Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  I have to warn Fulmer. I drenched my t-shirt, tied it around my neck, dumped my frazzled jacket and shook out my wings. I ran along the beach, reached the speed of take-off, swept my wings down and nothing happened. Air whistled through the feathers as if through a sieve. I forced a burst of speed, and more, tried again, twisted both ankles on the pebbles and painedly climbed into the air.

  I turned out to sea, but my right wing wasn’t pulling like it should. I couldn’t gain height. I just touched the waves! My wingtips flicked an arc of drops. I stretched on each flap, trying to grab the air, having to reach higher above me on the up-beat and pull down further, till the single long finger of each wing met below my body. Shit! If I scrape the water, I’m dead.

  I beat harder, desperately, and rose ten metres. I was flapping the stink of brine and my own burnt feathers, and a great exhaustion weighed me from the shock. I was coughing – my throat seared – lungs aflame – wouldn’t expand – the roof of my mouth was all blisters. Terrified, I focussed on the Gerygone, willing her closer, larger. But she was moving away over a huge distance. I flew and flew but seemingly got no nearer. Whining with agony I put on a burst and gained on the striped hull. Her bow wave was cascading as she heeled at full speed to the open ocean, sail on two masts. A fine twist of smoke was rising from the fore artillery hatch. Gerygone was going like a rocket, leaning on the mid-tack, and completely eclipsed the schooner which I couldn’t see at all.

  I flew into her light, keening through clenched teeth. My shadow skeeted over the waves. Mist’s lookout yelled. I flapped strongly, rose and grazed over the railing. Crashed onto the deck, shredding my jeans and stripping the skin off my shins.

  Mist ran to me, horrified. ‘What happened?’

  I opened my mouth to speak and it filled with thick sea water, coming from nowhere. It poured down my naked chest, and I saw it was blood.

  ‘Get the doctor!’ he shouted.

  ‘No!’ I spat. ‘The smugglers will blow the powder … They won’t be taken alive.’

  He grabbed my shoulders. ‘Jant? You were in that blast?’

  ‘Connell lit her barrels. The schooner will do the same.’

  ‘You’re burnt!’

  ‘Had to warn you!’

  ‘Can you walk?’ He pulled me up with surprising strength, and supported me between the mainmasts and coils of rope to the far rail which he propped me against – I clung on instinctively – and gazed at the shape of the schooner, its high stern, two masts, no lights at all but every stitch of canvas bellied out and moon-silvered, running rapidly into the darkness.

  ‘I have half her wind,’ said Fulmer. ‘I’ll be on her back in five minutes.’

  ‘Then you’ll both blow up!’

  He unhooked a megaphone from the rail and hailed the schooner. ‘Heave to, in the name of the Castle! Schooner, you cannot escape! Reef your sail and surrender … Or be destroyed!’

  If anything she seemed to gain speed. She heeled even further, bowsprit pointing skyward between deck and sail, graceful as a marlin. The water wet the dry wood along her flank, up to her railing.

  ‘Be destroyed, then!’ Fulmer yelled. He gestured, and the pair of searchlights at our bow and stern converged on the schooner and slickly illuminated her. Barrels packed her deck and we saw swift movement as the crew crouched behind them.

  ‘Oh, serendipity. If you want something done properly, Fulmer Harandis has to do it himself! Dee? Is the roundshot cooking?’

  ‘It’s ready, sir.’

  ‘Then let’s have an aiming shot. Fire!’

  A blast below our feet shook the deck. Fragments of the schooner’s railing flew into the air, bits of gunwale and hull. Flame raced up the edge of her foresail.

  ‘Well aimed!’ Fulmer called. ‘Dee, you hit her midships! Excellent shot – we’ll have you Challenging the Artillerist next year.’

  ‘Thank you, sir!’

  ‘She responds to our advances, now give her a warm embrace.’

  ‘Aye, sir … Ready, sir.’

  ‘Fire!’

  The same blast jarred the deck. A tiny light sped away towards the schooner and brightened as it flew. Then we all recoiled from the flash and boom. The ship blew into a fireball. A glare of orange light, fizzing particles arced out, it gathered itself and mushroomed up – and darkness clutched back. Shards of timber pattered down onto the surface of the water. Nothing was left. Nothing at all. The ship had gone. A wave rolled over the single long timber of the keelson, and then it sank below the surface and vanished.

  ‘Olé!’ cried Fulmer.

  Smoke was flowing up the side of our hull from the cannon below our feet. I was shaking, suddenly chilled to the core. The agony of my burns raised me into a separate, floating sensation. I swallowed against the spines in my throat, a horrible catchy dryness like carbonised hessian. ‘Fulmer … you killed … how many people?’

  ‘Usually ten on a brandy runner. But, Jant, you’re feverish and you’re making a mistake. They’re not people, they’re terrorists.’

  I shrugged, too hoarse to reply, and stumbled to his cabin. That, too, stank of fag fumes; it aggravated me into coughing and I retched, but my throat had swollen shut and blocked the vomit from passing, so it sunk back down and stung. Will I never be free of this smell? I’m a Rhydanne, for god’s sake, not a stoker. I’m built for the mountain top, the thin air club, not this vile smoke. My head swam. Why was I freezing cold and shivering violently, when my lungs are on fire?

  I sat down at the table, unbuckled my pack and slipped out my syringe and a phial of cat. I carefully measured a dose that would kill the pain without putting me under. I held up the syringe, tapped out a bubble until liquid flowed from the fine, hard tip. Steady, Shira. I wiped an alcohol pad over the crook of my arm, pressed the needle against the outside vein and watched it sink into the soft skin, registered a puff of blood and pushed the plunger down past the graduations.

  My eyelids flickered. The rush. Ah … I sat there for a minute, feeling it hit, listening down into my body. Then swallowed hard, pulled the needle out and stowed it, and was soothing my burns in the washstand when Fulmer walked in. He placed some folded clothes on the table and gave me a carafe of water.

  Scolopendium was bursting in pleasure in my brain. What pain? What pain? I could tell it hurt – I felt the tightness – but I didn’t care. Water was dripping off my arms. I croaked, ‘I put Connell in jail.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘Other Roses? I don’t think any survived.’

  ‘What about my marines?’

  ‘Twenty died.’

  ‘The deuce! …Jant, that is dashed extravagant.’

  I drank all the water and it helped me speak, though, in overcompensating for the slur of cat, my voice sounded taut. ‘Do you have any more? I need a decent guard.’

  ‘No. I don’t.’ He slipped off his coat, revealing a satin-backed waistcoat, and studied his reflection. ‘My marines are ashore at Tanager and Diw. I haven’t trained more than a hundred since I wiped out the pirates.’

  ‘You’ve none in Awndyn?’

  ‘Even if I had, I wouldn’t give you them!’

  I made my way round the table to the mirror which, given its size and splendid frame, should have been out of place, but was the natural focal point of Fulmer’s cabin. Under the film of water, my skin was vivid red down my right side. My jaw and right ear were worst, the back of my hand. My lips were bleeding, seared and split. My hair was crisped, I’d lost an eyebrow, and my shoulder was so incandescently scarlet that my Wheel scar showed pallid white. Fulmer was goggling at it.

  This time, she got me. All her previous attempts paled into insignificance. I was very lucky to be alive, and very pissed off. I ran my hand over my right wing, and the black, carbonised lumps of the covert feathers crumbled into powder. Patches of feathers were missing – I could see to the reddened skin – and the patagium membrane across the elbow was blistered. I’d lost the width of most of my flight feath
ers; they’d shrunk back halfway to the quill and smelt matted and sulphurous, like burnt hair. I looked like a dead pine tree. I looked like a plucked crow.

  ‘Oh, shit …’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Fulmer.

  The drug had touched my features, too: face relaxed, pupils pinned to fine lines, and the irises too high because my eyes were slightly rolling up. Fulmer recognised the signs from Tris, but he didn’t say anything. I returned to the basin and bathed my burns. He sat down at the table, carrying his ten-centimetre cigarette holder as if it was lit. ‘At least you’re safe. This won’t happen again now you’ve caught Connell.’

  I leant over, running with water. ‘Yes. I instructed the marines to guard her. But to take her to the Castle, I need more. I need outriders and a prison carriage.’

  ‘Well, send on the flicker to Cobalt.’

  ‘You’d better hightail us back to Cullion so I can read it.’

  Fulmer appraised me. ‘I’ll bring Gerygone about, into the bay. While I do that, here—’ he pushed the clothes towards me. ‘A shirt and trousers. The shirt’s one of my Dartes, though it’ll be too tight. The trousers are slops. Nobody on Gerygone has your height.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And the doctor’s waiting outside. Though, seriously, he’s freaking out over treating an Eszai and he’s never seen a Rhydanne before.’

  ‘Then let’s show him what a fried one looks like.’

  Fulmer curvetted out, and the instant he left the cabin, crooked up a wing as a windbreak to light his cigarette, and simultaneously scratched the back of his neck with the wrist of his other wing. His wings’ patagia were pierced with fine gold bands, and wide rings, too, around their wrists and fingers.

  The ship’s quack wrapped my neck and shoulder in wet gauze. Nothing more could be done. I soaked Fulmer’s cream paduasoy silk shirt, and the bottle green flannel trousers in the basin and put them on. I lopped off my hair to above my shoulders and pulled out all Tern’s feathers that I tie in it, and the malachite beads, Rhydanne style. The beads went in my pack, the scorched hair and laddered jeans I jettisoned out the stern window. Then I drenched my wings in water, and staggered out to stand at the bow, clinging to consciousness in the cool breeze, as Gerygone raced before the wind to Cullion.

  The bow wave broke in black and yellow streaks from the lantern light. Above the long extremity of Cobalt headland, the sky was almost clear. Only a slight mist of cloud covered the pale, full moon. Thin clouds like streaks of ink lay horizontally around it. They tiger-striped the sky in grey bands, apart from their ends around the moon, where its light showed them lilac.

  I used to suffer from a phobia of ships. Understandable, with a wingspan like mine: waterlogged feathers would drag me to the depths. But over the last ten years Fulmer had helped me overcome my fear. Aboard Gerygone I’d felt relatively safe, first at dock and then on the open ocean. Little by little I set myself the challenge of smaller and smaller vessels until I could sit in a rowing boat without fear of drowning. Which wouldn’t, I hasten to add, ever prevent me drowning if I touched the water. I won’t go so far as to say I can surf Cape Brattice in an open kayak, but I was proud of my achievement, which had taken me years. As an immortal, I’ve come to realise that’s what years are for.

  However, seeing Fulmer comprehensively annihilate the schooner had shaken me. The blisters in my mouth had popped, leaving flaps of skin, and I kept coughing blood. If it wasn’t for the scolopendium chiming in my veins I’d be phobic again.

  At Cullion we anchored in the deep channel. Fulmer joined me, in the glow from his open cabin door and, through the telescope with a tremulous hand, I examined the place where the pier had been. The explosion had obliterated it, and the boats we’d used for cover were scattered as matchwood. All the windows of the Red Lion had blown out, and in the darkness nothing moved but bunches of bladderwrack hanging from the harbour wall, drifting up and down mopping the top of the wavelets.

  The signaller at our morse lantern looked to me, but Fulmer motioned me to save my voice and told him, ‘Ask them to telegraph to Cobalt for cavalry and a prison wagon. And to Tanager: tell King Saker that we’ve caught Connell.’

  The flicker at the excise office responded, and I imagined the telegraph towers bathed in their floodlights, gathering themselves to dance. With a glow of satisfaction that I’d caught Connell Rose, I returned to Fulmer’s cabin and fell asleep on the floor, against the curve of the hull wall. And next morning my burns really, really seared.

  It took two days for the Governor of Cobalt to find us troops.

  Telegraph

  To: Jant at Cullion Cove / From: Saker, Tanager Grand Place

  Do you still have Connell under lock and key?

  To: Saker / From: Jant

  Yes

  To: Jant / From: Saker

  It hasn’t stopped the bombings

  To: Saker / From: Jant

  News?

  To: Jant / From: Saker

  Last night Fulmer’s house in Tanager, blown up completely.

  To: Saker / From: Fulmer

  My house what?

  To: Fulmer / From: Saker

  Not so much as a collar stud left.

  To: Saker / From: Fulmer

  With respect, I can do without the sarcasm. My house is packed with treasures, my one and only halidom, and you’re saying it’s ruined? Did you catch them?

  To: Saker / From: Jant

  Ten symbols only, you’re clogging the line.

  To: Fulmer / From: Saker

  Bombers notcaught. Whole Grand Place is rubble, twelve dead. Stay there, I’m coming to see Connell. Unofficially.

  Next morning, from the deck, I saw six horsemen riding along the cliff top, outlined against the sky. They decanted down the steep road through Cullion, which is so precipitous that its cobbles are laid on edge, a stepped surface for hooves to find purchase. Their clattering reached me, as muted and fractured as a fall of dominos.

  ‘They’re too few to be our escort,’ I said.

  ‘It’s King Saker,’ said Fulmer, with his eye to the telescope. ‘The glib bastard.’

  I flew unsteadily to shore and landed just as Saker and his entourage were walking their horses to a halt, and peering around at the unfamiliar buildings. ‘Welcome to Cullion,’ I said.

  Saker looked down from the saddle, alarmed, ‘What happened to you?’

  ‘I was in the fireball.’

  ‘You should consult Rayne.’

  ‘I’m sending Connell to the Castle first.’

  ‘Well, you said you were waiting for an escort,’ he said exuberantly. The breeze was blowing his horse’s mane. ‘Here we are, at the Castle’s service. Jant, this is Sula. Sula: Comet.’

  ‘Call me Jant. I thought you said you’re officially not here.’

  ‘I’m not. I’m in Tanager. We didn’t find any bombs in the palace … but the Grand Place is devastated. They did it at night. Fulmer’s house and the two adjoining, fronting the square, are just piles of wreckage … They killed all his servants and his housekeeper. Yes. I know … We got dogs to sniff out a powder charge in Serein Fioré’s house in Rachiswater, too. We defused it. Lucky for him.’

  ‘Did you find the Roses?’

  ‘No. Three were lynched in Wrought. Someone hung them from a low branch … Jant, I tried to discover who, but everyone’s struck dumb. Then a bunch of Spiza’s mill workers overtook five or six Roses leaving on the Broad Road and butchered them. Turned the wagons over and burnt them with the bodies inside. So, in response, hundreds of gypsies are massing outside our palace day and night in a goddamned protest, singing and slamming on the gates. Yes. We’ve increased the guard, but of course they won’t go. Connell’s ignited a wildfire. It’s gaining pace and spreading. Leon’s trying to control it, but the rage is intense. Where is the fucking bitch?’

  ‘In there.’

  ‘I want to see her.’

  ‘If you insist. But—’

  ‘I’m a witne
ss and a victim. I’m taking her to trial.’ He stepped down from Balzan and kicked his spurs folded. Then he looked out to sea, shading his eyes. ‘Ah, Gerygone …’

  ‘Yes.’ I glanced at the flagship, and noticed she was lowering a landing vessel. Mist must be on his way.

  ‘I toured her at her launch. Big, isn’t she?’

  ‘Twenty guns.’

  ‘I wonder about Fulmer sometimes.’

  ‘I wonder about him all the time.’

  Saker took his coat off and threw it on the saddle. ‘The Mallard painting shows her destroying the last pirate caravel. She was firing a broadside.’

  ‘She can fire a broadside every three minutes.’

  ‘He is, you know. He’s compensating for something. Jant, we haven’t staged down from Tanager, we’ve ridden hard and our horses are blown. Show me Connell.’

  CHAPTER 22

  Connell speaks – in jail

  Daylight shining in my face had woken me hours ago. Through the barred window, Allen had whispered that today my rescue would come. But I didn’t know how.

  I lay on the bench. My clothes had dried on me, but they were stiff with salty tidemarks – kerchief, breeches, and the sorry remnants of my blouse – itchy and uncomfortable. Having come so far, you’ve probably formed the opinion that I’m some sort of criminal. Well, I’m not. I’ve never been in jail before and I didn’t know what to do. They’ve trapped me in here for two days, a tactic to make me frightened and depressed. They know I’m a Litanee and I need my freedom. They can hang me if they want, it’s not like I’ve anything to live for, but being locked up I can’t stand. The Castle deals in infinity, and I’m afraid they might leave me here for years – maybe centuries. She assured me that won’t happen. She also said they’ll never beat me, so I can give them backchat.

  A wall of iron bars sectioned off this alcove from the rest of the excise office. A policeman sat at his desk, with his back to me. There’s nothing in my cell but the bench and a tin bucket in the corner.