23rd Taura, 999 NE
It was after midnight, and Jaroan was still out. Again.
She put on her thickest winter coat and, warning Jaid that she’d better stay in bed if she knew what was good for her, Xan headed out into the night.
The worst of the snows had stopped two weeks ago, only to be replaced by showers of icy rain that anyone would’ve traded for snow in a heartbeat. The four winds were at war, and they’d chosen Mund for their battle-ground: one minute the cold droplets were sheeting down at her back, battering her hood, then they whipped about, streaming at her face instead, tearing the covering off her hair and forcing her to reach up, pull it back down again.
She kept her head bowed as she moved out into the drop-streams of Mud Lane, watching her footing even more carefully than she watched the shadows in her surroundings. A bad fall, in conditions like these… you could drown in the sludge, and they wouldn’t even find your body for days, until the rains subsided and the drop receded – or at least until your corpse was washed out down near the Spannerwalk, where there were literal beaches of materials that’d been carried down the lane under the surface.
Despite such dangers, it wasn’t the weather she was worried about when it came to Jaroan. Something far more perilous was happening to the boy.
She checked his usual haunts, the alleyways and balconies where the gang of idiots he’d signed-up with most-often hung around. Nothing. It wasn’t until she ventured off the lane that she started to despair.
What had happened to Jaroan to make him start acting up this way? Was it all because of Kas being taken from them, or was there some other underlying cause, something she could actually do something about? Even Jaid was going out on her own sometimes now. Always in the day, always within reason, but it’d started to irk Xan until the day she followed the blonde girl up the alley – and saw her descending the skull steps into Helbert Bend’s shrine to Mortiforn.
She must be seeing the priests, grieving her brother, Xan realised.
She never followed Jaid again, and didn’t intrude on the girl’s privacy by revealing what she knew. Better to let the ministers do their thing.
The not-knowing. That was the worst bit. The inaction. With Jaid, at least she knew what was going on, but Jaroan? She had little doubt that by the time Xassy got to the age of ten she’d know precisely what to say and do to exert her authority, whip her son into line. But now, parenting a rebellious pre-teenager who’d lost almost everyone important in his life… It was an uphill battle and every day that passed, she thought he’d finally make good on his promise.
“I don’t even want to be here anymore,” he’d said to her three nights back. “What is there here, for me? For us? Kas wanted to keep the apartment because of Mum and Dad but now it’s him, it’s Kas I… I-I want to leave.”
Jaroan had looked over at his sister when he’d said that, but Jaid had just stubbornly shook her head. The young girl might’ve been feeling the same way, but the conflict within her was still ongoing. For now, at least, she wanted to stay.
“There’s no guarantee it’s any safer outside Mund,” Xan had replied in her most-measured voice. “Come on, I need you to keep chipping in. Without your earnings –”
“But I don’t want to leave Mund.” His eyes shone fiercely. “I just want to leave here.”
“Leave the apartment?” She couldn’t quite keep the surprise from her voice. “But that would mean all of us going – unless you mean you want to leave us, or –”
“Exactly,” he’d said in a matter-of-fact tone, then slammed the bedroom door in her face.
By the time she’d tore her way into the room, the hurt caused by his words tempered for a moment by her fury at the sheer cheek of him, he was already more than halfway out of the window.
“You get back here this… instant,” she started saying to his left leg, and concluded to a completely empty room.
“Jar!” Jaid cried, running past her and plunging out of the window after him.
But he’d even run from her – he was starting to develop the long legs of his brother, his father, and he’d apparently outpaced his sister within two minutes.
To fall into a black mood – that was pretty normal for the boy. But to abandon his twin – she’d never seen its like before. She had to stop herself reeling in shock because her reaction to Jaid’s report had set the girl weeping.
The streets were far from empty tonight. She avoided several groups of drunks, one group of watchmen, and punched an old groper square in the chin when he came leering out of the mouth of an alleyway. All in all, it was a fairly ordinary trip through Helbert’s Bend. She kept her eyes peeled for one of the Bertie Boys – she could get them to let Garet know what was happening, see if he could put some of his guys on it…
Ultimately, despite her fretting it didn’t take her long to find Jaroan. Within twenty minutes of trawling the streets she picked out his voice – he was sitting on a first-floor rail a few houses down Giblet Crescent, a good fifteen feet over the roadway; his back was to the road and he was talking loudly to his new friends. The way she approached the balcony where they were gathered, staying beneath the walkway, she ensured none of them spotted her.
“… I didn’t even need to show him. I just told him you sent me, like you said, and he started shaking. Knew who I was – who my brother was… Opened up his purse and let me take everything he had.”
A North Lowtown voice responded to Jaroan.
“Ever’fin’? How can yer be sure, though, eh? This is what they does – they empties their wallets before-’and, an’ then yer oanly gettin’ what they wants you to.”
“It’s ninety percent of what he owed you –“
“Woss that? In’t ninety less than a hunderd? An’ yer never even showed ‘im the knife! Fought your bro was that big darkmage, wonnee? Where’s yer guts gone, big guy? Fought you wanted control!”
Xantaire had been standing in what she thought was perfect stillness, unseen by anyone in the vicinity, quiet and motionless.
Now she was truly paralysed, hearing words she had never thought to hear.
“I-I’m sorry, Ti. You want me to go back, I’ll go back. Sh-show him.”
“Necks time, Mortenn. Necks time. Oo else? You – woss yer name again?”
“Tick.”
“Ah, thassit. What yer got fer me, Tick?”
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“I – I got… I got this.”
She heard the scraping sound: her mind painted an image of Ticken Sawdan drawing a knife.
The Lowtowner, Ti, chuckled dryly. “Didden even clean the blade.”
“Wanted to show it you this way.”
“See, Mortenn? See what yer up aggence? Yer doan wanna be drop, right? Yer wanna be the bess?” There was a pause. “I move the prodduck. Yer deliver an’ collect. Watcher think yer get paid fer? Coll–ect. Tha’ means blood as much as cash an’ katra. The boss, she’s gonna be ‘ere soon enough, and then they’s gonna be war in the streets. Yer know what firepower we got. Yer wanna be on the winnin’ side, yer know what yer gotta do.”
Xan had no idea what she was supposed to do. How could she handle something like this? Go to the watch? Tell the magisters with the glyphstone? This was bigger than her – bigger than Mud Lane, Helbert’s Bend…
“It’s Garet you need to prepare.”
The voice came in a whisper, cold and aloof, from directly behind her – right in her ear – Xan spun on her heel, swinging out her arms reflexively to grab at her assailant –
The black-swathed girl in a black, featureless mask easily evaded her attempt to initiate a grapple – she did so without even really moving, her feet still planted in the muck, only her upper body swaying effortlessly. The ebony bow slung across her back, the arrows in the quiver at her shoulder – they all stayed in place.
The failure confused Xan. The girl was well-within her reach. Her instincts told her she should be holding the archer in her hands, gripping at the girl’s upper-arms, but she was still there, almost heedless of Xan’s attack, seemingly gazing back at her through slits in the mask – though no such holes were visible, not in the shadows at least.
“Wh… what?” she muttered.
“Garet.” The same disdainful whispering sound. “You shouldn’t be here, girl.”
Being called a girl by the girl – that just added to her confusion. The stranger wore their hood up. She supposed they could be an old woman, for all she knew, but the frame bespoke a youngster.
“A-are you a darkmage?” she managed to ask in a low voice. “My… my brother is up there. Blond. Skinny. Ten years old. I –“
“Go home.” The mask tilted, seeming to leer. It covered so much of the mage’s head, only a dark tangle of hair was visible at the back, swishing softly. “I will return him to you if you go now.”
The voices of the kids on the balcony above had been continuing all the while, but she hadn’t had chance to focus on what they were saying.
Now she focussed. Even as she stood there in the shadows beneath them, the darkmage with a bow loitering right in front of her, she heard a new voice emanate from above.
It was the sound of a thousand beetles, a thousand chitinous carapaces rasping human words, an awful thing to have to hear:
“I told you I would eat your eyes, Ti. I might not stop there, though. You have such a delicious-looking face.”
“Go, now, and I will keep my word!” the black-clad magic-user snarled, pushing Xan aside and vanishing past her, a flurry of robes that disappeared in the darkness.
Xantaire had no idea what was happening. She’d been plunged into a nightmare. As the arch-diviner disappeared – there was nothing else the girl could be, could there? – she’d shoved Xan with greater strength than had been warranted, and instead of simply staggering she fell to the ground.
What had been ground.
In this moment the surface of the grimy ground was a sea of furred bodies, dozens of trains of rodents, thousands of them pouring towards the wall of the building and the posts of its balcony, streaming up and mounting the walkway in their legions – where Jaroan and Ticken Sawdan and any number of other kids were currently being placed under duress by this North Lowtowner, this ‘Ti’…
Xan could only hope that this dark archer, this strange seeress knew what she was doing – because as Xan landed and the waves of rats crashed over her, hundreds of tiny feet and tails trickling across her body, over her hair, she started to scream. She couldn’t help it.
She wanted to fling herself back up to her feet as quickly as she could but it was difficult. She was forced to grit her teeth against the horror of it all and push down on the slick, loathsome backs of the rats around her, with her bare hands, in order to haul herself up –
And then she fled, fled like never before, still crying out in wordless panic, casting off rodents that seemed only too eager to leave her behind – she supposed afterwards that she must’ve free of the blighted things after the first few seconds but it didn’t feel that way – not until she got home and got out of her clothes and washed her body and combed her hair, not till then did she feel like she’d gotten rid of them – but that still didn’t make her feel clean, feel happy. Their leathery little feet, their tails, their furry wetness, sliding all over her skin…
When the knock finally came at the door she was still drying her hair from the third rinse she’d put it through.
“Hello?” she called softly. She didn’t need to raise her voice – they’d done their best to plug the burn-line in the door and walls, but sounds and draughts still got through more easily than before.
She heard a faint but sharp hiss (“Speak!”) and then Jaroan’s voice.
“It’s m-me, Xan.”
She unbolted the door, swung it open.
“Jaroan Mortenn.”
He was standing there not two feet from her, but he refused to meet her eyes.
“Come in. Go to sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”
A sullen expression pasted across his face – his unscarred, uneaten face, praise be to Yune – he slipped around her and quietly entered his bedroom.
She stayed in the doorway, looking out at the black-garbed diviner.
“You never answered my question. Are you a darkmage?”
“You seem unfazed at the prospect for one without the gift of magic.”
“I’ve known my fair share of mages. I’ve seen a few things. I’ve flown.”
“Have you now? Such freedom!” The seeress was sneering, by the sounds of things. “And a day in the life of a bird prepares you for the worst such as I might inflict? Oh no. No. This isn’t it at all. You are lying to me. You more than flew. Everyone knows who you knew, Xantaire Tarent. You walked as I walk, outside time.”
It chilled her, to hear her full name spoken aloud like that by a darkmage so clearly-powerful as her.
“No. It is because you believe you know me, is it not? I can see those words burn in your future. I can assure you, you do not know me.”
The arch-diviner stepped forwards suddenly and Xan recoiled, flinching back so abruptly she smacked her elbow on the door.
“Your little brother doesn’t know me either. I never met Killstop. But I am a champion, girl. You don’t have to tie yourself in knots. They call me Nightfell. Who knows? You might hear of me again.”
There was no blur, no streak of darkness upon darkness. She was simply gone.
“Well, thanks a bunch,” Xan said to the night, and shut the door once more.
She went to bed but she couldn’t sleep. She heard the murmur of Jaid and Jaroan’s voices in the late hours and she wanted to go in there, wanted to ‘speak’ with him… but she knew she couldn’t. She played it out in her head and the disgust she felt at what he was becoming – it was still too real, too strong for her to overcome. It always went the same way and once she started she knew she wouldn’t be able to stop.
“You! You almost got me killed! Got yourself killed! Darkmages and archmages… thousands of rats! Do you even know what happened to me? I almost drowned in them thanks to you, you and your boneheaded selfishness, your anger – you think you’re the only one that hurts, the only one that can feel? Well you’re wrong! It hurt me too but now you’re going to go and ‘show’ someone the knife! The knife! How dare you! How dare you bring this into your own home, after what happened with your parents – with Wyre and the Bertie Boys! Into our home, my home, my son’s home! You know what, I do want you to leave! Go, get out of here and never come back, never make me worry about you again. I don’t even know you anymore.”
So she never went in, never saw them again. She fell asleep, eventually, and when she woke up it was late morning at least. She decided immediately that she was still numb enough from her dreamless slumber to confront him, so she sneaked out of bed and entered their room.
Its emptiness spoke to her before she even crossed the threshold, before she saw the way small items had been removed, everything picked clean. They even made the bed before they left.
“Mummy?” Xassy’s voice came from her room. “Mummy, where you? I had a dream. I had a dream!”
She picked up the piece of paper on the bed, unfolded it, scanned it with her eyes. Surprised at the length of the note, she took it back into her room with her, and got back under the covers with her son so that she could read it in bed.
To her astonishment, as the words sank in Xastur’s jabbering started to make more and more sense.
There was a moment of clarity, of release.
Then, weeping, she tore up the note, feeding each piece carefully into the burning heart of the candle-flame.
“What you doing, Mummy?”
“Xastur. I love you, Xastur.” She pulled him close to her and kissed the top of his head, drenching him in her tears. “I’m just… I’m saying goodbye.”
“The twins? They gone?”
“Yes, Xassy. For now, they’re gone.”
He held her back, and she drew in deep breaths, trying not to sob.
“Iss okay, Mummy. Guh-bye, for now.”
She couldn’t help it. She sobbed anyway, and couldn’t even say what she wanted to say.
“I know, Xastur. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay now.”
And this time, she’d even mean it.