NOLAN LANDED his bird next to Carro’s on the dusty farm road. The eagle shook itself and folded its wings. Nolan slid off and gave Carro the knotted rope he used as reins. Carro took it from Nolan’s hand. His skin briefly touched Carro’s palm. Nolan looked up and met Carro’s eyes.
Neither said anything. They knew the drill.
Nolan pushed open the creaky farm gate and crossed a vegetable yard to the door of the house. Such strange houses they had here, too. Walls made from stone blocks and straw roofs.
Burns well, Farey had said yesterday, and had proceeded to demonstrate with an old cranky farmer who wouldn’t tell Farey if he’d seen the two fugitives. The farmer’s family was hiding behind one of the windows in the house, and when Farey had taken off, he’d flown over the roof and dropped a burning torch.
Woof. The straw burned almost better than the ancient material that formed the roofs of many houses in the Outer City.
Farey laughed.
The old farmer and his family ran for shelter.
They’d frightened a few more families, and with each further house they came to, Carro was more afraid they’d find Isandor and Jevaithi. They had seen the riderless eagle. The beast had been too far away to recognise for certain, but it could have been Isandor’s. The more he thought about it, the more sure he was that it had been Isandor’s, because there were only a few wild eagles left, and the books said that in the mountains they didn’t grow large enough to carry a man. That only happened under influence of icefire in the City of Glass.
So yes, they would likely find Isandor soon.
Isandor would recognise him, and would plead forgiveness or some such, and Carro didn’t think he’d be able to look his former friend in the eye while Farey ran a knife through his heart. There were so many times that Isandor had helped him, or saved him . . .
Nolan knocked hard on the farmhouse door.
After the shoving back of bolts and creaking of hinges, a man opened, holding a sword.
In one movement, Nolan had his staff out and yanked the sword from the old man’s hand. It flew through the air and clattered to the ground at Carro’s feet.
Carro slid from the eagle, which looked at him as if it wanted to say Is that all you can get me to eat? Holding both sets of reins, he knelt and retrieved the sword. The weapon was old and blunt, of the type sometimes sold in the antique markets in the Outer City as having belonged to Chevakian soldiers during the Aranian war. The man was a veteran, clearly.
Meanwhile, the man was whimpering and Nolan shouting in Chevakian. The man was crying, shaking his head. A woman was crying, too.
By the skylights, shut up! Carro wanted to clamp his hands over his ears.
A gust of wind brought a chill.
And Carro’s vision faded. He heard, not the cries of the peasants in the farmhouse, but those of fighting youths in the City of Glass. The streets were dark with gloomy pinpricks of light from the odd street lamp. He saw brief glimpses of burning houses and groups of people running through the snow. It had been the night Isandor and Jevaithi escaped.
He tried to banish the memory from his mind.
By the skylights, he thought he’d been cured of the damned affliction.
“Hey, Carro! Carro!” Nolan shouted.
Carro jolted back into full consciousness.
Nolan was running through the yard, pursued by a younger man carrying a powder gun. The peasant stopped, aimed, and there was a loud bang. Something whistled through the air. The eagles pulled on their reins, flapping huge wings over Carro’s head. He was almost dragged up into the air.
Nolan flung himself over the fence, scrabbled up, swung himself on the eagle’s back and kicked the bird into motion. Carro followed, heading into the icy breeze. Thick smoke billowed up behind him. He tried not to think of the farming family, and what Nolan did to them. Once, when he was young, he had seen his father mistreat his mother—
She was crying and yelling at him, while Carro, about six at the time, hid behind the door.
* * *
Carro sits on hands and knees on his sleeping shelf, looking down into the central room of the limpet.
His mother yells, “If you do this again, I will tell my family!”
To which his father responds, “And what do you think they are going do? Admit that their daughter is a selfish sea cow and take her back so she can continue to be a selfish sea cow?”
Carro sniggers, then covers his mouth with his hand, so they won’t realise he’s listening. It’s so entertaining to hear his father yell at someone other than him.
His sister sits next to Carro; she’s crying. Carro grins at her.
His mother yells, “My parents will demand to have back their loan. Don’t you dare forget what makes you a successful merchant, whose money it is.”
“I don’t need your damn money, woman.”
“No, you just need a sex slave.”
* * *
Carro clung onto the reins, his hands sweaty.
He had been way too confident lately, had thought that because the visions were gone, he had been cured of them, but not so. Worse, the only thing that could help him, the ichina herb, was not available to him here and the hunters would cast him out if they found out he had an illness. They would tell his father. And his father would disown him, like everyone in his life had disowned him.
So he hung onto the saddle, and peered down to the forest, sweating and feeling sick. He must not give in to these visions. He must banish them.
The hunters’ temporary camp was a clearing in the forest big enough for the eagles to land. In the morning, they had piled their camping gear at the base of a tree and put branches on top and covered the fire with dirt and sticks.
It still lay as they had left it; Farey and Jeito were still out.
They went to prepare the camp silently.
Nolan strode to a tree, unhooked a bag from a tree and tossed his bird half a sabre-wolf carcass with the same careless gesture as he had hunted, killed and cut up the animal yesterday. The eagle claimed its prey with a yellow claw. Carro’s eagle got the other half of the beast, which Nolan threw with such force that it bounced over the ground and the eagle had to hop after it, only to find that its tether was too short. It gave an annoyed cry. Carro ran to shift the carcass before the bird decided to try chew through the tether. He glanced at Nolan while he did this, but Nolan looked the other way.
While Carro and Nolan relit the fire and uncovered the gear, the birds were ripping up their prey, snapping bones and crunching them in their beaks.
It was so silent that Carro could hear the wind rustle through the trees. Nolan was still not looking at Carro.
Finally, Carro couldn’t stand it any longer. He said, “I did something wrong, didn’t I?”
Nolan looked up. Oh, his eyes were furious.
“That guy almost killed me. I thought you were there on the lookout! Why didn’t you warn me he had a gun?”
Carro had been dreaming, on the verge of getting another spell, but he couldn’t say so. He had no medicine for it.
Carro shrugged. “Sorry. I was . . . looking the other way. Thought I saw something.”
Nolan’s hard stare met his. “I thought you’d look out for me. I thought you cared.”
Carro shrugged. “Sorry,” he said again.
Sorry was hardly appropriate, and he knew it. You could not say sorry so easily to someone who was in love with you. And Nolan was in love. He had said so many times while making love, but Carro hadn’t worked out what he thought. Every time Nolan touched him in intimate places, he thought back to the abuse at the eyrie, and he felt the stone under his hands as he clawed at the wall to get away from the tormentors with their cock up his arse. Nolan didn’t hurt him as much as the abusers had, and for a while, in the middle of it, he could enjoy the pure sensation. But later, he always wanted to wash the filth off. It was when he crouched near the creek, trying to clean the sticky stuff out of his hair down there, that he felt a seed of hatred grow deep inside him for the way men and women used sex to manipulate others.
He raised the water bladder to his mouth and drank deeply. Nolan was still looking at him, but Carro didn’t return his gaze. By the skylights, wasn’t it possible for any adult to have friends while keeping your clothes on? He finished the water and went to refill the bladder at the spring.
Here, away from the pile of saddlebags, their makeshift shelters and the firewood, the wind soughed through the pine trees. It was a lot colder than it had been yesterday, and the sky was white, rather than blue. Carro shivered. It seemed the cold had quietened the birds.
The grass rustled.
“No, you’re not getting away from me that quickly.”
He gasped. Nolan blocked his path.
“Looking the other way. That’s rubbish and you know it. You haven’t been the same all day. Is it because of something I said?”
Carro shrugged. “Back there, at the house . . . I wasn’t thinking. We’ve done so many of these farm calls that I didn’t expect the fellow to charge at you. I am sorry.” He looked at the ground and felt all the thoughts he had inside seething at him. They were saying come on, coward, do something. “I’m probably not very good at saying it.”
They were standing on the bank of a creek, and the grass here was green and kept short by animals that came in to graze at night. Farey would set his traps and catch the weirdest creatures. Things he called “hares” with soft fur and long ears and strong back legs with lots of muscle that was good to eat.
“Hey.” Nolan reached out and touched Carro’s arm.
Carro flinched.
“It’s all right. The fellow gave me a fright, but I survived. You were dreaming. Come on, confess, what were you thinking about back there?” His eyes were playful.
“Er—nothing.”
“You’re sure?” Nolan’s hand found its way under Carro’s shirt. His fingers caressed the soft skin.
There was just no getting away from it.
* * *
When they returned to the camp in semidarkness, Jeito had returned. A fire blazed in the clearing and a cooking pot stood in the flames.
“Smells good,” Nolan said.
Jeito raised one eyebrow. The light from the flames lit Farey’s face; he stood near the eagles, grooming his bird, listening to every word they said.
Carro didn’t know where to look. These men could see straight through him. Even though he had washed in the creek, he could still smell Nolan on his skin. He had no doubt Jeito would know what he and Nolan did at the creek.
Jeito was holding a map and scanning the campground they’d covered so far. Jeito’s hair, tied back in a ponytail, flapped with a gust of wind that nearly tore the map out of his hands.
“Oh, fuck!”
Jeito knelt in the grass and spread the map out there, using stones to keep it in place. Not for the first time, Carro noticed Jeito’s fine, long-fingered hands. In view of Nolan’s clear Chevakian background and Farey’s Aranian heritage, Jeito was an enigma. Small of build and southern in appearance, with a fine face, but ruthless with his dagger. Yet, Farey seemed protective of him. Carro got that they were lovers, and had been for a long time, but neither seemed to mind if the other strayed.
“You still think they’re in the region?” Nolan said, all business, coming to stand behind Jeito.
When Jeito didn’t reply, he continued, “One farmer said he’d been missing things from his garden. That one there . . . The farm with the goats and the big old house. There’s tracks in the grain.”
“An old man lives there,” Farey said from under the trees. “He had a visitor last night. I think it was one of the neighbours, one of the ones we roughed up.”
“They’re warning each other, huh?” Nolan said.
“Not used to being spied on from the air.”
The accuracy of these men was disturbing. Things they picked up he never would have. If Isandor and Jevaithi were in the area, they would surely be found. There were only a few farmhouses left that were yet unmarked by fire. What would Isandor say if he found his friend had been sent to hunt and kill him and the young Queen?
“I’ve spotted some soldiers on the road, over there.” Carro pointed at the map, away from the unmarked farms.
Jeito looked over his shoulder, a hint of irritation flitting over his face. Did he sense the deliberate change of subject?
“I saw them, too,” Nolan said. “There were four.”
“Four is not an army.” Jeito’s voice had a What do you know? tone about it.
Nolan shook his head. “It’s a spying unit. Or a special mission squad.”
Jeito raised his eyebrows. “What would they be doing here?”
“Same thing we are?” Nolan said. “They were doing something strange. They had a long section of cloth which they spread on the forest floor. Then they took a crate of silver cylinders from their vehicle. There was a frame attached to it, and they attached the cloth to it. Then there was a burst of air and a flame, and a section of the cloth bulged. And a bit later, it had grown bigger.”
“By the skylights, what was it?”
“I think . . .” Carro hesitated, remembering his books; he hadn’t seen the thing, but he’d been too busy staying on the eagle. “I think that thing is going to fly. I think it was a balloon.”
Nolan laughed. “That a balloon? It was huge and lumbering, and slow. Our eagles are much faster.”
“They are, but they don’t carry heavy weapons.” He’d learned about balloons in his books, even though he had never seen one. “You know that Chevakia defeated Arania with an army of balloons?”
“They did not. You’re just making things up. Chevakians would be too dumb to think of using things that fly.”
“Actually, he’s right,” Farey said.
Silence was instant. Farey didn’t speak much but when he did, everyone listened.
“The Chevakians had hundreds of balloons. In each balloon there were up to ten soldiers. The carried heavy weapons and vats of powder which they dropped on the ground. There were explosions everywhere, and fires, and people burnt to cinders. My father lost many of his cousins that way. The balloons are a great evil. Many people in Arania are still angry about it, and curse at the King who has gone weak and panders to Chevakia.”
“But what are they doing here with that thing?”
A moment of silence followed. Wind whistled through the trees. The Chevakians might have had word that the Queen was gone. The Chevakians had all kinds of strange magical equipment to carry their messages.
“We need to warn the Knights.”
“You don’t think they already know?”
Jeito shrugged. “Question is: do we care if the Chevakians do our job for us?”
“Course we do.” Nolan’s voice sounded indignant. “No bodies, no payment. Leastways, not for me. Yeah, yeah, I know.” He held up his hands. “I still care about getting myself some silver gulls so I can buy things in the City of Glass. I happen to like going back home every now and then.”
Jeito scowled.
Carro felt sick. So that was the deal. He knew that the patrol was meant to return the bodies, and he had some idle hope to prevent the killing. They could always say that the remains were too badly burnt to return. But no, it seemed that wasn’t going to please the Knights.
“Right, so let’s keep an eye on these Chevakian scouts. They know the country better than we do.”
He and Farey exchanged worried looks.
“Do you think it had anything to do with the flare we saw last night?” Nolan asked.
Jeito shrugged, but looked worried.
Farey said, with a glance at Carro, “It worries me that we haven’t heard from the Supreme Rider, especially since you are with us. I’d have thought he’d be sending us gulls every day.”
“How often does he normally contact you?” Carro asked.
“Once every few days,” Farey said.
“Why don’t we release a messenger gull?” Nolan asked.
“We haven’t heard back from the first one yet. We only have one left, and none have come to replace it.”
They all looked at the small cage hanging in a tree, holding a white bird with orange legs and a fierce beak.
Jeito shook his head and there was another silence.
“That never happens,” Nolan explained to Carro. “Whatever Rider Cornatan thinks of us, he’s normally good with his replies. He always sends gulls if we’re out. He gives lots of instructions.”
“Too many,” Farey said, and then glanced uneasily at Carro. “Tends to meddle a lot, telling us how to do our jobs and all that. He says he used to be part of the raiding parties in Chevakia. He’d find the best women, claim them there and then, and take them to the City of Glass, letting the silly noble soft guys think they’d actually sired the children the women bore.”
“Quit talking about that, will you?” Jeito said.
An uncomfortable silence fell. Like Nolan, it seemed Jeito had been one of those children. Did that mean Jeito was his half-brother?
“That’s right. We were talking about sending out gulls,” Nolan said.
Jeito said, “Not much good talking. I think we should send this one. Not much good sitting here yabbering about what might have happened when we have a chance of finding out.”
Farey nodded. “Can’t argue with that logic.”
Jeito had taken a leather folder out of his saddlebag. When he folded it open, it revealed thin sheets of leather and a pen. He went to write a note with a cramped, childish hand. Carro spotted spelling mistakes, but he didn’t dare point them out.
Meanwhile, Farey had retrieved the cage with a messenger gull. The bird hissed and pecked at Farey’s hand when he inserted it in the cage, but he took it out without the loss of one feather. Jeito gave him the message, rolled up in a tiny cylinder. Farey tied it to the bird’s foot and threw the bird up into the air. It gave a single undignified squawk and flew off into the dusk, leaving the hunters in silence.
The flames of the fire hissed. A chill wind made Carro shiver. Shadows trailed through his mind, of the merchant, and a dark cavernous warehouse, but he managed to hold the visions at bay. Not a sound came out of the forest, as if the world waited for a disaster to come.
They sat down and ate, all in silence.
If something had happened in the City of Glass . . . Was this war? Were they now marooned in hostile territory? Or was this just another of his father’s silly tests?