The hand on John’s sword spasms open. “Let’s go.” A curt nod, scattering water, and he strides off. I follow, impatient now, the slope seeming less steep. Only the Nuban spares a backward glance for Avery, still hugging the mountainside, and a second glance for me, watchful and beyond reading. The glow of my small victory fades, and not for the first time it’s the Nuban’s silence rather than his words that make me want to be better than I am.
Another of the Select takes up the rear guard. Greb they call him. “Watch your footing,” I say. “It gets slippery.”
We crest the lip of a valley and descend into shadows where the wind subsides from howls to muttered complaint. The light is failing but where the trail snakes down the slope I can see something is wrong. I stop and Greb stumbles into me, cursing.
“There’s something wrong with the rain.” I stare at it. Across a wide swath the rain seems to fall too slowly, the drops queuing to reach the ground and making a grey veil of falling water.
“Slow-time.” John says, not turning or raising his voice.
Greb kicks my calf and I carry on. I’ve heard of slow-time. Tatters of it wreath the Arcada mountains, remnants from when the Builders broke the world. We discovered the same thing, the Builders and me; if something shatters your world then afterward you find the rules have changed. They had the Day of a Thousand Suns. I had the thorns.
I follow the Nuban into the slow-time, a band of it two or three yards wide. From the outside the rain within seems to fall at its leisure. Passing into the region all that changes is that now only where I’m walking are things right. Ahead and behind the rain powers down as if each drop were shot from a ballista and would punch holes in armour. And we’re out. Greb’s still wading through it behind me, moving like a street-mummer, slower than slow, until he’s free and starts to speed up. The slow-time sticks to him, reluctant to release its prisoner, as if for ten yards it’s still clinging to his skin before finally he’s walking at our pace once more.
We advance and a shoulder of rock reveals the strangest sight. It’s as if a bubble of glass, so clear as to be invisible, has been intersected by the mountainside. Rain streams off it, turned from its path by unseen currents. At the heart of the half-sphere, close to the ground, a wild blue light entices, part diamond, part promise. And all about it statues stand.
“Idiots.” John waves an arm at them as we pass. “I can understand the first one being trapped, but the other seven?”
We’re close enough to see they’re not statues now. Eight travellers, the closest to the light dressed in fashions seen only in dusty oil paintings on castle walls. Flies in amber, moths drawn to the light of the fire in which we burn. What world will be waiting for them when they think to turn around and walk back out?
“Do all time-bubbles have a handy warning light at the centre?” I wonder it aloud but no one answers.
I glance back at them once before the distance takes them. All of them held there like memories while the days and months flicker past outside. I have time-bubbles in my head, places I return to over and again.
When I killed my first man and left the Healing Hall in flames, sick with poison from the wounds the hook-briar gave, they tell me it was Father Gomst who found me, unconscious, black with smoke. I escaped from Friar Glenn’s care again within the hour, and again it was Father Gomst who found me. Memory takes me to that tower-top where I leaned out, watching the flames spiral and the lanterns moving far below as Father’s guards hunted me. We stand on that tower, trapped in those minutes, we two, and often I pass by, pausing to study it once more, and learning nothing.
Father Gomst raises both hands. “You don’t need the knife, Jorg.”
“I think I do.” The blade trembles in my grip, not from fear but from what the fever puts in me. A sense of something rushing toward me, something thrilling, terrible, sudden … my body vibrating with anticipation. “How else would I cut?”
“Give it to me.” He doesn’t reach for the knife. Around his neck a gold cross, and a Builder talisman, a fone, the ancient plasteek fractured, part melted, chased with silver like the church icons. He says God hears him through it, but I sense no connection.
“The thorns wouldn’t let me go,” I tell him. Sir Jan had thrown me into the middle of the briar. The man had slabs of muscle, enough to tear the carriage door off and throw me clear before my uncle’s soldiers caught us. A strong man can throw a child of nine quite a way.
“I know.” Father Gomst wipes the rain from his face, drawing his hand from forehead to chin. “A hook-briar can hold a grown man, Jorg.” If he could truly speak to God he would know the judgment on me and waste no more words.
“I would have saved them.” The thorns hid me in their midst, held me. I had seen little William die, three flashes of lightning giving me the scene in frozen moments. “I would have saved them.” But the lie tastes rotten on my tongue. Would anything have held William from me? Would anything have held my mother back. Anything? All bonds can be slipped, all thorns torn free. It’s simply a matter of pain, and of what you’re prepared to lose.
Greb jabs me and I’m back on the mountain. The stink of him reaches me even through the rain. “Keep moving.” It’s as if he didn’t even see me kill Avery for the same damn thing. Judgment ... I’m ready for it.
“Here.” John raises his hand and we all stop. At first I don’t see the arch, and then I do. A doorway rather than an arch, narrow and framed by the silver-steel of the Builders. It stands on a platform of Builder-stone, a poured surface still visible beneath the scatter of rocks. Twenty yards beyond is a pile of bones, an audience of skulls, some fresh, some mouldering, all cleaned of flesh by the dutiful ravens. “What happens if we’re not Select?” Dead men’s grins answer the Nuban’s question.
John draws his sword, an old blade, notched, the iron stained. He goes to stand beyond the arch. The other three men take position around it, and Greb, who took over Avery’s position as Jorg-poker, pulls his knife. “You, big man. You’re first.”
“When you pass through stand still and wait for the judgment. Move and I will kill you, without the mercy of the ritual.” John mimes the killing thrust.
The Nuban looks around at the faces of the Select, blinking away raindrops. He’s thinking of the fight, wondering where his chance will come. He turns to me, making a single fist of his bound hands. “We have lived, Jorg. I’m glad we met.” His voice deep and without waver. He walks to the arch of judgment. His shoulders almost brush the steel on either side.
“Fail—” The arch speaks with a voice that is neither male or female, nor even human.
Move aside.” John gestures with his blade, contempt on his face. He knows the Nuban is waiting his chance, and gives him none. “You next.” The Nuban is secured by two Select.
I step forward, watching the reflections slide across the Builder-steel as I approach. I wonder what crimes stained the Nuban. Though he is the best of us you cannot live on the road and remain innocent, no matter the circumstance that put you there. With each step I feel the thorns tearing at me. They can’t hold me. But they held me on that night the world changed.
“Judge me.” And I step through. Ice runs down my spine, a cold fire in every vein. Outside the world pauses, the rain halts in its plunge for an instant, or an age. I can’t tell which. Motion returns almost imperceptibly, the drops starting to crawl earthward once more.
“Faaaaaiiiiilllllllu—” The word stretches out for an age, deeper than the Nuban’s rumble. And at the end it’s snatched away as if a knife sliced the throat it came from.
I believe in the arch. I deserved to fail, because I am guilty.
Even so.
“Join your friend.” John waves his sword toward the Nuban. His voice is wrong, a touch too deep.
“The rain is too slow,” I say. The quick-time is fading from me but still the arch’s effects linger. I step back through the silver doorway. God made me quick in any event, God or the Devil, and the Builders made
me quicker. This time the arch has no comment, but before the Select can close on me I step through once more.
Again the cold shock of transition. I ignore the arch’s judgment and dive forward, wrapped in quick-time, trailing it with me. John hardly flinches as I sever the ropes around my wrists on the sword he is so kind as to hold steady for me.
“Sssssseeeeeellllect m—” While the arch speaks I take John’s knife from his belt and cut him a new smile. And before the blood comes I’m off, sprinting toward the Nuban. I’m still quick, but less so as I reach him and stab the first of his guards through the eye. I twist the blade as I pull it free, grating over the socket. The Nuban breaks the second man’s face with the back of his head.
I chase Greb down. He runs although he has the bigger knife, and he thinks I’m as old as thirteen. My arm aches to stick John’s blade into the man, to sink it between his shoulders and hear him howl. But he sprints off a drop in the half-light before I reach him. I stop at the top and look down to where he sprawls at broken angles.
Returning to the arch, I take slow steps. The rain comes in flurries now, weakening. The cold is in me at last, my hands numb. The Nuban is sat upon a rock by the bone pile, checking his crossbow for damage. He looks up as I draw near. It’s his judgment that matters to me, his approval.
“We failed.” He nods toward the arch. “Maybe the Builders have been watching us. Wanting us to do better.”
“I don’t care what they think of me,” I say.
His brow lifts a fraction, half puzzled, half understanding. He puts the crossbow across his knees. “I’m as broken a thing as my gods ever made, Jorg. We keep bad company on the road. Any man would look good against them.” He shakes his head. “Better to listen to the arch than me! And better to listen to neither of us.” He slaps a hand to his chest. “Judge yourself boy.” He returns his gaze to his work. And more quiet, “Forgive yourself.”
I walk back to the arch, stepping around the corpses of the Select. I wonder at the ties that bound them, the bonds forged by the arch’s judgments. Those bonds seem more pure, more reasoned that the arbitrary brotherhood of the road that binds me to my own band of rogues, links forged and broken by circumstance. A yard from the arch I can see my reflection warped across the Builder-steel. The arch called "fail" for me, condemned me to the bone pile, and yet seconds later I was Select. Did I validate myself in the moments between?
“Opinions are well and good,” I tell it. I have a rock in my hands, near as heavy as I can lift. “Sometimes it’s better not to speak them.” I throw the rock hard as I can and it slams into the cross support, breaking into jagged pieces.
I set a hand to the scar left on the metal.
“FAILure to connect,” the arch says.
And in the end the arch has the right of it.
Footnote – There are many opportunities in Jorg’s story for seeing elements of our world through new eyes. You’ll see old buildings repurposed, everyday objects venerated. Here, standard messages from our age: “Failure to connect.” and “Select mode.” become the basis for a brotherhood not dissimilar to Jorg’s. The idea reflects on the arbitrary nature of so many loyalties, friendships, and loves.
The theme of brotherhood is written through the Broken Empire trilogy. Brothers by birth, leading into the larger issue of family. Brothers by association, leading to the issues of belonging, groups, and leadership. Brothers through friendship, leading to issues of loyalty and duty.
And here we have the Nuban too and mentions of Father Gomst. Two very different kinds of father-figure, both playing a role in the life of a young man whose own father leaves much to be desired. The Nuban, whose comparative moral superiority seems to be integral to the man, and Father Gomst who represents religious ideals and at the same time the difficulty men with no great strength of character have in embodying such ideals.
Mercy
“Serve revenge hot or cold, it will never sate you. It’s a hunger that only grows the more you feed it.”
“Very lyrical.” The angular young woman on her sway-backed mare rubbed the hollow of her stomach. “I could do with a meal right now. A good chicken soup would do. Like my mother used to make.” She smacked her lips. “But very lyrical.”
“I took to reading while my wound kept me abed, Sister Ellen.” Makin found his fingers touching the place where the sword had entered his back. “It seems I’m treading a path that’s been trod before. The wise have a lot to say about it.”
“Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” Ellen crossed herself. The tail of Makin’s stallion, swished before her and she slowed her mount. “That’s what they taught us in the convent. Mother Superior had it written in bible black on the wall behind her desk.”
“So I’m stealing from God?”
“If you’re going steal, you might as well steal from whoever has the best stuff. If you’re breaking one of the ten commandments why not go the whole hog?” Ellen glanced out into the darkness, her eyes defocused. Makin shivered, the girl saw through things. Darkness was the least of it. She saw through men too. The second sight wasn’t something they’d taught her at the convent. They’d tried to drown her for it. That had been a mistake.
“Here will do.” Makin pulled on his reins. “They say that an eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind. That’s another one the wise are fond of.” He turned and slipped the knot retaining the blanket-wrapped bundle across the back of his horse. It fell and landed with a thud, accompanied by the kind of ‘ooof’ that a man makes when the air has been driven from his lungs. “They say that revenge is a sweet poison that ruins a man even as he craves it.” Makin nodded to his retainer. “Sister Ellen, if you please.”
The woman nodded and pushed aside lank yellow hair. She pulled her knife from her belt, a cruel piece of iron blackened with age, as thin and wicked as its owner. Just the line of its edge caught the moonlight. She went to one knee and cut the cord binding the blanket around their prisoner. “Kill him if you must, but let’s be quick about it either way. This is a bad place.”
“Indulge me, Ellen.” Makin set a boot to the prisoner and with a grunt of effort set him rolling. A journey of a yard or so across the close-cropped grass proved sufficient to unwrap the young man who came to rest lying on his back, wide eyes fixed on the warrior’s face.
Makin drew his sword and squatted down, heels to haunches, the gentle sounds of a summer night pressing around him from the dark fields. “You know who I am?”
“My father is Lord Bucey.” The man tried to roll, tried to sit up, but with hands and feet tied that’s not easy. He lay back. “He’ll pay-”
“I asked if you knew who I am. Not who your father is. And if there’s paying to be done tonight it’s you who will be paying, Gorlan.” Makin set the point of his sword to the lad’s chest.
“W-what have I done?” White-faced.
“If you didn’t know the answer to that then you wouldn’t have been hiding in Merdith Fort four hundred miles from your father’s holdings now would you?”
“You’re Makin Bortha.” The man tested his bonds, pulling hard enough to bleed around the cords, but not hard enough to break them.
“I am. You burned my home. I’ve crossed three nations to find you, Gorlan.”
“It wasn’t me.” He managed to sit and started to shuffle backward. “The others-”
“The others are all dead.” Makin allowed Gorlan to retreat from his sword. “I found Captain Orlac on the edge of the Ken Marshes. It took me six months to heal and another two to track him down, but I was still raging, was I not, Ellen?”
“You were.” Ellen spoke from behind Gorlan. The lad whipped his head around to stare up at the figure at his back, lean and ragged, her narrow face unreadable. “You hung that one by his own guts. A slippery business. The worse part was finding a tree. They’re thin on the ground in marshland.”
Makin stood and thrust his sword into the turf between Gorlan’s scrabbling legs. He left it standing there. “S
ergeant Elias Smith we found in Orlanth, in Hollor Town, a busy place. He knew he was being hunted but he didn’t quite believe it even so. He thought if he put enough miles between us he could live a normal life, find work, drink in taverns, chase girls. If he’d known what was coming he’d have found a cave in the mountains and lived off rabbits and rainwater.”
“I had nothing to do with it! I swear!” Gorlan stopped his pointless retreat and looked up at his captors. “I didn’t even get off my horse.”
“And yet you were their leader,” said Makin. “Gorlan Bucey, the lord’s son. And as their leader, you led them. To my house. My wife was called Nessa. She was clever and kind. Good with her hands – she could embroider a scene that made you think you were looking through a window… A terrible cook, mind.”
“I didn’t-”
“They ran her down behind the house. Stuck a spear through her. I was lying in a ditch at the time, bleeding to death. Someone ran a sword into my back while I was fighting off your men. I still remember that ditch, the sky through the weeds and grass, very blue and very calm, and the shouts as your men fired the roof.
“I put a spear through Sergeant Smith in the Red Lion tavern in Hollor. When you do a thing like that everyone watches and no-one moves. Except for the sergeant – he tried to get up as I was walking back out into the street, but a spear’s an awkward thing to carry around at the best of times and he got tangled up in various chairs and what-have-you. You’d think a spear would kill you quick enough, but if you know how to place it it can take days.” Makin glanced across at Ellen. “Cut his bonds.”
The woman hunkered down behind Gorlan and began slicing.