storm Read online

  A group of young hara came down the alleyway behind him, and Moon began to head back in the direction of the Reliquary. But then somehar called his name: “Jaguar har!”

  He turned, reluctantly. The hara behind him all wore the distinctive curling facial tattoos of the Firedog clan, but what he noticed more than that was their grinning mouths. He saw scorn and a desire for sport in their expressions. One of the hara approached him. “What are you looking for?”

  Moon shrugged. “Nothing.”

  “Snake sent you.”

  “No.”

  “What's he want with us?”

  At this point, Moon registered a startling fact. This har was slightly afraid of him and thought he carried dire news. “Snake hasn't sent me,” he said. “He doesn't want anything.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “I came for a drink,” Moon said, “that's all.”

  “Can you tell the future?”

  “No.”

  “Bet you can. Tell mine.”

  Moon stared at this young har, with his silver-white hair, his pointed elfin features. “You will break many hearts,” he said. “If you are not careful, you will die among the pieces, because they are sharp.”

  The har pantomimed a double-take. “What's that supposed to mean?”

  Again, Moon shrugged and wished he hadn't said anything. He couldn't play this game.

  The har's companions were ambling off towards the inn and one of them called, “See you in a bit, Em.”

  The har waved at them without looking behind him. “Tell me more,” he said to Moon.

  “I can't,” Moon said. “I have to get back.”

  “It must be an omen,” said the har, “Snake Jaguar's son coming here. I want to know what it is.” He touched Moon on the shoulder, which Moon knew was a form of Firedog greeting. “I'm Ember Firedog. What's your name?”

  Despite his limited experience of life, Moon knew when the universe throws you a line. He knew it would be stupid not to take hold of it, so he agreed to go with Ember into the inn, on the condition he didn't have to tell anyhar's fortune.

  They bought drinks and sat at a table in a smoky corner. The other Firedogs sat nearby, but didn't attempt to intrude on the conversation. “Why will I break hearts?” Ember asked, his expression revealing he knew the answer only too well.

  “Because you look good,” Moon said. “And you know it.”

  Ember laughed. “It doesn't always work that way, Moon. You clearly have a lot to learn.”

  “Too much,” Moon said, more to himself than his companion.

  “Your father has kept you closeted away. Hara think you're strange. You're not though, are you? You're just very shy.”

  Moon didn't want to reply to this. He wasn't sure whether being thought shy was worse than the somewhat more glamorous idea of being thought strange.

  Ember was watching him very closely, which wasn't pleasant. “I know why you're here,” he said at last.

  Moon squirmed and stared into his drink.

  “It's OK,” Ember said. “It was going to happen sooner or later. You're brave. It must have been hard coming here.” He laughed. “But you've met me, so that's all right. Will it be your first?”

  “No,” Moon said. He didn't like this at all. There was something cold and clinical about it.

  “We could leave here now, if you like.”

  Moon stood up, knocking over his drink in the process. “You're wrong,” he said. “I don't know what you think, but you're wrong.”

  He fled out into the night, and somehow, in a kind of pitiful delirium, found his way back home. He sat panting on the steps of the Reliquary, hating every fibre of his being and wishing the world was a different place.

  In the morning, Ember Firedog came to find him. Moon discovered him wandering through one of the galleries, apparently hopelessly lost.

  “I might look good,” Ember said, “but I'm rubbish at seductions, as you noticed. I'm sorry. I have the sensitivity of a fish that is not only dead, but little more than a pile of maggots because somehar left it out in the sun. Or so I'm told. Can we start again somehow? This is a really weird place to live. Is it haunted?”

  Ember's direct manner often got him in trouble: Moon could see that. But this very Leviathan-at-full-speed approach to life also had its charm.

  “I was scared of coming here,” Ember said, as Moon showed him around the unfortunate ghost-free depths of the Reliquary. “I thought I'd run across Snake and he'd put the Eye on me. But I knew I'd screwed up and my friend Sand told me off about it. He said I should come and apologise or something, because hara can be really sensitive and stuff when they've just been through feybraiha. Not that I was.”

  “Are you ever quiet?” Moon asked.

  “Not often,” Ember admitted. “Does it put you off?”

  “A bit, yes.”

  “Oh.” Ember was quiet for some moments after that. “You see,” he said at last. “Looking good isn't everything.”

  Moon laughed. “I'm learning.”

  “You're really quiet because you're shy and I'm noisy for the same reason, I guess. That's what Sand says and he really understands me. Silence is a weird thing. It's full of thoughts and some of them might be wrong.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Eight – well, nearly. You?”

  “Seven.” Moon sighed deeply. “How do we get from here to there?”

  “To where?”

  “Being like older hara. I want to skip this bit. It doesn't feel right.”

  “Hmm. No way round it. My hostling says I have to make mistakes and learn from them. Then he gets pissed off with me all the time. It's very confusing.”

  “Want to see my room?”

  “Sure.”

  After only a week, Moon could barely remember the days pre-Ember. The Firedog filled his life, changed it utterly. Moon began to make friends, some of them from his own clan. He spent his days at the docks with other young hara, helping to unload cargo from visiting ships, and went drinking in the evenings with the Firedogs. It seemed like he'd lived this way for a long time. In Ember's presence, even Snake was different: more amenable, on occasion almost cheery. Ember had wanted to meet Snake, of course, no doubt to boast among his clan friends of having braved the serpent's lair. So, late one afternoon, they met together in Snake's dusty cavernous room, surrounded by the tart scent of Snake's favourite strong tea that came from the south on Unneah trading boats. They sat amid the rubble, because Snake hadn't bothered to clear up after the earthquake and Raven had been too preoccupied to notice. Spiralling motes of danced in beams of sunlight that came down through cracks in the ceiling, and the clink of the delicate china cups that Moon had once taken from a display case in the Reliquary sounded strangely nostalgic for a time Moon had never experienced. Snake told stories, because harlings loved stories, and no matter how much Moon and Ember wanted to believe they were grown up and serious, they really weren't. Ember had come like a flaming brand into the dark corners of the Reliquary and Moon dared to believe that everything – everything in the world – was going to be all right, touched with light, scintillating with hope.

  Snake knew Ember's family, because a long time ago he'd travelled north with them. Moon wondered why his father had elected to shut himself away, when it was clear he had once had friends. Had Silken's death done that to him? Somehow, Moon thought it had to be more than that. Snake could talk of Silken easily and when he spoke of his lost beloved it was not with bitterness and grief, but with a kind of wistful, peaceful remembrance.

  Ember liked Snake a lot and after a time even felt brave enough to ask if he could see the Eye. Reverently, Snake removed his patch, and revealed that savage feline gaze.

  “It is beautiful,” Ember said softly. “Like a jewel.”

  Sometimes, when Ember came to the Reliquary, he would visit Snake's chambers first, and once Moon was astonished to find him there, sitting on the floor before Snake's chair, rubbing his withered
foot with soothing oil that Ember's hostling had given to him for the purpose.

  Ember said, “Fawn invites you to dinner at the clan-house, you and Moon and even Raven.”

  “Perhaps soon,” Snake said.

  “Fawn says it's time to come out of the shadows.”

  Snake only nodded, then noticed Moon standing stunned by the door and beckoned him forward. “Represent our family with the Firedogs, Moon. Eat with them and come to tell me about it.”

  Later, Moon – and not without a tinge of envy – said to Ember, “You reach him in a way that I never have.”

  “You're too close,” Ember said. “He is afraid for you.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  Ember, for the first time ever in Moon's presence, appeared furtive. “History,” he said. “That's all my hostling told me.”

  Moon was alerted then to the possibility that Fawn Firedog might be able to enlighten him concerning things about which Snake would only remain silent.

  The Firedog clan lived in a shattered tower that was covered in dark green creepers. Vines had crept in through holes in the masonry and broken windows and grew over the inner walls. In the basement was a walled-off chamber, where twenty human bodies lay. Ember said they had killed themselves rather than be killed by Wraeththu. It had happened a long time before the fleeing Uigenna had come to the city. In another room, if you tore the creepers away from the plaster, there were pictures of what the city had looked like before. It was very different: austere lines and lots of hard stone. Now, it was softer and green. Humans had built this place, but since they had gone there had been no more building. Wraeththu lived in the ruins, made no mark upon the landscape. It looks better now, Moon thought, but at the same time he found himself wondering what it would be like to build a house to live in, one you had thought up all by yourself, that was filled with the things you liked.

  “It is all still there, beneath the green,” Fawn said. “Eventually it will be buried deep.”

  Fawn was a gentle har, chesna with a battle-scarred warrior named Hawk, who was not Ember's true father, even though Ember called him that. Hawk, like Snake and Raven, was damaged by past experiences and Ember said he was often prone to unpredictable rages. “He sees things we don't,” Ember said, “but Fawn thinks they're not real. Hawk has a hole in his head.”

  The head of the Firedog clan was Cloud Wolf, and it was perhaps because of his patronage that Hawk was tolerated by the rest of his hara. Moon couldn't understand why Fawn stuck by Hawk, because he was never anything but surly. But it was from Hawk that Moon eventually learned a little about his family's past.

  Biding his time, Moon didn't ask any direct questions until he'd visited the Firedog clan several times. He understood that to most hara of the clans the past was taboo, filled with sorrowful memories. Hawk, however, provided a convenient cue.

  One evening, as Moon sat on the floor with Ember and his parents eating dinner, Hawk pointed at him with a chicken bone and said, “You are Silken's son.”

  “Yes,” said Fawn, “we know that, Hawk. This is Moon Jaguar. Remember?”

  “What was he like?” Moon blurted out. “Silken, I mean? I can't remember him.”

  “Hara fought over him,” Hawk said, his attention returning to the plate at his crossed feet. “Like cats, like jaguars. Snake won him.”

  “Hawk,” Fawn said, in a warning kind of tone.

  “It was what happened,” Hawk said.

  “Yes, well...” Fawn began, but Moon interrupted him.

  “I wish he hadn't died. I wish I'd known him properly.”

  “He screamed,” Hawk said unhelpfully.

  “When he died?”

  “No, when Snake took him.”

  “That's enough!” Fawn said. He turned to Ember. “Take Moon outside.”

  Ember obediently got to his feet and pulled on Moon's arm, who was most reluctant to leave. He wanted to hear what Hawk had to say, no matter how unpleasant it was.

  “We are what we are,” Hawk said. “You are the gentle Fawn, but once you weren't.”

  “Things are different now,” Fawn said. He looked at Moon. “We were young and stupid. Don't listen to him. It has no bearing on your life.”

  “They were chesna,” Moon said. “They were.”

  “Yes. Don't worry. Hawk doesn't remember things properly.”

  “I remember that,” Hawk said reasonably, “and so do you. Snake did it to impress Wraxilan, because he didn't want hara to know how he felt.”

  Fawn put his face in his hands and sighed. After a moment, he raised his head and said, “Ember, take Moon outside. Now!”

  Ember's hostling might now be the gentle Fawn, but his son clearly understood when to do as he was told. He virtually dragged Moon from the room.

  Moon felt stunned. He didn't know what to think, sure only of the fact that he wanted to know more. Outside, the ghost of the old city hung around in the streets and birds off the lake wheeled silently between the broken towers. Moon didn't want to speak. His chest was full of feeling, hard complicated knots and small silverfish wrigglings: it was almost sensual. Ember put his hand on Moon's shoulder and together they walked out into the night. Sometimes, fires were burning, but nohar sat around them. Somehar, somewhere, high up, was singing: a soft wistful song. Dogs nosed through rubbish and bats flickered around like phantoms on the edge of sight. There was peace in this old, sad city: peace and death. It was hard to believe the clans had once been these terrible things, these warriors and rapists, these Uigenna.

  Moon and Ember slept in an empty building they found, Ember pressed tight against Moon's back. They hadn't spoken a word since they'd left the Firedog clan house, which given Ember's love of chatter was almost surreal. Moon held onto Ember's hands and tried to convince himself they were real and solid and not likely to disappear at any moment. He didn't want to think his friendship with Ember was just some pleasant fantasy he had and that he could wake up out of it to something bleak and depressing.

  In the morning, Moon said, “I want to speak to Hawk. Take me to him. Find us a place where we won't be disturbed.”

  Ember sighed, scraped back his hair and said, “I didn't know about Snake and Silken, Moon. I really didn't. Maybe you shouldn't find out more.”

  “I have to know about our family,” Moon said. “All of it, anything Hawk can tell me.”

  They found Hawk sitting in the middle of what might have been a playground or a parking lot. The concrete was still in the process of being broken up by determined plants. Hawk sat staring at the sky, his legs straight out in front of him like a harling.

  “Let me talk to him,” Ember said, and Moon was happy to agree to this. Ember was familiar with Hawk's moods.

  Hawk's tattoos were faded, as if the ink had run beneath the skin because Hawk himself was in some way melting. When Ember spoke his name, he did not react. Ember hunkered down beside him and started pulling out weeds from the concrete. Moon hovered nearby, his heart on tornado-beat.

  “What was is like when you first came here?” Ember said to Hawk.

  There was a short silence, then Hawk said, “Pretty much the same.”

  “Was it a long journey to get here?”

  Hawk didn't reply, but then turned round and looked directly at Moon. “I can hear you,” he said. “You shout to me from the inside.”

  Moon came forward a few steps. “Will you talk to me?”

  “Fawn says it should not be so.”

  “I don't care,” Moon said, wondering then whether that was the right thing to say.

  “Snake has a lot to live down,” Hawk said. “A lot. He cannot forget his kin, because of what they are. And nohar will let him forget.”

  Moon squatted down in front of Hawk. He could see this was not going to be easy. It was like hearing words from a distance, through a strong wind. “Tell me about my parents.”

  “Silken was a spoil of war, that is all. It began one way and ended another. It was not uncommon.”


  “Did...”

  “Why should you want to know about this?” Hawk interrupted. “It happened long before they made you. You should worry more about the kin from Beforetime.”

  Moon paused, then said, “My father's brother, the Tigron.”