The Modern World

by Steph Swainston

  I crouched down to the leaded windows. A rug had been tacked over them on the inside. I tapped the glass and called, ‘Cyan! Hey, Cyan? Rawney?’ Silence.

  I listened, aware of all the sounds of the night – at a distance the noise of Old Town had merged into a low murmur. Ducklings were cheeping, somewhere in the undergrowth on the far bank. I called, questioningly, cheerfully, politely, and finally with a firm demand, but it only produced more silence.

  I’m the Emperor’s Messenger and I’m not standing for this! I grabbed the rail on its roof and jumped onto the flat ledge running all the way round the boat. It bobbed slightly and I felt its keel bump off the fetid slime of the canal bed. I really cannot stand boats. I could all too easily imagine it turning turtle, pitching me into the black water. I edged towards the stern, feeling my boots grip on the grit embedded in its paint.

  I stepped down onto the stern deck, ducked under the tiller, and pushed open the varnished, cupboard-like doors. I wedged into the little entrance. The air inside was warm and stuffy.

  I looked down into a long rectangular room. A draught of wind blew in past me and started tinkling some capiz shell mobiles. Discs of coloured glass clattered against the windows. A hanging lantern with moons and stars cut out of its sides sent their projections spinning round the walls.

  From a futon, which was a piled mess of quilts and sheepskins, projected a slender blue-white arm, and a limp hand hanging down. I gasped. Cyan!

  She sat upright among cushions, her head lolled back and away from me, her legs apart and her skirt rucked up. A thin man lay on the floor at her feet, head back and foam dried into a crust around his mouth. He was stone dead.

  OK. This is nothing to do with me.

  Yes, it is. She’s Lightning’s daughter!

  I stretched a leg down the steps and shuffled in on my backside. The dead man was lying wedged between the wall and the futon. He must have had a fit and thrashed around because he’d kicked a potbellied stove free of its tin flue. It stood at an angle on its platform. I turned him over; he was so stiff that when I propped him on his side, his arm stuck up in the air. His blank eyes no longer stared at the ceiling but at me instead. I checked his dog tag – his name was Sharny. As I did so, something fell to the floor and rolled across the rag-rug. I leant down and felt around until my fingers closed on a glass hypodermic. Sharny’s sleeves were unbuttoned; I pushed one up. His arm was covered in red pinpoints, packed so densely his veins had collapsed, looking like they were open to the air. The skin inside his elbow was juicy with infection.

  Shit, shit, shit. Not cat, surely? Not Cyan? When I use, I try to space out the tracks so that they can’t be seen when I’m at the podium, to keep the veins fat and easy to hit. Sharny, on the other hand, had sunk lower than the dregs.

  I turned Cyan’s face towards me gently. Her eyes were rolled back, only showing white slivers under half-closed lids. Her lips were blue, she was hardly breathing; just a little sigh every so often. Two sips of the air, another ragged sigh with a high-pitched whistling sound. From elbow to shoulder her right arm was a solid bruise. I loosened the tourniquet above her elbow, hooked my thumbnail in it and pushed it down. I could only see one needle mark in the crook of her arm but that didn’t necessarily mean this was her first time.

  I tried to ignore the thought of her fast dropping into unconsciousness, helplessly watching Sharny’s avid experimentation with the needle in the back of his cold hand.

  I pressed my finger inside her fingers, waiting for a grasp response but nothing happened. ‘Cyan, can you hear me? Breathe. Breathe in. And out. Again. Keep going. Can you squeeze my finger? No? OK …’

  I must get her outside, into fresh air. I lifted her; she folded like silk, gave every impression of being dead. I laid her completely relaxed body on the bedspread and wrapped it around her.

  A table beside the stove caught my attention. It carried a decanter of water, a spoon, a razor and an unfolded paper of fine white powder standing in a peak. Some had been nicked away.

  I recognised it immediately. It called me like a lover and the next second I was down on my hands and knees. Don’t look at it! I thought; steady! Turn away. If I so much as touch it I’ll be hooked again. I’ll be hooked before I know it! Where did Cyan get cat? Where the fuck did she get so much? I felt sick and giddy. I knew I was going to pick it up. I moved with no volition of my own; the drug there on the table had more control over my limbs than I did.

  Let me explain what craving is. Craving is when your friend manages to talk you out of the corner and gets you to put the knife down. Craving is when you ask to be locked in, because otherwise you’d fly all night from the court to score. Craving is when you wear your fingernails to bloody stumps trying to pick the lock.

  What was she doing, playing with cat? But they hadn’t called it cat or scolopendium. What was their word? Jook? Jook, don’t you know, it’s the latest thing, all the rage. If I just take a little bit no one will mind. The Emperor won’t be able to tell. Shut up and help Cyan. I realised I had been holding my breath for so long my ribs were hurting. I swallowed hard, then stood up. Very slowly and judiciously I refolded the fat wrap of cat and dropped it into my pocket, where it burned.

  I bundled Cyan out of the double door, hoisted her onto my shoulder and jumped onto the bank in a bound that set the pool of lamplight lapping up and down. It slid up the inside of the bridge’s brick arch, then quickly down to the mooring loops. Viscid water sloshed around the Tumblehome’s ridged hull.

  I lay her on the ground and checked her. She had stopped breathing. Her eyes had receded into round hollows as if her skull was rising to the surface. Shit. This isn’t just a dead faint, it’s respiratory failure. I tilted her head back, fingered her mouth open, pinched her nose and blew into her mouth. Her chest rose. I rocked back on my heels watching it fall gently, then blew again.

  Her lips were soft, but her mouth was rank with beer, smoke and the metallic taste of death. I had to blow hard to overcome the resistance from the air inside her; my cheeks prickled and my jaw started aching. Her hair brushed my cheek every time I put my head down, but it stank of stale cigarettes. She was only a child, just as when I saved her from the shipwreck. Her chest rose, I looked sideways down the length of her body, between her breasts falling back from the bodice collar as she exhaled.

  She twitched, but it must have been nerves, because she definitely wasn’t anywhere near consciousness. She gasped and began to breathe for herself again. Thank fuck. ‘Well done, girl,’ I said as I wrapped her up. ‘Keep breathing.’

  I had been working so hard keeping her alive that I hadn’t been aware of my surroundings. Footsteps were running over the bridge. A boot ground on the path in front of me. I realised I’d seem like a mugger hunched over his victim, so I looked up – into the baby-blue eyes of Rawney Carron.

  Two men I hadn’t seen before stood either side of him. Movement at the edges of my vision told me three more had closed in behind me. They held naked broadswords, their hair was tied back into tarred pigtails. They couldn’t be sailors, because sailors, doctors and armourers are professions safe from the draft. Ex-dock workers, then, and probably owlers, a very dedicated breed of nocturnal smuggler.

  ‘Is this your fyrd squad?’ I asked Rawney, calmly keeping anger out of my voice. ‘Were you coming back to check on her or to collect your payment?’

  Rawney spat, ‘Comet, don’t you just know everything?’

  ‘Let me go, quick – she’s dying!’

  ‘We won’t let you arrest us.’

  ‘Look. I don’t care if you’re dealing. I won’t report you. Even though you’ve done this.’

  Rawney shook his head. They knew that to be caught in Morenzia would be their end. One by one they’d be carted to the scaffold, bound to a cart wheel and every bone in their body, ending with their skulls, systematically broken by blows from a mace. What they don’t know is I never turn dealers in. The only time I confiscate cat from soldiers is when I�
��m in short supply myself.

  I stood up, palming the flick knife from my boot. ‘This is an emergency!’

  ‘No!’

  Exasperated, I said, ‘I know two cartels that run “Ladygrace Fine” in from Brandoch. I know Emmer Rye fences everything coming into Galt. I don’t know you, so you must be kids.’

  ‘Fuck you. You’re one man against six. And you’re not much of a man anyway!’

  ‘Don’t mess about.’

  The legs of one soldier were starting to bend with fear. He never thought he’d see an Eszai so close in his lifetime, let alone face one with drawn sword. I could see Rawney trying to balance this against the fact I was obviously drunk and apparently unarmed. He jerked his head and said, ‘Kill him.’

  I whooshed my wings open, yelled, ‘In San’s name, with god’s will – get out of my way!’

  The man on Rawney’s left and the three behind me turned and ran.

  Rawney snarled and drew his dagger. I flicked my knife. The big man next to him chopped with his sword but I was already inside his reach and up against him. I hugged my arm round him, pulled him close and drove my knife deep into his heart. Blood forced thickly up the runnel, like rising mercury.

  Before it reached the handle he became a dead weight. I stepped back and let him crumple.

  Rawney was running, putting ground between us as fast as he could. I sprang over the dead soldier. I pounced – caught a fistful of Rawney’s hair at the nape of his neck. He cried out. I dragged his head back and pushed my knife’s point alongside his windpipe. He stumbled to his knees and I followed him down, my arm tense against his snatching hands, careful not to sever the artery. When the knife was in deep enough I levered it to the horizontal and pulled it towards me. I cut neatly through his windpipe from behind.

  Rawney worked his mouth but had no air to scream. He put his hands to his throat, ducked his chin. Blood sprang out like red lips. The ends of the tube snicked as they rubbed together. He drew his next breath through the cut and it whistled.

  I booted him in the solar plexus and he doubled up. He turned his head away and the stretched skin parted, laying bare more of the cords in his neck, slick gleam of a vein and the rings of cartilage above and below his severed windpipe.

  I hissed, ‘You’re to blame! You fucking killed Cyan! You can’t be her boyfriend. You’re scum. Like me. See? Eszai don’t do this …’ I crouched and leant onto him, weighting him down. With four quick slashes I drew a square around his fyrd tattoo. I sunk my fingernails under one edge, peeled the skin off, and I stuck it to the ground in front of his frantic eyes. ‘But gangsters do. Never push cat on my turf!’

  Rawney bubbled. His lungs were filling with blood. Huge amounts of bright pink aerated foam frothed between his fingers clutching his throat, and bearded him down to the waist.

  I lifted Cyan and jumped up fluidly into a sprint down the towpath. Behind me I heard the strangled liquid gargle, gargle, gargle, of Rawney trying to breathe through his slit throat.

  I ran. I ran along the slippery pavements, over the open drains. Above the roofs the moon gave a sick light through the clouds. I swear, anyone who ever bared his teeth at me has had them kicked in, and anyone who ever bared his neck to me has had his throat bitten out.

  I sped south, away from the canal, passing a sign pointing to the Church of the Emperor’s Birthplace. I ran beside the tiny portion of the original town wall that still remains – because no one had yet built over it. I passed through Watchersgate, the one surviving town gate, useless in its broken piece of north wall, with grooves where its portcullis had been. Life-sized statues with raised arms stood on top. They once held spears as if defending the town, but the spears were removed a hundred years ago after one fell off and, dropping twenty metres, transfixed both the Awian ambassador and his horse.

  The venerable astrolabe clock high in Watchersgate’s tower was called ‘The Waites’. Its iron rods started to grind as I passed and it querulously struck two. The damn thing was attached to a mechanical organ that played automatically at dawn to wake the town’s workers. If they didn’t pay their taxes it was left tinkling continually to remind them. It only had one hand, because back when Hacilith was a walled town, the hour was all you needed to know.

  Cyan was still locked off deep in a tiny, animal part of her brain. I didn’t know if she would ever come out, or if what crept back out would still be Cyan. I was terrified for her – and for myself – how the fuck was I going to explain this to Lightning?

  ‘Cyan, scolopendium is powerful shit. Nobody knows better than me on this subject, nobody! When I overdosed the Circle always bailed me out. I based my life round that cycle of “feel good, feel bad”. But you can’t shrug it off like I can. I’ve seen what it does to Zascai who don’t respect it. I’ve seen too many die. Stupid girl! What did you do it for? You’ve got to be already screwed up if you’re taking to drugs. Some people need it but what pain could you have?

  ‘Oh, god, oh god. Don’t worry, Cyan, I won’t let you die. I’m the one who’s good at becoming addicted, not you. I’m the one who leaves used needles around the place. I wake up junk sick. I punish myself for taking it by taking more. I’m the one who shoots enough to kill a destrier, not you. You’ll be fine … Nearly there … keep breathing … please keep breathing … Oh, god. Why did you come here in the first place? The city is a cess pool, where the same shit goes round and round and round!’

  I continued blethering in low and high Awian, then in Morenzian and its old and middle forms, Plainslands and its Ghallain and Ressond dialects, ancient pre-vowel-shift Awian, Trisian and Scree. I could tell I was closing in on the university, because the number of brothels was increasing.

  Five minutes and eleven languages later I reached the south end of Old Town, and the curlicued gates of Hacilith University, the oldest university in the world.

  The university’s gates were always open, just as the Castle’s gates are always open. Its red oriflamme pennant flew from a pole beside them, representing the light of knowledge. I sped through the gates, ignoring the porters shouting behind me.

  I flitted into the shadow of a residential hall and quietly along the path, leaning sideways to counteract Cyan’s weight. Her stockinged feet jutted out in front from the end of the bedspread roll.

  The university buildings were older as I neared its centre. Joss stick smoke caught at the back of my throat. Student poverty everywhere smells of cheap incense and burnt toast. Light diffused from oilcloth windows, each of which gave onto a different student’s room. They were silent – not tranquil – ominously dead quiet so I feverishly envisioned every undergraduate inside had been murdered in a different way. But worse still – they were cramming for exams. My imagination removed the outer wall, so each square room was suddenly visible in a cutaway like pigeonholes. Each room has a lamp, a book-laden table, a chair, a scholar sitting pen in hand. One lies on the bed, one sits on the floor. Each one works by himself, no one talks to another. Hundreds of individual student’s lives are separated in tiny rooms in a huge building; they reminded me of polyps in a coral.

  I clattered through a courtyard, past a marble statue of the founder, so ancient it wore a doublet and hose. An old professor stood in its shadow with two prostitutes, male and female, on the plinth in front of him. They were stroking his bald head and I heard their silky voices, ‘You’re sexy … you’re so sexy …’ The don was shaking but I couldn’t tell whether it was from fear or excitement. They didn’t look up as I hurtled past.

  Now in the very centre of the university I came to an unsurfaced track. I slowed my pace in awe, feeling as if I had walked back in time. Stony and yellow in the lamplight the track ran for a few hundred metres and stopped at the perimeter fence. It did not join nor bear any resemblance to any road in the modern Hacilith street plan. The city I knew had been built around it and the university’s buildings now hemmed it in. It was sixteen hundred years old – a road when Old Town was all of Hacilith, the only town
in Morenzia, and the country was ruled by a king from a palace god-knows-where in Litanee. The wattle-and-daub houses along the track had decayed over a millennium ago, but the College of Surgeons survived.

  I walked across and jumped the remains of a deep stone gutter. It once drained stinking effluent from the boilers that had reduced cadavers of paupers and rarities to skeletons for teaching aids. I hammered with my free hand at a nail-studded door. ‘Rayne! Rayne! Help!’

  Cyan’s body convulsed and she vomited down my back. ‘Oh, god! Well, better out than in, I suppose … Ella Rayne! Open up!’

  Rayne’s squat, square tower was once the College of Surgeons. Other faculties, refectories and dorms had gradually aggregated around its revered centre of learning – the university formed in much the same way as flowstone in a Lowespass cave. It was officially founded in the fifteenth century, only because it was no longer convenient for the faculties to ignore each other.

  The tower’s sixteen hundred years gave it a serious gravity. The newer buildings would have overshadowed it if the university had not built them at a respectful distance. Small bifora windows let meagre light into its upper level where a three-tiered lecture hall, now disused, once doubled as a dissecting room and operating theatre. Its roof was flat and its walls unmasoned stone, apart from the deep arch around the door decorated with several bands of zigzag carving. Ironically, given Rayne’s origins, the university had presented the building to her, and when she was not at the Castle or the front she lived here among her cabinet of curiosities.

  A shutter slid open and Rayne peered out through its iron grille. ‘Comet!’ She clanged the shutter and creaked the door open. ‘Wha’ are you doing here?’

  ‘Thank fuck!’ I pushed past her into the room, seeing stacks of chests and medicine boxes packed ready for removal.

  Rayne said, ‘You’re supposed t’ be a’ th’ dam. My carriage is on i’s way. Wha’ – you’re covered in blood!’