The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  ‘Never.’ Bern gripped his shoulder briefly. ‘You – and the boy – have been through a great deal, and Vostok is right, the war-beasts need to work as a unit. If I leave, that could damage what we have built.’ He looked away, and Aldasair noticed that his cheeks were faintly pink. ‘And what we have built means a great deal to me.’

  ‘Hoy!’ Eri was calling and waving to them. His wan face, still so gaunt, was flushed with colour. ‘We’ve found something.’

  He and the war-beast approached, the boy cradling something in his hands. From what Aldasair could see, it was a brightly painted object about the length of Eri’s hand.

  ‘We were digging together, and he found it. Isn’t it fine?’ The war-beast sat at his feet, long foxy nose pointed in the air.

  Bern took it carefully from the boy’s outstretched palm and showed it to Aldasair.

  ‘By the stones, Aldasair, I think I know what this is. Imagine finding one of these out here, and so intact too.’

  It was a clay figurine of a war-beast. Before Ygseril had been awakened and the Jure’lia queen had escaped, he and Bern had taken the last of the figures from the Hill of Souls and buried them quietly in the hills. When he had been a child, it had been a tradition to make such figures in honour of the war-beasts who had passed, and then when the Hill of Souls got too full, they would bury them in the ground so that their spirits might return to Ygseril. To find one out here that was still intact was certainly extraordinary.

  ‘It must be hundreds of years old, yet it looks like it was only buried yesterday.’

  The figure was of a winged cat, a little like Kirune, but with great twisting horns bursting from its forehead. The whole thing was painted a bright yellow.

  ‘I know who it is, too.’ Aldasair reached out and took the object lightly from Bern’s big hands. ‘Her name was Helcate, a very distinguished warrior indeed.’

  ‘Helcate,’ said Eri. ‘Helcate. I think I remember . . . There were stories, my father tells me them sometimes. Helcate. I’m sure I remember her.’

  ‘Helcate.’

  The voice came from the ground, and they all looked down to see the small war-beast looking up at them. His voice had been soft, and broken with disuse, but there was no mistaking what he had said.

  ‘Do you remember her?’ Bern crouched, bringing himself to the same level as the war-beast. ‘Are you her, small one?’

  ‘Helcate,’ repeated the war-beast.

  ‘I think he is just repeating Eri,’ said Aldasair, but his lips felt numb. ‘He is remembering how to speak, that’s all.’

  ‘Either way, I think that should be his name.’ Eri put his hand on the war-beast’s head and scratched him behind the ears fondly. ‘Helcate, my friend.’

  ‘How far is it?’

  Nanthema glanced up. They were beyond the realms of the palace, walking down a wide street in the eastern sector of the city. It was growing late, and the dying sun was sending pools of golden light and black shadow stretching across the road.

  ‘It’s not far,’ she said, and then she stopped. Vintage paused with her. ‘I’m not certain this is a good idea.’

  ‘I know it must be painful, and strange, Nan, but how can you stay here and not go and see?’ Vintage adjusted her pack strap. The windows of the great houses all around them looked too dark. ‘How were they when you last saw them?’

  ‘Old,’ said Nanthema, the corners of her mouth turning down. ‘Very old. And – Look, they told me to go, Vin. They didn’t want me to stay here, watching everyone die. Watching them die.’

  ‘I know.’ Vintage reached out and very briefly brushed Nanthema’s cheek. ‘That’s what parents do, I suppose. Try to spare their children the pain they have to suffer. But I’ll be there with you, Nan. Whatever it is, we can get through it together.’

  Nanthema nodded, her long hair sweeping forward to hide her face for the moment.

  ‘All right.’

  They resumed walking. There were, Vintage noticed, fresh tracks on the road, evidence that Ebora was not quite as dead as it had once been. A wind rushed down across the ruined houses, bringing scents of newly blossoming flowers, rain and rot.

  ‘Besides, twenty-odd years is not so long in Eboran years, is it? Your parents can’t have aged so much while you were trapped inside the Behemoth crystal.’

  ‘They weren’t in the palace, Vintage, and I doubt they would deliberately miss the return of Ygseril and the war-beasts. It wouldn’t be wise to get my hopes up.’

  Vintage nodded, feeling her cheeks grow hot. Always she was supposed to be the wise one, the clever one, yet when she was with Nanthema, it was as though she became her teenage self again, enthusiastic and full of ideas and opinions – not necessarily clever or wise ones.

  ‘Here. The house was just beyond the corner.’

  They did not see it immediately, as several sizeable trees had grown up at the intersection of the road, the spaces between them filled with newly budding shrubs and bushes. When they pushed through and spotted the dwelling, Vintage felt a shiver of apprehension move through her. It was a typical Eboran building, flat roofed and single-storeyed, sprawling and somehow organic-looking, but it was mostly hidden under a rust-coloured creeper, which had covered the pale walls and dangled like chimes from the gables. The windows were dark-smeared holes, somehow hungry and strange.

  ‘See?’ Nanthema was attempting to sound cheerful, but it came out strangled. ‘It doesn’t do to be too optimistic. My mother was hardly fastidious but I doubt even she would put up with such a mess.’

  They made their way towards it, stepping over rotten strands of creeper and dirt made slippery from melting ice. The scent of rot grew stronger, and Vintage was reminded of Esiah Godwort’s mansion. They had found only sadness there, and abruptly she regretted encouraging Nanthema to seek out her parents. I’m so set on finding the truth that I forget that a comforting lie is sometimes the better path.

  ‘Nan . . .’

  ‘No, look, we’re here now. It would be even worse to walk right up to the threshold and then turn away. I’d be thinking about it forever.’

  There was a pair of double doors under an ornate gable, carved once with images of Ygseril. The pale-green paint had flaked away and there were fat deposits of yellow moss clinging here and there like limpets. Nanthema tugged at the handle and the door stuck for a moment before springing open with a gust of foul-smelling dust. Immediately inside it was dark – Vintage could only make out a handful of chairs on a dirt-streaked floor – but moving beyond the receiving room they came to a chamber with windows all down one side in the Eboran style, and the last sour orange sunlight filled the room well enough to see the horrors inside it.

  ‘Nan, come on, let’s go.’ Vintage reached out for the woman’s arm, but she stepped neatly away. ‘You don’t need to see this.’

  ‘Oh, but I do.’ The strangled good cheer was back in Nanthema’s voice. Vintage winced. ‘I had to come back here, didn’t I? So it’s time to see what was waiting for me all along.’

  This was, Vintage guessed, a living room of some sort – there was a dining table, several of the braziers Eborans often used for cooking light meals nearby, and the walls were lined with paintings and tapestries – but at some point someone had brought in a makeshift bed and crammed it next to the long table. Perhaps the view from this window was their favourite, she thought, feeling her throat grow tight. Perhaps they’d wanted to be able to see it while they died.

  There was a twisted form lying on its front on the floor, its face turned towards the window. The body was not quite completely skeletal. Its long, white hair was still attached in patches to its scalp, and the nightgown it wore was yellowed and stained but largely intact. There was a very large black stain surrounding the body, scuffed and smeared, even disturbed here and there by the trails of insects as they made their way back and forth, but it was possible to see what it was. Impossible not to see.

  ‘She bled out,’ said Nanthema faintly. She was s
tanding very still and straight, her arms at her sides. ‘My mother got the crimson flux eventually, it seems, although she appears to have been very old when it happened at least. She loved the western garden, you see. My father was the gardener, spent decades crafting it, and he planted all of her favourite flowers out there.’ She smiled, and her face was beautiful and terrible in the dying light. ‘His garden, the eastern one, was full of medicinal plants, because his true love was science. But he spent more time in the western one, because it was his present to her. So mother came here at the end so that she could look at it, and eventually, I suppose, she could not stop coughing up blood. Vomiting it by the end, I imagine. She has crawled from her bed – do you think she lost her mind at the end? Did she try to get outside, thinking that could save her?’

  ‘Nan, please. Don’t.’

  ‘It’s interesting, though, don’t you think? It’s interesting what you can tell from this little scene. I wonder if my father was still alive at this point, or if he died before her.’ She turned towards the dining table. There were dishes piled up there, the contents turned black and furry. ‘This.’ She reached out and poked at a big yellow bowl. ‘My father would make tenzin stew and serve it in this bowl – always just this bowl. I think he was still alive and making it for her when she died. Have you ever had tenzin stew, Vin? It’s from Jarlsbad, that’s where you can get the best tenzin stew, but my father’s was quite good too.’

  ‘Nanthema, please. Let’s go back outside and get some air. We’ve seen enough.’

  ‘Yes.’ Nanthema turned towards her. The Eboran woman’s eyes were dry, although she did not focus on Vintage as she spoke. ‘Let’s go and look at the garden, because . . . Let’s go outside.’

  She strode over to the nearest window, and with some difficulty, thanks to the dirt and filth crusted to it, slid it aside. Immediately the room filled with the ripe scent of rotting vegetation.

  ‘Nan . . .’

  ‘Come on. We may as well finish this.’

  Outside, the garden was a confusion of long grass and thick clumps of bushes that had burst out of their neat rows. There were a number of fruit trees, the sort Vintage had seen all over the palace gardens; these had grown so wild and so close together that their interlinked branches seemed to form their own ceiling.

  ‘I wish you could have seen this place at its best, Vin,’ said Nanthema quietly. ‘It really was something.’

  ‘I wish that too.’ Vintage swallowed. ‘Did they have friends who could have checked up on them? You can’t have been all alone out here.’

  ‘It was the end.’ Nanthema sounded too calm, her voice oddly slow, as though she were speaking from a dream. ‘We kept to ourselves. Dying is a private thing. Look, here he is. Of course he would be here.’

  At first Vintage could not make out what she was talking about at all, and then she saw it. A slumped shape at the base of one of the miniature apple trees. The man had died on his knees, and his body had bent almost double, his head nearly brushing the ground. Insects moved busily across his shining skull, and one of his hands lay face up on the layers of dead leaves. For a moment Vintage could not understand how he was still upright, until she spotted a thick, rust-coloured object between his midriff and the ground. It was a sword, buried in his guts.

  ‘What . . .?’

  ‘Mother died, and Father couldn’t live with it.’ Nanthema tipped her head to one side, as though she were looking at an especially interesting species of flower. ‘I would imagine he was out of the room when she died, and came back to see her sprawled there in a pool of her own blood. He would not want to die looking on her like that, so he went out into her favourite place. He could remember her better there.’

  ‘Nanthema, please.’ This time Vintage took hold of the woman’s arm and held it until she met her eyes. ‘Let’s go now. If there’s anything here you feel you need, then I can come back for it myself, alone. You’ve had a terrible shock.’

  ‘A shock?’ Nanthema grinned. ‘Oh no, it’s not shocking. I knew this was what I’d find, I . . . when I left them I knew it would come to this but I didn’t think it would smell so much, do you see? That it would be quite so squalid.’ She laughed, an odd, choked noise. ‘No, you’re right. Let’s go.’

  They were some distance away, halfway back to the palace with the spreading branches of Ygseril in view, when Nanthema suddenly stumbled in the road, falling to her knees, much as her father had. The tall Eboran woman began to shake violently, and Vintage knelt next to her, holding her tight until it stopped.

  13

  As far as Hestillion was concerned, the windows were both a blessing and curse.

  They stretched the length of her new quarters within the corpse moon – not glass, of course, but a permanent translucence to the strange material that made up the Behemoth walls. Through it she could see the changing moods of the sky, the rushing clouds, and Sarn, cold and distant, and that had lifted her heart significantly – it was only when windows were taken away, she realised, that you truly understood what they had always given you. However, it also meant that she was horribly aware of every movement the Behemoth made. The clouds would abruptly rush by, or the ground would fly up towards them, and Hestillion would have to grab on to something to steady her roiling stomach.

  Celaphon, at least, did not seem especially concerned by all the queasy movement, but then Celaphon did not seem concerned by anything at all.

  ‘My dear one, do you not feel like eating today?’

  The small dragon was lying at the foot of her makeshift bed, his snout tucked neatly under his arm, but at the sound of her voice he raised his head slowly, blinking his odd, blind-looking eyes at her. The latest gruel pods sat next to him, each carefully opened by Hestillion for him to eat from, but he hadn’t touched any of them.

  ‘I am tired,’ he said, in his ghostly little voice. ‘Tired of . . . the food.’

  ‘And I cannot blame you for that, but if you do not eat, dear one, you will not grow up big and strong.’

  Celaphon lowered his head again, as though it were too heavy to hold up for very long.

  ‘I do not want to make you sad. But my stomach does not want it.’

  Hestillion strode across the room to the far corner. The queen had been good on her word, and had provided her with a new suite. It was still as far from her rooms at the palace as could reasonably be imagined, but there was evidence that some effort had been made on her behalf; a tall nook in the wall for storage, several soft mounds to sit on, even a mirror of sorts – it appeared to be made of a reflective liquid, that would sometimes shiver and ripple while Hestillion looked at it. She often wondered who was looking out. In the centre of the main room was a raised platform covered with the soft grey padding that lined the walls, and on this was a mismatched collection of furs and blankets; it was surprisingly comfortable, although the suspicion that she rested on the pliant flesh of a monster did not make for restful sleep. Celaphon would often curl at the bottom of the makeshift bed, his fevered scales keeping her feet warm.

  In the far corner there was a round hole in the floor, and in it was more of the slippery black fluid that was so much a part of the Jure’lia. Hestillion knelt next to it.

  ‘You, in there. I want to speak to you.’

  Immediately, the surface of the pool began to boil and jerk, and out of it rose one of the little homunculus creatures that had been bringing her the gruel pods. The shifting oily expanse of its flesh contracted, revealing a hole in what Hestillion guessed was its head.

  ‘Yes.’ Its voice was an oily whisper.

  ‘I want food. Real food, not this endless muck you keep bringing me. Celaphon needs meat, and fruit, and lots of it. I have asked for this before.’

  ‘We have brought you this before.’

  Hestillion pushed her dirty hair out of her eyes, trying to keep her temper.

  ‘Yes, and he ate that! That is how food works. You need to bring more of it, do you understand?’

 
There was a pause.

  ‘We will bring more pods.’

  ‘No! You will bring meat, and fruit, and you will keep bringing it. Do you understand?’ The creature stood, its mouth opening and closing uncertainly. ‘Where is the queen? Fetch her for me. She must know that she is starving us, and if we are starved, we cannot help her.’

  The homunculus was quiet for a time. When it spoke again, there was an odd tone to its voice, as though it were really two voices speaking at once. ‘The queen says: there will be more soon. We have no wish for you to starve. More very soon. Look out the window.’

  With that, the small creature sank back into the pool and vanished. Hestillion watched it for a while, rubbing her hands on her grimy robe, and then she stalked back across the room. Celaphon raised his head wearily, and she reached down and scooped him up into her arms before sitting on the foot of the bed. He was not as heavy as he had been, and that worried her.

  ‘Dear one, we will have some food for you soon.’ The dragon raised his eyes to meet hers, and she forced herself to smile. ‘As much food as your stomach can handle. And then how would you feel about trying your wings out again?’

  Celaphon’s head dipped to rest against her breastbone.

  ‘I will make you sad.’

  ‘No, no, you do not make me sad.’ Hestillion squeezed him to her, ignoring all the ways his bony limbs poked into her. ‘I only wish for you to be what you are destined to be, Celaphon. It will take time, and patience. That’s all.’

  ‘I want to fly. Like in the stories you told me.’

  ‘And you will, Celaphon, you will. You shall be the mightiest war-beast there ever was.’

  Ahead of them, the long window was full of orange and pink cloud; a sunset was filling the sky with its fiery light.

  ‘And you will breathe fire too, eventually. Dragons were always the most powerful war-beasts, and you, dear one—’

  The view in front of them suddenly lurched downwards, the clouds torn into feathery pieces to either side. Hestillion gasped, and clutched Celaphon closer, but all she could feel physically was a hum that moved through the entire ship, so low it was a sensation rather than a noise. Below them, now that the clouds had been cleared to either side, she could see the landscape of Sarn – somewhere to the east, if she was right, a rich place of green grass and fruit trees – and there was a neat little town crouched in the heart of rows and rows of orchards. Hestillion could see slate roofs and patches of smoke from chimneys, and narrow streets, some cobbled but most simply packed dirt. Cautiously she stood up, and carrying Celaphon with her, walked over to the window.