by Andy Graham
Contents
I - A Coin
II - Trust Me
III - Surprise
IV - Better
V - Tea
VI - Sun-Fans
VII - Return to Tear
VIII - Nine Months Ago
IX - A Worm
X - Purple Paint
XI - Pig-Headed
XII - Change
XIII - Behind the Gates
XIV - The Unsung
XV - A Prayer's Breath
XVI - Paper Galleries
XVII - Perspective (Eight Billion)
XVIII - Bucket Towns
XIX - Red Lipstick
XX - Rumours and Dreams
XXI - No Ifs, Ands, or Buts
XXII - The First GTC
XXIII - A Trick
XXIV - Dragons
XXV - Roundabout
XXVI - Donarth
XXVII - Rigour Mortis
XXVIII - Hydras
XXIX - A Handshake
XXX - Three Words
XXXI - A War Hero
XXXII - Wedding Burns
XXXIII - The Gunpowder Tower
Epilogue
Reviews
Free Story & Mailing List
Get Book Two
Franklin - a brother in search of himself
Franklin - The Prologue
Franklin - I - Twenty-Eight Years Later
A note on series order
Contact
Acknowledgements
The cast of Aijlan
Copyright and disclaimer
I - A Coin
In the old fairy tale the traveller carried his fire in his leather rucksack. The fire was always lit, always warm. Wherever the man stopped for the night, he would undo the buckles, pull out the fire, unfold it, and lay it on the ground. He’d reverse the process the next morning and continue his journey, a crimson glint seeping through the stitching on his bag. Aerfen’s father had told her the tale, and that’s what she saw now.
One by one, the man in front of her picked up the flickers of red, yellow, and green that skittered light off his face. He kissed each spark, whispered something to it, and packed the balls of fire down into the bag. His fingers patted them into the grey powder, like the young saplings he planted in the Weeping Wood. Despite the scars, the wrinkles, and the discoloured skin, his fingers moved with the precision of a watchmaker.
Aerfen had been brought up by those hands; they’d fed her, taught her to tie her laces, to write. They’d comforted and disciplined her. They’d even taught her how to clean herself. Her father loved her. Where did she get off with her impatience over his inability to grasp all the wireless technology sweeping the nation?
She’d woken on the morning of her seventh nameday to find the hands that seemed so much a part of her childhood had a finger missing. The leathery-headed man, who had labelled each of the lines on his face after one of her misdemeanours, had brushed off the questions, sat her on his lap, and brushed her hair for her. She remembered feeling the thud of his heart against her ribs as he held her still with his forearm.
When she was a teenager, it happened again. This time she’d been awake when he’d turned up missing a thumb. She had pestered him until he told her the truth.
Then the hands that had taught her how to live and survive taught her different things. Things she didn’t think one person could do to another. The things she had only heard about in whispers were now words in her bathroom, being washed down the plug hole with the swirling red water.
Aerfen reached into her fatigues. The metal disc was still there. She’d just checked. She wanted to be sure.
The torchlight flickered. She froze. Her fingers clamped around the token in her pocket. The beam steadied. With glacial stillness, her father reached to his side, and picked up a nail: long, jagged, and rusty. He whispered something to it, and pushed it into the powder with the pad of his thumb.
The wind picked up outside the tent, flapping the canvas. Aerfen was vaguely aware of the speech rising and falling between the tree trunks. Words that whipped the wind into a frenzy, and scared the bright watching eyes of the forest predators into the dark. For all that they were metres away, the other people could have been on a different world. Her father had been excused from the speech. Aerfen had slunk away, picking her way through the star light. She’d heard variations of it many times. The first time had been while she’d been dressing the stump of his thumb over their chipped sink.
The words reminded the listeners of the bastards that had taken everything from them: the soldiers who had ransacked homes, blitz mined the valleys, and stolen their gods. They’d demolished temples, and built their own on top, reclaiming land like one dog marks its territory over another’s. They’d tried to beat the language out of the children. Aerfen was one of those children; the thin scars on her back still smarted when she thought of it.
It was a peculiarly inventive way of encouraging monolingualism. Any child who was caught speaking their mother tongue had a hanky knotted around their neck. The knot was passed to the next child heard using that language. The child wearing the hanky at the end of the day got strapped.
The day after Deian, her father, had first recited that speech to her, she’d knotted one of her mother’s hankies around her neck and gone to school wearing it. She’d refused to take it off, even when the teacher’s cane had snapped on her back. The next day three of her friends had done the same. Within a week, the entire class was wearing them. A month later the school.
This was her cause now. Her inheritance. Not being considered old enough to be legally classified as a woman hadn’t stopped the enemy from abusing her like one. The men from Aijlan had bloodied her, took what should have been hers to give. Now it was her turn. She was going to take their crusade back to them.
She’d followed her father to her first meeting. There had been a brief flash of anger when he realised what she had done. He’d then hugged her, his arms trembling. The tears rolling down his face had been laced with fear and pride. When the order had come from the faceless leader of the Council to attack the castle, she’d told her father she wanted to be part of it.
She’d begged him while they sat next to each other on the edge of the bath. He’d finished cleaning his teeth, and spat the froth down the plug hole that had taken away so much filth and pain from their family. He’d taken her face in his hands and forced her to look at him.
There had been no tears, no attempt to talk her out of it. He’d cleaned her up the day after the soldiers had defiled her. He’d buried her mother. He knew why she wanted to go. Her father merely warned her: it’s easier to hate someone else than it is to love yourself.
“What ever happens in Castle Anwen,” he’d said, “don’t forget that. Don’t gloat. Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t even enjoy it, just get it done.”
Aerfen’s thumb rubbed over the rough metal edge in her pocket, feeling the grooves against her skin. She watched her father working. Despite his warning to her, he was whispering the hate into each piece of metal he packed into the gunpowder. The last ball bearing flashed its oily message around the tent, and he sat back on his haunches.
“Have you got it?” he asked.
Aerfen rooted in her pocket. “Yes, here.”
She held out the coin. A Somerian crown, the old type that the villages still used. It was warm in her hand, slippery. When their leader had sent it through the clandestine channels, Aerfen wanted the honour of looking after it. She’d spent weeks guessing at its symbolism: a vindictive tax payment, blood money, and others. In the end she had settled on something much simpler.
“For luck?” she asked.
Her father smiled, his gun-grey eyes twinkling under milky-white hair. Squeezing her hand as he took the coin from her, h
e slid it between a cluster of nails. “For luck.”
II - Trust Me
Rick Franklin watched his twin moon shadows slowly coalesce. The rifle slung low over his shoulder blurred, then shifted into focus. He murmured a hurried wish, tapped his forehead with his left hand, the body armour over his heart, and his right hand. The tradition was supposed to be performed naked, but he wasn’t sure Lieutenant Chel would approve.
The wind tugged at his trousers, moulding the dark cloth to his legs. High above him, partially hidden by grey clouds, the constellations glittered. The Jester teased the Dancer, while the Little Cleaver watched. Dotted amongst them were an increasing number of winking red dots. They were still and loud in their midnight blanket.
A scuff of boots to his left.
“Do you think anyone ever got what they wished for?” the other soldier asked.
“I doubt we’ll ever find out,” Rick replied. “This double lunar eclipse is pretty rare.”
Stann reached up a hand to grasp at the moonlight. Shadows danced on the stone behind him. “When I was a kid I told my mum that one day I’d be rich enough to buy her one of the moons. Just one, I wanted to leave the other for everyone else.”
“Generous of you.”
“Deluded too, even for a kid. There’s no way you get rich wearing this uniform.” He plucked at the triangular badge on his sleeve.
The wind swept past them. Stann gazed upwards. “I still think there must be a better way of tapping the moons than this mining mission. Surely there’s a way of harnessing all that light up there, all those winds shifting the clouds around. We’d need a way of getting it to these ravenous packs of computers of ours to gorge on, though. You know, like an aqueduct for electricity.”
“Nice idea, Stann. Maybe you can apply for Sci-Corps, the staff are short a few scars. You’ll bring the average up nicely.”
The other soldier didn’t react. He stared at the heavens with blank eyes and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Back home they’re saying this lunar mining mission of yours is gonna turn the moons against us. They’re saying that for every chunk of rock we take, the moons are going to take a wish, and twist it inside out. That people like you, the sparkies that worked on the project, are going to pay first and worst.”
Rick chuckled. “It’s not my mission, Stann. I just worked on it, you know that. And you Old Town folk were always a little too poetic.”
Stann’s head whipped round, his index finger jabbing towards Rick. “And you people from Tear always thought too much of yourselves. You and all those bloody pigs you have there that breed like flies.”
Rick bit back his reply. The moons slid across the sky. The crisp outline of Rick’s shadow lost its definition. His rifle blurred into two, and the helmet under his right arm split.
He pulled a screwdriver from his belt pouch. “C’mon, let’s get moving. I don’t want to get shot for the sake of an old tradition.”
Stann peered between the crenellations and spat through the stones. The spittle arced through the air, swallowed by the creeping mist below. “Lieutenant Chel wouldn’t shoot you for staring at the moons. He’d probably knock you around a bit, but a few bruises make a man look good.”
“I’m not talking about him.” Rick nodded over the battlements.
“The Somerians?” Stann laughed. “Don’t have the balls. Not even these death-before-dishonour separatists we’re watching. I’d bet my little finger on that. I heard they’re using girls to do their dirty work now ‘cos their brothers and fathers are too scared.” He snorted. “My mother has more testosterone than any man in this wretched country.”
“Does that explain the moustache?” Rick asked.
Stann spun on his heels. He grabbed a fistful of Rick’s lapels and yanked him close. His face creased into dark lines. The faint smell of sweat and oil wafted through the air. “What did you say?”
“Your moustache, Stann,” Rick said, the corners of his mouth twitching. “You were unusually advanced in that regard. You know, nature and nurture, feeding the seed.”
Stann’s eyes narrowed. The fabric strained across his knuckles, cutting red lines into the pale skin. He gave Rick a shove backwards. Rick staggered as he regained his balance.
“You trying to be clever again?” asked Stann. “Good job we go way back. I’d have given anyone else a little character around their face for that.” He held up his left hand. “Smells of respect. That’s what Dads used to say.” He held up the right. “Smells of disrespect.”
Something cracked in the woods below. They ducked and peered round the crenellations. A handful of birds spilled out of the trees and disappeared into the night. Raucous tweets cut into the silence.
“What’s your infra-red camera say?” Stann whispered.
“It’s not working; none of the cameras on this wall are. That’s why we’re here, remember?”
“Not that one, genius, your mobile one.”
Rick held it up over the edge, scanning slowly. The ancient stone tickled his face, the smell of damp decay seeping into his nostrils. “Nothing there. Nothing human anyway. Maybe it’s the moons, come to take some pre-emptive revenge.” Rick chuckled, a thin sound that felt loud and lonely when Stann didn’t join in. Rick’s eyes flicked upwards. Healthy disrespect, that was the way to deal with your fears. Never laugh at them; never let them laugh at you.
“Still not funny, Franklin.” Stann slumped against the wall, scratching at the rash of stubble on his chin. He tapped the small camera mounted on the wall. “They may not be working, but they’d be a great place to hide something. Squirrel it away for a later date.”
“Where?” Rick asked.
“The cameras. It’s the last place you’d look for something. Who watches the watcher?”
The lens hissed as it refocussed on something in the woods. Stann twisted and stared down his rifle sight. “Sure you wired them things up OK?”
“Trust me. The fault must be somewhere else,” Rick said. “I’m sure I know where it is. I just can’t place it.”
Stann squatted and dropped his head between his knees. “Trust me, he says. If only.” His voice was muffled. He sprang to his feet. “Someone help me. My village and your pigsty are less than four hours from here as the fisher gull flies, but the time difference feels like four centuries.”
He vaulted onto the wall, pulling himself up till his arms were straight. He stared out over the forest canopy that stretched below the hill. “Come and get me!” he shouted. His voice faded into the leafy night. “I’d rather die of bullets than bickering.”
“Get down, fool.” Ray tugged at Stann’s trousers. “If Chel catches you, he’ll give you a makeover that not even your dog could love.”
“I’m bored!” Stann dropped to the ground, ducked to grab a handful of gravel, and threw it off the walkway. A soldier scurrying across the courtyard swore up at him. Stann smiled back, waved, and hurled a handful of small stones and curses at the retreating figure. “I haven’t even had a decent fist fight since getting to this pile, given someone the old Stann Taille one-two, the stumble-and-feint routine.”
“That’s beyond old, Stann. No one falls for that unless it’s a no-budget film company.”
Stann kicked at the cobbles, grinding the moss underfoot into a damp brown sludge. “This sucks. The food sucks, Lieutenant Chel sucks, and all this waiting around for something to happen sucks.”
A bird hooted at the base of the hill, and Stann’s shoulders dropped.
“We’re outside, Stann,” said Rick. He ran a thumb across the shiny skin circling his wrists. The scars prickled, like a thousand tiny scabs were being pulled off. “It’s better than being cooped up in the barracks back in the capital. The air’s starting to smell funny there. Something’s up, sure as eggs came before chickens. The riots and those walls they’re building are just the start of it.”
Stann peeled a lump of moss off the stone. “Private Lee said the new walls around the capital are to keep us villager
s out. He said they’re gonna put border controls in, that we’ll have to patrol them.” He paused, wrinkles appearing around his eyes. His fingernail was stained dark green. “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”
“Orders are orders, Stann.”
“I didn’t sign up to fight my people, Franklin. They’re not my enemy. And when did the army finally tame you? I’ve barely seen you for a year, you get dumped into this unit out of the blue, and you’re all obedient now?”
Rick shoved the screwdriver back into his belt and rapped on the top of another camera with his knuckles. “I don’t know why I’m here either. I was told it was important, that’s all. My leave got cut short because of this posting. I missed my Rose’s fifth nameday.”
“There’ll be plenty more for you to go to,” Stann said. He flicked the moss shreds at Rick’s face. “And don’t think that means I’m gonna forgive that dig at my mother. Some things are just not said, remember that. Wives, mothers, girlfriends, and daughters are off limits.”
“Step-mothers, mothers-in-law? Grandmothers? Your enemy’s mother?” asked Rick. “My Great-Aunt Eleanor is someone’s daughter, and she’s a fearsome woman when she gets riled.”
“Don’t complicate the theory, Rick. I break things, you fix things. Let me have my turn at the clever stuff for a change.”
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Rick craned his neck up to the heavens, studying the light that glowed off the moons. The wind whipped the clouds into a frenzy. The same wind hissed through the leaves of the forest surrounding the castle. It swept across the top of the wall, buffeted him, sent cold air swirling up his sleeves, dragging shivers down his spine.
Stann stamped his feet on the stones. “This wind sucks too,” he said. “It makes me nervous, and not knowing why it makes me nervous makes me more nervous.”
Rick looked out across the forest, at the moonlight shimmered on the leaves. The Weeping Wood was restless tonight, the branches twitching in the wind. “My wife’s people have a fairy tale,” he said. “They believe that the wind is a collection of all the bad things that have ever been said. The stronger the wind, the more hate is being spoken. It’s the world’s way of cleaning itself, or warning us.”
