by Ian Irvine
Slipping the sections under her arm, she tore one of the rider’s shirts into rags, cut more strips from the surplus leather, peed into his mug and soaked the strips in it. Holding the amulet again, she climbed onto the front saddle and caught hold of the sheathed stalk. The lower feather-rotor was at her shoulder height while standing up, the upper one above her head. The moon was bright now and she could see that the damaged rotor blade had a distinct bend; either a break in the bone (assuming this creature had bones), a greenstick fracture or at best a bad sprain.
The flappeter’s body was covered in thick scales but each rotor blade had a thin, leathery skin out of which the feathers were extruded from horny collars. As she felt the hot swelling of the injury the flappeter let out a ringing cry and tried to heave her off.
She hooked her arm around the stalk and hung on until the beast went still, trying to work out how to fix the injury so it could fly. Had it been any normal farm animal she would have known, but the flappeter had been created by the abominable evil of flesh-forming, from the bones, tissues and organs of any number of creatures, fashioned to suit the God-Emperor’s perverted whim.
A cry echoed up the slope. Could the troops have seen her? The lanterns were surrounded by mist haloes now, so probably not, but there wasn’t time to think things through. All she could do was let her fingers work instinctively. If she could get the creature into the air and away, even for half a league, it would give her a faint chance.
Maelys hung the thong around her neck and thrust the amulet deep into her cleavage, hoping that skin contact would suffice. As she felt along the injury the flappeter writhed and its tail arched up towards her. She hastily pulled her shoulders forward, compressing her breasts until she felt the warmth of the amulet between them. The metal legs unfolded against her left breast and she nearly screamed. It felt like a huge, hard spider there. Maelys drew a deep breath, clenched her fists and restrained the urge to claw it out and bat it away into the darkness. After a long, shuddering moment the flappeter relaxed and the metal legs slowly folded again.
She wiped her brow, then, trying to maintain pressure on the amulet, began to manipulate the feathered blade. She was used to working by feel; it was ages since her family had been able to afford candles.
The blade wasn’t broken, for it didn’t have bones at all. Beneath the skin and feathers was a flattened, horny shell like the leg of a crab, though it was as flexible as a thumb-nail. An oddly hinged joint in the middle was dislocated and felt badly sprained. She eased it back, ignoring the creature’s flinch, allowing the internal tendons to pull the joint together then rotating the two sections this way and that until she could feel them slipping into place.
That was the easy part. Now she had to immobilise the joint so it would not dislocate under the strain of flying, yet allow the blade to rotate as it should, with as little pain as possible. No simple splint could do that, for even if she bound it on so tightly that it cut off the circulation it would eventually fail, and if that happened in the air they would die. But perhaps a two-part splint might serve.
She split one piece of bamboo in two and rubbed its spirituous contents over the lacerated area around the dislocation; it would help to stop it becoming infected. After carving out the ends to fit perfectly over the blade she padded the insides with cloth. The flappeter was stirring and the metal legs of the amulet twitching again, so she swiftly bound the bamboo on with the strips of pee-soaked leather, stretching them as tightly as she could. As the wet leather dried it would shrink, binding the bamboo on more tightly.
Maelys felt the repair; it was as good as she could manage. She slid back to Nish, who was still comatose, though warmer than he had been before, and breathing steadily. Time to go, assuming she could make the flappeter move.
She slid forwards into the rider’s saddle, drew the amulet out, squeezed it in her fist and said, ‘Go, flappeter.’
It didn’t move. ‘Fly!’ It did not react at all. ‘Get going, beast!’ Then, ‘Please.’ It just stood there on its many legs, its neck turned, staring at her with those paired eyes.
Was she supposed to call it by name? Hinneltyne had used its name when speaking to Vomix but Maelys couldn’t remember it. Rurr-something. Or was she supposed to say a prayer to the God-Emperor first, or give a special order or signal? It could be anything. How was she supposed to prevail over its alien consciousness?
There didn’t seem any way to find out. Maelys slumped in the saddle, feeling her suppressed panic rising again, and watching the soldiers’ lanterns creep ever nearer, when she noticed a brain-like protuberance at the back of the creature’s elongated skull.
It looked rather like a second brain grafted onto the first, and arising from it was, unmistakeably, a little loop-listener, its faintly luminous bile-green noose no bigger than a rat’s neck. The dark specks within the loop were still now. The rider had leaned forwards and spoken to Vomix through it. Could Vomix have ordered the flappeter to keep her here until the troops arrived?
Behind the loop-listener was a small, fleshy bowl, from the centre of which rose, on a stub of stalk, a round disc filled with shimmering threads. At first she thought it was a kind of wisp-watcher, though it didn’t have an iris. The threads appeared to be in random motion, and neither was it making that characteristic buzz.
Suddenly the specks inside the dangling loop began to sparkle. ‘Hinneltyne, where are you? Report immediately.’ It was Seneschal Vomix.
So the front organ wasn’t a loop-listener at all, but something greater and more dangerous. Maelys had no name for it but would call it a speck-speaker. Hinneltyne had used it to talk to Vomix. And when Hinneltyne didn’t answer, what would Vomix do? Try to take direct command of the flap-peter?
The flappeter’s head reared around at her and the serrated jaws opened, though then it seemed to hesitate as if waiting for an order which hadn’t come. ‘Don’t!’ she whispered, foolishly. The speck-speaker shimmered, sending her words to Vomix and, thoughtlessly, sure he’d ordered the beast to attack, Maelys whipped her knife out and severed the loop from its stalk.
Something that wasn’t blood spurted out, yellow-grey in the bright moonlight. The flappeter screeched and lurched sideways, its hooked feet scrabbling on the stony ground. The metal legs of the amulet snapped out and it scuttled across her left breast, over the nipple then down towards her armpit before it was brought up by the thong. This time Maelys did shriek; she couldn’t stop herself.
The flow ebbed, the wound skinned over and the pressure in her mind diminished so suddenly that she almost fell out of the saddle. The flappeter’s rage eased as well, although now she felt its overwhelming grief at the death of the rider it had been bonded with. No, not so much grief as loss. The bond with its rider had made it complete, and if it didn’t soon replace that bond it would go mad. Had she freed it from Vomix’s shackles only to torment it unbearably?
The amulet bent its legs, clinging by their points to the outside of her breast. She plucked it out and was reaching towards the wisp-device with the knife, wondering if she should cut it away as well, when an intimation made her draw back. What if that were the way the beast was controlled by the rider? She recalled Hinneltyne thrusting his fist forwards a couple of times, and once it had seemed to disappear. She clenched the amulet in her fist and thrust it through the wisp-filled circle.
Her fist disappeared, then fire ran along her nerve endings all the way up her arm, around the back of her head and into her skull, and Maelys experienced the strangest feeling of connection, as if she were an extension of the great beast she was mounted on. She felt many things: its core-deep pain for its dead rider; a dull ache from the splinted rotor blade; a sharp pain and a sense of loss from the stub of the severed speck-speaker; a dull emptiness in its gut, and other emotions too dark and alien for her to comprehend.
She heard shouts now, and about twenty soldiers appeared out of the fog a few hundred paces away, plodding in their heavy armour up the slope.
Are you taking on Hinneltyne’s contract, little one? said a deep, shivery voice inside her head. She looked up to see its eyes fixed on her. The moonlight reflected off them in geometric patterns.
Maelys didn’t know what to say. Presumably contract meant the bond between flappeter and rider. No time to think; she had to take the risk. ‘Yes, yes! I’m taking on the contract.’ She felt its relief; its pain and loss seemed to ease.
Are you strong enough? You seem young and callow to me.
‘I killed your rider.’ Why had she said that? ‘I cut you free of Vomix. I fixed your rotor blade. I’m strong.’
You’d better be, for if you falter I’ll devour you and take the amulet for myself. You do know that, don’t you?
‘But you owe me –’
Never make the mistake of thinking I’m human. I was made without any human frailties. I owe you nothing.
‘Then why are you talking instead of eating me?’
It didn’t answer. It must need her for the moment, though she was worried about the consequences of cutting off the speck-speaker. Had that weakened it? Or by ridding it of the bond to Vomix, and perhaps Jal-Nish, had she offered it the chance of freedom?
‘What’s your name, flappeter?’
My name is Rurr-shyve, amulet-bearer.
‘Go, Rurr-shyve,’ she said desperately. ‘Take us to Hulipont, please.’
Hool … eee … ponttt …
It didn’t move and her panic was rising again. Threats were no way to get the best out of a creature, though Rurr-shyve was a monster created by the God-Emperor to oppress people, and perhaps threats and brute force were the only things it understood.
An arrow whistled overhead. The soldiers were just within range; soon their marksmen would be able to pick her off. Maelys thrust her fist through the circle of the wisp-controller, feeling the heat grow along her arm and the inside of her skull warming up. ‘Go to Hulipont, Rurr-shyve!’ she said in the most commanding voice she could manage.
She raised her hand and felt the thin legs flex. They folded down until she could have stepped onto the ground, then snapped upright, catapulting the flappeter three or four spans into the air with such force that the blood drained away from her skull. Her belly churned, she tried desperately to avoid throwing up, then the lower feather-rotor began to spin, the upper one too, scooping the air down in huge blasts. It was like standing in a gale. The flappeter shot higher but it didn’t turn north, in the direction of distant Hulipont. It began to head east, directly towards the God-Emperor’s palace, and though Maelys wriggled her hand this way and that in the wisp-controller until every nerve in her body was singing, she could not divert it from its path.
SEVEN
Maelys had tried reasoning, and failed; she had even pleaded with Rurr-shyve, but it had cut itself off from her. How Jal-Nish must be sneering at her frantic efforts to escape. What pleasure he must have taken from the foolish hopes she’d raised after overcoming each new obstacle. Perhaps he’d allowed her to do so, knowing that her final, irrevocable failure would be all the more crushing.
There was one last way to frustrate him. It wasn’t in her to harm Nish, and Maelys was now resigned to Rurr-shyve taking him back to his father, but she might still save her family if she had the courage for it. If she threw herself off the flappeter from a great height her body would be unrecognisable.
Suicide was such a terrible wrong that Maelys could barely contemplate it. Not in the worst of times had she fallen prey to despair, and she wouldn’t choose death to avoid the God-Emperor’s torturers; it wasn’t in her nature. But if there were no other way to save her family, did duty require her to take her life? It was a question her simple moral outlook wasn’t equipped to answer, though if Jal-Nish took her alive he’d soon torture the names of her family out of her.
Maelys couldn’t see any alternative but to die. After all, she would defend her little sister with her life, and that would be accounted a noble sacrifice. Was defending Fyllis by taking her own life so very different? She felt that it was. The one was showing courage in the face of desperate odds, the other, taking the easy way out. Yet if her survival meant Fyllis being tortured, surely Maelys had to make the sacrifice …
She didn’t want to die. She’d do anything to escape such a fate. The flappeter was so high now that in the distance she could see the pinpoints of the lights of Morrelune. The flight wouldn’t take long and there was no point putting off her end, in case Jal-Nish took steps to prevent it. She had to do it now …
But first she must make sure Nish was all right and say goodbye, even if he couldn’t hear her. She couldn’t go without doing that. Slipping her feet out of the stirrups, Maelys climbed backwards over the saddle horn, hanging onto the straps as Rurr-shyve bounced on the air currents. The moon was high now, shining on Nish’s face. He looked younger, more at peace, and cleaner too. Immersion in the pond had soaked the worst of the filth off him.
His cheek was cold but his throat was warm, and so were his feet inside the fur-lined boots. He would survive, a small miracle in itself. If only he wasn’t going back to his father. Well, she’d done her best and it hadn’t been enough, but that was how things were fated to be.
Maelys turned away bleakly, turned back and, on a whim, bent and kissed Nish on the lips. It was the most shocking liberty, one that made her cheeks grow hot, but even a condemned prisoner was allowed one last request.
As she sat back, Nish’s eyes opened, he looked up at her sleepily and smiled. ‘Maelys,’ he said, and the name was like poetry on his lips. ‘You saved my life.’ He sat up, looking around in wonder, and his voice grew stronger. ‘You stole a flappeter from its rider, and you’re flying it?’
‘He – he came at me with a knife. It was sheer luck that I – I killed him.’ She couldn’t bear to think about it.
‘But only a trained, talented rider can compel a flappeter. Are you a mancer, hidden from my father all this time?’
‘I’m just an ordinary gir– boy.’ She hoped he hadn’t noticed her slip, though it didn’t matter now. ‘I – I’m sorry, Nish. I did everything I could but I’ve failed. I – goodbye.’ She turned to climb over the saddle horn but he caught her arm.
‘What are you doing?’
She pointed dumbly towards the lights. ‘I can’t control the flappeter and it’s taking us back to Morrelune. If I’m identified, you know what the God-Emperor will do to Fyllis. I’ve – I’ve got to jump …’
He didn’t let go. ‘No you don’t.’
‘But it’s my duty.’
‘I understand all about duty, Maelys, and the way people use it against you. We’re not finished yet. It’ll take half an hour to get to Morrelune in this headwind. How did you take command of the beast?’
A wave of relief washed over her. Nish had been a leader of men; he’d know what to do. She hastily explained how she’d splinted the feather-rotor blade and compelled the flappeter into the air. ‘I was going to cut off its wisp-controller too, in case your father could use it to take control from afar. Perhaps I should have.’
‘If you did that it might not be able to fly.’ He thought for a moment, then said in a low voice, ‘My guards often talked about flappeters. Of all Father’s created creatures, they’re the wildest and most wilful beasts; they don’t even serve him willingly. He should never have given them intelligence. They resent the bridle; sometimes they refuse to obey and he’s had to threaten them.’
‘How?’ asked Maelys listlessly, watching the lights of Morrelune come ever closer as the flappeter descended, and feeling a pain in the pit of her stomach.
‘I don’t remember,’ said Nish, oblivious to her torment. She was glad about that. It had nothing to do with him and she didn’t want him trying to talk her out of what she must do. Maelys began to ease her boots from the stirrups, took a deep breath and tried to go calmly and with dignity. Old people, children and even babies were r
obbed of life every day. Her death did not matter. There wouldn’t be any pain.
But I don’t want to die! It was a scream from the depths of her being. She clenched her fists on the saddle horn and tried to ignore it.
‘Severing!’ cried Nish.
‘What?’ She settled back in the saddle. The question and answer would gain her another minute.
‘The guards said Father had threatened reluctant flappeters with severing.’
‘Severing what?’ she asked quietly, so Rurr-shyve wouldn’t hear.
‘I don’t know.’
Maelys turned forwards to study the flappeter in the moonlight, then lowered her voice until it could barely be heard above the thup-thup of the feather-rotors. ‘Rurr-shyve spoke into my mind and told me its name, so perhaps Jal-Nish meant severing their consciousness. No intelligent beast could bear that.’
‘Yes, that must be the answer. But how would Father do it?’
Maelys was staring blankly at the bulbous protuberance at the back of the flappeter’s skull, like a second brain grafted behind the first, when it hit her. ‘What if that’s a second brain for flight, or consciousness? The two must be connected in some way, and if they were cut apart –’
She gave Nish a meaningful look, wanting him to take charge and do this terrible thing to Rurr-shyve, but he flopped backwards in his saddle, white-faced under the water-smeared dirt. He was having a relapse.
‘I – I’d better do it then,’ she said.
‘Tie on first,’ he said faintly. ‘Flappeter – won’t like it.’
She tied the last of the thin rope around her waist, checked the knots twice, then fastened the free end to a ring on her saddle. Maelys inched forwards until she could reach the bulge, but as soon as she drew the knife Rurr-shyve bucked wildly and turned upside down.