Blood Storm: The Second Book of Lharmell Read online

  ‘Sit.’

  ‘Please,’ I corrected. ‘What? Did I offend you? Did I break some rule of propriety?’

  He paced before me, hand to his mouth. The minutes stretched between us.

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ he said at last.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘You want to know everything. I will tell you everything.’

  I felt a flash of triumph.

  He knelt before me in the sand and gripped my forearms. ‘I’ve been lying to you.’ His voice remained flat.

  I searched his face in the wan starlight; explored the thread between us. I shook my head. ‘No. That is a lie. You said it yourself: you can’t lie to a harming.’

  ‘I can,’ he averred. ‘I can hide things from you. There is such a thing as a lie by omission. I am not proud of what I have done – that is certainly the truth – but it is my knowledge, and my price to pay. But I will tell you now because of the way you feel about me. I see myself reflected in your eyes and it is not the man I really am. Since we were lost at sea, I’ve felt you . . .’ He released my arms. ‘You shall change your mind soon enough. But I do not want your forgiveness, or your pity, though you might think to extend it. I will tell you all because I do not wish to lead you further down this path we’re on. You will not thank me for revealing the truth. In fact, you may hate me from this night on. So be it.’

  ‘You can tell me anything. It won’t change what I feel,’ I said. ‘I don’t care about your past. I can see you’re a good person. Don’t you think I can see that?’

  ‘You can’t see it. I haven’t let you.’

  ‘I know you, Rodden,’ I insisted. ‘I know everything about you, just as you know everything about me – everything that matters. I might not know the details, but I’m not blind. When I look at you I can see your goodness.’ I reached up to touch his cheek.

  He slapped my hand away. ‘You know nothing,’ he growled. He pulled himself from my grasp and turned away, sitting with his back to me on the slope of the dune.

  ‘Once,’ he said, in a voice as cold as Amentine ice, ‘I killed everyone I loved.’

  I waited in the blackness of the night. Shook my head though he couldn’t see me. But even as I denied it, I felt the truthfulness of his words as he finally, deliberately, relaxed the tight hold he kept on himself. Then I didn’t just feel the truth, I was struck by it. Wave after wave of pure emotion like a ship battered in a storm. Grief and fear and a great pounding guilt. I clutched my head, reeling from the sensations.

  ‘You see?’ he whispered, his voice faint to my ears as my head throbbed to the beat of his remorse.

  ‘My family was poor, like most others in Pol. We eked out a living doing whatever was necessary. My mother wove cloth from the few goats we kept; my sisters helped her as soon as they were tall enough to hold a spindle. My brother, older than me by eight years, hired on with mercenaries to the south, but was killed before the coin he’d been promised could be sent home.

  ‘My father was a clever man, and saw the virtues of an education that he himself had lacked. Though my mother denied the privilege to her daughters, who would never leave to be killed in someone else’s war, she feared the fate of my elder brother might befall me, and consented to my education.

  ‘The money my father made crushing sand and metals to make dye for rich Brivorans paid for books and a tutor. I was sent to a man called Levin Servilock, who ran a school for boys on the far side of the city. Six days a week, from the time I was seven years old, I attended what was known as the Clan. The lessons began innocently enough: geography, mathematics, the sciences, languages. I was taught not only the intricacies of my native tongue but other local dialects, such as Jarbin, and the languages of other continents. I became fluent in Brivoran. Then came archery and tracking. Swordplay. Knife skills. We were taught to fight and to hunt. This made little sense at the time. We were to be tradespeople and caravan masters, not warriors, after all.

  ‘I began to crave the sights of the strange lands whose languages I learned. I hungered for escape from Pol and the bland fate that awaited me. Servilock told me that I would leave Pol one day as an important man, not just as a trader. That I was destined for greatness. He flattered me constantly, praising my intellect and insight. It was true that I had a knack for learning that excelled that of my peers, that I was a proficient fighter. Under Servilock’s misguided tutelage I grew proud. He made me resent the humbleness of my existence and I despised my family for the menial way they earned a living. I ordered my mother and sisters around. I sneered at my father. My family endured much of my insolence, but when I was fourteen my father decided that I’d had enough book learning, and that it was time I was apprenticed to a trade. Servilock came to see him, reluctant to lose his star pupil, as I was reluctant to lose my place in his academy. But my father was adamant: my education was over.

  ‘I was apprenticed to the glassblower and was mad as a snake for many months. Servilock disappeared from my life. For the first time I worked with my hands and not my mind. I reviled the tasks I was given by my new instructor; the dirt and ashes and burns that accompanied my daily existence.

  ‘I had always been a thin boy, taller than most but as skinny as a drain-cat. Under the pressures of my new occupation I grew strong and tanned. I also learned humility under the glassblower, and to take pride in something, rather than simply be proud. I learned the wonders of glass. I also discovered that girls weren’t necessarily as annoying as life with my sisters had led me to believe.

  ‘When I was sixteen I met Ilona. She came to buy a glass trinket for her mother one afternoon when I was alone in the workshop, labouring over the bellows. It was sweaty work and I was accustomed to doing it shirtless. She blushed when she saw me, but I bade her stay and jested with her. She laughed, and I found myself suddenly bewitched. She found excuses to come to the glassblower’s again and again, and lingered over the pieces, her hands on the vases but her eyes on me. Soon I found I was going to her. I discovered why she had the money for glass: she was the daughter of what passes for a rich man in our city. This bothered me not in the least, for I was still a proud boy and on the inside I felt as good as any king. So I courted her in the secrecy she insisted upon until she would be old enough to marry.

  ‘It was about this time that Servilock came back into my life. He was snide about my work and stirred up all the old resentment in me. I was too important for this menial work, he told me; my destiny was more illustrious than I could imagine. I was tempted to defy my family and return to my education, but told him that I was happy with the way things were. That I was going to be married and stay in Pol. We argued bitterly, and parted in anger. I thought that would be the end of it, but his words were like poison. They niggled at me, day and night. I started to question why I had to keep my courtship of Ilona secret from her family. Was I not good enough for her? When my family discovered whom I meant to marry they howled in protest. Such a girl would not be happy as a crafter’s wife, they scoffed. She would drive me mad with her extravagance and dissatisfaction. They could not have chosen a more expedient manner with which to drive me back to Servilock. But they weren’t to know. They were, with the wisdom that comes with hindsight, probably right.

  ‘I quarrelled then with Ilona, demanding to know why we must keep our love secret, and at the height of my fury and confusion, when Servilock had seen to it that I had no one to turn to but him, he dosed me with Lharmellin blood. He was a harming, though I never heard the word until after I’d joined their ranks. The Clan was not a school, but an enclave; a cover for infecting students Servilock had groomed and who would then become infectors themselves and infiltrate every corner of the world. Hence the languages and geography that were taught, the hunting and fighting skills. While learning mathematics and the sciences wasn’t directly helpful to a harming, I suspect that Servilock, as a scholar, couldn’t help bu
t impart a well-rounded education to his pupils.

  ‘It is a blessing that you were infected as an infant, if such a thing can ever be called a blessing. The change is painful and protracted for the fully grown, and the ingestion of blood is required immediately to ease some of it. But for days I lay on a pallet in a secret part of the school, Servilock in almost constant attendance. He whispered to me throughout my delirium of my greatness, my destiny, the betrayal of my loved ones. He told me they were demons who would forever haunt my days and nights unless I liberated the evil from their bodies. I refused to believe him at first – my mother, a demon? My dearest Ilona? – but wracked with pain, tormented by hunger, I began to accept it as the truth. He should have given me blood to ease my passage. But he wanted me hungry. He wanted me angry. And inside me a great rage gathered, as a storm gathers over the seas. Servilock asked me if I wanted greatness, and I said that I did. He told me that my family and Ilona would smother my destiny, and I howled in agreement. I lost all sense of time, of day and night. In the brief moments he wasn’t with me I paced the prison that was my room – for he locked me in, and my captivity, too, I blamed on them.

  ‘Finally, when I was more wild, starving animal than human, Servilock let me out. And they were there: my mother, father, sisters and Ilona. I think they were in chains. Possibly it was rope. They were already bloodied and mutilated by cuts on their arms and faces. I smelled the blood. Servilock put a knife in my hand, and the storm was unleashed.’

  In the silence that followed I realised I was shaking. I was soaked with sweat that was turning icy. My fingernails cut into my flesh. My teeth rattled like stones in a drum.

  Rodden sat stock still, his breath the only sound audible over the noise of my own shivering. Minutes dragged by. Then, without turning, he stood and was gone.

  It wasn’t until much later that I realised he’d been waiting for me to speak.

  TEN

  Sleep was beyond me that night. The camp was quiet when I returned. Leap and Griffin sat by my wagon, uneasy sentinels. I retrieved my wrap and paced the sand. My hands clenched and unclenched at my sides. I needed to think. I needed to shoot something.

  My new bow and arrows had been placed at the foot of the pallet. I took them from among my sleeping companions, buckled on my gauntlet and called to Griffin with my mind. She fluttered to my wrist.

  The lid of an empty water barrel made an excellent target once I’d dragged it and the barrel a short distance into the desert. I propped the lid up in the sand. My eyes had adjusted to the darkness hours earlier and my makeshift target was easily visible at forty paces. Leap curled up on the sand beside me, eyes half-closed, and Griffin perched on the empty barrel next to me.

  I notched an arrow, drew, and fired. The arrow bit into the wood with a muted thunk.

  I waited, wondering if I’d woken anyone in the camp, but there was only silence. I drew again, and fired.

  Thunk.

  The bow became an extension of my arm and I felt the tension in my body begin to ease. Rodden had chosen well.

  With Leap and Griffin beside me and the coldness of the night, I could almost imagine I was back in Amentia. Unhurried, I shot arrow after arrow, emptying my quiver into the barrel lid, then collecting them and beginning all over again.

  Too soon the sky lightened in the east. I continued to shoot as the Jarbin began to stir. My eyes were focused on the target before me, but I kept a small part of my mind tuned to Rodden, that I might know the minute he woke.

  There. In my mind’s eye I saw him: knife in his hand, he made his way to the cages. Selected a bird. With a short, sharp twist the chicken’s neck was broken and then severed, the body upended over a flask.

  Thunk.

  I felt him approach my wagon with the morning’s repast. He rubbed a hand over the morning stubble on his face. He wore the same clothes he’d had on the previous evening, the shirt rumpled now and his hair dishevelled.

  I sighted him down an arrow, drew back on the bowstring and shot it at his feet. He jumped as the arrow sprouted in the sand near his right boot. I hailed him with another arrow, notched it, and turned back to my board.

  Thunk.

  He stopped beside me and handed me the arrow.

  I took it. ‘Thank you.’ My voice was crisp. ‘Tell me,’ I said, examining the tip. Blunt already. ‘What happened to the Jessamine?’

  Rodden looked at me in surprise.

  ‘You asked at port, didn’t you?’ I prompted.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I did, now you mention it. She never made it to Pol.’

  I nodded. ‘I thought as much.’

  I notched and fired.

  Thunk.

  I turned the bow in my hands, choosing my words carefully. He wanted no love from me. No pity. But I had another gift for him. ‘What you told me. I’ve been up all night thinking about it.’

  He waited for me to go on.

  ‘Would you have killed Servilock, had you found him in Pol?’

  He never hesitated. ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you’d told me I would have helped you. I’ll happily kill him myself. I can think of nothing I’d like more.’ I wanted to kill Servilock so badly I could taste it. I burned for revenge on the man who’d caused Rodden so much pain. I would keep burning until everything else inside me was reduced to ashes. There would be no love left. I wasn’t allowed to give it, so I would let it burn.

  In my mind I saw the queen I would one day become: a husk; a living effigy to duty, honour, obedience. Loveless, but free of pain, loss. Free of fear.

  Thunk.

  ‘Thank you for reminding me why we’re here,’ I said.

  Rodden’s hand reached to bridge the distance between us, and then dropped to his side. He looked tired and unhappy.

  I indicated the flask in his hand. ‘May I?’

  He passed it to me and leaned on the barrel next to Griffin, his movements stiff and tired. My bird’s beak was sunk into her chest, her eyes closed. She muttered in her sleep.

  I gulped the blood, and it erased the effects of my sleepless night. There. Everything was smoothed over. It was almost as if he had never told me the truth about his past. Almost as if I’d never let him see my love for him. Almost.

  ‘Here,’ I said, passing the remainder back. ‘You look like you need it.’

  He cocked an eyebrow at me. ‘No doubt.’ He took the flask and his fingers brushed mine.

  Pain sprang up afresh, like kerosene on a bonfire. There was much in me yet to burn. I stalked to the target and yanked out the arrows.

  The Jarbin were awake and stirring. It would not take long to break camp. I filled my quiver with the arrows.

  ‘How does it shoot?’ Rodden asked, indicating the bow.

  ‘Well enough. But I’ll let you know for sure once I’ve tested it on a harming.’

  I saw the wrangler hitching horses to the wagons. I wondered what the Jarbin thought about our performance the previous evening, the fact that we’d not returned. Had they seen the thunderous look on Rodden’s face as he’d pulled me from the circle, or two lovers disappearing into the desert? Either way, I didn’t want to ride alone today. The Jarbin might talk even more if they thought we’d had a fight. My pride had taken enough of a beating, and if even one of the Jarbin girls laughed up her sleeve at me I would be tempted to test my bow on her.

  ‘Ride with me?’ I asked.

  He nodded and rose from the barrel. ‘I’ll saddle our mounts.’ Hesitating, he said, ‘That wasn’t the way I wanted things to turn out on your birthday. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Actually, it was perfect.’ I pushed past him. I’d been given a weapon and the best reason in the world to use it. It had been foolish of me to hope for more.

  When I had washed with a wet rag and changed into my travelling clothes I felt lik
e a new person. I boosted myself into the saddle when Rodden handed me the reins. Having a firm purpose refreshed me. Kill Servilock and defeat the Lharmellins. Nothing mattered beyond that. Nothing after that, a voice whispered, would hold any pleasure for me.

  We were the last riders to mount, and let our horses set their own pace as they followed the train out of camp.

  ‘What happened after?’

  ‘After what?’ Rodden asked. ‘Oh. I was very ill. Glutted. Servilock left me with . . . the bodies.’ He took a deep breath, and then went on briskly. ‘I was eaten up by remorse. Servilock hadn’t expected that. I didn’t turn out like other harmings, just as you didn’t. On the eve of our departure to Lharmell for the Turning, I ran away. I went to the port and bought passage on the first ship I saw. It was then that I discovered my seasickness and I nearly died making the crossing.’

  ‘You seem to be making a habit of it.’

  ‘Quite. We docked at Jefsgord and I was turfed from the ship. I had nowhere to go, no money. But I didn’t need it. I had all the blood I needed from the city’s rats. When I found harmings I killed them. It was so easy. They never thought to fear one of their own.’ He took a deep breath. ‘But I was careless about it. Soon I was arrested for murder by the king’s guard and brought before Captain Helmsrid. He saw immediately that I was a harming myself and was fascinated to know why I had been killing my own. His own guards could never seem to get close enough to the scourge that riddled his city. Not long after that my arrest papers went missing and I found myself in paid employment for the King of Pergamia. Chief harming hunter. I refused to join the guard – life in the barracks as a harming would have been intolerable – but Helmsrid didn’t mind in the least when he saw the zeal with which I led squads of his troops on extermination forays.’