Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  ‘It makes me feel small,’ Saker whispered.

  ‘Evocative. You should be a poet.’

  ‘It extends to the inner side of the Postern Gate. Just within the curtain wall.’

  The groundspace of a quarter of the Castle seemed much vaster here beneath, with no walls to block the view or lend it proportion. But I assured myself that the blackness reaching to infinity was just an illusion. ‘So are we still under the Throne Room?’

  ‘Probably that end’s roughly under the throne itself.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘San sleeps on the floor,’ he added, acerbically.

  ‘What did you expect?’

  ‘I don’t know … riches.’

  ‘He doesn’t need riches.’

  ‘The room has nothing to occupy him.’

  ‘We’re his chess pieces, and the world’s his board.’

  Saker nodded. ‘Then Swallow has us in check … One sparse meal a day, and he sleeps on the floor. For sixteen hundred years. What sort of life is that?’

  ‘The most finely-honed.’

  ‘You said San’s room was a gateway to the Shift.’

  ‘So it might be. All he needs is a place to meditate.’

  The staircase made a hairpin bend, and we descended. At last he stepped onto a paved floor, and turned to illuminate the last step for me. The edge of water glimmered at our feet, as if it was a beach with the tide creeping in. Saker raised his wing to shield the lamp. Its halo slipped over the inky water that lay motionless, not so much as a ripple. Its surface was like a sheet of metal; it could be fathomless. But at the edge of the lamplight, where it illumined layers of water into the green depths, a white carp curved and swum away from the light.

  ‘How did you know about this?’

  He raised a hand before his mouth to whisper. ‘After the Games, we explored the Castle. Carillon, the kitchens, the moat weren’t built then. It was fed by an aqueduct from the river.’

  ‘But you don’t remember it being built?’

  He smiled faintly. ‘This is five hundred years older than I am.’

  He gave me the lantern and went to the wall of solid bedrock. Hanging on it was a slender kayak, with a paddle propped against its hull. He lifted it off the hook and set it on the water with the merest ripple. He placed the lantern on its middle plank and laid his weapons down, then stepped into the stern and held the bank with the paddle blade. I folded myself onto the bow seat.

  ‘I used to lay in my boat down here,’ he said. ‘Whenever I needed to think. When I needed to disappear.’ With a quick motion he pulled the paddle, and we were away.

  The paddle lifted; water ran from it like liquid glass, swirling into the ripples. Gold bubbles formed and popped without sound. The space around us was completely black; I stared into it until my eyes stung. Then, out of the darkness, a column loomed. It was rooted in the water and stretched up; following it I at last made out the ceiling. The column, topped with ornate latticework, supported a vaulting high above, as pristine as the day it was carved. Behind it was another, with scrolls, and another, which wasn’t a column at all but a giant marble arm.

  They seemed to be evenly-spaced; the rows beyond faded into darkness. Their white grew from the gloom as we approached, and they were blanched clean to half their height, where the water rises.

  Here was one with a surface carved to resemble bark. We passed another, with serried scales. The next was upside-down, and our bow wave rippled around its half-submerged capitol of leaves. Some columns were wedged atop blocks of masonry to increase their height, and they were haphazard fragments of gigantic buildings, delicately-carved cornices, jigsaw sections of friezes with inscriptions running their length, sometimes lodged vertically or upside-down, in a language I didn’t know. And if I didn’t know it, it was pre-Pentadrican … early Pentadrican … no word of it had been spoken for two millennia.

  ‘Where are they from?’ I whispered.

  ‘No one knows.’

  ‘But they’re masterpieces … and they’re just supporting the ceiling.’

  ‘Like Eszai and the Empire.’

  ‘The Pentadricans used pieces of … older ruins? Made by who?’

  He shrugged.

  We passed a burnt column with a cracked and reddened surface. It had been plucked from a building destroyed in an inferno. Maybe, millennia ago, a family had watched crying; maybe silent crowds gathered in a public square seeing smoke billow between the columns. Now it stood above pure water, with only the scent of our lamp oil.

  ‘But … they must have been made before god left.’

  ‘Stop asking what no one knows.’

  ‘You showed Swallow.’

  ‘She wrote “The Hall of Faces”.’

  It was one of her most famous concertos, I’ve often heard it, shelving into the low and tingling trepidation of chill water and deep time. Strings plucked slowly dripping in the unseen distance, and gradually, gradually, crept up the crescendo of tympani, and you stood on the brink of two thousand years. How many lifetimes, and what were they doing back then, before god left the world? The churn rolled your stomach like the slow approach of a thunderstorm, and then came the refrain, and it was the repeated dipping of the paddle, water peeling off the keel, and Swallow’s rejection of love, because love will not gain you the Circle.

  We passed a column placed on a gigantic woman’s face, taller than I am, with wild eyes the span of my hand. Water slipped into the curls of her stone locks and her stretched-open mouth, reflected in ripples from teeth and tongue.

  ‘Swallow said she was singing.’

  ‘No. She’s screaming.’

  Then there was a gargantuan male face. I saw the stippled surface where it had once joined a building, perhaps an entire body in high relief, or lone faces screeching above a gateway.

  ‘No trace of Awians,’ said Saker. ‘Some human civilisation … The Pentadricans used any ruin they could lay their hands on. Any massive stone.’

  ‘Before the Insects came.’

  ‘When they had time to carve … She’d have fitted in well back then. Shh … We’re nearing the centre.’

  We passed in silence an arm used as a column. Its muscles bulged seemingly in the effort of supporting the vaults. Maybe theirs was the age of the Emperor. Was he from the time of the sculptors? Did he also come here in his boat, to be with them?

  We skimmed through a forest of columns from the same edifice, then huge statues; a naked man’s body with a powerful torso and gracious face. He was wingless and so was the next; his partner a willowy woman dancing, drapes flowing out around her. She’d lost her arms so long ago that the broken surface was smooth and brown.

  Saker quickly pressed a lever on the lantern and its lens cap irised shut. Our light winked out. Darkness pounced back. I gasped a breath then felt his hand on my shoulder. He leant to my ear and his breath was hot – he smelt of gunpowder. ‘Our prow, one o’clock. Do you see?’

  A speck of light danced ahead. I nodded.

  ‘Keep your fingers inside. Don’t look at her lamp, your eyes will glow.’

  ‘How can you see?’

  ‘I can’t … I know my way around the Castle in the dark.’

  We darted swiftly between the statues. I felt cool air pass my face, heard the slick as he dipped his paddle and smelt the broken water but saw nothing. Velvet blackness beat the surface of my eyes.

  The speck grew. In the dome of light I made out a figure, hastily crossing a platform, and behind it a freestanding wall of wood, like the side of a ship. Then I realised the light came from several lanterns on a free-floating platform of tied-together punts. That the corrugated wall was a charge of gunpowder barrels that stretched up into the vaulted ceiling. The figure returned into the pool of light, a stocky woman in a short green dress.

  Saker jammed in the paddle and halted so abruptly I was thrown forward. He stirred it and reversed us into the shadow of a column. ‘It’s her.’

  ‘Yes.’


  ‘We’re near the west wall. Under the kitchens.’

  I glanced up as if to see the chink of light where the floor tile was missing, and Gabby’s fishing line slanting into the water. Blue specks prickled in my vision, and of course I saw nothing.

  Swallow walked across her stage, past her loaded crossbow standing on its two props. She walked without her stick, but limped. She bent down, the lantern light illuminated her wide, freckled face and copper hair. She started pulling some brown paper fuse from a big reel. She was laying slow match … and singing quietly to herself.

  Soundlessly, Saker picked up his bow and slid an arrow out of his quiver.

  Swallow cut the length of fuse, taped it expertly to the cable sprouting from the barrels, and reeled out another length.

  Saker bent his bow.

  Swallow started. ‘Who’s there?’ She picked up her lantern and its pool of light swung towards us. Suddenly we were bathed in light: the canoe, the pillar base, Saker beside me holding his bow at full span with the shining arrowhead aimed at her.

  She cried out, glanced to her crossbow and then a smile came over her face. She began to sing. She flowed into an eerie aria and began to reverberate the air. It was transcendent, melancholy, supremely powerful, as if her wisdom distilled from all her terrible experiences could tumble a fortress before it like tinder. Tears sprang to my eyes. I felt as if she was reaching into my chest and stroking my heart; surely such talent should be made immortal and I cried for its inevitable loss. I cried for our inexorable death, for mine, and yours, and I hated her, but I yearned for more. And that was nothing compared to the effect she had on Saker.

  He wavered. His jaw tensed, and I thought he would loose his arrow. Then tears flowed down his cheeks. He lowered the bow. He placed it on his lap with the arrow at string and wiped the tears from his face, hunched as if he couldn’t bear to look at her, as if his bow was too heavy to lift. I tried to pull it from him but he held it tightly. Swallow smiled at us struggling, raised her voice and sang till she rang the air.

  ‘Shoot her!’

  ‘No …’

  ‘Shoot her, Archer!’

  ‘… Can’t.’

  ‘Then let me!’

  Swallow picked up the linstock around which her taper sparked. ‘Go now,’ she declared, in a clear voice. ‘Do not look back.’

  He seized the paddle. With a quick pull he whisked the canoe away from the column, but as it tilted, I jumped out, beat my wings and flew onto the platform, and drew my sword. Saker in the canoe flashed into the darkness.

  I leapt forward to stab Swallow, but she crouched down, hovered her taper over the end of the quick fuse. Saker’s canoe slipped swiftly before an arch of daylight no bigger than my thumbnail. When he reached it I saw the low archway was three times wider than the boat. He ducked down, shot through it and was gone.

  Swallow looked up at me. ‘So music is mightier than the bow …’

  ‘Swallow …’

  ‘Back off! More! If you come a step closer, I’ll light this!’

  ‘All right!’

  She tapped the taper over the fuse like a conductor’s baton.

  I said, ‘Swallow … please … give me it.’

  Loathing mangled her face. ‘No! I said not to look back! But you always look back, don’t you? It’s your worst goddamn habit, Jant Shira. Well, here you are, at my last performance. A solo performance!’ She bent to light the fuse.

  ‘No!’

  ‘I can’t take Saker with me, but I will take you!’

  ‘Please, Swallow! He showed you this place out of love.’

  ‘Love! Love, you say? Well, what a fucking fool! He brought me here in a skiff full of flowers. At first I thought it’d be the usual Lightning boreathon but – yes, yes – you must admit, it turned out quite interesting … The acoustics are superb.’ She struck a note, and the chamber resounded.

  Then she gradually stood up, and gestured with the linstock to the fuse roll on its stand. ‘The slow match would’ve given me time to walk out, but … never mind.’

  ‘You still can.’

  ‘No.’ She rubbed her strong face, then the little feathers on the membrane of one auburn wing, then fixed me with her piercing green eyes. ‘I’ll finish my act. In this, the perfect auditorium. I wish I could fill it with every Eszai. Every one of you fuckers for my last encore. But sadly, I only have you.’ She dipped the taper to the fuse.

  ‘Don’t! No! No! Please … please, Swallow … It doesn’t have to be this way.’

  ‘It does … It does. San never came to his senses. You don’t know. All you Eszai are so self-absorbed, none of you have any idea.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I have cancer.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She touched her left breast. ‘San could have stopped time for me and prevented it developing. I could have lived forever with the tumour at an early stage. I could have survived! But no, the bastard won’t listen. The Circle is only for warriors, he says. Warriors! No warrior’s worth saving while a musician lives. And my cancer’s getting worse. Spreading. Soon the music will end. And I see you for what you really are. I hate you for it – I hate you all!’

  ‘I can take you to the Shift,’ I said. ‘You can live forever there. Painlessly – you can make music, for eternity – the inhabitants of Epsilon will love you.’

  ‘Ah. The afterlife you peddle. Has it made you rich …? Once, maybe, but it’s too late for that, Jant. All I want is to kill San.’

  She raised her lantern high and the shadows of the statues tilted over the water. For an instant the ceiling reflected in the still pool. ‘Look at it! Lightning said it was a song in stone. How right he was …’

  She illuminated the immense stack of barrels. There must be three hundred of them – fifteen tonnes. Fuses were taped to their sides, in careful lines. They’d blow the ceiling up, the columns out, and the whole northwest quarter of the Castle would collapse into this space.

  Her mother-of-pearl guitar leant against the kegs. Fragments of it would be the first to pierce our bodies. The thick fuse at her feet ran a few metres and split into two, then four, eight, sixteen, and ran into the barrels at the base of the stack. I couldn’t reach them before Swallow could drop her taper and light them. And the taper was sparking too slowly, and wrapped around the wand, was too long for me to keep her talking until it burnt out.

  ‘I’ll sing Gerygone, like I did just now. The aria I sang when I first saw Lightning. He was leaning out of the box, and he dropped his programme fluttering down to the limelights. So I turned and sang to him. Love at first sight, on his part, but not as beautiful as this … It’s my instrument, Jant, don’t you see? The sound of my rage. More colossal tympani than I could ever score. The most fortississimo drum to play … in the history of the world …’

  I leapt to slash her again and she crouched to the fuse end. ‘Back off, you cunt! Back off, I mean it!’

  ‘Please!’

  ‘I hate you! I hate you all! I won’t fade out quietly; that’s what the Emperor wants! I’ll kill him with his own fucking toy, the powder I replaced with sand from Awndyn beach. How fast can you run?’

  ‘Not fast enough.’

  ‘Good.’ She looked to the fuse.

  ‘Connell!’ I cried desperately.

  ‘What about Connell?’

  ‘Connell – your wife,’ I said, trying to speak slowly and calmly. ‘Is locked in the Northwest Tower.’ I pointed in that direction. ‘If you detonate your bomb, it will collapse the tower and kill her.’

  Surprise crossed Swallow’s face, but hatred overswarmed it. I said, ‘Do you remember your marriage dance? Did they throw rose petals over you? Did you spin arm in arm, in the ring of gypsies?’

  She glanced to the north wall and set her expression. ‘She was prepared to die for me.’

  ‘She—’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘Loves you.’

  ‘Oh, I know. Yes, we married at the festival,
but so what? The drive to be immortal purges love.’

  ‘The gypsies—’

  ‘Do the real work of the Empire! It sits on their shoulders, not yours! Can you even understand I found peace there? In her wagon, in the woods … I found a place at last where it was natural to write, to perform, where my music was appreciated and not squeezed dry. Appreciated by “the raggle-taggle gypsies, oh”, and not by your stupid fucking Circle. Not through San’s stupid fucking contests. By Connell, whose beauty wasn’t rotted by the Circle’s envy. The gypsies are spontaneous, they’re free, they don’t strive till they’re drained dry. They aren’t spent and thrown aside, like San does with you. I lived with her, living music every day … There was no longer any need to write it down.’

  ‘Don’t kill her.’

  ‘Oh, Jant, stop it! I’m not giving Saker chance to save San. Connell dies. We all die! …Yes, I loved her …because she said what she meant, not the weasly bullshit you Eszai spout, the craven crap you think you ought to say. She had nothing to lose.’

  Swallow contemplated her taper. ‘…And I have nothing to lose. Coda. At last. I will not cry. The world is crying for me.’

  In the distance she had distinguished, with her conductor’s hearing, water drops tinkling into the lake. ‘I’m a cripple. I can’t run. But better this, than a slow death from cancer.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Oh, yes! As I’ll take you, too! The very Castle walls say, “we’re in, and you’re out”. They must fall.’ She nodded, contemplating the truth of it, and licked her lips cracked by gunpowder. ‘Doesn’t it taste bitter?’

  She looked into my eyes. Her green eyes brimmed, and tears ran down her freckled cheeks. ‘Here’s my Challenge.’

  And she lit the fuse.

  A white flare raced along it. I jumped to stomp it out, but it had already reached the connection, split into two flames, and tore to opposite ends of the platform. They split again: four, eight, sixteen.

  I dropped my sword and sped for the daylight. The opening, too far! I ran. I pounded along the prows of the punts. Somehow I pushed harder, faster, legs and arms pumping, I opened my wings.

  Behind me, Swallow began to sing. She sang out her heart, resounding in the darkness with the baton sparking in her hand – the flames behind her split sixteen; thirty-two.