“Just shut it up,” Pukht snapped.
Olvar jumped up. The Junior Overseer pulled his sword. Olvar raised a placating hand. “Let me, I have a way with him.” The man nodded slowly, so Olvar picked the boy up. Bouncing him in his arms, he went to the window, taking down the green glass bottle which sat on the sill. The Junior Overseer regarded him suspiciously. “He likes this,” Olvar said. He held the bottle in front of the boy who quietened, mesmerised, reaching out to touch the magical substance. Olvar laid him back down on the table and stepped away.
Something flashed through the window. The Junior Overseer grunted, hands going to his neck. An arrow shaft protruded from it. He buckled. Pukht went for his sword. Olvar dived for the cauldron. Boiling broth sprayed the zealot’s face. Pukht roared, lashing out half-blinded, catching Olvar in the gut. Olvar cried out, the pan crashing to the floor. Pukht raised his blade.
“No!” screeched the midwife.
Pukht took a sharp breath, eyes wide. His sword clattered to the floor and he stumbled into Olvar, holding onto him like a sagging boxer. Olvar pushed back, and both men slumped, landing beside each other on the quarry tiles. Livia stood over them, the midwife’s knife in hand, the blade dripping claret where she’d stabbed Pukht in the back. He lay wheezing, choking, blood filling his lungs. A few seconds later, his eyes rolled back. He went limp.
Livia gasped, letting the knife fall to join sword, pan, and pooling broth. “Oh gods, Olvar, you’re hurt.”
“Don’t worry, woman, it’s just a scratch.”
Livia whirled round, scooping up her boys as the door burst open. A squat-faced man appeared there, crossbow slung over his shoulder. He stalked up to the injured Junior Overseer, still emitting rasping, gurgling breaths, and buried his knife in the base of his skull. The breaths stopped. He went to Olvar, rolling the dead Pukht over with his boot. “You all right?”
“I’ll live,” Olvar winced, gritting his teeth against the pain.
The midwife backed up against the wall, muttering prayers. She looked like she might be sick at any moment. “They must be bound,” she stammered.
Olvar snarled. “You know not of what you talk, woman.”
She looked between them, eyes wild. “How can you be so cruel?”
Livia rounded on her, both babes now crying in her arms. “You are mistaken,” she sobbed. “To Bind them would mean their deaths.”
The midwife could manage only a horrified stare. “Your mind is weary by rose and blossom, girl. What have you done?”
Olvar turned his face to the light, pulling back his hair to reveal a shrivelled eye as dead as a rock. “See this, midwife? How many of my brothers do you think survived the Binding?”
She stared, revolted. “I would not know, sir.”
“None, that’s how many. Concoction does not take well with my blood.”
She grimaced at the red pool spreading out around the Chief Overseer. “And yet you lived? Was your disfigurement not a price worth paying?”
Olvar groaned, holding his side. “My sons will do better than live, hag. Leave my house. There be no welcome here for sympathisers.” He paused. “Unless you would have the same welcome as your brothers?”
She shrank back. Livia shot Olvar a warning look and turned to the midwife. “Let us pay you for your time.”
The midwife’s eyes flicked between the two dead men. “I should just go.”
“Nonsense,” Olvar grunted. “It must have been a three-hour walk for you.”
She nodded uncertainly. “About that, sir.”
“In that case, you deserve recompense for your trouble.”
Livia went to a shelf, withdrawing a silver coin from a pot next to some dried herbs. “Here.” She pressed it into the woman’s hand.
The midwife pocketed it, her face distracted, and quickly gathered her potions up, avoiding looking at the deceased overseers. She fastened her bag and made to leave.
Olvar grabbed her ankle, rooting her to the floor. “If anyone should hear about this, I shall know where to locate that loose tongue of yours to cut it out.”
The midwife paled, her colour not returning all the while she hurried away down the dirt track and out of sight past the old oak tree.
2
Hunger of the Deep
Seventeen years later
The deck swapped vertical with a resounding crack. A swinging oil lamp lost its fixing, smashing on the floor, painting flame on a young girl’s dress. A quick-thinking old woman threw a blanket over her, smothering fire and scream alike. This was some new level of hell.
The ship’s hold was packed with Krellen refugees, scores of families taking the gamble of a crossing over the rough sea to escape the horrors back home. And a deadly gamble it was turning out to be.
Guyen braced himself next to the stairway, his gaze dark for just seventeen years. His ears rang accursedly. The clamour was never this bad. He pulled his brother to his feet. You’d never have guessed they were twins, Guyen—stocky, black hair, emerald eyes, Yemelyan—lanky, blue-eyed and blond.
A wave hammered the boat, sending salt spray through gaps in the hull.
“What was that?” Yemelyan screeched. A ghostly copy of the youth spun beside him, hands covering his eyes. Rikesh was identical to Yemelyan in every way, apart from being about as corporeal as gas. In the Feyrlands, these apparitions are known as simulacra. They are not discussed with strangers.
A clap of thunder sent shock waves through the ship. Adrenalin spiked, heart pounding. “We have to get up top,” Guyen yelled.
“You heard what the slavers said. If we go up there, they’ll gut us.”
“And if we stay down here, we’re already dead.”
As if on cue, the ceiling exploded, showering the hold with splintered wood and sparking iron. Sky opened up and a torrent of wind and rain bore down. Yemelyan’s simulacrum took off around the hold, chasing Toulesh, Guyen’s ghostly copy. Were they looking for a way out? The ether crackled and a vein of red lightning arced across the heavens. Guttural thunder shook the boat like a toddler with a disobedient toy. Cries in the hold became screams. Damn the mark-hungry traffickers, this was an expensive death sentence.
It was now or never. “We’re leaving!” Guyen scrambled up the steps and shouldered the locked hatch. It wouldn’t budge. The frame had shifted though, revealing a crack on one side. He recalled the scene from six days ago when they’d embarked on this nightmare, picturing the hatch topside and the location of the bolt. A metal hook dangled within reach. He grabbed it, forcing it into the gap, levering desperately as men shouted for him to get out of the way. The wood split, popping the bolt. He pushed up.
A wall of water slammed the hatch back down, but he forced it open, thankful for the strength gained hauling Father’s fishing nets. He clambered out on deck. Oil lamps lit the battered schooner’s lines, streaks of unnatural red lightning and moonlight revealing the rest. Red lightning? What was happening up there? He picked up a discarded oar, ready for the traffickers. Yemelyan emerged behind him.
The deck was deserted.
Where were the crew? Had the moneygrubbing slavers abandoned them? Why? Something glinted in the distance, portside. Several more glints and a flash of lightning lit up another vessel, three masts, giant sails pink in the strange light. Sendali navy. Well, that explained the lack of a crew then. The ringing in Guyen’s ears intensified, suddenly painful. As it did, red light flared midway along the pursuing vessel, a strange quality to it—too bright, too pure. It shot up into the sky like a fireball, ripping a burning red arc in the blackness, heading straight for them. What the fuck was that? A hallucination? It cast no shadows.