by Patty Jansen
Isandor stood in the second line of defence, amongst men in Brotherhood black, ordinary peasants, men and women, old and young holding whatever weapons were available. Isandor had a gun. Milleus stood next to him. He had retrieved his gun from the truck and stared at the scenes of mayhem at the lower barricade with a look of determination that made Isandor feel scared.
Milleus had seen battle. Isandor has assumed that the first he’d see action, it would be from the back of an eagle. Instead, they would probably face eagles soon. He knew what those birds could do.
And all he could do was watch. Powerless, and angry.
Tents burned, sending palls of smoke over the hillside, punctuated by the sounds of battle. People screaming orders. The discharge of guns. It was impossible to see what was going on and who was winning. Too much smoke and chaos. Groups of people running past, all still camp inhabitants.
The low clouds finally delivered on their promised rain. It came down in freezing sheets, whipped by the wind.
“Hey, relax,” Milleus said next to him.
Isandor made a forced attempt to diffuse tension. “Is it always like this, when you’re in a war?”
“Fighting is mostly waiting for things to happen. And then things do happen, either it’s confusing or scary, or it’s over so fast that you wonder what happened. You have no idea if you’ve won or lost. No idea where to go. You may have lost your unit, or they may be dead. That’s what it’s like for the soldiers on the battlefield.”
Isandor nodded. He didn’t like this feeling at all. And he thought that, given who he was, he should have more of a say in the situation. But respect needed to be earned. Milleus had said that many times.
They waited.
The Knights posted guards downhill of the barricades and went to sit in their trucks.
A squall of wind brought sheeting cold rain that made the camp inhabitants run for cover. Isandor grabbed Jevaithi’s hand and ran for one of the large tents, pulling his cloak over his head.
Inside the tent, everyone sat down, and people shuffled out of the way to make room for Jevaithi.
“Where is Milleus?” Jevaithi asked.
“He was just . . .” Isandor looked over his shoulder. Milleus was not behind him anymore. “By the skylights. He must have gone back to the truck.”
“I hope so,” she said, and there was fear in her eyes.
“Sit here, Your Highness.” Someone had spread a cloak on the ground.
They sat. People watched Isandor and their gazes made him feel uneasy. He thought they should listen, and they probably thought he should do something. But what?
A Brother walked around, doling out dry chunks of bread.
Simo prowled at the far end of the tent, shaking his first and shouting slogans like We’re winning this battle. It seemed to cheer people up, but Isandor knew enough about the Knights to see that this wasn’t a victory at all. The Knights were likely happy to have established a presence in the camp, ousted the Chevakians, and would send in the birds tonight. Then the real battle would begin.
Isandor sat amongst smelling bodies, chewing his dry bread, and wondering where their next meal would come from and what the night would bring.
Chapter 23
* * *
SO WHAT WAS going on with sonorics levels?
Sady went to the meteorologist’s office—his old office, but he no longer thought of it that way—and he and Viki studied all the available maps. Even though human-collected data from the south of the country was lacking, some of the barygraphs were still working. They showed the low pressure cell in the south still deepening.
Sady stared at the map, and its white area where they had no data.
“It’s as if something is still feeding this system,” Viki said.
Sady nodded. “But how reliable is this likely to be?”
“Can’t be sure, but the barygraph in Twin Bridges was still operating normally yesterday.”
Sady had a vision of a machine busily taking measurements in a town where all people lay dead in the street.
“Based on how long the sonorics spike took to get from Fairlight to Twin Bridges, how long before we’ll see it here?”
“A day and a half, two days maybe, if the wind eases off.”
Not much chance of that happening, Sady knew. Not in this time of the year, not with a low pressure cell this strong.
“So what do we do?” Viki asked. He had shaved his beard, but his cheeks looked hollow.
“Go home. Find a place in a shelter.”
“But—”
“Go home. No one can do anything without measurements. We don’t have measurements, and—”
“We have to do something!”
“Yes. Look after your elderly relatives. Get them to safety. Get them comfortable. Eat something yourself while you’re feeding them.”
Viki’s eyes met his. Sady didn’t like the expression. It was one that spoke of worry and deeper problems. Resistance against sonorics varied wildly, even amongst Chevakians. Children, elderly people and some adults were already feeling the effects of sonorics. What if Viki was one of them? Mercy, he should have thought of this possibility before getting angry with him.
He lowered his voice. “I understand your devotion to your work, but—”
“It’s nothing to do with devotion.” Viki’s voice spilled over. “We’re all going to die if we do nothing.”
A deep and uncomfortable silence followed. It was a truth that had remained unspoken.
Sady sighed. “Possibly, but you’ve not been doing nothing. You’re a wreck and you’re not functioning properly. Your family needs you. Go home. I’m going to sit here until you do.”
Viki sighed and rose from the desk. He moved slowly, supporting himself on the desk like an old man, and when he put his jacket on, his hand trembled.
“Shall I ask my driver to take you home?” Sady asked.
“I’ll manage.” Viki shuffled to the door and opened it.
As he turned and met Sady’s eyes, Sady had an overwhelming and irrational fear that this would be the last time he’d see Viki. This disaster was bigger than all of them, and there was nothing he, or anyone, could do about it.
* * *
Even without a doga session planned for the afternoon, the news of the demise of Twin Bridges had spread quickly, more quickly than it should, had everyone heeded warnings to stay inside. When Sady came back to his office, there were large crowds outside the foyer, and he had to take the painful step of restricting public access to the doga building. There were people wanting to know what had happened to their loved ones, people demanding that the army go over to check, and strangely enough, a lot of boys wanting to sign up as soldiers.
Sady despaired for the younger people, who had never experienced a sonorics crisis. All these people should be at home boarding their windows. They had no concept of the threat, although some of them were probably already feeling some effects.
He was chilled to think that the prisoner Tandor had foreseen this. And he, who had been at pains to take everything into consideration, had ignored it. Because the prisoner spoke of magical beasts. Because Chevakia didn’t just ban the use of the word magic, it actively erased the word from common speech. There was no magic, Sady had heard that repeated from the moment he was old enough to speak. Magic was a superstition held by poorly-educated people from backward regions.
Southerners believed in it, but southerners were crazy anyway.
But Tandor’s prediction had been true. And the soldier, who could not have known what Tandor said, had seen these fire creatures.
Sady wondered how much of what Tandor said was true. A magical beast flew over the city, and as it
did so, it absorbed sonorics. And outlandish as it sounded, it was the only explanation Sady had heard for the wildly fluctuating sonorics levels. Yet he could not, with all the will in the world, bring himself to take it seriously. There had to be a rational explanation
In his days of working as a meteorologist, he would have launched an investigation into air currents, tornadoes and their links to the myths and habits of the southern people. Even old Chevakian mythology was rife with weather phenomena personified into spirits. He would have asked at the Scriptorium; he would have tried to find books on southern mythology. But there was no time for any of that.
All they could do was hide.
So he wrote notes that ordered halls and cellars to be turned into shelters. By some cruel twist of fate, the courthouse jail would be one of the safest places in the city. He ordered the city’s thick-walled, marble buildings to be opened up to those who had no shelter. The library, the Scriptorium hall, even the doga’s assembly hall. He went to deliver those directives to the guard station downstairs personally, and when he came back to his office, it was to find that someone had delivered a stack of large boxes to the foyer.
Sady prised open a corner. Inside were countless vials stacked one on top of the other, all containing little white pills.
Alius’ pills. Not a moment too soon.
“There are a lot more of them in the store,” the secretary said.
Sady could have cried with relief. They might actually survive this crisis.
“Distribute these immediately to all troops and all people who have a need to work outside. Then give one each to each family.”
“Yes, Proctor.” The man went into the next room and called for help.
While the staff carried boxes away, Sady he slipped one vial in his pocket. For his family and Farius.
* * *
In the large kitchen, Sady regarded the people gathered around the table. It was late afternoon, still light outside, but the boards over the windows made it dark inside the kitchen. Persistent wind crept through gaps and cracks and the draught made the flames on the candles flap. Long shadows danced over the table.
Andrean looked out-of-place in the kitchen in his finery. His business was doing well; he’d gotten quite rotund in recent years. His wife, he said, felt too tired to come. Likely, Sady thought, she refused to come to his house with all those foreigners. Reili had come with her father, and she had the presence of mind to make tea for everyone. She was so much more mature than her eleven years. She smiled at Myra and stroked little Beido on the head.
Her father watched, and she met his eyes. She had Milleus’ stubborn set of her mouth, and all of Suri’s exuberant beauty.
Kalius sat alone and brooding at the other end of the table. With every year that passed, he resembled his father more, down to the hawkish suspicious nature of him. Of course the fact that his wife had walked out on him recently didn’t help.
As oldest, he was old enough to remember his mother before he was bundled off to boarding school. He proclaimed to hate his father, but they were so much alike it was scary. His glace went to Ontane, who had shaved, washed and cut his hair and wore a work shirt, all of which had taken ten years off his age. He looked very respectable, down to the pouch with tools which he had put on the table.
Myra sat next to her father. She had introduced herself politely to the visitors, and while Andrean had been polite in return, Kalius just glared. She had removed their sonorics suits and hung them up in the hall.
Loriane had been friendly to Andrean who had fumbled through a resemblance of a southern greeting, but hadn’t bothered with Kalius. She sat at the far end of the table, her arms crossed over her chest, glaring back at Kalius whenever he deigned to look in her direction. That woman took no nonsense.
“I’m sorry to call you all together like this,” Sady began. “But I don’t have the time to visit each of you individually. As you will probably know, a sonorics-related fire front has reached Twin Bridges, and is expected to come this way. The Most Learned Alius and his colleagues at the Scriptorium have produced a medicine that helps your body deal with the effects of sonorics. I want you all to take some of these.” Sady took the bottle of pills out of his pocket and put it on the table with a soft clunk.
Kalius picked it up and frowned at it, before giving it to his brother, who gave it to Myra.
Loriane took it from her, opened the lid, shook a pill out onto her hand, looked at it, sniffed it, and said something to Myra.
“And what else are we supposed to do?” Kalius asked, still glaring at Loriane.
“Do go outside. Board up the windows. Hide in the safest place in the house. Hope that this will be over within a few days. Take the pills, once a day.”
“Have you heard anything from Father?” Andrean asked.
Sady had to shake his head. Wasn’t game to say that Ensar was out of communication. He hoped Milleus had been able to save himself. He had hoped Milleus was somewhere in the traffic jam on the Ensar road, but it had been cleared from behind and there had been no sign of him. Milleus was resourceful and able to look after himself, but Sady was beginning to fear for his brother’s safety.
Reili divided the content of the bottle into three piles: a small one for Kalius, a large one for her own family, and a medium-sized pile for Sady and his household. She put each pile into a small container.
Kalius gave a sniff, pocketed his portion and rose. “Anything else?” His voice was distant and businesslike.
“No.” Except . . .
Sady’s thoughts went to the children’s book on the shelf. They surely would have thought he’d lost it if he asked them, Can we read Toki one more time?
Kalius was out the door almost immediately. Andrean worried about his wife. Could she take the medicine without it harming her unborn child?
Sady didn’t know. Wanted to say, Does that matter if we’re all going to die? But instead, he said, “If there was a problem with unborn children, Alius would have said so.”
Did Andrean even comprehend the seriousness of sonorics contamination? It did permanent damage to your body. The more exposure, the more damage. Some of it took many years to show up.
Andrean left, dragging Reili, who wanted to stay. “But, Dad—”
“No. You’ve spent enough time here. You have to help your mother.”
“But all she does is ask me to fetch cups of tea.” The sound of her protesting voice faded in the corridor.
Sady sighed, meeting Farius’ eyes. The young man sipped from his tea, trying to look as if he wasn’t there. Mercy, they were so terrible at doing family things.
Myra, Dara and Loriane were studying the bottle, talking in low voices.
Myra said, “Loriane wants to know what you do with this?”
“It’s a medicine to stop the effects of sonorics.”
Myra translated, and Loriane’s frown deepened. She exchanged some words with Myra, who shook her head. Dara put a pill on her hand, sniffed it, then broke a piece off and put it in her mouth. She said something to Loriane, who nodded. Dara laughed.
“What?” Sady asked, his heart thudding in his chest.
Loriane said, “This is simple medicine. We use for stomach cramps. This will not help you at all.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
Myra said, “Loriane knows about these things. She helps many people with medicine. This you can take, but it will not stop the icefire. It is not medicine. You cannot take medicine for icefire if icefire make you sick.”
The bottle now went to Loriane, who also rolled a pill out onto her hand. She sniffed it, put it between her front teeth and bit half off. Chewed. Frowned. Shook her head. She handed the bottle back to him. Her light blue eyes met his. Sad.
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“But . . .” He turned his own bottle around in his hands so that the pills rolled against the glass. This medicine came with Alius’ guarantee. He’d just distributed thousands of these across the city. The army’s support relied on these pills. Alius had an entire team working on this.
If this medicine was useless, why had Alius given it to him? Why had he distributed it throughout the army? If the men took it and believed they were protected, it would kill thousands of them.
Finnisius was going to kill him.
They were all going to die.
Why, Alius, why?
Chapter 24
* * *
RAIN PELTED down on the tent roof, whipped up by the wind.
Inside the tent, people sat huddled together in too small a space. Milleus ached all over. The ground was cold and his old limbs unsuited to sitting in such cramped conditions. If he leaned forward, his hips ached, and if he leaned back, someone behind him kept poking an elbow into his side.
Earlier on, he had wanted to go to the truck, but men dressed in black stopped him at the tent entrance. They talked, but he didn’t understand them. None of them spoke Chevakian. No one left the tent.
He had given up the idea that he could control any part of what was happening. He should have listened to the soldiers and left the camp when he still could.
Artan and his wife sat next to him, huddled under a blanket. She was crying, and talked about some relative or friend whom they should try to contact.
“Please, just be quiet,” Artan said. “What do you think we can do from here?”
“But if we asked—”
“We cannot ask anyone. They don’t speak Chevakian.”
“Surely they would have someone—”
“Maybe there are people who speak Chevakian, but I don’t see anyone. I’m just trying not to get killed. I can’t see what any of us can do.”