The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  Tor sat back from the fire, dumbfounded. ‘So you’ve done this before? Why are we bothering, exactly?’

  ‘It was different, then. We did not have a map, or any indication of where it might be. Whatever Micanal knew when he created that amber tablet, we did not know it then. And besides,’ she stretched out her claws, ‘mostly I must admit we were enjoying ourselves.’

  ‘Let’s get some sleep,’ said Noon, dragging a set of blankets from her pack. ‘It’s a long day tomorrow, and I’ve already got a sore arse.’

  Tor agreed, but in the end, while Noon slept, he sat up with a smuggled bottle of wine in one hand, looking out into the dark. He wondered where Kirune had gone.

  Deep within the palace, Eri also lay awake. He knew that some of his new friends had gone on a journey together, and that caused a seething nest of feelings in his stomach, so intertwined and strange that he couldn’t isolate any of it. Instead, he lay on the enormous bed they had given him – with sheets that were clean and unfamiliar – and turned back and forth, sometimes staring out the long windows that reached to the floor, and sometimes just looking at Helcate, who lay on the far side of the bed, his patchy tail dangling off the end. The war-beast was also awake, and it was possible to see his eyes glittering like wet stones.

  ‘Everything is changing,’ he whispered. Helcate blinked solemnly. ‘Everything was the same for so long, Helcate. Now things change daily.’

  ‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.

  ‘I know. I think it’s scary, too. But it’s . . . better? Better than living with that silence all the time, or the empty larder. Do you remember, in the winter, when the snows had fallen so deeply I couldn’t get out of Lonefell at all, and the silence would get so loud it became a noise? Like bells ringing, bells ringing everywhere.’

  Helcate blinked again, and Eri shifted on the bed. ‘No, that’s right, you weren’t there. Of course you weren’t. It’s just . . . I don’t miss the bells. And when you talk to people here, they talk back to you.’ He thought of the steel bucket, and of the soft clattering noise it made when you moved it around. There was no more bucket now; Father was buried, along with Mother, in their garden, underneath the sprouting peas and dormant carrots. He pictured the grave as clearly as he could, trying to force it over the image of the bucket. They were at rest. ‘Do you want to go for a walk, Helcate?’

  They slipped off the bed together, padding silently to the door. Beyond it the corridor was shrouded in shadows, save for a soft yellow glow that seemed to be coming from around the corner. With nothing firmer in his mind than a need to be up and about, Eri wandered towards the light, with Helcate close at his shoulder.

  The palace was, to his mind, extraordinary. Lonefell was so different, with its peaked roof and its winding staircases that led to floors and floors, and that was all he’d ever known, whereas the Eboran palace was like a sprawling maze that never ended. He could turn down corridor after corridor, passing closed doors and windows onto gardens, huge paintings that stretched for a hundred feet or more, or statues of tall people with sharp faces he almost thought he recognised, and never would he find a single staircase.

  Turning the corner, he found an open door, light streaming from it in a wide and inviting arc. He and Helcate approached it and peeked within the room, to see the Eboran called Aldasair sitting at a desk covered in slips of parchment. His head was bent over his work, long auburn hair falling in messy curls around his face, but at some soft movement he looked up, meeting Eri’s startled gaze.

  ‘Hello, Eri, Helcate. Can I do something for you?’

  Eri hung in the doorway for a moment, uncertain, until Helcate’s cold nose in the small of his back propelled him into the room.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  Aldasair looked back at the papers on the table, as if for a moment he couldn’t remember why he was there. Neatly stacked to one side was a thick deck of Tarla cards – Eri recognised them as something his mother had once owned. They had played games with them, sometimes.

  ‘Oh. Yes. I’m reading through the letters that have made it over the mountains to us. There are many of them, from all over Sarn.’ He picked up one especially battered and stained envelope. ‘This has come all the way from Jarlsbad.’

  ‘People are writing to you? You must know a lot of people.’

  Aldasair smiled faintly. ‘Oh no, not me. Humans all across Sarn have heard that the war-beasts live, you see. When they were born from the tree, those humans who were here to witness it carried word out across the Tarah-hut Mountains, and now the echoes are coming back to us. They all want to know when we will be coming to save them, how long they must endure the sight of the Jure’lia in their skies.’ Aldasair’s smile faded. ‘I’m not sure what to write back, but Bern says that we should. So that people know we are trying, and so that we can ask for help, too.’

  ‘What sort of help?’ It seemed incredible to Eri that a place like Ebora – like this echoing, twisting palace – could need assistance at all.

  ‘Logistics, Bern calls it.’ Aldasair ruffled his hands through the papers. ‘We are such a small force, but the war-beasts we have eat a lot of food. The people we have here require care too, and with only four war-beasts to fight, we will need human armies too.’

  ‘Five,’ said Eri. ‘You have five war-beasts.’ He patted Helcate on the neck.

  ‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.

  ‘Of course, you are quite right. And so, I have many letters to write. I spent so long not talking to anyone, and suddenly I am talking for all of Ebora.’

  Eri took a few tentative steps into the room, and for the first time Aldasair seemed to fully take in his presence. He sat up straighter in his chair.

  ‘Eri, do you need anything? It is very late, and I understand that children sleep at this time . . . Would you like food? Some wine? Should I get Vintage?’

  Helcate came into the room fully, snuffling at the ashes in a brazier. Eri shook his head. ‘No, I am fine. You said you didn’t speak to anyone for a long time?’

  ‘Yes. For many years, there was just the silence, the dust. Tormalin had left, and Hestillion came and spoke to me sometimes, but often I would imagine she was a ghost or a shadow, and she would get impatient and leave me again. She would always come back eventually, because even I was better company than the spiders and the wolves.’ He blinked rapidly, as if remembering something. ‘But it is better now, Eri. Ygseril lives, even if he sleeps so deeply we cannot tell, and there are real voices in these corridors again. Now, I have people to talk to every day.’

  ‘And you are better for it?’

  ‘Of course.’ Aldasair smiled, and it was more believable this time. ‘We should not be alone. Other people give things meaning. I forgot for a long time, and . . . maybe you forgot too.’ His voice had softened. ‘It is acceptable to remember, Eri. It is to be encouraged.’

  Eri nodded, looking at Helcate, who was now busily scratching his ear with one back leg. He was much bigger than he had been, and even in the relatively spacious room it was clear it wouldn’t be long before he would be too big to roam the palace freely.

  ‘I will be fine,’ he said firmly, trying not to think of the bucket, or the shiny yellow expanse of his mother’s skull. ‘I have Helcate, and we will never be apart.’

  ‘Good. That is good.’ Aldasair’s attention had wandered back to the letters, and as he held one up to the candlelight his handsome features creased into a frown. Eri watched as he read through it again a second time, and then retrieved its envelope from the debris on the table.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked.

  ‘Another plea for help,’ he said. To Eri, the young Eboran man looked uncertain again, ‘but I think Bern will want to see this one.’

  20

  In the morning they discovered Kirune someway up the beach. He had found an inlet, partially walled by rocks, where a great many fish appeared to have some sort of spawning ground. He had been in and out of it since sun up, his fur wet and stiffeni
ng with salt, and there was a big pile of fish on the sand. As they approached, Kirune had several fish hanging by their tails from his mouth.

  ‘Breakfast!’ said Noon, brightly. Tor looked less impressed, staring glumly at the heap of fish.

  ‘I suppose one of us will have to gut those.’

  ‘Not necessary,’ said Vostok, who lowered her head and took a great mouthful, crunching through fine bones and scaled skin with every sign of enjoyment.

  ‘Ugh,’ said Tor.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Noon peered closely at the tall Eboran’s face. He looked even paler than usual, much of the lustre missing from his shining skin, and there were brownish circles under his eyes. ‘You look hungover. Did you drink the wine you smuggled in already?’

  He looked away from the fish to raise his eyebrows at her. ‘You knew about that?’

  ‘Well, I have known you longer than five minutes, so yes.’

  ‘I’m fine, actually. I suppose I’m just not a fan of sleeping on cold, desolate beaches while listening to a dragon snoring like a horde of wheezing dogs falling down a mountain.’

  Vostok sniffed. ‘I snore majestically.’

  ‘This is great, Kirune,’ said Noon, trying to make eye contact with the big cat. He was pulling himself out of the water with another huge mouthful of fish, several of which were spiritedly trying to escape. ‘You’ve given us the best-possible start.’

  One of the fish slipped from his jaws and went slipping and skipping along the sand. Kirune instinctively leapt after it, his enormous paws thumping the wet sand into sudden dents, but in doing so he dropped more of the fish, who peeled off in all directions.

  Tor laughed delightedly. ‘The great hunter returns!’

  Kirune turned and hissed menacingly, dropping the rest of the fish.

  ‘At least I have done something useful. I do not stink of the drink you consume when you think you are alone.’

  Tor looked taken aback. Noon stepped between the two of them, feeling Vostok’s irritation like an itch on the back of her neck. A thought came from the dragon, for once as clear as a comet in the night sky: We should go by ourselves.

  Not knowing whether the dragon would pick it up or not, she sent back, I don’t have the map in my head, do I? And besides which, I’m terrible at reading them.

  Aloud, she said, ‘Come on, let’s get a few of these filleted. Tor, if you don’t know how, I can teach you.’

  ‘Of course I know how. What do you take me for, a human child?’

  Anyway, if I have to do much more of this bloody peace-keeping lark, I’ll have murdered them both by sundown.

  Kirune and Vostok ate their way through the pile raw, while Tor and Noon roasted as many as they could over the fire. They ate several, and they were unexpectedly delicious, the flesh pink and smooth. By the time they were packed up and ready to start their real journey, the sun was lighting the grasslands to their right with a soft, golden glow – still the sunshine of early morning, but getting later on in the day than Noon would have liked. After seeing the stark stretch of black sea the night before, she was very conscious of how reluctant she was to fly over the sea after sundown.

  ‘You know where we’re heading?’ she asked Tor as he strapped himself into Kirune’s harness.

  He shrugged, then catching her look, relented. ‘As well as I can, yes.’

  ‘We may have to come back to this beach,’ said Noon. ‘More than once, maybe. If we don’t find dry land in time. Vostok, you must let us know if you start to get tired.’ A strange thought suddenly occurred to her. ‘Can you swim?’

  Vostok snorted. In the morning sun her scales were liquid gold. ‘Of course I can swim. However . . .’ She turned her elegant head towards Kirune, who was pushing up long runnels of sand with his claws.

  ‘Oh shit. Kirune, can you swim? In the water?’

  The war-beast growled, deep in his throat. ‘I fly. I don’t need to swim.’

  ‘If he had his root-memories, he would be able to,’ said Vostok in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘Through our many Rains, we would often have cause to swim. Many of us did it for pleasure.’

  ‘Well that’s just great,’ said Tor. ‘Perhaps this is something we should have discussed before coming all this way.’

  ‘Kirune will not drown,’ said Vostok firmly. ‘I can pull him through the water if needed.’

  ‘I would rather drown!’ Kirune hunched his shoulders, causing Tor to rock forward in the harness.

  ‘Fire and blood . . .’ Noon rubbed a hand over her face. ‘Let’s just go.’

  Despite everything, it was a joy to fly. Vostok took off in a flurry of sand and white feathers, with Kirune close on her heels, and in moments they were up above the water, leaving behind the white lines of surf and the bleak grasslands. Below them, the sea was grey as slate, fringed here and there with foam.

  ‘Tor!’ she called across to him. He had tied his long hair back in a thick tail, and she could see from the colour in his cheeks and the quick smile he turned on her that he was glad to be on their way too. Despite everything. ‘You take the lead! You know where we’re going.’

  For once not contradicting her, he leaned over Kirune, murmuring words that were lost in the wind of their flight, and the war-beast moved in front. Noon felt a faint murmur of annoyance from Vostok, but it was slight, and immediately pushed to one side.

  They flew on until the early afternoon, Tor curving them slowly northwest as they travelled. For a long time the Barren Sea remained exactly that, until Noon found herself looking away from it and scanning the sky instead, but there was little to see there either, save for the occasional seabird. Eventually, when the sun had reached its apex and was heading towards the west, Tor and Kirune began to fly much lower and closer to the water, moving down until they were only around ten feet above it. Intrigued, she touched Vostok on the shoulder, and they swept down to join them.

  ‘What is it?’ she called across. ‘Was there something on the map?’

  Tor shook his head and pointed downwards, so Noon looked again. The thing was so large that at first she missed it entirely, and she frowned, wondering if this was one of the Eboran’s obscure jokes, but then their shadow passed over, blotting out some of the light on the water and she saw it: a huge, pale shape just under the waves, a blunt head at the front, and an elongated tail-end. Once she saw the one, she saw others, some even larger, and the one below them was easily as long as Vostok from nose to tail.

  ‘What is it?’ she cried out, startled.

  ‘Whales, I think,’ said Tor, sounding pleased with himself. ‘Vintage has talked about them before. Enormous fish that aren’t really fish.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘How should I know? Big bastards, though. If Kirune could get one of those in his jaws we’d be eating for months.’

  Noon snorted, amused by the image. And then, as if they’d summoned it, the huge creature began to get bigger, more defined. It was rising to the surface, she realised.

  ‘They breathe air,’ added Vostok. ‘Big stupid animals, really.’

  Leaning out over the harness to get a better look, Noon kept her eyes on the creature’s back, fascinated. The biggest animals they had ever seen on the plains were the hairy bison that migrated across their grasslands twice a year. But as the creature broke the surface she regretted her curiosity; the broad back was covered in ridged, pale-green skin, and all across it were wet, blinking eyes. There had to be around a hundred of them, deep blue and rolling at them with apparent interest. Here and there were a handful of holes, gasping in air like gaping mouths.

  With a wordless cry, she jumped back in the harness and Vostok rose up swiftly, putting a good distance between them and the strange whale. When Noon looked up, she saw that Tor and Kirune had done the same thing, and Tor’s mouth was turned down at the corners.

  ‘I don’t think I needed to see that at all.’

  ‘What was it? Something Wild-touched, out here?’

 
‘Behemoths did not always crash on the land when we brought them down,’ said Vostok. ‘The seas are every bit as dangerous, and as poisoned. We would do well to remember that.’

  Together they rose higher into the sky, and it was possible to see at least twenty of the enormous beasts, uncertain shadows under the dark water. Without having to discuss it, they put on a burst of speed, moving ahead of the group of mutant whales. The sea around them was featureless, and as they moved further from the shore, a deeper blue. Noon turned around and looked over her shoulder awkwardly. The dark, crumpled line of the Eboran coast had been behind them for part of the morning, but now it was completely out of sight.

  ‘How much longer will we be flying before we have somewhere we can land?’ she called to Tor. He twisted in his harness to glance at her, and his brow was furrowed in concentration.

  ‘Further than I’d like. But there should be a big collection of rocks, not far from here. We can sit there for a while, get our bearings.’

  Noon rested her hand against Vostok’s neck, wondering if the dragon remembered the place from her previous lives, but the war-beast didn’t venture an opinion.

  ‘Let me know if you’re getting tired,’ she said, leaning forward so that only Vostok could hear. ‘We don’t want to fly you ragged.’

  Vostok snorted. ‘I could fly all day.’

  As it was, they flew for another two hours before Noon’s tired and watering eyes latched on to a dark blemish on the Barren Sea. She opened her mouth to point it out to Tor, but he was already turning Kirune in its direction, and Vostok followed suit without having to be prompted. It looked ridiculously tiny to Noon at first, certainly not big enough to house two war-beasts comfortably, but as they gradually drew closer, she saw that it was actually quite sizeable, if not remotely inviting. Tor was not far off in his description of it as a ‘collection of rocks’; black and grey and blasted with salt and barnacles, the stones were jagged and sharp, appearing to have been thrust out of the sea with some force. As they circled, looking for a place to land, Noon saw a number of small mounds in the very centre, and at almost the exact same moment that she spotted them, they erupted with hundreds of black birds, all sporting brightly striped beaks. They rose up in a noisy, outraged crowd and then fled in all directions. The mounds, she realised, were sad-looking nests made from sticks, bleached feathers, old shells and an impressive amount of bird shit. The nests were in a big heap in the very middle of the bleak island, protected from the wind by the wall of jagged rock.