Keeping her eyes on the distant prison, she lifted the glass to her lips and drank the rest of the wine, savouring the soft burn on the back of her throat and the spreading warmth in her stomach. When she had been a child, the plains people she had been born among had had a drink called stonefeet, which was made from fermented mare’s milk. She had been too young to drink it, but had seen the effect it had had on their young men and women on festival days. They would be loud and boisterous, jumping from their horses or challenging each other to fights. Drunk as spring pigs, Mother Fast used to say. The effect of this wine was different, she thought. Like slowly sinking into hot water.
She wondered where Tormalin the Eboran had gone for the evening – perhaps even now he was reporting her presence to the Winnowry office in the city, hoping for a reward of some sort. Reluctantly, she recalled him standing next to her in the corridor, close enough for her to be able to smell the leather he wore. Up close, an Eboran did not look so different from her own people – the same narrow eyes, the same upward sweep of cheekbones – but his skin was like luminous stone, his eyes clear and blood-red. Mother Fast had owned puppets with the most delicate faces, carved from soft wood and then painted with fine brushes. There was a set of three that Noon remembered especially clearly; they depicted the three gods of Rain, Storm and Cloud. Their faces were beautiful, their lips painted into smiles, but their eyes were cruel. Tormalin, filling the corridor with his poise and calm confidence, had made her think of those puppets.
A piece of tile fell from the roof above and shattered on the balcony next to her, making her jump suddenly sideways. Reaching out blindly for any living thing near to hand with which to arm herself, she looked up to see a ghostly white shape peering down at her from the roof, huge liquid eyes shining in the last of the light.
‘Fulcor!’ she hissed, coming forward. ‘What are you doing on the bloody roof?’
The bat tipped her head to one side, and scampered vertically down the wall towards Noon, thick leathery wings held out to either side.
‘No, stop, stay where you are.’ The bat paused, and then dropped something from her mouth. It was a dead rabbit. ‘Fulcor, you don’t have to. Well, I suppose the kitchens can use it.’
She reached up and stroked the velvety place between the bat’s ears, watching as the animal’s eyes crinkled shut. ‘Why have you come back to me, you big daft thing? I thought you had abandoned me.’ Noon pulled her fingers through the fur, considering. Perhaps this bat didn’t like the Winnowry either. Perhaps she knew they had been running away. The giant bats were said to be intelligent. ‘You have to listen to me, Fulcor. You can’t just follow me around. They’ll be looking for me, and you could lead them right here.’ She glanced out across the roofs below. None of them had a giant bat roosting for the night. ‘You’re pretty noticeable.’
Fulcor made a chirruping noise, the warmth of her blood and the faint patter of her heartbeat comforting against Noon’s palm. What could the bat do? Go back to the Winnowry? Once there they might convince her to fly back to where she had last seen Noon. Or she could go to where her kind lived wild, but where was that? And how could she know? She had likely been raised at the Winnowry from birth.
‘It’s your hunting time,’ Noon said, gesturing out at the darkening night. The clouds had broken, and a sliver of moon poked through like a peeking eye. ‘Go get yourself something.’
Fulcor scrambled back up to the top of the roof and with an abrupt crack of wings, was a grey shape against the sky. Noon watched her go for a moment, before taking her empty wine glass and her dead rabbit back inside.
15
The ‘plains people’ is a highly inaccurate term for the great variety of communities living in the enormous stretch of land that meanders its way from the eastern steppes of Yuron-Kai to Jarlsbad in the far west, the Eboran mountains looming to the north. This grassland is home to numerous nomadic tribes as well as several more established settlements, and while most seem to share an ethnic root, the sheer breadth of difference in language, culture, religion, hunting practices, mythology, storytelling and farming techniques is extraordinary, and, in my opinion, long overdue a more exacting study.
Of the mobile tribes, most seem to move according to the seasons or the migratory habits of the fleeten, a species of goat hunted for their meat, skins and horns. Some, however, have more mysterious methods; the Long-down people, for example, seem to be following a gentle spiral, inwards and then out again, through the generations, while the Star Worm people – with whom I was lucky enough to spend a few days – have a remarkable collection of telescopes, more advanced than anything I’ve seen in Mushenska or Reidn, and they use these to plot their own travels.
While travelling with the Star Worm tribe, we spent one day at the Broken Rock sanctuary, a place that apparently acts as a neutral space for the various groups, and as a sort of ongoing seasonal market. If one group has a dispute with another, their representatives gather at Broken Rock and oaths are sworn that weapons won’t be used. Often, I gather, large quantities of a liquor known as stonefeet are involved in negotiations. Otherwise, they bring their trade goods and their young people, and so the various tribes keep in touch, even forming closer alliances through marriage (meeting places with an abundance of available alcohol have the same consequences all over Sarn, after all).
A recent development will bear closer scrutiny, I feel. The newly constructed winnowline crosses the southern-most section of the plains, with two stations situated directly in what is, for want of a better term, plains-people territory. As mentioned previously, the tribes are by no means a single group and the fallout from this will vary greatly, I suspect, but, so far, I have witnessed a great deal of tentative curiosity regarding the line and its potential. Like most of Sarn’s people, the tribes nurture many of their own superstitions about the so-called fell-witches, but I suspect the real test will come when the migratory groups need to cross the line. I would suggest that if the Winnowry feel like throwing their weight around in this regard, they may regret it. Or, at least, I hope they do.
Of course, it is difficult to talk about the region and the people who make their homes there without referencing the Carrion Wars, a dark period of history by anyone’s reckoning. Still, my lamp is burning low and my fingers ache, so another time.
Extract from the journals of Lady Vincenza ‘Vintage’ de Grazon
Ainsel lived in the part of Mushenska known as the Downs, a shady and disreputable gang of streets that always looked like they were on the verge of either a civil war or falling down altogether. Unlike Sareena, she was not independently wealthy, and the cramped room at the top of the old house reflected that, but she was adept at making it cosy; whenever Tormalin visited, he found a room artfully lit with shaded lamps and full of the good, wholesome smell of bread and freshly washed skin.
‘I did not hope to see you so soon!’
The frank pleasure on the woman’s broad, honest face was a boon to Tor. He stepped through the doorway and placed the bottle of dark liquor on the simple table. Not wine, but a fiery drink called Gouron from Reidn – Ainsel made her living as a mercenary, and had a mercenary’s tastes.