Blood Storm: The Second Book of Lharmell (11 page)

It was tempting to tell him it didn’t matter, I wouldn’t ask again, please don’t leave me behind. But pride is a stubborn thing, and it reared suddenly through my wretchedness. Maybe I didn’t need to know – but I should at least know why I didn’t need to know.

‘Perhaps –’ I said, hesitating, ‘perhaps if you gave me a reason for keeping things from me, I might understand. I might not need to know.’

‘Besides the fact that they’re my secrets and have nothing to do with you or our undertaking?’

I nodded.

He sighed, and his eyes searched the horizon. ‘There are things I’ve done that are painful to speak of, and even less pleasant to hear.’

‘Things that happened when you became a harming?’

‘Yes.’

I felt some of my frustration slip away like the sand through my fingers. I could understand that. Hadn’t I kept my confusion and terror to myself for as long as I could? I was still unable to tell my own sister the truth about what I was.

‘I don’t want to be left in Amentia,’ I said.

‘I don’t want to leave you there.’

With these words the tightness left my chest, and I discreetly blinked away tears. ‘I won’t ask any more,’ I said. ‘And I won’t follow you. They are your secrets. But . . .’

He glanced at me. ‘But?’

‘But if you should feel like talking, I’m well equipped to be understanding. Being a harming myself.’

He brushed sand from his fingers. ‘You are probably right.’ He stood, offering his hand to help me up. ‘But that doesn’t make the speaking any easier. Come on. We’ve got things to do.’

I took his hand and he pulled me to my feet. ‘You’re right. It is beautiful,’ I said, looking at the city lit by golden light. It was just as he’d described. ‘Do you think you’ll come home for good one day?’

Rodden looked long and hard at the city. ‘This isn’t my home any more.’ He turned to the desert
again and nodded at the wagons. ‘Those are the Jarbin.’

The Jarbin. I felt a thrill run through me. These were the people who would give us access to bennium. ‘Do you know them?’

‘Not personally. Shall we go and talk to them?’

Together we walked down the dune towards the troupe, and I was content to let secrets lie.

For the moment, at least.

NINE

T
he glassblower’s shop became a theatre at night, a bright hot coal in the centre of the city. Rodden and I gathered with the locals to watch the show. The meeting with the Jarbin had gone well, Rodden slipping easily into the dialect. We would be leaving with them in the morning.

The workshop, a twig-and-mud roof on posts, was lit by an enormous furnace at the rear and many coloured-glass lanterns. The audience gathered around sweet-smelling pipes that were placed here and there, tall as a child and made of brilliant brass. Men sucked on nozzles and blew reams of apple- or strawberry-scented smoke, always with one eye on the glassblower.

We chewed on flat bread wrapped around spiced
potatoes, and watched. The sun had set and the air was cooler now, and I had a scratchy woollen shawl gathered about my shoulders.

A boy worked the bellows, exciting the flames into a roar. The furnace was closed but the doors glowed red-hot at the edges where the seals met. The glassblower limbered up, cracking his knuckles and arranging his tools on a rag. He picked up a clay pipe about as long as my arm, checked it for cracks and then peered through it at the crowd like it was a telescope. His face was serious, but I saw a twinkle in his eyes.

He barked a command at his apprentice, who leapt for a rag and eased open the first door. I was yards away but I felt the heat of the fire blast my face. The glassblower eased the clay pipe in and twirled it like he was gathering honey on a spoon. Still twirling, he took the pipe out and turned to the crowd. We watched, mesmerised, as he lowered the glowing red ball of molten glass onto a marble slab and began rolling back and forth, shaping it into an elongated bulb.

He barked another command and the apprentice dashed forward and put a damp pad of paper into the master’s hands. They switched places, and the boy knelt and blew into the tube while the man
shaped the growing vessel with the wet paper pad. Steam and smoke billowed up around him.

At the glassblower’s command, the boy put the glass into the second chamber of the furnace – which seemed even hotter than the first, if it was possible – while the glassblower strewed bits of coloured glass on the marble slab.

The pipe was now back in the master’s hands and he rolled the glass in the blue chunks on the table. The pair repeated the process, blowing, shaping and reheating, until they had a brilliant blue vessel two feet long and a foot across suspended on the end of the pipe. With a set of shears the smith severed it from the pipe and the boy placed the glasswork in the third chamber of the furnace.

The glassblower gave a curt nod to the crowd and after a smattering of applause they began to disperse.

Rodden passed his bread to me and stepped forward to speak with the craftsman. I watched as they moved to one side of the shack where an enormous crate stood and Rodden eased off the lid. He brought out a sphere covered in rags, cradling it with two hands. Unwrapping it, he revealed a glass ball the size of his hand-span. After examining it, he held it aloft to show me.

They covered the crate and secured the lid, and stood talking a moment. Then the glassblower clasped Rodden about the shoulders and kissed his cheeks three times. They murmured to each other for a moment. Then, with a tight smile, Rodden said his goodbyes and made his way back to me.

‘Let’s get out of here,’ he muttered, taking his bread back from me and giving it to a clutch of cats that had gathered atop a wall.

‘You hardly ate,’ I protested.

‘Not hungry.’ He strode back towards our quarters, leading the way through the maze of streets.

‘You knew him,’ I said in the darkness, keeping to the edge of the laneways as I walked to avoid the muck that had collected in the middle of the street.

‘Yes.’ His voice was flat.

I guessed this was one of the secrets that I wasn’t allowed to pry into. I bit into my bread, tearing off a large chunk so I wasn’t tempted to ask the questions that burned on my tongue.

To a girl who had spent her life surrounded by snow and mountains and an ample water supply, setting out into the heart of the world’s largest, hottest,
driest desert seemed like a rash undertaking. In three directions, undulating white-gold dunes stretched to the horizon. The mid-morning sun beat down, and shimmering heat blurred the line between horizon and sky. I sat uneasily in my saddle, trying not to look back as Pol shrank behind us, giving me a peculiar feeling of vertigo. Rodden got seasick; it seemed I got desertsick. I was gripped with nausea at the thought of the city disappearing altogether.

Behind me, Rodden sat sanguine atop his desert mare. Leap paced in the leggy shadows of the horses, pupils shrunk to a thin line, eating up the sand with an easy gait. We were with the Jarbin, and the entire caravan stretched yards behind and ahead of me. There were a dozen wagons and scores of horses, and so many people that I couldn’t imagine getting to know all their names.

The sunburn I’d acquired while lost at sea was starting to peel and fizzed painfully in the desert sun. I kept my white robes wrapped about me, not allowing even an inch of skin to be exposed. I’d been offered a seat in a covered wagon with a handful of Jarbin girls. Rodden, to my annoyance, had told them my royal title as we’d milled about on the dew-damp sand that morning. I’d endured several minutes of exaggerated curtseying and tittering
before, teeth gritted, I’d mounted my horse. Now, as I sweated and squinted in the sun, I regretted my decision. I could see the Jarbin girls chattering to one another, shaded and comfortable.

Our caravan reached the crest of a dune and began to descend. I felt Pol disappear as my horse picked its way down the slope. The tors tugged my insides, whispering the distance I’d travelled. I tried to ignore what my eyes and mind-map told me: I was far, far from home.

None of the Jarbin spoke Brivoran. Rodden was deep in conversation with the leader of the tribe, a young but grizzled fellow with a theatrical air. He gesticulated to Rodden as they rode side by side, reins forgotten in his lap as he described something in a wild manner. Rodden nodded, added a word here and there, and then the pair burst into raucous laughter.

I grimaced and turned my gaze elsewhere. Griffin was sitting on my wrist, determined to stay as close as possible while ignoring me at the same time. I was not the only one, it seemed, who grew cranky about being left out. Having spent the last few days being left at the inn while Rodden searched the city, I searched for Rodden, and Leap courted all the queens within a two-mile radius, she was inclined to be annoyed.

I eyed the buzzards overhead, the only shapes in a barren sky. The huge birds rode the thermals rising from the desert sands on lazy black wings. They followed our passage all day and I found their company ominous.

That night when we stopped to make camp, I collected a mound of blankets and tried to make my bed under the stars. I was tired and stiff, and wanted nothing more than to be alone. The Jarbin girls laughed at me. They laughed, it seemed, at everything. Rodden explained that it was too cold to sleep out in the desert, and I would be soaked by the falling dew. I was bundled in with the girls instead and they were as raucous as parrots late into the night; more so, I suspected, for having a mute audience. There were three of them, two who shared one pallet and one who shared the other pallet with me. I had asked their names in the few words of Jarbin that I knew on three occasions but they spoke so rapidly that I couldn’t decipher the foreign syllables. It had become embarrassing so I’d stopped asking.

The days unfolded much like the first: mute on my part, boisterous on the Jarbins’. By day I rode my
horse at the rear of the train; by night I retreated into the wagon to pull a pillow over my head.

My one pleasure was watching the Jarbin at dusk. They were a joy to watch, able to accomplish things that I’d never even contemplated the human body was capable of; often dangerous things, like juggling fire or even swallowing it, and treading, barefoot, on tight wires they strung between the wagons.

But an evening came when I didn’t want to venture out even to watch the Jarbin. Instead I sat, arms wrapped about my knees, listening to the crackle of flames outside. I had an oil lamp for company and its soft yellow glow lit the painted interior. Leap sat at my feet, watching the moths dance before the light.

Practice usually ended after dusk, but tonight there was festivity in the air. Instead of settling quietly onto mats to eat the evening meal, the Jarbin rushed about and I could hear musicians tuning their instruments. My sleeping mates had changed into dresses that rattled with silver coins and tinkled with bells, their attire as noisy as themselves. Instead of the scratchy woollen poncho I usually donned of a cold evening, I’d put on a pair of the diaphanous pants that hung like a skirt and a matching shirt that hugged my ribs. It was a heavier version of the
attire I’d bought when first coming to Pol, made of burgundy wool and angora. I’d meant to join the others as soon as I’d changed, but now I sat on my pallet, hugging my knees, uncertain.

For today wasn’t like the other days in the desert, where I could sit quietly and lose myself in the antics of the colourful Jarbin. Today was my birthday. I was seventeen.

In this pale abyss the date meant little. It could just as easily have been yesterday or next week or not at all for all that it mattered here.

But I knew. And across the miles, Renata knew.

We were travelling further from Amentia every day, but I could feel its pull on my body as surely as I could feel the taut thread of the tors. I felt as if I was being torn asunder by my two fates, each one as hateful as the other.

There was a rapping on the door. ‘Are you decent?’

‘No.’

Rodden opened the door and stepped in. His black hair was neat and damp with water and he wore a shirt in the Jarbin style, with long cuffs and full sleeves. My heart flipped as I looked at him; desert life agreed with him. He was looking more handsome all the time. Tanned and vibrant in the
heat. I realised that every day on this journey could be one less that I would spend with him.

‘I said I wasn’t decent.’ I clutched my knees tighter with indignation.

‘You can’t lie to a harming.’ He frowned. ‘What are you doing in here?’

‘What does it look like?’

‘I’ve been waiting for you.’

‘What for?’

He sat beside me on the bed, reaching out to scratch Leap on the chin. ‘Your mother is a long way away.’

I looked at him in surprise.

He smiled. ‘Happy birthday.’

I was silent a moment. ‘How did you know?’

He raised a hand to the sky like a fortune-teller. ‘It was written in the stars.’

I punched his arm.

‘I waited until your sulking reached epic proportions.’

I punched him again.

‘Ow,’ he said, laughing. ‘All right, I asked Amis to find out from your sister before we left Pergamia. Are you coming out?’

‘No.’

‘Wait here, then.’ He disappeared outside.

‘I
said
I wasn’t going anywhere,’ I called.

He came back brandishing a long object wrapped in a black cloth.

‘What is it?’ I asked when he handed it to me. He sat beside me again and pulled Leap into his lap. My cat purred and rubbed silver fur all over Rodden’s black shirt, flexing his claws in delight.

‘A birthday present,’ he said.

‘I can see that. You shouldn’t have.’ I hesitated, the parcel resting on my knees. ‘Actually, you should. I’ve been entirely miserable since we left Pol and you’ve ignored me to be with all your new friends.’

He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘Have you made any attempt at all to learn the language?’

‘Yes. I asked those girls their names so many times but I couldn’t understand them. Why didn’t you teach me any Verapinian or Jarbin? You didn’t even tell me they spoke other languages here. I woke up in the sick tent and thought my brain had melted in the sun when I couldn’t understand anyone.’

‘Sorry. I was distracted. And worried that I’d made a mistake bringing you.’

‘Thanks.’

He reached for my hand and clasped it in his. ‘No, Zeraphina,’ he said, half-laughing. ‘You are
determined to think the worst tonight. I meant I was worried for your sake.’