Fire & Ice

by Patty Jansen

  Rider Cornatan laughed. “You would be. By the way, Korinne was most insistent in asking if you were available to come again tonight.”

  Korinne, asking for him. Offering herself to him without being asked. Did she like him after all?

  He nodded again. “I will be there.”

  “Very well, boy. That’s the sort of thing I like to hear. Lift your chin and make sure none of your peers tell you what to do. You obey your superiors, and no one else. You understand that?”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Rider Cornatan hesitated, as if he wanted to say something else, but thought better of it.

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  TANDOR KNELT in the snow in the shade of the alley, tugged off his glove with his pincer claw and put his hand flat on the hard, icy ground. In the feeble blue light of not-quite dawn, the area around his fingers glowed with a few specks of gold before winking out.

  Yes, Ruko had come this way. The trail was half a day old at least, but Ruko had been here.

  There were footsteps behind him, and voices of women. Tandor rose quickly and pressed himself to the wall on one side of the alley. The women walked past, casting Tandor strange looks that said, What is he doing here at this time of day?

  Tandor waited until the women had disappeared from view and continued down the alley, kneeling and touching the snow. With each step he took, and each glance at the brightening sky, his despair grew.

  Ruko was in trouble somewhere, or he would have returned long ago. It meant that someone out here could see Ruko and had a means of injuring him.

  To add to that, picking up Ruko’s trail became ever harder with the increasing strength of icefire.

  Golden strands now frequently crackled through the air, escaped from the matrix that normally held its power.

  The breeze carried the sounds of cheers, shouting and music. At the festival grounds, the common folk were watching the races. As yet they were blissfully ignorant of the increased level of icefire, but that wouldn’t remain so. The Heart was coming into its full power soon, and he had recruited not a single servitor to help him channel that raw energy. There were limits to how much icefire the citizens of the City of Glass could stand without becoming ill.

  Ruko!

  A flutter of icefire responded, the tiniest of pulses.

  Ruko?

  The wind sighed through the alley, an exhaled breath of pain. The connection was weak. Ruko was injured and he was close.

  The sound of children’s voices drifted from the other side of a high wall at his back. Tandor couldn’t make out the words, but the conversation held an edge of tenseness, the voices curious, more than just children at play.

  He crept along the wall until he came to a gate, which judging by the amount of snow piled up on the ground, was always open. It led into a walled courtyard surrounded on three sides by a building with a columned façade. Made of mountain marble, the building was ancient, because it was a long time since any marble had been brought from the border with Arania. It was also a long time since anyone had used the inscriptions which graced the building’s façade. Tandor remembered learning the formulae by heart. How to calculate the power of icefire at different points from its source. How to predict how many people could handle a certain amount of icefire, how to calculate how far the temperature would drop with increased power. How to convert icefire into heat and light. How he had hated those lessons with his mother.

  A door opened in the rightmost wing of the building. A bearded man dressed in black came out, leading a group of children across the courtyard. Some were crying, some held the man’s hand.

  The Brotherhood of the Light was named not after the sun, but after the power of the Heart.

  On the far side of the courtyard, two men came into view, heaving a large object between them that looked suspiciously like a body covered with cloth. There was another one already on the ground.

  A little boy came out of a door onto the veranda, but was ordered back inside with a sharp command. Both brothers in black stood silent, balling their hands against their chests. One of the men went inside, but the other hesitated and glanced at a heap of snow against the courtyard’s wall. Icefire leapt from the air, a single strand which forked like lightning. It shattered into golden diamonds, which rained down onto the snow mound.

  The young man didn’t react to the light spectacle, but Tandor had no illusion that he could see it in some form. The Brothers of the Light had been the old king’s spiritual order. Further back in history, the order had served as a handy depository for idle noble sons, including princes with minor claims on the throne. As such, many of its current members would have traces of Thillei blood. This Brother’s Thilleian blood had located Ruko.

  Bless the boy. Weak and injured as he obviously was, he’d gone and buried himself under the snow. Now all Tandor needed to do was wait until the courtyard was empty.

  * * *

  Loriane shut the door to the inner chamber of the limpet behind her. She crossed to the table and set down her tray.

  Myra sat cross-legged on the mat in front of the stove. The fierce glow from the fire gilded the folds of the girl’s thin nightgown.

  She didn’t look up or open her eyes. Her hands on her knees, she sat there, counting and breathing slowly.

  Loriane sat down and watched for a while. Maybe there was hope yet to prepare her for the birth. Her spot-bleeding had stopped overnight. Loriane might have a few days to teach the girl some relaxation routines.

  She felt guilty about not being able to help at the festival anymore, but if she was honest with herself, Loriane didn’t mind losing out on treating drunken louts.

  Myra opened her eyes. “Was that better?”

  “Much better,” Loriane said. “Now if you can take that off, I can examine you, before Tandor comes back.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “No.” If she sounded snippy, she meant it. “Does he think I have nothing to do but pamper him?”

  “Tandor doesn’t pamper—”

  “What do you know?” Again, too angry. Loriane looked away, ashamed to have let herself go.

  “I’m worried about him,” she said to the room in general. “He comes here, he does whatever he wants. He makes promises. He disappears.”

  “Does he keep his promises?” A lot of anxiety hung in the girl’s question. What had Tandor promised her?

  “Usually.” Loriane heaved a sigh. “Come, lie down here. After that we better make sure the washing is dry and we have all those oils poured in jars.”

  “I didn’t think being a midwife was so much work.” Myra slipped off her nightgown and lay down on the couch as Loriane indicated.

  “Oh, preparing the medicines is just a small part of the job. You don’t even know about the times I get called out in the middle of the night and have to stay all of the next day as well.”

  She grabbed her basket of supplies and kneeled awkwardly. Her own belly was getting in the way of this job. She rummaged through and then realised the bottle of disinfecting oil was empty. By the skylights. She had more, but she had left it in the tent at the festival grounds.

  “All right, this will have to wait.”

  The girl stared at the basket, her eyes wide. “What were you going to do?”

  Clearly, no one had ever examined her. By the skylights, had anyone looked after this girl? Did the people in Bordertown just let women have their children—and die giving birth—like beasts?

  She probed the girl’s belly. The womb tensed up under her touch, hard as rock.

  Myra gasped. “It hurts, it hurts.”

  “Yes,” Loriane said and withdrew. “You know what I think? I think your pains have already started.”

  “I’ve . . . I’ve been having cramps all day.”

  “That will be it.”

  “Is that all?” She sounded too relieved.

  “No, it’s not.” Loriane rose. She really needed that disinfectant so she c
ould examine Myra inside.

  Myra pushed herself up. She was trembling when she reached for her gown and hesitated putting it on. “Or do you want me to leave it off?”

  “We’re not getting to that stage so soon. That will be a while yet. You better do some more of those exercises I gave you.”

  Myra nodded and wriggled back onto the mat, crossed her legs and went on with the breathing exercises.

  Loriane studied the girl’s shape. The weight in her belly restricted movement of her spine, which she held at an uncomfortable curve. Her shoulders and hips were narrow, with not a scrap of meat on them. Loriane hoped, for all she was worth, that the father of the child was not too broad or big-boned. Myra was heavy for her thin frame, and a gentle start to the process like this often meant a protracted and painful birth, especially in young girls.

  “Loriane, how many children have you had?”

  “This is my tenth.”

  “Ten?” A stunned silence. “I don’t know any woman at Bordertown who has had that many.”

  And lived to tell the tale, Loriane added in her mind.

  “When is your child going to be born?”

  “Soon.” Should have been a few days ago.

  Another short silence.

  “I’ve heard that women in the City of Glass . . . sell their children.”

  “Noblemen pay fertile women to have children for them if their wives aren’t fertile. Many of them are barren.”

  “Why?”

  “They say it’s to do with icefire. It may not kill us as it does with the Chevakians, but many of us can’t have children.”

  “Yes, icefire is strong here. I’ve never seen it like this before.”

  Loriane studied the girl’s face. She had forgotten that one of the attributes of being Imperfect was the ability to see icefire. Even when Isandor was still at home, he had avoided this very subject. She couldn’t see icefire, not a single scrap of it.

  “Someone paid for your child?” Myra asked.

  Loriane nodded. She thought again of Yanko, and how much she doubted the child was his, and how she had no idea whose it could be. She hadn’t been with a man except Tandor a ten-night earlier, but just last night she had seen again how he lacked the necessary equipment to do the job.

  She glanced at Myra. Was there a way Tandor could have gotten both Myra and herself pregnant, even though he was no longer a man?

  Yeah, that was wishful thinking. Admit it, woman, this man has got you by the scruff of the neck.

  Loriane rose, rubbing her belly.

  Now if Tandor would come back, she could send him out to get some disinfectant from the tent at the festival grounds.

  Unless . . . She eyed his traveller’s chest, which he had left open next to the bed. His thermals lay over the chest’s contents. Whenever he visited, she usually gave him a few things from her practice, to use on his travels. He might still have some disinfectant.

  She lifted the woollen underwear from the chest. There were clothes, neatly folded, and stacks of old books. A basket made of tough leaves unknown to the southern land contained an assortment of stoppered flasks, jars and boxes with foreign labels. She rummaged through the selection, recognising—she thought—ointment for cuts, syrup for upset stomachs and pills, but the latter were labelled in a language she didn’t recognise. By the skylights, he even had face paint and perfumes. Did men use such things in the northern lands? With Myra watching, the sight of a large jar with a wooden stopper that she had seen many times before made her blush. Tandor brought this jar to her bed at night. It contained a gel which, when rubbed across certain sensitive parts, made those parts much more sensitive and made certain activities more pleasurable. She tucked that one away quickly.

  But no disinfectant.

  Tucked in a deep corner of the chest stood a jar made of clear glass with an elaborately-carved stopper. Clearly an item from an apothecary. The jar was heavy. The glass felt warm under her hands. Pink fluid inside suspended a fist-sized sac of soft flesh. A bundle of tube-like veins sprouted from the top, waving gently in the eerie bath.

  The sac pulsed of its own accord.

  Loriane stared at it, feeling sick. The pink sac was a human heart.

  What had Tandor said again? That Ruko was restored in return for something he had traded? His heart? The old king used to do things like that.

  Myra gave a soft gasp. “That hurt.”

  Her words broke Loriane from her transfixed state. With trembling hands, she put the jar with its hideous contents down and dropped the woollen tunics back into the chest.

  Myra had stopped her exercises. Her eyes were wide. “It hurts, Loriane.”

  “Yes, it probably does. Breathe as I’ve shown you. Nothing more I can do. It’s all up to you.”

  Where was Tandor? What was he doing with that horrible thing in his luggage?

  * * *

  It took a long time for the courtyard to empty. When the last boys and the Brothers had finally gone, he ran across and fell to his knees at the snow mound. Faint golden strands of icefire showed the shape of a man underneath the snow. Tandor dug into the biting cold, scrabbling chunks of iced-up snow off Ruko’s body. He lay curled up like an oversized sleeping child, and didn’t move when Tandor uncovered him. He was no longer blue, but a sickly grey.

  Ruko, Ruko!

  The response was weak, a mere tugging at the edge of his senses. Tandor breathed deeply, stifling panic that crept up from his gut.

  What, just what, had happened to him? Ruko was supposed to be invincible. A servitor. You couldn’t kill them unless you killed the maker. And not dead was just about the only thing that could be said in favour of Ruko’s condition.

  Tandor pushed the snow off Ruko’s legs and tried to drag him to his feet. The boy was too heavy for Tandor to lift, so he picked him up under the arms and dragged him across the courtyard.

  Tandor stopped at the gate. Where to now? He could hardly walk back to Loriane’s house like this, dragging a body that most people couldn’t even see.

  There was a narrow passageway between two houses opposite the gate. Tandor waited for the alley to empty of women returning from the markets before he dragged Ruko across. The recently-fallen snow had been trampled into a hard cover, on which industrious citizens had spread layers of sand. As Tandor dragged Ruko across, the heels of Ruko’s boots scratched into the sand cover, leaving tracks of pristine white.

  There was no time to grab sand from the bucket that stood next to the door of a nearby house—someone was coming.

  Tandor cursed, sending a burst of icefire to spread the sand and cursed again when icefire lifted all the sand and blew it against the outer wall of the compound instead. Icefire was so strong already, and he was no closer to getting into the palace.

  He dragged Ruko further into the alley, sending another burst of icefire to obscure the alley’s entrance from curious eyes. Passersby would see something that repulsed them, and made them look away. A drunk man, a dead animal, a pile of rubbish, two lovers engaged in an indecent act.

  Tandor proceeded further into the alley, past a side entrance to a house, past steps and a rubbish bin to where the passage ended. He tipped the snow off the bin’s lid and fashioned it into a wall, grabbing icefire from the air to melt the snow enough so it would stick together. The structure didn’t reach very high, but it hid Ruko from view in case someone could see past the illusion at the alley’s entrance.

  By the skylights, what now?

  He eyed the wall at his back. It was ages since he’d sneaked around the streets of Tiverius as a young boy getting away from his mother, scaling walls and climbing onto roofs. It wasn’t just that he’d become unaccustomed to moving around in such a way—he was a prince, by the skylights—but the roofs of the City of Glass were too steep, ice-covered and utterly unfamiliar. A man’s survival instinct is honed and primed by his youthful scampering away from obnoxious adults, his weapons tutor used to say. And Tandor’s experience was all in Tiveri
us. In Chevakia.

  He was a blasted Chevakian.

  He sat on the cold ground, his back against the wall, sheltering behind the rubbish bin. There was no way he could move until Ruko recovered, but he didn’t have the time. Someone was on the loose who not only knew he had a servitor, but who knew how to deal with servitors as well.

  He loosened the clasp of Ruko’s cloak and wriggled one of the boy’s hands from underneath.

  Tell me what you know.

  Ruko’s hand lay grey and pale in his live one. At first, Tandor didn’t see anything, but when he grabbed strands of icefire and poured them into Ruko’s prone form, images came to his mind.