The killer hunched over the corpse, panting, then concealed the box beneath his cloak.
Kapp was stunned by the incident. Apart from the wind sliding across the tundra, all sounds were improbably absent. Kapp felt an immense guilt, wanted to run. Had he actually contributed to murder?
As the remaining figure approached, Kapp experienced a sudden sense of calm. This was a cultist, or some official – you could tell by the medallion he wore around his neck. The rest of the outfit was elaborate, with the subtle red stitching of a small crest on one breast. The survivor was chubby, blond hair dishevelled. Kapp watched in silence as the cultist knelt down before him, bloody scars webbing across his face in symmetrical perfection.
‘Thank you, boy. Seems I owe you my life,’ the figure declared in elegant Jamur. He took Kapp’s hand and shook it. Kapp was uncertain of the gesture.
‘That’s all right,’ Kapp replied in Jamur, dazzled by the man’s intense blue eyes. They seemed unnaturally feminine… and there was no stubble.
He reached into his pocket and placed an object firmly in Kapp’s palm. A coin, silver and heavy and stamped with strange symbols: a single eye, shafts of sunlight radiating from within.
It would probably be worth enough to buy his family home.
‘I always pay my debts,’ the cultist continued. ‘Should you ever need a favour, you can find me in Villjamur. Show them this. Ask for me and I’ll be found. Otherwise it’ll not buy you much. Some may not even accept it.’
‘What’s your name?’ Kapp said.
‘Papus.’
‘Why was that man hurting you?’ Kapp nodded towards the bloodied body in the mud.
The stranger stood up, smiled in a way that suggested the whole story was too complicated to explain. ‘Because – among many things – I wouldn’t let him have sex with me.’
‘I don’t get it.’ Kapp frowned. ‘You’re a man. Why would he-?’
‘A one in two chance, boy, and you still got it wrong. Still, I don’t get offended easily. The offer stands, should you ever need a favour. But first, I suggest you avoid this conflict. Go, take shelter in Ule.’ Then with a harmless laugh, she jogged into the distance as cries of war began to spill across the tundra.
Snow and ice are isolating creatures.
But there is nothing as successful in this world,
no ruler, no king,
that creates the illusion that
the land is bound together,
as one.
Translation from Dawnir runes found on Southfjords, circa 458 BDC
ONE
Garudas swooped by, engaged in city patrols, whilst cats looked up from walls in response to their fast-moving shadows.
One of these bird-sentries landed on the top of the inner wall of the city, and faced the dawn. The weather made the ambience, was the ambience, because the city forever changed its mood according to the skies. These days, there was little but grey.
The sentry was attached to Villjamur. He admired the citizens who were its fabric, from the slang-talking gangs to the young lovers who kissed under abandoned archways. All around were the signals of the underworld, discreet and urgent conversations in the dark. It was the only place he knew of where he might feel a nostalgia for the present.
His precise vision detected another execution taking place on the outer wall. Didn’t remember any being scheduled today.
‘Anything you wish to say before we release the arrows?’ a voice echoed between the stone ramparts.
The garuda looked on with dull satisfaction from his higher battlement. He ruffled his feathers, shivered as the wind built up momentum over the fortifications, a chill quietly penetrating the furthest reaches of the city, a token of invading winter.
The prisoner, some distance away, wore nothing more than a rippling brown gown. He looked from left to right at the archers positioned either side of him on the outermost wall, their bows still lowered to one side. Down at the city-side base of the wall in its shadow, people marched circles in the freezing mud, staring upwards.
A thin, pale man in green and brown uniform, the officer giving the orders, stood further along the crest of the wall, as the prisoner opened his mouth cautiously to answer him.
He merely said, ‘Is there any use?’
A girl screamed from the crowds gathered below, but no one bothered to look down at her except the officer, who said, ‘A crime of the heart, this one, eh?’
‘Aren’t they all?’ the prisoner replied. ‘That is, of the heart and not the mind?’
A harsh rain, the occasional gust of something colder, and the mood turned bellicose.
‘You tell me,’ the soldier growled, apparently irritated with this immediate change in weather.
Some sharp, rapid commands.
As the girl continued her wails and pleas from the base of the wall, the two archers nocked their arrows, brought their bows to docking point, then fired.
The prisoner’s skull cracked under the impact, blood spat onto the throng underneath, and he buckled forwards, tumbling over the city wall, two arrows in his head. Two lengths of rope caught him halfway down.
A primitive display, a warning to everyone: Don’t mess with the Empire. State rule is absolute.
It was followed by a scream that seemed to shatter the blanket of rain.
The banshee had now announced the death.
With the execution over, the garuda extended his wings, reaching several armspans to either side, cracked his spine to stretch himself, crouched. With an immense thrust, he pushed himself high into the air, flicking rain off his quills.
He banked skywards.
Villjamur was a granite fortress. Its main access was through three consecutive gates, and there the garuda retained the advantage over any invading armies. In the centre of the city, high up and pressed against the rock-face, beyond a lattice work of bridges and spires, was Balmacara, the vast Imperial residence, a cathedral-like construct of dark basalt and slick-glistening mica. In this weather the city seemed unreal.
The refugee encampments pitched off the Sanctuary Road were largely quiet, a few dogs roaming between makeshift tents. The Sanctuary Road was a dark scar finishing at Villjamur itself. Further out to one side, the terrain changed to vague grassland, but well-trodden verges along the road suggested how the refugees never stopped hassling passing travellers as they sought to break away from their penurious existence. Heather died back in places, extending in a dark pastel smear, before fading into the distance. There was beauty there if you knew where to look.
The garuda noticed few people about at this time. No traders yet, and only one traveller, wrapped in fur, on the road leading into the city.
Back across the city.
Lanterns were being lit by citizens who perhaps had expected a brighter day. Glows of orange crept through the dreary morning, defining the shapes of elaborate windows, wide octagons, narrow arches. It had been a winter of bistros with steamed-up windows, of tundra flowers trailing down from hanging baskets, of constant plumes of smoke from chimneys, one where concealed gardens were dying, starved of sunlight, and where the statues adorning once-flamboyant balconies were now suffocating under lichen.
The guard-bird finally settled on a high wall by a disused courtyard. The ambient sound of the water on stone forced an abstract disconnection from the place that made him wonder if he had flown back in time. He turned his attention to the man hunched in furs, the one he had noticed moments earlier. A stranger, trudging through the second gate leading into the city.
The garuda watched him, unmoving, his eyes perfectly still.