Engines & Demons - The Undestined

Chapter 15ii

Tahlia gave a great sigh of relief as Mistress Shantir's door closed behind her, signalling the end of her morning ordeal. Three of her fellow students were ensconced in a nearby window seat, chattering and giggling over the papers in their hands. One of them raised her head and glanced over at Tahlia, before whispering something to her two friends and causing a new flurry of giggles.

Tahlia scowled, her hands tightening into fists and crumpling her own work from that morning's tortuous lesson. She turned away and stomped down the corridor, the childish tittering behind her irritating her ears until she passed down a spiral stair, where the metal walls of the keep finally quelled it. She stopped by a narrow window half way down the stair, peeled open the scrunch of paper in her hand, and raised it to the light to study its creased surface.

It wasn't such a bad poem! Better than the smush the other girls had written, and definitely not deserving of the condemnation it had received. She read through the neat lines of writing once again, trying to figure out where she had gone so wrong. Maybe she should not have compared her hero's head to a lump of rock. Maybe she could have thought of a more flattering simile, but what else could you compare a man's head to?

She scowled at the memory of Luisanna's poem, which had described the hero of the piece's hair as being 'As dark as a fallow's night'; a line that had been received with unrestrained cooing from the other girls in the class. Tahlia wondered if Luisanna had been thinking about Grifford as she wrote such dreamy drivel. It would not have surprised her if she had, because a great many girls seemed to spend a good deal of their time obsessing over her brother, though Tahlia was sure there would be somewhat less admiration for him if they only knew what a true dunderhead he was.

She folded the paper, a little more neatly this time, and pushed it into the pouch at her belt.

"Oh heroic prose be damned!" she said as she set off down the stairs, the memory of her morning's torture already fading.

She decided to take the stairs down to the courtyard and avoid the upper embarkation hall, which was bound to be filled with more giggling young ladies on their own way down to wherever they were going. After their day's detention, the children of the Order had finally been granted permission to venture beyond the confines of the fortress' walls. Doubtless many of the older ones would be looking forward to an afternoon of riding, and the youngest, the boys especially, would be eager to visit the fortress-bailey to see the new excitement that was unfolding there. Tahlia, however, had other plans.

* * *

Grifford stood at the head of the stairs beneath the pemtagrin door, glowering at the confusion in the central-courtyard below him. It was a scene of utter chaos. Masdon carts, still bringing in the summer's tithe, filled half the space and trailed back through the gate to the barbican, and the other half was filled with large wagons pulled by towering juddra. In their midst was an immense war-engine with three of the huge beasts harnessed to it.

Everyone was shouting. The pantler's men were shouting at the farmers, the farmers were shouting at the Engineers, and the Engineers were shouting at the fortress guard.

"Hello, brother."

Grifford turned to find that Tahlia had appeared at his shoulder.

"What is happening?" she asked as she peered down at the mess, in that annoyingly quizzical manner that she had.

"Some fool over at the access-keep has let too many farmers through," he replied. "I would have the man thrown to the Pride! Look at this mess! Our war-engines can't get out!"