The Devil's Armour (Gollancz S.F.) (15 page)

A woman lay on a jutting shelf of stone, her eyes closed, her face free of her suffocating cloak, offering herself to the burning desert sun. As always, she had come to this place to be alone, away from her companions of Grimhold, to commune with her dark thoughts. Her hands, scarred and rutted like a crone’s, sat flat on the baked earth beside her, palms down, absorbing the heat that impregnated the rocks. Her blonde hair splayed out around her head. The sunlight dazzled the insides of her eyelids. Half asleep, she remembered with awful clarity the thing that had happened to her . . .

She was young again. Free of pain. Safe in a bed in a little stone house with moonbeams slanting though the window. At twelve she was on the cusp of womanhood, and her body had started blooming. There was a boy down the street she had begun to love, but she had never seen him again, not after that night. She had no siblings, so slept in a room that she didn’t have to share. Her parents were still young enough for children, but for now Meriel was their one and only, and by the standards of their village they were quite well off. Meriel had been given love and enough food to grow healthy, and she remembered sleeping that night in contentment, oblivious to the catastrophe about to befall her
.

Alone on her rock, the memory was like a dream to the
woman. She could not silence it. As so often happened, it took control of her. In her mind, the nightmare blazed . . .

Asleep, the girl had not quite heard her father’s scream. It had come as if from a great void, too distant to comprehend. Soon, though, it was joined by a roar. Meriel had never known that fire could roar. Jolted awake, she sat up to find an orange blaze outside her door, its burning hands reaching out to sear her, leaping up to lick the curtains, the lamp, the windowpanes. Night had fled, replaced by terrible brightness. At once the pain of it charged her skin, making her cry out. Now she heard her father’s voice again. He was calling her, screaming her name. Where was her mother? Meriel had no time to wonder. She needed to flee, but the threshold out of her bedroom had been swallowed by the flames. Soon it would swallow her, too. Her ears rang as its angry shriek erupted, shaking the little house. As the flames jumped she batted them away, burning her hands as she called for her father, pleading for a rescue. Smoke choked her throat and stung her eyes. Panicked tears soaked her cheeks. She was out of the bed with nowhere to go, backing up against the wall. She saw the window and knew it was her only escape. But the glass seemed so far away, and the heat was enormous. Then, like a miracle, the glass exploded into the room. A man – a neighbour – was there, climbing through the broken glass to reach her. Too fat to make it through, he looked at her, fixed her with a determined glare, and demanded she run to him
.

His words made little sense to her, but the pain drove her toward the window. As fire swept the room, she bolted
.

That was all the woman remembered. Later, she learned that she had lost consciousness not long after the neighbour man pulled her from the house. When she awoke, her mother and father were dead. The pretty little house had gone to ashes. And twelve-year-old Meriel, who had been a beautiful child, looked in a mirror and saw a monster staring back at her.

Slowly, Meriel opened her eyes and stared up at the desert sky. The merciless heat beat down on her cloaked body. Since that day six years ago, she always wore a cloak. Even here in Grimhold, where there were dozens who could rival her deformities, she hid herself. Minikin had taken her to Grimhold, and that had saved her life. Before that she had gone from town to town, begging, working where she could, hiding her face and never daring to hope for love, as she knew that no man would take so scarred a woman to bed, not even for a night. She had not even been able to prostitute herself.

In her groggy haze, Meriel looked up at the sky and could not weep. The pain in her body was enormous; it never left her. Without speaking, she asked Sarlvarian to help her. An angry ripple coursed through her mind. Meriel ignored him.

Her thoughts turned on Minikin. The little woman had saved her, had made her one of her Inhumans. But Meriel had never felt at home in Grimhold. She had even refused to take an Inhuman name. Of all the folk of Grimhold, only a handful were her friends. She loved Minikin like a mother, and she had warmed to the Liirians, too. Thorin Glass was a friend, mostly, and Gilwyn Toms might be someday. But of all of them, there was one who was never far from her thoughts, one who had been kind to her and never seemed to mind her maladies.

‘Lukien.’

Saying his name made longing course through her. She remembered that now-nameless boy when she was twelve, and how she had loved him, or at least how she had thought it was love. Was it love she felt now for Lukien? Surely it must be, because only love tortured people so. Kind Lukien, one-eyed but still capable of seeing her true appearance, never flinched or looked away, even when she took down her hood. He had bid her to show herself to him that first day, and she had loved him ever since. Though all
the Inhumans were kind to her, Lukien’s attention was special, and she adored him for it.

‘But he’s still handsome,’ she whispered. Her voice was caught by the smallest breeze, so that even she could barely hear it. Even with his missing eye and weather-beaten face, he could have his pick of women and Meriel knew it. Worse, he pined for a dead women. How could she – so scarred and ugly – ever compete with Cassandra’s memory?

‘I can’t.’

Suddenly she didn’t care what Sarlvarian thought, or how much pain she would feel. She sat up quickly, searching the rocks for a spot where the sun was fiercest. Up on her ledge she could easily roast like a hen. She had her pick of hot spots, and with Sarlvarian’s reluctant help sensed a smouldering heat shimmering up from a nearby stone. As it had since she was twelve, the heat wracked her body with pain. She ignored it, shunting it away, burying it in her own self-loathing. She outstretched a hand over the shimmering – which could not be seen by anyone but her – and summoned a flame from the rock. The power came reluctantly. She could feel Sarlvarian protest. The Akari –
her
Akari – pleaded with her to stop. But he was part of her and bound to obey, and so empowered her to call forth the flame until it burst from the rock in a brilliant orange plume.

Meriel watched it for a moment, concentrating on keeping it alive. Suddenly she was on the verge of tears. She didn’t know why she did this to herself, why the hatred she had for herself had grown so monstrous. She apologised to Sarlvarian, then scooped the flame off the rock, holding it in her palm.

With the Akari’s help there was no pain; that was Sarlvarian’s great gift to her. The command of fire was no more difficult to her than the control of her own thoughts. This time, though, she wanted the pain.

She held the dancing flame in her scarred hand. She could have easily made a flower of it or some other pretty
thing, but instead she deliberately let her concentration slip, breaking for a moment the bond she shared with the spirit.

Searing pain shot through her palm, her wrist, her forearm. Meriel screamed. The flame went out instantly. At last the tears came, frustrated and confused. She put her burned hand to her mouth as she wept.

Helpless, Sarlvarian let his host feel the agony. With his great Akari powers, he could have soothed her. For a reason the spirit could not comprehend, Meriel would not allow it.

Baron Glass had never gotten used to the heat. After a year in Grimhold, he still detested it. For that reason alone, he kept himself sheltered inside the mountain keep, rarely straying into the village it protected or out into the surrounding desert. He was a Liirian, and as such accustomed to much cooler climes. There were, however, a few things that could get him out of the keep and its shadows. One was looking after Gilwyn in Jador. The other was chasing after Meriel.

When word had reached Grimhold of Minikin’s return with Lukien, Baron Glass went in search of Meriel at once. She was a melancholy young woman who kept mostly to herself, but Glass knew her haunts. There was a place not far from the keep where she often went, away from the protection of the other Inhumans. Lately, Meriel was retreating from Grimhold often, and it troubled Baron Glass. But he knew that she pined for Lukien, and that the news of the Bronze Knight’s arrival would rouse her from any sour mood.

Baron Glass was no longer just a guest in Grimhold. Like Lukien and Gilwyn, the place had become his home, and so he was free to roam wherever he wished, whatever the risks. He was not stopped by Greygor, the guardian of Grimhold, as he tried to leave the keep. The quiet giant simply opened the gate for him, bowing as though he were still nobility and his title still had meaning. Enduring the sun, Baron Glass walked through the canyon to the place he knew he’d
find Meriel, an alcove of rock tunnelled into a rugged hillside, like a stairway leading up to her private ledge. The two of them had spent many hours there together, usually when the sun went down, enjoying the peace of a starry desert night. For some reason, Meriel loved to hear the baron talk. She prodded him endlessly for stories, tales about the ‘real world’ as she called it, where people didn’t have Akari and men and women fell in love. And because the world beyond Grimhold was always paramount in Glass’ mind, he was happy to regale her. Like Meriel, Baron Thorin Glass felt lost in Grimhold, as lost as the left arm he had given in battle decades ago.

He walked to the place he knew he’d find Meriel. Not wanting to surprise her, he made sure to scuff his boots along the rocks. He didn’t bother calling her name; she would not answer him. Instead he climbed the jagged hill, squeezing through the tunnel of rock as he ascended, until the narrow gauge gave way to an open area jutting out like a malformed chin over the canyon below. As expected he found Meriel there, sitting on the baked earth with her ubiquitous black cloak around her shoulders. At once he smelled burning, and when he noticed Meriel favouring her hand he was angered.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him. She didn’t turn around to face him, but rather kept her face hidden. ‘It’s still light out. You don’t come here when it’s light.’

Thorin went to stand behind her. ‘Look at me,’ he demanded.

Slowly the young woman turned her face toward him, revealing first the right, unblemished half of her face, still comely and attractive, then the other, ravaged side, streaked with scars and with a drooping eye. There were obvious tears on her cheeks. Baron Glass shook his head, exasperated.

‘Your hand,’ he said. ‘Let me see it.’

Meriel obeyed. Perhaps it was his age or his booming tone that made her do so, but he had a way of commanding
the young woman that only Minikin shared. She put out her hand and let Glass examine it. Both hands bore terrible scars, but this one had new blisters on it and flushed a violent red.

‘It doesn’t hurt any more,’ she said. ‘Sarlvarian’s eased the pain.’

Glass seized her hand and inspected it. ‘Why does that damn ghost let you do this to yourself?’ He had never understood the odd relationship between Akari and Inhuman, or why Meriel’s spirit allowed her to mutilate herself. Meriel had explained it to him dozens of times, but it angered him still that she had so much control over the spirit, control she obviously couldn’t handle any longer. ‘Will you at least wrap this?’ he asked. ‘Put some cool water on it.’

Meriel pulled back her hand without answering. She had been harming herself this way for weeks now, but it was their secret, hers and his. Because he loved her and wouldn’t jeopardise their fragile bond, he kept it.

‘I came here to be alone, Thorin,’ said Meriel. ‘I don’t want to talk right now.’

‘No? Well this might change your mind – Minikin returns to Grimhold. Lukien is with her.’

The woman’s eyes lit up. ‘Lukien’s back?’

‘Not yet. They sent a scout ahead. They should be here after nightfall.’

Meriel’s gaze dropped to her hand. It was easy to tell what she was thinking. She tortured herself constantly over her appearance, and now that Lukien was coming she had a whole new scar to worry over.

‘There’s time, then,’ she said softly. She relaxed a little. ‘I will stay here a while longer.’ She surprised Glass by smiling at him. ‘Thank you for telling me, Thorin.’

‘I thought you’d like to know,’ replied Glass. ‘Minikin will want to see you, no doubt. And you’ll want to see Lukien.’ He tried to keep the envy from his voice.

‘Yes,’ she half-sighed. ‘It’s good to know he’s well.’ Her
tone was pensive as she gazed out over the rocky terrain, toward the desert where Jador waited.

She’ll never leave here
, thought the baron.
Minikin will never let her
.

And how could he blame Minikin for that? Meriel wasn’t a prisoner; none of the Inhumans were forced to stay in Grimhold. But none of them were strong enough to leave, either, not without Minikin’s blessing, and the little mistress had never blessed Meriel’s longing for freedom. It was a longing to be normal, really, and Baron Glass understood that well. Such was the invisible glue that held their friendship together.

‘You are one of Minikin’s favourites,’ he said. The words slipped out before he could stop them. Meriel turned and looked up at him, perplexed.

‘What?’

‘It is true.’ Glass donned a fatherly expression. ‘That is why she keeps you here. To protect you.’

‘I know,’ said Meriel. ‘But I am a woman grown now, Thorin. I have a life of my own to live, and there is so much out there I wish to see. If only I could see it as a normal person, and not as a monster.’ She leaned back on her hands and gave a mirthless chuckle. ‘Isn’t it odd? So many people want to come here, Minikin has to fight them off. Yet you and I would give almost anything to leave.’