Mercian whorl on a sea-green background, dozens of them fluttering along the ramparts; on the other side the imperial red hand of Mann, with the tip of the little finger missing, emblazoned on a field of pure white – hundreds of them staked out across the isthmus. Intent on this scrutiny the boy's skin clung thin and tight to his face.
'There is always hope,' said Marlee reassuringly to her troubled son.
Juno looked to his father once more.
'Yes,' agreed Bahn. 'There is always hope.'
But even as he said these words, he could not meet his son's eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
Boon The foot prodded him again, more insistent this time.
'Your dog,' came the voice through the thin material of his blanket. It was female, and sour. 'I think it's dead.'
Nico forced his eyes open a fraction, so that a glimmer of early sunlight tangled within his lashes. Too bright, he thought, as he hunkered further into the warmth of his own body. Too early.
'Leave me be,' he mumbled.
The blanket swept away, leaving him beached in the daylight. He clamped a hand over his eyes, squinted through the crack between his fingers, to see the girl standing over him, her hands on her hips. Lena, he recalled.
'Your dog, I said. I think it's dead.'
It took a few moments for her words to make sense. He was a poor riser these days; mornings were always a sombre, unwanted affair, and he did not like to face them.
'What?' he said, as he sat up and frowned at the girl, frowned also at a sun that shone several hours old in the sky. Boon was by his side where he had lain down last night. The old dog was still sleeping, surely, but flies were climbing over his muzzle, his blond fur. 'What?' said Nico again.
He scattered the flies with his hand, and ran it along Boon's coat. The dog did not stir.
'He was like that when I woke up,' came Lena's distant voice. 'I tell you, we'll be next if we don't get some proper food into us.'
'Boon?'
The dog looked terribly thin in the bright daylight. Ribs protruded along his side; his spine was a sharp ridgeline of bone. Nico expected an ear to twitch, or maybe a sudden sigh inspired from some animal dream. There was nothing.
He lay back on the grass, pulled the blanket over his head. Then he rested an arm across his old friend.
*
The summer drought had hardened the ground, so Nico used his knife to loosen it before digging the grave with his bare hands. He had chosen a spot beneath an old jupe tree on a hill just to the south of the park, not far from where they had been sleeping. Gaunt faces watched him as he worked. More than once during months past, he had fought away people trying to kill his dog, people desperate enough to crave the animal's flesh. Nico had shouted at them and thrown sticks, while Boon stood snarling at his side. Now he glared at them defiantly, the mud on his face streaked with tears. I'll kill anyone who touches him, he swore to himself miserably.
Boon weighed no more than a sack of sticks as Nico lifted him and laid him out in the shallow grave. For a while he knelt over him, stroking his golden fur. The flies were gathering again.
Boon had been just a pup when Nico's father had first brought him back to the homestead, Nico himself only a few months old. 'A companion to look after you,' his father had explained when Nico was years older. Boon by then had grown into an oversized hound, and the two of them were now inseparable. His kind had been bred for baiting deer and bear; for coursing upon open plains and forested slopes. This last year, living rough in the streets of the city, with so little food, had not been kind to him.
It was hard, pushing the dirt back into the hole, and then covering him with it.
'Goodbye, Boon,' he said at last, patting the earth flat, and his young voice emerged as a dry whisper, lonely as the sky.
He stood up, placing his straw hat on his head, wishing he had more to say. Words normally came easily to his lips.
His shadow lay across the grave: a solid form, its legs parted, hands clenched like balls, its head made bulbous by the hat. Its presence turned the dry, upturned earth black.
'I'm sorry I let you come to the city with me,' he said. 'But I'm glad you were here, Boon. I never would have survived this long otherwise. You were a good friend.'
Nico felt subdued as he shambled, with his pack, down to the great pond. He found himself a space amongst the other park-dwellers crowding the water's edge. There he washed his hands to clean the dirt from them, though his fingernails remained embedded with earth. He had torn the skin around them with his digging, and for some time he watched his blood seep in small clouds into the murk of the pond.
Nico swept the water clear of surface scum, took his covestick from his pack, and scrubbed his teeth. He was aware of the rank taste of the water on his lips, like silage he always thought, and was careful not to swallow any. Sunlight blinded him. Way out in the middle of the pond, the sun glowered in a fiery reflection. For a while he stared at that too, long enough for his eyes to hurt.
Lost, aimless, his thoughts returned to him slowly, settling down with care. Just walk, they said to him. Get on your feet and walk.
Nico stood and hitched his pack, all that he owned, on to his back. The blood rushed from his head and he swayed for a moment, feeling nauseous and weak. Around him the park was choked with refugees, its lawns of yellowgrass long since trampled to bare earth, its trees cut to stumps that poked in sorry isolation from the ground. He placed a foot forwards, allowed himself to fall into the rhythm of a forward stride. It was without haste or even purpose that he picked his way between wooden lean-tos and patched tents stitched out of old clothing. He passed groups of dirty children, as thin as sticks, and men and women with blunted looks in their eyes, struggling to bear up to more than just the present. Some were Khosian by appearance, but many more were refugees from the southern continent, Pathians and Nathalese; or more recent arrivals from the north, from the island of Lagos or from the Green Isles. They were strangely quiet, for so many people. Dogs barked, of course. Babes howled for mothers' milk. But, overall, they saved their energies for things more important than talk.
Nico's stomach growled at the scents of their cooking. For two weeks now he'd eaten nothing but beggar's broth – hot chee with hunks of keesh bobbing in it. No one could hope to live for long on a diet like that, and already his breeches hung slack from the belt he had re-notched tighter just a few days ago. As he moved, he could feel his protruding bones rub against the coarseness of his filthy clothes. The girl Lena was right: if he did not eat properly soon, he would lie down and die, just like Boon.
Just walk, soothed his mind.
Nico pressed through the main gates of Sunswallow park into the district beyond. There, in the streets, people walked without hurry, chatting or lost in their private thoughts. Man-drawn rickshaws rattled noisily over the cobbles, bearing single passengers of every kind. From the south, Nico could hear the grumble of guns, just over a laq away.
He took off towards the heart of the city, in the direction of those guns, his loose soles slap-slapping against the cobbles, his head thrust forward. A few blocks later he rounded a corner and emerged into the Avenue of Lies. The noise was overwhelming, like stepping out of a deep cave into a roaring torrent. Shouting was more common than ordinary talk. Hordes of street performers rang bells or played flutes for small change; wind chimes strung across the streets clattered in the breeze. It was as though the populace of Bar-Khos wished to make as much clamour as possible, so as to drown out any reminders of the ongoing siege from their daily lives.
Trees lined much of the avenue. In one of them, on a bare branch that twisted and drooped its way towards the street, a black and white pica sat watching the traffic below. From habit, Nico found himself tipping his head to the bird.
The mere act reminded him of a different morning. Of the day he had left home for good.
He had seen a pica then, too. It had laughed down at him from the roof of the cottage as he took off into the
