by Patty Jansen
Every time he’d come here, there had been children his own age playing in the snow. They had been rescued from abusive families, lived in the compound and received teaching from the Brothers. They had always seemed happy and harmonious. This was not a place of shouting and punishment; it was a place of learning.
Sometimes, in his darkest hours, Carro had considered seeking refuge here, but he had always thought it unfair to the children whose families actually beat them, the girls whose fathers came home drunk and raped them every night. Those children needed the Brothers, not him. Being ignored, ridiculed or scorned every moment he spent inside his parents’ limpet didn’t injure him or kill him.
He walked across the snow-covered yard and took the two steps up the porch. The two Knights followed him like silent shadows. From memory, the dining room was directly opposite the entrance, and the sleeping quarters were to the right. A glow lit up behind him. One of the Knights held a pebble no bigger than a fingernail, which gave off bright light. The first few windows they checked were storerooms with lots of boxes, or classrooms with benches and tables. On a blackboard against the far wall, someone had drawn diagrams made of squares and triangles. Carro was unsure what it meant, but he had seen similar pictures in the books he and Isandor used to read, ones that spoke of calculations of icefire.
The next window looked into a living room of some kind, but a thick layer of ice made it hard to see. The second Knight gestured to a window further ahead.
Inside was a dormitory-style room with two rows of beds against the walls. In each of those beds was a child. The Knight tried the window, but it wouldn’t open.
The other Knight gestured that there was an entry on the side of the building. They headed back into the courtyard and the Knight led through a passage between the building and the compound wall. There was an outroom at the back, and facing it, a wooden door. It was locked, but it took the Knights no longer than a few heartbeats to prise it open.
The quiet efficiency of these men chilled Carro. They had spoken no more than a handful of words since he had met them, and now he wondered if these men ever spoke. They certainly didn’t seem the type to attend Newlight celebrations and start rowdy brawls in melteries, nor to get distracted by the presence of female flesh.
These were real Knights in the way he was not. Real Knights didn’t party, didn’t fight in melteries, didn’t try to get into a girl’s bed. Real Knights didn’t even show off their status to their families and old friends. Real Knights didn’t have old friends. They only had their jobs, and their superiors.
They went into the building, entering a straight corridor that stretched into darkness.
The fur-soled riding boots made not the slightest sound on the floor. The Knight indicated, in here. He pushed the door open, again without sound. The air inside was impossibly warm and laced with the smell of musty blankets.
The first Knight marched into the room, while the second shut the door, holding aloft the light. Meanwhile, the first Knight was yanking blankets off the beds, uncovering sleeping children who woke up to a hand pressed over their mouths. Carro clutched his staff and felt completely useless.
The Knight struck success with the fifth child. Carro felt a cold shiver in the staff before the Knight had pulled the blankets off the bed. He was going to say that one for the sake of being useful, but the boy already sat at the edge of his bed. The harsh light showed his foot, was missing toes. Imperfect. Two heartbeats later, the Knight had the boy wrapped in a blanket and was pushing him into the corridor. All silent.
The other Knight gestured, Quick, let’s get out of here.
As Carro pulled the door to the dormitory shut behind him, the staff jerked in his hand, nearly causing him to drop it. He couldn’t restrain a gasp.
Both Knights looked at him. One had slung the blanket with the boy over his shoulder.
“Someone’s coming,” Carro whispered. He wasn’t sure if it was someone, but something was definitely happening. The metal of the staff was going alternately warm and cold in his hands.
The Knights had stopped. Neither spoke, but their sharp gazes roamed the corridor. Carro didn’t even know their names.
They listened. All Carro could hear was the thudding of his own heart.
“Your imagination.” The Knight closest to him gave him a disdainful glance and turned towards the door.
Carro shrugged, trying to be careless. Fine; these men thought he was an idiot, everyone did. He could do nothing but follow, even though the coldness in the staff increased.
They walked back along the path between the wall and the building, into the courtyard. Carro looked over his shoulder again. Saw nothing.
The staff chilled in his hands.
“There’s something . . .” He didn’t know how to continue. Speak of icefire in the presence of older Knights? Did they know what Rider Cornatan knew?
But the Knights broke into a trot.
Carro didn’t question their motivation.
Quick, back to the eagles. Hurry up. The staff was jerking now. He took the lead in the courtyard, the two Knights close behind. Almost at the gate. There was a noise, a soft sigh as if someone expelled a breath.
Carro glanced over his shoulder.
Something moved at the dormitory window, a smudge of distorted air.
Quick.
Puffs of snow blew up in the courtyard, coming towards them.
Carro ran.
A loud crack reverberated between the wings of the building, followed by a thump. Carro skidded to a stop. One of the Knights lay face down in the snow. The second Knight, holding the boy over his shoulder, had his dagger in his hand, slashing uselessly in thin air.
Some artefact of icefire.
Carro gripped the staff even though its surface almost froze onto his hands. Something was in the courtyard with them, something he couldn’t see. But he could see footsteps forming in the snow as the apparition walked. He waved the staff. The second Knight glanced around, his eyes wide, his dagger ready. His comrade hadn’t stirred.
The second Knight’s head jerked back. His face froze in a surprised expression. A loud crack echoed in the courtyard.
The man fell backwards as if in slow motion and landed on the icy ground with a dull thud, the blanket with the boy under him.
Carro wanted to run, but fear made his legs unwilling. He stared at the man’s neck, bent at an impossible angle. The invisible thing had broken the man’s neck.
Carro waved the staff like crazy. That thing was going to kill him next. “Begone, begone, whatever you are!”
A sudden gust of wind picked up, howling around the building. The air crackled. Snow sizzled, and blew into Carro’s face. He stood stiff with fear. He wanted to scream, but could make no sound. It felt like his entire face was on fire.
And then quiet returned.
Carro stood there, holding the staff. His hands ached with cold. Snow had blown into heaps obliterating any footsteps the apparition might have left. Where was it now? All Carro could see were indistinct mounds of snow, two of which contained the Knights’ lifeless bodies.
“Please, help.” The voice was soft and muffled.
The Imperfect boy was pushing himself up from under the dead Knight, shaking snow out of his hair.
“Come to me,” Carro called, still staring at the snow, expecting to see footsteps coming towards him.
He waved the staff. The metal was so cold it steamed. His hands hurt from holding it, but he was too scared to worry about frostbite. A deep keening filled the courtyard. Wind tore through the gate, throwing up a cloud of snow.
The boy had pushed the Knight off him. The man’s head flopped back like it was attached to this body only by skin.
“Come now!” Carro shouted into the howling wind.
The boy ran, clutching his blanket.
Carro grabbed hold of him with his free arm, while hanging onto the staff with the other. The staff, and his hand, were rimed with frost. He ran, whistled for
the eagle, and then remembered the business with the tied-up reins.
But the eagles came, all three of them, flying low through the street, with their wing tips almost touching the houses on either side. The reins dangled loose—snapped? The two Knights’ eagles kept flying, but his bird landed.
Carro heaved the boy on the saddle and clambered on behind him. One stroke of powerful wings and they were off into the night. Carro wrestled to gain control of the reins. His leather loop had broken, too; no, it had been cut.
The boy was shivering.
“S-s-so glad you came,” he said. His voice was young and hadn’t broken yet. “I thought . . . that blue thing were going to kill me like the others.”
Blue thing? “What did you see?”
Carro shifted his weight to free his arm so he could lash the dangling reins around his wrist. He now saw how the tying-up trick worked. The knot still dangled in the reins of the eagle flying to the left of him. At his whistle, the birds had simply bitten through the leather. The Knights would replace the straps once they became too short.
“Didn’t you see the blue man?”
“I didn’t see anything.” His teeth chattered.
“He were all shimmery and in places you could see right through him.”
Just what was he talking about?
Carro had to concentrate on flying and the boy fell into silence. He didn’t shiver so much anymore. Carro was too busy staying in the saddle to talk, and too busy worrying what Rider Cornatan would say about the death of two of his elite soldiers, men much more experienced than him.
Riding with the loose reins would have been tricky even during daytime, and the dead weight of the boy didn’t help. The eagle laboured to stay in the air, but he made the eyrie.
Rider Cornatan was waiting at the back of the room, silhouetted by the light. Carro slid off his bird, the weight of the boy pressing him down.
It was only when he stood in the straw, and the boy slumped on the ground that he realised the boy had lost consciousness.
Rider Cornatan gave a sharp command. A Knight ran forward to lift the boy’s prone body off the floor.
“Take him to the infirmary. Impress on the medicos that I want him to live.”
Then the man was gone, and Carro faced Rider Cornatan. He couldn’t bear looking up. He’d taken out two capable Knights and had come back alone. Rider Cornatan had given him the metal staff to protect the patrol, but he had run first.
“I can explain,” he whispered, but the horror of that snap echoed in his mind. How strong was this invisible monstrosity that it could break a grown man’s neck with such a loud crack?
There were footsteps on the floor, Rider Cornatan coming closer. Carro cringed. He would surely be beaten, punished for his failure.
* * *
Carro sits at the big table in the dining room. His sister is next to him, crying.
“Why did you do that, Carro?” his mother asks.
“Because she is ugly.”
“That is such a horrid thing to say. I don’t know how you let these things come into your head.”
“But it’s true.”
His mother slaps him across the face. “You need to grow up. You want to be treated like a big boy, you act like one.”
* * *
But a warm hand touched his shoulder.
“Look at me, Carro.”
Carro raised his head, blinking hard to repress threatening tears. He couldn’t help it—he always did or said stupid things that got himself and, most importantly, other people, into trouble.
Rider Cornatan’s eyes met his. It was impossible to guess what went on behind that gaze.
“I know what it means to face the horrors of the Thillei legacy,” Rider Cornatan said in a low voice. “There are certain things we simple human beings cannot fight. That is the true reason I sent you: because you alone have a chance. Had you not been there, the boy would have been in the hands of the enemy. You did as well as you could.”
“Who . . .” Carro swallowed. Did this mean that the death of two capable men would be written off as inevitable? While it was his fault? “Who is this enemy?”
“That is what we need to find out. We might have thought that all Thilleians were dead, but it seems they are not.”
Isandor. And then Carro had another chilling thought: did his friend have anything to do with this invisible monstrosity? It was Isandor’s idea to read the books, but what if he had kept the most important of them secret?
“Now, I want you to clean up and rest. Go downstairs to my quarters and use the bathroom there.” He winked. “I know it’s Newlight. Don’t stay too long, though. I believe you’re racing tomorrow.”
He passed an arm over Carro’s shoulders and squeezed them briefly.
Carro’s head was full of questions. What did he mean—don’t stay too long? How could Rider Cornatan be so indifferent about the death of two men? What was he going to do with that boy? Why, if he wanted Imperfects, had he not noticed the one right in front of his nose in the eyrie, and what would Carro do if asked to betray Isandor?
But he left the room and trudged down the howling staircase to the Senior Knight quarters. When he came to the bathroom in question, he understood at least the first part of Rider Cornatan’s remarks, because he could hear the sound of relaxed talk and laughter before he opened the door. It sounded like a party going on.
The room beyond was huge and impossibly warm. Steam drifted from the surface of a huge bath. At least twenty people sat in the water, on a bench around the perimeter of the bath.
“Hey, there’s the hero!” one young man called out.
The others cheered, holding up glasses.
The group included some of the noble sons who had always been indifferent to him, men who should know about the deaths of two of their fellows. And, by the skylights, there was Korinne, seated in the water.
Their eyes met, and Carro looked away, acutely aware of his filthy clothes. No way to face a girl.
In a corner filled with benches and washbasins, Carro slipped out of his clothes and washed blood off his hands. It was warm in the room, and the laughter and cheerful voices made his ears ring, where he still heard that snap, that awful snap, of the Knight’s neck breaking.
Footsteps in the snow.
Crack.
A servant came with a tray of hot bloodwine. Carro accepted a glass and drained it in one gulp. The liquid burned a way to his stomach. There. That was better. He slipped into the huge bath, not meeting anyone’s eyes. The water stung his cold-numbed hands.
Carro leaned back against the side of the bath, letting the talk in the room wash over him. His head was becoming comfortably dizzy with the heat and the effect of the bloodwine.
“Hi, Carro.”
Korinne had appeared on the underwater seat next to him. Her curls were flattened against her head and the bottom ends of her hair fanned out from her shoulders, partially covering her breasts.
“Um, hello,” he said, and then he felt like he had to add something. “Have you been here long?”
Stupid question, really, seeing as what he’d been through.
“Not very long,” she said. She took one of his hands and began rubbing it, examining blisters on his palms. “Flying out at night?” she asked.
He nodded, the simplest answer that didn’t require him to lie.
“Didn’t you wear gloves?”
Carro shrugged. He didn’t want to talk about his mission. The flow of the water drew her hair away from her breasts, soft white orbs with dark nipples. He felt oddly detached.
“We were just getting ready for the party and were waiting for you.” She ran her hands up his arm, meeting his eyes.
“For me?” Heat crept up his cheeks.
Was this the girl who had called him a clumsy idiot earlier that evening? By the skylights—was it only that evening? It seemed many days ago.
“Drink?” someone behind him asked.
Carro turned and to
ok the bottle from the man next to him, a tall, dark-haired young man with olive skin. His shoulders were lean and corded with muscle.
The man met Carro’s eyes; his were grey and uncomfortably intense. He had long eyelashes. His face was narrow, with a long, hook-like nose.
Foreign blood.