by Jen Williams
Sebastian glanced at Wydrin, who looked stricken. ‘That’s hardly what I said, Mum.’
‘The battle of Baneswatch, commanding the brood sisters and the wyverns, fighting alongside mountain savages.’ Devinia raised an eyebrow. ‘He sounds like a warrior to me. The sort that legends are written about.’
Very carefully, Sebastian put his goblet back down on the table. ‘Forgive me, I need to get some fresh air.’ He saw from Wydrin’s expression that she intended to follow him out, so he gave her the tiniest shake of his head. ‘The heat of this place disagrees with me. I shall be back shortly.’
Up on deck it was relatively quiet. He saw men and women tending to the tasks that kept a ship in good health, whilst a handful of others stood watch. The deck was filled with orange light from the lamps that hung everywhere. Beyond the guardrail the cliffs were a dark, solid presence, the sea a whisper against their hull. The air was full of the thick, wild scent of the jungle, and the high lonely calls of the creatures living in the trees passing above them.
He walked away from the main source of activity, heading towards the rear of the ship. It was darker here, the shapes of barrels and ropes looming out of the shadows. Heading for the portside, he looked down to catch the glimmer of lamps and starlight on the water. There was a section of lower ground; a long length of rocky beach sat at the bottom of the cliff, half concealed by thick foliage.
And there was the blue light again.
Sebastian felt his heart stutter in his chest. The ghostly light painted the leaves of the bushes with a glow like diamonds, and, as he watched, the figure stepped into view: the tall man with broad shoulders, hair curling close to his head. Sebastian couldn’t tell if he was imagining it, but it seemed to him that the ghost was clearer, and he was able to make out small details that had been lost in the light before. His clothes had a slightly military bearing, and he wore an ornate belt at his hip. The figure looked up at Sebastian, and their eyes met.
Sebastian looked back across the deck. There was no one close to him. His broadsword and other smaller weapons were wrapped carefully in his own bunk, along with his heavier mail and armour; he wore only his metal-plated greaves and bracers, more out of habit than anything else, and a small knife at his belt. Quickly, he began to pull on the straps of the last of his armour, loosening and then carefully placing them on the deck. Next he took off the light cotton cloak, unfastening the badge of Isu as he did so. He looked at it for a moment before placing it on top of his cloak. Eventually, he stood in his trousers and shirt, his wide leather belt and his boots.
The figure was still there, watching him. Without thinking too closely about what he was doing, Sebastian pulled himself up onto the guardrail. He looked over his shoulder once, half expecting Wydrin to have appeared out of nowhere to tell him he was being an idiot, but he was alone.
Standing up straight, he felt the world turning around him. There was a sense of something new beginning, or ending. It didn’t seem to matter which.
Sebastian dived off the ship into the black water, barely making a splash.
PART TWO
The Wolf with Two Faces
10
‘The passengers are here, Captain.’
Captain Allgood looked away from where his crew were readying the harpoon for travel and met the eyes of Reese, one of the youngest boys to serve on board The Huntress. The lad’s face was ashen.
‘Well? What are you telling me for? Show them to their bunk.’ Allgood waved at the boy irritably. He didn’t like dealing with passengers; they were a useful source of extra coin, but they didn’t stay quiet and still like the rest of his cargo. He turned back to the harpoon, peering critically at the ropes and chains. Next time they made port in Onwai he was going to have the whole thing looked over, refitted, if necessary. It had been a hard season up in the northern seas, and the ice and salt took their toll.
‘I think, Captain, that you might want to come and … have a look.’
Allgood turned back. Reese looked unsettled, and this was a boy who had jumped into the sea armed only with a spear, often finishing the job where the harpoon had failed. He was strong and wiry, and not easily scared.
‘If you’re wasting my time, lad, I’m having your rum ration.’
He followed the boy back down to the gangway where the crew were rolling on barrels of provisions. Behind them the port of Kortstone was quiet, shrouded in mist. Two figures with hoods stood to one side, letting the men and women with the barrels and sacks past.
‘If the Narhl has changed his bloody mind, I’m keeping the fee,’ Allgood muttered to Reese. ‘I told him. I said, “such as you has no business going so far south”, but there’s no telling those savages anything.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be the problem, Captain,’ said Reese faintly.
As they approached, one of the figures stepped forward. She wore decent travelling leathers, a thick woollen cloak with a deep hood covering her face, and a pack slung over one shoulder. The pack appeared to be tied with strips of a wide variety of strange materials: rough hessian, blue ribbons, a strip of red silk. The figure wore gloves.
‘Hello, yes, I’m Captain Allgood,’ the Captain said. ‘This is The Huntress. She’s a working boat, as you can tell, so I don’t really have the time for chit-chat and social niceties. My boy Reese here will show you to the space we’ve cleared. Meals are twice a day, you get the same as the rest of the crew, so don’t moan or Graces save us I will feed you to the first sea monster we find.’
The figure nodded once, and pulled back her hood. ‘Thank you, Captain. That all sounds quite sufficient.’
Allgood took an involuntary step backwards. ‘I … what … who?’
‘I told you,’ muttered Reese next to him.
The woman had skin as green as a ripe apple, and eyes that were yellow from lid to lid, with a black slit in the middle: the eyes of a snake. Her hair was silvery white and tied back into a long braid. When she smiled, he saw that her teeth were pointed and sharp. She was beautiful, and frightening; like the sheer drop from the side of a cliff, or the rolling bank of cloud that announced a storm.
‘What are you?’ Allgood finally formed a sentence. His fingers were scrabbling for the knife at his belt, with little success. He was not a man who had a lot of experience with fighting; his targets were taken down by harpoon and spear from a distance. ‘I will not – I will not have monsters on board this boat.’
The green woman frowned slightly. ‘I believe my husband has spoken to you and brokered our passage aboard your ship. Is there a problem?’
‘A problem?’ Allgood swallowed hard. ‘Your husband is Narhl, and I got no problem with the Narhl, but you—’ He shook his head. His fingers had found the knife, but he hadn’t drawn it. ‘By Ede’s soil and seas, what are you? I’ve never seen owt like you before.’
The woman drew herself up to her full height and raised a single eyebrow. ‘Have you journeyed the entire span of the globe, Captain Allgood? Have you scoured every inch of Ede’s soil and sea? No? Then you do not know all of her mysteries.’
Allgood shook his head. He felt lost. He wished that Reese wasn’t standing there watching him.
‘I can’t – I can’t just—’
‘Captain Allgood, I am a peaceful person. I do not have to be, but I am.’ The green woman smiled a little wider, revealing more of her pointed teeth. ‘I simply wish to travel to the destination as discussed with my husband. I will be no trouble to you or your crew. Unless you or your crew invite trouble. We are paying you handsomely, are we not?’
Allgood puffed his breath out through his lips. The green woman’s husband had given them more coin than they would likely make from hunting this season, and Allgood’s threat about keeping the money whatever happened now felt distinctly rash. Behind the woman, the other figure had come closer, and he could see a sliver of distinctive Narhl skin beneath the hood. The man had been skinny for one of the men from the frozen north, not obviously a warrio
r, but his eyes had a wild cast to them. Allgood found abruptly that he didn’t feel much like denying this pair what they wanted after all.
‘All right. Fine.’ He took a deep breath. ‘What should I call you, then?’
‘My name is Ephemeral,’ said the woman seriously. ‘It is my own name. I chose it.’
‘Are you certain about this, Terin?’
They were finally in their bunk, a tiny room down some steps, just opposite the hold. It was good to be away from the curious eyes of the crew. Ephemeral sat with Terin on the narrow bed.
‘Absolutely.’ He nodded once. He smiled. ‘We’ve spoken about it a lot.’
Ephemeral shifted on the bed. Her husband was not a typical Narhl. He was wiry and thin, a thinker rather than a fighter. His hair, brown streaked with grey, was wild and untidy, his small beard dotted with pale blue lichen. His eyes were dark blue. She still found his features fascinating, and could not grow tired of looking at them. And there was the way he looked at her. Without flinching.
‘It could be painful for you. Dangerous. It could kill you eventually. The warmth.’
He tipped his head to one side. It was a thing he did when he was thinking. ‘I have walked that line all my adult life, my love. The flames grant me visions sometimes. Imagine what I might see in a place where the sun beats down all day?’ He smiled. ‘Besides, we are already here. We both know we must go. Isn’t this true?’
Ephemeral nodded, and took his hand in hers, the marbled pebble patterns of his skin against the flat green of her own. ‘Your people do not leave the Frozen Steps often.’
It was a momentous thing he was doing. She could feel that in her blood, in the way his kin had looked at him before they left.
Terin nodded. ‘We are trapped there, really. Bound by the cold, bound by the mountain. Our connection to the frozen lands makes travel anywhere uncomfortable. But, Ephemeral, there is so much I must see.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘There will be libraries.’
Ephemeral smiled, but it felt too tight on her face. She led him into danger, this peaceful, kind-hearted man.
‘I do not know where he is exactly,’ she said. She pressed her free hand to her chest. ‘But I feel it, in here. There is something wrong. And it grows worse, all the time. The link between us is faint, because we are so far apart, but I feel it, keenly. I feel my father in our shared blood. I have to find him, husband. I must help him, if I can. Tell me,’ she shifted on the bed again, ‘tell me again what you saw when the flames took you.’
Terin nodded, his long face growing serious. There were faint burn marks up both of his arms and, she knew, across his narrow chest. His people did not approve of his fire-trances, but they would listen when he told them what he saw, because they knew the truth of it.
‘I saw a man with a black beard and black hair, a man with blue eyes and an unknown mountain in his soul.’ Terin’s voice was entirely normal, but his gaze shifted over her right shoulder, staring off into nothing. ‘There is a sword in his hands and a great weight on his heart. He moves into darkness now, and there are wolves in between the trees.’ Terin’s brow creased slightly. ‘There is an evil in the forest, something god-fed, and I can’t see it clearly. It moves, and it hunts, and it wishes …’ Terin shook his head, as though the words wouldn’t quite form. ‘It wishes great harm for the world. I can’t see it clearer than that. And the man moves closer to this darkness, and a great maelstrom of change. It is a chaos that will take him beyond the reach of the fire-trances, beyond my sight.’ He blinked rapidly, coming back to her. ‘That is all I remember, my love. I am sorry it cannot be clearer.’
She reached up and placed her hand briefly against his cheek. His skin was still cold, which was a blessing. ‘You see much,’ she said with feeling. ‘But you must promise me, Terin. If it becomes overwhelming – the heat, the strangeness of the places we go to – then tell me. I will take you back, if you need me to. I will not risk you.’
‘I will be fine.’ He smiled again. ‘I am not like my kin. I want to see the world.’
‘Even so, I will watch you,’ she said firmly. ‘And if I decide we must leave, then we will leave.’
Terin nodded once. There were a few moments of silence between them. All around, they could hear the crew preparing to leave Kortstone. The cabin they had been assigned was cramped and smelled of fish. For the first time, Ephemeral allowed herself to feel a shiver of excitement. She was truly journeying out into the world now, with no one to advise her or hold her back. The decisions she made from now on were her own, for better or for worse.
‘You miss your sisters,’ said Terin suddenly.
Ephemeral looked down at her own hands. It would be some time before she saw another like her, she knew that much.
‘They will be fine,’ she said, with more assurance than she felt. ‘Crocus and Havoc are busy. Indigo is keeping King Aristees on his feet. Toast is so taken with the wyverns, I doubt she noticed that I left.’
‘They will all miss you,’ said Terin. ‘They look up to you.’
‘My sisters walk their own paths now.’ And with that, she felt a small throb of pride. ‘They know their own names, their own minds.’ She tipped her head to one side, mimicking the motion he made when he was thinking. ‘We will see so many places, Terin.’
Terin grinned. ‘Ephemeral, you are my strength. Without you I would still be cowering in the snow somewhere, waiting for visions to transport me. Now I sail across oceans, towards adventure and the unknown. And libraries!’
‘And libraries,’ agreed Ephemeral. ‘We will find my father, and we will save him if we can. After that, the libraries of Ede are ours.’
11
They appeared just as Estenn was taking her midday meal. It was a fine hot stew, spiced with herbs grown in the jungle of Euriale, steeped in the juices of fruits they had picked themselves. The meat – that tasted akin to pork, but wasn’t – was tender and fell to pieces as her spoon touched it. Ivy and Gen appeared at the entrance to the Emissary’s home. The younger girl looked distressed, while Gen simply looked angry. Estenn put down her bowl and gestured to them.
‘What is it?’
Ivy sidled over the flagstones that were set into the earth at the entrance, clearly unnerved at entering such a holy space. Estenn made her home in an old temple to the Twins, one of the very few stone structures in their sprawling camp. It sat at the heart of their dwellings, a low building of pale-brown rock crouching close to the black earth like a wolf ready to spring. There was no door, just a dark entranceway of square rock, and on the floor beyond the flagstones were the remains of an old mosaic made of black and white tiles. If they filled the place with strong lamps it was still possible to see how one side had depicted Res’na, a white wolf against black, and Res’ni, black and snarling against a snowy background. There were two altars at the back of the squalid room, and Estenn fancied she could still smell the old blood that had been spilled there, particularly at night when the moon was full. She kept only the barest furniture in there, and slept on the stones. It was her place as the Emissary.
‘It’s the Spinner. He’s sick,’ said Ivy. She glanced up at the altars, lit now with long, thin beeswax candles. She pressed the palms of her hands flat to either side of her face, a brief entreaty of blessings from the Twins. ‘He’s shaking all over and won’t calm down.’
‘He’s pitching a fit or something,’ added Gen. She wouldn’t quite come over the threshold, preferring instead to lean on her spear just outside the entrance. ‘I think you should come and see, Emissary.’
Estenn put the bowl down on the flagstones and got to her feet.
Outside, the settlement was busy. Following Gen and Ivy she weaved around men and women performing their daily tasks in the sweltering heat, receiving nods and grateful smiles as she passed. One or two called out to her: ‘Bless you, Emissary’, ‘The Twins give you strength, Emissary’. She passed the cooking pits, where red-hot embers cooked the meat they had carefully skinned and spe
ared on spits. These were tended with special care, as cooking the meat was considered an act of worship to the wolf gods themselves.
Another guard stood at the entrance to the Spinner’s enclosure now, a thin man with grey hair and a pirate’s scars across his back and chest. He met Estenn’s eyes with a frown but didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to; Estenn could hear the Spinner’s howls from where she stood.
‘Stay here,’ she told the three of them firmly.
She ventured down into the dark, snatching up a lamp from the ground as she passed it. When she reached the Spinner’s enclosure, she paused. He had thrown off the blankets and the sacking they covered him in, but she could not see him clearly because he’d also knocked over the lamps they kept in his chamber. She silently thanked the Twins for this small mercy.
‘What has happened?’ she asked, not troubling to keep her voice soft. ‘Why are you causing such a ruckus?’
The Spinner howled again, a wild, discordant keening. It sounded as though it came from several throats at once, and Estenn could feel her hair trying to stand on end. The creature was shivering all over, and in the dark she could see his complicated limbs scraping at the walls.
‘You must be calm,’ she told him. ‘If you do not calm yourself, I will have them all down here to restrain you. Dirty human fingers, corrupting your skin. Is that what you want?’
The Spinner wailed once more, and then gave a great convulsive shudder. Orange lamplight ran sickly over rounded scales of pearlescent armour; they seemed to run like wax as she watched. She squeezed her eyes shut to try and keep the sight out. She had seen a great deal that was strange during her years on Euriale, but the Spinner’s true form was still difficult to process.
‘It is coming!’ cried the Spinner, his voice still full of strange harmonies. ‘It pierces us, tears back the centuries.’