Impossible Things (14 page)

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Authors: Kate Johnson

Tags: #General, #Romance, #Fantasy, #Warlord, #Fiction

BOOK: Impossible Things
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Kael stamped his feet. They squelched.

‘You know,’ he said, ‘there are people in the Empire who reckon being a warlord is all romance and excitement.’

‘The same people who’ve never heard of trench foot,’ Karnos said.

‘Or bog gators who can have your hand off before you’ve even seen them,’ Verak added.

Kael gazed at the mud-coloured shrubs, mud-coloured sky and mud-coloured water that passed for scenery in Palavio. ‘Why the hell would anyone want to be prince of this place?’

By dint of bribery, they’d added some local soldiers to the horde. This meant they were less likely to find their camp sinking into the mud, but Kael was never quite sure he could trust these small rivermen not to lead them to a patch of quicksand and let them drown. Or whatever the hell you did in quicksand.

‘I swiving hate this place,’ he muttered.

‘You said that about the New Lands,’ Verak reminded him, and Kael’s arms wrapped around his body in an involuntary reaction. He shuddered.

Verak and Karnos exchanged glances.

‘You sure you’re all right?’

‘Fine.’

Verak touched his shoulder, and Kael flinched away.

‘Yeah, you look fine.’

‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

Karnos said, ‘That girl in the tavern at that last place we stopped. She was all over you. Why didn’t you take her up on her offer?’

—the hands, the filthy invading bodies, the laughter, the hunger, the pain, the red silk dress, the devil promising he’d make it good for me—

‘Not my type,’ Kael muttered through clenched teeth.

‘Not your type,’ Karnos spluttered. ‘She was gorgeous!’

‘Anything with a pulse is usually your type,’ Verak added.

‘Not this time, all right? Gods.’ Kael turned and strode back to his tent.

‘What did Ishtaer do to you?’ Verak called after him.

Kael willed himself not to shudder. He failed.

‘Nothing that wasn’t done to her,’ he said.

‘Then there’s the symbol for a Seer,’ Sir Flavius said. ‘Many like to choose an eye or a variation thereof. Lady Celsa Luccia Aquilinia has an eye peeking out from behind a veil, combining the symbols of a Viator and Aspicio—’

‘Sir Flavius,’ Ishtaer interrupted, and paused to marvel at herself for doing so. ‘What do Viators do?’

‘Viatori,’ he corrected. ‘The correct plural is Viatori.’

‘In High Ilani,’ Ishtaer said, ‘but what about Common? I’m a Medicus, but everyone says Healer, and an Aspicio, but everyone says Seer, but with the Viatori …?’

Sir Flavius cleared his throat. ‘Might I ask your interest?’

Annoyance rose up in her. ‘I’ve spent all morning learning the correct way to describe a coat of arms I can’t even see, and learning the history of the Book of Names, and every time I say someone’s full name I get things in the wrong order—’

‘If you’re descended from a Chosen, his or her family name comes after yours if you’re male and before if you’re female. It’s very simple.’

‘Right, so if I’m learning all this stuff, why not something as simple as what the Viatori do?’

Sir Flavius was silent for a moment. Ishtaer wondered if she’d gone too far, but found herself curiously unafraid. She still had no idea what she’d really done to Kael at the Imperial Ball, but it felt to her as if she’d passed on some of her fear, her helplessness, the hideous heavy sensation of worthlessness. She felt lighter. Stronger. Much less afraid.

‘The most literal translation is
messenger
,’ Sir Flavius said eventually, and Ishtaer recalled Kael telling her to hire a Viator if she needed to contact him urgently. ‘Every Viator has a different skill set, much like every Seer having different powers, or every Healer having a different speciality. But most possess an ability to move extremely fast. We’re occasionally known as Runners. But stealth and silence play a big part. We’re good at hiding in the shadows, and listening. We can retain a huge amount of information. During the Third Battle of the Saranos, one Viator went behind enemy lines, memorised troop information about every single unit and relayed it not just to the general but all his colonels, majors and captains, word for word. The Saraneans were convinced the gods were against them as our victory was so complete.’

Ishtaer digested this. Was that what her mother had been doing in the Saranos? But … no. The war hadn’t even fully broken out until after Ishtaer had left the islands, a full fifteen years later. Eirenn had told her how the islanders had cut themselves off from the Empire, had rejected Imperial rule and eventually started blockading ports and sinking ships.

Kael had been one of the Warriors fighting on behalf of the Empire. If only he’d come a day earlier, or found her ship, or …

She shook herself. Dwelling in the past would do nobody any good.

‘I remember your mother,’ Sir Flavius said quietly. ‘That’s why you’re asking, isn’t it? She was a Viator, and a very good one. When Saria Secunda was sent on a mission, you got the results you wanted, and fast.’

‘Except her last one,’ Ishtaer said.

‘Yes. Intelligence-gathering. Deep undercover.’ He paused again. ‘Believe me when I say nobody knew she was expecting you. Not even your father. It’s my belief she kept it quiet so she could continue her mission. The intelligence we received was extremely useful …’

‘Worth losing her for?’ Ishtaer asked, her voice trembling a bit.

Sir Flavius merely said, ‘She knew the risks.’

Ishtaer got up and walked out before she did something she’d regret.

Theoretically, she outranked the vast majority of Chosen, who in turn outranked any other member of the Citizenry, who in their own turn outranked the vast number of freeborn and plebeian residents of the Empire. Theoretically. But she still didn’t expect that attacking Sir Flavius for letting her mother die was a particularly good idea.

Brutus headbutted her hip as she walked. Was it simply the confidence of having a large, potentially lethal dog by her side that had changed things? Or had that exchange with Kael actually done something to her?

She heard Marcus Glorius approach, and tensed, but he just walked on by.

Sleep didn’t come easily to Ishtaer that night, her head full of what-ifs and if-onlys. The parents she never knew tried to take nebulous form in her mind. A dark-haired woman, pale and lovely, her features indistinct, fading into blackness no matter how fast Ishtaer ran to keep up with her. Snatches of a children’s song floated through her mind …
run run run, as fast as you can, you can’t catch me, I’m the invisible man
 … and a wobbly, distorted image of a young girl with dark hair and skin and startling, unnerving blue eyes. The same eyes that looked out from her father’s face, strained and unhappy, calling, ‘Ishtaer, Ishtaer!’

She sat up abruptly on the cold floor, the images vanishing into blackness. Brutus grumbled as she stretched past him for the beaker of water on the nightstand, and drank. They weren’t dreams, weren’t visions, just miserable imaginings from an orphan child.

‘When I was a child,’ she told Brutus, ‘every kid in the workhouse would imagine who their real parents were. Everyone knew we were the unwanted kids of convicts and whores and runaways, but it never stopped us wishing, believing secretly, that our real parents were lords and ladies, that we’d been stolen away and that our real parents were searching for us.’

Brutus licked her face. He didn’t seem to care a fig who his real parents were.

‘And I always knew it was a fantasy. I never thought they would be searching for me, or I figured that if they were they would be as potless as everyone else I knew.’

Brutus thumped his tail.

‘Not that it does me, and I use this term in its fullest sense, the blindest bit of good.’

She lay back down, determined not to think about it, yet sure she
would
every time her new name was mentioned. Mallia Saria Ishtaer ex Saraneus Medicus Militis Aspicio prior Inservio.
Former slave
. That name told her whole life, if anyone cared to listen to the end.

She closed her eyes, and this time when the visions returned, she knew they weren’t just dreams.

Kael looked up at the high walls of the stockade and nodded grimly. He was fighting a disparate bunch of people who leapt out of nowhere, attacked either Kael or each other or both, and then disappeared again. After a disastrous few days, he’d gathered together his brightest men and the least insane of the local leaders, and hashed out a plan.

The insurgents needed food, weapons and recruits. They could only do that if the local populace was on their side. To this end, Kael had developed a policy of being open and honest with the locals: he rode into town – or more often, given these damn marshes, rowed into town – and paid over the odds for whatever he needed. He’d offered employment to the populace, protection from their enemies, and plentiful food for those who were running out, which was most of them.

In two months, he’d got maybe half of them on side. The Emperor’s bigwigs were doing their diplomatic thing with the locals, working out who was going to run the place when they’d all stopped fighting each other, but Kael was concentrating mostly on keeping the peace.

The stockade contained the fighters he and his men had rounded up. He’d planted a few of his own lads in there to identify the ringleaders and see what, if anything, they wanted. In Kael’s experience quite a few of them were just fighting because they liked fighting.

He swiped the sweat from his brow and pushed back into his own tent, where Verak was marking things off on a map. ‘Reckon the Carvelli are the next ones we should target,’ he said.

Kael looked the map over. Carvelli territory occupied a significant fork of the river delta. They were a nomadic tribe, their camp consisting of a small flotilla of ragged boats and tents pitched on whatever solid ground they could find. ‘Agreed. We get past that, we’ve got access to a huge chunk of the country.’

‘And we can control who escapes out to sea.’

Kael glanced out through the tent flap at the sun, which was sinking in the sky but not taking much of the heat with it. He longed for the cool, fresh air of Krulland. ‘Midnight raid sound good to you?’

‘Whatever happened to “open and honest”?’

‘We can be open and honest once we’ve captured the bastards who want to turn us into gator feed.’

‘Fair point.’ Verak slid his sword into its scabbard. ‘Midnight raid it is, then.’

Their boats moved almost soundlessly through the dark, swampy water. Kael was an excellent sailor, but this murky bayou was alien territory to him. They had no lamps to light the way and give away their position. In the dark, everything looked like a threat. Skeletal tree roots surged out of the thick water, moonlight glinting on rocks and logs that might well be insurgents or gators. The air was thick with heat and insects, and Kael was glad he’d left his heavy mail back at camp. Getting a mosquito stuck under that didn’t bear thinking about.

‘Swiving hate this place,’ he muttered, taking a two-handed grip on his sword.

‘I’m going to start counting the number of times you say that,’ Verak muttered back.

Kael opened his mouth to tell Verak he’d be running out of fingers and toes pretty soon, when the oar in front of him slithered loosely down into the water.
What the hell?
He reached for the oarsman, who flopped limply off his bench, a small dart in his neck.

Kael had his bow in his hand before he’d even formulated the words to tell Verak they were under attack. He was on his feet, scanning the indistinct shore.

‘They’ve seen us,’ he said, and Verak started hissing orders as Kael strained to see movement among the trees. He slid a fire-blackened arrow from the quiver on his back.

There! The tiniest flash of moonlight on the metal tip of a dart, dead ahead. Kael raised his bow.

He never fired a shot. Something hit the back of his neck, and the black swampy water rose up to swallow him.

Chapter Thirteen

Ishtaer woke, gasping, and was on her feet before she knew what she was doing. Her hands moved automatically, dressing in her training gear, rolling a spare tunic, breeches and dress into a ball and pressing them into a satchel. Despite the incipient warmth of the season, boots went onto her feet and a cloak around her shoulders. The satchel went over one shoulder, across her body. Her medical bag went on the other shoulder. Brutus’s lead slipped around her wrist.

She was halfway out the door when it occurred to her to stop and check with herself that she wasn’t going mad.

But she’d seen Kael in the swamp, seen him fall into the dark water where monsters lurked, seen him hauled out not by his men but by strangers painted green and brown. She’d seen them haul his unconscious body along the rough ground, drag him cheering into a raggedy camp of tents and boats lashed together, hoist him up by his bound wrists to a tree hanging over the mangrove swamp where his blood dripped down to beasts with huge, snapping jaws. She’d seen them laugh and throw stones at him, whip him, drain him of strength and blood and life.

She’d seen them sort through a pile of bodies, carve a message into the torso of one of them, then dump it in a boat and watch it drift away downriver.

And she’d heard a voice, an insistent voice as deep inside her as her own heartbeat, urging her to go after him.

He will die without you. He will die.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ she whispered to her midnight bedroom.

I will show you
, said the voice, and Ishtaer saw herself doing it.

She closed her door and went to wake Eirenn.

‘Just so I’m clear,’ Eirenn said as the sleek mail ship slid into port at Terafin, the last stable town before the badlands of Palavio began. ‘We hire a small boat, row downriver to the Carvelli camp, shoot, stab or otherwise disable anyone who gets in our way, cut down Krull from this tree above the swamp monsters, and then continue on our merry way through enemy territory until we reach Krull’s camp?’

‘That’s the plan,’ Ishtaer said, drawing the hood of her cloak closer around her face.

‘Just checking.’

He handed Ishtaer ashore and went to see about hiring a row boat. When he returned, she handed him a heavy sack.

‘What’s this?’ He peered inside. ‘Chain mail? Ishtaer, the air is like soup, we’ll dehydrate in seconds. Not to mention what’ll happen if we go overboard wearing forty pounds of metal. You might be curious what the bottom of a swamp is like, but I’d rather not know.’

‘They fire poison darts,’ Ishtaer said. ‘You leave any bit of skin exposed and you’ll end up the same as Kael. If you’re lucky.’

‘Chain mail it is,’ Eirenn said.

Something buzzed near his head. Kael figured this was an improvement over what snapped by his feet. He knew there was a proper name for it, but all he could think of was dragon. A dragon who swum and grinned its jagged teeth at him and opened its mouth about thirty feet wide, snapping shut, taunting him.

A snake slithered over Kael’s hand, and he’d have flinched if his fingers had been capable of movement. The creature twined around his arm and slid its head out into the soupy air, curling back to hiss at him. It had red and yellow stripes and a glob of green poison hanging off the edge of its forked tongue.

The snake opened its mouth wide enough to engulf Kael’s whole head. ‘My dragon friend isss going to eat you,’ it hissed at him. ‘Toesss then feetsss then legsss. Piggy by piggy.’

He was just lucid enough to think he might be hallucinating.

Ishtaer didn’t need to see the swamplands to know how creepy they were. She’d seen it all in her vision anyway. The huge eerie trees with their roots half out of water, the strands of hanging moss, the ripple and glide of a huge beast under the water. The air was foetid and thick with insects that batted constantly against the boat, her face and her gloves. She thought one or two might have got under the mail shirt she wore. She itched abominably.

But Ishtaer was good at ignoring discomfort.

‘You need to keep going,’ she murmured to Eirenn, reaching down to pet Brutus. She’d rubbed salve into his coat to try and stop the worst of the insect attacks, but he still gave a miserable whine. ‘Past the camp, until you get to Kael.’

‘Uh, won’t the banks be watched?’ Eirenn asked. ‘Guarded?’

‘Not after I’m done on shore, they won’t.’

‘Those, er, lizard things. Croco … gators?’

‘What’s a crocogator?’

‘Something with really big jaws attracted to blood.’

‘Then I won’t shed any.’

Calm descended on her.

Eirenn slid the boat to the bank, and Ishtaer leapt out. Brutus made to come after her, but she pushed him back. ‘No, boy. Stay.’ As much as a large dog might be handy for intimidating people, she needed not to have anyone to worry about.

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ Eirenn asked.

She nodded, unsheathing the longsword from her right hip and the gladius from her left. ‘I’ve seen it all. I know where to go and who will be waiting there and what I have to do. Go. I’ll see you at the tree.’

‘What tree?’ Eirenn hissed as she began to run, cursing the heaviness and noise of the chain mail.

‘You’ll see it.’

And she ran.

The first part would be easy.
Run until you reach the path, turn right, there are three guards on the way.

Her hand moved of its own accord, taking out the first man with the hilt of her longsword. He made no sound as he fell.

The second man heard her coming, but she whirled the sword and his blood spattered her face.

The third man got in a blow that glanced off her arm. Her gladius went through his belly.

Take out the first hut you come to.
She paused very quickly to strike a match and touch it to a small clay pot drawn carefully from her pocket, then threw it at the hut before running as fast as she could past it.

The
whumph
of the fire could be heard all over the settlement. Ishtaer felt the sudden heat against her back, and continued running.

They’ll run to the fire. Kill anyone who stops you.

At first she darted through the crowd, but at the first shout she brought her swords up and … danced.

The longsword had the greater reach but the gladius had more power to stab. Her right arm whirled in a graceful arc, she stepped and ducked and crouched and thrust the gladius back, scything the longsword above her head. Rolling back to her feet she twirled both swords and stabbed one forward, one back.

The fire heated her right side.

Kael is suspended from a tree at the end of a floating dock. Destroy it as you go
.

Ishtaer ran, planting her foot on a fallen man, a dog, a horse, flying through the air, over people’s heads, hacking at any hand that tried to stop her. She leapt onto the dock, shoving her swords back in their sheaths. She raced along the slimy wood and threw an unlit clay pot behind her.

Eirenn will be waiting. He will fire two shots.

‘Now!’ she screamed, and leapt off the end of the jetty.

Kael’s body fell heavily into her arms as Eirenn’s first arrow severed the rope holding him. Ishtaer’s foot landed on something which bobbed in the water. Jaws snapped at her.

She raced over the huge lizards, dancing from one to the next as she had with the tribesmen. Kael’s body was heavy, a dead weight in her arms, making her ungainly. Her muscles burned.

Behind her, heat blossomed as Eirenn’s second arrow hit the dock. This one was on fire, and the clay pot exploded.

She could almost see the flames.

‘Come on!’ Eirenn yelled, and she made one last push, her boot landing on wood. The small boat rocked alarmingly as she collapsed in a heap with Kael’s body under her, covering it as best she could.

‘Go, go,’ she gasped, and Eirenn put his Militis muscles to good use, whirling the boat away from the burning Carvelli as fast as he could.

The snake had stopped talking to him, but since the village had exploded into flames and spewed forth Ishtaer, swords whirling, armour gleaming, Kael figured he was still hallucinating.

In his hallucination Ishtaer tore him from his bonds, threw him into a boat, and rowed away faster than the wind. She also tore away his clothes while her wolf watched, his tail thumping.

Darkness descended for a while, hot and thick, and next time he opened his eyes his body screamed with pain. His arms had been torn from their sockets, his foot was ripped to shreds, his flesh on fire and crawling from his body.

‘He’s coming round,’ said a half familiar voice. Kael tried to focus on a figure with pale skin and dark eyes. He wore full mail and appeared to be rowing a boat. He also had an identical twin beside him doing exactly the same.

Both of them said, ‘You need to put him back under again, Ish.’

‘I can’t,’ said a voice right by his ear. He tried to turn and see but strong, delicate hands kept him from moving. ‘It’s all I can do to keep him breathing. The venom’s in his blood. Let me concentrate.’

His blood, which had been pumping as sluggishly as the river, suddenly roared with pain. Kael screamed, and clutched willingly at the blackness as it reached out to him again.

When he woke again the pain in his body had been downgraded to merely agonising, and he could just about focus through the pre-dawn gloom on Eirenn, calmly rowing, apparently without an identical twin.

‘Do us a favour, and don’t scream this time,’ he said. ‘I’ve hardly any arrows left if anyone else comes after us.’

Kael blinked. He lay back in a small boat, making its way at a leisurely pace through brown water, flanked by slimy trees dripping moss, and attended by swarms of insects. He didn’t seem to be wearing much, but then he hadn’t since he fell out of the boat.

‘Oh, and also keep your hands inside the boat. There’s a crocogator been following us the last half hour or so.’

‘Croco …?’ Kael croaked.

‘I don’t know what it is, and I’m not about to find out.’ Eirenn pulled on the oars. At his feet lay Ishtaer’s wolf, looking thoroughly miserable.

‘Swiving hate this place,’ Kael groaned.

‘You and me both. Now shush, Ishtaer needs to concentrate.’

‘Ishtaer?’

‘Sure. You might remember her. Pretty girl, Seer’s mark on her face, knocked you on your arse last time you saw her. Just saved your life and is continuing to patch you up even as we speak.’

Belatedly, Kael noticed that he was being propped up by a woman, whose hands rested on his chest. Not large hands, but long-fingered, calloused and capable-looking. Her fingers shifted delicately against his skin, but she said nothing.

‘How did … What happened?’

Eirenn grinned at him. ‘You’d never believe me if I told you.’

Kael drifted off to sleep again, waking once or twice more as the heavy night turned into a scorching morning. The brackish river gave way to stronger, clearer water, and despite being visibly exhausted, Eirenn continued to row. The banks widened, the trees grew taller and greener, and Kael thought it was beginning to look familiar.

The wolf began to bark, which was interesting since Kael didn’t think wolves could bark. Almost too tired to move, he turned his head and saw a man on the bank, pointing an arrow at them.

‘How many more arrows’ve you got?’ he asked Eirenn raggedly.

‘Four, but I’m not going to shoot him.’ The boy started steering the boat towards the shore.

‘What? But he’s aiming at us …’

‘But not actually firing, eejit. I reckon … yep, see that insignia? He’s one of yours. Thought we ought to be coming up on your camp soon. Hey,’ Eirenn yelled to the archer. ‘Can you give us a hand? A stretcher or maybe two.’

The man peered at the boat, and as they got closer Kael realised he was familiar. He returned the archer’s salute somewhat shakily, then realised what Eirenn had just said.

‘Two stretchers?’

Eirenn looked grim. ‘Not a word out of Ishtaer for a few hours.’ He hauled on the oars. ‘She’d better just be asleep.’

Alarmed, Kael felt for her pulse. He hadn’t registered whether or not she was breathing behind him.

Her blood thudded dully in her veins. He forced himself to turn, to kneel before her. Her face was white, her lips tinged blue. Her hands fell limply to her sides, her head lolling.

‘Shit,’ Eirenn said. ‘I warned her. I bloody warned her. Is it crystal-debt?’

Kael nodded. He was so tired he could barely speak and there wasn’t an inch of him that didn’t hurt. He picked up Ishtaer’s hand and pressed it over his heart.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

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