The old man puffed rapidly on his pipe to keep it lit. ‘You know the kind of child who must keep showing other children how smart he is? While other children run and play and eat and love their mothers, this little boy or girl cannot stop being smart. You know this child?’
Nita Qwan laughed. ‘All too well.’
‘Powers. Mostly, they are people who never learned to live.’ Ta-se-ho leaned back and chuckled. ‘Mind you, I’m an old man with no magic. If I could kill a deer a mile away with a flick of my fingers, I’d be a different man. But I’d never learn to hunt. And I love to hunt.’ He sat up. ‘I lack the words to explain better.’
‘You are a philosopher,’ Nita Qwan said again.
The older man nodded. ‘I could learn to like this word. But let me tell you a cold fact. The Inner Sea will freeze in a week. If we are going to paddle, we’d best paddle fast.’
And hour later, they were paddling south, for N’gara.
Lissen Carrak – Abbess Mirim and Sister Amicia
The Abbess read the latest message from Harndon carefully while Sister Amicia waited patiently, hands in her sleeves.
The Abbess winced once, and then her face stilled. Careful observation indicated she was reading the whole message a second time. This time she bit her lip.
She made a face – a very un-Abbess-like face. ‘Do you know anything about the contents?’ she asked Amicia, who shook her head.
‘Ma dame, I was at my place by the Southwark ferry, in the chapel, when the royal messenger came. As his message was for here and the sabbath was passed, I brought it directly. He had other stops to make.’
Mirim tapped the arm of her chair. ‘The King has appointed a new Bishop of Lorica who believes that the whole of the Order of Saint Thomas falls within his remit.’ She smiled – not a real smile, but a combative one. ‘I suspect that Prior Wishart and I will agree that he has no power over us, but equally I can see some trouble looming.’
‘The new Bishop of Albinkirk is a fine priest,’ Amicia said.
‘He called!’ Mirim said. ‘Hah, and caught us all in our shifts. Washing day, and the new Bishop comes to the gate! But Ser Michael turned out the guard for him, and we put on a passable show, and got the washtubs into the kitchen. He really is a very pleasant man, and his theology is refreshingly modern.’ Mirim took a scroll of the table under her elbow. ‘He issued you a further license to say mass whenever there is no priest present. And he appointed us a new chaplain – Father Desmond. A scholar, no less! We’ve all been on our best behaviour.’
Amicia curtsied again. ‘I’ll look forward to meeting him.’
‘You must be tired, dear sister.’ She paused. ‘There is a good deal of muttering about the liberties you are accorded. Please be at mass tonight, and at matins, so that all here can see you at your devotions.’
Amicia flushed with instant anger, and fought it back down.
‘And we need you to help us knit the defences back together. The choir – the hermetical choir – needs to practise while you are here.’ Mirim put a hand on her head. ‘Who ever thought that convents were places of rest?’
The Sacred Island – Thorn and Ota Qwan
When the moths hatched into larvae, it was incredibly disturbing for Ota Qwan. When the larvae hatched in the hung-up corpses of men who had been his companions, it made him think about things he didn’t want to, so he busied himself on errands. He gathered the early crop of young warriors of half a dozen tribes who had been inspired by Speaker of Tongues’ vision, and he led them on a short campaign – first, to overawe the Abenacki, and then further east.
No Abenacki force rose to meet him. South of the chain of streamside villages that lay in the heart of the Abenacki nation, he rested his war party and met with a delegation of elders. He demanded warriors and threatened them with destruction, and the two older warriors who had held senior commands that spring reacted with fierce words.
He shrugged. ‘Thorn will be your lord, now,’ he said. ‘Submit and grow in power. Fight and be destroyed.’
He left them to decide, and turned south and east. He had a branch from Thorn that allowed him to control the Ruk who suddenly infested the low country by the Inner Sea, and six of the lumbering giants followed him. The rest stayed clear of his path. He had expected to feel the power flowing through him; instead, there was nothing but the sight of the Ruk doing his bidding.
After six days’ travel the war party emerged from the rock-strewn marshes near the town of Nepan’ha. He walked forward on the first snow of the season and met with the headwoman, Big Trout, who was up on the catwalk of the palisade wall, holding a spear and wearing a fancy caribou-hide coat.
‘Thorn demands your submission,’ he shouted.
‘He should come and make that demand in person,’ she said, ‘and not send some witling to do it for him.’
‘He will destroy you,’ Ota Qwan promised.
The old woman turned, raised the hem of her coat and showed him her bare buttocks. She launched a long fart, and all her people laughed.
‘Tell your sorcerer to go pleasure himself with a birch tree!’ she shouted.
Ota Qwan allowed his anger to take control of him. He felt taller – stronger – and indeed he was. He raised the branch that Thorn had given him, and pointed at the wall.
From far away, there was the sound of bellowing. The ground began to shake.
A dozen Ruk lumbered forward.
The men and women on the wall had bows and spears, and the Ruk suffered much as they attacked. Four of them died outright.
But it takes a great deal to kill a Ruk. Those who withstood the withering barrage of missiles ripped the palisade down with their bare hands and went into the town. They launched themselves on an orgy of destruction, ripping buildings to the ground and killing anything they could catch – sheep, horse, or child.
Ota Qwan followed them through the breech with his fifty warriors. He pointed a hand in either direction, and ordered his senior warriors to clear the walls.
‘And then?’ asked one of the young Abenacki.
‘Then kill them all,’ Ota Qwan said.
That was not the Outwaller way. But the men were young, and they already saw much in Kevin Orley that they wanted to emulate.
Ten hours later, the last desperate mother was found huddled in a root cellar and had her child ripped away and killed. She was raped, and beheaded. His young warriors were covered in blood, and some were sick with what they had done and others curiously elated. Rape was new to the Abenacki and the Sossag – in Outwaller warfare, women were taken home, adopted and made wives. Otherwise, the matrons punished you.
Only Thorn had no matrons.
And he was there. Thorn came, wearing Speaker of Tongues.
‘What you have done, you have done for me, and for your people,’ he said. He went and knelt gracefully by the corpse of the last woman killed. ‘It is horrible, is it not? She was a person, and you took that and made her a thing.’ He rose. And smiled. ‘Listen, my warriors. We do this to save the rest. After Nepan’ha, no other town will resist me. This will save many lives – yours included. But also the lives of other women, and other babies.’ He walked through the rubble and the burning hides of what had been the central longhouse, to where Big Trout’s corpse lay in the doorway, her big axe still in her hands. ‘She was a fool to insult Ota Qwan, and doubly a fool to resist, and the deaths of all these people lie on her, not on you. When a leader accepts the responsibility of command, she accepts that she will bear the guilt. This fat woman owns the guilt you feel. So piss on her – pour your fluid on her and rid yourself of what is hers.’ He smiled beatifically. ‘For many years, you Outwallers have honoured the corpses of your enemy dead. Stop that. Desecrate them as fools and traitors. Our way is The Way. Be soft no longer. Be hard. Trust me on this.’ Speaker did as he said – he paused and pissed a long stream on the corpse, and the fat woman seemed to melt a little, and suddenly the warriors crowded around to do the same – and as they did, found their memories of the obscenity cloud over.