‘I know, here, on my face.’
Her smile softened his heart. Calmed him.
A knock at the door made them both jerk round to stare at it.
‘My Lord?’
It was Osidian’s voice. Carnelian waved Poppy back into the corner, then opened the door and stood blocking the doorway. Osidian frowned. ‘Why are you still masked?’
Carnelian pointed back into the cell with his head. ‘The homunculus…’
Osidian pulled back into the shadows. ‘How did it go today?’
‘I’ll tell you up by the heliograph over food.’ Carnelian saw that Osidian had already removed his leathers. ‘You go up and I’ll be there shortly.’
Osidian’s frown was deepening as Carnelian closed the door. He waited to hear him walk away, then confronted Poppy. ‘You can slip out of here now.’
Poppy smiled at him. He knew only too well how stubborn she could be. ‘Have it your own way. I don’t have the time to deal with this now. You stay here, but make sure you don’t make a sound.’ He glanced at the homunculus. Hopefully he would sleep a little longer.
‘Who’s that? I took a peek under his mask. He looks very old.’
‘Never mind him. Just help me change.’
‘Where’s the homunculus?’ Osidian asked Carnelian as he appeared at the edge of the heliograph platform.
‘In a drugged sleep. Did you expect me to ride around all day with him sitting on my lap?’
Osidian’s eyebrows rose. ‘I thought you said-’
Carnelian realized his mistake too late. ‘Forget what I said. We’ve more important matters to deal with.’ He sank to the platform so that the bowls of food lay between them. Then he began to describe the changes he had made to the way the Lepers were organized.
Osidian grew increasingly aghast. ‘But without a deep command hierarchy they will lose all tactical flexibility.’
‘Tactical flexibility? We’ll be lucky if we even achieve a modicum of military capability. Have you seen how they’re armed? And fewer than a third of them are mounted.’
As Carnelian saw Osidian’s eyes dulling, he became concerned he might lose the Lepers to him. ‘I have some notions as to how we might get round that problem, but I want to make sure we agree on this issue of tactical flexibility. You do not intend to use them interspersed among your huimur, do you?’
Osidian shook his head. ‘They would be cremated.’
‘As I thought. So you’ll be using them on your wings?’
‘Probably.’
‘Well, I’ll give you two independently controllable wings and, though they may not be up to any complicated manoeuvring, they should be able to stand up against Aurum’s auxiliaries.’
Watching Osidian considering this, Carnelian wondered if he would be able to deliver on his promise. ‘I’ve faith, Osidian, that you’ll be able to come up with tactics that will accommodate these limitations.’
‘Perhaps. What about the Marula?’
Carnelian smiled and shifted to Quya: ‘I am sure my Lord can find a better use for them than to act as an impenetrable barrier between himself in his huimur tower and the Lepers on the ground.’
Osidian nodded, but he was already sinking into contemplation. Carnelian was initially glad of this, then found it only served to bring to the fore his rising anxiety about Poppy. Not only was the homunculus down there, but also Legions and the other Sapients. What was he going to do with her?
Poppy was waiting for him, smiling.
‘Here,’ he said, offering her some hri wafers that he had saved from his meal with Osidian. She put the food down without even glancing at it. Her eyes seemed to be trying to see past the mask as if it were mist.
‘You must return to Fern and the others.’
Carnelian expected a protest, but Poppy’s smile did not change. He began to list all the reasons why she must return. The disfigurement of the tattoo; the irreversibility of her joining his household; the unlikelihood that he would ever in fact return to the Mountain, never mind the difficulty of getting her there too; that even if they managed it, life there for her would be far from what she might imagine; that not only she, but he too would be severely restricted by the Law; that she had no appreciation of how truly vast was the difference between their ranks. He fell silent, unnerved by the fact that Poppy’s smile seemed to have withstood his onslaught unchanged. ‘You would end up separated from Fern… and Krow,’ he added as an afterthought.
‘Not if they were also to join your household,’ she said.
That knocked Carnelian completely off-balance. Poppy seemed to have no doubt they would. He almost asked her what made her think that Fern would want to follow them to Osrakum, but something within him did not want to have that answered. ‘Even if all of this were to work out, even if we were all to end up in the Mountain together, one day I would succeed my father and thereafter you would never see my face again…’
Poppy’s smile thinned on her lips. Her eyes grew intense. ‘Look, there’s no point in going on about the things that could go wrong; I’m well experienced in how things can go wrong. What of it? At least we’d be able to spend what time there’s left together. And if we get to the Mountain, I’ll just have to learn to live with what we’re allowed. Where do you think I’m going to have a better life?’
‘Among the Lepers…’
She frowned and shook her head, tears in her eyes. ‘I’ve tried that. I don’t want to live there without my family.’
Carnelian felt his heart clench at that word.
‘Besides,’ she said, forcing her tears back with another smile, ‘I want to do something now. Something useful. If a battle’s coming, I don’t want to watch everyone else getting ready for it and do nothing myself. I can at least look after you and, perhaps, I can act as a link between you and the Lepers. By being here I’ve proved how easy it is for me to pass through the Marula. They’re used to me having access to you and so is everyone else. No one will notice me, either here or there.
‘The Master-’
Her eyes flashed. ‘I’m beneath his notice. If you tell him I’m yours, he won’t touch me.’
Carnelian considered that and thought she was probably right.
‘I’m a woman now and can make my own decisions.’
He noticed how, indeed, she had grown taller; how her face was growing oval, her breasts swelling. If not a woman yet, she was also not a child. He wondered how this change had come upon her so young; then recalled that some orchids, threatened with death, flower early. It made him sad that it might be the pressures of her life that had snatched away what little childhood she might have had left. He had to ignore that, and the hope in her eyes, to focus instead on working out what he must do. His heart leapt at the thought that he might keep her with him. He regarded her. It felt right in his bones. He reached up and began to remove his mask. As it came off he breathed a sigh of relief.
‘Carnie!’
She launched into him and he caught her, kneeling to embrace her. She pushed away and gazed at his face in wonder and her tears started his.
At last they disengaged, wiping tears, suddenly a little shy of each other.
‘Who’s that?’ Poppy said, pointing at the homunculus.
Carnelian tried to explain.
‘I thought he was a boy until I looked under his mask.’
‘He’s probably older than any Elder.’
Poppy gave him an anxious glance. ‘Did you kill him?’
‘Kill?’ Carnelian laughed. ‘He’s not dead, merely sleeping.’ Poppy gave him a look of disbelief. ‘Really. I made him take a sleeping drug.’
Poppy’s eyes grew sharp. ‘He has something to do with those things next door?’
Carnelian saw she was pointing to the wall, beyond which lay the Sapients in their capsules. ‘You didn’t open them, did you?’
She shook her head quickly in a way that made her look very much like a little girl. ‘I didn’t dare…’
He tried to
explain who was inside.
Poppy grew pale. ‘Childgatherers.’
‘Their masters.’
Seeing her fear, he felt a jab of panic. Poppy saw this and reached out to take his arm, smiling. ‘Don’t worry about me.’
He put his hand over hers and drew her towards the bed, where they sat side by side, with the homunculus behind them. He wanted to ask her so many things, but he needed time to marshal his feelings. ‘Tell me about Krow.’
She turned to him, smiling. ‘You’ve noticed how different he is.’
Carnelian nodded. ‘I suppose I have.’
‘He’s a lot happier,’ she said, with a warmth that Carnelian had never seen her show towards the youth. He asked her to tell him, from the beginning, what had happened between them.
‘Well, when you left’ – she gave him a sharp look that made him laugh, but then seized his hand and clung to it – ‘we were forced into each other’s company a lot. There was no one much else to talk to. I grew used to him, but there was always the…’ She regarded Carnelian with haunted eyes.
‘The massacre.’
She swallowed. ‘Yes, that lay between us. However much I wanted to like him, it was there. Until one day I asked him about it.’
She frowned, unaware she was kneading his arm, staring at the ground as if seeing something far away. ‘For days he stayed away from me, until one day he came and told me everything.’
‘Confession can be unburdening,’ Carnelian said.
‘Yes, it was a confession of sorts. He did help the Master in the killing.’ Poppy turned to look Carnelian in the eye. ‘But only because Akaisha begged him to.’
‘Akaisha…?’ Carnelian thought about it.
‘I think she knew it was the only way to save him from the Master.’
‘And she wanted him to carry a message to us.’
‘And he did.’
‘And we ignored him,’ Carnelian said. He let out a groan. ‘Why didn’t he tell us?’
The sadness that came into Poppy’s eyes was answer enough.
‘He still did help.’
Poppy nodded. ‘It took me a while to persuade him that he could have done nothing more than he did, that he was not responsible for the killing.’
Carnelian understood and smiled. ‘No wonder he looks so different.’
‘Yes, he is different,’ Poppy said, her face suffused with a warmth that displayed how she now felt about Krow.
Carnelian was happy for them both, but this feeling faded as the pressure built up to ask another question. ‘And Fern?’
‘Oh, you can imagine that was hard. Though his body had recovered by then, his spirit seemed to have fled him, but I worked on him and, eventually, he came round to forgiving Krow. At least, he seems to have; it’s difficult to say what he feels. He’s so closed now.’
She had misunderstood his question. Carnelian tried again. ‘You implied earlier that he might want to enter my household…’
She searched his eyes, then grimaced. ‘I’m not really sure about that. But, surely, there’s hope in him wanting to come up with the Lepers?’
Carnelian dropped his gaze, trying to hide his disappointment. He bit his tongue, which would have said: hatred could have motivated him to do that. ‘What about Lily?’ he asked, wanting to talk about something else.
‘What about her?’
It was no good, he could not drag his thoughts away from Fern. He rose. ‘It’s time to sleep.’ He looked around the cell and then back at the bed.
‘Let me stay here with you,’ Poppy said.
Carnelian nodded. She would be safer. He glanced again at the bed with the homunculus lying on it. In the past he and Poppy would have shared it, but she was getting too old for that. He thought of giving her the bed and making another for himself on the floor, but this was to set a precedent that could only lead to trouble. He found a cupboard that had some blankets in it. He threw these to her and smiled, indicating the floor. ‘Wherever you want.’
She glanced at the bed, then gave him a nod. As she made herself comfortable, Carnelian lifted the homunculus and transferred him to his nest of blankets. He kissed Poppy good night, then dowsed the lamp and lay back on his bed. The murmur of the camp rose through the night. He wondered if he had done the right thing by letting her join him. He listened for her breathing. When he heard it, it soothed him. It was the most at home he had felt for a long time.
When he set off the next morning, he left the homunculus in Poppy’s care. She had insisted that she could do it. When the little man had woken, they had gazed at each other warily. Carnelian had told the homunculus he had a choice. Either he agreed to her supervision, or else he would have to be drugged. Clearly perplexed by the relationship the Master had with this strange girl, the homunculus elected to remain awake.
As Carnelian led the Lepers out, his body ached all over from the riding on the previous day. He nominated Krow to be his liaison with Lily and Fern. As he gave the youth instructions, he took time to reassure him that Poppy was safe with him. Krow was clearly relieved. ‘I wasn’t sure it was a good idea, but you know what she’s like.’
Carnelian wished his mask did not stop Krow seeing that he too was grinning. ‘Yes, I know what she’s like.’
After that, in spite of being on either side of the mask, they were easy with each other. With the help of Krow, Fern and Lily, Carnelian divided the Lepers into two wings. Fern was to command one, Lily the other. Riding with a wing on either hand, Carnelian began the weary process of making them battle-ready.
He had to be content with slow progress. He came to understand that, even had he been able to find an aquar for every one of them, they would never become an effective mounted force. Not enough of them were natural riders. One day, in discussion with Fern and Lily, it occurred to him that perhaps their focus was all wrong. He asked the others if they felt that the Lepers would be happier fighting on foot. Lily said, with some emotion, that her people would be much happier. That evening Carnelian explained his idea to Osidian, who reluctantly agreed. The following day he had the Lepers modify their saddle-chairs so that they were more like those of the Plainsmen. The most important addition was a crossbar, but longer than a Plainsman one. As well as its rider, each aquar could now carry two more Lepers, hanging from either end of its crossbar. These pairs were matched closely in weight so that they would not unbalance their aquar. It took some practice, but soon, for the first time, the Leper force was able to move in a body without leaving stragglers. It was only then that Carnelian began to train them to fight in hornwalls. They improvised spears and shields by tearing apart abandoned sartlar kraals. To his satisfaction, the Lepers took to the new training well. Soon they were forming solid, bristling walls.
One afternoon he returned to the watch-tower well satisfied. That day the Lepers had swept forward in their two wings; at his signal, they had dismounted and, with almost no problems, had formed up into hornwall rings. These were not perfect and were of different sizes as each contained a single settlement contingent, but their shields had locked in an overlapping wall over which their rough spears had bristled, a hedge of fire-hardened points.
Poppy was waiting for him with a smile. These days even the homunculus smiled. Gradually, he and Poppy had lost their wariness of each other. Sometimes, they seemed almost to be friends. With his help, Poppy had transformed their cell. It smelled sweeter. Each day she and the homunculus brought up water with which they could wash a little. She prepared food for them both. Sometimes she would spend the night with Fern and Krow, and Carnelian would miss her. The homunculus perhaps did too. Certainly, one time, he had asked Carnelian when the ‘mistress’ was going to return. Often Carnelian found himself smiling at his strange new ‘family’.
That night when, as usual, he ate with Osidian beside the heliograph, Carnelian told him he thought the Lepers ready to be combined with his huimur. Osidian raised a brow. Carnelian had been resisting his urging for this for quite some time. Osi
dian gave a nod. Carnelian had some idea of how the training of the dragons had been going. The crews and the new commanders had settled in well enough for Osidian to begin exploring ways in which he could combine the flame-pipes. Carnelian was not certain what it was Osidian was attempting to achieve, but he seemed focused on some particular goal. Sometimes, while with the Lepers, he had noticed some smoke smearing against the heat-white sky. Osidian had been sparing with his naphtha and had made sure to use different dragons for his experiments. It was unlikely that they would have enough time to take them back to Makar to replenish their tanks.
So it was that Carnelian brought the Lepers to join Osidian’s dragons. The Lepers formed in their wings on either end of the dragon line. Day after day he and Osidian laboured to coordinate them, the Lepers learning to respond to simple mirror signals from the towers. Each night the Lepers returned coated red with dust. The dragons too, so that sometimes they seemed carved from sandstone, only their towers remaining pale upon their backs.
One day Carnelian noticed that Morunasa and the Oracles had all disappeared. That night, frowning, Osidian confessed they had retired into the stables to birth their maggots. With a shudder, Carnelian remembered them emerging from Osidian’s wounds. Even high in his cell, Carnelian felt too close to the filthy thing that was going on down in the bowels of the watch-tower.
The manoeuvres had long ago driven the sartlar from a great swathe of land to the west of the watch-tower. Without their labour, the fields were not watered. The hri had yellowed, then dried brown. The constant passage of aquar and dragons had broken its dead grip on the land. Every movement churned up great choking clouds of dust. At first these had drifted slowly into the south-west, but more recently the breeze had failed. After that every day was spent navigating through red mist. From the watch-tower each morning, the land looked like a sea. Carnelian tried not to see in this the sea of blood that inundated his dreams.
Craning forward in his command chair, Carnelian was watching with pride as the Lepers’ line kept pace with Earth-is-Strong. Through the murk he could see its blade curving away with only some nicks along its edge.
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