Chapter the Seventh
The world burned. The grass hissed and knelt and withered. Blackened skeletons of trees reached bony fingers towards the sky; a canvas of shifting greys and ambers swirled and succumbed. Against the amber, a single silhouette wavered, its edges melding with the smoke and heat that eroded the hard lines of her chevalier's shadow. Her eyes teared to watch him approach, though she had wrapped her tywyllgoch tightly about her head, tight as she could, tight enough to suffocate. The veil had dyed her whole world maroon: the apocalypse crescendoed around her, red-dyed.
She drew deep, and trapped her breath in her chest, feeling it roil about there, searching for an escape. The veil had kept the smoke from her face, but the heat submerged within her, marrow-deep and lovely, sweat beading along the single hand she kept bared to the air, running along her fingers and dripping lazily from her nails.
Gods above (and dust below), but the pale knight cut the loneliest of figures against the billowing grey. Nimue had known that he had burned – lonely were those in this land who had not – but she had never before seen someone so swathed in tânswyn, so that only a single eye stared forth at the world, watering in the acrid smoke. This was her chev, and he had not even had the sense to draw hailnedd! Nimue found herself, for a split second, casting about for spare fabric, and, finding none, pretended that she had not. Better to seem a cruel scion than an ill-prepared one, she supposed, and felt in her thoughts some ringing echo of the Second Lord who had sent them thus to doom. For honour, she thought bitterly, for glory.
She flicked the nail of her thumb against her flint ring, eliciting a lovely, hollow sound that rang across the Burning Fields and tangled gorgeously with the smoke. Click, click, click. The scholarly city of Caerdywod was still dozing; academics slept late and rose even later, which well she knew. Click, click, click. What a shame, she thought, staring at the chevalier in the white hood, what a shame: such a young man, such a tragic end, such a fucking pointless, endless, violent delight into which they now dove. Click, click, and then she stopped, because he was close enough now that he might realise that her worrying at her flint was less readiness than it was restlessness.
Together, she thought grimly, hand in burning hand.
She hailed him (syr ap alcluith!) and saw as his eye saw her. She found herself, quite unwillingly, examining what little of his skin she could glimpse from the gap in his swathings, searching for scars. She had not intended to cast about for destruction thus; she hoped he would take it as eye contact, direct and earnest. She had known him little when their paths had crossed at the Burning Schools, but it had run much the same: glances and smiles, awkwardness and uncertainty. She said, with her aunt's voice, "thank you for your service."
He said, "I have not served you yet."
"I know that you shall. Faithfully." She extended a hand and he, with a steady hand and cool palm, took it, and shook it, more gently than she had expected, less firm. He had guarded her cousin the pretender most loyally. She would have to trust this was instinct more than habit.
He said, "strange place to meet."
Nimue said, "I was not certain that you would come."
"You doubted me," said Maddoc ap Alcluith, fourth and final son of Hywel, servant of the Second. "Or you doubted our Lord?"
Nimue smiled, which was answer enough, and gestured northwards, where the wind blew cool and clear. Her veil stained the sky in that corner a peculiar shade of red-pink, a slice of raw flesh amongst the smoke which waltzed there. She said, "shall we?"
He said, probingly, "would you have gone alone?"
"Of course," said Nimue.
Click, and she stilled her fingers again, for they had leapt quite without her permission.
This seemed to have pleased him – or, at least, it had not displeased him. He said, "I would not see it happen," and this seemed to her a kind of oath, a sort of trust, and it quietened her hand just a little.
"Right," she said, and her heels dug into ashen land as she turned, and they began to walk towards the border, towards the place where the Burning Fields relented their grasp on the world. The Second Lord had not come to see them off, though Nimue went in her thankless place and in the place of her child son. They had, she mused, eyeing Maddoc, the both of them, been despatched quite gracelessly. No matter: they would wring grace from this moment in the end. She said, "have you a thought for the Selection, Maddoc?"
"Some."
"Good," she said, and refrained from another flick of her ring. What was wrong with her today? But for the obvious: she would miss the smoke so. The moon in the Capital Lands would, at least, be the same as that which crept from the sky here. "You are the chevalier, but I am a fine flintmaster. I rather hoped we might share our duties thus. Two heads, and all that."
He said, "you are dangerous, then, lady?"
"Not a bit," she said (and choked on the clean air when it reached her tongue). "You, syr?"
"Oh," he said drily. "Yes, a bit."
"Good stuff," she said, and felt as if she had spoken quite enough, and fell silent as though silenced as they forged forward towards the border, where the caravan was waiting. She thrilled silently to see it, for this was a start, and this was the start, and the first step had been fulfilled thus, when she cast her gaze towards the northward crest: merchants in green milling about on the edge of the Second Land, addaxes drinking thirstily from cupped hands, covered wagons splayed across the crooked road as though laying claim.
She and Maddoc moved quickly up the slope towards them, churning cinders underfoot, tiny sparks spitting up where they found new air to feed on. Maddoc was quick, she was glad to see, and quiet, and kept his tongue when she did. Useful boy, she thought, trusty chev. She didn't quite believe it, even when she was telling it to herself, but maybe – with practice – maybe.
The man who was waiting for them, a few paces from the caravan, was an old retainer from the Second Court. Nimue had only ever known him as Ewythr – uncle – and she hailed him as such now, smiling wide, stretching eyes wider than felt natural, smiling what she supposed, from beneath her tywyllgoch, must have seemed a red, red smile. She was glad that he had responded to her letter when she had written one (she was grateful that this much seemed simple).
He brooked no argument when he spoke, and gave few greetings: Ewythr said, "into the back with the labourers, then, and we'll reach the Paper City by dusk if the roads stay straight."
Nimue stared at the scoliosis-crooked pathway which snaked across the Second Border and into the depths of the Capital Lands, and decided against disputing this characterisation of their journey. She said instead, "we appreciate your goodwill, Ewythr."
"I wouldn't leave my favourite student stranded," said he, and, again, Nimue did not dispute the generous characterisation. She could remember all of three lessons from the old flint-worker: gifted though she had proven in the arts of the Burning Schools, Nimue was no craftsperson. It was a concern which had not even occurred to her until this moment, as she ran her nail across her ring once more. She eyed Maddoc thoughtfully. No – those were not the hands of a flint-worker. More the pity. Well, Nimue could be stingy; she could pinch and pare, if the days called for it. The Second Lord had instructed her to survive: that, merely?
"I will repay you," she said, "when I come into my fortune in the city."
Ewythr eyed the merchants with which he was travelling, and smiled meaningfully. He did not rat them out; Nimue realised, belatedly, that she had braced her fingers against her flint.
"Yes," he said. "Do that."
He gestured.
"Wagon."
There was a crowd of girls and boys gathered in the bed of the rear-most wagon, from which Nimue averted her eyes and to which Maddoc fixed his, fascinated. Thralls, Nimue saw, and regretted sincerely. The men in the emerald tunics – slavers, she thought, not merchants truly – moved to harness their addaxes again, and she and Maddoc clambered in amongst the dreck, winding their way through the crowd to take an unobtrusive place in an unobtrusive corner, where the light was thinnest.
To her surprise, none of their company were wearing chains: each thrall wore only a single manacle, bound tightly, raising white welts. Nimue could not determine if there was a pattern to whether their left or right wrist was shackled thus: it seemed random enough, and she suspected any differences in material was a matter of practicality rather than symbolism. She pulled her tywyllgoch from around her head, baring her face for the first time to the simple stench of unwashed bodies pressed tightly together, and gave it to Maddoc to hide his hood. He seemed to understand at once, pressing the veil between his head and the wall and drawing it once around him, so that he could feign sleep and hide his bandaged face from the stares of the thralls who surrounded them.
The caravan was rousing into movement; the addaxes pushed their hooves through the soft charcoal soil of the border, and the wheels began to turn, and the wagon lurched into movement. The thralls lurched too: one of them, a fine-featured girl with doe eyes and sweat-tangled hair, proved unable to keep her footing and fell into Nimue, almost helpless, her fingers twitching, her legs straining to find purchase once more. The one beside her pulled her, bodily, back to her feet and stared at Nimue with a hard expression: half-suspicion, half-fear.
Nimue, for her part, looked away and busied herself in pulling the flint ring from her finger and stowing it in her pocket (there was no point in making it too easy on the other Houses, she supposed, and was glad to have thought of it).
There were finer ways to worm through to the Selection, but Nimue was grateful that her friend Elin had suggested this one. These caravans were inspected little, primarily so that the kingsguard might maintain plausible deniability about the slaves that were trafficked into the Paper City – no, she mused, not slaves. Slavery did not exist in the civilised lands. These were maids and stableboys and servers and labourers all, even if they did not know it yet. They would be brought to the Capital, they would be washed and made presentable, and they would be churned through the King's Keep and the First Court in the thin pretence of employment and legitimacy. Ah, but whatever the term used, Nimue knew this much: the Capital would prefer to pretend that they did not exist.
For the time being, then, neither did Nimue or Maddoc.
You are sitting in the back of a wagon and you are already feeling sick, sick to your stomach, sicker than you were last night – though, you suppose, you were not sick at all that night, no sicker than your brother, far from it. There is a girl sitting beside you that you are meant to remember, through the years that separate you, and you smile when she smiles.
She wears a veil – a tywyllgoch, the red veil of the Second Court – so that her smile is dulled, as when a cloud comes in front of a moon and blunts its light. Your sword is at your hip, and it gleams like its own grin. She has hidden her rings. You should hide your sword, but what is a chevalier without his sword? You leave it where it is. This much you allow: you pull your sleeves over your flint cuffs, and you ignore that it feels more of a pretence than it ought.
You never did tell a lie, which should feel like a solace, like a sacrifice. It would, if the mistruths didn't crowd the tongue and the teeth, prepared for when the moment comes. Jump, just like that, ready for the word – a self-immolation to match the plain and selfish kind that beads at your fingers, warm and waiting.
Beside you, the scion of the Second House curls over herself, wrapping her arms about her knees, putting her head on her arms.
She is watching you, and pretending that she is not.