The Bitter Twins

by Jen Williams

  But Noon wasn’t satisfied with that. She took a few more steps forward, and released a new wave of flame, scouring the chamber from floor to ceiling. Tor put his arms over his face, feeling his scars tingle with the memory of their own burning. In moments, everything else in the room was dead or vanished, with only soot and smoke left behind.

  Noon lowered her arms. Her eyes were very wide. Tor put a hand on her shoulder, and squeezed it.

  ‘Come on, witch. Let’s get out of here, before they send anything else for you to burn.’

  48

  The nights were never truly dark in Ebora. Vintage stood by the tall windows in her room, looking out at the lights that blazed across the palace gardens. Campfires and lamps of all colours, alongside the softer illumination of silk tents that were lit from within. She had been initially fascinated by these, convinced that the flimsy walls would not be warm enough for an Eboran spring – there was still snow on the Bloodless Mountains – but she had introduced herself to the travellers inside, who had turned out to be from Kuruknai, a very distant eastern state that she had never laid eyes on, and they had shown her how the silk was treated with a type of grease, just on the inner layer. It kept the heat in amazingly well, and even smelled quite pleasant, laced as it was with the oil of a flower they called bluesky-wort. She smiled faintly.

  ‘All of this I would never have learned, if I’d stayed where I was.’ She thought of the vine forest every now and then, but with no particular sadness or longing – walking away had been the best decision she could have made. ‘I should have done it sooner, if anything, and then Nanthema . . .’

  Turning away from the window, she began rifling through the papers on the desk. She hadn’t seen Nanthema for hours, although this was nothing particularly new; lately the Eboran woman seemed keen to spend time on her own, walking in the palace forests.

  ‘Where the bloody hell is it?’

  Micanal the Clearsighted’s journal should have been on the desk, she was sure of it, but she had turned all the papers upside down several times and, after all, it shouldn’t be so easy to miss a fat leather-bound book. She frowned, ignoring the distant ache in her leg.

  ‘Am I getting old? Losing track of my things like some aged dear. Talking to myself like a lonely old baggage . . .’

  The door crashed open and Eri half fell into the room. The boy’s face was so white his eyes looked like dark holes, and his lips were grey with shock.

  ‘My darling, what is it?’

  ‘Helcate! He’s sick! I think he’s dying, Vintage, I think . . .’ He stumbled against the door frame, his eyelids flickering ominously. Vintage limped over and took him firmly by the shoulders. Even through the fabric of his shirt he felt too cold.

  ‘Calm yourself, Eri, it will all be fine. Look at me! Good, that’s good. Now, calm down. Take a few breaths, that’s it, that’s it. Where is he?’

  Eri nodded, and took a few more gasps of air, trying to follow her words. She felt a pang of affection for the boy that was as painful as it was sweet.

  ‘In the courtyard. He likes to sleep there now as he’s too big to be comfortable in my room, but it’s just down the corridor from me. I couldn’t sleep, so I went to see him and –’ He gasped again, his crimson eyes too bright in the lamplight. ‘I can’t wake him up.’

  ‘Come on,’ Vintage snatched up her crutch from where it rested against the wall, ‘give me your arm, lad, and we’ll get there all the quicker.’

  The corridors were silent, all the life of Ebora going on either within its rooms or outside in the palace gardens. The courtyard itself, when they got there, was lit with a pair of small oil lamps which Eri diligently lit each evening. Helcate was a furry lump, lying across the stones with his wings untidily spread behind him. Not far away from his snout was a partially demolished wheel of pale cheese. As they approached, Vintage could see that he was breathing, but his eyes were only partially shut; slivers of sky blue peeked out from between his eyelids. When Vintage waved her hand in front of his snout he did not respond, and they got no reaction when she briskly shook his shoulder.

  ‘Why won’t he wake up?’ The boy’s voice was thick, and she could tell he was on the verge of crying again.

  ‘There, don’t take on so, dear.’ She squeezed his arm briefly. ‘Perhaps he has a fever.’

  She pressed her hand to the creature’s forehead, noting as she did so that she didn’t have the faintest idea what temperature war-beasts were supposed to be. His fur there, a curly mixture of blond and copper, felt warm but not worryingly so.

  ‘Your bond with Helcate, Eri. Can you feel anything from him? Have you felt anything strange from him earlier tonight?’

  The boy shuddered all over, and then swallowed. ‘He is far away. Like, he’s lost in a fog. Something in his mouth tastes bad. That’s all I can feel.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Vintage smoothed her hands along the war-beast’s jaw and then down his neck, searching for swellings or obstructions, but found nothing. ‘Is there water for him here, my darling? What does he drink from?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ The boy jumped up and fetched, with little apparent difficulty, a huge bucket brimming with water. He set it down next to her, sloshing it only a little, and she reminded herself that however young he looked, Eri was an Eboran, and significantly stronger than he looked. ‘I filled it up fresh before I went to bed.’

  Vintage dipped her hand in the water and sniffed it. No scents, no strange colour, no burning. ‘My dear, rub some water on his face. Use my handkerchief, if you like.’

  ‘That’s all right.’ Eri stripped off his shirt, revealing his narrow bony chest, and dipped the garment in the water. As he worked at gently wiping the war-beast’s face down – it couldn’t hurt, Vintage reasoned, and it kept the boy busy – she worked her way down the creature’s body, looking for anything out of place. Carefully, she lifted the edge of his wing, and pressed her hand lightly to the mixture of feathers and fur underneath. When she lifted her fingers, they came away daubed with a slippery black fluid – not much, but enough for her to know that Helcate was bleeding in a spot just under his wing.

  ‘Eri, my dear, perhaps you could try trickling some water into Helcate’s mouth? A little water will do him good, I’m certain.’

  The boy nodded, and began gamely wrestling with the war-beast’s snout, while Vintage peered more closely at the thick matt of Helcate’s fur. It was certainly small, a wound no larger than the end of her smallest finger, and the fur around it was damp, as though someone had wiped the area down. Leaning forward, she sniffed carefully; no poisons that she could detect.

  She leaned back awkwardly, the crutch under one arm.

  ‘Eri – ’

  The sky over the courtyard was abruptly filled with orange light, and with it came a chorus of noises; the roar of fire, and the panicked screams of a large number of people.

  ‘Come on!’

  Vintage snatched up her crutch, and together they ran back through the palace. When they got outside, Vintage stumbled to the ornate gates and grasped them fiercely as her legs threatened to pitch her to the ground. The garden forest, that cupped the gardens in its green hands, was ablaze. The people in the caravans and tents were fleeing, some dragging their possessions with them but most leaving everything they had and running for the gates. As she watched, the fire grew higher and higher, curling dangerously towards the walls of the palace itself, and beyond that, Ygseril. She felt her heart stutter in her chest. Which way was the wind blowing? Could something like the tree-god even burn?

  ‘I absolutely do not want to find out.’

  ‘Vintage?’

  ‘Eri, darling . . .’ Her words were drowned out as the fire shuddered with even greater violence. Pieces of burning wood and foliage floated up into the night like fireflies, and several nearby tents turned into torches. ‘Wait! Wait! You there!’ She grabbed a passing man, his hair and beard elaborately braided with stones. ‘The lake, we need to get water from there and put this thing out
, do you hear me?’

  ‘Lady, I am not staying here to burn—’

  ‘Listen!’ She shook his arm violently. ‘If the tree-god goes up in flames, that’s the end for Ebora, and the end for our war-beasts! What do you think will happen then? The fucking worm people, that’s what!’ Vintage shoved him in the chest. ‘Get your people together, get buckets and axes, get water . . .’

  A woman who had been fleeing with the man stepped up next to him. She had a baby clasped to her chest and a short sword at her belt. ‘We need to create a space between the forest and the fire, it’s the only way to stop it now.’

  ‘Yes! Some bloody sense here, thank you – cut down the trees, don’t give it anything to eat up. Go!’

  Other people were having the same idea, and while children and animals were being moved away, men and women were coming back, their arms full of axes and buckets. The fire, meanwhile, was like a demon, roaring in the night. Where there had once been a thicket of beautiful trees, graceful and ancient, there was now a blaze almost too bright to look at; Vintage could feel the heat of it scorching her cheeks and crisping her hair. And it was still growing; as they watched, fat tongues of fire leapt up at the sky, turning the night into day.

  ‘How has it become so fierce so quickly?’ murmured Vintage. ‘I have seen a few forest fires in my time, and they are frighteningly fast, but this is a cold place, a wet place, and no alarm was raised until it was burning far out of anyone’s control . . .’ The words died in her throat. She reached out for Eri and squeezed his arm again, taking some reassurance in his solidity.

  ‘Lady Vintage?’

  ‘My book!’ She shook him lightly. ‘Well, your book, technically. It’s not missing at all, it’s been stolen.’

  ‘I don’t understand. What book?’

  ‘They must think it will tell them how to birth the war-beasts – never mind, come on. Let’s go and see exactly how badly I have fucked up, my dear.’

  The Hatchery was too dark, and the guards were missing from its doors – Vintage did not like to think what had happened to them. The faint fiery light from the windows only served to make the shadows deeper. Eri lit a lamp, and with a sinking heart Vintage followed him down the row of war-beast pods. There were three empty spaces, including the pod that Eri had been convinced would hatch next.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  And the poor lad really didn’t, Vintage realised as she looked at his pale face. His eyes searched the room as though the pods might have rolled off by themselves somewhere.

  ‘The book, a blood sample from Helcate, and three of the most valuable artefacts on Sarn.’ She took a deep, watery breath. ‘And Helcate, our only real chance of pursuing them, drugged. I suppose we can be relieved they didn’t try to take him too. I’ve no doubt they would have killed him if he’d resisted.’

  ‘Lady Vintage? I don’t understand what’s happening.’

  ‘The fire is just a diversion, a way to keep us busy, and of course if it just happens to burn down the palace, that will only increase the value of what they have.’ Turning to Eri, she met his eyes. ‘Eri, what is happening is that I am in a fucking rage, my darling, and someone is going to pay.’

  ‘Why are we out here, Lady Vintage?’

  Eri looked like a ghost in the moonlight, his hair silver and his face white. Vintage summoned up her bravest smile for him; Nanthema had been nowhere to be found, and the boy was her last ally. No sense in scaring him.

  ‘We need to be away from all the light and the fuss, my dear.’ They had walked some distance from the fires, but even so she could still smell the smoke, and the sound of the blaze was an ominous rumble on the edge of hearing. Her ankle was throbbing steadily, but it was a distant thing, unimportant compared to the anxiety curling in her stomach. ‘We have to trust our friends to do what they can to save your palace, I’m afraid. And we have to hope that some old friends of mine will be willing to help us.’

  She slipped the whistle out of her pocket and eyed it doubtfully. The instructions that Noon had given her were clear enough, but Fulcor had been living wild for months, and the great bat had her own young to take care of – it was doubtful she would pay any attention to the summons, let alone allow them to mount her again. Nevertheless, Eri carried the old Winnowry harness in his arms, ready.

  ‘Now then. Think some good thoughts, Eri. We’re going to need them.’ Vintage put the whistle to her lips and blew three short blasts – the summoning notes. They sounded very small and very stupid in the darkness of the trees, and looking for some reassurance, she touched the crossbow at her waist.

  ‘Is something supposed to happen?’ asked Eri. Vintage ignored him, and tried blowing the notes again, putting a bit more welly into it this time. She frowned. Now it just sounded desperate. ‘I would like to go and see if Helcate is awake yet.’

  ‘Just a moment, please, darling, just a moment.’ Vintage held her breath, and listened harder than she ever had in her life. The roar of the distant fire, the small sounds of the woods almost lost underneath it – and there! The leathery sound of wings, like an expensive book dropped from a great height.

  ‘Fulcor!’

  The great bat was a white smudge on the black sky, and then she was diving towards them. Behind Vintage, Eri gave a little shriek, but then Fulcor was on the ground with them, walking awkwardly on her wings, her black eyes bright and shining.

  ‘Old friend! Do you remember me?’ Vintage reached out and rubbed the short velvety fur on the bat’s snout, before slipping some morsels of dried meat from her pocket. Fulcor munched these up merrily enough. ‘Eri, my darling, let’s see if we can get this harness on her, shall we?’

  It wasn’t easy. Living in the wilds of Ebora for months, Fulcor had lost some weight, and they had to fiddle about with the belts and straps for some time before Vintage was satisfied they wouldn’t fall off, and all the while she was horribly aware that their thieves were getting further and further away. Her ankle was no help either, but eventually they were strapped in, with Eri sitting ahead of Vintage – ‘You can see better in the dark, my dear, so I will need you to be lookout for us’ – and with another round of commands from the whistle, they were in the air.

  ‘Wargh,’ said Eri, and then: ‘This isn’t much like flying with Helcate.’

  ‘Hold on to your stomach as best you can,’ said Vintage. Her own innards felt like they had been left behind on the ground, and the take-off had jerked her injured ankle so badly that she’d had to bite her lip to keep from crying out. ‘We are going to have to work quickly, if we’ve any hope of stopping them.’

  Up above Ebora, it was possible to see the true extent of the fire. It was still burning with alarming ferocity, but it had not reached the palace or Ygseril, and Vintage thought she could see a dark line on its nearest edge – people there had cut down the trees, and were flooding the area with water. There was a chance it wouldn’t be a complete disaster.

  ‘They have a lot to carry, but they have good, strong horses, used to carrying heavy loads – and they will be heading south-west, towards the Bloodless Mountains. They may have someone waiting there with fresh mounts, and if we don’t reach them before that, I fear we will lose them as they make their way over the pass. Lots of places to hide there.’ She took a breath, ignoring the tight knot of despair in her chest. Fulcor was heading towards the huge dark mass that was the mountains, a great absence of light against the night sky. ‘But if you saw Helcate awake and chirpy at bedtime, they can’t have gone too far. Keep your clever eyes open, my dear. If you see any movement, tell me.’

  Vintage looked too, and soon found she was continually wiping her eyes as the cold wind pushed and stung. Once, Fulcor gave a piercing squeak that almost sounded like a query and, instinctively, Vintage looked up, but she could see nothing in the night sky ahead of them. The further they flew, the more she became convinced that she had guessed their actions incorrectly; perhaps they had fled on foot, hiding in some cave somewhere until t
he initial search had given up, or had they headed north? There was nothing there of note save the Barren Sea, but it was possible they had chartered a ship to meet them.

  ‘Sarn’s twisted bones,’ muttered Vintage. ‘I bet that’s what they’ve done.’

  ‘Lady Vintage? I saw something. Moving under the trees.’

  ‘Could be wolves . . .’ Vintage sat forward and looked at where Eri was pointing. The forest here was sparser as they got closer to the mountain, but despite the bright moon and clear night it was very dark. She waited, biting her lip, and then a paler shape caught her eye; a grey horse, moving steadily through the trees, with a rider. Next to it were the dark shapes of four more horses, two with riders and two heavily loaded with bags. Vintage guessed they had used much of their energy in the initial flight, and were now giving their horses a chance to breathe. One of the riders shifted on their mount, and for a moment a hood fell back to reveal blond hair that was almost white. The woman snatched it back up, but it was enough.

  ‘Well, fuck me,’ murmured Vintage. She had been expecting the Yuron-Kai – they had been missing from their rooms, and they had been intent on taking the pods for themselves, after all. But in truth, poison and misdirection was hardly their style. On some deeper level she wasn’t surprised. She wasn’t surprised at all.

  ‘Vintage?’

  ‘Don’t worry, Eri, this will soon be sorted. Fulcor, quietly please, and not right on top of them.’

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Vintage pressed her hand to the crossbow at her belt. The truth was, of course, that she did not know. Could she kill them? One of them was a child. But there was still the chance the war-beast pods could hatch, and that could be the turning point in defeating the Jure’lia – she couldn’t let them just be lost.