Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  ‘Oh, I’m “Comet” now, am I?’

  ‘The noose, not a Insect!’

  ‘If you don’t want conversation at breakfast, tell me what the hell you were doing inviting it!’

  ‘All right!’

  I paused.

  ‘Swallow. I love her. She loves me. She is our Muse, and I am her soldier.’

  ‘Not good enough.’ I started hauling again.

  Connell yelled, ‘She’s my wife!’ And yanked down the neck of her vest. There, over her heart, in the shape of love hearts linked together, her marriage to Swallow was writ for all to see.

  ‘Oh … That explains … Such a great deal. Where is she?’

  ‘Awia. We set a bomb in Tanager Palace to kill the Queen.’

  ‘An artful response, I salute you. Last time I had the honour, you said Swallow doesn’t care about the Queen. Where is she?’

  Connell spat.

  ‘How did you get in?’

  ‘All men envy immortals! Some flea-ridden featherback on the Skein Gate let us in – because he hates you, too!’

  I snarled in frustration. I pushed my sword and its point pierced her skin. She screeched, but I prodded her the other way, back towards my tower. I dragged her through the shadow of the theatre to the tower door, inside, and up the spiral stairs. She tugged and fought like mad. She was as strong as a man; I only subdued her by angling my blade at her throat.

  I threw her into the Myrtle Room with such force she bounded off the windowsill and sank onto her knees, with her hands clasped round her ribs. She stared around, at the packing cases and my old skis. As a pendant, just below the notch of her throat, mirroring its shape, she wore a mother-of-pearl plectrum on a leather thong.

  ‘Are you really Swallow’s wife?’ I said, wonderingly.

  ‘Her music made me live … I’ll die for her.’

  ‘I guess so!’

  ‘We made love tenderly in a way you can never—’

  ‘Great. Describe it at length later. I—’ shook the sword at her. ‘Have to go clean up your mess!’

  ‘Fuck you, Jant, and fuck the Castle and fuck San!’

  ‘Well, that’s quite a lot of fucking; I’d be sore!’

  ‘And fuck immortality, and fuck—’

  ‘Where’s Swallow?’

  ‘I’m not telling you!’

  ‘You’re going to hang!’

  ‘I’m not scared. Hate banishes fear! I hate your Eszai clique! I hate your contests that San wouldn’t let her join. People could have voted on her music! We can judge the best music! So she could have been Eszai! But San will never put immortality to the vote … The buck always has to stop with him. He controls it! Why? Why does he have to control it? He hurt her, so I hate him! I hate you – you rode straight past me, when I was starving! You can’t intimidate me – I’ll die before I say!’

  I slammed the door, locked it, and stepped back on the landing, pocketing the key. All this shouting brought Tern down from my study. She paused on the last curve of the steps and raised her eyebrows.

  ‘I’ve got Connell,’ I said, and booted the door. Tern cheered and threw her arms around me. ‘Hey, hey!’ I said. ‘Be careful of the blade.’

  ‘I can—!’

  ‘Sh. She’ll be listening. She’s Swallow’s wife … Her tattoos say so. Swallow’s gay.’

  ‘Oh … Of course. I know who’ll take some adjusting to that.’

  ‘Swallow never liked him because she loved me!’ Connell yelled from behind the door.

  I kicked it. ‘The Insects have killed a lot of people, and San’s still on the tower.’

  Tern released me and straightened her dress. ‘The gypsy bitch won’t escape. I’ll see to it. I’ll call some Imperial Fyrd and station them all around. She’s mine now … Do you hear me, gypsy bitch?’

  ‘Fuck your collieries and fuck your forges, you slave-driver!’

  ‘There’s a long list of things she wants to fuck,’ I said. ‘It’s very exhausting.’

  ‘I’ve heard worse language in fashion shows.’

  ‘Fuck your fashion shows!’

  ‘And more imaginative,’ I added.

  ‘Oh, indubitably.’ Tern kissed me.

  ‘Take good care of her,’ I said, and loped down the spiral stairs and out towards Breckan. Hayl, Tornado, and Tré Cloud had between them cleared this side of the Castle of Insects. Tré was laying the bodies of herdsmen, fruit pickers, fishermen, traders, travellers and tourists in a respectful line, in the shadow of the avenue trees. Hayl was riding around jabbing her lance in dead Insects and dragging them into a pile, and Tornado had gone to report to San.

  I ran to the Dace Gate, seeing fewer bodies this side, and more Insects that Saker had exterminated. By the barracks one bug had run among the crowd, and left a tangled heap of bodies at the doorstep.

  The Emperor was watching from the tower parapet, Saker on his left, Tornado on his right, and he was giving them orders. I ran into the staircase portal, round and round up inside, and emerged into the sunlight to see them turning to me. ‘My lord, we’ve cleared all the Insects, and Hayl eliminated the ones closing on the town. Connell released these by the Skein Gate, but I caught her … I locked her in the Myrtle Room.’

  ‘What did she say, Comet?’

  ‘That she’s following Swallow’s plan.’

  ‘And Swallow is where?’

  ‘She won’t tell me.’

  The Emperor glared. ‘Insects in the very Castle!’

  ‘I know, my lord.’

  ‘How did the Litanee get in?’

  ‘The guard on the Skein Gate let them through – spurred by the mortals’ usual resentment of our lifespan … I think the gypsies are the only people who don’t envy us.’

  ‘They just detest us,’ said Tornado.

  I angled my head a little, and looked across the low sunlight so my eyes reflected gold, and watched the Emperor. He said, ‘Bring Connell to the Throne Room. She will talk to me.’ He strode away, down the steps with Tornado following him, axe in hand, his bandages and jeans clotted with yellow gunge. San approached the people trying to identify the bodies outside Harcourt, and talked with them for some time. They removed their hats in respectful gestures, but he wouldn’t let them kneel. Then he walked to the Zascai squatting by the corpses in the shade of the avenue trees, spoke with them, then those at the Yett Gate, and only then did I see him enter the Throne Room with Tornado as his bodyguard.

  Saker sat on the inside parapet and fiddled with the sights on his rifle. Far off down the Eske Road, tiny in the distance, my black coach-and-six was racing in, with Halliwell hunched like a hefty rat on the driver’s seat. I said, ‘Rayne’s coming.’

  ‘There isn’t a cloud in the sky …’

  ‘Saker?’

  ‘This thing needs a sun filter …’

  ‘Hello, Saker? Look, down there; Ella’s coming back.’

  He jumped up and paced to the battlements. ‘In that mail coach? I don’t want her to see me! …I mean, I’m not here!’

  ‘You’re the last thing on her mind.’

  ‘Ha, Jant … I broke her heart.’ He watched the carriage clipping along. ‘Is she safe out there? Are there Insects?’

  ‘I think we got them all.’

  ‘There could be a bomb.’

  ‘There’s no bomb in my Black Coach!’

  ‘But under the bridge. Or in the road.’

  ‘How could there be a bomb in the road?’

  ‘They could have buried it!’

  I leant over the battlements and spread my wings. At that distance the coach looked graceful; it glided along like a cannon ball ahead of its cloud of dust. ‘We’re getting paranoid, and that’s what Swallow wants.’

  ‘No harm must ever come to Rayne.’

  ‘Apart from your breaking her heart?’

  He huffed, swung the rifle butt to his shoulder and spied through its telescope at the road ahead. ‘I’ll take Connell to the Throne Room.’

  ‘No! It�
��s very important you go nowhere near Connell.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She’ll … wind you up.’

  ‘She’s just a gypsy.’

  ‘Yes, you keep saying that. “Just a gypsy”. Strange they’ve sent us reeling harder than the Insects have managed in a thousand years.’ I looked down at the people claiming their dead, and bodies that hadn’t been identified, including the little boy, being stretchered to the hospital. ‘Insects inside the Castle …’

  ‘Well, it’s a desperate ploy,’ said Saker to the sideplate of his rifle. ‘Swallow would have known we’d finish them swiftly.’

  ‘She killed about seventy Zascai.’

  ‘The bloodlust of a psychopath. She’d know Insects would slay innocent civilians, but have no chance whatsoever of hurting an Eszai.’

  ‘Shit …’ I said.

  He lowered his rifle and looked at me.

  ‘It’s a distraction!’ I said.

  ‘From what?’

  ‘I don’t know! How do you distract Eszai? With Insects! There’s no better way!’

  My skin chilled. My feathers stood on end. We stared at the tiny figures below, some crouching, some struggling with stretchers. They were peaceful with distance, between our sublime buildings – and the grass, Harcourt Barracks, marble Lisade and my white telegraph grew ominous. A sense of dread weighed colder until the people and the Throne Room, hospital and Simurgh Bridge stopped being real, just flat artefacts of the interplay of light and shade. It was like sliding into withdrawal.

  ‘I need a fix,’ I said.

  ‘No you don’t, Jant; think.’

  ‘I do … I do … I need a shot. Something horrible’s going to happen. We’ve been acting as she expected us to act … So we’ll be right where she wants us to be!’

  Saker squinted at Rayne’s coach racing in. Infuriated with him, I followed his glance – and everything clicked. ‘She’s been drawing us here! Blowing up our homes! So we return and I recall everyone … Then releasing bugs right on the Berm Lawns, so we ride around like fools showing off!’

  ‘There are no bombs here,’ said Saker.

  ‘The gypsies fled! Connell didn’t want to be locked in! Swallow’s been herding us – we’ve got to do the opposite!’ I jumped on the parapet and waved at the coach to stop, but they were kilometres away and plunged on regardless. I yelled in frustration. ‘Did any Rose slip in behind our backs?’

  ‘They had no time to lay powder.’

  ‘No, but they could set fuse!’

  ‘San had the Castle searched!’

  ‘The magazine?’

  ‘Of course!’

  ‘The barracks? Armoury?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Cellars of Breckan? Simurgh?’

  ‘Obviously!’

  ‘What is she planning?’ I hesitated. Slowly I raised my eyes to the tapering spire of the Throne Room. ‘That’s what she wants,’ I said softly. ‘But she can’t get in …’

  Saker’s expression fell to dismay. A glassiness spread across his face, eyes unfocussed, then screwed up in guilt. ‘Oh yes, she can!’ He belted to the staircase and down it, and a few seconds later out onto the lawn below. He turned, arms and rifle raised, and shouted up, ‘Because of the underground lake!’

  He whipped round and sprinted towards the Throne Room. I jumped off the tower, glided down, landed next to him, and ran beside as we hurtled through the gap back of Simurgh and across the quad.

  ‘If you charge in the Throne Room armed to the teeth they’ll shoot you!’ I yelled.

  ‘I know! I trained them!’

  We dashed up the steps into the portal. I waved my arms wide and the guards uncrossed their halberds. We raced past their terrified faces, across the narthex and into the Throne Room. Immediately all the archers on the gallery drew on Saker. We heard the creak as fifty longbows took tension simultaneously. He held up his hands, a gesture countervailed by the rifle in one of them, but he didn’t break pace and they tracked him halfway down the aisle until the Emperor stood from the throne and bellowed, ‘Lower your bows!’

  Tornado was standing beside the throne, his hands resting on the butt of his axe and its double head on the carpet between his feet. He watched us, but said nothing. We halted before San, and Saker cut in straight away, ‘The cistern! Did you check it?’

  ‘Of course,’ the Emperor said.

  His calm voice didn’t soothe Saker. ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Two days.’

  ‘No … No … We must go down there now.’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I said.

  He shook his head and gulped. ‘It’s the “Hall of Faces”.’

  ‘What?’ I said. ‘The cistern of Pentadrica Palace?’

  San spoke evenly, ‘Pentadrica Palace is long gone. The cistern is the Castle’s water supply. I kept it so we could withstand a siege. What of it?’

  Saker hunched his shoulders and wrapped his arms around his waist, so the rifle’s muzzle protruded from behind his back. He looked faint. ‘Swallow will be down there. She could have brought powder barrels on the barges … via Awndyn … Oh, god, we saw the barges leaving Awndyn! They come up the river, to provision the kitchens … on the river spur where it feeds into the moat – there’s a way into the cistern through the arch … the little archway by the postern gate.’

  ‘Swallow won’t know that,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, she does … Because I showed her.’

  The Emperor passed us, striding down the steps. He took a key from his coat’s inside pocket and beckoned us. Saker lagged for a second, then followed me, and Tornado behind.

  The Emperor went to the door of his private room. It was a plain door, into part of Alyss’ palace, and no one but San had been inside since the day Alyss left for Lazulai.

  Behind him, I hissed at Saker, ‘You showed her? Are you insane?’

  ‘It was twenty-five years ago … when she first came to petition for a place. I—’

  ‘What did you do, climb down a well?’

  ‘No. It’s not like that. It’s beautiful … I … I gilded a boat … and filled it with orange blossom. I hung it with lanterns, set a harp at the bow. I thought she’d love it. We stooped, to slide through the arch, then …’

  ‘You’re warped, you know that?’

  ‘It’s the only gesture I ever made she truly loved.’

  ‘How come I never noticed you were floating around in a gold boat?’

  ‘Jant, you were dying of drug abuse in the spring of twenty-fifteen.’

  ‘Belt up!’ said Tornado. He was staring over our heads as the Emperor unlocked the door. San’s hand turned the key, pushed it ajar, and beckoned us through. But trepidation stopped us, and we looked at each other. In sixteen centuries nobody had seen what lay inside. No Eszai, no servants, no one. We based our lives around the fact that the Emperor emerged at six every single morning and returned through the door to nowhere, at midnight, when the Castle’s clocks began to chime.

  We all had theories. I declared the door led to a sumptuous Shift world filled with sizzling women and delicious food. And, on my bleaker days, I say the Emperor steps through the door into nothingness, a profound space without end, only the faintest stars glimmering in the distance. Saker says it’s the Pentadrican royal bedchamber, untouched since the year 411, and Tornado believes it’s the very site where god left the earth.

  I bit my lip and stepped inside. It was a small room with a futon bed on the floor. The bed had a simple pillow and one sheet. The walls were just plaster, painted white, and somewhat greyed with age. It smelt faintly of cotton, nothing else, and there were two plain doors, one in the left wall and one in the right.

  ‘Is this all?’ I said.

  ‘Yes,’ said the Emperor.

  Saker and Tornado crowded in behind me, but I couldn’t shuffle forward because the bed was at my feet. We stood pressed together while the Emperor unlocked the bare door in the left wall, with the same key. He opened it, and behind wa
s only blackness. Tornado and I gazed at the forbidding, pitch-dark rectangle, while Saker stared at the Emperor’s bed on the tatami-matting floor.

  San said, ‘There’s a lamp inside.’

  Saker shook himself. He walked in, and found a shutter lantern in a recess. He flicked Fulmer’s lighter and the flame flared in his cupped palm. He opened the hatch, lit the wick, and the lengthening flame scooped his face into hollows. He altered his grip on the handle of the lamp and held it out – illuminated monumental granite steps curving down into darkness.

  ‘At the water’s edge a boat hangs from the wall,’ said San.

  ‘My lord, I will stop Swallow Awndyn.’

  The Emperor nodded and drew back. He left the room, to return to the throne, with Tornado accompanying him. Saker and I were alone at the top of the stairs leading into the void. It was like standing high in the night air.

  ‘Twenty metres down,’ I said.

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘I saw Tré’s son fishing, through the kitchen floor.’

  ‘Ah … Yes … This goes under the kitchens, all the way to the moat.’ He started down the steps and I pursued, to keep within the sphere of light. On our left the stones slipped by: gigantic, smoothly-chiselled to fit together so ingeniously you couldn’t slip a knife blade between them.

  ‘It’s the foundations of the east wall,’ I whispered.

  Saker swung out his arm and the lamplight revealed how the other edge of the staircase dropped like a cliff, and faded. I couldn’t see the bottom. The action made his shadow starve and arc up the wall behind us, bristling with spines from quiver, bow and rifle on their crossed straps. The sense of an enormous space around us pressed our skin and our feet felt leaden as we descended carefully into a chamber so vast the lamplight couldn’t penetrate it. I sensed an immense space with the faintest air currents circulating; I smelt stone, and water, like a cavern pool, and heard indistinct drips in the distance, but they gave me no idea how far the chamber stretched: I couldn’t grasp the scale.

  I opened my wings as if to brush the surrounding walls, but the cistern scorned me. I could fly in it, I was sure, but I had no means of gauging how many wing beats would cross it, no way of seeing any obstacles – I couldn’t even glimpse the ceiling.