The food arrived soon after she left. I sat quietly at the back of the cell while they carried it in, ignoring the posturing and the empty threats that went along with it. After a bit more shouting and the slamming of doors they left us alone and I unlocked both cells again, more for the principle of it than anything else, then set about eating. There wasn’t much, barely enough for a man, but it was far tastier than what I was expecting. Tatyana seemed content to eat on her own and I was happy to do the same and then stretch myself out on the soft bed, which creaked and moaned but held my weight.
I woke to the sound of men arguing in the passage outside my cell, something about the doors having not been locked. I wiped the grit from my eyes and glanced at the narrow window; the gloom suggested that it was the middle of the night, but that felt wrong. I stood and fumbled at the clasp on the window, and after a bit of twisting and pulling it came away from the frame and the window swung open with a clatter, followed by a gust of cool air. Looking to the east, I could see slivers of sunlight amidst the clouds like embers within an ash covered fire. I drew a deep breath of the air, sifting out the usual odours of the city until I was left with a slightly bitter, metallic taste I had last experienced in the catacombs beneath the city. Tainted magic.
The argument in the passage resolved itself while I was watching the clouds, but I paid no heed to the men as they barged into the cell and replaced the food tray with another. They left quickly, but not before locking, unlocking and testing the door several times. I opened both doors again as soon as they were gone, and soon after Tatyana joined me with her tray of food.
‘I’ll trade you, eggs for oats.’
‘Deal,’ I said, happily handing over the bowl.
‘You don’t know what you’re missing. This is the good stuff, made with butter and honey.’
‘It’s a matter of principle. And I like eggs.’
We ate in companionable silence until another gust of wind slapped the window open again, the frame clacking against the stone.
‘You got yours open, I see.’ She padded over to it and peered out. ‘That’s a big storm brewing.’
‘It’s not a storm,’ I said between mouthfuls of egg.
‘What do you mean?’
I swallowed the last bite and moved to join her. I drew a veil of sorcery across my vision and looked out across the city again. The clouds were heavy and dark, as if pregnant with rain, save on the fringes where the sunlight had forced its way through. There the vapours were a sickly green.
‘These clouds have been drawn together by men, not nature,’ I said. I closed my eyes. ‘The pressure is all wrong too.’
‘The pressure?’
‘Air has a weight and form to it. You don’t really feel it here, but to fly, you must learn to read the signs. Hot draws cold, as cold draws hot. It is how the winds and weather form.’
‘Huh.’
‘Yet I hardly feel any of that. This,’ I pointed to the green tinged sky, ‘is something entirely unnatural.’
‘They can do that?’
‘They can raise the dead, so there is little I count as impossible these days. The power involved would be considerable though.’
‘Could you do it?’
I considered that. ‘Yes, perhaps. But not on such a scale, nor for such a long time. Not alone.’
She closed the window, then sighed loudly as she picked up the clasp. ‘’Did you have to break it?’
‘Poor craftsmanship.’
‘I’m sure. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?’
I reached for her head but she flinched and swatted my hand away.
‘Not like that!’ She flinched as the window blew open again. ‘What I meant is, do you think this means he’s come with them? The Worm Lord.’
‘Ah.’
I knew he was out there somewhere, but I hadn’t really thought about him being so close. It was clearly a display meant to set fear running through the city, but was it more than that? Would frightening the population be worth such a cost? I had used fear as a weapon when I had owned the skies, but that had simply been a symptom of my size and ferocity.
‘Do you hear that?’ Tatyana asked, breaking me from my thoughts. ‘Sounds like a lot of people.’
I turned my head and listened. Men were generally very noisy, especially when more than a few gathered together, but the sound of voices echoing from the streets outside did sound more enthusiastic than usual.
‘What are they shouting?’
I paid more attention to the loudest of the chants. ‘Having. No. Hang him,’ I said.
‘Oh shit. You’re right.’
‘What do you think it means?’
She stared at me until I repeated the question then said, ‘You. It means you.’
‘Me?’
She didn’t reply at first and simply stared out the window.
‘Do you want me to lift you up?’
‘What? No. It sounds like they’re moving along Eagle Road, probably down to the main gaol near the guardhouse. They probably think you’re in there.’
‘It’s been a long time since I had a mob chasing me.’
‘I bet the weasel is behind this.’
‘Who?’
‘Marshal Wilsenach. Weasel, get it? He is, was, Polsson’s man. He’s good, but I wonder if he’s bitten off more than he can chew with this.’
I shrugged and went to sit down. Whatever would happen, would happen. I had one more day to gather myself before I left this city and sought my own path once more.
‘What are you doing?’
‘At the moment, I’m sitting down. After that, I want to explore the clouds.’
‘We can’t just ignore this.’
I looked up at her. ‘I don’t see why not.’
‘That’s a mob, Stratus. A scared mob with someone to blame their fears on.’ She stepped closer. ‘Have you ever seen a mob when it gets going?’
‘Yes.’ I sighed and looked up at her. ‘They’ll turn and flee as soon as things turn against them.’
In my experience, that had involved setting a few of them alight, especially the men. It was curious thing, but while a screaming woman could excite a mob into new savagery, when men started screaming it had entirely the opposite reaction.
‘Then you’ve seen a different sort of mob than I have. Once the riot starts, they’ll swarm.’ She was pacing now, and punching one hand into another. ‘Jean doesn’t dare use force against them, not now.’
I leaned back against the comforting solidity of the wall and closed my eyes. Tatyana was still pacing and arguing the scenario with herself, but I closed my ears to her and turned my attention inward. The last few days had been hard on me, and while the Songlines had healed the rift in my mind, my body was another matter. My body. I flexed the muscles of my arms. This was not truly my body. It was my flesh, certainly, but it was as far removed from what it had been as leather boots were to the cow they had come from. I could feel my sorcery rising as I started to draw together the form of the enchantment that bound me to this body.
I was jerked back to the present by a kick to my leg. I lurched forward with a growl that sent Tatyana dancing backwards.
‘What?’ I snarled.
‘Sorry,’ she said, a tinge of fear mixing into her scent. ‘I thought you were sleeping.’
I scowled against the sudden throb of pain that had woken above my right eye and was steadily working its way through my head, the price for having lost control of the sorcery I had begun to summon. A few drops of blood fell from my nose as I forced myself to swallow the anger that had risen within me.
‘You’re bleeding.’
‘That’s what happens when an idiot wrenches you from your sorcerous works.’
‘Oh shit. I’m sorry, I just—’
‘Just leave me alone,’ I said, my voice thickened by the anger that accompanied the pain. ‘Go.’
She stepped out of the door, but then hesitated. ‘Maybe next time you decide to wander off halfway through a conversation to fiddle with your magic you’ll have the goddamned courtesy to warn me.’
She shut the door firmly behind her before I could tell her what I thought about her so called conversation. Rather than the usual sense of confinement I felt in a closed room, the isolation actually felt quite comforting. My thoughts refused to settle though, so instead of directing them inward I began to form my own scrying construct, redirecting the energies, the exercise serving to sooth the ache before it could settle in and cloud my mind. It was quite satisfying when it held together and I carefully fed more power into it.
I splayed my hands against the floor to ground myself as my vision blurred and transferred to the construct’s point of view. I looked down at myself and watched as I shook my head, the separation of seeing it a moment after feeling it quite disorienting. I turned away from my body and sent my vision flying out of the window. It was easier to control once I was outside of the walls, allowing me to simply focus on what I was seeing. It felt like I was flying again, and I spent some time swooping back and forth under the pretence of perfecting my control of the spell-work.
Once I was satisfied that I could control my movement and sight, I rose and looked down on where the mob had gathered outside the guardhouse. It was a good size crowd, some several hundred strong. Some of them were armed, but the rest were simply shaking their fists at the guards staring down at them from the walls. I didn’t bother trying to identify the agitators as I could only see them, and without smell or sound I knew there was little chance of me recognising their all too human faces again.
I turned away and swept up and along the city walls, passing over the soldiers who were staring out into the gloomy fields beyond. There were far more of them as I approached the south and east, as well as several of the great siege-bows they had once been so fond of shooting at me. The streets below were empty now save for the occasional barricade where smaller groups of soldiers loitered, their mouths flapping in conversations I neither heard nor cared about.
I rose over the walls and looked out towards the Penullin camp that squatted in the shadow of the darkest clouds. That was where the answers would be. Was Navar there? Even without realising it, my vision had crossed the city walls and begun following the muddy ribbon of road that led to their camp. I fed a little more power into the construct, sharpening the clarity of what I was seeing and driving back the unnatural gloom bleeding from the clouds.
I could see the Penullin tents more clearly now, rank upon rank of them, all surrounded by small, busy figures. Amidst this forest of tents was a cluster of far larger constructions, each at least twice the height of a man and large enough to swallow several wagons. I sped towards these, eager to find my enemies, and in my haste I missed the shimmer of the wards their wizards had set about the camp waking. They flashed to life before me, the dense, angular runes of their construction giving them the appearance of snowflakes that had just come from a smith’s forge. It took bare moments for me to recognise what they were, but by then it was too late.
They exploded into razor thin shards of red light that flashed towards me at the speed of thought, shredding the framework of my construct and sending a discordant shockwave along the sorcerous line connecting me to it.
It was like being hit on the head with a hammer that had somehow bypassed my skull. My vision was still tied to the scrying construct, the now malformed structure of which was spewing raw energy into the air as it spun out of control, amplifying the disorientation that I was swiftly drowning in. The second shockwave hit even as some part of me registered that I had rolled across the floor back in the palace, the impact sending my limbs into spasms. I couldn’t unbind my sight from the construct, and it felt like my eyes were twisting loose in their sockets. I might have screamed, but the third shockwave hit and what thoughts I had managed to muster splintered and vanished like sparks blown from a fire.