Twenty Eight: First Night

The Barrens did exactly what they said on the tin.

They had not been long out of the city limits before they reached the straggling edges of the plains, and in the gloom Jordan could barely make out a horizon. He wasn't sure if what he was looking at was a horizon, or whether he'd just found the limits of his vision in the rune-less dark. After the narrow streets of Shadow's Reach, the open expanse was both terrifying and exhilarating.

He was out – finally out. He lifted his head and let the chill breeze play on his face until Ren gave a soft chirrup of protest.

He walked alongside the wagon, the only thing for miles around with visible runes to see by, but it wasn't the strongest source of magic out here. He could sense the mountains that distantly lined their path to his right, sense the rumble of the current that was tangible on a level that underpinned physical senses. The air was already fresher, free of smoke and city stink. Dead grass crunched under his feet.

A demon wailed in the dark.

"You're with four other Unspoken," Yddris muttered. "Friendly reminder so you don't shit yourself. You need those breeches to last you."

"Is this what you're like when Harkenn hasn't got you haring around?" Jordan grumbled back. His tutor's usual barbed teasing had been going steadily up by notches the further they got from the castle. He had the feeling Yddris was just as relieved as he was to get away, but didn't appreciate how it manifested itself.

"To be very honest with you, boy, I can't remember," Yddris replied.

"Yes, it is," Hap said, from where he was taking his turn riding in the wagon. "You'll get used to it."

"Great."

"What was that, boy?"

"Nothing." Jordan glanced up at Hap. "How long have you known each other?"

Hap sighed, readjusting the grip on his cane and said, "Must be over a couple of decades by now, eh, Yddris?"

Yddris grunted, thought for a moment, and then said, "Fuck, we're old."

Hap laughed. "You carry it better than me, my friend."

"Says the man who hasn't seen my face since I apprenticed," Yddris retorted. "That's my treat, that is." He hawked and spat at the side of the road.

The path was barely more than a dirt track. The soil was pale and fine, and lay in treacherous slicks of wet that barely glistened enough to see it before he slid in it. The bottom of his cloak was soon caked in grainy splatters, but he didn't mind, because at least it wasn't blood or demon shit. The wind buffeted them more fiercely than it ever had in the shelter of the streets; the merchant and his son had disappeared under a pile of skins and blankets, and it was so biting that Jordan felt his first real shiver in months.

"You can pull on the current if you're cold," Koen said, spotting it. "It'll heat you up."

"Oh yeah. I might do." But Jordan didn't even try, because in a strange way it felt nice to be cold – felt more normal. He wasn't blue-lipped and shuddering like the two non-Gifted travelling with them – he wasn't sure how cold it would have to get before that happened - but he was just chilly enough to be uncomfortable, and he relished the familiar feeling.

"I think we should camp here for the night," the merchant called over his shoulder. "Ground feels more sturdy."

Jordan glanced around, and then saw why; a stunted tree, one of the first they'd come across, had sheltered a patch of ground from the worst of the rains. It grew its branches more outward than upward, creating a flat canopy of dark leaves around its gnarled branches. It was a strange thing, its trunk leaning one way and then another as if some giant had been pushing it around as it grew, but it acted as a rather effective windbreak.

As the merchant parked the wagon and tied the horses to the trunk of the tree with nosebags on, Jordan looked back the way they had come. Shadow's Reach was nothing but a smudge of orange in the distance, and he could see why demons were drawn there from the bitter cold and dark. It was the brightest thing for miles around; everything else was grass, and mud, and rock.

"Chip," the merchant said brightly, and he looked down to find the short man standing beside him, hand outstretched. It was hard to grip his elbow through the sheer number of layers he was wearing, but Jordan gave it his best, trying not to pass judgement on the name.

"Thorne," he said.

"I know," the merchant said with a little bow. "Spread like wildfire when Yddris got his apprentice. Well met, Thorne."

"Well met," Jordan repeated, feeling a little bit sick at the idea that he was semi-famous. The tattoo between his shoulder blades itched under its wrappings. He had no idea how he was going to change them without being noticed.

Hap set a fire under the tree's shelter, and Jordan could see now why Unspoken were so useful to have on trips like these; not just for the protection, but because there wasn't a speck of firewood to be found unless one wanted to risk chopping down their shelter or setting the whole plain ablaze. The merchant's boy clambered out of the wagon for the first time, drawn reluctantly in by the promise of heat. He crouched a healthy distance from the green blaze in his comical volumes of swaddling, flinching slightly every time one of the Unspoken passed too near.

"I'll cook today," Astra said, the first thing Jordan had heard her say since they'd left. Chip whirled round from where he stood near the horses, clearly shocked to hear a female voice. Jordan heard Koen cackling from somewhere near the wagon. "I think we should have a rota."

"Don't include Yddris," Hap said.

"We'll get raw potatoes," Jordan added.

"Oh ha ha, fuck both of you," Yddris shouted from somewhere out in the darkness. "Boy, stop listening to Nika."

"That's the single worst bit of advice you've ever given, Yddris." Hap caught Jordan's gaze over the fire, and he was sure that if they could see each other's faces the man would have winked. The only response he received was a series of distant grumbles tinged with irritation.

The expanse pressed at Jordan's back; it didn't feel so freeing when he was facing away from it, or when he considered falling asleep out here. He had never slept without walls around him, but it didn't look like this camp would have so much as a lean-to. He was suddenly grateful that the plans had changed, because the prospect of coming out here with only one other person for company and security – even if that person was Yddris – was terrifying. He soon found himself shuffling closer to Hap on the sack-cloths they'd laid on the ground to shield from the worst of the mud, so that his back was to the tree instead. It was superficial cover, but it was still comforting.

"Not used to being out in the open?" Hap asked. Jordan's face heated to think that he had been that obvious.

"Not in the dark," he replied. "I mean, I've slept outside before. Technically. But there were loads of other people around, and we were inside a tent. Might also be to do with the fact that the most dangerous animal in my country was about this big." He brought his thumb and forefinger together until they almost touched. "The top ten most dangerous animals included cows."

Hap laughed. "Ah well, I can see why you're struggling, then."

"Should clarify that my country was extraordinarily tame," Jordan muttered. "Though I'm still not convinced there was ever anything that ate souls."

"I wouldn't rule it out," Hap said, as another screech reached them in the darkness. The pile of blankets that contained Chip's son jumped at the noise. "You'd be surprised at what can hide in the places no one thinks to look. I think you discovered it for yourself in that crypt. Up until a few centuries ago, people also didn't think that Nictaven had anything that ate souls, not for food at least. Unspoken had to fight to get that information widely accepted."

"Why wouldn't they listen to the people who were protecting them from this stuff?"

"Who wants to believe there are animals roaming the streets that can tear your very essence out of you, just because they're hungry?" Hap asked. "I wouldn't, given the choice. Much easier to believe that magic-users were doing it, or that the victims were just cracked. You at least have some measure of control over that." He readjusted himself with a grunt of pain. "Relations between the Gifted and non-Gifted have a turbulent history."

"So I'm gathering," Jordan muttered. He stared into the fire, frowning.

"Everyone needs us," Hap said, "but not everyone trusts us. Remembering that will save you much grief in the future."

Jordan had a sudden recollection of the night he had almost killed Darin Blackheart trying to drive away a Wight pack, and recoiled. A small part of him really couldn't blame them.

They spent the evening huddled around the fire. The wind was fierce and felt like a gust of ice against bare skin, until even Jordan succumbed and found himself drawing more magic into his limbs from the current, which roared just below his consciousness out here. Astra made a stew that Jordan was certain Nika had taught her. The familiar taste made him think wistfully of his bed in the Reach as rocks dug into his backside below his sack-cloth seat, but then he remembered that that bed came with the risk of a call from the Devils, and his tattoo prickled. The rocks suddenly weren't such an inconvenience.

"Shall I do a net for tonight?" Koen asked from Hap's other side, in the quiet that fell after they'd eaten. Yddris sat beside Jordan, smoking a pipe. Astra had coaxed Chip's son into a stuttering conversation on the other side of the fire.

"Better had do, this close to the city," Hap replied. Both Unspoken got up and, working from opposite sides of their camp, began drawing runes in a wide circle. Jordan watched, fascinated, as Koen drew neat, precise runes in the air and, while they still hung there like the afterglow of a sparkler, neatly linked his line into another rune, and then another, leaving a fading chain in the darkness behind him.

"Too finicky for me, rune nets," Yddris muttered, knocking out his pipe. "But if you want to have a go, Hap's already offered to do a few introductory sessions with you. Only if you want to, mind. Might have a knack for it with that drawing of yours."

"When I first joined, it hadn't occurred to me that there were quite so many options," Jordan replied. "And I've kind of been shoehorned into one of them."

He felt his tutor's eyes on him but kept his gaze on the fire.

"Where did they put it?" Yddris's voice sank even lower.

"Between my shoulders."

The amount of company he had was suddenly stifling. His skin prickled all over, as if everyone could see the tattoo beneath his clothes, and his heart began to race. It was the first time he'd acknowledged aloud that it had happened since that carriage ride with Arlen. His hunting knife weighed heavy on his hip, and his hand drifted to it, threatening to unsheathe it and throw it into the darkness, but instead it went to his pocket and drew out the little pouch of blackweed.

Yddris said nothing as Jordan struggled to roll a cigarette, only reached over and, with a deft twist of his fingers, finished it up and handed it back.

"Nika's going to kill me," Jordan mumbled, leaning forward to light it in the fire.

"Not if you don't tell him." Yddris stuffed his pipe again and lit it.

Jordan drew in a long breath, and his heart immediately began to slow, the sharp edges of panic dulling to fuzziness. "Aren't you supposed to be disapproving? Instead of, like...rolling them for me?"

"And what kind of a hypocrite would that make me? Besides, boy, you forget I've been there." He gestured with his pipe. "If it helps, it helps."

They fell silent, plumes of smoke rising before them, until Koen joined them back at the fire. Jordan thought about getting rid of the cigarette, but his capacity for shame had also dulled to a fog, and the calm was more desirable at that moment than anyone's approval. He could still feel the fear, crouched in the corner of his mind like a physical presence, and he wanted to keep it away for as long as possible.

"Night take me, you got him on it already?" the other apprentice said.

"The boy has enough agency to find his own way to it," Yddris muttered in reply. "That's not from me."

"It isn't," Jordan admitted. With a sigh, he dropped the rest of the cigarette in the dirt and stamped it out, blowing his last lungful out in one long stream.

"Young for a habit like that," Hap said, re-joining them and sitting back down with a groan. "Nika won't approve."

"Nika's not the boy's mother," Yddris said. "Much as he seems to think otherwise sometimes. He's an apprentice, not an adopted child. He wants to smoke, not my place to tell him he can't."

"Where did you pick it up, then?" Koen asked, still not sounding convinced. Jordan strained to care about the note of concern in his voice, but the calm was too valuable to be very successful at it.

"Some guy at a beer hall," he said. Yddris choked on his inhale. "You know. Every other bod smokes it in those places. Should probably have said no, but the sleep's been nice."

It was a lie – this was only the second time he'd ever smoked it and his sleep had been just as disturbed as ever, but he didn't want any more questions. They were wearing away at his nerves again, his thoughts dancing too close to the events in the Reach. He had come on this trip to get away, and he planned to do exactly that.

"Nika can brew you something for sleep," Koen said. "You don't need to turn to smoking. But," he held up his hands in a gesture of peace, "I'm not here to judge. To be honest, I'm so nervous I'd be tempted."

The other apprentice hunched up, staring into the fire with the rest of them. Jordan felt the buzzing at his back from the rune net Koen and Hap had made, a light frisson of magic that eased the sinister openness of the plains around them. Hap said something in response, but Jordan's gaze had already drifted back to the smudge on the horizon where the city lay – where his sister was, and where the limits were of everything he knew about this world. The wilds of Nictaven were a mystery to him; at times he'd forgotten there was land beyond the city limits. It had certainly not occurred to him to ask about it. He wished he could package up the feeling of the night, the open, clean, frozen air, and take it back to Grace. His phone had run out of battery months ago, but his fingers itched to take a video, a sound clip. His drawing was limited by his senses, and he'd never been great with words.

He knew she'd like this more than he did; when she wasn't burrowing through dusty old buildings she was out in the open air with her camera.

"It should've been Grace," he muttered. Yddris inclined his head.

"What should?"

"Who got the Gift." He swallowed, and it stuck on the way down. "I know that sounds like a shitty thing to say as her brother, but I think she'd have made more of it than I have. Nika would've loved having her as a student, she's fascinated by everything, and...she's going to waste away in that place. She's okay now, but she never stays in one place for long. I know she feels stifled already and some of it's my fault. Because I'm a coward."

"You don't need the Gift for freedom, boy," Yddris said, after a long pause. "That has bars of its own. They don't look the same, aye, but they're there. You know it as well as I do."

"I still think she'd have preferred it to what she's got now."

"What she's got now is security," Yddris said sharply. "An income, and a roof over her head. Guards on the gates at all hours. A dangerous slave girl who makes a formidable ally, who's gone absolutely silly over her. She has security because you gave yours up, boy, and if that's what makes a man a coward then I wouldn't mind being one awful much."

"I should've told her about the other thing."

"That's your prerogative, boy. If you think she can handle that information without trying to meddle, it's your business. You know her better than I do. But if you don't think that, then keep it to yourself. Kiel knows it's making you both miserable as sin."

Jordan's racing thoughts were interrupted by a cracking noise above. A branch from the tree above them crashed to the ground just outside the protection of the rune net. A shriek emitted from the depths of the blanket pile on the other side of the fire, and Astra was on her feet already. Jordan looked up and caught the edge of a wing disappear over the edge of the tree canopy, tried to pull his sluggish thoughts together to realise what he was looking at...

An ear-splitting shriek soon answered that for him. Ren hissed and dug her claws in inside his hood and he growled in pain, craning his neck to try and catch a glimpse of the Marrowhawk in the tree above them.

"Good job we set that net," Koen yelled over another screech.

"I'll get it," Yddris shouted. "It can't get through but it might..."

Something fell through the branches and landed in the wagon bed with a rattle. The night was filled with the sound of rattling leaves and beating wings, the air current it generated buffeting them and smelling faintly of blood. Jordan clapped a hand to his hood and turned his face away as, with a great ripping sound, the demon took off again. It wheeled, flapped a few times, and was repelled with a resounding crackle by the rune net, before it shrieked again and flew off towards the city.

Jordan watched it go for a minute, breathing hard. He had never been so close to one, hadn't appreciated how big they were. For a moment he'd been certain it would get through the net just with sheer size.

"Too late," Yddris said, and he was echoed by an anguished cry from Chip.

Jordan turned to look at what had fallen from the trees.

"Yeah, it did," Koen said, nodding. "It did just shit in the wagon." He clapped Jordan on the shoulder. "Welcome to the Guildtown road."