Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  Tern fastened her dress quickly. ‘I’m coming with you. I’ll tell San he should’ve made Swallow immortal.’

  ‘Bet you won’t. Ah, shit! It’s going to break.’

  She ran to me and hugged me. I could tell she was feeling the vertigo now; she clawed her fingers into my feathers. The sensation started to tighten, to a white point of nausea. Our bodies contracted, feeling the Emperor striving to hold the Circle together. To stop Sirocco from tearing it. And you feel it stretching, thinner and thinner, tighter and sicker with anticipation, and tighter and tenser, so thin you can see through it.

  I can’t breathe!

  San working hard to keep it from breaking, thinner still – and it goes. Ripped open. Out beams a flash of light to a plane of infinity. It snapped closed. All was dark. The feeling of safety flooded back. And our bodies relaxed.

  Tern was limp, clutching my feathers. She seemed to be on the brink of fainting. I rubbed her shoulders, muttering, ‘Please, San, try to be faster.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Tern. ‘Uh … Poor Sirocco … What a way to die.’

  ‘Fourth degree burns.’

  ‘I hate feeling someone die.’

  ‘You didn’t feel him die, love, you felt him break the Circle.’

  ‘It’s the same thing.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. We didn’t go through whatever he felt … thank god.’ But then, if Sirocco had been burnt to eschar he wouldn’t feel pain. His nerve endings would have been seared away, and his skin sloughed off like black puff pastry. The more burnt you are, the less pain you feel. It’s the smallest of mercies.

  I released Tern. ‘It took San a second to mend it. We’re all a second older.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  I stripped off Fulmer’s shirt, put on a t-shirt, rifled through the wardrobe for a pair of jeans, then picked my sword belt from the door hook and buckled it on. ‘On the battlefield, yes. A second lost in that fucking vertigo is enough for an Insect to grab me.’

  ‘Is everyone else OK?’

  ‘Tornado got hit.’

  I explained as she descended the spiral steps ahead of me and out into the bright morning, the colours of the lawns and walls of Carillon so brilliant we shivered. When the Circle breaks it always makes you wonder what your own death will be. If Swallow gets me, I hope it’s quick. I’d rather be blown into a cloud of pink meat than suffer burns like Sirocco.

  Tern dawdled, staring at the ground, so I took her hand. She gulped. ‘I’ve always known him …’

  ‘Come on, or there’ll be more! Who knows who’s next?’

  ‘That sick bitch Connell!’

  We passed quickly along the front of Carillon, past its red and white conical towers. The breeze breathed between its ornamented chimneys, the semi-circular pediments, and the cupola of the clock tower.

  ‘Where did you get fifty thousand pounds to offer as a reward?’

  ‘It’s the insurance money from Wrought. Some of it.’ She glanced at me. ‘Yes, Simoon has his uses. But it’s been no good so far. No one knows anything about Connell.’

  We passed the fantastic, baroque carving around the windows: Carillon’s griffons, cobras, storks and seahorses, and turned into the cool shadow of the Breckan loggia, then through the Starglass Quadrangle. The South Façade rose, noble and strong, a symbol of the Emperor’s message of concord and resilience, which would be great if the world wasn’t falling apart.

  The halberdiers in the tympanum portal saw us coming and stepped back. We walked between them, entered the dim narthex and paused, holding hands, smelling the frankincense which always recalls us to the day I brought her here, to be married. We had paused, just like this, beholding each other. Tern had looked incredible in a long, lace dress. I had made a statement, wearing an immaculate copy of Rhydanne clothes my tailor had contrived, furlined suede with wolf teeth and its hood draped down the back. She’d been so nervous, it amplified her beauty. It had been the first time Tern had ever set foot in the Throne Room. But she’d spoken to San without a quake in her honey-hued voice, and I loved her the more.

  We kissed. ‘Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready.’

  ‘Let’s do it, catkin.’

  We entered, and walked down the crimson carpet like the day we married, Tern sighing, the Throne Room shining around us. We reached the dais and bowed before the Emperor. There were no shadows this early, and the air was like spring water. The mosaic, gold in glass, sparkled all the way up into the octagonal hollow of the spire above the Throne.

  San looked most unsmiling. He said, ‘Comet, as you know the Grenadier just died. I hear the Roses blew the Lowespass fortress magazine. Hurricane brought it upon us, and Sirocco was the blameless victim. I have been receiving your correspondence, the last letter being that you had lost Connell. What has happened since?’

  I related everything. ‘So Tornado will return in the next few hours to treat his shoulder, Rayne is on her way, and King Saker is bringing Rax’s Roses whom he captured in Awndyn.’

  ‘How is the search proceeding in Litanee?’

  ‘Aver-Falconet telegraphed that he’s combed Diw and Vertigo, and the surrounding woods and villages, and found nothing. The people of Vertigo clam up, they don’t respond well to being questioned by troops from Hacilith.’

  ‘You go, and speak to them.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘If you catch Swallow alive, bring her to me. She wanted an eighth audience, did she not?’

  Tern flinched.

  San said, ‘Swallow is more important than the bomber troupes. But I wish to speak to them as well.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  Tern began quivering with anger and fear. She was staring at the columns in the apse behind the throne. When I agreed with San she burst out: ‘My lord Emperor, you’re sending him into explosions!’

  ‘Which he described most luridly.’

  ‘What are you doing to protect us?’

  I spread a wing and pulled her to me. She shouldn’t be questioning San! In the crook of my wing I felt her trembling.

  ‘Lady Wrought,’ San said calmly. ‘I have tripled the guard on each gate. None of them are Litanee, and we have searched the entire Castle. There are no powder charges here. All the immortals Comet requested to return are safe. He will apprehend Swallow and the risk will soon be ended.’

  ‘One of these fireballs will kill him! Swallow’s bombing us because we’re loyal to you! Who’s next? Your Messenger?’

  ‘Tern,’ I said. ‘It’s what I’m for.’

  ‘No! You swore to fight Insects! Not to track down some mad musician!’

  ‘He swore to help me preserve peace,’ said San.

  ‘You always say Eszai are forbidden to fight Zascai. We’re supposed to advise them! Yet you’re sending him to kill them.’

  ‘I did not order him to kill Swallow. I asked him to bring her here.’

  ‘How can he, without bloodshed?’

  ‘He is permitted to defend himself.’

  Tern’s dress clung to her body with perspiration. ‘Swallow must have been planning this for years! She’s turned all her genius to the task. Every bomb sends Jant – Comet – into a trap for three, four, five more!’

  ‘He can out-think her.’

  Tern burst into tears.

  The Emperor rose, descended the steps, and rested his hand on her shoulder. She raised her face in astonishment, and looked into his eyes, more from surprise than audacity, gave a little nod and stopped crying.

  ‘Follow me,’ said San. He walked away, through the last spacious arch of the west arcade, and across the smaller aisle beyond. He went to a door which matched, in mirror image, the one to his private chamber on the right side of the Throne Room, which no-one’s ever seen inside.

  He pushed this door and it swung open. We followed the Emperor into a dim, cool staircase. As we walked behind him up the narrow curve I sought out Tern’s hand and squeezed it. She looked at me with brimming eyes, a look of deep and ho
nest affection.

  The passage led into a room above the lantern. It was a large, empty, octagonal chamber, spanning the width of the tower. Its lancet-arched windows were set so closely together the walls were glass. Sunlight shining through made a pattern of bright fangs on the floor. This was the first stage of the spire, with the chalky smell of dust and chiselled fine, white Marram limestone. Above us, a graceful staircase spiralled up into invisible heights.

  San went through a plain portal at the end; we followed into the morning light and found ourselves on a balcony overlooking the lawns. The massive Dace Gate, with its portcullises and four heavy barrel towers of grey sarsen, stood directly ahead. The marble-clad Lisade Library was on our left, my telegraph pivoting on its roof and operators visible in the white cabin alongside. There was Gayle at her desk behind the centre window. On the other side of the lawns was the red brick barracks, with the Southeast Bridge high above it, arcing gracefully from the third floor of Simurgh to the curtain wall. Above us, the presence, the splendid solemn weight of the spire. We were seeing the Castle from a new perspective: a private balcony that only the Architect could visit, and the Emperor used.

  A warm breeze stirred Tern’s feathers and the Emperor’s hair. It carried the scent of cut grass and meadowsweet; the dry, rutted smell of the Eske Road. San laid his long, gnarled hands on the quatrefoil balustrade and seemed to be watching the lawn. He spoke precisely. ‘Could Swallow be in the Shift?’

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘She may be organising her rebellion from Epsilon, or any of the Shift worlds. Your letter said Swallow writes music that can Shift the listener to Epsilon. Maybe that’s where she’s hiding.’

  I realised the Emperor had brought us out of the Throne Room so the marksmen on the gallery wouldn’t hear him. ‘Or the drug atheudos might be a gateway. So Swallow has two ways in. I will not allow her in the Shift.’

  ‘No, my lord.’

  ‘There are things there one must not bring back. Every time someone Shifts, one of those creatures may follow him through.’

  ‘What creatures?’ said Tern. ‘Insects?’

  San moved his hand slightly and left a dark mark of perspiration on the stone. ‘Comet has seen one of the things that would come through.’

  ‘Yes …’

  ‘You saw the least of them!’

  I became aware the Vermiform was lying motionless, limply in the base of my pocket. It was listening as intently as it could.

  ‘Swallow would bring these miscegenations here unwittingly,’ San said. ‘Or, perhaps, deliberately. The Gabbleratchet. The Back of the Night Sky … and the vaster things. The Ribbon. The thing I faced inside it … the one that waits for me.’

  Tern and I looked at each other, and didn’t dare ask.

  ‘And that foul being made of worms. I know it’s in the soil, but on no account must it show itself in numbers here again. So, Comet, Shift and find any trace of Swallow. Consider it part of your search.’

  ‘My lord,’ protested Tern. ‘Please, no! Every time he goes there I think he’s going to die. He comes so close. It will kill him.’

  The Emperor raised his eyebrows in an expression that said: And?

  He returned through the tower chamber, and we followed down the stairs, into the Throne Room. I put my hand in my pocket, feeling the Vermiform lying doggo.

  San walked noiselessly up the dais steps and seated himself in the Sunburst Throne. On the arm of the throne his shield still hung, with his Wrought Sword and a musket fully primed. They symbolise his promise that he’ll protect the Fourlands until god returns from its holiday – if there ever was a god at all – and we’re his expendable weapons. San doesn’t care about any individual Eszai – if he needs to send me into the firestorm or sweet oblivion, what’s that to him?

  A commotion outside – horses’ hooves and a crowd of men’s voices – started me out of my reverie. The great double doors of the Throne Room were open, and through them came Saker. He looked up at the bowmen on the galleries and spread his hands, then strode towards us, through fractures of colour cast by the stained glass, past me to the lowest step and described a succinct bow. ‘My lord Emperor, I’ve brought Rax and his troupe of twenty Roses. I apprehended them loading ninety barrels of powder at Awndyn canal.’

  ‘Bring them in.’

  ‘All twenty?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He trekked back down the aisle, and through the amber portal. A few minutes later the gypsies spilt into the Throne Room like ink, all dusty, dishevelled and sweat-stained from the ride. As they crossed the threshold they fell into silence and clustered in a blot. In their combats, vest tops and jackets, they stood staring towards us, between the two arcades of arches and past me, at the Throne. Those at the rear gazed up to the vertiginous ceiling; vaulting and ornate bosses: caravels on a churning wave, a hare in foliage, Insect heads with knotted antennae.

  They stared at the rose window glowing with saffron yellow, peridot green and peacock blue, and smelt the mauve odour of incense. The gold lamps hanging on long chains hypnotised them; the arcades’ perspective to the Throne mesmerised them. So did the battle mosaics glinting on every surface, and some older, duller patches of fronds, a huge variety of animals and ancient buildings, which were the original tesserae still remaining from the Pentadrican palace.

  It had the most stupendous effect on these Roses used to the space inside a caravan, and they shrank as if being squashed. Saker and some Imperial guards shepherded the last of them through. They had immense difficulty herding them down the aisle – they’d still be trying now, if the Emperor hadn’t lost patience and raised his voice: ‘Come here!’

  Rax and the Roses involuntarily responded to his tone, filtered down the aisle. Rax limped, supported by his fellows, and I directed them all into the first benches. They stank of horse sweat and road dust. Saker wiped his forehead on his sleeve, making his dirty hair stick up, and bowed.

  ‘Thank you,’ said San.

  ‘My lord, I await your advice.’

  ‘King Saker, I suggest you return to Awia. Please stop Queen Eleonora’s wrongful treatment of Roses. Comet, tell him what transpired outside Tanager Palace, then fly to Litanee.’

  We left the rebel prisoners with the marksmen in the gallery attentive to every move. The Emperor descended from the throne and began to address them: ‘Rax, Roses, my friends, I give everyone a chance to live forever …’

  Outside the Throne Room, Saker received his bow, quiver and sword from the halberdier, slung the bow on his shoulder and tucked a wing through the strap. He buckled on his swordbelt as we trotted down the steps into the Starglass Quad, and checked the blade ran free by drawing a few centimetres and clicking it back.

  ‘You wouldn’t believe how weird it is going into the Throne Room unarmed. I had to give up my sword, like any Zascai. Like any fucking Zascai. Humbling, that is.’

  His archer’s short sword is the same length as the quiver and sits on his opposite hip. He dropped a hand to its hilt, swung it behind him, and walked off slowly, across the square paved with graves of past Eszai, looking without seeing. He was keenly aware of the buildings around us, but repressing as firmly as possible any temptation to dwell on what they meant. He hadn’t set foot inside the Castle for fifteen years. The welter of emotions was intolerable, so he did what he always does, and blocked it.

  ‘I can’t say it was all great,’ he announced, to the smooth, three-storey heights of Simurgh. ‘But the war can’t stop, you see.’

  He pinched his flight feathers closed with tension, and paced off, direct as a dart.

  Tern sped after him. ‘Listen! This won’t be good for you!’

  ‘I want to see my rooms. I mean, Cyan’s rooms.’

  ‘Come to the tower and have a drink.’

  He kept going, ‘I want to see Lightning’s suite.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. She’s probably wrecked the place.’

  We kept up with him, wanti
ng to offer support, but how? There was a vast gulf between the mortal he now was, and the immortal it was possible to be. His past self of fourteen centuries belonged here, but now he was a pale visitor to the Castle, where he once was its deepest heart.

  You’re a fool to revisit a place you no longer belong. No amount of thinking can square the circle and pinpoint the ways you’ve changed, the ways you no longer fit, no longer mesh with the cogs. The very shape of the Circle has changed. But Saker, when he’s in the mood, can scoop great handfuls of nostalgia and rub it into his very pores.

  We walked into the tilting shadow, through the gap between Breckan and Simurgh, and he turned left into the shaded loggia that runs down the front of Simurgh. We strode along with the red flicker of sunlight as we passed every arch, and the smell of old paint from the ground floor windows.

  ‘Need a new …’ he murmured.

  I said, ‘I don’t know what kick you’re getting out of this, but you should know that Leon’s guard gave the protestors a whiff of grapeshot.’

  ‘They did?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Ah.’

  He would remember me climbing through that window with a bottle of champagne in each hand. Tern laughing drunk with marquees on the lawn behind, when we piled into the basket of a hot air balloon and unreeled to view the Castle from the air.

  And god knows what other memories he saw: the famous duel between Tré Cloud and Shearwater Mist. The time he dragged himself here in 1007 after his fiancée Linnet was cemented into the Wall, the only occasion he ever fought Tornado – or interring the dead under each and every gravestone. Like ghosts recorded on the buildings, they flitted translucent in the corners of the square, seethed and layered between the beeches of Six Mile Avenue. His memory is seven times as long as mine, cherished to a higher power, and I can’t begin to describe its potency.

  It stopped him like a blow at the door at the end of the loggia. He looked at the knob as if doubting his strength to turn it.

  ‘I know why Swallow hates you,’ he said.