Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  Here’s the wood. Can I make it? Gusts of air battered me. Jant was beating his wings, hovering above me. I can’t shake the Messenger and the ex-Archer!

  Another arrow jutted through the corpse, gashed my shoulder. I looked back and it ripped my cheek. Jant was whacking the air down, his great wings blustering my head, balancing to drop on me.

  Pain stabbed my shoulderblade. Saker had pinned the corpse to me! I yanked apart from it, leant left to see him very close, bow at full draw.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said to the stallion. I dropped the right rein and hauled the left one left and up with all my might. The stallion’s head jerked left, his shoulders collapsed under me, and I hurtled off his back and smacked into the ground. I was up and running into the wood. Behind me I heard the thud and a horse’s scream as Saker’s horse ran into my fallen, kicking stallion. I sped between the trees, and heard a whoosh like sail and a thwack of boots. Jant had landed.

  CHAPTER 23

  Jant – Maple Wood

  I landed and sprinted into the wood through nettles and brambles, chasing Connell. She was some distance ahead but I gained easily. Shallow wounds were bleeding down her face and back.

  Ahead, the trees thinned into a clearing. Connell raced into it and jumped up inside a huge, wilted bush. It wasn’t a bush. A solid, rectangular shape lurked beneath the haphazard branches. The neighbouring ones were the same – eight gypsy wagons, painted green and brown for camouflage and piled with boughs.

  Is this Connell’s headquarters? Were the wagons full of gypsies, priming their muskets? I jogged forward between the trees. I didn’t like it. This reminded me of when we ran into Gio’s ambush in the woods, decades ago, and Saker got stabbed. I’m not going into the clearing on my own.

  I called for the others but they didn’t respond. I called again, waited, then I turned and dashed back. Ahead of me, a gunshot sounded – one of the Awian soldiers putting the injured stallion out of its misery.

  Saker had extracted Balzan from its tangle, though his white horse now bore a clear hoofmark in red on its chest. He was standing beside it, stroking its neck and calming it. His three surviving archers had followed. Fulmer was riding up on one dead archer’s horse, and was leading the other one with the two dead men laid side by side over its saddle, their wings tucked into their belts.

  I tore over wet ground and weeds. ‘There’re wagons in there!’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘In a wagon. I can’t go in!’

  Saker called to his friends, ‘Circle the wood! Hurry!’

  ‘How could you have lost her?’ called Fulmer.

  I pulled out my handkerchief and coughed into it until blood bloomed on the cotton.

  ‘I thought a fucking Rhydanne could catch a fucking racehorse! Let alone a girl with bare feet!’

  ‘He’s burnt,’ said Saker. ‘Let’s go in.’

  I said, ‘Are you listening? It could be an ambush! The gypsies have muskets.’

  ‘Muskets! You should have run in anyway!’

  ‘And get shot? Saker! Last time we tried something like this, Gio stabbed you in the kidney!’

  ‘He missed my kidney by a centimetre.’

  ‘Or he wouldn’t be here now,’ said Fulmer.

  ‘That’s not the point!’

  ‘Yes, it is!’

  ‘You nearly died!’

  ‘That was the Swordsman! Connell’s just a gypsy!’

  ‘Try this,’ said Fulmer. He tilted his cigarette lighter so it glinted, then threw it to Saker who looked at it, puzzled.

  ‘What’s this for?’

  ‘Red hot roundshot.’

  ‘I understand,’ I said. ‘But it could be a trap.’

  Saker said, ‘They’ll be very unfortunate to spring a trap with me in it!’

  ‘I’ll stay here,’ said Fulmer.

  ‘No crossfire!’ Saker called. ‘Wait for the Roses to come out! Take prisoners if possible – Actually, fuck it. Kill them!’

  It was like flushing Insects out of a wood where they’ve gone to bay. We strode through the brambles and onto the clear leaf litter. I motioned Saker into the cover of a dense holly bush and stopped him. ‘Eight wagons.’

  He peered between the branches. ‘The door of the nearest is ajar.’

  ‘Do you have fire arrows?’

  ‘A couple. Why?’

  ‘To trigger the powder inside.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ He selected from his quiver an arrow with a head like a pointed metal cage, stuffed with tinder cotton. He opened Fulmer’s lighter, dropped fluid onto the cotton and lit it – a long, bright flame flared high.

  He set the arrow to string, bent his bow and took aim through the bush at the nearest wagon. The flame trailed up like a pennant. He held his breath halfway and loosed. The arrow zipped through the gap in the wagon door. Instantly the roar of an explosion curled me up. Above the bush, the wagon roof hurtled skywards on a spout of flame. I wrapped my arms around my head. Another bang as the next caravan exploded, blowing planks above the trees.

  Fragments of wood clattered around us through the canopy. When the last had landed and leaves were fluttering down I lowered my arms and stared through the bush. Smoke blotted the clearing completely from view.

  Saker had turned aside and shielded his face with his outstretched wing. He lowered it and shuddered. We could hear his friends’ horses protesting beyond the margin of the trees.

  ‘God!’

  ‘Sh!’

  We approached the remaining wagons gingerly. It was like walking into smog. As the smoke thinned we saw that the clearing was strewn with objects blown out of them. Pieces of intricately-carved wooden frame. Shards of window glass. Tattered shreds of the canvas covers and padded brocade interiors. Here was a bunk bed ladder, there pieces of a stove chimney. Of the first wagon only the base and its four wheels remained. The carriage ply roof of the second one hung free, and we saw how camouflage paint had been slapped over the vibrant red and gold carvings. Some papers had blown out of it and lay scattered on the grass.

  ‘Nobody here,’ said Saker.

  ‘I bet the others still have powder in. Don’t touch them.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  I was trembling. The bangs had shredded my nerves. My burns stung, my ears were throbbing. That gung-ho idiot seemed to have forgotten the feeling of being dashed at the ground as the searing shockwave punches you.

  But he was clenching his jaw so hard it dimpled both cheeks. He walked along the front of the caravans. Then he bent and picked something up. ‘Here it is!’ He held out a fuse, which ran from all eight wagons and draped away into the woods.

  We followed it, out of the clearing to an oak tree. There, propped between its raised roots but quite dead, was the man I had hit with my pistol shot. His sightless eyes fixed on the clearing; he held a taper that was still steadily smouldering. The fuse ended just a hand’s width from it.

  ‘If he’d lived a few minutes longer he could have lit it,’ said Saker. ‘I must be more careful!’

  ‘Try being less stupid!’

  The corpse’s tattoos were lurid against his pale skin. Around his mouth and bearded onto his neck, blood froth was drying into tiny circles. ‘You hit him in the lungs. Good shot.’

  ‘Damn it, Saker. He was a man, not a target! He was called Allen, married, three children, liked fishing.’

  ‘How do you know? Oh. You read his tattoos.’

  ‘Yes! And he was my age!’

  ‘Nobody’s your age.’

  I slipped the taper from his fingers and stamped it out. Saker rested the horn tip of his longbow on his boot and looked across the clearing, to where the dead man’s gaze was fixed. ‘He knew he was finished, so he stayed and Connell escaped out of the spinney in that direction. Good trap. Nice try, girl, nice try …’

  He returned to the wagons and started poking about the articles scattered on the grass. I knelt next to the dead gypsy. Clots were forming in the folds of his kerchief and shirt. He could ha
ve been any man. He could have been me, if I’d never joined the Circle but stayed a frustrated mortal in gangland Hacilith.

  There was no exit wound, so I supposed my ball must still be inside him. I glanced over his tattoos and his chest bore a fresh one, newly-scabbed, an exploding barrel encircled with flames.

  ‘You were so proud of being a bomber that you record it for all to see? Well, look how much good it’s done you! I write my life events on my arms, too, but I do it differently.’ I shoved my sleeve back for the corpse to have a good look at my old track marks.

  ‘Jant!’ said Saker. ‘Look at this!’

  He was crouching in the tussocks with a piece of paper in each hand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s music!’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It’s Swallow’s handwriting!’

  He brandished the sheets, which were charred round the edges. I darted to him, took one and scanned it. Sure enough, it was a manuscript and in the five bars danced black notes written with the confident sketchiness of a musical genius going very fast indeed.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  He fixed me with a glance. ‘The handwriting of the woman I loved? Of course I’m sure! It’s the same piece. It’s the piece I’ve been reconstructing! This is it. I recognise … It goes: da da damm. Pause. And here … this one follows on …’ He placed the pages beside each other and started scooping up more. ‘This one – is the same. And this … all from the symphony! But the sheets aren’t numbered. I can’t tell the order.’

  He paused, and for a second his eyes filled with tears. ‘She never numbered the damn sheets.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I used to tell her to, but she wouldn’t.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It put her off her stride.’

  He eased the quiver on his hip and knelt down. ‘Jant, why was one of Swallow’s manuscripts in a caravan?’

  ‘She was their friend, remember. And benefactor. She studied their tunes.’

  ‘Tunes! Listen to what I’m telling you! This isn’t gypsy gambols. It’s her unfinished symphony!’

  He bounded to his feet, grabbed my shirt front with his free hand and jerked me closer so I was looking up into his face. ‘It’s priceless! Swallow’s last score! The world will go wild! And … and …’ He glanced at the manuscript he was clutching. ‘It continues! So she’s not dead!’ He let go of my shirt and enveloped me in a gigantic embrace that I thought would crush my ribs. I simply waited until he stopped.

  ‘She must be dead,’ I said. ‘She died writing it. You remember seeing how the notes faded out.’

  He scooped up the sheets and tried to figure whether they were part of the same manuscript. ‘But here they are strong again,’ he said, seized by romance. ‘We thought she was dead, but she’d gone with the gypsies! We can find her. We can save her!’

  ‘Saker, she is dead. We saw her body on the pyre.’

  ‘… Saw someone on the pyre …’

  ‘Come on, Fulmer’s waiting.’

  But he was eagerly reading the symphony and losing himself in it. Here, on the grass before six wagons reeking of smoke and stuffed with blasting powder. He ran his finger down the pages in an attempt to order them, set aside the first sheet of passionate quavers and hummed down the second. I picked it up. There were no words but the musical direction was inscribed between the staves in what was undoubtedly Swallow’s hand: with hatred.

  ‘Swallow did go with the gypsies.’ I said. ‘She’s behind all this. She’s their leader. She’s the bomber.’

  CHAPTER 24

  ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I said. ‘Connell’s gone.’

  I couldn’t shake a creeping sensation that the corpse might reanimate, and jerkily set his stomped-out taper to the damp fuse and blow us all to jelly. We made our way back to Fulmer.

  ‘You’ve lost Connell, haven’t you?’ he said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘They killed Auk and Merganser.’

  Saker climbed into his saddle and sat there, lost in thought.

  Fulmer said severely, ‘I thought a Rhydanne could—’

  ‘I was in a fireball!’ I rubbed the surface of my wing, and held up a palm covered in fragments of the scorched, wet feathers. ‘And the Cobalt captain was a Rose!’

  ‘They were all Roses. Couldn’t you tell?’

  ‘He put his musket to my head. Right here!’ I relived the cold metal dinting my skin. Fulmer pointed at the dead Awians, which sparked my fear to rage. I plucked my pistol from my belt and, arm out, pointed it straight at his face. ‘Ever had a gun set to your head? You fucking fop?’

  He went pale.

  ‘See what it feels like!’ I cocked the hammer.

  ‘Jant …’ said Saker calmly.

  ‘Your life flashes before you! You review your past in a second! And I have a lot of past!’ I grabbed Fulmer’s stirrup leather, raised my gun barrel and shoved it against his chest. There was a pleasing firmness. ‘Tell me, why’s this scarier than a crossbow?’

  ‘Arp—!’

  ‘It’s a messier death. It’s more certain! A fucking Zascai did this to me!’

  ‘Jant,’ said Saker. ‘If you don’t put that damn thing down, I swear I’ll throw it off the cliff.’

  Reluctantly, I lowered the pistol and eased the hammer closed. Fulmer rubbed his chest, shuddered to settle his feathers and adjusted his shirt cuffs. Satisfied that being held at gunpoint had not affected him sartorially, he recovered his customary poise: ‘Well, that’s a world first.’

  ‘Firearms are unreliable,’ said Saker. ‘You could have killed him.’

  ‘It’s not loaded.’

  Saker made an infuriated sound and cantered away to round up his men. I yelled after him, ‘I haven’t gone through two hundred years of hell for some mortal to blow my head off!’

  Mist Fulmer, with slow deliberation, pulled his silver case from his inside pocket, clicked it open, selected a viridian green one from a rainbow spectrum of cigarettes, and tapped it on the case cover. ‘First, I’m not a fop, I’m a gentleman. Second, how did the Roses know we had requested outriders?’

  ‘I sent a message to Cobalt on the telegraph …’ I looked at Mist and found him looking at me. My hot skin prickled. Dread suddenly pressed so heavily upon me I sat down on the grass. ‘They’re breaking my codes …’

  ‘Jant, nobody breaks your codes.’

  ‘They’re reading my telegraph!’

  ‘Only governors and Eszai know how to!’

  ‘Swallow was a governor! She has the code book!’

  Mist screwed the cigarette into his holder and found he had nothing to light it with. ‘Swallow Awndyn …?’

  ‘I think she’s still alive. Shit! If she deciphered my message, she can read everything I send down the line!’ I pummelled my fist in the grass. ‘If they’re reading it, I’ll have to hand-deliver everything. They’re slowing me down. She’s closing me down! Who knows which of us is next? Tern’s in Wrought, and—’

  He stopped me, sympathetically. ‘You’re in a tizz about Tern. Saker’s in a lather about Eleonora, and I admit I’m not terribly bucked about losing my house, with all its corking treasures that made me me. But we’ll catch Connell, and Swallow, if you say so. Poor Captain Merganser and Reeve Auk Lemma were both Tanager courtiers. Eleonora was fond of them. She’ll pull no punches when she finds out.’

  ‘She’ll make it worse!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Treating Roses badly will turn more against us.’

  ‘Huh. Skip it.’

  ‘Then more Litanee, then maybe other Morenzians. Everything we’ve done so far has fucked this up! Shit! …How can I telegraph San if Swallow can read it?’

  Saker trotted back with his guards, declaring, ‘Come on! Let’s track Connell!’

  ‘She’s had quite a start,’ said Fulmer.

  ‘She’s on foot. Jant, you’re a good tracker and I’m the best hunter in the world. L
et’s go!’

  ‘It’s Swallow we need to find.’

  ‘Chances are,’ said Fulmer, ‘If Swallow is alive, she’s sitting in Litanee. That’s where these terrorists are coming from, after all.’

  ‘I can’t ride into Litanee without asking the governor’s permission,’ said Saker.

  He leant and flicked the lighter for Fulmer, who drew on his cigarette so hard that, with lungs and eight airsacs, he demolished half of it in one inhalation.

  ‘I agree that killing Rose bombers before they leave their country would make Awia safer,’ he said.

  ‘It’d start a war.’

  ‘Well, try to think like Swallow. You know how she thinks better than anyone.’

  ‘How can I think like a woman who’s gone mad?’

  ‘If she was mad, you’d already have caught her.’

  Saker pulled the manuscript sheets from his quiver and brandished them. ‘This was her hiding place.’

  ‘How long ago did she abandon that wagon and that ditty?’

  ‘… I don’t know.’

  Fulmer exhaled an Awian amount of smoke and narrowed his eyes through it, looking out to the Gerygone lying at anchor on the hammered silver sea. Then he flicked ash at the dead horse and decapitated gypsy, who still had his feet in the stirrups. ‘Thirty of them. They were only wearing partial uniform, see, it’s way too big for him. If you hadn’t been in such a dashed rush, you’d have noticed … Connell rides as well as the Master of Horse. Tell her so, if you catch her again. Tell her she’s as good as Hayl, and see if she won’t spill all Swallow’s plans for a chance of immortality.’

  ‘Awia presses charges.’

  ‘Oh, Saker. Didn’t you lead the peaceful side when the Castle solved the Eske Rebellion that way? I can sail these two unfortunate courtiers back to Tanager on Gerygone. That way I can take the news to the Queen. You can leave the dead gypsies, the wagons and the carriage to me, too. It’s got Turvy Horses, hasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  He continued to fill his bones with tar and nicotine. ‘I’ll stay on my ship. I’ll watch the flickers. Let me know if you need me, or my twenty cannon …’

  ‘Here’s the lighter,’ said Saker.