It was the puppet she recognised first.
Its face narrow and sly, its clothes made of tattered pieces of grey and blue silk so that they tugged and shivered in the slightest breeze. The god of the north wind had so often been the villain in the stories she’d heard as a child, so much so that they had booed him when he came on; arriving to chase the heroes into the sea, or trick the good warrior into giving up her best horse. Noon knew the hands that had made the puppet. She knew them very well.
‘It can’t be.’
Someone else had joined the man with the blue hood. The old woman moved slowly, because she had suffered a terrible injury in the past. That much was evident from the rippling of scars that covered her face and body, and from the awkward way she held one arm away under her coat, but her other hand held the strings of a puppet, and despite her missing eye and the scars, it danced as nimbly as it ever had.
Horror crawled down Noon’s back, holding her in place with an icy hand. Mother Fast was alive. It was impossible, impossible, she had seen the old woman burn. But she was alive, and here in this place, of all places.
Noon took a step backwards, filled with the powerful need to hide, but despite the cheerful shifting crowd around her, Mother Fast looked up and saw her immediately – she met her eyes and there was no looking away, no hiding. The old woman dropped the puppet – the only time Noon had ever seen her do so – and screamed.
It was a hoarse, angry sound. It silenced the crowd with a knife edge.
‘You!’
Noon turned and tripped over her own feet, hitting the cold grass with enough force to wind her. Deep inside, the presence was reeling in confusion.
Why are you afraid? it demanded. She is an old woman, half dead already. She is no threat at all.
Noon moaned, squeezing her eyes shut against the flood of images that came. Not alien ones this time, but memories that were all too familiar: the grasses thick with smoke; a horse running into the distance, lit up like a torch; a woman’s face, better known and dearer to her than even her own, melting and boiling away to bone. And after, the bones and the black ash, the smell of cooking meat.
‘I mustn’t remember. I can’t remember, it would, it would—’
‘You were sent away.’
Noon opened her eyes. The crowd had parted and Mother Fast stood over her, the man with the blue hood next to her. There were other plains people here now, she saw, crowded around them. Aldasair was standing to her back, looking perplexed.
‘Is everything quite well?’ he asked.
Mother Fast’s one good eye flickered up to him, bright and black like a beetle.
‘Quite well, Eboran? This girl here is a murderer. A murderer.’ Her voice shook, and that was the worst of it. Mother Fast was angry, but she was also afraid.
Afraid of me, thought Noon. The smell of burning flesh would not leave her.
‘I’m sure there must be a misunderstanding,’ said Aldasair, mildly enough.
Mother Fast raised a trembling finger. It was a claw, Noon saw, a ruined cadaverous thing.
‘This girl murdered her own mother, saw her burn up like a taper, like a pig on a spit, and she murdered a hundred and eight other souls too. Innocent people of her own kin, and she would have murdered me too, only I would not die.’ Mother Fast gave a choked sob. ‘Oh, I suffered and I burned like all the rest, but I would not die.’
Shaking now and unable to stop it, Noon climbed slowly to her feet.
‘That’s not who I am any more,’ she said, her voice too quiet. Mother Fast was not listening. She had turned to the plains people at her back, shouting now, anger overpowering the fear in her voice.
‘You all know the story!’ she cried. ‘The witch child who killed her own people. You all heard it, tribe to tribe. Passed the story around on icy nights to scare your children with, to scare them into behaving themselves. Well, here she is.’ Mother Fast looked up. ‘Here she is.’
‘I’m not that person any more.’ Noon took a slow breath. ‘I’m not.’
‘You should be in the Winnowry,’ Mother Fast was leaning on the man with the blue hood now. ‘They said that’s where they were taking you. Why aren’t you there, murderer?’
‘The Winnowry is an abomination.’ The words were bitter in Noon’s mouth, and quite abruptly she wasn’t afraid. Her own anger, slow to rise, was filling her chest. ‘It’s a place to punish women for something they have no control over. It’s shameful. Listen to me. I am not who I was . . . that day. Not any more. Don’t you understand?’ Noon pushed past the roiling nausea in her stomach and nursed the flames of anger instead. ‘I was a child. I was a fucking child!’
‘I know what you are, well enough.’ The flat hate in Mother Fast’s voice was like a punch to her stomach. Noon gritted her teeth against it.
Kill her, said the voice in her head. She is an enemy.
‘I was a child,’ Noon repeated, but in her head all the memories were resurfacing, memories she had hoped had been forced down beneath everything else a long time ago. She remembered standing outside their tents, remembered the humming of the wind through the grass. Waiting for something, not knowing everything was about to change. Her mother’s face, lost in green fire. She remembered, too, the terrible anger that had been born inside her that day, greater and more frightening than anything she’d ever known.
With a soft whumph both her hands were gloved in flame. There were cries of alarm all around, and she saw people stepping back from her.
Good, said the voice inside her. You are a weapon, yet they admonish you for killing? Do they not see what you are?
‘No, I don’t think they do,’ she said. She felt light now, as though she were floating away. ‘I don’t think they know what I am at all.’ Holding up her hands, the winnowfire grew stronger, brighter. There were people here, many of them moving away now, crying out to others to get away, but she could hear something else on the edge of that: shouting, the clash of swords, the screams of the dying. The Jure’lia must be stopped. Dimly she was aware that the old woman who had started all this had fallen back, her scarred face caught in a rictus of fear. Noon smiled slightly.
‘Noon? Noon! What are you doing?’
It was Tor’s voice, jerking her away from wherever she had been. She saw his face and the burn she had put there. The winnowfire winked out of existence.
‘Tor?’
His arm came around her and she was being steered away from the crowd, back towards the palace. For a moment she resisted, in her confused state she felt that they must be taking her to the Winnowry – her mother had said that’s what would happen if she summoned the fire, and finally it was happening.
‘Noon, please, let’s go inside. Listen to me.’