The Modern World (38 page)

I could not leave Savory there to rot. I was furious with myself, my jaw clenched so hard my head was pounding, my fingers rubbing over the dirty bandage around my palm. I
missed
. I missed my
target
. I fouled a shot with a crossbow. I went over and over it in my head, unable to comprehend how that could be. When blood began to seep through my bandage I welcomed it as a punishment and a reality.

She will not be crows’ food up there on that
platform
. I kicked my way into the enclosure and scaled the ladder. Corpses were arranged lying on their backs all over the timber grid: naked old men and women, some babies, and a dried puddle of a foetus. Some were the maimed fragments of fellow warriors that the Cathee fyrd had managed to ship home from Insect battles. They were in various stages of decomposition and most had lost the small bones of their fingers and toes already through the grid. Some skulls lolled back, disconnected and eye sockets staring at the sky. One was bloated, but most were pecked to no more than skeletons pasted with dark red shreds of sinew and muscle. Green algae grew on the cups of their vertebrae. The ravens had started already on Savory’s hazel eyes. I quickly picked her up and, hugging her to my chest, carried her down the ladder.

I bore her in my arms to the clearing with the marriage stone.
Savory, it will make shift for the only monument I can give you here. But you will have a monument, my hunting lady. You don’t belong with those people any more
. I raised the spade and speared it into the earth with all my strength.
You are not one of them
. I turned over the tangled roots and soil.

I dug Savory a grave where we first made love. The cup-and-ring stone was her headstone, and I did cheat the villagers of their foul ritual. I covered her tenderly and then I lay down beside the grave and embraced my arm over the little mound of disturbed earth. I do not know how many days I lay there.

I do not remember leaving her side. I must have walked east through the forest for days to the coast. I must have lived on the game I shot, but whether or not I could still shoot I cannot recall. I was absent all that time. At Vertigo, the town built against the sheer walls of a deep chasm, someone gave me passage on a ship for Awia. I returned to my house at a gallop and ordered the gates locked and chained. I wrote no letters and spent no time on the archery field. I accepted no visitors and ignored the Messenger’s frantic queries. I waited for my hand and a shredded heart to heal.

Some time after Lightning left the meeting, it ended and the Eszai dispersed. Over the next five days I flew errands for them. Each evening I had piles of correspondence to digest and report to the Emperor; mostly badly spelled semaphore transcripts.

I returned to my desk in the corner of the hall. I started writing but I could hardly concentrate. I kept wondering about Cyan’s Challenge and Lightning’s strange behaviour. I stared at the piles of letters, under the glass jam-jar of worms I was using as a paperweight. The worms didn’t seem to be moving very much. I leant forward and peered at them. They were all limp and flaccid, coating the bottom of the jar. I picked it up and shook it, and they put out a pink, braided-together tentacle and tapped on the glass.

The worms arced up in the middle and raised two perpendicular strands. A sagging worm swung across from one to the other and joined halfway up. It looked like the letter H. It collapsed back into the feebly writhing mass. Weakly they sent up another string from which three comb-like projections shot out: E. A single thread with a right angle of worms at the base: L; and it summoned its energies for a thick strand that curled round on itself at the top: P.

I picked up my paperknife and poked some holes in the lid. The worms sprang to life, stretched up eagerly forcing their tiny mouths against the underside. They pushed ineffectually at it, swaying like animated hair.

They dropped down and started swirling around the jar, in one direction like water going down a plughole. They became a whirlpool of worms, riding up the inside of the glass with an indentation in the middle. I thought they were trying to push the glass apart so I gave it a shake and they slumped again. They started throwing up angry tendrils so quickly I could scarcely make one letter out before it was replaced by the next. An L, an E and a T. Let. A U, an S and an O. What? A U and a T. Us Out. Let us out. Y-O-U-B-A-S-T-A-R-D.

‘There’s no need for that,’ I said, and placed the jar back on top of
my correspondence. The Vermiform furiously started cycling letters. As it warmed to its task it threw up whole tiny words, the letters made of one or two worms apiece.

L-E-T-U-S-O-U-T

L-E-T-U-S-O-U-T

I signed a missive, blew on the ink, folded the paper. I dropped some sealing wax on it and embossed it with the garnet sun emblem seal which I wear as a pendant.

L-E-T-U-S-O-U-T

LET! US! OUT!

PLEASE

‘That’s better,’ I said, and was about to flip the jar’s clips when I was struck by a thought. ‘If I free you, promise you won’t harm me?’

The worms paused.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘You’re staying in there.’

I looked up across the hall and saw Rayne approaching, carrying an envelope. I didn’t want her to see that I had stolen her sample of Vermiform worms so I picked up the jar and slipped it into the big pocket of my coat folded under the table.

Rayne looked over my shoulder. ‘You’re transcribing code,’ she observed.

‘It’s shorthand. What can I do for you?’

She offered me the letter in her clean, smooth palm. ‘Could you take this t’ Cyan?’

‘Are you sure? It’s nearly midnight.’

‘Jant, think of wha’ she mus’ be going through up in t’ peel tower. She knows she’s made a fool of herself.’

‘Well, I’m not sympathetic.’

Rayne nodded sagely. ‘Neither am I, bu’ I do like her. She’s a smar’ girl. When t’ Circle broke three times, we were in t’ coach between Slaugh’erbridge and Eske. Cyan consoled me. I’m grateful for tha’. We talked all nigh’. Can you take i’ now? I’m up t’
here
with work in t’ hospi’al.’

I stood up and gathered my coat. ‘Of course.’

The full moon’s light basted the surrounding moorland grey and smooth. Like a ball of butter, it rolled along the top of a platter of thick, opaque cloud and lit up the margins from behind with a creamy glow. Silver noctilucent clouds hung in the western sky over the foothills; the last light ebbing from their thin streaks gave enough illumination for me to see Insects hunting by scent in the valley.

Small bats were fluttering in circuits around the top of the peel tower. I could hear their squeaks as they passed me.

I have had planks nailed out from the window ledges of each peel tower’s uppermost room. I swept up to this one and touched down on the end. The plank bent like a diving board. I shuffled up to the shutters of the bow windows in the hoarding. The shutters, as large as gates, were closed. I splayed both hands on the splintered and weathered wood, bent down and put my eye to the crack.

Cyan stomped past the slit, lit by a lantern outside my field of vision. She disappeared and then stamped back again. She was muttering to herself and biting the end of a pen.

I knocked on the shutters and she looked up. She rushed over and pushed them wide. They flew open and hit me in the face. A brief whirl of the sky; I flapped my wings powerfully, cart-wheeling my arms. I toppled off the plank, caught its edge with both hands, and dangled there for an instant before I kicked my legs, flexed my arms and drew myself up again.

‘Careful!’ I hissed. ‘You nearly broke my nose!’

‘Good!’ said Cyan, and drew the shutters to. I pulled them wide and stepped down into the room.

The tower-top room was big, ten metres square. A single bed and side table by the fireplace were the only furnishings apart from empty crossbow bolt racks on the walls. It was ill-lit, no fire burning in the huge stone grate, but lamplight shone up through holes in the floor, through which arrow sheaves could be hoisted. Cyan’s lantern gave a pool of colour on the table next to her silver plate and fork and a chessboard that seemed to have stalled halfway through a game.

Lightning’s dog rushed up from the bed, barking, then recognised me and sat down by my feet. I closed my wings, the primaries sliding over each other like fans. ‘I only have an hour.’ I said. ‘I shouldn’t be here.’

‘Well, I’ve been trying to write to you for hours,’ Cyan retorted. ‘Where have you been? What’s going on? No one’s visited me. I haven’t spoken to anyone except the guards for five days!’ She retreated to sit on the plain bed, leaning on a blanket roll against the wall, and gave me a baleful look. ‘Will you let me out?’

‘I’m sorry, Cyan; no. The least the Castle can do is save your life.’

‘You could rescind Daddy’s orders if you wanted, and the guards would release me. Why are you so afraid of him?’

‘I’m not.’

Her forehead furrowed. ‘After the guards dragged me out, what
happened? What did Daddy say? … No, don’t tell me. I hate him. Old titwart. I can’t believe he’s done this to me!’

I stalked across the room, pushed my ice axe hanger behind me and sat down on the fireplace surround. I ached all over and I felt sick. The constant undercurrent of panic and sleep deprivation we were all living with was taking its toll. I said, ‘I brought a letter from Rayne.’

‘One letter in five days!’

‘You don’t know how hard-pressed we are –’ I gestured at the window in the direction of the town. ‘Everyone’s terrified and San is driving us like pack horses. I’ve been sending dispatches to position battalions for the advance in two days. I spent the last hour fending off journalists and checking Lord Governor Purlin Brandoch’s cavalry slinking in on second-rate nags. In an hour’s time I have to collect letters for your father –’

‘Huh!’ she cried.

‘Hand-deliver the important ones and collect replies. I think I’ll report that you’re still furious.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, not looking it.

‘Do you have a message for him?’

She glared at me defiantly. ‘If the bastard is in a good mood, tell him I’m dying of melancholy. If he’s feeling miserable, tell him I’m singing like a lark.’

‘I can’t fathom what mood he’s in. He’s bottled everything up, and he seems very detached, as if he isn’t allowing himself to think about it.’

I pulled a sheaf of letters from my coat pocket and leafed through until I found Rayne’s envelope. Cyan accepted it and scratched the seal off with her fingernails.

‘Is Rayne the only person who’s thought of me?’ she asked.

‘Don’t be ridiculous. No. Hasn’t Lightning given you his dog for company? He’s been sending you the best food, otherwise you’d be eating biscuit and salt beef, like the rest of the Zascai.’

‘So he hasn’t forgotten me?’

‘No. He’s incredibly busy too.’ I sighed, wondering how I could make her understand what was happening. ‘This is the biggest advance of all time. When they start lining up in formation, you’ll see what I mean.’

Cyan lay back on the bed. ‘I tried to write to you but I couldn’t concentrate. I made a complete arse of myself.’

‘Yes, you did. I wish I’d –’

‘Oh, I don’t care what you’d have done. I wasn’t Challenging you.’
She put an arm across her eyes and said, ‘Pissflaps. Will you let me free, Jant; please?’

‘Look, Lightning put you in here for a reason. If I let you out, and you get killed, he would shoot me. If through your actions, you get someone else killed, I would be blamed. And I don’t fancy that.’

‘It’s like being in prison!’

I stared at her. Her truculent tone was beginning to pique. ‘Trust me, it’s nothing like being in prison.’

‘Oh, Jant’s
angry
.’

‘Stop that! Behaving like a ten-year-old is what landed you in here.’

‘
Please
set me free. I’ll reward you. I’ll give you –’

‘It won’t happen, so don’t try to tempt me.’

The deerhound leapt on the bed and Cyan took its head in her lap. ‘Good dog, Lymer.’

I knew she had never really seriously considered joining the Circle. Everybody harbours a secret wish to be immortal. Everyone, now and then, wonders what it would be like. But like most people Cyan had never genuinely entertained the thought, and I bet, in her head, she keeps repeating over and over what she did and imagines the Eszai laughing at her.

I knelt down with a cheerful air and began to build a fire in the grate, refusing to be overwhelmed by the awkward situation. Cyan watched me with animal antipathy.

I said, ‘I recognise a spur-of-the-moment Challenge when I see it. All Eszai recognise bluster, too. We’re often Challenged by people who know they’re not capable of beating us but simply want the attention. By the Castle’s rules we have to take each and every one seriously, and separately, because you never know when one is a true talent …’

‘I
don’t
withdraw my Challenge, if that’s what you’re driving at.’

I gathered handfuls of the dried moor grass, heather sprigs and sprays of thyme strewn as a floor covering. I used them for kindling and lit some skilfully with the last of my matches. I swung the kettle spit above the flames and began to make some coffee.