by Joseph Lallo
“That’s right. A good, honest Knight doesn’t run like a coward. A good Knight stands his ground and fights with whatever weapon he has.”
“But it’s not fair . . .” Carro panted.
“Warfare is rarely fair, boy. Yes, the enemy will use icefire. Then now, so do we. Come on, show me what you’ve learned.” He swung the staff.
Sweat pouring down his stomach, Carro gripped the staff in both hands. He adopted a fighting stance, legs apart, swaying from side to side.
Rider Cornatan circled him. Slowly, watching with eagle-eyes. The heels of his boots clacked on the stone floor. Carro’s skin pricked. He turned on the spot, as he’d been taught in sword fighting, always watching.
Rider Cornatan chuckled.
“I see you’ve been taught well.”
And then he thrust up. Lightning crackled around Carro.
Carro swung his staff. Too late. He didn’t know what he was doing. However was he supposed to fight icefire he couldn’t see with nothing more than a stick? Rider Cornatan thrust again. The air was thick with the scent of singed clothing.
“Fight, fight,” Rider Cornatan urged and punctuated each word with a thrust of the staff. He could still laugh. Or maybe he thought it was funny. Maybe this was Carro’s punishment.
He thrust faster and faster. Dust swirled in the room. Carro whirled, swung his staff whichever way seemed right, but Rider Cornatan always went faster.
Eventually, Carro could no longer keep it up. “This is ridiculous. I can’t see what I’m fighting!” He stopped, panting, embarrassed about his outburst. “I’m sorry. You win.”
He hung his shoulders. Humility. Lost to an old man.
Rider Cornatan laughed. “No. You win. Give me this.” He took the staff from Carro’s sweat-slicked hand. “Notice how the metal is cold?”
It was. Ice-cold in fact.
“You noticed how none of the rays hit you?”
Carro blinked. He couldn’t see the rays, but hadn’t felt anything either, so he supposed it was true. The floor certainly bore plenty of marks.
“That is because when you hold this weapon, it acts as a sink for icefire. When you’re holding this staff, instead of hitting the intended target, icefire is all absorbed in this staff.”
Carro’s spirits deflated. “So . . . Nothing would have happened to me even if I had not defended myself.”
“Precisely.” A smile curled the old lips. “You are special, because of what you are. Pure Pirosians are rare. Cherish it, keep it a secret and use it well.”
Carro tried hard to feel misused or suspicious, but he only succeeded partially. He was special He was more than Carro, useless boy from the Outer City, who was only here because the Knights wanted to spy on the Outer City residents.
“Apprentice Carro, we have a dire need of your talent. How would you like to be promoted?”
“Promoted?” Carro swallowed. This was getting more and more strange.
“The first Apprentice ever to skip straight to Learner? Your father would like that, wouldn’t he?”
Carro flinched. What did Rider Cornatan know of his father? What did he know of what his father thought about him? Did his father have a hand in this? Was that the catch?
* * *
The carpet is dark red and has a pattern of squares within squares that Carro knows all too well. He stands just inside the door, his hands behind his back, his gaze on the ground.
His father gets up from the desk and walks across the office. Carro follows his father’s movement from the corner of his eye. Don’t go to the cupboard please, not the cupboard. He doesn’t think he can stand any more work in the warehouse on the accounting books, but he will not cry, or the boys will tease him. All the boys who were already teasing him in the streets. It will just get worse.
His father opens the cupboard door. Takes a long time to select a big book. The stocktake records.
Carro closes his eyes and tries not to show his despair. He shivers with the intense cold in the warehouse.
He can feel the chill breeze as his father crosses to the rough table where he is sitting. The book lands on the table with a thud.
I want this done by tomorrow morning.
Carro just nods, his mind numb. He fights back tears of despair.
His fingers will be blue and sore by the time the night is over. Then his reading tutor will hit him for not paying attention. Then his father will order the stove to be tempered, because the luxurious warmth is obviously putting his errant son to sleep.
And then . . .
* * *
Carro wobbled. Oh, by the skylights, why was he seeing these things?
Fortunately, Rider Cornatan hadn’t noticed the spell. He was putting the staff back on the table. When Carro moved to do the same, his hands trembling, Rider Cornatan put his hand on the metal. “Keep it. I’m allocating you two elite soldiers. Get the boy and come back here. The soldiers are waiting for you.”
“What—now?”
“Yes. Everyone is asleep or too drunk to notice. You should be able to take the boy on your bird. He’s only a child. Bring him back here as soon as you can. Report to me directly. Don’t tell anyone else.”
Rider Cornatan turned to Carro and lifted up his chin with a single finger.
“Go on, make your family proud.”
“My family hates me, especially my father.”
Rider Cornatan’s eyes met his, blue, intense. “I don’t know about the rest of your family, but I can assure you, Carro, your father loves you very much.”
Chapter 14
THERE WERE many questions Carro should have asked, but his brain was so numb that he was out the door before he remembered any of them. It felt like it had all been a dream, except he had the staff in his hands and his Learner’s badge on his collar, and a fuzzy feeling in his head that told him that, yes, this was real, and if he wanted to come out of this alive, he had better obey orders. Someone was testing him, or teasing him, or using him as expendable bait, and all he could do was run along and hope he wasn’t going to get caught in something sticky.
The two elite Knights waited at the end of the corridor that led to Rider Cornatan’s quarters, both sharp-faced, silent men at least ten years older than Carro. He had never seen them before. Their eyes were hard, their gazes neither approving nor disapproving, but Carro was all-too-aware of their muscled arms and lean physiques. Body-guards or child-minders?
Their faces remained impassive.
They started moving through the dark corridor in the direction Carro recognised as leading towards the howling staircase. At night, there was no wind to make the jagged edges howl, and they climbed its many steps in uncomfortable silence. The sky was dark blue, too light to show any but the brightest of stars. Pink and green skylights shimmered above.
“You know where to find this Brotherhood compound?”
Carro had grown so used to silence that the man’s voice startled him.
“I do.” Carro explained the location on the far side of the Outer City. The men only listened. Evidently, they had been briefed on their mission.
They reached the eyrie, where dark shapes of birds shuffled and fidgeted as they came in. One of the Knights flicked the light lever up. The bulb sprang into life with its too-bright glow. Heads lifted from under wings, baleful eyes blinked. Both men had their birds untied before Carro had even done up his harness. His fingers trembled. He was fumbling with the staff Rider Cornatan had given him, not sure how to carry it. He settled on lashing his belt around the glass head. The stick banged against his leg, a feeling that was clumsy and awkward.
Carro untied his eagle. It hissed at him and flapped its wings, which made a few other eagles hiss and squawk.
Clumsy, clumsy.
At the opening, the two Knights mounted with fluid grace. Their birds stood ready, their eyes alert.
How had Rider Cornatan ever thought he could match men like these? Normal
ly, the Apprentices mounted their birds from a platform, but it had been taken away for the night. Carro put his foot in the harness trying to imitate the Knights. He heaved himself up and almost overbalanced. The eagle flapped with his sudden shift of weight. Carro salvaged the situation by grabbing the handholds at the top of the saddle with both hands. The reins slipped from his hands, but at least he didn’t fall.
One of the Knights gave a quick flick with his eyebrows before he launched the eagle out. Carro clicked his tongue and the eagle followed the other bird out, hurtling into the air that cut his face with the sting of thousands of knives.
Carro was shivering, already struggling to hold onto the saddle.
Most of the buildings in the city were dark. Lights burned in the odd window here or there, but most decent nobles and proper folk of the City of Glass had gone to bed. Alternatively, they were partying in the Outer City, which was an island of light on the plain dark blue with eternal dusk.
Carro kneed his eagle into catching up with the others. The bird was unwilling and made no secret of its dislike at being woken up. The two Knights fell back and let him lead the way, over the festival grounds, mostly dark, over the market square, bathed in light and full of revellers, to the part of the Outer City furthest from the City of Glass. Here, Carro landed his eagle in a rough piece of land amongst warehouses. There used to be a warehouse at this plot of land, but it had burned down some years ago. He remembered the flames, which had been visible from his street. He had Isandor had climbed up the limpet roof to see the flames roaring into the sky. Now it was just an empty piece of land with mounds of snow and stone pillars which had once been the foundations of the building.
There was nowhere to tie up the eagles, and it would probably be unwise to leave them behind anyway, so he dismounted and led the bird by the reins into the street. Eagles were not fond of walking and the bird kept jerking its head up. Carro almost lost his grip on the reins twice before he noticed how the two Knights had the leather straps wrapped around their wrists. They also kept the reins very tight, so their birds didn’t have the slack to get any force into the upward jerk. The Tutor didn’t teach that. Interesting. It worked, too.
In silence, they progressed to the wall that was the back of the compound.
Carro hadn’t expected guards at the gate, and indeed there were none. But now they couldn’t take the eagles any further and there was still nowhere to tie them up. Instead, the two Knights tied their birds onto each other. Their reins were interesting as well. His tack was the standard length of leather, fastened onto the harness on one end with a metal ring and looped back onto the harness on the other end. Their reins were two separate pieces of leather, each lashed around the rider’s wrist when in flight. They now tied one of these strips to each other, threading the knot through the reins of Carro’s eagle.
Carro wanted to ask, but what about if we need them? He envisaged a tangle of feathers and wings as all three birds tried to take off at once and found they were attached to each other. But evidently, the Knights had considered this and had some sort of solution.
Carro felt so dumb. I’m an Outer City pup, and they’ll do their best to prove it with every step I take.
The men took daggers from their belts. Carro untied the staff and unsheathed his dagger. He was unsure in which hand to hold which and his hands were too cold to do much with either weapon anyway.
They walked in through the open gates. On the other side was a small courtyard surrounded on three sides by a low building with a columned façade, very unlike the regular building style in the Outer City. Carro knew from earlier visits that the door was somewhere in the darkness between those columns, although he couldn’t see it. This was the furthest he had ever gone into the compound, bringing a delivery from his father to the Brothers. Fabric for bed sheets, he seemed to remember.
Every time he’d come here, there had been children of his own age playing in the snow, those who had been rescued from abusive families, lived in the compound and received teaching from the Brothers. They had always seemed happy and harmonious. This was not a place of shouting and punishment; it was a place of learning.
Sometimes, in his darkest hours, Carro had considered seeking refuge here, but he had always thought it unfair to the children whose families actually beat them, the girls whose fathers came home drunk and raped them every night. Those children needed the Brothers, not him. Being ignored, ridiculed or scorned every moment he spent inside his parents’ limpet didn’t injure him or kill him.
He walked across the snow-covered yard and took the two steps up the porch. The two Knights followed him like silent shadows. From memory, the dining room was directly opposite the entrance, and the sleeping quarters were to the right. A glow lit up behind him. One of the Knights held a pebble no bigger than a fingernail, which gave off bright light. The first few windows they checked were store rooms with lots of boxes, or classrooms with benches and tables. There was a blackboard against the far wall, on which someone had drawn diagrams of squares and triangles. Carro was unsure what it meant, but he had seen similar pictures in the books he and Isandor used to read, ones that spoke of calculations of icefire.
The next window looked into a living room of some kind, but a thick layer of ice made it hard to see. The second Knight gestured to a window further ahead.
Inside was a dormitory-style room with two rows of beds against the walls. In each of those beds was a child. The Knight tried the window, but it wouldn’t open.
The other Knight gestured that there was an entry on the side of the building. They headed back into the courtyard and the Knight led through a passage between the building and the compound wall. There was an outroom at the back, and facing it, a wooden door. It was locked, but it took the Knights no longer than a few heartbeats to prise it open.
The quiet efficiency of these men chilled Carro. They had spoken no more than a handful of words since he had met them, and now he wondered if these men ever spoke. They certainly didn’t seem the type to attend Newlight celebrations and start rowdy brawls in melteries, nor to get distracted by the presence of female flesh.
These were real Knights in the way he was not. Real Knights didn’t party, didn’t fight in melteries, didn’t try to get into a girl’s bed. Real Knights didn’t even show off their status to their families and old friends. Real Knights didn’t have old friends. They only had their jobs, and their superiors.
Into the building. A straight corridor stretched into darkness.
The fur-soled riding boots made not the slightest sound on the floor. The Knight indicated, in here. He pushed the door open, again without sound. The air inside was impossibly warm and laced with the must-tinged smell of blankets.
The first Knight marched into the room, while the second shut the door, holding aloft the light. Meanwhile, the first Knight was yanking blankets off the beds, uncovering sleeping children who woke up to a hand pressed over their mouths. Carro clutched his staff and felt completely useless.
The Knight struck success with the fifth child. Carro felt a cold shiver in the staff before the Knight had pulled the blankets off the bed. He was going to say that one for the sake of being useful, but the boy already sat at the edge of his bed. The harsh light showed his missing toes. Imperfect. Two heartbeats later, the Knight had the boy wrapped in a blanket and was pushing him into the corridor. All silent.
The other Knight gestured, Quick, let’s get out of here.
As Carro pulled the door to the dormitory shut behind him, the staff jerked in his hand, nearly causing him to drop it. He couldn’t restrain a gasp.
Both Knights looked at him. One had slung the blanket with the boy over his shoulder.
“Someone’s coming,” Carro whispered. He wasn’t sure if it was someone, but something was definitely happening. The metal of the staff was going alternately warm and cold in his hands.
The Knights had stopped. Neither spoke, but their sharp gazes roamed t
he corridor. Carro didn’t even know their names.
They listened. All Carro could hear was the thudding of his own heart.
“Your imagination.” The Knight closest to him gave him a disdainful glance and turned towards the door.
Carro shrugged, trying to be careless. Fine; these men thought he was an idiot, everyone did. He could do nothing but follow, even though the coldness in the staff increased.
They walked back along the path between the wall and the building, into the courtyard. Carro looked over his shoulder again. Saw nothing.
The staff chilled in his hands.
“There’s something . . .” He didn’t know how to continue. Speak of icefire in the presence of older Knights? Did they know what Rider Cornatan knew?
But the Knights broke into a trot.
Carro didn’t question their motivation.
Quick, back to the eagles. Hurry up. The staff was jerking now. He took the lead in the courtyard, the two Knights close behind. Almost at the gate. There was a noise, a soft sigh as if someone expelled a breath.
Carro glanced over his shoulder.
Something moved at the dormitory window, a smudge of distorted air.
Quick.
Puffs of snow blew up in the courtyard, coming towards them.
Carro ran.
A loud crack reverberated between the wings of the building, followed by a thump. Carro skidded to a stop. One of the Knights lay face-down in the snow. The second Knight, holding the boy over his shoulder, had his dagger in his hand, slashing uselessly in thin air.
Some artefact of icefire
Carro gripped the staff even though its surface almost froze onto his hands. Something was in the courtyard with them, something he couldn’t see. But he could see footsteps forming in the snow as the apparition walked. He waved the staff. The second Knight glanced around, his eyes wide, his dagger ready. His comrade hadn’t stirred.
The second Knight’s head jerked back. His face froze in a surprised expression. There was a loud crack that echoed in the courtyard.