Songs of the Earth (47 page)

And that was that. Malthus had written no more. Despair reverberated through every word; the very book trembled with it. Ansel heard the long-dead Preceptor’s voice in his mind, felt his anguish, and wanted to cry out to him to finish his account, to finally set down the truth of what happened on that day. Even if no eyes but his ever read it, someone would have seen it and acknowledged it for what it was instead of hiding it away in shame like an out-of-wedlock child.

He let the book close and smoothed his hands over it. Secrets and lies underpinned the fabric of his beloved Order like the stones and mortar beneath the Motherhouse. It was past time they were brought into the light. The Suvaeon should wear their scars proudly, as badges of honour, however disfiguring they might be. They showed that it was not the battles he had won that shaped a man’s character, but the battles lost. That was what made him a man, or broke him on the wheel of bitter experience. Scars were nothing of which to be ashamed.

The fire had burned low. Ansel reached into the scuttle and tossed a block of peat into the hearth. Too late he realised he should have used the tongs; ash and sparks belched up, sending a gust of fragrant smoke into the room. He leaned back out of the way, but it was too late. His next breath brought a dreadful clutching at his chest as the cough sank its talons into his lungs again. He fought it as best he could, holding his breath whilst he prayed for the urge to pass, but it did not and the cough burst out of his mouth in a spray of blood and spittle. Spasm after spasm shook him, and scarlet drops bloomed on his white robe even as black specks swarmed into his vision.

If he could just reach the bell at the far side of the hearth! He managed one step, clutched dizzily at the mantel, fell. Relentless pain clutched his chest in its fist. Drawing breath such a struggle now. Much better to lie still, the hearthstone cool under his over-heated cheek. The frantic fluttering under his ribs would stop
eventually, if he was patient. Darkness now, closing in, so soothing after so long spent struggling to read that damned book. Time to sleep …

Ah well. All things end.

Gair took the stairs to his room at a trot. He’d flown straight from Aysha’s apartment to the dormitory court, despite the blustery winds, but too many people were moving along the galleries for him to be comfortable making the shape-shift back into human form, so he’d had to double back into the kitchen garden instead. From there he’d jogged through the refectory, filching an apple on the way, and battled the tide of hungry students back into the dormitory wing. One or two people paused to stare as he passed; he hoped they hadn’t seen him for long enough to notice that his hair was uncombed and his chin rough.

He hadn’t woken until the bell rang for Prime. His head was woolly from too little sleep; it had taken the realisation that he was going to be very late for a tutorial with Master Brendan to galvanise him out of Aysha’s bed. She had stretched languidly, her body making tantalising shapes under the sheet whilst he dressed, and offered to send a note excusing him from attending as he was urgently required elsewhere. He didn’t have to ask where that elsewhere would be. It had been very tempting. Her goodbye kiss had damn near broken his resolve.

He had thought the first heady days couldn’t possibly last, but they had. It had been almost a month now, and if anything he was
further under Aysha’s spell than ever. She called to him in the evenings, her voice singing through his mind, and he went to her willingly, losing himself in her for hours at a time, most often for the night. He had taken to sitting at her desk to write his essays, just to share the same room with her, whilst she watched him from the couch like a cat. Too often the weight of her gaze was enough to distract him and then paper and ink would be pushed aside in favour of another kind of self-expression.

Somehow, he had managed to keep his word to Master Barin, though sometimes, like today, it had been a close-run thing. The apple would have to do for his breakfast if he was to have any chance of changing his shirt and still making Brendan’s class on time. Back in his room he washed as fast as he could, not even bothering to warm the water in the pitcher. Shivering, he opened his closet and rooted about for a clean shirt with one hand whilst towelling himself off with the other.

Someone rapped briskly on the door. ‘Anybody home?’ Darin’s face appeared round the door frame. He was fully recovered now, though dark shadows still pooled round his eyes. Saaron said they would fade in time, but until they did they gave Darin a haunted appearance completely at odds with his sunny character.

He eyed the evidence of hasty ablutions. ‘I didn’t see you at breakfast.’

Gair pulled the half-eaten apple from his mouth. ‘Overslept,’ he said, then stuffed the fruit back. He snatched a shirt from the closet and tugged it over his head.

‘But I was here an hour ago and your bed was made up.’

A word popped into Gair’s mind. He had no idea what it meant, but he had heard Aysha use it more than once and it sounded perfect for a situation like this.

Darin’s eyes grew rounder. ‘You sly dog,’ he breathed. ‘So it’s true.’

‘So what’s true?’

‘The Knight has a lady.’

‘What?’

‘You. You’ve got a girl!’

‘Where did you get that idea from?’

‘Gair, if you actually spent any time in the dormitory these days you’d have heard the gossip for yourself.’

Gair tucked in his shirt and refastened his belt. He didn’t really have time for this, but he might as well know, if only to learn where his careful precautions had failed him. He kept his voice light. ‘What gossip?’

‘Unbelievable.’ Darin shook his head, then started counting off on his fingers. ‘Before the supper bell’s stopped ringing you’re gone and no one knows where. You’re late for chess two times out of three, and I’ve given up even looking for you on free days because you’re never around. Without you to help me my history grades have slipped so far down since Eventide that they’re practically in the cellar. Now this morning’s evidence that you’re laying your head somewhere other than on your pillow and the conclusion is obvious. You, my friend, have got a girl.’

Well, the Belisthan had him there. He thought he’d been so discreet, too. Goddess, it would be so much easier if they could be open about it, but they’d so thoroughly broken one of Chapterhouse’s few rules that he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t be asked to leave on the very next ship. Sighing, he unfastened the
zirin
and reached for his comb.

‘I’m right, aren’t I? So who is she?’

‘Darin, I haven’t really got time for this.’

‘Is it somebody I know? Who? Is it Sarra, the Syfrian girl with the long braids? I saw the way you looked at her.’

‘I did no such thing,’ said Gair, dragging his comb through his hair. ‘As I recall, it was you who swore me to secrecy about wanting to get tangled up in those braids.’

‘Come on, Gair, tell me! Saints, you never tell me anything!’

‘Because it’s none of your business. Can’t a man have a little privacy?’

‘Did she give you that fancy clip for Eventide?’

He looked down at the
zirin
in his hand, turning it to read the inscription. She had told him what it said eventually, in Gimraeli. He was still no nearer a translation.

‘For my naming-day.’

‘So there
is
a girl, and she’s got money. Someone has their boots well under the bed there. Is she in one of your classes?’

Gair tossed his comb onto the washstand and fastened his hair back. The horsetail reached down past his shoulder-blades now, despite the trim, and the silver
zirin
kept it in better check than the cord had ever done.

‘Darin, Brendan will have my hide. Come on, or we’ll both be late.’

Scooping up his jerkin from the bed he headed for the door. Darin darted past him and braced himself across the door frame.

‘I’m not moving until you tell me.’

‘You’ll have a long wait, then.’ Gair jabbed his fingers into his friend’s midriff and side-stepped him as he doubled over.

As soon as he had caught his breath, Darin ran down the corridor after him. ‘Tell me!’

‘No.’

‘Tell me!’

‘No!’

‘At least tell me how good the ride is?’

Gair stopped dead. ‘I don’t believe you just said that.’

‘
Please?
Nothing below the waist, remember?’

‘Your mind is a sewer.’

‘So I’ve been told.’ The Belisthan’s grin was unabashed. ‘I take it that’s another no, then?’

‘It’s a no.’

‘Spoilsport.’

For the first time in twenty years, snow fell over Penglas. It came softly out of the north as evening fell, drawing veils of white over the land that thickened into the night, and by morning blanketed the entire island to a depth of two or three inches.

‘But it
never
snows here,’ Darin complained, huddling into his cloak in the bell-tower. ‘It’s almost like being back at home.’

‘I’ve missed the snow,’ Gair said. ‘In Leah, we’d say this wasn’t much more than a hard frost.’

He focused the spyglass on the ship beating across the mouth of Penbirgha Sound. She was as sleek as a fisher-bird, with raked masts and strangely rigged triangular sails, but she wore the scars of heavy weather. Several pieces of new rigging were not yet tarred down, one sail was split and another was so creamy-pale it had to be fresh from the locker. Still, the sailors handled her neatly, bringing her about and reducing sail so that she slipped easily between the headlands.

‘Looks like you were right. She’s a sea-elf chaser, and coming in fast.’ He closed the glass and handed it back to Darin.

‘I told you it was.’ The Belisthan peered towards the approaching vessel. ‘Caught in that storm last week, by the look of her. Masthead pennant’s little better than a rag.’

‘Someone must be in a hurry. It’s not been the weather for sailing lately.’

‘Sea-elves are the best deep-water sailors in the world. If I was going to trust anyone to see me through a storm, it would be them. Look, they’re lowering a boat.’

Gair leaned out over the balustrade. The chaser had barely slowed and already a dartlike launch was speeding across the sound towards Penglas. Apart from the oarsmen there was only one passenger aboard, though he could make out little more than a shape. As he watched, the ship’s anchor plunged into the sea with a roar of chains, audible even up there on the tower, and the launch was finally obscured by the cliffs.

Darin took the glass from his eye and slid it closed, bouncing it
on his other hand. ‘I wonder who’s coming ashore. Can you fly down there and see who it is?’

Gair reached for the Song of a gull. The melody was an untidy, jinking thing, threaded through with shimmering plaintive notes that spoke of long wings and wide skies. After the effortless power of a fire-eagle, the gull shape felt strange, but the narrower wings were tremendously manoeuvrable; gulls nested on cliff-ledges and hunted amongst the troughs of the waves, a world apart from the cathedrals of ice and stone that were the eagle’s world. In a few moments he had the trick of it and barrelled downwind over the town.

At the head of the jetty a familiar speck of blue waited for the launch to come in. Gair glided closer until he could make out Alderan’s face and saw him extend a friendly hand to the man with the bundle on his shoulder who climbed the steps from the water’s edge. They exchanged a few words, then began to walk towards the town.