They passed beneath the arch and strode into the littered compound, and were halted by the sight of all the snow-covered corpses.
Jinia pulled sideways at his hand, stretching out his arm.
But all the pain he’d been fighting against inside was suddenly too much, and blood had leaked out from his sword-wound, and once it leaked out, the battle was over. Darkness took him, and he sank into it, although in the instant before he knew nothing, he heard Jinia cry out as his hand tugged loose from her grasp.
When he next opened his eyes, the ground under his back was wet where the snow had melted. Jinia was kneeling beside him, and she had taken off her blanket and draped it over him, and he saw tears on her cheeks. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked her.
‘You fainted. There was blood. I thought – I thought you died!’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I didn’t. It was just that the wound remembered the sword.’
‘You should never have helped me.’
‘I can’t help helping you,’ he said, pushing the brokenness back inside and sitting up.
She wiped at her cheeks. ‘I thought I was alone. All over again. Wreneck, I can’t do this with you. I lost everything and I have nothing and it has to stay that way.’
He watched her stand, watched her brush the crusted snow from her bared, bony knees, revealing cracked red skin and scabs. ‘You can’t make me hope,’ she said. ‘It’s not fair.’
‘You’re leaving me?’
‘I told you! I can’t stay with you!’
‘Don’t die in that alley, Jinia.’
‘Stop crying. I won’t. I’ll survive. I’m like you. They can’t kill us. I get food left for me. Not every grown-up is bad, Wreneck. Don’t think that, or you will be a very lonely man.’ She looked around. ‘There’re cloaks I can find here, maybe even real blankets – horse-blankets, maybe. There’re some sheds that didn’t burn. I’ll search in those and find something. I won’t freeze to death.’
‘You promise?’
‘I promise, Wreneck. Now, when you go back home, go round the town. Don’t go down the main street. Some people there are mad at you, for what you said. It’s a longer walk, but go across the fields. Say you’ll do that. Say it.’
He wiped at his eyes and nose. ‘I’ll cross the fields.’
‘And don’t tell your mother about any of this.’
‘I won’t. But I won’t be there long anyway.’
‘Stay with her, Wreneck. If you leave, you’ll break her heart.’
‘I’ll make it better.’
‘Good. That’s good.’ She nodded towards the gateway. ‘Go on, then.’
The sadness in him was a worse pain than any other he’d ever felt, but he stood up. The cold bit at his wet shirt against his back. ‘Goodbye, Jinia.’
‘Goodbye, Wreneck.’
Then, remembering his regrets after he saw Orfantal off, he lunged to her and hugged her tight, and all the pain he felt when he did that, from the sword-wound, from everything else, seemed right.
She seemed to shrink in his arms, and then she was pushing him away, taking hold of his shoulders to turn him round and then giving him a little push.
He walked through the gateway.
Wreneck would cross the fields, as he had promised. But he wasn’t going home. He was going off to make things right, because even in this world some things just had to be made right. His ma would still be there when he finally went home, after he’d done everything he needed to do. He could fix things with her then.
But now, he would wait for dusk, hidden from sight, and then go and collect the spear he had buried under the snow near the old stone trough.
He was eleven, and it felt as if the year before it had been the longest one in his life. As if he’d been ten for ever. But that was the thing about growing older. He’d never be ten again.
The soldiers went east, into the burned forest.
He would find them there. And do what was right.
* * *
‘What are you doing?’ Glyph quietly asked.
Startled, the dishevelled man looked up. He was crouched beside a heap of stones that had been pulled from the frozen ground along the edge of the marsh. His hands were filthy and spotted with blood from scrapes and broken fingernails. He was wearing a scorched wolf hide, but it didn’t belong to him. Nearby, left on the snow-smeared ground, was a Legion sword and scabbard and belt.
The stranger said nothing, eyes on the bow in Glyph’s hand, the arrow notched in the string, and the tension of the grip.
‘You are in my family’s camp,’ Glyph said. ‘You have buried them under stones.’
‘Yes,’ the man whispered. ‘I found them here. The bodies. I – I could not bear to see them. I am sorry if I have done wrong.’ He slowly straightened. ‘You can kill me if you like. I won’t regret leaving this world. I won’t.’
‘It is not our way,’ Glyph said, nodding down at the stones.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’
‘When the soul leaves, the flesh is nothing. We carry our dead kin into the marsh. Or the forest where it is deep and thick and unlit.’ He waved slightly with the bow. ‘But here, there was no point. You take the bodies away to keep your home clean, but no one lives here any more.’
‘It seems,’ said the man, ‘that you do.’
‘They had rotted down by the time I returned. No more than bones. They were,’ Glyph added, ‘easy to live with.’
‘I would not have had the courage for that,’ the stranger said.
‘Are you a Legion soldier?’
The man glanced across at his sword. ‘I killed one. I cut him down. He was in Scara Bandaris’s troop – the ones who deserted and rode away with the captain. I went with them for a time. But then I killed a man, and for the murder I committed Scara Bandaris banished me from his company.’
‘Why did he not take your life?’
‘When he discovered the truth of me,’ the man said, ‘he deemed life the greater punishment. He was right.’
‘The man you killed – what did he do to you? Your face is twisted. Scarred and bent. He did that?’
‘No. This face you see has been mine now for some time. Well, it’s always been mine. No.’ He hesitated, and then shrugged. ‘He spoke cruel words. He cut me with them, again and again. Even the others took pity on me. Anyway, he was not well liked, and none regretted his death. None but me, that is. Those words, while cruel, were all true.’
‘In your eyes, I can see,’ Glyph said, ‘you yearn for my arrow.’
‘Yes,’ the man whispered.
Slipping the arrow’s notch from the string, Glyph lowered his bow. ‘I have been hunting Legion soldiers,’ he said, stepping forward.
‘You have reason,’ the man said.
‘Yes. We have reasons. You have yours, and I have mine. They wield your sword. They guide my arrows. They make souls leave bodies and leave bodies to lie rotting on the ground.’ He brushed the cloth hiding the lower half of his face. ‘They are the masks we hide behind.’
The man started, as if he had been struck, and then he turned away. ‘I wear no mask,’ he said.
‘Will you kill more soldiers?’ Glyph asked.
‘A few, yes,’ said the man, collecting up his sword-belt and strapping it on. ‘I have a list.’
‘A list, and good reasons.’
He glanced across at Glyph. ‘Yes.’
‘I name myself Glyph.’
‘Narad.’
‘I have some food, from the soldiers. I will share it with you, for the kindness you meant when burying my beloved family. And then I will tell you a story.’
‘A story?’
‘And when I am done with my story, you can decide.’
‘Decide what, Glyph?’
‘If you will hunt with me.’
Narad hesitated. ‘I am not good with friends.’
Shrugging, Glyph went over to the hearth. He saw that Narad had taken away the stones that had ringed the ashes
and cinders, adding them to the cairn. He set about finding some smaller stones, to build up around the hearth and so block the wind while he set to lighting a fire.
‘The people who fished the lake,’ he said as he drew out his fire-making kit and a small bag of dried tinder.
‘This is your story?’
‘Not theirs. But of the Last Fish. The story is his, but it begins with the people who fished the lake.’
Narad removed his sword again and let it drop. ‘There’s little wood left to burn,’ he said.
‘I have what I need. Please, sit.’
‘Last Fish, is it? I think this will be a sad story.’
‘No, it is an angry story.’ Glyph looked up, met the man’s misaligned eyes. ‘I am that Last Fish. I have come from the shore. This story I will tell, it has far to go. I cannot yet see its end. But I am that Last Fish.’
‘Then you are far from home.’
Glyph looked around, at the camp of his family, and the scraped ground where there had been bones. He looked to the fringe of brush and the thin ring of trees that still survived. Then he looked up at the empty, silvered sky. The blue was going away, as the Witch on the Throne devoured the roots of light. Finally, he returned his gaze to the man now seated opposite him. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I am far from home.’
Narad grunted. ‘I have never before heard a fish speak.’
‘If you did,’ Glyph asked, looking across at him, ‘what would he say?’
The murderer was silent for a moment, his gaze falling from Glyph’s, and then moving slowly over the ground to settle on the sword lying in the dirty snow. ‘I think … he might say … There will be justice.’
‘My friend,’ Glyph said, ‘on this night, and in this place, you and me. We meet each other’s eyes.’
The struggle that came in answer to Glyph’s words revealed itself on Narad’s twisted face. But then, finally, he looked up, and between these two men the bond of friendship was forged. And Glyph understood something new. Each of us comes to the shore. In our own time and in our own place.
When we are done with one life, and must begin another.
Each of us will come to the shore.
FOUR
‘LEAD UNTO ME EACH AND EVERY CHILD.’
A statement so benign, and yet in the mind of the Shake assassin Caplo Dreem it dripped still, steady as the blood from a small but deep wound, a heavy tap upon his thoughts, not quite rhythmic, like the leakage of unsavoury notions best left hidden, or denied outright. There were places into which an imagination could wander, and if he could but bar these places, and stand guard with weapons unsheathed, he would frighten off any who might venture near. And should one persist and draw still closer, he would kill without compunction.
But the old man’s thin lips, wetted by the words, haunted the lieutenant. He would as soon welcome a dying man’s kiss as see, once again, Higher Grace Skelenal grind out that invitation, in that wretched chamber of shadows, with winter creeping in under the doors and through the window joins, making dirty frost on floor and sill. Breath riding the chill air like smoke, the old man’s hands trembling where they feebly gripped the arms of the chair, and the avid thing in the deep pits of his eyes belonging in no temple, in no place proclaimed holy, in no realm of propriety or decency.
‘Lead unto me each and every child.’
He could remind himself that the old were useless in most ways. Their limbs were weak, their hearts frail, and their minds slipped and wallowed, or drifted along sordid streams few would call thought. Yet, for all of that, they could tend, severally, fecund gardens of desire.
Caplo would yield no pity in such places. He recoiled from plucking the luscious fruit, knowing well the poison juices each one harboured. Growth was no proof of health, and a garden made verdant with lust mocked every notion of virtue.
‘Your expression, friend,’ ventured Warlock Resh, ‘could turn a winter’s storm. I see a sky filling with fear as you bend your countenance upon the way before us, and that is not like you. Not like you at all.’
Caplo Dreem shook his head. They walked the rough, stony track side by side. The day was dull, the weather unobtrusive. The low hills to either side had lost all colour. ‘Winter,’ he said, ‘is the season that drains the life from the world, and the world from my eyes. There is something foul, Resh, in this denuded framework. I am not inclined to welcome the sight of shrivelled skin and raw bones.’
‘You shape only what you see, assassin, and see only what you would first shape. We cannot settle what it is that is inside with what it is that lies outside, and so toss them between our hands, as might a juggler with hot stones. Either way, our flesh burns.’
‘I would bless the blisters,’ said Caplo in a low growl, ‘and note the pain as real enough.’
‘What haunts you, my friend? Am I not the dour one between us? Tell me the source of your troubles.’
‘The hungers of old men,’ the assassin replied, shaking his head again.
‘We bend holy accord to profane need,’ Resh said. ‘Raw numbers. The Higher Grace spoke only what is written.’
‘And in so speaking, flayed the skin from pernicious appetites all his own. Is this the secret lure of holy words, warlock? Their precious pliability? I see them curl and twist like ropes. And all of this, no less, in the name of a god. Indeed, performed as ritual appeasement. How then to imagine that god’s regard as pleased, or approving? I confess to you on this road: my faith withers with the season.’
‘Faith I did not know you possessed.’ The warlock ran a hand through his heavy beard. ‘We are eager, it’s true, to confuse salvation with rebirth, and imagine a soul revived in its husk. But such flares are brief and easily ignored, Caplo. Skelenal and his appetites squirm in solitude – we have all made certain of that. Not a single child will come within his reach.’
Caplo shook his head. ‘Push on, then, through the centuries, and look once more upon our faith.’ He waved a hand, although the gesture faltered as his fingers made claws in the air. ‘Pliable words for the child’s pliable mind, which by prescription we knead and prod, and so make new shapes from old. And by this mishmash we cry out improvement!’ The breath gusted from him. ‘Nature yields its familiar patterns – those enfolding convolutions hiding under every skull, be it the cup of man, woman, child or beast. See our descendants, Resh, heavy in robes and brocaded wealth. See the solemn processions in flickering torchlight. I hear chants that have lost all meaning. I hear yearning in every inarticulate, guttural moan.
‘Heed me! I have found a truth. From the moment of revelation, of religion’s stunning birth, each generation to follow but moves farther away, step by passing step, and this journey down the centuries marks a pathetic transgression. From sacred to secular, from holy to profane, from glory to mummery. We end – our faith ends – in pastiche, the guffaw barely held in check, and among the parishioners a chorus of arrayed faces look on, helpless and bereft. While in the shadows behind the altar, foul-fingered men grope children.’ He paused to spit on the ground. ‘Beneath the eyes of a god? Truly, who will forgive them? And truer still, my friend, how sweet is the nectar of their abasement! I suspect, indeed, that this thirst lies at the core of their weakness. To revel in unforgivable guilt is their soul’s own reward.’
Resh was silent for a long while after that. Ten strides, and then fifteen. Twenty. Finally, he nodded. ‘Sheccanto lies as one already dead. Skelenal shakes his palsied limbs loose in anticipation. And the assassin of the Shake contemplates patricide.’
‘I would cut the shrivelled cock at its root,’ Caplo said. ‘Blunt the precedent in a welling of blood.’
‘Your confession is not for my ears, friend.’
‘Then stop them with blessed ignorance.’
‘Too late. But many who mourn a graveside in silence will harbour condign thoughts of the departed, with none to know the difference.’
Caplo grunted. ‘We wear grief like a shroud, and pray the weave is close enough to
hide our satisfied expressions.’
‘Just so, friend.’
‘Then you will not oppose me?’
‘Caplo Dreem, should such need arrive, I will guard your back on the night itself.’
‘In faith’s name?’
‘In faith’s name.’
The monastery and Skelenal were behind the two men now, shuttered away from the day’s steel light. Ahead, waiting on a low rise that seemed to bridge a pair of weathered hillocks, was Witch Ruvera. Ritually bound to Warlock Resh, assuming the role of wife to her husband, she wore a visage of cold stone, and its lines grew even more severe when she fixed her gaze on Caplo Dreem. As the two men drew nearer, she spoke. ‘Name me the company that welcomes an assassin.’
Sighing, Resh said, ‘Dear wife, Mother Sheccanto may be reduced to frail whispers, but we hear her desires nonetheless.’
‘Does the hag fear me now?’
The breath hissed from Caplo. ‘It seems you need no assassin to wield blades here, witch. Mother feared the risk you will take on this day, and charged me to protect you.’
Ruvera snorted. ‘She would know more of the power I have found. The company you will not name is one where trust lies strangled upon the threshold, and the gathering rustles like snakes in the straw.’
‘You invite unwelcome friends,’ said Caplo with a faint smile, ‘sleeping in barns. Rest your imagination, witch. I am but a guardian this day.’
‘With lies to protect,’ Ruvera said in a half-snarl, before turning away. ‘Follow, then. It is not far.’
Resh shrugged when Caplo cast him a bemused glance. ‘Some marriages aren’t worth consummating,’ the warlock said.
Ruvera barked a laugh at that, but did not look back at the two men.
‘By contemplation alone,’ said Caplo, ‘even I would flee into a man’s arms. I see at last the turn of your motivations, and indeed desires, friend Resh. Are we forever trapped in mockeries of family? Husband, wife, son, daughter – the titles assert, bold as spit in the face of the wind.’