‘In here, we’re together.’ She jerked her head towards the warped door in the warped frame. ‘Out there …’ Out there, everyone stood on their own.
He frowned at the little gap of coarse sheet between them as if it was a great divide that could never be crossed. ‘Sorry I can’t tell you where the Gurkish Fire comes from.’
‘Best if no one knows more than they have to.’
‘It’ll work.’
‘I believe you,’ she said. ‘I trust you.’ Vick trusted no one. She’d learned that in the camps, along with how to lie. Learned to lie so well, she could take one tiny sliver of truth and beat it out, like the goldsmiths beating a nugget of gold into leaf, till it could cover a whole field of lies. Sibalt didn’t doubt her for a moment.
‘I wish I’d met you sooner,’ he said. ‘Things might be different.’
‘You didn’t and they’re not. So let’s take what we can get, eh?’
‘By the Fates, you’re a hard case, Vick.’
‘We’re none of us hard as we seem.’ She slipped her hand around the back of his head, through the dark hair scattered with grey, held it firm, looked him in the eye and asked one more time. ‘You’re sure, Collem? You’re sure this is what you want?’
‘Don’t really matter what we want, does it? Bigger things than our future to consider. We can strike a spark that’ll set a fire burning. One day, there’ll be a Great Change, Vick. And folk like you and me will get our say.’
‘A Great Change,’ she said, trying to sound like she believed it.
‘When this is done, I’ll have to get out of Adua.’
She kept silent. Best thing to do when you’ve nothing to say.
‘You should come with me.’
She should’ve kept silent on that, too. Instead, she found she’d asked, ‘Where would we go?’
A grin spread across his face. Seeing it made her smile. Her first in a while. Hardly felt like her mouth should bend that way.
The frame groaned as he reached down beside the bed and came back up with a battered old book. The Life of Dab Sweet by Marin Glanhorm.
‘This again?’ asked Vick.
‘Aye, this.’ It fell open at an etching across both pages. As though it was often opened there. A rider alone, staring out across a sweep of endless grass and endless sky. Sibalt held that drawing at arm’s length as if it was a view spread out in front of them, whispered the words like a magic spell. ‘The Far Country, Vick.’
‘I know,’ she grunted. ‘It says under the picture.’
‘Grass for ever.’ He was half-joking. But that made him half-serious. ‘A place where you can go as far as your dreams can take you. A place where you can make yourself anew. Beautiful, isn’t it?’
‘Aye, I guess.’ She realised she’d reached towards that drawing with one hand, as if she might touch anything there but paper, and snatched it back. ‘But it’s a made-up drawing in a book full o’ lies, Collem.’
‘I know,’ he said, with a sad smile, like thinking about it was a fun game to play, but just a game. He flipped the book shut and tossed it back down on the boards. ‘Guess there comes a time you have to give up on what you want and make the best of what you’re given.’
She rolled over, pressing her back into his belly. They both lay silent, warm under the blankets, while the world went on outside, and the light of the furnaces across the street flickered orange beyond the misty windowpanes.
‘When we strike that spark,’ he murmured, voice loud in her ear, ‘it’ll change everything.’
‘No doubt,’ said Vick.
Another silence. ‘It’ll change everything between us.’
‘No doubt,’ said Vick, and she slipped her fingers through his and pressed his hand tight to her chest. ‘So let’s take what we can get. If I learned one thing in the camps, it’s that you shouldn’t look too far ahead.’
Chances are you’ll see nothing good there.
The Answer to Your Tears
Sometimes you wake from a nightmare, and there’s a wonderful wash of relief as you realise the horrors you saw were just ghosts, and you’re safe in your own warm bed.
For Rikke, it happened the other way around.
She’d been dreaming of something happy, somewhere happy, burrowing into feathers with a smile on her face. Then she felt the cold, creeping into her heart however tight she huddled. Then the aching in her sore legs as she shifted on the pitiless ground. Then the hunger, nagging at her gut, and it came back in a rush where she was, and she woke with a groan.
It was with great reluctance she opened her eyes, saw the cold, grey sky through branches creaking with the wind, and something swinging—
‘Shit!’ she squawked, scrambling from her clammy cloak. A man had been hanged from the tree right above where she’d been sleeping. If she’d stood up tall, she could’ve touched his dangling feet. When she lay down, it’d been too dark to see her own hands, let alone a corpse hung overhead. But there was no missing him now.
‘There’s a dead man,’ Rikke squeaked, pointing a trembling finger.
Isern barely spared him a glance. ‘On balance, I’d rather be surprised by dead men than living. Here.’ She pressed something into Rikke’s cold hand. A soggy heel of loaf and a handful of those horrible bitter berries that left your teeth purple. ‘Breakfast. Savour it, for that is all the food it has pleased the moon to give us.’ She cupped her blue hand and her white and blew into them, ever so gently, like even breath was a resource to be rationed. ‘My da used to say you can see all the beauty in the world in the way a hanged man swings.’
Rikke bit off damp bread, chewed it in her sore mouth, eyes creeping back to that slowly turning body. ‘Can’t say I’m seeing it.’
‘Nor me, I will admit.’
‘Should we cut him down?’
‘Doubt he’ll thank us.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Honestly, he’s not had much to say for himself. Could be one of your father’s men, hanged by Stour Nightfall’s. Could be one of Stour Nightfall’s, hanged by your father’s. Not much difference now. The dead fight for no one.’
One of her father’s men? Had Rikke known him, then? How many folk she knew were killed, these last few days? She felt the ache of tears at the back of her nose, sniffed it up hard.
‘How much more of this can we take?’ And she knew her voice was getting shrill and cracked but couldn’t stop herself.