the cursed Raiders at first, but once they hauled me up, I saw they were dressed too neat for that. Tems tried to fight ’em,’ she nodded to the eldest boy, ‘but they just knocked him down and one of them held him there at the point of a sword. I thought he was going to kill him, but one of the men said they ought to wait for Lord Rasten.’
‘You understood them?’ Mira said with some surprise. ‘Were they speaking Ricalani, or do you know Mesentreian?’
‘I know little of the southern tongue, m’lady, but I understand it better.’ She dropped her gaze to the floor as she went on. ‘Lord Rasten came in a few moments later and he just stood looking down at me, right where you are now, sir,’ she said with a shy glance at Ardamon. ‘I begged him, I said do what you want with me, but don’t harm the little ones. He slapped me across the face and told me to hold my tongue …’ The woman raised a hand to her cheek but there was no bruise Sierra could see. With that wound in his shoulder he couldn’t use his preferred hand, but Rasten could still do a lot of damage with his left. Rasten always hated it when a prisoner begged, but it seemed to her that he’d stayed his hand.
‘He just stood there for a moment, looking around. The children were crying and making an awful racket. He just stared at them like a cat watches a mouse and then he shakes himself and says I was no good to him and orders his men to leave. Well, they were near as stunned as I was. For a moment, none of them moved. He bellows at them to get out and mount up again, and they all just trooped out and left me here. Tems had to run down to the kitchen and find a knife to cut my hands free and by that time they were gone.’
‘And that’s it?’ Ardamon said. ‘They didn’t take anything with them?’
‘Oh, they took some stores from the kitchen and a bit of cloth, and a couple of goats for meat we think, but that’s all. My husbands and my sisters came back a few hours later and found us all barricaded in the furnace room with every weapon I could get my hands on.’
Ardamon turned to Sierra with a furious glare. ‘What in the hells was he playing at?’
‘Rasten was about Tems’s age when Kell took him,’ Sierra said. ‘Kell had a band of the king’s warriors with him. They killed his fathers and Kell let his mothers and his older sister be passed around among the men, then he made Rasten watch while he cut their throats. There were some younger children, I think, and Kell had them shut away in a room on their own before they all rode away.
‘Rasten doesn’t like to work with children. He wouldn’t have touched them,’ Sierra said to the pale and trembling woman. ‘And you probably reminded him of his mothers. It’s just as well your menfolk were away. He’d have had no hesitation in taking one of them.’
Ardamon folded his arms across his chest. ‘Do you mean to tell me that raping, murdering monster has a conscience?’
‘Of a sort,’ Sierra said. ‘Kell’s the one without one.’ Once again, everyone was staring at her. She knew there was no threat but her power responded to more base instincts and flared in response to her nerves. Fortunately, running as low as it was without anything to feed it, she could keep it contained beneath her skin.
The little girl sitting nearest the still-shaking woman tugged on her mother’s sleeve and pointed at Sierra. ‘Look, Mama. She’s got all lights around her.’
The woman blanched. Stammering an excuse, she gathered the little girl up in her arms and fled from the room.
One of the men who had been standing with his hands folded behind his back took a step towards Sierra, glowering and with his hand hovering over the hilt of his belt-knife. ‘I’d like you to leave now, miss.’
Cam settled a hand on Sierra’s shoulder. ‘Now wait just a moment,’ he began.
‘Cam, no, it’s alright,’ Sierra murmured. ‘I’ll go.’
He held her where she was for a moment longer. ‘Do you think there’s anything else here we should know?’
‘No. They’re s
afe enough. Rasten won’t come back.’ She pulled away from his hand and ducked back into the entrance hall and from there went down the ramp and outside.
As soon as she set foot down on the snow Sierra heard a cough off to her left. She turned to see the woman from inside peering around the corner of the house. With a wary glance at the men waiting some distance away she beckoned to Sierra and then backed away again, moving around the corner of the house and out of sight.
Curious, Sierra followed. The woman led her around to the back of the house. The household dogs had been tied up to keep them from harassing the horses and a pair of caribou had taken advantage of their absence to come down from the trees and pick over the snow for any feed that had been set out for the goats. They watched the women warily, but did not flee.
The woman was still holding the little girl on her hip. ‘I didn’t want to ask in front of the others,’ the woman said. ‘You have the taint, don’t you? Like him.’
‘Yes,’ Sierra said. She took off her gloves and cupped her hands together to create a tiny globe of light. With Isidro as a willing test subject she’d finally learned how to make them without shocking a non-mage. She handed the ball to the little girl, who took it with a giggle of delight.
‘This is Ricca,’ the woman said, hitching the girl to a more comfortable position. ‘I’m Marima.’
‘Sierra,’ Sierra said, and reached out to smooth down a lock of the girl’s coal-black hair.
‘There’s something else. Something I didn’t tell the others. You saw it in her, didn’t you? Well, he did, too. I thought he was going to take her. Isn’t that what the likes of him do, take mages and turn them into slaves? I know that’s what she is. She’s not even old enough to be tested in the temple yet, but there’s no doubt in my mind.’
‘She will be,’ Sierra said. ‘She’s still too young — she’s got the spark, but it won’t develop into real power for a good few years. Maybe not until her menses start.’
‘Will she … Will she be like him?’