by Patty Jansen
“Please. I’m a Chevakian citizen,” Tandor said. “I have the right to a fair trial.” Not tomorrow. He needed more time before icefire was strong enough for him to escape.
The guard laughed. “You murder four people and dare talk about rights?”
“I did not murder anyone. It was all a misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding that involved a knife and a lot of blood, huh?”
“The blood was mine.” And it was. Scratches from when he’d fallen into the bushes. “Please. I think it was an Eagle Knight. I was trying to stop him by jumping onto the bird. I couldn’t hang on and I fell off.”
The guards glanced at each other with an expression that said Eagle Knights?
“Hmm,” one said. “I wonder why you didn’t say anything before.”
“Because I fell off. I was dazed.”
They continued their non-believing glares.
“Please,” Tandor repeated. “Untie me. I’m an honest Chevakian citizen. I won’t try anything funny. Only for a short while.” Only to untie his pants and piss. His bladder was so full that it hurt.
“I don’t know about that. You don’t look Chevakian. Why do you speak Chevakian so well?”
“Because he’s a spy,” the other said, and understanding dawned on the first man’s face. By the skylights, not only were they obnoxious, they were stupid as well.
“Please,” Tandor said.
The man looked at him, his face sneering. “Why should we trust you? We should tell the doga about you.”
No, not the doga. His mother had ties all through the doga. They would report him to her. And he didn’t want to face his mother before he had the hybrid, or Ruko, or preferably both.
“I’ll do whatever you say. Please.”
“I don’t think so,” the guard with the torch said. “Come, let’s go.” He went to the cell’s entrance.
The other man followed, then stopped, turned and hit Tandor in the stomach.
Doubled over, Tandor heard his voice come from far off. “That is what we do with traitors.”
When the pain subsided, Tandor felt the cold of piss having soaked his pants.
From elsewhere in the prison came a voice, rough and gravelly. “Hey, new guy, what’d you be in for?”
“Nothing. I don’t belong here.” Even to his own ears, his voice sounded too cultured.
A couple of men laughed.
Another voice said. “That’s what they all say, the first day.”
“Ha, ha, until they are taken into the gallows room.” Another voice joined. “And then they’ll say whatever the guards want to hear, and the guards don’t care, because they love hanging prisoners. We can hear them scream from here.”
Tandor shivered. Without the dacon, he couldn’t prove his innocence, and the court would have no trouble finding him guilty and the hangman would come quickly. No use in wasting resources on people who killed.
“I stole Lady han Silvanian’s jewels,” said the first man again. He seemed proud of it, too. Thievery carried the sentence of deportation to one of the labour farms outside the city. Some destitutes stole simply to get a roof over their heads.
The other laughed. “She has too many jewels anyway.”
“Yeah, fat cow.”
“Will you shut up!” came a voice from further away.
A brief silence, and then the thief said again, “Don’ listen to him. He’s the one who raped the Vinalissi girl and then killed her when she screamed too much.”
“Yeah, he’ll be hanged real soon.”
Tandor felt sick. In here, status mattered nothing. If he didn’t get out, he would be remembered as worse than them. Much worse.
“So, new guy, what did you do?”
“Nothing,” Tandor said again.
“Whoa, a cranky one,” the talkative prisoner said. “Yeah, all right. Suit yourself. Just trying to be friendly that’s all. Good night to you sir.”
There was some rustling and grunting and creaking of benches and it grew quiet.
Chapter 8
* * *
ISANDOR PUSHED his way out of the tent, past the crowds cramming in to see the queen, past the self-styled guards, into the darkness.
“Hey, where are you going?” someone asked.
“I can go wherever I want,” Isandor said. By the skylights, he was angry. As if the Brotherhood had suddenly taken over ordering people about when the Knights had gone. And Jevaithi believed them, by the skylights.
The stupid civilian guards had no authority to boss him about, and no one was going to stop him seeing Milleus. But when the guard held the lamp up and Isandor could see his face, he realised that the youth was younger than him.
“By the skylights, it’s the champion,” the other guard said, this one a woman.
“Really?” the boy said.
“Hey, you,” someone else called from further down. “Didn’t Simo say that we had to guard the tent?”
“That’s what we’re doing,” the woman called back. She gave a derisive snort.
“So, Simo is pretty much the boss here?” Isandor asked. He tried to make his question sound as casual as possible.
“Pretty much,” she said, shrugged, and then let an awkward silence fall.
They were afraid to say more, Isandor guessed. Afraid to be on the wrong side of whatever the Brothers wanted. He asked, “What’s your name?”
“Kenna. This is my brother Zito.” The boy looked about thirteen, and he had a dirty bandage around much of his left arm.
“Are your parents here?”
Kenna shrugged. “My father sells fish. He was away to get supplies.” There was no need to say more. The fish markets were closer to the City of Glass proper than to the Outer City.
“Are all people here supporters of the Brotherhood of the Light?”
“I think so.” Kenna looked over her shoulder, but the third youth had vanished. “Not that I’ve talked to any and know much about them. You know what they were like, quietly going about their business. You’re from the Outer City, too, aren’t you?”
Isandor nodded. He knew. The Brotherhood school was for orphans. No one cared much about what went on there, except the young people who left the school were usually very smart and did well for themselves in a quiet, unassuming sort of way. None of those people, the merchants, the administrators, the teachers, ever mentioned that the Brotherhood stood for anything, except education. It seemed people were glad the Brotherhood was looking after orphans, so that no one else needed to worry about them.
“When did they start coming out so openly?”
“When we were on the train. There were more and more people in black. Not just men with beards, but women, too. They were saying things like that this was our chance for freedom, and that we could defeat the Knights.”
“A lot of people liked that,” the boy said.
“Did they say how they planned to defeat the Knights? Did they have any real plans, or were they just saying things because they sounded good? They do know that just because there are no Knights here, it doesn’t mean that they’re all dead?”
She shrugged. “I thought they meant to recruit people to fight. They set up an army, and gave people tasks to do. You could join the guards or the cooks or work in the supply tent. Everyone joined these groups. I mean—there is nothing else to do here, and it sounded like a good idea because no one else was organising anything.” She cast him a nervous look. “I mean—you did get banned from the Knighthood, didn’t you?”
Isandor let the uncertainty hang between them. “Have you spotted anyone using icefire?”
“But we’re in Chevakia. There is no—”
“Not anymore. The barriers broke and now it’s everywhere.” Isandor held up his hand and let a spark dance over it. Young Zito’s eyes widened.
“No, I haven’t seen anyone use it,” Kenna said.
“What about Simo?”
They both shook their heads.
“He yells a lot at people,” Zito said. “People are scared of him.”
“He knows Chevakians,” Kenna said.
“Chevakians?” Isandor frowned at her.
“Yes, I saw him with some of the ones who came into the camp. They seemed to know each other well.”
Isandor glanced uphill where the remaining Chevakian vans were clustered around a fire. He recognised Milleus’ truck. “Any of those Chevakians?” It didn’t look like they knew anyone in the camp. Milleus had told him he hadn’t met any southerners for many years.
Kenna peered. “I don’t think so. A lot of Chevakians left.”
The fence had been repaired and he could see fires and tents on the other side. The group still on this side sat around the fire, where people were talking. Milleus was one of those people. Isandor didn’t see him, but he saw the familiar truck, and the trailer and goat pen. He ached to go there, but the Chevakians would probably think the was an intruder, and he didn’t want to lead Brotherhood thugs to Milleus, so he sat with his knees pulled up to his chest and watched from a distance until the meeting with Jevaithi in the large tent broke up and people streamed out talking to each other, oblivious to him sitting in the darkness. He caught a snatch of conversation about how pale Jevaithi looked.
An older man in black strolled past, semi-casually, but Isandor didn’t miss glances at him and at Kenna and Zito who stood on both sides of the tent entrance, not moving and not saying anything. When everyone had left the tent, two new sentries came, both dressed in black, and Isandor finally got up.
Both glared at him as he walked past into the tent, but didn’t challenge him.
The people had turned the throne room into a makeshift bedroom by draping Chevakian blankets over upright planks, which partitioned off half of the tent. An oil lamp sputtered, about to go out, on a table in the other half of the tent. A couple of crates and boxes formed chairs and a table.
As he stood there, a cold chill went through him, tugging at his senses. Something above the tent, in the air. He froze, looking uselessly at the tent’s ceiling. For a moment, it seemed the world had died. But the feeling passed, leaving the air warmer and without the edge of icefire.
By the skylights, the Knights were flying over the camp with their sinks. No Knights here? Who believed that? They were hiding, waiting to attack.
On the other side of the partition, Isandor found a bed covered in furs. Jevaithi lay there, already asleep.
Isandor undressed and lay down next to her, pulling the fur covers over him. The skins smelled grimy and retained a lingering scent of animals. Cocooned in the smell, he lay staring into the darkness. He liked Milleus and his rational way of dealing with people. He liked the way Milleus looked at something, and tried to understand it. Milleus did not judge based on beliefs or birth. He did not discount facts because they were provided by his enemies.
Isandor realised he had become a lot more Chevakian since being with Milleus, and he liked it. No one in Chevakia had questioned his wooden leg. They’d just assumed it was from an accident, and, unlike the people from the City of Glass, didn’t judge him any less for it.
Jevaithi loved her adoring masses, but he felt more comfortable with getting knowledge. He’d always been like that, wanting to question what people told him. He wanted proof, not beliefs or rumour. It was, he thought sadly, something that his mother had taught him.
He could still hear her voice. I’ve seen so much stupid belief about birthing babies, and a lot of girls would be dead if I didn’t speak out against it.
By the skylights, where was his mother now?
He nodded off and woke with a shock to the screeches of an eagle in the distance. He jumped out of bed, still in the dark, but when he checked outside, he could only see the side panel of a trailer moving in the wind, and the flapping of a tent awning. It was pitch dark. There was no one to be seen. Even Milleus had gone to sleep.
He went back inside, shivering with the cold, too worried to sleep. Too many things went on in his head. Daytime would come soon.
He re-lit the oil lamp and sat at the table, wondering if he should go outside and find a fire and make tea. Didn’t know if it was safe to do so. The camp had gone quiet, but there might still be troublemakers about. Southerners or Chevakians, he didn’t know. Who could he trust, anyway?
He wondered how many people they had displaced in this large tent and what the poor people of the City of Glass had given up just so that the Queen cold have her own tent and big bed with furs. Jevaithi accepted it without question. She was used to being given things without asking for them.
The table was clearly a Chevakian thing, being made of wood, but the crate that formed the seat was something different. In fact, it looked like someone’s travel luggage, very old and very Chevakian. He wondered what it was doing here. When he lifted it by one handle, the contents slid against the far end of the chest. By the skylights, it was heavy.
Curious, and because there was nothing else to, he tested the lid and found that the lock was damaged, and open. The lid creaked. The golden light from the oil lamp lit a jumble of clothes and books all thrown in at random, as if someone had searched the chest.
There was a large stopper of the type of jar his mother would use in her practice, but the jar was missing. Whatever had been in it must have been stored in some kind of spirits and must have broken during travel, because the smell still lingered in the chest.
The clothing was mainly men’s felt underwear, southern style, but there were some long-sleeved felt shirts and a leather vest.
They were southern clothes, too. Well enough made to belong to a rich person. The chest also contained a variety of pots and stones and metal instruments like rulers and a quadrant, and some instruments he didn’t recognise and . . . very old books, with dusty and worn spines.
He took one of the books out and opened the silky pages of vellum. It seemed a diary of some sort, in a very old style of handwriting. Southern, and dating from before the Knights. This was something he would once have paid a lot of money for, when he collected this sort of stuff with Carro.
The writing was hard to read and loopy. The entries were dates, and the text detailed such things as meetings and things that needed to be done, many unfamiliar to him. What, by the skylights, did temper the feeder lead mean?
He leafed through and was about to put the book aside when he came to the last entry, scrawled sideways across the page in a hasty hand.
They are at the door. My son and his wife have hopefully fled the palace. Look after them. My life will be short.
By the skylights, he noticed the date, fifty years ago. And the seal depicting the leather-winged creature, some mythical all-powerful figure called a dacon, which was the symbol of the Thilleian house. This was a diary of the old king himself. This travel chest must have belonged to Tandor.
There were two more books, one equally old and incomprehensible, and one full of notes and calculations. There was a diagram with maps and numbers, using a Chevakian word: motes? What did that mean?
He turned a few pages read of a chamber outside the City of Glass, where one could control the thing called the Heart of the City. Someone had made elaborate notes on setting and levels of all kinds of elaborate levers, similar to the ones Milleus had on his truck. The type of work the Brothers did, with very detailed instructions. By the skylights, it looked as if Tandor had been messing with the Heart.
At the end of the book, he found a diagram in tiny writin
g spread over two pages. It held names and birth dates. None of them older than himself. His name was on the scheme as well.
Tandor x Maraithe—Jevaithi and Isandor.
He read the line several times. Underneath his and Jevaithi’s names was a date of birth. Jevaithi’s. He’d always been told his birthday was a day earlier.
He stared at the text, while the diagram blurred before his eyes.
Tandor had betrayed them all. He was Isandor’s father, the mysterious man who had fathered Maraithe’s children while the Knights were bickering, the merchant in disguise. Jevaithi was his twin sister. They were both the old king’s great-grandchildren.
Chapter 9
* * *
MILLEUS ROSE at first light, much earlier than he would have liked, and still feeling tired after a few measly hours of sleep. Mercy, he was way too old for these night-time escapades. Outside, the light was still dawn-blue, filtered through a grey-blue haze. The air smelled of fire, although from his position, any evidence of the fights from night before was well-hidden. The tent entrances were shut, and the alleys between tents were empty, except for a few black-clad sentries by the large tent, hands in their pockets. The Chevakian tents, too, were still closed.
Heaving a sigh, he opened the door and let himself down from the truck. As soon as he set foot on the ground, the goats started jostling each other to the corner of the pen, clanking their hooves in the food trough.
He ran his hand over the hairy heads, while they pushed their noses into his palm, bleating and shoving each other out of the way.
“Shh, Ladies, people are sleeping.”
He found the milking stool and started the daily process of milking with hands that had become unused to the task. At home, he had the milking machine, and since leaving the farm, this had been Isandor’s job, with his stronger hands and more supple back, and there was a kind of sadness in the fact that he now needed to do this. But there was no point in complaining. He’d been on his own for ten years, after all. Still, his fingers felt sore and stiff and the joints ached from the weather. More than anything, he was so tired.