Notes from the Burning Age by Claire North

Author:Claire North [NORTH, CLAIRE]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2021-07-06T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 36

Sit upon a stone outside the hearth door, and watch the dinner guests depart.

Krima vaMiyani talks to Yue, low, urgent, her eyes moving to every face. Krima is the one we must rely on to find Pontus, and yet slow – so slow. How has she not found them yet? Why has Krima failed? I am the sea; I drown in thoughts of Pontus.

Krima sees me, acknowledges me, does not approach, has nothing to say. The inquisition has done its part, and I am nothing more than a blown agent, dragged halfway across the Provinces on the whim of her enemy. Yue can deal with me.

Pav Krillovko tells a joke to Ull and Farii, and they do not get it, and are not in the mood. Antoni Witt is enduring Fethi and his pious, pompous huddle of Medj pontificating on some finer point of the kakuy – perhaps they are arguing that owning more than one pair of shoes is insulting, demeaning to the spirits of the earth, or that any glue made from animal bones is heresy, and we were meant to live on the forest floor or in caves and feast entirely on nuts and berries, as our ancestors did. Our ancestors died when they were thirty-two but well, ah well, if the kakuy demand it, so it must be.

Fanaticism would be a wonderful cover for Pontus. The absurdity of it, the sheer excess of it all suffocates even the slightest thought of subtlety, cunning or betrayal. Does Pontus cut their arm and bleed into the dust, proclaiming, “Bless me, spirit of the sand”? Does Pontus smile to see their scars by moonlight?

Somewhere, carried by the wind, the Brotherhood are singing. Their songs are of human endurance, spirit, passion and bravery. They are songs of heroes, bright and bold, loud enough that even Witt briefly stops arguing to turn and listen. Perhaps the world was once full of heroes, before the kakuy woke and, not even noticing what they did, crushed the great, the mighty and the bold beneath the storm.

I move away, fumble my inkstone from my robes, try to find words in it, something meaningful, something calming. The screen is old, a crack in one corner that no one has got round to repairing yet. You have to hold the on-switch down in just the right way to get it to come on.

Then Yue is by my side, and she says: “Not your stone?”

“No. Borrowed from a Medj with a cataract.”

The sound of music swells, lifted on the wind; a cry of glory and the might of man. Her head turns to it, as if it were the snap of a breaking branch in a midnight forest.

“They’re certainly keen singers,” I mumble.

“Worrying you chose the wrong side?”

I shook my head. “No. You?”

“I think it would be too late for me to change my mind, even if I did.” Her hand brushed mine, so light that for a moment I thought I’d imagined it. Then she said: “I’m leaving tomorrow.

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