The Year of Our War (21 page)

Shit. Fan. Life is certainly becoming more interesting these days.

A
ta left the Castle on horseback. I made sure her journey was fast; she reached the coast two days before her husband. I left her on the quayside at Diw, before a brilliant pink sunset, which melted the massive sky and still ocean together in waxen rose. A boat was prepared for her, five men to row. She stepped down and rested a sixth oar in the lock, saying that she would row with the rest. They splashed out of the harbor and toward a caravel’s sharp baroque hulk.

Diw manor belongs to Ata’s daughter. She has another two sons who are jewelers, and two who build ships. Originally Ata had five daughters, all of whom married. The five daughters had twenty-five children, of whom ten married. The twenty-five grandchildren had a hundred and twenty-five great-grandchildren. The hundred and twenty-five great-grandchildren had six hundred and twenty-five great-great-grandchildren. After that I stopped counting. Ata put word out that she needed help, gossip ran round her network like a rat in a treadmill, and money started pouring in to Diw.

Some of Mist’s children supported him, but he usually paid them little attention. Ata kept in touch with the intricacies of all her generations, and they defended her keenly.

Pink became crimson, then dark and darker purple. I rode failing thermals from Diw to Grass Isle, a black cutout clustered with lights. Ata built a flock of twelve towers there, around the coast, before the Emperor forced her to stop. They were known as the Sute Towers, and each looks out over a separate expanse of ocean. No ship could put in at the Island without falling under the silent watch of those squat sentinels. In this way Ata made the entire island her stronghold, while Mist had simply embellished the port. I soared around the island’s circumference, twenty minutes from Towers January to December, sound of breaking surf and stink of burning sea coal. When lights came on in the meeting hall of July Tower I cut short my circuit and landed on a red-tiled roof. From the ridge to the eaves, in through an open window, and I was suddenly in the midst of crowds: servants and sailors knocking each other over in their haste to obey Ata’s orders.

A
t length the sparse hall was empty. Sute was abandoned to a garrison only. Lights were extinguished across Grass Isle, keys turning in locks, doors were being barred. The air of finality was terrifying; Ata was clearing her island for troops. Motionless, I had waited at the window, and now Cyan and her nursemaid were the only civilians left. Ata sighed and slid into a chair behind her candlelit desk. She suddenly looked old. The bruises on her face were brown and yellow, like a frieze of autumn leaves. Her hair was a white silk shawl, paler than her bronzed skin. She crossed legs in tight blue leather trousers, folded azure slashed sleeves over a waistcoat embroidered with cobalt-blue and ivory plumes. Her shirt pulled tightly over shoulders rounded and upper arms flattened with muscle. She stared into space.

I eyed Cyan’s maid, who was sitting on the floor trying to interest the reticent child in an ugly doll. I had always assumed nursemaids to be stern old women, but this one was thin and under thirty, and very attractive.

Ata sighed and leaned back in her winged chair. A little bulge of fat showed over the top of her belt. Fat softened the line of her jaw and candlelight accentuated crow’s feet around her eyes. The rest of her body was still youthful steel. She could easily beat me in a fair sword-fight. “You know, Comet,” she said. “I just can’t figure you at all.”

I waited. I use silence as my main defense; flatlanders drown in silence, they find it unbearable. They will say anything, no matter how stupid or recriminating, in order to break it.

“I mean, why are you here anyway?”

Creating debts. “Awaiting my lady’s command.”

“Don’t take me for a fool! You’re watching the show. Well, I swear you this, the show will be worth watching.” She stood up and walked across the room to Cyan, past the girl, to the window and back. She paced back and forth, saying, “I’ve had all I can stand. I’m doing what I should have done five hundred years ago. This is what I was born for! But no—I thought he was right and I was wrong, and in a moment of self-doubt I followed him. Now things will change! My stupid husband waits for instruction from Rachiswater—Staniel is killing Awia with cowardice!

“I should have Challenged Shearwater; by god I
did,
then lost heart. So I married him and sailed with him for five hundred years. Five hundred fucking years! Blood and sand! Sorry, Cyan. Come here, child. I thought joining the Circle by marriage would be as good as having the title myself, but it isn’t, of course. Shearwater takes the credit for everything I do and I never had the fucking guts to complain! Those ships still fly the Awian ensign. Not anymore! No fucking longer! There will be no pennants on the Castle fleet. My flag will have no emblem. I’ll nail his balls to the mast!” She paused. “I need you, Rhydanne, but I don’t know how to play you. You’re too damned smart. No loyalty.”

I sat down cross-legged on the window seat. Behind me, a sheer drop to the sea-washed rocks. “I do admire independence. You say it took five hundred years to realize what I realized at the age of five. But then, I was put through a harder mill than you.”

“Oh, you were?”

“Yes.”

She crouched down behind the desk, leather creaking, her sword-hanger’s gilded chain clinking against the basket hilt. She slid the bottom drawer open and took out a stack of banknotes tied with ribbon. “Your loyalty is to money?” She gave the ribbon to Cyan for her hair. The sheaf of notes was split in half and counted. “This is all I have left,” she said, which I didn’t believe. “Take two hundred pounds. It will come in useful next time you go to Hacilith.”

“Ata, I’m not asking for money.”

“I’ve heard tell you need all you can get.”

I took the battered gray notes from her, riffled through them and shoved them in a frayed coat pocket.

Ata continued, “Mist is the Castle’s Sailor; it’s your duty to do what he asks, no matter how much I pay you. You’re a wild card. Well, we’re all wild cards; every card in the fucking pack is a joker.

“Take Cyan down to the harbor. A boat is waiting. Make sure she is safe at all times, cross from September Tower to Peregrine Quay, where there is a coach. A closed carriage, please—watch for Insects! Deliver her to the nearest place where she will be absolutely safe…”

“Which is?”

“Micawater Palace.”

I giggled. “Lightning will never agree to—”

“He already has. If you wish to return you must fly because there will be no sailing between the coast and the island after you leave. Cyan will have the last boat out. Also, there will be no access past the island, Awia will have to manage its affairs and affrays by land.”

I stared at her. She shrugged, hands down on Cyan’s checkered shoulders. “It isn’t as bad as all that,” she said. “There’ll be a fee to escort ships taking fyrd to the front.”

“You mean a toll?”

“I mean a fair price for the pilot. The
Ortolan
and another five caravels will enforce it in the south. The sound will be patrolled by four caravels, which will be fast enough to cut down Mist’s ship.”

I hadn’t been aware she had such resources under her control. Then I realized she had everything that Mist left in Diw—sixty caravels—the
Stormy Petrel
and the
Ortolan
with the greatest weight of sail.

She continued, “I am afraid that you will take my child to the manor rather than through Peregrine and leave her with Mist. You will not do that, of course, because Lightning expects to receive her—and you want to keep your creditor content.”

“I’m not a bloody nursemaid, Ata.”

“No.” She shrugged. “You can always refuse.”

“Oh, I’ll do it. But San will hear of this.” I slid off the windowsill and offered the girl my hand. Cyan clung to her mother’s leather knees. She patted the child’s shiny hair—candlelight reflecting in a halo around her head—and whispered something in her ear. Cyan grabbed two bundles of blue skirt, ran to me, stopped just short, and raised a hand solemnly.

“Cyan Dei of Peregrine,” she said, timidly.

Ata winced. “Of Sute, darling.”

“Of Sute. Pleased-to-meet-you, sir.”

“Jant. At your service and that of Sute.”

“Right,” said Ata briskly, turning away and sitting at the olive leather-topped desk. “You leave with the tide, so you have five hours. Until then, Rhydanne, make yourself useful—do what you do best. Take yourself down to the Night Jar, and buy all the sailors drinks on my behalf.” She split the sheaf of notes again and handed me roughly a hundred pounds. “Listen to the gossip; I want to know all their thoughts and fears. I want you to play your fortune cards for them when they ask, and you will predict that every skirmish between my
husband
and myself will end in my favor. Can you do that convincingly?”

“Easily.” I smiled. I bowed to her, shook out my wings, watching Cyan’s astonished eyes. I climbed out of the window, and welcomed a waking rush of air. The girl clattered to the window, hands on the sill, and gazed out on my slow glide down to the dark quay.

I
can tell by the way the road is becoming smoother that we have almost reached Peregrine. Anxiety grows on me. I say anxiety when I mean fear. The coach stopped briefly to change horses, but I kept the blind down. It is between two and three in the morning and we have been shaken like dice in this tiny black lacquer box all night. My coach has no insignia, the dirty windows are made of veined Insect wings, the flat springs squeal at each corner, every bump in the road. The landscape outside will turn pale gray soon, and we will rush screaming and foam-flecked into another dawn. There will be myths of ghost coaches on this highway.

The ceiling is a canopy of rusty taffeta; the walls are dented plywood. I sit on an uncomfortable leather-covered bench and gaze at the little girl opposite. I find myself wishing she had twenty more years, and that this was Hacilith, not the Awian border. She is lying on the bench, knees pulled up under a long dress, her head resting on my coat. She has a copper ring on her tiny finger, and a wide lace ribbon loosening on a flaxen ponytail. That is all; no coat, no luggage, no spare clothes. I carried her on my shoulders over the fetid beach at midnight, and I am plastered in gritty mud, and sweat from having been in a boat, but at least her white socks are still clean.

“Not a word from you,” I had said, lifting her into the coach. She shrugged, unbuttoned her ankle boots and curled up. “Aren’t you scared?”

“No.”

“Well, you should be.”

The ring was a minute dolphin, which looped her little finger, its tail welded to its snout. She was more interested in it than in the real world. “Do you know what’s happening?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“Mummy and Daddy are fighting again. Only this time it’s for real. This is serious. Cyan Dei, look at me when I’m talking.” I pushed my sunglasses down my nose and glared at her over the tops.

“You’re one of them,” she said, “aren’t you?”

“One of who?”

“People who don’t die.”

“That’s right.”

She gave a contented sigh and put her head down on my coat, evidently deciding she was perfectly safe. She was asleep in minutes. Her trust was touching, which is why I have been watching over her all night.

We sped through Peregrine manorship with the coach blinds anchored tight. I remembered how the gang used to tip coaches over in Hacilith, with a rope strung across the cobbled street. Wheels spun helplessly in the air, we slit open black beetle carapaces with cleavers and swords, pulled out spluttering riches and spilled the horses’ hot blood.

A single Insect could scare horses into bolting, and then we would be out of control. On guard, I waited for all this to happen in confused darkness, but we were lucky; no roadblocks, no starving Insect packs, and then we were through.

Cyan woke with the first rays of sun, and stretched along the bench. Splinters caught at her skirt. “Have we got any food?” she said.

“No.” I pulled a silver hip flask from the top of my boot. “If you want, you can have some of this.”

Her fingers traced embossed knot-work around the bottle. She seemed to love beautiful things, shiny things. She unscrewed the lid, sniffed. “What is it?”

“Sloe gin. From the Night Jar.”

Cyan took a sip, seemed to like it. She sipped again and rolled the sticky liquid around her tongue. Definitely Ata’s child, I thought. “Steady, steady. It’ll make you sick!”

She pulled the dolphin ring from her finger and offered it to me. “My father gave me this,” she said, and started coughing. I slapped her on the back. When the girl could breathe again she continued, “Could you please give it to him? To say that I’m safe and I still love him. Very, very much.”

“Of course I will, Cyan.” I am taking orders from an eight-year-old now.

T
he smooth, shortbread-colored stone of Micawater Palace glowed in blue daybreak light. Harrier stood on the steps, between fluted columns, in a striped gray waistcoat and narrow trousers, long peach lace cuffs hiding his hands. Ornate gates clanged shut behind us. I lifted the blind so Cyan could see as the aching horses slackened and we scrunched along a long, curved driveway and rocked to a halt in front of the main entrance. I unfastened the coach door, kicked down the folding steps and emerged at last stretching thankfully and measuring the sky; this was a fine morning.

Tackle jangled as two boys rushed to steady the ebony horses and a third to help down the weary driver. A cup of steaming coffee pressed into his hands, he was accompanied into the house. I lifted Cyan from the coach and placed her on the ground. She fell over. The coach drew away promptly. I removed my hip flask from a ruddy hand and stuffed it hurriedly into the top of my boot as Lightning’s steward approached.