Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  It glitters, does Saker’s river, with countless tiny mica flecks carried down the Gilt tributary, from up where the gold rush grounds used to be. Kilometres passed and the river matured and calmed but, even here, anyone who swims in the pure, clear water emerges shimmering with flat crystals, head to foot.

  I passed over the town. There was his palace. I pulled in my wings and dropped into it like a wasp into a very ornate flower. I knifed smoothly down the sky; the roofs of the palace passed under me – the colonnaded portico, the main building, out over the double staircase, dropped to the fountain parterre – the striped lawns beyond tilted into view.

  I spotted Saker, a little figure on the archery field alongside the lake. A sort of impromptu bridge – a walkway floating on punts – had been constructed from the lakeshore to the tree-covered island. It was undulating on wavelets in a sudden breeze. I skimmed the lawn with my wingtips, flared and landed next to him. In shirt sleeves and quiver at his hip, he was whacking arrows into a butt at just one hundred paces. The bereaved father: he drew the bow regularly, automatically; he was in a kind of trance. His red-fledged arrows bristled in the target.

  Swish-thunk. Swish-thunk. There was something soothing in the sound of the shafts hitting. When I approached him I realised he was writing her name with arrows across the target. He stopped when the quiver was empty, hurled it on the ground and bent down to pick up a new one. ‘How did she die?’

  I explained the coach bomb. He listened intently, not looking at me, and I looked down the field at the arrows in the N of CYAN.

  ‘Eleonora has sent Cyan to the Castle.’

  ‘What, in a saddlebag?’

  ‘… No, Saker, she—’

  ‘Don’t cosset me! I know there won’t be much left.’

  ‘Just the right hand,’ I admitted.

  ‘Is that all they could be bothered picking up?’

  ‘It’s all they could find … It was fast. She didn’t suffer …’

  ‘Ha!’ He snarled. ‘They set a bomb here, too. For me. Here! Here on my own grounds! The most evil, cowardly act I’ve ever seen!’

  ‘Was there an explosion?’

  ‘No. The lakeman found it.’ He shouldered his bow and nodded at the island. ‘In the mausoleum.’

  I followed his gaze. The roof of the tomb, among the island’s oak trees, shone as coral-coloured marble, wet from the last shower. Tall hollies and flowering rhododendrons clustered thickly around it, hiding its sparkling aventurine columns, the statues among the bushes and the pediment filled with figures, but the undergrowth had been trampled where the floating walkway joined the shore.

  ‘I rolled out the bridge so Harrier’s men could carry the barrels away,’ he said bitterly. ‘What is this Connell? How did she know I’d lay Cyan to rest there? How did she fucking get in? …I’m going to lock the Lake Gate permanently! …I mean, who …’

  ‘Be calm.’

  ‘What I’m trying to say is: what sort of tattooed monster coldly sets a bomb waiting for me to lay my own daughter’s body in the grave?’

  The bomb wouldn’t have only caught him. Me and Tern, Eleonora, Lory and Ortolan at least would row across the lake in formal mourning to carry Cyan to her vault.

  ‘It would’ve killed me, too.’

  ‘Oh, yes, it was very professionally done! Fuses ran to the back of the island. A canoe was hidden on the lakeshore. The fucking gypsies had stowed barrels of blasting powder behind Martyn’s tomb. And Teale’s, and my brothers’, and all behind the bushes. So when we set foot in there, that bitch would light the fuse and blow us to bits!’ He slipped into disgust. ‘I can’t believe it. How can she conceive such a thing? To murder a family in mourning, while they buried their daughter? To turn my mausoleum into a fireball!’

  We fell silent, regarding its walls. They would have contained the blast and smashed Saker, Eleonora, Tern and myself to hot ash in an instant, against the tombs of three generations of his family.

  ‘Why?’ he yelled, and stormed off across the lawn.

  I followed.

  ‘Why, why, why?’

  Because with the flick of a match Connell could obliterate the royal family and several Eszai.

  ‘And stop!’ he yelled at the sky. ‘Fucking drizzling on me!’

  ‘Saker …’ I said.

  ‘She was Cyan Micawater. Eleonora denies me the right of burying her, and Connell tries to fucking kill me!’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And my other babies!’

  Hastening towards the rear of the palace, we approached the rose beds of the knot garden. Saker flexed his bow and shot at the first rose bush – the arrow zipped through and half-buried itself in the soil behind.

  As we reached it, I saw he had neatly severed one of the blooms; it lay on the ground with a length of stalk. He snatched it up without breaking pace and shook it at me.

  ‘If you did that with a rifle, you’d burn the stem!’

  I stared at him.

  He ripped the rose to shreds as he strode up the Melowne Steps, along the terrace, and in through the French windows to the Mosaic Gallery. Inside, he halted, pulling off his archery glove and staring down the gallery to his children.

  The glove was stained pink from the rose petals. I came in, startling Lory and his sister, who were playing with blocks before one of the lamp-bearing statues.

  ‘No, no, let them stay,’ he said to someone through the doorway. His voice echoed slightly off the agate of the Cornflower Landing. ‘And search all the carriages for bombs. We’re going to Tanager in the burgundy. Please set a meal for Jant – hall at twelve?’ He shoved the glove in his quiver, cast Lory and Ortolan a strained smile, and set off down the long mosaic, reflected in the mirrors covering the wall.

  ‘What are you doing to the gypsies?’ I said.

  ‘My Select Fyrd are rounding them up.’

  ‘Not putting them in jail?’

  ‘No. I can’t. I shouldn’t. Anyway, there’s too many. My Select are picking them up with gusto – I didn’t know there were hundreds. If I cram them in the Sturge, the conditions will be terrible. In two days it would … Well, anyway, one gypsy’s been slain already.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘An officer’s brother was blown up at Spiza’s Mill. So he stabbed a Rose in return. Just like a sodding Cathee thing to do. I’m ashamed. Now, look, there’ll be more repercussions. That’s one reason I can’t throw gypsies in jail. The jailers might kill them.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Half of Wrought’s raring to lynch any Rose now.’

  ‘Oh, god.’

  ‘Your steward said so. Once they read the flaming rant the Standard printed this morning. Everyone’s frightened. My staff, your townspeople. These powder charges are terrifying because nobody can see them. We don’t know where they’re hidden. But they need Roses to light them.’

  ‘So you’re getting rid of Roses?’

  ‘None of those Sula’s questioned so far admits to knowing anything. But they’d say that, wouldn’t they?’ He paused, and glanced at his reflection oddly, as if not really recognising it, or allowing himself to, and pulled at a strand of grey hair.

  ‘So, what are you doing?’

  ‘Throwing anyone with tattoos instead of wings, out of the country.’

  ‘Please—’

  ‘I know San won’t agree. I’m trying to do the right thing, but, Jant – what is it? This is for their own good. If they stay, my people will turn on them. Connell murdered my lovely daughter. She dares to kill an Eszai! She tried to kill me three times. She killed a hundred and eleven people in Wrought.’

  ‘A hundred and eleven …’

  ‘Raggiana said the toll’s still climbing, because the burnt victims are dying, and he hasn’t finished counting the ones missing from Kingfisher Mill. He said some will never be found.’

  ‘Shit.’

  ‘Yes. Shit. Do you see?’

  He started again, towards the triple archway at the end of the gallery
, over a mosaic of spearmen holding a leopard at bay, then a hind fleeing from hounds in full cry. ‘Will you explain my position to the Emperor? I know Litanee can make their way back across the border. So my guards are telling them, that if they do, we’ll impound their wagons. That’ll stop them. Isn’t a Litanee without his caravan two days away from ending up in a Hacilith workhouse?’

  This was dire.

  We reached the last slender gold statue holding a spherical oil lamp, turned on a mosaic of nestling quail, and returned up the gallery, over a bear raiding a beehive, and a stag having an exceptionally hard time with a snake.

  ‘They could creep in on foot,’ he said. ‘Maybe more bombs are already set. But I’ve stopped them moving the stolen powder. I have Awian guards now on every magazine, every new shipment to the Front and they require papers, and I’ve allocated a hundred men to each mill.’

  ‘Litanee help with your harvest.’

  ‘The townspeople will volunteer instead.’

  We reached the other end of the gallery, turned on a mosaic of a shepherd with lambs, and walked up and down the long room twice.

  ‘Lory and Ortolan will be safer in Tanager, and Leon has more resources than I do.’

  ‘She’s too heavy-handed.’

  ‘Isn’t she? But if Connell’s targeting me, I won’t draw her fire onto my family. I’m going to hunt her down, and ask her, face to face, why she murdered my darling.’

  The last thing I wanted was the king on a revenge trip. He pointedly left me standing on a mosaic of Morenzian wolves running from Awian fire-breathing eagles, that dated back to the 415 civil war. He went to speak to his children.

  The mirrors covering the inside wall reflected the stunning view of the landscaped grounds and lake, because the outside wall was simply glass between its columns: centuries ago Saker had glassed-in the mosaic that used to be part of the terrace. But the mirrors and elegant torchière statues were new – the Mosaic Gallery used to have vine-painted walls and fluttering oil sconces, given that it was fourteen hundred years old.

  We used to take off our boots to avoid damaging the mosaics, and the hypocaust floor beneath. But Micawater no longer had the pickled-in-aspic appearance it used to. Since leaving the Circle, Saker had transformed the Mosaic Gallery from an antiquity into a ballroom and the mirrors reflected nights of dancing and laughing masks. Now the guest rooms had running water and you could have a hot shower without having to trudge to the bath house. When Saker’s brother had given him the place, ‘to preserve for all time’, he had really rolled up his sleeves about it, but now as a Zascai he’d ceased to care for a promise made so long ago. He’d dragged palace and town into the twenty first century in a mere fifteen years.

  He crouched by his two kids. ‘Lory, Ortolan. This is Jant. Remember Jant?’

  They looked up brightly. They were sitting on a mosaic of a tortoise eating a bowl of cherries, and between them they’d constructed a rickety tower of blocks. ‘They’re building a little chateau.’

  ‘Great,’ I said.

  ‘Jant’s good at building little chateaux. Which is fortunate, considering—’

  ‘Saker, stop it!’

  ‘Go find the mosaic of the henhouse with the tiny chicks. That was my favourite when I was your age.’

  Lory and Ortolan jumped up and raced down the gallery. ‘Jant,’ said Saker. ‘Will you bring me the Emperor’s advice?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘God knows I need it.’

  ‘It’s here! It’s here!’ called Lory, standing halfway down the gallery. His sister was stuffing the end of her sash in her mouth. Lory Tanager had a confident and open bearing, because Saker began his training with sword and bow when he was aged three. Awians are born armed.

  ‘Well done!’

  The eleven year old and four year old ran to him. He crouched and picked them up, one on each arm. ‘Say goodbye to Jant. When you next see him, he’ll look just the same. It’s the still hub of a world that turns too quickly. Now, listen. We’re going to see mother. You mustn’t go outside, and you mustn’t hide from Hoopoe. Will you be good?’

  They nodded, wide-eyed. He blew gently on their wings and his breath parted the feathers to the down. They giggled and hugged him. He gave them each a kiss and lowered them to the floor.

  We went out to the terrace and closed the glass panelled doors behind us.

  ‘Wonderful, aren’t they?’

  ‘Gorgeous. So—’

  ‘Lory can already … Oh, fuck it. Jant, I can’t eat, I haven’t slept. I’m exhausted.’ He leant on the balustrade and looked down into the first limpid pool of the parterre, which reflected the rear of the house. ‘I just keep wondering what’s the last thing she thought … and now you’ve told me about the bomb, I’ll be wondering what it felt like.’

  ‘She never felt it.’

  He put his hand over his eyes. Tiny, at the margin of the pool, the water reflected us above the balustrade. The fountains had all been switched off and there was no-one in sight. He’d sent them all home.

  He cried a little. The loss hits like a physical blow. ‘What have we done to deserve this?’ he said. ‘How could we have hurt a gypsy?’

  ‘I’ll find Connell.’

  ‘She won’t touch Lory and Ortolan. They’re all I’ve got left … Cyan – see, I can say her name. I’m not ashamed of crying. Cyan was only seventeen. That’s too young to die. She had all infinity ahead of her.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘A girl so brave doesn’t deserve to die like that. To turn our own Insect weapon on us is … It’s despicable! And she’d been coping with immortality well. Hadn’t she, Jant?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That makes it all the more painful.’ He whacked the balustrade and didn’t say anything else, but stared down the slight slope of the lawn to the lake with the mausoleum and oaks around it stretching for the sky. I walked the length of the terrace and back. Through the glass I saw Harrier’s wife scooping up the children to prepare them for the ride to Tanager.

  A brief shower of rain fell, and a gust of wind behind it splattered the drops against the stone. Then, as if the day’s quota of rain had been fulfilled, the sun re-emerged and the whole place began to steam.

  Saker took something out of his pocket and began measuring it between his hands. It was a roll of quick match. His eyes were shadowed and his brow furrowed.

  ‘She was brave, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Cyan was, yes.’

  ‘Not even Hurricane could daunt her. Jant, when I threw my Challenge and let her be Lightning, people said I’d made a mockery of San’s whole system. They said it meant the Castle wasn’t a meritocracy at all. Remember what the newspapers said? How they misread me? I was burnt by the hatred. They said I’d skewed the Circle. They said I’d let Cyan inherit my position. If Eszai’s places can be passed from father to daughter the Circle’s no better than this fucking pile. The Standard and the Intelligencer called for Challengers to come, and beat Cyan as soon as possible. Turf her out. But she held her own. Didn’t she?’

  ‘Yes, Saker.’

  ‘So she was worth it.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She died unbeaten, too.’ He wound the quick match into a roll. ‘During the Challenge I thought perhaps San wouldn’t let her in. Maybe he’d refuse her, and open the position to general competition. But he did make her Lightning because he knew the system would right itself. He knew she’d be inundated with Challengers and she’d either square up to them, or fail.’

  ‘She stood on her own two feet.’

  He squeezed his eyes shut.

  ‘She deserved the position,’ I said.

  ‘Ah … good.’

  ‘What is that stuff?’

  ‘Um … it’s … the fuse from the mausoleum. Look. They laid it in haste. They didn’t tape it properly.’

  He showed me a link where lengths had been joined, tugged it, and the ends came apart. The bomber had simply slit the brown paper coating a
nd shoved the new end inside. Quick match is string soaked in glue and covered with black powder. It would have raced to the charge. ‘Connell didn’t give herself much time to run,’ he said. ‘She cares little for her own safety. That’s something else I don’t understand.’

  He dropped the fuse and it fell five metres into the terrace pool, shattering the calm reflection. Then, startled, he put a hand to his mouth and brought away a smear of blood. ‘It … gunpowder always cracks my lips.’

  ‘It cracks my fingers, too.’

  ‘Caustic stuff. We’re wrong to turn away from bows, Jant. I feel it here …’ he tapped his chest. ‘Bows are pleasing to handle … smooth wood and wax …’

  ‘And gunpowder?’

  ‘Is poisonous.’

  ‘It was Cyan’s life.’

  ‘They live by it, they die by it! Fuck the Trisians for bringing us this scourge.’

  ‘To the Trisians, we’re the land where the sun sets,’ I said, quoting Capelin.

  Saker rubbed his lips, red raw from the drying effect of the powder. ‘Well, I don’t fear inventions old or new that crawl out of their damn library. But dangerous philosophies will go … boom.’ He spread his hands in the shape of a fireball.

  Then he sagged against the balustrade, shoulders hunched, and stared at the lake. Beyond its far bank, rising into the distance, landscaped stands of beech and walnut convened to direct the eye down a vista with a few fallow deer grazing, to a statue with its wings spread, on a column on the horizon. The sky changed constantly, with subtle-shaded pearl-white clouds, lemon-yellow and a stormy blue, which I couldn’t tell if it was the colour of the clouds themselves or the naked sky behind them.

  Saker didn’t give a flap about it. He was folded into his grief. The Donaise sun hammered the surface of the water. The infinitesimal crystal flecks that hadn’t settled out in the lake cast it back and glistened. On the far shore in a pool of trees, a columned pavilion mirrored the house, and from it a carriage driveway curved uphill to his telegraph tower, cunningly hidden out of the house’s line of sight.