The Gauntlet and the Broken Chain, page 12
The knight spent the day examining the orb alone, and Ruemar spent the day resting in the infirmary, though with his benediction she felt far stronger than she had before – after her previous flights in the orb. She had a room alone, and lay on the low nest nook and stroked the four wands she had taken from the demons. Each had an identical handle, ten inches of dark black metal – starmetal. Starmetal rocks dotted the southern coast of Undal, and the seabed and reefs of the Wind Sea. Strewn there on a night of fire so long ago it was known only in song; a night when the stars themselves fell, scattering across the Wind Sea and the wider world.
Ruemar inspected the gems one by one visually, and then within the true current. Runes she did not recognise, runes wrought on and within the crystal, together forming pattern. A red gem that would bring her flame, blue that would cut fine like a blade. The purple gems pushed a wall of force outward, like a gale, and the green sent any waking in its path to sleep. Ruemar had not long studied the true current with her broodmother when the orb had taken her – she had looked, and touched a little, but always held herself back the way she had been told. Long after dark she was still nestled in her nook, when the door opened.
The Unnamed Knight was there, a cloak of black sharkskin covering his shoulders with the hood raised over the smooth metal of his helm. His spear was slung at his shoulder in a leather harness.
‘I would have you fly me, Ruemar daughter of Leomar. If you are willing.’
Ruemar nodded her assent. Together they descended the quiet spiral of the shardspire, damp coral underfoot. The knight asked a stream of questions, pausing after each that she might consider her answer.
‘Must the light shine for it to fly? The field of silence that surrounds it, can you adjust its strength or diameter? How high have you travelled? How fast? Have you fired the weapons? What other abilities do you suspect of it?’
Ruemar answered as best she could. She did not know; she did not know. Above the clouds, faster than any bird or ship. No, she did not know. She felt a fool. The expression of the knight was unreadable behind his helm, and as they crossed the reef city together Ruemar felt a strange sense of calm descend in the long silences between his questions. The city was empty so late at night, quiet and dark. Red crab scuttled amongst the leftover mess of the street vendors, and clicked their claws in challenge at the passing Tullioch with utmost bravado.
The guards bowed to the knight when the two of them reached the courtyard, and inside the orb sat still and dark, black stone and hazy crystal on spindly legs of metal. The walls of the reef city held back the wind, and above Ruemar could see only stars – it was a clear enough night that she could see the great current cutting behind and through the stars, that band of light pressing ever on through the blackness above.
‘Come, daughter,’ the knight said, and together they walked up the ramp. He gestured for her to take the pilot’s chair, and he took the chair next to it, marvelling as it and the wand attached to it swivelled around the strip of crystal, the metal of the chair attached to a strip of metal circling the inside of the hull just below the crystal. All of it moved so smoothly, with no clear mechanisms.
Ruemar held the helmet of the orb in her hand and stared down at it.
‘Will we help them?’ she asked, and the knight stopped his play and turned to her.
‘I would give you the power to fly, if you would take it, daughter.’
Ruemar nodded, and as the strange metal of the helmet folded and melded itself around her skull, she dropped into the skein and felt the power flowing from the Unnamed Knight into her. She shivered and let her connection go – she did not need it to fly, needed only thought and her hands, her eyes. The light flared on, that bright white glow suffusing the courtyard, and through the crystal strip Ruemar looked at the guards and willed the ship to move upward. She still wasn’t sure if it was her hands on the slick metal controls or her mind and her will, but the ship did what she wanted. The controls were intuitive, like guiding a child by the hand. There was the softest clunk below as three metal legs folded softly into the light-infused stone, and then they were rising into the night sky.
In starlight the reef city was a wonder – the walls of it were patterned like waves, and as the orb rose higher and Ruemar looked down, the city looked like the mouth of a great clam, rippling streets keeping direction with the waves around. The shardspire was unlit save the occasional dim flicker where perhaps a candle or a bulb of luminescent plankton glowed through the slit of a window, the tower blocking out at first half the sky and then less and less as they rose, and Ruemar ran the orb in a wide circle around the spire, upward and upward, stopping to hover at its sheer top – the wound had long since been scarred over and shored up with new coral colonies, grafts of polyps from the sunlit reefs – the flatness of the shearing slice that toppled the tower slowly turned into something more natural with the accretion of more coral, of more life.
As she flew close around, the glow from the orb cast shadows on the endless intricacies and mottles of the coral tower, tiny shadows combining and moving. There was only a hint of the wonderful colour that one could see in daylight, brief glances of variegated red and yellow and green. Glancing down she could see where the broken shard had fallen so long before, scars still clear in the rippled topography of the city streets below – those shards were part of the city now, integrated as tunnel and wall and home. The scars were as much a part of the city as any wall or strut or pillar.
‘Take us up,’ the knight said quietly, and Ruemar smiled at him and clicked her teeth. It was so much easier with whatever he was feeding into her – the orb still took, she could still feel it wearing on her, but she was bolstered. I could do this forever. She began to rise gently, but then as they picked up speed she upended the orb so she was facing upward, the weight of her own body pressing back into the chair. There were little straps that could be secured, and she had tied two loosely around her waist. She used the speed of the orb itself to keep her pressed to her chair, up and up and up again, up towards the stars.
There were no clouds. Finally she levelled out and looked out across the Wind Sea – in every direction, the waters spread, the reef city a point of pale shadow in the darkness below them. The orb held its place in the sky perfectly – it was strange to not feel the push of the tireless winds. She could not see the coral caverns of the Deepfarrow in the west, or the other clan holds across the reefs. Everywhere, waves were breaking, breaking on those intricate wild reefs that gave them shelter and food, keeping them free. She spotted a mote of light and squinted downward. A ship’s night lantern, maybe.
‘Our oldest tales tell of swimming wild seas and journeying far,’ the knight said. She looked at him, trying to read his expression, but there was only the shining metal. His face was turned upward to the stars, and following his gaze she looked at the firmament and let it wash over her.
‘Take us to the water, Ruemar.’
She flew them down in a long series of spirals until they were skimming over the water, and the knight held out a hand. She brought the orb to a stop.
‘Turn off the lights, if you will.’
Ruemar reached and found the little switch she knew controlled the glow of the orb – it seemed to fly slower with the lights off, though she did not understand why. There was so much she did not know. Clearly the orb was deeply connected to the true current, and the stone and crystal was all worked by no tool she knew of. She did not even know if the field of silence surrounding the outside of the orb persisted when its light was dimmed – how would I have even tested that, alone with four children?
Even the thought of the children made her jaw clench and her claws flex. Weak, the nurse had called little Jurren. They hung in silence and darkness above the water, stars above and waves below, waiting at that juncture between two infinities.
‘The Antian was not weak,’ she said at last. ‘He was a child. Are we going to help them? My father said…’
The knight put a hand on the back of her neck, the way an elder would when comforting a juvenile. Ruemar did not protest.
‘Your father said, this is not our war,’ he responded, and she nodded. He gestured at the black water through the crystal strip. ‘Take us under, Ruemar, and turn on the light.’
Ruemar hesitated, but he did not speak again. She stared at him for three breaths and then turned on the glow, and willed the ship to lower itself down, down towards the black water.
The moment of impact was jarring, a little jolt, but then they were down and down again. Ruemar could see no reef, no seabed, only black water in every direction, only visible so close with the glow of the light.
‘Open yourself to the current, daughter.’
Ruemar fell back into the current as the orb cut through in the churn of tides, passing unfazed through the grip of the great channels of water that crossed the ocean. As with the sky above, it held firm to where she had piloted it – only the slightest shake and tilt acknowledged the great pressures beyond. Around her, she could see the current – the true current, the current below all others. The orb was a mix of utter simplicity and confounding complexity – its stone was flat, flat in a way nothing else she had seen appeared to be, in the current where everything always had another layer, another angle. Pushing outward she felt the ocean around her – a fish, the dance of plankton, the little beasts too small to see that thronged everywhere. She could see past the glow of the orb another twenty feet in the darkness. The knight next to her reached his hand and in it was a ribbon, a ribbon of vibrating light that danced from his chest to his hand. She reached for it and then she saw everything.
The Unnamed Knight shared his sight with her, only for a moment, and she saw hundreds of feet – further than my eyes in the clearest water. There was a shark, shoals of fish, each of them intricate and strange in the abstract of the current – she could see the shark’s skin and stomach at once, its brain, where it had been, its intention and its possibility, could see the pressure pushing on it and the soft buzz it sensed from other creatures in the tip of its nose. Below the shark there were stands of soft coral, and each one of them was a joy to behold – every coral was a hundred thousand polyps linked so intricately, and as she stared, the knight stared with her. She saw one polyp alone, the connection within it.
‘Something is wrong with the currents, daughter,’ the knight said, but he did not withdraw her from his sight. ‘Across the ocean floor there are stones, great black pearls – points of connection across the world. Anchors. They are broken, daughter. I have been to see the Whale, and she wanders far – further than I have ever seen before. The world is changed.’
Ruemar felt her sight drop back in scope until it was only her own sense of the true current. She rose from that, brought herself back into the physical, and turned off the light of the orb and stared out into the darkness. All to black.
‘Are we going to help them?’ she asked again, and the Unnamed Knight pointed through the crystal to her right, and far in the distance she saw a mote of light – a spark, like a tiny fire under the water. Blazefish. The light would lure some foolish little fish, and the blazefish would feast.
‘They took our children, Ruemar,’ the knight said. ‘They took them from home and clan, and in the dark they killed them. They cast fire down on our walls and our roofs. There are only five, that I know of. Five creatures like me in all the known world this side of the endless seas that I have ever even heard rumour of – a sorcerer king in Caroban; a hermit in Lello; the Grand Sun Master in Cil-Marie; the richest man in Uradech. Those and Tullen One-Eye.’
Ruemar gripped at the hilt of her knife.
‘Are you afraid of him?’ she said, and the knight nodded.
‘He killed the last Unnamed Knight who fought him, more than four centuries ago. He broke the shardspire, our greatest monument. He killed the owl Nessilitor, by all accounts a power as great as our Bird and our Whale. There is something… We do not seek each other, people like me. Knights, skein-wrecks, magi – whatever we are called. We do not occur near to one who already is, and we do not seek. There is a repulsion. Perhaps fear is the word. But I’d not risk our world for war with this mage. The one who took our children is dead. This is not our war.’
Ruemar pictured the little Antian Jurren coughing on the cold floor of the mountain cavern as the snow flurried past the cave entrance. She pictured rows of chained children, and rows of watching mages clad in black, throngs of goblins at their beck and call. She felt a hot itch under her scales at the memory of the sacrificial altar, the glowing runes inscribed upon it.
‘I’ll go alone if I must,’ she said, and the Unnamed Knight put his hand on the back of her neck and together they stared out at the darkness, the light of the blazefish long faded.
A PRIVATE CONSTELLATION
‘The girl is a mess, Salem. She has no discipline, no respect. Whatever rule we set for her she breaks. Whatever teacher we find for her, she scandalises. She flirts with the maids and steals from the cooks. Anshuka, save us from our children. I had thought to send her to the lancers or the City Watch, but she is dissolute. An embarrassment. Every night, another war to be fought over dinner. I can indulge her no longer. I think Undal City or Aber-Ouse would only give her outlets for her recklessness – I remembered you’ve a cousin in Port Last, administering the keep. Might they consider taking her in? I would pay handsomely, and surely there is less trouble to be had that deep in the north.’ – Private letter to Salem Starbeck, Commander Hallfast of Fallow Fen
Benazir and Guil were lying over the blankets, limbs and fingers and lips entwined. Through the narrow window of the Stormcastle tower, the distant thrum of thunder reverberated across the sky.
‘Enough, Commander,’ Guil said, and extricated herself slowly, over the course of a dozen kisses, each shorter than the last. She sprawled over the bed and grabbed her cup of wine and drained it, and then rolled back onto the twisted sheets. ‘It’s too bloody hot.’
Benazir moved one hand to Guil’s leg, the other running through the tufts of her red hair, feeling the shape of her skull beneath. It was dim in her chamber, but this deep in summer the sun ran high in the sky, and over the rotstorm to the west the last orange hues were fading, leaving only the purple and red aching pulses of light from the roiling black and grey clouds.
‘The wine should be chilled,’ she said, and Guil passed her the cup back and stretched out. Benazir watched Guil’s long limbs stretch out, the flex of muscle under pale skin dotted with a thousand freckles. She sipped at the wine. It was warm and sour.
‘I thought as our newly appointed commander, you’d have better wine. I think it was chilled when you got it, but it’s been a little while.’ Guil crawled up the bed and nestled her head into Benazir’s shoulder. ‘But then perhaps command isn’t all chilled wine and dalliances with the troops.’
Benazir grinned and gave Guil a squeeze.
‘Many a dalliance,’ she said, ‘but only one troop, so far.’ She frowned. ‘You understand we need to keep this discreet?’
She felt Guil nod, but then she was biting the flesh just below her collarbone, biting hard, and Benazir gasped and bit her lip to not scream out. Guil let her grip slacken and grinned up at her.
‘I can be discreet.’
They stayed in bed, and as the last of the light faded Benazir pulled on an old cotton smock and lit a candle. Guil was still lounging. Benazir knew she would stay until the night was darkest, and then Guil would slip back to her room. As a sergeant, Guil had some privileges. No sneaking out of the privates’ barracks for a tryst behind the storerooms. Cupping the candle with one hand to protect it from the breeze, Benazir grinned. She’d experienced enough of that, years living in Stormcastle XII as a private, a corporal, a captain. It meant that now, as commander, she knew which corridors and old classrooms to avoid. Best let them have their fun.
Back in bed Benazir read the daily reports by candlelight. Always, more reports. Reports on stores, reports on coin reserve, on troop deployment. Skirmishes along the Stormwall, which section needed work. Where the summer work camps were set up, how many horses lost to crocodiles, how many trainees lost to the rotstorm. Too many.
She moved her lips when she read, the occasional word slipping out loud. It was an old habit, one her father used to berate her for. Eventually she waved a hand to Guil and she retrieved parchment and quill, lighting her own candle but retrieving no clothes. She lounged naked, and Benazir’s eyes kept flicking to the constellation of freckles lit by dancing candlelight. Guil was lanky and sinewy and scarred, like most of the commandos, but the candlelight cast dancing shadows across every curve.
‘Focus, Commander,’ Guil said with a grin, and Benazir felt her face flush. Focus. Guil’s quill began to scratch as Benazir called out her notes. The sergeant had come to take notes, the way she came every night. And every night for the last season, she had stayed. Benazir forced her eyes from the stretches of bare skin, down to the reports. Focus.
‘Tell Nostul he needs to get the apprentices out with the patrol squads this span,’ she began. ‘I need Voltos to look at the pattern of breaches north of Stormcastle XI – once or twice might have been chance, three times is enemy action. We need more arrows, up a third from our last order. The fourth and seventh patrols are below fighting strength – get temporary promotions from the most senior crop of cadets onto wall guard, and get the wall guard onto the patrols. There should be a lancer detachment arriving in the next three days from Bow, training on the Slow Marsh, but they want a look at the rotstorm – get Thom to set up barrack space, make sure the kitchens know what’s coming, and I’ll have dinner with the commander and Nostul the night they arrive. Message from Thum-Pho at XIII says a rotbud sensed to the north-west – have Yonifer put a patrol together.’
