Salvation's Fire

by Justina Robson

  The Kinslayer had severed the gods from the world. Their temples and their followers were everywhere bereft. Only the Guardians remained. Celest was ambivalent about the gods. A god could have restored wings to the Aethani and not left it to her to attempt the journey in some gesture of reparation she wasn’t entirely up to but which had to be done. It had not ended as she had hoped. Some things were not undoable. Maybe the gods were responsible for that impulse to improve and mend that seemed to fill her with the urge to action she felt now. So much had been made ruin and the alternative was to lie in the cherry orchard in a drunken stupor, avoiding people and watching the days pass by unchanged. She couldn’t dredge up sufficient self-pity for that.

  “But you are going,” Deffo said, hanging onto the stable door as a way of half-hiding. “When this is done.”

  Heno and Nedlam, gathered here under the pretence of looking after the horses, looked meaningfully at her. She fancied there was a twinge of wistfulness in Heno’s face, but he was always hard to read. She figured he was getting better at dealing with emotions, but he didn’t like to show it.

  “We’re going. After the wedding. Soon as it’s over.” She nodded firmly.

  “Does that mean I get to sing?” Ralas asked. He was sitting on a hay bale, picking hair out of the horse brush using the iron comb. His movements were slow, pain-filled but executed with great determination and grace. A large ball of horse hair was gathered at his side. “I noticed some rather nice instruments around the place. In the halls. Gathering dust.”

  “You can have them. And yes. We need musicians. If you want to play, that is. Though you don’t have to play ‘All Black and Silver Fire He Came’.” She named the song he had been working on to celebrate Deffo’s musteline heroism in the defeat of Wall—a song fraught with the most expansive lyrics and melodramatic chords, not to mention a role of daring-do which stretched the imagination almost to breaking point. She looked at Ralas with caution. He could be so self-deprecating and sarcastic at times that she wasn’t sure he intended to be taken at his word, but he looked cheered. “No ‘Castle Mourn’-ing,” she added.

  “Oh, I think I have to play whatever the bride requests,” he said with a smirk and flexed his right hand, looking critically at his long fingers, pale and weak. They were filthy and the nails black with grease from the brushes. “Maybe I could have some new clothes? A bard should not appear as a tramp.” He gestured at his rough travelling gear, much of which had not been washed for weeks. “In fact, some of us are in serious need of bathing and grooming.” He glanced at the Yoggs.

  Nedlam bared her huge teeth in a grin and patted Celestaine’s horse, whose hide was gleaming softly in the sunlight coming through the door. She clapped it on the neck, gently, and rested her hand on its withers, managing to make it look small though it was a war-steed and a high one at that. “All finished here. Shiny little horsie. Very nice work.”

  “He means us,” Heno growled, shaking his head as he looked at Celestaine to see how bad it was going to be. There was a strange tension around his eyes, a sombre resignation waiting to be born.

  She had honestly not given a thought so far to appearing at a clan gathering with him at her side. With them all looking at her she could see that they were all picturing it, aside from Nedlam who was busy licking a finger and applying it to a streak of mud on her booted knee. Celest looked at Heno, her lover and her most loyal companion. Slate blue of skin, white of hair, tusked, moustached, taller by a foot than any human she had ever known. And Nedlam, eight foot and then some of massive power, topped by a spiked black coxcomb. She had a brief vision of Nedlam in a dress, holding Wall’s gigantic hammer with a ribbon tied around its haft, the bloody handprint of a human child on her bodice, laced with the guts of her enemies to join the human and the Yorughan traditional formalwear. She blinked to get rid of it.

  Even without that there would be some kind of explanation required. But then, what explanation could she possibly offer?

  Hello, everyone. Yes, it’s me, Celestaine the Fair, of Fernreame. I know the song says I killed the Kinslayer but really it was a group effort and the people you should thank are these two here. He did breed them in a pit under the earth for the specific purpose of channelling his power to wipe out all humankind but in a turn-up for the books they decided to stick the knife in his back first. So, I know they look like every nightmare you’ve been having for the last few years but if it hadn’t been for them letting me go after I got captured and helping us all to reach the inner sanctum at Nydarrow none of this would ever have happened and you’d all be topsoil by now! Isn’t that amazing? And yes, this one that does the death-lightning is here with me. On my arm. We’re together. I hope you’ll all join us in offering a toast to the bride and groom…

  “Maybe it’s wiser if we don’t go,” Heno said. His tone made it clear he was prepared to wait, unhappy about it, but accepting of their place as scum in this scenario—and she hated it, realising only then that she’d just assumed they would all be going, that they were all welcome. They must be welcome, it was only fair after all that had happened, but she knew that her idea of history and the one already making the rounds in the mouths of minstrels and couriers were very different things.

  “I’m going to sort it out,” she said at the same time. “I’ll make it right. But just in case make sure everything is ready to leave at a second’s notice.” She put her saddle down on the bale beside Ralas.

  “What’s a wedding?” Nedlam asked suddenly, frowning down at Celestaine, as what had been said ten minutes ago finally reached its destination.

  SHE RODE OUT with Caradwyn the next day after little sleep, wondering how to broach the subject. They took their most common route away from the estate by the river’s edge, cantering easily along the green hollow, the stems of flyworts and parsleys breaking as they passed and lending a sharp, herbal scent to the dawn air. This hour and the one before sunset had always seemed the most magical, full of unmanifest desire and the possibility of anything being around the corner. They slowed as they approached the rocky ford and Celestaine started to draw breath but before she could speak Caradwyn turned to her, standing in the stirrups to haul back her spirited grey stallion, her long white-gold braids flying around her shoulders as she expertly wrestled him into a submissive prance.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were in love with that Yorughan? How long were you going to wait? Forever? Do you really think so little of me, Celest?” She rolled her eyes. “And now you’re giving me the face that says you can’t believe I know. I hope you realise that it’s not hard to guess. So much sw-sw-sw whispering and glancing and stalwart standing up like a royal trout with a skewer up your arse! And anyway, why else would you be avoiding me?”

  Celest reined back, weight lower, hardly moving, her horse instantly responsive from their years of familiarity and battle. “I thought you’d get the same face on you I see everywhere else when they’re with me.” They, not him. They. Some kind of new family unit.

  The horses began to pick their way around the boulders and rocks of the shallow river crossing. They let the reins loose.

  “I can’t say I wasn’t surprised, Cel, but not as surprised as when I heard you killed the Kinslayer.” She cast a side eye.

  “I didn’t really do that,” Celestaine said, watching Caradwyn’s knowing smile. “I was there at the end, but so were a lot of other people.”

  “I like my version better.”

  “It isn’t true.”

  “I don’t think that’s the point of a story.”

  “Yes, but it’s the point of history,” Celestaine said evenly, knowing this was only the preamble to what Caradwyn wanted to say next.

  “And, since history is being written and you have a starring role, I do think that I can sway matters in your favour for the wedding,” Caradwyn said. “I can enforce the peace, until a lot of drink has gone under the bridge. After that I can’t vouch for things and I can’t speak for Starich or his ento
urage though I have heard they are many war veterans. So, my proposal is that there is a separate gathering in the orchard for your party. You can do the ceremonial bits, and then join them there. It’s not overlooked by the main tents or any of the gardens and it has a clear route to the Ilkand road.”

  “Ah. I see,” Celest said, grateful but also hurt in a way she had not expected. It was minor and she didn’t count it worth much. “Thank you. That’s very pragmatic.”

  They had reached the end of the crossing and were gathering themselves up again as the horses stepped out onto the track, one horse to either side, pressed close enough by the overgrowth that their stirrups clashed now and again.

  “I wish it would be otherwise,” Caradwyn said. “But I don’t have that much faith in us all as a collective. Forinthi are progressive and forgiving but they aren’t divine. If it were only you and me though then I want you to know I’d be glad if it were a double wedding. I’d never put you aside because of who you choose to love.” She reached over and squeezed Celest’s hand where it was on the saddle pommel. “Life will take us away from each other but it will never take you from my heart, Celest. This only shows that you are a hero in more ways than merely slaying a mad god. Now, let’s ride like the wind! Let’s be highwaymen! One more time!” And before Celestaine could react, her heart jammed awkwardly in her throat, Caradwyn had spurred her stallion into a leaping gallop and she was having to dodge huge clods of mud flying up at her face as it showed her a neat pair of iron shoes.

  They thundered below the beech stands and the arching banks of the long cutway that ran through the hills south of the estate, the wind in their faces, mud and the whipping lash of branches a strange frenzy, reminiscent to Celestaine of so many other gallops; old ones here in the innocent dawn, and fresher ones across fields of blood, tendrils of tangling bloodweed leaping from the bodies of the newly slain as Tzarkomen necromancers called it forth to poison those fleeing the Kinslayer’s ruin. She was so glad that Caradwyn had never been there, so grateful she and her dreamy mind were safe here, and then to her left she saw a flash of metal against the darkness of the woods.

  Automatically she was reaching for the Guardian-given sword and found only emptiness under her hand. For a flash she saw the broken, lost blade’s entry point to its tomb, a black slash in stone, then recalled her common straight sword, left behind. Her hand didn’t pause, travelling to her boot dagger without need of thought. It was in her hand as she sat up, goading her horse faster, nudging to the rear quarter of the grey stallion to push herself between Caradwyn and whoever was in the trees.

  The sound of an arrow smacking leaves in flight came to her and she countered her impulse to duck, instead shouting loudly in the war cry that wasn’t even a word. The arrow slipped between them with a hiss and vanished silently into the hedgerow on the far side of the track. Caradwyn was turning in the saddle as Celest used the slack of her reins to whack the stallion’s rump.

  “Go, go!” she screamed after it as she sat back, straight and tall, turning her weight and intent to face the attack. She drove the horse into the woods at the first opportunity, eyes struggling with the sudden darkness, the metal flash locked to a place in her mind. Another arrow came, passing her by a hair’s breadth, and she recognised the black fletches on it with a sickening plunge in the gut just before she caught sight of the three Yorughan facing her, one with bow drawn back, one lancer, one with a club. The ragtag of the Kinslayer’s armies had broken apart and scattered into warbands that roamed without purpose other than their own survival. They were fractions and free, but without roots or governance their years of living by the sword and being driven to the slaughter continued amok. She could not figure them for anything other than a random crew come to try its luck in the rich farmlands of the Fernreame estates. In these edgewoods they could live for seasons, years even, and use the miles of unclaimed wilds to travel unseen day after day.

  Her horse wove left and right, an indirect line that took advantage of cover. Celestaine changed her grip on her dagger to an overhand hold and altered course in a moment, aware of the archer loosing and missing as she lay low to the horse’s neck, then sped up to maximum speed to charge them down. The lancer stood to the last moment, braced and ready to skewer the horse with their polearm, its blade sharp—the glinting object that had betrayed them—but the horse was well trained and turned aside on a pin at the penultimate second, leaving Celestaine in only her leather riding gear flying at them, dagger hand scything, going for any good strike. Her impact at shoulder height knocking two of them down. It was a foolish move, suicidal on a battlefield, but here the horse was a liability and without better weapons she had only herself to use.

  She felt herself hit them, felt the dagger cut and bite, drag hard so that she had to fight with all her focus to hold onto it but in a second she had lost it anyway, and then she was rolling over and over, fighting to regain her feet and face them. One was down, gurgling its last, the dagger sticking out from a point near its collarbone. The archer was nocking an arrow—the range was point blank, only an idiot could miss her, there was no cover at all. The third, a grizzled war matron with a massive club, was recovering also, reaching for her weapon mere feet from Celestaine’s rising face, her tusks bloodied and a grin on her face that reminded Celestaine of Nedlam’s bloodthirst. The archer was, beside her, a minor problem.

  Celestaine whistled and closed her fingers on earth and leaves. She flung the dirt as hard as she could, jumping to stand as the war matron blinked automatically, snarling contempt, the club rising to her one-handed hold as easily as if it were nothing. Celest stayed low and shoulder-charged the archer with a roar, hoping to put him off his draw. It wouldn’t have worked but for a moment that she saw a flicker of recognition in his face.

  “Kinslayer’s Bane,” he said, taken aback, and he did falter: only for a moment, but it was the moment in which she reached him and made her tackle. He was huge and sturdy, but she was heavy and without hesitation. She wrapped her arms around his legs, pulling to the side. He lost his balance, unable to regain it, going over, the bow flung away from him to save it as his hands also went for his knives and sword, fumbling in mid-air as hers also searched, patting over one another in a moment before he hit the ground, trapping her arm beneath him.

  “What?” The female Yogg had her club back in its arc, looking at Celestaine as she closed the yard between them, her boot coming down hard on Celestaine’s lower leg. It hurt brutally but it didn’t break, the tough sole of the boot sliding off her calf, crushing the muscle. “Kinslayer?” She stood, baffled for a moment as to the meaning, or for some other reason that Celest would never discover because at that moment her horse came powering out of the bushes and reared up, its iron-shod forefoot crashing into the woman’s skull with the sound of a hardened wooden bowl being broken.

  By then the archer was getting up and backing away from her, the sight of his companions’ end and her reputation making him fatally indecisive. An arrow with peach and white fletchings sprouted suddenly from the back of his shoulder, followed by another, the point coming right through his torso directly at Celestaine. He looked surprised, as if he wanted to say something to her. He raised his arm, knife falling from his hand to point at her, and then fell on his face, dead.

  “Celest! Celest!” Caradwyn was riding at her, bow in hand, a figure of strange colour in the green gloom. “Are you all right?” She slid off her horse and hugged Celestaine hard before standing back to look down at the bodies around them in the little clearing made by all the action.

  Celestaine blinked, trying to clear her thoughts and feelings. “Why didn’t you tell me you had trouble with warbands?”

  Caradwyn’s face, flushed pink, eyes bright with fear and excitement, was a picture of startling beauty. Celestaine suddenly envied her, then looked down at the Yorughan. She felt an ugly sensation at killing them, even though they had tried to kill her first. Maybe there was something to have been said and now it wasn�
�t going to be said, but she’d never been the diplomat. She reached out and hugged her cousin with one arm around her shoulders.

  “I didn’t want to worry you,” Caradwyn said, giggling at the foolishness of the sentiment and with an overspill of adrenaline. “I thought it might upset you, given your Heno.”

  Celestaine nodded slowly. “Just because things look alike doesn’t mean they’re the same. I think I can handle the notion of bandits, Cara.”

  Caradwyn nodded. “I’ll remember that.”

  “I thought you were carrying that bow for show.”

  “I was.”

  Celestaine looked around them, but there seemed nobody left to say anything. “Let’s get out of here.” My Heno.

  “I’ll send some men out for the bodies. Tell them to bury them deep here.”

  Celestaine said, “You’ve done this before.”

  “Yes. And I’ll do it again. Until they stop.”

  They rode back in silence.

  As they approached the yards they could already hear the hubbub of many voices. Coming through the side gates they found it full of newly arrived wagons and riders. At the centre of the melee a man on horseback was talking to someone standing at his stirrup. He was tall and dark, with long hair and skin the colour of walnut. A braided beard was neat on his jaw and he had the easy presence and power that Celest recognised from seasoned warriors when they weren’t in any imminent danger. He looked up as Caradwyn came through the gate and Celest watched her cousin’s back straighten with pride. That was him then, Starich the wolf.

  “Not quite as large as yours,” Caradwyn murmured to Celest, leaning over towards her and crooking her little finger delicately in the shadow of her horse’s mane with a cheeky glint in her eye, “but strong in the arm and thick in the head, just the way I like them.”

  Celestaine found herself laughing though she hadn’t expected to. She didn’t worry any more about Caradwyn’s happiness or her standing. The other warriors riding around the place looked to their leader with a deference she found heartening. Then Starich realised who she was and made a deep bow, head down to the level of his horse’s shoulder.