storm (23 page)

            One evening, he found himself walking towards the harbour and knew he was about to take an irrevocable step.  He could hear music playing and the sounds of voices and laughter.  It was a different world, one he had never entered.  He was not sure how he'd be received by it.  He visited the harbour during the day to barter for provisions, but its night time face was something else.  It didn't look the same.

            Open fronted bars faced the water, their awning hung with lamps.  Food vendors cooked their wares in the open air, currency brokers sat in their kiosks, and visitors from further south, mainly traders and trappers, thronged there noisily.  Groups of hara sat around fires, some beating out hypnotic rhythms on drums, while others danced, uttering strange cries, their long hair swinging.  Nohar took much notice of Moon as he skulked through the crowds, but occasionally a har of the clans would recognise him and stare, or else nudge their companions and point.  Moon knew he should perhaps nod in greeting and smile, and that such behaviour might break the ice, but lacked the will to do so.  He felt awkward and vulnerable.  Eventually, he approached a broker and swapped a few artefacts he'd brought with him from the Reliquary for  handful of rough iron coins.  This was enough to buy him drinks for the evening, in fact enough for him to drink himself senseless.

            As the broker handed over the coins, he narrowed his eyes and said, “You're Snake Jaguar's harling.”

            Moon nodded.

            The har continued to inspect him for some moments, then said, “Try the South Wind Inn.  Young ones go there.”

            “Thanks,” Moon said.

            The broker gestured behind him.  “That way.”

            Moon stumbled off, his face crimson.  He knew it was obvious why he was there and the broker's helpful advice only made it worse.  He couldn't do this.  He should go home.

            The South Wind was only a short distance from the broker's kiosk and once Moon caught sight of its open doorway, he scuttled into an alley and watched the hara enter and leave the premises.  Some of them were of the Jaguar clan, but Moon didn't really know them.  He, Snake and Raven never took part in group Jaguar activities.  In this place, it seemed that apart from him everyhar knew one other.  It was impossible for a stranger to enter that closed world.

            A group of young hara came down the alleyway behind him, and Moon began to head back in the direction of the Reliquary.  But then somehar called his name: “Jaguar har!”

            He turned, reluctantly.  The hara behind him all wore the distinctive curling facial tattoos of the Firedog clan, but what he noticed more than that was their grinning mouths.  He saw scorn and a desire for sport in their expressions.  One of the hara approached him.  “What are you looking for?”

            Moon shrugged.  “Nothing.”

            “Snake sent you.”

            “No.”

            “What's he want with us?”

            At this point, Moon registered a startling fact.  This har was slightly afraid of him and thought he carried dire news.  “Snake hasn't sent me,” he said.  “He doesn't want anything.”

            “Then why are you here?”

            “I came for a drink,” Moon said, “that's all.”

            “Can you tell the future?”

            “No.”

            “Bet you can.  Tell mine.”

            Moon stared at this young har, with his silver-white hair, his pointed elfin features.  “You will break many hearts,” he said.  “If you are not careful, you will die among the pieces, because they are sharp.”

            The har pantomimed a double-take.  “What's that supposed to mean?”

            Again, Moon shrugged and wished he hadn't said anything.  He couldn't play this game.

            The har's companions were ambling off towards the inn and one of them called, “See you in a bit, Em.”

            The har waved at them without looking behind him.  “Tell me more,” he said to Moon.

            “I can't,” Moon said.  “I have to get back.”

            “It must be an omen,” said the har, “Snake Jaguar's son coming here.  I want to know what it is.”  He touched Moon on the shoulder, which Moon knew was a form of Firedog greeting.  “I'm Ember Firedog.  What's your name?”

            Despite his limited experience of life, Moon knew when the universe throws you a line.  He knew it would be stupid not to take hold of it, so he agreed to go with Ember into the inn, on the condition he didn't have to tell anyhar's fortune.

            They bought drinks and sat at a table in a smoky corner.  The other Firedogs sat nearby, but didn't attempt to intrude on the conversation.  “Why will I break hearts?” Ember asked, his expression revealing he knew the answer only too well.

            “Because you look good,” Moon said.  “And you know it.”

            Ember laughed.  “It doesn't always work that way, Moon.  You clearly have a lot to learn.”

            “Too much,” Moon said, more to himself than his companion.

            “Your father has kept you closeted away.  Hara think you're strange.  You're not though, are you?  You're just very shy.”

            Moon didn't want to reply to this.  He wasn't sure whether being thought shy was worse than the somewhat more glamorous idea of being thought strange.

            Ember was watching him very closely, which wasn't pleasant.  “I know why you're here,” he said at last.

            Moon squirmed and stared into his drink.

            “It's OK,” Ember said.  “It was going to happen sooner or later.  You're brave.  It must have been hard coming here.”  He laughed.  “But you've met me, so that's all right.  Will it be your first?”

            “No,” Moon said.  He didn't like this at all.  There was something cold and clinical about it.

            “We could leave here now, if you like.”

            Moon stood up, knocking over his drink in the process.  “You're wrong,” he said.  “I don't know what you think, but you're wrong.”

            He fled out into the night, and somehow, in a kind of pitiful delirium, found his way back home.  He sat panting on the steps of the Reliquary, hating every fibre of his being and wishing the world was a different place.

            In the morning, Ember Firedog came to find him.  Moon discovered him wandering through one of the galleries, apparently hopelessly lost.

            “I might look good,” Ember said, “but I'm rubbish at seductions, as you noticed.  I'm sorry.  I have the sensitivity of a fish that is not only dead, but little more than a pile of maggots because somehar left it out in the sun.  Or so I'm told.  Can we start again somehow?  This is a really weird place to live.  Is it haunted?”

            Ember's direct manner often got him in trouble: Moon could see that.  But this very Leviathan-at-full-speed approach to life also had its charm.

            “I was scared of coming here,” Ember said, as Moon showed him around the unfortunate ghost-free depths of the Reliquary.  “I thought I'd run across Snake and he'd put the Eye on me.  But I knew I'd screwed up and my friend Sand told me off about it.  He said I should come and apologise or something, because hara can be really sensitive and stuff when they've just been through feybraiha.  Not that I was.”

            “Are you ever quiet?” Moon asked.

            “Not often,” Ember admitted.  “Does it put you off?”

            “A bit, yes.”

            “Oh.”  Ember was quiet for some moments after that.  “You see,” he said at last.  “Looking good isn't everything.”

            Moon laughed.  “I'm learning.”

            “You're really quiet because you're shy and I'm noisy for the same reason, I guess.  That's what Sand says and he really understands me.  Silence is a weird thing.  It's full of thoughts and some of them might be wrong.”

            “How old are you?”

            “Eight – well, nearly.  You?”

            “Seven.”  Moon sighed deeply. “How do we get from here to there?”

            “To where?”

            “Being like older hara.  I want to skip this bit.  It doesn't feel right.”

            “Hmm.  No way round it.  My hostling says I have to make mistakes and learn from them.  Then he gets pissed off with me all the time.  It's very confusing.”

            “Want to see my room?”

            “Sure.”

After only a week, Moon could barely remember the days pre-Ember.  The Firedog filled his life, changed it utterly.  Moon began to make friends, some of them from his own clan.  He spent his days at the docks with other young hara, helping to unload cargo from visiting ships, and went drinking in the evenings with the Firedogs.  It seemed like he'd lived this way for a long time.  In Ember's presence, even Snake was different: more amenable, on occasion almost cheery.  Ember had wanted to meet Snake, of course, no doubt to boast among his clan friends of having braved the serpent's lair.  So, late one afternoon, they met together in Snake's dusty cavernous room, surrounded by the tart scent of Snake's favourite strong tea that came from the south on Unneah trading boats.  They sat amid the rubble, because Snake hadn't bothered to clear up after the earthquake and Raven had been too preoccupied to notice.  Spiralling motes of danced in beams of sunlight that came down through cracks in the ceiling, and the clink of the delicate china cups that Moon had once taken from a display case in the Reliquary sounded strangely nostalgic for a time Moon had never experienced.  Snake told stories, because harlings loved stories, and no matter how much Moon and Ember wanted to believe they were grown up and serious, they really weren't.  Ember had come like a flaming brand into the dark corners of the Reliquary and Moon dared to believe that everything – everything in the world – was going to be all right, touched with light, scintillating with hope.

            Snake knew Ember's family, because a long time ago he'd travelled north with them.  Moon wondered why his father had elected to shut himself away, when it was clear he had once had friends.  Had Silken's death done that to him?  Somehow, Moon thought it had to be more than that.  Snake could talk of Silken easily and when he spoke of his lost beloved it was not with bitterness and grief, but with a kind of wistful, peaceful remembrance.

              Ember liked Snake a lot and after a time even felt brave enough to ask if he could see the Eye.  Reverently, Snake removed his patch, and revealed that savage feline gaze.

            “It is beautiful,” Ember said softly.  “Like a jewel.”