There was a cough at the door, and Aldasair returned. He paused and gestured in what she suspected he thought was a welcoming way, and Mother Fast appeared. She was out of the chair she had been carried in, but there were two people at her elbow to support her: a burly woman with close-cropped hair, and a young man with flinty, watchful eyes.
‘Please, do come in.’ Hestillion bowed to the trio formally, and then gave them a moment to respond. When none of them moved, she forced a smile upon her face. ‘I have food and drink here for you, and tea, if you wish it. But where is the remainder of your company?’
‘They need more of a rest,’ said Mother Fast. She looked at Hestillion with her one good eye, and then at the laden table. ‘And I’m hungry enough to eat a scabby horse.’
‘Please,’ Hestillion came forward, half thinking to help the old woman to the table, but the man and the woman stepped around her and led Mother Fast to a thickly padded chair. She walked slowly, with one arm tucked away inside her jacket. She had removed the horsehair hood, as they all had, and it was possible to see that she wore a pair of silver chains around her neck, each with what looked like a carved wooden head hanging from them. How charming, thought Hestillion.
Seated in her chair, Mother Fast pulled a plate of salted sausage towards her, selected one, and chewed the end. For a few moments the only sound in the room was the old woman’s determined chewing. By the door, Aldasair stood fiddling with the buttons on his frock coat, clearly wishing to be somewhere else, while the young man and the broad-shouldered woman stood behind their leader. Hestillion felt a brief wave of disorientation move through her, and all at once she wanted to be back in the empty corridors, waiting for the silence to claim her. It was too hard, all of this. Too desperate.
‘I will have that tea, if you’re offering.’
Hestillion nodded, glad of the distraction. She went to the brazier in the corner of the room where the pot of water was heating, and Mother Fast continued helping herself to the food on the plates.
‘This is Frost –’ she indicated the young man with a wave of a sausage – ‘and Yellowheart.’ The stocky woman inclined her head. ‘I do not travel well these days, and we are a travelling people, as you know, Mistress Hestillion. Frost and Yellowheart help me to get around, and they don’t complain about it too much.’
Hestillion brought the pot over to the table, and poured the steaming water over the bowl of leaves. The familiar scent of tea, slightly stale but utterly welcome, filled the room. ‘And I am very grateful that you have made such a journey, Mother Fast. A journey across the mountains at any time of the year is arduous.’
The unspoken question hovered in the air between them. Hestillion focussed her attention on mashing the leaves with a long silver spoon, wrought especially for the purpose. It was important, she felt, to let the old woman explain it in her own words. But it seemed Mother Fast wasn’t to be so easily led.
‘Our peoples have a shared history. You know that, Mistress Hestillion.’
Hestillion poured the tea into the cups. She had chosen a simple set; red-glazed clay with the lip outlined in gold. Abruptly, she wished she’d chosen another colour.
‘A very long time ago,’ she said, keeping her voice smooth. ‘We call it history, for that is what it truly is.’
‘You imagine we’d have forgotten, is that it?’ Mother Fast grasped the cup between fingers like sticks, and glared at Hestillion with her single eye. ‘Memories like that, girl, they get passed down in the bone. Your people swept down from the Bloodless Mountains and massacred mine. At first, you called it a border dispute. We had sent raiders to Ebora, you said, to steal away the treasures of your precious empire. Thieves and bandits. But, in the end, you had no time for excuses – you just came for our blood, and it didn’t trouble your conscience at all.’
Hestillion took a sip of her own tea, savouring the burn against her lip whilst keeping her eyes downcast. Let the old woman say her piece. In human terms she was teetering on the edge of death anyway. By the door, Aldasair was looking out into the corridor, his lips pressed into a thin line. She knew any mention of the Carrion Wars tended to upset him.
‘Good tea.’ Mother Fast cleared her throat. ‘Anyway, I am not here to pick over old corpses with you. I don’t have time for it, and, judging by the emptiness of your palace, neither do you. On the last full moon, I was troubled by a terrible dream.’
Hestillion looked up, settling her gaze on Mother Fast’s ravaged face. She held herself very still.
‘A dream?’
‘The worm people.’ Mother Fast spat the words, her lips twisted with distaste so that her burned cheeks stretched and puckered. ‘The Jure’lia come again. I saw them as clearly as I see you now. By all the gods, I could smell them. They came again in force, and I saw the plains eaten up with their terrible excretions, and I saw my people eaten from the inside out.’ For the first time, Mother Fast looked uncertain. The hand that had so far been hidden within her sleeve crept out and touched the carved heads at her throat; it was little more than a blackened claw. ‘I’ve never had a dream like it, not one so real. There are very few of my people left, Mistress Hestillion, but we had seers. One or two. I never thought their blood had mixed with mine, but I cannot turn away from what this dream means. The Jure’lia are set to return. I woke screaming, the knowledge of that heavy in my bones.’
Frost and Yellowheart stood behind her still, their faces grim. Hestillion leaned forward slightly.
‘And you have come to us?’
Mother Fast took a slow breath, rattling through her bony chest.
‘You may have a monstrous past, and the gods know I have no love for Ebora, but all know who stood against the Jure’lia, time and again. We all know it. Sarn knows it. For every invasion, a Rain.’
There was a brief silence. Aldasair was staring at the far wall now, his beautiful face blank. Hestillion let her eyes fill with unshed tears.
‘Mother Fast, Ebora is not what it once was.’
‘And all of Sarn knows that too.’ The old woman leaned forward. In the cold daylight from the glass doors, the ruined landscape of her face was hard to look at. ‘Whatever it is we can do to heal Ebora, we will do it. We must at least try.’