Wain shared her brother’s contempt for all na’kyrim. Their very existence was a symptom of that wilful disregard for the world’s natural order which had led to the Gods’ despair. Nevertheless, she could not free herself of the sense that Aeglyss meant something. He had proved his value more than once now. Kanin might refuse to accept it, but fate could use the strangest tools in weaving its pattern.
She found the catapult becalmed on the street outside the gaol like a sea monster thrown helpless on a hard shore. One of its axles had broken. Workmen were trying to mend it, and at her approach they bent furiously to the task, each trying to outdo the other in the urgency of his efforts. For a few minutes she watched the repairs. The leader of the group kept glancing at her. Every back was tensed, expecting the lash of her tongue at any moment. It did not come. She no longer truly believed that siege engines were the key to this lock. She left the men to their labours and walked on.
She went to the outer wall of the city. Climbing up on to the rubble of the ramshackle defences, she stared out over the fields beyond. The tents and fires of the Kyrinin were there, the camp as silent as ever. She stood and watched for some time. She had no idea what it was she was looking for. There was nothing she had not seen before.
She looked down at the stones beneath her feet. They had been great building blocks once, scales of the town’s armour. Now they were eroded and chipped, jumbled in a heap and already embarked upon the centuries-long journey to dust. Time and fate paid no heed to the intent of mere mortals.
‘Wain.’
The soft voice at her shoulder startled her and she almost lost her footing on the loose stonework. His hand was there in an instant, upon her elbow, keeping her steady. She snatched her arm away.
‘Do not touch me, halfbreed,’ she hissed.
‘As you wish,’ Aeglyss said, unconcerned. He glanced out towards the White Owl encampment. ‘You were watching the camp. What do you see?’
‘Savages.’ His closeness made her skin crawl.
‘They would say the same of you. A mistake, to always see only what it is easiest to see.’
The urge to turn away from him, from his grey eyes and his corpse-pale skin, was powerful. Yet his voice held her.
‘Why is it you and your brother turn me away?’ His hand was back upon her arm, and this time she did not withdraw. ‘I only want to help you achieve what you desire.’
‘What is it that you think I desire?’ she asked tightly.
‘The same things as your father, and your brother: vengeance for past defeats, the triumph of the Black Road, honour for your Blood. The end of this world. The Kall. But it burns more fiercely in you than in them, Wain. I can feel it in you as if you carried the sun itself in your breast.’
Carefully, she took a step away from him, easing her arm from his grip. She had never feared anyone in her life, yet this na’kyrim brought that emotion close. For all that she could break his neck or snap his wrist in a moment, some part of her believed she was the weaker. And his unflinching gaze and his calm, entrancing voice told her that he really might be able to give her what she wanted. He is more than he appears, she reminded herself. He can twist your thoughts, cloud your mind, with that voice.
‘You move away from me,’ he said. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘Not of you,’ she said. ‘But I mistrust your voice. What is it that you want?’
‘Speak with Kanin. Persuade him to look with favour upon me again. Persuade him to allow me to help you, in whatever way I can.’
She hesitated. Hesitation was no more in her nature than was fear.
‘I did what I promised before,’ Aeglyss whispered. ‘I bent the White Owls to your will. Your father trusted me to aid you. Learn that trust from him, Wain. Teach it to your brother.’
A terrible tension was building in Wain, knotting the muscles of her stomach and shoulders, setting her pulse thudding in her head. She could not bear it.
‘Very well,’ she said, without knowing quite why she said it. ‘I will speak to my brother. Come to us tomorrow morning. We will be holding a council in the hall on the square.’ She made to climb down from the wall.
‘Wait,’ he said, and she found herself turning back to him. ‘Why do you despise me so, Wain?’ His voice was different now. She thought she heard need. She refused to trust that thought.
‘You are what you are,’ she told him, ‘and I am as I am. I do not despise you, but you are not of the Road. And you are not of my kind.’
‘My father was, though. He had the same blood in him that you do. That should mean something. But it’s not enough, is it? Not for you. I do not understand what I have done to earn your—and your brother’s—contempt. I did nothing but what you wished. I sought only favour in your eyes.’
‘Fools look for reasons,’ Wain said softly. ‘What has been and what will be are one. They are the Road, and happen because they must.’
‘Will you see me differently if I give you what you want?’ He smiled and it was a smile that shook her. ‘Am I really so terrible in your eyes? You seem so fair in mine. You are not like the others. All I want is for you to trust me, to let me be a part of this with you.’
Her breath was light, fluttering in her throat. He reached out towards her. She felt as if she stood upon some towering precipice and the world was rushing away beneath her. Then she saw his fingernails, and they were clouded. She remembered who, and what, he was. She spun away and vaulted down over the great stone blocks to the street below.
‘Please...’ she perhaps heard him say, almost inaudibly.
She forced herself not to run as she strode into the city, and did not look back although she could feel his eyes upon her back like twin embers.
Inurian did not even hear the other entering this time. He felt his presence, and that was enough to wake him. It was like a breath upon the back of his head; a stone dropped into the Shared. Inurian rolled over. Aeglyss was sitting with his back against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest and enfolded by his arms. His face was in shadow. There was a silence such as comes in the very heart of the night, when all the world and all its inhabitants are still. Inurian said nothing. He watched his visitor and waited.
Aeglyss spoke. ‘I never knew my father’s name. They killed him before I was born, as soon as they realised I was there in my mother’s womb. She would never tell me what they did to him, but they are cruel, the White Owl. For a Huanin, and a captive at that, who had dared to take one of their own as a lover... Well. They might easily have taken her life, too. Stilled me before I had drawn my first breath.’
Inurian dared not stir. He could almost see the emotion that was coiling and uncoiling itself within the other’s frame, like a snake in a fire.
‘When I was... six? Eight? One of the other children—a girl—ah, what was her name? I can’t remember. She was hounding me, tormenting me. Kyrinin are no more gentle with the likes of you and me than Huanin are. That day it was too much. I told her to take out the skinning knife she had on her belt. I told her... she put it through her hand. It was the first time I really understood anything about the Shared, understood why they were afraid of me.
‘They shut me away. They must have wanted to kill me then, I suppose, but my mother came. She cut through the side of the tent and carried me off. We went into the forest, just me and her together. Do you know what that means, for one of the people to leave the vo’an, to go alone out into the winter?’