The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  ‘Did you ever think to see such a thing, Nan?’

  Nanthema looked back from the window. It was another bright spring day, and the light made her look ethereal, unreal.

  ‘You forget that I have seen it before. Their armour, the things they liked to wear, back when they were alive.’

  ‘They are alive now,’ said Vintage mildly. ‘I can’t wait for them to see what we have.’

  ‘Do you think it will make much of a difference?’

  Not for the first time in the last week or so, Vintage bit down a caustic reply. Just lately Nanthema had been reminding her of her eldest niece – a sulky child who had been capable of giving everyone the silent treatment from roughly the age of three, something more or less unheard of for a toddler. It was important to remember that Nanthema had witnessed the decrepit remains of her parents, and had been brought back to Ebora much sooner than she would have wished. Not looking at the Eboran woman, Vintage hobbled carefully over to the nearest piece Tyranny had brought them. It was a huge gauntlet, with long razor-sharp claws, all carefully sharpened.

  ‘Look at this thing, it looks bloody lethal. I must say, this opens up a whole area of study I never imagined – weapons of war-beasts. I’m quite sure I’ve never seen anything written about them, and certainly no diagrams.’ She sucked in air through her teeth. ‘Of course, Nan, it must make a difference. Every small advantage we can get is worth chasing after, if it means we could save more lives.’

  Nanthema did not reply, but Vintage could feel her scepticism like a wall of cold bricks at her back.

  ‘Why were all of these things out in the world? Such artefacts should have been here for us to find in the first place.’

  ‘Much of it was sold,’ said Nanthema. ‘What use was there in keeping it?’ She took a breath and for a time some of the old light came back into her eyes. ‘Long before I left, an emergency council was drawn from the survivors. It was their job to plan Ebora’s survival, and it was decided that non-essential items would be sold, as quickly as possible. We were sick and dying, barely able to produce the food we needed, so we had to rely on trade. What could be more useless than the armour and trinkets belonging to the war-beasts? They were all dead. They were not coming back. Our art and our possessions were valuable, but war-beast artefacts had never been on the market before. It was shameful, of course, so much of it was traded directly with governments and criminals, and never spoken of publically.’ She smiled a chilly little smile. ‘I believe that if they had lived long enough, the emergency council would have started chopping up Ygseril himself, selling him off as firewood.’

  ‘That is incredible,’ said Vintage quietly. ‘And it must have been hard. Like giving away the possessions of a loved one.’

  Nanthema shuddered, and Vintage turned away.

  ‘I wouldn’t need all that long to catalogue it all, make some sketches. And it’s not like they can wear all of it at once, although I suspect Sharrik will certainly give it a try.’

  ‘And when will he be coming back?’ It was Tyranny, appearing at the ballroom door. The woman could walk utterly silently when she wanted to. Vintage envied her that; clacking around marble floors with a stick was so undignified.

  ‘My dear! As I said, I am not certain when we’ll see our war-beasts return, but I’ll be sure to introduce them to you. The pieces are looking fine! We cannot thank you enough for your assistance with the cleaning and repairs.’

  Tyranny beamed at her. ‘My pleasure. Is this where the war-beasts were born? I must admit, I’d love to see the place where they came back to this world. It would feel very . . . historic.’

  ‘Oh no, this is just a very large and handy room. Not that the Eborans are short on large rooms, as you can probably imagine. There is a special chamber for the war-beast pods, one that has always been used for the purpose.’

  ‘And they all hatched in there?’

  ‘Not all of them, no. And I’m sure we’ll show you the room, my darling, but that will have to wait until the war-beasts have returned. It’s their history, after all.’ She gestured to the pieces of armour. ‘Just like these are.’

  Tyranny nodded, her face serious again. ‘Of course, I wouldn’t dream of being a pain. Actually, I popped along to ask you to dinner, Lady de Grazon.’ She half turned and nodded to Nanthema too. ‘And the Lady Nanthema, of course.’

  ‘I’m busy,’ said Nanthema, before the other woman had finished speaking, and again Vintage thought of her niece’s stubborn face, her little brows drawn down over her wrinkled nose. Tantrum incoming.

  ‘But I would be delighted, of course.’

  ‘That’s wonderful.’ Tyranny smiled back. ‘We brought some special foods and wines with us just in case we could convince the Eborans to eat with us. Nothing as tasty as your own vine-forest wine, I’m sure, but I’ve dabbled in the trade myself over the years and I’m happy to claim we’ve got a few bottles that you won’t sniff at. Please, join us this evening.’

  When the younger woman had left again, Vintage turned to Nanthema, no longer quite able to keep the frustration from her face.

  ‘What is so offensive about dinner, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t trust them.’

  ‘You don’t trust them to make dinner?’

  ‘Vin,’ Nanthema pinched the bridge of her nose, half smiling, and the sight of it filled Vintage with hope. ‘You know what I mean. What do they want here? Humans are . . . I don’t really believe they are here out of the goodness of their hearts. They are too interested.’

  ‘You underestimate the lure this place has,’ said Vintage, but she also put her hand on Nanthema’s arm and squeezed it. ‘We are careful. They do not have the run of the palace, and all of Sarn’s valuables are locked away. I have pressed several of the strapping young people Bern left behind into guard duty, and the Hatchery is watched constantly. Don’t worry, Nan, your inheritance is safe from sticky-fingered humans.’

  ‘That’s not what this is about.’

  ‘Then tell me. Please, I want to help. I care about you.’

  Nanthema looked startled again, and abruptly she seemed very young – certainly she looked closer in age to a stroppy toddler than Vintage’s forty-six years. Silently, she reminded herself that despite appearances, this woman was over four hundred years old.

  ‘Vin, I have tried to explain, but you’re so tied up in all this,’ she gestured at the glittering pieces of armour, ‘that you’re not seeing it. From my point of view, I’ve only been away a handful of years, yet everything has changed. Ygseril is alive – at least partially – but my people are more or less dead. The palace is full of humans, and there are war-beasts in the skies again. There are humans riding war-beasts! Except that they are not the war-beasts of my childhood, but something lesser, something almost insulting. And you . . .’

  Vintage waited, one eyebrow raised.

  ‘And I am what, exactly?’

  ‘Older. You are older.’ Nanthema smiled faintly. ‘The Vintage I left behind was desperately eager to see Sarn, desperate to leave her old life behind. That’s what I liked about her. I wanted to leave the old life behind too. But you’ve brought me back here. And it’s not just old now. It’s broken.’

  A swarm of sorrow and anger threatened to close Vintage’s throat, so she closed her fist around the top of her stick, squeezing until the pain pushed everything else aside. She thought back to the months when she had been at home or at college, writing endlessly to Nanthema about when she could finally leave and join her. Nanthema had never, she belatedly realised, offered to come to meet her, to help her smuggle her things out of her dorm, or even to wait in the nearest village with a carriage, ready to whisk her away. Oh no. Nan had just carried on with her travels, from Reidn to Jarlsbad and back again, sometimes posting Vintage presents, things she thought she might find interesting, but never really committing to a plan. While Vintage sat at her dorm window, smelling the soaps she had sent or leafing through the pages of a new book, Nanthema had
been doing exactly what she wanted to do – and that only included Vintage if she happened to be there at the time. The realisation was like a splash of cold water to her throat. Tor was self-interested too, but at least he didn’t pretend to be anything else. In the end, when Nanthema had vanished, Vintage had given up on her hopes of adventure and returned to the vine forest to take up the running of the estate. If she had vanished on Nanthema, it would not have made even the barest scratch on her plans.

  ‘The key phrase there, my darling, is “left behind”. As charming as you apparently found me, you couldn’t quite be bothered to wait, could you? And I am sorry if I am not as innocent or as free from responsibilities as when you left. Some of us do have to grow up.’

  Nanthema shook her head. ‘Humans! You think you know so much, when you are only here for a blink of an eye.’ She took her glasses off again, viciously rubbed them on her sleeve, and put them back on her nose. ‘I hope you enjoy your dinner.’

  With that, she stalked from the ballroom, her footfalls somehow flat and empty.

  The corridors were not dark and silent. Eri liked this very much. As he and Helcate made their slow way from one room to another – Helcate was large enough now for Eri to ride him with his own special harness – they passed many tall windows filled with the night sky, but always they could see the lights of the humans too, many-coloured lamps or the cheerful glow of campfires, and they heard the distant chatter of human voices. Once, Eri was sure, the very idea of even hearing a human voice would have terrified him. To his parents, humans were some sort of very special secret, a dark piece of history that it was best to leave behind – histories and conversations carefully gave only the slightest of details or left them out altogether, so in the end Eri had built a picture of them from the hole they left behind. Vintage had been the first human he had ever met. He thought that probably she had been a good one to meet first.

  ‘I like Vintage,’ he said to Helcate. ‘And I like the lights and noise.’

  ‘Helcate,’ said Helcate. Somewhere nearby someone was telling a story, their voice tight with the joy of it, and then a number of people laughed, a tide crashing together.

  ‘They spend a lot of time with each other,’ Eri continued. ‘I’ve noticed that. They like to be in big groups. Maybe it’s because of how long they live. What if they try to know as many people as possible, because they might all be gone tomorrow?’ Eri frowned and patted Helcate on the head. He didn’t want to confuse the war-beast, and the ways of humans were confusing. ‘I’ll ask Vintage about it.’

  ‘Helcate.’

  They rounded another corner to see that the lamps at the end of this corridor had been extinguished, leaving the far side in a shroud of shadows. Eri and Helcate paused, looking at it. The dark did not worry Eri; in Lonefell he had gone many long winter nights with no lamps at all, because he had needed to save the oil. In those situations you either learned to love the dark or go mad – it was one of the things his father had told him, from his place in the bucket.

  This was different, though. There was movement in the dark – a quick flitting of someone moving stealthily from one side to the other, and then standing, very, very still. It was so unlike all the open noise and movement outside that for the first time Eri became afraid.

  ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

  Silence. Eri listened very hard, but all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing and the soft presence of Helcate inside his own head. That settled it, then. Everyone knew that humans always had to reply when you spoke to them – they loved speaking so much, they could not help themselves. Humans did not understand what silence was at all.

  Eri turned Helcate aside, and they sought out the brighter lights of another corridor.

  With the war-beast armour removed from it, the caravan was warm and cosy. Every surface was filled with cushions, the walls draped with tapestries – gaudy, certainly, but finely made. Vintage ran her thumb over one, noting the tiny silk stitches.

  ‘The silk of Reidn can’t be bettered, in my opinion, although don’t let Tor hear me say that. I must admit, my dear, when you asked me to come to yours, I did think you would mean your rooms in the palace.’

  Tyranny looked up from the glass goblets she was polishing. Through the open back doors, Okaar stood over a neat little cooking fire, stirring something thick in a pot, and beyond them it was possible to see all the small human encampments making their dinners for the night in the Eboran palace gardens.

  ‘Not that I’m complaining,’ added Vintage quickly. ‘This is an utterly charming location for dinner. And goodness knows, I have seen enough of the inside of that place lately.’ She tapped on the wooden crutch for emphasis.

  ‘Are you comfortable enough?’ Tyranny passed a glass of pale golden wine. ‘I can always get more cushions. It’s a bumpy journey from Jarlsbad and we like to be well padded.’

  ‘I’m absolutely fine, my dear.’

  ‘We thought it would be easier for you to get to know us if you saw us in our home,’ continued Tyranny. She had poured herself a glass, and was peering at the liquid closely, as though it owed her money. ‘I mean, I move around a lot, so this caravan has become a sort of home, and Okaar has become my family.’

  Vintage nodded, sipping her wine. It was a good, if not especially subtle, way of getting her out of the palace. She thought of all the burly and skilled men and women standing guard on various doors, and her smile deepened.

  ‘Where is your young friend whom I saw here before?’

  To her surprise, Okaar answered. His voice was still soft, but it carried easily enough from the cooking fire. ‘Jhef has grown close to some of the other young people here. She is of an age where she would rather chase moonbugs than eat. They run wild together.’

  ‘I was the same when I was a kid,’ said Tyranny, half a wistful note in her voice. ‘Head to toe in mud and filth, ragged and big-eyed and no real morals to speak of.’ She grinned. ‘I like kids.’

  ‘Jhef is your sister, Okaar?’

  The lithe young man began to serve the stew into bowls. His every movement, Vintage noticed, was measured and precise. He would, she knew, serve everyone exactly the same amount of stew.

  ‘You are very observant, Lady de Grazon. She is my youngest sister.’

  ‘Many siblings?’

  ‘Many.’ He brought the bowls into the caravan, navigating the steep steps with no difficulty. Vintage kept her eyes on him, watching closely. She could not quite make out what his relationship with Tyranny was, but it did not appear to be romantic.

  ‘This stew is wonderful.’ And it was. Vintage had tasted spices like this before, on some of her furthest travels, but never combined in such a way. ‘You are a talented cook, Okaar.’

  ‘What do you think of the wine?’ asked Tyranny. She nodded at Okaar. ‘We have a bet on, you see. Okaar thinks it won’t be sophisticated enough for your palate, but I spent a bloody fortune on that bottle, and if I know anything, it’s that you pay for quality when it comes to booze.’

  ‘It is very fine. From the northern region of Crest? My father used to insist that they get a different quality of light up in the northern hills, and that’s why the grapes produce such a delicate flavour. Tell me, Tyranny – for such a young woman you seem to have fingers in a lot of pies. Who are you? Really?’

  To the young woman’s credit she only looked surprised for the briefest second, and then she covered it up with a rueful smile. Vintage, knowing she would be tempted to fill the silence, drained off her glass of wine without a blink. If they wanted to get her drunk, they would need to open a few more cases yet.

  ‘You’re a clever woman, Lady de Grazon. You have something of a reputation for it, after all. But there is nothing much more to know about me, I promise. I am what I said I am, a woman who found something interesting, and decided to make a business out of it.’

  ‘Why Tyranny, then? Tell me why they call you that.’

  This time there was a flicker of di
scomfort, visible in the way her pale-blue gaze shot to Okaar, in the way she shifted her shoulders.

  ‘Well, Lady de Grazon, I’ll be honest with you, that’s not a very nice story, and it doesn’t – how would you put it? – show me in the best light.’

  ‘Please, darling, call me Vintage. A story with blood, is it? I assure you, I have a strong stomach. And this is a time of war. Perhaps we need people with some bloody stories in their past.’ She reached over and refilled her goblet herself. It was very good wine.

  ‘If it puts you off Okaar’s excellent stew, then don’t blame me.’ Tyranny was still smiling, her posture still relaxed, but nevertheless there was a new tension here. Vintage sensed that the young woman was giving up something valuable by telling this story, but that she had decided the stakes were worth it. Interesting.

  ‘I grew up in Mushenska, I’ve already told you that. I was a street scrap, a pocket shark, but I kept my head down then. When I was fourteen or fifteen, I joined a gang called the Salts, run by a woman called Reanne O’Keefe. It was a good place to be, because the Salts were feared and respected, and all the alleys of Mushenska seemed a little drier and a little safer while I was there. We did all sorts of jobs, but mostly stealing to order. “Go to this big house, take this fancy thing, bring it back here to be sold on.” The only problem with being a Salt was O’Keefe herself. She was a bloody nightmare.’

  Tyranny grinned, and Vintage got a glimpse of the child she had been: old before her time, sharp and street-tough.

  ‘A temper like you wouldn’t believe. She distanced herself from the main population, like, but sometimes she would make a flying visit, and we would all try to stand in the darkest corner because if she caught your eye, it was likely you’d get a beating for it. You’d be looking at her the wrong way, you see. She had a couple of associates who did the day-to-day running of the gang, but I don’t think she was close to them, either. And everyone wanted to be a member of the Salts, so if she needed to have someone taken outside and beaten to a pulp, or just have their eyes cut out, or whatever, there was always someone eager to take their place.’