Smiler's Fair: Book I of The Hollow Gods

by Rebecca Levene

  Krish could see the rage darkening his da’s face as he brought his hand back and then forward, the movement looking almost slow but the crack of its impact against his ma’s cheek horribly loud.

  Krish clenched his own fist, but knew he wouldn’t use it. His father was twice his size and interfering only made the beatings worse. He watched instead, as the man who had never been his father hit the woman who was not, it seemed, his mother.

  6

  On the third dawn after the ruins of Manveer’s Folly, Captain Mahesh told Nethmi that they’d reach Winter’s Hammer by noon. They were the first words he’d spoken to her since they’d fled together from his dead guardsman and the thing that had killed him.

  The events in the ruins had brought back long-faded memories of her childhood. Her father had tried to keep her from the battles he fought, but it wasn’t always possible. Once the mountain savages had attacked the army’s camp itself and she remembered watching men fight and die. She’d found it exciting. To a six-year-old, it had seemed like an entertainment put on purely for her benefit.

  The territory they passed through now was a part of Ashanesland only because of those battles and those deaths. They hardly seemed worth it. The mules had trudged past the snowline long ago, and now they laboured through waist-high drifts and the soldiers were forced to stop often to dig them out. There was little sign of life up here, only the occasional buzzard circling above and sometimes the tracks of what might have been foxes. She’d seen nothing green for two days, nothing but the pure white of the snow and the dirtier white of the sky, pregnant with more of the stuff.

  Two of the servants had been frostbitten. Nethmi had stared, horrified, at the blackened stumps of their fingers and heard them sobbing at night when everyone else was asleep. Her robes were thick and her fur mittens kept her hands safe, but nothing could keep her warm. Each day the memory of heat would bleed out of her, and each evening the fire reminded her so that she could miss it all the more the next morning. But now all that was over.

  Her body had grown accustomed to her mule’s rocking gait. She tightened her legs around its waist as it scrambled to the top of yet another featureless rise. With her eyes half-closed against the white glare, it took her a moment to recognise what she was seeing: the climb had finally ended as their path spilled out onto a vast, snow-covered plain. Its only features were the monumental black rocks scattered across it, each ten times the height of a man. Their tops were dusted white but the smooth sides glittered in the feeble sunlight. Nethmi couldn’t imagine how the huge boulders had been carried here, all the way to the top of the world.

  As they drew closer she saw that the rocks had been carved, every one with the same image: a face, long and thin and male and subtly but terribly wrong. Her heart lurched as she realised what it reminded her of. The brief flash she’d seen of the worm man’s face in the darkness had had the same hollow cheeks and long, up-tipped eyes. The plain was covered in the rocks. There were a dozen within reach, hundreds of them just black spots in the distance.

  ‘Who is he?’ she turned to ask the rider behind her, realising too late that it was Mahesh.

  He shook his head. His hands were tight around the reins of his mount and she was sure he’d seen the resemblance too.

  ‘Did the savages carve them?’ she asked.

  He shook his head again, still staring, then roused himself from his daze. The smile he gave her was unpleasant. ‘You can ask them yourself, my lady, if you like. We’re here.’

  Ahead lay the shipfort that was to be her new home. Winter’s Hammer wasn’t large, perhaps a fourth the size of Whitewood. It squatted on its platform like a black toad, fashioned from the same rock that littered the plain. Its towers were jagged, as if the material was hard to carve. Now she looked, she could see that the face on some of the rocks was mutilated where blocks had been chipped away. The edges of the working were ragged, like unhealed wounds.

  The waters of the lake were very blue. The colour made her think of toothache. On its banks, the shaggy forms of hill mammoths drew the fort around. Like Winter’s Hammer itself, they were squatter and uglier than anything she’d seen before, their coats curled and almost the same colour as the rock. As her company drew nearer, the stench of them hit her, like bedding that hadn’t been washed for a year. It made her mule seem positively fragrant.

  A crowd of men waited for them on the lakeshore. There was no bridge that she could see, but small boats bobbed on the water behind them. All the men were armoured and armed, glints of metal shining from beneath their heavy furs. They were clearly the household guard and Nethmi wondered if her husband was among them. Her head spun and her breath was suddenly short. It hadn’t seemed quite real before. Now it felt inescapable.

  No one made a move towards them and there were no shouts of greeting. Their group approached the other in an eerie, hostile silence. Even their footsteps were muffled by the snow. When they were within forty paces, she saw swords being loosened in scabbards. Mahesh raised an eyebrow and his lips thinned but he waved at his own men to be at ease.

  The strangers’ expressions seemed to relax a little, but they weren’t gentle faces. Their skin was unpleasantly pale, a yellowish sort of beige, and their hair was straight and black. Their eyes were narrower and their noses smaller than any true Ashane’s. Theirs were faces she remembered from her childhood. She’d seen them dead on battlefields and caged by her father’s troops, ready to be ransomed back to their tribe when peace finally came.

  Her own people crowded behind her and she heard a murmur of discontent from the servants that they should have travelled so far and suffered such hardship only to be treated thus. When the two companies were face to face, a man a little taller and older than the rest stepped forward. ‘You are the Lady Nethmi, daughter of Lord Shaan of Whitewood?’

  ‘I am.’

  There was no change in his expression. His cold eyes shifted from her to Mahesh’s men. ‘You bring many people and many weapons. It looks as if you’ve come to make war.’

  Mahesh stepped forward, quivering with rage. He seemed to have forgotten his anger at her in his fury at this affront. ‘The Lady Nethmi has come to be married, and she was expecting to be welcomed to her new home, not questioned like a common brigand on a cold lakeshore. These men are for her protection and her honour. Lord Puneet does not send his beloved niece into your savage mountains unescorted.’

  The other man bowed, a very tiny amount. ‘Your forgiveness, Lady Nethmi. Many attacks may come under the cover of friendship, and we have long memories here.’

  She felt quite as angry as Mahesh, but schooled her expression into a smile. She could wear a mask when she needed, and there was no profit in starting her new life by making an enemy. ‘I understand, Captain …?’

  ‘Seonu Lin.’

  ‘Captain Lin. You’ve fulfilled your duty admirably. But now, I beg of you, my people are tired and cold. We’d welcome a warm hearth to sit by.’

  If his expression softened, it wasn’t perceptible. ‘You may come, but your soldiers and servants do not stay.’

  ‘Am I to understand you’re denying us the hospitality of your house?’ Mahesh asked, incredulous.

  ‘This land is hard. Food is scarce and we have many mouths to feed. You are strangers to us, your servants owe us no fealty. There are none within our walls who have not sworn an oath of service to Lord Thilak. It is the Seonu way.’

  ‘It’s a cold, mannerless way!’ Mahesh snapped.

  ‘And this also,’ Lin said. ‘There are those within Winter’s Hammer who remember the war, back when we were a free land. Men such as yours burned our tents and killed our children. Your father’s men, Lady Nethmi. It is safer to stay apart, so that old grudges cannot turn blood hot and see it spilt.’

  Suddenly, the tension that had dissipated was back. Lin’s men had never moved their hands far from their sword hilts and now Mahesh did nothing to stop his own as they grasped their weapons. Nethmi realised they were an
eye-blink away from lethal violence. A part of her wanted to let it happen and see her uncle’s plans for this alliance turn to ash.

  But her eyes shifted to the black walls of the shipfort and the high bow-slits within them. It wouldn’t be a fight; it would be a slaughter and she’d be caught in the middle of it. She remembered her father, after the mountain campaign was won, when King Nayan had offered him lordship over the newly conquered lands. I’ve had enough of fighting, he’d told his liege, and these people haven’t. Send me somewhere my sword can stay in its scabbard.

  ‘Enough,’ she said. ‘If you cannot accommodate my people then we must be content with that. If you have some kindness in you, perhaps you’ll send out fuel and food to warm them before they begin the long journey home.’

  Mahesh scowled and his men muttered, but they didn’t dare countermand her.

  ‘Your people will be fed one meal,’ Lin said. His lips twitched into the sketch of a smile. ‘I will send to the kitchens. There was a hunt yesterday, so there is a little meat to spare. Now, Lady Nethmi, you come with me. Lord Thilak waits.’

  She nodded stiffly. ‘I’ll need your men’s help, if you won’t let my own cross to Winter’s Hammer.’

  ‘Your clothes and bags will be brought.’

  ‘And my prow god.’ She gestured at the sled being drawn by two mules. The figure on it was draped in canvas to protect it from the snow, but the outline of its head and upraised arms was visible beneath the fabric.

  Lin stared blankly at her, then abruptly crossed to the figure and raised the canvas to look beneath. There was a shocked gasp from her people and several moved to stop him. Only she was permitted to touch her own prow god, but it was already too late. The jewels embedded in the statue’s torc glittered in the light. Its face, smooth and calm, neither male nor female, gazed benignly at Lin. He stared back. ‘This is your god.’

  Nethmi yanked the cover back over the figure. ‘Peacebringer, yes.’ Her uncle hadn’t stinted her on that, paying one of Bright Star’s finest sculptors to make the piece according to the truthteller’s god-dream on her fifteenth birthday. The prime family’s prow gods reflected on the whole fort and Peacebringer had protected them all while he was under their roof. She had prayed that war and ruin would come to Whitewood with her god’s departure.

  ‘I understand,’ Lin said after a moment. ‘Your ways are not our ways.’ He gestured to a group of his men, and they moved silently to grasp the four corners of the god’s palanquin and lift it towards the largest boat. It dipped low in the water beneath Peacebringer’s weight, and for a terrible moment Nethmi thought it might sink. But the boat stayed afloat and then she was being handed into the one beside it, a fur-wrapped tribesman taking his place facing her to pull the oars. She turned to watch the lakeshore as they moved away, lifting an arm to wave at Ayesha’s retreating figure. She hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye to her maid.

  Halfway across the water, the tribesman had begun to sweat beneath his furs, his face red with effort. She realised that it was a young face, only a few years out of boyhood. The tension in her muscles unwound a little as he smiled cautiously at her.

  ‘Why isn’t it frozen?’ she asked him.

  He frowned, and she wondered if he understood her at all, but continued, ‘The lake. Why is there no ice on it?’

  ‘Hot,’ he said. His eyes met hers for a moment before dropping shyly back to his oars.

  She laughed, surprising herself. ‘I hardly think so. If it grows any colder than this, I’m going to freeze solid.’

  ‘No, water hot. Feel.’

  He nodded down at the very blue lake beneath them, and after a moment she pulled off her mitten and cautiously trailed her fingers in the wavelets. It was warm, as warm as a bath. She realised that the mist hovering in patches above the water was actually steam.

  ‘Mountain burn,’ he said. ‘Make lake boil. Make tears of the moon.’

  ‘The tears of the moon?’

  He pointed behind her to one of the massive black rocks, then lapsed back into silence. The splash of the oars in the water was soothing, and the warm steam even more so. Nethmi’s eyes had drifted shut by the time they reached Winter’s Hammer and she jerked awake with a start as they bumped against the small dock. The oarsman jumped ashore to help her out of the boat as the others made their landing around her. She found herself reluctant to part from the young tribesman and his gentle face. Her future began as soon as she stepped through the doors of Winter’s Hammer, uncertain and unwanted.

  She didn’t know if the tribesman sensed her hesitation, but he touched two fingers to her chest, just above where her heart beat out its sudden fear. ‘Welcome,’ he said. ‘May our tent always shelter you.’

  Then Lin was beside her and the youthful tribesman faded into the mass of his fellows, leaving her stranded. She scanned the docks ahead of her, but they remained empty. ‘Will I meet my betrothed soon?’ she asked Lin. ‘I’m … anxious to do so.’

  ‘Of course, Lady Nethmi. Tonight, at the wedding. It is ill-luck to see his face before.’

  And that seemed to be the end of the conversation. He turned away from her to shout orders at his men in their own language. Her goods were gathered and carried towards the gates of the shipfort, and she was left with no choice but to follow after.

  The room they brought her to was big but austere. Its walls were covered by tapestries, which did little to keep out the chill radiating from the black stone beneath. Each tapestry showed a different view of the landscape outside the windowless shipfort. On the floor there were the hides of three bears, one black, one white and one the orange of gingerbread, the only colour in the place. Their heads had been left on and their glass eyes followed Nethmi as she crossed the room.

  Her possessions had been dumped in one corner. There were wardrobes and drawers, but without Ayesha there was no one to fill them for her. Lin had told her a woman would come with her gown and Nethmi guessed she must be her new maid. She sat on one of her chests, chin resting on her fists, and waited. It didn’t seem right that she’d woken in a cold tent this morning and would be lying in her wedding bed tonight. She’d thought she would have more time to prepare.

  She heard footsteps outside the door and a woman entered without knocking. Nethmi had hoped she might be Ashane – her betrothed must surely have brought some of his own people with him when he came to rule here – but she had the untrusting eyes and pale skin of the mountain savages. Their thin mouths didn’t seem to be made for smiling and the woman didn’t try.

  ‘Your gown, lady,’ she said, mangling the title as if she didn’t understand it. Perhaps she didn’t. Her father had told her the tribes had neither nobility nor rank before the Ashane came. The woman laid the dress out on the bed, then stared at Nethmi.

  After a few seconds, Nethmi realised that she was expected to dress herself. She ran her fingers over the material. It was grey and soft but thick, maybe woollen. She’d wanted to bring her own gown to wear. Wanderers often brought fine linen from the far west to Whitewood and Ayesha had known a woman who could sew a dress with seed pearls so that it shimmered wherever she walked. But her uncle had forbidden it. He’d told her Lord Thilak would be insulted by the suggestion that he couldn’t clothe his bride.

  Though the dress was clean, Nethmi could see the shadows of stains on it. She wondered how many women had worn it before her. There were no jewels, but the front had been heavily embroidered. The scene showed two warriors, two female warriors, engaged in a furious battle. The red thread of their wounds was vivid against the pale material.

  Nethmi ran her fingers along the stitches. ‘It’s not the most romantic scene I’ve ever seen.’

  ‘The first bride to wear this dress won her husband with her axe. The dress remembers.’

  ‘Oh.’

  The fireplace was filled with slabs of what looked like earth. They burned low, smelled terrible and seemed barely to heat the room. Nethmi shivered as she removed her travelling clot
hes. The buttons at the back were awkward to unclasp without help, but the woman didn’t offer any. Her bright black eyes watched expressionless as Nethmi stripped down to her petticoats. They were grubby from the long journey and she could smell her own stale sweat trapped beneath.

  ‘May I bathe first?’ she asked. ‘I’d like to go to my husband fresh.’

  ‘Bathe? No. The flesh must not be washed in winter. Illness follows.’

  ‘Oh,’ Nethmi said again. So there was no choice but to pull the dress over her soiled undergarments. It felt gentle against her skin, but the embroidery made it heavy. Her shoulders were weighed down with it. The back gaped open, its ribbons out of her reach, and the woman finally moved forward to assist. The calluses on her fingers brushed Nethmi’s skin as she tied them.

  When she was done, Nethmi turned to the tall mirror in one corner. She looked … not like herself. The dress made her seem older and her brown skin looked ill against the grey.

  ‘Very beautiful,’ the woman said. ‘Come now. Lord Thilak waits.’

  ‘But –’ Nethmi realised there were too many objections she wanted to make and no point to any of them. Where are my followers, my maids to strew flowers in front of me? Where is my honour guard? ‘Where is my prow god?’ she asked instead.

  ‘It is in the hall, waiting. Come. Time to wed.’

  The woman took her arm and Nethmi let herself be led through the door. The hallway outside was unadorned, though at intervals statues lurked in niches in the wall. They were of hard-faced men and stern women, carved from the same rough rock as everything else. Lanterns sat in brackets along the length of the hallway but did little to lighten the darkness. Winter’s Hammer looked as if it had been built by savages trying to imitate the wondrous shipforts of civilised folk they had only ever seen from a distance.