by Spurrier, Jo
‘I wish we had another day to think this over,’ Cam said once they were far enough away to speak in safety.
‘I thought you were the impulsive one and it was Isidro who devised the plans and strategies.’
‘It used to be that way,’ Cam said. ‘But everything is different now. Are you sure you’re prepared for this, Sirri?’
‘Rasten said he had solutions for all our concerns,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t be agreeing to this if he thought I would end up dead.’ Sierra knew it didn’t quite answer Cam’s question, but she wasn’t prepared to discuss it. From this point on she would have to keep her power under rigorous control and focussing on her fears and worries now would only result in it rising up again. I’ve learned so much in the last two months, Sierra told herself yet again. I’ll be able to control it this time. I know I will.
They met Rasten just after dawn. His escort waited some distance away, gathered in plain sight. Rasten strode out to meet them alone with his coat open and swinging from his shoulders and his hands clasped behind his back. Since they’d set out Sierra had been wondering what mood they would find him in and once they drew close enough for her to make out his eyes, she sighed in resignation. His good humour of the day before was gone. Today his face was tight and hard and he watched Cam with a narrow gaze as they approached.
‘Good morning, Little Crow,’ Rasten said to her as she reined in and dismounted, dropping her mount’s reins to make him stand. ‘Do you mean to hand the gelding over to the Akharians, too?’
‘Cam will take him back for me,’ she said.
Rasten shrugged and Sierra relaxed a little. Perhaps his mood wasn’t as dark as she had thought. ‘And so you are set on this course, Little Crow? There’s nothing I can say to change your mind?’
‘Nothing,’ Sierra said. ‘Until Isidro is safe I can’t consider anything else.’
‘I don’t suppose it has occurred to you that Balorica’s better off where he is? The Collegium won’t care if he’s crippled so long as his mind is sharp enough to serve, and he’ll be beyond Kell’s reach. Valeria’s, too.’ Rasten turned his gaze to Cam. ‘This one would be wise to join him. He would survive longer in an Akharian mine than he will when Dremman realises he is working against him.’
‘I’ve made up my mind, Rasten,’ Sierra said.
He sighed. ‘So you have. I ought to be glad of it. You would be no good to me if your spirit was broken. Tell me, Sierra, have you ever heard the tale of the prisoner in the tower who tamed the birds that lived in the rafters and watched their flight? It’s a load of horseshit, of course. Any jailer who knew his business would have poisoned the birds. But you’re my bird, Little Crow, and I won’t stop you from flying.’
Cam shuffled his feet in the snow. ‘Sirri,’ he said in an undertone. ‘We have a time limit here.’
Rasten swung around to glare at him with undisguised hostility. ‘So you have,’ he said and reached into his pocket to pull out a pair of milky-white stones. For a moment Sierra stared at them in sheer surprise. They were identical to the ones that had littered the scorched ruins of the village.
Rasten held one up to show to her. ‘Oh, they’re yours, sure enough. I had some men ride out there to gather them. This one is for you,’ he said, holding it out to her. ‘You’ll have to keep it hidden. At least you have a choice as to where. If I had a cunt I’d choose that over the other option.’
That made Cam choke a little and when Rasten turned his gaze back to him Sierra cursed inwardly. She had been hoping to keep Rasten’s attention fixed on her. To drag him back she stepped closer and took the stone from his hand, letting her fingers brush against his. It worked. Rasten turned back to her and held her gaze as she slowly stepped back again.
‘Of course if they find it on you they’ll know you’re playing them,’ Rasten said. ‘If any man takes a shine to you, you will have to deal with it quickly.’
Sierra nodded and focussed on the stone in her hand, trying to make sure it was the communication device she and Rasten had agreed upon, and nothing more.
‘That’s it?’ Cam said. ‘You know how the Akharians treat their slave-women and that’s the extent of your concern for her?’
‘Cam —’ Sierra said, her heart sinking as Rasten’s head snapped around to focus on him again. By the Black Sun, why couldn’t he leave well enough alone?
‘You think I should be concerned?’ Rasten said. ‘I would be happier if no other man ever touched her, but that’s not within my control. She knows what she’s letting herself in for. Better than you do, I’d imagine, although your brother could no doubt tell you a thing or two about it.’
Cam recoiled and began to snarl a reply and as Rasten threw his head back in a peal of laughter Sierra grabbed Cam by the arm, prepared to use power to restrain him if she had to.
‘You son of a bitch —’ Cam began as Sierra dug her fingers into his arm.
‘Don’t let him bait you,’ she hissed.
Rasten was watching them both with mild interest. ‘It’s such a little thing,’ he said. ‘At worst it’s a few unpleasant hours, but it’s inevitable and at the end of it all what difference does it make?’
‘If you really think that way,’ Cam said, ‘why is it so important for you to kill your master?’
Rasten’s face turned flat. He started towards Cam but Sierra pushed herself between them. ‘Rasten! We have other things to attend to.’
‘That fool of a prince —’
‘He doesn’t understand, Rasten.’ She caught Cam’s eye with a warning glare. ‘He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.’
‘Oh, I think I do,’ Cam said. ‘I’m talking about total and utter hypocrisy. You claim to care about her, Rasten, and yet you don’t blink an eye when there’s every chance that she’ll be passed around a camp full of soldiers —’
‘What’s your point?’ Rasten said. ‘It’s just fucking.’
‘Rasten! I told you, he doesn’t understand.’ She placed both hands on his chest and felt his power pulsing beneath his skin, hotter than blood.
‘If I ever get the chance, princeling, I’ll make you understand,’ Rasten said. ‘That’s a promise.’
‘Rasten, what about the other stone?’ Sierra said, desperate to bring him back on track. She could fight him here if she had to but the display it would create would undoubtedly draw notice and it would delay their plans by days at least.
‘The other one is for him,’ Rasten said. ‘Since he doesn’t have so much as a spark of power we’ll have to seal it to him with a ritual so he can use it.’
‘A ritual?’ Sierra said. ‘You didn’t mention that.’
Rasten shrugged. ‘You wanted some way to communicate. There aren’t many options when one of you has as much talent as a lump of coal.’
‘Alright, then,’ Sierra said, ‘but I’ll do it.’ If Rasten did the working, he would have a permanent link with Cam. Since Cam had no talent at all it would be of limited use, but it was still something Sierra would far rather avoid. ‘You’ll have to walk me through it. Give me the stone.’
He handed it over and turned to Cam. ‘We’re going to need some blood. Strip.’
‘What?’ Cam said. ‘Sirri —’
‘Just to the waist will do,’ Sierra said. ‘Sorry, Cam, I should have guessed it would need this. I should have warned you.’
‘But it’s cursed cold out here!’
‘I can cast a shield to keep you warm. It will only take a few minutes.’
‘Will he hold still, or do you want to tie him up?’ Rasten asked her.
‘He’ll stand,’ Sierra said.
Cam made no move to take off his coat. ‘How do you know this thing is even going to work for me if I’m not a mage?’
‘It’s an enchantment,’ Sierra explained. ‘The work lies in its creation. The problem here is that you need to be able to use it, not just wear it, which is why we need the ritual. It’ll be using your life force to fuel itself, but we’ll only need
it for a few months, so it shouldn’t do you any real harm.’
‘Just don’t take it off,’ Rasten said. ‘Or it’ll run down and die and you’ll need another mage to restart it.’
‘Sirri —’ Cam began.
‘It only needs a little cut. Best to get it over with.’ She summoned her power and with a gesture cast an encircling shield that surrounded the three of them in a bubble of warm air. It immediately began to fill with mist as the trapped moisture from their breath condensed into fog. Her shield manifested as a net of flickering lightning and Rasten turned his face up to watch it fade into the mist.
‘Pretty,’ he remarked.
Cam took off his belt, laying his sword at his feet, and quickly stripped off his coat, jacket, shirt and undershirt. He immediately began to shiver. The temperature inside the bubble was only a little above freezing. It was warm enough that he wouldn’t get frostbite, but hardly a comfortable temperature to be standing around half naked. Any warmer however, would soon have them standing in a pool of freezing slush.
‘You have a knife or do you want mine?’ Rasten asked Sierra.
‘I’ll use my own,’ she said, baring her hands and pulling out the little belt-knife Mira had given her.
‘Alright. You do it like this.’
Rasten explained the ritual to her once before they began and then again as she followed his instructions step by step. Sierra had never made an enchantment. Her lessons with Rasten had focussed on offensive and defensive techniques, not the minute precision and control required to secure a working within the crystalline matrix of a stone. She followed Rasten’s instructions by rote as she nicked a tiny cut on Cam’s chest, just over his breast bone amid the downy fuzz of fine, pale hair that marked his foreign blood.
When she smeared a drop of his blood on the milky surface of the stone she felt the enchantment inside uncoil and awaken, latching onto him like a leech. Cam didn’t flinch at the touch of the blade, but when the enchantment sank its teeth into him he gasped and bent double as though someone had taken him by surprise with a punch to the gut.
Sierra grabbed his shoulder, forgetting that her fingertips were smeared with blood and left sticky streaks on his skin. ‘Cam?’
‘Ah … Fires Below, you might have warned me.’ It felt like a fish-hook snagged beneath his heart — Sierra sensed it, too, for an instant before the pain was washed away in a tide of warmth. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and bask in it while the rest of her wanted to wilt in shame that she could take such pleasure in her friend’s pain.
‘You’ll forget all about it in a couple of days,’ Rasten said. Sierra felt him come to stand behind her and he laid a hand on the back of her neck. It made her shudder. She wanted to slap him away but she made herself hold still, unsure how he would react if she did. Her power reared up and surged at the repression, though, and he surely felt it bite at him through her skin.
Cam must have felt her go very still. He looked up with an expression of pure hatred in his eyes and encircled her arm with his hand. He took a step back, drawing her with him.
‘I’ll find something to bandage that cut,’ she said to him.
‘Don’t bother. It’s no more than a scratch. It will stop on its own.’ He pulled his clothing on again and took the bloody stone from her fingers. ‘Does the wretched thing actually work after all that?’
Well, let’s test it and see, she thought to him. Can you hear me?
He recoiled as though she’d slapped him. ‘By the Black Sun herself …’ How … like this?
Yes. Just picture me and imagine you’re saying the words.
Rasten watched them with his lips pressed together. He was jealous, Sierra knew, but she couldn’t bring herself to move away from Cam to placate him. ‘There’s one more thing to be dealt with,’ she said. ‘I still can’t keep my power from peaking —’
‘I’ve noticed,’ he said dryly. ‘We don’t have time to teach you to control it properly so we’ll have to do it the roundabout way. I can take the excess from you but you’ll have to lower your shields and let me in. If you fight me in the middle of an Akharian camp their mages will know at once just what is hiding among their slaves.’
‘I can do that,’ Sierra said. She was familiar with the procedure. Raising and supplying power had been Kell’s main use for her. Early on, the suppression stones had been enough to prevent her from fighting him and later the heat of the punishment bands had forced her to submit.
‘You’re making a mistake allying yourself with these people,’ he said to Sierra.
‘But you think she should go back to Kell with you?’ Cam said. ‘You, who doesn’t care what she might go though in the slave camps? Why would she ever choose to go with you over staying with people who care about her for who she is, not what she can do for them? But of course you wouldn’t say anything against it. It’s what you have in mind for her, after all, if she were ever fool enough to turn herself in.’
Rasten stared at Cam blankly, as though he’d spoken in an unfamiliar language. Then he turned to Sierra. ‘You’re right. He doesn’t understand.’
‘I tried to tell you,’ Sierra said.
‘Look, princeling,’ Rasten said. ‘She’s higher above you than you could possibly imagine and she is still growing. She’s not like you at all.’ To Sierra, he said, ‘You’re starting to feel it, aren’t you? It’s getting harder and harder to remember that you’re supposed to share their little hurts and struggles. To pretend you’re human. Well, this is only the beginning, Little Crow. That night at the village wasn’t an aberration, a freak moment you can put to the back of your mind and forget all about. That’s what the world is really like. At the moment you think these insects will help you, that they will keep you warm and safe and share what you’re going through, but when they see the real you they’ll run screaming.
‘I know you think I’ve forgotten, but I do remember what it was like to have a family, and so I know what I’m talking about. You’ll destroy them if they don’t abandon you first. I want to spare you that pain … but you’ll fly where you will, Little Crow, and I can’t stop you.’
He dispelled her shield with a flick of his hand, breaking it so sharply the power returned to Sierra in a stinging smack of energy that rippled and crackled over her skin before arcing down to earth itself in the ground.
‘When the time comes, call me. I’ll be nearby.’
He turned and stalked away across the bright swathe of snow. In the distance a man started out from his waiting riders, trotting closer with a riderless horse in tow.
Sierra turned away, leaning towards Cam as he slipped an arm around her shoulders. She leaned close, taking comfort in his warmth and the trickle of power that still flowed from the cut on his chest.
‘He’s mad, isn’t he?’ Cam said. ‘Totally and utterly mad.’
‘I tried to tell you,’ Sierra said.
Epilogue
Cam made her a makeshift toboggan by cutting a forked limb from a tree with the two long branches to form the base and a short, upwardly curved stem on which to affix the traces. They disturbed a moose feeding in the stand of trees where he cut the branch. The beast peered down its long nose as it stamped and pawed at the snow and rather than risk goading it into a charge they took the branch elsewhere to finish the job.
Sierra lashed a hide to the forked branches with the fur side down to provide a slick base, then tied her meagre supplies to it. She hoped it would be enough to convince anyone who came across her that she had been travelling alone in the wilderness for some time.
When it was all ready Sierra slipped her feet into the thongs of her snowshoes and slung the sled-rope across her shoulder. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose this is it.’
‘Do you have your magic rock?’ he said with a straight face.
‘Cam!’ She went to prod him with her forefinger but he stepped back out of her reach with a grin. The humour was short-lived. They could hear the sound of axes echoing over the hill
side.
‘Will you be alright?’ he asked her one last time.
‘They can’t do anything to me unless I let them. I’m more worried about you, getting past Rasten first, and then dealing with Dremman.’
Cam shrugged. ‘Ardamon won’t be far behind us. I’ll wait with him until you send word that everything has gone as expected.’
Sierra shook her head. ‘I’d rather not use it unless it’s absolutely necessary. There’s always the chance that one of the Akharian mages will overhear. Just go, Cam. If anything goes wrong, I’ll deal with it and tell you afterwards. But if Rasten gives you any trouble, call me, and I’ll deal with him.’
He turned away with a grimace. ‘I’m the warrior here, I should be protecting you.’ He scrubbed a hand through his hair and sighed. ‘Well, at the rate the Akharians have been travelling they should reach Demon’s Spire within a month. So long as the Thaw holds off, anyway.’ He looked away over the valley. ‘He was only saying those things to scare you.’
‘I know.’
‘You won’t need his help once you get your hands on Vasant’s books.’
‘I’m sure you’re right.’
He wrapped his arms around her. Sierra shut her eyes against the sting of tears. She’d hugged her mothers and fathers before walking down the hill to surrender to Kell. They’d begged her not to go, but they hadn’t tried to stop her.
‘You’re shaking,’ he said.
‘I’m just a little nervous.’
‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘Yes, I do. There’s nowhere else I can go, remember?’ She shook her hood back and let the cold air brace her. ‘I’d best go.’
‘Sirri, tell Isidro … tell him I’ll see him soon. And tell Mira I’ll bring her the head of any man who hurts her. Starting with her uncle if she wants.’