Riding the Serpent's Back (32 page)

Spying trips soon revealed that the Authority Docks had been abandoned. Now, the Charmed Burn Plain barges docked with the Shelf out to the west of the Falls, where it would be far more difficult to mount an attack. With no railway, heavily defended convoys of moke-wagons hauled their cargo to the new site of the Junction: a natural harbour on the bank of the river farthest from Edge City. Here, the paddle-steamers continued their trade uninterrupted. The width of the river meant that, by staying in the central channel, the steamers were safe from attack from either bank, and they travelled in convoys heavily protected from boarding parties or attack boats.

Six days after the takeover of the Junction, Chi and his siblings gathered on the hill where Joel had made his encampment.

“What next?” said the horseman, his jovial tone doing little to belie his increasing frustration. He had already reminded people that he had been reluctant to move on the Junction, that such an assault was an open invitation for Lachlan to send armies down from the north to stamp out their squalid little rebellion.

“Guerrilla tactics,” said Sawnie. “I’ve been training them. It would be pointless to attack the new Junction: they would either defend it more effectively or, as I suspect, simply move camp again. We could chase them around the basin of the Hamadryad for years, if that’s their tactic.

“But what we can do is disrupt their activities. If we cannot cut the trade route altogether, we can attack their boats all along the river up to the Zochi jungle – that gives us several hundred leaps of river in which to operate: it will be easier for our units to hide and surprise than it will be for them to maintain their guard all that way.

“Their weakest point is on land, though. We can attack where they’re landing stuff from the Burn Plain. More specifically, we can attack the wagon trains between there and the new Junction.”

Joel was waving his hands in front of him, in a gesture of dismissal. “Permit me to interrupt,” he said, in a scathing voice. “But, sister, you’re playing games here. Disrupt all you like, but if you do enough harm to seriously irritate Lachlan he’ll simply send more troops down and crush you. Either you’re ineffective, or you get squashed.”

Chi joined in now. “Joel’s right,” he said, and his support clearly took the wind out of the horseman’s sails. Then he continued, “But so is Sawnie. We’ve started this thing moving: we can’t stop now. So yes, in the short term, we have to pester them, make things as difficult as possible.”

“And in the long term?” asked Joel distrustfully.

“The long term is the same as before,” said Chi. “We will come up against Lachlan Pas. We will stop what he is trying to do, and we’ll remove his brutal regime.”

“But look at us!” said Joel. “An army of Raggies and irregulars! What do you propose? Do we confront them with handkerchiefs at ten paces?”

Chi shook his head, as if he took the last suggestion seriously. “This is just the start,” he said. “That’s why I called you all to my side. I want you to return to your homelands and do whatever is necessary to win pledges of support. If each of us gathered here can guarantee that our home provinces and their allies will do nothing to support Lachlan, if we can persuade them to support us with their military, then we might stand a chance. I have already sent out messengers to all of my old allies from my days in the Tullan Senate. So now it’s your turn, brothers and sisters: go back to your homes and use your influence. When the time is right I will send out more messengers and our forces will come together. Before the year is done I will be camped out above the Zochi jungle with whatever forces we can raise.” He was leaning forward now, looking intently at his siblings. “Go back to your homelands,” he said, “and raise me an army!”

Monahl felt excluded again. She had stated repeatedly that Zigané would do nothing to intervene in the affairs of the Rift. She could do nothing to change that.

Later, she left the gathering to stroll over the top of the hill. She felt as if she had failed her brothers and sisters already.

After a short time, she realised she was being followed. She found a boulder and sat, looking out across the pinprick lights of Edge City. Soon, Chi scrambled up beside her.

“Did that apply to me, too?” she said. “You want me to go, too?” She looked at him, feeling a mix of hatred and repulsion, but...he was a child...She looked at him and did not know what she felt any more other than a bond, a bond deep enough to bring her here.

“You have to,” said Chi. “We all have to.”

“But I’ve already told you it would be futile: I have no influence.” Alone with him at last, she felt tears on her cheeks and she hated that.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” he said finally, his first acknowledgement of their previous time together. “I...I don’t know what happened back then.” He corrected himself: “No, I
do
know, but...it’s all a mess in my head.”

“Mine too,” said Monahl. Such a mess, even now.

“I have no excuses,” he said. “But my head was a mess. I didn’t know what was happening. Maybe it was the drink. I don’t know. All I know is that one minute I was dreaming, and then I was awake and you looked...
broken
again. I’m sorry.”

His words stung. He had most certainly broken her all over again, after spending so long healing her. He had broken her trust in people, and he had broken her mind. It was a madness Monahl shared with her mother, Camptore.

Camptore had entered her brief affair with the ailing Donn shrewdly aware of what was involved – the conception of a baby, nothing more. But she left it in ruins. It didn’t show through the months of her pregnancy, or even immediately afterwards. When she became increasingly melancholic, people said it was only natural to grieve the birth of an infant: it was even traditional to wear red for mourning and to wail despairingly for a night in a new mother’s grief. But normally these things passed.

Camptore’s mourning for the birth of Monahl lasted for five years. She took to pleading with everyone she met to send messages to Donn that he should return and take the two of them away. She died because the old mage had broken her heart, although the physical cause was more prosaic: a high beam, a looped length of rope, a bench kicked away. Before killing herself, Camptore had lit a candle in Samna’s shrine for her daughter and it was as if that candle had never burnt out: a flickering flame of madness that had tainted Monahl’s life ever since.

“I got over what you did to me a long time ago.”

It was clear from the boy’s expression that he saw through her lie. “Good,” he said.

She tried to find the words to tell him of his daughter, but Chi spoke first.

“I know you can’t recruit an army for me,” he said. “That’s not why I sent for you.”

“Then why?”

“You’re a devotee-priest,” he said. “You can Charm the earth. If we’re going to beat Lachlan, then we will have to destroy the Charmed Pact of Samhab.”

She laughed at him. “You don’t know what you’re saying!” she cried. “Even if I could recruit the entire Order we’d stand no chance. No matter how far its power has declined over the lost years, the Pact was cast by a mage – it won’t be broken by a mere devotee.”

“Who could break it then?”

“Donn? But he’s been dead for years. And anyway: even when he was in Zigané, more than thirty years ago, he was a frail old man. Even if he was alive I doubt he’d have the strength any more.”

“Who else?”

She saw what he was getting at: Herold, Zigané’s Guardian mage. She met Chi’s look, then, and he said, “Could you persuade Herold to leave Zigané and help us?”

She was shaking her head. “You don’t understand,” she said, before he tried to persuade her. “He hasn’t been home in more than a year.”

“Where is he then?”

“He had a call from his home city, in the western hills of the Rift. The last we knew of him, he was heading for the City of the Divine Wall.”

Chi straightened. “Then, Monahl,” he said. “Will you go there for me? Will you go to Divine?”

Leeth flew Sky harder than ever before. He had to put distance between himself and Edge City. Or, to be more specific, between himself and Cotoche.

“I love you more than I ever felt possible,” she had said. “It’s as if you’re flowing through my veins.”

Yet still she had refused to leave with him. Still she had placed more value on her loyalty to Chi than she had on her love for Leeth.

For a few brief seconds, as they held each other and kissed, he had thought she would be his.

But no.

She had chosen the boy-tyrant over Leeth. He should have known that would be her choice. One of her most striking features was her unshakeable solidity, after all: a boulder standing firm in the middle of the most raging torrent.

Leeth had been willing to give up everything for their love.

Cotoche had only been willing to give up their love.

He cursed her. He cursed himself, for his impetuosity – if, indeed, sharing a home with her for a year before making his feelings known could be described as impetuous.

He didn’t even notice the approaching fringe of the Zochi jungle, the rising, green-carpeted hill beyond. It was Sky’s uncertainty that drew his attention to the tangled green mass.

He spotted a stream emerging from the undergrowth and directed Sky down to land by its side. It was a day’s hard flying to traverse the jungle: they would have to camp here for the night and start at dawn.

Even in his confused and bitter state of mind, Leeth was not reckless enough to try the journey at night, with a courser already exhausted from flying all day.

He sat alone, as Sky shuffled across to a nearby banana tree. Soon, the beast – so ungainly on the ground – was throwing herself up at the branches, knocking down bunches of fruit so she could scavenge them from the ground. Occasionally, Sky looked at Leeth, ready to defend her harvest from him. Despite their long bond, Sky was still a wild animal at heart.

Leeth wasn’t hungry, in any case.

He sat and watched the twisting patterns of the water, the iridescent dragonflies defending their air-space against each other with startling ferocity. Later, Leeth curled up with his head resting on Sky’s rumbling belly, but he couldn’t sleep. It wasn’t the digestive noises that bothered him, nor was it the wild calls and insect sounds breaking out from the jungle.

He couldn’t stop thinking of Cotoche.

He wondered if she felt anything, now that he had kept his word and gone. He wondered if she had told the others of his decision, or if she was just leaving it for them to find out that he had left.

As soon as the heavy night clouds began to redden, Leeth rose and went to drink from the stream, frightening away a party of river coots. When the bulbous black birds saw him, they burst explosively from the water, huge, spidery feet trailing behind them. The sight of their mad escape made him smile as he stooped to fill his cupped hands.

He was going to be all right, he decided. He may be a loser but, more important than that, he was a survivor, too.

~

The river cities along the Hamadryad had never done much to inspire Leeth. Soulless places which had grown apace with the arrival of the paddle-steamers thirty or forty years ago, and more recently, the railway line to Tule.

He had been spoilt, he supposed, by growing up in what was probably the most beautiful city in the world, Laisan; and also by frequent childhood visits to another fine city, Totenang, and the thriving metropolis of Tule. By comparison, just about anywhere might appear dull and spiritless.

For several weeks, after his escape from Edge City, he travelled among the cities and towns that clustered by the Hamadryad. He found, amongst all the bland uniformity, that he sometimes even forgot which city he was in. In an odd way this seemed appropriate: he had no direction, no purpose, and these dull settlements came to reflect the life he was living.

He still had a little money he had accumulated from his time working on the Serpent’s Back. He supplemented this with occasional jobs he picked up, flying Sky with messages and packages from town to town.

He decided quite soon that it was safest to keep a low profile, to try to go unnoticed. One change since he had last been in this region was the creeping militarisation, the spread of sleepy little army posts staffed by nervous young soldiers who looked, to Leeth’s jaundiced eye, no more than twelve or thirteen years old. For a land not yet at war, it was putting up a pretty good pretence.

Out of defiance, he still wore the kilt he had worn in the south. The Painted Lady tradition had largely been stamped out north of the Zochi, but its persistence in the south meant that Leeth’s androgynous attire did not appear to draw too much attention. Apart from this one gesture, he tried his best to blend in. It was only sensible when military suspicions might so easily be roused: there was so much in his recent past that would be dangerous to reveal up here, he could not risk any close interrogation.

As bonding with coursers was the one Talent not commonly associated with the True Families, he tried to lose the arrogant strut and the confident tones of his upbringing and heritage. It was easy to wear poor-quality clothing – he had done that for the last four or five years, after all – but the changes in posture and expression, the changes in response to encounters in the street, the changes not so much in accent as in tone of voice...years ago, old Muranitharan Annash had pointed out to him how these were the most important things in marking out the True from the masses. But where Muranitharan had adopted the guise of the True, Leeth now shook off his upbringing and adopted the traits of the ordinary people around him. He was startled at how naturally it all came to him.

He supposed he had always been like that: quick to adapt and fit in, adept at looking just like anyone else. His acting ability had always been a natural defence.

Even so, the first time he was mistaken for a woman came as a shock.

He was at a market when a swarthy vendor called him ‘love’ and touched his hand as he passed over a bag of limes. Startled, Leeth backed away into the crowd. Later he realised what an advantage it was: his appearance had become so anonymous that people seemed to see in him whatever they expected, or wanted, to see. He found it easier and easier to make deliberate alterations to aspects of his behaviour or appearance. Immediately, these changes became a fixed, automatic part of how he presented himself to the world. He was, he discovered, a consummate role-player.