Above the Snowline

by Steph Swainston

  ‘You’re taking the piss. He’s taking the piss, Lightning, isn’t he?’

  I said, ‘Safer to ignore him when he spouts nonsense.’

  ‘Damn you, Jant. I believed you then! I bloody believed you - up until the seals.’

  ‘Mountain seals,’ he averred, in hurt tones, and then burst out laughing. ‘Should have seen your face. It would never work, anyway. They’d end up in the valley. Then they’d have to wait for winter, for enough snow to build up and leave them at the top of the mountain again.’

  ‘Damn you, I’ll pay you back one day.’

  ‘You’d have to get up so early in the morning it would be the middle of the night.’

  Tornado smiled. ‘Should have realised when you said the mountains grew.’

  ‘The mountains do grow,’ Jant insisted. ‘That one’s true. It causes the earthquakes, and I’ve lived through one myself. It causes volcanoes too, like Mhadaidh, which means ‘The Fox’, you see, because its slopes are red with sulphur and all kinds of noxious chemicals. Some mountains, like Bhachnadich, have holes that actually smoke.’

  ‘Smoking mountains,’ said Tornado. ‘Nice.’

  ‘More nonsense,’ I agreed.

  ‘Saker,’ Jant said to me. ‘Don’t you want to come and see?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘Have you ever seen Darkling?’

  I sighed. ‘I have occasionally hunted in Eyrie.’

  ‘That’s the foothills!’

  ‘I plan to spend the New Year in Foin; I have no wish to travel to Carniss.’

  Comet and Tornado glanced at each other. Neither was inclined to broach the topic, but I know they were thinking that … well, it has been seventy years since Savory, and perhaps I should leave her in the past and seek more society than the quiet backwaters of Foin, but where I spend New Year is my choice. It is the best place to salve the spells of wistfulness I still suffer from time to time.

  ‘You are incurious,’ Jant said. ‘How long have you been alive without visiting Darkling?’

  ‘Don’t criticise me.’

  ‘You’ve no sense of adventure. I thought that was the advantage of being immortal. You can go everywhere, see everything! The Emperor seems to have done so, before he ended up in the Throne Room. Take a leaf from his book! What have you been doing all these years?’

  Shooting Insects and lasting longer than you will, I thought, but he plunged on, ‘You should jump at the chance to see something new. What’s your problem?’

  I shrugged, piqued. Doesn’t every man fall short of his own self-image? ‘It seems that when you were learning Awian and I let you run riot in my manor, you failed to absorb a point of etiquette. One should—’

  ‘Never been to Darkling. Never been to Ressond. Never been to Addald Island or Cape Brattice.’

  ‘I sailed around Cape Brattice in the year twelve hundred, before it became easy.’

  ‘Never even been to Cathee before Savory dragged you there.’

  ‘Savory didn’t drag me anywhere,’ I snapped. His wits are quicker than mine, but I know my manor is superior to any of those places. It is layered as thickly with memories as a canvas reworked with many successive paintings. I wanted to sequester myself in Foin, in the midst of them, as if in a gallery, and peruse them to my heart’s content.

  ‘Savory was more adventurous than he is,’ Jant said to Tornado, who good-humouredly let the matter drop. He knows me well and recognises, far better than Jant does, when to stop aggravating me.

  We passed between the Breckan and Simurgh Wings, following the processional route from the quadrangle. Only a few leaves remained on the poplars bordering the avenue down to the Yett Gate. We walked past the shaded arcade on the ground floor of Breckan. Dellin sprinted to the wall, seized the smooth stone in both hands and pulled herself up. She climbed with such gusto her rucksack with her spear attached bounced on her back. I couldn’t see any handholds; she just spidered up. She reached the roof, flexed her arms and pulled her body over the balustrade. A second later she stood tall on its parapet, backgrounded by the old white buttresses of the Throne Room that soar high behind Breckan. She ran easily along the balustrade until she came to Breckan’s neoclassical pediment, then ran up the side of it and stood on its peak.

  Tornado, staring at her, rubbed his neck. ‘What skill! Wish I was that agile.’

  ‘Nothing I couldn’t do,’ said Jant.

  ‘I’d like to put her against Insects in the amphitheatre.’

  ‘Her spear is crude. No balance.’

  ‘I wonder what heft it has,’ I said.

  Tornado glanced at me. ‘Rhydanne in the amphitheatre, eh, Saker? We’d have the biggest paying crowd of all time. Not least cause she has a body like a lynx!’

  Jant shrugged. ‘If they had more human minds they wouldn’t need such lynx-like bodies.’

  ‘It’s a good thing they don’t,’ Tornado said. ‘If they had human minds and lynx-like bodies, then most of the places in the Circle would be filled by Rhydanne, mark my words.’

  I said, ‘It is a pity they can’t join the fight against Insects. She’d make an excellent scout.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ said Jant sarcastically. ‘She’d throw rocks at the Insects for - oh, twenty minutes - before getting bored and wandering off.’

  I disagreed. Dellin’s determination was obvious to me, if not to him. I said, ‘I bet I could teach her to use a bow.’

  ‘She’d just slope away, and you’d achieve no more than to damage the fyrd’s morale. You might as well herd pumas.’

  ‘But you’re not like that,’ said Tornado. ‘After all, Jant Shira is a Rhydanne name. If you don’t wander off, why should she?’

  ‘Because I’m half Awian!’

  Dellin reached the end of Breckan’s roof and crouched on the balustrade. Although she was above a drop of fifteen metres she looked as steady as on the ground. She drew back and disappeared from sight.

  ‘Fuck it,’ said Jant. ‘I’ve lost her already.’

  She reappeared, sprinting, and jumped into the sky. She seemed to hang there, between the two buildings, falling with one leg and arm stretched out. She landed on the lower roof of Carillon, dropped to her knees, and was up and running again along the tiles. That image is still fixed in my mind: Dellin sailing in the air without wings, her hair flying behind her, in the gap between the two magnificent buildings, against the dazzling sun.

  Tornado gave a low whistle. ‘Wow. You can almost believe they turn into lynxes on their birthdays.’

  ‘Don’t tempt her.’

  Dellin reached the end of the roof, knocking off a few tiles, and shimmied easily down a drainpipe. Without glancing at us she hurtled off joyfully, following her nose towards the kitchens. She was full of excitement from having spoken to San. The release of tension drove her to climb every building as far as the Dining Hall, where Jant reined her in.

  Jant ordered food to be delivered to his room. The hall was buzzing with gossip, so I did not follow Tornado inside. I said farewell to Jant and made him promise to tell me all when he came back in the New Year. I kissed Shira Dellin’s bony hand, which she found most peculiar, and returned to my own apartments.

  JANT

  Dellin ran ahead up the spiral staircase, taking absolutely no notice of me. She crammed herself into the recesses funnelling down to each slit window and tried to peer out of the cracks in their narrow shutters. She pulled herself up by the thick rope handrail. At length I opened my door and released her into my room.

  She darted about investigating everything rapidly but thoroughly - the curtains, the furniture, the hearth and the desk. She started pulling all the letters from the pigeonholes.

  ‘Hey!’ I said, ‘Stop that!’ I stood in front and guarded them - and off she dashed again.

  She looked into the beaten-bronze bowl on its wrought-iron wash stand, then caught sight of herself in the mirror above it and a startled expression crossed her face. She tried a sly smile, then ripped the mirror f
rom the wall and gazed down into it, studying her reflection. That didn’t last long; she tossed the mirror on the divan and pulled dictionaries of various languages out of the bookcase, flicking through them while sniffing the paper then letting them drop.

  Butterfly, my Insect trophy, dominated the room on one side of the window; a dated but carefully maintained suit of scale armour stood to attention on the other. She approached the huge dead Insect cautiously - I doubt she had seen one before - seemed to realise it was just animal remains and reached out to knock on its hollow thorax. She leant from side to side observing it, her angular face a centimetre away from its globular eyes, the tip of her nose almost touching the shell, its reedy antennae and razor jaws. Beneath the mandibles are jaws like paired trapdoors, then under them many layers of maxillae. I have a recurring nightmare of being caught by an Insect and held down while the maxillae like circular saws rasp away at my flesh, scraping it down to the bone while I’m still alive.

  Dellin knew nothing of the horror of Insects. She left Butterfly and disappeared behind the blue curtain. I sighed and walked it back along its rail, just in time to see her looking under my four-poster bed. She pushed head and shoulders underneath then pulled back into a crouch and emerged, sleeves and hood white with dust and smelling of camphor.

  ‘Nothing under the bed, is there?’ I said. ‘No one in it, either, thanks to you.’

  She examined its posts entwined with variegated ivy and topped with bunches of peacock plumes, the drapes and canopy of bottle-green damask. A series of pennants hung along the top frame, embroidered with cockerels and daisies, with red tassels on each point, actually the bunting from a jousting tent. Dellin was still trying to figure out what the bed was for - she pulled off the bolsters and green sheets edged with gold silk.

  I fended her off and replaced them, but a chinking sound made me look round. She had taken one of my wine bottles from the mantelpiece and, holding it between her feet on the floor, was stabbing at the cork with her spear.

  ‘Stop it! For god’s sake! Sit down. Here …’ I moved my chair away from the desk but she ignored it. She made camp under the desk itself. She took off her snow-leopard-skin parka, spread it on the floor with the soft fur lining turned uppermost, and sat down cross-legged on it, her long legs folded like a grasshopper’s.

  ‘Where is your wife?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t have a wife.’

  ‘So old and not married?’

  ‘Dellin, I wish you had the slightest idea how tiring it is trying to speak in your terms. I’m a Shira. My mother died while giving birth to me; my father was Awian, so how could they arrange a match for me?’

  ‘And you haven’t found your own partner? Are you slow or something?’

  ‘No, I’m not bloody slow! I’m the fastest man in the world!’ She opened her pack and brought out a waterskin, unplugged it and drank it dry, then squeezed it flat and shook it mournfully.

  I caught a whiff. ‘Gin, Dellin? That’s not Rhydanne poteen. Have you been through Eske?’

  ‘It’s good.’

  ‘Have you been stealing drink all the way across the flatlands?’

  ‘All the flatlands! They have a lot of alcohol. They can spare some.’

  I envisaged a trail of broken-into vintners and pubs from Carniss to the demesne. And - oh, god - how had she been eating? Catching livestock? Chasing down sheep and cattle and slaughtering them in the fields? ‘I bet you found animals on the plains easy to spear?’

  ‘Very easy. They are fat and slow.’

  ‘That’s because they’re farm animals! I’m surprised the owners didn’t set their dogs on you.’

  ‘Some did. The dogs were not as tasty.’

  I sighed, thinking of newspaper headlines proclaiming packs of wild women ransacking the plains. Dellin turned to look speculatively at the bottles on the mantelpiece. I had been trying to cultivate a knowledge of wine, as the connoisseurship of certain older Eszai impressed me, but Dellin had limbered up on gin and was dying to attack the vintages I had carefully purloined from the Castle’s cellars.

  ‘I can’t believe you drank a whole waterskin of gin.’

  ‘Two waterskins, Jant. This is the second.’

  ‘The second? When did you drink the first?’

  ‘Before talking to the silver man.’

  ‘Mmm. I don’t blame you.’

  ‘I am not drunk,’ she said suspiciously, just as there was a knock on the door.

  She started and grabbed her spear, but I called ‘Enter!’ and the door creaked wide. Three servants nudged their way in, carrying platters piled high with bread and meat, fruit and salad, and another boy behind them staggering under the weight of a majolica jug of wine.

  ‘Ah, excellent. Put them down there …’ I indicated the middle of the floor. ‘Just there. And you can take the old plates back. Don’t mind the Rhydanne. That was an excellent cake, by the way. And those glasses. Wonderful. Thank you. Much obliged. Bye!’

  I passed her the jug. She lifted it with both hands and started guzzling wine. She stuck her talon into an apple, inspected it impaled on her fingernail and threw it away. Then she turned to the meat - with Tornado’s appetite and the manners of a wolf. She snatched a slice of fillet steak and it vanished. Two more, one in each hand, and both disappeared. She chewed with her mouth full to bursting and all the time pulled the platters closer to her knees.

  She snatched a roast chicken, done the Awian way with garlic and capers, and deftly twisted it apart. She dug out the buttery-juicy meat with her fingernails and fed her maw with both hands. It turned my stomach and, worse, it brought back memories I would rather not explore.

  ‘Steady, steady!’

  ‘I’m hungry!’

  ‘Take your time. No one will steal it. We have food and drink enough.’

  The meat went into her mouth as a child would eat sweets. She chomped on a leg, gristle, skin and sinew, all together, then placed the clean bones down neatly as if she had a use for them too. For all her gobbling she didn’t waste a single crumb or drop of wine; she thought it much too valuable.

  She finished the chicken, then batted the tray aside and pulled another, of ham arranged in a spiral, towards her. I tried to slow her but she glared, her eyes sparking and her hair wild. I could almost see her putting on weight.

  ‘You must be ravenous?’ I asked, amused.

  ‘I haven’t eaten since last night. When I saw the spire I started running.’

  ‘Tell you what, I’ll eat the salad.’

  She paused in the act of screwing ham rind into a little ball so she could fit it into her already full mouth. ‘Who were those men in pale blue?’

  ‘Only servants.’

  ‘They must be excellent hunters,’ she said, in a tone indicating that perhaps she should be talking to them rather than me.

  ‘No, we Eszai do the hunting. I am a hunter; they just cook the food.’

  ‘How do you stop them stealing it, then?’

  ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but there’s enough to spare.’

  ‘Then you must have a lot of time on your hands.’ She nodded towards my silk shirt. ‘No wonder you have such good clothes.’

  ‘I don’t make my own clothes either.’

  ‘Ha! I knew there was something wrong with you.’

  ‘Dellin! For god’s sake! Try to understand. I’m not ill, or disabled, or childish, or slow. I’m rich! Well, I’m far from being rich, but the Castle is. Extremely wealthy, and I live here because I’m the Emperor’s Messenger, called Comet, the fastest man in the world.’

  I explained my position, which took a very long time because Scree doesn’t have the words. I told her that the Emperor makes the Circle’s warriors immortal, and maintains our immortality through the Circle, for each who is the best in the world at his speciality. I said there were fifty of us, but each could be replaced if someone beats them in a fair and open competition. Tornado was the strongest man in the world and Lightning the best archer,
and they prove it every time they are Challenged.

  It was even more difficult to relate my childhood in Darkling, because she thought being a goatherd was lowly, and I kept shrinking from the images that came to mind of that terrible time. To admit my past was to recognise memories that were more like unfocused patches of pain than clear recollections. I skirted round them with care.

  ‘So you see,’ I finished. ‘The Castle buys more meat every day than in all the cliff-fall hunts you’ve ever seen put together.’

  ‘The silver man is powerful.’ She smiled.

  ‘He stops time from ageing us. What greater power can there be? For example, I am ninety-five - or thereabouts - because I don’t know the exact year I was born.’

  She just gave me an incredulous look: the number was too large. It was several Rhydanne lifetimes and completely at odds with my appearance.

  ‘Ninety-five melt seasons, ninety-five freeze seasons.’

  Her gaze wandered over me steadily, noting the lack of bangles and beads and, worse still, the clothes of a soft flatlander and the scent of aftershave redolent of male Awians. She turned her attention pointedly back to a tray of succulent pink venison. ‘So many flavours,’ she murmured, scooped the meat up and tipped it into her rucksack.

  ‘You don’t have to do that!’

  In went the rest of the venison and a whole bowl of granary rolls. She was dropping them into a sort of leather pouch in the main sack.

  ‘Stop! It’s disgusting!’

  She picked up a tray of songbirds wrapped in vine leaves and stowed a handful carefully behind the cushion on my divan. I tried to take the platter, but she wouldn’t let me.

  ‘You don’t have to cache it! We can order more any time!’

  ‘You can’t have my food! Go find your own food!’ She escaped with the platter and jumped the double step to my bedroom. She piled stuffed quails on the sill behind the shutter, checked they were hidden from view, and cached all the chicken bones under the bed. Then, satisfied her food was safe, she wiped her hands on the curtain, seated herself under my desk and washed down her meal with mouthful after mouthful of wine. She may have been calm but I was infuriated, more because she was paying no attention to me than because of the foul mess. I have learnt, from attending governors and the king, how much appearances matter. Now to impress Dellin, did I have to act like a savage as well as reverting to her lingo?