Chel sat at one edge of the rotunda, the late afternoon light streaming through the narrow windows casting thick bars of dancing motes before him, staring at the plum stone in his hand. If he concentrated on it, he could almost ignore the clamour of bells, shrieks, and cries from beyond the windows, the angry shouts echoing around the towers, the frantic jingle of hurrying troops. Behind it all, the wind was a constant, howling, moaning, a trapped and miserable animal.
The door flew open, and Lemon struggled into the rotunda, her arms piled with small boxes. Foss was right behind her, carrying a pair of crates that clinked and tinkled with each step.
‘All right, wee bear, what’s the crack up there? Place is in uproar.’ She stomped to the low table at the room’s centre and unloaded her cargo, spilling fruit and pastries. Foss placed his crates down beside the table with great care. ‘Not that it didn’t play into our hands.’
Chel stirred from his perch. ‘What’s all this? Where did you get that?’
‘Did a bit of a tour, picked a few things up. Everyone’s tear-arsing around, nobody minded us a jot.’
‘You stole this?’
Loveless was in the doorway, a sack over one shoulder, a thick clay jug under the other arm. ‘Fuck them. You can’t rob snakes.’ She kicked the door closed behind her and strode to the table, laying her contraband beside Lemon’s. Something peeked from her jacket, a wrapped package, and she tucked it quickly back inside. ‘Where are the others? What’s the fuss? I thought I heard thunder.’
Chel rubbed his eyes and wondered where to start. ‘I don’t know where Rennic is. Kosh is still with Matil, and Tarfel is with them. In the gallery.’
‘He let you out of his sight? You’re his comfort blanket, aren’t you?’
‘I was … removed.’
Lemon was already devouring a fig. ‘Removed? What magnificence did you perform, wee bear?’
‘I demanded they reopen the city gates. Quite … strenuously.’
‘The gates are closed?’ Loveless had been halfway to sitting, but this brought her back to her feet. ‘All of them? Why the fuck are the gates closed?’
‘The main gate, the bridge to the plateau. I don’t know about the plains side. They’re closed to stop thousands of people fleeing into the city.’
‘And why are they fleeing the plateau?’
‘Because Corvel’s accursed alchemists have levelled Korowan.’ Rennic stood in the opening doorway, leaning heavily against the frame. ‘They’ve destroyed it with witchfire.’
‘How?’ Loveless had spun to face the door, her words an accusation. ‘It’s a fucking mountain of stone!’
‘Packed those kegs around the base and blew it in on itself? Battered the first gate and stacked them within? Either way, it’s gone. Where’s the Nort? She might be able to shed some light on this.’
‘With her new friend, apparently,’ Lemon said. ‘Keeping a low profile, I imagine.’
‘That’s the other thing,’ Chel said, eyes back on the plum stone. ‘Matil is Keeper now, it seems. Acting, maybe. I don’t know if Exalted Hayal herself is still alive, somewhere.’
‘What?’ The shout came from multiple directions.
‘She … fell. Just after the fortress.’ He turned to Rennic. ‘You’re sure? The fortress is really gone?’
He nodded. ‘It’s rubble and blood, the pass is blocked. They sent riders from the gatehouse, they just returned.’ He saw Chel’s look. ‘What? I know a little Serican, enough for professional courtesy.’
‘How did the riders get back in? The gates are closed.’
‘They’ll open to those who count.’ He levelled his gaze on Loveless. ‘Still want to leave?’
‘Still want to stay? After the red confessors have flattened the greatest defensive structure in the known world? Think what they’ll do to this place if they choose.’
Rennic walked down the steps from the door and flopped down beside the table, plucking a pomegranate from Lemon’s hoard. ‘They must have spent all they had on destroying the fortress – as you said, it was a mountain of stone. It’ll take them days to clear the rubble from the pass. In the meantime, they’re trapped in the gully as if the fortress was still there. Calculated attacks from the slopes, pin them with archers, can whittle their numbers before they can get clear. Sow enough panic in the ranks, they’ll break, especially those who took the cloth unwillingly. In three days they’ll be little more than a rabble of fanatics in muddy cloth, clawing at boulders with their hands. They might think they’ve demonstrated their power, but all they’ve done is hem themselves in.’
‘And if you’re wrong?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You could be. It’s happened before. Then what?’
‘There’s only one bridge to the plateau. I’d like to see them try and stack kegs around the walls of this place, assuming they have any left. They’ll need fucking wings.’
‘Aye, right,’ Lemon volunteered, ‘and what about those little egg-things the wee bear mentioned, the spikey wee fuckers.’
‘They’d need hundreds, maybe thousands. And what are they going to do, throw them across the gorge?’
Loveless’s gaze hadn’t left him. ‘And what if they do?’
‘Then we face them.’
‘Face them? What, the four of us against the red tide?’
‘You want to keep running? We’ve been running for months! They’ve hunted us the length of the country. They’re not going to stop, unless we give them reason.’
‘They’re not hunting us. They’re hunting him.’
‘So you’re back to abandoning him, our princeling? Our client?’
‘Our client? Fuck me, Gar— When has he ever paid us?’
‘He can pay when he’s king.’
‘When? You’re talking fantasy!’
‘You want to give up? Hand him over, or leave him to swing in the wind here?’
‘Why not, Gar? Why in righteous fuck shouldn’t we?’
‘Because … Because then … What was it all for? What did she die for? What did we do any of it for?’
‘What?’ Loveless took half a step, paused, rubbed at the deep scar at her temple. ‘We did it for coin, Gar. We did it because we are mercenaries, a free company, contractors.’
‘Did we? You said it yourself, when did we last get paid? Isn’t this about something more, now? About doing something … right?’
‘Shepherd’s tits, Gar, do you think if we eliminate Corvel and his cronies, that all will be brandy and roses? You think Prince Shit-for-brains will be wise and just and rule with fairness and equanimity? Oh, I’m sure he’d have the best intentions, but mark me, jobs like that have a way of changing people. You watch the Nort’s new friend Matil, now she’s holding the reins. See how long her compassion lasts in the face of the realities of power.’
‘Then we shouldn’t even try to change anything? Why even bother?’
Loveless nodded and sucked her lip, then grabbed a handful of fruit and one of Foss’s bottles. ‘You do what you want, Gar,’ she said, heading up the steps toward the rooms on the upper gallery. ‘You always do.’
Her door slammed a moment later.
Rennic stared after her, breathing hard, nostrils flared, but not angry. Chel stared at the big man, trying to puzzle his mood. He seemed … surprised?
‘Ancestors’ wisdom, boss, you sounded like the wee bear then.’
‘Shut your fucking mouth, Lemon.’
‘Righto.’
Rennic stalked up the steps to the outer door, and a moment later, it too slammed.
Chel, Lemon, and Foss were left alone, only the wail of the wind and the clanging of bells for company.
‘Well,’ Lemon said, but nothing more.
‘It would be five,’ Chel said, still sitting off to one side.
‘What’s that?’
‘Five. Loveless said it would be four of you against the red tide, but I’d be there. There would be five of us.’
‘You? You’re still sworn to princeling, aren’t you, wee bear? He says jump, you say what on?’
‘He’d understand. He’d let me, if I asked him.’
‘Oh, wee bear, stop, you’re making me weepy. My poor heart can’t take all this.’
Foss chuckled and lowered himself down to the table, and Lemon followed suit. Chel watched them, still turning the plum stone in his hand.
‘What now? What do we do?’
Foss began pulling bottles from the crates, arranging them on the table beside the piled food. ‘Well, friend, either an army masses on our doorstep, ready to crush us, or our hosts will grind them to powder in the gully. Either way, matters rest in God’s hands for now.’
‘Meaning?’
Lemon arranged gilded cups, produced from some hidden pocket in her clothes. ‘Meaning, wee bear, we’ve got nothing to do but eat, drink, and be merry. Because we have no idea what tomorrow brings, so we might as well face it with a granny-fucker of a hangover.’
Foss started pouring from one of the bottles, then added a dash of another, then another. ‘An occasion to merit Uncle Foss’s Special Drink.’
‘Evil days, Fossy.’
‘Evil days, my friend.’
They clinked cups, and after a moment, Chel went to join them.
***
Things had become hazy. At some point Rennic had returned and begun drinking with them, but Loveless remained in her room above. Tarfel was still not back; Chel rather blithely assumed he’d turn up eventually. The daylight had gone, the room lit with candles and lamps kindled by unseen attendants, and the air had become chill. Chel handled this by increasing his intake of Special Drink, which tasted mostly of spiced fruit and smelled of alchemy. From somewhere beyond came the bells, the shouts, the incessant whine of the wind, the occasional rumble, like distant thunder, making the bottles jingle in their crates. Nobody seemed to pay it any heed, so Chel did his best to ignore it too.
‘Which is why …’ Lemon said, paused, drank, resumed. ‘Which is why the wee bear remains as useful as a one-legged man at an arse-kicking contest.’
‘Thank you?’ Chel said, brow furrowed. He’d put the plum stone down somewhere, and couldn’t remember where.
‘Aye, right, so here’s the thing, right. Why are you called “bear”? You’re not exactly bearish, are you? You’re more of a …’
‘Faun,’ Rennic said, then sniggered into his cup.
Chel coloured. ‘I thought we didn’t ask for intimates.’
‘Aye, well, thing is, could be an army of red bastards rolls into town in a day or two and does for the bunch of us, and I’d hate to go into the beyond with this bugging me.’
Foss sipped at his cup, reclined, replete, eyes half-closed. ‘It started with your sister, friend? That’s what the prince said.’
‘It did. But listen, tell you what: you tell me where your names come from, I’ll tell you mine. Fair?’
‘Oho, he’s a tricksy one, this wee fella.’
‘Deal,’ said Foss.
‘Deal,’ Chel repeated. ‘So what does “Foss” mean?’
Foss eased back against the cushions. ‘It’s an old word, this one. Very old.’
‘It means “wall”,’ Lemon announced with a proud grin. ‘Back from your pit days, right, Fossy? No bastard could touch him.’
Foss raised a hand, a pained look on his face, eyes open but downcast. ‘No, friend. Not quite.’
‘Eh?’
‘It means ‘ditch’. It means something that … lies down.’ He rubbed at his beard, running his fingers over his jaw, feeling for something beneath. ‘But I got it in my pit days, and I’ve kept it since. To keep me honest.’
Chel blinked, unsure of what had happened. ‘Has it worked?’
Foss stared into the middle distance for a moment, then a slow smile spread across his face. ‘Yes, friend. I think it has.’
Chel nodded, bemused, then switched to his neighbour. ‘And what about Lemon?’
She shrugged. ‘Nothing to it, no great story.’
‘Really? Really? I find that a … challenge to believe.’
She spread her hands. ‘My real name is Lennon. One of these pricks misheard, or pretended to, and that was that.’
‘Lennon? Lennon of Clyden?’
‘Aye.’
‘That’s the most ridiculous name I’ve ever heard.’
‘My thanks, Bear of wherever the fuck you’re from.’
‘And what about you?’ Rennic stirred under Chel’s stare, but didn’t flinch or fidget. ‘Where does “Gar Rennic” come from?’
‘My mother,’ he said, black eyes unblinking in the lamplight, and Chel let his gaze fall away.
‘Come on then, wee bear. Spill your guts. What makes you bearly?’
‘Fine, fine. When Sabina, my sister – she’s younger than me by a few years – was little, she couldn’t say her Vs, couldn’t pronounce my name.’
‘Which is?’
‘Vedren. Hells, Lemon, you knew that.’
‘Aye, right you are.’
‘She’d try to say “Vedren”, but it would come out “Bedren”, if even that. She was a lazy sow, only bothered with the first syllable most of the time, so mostly she called me “Bear”. My f—’ His throat caught, and he took another swig of Special Drink before continuing. ‘My father … he was quite tickled by it, started calling me the same. His little bear. Even once my sister was grown, and had full control of her speech … for better or worse.’
‘Well, that,’ Rennic said, lip curled over his cup, ‘was disappointingly anodyne.’
‘You asked. I told you.’ Chel took another swallow, emptying his cup. Something fizzed within him. ‘Lennon of Clyden, eh?’
Across the table, Lemon shrugged. ‘It’s really quite a common name where I’m from.’ She looked momentarily wistful. ‘You know, when I thought maybe we might go back – to Clyden, that is – I had the strangest feeling. Like, like, I wanted to, but I didn’t want to. Like I never expected to.’
‘But you’re a, what was it, tourist, right?’ Chel paused. ‘What is a tourist?’
She shuffled back in her cushions, assuming her posture of great lecturation. ‘Ah, well, the tour is a grand tradition of the Clydish youth, especially among those at the upper end of the social dynamic.’
‘You’re a princess?’
‘Am I fuck. Kind of the opposite, as it turns. My touring was … uncommon.’
‘Wait, what’s a common tour?’
‘Aye, you know, go out, see the world, experience different peoples and places, enhance your linguistic acumen, expand your mind and horizons. Very standard stuff. Important part of attaining adulthood, course, but … basically a grand old adventure for a young up-and-comer, under careful chaperon. They head for the continent, pootle around Amistreb or Shenak, poke at the old buildings and imperial relics, buy up some souvenirs for the trip home, to show off how much they saw and how much they grew – or how many forgers they enriched on their travels.’
Chel leaned closer, the cup tight in his hands. ‘What about family, though, duties? Obligations?’
She looked up at the patterned ceiling, her mouth pulled down in thought. ‘Depending on your outlook, you could say it’s part of your duties, but in the grand scheme, they’re … paused. Idea is, you’ll be better-placed to meet them on your return, grown up a bit, got some … perspective.’
‘You, then? The uncommon.’
‘Aye, right, not for Lennon of Clyden the standard and well-trod. I wanted to see Vistirlar, seat of the Taneru, where all the history comes from. See the art, the culture … course, how was I to know you were all backward savages compared to the majesty of Clyden, eh?’ She shook her head, tresses bouncing. ‘All a bit grim round these parts. Still, I’ve hit the high notes. Worked on a whaling ship, woven fishing nets, made armour, built a bridge, plus all the mucking about with you bastards … Expanded horizons, all right. Not bad for a simple Clydish lass.’
‘When does your tour end?’
She looked at him with sad, distant eyes. ‘The average tour is a year, wee bear. I’ve been away for …’ She counted on her fingers, getting to at least seven. ‘I don’t think I’m ever going home.’
‘Won’t that upset people, those waiting for you?’
Her gaze dropped and her voice with it, and Chel had to strain to hear. ‘Nobody’s waiting for me, bear. My unreturn was priced in from the start.’
Chel felt something prickle in his own chest, a feeling like his own thoughts were being drawn out of him into the light. Going home … Where even is home for me now? Wouldn’t it be something to strike out into the world, make a new life of my choosing?
Lemon belched and the spell was broken. ‘Aye, well, seems only fitting to be expectorating secrets on our last night in the corporeal realm.’
‘You what?’
‘You know, assuming the boss is talking as much bollocks as ever, and Corvel and his bastards come knocking for us in the morning. At least we’ll have had …’ Lemon waved her hands around, slopping the contents of her cup. She didn’t seem to notice. ‘… This.’
The eve of our execution. The phrase stirred something inside Chel, a memory of a promise. He lurched to his feet. ‘I’ll be … Back.’
He was halfway up the stairs before he realized it, feet moving faster than his stumbling mind could have foreseen. Lemon or Rennic called something after him, but it was lost to the pounding of blood in his ears, the sudden roar of his own breath.
His feet stopped him outside Loveless’s door. It was closed, but light shone from beneath it, flutters of shadow indicating movement from within. Eyes shut to still the latent whirling, he knocked.
She looked tired. If she’d been drinking in her room, he saw no sign of it.
‘What, cub?’
‘It’s … It’s the eve of our execution.’
‘What?’
‘You said. You said before, about what happened. How we’d … try again … the day before we died.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Have you come looking for sex?’
He found he couldn’t answer. No combination of words seemed right.
She took a long breath and swung the door open the rest of the way.
‘You’d better come in.’
***
The lamps in the room were low, but even by their gentle light he could see she’d been busy. A knapsack, bedroll, and several satchels lay on the bed, some of Foss and Lemon’s pilfered fruit poking from within. She’d laid out clothes, hard travelling wear, along with some of the richer gear the Sericans had provided for them. Nestled among them was Ruumi’s fat blue stone, peeking from a leather pouch, its delicate facets twinkling in the light.
She poured him a cup of water from a pitcher and nodded toward the chair in the room’s corner. He sat, heart fluttering in his chest, still uncertain of what might happen.
‘Did you know Lemon’s real name was Lennon?’
She raised an eyebrow but said nothing, concentrating only on bundling the clothing to fit in a pair of conjoined sacks. At last he recognized them as saddlebags.
‘So, when you said—’
‘If you’re about to ask if we’re going to fuck, then no, cub, no we are not. Just sit there, drink water and be quiet for a while, will you? Shepherd knows you stink of booze.’
Inside him, something crumbled, perhaps hope. His eyes fell on the bed, forbidden territory, and the ordered effects that lay on it. His mind caught up.
‘You’re packing? You’re leaving?’
She looked up at him, her mouth a thin line.
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
Her eyes widened, perhaps in anger, perhaps amazement. ‘More reasons than you could name.’
‘You’re leaving us?’
‘You could come too.’
‘But … But the—’
‘Yes, exactly. Now hush. Drink the water.’
He drank the water. She packaged up the clothes, then paused, and at last shrugged off her shirt, bundling it and stuffing it in with the others. Beneath she wore only the strapping he remembered from Wavecrest, from tending her wound after her sparring with Dalim. He looked for a mark, a narrow scar below her chest, and as she turned in the amber lamplight he saw at last what had been escaping him for weeks.
‘You’re …’ He swallowed, throat dry, swigged water. ‘You’re …’
She gazed at him, level and unhurried, making no move to hide or cover her thickening abdomen.
‘Yes.’
‘A b … baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought … you couldn’t?’
‘So did I. Apparently God has a sense of humour after all.’
‘Is this why you’re leaving?’
‘Nothing I said before is any less true for this.’
‘Does Rennic know?’
‘Why would he care?’
‘It’s not his?’
‘She is mine.’
Chel nodded slowly and sipped water, ill-equipped to cope. ‘Does he know you’re leaving?’
‘Cub …’ She pulled a silken robe from the ornate screen in the room’s corner, and pulled it on with a look of distaste. ‘Listen to me. The world, the people in it, they try to funnel you. To push you the way you’re supposed to go, the way they want you to go, need you to go. This place … this place reminds me of who I was, and to them I’ll never be anything more. I can’t stay here without falling back into the role they chose for me. They’ll choose for you too, given the chance.’
Chel thought of the Andriz enclave, thought of Laralim sizing him up for the breeding pool, thought of Rasha, thought of Loveless … He drank more water.
‘The big man and I, we’ve been pushing back against that for years. It’s what we’ve done together, in all the time I’ve known him. Push back against the world, dig in our heels and deliver a big fuck you to it all. Travel our own path.’
She fussed with the items on the bed, then stopped and sighed. ‘But something’s different in him now, and I’m not saying it’s your fault, but he’s been changing since our path crossed with yours. If he had his right mind today, we’d be saying fuck all of this, let’s get gone. But here I am, the only one with one foot out the door. We used to discuss things, him, me, and Whisp, talk things out, decide together. Now he just does what he thinks … So you tell me, cub, what’s changed? What’s left Gar Rennic staring down the business end of a hero’s valiant, pointless death, and not walking away?’
‘I don’t … I—’
‘Yeah. Things change, nothing lasts. What do you want, cub? And don’t say sex.’
‘Huh?’
‘Why are you here, in Arowan? What has brought you to this madness? God knows you’ve been riding this runaway horse for half a year, and sooner or later you’re going to have to choose when to jump.’
‘I swore an oath. I have to do my duty—’
‘Answer the question. What do you want?’
Chel swallowed more water. ‘I want … I want the prince to be safe. I want peace.’
‘But for yourself? What are you yearning for, pining for? And again, don’t say sex, or at least not sex here and now.’
‘My sister asked me the same thing, before we parted. A little differently, of course.’
‘And? What did you say?’
‘To … do my duty.’
‘Five hells, cub, you’re exhausting. Why? Why this obsession with duty and obligation, beyond all sense and reason?’
‘My father said—’
‘Oh, saints preserve us, your dear dead dad. Let me guess, you miss him terribly, and don’t much care for your mother now she’s remarried.’
The flush that burned his cheeks cut straight through the booze-fug. ‘I …’
‘Guess what, cub, I doubt she had much choice. Your father is gone, before he had a chance to disappoint you beyond up and dying. Your mother remained, human and fallible, facing the world alone. You think that’s easy? You think she remarried to spite you, you infant? Shepherd save us from the solipsism of youth.’
‘The what?’
‘Thinking you’re at the centre of everything, cub, that every decision another makes has you at its heart. Your father is dead, Vedren, and his approval will never be forthcoming, no matter how nobly you hurl yourself into peril. There are plenty of people alive who care about you. So why this obsession? What is so absent in your existence that you drive yourself this way? What is it that you want?’
‘I … I don’t know. I want …’ He could feel tears prickling in his eyes, running hot on his burning cheeks. ‘I want this feeling to end.’
Her voice dropped, intent now, gentle. ‘What feeling, cub?’
‘Like … Like I’m weighed down. By what people expect of me. Like I have no control over my life, I just have to do what’s … expected. Demanded.’
She leaned back with a triumphant grin. ‘Now you’re getting it. We’re closer than you might think.’ She walked over, the robe trailing on the floor like a train, and refilled his cup. ‘That feeling, my young friend, exists in your mind. You escape it by choosing to.’
She ruffled his hair, infuriatingly maternal. How fitting, a small, detached part of his brain observed. ‘I wasn’t kidding before. You could choose to leave. You could walk back down those steps now and tell Prince Gargleballs we’re fleeing, and he’ll go with it. You might be his sworn man but he’s your puppy. The others would come too. You could save everyone.’
Chel’s voice was cracked and hoarse. ‘But not the rest of the kingdom.’
‘You can’t save a kingdom by yourself. You need to care for those around you first.’
‘But you’re leaving us.’
‘Because I need to look out for myself most of all.’
He half-expected her to put a hand on her stomach, but she went back to fussing over her packing. His thoughts boiled, and the silence grew.
‘I … I can’t do it,’ he said at last, eyes on the beautiful silk rug at the bed’s foot. ‘I can’t walk away. Not with all this danger—’
‘I know,’ she said, not looking up. ‘But maybe one day you will.’ She tightened a bag-strap and stepped back. ‘Time for bed, cub. There are no more answers to be had tonight.’
He stood, the rush leaving him wobbling on his feet.
‘Just promise you won’t go before … Say goodbye in the morning, tell the others.’
‘Of course.’
She walked him to the door, one hand on his arm, supportive, intractable. She spoke quietly as they walked, her voice a murmur. ‘You need to be very careful with Gar, cub. I called him a coward before, but I was wrong. He’s innately cautious, or he was, but that’s gone, scoured away … Once he gets an idea, he … hardens around it. He’s set on his course now, and you’d better be thrice-damned sure you have the stomach to follow him to its end.’
She pushed him gently through the door and began to close it.
‘Watch him for me.’
***
When he returned to her room at dawn, ready to apologize and redouble his efforts to convince her to stay, she was gone.