In the House of Five Dragons
10. Northern Wind
“The ever-changing realm of the Alterra is one of water and fire, the very same ephemeral humours of our own blood. Is it any wonder, then, that blood calls to them?”
— From A History of Our Worlds, by Carnus Orphaem
The bright light of the sun woke Thainna not long after dawn. She rolled over and pressed her face into the burlap bag of her bed, but sleep would not be so easily recaptured. Flaky old wheat chaff scratched her cheeks and made her nose itch. Thainna sneezed and sat up. She rubbed her eyes and crawled to the rain barrel. Looking over the rim and down into the brackish puddle at the bottom, Thainna decided that she wasn’t really that thirsty.
Thainna rarely had such vivid dreams. Meeting Rikard Mazrem in the Rows? It had seemed so real… But in the early morning light, the whole thing seemed ridiculous. Thainna sat on her sack-bed to examine her toes. They were even worse than the day before, with cracks scabbed over and bruises on her heels.
Like I was running.
So it wasn’t a dream, after all. But that did not make it real. How long since her last real meal, since a drink of clean water? Thainna had lived all her life in the Rows. People starved and died of thirst every day, and it was not just the lack of food and water that killed. Desperation sometimes drove the hungry to make meals of poison.
Thainna considered the rain barrel again. It looked unappetizing, but didn’t seem toxic. Did it? She was not a physic or a foster or anyone who could tell such things. Maybe the midnight vision of Captain Mazrem simply meant she was sick. Some people believed that such delusions and hallucinations were visions from the gods. Maybe it was some sort of prediction.
Hae, but of what? That Rikard Mazrem’s going to come back?
The whole argument seemed circular. Trying to make sense of it all only made Thainna’s head ache. She was no one. The gods didn’t waste time with dirty little thieves from the Rows. No, it was probably just an addle-brained delusion from some bad water. Nothing more.
At least it made for a good story. Thain would love it. Thainna stood gingerly. Her feet hurt worse than ever. She searched around the narrow alleyway until she found the moth-eaten burlap that used to be her father’s bed, until he’d started sleeping at the storefront. Thainna tore the cloth into wide strips, folded two of them into pads and used the rest to tie them to the bottom of her feet. It didn’t take away the pain, but it was considerable improvement over bare feet.
On her way to the fostral, Thainna detoured to visit Aelos. He was awake and counting a pile of shaved silver willows under the surly supervision of another Talon — a short, bald Karabosi named Bannon. Both looked up at Thainna’s entrance, but recognized the interloper as just another House member and quickly returned to their work.
“Thirty-seven,” Aelos said.
Bannon made a displeased noise, somewhere between a grunt and cough. “That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
The stout Talon grunted again and then left the store. Aelos dropped his money into a bowl of other coins. The silver willows clanked and rang against each other.
“You didn’t put them away,” Thainna said. “Is someone coming to pick it up soon? Is mine in here?”
There were several gold-edged laurels inside the bowl. Thainna reached out to touch one — it had taken so much work to collect them — but Aelos clapped his hand over hers and pushed it away.
“Leave it, Thainna. Hae, your money’s in here. One of the Eyes will be by this afternoon to take it out to the temples.”
“Don’t they trust you to do it?” Thainna asked.
After a lifetime of service to the House of Five Dragons, Aelos Vahn had very little to show for it. No money, few responsibilities, and not an ounce of trust. Of course, if the House could trust their counters, old Kir would still have all of his fingers.
“I’m just a Talon,” Aelos said. He shrugged, but the limpness in his shoulders betrayed his own unhappiness, deeper than he would ever admit. “The Crest is… selective in his trust.”
“Hae,” Thainna agreed dispiritedly.
The two of them stood together in awkward silence for a long moment before Aelos cleared his throat and spoke again. “Do you have more to deposit?”
“No, I just…” Why had she come? To tell her father about last night? He would never believe a word of it, even if she did. “I just wanted to say good morning and ask if you’d come home tonight.”
“What for? It’s an alleyway, Thainna,” said Aelos. He had been fidgeting pointlessly with some of the coins, but now he looked up at his daughter. There was something pitiful and heavy in his dark green eyes. “It’s not a home. It’s just a dirty patch of ground. I’m sorry, Thainna.”
She didn’t want apologies. He was right, but whose fault was it? Her mother was long since dead, too weakened by the twins to survive their birth. Thain was a sick boy in a distant white fostral bed. Thainna worked all day, every day to make life into something! What did Pata do? What did apologizing ever do? It never changed anything or made it any better.
Thainna left the shop without another word to her father.
“Rikard Mazrem? You saw Rikard Mazrem?”
Thainna rested her head against the edge of Thain’s bed. The new sheets were clean, but her twin’s hair still looked ragged and brittle. Had the fosters done anything about it?
“No,” Thainna corrected. “No. I couldn’t have, could I? Captain Mazrem’s dead.”
“But you said that you saw him!” Thain was excited, practically bouncing in his narrow fostral bed as he grinned at his sister. “You have good eyes, Thainna. You said he looked just like the statue in Mazrem Square.”
She put her chin in her palm and shook her head. “That doesn’t mean anything. There are millions of men in the empire. I’m sure at least one of them looks like Rikard Mazrem. If I really even saw anything! Last time I ate, it was moldy bread. Who knows what really happened?”
Thain touched the top of her head and Thainna looked up. With his thin, sunken face, her twin looked like an old man.
“Why are you so sure it wasn’t him?” Thain asked. “You were certain last night. You never trust anyone, not even yourself.”
“Forget it.”
Thainna lifted her face out of her hands and looked down at them. They were small and very dirty. They didn’t look capable of very much.
“I trust you,” Thain said. He smiled and took one of her pale hands in his. “I’m not blind, Thainna. You work every day to get the money for the Auction so you can make sure the next Crest isn’t like this one. Anyone else would put themselves on the Jade Throne, but not you.”
“You’ll be a better Crest than I ever could, Thain.”
She meant it. For all his sickness, Thain was brilliant, sweet and kind. Not slow and stubborn like his sister. He didn’t need physical strength to be Crest, if she could just buy him the position. Thain would have every Eye, Flame and Talon to serve as his able hands. All he needed was his mind, his spirit. Everything would be better once Thain became Crest.
“I know that you think I can do it, and I trust you,” Thain said, squeezing her fingers weakly. “If you think I’m clever enough to become Crest this winter, then you have to listen to me, hae? And I’m telling you to have a bit more faith.”
Thainna giggled helplessly. It was impossible to argue with her twin. He always won. Thain laughed, too, a thin and breathy sound.
“Tell me more about him,” Thain said.
“About… Captain Mazrem?”
“Hae. There are so many legends. What was he like? Grand? Commanding and brave as in all the stories?”
“He wasn’t at all like the stories… if it was him at all,” Thainna hastened to add. “He was so angry. No, not just angry. Crazed. He was like an animal, Thain. He grabbed me and started screaming and choking me just because I’m Fiori.”
“And he seemed young?”
“Not fifty or sixty years old, at least, and he looked younger than Pata. Five years older than us. Maybe ten.”
“Was he handsome, like his statues?” Thain asked slyly.
Thainna blushed. “I don’t know.”
“But you recognized him! You said he looked just like the statues,” Thain accused.
“He did! But he looked crazy, wild. Sick, too, or like he hadn’t eaten in a long time.”
“Hae, and you can talk!”
“And he was injured,” Thainna continued, ignoring her brother’s jibe. “I don’t know how. Who would attack him? Especially the way he was acting. You’d have to be crazy, too!”
“Rikard Mazrem was injured during the Njorn Pass battle,” Thain reminded her. “If he hasn’t gotten any older, maybe he hasn’t healed, either.”
“But it’s been thirty years!”
“So? If you saw him last night, then Rikard Mazrem didn’t die in Njorn Pass. He didn’t leave a body, only his sword. He made an open deal with the Alterra. No one knows what they asked for. Maybe thirty years of his life? His mind?”
“His mind…?” Thainna had no idea what her twin was talking about. There were stories about the deals struck between VEIL and their Alterran counterparts, but few details of what the knights traded away.
“Nothing physical can pass between the Terran and Alterran worlds,” said Thain. “Blood shows through, but it doesn’t actually cross the veil. Just thoughts and memories, hae?”
“I… don’t really know,” Thainna admitted.
She liked the stories about Captain Mazrem. He had been a hero, whatever else her strange midnight encounter might suggest. His sacrifice was noble and his defeat of the Fiori was legend. It was exciting! But the complicated and arcane pacts between VEIL and the Alterra did not make for very good stories. Thain patted Thainna’s hand. Even from his bed in the fostral, her twin knew more about the world than she could learn in a thousand years.
“No one has been to Alterra. We don’t know anything about it except what the Alterra tell VEIL. And we don’t know much about the Alterrans themselves. Mazrem didn’t dictate the term of his pact. They could have taken absolutely anything.”
“And they took his life. Captain Mazrem traded his life for all of his men’s,” said Thainna. “Everyone knows that.”
“Do we? What exactly does that mean? Maybe the Alterra didn’t have to kill him to claim his life. Nobody knows for certain. Except Rikard Mazrem, of course. Aren’t you curious?”
Thainna thought back to the howling, screaming man choking her in the dark and shivered. She preferred the legends.
“No. I don’t want to know.”
