by Spurrier, Jo
Sierra could have killed them easily — it would have been a small matter to collapse the tunnel or drown them in molten stone — but she couldn’t bring herself to do it. The men she would have crushed without a second thought, but she had too much in common with that girl to cause her death so lightly.
She felt a hand on her shoulder, and someone shouting in her ear. Isidro. ‘Let them go,’ he told her, over and over again. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by killing them, Sirri. Let them go.’
She broke off her attack, and felt the girl sob with relief as she and the other survivors broke through into the passage. Rasten, too, halted his attack, and the mages guarding the retreat fled as well. Only one lingered, casting a baleful glare over those who had defeated them. At first, Sierra thought his gaze had fallen on her, but she couldn’t recall seeing him before, not in the meat-market or in the work-teams. It took her a moment to realise that it wasn’t her drawing his fury — it was Isidro.
Isidro’s hand tightened on her shoulder as the man stepped back into the tunnel and sealed it with a wall of stone that oozed out of the rock like juice from a bruised fruit.
The warriors and freed slaves all broke into cheers, but Sierra could feel Rasten still channelling power. One last knot of Akharian fighters had been separated from the rest, and Rasten pinned them in the deepest and coldest section of the cavern. Without thinking Sierra ran to join him and, as she added her strength to his, she felt the trapped mages focus their remaining power into their shields.
With a sigh, Rasten broke off his assault. ‘Wind it back, Sirri,’ he said. ‘Battle-Mages will drain themselves dry to hold a shield, and dead hostages are worthless.’
Warily, she did as he said, keeping her power close at hand, coiled within her palms like a serpent. Abruptly, she realised that she was closer to Rasten than she was to Cam and Isidro — not that there was anything they could do if he turned on her. She simply felt safer with friends at her back. She didn’t dare look away from him, but she sensed Isidro’s wariness through the link, and saw Rasten’s gaze flicker to someone approaching behind her.
Her power was winding down from its peak, although there were still dozens of wounded and dying strewn across the cavern. She could drain them all for a rush of energy, but it wouldn’t be the great singing flood she’d ridden at the height of the battle. If Rasten tried to take it from her, it could turn messy.
Sierra took a step back, and then another, until she felt Isidro’s warmth and bulk beside her.
Rasten was studying his hands, seemingly too engrossed to notice her retreat. Sierra caught a stray thought drifting from his mind — his hands were clean for once, not tight and sticky with drying gore. This is the first time I’ve fought a battle without being up to my elbows in blood, he thought.
Then he turned to Sierra with a furious glare, and she knew he hadn’t meant her to overhear him.
Cam came over to join them and, though he kept his gaze on Rasten, he couldn’t keep from clapping his hand on Isidro’s shoulder and sending him a sidelong grin. Mira pushed through the crowd as well, and Cam seized her in a fierce embrace. Over his shoulder she spied Ardamon; with one arm curled around Cam’s neck, she stretched the other towards her cousin and called out his name.
A flicker of pain crossed Rasten’s face, and he backed away. There are no joyful reunions awaiting him at the end of this battle, Sierra thought. Or any battle. There was no reason for him to linger. The fight was over, but the Akharians had more troops and mages camped above. It would take nothing less than the threat of a Blood-Mage in the War-Leader’s company to keep them from storming Demon’s Spire again.
Still, she couldn’t dismiss the pain he tried to hide. He’d had a family once, before Kell had slaughtered them. Even if the two of them succeeded in destroying their master, he did not have this moment of homecoming to look forward to.
With a snap of his fingers, Rasten summoned his bodyguards, and turned, heading for the darkness of the tunnels once again. There was weariness in every line of his body, but she knew the determination in the set of his shoulders. The cramped and chill tunnels were preferable by far to the pain of watching what he could never have.
Sierra rubbed her eyes clear, and turned to see Cam seize Isidro in an embrace, pounding him on the back before he suddenly pulled away. ‘Oh, Fires Below, I forgot — your arm …’
‘Don’t worry about it. It’s mostly healed now.’
Cam’s eyes fell on Sierra, and with one swift stride he closed the gap between them and scooped her up. He held her so close she couldn’t breathe: all she could do was laugh, a giddy, breathless chuckle as all the fear and tension she’d been carrying for so long drained away.
They were free. They had the Spire.
They’d won.
Chapter 5
The battle had lasted for perhaps half an hour, but dealing with the injured and the dead and making sense of the wreckage of the camp seemed to take an age.
The last Akharians surrendered a short time later. They’d exhausted their power and were too weak to be any threat, but to be sure Cam had them trussed with warding-stones and stationed in the coldest part of the cavern, while sentries watched over them.
There were relatively few wounded to care for. Ardamon lost one man, with a handful injured, but it was the slaves who suffered the worst. Since Rhia had only the supplies she’d carried, Isidro enlisted Lucia to search for medicines and bandages. The wounded Akharians were delivered to the surrendered soldiers, who were allowed a tent, brazier and some supplies to care for them. There was some discontent among the freed slaves at that, until Mira reminded them living wounded would feed Sierra power when dead men would not.
Then there was the matter of the bodies. There was no way to bury them and no fuel to spare for a pyre, so Cam ordered the corpses to be carried into the passages to freeze. For now it was the best they could do.
By the time all this was done, Mira had recruited women from among the freed slaves to set up tents and stoves. The captured supplies stretched further with the reduced numbers, so the stoves were well fed and the tents were blissfully warm — almost too warm to Isidro’s mind, but when he found Sierra huddled by the fire in Delphine’s old tent he remembered how badly a body starved of food and warmth could feel the cold. It was easy to forget how privileged he’d been under Delphine and Harwin’s care.
Mira, too, was in better condition than the rest of them. She mustered the strongest and healthiest of the women and set about cooking pans of bannock with lashings of butter to pass around the camp.
By the time everyone was warm and fed and the perimeter was secure, the last adrenaline from the fight had burned away and Isidro couldn’t escape the fact that he’d had only a few hours’ rest in a very full day and night. When Sierra curled up beside him and yawned herself to sleep, Isidro could fight the urge no more and lay down as well. He was asleep the moment he closed his eyes.
When morning came — and it was easiest just to call it morning, for he had no idea how long they’d slept or where the sun hung in the sky — it came with all the comfortable sounds and sensations of domesticity, with the hiss of a kettle coming on to boil and the smell of fat heating in a pan. It felt so right that for a moment Isidro could forget all that had happened in the last few months. Nearby, Mira and Sierra talked in soft voices.
‘And that’s what he told you?’ Mira was saying with a hint of scepticism in her hushed tones. ‘Honestly, Sirri, I don’t know how you can bring yourself to trust a creature like Rasten … but I have to say it’s accurate as far as it goes. Valeria was the true ruler after Queen Leandra died, even if Severian was the one wearing the crown. He’s been slipping away from her these last few years, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets him back on the leash before all this is done. Some people just go mad when they have a chance at power — Valeria’s the sort who would rather rule a crippled kingdom than let a strong one slip out of her grasp.’
‘But
suppose we do manage to pull this off,’ Sierra said. ‘Say we can beat the Slavers back, and destroy Kell. What then? Is Cam the true king? I’ve heard it said that Leandra named him her heir —’
Isidro opened his eyes. ‘Don’t let him hear you say that.’
As he sat up, Sierra gave him a wide-eyed look, and then dropped her gaze as a flush crept over her cheeks. ‘Why not? I mean, I’m sorry, I didn’t —’
‘Oh, you needn’t be sorry when you didn’t know,’ Mira said, and lowered her voice to little more than a whisper. ‘He doesn’t like to talk about it. So many men died when they tried to claim the throne, Isidro’s father among them, though he was Cam’s father too, in all but blood. And more still were tortured and killed after they helped Cam and Isidro escape. They stayed back, you see, to cover for them, and sacrificed themselves to let the boys get away.’
‘Cam swore he’d never ask men to die to put him on that cursed throne,’ Isidro said. ‘Most folk are wise enough not to suggest it to him, not more than once. If we get that far, Sirri, we’ll come up with something, but to be honest we’d do better to focus on the matter at hand. For now, we need to work on helping you master your powers and taking back the slaves. We’ll worry about the rest if we get that far.’
Sierra nodded, but she kept her gaze down, until he snared her hand in his and brought it to his lips with a kiss — only then did she look up again, and smile.
By the time the bannock was cooked and the tea brewed, Cam and Ardamon were beginning to stir, but Rhia slept, visible only as a puff of tawny hair peeking out from beneath her furs. Lucia had woken and clambered out of her furs, but sat upon them with her knees drawn to her chest and her shoulders hunched.
‘Lucia —’ Isidro began but then he broke off with a shake of his head. ‘No. What’s your real name?’
‘Amaya,’ she said softly, barely looking up. ‘My name is Amaya.’
‘Amaya,’ he said, praying to all the Gods that he wouldn’t slip and use the wrong one. ‘What’s wrong?’
Her breath hitched, and when she met his gaze there were tears in her eyes. ‘I … I thought that once we were free everything would be better. But my family are all long gone. I’ll never see them again.’
‘We’ll free the rest of the slaves as soon as we can,’ Sierra said. ‘I promise.’
‘But … they’re not even in Ricalan any more, some of them. What if they’ve all been sent to the empire?’
‘My dear child,’ Mira said. ‘I’ll do everything I can to help find your kin, I swear it by the Twin Suns.’
‘But will I have to go and stay with the other women? I don’t think they like me.’
Mira looked confused, but Sierra seemed to understand. ‘Have they been nasty to you?’
Amaya nodded.
‘Why?’ Mira asked, torn between confusion and anger.
‘They’re jealous because you had a good master and escaped the meat-market,’ Sierra told the girl. ‘If they had a chance to do the same they’d have jumped at it, believe me.’ She turned to Mira. ‘There’s no reason she couldn’t stay with us, is there?’
‘Oh, can I?’ Amaya pleaded. ‘I’ll work for my keep. You know I can cook and clean and tend a tent, my lady.’
‘Of course you can stay,’ Mira said. ‘But I can think of better work for you than washing clothes and sweeping up ash. Our Rhia could use an assistant to help tend the wounded. What do you think? If you like each other, you can learn her craft while we find your kin.’
Amaya slowly nodded. ‘That sounds good.’
‘You don’t mind the sight of blood?’ Sierra asked her.
‘Oh, no, and I like helping people. Thank you, my lady.’
The conversation seemed to cheer the girl, but it left Sierra frowning. By this time, Cam and Ardamon were up, and they came to join the others as Mira tore the breakfast bannock to share it around.
‘What’s wrong, Sirri?’ Isidro asked as she nibbled.
‘I’m thinking about the rest of the slaves,’ Sierra said. ‘I know we had to choose between taking the Spire and attacking the encampment at the mouth of the valley …’
‘If we’d fought them up above, then the Akharians would be ensconced down here, with Mira and Isidro,’ Cam said around his own piece of bannock.
‘What’s this?’ Mira said. ‘I’ve heard nothing but rumours for months, what’s the state of Uncle Dremman’s men?’
‘We couldn’t risk attacking the encampment at the mouth of Earthblood,’ Cam said. ‘Even with Sierra and Rasten — they have too many mages. Taking the Spire was a better bet, even if it did mean relying on Rasten’s help.’
‘Isidro told me you’d made a deal with Rasten,’ Mira said, shaking her head. ‘By the Twin Suns —’
‘It was the only way. Even if we could hit the Akharians hard enough to release the slaves, there’s no way we would have freed you and Isidro, and we wouldn’t have access to the Spire,’ Cam said. ‘We’d be facing the surviving Akharian forces and dealing with Dremman, both doing all they could to keep Sierra from reaching this place. Add Rasten, who still wants to drag her back to Kell. No, attacking the legion was never a good choice. But we will free the rest of the Ricalanis. It’s only a matter of time. The Akharians want what the Last Great Mage hid down here — they’re not going to pack up and go home when it’s almost within their grasp. They’ll be willing to negotiate, and they’ll hand over their prisoners if that’s what it takes.’
‘But if Sirri’s down here, what’s to stop their mages from attacking our men?’ Mira asked.
‘Rasten,’ Isidro replied.
‘Exactly,’ Cam said. ‘You three haven’t heard this yet, but the king is growing weary of making do without Sierra’s power. He’s sent Osebian north with a thousand men to join Rasten and add weight to our negotiations. Rasten should have reached them by now, and I daresay the Akharian survivors will reach the surface soon. None of them can strike at any other with any real chance of success. The rest of this will be settled at the parley table.’ He turned to Isidro. ‘What do you say, Issey?’
‘The Akharians will want to drag it out,’ Isidro said. ‘They know they’re keeping one of the Blood-Mages out of action; Kell and Rasten are more dangerous together than they are apart. But that’s good for us — we need all the time we can get.’
‘What does that mean for the slaves?’ Mira asked. ‘The Akharians need hostages … or perhaps not. It’s a lot of people to feed.’
‘They’d be wise to let the women and children go as a gesture of goodwill,’ Cam said. ‘To the Akharians they’re nothing but useless mouths; they might as well put the burden of feeding them onto the clan. But they’ll keep the men — they know if they release them today they’ll be fighting them tomorrow.’
‘It’ll put pressure on our people to settle the negotiations quickly,’ Ardamon said. ‘Between the matter of supplies and threats from Osebian and the king, Father can’t afford to let this drag on.’ He turned to Sierra as she licked the pan-grease from her fingertips.
‘I suppose I’d better get on with it, then,’ she said.
‘I’ve been thinking about this since we took the books from Milksprings,’ Isidro said to her. ‘I’ve got a fair idea of where to start. Delphine’s going to be livid when she finds out what’s happened, and it’ll take some time to convince her to cooperate. It would be best if you have a good grounding by then.’
‘Sirri mentioned you took Delphine prisoner,’ Mira said with a shake of her head. ‘I don’t envy you having to deal with her, Issey.’
‘Who?’ Cam asked, and so Isidro had to tell the whole tale. He tried to keep it brief, but that required explaining the installation, the chamber where the walls themselves were made of warding-stone, and the woman made of light trapped within the wall. The story seemed to confuse the others more than anything else.
Amaya was stricken by the news. ‘Madame Delphine is still here? By the Black Sun, she’s going to be furious.’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet,’ Isidro admitted. ‘Sirri, you can drain a mage’s power, right?’
She nodded. ‘In theory. It’s hard to do it without killing them, though.’
‘I brought Sierra’s old warding-stones with me,’ Cam said. ‘The ones she was carrying when we found her. Would they help?’
‘If they held me they should hold her,’ Sierra said.
‘Worth a try,’ Isidro said. ‘Otherwise, we’ll have to keep her in the dampening chamber.’ He turned to Sierra. ‘You can drop her again if the stones don’t work, can’t you?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Sierra said. ‘I’d best stay out of sight so we know for sure. She’s too clever to try anything in front of me.’
‘I’ll dig out those stones for you,’ Cam said.
Mira and Amaya, however, both looked sceptical. ‘She’s going to be so mad,’ Amaya said. ‘Um … Isidro? Do you know what happened to Master Harwin and the others?’
‘They escaped with the general,’ Isidro said.
‘Good,’ Amaya said. ‘He was nice to me. I didn’t want him to die.’
Cam returned a moment later with the restraints. Sierra had damaged them when she escaped, but the ornate gilded fittings had enough loops and flourishes that a cord could lace the broken edges together. Isidro tucked them into his sash, where he felt the cold, greasy touch of the enchantment even through his clothes.
Cam studied him all the while, and as Isidro straightened he felt his gaze linger on the thick, knotted scar on his neck. Isidro reflexively raised a hand to it.
‘That was a nasty cut,’ Cam said.
Isidro didn’t know what to say, but he could feel colour creeping into his cheeks. He hated to remember that time. Of course he was glad now that he hadn’t succeeded, but he could still recall how desperately he’d craved a release from the hopelessness and pain …