Second Kiss (7 page)

A Lack of Appropriate Clothing

O
ften
during his ordeal of waiting and not knowing, Xemion doubted so strongly that it had been Saheli he'd seen up at the front of the Panthemium that it was almost as though she had been confirmed missing. Other times, like now, as the third week ended, he was almost positive that it had been her. Either way, he wouldn't have to wait much longer for certainty. Soon, Veneetha Azucena would go to the camp, and when she returned she would bring word and he would finally know for sure.

Before she could depart, however, there was a sudden shift in the weather. It got quite cold as the wind came in off the northern sea, and Yarra began to mumble about a long and early winter to come. In the midst of this, the community was hit with an outbreak of influenza. It struck quick and hard, disabling many. Most began to recover toward the end of the week, but Ettinender and two others never recovered. These were the first casualties of the rebellion at Ulde.

Then, just a day before her planned departure, Veneetha caught the sickness, and it affected her so quickly and severely that she was unable to go. Xemion only learned after the fact that Tiri Lighthammer had gone instead. That next week was one of the most maddening and painful of Xemion's life, but somehow he managed to continue his scribing duties and his not-so-secret sword practice at night. Sarabin assured him that Vallaine and his ship, the
Mammuth
, were expected back in Ulde imminently and would likely be delivering not only a boatload of supplies for the kitchens but the returning Tiri Lighthammer. Veneetha promised Xemion from her sick bed she would personally ask him about a girl with a scar over one eye.

Days later there came a severe ice storm. When the denizens of Ulde arose the next morning, they looked up to see a conglomeration of floating spell-crossed houses frozen together above the city, all encased in and joined by a thick coat of glittering ice that extended from the houses on the ground to others quite high up, which were sparkling in the sky. The extreme cold quickly made it apparent to all that there was a lack of appropriate clothing in Ulde. Most of the recruits had fled their homes with little more than the clothing on their backs. Now, as winter came on, many of them would be in danger of freezing to death if appropriate measures were not taken. Veneetha Azucena generously donated numerous extra items from her wardrobe and insisted that even the old men's military garb carefully obtained by its owners for special ceremonial purposes be lent out to the shivering recruits. But there still wasn't enough warm clothing to go around, and while a team of finder Thralls scoured the uninhabited buildings of the city in search of anything that might be turned into clothing, many of the others were forced to remain indoors.

Fortunately, the weather warmed up again and there was a thaw. As a result, the houses, no longer held aloft by either the ice or the fifty-year-old spell cross that had lifted them, began to fall, some of the rubble landing on the isolated street where Xemion lodged. A crew of thick-chested Nains, including Tomtenisse Doombeard and his nonviolent brother Belphegor, came with wheelbarrows and picks and shovels and began carrying off the rubble. Such labours were always closely supervised by Glittervein. The houses had originated in the Era of Common Magic and often contained still-working spellcrafted devices. As Provost, he was responsible for making sure they were properly incinerated. He did his best to make sure not one of them missed his attention.

Xemion, as usual, did not participate in these labours, but one day when Musea fell into a deep sleep he went home early and was spotted by Glittervein. Ever since the night at Uldestack, he had done his best to avoid the Nain, but now that Glittervein had seen him and called out to him, he had no choice but to remain still as he stalked over. The wind was coming in cold again, whipping the long curls away from Glittervein's face. He turned the disfigured side toward Xemion and spoke sharply: “Who are you? I don't remember seeing you at the gate on the first day. I personally inspected everyone who came in and I know a face forever. And I don't know yours.”

“I came in from the eastern side of Ulde,” Xemion answered, a little nervously. Glittervein's pupils shrunk to pinpoints. “I knew nothing of this.” His voice deepened by an octave. “You should have come in by the western gate and been screened and searched like everyone else.”

“I couldn't get around the outside of the wall,” Xemion answered.

“Well, how is anyone to know whether or not you brought in some spellworks?”

“I didn't,” Xemion answered, a little offended.

“And how is anyone to know whether you are a spy, or a kwisling, or—”

Xemion's answer, tinged as it was with insolence, brought out the “high and mighty” quality of his voice. “I believe Mr. Sarabin would speak on my behalf.”

Glittervein shook his head and just stood there for a long time staring at Xemion. “We'll see,” he said finally, before stalking off.

A week later, a blizzard struck, burying the whole of the Phaer Isle in snow. The drifts were so deep in Ulde that the streets were impassable and there quickly began to be a shortage of firewood and coal. Vallaine still had not returned, and the food supply was definitely dwindling. It was so low, in fact, that as soon as there came a thaw several more of the newly formed brigades, many wearing rags on their feet for warmth, were sent to camps in the mountains that had been previously provisioned enough for there to be time to teach the recruits to forage and hunt. This would relieve pressure on the situation in Ulde.

And Lighthammer had still not returned — nor would he until spring. All the mountain passes were blocked by ice. For the rest of the winter travel on the Isle would be impossible. But no one knew that yet. Like Xemion, everyone waited moment-by-moment, hungry and cold, expecting imminent relief. They hoped for another thaw or a warm spell, but none ever came, only another outbreak of influenza. And because everybody was spending so much time indoors, quite a number more died. They might've all died had Lirodello not found in a secret cellar beneath the kitchen cellar vast storehouses of dried and pickled fish, which must have dated from half a century ago. There was also an assortment of old musical instruments and sacks containing multicoloured pellets, which, when thrown to the ground, could explode into small grey dinners. If Tiri Lighthammer had discovered this, he would have had them all destroyed, for they were surely the products of long-ago spellcraft. But Tiri Lighthammer was not here, and there was nothing else to eat, so the whole colony fell upon this food like locusts on a field. There was joy in the taste and eating of it, but in the end it had very little nutrition and some of those who ate a lot of it came down with a strange multi-coloured pox that left their faces pitted ever after.

Xemion wasn't alone in his longing and uncertainty. With the departure of almost all of the Thralleens to different base camps, there was hardly a kitchen Thrall who was not stricken with the absence of his true love. Lirodello was particularly affected. That same face that had seemed born and shaped for humour was now frozen in a sorrowful mask, and his wide, stricken eyes tended to fasten on inanimate objects as he stood, staring and tragic, shivering in the streets. Nevertheless, as one of the few people that Xemion had any contact with, he took care to deliver on his vow of eternal friendship, doing his best to rarely leave Xemion alone. For Xemion, he was one of the only sources of information, so he bore his chatter and yearnings, his lyric exclamations, and his long rolling laments for the love of Vortasa as best he could.

⚔

The winter solstice came and went, and all the while the severity of the weather increased. There was still very little warm clothing and what there was had to be traded back and forth among the outside workers while the rest huddled en masse in smoky rooms using whatever they could find for firewood, including the very desks and chairs intended for their studies.

In general, though, Xemion suffered less from the cold and hunger than most of the others. Because of its depth in the Earth, the underdome was much easier to heat than the surface rooms. He didn't know it, but often when even the kitchen Thralls went hungry, Sarabin saw to it that Xemion ate well. Sarabin needed to keep him healthy for the sake of literature.

In all those frigid days that became weeks and then months, the ache of not having her, the ache of not knowing if she was safe, was unrelenting. He kept telling himself that he wouldn't have wanted to dull the pain of it, because that would dishonour the full depth and intent of his devotion to her. So he bore it. The worst of it, though, came near the end of winter when the possibility of an actual spring was just beginning to fill the air and Xemion was allowing himself to hope. That was when Musea began to dictate an old text detailing the day-to-day life of the ancient Elphaereans. She was reciting a passage about the ways of teaching in the ancient military academies, and when she got to a part about the practices used to integrate and harden those special ones chosen for the elite forces, she said this: “And it was always the practice then as now for both male and female to take part in all gymnastic events naked.”

Nothing in life had ever so utterly undone Xemion's composure as did this piece of news. It sent a great jolt of cold alarm through every branch of his being right to his fingertips and the roots of his hair. “No!” he exclaimed.

It was one of those rare times when Musea actually stopped reciting and waited.

“Yes, yes, it is so,” she said at last.

In truth he had never even thought of Saheli naked, but now that he had, that thought was accompanied by the next thought:
Torgee would see her naked
. This thought froze his blood in mid-pulse and he felt like vomiting. It was so huge a feeling that he had to struggle to push it back down inside. And then his only hope was that the scribing would continue as long as possible that day, thereby delaying his mind from veering back to the terrible cliffs of that thought.

He paid dearly for it when work was over. It rose up in him with a fury, and despite the cold he went out onto the balcony to practise his sword work. His luminous thrusts that night were especially savage — and therefore that much more thrilling to the wide-eyed Thrall children nearby who had by now learned to keep quiet. They watched the shining sword flash back and forth as Xemion's mind brimmed over with jealousy, bitterness at the injustice, deaths he'd rather die than go on living, fights with Torgee he'd like to have, the torture and death of Montither, the burning of all Elphaerean literature, the disgrace of Tharfen, the dragging down of the sun into the abyss …

Later, when he put the sword aside and lay down on his straw pallet, the images kept coming at him like vultures darting about in the frailness of his remaining sanity, waiting for it to die. He couldn't sleep, not that night nor the next.

Second Skin

T
here
was the sound of a shrill whistle. “Cut! Cut!” Ever since she'd arrived in the camp for special training, the one they called Zero had been spending many hours a day improving her accuracy by chopping off the heads of straw men. Sometimes her sword would find the narrow slit between their helmets and their body armour and sometimes it wouldn't. Sometimes she hesitated.

The whistle sounded again. “Cut.”

Day after day Zero struck on command and with each successful blow one of the assistants would flip the straw head back into place and secure it for the next attack.

“Do not hesitate. Hesitation is defeat. Strike. Now.”

The only alternative to the tedium of decapitating straw men was the monotony of exercise: trekking up the tall stairs of the turret two at a time and then trotting back down many times a day, all through winter. The weighted bags she lifted over and over reshaped her arms, made her shoulder muscles strong. The weird focusing routines, the complex sword patterns she was learning, knit new neural networks in her brain, and, once in place, it was as though they had been there a thousand years, deeply delved. She fell into them easily and fluently. Lighthammer, unperturbed by his long unintended stay in the camp, continued to be impressed with her. Aside from her martial abilities she possessed clear leadership potential. There was hardly a Thrall or Freeman among the recruits who did not look to her to set the standard in whatever challenge or task he put them to. He himself could not help but admire her, but knew she was as yet untested.

“Cut, cut, Zero.”

For that reason he had her eating vast amounts of meat and drinking ale and slaying straw men. This often left her exhausted, but rarely miserable. She loved the rigorous physical training. She loved to climb, to slither through mud, to duck mock arrows, to make the same quick thrust a thousand times a day. She loved to practice the various kicks, the sudden lunges with the fist or the open hand designed to kill or maim. She grew skillful with a small hidden rapier. She knew how to slam the hilt of her sword against the side of a helmeted head so hard it could cause death or immediate unconsciousness. Such skills, as Lighthammer so approvingly put it, had the potential to “double or triple her casualty count.” She loved the quickness of mind in sword work, the utter focus. It was like finding some extra missing piece of oneself.

Like most of those who had come to the camp as raw adolescent dreamers five months earlier, Zero was now much larger, stronger, and much more attuned to her fellow trainees. They were all “one scowl,” “one muscle” as Lighthammer proclaimed, when he was not insulting them. But it was not just physical strength. Even when the competition amongst them was fierce and nasty she was courteous and kind in victory, always offering her opponents a hand up if she defeated them. Only the large one they called Stone despised her. His distaste was obvious in the expression on his face anytime he encountered her. And with every increase in the esteem with which others beheld her, he boiled and seethed more. Most days, as Lighthammer berated him for his anger, as the others avoided or even openly mocked him, and most of all as Zero advanced through the ranks, he hardly knew what to do with all his hate.

Lighthammer waited until spring was nearly upon them before he set Stone against Zero in a match. It wasn't long, though, before Stone lost his temper and began to hack at her wildly. She easily deflected his blows, but when Lighthammer blew his whistle and shouted at Stone to stop, he ignored the order and kept furiously hacking and hewing at her as though he wanted to kill her.

The whistle shrieked even louder. “You will stop immediately, or I will instruct her to do her worst to you,” Lighthammer shouted. But to no avail. It only seemed to fuel Stone's frenzied onslaught. “Take him out then,” he yelled to Zero. There were numerous gaps in Stone's defence and Lighthammer knew the girl was quite capable of finding an opening and ending the attack with one quick thrust, but she resisted. This time Lighthammer's whistle blowing was augmented by the furious stomping of one foot. “Take him out, now!” he bellowed, but she just continued deflecting his blows. Suddenly Lighthammer yanked his own sword out and, before Stone could even gasp, his sword was struck from his hands. Lighthammer backed him up against a wall, the point of his blade pressing into his thick neck at the exact point where Xemion's painted sword had once rested.

“You are no longer with us. Take back your old name and your old ways. The mountain passes are now clear of snow. Just in time for you to leave us. Take your weapons and be out of this encampment before sundown,” he ordered in a quiet voice, his face livid with rage.

When he was gone, Lighthammer turned on Zero, enraged. “Why did you disobey my direct order?” he bellowed.

She hung her head. “I'm sorry, Tiri Lighthammer,” she said, visibly chastened. “I … I was waiting for the right opportunity.”

“I did not order you to wait for an opportunity.”

“You … you told me to take him out. But I would've had to wound him severely to take him out in that moment. And that seemed like it would be a waste.”

“You are a waste. A waste of talent.”

“I knew if I waited just a little longer he would leave himself so open I could disarm him.”

Lighthammer's only answer to this was to cough and spit, quite voluminously, at her feet. After that, he set out to test her. He instructed his assistant, Ingothelm, a brawny youth from the northwest part of the island, to begin stalking and ambushing her. Three times Ingothelm managed to come in close and quick enough to rest the edge of his cold blade upon her neck and say “You're slain!” The fourth time he might have lost his own head if he hadn't been wearing a collar of mail, for Zero blocked, thrust, and slashed through his ambush with speed and precision that was startling.

As angry as the constant attacks made her, she could see they were working. Her response time was getting better and better, her attacks more and more automatic. Come the spring equinox when they would all return to Ulde to compete in the first Phaer Tourney in fifty years, there wouldn't be a shred of hesitation or mercy left in her. And that was good, because, just as in ancient times, the Tourney would be a fight “by all means.” The vow of alliance would be suspended, the weapons would be real, and the combat would be intense and conceivably even deadly.
And then,
thought Zero, with increasing determination,
I will fight honourably but fiercely, and I will win.

The only thing that made her question the degree of ruthlessness she would need to achieve this goal was her feeling for the three Thrall sisters — now known by their warrior names: Asnina, Atathu, and Imalgha — whose quarters she still shared. Not only did they each consistently maintain overall scores just as high as hers in the various challenges and bouts Lighthammer set for them, but they had become her best friends. If it came to it, she wondered, could she muster enough gall to defeat one or all of them?

They were, after all, her sisters in arms. Together, when they had any spare time, they did all the things that young Phaer women had always done. They sang the old songs, arm-wrestled, put war paint on, and, increasingly, traded tales of romantic gossip. The Thrall sisters thought themselves glamorous and did their best to bring out this quality in Zero. Their heads were full of rumour and speculation about whom Veneetha Azucena's beloved might be and who among the other recruits was smitten with whom. Sometimes, they would tease Zero that she was smitten with the recruit named Fargold. He had a long, elegant nose and his accent was a little like hers, and he seemed to always be staring at her. But Zero only shook her head and smiled. Once they asked her if she had ever kissed him, and she answered quickly, “No.”

“Have you ever kissed anyone — on the lips?” Imalgha, the eldest sister, asked.

Zero thought about it a moment. “No” was the somewhat exasperated answer.

“But why not?” Imalgha persisted. “Kissing is delicious. When I get back to Ulde I'm going to kiss that little Lirodello's lips till I make him squeal.”

Zero clearly found all this quite embarrassing, but she answered despite her red face. “I would only kiss the person I know for certain is my beloved.”

This caused a strange pain in her heart. She felt it very rarely now. But when it came she knew what to do about it. She waited until she was alone and then she reached under the bed where she kept her staff and drew out the other thing she kept there — the little black bottle. There was only a little liquid left in the bottom. She no longer remembered where she had found it, but she certainly remembered its effect. Seeing how little was left, she hesitated. Maybe she should save it. She almost put it back under the bed but then she heard for the first time in a long time a fragment of a strange backward sounding melody running through her mind. She hated that melody. She removed the cork, tilted the bottle to her full lips, and took the last soothing sip.