he made the mistake of glancing back at Koolas just once.
‘Fool’s balls,’ Koolas exclaimed as he caught the look in Bahn’s eyes. ‘Is it that bad?’ He sounded appalled, and for a moment Bahn was reminded that Koolas was more than a simple chattēro after a story, that he was Khosian too, born and raised in the city, with his own friends and family to worry over.
Bahn sagged within his armour. ‘One moment,’ he said to the rickshaw bearer, and stepped closer to Koolas.
‘It’s an invasion, that’s all we know right now.’
‘How many? Which army?’
‘Reports indicate it’s the Sixth Army from Lagos, with auxiliaries from Q’os.’
The man drew himself straighter. ‘How many?’ he insisted.
Bahn turned as though to walk away, but paused. ‘All I can say is that we’re calling up every man we can. We’re emptying the jails and stockades of veterans. Even the Eyes.’
‘What? Those murderers and lunatics?’
‘Any that can still carry a shield, aye.’
‘And the council, what do they make of it? I just saw a delegation go inside the Ministry.’
‘Does it matter? We’ve been invaded. It’s out of their hands now.’
Koolas rubbed his face ruefully. ‘Aye. And I’m sure Creed made that more than clear to them. There’s a man with a chip on his shoulder if ever I saw one.’
Bahn scowled, and left before the chattēro could ask anything more of him. He climbed into the rickshaw, and nodded to Koolas as the bearer pulled him past.
He offered the bearer an extra five coppers to make a faster pace of it, and sat back and tried to calm himself as the rickshaw wove between the bustle and traffic of the streets.
In the far north of the city, in a small avenue lined with cherry trees turned bronze by autumn, Bahn climbed down with a thanks to the bearer and stepped into the house that had been his family home for seven years now. The rooms were cool inside, everything still. A smell of incense still hung in the air from their small shrine to Miri, the Great Disciple who had brought the Dao and the Great Fool’s teachings to the Midèrēs.
His son Juno would be at the schoolhouse today. Upstairs, he heard his infant daughter begin to cry.
Bahn found Marlee in the backyard, turning the soil in their small vegetable patch as though oblivious to the distant horns, yet her movements were quick and frustrated.
‘Hey,’ he said to his wife as he slid his arms around her waist from behind. Marlee straightened against him, her body tense. ‘Can’t you hear her?’ he asked.
‘Of course I can hear her. She’s teething again.’
‘Need anything?’
‘No, we still have some mother’s oil left. I daren’t give her any more, though.’ Marlee turned around and looked up at him. Her smile faltered. ‘What is it, Bahn? Why the alarms?’
He heard the sigh escape his lips. ‘I haven’t long. I should be at the stadium right now helping with the preparations.’
‘Preparations?’
He squeezed her arm and could not speak.
‘Oh, Bahn,’ she said, and her eyes shone moist. ‘They’ve landed here?’
He nodded stiffly.
Ariale wailed even louder from inside the house. Neither of them could find any words to say. Marlee looked to her feet and took a deep breath of air, then looked up again. ‘I’ll go and settle her,’ she said quickly. ‘Then you can tell me how bad it really is.’
He reached out to stop his wife.
‘I’ll go,’ he said with a smile of sadness, and left to settle his daughter.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Enlistment
She had been a child – perhaps four years of age – when her mother had died giving birth to her youngest sister, Annalese. So young in fact that she could hardly recall the experience now, whether it had been day or night, summer of winter, quick or slow; nor even who had been there, and who had not.
Only the few moments before the end did Curl truly remember, and those moments were so fresh in her still that to recall them brought a flush of emotion from her beating heart.
Her mother, pale as moonlight, wasted and bloody on the birthing bed with her gaze fixed distantly on the ceiling above. The dark curls of her hair plastered around the sheen of her complexion. Her chest barely rising as she fought to breath, a faint rhythm growing fainter. Her nipples, dark and hard on stretch-marked breasts made plump with milk, the wooden charm hanging between them, a dolphin, shaped from unseasoned jupe. The newborn, screeching in the room beyond the