The Gauntlet and the Burning Blade, page 4
The abrupt change of topic caught Yselda with her mouth full of wine. Did he do that on purpose? She shook her head. Her head had been full, imagining the war in the north, and she knew as little as everyone else about the whitestaffs. When the orbs struck, the whitestaffs fled to their island home of Iskander, to the monastery of Riven. All the cadets knew that. One of the older cadets stationed in the keep, Borvillain with the blonde curls and the big jaw, had told her no boat that had sailed to Riven since had returned, and the docks of Undal City were almost empty as the Grand Council sent increasingly desperate envoys to find out why their most esteemed teachers and healers and leaders had abandoned them.
Only a handful of whitestaffs had stayed behind, those attached to military hospitals or stationed at the Stormwall. They would only say that they had been summoned in the skein but could not abandon the sick. Yselda opened her mouth to respond to Tomas but then the door opened and Commander Artollen was there along with Commander Arfallow, the latter slight and withdrawn compared to the instant physical presence of Floré who stomped through the door, face flushed with exercise, clothes soiled with sweat and dirt. Her mouth twitched when she saw Tomas, and Benazir ignored them all to come and sit at the table near the hearth, next to Yselda. Benazir gave Yselda a brief nod and her eyes caught for a moment on the sheathed dagger Yselda still toyed with, and the ghost of a smile crossed her face.
‘Tomas,’ Floré said, ‘we have to eat and then go and see Starbeck. Did you need something?’
Tomas smiled and leaned back in his chair, one hand adjusting the lay of his dark goggles over his eyes before trailing across his cheek and scratching idly at the scars there.
‘Only you, dear Artollen. Only you. And don’t worry – Starbeck is coming here.’
*
Banner was sweating profusely. Suddenly he had gone from preparing an informal dinner for the rustic Commander Artollen and her confidants to preparing dinner for the knight-commander of the Grand Council, head of the Stormguard, a man normally cloistered away behind a dozen attendants and assistants and guards as he guided the Stormguard, and thus the country, through every moment. Floré tried to calm Banner but he hurried in and out, calling for servants and help. The moment she had told him the knight-commander was joining them, Banner’s face had fallen so utterly that Floré had wanted to laugh. Starbeck has his fearsome reputation, but surely he hasn’t become such an ogre the castle staff fear him so greatly! Tomas sat quietly sipping his wine in his strange goggles, and Floré left him with Benazir and Yselda. Yselda was acting the steward, hanging up Benazir’s cloak and pouring her a glass of wine.
Beneath the cloak Benazir’s right arm was held tight in a sling, her wrist ending in a rough stump of thick bandages. Floré hung up her own cloak and headed back out to the nearest privy, washing her face and hands with the water ewer left there. The commander’s corridor was well kept and warm, and the water was fresh and cool. She returned, then went to the bedchamber where Cuss was playing with Marta. The two of them were having a tea party, along with a stuffed bear Floré had found at a market stall when she and Marta had broken free of the keep for a morning, walking the wide avenues and twisting alleys of Undal City in the warmth of the dying summer. Before the first days of autumn, the season of Leaf. Before the cold came. Floré shivered.
‘Mister Cuss is only allowed pepper tea,’ Marta was saying, and Cuss was nodding along gamely and sipping from his empty cup. He screwed up his nose and spluttered. ‘This tea tastes like… pepper!’ Marta giggled, then dropped her cup and ran for a hug with her mother when Floré closed the door, her tea party unceremoniously abandoned. Sweeping up Marta always felt right, the size of her, the weight of her pressing down on Floré’s chest, the way her hands wound around her neck. She gave Marta a squeeze and then smiled down at Cuss.
‘My thanks, Cuss,’ she said, and he shrugged and set down his cup with the others, slowly lumbering to his feet. The last six spans had eaten away at him, and though he was still burly he was certainly leaner than he had been back in Hasselberry. Six spans of injury and then the relentless training of the Stormguard cadets. Floré had thought his myriad wounds would kill him within the day, but the Orubor medicine of herbs and skein-magic seemed to have knitted the worst of his troubles. The Orubor, those blue-skinned elves with eyes like orbs, elongated ears; etiolated wraiths of the wood with serrated teeth. Rumoured to be mind-readers, rumoured to be cannibals.
Floré had met one, once, long before the nightmare of Varratim and the orbs: Ashbringer. An Orubor who came to Janos with questions on how to kill an unkillable man, obtuse and unclear but as polite as she was strange. For centuries nobody had entered their forest and lived to tell, but Floré, Cuss, Yselda, and Tomas had saved Anshuka from the demon and his orbs of light, and Anshuka was as much the Orubor’s god as her own. They had joined in force, had healed the wounded, had then accompanied Floré swiftly to Undal City, and even now an embassy of three Orubor were somewhere in the keep, afforded every luxury, politely refusing Starbeck’s requests for access to their forest, to Anshuka, and perhaps most fervently on his part to the remaining orbs of light that Floré and Varratim had flown from the Blue Wolf Mountains. What do they mean to achieve here?
Floré shook her head and squeezed Marta tight. She was only glad Cuss was okay, whatever strange magic had kept him from the next life. Cuss brushed the dust from the floor off his linen shirt and smiled a tight smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Marta pulled at her mother’s hair and began singing, off-key and loud in Floré’s ear.
‘I’ll see you tomorrow for training, Commander?’ Cuss said, and she shook her head.
‘Stay, Cuss. Starbeck is joining us, and Tomas says he wants to speak to you and Yselda as well.’
Cuss’s mouth parted at that, and then he filled his cheeks and blew out slowly. He rubbed the back of his tightly curled hair with one hand, and Marta started to pull faces at him, sticking out her tongue, her unknown song abandoned. Cuss pulled a face back and Marta giggled, and then with a wrench the stuffed bear began to float from the floor, rising with a stuttering sway until it floated by Cuss’s arm. He stared at it and Floré held her breath. Please, not again. Marta began to cough, her thin body wracking as she screwed her eyes shut. Floré held her tight and leaned her head to her daughter’s ear.
‘Let it go, sweet pea,’ she said. ‘Let it be.’
Cuss grabbed the bear from the air. Marta grew still and stopped coughing after a long moment and then she screwed up her nose and clung to her mother, sniffling, eyes closed.
‘Am I in trouble, Commander?’ Cuss said, shifting awkwardly on his feet. Floré shook her head and smiled.
‘Not while I’m around.’ She lifted Marta higher and held her up so their faces were pressed together. ‘Now, can I try some of this pepper tea?’
*
Floré washed the sweat from her exercise off in the copper tub. A girl she didn’t recognise, dressed in the dour brown of the keep staff, brought ewers of hot water to her room. ‘From Mister Banner,’ she said, and then she was backing out of the room to the central chamber with its long table where Tomas sat in his ludicrous goggles and Benazir sat cleaning goblin blood from her dagger clumsily with a cloth napkin. Clad in a simple long dress of green over wool leggings Floré joined the table. Marta was eating a plate of cheese sandwiches, telling Yselda about a dragon who lived in the harbour.
‘His name is Deviltooth,’ she said, mouth full, ‘and he eats nothing but fish.’
Yselda nodded along gamely. ‘Is he a friendly dragon, or a nasty dragon?’ she asked, and Marta rubbed breadcrumbs into her fingertips, her brow furrowed.
‘He’s a friendly dragon. He has blue skin. He roasts goblins, roasts and burns them with his fire. He won’t let them hurt anybody.’
The girl’s voice grew thicker as she came to the topic of goblins, and then tears were in her eyes. Yselda quickly distracted her with a question about bread, and Floré blew out a long breath and felt a cold anger filling her veins. Marta had been taken from her for only a few days, but the mark was indelible.
‘Tomas, you know anything of a goblin being kept by Artus-mage in the keep? A prisoner. A test subject.’ Benazir’s question was pointed but Tomas simply shrugged.
‘I don’t know him,’ he said, and then without pause moved on to a list of candidates for elevation in the ranks of the skein-mages of Stormcastle XII. Floré left them to it. Yselda was entertaining Marta gamely enough, and Cuss sat silent, staring off at a far wall. A loaf of black bread sat on the table before him untouched. Floré rubbed at the scar on her cheek and reached across, tearing the bread in two and offering him some.
‘How goes the training, Cadet?’ she asked. Cuss blinked slowly and looked down at the bread she offered, taking it in his hand but making no move to eat. He met her gaze then dropped his eyes.
‘It’s all right.’ He shrugged. ‘The Gauntlet is best, but all the lessons on the Balanced Blade are a bit beyond me. Ranged combat and strategy aren’t really my thing. I don’t think I’m who they have in mind for that. My sword-work is a lot better though!’
Floré smiled at him, and spoke quietly of the intricacies of the low guard, and tactics against the Tessendorm barbarians with their heavy clubs compared to the armoured knights of Isken.
When Starbeck finally entered the room, Banner began a formal announcement of his names and title but Starbeck halted him with a raised hand. Starbeck was as gaunt as ever, a wolf in a man’s body – his eyes were never less than calculating, his face betraying no expression. As the door closed Floré saw two of Starbeck’s personal guard waiting in the hallway, Stormguard City Watch in grey tabards with long knives at their belts.
‘This is to be a private, informal chat, my man,’ Starbeck said, and Floré swept up Marta from the table and put her into Banner’s arms.
‘Be with her, please, Banner,’ she said. Banner’s mouth opened and closed, and then he nodded and took Marta out of the dining chamber, his eyes glancing back at the knight-commander. Marta was still clutching a cheese sandwich in one hand, and lumps of cheddar trailed them as they left the room, Marta coughing into Banner’s shoulder. Starbeck’s gaze dispassionately followed the pair as they left, and Floré bowed her head incrementally to Starbeck.
‘Wine, Knight-Commander?’ she asked, and he acquiesced and took a chair at the head of the long table. As they settled, Cuss and Yselda were clearly nervous in their silence, Tomas was all smiles, and Benazir was staring into the fire. Drinking a swift mouthful of water, Floré gripped her right hand with her left under the table. Her right arm was twitching and aching, the old lightning scar of the rotstorm burning at her bones. It always came back when she least expected it, or when she needed to concentrate elsewhere. She sang in her mind the chorus to ‘Three daughters of the mist, unkind’, an old song and one of Janos’s favourites.
Kiss your daughters, count their toes, hear the daughters, wail and woe.
Since his death she caught herself singing it over and over again in idle moments, imagining him in the pine of Hookstone forest, dappled in sunlight. By the time the last word passed through her mind the pain in her arm had eased from an acid etching to a dull diffuse ache in her marrow, but she felt tears prickling at her eyes. Always she had to trade one pain for another. Hurt, not injured, she thought. I can do the work. Flexing her fingers she returned her hands to the table and her focus to the room.
‘Ghastly, I know, Commander,’ Tomas was saying, ‘but my eyes have grown rather sensitive since the crash of that orb – perhaps the flame, or a blow to the head. I can still operate at maximum efficacy, I assure you.’
Starbeck was nodding. He sat with a spine like a spear shaft, no deviations as it rose from chair to skull. Though he held a glass of thin red wine from Cil-Marie, the kind Floré’s father had favoured, Starbeck drank no more than a sip. Floré frowned at the ewer of wine. Did Banner bring me that because of my heritage, the traces of Cil-Marie in my face? Or is it coincidence? She made a mental note to keep track – if the wine appeared more than random chance might favour, she would have to speak to him. She was as Undal as the next girl, and didn’t need some token of a far-off land to feel comfortable. A jug of cheap Isken duck-eye would do her just as well. Regardless of his intentions, she would have to speak to him.
‘I won’t be joining you for dinner,’ Starbeck said, and Floré spared Benazir a quick glance. Benazir had turned and was watching Starbeck intensely, her eyes sharply focused and steady, not the vague creature staring into flame or distance she had been so often.
‘Orders, sir?’ Floré asked, and Starbeck’s mouth twitched upwards at the corners, the slightest inclination of a smile.
‘I have a question and news, and orders, Bolt-Commander,’ he continued, his voice monotonous and thick. As ever, his eyes were cold and still, and no trace of emotion crossed his face. His jaw had the habitual few days’ growth of stubble, the mark of a man of the commandos – there was no shaving past the wall, but a full beard might catch briar or soak with acid rain. Starbeck was without his usual regalia, but even his informal clothing was simply a Stormguard uniform without the tabard or armoured elements. Floré had never seen him in clothes other than those any Stormguard could find simply from the quartermaster – Starbeck was not a man to indulge in the louche trappings of Undal City society.
‘Firstly the question,’ he said. ‘Is your daughter Marta, the daughter of the skein-wreck Janos, still sick?’
Floré didn’t answer immediately, her gaze falling to her glass as she composed herself. The Whitestaff Mallendroit had visited that morning, as he had each morning in the spans since she had come south from Orubor’s forest. He had sat with Marta, spoken in low tones and spent long minutes in meditation, and afterward her coughing and fever had subsided. Ever they would return. She spared a glance to Marta’s chamber door and stretched her neck before meeting Starbeck’s gaze.
‘She is.’ Floré filled her glass of wine and drank a slug hurriedly, wiping a trail of thin red from the corner of her mouth. The wine was sour and sharp. She examined it in her cup, swirling it as she continued. She pictured Marta the night before and the night before that, shivering and wracked with fever, weeping in pain, crying for her father as the magic ate at her, magic she could not stop reaching for, even in her dreams. Floré had held her tight and whispered and sang to her but there was scant comfort she could give. Keep her safe, Janos had said.
How?
3
NEW TEMPLES, OLD TREES
‘Wounded are more costly than dead. A torn artery will retract and perhaps heal; an artery cut clean through will bleed until the blood is gone. If you seek to kill, sharpen your blade. If you seek to burden your enemy with the care of his wounded, dull your blade. The barons of Tessendorm learned well that the dull blade cuts longest.’ – Commentary of the Ferron–Tessendorm campaign, Consul Semphor, year 627 Isken reckoning
Ashbringer craned her neck upward to look to the top of the Falls of Dust. In summer, the flow was not so bad, the river a thin creature, but this autumn the rains to the north were steady and the water tumbled down the two hundred feet of jagged rock. At the top, her home: Orubor’s wood, the humans called it. Ashbringer smiled and leaned deeper into the shade of the rowan tree she had chosen as her vantage, her bare feet crushing ripe red berries that had tumbled from its branches. Her shaven head and long ears were hidden beneath a simple hood, and she wore long skirts that trailed the ground and thin gloves to hide the blue of her hands and feet. All Orubor had blue skin, the serrated teeth of a predator, the lean build of a hunting cat.
Running her hand across the antler hilt of the broken silver sword sheathed at her hip, Ashbringer sang low and slow a song of the forest as she gazed at the pilgrims in the valley below. She felt one of her rune-scars flare with heat, one of the intricate patterns that covered her skin, as she called to the pattern of it and the pattern below that, the idea of shadow. Beneath the boughs, the air dimmed and Ashbringer allowed herself a moment to sit and look on from the newly accreted darkness.
From where she perched beneath the rowan, she had a view down to the green valley where the Falls of Dust brought the river Boros from Orubor’s wood into the Undal Protectorate. Up the jagged rocks of the falls there were dark trees, the ancient forest unharvested and untilled, the sanctum of the slumbering bear-god Anshuka. For centuries, her people had guarded the forest with no mercy and no quarter. Before that, their history was lost – she only knew they were the original, the people of the great bear. Anshuka was what the humans called her, the Undal and before them the Ferron who called her away. Anshuka, Ashbringer would call her if ever she spoke of the god aloud, but in her heart there was a secret name, a secret only to the Orubor and the people of the bear. The true name of the bear, never to be uttered. The pilgrims in the green valley sang to their god and rang their brass bells, and their sombre shamans clutched talismans and preached wherever they could find a stump to stand above the throng. Throughout the valley dozens of humans were gathered in little groups, a wagon here, a caravan there. Some of them sang as they reached the base of the falls and drank the water and laughed with joy.
Ashbringer blinked slowly and tracked her eyes from the joy of the pilgrims up to Orubor’s silent wood and Anshuka sleeping within it, the rush of the river Boros through dappled glade and twisted briar. She had followed the river, followed the trail of whoever had killed her kin. At the top of the Falls of Dust, miles upriver, four of her kin had been cut down as they carried the skein-blade of Varratim from the Highmothers’ conclave to the weaponsmiths of Elm. One had survived, and no trace of the killer or the blade was found.
