by Jen Williams
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
‘The war-beasts you speak of, along with others, are away on missions right now.’ Vintage raised her hand. ‘Due to the hardships Ebora has suffered, their forces are greatly reduced, and they cannot possibly be everywhere at once.’
‘It’s true,’ added Tyranny. ‘We came here to see them too, but they’re busy. As you might expect at a time of war.’
‘Are you letting that child raise it?’ demanded Sen-Lord Takor. ‘Clearly you do not know what you are doing. A human woman, greeting us at the gates of the Eboran palace! Do you think to stay here and be safe by keeping the war-beasts to yourselves?’ He shook his head. ‘The remaining pods should be given to us for raising. Raised in Yuron-Kai, they would be warriors such as the previous Rains have seen. Greater, even.’
‘Hold on! How do you even know about those?’ Vintage glared around at the gathered warriors. ‘And such a suggestion is ridiculous! You think you can just walk into Ebora and start taking their property?’ She shook her head, annoyed with herself. ‘Not even their property, but their sacred children. It is an outrage! I will not hear it said in my presence again.’
To her surprise, Sena-Lord Kivee looked at her partner, and she seemed to sense a reprimand in that glance. The bearded man made a grumbling noise, and clasped his hands behind his back.
‘Yuron-Kai demands the assistance of the Eboran lords.’ Sena-Lord Kivee let go of the chair back, her voice soft but still dangerous. ‘We will not stand by and suffer more losses. You will mark these words.’
36
In the silvery dawn light, the grey war-beast pods looked eerie and misshapen, like gravestones in a forgotten graveyard. Eri went to each one in turn, telling it good morning and hello. It was the first thing he did each day, and each day he hoped that he would find a new war-beast waiting to greet him back. They remained inert.
Once he had greeted them all, he went back to Helcate, who was waiting in the centre of the Hatchery, and they sat companionably for a while. Eventually, they would both be hungry and they would wander down to the palace’s sprawling kitchens to see what the humans were cooking that morning, but for now Eri liked to watch the pods, just in case. Sometimes he felt like everyone else had forgotten about them.
‘But they are your brothers and sisters,’ he said to Helcate, who was resting his furry head on his front paws. ‘They just need more sleep than the rest of us. I know you’re feeling lonely, since the others went away, but you just have to remember that the rest of your family is in here. What’s it like having so many brothers and sisters?’
Helcate yawned cavernously. ‘Helcate.’
‘Oh. Well, you are nearly as big as Kirune now, and your wings work beautifully. So I am sure you will fly and fight with them when they all come back.’ Eri pulled his fingers through the beast’s fur. ‘I suppose Kirune could have grown while he was away, but you’re pretty big.’
There was a noise at one of the tall windows. It was still quite dark out, the shadows lingering as long as they could before the sun chased them off, but Eri thought that he could see a shape there. He looked back to the huge double doors; human guards stood outside them at all times, but there was no sound of activity from the corridor. He heard another noise, and this time it was identifiable enough: a hesitant tap tap.
Cautiously, Eri stood up and moved to the window where the shadow waited. The person outside was no taller than him, and they stood close to the frame, almost as though they were making themselves look as small as possible.
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
‘I know,’ Eri whispered back. ‘I’m just having a look.’ In a slightly louder voice, he said, ‘Who’s there?’
‘It’s Jhef. Can you let me in?’
Eri stood very still, his hand resting on the sill. It had been a while since anyone had dusted it. He knew who Jhef was – she was the sister of the man Okaar, who had come with the war-beast armour. He and Helcate had looked over every inch of it, of course, and been annoyed to find that almost all of it did not fit the war-beast yet.
‘I can’t let you in here.’
‘Why not?’
Eri had to admit he did not really know why not. When he didn’t answer, the girl spoke again.
‘I just want to have a look at them. I’ve seen you come in here every morning. What’s so interesting? Can’t you show me?’
‘I’m not supposed to, that’s all.’
Jhef made a snorting, disgusted noise. ‘That’s no reason for anything at all.’
Eri turned and looked back at Helcate. The war-beast was sitting up, his long raggedly tail curled around his feet, but he didn’t venture an opinion. There had been lots of things Eri wasn’t supposed to do at Lonefell – leave the grounds, explore Ebora, ask questions – but the world was different since the corpse moon had fallen from the sky.
The window had been locked with a pair of steel arms that were screwed in place. They were rusted, and even appeared to have been painted over at some point, but when the pods were placed in the Hatchery someone (probably Bern) had come and opened each window to air the place. They had all been carefully locked again, but it was no great feat to remove the screws. When he pushed the pane up, there was a terrible screeching noise, and he stopped, heart thumping in his throat, but no guards came. Perhaps they had fallen asleep.
He had only pushed the window up a few feet, but the girl slipped through it like an eel, barely making a sound. She grinned at him in the gloom of the Hatchery; her clothes were all dark, and her black hair hung partially over her face, but her eyes were very bright.
‘Hello. You’re Eri, aren’t you?’
She did not sound like anyone he had ever met, with a music to her voice he had not heard from the other humans.
‘That’s me. This is Helcate.’
Her eyes grew wide, and she slipped further into the chamber. She made no sound at all as she walked.
‘A war-beast! We’ve seen him from a distance, but not close like this.’ She flashed Eri another smile. ‘He is very beautiful.’
‘Helcate,’ Helcate agreed.
‘Thank you for letting me in, Eri. It was colder out there than I thought. Your country is very nice to look at, but not very warm. Okaar is always dragging us to cold places.’
‘It’s still spring here, and the snows have only recently gone,’ pointed out Eri, reasonably enough. ‘Okaar is your . . . brother?’
She made a face. ‘My big, overbearing brother. Do you have brothers and sisters Eri? Where is your family?’
Eri thought of the bucket. ‘Oh, far away from here. I don’t have any siblings, but I have Helcate.’
She padded silently over to Helcate and stood looking up at him. Helcate’s big blue eyes were like lost pieces of summer sky. Outside, the sun was finally breaking free of the horizon and the chilly light revealed the dust on top of the war-beast pods. Eri found himself feeling oddly ashamed.
‘When did Helcate hatch? How old is he?’
‘He was the last to hatch.’ Eri found he was glad to talk, as if that might distract from the empty, sad atmosphere of the room. ‘It was on the eighth day of the Turning month, in the year of the Crawling Spider.’ Realising how formal he sounded, he cleared his throat. ‘I mean, he’s much younger than the others, and look at how big he is!’
‘The process can take that long? It sounds unpredictable.’ Jhef looked around the room, and the assessing expression on her face confused Eri, but then she caught his eye and it vanished. ‘I did not realise there were so many beasts waiting to be born here! Thank you for showing them to me.’
Eri scuffed his boots over the floor, trying to ignore the worm of worry that was growing in his gut. He did not feel that he had been showing the girl the war-beast pods, but it seemed that is what she thought he had done. He suspected Vintage would not be too pleased about that. When he didn’t answer, she wandered over to the nearest pod.
‘How heavy are they? Probably n
ot heavy for an Eboran to lift – Okaar says you are all very strong – but a human would have trouble, wouldn’t they?’
‘I don’t know.’ Eri shrugged, and then in a quieter voice said, ‘I haven’t really met any humans before.’
‘You haven’t? Well, I haven’t met any Eborans either, although there’re quite a few more of us than you.’
She smiled in a certain way, and Eri realised she had been making a sort of joke.
‘Ha ha,’ he said, hoping that was the right response and distantly wishing the ground would open up and carry him away. ‘Ha, yes, although my people did try to lessen your numbers at one point.’
There was a horrible period of silence, and then Jhef seemed to brush off his attempt at humour. She reached out to touch the inert pod, then thought better of it.
‘I hope one hatches before we leave, Eri. That would be incredible. Something hardly any other human has seen. Are there still guards outside the door?’
Eri blinked. ‘Yes, they stay there all day and all night.’
‘Sorry, I will speak more quietly.’ She pushed her hair back behind her ear, revealing her long face fully for the first time. ‘I don’t want to get you in trouble. Do you think one will hatch?’
Again, Eri felt oddly ashamed, although he could not tell if this was because he had somehow revealed the vulnerability of the war-beasts, or because he felt responsible somehow for their failure to hatch.
‘I don’t know,’ he said simply. ‘We just have to wait.’
‘But don’t you have any idea? I mean, is one of these pods more likely to give you a war-beast than another? You say hello to all of them each morning, don’t you? Are any warmer than the others, or do they move?’
So many questions. ‘Sometimes I think some are warmer than others, but then I think it is where they are warmed by the sun.’ Jhef was looking at him attentively, and as the room grew brighter he could see that there was a scar on her chin – a tiny curve of white against her brown skin, like the half-moon shape on his fingernail. ‘This one, though.’ Hesitantly, he walked over to the pod that was third closest to the back of the room. It was just slightly smaller than Helcate’s pod had been. ‘Helcate sometimes feels something from this one.’
Jhef looked impressed. ‘He does? What does he feel?’
‘It’s hard to describe.’ Eri frowned, trying to think of the right words. ‘It’s like when you can hear someone talking in the next room, but can’t make out what they’re saying. And sometimes I have touched it, and it is warm. It’s not much, really.’ He shrugged. ‘But if I had to choose one to hatch next, it would be this pod.’
Jhef smiled. ‘I hope it does, and soon. What does Helcate eat? What are his very favourite foods?’
‘Oh, he will eat most things. He’s always hungry!’ Eri smiled. ‘I think it’s because he’s still growing. But there is a cheese the humans make . . . I mean, the Finneral people have a cheese made from goat’s milk, and he loves that. He got into their tent and ate a whole wheel of it to himself, and I thought they would be very angry, but instead they laughed. They said they would send for more of it.’
From the corridor outside came the sound of male voices, low and fogged with recent sleep. It was the guard changing over, and Eri found his throat growing tight.
‘If they find us in here . . .’
‘Shall we go to the kitchens?’ Jhef didn’t look at all concerned at the noises from the guards, but she was making her way back to the open window. ‘You can slip out this way with me, and I can show you all the secret ways I’ve found.’
Eri stopped by the window. The gardens beyond were bright with icy sunshine, glittering on the dew. He knew what it would feel like to run his hands through the grass, that sudden burst of chilly wetness, but then he looked back at Helcate.
‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Helcate won’t fit through the window.’
The girl looked blank, and in that moment she looked much older than she had, and much more like her brother. In the next eye blink, the blankness was gone and she seemed happy, if slightly disappointed.
‘Of course, that’s silly of me. I’ll leave you, then.’ She went back to the window and slipped back out into the bright morning. ‘Thank you for showing me the pods!’ This last was a whisper, and then she was gone. Eri couldn’t see how she could disappear in such clear sunlight, but when he went to the window and peered out, there was nothing to say she had been there at all.
‘Oh,’ he said, feeling as though he had failed some sort of test. He thought of the dew and the secret ways, and felt a sour bloom of disappointment in his chest.
‘Helcate,’ said Helcate.
37
It appears that Tethras – Tethras, of all people – truly has stumbled upon something extraordinary. He has produced more fragments of the Forbidden Texts, and although they are vague and, in some cases, extremely cryptic, they all seem to point to something significant in the midst of the Barren Sea. My mind begins to turn in all directions, and I cannot sleep at night. Can I let this go? Can I stay here and watch the last of my people die when there is a chance of redemption?
Tethras is staying in our apartments, and there is no question now that he has the flux. Arnia spends a great deal of time with him, nursing him or easing his passage, I do not know, but sometimes, when he is well enough, he will sit by the fire with me and I hear the story of how he came to find such wonders, although his telling is fractured and strange. The flux seeps into our minds sometimes, and I think that might be the cruellest part of it.
He was hunting. Despite the disaster that was the Carrion Wars Tethras was never quite able to let go of his hunger for human blood, and that is not as rare as an outsider might think. Just because it is poison, this does not mean it no longer soothes our aches and wakes our minds – but most Eborans who still partake find willing human donors, and sample only enough to keep old age at bay. For Tethras, the chase, the killing, the feast . . . these were all a part of it. He heard that there was a human settlement on the very edge of Eboran territory, so he travelled there, meaning to pick them off one by one, at night perhaps. He would make a game of it. All this he told me with a gleam in his eye, and I think he wanted to become something like an evil spirit to them. Something to warn their children of at bedtime, a creature of darkness. Just as they expect us to be, he told me, smiling. But he underestimated his own bloodlust. He found them living in an old abandoned temple, and in a fit of rage he killed them all. ‘How dare they?’ he asked me, as though his slaughter were in response to some insult rather than an attempt to relive his war days. When he had drunk his fill, he explored the temple, and found it to contain more than just the corpses of his unfortunate victims. A buried room, an iron chest. The keys to our future, perhaps.
Arnia joined me as I walked the palace grounds, and she spoke of ships, and maps. Slowly, our ideas are forming, and hope is such a fragile thing I feel I cannot look at it directly. In the soft light of dusk Arnia’s face was gaunt, and I know she looks upon my skin, still smooth and unlined, and sees time running out for her. She has always been the practical one.
Extract from the private journal of Micanal the Clearsighted
Noon stretched her legs out under the table, wriggling her toes. Her boots, which were thick with river mud, had been cast down by the table, and they ate again outside, another balmy early-evening sky overhead.
‘You have yet to find the tablets, then? I do not envy you the task, not in this sun, pawing through all that mud. Here, have some more cake.’
Arnia was in fine form, standing and smiling as she served up big slices of a moist fruit cake. As at every meal, she ate very little herself, but still seemed full of a restless energy.
‘If you helped us, we might find them more quickly.’ Noon watched the woman’s face for a reaction, but she just smiled all the wider.
‘And have you leave me all the sooner? I could hardly do that.’
Noon tried to catch Tor’s eye, s
ure that he must see that this could practically be an admission of guilt, but the stupid Eboran was already halfway through the bottle of wine and seemed quite happy to be fed endless food and lies. Vostok crouched at the far end of the table with the old man, and they were talking together quietly, taking little notice of the rest of the company. For the first time since arriving on the strange island, Noon felt a real lurch of fear. Tor, with his beautiful face in profile, Arnia poised as the ethereal hostess, moving gracefully around the table, Micanal with his long fingers interlaced, his head bowed. And the dragon, pearl scales shining in the evening light. They were all figures out of a story – living, breathing myths and monsters – and she was the only human: weak, short-lived, a footnote to their history. What was she even doing here?
‘Where is Kirune?’ She wasn’t sure why, but the big cat’s cool demeanour was something she suddenly missed.
‘He is off exploring,’ Tor said, toying with a piece of bread. ‘He likes to prowl the woods.’
‘Lord Kirune must be careful,’ said Arnia. ‘As I said before, much of this island is not safe. I would not like Kirune to find himself in danger.’
‘Danger? What would a war-beast have to fear here?’
But Arnia did not answer the question. Instead, she put down the bottle of wine she had been pouring for Tor and brushed her hands together.
‘Do forgive me, but I am feeling so tired today. I think it must be all the excitement of having guests.’ She smiled wanly and looked around at them all, her gaze lingering longest on Tor. Micanal looked up from his conversation with the dragon, and Noon thought he looked at his sister with something approaching contempt, but the expression, if it had ever existed at all, was gone in a moment. ‘I will go to my bed, I think, but please, finish the food and drink here. You will need to keep your strength up if you will be searching more mud tomorrow.’