The door creaked open. It was his father. He had removed his Blacks, and now stood above Yarrek in his homely farmer’s garb.
“Yarrek,” he said. “Yarrek, I must tell you something.” He sat down on the bed next to his son, and Yarrek stiffened at his father’s unaccustomed proximity.
He stared into the old man’s face, wondering at his father’s nervousness.
And the farmer, pained by a duty he would rather have forgone, told him the truth.
“Twenty cycles ago,” he began in a voice heavy with weariness, “a family in Icefast, a rich and influential family high up in the hierarchy of power, broke the edict of the Church and sired three children.” Yarrek did not yet comprehend the import of his father’s words: the thought of a rich family contravening Church Edict was shocking enough.
“Had the Church discovered the birth,” his father went on, “the child would have been put to death, according to the Law of Conservation. But the family had power, as I said, and managed to spirit this child, a boy, out of Icefast in the depth of dimming and send it with paid agents Hubward.”
His father could not bring himself to look Yarrek in the eye. “These agents arranged for a family to take in the boy, to raise him as their own.”
Yarrek said, “No.”
“The truth, Yarrek, is sometimes almost impossible to bear. But remember this: that truth, duly weighed and considered, makes a man stronger.”
“You…” Yarrek said. “I… I am that child? You took me in? I am not…?” It was too vast a concept to take in. His parents were not his parents? Jarrel was not his brother? He felt the certainty of the world tilt beneath him.
And then his father — or rather the man who was not his father, but had acted as such for twenty cycles — did something which he had never done before: he reached out and took Yarrek’s shoulder in compassion. In a small voice he said, “Your mother had just miscarried. A son. She was grieving. We were poor, then. The farm was yet to prosper. When the agents of aristocrats called and made their offer, we could not refuse. They paid us well, but money was not our motive. We looked upon you, and knew that if we were to refuse, then there was the possibility that you would die.”
His father paused, and went on, “Your progress at college was monitored by the interested party in Icefast, and they arranged for your apprenticeship.”
The irony! He, the illegal third child of aristocrats, was to be seconded into the very arm of the Church responsible for the policing of such edicts!
The hand tightened on his shoulder. “But be assured of this, Yarrek. Despite everything, we love you as our own.”
It was the first time his father had ever spoken such words of affection. With that, his face averted, he stood and left the room.
Yarrek lay on his bed, staring through the open window at the baleful eye of the rapidly dimming sun. Unable to sleep, he thought ahead to his time in Icefast. Though much of what lay ahead would be a mystery, he resolved upon a course of action that would give his future some purpose: during his time in Icefast he would attempt to track down the people who were his rightful parents.
Much later he was awakened by a sound.
He sat up quickly, the revelation of his past, and his future, brimming in him like sour wine. He blinked. It was still dark, though the sun had reached the extent of its dimming, and was little by little beginning to brighten.
It came again, the sound.
“Yarrek!” A mere whisper, from the direction of the window. He turned on the bed and saw, beside the nodding dark-blooms that wound in around the window-frame, Yancy’s round face staring in at him.
“Yancy?”
“I heard that you’re leaving for Icefast. Jarrel told me over at the platform. When you didn’t turn up, I thought… Well–” she shrugged “–here I am.”
He hurried across the room and embraced her. She was standing on a thick twist of vine that clung to the façade of the manse. Her presence here, as it did every time she came for him, amazed Yarrek, for Yancy Garrish was blind. Her massive eyes were skinned over with a milky meniscus that only served to accentuate the beauty of her face.
She raised a small flagon. “I’ve brought some yail acid, from my father’s locked cupboard,” she grinned. “Come to the platform and tell me everything.”
She was already shinning down the vine, and he straddled the windowsill and followed her.
He jumped the last metre and ran after Yancy as she disappeared through the yail stalks. Minutes later they emerged at the platform. It stood stark and empty in the umber light of the slowly brightening sun. Full brightening was hours away. He would have plenty of time with his friend, before returning home.
They climbed onto the platform and fell back onto piled sacks of yail. Yancy unplugged the flagon and took a quick slug, then passed it to Yarrek. The spirit burned his throat, filled his belly with strangely comforting fire.
He said, “What did Jarrel tell you?”
She chose to ignore him. “Are the kite-fish swarming?” she asked, her sightless eyes staring in the direction of the brooding sun, and the flotilla of kite-fish that basked in its gentle pre-brightening warmth.
He took her hand. “Perhaps twenty, maybe thirty. Massive ones, mostly male, putting on a show.” He watched the intricacy of their aerial dance. “They’re performing their mating rituals, flying circles around the sun.”
Yancy sighed and squeezed his hand. “And on the other side,” she said. “What can you see there?”
Yarrek narrowed his eyes, peering past the sun and focussing on the other side of the world. Directly above him he could see that side’s Hub City, and radiating from it the web of lines that were the sail-rail tracks, with a great checkerboard of farmland in between. Overland, as his people called it, was a mirror image of the plain on which Yarrek lived; he had never met anyone who had ventured there, though he knew that ships plied back and forth across the frozen seas of the Edge.
So he described it to Yancy in great detail, omitting nothing.
She snuggled close to him, her warmth in turn warming him, banishing his fears.
He asked again, “Yancy, what did Jarrel tell you?”
She was a while before replying. “He said you were to go to the Edge, to Icefast, at mid-brightening. There you had a job awaiting you. A very important job.”
“Did he tell you what it was?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t know. Your parents had told him only so much, to prepare him for your leave-taking.”
His silence prompted her question. “Well, Yarrek, will you tell me?”
He braced himself for her ridicule, even her disgust. “I will sit an exam for the office of the Inquisitor General.”
He turned and stared at her broad, pretty face in the light of the brightening. It was as if her features were frozen. Her hand remained on his, though her grip had slackened appreciably.
“Yancy?”
“You’ll be a lackey of the Church?” she said. “And an Inquisitor at that!”
He shrugged. “I have no say in the matter. Do you think I want to leave here, leave you?” And he felt a twinge of treachery at these words, for he had planned to venture to Hub City without her, after all.
She was silent for a long time. He watched the kite-fish perform convoluted arabesques with vast, lethargic grace.
He wanted to tell Yancy that he was not a true Merwell, that his blood family were aristocrats in Icefast — but he could not bring himself to do so.
“You’ll change,” she whispered. “You’ll become like them. Hard. Unforgiving. You’ll forget what it is to love, to feel compassion. For how can those that rule by the Edict of the Church have room in their hearts for the forgiveness of human frailty?”