The Red Knight

He made a face.

‘It would be something,’ Ser George admitted.

‘Yes,’ the captain managed.

Toby – unarmoured and unarmed – had survived the rush from the irks. He’d simply run away. Now he was back.

‘I’ve food,’ he said.

His scrip was packed with beef, bread and good round cheeses and Sauce’s men-at-arms fell on him like scavengers on a carcass. His head was patted a dozen times. He had a meat pie for himself. But he always seemed to.

Sauce moved among them. ‘Drink water,’ she said, as if they were children and turned to the captain. ‘Think they’ll try again?’ she asked.

The captain shrugged, and the weight of his armour and the pain in his shoulder defeated the motion completely. So he bobbed his head. ‘No idea.’ He took a deep breath. His breastplate seemed to be too small, and he couldn’t catch his breath. The smoke in the air was burning the inside of his lungs.

It was a very small working, an insidious thing. He saw it as soon as he made the effort.

The air was full of a poison. He couldn’t even see how it was done.

Sauce started to cough.

Harmodius! He called.

I see it, lad.

Do something! the captain shouted in his head.

Lissen Carak – Amicia

His shout came to her as clearly as his anguish.

She was working on Sym’s back, running her hands along the weels left by the lash, and trying to fix some of the deeper issues, as well. The captain’s thoughts were not helping her concentration.

She reached out instinctively. It was in the air. Poison. She read it from his thoughts.

She tasted the air through his mouth, and felt it through his lungs.

She was in him.

Then he slammed his gate shut.

She was standing over Sym, with her hands clenched into fists. Shaking.

Captain! She sent.

He responded.

It’s an unhealing. A curse.

Tell me.

You cannot banish it. You can only heal it.

Another voice. The Magus. I see! Well thought, mistress.

Now it was her turn to raise her defences. Get out! She said it aloud too.

Sym looked at her.

‘Not you, silly,’ she muttered.

Lissen Carak, The Lower Town – The Red Knight

The captain could feel the poison thickening in the air and he didn’t know how to heal. Although now that she showed him, he could see it.

A curse.

The physical manifestation of a curse.

He went into his tower. ‘I need help,’ he said to his tutor.

She smiled. ‘Ask me anything,’ she said.

‘A curse. A physical curse – a poison in the air.’ He went to the door to his tower.

‘He’s waiting for you to open it,’ she said.

‘I think he’s busy, and a lot of people are going to die if I don’t act.’ He reached to door.

‘If it is physical, perhaps we can move it physically,’ Prudentia said. She smiled sadly. ‘I don’t know healing, either.’

‘That’s a fine thought.’ He looked up at his symbols. ‘Wind,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Prudentia agreed.

He spoke the names. ‘St George, Zephyr, Capricorn,’ he said, and the great ranges of symbols rotated silently.

He touched the door.

He could feel the enemy, and he opened it anyway.

And slammed it back shut.

Lissen Carak – Sauce

The wind came up without warning – first a heavy gust that cooled them, and then a mighty rush of air from the east.

Sauce drew a shuddering breath.

‘Get a scarf over your face,’ the captain shouted. ‘Anything.’

The wind moved the poison – but he could still smell it.

And then he felt the sending. It was gentle as snow, and just for a heartbeat the air seemed to sparkle all around them, as if the world was made of magic.

Lissen Carak – Harmodius

Harmodius watched the Abbess’s working and he could only think of Thorn’s statement that men were too divided.

It was beautiful. The sort of mathematical Hermeticism that moved him the most deeply. In it were the rotations of the planets and the paths of the stars across the heavens. And many other things, thought and unthought . . .

‘You are far more powerful than I had imagined,’ Harmodius said.

She smiled. Just for a moment, it was the Queen’s smile.

‘Who are you?’ he asked.