Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  Thunder strode past, swept his oilskin away from the spines and dragged the door open. ‘You fight very unconventionally.’

  ‘I’m a Rhydanne.’

  ‘You hurled yourself at them!’

  ‘Only when I’m in harness.’

  He stared at me as I pulled the claws off my armour and retrieved my sword. He was assimilating how fast I can move, and seemingly glad to have discovered my gangland fury aimed at bugs rather than himself. ‘Come through,’ he said soothingly – And an Insect’s head burst out of the ceiling above him. I pushed him through the door and thumped it shut.

  CHAPTER 7

  The main chamber

  A tremendous block of barrels atop barrels marched into the darkness of the gigantic chamber. Dim light came from safety lanterns at intervals, set into niches in the stone revetments Snow’s men had built along its walls, and the glow of further lamps emanated from the passage leading to the other three mines.

  The first bomb was vast. More marvellous than I’d imagined. Ten by ten by a hundred barrels deep. Each barrel was sealed in oilcloth, and from each base sprouted a fuse, twisted together at the end of every row, and at the corner they ran together into a cable twice as thick as my arm, wrapped with cloth tape, that led to the ground and into the earthenware tube.

  I looked up: the ceiling was a criss-cross of timbers, and the floor was leather-covered duckboards. No spark must strike in here.

  I breathed out in awe and an expression of anger crossed Capelin’s face. ‘It’s all ruined!’ He set off towards it. ‘Two thousand tonnes of gunpowder. Two years to prepare the greatest explosion ever. Above us, a hundred thousand Insects fill the valley – and now what will I do?’

  Tornado, the giant Strongman, was pacing back and forth, swinging his axe. He raised a finger to his forehead in greeting. I nodded and flicked my wings. Soil was pattering off my armour, grinding in its overlaps, but Tornado, with slabs of muscle, eye patch and shaved head, looked as incongruous down here as I did.

  ‘Get many Insects?’ he asked.

  ‘Five.’

  ‘We had ten in the last hour. They’re digging down from being crowded above us. Like, getting closer. Now, watch him …’

  Capelin Thunder took a copper knife and peeled the cover off a barrel on the lowest row. He levered up its lid and showed me the jet-black grains of double-C blasting powder. He took the ladle from his belt and stirred them. Each grain was the size of a peanut and, slightly rounded from tumbling, they rattled gently against each other. The stuff of death. He pushed the ladle deeper into the barrel and brought it out. It held sand.

  He tipped the ladle and let the white sand flow onto his palm. It sifted between his fingers, onto the floor.

  ‘Shit,’ I said.

  ‘Every barrel is two thirds gunpowder and one third sand.’

  ‘Every barrel?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t checked them all. But every one I’ve tested – yes, it is.’

  ‘How many have you checked?’

  ‘Three hundred.’

  ‘What? You’ve lost a hundred barrels of gunpowder?’

  ‘Maybe thirteen thousand barrels,’ said Tawny. ‘If they’re all the same.’

  Thunder glared at him. ‘I didn’t lose it! Nobody stole it here! They reached me in that condition!’ He brandished the ladle. ‘The Castle paid for full kegs! Every single one that arrived from the mills had its seal intact. The selfish, greedy mill owners have sold us short!’

  ‘We haven’t time to check more,’ said Tawny. ‘We should check the whole lot.’

  ‘The mills defrauded us! Destroyed my plan! Endangering lives! Mocking my genius! …Some penny-pinching manager’s stuffed his pockets with the Castle’s money and sent us – sand!’

  I looked up at the ceiling planks. Twenty-five metres above them we’d crushed a hundred thousand Insects into one little valley. We’ve shaken them up and corked them in, under pressure. ‘There’s going to be a swarm,’ I said. ‘We’ve made a swarm!’

  ‘A big one,’ said Tornado.

  ‘A swarm that can reach Awia?’

  ‘That can take half of Rachiswater!’

  I said, ‘Capelin, can’t you blow the bomb anyway?’

  ‘I’m going to, but the sand will dull the blast. It’ll disperse it.’ He waved the ladle to emphasise the volume of the caverns. ‘The effect would be many small bombs going off simultaneously in this space, not one big one punching through the ground.’

  ‘I see.’

  In the silence I could hear Insects scrabbling. Somewhere, deep in the mine, rainwater was dripping from the roof and placking off a tarpaulin. As I listened, the drips doubled in speed and intensity, and Tornado listlessly began swinging his battle-axe and creaking the duckboards.

  ‘How many will survive the bomb?’

  ‘I cannot possibly estimate,’ said Capelin.

  ‘All right. Say half. We withdraw as planned. We blow the bomb as planned. And after us will come fifty thousand Insects!’

  ‘Surely you have the experience to stop them!’

  Tornado looked at me. I grimaced. ‘Tawny might. Saker might. My experience is telling me I have to report this monumental fuckup to the Emperor.’

  ‘Tell San it isn’t my fault!’

  I drew a breath and addressed the barrels. ‘Capelin Thunder checked the top of every tenth barrel and therefore caused this slaughter in Rachiswater and wasted two fucking years of taxes drawn from your manors, my lords and lady governors. Or, if the stuff did exist, he’s lost to the four fucking winds six hundred tonnes of high-grade blasting powder, of which the Castle has always made a strict point of knowing and owning the location of every goddamn gram!’

  He went pale, which at least was gratifying. He pulled a piece of paper from the neck of his tunic and unfolded it. ‘Here’s a list of the mills that supplied us. Visit them. I need to get to the bottom of this. I’ll make them pay!’

  ‘Jant isn’t going anywhere,’ said Tornado.

  ‘You need me here. I’ll send a courier.’

  ‘No! I want you to do it. I’ll bring the thieves to light! I want you to find them and terrify them – as only you can.’

  ‘That many Insects can swarm as far south as Micawater,’ I said.

  ‘Tornado will deal with them.’

  ‘Tornado will try,’ said Tornado. ‘But not on his own.’

  Capelin stirred the ladle in the blasting grains. ‘It cost a fortune. I thought I was pushing the mills to increase production, and all I get is sand!’

  He was too unworldly, too much of an Islander, to know the stresses of the Fourlands I play strains on every day. I was reminded again of Frost’s innocence, and how her dam caused her madness. It seems that for every invention there’s an equal and opposite reaction – upon ourselves.

  But Thunder had no predisposition to madness. ‘The manager of Fusain Mill is Spiza,’ he said. ‘Go there tomorrow after giving the orders.’

  I shook my head. ‘The Insects we’ve bottled in the valley are going to burst out. I’ll check your stupid list when I’m sure that none of them will stream into Awia.’

  He glanced up. ‘But we’re far behind the Wall. What about all the land we’ve reclaimed?’

  ‘You’ve lost it.’

  I turned to leave the chamber, grateful to put those tonnes of gunpowder behind me, and bracing myself to sprint through the tunnel full of Insects. Tornado caught up with me at the door. He said, ‘I’ll look after him.’

  ‘Someone has to. Insects won’t appreciate his great mind.’

  ‘Oh, they’ll find it very tasty.’ Tornado rasped his stubble and scratched the ridges at the back of his neck. ‘I hate it in here. It’s like, claustrophobic.’

  ‘Claustrophobic. Good word.’

  ‘Superlative word, given how knackered I am right now. Here’s a tip. Use your ice axe not your Wrought Sword because you can’t swing a katana in the tunnel.’

  ‘I know. I’ve just stuck it
in the wall twice.’

  He wagged an immense finger at the ceiling. ‘We must continue the withdrawal through the dark. Snow says we’ve got to leave now. And put the best fighters last. Insects are going to follow and there’re enough to cut straight through us. You know how imperturbable Snow is. Well, you should’ve just heard him yell at Capelin. He said twenty-five metres of soil and a hundred thousand Insects mean you’ve got five hours left before they fall on your head.’

  ‘He’ll be right. Currently Eske are pulling out.’

  ‘Put me last.’

  ‘All right, Tawny.’

  He held out a hand like a slab of beef. We shook hands, his huge fingers enclosing mine completely. Then he rolled open the door for me and whacked me fraternally on the pauldron with a fraction of his strength. I ran, like a ball from a musket, down the bore of the passage and out into the flying night.

  CHAPTER 8

  How I brought muskets to the Empire

  Thunder’s superciliousness ruffles my feathers. He’s the most recently-admitted to the Circle, but he deems himself the best Eszai, despite the fact we’re all equal. And now he’s so obviously failed, he wants me to find a Zascai (mortal) to whom he can apportion blame.

  As a Trisian he’s always held us in scorn. I think he happened to be present twenty years ago when Gio deliberately burnt down their library. An event which, as a scholar studying there at the time, rattled him deeply, and he never ceases to mention it. Moreover, he’s never forgiven me for bringing the blueprint of the first musket from the Shift.

  When Capelin brought us gunpowder, he designed and built the powder mills in the east of my wife’s manor. Wrought became the boom town of the Empire once again. Tern’s foundries cast cannon and her charcoal burners trebled production, because charcoal fit for the finest steel was nothing compared to the amount we needed for gunpowder. Mist Fulmer and Captain Wrenn sailed in clipper loads of sulphur from the volcano on Tris, and I flew to Darkling to show Rhydanne how to gather the yellow crystals from the west of the range, which they now trade down through Carniss for industrial quantities of alcohol.

  Rayne discovered we had saltpetre by the tonne, because the latrines of the fyrd for a thousand years of fighting in Lowespass had turned into the stuff. Saltpetre, charcoal and sulphur, seventy-five to fifteen to ten. We proofed and improved it, and ran ourselves ragged with joy. A new weapon! This was what the Castle was for!

  Not long after, in 2031, I visited Thunder’s trial ground to see roundshot fired from a mortar set into the concrete, testing various combinations of powder. The booms and the stench of the smoke clicked my memory, and I realised this was the explosive that powered the muskets which the Equinnes of the Shift land of Osseous had been using for at least two hundred years.

  I flew to my tower room, unlocked my desk drawers and pulled the topmost open. There was my syringe case and a few ampoules of scolopendium from the Skylark Labs in Brandoch.

  ‘I’m Shifting to Osseous,’ I said to Tern. ‘Will you look after me?’

  She was using the dressing table as a desk to sketch her new capacious coats. ‘Jant,’ she said, slowly. ‘Where did you get those?’

  ‘Rayne gave me a box full … to stop me contacting the Summerday cartel.’

  ‘You’ve Shifted twice this year already.’

  ‘That’s not enough to get hooked.’

  ‘The last one nearly killed you.’

  ‘I’m San’s Messenger to Epsilon. He wants me to go.’

  ‘Oh, god, Jant. San has no right! He’s ordering you to kill yourself! Last time … Remember last time? I found you in bed with a rig in your arm. Blood fucking everywhere, it was ghastly! I couldn’t tell if you were breathing. I was crying my eyes out! I called a servant to go get Rayne. Lucky I did! You stopped breathing altogether! Your lips went blue.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She came to sit beside me and stroked my feathers. ‘But you can’t wait to do it again …’

  ‘I have to visit Osseous, kitten.’

  ‘Don’t “kitten” me! You don’t know what it’s like, seeing Rayne whack you! Then Saker tried to take your stash – well, that was a mistake! It took us an hour to talk you out of the corner and get you to put the knife down.’

  I said, factually, ‘Last time I had to see Dunlin in Epsilon, because he’s ahead of the Insect advance at Osseous.’

  ‘I nearly lost you!’

  ‘We’re coordinating the war. If Dunlin pushes against Insects, they come out here. If we both push, they swarm somewhere else, possibly Dekabrayer.’

  ‘Rayne said if your lips go blue I’ve got four minutes before you’re dead. Four minutes, Jant! She breathed into your mouth.’ Tern’s voice rose to a sob, her dark eyes tanged with fire. ‘I hated seeing it. I don’t ever want to see it again. I hate seeing you inject.’

  ‘I’m sorry, kitten. I’m following San’s orders … Um … It’s for the good of the multitude.’

  ‘Stuff the good of the multitude! What about us?’

  ‘Look … I haven’t touched it otherwise, since Saker left.’

  ‘Apart from protecting drug dealers in Summerday?’

  ‘I need it the most at the Front.’

  ‘So you do? They deal it to soldiers, Jant. Are you deranged? This will finish you as an Eszai if anyone finds out.’

  ‘You worry too much.’

  ‘No!’ she slammed down her sketch pad. ‘Shit it!’

  ‘Rayne’s got me using Skylarks, I can measure it properly. Don’t fret.’

  ‘Of course I’m going to fret!’

  ‘Though I’d do anything right now for a gram of Galt White.’

  ‘Fuck sake! There’s no stopping you! You love it more than me.’

  ‘Nothing’s as good as you, Tern.’

  With my fingernail I broke the seal on two phials and pulled out the stoppers. An overdose that’d kill a mortal or virtually so will belt me into the Shift and – hopefully – the Circle will pull me back.

  This medical-grade cat doesn’t ‘taste’ as good as the stuff I distil myself, or the best I’ve bought from Summerday or Hacilith. They make it to my method from chopped centipede fern leaf, which only grows in the ghylls of Ladygrace. This mass-produced solution doesn’t taste as many-layered, or as complex; it’s shallower, clinical. I won’t drift on the lovely warm waves of bliss and I’ll come down dissatisfied. But I’ve sold my still, I’m officially clean but for the craving, the terrible whisper in the background of my daily life. Having been a full-blown addict, dependent on and off since I was ripped inside out at Slake Cross Battle, I want it so much. The sensation is … ah … there’s nothing better. If I didn’t keep chipping in and out of the Shift the craving might wear off, eventually, say in fifty years, but San won’t give me chance.

  I drew clear liquid into the syringe and went to sit on the bed. Tern joined me. ‘You should be doing this in the hospital with Rayne.’

  ‘She’s at the Front … Will you watch my breathing?’

  ‘I’ll watch you. I love you.’

  ‘I think I’ll be out for two hours. If you feel me pull on the Circle, don’t be afraid.’

  She tied her hair back, knelt and supported me. ‘Oh, Jant … you’re beautiful and unique, and you shouldn’t have to do this.’

  I held the needle at forty-five degrees to the fattest vein in my wrist, slipped it in. As the sharp tip pierced the skin, a scintilla of heat and pleasure passed over me, that adrenaline kick. I registered a puff of blood in the barrel, paused for a second, and pressed the plunger down against the sweet resistance.

  I went limp in her arms.

  She lowered me. By then, I didn’t care. By then I’d gone.

  In Osseous I persuaded Captain Magor the Equinne to disassemble her musket and I committed the parts to memory. I regained consciousness very slowly indeed. The sun had jumped along its arc, beyond the frame of our broken-shuttered window. The sky was just an incandescent empty space; my wings, iridescent w
ith a deep sheen. Wherever the light struck the surfaces in the room they were jewels.

  A spasm passed over my body. I felt as if scolopendium was gently lifting me, floating my body a few centimetres above the bed … occasionally a slight wave of nausea. Tern had tilted my head in the recovery position, I could feel my tongue sagging into my throat but not slipping all the way back to block it. My wings were limp, I could feel their presence, but couldn’t move them. Managed a pleasurable twitch and shudder. My eyeballs felt shrunken and as hard as marbles with dehydration – the lids got stuck when I tried to blink. And my arms had been outstretched for so long my hands were screaming pins and needles.

  Tern sat beside me, watching me carefully but I don’t fucking know … I passed out and came round hours later.

  I crawled off the duvet, down two steps to the dressing table and pulled her sketchpad and pencils on top of me … leafed through her élan figures until I found a clean page, and began to draw the first musket in the Fourlands.

  I’d never give it to Thunder. He was too busy scaling up cannon to monstrous proportions. He’d never thought of giving each man his own gun.

  A brisk rat-a-tat sounded at the door. Tern looked at me. I stared at the chandelier of her tears. She went to the door and tried to get rid of our visitor, but I recognised Cyan’s voice.

  ‘Let her in,’ I murmured.

  ‘Don’t be alarmed, my dear,’ Tern apologised. ‘Our favourite Rhydanne hybrid is tripping his tits off.’

  Cyan had seen me in this state before. She’d been in this state before, but she still baulked. I was sitting, leaning against the desk drawers and melding into them. The wood grain was sidling off in helical patterns and merging with the carpet. Every surface I touched adhered to my fingertips and stretched long strings of itself when I lifted away. Which made drawing difficult.

  Cyan, in snakeskin jacket and jeans, looked utterly amazing. ‘I dropped in for coffee and advice,’ she said. ‘I guess I’ll come back later.’

  She pulled a handful of letters from the pigeonhole and leafed through them. ‘Oh, god. Not Crake again. I even recognise his bloody handwriting …’