Chapter Twelve

THE PROBLEM WITH DISTANCE

If you stood at the topmost window of Canarva’s Venerance temple and cast a hand from the Watcher’s head to the south and back again, you would look upon all I had ever known of the Holy Realms. More than four thousand miles it was said to stretch, border to border, north to south, never mind the oceans and scores of islands it ruled in the middle. And according to the crumbling map I found in a hidden stash in the wagon’s floor, I had seen but one volcanic armpit of the Realms. I was determined to make amends. And judging by the fact my smallest fingernail easily covered the gap between Canarva and Mullog, I had an entire empire to explore and inflict myself upon. That didn’t even include the western continents, nor the missing bottom quarter of the map, leaving the farthest south a ripped-off mystery. I imagine such a wide world might have put the fear of the Watcher in a lesser soul. I brimmed with excitement, let me tell you. I spent half the journey out of the marshes wishing my borrowed kumi lizard would trot faster. Not for what lay behind me, but for what lay ahead.

‘And what’s this place?’ I spoke aloud to the lizard, who I’d taken to calling Chum seeing as he was the only friend left to me in the world. I was poking at a crude illustration and notes drawn on the map. ‘Eskreer. A place of standing stones and vineyards. Are you a fan of wine, Chum?’

The kumi had even taken to responding to my idle chatting with talkative yowls as if he understood. Perhaps he did. I kept the private opinion that beasts knew more than we gave them credit for. From the brief interaction I’d had with Biggith in the tavern, I imagined he wasn’t the most patient owner, and put more burden on his beast than he should have. Chum seemed pleased with his new owner, even though I drove him on at a good speed. It had taken me the night to work out what orders the reins could give. It was no science, and Chum was apparently as eager as I was to get south.

Biggith had been a keen notetaker. Especially when it came to scarlet melons. Many different places on the map had a ring inked around them and one word: MELONS. Biggith had been obsessed. A face with a broad smile or frown had been drawn next to each one. I pondered whether he was in a Venerance cell right now, wondering how he had got there. I couldn’t have cared less. He should have taken my first offer.

My finger found its way southwest across the map, past the mountains and lakes and rivers that the marshes fed, all the way to an indent on the coast that held a fistful of islands. There lay Bashkar, and further beyond it, the capital of the Holy Realms and the First Chosen: Tempest. A city where buildings flew and the stars were outnumbered by its lights. My gaze wandered back to Bashkar for a moment.

I turned my head over my shoulder, looking for glimpses of Venerance masks and white armour. The mists drifting across the roads kept us hidden. If I was being followed, it was from a distance and at the same speed as I was moving. I still kept my eyes peeled for messenger crows, just in case Litkas had set a trap ahead of me.

Fifty miles beyond Mullog, the Witchfell Marshes died out at last. Its lurking mists and clouds of steam faded to a faint haze that obscured the distance. Its chirping crowds of biting flies died away. The bogs that had almost claimed me withered to puddles. Instead of rock, pumice, and ash, grass had begun to grow. That apparently meant a lot to the kumi, who strayed often to nibble the bugs and lap at the cleaner water with his trident tongue. Even the sun came out: a hazy orb behind a veil of mist.

Spending a life in the gutters, running from trouble every other day, there wasn’t much opportunity for solitude, never mind peace and quiet. It might sound boring to you, my good reader: perched on a wagon, watching the countryside roll by at the pace of an old lizard, but you must be used to such things. It kept me sitting straight as a spear and my head turning every which way, watching for creatures. I even greeted the wagons and merchants coming the other way with cheery – albeit slightly and subtly mocking – smiles.

Biggith had more in his secret stash other than his crinkled old map. A small metal tin held some dried purple leaves, the kind that working folk chewed to put them into a sleepy daze and that the Venerance wasn’t fond of. There was a change of clothes, of which one baggy shirt and some raggedy boots fit me. I found waxy parchments, which I deduced to be a licence for Biggith to work as a merchant, a dagger tarnished by rust, a handful of shells for my troubles, and a small book bound with twine and cheap leather. Whatever title the book once held had been worn away, but I could still feel the mark of the six holy circles of the Venerance stamped into its cover. I undid the twine and leafed through its thumbed and dirty pages, eyeing the words some cleric had likely spent a year copying out. Aberan had taught me my letters from a Venerance pamphlet on the infinite wisdom of the Great Watcher. It had been a while, but the lessons had stuck.

The book was a collection of stories. True tales, the book called them, but they didn’t read like the history books or the scriptures the Venerance allowed. They read like fiction. One caught my eye as I rifled through. It was called The Wytch’s Folly. Not the kind that had tried to eat me in the marshes, but the old crone kind of wytch that was long driven out of the Realms. It even had a small – and rather terrible – sketch of a dishevelled woman cowering before an alchemage’s shining fist.

It was a simple story. The wytch is rudely cast from a town due to her ugliness and her dabbling in apparently “bad” magic. In revenge, she cooks a stew so delicious it summons all the cruel town’s children to her lair in a forest, where they dance and play with the woodland beasts, utterly free of their intolerant parents. The wytch was painted as the villain in this story, of course. The hero? A shining alchemage of the Venerance who, without conducting any kind of investigation whatsoever, savagely murders the wytch for her supposed crimes. Right in front of the children, no less, who are dragged back to the town, and punished accordingly by clerics’ whips for entertaining the world’s evil and banned magic. The chosen one is cheered and thrown a feast.

I glowered, feeling for the wytch.

Riveno had told me the purity of blightpowders had a scale, and that scale was based on stars. A six-pointed star just like you’d find in the centre of the symbol of the Watcher. Five stars rated the purest of powders, mined from concentrated sources and processed by the best companies. Three meant the kind usually scraped out of ashfields alongside other minerals. One star meant the kind of powder that was scraped from a marsh or mixed with dyed flour or chalk to make up the weight. I found myself wishing there was a similar scale for rating books, and a way of telling the author what I thought of their work. I flipped to the back, where the symbols of the Venerance were joined by a single name that I read aloud.

‘Grigio Keora,’ I whispered. ‘Well, Grigio. One star for you, whoever you are. You can keep your sermons and scripture in disguise. I’ll dabble in the bad magic all I want.’

I placed the book back in the wagon’s small and dusty compartment, leaving it for later judgement. The mists were gradually revealing their secrets. Behind me, there was a fat wagon taking some of Canarva’s goods south, but no Venerance. I eyed the skies, where a murmuration of birds made shapes from their numbers. Still no crows that I could see beyond the ones that sat in scrawny trees and cawed at my mere presence. Venerance messenger crows flew straight and fast.

Ahead of me, the ground was cresting into a hill. I could see nothing of the world beyond it thanks to the cursed mist, but as Chum and I battled the slope, a warm breeze sprang up, and the lands I had once glimpsed from a baron’s windows were revealed.

The mountains came first, poking above the rise like knives piercing flesh. The snow capping them was a stark contrast to their russet brown and forested slopes. The wagon crested the hill, and I pulled Chum to a halt so I could take in the landscape before me that unfurled like a god’s carpet. The southern road wandered on, down a hill of rubble and scree and into a valley glowing emerald with forest. The woods stretched out from east to west. A river snaked through the forest, carving a broad valley that was bordered by grasslands the like of which I’d never seen. Roads like lost threads led to villages and grain farms of varying sizes. All that grew in the Ashlands was shrivelled potatoes and tea leaves. Blight-powered balloons and cruisers dotted the cloud-dappled sky as they hauled their cargo between cities.

Everything was simply, overwhelmingly, green. Alive. I wished I could describe it to you in a better way, but that was how it was: a spectrum of green from horizon to horizon, and at the very limits of the east, I saw a sparkle of ocean waters. It was all foreign to me, a girl who had grown up watching firefountains vent their anger and chasing ash-flakes around as they fell from the sky. I felt a stirring in my gut I had rarely felt. See? I might have been becoming a cold soul, but I was still human enough to be inspired by a landscape.

There was one problem with the bucolic paradise I had stumbled across, and that was the damnable Venerance watchtower at the bottom of my hill. White and blue flags rippled in the same breeze that took the chill out of my bones. I furrowed my brow. Travellers like me were forced to amble beneath it, where a cluster of prosecutors looked down and heckled passersby.

It was a gamble. Either these prosecutors had received a crow telling them to watch for a soot-haired girl of Canarva, or they hadn’t. It was a simple wager, but one with a prize that could involve either capture or continued freedom.

‘Fuck,’ I whispered to Chum and the breeze, tying my hair up into a tight bun and using another of Biggith’s shirts as a hood and shawl. The kumi yowled at me as though he was impatient to get going. Selfish lizard, I thought, giving no thought to my situation.

While I pondered, I heard a screech that cut the quiet air. I whirled around to see a charcoal-coloured drake wheeling above me. I watched it with curiosity, wondering what a lone drake was doing out here, when it started to flap towards me. And I mean straight towards me, as if I had stolen its eggs or something equally transgressive.

‘What in the nether?’ I muttered as it swooped for me. I almost had my cleaver out of my pocket when I realised I recognised this particular drake. It was none other than Tasparil. Riveno’s drake.

The drake stopped short of the wagon and squawked sharply at me while it flapped in a circle. I cautiously held out my arm for him to land on, and surprisingly, the creature did just that. I winced as his claws latched on, finding skin beneath the sleeves of my borrowed shirt. I stared into Tasparil’s three glimmering eyes and he stared right back. My body was tense, expecting him to spit sparks at me at any moment. Instead, all he did was croak softly and sniff at my other hand.

‘What are you doing here? Have you been looking for me?’ I asked it. The drake just showed me his needle teeth. ‘Riveno couldn’t have sent you, that’s for sure. Unless he knew?’

I stopped myself there. I would never know the truth, and truth was pointless to guess at. I don’t know why he had sought me out. All that mattered was that Tasparil was here, and I was comforted by it. I let the lizard wander up to my shoulder, where he stayed and grumbled in my ear.

‘You dare singe me, drake, and you can fly the whole way,’ I warned him.

Tasparil grumbled again.

‘No, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’m going wherever Reverent Lectra has taken my brother,’ I said, imagining Riveno’s voice. I opened the map again and prodded at Bashkar. ‘If that’s where that holy bitch came from, that’s where I’ll go. I’ve got business with them both of them, as a merchant would put it.’

After I shook the reins and Chum onward, I took out the godgear box, carefully took out the shard, and used some of the book’s twine to tie it tightly around my neck. Let me tell you: it was a tough job with the wagon rattling over every pothole in the slope. You’d think the Venerance, for all its money, could maintain its roads, but no. They never talk about potholes in those old stories.

Shivering at the ice-touch of the shard against my skin, I emptied the purple chewing leaves into its lead-lined box. I tossed the empty tin into the grass lining the slope and put the box, book, and map on my side. My cleaver and blightpowders joined the rusty dagger in the stash, and I put back the wooden board in the floor.

The prosecutor watchtower had a queue of wagons and carts coming to and fro. The prosecutor checking people on the road was being laughed at from those above.

‘Come on, hurry it up, Fogrel!’

‘He can barely read. Why’d we send him down?’

‘Ha! How else is he going to learn?’ came the shower of mockery. I couldn’t help but smirk. It was a useful distraction.

‘Next, by the Watcher! Next, damn it!’ shouted Fogrel, sweating even in the cool day. He snatched at each handful of parchments the merchants and travellers offered him and spent far too long squinting at them. The backlog cleared gradually. Even Chum became restless. I sat still and attentive, pretending to be calm while my mind raced through every possible outcome, all of them inconvenient. My heart acted like I was already fleeing.

When Fogrel had an overly lengthy struggle with the merchant ahead of me, one of the prosecutors threw up his hands, hurled whatever baked treat he was scoffing down at the wagons, and came thumping down the tower’s stairs. The others began to follow him.

‘Bollocks,’ I breathed.

‘Out of the way, Fogrel!’ shouted the ringleader, a thick Ashlander fellow with crumbs in his beard. He shoved the illiterate aside and snatched the pages from him. ‘Give me those. You. Where you going?’

‘Serpentine,’ replied the Drola courier ahead of me, rather haughtily.

‘And good riddance to you,’ snapped the prosecutor before tossing his parchments to him and waving him on. ‘Next! See how it’s done, Fogrel, you dunce?’

Fogrel stood with his arms crossed and staring off at the mountains.

‘Next!’ the thick prosecutor yelled at me even though I had brought Chum up to the tower. I struggled to keep my smile up and my head bowed. All I could do was hope they had not received word from the north.

‘Parchments,’ he ordered of me, greasy hand out and grasping.

I handed the prosecutor Biggith’s license. He glanced at the scribbles on the pages, which held all kinds of names, records of travel, goods, a sketch of Biggith, and other such nonsense that the Venerance required of merchants. All so they could tax the arsehole out of every trade by the name of the Great Watcher.

When the prosecutor’s eyes came back to mine, there was a scowl on his face. ‘Name?’

I had one ready to blurt. ‘Yver Brokenshell, sir,’ I said, and don’t judge me; that was the first name to come into my mind. My last name was stolen from Biggith.

The prosecutor grinned like a hungry salamander trapping its prey in a corner. ‘Then explain to me why this says Biggith Brokenshell.’

‘Biggith is my father. He’s sick. Come down with a flux, bless the Watcher. I’m driving the wagon back for him while he stays in Canarva,’ I lied.

‘You don’t look like a bloody Esfer to me. You ain’t got a feather on you. In fact,’ he said, making me tense up, ‘you look very much like an Ashlander.’

‘Adopted father,’ I replied, very aware that the other prosecutors were now prowling around my wagon, checking its wheels and poking at my kumi. One tapped the sides of my wagon as if they tried to find a hollow section. Smugglers were not welcome in the Holy Realms.

The prosecutor wrinkled his lip. I knew his kind: the kind that had no love for anyone that didn’t look like him.

The man tried to trap me again. ‘And where are you headed, Yver Brokenshell?’

‘City of Garrad.’ The land of scarlet melons, or so I imagined. Even if I hadn’t remembered Biggith’s home from the bar at Big Toad’s, the parchments had reminded me. ‘Got another shipment of melons to pick up. That’s what my family trades in.’

‘What’s with that filthy drake?’

‘A pet.’

One of the other prosecutors stood on the wagon to grab at my book and the box. She rifled through the tales and threw it back to me, making Tasparil hiss. The box made her pause. ‘Got some chew here, boss,’ she said.

‘Give it here.’

The box sailed over my head into the prosecutor’s hands. He poked at the leaves before sighing deeply.

‘Yours if you want it. My father forgot it and I don’t use it,’ I said.

The man shoved his shoulders back. ‘You trying to bribe an officer of the Venerance, girl?’

I shook my head sincerely. ‘Not at all, sir.’

The prosecutor levelled a look of distrust at me. He held his stare and I held my innocent expression. At least, I hoped it looked innocent. I’d forgotten how to be such a thing as innocent. There was silence save for the cawing of two crows in a cage beneath the watchtower.

‘We’ll be confiscating this,’ the man said at last, closing his fingers around the box. He eyed the other waiting merchants as if they were inconvenient witnesses. They all watched us.

‘As you wish,’ I replied with a solemn nod.

‘Then on your way,’ he ordered, watching me closely.

Breathing a sigh of relief through my clenched teeth, I did exactly as I was told. The three of us trotted onwards, where saplings cast their shade across the edges of the road.

‘That was close,’ I whispered to the drake perched on my shoulder.

The sting of eyes on my back itched me. I couldn’t help turning around to see whether they still watched me leave. I knew it was a mistake as soon as I did it. The ringleader was still staring at me. One of his cronies was whispering into his ear.

I turned back, an unease settling into my stomach. I managed to get a quarter mile before I had to glance over my shoulder again. I was slyer this time, and to my annoyance, I spotted a figure standing at the cage of crows. Moments later, the two birds were released. One flapped north, while another flew a more southerly path. Likely to the next post of prosecutors, where they would be waiting to catch me.

‘Tasparil,’ I muttered. ‘I don’t know if you can understand what I’m saying, but I need you to do me a favour right now.’

The drake chattered, and I hoped that was some kind of agreement. Hope gets you far in life, dear reader.

‘If you can understand me, then I need you to stop that messenger crow.’

Tasparil looked at me blankly.

‘Bloody nether, lizard, the crow up there!’ I pointed as the bird came flapping overhead, cawing as if it mocked us.

With a jolt, Tasparil jumped from my shoulder and flapped into the clear sky after the crow. I urged the kumi after them, but they disappeared behind the tips of a copse of trees within moments. I heard a commotion of cawing as Chum and I were enveloped in the chill shade of the trees. I craned my neck, impressed by how tall the trees stretched and eyeing at the sharp needles at the end of their branches.

‘Tasparil!’ I called out. The day had fallen silent again.

Something small and black came crashing through the branches. It fell to the roadside with a thud and lay there, still and smoking slightly. For a moment, I worried it was Tasparil. That was until he came crashing through the branches himself and landed on the wagon with a victorious squawk. A tiny, wax-sealed roll of parchment was in his mouth, also slightly burned. He spat it on my waiting palm, gifting me with more saliva than he did parchment.

I read its hasty scrawl aloud. ‘ “Ashland girl who caused fire in Canarva found on road south driving merchant wagon. Heading for Garrad. Will reach Port of Shrewn shortly”.’

I crumpled the note in my hand and tossed it back to Tasparil, who promptly ripped it to shreds.

‘Shrewn,’ I echoed myself, staring ahead. The forest of the needled trees was growing around us. The copses joined together until the road was a canyon through the trees. A sage moss covered every inch of the forest floor. Bright ochre birds and thumb-sized winged lizards scattered through the branches. Deer with antlers that blossomed with red flowers froze at the sight of the kumi and watched us until we had passed. I had never seen such a thing, and it stole my attention while I plotted.

It was only when we came across a signpost wrapped in moss that I stopped Chum. I had to read the numbers thrice to make sense of them, my brow becoming more furrowed every time. Almost two thousand miles and more lay between Bashkar and I. Canarva lay a hundred and fifty miles back. I had never been one for numbers, but I wagered that at the speed of the kumi, this journey of mine would take not only days, but weeks. Perhaps months. All the while chased by the Venerance.

The joy of riding upon the wagon, even amongst a forest as I had always dreamed, dulled slightly like dust on a silver vase. My adventure felt as though it had tripped as soon as it had begun. The problem with a journey is the journey itself. You can tell me that journey should come before destination all you want, but I won’t listen. Now I know why the walking and wagoning part of stories is hardly ever talked about: because it’s boring. And I would not let my story be boring. There was important work to be done.

I slumped, letting Tasparil amble onto the back of the seat. ‘Ports mean boats and ships,’ I muttered.

The drake croaked.

‘Maybe balloons…’

Tasparil nodded.

‘Then I think we’ll go to Shrewn, and see somebody about a faster ride.’

It was then that I heard the strum of musical strings, and noticed the young man sitting deathly still a stone’s toss from the signpost. He had a stringed wooden bowl in his hand and plucked it again as he spoke, an annoying rise and fall to his voice. The oat yellow of his hair made him a southerner. From the way he smiled, I could tell he thought he was – as we Ashlanders say – the shit. He reminded me of Ganner in a single heartbeat, and I decided I utterly distrusted him by the second.

‘World’s a big place, isn’t it?’

‘And what are you doing skulking in the dirt?’ I called to him while leaning forwards and surreptitiously prising the board from the floor. I slid my cleaver and the dagger into my pockets.

‘I’m not skulking. I’m sitting,’ he objected.

I moved the wagon to him, listening to Chum snarling at the man. Kumi were dumb beasts bred to stay dumb, but that didn’t mean they weren’t fierce or dangerous when they needed to be.

‘I mean no harm. I’m just a simple bard.’

‘Oh, good.’

‘You know, a lot of people think that we bards prance about all the bloody livelong day. Me?’ He raised a leg out of the grass, and I saw half of it was wooden. ‘Or that we only speak in song.’

‘Yeah, I know the kind.’ They infested the taverns of Canarva, squabbling for shells.

‘They,’ the man said, picking an intricate and brief melody, ‘are the bad kinds of bards.’

‘And I suppose you’re one of the good ones.’

‘I like to think so. I sing the old songs to keep them alive and make up new ones to spread the news. I take pride in my calling. And you won’t find and another pair of hands in the Realms who can play a lyre like these can,’ he said, holding his hands up as if I aimed a pistol at him.

‘All for a shell or two, I suppose.’

The bard’s smile went wider. I hadn’t thought it possible.

‘Usually, yes. But right now I am in need of a kind passerby to let me ride with them.’

I was suspicious why nobody had picked him up already.

‘Yet sadly and so far, nobody along this road has been willing to help. In return I can provide a song or a poem to pass the miles. No trip along the road is complete without music.’

And there was my answer. I didn’t need somebody yelling in my ear the entire way. I shook my head. My suspicion ruled me. ‘I travel alone. And quietly.’

‘You look like you could use a guide, then. I’ve travelled. I’ve journeyed. I’ve seen north and south and everything in between. I’ve met. I’ve witnessed. I’ve listened. I’m a useful sort to have on the road.’

‘I have a map already, thank you.’

‘A map that, by the looks of it, has lied to you,’ he said, with another strum of his strings. He pushed himself out of the grass using a stick and pointed the way I was going. There went that excuse. ‘If you would take me as far as Shrewn, I’ll be on my way. You see, I’ve been working on a song about the Blaze of Canarva.’

‘The what?’ I asked. I haven’t lied to you yet, dear reader, and I don’t intend to now: my ego was stoked by the bard’s words.

‘The Blaze of Canarva. It’s what I’m calling my latest ballad: a song of the fire that almost consumed a city. Now that it’s almost finished, it’s time to take it south. I’ll be the first bard to do so, and all will hear it. If I can travel the forty miles Shrewn, I can catch a balloon or an airship to Tempest.’

I cursed him quietly for intriguing me.

‘What do you know of Bashkar?’ I asked.

‘Bashkar? Why! I have sung my way across Bashkar, little madam, from the port taverns to reverents’ garden parties. I know it like every dent in my lyre.’

Sucking my teeth, I nodded for him to join me. I patted my cleaver in the meantime. That’s the fun thing about choosing the life of a villain: following the path of being lawful and good doesn’t let you cut the throats of those that betray you.

I watched the bard climb onto the wagon. Tasparil hissed at him, and I saw the man’s smile waver for a brief moment as he clomped his wooden leg on the floor.

‘What’s your name, bard?’

The bard sketched a little bow and plucked a deep note on his lyre.

‘Voldo Do Berria, here to make your day merrier, as I always like to say.’

‘Watcher’s arse,’ I muttered, already rolling my eyes. I almost wanted him to betray me.