Dangerous Offspring

by Steph Swainston

  I cruised at the rate of two beats a minute, my legs straight and pressed together in quick accipitrine flight, above the road as it ran across the single, flint-faced span of Pityme Bridge, the oldest on the canal, carrying the Camber Road into the city of Hacilith and the republic of Morenzia.

  The Moren River was silted and sluggish, seemingly a solid bulk. It reflected dully, as if shellac varnished, the lights glimmering on its far bank–the Marenna Dock piers and waterfront way over in Brandoch manor.

  The Moren is tidal as far as Hacilith and its banks are brackish. I saw a dismal grazier wandering on the marsh, looking after emaciated sheep. Then the huge iron lock gates at the end of the Hacilith–Awndyn canal hove into view and the marsh ended in a continuous stretch of wharves.

  This immense canal was Frost’s grand waterway; it took her fifty years to complete and it ensured the rise to prominence of the Wrought armouries. The canal made Awndyn’s fortune too, but it turned Diw harbour into a ghost town, as ships no longer needed to risk rounding Cape Brattice.

  Below me, the rough Galt district docks sprawled along the whole east bank of the Moren, surrounded by refuse tips and the shacks of ‘mudlarks’ who scrape an existence by beachcombing the mudflats. The paddletrams had been decommissioned decades ago, and their waterwheels had been dismantled, but the decaying supports reared like spires out of the river.

  Fat chimneys, squat chimneys of pottery and slate. All the mucky house backs with alleys hung with washing and piled with so much refuse it was turning into soil.

  I made very sharp turns and fell steeply with my wings fanned out and my legs dangling. My descent and angle of vision became more acute: the shop fronts too sheer to see, just lines and lines of roofs running in the same direction. I seemed to be going faster the lower I dropped, because I could measure my speed against every ridge and gutter. Landing is the most hazardous time and I concentrated completely on finding a safe place. It was impossible. I couldn’t glide down any of the roads without hitting a shop front.

  I turned and the exclusive Fiennafor district tilted into view ahead. The tall eighteenth-century town houses were regimented in quarter-circle curved terraces. Aver-Falconet’s bronze-clad palace front glowed dully in the street lights. Puddles glinted among the cobbles on its wide parade.

  Here was the arc closest to the palace, all double sash windows, Neo-Tealean white fronts with plain columns flat against the walls. The gates in their iron railings gave onto the parade, around an immaculate oval lawn with a spreading plane tree. It was The Crescent, and Lightning’s house was number one.

  I descended in front of it. I thrust my wings forward and the feathers spread flat automatically to stop me stalling. Wings’ fingers open, legs down: my boot toes skimmed over the surface of a puddle leaving two long ripples. I stepped down out of the air and began walking without a pause, folding my wings behind me.

  The yellow wheels of a glossy coach rolled past an arm’s length away. I let it pass, crossed the road and walked up the steps to the black painted door.

  The door knocker was so highly polished it looked unreal. I rapped it and looked around as I waited for the major-domo to answer. The sky was heavy with more rain and the evening still.

  The major-domo showed me a room. She laid out a dressing gown of the best Awian silk and took my clothes to be cleaned and pressed. She spread the table with hot coffee and pancakes. When I had eaten I stripped all the covers off the bed and slept on the floor.

  CHAPTER 5

  I began searching for Cyan and thought it best to try the fashionable district first. I walked around Fiennafor and looked in Aver-Falconet’s palace, then Lorimer Street with The Moren Grand Theatre, The Bourse and The Old Almshouse Cafe. I found no sign of Lightning’s daughter anywhere.

  I hired a carriage and drove east to Moren Wells, a very upmarket spa town recently swallowed by the fringe of the city. I searched for Cyan in the Sinter Spa and Calandra Park, but no one there had heard any news.

  The next morning I wondered what to do. I only had one day left and I doubted I could find her. I decided to work my way south through Galt into Old Town. That way I could visit Rayne at the university before leaving. I made sure my wallet was safe, buttoned my coat pockets tight, and submerged myself in Galt, the largest of the five districts.

  The further I walked, the more I realised that I would never find Cyan but, ever hopeful, I walked slowly and looked around carefully, especially at the girls, as I passed the:

  Scuttlebutt Casino

  Cockfighting pits

  Prize-fighters’ boxing booths

  Clutchfut Vintners

  Inglenook Hostel

  The bull ring

  The paper mill

  The brass hammer mill

  The denim mill

  The cartwheel lathes

  The markets:

  The cattle market

  The hides and skins’ market

  The broadcloth Furbelows Market

  The woodwork Treen Market

  The glass and pots Frit Market

  The fish and salt Gabelle Market

  The Meal Market, where shiploads of corn change hands

  The Meat Market, its drains running with blood

  The Mop Market, where job seekers sell their own services

  The Crimp Market for mountains of coal

  The Whispering Market for perfumes and objets d’art–a covered arcade where the stalls are packed so closely together that business is done at a whisper in case anybody hears the deals

  Past the butterstone at the markets’ end

  Past the Cooper’s yard

  Past the Atilliator’s yard

  Past the rope walk

  Past East Sea Customs House

  Past the dry dock, where ships were repaired

  To the wet dock where goods were being unloaded.

  I paused there and looked out over the river, a solid mass of inshore galleys, barges, tugs and flyboats; waiting to load, register, enter the canal or extricate themselves from the chaos. Upriver, a single armed caravel watched the teeming industry with a constable’s eye.

  The incredible number of wagons, drovers’ turkeys with pitch on their feet, grain storehouses full to the roof, the stink of coal tar and the hubbub of the markets reminded me of the queues coming into the battlefront. I didn’t stand any chance of finding Cyan if she was lost in these crowds.

  I bought a kebab on a stick, and a copy of Lammergeier fashion magazine to see what my wife, Tern Wrought, was doing this season. I scanned her column, called ‘Ageless Taste’, but it had nothing about me. I had not seen Tern this happy since last century; she had paid off most of her debts with the booty from Tris and was supervising the rebuilding and redecorating of her manor house. Wrought isn’t called the fashion capital of Awia for nothing; Tern was working hard, from party to party, trailing people without noticing them, except for when they itched.

  It began to drizzle and the damp Hacilith chill sank into everything. I turned away from the river and walked deeper into Galt, heading towards Old Town. The houses here were all back-to-backs with alleys between them; no yards but one outside toilet shared by each alley. Rainwater chuckled along the gutter, washing over some rotting pamphlets from the recent elections.

  The poverty was obvious here; many lived in the streets. Everyone wore hats, endless designs of cloth caps and liripipes. A beggar was shouting, ‘Fists and daffodils! Swans and shells!’ I riffled through my wallet and dropped him a couple of ten-penny notes with the Summerday shell.

  I glanced over to the shield factory’s covered courtyard. Boys from the workhouse were laying out unpainted shields for their glue to dry. I could just see onto the factory floor where craftsmen were making them by hand.

  I stopped and looked around. I knew I was still heading towards Old Town because the university’s tower, with turrets at each of its four corners, projected above the shambling roofs. I was deep in Galt now but I felt weirdly disorienta
ted. I had expected to recognise my old haunt, but it bore no resemblance to the Galt I knew. There was no ground plan left of the streets, no trace whatsoever of the old docks. It’s been two hundred years, Jant, I told myself; what do you expect? It was unfamiliar…no, so nearly familiar, that it was giving me the creeps.

  A cart laden with rubbish went past; the whiskery driver bellowing, ‘Raag and Bo-one! Raag and Bo-one!’

  What was that about? Where were all the wharves? All this used to be open ground–it seemed impossible–how could so many houses have been fitted into it?

  I was sure I should have passed the Bird in the Hand Awian strip joint, but there were just more houses. Either I was completely in the wrong place or the very roads had changed. Well, I thought, the chemist’s shop where I used to work would have been over there. I’ll walk down and see if I’m right.

  When I lived here, the city way of thinking trapped me, narrowing my horizons just as the factories block out the sky. I didn’t even want to leave. I put all my energy into misguided actions and negative reactions until I couldn’t pull myself from the mire. Back then, the roads out of Galt led in two directions. To the left, the streets thinned out and one road wound over Pityme Bridge into the beginning of grassy hills in the distance. I could have taken that road and escaped, but I never did; not until I was forced out. That road may as well have not existed. Every night I went right, down the other alley to the strip joint with a sign promising ‘Great Tits!’ in the window. I convinced myself that I’d had enough of travelling, should stay in the shop and read books, and visit whores. It never even crossed my mind that the Castle would want my talent, until my life in Hacilith was in ruins.

  I had liked working in Dotterel’s chemist shop, it was dim and quiet; the gang’s fear of employment made it a safe refuge. With the shutters down, every customer who entered saw me, a boy slouching on the counter who had already looked them over, a freak perhaps, tall and skinny even for adolescence, but a perfect confidant.

  My time looking for Cyan was nearly up. It’s hopeless, I thought–I’ll go and see Rayne instead, if she hasn’t already left for Slake, and then I’ll head back. At least I’ll be able to tell the others when Rayne should be arriving.

  I reached an open plaza and stopped. This should be Cinder Street. Maybe…that row of shops was along the same line. I looked around. If this was Cinder Street, then the Kentledge pub would have been at the far end…And my chemist’s shop would have been…there. And the Campion Vaudeville! That should be on the next street over! I ran quickly towards it, remembering the peeling playbills fluttering on its boards, the shards of glass that topped the walls around it, the masks and scrolls around the windows in its leaking mansard roof.

  The street ended at an empty plaza with a row of smart boutiques and some sort of trendy wine bar. The Campion Vaudeville had totally gone.

  They’ve redeveloped my street! How dare they? Yes, it had been run down but I had liked it! There was no trace of the second-hand shops full of individual texture I had loved so much. That corner was where I busked with Babbitt–and now it had all been swept away.

  The new shops had no character; time hadn’t given them any unique pattern of wear. They blocked my view of the canal towpath, pressed up tall and narrow against each other as if someone had put a hand at each end of the plaza and squeezed them together. Their colour-washed fronts were rose pink, yellow, pale blue, chalky green and grey. They proudly announced they’d passed inspection, with firemark, ratmark and lousemark tin badges tacked to their walls.

  I walked along the row, half whited-out by drizzle. Streams of water dripped from the sign of the horrendous new bar at the far end and pattered into concentric rings on the paving stones. That bar would be more or less on the place where the Kentledge pub used to be, where our gang leader carved the Wheel scar into my shoulder. The power of the memory made me shudder: I outlast whole streets, and now Cinder Street and everything I remembered was no more.

  This must have been exactly where Dotterel the chemist picked me up; when he made me his apprentice. I stood and stared at the row of shops until I could call up an image of the Campion two hundred years ago. It seemed larger in memory, closer and brighter than the shops it overlaid. Its smoke-stained stone had flaked off here and there showing clean, biscuity spots.

  I heard a whir, a paddletram!–It sounded like it could be…but it wasn’t. Simply flocks of starlings screaming and swirling in to roost.

  A vision of my younger self jumped down from the Campion’s portico and ran past me, soundlessly though his footsteps should have splashed. He vanishes. He reappears again in the alley by the Kentledge; transparent–then solid–a lanky fifteen-year-old in a filthy parka. He ducks his head and wipes his nose on his sleeve.

  Lines of coaches are waiting outside the Campion Vaudeville, and wisps of smog are curling through and around their wheels. Oil lamps are guttering out with gin-blue flames since it is three in the morning and the late show is just ending. The act closes to half-hearted acclaim and people begin to stagger out into the street. Linkboys hang around in a curious cloud, their tapers scribbling lines of smoke into the air above them. The Rhydanne boy hates them, because they understand each other. They know how to buy bustard burgers and tablet fudge. They swagger with the all-encompassing importance of their job.

  From the end of the street there are raised voices, lads shouting to each other about the can-can dancers. Paddletrams groan past in the background, grinding cabbage leaves and hawked-up chewing tobacco into a black sludge between the rails. The boy is faster than sight; he pauses to draw breath and ducks behind the frame of a waiting coach. The nearest human moves on and the boy relaxes.

  He moves in quick bursts, waiting behind lamp post and coach wheel, doorway and alley. He crooks his elbow and tears the Insect wing windows of all the coaches along the line.

  ‘I saw you!’ calls a voice from somewhere in the fog. Quick as a rat the boy leaps onto the top of the carriage, which hardly rocks at all on its flat springs. He crouches, nose streaming, piercing eyes in a grimy face.

  An old man emerges from the porch of the Campion. His head is bowed and his face is in shadow. This is a trick the boy very much admires. The man looks up; his face is padded, deeply wrinkled and his nose veined cranberry red. Wisps of hair too white for Galt adhere to his bald head. He is wearing a long, grey coat and carrying a cane with a silver handle, which he points at the boy. The boy simply crouches further on thin haunches and spreads his wings.

  The man knows that if he takes a step or even stares too hard, the boy will run. Very querulously he says, ‘Who are you?’ but he says it in Scree.

  ‘You speak Scree? How? At last! What is this place? Er…I haven’t spoken to anyone since last melt season. I’m ill all the time. I’ve never been this ill before. I have to hunt for myself! And I c-can’t make any one understand! No one–’

  ‘Sh! Slower, boy; don’t gabble. You’re alone?’

  ‘You’re observant!’

  ‘Why did you break the windows?’

  The boy shrugged. What else could he do to show his anger or make his presence felt? He sat cross-legged on the coach roof, reached a hand down through the torn window and brought out an apple. He began to examine it with the delicacy of mime.

  ‘They don’t belong to you, Dara.’

  ‘I’m a Shira. That could be the reason why I am finding it so entertaining to break them.’

  ‘You’re quick,’ said the old man, smiling.

  ‘I’m the quickest,’ said the boy.

  The man took a tight grip on his cane and tapped the cobbles for a while in thought. The boy, seeing this, threw down his apple which rolled under the folds of the man’s long coat. Enthralled, the boy watched it, head on one side. His instincts were to bolt, but this man was the first person he had spoken to in a year. Indecision rooted him to the spot. He swore in Scree, but all those insults about goats didn’t seem too relevant in Hacilith.

 
; The man gave a rustle of coughing laughter. ‘Well, I need an assistant, but I never thought I would have to tame one…I will turn now and walk away,’ he continued slowly. ‘You can follow me if you want. No one will hurt you. No one will force you, but it will be best for you if you come.’

  The man walked on and did not look back, and gradually disappeared into the smog. He did not seem to be a threat; indeed, he could be a saviour. The boy watched from his precarious perch, then fluttered down and sauntered after him, still prepared to run.

  Dotterel and the boy walked through the wall of the bar and disappeared. I sighed. Any Rhydanne would have been naïve in the city, but I had been naïve even by Rhydanne standards. I was quite the little foreigner; it’s a wonder I survived at all.

  I need a drink after seeing that, and besides, the rain was running down my neck. I investigated the bar, plated with brushed and burnished bronze along its whole front. Smooth almost featureless metal statues with folded arms and stylised wings like blades stood with heavy elegance on either side of its doorway. It was done up to look like Aver-Falconet’s square palace, in the new Decorative Art. Its sign said: The Jacamar Club. An Awian pub, then, the sort popular with the few tourists who came out this way from Fiennafor. As if to prove my thought, some frightful shrieking laughter resounded from inside. I have never understood why travellers and expats feel the need to go to a pub mocked up with all the features of a bar of their homeland to drink wine at ten times the price. There were any number of Morenzian inns nearby where they could drink beer, eat boar pie and hear the citizens speaking their own language.

  I went inside, flapping my half-closed wings to dry them and flicking drops everywhere. A couple of students at a nearby table yelled, but when they looked up and saw me, they shut up abruptly.