IN THE DARKNESS of the eternal night in the prison cell, Tandor could tell day from night by the number of meals brought by the guards. During the day, there would be three meals fairly close together, followed by a long time without any meals. Also, during the day, guards came and went, jangling keys, and taking prisoners away, to the courts or the gallows room. Every time someone left, other prisoners took bets as to whether he would be back.
But today, they’d received only two meals, and no one had come to get the prisoners. In fact, no one had come yesterday either. The other inmates went into a frenzy about this. They said the guards never skipped a meal, and sentencing went on every day, even during festivities.
With his knowledge of Ruko and the other children, Tandor feared that this was the beginning of the end. The guards didn’t come because either they were too busy trying to organise people into shelter or, and what was worse, they were all dead, and in that case, the prisoners would starve to death in this hole.
What a way to end a life that should have ended in triumph.
When a guard finally did show up, he marched past all the doors, to loud protests of the inmates.
“Bring our bread.”
“We’re hungry!”
The guard walked past all of them, while the patch of light from his lantern moved down the corridor. He set the lantern down at the door to Tandor’s cell, extracted keys and opened the door. He picked up the lantern, and set it on the bench inside. He didn’t close the door. By then, Tandor knew.
“I told that idiot of a Proctor that he’d beg for my help,” he said, and coughed. “He still wouldn’t believe me. So what’s happened now?”
“The Eagle Knights have attacked, and there is fighting in the refugee camps. A large sonorics storm approaches. Someone seems to think that you can do something about it.”
The guard knelt next to Tandor and unlocked the shackles that held his legs. “Don’t get too cocky. Also, don’t think that this means that’s you’re innocent.”
“I don’t think my innocence or guilt matters.”
The man swore under his breath. Next, he unlocked the shackles that held Tandor’s arms, then quickly backed off.
Tandor let his arms rest by his side, relishing the feeling of freedom.
“Come on then, go,” the guard said. “Before I change my mind. I don’t like this order one bit.”
“Good for you then you didn’t have to give it.” Tandor struggled to his feet. He was stiff and sore, and clumsy. In slow, shuffling steps, he walked past the guard into the corridor.
Prisoners stirred in their cells.
“Hey, they let him go.”
“What about us?”
“You can ask him,” Tandor said, jerking his head at the guard. “But I doubt he’ll be in the mood. To be honest, you’ll be safer down here.”
It cost him much effort to climb the stairs.
The courthouse corridor was deserted and lit only by a few flapping lamps along the walls.
A guard stood just inside the building’s entrance, looking bored at a temporary guard station that would normally be outside. Tandor half-expected to be challenged, but it seemed the order to release him had been genuine, and the guard only watched him.
He opened the door and walked onto the porch of the building. Cold air buffeted him in the face, and with the wind came a familiar tingle. He drank in the icefire, and searched the sky for the flying dacon. He didn’t see it.
To the south, the sky was pitch black, a dark mass of roiling clouds with the occasional flicker of lightning within. The base of the clouds glowed orange. That was the direction of the camp, where all the action was taking place. But he was too stiff and sore to get there in a hurry.
He moved in a kind of shuffling run. Through the merchant quarter past the houses of families he knew. The sky was dark and ominous punctuated with flashes of lightning.
The wind whipped around corners, sometimes warm, sometimes cold. Sheets of rain lashed his face. When his muscles cramped, he stopped and studied the sky, but never did he see a dark form fly over, not an eagle, not the dacon. Where would it have fled?
Finally, he stumbled up the steps to his house. The windows at the front were dark, at least those he could see over the wall.
The doorman stuck his head out of the gatehouse and called, “Halt, what are you doing here?”
“Don’t be stupid, let me into my house.”
The man came out, carrying a torch. He shone it into Tandor’s face and stared, his mouth open. “Master?”
“Open the gate, you idiot. I don’t have all night.” In fact, it was almost morning.
“Yes, yes, sure.” The man unlocked the gate and pushed one half of the solid metal gate aside.
There was light on in his mother’s back room, and he heard voices.
“But it was your guarantee that none of us would be harmed!” said a male voice.
“That depended on your work.” That was his mother. “You didn’t do the work I required.”
“No, that was not what I heard. This medicine was to protect us all from sonorics.”
“You lied to us!” Another voice.
“You are responsible for Alius’ death.”
Tandor opened the door and went in.
His mother sat at her desk, surrounded by her rich Chevakian men, the ones she had convinced to support her. Their clean and cultured faces twisted into masks of horror. Tandor could only imagine what he looked like to them, dirty, with his hair burned off, his face scarred so that he could barely close his eyes and his clothes filthy from the prison.
The rule was that when family turned up, guests left, so the men rose and left the room. One of them was the former proctor Destran.
No one said anything until the door closed.
His mother gave him a cold look.
As he took his time sitting down, he noticed that his sisters were also in the room.
Rosane wrinkled her nose at him. “You stink.”
He felt like telling her off, the arrogant cow. Always thought she was better than him, and never did any of the hard work.
But his mother glared his sister into silence. She regarded him from behind her desk, her elbows leaning on the surface and the tips of her fingers touching each other. “You took your time turning up.”
“Yes, well I got held up.”
He hadn’t expected sympathy and got none. She flicked her eyebrows; her gaze lingered on the hairless part of his skull. “Where is the dacon?”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“I don’t see it. You were meant to bring her.”
“I will bring her, but I need a vehicle. I can’t chase anything like this.”
His mother’s lips twitched. “Very well, but I’m coming. I’m not letting you ruin a perfectly good truck.” She rose and retrieved her cloak.
“Thanks for the confidence,” Tandor muttered.
His mother crossed the room in a few steps and held a finger under his nose. “Look, without me, you’d be nothing, and if you ask me, you’re still nothing. What is so hard about bringing a newborn baby here?”
“If you’d come to my help, you would have found out. But no, you let me deal with the escaped servitor by myself, and now you blame me for all that’s gone wrong.”
“You never knew where the baby was.”
“I did, but she turned before I could get to her, and I tried to climb on her back, but she wouldn’t obey me.”
His mother stopped. “What? Isn’t the dacon meant to listen to Thilleians?”
“She didn’t listen to me.”
“Where is it now?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t seen it, because the Chevakians caught me and put me in the courthouse jail. Where were you? Why didn’t you check on me?”
“I had other problems. Alius decided to jump sideways on the issue of the pills. He stalled and stalled bringing out the pills until it was too late, and then he killed himself rather than issue the medicine to keep everyone happy. Next thing, all our supporters have questions.”
“Why?”
“They say that people have warned them that the pills don’t work.”
“And—do they work?”
He had trouble transporting himself back to the situation before he left: his mother in discussion with Chevakian business people about opportunities that would open up with increased icefire. The barrier was silly, she said. There were better ways for the Chevakians to protect themselves.
“That hardly matters.” But he saw the answer in her eyes. She didn’t care about any of the Chevakians who had given her money. “We need to control this beast or the entire country is going to demand the death penalty for us. We need to find it. I’m coming with you. Two of us will be stronger than one.”