The Collarbound, page 4
The giants made the collars, thought Lal. Good thing they’re all dead.
Mist was rising from the rim of the cliff, draping the bottom of the castle in clouds. It gave the impression that the Nest was hanging in mid-air, about to float away. Seagulls mottled the sky with flecks of white. They flew off the Edge to catch fish from the river. Their screams filled the air, piercing above the thunder of the waterfall. Tatters didn’t know how mages managed to sleep between the cries of birds and rushing of water.
He crossed the bridge. The great doors of the Nest, which required a crew of human hands and pulleys to manoeuvre, stood open. Merchants were already bringing food to the servants, who would then rush to prepare breakfast. By the time the mages dragged themselves out of bed, the Nest would have been awake and brimming for hours.
Across the threshold were beggars of a different kind – the lacunants. Tatters tried not to look at them nor catch their eye.
Whether the gates were open or closed, the lacunants stayed begging at the entrance. Their welcome didn’t extend to the Nest’s courtyard. Once Tatters had made his way through, it was a relief to be away from their glazed stares.
The Nest was built out of creamy sandstone, pockmarked by years of wind and rain. Its inner courtyard was large enough to set up a market inside. On the right was the gibbet to hang criminals from, with the prison just behind. On the left were the stables. And in front of Tatters was a series of arches, each one as large as the door of the tavern, all leading into the Nest’s main hall. On either side of each arch, a kher stood guard. Only mages or their servants could cross into the Nest itself.
Tatters strolled closer, intending to walk past without asking for permission. That was usually enough to be let through. Nobody impeded a collarbound – at least, most days.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ A kher guard. Only khers could serve as efficient guardsmen within the Nest, as they were immune to mindlink. She was a woman, of course – most males weren’t allowed to work. He spotted the sword at her side and gave her his best smile.
‘Errands for my master,’ he answered.
This didn’t seem to woo her. ‘And who would your master be?’
Tatters didn’t hesitate. ‘That’s private information. I’d rather not tell.’ He crossed his hands in front of him and brought his feet closer together, trying to display a servant’s meekness.
The kher hesitated. This was above her paygrade. If she caused trouble for a high mage’s servant, she would be in trouble too. She motioned for Tatters to follow her, and guided him towards the gibbet, where a watchtower had been set up for the guards. There, another female kher was talking to a group of disciples. The guard escorting Tatters waited for their conversation to finish before introducing him. Tatters stifled a sigh. Still, when he was presented to this second kher, he made an effort to smile.
She was smaller than him, with slim annulated horns that grew out of her forehead and curved around her skull to reach the bottom of her ears. Her hair rested in a bun between them. She’d polished the keratin of her horns until they shone ebony, and painted complex drawings across them. The tips were unpolished, a duller shade of black.
She repeated the same questions. He repeated the same answers.
‘You are dismissed,’ this new kher told the younger guard. The guard nodded and left them to it. ‘You will have to answer, you realise,’ she said, this time to Tatters.
‘I doubt my master will be happy to hear I shared their name and errands with, no offence, simple doormen. Doorkhers.’
The kher pushed up her sleeves, and Tatters spotted tattoos across her scarlet skin, starting at the wrists. Triangles and circles, interlocked patterns like cogs in a wheel, followed the curves of her muscles. She crossed her arms.
‘Not good enough, I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘You want in, you and your master have to be on the register.’
Are we going for the usual gamble? Lady Siobhan?
Yes, said Lal. Tatters sensed her hesitation. We shouldn’t push our luck, though.
We’ll find a way.
Instead of giving Lady Siobhan’s name, Tatters held the kher’s gaze. ‘This is new. Are you sure the head of guards knows about this?’
She flashed a mirthless smile. ‘I’m the new head of guards. Rules have always been there; I’m just making sure they’re being followed.’
That explained it. Tatters didn’t like new recruits – they did twice the work required of them. They always gave him a tougher time.
They were standing in the shade of the tower as young mages flocked by, their grey robes trailing against the ground. ‘Are you going to check all these folks are on the register?’ asked Tatters. ‘That’ll take forever.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’m going to check you are.’
‘Will you let me through if I buy a grey robe?’
She shrugged. Her leather armour, freshly sewn, was tightly fitted around her shoulders. It wasn’t yet frayed or soiled. ‘If you feel like risking the crime of impersonating a mage, by all means. But you’re looking at a prison sentence.’
She won’t give in, said Lal.
‘My master is Lady Siobhan,’ said Tatters. ‘But I’m relying on your discretion here.’ He might as well have punched her. Lady Siobhan was the supreme mage in charge of the Nest. No-one could afford to disturb her, especially not a recently employed kher.
The guard looked him up and down. Like most khers, she had jet-black eyes and jet-black hair to match her horns. ‘I’ll check you’re on the register,’ she decided.
You’ve pissed her off, said Lal.
No kidding.
The kher brought him inside the watchtower, past a thick door reinforced with iron. In the tower’s circular room there was a weapon rack, a round table with a few knucklebones scattered across it, and a ledger. She opened the heavy volume.
‘Do you know when Lady Siobhan officially announced you?’ she asked. ‘It’s in chronological order.’
She’s not buying it. We’ll never get out of here, moaned Lal.
‘No idea,’ said Tatters. ‘Ten years ago?’ He hadn’t been around the Nest ten years, but realistically, Lady Siobhan could only have obtained a collarbound in her – not youth, exactly – but in her formative years. She wasn’t in a state to do anything these days, let alone control a slave.
The kher glared at him, as if he were wasting her time on purpose. She pulled the only stool of the room towards her to sit down. She rested her horned head in her hands and started scrolling through the ledger, with the grim slowness of someone determined to do this right.
Tatters stood and waited. After a while, he picked up a knucklebone and had fun bouncing it on his fingers, swapping between the back and front of his hand. When she didn’t stop him, he took a handful, increasing the difficulty of the juggling. He kept at it until she snapped at him to stop.
‘Couldn’t you at least try to remember the day you were brought to the Nest?’ she grumbled.
They sank into a sulky silence. The only sound was the rasp of vellum pages as she turned them.
‘Aren’t you a bit old to be doing this?’ he asked.
She didn’t even glance up from the book.
‘Don’t pretend you can tell,’ she said. Khers’ faces were always smooth-skinned, unwrinkled. To humans, they seemed stuck at twenty years old, enjoying the beauty and health of youth. The saying went: Grow up, not old – no wisdom, but bold. Khers were supposed to be brave, strong, and as thick as the walls of the Nest.
‘I can,’ he said. ‘I’m not any old flatface.’
The word ‘flatface’ caught her attention, at least. She stopped turning the pages and looked up.
‘The horns are on the inside,’ he said, tapping his forehead. He’d heard Mezyan say that often enough. She lifted an eyebrow. Obviously his kherer-than-thou technique wasn’t working. He picked up three knucklebones and wedged them between his fingers on his left hand.
‘Surprise me,’ she said. ‘How old am I?’
If she’s a longlived, you’ve had it, said Lal.
Thanks for your support.
He watched the kher. She had an elegant face, with sharp features. She was thin and wiry, but handsome nonetheless, like birds are, despite the jutting bones.
From the horns’ curve, she must have lived two-thirds of her life, more or less. Often khers in the last third of their life didn’t start anything new, especially not a job. He quietly counted the annulations on the horns. If they were growing at a normal rate, she was probably fifty years or so. Which meant she had another thirty to go before the horns looped back towards the front of her face and started growing through her head, eventually breaking the skull and piercing the brain.
Khers died when their horns killed them. They didn’t age from the inside out, but from the outside in.
What if she’s tampered with her age by sanding down her horns? asked Lal.
Most khers don’t, he argued. It goes against their traditions.
But she’s a city-kher.
Tatters shook off Lal’s thoughts. He threw the knucklebones and caught them, to keep his hands busy. ‘I’d say you’re fifty, give or take five years.’
He knew he’d got it right when she shrugged and turned back to the book.
‘Someone told you,’ she said.
She was rather cute when she sulked.
By the underworlds, if you start flirting, I’ll puke.
Sometimes sharing thoughts with Lal was wonderful. And sometimes it wasn’t. Give me a break, he thought. I’m not flirting. Plus, you can’t puke.
In any case, he wasn’t sure the kher would be interested in a human nearly as small as she was, with the tell-tale size and gait of someone who was underfed as a child. Sometimes, to tease him, Hawk would lean against him, putting all her weight on his shoulders, and say he should call himself Gnarled, not Tatters. She would ruffle his red hair – not bright red, murky red – and comment on his eyes – not blue, murky brown.
And yet Hawk liked you well enough, at the start, said Lal.
He turned to the kher. ‘Your mother told you how to count people’s age too, didn’t she? I’m sure you did circles with your friends, trying to guess strangers’ ages, betting on who’d get it right.’ It was a stretch, but Mezyan had described his childhood in those terms, so Tatters assumed it was true for most khers. Children were the same everywhere, after all. Tatters continued playing with the knucklebones.
She put one hand across the pages of the book, fingers spread out. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who taught you how to do it?’
Tatters put the knucklebones down. He pretended to pick at something underneath his nails. ‘What does it matter?’ It was nice to have her watching him, for a change. Then, to rub it in: ‘Have you found me in there yet?’
‘No.’ She tapped her fingers across the thick page.
On impulse, Tatters said, ‘Not a betting man, but I bet you can’t get my age right.’ It was a little-known fact that khers also found it difficult to work out how old a human was. Wrinkles and small marks on the skin weren’t something they were taught to look out for. They could tell very withered and crooked humans were old, and very smooth and smaller humans were young. But they couldn’t do much better than that.
She narrowed her eyes at him. ‘You’re …’ She paused. She studied him more closely.
‘If you get it wrong, can I go in?’ he asked.
She shook her head. ‘I’m not risking my job on a bet.’
‘Why? Worried you’ll lose?’
She snorted a laugh. She brushed her horn, as humans pass fingers through their hair. ‘You won’t get me like this. I’m not a child.’
He gave her time to think about his age. He sensed Lal’s shifting moods inside him, impatient and worried, annoyed that he was playing, relieved that the kher wasn’t looking too closely at her ledger. He focused on his breathing, keeping his thoughts and hers distinct. He watched the kher’s frown, the way she rubbed her eyebrows with her thumb. Now that he had time to admire her tattoos, he saw that the overlapping shapes were mimicking the knots of a tree’s bark. Black squares were filled with slim, flesh-coloured curls, to figure shoots and young leaves.
‘Sixty?’ she said at last.
He couldn’t help but laugh. ‘That is not a compliment. Nope. Half as old as that. Well, more than half, maybe, but close enough.’
She ran her finger down the ledger, not really looking at it. ‘How old are you exactly?’
‘Who knows?’ He smiled. ‘I’ve not been keeping count. And I haven’t got a reminder growing out of my head.’
The kher got up from her stool and closed the register.
‘If I ever find out that you lied to me,’ she said, ‘I’ll kick you over the Edge.’
He bowed to her. ‘Much obliged.’
He was about to head for the watchtower’s door when she asked:
‘As a slave, do you have spare time?’
It was an unusual question. He glanced from the tower’s wooden door to her, the other side of the table. She was standing in front of the weapons rack, where someone had piled shields with the heraldry of the Nest painted on them. It was a reminder that she was a guard. So was her leather armour, and the hand resting casually on her sword.
‘Sometimes,’ he said cautiously. ‘Why?’
‘If you’re that interested, I could give you a taste of kher food.’
‘Erm …’ Tatters hadn’t been invited to eat by anyone since he’d worn his collar. Apprentices paid him drinks in exchange for lessons, but that was as far as it went. People didn’t much care for someone with so little freedom he didn’t even belong to himself.
The kher – whose name he didn’t even know – walked around the table and up to the door. She opened it for both of them. It was warmer outside the stone tower, and for the first time Tatters became conscious of how cold he’d been. He rubbed his arms as she closed the door behind them.
‘So?’
‘I mean, I’d be flattered,’ he said.
‘You don’t look flattered.’ She stood by the door, arms crossed before her. She was wearing a linen shirt underneath her leather jacket. She wasn’t rich – the shirt was undyed, the shoes were worn, the armour was a benefit from the Nest – but she wasn’t wearing rags that would mark her out as poor.
‘You do realise I’m a slave, right?’
‘You do realise I’m a kher, right?’
She didn’t smile, but her face softened. She was right, of course. Khers who worked within the Nest weren’t considered much better than guard dogs – animals needed for a specific task, but animals still.
And if Passerine is here, we could do with more friends, said Lal.
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’d love to taste kher food.’
That was how Tatters met Arushi.
Chapter Three
Isha woke up in the dormitory, in a small bed packed with hay and fresh sheets. For a moment, she thought she could hear her foster brother snoring quietly, but of course it was only the girl in the next bed. It was daybreak. In the dimness, Isha could make out shapes; sleeping figures shrouded in shadow. The stained-glass windows cast eerie colours across their closed eyes.
When she got up, the ceiling felt too high, the arches too wide, the stone walls too compact. Every room was a reminder that it hadn’t been built for humans. To adapt it to their size, the mages had built wooden lodgings within the stone castle. Inside the dormitory, they had set up a mezzanine across half the room. The disciples slept upstairs, where the wood kept the heat better, and they could stomp their feet to annoy the people below. Apprentices lying under the mezzanine didn’t benefit from the high-placed windows; they had to prepare for bed and rise in the gloom.
Isha rubbed some life into her frozen feet before getting dressed for the day, struggling to tie her robes with some hemp rope so they would fall comfortably. Most apprentices had dyed belts; rope was only for newcomers, to indicate they weren’t yet fully-fledged members of the Nest. She should have waited for Kilian, her official guide, but he wouldn’t be awake yet, so she left the dorm without him. She listened to the hum of life growing inside the Nest: voices, the patter of servants’ footsteps, the low rumble of people waking up. The change of guards, with the clang of armour and weaponry as they finished their rounds or started new ones. As she reached the mess, a bell rang loudly, summoning the apprentices from their beds.
In the mess, several fires already blazed, warming the whole room. Porridge bubbled in the soot-black pots hanging above the flames. There was honey and dried fruits, apples and pears, to sweeten the oatmeal. Servants were chatting amongst themselves, bringing more bowls of fruit, stirring the porridge. Long wooden tables and benches were scattered across the room.
The main chimney was built against the furthest wall; the hearth was the size of a pony. It was the only fireplace that wasn’t lit.
After Isha had helped herself to some food, she went to sit near the chimney. In front of it stood a metal screen, blackened by time, wrought with the abstract curves the giants loved. The windows were decorated with similar swirling patterns. The hearth was clean. Isha guessed it didn’t see many fires. She marvelled at its size, trying to imagine the giants’ pots and pans, the size and sound of their flames.
The mess started filling up – apprentices ambled in, yawning and stretching, ladling more than their share of porridge into bowls. A group of five disciples walked up to Isha’s table. They were thick-shouldered, grim-faced boys.
‘You training with Sir Leofric?’ one of them asked.
‘No,’ she said.
‘This is Sir Leofric’s table.’
Isha weighed her options. She wondered if she would be able to make a better attempt at mindbrawl than she had at the Coop. But she didn’t want trouble this early in the day, not after yesterday’s fiasco.
‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’ She got up. Bowl in hand, she searched for another table.
It proved more difficult than it should have been. A group of girls laughed in her face when she tried to sit beside them, and told her servants weren’t supposed to eat in the mess. Another group of disciples politely explained that they were having a private conversation about their teacher and didn’t want her to eavesdrop. It seemed that only apprentices with masters were allowed to sit down. She spotted several other puffins wandering helplessly from table to table – they must have lost their guide, like her, and now they couldn’t find a seat.
