Reaching the door, she was startled by a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see the horse master, his eyes still red and streaked tears on his lined cheeks. ‘Master Venth, what do you wish?’
‘Your pardon, hostage. But when the captain took from me the reins of his mount, he informed me that you were intent on watching from atop the tower.’
She nodded.
‘He asked that I escort you there, hostage. And, if you so desire, that I keep you company.’
‘Is it dangerous to be up there, horse master?’
His eyes shied away. ‘Not from anyone outside the walls, hostage.’
‘Then at last Captain Ivis is convinced. They are still here, aren’t they?’
‘Food’s gone missing, hostage. Corporal Yalad shared your conviction and he has been diligent, and like you he believes that they hide in secret passages.’
‘Then, Venth, I will welcome your company.’
‘Permit me to lead the way, then.’
‘Of course.’
* * *
Clearly, Envy reflected, something was wrong. Malice was rotting. They huddled under the floor of the kitchen, sharing between them a loaf of bread Spite had stolen just before dawn. They were all filthy, but the smell coming from little Malice was rank with something much worse than grime and sweat. Each time Malice opened her mouth to take another piece of bread, the stench grew worse.
‘All the house guards trooped out,’ said Spite. ‘I was behind the hearth wall at the crack. Envy, we have the house to ourselves.’
‘We can get to the hostage then. Good.’
‘Not yet. She went out, too. Something is going on. I don’t know what – we heard all the horses. I think they’ve gone to fight somewhere.’
‘War? Could be. Everyone’s closing in on Father. About time.’
‘He’s not here, though,’ said Malice in a dry, cracking voice.
‘Then he’ll come home to ashes,’ said Spite.
‘I don’t want to burn,’ said Malice, each word spitting out crumbs of bread.
‘We can use the tunnel,’ Envy said, but her mind was not on the subject. She kept her gaze averted from Malice. ‘We have other problems right now. Spite, you know what I mean.’
Her sister nodded, wiping at her nose. ‘If they bring dogs inside, like Yalad was saying, we’re in trouble. I know what to do, though, and we should do it now.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Malice asked.
‘Don’t worry about it. You thirsty, Malice? I am. Envy?’
‘Parched.’
‘There’s no one in the kitchen. Some nice sweet summer wine – it’s all I can think about. This bread is like a lump of wax in my belly.’ She lifted one of her hands to study the red scar the surgeon’s cutting tool had made. ‘We won’t heal up all the way until we get more food and drink in us. That’s why we sleep all the time. We’re starving.’
‘I’m not hungry,’ said Malice. ‘I’m never hungry.’
‘Then why do you eat with us?’ Envy asked.
Malice shrugged. ‘It’s something to do.’
‘Maybe it’s the food inside you that’s rotting.’
‘I don’t smell anything.’
‘We do,’ snapped Spite. ‘But some wine should fix that.’
‘All right, I’ll drink some, then.’
They set out, gathering again at the end of the passage beneath the kitchen floor, where it opened out into two further tunnels. The one on the left led under the entranceway and ended up under the stables, in a room shin deep in mud soaked with horse piss, while the one on the right ran the length of the main chamber. At the junction of these passages there was a chute that reached up to behind the larder. There were no handholds and the only means of ascending this shaft was to wedge oneself against the walls, with knees drawn up. It was difficult and left scrapes and bruises, but it was the only way into the kitchen.
Envy went first, since it had turned out that she was the strongest of the three and so could reach down and help the others up. The walls had become greasy with constant use, making the climb still more
treacherous
, but at last she reached the ledge that marked the sliding panel at the back wall of the larder, and slid it open so that she could pull herself up and then into the room. She had to huddle since she was beneath a shelf stocked with jars. Reaching down, she let her right arm dangle. Moments later she felt Spite grasp hold of it and then use it to climb up the chute. Each yank shot pain through Envy’s shoulder. Spite’s harsh breathing drew closer, and then her sister was clambering through the trap. As she squeezed past Envy, she whispered, ‘The oven.’
Envy grunted to acknowledge that she heard, and then reached down once more.
Malice’s hands were cold. Skin and the meat beneath it slipped strangely until Envy could feel every bone, closing like talons around her arm. The stench of her sister rose up and she gagged, fighting to keep the contents of her stomach from rising into her mouth.
She felt Spite take hold of her ankles and begin dragging her out from under the shelf, and this helped Envy pull Malice after her. Moments later, all three rose to their feet in the darkness of the larder. That darkness proved no barrier to vision – one of Father’s gifts, Envy assumed.
Spite crept to the door and pressed her ear against it. She released the latch and pulled the door open.
They walked out into the kitchen.
‘Let’s sit close to the oven to warm up,’ Envy said. ‘Spite, find us a jug.’
Malice accompanied Envy to the oven. The fires beneath it had just been fed, to keep the oven hot until the midday meal needed preparing. Envy suspected that this day would see no such meal; still, the habit had been adhered to and so the heat emanating from the metal door and its brick flanks was fierce and welcoming.
‘I can’t feel it,’ said Malice, sitting down beside her.
‘Do you feel cold?’
Malice shook her head. Strands of hair drifted down to the floor. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
Spite reappeared with a heavy earthenware jug. She came up to them, and a moment before reaching them she took the jug’s handle in both hands and swung it against Malice’s head.
Clay and bone shattered, spilling wine and blood out over Malice’s body and the floor, and both sisters. Where the liquids splashed against the oven door there was savage hissing, and then smoke. Spite dropped the handle. ‘Help me lift her!’
Envy took up a wrist and an ankle.
One side of Malice’s head was flattened, although mostly near the top. Her ear was pushed in, surrounded by torn skin and cracked bones that made a pattern like the petals of a flower around that bloodied ear. The eye on that side stared up at the ceiling, leaking bloody tears.
She
made a moaning sound as she was lifted from the floor, but the other eye looked directly at Envy.
‘Wait!’ snapped Spite, setting Malice’s foot down and reaching for the oven handle. She cursed as she pulled down the door and Envy smelled scorched flesh. ‘That smarts,’ she said, gasping as she retrieved Malice’s right ankle. ‘Turn her round – head first into the oven.’
Envy could not pull her gaze from Malice’s lone, staring eye. ‘She’ll kick.’
‘So what. We can break the legs if we have to.’
Together, with Malice between them, they forced their sister into the oven, and this effort at last swept from Envy that terrible staring eye. The inside of the oven was lined with clay, and loud sizzling sounds accompanied every touch of skin, blood and hair against the rounded sides. Malice struggled, pulling at her arms, but the effort was weak. They got the upper half of their sister’s body into the oven and began pushing the rest in. The legs did not kick. They were limp and heavy, the toes curling upward.
‘No more bread in this one,’ gasped Spite as she folded the leg she held and pushed it past the edge of the door, the knee leaving a patch of skin on the metal rim.
‘They’ll have to smash it into pieces and build another,’ said Envy. She got the leg in on her side as well.
Spite grasped the door’s handle and slammed it home.
‘Feed more wood,’ said Envy, sitting back. ‘I want her crisp. She stank like the Abyss!’
‘I wonder what we did wrong.’
‘Don’t know, but it tells us one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You and me, Spite. We should never try to kill each other. If one of us did, well, I think it’s dead for keeps.’
Spite studied her for a long moment, and then went off to gather an armload of wood. ‘She won’t come back from this one, will she?’
‘No. Of course not.’
‘Because,’ continued Spite, ‘if she did, we’d be in real trouble.’
‘Throw some wood into the oven itself, and that kindling there.’
‘No. I don’t want to open that door again, Envy. In case she jumps out.’
‘All right. It’s a good point. Just fill it up underneath, then. Lots and lots.’
‘That’s what I’m doing! Why not help me instead of just sitting there giving orders like some fucking queen!’
Envy giggled at the swear word and could not help but look round guiltily, if only for an instant. Then she set to collecting more wood.
In the oven, Malice burned.
* * *
Rint remembered his sister as a child, a scrawny thing with scraped knees and smears of dust on her face. It seemed she was always climbing something: trees, crags and hillsides, and she would perch high above the village, eyes scanning the horizons or looking down to watch passers-by. Her moments of fury came when it was time for Rint to find her and bring her home, for a meal, or a bath. She’d spit, scratch and bite like a wild animal, and then, when at last he had pinned her arms against her sides in a tight hug, and lifted her from the ground to stagger his way back to the house, she would moan as if death had come to take her.
He bore stoically the wounds from her thrashing about, as befitted a brother who, while younger, was still bigger, and he was always mindful of the smiles and jests of others in the village when he passed them with his sister in his arms. They had been amused, he thought, even sympathetic. He had refused to think such reactions belonged to derision, contempt or mockery. But every now and then he had caught an expression and he had wondered. Some people took pleasure in the discomfort of others: it made a balance against their own lives.
There was no reason for thinking these thoughts now, as he looked across to his sister, except for the way she was studying the Houseblades forming up below. From her perch on her horse, atop this hill, she was wearing the same expression he had seen many years past. He thought of the daughter growing inside her, and felt a deep pang in his gut. It was said the soul only came to a child in the moments after birth, when the world opened out to wide, blinking eyes, and the lungs first filled with breath and on that breath rode the soul, rushing in to claim what had been made for it. In the time before all of this, with the vessel still trapped inside the mother’s body, the soul hovered near. He imagined it now: rising high above them to look down, with a girl’s closed expression, a strange steadiness in the eyes, and a wall of mystery behind them.
All at once, his love for his sister almost overwhelmed him, and for an instant he felt tempted to steal her away from what was to come. Perhaps the disembodied soul of the child sensed the risk, the terrible danger awaiting them, and was crying out to him, in a voice faint as the wind that reached through him, slipping past his own hurts, his mass of wounds. Then he looked round to study his companions. Ville, silent and hunched – there had been a young man he had longed to give his heart to, but was too frightened of rejection to make his feelings known. That young man had been a potter, possessing such talent with clay that no one questioned his rejection of fighting ways, and were ever pleased at his work. He was dead now, cut down in the village.
Rint’s eyes travelled past Ville and settled briefly on Galak. In the
days
before they had left on their mission, Galak had lost the love of yet another young woman in the village, the last in a pattern of failures. Galak had blamed only himself, as he was wont to do, although Rint could see nothing in the man to warrant such self-recrimination. He was kind and often too generous, careless with coins and his time, prone to forgetting meetings he had arranged with his mate, and hopeless at domestic tasks – but in all these things he had displayed a child-like equanimity and innocence, traits which seemed to infuriate women. As they had ridden out for House Dracons to begin their journey west, Galak had sworn off love for all time. Looking upon him now, Rint wondered if his friend regretted that vow.
He saw Traj, with his red face and belligerent expression, both permanent fixtures. Rint could not recall ever seeing the man smile, but his wife had loved him deeply, and together they had made four children. But now Traj was alone in his life, and no love surrounded him to soften his stony presence, and he sat as one exposed, suffering the weathering of a harsh world.
There were others, and each one he looked upon reminded Rint of his stoic marches through the village, with his sister trapped in his arms. The wounds could not be hidden and so must be worn as a child would wear them, struggling not to cry at the pain, or the shame, determined to show everyone else a strength well disguising its own fragility.