by Patty Jansen
But he had no energy for that debate.
“Magic or no, it doesn’t matter what name you attach to it.” Was this him talking? They must think he’d gone soft. “I don’t know what else is going on, but I’m planning to push on into Tiverius, maybe tomorrow when we can see where we’re going, and go into the doga. This camp, and the guards, is a shambles. Either the army keeps the refugees under control, or they don’t. They’ll need someone who makes the decisions.”
One of the men clapped. “And get the southern knights out of our country. There have been too many sightings for them to be untrue.”
“Shoot them down. Let the whole lot go back to their own country.”
“We’ll come with you.”
“Tomorrow,” Milleus said. “When it is light.”
This satisfied the Chevakians, and people retreated to their trucks and tents to sleep.
But dawn was not that far off and Milleus felt too restless to sleep.
In the distance, he could see the city lights, turning the heavy cloud cover a sickly orange. He leaned on the railing of the pen and sighed. The hurt that started with the revelation that the delicate Nila was really the Queen of the City of Glass refused to go away. She was not just an innocent highborn girl. Both of the youngsters had played him, and he had been too dumb to see it, and worse, now he’d lost them and they never even found out who he was.
Both he and she could have put their contact to better use. What a waste of opportunity.
And damn it, he still liked the two of them.
To his right, a bit further down the hill, the sound of many voices came from the big tent. Well, they had what they wanted, although it was unclear to him exactly why they had fled. It didn’t matter anymore. They were safe, and with this many people around, whoever had tried to kill the youngsters would not get a second chance.
It was just that . . .
To be honest, he wanted to return to the farm.
He didn’t look forward to going back to Tiverius. There was too much unfinished business for him to attend to. Andrean and Kalius would have a few things to say to him, none of them nice. How he’d walked out on them, how he’d driven their mother to kill herself and then failed to even put up a plaque at her alcove where the jar with her ashes stood. Trouble was, he couldn’t think of anything suitable that was also appropriate. He’d wanted to say, I never loved you as much as you deserved, and I should have set you free. But at the time, he couldn’t stand the thought of Sady, young, smart and cocky Sady, getting his hands on her. While he was away, his brother was screwing his wife. So Suri was dead and Sady had never married. Had Sady ever touched a woman since?
He did not want to deal with this.
He stood there, leaning on the fence. The goats were all settling down for the night. The lights in the other Chevakian trucks and tents winked out one by one.
If he wanted to be gone tomorrow, he should go to bed. The time that he could work through the night unaffected had gone with his youth and his strength. Bluff aside, there was no guarantee that he’d be able to talk his way out of the camp, and there may still be long days of dangerous negotiations and riots ahead. Heck, the soldiers might even decide to take them to jail for disobeying their orders.
He should go to bed.
He straightened and turned to the truck. As he put his hand on the door handle, a cold gust of wind tore over the hillside and blew all his hair to one side. The air was humid and cold as winter. This weather got more strange every day.
Then, a screech that echoed over the hillside made him shiver deep in his bones. Whatever that was, it sounded close. He peered in the direction of the forest. A huge shape flew low overhead, lazily flapping huge wings. It came straight overhead. For a moment, Milleus saw a dark form, a leathery belly lit from below by the glow of the few remaining lights.
It was as if the wind stopped, the sounds from the city stopped and the whole world turned to silence. Then a gust of warm air followed in the creature’s wake.
What in mercy’s name was that thing?
Milleus stood quiet, watching the sky. None of the other Chevakians appeared to have seen the creature, at least no one seemed to be awake still. And why was it so hot all of a sudden?
Chapter 7
* * *
TANDOR ACHED like he never ached in his life. Not when he became engulfed in icefire, not when Loriane peeled burnt skin away from his face, not when his hands thawed out after the long ride through the snow, had he felt like this. It was as if a piece of his soul had been ripped out of him. As if Ruko’s mind had grown roots inside him that had been torn out when Myra and Loriane cut the bonds. Yet he had still managed to maintain the merest wisp of a connection with Ruko. He could still feel Ruko’s presence, and see shards of what he was doing.
After his escape from the tent, Ruko had simply vaulted the fence and the Chevakians hadn’t even noticed. Now, he was running with the same superhuman strength through the Chevakian country, on his way to join his friends. Whenever he needed to eat, he’d steal a pigeon or duck from a farm and eat it raw, annoyed at the weaknesses of his body that needed food.
He ran, and ran, and ran. All he wanted was to find the other children. Once he reached them, he would discard his mortal form and become one of them once more. With him as their leader, he would push them into revenge. They’d seek out the Knights, and find Tandor, and punish all of them for hurting his girl.
The hatred was so strong that it burned in Tandor’s mind.
But Tandor could do nothing to stop the visions coming. And he could also do nothing to stop Ruko reaching his goal.
Tandor himself had been lucky to escape the refugee camp once he confused the camp guards by swearing at them in Chevakian. Claims about his membership of a good Tiverian family were not lies, and when the soldiers left him to confer with their superiors, he’d simply walked out without being questioned; the Chevakian army was that short on personnel.
He’d even been lucky to have overheard where Loriane had been taken. He’d managed to climb into the yard of the senator’s house and waited outside the window of the house’s guest room, hiding behind a hedge under the cover of gathering darkness. The room had flimsy doors with large panes of glass. He studied them so as to break in quickly, after everyone had gone and the lights were off. After the child was born. He could taste victory. He’d grab the child and take it to his mother’s house. If the books were right, it wouldn’t take long before the child’s first turning. Then he could start to repair the damage, defeat Ruko, sweep up the expanding field of icefire and bring the plan back on track.
For now, he waited and listened to the Chevakians talking. There were two men, in medical gowns. By the skylights, why would this senator go to the expense of getting in surgeons?
What did a Chevakian care about Loriane? She was Tandor’s princess. When all this was done and fixed, and the Thilleian family once more held the throne, she would be his queen.
He remembered a hazy flash of memory from yesterday. Loriane shouting at him I hate you. She did that often, when he visited her, but she never meant it.
Then there was a ruckus inside the room. Loriane cursing. And then her voice again, a beastly cry that made Tandor shiver deep inside. He tried to imagine Loriane’s face, but could not. He could only see Maraithe, grabbing her swollen belly. In his mind, he heard Maraithe’s cries. And the voice of the nurse, By the skylights, this one is Imperfect.
And panic. He had to save her children, both of them.
So when Maraithe slept, and the Senior Knight came in to take the boy to be left on the ice floes, Tandor jumped out of the wardrobe and overpowered the man, put on the man’s uniform and took the baby to a safe place. And of course, he had been caught when he returned to the palace. By n
ow, the Senior Command knew that Maraithe’s baby girl was Imperfect and understood that the young Chevakian merchant whom they’d deemed safe company for the Queen was not what he claimed to be.
If the Chevakians thought their courthouse prison was bad, they hadn’t seen the prison under the palace in the City of Glass.
Tandor remembered lying naked on a table, the feel of rough wood against his naked back. He remembered the Supreme Rider grabbing a handful of his manly bits. He remembered the glint of a knife—
—and he tried to push away those memories as he sat there hiding behind the hedge, and tried to listen for signs or sounds that Loriane’s child had been born, and that the surgeons had left. But there were no clear sounds—Loriane said screaming was for first-time mothers; she had told him often enough—so he risked looking over the hedge.
The light was still on in the room. Loriane sat propped up against pillow in bed. A serving woman brought tea to the surgeons. There was also a guard in the room. Tandor could see a basket next to Loriane’s bed, but he couldn’t see inside it.
By the skylights, what if, for all his calculations and study, the child was normal? His mother would kill him.
He was flooded with memories from even further back, when he sat on the little stool in his mother’s big garden room, surrounded by luxurious furniture he wasn’t allowed to touch—because little boys only make things dirty. She would tell him of all the riches in the City of Glass. He would ask why the City of Glass was no longer rich, and she’d say that the Knights were stupid. She said that he was a prince and that all those riches were his.
And he believed all of it.
Except when he mentioned at school that he was a prince, the Chevakian kids just laughed. Then he would try to make sparks with icefire as his mother had taught him, but he couldn’t do it while they watched. Icefire was too weak in Tiverius anyway, even before the barriers went up.
And then the kids would laugh even more, and he got called into the teacher’s room and this big fat Chevakian man would rant at him about how there was no magic. Tandor tried to throw sparks at the teacher, too, but it didn’t do anything either, except earn him a cuff on the ear.
There was a shout and the light went out in the senator’s guest room, casting the courtyard in deep darkness.
A low, sibilant sound came from the room. Someone shouted and another said, “It must have been the wind.”
Where before, there had been no wind at all, there was an icy breeze which found its way through the gaps in Tandor’s clothing. The air tingled with icefire.
He rose and grabbed his dagger, and headed for the darkened room, but before he reached the door, and before he could force his way in, a terrible hiss came from inside, and then a muffled scream, cut off suddenly. Another growl and hiss. Tandor couldn’t see anything inside that dark room, where there were now crashes and growls, and the sound of breaking crockery, and the splintering of wood.
The window exploded outwards and a huge shape emerged, shaking broken glass of its back as a bear might shake water from its pelt. It moved in a stealthy way like a sabre wolf, with powerful strides like a huge predator. Its neck was long and its head was an extension of the neck, without ears. It had no hair. It walked on powerful claws, but soundless like a lion.
It unfurled its leathery wings. Tandor leapt forward, onto its back. The skin was rough and scaled like a snake’s, and was incredibly warm under his hands. The creature bucked to try to throw him off. Tandor held onto the place where the wings joined the body. He threw all icefire he could muster at the animal, but it wasn’t much, and it sank into the skin without trace. Tandor cursed.
The dacon turned its head and regarded Tandor with an angry blue eye. Then it snorted and jumped into the air. The power of those wings!
While it flew over the courtyard wall, it shook its shoulder blades and rolled. Tandor did his best to hang on, but his clawed hand couldn’t get a grip on the creature’s back, and he slid off. Fortunately, he landed in bushes, where the Chevakians had found him.
After discovering him in the yard, the three Chevakians, a doga guard, a family-employed guard and a higher-placed man, had taken him to the Tiverian courthouse jail, where the guards had locked him into the dungeon. He was accused of killing four people. He saw no point in arguing; they wouldn’t believe him anyway, not until they saw that locking him up wouldn’t be the end of the killing. They tied him to a crate with bonds so tight that he couldn’t sit down without the rope cutting off circulation in his arms.
Meanwhile, the dacon was loose in Tiverius, and it was only a matter of time before it killed again. It needed lots of food.
He needed to find the hybrid, and fast, because crossbreeds lived one day for a normal person’s year. Even when healthy, the crossbreed would not last to see the end of summer.
Once Ruko re-joined his fellows, he would send the children on a rampage of revenge. Maybe Ruko would seek out the crossbreed in order to kill it, which meant Loriane was in danger, too. But Tandor was trapped in this stupid prison by unbelieving Chevakians, and weak from the trip without much food, and still aching from where Loriane and Myra had cut the bonds with Ruko.
“In prison, tied to a fucking crate,” he mumbled to himself, and laughed so that he wouldn’t cry, and his laugh developed into a wet, hacking cough. He spat out phlegm, wishing for a drink.
Tandor fought a tickle in his throat that wanted to become a cough. His breath rattled with stringy phlegm. He tried swallowing it, but couldn’t so he spat. And then coughed up more phlegm.
He peered into the darkness. There was only one small oil lamp at the far end of the corridor, and it cast the feeblest of light by which he could just make out the bars to the opposite cell.
It grew cold in the cell. Tandor was mortally tired but couldn’t lie down. He dozed a bit only to find that his arms became painful where the metal bands clamped around them. The scabs on his face itched, but he couldn’t scratch. He also needed to pee, and he hoped someone would come and untie him before he embarrassed himself.
But no one came.
He could feel a whisper of a cool breeze stroke past his skin. There was a vent somewhere, and where there was air, he had access to icefire . . . if it was strong enough . . . if the guards untied him and he could get near the vent.
Then he was back at the palace in the City of Glass, and relived that moment where his Imperfect children walked out of their prison into the corridor. With stone sinks embedded in their bodies, they would not listen to his commands. Those sinks also stopped him making them his servitors. They were walking towards the Heart of the City, and he should have killed them, knowing that they would absorb the icefire and that something disastrous would happen.
But those children had been the only people he had really cared about. Not his mother, with her scheming plans and her shady money and her large band of supporters who would all abandon her as soon as they realised what she wanted. Not his merchant stepfather who had been as clueless as he had been rich. Not his haughty half-sisters, who took after his mother and only cared for money.
Having lived the life of a scrawny bullied kid with the fake hand, he wanted those kids he saved to have good lives.
He enjoyed bringing them presents and organising parties for them. He loved the smiles on their faces, even though he knew they thought he was a bit creepy and he didn’t know how to be nice to them. He enjoyed seeing them fall in love with each other. Like a dirty old man, he had spied into lofts and rooms watching them fumble making love.
He wanted them to live, and have lots of Imperfect children. Apart from Myra, two other girls had fallen pregnant. He couldn’t possibly kill them.
But he should have, because now their bodies had been filled with icefire, and they had slipped from his control. And now t
he only thing that could control them—the hybrid child—was about to slip from his control as well.
I cared too much, Mother. He’d hoped to give the children the childhood he’d never had.
How to get out of this cell to salvage whatever he could of his plan? He had to change his tactics, and talk to the guards, convince them that they had the wrong person, if they could still be made to change their minds.
Icefire was still very weak in Tiverius. All the way down here under the ground, it was far too weak for him to get rid of the metal manacles, but there was one thing that didn’t require so much power. He closed his eyes, and blinked, and blinked again. Ideally, he needed a mirror to do this, and he hoped that just thinking of brown eyes would be enough.
By the skylights, that exhausted him.
He must have dozed, because suddenly there was the jingle of keys and the creak of the cell door, and two guards came in, one of them carrying a torch.
“What do we do with this one?” one of the men said. He carried a slate. “Wanted for quadruple murder, needs a translator.”
“I’d say he needs the rope,” the other man said. He held the torch close to Tandor’s face.
Tandor’s eyes watered from the brightness of it, and he could not make out more than the men’s outlines and brown Chevakian uniforms.
“Urgh, he looks like a troll. What has he done to himself?” The glow from the torch moved across Tandor’s face.
Tandor took a deep breath and plunged in, hoping his disguise, feeble as it was, had worked. “Please, untie my arms.” His voice wouldn’t cooperate and it came out as a rasp.
The guard cursed. “He speaks Chevakian. Did anyone know he speaks Chevakian?”
“Who cares? It makes the matter more simple. We have a trial today and hang him tomorrow.”