The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  And then a voice, which again seemed to come from all around.

  ‘Very well.’

  The side of the corpse moon split open again, and the two of them were eaten up by the darkness.

  33

  ‘Whether it’s searching out parasite spirits, worm-people junk or fabulous artefacts, it always seems to end with me knee-deep in mud.’

  ‘It’s funny how it also seems to end with you moaning about something.’ Noon, who was bent at the waist and peering intently through the murky water, straightened up briefly to cup some water in her hands and throw it at Tor, splashing the back of his shirt.

  ‘I am going to prove I am the adult here and not respond to that.’

  Luckily, the water in the crevasse came up to the top of Tor’s thighs and the current was sluggish, meaning they could, more or less safely, search for the missing amber tablets. Less luckily, the floor of the crevasse was covered in a layer of silt and mud, and every movement caused swirls of the stuff to darken the water, making spotting anything at the bottom extremely difficult. The crevasse was also wide enough for the sun to make it down there, meaning that the centre of the little river was a headache-inducing collection of lights bouncing off the water. They had been searching since the sun had risen, and Tor was already too hot and too wet, and certainly too covered in mud.

  Vostok waited above, her long tail hanging over the cliff’s edge, while Kirune was upstream some way, bathing himself. He was causing even greater tides of mud, but Tor didn’t feel much like telling him to stop it.

  ‘I can’t help feeling like this is a hopeless task.’ He straightened up and pushed his hair out of his face. ‘Even if we find the tablets, we’ve no way of knowing if they’ll actually help Kirune and the others. Meanwhile, anything could be happening at home.’

  ‘So, do you want to give up in ten minutes, or wait until lunch?’

  Tor turned to Noon in surprise, and then caught the expression on her face. ‘Yes, all right, I am moaning again. I’m just being a realist.’

  Noon bent her head back to the water. She was soaked from head to foot, her black hair now a collection of inky wet curls, and her cheeks were flushed from the heat. ‘The amber tablet we have is pretty heavy, right? Maybe the things sank into the mud, and they’re still there, sitting on some lower bedrock. We could get Kirune to try digging around.’

  ‘Or the river was different when Micanal helpfully chucked them away. Deeper, stronger. They could easily be anywhere.’

  ‘We’ve come a long bloody way, and eaten that bloody awful salted beef for days. I’m not giving up after only . . . ow. Ow.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘My neck. It’s seized up, or I’ve pulled something.’ She stood up straight, wincing and rubbing her neck.

  ‘Come here,’ said Tor, before striding over to her. ‘Let me have a look.’

  ‘You can’t see a strain, Bloodsucker.’

  ‘Now who’s moaning? Let me just . . . here.’ He walked behind her and placed his hands on the back of her neck, the smooth stretch of her shoulders. ‘You’ve got big knots here, which doesn’t surprise me, given all the flying and riding and sleeping on rocks, and how much staggering around in mud we’ve been doing.’ Carefully, too aware that he was strong enough to snap her neck if he wanted to, Tor began to knead the muscles in Noon’s shoulders. She jerked a couple of times as he reached an especially sore spot.

  ‘Ow! Is this supposed to be helping?’

  ‘Just let me do my work.’ Her skin was warm, and he could smell her too now; good clean sweat, the scent of her hair, all tangled up in the minerals of the river. ‘We spent a year on this at the House of the Long Night. Usually, of course, it involves oils scented with violet-wort and king’s-blossom, but hopefully the results will be the same.’

  Noon snorted. ‘Hmm. That does feel better actually.’ With his hand on the side of her neck, he could feel her pulse, light and quick. Growing faster. ‘Much better.’

  He bent his head to her ear, not at all sure what he was about to say, when a voice carried down from above.

  ‘How goes the search?’

  It was Arnia, her oval face framed with her cloud of black hair as she peered down from the cliff edge. She was smiling broadly, as sunny as the sky. Noon stepped away from Tor, smoothing her hand over the back of her neck.

  ‘Slowly,’ she called up. ‘Have you come to help?’

  Arnia laughed. ‘I will bring you some lunch soon, though.’

  When they eventually got Kirune to shepherd them back up to the clifftop, Arnia had laid out a lunch for them on a blanket, complete with more of the sour wine. She was wearing a robe of white silk embroidered with tiny golden suns, which looked quite incongruous in the middle of a vibrant forest, but with Vostok stretched neatly behind the blanket, it could almost have been a scene from an Eboran painting; the war-beast and the lady dining together. Arnia looked exquisite, and as she reached to pour the wine, her sleeve pulled up to reveal rows and rows of delicately carved wooden bracelets – they were covered in interlaced hands. Seeing Tor glance at them, she smiled.

  ‘Made for me by my brother.’

  ‘We shouldn’t have too much of that,’ said Noon, nodding at the wine. ‘Not if we’re going back down there.’

  ‘Oh, you haven’t finished looking, then?’

  Noon picked up a slice of cured meat and pressed it whole into her mouth. ‘There’s a lot of mud to sift through.’

  Arnia shrugged as if it didn’t matter at all. ‘Well, it is good to have your company.’ She looked at Tor as she said this, and he returned her smile. ‘It’s been so long since I’ve had anyone to talk to other than my dear brother. You are like the past of Ebora, and its future, come to visit us.’

  Tor took the offered glass of wine. It was too sour, but after hours in the sun and mud, he thought he could get used to it.

  ‘Why haven’t you tried to leave?’ Noon was picking up more of the ham, apparently to see how much of it she could stick in her mouth at once. ‘Your brother seems very nice, but I can understand wanting to find other company after . . . how many years have you been here?’

  A shadow passed over Arnia’s face, and the sunny smile vanished. ‘We thought Ebora was dead. The grief of it . . . I can’t expect you to understand what it feels like to watch everyone you’ve ever known die, but it’s not something you recover from, even after centuries.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Noon swallowed her mouthful of ham, and Tor thought he recognised the overly tight smile on her lips. He began wondering if something was going to be set on fire shortly. ‘I think you’d be surprised by how much I could understand about that. And you left while there were still people alive in Ebora, didn’t you?’

  ‘Once we were here, this seemed like a paradise of sorts. It wasn’t what we had hoped for, no, but there was a peace here, away from the cities and the politics, and the memories. We turned our ships into houses, and we decided that this was where we would spend the rest of our years.’

  ‘And then everyone got the crimson flux and died anyway?’

  ‘Noon,’ said Tor. He glanced at Vostok, wondering what the dragon was thinking of this aggressive tone, but her violet eyes revealed nothing.

  ‘No, it’s fine, Tormalin. I know it is difficult for the shorter-lived species to understand our struggles.’ Tor saw Noon roll her eyes at that from the corner of his vision, but Arnia was looking at her glass of wine and missed it. ‘Did I hear correctly? That you studied at the House of the Long Night?’

  This was quite a change in direction. Tor nodded graciously. ‘For over a decade, my lady. Our numbers were greatly reduced by then, I’m afraid, but there were still those who remembered.’

  ‘It is good to know that the old traditions are being kept alive.’

  ‘Well, this has been charming, but we’ve still got a lot of searching to do.’ Noon stood up, brushing crumbs off her damp trousers. ‘Vostok, would you give me a lift back down the
river please?’

  ‘Do be careful,’ said Arnia, ‘not to come up on the wrong side of the crevasse when you are finished. You could get quite lost, and there are larger, more dangerous wild animals on that side of the island.’

  They left Arnia still sitting on the blanket, her golden dress sparkling and her face raised to the sun.

  They searched for the rest of that day and well into the evening, until the shadows grew so deep that Tor managed to walk into the cliff face twice, and they did not locate a single amber tablet. Wet and sunburned and aching, they returned to the grove of houses. Micanal and Arnia had opened up one of the empty homes for them to stay in, and they were both too exhausted to take much notice of it, although Tor did note that the walls were all hung with pieces of Micanal’s art, alongside works by lesser artists – he wondered how many of the Eborans who had set out on the Golden Fox expedition were his surviving students.

  Noon had been in an especially grumpy mood on the way back, so Tor retired straight to bed. He lay there for a while, listening to the soft pads of Kirune circling the house, and eventually drifted into a thick, smoky sleep. When he began to dream, he almost recoiled from it – rest was what he really wanted, of both body and mind – but he soon recognised that this was not a dream of his own making, and that made him curious. In the dream, he was on a ship. It was beautiful, with huge white sails like clouds, and the masthead was carved with foxes chasing each other. Everywhere he looked he saw Eborans, men and women who looked happy, excited and healthy. Seeing them all together it occurred to him that he could not remember a time when he had been around so many healthy Eborans; nothing that wasn’t hazy with distance and memory, at least. He saw these faces clearly, and his heart lifted at the sight of them. They wore not the usual finery of the Eboran palace, but simple, tough, well-made clothes – the sort of clothes necessary for a long voyage – and they moved around the deck of the ship with ease and knowledge.

  ‘Arnia?’ he called. ‘This must be your doing.’

  She appeared from behind a group of Eboran ladies, grinning sheepishly.

  ‘I thought you would like to see the Golden Fox expedition as it was,’ she said, ‘rather than how it ended. We had so much hope, you see.’

  ‘Did you bring those who could sail? Or did people learn?’

  ‘We learned, mostly. We built our own ships too.’

  ‘A purely Eboran enterprise.’ For some reason, this made Tor think of his sister. She had chosen to turn away from the world too, while he had walked out into Sarn. ‘Have you ever thought what would have happened if you hadn’t come out here?’

  A crease appeared between Arnia’s eyebrows. ‘We all would have died. There is no mystery in that.’

  ‘Or you could have gone beyond the Wall and out into Sarn.’ Tor watched as a pair of young Eborans, perhaps only three hundred years old, turned over a crate to play cards on it. ‘There’s a lot to see out there. You’d be surprised.’

  Arnia turned her head and walked to the rail. The sea was vast and silvery, stretching out in all directions. Tor knew it wasn’t easy to hold such a large dream together; Arnia was quite a talented dream-walker.

  ‘I hope you will stay,’ she said suddenly, still not looking at him. ‘I know that’s not very fair of me, Tormalin the Oathless, but I hope it anyway. What is there for you back in Ebora? The last dregs of our people, dying, and the Jure’lia returning to finish the job they started with the Eighth Rain.’

  Tor joined her at the rail, trying to look at her face, but she just continued to stare out to sea. ‘But we have to fight. You must see that.’ He half laughed, thinking she must be teasing him, but her expression only grew stonier. ‘Without us, and the handful of war-beasts we have left, Sarn is doomed. I know you remember what the Jure’lia are. If we don’t stand against them, who will?’

  She lifted a shoulder. ‘The Jure’lia may never come here. We are hidden, and distant. This could be the only safe place left on Sarn. You could live here with us. Perhaps that should be your duty.’ Arnia turned to him and pressed her hand to his arm where it rested on the rail. Her touch was shockingly warm, and her gaze very direct. ‘I have so much to show you here. And I think you would understand it too, like no one else has.’

  Tor cleared his throat. There was something going on here, something strange under her words. She was concentrating on them so fiercely that the light of the dream had dimmed around them, the sounds of sea and sailing growing faint, but all he could think of was her warm hand on his arm. Slowly, she slid it under his sleeve.

  ‘What . . . what do you mean? What is here that you need to show me?’ He struggled to concentrate as the dream grew darker and darker until she was the only bright thing.

  ‘I am so lonely, Tormalin the Oathless. Can you imagine what it has been like for me here, with only my brother for company?’

  ‘My sister isn’t too fond of me either.’ She was leaning towards him now, and he found that he was searching her face for the least sign of aging or of the flux, but there was nothing. Arnia was flawless, untouched by the curses of Ebora. ‘What did you mean, we are hidden here? The lights that surround the island – do you know what they are? Did you see them when you came here?’

  She blinked. He could smell blood, sudden and sharp, and then he was awake, lying in the bed. He had, he realised with some exasperation, an erection, so he stood up and walked around the room a little, letting the night air cool his skin. By the time he was feeling vaguely back to normal he was fully awake, so he left the bedroom and walked into the parlour. One of the siblings had left a bottle of the sour wine on the table there for them, and he hoped a glass might ease him back to sleep. However, Noon was already there, her feet curled under her in the dark and a goblet of wine cradled in her hands. She looked up at him with no surprise at all, and Tor was thankful that she would not be able to make out that he was blushing in the shadows. He found another chair and sat in it with a huff.

  ‘So,’ said Noon softly. ‘What do you make of all this, then?’

  He contemplated a flippant comment, then decided he didn’t have the energy for it. ‘I think Vintage would say it all stinks like a week-old fish.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Noon sipped her wine, and made a face. ‘Ugh. I saw someone as we were leaving tonight. On the other side of the crevasse.’

  ‘You saw what?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything because I think they had been watching us for some time, and I didn’t want them to know I’d seen them. They looked human to me, though, from what I saw. Too short to be an Eboran. It’s interesting that Arnia specifically warned us away from that side of the island, isn’t it? Has she visited your dreams at all?’

  ‘No,’ said Tor, before taking a big gulp of the wine. He wondered if he had said anything in his sleep. ‘So there might be people living here already, is that what you think?’

  ‘I don’t know what I think.’

  Silence weaved itself between them, growing thicker and heavier. Tor thought about the people who had built this house, and then supposedly died in it, probably coughing their lungs into shreds.

  ‘Do you think,’ Noon said eventually, ‘that Arnia could have found the tablets and moved them?’

  ‘What? No. Come on, Noon. Not all of my people are devious monsters, you know. And think about what you’re saying. You’re suggesting that Arnia climbed down there in the dark, after Micanal had shown us the place, retrieved the tablets, climbed back up – still in the dark – and hid them somewhere. All to, what? Vex us slightly?’

  ‘To stop us from leaving straight away. And yeah, that’s exactly what I’m saying. Even Micanal said she was capable of doing it, because she is still young and strong, and he’s not. And what is that about, anyway?’

  Tor shifted in his chair. ‘I agree that this place is strange, and there are undoubtedly a lot of questions I’d like the answers to, but I think you are seeing plots where there are none. Arnia is just a lonely woman, not some scheming crea
ture.’

  ‘Mmm. Lonely, and desperate, maybe. They’ve been here centuries, Tor, alone. You don’t think that might have made them a bit unstable?’

  ‘You are thinking in human terms, witch.’ It was growing lighter outside, the deep blues of night becoming the greys of dawn. ‘A human would go mad, certainly, stuck here for so long with no other company, but Eborans are made of sterner stuff. We can endure.’

  ‘And I suppose you left Ebora just because you were bored?’

  Tor put his glass down on the table, with a little more force than he’d intended. ‘I imagine you will want us back down in the mud pits as soon as the sun is high enough, so I am going to see if I can grab a few more hours’ sleep.’

  34

  At first, Aldasair thought he had gone blind.

  He felt his eyes open, but he simply went from one utter darkness to another. Carefully, he lifted shaking fingers and touched his eyelids. He could feel the creases there, and the working muscles. Dim colours burst and spread in his vision, his eyes trying to make shapes from too little information. Alarmed by this, he squeezed his eyes shut and reached out around him. He was lying on a soft floor, slightly warm to the touch, like skin – a spike of terror surged up his throat, and he swallowed it down. He ached all over, his left side and his left arm in particular, as if he’d landed on it with some force. Awkwardly, he clambered to his knees and began to crawl.

  A pale light blossomed into life, revealing a strange grey room with softness where there should be corners. The light itself came from a fistful of fronds growing straight out of the wall, and twenty feet away Bern also lay on the floor, unmoving.

  ‘Bern?’

  The big human didn’t reply. Aldasair wobbled towards him only to find a soft, transparent barrier in his way – it stretched across the whole room, cutting him off from Bern. Touching it made him think of the way unseen cobwebs could ambush you in corridors, and with a shudder of revulsion he pulled himself free of it.