by Patty Jansen
Mercy, he hated these kinds of votes-for-money deals, and they didn’t stop with the demands from the north. The east wanted better telegraph lines. The west wanted export regulations to Arania to be relaxed. Mercy, mercy. Even if he agreed to some, there were always other demands, and other senators claiming unfairness because senator so-and-so got their wish. They were all like little children around the honey pot. And he was the bee stupid enough to have been caught in the frenzy.
The more the process wore on, the more he wished he could follow the one senator who walked out in disgust.
At the end of the afternoon, there was another vote which delivered a grand majority of two . . . in favour of senator Sadorius han Chevonian. So in the still-noisy hall, he walked down the stairs and took the ceremonial cloak and hammer from Destran, whose face twisted in a sneer. Whose face reminded Sady of Milleus’ when that same fate befell his brother. He wanted to say sorry, except he was not, really. He didn’t dislike Destran as a person, and his likes and dislikes had nothing to do with politics anyway. Besides, Destran looked furious.
He hissed through clenched teeth, “You and your family are all the same. Enjoy it while you can. It won’t last.” He turned abruptly and stormed out, leaving Sady to stare at his retreating back, feeling the literal and figurative weight of the Proctor’s cloak on his shoulders.
Mercy.
What had he done?
Chapter 13
* * *
DARA AND MYRA spent a long time packing, far too long, for Loriane’s liking. She had nothing to pack and, with more and more people streaming into the town, wanted to be gone as soon as possible.
She carried her meagre possessions into the shed, where the bear was snorting nervously and the camel stood chewing peacefully and Ruko sat atop Tandor’s chest. Well, she couldn’t see him of course, but something threw a ball of twine into the air and caught it again and again.
“We can use Tandor’s sled,” Loriane said when Ontane stumbled into the shed after her, carrying a heavy travel chest.
He put his load down. “Where we be going we can’t use a sled. Snow stops quickly down the side of the platform.”
“Then how are we going to get to this hunting shack?” By the skylights, she hated the idea of another trek.
“We walk, and take the camel and a cart.”
He pulled a rough cloth off a strange contraption in a corner of the shed. It was completely made out of wood—it had to be worth a fortune—and moved smoothly on the ground on two round things on either side.
“What, you never seen wheels, mistress?”
Loriane shook her head. Like the sled, it had a tray and two beams on which to tie the animal.
“Cart.” She repeated the strange Chevakian word.
He slapped his hand on the tray. “We’ll put all our things here and your man on the saddle.”
Loriane was going to say that he wasn’t her man but couldn’t muster the energy. She went up the stairs, ignored the piercing stare from Dara in the kitchen, and tried to get Tandor to sit up. He mumbled some incoherent words, but wouldn’t open his eyes more than a sliver. His face looked horrible, half-covered in caked blood. Most of his long hair was gone. But for all she could see, his injuries were superficial.
“Come on, Tandor, stop behaving like this and help me.” She shook his shoulders. His eyelids flickered, but he did not otherwise react to her. “Tandor, come on. I can’t move you by myself. I’ve had enough of this. I know you can hear us, so help me, by the skylights.”
But her words made no difference.
Slowly, she dressed him in his filthy overclothes. She had scrubbed some of the caked and dried blood and mud out of his cloak, but the furs smelled terrible.
His eyelids flickered and his eyes seemed to gain focus.
“Come on, Tandor, talk to me.”
He opened his mouth, but at that moment there was a rushing sound and she was roughly pushed aside so that she fell into the chair that stood before the hearth.
“Hey, watch out!” she yelled at Ruko, who was now lifting Tandor off the bed. “Tandor, tell him that he’s rude.”
But Tandor had gone back to being non-responsive.
Ruko carried him down the stairs, and Loriane followed, glad for his assistance, because she wouldn’t have gotten him down. In the shed, Ontane had put a saddle on the camel and was lashing a pack to the cart.
Dara strode into the shed carrying another pack, which she added to the pile already waiting to be put onto the cart. Ontane heaved the pack his wife had given him onto the cart.
“There be something you wish to take, mistress?” Ontane asked.
Loriane glanced at Tandor’s chest on the sled. It was much too big to fit onto the cart with all the packs Dara had brought. Yet she couldn’t leave it here. They might not come back. The refugees might destroy it. Tandor never travelled without it.
“I . . .” She walked to the chest, fingering the lid.
“It be clear that we can’t take that entire thing,” Dara said, before she turned away and left the shed, no doubt to get more packs from the kitchen.
Yes, Loriane could understand that, but why did this woman have to be so rude about it?
If she left Tandor’s things here, vital information could be lost. She should at least take something. The books, at least.
Yet she shuddered at the idea of going through Tandor’s things and finding goodness-knew-what. Like that horrid beating heart in the jar. She couldn’t even blame rude and simple-minded Dara for not wanting to take that. What would she do with it?
She braced herself and pushed the lid—
* * *
—No, Tandor screamed in his mind, don’t take it.
Ruko laughed. “They won’t hear you. They’re stupid, meaningless people.”
“They saved me.”
“They prevented you being saved. They are stupid.”
“Why are you talking like this? You are meant to listen to me. What are you doing here? I thought I told you to guard this town.”
“I’m not going to listen to a weakling like you. There’s no point staying here. You don’t command me, and the others don’t command me. I’m going with them to Chevakia.”
“You can’t. You’ll vanish as soon as you cross the border.”
“Then I’ll just have to return to my normal form, won’t I?”
* * *
—the lid opened.
Dara walked past again with another look at Loriane. “Take some of his clothes, but we’ll have to leave the rest of that thing here.”
“I’d like to take all of it.”
Dara’s eyes widened. “Don’t you see there’s no room? We need food and blankets, and the tent. We have no room for silly things like books.”
“I have hardly anything to take. This can take the space for both of us.”
“But we can’t—”
“Look!” Ontane said.
Tandor had stiffened. His eyes were wide.
Loriane said, “See? He knows we’re talking about him. He doesn’t want his things to be left behind. There is important information in Tandor’s books.”
“And I’m saying that everything on that cart is for all of us. Food, blankets, tent—”
“I have to take it, or I’ll never find his family—”
Ontane stepped between them. “Ladies, ladies, stop the fight—”
* * *
— “I forbid you to return to your normal form!” Tandor called in that place between life and death.
Ruko laughed. “You forbid? You have no say over me anymore. Never had any, coward. I’ve had enough of hanging around in this s
tupid village.”
“And you’ll have to hang around here some more. I want you to see what happens with all these refugees here—”
“I’m coming. Watch me.” He went to Tandor’s travel chest.
* * *
—Myra screamed, “Look, Da!” and pointed.
The clothes that lay atop the contents of the chest moved by themselves. Then the invisible hands rummaged through the contents underneath, pushing aside underclothes and books, and unearthed the glass jar with its grisly contents.
Lifted it. The jar stopped in mid-air.
Ontane stood watching, his eyes wide.
Myra came up behind him. The baby in a fur sling across her chest gave out muffled cries.
Ruko, for it must be he holding the jar, turned to her and held it out to her. The contents of the jar pulsed with blue glow. Myra’s eyes widened.
“Da? Mistress Loriane? What’s happening?”
“I think he wants you to take it,” Loriane said.
“What is that thing? It’s . . . disgusting.” She shrank back.
When Myra made no attempt to take the jar, Ruko retreated. The jar went up, and before anyone could do anything, Ruko had smashed it on the ground. Myra screamed. Even Tandor uttered a cry.
Shattered glass lay in a heap in the straw, and amongst it, the pulsing heart.
Ontane muttered, “By the skylights, it be alive.”
But Myra was still staring at the spot where Loriane suspected Ruko to be, in the middle of the barn.
“What?” she whispered. “What do you want me to . . .”
She knelt on the ground.
Her mother shouted, “Myra, don’t touch it—”
* * *
—Tandor jumped forward, but his virtual body was insubstantial where his real body still refused to obey his will.
He grabbed hold of Ruko’s arm, but his hand went straight through it. Ruko laughed.
“You have to learn being a ghost.”
“What are you going to do in Chevakia?”
“I’m going to offer my services to this mistress of yours, because she seems to have more backbone than you.”
“She’s my mother, by the skylights, and she’s a horrible old woman. She cares only about revenge, no matter who gets hurt.”
By the skylights, he did not want his mother to get her hands on Ruko—
* * *
—But Myra had already picked up the pulsing heart in her hands. She rose, holding it out. The fluid from the jar dripped off her hands and spread a pungent odour through the shed.
The heart vanished, as if eaten up by the air.
* * *
—Tandor lunged.
He fell straight through Ruko’s body and landed hard on the floor, next to his body. He scrambled up, called strands of icefire and lashed them around Ruko’s upper body, even while the heart vanished into his chest.
Ruko twisted and snapped the strands, but as his body oozed icefire and faded from the in-between world, one strand hit him in the back of his head and looped around his neck. The strand stretched and grew thinner and thinner—
* * *
—There was a flash of light. Myra screamed. Loriane clapped her hands over her face.
When Loriane uncovered her eyes, a young man stood in the middle of the barn. He was long-haired and filthy, dressed in a ripped shirt and trousers held up only by a piece of string, clothes far too small for him. He was skinny and his arms were covered in bruises and scratches.
Dara was staring at him. She whispered, “Ruko? Is that you?”
He said nothing, just stood there. Like Isandor, he had only one foot, bare and red from the cold, the other leg ending in a wooden stump. His eyes were black and hollow.
“Ye always said he be gone, here’s yer proof that he didn’t,” Ontane said. “I always seen him, every time the sorcerer brung him in here. Believe me now, woman?”
Dara snorted. “I don’ know that he be real. He don’t look too real to me. Hey—you, say something.” She stepped up to stare into the boy’s face.
“Hey, can you hear me?”
* * *
—Tandor laughed. “You thought you could get away from me?”
Ruko’s voice was distant, his form in that in-between world little more than insubstantial mist. “Fuck you. I’ll get you. Your control over me is only weak.”
* * *
—He said nothing. His face was impassive and menacing, Loriane thought.
“Hey!” Dara poked him in the chest. “An adult asks you a question.”
He merely stepped back.
Dara snorted. “See? He be nothin’ but a ghost. Body is here, but the brain’s somewhere else. I always said the sorcerer be up to no good.”
All of a sudden, Ruko jumped into action. He flung all of Tandor’s possessions inside the trunk and snapped the lid shut hard. Then he heaved it on top of the cart with a thunk.
Ontane protested, “Hey, that be the space for our things.”
Ruko didn’t react. Without a word, he turned to Tandor—
* * *
“Come, old man, the situation has changed. I am real and you are not. I think I’m going to have some fun.”
“Ruko, I forbid you—”
“—you’re my servitor now.” He laughed.
* * *
—and heaved him into the saddle of the camel as if he was no more than a small child.
Dara was elbowing her husband in the side. “Go on, stop him. That be the place where we need to put our things.”
“Stop it, woman. What do you think I can do? Have you seen how strong he is?”
“Oh, ye men are useless!” She stomped to the cart and tried to heave off Tandor’s trunk, but she couldn’t lift it. “Hey, you! Take this thing off, or we’ll have nothing to eat!”
Ruko had been tying Tandor’s legs to the saddle straps, but now he wheeled around.
Ontane yelled, “Watch it, woman!”
Ruko pushed Dara aside. She fell bottom first in the straw.
“Ma!” Myra yelled.
Dara screamed, “Did ye see that? He hit me! Do something about that creep, useless lump!”
“There be no time for fights. There be room for our packs to go on top.” He picked up a couple of bags, but Ruko had taken the camel by the lead and was leading it towards the door of the shed.
“Hey! Wait!” Ontane yelled, hobbled after the cart and flung the bags on top of Tandor’s trunk.
“We still need to get some things from the kitchen,” Dara protested.
“No time. You already spent so much time packing. We best move our sorry backsides afore everyone out there wakes up to where we’re going and wants to come with us. There be only so much space in the hunting shack.”
Ontane lifted the latch and pushed the shed doors.
They would only open halfway, because the refugees had built an igloo outside. Ruko let go of the reins and gave the doors a huge shove, simply pushing aside snow heaped up behind them.
Loriane expected to be swamped with requests for food and shelter, but all refugees were further down the street, staring in the direction of the plain.
Behind her, Myra gasped. “By the skylights.”
“What’s going on?” Loriane asked.
“The whole sky is crackling with icefire.” She gave Loriane a strange look. “You can’t see it?”
Loriane shook her head.
“This is like the wall we saw in the City of Glass. The dome of icefire, expanding outwards.”
“Can you see . . . anyone?
” Loriane asked. Myra had told her that she’d seen her boyfriend, the father of her baby, as a giant figure of burning icefire.
Myra shook her head. Her eyes glittered.
“Is it going to stop when it reaches the edge of the plateau?” she asked.
Ontane shrugged. “It’ll stop at the border. Chevakians have barriers.”
Ruko turned the camel into the street.
They crossed the village, where refugees hung around their igloos, camped in the lee side of buildings. There were even some Knights of junior rank, trying to organise people into some sort of order. Loriane caught shards of yelling. “. . . and then, once we’ve registered all your names, you will be given passes for food . . .”
“Hmph. Wonder where he’s going to get food from,” Dara muttered.
A man asked where Ontane and his group were going, and Ontane mentioned relatives in some place that meant nothing to Loriane.
“You should tell them about what’s coming,” Loriane said.
“They’ll find out soon enough. We’ll have a head start.”
As awful as it was, he was right, and she hadn’t the energy to protest.
The crowds grew thinner and they left the last of the houses of the village behind. From here, the path sloped constantly down, and soon they reached the edge of the southern plateau where the steep cliffs fell. Far below them spread the rolling hills of Chevakia, looking furred and black in the morning light.
It was the first time in her life that Loriane saw land that was not covered in snow. She understood that what looked like black fur from here were trees, even though she had only seen pictures of those strange things.
The terrain plunged off the cliff-side into a tangle of rocks. Ruko led deftly through places where Loriane couldn’t see a path. Ontane had been right in that the sled wouldn’t have gone down here. At first, there was still a meagre cover of snow, but it was wet and sometimes frozen over. Later, it was just wet.
The cart had enough trouble getting through with all the rocks and the steep slope. Ruko walked at the front leading the, protesting, camel, and Ontane at the back pushed the cart when the terrain was too uneven for it to roll across. Sometimes he and Dara both needed to hang on to stop the cart rolling down. Sometimes they needed to lift the cart over rocks. It was slow going, it was wet, and as the day progressed, Loriane grew ever more weary. She was top-heavy, out-of-balance and half the time couldn’t see where she put her feet.