Chapter Five
We let ourselves out of the storage room and into the pub. Oriel locked the door behind us and took the key over to the bartender, who acknowledged him with a jerk of his chin and gave me a curious look. As Oriel jogged back it hit me again how familiar he was and I blushed as I realised I was staring again. He raised his eyebrows at me. ‘Ready?’ I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway.
We left the pub though a back door into a dark alley. The stench that hit the back of my nose suggested that this alley was the go-to place when one of the inn’s patrons felt the need to evacuate the contents of their bladder and/or stomach.
We picked our way through barrels and crates until the alley turned onto a wide cobbled road. Houses and shops of a soft grey stone lined the street on either side and market stalls were crammed in every available space. The air here, thankfully, smelled only of salt from the estuary.
Neve and Oriel strode along quickly on either side of me with a fluid, long-limbed grace, like a pair of glamorous bodyguards. At five foot eight I was hardly short, but I felt like their tiny dumpy cousin trotting along between them.
We hurried through the streets, dodging shoppers and street hawkers, passing bow-fronted shop windows. One with hundreds of clockwork gadgets on display, none of which I could identify, caught my eye and I would have dearly loved to stop and look more closely. As I stared, a horse-drawn cart rattled by, making me jump; perched on the back was a man dressed in black sermonising loudly about the end of days.
As I watched the cart rattle up the street, my gaze was drawn upwards. The sight made me jump back and gasp. Overlaid across the dappled blue sky were thin gridlines of golden wire, stretching as far towards the horizon as I could see, glinting softly in the weak sunshine. I stopped in my tracks, staring up. ‘What the-’
Neve jerked to a halt next to me and followed my gaze upwards. ‘What’s the matter? Oh. The demon nets.’ She gave me a crooked smile. ‘Our first line of defence. Some demons have wings, you see.’
‘How are the- What the- What-’
‘I should know how they work, but I don’t,’ she sighed. ‘Not really. I just know they do work. Anything demonic that flies near them gets zapped. The artificers set them up hundreds of years ago and they maintain them, keep them working.’
‘But how do they…’ My words still weren’t working properly.
Neve hooked her arm through mine; my feet started to move quicker and I realised she was trying to hurry me up. I started to trot and before long we were out of the main thoroughfare and heading through some quieter lanes towards the outskirts of the town.
The shooting range turned out to be a sprawling stone house set slightly back from the road. No curtains hung at the windows and the front garden was paved with low-maintenance cobbles, giving it a faintly institutional air. Oriel led us round to a tall set of double doors at the side.
He jiggled a key in the lock and pulled the doors open. Light streamed in through the windows at the back of the room glinting off every surface and it took me a second to realise that it was reflecting off weapons. Racks of swords, axes and spears and then other weapons that looked like a cross between the two. Maces, flails and morning stars. Hundreds of bows and crates upon crates of arrows. ‘Jesus,’ I said shakily, ‘are you expecting an attack?’
‘Yeah,’ Neve said distractedly, pawing through a stack of quivers. ‘I mean, like, not right at this moment,’ she said hurriedly at my panicked expression, ‘but demons can break through anywhere, so we keep an armoury like this in every town. Now look at this,’ she said happily, handing me a bow made of golden-brown wood, buffed to a mellow shine. ‘It’s yew, nice and springy, and here,’ she handed me a stiff leather quiver, ‘are some arrows. Let’s go outside and we can watch you shoot.’
Outside, the gardens stretched so far that they were more like well-tended meadows, sloping downwards towards the town and the estuary beyond. It would have all been very picturesque, were it not for the sword-impaled mannequins hanging from the trees dotted around the perimeter.
Oriel’s face fell. ‘Who’s left all this kit lying around outside?’ He stamped off and started retrieving swords, running his hand through his hair in annoyance, making it spike even more crazily than before. My stomach lurched again as I watched him and I wanted to shout, Gah! Yes! You always run your hand through your hair like that when you’re pissed off about something!
‘Right then, there’s your target,’ Neve clicked her fingers to drag my attention away and pointed to a round target with alternating black and white rings twenty or so metres away, ‘and you have your bow and arrows. Let’s see what you can do.’
She went to join Oriel under a tree, where they both sat watching me intently. Because an audience was just what I needed.
I weighed the bow in my hand. It was a bit longer than the one I used to use, but not unwieldy, and it had a nice balance to it.
I chucked the quiver down next to me and pulled an arrow out. My arrows back home were aluminium with purple and silver artificial feather fletching. This one was made of wood and was fletched with what looked like turkey feathers. I fitted it to the bow, pulled, and stood for a moment enjoying the familiar feeling of raw power before letting the arrow go.
It flew about a metre wide of the target.
I cringed inwardly. I hadn’t even done that badly the very first time I ever shot an arrow.
I turned to Neve and Oriel. Neve looked as if she was trying very hard to mask her horror and Oriel just looked confused. ‘Mind if I have another go?’
They both gestured to me to go ahead. I nocked another arrow and aimed. The world around me turned hazy as I brought the centre of the target into sharp focus. I released the arrow and it struck the centre of the target.
That was more like it.
Neve raised an eyebrow. ‘Better,’ she called over to me, her voice a perfect balance of approval and relief. ‘Now do another couple.’ I did as she asked and they hit the centre too.
‘Looks like you weren’t wrong,’ she said to Oriel, and got up to move the target back to fifty metres. He smirked cheesily at her and gave me a thumbs-up.
I fired another three arrows as Neve stood behind me and watched. They hit the centre of the target too. Oriel jumped to his feet and came over to join us. ‘That was good. Now show us how you do with a moving target.’
I bit my lip. My archery club had two moving target setups: one that swung from a rope on a tree and a tyre that got rolled down a slope. I’d only ever tried them a couple of times.
Oriel threw a small blue ball towards the top of the tree, further and faster than I would have thought possible. As it flew up, it unfurled and took the form of a large bird which swooped and fluttered high in the air. I gave a surprised bark of laughter. My coach would have cut off his own foot for the chance at using targets like that. Oriel grinned at my reaction. ‘Courtesy of the artificers,’ he said.
I yanked an arrow out of the quiver and watched the bird, trying to work out its flight pattern. It didn’t have one. It was moving completely randomly. I aimed for a couple of seconds before loosing the arrow. The bird exploded into blue dust. I clenched my fists to stop myself breaking out into a victory dance.
The next targets he threw for me got progressively smaller until the final one, the seventh, was about the size of a sparrow. It flew up around the chimney stack of the house and exploded in a cloud of yellow sparks when I hit it.
Oriel turned to Neve, looking as satisfied as if she’d shot the targets himself. ‘See? See?’ he grinned.
Neve rolled her eyes and suppressed a smile. ‘Fine. She’s good.’ She dusted her hands against her trousers. ‘Come on, let’s go back inside and we’ll get you some kit. Not that what you’re wearing isn’t lovely,’ she amended hastily, casting her eye doubtfully over my black jeans and hoodie and lingering on my Converse. ‘Wow. Those shoes are very...purple, aren’t they? But you’ll need some different clothes if you want t
o, you know, blend in.’
‘Is that my cue to go back to the inn?’ Oriel asked.
‘Hello? Pervert, much? Obviously you’re not coming with us while we try clothes on,’ Neve said crisply. ‘We’ve just managed to get ourselves a very competent archer; I don’t want you scaring her off.’
‘I think Roanne’s braver than you give her credit for, Neve,’ Oriel said, smiling at me. He sauntered backwards and turned, waving back over his shoulder. I stared after him for a couple of seconds and when I turned back to Neve, she was looking at me with faint amusement. I felt the heat start to radiate up from my chest again.
I hadn’t noticed the clothing in the storage room before, what with all the terrifying-looking weapons lying about the place. Neve busied herself with neatly-stacked piles of clothes while I looked through a rack of fitted, thigh-length coats. The dark-green wool was thick and supple with a slight sheen. I wanted to run my cheek along it.
‘That’s Protectorate uniform,’ she said, steering me gently away, ‘and besides, that’s a winter jacket. You want something more like these.’ She handed me a small pile of clothing.
I ducked behind a suit of armour and changed into a loose beige shirt and brown trousers made of thick linen and cut to a style that meant they could only be described as breeches.
While I changed, Neve floated around the storeroom finding me some other bits of equipment. ‘Um, Neve?’ I called out.
‘What’s up? Aren’t the clothes any good?’
‘No, they’re fine. I just wanted to ask-’ What did I want to ask exactly? How do I know your brother? Why do I recognise him but not you? ‘Um, is Oriel from the-’ Nope. Couldn’t bring myself to say Sanctuary. ‘From…where I come from?’
No,’ she said slowly, confused. ‘We were born here. Both of us. I know it’s not immediately obvious, but we’re twins. I’m older,’ she clarified quickly. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘Just his clothes. They’re kind of different to what everyone else is wearing.’ I didn’t have a huge amount of comparison, but everyone else I’d seen, Neve included, wore plain, homespun clothing. The sort of stuff you wear when you spend a lot of time outdoors. Not Thundercats t-shirts
She hesitated and a soft laugh drifted over from the next rack of clothes. ‘Oriel’s a real nerd for Sanctuary stuff. You should see his apartment; it’s like a Den of Geek. And he gets away with dressing like that because he’s one of the best at what he does and thinks the rules don’t apply to him.’ She stepped out from behind a mannequin, armed with assorted equipment. ‘The thing we told you about? The Window? It’s like his most favourite thing in the entire world. You can scroll the view around, look wherever you like, zoom in on stuff.’ She broke off and when she spoke again her voice was slightly dreamy. ‘Sometimes I like to look at the towns. Whole huge towns with no demon nets. People just going about their business with no weapons.’ She crunched her nose up in disbelief. ‘No weapons at all. So weird. I could watch it all day.’
‘And that’s how you found me?’
‘Mm-hmm,’ she said, bending over my wrist to fasten a set of tooled leather bracers. They made my sleeved billow slightly and I admired the look in the speckled mirror. Neve stood behind me and nodded her approval. Then her face fell. ‘Oh gods. I don’t mean- We don’t sit there watching you. I mean, we did, but we weren’t watching watching you. And never when you thought you were alone. We’d never do that. I know I called Oriel a pervert back then, but he’s really not. He’s lovely.’ Neve closed her eyes and shook her head. ‘I’m messing this up,’ she said quietly. ‘Oriel’s so much better at this stuff than I am. Please don’t freak out and leave us, because the truth is... The truth is we really need you, Roanne. And we’re so grateful you’ve come. I realise this must all be strange for you-’ understatement of the millennium ‘-but please don’t run home screaming.’
I didn’t say anything, because she was right. It was strange and I was totally planning on running home screaming as soon as I saw an opportunity. ‘I want to ask if we’re cool here, but I’m frightened you’ll say no.’ She looked at me enquiringly.
‘Best not to ask then,’ I said.
She seemed to accept this. ‘Alright then, footwear,’ Neve held up a pair of not-very-new-looking brown leather boots. ‘Pre-broken-in,’ she explained with a thumbs-up, somehow making it into a selling point.
The boots reached halfway up my calves and were loaded with buckles and laces. As I pulled them on, I tried not to imagine the previous owner’s corns, bits of verruca and foot flakes that might still be lurking inside.
‘I know second hand probably wasn’t what you were hoping for, but I’m guessing you don’t do an awful lot of walking usually?’ She guessed correctly. ‘These boots are broken in already, soft as butter. If I give you new boots, your feet’ll be cut to ribbons before we’re halfway out of town, and we won’t have time to let you stop and rest. Believe me when I say that marching on blisters is one of the more unpleasant things that could happen to you over the next few weeks.’
I thought about the veiled insinuation that I could expect a range of unpleasant things to happen to me in the near future, and tried to shove it to the back of my mind.
‘Keep that bow. It’s a pretty good one and it seems to be working for you so far,’ Neve breezed on. ‘Let’s get you a nicer quiver, though.’ She loaded a soft green leather quiver with a bunch of turkey-feather arrows and in its side pouch she put half a dozen coloured arrows. ‘The red ones are fire arrows, the blue ones are ice. Load and shoot them like your normal arrows and they flame or freeze mid-flight. Brilliant if there’s someone who just won’t go down and you just need a little extra oomph. The artificers make all kinds of shiny toys like this for us but they’re desperately expensive, so only use them in an emergency.’
‘Do I get a sword as well?’ I blurted.
Neve stopped what she was doing and looked at me, her green eyes twinkling. ‘Okay,’ she said slowly. ‘Help yourself.’ She nodded to a rack of swords almost as tall as I was. I grabbed one by the hilt and picked it up. Or I tried to, anyway. The damn thing weighed about as much as a car. Using both hands, I could just about drag it out of the rack. Just.
Neve laughed not unkindly at my struggles. She took the sword from me before I gave myself a hernia and twirled it over her head before slotting it neatly back on the rack. ‘Look, chances are nothing’s going to happen on this mission, but if it does then your best defence isn’t going to be a sword, it’s going to be running and hiding behind a tree. An archer’s a ranged fighter, a sniper. As soon as you realise we’re under attack you run, hide and start picking off our attackers with your bow. You don’t get in the thick of things. Leave that to me and Oriel, it’s what we’re trained for.’
Running and hiding. That sounded well within my capabilities. ‘Oriel didn’t explain very well earlier, but there are two types of soldier in the Protectorate: Guardians and Psions.’ Neve started loading a small kit bag up with some spare clothes and a few other bits: a plate and spoon, a mug, and a bundle of material that I hoped was more comfortable than it looked for sleeping in. ‘Oriel and I are Guardians, so our Blessings are that we’re super-strong and fast and stuff. Handy with a sword,’ she grinned. ‘Or an axe. Or shuriken. Spears. Flails. But anyway, it’s the Psions that can do the really cool shit. They can do stuff like telekinesis, telemorphosis, elemental control, like the trick Kallista pulled back at the pub. Ooh, I forgot we had these!’ Neve swooped on a box marked with Cyrillic-looking symbols.
‘Neve,’ I said, ‘that box... What is that?’ I pointed to the writing.
‘What’s what?’ She frowned at where I was pointing and I jabbed my finger again. ‘What, that? Er, well, it’s words,’ she said slowly. ‘It says ‘Grenades’.’ And then she realised what I meant and her face dropped. ‘Oh! You mean you can’t...’
‘No,’ I said shortly. ‘I mean, yes I can read. But not this.’ I was annoyed but not surprised that this hadn�
�t occurred to me earlier.
She rubbed my arm sympathetically. ‘We all know our letters, so we’ll be able to help you along. To be honest, we’re going to be walking most of the time so you won’t need to be able to read much. And maybe you’ll pick up some words here and there along the way.’
‘Yeah, maybe,’ I muttered.
When you’re a twin, people love to put a label on you. They love it. Instead of being referred to by our names, over the years Chec and I have been called The Loud One (Chec), The Quiet One (me), The Obedient One (me), The Naughty One (Chec), The Pretty One (Chec) and so on. And out of the two of us, I was The Bookish One. I would have listed reading as a hobby on my university applications if it hadn’t sounded so utterly pathetic. I had a book with me in my backpack, but it was a thin-ish one and I’d only chucked it in my bag because, well, I never went anywhere without a book. And now, here I was: stuck in the arse-end of nowhere with only a hundred page novel to last me for weeks.
‘Can I cheer you up with some grenades?’ Neve asked hopefully, holding a handful of the small incendiaries out like a bag of sweets. ‘The red ones are fire, but the green ones are acid.’
‘Thanks,’ I said sadly, shoving a handful of grenades into a side pocket of my kit bag.
‘I know, let’s do something fun,’ she said, taking my hand and stroking it. She looked at me pleadingly, her eyes wide. ‘We can go back to the Griffin, get drunk, and you can tell me all about how motor cars work.’ She noticed my forlorn expression and turned up the puppy-eyes look a notch. ‘Come on, I promise there won’t be any books!’
Neve pulled me along and after one last glance at the box of grenades, I followed her.
Completely illiterate and armed to the teeth. What could possibly go wrong?
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