Boots crunched the sand on either side of me as I was pulled back through the streets of Antissa. The heat made it hard to focus on much; how far the two officials pulled me or how long the pulling took. My legs kicked just enough underneath me to stop from being dragged along the ground, but the rest of me was goop. I was down a sandal too, but at least had managed to keep hold of the thing from my pocket. I’d be sick again soon.
The ground passed into shade, though it was only when the men began to speak above my head that I realised we’d stopped. ‘Taking him up the barracks,’ one said. ‘Puked on one of the banners.’
‘He what?’
‘Puked. Over the colours.’
A snort. ‘That’s a new one.’
I tried raising my head. There was a white wall in front, a gate, another official standing with a spear. My head dropped as someone puffed a sigh. ‘Look, just give him a once-over with the crop, easy enough. Don’t see why you’ve got to haul him up the barracks and all.’
‘He’s one of the new refugees off the border.’ As one of my captors said this, my jaw was pinched in a grip and my face pushed up for display. ‘See?’
The gatekeeper leaned in. This one had a black cape on, I saw. ‘Hm, best make sure then,’ he said in a more dutiful tone. My head flopped.
On they pulled me. Sand and dust ebbed away from clean cobbles that were hot on my bare foot. There were no merchants or haggling or heckles around here and the only animal sounds those of hooves clopping smartly. Buildings and balconies threw statelier shadows on the road and people passed in ones and twos. Steps took us up, then there was dimness, no more scorching sunlight bearing down, and walls touched orange by burning torches. More studs on leather and black capes moving past, and then a door that stood ajar. One of the men knocked firmly. ‘Come,’ a voice said.
The men pushed their way in, dragging me, then threw me down. As they immediately blocked the only way out of the room, I scampered to the first corner I could see, crouched and clenched my fist. That was an instinct – I wasn’t even sure what I was holding, or why.
The walls were grey here, adorned with shields and spears and other pole-arm weapons. A small, high window weakly lit a block-like desk where papers lay in stacks that either leaned or had toppled over. ‘Be brief, boys, please,’ grunted the sour-looking man who sat behind it, leafing pages.
‘Unruly child, sir. Vandal,’ said one of my captors.
‘Which one is he then?’
‘Both, sir.’
A cough. ‘Sure that’s all of him?’ The sour man flapped a page onto one of the toppled stacks, licked a finger, flapped another. ‘Why else should it take all of two guards to drag a scrawny whelp up to my desk?’
Not soldiers then. Guards.
The guard who had broken up my fight cleared his throat. ‘Just a vandal, sir.’
‘Just a vandal,’ sighed the desk-man. ‘Well, we can all sleep a little easier knowing that.’ He too had the accent of the people in the streets, though not as coarse. ‘Go on.’
‘He, er . . . we found him vandalising the colours of the Satrap, Captain,’ the guard informed him. ‘You know the banners on the northeast wall.’
‘Mm-hm.’
‘He’s one of the borderland refugees, sir,’ said the other guard. ‘Came in this morning. Their village—’
‘Left in ruins, I’m told,’ the desk-man interrupted. He looked up from his paper-flapping and straight into my eyes. ‘By the Rath that attacked it.’
I shied from the gaze.
‘That’s right, sir,’ said the guard.
Eyes still on me, the desk-man tapped a finger on a page, then set it down and leaned back in his chair. ‘Come here,’ he said.
The guards turned, leathers creaking. ‘Look alive, the Captain calls you!’
‘That’ll do, he heard me. There, see, he’s coming.’
I had no choice. There was no running or escaping from this man, not with both guards so near the door.
The floor was cold on my bare heel, racking my body with a shiver. Or maybe that was the thought of my home in ruins, a thought that now flooded my mind. I kept both fists tight as I stepped up to the corner of the desk and stopped, a safe distance from the guards. I looked at the face of the man they called Captain. It was square like his shoulders and his desk, bristle-cheeked and wide-nostrilled. Like a bull. His hair was silvering from black, and if his brown eyes were grim, they were a sleepy sort of grim. I saw them drop to my lip.
‘You’ve been fighting?’
I didn’t answer; knew the guards would do it for me anyway: ‘Attacked a boy in the street.’
‘District?’
‘North, sir.’
‘Gutterwaifs then,’ the Captain scoffed. ‘Likely provoked.’
The guards fell silent.
‘But the colours, eh?’ the Captain went on as if, really, it must be the last thing today. ‘Did you know that’s what they were?’ This was a direct question to me, so after a moment I shook my head, no, in reply. He grimaced: ‘What exactly did he do to them?’
Here it came again.
‘Puked on them,’ said the first guard.
‘Beg pardon?’
‘At least, was sick on them, sir. Made a right ugly mess.’
The Captain rubbed his chin, making it crackle. ‘I’m not understanding. Do you mean he was sick on the colours only after he vandalised them, or that his being sick was the vandalism in question?’
‘Second one.’
He looked at me again, seeming a little bewildered. When I met his eyes this time, I somehow knew what he would ask and got my answer ready. ‘What’s your name?’
I gave it: ‘Florian.’
‘Florian what?’
Not ready enough; I drew a blank. Did I have to be Florian anything-else? I stared at his chin, but when his eyebrows went up in expectation, said—‘Flint.’ It had been their name, Erik and Sarah’s; I’d keep it. Keep it for them. Still, it earned me a snigger from one of the guards. I didn’t see anything funny, so ignored it. So did the Captain, whose eyes now shifted to the door.
There was a sudden loud scratching; I looked around just as a large beast bounded into the room – a dog, tall and blue-grey with long legs. It batted its way past the door and darted straight towards me, lunging and nosing me hard in the face.
‘Tazen!’
At the shout it bounded back and came to heel beside the tall man who had also entered. A man in white. The guards straightened at his arrival and their Captain nodded from his seat. ‘High Commander.’
The man didn’t answer, but crossed to the far side of the desk with such elegance and poise that I couldn’t help but stare at him. He wore a scabbard on his belt. It was him. The white messenger—the soldier on the white horse who had come to our settlement and summoned us to Antissa. Jerome had said that he’d been waiting for our carts at some dry river on the way, but I didn’t remember that part. All I remembered of this man was that the last time I’d seen him, Erik and Sarah had been alive.
Without a word he now handed a small tube of paper to the seated Captain, while I gazed at the scabbard. I’d never seen one up close. Then I looked at his face; long, narrow, grave, his skin the colour of milky tea. It was framed by a headdress, the folds of which were held in place by a jewelled silver band. The jewel, blood-red.
Opening the tube and reading its contents to himself, the Captain spoke on a little absently. ‘I am . . . sorry about your village, uh . . . boy, but I can’t have it seen as permissible that an outsider . . . even a boy, uh . . . do insult of damage to the emblem of our Satrap.’ He looked up. ‘You understand.’
I didn’t really, so said nothing. The white messenger was eerily still as he stood there; only once did he move, to make the dog stop frisking about the guards’ boots, and even then all it took was a glance. The dog sat.
‘You’ll spend the night in one of the cells here in the barracks gaol,’ the Captain went on, suppressing a yawn, ‘and that will be an end of the matter. Next time, of course, less leniency will be shown you.’
The man in white cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me, the crime?’
And again . . .
‘Chucked his guts on one of the fortification banners out on the wall,’ said the Captain. ‘Mooncircle colours.’
There were some moments of thoughtful silence before the white messenger said, ‘I see,’ and then paused while the Captain carried on reading his tiny paper. ‘Could it not be he was ill?’
The seated man puffed, ‘Of course, Commander, but he’s a borderlander. I can’t be half-hearted. I’m certain the Viceroy would not have me—’
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
‘A refugee?’ said the white messenger, eyes wider now.
‘Yes, one of the new ones.’
Something leapt inside my body as the man they called commander looked directly at me. Down the width of the desk I could see his eyes were grey, much paler grey than his dog. Severe as they were still.
‘Captain, it is one thing to punish a child for foolish damage to a flag. It’s quite another to admit a border refugee to the High District when their residence in the city remains contentious.’ He darted a glance at the guards. ‘He should not have been brought here.’
‘My men simply—’
‘Your men were in error,’ said the white Commander more loudly. ‘It will draw attention.’
Still seated at his desk, the Captain dropped the paper and raised his palms. ‘Very well. The refugees are your business after all. Yours and the Viceroy’s. I’ll give due instruction to the guard-force.’
‘Please do. And be grateful that it was I who walked in on your interrogation, not Symphin. He is most adamant that nothing should tempt the Shield in this matter.’
His accent was even smoother and he spoke so slowly, almost a drawl. I felt power in that. He was important, that was easy; maybe more important than this Captain, but I also thought he looked younger. He began moving round the desk.
‘What of the charge then?’ said the Captain. I could feel my fate changing hands.
‘Charge?’ Suddenly huge, the white Commander stepped between the desk-front and the guards to seize my face by the jaw and jerk it sideways. Hard fingers. ‘How old are you, boy?’
‘Twelve,’ I managed through the squeeze, and looked past him to the dog, whose pink tongue lolled.
‘I’d have said younger. Ten at the oldest,’ he corrected me. ‘You would charge a boy of ten, Mondric? Wartime is having its effects on you, clearly.’
I was surprised to hear the Captain give a chuckle to this, his pen now scratching across the little tube-paper. ‘I’ll have you know I once relieved a lad just barely fifteen for throwing mud at those banners,’ he boasted.
At that, my face was shoved away, the white-robed back turning on me. ‘A Vedan no doubt, who should have known better,’ said the Commander.
‘There was camel shit in it if I re—’
‘This boy knows nothing of our ways, our strictures.’ The dog worshipfully watched its master re-circle the desk.
The Captain handed back the tiny paper-tube. ‘Well, as for wartime,’ he said, ‘we’re no longer at war, are we. We’ve the Viceroy’s word on that. And your own, if you’ll permit me.’
In the silence that followed, the white Commander slipped the tube into his sleeve. When the Captain spoke again, it was with less humour in his voice.
‘Refuge or no refuge, ekharan, I have order to protect. That is rightly my business.’
But the Commander didn’t seem to be listening to him. He pursed his lips in a low whistle that brought the dog smartly to his leg, and made to leave. ‘The boy will not be detained in your gaol,’ he said. ‘Search him if you must but then see to it that he is escorted to his proper quarters in the districts. Tomorrow morning, have your guards take him back to the wall, that he may himself wash off his treason.’
As the white Commander strode for the door, the Captain nodded a little order to his guards. Realising what it was, I retreated to the corner but the men grabbed both my arms, big hands all over my body as I tried twisting to escape. No amount of twisting could resist them. Soon enough they took my wrist and prized my fingers open.
For just a second, blank amazement crossed the fight-breaker’s face; his grip eased. Then he claimed the thing out of my hand and let me go. I watched it seemingly float away, still in his hand, until he set it on the edge of the desk. The room went still.
An oval object lay there, no larger than an egg. An egg slightly flattened to a disc. To my mind, anyway, it looked to be made of silver. But no silver I’d ever seen or ever heard of could do that.
That reflection. Every part of the grey room was captured on its surface: not just reflected, as by a mirror, but magnified, perfected, with more crystal clarity than a mirror even ten times its size. From the Captain’s frozen scowl between his papers, to the thinnest thread of sisal fibre worn by the guards, to the finely etched patterns on the handles of the weapons all the way up on the walls, to the insect—no, two insects—dancing in the light of that high window, to the grit between the floor-stones, to the orange of reflected torchlight from beyond the doorway where the white Commander had also stopped to look back – it was unnatural, surely impossible, just how completely it contained every detail around it . . . and beyond. My stomach turned again as I remembered the moment I’d pulled it out of my pocket on the city wall; how enormously the plains and the sky had opened; how that vastness had spun me with so much force I couldn’t bear it! Far past perfection, it had summoned back the borderlands and the night, the white Rath skin and black Rath eyes. Somehow more vivid in its mirror than it was in my own memory.
As I stood there in the corner, ten feet away, and looked at the thing, I could have counted every sheet of rough-stacked paper on that desk, all the bristles on the Captain’s chin, the tiny hairs sprouting from the mole just above his right eyebrow, the finest lines across his forehead. Which now creased deep as he frowned. ‘What the . . . what . . . is that?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ replied the fight-breaker guard, his voice distant. ‘Looks . . . expensive enough, though.’ He coughed, uncomfortably, I thought. ‘Reckon he nabbed it or something?’
‘Looks foreign is what it looks,’ said the other, sounding even more ill-at-ease.
‘A moment, Mondric, please.’ This from the white Commander. He crossed the room again, more briskly, with the dog at his heels and waved the guards to step aside. This time he simply extended a finger to the floor to sit the dog before he stopped. His hand hovered above the thing as if it were a worrisome spider. ‘Where did you get this?’ he said to me.
I wouldn’t say. No. Tell him nothing. What right had he or any of these people to know about the things from Sarah’s box? Because that’s what it was. That made it mine.
He swung his grey eyes at me. ‘Where did you get it?’
I frowned hard in full defence, but his intensity vanished. He touched the disc and picked it up, holding it near his face. I heard him exhale very lightly, and saw it too, in that mirror. The air at his mouth, I saw it move.
‘The Viceroy has one,’ he said, ‘exactly like it.’
‘Oh,’ the Captain grunted. ‘So what is it?’
‘He also does not know, I gather. I believe he thinks it to be of Lackish origin perhaps, some manner of evidence that tribes still roam regions of the Dustlands.’
While the dog panted loudly, the Commander ran a finger down the disc’s bevelled face. Magnified impossibly, I saw the textures of his skin in the reflection. And the guards behind him, looking away.
The Captain tapped his pen. ‘Does he. Well, where did the Viceroy get his one?’
‘I’ve never asked.’
‘Same thing exactly?’
‘Yes.’ The Commander’s finger moved beneath it now to stroke along the base. ‘Same size, same shape. Same . . . metal.’
The Captain sighed. ‘Well fancy that.’
‘Brittle arc,’ someone added.
I looked at the Commander, who must have said it, but with a sudden flick of sleeve he took a strip of cloth out of his robe and wrapped the disc up inside it. ‘Get rid of him,’ he ordered with a gesture at me. Suddenly I was the object in the room. ‘I don’t wish to see him or any other refugees in the Inner City again. This will go to the Viceroy. It may be of some interest. Tazen.’
Slipping it into some pocket of his robe, he made for the door a second time, dog up and close behind him.
Electric panic blazed inside me.
‘Give it back!’ I shouted.
The dog barked, silenced by a glance as the man turned back. His silver headpiece only just caught the light from the high window. His face was empty, just as it had been when he first entered. For as long as I could, I challenged the empty gaze. That thing was mine. A piece of home. Erik and Sarah. I wanted to scream their names at him but had yelled once now already and it had left him unimpressed, I could see. Pond-grey. That was the colour of his eyes.
Behind me the Captain’s tone was almost cautious: ‘You don’t think . . . the boy knows more of it than he’s telling? If, that is, the Viceroy’s interest in the piece extends that far.’
‘I don’t think the boy will be leaving Antissa either way,’ said the Commander. He pulled the door wide to let the dog out, then left the room.
‘You heard him, boys,’ said Captain Mondric to his guards, all interest gone with a last sigh. ‘No refugees in this district. Get him back to his shelter. See he cleans that banner in the morning.’
From his office they frog-marched me out of the barracks, into evening light. This time I went quietly, at least as far as the white wall and district gate. Then I pulled from their grasp, kicked off my other sandal and ran for it. I’d find my own way back.
----------------------------------------
Although the air had turned cool, dark was a long time off yet. Shops were closing, keepers drawing down their awnings or canvas. The streets were a little emptier, the boys and the ball thankfully gone when I got to the plaza. The fish, cloth and coal stalls were already closed and the metal shop was silent. A lantern hung above the doorway of the warehouse now, shedding light through shuttered panes that looked different from firelight.
Inside, the shadows of my people played with amber on the walls. There was still some weeping but it had gone much softer now as people warmed their bodies around a central firepit. Some sat and watched the yellow tongues, their tear-streaks shining. Others got ready to sleep, or were sleeping. Others still seemed to keep watch, as if not trusting this new city to stay outside just for tonight. I crept around the room, over the wide wooden shelves, to where Jerome sat perched like a gargoyle. He was one of those watchers, though not a very good one. When I touched him on the shoulder, he jumped. ‘Dammit, Florian!’ he cursed, a shouted whisper. ‘Don’t do that!’
I crouched beside him. ‘Sorry.’
‘Where were you?’
Sleepers stirred below the shelf-ledge we sat on. ‘Shh,’ I warned him.
‘Don’t shh me!’
‘Where’s Con?’ I asked, ignoring his protests. ‘I never made it to the healers.’
‘You’ve got a lotta nerve, you know that.’
‘And you’ve got some guts standing up to those boys,’ I retorted. ‘Could’ve used some help with that.’
‘I only got there when the soldier had you!’ he lied urgently.
‘Guard,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Not a soldier. A guard.’
But he only punched me in the arm.
‘So where’s Con?’
‘You’re not gonna tell me where you went?’ he pushed again.
‘Just explored a bit, okay.’ He probably knew I’d got in trouble, and if he didn’t, would find out in the morning anyway.
His eyes dropped to my lip. ‘Ooh, that kid really thumped you. Right over—’
‘I noticed,’ I snapped, batting his hand away from my mouth. ‘Is Con back yet or not?’
Jerome looked down from the ledge, nodding at a lump on the floor right below us. The face was covered by the blanket and a crutch was lying beside.
‘Is he . . .?’
‘Leg’s gonna hurt for a while but he’s got the stick,’ said Jerome. ‘Scared shitless when he got back and you weren’t here.’ He glared at me.
I rested my mouth on my hand and watched the lump until I saw the rise and fall of slow breathing. While Jerome rolled on his side and curled up into a ball, I let at least five unwanted memories dart through and out of my head. My belly groaned. ‘Any food?’ I asked.
‘None till morning,’ he mumbled back. ‘Missed it again. Just get some sleep.’
There was nothing else to do but try. And with just one blanket between the two of us, we had to share it top-to-tail. Sleep wasn’t easy. And when it came, it brought the dreams: the beasts, the blood and blinding terror, spinning in chaos around me. All so bright and so sharp and so clear . . . impossibly clear . . . caught in the mirror of that Disc.