42
There could be few Behemoth sites more dangerous than this one.
Vintage had been camping on the beach for three days, just watching it, observing the distant glitter of parasite spirits slipping over the water. The wreckage itself was a jagged mess, salt blasted and covered in the white-grey shadow of barnacles, but still there, for all that, just far enough away from the shore to be a pain. The shape of it was hopelessly familiar, of course. She had been here, years ago, when finally it became apparent that Nanthema had vanished. Working back from her letters she had figured out that this was the wreck the Eboran woman had been on her way to when all communication had ceased, and so young Vintage – or younger, anyway – had travelled all the way here on her father’s money, and she had spoken to the people of the nearby town. Yes, an Eboran woman had been here, she was difficult to forget. Yes, she had bought supplies and smiled graciously and tipped heavily. No, they didn’t know where she was going. It didn’t matter; Vintage knew well enough where she had been going.
So she had hired a boat and gone out there, rowing cautiously around the wreck, half terrified that her small vessel would have its bottom torn out by some unseen scrap of Behemoth metal, and half convinced that she would simply be caught by one of the parasite spirits that circled this lonely, artificial island. In the end, she had got as close as she could and called Nanthema’s name for hours, feeling foolish and desperate all at once. She had never set foot on the wreck itself. It had been the first one she’d seen so close, and the alien sense of it closed her throat with fear.
Now, Vintage sat on the same beach with her crossbow next to her, the remains of a meal of fresh fish on a battered plate next to that. Down by the shoreline, the small boat she had purchased leaned slightly to one side, packed up and ready to go. She sighed.
‘Dangerous or not, I am here now.’
As she watched, an elongated shape made of purple light rose shimmering from the waterlogged wreck, turning gracefully in the air as it sailed slowly from one side to the other. She missed Tormalin and his easy, cocksure confidence, and she even missed the strange forceful presence of the fell-witch Noon. But she could not have brought them to this particular wreck.
‘I’ve put them through enough,’ she said to the empty beach, to her half-eaten dinner. ‘And they’ve already paid for my curiosity.’ The guilt of leaving them was a heavy weight in her stomach.
Except that wasn’t all of it, she well knew. The truth was that what this Behemoth might contain was much too personal, much too raw, to ever let anyone else see. Vintage stood up. It was a warm, balmy day but the breeze coming in off the Kerakus Sea was chilly. The scorching on her cheeks had finally healed, and the skin there felt tougher than it had before.
‘Time to find out, either way,’ she said aloud. ‘Nanthema, if you’re in there, I will be there soon, my darling.’
Kicking sand over the embers of her fire, Vintage slipped on her small pack – she would be travelling light today, no sample jars and no notebooks – and fastened her crossbow to her belt next to a newly sharpened hunting knife she’d bought in the seaside town. The boat was not easy to push into the sea, and she got a good soaking before she clambered into it, but the woman who’d sold it to her promised that once it was in the water it would be a dream to handle, and that much seemed to be true. Gathering up the oars, she leaned into the work with a grimace. Her back complained, but she could ignore that. It would complain all the more tomorrow.
‘If I’m still alive, of course.’
The small boat bobbed and lurched, sunlight dancing across the water in blinding shards. The shattered Behemoth remains loomed closer, and she periodically reminded herself to keep an eye on the water as she went. The woman who had sold her the boat had told her that once they had tried to mark the areas where the Behemoth shards lurked just below the surface. A small party had come out here with specially made floats and chains, but three of their number had been turned inside out by parasite spirits and they hadn’t tried again. Now people simply kept away from the bay entirely – it was easier that way. It wasn’t a comforting thought.
As if she had summoned it, Vintage spotted a twisted point of oily-looking metal poking just above the waves ahead of her. Squinting so hard that she was sure she would get a headache, she steered the little boat away from it; as she went, she got a brief impression of the enormous piece of broken Behemoth hidden just below.
‘I am a bloody fool,’ she said, a touch breathlessly.
Ahead, the main section towered above her, cave-like and littered with shredded sections of what she now knew to be springy material that made up their corridors and walls. Now that she was closer, she could see thick wads of seaweed clinging to the places where the metal touched the water, as well as sweeping colonies of barnacles and mussels. Giant crabs too – she saw their furtive sideways movements as they skittered into the dark. There was, she mused, a lot of food out here for someone willing to chance it, but no crab was tasty enough to risk having your innards exposed by a parasite spirit. Soon the Behemoth wreckage closed over her head, and the bright breezy day was lost to a shadowy quiet. It smelled strongly of salt here, and the other, unnameable smell she had come to associate with Jure’lia places.
‘Here we go.’
Bringing the boat up as close as she could, she tied it up to a twisted piece of metal. Ten feet above her was a section like honeycomb, sheared in half by the violence of the impact; she was looking at the exposed ends of several passageways. They would be her way in, if she could get up there. Working quickly, all too aware that a parasite spirit could appear at any moment, Vintage slipped an augmented crossbow bolt from her pocket and fetched the length of rope from her pack. Tying one end to the bolt, she then fixed it firmly into the crossbow, and aimed it above her, trying to spot a good place to try. She only had five of these special bolts, each one tipped with an extra layer of steel.
It took three attempts before she got a bite she trusted, and then she was wriggling her way up the line, swearing violently under her breath and cursing her own stupidity, all the while hoping that a parasite spirit wasn’t oozing out of the dark towards her. When she got her fingers hooked over the edge of the closest platform, she hauled herself up and over, and crouched where she was, listening and watching.
‘Let’s hope it stays this quiet.’
Satisfied that she wasn’t in immediate danger, she began to move. From below she could hear the crash and slosh of seawater against the broken hull, and far, far above, the cries of seagulls. The sound cheered her a little. Reaching inside her pack she retrieved and lit her travelling lamp. Its small, warm glow blossomed into life, and she grimaced at the walls of the passageway. The Behemoths were made of the most resilient material she had ever seen, but so many years in the water had taken its toll; moss and mould were in evidence here, and the place had a terrible, dying smell to it. Summoning what she remembered of the structure of Godwort’s Behemoth, she walked down the passageway, boots echoing on the damp floor. All too quickly, her light was the only light.
‘Nanthema,’ she said to the walls streaked with mould and the encroaching darkness. ‘I remember the first time I saw you, my darling.’ Her voice was a whisper, keeping her company. ‘I had never seen an Eboran before. I had never even seen anyone wearing spectacles before.’ She found herself grinning reluctantly at the girl she had been. ‘And there you were, larger than life in our drawing room, dazzling and frightening my father with your questions and your knowledge. You were a painting come to life. A figure from mythology walking around and eating our good cheese.’
The passageway curved and split. There was no way to know for sure where she was going, so she went left, deciding to trust her instincts.
‘Soon it was me bothering you with questions, and you, I think, were glad to find someone finally interested in the ghosts in the vine forest. Nanthema, our time together was so short.’ She took a slow breath. ‘I do hope I am not about to trip over your skeleton in the dark. That would be dreadful. Unless I’m right about where you are . . .’
The smell of rot lessened, and the deeper she went the cleaner the walls were. Eventually, she came to a section where the strange pulsing lights were still working, casting a pinkish light over the empty corridors. She saw more of the strange tubes they had witnessed in the other wreck, and more alcoves, their meaning or use no clearer than before. Eventually, she came to a section where the ceiling was lost in the darkness, and for a reason she couldn’t pinpoint, this felt like progress.
She had raised the lamp to see the exit on the far side when a shifting pattern of light oozed through the wall to her left. Vintage gave a low cry and staggered away, reaching for her crossbow, but the thing was so fast. In moments, it was on her, a head like a bald skull made of light twisting down with its jaws open wide. The crossbow bucked in her hands and the bolt landed directly in the space between the holes she chose to believe were its eyes. The parasite spirit let out a high-pitched wail and floated up and away from her like a leaf caught in a strong wind. Not waiting to see what it would do next, Vintage snatched up her travelling lamp and sprinted across the chamber, a ball of terror heavy in her chest. Once through the exit she kept moving. Her hope was that she would lose it deeper inside, that it would be too pained and confused by the bolt in its head to come after her.
There followed a breathless, panicky run, the light from her lamp bouncing unevenly against the walls. When eventually she found what she was looking for, she did indeed nearly trip over it; a nerve centre of fleshy, greyish blocks rising in a low hill across the floor. Somewhere beneath that, she suspected, was the twin to the pink shard of crystal that had trapped Esiah’s son and driven the old man mad. Her heart in her throat, she circled the protrusion, and when she found the hole she had known would be there, she felt a terrible mixture of hope and terror close over her heart. Someone had been here, someone had made it this far. And she had a pretty good idea of who that had been.
It was the morning of what the Eborans apparently called the Festival of New Lights. They were a people on the point of extinction, their city an empty husk with a dead god crouching at the heart of it, but despite this, Noon sensed an atmosphere of hope about the place. It was a cold day, everything awash in sunlight that was bright and clean. Far above them, the corpse moon hung in the sky, a greenish smudge too bright to look at; it looked closer than she’d ever seen it, and very clear. Word of what was to be attempted had got about somehow, and the people camped on the lawns and the diplomats taking up residence in the rooms were all talking about it. Noon heard it on everyone’s lips as she wandered around, speculation and gossip traded by people who looked worried, or excited, or bemused.
The ceremony was to take place at midday. Hestillion had wanted it closed off from the hordes, for them to try the worm people’s magic privately and without an audience, but Aldasair had been besieged by interested parties desperate not only finally to see Ygseril, but also to see the use of an ancient Jure’lia artefact. And, of course, if this was to be the day that the tree-god came back to life, every one of them there wanted to be in the hall to witness it. What a thing to tell your children! What a thing to take back to your city or kingdom, a piece of prestige that would make you envied, famous, untouchable. Tormalin had given the word finally, a half-amused expression on his face, allowing the peoples of Sarn to be there to witness the revival of the great Ygseril. Noon thought only she had seen the expression that had flitted over his sister’s face. She was worth keeping an eye on, that one, Noon felt instinctively, even as part of her felt calmer all the time; after the initial confusion, it seemed that the presence inside her was at peace here, and that, in turn, made her happier.
As she made her way back across the lawns she saw Aldasair sitting on the grass, a trio of children sitting cross-legged with him. He had a deck of cards covered in elaborate drawings, and he appeared to be teaching them a game of some sort. The children were laughing and elbowing each other, crowing at each victory, while a tall human man with a pair of shining axes stood over them. Noon smiled. Grass and laughter and the feeling of sun warming her through her clothes; it was all a long way from the Winnowry. Agent Lin was dead, and even the Winnowry would have to think twice about bringing their grievances to Ebora.
‘Lady Noon, will you join us?’
Noon smirked. ‘Just Noon is fine. What sort of cards are those?’ She added herself to the circle, ignoring the brief puzzled glance one of the children gave the bat wing on her forehead. All behind her now.
‘These are tarla cards.’ Aldasair shuffled them skilfully, blending them between his fingers and making the children giggle. ‘We used to use them to tell fortunes.’ He nodded at a little girl with a snug fur collar and short black hair. ‘They’ve already told us that Callio will grow up to ride a horse better than her brother, and Tris here,’ he nodded to a small boy with a mess of ginger curls, ‘Tris now knows that one day he will find a gold nugget as big as his fist. So we’re going to try a game now.’
Aldasair began to deal the cards, but Noon shook her head.
‘I’m happy to watch.’
And she was. Whatever happened this afternoon when Tor poured the golden fluid onto the roots of Ygseril, her past was behind her. The game went on around her and for the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt some of the tension go out of her shoulders. Deep inside, the presence that spoke to her so easily now seemed to stretch like an indolent cat.
Times of peace, it said, should be savoured.
She couldn’t agree more.
Presently, a tall girl with scabby knees came running over to them, a flush of excitement on her cheeks.
‘Callio, the lady is doing the puppets again! Come and look!’
The children immediately abandoned their card game, scrambling to their feet.
‘I’ve heard the puppets are very good,’ said the tall man with the axes on his belt. Bern. Aldasair, she remembered now, had introduced him to her the night they had arrived. ‘Shall we go and have a look?’
Aldasair looked at her, and Noon shrugged. ‘Why not?’
They followed the children as they weaved through the crowds. It did feel like a festival day out here – the smell of roasting meat, brightly coloured flags. There were lanterns and lamps everywhere – some already lit for the Festival of New Lights, others waiting for the evening. One tent had been covered in a piece of fabric sewn all over with pieces of broken mirror so that it winked and glittered like the sea under a summer sun; the people of Sarn were getting into the spirit of the thing. Presently they came to a small crowd of seated children. There was a young man wearing a bright blue hood – Noon noted absently that he looked like her, his black hair shining almost blue under the sunlight, his skin a warm olive colour – and he was dancing a figure on strings between his hands. The children were laughing, enjoying the show.
It was the puppet she recognised first.
Its face narrow and sly, its clothes made of tattered pieces of grey and blue silk so that they tugged and shivered in the slightest breeze. The god of the north wind had so often been the villain in the stories she’d heard as a child, so much so that they had booed him when he came on; arriving to chase the heroes into the sea, or trick the good warrior into giving up her best horse. Noon knew the hands that had made the puppet. She knew them very well.
‘It can’t be.’
Someone else had joined the man with the blue hood. The old woman moved slowly, because she had suffered a terrible injury in the past. That much was evident from the rippling of scars that covered her face and body, and from the awkward way she held one arm away under her coat, but her other hand held the strings of a puppet, and despite her missing eye and the scars, it danced as nimbly as it ever had.
Horror crawled down Noon’s back, holding her in place with an icy hand. Mother Fast was alive. It was impossible, impossible, she had seen the old woman burn. But she was alive, and here in this place, of all places.
Noon took a step backwards, filled with the powerful need to hide, but despite the cheerful shifting crowd around her, Mother Fast looked up and saw her immediately – she met her eyes and there was no looking away, no hiding. The old woman dropped the puppet – the only time Noon had ever seen her do so – and screamed.
It was a hoarse, angry sound. It silenced the crowd with a knife edge.
‘You!’
Noon turned and tripped over her own feet, hitting the cold grass with enough force to wind her. Deep inside, the presence was reeling in confusion.
Why are you afraid? it demanded. She is an old woman, half dead already. She is no threat at all.
Noon moaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the flood of images that came. Not alien ones this time, but memories that were all too familiar: the grasses thick with smoke; a horse running into the distance, lit up like a torch; a woman’s face, better known and dearer to her than even her own, melting and boiling away to bone. And after, the bones and the black ash, the smell of cooking meat.
‘I mustn’t remember. I can’t remember, it would, it would—’
‘You were sent away.’
Noon opened her eyes. The crowd had parted and Mother Fast stood over her, the man with the blue hood next to her. There were other plains people here now, she saw, crowded around them. Aldasair was standing to her back, looking perplexed.
‘Is everything quite well?’ he asked.
Mother Fast’s one good eye flickered up to him, bright and black like a beetle.
‘Quite well, Eboran? This girl here is a murderer. A murderer.’ Her voice shook, and that was the worst of it. Mother Fast was angry, but she was also afraid.
Afraid of me, thought Noon. The smell of burning flesh would not leave her.
‘I’m sure there must be a misunderstanding,’ said Aldasair, mildly enough.
Mother Fast raised a trembling finger. It was a claw, Noon saw, a ruined cadaverous thing.
‘This girl murdered her own mother, saw her burn up like a taper, like a pig on a spit, and she murdered a hundred and eight other souls too. Innocent people of her own kin, and she would have murdered me too, only I would not die.’ Mother Fast gave a choked sob. ‘Oh, I suffered and I burned like all the rest, but I would not die.’
Shaking now and unable to stop it, Noon climbed slowly to her feet.
‘That’s not who I am any more,’ she said, her voice too quiet. Mother Fast was not listening. She had turned to the plains people at her back, shouting now, anger overpowering the fear in her voice.
‘You all know the story!’ she cried. ‘The witch child who killed her own people. You all heard it, tribe to tribe. Passed the story around on icy nights to scare your children with, to scare them into behaving themselves. Well, here she is.’ Mother Fast looked up. ‘Here she is.’
‘I’m not that person any more.’ Noon took a slow breath. ‘I’m not.’
‘You should be in the Winnowry,’ Mother Fast was leaning on the man with the blue hood now. ‘They said that’s where they were taking you. Why aren’t you there, murderer?’
‘The Winnowry is an abomination.’ The words were bitter in Noon’s mouth, and quite abruptly she wasn’t afraid. Her own anger, slow to rise, was filling her chest. ‘It’s a place to punish women for something they have no control over. It’s shameful. Listen to me. I am not who I was . . . that day. Not any more. Don’t you understand?’ Noon pushed past the roiling nausea in her stomach and nursed the flames of anger instead. ‘I was a child. I was a fucking child!’
‘I know what you are, well enough.’ The flat hate in Mother Fast’s voice was like a punch to her stomach. Noon gritted her teeth against it.
Kill her, said the voice in her head. She is an enemy.
‘I was a child,’ Noon repeated, but in her head all the memories were resurfacing, memories she had hoped had been forced down beneath everything else a long time ago. She remembered standing outside their tents, remembered the humming of the wind through the grass. Waiting for something, not knowing everything was about to change. Her mother’s face, lost in green fire. She remembered, too, the terrible anger that had been born inside her that day, greater and more frightening than anything she’d ever known.
With a soft whumph both her hands were gloved in flame. There were cries of alarm all around, and she saw people stepping back from her.
Good, said the voice inside her. You are a weapon, yet they admonish you for killing? Do they not see what you are?
‘No, I don’t think they do,’ she said. She felt light now, as though she were floating away. ‘I don’t think they know what I am at all.’ Holding up her hands, the winnowfire grew stronger, brighter. There were people here, many of them moving away now, crying out to others to get away, but she could hear something else on the edge of that: shouting, the clash of swords, the screams of the dying. The Jure’lia must be stopped. Dimly she was aware that the old woman who had started all this had fallen back, her scarred face caught in a rictus of fear. Noon smiled slightly.
‘Noon? Noon! What are you doing?’
It was Tor’s voice, jerking her away from wherever she had been. She saw his face and the burn she had put there. The winnowfire winked out of existence.
‘Tor?’
His arm came around her and she was being steered away from the crowd, back towards the palace. For a moment she resisted, in her confused state she felt that they must be taking her to the Winnowry – her mother had said that’s what would happen if she summoned the fire, and finally it was happening.
‘Noon, please, let’s go inside. Listen to me.’
His face was close to hers and she could see his scars – the scars she had caused. The fight went out of her and she allowed herself to be steered inside, away from the crowds that were already recovering from their fright.
Inside the palace she seemed to lose track of time. Too many similar corridors, the bright squares of daylight on marble floors. And then they were in a room together, alone. Noon sat on a bed and ran her hands over her face.
‘What happened?’
Tor was wearing the finest clothes she had ever seen him in, a long-sleeved robe of pale grey silk, tightened and shaped around his slim figure. The high collar was embroidered with black serpents, all twisted around each other, and there were smaller serpents at his cuffs too. His hair was shining, brushed back from his temples so that the scarred portion of his face was exposed, and he wore a silver earring in his unruined ear – a three-pronged leaf. She thought she had rarely seen him look more beautiful.
‘Mother Fast was there.’ Noon swallowed. ‘I thought she had died. I thought I’d killed her, just like everyone else, when I was eleven.’
Tor stared at her, and, afraid of what she might see in his face, she looked away.
‘What do you mean, everyone else? You killed everyone? Who?’
Noon looked down at her hands instead.
‘I was born to the plains folk a fell-witch. You’re supposed to be reported to the Winnowry straight away, but I hid it, and then my mother hid it. Not that it helped in the end. I’m a murderer, Tor. That’s the truth. I killed a lot of people – people I knew, who I loved and who loved me – and then I was put inside a prison for it. And then I escaped, because I didn’t want to die there, regardless of all the people I’d killed.’
For a long time, Tor said nothing. He went to a cabinet and retrieved a bottle and a glass, pouring wine and drinking it in silence. Noon found that she missed Vintage, except, of course, if Vintage was here, she would have learned the truth about her too.
‘Noon.’ Tor put the glass down, empty. ‘Noon, I don’t have time for this.’ He turned to her and he looked faintly exasperated. ‘We’re trying the Jure’lia fluid in less than an hour, and I can’t have any distractions. Hestillion won’t stand for it.’
‘Did you hear what I said?’
‘I heard you. How is that woman here if you killed everyone?’
Noon blinked. It wasn’t the question she’d been expecting.
‘How should I know? She must have survived. Another tribe took her in and helped her to heal, I expect.’
‘Well,’ said Tor. ‘That’s unfortunate.’
Noon shook her head slightly. ‘Unfortunate?’
‘For her to be here now, in the middle of this. Never mind, it can be ignored for now, I think. People are too curious to see what will happen with Ygseril. We can continue as before, it’s no matter.’
‘No matter?’ Noon curled her hands into fists, the bones popping like a knot of wood on the fire. ‘That’s all right, then. I suppose, being a people so used to murdering to get what you need, my killings must seem like nothing to you.’
A flicker of anger crossed Tor’s face. ‘We’re back to bloodsuckers, are we?’
‘Isn’t that what you are? Isn’t that what I am to you – a handy vein?’
‘Noon –’ For a moment he looked stricken, and she remembered him on his knees inside the Behemoth wreck, how she had held him and kissed the top of his head. That same vulnerability was there in the set of his mouth and the cast of his eyes, but then she saw him visibly collect himself, pushing those feelings away. ‘I am sorry for your past, Noon, but this is the future of my people I’m talking about here. It requires all of my attention.’ With that, he went back to the door, turning to her just before he left. ‘I’ll let you know how it goes afterwards,’ he said simply. ‘Wish me luck.’
The door closed and, after a moment, Noon heard the rattle of a key turning and a lock tumbling into place. She stared at the spot where he’d been, a cold feeling settling over her like a shroud.