San said, “Good. The majority of Gio’s followers deserted him during the battle. The only people prepared to flee with him are those who have no option and no dreams other than those he concocts. So his last act of defiance is to stop Tris joining the Empire…”
I knelt on the damp carpet. “My lord, why should they listen to him?”
San continued as if he hadn’t heard me. “Whether Gio means to build his own stronghold or-more likely-take the Senate I cannot tell; but we must not let him impose any rule on Tris. Mist has sold swords to the Trisians, now Gio can train them. He is a teacher, is he not? He can perform several deeds to ingratiate himself with the Senate: he can hunt down the Insect that you so carelessly set free! Assuming a Trisian has not caught it already. And if a man has, he is more worthy of immortality than all of you!”
“My lord.” I closed my hot and bloodshot eyes for a second, ran my hands over the bangles on my left arm-my pointed nails in a variety of chipped colors. I squeezed water out of a handful of hair and managed to ask, “What will you do?”
San began again in a brisk tone of voice: “Before Gio became the Swordsman, that place in the Circle was for broadsword fighting, not fencing. But my current Swordsman has clearly demonstrated what everybody knows. Rapiers are ineffective against Insects, so immortals should not use them. From now on, Challenges for Serein’s position must be with broadswords or Wrought swords or, taking future improvements into consideration, the most effective blade to kill Insects. Tell Serein that.”
“Yes, my lord.” With a single edict, the Emperor had put an end to the Ghallain School and all its flamboyant sparring. Few people would practice rapier combat if it was not a key to enter the Circle and if there were no successful Eszai to inspire mortals to take up the art. The Morenzian and Plainslands fashion for dueling and wearing rapiers would decline.
San stated, “Now to deal with Gio himself. When he leaves harbor, the Sailor must pursue him. But if Gio arrives at Capharnaum, he will wreak havoc as he prepares for her.”
“I’ll go and tell her.” I stood up, tucking strands of wet hair behind my ears. San must want Mist to catch Gio at sea and deal with him out of sight of land, where there would be no witnesses, he would have no reinforcements, and the sea would cover the remains.
“You will travel with her.”
“My lord…” The last thing I wanted was to be involved in a sea battle.
“The Castle protects the Fourlands against aggressors, Comet. Thankfully Tris is free from most of them, but Gio is certainly an aggressor, and one of our own making; our duty is to stop him. If he succeeds in reaching Tris you will deliver Capharnaum from both him and the Insect. I hope that if that eventuality occurs, the Senate will be inclined to communicate with us. You could tell them: ‘Our Emperor has sent us to protect you from Gio Ami and his criminals.’ And, only if the situation is right, tactfully restate my offer to join the Empire.”
San perceived the doubt in my eyes, and added, “With the help of Mist and Lightning you will be able to do it, I am sure.”
“My lord, have you heard news or can you feel…Would you tell me how Lightning is doing?”
“He lives, Comet. Walk with me.” San rose from the throne that had been worn over time to the exact shape of his body. He paced down the dais steps; his stiff white satin cloak trailed over them.
Amazed, I followed slightly behind him. We walked between the piers of a tall ogive arch into the west vault, up some worn steps and through a side door that led to a long outside terrace five meters above the lawns. Next to us, the arched windows of the Throne Room triforium ran the length of the building. Last night’s downpour had stopped, and a quite hot sun was sending all this travel-sick water skyward again.
I had never accompanied San outside the Throne Room before and had never seen him out on the terrace. I felt very awkward. I had some conception that I should kneel, but when I abased myself San just sighed and motioned for me to rise. So I stood next to him, looking toward the Dace Gate, and I felt like the most honored immortal until I followed the Emperor’s gaze and saw, for the first time in daylight, the destruction that Gio had wrought.
The Dace Gate was completely destroyed. Its tower was smashed open to the sky. Holes half a meter across shattered the top of the east curtain wall for fifty meters to our left, and chipped stone blocks lay all over the rutted lawns.
Northward, in the gap between the palace and the Castle’s outer walls, the trebuchet stones had obliterated the Aigret Tower’s top arches; their uprights remained like broken stalagmites. Cylindrical marble blocks lay among the statues in the monument square beneath and, peering through the skeletal tower, I saw that several of the Finials had fallen. Two whole trefoil arches on supporting pillars lay full length on the ground. I could see the signatures that covered them, like tiny cracks in eggshell. Gio had no right to attack the cenotaph, bring down the statues of mortals or wipe out the names of Eszai more ancient than him.
Tornado emerged from the Dace Gate barbican and ran heavily across the grass. He looked outsized even without any other men for comparison. He threw himself on his knees and looked up to our balcony, showing a round chin covered in stubble and enormous pectorals. His thick leather trousers and steel-toed boots were smeared with mud and I was satisfied to notice a bandage wound around his huge left shoulder, under a chain mail waistcoat that was mended with pieces of twisted wire. Hooked in his belt was a soup ladle, because whenever Tornado was not fighting, eating or drinking, he was cooking sumptuous meals. He smiled so hard his eyes disappeared. He boomed, “My lord, the cleanup’s going well; we’re just dismantling the last trebuchet.”
San nodded. “Good. Tornado, Gio will certainly not return. He is in the safe hands of the Sailor.”
The Strongman said, “I can march the fyrd toward Eske to trawl for any stragglers but-like-I need outriders or we might get ambushed in the forest.”
Tornado was ten times smarter than people gave him credit for. He glanced at me; I glared back daggers and he looked a bit puzzled. He was easygoing and probably thought that Tern wasn’t worth fighting over. It’s a shame to break such a long friendship but he’s doing the breaking, not me. I will fight him. I dropped my gaze only when I realized how closely the Emperor was studying us both.
“There is no need,” San said. “Take your Select Fyrd to the Front where the governor of Lowespass is calling for help. Please take the dismantled trebuchets with you; you may well need them.”
Tawny ran a big hand over his shaved head and the thick corrugations of fat and muscle at the back of his neck. He stood, bowed in a gainly manner, and walked back into the ruins.
The Emperor said quietly, “No one has attacked the Castle before. Whatever precedent it sets for the future, the governors are now abashed. They are already competing to demonstrate their loyalty by repairing this damage. They are sending their best architects, money and materials. A particularly generous quota is expected from Ghallain and Eske.”
“My lord, I can fly a circuit around the Plainslands and-”
San’s voice was unexpectedly sympathetic and warm. “I know you do not want to go back to Tris. You feel forsaken; you do not trust Tern and you want to be with her. But listen, your wife will not stay with Tornado.”
Then San stepped back into the Throne Room and was gone, leaving me on the balcony. The Emperor had mystified me again, this time with kindness. The warmth of his reassurance sank into my very core; I was overcome with gratitude. He touched me with a word and inflamed me with his energy. I felt like a great Eszai once more.
Long ago, Lightning told me how Tornado joined the Circle. In the year 885, Tornado strode into the Throne Room while court was in full session. The guards at the gate tried to stop him but Tornado just carried them along. Everybody fell silent as the giant stranger deposited two guardsmen in front of the throne. He leaned on his axe and said loudly, “I’m a Lowespass mercenary. I have no idea who to Challenge but I’ll fight any one of you!”
The silence continued; everyone stared at the nameless fighter. The Circle members looked perturbed while the Emperor regarded them expectantly. “I didn’t answer him.” Lightning shrugged. “I’m a bowman, not a brawler.”
The Emperor listened to the shuffling of feet before he broke the silence: “Very well. Warrior, tell me about yourself.”
Tornado came from the area where Frass town is now, a ravaged landscape since strengthened by the chain of peel towers built by Pasquin, the previous Frost. He led a company of mercenaries who were paid by the farms in proximity to the Wall to protect them from Insects. Back then, the bounty was a pound per Insect head, and his troop made enough money to survive. Tornado loved his itinerant life until his wife died from food poisoning-a dodgy beef curry killed her when a thousand Insect battles couldn’t.
The day after he arrived at the Castle, Tornado was taken to the amphitheater and the Eszai loosed Insects against him. He chopped Insects into pieces all day until San, satisfied, created a new place in the Circle for the Strongman. Tornado remains the world’s strongest man in eleven hundred and thirty-five years. He owns no lands nor houses, nothing but a shelf of Lightning’s novels and seven-eighths of the Fescue Brewery-from which he takes his dividends in kind.
My buoyant mood stayed with me all day, as for fourteen hours I rode a convenient southeasterly to Awndyn. It was cold and rather damp, and the clouds gathered at nightfall, hindering my navigation. I gained altitude and flew above them.
The flat cloud cover ended above the last extremity of the land, precisely following the coastline. As I descended through the clear space in the cloud surface I felt as if I was diving to an underwater Awndyn far below. The full moon gave a much better illumination than the autumn evening daylight; the roads looked smooth as glass. I imagined the news of Gio’s conspiracy flashing in along them from Eske and Sheldrake.
The promontory at the head of the strand was covered with grass the color of rabbit fur and, with patches of bracken, it looked like aged velvet that was losing its nap. The beach was a peaceful collage; bottle-green waves soughed and sucked back through the sand. It could not be more different from yesterday’s hurricane, which had spun windmill vanes around so rapidly that across the plains three hundred were still burning.
I landed and ran to the squat manor buildings, finding them dark and silent. The dewy grass around the annex was crisscrossed with smudged footprints. Sometimes it could all just be one of my fever dreams. A glow radiated from one window on the ground floor. Cyan Peregrine was sitting on majolica-orange cushions on the window seat behind a pair of curtains that separated the window alcove from the rest of the room, to make a cozy den. Cyan’s head was bowed; she was reading intently from a large book by lamplight. Her straggling blond hair escaped its ribbons; the sleeves of her dress were puffed like cream cakes.
I tapped on the glass with a pound coin. Cyan jumped and looked all around, saw me beaming at her. She grinned and reached up to raise the latch and swing the window out. “Jant!”
I gave her a hug but she pulled away from my cold skin. “Sorry to scare you, little sister.”
“I’m not scared. Are you looking for Daddy?”
“Yes. Where is Lightning? Where is everyone?”
“They went out to the boat. Mist’s red carnival. Caravel. She sailed it into the bay…I saw it. I wanted to go on it but Daddy wouldn’t let me. He’s ill.” Cyan sat back on her heels, hazel eyes wide.
“He’s awake? How is he?”
“That old woman said he’d be okay. I don’t remember her name.”
“Rayne?”
“Yeah.” Cyan reached for my feathers and I gave her a wing to stroke. She often pestered me to fly carrying her, although at twelve years old she was far too big. “Governor Swallow told me about the battle at the Castle and there are loads of men coming into town who don’t like Eszai…” Cyan made an effort to remember. She forgot the book of natural history that lay open on her knee but her finger still pointed, holding down a page with a gray watercolor of seals reclining on a shingle beach. “Swallow said she…Um, she ‘couldn’t guarantee their safety’ so Mist took them aboard. Are you going to fly after them? You’re not going to stay?” She sounded resigned.
“Where is Swallow?”
Cyan sighed. “Governor Fatbottom is trying to get rid of the men who don’t like Eszai. She wants them out of Awndyn. She says they’re troublemakers. I was supposed to go to bed, but I didn’t want to, so I hid.”
“Fatbottom?” I giggled.
There was a wicked gleam in Cyan’s eyes. “I keep thinking you’re the same as the rest, but you aren’t.”
“I can’t be.”
Cyan complained, “Swallow tries to teach me the harpsichello. The piccoloboe. Loads of instruments…I hate them. She says, ‘You think you’re good because you’re Saker’s kid.’ I feel like I’ve always done something wrong. I don’t belong here.”
That sounded like me at her age. “You don’t have to do what Swallow says! You’ll be a governor when you’re twenty-one.”
“When I grow up. Yeah, yeah.”
“It’s not a long time to wait. Take it from me; I’m twenty-three.”
“Hmm. That’s reallllly ooooold,” she said thoughtfully.
“Isn’t it?” Cyan had everything she could possibly want, but her fortune was just a spacious cage, as Lightning had planned out her life. Swallow, her guardian, knew of nothing apart from music and she found the child an obstruction to her obsession. Swallow may well never succeed in joining the Circle but she was determined to spend her whole life trying. I thought that if the bitterness set in, she wouldn’t stand a chance. “Remember that you can do anything you want.”
“I want to grow wings-it’s like having four arms. And to fly like you.”
“Within the bounds of possibility. Cyan, lots of people who live in Awia don’t have wings. The Emperor doesn’t, either; it’s not important that you take after your mother.”
She gave the concept serious consideration. “I like it when Daddy teaches me archery. I wish he was here more, but he’s very busy and now he’s hurt. Everything’s collapidated again. I like talking to him-he brings me presents-but he says I should do what Swallow tells me.”
I waved my hands emphatically. “You don’t have to believe anyone, no matter who they are-not Lord Daddy and not Diva Fatbottom. Think things through for yourself instead. Swallow isn’t teaching you the right subjects, for a powerful governor-to-be, so you will have to observe and question. Remember, brother Jant is at your command; all the Eszai are. Governors don’t seem to realize their power, and we need you to keep us in check with Zascai reality. That’s what’s been going wrong recently.”
She scowled, slightly resembling Lightning. Her tattered socks were rucked round her ankles and her shoes were scuffed with the gray-green mold found on tree trunks. She clenched her jaw to stop her teeth chattering; her breath hung in the cold night air.
“Goodbye, Cyan; look after yourself.”
“Are you going to fly? Why can’t I fly?”
“Because you’re normal.”
“Why can’t I see this island?”
“Soon you will, sister. Soon everybody will.” I ran on the wet grass and took off, bound for the harbor.
Many humans envy wings. A few years ago, a serial killer murdered only Awians, chopped their wings off and wore them. But it doesn’t matter whether one has wings or not when none of them can get off the ground. Cyan was more perspicacious; she envied flight. I worried about her as I remembered the Carniss saying: Wolves track lonely people.
When I was her age, in 1807, I was solitary too. No child wants to be left alone, but Rhydanne children grow up quickly. When they fall, they don’t cry; when abandoned, they’re independent.
My childhood in Darkling came to an abrupt end in my fifteenth year. Eilean insisted we remain every winter in our scanty summer dwellings in the high peaks. She said it was for my own protection that we did not go down to Scree pueblo with the other herders, although winter storms brewed and raged in the cirque every night.
Eilean Dara, my grandmother, was forty years old. She was a good runner; she had only ever let herself be caught by one man, who married her and treated her gently, but he died shortly after their daughter was born-my mother inherited a very fast speed indeed. I never understood how my rapist father could have caught her and Eilean wouldn’t say.
My presence forced Eilean to change from her beloved hunting way of life to herding. She built our shieling herself, although it looked as if it had grown, part of the uncompromising mountains; an antlered hillock with moss on the roof that the goats ate in summer when the ice thawed. The shieling was a one-room box with bedding on the floor. Every wooden surface was covered in pokerwork designs, my grandmother’s pastime in our desolate world. She burned board games into the low table top-a checkered square for solitaire and trapper’s luck, brown teeth for backgammon, and rectangular patches where packs of cards were placed for telling fortunes. When hunters visited they played games that were fast and simple compared to those I learned later at the Castle.
I discovered the rules of flight from trial and error; no child was ever as covered in cuts and bruises. Eilean made me look after our eight goats; I was good with a sling but I was never taught the bolas so when hunters came to poach them, I had to call her for help.
I left the goats tethered while I improved my gliding, soaring too far to hear their bleats and bells clacking. A pack of white wolves attacked the herd. The goats panicked, leapt high and strained at their ropes but the wolves devoured them in a leisurely fashion. When I landed hours later I found a pile of bones, tethers and bells. I hid from Eilean for days before she gave up trying to throttle me. She then steadily reverted to her previous life, chasing ibex and swigging whiskey to forget the strain of my existence.
I sat cross-legged in front of the hearth and stared at the flames. After a while the door was nosed open and two massive tame wolves slipped through, padding solemnly. I relinquished my space on the mat for them; they lay down and sighed simultaneously. Compacted snow sticking to their pelts became translucent as it melted and dripped. Thunder tumbled down Darkling valley; there was a great sense of waiting in the air. Eilean Dara kicked the door back on its leather hinges and strode in. She hung up her bolas, reclined on the rugs, resting an elbow on the table, and looked around vaguely for me. “Look at you, Jant; why are you still here? You should have left home by now. Have you no sense of shame whatsoever? I think you’re determined to slow me down like powder snow. First, I can’t even marry you off because how do I find someone who wants a deformed Shira as a husband? Second, you remind me of what those vile Awians did to the daughter I loved. Third, then you killed her, with your chunky body and wings trapped in her belly. We had to cut you out with an axe.”
I gathered her plate from the fireplace, pine nut crackers and meat stew cooked for so long it was a stringy paste. Eilean continued: “A full seven-month pregnancy and you were still tiny. I fed you goat milk and raised you despite the fact that of course your birth wasn’t timed and you arrived in the middle of the freeze season. So now you’re grown, the way you show gratitude is by feeding my vicuna to the wolves.”
She reached out and I flinched. “Have you caught anything?”
She carved a chunk off the stew, stuck her fingers in it and licked them. “Nothing,” she taunted. “Not faun not fowl not fuck.”
“Do I go bring them in?”
“Not green sludge in a dead deer’s gut, not frozen milk in a dead girl’s tit. There’s no game this side of Chir Serac anymore. I think we all starve.”
I peered at the whited-out valley. The temperature was plummeting and the sky was fantastically clear. There were more stars above the Darkling Mountains than anywhere else in the Fourlands, because they liked the clear air. Stars gathered there and fell as snow.
Two grouse were strung up on the shack’s wall, their feathers harassed by the wind, purple in the impure light. A llama from Mhadaidh shieling still had a bolas wound around its legs, and a light covering of snow settled on the black antlers of a buck chamois. Its slack tongue was freezing to the ground; it looked at me with yellow teeth.
Eilean’s fingers chased the last shreds of meat around her bowl. “Oh, you are always under my feet. I need some space. Get out! Out!” She shoved a couple of thin skewers into the embers, knocking out sparks onto steamy wolf fur.
There was nowhere to go but the empty goat shed high on the rocks, built around the twisted trunk of a rowan tree that spidered up the cliff as if trying to creep away from me. I had believed Eilean’s gibes that if I ran down to Scree the other Rhydanne would pull my wings off.
I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and nestled in the bothy among the heather hay. Thick cornices hung over the vast black splintered cliffs, looming dark against the snow clouds. Eilean shouted, “And don’t come back in tonight!” She slammed the door, cutting off the firelight abruptly.
I listened, motionless, as from far up on Mhor Darkling, the highest spire of the range, an ominous creaking echoed down the valley. Tabular layers of snow began to slide.
My head was full of its white roar as I flared my wings and landed on the deck of the Stormy Petrel. I shook my head to silence the resounding smashes and splitting, buckling rock. For two centuries the avalanche has echoed in my ears.
I ducked into Mist’s cabin and she immediately leapt up, dashed across and flattened a piece of paper against my chest. She yelled, “What is the meaning of this? What’s going on?”
“Huh?” I tried to pick at the note but her palm pressed it tightly to my shirt.
“What have you done, Jant?” she demanded, clapping the paper to emphasize every word. I recognized it as the Emperor’s letter that I had sent to Awndyn with a loyal rider four days ago. My handwriting covered the back of the envelope.
“Hey, hey…Don’t blame the Messenger. San sealed this, not me. I haven’t read it.”
Mist threw up her hands in complete exasperation, “Then read it!”
DELIVER TO THE HAND OF MIST ONLY
Gio Ami shows interest in Tris. Be informed that his spies will try to discover the coordinates and the means to reach the island. You will make it easy for them to learn this information. With discretion, leave your charts or records where they may be readily accessed. Comet will tell you my further orders.
SAN, EMPEROR OF THE FOURLANDS, JULY 13, 2020
I threw a cushion to the floor and sat down. Through the stern windows the panorama changed as Stormy Petrel turned on her anchor. The lamps of homes and pubs on the seafront, the lighthouse on the harbor wall, the notched tops of yew trees in Awndyn cemetery protruded above the land’s dark profile. The ship swung back: yew trees, lighthouse, seafront.
“I don’t know what this means,” I said weakly.
Serein Wrenn had his feet crossed on the table, honing his rapier’s edge with a tiny silver whetstone and watching the barometer drop. He said, “We hoped you would explain.”
I told him San’s edict on rapier fighting and Mist listened intently as I described Gio’s rally. I folded the letter and held it in a candle flame until it burned completely back to my fingernails. I finished by saying, “So, Wrenn, you have to relearn broadsword techniques quickly; and Mist, you gave Gio’s spies that chamber pot and notebook.”
Mist tutted. “Never! As ordered, I neglected to lock them in the safe, and they were stolen by a midshipman with confused allegiance. He thought he had performed a cunning heist…But it makes me scream with frustration; after all last year’s secrecy.”
“Gio has a very strong force around the Pavonine,” Wrenn added. “And he’s got three other carracks. It’s not going to be easy to stop him leaving.”
“Damn. That explains the lights I saw on the quay.” Wrenn threw me a packet of ginger biscuits and I started munching them. I said to Mist, “San said you have to take care of the rebels offshore. Can we follow him?”
Mist gave me an incredulous look. “You have no idea, Rhydanne. Ninety percent of Awndyn supports him. He recruited most of my old crews and he’s cleaning out the harbor stores. Gio’s more ravening than Insects! May dogs shit on his grave. I need to send to Grass Isle to hire sailors loyal to me-mobilize some Awndyn Fyrd-call in old favors. He’ll be long gone before we can raise the troops. So I must find food and…blood and foam! That’s without counting recaulking, fumigation, repairs! It’ll take at least a fortnight! San knows that!
“Tell him I’ll certainly follow Gio-Petrel is faster than those Plainslands crates. We have stun sails, bilge keel; we’re stable while they corkscrew, pitch and roll. I have tricks up my sleeve. If I catch them I’ll sink them all right, but I might not gain more than a couple of days on their tail.”
She ruffled her hair vigorously. “This is not like the Emperor. San knows very well it takes me two weeks to get this ship prepared. He doesn’t make mistakes. Gio’s Awndyn carracks are tough second-class merchantmen designed to round the cape. Ships Taken Up From Trade. In the right hands they could reach Tris. So now we’re all STUFT.”
“I heard that Tornado already had the dissidents under control,” Wrenn said. “San’s given Gio a means of escape. Why in the Empire does he want to do that?”
Mist said, “He usually asks a lot of me, but this…”
Wrenn slid a scabbard over the rapier lying across his knees. “Perhaps San thinks Gio will sink, then he’ll be rid of the little plucker and two whole boatloads of bastards.”
Mist said, “No. He never leaves anything to chance. Sometimes I think even god coming back is just a story he invented to suckle us.”
Nausea rolled over low in my stomach. I wanted scolopendium and my hands were beginning to shake. “San can’t be allowing Gio to reach Tris. Tris is so peaceful. Gio intends to ruin it.”
“True, but if we save the island from Gio, it’s more likely to become part of the Empire,” said Mist. “What does Tris mean to San?”
“I don’t know. It must be more important to him than Gio’s rebellion is…” Then I figured it, and in a moment I saw time as San sees it. Its profound length funneled out before me. I stared into a black well, as linkages and patterns suddenly lit up across centuries. Even Eszai can’t see them; the Emperor plans them.
Of course I had no proof, but I was convinced that I was right. It was a feeling of falling as terrible as when the Circle breaks. One life was a second, a spark. No human can think back and forth over such an immense span. “Oh, my god! I’m absolutely certain…Gio is acting as the Emperor’s cat’s paw.”
Mist gave Wrenn a smile. “I know inspiration when I see it. Jant, what’s the real meaning of San’s command?”
“He’s sending Gio to Tris!” I jumped to my feet and pointed at her. “You didn’t discover Tris by chance, did you?”
She blanched, but stood her ground. “Comet, let’s work tog-”
“Did you? How stupid I am! One little island-the vast ocean! What are the odds on that? Petrel should have sailed straight past on either side! You weren’t just lucky; San gave you the location, didn’t he? He sent you to find Tris. San must have wanted to find the Trisians ever since they left the Empire in the first place!”
“What?” said Wrenn.
Mist said, “I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘in the first place’?”
“Ata, what were your orders? Why did you do it-to prove yourself? No wonder you even played the marriage card. San wants Tris back in the Empire at any cost.”
Mist admitted, “Yes, Comet. All he gave me were the rough coordinates and I tacked east until I came upon Tris.”
“The rough coordinates? You must have itched to ask him how he knew!”
“Yes,” she said softly. “But I can’t question the Emperor, and I practice self-control.” Her eyes were expressionless.
“Everybody knew, back then,” I said, awestruck. “Two thousand years ago, the whole Four-Fivelands knew there was an island in the eastern ocean. San wanted us to rediscover Tris.”
“But why give it to Gio?”
“Because every new problem is a solution to an old problem,” I ranted. “San has sent Gio to invade the island instead of us!”
Mist said, “Oh. Because he can’t be seen to do it himself?”
“Yes. Listen; San ordered me to tell the Senate, ‘Our Emperor has sent us to protect you from Gio Ami.’ He makes Gio sound like a formidable enemy, so that he has an excuse to send us!”
“Gio is a formidable enemy,” Wrenn pointed out. “I’m determined to prevent him and his scumbag highwaymen from destroying Capharnaum.”
My hand on the door handle. “Well, at last San has the means to reach the Trisians, to catch up. Tris is a loose end that must have bothered him for two thousand years! He gave you money to rebuild the fleet after the last Insect swarm, didn’t he, Mist? How does it feel to be one of his instruments? And Serein, what’s it like to be his Swordsman executioner? No better than Gio, who thinks he’s rebelling but he’s just San’s pawn. San wants the descendants of the fifth-century rebels returned to the fold; wouldn’t you? Oh, I really need a fix.”
“Come back!” said Mist. “Tell us how you know all this. Where are you getting it from?”
“A History of Tris. It’s…” I faltered. “I could do with some cat.” I ran to the hatch and down the ladder, heading for the sickbay.
The book I stole from the library recorded that a group of radicals left the Pentadrica to found Capharnaum. San must have known. I was sure that he wanted their reintroduction to the Empire, and Gio provided the means. I knew that we had to stop Gio. I also knew that I had just flown an awful, demanding itinerary all over the Plainslands and that being back on a caravel was not helping the fact I badly needed cat.
I ducked along under the low beams. Smells of gravy and hot flour rose from below. The ship creaked; the deck was gloomy. I paused and listened at the sickbay door lit by a single swinging lanthorn because a compassionate voice emanated from inside. It was the Doctor. I thought she was addressing Lightning, but no other voice answered or interrupted her. The old woman was talking to herself.
“Over time, Eszai are supposed t’ get worn out and replaced. You’re no’ supposed t’ live forever, really.” I heard her bustling about. “My dear, you like stories? Of course you do, you’re a romantic. Hard t’ believe once I was a lit’le girl with brown plaits and a patched skirt tha’ spun ou’ when I twirled. I was walking down the cobbled back streets in a Hacilith summer, and I heard music. That were before you were born, Saker, a long time ago. Such music! It were a shawm an’ sackbut, though there could’ve bin a hundred of each, the way they wove t’ most tempting tunes. T’ music were coming from behind a high wall, with an arched green gate in it. I tried t’ gate but i’ were locked. I shouted to t’ musicians, but nobody answered. I sat down on t’ cobbles and began to cry.
“Then along the road there came this crowd of people, dressed in t’ most beau’iful costumes, with plum-colored feathers and foil masks. They caugh’ me up in their masquerade, an’ I slipped in behind them when the green gate opened t’ le’ them through. From then on, I were lost among t’ drunken guests of an outlandish party, and I, only a lit’le girl with a calico skirt, became their amusement. They whirled tall and grotesque around me, an’ I stared in fright. When I tired of t’ constant noise and mysterious innuendo, I tried t’ run away. I tried t’ ge’ out of t’ ornate garden, but t’ high wall trapped me in. Ladies and servants bat’ed me away, their sharp heels ripped my skirt. Eventually I crawled under a bush covered with these massive waxy flowers and I fell asleep. When I woke up I found myself out in the stree’ again. I had been cleared up and put ou’ with all the refuse from t’ party.
“Saker,” she said tiredly, “I heard how men break wild horses; tie their back legs, and when they attemp’ t’ run, they fall. That’s how i’ was for me before the Circle. You saved me then and we’ve been friends since. I’m saving you now. I can’t do withou’ you. Simply, if you leave me, I shall be alone forever.”
The voice stopped and all was quiet behind the door. I pushed it and slipped inside. The Doctor was sitting beside Lightning, playing a game of solitaire with glass beads. She put her wrinkled finger to her lips.
Lightning lay on his side on a cot that was attached head and foot to the ceiling and swung slightly with the ship’s motion. His wings were open, one thoroughly bandaged, the other spread to stop him moving on the mattress. The feathers had been cut down in accordance with Rayne’s theory of cleanliness. He was asleep. The blanket rose and fell with uneven breathing but in the indistinct light he looked like a tombstone effigy.
Rayne followed my gaze to a half-empty brandy bottle on the floor. “Tha’s the strongest narco’ic I can get him t’ drink,” she said. “He’s feverish and t’ wound’s infec’ed bu’ he refuses t’ take painkillers. He’s afraid of them, I think, having seen what drugs have done t’ his friend.”
I hugged her; her face only came up to my chest. Wrinkles beneath her eyes overlapped like an oyster shell. Her plain cotton frock smelled of wintergreen oil and steam. In the small cabin she stood tall whereas I had to stoop.
“How is he?”
“In a serious condition. T’ wound won’ close. I’ will take a long time, stabs have t’ heal from t’ base up and this one’s deep. He los’ a lo’ of blood. He’s weak, but a’ least he’s eating. A blood transfusion is t’ las’ resor’. I told him, ‘Lie still or i’ will trouble you for a century.’ I’m treating his sprained arm as well. What about you? You look like you’re dependen’ again.”
“Yes…I’m…I’m back on the needle. Is there any way I can help Lightning?”
She seized my wrist firmly and pushed my loose sleeve back. “Shi’, Jant. T’ pet cat you’re keeping has been scratching your arms again. What a mess. Thought you’d beaten i’ las’ time. More fool me.”
I crouched down against one of the ribs that supported the deck above. If you use drugs, in time you grow unusually familiar with the corners of rooms. My own predictability sickened me: “Do you have any cat?”
“Yes. I had t’ bring new supplies ’cause someone made off with t’ ship’s complement of skylarks. No pity this time, Jant. You use your habi’ t’ bask in sympathy, soaking i’ up like a sponge.” Rayne shuffled to prop her ample bottom on the work surface, obscuring her medicine case. “T’ chest stays locked. I can shou’ for Wrenn. He’s easy strong enough t’ chuck you in t’ brig.”
“I’m not violent,” I said, aghast.
“I know. Bu’ in a few hours you’ll be desperate.”
I wanted to get away. “Look, I don’t want to take cat anymore but I don’t have the willpower to stop. In the last week I’ve had three nights without sleep and small shots give me the energy to keep going. I am trying, Rayne.”
“You certainly are. Wha’s your dosage?”
“Five grains every two days.”
“Shi’. A Zascai wouldn’t live long a’ tha’ rate. I thought I felt t’ Circle strain to hold you.”
Slumped against the hull and starting to shiver, I wretchedly submitted to her examination. She cleaned down my track marks and peered at my tongue and red-rimmed eyes. Macabre old woman. “If you don’t qui’ soon ca’ will kill you. You have one bugger of a problem.”
“What problem-Gio determined to ravage the Fourlands’ only idyll, or Tern’s adultery that I dwell on for hours at a time?”
“Silly boy. Tern’s infideli’y is her way of coping with your drug habi’.”
“It’s the other way around,” I said. “I use cat because I can’t bear to think of her affairs.”
“Pull yourself together! You and Tern blackmail each other…but she’s more likely t’ enjoy i’, whereas you hurt yourself t’ ge’ her attention. You’re addic’ed t’ sympathy-from Tern, from me and even Saker. Well, i’s run out bu’ you’re still dying. Stop get’ing guilt kicks from asking for help and then rebuffing i’. Stop saving all your pain till later, live in t’ real world. I know i’s harsh but i’s no’ as bad as t’ damage you wreak on yourself trying t’ escape. If you don’ break t’ vicious circle, you’ll wreck both your lives.”
“Tern left me first…She doesn’t care about me anymore,” I complained.
“Don’ argue,” Rayne snapped.
“I’m not arguing. I agree with what I’m saying!”
Lightning stirred and Rayne continued quietly. She turned her back on me and began to sort through vials. I didn’t want to listen but I had no option. “I find tha’ selfishness is t’ worst chronic disease of Eszai. Tern also suffers from t’ condition. She loves you as a daredevil, how you used to be-flying t’ Ressond gale, climbing t’ cliffs a’ Vertigo. Admi’ that you’re a lo’ less beau’iful lying on t’ floor staring a’ t’ ceiling. An’ after ninety years t’ res’ of t’ Circle’s bored and sick of you collapsing all t’ time… Sometimes I think t’ greatest strain on San is restoring everyone’s livers. Tornado challenges ten men to a drinking contes’, Frost sups enough coffee for ten men, and you do both stimulants and narco’ics.”
I wished that people could see and believe my exploits in the Shift. I folded my arms tightly; my sharp fingernails dug into my biceps. I rocked forward. “It hurts, it hurts. I don’t want to do the fast cure…I can’t kick now. The Empire needs me.”
“You mus’ have some now because you’re going into shock. I don’ wan’ two Eszai in life-threa’ening states. Then I ration you, one dose a day, oral no’ intravenous, until I have chance to straigh’en you ou’. I can guess a’ t’ difficulty of injec’ing on a moving ship in a tempes’.”
I nodded, relieved to submit to Rayne’s regime. She would look after me. “It’s a deal.”
She held out a hand for my nearly empty hip flask. The whorls on her fingertips were worn smooth through age and she had cured the warts, leaving small brown circles. I forced myself to open my fist a finger at a time and drop the bottle.
“Well done, Jant,” she said approvingly.
Hopelessness washed through me; dread filled me. I gave her a look that would have been puppy-dog if my eyes hadn’t been so wildcat. A few minutes later I was rewarded with Rayne’s confident grip on my bare arm, and a flick of her finger as she pushed the needle into the crook of my elbow. I felt no pain; Rayne was good. Unlike me she left no time for a red wisp of blood to spring into the syringe and dissipate, be sucked back with the drug. She just pushed the plunger down efficiently. So I got half of the ritual that I so badly craved. She shook her head, shaking her wattles like a bantam. I lost focus of her concerned face. I may look ill but it’s beautiful in here. I breathed a week of strife out in one sigh; sleep at last.
I spent the next four days delivering communications. Governor Swallow could only find fifty Select Fyrd whom she could vouch had no sympathy with the rebels, and double that number of reliable General Fyrd. Mist employed a crew but could only find basic supplies, poor quality and meager quantity: salt fish, three hundred barrels of flour bulked out with ground peas.
Mist came to the deck where I was supervising the fyrd carrying baskets of crossbow bolts up the gangplank. She said, “Make them work faster. Gio’s ships left during the night and they’re already out of sight.”
“How many ships?” I asked.
“Three. Well, he took four carracks. Three of them, Pavonine, Cuculine and Stramash, sailed right out through the overfalls at slack water. I don’t know the lead skipper, but he’s a capable navigator. Gio’s braving heavy seas-force-ten gales! But no one will follow him since the Demoiselle Crane capsized. I altered the harbor coordinates in the logbook before I so carelessly let a deckhand steal it.” She laughed with asperity. “The Demoiselle Crane hit the Corriwreckan overfalls at flood tide, one A.M. exactly.”
Her thin-lipped expression was unsettling. I shuddered, as an echo of my sea-fear returned.
The loading continued night and day under Mist’s impatient gaze, but it took a week before the stevedores’ footsteps stopped resounding up and down Petrel’s ladders and in the hold. The gale-force wind filled the sails and hauled us forward, and we began to crash through the storming seas outside the harbor. I retreated below to tell Lightning the news.
I took the first turn to watch over Lightning. When awake, he refused to allow the pain to affect him and was as courteous lying in the sickbay as in his palace. I wished that I had his self-assurance, but I don’t have the security that comes from never questioning my place in the world. Rhydanne always see my wings and flatlanders see my cat eyes.
Because wolves track lonely boys, I was hunted out of Darkling in the melt season of the year I later calculated to be eighteen-ten. I was unaware that the high airstreams would carry me to the biggest city of hungry rats, bewildering to a mountain child, and proving nearly impossible to escape. Until I joined the Circle I was always pushed on, only ever seeking to get away from the places in which I was trapped. I became so used to defending myself that in the Hacilith chemist’s shop, when I began to feel I belonged, my behavior left me ruined and homeless again.
After the avalanche I ran down from the devastated valley keeping Mhor Darkling’s colossal crags on my right, onto the plateau and warily toward the pueblo. I sneaked into the storeroom of the distillery, desperate to find food, filthy and tottering from exhaustion. I had not run such a long distance on my own before.
I descended a gravel and damp matting slope into the dark cellar and splashed onto a stone floor. It was covered with a good six centimeters of standing water. Drops ran down the dank walls and fell from the ceiling, plinking rhythmically. This was so wrong. Did anyone know the store was flooded?
It was like creeping into a cave. The cellar was stifling with the smell of pounded meat; the freeze-dried pemmican had become a sodden, slimy mass. But I had grown up with the smells of pelts drying and antler soaked in urine to soften it for carving, brown fat spitting on a cooking fire of burning bones, the reek of split long bones boiling to make grease.
I reached up and pulled down one of the baskets of dried berries that were stacked in piles of five. Rhydanne count in base five because it is warmer to keep one hand in a mitten. Besides, five of anything is a lot in the mountains. I ate an entire basketful of bilberries and cloudberries. Then I scooped water from the floor and lapped it out of my cupped hands until I was satiated.
Throughout my childhood in Darkling, I mainly ate meat. So when I reached the city I lived by stealing sizzling burgers from market stalls, which was as near to meat as I could find. When I figured out what fruit was, and how to peel it, I changed to pilfering apples and oranges, loving the intense sweetness, although to start with they gave me indigestion. The first words of Morenzian I learned were the tradesmen’s cries and curses.
I crept back to the distilling room and checked that it was deserted. I dashed out of the stone doorway, left the pueblo and jogged onto the plateau, while biting grit from under my nails. The dull sun shone a white pathway in the overcast sky. A skinning wind blew from the direction of Scree gorge, carrying the roar of the meltwater torrent and bobbing the sparse heather patches. Thick snow lay in hummocks everywhere, receding from dashes of black rock. Muddy blots in the distance were chamois, wandering along the vast plateau. Above them ancient glacier scratches scored the distant cliffs, as if in desperation.
Two Rhydanne sprang out in front of me. I dodged with a cry but they blocked my path. They were adults, I was as tall as them but not as strong. I didn’t know the man’s name but I knew his reputation. Being the area’s fastest runner, he had caught a lot of women and lorded it over the other men. He had married and keenly defended a very desirable fellow hunter, who stood beside him.
A handful of condor feathers quivered in her long matted hair; it was dried back with ochre paste and red daubs stained the hair roots on her forehead. She had a pierced bear-canine necklace, and wolverine claws strung on the babiche lacings of her tasseled puma-beige breeches. She looked old, perhaps thirty-five. They both had knives on their belts and armfuls of plain bangles, prized possessions that confirmed their status. As the mountains grow, earthquakes and erosion sometimes uncover veins of Darkling silver that Rhydanne beat into jewelry.
These hunters were out of their territory, which I knew to be on the other side of the aiguille-lined ridge called the Raikes. They were not at all impressed by the farouche shock-headed boy who, having summed them up, was trying to flee. They strode around me. I couldn’t dash between them; I was trapped.
“What is this?” she said with curiosity. Her eyes drilled into me like pale shards of bone.
“He’s an Awian. Stocky as he is, he’s young.”
“Alone?”
They looked around. “If he is an Awian he’s not old enough to be here by himself, I do declare. An orphan, then.”
The woman spoke slowly, “Are you an orphan? Or abandoned?”
I said nothing.
“What are you doing here?” the man asked.
With overwhelming isolation I thought, I do two things: I can keep people company or I can leave them alone.
The woman shot out a wind-burned hand and started pinching my feathers. Her husband gave a laugh and pick, pick, picked at the other wing. I yelped and sprinted away. Why were they doing this to me?
The cold wind lifted my dirty hair. My soaked feet were freezing; my three layers of fur socks had been shredded when I scrambled among the landslide rock shards.
I ran frantically over low outcrops, knocking stones from their frost-shattered surface. The Rhydanne kept pace without quickening their breath and all the time they laughed and plucked my feathers, leaving a trail of the ones they managed to detach. The woman poked me and I staggered; the man shoved me back to ward her. I made a break but she leapt and pushed me; I fell over and broke the ice on a snow patch. I got to my feet whimpering with frustration and the numb pain from last night. The woman teasingly flicked my head and tore the hood from my alpaca wool jacket. The man pulled all the horn buttons off and the belt that kept it closed, since I had long out-grown it. They packed snow down my back. If they stripped all my clothes off, I would die of exposure. I thought that was their intent.
I wish I had realized then that my ability to fly would awe all Rhydanne, because it was faster than they could ever run. If I’d known that I would have armfuls of bangles; if I’d known that I would own the Spider, and remind them of the fact with free drinks every year, then I wouldn’t have sobbed and darted about in vain attempts to escape, tears rolling down my face.
I wrenched free and ran as fast as I could. The man gave a double whistle. The woman whistled once to show she understood and they spread out on either side of me. They’re hunting me, I thought with horror.
I swerved away from her and ran straight. Her mate narrowed the gap and forced me toward her with a laugh of pure joy. The ice inside my collar rubbed my skin raw and was seeping down my neck; the cold air seared my throat.
They easily followed their hunting system and mercilessly passed me between them. For them it was a leisurely pace but I was trembling and close to pissing myself with fear.
The third time around a stack of antlers marking a meat store scraped in the frozen ground I realized that they were deliberately making me run in large circles. I yearned to jump far away from Scree-to leave every one of the Daras and hunters. Blind with tears I swerved abruptly and headed straight for the gorge. They chased me, grinning. The lip of the crevasse loomed far too close. They halted, called, “Stop!” I heard concern in their voices but I wasn’t falling for any tricks.
I spread my wings and glided over the gorge. The ground fell away and I was suddenly one hundred meters in the air above lashing milk-white water.
The Rhydanne clutched each other, their mouths agape. Apart from Eilean, they were the first to see me fly. But I remember terror rather than triumph as I watched their figures shrink into dots. A powerful air current grabbed and hurled me up. The Pentitentes Ridge of Chir Serac lengthened, covered in cone-shaped ice formations. Mhor Darkling’s highest white peak pulled down past my wings; the entire mighty, beautiful massif spread out beneath me.
Above my world, a steady broad slipstream of wind blew to the southeast. I fought for breath in the thinnest air and talked myself calm. “Then that’s the way I’ll go. Wherever I land has to be better than this.” I turned with the wind stream and let it speed me away.
“Jant?” Lightning’s voice sounded amused. “Jant, wake up! Are you all right?”
I sighed. “Yes. Don’t worry about me; how are you?”
“Bearing up. Burning, weak. Snatches of music keep going around and around in my head. You look dazed too.”
“I was just thinking,” I said. “Reminiscing about my childhood.”
The dingy cabin creaked and lurched. The Archer nodded approvingly and said, “Please tell me about it. It must have been wonderful, living in the mountains and being free.”