Chapter 10
It was a busy Addersport morning, hideously crammed with human noise and scent. In Elver’s arms, the keltraxia cub wriggled inside the sack, already eager to get back out again.
The smells! I want to see what they are!
She lowered her face until her lips brushed the fabric of the sack.
‘Remember what we talked about? While we’re in the city, you have to hide. If we’re caught with you here, we’re in big trouble. Try and be still.’
I don’t see why I should sit in a sack while you get to walk around a human city. Just because you’ve got two legs and look like them or whatever. After that, the cub grew quieter. Elver could sense him busily sulking.
Artair, meanwhile, was having the opposite of a sulk.
‘Isn’t this place incredible?’ he said. They were walking east, away from the tavern, following one of the many waterways that sliced through the city in every direction.
It was a bright autumn day, the morning sun dancing on the water and sending sinuous patterns of light over the walls of the buildings around them; they made Elver think of the serpents that had invaded Addersport when she was a child.
‘I’ve never seen so many people in one place. ’
‘I know. It’s awful.’
He shot her a surprised look. ‘I used to dream about what it would be like to come to this city. I never thought I’d actually get to do it. I suppose, living in the woods, the city must be very overwhelming.’
Elver scowled. ‘I was born in this cesspit. And I lived here until I was twelve.’
‘You did?’
The streets were growing busier and busier the deeper into Addersport they ventured. Elver pulled up her hood and used one hand to tug her sleeves down so that they covered much of her hands.
‘Let’s just get out of here as quickly as we can. The cub isn’t happy about being in this sack and I’m not happy about having to smell all these humans.’
He raised an eyebrow at that. ‘You’re not wrong. A lot of people in one place creates an… interesting smell.’
They turned a corner, passing shops with open fronts selling all manner of goods—clothes, fabric, jewellery, spices, a great deal of salted and fresh fish—and then they were in an open market square, filled with a large crowd of people.
They were all standing around, some of them eating foods that Elver dimly remembered from her childhood—sticky buns on sticks, hot cinnamon bread and spiced lamb wrapped in thin pancakes—and overhead there were strings of red and gold bunting.
They all appeared to be looking at a raised dais in the centre of the square, which was partly covered with a crimson sheet.
There was a man up there too, dressed in fine velvet and silk, a big gold chain around his neck.
When Elver had lived in Addersport, the mayor had been a woman; this bearded man was apparently her replacement.
Without discussing it, they both stopped to listen as the mayor began to shout over the crowd.
‘I’d like to thank the Addersport Orphanage Fund for raising enough money for this fine tribute.
It’s taken us some time, and I know it wasn’t always the case that everyone wanted this monument…
’ There was some muttering from the crowd at this, but the mayor carried on regardless.
‘But now that we are here I think that ultimately we can all agree that the sacrifice should be marked, and we should have a way to remember her every day.’
‘What are they talking about?’ asked Artair. He was craning his neck to look at the dais. ‘What’s under the sheet?’
‘I don’t know. More human nonsense, I expect.’ But Elver had a cold, creeping sensation on the back of her neck.
‘Only five short years ago, Addersport stood on the brink of ruin. We had lost many lives and a great deal of money to the monstrous serpent threat.’ The mayor paused and dabbed at his sweaty brow with a handkerchief.
‘And she, brave child that she was, stepped forward to save this city. I give you, the Hero of Addersport.’
He swept the sheet away dramatically and Elver blinked, shock like a splash of cold water on her face. She wasn’t sure if she was going to laugh or be sick.
Underneath the sheet was a bronze statue depicting a child, standing with her shoulders back, her chin held high, and one foot resting on the body of a serpent that lay on the ground below her. The bronze shone like embers under the sun, and the crowd cooed appreciatively.
‘This child died for us,’ the mayor continued, his voice solemn and heavy. ‘To fuel the spell that freed Addersport. Now, with this monument, we can give thanks to her every day.’
Elver wanted to run up to the mayor and press her hand to his sweaty skin until he screamed with agony. The statue didn’t even look like her.
‘Are you alright?’ asked Artair. ‘You’ve gone a funny colour.’
‘The cheek of it. The brass neck of it! I knew this place was a grasping midden full of selfish, mindless fools, but this ?’ Elver was pushing through the crowd, heading to the far side of the square and away from the statue.
‘These humans should be ashamed, and instead they’ve built a bloody great celebration of it!
’ She wanted to scream at the surrounding crowd, ask if they knew her name.
She knew that they didn’t. They would know Maura’s name though, and this made it all the worse.
All at once, the idea of facing the mage and making her pay for what she’d done felt irresistible.
‘Elver, wait.’ Artair caught up with her with one easy stride. He stood close so that he could speak to her in a low voice. His scent, she realized, was different to the humans around them. He smelled of a cool autumn morning. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
He was looking at her very directly. To him, this was a simple question: was there something wrong?
Could he help? She remembered his voice as he described what had happened at his monastery, the pain it had clearly cost him to recall it, and she remembered the other voice that had come out of him at night: the sly, slippery tones of Lucian.
One body, two entirely different spirits moving through it.
‘There’s no time. Let’s get out of here before I decide to poison some idiots just to cheer myself up.’
Before long they found themselves in the Twelfth district, the place dedicated to the temples of the gods.
Most cities and towns large enough had a Twelfth district, where acolytes, priests and mages could ply their wares.
As a child, Elver had had no use for the place and avoided it, but Artair dawdled, his eyes caught by every detail.
There was the Temple of the Hooded Crow, the god of death, medicine and secrets, the cold black marble of the archway strung with pungent herbs.
And there was the colourful Temple of Vilon the Many Limbed, the god of the arts; always popular, men and women streamed in and out of it, talking animatedly about the inspiration they had been granted within.
Barleycorn, the god of the hearth—amongst other things—was even more popular, probably because his temple took the form of a well-stocked tavern, and the priests were sunny-faced men and women who would come out and merrily chat at you if you weren’t careful.
Artair wandered too close, and a priestess nabbed him.
‘Won’t you come in and take a load off, son? Barleycorn tells us we should seek out the good times, because what else are we here for?’
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you so much. That is very kind of you.’
Elver steeled herself and took hold of his arm to pull him away.
‘We don’t have time for this…’
‘Your girl is welcome too, of course,’ beamed the priestess. ‘Nothing Barleycorn likes better than a young couple rolling in the hay.’
‘Rolling in the what?’ He laughed, and the woman grinned back at him.
‘Come on .’ Elver dragged him away. At the end of the street was another temple, quieter and more austere than the others.
The lintel over the doorway was hung with white masks, and long runners of white silk hung in front of the portal.
This, Elver knew, was the Temple of Trilot the Faceless, god of purity and truth.
Trilot was significantly less popular than Barleycorn.
There was a single priest standing on the steps, watching them as they passed.
Elver spared him a quick glance. He wore the long gloves and high-necked gown of the order, though he wasn’t masked, so he wasn’t one of the high priests.
Priests of Trilot were forbidden to touch or be touched—and at this thought Elver felt a strange moment of sympathy, which she quickly brushed aside.
Trilot despised the Queen of Serpents and all her children, seeing them as the ultimate embodiment of the impure, and it was under his advisement that humanity abhorred monster kin.
The Queen had warned her to be careful of the Faceless One.
‘There’s just so much to see,’ said Artair. ‘The different faces, the colours of the stone, the food… I have never seen a river that runs through a city before, and here they’re everywhere.’
‘Technically, they’re waterways. Not real rivers. Not like you get in the forest.’
‘I’ve spent years only ever seeing the same stone corridors, the same view of the forest, the mountains. The same garden growing the same plants.’
His voice sounded strange, and when she looked at him, he had a slightly glassy expression. The compulsion to ask him if he was feeling well rose up in her, but she swallowed it down, and in the next moment he seemed to shake off his discomfort.
‘It’s all necessary though,’ he said to her emphatically. ‘Our sacrifice is necessary. Without it, the whole of Tlevrae would be in danger from the spirits that hide inside us.’
‘I don’t know. It seems to me that people who are very keen on sacrifice are often the ones not losing anything.’