Fair Rebel

by Steph Swainston

  He glanced up to see me half-naked at the window. ‘Jant! What time do you call this?’

  ‘I call it four a.m.’

  ‘It’s five past. Come down!’

  The Vermiform was sitting on the shoulder of my shirt on the chair back. It crawled into the pocket as I picked up the shirt and flung it on. I rolled my eyes at the mirror as I passed and ran down the zigzag staircase with its linenfold panelling and creaking treads, swung round the newel post at the bottom and out to the forecourt. Saker nodded at me, turned his horse and walked off. Apparently I was supposed to walk beside him, and the fyrdsmen fell into line behind us, marching two abreast.

  ‘It’s this direction,’ said Saker. ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘To the canal basin?’

  ‘Of course.’

  With lips cracked from gunpowder and bags under his eyes, he looked shattered. Being in Swallow’s house had haunted him all night. He’d never bargained for such close proximity to her, to the music they’d enjoyed together, to her grand bedroom he’d never got anywhere near. I don’t believe he’d slept at all, nor even gone to bed, just spent all night in the annexe listening to the sound of the sea.

  And now he’d adroitly assumed the role of Governor of Awndyn. ‘Jant, I want you to fly ahead and spy out the wharf. Caution is the watchword. Come back and tell me if you see any gypsies.’

  I nodded. I ran, flung open my wings and sped into the gaunt dawn. Having trouble steering, and expending twice the effort with so much vane missing from my feathers, I flew unevenly above the road, with the sand dunes to my left, towards the canal like a lead strip between the cornfields.

  The basin was hidden by a row of houses, all red herringbone brick bellying out between black half-timbers. I swept up and smacked into the roof of one, crawled to its ridge, concealed from the dockside by a chimney stack. I pressed against the chimney, and strips of eroded mortar cascaded out and went skittering down the tiles, dropped off the roof and crashed onto the wharf cobbles. I shrank back for a second, then peered round. Nobody seemed to have noticed.

  Five big barges were moored at the dockside, loading. Stevedores swarmed all over them. Each barge had a crane attached to its stern; the nearest was hoisting a crate. Two bargemen raised their arms as it lifted between them. A stack of similar green crates obscured my view to the end of the wharf. The second barge was loading wool bales for the mills of the capital. The third one was swinging aboard bundles of firewood.

  The fourth barge sat low in the water. It was a boat I’d seen before, being one of the flotilla that provisioned the Castle. Its bargeman in oilskins leant on the cabin doorjamb, smoking a pipe.

  Then there was a pyramid of barrels, then wheelbarrows of amphorae of that terrible wine Awndyn produces. The last barge was painted black, with its deck planks removed, loading barrels from the pyramid. The wharfinger’s shouts were muted in the early morning air.

  A man with Rose tattoos walked straight beneath me. I glimpsed his shoulders and shaved head; he disappeared under the roof’s overhang, then emerged from the gable end, strolling down the quay. Grey vest and fyrd trousers: he sported a big, naturally-inked Rose on his shoulder, with a ribboned tiller and a barge horse with SH for the Shivel Horsefair.

  He passed the pyramid of barrels with care – they were gunpowder kegs. God, there must be a hundred! He joined the group at the black barge and looked up to its crane, which was holding one keg aloft. It turned slowly above him, swung aboard; two stevedores lowered it into the well deck and back swung the crane. His big hands caught the hook and fixed it to the strap of the next barrel. The barge bore neither name nor insignia. I studied it until my eyes stung – the arms of all its bargemen looked clothed because they were netted with tattoos.

  They must have a lookout. I eased around on the roof. There, by the warehouse wall.

  I hopped off and flitted back to Saker. He reined in his horse, halted his fifty men and watched me land. ‘Roses are loading a barge with powder barrels,’ I said. ‘It’s the black one, furthest on the quay.’

  ‘Is there a guard?’

  ‘They have a lookout.’ I pointed up the road. ‘On the right, there’s a warehouse with a weathervane. The man in the dark fatigues, standing in its shadow, against the wall – he has a crossbow.’

  ‘Stay here.’ Saker dismounted and took his bow and quiver. He walked up the road and was back a few minutes later. ‘They don’t have a lookout … This barge, would it be first on the wharf if we round that side of the houses?’ He pointed left, to a maize field extending to the reeds on the brink of the canal.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How many Roses?’

  ‘Twenty. It’s not Connell.’

  He looked distant for a second, as if seeing through the field. ‘Troupes everywhere. Did you spot their leader?’

  ‘A man, shaved head, similar build to Sula. Um … He has the biggest Rose here. He’s been a bargeman for years, married, two kids, they live aboard, plays the guitar. Trades at Shivel Horse Fair.’

  Saker laughed. ‘Their tattoos are invaluable. If I take him alive will the rest surrender? Given that they’re sworn to help each other?’

  ‘I can’t say.’

  ‘We’ll try it. Sula?’

  ‘Yes, my lord?’

  ‘Take everyone up the road and wait behind the warehouse. Listen for my whistle. When you hear me, come in and arrest them. Don’t shoot unless I say.’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  ‘Beware of crossbows. Cyan flooded the market with cheap outmoded crossbows for any criminal to buy. Jay, stay here and bring our horses up last, or they’ll hear the hooves.’

  We stood on the verge and watched the fifty men, led by his two courtiers, begin to creep quietly up the road. He grunted approval, turned and descended the verge into the maize field like a man wading into the sea. He seemed a lot happier now he was master of the hunt. We moved through the maize field slowly, pushing the stalks aside, smelling the cool, silky grass scent of the unripe corn and listening to the bustle of the wharf – geese on the river and the barge cranes clacking.

  Saker stopped before the last maize stalks and dropped to one knee. With a click he fitted the bowstring into an arrow’s nock, and I heard the faint clack of its shaft on the bow riser. By his boots, a ladybird that had fallen off one of the green stems was crawling over the dry soil.

  I came to his side and looked out between the stalks. There was the end of the wharf, fifty metres distant, the barge bow-on with gypsies working to and fro on the deck. Their leader was looking up under the next rising barrel.

  ‘The one who looks like someone chopped sticks on his face?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His left calf will heal easiest.’

  ‘I’m ready.’

  He bent his bow and the bodkin point protruded from the edge of the corn. Loosed, and I was away after the arrow. The man screamed, crumpled to the ground, and a moment later I had my knife to his throat.

  Recognising me, the gypsies backed off. The muscular man was puffing, his shin folded under him, bleeding freely with the shaft through it. I smelt his fear and pain, the heavy bulk of his sweating body, and the fact I’d caught prey thrilled me.

  His bristly jowl hung over my blade. I pricked him with the point. ‘No one shoots! Tell them!’

  ‘You heard him, don’t shoot!’ he called to his troupe, who stood like statues, wide-eyed, mouths open here and there. I motioned for them to lower the barrel and they duly cranked it down.

  Saker strolled onto the wharf with an arrow at string and passed an investigative glance over the Roses. ‘You’re under arrest,’ he said loudly. He stood by the barrel and studied the men on deck. ‘I’m the Governor of Awndyn, and if anyone makes a move he’ll join your leader on the ground.’

  He held the arrow shaft on the mark of the bow, stuck two fingers of his other hand in his mouth and whistled. His soldiers ran onto the quay, past the gabled fronts of the houses, past the pub with the sign
of the Frog and Pepper, to the side of every gypsy. They were two to each Rose, who made neither move nor sound till the soldiers walked them away.

  I was still crouched beside the boatman; he was sprawled on the cobbles with my knife under his chin, drip-white and panting.

  Saker waved me away, seized his shirt and dragged him to the edge of the cut. The water rippled smoothly from the bank. He dropped him so his top half was over the edge, stomped him between the shoulderblades, ducking his head underwater, and kept his foot on the guy’s back, holding his head under while he struggled and kicked.

  ‘Can you?’ He stomped him under again. ‘Breathe like a mermaid?’

  ‘Ark—!’ The man arched his back, strained away from the surface, thrashing his head, flicking off drops. Saker pressed the instep of his boot against the arrow shaft sticking out of his calf. He shrieked.

  ‘Is Swallow alive?’ Saker demanded.

  I yelled, ‘Let him go!’

  He put more pressure on the arrow. ‘Is she?’

  ‘I’m not – argh! Yes!’

  ‘She’s alive?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘She’s alive, where is she?’

  ‘I don’t know!’ yelled the man.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Rax!’

  ‘Where’s Swallow?’

  Rax was rigid, trying to keep his face off the water.

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Nobody knows!’ he gasped. ‘We just get orders.’

  ‘Who gives you orders?’

  ‘Connell!’

  Saker kicked the arrow so hard it tilted and Rax gulped a sob of air like a scream backwards. ‘Someone must know where the bitch is hiding!’

  ‘Only Connell! She rides to us!’

  ‘How many groups are there?’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘He’s just a little cog,’ I said.

  Saker took his foot from the arrow and stamped Rax once more between the shoulder blades, splashing his face in the water, then hauled him off the bank and dumped him on the cobbles. ‘Where were you taking the powder?’

  ‘Hacilith.’

  ‘Where in Hacilith?’

  ‘Connell wouldn’t say.’

  Saker slipped his bow from his shoulder and rubbed his fingertips on the string. ‘Jant, fly to Hacilith and warn them. Rayne first. Go on.’

  ‘I’m not leaving you to torture Rax!’

  He shook himself. ‘Torture? No, I’m interr—’

  ‘You were!’

  ‘I had to find out! Otherwise she’ll kill more people, she might kill Rayne!’

  ‘There are better ways – we’ll take him to San.’

  ‘There’s no time!’ He examined Rax, who was sallow and fainting, and then glanced at Jay, waiting beside the tavern with the horses. Saker was holding his wings splayed low, in threatening body language, and Jay hadn’t dared approach.

  He folded his wings and beckoned Jay to bring Balzan. Together, they bumped Rax up into the saddle. He screeched with pain and then stoically sat motionless, his leg locked out straight, fletchings in his calf like a badge and the point projecting a clothyard from his shin. Blood was running into his boot. His soaked grey vest was skewed, showing the tattoos around his neck.

  Saker took the reins. ‘What does the drum on your chest mean?’

  Rax glared at him, sucked a breath. ‘Awndyn music festival.’

  ‘Is that where you met Swallow?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is this her retaliation? Because San refused her?’

  Rax drooped forward onto Balzan’s neck. Saker prodded him with his bow.

  ‘I’ll tell the Emperor you’re on a revenge rampage,’ I said.

  ‘You may tell the Emperor anything you please, Comet. Because I’m not his damn hawk any more! Rax, why is she bombing Eszai?’

  ‘She hates them … Can’t you feel how much she despises you, too?’

  ‘… But why?’

  ‘Because the Emperor not only thwarted her, but humiliated her.’

  Saker stepped back and stared at me. ‘She’s turned into a monster.’

  ‘And you’re on the way!’

  ‘I’m doing this for the Castle! She’s killed hundreds! Remember Wrought!’

  Rax fastened his hand over the arrow shaft and moaned. ‘I don’t know anything else … The troupes work independently. That’s all, that’s all I know. Swallow gave me orders in advance. Everyone got instructions at her festival … She only wanted me to load the stuff … because it’s my boat.’

  Saker said to him conversationally, ‘Not many people enjoy an audience with the Emperor.’

  ‘Please let me go.’

  ‘I have two children as well. Lory and Ortolan. The Awndyn doctor will fix your leg. As long as you don’t try to escape, you’ll see your kids again.’ He gave the reins to Jay and watched him lead the horse and Rax off the quay, towards town. He sent Sula for more fyrd to reclaim the barrels. Then he sighed, looking down the quayside, and said, ‘Jant, I’ll find horses for all the Roses and take them to the Castle.’

  ‘All right, Saker,’ I said, ‘But be careful. There’ll be dozens of troupes. Stay clear of inns and coach houses … stables … Shivel manor.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve learnt my lesson. No gypsies will get past Warden Sula and a hundred Awndyn Select.’

  All the other stevedores had fled the wharf and left the barges deserted. We stood looking at the stack of barrels, as the double-windows in the houses’ steep gables rouged with the rising sun. A seagull flew across its red disc, momentarily vanishing in the glare.

  ‘Swallow’s clever,’ I said. ‘No one troupe knows another.’

  ‘The sections of an orchestra don’t communicate with each other, Jant. They just play.’

  ‘An orchestra, ha …’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouted. ‘An orchestra! They rest until she cues them in, to play at the right time. She conducts them – and she has the timing of a genius! We can’t cover the whole Empire as she starts the crescendo.’

  If the troupes were communicating at all, I couldn’t see their means because they were too damn simple. Any traveller could be carrying orders – who was in cahoots and who wasn’t? What could I do, damn it? I couldn’t stop every man on the road!

  I said, ‘Out of Rax’s troupe, beware the one with the skull on his chest. He’s a knife fighter. The one with the stirrups is a crack rider.’

  ‘And I am tempted to shoot the fucking lot.’ Saker paused in counting the barrels and extended his hand to shake mine. ‘Jant, look after the Doctor … for me.’

  I nodded, then turned on the ball of my foot and sprinted down the quay. I opened my wings, elbows first, then whisked out the splay of my flight feathers, pushed my feet harder against the cobbles to overcome their drag, jumped and took off.

  I beat up, into the rose-flecked sky, and turned south for the city. At about a hundred metres altitude I glanced down to see Saker standing alone at the quayside, waiting for his reinforcements. The column of soldiers with their gypsy prisoners, respectively olive and black, were making their way along the road between cream-green maize fields, towards the jail in the ramshackle rustred cluster of Awndyn town.

  High tide pared the white sand beach to the thinnest crescent, almost glowing, where waves that seemed as smooth and hard as enamel, broke from lilac to foam.

  CHAPTER 28

  The city

  I flew to Hacilith, following the canal. The airflow soothed my burns, and I tipped water from my canteen over my bandages, but with every wingbeat they smarted and chafed. I tried to glide but I dropped height quickly – I’d lost too much feather, so I had to keep flapping on laboriously.

  Saker was acting weird. He would have stabbed Connell, and he had no qualms about twisting his arrow in Rax’s wound. Had he been like this all the time he was Eszai, and hidden it?

  Well, Saker’s always become furious when people whom he feels are under his protection are threatened.
It piques his self-imposed duty of care for the vulnerable – children, people who are close to him, his soldiers, cottars, or women. Especially any women, the romantic old fool. As long as he thinks he’s trying to save them, he feels justified in any action, and I don’t know how far he’ll take it.

  The gypsies are catching innocent people in every blast. It’s the thing most guaranteed to rile Saker. Only the self-consciously moral feel the need to protect the rest of us poor bastards, and they’ll fail their own morals, when they do.

  Below me, the clouds thickened into a lumpy white sheet that looked solid. My shadow flickered over its surface and a headland of cloud stretched out ahead. The country of cumulus is always peaceful no matter what’s breaking loose below. I wish I could land there and walk about; meet the people who live there and, if possible, live there myself.

  The hot air given off by the city ramped the clouds into great piles and shaggy-stalked mushrooms, as if the mills and smokestacks were replicated in the sky above them – as if they were pushing up the cloud. I flew between puffy columns like suspended Insect architecture. They hung as weightless as the pillars of kelp underwater, between which the diver soars.

  The headland ended like a bay, in a clear stretch of air, and suddenly ten thousand streets were spread out beneath me.

  So it’s sunny in Hacilith. I glided down the sheer face of the cliffs of cloud. Their bay arced out either side – then I was below it – and black factory chimneys bristled at me like cannons. Acrid air caught my throat. Below me, lines and lines of terraces in Piteem. The shine of the canal split into a network of parallel wharfs in Galt, with warehouses, cranes, millfronts and metalworks around them, barges moving like beetles.

  Ahead, the estuary – looping, branching, braiding rivers with boats in the centres of the main channels, mudbanks between them, and piers like black lollipop sticks planted further out in a sandy-coloured expanse of sea.

  There’s the Brandoch coast; there’s the hip of Morenzia, looking just like the map. It was mid-afternoon and the ocean sparkled. I wheeled above the city. That green rhombus is Fiennafor Park. That heliograph flash is sunlight on the Bronze Palace, with the plaza and the candy-pink and white Bullion Palace beyond. That spire with the four bartizans is the university main building. I bit my lip, pulled my wings in and dropped, eyes half-closed against the rush of air.