THIRTEEN

The hood was plucked from his head, and he could see again.

‘Remove your armour, please.’

Beneath the grey-eyed gaze of the bull-like man who’d kidnapped him, Chel did so. They stood in what he took to be a library or reading room, a stone-walled room decked with low shelves, packed with more books than he’d ever seen in a single location, including his time in Black Rock. Long benches spread in bands from a central hearth, lamp tables spaced evenly between them, the combined heat of which did little to raise the room’s temperature above chilly. It got chillier as he drew the mail shirt over his head, wincing as the movement aggravated his bad shoulder. They already had his mace, of course.

‘Where am I?’

They’d taken him, hooded, in a cart or wagon, something horse-drawn, the smell and clop of the beast in front unmistakable. He’d been packed in between the two barrel-chested men, rocked against them, crushed at each bump, barely able to breathe let alone squirm. He’d thought he’d heard Rennic shouting somewhere, muffled by the hood and the sounds of the vehicle’s travel, but he was far from certain. There was no sign of the mercenary now, only the cuboid man watching him. Another Andriz, another desert bloom like him. The first of his people he’d seen since Sab, and since he’d left home before that.

‘I said, where am I?’

He knew where he was. He’d felt the climb around the hillside, heard the groan of a gate and echoes of enclosure. He’d heard animals, voices. He was in the settlement that overlooked the city. He’d been taken by the Wards. They truly didn’t care for the medicinal trade.

‘Remove the jacket too, please.’

Grimacing, he did so, his shoulder grumbling. The Andriz watched with steady eyes, hands clasped behind his wide back. The heavy baton at his belt clunked as he shifted position, and Chel’s mind clicked. No wonder the boy was so terrified, he thought. Dark cloak, something like a mace, and Andriz features. I look just like them.

He stood at last in only his breeches and silk shirt. ‘Where is my—’

‘Follow, please.’

This one was not a talker.

A panelled hallway, warmer than the library, led them to a wider, octagonal area, a receiving room of sorts, the blaze of snow-mirrored daylight cracking through slot-like windows high overhead. His escort strode directly up the weave-draped stairs at the chamber’s far side, nodding to the guard who stood beside the wide doors. Needless to say, the guard was another Andriz, not quite as bulky as the first, but clearly a man who could carry a pig under each arm up a steep hill without breaking sweat. Chel looked closer as he approached, meeting the guard’s curious gaze. His features were quite distinct from his escort’s, but the same hairstyle, same outfits, even the same posture, made them all seem cast from the same mould.

He waggled an eyebrow at the guard as he passed, as he imagined Lemon might, and then he was inside. The room beyond the doors had the same high ceiling as the receiving room before it, the same slants of white and watery light from high windows, casting diagonal shafts of drifting motes through the room’s upper gloom. Four fires burned in wide, stylized hearths at opposing corners, and oil-wick lamps glowed from alcoves along the walls. A wide table dominated the room’s centre, dark-wood and burnished, half an octagon to match the surroundings. The four chairs at the table’s far side were tall, imposing and occupied.

He could make out little of the occupants beyond silhouettes, their faces cast in shadow by the lights behind and the slanted light above, but he noticed one of the squarish men from outside the poppy den standing beside one of the central chairs, his head bowed in conference with the chair’s owner. He now wasn’t sure which of the two had been the one to grab and hood him, which had been the one behind, but he supposed it didn’t matter. He was among his people now. His mother would be so pleased.

His escort put a thick hand on his arm, then steered him before the table’s flat side. He could by now discern more of the people sitting opposite, detecting familiar dark hair and grey eyes on each. Quite the enclave, this place. His people hailed from the plains and deserts of the arid west, far, far from Vistirlar and its provinces, and he’d assumed that he was one of only a handful of travelling curiosities within their borders.

‘What’s your name, boy?’

The speaker was a woman, her age indeterminate, her skin appearing smooth but her hair a wall of silver sheen. Gold gleamed in the braids of her hair, at her throat, and at her fingers and wrist as she raised a hand to beckon him forward. In the same motion she waved away the lump hovering behind her. Her accent matched that of his escort, nigglingly familiar, something from long ago. He didn’t answer. Two could play silly buggers.

The man in the chair next to hers, short and no less silver, leaned forward over table and said something, but the words had no meaning. He was a child again, hearing angry foreign words echo from the walls of the manor while he and his sisters supposedly slept above, his mother’s angry growl, his father’s placations, robbed of meaning and left purely as tone. Seeing once more the black door, the door unopened, while his father lay dying beyond and would speak through it to his mother only in those meaningless words, her anguish and rage voiceless for the children but screaming behind her eyes.

Emotion roiled within him, a great surge of physical pain like burning, like impalement. Of course, he recognized their accents. They spoke like his father.

He gasped and rocked on his heels, one hand going to his chest. The woman leaned forward, affecting concern. ‘Heavens, boy. We only asked you your name.’

He swallowed. The burning was receding, but every in-breath felt sharp.

‘Chel.’

‘Your family name, if it please you.’ Her words were polite, the tone anything but.

‘That is my family name.’

Muttering, again in the tongue he recognized but could not parse. It was so strange to hear it again, to hear tones and syllables that had surrounded him as a child, his attempts to learn and understand stymied by first his parents’ intent to keep their disputes impenetrable, and then by his mother’s refusal to speak the language again. After she had no one to speak it to.

‘That is not a name of our people, boy. What is the name given to your mother, your father?’

One eye narrowed. ‘I couldn’t tell you, that is all the name I have. Now, perhaps you might like to fill me in on a few things in return? I’ve been forthcoming.’

One of the other men said something and the others laughed. Chel guessed it was at his expense, but let their laughter wash over him.

‘One more time, then,’ he said, his irritation damping whatever nostalgic embers still lurked. ‘My name is Vedren Chel, of Barva, first son to Justina and Antonin.’

‘Those are not names of our people.’

He shrugged. ‘Well, there you go, maybe I’m not your people after all. Now who the fuck are you and why have you kidnapped me?’

The woman beckoned back the bull-man, irritation lining her face, and spoke terse, low words to him. He nodded and left the chamber, heading back toward the library.

‘So,’ the woman said as he left, sitting back and steepling her fingers. Jewelled golden bangles clattered at her slender arms. ‘Your parents took local names. We will find them; our archives are most comprehensive.’

‘And then what?’

‘Then we will know where you fit.’

‘Where I fit?’

‘Indeed.’

‘How about you just let me go about my business instead? How about you return my belongings and my … friend.’

The woman pursed her lips, the corners of her mouth rising in curt amusement. ‘I’m afraid we have a duty of care, Vedren Chel of Barva. Deny it all you like, but you are one of us, and your state is … Well. You might be wearing Serican silk, but your company is questionable, and I cannot believe your parents would be delighted to hear of your entanglements.’

Frustration burned within him, white-hot and rising. ‘My father’s dead, and my mother is in the thrall of some fat fucking southerner.’

‘Your language is also improper.’

‘My language is my own fucking concern.’

‘It’s no surprise, I suppose. You’ve grown up beyond our protection, our guidance, who knows what you’ve been exposed to. The good news is that you’re still young, and your wanderings in darkness have ended.’

Chel could no longer control his rage. ‘What the fuck are you talking about?’

The woman nodded to Chel’s left, and the meathead beside him cracked him across the back with his baton. The pain was sharp and staggering, sending him lunging forward onto the table, both hands planted. A second rap of the baton against his knuckles made him yowl, dragging his hand back and cradling it beneath his arm.

‘As I said,’ the woman continued, ‘your wanderings in darkness have ended. Your path back to the light begins today.’

‘Who are you?’ he hissed, mentally inserting ‘the fuck’.

‘My name is Haranali Laralim.’ She smiled, this time with unexpected warmth. ‘But you may call me Auntie.’

***

Chel walked beside Laralim out into the brisk air of the terraced gardens, paying close attention to his foot placement lest he step on the swishing train of her bright silken dress. Behind them lurked the squat bruiser, named by Laralim as Urbu. The baton remained in his hand.

‘Why have you brought me here?’

She tilted her head, awaiting something.

Auntie,’ he added through gritted teeth.

She smiled. In the silvery light of the gardens, he could see the layers of make-up that caked her face, applied with expert hands but cracked and flaking nonetheless. He realized that the shadows were long, the absent sun descending in the north-western sky, soon to be lost behind the wall of smoky peaks that loomed over them. They’d left him bound and hooded for hours. He had places to be, and people to find.

‘We are the Wards,’ she said. ‘The Wardens. We are the keepers of our people. This is our enclave.’

‘Oh. I’ve heard of you.’

She nodded, still smiling, more to herself than to him. ‘As well you might.’ They walked along a covered path around the faceted edge of a building, the occasional drip of meltwater plopping from roof to the puckered earth below. The gardens bloomed beyond them, a regimented array of brilliant colour, reds, pinks, and lilac, stacked in terraces down the hillside toward the grey walls encircling them. Directly before and beneath them sat the gloomy bulk of Merenghi, steaming and huffing in the afternoon light. In the other directions, he saw little; curls of drab, rolling plains, pockets of scrubby trees, another distant run of hills, the barren rise where they’d parted from Whisper and Tarfel, empty now. The gardens were a splash of vivid colour in a sea of dinge.

‘You have a pretty garden,’ he ventured, hoping a little flattery might earn him some answers.

‘We do. It is well-tended and carefully nurtured, like our family.’

He sighed inwardly.

‘My friend, where is he? Why are you keeping him? Keeping us both?’

The path diverged at the wall’s end, and she directed them out along the edge of the terrace, under the pale shade of thin and barren trees, moulded into arches. Urbu stomped behind them, quietly seething.

‘You are here, Vedren of Barva, because you concern us. Which is to say, you are of interest, rather than you are a source of worry, although perhaps both may yet apply.’

He stayed tight-lipped.

‘You see, dear boy, we take great interest in the comings and goings of visitors to our city.’ Ah. There it was. She crinkled one corner of her mouth at the stiffness of his reaction. ‘You thought you’d slip in undetected, did you? Let me guess, some manner of exchange with the guards at the gates, some unpleasantness within the walls.’

They stopped at a wooden railing, hewn from the same narrow wood as the bent trees behind them. Laralim leaned on it, looking out over the estate, the rising columns of steam and smoke from the huts and gatehouses at the hill’s foot, the fiery orange gleam of evening sun searing the horizon.

‘There was a time, long before your birth, when our people left the heartland in great numbers.’ Presumably she meant the plains, somewhere far, far to the north-west, from which his people had apparently sprung. ‘It was a sad time, a hard time, of great upheaval and greater strife. Many of us perished, but some of us flourished.’

She gave a little smile, the evening light rich on the deep furrows of skin around her mouth. ‘Our people acquired a reputation for achieving tasks that others would not, or could not, and we were rewarded in turn, first with coin, then later with land and titles. In turn, more of us came, and for a while, at least, we continued dispatching the flower of our youth to expand our legacy.’

Laralim paused, and the smile ebbed away so fast it was hard to imagine it had ever been. ‘Times have changed. But some legacies remain. As I’m sure you have surmised, Merenghi, vile as it is, is ours. Think of it as an unpleasant but dutiful inheritance, say a nasty old uncle. The hut-folk and their confederates within the walls come with the territory, and as long as they keep to their business and keep their business discreet, we tolerate them.’

She sighed, her breath misting orange in the dying rays of the vainly resurgent sun. Laughter drifted up from the terrace below, a gaggle of no doubt grey-eyed children racing between twisting trunks. ‘Sadly, people like that are a fungus, an infection. They never stay where they’re put, always looking to seep and spread. Hence, as I said, we maintain an interest. The slum-dogs might claim to have the constables in their pocket, but they know who pays their wages.’

She turned to face him. ‘The sudden arrival of a ruthless hireling and one of our own? You can see it would have piqued our interest. Whatever the slum-dogs were planning, we will not permit it.’

Chel leaned back next to her. The fading sun was almost warm as the air temperature dropped. Already small lights were sparkling around the squat, domed buildings above them, the smoke from two dozen hearths blending with the darkening sky. ‘Well, now you’ve met us. You can see we’re nothing to worry about. Why not let us be on our way?’

‘You have, perhaps, somewhere you need to go?’

‘Yes. Some people we need to see, in other cities. About … a festival.’

Her look was half reproach, half maternal indulgence, her eyebrows rising high enough to crack her pristine maquillage. ‘Dear boy, please do not take me or my peers for fools. We have steered this family for a generation, against the machinations of better liars than you. I have already made it plain, you will be staying with us, at least until we can send word to your mother that you are in our care. After that, we will see.’

He was no longer listening, his heart sinking through his gut like a lead fist. He was being held prisoner, little better than the cells of Black Rock. Rennic was somewhere within the walls, no less caged. If their visit to Merenghi was a bust, they needed to move on as fast as possible. As Rennic had said, there were other stops to make before they hauled east to the river crossing. Take too long about it and they’d miss the first moon, and the rest of the company with it. He offered up a silent prayer that the others were faring better than he was.

‘At least … At least release my friend, let him continue our journey. He is of no concern to you. He’s a northerner. I think.’

She shook her head. ‘Your associate will remain with us for the time being, until we understand his motives, and he ours. The trouble with the kind of people in his profession,’ she said, her silver-fluted eyes boring into him, ‘is that they can say one thing to your face, yet do something entirely different the moment they are out of view. It’s best to keep them where you can see them, I find.’ She moved off down the path again. ‘This way.’

She led him back indoors, Urbu still dogging their every step, up a wide, wood-finished staircase to a room on the upper floor. The shutters were already drawn and bolted, a small fire kindling in the hearth, a candle on a narrow table. ‘This will be your room for the time being. I don’t think you are ready to eat with the rest of us yet; I will have your meal sent up.’

She went to leave, the door half-closed before she paused. ‘Dear boy,’ she said, ‘why didn’t you come straight to us in the first place? However bad things might be, there was no need to approach the filth-traders. We could have helped you out. We’re family after all.’ With that she pulled the door closed. After a moment, he heard the key clanking in the lock.

He sat down on the straw-packed mattress, watching the woven, patterned blankets rise in response. The pattern featured a lot of many-petalled flowers, interwoven with keys. It seemed a lot like a taunt.

‘Fuck,’ he muttered.

***

The clank of the lock roused him from his doze, sending him bouncing up from the bed. Finding nowhere else to stand, he sat back down on the bed as the door swung inwards. Shadows filled the doorway, giggling silhouettes in the lamplight beyond. He peered into the mass.

‘Who’s there?’

One of the shapes entered, carrying a steaming tray. For a moment, he thought it was Sab, then his brain caught up with his blinking eyes and rendered an Andriz girl, somewhere around his own age, dressed plainly but well, placing the tray on his table. Another girl followed, carrying a silver pitcher, which she laid down beside the tray. They turned in unison, eyes lowered but peeking upwards.

‘Who are you?’ he said.

The girls cast nervous, mischievous looks back toward the door, where their presumed chaperon lurked. Chel watched them, seeing them both as young adults like himself, but also as cosseted children, who’d seen nothing of his own rich experiences. He felt himself adjust his stance, affecting a somewhat world-weary slouch, knees spread. The girl who’d brought the tray was really rather pretty.

‘Are you the mercenary?’ said the one on the right, the water-carrier.

‘The ruthless killer?’ the other added, flashing wide, oyster-coloured eyes at him. She reminded him of someone, although he couldn’t think who.

He drank in their curiosity. ‘I may be ruthless,’ he said, rubbing one hand over his less-than-stubbly chin, ‘but I’m no killer.’

An angry shout came from down the hallway. Urbu, or one like him.

They almost squealed, hurrying from the room. The tray girl gave one backward glance, and he caught it.

‘Wait. What’s your name?’

‘Rasha,’ she said, cheeks darkening, and then she was gone from the room. Chel stood to follow, but Urbu filled the doorway as he reached it.

‘You,’ he said, from beneath thick and lowered brows. ‘Stay in here. Do. Nothing.’

Chel let him slam the door, his thoughts already drifting back to the adoring gaze of the departed Rasha. Perhaps his confinement wouldn’t be the end of the world.

He sat down to eat and his thoughts drifted, trying to place the memory the girl had jogged. Someone darkly pretty, friendly, a nervous smile shared.

The spoon dropped from his hand, clattering back against the tray. The hunter’s daughter, the girl on the Raven-Hill. The girl Brecki had murdered, thanks to his inattention, his complacency.

He no longer felt hungry. He had to get out.

‘Fuck,’ he whispered in the growing darkness.