Aurora (13 page)

Clay kisses Candle hard on the cheek, leaving the mark of his mouth on the pearl dust. ‘Remember you are Candle.
Not
Tartoq. No one owns you – or me.
Ever
.’

Candle touches her tingling cheek. How will she bear it when she can’t see Clay every day? He can’t come clambering into a guarded palace the way he does the mountain home of an absent Sea Lord. The Pontifix rarely leaves his palace these days, not since his eyes grew so weak. There are no windows in the palace anyway.

How desolate Candle was when Clay was sent away to the harbour hovels to work for the scavenger Scuts. He was still a boy then, barely as tall as Broom. Now Clay is taller than most men in Ilira. Where Candle has the wind-planed cheeks, cave-dark eyes and sturdy body of her mountain people, Clay has his mother’s gentle face and large eyes, but the strong body of his hunter father who went down with all the others in the shipwreck that Broom and her tiny son survived, years ago.

‘Hide!’ Candle tells him.

Clay jumps back out of the cave window as the door of the room bursts open and Sea Lord Rodenglaw stomps in.

‘Father,’ Candle murmurs, struggling not to flinch at his fierce eyes.

Fear annoys him. If she is going to act scared she may as well have cause, he will say, adding that the mark of his hand can only add interest to such a plain face. But any boldness earns Candle an even harder blow. Candle has learned to grow an invisible shell and close herself up like a clam when her father around.

‘Wedding gift,’ he tells her gruffly, pulling a bright red bundle from the fur-lined windwrap he has taken to wearing over his sea armour, in the style of the Pontifix. ‘Belonged to your mother.’

Candle can’t remember her father ever giving her a gift. There are never any on her birthday, a day of mourning for Rodenglaw.

On that day, fifteen Winter Darknesses ago, a fleet of gypsea pirates surged up the fjord and firebombed the city, ravaging Ilira’s harbour of boats and ships. Rodenglaw’s wife, heavily pregnant, was caught up in the sudden attack and so badly wounded in the firestorm that the baby had to be cut from her burned and blasted body.

The mother died, but the baby lived. Rodenglaw’s small son perished too.

Broom was found that same day, washed up in the bay clinging to the lifebelt of her sunken ship with her own tiny child, and was taken by Rodenglaw as a slave to nurse his motherless baby. The unwanted scrap of life was named Tartoq, the Iliran word for the darkness the wailing baby seemed to embody for Rodenglaw now he had lost his fleet of boats, along with his beloved son and wife.

Broom and Clay became a mother and brother to Tartoq. But her new mother refused to call her by the bleak name given by her father. Instead Broom called her Candle, in memory of the old Treenester woman who had been like a mother to her because, she said, Candle’s birth should be seen as a tiny bright miracle that happened on a dark day.

Her own story is almost as strange to Candle as Broom’s tale of her shipwreck and slavery, after escaping the netherworld at the foot of a city of great towers.

Now Candle breaks into a delighted smile and clasps the red leather shoes her father has gifted her. It’s the only heirloom of her mother the girl has ever owned.

‘Look, Broom! They’re beautiful.’

Broom’s large, shocked eyes stare at the red shoes as if Candle holds a ghost in her hands.

Rodenglaw grips his daughter’s shoulders and she stiffens as he turns her around so that he can appraise the black coils of hair, the weighty cloak made from the aged white fur of the last polar bear ever seen in Ilira, and the pearl-seeded silks underneath.

‘What this dress cost me!’ he says, his lips pressed thin in his weathered face. ‘Siberian silk! This dress, the wedding dowry I gave to the Pontifix – I could have built a whole new ship for less!’

Rodenglaw takes a box from under his arm and hands it to his daughter. Candle is astonished. Another gift?

‘From the Pontifix.’

Candle takes the dented metal box. Ancient writing is still visible on its rusted surface but Candle cannot read. She studies the faint image of the exotic delicacies that must be inside. Her mouth watering, she opens the box – and blinks as she pulls out a handful of what seem to be tiny, blazing suns.

It’s a necklace made of a hundred amber gems.

Rodenglaw grunts in appreciation. The gems trickle through Candle’s fingers and she sees that each amber droplet has a tiny dead insect trapped inside. Broom’s quick hands are already draping the jewels around her neck and shoulders in a glittering cloak. Candle moves towards the window and each gem becomes a tiny sun-catcher. The girl spins around, delighted, in a dazzle of amber.

‘I am not Tartoq any more,’ she laughs, and her small, dark eyes sparkle. ‘I am all light!’

Rodenglaw raises his arm so casually he might be going to caress the girl’s face, but he brings his hand down on her with a blow that sends Candle sprawling against the rock wall. The amber necklace splashes up over her face and the red shoes fly from her hand.

‘You will always be Tartoq,’ Rodenglaw mutters darkly. ‘The girl who was the death of her mother. You have no reason to be pleased with yourself.’

He stumbles over the red shoes and his face darkens. He kicks them away but a brief, strange flush of shame remains, as if the boots are a flash of reproach. If her mother were alive, Candle thinks for the thousandth time, rubbing her throbbing elbow, she would never let Rodenglaw be so brutal.

Scrambling outside the window makes Candle jump. Broom’s face turns ashen.

‘Lord of the Sea, she’s just a stupid girl,’ Broom murmurs hastily. ‘Please don’t bother with her. I’ll see that everything is as you want it.’

She ushers Rodenglaw towards the door, just as Clay’s head appears at the cave window behind him.

Rodenglaw stops by the door, pulling his furred windwrap around his burly body.

‘I need your sunpower plans to be ready,’ he tells Broom, ‘as soon as the wedding is done. The Pontifix likes the idea.’

‘Yes, Lord Rodenglaw,’ gasps Broom, and almost shoves him out of the door as Clay clambers back over the window ledge, a dagger in his fist.

TODAY OF ALL DAYS

‘I’ll kill that brute!’

Clay strides across the room to the metal door that Rodenglaw has clanged shut. Broom gets there first and stands with her back against the cave door.

‘Don’t, Clay!’ pleads Candle. ‘Not on my wedding day.’

The echo of Rodenglaw’s clopping feet recedes in the mountain corridor.

Clay throws down the dagger and helps Candle to her feet. The girl’s eyes are dry but the rock wall has scraped her cheek and a trickle of blood runs like a scarlet tear towards her mouth. He stares at the necklace, at the tiny insect trapped in each amber gem, and remembers Lily Longhope’s fire-flecked eyes.

‘I’ll get him another time,’ grunts Clay. ‘Like tomorrow.’

‘How could he do this today of all days?’ Broom’s gentle face is flushed and furious as she dabs at Candle’s cheek with seaweed balm. ‘But this is the last you’ll ever have to suffer him. The Pontifix is a good man. He must be. Look at what he’s done for this city.’

The clang of a bell sounds deep in the bowels of the mountain, echoing through all the tunnels and caves.

Broom rushes to the window and looks down the mountainside to the bay. ‘So many people! The whole of Ilira is coming out for you, Candle. And the sun too – see, it’s chasing the clouds from your wedding day.’

Candle goes to the window and looks beyond the glistening bridges to the glass palace on an islet deep in the fjord. The morning sun blazes upon the palace that will be her home after today. What will it be like to live without the shelter of the mountain, in the blast of the sea and sun and the dark and the storms – with the Pontifix?

Broom gives Candle a tender shake. ‘Your father won’t dare mistreat you once you are the first lady of Ilira. No one will.’

Candle kicks off her embroidered sealskin boots.

‘I will wear my mother’s shoes,’ she says, exerting the only power she has now.

Broom watches with a grim look as Candle tries to squash her feet in, and can’t.

‘I
will
wear them,’ Candle insists.

‘Clay, give me your knife,’ says Broom with a sigh, and kneels to the leather upper of each shoe, almost to the toe, then stuffs Candle’s feet in. They must still hurt but the look on Candle’s face says that she’ll wear them if it means breaking her toes.

Broom wipes her eyes and stands up, her hand shaking as she gives the knife back to Clay.

‘These shoes were not your mother’s,’ she tells Candle. ‘Candleriggs, the old Treenester I named you for, gave them to Mara. I could never forget them.’ Broom stare down at the red shoes, distraught. ‘But how could Rodenglaw own them?’

Clay and Candle exchange glances. They know all the stories about Mara and the Treenesters of the netherworld and how emotional those old memories always make Broom.

‘It’s just a scavenge, Mum,’ says Clay. ‘Washed up on the shore – like us. They only look the same.’

‘They were my
mother’s
,’ Candle insists, her face crumpling again.

Broom pulls herself together. ‘Well, now they’re yours. Ready?’

Candle shoots a last, nervous glance out of the window to the palace where she will meet her groom today, on her wedding day, for the first time. ‘What should I call him?’

‘Lord of the Sea Lords, Keeper of the Globe, Pontifix of the Bridges . . . take your pick.’ Clay’s voice is as dry as a bone.

‘Can’t I call him Tuck?’

‘Just do what he says,’ says Broom. ‘At least, let him think you do.’

Clay’s face has darkened again. He fumbles in his parka pocket, chewing his lip. Then pulls out the glowing crescent.

‘Give this to your new husband.’

Red-faced, he pushes his wedding gift into Candle’s hands – then thrusts his own hands back in his pockets before he changes his mind. But what else can he do for her? And Lily Longhope will have no use for it, not now, no matter what she says.

‘It’s a scavenge,’ he tells her. ‘Old world stuff that he likes. It might make him kind towards you. He’d
better
be.’

‘What is it?’ Candle’s narrow eyes widen as the crescent begins to glow in her hands.

Clay shrugs. ‘Dunno. But watch and see what the Pontifix does with it.’

‘Mara’s halo!’ Broom clutches at her heart. ‘From the magic wizz. First the shoes, now this. Today of all days. What’s happening? Where did you find it, Clay?’

‘The girl had them.’ Clay shoots his mother a troubled glance. The girl, he remembers, called it a halo too.

‘Girl?’ Broom demands. ‘What girl?’

With trembling fingers she reaches out and touches the halo as if it’s a sacred relic.

‘The girl I scavenged from the rocks. I
told
you.’ Clay’s mind is buzzing again, as he remembers Lily’s words. ‘Mum, the Pontifix’s globe . . .’

Another clang of the mountain bell drowns out his words. The march of feet resounds in the rock tunnels: the Pontifix’s guards coming to collect his bride. Candle slips the halo into her goose-feather bridal bag before he can say any more. There is panic in her eyes. Clay hugs his almost-sister feeling wretched because there is nothing that he, a powerless slave, can do to save Candle from a marriage she never wanted and cannot escape. At least his mother will be with her, as her palace slave.

Broom gathers herself together and raises Candle’s chin with her workworn hand. ‘Hold your head up and remember – now you are the most important woman in Ilira.’

Candle bites her lip and nods, then walks to the door where the Pontifix’s guards wait to escort her to her new life.

Clay faces his mother as the stomp of marching feet recedes.

‘No, I haven’t lost my mind,’ Broom whispers, as if the rock walls might have ears. ‘Those red shoes
were
Mara’s and that halo . . .’ She shakes her head and gives her son a wobbly smile. ‘Oh, I suppose you’re right, Clay. Mara couldn’t have the only red shoes and globe and halo in the world.’

But Clay’s heart has quickened. ‘It’s strange though. Lily said—’