Dark Heart (28 page)

‘But you’re not happy about it.’

‘Are you?’

‘No. I’m confused. I didn’t see Mother die. It feels as though we left her in Fossa, and if we returned, she would be there waiting for us.’

‘I saw her die. I helped bury her. She died as a result of our father’s flaws: impatience, selfishness and an unwillingness to share his burdens with others. He never thinks to trust anyone. He is always alone in a sea of people.’

‘Perhaps if we had seen what he saw, we might feel the same.’

‘Dear sister, I saw our mother run through by a Recruiter’s blade because our father would not surrender. How can you think I suffer less than he does?’

‘Would you carve up a room full of defenceless people to have your revenge?’

‘Not even to save Fisher Coast would I do what our father did,’ Anomer said. ‘I would have found some other way.’

‘So. How do we live with this man?’

‘Live with my father? As much as I love him dearly, there’s no living with him.’

‘You’re right,’ she signed, her hands drooping with fatigue.
More sleep, I need more sleep.
‘There is no way this can end well, is there?’

‘No,’ Anomer said. ‘None at all.’

‘Want to talk to you,’ said a voice, a woman’s voice, as someone shook Arathé’s shoulder. ‘Wake, please. I need to talk.’

‘Leave her alone.’ Anomer came to her rescue. ‘She needs to sleep.’

‘I need more than sleep,’ Arathé said, using more voice and fewer gestures than normal. ‘But sleep is a necessary beginning.’

‘Sorry,’ the woman said awkwardly, as though the word was even less familiar than others in the language she struggled to use.
One of the southerners, one of Duon’s companions. Lenares.
‘Sorry. But we must talk.’

‘Very well,’ Arathé signed to Anomer, who translated for the persistent woman. ‘I’ll hear your words.’

‘You…’ the woman searched for the word, ‘you crossed, met, the hole in the world.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Arathé signed to her brother.

Neither do I,
he responded.

‘Don’t use the mind language,’ Arathé said. ‘We’ve used the power enough recently to bring that storm down on our heads.’

‘Do you mean the storm that afflicted Raceme? With the whirlwinds?’ Anomer asked the southerner. ‘Is that what you mean by the hole in the world?’

‘The storm was the hole,’ she said. ‘The hands of…’ Again she struggled for the correct term. ‘Power. God. Gods.’

‘I’m not sure whether she means that any storm is a “hole” or that this particular storm is the hand of a god,’ Arathé signed to her brother. ‘Interesting, though, that she sees the storm as important enough to talk about. She obviously doesn’t think it is natural.’

Is it just me, or does she seem a little…simple?

‘She speaks our language after a fashion. Do you speak hers? Who is the simple one?’

‘That’s not fair,’ Anomer said out loud.
No, I mean she seems…differently focused. Look at her. She hasn’t relaxed for a moment. No small talk. I’ve never seen eyes so intense—not even yours, big sister.

‘We need to hear your story, Lenares,’ Arathé said, in her combination of speaking and signing.

To her astonishment, the southern woman signed back. ‘Yes. I will tell you my story.’

‘She’s picked up your language so soon?’ Anomer said. ‘How is that possible?’

‘I am special,’ Lenares said. ‘I am special,’ she signed, shocking them both.

‘You are,’ the siblings said together.

First she gave them her story, a rambling affair lasting hours. The big black man called Torve joined her an hour or so into her telling, his eyes hooded, saying nothing other than to offer them food. The girl told an outlandish tale of another land, far, far to the south, of a race of men—races of men—the brother and sister had never heard about. The story took two parts: the thread of movement, telling who went where and did what; and the underlying revelations as to her own personality and her special gift. Both threads captured Arathé’s imagination.

‘You see things as numbers?’ Anomer asked, also clearly entranced. ‘What numbers am I?’

‘I am watching you, and your sister, since we came here. You glow like sleepy fire. You are both made up of many numbers, but four hundred and ninety-six is your central number. This a special number because—’

‘Because it is perfect,’ Anomer finished dreamily. ‘Because it is the sum of its divisors. One plus two plus four plus eight plus sixteen plus thirty-one plus sixty-two plus one hundred and twenty-four plus two hundred and forty-eight. All beautiful numbers.’

‘Yes! Yes!’ The girl leapt to her feet and jumped up and down excitedly, her language lapsing in the moment. ‘How know you this? You are cosmographer?’

‘When he was a child he sat on the floor and wrote out lists of numbers on parchment,’ Arathé signed. ‘He never wanted to go outside and play.’

Anomer laughed. ‘I still love numbers, but my father made it clear I was not to waste my life on them. He said the world had enough scribes.’

‘Not enough cosmographers though! I am the only one left.’

The girl tapped her chest. Which, Arathé noticed, was well proportioned. In fact, the girl was quite a beauty, despite her obvious travel stains and some curious burn scars on her cheeks. Anomer’s cheeks turned faintly red: he had noticed too.

You blush prettily, my brother.

He ignored her, and cleared his throat. ‘So we have a perfect number. What does this mean?’

‘All parts of you are in perfect proportion,’ Lenares said.

Anomer’s blush deepened, and Arathé barked a strangled laugh. The girl realised she had said something inadvertent and tsked in impatience.

‘Of you, the real you. Inside you. Your thinking, your strength, heart, all nine parts in balance.’ She frowned, and leaned closer to him. Disconcertingly close, invading his personal space as though she had every right to be there. ‘Or they were; but not now. The boy here is thinking and not glowing. Thinking bad—bitter?—thoughts. Such thoughts will damage his heart.’

‘You can see this how?’

‘I cannot tell you how. There are not the words even in my tongue-speak. But you,’ she swung around to address Arathé alone, ‘have another number in your head, and it does not belong there. Like Duon. The same number. It is a palindrome, one hundred and ninety-one. The number of the worm. You and Duon both have worms in your heads.’

They tried to get Lenares to expand on this revelation, but had little success. The girl seemed piqued at this, unreasonably angry, and Arathé wondered again at her brother’s initial assessment of her as simple. Perhaps. But Arathé knew enough from the link between Duon and herself to realise the strange southern girl had uncanny knowledge, and she wished to explore it further. But the girl’s reluctance baulked her. Perhaps when Duon returned.

Eventually they managed to get Lenares back to her story, and she described a vast army gathered by a cruel emperor for the purposes of a northern conquest. The cosmographers were part of this army, and the girl digressed again to explain their role in Elamaq society. After several tangential remarks, she told them how Captain Duon led the army north into an ambush and destruction, from which only four people escaped. These four wandered and were eventually snatched up by a hole in the world, then deposited in Raceme just as the whirlwinds ceased.

Hands of the gods. Holes in the world. Storms…

Arathé wondered.

She wondered about a storm that seemed to behave as if it had intelligence, or was guided by someone powerful. That herded herself, Mustar and Sautea, confining them to the coast and driving them into Raceme. That reached down to inflict whirlwinds on Raceme, targeting herself and anyone mind-speaking her.

She wondered about a hole in the world that herded a great southern army into an ambush. That drove the handful of survivors north into a place called Nomansland, then reached down a godlike hand and plucked them into its open throat.

She wondered. She wondered why, if she was as clever as her tutors had claimed, it had taken her so long to begin putting things together.

You and Duon have worms in your heads.

Worms. Planted by someone in Andratan. Drawing the attention of powerful magical beings, called the Son and the Daughter by Lenares. Undoubtedly southern inventions, labels for things the southerners did not understand, but that there was a reality behind the superstitious beliefs Arathé didn’t doubt for a moment.

Worms that speak. A voice that worms its way into our heads, gaining our attention, guiding our thoughts and actions. An apt description, Lenares.

The southern woman was undoubtedly strange, but Arathé found herself liking her. More, respecting her. There was not the slightest hint of magical ability in the girl, but she had an otherworldliness about her, a level of intensity that appeared to give her insights at least as valuable as magic. She seemed to have few social skills; instead, she showed herself willing to interrupt others, to override them, to disregard their feelings as unimportant in the quest for what she considered truth. This was the unintended but clear subtext woven throughout her story: she was special, and because she was special she was disliked and laughed at. In response she behaved directly, which those around her mistook for obnoxiousness. Yet what Lenares wanted most of all was to be taken seriously.

Don’t we all,
Arathé thought, reflecting on her father.

Which thought reminded her. Leaving Anomer to talk with Lenares and Torve, Arathé focused on her father’s thread, still burning brightly in her mind, and that of Duon, a pale star beside that of her father.

Are you making progress?
she asked them.

Of a sort,
came Duon’s answer in his slow, gentle thoughts.
We were just about to bespeak you. I’m still limping, and your father is being driven to distraction. We have a small problem, you see.

Oh? What is it? Can we help?

Well, yes, not help so much, but be mindful. We think we’re being followed.

You ought to be a match for anyone following you. Just let me know what we can do for you.

Her father’s gruff sending overrode Duon’s thoughts.
No match for what appears to be the entire Neherian army, girl. They’re catching us with every step.

‘It’s more than a limp,’ Noetos growled, sparing a glance at Duon’s trailing leg. ‘You’ll be fortunate not to lose it.’

‘Let me try to put some weight on it…Ah! What ought I to have told them?’

He leaned back into Noetos’s shoulder, jabbing his makeshift crutch fiercely into the ground.

‘The truth. That you’ve smashed your leg to pieces, slowing us to such a degree our pursuers are likely to catch us before we reach the others.’

‘It’s not smashed to pieces, friend Noetos, just broken in a couple of places.’

‘Of course. Though “broken” seems an inadequate word to describe
that
, friend Duon,’ Noetos said, indicating the grey skin of the man’s shin. ‘Months to heal, especially if your nameless magician continues to hide himself.’

‘Then leave me, as I ask,’ Duon countered. ‘I’ll hunker down somewhere. Someone can come back to get me later.’

‘Dig yourself a hole and cover yourself over with dirt. That’ll save anyone returning.’

What was the point in this discussion? Noetos had told Duon he would not be abandoned, and that was that. Anything further was a waste of the breath he needed to help the southerner.

The two men had discussed leaving Duon behind when they’d caught sight of Raceme from the top of a limestone ridge. A line of glittering sparks led out from the Water Gate, pointing up the north road; the reflection of sunlight on steel. Someone had taken charge of the army, after all. Noetos had hoped the decapitation of the Neherian leadership would have sent anyone remaining with aspirations home to consolidate their position, but it had been a forlorn hope.

The Neherians were more disciplined than that. And, he guessed, no one would want to be the man returning to Aneheri to answer the hard questions that might well attend this debacle. The public would demand blood, and the hanging trees would be full for weeks. So here came the army. Part of it, Neotos judged; but the longer they waited, the more he mistrusted that judgment. Eventually they turned their backs on the distant view of the city, from where soldiers still issued like ants from a damaged hill.

The army might not be following them, of course. It might well be continuing the Neherian march northward. But Noetos considered this highly unlikely.

He had found Duon lying unmoving on the rocks below the Summer Palace. His own leap had nearly foundered: he had plunged into the water with a breath-loosening smack, and a moment later scraped his elbows on the rocky seabed. How had he ever made this leap as a child? He had avoided hitting a rocky outcrop—the Thinking Seat, the local lads had called it; he’d sat on it many times—by less than an armspan. Had forgotten it was there. Duon, however, must have struck it with his trailing leg.

Should have made the leap a few paces to the right,
he’d thought as he examined the whey-faced man. Duon tried to lie still, tried to keep quiet, but his injuries were serious. If it had been the man’s own fault Noetos would have left him there. No question. Especially when it became clear that Duon’s magician would not—or could not—offer healing.

Noetos was an excellent swimmer, unlike most fishermen he knew. Had learned in these very waters as a child. He had never tried to drag someone else though, and even finding a relatively efficient method—on his back, Duon’s head on his chest—did not make it easy. The Raceme children had measured the distance to Rings Beach in minutes, but it took Noetos hours.

For every moment of those endless hours he fretted over swords and sharks. So far to come for the damnable Heirsword, and it threatened to drag him down into the black depths, along with Duon’s blade. The shark-patrolled depths. The port always used to attract wideheads and bigmouths, especially in spring and autumn, but the fishing fleet was out somewhere, hopefully having dragged the sharks with them. He thought of dropping the swords, but it would be then, of course, that the sharks would come to inspect the taste of blood Duon’s leg offered them. So he kept them, though they impeded his progress.