The Company of Glass Read online

  THE COMPANY OF GLASS

  Tricia Sullivan

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

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  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Prologue

  Eighteen Years Later

  Jai Khalar

  Coddle the Messenger

  A Ditch to Sleep in

  Valiant or Crazed

  A Light Snack Between Meals

  Wings

  A Sheep’s Bladder in a Kicking Game

  Impressions

  Leap of Faith

  The Assimilator

  In the Liminal

  Jaya Plants

  Dario’s Story

  The H’ah’vah

  Not Like a Bull

  Wolf Country

  Chyko’s Idea of Fun

  To the Monitor Tower

  The Pharician Army

  A Wretched Parade

  The Smell of Night

  Snug as a Bad Dream

  You Can’t Sneeze

  Order

  There Are No Roses in Everien

  Stew

  Burning

  Daughter of a Daughter-Thief

  The Dance of the Bears

  Finally a Confabulation

  Of Ghosts and Green Earth

  Tash

  The Floating Lands

  The White Road

  If the Sea Had a Purpose

  Mouse

  A Poached Egg

  Pallo’s Grandmother’s Beard

  Quicksilver

  Terms of Surrender

  Keras

  The Black Island

  Bugs?

  For Her Prince to Come

  A Bearskin Cloak

  The Moon and Ice

  Ires Quits

  Open

  Here Comes Your Chance to Get Power

  The Causeway

  Three Doors

  Seahawk

  The Way of the Rose

  Vorse’s Whip

  The Company of Glass

  Exiles

  Two Months Later

  Epilogue

  Website

  Also by Tricia Sullivan

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Rose

  oh, the pure contradiction

  delight

  of being no one’s sleep

  under so many lids.

  —Rainer Maria Rilke

  Prologue

  Men are animals. It is no slander to say so, for only by skilful application of all his faculties can a mere human evoke that creature within whose senses are sharper than his, whose heart is truer, whose mind is wiser. A Clan warrior at the height of his powers is never more than a hand’s breadth from his own animal nature – it is from this proximity to his primal spirit that he derives a joy unknown to others.

  Yet it was not joy that polished the bare skins of the Snake and the Bear who faced each other in the ring – it was hard sweat. By the time Queen Ysse entered the training ground, the two combatants had whipped each other up into a froth of hatred that aroused their animal natures to savage violence. The metamorphosis was not magical – there were no scales or tails. It was chemical. Transfigured by emotion, the contenders moved in communion with the wild creatures whose fighting skills their ancestral traditions had taught them to emulate. They had become more than human.

  Ysse smiled. The Company were too absorbed in watching the test match to notice the old woman come limping in, but Quintar the Captain of the Guard picked up her movement in his peripheral vision and glanced in her direction. A tall, rather homely man with claws of Seahawk paint decorating his face, he was lounging against the far wall of the arena, apart from his charges. He might have been handsome once, but his countenance had known so many fights it was impossible to be sure what features he had been born with. As Ysse made her way towards him, he acknowledged her arrival with a slight wave, but his gaze never left the ring.

  The Snake was bleeding. The yellow stripes of Clan paint rendered his swarthy face anonymous, hiding the signs of pain that would otherwise be evident; his nose was gushing scarlet and there was no mistaking the fact it had just been broken. The Bear wore no family ornament beyond the silver earring that showed his rank in the Queen’s Guard – lieutenant – and his exposed visage showed satisfaction at the hit he had just landed on the Snake’s face; yet he could not stop himself shaking his bare right hand, trying to disperse the pain in the knuckles. He had failed to capitalize on the strike, for the injured Snake had slipped out of his reach, leaving red footprints on the bleached white wood of the arena. Both men were stripped for the fight, and the Bear’s ribs heaved; his relentless pursuit of the elusive Snake had winded him.

  ‘Come on, Vorse!’ called the Company from the perimeter, clapping their hands in encouragement for the injured Snake. The Snake was lean and sinuous as befitted his family name, and he had managed to stay just out of range of his heavier opponent until the Bear had countertimed his feint and scored the lucky hook. Ysse’s body twisted slightly as she followed the Snake’s movement. Even through the frailty of her illness she could feel what it was like to be the Snake. She could feel the fight coming alive in him. Mouth open, red-toothed and angry, the Snake now wove back and forth before the larger man, who aimed a series of kicks at him, attempting to compound the damage he’d inflicted already.

  Ysse tensed as the Bear went in. But the attack was too slow, and the Snake slipped into the gap in his opponent’s timing and wound himself around the Bear like a snare drawn suddenly taut, destroying the Bear’s balance and dragging him to the ground. A shout went up from the observers as the Bear managed to twist on the way down and land on top of the Snake.

  ‘Stay cool, Vorse,’ said the Captain of the Guard as the scramble continued on the ground. ‘It’s only a nose. We’ll get Hanji to knit you another one.’

  He edged along the wall, head tilted as he watched the opponents wrestle. The floor of the ring shuddered when they slammed against each other. As Ysse reached his side, Quintar murmured,
‘They’re fighting for the twelfth place in the Company, the one left by Ajiko when he broke his leg.’

  ‘Why not take them both and have thirteen?’ Ysse asked.

  ‘Because that would be a compromise. It’s better for them to fight for it. I’m going to take them to clear the Sekk out of Bear Country next month, and this contest will motivate the whole Company. Yesterday they all climbed the North Face. I made Vorse and Lerien race ten miles this morning before the fight. They hate my guts.’

  Ysse warmed with affection for him: she could see the bonds between Quintar and his men as if there were lines drawn in the air between them. He had handpicked the members of the Company from across Everien, then spent eight years teaching them to destroy the monsters that the Sekk called down from the mountain wilds on the Clan villages. He spared no effort with them: elite bands like the Company were Everien’s best hope of survival against the Sekk scourge, which could appear anywhere and at any time – from beneath the hills themselves, sometimes. He had pushed his men to their limits until their limits stretched and broke, and they got better than they’d thought themselves capable – and none of them could ever have been called modest. The men of the Company were a strong-willed bunch, each a warrior of note within his original animal Clan, conditioned from birth to fight. Left to their own devices, they would have fought each other: no Clan warrior needed an excuse to challenge a man of another Clan. Yet Quintar managed them with a mysterious blend of intelligence and coercion that kept him always one step ahead of them. They hated him for his harshness and occasional brutality, but they also learned to trust each other, until the esprit de corps of the Company overcame their Clan rivalries. All became tougher and smarter and faster, and Quintar’s reputation grew. Only Ysse knew how he fretted over his charges like a grandmother, losing sleep over their failures and endlessly searching for ways to get more out of each of them. Only Ysse could see how every one of their triumphs and failures was felt doubly by Quintar, who affected aloofness for the sake of maintaining authority. Yes, the men hated Quintar, but she suspected that by now they also adored him. For his part, Quintar had come to have no existence independent of the warriors he led to victory over victory.

  She knew how he felt, for she was the monarch of a country that she had struggled to build against heavy opposition from Clan chieftains who would as soon kill one another as unite against the Sekk; a fragile country built on the ruins of ancient Everien; a country that had never known a king, much less a queen. Her existence was the very definition of solitude. She only ever felt slightly less alone when she was with Quintar, her protégé. She wondered if he knew this and decided that he probably didn’t: he was too self-contained, utterly focused on the work at hand. Like all her subjects, Quintar could not help but view the queen through the legends that had grown around her. Ysse sometimes wished it could be otherwise. She shifted her weight unobtrusively to her right hip, for the pain in her legs made it hard to stand, though she tried not to show it.

  The Bear and the Snake were tangled on the floor, breathing hard. It did not look good for the Snake. The Bear was sitting on his chest and beating at his head with huge fists; the Snake covered what was left of his face with his elbows and forearms. Blood flew like flower petals in a wind.

  ‘Just say when you’ve had enough!’ roared the Bear, enjoying himself. The rest of the Company screamed encouragement, some to Vorse, some to Lerien, who rode on top.

  A lifetime of fighting the Sekk had left Ysse no stranger to violence, but now she began to cast reproachful looks in Quintar’s direction. He ought to stop the fight. It was clear that the Bear was dominating, and what was to be gained by letting him rip the Snake to pieces? Both men had lost all self-control.

  Quintar had moved off to get a better look at the action. Angrily the queen dragged herself to his side. ‘Stop the match,’ she whispered.

  He didn’t look at her. ‘Who will be there to stop the fight when a Sekk monster is trying to eat them? Will it be fair when their own brothers attack them, consumed with madness under the Slaving of the Sekk?’

  ‘This is training,’ Ysse snapped, grabbing his arm. ‘You abuse Vorse. He’ll be killed.’

  The Snake was virtually invisible beneath the mass of the Bear. He appeared limp, possibly lifeless. Ysse drew breath to command a halt, but some premonition checked her. Her nails bit into Quintar’s forearm as the Snake made his move. Seemingly boneless, he writhed, pressed his right shoulder against the ground and with a lightning jerk that seemed to ripple through his entire body, suddenly upended the Bear, wrapped his left leg over the Bear’s shoulder, and snapped his pelvis up to trap the neck between his thighs. In the same fluid movement he caught a wrist and locked the arm at the elbow. The Bear screamed. The joint snapped audibly, and then before the crowd could react, the Bear was choking in the grasp of the Snake’s legs and the Snake, throwing all of his slight weight into the movement, levered the Bear’s back off the ground, almost breaking it at the neck.

  Quintar had already leaped in to intervene, and now the surrounding Company fell on the pair, separating them. Spitting teeth, Vorse stood up and was enveloped in a buffeting of congratulatory slaps. Quintar emerged from the crowd and beckoned his comrades to attend the defeated Bear, who got to his feet more slowly, head down, broken arm dangling.

  ‘He’ll be all right,’ Quintar told her, clicking his tongue as he swung his head from side to side in disparagement. He reminded Ysse of an auntie fretting over a pair of recalcitrant children. ‘Stubborn! Lerien should have conceded quicker. Vorse might have got carried away and broken his neck.’

  Ysse sighed. Quintar was still young – and like all the young, he didn’t know what that meant. Standing beside him, the queen felt weary, and she remembered now why she had come down here. She drew herself erect and said: ‘The White Road has opened. Jai Pendu draws nigh. Are your men ready?’

  Quintar reacted as one well accustomed to Ysse’s style of leadership; he had learned long ago that when she had something of moment to say, she always said it casually, without warning or preamble. He was startled, and for a second his brown eyes fixed on her face; then he shrugged. He gestured towards the sand arena at the far end of the training ground. ‘My archers are practising target-shooting right now. Do they look ready to you?’

  Four black horses flowed across the sand each in a different rhythm, changing direction suddenly at invisible signals from their riders’ legs, for the Wasp archers rode without aid of rein. On the ground among them was a small man wearing only a loincloth and elaborate Wasp Clan tattoos. Unarmed, he was engaged in evading the arrows of the four Wasps who ferociously attacked him.

  ‘What can you be thinking?’ the queen rebuked Quintar, and forgetting the pain in her ankles she took several long strides closer to the fence. A stray arrow flew by her, which she ignored. She snapped, ‘Get Chyko out of there before he’s killed.’

  Chyko darted and changed direction like a crazed fly. When one of the horses braked suddenly he disappeared into the white arc of sand that spat from its hooves. He reappeared momentarily, then slipped beneath one of the other horses. There was a flash of metal in his hand before he whirled away from the slashing hooves, waving his arms and shouting taunts at the riders, the nearest of whom toppled when the saddle slid off his mount: the girth had been cut.

  ‘I can’t control Chyko,’ Quintar said, admiration colouring his tone. ‘Maybe he’ll listen to you. He likes women.’

  ‘If you can’t control him, you shouldn’t have him in your Company,’ Ysse reproached, unsettled by the display. ‘You have worked too hard on these men to spoil their discipline with a wild creature such as this.’

  Quintar said, ‘He brings up their ability. And he’s worth twenty of the rest. Look!’

  Chyko, surrounded by the snorting horses and cocked bows of his fellow Wasp Clansmen, stuck out a hand and caught an arrow. He ducked another shot, spinning at the same time and sliding on to the back of the loose
horse, to which he clung like a flea. The horse took two strides, jumped the fence, and roared past Quintar and the queen like a hurricane.

  Stunned, she said, ‘That one cannot be a man. He must be something else.’

  ‘To answer your question,’ Quintar said, smiling, ‘they are ready. We will set Vorse’s nose in a splint; the discomfort will help him to concentrate. Maybe he’ll make fewer mistakes the next time he takes a bigger opponent to the ground.’

  ‘What about the Bear who lost the match? Lerien? He fought well.’

  ‘His arm is broken. I leave him to you. You will need someone to command the Guard while I am gone.’

  These words hurt. For a moment she had been caught up in watching the Company train, and she had forgotten that they would ride away without her. They would ride off to Jai Pendu as she had once done, when she was as young as Quintar was now. Even from far away she swore she could feel the floating city approaching on the tide; she could feel the pull of its Knowledge and she wanted badly to go with them, to witness Jai Pendu’s wonders once again. She ached for the glory of holding the Fire of Glass in her bare hands and knowing that she, Ysse, a mortal creature, had touched the transcendent Artifact of the ancient Everiens.

  But her time was past. This was Quintar’s age, and Ysse must stand aside. Her hand was on the sword she carried – even in Jai Khalar, her own castle; even in her illness and age. She drew the blade. Quintar stepped back a pace, his eyes holding hers with the empty quality that meant he still took her seriously as a fighter; he was prepared for the possibility that she would attack him. Lowering her blade, she slid off her sword belt and extended the scabbard to him. He looked surprised for only the briefest instant; then he took the scabbard and ran his hands over the incisions that were Ysse’s personal signs. Years ago, when she had gone to Jai Pendu, she had acquired the three symbols she had worn on her blade ever since. She had never discussed them with anyone, much less explained them. Emotion made her throat tight as she now passed on to Quintar the scabbard bearing the signs of the Eye, the Sun, and the Rose. Her voice was hoarse.