Ecko Burning (4 page)

Somewhere, he could hear Eliza laughing like broken glass, surrounding him with a hundred sparking shards of mockery.
Ah, but there’s the choice, Ecko! If you want to leave the program and come home, then you’ll do as you’re told. You’ll play nice with your friends, eat all your greens and be in bed before 10 p.m. You’ll go sane, Ecko, go safe - you’ll learn to be
normal.

And Collator:
Chances of successful scenario currently rated at -

“Oh, you are taking the fucking
piss.”
His words were soft, but vicious. Both women looked at him, then at each other.

He
died
believing in you.

He found that he was holding Lugan’s lighter, cold and square, like an anchor. He was trapped. Not by some preordained path, some questing goal of necromancers and gold fucking coins - but by a new target, one that was as much anathema as it was unattainable.

You’ll learn to be normal.

He could see himself now, his own pale skin and red hair, his scrawny wire frame in a suit, his little Pilgrim tablet every morning...
I am happy in my servitude.

He wanted to scream, throw things, burn the fucking place down, but he held himself still.

Somewhere, in the darkest parts of his mind, somewhere deep enough that not even Collator could find it, an idea was beginning to take shape.

Something that would take that noose away.

Mildly, he said, “So - okay, we did this. Whadda we do now?”

“You’re running messenger,” Triqueta told him, “to Amos. Lord Nivrotar needs to know about this and it’s too complex to send by bretir.” She grinned. “Time to trade for your keep.”

“Christ.” His hand was cramping; the lighter was cold. He stood still for what seemed like an age, his chin up and his hood falling back, letting his face shift to the colours of the rising sun. “And - lemme guess - you’re comin’ with me.” It was a statement - he already knew the answer. “Just to make sure I don’t go AWOL.”

“We are,” Amethea said, grinning. “We’re going on a little river trip - Jade had a bargemaster make space.”

“A
boat?”
His flash of genuine horror made Triqueta chuckle.

“A boat.” Amethea said. “The city’ll give us what we need - think she can spare that much. And Redlock’ll catch us up -”

“No shit.”

“And I need to see my family,” Triqueta said. “Ress and Jayr went to the Amos Library, looking for stuff about centaurs. I’ve missed them. I want to know what they found.”

Harvest time had come to the great city of Fhaveon. Celebration danced drunken through her zig-zag streets.

Harvest was a time of thankfulness, of rejoicing in family and abundance, of celebrating the incredible wealth of autumnal colour that washed the open Varchinde. The crafters and the traders, the storytellers and the warriors of the city amassed their wares and moved to their tithehalls, waiting for the incoming wagons of meat and bone and clay and leather. The bookkeepers of the Terhnwood Harvesters’ Cartel went through their notes and records for the previous return, and stole down to the city’s sanctuary to assure themselves that the security stockpile, hoarded against crop failure or extreme winter weather, was enough to guarantee them safety.

Harvest was also a time of sorrow, for the colours in the grass meant it would die, that the vast emptiness of the Varchinde would be scoured back to barren soil and bared rock and scattered scrub, waiting, bereft, until the spring growth came again. Everything the people of the Varchinde needed for the winter had to be gathered when the double harvest moons rose from the eastern sea. If they failed to gather enough to survive, there was no contingency plan.

Like the ancient rule of Heal and Harm, the harvest was both life and death - and it told that there must be balance in all things. The people of the city’s manors knew this in their blood and bone.

In the city herself, though, where the wild colours of the grasses were hung from garland-banners and woven into decorations, such traditions were sometimes easy to forget.

Surrounded by the noise of Fhaveon’s bazaar, an ageing scribe sat beneath a pale awning, spectacles perched upon his nose. His parchment was pinned to its easel by ingenious fibre clips. He drew with a deft hand - not letters, but swift curves and features, charcoal lines of body and face. The parchment flapped occasionally as the wind chased through the tent, but the scribe continued with his work.

Above him, upon one of his upright support-poles, a long pennon fluttered like a live thing, snapping in the salt wind. It bore a symbol advertising his skill to the people of the topmost streets of Fhaveon, the people who had left kiln and needle and hall and workshop to enjoy the festival. The scribe’s name was Mael, and he was a well-known character of the sunlit street-sides. Once, he had kept records for the hospice, but he was too restless for the methodical work. Now, he made his living raising a smile and a gift from those who watched him draw.

Around him, Fhaveon’s decorous walls and shining, tumbling waterways shone with rare autumn warmth. Wreaths of grass, studded with berries like drops of blood, adorned the stonework proclaiming the city’s double holiday with indulgent glory. More garlands, red and yellow and umber and ochre, wove through the wide streets, covering the city’s topmost heights as if they’d grown from the very clifftop.

Beneath them was the wine and food bazaar: stalls that offered gifts and jewellery, most made from ubiquitous and gloriously decorated terhnwood, some few pieces of real ravak, red-metal worked by the craftsman of the distant Kartiah. Gamblers called to passers-by to roll their dice, try their fortune. Storytellers flourished and boasted. Animals were here, too: exotic beasts in embroidered collars, doomed and squeaking esphen, bright birds in cages. The smells and the noise were incredible.

Harvest time - the celebration of the Varchinde grass.

And a perfect time for the city’s new powers to take advantage.

The crowds stirred and eddied. In among them were performers, troubadours and jongleurs, attracting gatherings when they paused for a song and a jest. The tales they performed were carefully selected: the lineage and beauty of the new Lord Foundersdaughter, the necessity of trade and terhnwood, the long wisdom of the Council of Nine. Some sang of lively rogues and troublesome maidens, older tales chosen for both fiction and familiarity, each accompanied by the pulse of the drum or the skirl of pipes.

The people gave them food and wine, sometimes trinkets.

Sometimes things rather less savoury.

At the heart of the revelry, a huge, abstract mosaic lay basking under the fat, autumn sun. Here, the wind was keen and the area was free from the bazaar; here, the people broke away from the crowds to eat and wander, to watch the sparkling fountains and look above them at the tip of the city, the ten shining windows of the High Cathedral, the valour of the Founder’s Palace, both flawless against the azure sky. Up there, looking away from the plaza and out over the sea, stood the imperiously motherly statue of the GreatHeart Rakanne, keeping her eye upon the silent shores of Rammouthe Island.

The Lord’s face was blunted and salt-rimed with age, though its decay could not be seen from below. Had she but turned, behind her and to her left, she could have looked down into one of her own creations, one of the joys of the city - her sunken, half-circle theatre. This morning, the tiers of seats housed a scattering of people, shaded by canvas roofings, like horizontal sails, that flapped tightly in the breeze. The theatre was behung with flying pennons of more woven grass - like all the others, they would be burned when the evening’s dancing began. For now, though, they framed the single herald and the pair of sparring fighters that occupied the stage.

The harvest tourney, a long city tradition, had begun.

Ousted combatants wandered freely back into the stalls and the roadways, garments stuck to their bodies with sweat, garlands hung about their necks. Some sought wine in solace or celebration; others eyed the kaleidoscope of wonders on offer, and plotted how to win in the following return.

One of these paused by the awning of Scribe Mael.

Intent on his sketch, Mael did not look up as something large blotted out the sunlight. He was putting the finishing touches to a picture that was unmistakably the new Lord Foundersdaughter, her face petulant, her curves overstated, the grasslands behind her rippling under a dramatically stormy sky. It was accurate enough to show Mael’s artistic talent, cutting enough to be funny, funny enough to ease the inherent disrespect.

Several people were tittering behind their hands, but as they saw the fighter approach, they stopped and sidled away.

Eventually Mael glanced around, saw that his audience had gone, and scowled.

“You damned great oaf, Saravin,” he said.

“I’ll have you hauled in. Look at that picture.”

The two men had been friends for more than thirty returns, one settled in the hospice records room, the other roaming the city’s tithed farmlands as one of Fhaveon’s few warrior freemen, a sort of one-man Range Patrol.

Mael pulled the picture from the easel, and handed it over.

“Here, keep it if you want.”

Saravin took it, grinned. “You trying to get me in trouble?”

The scribe stood up from his stool to stretch his back. He was a small, slim man, stooped from returns of peering at manuscripts, and lately framed with a faint atmosphere of nervousness. Beside him, Saravin was as big and as furry as a northern bweao. The contrast was marked, but there were similarities in body language, in inflexion, which marked their very long friendship - in many ways, they’d grown up together.

“Her Lordship going to show her face, later?” Mael asked. “Join her party?”

Saravin eyed the picture. “Doubt it. Reckon her days of freedom are over, poor love.”

“Love?” Mael sniffed, began to tidy up the inside of the tent. “Love is for -”

“Poets and fools, I know.” For a second, the big man’s grin broadened. “I taught her everything I could - think my days are just as done as hers.” The grin vanished below his beard. “Being... deniable has its downside.” He eyed the picture thoughtfully. The young Lord’s hair and skirts flowed free in the wind - the same wind that rippled the autumn grass, that was even now -

Mael grunted humorous assent with an edge of resentment that caused Saravin to frown and study his friend more closely, but the scribe shooed the warrior from the front of his stall, followed him out. He began to let down the flickering, shifting curtain.

“And how did your heat go?”

Saravin chuckled. “Was drawn against Lithian, first thing this morning.” Saravin cast his eyes above, then his grin broadened and he winked. “I’m through again. Next bout this afternoon.”

“Interesting,” Mael said.

A collection of young, off-duty soldiers knocked into them, spilling wine from skins and goblets. They caught Saravin’s eye and muttered an apology before moving off into the crowd once more, spluttering with laughter.

“You think you’ll get it?” Mael said. Again, that hint of annoyance.

With a quick, impish chuckle completely at odds with his size, Saravin shrugged.

“Get what?” the warrior said, with a wink. “Foundersdaughter’s Champion? Rhan’s empty seat on the Council of Nine? Can’t think what you mean.”

Mael hissed, and Saravin chuckled again, a brief, sweet sound, oddly boyish. Then he lowered his voice, and said, “Someone has to do something, Mael. If not me, then...” He shrugged, let it tail away.

The curtain was stuck, and Mael tugged at it harder, speaking as he pulled.

“This is all madness. Haven’t you heard? There’s something wrong with the harvest.” The old scribe glanced up at the garlands - a veneer of hope that concealed a leering, unspoken fear. How much grass had been wasted in their making - in the celebratory burning that would come? “The city’s still in shock from Rhan’s death, we should be in
mourning.”
His eyes flicked to the palace above them, back. “So much is happening around us...” For a second, he glanced about them at the revelry. When he spoke again his voice contained a knife. “I can’t find my feet, gather my thoughts.”

Saravin chuckled again. “You? The young prodigy who’s unlawful learning once cured a warrior doomed?”

Mael frowned at the memory, said nothing. He tugged harder and suddenly the curtain came free, closing off the tent with a sharp slide that nearly made the old scribe stumble. Saravin caught him easily, then indicated a long pennon that flew from one side of the plaza.

“You need an ale.”

“You’re fighting this afternoon - get drunk and you’ll be a warrior doomed all over again.”

“I’ll stick to water. Save you saving me twice. You’re a bit long in the tooth to be remembering those forbidden books now, old friend.”

“Don’t you ‘old friend’ me.”

Saravin laughed.

They wandered slowly in the direction of the pennon, pausing to admire the stalls they passed on their way. The stallholders nodded at them, knowing both of them well enough by sight.

“Pure terhnwood resin, straight from the plantation itself. Craft with this, it’s smoother than a maiden’s...”

“First round’s always a winner, seek your fortune...”

“Paints and colours, inks and powders! Dyes all the way from Southern Padesh...”

The scribe hesitated for a moment to look at the colours offered by the dyer’s stall.

“This is all crazed,” he said, his attention on the display before him. “You mark my words.”

“Prophesying doom again?” The stallholder, it seemed, knew Mael’s ways. “What ails you this time, Brother?”

The scribe shot a glance at Saravin, but the warrior had moved to the next stall along the row, where he was chatting with another of the morning’s fighters. Saravin slapped the woman sympathetically on her tanned shoulder.

Mael turned back to the dyer, picking up a fragment of coloured cloth.

“I’m afraid,” he said. “Afraid of the future. And afraid of -” He caught himself, but his eyes must have flicked to the palace - or to the statue - because the stallholder leaned forwards.