Tormalin shifted the pack on his back and adjusted his sword belt. He could hear, quite clearly, the sound of a carriage approaching him from behind, but for now he was content to ignore it and the inevitable confrontation it would bring with it. Instead, he looked at the deserted thoroughfare ahead of him, and the corpse moon hanging in the sky, silver in the early afternoon light.
Once this had been one of the greatest streets in the city. Almost all of Ebora’s nobles would have kept a house or two here, and the road would have been filled with carriages and horses, with servants running errands, with carts selling goods from across Sarn, with Eboran ladies, their faces hidden by veils or their hair twisted into towering, elaborate shapes – depending on the fashion that week – and Eboran men clothed in silk, carrying exquisite swords. Now the road was broken, and weeds were growing up through the stone wherever you looked. There were no people here – those few still left alive had moved inward, towards the central palace – but there were wolves. Tormalin had already felt the presence of a couple, matching his stride just out of sight, a pair of yellow eyes glaring balefully from the shadows of a ruined mansion. Weeds and wolves – that was all that was left of glorious Ebora.
The carriage was closer now, the sharp clip of the horses’ hooves painfully loud in the heavy silence. Tormalin sighed, still determined not to look. Far in the distance was the pale line of the Wall. When he reached it, he would spend the night in the sentry tower. When had the sentry towers last been manned? Certainly no one left in the palace would know. The crimson flux was their more immediate concern.
The carriage stopped, and the door clattered open. He didn’t hear anyone step out, but then she had always walked silently.
‘Tormalin!’
He turned, plastering a tight smile on his face. ‘Sister.’
She wore yellow silk, embroidered with black dragons. It was the wrong colour for her – the yellow was too lurid against her pale golden hair, and her skin looked like parchment. Even so, she was the brightest thing on the blighted, wolf-infested road.
‘I can’t believe you are actually going to do this.’ She walked swiftly over to him, holding her robe out of the way of her slippered feet, stepping gracefully over cracks. ‘You have done some stupid, selfish things in your time, but this?’
Tormalin lifted his eyes to the carriage driver, who was very carefully not looking at them. He was a man from the plains, the ruddy skin of his face shadowed by a wide-brimmed cap. A human servant; one of a handful left in Ebora, surely. For a moment, Tormalin was struck by how strange he and his sister must look to him, how alien. Eborans were taller than humans, long-limbed but graceful with it, while their skin – whatever colour it happened to be – shone like finely grained wood. Humans looked so . . . dowdy in comparison. And then there were the eyes, of course. Humans were never keen on Eboran eyes. Tormalin grimaced and turned his attention back to his sister.
‘I’ve been talking about this for years, Hest. I’ve spent the last month putting my affairs in order, collecting maps, organising my travel. Have you really just turned up to express your surprise now?’
She stood in front of him, a full head shorter than him, her eyes blazing. Like his, they were the colour of dried blood, or old wine.
‘You are running away,’ she said. ‘Abandoning us all here, to waste away to nothing.’
‘I will do great good for Ebora,’ he replied, clearing his throat. ‘I intend to travel to all the great seats of power. I will open new trade routes, and spread word of our plight. Help will come to us, eventually.’
‘That is not what you intend to do at all!’ Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled. ‘Great seats of power? Whoring and drinking in disreputable taverns, more like.’ She leaned closer. ‘You do not intend to come back at all.’
‘Thanks to you it’s been decades since we’ve had any decent wine in the palace, and as for whoring . . .’ He caught the expression on her face and looked away. ‘Ah. Well. I thought I felt you in my dreams last night, little sister. You are getting very good. I didn’t see you, not even once.’
This attempt at flattery only enraged her further. ‘In the last three weeks, the final four members of the high council have come down with the flux. Lady Rellistin coughs her lungs into her handkerchief at every meeting, while her skin breaks and bleeds, and those that are left wander the palace, just watching us all die slowly, fading away into nothing. Aldasair, your own cousin, stopped speaking to anyone months ago, and Ygseril is a dead sentry, watching over the final years of—’
‘And what do you expect me to do about it?’ With some difficulty he lowered his voice, glancing at the carriage driver again. ‘What can I do, Hest? What can you do? I will not stay here and watch them all die. I do not want to witness everything falling apart. Does that make me a coward?’ He raised his arms and dropped them. ‘Then I will be a coward, gladly. I want to get out there, beyond the Wall, and see the world before the flux takes me too. I could have another hundred years to live yet, and I do not want to spend them here. Without Ygseril –’ he paused, swallowing down a surge of sorrow so strong he could almost taste it – ‘we’ll fade away, become decrepit, broken, old.’ He gestured at the deserted road and the ruined houses, their windows like empty eye sockets. ‘What Ebora once was, Hestillion . . .’ he softened his voice, not wanting to hurt her, not when this was already so hard – ‘it doesn’t exist any more. It is a memory, and it will not return. Our time is over, Hest. Old age or the flux will get us eventually. So come with me. There’s so much to see, so many places where people are living. Come with me.’
‘Tormalin the Oathless,’ she spat, taking a step away from him. ‘That’s what they called you, because you were feckless and a layabout, and I thought, how dare they call my brother so? Even in jest. But they were right. You care about nothing but yourself, Oathless one.’