by Patty Jansen
Isandor had heard this, too. In the butchery, when his uncle ran out of stories of the Northern Lands, he had sometimes told of the Great War, and how the City of Glass was the molten remnant of a weapon so powerful it could turn stone to water.
“So I wanted to use that ability, didn’t I? I was young, I was curious and I grew hungry for power, so I obtained the permits to become a Traveller and came to the White Lands of the south.” He gave a hollow laugh. “What did I know then? I was a boy, just like you are now. I was captured by the Queen’s guards. They saw I was imperfect, but judged me too old to be abandoned on the Floes—I might find my way back and come to haunt them—so the Queen ordered that I be changed so I could never father an imperfect child.”
It took Isandor a heartbeat to figure what Tandor meant, but then he realised. Ouch. He winced. “I’m sorry.”
“If you don’t want to attract my wrath, don’t be. But no, I cannot be your father.”
Isandor took a few deep breaths to regain his composure, repressing the urge to shove his hand down his pants to check on his private parts. “Then what do you want from me?”
“I see in you myself when I was your age. So few imperfect boys live in the southern lands. So few of those learn to tap the true power of icefire. I have spent my life studying. I want someone to continue my work. I want an apprentice. When I heard of your birth, I asked that you be kept alive. That’s why I’ve paid your mother to look after you.”
So it was indeed true.
Tandor breathed out heavily through his nose; the window fogged. “I want to see you out of this Slum. I want to see you soaring in the sky. You, and all other imperfects.”
“You are going to make me an Eagle Knight?” Isandor barely dared hope, although he couldn’t see how, now the knights knew he was imperfect, Tandor could get around that.
A flicker of distaste went over Tandor’s face. “I’ll make you whatever you want, in return for a task.”
“What do you want me to do?” Isandor could almost feel the wind in his hair, hear the wingbeats of the eagle under him.
“I want you to bring me the Queen’s heart.”
Silence. Shock. The vision of the eagle evaporated.
“The Queen’s heart?” Isandor gaped. Jevaithi? The beautiful young Queen who had captured his gaze that day? “How do you . . .” He didn’t even know how to ask. How did Tandor know about that chest under his bed, the one not a handbreadth removed from Isandor’s heels. One day, he hoped to take the chest onto the Floes and find those untamed bears, those great Legless Lions and those magnificent Tusked Lions whose hearts he had kept all those years and return his treasure to their owners.
“I know you can do it,” Tandor said.
“I’ve only done animals.” No use denying it, but Isandor didn’t look Tandor in the eye.
“You’ve done them well enough. You’re powerful, and you can be more powerful with training.” Tandor’s gaze went to the chest, as if he knew about Isandor’s secret.
Powerful. Learn to use icefire. Leave the Slums. Then reality took over. “But the Queen?” And then a more immediate question: “I’m a nothing. I’m not even an Eagle Knight apprentice anymore. How would I get into the palace?”
“No one at the gate questions nobles. I’ll write you out a message for the Queen. You will deliver it wearing my clothes and an illusion that I will weave for you. Everyone will think you are a noble. Only Jevaithi will know the difference, but once you’re in her room, it will be too late for her. When you come back with her heart, I will give you an eagle and start teaching you about icefire.”
Knowledge, that was all Isandor wanted. A way to get out of this Slum. He could easily do what Tandor asked. A girl his age was much smaller than a Legless Lion. It wouldn’t take much icefire to fill her chest. But still . . . “Why me? You’re a noble, you could get into the palace yourse—”
Tandor’s eyes blazed. “I warned you not to remind me of my time in the royal prisons ever again. Ask me no questions. Do as I say, and you’ll find yourself rewarded.”
* * *
The promise of a reward made Isandor like the task only a little bit more, but he dressed in Tandor’s clothes and took Tandor’s amulet. After all, it was not as if he was going to kill her.
Looking at himself in the reflection of the glass, he couldn’t imagine how in the world anyone could mistake him for a noble, but when he finished pulling on Tandor’s shirt, Tandor touched his chest, and a golden glow of icefire spread over it. Now when he looked at himself again, he saw a young nobleman. He brought his fingertips to his face, but couldn’t feel anything different about the skin on his cheeks, yet each cheek had acquired a shimmering golden spiral. Tandor’s blue cloak made the disguise complete.
Tandor handed him a roll of felt, tied with a golden ribbon. “That is your message for the Queen. Do not give it to anyone except Jevaithi herself. Do not defy me. Do not wander. Many of the palace guard are in my power.” He re-arranged the belt around Isandor’s waist. The knife-pouch banged against his thigh when he walked, as constant reminder of his task “Stand up, boy. Let me comb your hair.”
Isandor straightened his back. Tandor pulled at his mess of curls with a brush. Muttering, he cut off the ends that were beyond combing, and bound the rest with a ribbon.
Finally, Tandor was satisfied.
Out in the street, the sled and driver waited, pale blue in the pink and green flicker of the sky lights. Isandor climbed on the fur-covered bench. He glanced at the blue shimmer of the hole in the driver’s upper body, then at Tandor, realising that he had not heard Tandor speak a single word to the man. “How do I tell him where I want to go?”
“I’ve told him. He’ll take you there and back. Nowhere else.” He paused; his face took on a serious look, as if he expected Isandor to run away.
Isandor didn’t know what to make of this. All the nobles he had met had pretty simple motives, written on their faces as soon as they entered his mother’s house. This man was different, and Isandor wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. He wasn’t even sure if Tandor was a proper noble, or only disguised himself as such. He bred cripples; he wanted the Queen’s heart, and did not seem to care if anyone saw his icefire.
But there was no time for contemplating. Tandor threw the furs over Isandor’s lap and clicked his tongue. The bear jumped into action.
At first, Isandor sat stiffly on the bench, clutching the roll of felt under the cloak. Wind whipped his face while the sled raced through narrow streets. Pedestrians ran out of the way. Some cursed nobles behind his back. At least they were fooled by the disguise.
Then the sled whooshed out the gate and hit the open plain. The great bear loped over the ice, the harness creaked, the bells rang, the driver flicked the reins. If Isandor hadn’t been so nervous, he might have enjoyed it. But all the while, the jagged peaks of the City of Glass became more jagged and higher and far too soon, the sled came to the gate.
Isandor didn’t need to show the felt roll with the Queen’s name; the guards waved him through without a second look. The disguise worked here, too. Or maybe these guards were in Tandor’s pay as well. Why didn’t Tandor do this grisly task himself? That one question remained. Why? There must be some plan, and he, silly Isandor from the Slums, dressed up as a noble, was walking into the maw of it.
Inside the gates, the sled turned up the hill to a part of the city where Isandor had never found cause to dwell. As a Slums boy, and a cripple, he wouldn’t have belonged.
Sleds fine as ice crystals, brightly-clad occupants enclosed in bubbles of glass. A few even waved at him.
I’m a noble, he reminded himself. But he still felt like he didn’t belong. He might appear a noble to them, but he was not. He felt dirty, a cheat.
Isa
ndor wondered why ever a noble man would leave the city—maybe other than to impregnate a Slums woman who would bear his child, and who would be his to use until the babe was born. All people here were pretty. There were smiles on well-fed faces, polite bows and gentle conversation. There were no dirty children—in fact, there were no children on the streets at all, and no old beggars and wrinkle-faced peddlers or rubbish collectors.
Apart from the palace, there were no houses in the City of Glass. The city’s people lived in tall buildings that lined the street, straight and featureless, covered in glass panels all the same size. Every now and then, a building’s facade looked to have melted, like a candle too close to the fire, the wax all congealed and dripping down the side. Such were the blobs of molten stone and glass that had fused onto the street. Some time countless years ago, artists had chiselled shapes out of some of these anomalies. They now stood as green and black-tinged dragons, or delicate ice crystals. They were pretty, but made Isandor shiver at the same time. Sometimes, he felt that the City of Glass was a graveyard, having captured the souls of all those who had died in the Great War.
The sled stopped at a pair of gates of carved glass so intricate they could only belong to the palace. A guard stepped out from his shelter to take the reins, but shrank back at the sight of the driver. “Just wait over here. You can take the sled no further.”
Isandor descended into the street. The blue giant jumped down from the front seat, leading the bear by the reins in the direction the guard had pointed. Over there turned out to be a second gate, through which Isandor could see a row of igloo-shelters for bears, sleds parked outside. He memorised the location in case he needed it in a hurry.
The guard led him through the gate into the courtyard, which had been swept clean of snow. The hard pavement made a strange sound under his one boot. Tandor had stuck a piece of material to the bottom of his wooden leg, and he now understood why: footsteps made a lot of noise if you didn’t walk on snow. To any observer, Tandor’s illusion would look as if he had two normal legs, so his footsteps could not sound different. The illusion was still working, because the attendant at the massive metal doors didn’t give him as much as a second look. He just checked the roll of felt, and the seal and swung the doors open.
Isandor stepped into an immense triangular hall filled with bluish light, glass and mirrors. Here, the sound of his footsteps drowned in other sounds—people talking, hundreds of voices echoing off a ceiling so high he could barely see it.
A triangular basin of water graced the middle of the hall. Although blue with salts, dripping water had frozen in grotesque stalagmites at the foot of the burbling fountain and miniature ice floes bobbed on the pond’s surface.
All around the hall, glass carts trundled up and down rails, taking their occupants to higher or lower floors. He seemed to have acquired a minder, because a man in the blue worn by palace guards urged him on. In the power of Tandor . . .
The guard led him to such a box of glass, which carried them up.
It occurred to him that his mother came here often, although he doubted she would use the same entrance. Most likely, the birthing room was at the back of the palace, where babies were dispensed to the nobles without anyone needing to look on the pauper women who suffered to bring them into the world. So few of them for such a big job. Aside from his mother, Isandor knew only a few other fertile women. However many children they had, they could not possibly keep up the population of the city on their own, if half the births were useless boys or worse, cripples. It occurred to him that if the City of Glass was to survive, they needed women who could birth many children, such as the poor creatures the Eagle Knights used to capture in the North and sell as slaves to noble families. Whispers went that the Queen had put a stop to that a few years ago, but no one knew why.
Without the slaves, the city was dying.
As the carriage came closer to the highest point of the hall, the ceiling came into view: twisted metal bent into elegant sculptures, haphazardly holding up sheets of grey stone. Molten glass carved into arches. He wondered what weapon could twist stone and metal so.
In the hall at the highest point of the building, two magnificent bears stood guard on both sides of a door, together with one armed Eagle Knight.
Isandor showed the roll of felt, and the knight let him through.
Too easy; it was too easy. They were all in Tandor’s power.
Inside the room was more luxury. And warmth. And a view through a large window, encompassing the entire city and the plains.
The Queen looks down on all of us.
This, then, was the Queen’s residence. Isandor went in, sensed someone there, and sank to one knee. Soft carpet cushioned his descent. His wooden leg stuck out awkwardly.
“Rise, boy.” The voice was clear and young.
In a bed with silken sheets sat a girl, barely his own age, but blooming into adulthood. Her skin pale as snow, her hair golden as the sunlight. There was no mistaking her identity, no mistaking her jade eyes. From close up, Jevaithi was even more lovely than he remembered.
And oh, the shape of her, the soft curves of her breasts. The dark patches of her nipples shone through her gossamer nightgown.
Fighting a rush of blood to his face, Isandor bowed again. “I have a message for you.”
“Bring it.” Her voice was like music, clear as glass. Her green eyes fixed his. Did she remember? Did she know that he had dreamt of her?
Heart thudding, Isandor crossed the room, his boot and wooden leg making no sound on the thick carpet. The knife-pouch banged against his leg with every step. He wanted nothing more than to hurl it out the window.
She took the roll from him with her left hand and leaned back in the pillows. Her right arm lay on the silken sheet. It ended in a stump.
Isandor stared, barely believing his eyes.
He wracked his mind to remember what she had worn on that day he had seen her. If back then he had noticed she wasn’t showing one of her hands. He couldn’t remember. He’d been too pre-occupied with her eyes. Now that intense stare made sense. He had felt her icefire; she had felt his.
She in turn was staring at his leg. Tandor had warned him that she would be the only one who saw through the disguise. Even that made sense.
“Isandor, you have come.”
“I have . . .” She’d been expecting him?
He was going to say more. Words of praise and friendship, an apology, maybe more, but in a fraction of a heartbeat, she grabbed a fearsome knife off the bedside table and lunged for him. He avoided the blade, but took her weight on his shoulder. His wooden leg slid out from under him. She fell on his chest, smothering him in sweet perfume. Then she rolled over and was again on her feet.
Isandor scrambled up, yanking the knife from its pouch. So they faced each other. Her lovely face contorted, she held the knife before her in her outstretched hand, rocking from side to side, ready to spring. Her right arm hung uselessly by her side.
Isandor gripped his knife firmly in two healthy hands, but he stood stiffly. The fall had shifted his stump inside his wooden leg, but he couldn’t attend to it. He had no chance against someone with two healthy legs. To distract her was the only option. Talk to her. “What do you want?”
“Same as you. Your heart.”
Realisation clicked. “Has Tandor been here as well?”
“Tandor has every right to come here. Tandor is my father.”
Her father? In that moment of confusion, she lunged. Again, he managed to duck out of her way and again, they crashed to the floor. She lay on top of him, her chest heaving. She moved to put the knife at his chest, but Isandor was quicker. Using both his healthy arms, he rolled her onto her back, pinning her to the ground. He glared down at her, panting.
“That’
s rubbish. He can’t be your father. Tandor told me what your grandmother did to him when she found out he was imperfect.”
“Yes, my grandmother did that—after she found out he had got her daughter with child.”
Confused, Isandor relaxed his grip on her. “Is that true?”
Lightning-fast, she wriggled from his hands and bit him on the hand. Isandor pulled her hair, and she let go, rolling aside. Isandor dived on top of her to stop her getting up. He was much stronger on the ground; she was stronger standing.
She kicked. Tandor’s cloak came off. Long nails scratched his back through Tandor’s shirt. He pinned her to the ground and yelled out, “Stop, just stop it will you!”
She lay there, panting, looking up at him with those sharp green eyes. The icefire that flowed from her made blood rush to his cheeks. “Is it true what you say?”
“Yes, and he made sure that my mother, who was only thirteen, was so damaged that she could never have other children, so my family had to keep me alive, but they don’t want me, do they? No one wanted me. And now my mother is dead and the Eagle Knights still don’t want me, but I’m better than the alternative: feuding warlords of different factions of the knights. So they keep me here. I’m not a queen; I’m a prisoner!” Her eyes blazed. “Tandor is the only one who will help me.”
That sounded awfully familiar. “What has Tandor promised you in return for my heart?”
She blinked, and Isandor was ashamed to see moisture in those eyes. “My freedom.”
She quickly composed herself. “What has he promised you?”
It didn’t seem appropriate to admit to wanting to become an Eagle Knight, so Isandor only said, “I wanted a way to get out of the Slums. He promised me that.”
For a moment, her eyes softened. She moved her lips but no sound came out. Isandor stared, wanting her to speak, wanting her to propose a solution to this crazy situation. He thought he had his own solution, but just the thought made his face grow hot.