The Icefire Trilogy

by Patty Jansen

  “There are plenty of reasons. Maybe to help an overthrow of a regime they don’t like. Maybe some of us, whose families were killed, fled to Chevakia.” Simo’s voice had a distinct sneering, shut-up-you-little-boy tone.

  “The old king’s family, you mean.” Isandor’s voice was cold.

  Simo glared.

  “Say it aloud, if you dare. It’s an ill-kept secret that the family of the old king fled to Tiverius. These are families of people who thought it was fine to murder anyone who didn’t agree with them, and reign with terror through heart-less servitors. People who terrorised the City of Glass. These are the families who want to see that regime re-instated!” Isandor was yelling now, and more people rushed into the tent.

  “Isandor!” Jevaithi grabbed his arm, but he paid her no attention. His muscles were tight as a spring.

  “No,” he said, brushing her off. “This needs to be said. Because you know what? We are the old king’s family, too. And we never agreed with what he did, and neither do all the people out there.”

  Simo’s eyes narrowed. His voice was low and threatening. “What are you? A spy for the Knights?”

  “I’m a Knight, not a spy. I’m a Knight committed to the honour of the Knighthood, not to the murder of innocent children, the raping of new recruits and the imprisonment of the Queen. Jevaithi and I are a full-blood Thilleans more pure than any of you. We are also sick to death of this clan business, which hasn’t done the City of Glass any good for the last fifty years, if not longer.”

  “You are a traitor.”

  “Not me. You will be a traitor if you accept help from people who haven’t lived in the City of Glass for fifty years, a traitor to your own country. The people of the City of Glass don’t care about the perpetual arguments between Pirosians and Thillei. They want peace. They want this stupid vendetta to be forgotten. Buried. Never to be resurrected.”

  “How dare you say that to someone whose family was murdered by Pirosians?”

  Isandor grabbed Simo’s black cloak and drew him so close that their faces almost touched. “Pirosians almost killed me, but the woman I call my mother is Pirosian. A Thilleian sought to turn me and Jevaithi into servitors, but Jevaithi is pure Thilleian and I love her. Let people be judged by their actions, rather than their blood. I’ve had enough of this stupid clan stuff. Enough!” He let go of Simo’s cloak, and Simo stumbled back to keep his balance. His eyes were wide. Clearly he had not expected such strength in a child. “I’m going to let the Chevakians know that these weapons are here, so they can take action against whomever from Tiverius brought them. Having heard about the Chevakian laws, I am sure that inciting rebellion is an offense punishable by death.”

  Simo eyed Isandor as if sizing up his chances in a fight, but decided against it. “You, boy, what do you think you are?”

  “I am Isandor. I am Thilleian. I am an Eagle Knight. I am a butcher’s assistant from the Outer City. You can choose which of those reasons you want to use to justify killing me, but I am what I am, and I want the clan fighting to stop.”

  Simo looked like he was about to explode.

  Isandor turned to the man who was still holding Kenna. “Let her go. This achieves nothing.”

  To Jevaithi’s surprise, the man did as Isandor said.

  He continued, “We’re in a foreign country, and none of us know where the main body of the Knighthood is, whether they’re still alive, and if so, whether they’ll come to join us, and if they’ll come peacefully. One thing I know, if they come to fight, none of us stand a chance.”

  “What did you think the weapons were for?” Simo said.

  Isandor nodded. “Point made. But when they turn up, we’re better off to talk to them. A lot of Knights adore Jevaithi.”

  Simo said nothing. Jevaithi didn’t think that he liked making bargains with children. On the other hand, he didn’t disagree either.

  “Come,” Isandor said to the two young guards.

  The left the tent, to find that a huge crowd had gathered outside in the dawn light.

  A voice came from somewhere at the back. “Mercy, I leave you for a day, and you already create trouble.”

  “Milleus!” Jevaithi let go of Isandor’s hand and threw herself in Milleus’ arms. He smelled of goats and smoke and engine oil.

  “Now, now.” He patted her hair. “Come, you two, let’s get some milk.”

  * * *

  Some time later, the three of them sat next to Milleus’ truck clutching cups of warm milk. Milleus told them of how the soldiers had refused to let the Chevakians out, and Isandor told him of the weapons.

  Milleus’ eyebrows rose. “You were sure these were Chevakians? Why would Chevakians send weapons?”

  Isandor looked over the rim of his cup. “I can think of only one reason: to fight the Knights.”

  “But there are no Knights here,” Jevaithi said.

  “They are somewhere. Maybe the Chevakians know where they are.”

  “Still, why would Chevakians care?”

  “I think,” Isandor said and let a silence pass as he sipped. “I think that the survivors of the royal family who fled to Tiverius have somehow managed to get a lot of supporters. I think that the Chevakians preferred dealing with the old royal family. They might have been bad to their own people, but they were more open to the Chevakians. Back then, there were ambassadors, and Chevakians came to the City of Glass wearing strange suits. After the king fled, the Knights had this idea to solve the fertility problems in the City of Glass by bringing Chevakian girls. We were told they came voluntarily, but the Chevakians know otherwise. The Knights haven’t attempted to trade or even talk to Chevakia. I think it’s understandable that Chevakia would support anyone who tries to get rid of the Knights.”

  “Mercy,” Milleus said. His eyes were wide and in wan dawn light, he looked pale. “Mercy,” he said again. “I think you could be right. And I think I know exactly who you’re talking about.”

  “Tandor,” Isandor said.

  “His mother,” Milleus said.

  “Are you kidding?” Jevaithi said. “She’s not even a real princess. She married into the royal family.”

  “Those are often the worst,” Milleus said.

  Isandor met Jevaithi’s eyes. “They forget one thing: we are old king’s great-grandchildren.”

  “We?”

  She met his eyes, and was shocked to see them overflowing with tears. His heart beat in her chest like crazy. Then he said, “King Caldor’s son the crown prince was married to Tandor’s mother. She was pregnant with Tandor when she fled to Chevakia. Through Tandor’s machinations, the baby daughter of the queen installed by the Knights was swapped for Maraithe, who had a lot of Thilleian blood. Tandor posed as merchant and fathered her twins. You were one of those. I’m your twin brother.”

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  CARRO AND THE hunters packed up their camp at dusk. They rigged their gear to the eagles’ saddles and mounted their birds, still without many words spoken. Jeito who had studied the maps, led the way, over the valley through which the muddy river with the burnt logs wound its way, and over the slowly-rising farmland.

  The sun came out right on sunset, a rare occurrence with the recent heavy cloud cover. The sky turned deep red with the haze that seemed to have gotten stronger. Lit from below, the menacing bank of clouds in the south looked menacing, as if edged in blood.

  By the skylights, it looked like the worst of the weather was still to come.

  Soon, the town of Twin Bridges came into view, a loose scattering of houses at the place where two rivers joined. From here, the road split, with branches going off in two directions, each with its own bridge. The railway line did the same, following the road. The main t
rack went to the west and would join with the Fairlight line and the other branch kept going into the ranges, where it would go as far as a town called Solmeni.

  From Carro’s height, the train tracks were easy to spot, unnatural straight lines cutting through the landscape. The metal occasionally glistened between the trees. The roads were harder to see, narrow, and often overshadowed by trees.

  They circled over the town a few times while Jeito was squinting down trying to get her bearings. There was meant to be a narrow forest road leading towards a timber town long since abandoned.

  The town of Twin Bridges itself looked peaceful. Sparse lights lit the street and smoke curled from chimneys. The forest to the south was a black mass of trees.

  Jeito whistled. She had found the track and they set off in the direction of the highlands, rugged hills with rocky outcrops.

  The forest underneath was now so dark it was almost black. The tiny lights of the town faded on the horizon.

  It grew dark and the air became very cold. Occasional gusts of wind brought images to Carro’s mind, shadows moving beyond the edge of his awareness. There was icefire in the air, he could feel it. He lashed the reins around his wrists, hoping they’d find the hidden army before he got any full-blown visions.

  Those clouds on the southern horizon looked very scary, worse than blizzards in the City of Glass, worse than the worst weather he had seen. Occasional flashes of lightning flickered within the cloud tops, and endless series of anvil-shaped protuberances jutted from the top.

  Jeito whistled and sent her eagle plummeting towards the dark forest. Carro and the others followed.

  At much lower height, he could make out a forest clearing with dark shapes that looked like buildings. The abandoned logging settlement. There were no lights.

  They brought the eagles down in the middle of the clearing.

  Carro’s bird skittered, its wings held wide as if ready to take off again. He had to hold tight onto the reins to stop it doing so. It pulled the straps, uttering kek, kek, kek sounds, the eagles’ alarm call.

  Farey lit a torch.

  Nolan’s bird was also protesting, hissing in a low crouch, with its wings spread. Farey’s magnificent male gave it a disdainful look.

  The pool of light cast by Farey’s torch showed nothing more threatening than a forest clearing with a few dilapidated shacks. The roof had collapsed in one of them. Another had sagged sideways. Thick layers of moss grew on the timber beams. This did not even deserve the name village.

  The grass underfoot was short with longer clumps, a sign that the field had held animals at some time in the recent past. The air was thick with haze and smelled of fire. The wind whipped the treetops, making branches whistle.

  Carro shivered. “Where is everyone? You’re sure this is the spot?”

  Jeito snorted. “Who got the directions, you or me?”

  Carro’s eagle gave another alarm call.

  “Shut that bird up, will you?” Farey said.

  Carro threw the long end of the reins around the eagle’s beak and pulled the head closer. It strained against his grip, its eye rolling.

  There was one major thing that alarmed eagles: unfamiliar other eagles, often wild birds, which would sometimes attack intruders into their territory. But they were far outside the Aranian border ranges where wild birds lived.

  A gust of wind blew all his hair to one side. Voices whispered in the air. Isandor, his mother, the merchant, his sister’s whiny voice, Caman and Jono’s sneering, the Tutor berating him. All those voices yelling at him, or quietly scolding him. You had the chance, why didn’t you say anything? or You’re a coward. Yes, he was a coward, and all those people in his past life could tell.

  “Over here,” Jeito called from the darkness, jolting Carro from the edge of his torment.

  They went into the forest, where huge trees towered above them, their straight majestic trunks rising out of reach of the pool of light from Farey’s torch.

  The eagle, still with the leather strapped around its beak, was growling and pulling so hard at the reins that it cut off the circulation in Carro’s wrist. On top of whatever disturbed it, eagles disliked being in enclosed spaces. They were birds of mountaintops and open plains, not of forests.

  Jeito stopped and whistled.

  Further up the slope, someone returned the whistle.

  It was a single man, in a Knight’s shorthair cloak, but wearing a Chevakian-style shirt and trousers. He carried a Chevakian oil lamp, with glass sides that stopped the flame being blown out.

  He called, “Who are you?”

  Carro wrestled through the shrubbery to pass Jeito, pulling the Pirosian medallion on top of his clothes. On this mission, talking was his task. The man was taller than him, with southern grey eyes, and carried a southern-style crossbow.

  “We’ve come from Tiverius. We assume that you didn’t get the Supreme Rider’s message?”

  The man’s gaze rested on the medallion. His face remained strangely blank. For someone having lost contact with the rest of the army, Carro would have expected joy at hearing from other countrymen.

  “You’ll want to speak to the command,” the man said. “Come.”

  He turned and led the group further up the slope. The shrubbery grew dense here, and the eagles snapped and hissed at passing branches. Carro’s eagle uttered sharp calls that eagles used to establish each other’s presence. Even though he couldn’t see them yet, there were definitely eagles here.

  The path became more steep and led up to a rocky outcrop, under an overhanging rock. Underneath, a single light marked the entrance to a cave. The ground was dry, sheltered from the weather, and marked with many eagles’ footprints.

  The cave was much larger than he had thought. Rough walls suggested that it had been enlarged by people. Carro’s eagle skittered and pulled at the reins. It yanked so hard that Carro almost lost grip of it.

  “The birds go in here,” the man said, indicating a dark entrance to the side. It smelled like birds, too. A young boy came out with a basket containing hunks of meat. All of a sudden, the eagles were all over him, pushing each other to get to the food.

  By the skylights, those birds had no principles and manners at all. So much for being scared of confined spaces.

  The man led Carro and the hunters further into the mountain, along a hewn passage where occasional lights flickered on the walls.

  “Who made all this?” Carro asked, and his voice echoed in the passage.

  “This used to be an outpost for the Chevakian army,” the man said. “Back in the day when the border regions were still independent.”

  Carro didn’t know that much about Chevakian history.

  “The army had to hide here, because the border regions had strong armies, and morale amongst the Tiverian army wasn’t always high. They used these caves to hide their supplies and give their troops a comfortable life to stop them from starting a mutiny.”

  They arrived at another opening where soft light slanted into the passage. Inside a low-ceilinged chamber, a camp office had been set up, with proper furniture and other things that must have been here before the group came.

  Farey, Jeito and Nolan remained at the door.

  Carro and the Knight headed across the floor, with people stopping their work and looking at them. Many fell silent and followed the group with their gazes. Again, Carro had expected the Knights to be cheerful at their arrival. And what were all these people writing anyway? No, they weren’t all writing. A group of Junior Knights sat around a lamp, sewing fur pelts together. Another group was using twine to lash mesh made from sticks to the bottom of sturdy poles. Those looked like snow walkers.

  They came to a halt at a field desk at the far end, where a
Senior Knight sat. Carro recognised his short, grey-flecked hair, his alert face and penetrating eyes: Eminent Rider Barton, a member of the Knights’ Council.

  The man who had brought him here retreated. Rider Barton rose and greeted Carro, his gaze on the Pirosian medallion—Carro started to wish he’d put the damn thing under his clothes—and they both sat down.

  Carro spoke into the uneasy silence. “I am glad that we find you well. Just as well we had instructions. You would have been hard to find.”

  “This is a dangerous area,” Rider Barton said. “We were forced to hide. The Chevakian army probably suspects that we’re here. There are many balloons during daytime. You took a great risk coming here.”

  “We didn’t see any balloons.”

  “You were very lucky.” Yes, Carro remembered this man from the eyrie. Highly ranked, softly-spoken, but had a reputation for being merciless on his enemies in that same, kind voice.

  “You didn’t receive prior messages from Tiverius?”

  “No, we haven’t received anything.”

  “Rider Cornatan sent a messenger. You’ve seen no sign of him?”

  “We’ve seen no one. What was the message?”

  “Rider Cornatan requests that you come to Tiverius.”

  There was a small silence and the Rider Barton said, “Certainly. We were already preparing for that mission.”

  With furs and snow walkers, certainly. But Carro let it rest. It was not in his power to question, and it wasn’t in Rider Barton’s interest to discuss the unit’s intentions with a messenger.

  They went on to discuss the route Carro and his companions had taken, and if they’d run into any Chevakian army outposts.

  “We’ll leave tomorrow on dusk,” Rider Barton declared. “I’ll ask the men to put you up in one of the dormitories. It’ll be crowed, but dry, safe and out of the wind.”

  On the way back through the chamber, many gazes followed Carro. No one smiled. When he was in the passageway, the men continued what they’d been doing, never mind that those activities would be futile.