Si Glyph [https://i.imgur.com/mHhTdaF.png]

Sark’s chapel was a dull grey stone box with a slate roof, only distinguished from the surrounding houses by the dark granite pillars guarding the door. A ladder leaned against the wall, ready for them.

Simon squinted at the roof. ‘So where’s this hole?’

Sam pointed to a spot near the ridge, where a few tiles had slipped.

‘How in Light’s name did you get up there?’

‘I got on the rain barrel at Ma Hagger’s, then jumped and grabbed the drainpipe. From there it’s easy.’

‘For you, perhaps.’ Simon considered the route, and had to conclude it was possible—at least, for someone agile and fearless. Sam was braver than he’d thought. Or stupider. ‘Well, this time, you can use the ladder.’

He steadied the ladder while Sam climbed. Once Sam reached a secure seat on the ridge and set the tool bag beside him, Simon followed, taking his time on the ladder. His stiff leg didn’t appreciate the exercise and he didn’t want to slip and damage the roof, or himself.

Though the chapel was only a little taller than the surrounding houses, the ridge felt dizzyingly high. From here, Simon could see over the wall that encircled the town and trace the straight line of the Athanor road as it crossed the plain into the grey distance.

Sam banged his heels on the slates. ’Are you really going to Athanor?’

‘I think I must.’ Simon took a deep breath. The north wind blew straight off the ice wastes, clean and bitingly cold without the shelter of walls around him.

He’d dreamed last night—a nightmare, though not the usual one. The details had faded, but the oppressive sense of dread remained like a warning. Was it right, to go to Athanor? It felt wrong, somehow, a transgression against limits set for him by powers beyond his understanding or control, like the sins the priest preached of in the chapel every Holy day.

And that was strange, for Simon had been raised in the Gnostic faith, which had nothing to say of sin or punishment. When he’d first arrived in Sark, he’d been shocked to find the miners and their families were Sammael-worshippers. To think, in this day and age, people prayed to an actual god and feared his judgement on their petty misdemeanours! Later he’d understood their beliefs, crude as they were, offered a necessary comfort to lives that were hard and too often cut short by accidents and illness. The abstract tenets of Gnosticism weren’t for Sark. The miners didn’t want to transcend the human condition, just survive it.

His own wife had been a Sammael-worshipper, and Simon had never argued religion with her. His own Gnostic beliefs were more formality than fervour; his mother’s affliction had soured his interest in religion.

The cold dampness of the slates seeped through his trousers. He shivered, realising his mind had drifted. ‘Where’s this hole then, Sam?’

Tiles had slipped, exposing wooden beams rotten with age and damp, which Sam had put his foot through. Not as large a hole as Simon had feared, and not difficult to repair. Simon got Sam started then sat back to supervise.

Sam, engrossed in his carpentry, smiled as he worked, and Simon felt a pang of guilt. He so rarely spent time with Sam, or even talked to him, and perhaps that was the root of the boy’s wildness. That and his mother’s death, which couldn’t be helped, but he should try harder with Sam.

In his own childhood, there had been tutors, teachers, nursemaids, constant attention. His father had been a distant figure, and his mother—well, she’d been there, sometimes. Yet his father had always been central to his life, someone to respect and admire, and fear too. He would have obeyed him in anything without question.

It came to him then, sitting chilled and stiff on the chapel roof, that he’d been wrong about his religion. He had been taught to worship a god, and that god was House Oryche. The House and the Lord of the House were the Power he feared to offend. And the House was many things—power, wealth, family, home—but not a god, never any sort of god. He had nothing to fear from them. He owed them nothing. They had exiled him, not for anything he had done, but for his father’s sins.

He gazed east, toward Athanor, and the north wind filled him with icy clarity. Sark was dying, that was unavoidable. The town held no future for him or his family. It was time to go. He would take his family to Athanor, and they would make a new life there, with or without the approval of House Oryche.

The last wagon train of the season was late that year. For four long days, Sark’s urchins perched half-frozen on the town wall, vying for the first glimpse of the thirty mammut-hauled wagons snaking along the road.

But finally it had come, carrying grain, dried fish, and root vegetables to keep Sark alive through the winter. Other long-awaited essentials too: news and post from Athanor, cloth to make clothes, coin to pay miners wages, pots and pans, boots and nails.

Three days later, the train was preparing to leave with its Athanor-bound cargo of tin ore.

Simon stood with his family, watching the miners load the last ore onto the wagons. Even in those few minutes, his hands grew cold. He clapped his mittens together and wriggled his fingers against the fur lining, for all the good it did. His breath froze in the still morning air. The fur-swaddled men shovelling ore each carried their own cloud and the humped backs of the mammut loomed like brown islands in a sea of fog.

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And this was only the start of winter.

A wagon train like this one had brought Simon to Sark: a twelve day journey through bleak wilderness, yet he remembered none of it—only cold and misery too deep to bear. At journey’s end, he had stood here, surrounded by the same stench of mammut and mammut dung, shivering in his too-fine city clothes. Mourning clothes, for his father’s death, for even in disgrace, the Oryche family must observe propriety.

He couldn’t recapture now what he had thought of Sark then. Familiarity had washed away those first impressions of dirt and poverty, leaving only the dull, freezing horror as he realised this was his new home. He had nothing left: no family, no roof to call his own, no belongings but what he carried, no future but what he might make.

Yet he’d been certain, even then, his family would not abandon him forever. After all, he was Simon vai Oryche. In a month, or six months, or a year, they would recall him to Athanor, his father’s crime would be forgiven and he could resume his life.

It had taken nearly dying for him to see the truth: House Oryche did not care if he lived or died. He was already dead to them.

He glanced at his waiting family, huddled in their new winter coats. ‘If you’re ready, you can board and get out of the cold. I have to speak to Afsen.’

‘Ready,’ Nana sighed and shook her head. ‘A whole side of salt cod. Given away! And the pickles. I don’t see why we couldn’t have waited to the spring. Such a hurry to pack, and I’m sure I forgot a great deal.’

‘In Athanor,’ Simon said, ‘you can have all the cod and pickles you want.’

She sniffed. ‘Not half as good, I doubt. What do I want with Athanor, at my time of life? This is my home. Why can’t I stay? The neighbours said they’d help, not that I need help, I’ve looked after meself all my life.’

‘We discussed this.’ Simon did his best to swallow his irritation. The old woman was scared to leave Sark, though she’d never admit it. ‘You want to be with your grandchildren, don’t you?’

‘We couldn’t manage without you, Nana.’ Lorie smiled. ‘Or your pickles. Shall I carry your bag?’

Nana gazed back at the house where she’d lived most of her life. Tears shone in her eyes, and Lorie and Sam, who had been so excited for the last week, seemed hardly more cheerful. Their faces, framed by the hoods of their new fur-lined winter coats, were pale and miserable.

They ought to be delighted. What was there in Sark, for any of them? To escape before the winter too, to be out of the freezing dreariness of Sark, to have light and warmth and the wonders of civilisation to look forward to—they ought to be happy.

‘I must have a word with Afsen,’ Simon said. ‘I won’t be long.’

He walked round two sides of the square, skirting the wagons and mammut and workers with their barrows.

Afsen saw him approach. ‘There you are, Simon vai Oryche. You are ready?’

‘Almost.’

‘I’m glad for you. You’ll do what you can for us, I know, but Sark is dying. In a few years, there’ll be nothing here. Nothing but ice and a hole in the ground.’

Sark never had been much more than that. ‘Afsen, I need the draft against House Oryche, my savings.’

‘Of course. You won’t forget us, will you, in Athanor? We rely on you.’

‘I’ll do my best. Beyond that, I can make no promises.’

Two men shouldered their way through the workers, heading for Afsen. Both were bearded and wrapped in layers of furs, carrying large packs. The shorter man limped badly on his left leg. He dragged along with him a shorter, slimmer figure, similarly dressed, but masked and with bound hands. Behind the odd group ambled a large grey mastiff dog.

Simon judged they were hunters or fur traders: they had that feral look, bloodshot eyes squinting from seamed, wind-tanned faces.

They approached and stopped. The taller man eyed Afsen. ‘You’re the mine-manager?’

‘For my sins. You are?’

The man grinned, showing black-stained teeth. ‘Chase. My brother Nyl. Fur traders. Hoping to hitch a ride to Athanor with your wagon train. We can pay.’

‘And this?’ Afsen nodded toward the masked captive.

‘Our cousin,’ Chase said. ‘Poor kid’s demon-spelled. We’re taking her to Athanor for the cure.’

The masked figure didn’t move when she was mentioned. She stood quiet in the grip of the man Nyl, head hanging.

Simon doubted she was truly demon-possessed. The unfortunate girl was likely insane, as were most claimed cases of possession. Better for her, if so: exorcisms as often killed as cured, or worse, left the victim an empty, gibbering shell.

Afsen shrugged. ’If the drivers will have you, it’s no business of mine. Come, I’ll introduce you.’

‘Hold on.’ Simon grabbed Afsen’s arm. ‘The draft. You told me you’d written it.’ Twenty years of savings, and it was little enough, but it might be all they had to live on in Athanor.

Afsen stopped. He patted his pockets. ‘Yes, yes, I have it. Patience.’

The fur traders loitered. Their dog stared at Simon, dark eyes fixed on him with un-animal-like intensity. It was a huge muscle-heavy beast, big enough to take on a dire wolf or bear, its face criss-crossed by old scars. It growled.

‘Maul,’ said the man named Chase. ‘Quiet.’

The dog flinched and subsided.

‘Here it is.’ Afsen dragged a bundle of papers from his pocket. ‘Good luck to you, my friend.’

They walked away, leaving Simon to scan the document Afsen had drawn up. It seemed in order, so he tucked it into the inside pocket of his coat.

‘Nasty looking beast, that dog.’

Simon started at the unexpected voice behind him, but it was only Cal. ‘What do you want?’

‘Lorie asked me to find you. The wagon drivers want the passengers to board.’

Simon glared at him. He’d caught Cal loitering near the house last night. ‘Just passing,’ he’d said, as if that was likely. He didn’t think there was anything between the boy and Lorie—surely not, at least not on Lorie’s part—but it made him uncomfortable all the same. ‘Thank you,’ he said grudgingly.

Simon strode back across the square to rejoin his family. ‘Lorie, have you been talking to Cal? I told you I don’t like him around.’

‘What’s wrong with Cal? He’s brighter than you think. He can read and write.’

Which, in Sark, made him an intellectual. A good thing they were leaving before the girl got it into her head to marry the lout. ‘Is the luggage loaded?’

Sam nodded. ‘I saw to it. Who were those men you were talking to?’

‘They were talking to Afsen, not me. Just fur traders. They may be on the train.’

‘I hope not,’ Nana said. ‘Rough looking lot. What are they up to? Nothing good, I should think.’

The ore-loaders had finished their work and now the two drivers strolled from wagon to wagon, patting each mammut on the trunk. The five-ton beasts rumbled bass complaints. The chains that harnessed them between the wagons rattled.

‘I don’t know,’ Simon said. ‘It’s not our business anyway.’

He took a last look around, a last glance at where he’d met his wife, the streets they had walked on, the graveyard where she was buried. Twenty years separated him from the young man who had stepped from the wagon train into the frozen mud of Sark. Years of love, marriage, children, work—work he was proud of, for because of him, many men lived who would have died. He had been important in this small place, and valued.

He ought to feel sad to leave, but in his heart he found only emptiness tinged with irrational guilt.

‘Sark has been your home,’ he said. ‘Of course, you’ll miss it, and you’ll miss the friends you had here, but you must think of the future. Soon we’ll be in Athanor, and you’ll see this was the right choice.’

They didn’t look convinced.

Simon sighed. He really hoped he wasn’t lying to them, for all their sakes.