I pulled a sheaf of letters from my coat pocket and leafed through until I found Rayne’s envelope. Cyan accepted it and scratched the seal off with her fingernails.
‘Is Rayne the only person who’s thought of me?’ she asked.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. No. Hasn’t Lightning given you his dog for company? He’s been sending you the best food, otherwise you’d be eating biscuit and salt beef, like the rest of the Zascai.’
‘So he hasn’t forgotten me?’
‘No. He’s incredibly busy too.’ I sighed, wondering how I could make her understand what was happening. ‘This is the biggest advance of all time. When they start lining up in formation, you’ll see what I mean.’
Cyan lay back on the bed. ‘I tried to write to you but I couldn’t concentrate. I made a complete arse of myself.’
‘Yes, you did. I wish I’d –’
‘Oh, I don’t care what you’d have done. I wasn’t Challenging you.’ She put an arm across her eyes and said, ‘Pissflaps. Will you let me free, Jant; please?’
‘Look, Lightning put you in here for a reason. If I let you out, and you get killed, he would shoot me. If through your actions, you get someone else killed, I would be blamed. And I don’t fancy that.’
‘It’s like being in prison!’
I stared at her. Her truculent tone was beginning to pique. ‘Trust me, it’s nothing like being in prison.’
‘Oh, Jant’s angry.’
‘Stop that! Behaving like a ten-year-old is what landed you in here.’
‘Please set me free. I’ll reward you. I’ll give you –’
‘It won’t happen, so don’t try to tempt me.’
The deerhound leapt on the bed and Cyan took its head in her lap. ‘Good dog, Lymer.’
I knew she had never really seriously considered joining the Circle. Everybody harbours a secret wish to be immortal. Everyone, now and then, wonders what it would be like. But like most people Cyan had never genuinely entertained the thought, and I bet, in her head, she keeps repeating over and over what she did and imagines the Eszai laughing at her.
I knelt down with a cheerful air and began to build a fire in the grate, refusing to be overwhelmed by the awkward situation. Cyan watched me with animal antipathy.
I said, ‘I recognise a spur-of-the-moment Challenge when I see it. All Eszai recognise bluster, too. We’re often Challenged by people who know they’re not capable of beating us but simply want the attention. By the Castle’s rules we have to take each and every one seriously, and separately, because you never know when one is a true talent …’
‘I don’t withdraw my Challenge, if that’s what you’re driving at.’
I gathered handfuls of the dried moor grass, heather sprigs and sprays of thyme strewn as a floor covering. I used them for kindling and lit some skilfully with the last of my matches. I swung the kettle spit above the flames and began to make some coffee.
‘Rayne was recently Challenged,’ I continued. ‘By a healer, some Awian noblewoman. High Awian is a useless language for science, and Rachiswater university mainly teaches arts. They’re not far behind Hacilith though. This woman believed in the properties of precious metals to cure diseases. She made gold mirrors and shone light into the patients’ eyes. It was no laughing matter … her bedside manner was so good many patients were cured by their own expectations. Rayne set her a Challenge at the front, and she learned that no shiny mirrors or soothing music can stuff a patient’s guts back in.’ I shrugged. ‘Only three places in the Circle have never changed hands: Rayne’s, Tornado’s and your father’s. Everybody who Challenges them makes a fool of himself. You’re not the only one.’
‘It was his fault,’ she said. ‘He pushed me to it. In front of the Emperor and everything.’
‘Cyan, I’ve better things to do with my free hour than talk with a stroppy cow.’
‘Please tell the guards to release me.’
‘No. After seeing you make an exhibition of yourself and humiliate Lightning, even though I told you to sit down, I’m surprised I’m here at all.’
‘I don’t regret it,’ she said.
‘He’s been the best archer for over fourteen hundred years!’ I tried to make her understand that length of time. ‘Awndyn didn’t exist when he was mortal. Or Peregrine. They didn’t have highways, they didn’t even have coaches. They used to have ballistae and now we have espringals, thanks to the effort of San knows how many Artillerists. Lightning improved bows, from the early awful type they had before the Circle, to the shit-hot bows you use now. He’s lived through all this, and been on top all the time! It’s as much his day now as it was then. So it’s bloody stupid to Challenge him.’
‘’Spose you’re right.’
‘He’s seen the four corners of the world … Five, including Tris.’
‘In the past, though. He lives in the past. And Swallow lives in the future – but I live in the present.’ She got up and crouched in front of the fire, rubbing some warmth back into her hands. ‘He hasn’t been a father to me at all. He’s been more of a father to you than to me.’
‘Not really. I –’
‘That’s what he is, your substitute father. It makes me sick how you’re blind to his faults.’
‘Nonsense.’
‘Yeah, well why are you defending him so much?’
‘I don’t need a father. I survived by myself for years in Hacilith. Worse than anything you’ve seen. And –’ I swept a hand, rattling the bangles around my wrist ‘– for example, these peel towers. I won a battle myself at the furthest one, at Summerday in nineteen ninety-three. Yours truly and Shearwater Mist beat the Insects before Lightning had even ridden out of Awia. We were the only Eszai in command; the brains and the brawn.’
‘Which one of you was the brains?’
‘Me! Damn it.’ I poured hot water into two cups of coffee. ‘Mist was bitten through the shoulder and I had to look after him almost as much as the Zascai.’
‘I wish I could be involved in something like that.’
I would have laughed if she had led with a trace of humour in her voice. ‘You’re not joking, are you?’
‘No, I’m not … I want out.’
‘Stay here, Cyan. Insects are running everywhere. These towers provide enough shelter to last a swarm. There are rainwater butts on the roof and enough stores in the cellar.’
She said, ‘I’ve been watching the archers drill all afternoon. I can see everything from up here. Daddy was riding up and down in front of the ranks as if he’d forgotten me. There are two enormous women soldiers guarding me and all the money stored here. Not men, worse luck; “Bitchback and Nobless” from Midelspass.’
‘Really?’
‘Mm. They don’t pass on my messages. They don’t listen to me, even.’
‘Wonder where Lightning got them from?’
‘I don’t know but they adore him. They’re so desperate that if they knew a man was up here they’d strip-search you … And the lake reeks,’ she went on. ‘All day when the wind was gusting I could smell it.’
She pushed Lymer aside and lifted the chessboard onto her knees. ‘Do you want a game?’
‘Huh? No, I don’t know how to play.’
‘In all this time, you haven’t learnt chess?’
‘No. Can you fend off wolves using only a sling?’
‘No.’
‘Well then.’
‘I’ll teach you,’ she said.
‘It’s a stupid game. I can’t think of one good reason for it, and besides, my time’s nearly up.’
‘You mean you don’t have the patience.’
I picked a lancer and offered it to her, but palmed it so Cyan found herself grasping at empty air. She giggled. I placed it back with a click on the board. ‘Check! Now, why don’t you read Rayne’s letter? She likes you.’
‘Yeah, I like her too … but I find her accent a bit impenetrable.’
‘That’s the seventh century for you.’
Cyan unfolded the letter. ‘Rayne must be an amazing doctor to hold her title for as long as Daddy.’
‘She is. As time goes on, it seems less likely that she’ll ever lose a Challenge. The mortals’ behaviour benefits her, I think.’
‘Why?’
‘Other doctors all stunt each other’s growth. They never share their discoveries because they all want to Challenge her. Rayne’s fond of saying that the branches of science wouldn’t be so separate if scholars were less secretive.’
‘I suppose, living in the university, she’s the first to hear of anything new.’
‘Yes. She loves it when novices notice something different. She encourages them. Otherwise they’d just follow her and ape her experiments.’
Cyan read the letter for a few minutes while I played with the chess pieces and sorted out my eyeliner, and then she passed me the letter. ‘Why not have a look while I write a reply?’ She pulled a pillow from the bed and sat down on the floor next to the low table, her long back rounded above it. She began to fiddle with the nib of her pen.
While she scrawled her reply, I perused Rayne’s pages of neat, close writing.
Slake Cross Hospital
17th May
1.30 a.m.
To be delivered by the hand of Comet
Dear Cyan,
I know you are trapped and must be feeling miserable. Your father’s rage seemed shocking, but I hope at some time in the future you will agree he may have saved your life and that life is indeed more precious than you currently hold it. Lightning loves you with all his heart but you simply refuse to understand how much strain he’s under. He does not want to lose you and he must concentrate on reaching the dam. I didn’t think he would do anything like this no matter how hard you pushed him, but San has never put us under this pressure before.
In the coach on the way from Hacilith I enjoyed our conversation. How agreeable it was, for an old lady who does not need much sleep, to talk through the night with a young lady who is too excited to sleep. And then when the Circle broke and you consoled me … Please turn over in your mind the tales I told you of your father’s life, and understand that in Hacilith you were fed a lot of slander. It shouldn’t colour your opinion of him now.
Once you realise of how little consequence you are in the immensity of time, you gain a great power, a liberty and you can follow your own path in peace. Bide your time and learn.
You probably don’t feel lucky, but let me tell you, you have been living in a time of such equality and freedom it almost seems to me that the people of this era act like spoilt children. People like myself have toiled over decades and centuries so that you may have such freedom. I expect you feel you have little choice in life but in times past you would have had even less. When I was mortal, girls could not be students and few people could read. I guided Hacilith University to develop in the image of the Castle, so it’s run by merit, not by dodderers. These days an applicant to the university must have worked in the outside world for two years, so the prospective students are people who know how to put in a day’s work and their mature approach recognises the great worth and luxury of study. You never needed for anything, Cyan, so you never needed to learn until now. I urge you to put your time to good use.
Watch your father from the window as he leads the battle. Would you be able to do what he does, so well? As a Challenger you seem to think you could do better. Lightning and the others who surround you are not simply faces, not simply there to grant your wish but every one has a long and complicated history to which his reactions pertain, just as much as they do to you. The road to becoming immortal is so uniquely steep and tortuous that every man travelling it has a story to tell. Your father is no exception.
Lightning and I discovered the privileges and tribulations of immortality at about the same time, though it meant different things to us both. During six nineteen, when the Emperor’s First Circle was defeated, I was scrubbing out the washing coppers in Chattelhouse’s laundry room. We were aware that San was losing Awia but the intense fighting was happening somewhere far off in the north. We could only keep going and wait until the Insects arrived at the walls of Hacilith. Every day the news came, the atmosphere grew more and more ominous and we lived under a constantly encroaching threat. How Lightning can call it a golden age I don’t know.
Until I was about ten years old I lived on the street with no roof over my head, but I hung around the gates of the College of Surgeons as if drawn to them. I was sitting playing knucklebones on the track outside when I saw the cleaner being sacked. She hefted her bags and stomped away in a huff. The porter began to close the gates but I slipped between them and begged to be allowed to clean the floors. He rolled his eyes but he hired me and I became the most lowly servant to the Guild of Barber-Surgeons. Guilds disappeared before the close of the first millennium, but they were very influential when I was mortal.
I dreamed of being a subsizar, a scholar’s assistant, but girls were not permitted and, besides, they would never employ an orphan with no clue as to her parentage.
After I turned thirteen, the gentlemen students sometimes offered to let me stay in the rooms they hired in town or in Chattelhouse, the wattle-and-stone residential hall. I’d move in, then be ejected back to be bullied in the deprived and unbearable servants’ quarters, until I could find another Chattelhouse room. The boys never gave charity freely; they always pressed for sexual favours in return. Indeed, one of them suggested that I become a prostitute so he could make some money – but I all wanted was to talk about medicine with them!
Many’s the time I tried to sleep on a boy’s couch and late at night he would loom in the doorway, turn back the covers and slip in next to me, his hands on my breasts and his penis hard. One man in particular would strew his apartment with pornographic pamphlets as a hint, and every morning he would demand … Well, Cyan, the things that happened were so awful I will not set them down on paper.
By the time I was thirty, Chattelhouse employed me as charwoman and cook in exchange for board. Some of the fourteen-year-old scholars grew to regard me as a mother far more approachable than the one who sent them away to study logic, rhetoric and grammar. One boy, whom I’ll never forget, developed an infatuation and spent his afternoons teaching me to read. He stammered and blushed his way into finding me a better job. At long last I could mop the Surgeons’ lecture theatre after lessons. The chalk scrawls left on the blackboard enthralled me. If I made myself scarce during the anatomy sessions I was allowed to lay out the instruments and clean them afterwards. Eventually I had my chance to attend! I placed the scalpels and saws on the bench, and then hid in the equipment cupboard and peered through its slats. If I had been discovered spying they would have cast me out, but I learnt exactly which implements to lay out for each lesson, so nobody had occasion to open the door.
Huddled in the dark with chinks of light shining on my face, I watched the dissections for years and years until I knew the procedures by heart – and here was the strange thing – they never changed. It was as if the professors couldn’t add to their knowledge because they had mastered everything – which, I reasoned, could not be the case if patients still died.
The young men on the tiered seats either sat carving their names in the benches or lapped up the professor’s witticisms. But I peered at the cadaver. Of course blood couldn’t move through the septum of the heart, which had no holes. Of course ligation after amputation would reduce deaths from shock caused by dipping the stump in hot pitch. He told them that dead flesh spontaneously generated maggots, while flies buzzed round his head and laid eggs on the hanged felon’s body right there on the bench.
He propounded the myth that Awian hearts are larger than those of humans because Awians have a higher sensibility for love, without considering for a minute that their wings might need a larger blood supply. He told them that Rhydanne children grow rapidly because they are savages, no better than animals. It never occurred to him to ask how else they would surviv
e the mountain winters. It was clear to me that Rhydanne have short pregnancies and small babies because their mothers have narrow hips to make them better sprinters, a trait Rhydanne must needs inherit if their females choose to be caught by the fastest men.
It was unthinkable that a woman should set foot in the Barber-Surgeon’s library. With hindsight I’m thankful that I wasn’t filled with the books’ received wisdom. I had no framework to force my observations into. But I was consumed by my interest in medicine; I had to find out more. It was what I was for. Cyan, sometimes in life you will have to admit that you are wrong and alter the way you think. Cherish that process. Why do you think I’ve lasted so long? The entire discipline of medicine we have today owes itself to my belief, then as now, that knowledge can only be recovered from nature by close observation and practice, not through revered manuscripts or bombastic speech.
My dear, I am remembering my aggravation and losing the thread of my story, so let me simply say that I wondered why their wisdom did not accord with my notes. I questioned whether the gentry really knew better than me. Suffice it to add that Chattelhouse’s ‘long room’ latrines were over a cesspit so vastly deep that it was only emptied every two hundred years. And they wondered why they got plague.
Try to imagine me at the foot of a narrow spiral staircase to the dormitory, mopping the flagstones. It was evening so the tiny arched windows high on the walls gave no light whatsoever.
A student bounded down the stairs, making the rush lights gutter in their sconces. He tripped over my bucket and fell headlong measuring his considerable length on the floor. Dirty water slooshed down the corridor. The dice he had been tossing up and down in one hand rolled to a halt in the puddle at my feet and showed double six.
The Modern World Page 29