He had just shaken sleep off when Ilain bustled in, bringing water and a cloth. She hardly spoke beyond wishing him a good morning. Her thoughts on the subject of late risers were almost palpable. By the time she left, Orisian was reproaching himself for his laziness.
The day passed quickly. In the morning, he went with Anyara over the causeway into town. They wandered about the market, jostling their way through the amiable crowd. They came across Jienna, the daughter of the merchant who owned fully a quarter of the stall plots. She was the same age as Orisian, and pretty. She and Anyara gossiped gaily, more or less ignoring Orisian. When he did steal into a gap in their conversation to compliment her on her dress, she laughed. Thankfully, it was a friendly, grateful laugh.
Afterwards, Anyara poked him in the back and teased him. He reddened and cursed her without conviction. She soon tired of the game and they turned back to idle talk: how many guests would come to the feast in the castle, who would be the Winter King at the celebration, which of the market traders was doing the most business.
They found a stall selling little honey-coated cakes, a delicacy their father had always loved. When they had been children he would often return from visits to Drinan or Glasbridge with packets of them hidden away in his baggage. It had been a regular game for Orisian, Anyara and Fariel to dig through Kennet’s belongings in search of the sticky treasures which he, until the very moment of discovery, would deny the existence of. The passage of time had shuffled roles and relationships. Now, Orisian and Anyara bought a small box of the cakes to take back to their father.
Later, Orisian went looking for Inurian. He searched the castle without success. Eventually he was directed out through the tiny postern gate at the rear of the stables. A passageway burrowed through the castle walls and gave out, through a heavy steel-banded door, on to the rocks of the isle’s seaward flank. There was a crude jetty, and alongside it a little sailboat: Inurian’s, which he must have left there after his most recent crossing to the far shore of the estuary. It was a simple, fast boat, sturdy enough for short trips when the weather was kind. It would not survive in such an exposed berth if caught by high wind or wave, though, and Orisian guessed that it must soon be moved to the town’s quay-side. He always enjoyed those rare occasions when Inurian took him out on the water, skimming along so close to the surface that an outstretched hand could plough a sparkling furrow through the waves. The short journey from castle to harbour might be a last chance to have a trip in the boat before the winter took hold.
With his back to the great bulk of the castle, not a sign of human life or habitation disturbed Orisian’s view north across the Glas estuary to the heights beyond. There was almost no wind and the great bay was as near to stillness as it could come. He stood for a moment watching the distant white shapes of seabirds chasing one another low across the water. The Car Anagais, a rugged ridge of bare mountain tops skirted by dark forests, dominated the northern shore. The summits succeeded one another in a jagged line stretching off in either direction. To the north, he knew, they ran all the way up towards Glasbridge where they merged into the greater ramparts of the Car Criagar, and far to the south they marched down to the blasted headland of Dol Harigaig, where the ridge collapsed into the sea in a welter of broken, jumbled rock. Far beyond Orisian’s sight, a bleak island lay there, lashed by the ocean. It skulked off the point of Dol Harigaig, as if the last of the mountains had slid intact into the water and left only its peak above the breakers.
An old story said the isle was the body of a giant, one of the First Race, cast into the sea. It had a more acute meaning for the people of Kolglas now. Dozens of their kinsfolk had found their final, fiery rest there during the Fever, their bodies carried to its huge pyres by boats with black sails. That had been the last journey Orisian’s brother and mother had made, bound up in linen winding sheets and crowded in with the other dead upon the deck of a corpse ship. Until that grim year, the island had been called Il Dromnone, an ancient name. Now, everyone knew it as The Grave.
Orisian slipped and slithered along the rocks at the foot of the wall to where he could see Inurian crouching by the water’s edge, poking around amongst the stones with a stick. The hem of the na’kyrim’s dark robe was trailing in the sea.
Orisian called to him. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Looking for sea urchins.’
‘Why?’
Inurian sat back on a convenient boulder. ‘Well, firstly because if you dry them and crush them to a powder they are said to prevent dampness on the chest when taken in broth. I doubt it myself, but who knows? Secondly, because I had a good amount ground up, at which point Idrin chose to knock the bowl over. Most of it disappeared between the floorboards.’
‘Ah.’
Inurian tossed the stick into the water disconsolately. ‘There are none here, though,’ he said.
Orisian sat beside him. They gazed out towards the hills. Inurian at last noticed that his robe was sodden and began to wring it out, muttering under his breath.
After a minute, Orisian narrowed his eyes and cocked his head to one side. He thought he could see, so faint that it might be nothing, a hair-thin thread of smoke rising from amongst the trees on the distant shore.
‘Can you see smoke?’ he asked, knowing that Inurian’s half-Kyrinin eyes were a good deal sharper than his own.
‘Indeed,’ said Inurian without looking up. ‘It has been there for some time. Quite careless.’
For a moment Orisian was puzzled, then he understood and glanced at the na’kyrim.
‘Kyrinin? A Kyrinin camp?’
Inurian nodded.
‘Fox, then?’ pressed Orisian. ‘There’s only the Fox clan over there, isn’t there?’
Inurian’s Kyrinin father had been of the Fox clan. Other than that, Orisian knew almost nothing of the inhuman side of his heritage. Though he had never dared to ask, he was almost certain that Inurian went into the hills and forests of the Car Anagais not just in search of mushrooms or herbs but also to visit the camps of the Fox. Much of his longing to accompany the na’kyrim on one of those journeys was rooted in the wish to see such a camp. Whatever others of his kind might think of them, Orisian felt more curiosity than anything else about the Kyrinin who lived upon the fringes of his homeland.
‘Only the Fox,’ agreed Inurian. ‘I suppose they are right to think themselves safe in such an inaccessible spot. Myself, I would still call it careless to give so clear a sign. I would have thought better of her.’
‘Who?’ asked Orisian.
Inurian blinked. ‘Whoever’s camp it is,’ he said. ‘Them.’
‘There’s no danger to them there, surely?’ Orisian said.
Inurian shrugged. ‘Your uncle claims that land, even if no one lives there. Now is not the best time for Kyrinin to be so visible within Lannis-Haig borders.’
‘But if they’re Fox . . . it’s the White Owls in Anlane who are causing trouble.’