by Patty Jansen
“Girl, shut up. You’re not going to get that child out by screaming. Now sit still.” She crouched on the floor, awkward because of her own belly. Myra was crying.
She slid her hand inside the girl’s softness. The womb tensed up. Myra screamed.
“It hurts, it hurts.”
“Shut up. It’s not that bad.”
But then she probed with her fingers and felt that it was bad. By the skylights, she should have checked earlier.
“Tandor, do you have that sled and driver handy?”
He raised his eyebrows.
“The child is facing the wrong way. I need to take her to the palace.”
Tandor’s eyes widened. “The palace?”
In one hit, his face had lost its madness.
Chapter 25
* * *
FIRE LIT UP the sky. Flapping flames reached over the rooftops, spreading foul smoke in the air. People ran through the street, mere silhouettes in the dusky night. Some carried sticks as weapons, others had their faces covered.
Carro walked through the dark streets alone, cold air biting through his cloak. His face hurt, his muscles hurt, his head hurt. He’d fled Mistress Loriane’s house without the medicine, but he could hardly go back.
He was sure that the man in Mistress Loriane’s kitchen was the same he’d hunted earlier that day. Who was he, and what was he doing there? He might be dressed up as a noble, but he was no noble of the City of Glass. The man spoke with a Chevakian accent.
Carro knew he should seek Rider Cornatan urgently to tell him of this man, but on the other hand . . . Mistress Loriane had said that ichina would help stop the confusing memories. Surely there would be some ichina at the medical post in the festival grounds. The post was closed, but it was only a tent and he could easily get in. Taking medicine he needed wasn’t stealing, was it? He’d rather no one else found out about it. It was a medicine for women and he had seen his sister prepare it many times. It never worked for her. But his sister was only his half-sister, wasn’t she? Born from a different breeder. And what was wrong with him didn’t have anything to do with a girl’s ability to conceive, did it? Or rather—by the skylights, Korinne. She had probably taken it and was now waiting until she and her father could come to his door to claim their prize. He didn’t want the care of a child. His Knight’s stipend would never pay for a house and a wife, and servants. A Knight couldn’t very well live in the Outer City either.
And he just didn’t, didn’t, want that sort of thing. Knights, especially Senior Knights, often paid families to look after their children, since most didn’t marry. However, they were from noble families and had money, and they had lineages and inheritances to look after. He was only Carro, and no one cared about any brats of his.
Then you should have thought about it before you acted. He could almost hear his father’s voice. His father was right, but his father was a jerk, and Carro would rather die than accept any help from the man.
Was that how he himself had come about? His father had been careless during the Newlight festival, but didn’t care, didn’t want him, got him anyway, and now Carro was about to do the same to a child of his? Rejecting a little boy whose only wish was to be liked?
A strange thought occurred to him: what if Isandor got Jevaithi pregnant? Isandor had no money at all; he didn’t even have a family. Oh, that would be priceless, with all the Knights drooling over her and all the speculation of who would father Jevaithi’s children. And then the Knights found she would have the child of a dirt-poor boy from the Outer City, an Imperfect at that. Hilarious.
Carro chuckled, then he started laughing. He laughed and laughed and couldn’t stop laughing.
A man stopped and asked if he was all right, but Carro couldn’t see him. The street, the people, the limpets, the orange sky above all blurred into streaks of light and dark. Tears of freezing water bit into his cheeks.
“Yes, yes, I’m all right,” he said and the man left.
But he wasn’t all right, wasn’t he? He was crazy, damaged, sick. A common Outer City healer could see that.
He moved through the streets with the flow of the crowd, under cover of darkness. The air resonated with angry voices. People looked at him from the corners of their eyes. Young men in black formed little groups and spoke to each other in low voices. In a street nearby people were shouting. In an alley between two limpets, he caught a glimpse of a blazing fire and lithe silhouettes running away from a patrol of Knights.
Carro jammed his hands in his pockets and bent his head, hoping not to attract any attention.
Who were these people coming out in support of the Imperfects? Why were there so many of them? Did this mean the entire Brotherhood of the Light and all their pupils supported Thilleians? That they were Thilleians?
He had read of the time before the uprising against the king, when the common people stirred against those who held all power. There had been hordes of looters in the streets, demanding for the king to come out of the palace. The people had lynched the king’s guards, hacked them to death and cut them up into pieces.
Something like that could easily happen again.
* * *
Carro slumps on the table. Rows and rows of numbers dance before his eyes. He could put his head on the book and sleep. All night, he’s been sitting here. His fingers are cramped, his toes frozen.
One mistake in his additions, and he can start over. The figures never add up. Income and expenditure never balance. Records are missing or incomplete. One complaint to his father, and another book is added to the pile. No dinner until he’s done.
He wishes that his father, like normal fathers, would hit him. Punishment by accountancy is cruel, slow, mind-numbing and, in the unheated warehouse, incredibly cold. His hands hurt. His feet hurt and he is beyond shivering.
* * *
“Hey, watch out where you’re going!” a man shouted.
Someone bumped into Carro, a hard knock of a shoulder against his upper arm. Carro just stood there, gulping breath.
Carro mumbled an apology, rubbing his arm. One way or another, he must get the ichina to stop those spells.
If he left it too long, he was going to be expelled from the Knighthood, and he would have no other option than to go back to his family.
He felt himself sliding into another vision and had to steady himself against a lamppost. It was getting so bad recently. He was mad, not fit for duty. He was—
“Hey. Carro, isn’t it?”
Carro looked up, into the grey eyes of one of Rider Cornatan’s private hunters, Farey. He was out of uniform, wearing a cloak as dark and sleek as his hair. He raised his eyebrows at the bandage on Carro’s face.
“I . . . I was looking for my patrol,” Carro stammered, his tongue feeling like an overcooked piece of meat. He was still struggling to hold onto the present.
The eyebrows rose further.
Carro squirmed. This man had the ability to make you feel uneasy without saying anything. He added, “They fled.”
“Real brave hearts, huh?”
Carro nodded, and looked aside. He knew what Farey would think of him: weak, unfit to command even a bunch of Apprentices. He had to punish the lot of them, and punish them hard.
“We . . . encountered some enemies . . . invisible ones.” It seemed such a lame story, at least when facing this strange and very unnerving man.
“Ah.”
It was too dark, but Carro thought a look of bemusement crossed Farey’s face. His eyes glittered with mirth. Something in his smile made Carro shiver, not because he was cold, but because . . .
Both times when he had been to Rider Cornatan’s bathroom, there had been more men than women, and both times, he felt the hunters considered Korinne a floozy who didn’t belong there, and who was merely a plaything for a child.
Real Knights didn’t play with girls; they played with other men.
Carro’s heart thudded. What had Farey come to ask him?
“I’ll .
. . have to punish my patrol for running away.”
“Yes.”
“What about you?” He barely knew what he was saying. All he could see were Farey’s grey eyes, intense and amused.
“My missions are always simple.”
“Oh?”
“I was looking for you.”
Carro’s heart jumped. He saw Farey in Rider Cornatan’s bathroom, his lean and muscled chest, his olive skin—
“I was asked to save your arse, and get you out of here before these riots blow up.”
* * *
A nursemaid.
Farey had come as nursemaid. Rider Cornatan thought he needed a minder. He thought Carro was soft; Farey thought Carro was soft.
Carro paced in the empty hall, up, down, past the pathetic members of his patrol, whom he had dragged out of the dormitory.
He was still shaking from his encounter with Farey and the flight back through the freezing night air. He was shaking with anger, at himself, at his stupidity, at everyone for playing games with him.
“You stupid idiots,” he yelled. “You left your commanding officer like a bunch of screaming girls.”
The boys stood there, white-faced, dirty, eyes downcast, not looking at one another, especially not looking at him.
“What the fuck did you think you were doing?” Carro yelled, replaying in his mind how the Tutors yelled at him, and trying to copy. “We were to stay together at all times. Isn’t that one of the things we learn?”
“We can’t fight when it comes to icefire,” Inran said, his eyes on the floor. “It’s not a fair fight.”
“No fight is fair!” Carro grabbed Inran’s collar. Just as well he’d learned so much from watching the Tutor. “I can’t remember fights being fair when I was at the receiving end of them. Did I run? No! Look at you lot. You decide to run off—by yourself. Deserting. Do you know what the punishment is for desertion?”
“There were two blue ghosts.” Inran’s lip was trembling.
“There were—what?” Spit flew from Carro’s mouth.
Inran cowered back. “There were two blue ghosts. I was scared. I thought you’d seen them, too.”
“Thought? You thought? Apprentices never think anything. You are not here to do any thinking. Your stupidity nearly got me killed. Is that what you wanted? Do you know who appointed me to this position?” Carro had to stop yelling to catch his breath.
Inran shook his head, blinking. He was one of the boys who used to egg on Jono and Caman when they teased Carro in the dormitory, but he didn’t look so brave now.
* * *
Isandor looks up at him with those strong, blue eyes.
“All you need to do, Carro, is tell him you won’t do it. You have been accepted into the Knights and you will have your own income. Your father can no longer demand that you do things for him if he’s not paying for your upkeep.”
“It’s easy for you to say. You don’t have a father.” That was a very nasty remark, Carro.
Isandor fell into a moment of silence. Then: “Try it. Tell him you’re busy. What can he do?”
“Give me a beating.”
Isandor shakes his head, and Carro notices how fuzzy his friend’s chin is becoming.
“Carro, you’re sixteen. Your father won’t beat you. He’s an old man and you are stronger than he. He’s afraid of you.”
* * *
They should be afraid of me.
Carro let Inran go and paced back to the middle of the room, then whirled to face the boys. Inran stared at him with wide eyes. Jono and Caman were quiet enough, but looked absent-minded. They hadn’t even listened to what he had said.
“What are you staring at? Get your rotten arses out of here.”
The boys saluted and made for the door. Jono and Caman glanced at each other, and Jono smiled, a smile that said, We haven’t been punished. Rider Cornatan would think had he been too soft. Not fit to command a patrol. These Apprentices should be so scared of him they wet their pants.
“Apprentice.” Carro made the utmost attempt to let his voice sound harsh. How did Rider Cornatan achieve that?
The boys stopped in the doorway, Caman furthest into the corridor.
Carro had not forgotten Jono’s taunts. The boys hated him all right; they had hated him from the moment he’d joined. They’d never hated Isandor, because Isandor wasn’t special in the same way he was. Isandor was never any competition in the eyes of those pampered noble boys. That’s why they hated him, because his presence threatened them. Then you must hate them back. Rider Cornatan’s words.
Carro joined the two at the door and paced around them, slowly and deliberately.
“Do you need to be taught a lesson?”
Meet violence with violence. Payback time.
“You.” He pulled Jono’s uniform by the neck. Why had he never noticed that he had grown taller than the bully?
“Hey! You can’t do that!” Jono squealed.
“Yes, I can. I’m your superior, like it or not, and you will respect me and obey my orders.”
“I was obeying—”
“You were not.”
Jono gasped a few words, trying to prise his fingers between his neck and the collar that cut into the skin. His eyes went wide.
* * *
A hand comes into Carro’s field of vision, a hand filled with snow. The next moment, the snow hits his face, and the hand rubs it into his stinging cheeks.
Carro screams.
Someone is sitting on his back, knees painfully pressing into his spine.
“Stop it, stop it!”
His mouth fills up with snow. Carro spits.
Someone pulls his hair.
“Listen to me, you worthless runt,” a boy hisses in his ear. “Any time we meet you again, we will repeat this. Understood?”
Carro nods. A cold lump of snow slides down his back between his clothes and his bare skin.
“Understood?” the boy says again, but louder.
Carro nods again.
The boy fumbles for the back of Carro’s trousers, lifts the waistband and shoves in the handful of snow.
The other boys are laughing.
* * *
Carro hated them, he hated Isandor, he hated everyone. No one ever respected him. No one. Even Isandor, a cripple, treated him like a weakling, like someone who needed help. He didn’t need help. He could punish these boys just as well as everyone else had always punished him.
He tightened his grip on Jono’s hair and slammed him face-first into the wall. Jono whimpered. His arm trembled under Carro’s touch. Yes, yes, this was how it was done. They had to fear him, or they would run circles around him. They would laugh at him behind his back.
He ordered the other two, “Hold him.”
They did as told and each grabbed an arm. Very quiet and obedient all of a sudden. Oh, they knew what was going to happen. They knew, and they didn’t want it to happen to them.
Slowly and deliberately, Carro undid Jono’s belt and let his pants whisper to the floor. His buttocks were scrawny and hairy, with a few angry red pimples. Goosebumps broke out all over his skin.
Carro squirmed and forced himself to think of Korinne—he repeated her name in his mind, saw her golden locks, her alluring eyes.
“Come on boy, what are you waiting for?”
She laughed, and her image faded. When he wanted the visions, he couldn’t hold on to them. His cock was at best half-limp. Panic gripped cold fingers around his heart. Now he started this, he had to go through with it; this was how junior Knights were punished. He could of course use the belt to hit Jono, but that would be considered backing down. His . . . ability would be questioned. Carro the dud, he could just hear it. He had to do it, he had to, he had to. . . .
Inran and Caman watched him, their gazes hollow. They’d seen it before. They’d switched off in the same way they had when Carro was receiving this punishment.
They knew what was required.
Carro felt sick. Felt h
imself standing in the dormitory enduring the humiliation with clenched teeth. Oh, by the skylights! He had to do this properly. Rider Cornatan wanted it. You must hate them back. Hate, hate, hate . . .
Carro undid his own belt and clumsily pressed against Jono’s backside. The skin was clammy with sweat. Carro remembered, felt the pain, his face pressed against the plaster of the wall. He ran his hands down Jono’s sides in a mockery of a loving gesture, breathed hot on Jono’s naked shoulder, and he grew hard. Jono squirmed away, but his fellows held him tight, white-knuckled fingers biting into purpling flesh, pushing him hard into the wall. Carro rammed in.