Wolf Wing

by Tanith Lee

  I do know this. Jizania is more dangerous than any of them, than Ironel – even Twilight. She plays soft, like a lion’s paw, but the claws are there inside. Then she plays sharp like the claws, but beware the softness!

  She told me, she feeds off life. Like the free lions with the meat.

  Everyone else had sat down, and kept quiet at her invitation. So much for powerless old royal ladies. She pitched her voice easily over the noise of the waterfall.

  ‘I am not your heroine,’ began Jizania modestly. ‘Claidi and Dengwi are the heroines.’ (Cheers.) (I was too uncomfortable now even to feel uncomfortable.)

  ‘And all the more your heroines,’ announced Jizania, ‘because both these girls had more at stake than any of you have ever known.’ She raised her glass of pale tea. She said, ‘Claidi was not even a servant, she was a slave, born to a slave mother and a father unknown – for as you well recollect, a male slave’s name was never noted, when a child was permitted him, only the slave-woman mother’s.’

  Had she never told them this about me before? She had always known.

  Jizania said, ‘But Dengwi triumphed another way. For though Dengwi’s mother was a slave of the House, Dengwi’s father was a prince. Prince Lorio. He isn’t here with us tonight. He left us with the others. Only Dengwi is here. I raise my glass to Dengwi, then, a princess after all, and to Claidi, a slave now free.’

  There was a kind of spluttering nothingness in which about three slow-witted people still started to cheer, and then realized cheers weren’t it any more.

  Somewhere someone dropped a cup. Even over the noise of the fall, it was loud, this smashing sound.

  Jizania sat down smiling. Old and wise and kind.

  It was Dengwi who, back in her place at the table’s opposite head, got to her feet.

  She spoke as clearly as Jizania.

  ‘Is this true?’

  ‘True?’ Jizania, a little vague now, a little, forgetful old lady. ‘What, my dear?’

  ‘That my father was a prince.’ Dengwi’s words came like bites into the darkness, left little holes.

  ‘Oh yes. Lorio. He was briefly attentive to your mother. He even told her what name to give you.’

  I remember Prince Lorio, too. Everyone would. Ebony skin and iron eyes and two small bits of ice for mind and heart. He had been one of the monsters, here.

  Dengwi’s father—

  And she could never have known.

  I thought how Jizania had shocked me when she told me I was royal. At least that had been in private. (And wasn’t true.) Nor had it been destructive.

  But royalty was garbage at the House now. And so Dengwi, the Heroine, was now garbage?

  Jizania had lied about me. This too might be a lie.

  I got up, in the second Dengwi walked briskly away from the tables.

  There was so much confusion all round now, mounting gradually into noise and argument, no one took any notice of me as I hurried after Dengwi, and Argul strode after me.

  As for Jizania, eyes hooded, gentle as a poisonous snake that sleeps, she sat there giving another biscuit to the bird.

  ‘Wait – Dengwi!’

  Dengwi waited. There under the black velvet trees.

  I waved at Argul, and he stayed where he was, so I could talk to her alone.

  ‘She’s a liar, Dengwi. She lied to me. I can tell you—’

  ‘I don’t think she’s lying.’

  ‘She’s made you trust her.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Dengwi flatly. ‘I just never expected – that.’

  ‘Why don’t you think she lied?’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t know about this. It’s just that I did know my mother a while, before they let me be a maid instead of a slave. And Mum – she said to me I was being allowed a better position because of my father. So I said why, who was he? And she said she couldn’t say, she wasn’t allowed to say. I thought afterwards,’ said Dengwi, ‘she was making that up. Kidding herself my dad had been someone royal. She was only young, my mother. About my age now. She only lived a few more years. Slaves don’t – didn’t – last.’

  We were walking slowly on into the black silence of the trees. No one was near now. Only Argul, back there, burning like a distant lamp.

  ‘She must have been proud,’ said Dengwi, ‘in a horrible way, that she’d been honoured by a prince. But naturally I am ashamed of it. And now I’m an outcast.’

  ‘No, Dengwi, they wouldn’t—’

  ‘What did we rebel against?’ she asked me. ‘Against the royalty. What am I half of? Royalty, it seems.’

  ‘Yes, but some of them have stayed.’

  ‘And you see how they are. Tolerated – and left on their own most of the time. Or picked on and driven mad like Jade Leaf. All but Jizania, who is – Jizania, and not like anyone else.’

  ‘Look, they won’t turn against you!

  ‘Maybe if he’d been some other prince, someone halfway all right. But Lorio?’

  We stopped walking and talking. We stood and looked at the darkness all around.

  Finally she said, ‘I don’t want to be his daughter, Claidi. I don’t want that blood in me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And I don’t want my own kind trying to pretend I’m just fine. Or having to keep with the other kind, like Flindel and Kerp – who might rather like me, now.’ She shuddered.

  She didn’t say, uselessly, Why did she do this to me? Why did I ever trust her?

  Dengwi doesn’t often waste words.

  ‘What will you do?’ I eventually asked.

  ‘Leave.’

  ‘Where will you—?’

  ‘Somewhere.’

  ‘Dengwi,’ I said, ‘Argul and I really came here to rescue you—’

  And just then, over her shoulder, I saw something that took the rest of the sentence out of my mouth.

  Down deep among the black trees had appeared two glimmering straight shapes, two coin-colour ghost faces, and two metallic round hats, like haloes—

  At my start, Dengwi spun to look too, and in that moment the figures flickered out among the shadows.

  ‘Did you see—?’ I said.

  She hadn’t.

  And then next second this other thing happened, because obviously so far the evening had been uneventful.

  What it actually was, was Jade Leaf springing against us, giving a long shrill shriek, with one of the natty Dinner knives in her fist ready to plunge in our backs.

  Our luck was in. It was me she struck first. She’d always disliked me best.

  And of course, the ring—

  There was a rush of light, like lightning, which shattered in flakes, and Jade Leaf was flung head first into a thicket about twenty feet away.

  Dengwi looked me over.

  ‘I have something that protects me,’ I said.

  ‘So I see.’

  ‘We’d better go and look, see if she’s hurt,’ I squeamishly muttered.

  ‘I can hear her moving, I think.’

  We went to the thicket and peered in. Then we forced a way through and poked about. There wasn’t a trace of her.

  By then Argul was there. He looked too. Nothing.

  ‘She must have run off’

  It did seem rather unlikely. After the way the ring had thrown her, you’d expect anyone to be stunned at least. But she wasn’t there.

  Across the trees we could hear shouting now from the terrace. It didn’t sound very matey. I thought of the first Lion Night, the roars and torches, the hunting down and driving out of royalty, and only not killing them because that was what the royalty themselves had been expected to do—

  ‘Dengwi,’ said Argul, ‘you probably don’t want to trust anyone right now. I’m going to ask you to trust the two of us. Give me your hand. Claidi, take her other hand.’

  She is sensible, even like this. I would have dithered, of course, resisting, quacking Why, what for?

  She just gave us her hands.

  ‘Hold tight,’ he said.
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br />   She held tight.

  And up we went, the three of us, into the night.

  TO THE SOUTH?

  Each of us saw the hot air balloon, too, as we crested the trees.

  I said, didn’t I, it had been a slow evening …

  The balloon was a way off, and seemed to be moving east to south, judging on where the moon was.

  Moonlight caught in a silver crescent around the balloon itself, and half-lit the basket thing below, but also, in the dark, fire from the thing that makes a balloon work, shone up red on its underside. It looked unearthly, and menacing.

  We’d dropped back a little, into the tree tops.

  From up here, not only could we see the balloon sailing slowly over, but the crowd below on the big terrace.

  ‘The balloon’s why they’re shouting.’

  There was panic down there. Lights flaring, going out. Some people were running away into the cover of the trees. While others stood there, gawping upwards, turned to stone.

  Daisy’s ghastly Jovis had stayed at the House – would he, and any other remaining Guards, now unpack the cannons and try to shoot the balloon down?

  That didn’t happen. Instead, the crowd left on the terrace grew quiet. And the silent, silvery-fiery thing went drifting on, and away, getting smaller.

  ‘Whose is it?’ I worried.

  ‘Could be from anywhere,’ Argul said. ‘A lot of places claim to have them.’

  But the only place I’d ever found that did, was the City of Towers. Which was south, where the balloon seemed to be going.

  ‘Come on,’ he said.

  And we lifted off again and sky-ran through the air, unseen by anyone on the ground, or (hopefully) in the balloon.

  By the time we’d flown out from the Garden walls into the desert, the balloon had grown as tiny behind us as a pea.

  Yinyay was standing firm where we’d left her. She didn’t seem aware of any threat.

  We flew towards her big shape, Dengwi held really very easily between us.

  She hadn’t said anything. Well, all this must be a sort of surprise.

  Maybe the House will end up capturing the balloon tonight, as one more sign of the rightness of Lion Night. It was Nemian’s balloon that started everything. All this …

  Perhaps this balloon was a coincidence.

  And the masked statues I thought I’d seen – just a trick of the shadows?

  Anyway, it had all been so dull so far, hadn’t it, we were now ready for some excitement.

  No sooner had we got into the downstairs foyer of Yinyay, and were standing on the marble (if it is) floor, with Dengwi gazing speechlessly up at the soaring galleries and stairs and lift-spaces, than Yinyay spoke.

  ‘Welcome on your return,’ she said. ‘A letter has come for you, Claidi and Argul.’

  I’m writing this up now, as I said, in the library. (Thu is lying under the table snoring, worn out by some of the clockwork chase-fetch games Yin has made for him, and which he plays ceaselessly when we’re not there, judging by the upended chairs!)

  Dengwi’s gone to a bedroom Yinyay arranged.

  D still hasn’t said much, and I’m concerned she really is shocked, but she seemed calm, and Yinyay will keep an eye on her. (We did explain a bit about Yinyay, and the flying and all that, but it’s too much all at once, isn’t it.)

  Can she trust us – well she has. Only because she felt she had to? And – can we trust her? (It’s, occurred to me how unlikely it would have been for the royalty to kill all their servants just because of my escape with Nemian. So saying they would, was whose plan? Only Jizania’s?)

  And now, this other thing.

  This letter.

  You see, it’s a ‘flying letter’ – like the ones Venn was sent at the Rise. Yinyay can receive them too. And I don’t, never have, understood/stand how this works. But there it was and here it is, in front of me now.

  After he read it, Argul said, leave all this for the morning.

  But I’m on edge.

  (I’d never told him about the statues from the grove, kept forgetting. I’ll have to do that tomorrow, too. Then I can tell him how I may have seen two of them again tonight.)

  Meanwhile, I’ll copy the letter down here, I think. Oh, you’ll know who it’s from, perhaps, the way I did, the minute you see how it begins.

  My dear Claidissa and Argul, I hope this finds you well.

  Really, it’s just like her other letter. And her curling, looped and ornamented writing, with something spiky and hard at its centre.

  Ironel.

  (But why is she calling me Claidissa now? How can she know we’re in Yinyay and not know I am not Claidissa, but only slave-born Claidi? Perhaps it’s just her being awkward.)

  ‘My dear Claidissa and Argul, I hope this finds you well. I, of course, am never well.’ (Hah! She’s as fit as an alligator.) … ‘But I will not try your patience with my personal difficulties. I understand that your ventures have been a success. But now I have urgent news which you would be most foolish to ignore, and which, though it will astound you both, I am unwilling to put down here. Therefore, come to my private house, which your Tower-Ship will find with no trouble, seven miles outside the City. Make haste, let nothing delay you. Remember, I have been your friend in the past.’

  And then her name, ropes of coils and swirls, as if she’s trying to grow a hedge of thorns round it to hide her and what she really is.

  And then, one of her little additions. This one quite astounding itself, in its way: ‘Make sure Dengwi comes with you.’

  ‘Do we go there?’ I said to Argul this morning.

  He frowned. ‘You think it’s a plot.’

  ‘Why not? Seven miles from the City – which means seven miles near the Wolf Tower.’

  ‘At least it’s seven miles.’

  ‘When we trusted her before it was only because we had to.’

  ‘And that worked,’ he said.

  ‘You do think we should go.’

  He’s her grandson. Ustareth was her daughter.

  I thought of flying south, back to that grey River called Wide, that repellent City of stone. That Tower with a black stone wolf crouched on it.

  ‘I’ve been to her house before,’ Argul reminded me, ‘and escaped alive. You know, I think I do want to know what this is about.’

  He looks – the same way I remember at Peshamba. As if he’s thinking of other things, things that have been lost. Is it the idea of Ironel?

  We agree to go south.

  We go and tell Dengwi, who simply nods. She doesn’t care about this, doesn’t really want to talk to us, just be by herself and think through what bloody Jizania’s landed her with.

  I didn’t say Ironel mentioned her.

  At least Thu is pleased we’re off somewhere again. He’s racing up and down and everywhere. Yin is moving at her top speed, but though you can slightly feel it, it’s not uncomfortable. (The horses are fine.)

  The ground is invisible, a blur. Yinyay says, like this, it will take less than a day to get there.

  Oh, yippee. Back with the Wolf Tower and Ironel in less than a day!

  THE HOUSE IN THE LAKE

  He had told me, her mansion loomed over a lake. When we got there, the house was in the water. I was puzzled. Argul said, ‘There’s been a flood.’

  It turns out the lake (like Wide River and the marshes) is tidal. The tides had grown strong and run up over the flattish dry meadows, and stayed there. Only the first storey of Ironel’s mansion is under water.

  And it was raining anyway. I always remember it raining, or drizzling, at the City. Just once did the City sun come out – the day I left.

  Yinyay had slowed down, coming in over some low rocky hills, and I’d immediately gone to several windows, checking I couldn’t see the WT anywhere. But I couldn’t. It and the City really were miles off.

  The mansion is greyish-yellowish, like the lake, and the sky.

  Yinyay parked about a hundred yards away.

>   We’d discussed whether to have her shrink, but it had seemed safer to leave her outside and large, with the horses and Thu inside.

  Then Thu made a scene because we were going out again without him. He yelled and jumped at us.

  ‘We’ll take him,’ said Argul. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because – of her is why not.’

  Argul looked exasperated. ‘Claidi, let’s give the old woman the benefit of the doubt this once. And if anything goes wrong, Thu is a big, tough, canny boy.’

  I was uneasy. Always am where Ironel is involved. But Argul, it seems, isn’t much. There’s the difference.

  Then there was Dengwi. Why should she want to come and see Ironel? She wouldn’t. And if I told her about Ironel inviting her, she’d want to even less.

  But Argul spoke to Dengwi, telling her quite a lot quickly and clearly. (I do admire people who can do that. Perhaps it comes from having been Hulta leader.)

  Dengwi nodded. She said, ‘Why does she want to see me?’

  ‘We don’t know. We don’t know why she wants to see us. She’s a mischief-maker. But I’ve found her helpful.’

  I said, ‘You don’t have to go with us, Dengwi.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ said Argul.’ You can just hang round here. Unless you’re curious.’

  I saw Dengwi thinking about hanging round in (peculiar automatic) Yinyay, quite alone, wondering what the hell was going on in the mansion.

  I saw Argul had made her do this, and decide coming with us would be better.

  More leaderly gifts, persuading people to do what they don’t want to, while thinking it was their idea … ?

  Is that so good?

  Anyway, we all went.

  We walked down to the shore of the lake, or the brink of the flood.

  ‘We’ll need to fly over,’ I said. ‘She must have known that. Perhaps it’s another test, to see if we really can.’

  ‘She already knows I can. She gave me the Power sapphire,’ he said.

  ‘Me then. Testing me.’

  Argul said, ‘Look.’

  I looked. A long grey boat was coming, rowed through the water, so folding glass ripples crawled away and away.