“Go to hell, Krellen.”
Damn, Rossi. Who gave a shit about him? “YEMELYAN!”
Nothing.
Return, Guyen sent.
No reply. Where was Toulesh? It was the damn rakha. They couldn’t connect. Guyen fought the drunkenness, willing the apparition into existence. A vague blur appeared over the water. At last.
Find Rikesh.
Toulesh vanished.
Seconds later, he reappeared, brighter and more substantial, circling a spot on the water several yards away. Guyen swam over. Yemelyan bobbed lifelessly on his back.
“Yem? Are you all right?”
He offered no reply. At least his mouth was out of the water. Guyen grabbed him around the neck and struck off towards shore, heading towards the shipyard. But drunk, fully clothed, in boots, there was no way to fight the current, it took every ounce of effort to even stay afloat. He couldn’t keep this up for long. The current carried them further into the estuary. The bank receded. They were being swept out to sea.
Something heavy crashed into them, almost pulling them under. Guyen grabbed hold—a section of bridge. He caught a stray rope, winding it around his arm, and held on for dear life.
The cliffs rushed by, jagged silhouettes against the ghostly super moon.
10
Quick Justice
The floating bridge section hit the east side of the estuary, catching on boulders at the base of the cliff. Another twenty yards and they’d have been swept out to sea. Purchase came underfoot and a last shot of adrenalin imparted enough energy to scramble clear of the water, dragging Yemelyan behind him. Guyen collapsed, retching from so many mouthfuls of salty water. In the distance, what remained of the Impossible Bridge hung from the cliffs like withered limbs, the giant, watching moon catching jagged edges in glittering silver.
Finding energy from somewhere, he forced himself up to examine his brother. Weak breath warmed the back of his hand. Somehow, he was alive. Relief flooded up, then fear again. “Yem? Can you hear me?”
Nothing. Dead to the world.
The bridge section dislodged itself and disappeared into the night.
This was dire. Yemelyan was too heavy to carry, especially drunk over slippery rocks. It was pointless trying to attract attention—the ringing bells and commotion around the clifftops was too far away. They could stay put, wait for him to wake up, but what if he didn’t? He’d get the chills. Mother would know about the bridge by now. Would she think they’d been on it? The only certainty was that if Yemelyan died, it would be the end for her too.
One option remained—go for help, but Yemelyan needed stabilising first, and cold was his biggest enemy. Dried-up seaweed clung on above a hollow in the rocks, so Guyen dragged him up there, stripped his wet clothes, and covered him as best he could. Taking careful note of where they were so he might find the spot again, he clambered upwards.
The way was unnavigable back towards town, so he rounded the headland instead, picking his way across slippery boulders at a frustratingly slow pace until he got to where the gorse grew. A worn path appeared, probably a smugglers track. He followed it, gnarled, knotted roots conspiring to trip him, as unidentified, scurrying critters dived out of the way of his squelching boots. He emerged onto the clifftop. It was a long way back to town from here, and who would help him there? No one. He turned in the opposite direction, setting off eastwards at a sprint.
Ten minutes later, he hammered on the hexium’s heavy iron gate.
The night-watchman appeared. “Get out of it,” he whipped. “Don’t you know what time it is?”
Guyen grabbed his jacket, desperate. “I need Dalrik,” he panted. “Quick. It’s an emergency. Tell him it’s Livia’s son.”
The man hesitated. “Wait here.” He strode into the nearest building. A moment later, Dalrik pushed outside, the watchman trailing. “What is it, lad?” he called.
“I need help!” Guyen shouted.
He bustled up. “Don’t just stand there,” he said to the other man, “let him in.”
The night-watchman pulled some keys from his belt, unlocking the giant padlock securing the chain, as Guyen gushed an explanation through the bars. Dalrik remained calm, quickly issuing orders. A cart and several men on horseback formed out of the darkness. Dalrik pulled him up onto a black stallion and they rode out, heading back down the coast road under the gaze of the watchful moon. A few minutes later, they were scrambling down the smugglers track. Guyen took the lead, urging haste. How long had it been now? An hour?
Dalrik followed behind, questioning him. Why couldn’t he keep his attention on the path? Time was of the essence. “Destroyed?” the Sendali repeated, hardly out of breath. “The bridge is gone?”
“Yes,” Guyen said, stumbling over a root, “the ropes snapped.”
“I wouldn’t have thought that possible.”
Neither did you. “Here, this is it,” Guyen panted, recognising a bush. This was where he’d joined the path. He ventured back onto the rocks, the strangers following, uncomplaining. A new worry surfaced—it all looked so generically bleak around here. Would he be able to find the same spot again? However, navigating the slippery boulders was easier with a lit torch, and his memory was precise. Ten minutes later, they found the hollow. Yemelyan slept, still dead to the world, breaths sharp and weak, but alive at least.
“You did well,” Dalrik said, examining him. “We need to get him warm though.” He signalled the two men accompanying them, burly Flags players who’d been keeping a late night appointment at the hexium. They lifted Yemelyan onto their stretcher, and set briskly off across the rocks. Guyen scrambled wearily after them, Dalrik bringing up the rear.
They emerged onto the clifftop and transferred Yemelyan into the back of the waiting cart.
“We’ll use the Canyon’s healer,” Dalrik said, mounting his horse. “He’s a lot better than those quacks in town.”
“Thank you for helping.”
“It’s the least I can do,” he said. Whatever that meant.
Guyen got in beside Yemelyan and they set off. They arrived at the hexium a short while later and carried Yemelyan to a room used for operating on injured players. His pulse was weak. He was ice cold. They wrapped him in warm blankets. “You’ll not be going home tonight,” Dalrik said, feeding the fire with extra logs. “Don’t worry, I’ll get a message to your mother.”
The healer soon arrived and set about seeing to Yemelyan’s injuries. Swapping the blankets regularly for hot ones, he slowly warmed, but showed no signs of consciousness despite the healer’s smelling salts. There was still no sign of Rikesh. Dalrik ordered one of the night staff to open up the kitchen and fish soup was brought in.
“What happened?” he asked, breaking some bread.
“I told you,” Guyen said. “The bridge collapsed and we fell in.”
“And the bruises? It looks like he’s been in a fight.”
There was no point hiding the night’s events. In between mouthfuls of salty soup, he told all.
Dalrik shook his head in disbelief, his expression unguarded consternation. “There will be kickback on this. The cadet’s father is a colonel with the Third Dragoons—Rossi—I know that family, litigious to a fault.”
“They started it.”
“Let us just pray he made it out of the water.” Guyen sagged in the chair. Dalrik offered a sympathetic smile. “For now, you sleep. We’ll sort the rest out in the morning.”
Guyen curled gratefully up on a makeshift mattress in front of the fire to do just that. Moth Canyon’s healer stayed awake, watching them from a recliner in the corner. For the first time in a long time, this felt like safety. A thought nagged though—whatever had happened on that bridge, these catastrophes were becoming a pattern. And he was at the centre of them all.
He awoke, foggy, a few hours later, aching all over. Mother appeared soon after dawn, beside herself with worry. “I think we must be cursed,” she said in between sobs. That went without saying.
>
They took Yemelyan back to the cottage, crossing the Tal by boat. Two Flags players, a half-forward and one of the shell team, carried the stretcher to bemused looks from the local kids, striking up a battle chant as they passed, much to their fans’ delight. Inside the cottage, they laid him on the bed and a Krellen nurse attended. After a short conversation, Dalrik and the Flags players left. Several hours later, with the aid of a potent liquid distilled from a local herb, the nurse managed to bring him round, in a fashion—he was dazed and confused, talking gibberish. He soon drifted back into unconsciousness.
The next day, one of the town quacks came out to see him. The old man, a Doctor Renzo, wore a tall black hat and carried a cane in one hand, a surgeon’s bag in the other. He scanned the cottage, wrinkling his nose in disgust, before carefully placing his bag on the table, then complaining he’d had to get a boat across the river. He spent a while redressing the muttering Yemelyan’s wounds and testing him with leeches for gods-knew-what before giving his diagnosis.
“It doesn’t look good,” he said to Mother. “He seems not to know where he is, or who he is.”
“He’ll recover though?” Mother didn’t hide her desperation.
“It depends what the cause is, madam. But you should prepare for the worst. It is possible he has lost his Binding.”
Her breath caught. “No.” She dismissed the suggestion. “It’s just a fever. You’ll not tell anyone.”
The doctor pursed his lips. “I’m afraid the statutes compel me to report such peculiarities.”
“He was perfectly fine until this.”
“Well, it’s not for me to say.” He buckled his bag. “The cost for the visit is sixty marks.”
“Yes, of course.” Mother nodded over. Guyen stomped to the tin in the larder.
Cut off from the rest of town by the loss of the bridge, the Krellen working men on the west bank could not fulfil their drab, off-license jobs, and relations with the Sendali locals soon became strained. Merchant caravans from the west piled up in the quarter, causing more friction. Necessity being the mother of invention, a ferryman named Gerundus set up on the headland and goods crossed the Tal by boat. This involved a precarious journey down a little-used, rock-strewn path in the west cliff, and Krellen youths carrying boxes in long trains, paid for their trouble in tabac and spices. The consequence for Guyen was a four copper toll every day, leaving a pittance from his meagre wages for food and fuel. There was no option but to turn up at the foundry though, or he’d certainly be arrested for Assignment skipping.
Forced to take the ferry every day, news surfaced from other parts of the country. On the third week using the services of Gerundus, he sat in the boat with two spice merchants heading to the east bank on their way to Ranatland.
“You hear about that High Lord Glazer?” one said to the other.
“Glazer?” The merchant blew tabac smoke in Guyen’s face. “No, what of him?”
“Dead.”
The man whistled. “Ages! What happened?”
“His whole household was butchered. Carnage, they say. The residence was more like a slaughterhouse when they found it. Talk is, a horde of Unbound got in.”
“Unbound? Here in Sendal?”
“That’s what I heard.”
“Piffle.” The merchant didn’t look convinced, and you couldn’t blame him, atrocities like that weren’t supposed to happen in a civilised, controlled country like Sendal. Redcoats slaughtered the madmen in Krell so the citizenry didn’t have to at home. But the way the merchant talked on the subject, it didn’t sound like the first time such a thing had happened.
Yemelyan had improved little these past few weeks, periods of wakefulness lengthening, but lucidity decreasing if anything. When his eyes were open, he made no sense, the madness growing within him. The possible cause, that this was the maddenings, that he was losing his Binding, went unspoken. When Guyen wasn’t at work, he sat with him, talking, hoping for a sight of Rikesh, but none came. The simulacrum had vanished.
An investigation into the bridge concluded the ropes had weakened through age. The locals who’d worked on its construction five years earlier derided that idea. However, Guyen was summoned to visit the local Justice, a minor lord by the name of Bartholm, to answer for the fight. Rossi’s family had made a formal complaint.
As there was no sitting court in Tal Maran, Guyen called on Justice Bartholm at his grand house on Hangman’s Hill, on the southern outskirts of town. It was a beautiful day, the weather warmer, the view majestic—luscious green forest stretching off to the east, the Tal winding its way south like a turquoise snake sewn on a patchwork quilt. A servant showed him into a lobby to wait. A lavish grandfather clock sat up against the wall, an expensive timepiece like all clocks in the Feyrlands powered by Faze mechanics. Toulesh took the opposite seat, thrumming his fingers on the window sill. Guyen’s own bored hands found the once-lucky silver. Part of him wondered whether he shouldn’t just throw it away, it was probably cursed. He stared at it, spinning it on the leather armrest. It landed randomly, all the magic gone.
He glanced at the door. Still nothing. The Justice was letting him stew.
He examined the coin more closely. It was pitted and tarnished from use, worn more on the harps side. That it had stopped working confirmed his suspicions it was linked to the broken trunk. The trunk had to have been a Faze device. If only he understood how it worked. His thoughts wandered. What was he doing with his life? Would Yemelyan recover? How long could they go on?
A pulsing, chiming sound pulled his attention back to the here and now. Where was that coming from? The clock? No, it seemed inside his head, part of the clamour. He looked back at the coin, or at least tried to, it wouldn’t come into focus. He glanced at the potted plant beside him, making out hairs and veins on its leaves. Nothing wrong with his eyes then. He glared at the coin, unable to block out the sound. Was he going mad? The metal felt smooth. And cold. He checked the other side. It was identical—just a blurred silver disc.
A cough at the door made him jump. The Justice regarded him with a disapproving stare. Guyen glanced guiltily down at the coin, but it looked like a regular silver again now. And the strange sound was gone. He palmed the coin, getting to his feet. “My lord.”
“If you’d be so kind as to join me?” the Justice drawled.
Taking one last look at the coin, and seeing nothing out of the ordinary, he pocketed it and followed Bartholm into his office. Dusty portraits lined the wood-panelled room.
“Sit,” the Justice said, indicating a black leather chair. He opened a file on his desk. Toulesh appeared at the window, face pressed up against the glass. “You’ll be aware complaints have been made against you?”
“Unfounded ones,” Guyen said. “Yes.”
Bartholm frowned. “Well, I have decided to issue you a caution.” His brisk tone suggested he wanted to get on with his day. “I cannot say you were responsible for the altercation,” he said, “as from what I gather from witnesses, it was your brother who instigated things and, well, he is in no position to answer for himself at this time, but be warned, Yorkov, your card is marked.”
And that was it.
This was a bit of good luck for a change. He’d expected to be punished for something, maybe even charged with destroying the bridge. He’d relived the moment time had stopped, that pause in reality when he’d willed Rossi’s blade into missing. He’d done something, he just knew it.
The days passed and nothing much changed. Despite examining the fake silver at regular intervals, it remained just an irregular coin. And Yemelyan remained strange. When Guyen returned home from the foundry one Ebbensday—it was the third week of Neyn now, he was tired and hungry, but as he was about to push through the backdoor, raised voices came from within. Their landlord, a snake of a Sendali, argued with Nazhedra in the parlour.
“Perhaps I should take your daughter to work for me in lieu of rent?”
“I will get up to date, Mori, I promise.�
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Guyen burst in. Mori whipped round, wilting upon seeing him. He turned back to Nazhedra. “Well, see that you do. The offer is there though.” He smiled at Evgeniya. She looked nervously down at the table.
Guyen escorted the snake outside, impolitely, and lingered by the garbage pile, watching as he called on the next cottage. Evgeniya appeared with the bucket. “He’s not a nice man.”
“No, I don’t think he is.”
“Will I have to go work for him?”
“It won’t come to that.”
She didn’t look persuaded. At this rate, they’d need to talk to Dalrik. Mother earned little, Nazhedra likewise, the girls the odd drucket here and there, sewing, washing and cleaning. They wouldn’t have enough to cover their rent arrears and Mori’s patience would soon run out.
“Here,” Evgeniya said. She held out a new tricorne. “Since you lost the last one.” She rolled her eyes.
He took it, unable to suppress a broad smile. She’d taken some time over this one, the felt treated, a feather motif embroidered around the brim. “It’s amazing,” he gushed. “Twice as good. Thank you.” He gave her a hug and fitted it on his head.
She nodded approvingly. “I knew it would suit you.”
He tapped the bucket. “Come on, I’ll give you a hand.”
They wandered over to the well. A woman filled her pail, a yappy dog nipping at her ankles. It bounded over to play. Guyen petted it, throwing its saliva-coated stick several times. Eventually, the woman trudged away with her water, the over-excitable pooch under her feet.
“He scratched me today,” Evgeniya said, tying the bucket to the winch.
“Yemelyan?”
“Yes, he’s getting worse.” She paused. “What’s wrong with him?”
Guyen avoided her eyes. “He’s recovering from his injuries. He’ll get better soon. I’m sure of it.” He winched the bucket down, feeling the rope tighten as it filled with water. It came back up and he rested it on the ledge, untying the cord. Evgeniya went to pick it up. He grabbed the handle. “No, I’ll take it.”
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