by Patty Jansen
“The king’s court historian.” Carro bends forward and flicks the pages, trying to ignore his numb and cold fingers. Heroes are not bothered by cold.
“Wait.” Isandor stops Carro’s hand. There is a drawing on the page with many lines leading from one box to another. “Look at this. It’s a map of the city with this thing they call the Heart.”
“The Heart? There is no such thing.” Carro feels uncomfortable. His father has spoken of this thing once and he’d seen it when he flicked through the book.
“It is the Heart,” Isandor says. “It says so in the book. It’s a machine under the palace. They say it’s the source of icefire.” Isandor raises his head. His eyes are distant. “You know this book sings?”
“Sings?” Carro shivers.
“Yes, can’t you hear it?”
Carro shakes his head. “What song?”
“There isn’t a song. It’s like the band in the meltery. The music just plays on and on, but no one takes any notice of it until it stops. That’s what it’s like.”
Carro shrugs. It’s strange. Then again, Isandor has Thilleian blood, Carro is sure about that.
The old king only needed to reach into the air and icefire would spark from his fingers. He would kill people with it. Old people still tell the stories.
* * *
Carro carried the box across the marketplace to the sled, repressing memories unlocked by the musty smell. Other merchants, all people he knew, followed his every move with stone-hard looks on stone-hard faces. He wanted to scream that it wasn’t his choice to do this job, that he’d been told to do it, that the Knights who had come with him were all older and hated him, that . . .
He dumped the box on the luggage tray of the sled. The Knight Captain strolled to the sled and rummaged through the contents in a bored fashion.
“Another load of old junk,” he drawled. “You know, we’ve collected so many light stands over the past few days, one wonders where the lights are.”
Carro didn’t meet his gaze. The silver light globes were always gone by the time these items came to the market. Even if the lights had been complete when the merchant obtained the items, he would know better than take the globes to the market. They were worth a fortune, those bulbs that needed only icefire to glow.
The merchant hadn’t given up everything he had, Carro was sure of that. But he’d hoped that by going to the Brother’s stand first, he could spare the man a more thorough inspection.
No such luck.
The Captain flicked his fingers and pushed himself off the sled.
The other two Knights of the patrol moved towards the stall. One spoke, but they were too far away for Carro to hear what he said. The merchant shook his head. Then the second Knight grabbed the edge of the table and turned it upside down. Pots and plates flew everywhere, shattering on the frozen ground.
As Carro had suspected, there were more boxes underneath—boxes holding far more damning material than the few stands and leaflets he had collected. He could see the spines of books and items of clothing in black and silver: the colours of the Thilleian house.
“You said you inspected that one?” The Knight Captain raised his eyebrows at Carro. “Are you Apprentice puppies capable of anything?”
Carro clenched his fists. The Brotherhood merchant was looking straight at him.
“I thought you would actually be of some use to us here,” the Captain continued. “That’s why I asked your Tutor if you could come. You did weasel your way into the knighthood from this slum, didn’t you?”
Carro shrugged.
“Answer me when I ask you a question.” The Captain slapped Carro in the face. “And look at me when I’m talking to you.”
“Yes, Captain.” Carro met the man’s eyes.
“Then go and carry all that rubbish onto the sled.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Carro set off to the ravaged stand, past the yellow garlands that seemed to mock him. His cheek stung, but he resisted the urge to wipe it. Every merchant and many of the market’s customers were looking at him. Carro, the pride boy of the Outer City. Carro, the son of a lowly merchant who had made it into the Eagle Knights. Carro, who had come back to betray his own people.
“I want that merchant watched,” the Knight Captain said behind him to another member of the patrol. “See who visits him and what they bring, or buy.”
Chapter 4
* * *
THE SLED SWISHED to a halt at a spot where a mound of snow broke the monotony of the plain. Tandor peered into the low sun, which trailed long shadows over the snow. Little diamond-like specks twinkled in the powdery surface untouched by man or beast. At the horizon, the sky faded from pink to the most delicate of blue. The tall buildings of the City of Glass were mere specks in the distance, glittering needles that reflected the sunlight in their glass façades. What tranquillity, what incredible beauty. This was home, this was what his heart had been denied all those years that his mother had forced him to live in the dust and noise of Chevakia.
“What are we doing here?” a whining girl’s voice said. The bundle of fur that hid Myra from view stirred. Her head poked out.
“Enjoying the view,” Tandor said. He’d grown weary of her complaints. Her back hurt, her head hurt, she was cold, she needed to piss. “You asked for us to stop somewhere you could piss behind a tree. Well, there aren’t any trees on this plain as you might have noticed, so it will have to be a stack of ice instead. Here you go.”
He jumped down from the sled, his footsteps creaking in the snow. The cool air that charged his lungs made steaming puffs of mist when he exhaled.
He unlashed a net from the back of the sled and took out an ice pick and a shovel.
“What’re you doing with those?” Myra asked.
“Some big business.”
She wrinkled her face, but pushed herself up awkwardly. With a bit of luck, she would go for a walk to the other side of the mound.
“You’re welcome to watch.”
“You’re not just creepy, you’re disgusting.”
“At your service, lady.”
She sniffed, let herself down from sled with a wince and waddled off. Good.
Tandor positioned himself so that the peak of the snow mound and the glittering buildings of the City of Glass aligned. His gaze tracked the barely perceptible line that marked the shore of the Frozen Sea, the flat plain of the iced-over bay to his left, and the soft, undulating, snow-covered hills on his right.
Yes, he was at the place the diary had described.
He glanced around, checking if Myra had gone. Ruko stood at the sled, glaring into the light. The bear fidgeted, shaking its shoulders and jiggling the harness. Steam blew from its nostrils. Ruko patted its back, to which it responded with an angry snort.
Tandor glanced at Ruko. You deal with it.
Ruko gave Tandor his usual fuck-you look and flicked his too-long hair out of his eyes. Tandor had tried to cut it, but the boy wouldn’t let him near. With every step closer to the City of Glass, Ruko gained strength. He had heaved huge blocks of ice out of the sled’s path with his bare hands. He had run after the bear when it got it into its mind to chase after a group of gulls and he had dragged the bear back by the scruff of its neck. Tandor had needed a lot of icefire to make Ruko let go of the bear.
Tandor swung his ice pick up above his shoulder and drove it hard into the mound. Ice chips flew in arcs of glittering diamonds. Two more hits and the point of the pick hit a hard object under the snow with a “ping”.
Good. He was definitely at the right place. The secret had not been disturbed. There was hope yet.
A few scrapes with the shovel later, he had unearthed a door handle, a few more shovelfuls and the rest of the door had become visible, a plain metal surface, pitted and weathered over time. Tandor stuck the pick and shovel in the snow and yanked at the handle. It wouldn’t turn.
He gathered strands of icefire from the air—much stronger this close to the c
ity—and directed them at the door. Steam hissed. The metal vibrated and glowed. He yanked at the door again and this time it opened. Cold and stale air spilled out of the dark maw.
The bear gave a low growl, lifting one corner of its dark lips.
Tandor let his hand stray to the Chevakian powder gun he carried in his belt. Icefire oozed from the door, against which the gun was of course perfectly useless.
He felt a stab of anger at having shown such a basic Chevakian reaction. All his life he’d lived in the blasted foreign country. It had corrupted him.
He had even known that there was supposed to be a field of icefire here.
This was not the time to hesitate or make silly mistakes. He’d best hurry up before the nosy girl came back. If the past day was anything to go by, she’d be asking plenty of questions already.
He stepped inside and tripped over something. By the skylights, it was dark in here. According to the maps in the diary, there should be a light somewhere on the wall.
He stumbled to the side, hands outstretched, until his palms met slime-covered stone. A waft of cold air drifted in from outside.
Ah, there was the lever, the metal ice-cold under his fingers. He pushed it up. A light flicked on, cold and white and incredibly bright. It came from a round globe unlike the oil lamps used by the common folk in the city or the gas lamps in Chevakia.
The beauty, the wonder of it. How could the Pirosian Eagle Knights have denied the people of the City of Glass this technology? How could they have condemned the citizens to living in poverty as primitives while these wonders existed?
The room was dank and moist. Against the far wall, a staircase wound down into the earth, much like the dungeons in the palace, with which he had made unfortunate acquaintance, and just as slippery. Unlike the staircase in the palace, this was covered in slime from disuse, accumulated over all those years that water had seeped through the stone.
Tandor made his way down, groping along the wall for additional lights. A fear grew in him as to what he would find at the bottom of the stairs. What would remain of his plan if the machine was ruined by meltwater?
The stairs ended in a round chamber. A table stood in the middle, and on it, an array of jars and tubes and a large metal box with levels and buttons. He ran his finger along a glass tube. A tingle of icefire crept up his hand. What purposes had this strange equipment served? There might be some records of it, scattered in the antique shops of Chevakia and Arania, where refugees from the palace had taken their goods, but it was likely that no one would ever know. That was the crime the Eagle Knights had committed. All that knowledge lost. They had plunged the City of Glass into the worst period of backwardness history had ever seen, and had condemned anyone who was not of Pirosian noble blood to poverty. Simply because they were afraid of icefire, and jealous of those who could see and use it.
At the far end of the room, a bank of tables lined the wall, their surface a maze of controls and dials, many of which were rusty and probably no longer worked. In the old days, this machine distributed the power for the city’s heat and lights and for trains that flew along rails, much like Chevakia’s steam trains, but without the smoke, the stink and the noise of the engine.
In those days, the machine they called the Heart of the City beat strongly in the catacombs of the palace. The more power was channelled away, the more the Heart produced. Now, ignored and isolated, cocooned in its underground prison, its beat had faded to a feeble throb. Even after they’d seized power, the Knights hadn’t been able to turn it off. Its fuel was contained within the machine, which dated from much further back.
Tandor sank into the chair that faced the panels and slowly extracted the key, which he had spent months travelling to find, from under his clothes. Discovering it, after a lifetime of searching, in a box of curiosities in a market in northern Chevakia, had been the culmination of his work. If he could turn the distribution network back on, the Heart would again be powerful, and increased icefire would be available to all who could use it around the city. Then those people, the Thilleians, would make the southern land great again. Of course it wasn’t quite so simple, even though his mother would like to think so; but it was a start.
The key was a strange thing, a thin strip of metal as long as his thumb, with two ridges on either side. He slipped the chain that held it in place from around his neck, feeling the stern eyes of his dead ancestors prick in the back of his head. They knew what he risked, and they knew of the glory of days past, and of the disasters. They also knew that he had no army to control the icefire the machine would produce.
They’re in the City of Glass already; they will help me because they are destined to do so.
But he had to obtain their hearts for them to be unconditionally obedient to him. They had to be servitors, like Ruko. At the thought of Ruko, an unpleasant thought surfaced.
If I wait any longer, I won’t be able to control him anymore. If I wait any longer, the Knights will kill the children, and then all my work will have been for nothing.
He stared at the controls and the dust-coated engravings in the metal surface. Levers stuck out of slots, their handles made from Chevakian wood inlaid with river pearl. There were little silica windows with silver embossing, now dark and lifeless. The work oozed beauty and craftsmanship.
I owe it to the souls of all the Imperfects who have been killed since the Knights took power.
There would not be a second chance. This was the best time of year, with the Eagle Knights distracted by the Newlight celebrations. Half of them would take part in the competitions and the other half would be drunk or in some woman’s bed.
He didn’t have another fifteen years to scout out another army. It was make do with these children, or not at all. He did have enough power to get into the palace.
I am no quitter, Mother, no matter how much you think I am.
He breathed in deeply and slotted the key into the panel. Strands of icefire bent to his hand. He pressed a button. A tiny light brightened, under a cover yellowed with age. Silver engraving reflected the glow. Underneath the ice on the plain between here and the City of Glass, in a pipe that contained threads that Chevakians called wire, a signal would travel to the underground power network to bring it to life. And under the palace, the Heart would respond.
Tandor went through the motions he had memorised from the diary. The network needed water to cool down. The underground passages needed to be opened up to let the heat escape. He slid up levers and turned dials. More lights blinked into life.
Everything seemed to be working the way it should. He had five days before the machine would come into its full power. This would be one sizzler of a Newlight celebration.
Cramped, shivering, Tandor rose from the seat.
He charged back up the stairs, across the slippery bunker and out into the brightness of the snow-covered ice. He heaved the door back into its place and used his pick to push snow over it.
Ruko waited in the driver’s seat, the reins in his hands, an impatient scowl on his face.
Myra sat in the sled, rummaging through her luggage.
Tandor jumped onto the seat. “Ready to go? From here straight to the City of Glass. We’ll be there today.”
He expected a keen response from her. The prospects of visiting markets and shops had kept her happy for the past two days, but she wasn’t looking at the horizon at all. Her underwear was bunched around her knees. His heart jumped. Please, no.
“Anything wrong?”
“I’m bleeding.” She sniffed, wiping a tear from her cheek.
“What does that mean?” His heart thudded.
“I don’t know!”
“Does it hurt?”
She shook her head. “It’s only a tiny bit.” But her voice sounded unsteady. Her face was very pale. He glanced at her underwear, spotting streaks of blood-tinged slime. Was that normal?
“Do you have any . . . pains?”
She shook her head again.
; “You think you can hang on for a bit longer? We’re almost there.” By the skylights, please. He heard a woman’s screams in his mind. Then the feeble cry of a baby, followed by the horrified voice of the midwife, This one’s deformed.
“I think so,” Myra whispered.
Tandor took a deep breath to calm his thudding heart. “Let’s go then.”
Chapter 5
* * *
THE EYRIE OF the eagle knights perched atop the second highest tower in the City of Glass, a place where windows had been removed and eagles and their riders could fly in and out freely.