Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  Hardship made them leave home in the first place, and I can relate to that. Litanee is a rocky, storm-cleft coast. Their towns are either built into the wave-torn gullies, like Vertigo, or between the sparse oat fields of the cliff top, to the edge of Cathee forest. The youth growing up find there’s no employment, no money, and precious little space. They’re stuck, as they say, ‘between the cliff and the Cathee’, and nobody really wants to tangle with the Cathee. So the Litanee teens move out, either to Diw and join the coastal trade or build a wagon for the road and follow family footsteps into the Rose or Oak tribes. And start their tattoos.

  The Litanee who stay at home don’t celebrate their life story on their skin, but they’ve always decorated themselves with knotwork tattoos. The rovers in their wagons ink their hearts on their sleeves – indelibly Litanee. And why not?

  Sometimes they congregate in troupes, sometimes they travel alone. Their roses or oak leaves carry them invisible, in a world of their own. They answer to no one – which I liked. But why attack us? And was it just Connell, or were all Litanee rising? The thought chilled me. Their little bands pervaded the world, a hidden brotherhood I couldn’t see; I couldn’t stop.

  Depressed enough by this, as I crossed into Lowespass it began to rain. The sky was zinc. I flew through suffocating curtains of water slanting down into the Paperlands, where it streamed off into the river. In Lowespass all the seasons seem to melt into the same monotony. There’s no differentiation between summer and crisp winter; this cold rain permeates everything. In fact, the tents only dry out when the mean wind blows the water off.

  I lost height as my feathers sogged, and glided down past a bastle farm with a few clots of dejected sheep, over the army road, to the great stone walls of the camp. Every feature stood out, forelit vividly by the sun against a gunmetal sky.

  The camp was awash with mud. Most of the fyrd tents had been dismantled and a great collection of packing crates stood around the Sun Pavilion.

  I landed outside it. My boots slipped on the sludge, then caught on the grit. Rain beaded the pavilion’s brass sun bosses and muddy water was rising up the cream canvas. Tern hurtled out and embraced me. She clung to my wet shirt, which was sticking to my skin. She seemed tiny in her riding coat and I felt a pang of guilt that she was still stranded here, then a welter of despair because, confronted with her warm body in my arms and her dark hair against my cheek, the smell of her perfume, all her exquisite quirks and wonders, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her the news.

  ‘I felt Cyan die,’ I said.

  ‘Oh, Jant, it was awful!’

  She pulled me into the pavilion. Tornado, Capelin Thunder and Eleonora were inside, sitting round an empty table. ‘What happened?’ I said.

  ‘It nearly got Tern,’ said Tornado.

  ‘What did?’

  She waved him silent. ‘It wasn’t meant for me.’

  ‘Saker knows,’ I said. ‘He’s devastated. He plunged off trying to be revenged on something.’

  ‘I don’t think it’s going to be that easy,’ said Tern. ‘Let me show you.’ She pulled me outside into the rain and we sploshed onto the path towards the watchtowers, with Tornado and Eleonora following. There was a ragged hole in the gate, through which you could see the road outside, and one of the towers was charred to half its height.

  Tern pointed to a shallow depression in the road, burnt black. There were small fragments of wood and metal everywhere. She picked one up and gave it to me; I turned it over to see the blistered remains of a red lacquered surface. It had been the chassis of a coach. So the torn bits of brass were coach fittings and – oh god – it was strewn over a huge area!

  ‘The coach exploded,’ said Tern. I didn’t reply. I was thinking of the carnage at her house. ‘Cyan was going to the fortress to fetch the cannon wagons. She climbed into the coach. It started, and …’

  ‘It blew up,’ said Eleonora.

  Tern surveyed the crater, silently. ‘Jant,’ she said. ‘It was the most appalling blast …’ She extended her hands and mimicked a dome of flame. ‘It killed her immediately.’

  ‘I was standing here,’ said Tornado. ‘And it blew me over … there.’

  ‘Shit.’

  Tern rubbed her nose. ‘The coachman … it blew his body through the gate to the other side. And there wasn’t a stitch on him.’

  ‘There wasn’t any skin on him,’ said Eleonora.

  ‘Leon!’

  ‘It made me puke. I thought I’d seen everything.’

  Tornado pointed at the piece of panel I held. ‘That’s the running board. The roof went up – there. Like a grenade burst or something. Like a whole box of shells!’

  ‘What about Cyan?’

  ‘Nothing survived,’ Tern said, in the mid-unctuous caramel tone she usually reserved for criticising the catwalk.

  ‘Oh, tell him, Tern!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We found a hand,’ said Eleonora.

  ‘A … hand?’

  ‘And the sun off her brooch … It was bent …’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘Jant, it was gruesome! There was blood and bodies everywhere. A horse’s skull got embedded in that tower … As for the outriders – I had to send fyrdsmen out with bags and a shovel.’

  I stroked Tern’s hair and my hand settled on the nape of her neck. She was vulnerable, delicate, yet strong. She looked up, ‘I was in the coach behind. Yes, yes, I’m all right … I think but … oh, fuck, only by a fluke. The burst flipped my coach over. I fell onto the ceiling and I was so numb, I didn’t move. I just lay like this.’ She curled her fingers. ‘I felt as if my whole body’d been hit by a hammer. The blast felt solid. I was …’

  ‘Stunned,’ I said, remembering lying on the lawn.

  ‘Stunned. Yes. Tawny ripped the door off and pulled me out. The horses were still in the traces but … all their bones were broken. They were mangled.’

  ‘They were paste,’ said Eleonora.

  ‘Shut up, Leon!’

  ‘Cooked paste.’

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw something pink-white speared into the watchtower at above head height. It was a shard of bone. I dropped the fragment of carriage ply; I didn’t want to stay here any more. I enfolded Tern with a wing and walked with her back to the pavilion.

  We sat down at the table. In her riding overtrousers with flat silver buttons up the sides, smeared with mud, Tern was more beautiful than in any ballgown. I was filled with tenderness; she’d always been a survivor. She was graceful but unbreakable. Her aura of strength made me kiss her. ‘I won’t let them hurt you.’

  ‘Who? Who killed Cyan?’

  ‘I’ll find them.’

  ‘Jant, what are you not telling us?’

  I explained about Connell and the gunpowder, but still I omitted the pressing news of Wrought. Was I going to wait till she read it in the papers?

  Capelin Thunder hadn’t moved from the table all this time. At first I thought his silence was remorse, but I began to suspect his mind was engaged on a new project. I said, ‘Wake up, shit head! This was the powder you ordered!’

  ‘I am not responsible for the carters appropriating it.’

  ‘They haven’t just targeted Cyan!’

  ‘What?’ said Tern.

  Capelin said, ‘How should I know your conflicts? I designed gunpowder to kill Insects. True, any Trisian might surmise you riven barbarians would soon employ it to murder each other, but how you use it is your concern. I simply invent, and what happens to it afterwards is not my responsibility.’

  I went for him. I pounced halfway across the table, was arrested in mid-air and yanked back. Tornado had grabbed my shirt. Capelin had risen to flee, but once he realised Tornado had me in an inescapable grip, he settled down and spread himself in a thin, supercilious voice: ‘You Eszai destroyed my island. I used to be an artist. I could have been an artist now. The Emperor made me the Artillerist, so I can ship blasting powder where I damn well like. How was I to
know you’re infested with thieves? I don’t follow your grievances! I’m not surprised mortals have scores to settle!’

  ‘Shall I let him go?’ said Tawny.

  ‘Yes!’ said Eleonora.

  ‘Jant, cool it,’ said Tern.

  ‘Just let me kill him a little bit!’

  Tornado dropped me onto the bench beside Tern. She caught a handful of my feathers and I put my head in my hands. If Connell had hit Wrought and Cyan simultaneously she was a superb strategist. I feared these were the first points of a scheme beginning to emerge from her Litanee network spread throughout the world and thoroughly supplied with our powder.

  ‘You know more,’ said Tern.

  ‘I love you, kitten …’

  She leant back, the better to view me. ‘Has this happened to you, too? I can smell it on your feathers!’

  ‘It wasn’t a coach …’

  ‘Then what?’

  I steeled myself and told her everything. She paused, then leapt up. She clenched her fists, shouted, ‘Oh, god! No!’

  She whirled round, shook her fists at the ceiling, stamped down the length of the pavilion and returned in a fury.

  ‘Tern …’ I said.

  ‘This Connell!’ She drew her knife and flourished it. ‘I will have her liver! I’ll have her hung! I rebuilt that hall. It’s my grandmother’s palace! Francolin’s palace! The black stone paradise! It cost me—! Oh, god! This will bankrupt me again!’

  She put a hand over her mouth and tears welled up. I tried to take her hand but she resisted.

  ‘The South Wing’s unburnt,’ I said quickly. ‘Our bedroom, your office, they’re fine.’

  ‘That’s all? What about my friends? Raggy?’

  ‘Raggiana’s all right. Well … he’s a bit burnt and very scared.’

  ‘Parula?’

  ‘Was killed. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Becard?’

  ‘Tern, I don’t know him.’

  ‘Using blasting powder to destroy buildings is very interesting,’ Capelin murmured. ‘One could—’

  She rounded on him. ‘It’s not a building, you fucking freak! It’s my home! My friends! And they’ve suffered enough!’

  Capelin blenched at the force of her anger. She pulled a fistful of her hair, ‘I need to be there! I need to visit the people in hospital, see the families … oh, shit, it must’ve been horrific!’

  I thought of the torn-off wings with shreds of muscle adhering, chunks of flesh like cuts from a butcher’s counter.

  ‘How many died?’

  ‘Over a hundred. Don’t ask to see them.’

  ‘I know what they look like! I was nearly one myself! And I need to see the house … My poor goddamn house … Capelin? How much blasting powder do you think was in Cyan’s coach?’

  ‘About a third of a barrel.’

  I yelped. ‘You’ve lost enough powder to blow up four thousand coaches?’

  ‘At a conservative estimate. Or two hundred and forty halls the size of Wrought.’

  ‘All right,’ said Tornado. ‘Kill him a little bit.’

  I snatched the front of Capelin’s tunic and hauled him over the table. Back went my fist.

  ‘Jant!’ Tern snapped. ‘How will that help?’

  ‘Let you know when I’ve done it.’

  ‘He’s a worm. Drop him! …I said, drop him!’

  ‘I’ve dropped him, kitten.’

  ‘Don’t punch him: make him work. Connell could be hiding bombs everywhere. Maybe she’s targeting women. You have to warn all the Eszai, especially those with houses, tell them to search top to bottom. And telegraph all the manors, the city …’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And San.’

  Eleonora picked her overcoat from the table. ‘I’m returning to the capital.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘Not Tanager. Saker asked you to join him at Micawater first.’

  She grimaced, then laughed. ‘What? Add six days to my journey in the middle of a crisis? I’m handling this from my stateroom, he can pick up the kids and join me.’

  ‘He asked you to bring Cyan to the Lake Mausoleum.’

  ‘Always with the sentiment.’ She swept the coat over her wings, thrust one arm, then the other, through the wide sleeves. ‘I’m the Queen. Awia’s my kingdom. Saker’s my consort. Otherwise we’ll stumble over sentiment, and get blown up. I’ve already sent Cyan’s right hand by rider to the Castle, where, I believe, it’s the tradition to bury you Eszai under tombstones in the Starglass Quadrangle. Not in Micawater.’

  ‘Damn it,’ I said. ‘He won’t like that.’

  Tornado said, ‘Cyan would’ve wanted to be buried in Valley Twenty … like, at the furthest reach of our advance.’

  ‘For such a big boy, you’re an awful sap, too. If you want to hack your way through the swarm, go ahead.’

  I said, ‘Burial at the Castle allows Cyan her honour as an Eszai.’

  ‘Exactly, Jant. Tell Saker to join me at Tanager.’

  I said, ‘Your Majesty, please be equitable and consider the Litanee. Don’t tar them all with the same brush. Saker’s threatening to imprison them.’

  ‘Excellent idea.’

  ‘Leon!’

  ‘So the sentiment doesn’t always stall him!’ She towelled off her hair, shoved on a broad-brimmed hat, headed for the tent flap and almost walked into Hurricane.

  He shouldered in, letting the canvas slip closed behind him. He dripped with rain. ‘Your horses are ready.’

  I said, ‘Arlen, am I glad to see you!’

  As nobody’s ever said this before, it threw him on guard. ‘Are you?’

  ‘Yes. Who better to hold the Front?’

  He stuck his poleaxe in the floor and gestured with his other hand, holding a covered tumbler. He drinks a faddish brew of blueberries, ram’s testicles and crushed sea krait fangs, in the belief it’ll further his fitness, though he’s as fit as it’s possible to be. He calls it ‘winning by the accumulation of marginal gains’. I live in hope that one day ‘the accumulation of marginal gains’ will make him sick.

  He said, ‘If there were any gypsies in the camp, they’ve gone. I heard you so I searched for tattoos, I didn’t find any.’

  ‘Will you stay here?’

  ‘Yes! Me, Capelin, Sirocco. I’ll defend the Front like I defend my title. I’m not leaving it to the fucking bugs. I can defend best from the fortress, the magazine is full.’

  ‘Good.’ I said, ‘Tornado, will you ride to the Castle to receive San’s orders? Capelin, you go to Frass and secure this end of the valley.’

  Hurricane considered this. ‘Not a bad plan, for a dope fiend.’

  ‘Gosh, thanks. I was thinking as much last night, when I i.v.’d twice the dose that would kill you.’

  He didn’t know whether to be impressed by this or not. He hesitated, then shrugged and sneered. ‘All right, Shira.’

  ‘Do me a favour and don’t use my caste name.’

  ‘Sorry … Shira.’ He laughed silently out of the corner of his mouth. It was half a grin and half a grimace; it showed all his brown back teeth on one side like a dog with apoplexy. He went out, chuckling. Leon followed, and toggled the flap open so Tern and I could see their escort waiting patiently in the rain – the Queen’s Own Tanager Lancers and a varied panoply of Awian gentlemen starrily devoted to my wife.

  I kissed Tern and she placed the tip of her finger on my nose. ‘Jant, find Connell. Don’t let her set another charge.’

  ‘I’ll try, but please be careful.’

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘Maybe not, when you see what’s happened to the North Tower, the Martlet Window and the Boiserie Bedroom.’

  ‘That’s just stuff. It’s the people I’m concerned about.’

  ‘What about the Filigree Spider?’

  ‘It’s safe in my jewellery box, in your room at the Castle.’

  ‘I’d love to see you wear it.’

  She spread a wing from the box-pleated slit in her coat a
nd brushed my face. I kissed its hand, taking in the biscuity scent of the rounded feathers, which overlapped like soft tiles. Paler down grew in the crook of her wing. She smelt like a small bird cupped in your hand, crumbly, warm, delicate but independent. I always feel a surge of love when I recall how my queen of green baize, seemingly petite, plays her hand in life as wily as her card games; she’s tougher than a gangland lass.

  Her feathers tickled my throat, sliding up and down as she breathed. ‘You said you took cat last night. Why?’

  ‘Because Saker found a way into the Shift.’

  ‘Saker did?’

  ‘He’s a virtuoso pianist.’

  ‘I know. So?’

  ‘So … So I think I’d better explain all that later.’

  She folded her delicious wing back inside her coat, walked out into the rain and mounted her palfrey. ‘Please don’t do any more cat.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Not on your own. Not with all hell breaking loose! You must catch this absolute bitch for me. Oh – whoa! …Caprice always reckons you’re going to eat her.’

  ‘I never eat them without horseradish sauce.’

  She leant and pressed her lips to my forehead. Some locks of hair trailed from her diamond pin. They were the same dark chocolate as her wings, and their shade changes throughout the year: they’re almost black in winter, and I fancy then she looks slightly Rhydanne, muffled in furs when we walk in the snow.

  ‘I’ll telegraph you,’ I said.

  ‘If I’m not at Wrought, I’ll be at the Castle.’ She tapped Caprice’s side, started forward and with Eleonora and her escort rode out of camp. I ran and took off, bound for Micawater.

  CHAPTER 17

  Micawater

  I flew non-stop through the evening, all night and damp dawn. Sometime around ten a.m. next morning the ground assumed the familiar lush rolls of the Mica River valley, which was excellent progress. Nimbus clouds piled high over the Foin Hills tinted woodpigeon grey and pink. The rumbustious river caught their colours, churned them up and reflected them skywards like the iridescence of ancient glass. I turned and followed it down the valley.