The expression on Bern’s face was unreadable, much of his face hidden in shadow. ‘Do you remember it?’
‘Fragments. I remember the way Ebora felt, more than anything. There was such a frenzy. People seemed brittle, living on the edge of a life that could be taken away at any time. And then it was.’
He knelt on the grass, feeling the chill of the ground immediately soak into his trousers. From within his pack he took a pair of short-handled trowels, and passed one to Bern, who knelt across from him to take it. Finding those had been a challenge in itself; nothing seemed to be kept where he remembered.
‘I attended a party at the height of it all.’ Aldasair kept his eyes on the ground, watching as the edge of his trowel bit into the grass and lifted away a lump of turf. ‘I was far too young to be there, really, but all the rules were looser, then. It was beautiful. All the lamps were lit, and there was music. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard music like it since. The lady whose party it was, she wore red jewels at her throat and her ears, and I remember that was the fashion. For crimson.’ Bern began shovelling dirt too, and the air filled with the good smell of wet earth. ‘There was a human man there. He was pale, and I could smell his sweat, but he was smiling, smiling all the time. The lady told us all that he was our willing guest, and that for a life at the Eboran palace he would gladly give what he could. We knew he wasn’t talking about money. As it grew later, the lady drank more and more, and, once, she caught hold of my sleeve and told me that I must serve her human. Fetch him food and drink, and attend him like a servant. I was, as I think I have said, very young, and I thought it a game. It was fun, to play at being a servant, so I brought him goblets of wine and platters of fruit, until it got very late and I was too tired for it all. I found a quiet room and slept there, very deeply. I didn’t hear the rest of the party, and woke to full sunlight streaming in the windows.’
They had a reasonable-sized hole. Aldasair sat back on his haunches, looking away down the hill to the palace. The gardens were full of campfires. ‘I remembered that I was supposed to be the human’s serving man, and I wondered if I was supposed to serve him breakfast, so I got up and went back to the ballroom.’ Aldasair lowered his head, looking only at the dirt. ‘I couldn’t find him. I found – other things. Later, I saw the lady who had thrown the party, and she was sitting in a corridor with her head in her hands, crying and crying. Her arms were bloody to the elbow.’
Bern the Younger had gone very still.
‘Do you see what we are?’ Aldasair asked softly. ‘Do you see it, yet?’
For a long time, Bern didn’t say anything. Somewhere, perhaps beyond the Wall, a wolf howled, and another wolf-voice joined it.
‘Show me a people who don’t have a bloody history.’
Aldasair sat for a moment in silence, his fingers clutching the edge of the box. Eventually, he reached inside and took out the first of the figures. Once, it had been something like a fox, with a great bushy tail. He held it up so that the light of the moon coloured its pitted surface, and then he placed it gently in the deepest part of the hole.
‘Ebora thanks you for your service, mighty one. Return to the roots.’
By the time they had buried all the war-beast figures, the sky to the east was a watery pink, and the air was stiff with cold. Walking back together through the empty city, Aldasair felt an odd loosening in his chest – a tension he had been unaware of had lessened somehow, and although the empty buildings with their broken windows and overgrown gardens still looked ghostly, he found he could look on them without dread. Next to him, Bern seemed unconcerned by the chill of the dawn, even as his breath turned to puffs of white vapour.
When they reached the palace grounds, the humans camped on the lawns were rousing themselves; building cooking fires, fetching water, having their first conversations of the day. Aldasair looked at them with new eyes. To them, all of Sarn was in terrible danger, and the chances that Ebora could save them were so slim as to be impossible, but still they climbed out of their beds, cared for their children, cared for one another.
‘Bern, I must thank you.’
They stopped on the edge of the main circle of tents. From somewhere nearby, a child was complaining loudly at being turfed out of warm blankets.
‘It’s a small thing,’ said Bern. He seemed embarrassed somehow, and Aldasair thought again that he would never understand humans. ‘By the stones, there are plenty of us who should have given thanks to your war-beasts long ago. There would be no Sarn at all, without them.’
‘That’s not the point, though, and you know it.’
Bern turned to him, his eyebrows raised in surprise, but at that moment there came a whiskering sound across the frigid grass. Aldasair jumped as though he’d been pinched and turned to see a pale figure bearing down on them. It took him a few seconds to see that it was Hestillion; she wore a padded robe, silvery white in the dawn light, but no cloak, and her yellow hair was loose over her shoulders. No, not just loose – tangled. Aldasair blinked. He had never seen Hestillion in such a state of disarray, not even when she was tending to the victims of the crimson flux. Striding towards them, it was possible to see that she wore soft silk slippers, shoes never meant to be worn outside the palace. She looked, if not angry, then only a heartbeat away from it.
‘Aldasair, come inside with me. I need you to come to the Hall of Roots.’ She didn’t look at Bern the Younger. The tall man may as well have been invisible.
‘I am a little busy at the moment, Hest.’ He cleared his throat. ‘You asked me to take care of the diplomacy, and that’s what I’m doing.’
Hestillion’s blood-red eyes flickered briefly to Bern, seeing him for the first time and dismissing him just as quickly. ‘You can play with the humans later.’
‘My lady Hestillion, we’ve not had time for much more than a few words, but I am glad to meet you.’ Bern cleared his throat. ‘I’d be glad to lend my arm, should you need anything.’
Hestillion shook her head quickly and turned back to Aldasair. ‘By the roots, I do not have time for this.’ Hestillion reached out and grabbed his sleeve, and he noticed that it was sewn all over interlocking tree branches, grey on cream. It made him think of the card he’d drawn for Hestillion in the room of dust and dead spiders, and for some reason he felt deeply uneasy. Without knowing why, he glanced up at the silvered shape of the corpse moon, hanging above them like a bloated egg sac.
‘Bern, I am sorry,’ he said, forcing his voice into the smooth tones he imagined fearless leaders used. ‘This apparently requires my immediate attention. I must attend my cousin. We’ll talk more later.’