The roof was broken like a crust from the fallen spire, angled into a powdery grey metal awning. ‘We have to widen that gap. Jant, how long it takes depends on how quickly you can bring me men and lifting equipment. I need everything. I need you to know everything. This is like the Front. I can do it, but I need Lowespass-capacity.’
‘You’ve got it.’
‘I’ll send you a runner with orders every ten minutes.’
‘The Emperor … crushed …’ Tern murmured.
‘He doesn’t have long. We don’t have long. Tern, there’s no water or food. Will you ride to Demesne and tell Auburn we need everything? Every milk churn of water, all their medical gear. Bring it to the servants’ quarters, that’s our mess hall now.’
‘She’ll ask what happened.’
‘Aye, she has Insects chewing her arse one minute, bits of spire falling on her next. Tell her all.’
Tern gave me a kiss, then left.
‘How long can they survive in there?’ I said.
‘Depends how mangled they are.’ Kay redoubled yelling.
The massive roof-lead panels looked like a still lake. Pieces of the pinnacles lay on it like broken icicles. Along the centre, in a spine of rubble, the huge ridge of the fallen spire stretched back towards the South Façade. Its nearest blocks had been torn asunder by the collapse but, further up the tower, further south towards the bookend of the still-standing Façade, whole sections lay complete. Gargoyles had smashed off them, and lay petrified in mid-escape.
I flew up and sailed above it. Crevasses split the lead sheets, then the roof ended, sheer, and I looked down into the pit. I glimpsed dark rubble far below – the west side of the Throne Room had vanished underground. So had the north end of Carillon and Mare’s Run, all of the kitchens, dining hall and theatre; the pit gaped all the way to my tower. This end of Mare’s Run had shorn off, revealing sudden interiors: the purple wallpaper of the Sailor’s room on the first storey, a huge, gold-framed painting dashed to the floor, water pipes jutting from the bathroom below.
I flapped over the ruins of Carillon. They stepped as if kneeling, then corniced into the pit. By the curtain wall, the storerooms were nothing but a range of rubble. Food and dead bodies dotted, half-buried amongst the bricks. Simoon’s search team crested one heap into a valley, heading towards the source of horrific screams.
My tower had broken open with a crack two metres wide, starting at the lintel above the doorway. It spiralled around the tower like a fracture in bone, and through the wide fissure I glimpsed our corkscrew staircase, before it curved out of sight. The inner half of the whole tower had fallen a metre. The blast had undermined it, carved the front off it and dropped it a metre lower, smashed the Myrtle Room and bathroom windows. The wall was soaking where a broken pipe had spewed before all water pressure ceased.
It might fall down any second. Tern had been lucky to escape. Fuck Swallow. Fuck Swallow! This was my home!
I landed at the ruined doorway and ran up to the Myrtle Room. Its door had been ripped from its hinges when the front of the tower fell. Connell had gone. Whether she lay under the rubble, or deep in the cistern, I couldn’t tell.
I flew to Lisade, landed on the library roof and ran down to my desk.
CHAPTER 41
Communications
I sent telegraph messages and fast riders to Eske, Shivel, Fescue and Hacilith, requested their Select Fyrd, equipment and medical supplies. Then the news that the spire no longer dominated the skyline must have flashed across the Empire from Demesne to Summerday, because the telegraph crashed.
I don’t mean it physically broke. There were so many messages backed up on the lines that the terrified senders couldn’t prioritise. The Hacilith line jammed, then Eske to Tanager, and the whole lot went down. One minute the boy delivers an armful of pink slips, and the next there was … nothing.
I was dropped out of my window on the world and brought to myself, blinking at the desktop wood. Then I became aware of the sound of rubble crunching and Snow yelling. All my lines are dead. My picture’s blank.
I climbed to the roof and yelled at Jackdaw. ‘I told them emergency protocol! It’s my code and it’s red! Tell them again! Nobody talks except me!’
‘Yes, Comet.’
‘Well?’
Jackdaw, his watcher and I stared out of the viewing pane, emptied of shattered glass, through the white murk, to the Binnard tower, which had lowered its arms to the receiving position. Which they’ll all have done, by now. ‘Well, go on. Give it a kick!’
‘Comet … is the Emperor … is the Emperor …?’
‘Dead? He will be soon, if you don’t knock all that shit off the line!’
He gulped and started sweeping the knobs of the levers across the sloped desk. I stood in the doorframe and watched him describe the code to clear the line and give the senders chance to recover.
I said, ‘Shut down the Peregrine line. I want to talk fastest to Eske.’
‘Yes, Comet.’
‘If I ask Eske a question, I want a fucking answer, not a question in return.’
‘Yes, Comet.’
‘Ah. That brought them back.’
‘Brome two keeps tacking on he’s tired.’
‘Already? Ha! Have him relieved; there’s six in Brome one.’
Looking down to the rescue site, I saw Kay’s men digging like ants to widen the gap at the edge of the roof. He had fifty wagons already – Imperial Fyrd carts and fruit pickers. A team of drays was ploughing up the lawn, dragging a chunk of facing stone the length of the telegraph mast. Jackdaw leant forward until he was bent over the powdered glass on the sill. ‘He’s setting up floodlights … You can actually see the sunburst … there.’
‘Keep your eyes on Binnard.’
‘Sorry, sir.’
Search teams swarmed the rubble. The only place free of them was the Throne Room roof. Down its centre the spit of spire debris tapered to a point, and the sun boss on its golden lance shone like a shield of flame. In comparison with the searchers, it was twice the height of a man.
I returned to my table and arranged the slips in importance, category, manor, and it looked like a colossal game of patience. In five minutes, the runner brought down another handful and the rescue jacked up a notch.
From: Eske. Sending Select cavalry ETA one hour.
From: Hacilith. Doctors requested leaving now coach ETA three a.m.
From: Fescue. Heard it. Sent horsemen.
From: Shivel. Select dispatched.
From: Carniss. Miners preparing ETA four days.
From: Hurricane, Lowespass. What the FUCK is going on??
I scooped the Vermiform from my pocket and dumped it on the table. The Fourlands were buzzing, now let me see if the Shift will help. Its worms huddled in a flaccid lump until I poured a sachet of sugar over them. They scoffed it with a high-pitched chomping, and twirled up into a tiny version of the beautiful woman.
‘Feel better?’ I asked it.
She unravelled and fronded at me vigorously.
‘Can you see the cistern? Can you see the Emperor? Do you have worms in the Castle’s foundations?’
She sagged into a swarm, streamed across the table and lifted my fountain pen. The worms spiralled around it and deftly spun it unscrewed. They dropped the steel barrel, wound around the rubber reservoir inside, and squeezed a shining blot of black ink onto the table top. Then they split, and half the worms crawled through the ink while the others dragged over one of the telegraph slips and held it down. The inky worms crawled across the paper, writing: We can see the Emperor
‘Is he badly injured?’
VERY!
‘And what about Tornado?’
Both dying on the throne
‘Will you help us? Can you help dig them out?’
Dunlin EXTREMELY angry about this!
‘I’m not asking Dunlin. I’m asking you … Vermiform, I know you could rebuild the Throne Room instantly if you wanted to. I know you can
raise San up. Please help us.’
There’s a little man down here now
‘That’s Kay Snow.’
We like him
‘Will you help him?’
Yes
The worms enthusiastically bathed themselves in ink, splashing it everywhere. Your world will fall apart without San. Insects will overwhelm you. So we dig. Flowing through ~~~
They trailed off, and I could see the throng was thinning rapidly as worms disappeared from it, back into the Shift and presumably into the Throne Room collapse. ‘One more thing!’ I said. ‘Where’s Gayle?’
Buried deep. We show Kay.
‘Where’s Saker?’
STEPS
‘What steps?’
The few remaining worms whirled in spirals, beaming frustration that they lacked the correct term. They hurled themselves through the ink, raced across the paper and drew with uncanny precision the outline of the South Façade, complete with ruined Rose Window. Then they dwindled to five worms. Three worms, and were gone.
I was alone.
I went looking for Saker.
CHAPTER 42
Saker in the portal
I could feel Saker in the Circle but he wasn’t pulling on it. Gayle the Lawyer had begun to pull violently, and I thought her rooms midway along Carillon’s ground floor must have become her living grave.
I ran down the grand staircase of Lisade and out into the ash, and turned to glance at the building. Its polished marble cladding, salmon pink, green and grey, had been pocked with holes and gouged in great scrapes by falling pieces of Throne Room.
Kay had built a crane atop the rubble, with a trough for a bucket, and an operator was spilling stone down the outer slope. On the far side, on the mound that used to be Carillon, a stretcher team was lifting a body with a sheet over it.
I climbed to the excavation, and found that Kay had wriggled down into the East Aisle. He was shifting debris between the last column of the arcade and a huge fallen ceiling boss, the final one before the throne, which lay like a coin on its side. Beyond it the tiled floor ended abruptly, hanging over the black abyss of the cistern. Kay came to the wall and looked up at me, his hair full of dust and a kerchief over his mouth. I explained the Vermiform as best I could. He was too desperate to be daunted, he sagged in gratitude when I described how it was digging towards us from the throne.
Behind him the timbers of the roof space jutted in a jumbled forest. Two thousand years ago the hardiest oaks of the Pentadrica had been felled, suspended above the ceiling for millennia and now ripped down in a mass of rafters.
I climbed down to the roof and walked along it, grating the dust beside the spire towards the South Façade. The ledges crusted with pigeon shit lay segmented along the same lines where they’d been built, and the separated surfaces of the blocks revealed the iron staples that had bound them together since before the Insects invaded.
I’d often landed on the spire. I’d been familiar with every crevice, every toe hold. I knew that cluster of moss in the corner of that arch, when the arch had been upright. I’d perched on the gargoyle with the bat wings, when it had reared into space. And now the impact had scattered its fragments of weathered limestone and lichen onto the lead.
Higher up, the spire narrowed. I’d spent hours standing high on the arcade course, looking out at the Demesne, washed by scolopendium and the breeze, while guardsmen in red walked tiny the wall tops below. That gargoyle with the Insect eyes, I’d tried to land on it once in the lashing rain, slipped off and fell all the way to that pinnacle. And now they were all on a level.
The octagonal-pyramid point of the spire lay cracked in half, a fissure running right-angle by right-angle down the surface of the stones. I passed the sun boss, its smooth gold disc embedded in the lead with the force of its fall.
I reached the south end, clambered down the roof and saw Saker sitting in the nested arches of the main portal, his back to me. I scrambled over tiles and slabs where the narthex had been, but my crunching and sliding didn’t alert him. There were the carved amber drapes of the doorway lying broken under immense beams and fan vaulting. The guards were flattened under them too, and reeked of scorched flesh. Only one bare lower leg and a glimpse of jacket projected.
I dropped into the portal. Saker was huddled with his knees drawn up, his head resting on the wall under the plinths. The statues had fallen from their niches and lay with rigor mortis on the steps. Dust covered him so thoroughly he looked like one.
His wings were burnt. All his golden flight feathers were reduced to their central shafts, no vanes remaining. The barbs had melted and shrivelled, leaving just the splay of quills which looked like long, thin claws, scraping the step with his every breath. Some had stuck together with ugly black blobs of keratin. The molten, bubbling gunge had dripped onto his trousers and set there, too. It stank like burnt straw. His singed feathers had curled, revealing bands of muscle, and scratches from flying debris smeared them with blood.
I took his shoulder but he nestled into the stone. ‘Saker …’
Silence.
‘San made you Eszai.’
He opened his eyes. The red rims stood out ghastly as the only flesh colour. ‘Why … when I did this?’
‘Swallow did it.’
A whisper like breathing: ‘I couldn’t …’
‘Did you try to warn him?’
‘I ran. I got here and the fire … burst out … in front of me. The hall fell …’ He spread his wings reflexively and the quills were like spiders’ legs. One laceration yawned and bled. God, I thought. Two more steps and he’d have been inside.
‘Why? Why make me Eszai?’ He came alive and punched the stone. ‘San knows I walked away! He knows I left the Circle! Why taunt me? When I’m to blame!’
‘You’re not to blame.’
‘For this!’
‘Swallow lit the fuse.’
His eyes widened and for a second I almost saw the blaze reflected in them. Then he gave a horribly unhinged laugh and rested his head against the wall. ‘Fire like a torrent. Like a flame thrower.’
‘I think you should see Rayne.’
‘No! It … folded up … before my eyes. Before my eyes, Jant! Where’s San?’
‘Snow’s digging him out.’
‘Is this some punishment?’
‘No. San must want you to take a lead. He knew you were waiting for a competition.’ But Saker was in no shape to hear it. He was shaking with shock.
‘How’m I going to tell her?’
‘Tell …?’
‘Eleonora!’ he cried. ‘He didn’t join her in! He didn’t make her immortal! Just me!’ He punched the wall so hard I winced.
‘Saker,’ I said. ‘King Saker. San never joins anyone to the Circle he hasn’t met and questioned. Come sit with us, at the rescue site.’
‘Oh, god, how will I tell her?’
I tried to help him up, which was impossible. He stared vacantly for quite some time and then stood up abruptly. He fanned out his wings and looked at the melted feathers as if they belonged to somebody else. ‘I lost my array,’ he said. ‘See? Every single one.’
‘Come on,’ I said.
‘I can sense you … and Tern … and Ella … and …’
‘Good. Let’s go.’
‘I left my bow in the boat.’
‘You don’t need your bow.’
‘Left … also … the rifle.’
‘You don’t need the rifle either.’
‘… I lost my array.’
‘We’ve established that. Come on.’ I pulled at his scorched sleeve and he moved in the direction of the pull. I led him down the steps and into the Starglass Quad. I’d rather have led him behind Simurgh but the path was shoulder-height with rubble.
When we were far enough into the square for him to register the whole South Façade he stopped dead and gazed up at the broken Rose Window. He stared for so long I thought he’d lost his tenuous grip on reality altogether. Then he mur
mured, ‘How could I …?’
‘Swallow did it.’
‘I … I … killed San. I’ve broken the Empire. What will happen …? I could’ve shot her, Jant; why didn’t I? I don’t understand … I just loose the string nothing easier why not why didn’t I?’
He rubbed his eyes and cleared patches around them, though the dust stayed in the spider-web lines of his skin. ‘…I showed her the lake and I brought her here, like a, me, I did it, I showed her, what for? Why do that?’ He stepped back and gazed at the stained glass filmed with grime. ‘Some idea, some wrong idea: love. Why? Well, why? I just roll the string off my fingers and she’s dead and didn’t do this …’
‘You did shoot her,’ I said. ‘You shot her, and with her dying breath she lit the fuse.’
‘Ah, don’t furnish me with a lie to live with … Is San … under that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shit.’
‘Come on, soldier.’ I pulled his sleeve again and he followed. He said nothing along the front of Simurgh, though wet smoke was billowing out of Serein’s attic window. He was silent past the barracks, but when we sighted the cranes he shuddered, rattling his quills. ‘Why did you jump from the boat?’
‘I tried to talk Swallow out of lighting the fuse.’
‘So much hate … Your sharp tongue won’t cut …’
‘It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone. She was blown to—’
‘The heat’s her hatred.’
I walked him to the base of the rubble, and he looked up to the winch. The man standing above us clicked a hook onto the bucket’s base. His mate on the grass led his horse forward, tipped the bucket, and with a crash cascaded the debris down the slope. I saw a twinkle of tesserae, and a piece of mosaic the size of a shield slid to rest against Saker’s boot.
It showed the forked tip of a banner, superimposed by a raised silver sword. Saker stared at it. Then he suddenly shook himself, hurtled up the slope, crested the top and cried out. I followed. There was the adjoining piece of the mosaic. Its surface slanted to the sunlight: it showed the rest of the soldier on horseback, carrying the pole of the banner and the hilt of his upraised sword, the horses’ heads of a division of cavalry ranked behind him.
Fair Rebel Page 37
