Stands a Shadow (21 page)

‘Olson Avenue,’ he told the bearer quickly, and just before he climbed into the seat he made the mistake of glancing back at Koolas just once.

‘Fool’s balls,’ Koolas exclaimed as he caught the look in Bahn’s eyes. ‘Is it that bad?’ He sounded appalled, and for a moment Bahn was reminded that Koolas was more than a simple chatt
ē
ro after a story, that he was Khosian too, born and raised in the city, with his own friends and family to worry over.

Bahn sagged within his armour. ‘One moment,’ he said to the rickshaw bearer, and stepped closer to Koolas.

‘It’s an invasion, that’s all we know right now.’

‘How many? Which army?’

‘Reports indicate it’s the Sixth Army from Lagos, with auxiliaries from Q’os.’

The man drew himself straighter. ‘How many?’ he insisted.

Bahn turned as though to walk away, but paused. ‘All I can say is that we’re calling up every man we can. We’re emptying the jails and stockades of veterans. Even the Eyes.’

‘What? Those murderers and lunatics?’

‘Any that can still carry a shield, aye.’

‘And the council, what do they make of it? I just saw a delegation go inside the Ministry.’

‘Does it matter? We’ve been invaded. It’s out of their hands now.’

Koolas rubbed his face ruefully. ‘Aye. And I’m sure Creed made that more than clear to them. There’s a man with a chip on his shoulder if ever I saw one.’

Bahn scowled, and left before the chatt
ē
ro could ask anything more of him. He climbed into the rickshaw, and nodded to Koolas as the bearer pulled him past.

He offered the bearer an extra five coppers to make a faster pace of it, and sat back and tried to calm himself as the rickshaw wove between the bustle and traffic of the streets.

In the far north of the city, in a small avenue lined with cherry trees turned bronze by autumn, Bahn climbed down with a thanks to the bearer and stepped into the house that had been his family home for seven years now. The rooms were cool inside, everything still. A smell of incense still hung in the air from their small shrine to Miri, the Great Disciple who had brought the Dao and the Great Fool’s teachings to the Midèr
ē
s.

His son Juno would be at the schoolhouse today. Upstairs, he heard his infant daughter begin to cry.

Bahn found Marlee in the backyard, turning the soil in their small vegetable patch as though oblivious to the distant horns, yet her movements were quick and frustrated.

‘Hey,’ he said to his wife as he slid his arms around her waist from behind. Marlee straightened against him, her body tense. ‘Can’t you hear her?’ he asked.

‘Of course I can hear her. She’s teething again.’

‘Need anything?’

‘No, we still have some mother’s oil left. I daren’t give her any more, though.’ Marlee turned around and looked up at him. Her smile faltered. ‘What is it, Bahn? Why the alarms?’

He heard the sigh escape his lips. ‘I haven’t long. I should be at the stadium right now helping with the preparations.’

‘Preparations?’

He squeezed her arm and could not speak.

‘Oh, Bahn,’ she said, and her eyes shone moist. ‘They’ve landed here?’

He nodded stiffly.

Ariale wailed even louder from inside the house. Neither of them could find any words to say. Marlee looked to her feet and took a deep breath of air, then looked up again. ‘I’ll go and settle her,’ she said quickly. ‘Then you can tell me how bad it really is.’

He reached out to stop his wife.

‘I’ll go,’ he said with a smile of sadness, and left to settle his daughter.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Enlistment

She had been a child – perhaps four years of age – when her mother had died giving birth to her youngest sister, Annalese. So young in fact that she could hardly recall the experience now, whether it had been day or night, summer of winter, quick or slow; nor even who had been there, and who had not.

Only the few moments before the end did Curl truly remember, and those moments were so fresh in her still that to recall them brought a flush of emotion from her beating heart.

Her mother, pale as moonlight, wasted and bloody on the birthing bed with her gaze fixed distantly on the ceiling above. The dark curls of her hair plastered around the sheen of her complexion. Her chest barely rising as she fought to breath, a faint rhythm growing fainter. Her nipples, dark and hard on stretch-marked breasts made plump with milk, the wooden charm hanging between them, a dolphin, shaped from unseasoned jupe. The newborn, screeching in the room beyond the open doorway.

In the end, her mother had seemed hardly aware at all as Curl gripped her hand and shed her tears over her prone, draining body. Just once their eyes had locked. For a moment, her mother had looked upon her daughter with a blink of recognition. She had gripped Curl’s small hand until it burned with pain, and had glared at her as though trying to impart something of meaning in her last moments on this world.

Make the most of this life, my daughter
, her eyes had seemed to say to Curl in the years to come.
Follow no path but your own
!

And then she had passed into sleep, and into death, and into the ground.

The years after that were dim too in Curl’s memory, as though some shroud of forgetfulness had covered her world. Only glimpses remained.

Her father, silent and spiteful, no longer the man he once had been, losing himself in his work as the local physician. A house without joy or happiness or laughter. Foot-creaks on floorboards; everyone treading lightly. And beyond the confines of their family grief, soldiers passing through the village; priests of Mann shouting sermons, decrying the old faith; rumours of war and rebellion like thunder in the distance.

At thirteen, her aunt and younger sisters celebrated Curl’s coming of age.

It was her aunt, whispery and wise and subtly beautiful, who had explained to Curl the budding of the moon’s cycles within her body, who had taught them all how they would some day become women. On that night of celebration, the woman had made a gift to Curl of a simple lump of wood. It was a knot from a fallen willow, she had explained.

‘Carve it tonight,’ she said, ‘when you are alone. Finish it before you sleep.’

‘What will I carve?’ Curl had asked in wonder.

‘Whatever you like, sister’s-daughter. Whatever brings warmth to your heart.’

When the others went up to bed, she sat on the deep rug in front of the hearthfire, a little drunk on the apple cider she had been allowed to sample for the first time, and with her father’s smallest carving knife and polishing stone, began to carve the piece of wood in whatever way seemed most appropriate. Hours passed fleeting; the fire dwindled until it was only ashes glimmering with the memory of heat.

She awoke where she had fallen asleep before the hearth. It was still night. Her aunt was lifting her into her arms. The woman had wrapped a blanket about her and was carrying her up to bed. Curl’s two sisters slept soundly in the other bunk.

‘What have you carved?’ her aunt whispered as she placed Curl beneath the blankets. Curl opened her hand to show her.

In her palm lay a simple figurine the size of her thumb, a woman of plump, fulsome curves. There were few discernable details in the carving, merely the vague contours of shape. The breasts were big. The belly swollen.

Her aunt smiled. Kissed Curl’s forehead.

‘Your mother would have liked that,’ she told her. ‘It’s a fine ally indeed. Now make sure you wear it always, and may it look out for you when you most have need of aid.’

Curl slept, knowing she would remember this day for the rest of her years.

Later, during the coldest nights of deep winter, her father began to visit Curl while her younger sisters feigned sleep across the room.

And so their world changed once more.

For Curl it was a winter of bitter dreams and darkness, marking more loss in their lives, not least of all a father.

In the spring of the following year, they found him hanging by the neck from the rafters of the smokehouse. They stood there, all three of them, gazing up at his gently spinning body clad in his old and handsome wedding garments, his shoes freshly polished, his hair neatly combed across his balding head.

Against his chest hung the wooden dolphin charm once carved and worn by their mother.

The morning the soldiers came, Curl was out gathering sixbell in the fields that overlooked the town of Hart, where her aunt had taken them to live following their father’s demise.

She was hoping to ward off the chance of pregnancy with the little blue herb, for she was secretly seeing a man in the town by then, a married wagoneer more than twice her age. That morning she wandered far, ranging over the hills in her searching, spending quiet hours slowly filling her pocket.

It was only upon her return that she noticed the smoke filling the sky ahead like storm clouds. Hitching up her skirts, she hurried over the crest of the last hill and gasped in incomprehension at what lay before her.

The town was on fire. White specks of soldiers surrounded it, and they were moving inwards.

The screams of its people fluttered like bird cries on the wind.

Curl thought of her aunt and her sisters down there. She thought of their faces as the soldiers and flames approached them. She doubled over in anguish and thought she would be sick.

Curl hid all day in the grasses, listening to the sounds of the town’s folk dying even as she pressed her hands to her ears. At times the shame of her guilt became too much, and she would try to rise as though to go and help them. But each time she froze, unable to move any further. She wept until she could weep no more, and then she grew numb, and silent.

The soldiers left in the fading light, marching out with their wagons loaded high with booty. Behind them, the town was a smoking desolation.

Curl waited another hour before she could bring herself to venture down to the ruins.

Blinded with tears, choking with grief, she was unable to find her family amongst the smouldering pile that had once been their house.

She lived a feral existence after that, wandering aimlessly amongst the pyres and ruins of her homeland. Her mind was a little gone by then. Her sense of time stretched into an eternal moment.

One day, Curl was walking along a beach when she sighted the man ahead of her, large and thickly bearded. She retained enough sense to fling herself flat to the ground.

Too late, though, as it happened. The man came to where she lay with her face pressed against the rough grasses of the dunes.

‘It’s all right,’ he said to her gently. ‘I won’t harm you, girl.’

She looked up into a tired and weather-beaten old face. His voice sounded strange, though it was only that she hadn’t heard another’s voice for so long.

‘Come with me,’ the man said, holding out a hand. ‘We must leave now.’

Curl climbed to her feet and turned to make a run for it.

Go with him
.

At once she faltered in her tracks.

‘It’s all right,’ he said again, taking her carefully by the arm. ‘Come now, we need to be gone from here.’

He led her down to a cove and a small beach of shingle. A fishing boat bobbed in the water. Men and women were wading through the waves to climb aboard.

The man led her out into the water. Curl convulsed from the bitter shock of it against her thighs.

‘One more!’ he hollered to someone already on board, and a few heads turned to acknowledge her. She saw men and women with reddened eyes, hair askew, faces sagging. No one spoke as they helped her into the boat. Curl found a space amongst the bundles of goods and sat down and huddled with her knees pulled up to her chest.

‘Is that everyone?’ asked the man.

‘Aye, skipper,’ replied another. ‘Now let’s bloody well get away from here while we still can.’

Two men pulled on oars, slowly dragging the boat out through the waves of the cove into the breakers beyond. The sail was unfurled, snapping as it caught the offshore wind. After a time they were shooting across the choppy water, with all eyes turned to the distant island behind.

‘That fool Lucian and his rebels,’ spat a small bald man, glancing about him with a set of black eyes. ‘He brought it down on all of us, and damn his soul for it.
Damn your soul, I say!
’ he bellowed, shaking his fist at the land.

The rest of the group sat in silence. They continued to gaze upon their homeland as it faded into the distance.

The old skipper shouted a command. At the rudder, a young lad turned the boat so that the sun wheeled behind them.

The bald man calmed himself by steady degrees, his muttering diminishing until he was silent. He sobbed for a while, the other men looking away in embarrassment. One by one the women began to cry too, though Curl only stared over the side of the boat, still numb.

‘You’re a lucky girl to stumble across us like that,’ said the bald man, his eyes dry now as he shifted across to sit beside her. Curl inched away from his touch. ‘Perhaps your ally there was looking out for you, hey?’ And he chuckled drily to himself in mockery.