The City of Night Neverending

by Steven Lochran

  Trix ignored it in favour of grabbing him in a hug that was just as intense as the one she’d given her brother. Then she flung her arms around Hero, who patted her shoulder so uncertainly that Joss couldn’t help but smile.

  ‘Ganymede has told me so much about you both!’ she said, then, when Joss and Hero shared a look of apprehension, she added, ‘Only good things, I promise!’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were in such close contact,’ said Hero, addressing Drake.

  ‘Not as close as I would like!’ Trix replied. ‘Ganymede, are you staying long? Please say you are!’

  ‘Beatrix, don’t be a bother now.’ A woman’s voice floated from the doorway. Everyone looked to see Drake’s mother standing beside Hero. The flaxen hair of the photo was now smoothed back and sprinkled with snowflakes. While Drake’s mother hovered on the threshold, cold was rushing in from the mudroom, where their boots and coats had been left lined up on the racks. A guarded little smile flittered upon her lips, while worry pooled in her eyes. ‘No doubt it’s been a long journey here for your sister and her – for his – for our guests.’

  ‘Mother, I –’ Drake began with a weary sigh, but his mother immediately shooed away her own words as she took a tentative step inside.

  ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to – it’s just been so long since … And it’s hard to know the right thing to say …’ Her hands were trembling.

  Drake’s father returned at that moment from the kitchen, with enamel coffee mugs in his grasp. His face fell as he looked at his wife, and he set the coffee mugs aside. ‘Eudora. You’re upset.’

  ‘No, Torvald, I just –’

  Drake’s father turned on his son. ‘What did you say?’

  Drake glared. ‘Nothing.’ He slammed the broken gyrothruster back on the sideboard, making the family pictures over on the mantelpiece shake. Even Trix jumped at the noise. ‘But it’s good to know that you regard me as charitably as you ever did.’

  ‘You run off in the middle of the night, break your mother’s heart, shame your family, and you seek to lecture me on charity?’

  ‘Shame my family? I didn’t realise my existence was so shameful to you.’

  ‘Yes, it was shameful!’ Drake’s father exploded.

  ‘Torvald, please,’ Drake’s mother said, taking him by the arm in an attempt to calm him. But he would not be so easily appeased.

  ‘It was shameful having to explain to all our friends and neighbours why you had fled in the night without a word, as if we were monsters who kept you locked away!’ he shouted. ‘For years we carried that burden, and not once did you seek to talk to us, to let us know you were safe and well.’

  ‘I sent letters.’

  ‘To your sister. Never to us. Not one word of contact! Do you have any idea what that did to your mother?’

  Again, Drake’s mother took hold of her husband. ‘Torvald, we don’t need to go into all that now. Please calm down.’

  Her second attempt worked better than the first, helped as it was by Trix wedging herself between her parents to gaze pleadingly up at her father. When he spoke again, his tone was quieter, almost conciliatory.

  ‘I don’t mean to lash out. Especially not when we’ve only just come back together.’ He took a shuffling step forward, his brow wrinkled. ‘But I need you to understand, Gw–’

  Drake bristled, not allowing his father to again address him by a name he’d long ago left behind. ‘My name is Ganymede,’ he said, striding across the room. ‘But don’t worry, after tonight I won’t ever bother you again. And then you can call me whatever you damned well please.’

  Brushing past Hero, Drake flung open the mudroom door and then slammed it shut behind him. Hero’s dark locks were whipped across her face by the sudden gust of air. Unfolding her arms and standing upright, she smoothed back her hair, adjusted her hat, then opened the door and left.

  Drake’s parents looked from the door to each other, and then to Joss. Joss took one step away from the mantelpiece, then another. He was halfway across the room when he thought to speak. ‘You have a lovely home.’

  No one answered as he grabbed his coat from the rack, sidestepped the melting piles of slush on the floor, and followed Drake and Hero out into the cold of the night.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  A FAMILY HEIRLOOM

  JOSS trudged through the thick bank of snow towards two figures breathing clouds of steam out by the bluestone barn, their backs to the house. They looked to be staring up at the aurora rippling in the sky above them, its radiance only really striking Joss as he cleared the corner of the barn.

  Stretched across the full canvas of the sky, the aurora’s flames were as green as absinthe and as red as phoenix feathers, churning like waves one moment and then flowing like ribbons the next. It was hard to believe its colours could have been caused by anything but magic as it swirled and danced, wrapping up the stars themselves in its luminous fabric. It would have been a wholly spectacular sight if not for the heartache that Drake was suffering in its glow.

  Crunching through the ice, Joss approached his Bladebound brethren.

  ‘How’re you holding up?’ he asked Drake.

  ‘Fine,’ he said, his eyes set on the sky. ‘I was just apologising to Hero for my melodramatic exit. I didn’t mean to make a scene.’

  ‘And I was telling him that he needn’t worry. We all know how family can be.’

  Though of course she didn’t mean anything by it, Hero’s words stung Joss. They served as a stark reminder of everything he’d lost so early in life, as well as of an unspoken bond between his brethren that he could never share. Not that any of that mattered right now. Not with the hurt that Drake was feeling.

  Tentatively, Joss sat down next to Hero, with Drake on her other side. Drake’s hand was at his face, tracing his high cheekbones with his fingers, prodding at his dimpled chin. It was as if he were examining his own flesh and bone, testing to see it was real, making sure it hadn’t turned to sponge.

  ‘Do you remember that night on the Way? When we talked about the dreams we’d had of becoming paladeros?’ he asked.

  ‘I remember arguing about it,’ Hero replied.

  ‘Not one of our finer moments,’ Joss admitted. The cold was so bitter that his whole body was trembling. Looping his arms around his knees, he hunkered tightly to himself. Drake, meanwhile, looked untouched by the chill. Stretching his legs out before him, he turned his gaze to the aurora, though his fingers still explored the details of his face.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot on the way here. I remember saying that it was all I’d ever wanted. But that isn’t true. Before I dreamed of being a paladero, I dreamed of being nothing.’

  Joss and Hero both stared at Drake with concern, listening intently as he continued.

  ‘I would come out here and watch the aurora, and I would imagine it growing so bright that it reached out and absorbed me. Or I’d imagine myself at the bottom of the ocean, deep beneath the waves, where piece by piece I would dissolve as easily as an ice floe, never to be seen again, never to be heard, never to be ridiculed or judged. The idea of it comforted me …’

  ‘I don’t know if I like the sound of all that,’ Hero said, brow scrunched over her goggles, her mouth drawn tight. Drake smiled softly, his hand drifting away from his face to thread his fingers together with hers. To Joss’s surprise, she didn’t pull away.

  ‘Not like that,’ he said. ‘Not really. Maybe in my darkest moments, I suppose … but never for very long. There was too much going on in the world. Too much possibility. And I didn’t want to sacrifice the chance that things could change. That I could change.’

  Joss watched as the aurora shifted tones. What had been green and red now warmed to pink and gold, the colours lighting up Drake’s face.

  ‘That feeling became so much stronger the day I found an old photograph of my grandfather,’ he said, looking almost like a stranger to Joss in this rosy glow. ‘He was dressed in his finest furs, saddled on t
he back of his bear, Wagner, and he’d just been named the winner of the Tundra Games. His face, the resemblance – it was like discovering a version of myself that I’d never met but had always known, deep inside. That one image was everything I’d ever wanted to be and had never had the language to express. I wanted to be a paladero. I wanted to be me. The real me. I wanted to be Ganymede Drake.’

  ‘Because being Gwendoline Drake – that was too painful for you?’ A voice came from behind them. They turned to see Drake’s father. He was standing by the barn wall, holding something longer than he was tall. It was wrapped up in a fur pelt and fastened with leather straps, and while there was no way of knowing how much he’d heard, he’d clearly been listening for a while.

  ‘What do you want?’ Drake asked him, pulling his hand from Hero’s.

  ‘To talk,’ his father replied. He glanced at Joss and Hero. ‘May we have a moment?’

  Joss moved to stand, but Drake would have none of it. ‘Hero and Joss are my brethren. Whatever you have to say to me, you can say in front of them.’

  Drake’s father swayed on the heel of his boot, uncertain. His jaw was clamped tight, as if he had a flood of words in his mouth threatening to burst loose. If only he would let them. ‘Very well,’ he relented, loosening the straps on the pelt. ‘For what I said just now, and for all I said in the days and weeks and years before you took off for Starlight Fields … I apologise.’

  Drake blinked, Joss saw, clearly taken aback.

  His father continued, his eyes on the knotted straps of his bundle as he worked them loose. ‘I never meant to turn you away or make you feel like you were worth less than you are. Sometimes it can be hard to know the best path to take. It’s your mother who reminds me that it should more often be the path of compassion. Understanding. Love. And she reminded me of that again, now. Which made me think. There’s something that I’ve been meaning to share with you. Something I’ve wanted to pass on.’

  Drake’s father undid the last of the straps and pulled loose the pelt, revealing a gleaming spear of what looked to be platinum and bronze, its grip wrapped in finely embossed leather. Drake stared at it, stunned, as the aurora’s rays leapt from its pointed tip.

  ‘Grandfather’s spear?’ he said with quiet awe.

  Drake’s father nodded solemnly. ‘The Icefire spear,’ he said, setting the pelt down before walking forward. Joss and Hero also rose as Drake stood up to meet him. ‘The prize he won that day at the Games – the last Tundra Games that would ever be held, as it turned out. You recall, I know. There was talk of him being sent to compete in the Tournament, if only his order had the funds to pay for it.’

  ‘I remember. Well … I remember him talking about it.’

  Drake’s father chuckled. Somehow it managed to sound both affectionate and bitter. ‘He did like to talk about it, didn’t he?’

  Examining the spear and the way the light played upon its surface, Drake’s father went on. ‘I was never really the son he wanted. Couldn’t ride, couldn’t fight, couldn’t muster. I had a head for numbers and procedures, and dreams that stretched only as far as hearth and home. It was a disappointment for him, I know. He liked you, though. You’ve proven to be everything he could have ever wanted in his own son. And perhaps that’s what I’ve struggled with so much – beyond any name that you may have wanted to be called or any identity you wished to claim for yourself. I’m ashamed to think of how I’ve acted. I hope that you can accept my apology, along with everything else that is yours by right.’

  Raising his arms, Drake’s father offered his son the Icefire spear.

  ‘I – couldn’t possibly …’ Drake said.

  ‘Yes. You can. The spear is yours. It always has been,’ his father told him. ‘Ganymede.’

  Drake’s eyes widened. Shaking, he raised his hands and accepted the spear. It seemed then to shine even brighter, as if it was exalting in being united with its true owner. Joss watched as Drake took a moment to look the blade over, to appreciate its weight in his grasp, before looking up again.

  ‘Father …’

  Neither Hero nor Joss knew what to do with themselves as Drake and his father embraced. They shifted awkwardly aside, Hero’s feelings as impossible to read as ever, while Joss tried to focus only on his happiness for his friend, to not let the seed of jealousy he could feel sprouting inside him grow into something even uglier.

  Casting his gaze elsewhere, Joss noticed two silhouettes at the window of the family home. He could just make out the tearful smile of Drake’s mother, then the second silhouette dropped away, only to reappear again as the front door was thrown open. Trix’s grin was twice the size of her mother’s, tinged by the tears rolling down her cheeks.

  Drake and his father parted. They looked at each other now with a new and shared understanding. But while Hero drew close to Drake again, Joss remained distant, full of contradictory emotions.

  ‘I never intended any harm. You should know that,’ Drake said to his father, hefting the spear so that its end rested in the snow. ‘I just needed to live the only way I could.’

  ‘I know,’ his father replied. ‘But there’ll be time for all that later. Come back inside. I’m sure your mother and your sister would appreciate it. And I think it’s safe to say your friends would prefer a warm bed to sleep in tonight.’

  Drake agreed and, with his father and his brethren, walked back to the house. The aurora was burning even brighter than the full moon now. Joss cast one last glance at its radiant hues, his heart full of joy for Drake and sorrow for himself. Making his own silent and selfish wish, he followed the others inside.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  A LEGACY TO INHERIT

  THE snowskimmer kicked harder and growled louder than any raptor that Joss had ever ridden, and it took all he had to keep from being thrown off it. It wasn’t like Zeke’s jet-cycle, technologically advanced and built for comfort. In fact, it was little more than an engine with a seat soldered onto it, and a trio of bladed struts that carved the icy terrain with limited reliability. Every stone and fissure left Joss to bounce painfully in his seat. That would have been difficult enough without adding the sleet that was misting up his goggles, turning his vision into little more than white fog.

  ‘How much further?’ he called out, risking his safety in letting go of the handlebars to quickly polish his lenses with the inside crook of his elbow. His breath was hot against the scarf that hid his face, his only source of warmth other than the dull heat of the wisp’s mark on his chest.

  ‘Not long now!’ Drake shouted from the back of his own skimmer. Joss grumbled at the response, not that his discontent could be heard. Drake had been saying the same thing for hours now, almost since they’d left Snowbridge. Their original plan had been to bring Pietro with them, but Drake’s father had pointed out that there would be nobody to look after the bear where they were going.

  ‘You can take the spare snowskimmers instead,’ he’d offered, after Drake had fixed the broken gyrothruster and reattached it, making all three vehicles operational again. ‘And we can look after Pietro while you’re gone.’

  Trix, sad to be losing her brother again so soon, looked buoyed by the prospect of having a tundra bear in his place. She was still brushing Pietro’s coat and scratching him around the ears as the rest of the family were saying their goodbyes.

  ‘Promise you’ll visit again soon,’ Drake’s mother told him in no uncertain terms.

  ‘I promise,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry I didn’t come home sooner.’

  ‘There’s nothing to apologise for,’ she replied, and kissed him on the cheek as his father stepped forward.

  ‘You’re a brave man, son,’ Drake’s father told him. ‘Don’t ever doubt that.’

  Drake had responded with a wholehearted hug that was swiftly returned. Joss watched them, as happy for his friend as he had been the previous night, and still just as envious. Family, home, a sense of belonging, a legacy to inherit. Everything that Drake had reclaimed
for himself. Everything that Joss would never truly have. The Icefire spear was the most conspicuous symbol of all that, and it glinted in the frosty sunlight as they exchanged their final farewells.

  And so the prentices had set off on the Freezeway, an unpaved stretch of compacted snow that ran from Drake’s hometown all the way to Stormport, with dozens of smaller paths branching off it. Every intersection was marked by a wooden pole as tall as the Behemoth’s mainsail, each of them adorned with colourful flags in lieu of street signs. The signposts grew increasingly rare the further the Bladebound travelled, with a whole league passing before they finally encountered the tallest and grandest signpost of them all. It had a large blue banner attached to it, swirling and snapping in the wind, which was emblazoned with a swooping white star.

  Drake skidded to a stop beside the pole, pulling his scarf and goggles off as Joss and Hero ambled alongside him. Joss did the same as Drake, feeling the sunshine on his skin for the first time in hours. He let out a shaky breath and saw it escape from him in a thick mist.

  ‘There it is,’ said Drake, pointing down an icy track. It curved through a wide valley towards a cluster of domed buildings on the horizon. ‘Starlight Fields.’

  Joss gazed out towards the distant structures. Brown masses were slowly moving among them, no doubt the mammoth herds that he and his brethren would be expected to muster as part of their training. It felt odd to be within such a short distance of his future and only having a chance to glimpse it. He wondered for a moment if he was making the right decision to head off in pursuit of Edgar, but that doubt lasted for only a split second. After all, if he didn’t try, then who else would?

  Still, it was daunting to have come to the moment that he would be setting off on his own. He had grown to depend on his brethren in a way that he never had with anyone else. He didn’t want to part with them now, not when he needed them most.

  ‘Salt lives less than a league further up the road, off a track marked by a narwhal skull,’ Drake said, pointing the way. ‘It shouldn’t be hard to find.’