Chapter 2: Mountains and Riots

Wirrin led the way out of town, past all the shrines that marked the best path out of Tellan. Most of them were suns, flowers, and hammers. A right turn about an hour out of town took them through a few more suns and flowers.

Hest was scowling the whole time. Wirrin wasn’t paying the trio much attention, but she didn’t have to. None of them much liked walking past all the shrines, which Wirrin could appreciate, but Hest was least subtle about it.

Oh, to be young again.

Wirrin had a notion.

It had been a few years since Wirrin had escorted any rich people anywhere. It had been years since Wirrin had escorted anyone anywhere, really. But she soon discovered that these three were of the slightly less annoying variety of rich people.

Some of her wealthier clients had expected her to carry everything, to act like one of their servants. They wanted to stop often to rest, and simply chattered amongst themselves while Wirrin did all the work. It was like watching children.

Alina, Leran, and Hest were of the other sort. They tried to keep their backs straight and noses pointed as they sweated and heaved under the autumn sun. They tried not to slow. Tried not to looked tired.

Wirrin decided to do an experiment. She stopped by a stone that came up to her knee, with a symbol of a rose with sun rays. It was mid-afternoon and already starting to dim.

‘You ought to rest,’ she informed her charges.

Alina frowned, but didn’t say anything.

‘We can keep going,’ Leran said, trying to choke down his panting. ‘Our journey is too important for rest.’

Hest scowled. ‘At least until nightfall.’

‘Is your quest too important for you to freeze to death on your first night out of Tellan?’ Wirrin asked, flatly. She was being dramatic, of course, but that was part of the experiment.

Leran and Hest stared for a moment, identical scowls on their faces. They were brothers after all, Wirrin supposed.

Wirrin lay out a rug she’d had for almost fifteen years on the thin snow and sat down by the little shrine to Light and Growth. Alina was first to follow suit, laying out a thin blanket instead of a rug and doubling it over to sit just across the path from Wirrin.

Still scowling, Alina’s brothers set out their own mats. All three had blankets rather than rugs. Wirrin hadn’t thought to mention it, so she hoped they had enough sense not to use their actual sleeping blankets or she might not have been as dramatic as she thought.

Leran sat beside Alina and Hest sat further away from everyone and especially the shrine, sinking into the deeper snow away from the path and rest area that the shrine marked out.

Her experiment complete, Wirrin pulled off her boots and sat cross-legged, feet up on her knees, to rub at her soles and make sure there were no holes in her socks. She didn’t tell the trio to do the same, they were probably too young.

All three of the siblings glared at her, doing their best not to appear like they were looking in her direction. Wirrin didn’t bother to bring it up, it was to be expected, after all.

When Wirrin put her boots back on and started rubbing at her legs and thighs, Alina finally piped up.

‘How would we freeze to death from failing to rest?’ she asked, her tone very neutral.

Wirrin considered the woman for a moment, trying to work out if she were interested or annoyed, but Alina was good at the neutral expression. ‘Oh, you wouldn’t,’ Wirrin said. ‘At least probably not.’

Hest’s scowl took over his whole face and he opened his mouth to say something, presumably something hostile. But Alina turned to look at him and he stopped.

‘Why insist that we stop, then?’ Alina asked, turned back.

‘You were all getting pretty puffed,’ Wirrin said. ‘It’s better to rest than to trip while climbing a mountain because you don’t want to admit that you’re tired.’

‘And to massage your legs?’

Wirrin shrugged. ‘I’m older than you lot,’ she said. ‘I get stiff and sore, as old people do.’ Wirrin was only thirty-five, but she figured the trio in front of her were at least ten years younger and would have no idea.

After about ten minutes of sitting and massaging her legs, Wirrin stood and folded up her rug, keeping the wet side facing out. All three of her charges followed her example and were about to head off when Wirrin started stretching.

‘Are you so old that your legs can’t keep up with this work?’ Hest asked.

Alina’s head snapped around to look at him and the scowl disappeared in a second. She turned back and, after a moment of observation, joined Wirrin’s stretches.

‘I assume,’ Alina said, carefully. ‘That it’s like any other sort of exercise. We wouldn’t want to injure ourselves by being overzealous, would we?’ Again she looked around at Hest, who shook his head meekly.

Still the brothers didn’t join in the stretching. But it was only another couple of minutes before Wirrin was ready to go again.

The sun set slowly in the snow, and it was another few hours before Wirrin called the trio to camp by a tall, pentagonal stone with a sun carved into each side. On a small, rotting wooden table behind the stone was a large, canvas bag about half full of charcoal.

Wirrin set about shovelling the snow out of a ring of stones that had been here since she was a teenager and piling some of the charcoal in. Sometimes there would be cooking stands or flints, but they tended not to last out here.

She set out her rug again, which was still damp on the bottom, and sat down by the fire. The trio sat down to her right, across the fire from the shrine. Again, Hest sat furthest from the stone.

As the fire rose, Wirrin took off her boots again, and her gloves. She warmed her hands and massaged her feet. Alina was first to follow Wirrin’s example, sitting on her folded, thin blanket.

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Wirrin didn’t need to ask to know that none of them had brought any cooking utensils with them. On the one hand, she probably should have said something about it back in the caravanserai, but on the other it was funny. At least while they didn’t know each other, she suspected no one was going to ask her to start cooking.

‘I was born in Ettovica, did you know?’ Wirrin said, hands stretched toward the fire, not looking at anyone. She wouldn’t get a definitive answer, but it wasn’t like the siblings were being subtle.

‘That man said you grew up in Tellan,’ Alina said. ‘So you know the mountains better than anyone.’

Wirrin smiled. ‘My mother moved us to Tellan after the five-hundred-year riots. It’s essentially true that I grew up around here, exploring the mountains.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t think I know them best, mind. Of the people who’d be willing to take a two-month trip at the start of autumn, I’m probably your best option.’

‘I heard a lot of people left Ettovica after the riots,’ Leran said, leaning in a little bit. ‘A lot of the sailors were killed and jailed, weren’t they?’

Wirrin looked at Leran for a moment. Calling them ‘sailors’ was an interestingly middle-ground sort of term that Wirrin wasn’t used to hearing. ‘I was young, still. I don’t know how many people left. I don’t know about jailed, but I remember a lot of people were killed.’

It was Hest’s turn to lean in, of course, and even shuffle a little closer to the fire. ‘You were there? What was it like?’

Wirrin shrugged again. ‘It was a real novelty,’ she said. ‘My mother was so excited that there would be a Church parade in Ettovica. There hadn’t been one for a hundred years, of course.’

Hest scowled.

‘You weren’t excited?’ Alina asked. ‘Just your mother?’

‘I was.’ Wirrin finally pulled out her pan, the fire was about high enough now. ‘It was a special event, wasn’t it? I’d been to watch the Sovticra down on the docks a few times, but compared to that, this was supposed to be huge.’

‘Sovticra?’ Hest frowned. ‘Blood?’

‘The dirge,’ Wirrin said. ‘The singers called themselves Sovtlan.’

‘Oh…’ Hest said.

‘Rayoula yan sovt,’ Alina said. ‘Rayoula lin fouticra hil va Etteranen.’

Wirrin didn’t correct anyone, just frowned mildly like she had no idea what was being said. Technically Alina’s explanation was correct anyway, and Alina probably didn’t know she was insulting Estanen.

‘Oh,’ Hest said. ‘So they were singing the old language?’

Wirrin nodded. ‘They called themselves…’ She pretended she couldn’t remember. ‘Old Worlders, I think. Heretics, according to the Church. But… well… it is Ettovica.’ Wirrin shrugged. ‘For the parade, though, Church people came from all over the South.’

‘They brought people in?’ Hest asked. ‘To keep the peace?’

‘Maybe. But I think mostly to join the parade,’ Wirrin said. ‘There would have been less than a hundred, I expect, if they’d held a parade in Hirasica or Bitalen or Tellan. Instead, they told everyone to come to Ettovica.’

‘And these… Old Worlders, was it? They weren’t happy?’ Leran asked.

‘Of course they weren’t,’ Hest said. ‘This is what I’ve been…’ He cut himself off, though, didn’t get back into a familial argument.

‘So they attacked the parade?’ Adina asked.

Wirrin cut open a bag of pemmican and dug half of it into her pan before she answered. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said. ‘I remember standing by the parade. It was incredible, to me. I don’t know if you’ve been to Ettovica, but it’s a deeply quiet sort of place. There were people, coloured lights, painted floats. Such an air of fun. It was the first time I’d ever seen a mage, the Light mages who made the coloured lights.

‘It was all a bit much, really,’ Wirrin continued. ‘It was honestly comforting when I heard the Sovticra start up. I was too young to know what it meant, but it was still what I was used to.’

‘There must have been a lot of… Sovtlan,’ Hest said. ‘I thought more than ten thousand marched in the parade.’

Wirrin frowned, though she’d heard that number before. ‘Oh, nowhere near that. No. My mother was quite disappointed by the turnout, as I recall.’ She stirred the melting pemmican and added more, this time with a healthy pinch of salt and chilli.

‘How many, do you think?’ Hest asked.

‘My guess at the time was maybe five hundred in the parade and a thousand to line the streets and watch it pass,’ Wirrin said. ‘Since I’ve gone back to Ettovica, most of the people who were older at the time guessed something like two thousand.’

‘And the Sovtlan?’

Wirrin stirred the pemmican. ‘It’s hard to be sure, of course,’ she said. ‘They didn’t want anyone to know the numbers, the Church doesn’t want anyone to know the numbers. From how loud the Sovticra was, and how many people I saw fighting, my best estimate is at least five thousand.’

‘Wow.’ Hest’s eyes were shining, and both his siblings were leaning close to the fire to follow the story.

‘What started the fighting?’ Alina asked.

‘I can only say what I saw near me,’ Wirrin said. ‘Though most people I’ve talked to have said the same. That it was the Light mages who started fighting. Shouting and pushing and shoving, at first. The whole parade started to break up. And then there were flashes of light, burning flesh, screaming. My mother grabbed me and ran.’

Wirrin stared into her makeshift chilli fry, as if she were lost in thought. Mostly she was wishing she’d thought to buy herbs earlier in the year so she had more northern spices.

‘I heard that more than a hundred of the… Sovtlan, I suppose, were killed,’ Hest said, when it seemed like Wirrin wouldn’t continue.

Wirrin shrugged. ‘I didn’t see, at the time. The brawl lasted a long time, and you could hear it all through the city. People I’ve talked to said that only maybe five or ten people were killed in the brawl. Lots of people blinded and burned, mind.’

Hest physically deflated. ‘Oh.’

‘It was when they went to the Church that the fighting really got going,’ Wirrin said, picking a little piece of meat out of the fry to taste. ‘Must have been after midnight. And a lot of the people from out of town were staying in the Church.

‘I got woken up by the shouting,’ she continued. ‘My mother and I didn’t live so far from the Church. She was religious, I suppose. So I snuck out, before she could stop me, and went to have a look.’

‘Shouting?’ Hest asked, straightening up, eyes immediately gleaming.

‘We heard it was saboteurs, in the dark,’ Alina said.

All three of them shared that fierce, gleaming stare.

‘Oh no.’ Wirrin chuckled and found a bowl in her pack. ‘Thousands and thousands of people were in the square outside the Church, shouting about restitution and justice for all the people the mages had attacked.’

‘How many?’ Hest gushed.

‘I’ve heard it was up to fifteen thousand,’ Wirrin said. ‘I think that might be a tall tale, though. The population was only a little over twenty thousand at the time. But it was so many they couldn’t all fit in the square.’

Wirrin served herself about a quarter of her little meal. ‘I don’t know how long they’d been there when I arrived, but it wasn’t long before the mages came out of the temple. Help yourselves, eat more than you think.’

‘And they attacked the crowd?’ Hest asked. Wirrin was only slightly impressed that Alina and Leran had thought to bring their own bowls.

‘Not immediately,’ Wirrin said, blowing on her spiced pemican. ‘They tried to talk to the crowd. But there weren’t any leaders, and they didn’t offer anything, of course. They just told everyone to calm down and go home.

‘This time it was the crowd that started the fighting,’ Wirrin continued, through a chewy bite. ‘Everyone near the temple all tried to pile into the mages who had come out. Even though we all knew they were mages. Maybe a dozen of them.’

Hest served himself as he asked the next question. ‘What happened?’

Wirrin remembered the screams, the blinding lights, the burning flesh. She remembered the way some of the mages moved, the way plants burst out of the frozen, paved ground. She shrugged. ‘All the mages died,’ she said. ‘Enough people had brought weapons. Maybe half the people in the temple got out before it was brought down. Something like two thousand people in Ettovica were killed by the mages, and the few Church people who could fight.’

‘All killed, not arrested?’ Alina asked.

Wirrin shrugged. ‘My mother moved us only two days later. I know more mages went to the city and there was more fighting. I think that’s when people got arrested.’

‘Wow.’ Hest’s eyes glinted in the firelight, a huge grin on his face.

They ate in silence for a minute.

‘Why tell us all this?’ Alina asked, eventually.

Wirrin pointed her spoon at Hest. ‘I understand not liking these shrines out here,’ she said. ‘But they mark the safe path for the next couple of days. It’s important that we stick to them or risk sliding down the mountains for our pride. Trust me, I’ve done it. It’s not much fun.’

Alina burst out laughing.