by Tim Lebbon
“All things considered, Kel, I’m more trusting than you are. I’ve seen no harm in these visitors, and the thought of going out to the island… it excites me, it doesn’t scare me. And I can help you get out there. If there’s danger, we come back and you save me. Big soldier saves little woman.”
Kel could not help laughing softly. “Stop with that, will you?”
“Well …”
“What of the interference?”
“Hopefully that’ll be settled by tomorrow,” she said, and Kel saw smoke rings parting and interlocking again before her.
“In the morning,” he said, “we’ll go back to the harbor together and see what’s happening. Maybe with a night between us and the disaster, it’ll be easier to judge.”
“Time cures all?”
Does it? Kel thought of O’Peeria, and the children he had seen slaughtered, and he knew that was not the case at all. He blamed himself for their deaths as much as he had the moment he had witnessed it happen.
“The morning,” he said.
“Very well,” Namior said. “But you’ll stay here tonight?”
He bowed his head and leaned forward, resting his forehead against hers. He was glad that she did not pull away. He smelled the familiar evening smoke on her breath, but for a change it was exotic and forbidden. Time sometimes doesn’t heal, but with every beat it changes.
“Thank you, witch.”
“Don’t mention it, wood-carving soldier.”
THEY WERE BOTH exhausted, physically and emotionally, and he thought they’d quickly fall asleep. But they stripped beneath the gaze of the unfinished cliff hawk, washed each other with water warmed by a spell from Namior, and the cleaner they became, the more their tiredness evaporated. Their breathing grew shallower and faster, and Namior took Kel in her hand, stroking and teasing as she pulled him to the bed.
He knelt and kissed her between the legs, and in her sighs of pleasure he heard an acceptance of the new Kel Boon, soldier and wood-carver. When they made love, everything but the two of them vanished.
Afterward, as they drifted to sleep beside each other, Kel thought of what he had intended asking Namior when he gave her the carving. But, the time for that had passed.
Chapter Six
containing the curse
SHE’S A FUCKING teacher,” O’Peeria says. “Has been for ten moons. Who knows what shit she’s been forcing into those children’s minds? Curse her, this one hid really well.”
They’re riding a transport machine through the streets of Melute, thirty miles south of Long Marrakash. They’re due to meet four more Core members to prepare for the killing. The air is heavy with snow, and the wheels wash through a sludge of icy mud and horseshit. It’s so cold that Kel can feel the skin of his face hardening every time he exhales.
They share the transport with several other people, none of whom seem to know each other. The Practitioner sits at the rear of the machine, apparently comfortable in a haze of heat issued from vents along the construct’s back. Kel wonders why the heat can’t be shared. The Practitioner looks at him with hooded, yellowed eyes, and he recognizes the gaze of a fledge addict.
“We need to get the children away first,” Kel says.
“Of course,” O’Peeria says, as though it’s a minor concern. For her, catching and killing the Stranger is the only important factor. She’s said before that a few innocent deaths is a small price to pay. Most Strangers are there to infiltrate and collect information, as far as the Core knows. But it’s ones like the teacher, who have been there for some time and insinuated themselves into a Noreelan community, that trouble them the most.
With O’Peeria, it is pure hatred.
Kel glances at her. There’s a fine frost collected on her eyelashes and the light hairs across her upper lip. She’s very beautiful, and he remembers her from the previous night, squatting above him and guiding him inside her. She had unbraided her dark hair and let it fall across her pale Shantasi body, and though she rode him, there had been a vulnerability about her that made him love her, just a little. They have known each other for six years, and last night was their first time.
This morning she rose, washed, dressed, and strapped on her weapons without saying a thing about what happened, and now she is the usual stern O’Peeria once again.
“O’Peeria …” Kel says.
She turns to him, and the ice is reflected in her eyes. “Later, Kel. After I’ve slit the throat of this sheebok-bitching Stranger.” And she looks more excited and involved than she ever did with him.
When they reach the school, it has already begun. Children are streaming from the long, low building, running terrified in all directions, and Kel tries to guide them across the street into a leather store. O’Peeria curses and runs for the school, pulling her sword. The windows blow outward, and the familiar, dreadful blue light sizzles, crawling across the timbers and melting ice.
Kel follows O’Peeria inside. He can hear screaming.
As he enters the school and sees the blood, he discovers that those Strangers who infiltrate deepest, fight hardest.
WHEN THEY WENT downstairs the following morning, Namior’s mother was at the groundstone. She rested one hand against it and chanted softly, and when Namior sat, her mother offered a pained smile. Namior looked troubled as she kissed her own hands and reached out for the stone.
Kel felt like an intruder, so he stepped outside and wandered down the path to the stone wall. He was keen to see what dawn would reveal.
There was already activity at the harbor. People worked at the ruins, Komadian machines helping, and from that distance it was difficult to distinguish between Noreelans and visitors. The bridge had a complete new surface where the central span had been washed away, and people were crossing in either direction, pausing to examine the repaired section. Several more Komadian boats had docked, though after a quick count Kel decided that no more had sailed out from the island. Between the buildings lower down the hillside, he caught glimpses of a small, squat boat moving slowly upriver.
That troubled him. From what he’d seen yesterday, there were no boats surviving in Pavmouth Breaks’ harbor, so it was undoubtedly a Komadian vessel. The sight of one of their craft cruising inland felt almost like an intrusion. Previously, they had been moored at the mole or anchored in or beyond the harbor. Now they were sailing into Noreela itself.
He turned away, frowning, and Namior was walking down the path toward him. She carried two steaming mugs of bondleaf tea.
“Anything new?” she asked.
“The mud and silt look a shade drier. It’ll be harder to dig out. And someone is sailing upriver.”
“Komadians?”
“Must be.”
Namior warmed her hands around the mug and drank her tea. “So what’s the plan?”
“You mean, do I want you to come with me?” Kel said.
She glanced at him across the top of her mug, steam obscuring her eyes.
“I’d like you to,” he said. “But… it might be very dangerous. These people could be what I’ve spent half my life trying to fight against.”
Namior looked back down at the harbor, then out to sea. The island was almost unreal in the early-morning mist. It looked as if it floated above the sea, a ghost island, an image thrown across the ocean by strange effects in the air. Kel had heard about such mirages from sailors and fishermen.
“It really doesn’t look like an invasion to me,” she said.
“What of the groundstone today?”
Namior blinked and took another sip of tea. Frowning.
“Namior?”
“Still… strange,” she said. “I can’t feel it or hear it at all this morning. Neither can my mother. Interference, my great-grandmother called it yesterday. And Mother says when she touched it this morning, her craze grew deeper still.”
“Interference. And what do you call it?”
“I don’t deign to know magic.”
Kel laughed. He couldn’t
help himself. “You sound like a Sleeping God cultist living in fear of her deities.”
“But we all know for sure that magic exists,” she said, a little coldly. “I respect it. Who knows how it’s been altered by that island appearing? Maybe it’s… I don’t know… wounded.”
“It’s an energy we use, that’s all. The island could have drained it, perhaps. Or maybe the Komadians have interrupted it on purpose.”
“They don’t even use magic. Their machines have steam.”
“And just how in the Black does that work?” Kel asked. “They puff steam here and there, yet still they float, fly, lift loads most of our machines couldn’t touch, even when there was magic to work them! It’s a play, that’s all.”
“Or their application of the same magic,” Namior said. “And why do you trust it so little? It tells us how to build machines, powers them, shows us things from afar. It helps me to heal. It’s more than just an energy, it’s a living thing. It talks to us.” Namior’s anger turned into passion, and Kel cringed inside. He had no wish to trouble or hurt her. Especially not after the previous night. That had felt something like acceptance, and he needed that. He might be Core, but he still felt weak and uncertain.
“Living,” he said. “Maybe that’s why I still fear it.” Namior smiled, and he was glad to see it.
“My paranoid wood-carver.”
Kel drank some of the tea and sighed as its heat coursed through his body. He’d seen Namior’s mother making bondleaf tea many times before, and she usually used magical heat, not water warmed by fire. This drink was different, because this morning there was no magic. He appreciated the irony in the fact that it did not taste as good as usual.
“How far out do you think it is?”
“Three, four miles.” Kel looked out at the island, the smudge of settlements along its coast, the wooded hills at its center. Maybe it was two miles. Maybe it was ten.
“Long way for two nonsailors,” Namior said.
“I can rig a sail and ride the wind,” Kel said.
“Currents? Tacking?”
He shrugged. She smiled.
“A real adventure,” Namior said, and the excitement in her eyes could not help but transfer to Kel.
“I don’t think you should tell your family.”
The excitement faded, and her face grew sad. “I’ve thought about that. I hate lying to them, but I think I’ll say I’m staying with you tonight. Just in case it takes more than a day.”
And there was much more left unsaid, which Kel thought about but dared not express. And what if we don’t come back? For all her bluster, bravado and exhortations of trust, he could see that possibility shadowing Namior’s mind as well.
SHE TOOK THEIR mugs inside to bid her mother and crazed great-grandmother farewell, while Kel leaned on the wall and looked out to sea, trying to make out more of the island than distance allowed. She returned surprisingly quickly, her step light and the usual half smile back on her face.
“Ready?” he asked.
Namior nodded as she walked by. He asked her no more, and they headed down toward the harbor.
Someone had strung charm ropes across the remains of the washed-out path, one end fixed into the wall, the other tied to sticks wedged into cracks in the surface. The ropes were dyed various colors, and threaded onto them were the dried bones of several unidentifiable animals, each of these painted a different color as well. Some ropes had the bones gathered together, and on others they were strung out at equal or random spacings. They could just about step over the ropes without disturbing them.
Namior seemed particularly troubled by the charms, and she did her best not to touch or disturb them at all. Charm breathers bowed to powers other than magic and the worship of gods. To Kel, they had always been just another cult or faction, but witches and charm breathers nursed an ancient tension between their two practices.
“It’s only in honor of the dead,” Kel said.
“What can false charms do for the dead?”
“Not for me to say. I don’t believe in charms.”
Namior stepped over another rope. “Foolish things.” But Kel could see that she was unsettled at their presence.
When they reached the repaired bridge, a group of residents were crossing from the other side. They were covered in filth, faces streaked and hair awry, and they looked exhausted.
“What news from the harbor?” Kel asked.
“No one left alive,” a woman said, her voice devoid of emotion. Her eyes looked very far away. She had a tattoo of a sea serpent on one cheek, fighting to be seen through drying mud.
“You’ve been digging all night?” Namior asked.
“Since daybreak. And it’s the Komadian machines that have been digging. We’ve just been stacking the bodies.” The woman tried to smile but it came out as a grimace. She and her companions went on their way.
As Kel and Namior started across the bridge, the woman called after them. “Take care. There’s something in the harbor.”
“What?” Kel asked. He turned, and the woman alone had stopped. The others were still heading home.
“Don’t know,” the woman said, shrugging. “I’ve only seen the ripples.”
They walked on, and as soon as they left the bridge Kel’s eyes were on the surface of the harbor. There was still plenty of debris floating on the surface, clumping together here and there and added to by the sea: smashed wood and seaweed; tangled clothing and dead fish. The water swelled and moved slower than normal, as though the slick of wreckage weighed it down. He saw nothing stirring there.
“Could be anything,” Namior said. “You told me you saw a sea wolfs tracks, maybe it’s still here.”
At the harbor they saw Mell, working at the remains of the Rettaro Fish Market. Mygrette was with her, watching the search efforts, one hand stroking the back of her motionless machine. The old witch looked lost.
Mell looked up when they approached, tired but determined. She even managed a smile.
“Any sign?” Kel asked.
“Nothing.” She pointed down at a hole in the mud where steps used to lead down into the basement. She had escaped from there the previous day, and now there were signs of fresh digging. “Been down there, looked around. It’s still flooded, but he’s not there.” She nodded past the hole at where several low walls met. “The back of the market, where it met the dwelling next door. He’s not there.”
Mygrette was looking at Kel, leaning on a thick length of wood she’d found somewhere.
“Are they helping?” Kel asked her. He was aware of the activity around them, the movements of fit, well-dressed people across the mud and between the ruins, the sharp exhalations of steam from their floating, crawling, digging machines.
“They’re doing more than we can,” Mygrette said, slapping the back of her lifeless machine. Kel saw fear behind the violence. “They pulled a live girl out just before dawn, took her up there to the Healing Hall.” She nodded at Drakeman’s Hill. “Floated her up on a machine, because she was barely awake. Cleaned her lungs first, with some metal mechanical thing one of them wore around his belt. Steam drove that, too. So yes, they’re helping. And I’ve not heard one of them complain.” She glanced around as if to make sure no one was looking. “But I still don’t trust ’em a spit.”
“Why?” Namior asked.
Mygrette grinned, gap-toothed and cold. “Young witch, you are. Confident in your touch, but you only hear what magic tells you. You don’t read it, you just listen. I’ve learned over the years to let it run through me, not into me, and when it runs no more, that’s to be read, too. And our visitors, our Komadians, have something in their eye.” She nodded and looked from Namior to Kel, because maybe she saw more in him. “You look. Next time you meet one, you look, and see if I’m wrong.”
“Don’t need to tell him,” Namior said. “He’s suspicious enough already.”
“Good for you, wood-carver.”
“They’re doing more than digging,�
�� Mell said, leaning on a shovel handle. “They’re building, too.”
“The bridge is good,” Kel admitted. Mell stared at him, and he knew she meant something more.
“Tell them,” Mygrette said.
Mell gestured at Drakeman’s Hill with her head. “I went up yesterday evening, spent the night at a farm with my parents. The farmer put us up in his barns and grain stores, maybe fifty survivors. Gave us milk, grain biscuits, a little rotwine. We were all exhausted, but I couldn’t sleep. And when my parents slept, I went for a walk.”
She came closer. “I like it up there. Always have. Away from the sea for a while, it’s a different world. Still Pavmouth Breaks, but beyond the familiar smells and sounds. I walked across the farmland and out to the old Throats.”
Kel knew of the Throats. They were the first part of Pavmouth Breaks he had come across five years before, a network of deep tunnels and caverns that led a treacherous path from the top of the cliffs, all the way down to the sea. Some said they were formed during the Season of Storms, a mythical time before life began on Noreela when the land itself was being shaped by the breath, fire and might of those gods now sleeping. Others suggested they might have been machined into the land by smugglers bringing artifacts by sea from Kang Kang. Kel believed neither, but he liked the fact that they attracted such stories.
“Dangerous in the dark,” he said.
“That’s just it,” Mell said. “It wasn’t dark. At first I thought it was the life moon, but there were clouds last night, and the moon was a smudge. And then I saw that the light was a glow coming from the other side of Steep Hill.”
“Beyond the Throats?” Namior said, confused. “There’s no one living out there.”
“That’s why I went to have a look. And I saw a group of Komadians and their machines. The light came from three of the smaller ones.” She paused, frowning, and Kel saw that she was trying to describe what she had seen.
“And they were building what?” he asked.
“I’m really not sure.” She glanced around, then put her shovel down and stretched. Kel heard her knees pop and her fingers click.