It hardly mattered, he supposed, as they came down off the hill onto the Avenue of Lies. The horns were announcing a full call to arms, and everyone could hear them. The mood in the streets already seemed close to panic. Citizens bawled at each other in their haste to be home or at their local tavernas. Mothers were plucking their children off the streets. All about, he could see Red Guards hurrying towards the Stadium of Arms, and old retired veterans, the Molari, heading for the stadium too, bearing dusty shields and their long chartas bundled in oiled canvases.
‘Come on, now,’ Koolas said to him amicably enough. ‘They already know we’re in trouble. All I’m after are some details so their imaginations won’t run wild on them. What are we up against here? Is it a raid or a full invasion?’
Bahn held up a hand to wave down a passing rickshaw. The bearer sped past him without stopping, the rickshaw empty of passengers. He swore under his breath as he looked around for another, finally managing to get one to stop for him.
‘Olson Avenue,’ he told the bearer quickly, and just before he climbed into the seat he made the mistake of glancing back at Koolas just once.
‘Fool’s balls,’ Koolas exclaimed as he caught the look in Bahn’s eyes. ‘Is it that bad?’ He sounded appalled, and for a moment Bahn was reminded that Koolas was more than a simple chattero after a story, that he was Khosian too, born and raised in the city, with his own friends and family to worry over.
Bahn sagged within his armour. ‘One moment,’ he said to the rickshaw bearer, and stepped closer to Koolas.
‘It’s an invasion, that’s all we know right now.’
‘How many? Which army?’
‘Reports indicate it’s the Sixth Army from Lagos, with auxiliaries from Q’os.’
The man drew himself straighter. ‘How many?’ he insisted.
Bahn turned as though to walk away, but paused. ‘All I can say is that we’re calling up every man we can. We’re emptying the jails and stockades of veterans. Even the Eyes.’
‘What? Those murderers and lunatics?’
‘Any that can still carry a shield, aye.’
‘And the council, what do they make of it? I just saw a delegation go inside the Ministry.’
‘Does it matter? We’ve been invaded. It’s out of their hands now.’
Koolas rubbed his face ruefully. ‘Aye. And I’m sure Creed made that more than clear to them. There’s a man with a chip on his shoulder if ever I saw one.’
Bahn scowled, and left before the chattero could ask anything more of him. He climbed into the rickshaw, and nodded to Koolas as the bearer pulled him past.
He offered the bearer an extra five coppers to make a faster pace of it, and sat back and tried to calm himself as the rickshaw wove between the bustle and traffic of the streets.
In the far north of the city, in a small avenue lined with cherry trees turned bronze by autumn, Bahn climbed down with a thanks to the bearer and stepped into the house that had been his family home for seven years now. The rooms were cool inside, everything still. A smell of incense still hung in the air from their small shrine to Miri, the Great Disciple who had brought the Dao and the Great Fool’s teachings to the Mideres.
His son Juno would be at the schoolhouse today. Upstairs, he heard his infant daughter begin to cry.
Bahn found Marlee in the backyard, turning the soil in their small vegetable patch as though oblivious to the distant horns, yet her movements were quick and frustrated.
‘Hey,’ he said to his wife as he slid his arms around her waist from behind. Marlee straightened against him, her body tense. ‘Can’t you hear her?’ he asked.
‘Of course I can hear her. She’s teething again.’
‘Need anything?’
‘No, we still have some mother’s oil left. I daren’t give her any more, though.’ Marlee turned around and looked up at him. Her smile faltered. ‘What is it, Bahn? Why the alarms?’
He heard the sigh escape his lips. ‘I haven’t long. I should be at the stadium right now helping with the preparations.’
‘Preparations?’
He squeezed her arm and could not speak.
‘Oh, Bahn,’ she said, and her eyes shone moist. ‘They’ve landed here?’
He nodded stiffly.
Ariale wailed even louder from inside the house. Neither of them could find any words to say. Marlee looked to her feet and took a deep breath of air, then looked up again. ‘I’ll go and settle her,’ she said quickly. ‘Then you can tell me how bad it really is.’
He reached out to stop his wife.
‘I’ll go,’ he said with a smile of sadness, and left to settle his daughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Enlistment
She had been a child – perhaps four years of age – when her mother had died giving birth to her youngest sister, Annalese. So young in fact that she could hardly recall the experience now, whether it had been day or night, summer of winter, quick or slow; nor even who had been there, and who had not.
Only the few moments before the end did Curl truly remember, and those moments were so fresh in her still that to recall them brought a flush of emotion from her beating heart.
Her mother, pale as moonlight, wasted and bloody on the birthing bed with her gaze fixed distantly on the ceiling above. The dark curls of her hair plastered around the sheen of her complexion. Her chest barely rising as she fought to breath, a faint rhythm growing fainter. Her nipples, dark and hard on stretch-marked breasts made plump with milk, the wooden charm hanging between them, a dolphin, shaped from unseasoned jupe. The newborn, screeching in the room beyond the open doorway.
In the end, her mother had seemed hardly aware at all as Curl gripped her hand and shed her tears over her prone, draining body. Just once their eyes had locked. For a moment, her mother had looked upon her daughter with a blink of recognition. She had gripped Curl’s small hand until it burned with pain, and had glared at her as though trying to impart something of meaning in her last moments on this world.
Make the most of this life, my daughter, her eyes had seemed to say to Curl in the years to come. Follow no path but your own!
And then she had passed into sleep, and into death, and into the ground.
The years after that were dim too in Curl’s memory, as though some shroud of forgetfulness had covered her world. Only glimpses remained.
Her father, silent and spiteful, no longer the man he once had been, losing himself in his work as the local physician. A house without joy or happiness or laughter. Foot-creaks on floorboards; everyone treading lightly. And beyond the confines of their family grief, soldiers passing through the village; priests of Mann shouting sermons, decrying the old faith; rumours of war and rebellion like thunder in the distance.
At thirteen, her aunt and younger sisters celebrated Curl’s coming of age.
It was her aunt, whispery and wise and subtly beautiful, who had explained to Curl the budding of the moon’s cycles within her body, who had taught them all how they would some day become women. On that night of celebration, the woman had made a gift to Curl of a simple lump of wood. It was a knot from a fallen willow, she had explained.
‘Carve it tonight,’ she said, ‘when you are alone. Finish it before you sleep.’
‘What will I carve?’ Curl had asked in wonder.
‘Whatever you like, sister’s-daughter. Whatever brings warmth to your heart.’
When the others went up to bed, she sat on the deep rug in front of the hearthfire, a little drunk on the apple cider she had been allowed to sample for the first time, and with her father’s smallest carving knife and polishing stone, began to carve the piece of wood in whatever way seemed most appropriate. Hours passed fleeting; the fire dwindled until it was only ashes glimmering with the memory of heat.
She awoke where she had fallen asleep before the hearth. It was still night. Her aunt was lifting her into her arms. The woman had wrapped a blanket about her and was carrying her up to bed. Curl’s two sisters slept soundly in the other bunk.