Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  ‘Naivety leads to misanthropism.’

  ‘Oh, for sure.’

  He performed a most ideal arpeggio, and another, running into sharps and flats until he couldn’t think of any more and switched to scales in double thirds. It reminded me of the time they tapered me off cat, that rainy late summer after Cyan’s Challenge, in Micawater Palace, with Saker downstairs standing by the window, playing the violin, and the Lake Gate open to the muddy public. The trompe d’oeil figures stepped out of the frescos, falling, tumbling, gesticulating, onto the coral patterned carpet.

  ‘Swallow suffered from a great fear of dying,’ he said. ‘She experienced the world so richly and loved her sensations so much, she didn’t want it to stop. She was extremely scared of no longer existing. That’s what drove her to petition San seven times. But then … after that Challenge she knew she’d blown her chance to get into the Circle … Maybe the world didn’t seem so bright and vibrant to her afterwards.’

  ‘Rich sensations …’ I said.

  ‘Yes. A rich internal dialogue. She had a wealth of wonder in the simplest things. Blackthorn blossom in the May sunlight made her cry out in joy.’

  ‘Like the Shift. The world must have seemed like the Shift to her.’

  ‘That’s how she composed so well,’ he said. ‘It was her Shift. I never liked to see you addicted. I always tried to take scolopendium away from you. I tried to make you stop, Jant. And yet … I’ve wanted to see the Shift myself. The beauty of Dunlin’s court. The crazy places you describe.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t believe me.’

  ‘After Frost’s Battle, when the worm-thing appeared. The worm-thing I couldn’t shoot …’

  ‘The Vermiform.’

  ‘… Then I had to accept there was a worm-thing. Do you see?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When I left the Circle the Emperor invited me to dinner with him. Just him and me, remember? San told me all manner of wonderful things. He told me Dunlin leads many nations against the Insects. Your Equinnes. The blue ones …’

  ‘The Tine.’

  ‘And the fishy women.’

  ‘Naiads? Stinguish? Thula?’

  ‘Oh, god, I don’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘I did tell you. I’ve been telling you for years.’

  Saker shook out his hands, drained a glass of brandy from the piano top, and began playing a sensitive melody that was very compelling. ‘San told me cat wasn’t the only way to Shift. Someone at the limits of endurance may Shift, like … oh, like a badly-wounded soldier. Or you can reach Epsilon through meditation.’

  ‘It’d have to be very profound,’ I said. ‘A shark told me once.’

  ‘Well, have you tried?’

  ‘I can’t keep still long enough. But I bet the Emperor could.’

  Saker looped the piece again. ‘He didn’t give me the impression that he visits the Shift. Rather, that he’s wary of it. Frightened, even. I don’t know why.’

  ‘He’s old enough to have perfected meditation.’

  ‘Fighting Insects, I’d want to.’

  He started again with a smooth transition, and the music blended a many-layered harmony. ‘Rayne has visited the Shift. Even my daughter admitted she’s seen this Gabbleratchet. So I want to see it.’

  ‘No, you don’t!’

  ‘I’m not frightened. What could it possibly do?’

  ‘Oh, you wouldn’t believe!’

  ‘I do believe …’ Neat key change, little flurry, the tune started again. I felt all the tension flowing out of me.

  ‘Peaceful, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you think I can play myself into the Shift?’

  ‘With that?’

  ‘I didn’t write it. Swallow wrote it for me. Before anger wrecked her music. Before hatred destroyed it. Back when I thought there was a chance she could love me.’

  ‘It’s relaxing.’

  ‘It’s a musical joke … At the end there’s a da capo and it refers you to the start. So you start again and play it through, and you reach the da capo again and return to the beginning and play it through, and you reach the da capo and you just go seamlessly round and round. There is no coda. It’s a palindrome, beautifully done, a ring, a circle … a never-ending circle. That’s what she called the piece: “The Circle”.’

  He smiled wistfully. ‘The joke being, of course, that as an immortal I could play it forever …’

  Key change, grace notes, the intertwined melody washed over us. ‘Thank god for the brandy. My fingers never used to hurt before, but I’m older now … I’ve always wanted to. And now I can. Let’s do it.’

  ‘Saker—’

  ‘Listen …’

  I laid my head on my folded arms and let the pellucid notes flow over me. I was more relaxed than I’ve been … ever in my life before. The constant churn of thoughts in my head ceased and I was surprised at their absence. No language … just nothing …

  Swallow had accessed the calm at the heart of immortality, the calm we should all feel but never do. She had torn aside our anxieties, reached through the depths of being to the peace that lies beneath. It lies beneath everything, this sea of nothingness – and how stupid we are to cover it up with our daily worries. Swallow could not only see it, she could express it, and now I was feeling the stillness underlying reality; the serenity of space beyond all the planets; the tranquil release of giving up in the face of immeasurable distance, immeasurable time; vastnesses and possibilities we cannot conceive. We are so tiny at the brink of infinity that in grateful thanks we yield, let go, and relinquish ourselves. It is the act of death.

  I saw the room as just a thin picture stretched over the motionless presence, printed on tissue through which I could easily push my fingers and tear it. There’s an empty space beyond. So, since nothingness underlies everything we know and grasp and wish to do, of course there’s only calmness left.

  The sunset faded into pink, then grey, and the hall became a patchwork of dappled shades. We were both still drained from the battle and I dozed as wax drops fell silently on the candelabra base beside me. The light from its candles didn’t reach the window bay, where Saker played the melody with his eyes closed, being the instrument through which it plays, it plays itself.

  The flurry happened twice each cycle, the end sealed to the beginning with no audible join, it looped the same refrain … Flurry, key change and lost, it played him.

  I suddenly had an image of my mountain. A pointed peak rosy with the light that comes before dawn in high Darkling. It was so solid, so weighty. But even the mountain was unreal and I scratched it, eased my fingers through, peeled down a strip and opened a portal. Nothingness lay behind it, it lies behind everything.

  Saker nodded over the keys. The pointed panes backed by darkness behind him were mirrors barely reflecting the length of the piano. The muscles in his forearms flickered as he played. The key change, the grace notes, the ring began again … and every few minutes it looped time round … one, two, three in the morning …

  He was hypnotised, caught up in the cycle and unaware of anything else. He nodded, played on, his head drooping. Your instinct is to wake with a start, shake yourself, but he forced himself through, held himself to it, and kept going. Played, and sank deeper.

  And played. The candles guttered out. Round and round the music flowed until the notes lost all meaning. As when you look too long at a printed word, it becomes simply a shape on the page. Then you realise nothing is real and you’re a step towards the Shift. The notes seemed to sound together, one chord, the time between them was collapsing.

  And round

  and round

  and round

  I opened my eyes and saw with jolting clarity the hall a flat unreal picture. The floor was slick with moonlight. Saker played in a trance, his cheek resting on the piano top. Reality wore paper-thin like melting snow while it seemed unchanged. Suddenly in patches here and there, transparent – and I saw th
rough to the infinite …

  He was completely under. I was hypnotised, but not as deeply. Music has a greater effect on him. He sagged forward – onto the piano and his hands slipped off the keys with a horrible discord that echoed round Wrought.

  He’s gone. Was he Shifted? I couldn’t tell. Moving slowly, I fumbled for my tin containing my syringe, uncorked a phial and pulled a dose into the barrel. I paused when the plunger reached my normal measure, then sucked in more. A dose and a half will send me there. Through my trance I felt the weight of terror that grips me when shooting an overdose. But the chord still rang a faint chime and Saker lay on the piano.

  Don’t move, my friend. I’ll be right there.

  I sank it in the crook of my arm and slumped on the chair.

  and then it was as simple as leaving a room, to walk through.

  ‘But we’re not walking,’ said Saker.

  ‘Don’t overthink it.’

  ‘How can I hear you?’

  ‘You can’t. We’re following the same train of thought.’

  ‘Just nothingness …’

  ‘The Emperor must know it well.’

  ‘No wonder he’s scared.’

  Saker sounded decisive: ‘Where am I going? I’m going to Epsilon.’

  The brightness was so piercing I threw my arm over my eyes. Lowered it, we were standing high on the upper tier of an amphitheatre, on a promontory, with the ocean sparkling blue on either side. The marble tiers were packed with creatures, and people, every kind I knew and most kinds I didn’t, shouting and cheering and watching the combat in the ring.

  A huge spider, the size of a coach and bright red, with black fangs the length of scimitars, was chasing down an Insect – a big one! – scurrying across the pitch as fast as it could. The spider jumped with all eight legs, covered an almighty distance and landed squarely on the Insect, plunged its fangs into its carapace – we heard the crack and the creatures cheered.

  Saker stared at it, beside himself with elation. ‘This is it! This is what I thought it’d look like!’

  ‘You’re lucky. I see the city—’ I pointed to the horizon where Epsilon, thirty carat gold, blue glass shards and concrete, tumbled towards the sea. ‘—And Cyan saw a blasted heath.’

  ‘Why should it be any different?’ He gazed at the shining seats, trying to take it all in. Huge arches behind us, standing high around the rim of the amphitheatre, framed the sea, and a variety of ships, some with brocade sails, some giving off smoke from steel chimneys, some that change the very action of the waves into power, slipped peacefully between spouting whales and glistening shoals.

  ‘Where’s Dunlin?’

  I pointed at the box, some rows below us on the long side of the oval, and Saker set off towards it. He was gleaming in sun-gold scale mail on a scarlet leather arming shirt, with a crimson scarf tucked into the neck and the tassels hanging between his wings. On his legs, he’d imagined into being fluted gold plate armour with gothic edges and riding boots with sunburst rowel spurs. At his waist manifested a red leather quiver full of spaced arrows with striped flights. Over his shoulder appeared a sinuous bow on a strap zigzag-embroidered citrine and carmine. His hair and wings without any grey, honey-coloured in the sunlight.

  I said, ‘You’re just a projection, here. You can look like anything you want.’

  ‘This is what I look like.’

  As we walked down the steps I gave myself a snakeskin jacket like Cyan’s and skinny blue jeans. Inland we could see the vibrant grassland, with herds of epochs timelessly grazing, and further off woolly mammons with their golden calves, shining necklaces and designer label baseball caps. Their jewellery flashed in the sun as they lumbered nose to tail across the plain. There were groups of flummoxen with shaggy coats, huge horns and a head at both ends, standing quite immobile, permanently puzzled as to which end should lead.

  A pair of aerial cuttlefish rose from the crowd, floated over and inspected us, changing colours constantly, then zoomed off, tentacles trailing, to tell Dunlin.

  Saker watched them go, spotted Dunlin in the spectators’ box draped with silk, tried to make his way there but distracted by the creatures on the way. He stared at the voluminous jaws of a great group of Social Morays, standing tall and wriggly on their tails, chatting happily amongst themselves.

  We passed a couple of Spriggans, dark green ivy people with thievish grins, whispering about us behind leafy hands, giggling and twitching their tendrils round our feet. Then a pensive group of thick-furred Stalos, ogres each with his hunting dog, sat watching the scarlet spider devour more Insects. The Spriggans’ living ivy bumbled up their hairy legs.

  We descended to the level of Dunlin’s box, and picked our way through the crowd, apologising all the way for treading on toes, paws and twigs. Tine on the steps were selling refreshments, calling, ‘Ladies’ fingers! All organic! Made out of organs!’

  Marsoupials with furry ears were lading broth from their open pouches. A friendly Nomble was handing out water bottles, and the big blue Tine were selling buckets of blood.

  ‘Those are the Tine,’ I said.

  ‘My god! And what are those?’

  ‘Igigi.’

  ‘Can they fly?’

  ‘Oh, yes. On their days off.’

  The crowd of three hundred Igigi took up two whole rows, laughing and chucking stuff into the ring, all tanked-up and unruly, opening beer bottles with their hooked beaks. These Igigi have the head and wings of an eagle, human arms and body, and body odour too. They get lumbered with all the heavy lifting and manual jobs, digging ditches and baking bricks.

  ‘Damn,’ said Saker. ‘Those stinking things can fly?’

  Some entertainment at the far side of the ring, a formation flight of the shining steel Sentient Drones and a Tine Choir of Ejaculating Cocks, which was a thing to behold, but we hardly glimpsed it – so much was going on. It was hard to thread through the packed crowd, pushing thieving hands off our swordbelts, and thanking the people who moved. Saker headed to a gap but it turned out not to be – a space where the Elephant of Conscience was sitting, quite invisible but you can feel when it’s in the room.

  There was the Great Lavra, a huge, hulking being with slow-flowing skin of bright orange molten rock, steaming and cooling on the surface to black cinders. We steered clear of it and climbed the next set of steps – now we could see out of the far arches across Osseous plain to the mountains under the turmeric sky, where nothing lives except crabby hermits in their shell-like little caves.

  And up we came to Dunlin’s box, but before we reached the railings a great cloud of elegant women arose as one from the benches and crowded round us. They were tall, thin and very comely, with four arms, eyes faceted like diamonds and thin cranefly wings like leaded glass blurring faster than even I could see.

  They pressed themselves around Saker, spanning his broad chest with their hands. ‘Mate and die. Mate and die.’ Whickering around us with seductive smiles, licking thin butterfly-tongues against his neck. One was trying to undress me. ‘Mate and die. Mate and die.’

  ‘You or me?’ he asked them.

  ‘They’re Ephemera.’ I waved them away. ‘They only live a few days.’

  ‘Like midges,’ he said, exhilarated. ‘Get off my backside!’

  ‘Dunlin likes them.’

  ‘Does he?’

  ‘They fight Insects too. Because they know they’ll die, they lead Forlorn Hopes. Buzz off!’ I told them. ‘We’re not Epher-males … It’ll never work.’

  ‘What are those white monsters …? People? Candle white with flames for heads?’

  ‘Something horrible out of Dekabrayer.’

  ‘Does Dunlin use them too?’

  ‘Yes. These are all Dunlin’s peoples.’

  We passed two Beetles sucking reflex-blood lovingly and fetishistically from each other’s shoulder joints, past the High and Beautiful Beachcombers of Vista Marchan, past a single proud Nereid, clothed in a drape of constantly-moving water. Sh
e can command any marine animal when her feet are in the sea. Then there were a couple of small Porkles, and before we could reach the gate into the private box we had to pass a gigantic glass aquarium.

  Thula swimming inside it immediately swept over to examine us. Beautiful women and muscular, scale-perfect men, they pressed up against the pane in curiosity. The women began to kiss the inside of the glass, their incredible hair swirling out around them.

  Saker said, ‘Mermaids!’

  ‘Ah, no, don’t—’

  He’d already gone to gaze at the breathtaking, high-cheekboned girls forcing themselves against the pane, their fish tails flicking to keep them upright. ‘Mermaids! Jant, like in the stories! You never said they were real!’

  ‘They’re not mermaids. They prey on mermaids. They’re Thula, escort to the Nereid.’

  ‘Thula …’

  ‘Don’t look at them!’

  A Thula girl tilted her head to give him the most lascivious gaze I’ve ever seen. She flattened her fish-cold nipples on the glass. Her silver skin was iridescent – dark scales on her shoulders and the tops of her arms, grading to paler silver below, and her rib cage ended in curved slits under which pink gills tiered where lungs were supposed to be. From the hips she tapered into a sumptuous platinum tail, with rays of cartilage keeping the fins open.

  Saker pressed his hands to the glass, matching her unnerving claws. Enchanted, he said, ‘She wants me to swim with her.’

  ‘She certainly does. They’ll drown you.’

  ‘But … she’s magnificent!’

  ‘Believe me, they’ll seize you and hold you under. It’s how they get their meat.’

  The Thula beheld him longingly with large eyes of sapphire blue. Behind her plump silver lips, her teeth were short and sharp, and water washed into her mouth and out of her gill slits.

  ‘She’s breathing water.’

  ‘Yes, but she can’t breathe air. She can haul herself out of the sea but she slips back in when her gills start to dry.’