‘Yes. Everything.’
‘There’s a woman with a rose.’
‘That’s Val,’ I said.
Swallow rested her head on my shoulder, tapping a beat and regarding the painting, which was the best I could render, given that it’s the whole left panel of the porchwork. ‘Teon and Lewin are this side,’ I said, tapping the panel on my right.
‘Teon and Lewin …’
‘It’s a story. A Litanee story.’
‘How does it go?’
‘Like this … A lady named Val lived in Diw not so very long ago, as the Eszai see it, and she was beautiful. So beautiful, in fact, such fun and so outgoing, that she had two suitors. One was Teon, a warrior, and the other was Lewin, an ingenious craftsman. Teon and Lewin loved her intensely. Teon was courageous and headstrong, Lewin was quiet and clever, and she couldn’t choose between them.’
‘She should have both,’ said Swallow.
‘This wasn’t Awia. This was Litanee.’
‘She should choose neither.’
‘Then it wouldn’t be a story. Val said to Teon and Lewin, “In Governor Aver-Falconet’s palace there’s a garden where a rose tree grows. Its flowers bloom dove-grey. Whoever brings me back a grey rose is the man I shall marry.” So Teon set off at once for Hacilith, and during the night he tried to climb the palace wall, and the guards arrested him, mistook him for an assassin and threw him in jail.
‘Lewin stayed at home and made a rose from green and dove-grey silk. It was crafted so skilfully that Val was duped and married him. They settled down together in the most comfortable house in Diw, and time passed, and they had five children. And ten years later, Teon was set free from jail.
‘He came storming to Diw and said to Val, “I’ve been locked up for ten long years, for following your wish, and you’ve married this fraud! Look, there’s the rose on the mantelpiece! Hasn’t it crossed your mind that a real rose would have wilted by now?”
‘And Val said, “Who the hell are you?”
‘ “I’m Teon! Don’t you remember sending me to fetch a rose?”
‘Val said, “You’ve no right to come barging in here, where I’m comfortable with my happy family and growing prosperous and fat. I don’t know you. I don’t care what problems have beset you. Too much water has flowed under the bridge since you walked away. Have you come to harass me when I hardly remember you and didn’t even recognise you? Haven’t you got a life? Grow up and clear off!”
‘Teon left and neither Val nor Lewin ever saw him again. They lived in affluence and peace for the rest of their days and their children grew up wise and happy, and so on, until the nth generation, because the moral of this story is that no one appreciates a person from their distant past resurfacing and unsettling them, especially if they’ve wronged them, especially if, in the meantime, they’ve changed.
‘You should never return to people you’d find have altered beyond imagining, and you’re no longer welcome. Teon made Val uncomfortable and she threw him out. He should have contemned her and never set eyes on her again.’
‘That’s what we’re doing,’ Swallow said. ‘Setting out for pastures new.’
‘It’s a gypsy story. To remind us never to return to Litanee. We travel the world, and it’s harsh, my love.’
‘Say that again.’
‘My love. My love. You don’t realise how awful my life was before you came. You’ve given me stability. You’ve given me purpose. You’re the girl I needed to give me meaning.’
I wanted to protect her. My strong arm will always guard her from the severe world and, in the niche of peace I defend for her, she’ll be able to compose, for me.
‘Get your guitar. Let’s sing that roundelay.’
She sang. And I drove on, over the pale brown leaves, through Eske and into the evening, for these short days of autumn are either dawn or dusk, with nothing in between.
CHAPTER 33
Connell: Love in the time of gunpowder
Swallow wrote to me hysterically, and I picked up the letter at Awndyn post office when I returned from Tris. I retrieved my wagon from Allen and drove to the manor.
I pulled up on the grass, unfastened Biddy and went to the window of Swallow’s study. A lamp burned inside. I tapped on the pane and a blurry shape moved within, resolved into Swallow on the other side of the glass. She opened one light of the window.
‘Connell!’
‘It’s all right. I got your letter.’
‘I thought you’d left me.’
‘No.’
‘Abandoned me like the others. Rejected me like San did.’
‘No.’
‘So where have you been?’
‘To Tris, working on a clipper. I brought some tea … all kinds of herbs, actually.’
She stared at me, then disappeared into the room. A second later she unlocked the main door and beckoned me through, into her study. She sat at her desk, and I knelt on the floor at her feet. On the green couch lay a silver flute bent in half, an oboe and clarinet with the wood splintered halfway down their length, as if she’d stamped on them.
I hugged her calves and rested my head on her lap. ‘I’m yours, Swallow. I never would have gone if I thought this would happen. If I knew you’d need me.’
‘What were you doing?’
‘Adventuring.’
Her frostiness melted and she began to play with my hair. ‘Oh, Connell. It’s the gypsy wanderlust, but I love you for it.’
‘I’ll never leave you again,’ I said, emphatically. She told me her diagnosis. Tears pricked my eyes. She was my love, who loved the world so much, and made marvellous music from it and for it. I couldn’t think of her not existing any more. With the sadness rose great fear. Swallow’s frightened of death, too. Of ceasing and stopping, because she loves the world so much. There’s always something new to put into music. She always embraces the next inspiration, investigates it, throws herself into composing. And now … I began to cry. I squeezed her calves and pressed my cheek on her warm lap.
‘So will you never leave me, now I’m dying?’
‘I’ll never leave you, Swallow. I’m your champion, I’ll fight for you.’
‘And stronger than ever.’ She wound a lock of hair around her finger.
I kissed her knees. She said nothing – her shocking hatred flickered like flames in the very air she exhaled.
‘Please,’ I said gently. ‘Become a Rose, live in my wagon. We can start your tattoos.’
‘But the Castle …’
‘Forget the Castle. Give it up and join us.’
She said nothing for a long time. I pressed my lips against her velvet thighs, dedicating myself as her warrior, heart and soul. Then she kind of smirked. ‘The outdoor life …’ she said bitterly.
‘We laugh at the Castle.’
‘… is diminuendo … a pianissimo.’
‘No. Vivace, Swallow. Con bravura, giocoso. If you join us you’ll see we disdain the Eszai. Put your hatred aside … we can live in peace. With your money we need never work again. We can play the guitar. We can party in the forest, dance in the olive groves. You can build up your strength, throw your stick away. We need never touch the Castle’s silly world again. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?’ I looked up, at her eyes deep with genius. She’s achieved all this, I thought, and now she has to uncouple herself from it. Unfocussed moments of abstraction, distraction and contradiction passed over her eyes, like fast-blown clouds reflected in the surface of a pool.
‘I’m going to kill them,’ she said. Her voice was leaden. She went rigid, staring across the room at nothing – into some hell of her own devising. ‘All of them.’
‘No. Stop trying to be an immortal. Be yourself.’
‘I’m going to be the one who kills them.’
‘They’re going to die anyway. They’re just putting it off. Relax.’
Of course it was too late.
I pulled down her wing and stroked the soft feathers. They smelt of almonds a
nd so did her hair. For all her ferocity, she was defenceless. She was so passionate, she feels so deeply. I’d protect her, come what may; I was heady with warmth for her. Round and round her finger looped my hair distractedly. She was embroiled in her anger, it’d been burning too long, but I still believed, then, that with months of perseverance I could quench it.
I wrapped my arms around her, hugging the second shoulderblades of her wings, feeling the warm feathers move in the skin. She held me with her wings’ little fingers.
‘I’m a thing of their past now,’ she said. ‘Saker got married, and Jant thinks opera boxes are for debauchery.’
‘Forget them. Come and live at peace.’
She tests me this way. She rubs in how closely she lived with kings and Eszai, and what firm friends they’d been. She knew all the details of their lives and predilections, but they’re just distant names to me. They rejected her from their circle of friendship as well as from the Circle … so she said. But I’m not such a fool as to fall for her constructions: did they really reject her or did she tear herself away?
‘We’ll leave the Rooted People’s world,’ I said.
She woke. ‘Oh! You got a ship tattoo.’
‘It’s the clipper.’
She bent her head and rubbed her lips on its scabbed surface. ‘How long will it take to heal?’
‘Not long.’ I brushed my hands down her back, over her hips and thighs. Her muscles were tight but she moaned and, delighted, I massaged her legs. She is a precious jewel whom I want to save, but I can’t. And she’s so very complicated. Two complicated people shouldn’t be lovers because it creates too much complexity, which leads to misery. Fortunately I’m straightforward, so I’m well matched with her – I’ll try to make everything all right, and show her the way. ‘My next tattoo will be your loveheart. They’ll shower us with rose petals as we dance.’
‘Tornado has a tattoo of the Castle’s sun,’ she murmured. ‘I’m going to kill him.’
‘Sh …’
‘All of them.’
‘Join us. We can roll anywhere.’
‘But San would still exist.’
‘Who cares?’
Beyond the windows, the flat cloud base flashed pale with the lighthouse beams. My horse moved to and fro, cropping the lawn.
Swallow’s tone hardened. ‘San cannot be allowed to exist. He cannot keep going the way he has: never letting in any decent talent. His Eszai are corrupt.’
I sighed, temporarily beaten.
‘Oh, Connell …’ She leant to me; her full lips brushed my cheek. One hand went under my breast, and the other around my waist, and I opened my mouth as she pressed her lips on mine and kissed me deeply. ‘…We can kill them. All of them. And this is how we’ll do it …’
CHAPTER 34
Swallow in Maple Wood, Drussiter
I am overwhelmed by hate. Hatred consumes me. Anger has long since become hatred, and I hate with the intensity of fury.
My hatred of the Castle knows no bounds. I am totally given over to it. I want to tear down the Castle, destroy it, rive it to shreds. I am pure wrath. I am the Colossus of Death. I will stand tall above the earth and pour oceans of black hatred on the land and the seas, and I will sink the Castle. I will flex my fingers and unleash a destructive force as great as the Insects; I will become immortal in my notoriety, and soon people will say, ‘Swallow, who destroyed the Circle, did mankind its greatest service.’
I sit here in my wagon, just as I sat alone in my house, and think of the immortals enjoying themselves. In my manor I went about in absolute hatred, not able to concentrate on the running of the place. I moved as if through thick mud, so cloyed and hindered and dragged down was I by hate. When I grew tired, the hatred became despair, and back again to searing hate when my energy revived.
I could think of nothing else but the insults I’ve been subjected to. They replayed in my mind night and day. I ruminated on them every second – I was trying in vain to understand why San treated me so badly, why I was just his plaything. And my mind dwelt on every affront and eventually I had no other thoughts. I was a broken instrument: the music no longer came to me: I could no longer compose.
So I gave up my manor to direct my hatred. It was easy, and here I am: free – but as free as a gypsy, not an immortal. Time is still passing and my death is drawing very near. Hatred sets my face in a snarl as I think of the Eszai wallowing in decadence: Jant with his needle, Tornado with his feasts, Tern fizzing with fame on the front row watching the catwalk. The hardships of the world never touch them. Well, now they’ll learn.
Other people enjoy their simple pleasures: friends and happy families. But that’s because they’ve spent their lives pursuing those successes, while I have spent my life composing, in the hope of getting into the Castle. Which, as it turns out, is a vain hope. Of course, I knew all along that immortality is not for musicians, and if I wanted to be Eszai I should have made myself a soldier instead. Could I have Challenged the Artillerist or the Grenadier? Of course not. A talented musician is what I am, and so I will never gain eternal life. If all my symphonies are played hundreds of years from now, beyond the lifetimes of every current Eszai, so what? What fucking good does that do me?
I hate them. As long as one lives, I won’t rest. I’ll destroy each and every one, tear down all they stand for. How dare San block me? I’ll rend the Circle apart!
The pain in my chest is getting worse and some days I feel nauseous. But my disease won’t rob me of my genius. Time won’t destroy my talent. I won’t die in a sick bed, I’ll go down fighting. Bring on the dying faster! The Emperor won’t let me fight for him, so I’ll snap every link in the Circle. Every Eszai will feel his friends die one by one – I hope it feels like death fifty times over!
Hatred so strong can’t last: no overwhelming emotion can. It either drives you mad or with time it metamorphoses and fades. I’ve nurtured it for ten years and I fear it breaking, so now’s the time to act. If I don’t act it’ll burn itself out and I’ll end my days strumming a guitar in the woods with Connell, while my disease eats me up from within.
She’s returned to camp, with her troupe, though I didn’t see them arrive. They’re very good at not being seen, which is why I’ve employed them.
I put my emotion aside. It sustains me, but I must concentrate and need a clear mind. Revenge is a dish best served cold, they say. Who says that? They’re wrong. Revenge is a dish best served at eight hundred degrees centigrade: the temperature at which gunpowder burns.
I jumped out of the wagon and joined their ring around the fire. Connell’s arrow wound pains her, but it hasn’t slowed her down. My music and my words have convinced her I should be Eszai. I’ve stoked her with the same hatred, and it drives her great energy.
The seed of such hatred exists in us all, and we were once as innocent as you. And if these events happened to you, you’d turn out the same.
Looking back, the path on which I was set seems inevitable. The Emperor compounded my hatred as precisely as the gunpowder in a mill. A mixture of fury, bitterness and resentment in the proportions of 75:15:10. The bitterness supplies fuel, the fury ignites with a white heat, and the resentment burns long and slow.
The Emperor mixed these ingredients together, not me. I am only the vessel. I used to feel hope, creativity, and a willingness to fight for the Fourlands. I applied to the Castle and San turned me away: again and again he magnified my enmity. He polished it into the lens that sets light to the fuse. I even tried battling Insects to show him I could, and they injured me so much I lost the ability to bear children. I only started to walk unaided when I joined the gypsy life.
So San poured rancour into the mixture, and lastly malice, when he made me a laughing stock in front of thousands. Capelin was accepted, and I was rejected – now see what I can do! All my feelings have been mixed wet and finely ground into a powder that dried slowly, slowly: so that it won’t explode at once but, coated with self-restraint, will stay deadly
potential until the last.
CHAPTER 35
Back to Jant: Audience with the Emperor
Tern kissed me awake. ‘Love? You’re back.’
I blinked at her blearily, ‘What time is it?’
‘Carillon’s just struck six.’
‘Damn,’ I leapt up. ‘Your junkie husband has to report to the Emperor.’
She slipped out of bed, brushing the ivy that entwines our four-poster. ‘You’re covered in bandages.’
‘Connell got me, at the cove.’
‘Are you badly hurt?’
‘Ha ha. What’s “hurt”?’
‘Oh, god, Jant. Are you on cat?’
I felt her disappointment twist me into hard-heartedness, the only way I could safely go. I didn’t want her to know I’ve been using … but at the same time I needed her to take these phials away. Save me from them. But I couldn’t tell her that.
She came to look into my eyes. I gave her the last line first, it saves time: ‘Tern, my love, I have an illness, it controls me. I can’t stay clean when I’m in this much pain. But if you help me … I can stop before I become addicted.’
‘I’m here for you, Jant. Just don’t lie to me.’ She examined my bandages, ducking all around. I reached out the wing I’d sheltered behind in the explosion and tickled her with shrunken flight feathers.
‘They’re all burns.’
‘Yes. The blast threw me to my knees, like this …’
‘Oh, sweetheart.’
‘It made me spread my wings instinctively. Which … didn’t work.’
‘Telegraphs are pouring in. Did you see them?’
‘Yes, there’ll be a tsunami waiting for me in Lisade. It’s been clicking since first light,’ I said, and then I felt Sirocco pull on the Circle so powerfully I cried out. Tern stared at me in concern. ‘Sirocco … he just yanked on the Circle as if it’s his last breath … Come on, Tassy, it’s not elastic. He’s only got hours left, I think … No. Minutes. Can you feel it?’
‘Not yet.’
‘It feels like it’s sucking me inside out.’ As if it was pulling me out of my body. I looked at my hand, and was surprised not to see another ghostly hand next to it, the sensation of dislocation was so strong.
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