36
Dear Lady de Grazon,
The work is slow and hazardous, as I’m sure you can imagine, but we have made some interesting progress with the outer sections of what I, for want of a better term, call the corridors of the Behemoth. As I have stated in the past, I strongly believe these beings are closer to being living, organic creatures than simple conveyances for the Jure’lia, and everything I have found so far only confirms this hypothesis.
I intend to publish my findings in the next two to three years. I have chosen to take your impatience over this as a compliment rather than the thinly veiled insult I suspect it actually is – I have no doubt that the great Lady de Grazon thinks she would have solved the mysteries of the Behemoth in half the time, but believe me when I say that there is more here than you can possibly imagine. Yes, my family have been investigating the site for generations, and they will continue to do so. My boy, Tyron, has all sorts of ideas as to how to make exploration of the compound less dangerous.
As I have said before – at length – I will not send you any maps or drawings or samples. There is nothing you could trade that I would want. You will have to wait for my book like everyone else. I do not wish to hear from you again on this subject.
With affection,
Your good friend, Esiah Godwort
Extract from the private letters of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Tor spent some time in front of the mirror, alternately unable to look away from the ruin of his face, and unable to look at it, staring instead at the richly woven carpet. Eventually, he stood up, found a bathroom, and bathed slowly in cold water. He could have gone down to the kitchens to heat it up, but then he would have had to face the fell-witch, and he felt strongly that she had seen him in this state for long enough. Soaping his hair and carefully cupping water to his face, he watched as dark flakes of dried blood fell away – it was black, the blood of a mortal wound, but he had survived. When he was as clean as he could manage, he went to Esiah Godwort’s rooms and spent a good hour scavenging an outfit he felt wasn’t entirely abominable.
Dressed, with his hair pulled back into a simple tail, Tor made his way down to the kitchens, where Noon was sitting at the big scarred table, a goblet of wine in front of her. She looked a little brighter than when he’d seen her last; her cheeks were flushed – the wine, perhaps – and she was wearing a scarlet velvet jacket with a high collar. It suited her.
‘I will have that drink now, if you don’t mind.’
Noon nodded once and filled the empty goblet that was waiting on the table. Tor sat, too aware that he was moving stiffly, that each movement pressed the tight skin of his shoulder against his shirt.
‘Ebora,’ he said into the awkward silence. ‘I still wish to return there. With the Jure’lia fluid.’
Noon looked up at him, lacing her fingers around the goblet. ‘The dreams, then. They were real?’
‘What a question.’ Tor half smiled, but feeling the way his face twisted strangely with the movement, he lost all urge to smile almost immediately. ‘Yes, they were real, in so much as dreams can ever be real. The conversations we had there were, certainly.’
She looked away. Perhaps she was remembering how close they had been, in that dreaming place. How they had lain together in the grass. Tor knew now that part of that had been prompted by her blood; all that time it had been seeping through his own system, quietly repairing him. Or quietly summoning the crimson flux. It was an intimacy he normally only shared with lovers.
‘The original sample of the fluid is gone,’ she said. ‘The Winnowry destroyed it along with Vintage’s carriage on the winnowline. Even if we still had it, I doubt it would be enough to effect something as big as your tree-god.’
Tor took a sip of his wine. It was passable. ‘Indeed. I will want to take as much of it as I can to Ebora, which is why we must go back inside the compound.’
Noon raised her eyebrows at him, crinkling the bat’s wing on her forehead into a curious shape. ‘Are you out of your actual mind? You really want to go back in there?’
Tor drank more of the wine. He was remembering brushing the dust from the tall mirror in the bedroom. How he had thought that it couldn’t be that bad. ‘I am saner and more observant than you will ever be, witch. We saw the containers in the Behemoth, remember? Golden orbs, just like the broken one we found in the Shroom Flats. Judging by everything Vintage said and wrote about him, Esiah Godwort was a cautious man. Those intact orbs will have been left in place so that he could observe them, get an idea of the bigger picture. There were several of them in the half of the Behemoth you didn’t destroy. It could be enough.’
‘Even so. We nearly died. All of us. To go back in there would be—’ Noon stopped, pushing her hands back through her hair, making it stick up wildly. ‘I can barely think with all this noise.’
Tor blinked at her. It was utterly silent in the house. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Never mind. Look, the parasite spirits in that place were enormous, and aggressive.’ She stopped again, wincing. ‘It’s not worth the risk.’
‘Not worth the risk?’ Tor slammed his goblet on the table, then took a slow breath. He would need the witch to watch his back inside the compound; it was important to remember that. ‘Not worth the risk? How dare you say that to me?’ He leaned forward over the table, meeting her eye. ‘Because of you, I am stuck with this ruined mask of a face, possibly for the next few hundred years. Do you know what that means?’
‘I saved your life.’
Tor laughed. There was a knot of nausea in his chest like a fist. ‘Oh yes, thank you for that. I have a chance here, witch, to save not only my god, but my people. And if the sap of Ygseril runs again,’ he pointed at the ruined side of his face, forcing her to look at it, ‘then there’s a chance it could heal this. Not worth the risk, you say?’
Noon finished the rest of the wine in her goblet, swallowing methodically until it was gone. When she put it down, Tor noticed that her hands were shaking, and for a moment he felt a brief spike of concern. He pushed it to one side.
‘Fine,’ she said eventually. ‘Why not? Perhaps going back in there will sort everything out. Make everything clearer. I don’t know.’ She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth. ‘Give it a few more days, until you’re stronger, and we’ll go back in.’
‘We go back in immediately.’ Tor stood up. ‘It is a long way back to Ebora, and I have no intention of remaining in this – this state for a day longer than necessary.’
There was movement below.
Agent Lin stood up slowly, careful not to shift her gaze from the tiny figures moving in the distant courtyard. Her back was stiff from staying in one place for so long and there was a steady ache in the centre of her forehead from a lack of sleep, but there was no doubt her quarry had broken cover. The girl was there, her head uncovered, wearing a scarlet jacket, of all things.
‘Doesn’t she realise she’s being hunted?’
Next to her, Gull shifted his enormous bulk and made a series of huffing noises. The bat had left to hunt periodically but had not gone far. Another figure had appeared in the courtyard: the Eboran who had dared to threaten her with his fancy sword. If she could kill him too – and she suspected she would have to, to get to the fell-witch – then Agent Lin decided she would keep the sword for herself. She deserved something out of all this mess, and there was little doubt that such a fine sword could be sold for an eye-watering amount of money. She wondered briefly if killing an Eboran could lead to any political trouble, but quickly she dismissed the thought. Mother Cressen preferred these things to be resolved without civilian deaths, of course, but this was a remote and lonely place with no witnesses, and besides which, the great empire of Ebora was a corpse now. Everyone knew that.
Gull chirruped, nudging her slightly with his great blunt head. She patted his nose lightly, still gazing down to the courtyard.
‘Not much longer to wait, now. Not much longer at all.’
The flagstones in the courtyard were wet, turning the ground beneath her boots into a broken mirror, reflecting the dull grey sheen of the sky. Noon glared at the stones, putting one foot in front of the other and thinking only of that. If she lost concentration, part of her started to insist that she had four feet at her command, which made walking suddenly more confusing.
‘What are you doing? Are you drunk?’
Tor was waiting for her at the compound gate. The Ninth Rain, which, against all odds, had not been lost on their flight from the fire, was slung over his back again, and he wore a deep hood that cast his face into shadow. Out here, in the daylight, the scars were especially hard to look at.
‘Keep your hair on, bloodsucker.’ Noon winced at her choice of words before continuing. ‘I’m in no rush to get torn apart by parasite spirits.’
She had several empty sacks slung across her back, as did Tor, and a bag containing a pair of large empty jars they had found in the kitchens, just in case that was the only way they could transport the fluid, and two pairs of thick leather gloves. Neither of them wanted to find out what happened if you got the stuff on your skin.
‘We’ll move quickly,’ said Tor, ignoring her tone. ‘We know where we’re going this time. We’re not on one of Vintage’s quaint sightseeing tours.’
Reaching him, Noon nodded. This close, she felt a flicker of the same awe she’d felt when she’d first seen him striding through the Shroom Flats towards her – only now he was an angry god, something half destroyed and vengeful. And on the edge of that, something else; a feeling she sensed came from the new presence inside her. It felt like longing.
‘Let’s get it over with.’ She pulled the collar of her jacket up around her neck, glancing up at the bleak hills behind them as she did so. For a moment she thought she saw something moving amongst the rocks there, but dismissed it as the rushing shadows of clouds. There were enough immediate dangers without imagining new ones.
The gates to the compound were as they had left them, although a pile of old leaves had gathered against the door. Some of them, Noon noticed, were enormous; old brown and gold leaves as big as her head, twice as big. The cold presence inside her head shifted, and a new thought occurred to her.
‘The Shroom Flats, and this place. They’re both full of weird plants, aren’t they?’
‘Are you trying to impress me with your powers of observation now?’
Noon ignored him. ‘The vine forest as well. Vintage said she makes her wine from giant grapes, and there is Behemoth wreckage there too, hidden deep within it. Look at these trees.’ They had stepped inside the compound now, and the twisted, overgrown forest loomed all around them. The scent of smoke and wet ashes was a ghost on the edge of her senses. Noon lowered her voice. ‘This is a yellow oak. They grow on the eastern side of the Trick. It just doesn’t look like one, because the trunk is all swollen and twisted, and the leaves are three or four times bigger than normal.’
Tor had drawn his sword, and was moving slowly, the blade held at the ready. ‘You know, when Vintage left us, I thought I might get a rest from this sort of scintillating conversation.’
‘You really don’t see it, do you, you massive idiot?’ He shot an annoyed look at her for that. ‘It’s the fluid. The stuff we’re going to collect for your big creepy tree-god. It must have soaked into the ground all around here, making all these trees and plants grow bigger and stranger than they should. I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened wherever a Behemoth has crashed. Think. The fluid is what’s responsible for the Wild.’
Tor stopped. He looked back at her, and the expression framed by his hood was one of genuine surprise. Noon felt her heart lighten slightly at the sight of it; it was the first time she’d seen him look anything other than angry or lost since he’d woken up.
‘By the roots.’ He looked around, as if seeing the strange vegetation for the first time. ‘All Behemoths must carry this fluid. And perhaps when they crash, it spills out all over the ground. Or some of it is vaporised.’
They were moving again, creeping through the eerie forest. Water dripped from branches and trickled down trunks.
‘In a place already densely populated by vegetation, like the vine forest,’ said Tor, ‘this Jure’lia fluid would have been carried even further. Dotted on the wings of birds, droplets on the wing-cases of beetles. I’m surprised Vintage didn’t see it immediately.’
‘There were so many pieces to the puzzle, that’s what she said. And some of those pieces are trying to kill you.’ Picturing the shimmering, light-spotted monsters, the presence inside her swarmed to the front of her mind. For a moment the dank forest floor was replaced by a shining riverbed of precious stones, glittering in sunlight – the water was cool on her claws, easing away the sting of hot sand. The world spun, and Noon stumbled back amongst the haunted trees. Tor was still stalking ahead and had not noticed her confusion. She cleared her throat. ‘I bet she suspected it, though, when she saw what it could do. I think if she’d had a chance to sit and study it, she’d have seen it much faster than either of us.’
Tor grunted. ‘But instead she rushed us halfway across Sarn to visit this lunatic and his hell hole. She always was too impatient.’
Noon didn’t know what to say to that, and they walked in silence for some time. A light rain began to fall, and with it the temperature plummeted. Noon watched her breath turn to white vapour and she missed her warming scales, until she realised that made no sense at all. Shivering, she pushed her damp hair away from her forehead and retrieved a knitted cap she’d recovered from Tyron’s bedroom. Ahead of her, Tor pulled his hood back, exposing his black hair and the livid skin on his face and neck.
‘Aren’t you cold?’
He shot her an irritated look. ‘The hood already dampens my hearing. With the rain as well it is intolerable.’ He took a breath. ‘It’s not as if you haven’t already seen what I am.’
Noon opened her mouth to reply to that when, out of the dismal shadows just ahead, a limb covered in jelly-like fronds swept towards them, swiftly followed by a tall, oozing shape. It was lit all over with glowing points of purple light, and there was a dark, gaping hole near what Noon would be tempted to describe as its head. It made a ghostly, whooping sound as it came, dragging its lower limbs through the foliage.
‘Quickly, let’s go round it,’ said Tor, skirting immediately to the right of the parasite spirit, moving nearly silently as he ran. Noon followed, horribly aware of how much noise her boots made crunching through the dead leaves. They quickly left the creature behind but Noon was certain she could feel it watching them go, that strange dark hole whooping after them as they left.
‘We’ll go faster now,’ said Tor as she caught up. ‘Where there’s one, there will be others, and we don’t want a repeat incident of you blowing anything up.’
Noon scowled. ‘Believe me, I do not want anything—’
There was another swarm of lights, this time from their right. This parasite spirit had a great broad head and jaws that hung down onto its chest, and it reached towards them with translucent appendages like bear claws. Tor muttered several oaths under his breath, bringing the Ninth Rain around to meet it, but as Noon looked up at the parasite spirit, it stopped.
‘That’s right!’ Tor shouted. Noon realised with some alarm that his voice was shaking. ‘Step away!’
The parasite spirit cocked its head, in a gesture oddly like a hunting dog listening for a distant herd, and it let out a series of discordant wails. Noon cried out involuntarily – the noise seemed to stab at her ears, piercing her deep inside her head – while at the same moment a great tide of sadness welled up inside her chest.
‘Brave warrior,’ she said through numb lips. ‘You have been served a great injustice.’
‘What?’
Tor took hold of her arm, pulling her away, and with some shock she realised she’d been reaching out for the thing, her fingertips outstretched. The feeling of sadness left her and they were running again, stumbling through the trees away from the parasite spirit. The smell of wet soot was growing stronger all the time.
‘What, in the name of Ygseril’s wisest roots, do you think you’re playing at?’ Tor glared at her. His skin was damp, although she couldn’t tell whether it was the moisture in the air or sweat. ‘You were reaching out to the thing like you wanted to pet it! Have you forgotten these things can turn you inside out?’
‘We shouldn’t have come back in here so soon,’ she replied, shaking his hand off her arm. ‘You’re not ready. You’re too afraid.’
From the corner of her eye she saw the expression of outrage on Tor’s face, but a pair of parasite spirits were running towards them out of the gloom. Beyond them, she could see the shattered shape of the Behemoth wreck, black against the bright grey of the sky. Without thinking about what she was doing too closely, she called out to the cold presence in her mind while reaching towards the shimmering, changing shapes scampering towards them. All at once, Noon felt larger, more powerful. The creatures in front of her were not to be feared; they were to be pitied. Nothing so sorry could possibly harm her.
The parasite spirits stopped, wavering as though they were pieces of seaweed in a strong current. After a moment they turned away, and Noon was herself once more: small, reduced, no longer lethal.
Nonsense. The voice was like cold coins dropped into her mind. You are a burning brand, child.
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know.’ Noon grabbed hold of Tor’s arm this time, glad of the solidity of it. ‘Come on, before more of them come.’
They ran together then, near arm in arm, until Tor’s hand slipped down and took hold of hers. She squeezed it, and they ran faster; heads down, they were dark shapes slipping through the mutant forest.
‘Here we are, witch. We’re here.’
On their left stood the portion of the Behemoth that they had all been inside when Noon had set off the winnowfire explosion. It was not difficult to tell; it was a blasted, twisted wreck. Pieces of the greenish moon-metal were twisted, blackened shards, reaching up to the sky and out to the surrounding trees. It was hard to make out the interior structures that they had seen on their last visit; it was all broken and in pieces, the ground itself an inch thick with pale ashes and black soot. The place stank. Noon wondered what had happened to the parasite spirits that had been caught by the explosion itself. To their right was the half of the Behemoth that had contained the sad corpse of Tyron Godwort, and the metal orbs that, hopefully, would hold the Jure’lia fluid they had come for. Tor was already striding towards it, the Ninth Rain held out to one side, pointing at the ground.
‘Go carefully,’ she said to him. ‘This is still a dangerous place.’
‘We’re nearly there.’ The look he turned on her was wild. ‘From here, to Ebora. Quickly now.’
The entrance they had used last time had collapsed further in on itself, but they could still just about squeeze through, Tor crouching so low that he was almost on his knees. Inside, they were lit with the same eerie lights, and Noon thought she could see their own boot marks in the dust. Coming back here felt like a further intrusion, and, unwillingly, she thought of Tyron Godwort, lost somewhere in a strange chamber below. She wondered if Esiah had reached him and was even now sitting by his son’s body, his mind finally gone.
‘It was this way. Keep close.’
Noon followed Tor up the corridor, glad that he remembered the way – to her this was a place of sly confusion, of alien directions – until they emerged into the widened section of the corridor where the orbs had been stored in alcoves in the walls. Here, part of the ceiling had fallen, and they had to climb over the twisted pieces of metal to reach the storage area. Leaning on one piece as she slid down another, the metal felt oddly warm under her fingertips and not for the first time Noon thought of clambering about in the entrails of a giant beast. She was so busy frowning over this and trying her best not to come into contact with the walls that Tor was some distance ahead of her, and his cry of dismay made her jump. She half stumbled, half fell the rest of the way until she was by his side.
‘What is it? What’s happened?’
The golden orbs had been shaken loose from the alcove, and all of them had shattered. Noon could see a shining wetness on the textured floor, and some of the curved pieces still held remnants of the miraculous fluid, but almost all of it was lost. Tor dropped to his knees and held his hands over the floor, as though hoping to scoop the fluid up somehow.
‘No.’ His voice was flat, and his hands were shaking. ‘No, this cannot be.’
Noon could see how it had happened. Safe for hundreds of years, held in their delicate alcoves, until the enormous explosion just on the other side of the clearing – the same one that had brought down the ceiling – had shaken the orbs from their spaces and shattered them all across the floor.
‘No!’ Tor picked up one of the pieces and then threw it at the wall. ‘NO. This is all I have left, this is the last chance, I can’t . . .’
He hid his face in his hands, his shoulders starting to shake. The contrast between the man she’d met in the Shroom Flats, so tall and confident, and this beaten person, wearing borrowed clothes and with his hair half burned away, suddenly cut her so deeply she could barely breathe. She went to him and gathered him to her, smoothing a hand over his hair.
‘It will be all right,’ she said.
‘How?’ He pressed his face to her stomach, and she held him there. After a moment, his arms circled her waist. She thought of how close they had been in her dreams; not all of that had vanished when he had woken them both. ‘How can I do anything, like this? How can I live like this?’
‘You are so dramatic.’ Bending down and hesitating only slightly, she briefly pressed her lips to the top of his head. She felt some of the tension leave his body. ‘This won’t be the only chamber. It can’t be. Remember what we figured out about this stuff? The Behemoths must carry lots of it – enough so that when they crash, the places around it are infected. We just need to look. It’s worth looking, isn’t it?’
All was quiet for a moment as he took this in.
‘You are wiser than you look, witch.’ Tor stood up, and to her surprise he took her hand and kissed the palm of it, just as he had within her dream. His eyes looked wet, but when he nodded at her she saw some of his old determination in the set of his shoulders. ‘We will search for more. There is no need to despair yet.’
It took them hours. Narrow corridors led to cavernous spaces filled with shadowed, alien shapes; Noon could only guess at their function. They crawled through spaces where the walls were slick and yielding, climbed uneven sets of stairs, sought out each darkened corner. In one enormous chamber they found themselves walking on a suspended bridge, while below them something black and viscous shifted and moved. Noon knew that if Vintage had been with them, she would have insisted they explore further, but Tor took one look at it, grimacing slightly, and led them on. Noon was inclined to agree with him.
Eventually, they came to a long stretch of passageways where the strange lights had been damaged somehow, flickering and uncertain, until they died completely. For uncountable minutes they were in complete darkness, and Noon found herself wondering about the Jure’lia and whether they still existed somewhere in this giant corpse. Perhaps they were at the bottom of the evil liquid in the giant chamber; perhaps they had watched the trespassers with milky eyes, waiting for them to reach this place, where it was too dark and they were too lost to make it out alive . . .
‘Noon,’ came Tor’s voice, ‘you’re breathing very rapidly. It’s unnerving.’
She gave a strangled laugh. ‘This whole place is fucking unnerving. Do you even know the way back?’
‘Of course I do. I have an excellent sense of direction. Look, the lights are working again up ahead. Keep moving.’
Noon amused herself for the next few minutes by trying to decide whether she believed Tor’s bravado, and then they were in a low-ceilinged room. There were ragged black ropes hanging down, and a shallow pool in the centre. Something gold glittered there.
‘Look!’ Tor strode across the room, impatiently pushing the black ropes out of his way. There, in the shallow pool of what looked like water, were six of the orbs, entirely intact.
‘Wait, shouldn’t we figure out what that stuff is first? It could be dangerous.’
‘What? You mean it might burn my flesh off?’ Tor shot her a look before wading down into the pool, soaking himself to the knees. He paused for a moment, and then shrugged. ‘It’s just water. Here, I’ll hand them to you. Be careful.’
Noon packed them carefully, swaddling the orbs in rags and cushioning them against each other. Each one felt heavy and full in her hands, and when she tipped them gently back and forth, she heard the liquid sloshing inside.
‘Will it be enough?’
Tor took one of the bags from her and tied it carefully to his back. ‘How could I possibly know that?’ Then his voice softened. ‘I think it will have to be. I barely have the energy to walk back out of this place, let alone continue searching. A few moments’ rest, and we will hope that we can get out of here before nightfall.’
Noon looked closely at his face. His skin was grey, and there was sweat on his forehead now. He looked unwell.
‘You look like you need more than a short rest.’ After a moment, she reached into her pack and retrieved a short knife.
‘Noon—’
‘Do you think we’ll make it back out of here if you’re half dead on your feet? You’ll lead us into some dead end, or we’ll get outside and not be fast enough to avoid the spirits.’
‘You don’t know what it is you offer me.’
Noon grinned at him. The whispered voices in her head were quieter than they had ever been – she had the strangest idea that they did not like being inside the Behemoth – but even so, she felt half mad. ‘I think it’s a bit bloody late for that, don’t you?’ She held up the knife again, and this time he nodded, reluctantly. Sitting on the chamber floor, she cut a shallow wound in her arm and offered it to him, turning away as he bent his head over her – to save his privacy or hers, she wasn’t sure. The warmth of Tor’s mouth on her skin was shocking in this cold, alien place, and when he pulled away she was surprised by a sudden spike of desire for him. Dishevelled and vulnerable, his long hand resting against the skin of her arm, she thought she’d never seen him more beautiful.
‘Thank you.’ He stood up, and his movements already seemed smoother, stronger, and his eyes were brighter. ‘Let’s get out of here while the effect lasts.’
Their escape was much swifter. Without the need to stop and look for the orbs, they moved quickly through the narrow corridors and echoing chambers. Crossing the bridge again, Noon cast one glance over the edge, remembering how she had imagined the ancient Jure’lia lying in wait down there, but nothing looked back up at her as she passed. Eventually, they came to the broken exit, where a slash of grey daylight lit their way out.
‘We’ll leave tomorrow,’ Tor was saying, adjusting his pack so that he had easy access to his sword again. ‘Gather what we can in supplies and start making our way north. Vintage was right about the rains, it won’t be pleasant, but there’s no real sense in waiting—’
‘Be quiet. I think I hear something.’ Noon crouched and shuffled her way out, trying to see everywhere at once. Back out in the clearing, the sun was a lighter patch on the horizon, and the ground was steeped in shadows. The rain had stopped, but she could hear dripping everywhere, a disorientating sound.
‘I can see no lights,’ said Tor brusquely, emerging next to her.
‘I said I heard something, not that I saw—’
A bulky shape dropped from the trees in front of them. It was a shadow against shadows, and then a flare of green light revealed the woman’s face, caught in a snarl of rage. A moment later, Noon saw the ball of winnowfire suspended above her fist, and then the woman was jumping neatly from the back of her bat to land in the clearing in front of them.
‘Shit! It’s the Winnowry!’
Noon saw Tor draw his sword, the steel flashing green and white, and then a dart of green flame shot between them. Half falling, half running, Noon threw herself at the trees and then heard Tor’s shout of alarm. She looked back to see that part of his jacket was on fire, and the woman who had called herself Agent Lin was advancing on him with her arms full of boiling flame. She intended to kill him; the intent on her face was as clear as the corpse moon in the morning sky.
‘No!’
Before she really knew what she was doing, Noon was running back, already summoning the winnowfire from within her. The parasite-spirit energy, that slow-burning ember of power, suddenly flared back into life and green flames shot from her palms, coursing through the air towards the agent. The woman spat a curse and produced her own wall of flame, which dissipated Noon’s own wild attack easily.
‘Leave him alone! It’s me you came for.’
The woman Lin raised her eyebrows. Tor was beating out the flames on his sleeve, an expression of sheer panic on his face.
‘No loose ends,’ the woman said. ‘Besides which, he insulted me. And I’m in a bad mood.’
‘A bad mood?’ Noon gaped at the woman for a moment, and then shook her head. ‘Why do this? Why work for them? You know what they really are.’
Agent Lin smiled. It was a brittle thing, and for the first time Noon noticed that the woman looked tired, careworn. Clearly she had not washed her hair for some time, and there was a layer of dirt on her skin.
‘Oh, I know all about them, girl, which is exactly why I do this. Better to have the wolves on your side than at your throat.’
‘Then you’re a coward.’
Agent Lin smiled a little wider. ‘If you’re looking to distract me with insults, child, you will find that I am rather too thick-skinned for that.’
Noon reached inside her and found that swirling pool of energy again. It threatened to overwhelm her, and Tor was too close. She moved towards the Winnowry agent, putting herself between the woman and Tor. She held her hands out in front of her.
‘It is touching that you’re defending the Eboran. You’re of the plains people, aren’t you? So you must know his people decimated your own, generation after generation. Are you a particularly forgiving soul, or are you also fucking him?’
‘You should start running,’ said Noon. The power was building inside, swirling into something explosive, but Agent Lin couldn’t know that. ‘Get back on your bat and fuck off.’
‘Fell-Noon, that’s cute, but I’m trained to do this.’ The woman pushed a lock of grey hair away from her forehead. The bat wing there was cruder than Noon’s, almost more a scar than a tattoo. ‘I’ve seen you fight before, remember? You are no more than a child waving a torch.’
‘Yeah, well, maybe my torch got bigger.’ Noon thrust her hands forward and gave free rein to the parasite-spirit energy. A ball of flame erupted ahead of her, too bright to look at, and she heard Agent Lin give a startled shout. Noon felt a fierce moment of triumph, and then her ball of flame was torn to pieces, shards of emerald flame dicing it into tattered remnants. Noon threw herself to the ground to avoid the shards, landing in a squelch of mud and ash. Somewhere she could hear Tor shouting.
‘Even now, even with this, I can’t kill her.’ There was mud in her eyes. She rubbed her face, desperately trying to see what was going on. ‘I’m too weak.’
Nonsense. The voice in her head was back, stronger than it had ever been. Noon could almost feel the shape of the speaker, thundering through her blood. You were crafted for war, just as I was.
‘Who are you? What are you?’ Noon staggered to her feet. The sounds of a fight drifted towards her, a woman laughing. There were flares of green light all around.
I am death and glory. Now, listen to me closely.
Noon listened.
Tor flicked the Ninth Rain up in front of him just in time to catch the narrow dagger of flame the winnowry agent had flung at him. The roll in the wet mud had extinguished the flames on his sleeve, but his heart was still beating too fast and his mouth was dry. He had thought that he had forgotten almost everything from Noon’s explosion, but now he found that tiny memories were seeping back – the exquisite agony as the skin on his face was crisped away, the smell of his own flesh being instantly cooked, the searing pain as his shirt was consumed. He could not be burned again. He would not allow it.
The agent was advancing on him, and he couldn’t see where Noon had ended up. He scrambled back, mud slipping through his free hand.
‘I would normally have let you be,’ the woman was saying in a conversational tone of voice. ‘But this has turned out to be a particularly unpleasant experience for me, and I think someone else should pay for once. Someone other than me, other than my boy.’
‘Lunatic,’ Tor muttered under his breath.
‘No one will know, anyway,’ the woman was saying now. ‘I’ll leave your body here to rot in this haunted place. Your people are nearly all dead anyway, one more won’t be a great loss.’
Noon appeared at the woman’s right. Her black hair was standing on end, and she had an expression on her face Tor had not seen before. Without knowing why, he felt a cold trickle of dread move down his back.
The Winnowry agent shook her head as though dealing with an errant puppy. ‘You’ve not learned your lesson yet, Fell-Noon? Very well, I can’t say it won’t give me pleasure—’
Noon jumped and turned gracefully in the air, bringing down her arm in a sweeping motion, and with it several darts of fire, so bright that they were almost white, were born out of thin air. They shot across the clearing and exploded at the feet of Agent Lin, sending the woman flying up into the air, before she dropped, sprawled in the mud some distance away. To her credit, she was on her feet again immediately, flinging a barrage of fireballs at Noon’s advancing figure, but the young fell-witch raised her arms and produced a shimmering wall of green flame; the fiery orbs were absorbed into it with barely a hiss. Dropping her arms, the fire was gone.
‘What is this?’ Agent Lin’s face had gone white, speckled here and there with black mud. ‘What have you done?’
Tor doubted the agent heard Noon’s words, they were spoken so quietly, but he heard them clearly enough. They made him think of his childhood, the smell of clay and his cousin Aldasair, although he couldn’t have said why.
‘I am death and glory, tired one.’
Noon crouched, bracing herself on bent legs, before turning her upper torso in a slow circle, her arms outstretched. A bright shard of green fire formed there, which she gathered into a globe before pushing it towards the woman. It wasn’t fast, but it expanded as it travelled, and the agent turned and started to run.
‘Noon?’
Ignoring him, Noon swept her arms up and round, throwing a dart of green fire after the expanding cloud of flame. Like a stone thrown into a pond, the dart hit the cloud and it exploded, showering the agent and the area around her with a rain of emerald fire. There was no escaping it.
‘Noon? Noon!’
She took no notice. She advanced on the woman, who was writhing on the wet ground in a circle of fire, and, unconcerned by the flames, Noon reached down and seemed to pull something from around the agent’s neck.
‘Come on, before the spirits follow.’
They ran then, leaving the burning woman behind. Noon took a whistle from her pocket and blew a single sharp note. With a thunder of leathery wings, a dark shape rose above them and followed them. Noon caught Tor’s eye, and the look on her face was one of quiet satisfaction.
‘It will be faster to get to Ebora with two bats, wouldn’t you say?’