Signs of the old dwellers began to appear-perhaps they were Shake remnants, perhaps they belonged to a people now forgotten. She saw the slumping humps of round huts covered in wax-leaved vines. She saw on the massive trunks of the most ancient trees crumbled visages, carved by hands long since rotted to nothing. The wooden faces were smeared in black-slime, moss and lumps of sickly fungi. She halted her mount beside one such creation and stared at it through the rain for a long time. She could think of no finer symbol of impermanence. The blunted expression, its pits of sorrow that passed for eyes: these things haunted her long after she had left the ruined settlement.
The track eventually merged with a Shake road that had once joined two coastal villages, and this was the path she now took.
The rain had become a deluge, and its hissing rose to a roar on her hood, a curtain of water sheeting down in front of her eyes.
Her horse halted suddenly and she lifted her head to see a lone rider blocking her path.
He seemed a figure sculpted in flowing water. ‘Listen to me,’ she said, loud, unexpectedly harsh. ‘Do you truly imagine that you can follow us, brother?’
Yedan Derryg made no reply-his typical statement of obstinacy.
She wanted to curse him, but knew that even that would be useless. ‘You killed the witches and warlocks. Pully and Skwish are not enough. Do you understand what you have forced upon me, Yedan?’
He straightened in his saddle at that. Even in the gloom she saw his jaws bunching as he chewed for a time on his reply, before saying, ‘You cannot. You must not. Make the journey, sister, upon the mortal path.’
‘Because it is the only one you can follow, banished as you are.’
But he shook his head. ‘The road you seek is but a promise. Never attempted. A promise, Yan Tovis. Will you risk the lives of our people upon such a thing?’
‘You have left me no choice.’
‘Take the mortal path, as you said you would. Eastward to Bluerose and thence across the sea-’
She wanted to scream at him. Instead, she bared her teeth. ‘You damned fool, Yedan. Have you seen the camp of our-my-people? The population of the whole island-old prisoners and their families, merchants and hawkers, cut-throats and pirates-everyone joined us! Not even including the Shake, there are close to ten thousand Letherii refugees in my camp! What am I to do with them all? How do I feed them?’
‘They are not your responsibility, Twilight. Disperse them-the islands are very nearly under water now-this crisis belongs to King Tehol-to Lether.’
‘You forget,’ she snapped, ‘Second Maiden proclaimed its independence. And made me Queen. The moment we arrived on the mainland, we became invaders.’
He cocked his head. ‘It is said the King is a compassionate man-’
‘He may well be, but how will everyone else think-all those people whose lands we must cross? When we beg for food and shelter? When our hunger grasps tight our souls, so that begging becomes demands? The northern territories have not yet recovered from the Edur War-fields lie fallow; the places where sorcery was unleashed now seethe with nightmare creatures and poisonous plants. I will not descend upon King Tehol’s most fragile subjects with fifteen thousand desperate trespassers!’
‘Take me back, then,’ Yedan said. ‘Your need for me-’
‘I cannot! You are a Witchslayer! You would be torn to pieces!’
‘Then find a worthy mate-a king-’
‘Yedan Derryg, move aside. I will speak with you no longer.’
He collected his reins and made way for her to pass. ‘The mortal path, sister. Please.’
Coming alongside, she raised a gloved hand as if to strike him, then lowered it and kicked her horse forward. Feeling his gaze upon her back was not enough to twist her round in her saddle. The weight of his disapproval settled on her shoulders, and with a faint shock she discovered that it was not entirely unfamiliar. Perhaps, as a child… well, some traits refused to go away, no matter the span of years. The notion made her even more miserable.
A short time later she caught the rank smell of cookfires dying in the rain.
My people, my realm, I am home.
Pithy and Brevity sat on a rolled-up, half-buried log at what used to be the high-water mark, their bare feet in the lukewarm water of the sea’s edge. The story went that this precious, magical mix of fresh rain and salty surf was a cure for all manner of foot ailments, including bad choices that sent one walking in entirely the wrong direction. Of course, life being what it is, you can’t cure what you ain’t done yet, though it never hurts to try.
‘Besides,’ said Brevity, her short dark hair flattened on to her round cheeks, ‘if we didn’t swing the vote, you and me, why, we’d be swimming to the nearest tavern right about now.’
‘Praying that there’s still some beer on tap,’ Pithy added.
‘It was the ice melt, dearie, that done in the island, and sure, maybe it would’ve subsided some, maybe even enough, but who wanted to hold their breaths waiting for that?’ She pulled a sodden rustleaf stick from some fold in her cloak and jammed it in the corner of her mouth. ‘Anyway, we got us a Queen now and a government-’
‘A divided government, Brevity. Shake on one side, Forters on the other, and the Queen hogtied and stretched in between-I can hear her creaking day and night. What we’re looking at here is an impasse and it won’t hold that way for much longer.’
‘Well, with only two witches left, it’s not like the Shake can do nothing but wave a bony fist our way.’ Pithy kicked her feet, making desultory splashes quickly beaten down by the rain. ‘We need to make our move soon. We need to swing the Queen over to our side. You and me, Brev, we should be leading the contingent to King Tehol, with a tidy resettlement scheme that includes at least three chests heaped with coins.’
‘One for you, one for me, and one for Twilight’s treasury.’
‘Precisely.’
‘Think she’ll go for it?’
‘Why not? We can’t stay here on this rotten coast much longer, can we?’
‘Good point. She saved us from drowning on the island, didn’t she? No point in then having us drown here in the Errant’s endless piss. Fent’s Toes, what a miserable place this is.’
‘You know,’ said Pithy after a time, ‘you and me, we could just abandon ’em all. Make our way to Letheras. How long do you think it’d take us to get reestablished?’
Brevity shook her head. ‘We’d get recognized, dearie. Worse, our scheme ain’t going to work a second time-people will see the signs and know it for what it is.’
‘Bah, every five years by my count you can find another crop of fools with too much money. Happy to hand it over.’
‘Maybe, but it’s not the marks I was thinking about-it’s the authorities. I ain’t in no mood to get arrested all over again. Twice offending means the Drownings for sure.’
Pithy shivered. ‘Got a point there. All right, then we go the honest politician route, we climb the ladder of, uh, secular power. We soak and scam legitimately.’
Brevity sucked on the stick and then nodded. ‘We can do that. Popularity contest. We divide up our rivals in the Putative Assembly. You bed one half, I bed the other, we set ourselves up as bitter rivals and make up two camps. Get voted as the Assembly’s official representatives to the court of the Queen.’
‘And then we become the choke-point.’
‘Information and wealth, up and down, down and up. Neither side knowing anything but what we decide to tell ’em.’
‘Precisely. No real difference from being the lying, cheating brokers we once were.’