‘I thought you would stay with me.’ Hella looked upset.
‘Firstly, that would look odd and, secondly, Solen is likely to go to his fell when he returns, or to yours. If one of us is in each, it won’t matter where he goes. I will have to keep on going to the minescrape. It would look peculiar if I suddenly stopped. You should do what you normally do as well.’
‘I am a gemmeller, so no one will find it odd if I work at home.’
Glynn nodded as if she knew what a gemmeller was. ‘The problem will be if Solen goes elsewhere first. That is quite likely,’ she added cynically, thinking of the nights Solen had stumbled into the fell near dawn, stinking of cirul.
Hella flushed and looked unhappy. ‘We dare not leave messages about for him. Not in the sort of places he frequents.’
‘I think he would come back to his fell and bathe before he went anywhere else,’ Glynn decided. ‘Maybe I should scribe a chit and hide it somewhere he cannot help but stumble on it, in case I am not there when he comes.’
‘You scribe?’
‘My mother was a scholar before she met my father,’ Glynn replied, deciding she was getting better at impromptu lies.
‘Leaving a chit is a risk. If Solen’s fell is watched, it is certainly searched regularly as well.’
Glynn tugged at a grimy strand of hair thoughtfully. ‘All right. I will leave a chit out in full sight saying something that will send Solen to you. But for the sake of the watchers, it will have to be something true.’
Hella’s face lit up. ‘You can leave a message that I have received sky sether.’
Glynn remembered what Solen had told her about blue sether. ‘A proposal? Perfect. Who would know if you had or not. Does Solen have to give his consent?’
Hella laughed. ‘What a funny idea.’
Glynn attacked her dig anew, thinking that had been the second time she had slipped in a matter of minutes. Hella was easy to like and a generous listener, clearly starved for some friendly conversation. Glynn would not have minded confiding in her, but the Acanthan girl was under immense pressure over Solen, and she did not seem to be very strong.
They had arranged to meet again tonight and Glynn had suggested the nightshelter where she had gone to meet Lev. That was a risk because Solen might return while they were both out, but Hella had been insistent.
Glynn wondered what would happen to Solen. Nema had made his precarious situation very clear. She would have liked to ask Hella more about what had happened to their father, Ditar, but asking would just open up old and viciously painful wounds. Nema had said enough for it to be evident the man’s death had been surrounded by scandal, and Solen had told her the night before he left that something had jolted him out of his course in life. He must have meant the death of his father. What had stopped her questioning Hella, other than the shortness of time, was her awareness of how much she hated to talk about the death of her own parents. She tried to imagine how much worse it would have been if their deaths had been something more than an accident. A suicide or a murder. The grief would be increased tenfold. She remembered something her father had said after Wind’s suicide.
‘Glynna-love, bearing heart hurts takes as much courage as facing a man with a gun pointed at your head.’ Her father’s words following Wind’s too-small funeral swirled up out of her subconscious, vivid and full of his gruff, sweet personality.
‘You were born for a reason, Glynna-love,’ her father had said. ‘Everyone is, but the light shines in you and the world has need of all the light it can get.’
Not for him Wind’s philosophical longings for unnameable things. Her father had been solid and honest and simple in his beliefs. Glynn had loved her mother too. She had been beautiful like Ember but, like Ember, she had been quiet and self-absorbed. Glynn’s father had been the one with the knack of making her feel as if she were special. Lord knew, she had needed that after Wind had died. Her father had told her such lovely lies about herself. No – not lies. She had been special to him. But she knew the truth about herself as far as the rest of the world went. If she had been in a movie, she would have been the princess that fails the pea-under-the-mattress test and gets turned into a frog before the real princess comes along. She would have been the cannon fodder. Wind’s death had shown her that, for would he have left her if she had been so special?
Glynn froze, seeing a sparkle of light where she had been about to strike.
Unconsciously holding her breath she leaned nearer, lifting her lantern to illuminate the slight depression. She relaxed and sighed in disappointment, seeing the dull, smoky-quartz gleam of an unpolished callstone vein. Well, a cluster of callstones was better than nothing and probably more than she deserved. She had been banging away indiscriminately, paying no attention at all to what she was doing. If she had struck the vein hard enough with her careless hammer, she might have fractured the whole section, reducing the callstones to a myriad of worthless shards.
Resolutely, she dismissed from her mind all thoughts of her father and of Solen and his troubles. She took out another tool to prise out the visible callstones before excavating deeper with her fingers. But even as she began to dig out the second callstone, she saw another flash of light. This time she was close enough to see the raw darklin embedded in the roof of the hole.
Not daring to trust her shaking hands with the pick, she scrabbled at the dirt with stiff fingers until the black stone dropped freely into her hand. She held it up to the light, marvelling at its weight and its rich gleam. It was black, but where the lantern hit, it showed flecks of gold. It looked quite different from the stones which had been embedded in Nema’s door and was warm to touch.
Glynn could scarcely credit her good fortune. She stared into its velvety depth, trying to make up her mind if she should show it to Mallin. She knew the overseer only had the mining contract for callstones and that minor nuggets of gold or rosy quartz were kept by the miners and sold privately to jewellers. She had amassed a modest collection of pieces but had yet to learn how to dispose of them. But maybe it was different with darklins.
Suddenly she experienced an eerie sliding sensation and, all at once, she seemed to be falling forward into the stone. For a moment Wind’s face flashed before her eyes, and heat pulsed in her belly.
‘Glynna …’ She saw his mouth shape her name, then she was floating in darkness. Ahead, light showed like headlamps through fog. She seemed to fly into the light. She was astonished to find herself standing in an unlit circular room. A dim though unmistakable form in the grey light, which might have been dawn or dusk, Ember was lying on a bed in a long purple gown. For a heart-stopping second, Glynn thought she was dead, but then she noticed the rise and fall of her chest. Ember’s face was so heavily shadowed that she gave the impression of being masked.
Abruptly Glynn was back in the minescrape, staring incredulously into the darklin.
Calming down, she realised she had accidentally invoked the visioning ability of the stone and it had enabled her to see back home. Ember was clearly in a hospice of some sort. She had not seemed to be in pain, but Glynn felt sick.
‘I can take care of her at home,’ she had reiterated firmly, when the doctors had warned that a time would come when Ember must have constant professional nursing in a hospice for the dying. She had been determined Ember would never go somewhere where people waited simply to die.
She swallowed hard, now, and told herself that at least Ember was alive.
If the vision could be trusted. That was the trouble. What she had seen might just as easily be a lie. Lev had made that clear. Ember could be deathly ill and all alone – or worse.
Glynn would not let her mind go any further than that. She had a sudden savage urge to hurl the stone against the wall. What was the good of a thing that told seductive, longed-for lies? In a way it was worse than not knowing at all what was happening. It gave you hope, then snatched it away at the same time.
Clenching her teeth, Glynn thrust the darklin deep
into her pocket where it was out of the way of her anger. It would fetch a high enough price to ensure a passage on the next ship to Darkfall. That was what she should concentrate on. Then someone else could have the sly thing and welcome to it.
She could not leave the minescrape until the windwalkers came at dusk, so she worked on in a desultory fashion, trying to contain her impatience. She had made up her mind not to tell Mallin about the stone. It was not so much that she mistrusted the overseer as that she feared revealing the depth of her ignorance. She wished Lev was still working in their part of the mine, but there was only the silent man he had been paid to proxy for, Teesa and the obnoxious Baltic.
Tonight she would tell Hella about the stone. She could hardly wait for the day to end.
But when she came out of the minescrape that evening, Hella, looking pale and agitated, was waiting for her in the song cavern. She had received a message from Nema saying they would both be required to attend her at the wing hall which was scheduled to take place that very night. They were commanded to report to Nema’s fell when they were ready.
Glynn had not considered that they would actually have to attend Nema at some sort of function when it had been proposed by the old woman as an excuse for her summoning them. ‘What is the point of going when Solen is not back?’ she demanded as they hurried along the races to Porm. ‘Our being invited was supposed to be a snub for him.’
‘We must go or we will undo all the good we have done in making our visit to Nema appear innocent. Apart from anything else, no one in their right mind would turn down an invitation to a wing hall.’
Glynn was trying to be calm, but her stomach twisted with apprehension. Despite everything, Hella was clearly excited by the prospect of attending the ceremony, but Glynn had no idea how one was supposed to act at such a thing. What if she gave herself away now with the means for her departure in the palm of her hand?
‘Look … I don’t seem to remember anything about wing halls … the bittermute …’ she began uneasily.
‘Oh, I know as little as you about how to act at such an occasion, so do not worry. All we have to do is sit with Nema and get anything she asks for. Which will be nothing because there will be servitors. She will tell us what we must do, anyway. The whole attending role is an honorary matter. We are allowed to have escorts there and we can dance.’
‘Great,’ Glynn said flatly.
‘You have no partner,’ Hella said sympathetically, misreading Glynn’s glum expression. ‘If only Solen were here, he could bring you.’
That would be cosy, Glynn thought. I could let him lean on me and maybe his drunken stumbling could be read as dancing.
Hella supervised their toilette. She bathed first and then, while Glynn was revelling in the unspeakable bliss of a bubbling oil that served the same purpose as soap and shampoo, the Acanthan girl donned an elaborate jewelled head-dress and made her face up, using a small collection of pots and brushes. It was not so different from the makeup women wore at home, Ember observed, though more theatrical. Hella put a lot of colour around her eyes and accentuated their almond shape with black lines. She dusted the sides of her cheeks and forehead with silver and, on one cheek, she drew a spiral of blue dots.
‘Is it usual for wing halls to be proposed so suddenly?’ Glynn asked, getting out of the bathing pool.
‘I do not know for I have not received an invitation before,’ Hella replied, absorbed in drying Glynn’s hair with rather more force than Glynn felt was needed.
‘There,’ Hella said. She tilted her head like a bird and examined Glynn critically. ‘You had best put your gown on before I prepare your hair. I will paint your face last of all.’
Glynn rose obediently, wrapping the towel around her. Hella appeared not to find it odd that she was so passive, which was just as well. The Acanthan girl seemed entirely in her element, a supervisor in a towel sarong. While I, Glynn thought ruefully, am as far out of mine as it is possible to be.
In spite of everything, Glynn began to enjoy herself. She felt clean and pampered for the first time since coming to Keltor, and in her bedding was a darklin that was going to get her away from Acantha. She was startled to find she could regret saying goodbye to Hella. Typical that she should find a friend on Acantha now.
Her pleasure lasted until she saw the gowns Hella had brought for them. Far from the modest tunics Glynn had half envisaged, these were the kind of gowns women wore when they wanted to be stared at. One was a silky golden sheath and the other a confection of jewelled embroidery and floating layers in blues and purples.
Glynn just knew she would look foolish in either. Girls like her did not wear things like these. Sometimes in shops she had touched such silky wisps in the way you might pat a tiger – with longing and wariness. She had not needed the saleswoman’s slightly affronted look to know they were not for her.
Seeing her reaction, Hella was amused. ‘You must be dressed properly for the wing hall. It would be an insult to Nema, and to Jurass, if you were to make no effort.’
‘If we wear these, no one will notice Jurass!’
Hella laughed and effectively silenced her by saying that, Fomhikan or not, she sounded like a myrmidon now. ‘Everyone will be dressed like this. If you are not, you will stand out terribly!’
Since the last thing Glynn wanted to do was to stand out, she gave in.
‘Which one is mine?’
Hella repressed a grin and held out the gold sheath, taking the other dress reverently and easing it over her own head-dress. Glynn put the sheath on and was horrified to find that although it hung modestly from a collar fitted around her neck, covering her from chin to toe from the front, the dress left her arms and shoulders and her entire back bare to well below the waist.
‘I can’t wear this!’ she cried. ‘I look like I’m only half in it.’
Hella gestured at her own attire. ‘Perhaps you would prefer this, then?’
Glynn looked properly at her. The filmy layers of her gown were almost completely transparent.
‘I don’t think so,’ Glynn stammered, amazed that people who wore the same drab body suits, day in and out, would feel comfortable in garments such as these.
‘That farm of yours must be in the mountains where it is cool and people are more restrained, because the town-dwelling Fomhikans I know would find these clothes positively cumbersome,’ Hella said, reminding Glynn again that she must take more care. Luckily Hella had not seemed to take her reactions amiss. She painted Glynn’s face, wielding brushes and pots of colour expertly, then sighed with pleasure at the final result.
‘I must say, you look nothing like a myrmidon now, which is just as well.’
‘Yeah,’ Glynn muttered, feeling stupider than ever. Like a scarecrow dressed up in a ball gown. The crows would laugh fit to bust.
Sitting out in the main room by the fire to keep warm as Hella dressed her hair, Glynn felt suddenly exhausted. So much had happened that she could barely believe she had only been on Keltor for a short while. There was no telling how much time had gone by in her own world, or what the people who owned the guest house on the Greek island thought about having a tenant who had drowned. Ember, too, would think her dead. If she was capable of thinking anything now. The doctors had said her blindness would increase as the tumour grew and, at the end, she would be likely to fall into a coma. The new pills held the tumour in stasis, but they would not work forever. When they stopped working, Ember would have only a few weeks to live. There would be blackouts and increasing loss of vision until she was completely blind; then it would be a matter of days.
Ember and home seemed so far away.
Reality had become this world with its caves and endless sea, its savage political struggles and the black chill of the minescrape.
‘Your hair is very beautiful now that the minescrape black is gone from it,’ Hella murmured appreciatively. ‘Like long skeins of the finest bleached Sheannite thread.’
Glynn hardly heard the complimen
t. She was looking with astonishment into the small mirror Hella held. Some of her hair had been threaded in and out of the sparkling head-dress and the rest had been left to cascade down her back. The silky flow of the dress made her long angular body seem lissom and graceful, while her face, dusted with gold and coppery brown and marked with curling lines and dots, was the face of a beautiful exotic. Seeing herself like this, she was reminded of something Wind had told her when she had offered herself to him.
‘One day you will know you are a woman, and it is as a woman you will find love and true passion. I would be a thief – and a fool – to steal what is not yet ripe.’
That was what she saw in the mirror: a woman with secrets in her eyes that she could not fathom. Yet she is me, and her secrets are mine, Glynn marvelled, and knew that she would never be able to look into the mirror again without seeing this woman.
The fell door flap burst open without warning to admit a solid, bullish young man, dressed in a purple wing suit slashed with blue. He wore a blue metal plait around his temples and his face was dusted with blue and purple whorls.
Hella threw down the mirror and ran over to him, her eyes glowing. ‘Saxa. You got my message! I hoped you would be back in time to escort us to the wing hall.’
‘I have only this thing to ask,’ he said, avoiding her hands. ‘Did you know Solen took Flay to Darkfall?’
Hella paled. ‘Saxa!’
‘Tell me?’ he demanded.
She reached out one hand to him in a pleading gesture. ‘Aye, but …’
He slapped her hand away. ‘I beat Bolten to a pulp because he told me that you knew. When I heard tonight your brother betrayed his own sept, I could not believe you had known about it.’
‘Solen did not betray Acantha!’
‘He disobeyed our chieftain!’ he snarled. ‘That is treason.’
‘You misunderstand …’ Hella said, trying to smile.
‘I understand that you set your brother and Darkfall’s meddling hags above your sept.’
Hella drew herself up proudly. ‘And has it become common for highborn Acanthans to use gutter language?’