Impossible Things (11 page)

‘—getting the merry hell beaten out of you by Marcus Gloria. Really, Ish, you’ve got to stop just defending yourself and go on the attack.’

Since it took every ounce of courage she had to defend herself, Ishtaer ignored this. ‘Then it’s classes with Madam Julia and all afternoon here.’

‘You don’t have to spend all afternoon here. Your other classmates don’t.’

‘No, they do mornings instead. I have twice the amount of classes to fit into half the time.’ She felt for the roll of gauze and cut a length, folded it over and pressed it to the cut on the young man’s face. ‘Hold this.’

He complied. ‘Will it scar?’

‘Do you want it to?’

He looked surprised to be asked.

‘I can erase all trace of the cut,’ Ishtaer said as she cut the tape to hold the gauze in place, ‘but sometimes scars are a useful reminder. Every time you look in the mirror you’ll remember why she hit you.’

He flinched. ‘My own stupid fault,’ he mumbled, and then added sharply, ‘I tripped and hit myself.’

Eirenn chuckled. ‘Sure you did,’ he said. ‘Solitaire ring, was it? Did you give it to her, or was she someone else’s wife?’

The young man jerked as if to hit Eirenn, but Ishtaer’s hand on his shoulder kept him in place. Madam Julia often called on her to restrain unruly patients, or to hold down those she didn’t have time to anaesthetise before a painful procedure. It had taken an embarrassingly long time for Ishtaer to realise that most Healers didn’t have this kind of strength.

‘Leave it,’ the patient muttered, subsiding. ‘I ought to be reminded.’

Ishtaer gave him some ointment and instructions to come back if there was any sign of infection, then took the items she’d been using to the row of large stone sinks, served by their own pump and a fire for heating water. She set about sterilising the equipment.

‘You didn’t answer,’ Eirenn said. ‘About the dress. You do know you need a new one?’

‘Won’t the one I wore at Midwinter do?’ asked Ishtaer, who’d been bullied into buying more clothes than she possibly needed by the terrifyingly grand assistants at one of the city’s premier tailors.

‘Of course not,’ Eirenn said, as if it was obvious. ‘It’s blue.’

‘They told me blue was the colour for Healers.’

‘And so it is, but not at the Ball. Not until you’re qualified. It’s all very … symbolic.’

She put the scalpel and needle to one side and began scrubbing her hands. ‘So what must I wear?’

‘White is traditional for Tyros. Fine for girls but looks bloody stupid on men. An incentive to graduate as soon as we can, I suppose. If you ask me, you should get his Lordship to pay for something terribly expensive.’

‘Why?’

‘Just humour me, all right? I’ve had to wear the same damn thing every year since I stopped growing, and the Scholarship Fund won’t shell out for anything new. You’ve got a sponsor with stupid amounts of money. Spend it!’

Ishtaer paused in scrubbing her nails. Eirenn had alluded once or twice to being a scholarship boy, but it had taken a while for him to admit that the gophering he did for the Academy was actually paid employment, and that half his clothes were second-hand, donated by the Academy.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll see if I can get some time off this evening.’

She didn’t leave the shelter of the Academy often. Over the months she’d become familiar enough with its layout, the steps and uneven cobbles and walls and doors, to make her own way around. Within the sick bay she rarely put a foot wrong, although it often unnerved her patients that she did everything by touch and not sight.

But outside on the crowded streets of Ilanium, she found it nearly impossible to get around without help. She couldn’t hear or feel where she was going, and the people and animals around her moved so fast she knew she’d be under a horse’s hooves in minutes without someone to guide her.

‘There was a circus here at the weekend,’ Eirenn said. ‘One of Lord Gloria’s nobby friends had a private menagerie in his garden. Shame it didn’t eat some of the guests. The wagons caused bloody havoc overnight. Half of them were still here in the morning, and you know there aren’t allowed to be any wheeled conveyances during daylight hours? The Emperor sent out his guards to remove them. It was chaos this time yesterday.’

He took her to the Sartorum Ilanium, where she’d purchased the clothes she wore every day and the few finer items they’d recommended for days like Midwinter.

‘A dress for the Ball?’ said the horrified assistant. ‘It’s next week!’

‘I know that,’ Ishtaer began.

‘We’re run off our feet! Most of the Chosen ladies place their orders before Midwinter!’

‘So that’s a no, then?’ Eirenn said, and the assistant utterly missed his sarcasm.

‘It most certainly is!’

‘Even for Lord Krull’s protégée?’

The woman paused, and Ishtaer could feel her sudden agony. But even Krull’s name didn’t work its usual magic. ‘I’m really sorry,’ she said pleadingly. ‘But there’s nothing we can do.’

It was the same story in the next four boutiques they tried. In the fifth, Ishtaer was too dispirited to even ask, but Eirenn managed to catch someone’s eye and enquire.

‘For the Ball?’ The girl whistled. ‘Not a snowball’s chance in – wait a minute. I know you.’

For a second nobody spoke. Then Eirenn nudged Ishtaer. ‘She’s talking to you.’

Ishtaer frowned. She didn’t know anybody apart from Eirenn.

‘You mended my hand.’ Ishtaer’s own hand was taken by the assistant’s. Her fingers were long, the tips hardened, the nails cut right down to the quick. And the bones had been recently healed. Nearly all of them.

‘The cart accident,’ Ishtaer said. ‘At Midwinter.’

‘I would have
died
without you,’ said the dressmaker’s assistant earnestly.

‘Really it was Madam Julia who did most of the work,’ Ishtaer said.

‘But you were the one who healed my hand. Without this,’ the girl flexed her fingers, ‘I’d be—’ Her voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. ‘I’d be out on the streets. I’m not a Citizen, I don’t have any rights or a family who can protect me. Girls who can’t work don’t get paid. You have no idea what you saved me from.’

Ishtaer pulled back her hand abruptly, pretty sure she had.

‘My name’s Malika,’ the girl said. ‘Look – if you can come back after we’ve closed, I’ll see what I can do. I might be able to make you something, so long as it’s not complicated and doesn’t need a lot of embellishment.’

‘The simpler the better,’ Eirenn said. ‘Malika, you’re a lifesaver.’

‘No, Lady Ishtaer is,’ said Malika fervently.

‘It’s Tyro,’ Ishtaer began, but Eirenn was already pulling her away and thanking the girl as he did.

‘Let her call you a Lady,’ he said. ‘You won’t be a Tyro forever.’

‘Are you sure about that? You said yourself I need to learn how to attack, and as for being a Seer, so far all I’ve had is one vision that makes no sense and one ghost, who, thanks to the fact that I can’t see even after the Emperor sent his personal physician to me, might just have been a normal person playing a joke on me.’

‘But you took a seamstress’s shattered hand and gave her back her livelihood,’ said Eirenn, drawing her down the small street back towards the main avenue. ‘That says Healer to me. I’ve seen how Madam Julia relies on you. She doesn’t do that with just any first year student, you know.’

Ishtaer wasn’t sure what to say to that. Madam Julia asked for her help, yes, but surely no more than anyone else. Ishtaer worked hard, that was all. Some of the other students seemed appallingly entitled, didn’t like getting their hands dirty or working long hours. Ishtaer had been doing that for as long as she could remember, and nobody had given her three hot meals and a warm bed for her trouble.

Not that she’d actually got around to sleeping in the bed yet, but the offer was there.

The thought was cut short by a sudden whine that had her head snapping to the left.

‘If you ask me,’ Eirenn began, and Ishtaer held up a hand for silence. ‘What?’

This time she put her hand over his mouth and cocked her head to the side, listening hard. Eirenn had commented that she seemed to have better hearing than anyone else, which Ishtaer didn’t think was strictly true. She just relied on it a lot more than anyone else.

And what she heard now was the whine of someone in pain. It might have been an animal, but she’d heard people make the same noise. People who were degraded to the status of animal. People who thought of themselves as less than human.

People like she’d once been.

‘It’s coming from that alley,’ Eirenn murmured very softly. She nodded. She could hear voices now too, laughing and jeering. And the thud of something blunt hitting living flesh. Both were sounds she heard every day in the training ring.

‘Are you armed?’ she asked softly.

‘A knife,’ Eirenn replied, ‘but listen. There’s at least three or four of them.’

She thought there might be more, all of them youths, none of them familiar. ‘They’re not Chosen,’ she said. ‘We’d know them.’

‘You really want to go into a blind alley and fight an unknown number of men armed with the gods only know what?’

‘You want to walk away and leave whoever that is to be beaten to death?’

Eirenn sucked in a breath. Then he took her hand and pressed the hilt of a small dagger into it. ‘You take the knife,’ he said. ‘And try not to hit me.’

They walked together to the alley, and Eirenn said loudly, ‘Well, well. It’s a parlous state of affairs in this city when one small dog is such a threat that it takes five of you to subdue it. With rocks.’

A dog. Not that it mattered whether it was a dog or a human or a horse. There were five of them against one, and Ishtaer had seen those odds before, had
been
those odds before.

An unfamiliar feeling built inside her, spiky and hot. She thought it might be anger.

‘Piss off,’ said one of the lads. He was probably a few years younger than Ishtaer, judging by his voice. There was another thud and whine as he threw another rock at the dog.

The anger pulled in on itself, drawing her in with it.

‘Now, that’s no way to talk to a lady,’ said Eirenn. ‘Especially when she
is
a lady.’

At this, the jeers stopped for a moment and she heard the rustle of clothing and feet as they all turned to look at her.

Her head went up. Her left hand curled into a fist, her right tightening its grip on Eirenn’s knife.

‘A Seer, in fact,’ Eirenn went on conversationally, ‘and she’s just had the most fascinating vision of the near future. Would you like to hear it?’

‘We ain’t scared of a Seer,’ said the boy who’d spoken before.

‘Ah, but you would be if you knew what she saw. It’s really exciting. Basically it involves the two of us beating the shit out of the five of you, and then walking away with this dog you’ve been tormenting for no good reason. Is that about the size of it, Ishtaer?’

‘It’s how I see things going,’ said Ishtaer, amazed at the steadiness of her own voice.

‘Wait a minute, Ishtaer?’ said one of the other boys.

‘Yes. Ishtaer ex Saraneus Medicus Militis Aspicio. You might have heard of her. She’s very good friends with Krull the Warlord.’

‘Yeah, right,’ said the first boy, but the second whispered something. ‘You don’t get women Warriors,’ came the scornful reply, but it sounded less certain.

Months of training every day pushed Ishtaer’s body into an automatic fighting stance, body reduced to a smaller target, hands ready, knees loose.

‘Would you like to test that theory?’ she asked.

‘She did what?’ Verak said.

Kael looked at Eirenn’s letter again. ‘Beat up five lads twice her size and adopted a wolf.’

‘Yes, I thought that’s what you said.’ Verak took the letter and read it for himself. ‘He says it looks like a wolf cub, not that it is one.’

‘Does it make any difference? The rumours will have it as a wolf. It’s a nice bit of mythology.’

The two men stared out over the rail of the
Grey Ghost
as it slid away from the headland. From here, Skjultfjell was completely invisible, hidden by the rocks and cliff face. A week’s journey to the south was Ilanium, and the Imperial Ball, which Kael would usually avoid like something that came with festering boils but which he was suddenly eager to attend.

Besides, he had a plan for Ishtaer when he arrived. Beating up youths to save a puppy was one thing, but Eirenn’s reports weren’t getting any more optimistic about her ability to defend herself.

He could only remember one occasion when she’d fought back with any determination.

He might as well recreate it.

‘How does it look?’ Ishtaer asked, standing diffidently by the fountain. Eirenn had been silent for nearly a whole minute, ever since she walked in, and she was afraid she looked ridiculous. ‘Malika said something simple would be fine, but I don’t know … If the fashion is for something really complicated then will I just look wrong? I don’t know what fancy people wear. Eirenn, say something!’

‘You look,’ Eirenn began, then cleared his throat and started again. ‘You look stunning.’

‘In a good way?’ she asked doubtfully. Malika had also given her hair a trim, and she had no idea how it might look.

‘In a very good way. I shall have to send flowers to Malika for creating something that suits you so well. Or maybe ask her to marry me. You look wonderful.’

He took her hand and kissed the back of it. Ishtaer flinched and pulled it back. At her side, the dog growled.

He was only half grown, leggy and skinny, but he was already a large animal, his head at mid-thigh level. Since she’d brought him back to the Academy, washed his matted fur and fed him raw meat from the kitchens, he’d barely left her side. Madam Julia had forbidden him from the sick bay, although when he’d licked her hand and made a whining puppy noise, she’d allowed him to stay in her office while Ishtaer worked.

‘He’s like the guard dogs my father used to keep,’ she’d said, her voice softer than it had ever been since Ishtaer met her. ‘He’ll be a big fellow one day.’

Big fellow or not, he now sat at Ishtaer’s side, wearing a lead made from rope braided with the same red, blue and silver ribbons that edged Ishtaer’s white dress. She’d looped it around her wrist, like a bracelet. Apart from the leather pouch of crystals around her neck, it was the only accessory she wore.

‘Are you sure I’ll be allowed to take him to the Ball?’ she asked. She was still amazed she’d been allowed to keep him in her room, but Eirenn pointed out that a lot of sons and daughters of the Citizenry kept their own horses, hunting dogs and birds of prey within the Academy’s walls.

‘Oh, sure. Few years back there was a fad for women to wear wigs with birdcages in them, and actual birds. Of course, they were always escaping, flying all around the place. It was chaotic. Nobody stopped it though. So long as he behaves himself …’

‘He will,’ said Ishtaer firmly. The dog licked her hand. ‘I can’t leave him in my room, he cries all the time.’ She ruffled the soft fur between his ears. Despite her healing the injuries the boys had inflicted on him, the dog was still thin, still wary, and had latched onto Ishtaer as some kind of saviour. As a result, he’d also become fiercely protective of her. Even Marcus Glorius had backed off when faced with seventy pounds of growling canine.

‘How’s Gloria doing?’ Eirenn asked as they set off towards the Academy’s exit, along with a growing stream of excited students heading towards the Turris Imperio and its huge ballroom.

‘I told him he’d be fine unless he threatened me,’ Ishtaer said. ‘The dog was out of sight while we were training. If he hadn’t tried to trip me on my way out, the dog would never have snapped his lead like that to pounce on him.’

Eirenn laughed. ‘Did Madam Julia heal his black eye?’

‘No. She said he ought to keep it as a reminder, and that if he went running to his daddy to complain then she’d be forced to tell him how Marcus had attacked a girl, unprovoked.’

‘I love Madam Julia,’ Eirenn said. He scratched the dog’s ears. ‘But you know what? You can’t keep calling this feller “dog”. If you’re going to keep him—’

‘I am.’

‘—then he needs a name.’

She frowned, pausing to let someone else ahead of her through the gate. Since the incident with Marcus, people had been giving her and the dog a wide berth. ‘I don’t know how to name a dog,’ she said.

‘Right then, let’s see. You could call him something like Fluffy—’

‘No.’

‘Or … Grey Ghost …’

‘Kael’s ship?’

‘Lord Krull to the rest of us,’ Eirenn reminded her. ‘He might like it if you name your dog after his ship.’

‘Yes,’ said Ishtaer, who suspected he’d like it too much, ‘he probably would.’ Her stomach fluttered at the thought of meeting the warlord again, even if she knew she wasn’t the frightened wretch he’d left behind. All right, so she still couldn’t bear to be touched and hadn’t got up the courage to sleep in her own bed, but she was stronger, healthier, and even though she’d had Eirenn’s help and the boys had mostly run away the moment they’d been threatened, she found herself carrying her head a little higher after word got around that she’d beaten up five men all by herself.

‘He needs a strong name. After all, he broke that fence post clean in two when he went after Marcus. What’s High Ilani for
strong
? Or
big
? Or … something like that.’

Eirenn thought for a while, then said, ‘How about Brutus? It means heavy, immovable.’

‘Brutus,’ Ishtaer said, and the dog licked her fingers. ‘He likes that. Well, then. Brutus it is.’

For a second Kael paused at the top of the stairs and looked down into the blinding confusion of the Imperial Ball.

Ishtaer, he thought as he descended the grand staircase, was probably lucky she didn’t have to look at it.

The fashion amongst wealthy women seemed to be for skirts about a mile wide in every shade that could be conjured by the human imagination, and even some that couldn’t. Bodices were low, spilling acres of cleavage where it had no right being. This season’s wigs were huge, and also brightly coloured. And also worn by men. The modish look seemed to be for highly embellished coats with wide skirts that echoed the women’s outfits, emphasising narrow waists and shoulders. Men and women wore make-up, and not in a way that could be called subtle.

They looked, Kael thought, quite demented.

Moving amongst these mad peacocks were the Chosen, generally more soberly dressed, each of them wearing a coloured sash. The majority were red or blue for Warriors and Healers, with a few purple Viatori dotted here and there, and the duller shades of the Bards and other lesser Chosen. Some of the Warriors had their sleeves embroidered with the patterns of their marks, and he saw at least one Healer with an embroidered glove.

Kael adjusted his own red and black sashes and idly scanned the crowd for anyone else with two of the damn things. His eye drifted over the clumps of Tyros fiddling self-consciously with their all-white outfits and picked out Lady Aquilinia in her purple and silver sashes. A faint smile curved his lips in remembrance. Aquilinia raised her brows at him but made no move to approach. They understood each other. She no more wanted a relationship than he did. It was incredibly refreshing after the endless advances made on him by fortune-hunting young – and often not-so-young – women. He wondered if he should invite Aquilinia back to his rooms later.

But then a slight commotion behind him made him turn back towards the stairs, where he saw two Tyros dressed in white. And a wolf.

Kael blinked, but they were still there when he opened his eyes again. Eirenn Fillian, his faithful correspondent, and a tall, slim woman in a draped silk dress that made her look like a goddess and displayed the bold, chasing lines of the Militis mark on her arm. She had dark hair cut unfashionably but attractively short, which meant that there was nothing to distract from either her lovely bone structure or the Aspicio mark around her eye. Wrapped around her left wrist was the leash of the wolf – a swiving wolf, by all the gods!—and her palm was turned outwards, revealing the Medicus mark there.

Kael stared.

She had high cheekbones and long dark lashes and her eyes blazed a curious pale blue that seemed at odds with her warm skin tone. Her breasts were small and high, her bare arms slender and strong with the sort of muscle few fashionable women ever had.

‘Dear gods in heaven,’ said Verak, who Kael hadn’t even noticed standing beside him. ‘That’s Ishtaer?’

Kael could just about manage a nod.

All around him, people nudged and murmured, but Ishtaer appeared to ignore them. She took the arm of her friend, her head high and her blind eyes aimed straight ahead, and descended the staircase like a queen.

‘Are you sure that’s not a wolf?’ Verak asked.

Kael shook his head, a little too rapidly. He cleared his throat. ‘No. Can’t be. Must be a big dog.’

‘Looks like a wolf to me.’

‘Why would she have a wolf? Must be a dog.’ It had the same pale blue eyes as its owner and a shaggy winter coat in shades of grey and brown. It had a skinny, defensive look about it, exactly like Ishtaer when he’d first met her.

Eirenn murmured something to Ishtaer, and the odd trio made their way over to Kael, brushing past the society women with their ridiculous clothes and wigs and thick warpaint.

‘My lord,’ she said, with a very slight incline of her head. That was how most of the Chosen bowed. Someone had been tutoring her.

‘Ishtaer,’ he said. He stared at her some more, uncomfortably aware that while she didn’t know he was doing it, both Eirenn and Verak did, and that he should stop. But he couldn’t. ‘You look …’ She looked a lot of things: strong, healthy, exotic, attractive. All the things she’d never looked before.

‘You look different,’ he said eventually, and she gave a tiny flicker of a smile that looked, of all things, disappointed. ‘Nice pet,’ he added quickly.

‘His name is Brutus,’ she said.

‘Going to need to do a bit of filling out to live up to that name,’ Verak said.

‘He’s only young. Less than a year, I think.’

There was a short silence, during which Kael attempted to unglue his gaze from someone who should have been a skinny, pathetic wretch but who was instead a rather lovely young woman. He failed, miserably.

But at least he wasn’t the only one staring. Eirenn gazed at her with what Kael could only call adoration, and she drew curious and admiring glances from plenty of passing men. In this frantic sea of overdressed, overcorseted popinjays, she stood like a statue.

‘It’s a good turnout this year,’ Eirenn said. ‘I didn’t think you usually came, my lord.’

Kael cleared his throat and tore his gaze from Ishtaer. ‘No. Well. Long way.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘Thought I’d better come and see my protégée.’

When no one said anything, Verak said, ‘We’ve been getting your letters, Eirenn. Great to see how Ishtaer is getting on.’

‘She’s doing really well,’ said Eirenn. He was of a height with Ishtaer, dark haired and pale skinned. She seemed entirely comfortable leaning on his arm.

I wonder if they’re lovers?

Kael physically shook himself at that. There was no way in this world or the next that Ishtaer was anyone’s lover. He’d seen her reaction back in the New Lands when he tried to seduce her. If his barest touch had repulsed her that much, he doubted any other man had got between those no-doubt muscular and firm thighs …

Stop thinking about her thighs!
He gave himself a mental slap and forced his lustful thoughts to the back of his brain, saving them for later. At least he wouldn’t have to do much acting if he wanted his plan to work.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’ve got people to talk to. Oh look, the Emperor. I’ll see you at the Presentation, Ishtaer,’ and he walked off before she affected him any more.

Behind him, Verak laughed.

Eirenn accompanied her to her first Presentation, where each Tyro Militis was presented to each fully qualified Militis in attendance. There were a lot of them, each with hands to be shaken, and it was a tedious business. Ishtaer smiled politely as each and every man there, young and old, exclaimed how they never thought they’d see a woman Warrior. Some were curious, some were downright rude. Ishtaer simply tightened her hand on the woven rope connecting her to Brutus, and they quickly shut up.

When she reached Kael, he held her hand a fraction too long, and murmured, ‘You look really good, Ishtaer.’

Her smile suddenly felt very hard to maintain.

After the Militis Tyros were presented, those who had been judged proficient enough to graduate were called forward and draped with a red silk sash. Sir Scipius and various other notable Warriors made speeches, although she noticed Kael wasn’t among them. Everyone applauded. Brutus barked. Eirenn whispered in her ear that Lord Glorius looked livid that Marcus hadn’t been selected for passing out. Marcus himself stomped out of the room, his tread as familiar to Ishtaer as her own.

They followed the newly graduated Warriors back into the main ballroom, where they were announced and applauded again, and then the man with the loud, ringing voice who’d announced the Militis Presentation called forward the Healers.

‘Try not to yawn,’ Eirenn advised, and Ishtaer retraced her steps. She’d been nervous about this evening, but now she had no idea why. Mostly, like the other official occasions she’d been obliged to attend, it was just mind-numbingly boring.

She followed the other Medicus students along the line of Healers, shaking hands with a fairly equal number of men and women, a surprising number of whom said things like, ‘So you’re the Ishtaer Julia’s been telling us about!’