Impossible Things (4 page)

Ishtaer didn’t know what to say to that. She just nodded, jerkily.

‘Now. Since we’ve established no one’s going to be swiving anyone they don’t want to, and no one’s going to be beating anyone else up,’ he added pointedly, releasing her hand, ‘let’s get on with things. Might I ask you to try moving your right leg?’

She frowned, unsure what he meant by that. Her right leg was the bad one, had been for … actually, she couldn’t remember how long. Ugly and twisted, it made walking awkward, and if someone kicked her there – which they did, regularly – the pain brought her to her knees.

She shifted under the covers – and gasped.

The warlord let out a low laugh.

‘Have a look at it,’ he said. ‘That is – I mean, have a feel at it.’

Ishtaer shoved back the covers and ran her hands over her leg, suddenly cautious, a little afraid to believe what she thought she’d just felt. Her crippled leg, moving free and easy beneath the blanket.

Hesitantly, she touched her shin, then ran her fingers down the length of the bone.

It was smooth and straight.

She ran her hand back up, astonished. The bone remained straight. The surface of her leg unmarred by the painful lump of bone that had protruded, aching and awkward, for as long as she could remember.

‘But—but—’

The warlord laughed again, a rich sound of amusement. ‘Karnos reset it,’ he said. ‘He’s my Healer. Lots of experience with broken bones, although admittedly he usually gets to them a lot sooner. How long ago did this happen?’

Ishtaer couldn’t stop touching her newly healed limb. ‘Three winters,’ she replied, and then blinked, surprised at her own answer.

She remembered. She just didn’t know that she remembered.

‘You’ve been walking around on a compound fracture for three years?’ He let out a low whistle. ‘Was this before or after you were blinded?’

She couldn’t stop herself flinching. The touch of her own hands suddenly repelled her. Shaking her head rapidly, she managed, ‘Same time.’

The warlord said nothing for a moment, then he said, ‘That must have been some accident.’

Ishtaer said nothing.

The warlord cleared his throat. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘Karnos wants to talk to you about the injury. He’s been with you, by the way, most of the time since we boarded the ship. He says you’ll probably always have a scar, and it’ll take some time to build the muscle back up, but there’s no significant nerve damage or … actually, I lost track after that. He wondered if you healed any muscle damage, or if there was an infection?’

She shook her head again, the nightmarish memory of those awful days pressing in on her. All the things that had been lost in the fog of her memory, all the small things that were benign and unfrightening, but what crept into her mind like an evil demon whenever she let her guard down was this.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said, her voice small.

‘Right. Fine. Never mind.’ He paused again, and let out a sigh. ‘Look … the other thing is …’

Ishtaer rearranged the covers over herself and waited.

‘You still can’t see me, can you?’

She shook her head apologetically. ‘No, my lord.’

‘Karnos looked at your eyes. Can’t find anything wrong with ’em. No injury, and nothing in your head that could cause it. That is, the skin around one eye was a little burned after Samara’s charming attentions – oh, the burn on your arm is much better, by the way, and he’s been making headway on some of the other stuff – but it’s all fine now.’

Ishtaer felt at her arm. What burn did he mean? There was still the scar of an old brand there, nothing fresh, the S every slave had. Ladyship’s mark of ownership. She’d always had it. Hadn’t she?

‘There’s a little bit of scarring on your face,’ the warlord went on, ‘but you ought to be able to see.’

Ishtaer blinked, but her vision remained as blank as it had been for the last three years.

‘What caused it?’ the warlord asked bluntly.

She willed herself not to think about that night. ‘I hit my head,’ she muttered.

‘But there’s no head injury.’

She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, my lord.’

He blew out another sigh. ‘Yeah. Me too. How the hell am I going to present a blind Tyro to the council?’

Ishtaer didn’t understand that, so she kept silent.

‘Maybe someone in Ilanium can figure it out. Delicate surgery isn’t exactly Karnos’s forte.’ She heard the furniture creak as he stood up. ‘Are you hungry? Stupid question. Bet you’re always hungry.’

She gave a meek nod.

‘Stay there. I’ll get you something to eat.’

And with that, the warlord departed the room like a servant.

Within a few days Ishtaer was on her feet again. The ship’s carpenter fashioned her a crutch and then a cane to keep the weight off her leg, but even Karnos was impressed at how fast it healed.

‘Malnourished wretch like her, didn’t think her body’d have the strength,’ he said to Kael.

‘She is a Healer herself,’ Kael replied. ‘And don’t call her a wretch.’

Karnos raised his eyebrows but only grunted in reply. The old Healer was grizzled and surly, but Kael could count at least five times in his life when he’d have died were it not for Karnos.

Verak fashioned a little leather pouch to hang around Ishtaer’s neck, filled with a variety of crystals. None of them were entirely sure what sort of crystals a Seer might use, but then again, nobody really knew what it was that Seers did. They gave her the most commonly used crystals for Healers and Warriors, and watched her carefully.

After a week she had no need for her cane and walked carefully around the deck with Kael or Verak. To begin with, Kael alerted her to every obstacle, but when he forgot to remind her of a hatch lid he realised she stepped over it anyway.

‘How did you know that was there?’ he asked.

She looked surprised. ‘I remembered it from last time.’

‘Just that one, or all of them? Every coil of rope, every step, every single obstacle?’

She frowned, but nodded. Kael took her arm – she only flinched a little now – and led her around the deck again, saying nothing about anything in their path.

She avoided every obstacle, even ducking under the boom as it swung over their heads. Kael, who’d been about to shield her head with his arm, stared at her.

‘How did you know that was there? It wasn’t before!’

‘I heard it. I felt the air move.’

‘But we’re on deck in the middle of the ocean. There’s a lot of air moving around.’

Ishtaer just shrugged. ‘I don’t know, my lord. I just knew it was there.’

Kael caught Verak’s eye, and the other man motioned to the mark on Ishtaer’s face. Kael shook his head. Could her Seer’s powers really be helping her to find her way around?

She certainly knew where everything was in his cabin. He’d decided to keep her there, out of the way of his curious crew, partly for her own protection and partly for theirs. He’d assured her no man on the ship would touch her, but he wasn’t stupid enough to rule out arse-pinching or catcalls, and he honestly didn’t think Ishtaer was strong enough to handle it. Three weeks was a long time to be confined to the same small space with no women, and he wasn’t about to throw temptation right into their way.

Added to which, he still wasn’t entirely sure she might not suffer some sort of panic attack at deserting her beloved Ladyship and attempt to throw herself overboard. He, Verak and Karnos kept an eye on her all throughout the day, and he kept her locked in his cabin at night.

It panicked her to be locked in with him, but then as far as Kael could tell, pretty much everything panicked Ishtaer. While she’d been unconscious, first due to her own eerie drugs and then from the concoction Karnos gave her to keep her under while her leg was fixed, Kael had slept in the same bunk as Ishtaer. It was a large enough bed, and she took up less room than one of the ship’s cats.

But when she woke up and found herself sharing the space with him she’d gone rigid and started trembling so violently he thought her bones would shatter.

‘Don’t worry, lass, you’re really not my type,’ he said, but she didn’t even seem to hear him. He’d been unable to snatch more than a few minutes’ sleep the rest of the night.

His shadowed eyes made most of the crew snigger. ‘Up all night, were you, cap’n?’ ‘Demanding lady, is she, sir?’

He ignored them, but the scarlet flush on Ishtaer’s cheeks just made them laugh harder.

‘Treat her with respect, or I’ll have you keelhauled,’ Kael said flatly, and the laughter abruptly stopped.

He brought in a hammock for her, but kept it quiet. He figured if the crew thought Ishtaer was his woman they’d be less likely to hassle her. Although he had to wonder if they thought he’d lost his mind. Although she gained in strength every day, she was still a painfully skinny creature, constantly trembling in fear and flinching from the most fleeting of touches.

Kael thought that even if she could see, she’d never meet his eye.

But he made a point of physical contact with her. She couldn’t expect to survive at the Academy if she was so frightened of being touched. Hell, if she took the route of privilege and decadence most Chosen did, she’d have to get used to a bevy of body servants washing and dressing her and … er, doing whatever it was those people did.

So he took her arm and walked around the decks with her, gave her a wooden practice sword and taught her a few basic moves and steeled himself to teach her unarmed combat so she could at least defend herself next time a bully like Samara tried to take advantage of her.

And all the time he wondered. Who was she? Where had she come from? How had she ended up as a slave? And why was she just so frightened of absolutely everything?

‘… to the Academy, which is in Ilanium. And Ilanium is the capital of …? Ilania, that’s right,’ the warlord said as if Ishtaer had answered him herself.

He speaks to me like a child
, she thought, and was astonished at such a rebellious thought.

‘Now Ilania is the country, but its empire is known as the Ilani Empire. Encompasses most of the mainland, including countries such as Draxos. You remember me talking about Draxos?’

‘I remember,’ she said obediently, although the memory was fuzzy and indistinct, clouded with the fear and pain and confusion of that day.

‘Draxos is quite a hot country, to the south and east of Ilania. A lot of people there have dark hair like yours. Although,’ he faltered, ‘they’re not usually as pale as you. But then you’re probably just pale from lack of sunshine. Get back to Draxos and you’ll be brown as a nut in no time.’

Ishtaer was nonplussed. She genuinely had no idea what she looked like. Even when she could see she had no recollection of ever looking in a mirror.

‘My hair is dark?’ she asked. One hand, the hand that wasn’t tucked into his arm, moved up to touch her hair. Someone had hacked it all off, taken away the painful mats that tugged at her scalp and were home to more crawling creatures than she could get rid of. Not that she recalled trying much. There had been a time when it had bothered her, but for some reason, after a while with Ladyship it just seemed … unimportant.

Now it covered her clean, unbitten scalp in a layer no more than an inch long. She wondered if it made her look ugly. Then she wondered where that thought had come from.

‘Yes, your hair is dark. Rather like mine. Not quite black, but getting there. And your eyes are blue, did you know that?’

She shook her head.

‘Quite a nice pale blue, actually,’ he said, and from his voice and his breath on her face she could tell he was peering at her. ‘Not terribly Draxan,’ he added, straightening away from her. ‘Was your mother Draxan?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ishtaer said.

‘Did your father have blue eyes?’

‘I don’t
know
.’

‘What do you know about them?’

‘Nothing,’ she answered automatically, and then shook her head and tried, really tried, to remember.

She must have had parents. Everybody had parents, even slaves. Someone had given birth to her and nursed her, and … then what? Someone had inspected the cleanliness of her hands, had beat her with a cane for misbehaving, had dabbed stinging ointment on scrapes and bruises. But that someone wasn’t family.

‘I don’t … think I knew them,’ she said slowly.

‘An orphan?’ asked the warlord.

Orphan. The word slotted into place in her head, like a key opening a door. ‘Yes, an orphan. In the … the place, where they put people who have nowhere else. The … the …’

‘Orphanage?’

‘No,’ she said, frustrated with herself. The stern voice telling her to turn her hands over, enquiring whether her fingernails were clean … the smell of tripe and disinfectant … the high, barred windows … the tubs of water and the wringers and the red, raw knuckles …

‘They send people there to work. People who have nothing. And children. The ones without families. We did the work. The laundry and mending and picking and cleaning. We worked—’ she broke off, unable to find the words.

‘A workhouse,’ said the warlord beside her. He sounded shocked.

‘Workhouse,’ Ishtaer repeated in relief, and that word opened up another door, another memory. The inside of the workhouse, the huge central hall where meals were taken at long tables, everything smelling of tripe and cabbage. The laundry, endless, steaming and scalding, the ache in her fingers that she could still feel now. The hard bed, scratchy blanket, the pervading chill from the stone floors. Always a small child crying somewhere. Always a bell ringing, for some task or some punishment. Always a line of penitents standing in the hall, watching the others eat, waiting to be caned for the day’s misdemeanours.

‘I remember,’ she breathed, bathing herself in the memory, the cold and the boredom and the smell, all of it.
That was me. I existed before all this. I have memories.

‘I wasn’t always a slave,’ she said.

‘She’s from the Saranos,’ Kael said, and watched the table go silent. For a long moment the only sound was the creak of the ship’s timbers and the patter of rain against glass. Kael was glad he wasn’t out on deck tonight.

‘She told you that?’ Verak said eventually.

‘She grew up in a workhouse,’ Kael said, emptying his wine and reaching for more. The table, hanging from a pair of brackets on the ceiling, swayed as he set the flagon back down.

‘But they were all shut down,’ Karnos began.

‘After the war they were,’ Verak said. ‘More than five years ago they’d still have been operating. Seven hells, Kael. She lived in one of those places?’

Quite a large proportion of his crew had been there in the Saranos Islands five years ago. Kael had personally walked into one of the cathedrals of misery where the Saraneans put their poor and hopeless, had seen the defeated faces of men drowned in debt, unmarried mothers, orphaned children. He hadn’t been much older than Ishtaer was now. He’d thought it was the worst place he’d ever been.

That was, of course, before he’d seen Samara’s compound.

‘Does she remember the war?’ Karnos rumbled.

‘No idea. She got as far as the workhouse then had to go and lie down.’

‘She eaten today?’ Verak asked.

‘Yes,
Papa
, she’s eaten properly,’ Kael said. Verak rolled his eyes. ‘In accordance with Healer’s orders.’

‘Don’t recall as I gave any order about how she should be fed,’ Karnos said, watching them with amusement.

‘No, you don’t need to, because laddo here knows all about hunger, don’t you?’

Kael pointed at his second with a chicken leg and said, ‘Aye, more than you do, so shut it. Does a man good to know what it’s like to be hungry. I’ve half a mind to strand the crew on an island somewhere and pick ’em up a week later, then we’ll see how they complain about hard bread and rotten meat.’

Verak held up his hands. ‘Spare me the tale, I’ve heard it often enough.’

Kael wrenched some more meat off the bone with his teeth, good humour gone. He’d hated his father at the time for sending him out into the wilderness like that, unarmed and unprepared, a boy of eleven with nothing but sheer bloodymindedness on his side. He could still hear the old man’s voice telling him that if he was so sure he was going to be a great fighter he could learn to take care of himself.

Kael had done better than that. He’d learned how to catch small animals and fish, how to construct a shelter and make a fire from almost nothing, and one day when his feet were frozen and his belly cramping with hunger, he’d fought a she-wolf over a dead rabbit, and won.

Of course, later he discovered the wolf’s pups, and still couldn’t work out whether he was proud of himself for showing them mercy, or whether he’d been a coward not to slay them. Two had died anyway, and the third bit him hard enough to leave a scar before wandering off, never to be seen again.

When Kael returned home, it was with the Warrior’s mark on his arm.

‘If you two are done bickering,’ Karnos broke into the memory, ‘perhaps we should try to work out why a girl from the Saranos, from the Empire, ended up as a slave.’

‘Maybe that’s what the workhouses did with an excess of inmates,’ Verak said darkly.

‘She must have left before the war,’ Kael said, trying to put it together in his head. ‘The Islands were a lawless place back then. Remember all those smugglers we caught?’

‘I remember,’ Karnos said. ‘Those smugglers paid for my cottage out at Offerhöjden.’

Kael grinned. ‘What a piece of legislation the Privateer Act was.’

‘Maybe she was kidnapped,’ Verak said. ‘There were still slavers operating out of the Saranos.’

‘Maybe,’ Kael said. ‘I still can’t work out how she ended up in a workhouse in the first place. With those marks she has to be from the Citizenry. Even if she was orphaned she shouldn’t have ended up there.’

‘Was she? Orphaned?’ Verak added, and Kael nodded.

‘She remembers that. Says she doesn’t know anything about her family. Remembers the workhouse. And that’s it. I’ll try again tomorrow.’

Karnos picked up his glass and said, ‘By the time we get her to the Academy she might even have a last name.’

She didn’t have a last name, despite Kael’s increasingly inventive questioning. By the time the ship rounded the Excelsis Cliffs he’d ascertained that she’d worked in a kitchen of some kind and that she’d been called Agnes there because ‘I won’t have filthy foreign names in my kitchen,’ but when he asked who exactly she’d been quoting Ishtaer got that frustrated look on her face and said she didn’t know.

He tried to explain about Ilani naming structures to her, but could tell about five words in that she found it utterly baffling. He couldn’t entirely blame her. His own name in High Ilani went on for so long he needed to start saying it five minutes before he introduced himself.