The Aware (The Isles of Glory Book 1) (20 page)

I said thoughtfully, ‘He may be clever, but he’s also vengeful. And both impulsive and cruel too, where his antipathies are concerned. I would say he has an almost pathological hatred of Awarefolk. Those are all traits that may bring him down in the end.’

He considered that. ‘We have noticed that many of the people he has killed were those with Menod ties. We thought he must dislike the Menod—but perhaps it was the Awarefolk among them that he was after. He has murdered a great many Menod patriarchs and there are a disproportionate number of Awarefolk in their patriarchy, as I am sure you know.’

‘Rans—er, Noviss…he gave Noviss a dunmagic sore, and he’s a lay Menod, but not one of the Awarefolk.’

‘Maybe Noviss was rude to him.’

I grunted. It was quite likely. ‘So what are you planning here?’

‘An offensive on the village where these subverted sylvtalents live.’

‘Beware, Syr-sylv. I’ve glimpsed that place; it shimmers with the raw hell of dunmagic. If you and your friends have the sort of power to rid Gorthan Spit of that dunmagic sore, then you’ve been hiding it from me.’

‘You think we will fail?’ He raised a disbelieving eyebrow. ‘Keepers are not in the habit of failing. However, there is something we must do first—we must identify this dunmaster. Destroying the village and those in it will not help in the long run, if the original dunmaster escapes. He must be eliminated, preferably beforehand.’

‘If you mean killed, say so, Syr-sylv. Your propensity to cloak unpleasantness in soft words is one of your less endearing traits. And is it really necessary to wipe out the people in the village? Can’t you
save
them?’

‘Not the subverted sylvs, no. What I said to Flame was the truth. They
are
dunmagickers now, make no mistake about that. What they were is irrelevant. They don’t
want
to revert to their original sylvmagic, except perhaps in their deepest souls. And if they don’t want to, they won’t. They have enough power of their own to prevent it happening.’

I glanced at Flame, glad at least that I had saved her from that. ‘If I knew who the dunmaster was, I would have given you that information already. I don’t know who he is. I know we have been in the same room on at least one occasion, and I have spoken to him another time, but without seeing his face or recognising the voice. I have felt his spells, but I can’t identify him.’

‘Why not? Surely that is what your talent is—’

‘Awarefolk sense sylvs or dunmagickers because we see or smell their magic. Each spell leaves traces of itself behind on the person who cast it, and that residue usually lasts a week or two, even several months sometimes, depending on the strength of the spell. But if a sylv doesn’t cast a spell for a few weeks then he looks like everyone else to us. The same with dunmagickers.’

‘This man has been casting a few spells, wouldn’t you say?’

I ignored his sarcasm. ‘The problem here is actually the opposite. This man’s dunmagic is simply too strong. I’ve been smelling and seeing the residue of his spells ever since I arrived on Gorthan Spit. The stink of dunmagic is
everywhere
. Even when he actually cast a spell in the same room as me, there was so much evil I couldn’t pinpoint its origin.

‘However, I have someone investigating for me who may have some information that will be useful. You cure Flame’s illness and pay me the two thousand setus I would have got for the Castlemaid, and I’ll find out who the dunmaster is.’

He looked across at the bed, his violet eyes now a velvety purple in the dim light. They reminded me of smooth, potent Bethany portwine. After some hesitation, he said, ‘All right, I’ll help her. I will build up her sylv magic so that she has the strength she needs. It will take a mere hour or two. But there’ll be no money, except expenses, and there shouldn’t be much of those. If you want your money, you’ll have to produce the Castlemaid.’

He looked back at me, and we held the stare. I suspected my face was as unreadable as his. He had me where he wanted me, of course. He knew me well enough to sense that I wasn’t my usual disinterested self around Flame. He knew I cared and he guessed that there was very little I would not do to save her. He might not have shown anything on his face but I knew what he was thinking. He thought she was my lover and he was conservative enough to despise me for that, just as he despised me for being a halfbreed. I could almost feel his contempt. For some absurd reason, that hurt. After all these year of his indifference, why should I care? But somehow he still had the power to hurt me.

‘Start now,’ I said. I picked up my cloak from where I had thrown it over a chair. ‘I’ll look for my friend.’

More about me? Is it relevant? It’s not a particularly pretty tale. I’m not proud of the way I grew up. True, I’ve not been ashamed of it either… When you’re a child, you can only act within the boundaries of what you know. I did my best, I made mistakes, but I
survived.
Not many halfbreeds do, when they have no support of a family. I was lucky, because I had Awareness. Awareness…and Duthrick.

I tried to escape him once, you know.

I ran away from The Hub, in fact from the Keeper Isles, when I was fourteen. I intended to be free, to go my own way, never again to have to do what I was told in order to stay alive…

The rebellion had always been there, I suppose, but it became more focused when I was removed from the Menod Boys’ School. I must have been around twelve, and I’d just had my first menses. The patriarch teachers, somewhat embarrassed and at a loss, decided that an adolescent girl was definitely a distraction to adolescent boys—not to mention to mostly celibate patriarchs—so they informed Duthrick that they would no longer teach me. Duthrick had me placed in a sylv girls’ school, not the original one I had been in, but another.

He could not have chosen anywhere more inappropriate.

It was an elite school for children who would one day work for the Council in one way or another. Everyone else there had sylvtalent and they were just learning to make the most of their skills. The place was awash with illusions, shams, spells and sylv sophistry—every one of which was as transparent to me as a glass jellyfish. Being a tough twelve-year-old with a chip on my shoulder the size of a whale jawbone, I was scornful of their games and their sylv lies, and I showed it. Small wonder, then, that everyone loathed me. And a schoolful of adolescent schoolgirls, I quickly discovered, could be enormously innovative in their revenge…

I was in a constant state of war with everyone and could never relax for a minute.

I actually did not attend all that many classes because most were geared towards the use and development of sylvtalent. But I did have to learn, by rote, all about Glorian politics and geography and history. And, as it was clear by then just how tall and large I was going to be, Duthrick ordered that I be trained as an athlete: swordplay, archery, swimming, rock climbing—he had his own vision for me, I can see that now. An instrument with Awareness, someone who could do his bidding and yet who was strong enough to look after herself.

I kept looking for some sign of concern, for some sign that he cared about me as a person—and I kept on being disappointed. And yet I kept looking. I was only a child, after all…

They made use of me just as they had before. Duthrick, or one of his staff, would occasionally come and I’d be taken off to perform some task or another than involved the use of Awareness.

I hadn’t been long in the school when I had my first taste of travel to another islandom. Duthrick sent me to act as page to Syr-sylv Arnado, a wealthy middle-aged man in Keeper Council service. He was one of the Council’s foremost guards, a famous sword fighter whom every young practitioner dreamed of emulating, including myself. At first I was in utter awe and could hardly string two sentences together in his company. He put up with that for the first day, but on the second, as the Keeper ship we were on scudded through the straits between Hub Island and the Spokes on our way to Bethany, he suggested we do some sparring. Of course, it wasn’t really sparring—what he was doing was teaching me—and fortunately the awe was soon replaced by a desire to learn as much as possible. We ended the outward journey the best of friends. I made him laugh with my graceless manners and forthright way of putting things; I thought he was quite the most patient and kind man I’d ever met. Of course, I did my best to imitate him and doubtless it was laughable, but I like to think that some rudiments of his polish rubbed off on me. I never learned to be the suave courtier, but I could put up a passable imitation for a while if need be, and I owe that to Arnado. Perhaps the greatest service he ever did for me was that he took the vague beginnings of self-worth that the Menod had planted within me, and built on it. ‘Good soil,’ he used to say, ‘even if it falls into the sea, becomes an island. You are good soil, Blaze, and don’t let anyone else ever tell you otherwise.’

Our assignment in Bethany, Arnado explained, was to see if there was any truth to the rumour that one of the Holdlord’s chief advisors was a dunmagicker, and if it was true, to do something about it. I was so naïve, I didn’t even think about what the second part of the assignment meant. I followed in Arnado’s wake, enjoying every bit of the experience, delighted to be away from that horrible school and my schoolgirl nemeses.

Arnado had letters of introduction that gave him entry to the court of the Holdlord, and I tagged along as his page. It was my first introduction to how the nobility lived, and I was torn in all directions—between laughter and horror and sheer fascination. The rich, I found, could be so absurd; they could spend hours each day seated in front of a mirror preening themselves like sea-mewlers straightening their feathers. They’d rather dress uncomfortably than be unfashionable, which I found incomprehensible. In fact, I found their self-absorption disturbing: how could they live in such wasteful luxury, while others could not even afford a roof over their heads? I suppose I moved around in a daze, a sand-eel that’s just found a coral reef for the first time and can’t close its mouth at the wonder of it all.

It took over a month for me to pick up the stench and trails of dunmagic, mostly because it took us that long to be invited into the top echelon of Bethany society. However, within a few days of being sent an invitation to the Holdlord’s personal functions, I came across the dunmagicker: not the Bethanylord’s advisor, but the advisor’s new wife. She had the old man so befuddled with spells he just said whatever she wanted… There was even evidence of dun colour about the Holdlord himself: she must have cast a spell or two in his direction as well.

I told Arnado what I’d found out. He ruffled my hair with a smile. ‘Are you sure, my little firebrand? Remember, I will act on your word, and if you are wrong, then the wrong people could die.’

Even then, I didn’t fully understand. I said indignantly, ‘Yes, of course I’m sure. She’s a dunmagicker, and her husband’s so drowning in crimson I don’t think he has a single thought of his own any more.’

‘Good. Then your job is done.’ He pressed some money into my hand. ‘I want you to pack up all your things, and mine, and go down to the river wharfs and book us two seats on the next down-river boat to the sea. Take the baggage with you. Wait for me at the wharf. Think you can do that?’

I nodded. He had already shown me where the wharves were and how to buy the tickets. I ran off happily, did as he asked, and sat down to wait.

When he arrived he seemed rather sombre and disinclined to talk. We boarded the riverboat and he stood in the bows, watching the water slide past, as we were poled downstream. When he finally spoke, what he said shocked me out of any complacency I had about my role in Keeper strategies. ‘I killed them both, Blaze,’ he said, ‘on your say-so. I thought about sparing him, but if he was that much sunk in the red-shit, his mind would never have been the same even after she died—so I killed him too.’

I stared at him in utmost shock. Stupid, of course: what ever had I expected?

‘The Bethany Holdlord?’ I asked finally. ‘He asked you to do this?’

He gave a harsh laugh. ‘No, child. That’s the whole point: to go in quickly, kill the dunmagicker and leave without the Bethany Holdlord ever finding out that Keepers have been interfering in Bethany politics…’ He sighed. ‘We do the Keeper Council’s bidding, Blaze. Never forget that. We don’t ask anyone else’s permission, because ultimately it is
our
safety—Keeper safety—that will be compromised by dunmagickers.’

I sat there on the hatch of the riverboat and watched the riverbanks slide silently by. ‘We are running away,’ I said. ‘They could be hunting us.’

‘Yes. But unlikely. Don’t worry, I was very careful.’

‘You killed two people because of what I said.’

‘Not people, Blaze. A dunmagicker and her husband.’

‘But no one else knows that. If they catch us, they’ll think we just murdered a man—a very important man of Bethany—and his wife.’

‘Yes.’

‘And because it was a dunmagicker it makes it all right?’

That surprised him. ‘Of course. We can’t treat them like ordinary folk—while we were waiting for them to show their true natures, they’d be laying spells of confusion and illusion, or seeding us all with dunmagic sores. We have to hit them first. It doesn’t
bother
you, does it, Blaze?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘Of course not.’ And it didn’t, not then. In fact, the killing never bothered me at all, until I had to kill a Quillerman who meant something to me. Until I had to kill dunmagickers who were subverted sylvs… But that was more than seventeen years later.

###

I continued to do similar tasks for Duthrick and the Council, not all of them so simple. Sometimes I accompanied Arnado, sometimes other sylvs. I was attacked by dunmagickers on several occasions and once in Spattshield I was actually arrested for murder by the island’s guards. I was all of thirteen, and I had not actually done the killing. That was done by the sylv I had accompanied on that occasion, a nasty piece of work called Fiesta. The moment I was caught, she made off back to the Keeper ship leaving me to fend for myself. I might still be languishing there if it hadn’t been for the Keeper ship’s captain, who insisted that Fiesta go back for me and sent a couple of sailors along to make sure she did. I’d sailed with him before, and he had a soft spot for me, you see.

With sylv magic it was not all that difficult to free me: illusions to mystify the guards while Fiesta blurred her entry to the building and stole the key to my cell, more magic to blur us both on the way out… Yet she sulked all the way home, furious that the captain had humiliated her by insisting she go back for me, furious because I had allowed myself to be caught in the first place; furious that her reputation was sullied because of a halfbreed brat.

She had her revenge when we landed back in The Hub. She told some of the old Keeper sylv fanatics about a halfbreed girl whose future fertility would threaten island purity if they didn’t do something about it…

I told her I’d kill her one day for that. (She must have believed me because shortly afterwards she asked for a transfer out of The Hub and went to live on Segorn in the Spokes. It has been my fervent wish that she spent the rest of her life looking over her shoulder, looking for me.) Still bleeding from the
cet
leaf cauterisation, still in pain from the branding, I went to Duthrick in outrage. I don’t know what I expected. Regret? Sympathy? Great Trench, but I was naïve! All I received was the knowledge that he himself had fully intended that I be sterilised soon anyway. Perhaps he had intended it to be done more humanely, with sylv healing to take away the pain, but he had never intended that I wander the Glory Isles with the potential to have children.

The last vestiges of my childhood died that day, without me ever having really
been
a child.

A week later, I ran away, intending to leave the Keeper Isles and Keeper service for good. I certainly never wanted to see Duthrick again…

I stowed away on a coastal hopper carrying coal from The Hub to Xolchas Stacks. Of course I was soon found and an irate captain had me working like a slave to pay my passage. I was put ashore on one of the stacks—the rocky columns rising up from the sea like pock-marked phallic symbols—and immediately found out just how hard it is for a halfbreed with no money and no Keeper backing.

I went from stack to stack, begging passage, always hoping the next island would be better than the last. It never was.

In the capital, Xolchasbarbican, they finally ordered me off the islands and forced me on to a tramp sailing for Breth. On Breth, things went from bad to worse. For a time only my sword kept me safe, but in the end even that was stolen while I slept. Desperate and starving, I became a thief myself, sinking lower and lower into the underbelly of life in Brethbastion, always having to dodge the authorities, hide, slink away, live a life of stealth. The nadir came the night I was attacked while I was asleep, and raped. I killed the man responsible when he made the mistake of falling asleep beside me: he was the first person I ever slew, and I looked upon it as an execution. I don’t even know who he was.

I took his purse, and fled the city. A few days later, on the coast, I bargained with the stinking captain of a fisher to get to Fen Island; the price was high but I paid it. I slept with him all the way to Fen. I felt as dirty as a lugworm buried in tidal mud, dirty inside and out, as if I’d never be clean again.

Life in Fen was marginally better. I had green Fenlander eyes, so it wasn’t always immediately clear that I was a halfbreed, a situation I fostered by growing my hair long so that it covered my ears and staying out of the sun to lighten my skin. I sometimes managed to find legitimate work, at least for a day or two. In addition, I kept growing. I was becoming a large woman, a little less obviously a victim. Still, it was no kind of life, and deep in my heart I knew it.

When I saw a Keeper Council ship in port, staffed by those tall, violet-eyed people with their numerous talents and learning, it was like a revelation.
This
was what I wanted. To be one of them—not to be a second-rate woman sleeping and clawing her way to equality. All right, so I could never be a sylv, but I could be Keeper. I could be a respected human being of stature. Or so I thought…