The Modern World

by Steph Swainston

  ‘You stupid beldam!’ he howled, rubbing his knees. Although he was a vain Awian, he had adopted Morenzian clothes against the cold and damp – well, the style we wore in the year six twenty. He had a knee-length robe with the cape of his hood around his neck. His hood’s pointed tippet end hung down his back. He’d rucked the robe up in his belt, from which a silk purse dangled, the only ornamentation in his drab garb. The tops of his woollen hose were tied somewhere up under the robe with strings, his ankle boots were soft leather, and now they were soaking.

  Lightning was dazzling in comparison, the first time I saw him. He had a white tunic with a long toga wound around his waist and over one shoulder, the one pulled back to keep his bowstring drawn and – well, I am getting ahead of myself.

  I offered the hearty boy a hand to pull him up but he ignored it. ‘Look at my robe!’ he said petulantly. ‘It’s ruined! This cost more than you’ll ever see. Now I shall be late for the gaming table!’ He squeezed water out of his curly hair. ‘You seem to be amused. It’s not bloody funny. I shall report you to the Housekeeper.’

  I began to answer but he stopped me. ‘I do not speak to servants. Obviously you don’t know who I am, but –’

  ‘You’re from Awia.’

  ‘I am the son of the Governor of Foin – third in line anyway. So you may –’

  ‘Everyone in your country seems to give themselves a title, so I’ve read.’ I righted my bucket and sloshed my mop about. The water was soaking through my shift and making my legs itch.

  He retrieved his dice without answering. ‘Something you read … Hm? … Servant? You can read?’

  ‘Yes. Come with me and I’ll dry your clothes. I’ll make up some liniment for your knees as well. A bruised knee can swell badly since the body tries to cushion damaged joints.’

  ‘You sound more like a prelector than a servitor,’ he said carelessly. ‘Would that you could write my essays as well.’

  ‘Oh, but I can.’

  That night, I did not sleep. I had explained all to Heron and my thoughts were in turmoil. I knew what to do, what I must do, and wondered if I dared. I heard the students clatter to the refectory. I opened the shutters and found it was already morning.

  I began, behind the scenes, to do Master Heron Foin’s homework. At last I could air all my observations, my theories! I wrote the methodologies of his experiments, delineated hypotheses in novel articles. Heron became suddenly famous, and he knew how to use it; he was a consummate self-publicist. He set himself up as the foremost student, the pride of the college. He brought me more books, though he could never fathom why I wanted to learn.

  Far from suspecting the fraud, the Chancellor awarded him the acclaimed prizes in anatomy, physiology and penmanship. He was even recommended to succeed Professor Pratincole. Heron’s conceit grew deeper. He loathed and resented the fact he was simply an actor, a mouthpiece for my work, while all and sundry told him he was a genius. They expressed surprise that he could pay so little attention to lectures, spend so much time on the playing fields and still make groundbreaking discoveries. He began to believe that he was doing the work, not me. He would throw me a half-remembered essay question. ‘And it has to be done tonight! If you don’t, I’ll tell the Housekeeper how often you hid in that cupboard. Just bear in mind what you owe me, Ella. You’re my servant, I raised you from “below stairs”, and you’ll have to go back there, anyway, because the damn freshmen are hinting at all kinds of relationships between us.’

  Thank god I was grown too old for their sexual advances.

  Then on the first of July the Emperor came to Hacilith. Governor Donacobius accompanied him into the town square. Everyone poured out and crowded around their caparisoned horses. I left my washing soaking in lye, dropped the shirt I was squeezing around a wringing post, and dashed to the window to listen. The Emperor himself proclaimed the Games. He announced that every man and woman regardless of age or background was welcome to compete in organised tournaments. San would share his immortality with the winners providing they were prepared to act as leaders in the war.

  Many students left to try their skill at the Games, but as far as I could tell, they all came back in the following weeks, and very chastened. Life at the guild went on as normal.

  Until, that is, Heron disappeared. On my morning visit I found his rooms vacated and I panicked. His landlord told me he’d gone to the front. Heron had been in communication with the Messenger and had suggested that the Circle needed a doctor. San agreed and asked him to come to Rachiswater to be tested by treating the casualties of the ongoing massacre. Everything I had worked for vanished instantaneously – what good was a rich student’s famulus without the student? Devastated, I returned to darning socks.

  Less than a month later a letter arrived from the front, from my ‘grandson’. Its ink had run where Heron’s tears had hit the page. He begged me to come and help him. He was completely out of his depth with the number of men slashed and disembowelled. We had never seen an Insect up close and the injuries they caused horrified him. He had never dirtied his hands in the operating theatre and hadn’t the first idea how to organise a hospital. The assistants were afraid, he had lost his authority over them, and the Messenger was too busy to listen to his excuses.

  Heron had included enough money in the scroll for me to bribe a fyrd captain to ride pillion on his cart when the next draft left town. So I came to the grimy field hospitals of Rachiswater and I soon had them under control. I know when a floor hasn’t been cleaned properly and I was not above showing the assistants how to do it. I improved or made comfortable the majority of the patients, organised supply chains of medicine from the capital, and upbraided Heron as if I really was his grandmother.

  San noticed the progress and visited the infirmary. Heron greeted him and showed him in, bowing low and explaining the enhancements he had made, whilst blocking San’s view of me. The Emperor looked past him and saw me bloodied up to the elbows, trying to stabilise the condition of a maimed soldier. He came to question me and quickly understood that the improvements had coincided with my arrival so, as I worked, he joined me to the Circle and made me one of the immortals. It was my dream, what I was made for! At last I was in the right place!

  That night, I was shown to a pavilion that would temporarily serve as my scriptorium. I sat down to write. Heron burst in, stinking of brandy.

  He disentangled himself from the tent ropes and slurred, ‘I know the rules, you old bag. I’ve always learned the rules so I can work the system.’

  I said, ‘Yes, and that’s all you do.’

  He sneered. ‘San wants the best specialists. I suggested the Circle have a Doctor, and you walked in. That’s not fair. Well, I’m the next best doctor, so if you were to die I’d take your place.’ He drew his dagger and dived at me. I tried to dodge but his fist on the hilt caught my eye such a crack that I fell off the stool, onto my back on the grass.

  In a trice he was on me. He raised the dagger above my throat. I had a vivid image of myself as a cadaver on the dissecting table. Female, aged seventy-eight, note cause of death; a single deep puncture. Carotid cut, thyroid and oesophagus pierced, sixth cervical vertebra shattered, spinal cord severed. I’d make a fine lesson! I braced myself to feel my blood spray.

  The point arced down. A shout made Heron flinch. His dagger deflected and tore through my hood.

  ‘Fuck!’ he said, and glanced behind him. Then he turned as pale as if he’d been bleached.

  The Castle’s Archer was standing at the entrance, bow flexed and an arrow unerringly trained on Heron. He said, ‘I only have to let go. And believe me, nothing would give me greater pleasure.’

  Heron collapsed into a kneeling position.

  Seeing his face, the Archer looked surprised, but only for a second. ‘Heron Foin?’

  ‘I’m sorry, my lord prince, I’m sorry.’ To my astonishment Heron began to grovel at the Archer’s feet. He changed to High Awian and wept apologies into the grass.


  The Archer lowered his bow. ‘I know of you, Heron Foin. I know your father. Go home to the backwater little manorship you crawled from. If you harm our genius surgeon or even show your face here again, my brothers and I will take your hall apart until it is nothing but a field with stones in. Do I make myself clear?’

  ‘Yes! Yes!’

  ‘Get yourself out of my tent.’

  Heron kissed the ground, jumped up and sped out. I never saw him again. I unpinned myself from the grass and dabbed my black eye with a handkerchief. I had never before heard a voice with such natural authority; it made even the professors sound strained. The Archer helped me to my feet, then bowed low and kissed my hand. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I would be honoured if you would call me Saker. What is your name?’

  *

  So, Cyan, you see how much I owe your father. Imagine how overwhelming life must have been for him in the early days of the Circle. Before the Games, the First Circle were no more than boastful mortal warriors leading a mass of untrained fyrd with swords and spears. The First Circle had lasted for two hundred and five years since San first drew them from three countries, but they gradually gave ground to the Insects all that time and left northern Awia to the Paperlands.

  There was no effective way of fighting Insects then. The nobility and peasant levies simply fed the hordes and although the First Circle fought, manor after manor fell. We thought we were doomed. Your tutor may have taught you this, but don’t forget it really happened, and Lightning was there. A million corpses is not some story you tell children at bedtime!

  The blizzard winter of six nineteen put an end to the First Circle. Those who weren’t eaten died of starvation, disease and exposure in snow holes by the Rachis river. Deep drifts covered the ruins of Murrelet.

  San realised that the First Circle’s brave but stupid warriors weren’t enough. He needed the best to train fyrds. He needed an infrastructure to keep supplies flowing – cooks and doctors; and to keep knowledge from being lost – agriculturalists and armourers. He needed an administration to take decisions on his behalf on many battlefields simultaneously. In short, he needed people who could think in the long term, as he did.

  When San revealed he could make other people immortal, everyone suddenly saw him in a new light. Before, he had relied on the goodwill of the governors to raise and lead fyrds; now everyone clamoured to join the Circle.

  San also knew that the celebrations and ceremony of the Games would raise our hopes. He let us see our own capabilities. Our fighting spirit soared.

  San kept his personal symbol, the Imperial Sunburst, and extrapolated it to invent all our Eszai names. With the First Circle gone, the Castle’s Breckan and Simurgh Wings stood empty, waiting for the victors of the Games. It was an exhilarating time. It threw us together, people from every stratum of society across the world and some with naught but the clothes they stood up in. I heard that Lightning arrived with a retinue of eight carriages of belongings and attendants, to discover that the rooms he was allocated by ballot were tiny compared with those he was used to. He divided his treasures among the new Eszai and filled all their rooms.

  In the seventh century I discovered that sexism was not a glass ceiling but is present at all levels, in all classes. It was a glass web, and I threaded my way through it, cut by the strands I broke. San was the first to see my merit and your father was the first man truly to see me as an equal.

  Since he has confided in me on many occasions, I suppose I am even more indebted to him for his friendship. It is impossible for you to understand a friendship of fourteen hundred years. You discover things about a person that you might not like, but it makes their virtues all the more admirable. I have the measure of Lightning and he has the measure of me.

  I hope I have given you food for thought.

  Send word with Comet if you need anything.

  Love, Ella Rayne

  That is food for thought. I folded the letter and placed it on the table. Cyan was putting the finishing touches to hers. ‘Will you deliver this?’ she asked. ‘I don’t have any sealing wax. Actually I don’t have bloody anything here.’

  ‘It’s all right, just fold it. I can take it to Rayne unsealed.’ I slipped her letter into my coat pocket and said, ‘But she might be too busy to reply. I haven’t seen anything like the crowds down there in my whole life before.’

  ‘Will you be able to come back at least?’

  ‘I’ll try to.’

  ‘You’re the only person who’s noticed me.’

  I patted her shoulder but she shrugged away. She smelt of soap and birch bark chewing gum, reminding me how young she was for her years. Other seventeen-year-olds don’t make idiots of themselves by Challenging Lightning.

  I went to the window and opened the shutters. In the still night I could hear the clucking of the hens kept by the guards in their room downstairs. Very bass in the distance, the bass toll of the town’s gatehouse bell rolled out over the moorland, thinning as it filled the expanse.

  ‘Midnight. I have to go.’

  Cyan tried again, ‘This is a prison.’

  ‘Honestly, it’s for your own good. You should thank Lightning.’

  ‘I’ll kill him!’

  ‘Shame. Thought cage birds sang more sweetly than that.’

  ‘Well, if you won’t free me, then bugger off!’

  ‘I’ll send you up some bread and water ha ha.’

  I climbed onto the plank, ran along it and launched myself off. I flapped to the town with broad, uneven strokes, and landed on the hall’s roof. I sat down on the ridge, wings drooping, and shook my hair down my back.

  Below me the square was bustling with people. Around fifty of Rayne’s orderlies with their white sashes were pulling tables out of the tavern and constructing beds. Fyrd squads were sitting on the tables, assembling arrows from piles of shafts and glittering points. The hall was packed with governors, wardens and captains as Lightning briefed them on the advance.

  All the oil lamps and spotlights burned fiercely. The stars were dim in comparison, while the thick clouds at the edge of the sky seemed banked up above the town walls, hemming us in.

  I unfolded Cyan’s letter and read it.

  Peel Tower Ten

  Thursday

  Dear Rayne,

  Please will you help me get out of here? It’s not fair that i’m locked up – it’s just not fair. Daddy is cold & distant – like he always has been – and Jant says Daddy is like that most of the time. Will you ask him for me?

  Apart from you and Jant everybody is ignoring me. I try to be independent, and i’m punished. Typical. Even Jant says i made a fool of myself. But i have put it behind me & i’m not thinking of it any more.

  I don’t want to be stranded in here during the battle – i’m not afraid of what may happen. I want to see the advance – i can come to help you at the infirmary. I’m sick of trying to be a good girl, i just want to be free – please, if you’re really my friend, send a note to the guards and cancel Daddy’s orders. Thank you for writing – please write again.

  Yours,

  Cyan xxx (Lady Governor Cyan Peregrine)

  Slake Cross Hospital

  18th May

  2.30 a.m.

  Dear Cyan,

  I’m sorry but neither Jant nor myself can let you out of the peel tower, given what is happening down here at the moment. But please do not despair, my dear. Bear out your imprisonment patiently and in time the awful things that are happening will bring you wisdom.

  You are intelligent but you are not yet wise. Do not blind yourself with opinions drawn from your own intelligence, because even the cleverest people can be wrong if they do not examine solid facts.

  Wisdom never comes from staying at home and avoiding unhappiness. In order to become wise you must go out into the world and be tossed about in its storms, stripped bare by terrible experiences and confused by good ones. After a long time you learn to see and control the effect those circumstances have on yourself. Then
it will never matter one bit where you find yourself in the world, because you will be able to cope with it. The top of a peel tower or a Hacilith bar will be all the same to you if you are comfortably at home with yourself.

  Now you are a little uncomfortable you are crying out for help. But you are a Challenger! You can’t be Eszai material at all if you are disturbed by a little inconvenience. Every Challenger is prepared to forgo pleasure and comfort in the pursuit of success. You are now a Challenger, so what are you complaining about? Hadn’t you better prepare yourself for the competition instead? In a sense it’s already underway, your father made the first move and now you are in check.

  I thought you wanted to rebel, to put distance between yourself and Lightning. Then why on earth have you Challenged him as if you are yet another good archer? Everyone expects Lightning’s daughter to have a modicum of archery. I thought you were trying to re-create yourself. You must know that if you follow the career of a great man like your father, you will have to accomplish twice as much to shine. You won’t be able to shine in your own right if you’re known as another archer, because everybody knows Lightning is the best archer.

  I doubt you have even thought about it – but of course, you don’t really want to compete with Lightning, you just want to escape from his shadow. Consider this – every Eszai and Challenger must submit to a much greater authority: that of the Emperor. None of us can escape San: not even Lightning. You rebel against your father and come under the power of a more authoritative man. Oh, Cyan, when you become wise you’ll realise that freedom is a teenager’s aspiration and illusion, and the world actually consists of varying degrees of compromise.