Black Sun Light My Way

by Spurrier, Jo

  Sierra remained frozen, utterly baffled. For a brief moment, she entertained the hope that they’d come to rescue Cam — but then she remembered what had happened to Delphine on the morning after the battle of Demon’s Spire. If she also underestimated the danger, there would be no one to come to her aid but Kell and Rasten. Shaking her head, Sierra got to her feet and opened the door.

  The hallway was empty. The door opposite stood closed — that was the furnace-room, one she had already searched. Now a thin ribbon of light gleamed from beneath its closed door.

  Sierra crept towards it. The glowing strip was oddly truncated — it was perhaps two-thirds of the width of the doorway, as though something had been set down inside to prop the door closed. She pressed her palms against the wood and closed her eyes to listen. Voices murmured within, but she couldn’t understand what they said, or even what language they were speaking.

  Then she heard another noise — a mechanical click, much muffled, and then distinctive male voices.

  Muttering a curse, Sierra pushed at the door and felt a definite resistance on the other side: the obstruction was a dead weight that moved only grudgingly. The door opened a crack, enough to let her see a narrow slice of what held it shut. She saw a bit of uniform, sewn from grey woollen cloth, and mouse-brown hair, cropped short.

  Sierra shoved with all her strength, but the door fouled on the body even as it slumped to the side. She squeezed an arm through the gap, heedless of the threads and skin that snagged on the rough wood. The corpse — or so Sierra assumed — weighed far more than her, literally a dead weight. But now that the door was partially open she could hear the voices more clearly, and a strangled kind of grunt in a frantic tone.

  She pulled her arm free, leaving more skin behind, and drew a deep breath. What was it Delphine had always told her? Think only of the task at hand, push all other thoughts from your mind and concentrate solely on your goal.

  Sierra closed her eyes and summoned her power. She thought of her muscles, and channelling all her power into blood and flesh and bone, she took her stance, placed her hands on the door, and pushed.

  The corpse rolled away, leaving a smear of blood and skin across the floor where the door caught and dragged the soft flesh. Sierra stepped over it, and closed the door behind her.

  There was a second body, set down like the first near the table in the centre of the room. One of the cabinets hung open, just like a door, and yellow lamplight gleamed out from the chamber behind. From within came the sounds of a hushed struggle, men scuffling and breathing hard.

  Sierra ran for the doorway. Inside was a single cell, its door hanging open. Three men struggled on the far side of the iron bars, two clothed, one naked, but two of them had Cam’s foreign sandy hair. Together, the clothed men had Cam pinned on the narrow bench, one of them holding his arms while the other had his hands wrapped around Cam’s throat.

  One of them, a burly Mesentreian fellow in nondescript clothing, glanced up, calling a low warning to his comrade, and lunged at her.

  Sierra dropped him with a bolt of power that filled the tiny chamber with crackling light and the stench of burning hair. Black Sun’s Fire danced across the grille, and tiny bolts of lightning crawled over the metal.

  The two men remaining turned to face her. They were alike enough to use each other for shaving mirrors.

  In that moment of distraction Cam swung his fists at his cousin, but he was hampered by his prone position on the bench. Osebian twisted where he crouched, hunching his shoulders and ducking his head to dodge the weight of the strike. He grabbed Cam’s hair with one hand, snatching a knife from his belt with the other. The blade flared with blue light as he brought it to Cam’s throat.

  Without thinking, Sierra reached out as she had seen Rasten do countless times and wrapped cords of power around his arms, holding him as firm as the strongest chains.

  Osebian’s eyes were dark with fury. ‘You —’ he spat, but he never said anything more, as Sierra struck him with a bolt of power that set him twitching and convulsing within her glowing restraints. When she released him, he fell to the floor and lay still.

  Breathing hard, Cam hauled himself up. He was filthy, bruised and naked, and for the first time Sierra noticed the manacles and heavy chains that bound his wrists.

  ‘Cam!’ she said, and flung herself down to wrap her arms around him.

  ‘Sirri,’ he gasped, trembling beneath her hands. ‘By the Black Sun herself, you certainly know how to make an entrance.’

  She didn’t realise how bad his condition was until she took the manacles off and he tried to stand. Sierra had to help him into the other room, where he sat heavily beside the table and rested his head on his folded arms, his breath still hard and ragged.

  The beatings had left him with a few cracked ribs, but she felt no deeper injuries. Sierra scrounged through the cabinets until she found some bowls, a packet of tea and a half-full sack of roasted barley flour. She poured a bowl of tea, and then slopped some liquid into a second bowl with a handful of the coarse flour, and took both to him. ‘I don’t dare give you anything to stir it with,’ she said, glancing at the implements drying on the racks above the stove. ‘You don’t want to know where they’ve been.’

  Cam took the bowl in silence, and when she saw how filthy his hands were she went back for a damp rag. He stared at her hollow-eyed as she wiped the grime from his fingers, and his passive trust reminded Sierra of her younger siblings submitting to her ministrations, back when she’d still had a family.

  ‘Sirri …’ he said, his voice hoarse. Bruises were already darkening around his throat. ‘We should be running …’

  She shook her head. ‘We have a little time, and you won’t get far in your condition. Eat.’

  ‘But Rasten must have felt you kill those men …’

  ‘Cam, it’s alright. He won’t bother us.’ Just to be sure, she checked on him in her mind, and found nothing but emptiness. He was still unconscious.

  ‘But how can you be sure?’

  ‘Because I screwed his brains out and shocked him unconscious. He’s back there sleeping it off. We’re safe for the moment. Please eat something: you’ll need your strength.’

  He didn’t argue further. Sierra saw that he was in shock: his hands shook as he picked up the bowl of flour and began to stir with his fingers to knead the mixture into dough.

  Sierra couldn’t sit still while he ate and drank. Time was precious, and they needed a plan; but as she looked over the bodies, she didn’t know where to begin. All she’d endured in the last few weeks had taken its toll on her mind and faculties, just as Cam’s captivity had worn down his.

  Cam followed her gaze. ‘Did you kill all of them?’

  ‘No,’ she said, frowning. ‘They were like that when I got here …’ She went to the dead man nearest the door.

  The bodies wore the clothes and gear of guardsmen. The first carried nothing of interest, only his weapons and a small packet of pemmican and fruitcake, the sort of thing a man on night-duty would carry to munch on in the coldest hours.

  The second corpse yielded something more interesting. In a pouch under his shirt, Sierra found a letter in Ricalani, bearing the Wolf Clan’s seal and signed by War-Leader Dremman. She read it three times with a frown before she placed it on the table and went to check over the last two men.

  The duke’s manservant was carrying very little, but Osebian had a document case with a carefully drawn map and an order written in a hasty Mesentreian scrawl, ordering two men to leave the camp to join another party. It too was signed and sealed, but Sierra didn’t recognise the name or the symbol.

  When she brought her find back to the other room, Cam was reading the letter she’d found. ‘This has been tampered with,’ he said, waving it at her. ‘There’s a solution that washes out ink, but you can feel the difference in the paper. Drosavec taught Issey and me about it when we were boys.’

  ‘I did wonder,’ Sierra said. ‘I couldn’t imagine
Dremman being fool enough to name a spy in writing and send the message off for anyone to get their hands on.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cam said. ‘What do you have there?’

  She showed him the other papers and refilled his bowls while he looked them over.

  ‘Osebian wouldn’t need orders to get past the gate guards,’ Sierra said. ‘Why wouldn’t he just show his face?’ The reason occurred to her just as she said the words. ‘Because he didn’t want to be recognised.’ She bit her lip as she considered the situation — they’d crept in to kill Cam, leaving behind the bodies of two guardsmen, one bearing evidence incriminating him as a spy.

  Sierra poured herself a bowl of tea. ‘So what was their plan? A Wolf Clan spy learnt you were here? He crept in to free you, or perhaps kill you if he couldn’t …’

  ‘A guardsman followed him in and killed him, but was killed himself before he could raise the alarm,’ Cam said. ‘It’s a thin story, but not bad for one dreamt up in the space of a few hours.’

  Sierra winced. ‘I wanted to come to you sooner, Cam, but I had to wait until Rasten came back from Kell. If he’d found me gone …’

  He reached across the table to take her hand. ‘If you’d come sooner you’d have been surprised by my wretched cousin, instead of surprising him. I’m cursed glad you didn’t come any later, of course, although I suppose it would have been preferable to anything Kell had in mind for us.’

  Sierra didn’t have to ask — she knew he hadn’t suffered any of Kell’s favourite abuses. There was no way he could hide the after-effects from her.

  Cam still held her hand. ‘You were right, Sirri. I shouldn’t have followed you.’

  His words seemed to cut right through her. And at once her eyes flooded with tears. ‘Oh Cam, I’m so sorry! I … I wish …’

  ‘Hush,’ he said in a rough voice. ‘There’s no need for that now.’

  She sniffed and gulped, and wiped her cheeks on the cuff of her sleeve. ‘How did they even find you?’ she asked. ‘You must have known they’d watch for anyone coming after me.’

  ‘We did,’ Cam said. ‘We took every care … but they found us anyway. I’ve had lots of time to think about it, Sirri. I was with Ardamon and his men, but they weren’t killed, and I heard one of Osebian’s men say they were sent back to the Spire. I think we were betrayed.’

  ‘I can well believe it,’ she said, but then she turned back to the letters. ‘Osebian must know the story was thin —’

  ‘It wouldn’t matter,’ Cam said. ‘Making noise about it would only embarrass the king and Kell. This,’ he waved the marching orders at her, ‘makes me wonder if Osebian pretended to leave the camp hours ago, so everyone would think him long gone once anything was discovered amiss.’

  ‘And the map?’

  ‘These are Mesentreian military symbols,’ he said, indicating various markings on the map. ‘I’d guess he intended to meet up with his men in a few days’ time.’ Cam laid down the map. ‘Do you know what this means? We can slip out of the camp. Osebian knows he’d be recognised on sight — he’s marked the locations of the camps and patrols, so he could avoid them. Sirri, we have a map that will get us through enemy territory without being seen.’ He squeezed her hand. ‘Do you have any proper clothes? Oh, it doesn’t matter; one of those uniforms will fit you well enough. They must have horses nearby and rations enough to last for a few days.’

  Two horses, Sierra thought, will allow one man to switch his weight between them and make better time. And rations for two will last longer with one mouth to feed.

  ‘Cam,’ she said.

  ‘You look like you’re in good enough shape to ride, and there’s a lot of fuel around here. If we set a fire as we leave —’

  ‘Cam! I’m not leaving! I can’t. Not yet.’

  He broke off, watching her with an unreadable gaze. ‘I don’t understand why you did what you did,’ he said at last. ‘But I don’t care. Sirri, you can’t stay here. They’re destroying you: I can see it in your face; I can read it in your eyes. If you help me escape, they’ll know it. Whatever you’ve had to endure will be nothing compared to what they’ll do then. I can’t let you stay and face that, Sirri. I just can’t.’

  Sierra couldn’t speak. She just turned away, shaking her head.

  ‘Are you worried about Isidro? Fires Below, he loves you, Sirri. Knowing what you’re going through down here must be killing him —’ Cam broke off with a quick breath, and when he spoke again there was a fearful note in his voice. ‘Have you heard from him? Did he wake up? He was still unconscious when I left.’

  ‘He woke,’ Sierra said. ‘He’s been trying to reach me, but … I wouldn’t talk to him. If you hadn’t sent me that message I’d never have known you were in danger.’ She rubbed her thigh, where the letters scratched into his skin had begun to sting again. To her shame, she recalled how she’d pushed Isidro away. She couldn’t bear to let him see what she was going through. All this time he’d been trying to ask her for help, and she’d walled him out, refusing every attempt at contact.

  Well, she could change that now. ‘I’ll tell him you’re safe.’

  ‘You can stay in touch with him as we ride,’ Cam said. ‘I’m not leaving you behind, Sirri.’

  She lacked the will to argue with him, and so in silence she pushed herself up from the table and went to the other room where Osebian lay. His servant was dead, but she’d stayed her hand when she felled the duke. She’d secured the manacles around his wrists in case he awoke, but now she took them off again and began to strip him. There was no question that his clothing would fit Cam. There was less than a fingertip’s difference in their height, and they both had a warrior’s build, lean and hard-muscled. By the time she was done, and Osebian lay face down and naked on the floor of the cell, Sierra was struck by how similar they were, right down to the tone of their skin, starved of sunlight here at the end of winter, and the downy covering of fair hair on his forearms and lower legs.

  With an idea still forming, Sierra gathered the clothes and turned to find Cam in the doorway, watching her.

  Sierra handed him the bundled clothes, then brushed past him into the other chamber, looking over the instruments on the walls. Cam’s back was a mass of bruises, and he bore a clan tattoo on his chest — a lion, or so it was said. No Ricalani artist had ever seen such a beast; they only knew it was like a tiger without the stripes, and with a great ruff of fur around its neck. She had been surprised to find Osebian bearing the same mark. Perhaps it had been necessary to validate his adoption into the royal line and legitimise his claim to the throne.

  ‘Were you dressed when they brought you in?’ Sierra asked him.

  ‘Yes, or I would have frozen.’

  ‘Did Kell see you naked?’

  ‘No,’ Cam said, puzzled. ‘Rasten took care of that once the old man was gone.’

  So Rasten would know what to look for. Could she trust him not to speak of it? Sierra grimaced to herself. She didn’t have any choice.

  A poker hung on a hook by the stove, and Sierra hefted it thoughtfully. She couldn’t replicate days-old bruises, but Osebian’s hide could not be left unmarked.

  Moving stiffly, Cam was still struggling into the clothing when Sierra went past him with the poker. He turned to watch her go. ‘Sirri, what are you doing?’

  She hesitated. Osebian was still Cam’s kin, and she wasn’t sure how much that meant to him. ‘Why would Osebian try to kill you like this? Surely he knew Kell would never let you live.’

  ‘It’s the dishonour, I suppose,’ Cam said. ‘In Mesentreia, men who lie with men are reviled: it brings a shame upon the bloodline that cannot be expunged. Osebian might not give a pig’s fart for me, but he wouldn’t want his own name dishonoured.’

  ‘I suppose that makes a kind of sense,’ Sierra said. As much as the mad ways of foreigners ever did. She shifted her grip on the poker. ‘You know, Cam, the first time I saw you I thought you were him, you look so alike. It wasn’t until I was clos
e enough to see your eyes that I could tell the difference.’

  Cam grimaced. ‘Isidro once said the same thing when he told me about that day when he was taken.’

  ‘They won’t look for you so hard,’ she said, ‘if they think you’re already dead.’

  Lying on the floor, Osebian groaned.

  Cam blanched.

  Sierra set the poker down and took him by the arm. ‘Come and sit down. You need to rest. Have another bowl of tea, and … stop up your ears, or something. I have to do it, Cam. I’m sorry … your own kin.’

  ‘He’s no kin of mine,’ Cam said. ‘When Queen Leandra handed me over to the Owl Clan I got the better part of the deal. Do what you have to do, Sirri.’

  It was hard and filthy work, and it took longer than Sierra imagined. After the first splatter of blood she had to take Rasten’s shirt off to spare it from further stains. A few drops might pass unnoticed, but not the rest of it. By the time she was done she had to find another rag and wipe down the walls.

  Osebian roused once or twice, but each time she knocked him unconscious once again with a measured bolt of power. She had to be careful not to kill him — the disguise she had in mind would only work if his heart was still beating at the end.

  It took all her strength to drag him to the bars. Then she arranged the servant’s body so one arm lay flung towards the cell. The servant was a portly fellow, heavy enough that a man of Cam’s size, weakened by beatings, would struggle to move him at all.

  Sierra tore the sleeve from his jacket. Time was running short, and hastily she tore the cloth into strips and fashioned a noose that she tied to the bars.

  She needed Cam’s help for the next part. She wasn’t strong enough to hold Osebian up and slip the loop around his neck. As soon as the noose was in place and Cam let his weight sag, Osebian began to make the most awful noises, choking, wheezing gasps that sent Sierra into a panic, thinking they’d be heard. She ran to the other room for a rag to press to his mouth, while Cam used another strip of cloth to bind his hands to his feet.