Above the Snowline

by Steph Swainston

  I unclipped my sword and sat down on the divan with the scabbard between my knees. ‘Look, I may not be wearing any trinkets but I am a good hunter. See how much metal?’ I pulled the hilt up and bared a little of the blade.

  Dellin immediately held her hand out for it. I shook my head and offered her my gold ring, but she pointed to one of a pair of brass candlesticks on the side table. ‘I like that better. It’s bigger.’

  ‘But it’s just brass. It’s cheap.’

  ‘Great. You could own a lot of them and then you’d be really important.’

  I passed her a candlestick. ‘Here.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, and just pointed to the other of the pair.

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Yes.’ She tucked them under her rucksack straps and pointed at my ring. So she would just take whatever I gave her and think me a damn fool for parting with it. I put my ring back on. As no more riches were forthcoming, Dellin simply lay down on the fur. She curled into a remarkably small space, with her hands together in front of her face, and immediately went to sleep.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ I said, and regarded her frankly. ‘You smell. I’ll have to ask Ata to give you a shower. If this morning has been a culture shock wait till you discover the delights of a flushing toilet.’

  I left her, locked the door for the first time in months, pocketed the key and descended again. I visited all the women I could find, female Eszai and male Eszai’s wives. Many immortals were away, training or pursuing business, interests, pleasures and rivalries from their other residences, but I found several servants whom I knew well, doctors in Rayne’s hospital, librarians in Lisade and accountants in Carillon. I borrowed jewellery from them all. They thought it was hilarious and I faced a blizzard of questions about Dellin. I joked with them as they laughed at me trying on their beads, but after an hour I had an arm full of plain bangles fit for the best hunter in Darkling.

  I ran to the stables and ordered a coach, then back to my room, rather enjoying the dissonance of silver, opened my door - and Dellin had gone. Her parka was rucked up and the shutters swung wide.

  Damn her. I ran to the window and leant out. Far below, the grassy slope of the glacis led down to the moat, which rippled black and white like damask steel in the afternoon sunlight. Nobody was down there; she could be kilometres away by now.

  ‘Hey!’ A shout from directly above. I twisted round and looked straight up the wall. Giddyingly, Dellin’s worn moccasin soles dangled from a notch between two of the crenellations. They bounced against the stone and arced out as she swung her feet.

  ‘What are you doing up there, sguniach?’

  Her face appeared, looking over, ‘Come up!’

  Swearing, I stomped back to the landing and up a ladder to a trapdoor in the ceiling. I slipped back the bolt and shoved up the trapdoor. It swung over and crashed flat against the roof above, showering grit into my eyes.

  Swearing even more loudly, I climbed out into the bright air, the trapdoor frame smearing tar down my trousers. Dellin was perched between the merlons, her legs hanging over the edge. She craned round to see me and blinked, surprised at my bangles.

  ‘I have more but I cached them,’ I said. I walked around the low cone of the lead roof and sat down next to her. She was still eating but obviously forcing it down. Close to, the suede rounded over her skinny thighs was scratched and pockmarked with the bites and scars the leopard had received when it was alive. The thick seams shone with bone grease rubbed in to waterproof them. Her long ponytail down her back was surprisingly clean.

  In addition to her small size, she was probably younger than she looked, because Rhydanne grow and mature faster than humans or Awians. I guessed her to be twenty, which would be the equivalent of early thirties for us. Crow’s-feet clasped the corners of her eyes, and over hard muscles, her skin had a windburnt shine. There is no such thing as an elderly Rhydanne. Their bodies take the brunt of their harsh existence and they live and run at full speed until they drop dead at around age forty.

  Above us my flag, the Waterwheel emblem black on white, fissled and rustled. This tower was my haunt, my eyrie, my silent kingdom, and the serrated peaks of Darkling lurked out of sight below the horizon. I did not want to go back there; I had been away too long. Like climbers who have attained the summit and gained a sudden peace, we looked out across the meadows to the frothy tops of oak trees at the start of the Eske woods. Beyond the wide strip of the moat, the river glittered into a series of locks. Two channels ran from it, into the second moat and the fishponds. The banks of the ponds were dotted with people fishing, and a nodding carthorse was towing a barge on a return journey from the kitchen’s postern gate to the river.

  Dellin looked left to the edge of the earthworks, right to the bridge of the Skein Gate. ‘This is better! Inside, I feel trapped. The walls are too close. It’s too small and dark.’

  ‘Even the Throne Room?’

  ‘Even the Throne Room. So many people! It must be a sight.’

  ‘What must?’

  ‘When you move for winter.’ She pointed to the pale Skein Road, which ran out of the barbican, across both moats and straight as a die through the water meadows in the direction of Binnard. ‘I bet people and herds fill that whole track.’

  ‘You think we move to winter quarters? You think everyone in the Castle moves?’ I laughed, then stopped abruptly, because a joke gets bitter quickly when there’s no one to share it with. ‘Wait till I tell Tornado … No, no, Dellin. We stay here all year round. Flatlanders tend to live in one place.’

  She was silent for a while. Below us, ninety metres of masonry slitted with windows plunged to the moat. The guard was changing on the Skein Gate and snatches of jocular conversation drifted up.

  ‘So, then, the featherbacks won’t move from Carnich?’

  ‘No, Dellin, not in the winter.’

  She laughed derisively, which angered me.

  ‘You don’t appreciate the might of Awia! This has repercussions; if you drop a pebble you could cause an avalanche. It goes all the way to the king himself! You might as well try to push down that bloody spire!’

  She glanced over her shoulder, looking across the tower top and through the gap between two battlements, past the tip of the theatre’s cupola, beyond which, just visible, rose the Throne Room’s octagonal spire. ‘The weather itself may push it down one day, Jant Shira. And the Awians? Trying to stay at Carnich through the winter? Do they really know what the mountains can do?’

  When our coach was ready I took Dellin down to the gate. A crowd had gathered around the coach, including Lightning and Tornado. Really, you would think they had something better to do. I explained all to the driver, opened the door and Dellin jumped inside. I climbed in behind her, sat down on the bench and slammed the door. The Sailor’s wife had helped her to take a shower, which had left her much cleaner, but somewhat bedraggled and subdued, and her hair still smelt of lanolin.

  The second the door closed she looked frightened. She half-stood and shoved the door, turned round and barged past my knees, then shoved the door on the other side. I couldn’t make her sit down. Bowed beneath the padded ceiling, she grabbed the handle and tugged it. The door sprang wide and she jumped out.

  The coach rocked on its flat springs and a nervous titter went through the crowd. I stepped out. Dellin, terrified, was backing away into the crowd, which was separating to watch as she passed.

  The driver called, ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘She! She is the problem!’

  I put Dellin inside again and the same thing happened. She threw her weight from side to side and the chassis bounced. She kicked open the door and leapt to the ground.

  ‘It’s a tiny space,’ she gasped. ‘I’m trapped!’

  ‘Look out the window.’

  ‘No! It’s too small!’

  Now the horses scented her. They raised their heads, trying to see around their blinkers. The mare nearest her stamped its front hoof, edged away
from her, and in two steps was up against the harness beam. So began a pas de quatre which should have been carried out to a slow waltz tune. The horses on the other side stepped away from Dellin too and the coach began to tilt. The wheels on my side rose off the ground. The driver grabbed his seat to stop himself slipping and the coach bit further and further into its suspension, its step and running board cutting into the grass.

  The crowd seemed content to watch rather than help so I pulled Dellin away from the horses. The driver walked them forward to realign them, the coach rocked back and its step flicked off a lip of soil and grass.

  ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ I said. Dellin showed her teeth.

  I took her arm and tried to drag her inside but she braced herself in the doorway with both feet and one hand. I couldn’t tug her in, her limbs were so rigid, and the crowd fell about laughing.

  The driver, flustered with embarrassment, said, ‘What’s the matter with her?’

  ‘She doesn’t like the confined space.’

  Dellin had darted round and was regarding the horses inquisitively. They were veering away from her on that side now, shying and tossing their heads, chewing their bits, twisting the harness bar and lifting the left wheels off the ground. I don’t know how the driver managed to stop them from bolting. He waved her away, so I moved her to a safe distance and shouted, ‘If she can’t sit inside she’ll have to go on the luggage rack!’

  ‘Won’t she be chilly?’

  ‘Not at all!’

  I explained to Dellin, who swung up on the brass brackets and settled happily next to the trunk. I stepped onto the running board and called, ‘Let’s get this show on the road!’

  ‘Hah!’ The driver cracked his whip. The horses bowed their heads and took the strain, the reins slipped through his fingers, and the glossy black coach rolled forward. The sound of the hooves echoed back hollowly from the Castle walls. I was about to duck inside when Dellin jumped down, ran around us and ahead, up the road. The lad pulled the horses to a halt and looked round at me.

  ‘What now?’ I called to Dellin.

  ‘Why go in a box when you can run? Much faster than the horses!’ she exclaimed and cheerfully bounced from one foot to the other.

  ‘Because it’s a long way. I have a lot of luggage, and …’

  She sneered.

  ‘All right, all right!’ Well, if I am trying to be conspicuous, then surely Raven and the Rhydanne will be far more impressed to see me flying in, than if I arrive by coach.

  I turned to the driver. ‘Dellin can’t bear the coach. She wants to run, so I’ll run with her.’

  Someone in the crowd cheered - do you know, I think it was Tornado - and the rest followed suit. I acknowledged them with a wave. Then I climbed up onto the luggage rack, flipped open the trunk and stuffed as much into my haversack as I could carry, ending with my grey velvet army hat, which has had more than its fair share of fame.

  I settled the sack between my wings, then jumped down and set off after Dellin without another word. But never let it be said that Comet ran all the way to Carniss. As I crossed the drawbridge I was running fast enough to fly. I spread my wings and flapped up, labouring higher, passed over Dellin, and fanned her with the down-draft of my wings. It was a shame I missed her expression, but I felt her staring after me.

  That surprised you! I thought. Now you know why I’m the fastest man in the world! I turned on the breeze and circled. Dellin was a little black and white figure far below, running steadily along the road. She tried to beckon me down, but I ignored her and she stopped trying. After that she only rarely looked up, but when she did I dropped height to show I had seen her.

  Behind us, the tiny coach and the crowd surrounding it shrank into distance across the water meadows. Shallow pools flooded the waterlogged common here and there, like mirrors framed with grass. Lines of debris on the road marked the highest extent of the flooding, and the breeze bore the tangled, hairy smell of wet nettles and mud. The last we heard of the Castle was the faint peal of the Starglass, striking two p.m.

  Tornado could never run in such a sustained fashion and, unlike Dellin and myself, he isn’t immune to all but the most intense cold. He might be the anvil-splitting Strongman who once dragged a canal boat up Dace Weir, and the nemesis of a hundred thousand Insects, but this job is best left to the expert.

  I was also disappointed by Lightning. He used to be a good deal more outgoing, but he has spent too long moping over Savory - and, of course, being continually upstaged by my good self. His so-called love for Savory was ridiculous in the first place, but to spend seventy years in mourning, growing his hair in a ponytail and avoiding the limelight, goes from the ridiculous to the sublimely absurd. He is putting it on, you know. Instead of hiding in Foin he should cut his hair and make this New Year a night to remember.

  In fact, just as Savory gave me a night to remember, and more than once - whenever I carried one of Lightning’s love letters to her at the Front. I would walk past the lines of Cathee soldiers’ tents, and their boar skull standard on a pole, to the captain’s pavilion.

  ‘Captain Savory?’ I would call, and a young, ginger-haired woman would answer at the tent flap. The first time I saw her, she was clad in pieces of Lightning’s sun-golden armour, greaves, vambraces and shoulder plates, which he had given her to wear. She also had a lentil skin stuck between her teeth. I would deliver his blue rose - by now somewhat wilted - and his letter, which was as embarrassingly dramatic as it was simple in style, because Lightning’s knowledge of Morenzian was basic at best and Savory could scarcely read at all. Then we would lie down on her sheepskin bed … She wasn’t a virgin; she was wild.

  So you see, all he thinks of is l-o-v-e, and it’s a fool’s delusion, always a fraud. We don’t win wars through lurve. We exist to fight for the Castle, that’s all, and lovers only succeed in destroying themselves. No wonder Lightning got hurt: he heaped all his affections on one mortal woman when there are so many women to pleasure us. When Savory was killed in a blood feud in her own part of the back of beyond I could have said, ‘I told you so!’ But Lightning wants to live in the gilded cage he has constructed for himself and forgets the fact that the world outside is freezing, dark and cruel. Many people think that the world is too harsh to inhabit without a cage, but the bars they build can only ever be scant protection and the real world will break in upon them. Better to live in the raw, the way I do. We live too much in fantasy in the first place, for Lightning to delude himself further with feisty Savory, flirtatious Savory, the woodsman’s daughter and the dreamer’s fodder.

  They are whores, all those women: they are hay to our baser nature. Back in eighteen eighteen, when I joined the Circle, he had already been courting Savory for three years. I could in no way believe he was really in love. I thought he must be bored and seeking trysts to enliven and complicate his life. Why otherwise would a lord of Awia intrigue with a backwoods boar-netter and show no trace of shame? Being new to the Castle I was always wanting to run, fly, put my life on the line, for anything and at any time, and the fact I was shagging Lightning’s betrothed was highly amusing. Perhaps it would have continued even if they’d married.

  As for marriage, well, he was talking like a mortal. What need does an Eszai have of a wife? It was distasteful to see him following Savory around - immortals should remain independent. Mortal women are trouble: they are branded with death like everyone else, and like we once were. My girlfriend in Hacilith died. Savory died too and so soon, kneeling in her cottage rank with the smell of pork fat and potato peelings. Lightning told me as he picked a blue rose in the gardens of Micawater that he would give up his manor to follow her beauty. And I say? I say such a sentiment makes me feel sick. I say that, as for love, I have all the whores in Hacilith and that is all you need.

  Which reminds me, Dellin is down there. The evening is drawing in and the lights on the horizon are those of Melick village, in Fescue manor, where I know a good brothel called the Tired Concubine. I th
ink we will reach it a little after nightfall.

  So, Lightning, the Castle’s Archer, was damned impulsive when he fell in love with Savory, and I must be right because I proved her to be as loose as every woman secretly is. But he’d find it very easy to shoot a flying target, so he must never know I shagged her, all right? He must never, ever know.

  ZOYSIA

  There was me, Wagtail, ‘Textbook’ Ana and Cisticola ‘Slow’ who were the best. My name is Zoysia, Fescue born and bred. I haven’t never been out of the muster, nor out of the village hardly, since I turned sixteen and first came to the Tired Concubine.

  I was in my boudoir, sitting on my bed, painting my toenails by candlelight because business was quite slack, there being few travellers this late in the year. There was a mighty thump on the roof and all the girls in the attic shrieked. Ana’s voice in the corridor thrilled, ‘Did you hear that?’

  ‘Yes!’ I called, and so did Cisti from her room.

  Ana knew I wasn’t with a client so she barges in. ‘It shook the gable!’

  ‘It might be Comet,’ I said. ‘Like last time.’

  ‘Yes. Sh!’

  We listened and sure enough we heard footsteps tap-tapping, directly above, along the ridge. We stared up at the angle between the rickety ceilings. Ana shuddered and pulled her white fur stole closer round her shoulders. The attic fell quiet - we were all holding our breath and listening.

  On occasion Comet did use our house for overnight stops, and our madame, ‘Lady’ Spelt (a jaded old harlot if there ever was one) said he found the Concubine of use because us girls asked no questions and pestered him only in the way he wanted to be pestered. No more, no less. Spelt had let him have a free ride when she was young - so she could say the Concubine had been patronised by an Eszai - and he came back again and again, so it turned out to be a sound investment.