Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  ‘Hey!’ I called. ‘Hey, it’s breakfast time.’

  ‘No breakfast.’

  ‘Coffee? Water?’

  He lumbered off to a side room and returned with a mug. He thrust it between the bars so roughly that half the water slopped down my front, and he started leering at my breasts. I guzzled the water, then went and pissed noisily in the bucket. When I’d finished the policeman was leering more than ever. He had no tattoos. He was a governor’s lackey.

  ‘They’ve come for you, petal,’ he said.

  ‘Stop calling me “petal”.’

  ‘But you’re covered in ’em. I like ’em. And your red, red lips.’

  I wiped a hand across my chapped mouth. Then some door crashed open. The policeman started, gave a bow and disappeared into the side room. Two soldiers entered, walking a barrel round on its rim between them. One of my barrels – so they’d discovered my cache in the sea cave. I watched, very on-edge, but with a strange tinge of triumph. They’ve taken away my freedom like she said they would. They’re probably going to hang me. But we hit them, we did! The Castle tasted our sting!

  Jant followed the barrel in and placed his weird-looking hand on it. Hatred roiled my guts immediately I saw him. Then in came King Saker, the fucker who’d shot me and ruthlessly murdered four of my troupe. Are these two joined at the hip?

  The soldiers stopped. One of them produced a jemmy and levered up the lid. Jant nodded at them, and they removed the planks and left. He gazed at me and settled back until he perched on the edge of the barrel.

  He’d lost one eyebrow, his flat, slanty cheek was tomato red and his neck was bandaged. Satisfied, I dwelt on this while he smoothed the surface of the gunpowder and examined me. So I had the chance to examine him. He looked wiry and tired but you can’t fool me. He’s two hundred years old! And Saker’s over a thousand! Jant’s a ’danne who started off a shopkeeper, like one of us, and now look at that silk shirt! He fucks on piles of banknotes and swigs champagne all day with his posh wife.

  He coughed into his hand. ‘Connell, why are you killing us?’

  I said nothing.

  ‘Why did you steal powder?’

  I said not a word.

  ‘Did the blast jar your wits?’

  ‘Did it blow yours clean away?’

  ‘It nearly burnt my fucking lungs out, thank you so very much.’

  ‘You shot Lagan.’

  ‘We destroyed your schooner.’

  ‘Oh. Murderers!’

  ‘That’s a bit rich. Mist wants to know how you could afford such a ship, and who built it.’

  ‘It fell from the sky.’

  ‘I ask again …’

  ‘It fell off a really big wagon!’

  Then Saker growled, ‘Why did you kill my daughter?’

  I didn’t say anything. His immense age made me queasy. In comparison, I felt as if my end was very close. Which, of course, it is.

  ‘Why did you kill her?’ he said.

  I gulped. ‘I want to kill all the immortals, until the Circle falls apart.’

  ‘Immortals? Not me?’

  ‘Just Eszai.’

  ‘Not the Queen? Not my little chicks?’

  ‘I hate the wankers who call themselves the Best In The World!’

  ‘Why? Without them, you’re Insect paper.’ He came to the bars. I backed until I pressed against the whitewashed wall. That put more than an arms’ length between us. I couldn’t get over the fact he was from the deep past but looked like any well-built soldier.

  I rallied. ‘I’ll kill because we’ve nowhere else to go. No matter what I do, I can’t get anywhere. No matter how hard I work, I’ll always be your fucking slave. You’ve got it all sewn up … you rich pricks! You have all the money and the rest of us have nothing. I hate you! And I’ll destroy you, because the world has changed.’

  ‘Damn straight the world has changed!’ snapped Jant. ‘I changed it!’

  ‘Did I kill Tern?’ I asked.

  He had another coughing fit over his sleeve. ‘You tried! Why? Do you understand what you’re doing?’ He dipped one hand into the blasting powder and brought it up, letting the shiny grains trickle between his fingers. ‘Tell me, where are the other barrels? …Tell me, Connell Rose. Make the rest of your life slightly easier.’

  ‘You found them in the cave.’

  He dug both hands in it and flung it in the air. ‘Ten! There were ten in the cave! Where are the others?’

  I smiled. So Rax had managed to get them onto the wagons.

  Jant yelled and hurled a handful of pellets at me. ‘The court will wipe that off your face!’ He slid off the barrel and paced up and down, pushing grains of double-C powder out of the way with his toe.

  ‘How many more of you?’ said the king. He didn’t show his wealth overtly but it’s there. His understated shirt was a quality weave, full-grain leather formed the seat and inside leg of his riding breeches, his spurs were shaped like talons, and his sword was very swish. But his hair was flattened at the front, spread about like a tussock where a rabbit’s been sitting.

  ‘How many bombers?’ he repeated, so threateningly that Jant looked up.

  ‘Hundreds.’

  ‘All Roses?’

  ‘Not even all Litanee, but everyone the Emperor crushes beneath his heel.’

  ‘San has never crushed anybody! You’re insane.’

  ‘Our lives are so quashed by you, so stifled, so frustrating, we won’t stop until we’ve killed every last Eszai.’

  Jant slipped the keys in his pocket.

  ‘Just like Cyan Lightning.’ I said. ‘I hid half a barrel on her coach suspension. I wonder if she smelt the slow fuse?’

  He swept on Jant in sudden rage. ‘Get her out!’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Unlock the cell!’

  ‘No!’

  He kicked the bars. ‘Give me the fucking keys!’

  ‘What would you do?’

  ‘I won’t leave a mark.’

  ‘No!’

  He paced across the room and kicked the opposite wall. Then he drew his sword, pushed it between the bars, and would have plunged it into my chest, but I screamed.

  ‘Saker!’ said Jant. ‘Do you want your guards to hear?’

  ‘She murdered my daughter!’

  I screamed most heartily until he withdrew his sword.

  ‘Cyan was worth a thousand of you!’ he said.

  ‘We’re all the same!’

  ‘Oh, bullshit! Did you invent rifles?’

  ‘Can you shoe a horse?’

  ‘She’s insane,’ he said to Jant, who was regarding me wryly, with sparkling eyes. He can’t be amused, surely? It must be the reflection on the Rhydanne tapetum lucidum. I peered closely – yes, just like she told me, he’s got green eyes with vertical pupils. They close narrower than human pupils, to cut out snow glare, and the membrane reflects light, so he has integral sunglasses. He doesn’t need to wear sunglasses at all, but she said he does to hide the effect of drugs. I can’t use the sun glare trick on him, and he might try it on me. He was agile, with a smooth, fast flow to his movements, a distance racer.

  I told him, ‘You still think you’re a Hacilith worker, but you’re not. You’re one of them.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘What are you doing to my people?’ I asked Saker. ‘Expelling them from Awia? Depriving us of the few pence we earn a year?’

  ‘It isn’t your right to cut corn.’ He sank onto a chair and half-spread heavy wings, like an eagle’s, but that didn’t daunt me. They’re going to hang me, so what else can he do? I no longer cared for my safety, for anything. He glanced at Jant. ‘I hate speaking Morenzian when I’m rusty,’ he said, a lot faster in Awian.

  ‘You’re doing fine.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken it so much since Savory.’

  ‘Or since my first week in the Castle,’ said Jant.

  ‘It was the only way I could communicate with you.’

  ‘Ah! She is fluent in Aw
ian. She’s listening.’ Jant came to the bars. ‘Connell, is your life really so awful that you’re willing to die, for the chance of taking an immortal with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You don’t fear death?’

  ‘No. As I’ve never loved life. When the Castle hangs me a hundred more will rise, howling with indignation, to start where I left off.’

  ‘Which Eszai’s next? Who are you bombing? Give me a name.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Tell me which place. Whose house?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You must have the most incredible mind to co-ordinate your groups. You have the prowess of an Eszai.’

  ‘She …’

  ‘Doesn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, she – oh. Shit.’

  He stared at me. ‘Who is “she”? Another woman? Your friend? Your leader?’ He grasped the bars. ‘I thought you were the leader.’

  I’ve said too much. I shut up completely.

  Saker pointed at Jant’s pocket. ‘Let me in the cell and we’ll soon find out.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot!’

  ‘I won’t break any bones.’

  ‘I’m not letting you be escort if you’re going to hurt her.’ Jant pressed his face to the bars so hard their pressure turned his red cheek white. ‘Connell, it doesn’t matter if you’ve stopped feeling conversationally inclined. When you stand in front of the Emperor, you’ll find yourself telling him everything. Silver tongue, silver ears; he’s got the silver fucking lot. You can’t even prepare yourself for the terror.’

  He returned to the barrel and leant on it. He produced a bloodstained handkerchief and coughed into it, closed his eyes and swallowed – I thought he was about to faint.

  ‘Watch her all the way,’ he said to Saker. ‘I’ve seen plenty of Rose around, and a fool could break her out of here.’

  ‘Not that they are fools,’ I said in Awian.

  ‘Not that they are.’

  He looked me up and down, reading my tattoos like a book. He could have been from Litanee, the expert way he read me, and I hated that I couldn’t read him so easily. Northerners don’t wear their heart in pictures on their skin. Awians are aloof, Rhydanne are enigmatic, and immortals are as adept at hiding their chequered pasts as they are their feelings. We Litanee, by contrast, are wide open.

  ‘We can’t scare her,’ he said eventually.

  ‘No. Do we “bombers” scare you?’

  ‘Try me, Connell.’

  ‘I did. Did it burn, much?’

  He folded his handkerchief carefully. ‘Be grateful that it’s me who caught you and not the Queen,’ he added.

  ‘We should throw her to Leon,’ said Saker. He stretched a wing and scratched between the feathers with a hand that seemed stronger every minute. I felt pliant and vulnerable, like a hare in the hunter’s grip. He could twist me apart.

  There was a rap on the door and a fyrd captain entered. He stood on the threshold, anxiously regarding the grains scattered all over the floor like waxed black rabbit droppings. Jant motioned him impatiently into the room.

  ‘The prison carriage is ready,’ he said.

  Jant nodded. ‘And outriders?’

  ‘Thirty.’

  ‘Only thirty? This is suspicious,’ he said to Saker. ‘They’ve taken too long and not brought enough.’

  ‘I scoured the ranks to find the best,’ said the captain.

  I called, ‘Thank you for your diligence!’

  Jant scowled at me. ‘Stop wasting time.’ He threw the keys to the captain. The unshaven lackey wore a brigandine steel plate jacket. He opened my cell door and held his hands for me to imitate, so he could put cuffs on them, but instead of raising my wrists I clicked imaginary shackles on him!

  Next thing I knew, I was in a headlock. He grabbed my arms and cuffed them. Then he twisted a fistful of hair and would have dragged me to the coach but Jant said, ‘No! Be civilised!’

  Saker said something laconic in a language I’ve never heard before, and Jant snapped, ‘What’s up with you? You’ve turned savage!’

  The captain flung the keys onto the desk, grasped my handcuff chain and yanked me out of the cell.

  Outside, a handful of dust-stained featherback horsemen accompanied us up to the cliff top and the waiting coach. Allen and my thirty gypsies, disguised as Cobalt guards, were on horseback behind it, with muskets. The coach was grey steel, thick enough to stop a ball. Its windows were barred, like an Insect cage wagon, and the jail’s own coachman was climbing up onto the driver’s seat.

  I noticed immediately that its four horses were Turvy Horses. Then glanced away lest I reveal it. I knew my love wouldn’t leave me! I was alert – every muscle!

  Behind us, Saker, on an Eske courser with his archers, was distracted into watching a chap in a seaman’s coat running towards us past the last houses of the town. Ahead of us, the grass of the cliff top, then Maple Wood where Allen had fused my wagons.

  The captain opened the prison carriage door revealing two benches. I stepped up inside – not easy with my hands cuffed – and sat down. Jant swept onto the other and slammed the door.

  ‘Forward!’ the coachman cried. We didn’t move.

  Jant was preoccupied with trimming his pistol, but this roused him and he glanced to the window.

  ‘Hey!’ yelled the coachman. ‘Walk on!’ But the horses remained stock still.

  ‘For god’s sake!’ Jant spat.

  We heard the coachman crack the reins, then he plied the whip. The four mares, however, didn’t budge. Jant poked the muzzle of his pistol against my ribs and yelled out the window. ‘Whatever you’re trying, I’ll blow her away!’

  Then he cried out. The captain had shoved his musket against Jant’s forehead. Jant gingerly drew his head back from the window and the captain, astride his horse, extended his arm so the barrel followed him in, pressed so firmly to his forehead it puckered the skin. As the captain reached out his arm, his cuff rode up and I saw around his wrist, his Rose tattoos.

  ‘Drop that thing,’ he said to Jant. ‘Or I’ll blast your Eszai brains all over the inside of this coach.’

  Jant screwed his barrel more painfully into my ribs. ‘In the name of the Castle—’ he said.

  ‘Fuck the Castle. In the name of the Muse,’ the captain said steadily.

  I felt a surge of hope, but he was trying to stare Jant down, and realising that the owner of those Rhydanne eyes wouldn’t submit. ‘I’ll kill you,’ he snarled.

  ‘You won’t,’ said Jant.

  The captain cocked the hammer. ‘Let her out.’

  I followed Jant’s rapid logic: If I die, I lose all eternity. A gypsy lass isn’t worth it. She can’t escape, anyway. He pulled the muzzle from my ribs and opened the door.

  I stepped out, relieved. The captain was still looking into Jant’s bizarre eyes. ‘ “In the name of the Castle” won’t work any more.’

  ‘It never fucking did.’

  ‘This is the end of your immortality.’

  The captain’s finger bent to the trigger and his head exploded. It flew into three parts in a burst of slime. His musket fell, and his body slopped forward onto the stallion’s neck.

  I stared in the direction of the shot. Saker was lowering his gun from his shoulder. I grabbed the horse’s rein and glanced down to where a piece of the captain’s nose and cheeks lay on the ground like a mask. Whatever that shot had been, it wasn’t a musket.

  My gypsies raised their muskets and let Saker and the Awians have it. The noise was deafening. Bangs and balls pinging off shields. Two Awians slid to the ground – then one Rose exploded horribly. Now they’d have to reload. I feared the Awians’ arrows.

  The stallion shied sideways, yanked my arm. It was going to bolt. I jumped onto its shoulders, pushing the corpse upright, saddle pommel behind me. We train these Turvy Horses to obey the opposite commands.

  ‘Whoa!’ I yelled, and he lurched as if spurred, then went like the wind.

  The corpse
was flopping behind me, its lower jaw still attached by the skin. Galloping at full pelt, with the stallion’s hooves bashing the ground, throwing turf in my face, I gripped with my thighs, twisted, and searched its trouser pocket for the handcuff key. Found it, wrestled it out of the pocket and stuffed it in my mouth.

  The Awians in a cloud of smoke zipped arrows at my Roses. Three fell, the others galloped away. Arrows flew after them and another four Roses reeled from the saddles.

  The coachman bellowed and shot at me but god knows where his ball went. I rived my horse into the line of the coach and heard Saker yell as the steel chassis blotted him from view.

  The corpse was bashing its slimy chin on my shoulder. There was a tongue in there, too. Its boots were in the stirrups and my bare feet hung loose, bouncing with the striking hooves. I unlocked my shackles and dropped them. With one hand I leant for the reins, with the other I grabbed the corpse’s arm and pulled it round me in a hug.

  The stallion was neck out, charging in panic. I let him have his head, the wood was in front and nearer every second. My friends in their fyrd uniforms were belting away on the cliff road, out of range of the archers, but where was Allen?

  I glanced back and saw him on my tail, galloping his hardest, fyrd jacket flapping. Jant was out of the coach and levelling his pistol. I saw a puff of smoke and heard the crack, and Allen rolled forward and blood burst from him all down his horse’s neck. Miraculously, he didn’t fall. But neither did he straighten up. He slumped over its neck and bumped with every hoof beat.

  Jant started running – and actually closed the gap! I screamed. The stallion pounding under me couldn’t run faster no matter how hard I kicked it. I forced it at the closest part of the wood. Rhydanne are sprint hunters. If I can outride Jant he’ll give up and take to the air.

  A thwack, and I felt a point stab my back. I glanced behind. Saker was gaining on me at a gallop, past Jant, bending his bow. His arrow had gone clean through the corpse’s coat of plates, chest, and was raking my back.

  I pulled the corpse’s arm over my head and a second later three arrows dropped vertically into it, wedged in the plates.

  Its slack jaw and horrible chin were spattering blood and muck into my hair, down my front. I thought it’d be my shield but Saker’s shooting straight through it!