I followed the Eske Road in, a gray line ruled through the woods. If I had to rely on my compass, then the crosswind, gentle as it was, would have pushed me northward kilometers off course.
By dawn, the Castle was a dark smudge on the horizon. Even at this distance I could sense the tension: something was wrong. Dozens of tiny fires were scattered just inside the forest’s fringe where it ended at the clear grass of the demesne surrounding the Castle.
Hundreds of specks fanned out from under the trees-running men who purposefully converged on a few sites and set to work. I approached watching timber being felled, ranks formed out of thronging mobs. They abandoned carts to choke the final approach of the road, and at the forest’s edge they were winding back the huge wooden arms of trebuchets. I counted six machines of the largest class. Men with shovels were rapidly topping up their counterweight boxes with earth, while another team systematically dismantled the last watchtower on the Eske Road, carting blocks back and distributing them, stacking a pile beside each catapult.
Just forward from the trebuchet line, Gio’s rebels drew up into a long ragged crescent in front of the Castle’s east wall, centered on the Dace Gate. Facing them across the open ground, with their backs to the Castle and the outer moat, was a much smaller formation, the Castle’s defense.
They were framed between the Northeast and Southeast towers: Fescue Select, Shivel Select in front of Fescue General, Shivel General-the full fyrd of two Plainslands manors, but only two. Either the rebellion was very widespread or the manors could not marshal men in time. Their banners cracked in the breeze, a sound that always filled me with dread. The center was a solid block of heavily armored hastai-veteran Select infantry-and a figure so huge that as I angled over them I easily recognized Tornado. To either side ranked pikemen raised a forest of jostling pikes. Cavalry pawed restlessly at the flanks, Hayl’s white horse pennant above the larger group. All the loyal fyrd were unusually well equipped and their armor shone-they were offering a deliberate contrast to the ragged rebels.
Hundreds of helmets glinted as they looked up to see me flying over. I waved my arms in acknowledgment. Don’t look at me, I thought; watch the rebels! I passed above the curtain wall, reassured by its bulk. Along the east wall, longbowmen of the Imperial Fyrd were stationed between the crenellations-I suddenly realized that the toothed tops of the towers were not just for decoration; the defenders on the parapet could shelter from missiles behind each merlon tooth. But the Castle was the only fortress to have crenellations-the Insect forts, like Lowespass, didn’t have or need them. The Castle was a fortress designed for protection against people as well as against Insects. “Shit,” I said aloud in astonishment. “How long ago had San anticipated this?”
The two forces faced each other, hearing the clacking as six trebuchet arms wound tight and still tighter. Each side waited for the other to move first. I banked around the Southeast Tower thinking that I couldn’t tell Tawny anything that he couldn’t see from the ground, so I circled up two hundred meters in the dawn air, wary of more arrows.
Archers detached from the main crescent of rebels and advanced slowly, their line like a loose screen. Tornado’s infantry responded by locking their hooked square shields together into an unbroken wall. A second later the ranks raised their shields over their heads, forming a makeshift roof against the arrows. The odd formation was unlike anything I had seen before, but I admired Tawny’s ingenuity.
With a crash of counterweights, the arms of all six trebuchets jerked up. I was far above them and saw, in plan, six stones arc out. One smashed down just in front of the machine-the stone had been too light; the middle two fell short, ripping up turf swaths; a fourth crunched through the canopy of the farthest plane tree in the paddock and dropped into the moat in a white water spout. Two rocks seemed to grow in size as they came up under me, shrank on their descending trajectories and struck the crenellations. Bowmen dived out of the way as chips flew off the facing stone.
A distant roar of exultation burst from the woods, tinged with fear at their own audacity. Teams of men hauled on the capstans to rack the trebuchet arms down; then others staggered forward and rolled a stone into each sling.
Appalled, I thought, isn’t Tawny going to do anything? People are actually damaging the Castle itself. Zascai are really attacking us. What have we done to make them hate us so much they want us dead? Do they want to harm the Emperor and annihilate the Circle? If Gio gets inside he knows the way to the Throne Room. My mind whirled at what would happen if every Eszai at once found himself suddenly returned to mortality.
In less than a minute the trebuchets were ready to launch again-their crews were obviously Eske’s trained fyrd. Their accuracy improved: only one block fell short, in front of the Yett Gate on the southeast wall. One went wide and bounced along the paddock fence, smashing it into matchwood; the remaining four thudded into the curtain wall. The Castle bled more rubble into its inner moat. I noticed that the wooden bridge to the Dace Gate had been removed.
Now the rebel archers started to send volleys toward the loyal fyrd. Arrows stuck in the shell of shields protecting the infantry. They found their marks in horseflesh spreading disorder and agitation throughout the cavalry.
Hayl Rosinante had had enough. He waved his horsemen forward, and they surged and gathered speed, spreading into a thin line, raising their lances. The archers immediately turned and raced back toward the safety of their own spearmen. From my vantage point I saw they wouldn’t make it. Swift as Insects, Hayl’s men ran them down. Ridged lance points devised to crack shell drove straight through the soft bodies of Awians and humans. Half the riders abandoned their lances in their impaled victims and drew swords, continuing their charge toward the rebel line.
I was…I had never expected to see mortals fighting immortals, and here of all places. In front of the Castle with Eszai leading troops against the Zascai we were sworn to protect! I wheeled around, sick with disgust, and sped toward the Throne Room.
As the breeze propelled me sideways, I kicked away from the pinnacle tops and lead sheet roofs coming up under my feet. Another horrible crash sounded from the direction of the Dace Gate.
The Throne Room spire sprang like a frozen fountain three hundred meters into the air. Its shadow swept around an enormous sundial on the Berm Lawns. The spire was built on Pentadrica Palace, which settled to accept it, ninety centimeters into the ground. The pressure caused little splits in the beams, cracks in the plaster. Its base was a harder stone, to stop the spire’s weight crushing the blocks.
The end of the Throne Room was pierced by stained glass windows in primary colors. The rose window crowned it, twenty meters across. One of its multifoil panes was propped open. I could fit through there. I pulled my wings to my body and folded them up as I felt the feathers brush the mullions. The arcuate sill passed below me; I slipped through.
The dim, silent hall was five hundred meters long, its cross-vaulted ceiling thirty meters high. At the far end was the black screen; way below me was the tiled floor with its scarlet carpet. People no taller than a centimeter looked up as I appeared in front of the rose window, my wings stretched in silhouette against its red and blue light.
I flew at the height of the diaphanous gallery adorned with different colors of marble. Above me were smaller lancet windows, the great bays divided by pointed arches below. Every window gave a fragmentary view of another part of the Castle.
My body rose and fell with wing beats. With every beat I passed an arch-with columns like bundles of thin tubes, supporting ribs interlacing the ceiling. I was in perfect rhythm with the arcades’ march down the Throne Room. They met at the vanishing point, where the Emperor sits.
The capstone bosses were larger than life-a double-headed axe, oak leaves, turtles, cascading cornucopias, flowers complex as chrysanthemums. The walls were bright with daylight. The sun shone on the east side and cast the shadow of the pointed windows all the way down the west vault. San watches these shadows tilt, shorten and reappear on the east vault every day. Above him, the ceiling vanishes up into the octagonal spire; behind him shines the sunburst.
The scent of incense thickened. The marksmen on the balcony looked distressed; then the carved ebony screen filled my vision. I swung my legs down, alighted gently on the carpet before it, and trotted through the portal, pulling my wings in and folding them. I knelt fluidly before the dais.
“My lord Emperor, I have returned from Tris and await your command.”
A crash, scarcely muted by the pierced walls, echoed through the hall. I winced. “What’s happening out there? How can I help?”
San said, “The guards will inform me of the situation outside. Am I right that you can add little news about the rebellion?”
“Lightning is wounded. I left him at Awndyn manor.” I outlined the ambush, the spice ship, and Stormy Petrel hidden in a fissure. I paused at every clash or an outburst of shouting, wondering if they were coming nearer. I could only hear the loudest shouts, chaotic and disjointed. I fretted-why didn’t San send me outside to watch them? The rocks were smashing the outside wall and destroying the buildings in the gap. Can they reach as far as the Palace? If Tornado doesn’t keep them out of range Gio will aim for the spire.
The Emperor listened impassively and at length said, “Be calm, Comet. The Archer’s injuries are to be regretted, yes, but he is not the whole Circle. There are other ways to defeat Gio. Tell me about Tris-everything concerning the island.”
“I have Mist’s written account.” I took the scuffed stack of papers from my satchel, climbed the four steps to the rostrum and passed it to San. His pinched, wolfish face watched me keenly. Under his ivory cloak, his sleeves were loose to the elbow. His fine white hair hung down to curl on narrow shoulders.
A breathless guard ran past the screen then prostrated himself on the floor, his sense of etiquette battling with the need for urgency. “My lord,” he panted, “Hayl’s cavalry have been turned back by the rebel pikemen but casualties are light. Tornado says he must break the rebel lines in a melee if he’s to stop the trebuchets.”
San nodded. “Tell Tornado I have full trust in his judgment. However, remind him that there must be no pursuit once he has broken the resistance.”
The guard stumbled to his feet, bowed, and left.
“My lord,” I said. “Perhaps I should go and help the Strongman. We’re heavily outnumbered.”
The Emperor gave a grim smile. “This situation is not unforeseen. Last month Queen Eleonora offered half her fyrd to guard the walls. I declined as the involvement of Awia in any such engagement would increase discord. Instead the Plainslands manors have shown their loyalty, and the weakness of Gio’s support.”
Two more crashes, only a second apart; falling slates then silence. I looked tentatively at San, unable to hide my doubt.
“Comet, remember that the Circle is composed of the unsurpassed. The strongest warrior and finest horseman in the world defend us. These walls were built by a succession of the world’s preeminent architects. Gio Ami may be the second-greatest swordsman ever but he cannot be everywhere. His followers have disloyal natures or they would not have joined him, and once the battle turns against them he will be unable to hold them for long.”
“My lord.”
“Now, report on Tris.”
I began to describe everything that had happened on our voyage, in chronological order. I took pleasure in doing my job well. San listened to me talk, and act, as I paced back and forth on the carpet before the dais, in a red patch of light cast by the stained glass windows.
Another crash resounded, and the noise of shattering glass-the telescopes and sundials in the Starglass Quadrangle. The Emperor frowned and sent a guard to check on the damage. The Starglass Quadrangle was full of accurate instruments that set the time for the entire Fourlands. In fact, the Fourlands’ prime meridian runs through it; the north axis that crosses the east axis at zero degrees through the Emperor’s throne.
Another soldier sped in. I stepped aside while he flung himself on his knees in front of the throne and spieled out the latest news seen from his vantage point on the Skein Gate tower. “The Select Fyrds have engaged the rebel center. The cavalry are regrouping on the flanks.”
“Very well, return to your post.”
I thought of the picture of San in Tris Istorio. He was acting like a fyrd captain once more. I resumed speaking but was interrupted every fifteen minutes by news of the battle. There were longer waits between the trebuchet impacts now and the shouts were farther away. Tornado and Hayl are driving the rebels back, I thought with relief.
I spoke for so long that we had to break the court session to give me a meal. The four hundred kilometers I had just covered were taking their toll. By the time I finished it was early evening, and the bombardment had ceased some time ago. Nervous servants came in to light the torchères and wind lamps down on chains from the ceiling to fill them. I was exhausted from sleep deprivation and practically flayed by San’s questions.
I stared at the four gemstone columns in the niche behind the throne: blue azurite for Awia, purple porphyry for Morenzia, green jade for the Plainslands, silver-gray hematite for Darkling. For the first time I noticed that although there was equal distance between them, the four columns did not span the apse symmetrically. There was room for another pillar on the far right, just by where some small steps descended to an arched and iron-studded door that led to the Emperor’s private rooms. There was a gap where a column used to be-for the Pentadrica.
An Imperial Fyrd guardsman entered, bowing to give his final message without meeting the Emperor’s eyes. “Tornado reports that the rebels have been routed. Gio Ami didn’t dare face him in combat and his body is not among the fallen.”
“Very well. Tell Tornado and Hayl to bring their reports as soon as they are able.”
The guard left and San returned his gaze to me. “So you even left the Insect running loose?”
I picked at the unraveling seam of a fingerless glove. At this very minute the Insect was probably dining on the Capharnai. “Yes, my lord. We respected the Trisians’ wishes. It’ll be difficult enough to deal with them in future; we didn’t want to exacerbate the crisis still further. Vendace found it easy to reject Mist’s offer, because to the Senate immortality is just a nebulous concept. Half of them don’t believe in it.”
“I see. You failed to convince them. In fact you have given them one more reason to mistrust us. The situation must be healed, and quickly. Comet, you have worked hard so far. Can you do better?”
I bowed. During my meal in the empty guardroom San had written a missive that now lay on the marble arm of his throne, neatly sealed with the crimson sunburst. He regarded me carefully, as if he could read all my private thoughts from my face. He resumed: “Gio’s followers hold up our stagecoaches at every point between here and Cobalt. Gio himself is not easily found, except when he wants to be, it seems. This letter”-he picked up the small envelope-“must be delivered to Mist urgently. Do you have someone you can trust to do it?”
That was a poor precedent: a mortal asked to do my work. I said, “Messages are only truly secure if delivered by my hand.”
San’s pale thin lips turned up slightly. “I don’t doubt it, Comet. But I have other work for you. Following his defeat, Gio Ami will attempt to regroup. I know that he will be holding a meeting in two days’ time in Eske, in a salle d’armes hall that is a branch of his school.”
“Yes,” I said. “I’ve been there often.”
“I want you to go and listen to what he has to say, and then come back and inform me.”
“Your wish.” Obviously I wouldn’t be able to walk straight in, but I would relish finding a way to spy on Gio. He had once given me fencing lessons and I knew he was an excellent teacher; when in front of an audience he was a born performer. I said, “I’ll send the letter with a fast, dependable rider who should be able to slip past Gio. Mist should receive it late on Wednesday night.”
“Very well. In the meantime, if Tornado needs your assistance as a lookout or envoy do as he asks.”
Help the man who was fucking my beautiful wife? But San gave me no time for introspection: “Comet, what do you think of Tris?”
Danio was immediately brought to mind; I shied away from the memory of her drumming feet, and recollected the Amarot library. “The islanders love debate and casuistry that’s misguided compared to our practicality. It’s great that Tris now knows of the Fourlands. If we can make allies with them, if they become willing to communicate with us, their theories added to the Empire’s will increase our inventiveness a hundredfold.”
“What is your opinion of the riches of Tris?”
“My lord, I think they’re very dangerous. They’ll cause avarice, not to mention inflation.”
“And the people?”
I sighed. “On Tris, everything works, but that’s because it’s a tiny island. I think they have sorted out their problems-a very long time ago, perhaps-and they’ve not changed since. On Tris, a thief can become a honest governor…” In our case, it’s usually the other way around. “But I find it strange that the citizens of Capharnaum don’t want to cooperate with the Empire, like Rhydanne, and they hide themselves away when they clearly do care about the world and want to improve it, like Awians…It’ll probably do Tris good to learn of the real world. Maybe they’re in shock. I hope that when they understand us the whole Empire will benefit.”
San watched me carefully, sitting straight in the throne without stirring. He was satisfied that I was telling the truth. “Make sure that letter is sent to Mist swiftly and with the highest security,” he said.
“Yes, my lord.”
“Go now and rest, but return on Friday and tell me exactly what Gio says in Eske.”
San gave me the Top Secret sealed letter. I made obeisance, taking a few steps back before turning and passing the screen. As I left the Throne Room I called, “Immortals and fyrd, bring any letters for Eske to my room before midnight. Any questions about Tris, keep them.”
Walking down the corridor I caught sight of a flicker of movement on the opposite wall and went back to investigate. It was my reflection, pickled in a tall mirror speckled with tarnish. An expression of horror crossed its face-even in the half-light I don’t look as good as I did this time last year. Still the same age of course, but my eyes were ringed with deep shadow; my cut-off T-shirt was the gray texture of clothes washed hundreds of times.
I called at the stables and watched my courier race away with San’s letter. Enormous plane trees grew in the wrecked paddock outside. I walked past the one that I had sheltered underneath, two hundred years ago. Suddenly I saw a vivid image of my tattered self back then, leaning against the tree trunk. If I had known that any Challenger was welcome to walk into the Castle at any time, I would not have spent three days sitting under this very tree, wondering how to present myself. On our way from Hacilith, highwaymen had murdered my girlfriend and stolen the money I’d gained by blackmailing the city’s governor. I owned nothing but my crossbow and a switchblade.
On the third day under the plane tree I felt a presence watching me-a man, all his colors subdued and outline unfocused as if seen through gauze. I felt a chill and didn’t dare move. I stared at him and he looked back, so strange, full of confidence and concerns larger and more frightening than I could comprehend. An adult world, seen by a young man terrified for an instant by the inkling that he will join it and have heavy responsibilities every day.
I didn’t know in eighteen-eighteen that I was looking through thinned layers of time, at myself. But now I realized that I was the ghost that my younger self saw. I wanted to tell him that everything would work out fine, that he would win his Challenge and two hundred years later he would still be twenty-three. I couldn’t speak to him, but I smiled-and I remember receiving that warm compassion, because when I sat with my back against the plane tree’s bark, I wondered at the manifestation but felt heartened and at ease.
Two centuries ago, what happened next was that at nightfall some immortals returned from the Front. I rushed to hold the reins of a horse carrying a well-built man with stripy gray and white hair, and the Castle’s sunburst on a big round shield. His horse’s withers were smeared with yellow blood.
I don’t know why I expected Eszai to look different. A sparkle of the Circle about him was simply my excited imagination. He said, “You’re no groom.”
“I want to be Eszai.”
He must have wondered at what in the Empire I could possibly excel. “Then come in, waif.” He kicked the horse’s ribs and it cantered forward. Its hooves boomed over the wooden bridge and echoed between the weighty towers of the massive barbican.
I picked up some more steak sandwiches; I expend so much energy flying that I have to eat vast amounts. I walked from the kitchens through the ground-floor corridor of the Mare’s Run, the inner west wing, past Hayl’s apartments. I passed the Southwest Tower, where Tawny’s well-lit room was located, full of indiscriminately chosen prizes: Insect legs, bear pelts and jousters’ helmets. Then I climbed the three hundred and thirty steps of my tower, leaning on the wall all the way up, past the myrtle-green storeroom and the bathroom on its first floor that smelled as musty as hessian. I could lie on the bed for a while and fantasize about Tern-although I am more in a mood for a Rhydanne. Or I could, and I know I will, be distracted by the obvious alternative.
Wind-thrown rain began to scour the shutters. Tern had not been in for months; my room was dark and bundles of letters overflowed the shelves, piled everywhere. My valuable pendulum clock had stopped; I wound and set it to the right time and date. Masquerade masks hung around the mirror, beside a hookah as tall as I am, its fuzzy orange tube coiled around its brass pipe like a python. I spun the oval mirror around on its stand, face to the wall.
Faded posters taped to the round ceiling advertised music festivals, marathons, and Challenges when I wiped the floor with the mortals who wanted to contest me. I’m usually Challenged in winter when conditions for flying are at their worst, and I set the same test that won me my immortality-a race from the Emperor’s Throne Room to the throne room of Rachiswater and back.
There was a vase of dried flowers, the only plants that withstand Tern’s immortal forgetfulness. There were a few neglected old projects: my guitar, tennis rackets and a crossbow, all equally broken. There was my bike on which I lavish much attention, wrapped in its red rope that I use to lower it out of the window. Hanging on the wall above it was a series of obsessively concentrated little pen-and-ink sketches by Frost of jousting tournaments. The mantelpiece was cluttered with some wax seals in their skippet boxes; a souvenir from Hacilith-a spider’s web preserved between two sheets of glass; and a lump of solidified Insect paper with a coin pressed into it. By the window stood “Butterfly” my Insect trophy wearing a sailor costume, and my suit of armor stuck fast to the wall with decades of rust. An array of kettles, toast forks and dirty plates filled the hearth. On the dusty table beside my still’s retorts and condenser was a note covered in Tern’s dying-spider handwriting. I screwed it up and threw it in the cold fireplace. Looks as if the temptation of Tornado was more than the pretty lady could stand, I thought, fishing in my satchel for my syringe.
Once I start to feel the need I can go downhill very rapidly, and the room seemed suddenly very warm. I have to shoot some, I found myself thinking. No, I don’t need it. Oh, yes, I bloody do; I don’t want to be sick. Maybe when Tern sees how badly her adultery affects me she’ll come back. The trouble is that we spend so long apart that when we do meet we are still self-sufficient, which is a barrier to becoming really close.
I sat down at my desk, reached behind me to pull down one wing, unfolded it in front and held it between my knees. I preened fingers through feathers like a harp, hearing them rasp, and felt the thin skin ridged over my quills. Here are veins I haven’t used and they looked tempting. But if I made a slip and something went wrong, or if I damaged it and was paralyzed, that would be the end of me. I have only shot up in a wing once before when I was desperate. This was sacred. Sighing but pleased at some show of willpower at least, I untied the pendant thong from around my neck, looped it over my right arm and licked the ends up between my teeth. I flexed my fingers, impatiently tried to raise a vein. Don’t poison yourself, Jant. Meditate your way to Epsilon. Yeah, right. Why did Tarragon think I wanted to go to Epsilon? The Shift was an unwanted side effect when I only needed the drug to make me forget my pain. Why walk through worlds if you’re immigrant in each?
I sat with the needle poised, feeling a last blast of guilty defiance, then pushed it in neatly. In the space of a heartbeat it hit like a coach-and-four. Feeling like a god, if a rather incapable one, I located the chaise longue under my maps and lay down. This was like flying into a wall.
My thoughts played out in the air above me, but they were rudely curtailed by the door unlatching. A graceful and chic figure entered, and seemed to flow over to me. Tern looked at me closely. Her body was a fair; there were dances there. Her spine a snake, voice like icing on cakes-
“Oh, typical,” she said crossly. She touched up her lipstick in a mirror above my head.
“Where have you been?” I asked suspiciously.
Tern glanced down and must have realized from my expression that subterfuge was pointless. “At Tawny’s apartment…I had a good time.”
“What, all of it?”
“Tornado single-handedly held Gio off from attacking our home. He said if Gio came nearer I should run to the Throne Room. I have been encouraging him…Is it okay for you to enjoy yourself but not me? I’ve heard that Tris is a perfect land. You sailed off and left me here.” Tern slipped out of her dress and searched around for her silk dressing gown, clad only in a white bra and underskirt. I was too stoned to be angry. I found it hard to care about anything, not even if the strongest man in the world came in and bent her over in front of me. I gave her my orphan look: please take me home and put me in your bed.
“Wipe that off,” she said. “Are you going to lie there all night with your hand dangling? We had a pact, Jant. You’re not being sophisticated, just sedated.”
Yes, we had a pact, which we began after the span of a mortal lifetime had lapsed. We promised that it is acceptable to have affairs because we will still love each other the most, and we will always return to each other. Actually, sleeping around should be refreshing because we have to spend the rest of eternity together without becoming bored.
I propped myself up on the velvet cushions. “Tern, why Tornado? Amre, he’s stupid; demre, he can’t converse worth shit; shanre, he’s bald; larore, he’s ugly; keem he’s poor! Is that the kind of man you really like, so you don’t love me anymore? Was your pride among the possessions you lost in the fire? Keemam, is he better in bed than me or, keemdem, are you so worried that I might be beaten in a Challenge that you’re prepared to shag the whole Circle?”
Tern said, “Why did you steal my money? Can I have it back, please, or have you mainlined it all?”
I ignored this transparent attempt to change the subject. I kept pleading: “Remember when I proposed, how I brought you the filigree spider? We could go down to the Hall and dance without music, the way we did back in ’ninety-five. Come on! Wear your brooch-it can be our seventh honeymoon.”
“Ten minutes and you’ll simply collapse.”
“Come to bed then.”
“That’s not the point! Shira, you’re never here yourself!”
“I’m the Messenger! The point of my existence is to bugger off and bring back news! It’s my job!”
Tern drew the curtain across our room. I lay and watched the details of its velvet folds; they looked like letters of the alphabet.
She wiped her eyes and said quietly, “All your holidays are spent in Scree. Fighting Insects nearly burned you out-so off you go to the mountains. Do you have any women there? Even when you’re here, you’re unconscious! I knew your cycle would come around again. You can’t stay off cat-you can’t stand to be sober for more than five years. You’re not thinking about us; you are thinking about that fucking drug.”
Tern knew how to hurt me. She had observed it well over the last century and her infidelity had pushed me into addiction before. If she was not adulterous I would not be a junkie. “I took cat because I’m scared of the ships,” I said. “Everybody knows that but Ata still forced me to sail. Besides, I would rather not use cat at all than bother you with it. It’s under control.”
“That’s not always apparent.”
Well, it wasn’t always true.
Tern kept going. “Oh, for god’s sake! If I upset you, you suddenly start to notice-but you don’t think how your actions affect anyone else! I should never have married a Rhydanne.”
“Where did that come from?” I blinked.
“I don’t mean your appearance! Some things you just can’t grasp, no matter how hard you try. It doesn’t occur to you to think of anybody else, like you’re still living alone in a hovel in the mountains. When you’re away on errands do you ever think of me?”
“Yes. Yes, all the time! That whole Rhydanne thing is just bullshit. Don’t lay it on me as well now.”
“The pact-”
“Sod the pact! It’s all right in theory but neither of us can actually stand it!” In a lull between the waves of chemical pleasure I sprang to my feet and stalked around the room. I ran my hands down the embossed spines of the books on the shelves. I ended up leaning on the stone mantelpiece looking at outdated invitations to dances. Our marriage rings were smoke rings and they soon dispersed. “I’m still Eszai,” I said.
“Shira…” said she, and then fell quiet as she remembered what my name meant.
I kicked a neat hole in the bottom of the wardrobe door, then sat down cross-legged on the bearskin rug. “Yes! See how important fidelity is to Rhydanne. If you’re going to make all these unfair comparisons! I’m mostly Awian anyway!”
Tern said nothing; she had not seen me this angry for years. I stared at the ceiling, the only part of the room that didn’t spin. I understood affairs; Tern wanted the same intensity of feeling now that she had when she was young. We might have young bodies, but we have had so much experience that we can’t be young again. Tern should face it: she’s one hundred and twenty-one. She would be dead by now if it wasn’t for me, the ungrateful bitch.
“Do you drop your underwear on Tornado’s floor as well?”
“At least I don’t vomit on the floor!”
“Where do you think I’ve been? Tris and back! This is the first rest I’ve had in months; I’m serving the whole Fourlands, not just Wrought! You can’t see farther than your own nose! Having been through all that-ocean-don’t I deserve some affection from my wife? Well, I can speak a patois that Tornado will understand. I will challenge him to a duel.”
Tern laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’ll throw down the gauntlet and fight him. When I have a clear year to recover from being hospitalized. Of course he’ll rip my wings off but it’s worth it to get through to him.”
“You mad bastard,” Tern said, with something of her original admiration.
“Yes, I am. And remember, none of the mortals were. Not Sutler Laysan-”
“I didn’t-”
“Or Aster-”
“That-”
“Or Sacret Aver-”
“No!”
It was the fact that her latest affair was with an Eszai, not a mortal, that angered me so much. I would outlive the mortals and my talent reassured me; I knew that Tern would always come back. Now for the first time she had a choice. “Are you going to divorce me and marry the Strongman?”
“Jant, don’t ask such questions…I’m going now. I’ll come back when you’ve straightened out. When you can return the money you stole.”
“Money has nothing to do with this!”
“It does. Oh, it does indeed.” Her pure, sparkling voice instantly froze. She picked up the most expensive beaker from the still, turned it over and put it down thoughtfully. “I can’t keep up repayments on Wrought’s debts. I can’t afford to rebuild the foundries. With no workers in the colliery or armories, my manor is sunk.”
But I knew all that; I had always tried to help Tern. I was suddenly uncertain how to answer because I had been listening more to her voice than her words. “What are you saying?”
“Wrought will have to be leased. I considered selling but I don’t want to lose my title, so I have managed to find a tenant. A coal-quarrying, canal-building nouveau-riche Hacilith businessman. I have no idea what Lightning will think of that. But who cares? Micawater itself is not in a position to help us financially anymore.”
“But that’s terrible! How will we live?”
“Soberly. The rent will pay my creditors-thankfully credit rates for immortals are good-but there will be little left over, and I will have to live here. The man from Hacilith and his family will help me reconstruct the manor house. Until my fortune improves, he’ll reside there and also take the revenue from the armories. He’s keen to work with Eszai.”
“I bet he is. I’m sorry. I do love you, Tern.”
Tern came and placed manicured hands around my cheeks. “You look awful,” she observed, and laughed red-wine fumes into my face. She lightly kissed my cheek and I smelled her powdered skin; the scent went straight to my groin. I swept one wing across my body to hide an erection that swelled so large I thought it was trying to climb into my belly button. I might get some sex tonight, after all. “What would you say to a quick fuck?”
“Don’t push your luck, quick fuck.” And she left, bound for Tawny’s rooms.
I yelled after her, “Don’t ever come back! You’re not that important to me anyway!” I picked my needle off the floor and threw it at the dressing table. “Cat makes me feel better than you ever did!”
I felt as if I had a hole in the middle of my chest, and everything I am and everything I had been was draining through it until there was nothing left. I was hollowed out, utterly emptied. No smile or kindly deed I will ever perform will be rooted in myself; it will be carried out from duty rather than love. The world’s conflicts carry on, oblivious, elsewhere and unreal; from now on there was no way to connect with them. I was animated only by that sick sense of duty, because all the love had been washed away.
I retrieved my needle and staggered up the steps to the four-poster bed with a feeling of desolation and a strange desire to get down and walk on all fours like a dog.
I drew the curtains; the dark brocade bed became a ship spinning on a whirlpool’s rim. Its sails would not fill. Cold fish push up under my feet, fall flapping from beneath the bolsters of this bed and everywhere I’ll ever sleep. In the tiny vial eels seethe and bite. I wanted to sink out of the world. I tapped up a vein running over my biceps and slid the needle in deep with a practiced hand. Then I huddled against the ivy-covered headboard, sighed, and bubbles rose around me. Scolopendium pulsed through me, so good, to my toes and fingertips. A solid blow hit my heart and I squeezed a fistful of shirt tightly. I can ride the rush. But there’s nothing to hold on to on this ride, because the ride’s yourself. I gasped ice water into my lungs and then was nothing. It kicked me heavily out of my body and into the Shift.
Into Epsilon, the place you find when you take a wrong turning and decide to keep going. There is no easy way in.
I walked down the street. It’s a one-way street; from the other end it looks like a mirror. Litter blew past, in the opposite direction to the breeze. Some of the Constant Shoppers were already arranging their wares, buying from each other with a muted morning energy. Tine made their stalls of smooth, living bone. They shaped a grainy bone gel with their hands and it set in sculptural sweeps. They exhibited framed emotigraphs, pictures faint with age or new and piquant, that recorded the subject’s emotion and emanated it for the viewer to experience. A wedding picture radiated every feeling from rapture to secret jealousy. A picture of an autumn forest evoked nibbling nostalgia: lighting up a stolen cigarette, smell of leaf litter and first-night stand sweat.
Traders at a pet stall were herding some pygmy house-mammoths, the size of dogs, into an enclosure. An indigo-feathered archaeopteryx on a perch rattled its scaly plumage and twisted its head down to bite at its toes. The strawberries on a nearby fruit stall chatted between themselves of whatever strawberries talk about.
I walked to the edge of Epsilon city, along the bank of the river that runs mazily in right angles and often uphill. The market clustered around, infesting both banks. It seeped out of the town’s perimeter, down to the estuary and toward the open plain, a lush grassland dotted with tiny isolated hermite mounds.
Out on the savanna, in the distance the skeletal white city of Vista Marchan tilted in the air, hanging like an enormous moon in daylight. Flocks of birds flew through its insubstantial mirage towers. Single-humped dronedaries grazed the long grass. They wandered, complaining, without even glancing at the ghostly streets around them. An Insect bridge arched up from the green plain, became transparent at its apex, then descended into the center of Vista Marchan. The bridge was so old that cracks showed in its silver-gray patina like weathered teak.
Vista Marchan is a city that crashed through in the wake of an Insect invasion. The entire world of Vista was undermined by the Insects and collapsed into the Shift, where it is now visible from Epsilon. Its sandy wasteland seemed to emerge from the ground and extended at an incline to high in the sky. The dead towers of its capital city leaned at forty-five degrees through the Epsilon plain, listing so that their tops hung over the Insect bridge. Their basements looked to be embedded in the ground, but actually they neither entered nor overlaid it, and they shimmered slightly in a heat that the savanna did not feel.
Nothing survived the Insects in Vista Marchan, but since they destroyed the boundary between the worlds so completely, people could walk there now, over their bridge.
One Insect tunnel bored into Vista’s deep-sea abyss, causing a kilometer-high waterspout in another world, through which the entire ocean drained away. No good came of this apart from the fact that it killed god knows how many millions of Insects, and there is now a peaceful saltwater sea in downtown Somatopolis.
I wondered if the Insects would eventually reach Tris of their own accord; some time millennia from now the Trisians might truly need Eszai to defend them. I wondered if the Insects burrowing down and piercing through the worlds would in the far future infest them all-the last worlds forming the outer layers of their teeming nest. Were they imperceptibly surrounding the Fourlands on all sides? Were we at the center, near the Insects’ long-overrun world of origin, or were we on the outer reaches, one of the last to fall?
Tarragon said she wanted to view the ocean’s sphere from the outside. I wanted to strip away the worlds and look at the complex extensions, apertures and twisted continuous shapes of the Insects’ domain.
Lost in contemplation I wandered through the market’s fresh clothing region and the designer food district, to the edge where the Constant Shoppers’ rickety shacks were dotted around between the stalls. The poorest Shoppers had to walk hours to reach the Squantum Plaza, heart of the market. They are a collection of all species but habitually a breed apart. They are either creatures of Epsilon, or Shift tourists like myself, so overwhelmed by Epsilon’s bazaar they never escape.
“They buy things all the time,” Tarragon had said. “Compulsively. I mean, that’s their only pastime. They trade morning to night, and then all night in the southern souks. It’s fashionable to spend money. Some of them are terminally addicted, which is as terrible as your habit.”
“These Constant Shoppers, what do they do when they run out of funds?”
“They set up their portable stalls on the other side of the Plaza and sell everything they’ve bought. Then, with that money, they start shopping again.”
I explored toward the river mouth. The market did not end at the waterline; the rows of stalls kept going, unbroken, straight into the estuary and along the sea floor.
Out here in the periphery Epsilon market extended into the air as well. Tall metal struts supported stalls on platforms thirty meters high. Creatures on top flitted, squawked and chirruped, eager to buy and sell. Marsh gibbons swung hand over hand along ropes strung between the poles; vertebrate spiders with meter-long fangs spun webs across them to catch flying machines.
Seldom ripples came in on the limp Epsilon sea. The water was as clear as air. At first half-submerged, the market continued down to great depths, where it faded from view in the poor light. Jellyfish hung motionless above it. Things with long, intricate shell legs waded between the stalls and reached down to select bargains. In comparison with the aerial stalls, the underwater market moved slowly and gracefully; columns of kelp swayed like trees. Temblador eels glowing eerie white swam at a sedate pace in shoals through the passageways. Nicors with ivory tusks and whiskery faces flapped along with lazy fins. Saurians snacked on pre-Cambrian sushi, tasty bundles of seaweed and writhing worm junk food. They haggled over jewels-green glass beads on silver rings. Anorkas clustered with geeky excitement around a shell stall and frales-very small whales-cruised picking up crumbs just as dogs, rats and trice do on land.
There were red octopi with pale undersides and eight shopping baskets. Rays with sinister ripped-off goods under their cloaks avoided the pikemen patrolling the aisles.
The market surrounded a large, translucent hall that the stinguish had constructed out of solidified water. Their building materials were monumental, colorless pyramids of spring water atop black water slabs from the lightless abyss, and gray speckled blocks from the deep silt where soft carcasses degrade to their elements. Their edifice was decorated with bricks colored bright blue from the brine captured in sea caves, and rare aquamarine from the surface water that flares green when the last ray of the setting sun flashes through it.
A mirth of female stinguish looked up from the forecourt of their hall, through the surface tension. I waved to them; they turned to each other and giggled, long silver fingers over their lipless mouths in girly gestures.
Stinguish are a lighthearted people who live in groups called mirths. They communicate by laughter that carries underwater for thousands of kilometers, so any two individuals can chatter to each other through a network of mirths, anywhere in the vast ocean. According to Tarragon, chatter is exactly what they do; their flaky air-head nonsense pervades every cubic meter of the sea. Stinguish mirths migrate fifteen hundred kilometers twice a year, dive two thousand meters down to chasms, or lounge on the beaches in the tidal zone and breathe air. No stinguish was ever solitary. They had even more camaraderie than Plainslanders did. If you kicked a football along the streets of Rachiswater, an Awian would either tell you to keep the noise down, or point at the KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs. If you kicked a football about in the wrong side of Hacilith, someone would knife you and steal it. In Eske, Plainslanders start fifty-a-side matches that last for a week. But stinguish never stopped playing. How they managed to swim vast distances and remain cheerful is one of the great mysteries of nature.
My boots crunched on the pebbles. I passed a refreshment stall under which crouched a pair of brown, scaly tea dragons. Their innocent yellow eyes tracked me. Tea dragons breathe streams of hot, black tea. They were being used as caddies; I approached carefully because I didn’t want to be sprayed with it. The stall holder was a polyp, a teacup held in each tentacle and its wet skin shining in the sun. “What’s it like being a polyp?” I asked.
“It’s awful. Bits of me keep budding off and becoming accountants.”
The polyp sold tea to a flabberghast who bought a whole armful of ghostly doughnuts. I didn’t see the flabberghast in time and accidentally walked straight through his corpulent, overhanging belly.
“Hey!” he exclaimed. “Look where you’re going, skinny boy!”
“Sorry, sorry.” I backed down to the water’s edge, my hands raised.
Immediately a stinguish girl shot out of the wavelets. She grabbed my ankle with fingers as bony as a bird’s feet.
I shook my leg. “Get off! What are you doing?”
“Can you spare some change, please?”
The stinguish was young, with circular silver eyes, not much of a nose at all, and an ample mouth side-to-side of her round smooth head. Her mouth turned up at the corners like a dolphin’s and was full of small pointed teeth. Her thin arms grew down into long, bony claws, her chest was flat and lacking nipples, and her body ended in a broad tail like an eel’s-thick in the middle, edged with a fringe of fin that came to a point. She coughed up some water, shuddered and quailed as she took a lungful of air, as if she didn’t like it at all. Water drained out of the gills that lay shaped over her ribs. The stinguish’s smooth silver skin was extraordinary; every imaginable pastel color shone on her iridescent metallic hide. I could see the herringbone arrangement of muscle in her tail. Her ribs were like ripples in platinum sand; she looked malnourished.
Oddly, she was alone and she hadn’t laughed once. She was not behaving like a stinguish at all. She waved her tapering tail exhaustedly and pleaded with big lidless eyes. “Please. I need to buy things.”
I crouched down and peeled her pointed, nailless fingers from around my ankle. “Hello, little urchin,” I said.
“I’m not an urchin. Urchins are prickly.”
“No, they’re not all bad-tempered. I was one once.”
The stinguish shook her head and an expression of confusion appeared in her medallion eyes. “What are you going on about? Can you spare any change, or not?”
I wondered what a cheerful, giggling, stupid stinguish wanted with money. “Why aren’t you with your mirth?”
“I don’t have the time for this. I have to go and buy more things. Look at it all,” she said, distraught. She turned her face left and right taking in the vast market. She was desperate to be out there, beach-combing among the stalls.
“Listen. There’s a stinguish representative in Epsilon’s court. I can introduce you to her if you’re lost. She’s called Far-Distant. I’ll-”
“I’m not called that anymore. My name is Summer-Sale.”
“Far-Distant? Is it you? You’ve grown very thin! Don’t you remember me?”
She bubbled distractedly. “All the things on the stalls look really pretty and exotic when they’re arranged together, but if I buy one and take it away, it’s not the same. It seems to turn into tacky crap. I just want them all. I spent all my money on clothes, slime and jewelry, and now I’ve no money left. Please…I’m missing the music and the lights, and the stall holders talk so friendly.”
Far-Distant had evidently become a Constant Shopper. “No, my sister. I won’t give you anything. No one you meet in the market will be as friendly as your mirth. I think you should go back to them.”
The stinguish started wailing. I understood why, because I know the torment of addiction, and the effects of all addictions feel similar. Far-Distant would have to do withdrawal from shopping, and whatever world she must return to will seem very cold and unforgiving. I stroked her head but hundreds of tiny circular transparent scales rubbed off and stuck to my hand. Her mackerel skin shone.
She tried to shake me by my ankle. “I need money; I’m so unhappy.”
“There’s much to be happy about. If it had seasons, the ocean would be beautiful at this time of year.”
She looked for a way to escape me. “I’d rather go hungry than trouble you further…”
“No! Come back! OK, I’ll give you some cash,” I said soothingly. “You’re just a bit lost. Why not call for your mirth, they’ll help you.”
“You don’t understand,” she said bitterly. “All stinguish are lost and they always have been. All of us! We don’t belong here. Insects keep destroying our homes.”
“You mean Epsilon isn’t your home?”
“No. Up there.” Far-Distant dragged her arm out of the water and pointed vaguely away from the sea, across the open grassland.
“In the sky?”
“No, silly. Vista.”
Vista’s pale wasteland seemed to focus as I stared at it. For all its immense size, it looked weightless, part of the air. “I know that the Insects bored through from Vista to Epsilon so thoroughly that Vista slipped down the path they made.”
“All the sea fell into the Somatopolis,” said Far-Distant. “And the water carried us through, too. Ha! Not us exactly; our ancestors-it happened a million tides ago. But Insects ate the Somatopolis so we swam on again, and we ended up here. We’re very lucky to survive; the sea kraits and so on all became extinct. Everyone who was too big to fit down the waterspout died, left high and dry. The bad old snakes squirmed around in the ooze, too heavy to support their own weight in the air, and they were crushed. The ones trapped in pools starved when the food ran out. All of us stinguish rejoiced. The kraits used to eat us, but we escaped and they didn’t, ha ha. But that’s why stinguish are very lost. No wonder I feel lonely and have to go shopping to cheer myself up…Now can I have some change?”
“Well, all right.” I dug in my pocket for coins. “But tell me first; it’s just a myth, isn’t it, that stinguish can chat underwater?”
“We can! For two thousand kilometers.”
I shook my head. “I hardly believe it. I’m a messenger and if it was possible to shout that far I’d be redundant. But I’m not worried by those tales; I know water’s thicker than air and probably just muffles the sound.”
“It’s true!” she said indignantly.
I shrugged.
“Look! It’s true! Watch!” She ducked under and gave out her signature laugh. Bubbles rose from her gaping mouth and burst, releasing her wonderful inflective giggles. “Ha ha ha ha!” the bubbles chuckled. “Ha! ha!”
She listened for a second, then surfaced, blowing out spray. “I called ‘Hi.’ The littoral mirth is passing it on.”
Stinguish began to swim in from all directions. They all looked the same but different sizes. Naked and grinning they wriggled between the market stalls or glided effortlessly above them. Their tadpolelike tails waved in sinuous ripples, their long arms trailed, heads raised, watching the surface tension. Their swimming reminded me of flying; the grace of both belies the strength it takes. I appreciated their sturdiness, but I didn’t envy them the cold water.
The first stinguish thrust his hands against the estuary bed and burst upward, in a shower of spray. He gave a smile so wide I thought he would drink the ocean. “Far-Distant! I haven’t seen you for tides and tides.”
“Way-Farer!” shouted Far-Distant.
He batted her with his tail. “Have you recovered from your latest spending spree?”
“I think so,” she said uncertainly.
“Ho ho! So come back to us! We won’t lose you again, Far-Distant. We’ll surf the warm current over the reefs while fish shoals scatter before us. We’ll echo the sonar laughter rising from the benthic mirth five hundred fathoms down!”
Her mirth all broke surface at once; a hundred rounded backs rolled on the wave. The sea was silver with their bodies; chuckles and gasps wet the air. They surrounded Far-Distant, guffawing and tittering. Their round heads bobbed up, some leapt from the water and somersaulted back, flicking their gleaming tails. The nearest ones beached themselves on the pebbles, propped up on their spindly arms. They pointed at me in my “Club 18-∞” T-shirt and black wings, and collapsed in helpless belly laughter.
Far-Distant looked up at me. “It’s my mirth. Mine! They want me back. Thanks for your help; I’ll always remember. Um? Bye!”
“Wait!” I called. “I want to know about the sea kraits. If they’re extinct, how can Tarragon save them?”
“Tarragon?” cried Way-Farer. “Where? A shark! A shark!” He submersed and laughed an alarm call through the water.
“A shark?”
“Worse-a megalodon! Swim for your lives!”
Their heads bobbed down and their fleshy tails fluked up. Bubbles trickled between them. They whipped the sea into froth which the next wave brought ashore. The tight crowd of stinguish glided toward deep water, vanishing into the gloom. I shouted, “Far-Distant! Come back, you annoying amphibian!” But her mirth had gone, leaving just the occasional giggle swept back on the wind.
I felt the unusual warm glow of having done something right. I lingered and observed the aquatic commerce in the soaked souk. Far-Distant was an addict, and I managed to help her; maybe there was some hope for me. I couldn’t tell if her cure was temporary, or what strains drove a carefree stinguish to class-A shopping. For me, it was my past, and now Tern’s infidelity was eating me alive. But every Shift I start to die, and that’s the trip. I wished that someone in the Fourlands would save me the way I have saved Far-Distant. I needed someone strong and forthright to barge in and force me to stop.
The attraction to my body began to drag me back. I concentrated and redoubled the rate at which the vivid marketplace faded to gray. To black.
TO BLACK. t o b l a c k tob l a c k o b l a c o b l a b l a l a a w a s e was f g e was fu n g e was f u l i n g e was f u l l r i n g e was full y r i n g e was full s y r i n g e was full s y r i n g e was full of blood. the syringe was full of blood.
Blood was trickling out of the back of the barrel. It had soaked into the sheet and mattress in a patch around my elbow. The syringe looked like a red glass feather growing out of place on my arm. Fuck it. I sat up and wiped at a warm trickle that had been running out of my nose and horizontally across my cheek. I stared at my hand-it was smeared with red.
Shit, I thought; what time is it? I glanced at the clock-six P.M.! And it’s Thursday! How could I have slept for two days? Oh, by god-Gio’s meeting! I’m late! I pulled myself out of bed, feeling weak and sick, viscid with self-recrimination and resentment. Shira, you stupid bastard; you really can’t leave it alone, you can’t control it. Ninety years in and out of scolopendium; you should have learned by now. I snarled, “You don’t fucking deserve to be an Eszai at all!”
Evening was now invisible through storm clouds clustered over the Castle. The rally starts in three hours; at full speed I might be able to make it in time. Torrential rain had seeped in through a broken shutter and my satchel was lying in a shallow pool. I couldn’t stand the thought of putting my hand in cold water, so I kicked it to a less saturated part of the floor.
I looked for any sign of Tern, but she had spent the day away. Catching myself shaking, I suddenly flooded with anger. Nothing rules me; what the fuck have I become? My syringe lay on the floor under the bed and just the sight of it overwhelmed me with lust and despair. I picked it up and, holding it like a dagger, I smashed it down onto the slate top of our dressing table until fury deserted me in a wave and I was left looking rather cynically at the bent object. You are really going to regret doing that in a few days, Shira.
Can’t waste the rest, anyhow, I vindicated. I stalked down to the lower room, where I diluted my last vial of cat and decanted the preparation into a little hip flask so I could take sips while traveling. A drift of letters had piled up against my door and when I opened it they fell into the room. I ignored them and pinned up a withered note that read, “I’m not in but you needed the exercise.” I spread my wings, wriggled through a slit window and jumped off bound for Eske.