They’re parading the senators where we can see them,” I said.
“Tirrick,” said Lightning. “I know the type. Privileged but strident and embittered, the youngest son of a minor noble.” He licked his fingers and held them out of the window to judge the breeze. Then his fingertips rasped over the arrow fletchings and settled on the string. Tirrick angled his dagger across Vendace’s scrawny neck and called, “We’ll kill one of these for every shot you loose!”
Vendace rolled his eyes and stamped his foot. His brown arms were rigid by his sides.
I said, “The boxes are full of money. I think the swordsmen will take it to the ship, with the senators as hostages to shield themselves. It’s our chance to escape. Oh fuck, no it isn’t…”
Around twenty swordsmen ran out of the colonnade, carrying lamps and oil jugs with spouts. Lightning drew on them but saw Tirrick’s blade bite against Vendace’s skin, and didn’t loose. The guards around the library door let them speed through. Crashes came up from below, smashing pottery, rustling and tearing.
A heavy thump shook the floor as the men pulled a bookshelf over. I heard them kicking the scrolls into heaps. “They’re going to burn the library!” I darted to the stairs and called down, “Stop! In the name of San and the will of god. How dare you?”
A voice shrugged, “Come out and be executed or stay there and char.”
But these are books-all the books of Tris. “You must not,” I yelled desperately.
A blue-gray twist rose from the stairwell like cigarette smoke. Within seconds it widened to fill the whole well. From the window I saw the swordsmen pouring out onto the mosaic, shoving the guards back in their haste to escape. “The fire’s caught! Ready yourselves, they have to surrender. It’s going up!”
Smoke billowed past me in a thick stream and drifted along the ceiling. Lightning released the tension on his bowstring. “We have to break out. There are a dozen fencing masters. We can deal with them, but the senators will die.”
“The books!” I wailed. “I can’t leave-”
“Don’t be stupid!”
“Maybe there’s another way down.” Gray wreaths shrouded the rafters completely and were descending extremely quickly to fill the room. I fumbled through a stack of leather-bound books on the table and slipped them into my coat pockets. I picked up the lantern. “Wait here. I’ll check the far end.”
Lightning began coughing loudly. I called, “Stoop low. Slouch down under it.” I had been in a burning building before and, as far as I knew, he had not. But my lungs hurt as I sucked smoke and I started choking more than him.
I had to save the books, as many as I could carry. I strode down the aisle snatching them from the shelves. I stuffed one in my waistband, another in my belt. I had no time to translate the titles; I couldn’t see with the smoke stinging my eyes. I didn’t know what I was snatching. I piled them frantically in the crook of my left arm, discarded a heavy tome, selected two more haphazardly. I thought, I’m rescuing a handful of volumes at random to represent the total knowledge of an entire culture. Which were most worthwhile? Were these engineering, cookery or poetry? Or even bloody fiction? I had no way of judging. I spat out the cloying smoke and the stack buckled in my arms. I reached the end of the library-which was just a blank wall-and I dropped all the books with a series of thuds.
Recognizable but horribly out of place, gray mottled, fibrous drapes strung between the last two bookcases: Insect paper. They looked folded but were as hard as concrete. They curved up from the shelves and blurred into the smoke creeping down from the beams.
Two long, brown forelegs emerged from the nest. The Insect’s black spiny foot clicked down onto the floor between my boots, and its three claws articulated shut. I backed into the opposite bay.
The Insect ducked its triangular head and slipped out from between the bookcases. Its eyes’ tessellations reflected the lamp-lit swirling smoke. It brushed a fringe on its front right leg over them. It must have pulled out Wrenn’s rapier, because the hole through its thorax was now a deep concavity filled with smooth new shell. It had sloughed its skin and was even bigger than I remembered. The high joints of its back legs loomed out of the smoke.
Two club-shaped black palps shuffled like a pair of hands rubbing together. They retracted and the scissor jaws opened and shut. It lifted a foreleg and cleaned its single crooked antenna through filaments inside its knee.
Lightning flexed his bow and spoke with his lips to the string, “Step aside.” Through the smoke he was just a silhouette blurred by the tears streaming from my eyes. I pressed my coat cuff to my nose and mouth. In another thirty seconds the room would be full and I could hear crackling from below.
“Wait!” The Insect stood still, close enough for me to see the scars and impressions I had made with my axe. A row of black spines four-wide supported the upper surface of its striped abdomen. The pale underside pulsed as it curled its abdomen under itself, pumping air through its spiracles which were wide open.
“Wait. It doesn’t like the smoke.”
Its antenna flicked forward, sensing for the clean air. It jolted into an involuntary crouch. “It’s going to run-let it pass!”
The Insect leapt. It hurtled past Lightning, stretched its full length and reached over the handrail, down into the stairwell. Its back sword-shaped femurs kicked and claws scrabbled on the blistering varnish, then it disappeared into the gusting smoke. I ran after it instantly; Lightning seemed bewildered so I grasped his arm and urged him to the steps.
We took deep breaths and plunged down. I patted my hair-it felt so hot I thought it was alight. Lightning held his hand over his mouth and the tip of his bow rattled off the ceiling. The steep steps were opaque with smoke. Perspiration and tears trickled down my face.
We stumbled to the ground floor, onto ten centimeters of fallen books. They slid over each other, making the floor slippery. I led Lightning around the tall shapes of leaning shelves. We crushed scorching scrolls underfoot with a sound like old Insect shell. Even now I was torn with the desire to rake them up. The fire’s crackling built into a steady sibilance and its raw orange light leapt behind the smoke, illuminating the surfaces of the billowing wreaths.
Lines of yellow flame spread between the parquet blocks. By the windows, flames began to lengthen and bend as air flow sucked them out of the shutters.
“Can’t breathe,” I said weakly. “Where’s…the fucking door?” The unbearable heat singed my feathers, my reddened skin stung. The pages of open books on the floor around us were curling and turning brown spontaneously. I saw one burst into flame.
I pointed to the rectangle of pale morning light; we rushed through without readying our weapons. Getting out of the smoke was all that mattered.
The men who had been guarding the door were spilt on the mosaic in a fan of visceral blood. We crossed the threshold with smoke pouring out above us. One had died quickly, eyes open, from a horrible gash that opened his belly to the sternum. Another crumpled in a red pool so thick the Insect must have severed an artery, though I couldn’t see the wound. The arm of a third man lay beside a rapier some way off.
The Insect did not pause to clean its mandibles. It was confused by the scents and invigorated by the fresh air. Its six feet left prints, its knee joints bunched and separated as it dashed toward the senators and swordsmen. Their white clothes reflected in its directionless eyes. Their mouths were round in astonishment. Every one of the swordsmen bolted, including Tirrick, leaving the senators in the Insect’s path.
Lightning leaned into his bow and bent it fully with the strength of his shoulders. The broadhead point drew back to the grip. Across the square the Insect reared up before Vendace. Lightning straightened his fingers, released the string with a crack and the arrow whistled past me.
The Insect’s foreclaws lashed the air in front of Vendace, then it fell sideways. It curled on its right side, the arched plates of its abdomen sliding over each other as it coiled and throbbed. A spasm went through it that flexed all its joints and pulled its limbs in, like the legs of a dead crab. They steepled angularly together, its feet drawn up to the six semi-translucent ball joints under its thorax. By the sunken ring at the base of its feeler, Lightning’s arrow shaft made a second antenna. The shell gaped around it, an open crack showing an organ of dark brown gel deep inside.
The senators gazed at it, and at the library. All the erudition of Tris was rising with the fire. I faced the intolerable furnace as if it was a punishment and spread my wings to accept and be consumed by it. Rolls of heat belched out, shelves split with creaks and thuds. Tremendous flames raged through the library I respected so much; I felt sick in the pit of my stomach.
“Shira!” Lightning called. “Come here, why are you standing so close? It’s falling apart!”
“No. The books are burning…What has Gio done?”
“Get a grip! Speak to the senators.”
I was numbly aware of Lightning ushering the Trisian leaders to the boulevard. Behind us, the coffers lay forgotten. I thought, if I live through this I’ll claim them. The Trisians would disregard the treasure as dross, so I relinquished it for the time being, avoided the dead Insect and stepped over three or four agonized rebels with arrows in their thighs, and ran to catch up with them. They were hurrying down the path with appalled backward glances.
Vendace was holding one of the senators tightly, a young lady. She was kicking and biting, frenziedly struggling and pulling in the direction of the library. I ran to help but Vendace snapped at me, “She’s Danio’s successor. Don’t let her go; she’ll run in to the fire. Every time you come here, you put an end to our librarians!”
We tried to calm the hysterical girl. I explained to Lightning, who said candidly, “I know how she feels. People pass away, there are always more, but the books are irreplaceable. They’re the immortal part of Zascai-how many lifetimes are burning to cinders in there?”
I said to Vendace, “You saw how Gio’s men treated you. They’re causing this catastrophe, not us. We’ll deliver you from them before they destroy the rest of town. Lightning shot the Insect dead. We were sent to protect you from it and from Gio; he’s a wanted criminal in the Fourlands.”
Vendace, mystified, turned his pinched, resilient face from myself to the Archer. The Senate had prized Gio’s rhetoric so highly that they found it hard to trust our actions. As I walked quickly they pressed close, trying to hear over the sound of the blaze. With an earsplitting screech and crash, the library roof caved in at its midpoint. Timbers dangled like fingers from both sides. Glowing tiles slid into the fissure, adding to the noise; the rumble grew to a roar. Sparks whirled up and fell on the roof of the Senate House. It was hypnotic.
Lightning said, “Jant, tell them that I’ll see them to a safe place, then I’ll clear looters from the avenue as far as the rear of Gio’s column.”
I asked, “Are you well enough?”
“I believe so.”
“Then I’ll fly over Mist and Serein, and join you on the main road.”
An elderly senator with a rookery voice coughed. “What is going on? Where’s Gio?”
I changed language and said, “He’s causing the mayhem-I’m going to find out. Lightning will help you, if you please lead him to a place of refuge. I’m sorry, I am really sorry.”
Vendace pointed a shaking finger at the Amarot. Flames were now lapping on the Senate House roof. Driven to incandescence by the wind, the fire spread to the apartments on its upper story and began to engulf them. “No amount of apologizing will ever repair that sacrilege!”
When we reached the base of the crag, Vendace directed Lightning toward a road called First Street. I left them, and as soon as I carved into the air I found myself battling against the wind being sucked into the inferno. It whipped around the crag in one-hundred-kilometer-per-hour gusts, causing a swirling column of vertical flame to rise eighty meters above the devastated library.
Smoke layered and drifted out at the height of the Amarot. It completely blocked the sunrise and shadowed the town. Burning embers were falling into the gardens of the villas below. The whitewashed walls looked gray and the boulevard was littered with spoil and broken furniture dragged out by the rebels; here and there lay the bodies of the Trisians who had tried to stop them.
Sleepy residents stumbled into the street, looking up at the crag and trying to understand. At the edge of town, people panicked and began moving toward the harbor. I saw Capharnai of all ages responding to a call to make a bucket chain. About two hundred people filled pails, pans and bowls from cisterns and carried them up the winding road to the Amarot, but the air was unbreathable; the rising heat and wind stopped them before they reached the mosaic. A few of the lamed rebels who were still lying among the boxes of money, writhed as they inhaled smoke. Their clothes and hair caught fire spontaneously.
I soared higher, because I was alarming the Capharnai and they were wasting their time watching me. I lost sight of the peach-colored sky beyond the edges of the smoke pall. Flocks of pigeons sped around the tiny rooftops, grouping to roost, confused by the eerie eclipse light. Dawn would not end; the light was dim, as if it was still seven A.M.
The looters were fanning out through the top of town, kicking in doors and pulling shutters off their hinges, leaving a wake of debris, barking dogs and half-eaten food.
Pages and whole blackened pamphlets, scroll fragments burned thin, jostled up in the smoke then fell on the town as hot ash. The residue of hundreds of thousands of books was raining over Capharnaum. The gloaming light and the roar of the library added to the rebels’ edginess. It was much louder than the sound of the wind on my wings.
Gio’s rabble now packed the lower half of the main street, blocking the wide road as they progressed down the slope toward the harbor. Gio walked ahead of them with his rapier drawn. His column was twice the size of Mist’s tight ranks.
Mist’s fyrd was marching up the street from the Stormy Petrel. The boatswains were drumming; their beats got louder as I dropped height and passed over them. I spotted Mist leading by Wrenn’s side; she looked up and raised her hand. She had tied her shawl a round her waist, revealing a cuirass and backplate. Wrenn wasn’t wearing armor; he was in his fyrd fatigues. He was looking for Gio, dissatisfied with their disputable duel in the forest. He was determined to beat Gio on equal terms and leave no doubt that he deserved to be immortal.
Mist was surrounded on all sides by crossbowmen and a bodyguard of her strongest sailors, all in half-armor. After that came one hundred and fifty Awndyn men carrying halberds and spears; no space to wield pikes. They wore dark green brigandines; their helmets shone like globular mirrors.
As I watched, the rear of Ata’s column stopped at the quay and the rest separated and continued up the street. She had left about fifty men, a fyrd lamai unit, to protect Stormy Petrel, moored a hundred meters behind Gio’s ships. From Petrel’s forecastle and poop deck, archers looked out. Both her gangplanks were down but colored shields lined her railings. The longbowmen were tense, watching the rebel defectors who ran, laden with loot, out of the ends of the parallel streets. They raced up the Pavonine’s gangway to a deck that seethed with drawn weapons; white faces ugly with fear stared up at me. They had turned pirate; they were prepared to defend their carrack to the death.
When Gio’s rabble caught sight of Mist’s vanguard, rebels in ones and twos began to melt away from his column, down the alleys and into the streets of the grid. They turned left and right along the intersecting roads like counters in a board game. I decided that their movements were too random to be tactical, even before I saw them start smashing shop shutters and grabbing whatever was inside.
Mist’s fyrd and Gio’s horde stopped with twenty meters between them. There was a second’s silence in which Gio, shield on his arm, walked forward of his line and scanned the people opposing him, looking for Wrenn.
The Awndyn Fyrd captain called, “Crossbowmen! Span. Latch. Loose!” They shot straight into the rebel front at short range, aiming at the fencing masters, knowing they were the most dangerous. The metal Insect-killing bolts cut past shop canopies and statues, burying themselves in men’s faces, chests and bellies. I saw black bolt points project from their backs.
The crossbowmen’s partners stepped forward with a shout, raised and slammed their green and white shields into a wall, hustling into position across the road. Behind the shields, the crossbowmen began to reload.
Gio’s men waited in horror for the next barrage. Heads bobbed up and down as some men split off down the side streets but most were trapped in the center.
The shields were lowered, crossbows leveled. “Latch! Loose!” Another barrage flew at Gio’s front line. The last of the fencing masters fell, lifeless or mortally wounded. Gio peered from behind his shield; swung his arm. “Forward! Break the wall! Bear down the shields!”
A wave of three hundred men together started running. The front of the column seemed to flake off, as faster and faster they closed the gap. They jumped high, crashed into the shields at full tilt, hitting them with their shoulders and forcing them down. Their swords thrust over the tops, into the necks and faces of the bearers.
The crossbowmen slung their bows into holsters on their backs, drew their swords and surged forward against the rebels. The confused mass began to shove up and down the street.
I saw that Ata’s spearmen were trapped toward the rear of her host. Surely that was a mistake-wouldn’t they be better than the crossbows? Crossbowmen had served Ata well five years ago; now she was relying on them too much. The shield wall was perfect but it should be backed by spears. The fyrd are simply following their usual procedure: Insect-fighting tactics. They’re wrong but even Ata hasn’t noticed the discrepancy.
Both the fyrd and the insurgents tried to outflank each other. From above I watched the side streets filling. As the melee widened, the columns in the boulevard shortened, with Wrenn and Gio in the exact center.
I called to the fyrd who were exploring the alleys, and led them down the right routes to ambush the rebels, who were more used to fighting in side streets. I landed and directed a group; we surprised five of Gio’s men before they could rejoin the main column, and killed them all.
I returned to the air, where I could easily distinguish Mist’s bodyguards. I occasionally glimpsed her face but she no longer had time to look up at me. The press was so intense, she held her curved Wrought sword with the convex arc uppermost to thrust rather than slice. Her voice carried-she screamed commands to surround Gio and disarm him. Whenever he could, Gio yelled at his rebels to close in on Mist.
In Lowespass, women soldiers have always successfully fought Insects. The culls follow procedures; the women help each other and men sometimes back them up. The difference in strength was not important when six or seven infantry recruits can tackle an Insect together, or women can join the cavalry and ride destriers. But in this crush they were fighting one-on-one against men, and I gravely feared for them.
Capharnai families peeked from the windows of their houses above the shops all along the street. They were stranded in their homes, witnessing a scene they couldn’t hope to understand. They saw the heads of men wrestling and stabbing along the center line, and behind them, filling the street above and below, a pack of foreigners in strange clothes facing each other, putting pressure on the breathless crush. The strangers were so eager to push forward to the fight that they trampled dead bodies. At the end of the street, flames piled up from the civic center and smoke boiled like spit in lamp oil. The Capharnai neighbors looked helpless, not knowing what to do. I shouted, “Stay inside! Don’t get involved-they fight each other, not Trisians!”
They saw their own shops vandalized below them. Their faces disappeared from the windows as they began barricading themselves into their upper rooms.
I glanced back; the library was now a roofless shell, the floors were falling through and just the façade was left. Flames leapt in the windows surrounded by blackened stonework-it looked like an animated skeleton.
Coruscating sparks and dull fragile ash dropped on us. I beat my wings to dislodge flakes from the feathers, thinking: the town is being covered in burned knowledge.
Gio was looking for Wrenn, carving his own men aside. I landed on the nearest roof to watch, searching the alleys below for a crossbow to pick up. Gio, wild-eyed, saw Mist’s bodyguards and Wrenn beside them in an area of calm because no fighter would engage with him.
Gio raised his rapier and saluted. “Well, look if it isn’t the novice.”
“Good morning,” smiled Wrenn.
Gio snarled, “You could have chosen better last words.”
First-blood fencing in the amphitheater was just an entertainment; no rules apply in a duel to the death. They watched each other with cool anticipation; Capharnaum didn’t exist for them. They were in a world of two people, challenger and challenged.
There are no words in that world. I know, because I have been there.
Gio swept his rapier down in the rage cut. “You stole my name,” he said. “I’ll be Serein again. I am good enough. I Challenge you, Serein Wrenn.”
Wrenn leveled his blade. “Just run onto this and save me the effort.”
I took off and climbed above them through the deafening battle’s noise.
They dropped the pretense of faking other styles to conceal their own. They flew at each other eager for blood. Gio rushed to chop at Wrenn; at the same time a bystander tried to catch him but Wrenn smashed his teeth with the rapier pommel.
Wrenn lunged at Gio, reprised. Gio swiped it aside with a blow that would have shattered a lesser blade than the 1969 Sword. I thought: How long can they keep this up? But I knew the answer-at least four hours.
Gio pointed his rapier, its lanyard loose around his wrist. He lunged to Wrenn’s dagger side. Wrenn swept his rapier across-clash!-disengaged and cut down aiming for the sensitive bone of Gio’s shin.
Gio jumped on the spot then attacked. Wrenn parried, riposted, enveloped Gio’s blade in quatre, made as if to beat him on the arm and tried to stab him in the forehead. Gio spun away in a move that took me two years to learn. His thigh boots slipped on the pavement. He was trying to predict Wrenn’s actions four or five moves in advance.
In a split second Wrenn slid his rapier tip through Gio’s swept hilt, sliced the skin off his knuckles, withdrew the blade. Gio’s grip became slippery on the freely running blood. He hid his sword hand with his dagger, so Wrenn couldn’t see to predict the direction of the next blow.
Their motions were wide; their heads ducked to avoid being cut in the eyes, watching with the faster speed of their peripheral vision. Their flexed sword arms were close to the body for strength. They hacked at the nearest enemies whenever they had a chance and the melee backed away from them, leaving them in a clear space. The fighting was spreading up and down the street and fragmenting. Tussling groups of men dispersed down the side alleys. The densest part of the fighting eddied around Ata’s bodyguard; spearmen behind, rebels ahead. Five sailors linked arms, trying to preserve a space around her so she could breathe.
I’m doing no good here, entranced by the duel. I need a firebrand to drop on Gio.
I flew back to find Lightning. It was easy, because he was the only person in Fourlands clothes walking down the middle of the broad street. Behind him, the road rose up the hillside backed by the incredible blaze. He was oblivious to the Capharnai around him, with their crying children, bucket chains and packs of belongings. He sniped unerringly at the small groups of rebels-turned-pirates who were all busy with different intents. Some scavenged like wolves; a man pulled down a gold street-lamp bracket; two lechers were held at bay by a Trisian man defending his daughter.
Lightning limped on his left side, moving slowly. Conserving his energy, he held his mighty bow horizontally with the arrow on top, drawing back the heel of his hand to fit in the hollow of his cheek. He used short-distance arrows, color-coded with white flights, and let fly at the looters. Anyone who touched a shop shutter or ran from a house with an armful of gold was sent reeling with an arrow through bicep or thigh.
I glided over and called. I landed and ran to a halt beside him. “Gio and Wrenn are dueling! Ata’s caught in the crush-we have to help her.”
I drew my sword and we continued downhill toward the rotunda at the road’s midpoint. Lightning never missed a shot, counting under his breath, “Fifty-five. Fifty-four. Three…Two…”
I scanned the windows for any movement that might end with a knife in my back. Beyond the forum we passed a precinct of narrow streets. We looked down the nearest and saw a gang of rebels heaving at a solid door. The first was a weasly man with baggy, low-crotched jeans. He had his shoulder to the cracking panels and the others all added their weight. They noticed Lightning and me but renewed their assault on the building. Inside, women were screaming in Trisian so rapid and full of dialect I couldn’t understand. From the first-floor window an elegant lady with ringleted hair, a white chiton dress and red nails hurled terracotta dishes down on the besiegers. They angled their arms over their heads and kept pushing.
“Hey!” yelled Lightning. “Away from that door! Jant, what are they shouting? What is this place?”
I read a tiny inscription on a stone block set into the wall: Salema’s Imbroglio.
“It’s an imbroglio; in Trisian, I mean. A brothel.”
The Archer raised his eyebrows. “I see. Then we must save the honor of these ladies-regardless of whether they have any honor or no.” He loosed at the thin-faced Awian. The arrow rammed straight through the man’s leg and into the wood. Its shaft made a high-pitched crunch of gristle, dimpling his jeans’ fabric into his knee, locking it out straight. He tried to step forward but was fastened to the door. He screamed and hammered his fists and free leg against it.
“Are you all right?” said his friend, being slow on the uptake.
He screamed, “Pull it out!”
“You can’t, it’s barbed.” Lightning spanned his bow. “And if you try, I’ll kill you both.”
The gang sloped off, then broke up and ran toward the forum. Lightning called to the whores, “I promise you’ll come to no harm.”
“I’m sorry,” the would-be rapist pleaded, leaning forward with both hands over his knee.
“You will be,” Lightning commented, without moving the arrow trained on him.
“Saker, what are you doing?” I said, disturbed by this change.
The rapist’s eyes bulged. His left leg kicked, shoe sole scraping the step. He stuttered, “No, no! I’ll-”
“You’ll do what, exactly?” Lightning said, driven to fury by the man’s Donaise accent. He loosed the arrow; it pinned the rapist’s left leg to a panel. It met some resistance at the kneecap but drove easily between the articulated surfaces of the joint behind and split the wood. Its arrowhead was a shiny stud in his flattened and mushy knee.
Lightning selected another arrow. “My card. Seeing as you need reminding who we are.” He shot again, pinning the man’s right elbow to the door. A wedge of broken bone clicked away from the metal point pushing past it.
The rapist howled and sobbed, “Why? Oh god, help…WhataveIdone?” He turned his head and vomited onto the top step.
“You know who we are!” Lightning shouted. “But still you have to plead, you have to ask! You think Tris is beyond the reach of the Castle! You take advantage of this gentle town!”
Before I could stop Lightning he whipped out a fourth arrow. He couldn’t be enjoying this. I dashed in front of him. “Stop! Are you mad?”
Stony-faced, he aimed over my shoulder. “The lout has an elbow left…”
“Leave him!” I shouted.
“Rape is the worst of crimes,” Lightning muttered. He shook himself and looked up to where the beautiful whores were leaning out watching, some timidly, some brazenly. “Interpret for me, Jant,” he said, and called, “All right, girls. Do with him what you will.”
We walked away from the man’s beast noise. With his whole shocking strength he made every breath a scream.
The Capharnai watched in horror from their doorways. They couldn’t distinguish Lightning and me from the rebels. A young lad, his trousers spattered with somebody else’s blood, ran from the piazza and confronted us. He glared and brandished one of our broadswords, holding it like a tennis racquet. Lightning hesitated. I flicked my dreadlocks back, spread my double-jointed hands and wings and roared, “Raaaah!”
The boy yelled and fled. Lightning looked impressed.
At the next intersection stood one of the unidentifiable poles topped by a right-angled black and white bar. A man stood beside it, manipulating levers that pulled wires to make the plank swing in well-defined motions, somewhat like a flag. He looked up the street to another pole at the foot of the smoke-obscured Amarot and operated the levers to follow its movements. A third device distant at the edge of the town replicated his signals a second later. I realized these were not standards at all; it was a system of communication, and quicker than anything I could provide. Even in the midst of the chaos I thought, I’ll make this innovation my own. I’ll put this system on the Lowespass peel towers instead of the beacons to monitor Insect advances lest someone else beats me to it.
We reached the rotunda that stood over the main crossroads, a domed folly no bigger than a room. It had round columns supporting arches taking in the boulevard and the north-south road. Someone had hacked great chunks of plaster off the interior walls surfaced with blue gems.
A woman wearing a fyrd greatcoat with the collar up was energetically prizing squares of sapphire out of the mosaic. Seeing Lightning’s arrowhead leveled at her, she shrank back, tossed up her knife and caught it by the point, made as if to throw it at him.
Lightning swung slightly left and shot at the edge of the nearest pillar. The arrow hit it obliquely, glanced off into the shade inside and she felt the breeze as it zipped past her face. She burst from the northern arch, away between the empty pavement tea shops, her coat streaming behind her. Lightning bowed-he could even bow sarcastically.
The rear of Gio’s column was two hundred meters below us on the road. We could see the backs of heads, sallet points or bandanna knots at the napes of their necks. Two men in the last line noticed us, nudged their friends and the motion rippled out until everyone at the rear turned around. They were only inclined to watch us until one man, with a look of hatred, pulled a bolt from his bandolier, cocked his crossbow and raised it to his shoulder. Nine or ten others followed suit; I dodged inside the rotunda but Lightning stood still, in disbelief. I urged, “Come on!”
Lightning shook his head as the men pulled their triggers and a barrage of bolts flew at us. Out of range, they dropped and struck the pavement, and the broken pieces skidded, stopping two meters from Lightning’s feet. He stepped forward and kicked them, as if to check they were real and he wasn’t imagining it. He sounded aggrieved. “What have I done to warrant all this? They think they can outshoot me. I’ll attempt to confer with them.”
“Talk to them?” I stopped because Lightning took a handful of distance arrows, long thin shafts with stiff triangular red and yellow fletchings. He held them together with his bow grip, and shot rapidly along the line. “Twenty, nineteen, eighteen.” Another handful. “Seventeen, sixteen, fifteen.” The rebels ran like their arses were on fire, but they all ended up lying on the ground moaning or yelling. People in the next line pointed us out then made a break for it, forced to run toward us to reach the side streets’ empty entrances.
The horn tips of Lightning’s longbow shook. He lowered it, breathing deeply, gazing downhill to the churning front of the fray where Gio and Wrenn appeared and disappeared. His legs were trembling and he was pale with pain.
I watched the Sailor’s bodyguards, in dark blue and steel, hacking at the rebels with Ata close behind. From the midst of Gio’s rabble a spear looped up, fell steeply onto them. It hit Ata, impacting on her breastplate. She staggered, unhurt but knocked off balance. The mob surged forward and she fell under their feet, out of view. Her bodyguards lurched back, tried to stay upright by grabbing each other and the soldiers around, but simply pulled people down together, opening a hole in the crowd.
“Get up,” I said. “Quick, Saker; shoot!”
Lightning now shot to kill, aiming at the rebels standing over Ata, in the most accurate volley I had ever seen: an arrow every two seconds.
“Get up! Get up!” he muttered.
The rebels fell around the place where Ata had gone down. He picked them off in the solid crush, no space between them. They couldn’t even raise their shields. The arrows started to hit the same men again and again; dead bodies kept upright in the crush were filling with them, their heads and shoulders pinned with the bicolor flights, but Ata and the men stabbing her were underneath. We couldn’t see her.
The bodyguards tried to shove forward, stabbing the rebels facing them in chests and stomachs. They shouted and tugged at the clothes of the men to either side, urging them to push ahead.
Lightning hissed in exasperation. “I can’t get a clear line of sight. Nine. Eight. Seven. Move out the way!”
His quiver was nearly empty. The ends of his bow vibrated; rapidly his right hand reached down for the short nocks, pulled one up and fitted it to string. Hooked the string with three bent fingers. Drew it past his ear to the side of his head, swinging his shoulder back for a couple of extra centimeters.
He shot with unflagging speed but dimples appeared around his pursed lips. “Five, four. Jant, brace yourself; the Circle’s going to break.”
Zascai are slaughtering Mist. And there’s nothing I can do. I tried to feel it starting-couldn’t-and it hit me. Time rushed past us; I felt torn across the middle. My awareness raced out, expanding in all directions. It stretched, flattened, spread thinner and infinitely thinner until my own identity and individuality vanished. I lost consciousness of my surroundings. I ceased to exist. The Circle reformed with a snap. I woke and blinked around at the battered shopfronts and blue domed ceiling overhead.
It happened so quickly I was still on my feet but I had dropped my sword. I felt cold, very aware of my body and the battle’s noise.
“Three, two…” Lightning stopped with an arrow at string. “I…I am still here,” he said deliriously. We looked at each other.
“Killed by Zascai,” he whispered.
At the battlefront crush, Serein Wrenn staggered. New to the Circle, he didn’t understand what had happened. Gio, on the other hand, had known it well. He took advantage and cut at Wrenn’s forehead, drawing a red line across his temple to blind him with blood.
Wrenn came to and tried to defend himself but, concentration lost, all he could do was retreat. Gio pushed him back, slashing at his face to further unnerve him.
“Serein!” Lightning raised his bow again, arced an arrow up high over the entire rebels’ column.
I just had time to see that someone had grabbed Wrenn from behind. Wrenn, still confused, struggled to free himself. The arrow came straight down into the top of the assailant’s head; he crumpled up.
“One.” Lightning fitted his penultimate arrow to the binding on his bowstring. Behind Wrenn a man in a painted leather jacket brandishing a curved falchion leapt at him. Lightning drew and loosed; the arrow pierced the man’s forehead and his body fell, knocking Wrenn. The crowd realized that anyone who closed with Wrenn received an arrow between the eyes. They left the duelists alone.
The Archer gasped, “Serein is an Eszai and must win his own duel. But I made it an even fight; there won’t be two Eszai murdered today.”
His shirt hem was soaked with blood; it was spreading to the tops of his trousers.
At the place where Mist’s dismembered body was being trodden underfoot, someone raised a halberd, her head on the spike. I could only tell by the short white hair, because it was crushed and gashed. The pole turned and the head jigged around to face us. Its indigo eyes were turned up, its mouth open, its nose flattened and bloody.
Lightning’s legs buckled. He staggered back to the rotunda wall, sat down against it, then collapsed sideways leaving a smear of blood. I helped him sit upright with the bow across his knees. He pulled the leather tab off his right hand with his teeth and dropped it. His face was ashen. “The animals. How could they do that-tear her apart? An Eszai, and Cyan’s mother…Immortality’s pointless in the crush. We’re too used to Insects. They don’t throw spears. Damn, don’t you feel like you’ve died? I hate feeling someone else’s death and the years I’ve cheated catching up with me. You know…we all become a second older before San mends the Circle.” He bowed his head. “You know that with me it adds up to minutes…”
Lightning hugged arms around his waist and squeezed his eyes shut in agony. I crouched and laid a hand on his shoulder, trying to bring him around because he was drifting and talking to himself. “They killed her. Her schemes were useless…I don’t know what they’ll do next.”
He could not fight in this condition, and the rotunda gave sparse cover. Lightning knew this and made a tremendous effort. He nocked his last arrow and eased his short sword loose in its scabbard though it took all his mettle to lift it.
“Wait and gather your strength,” I said.
He nodded. “Yes. I’ll try to make my way back to Rayne…I’ll meet you at the Petrel.” He sighed, chin on his chest. He was thinking about Mist; the reality hitting him was as incapacitating as the wound. “You and Serein must persevere. Kill Gio, for Ata…for me. You are Eszai and that is your purpose.”
He looked so ill that I didn’t want him to tangle with any more rebels. “Don’t stay here, those bastards will come up. Go all the way to the end of Fifth Street before you turn down to the harbor. The roads are quieter at the edge of town. Saker, I really think-”
He spoke through gritted teeth. “‘Saker, I really think’ nothing. Into the air and stop this fight!”
He watched me pick up two jewel-encrusted pieces of plaster, one in each hand. I ran to take off.
I dived at Gio and dumped both bricks on him. They hit him, one on his towhead, one on his forearm, and he reeled. Wrenn jumped forward and thrust.
Gio’s neat last-minute parry saved him-the rapiers clanged hilt to hilt. Their blades bound, they wrestled. Gio kicked Wrenn’s shin. The muscle fluttered in Wrenn’s calf but he threw the taller man back and wiped blood from his eyes.
“Shoot him!” Gio bellowed at a crossbowman. “Shoot him, someone, why don’t you?”
In return Wrenn spat at Gio and swiped low behind his knees to sever the hamstring. Gio pivoted on the ball of his foot and let the soft thrust go past.
A bruiser of a man offered his rapier to Gio. Gio fluidly slipped his dagger into his belt and snatched the sword from the man’s fist. He leveled both rapiers at Wrenn. They must have had different hefts but I couldn’t tell from the way he handled them.
Instantly at a disadvantage, Wrenn hit at the new rapier’s side. Gio parried and at the same time attacked. Wrenn stood his ground. A sailor tried to pass his sword to Wrenn, but Gio severed his hand still clutching the hilt. Numbly, the sailor bent to retrieve his sword but he had no hand to pick it up with.
I circled above Wrenn, calling encouragement. He looked desperate; blood flowed down his face. He searched out the last of his strength and stood tall as if he had found hope, but I thought he was acting because Gio didn’t respond. Wrenn feinted. Gio attacked with a move like a sneer. Wrenn evaded, left his dagger arm exposed, too low. Gio’s rapier penetrated between his fingers, slid through his hand and up his arm under the skin. The point issued from his elbow in a patter of blood. Wrenn’s hand opened, his dagger fell.
It’s over, I thought; but Wrenn had trapped Gio’s sword. Wrenn’s rapier forced Gio’s other blade far to the left, disengaged and thrust. His hilt slammed into Gio’s chest.
Gio hunched; about a meter of bright steel projected from his back. A red patch darkened his coat around it. Wrenn pulled the hilt down, tearing his lungs. Gio staggered, blood spitting from his mouth. Wrenn couldn’t hold Gio’s weight on the blade and dropped it, leaving him sprawling transfixed by the rapier. Gio’s blade snagged in Wrenn’s arm tore out through the muscle making a gaping wound.
Gio lay curled up. He coughed around the blade. Blood sprang from his mouth onto the pavement, dribbled from his lips. He didn’t breathe in again. Died.
Awndyn soldiers rushed to Wrenn and supported him. His fingers scrabbled, trying to stick the edges of the gash back together. Blood ran down into his mouth and he smiled. He had deliberately caught Gio’s blade in his arm, in a furious variation of the same attack that had won him immortality a year ago.
Wrenn struck out with his fists at the soldiers trying to calm him. He fainted, so they picked him up and I led them to the Stormy Petrel.
I picked up a sheaf of arrows and a bottle of water, and my horn that I sound to give commands on the battlefield. I flew back to Fifth Street and landed near Lightning. He looked exhausted but grateful as I sprinted past, called, “Gio’s dead!” dumped the ammunition and bottle while still running, took off.
I swept low over the rebels and shouted, “Gio has fallen; give yourselves up!”
The whole front of the column who had seen the duel, and several more, especially the girls, surrendered to the Awndyn Fyrd. The rear dissolved, rebels becoming looters or fugitives. Many became disoriented and I saw them running farther into the meshed streets. But the leaderless center of the column and the men who had killed Mist knew they were doomed. A new sort of aggression flared among them, affected by desperation, the strangeness of Capharnaum and the rum they had drunk.
There was a tangible atmosphere of possibility and menace. Instantly the five hundred rebels in the main street acted as if they were a single being, powerful, euphoric with it, and mad. I sensed their vigor and my pulse raced. Anything could happen; everything was happening-the riot obeyed no laws at all. The youths were at home with it; it was their atmosphere. They ran in large ragged groups. They all thought: why not take the wealth that surrounds us, in an abundance we’ve never been allowed before? The strength of individuals was nothing compared with the violence of the crowd-they tore the shopfronts apart. They were bent on spending everything in the town in one hysterical surge. They brought out bakers’ trolleys and smashed them into caryatid statues. They infected each other to screaming pitch rejoicing at their own bodies’ force, their freedom and their sudden riches. No future prospects Capharnaum could offer them were as good as the fun they could have trashing it. From the air I saw a mass of people sweeping away from the boulevard. They spiraled around ransacked shops like the eye of a storm.
The burning crag’s jumping unnatural light lit the quay. Gio’s men were now just pirates, plundering the surrounding houses. They dragged out tables, threw lamps into sheets and bundled them up. Fights broke out between them: men stabbed and punched each other over any precious-looking metal. They broke furniture and hefted the pieces as clubs.
Bricks were hurled against the houses’ upper windows, and when a Capharnai man leaned out and shouted, they threw bricks at his face. The pirates gathered cutlery and amphorae but discarded them when gold gleamed. So much gold, it was like the Castle’s treasury. They hastily lashed together enormous packs of objects with their belts. When each had plundered all he could carry, he set off to the Pavonine leaving wailing and raging Capharnai families behind them.
Some Capharnai defended themselves. A group of fishermen threw a huge weighted net over thieves escaping from a house. As they struggled under it, the fishermen stabbed them with marlin-spikes and tridents that sloughed dried white scales.
A group of Trisian lads came out of one house carrying sacks to loot food, kicking the door of a restaurant. Thick olive-oil smoke ribboned from its cellar grating. Little fires had been kindled at irregular intervals on the boulevard. The rioters set alight waste bins and chairs; I could see no reason why, apart from the lust to cause as much havoc as possible. I yelled, “Stop destroying this wonderful town!” The ones that heard me started laughing.
There was no hope of catching the rioters without abandoning our own wounded men. I ordered the fyrd to pull back to the Petrel. At the foot of the gangplank the Awndyn unit had formed a barricade. They leveled pikes above a shield wall. Some fyrd regrouped there, but in equal numbers those who spied the gold were unlinking their shields and deserting to join the looters. Archers on the Petrel’s fore-and rear-castles sent sporadic volleys down at the pirates crossing the quay, who had no choice but to run through the hail of arrows to the Pavonine.
Thieves poured up the Pavonine’s gangways carrying their prizes or dragging their wounded friends. I flew over the Stramash and Cuculine, puzzled; their decks were on the same level as the water. They had been scuttled; they sat empty and perfectly upright, their keels on the sea bed. Their main decks were swamped with lapping waves, from which their castles projected like four square islands.
The crews of all three ships were at work unfurling and setting the Pavonine’s sails. Others, yelling, waved their friends aboard. Poleaxes and spears looked like metal hackles standing up on the ship’s back.
I glided above Pavonine’s deck and saw Tirrick, and Cinna. Tirrick had Cinna Bawtere at rapier point, forcing him to steer the ship. Cinna clung to the wheel, shaking visibly, his porcine face set in a grimace. Tirrick, however, smiled rapaciously. He shouted, “Climb aboard! We’ll sink the Petrel, then pack provisions and sail for Awndyn! I’ll be the next Serein and fatty will be the next Mist!”
Cinna glanced up at me and scowled. He had a length of chain around his middle, worn by fearful sailors so if they fell overboard their suffering would have a quick end.
I shouted, “Cinna, don’t you dare leave!”
He told me to go and do something unspeakable with a goat.
Sailors on the harbor cast Pavonine’s mooring ropes loose and swarmed up. The ship grated along the quayside with looters still chucking bags onto the deck and catching lines to haul themselves up.
Those left behind turned their attention to the Petrel. Small groups of rebels gathered out of range on the villa verandas; they began to coalesce, ready to attack the Petrel’s gangway in a desperate bid to hijack her. I thought of Rayne; I would not let anyone hurt the Doctor. She was my adviser, Lightning’s confidante and devoted friend. Lightning would be even more shattered than he already is, if anything happened to Rayne.
I have seen Mist die and Serein badly wounded. I have left Lightning faltering his way through the outskirts of town. The only books to escape the firestorm are in my pocket. I don’t know how many Trisians have succumbed but their houses, their shops and the harbor are despoiled. Cinna was sailing off with their belongings, surrounded by pirates and protected by Tirrick. The remnants of Gio’s men were completely beyond control. Our forces were disheartened and either retreating or deserting.
I needed everyone in the riot to listen to me, to stop and look up so I could shatter the hysteria that gripped them. I must attract their attention with a gesture more powerful than Gio’s last stand. But how? None of my battlefield horn signals mean anything now. I couldn’t drop rocks accurately onto Pavonine from above the archers’ range.
I shouted, swooped acrobatically and landed on the main street, but although the rebels heard me they paid no attention and simply ran away. What was I to do-pursue them one by one? Infuriated by our failure, realizing that we were stranded, I felt my scolopendium clock running down. A cold shiver washed over me; the long muscles twitched in my arms. Oh god, not now. If Tarragon surfaced she could soon put an end to the Pavonine, but that wouldn’t stop the fighting on land that second by second was becoming bloodier. I needed Tarragon, her car or a congregation of Tine, a sea krait…A sea krait! Did I dare speak to the kraits? I thought: I can use the Shift to stop the sacking of Capharnaum!
I flew to Petrel and landed on the half-deck. Rayne had transformed the main area below me into a field hospital, and she was extremely busy. Wounded men were being brought in and laid on camp beds between the masts and hatchways. Rayne bent over one, whose blood pooled in the brown stretcher. Her assistant struggled with the breastplate strap, having to pull tighter in order to release it through the buckle. Rayne said, “No! Tha’ sucking wound-ignore the res’.” She slipped a gauze pad under the edge of his armor and pressed on a jagged gash in his ribs. The soldier struggled. Rayne grasped his hand firmly and he lay still. Then his hand relaxed out of hers.
I watched as I retrieved my envelope of cat from my cabin, and I saw it all. Rayne looked into his eyes as he died. She often did that with the mortals for whom, no matter how hard she tried, she could not prevent death. She wants to glimpse the change as their eyes set. I once thought her obsession was compassion, now I think it’s just her insatiable curiosity. She wants to see what they’re seeing, she wants to know all that they suddenly know. It’s understandable because people are always inquisitive about what they can’t do. Or maybe, and although it’s morbid I wouldn’t rule it out, Rayne is fond of being the last thing a man sees as he quits the world. One day her curious face might fill my field of vision, through a bloodred filter.
I ducked into Ata’s office; the bottle of brandy stood on her table. Through the stern windows I saw the Pavonine, nearly stationary against an onshore breeze. Her sailors swarmed on the high aft castle, adjusting some timbers-the long beam of a trebuchet. I said aloud, “Bloody fuck, not another catapult.” It could even be the one we saw being dragged along the Remige Road. It had two large wooden treadmills set upright on either side. A sailor crawled into each wheel and walked them around; others on the outside pushed to winch the arm back. It was so long it overhung the poop deck steps. Another pair of men lowered a ball into the sling. Tirrick gave a shout, the arm kicked up to one side of the mizzenmast, and the stone flew through the air.
It overshot Petrel and crashed into the roof of one of the harbor villas. Cinna’s sailors busily set about winding a windlass to decrease the trebuchet’s throw. Shit, if we ever needed Lightning’s professional opinion it was now.
I dashed out of the cabin and called to Rayne, “They’re taking potshots at us! Move down below-and stay there till I bring reinforcements. Don’t abandon ship unless they hole the hull. If you must go to land, ask the officer of the Awndyn Fyrd lamai to give you some cover.”
I heard Rayne ordering that her patients be taken to the living deck; I did not have much time. I tipped a fistful of cat out of the envelope. It ran like fine sugar between my fingers as I sifted it into the brandy glass. I tapped my hand on top to knock the powder out of the damp lines on my palm. Then I uncorked the brandy and sloshed it in. The crystals eddied and spun. I drank it down right to the dregs of undissolved powder where the brandy had not penetrated between the dry grains. I put the glass down with a click.
That was a massive overdose. Through the windows broadsword fighters battled at the junction of the boulevard. Pikes held the gangplank secure but only one line of fyrd remained behind them.
The metal clashes muted suddenly, as if at a distance; the bustle of the surgery shrank to background. My own breaths boomed loud and blood pressure rumbled in my ears. It is coming on.
Pavonine turned her slender stern to me and the flat towers of her soot-spotted sails. Her reflection vanished. The image of the quay wall and houses ripped away. The sea moved, silver but featureless. It wasn’t reflecting; it should be mirroring the sky.
The waves slowed to the consistency of treacle. Pavonine lifted and fell again hours later. Another round shot slowed until it was almost floating; it tracked a lingering trajectory through the air and disappeared at the water’s surface in front of the window.
I’m going under. I slipped to my knees, trailing my fingers down the dirty panes. If I concentrate on breathing I’ll never remember how to. I could no longer kneel. I lay down, one arm extended. The bracelets on the other wrist pressed into my cheek, my sword belt dug into my hips.
Black haze filled my vision from the edges to the center. I thought with a sudden flush of panic: I haven’t taken anywhere near enough. This will never work. I need more-