The Year of Our War (30 page)

“My lord, there were a thousand people here,” called Harrier. Looked like it, from the state of the muddy, rutted paths, litter and trampled grass; but Peregrine manor was now a deserted shell. Lightning, hands in frock-coat pockets, wandered around the porch, searching for a way in, and muttering how despicable it was that he couldn’t get into his own house.

“This is so strange.”

“Allow me,” I said, and he stepped out of the way, remembering my suspicious lock-picking skill. Instead, I produced a key, fitted it to the lock, where it turned easily, and I pushed the doors wide onto an echoing hall. I presented Lightning with the key. “From Mist’s room in the Castle.”

He paused on the threshold. “I haven’t been inside for seven hundred years.”

“May I?”

“Be my guest.”

Harrier followed us in; our footsteps resounded in a mansion newly stripped clean. Marble blocks were the pedestals for vanished vases and busts, polished shelves were free of silverware, and brighter squares could be seen on the walls where paintings had been. We walked through to a main hall, a cold black and white, where two staircases converged at the far end. Between the staircases a blue flag draped, hanging on wires from the ceiling. A massive table in the center of the room stood on a blue carpet, the same motif of a caravel in full sail.

Mist and his little band had gone, that much was obvious, and it seemed clear that he did not plan to return. Lightning walked up and down the cold vestibule as if measuring it, gazing at the places where treasure had been. He was looking inward, remembering past scenes when Peregrine was lighted, newly built, vibrant with movement and music. He brought haunting to Peregrine, images of his friends after hunting trips, telling stories over sumptuous feasts. He was remembering the dimensions of the mansion. Whether it seemed larger or smaller in memory, I knew that in reality the manor had changed little since his family owned it—apart from slowly falling into dilapidation. Mist had concentrated on building ships rather than palaces.

While the Archer paced the hall and wandered up and down empty steps to the rooms above, Harrier and I discovered the kitchens. The kitchens were deserted as if abandoned a second before; only the valuables had been taken and we found plenty of food that would just attract Insects. We lit lanterns and brought them through to the table in the hall.

Lightning snapped out of his trance and slammed his fist down on the solid table.

“No, no,” he exclaimed. “This shouldn’t be here!”

Harrier and I glanced at each other. Lightning threw off his coat and started pushing the table with a great show of effort, but for all his strength he couldn’t move it a centimeter. “I’ll
kill
Shearwater!”

“Yes, if we can catch him,” I said. All the way from the Castle I had been anticipating a duel here in Peregrine and the bird was flown. Lightning had gained the mansion without the satisfaction of a killing and I knew he wouldn’t give up the chase. Lightning’s kin-worship annoyed me; it was a ridiculous waste of time. I alone knew we only had a month to push the Insects back into the Shift. “Insects are moving south constantly, Saker. We should let Mist go; we haven’t enough time.”

“Time…Ha! Don’t…talk to me about time,” the Archer panted vaguely.

Harrier had realized that nothing was going to happen until Lightning had finished whatever he was trying to do, and so he set to helping.

“You’re both mad!”

“Jant, shut up and help.”

The three of us heaved and shoved at the table until we had moved it onto the stone floor. Lightning dropped to his knees and rolled the carpet back. It was filthy but he dragged it, threw it aside. Under the carpet was another grimy patch of stone. He rubbed it with the side of his fist, and then with his shirtsleeve, and because that wasn’t enough crumpled his brocade coat into a ball and cleaned the stone with it. Harrier leaned close with a lantern and its yellow glow revealed the tomb.

It was a stone slab, three meters long, and it bore the deep relief carving of a square-faced man aged about fifty, broad in shoulder, his feet resting on an attendant hound. He was sculpted in full armor of ancient design, a horizontal-strip cuirass, a helmet with a horsehair plume; he lay on a round shield. I recognized the style of two thousand years ago, before Awians began to use scale armor and before the Morenzians invented plate. A sixth-century inscription edged the slab, punctuated by quatrefoils:

We waited respectfully. The silence grew, and Lightning still knelt there, his hands on the deepest engravings, in which fragments of gilt remained.

Harrier drew me aside with an anxious glance over his shoulder and whispered, “What shall we do?”

“I think we should leave him alone.”

“Can we help?”

“There’s nothing we can do. Come away.”

It looked like a midlife crisis to me. I took one of the lanterns and left Lightning kneeling by his brother’s grave.

In the kitchens Harrier set out wine in tarred leather cups and bread on scarred platters, and we ate in silence. I tried to enliven the woodsman—if he knew the truth he would realize I’m hardly worthy of reverence. But his ingrained respect and new astonishment got the better of him, and, “I’m so glad I’m not an Eszai,” was all he would say.

“We should look for Mist at the quayside next,” I said. “That’s where the footprints were leading.”

“I really want to find my family in Hacilith,” Harrier confided. “My wife and son are refugees now. I hate to think what Insects have done to the Palace.”

I wondered if Harrier would make a good Eszai; his open, honest face was a true indicator of his tractable nature. How different an Archer he would have been, had he beaten Lightning. I drew Harrier out by asking after his family; he began to talk more readily. I found apples and a block of marzipan to divide between us with more wine. Cat in my bloodstream eagerly welcomed the food, unlocked all its energy and gave me a second high. I decided to curb my exhilaration when Harrier gave me a strange look. I may have been speaking a little too fast.

That was why, when the moment came, I thought it was to do with the drugs. I was just raizing the cup when it hit. It almost knocked me from the chair. A terrible feeling: dislocation. A million windows blew wide and an ice gale tore through me. I seized the edge of the table. I cried out.

Harrier’s eyes were wide. “What’s the matter?”

I don’t know. I really don’t know. Cat has never done this to me before. Shift is not like this. For a second I felt cracked open and all the stuff inside me flooded out. I spread on a plane through the whole world in view of everything. It was like looking for too long at the spaces between the stars falling faster and faster up into them a mad sensation of space pulled me out in all directions paper-thin translucent-thin.

It snapped shut.

It was gone.

I sat there, blinking, surprised to look completely normal. The fire was crackling in the corner, the taste of marzipan in my mouth.

“What is it? Comet?” There was an edge of fear in Harrier’s voice. I realized that I had dropped the cup and wine was spreading out on the table. The impression of infinity had taken a second. “Shit…” I said. “Wow…It’s
vast
.”

Lightning appeared in the doorway, personification of intense panic. “Jant! There you are!”

“You felt that too?” I asked.

He nodded. “Of course.”

“Felt
what
?” Harrier demanded.

“The Circle broke,” said Lightning. “One of us is gone. I mean—dead. One of the Eszai…For a second I thought it was…Thought it was you. Should have known better.” He rubbed his eyes, wiping grime all over his face. He looked gray and sick. He had more experience than me. He’d felt it before.

“Tern?” I got to my feet. Damn it, I should never have left Tern. I should be by her side all the time.

Lightning looked distant for a second, sensing the rest of the Circle. He felt for the presence of the other Eszai and our shared time, keeping us all alive. I don’t have that ability, it takes centuries of practice.

“It’s not Tern. Why should it be Tern?” he said slowly. “Come on, Harrier. Let’s go!” He pinched an apple from the table and strode out.

I thought of Tornado fighting to the last of his strength in dark Lowespass, overwhelmed by Insects. I thought of him baited by thousands, the last of his men long fallen, cut to shreds, borne down at last and with his last breath still bellowing defiance at them.

The sensation paralyzed me but Lightning was stung into action. “Jant, you Rhydanne failure. Your help is now
essential
.”

“Yes, yes,” I said testily, unable to drop the feeling that a part of me had died. I felt lonely, at a loss. I felt like a mortal again, now I knew the sensation of the Circle failing me.

“This will all change!” Lightning promised the mansion, with a glance at Peregrine’s sarcophagus, then: “I must take Mist’s banner down.” He plucked one of his long arrows from the quiver, nocked it to string and flexed both arms, bending the bow. He looked to the flag with instinctive aim, and loosed. The arrow cracked into the wall. The ship flag swung slowly sideways, rippling, until it was hanging like a rag from its remaining wire. Lightning selected another arrow and shot through that wire too. The rich flag fluttered to the floor, draping the white double staircase in dark blue and golden folds.

“Now Peregrine is mine,” Lightning said briskly, buckling the nearly empty quiver to his hip. “I hope we meet no Insects on our way to the quay.”

The quay was the last place I wanted to be, in reach of those mighty waves. I still thought of the ocean as a gigantic beast, its bulk gray-green, its rabid mouth white with foam. The water had a mind of its own, ever-changing, sometimes lying low, always ready to pounce. I understood the rules of the air and knew its moods, but I couldn’t predict what the sea was plotting. With my feathers waterlogged and my acrobat’s strength useless in the surf, I would surely drown. The wind was too strong, the ocean too alien. I was averse to horses, lacking an ice ax and I wanted the chance to fly. I had no chance to use my talent here and I was reduced to being hauled along unwillingly by Saker as if I was his flunky rather than an Eszai. Not the best assignment for the Emperor’s Messenger and the only being in the Fourlands who knows the truth about the Insects.

I followed Lightning dourly, the horse hooves cracking on cobbles and through panes of ice that were forming in mud ruts on the path. I searched for a way to stop his stupid pursuit but could think of nothing; at least, not while he still had arrows left. I decided that I would stay long enough to find out his next move, of which I could inform the Emperor. I would see Lightning and Harrier to the quayside and leave them there—they could find their own damn way out of the sea’s clutches.

T
he wind was waiting for us when we left the forest, as intense as before. It sped the dissonant seagull cries and the relentless boom and suck of surf on the pebble beach. Insect shells turned over and over on the tide-line. There were fragments of broken wood there too, and stinking clumps of seaweed. Some horses, free of tack, stood on the path. We rode to the manorship’s harbor, and there was no one there. The log-built boathouses, stores and offices were deserted.

“The tenders have all gone,” Lightning said.

He took his horse up along the harbor wall and onto the main pier, demanding that Harrier and I follow. Impossible. The planks were running with water, doused by waves that licked underneath and covered the horses’ hooves. Kelp and limpets encrusted the stacks; the wind blew the water into an opaque expanse of ripples. I kept my eyes on my horse’s black mane, and let my mount find her own footing to the end of the pier. It seemed to take hours.

“Look up, Jant.”

“Saker, you bastard!”

“Not in front of Harrier.” He smiled. His voice was light with triumph. “The sea is for Peregrine!”

Puzzled, I glanced at the gray horizon, and the spectacle held my gaze: a wreck, transfixed prow to stern on the Grass Isle rocks.

H
oneybuzzard
,” I said, remembering the green copper-clad hull. The windows at the stern were ruined holes, the figurehead facing away—the ship had smashed sideways onto the clustered rocks. A tangle of broken spars and snarled rigging washed on her port side, buffeted by the waves. A rent down the other side held her keeling fast to the Grass Isle reef, the deck tilted away from us. Two of the three masts remained, but the first was trailing with the rigging, leaving a splintered stump.

Clear of the water, the caravel seemed the size of a manor house. And silent as the grave. The wind blew the deafening roar of wave after wave crashing onto Grass Isle’s shore to us across the strait. It was wild out there, beyond the shelter of the harbor.

“The girl,” the Archer said cautiously. “Cyan. Cyan Dei. She will be on the ship.” The tone of triumph fell to horror in a second.

“I’m sorry, Lightning.”

“Cyan…”

“Nothing on that wreck is alive, Lightning. We felt the Circle break; Mist is dead. You must have guessed—”

“I felt it could be him. And I thought Mist would try to run. Wind too strong. Couldn’t…I suppose he couldn’t make it round the headland. Lighthouse or not. But look, Jant, they have been there for hours. How else could the ship be so broken up? So, she’s gone…I thought I’d find her.”

“I have to tell the Emperor.”

“No. We will still follow my plan. Fly out to the wreck and see if Cyan is there. See if there are any survivors.”

The concept was ludicrous. Lightning took my look of hatred. He saw me take a deep breath and he motioned to Harrier, who goaded his horse round and rode out of earshot to the land. “You take him for granted,” I said. “Unlike him I’m no servant, Saker.”

“Fly out to the ship,” he said quietly.

“How could you be an adulterer? How could you have a daughter? You had an affair with Ata and kept it secret though Cyan herself found a way of telling me and now you’re willing to put all the Fourlands at risk for her, not to mention my bloody life, if it hasn’t crossed your mind I’m terrified of drowning and the worst thing is I looked up to you, but now I hate you, you seemed to be in love with Swallow so earnestly all this time and now it turns out you were only pretending!”

“No. Not pretending. I am. I always will be. Fly out to the ship.”

“You rarely speak to Ata. You’ve never acknowledged the girl. Fuck it, I’m not hazarding my life for an illegitimate brat.”

“I had to keep the secret. I have watched Cyan. Fly out to the ship.”

“It’s a secret I want to know. I thought you had a blameless past, so giving Ata grounds for blackmail was a doubly stupid thing to do.”

“Jant, please. I’ll tell you of it later.”

“Seduce you, did she?”

“Damn it, stop it. What’s got into you? This is not easy for me.” A wave of remorse broke in his voice; he sounded bitter. We watched the ship continue its slow disintegration under the force of the waves. “Yes, if you want to put it like that I was seduced. We only had one night together—”

“A
pleasure
cruise.”

“Enough! Please. She said it was safe but now I regret it. How I regret it! Eight years is no time at all and I never thought the confidence would become known so soon. That beautiful bitch. I don’t know how to cope with her. I have to know what’s there on the wreck. Jant, please help me. Fly out.”

“Swear that you’ll give up Swallow and Ata and any other women for a year, while we turn the tide to obliterate the Insects.”

“I swear it!” the Archer declared.

“All right.” I clambered from my horse, fighting down a bout of hysteria as the salt water wet my boots. I held my wings open. “Give me some space.”

“Thank you, Jant.” I heard his horse’s hooves backing. The needle-wheal stung on my numb left wing. I will never take cat again.

The gale was so strong I simply had to hold my wings open against it to feel light on my feet. I kicked off and the bay spread out beneath me, the pier shrinking rapidly. A frightening speed of ascent. I leaned forward, pushing all my weight ahead, otherwise the gale would start to blow me backward.

The coast fell behind quickly and I was over clear water. I tried to attend to the shape of the air, but I kept looking down to judge my height from the surface. I didn’t want a gust to dump me into the water. My rapid forward flight meant I lost height quickly too, but every time I came within the waves’ snatching distance I angled my wings and hurtled up vertically. I faced gusts head on, uplifting and falling between them like waves.

The sea seemed flat dark gray, laced with lines of foam, and it was only when I neared it at the end of each short glide that I saw how broken it was.

Wings knifed the air but my body dragged, aching my prominent carpal bones. It was hard to keep the four long fingers of each wing open against that unpredictable wind. Even the Darkling snowfields have refuges, but the sea is all death. I fought upward desperately as the waves prolonged into crests and grabbing foam fingers. I flew frantically as a drowning swimmer thrashes.

I took a low altitude approach to the sloping hulk, aware that if I overshot I would have to turn with the squall behind me, which would make my flight unstable. I pushed the air down with fingers, wrists, elbows; the whole six-meter wingspan, steered with my legs and skillfully came up to the
Honeybuzzard
’s railing.

Flapping energetically, I made it over the railing and touched down. It should have been a beautiful landing.

My legs slipped from under me, I fell heavily on my backside and slid ten meters across the deck before crashing into the railings on the other side. Winded, I dug my fingernails in. I stood up and looked around. I was standing on a film of white ice-rime, like powdered glass. The deck tilted at an angle of thirty degrees.

Ropes hung from the splintered masts at head height and the rigging and wooden toggles swung and splashed against the seaward side. The side nearest the land was lower, water swirling among massive rocks. I looked over to see jagged black rocks scattered with fragments of planks, impaling the gash in the hull, twenty meters long and ten meters high. Water boomed deeply as it circulated inside the ship. Seeing the high-water mark on the Grass Isle shore, I realized that we were low on the rocks and, come high tide, all this would change. I didn’t know enough to tell whether
Honeybuzzard
would be pushed upright, or if it would sink altogether.

A cable from the masthead snaked and cracked. Timbers rasped as waves forced the wreck farther onto the rocks. Quickly I began to walk sternward, keeping one hand on the railings and looking up to the port side. The deck was washed clean of anything not made fast, and I guessed the people, too, had been swept overboard. I searched the land for survivors, but saw no ragged figures, no movement, no signals. Out of Mist’s two hundred crew, I saw one body, floating facedown just inside the hull. An Awian man, his wet coat had trapped air that kept the corpse afloat, his sleeves rolled back, skin pale and abraded. His long hair and dark brown wings spread on the surface of the water. I looked for others and saw ripped cloth snagged up on the rocks, which could have been corpses or just cargo.

Everything Mist had taken from Peregrine manor had gone. I couldn’t see anything but foam and spray smashing against the headland.

“Where were you taking it?” I said aloud. Then I caught my breath because I saw him.

The body stood against the helm, held upright by a rope passing under its arms and around its waist. Its head rested on the compass glass. Long gray and white rattails of hair were frozen onto the glass and stuck, glittering with ice and salt crystals, onto his shoulders. I slipped closer across the tilting deck. The compass had frozen pointing east-southeast where north was supposed to be.

Shearwater Mist’s stocky body hung in the restraining ropes. His arms had dropped to his sides. The skin on his hands was white-blistered and torn. His eyes were open and glassy; he was coated in ice.

Hard skin blue-gray, the skin under fingernails dark purple, folds in his clothes stiff with ice. The hair on his arms was frost-white; the bandages still bound tightly round his ribs and wings. His dagger was hanging on a red lanyard under one arm, ready for use. An ivory shirt was molded over his torso’s frozen muscles like a second skin.

It was true to say there had been no Awian hardier than Mist, but why would he take his ship into a storm with only a tricot shirt and denim slacks for protection? I scanned the deck, seeing that his cloak was piled at the foot of the main mast.

In the eerie quiet of this dead little world it began peacefully to snow. The flakes hissed and vanished when they hit the brine.

Shearwater had bundled up his cloak and roped it to the mast. Why? I examined it closely. Cyan’s face was peering out of the bundle. I hunkered down and pressed the back of my hand to her blue-gray lips. A little warmth—she was still breathing.

“Cyan? Cyan, darling. You remember me. Can you hear?” I held both hands around her cheeks to warm her, a pointless endeavor because by now my skin was probably as cold as Mist’s. I carried on a constant stream of encouraging chatter while sawing through the twisted cable with my sword.

“My dear, everything will be all right. Hold on a little longer, and I’ll take you back to dry land.” But before we set foot on land there’s a short excursion through thin air. I lifted the child; she was far too heavy.

I sat down cross-legged on the ice and proceeded to unwrap Cyan. Mist had tucked his thick sailor’s cloak carefully about her, and under that was a shredded sail, then her coat. The girl’s dress was cornflower blue. She had gained a belt with peacock-feather tassels. Her feet, though, were bare and dirty.

I unclipped my scabbard so that I could use my belt to buckle the child to my chest. I held her securely against me. Then I wrapped her beaded belt around us as well. I slipped my sword, in its scabbard, under the bindings at my back.

I have never carried a pack as heavy as this eight-year-old. A handful of letters is my usual load. This is hopeless. Not to panic is key. The down-drag will be incredible. If I battle against it I will run out of energy. So I will fly with long, strong beats. I will ignore the pain and stay on a straight path with a solid approach. I’ll avoid the fucking pier and set down in the village; Peregrine harbor seemed an immortal’s lifetime away.

“We’re going to go home. To see your parents and to get some hot drink. Can you open your eyes?” She stirred and moaned. Good. “I know you feel cold,” I told her, wildly understanding. “Soon we’ll be safe and in the warm. But before that it’s going to get very much colder and I want you to hold on. You must not go to sleep. Sing if you can—sing to yourself.”

I slid up to the highest point at the stern, and faced Grass Isle. The sea churned and bubbled. I was tense in anticipation of the shock when I, and Cyan, plunge into it. The freezing water will drench my hair and gush stinging salt into my throat. Don’t give yourself time to think, Jant. Just go.

“Cyan, don’t move. You must stay still.” Then I ran into the wind until my feet left the deck, turned toward the shore.

I struggled, confused—I was falling straight down! What a weight! I stretched and beat twice as fast. I maintained an unbalanced flight a meter from the licking waves and then slowly, slowly gained height feeling my muscles tearing. I kept my arms wrapped around Cyan, but I couldn’t breathe with her weight on my chest. She pulled me down headfirst.

This pain is too much; just drop her. I kept my eyes on the land, wishing it nearer and nearer, larger and larger. The wind pushed me north so I was at the top end of the village when I eventually scraped in at roof level.

I lost height, turned into wind to land, was blown back up again, pulled my wings shut in desperation and came down with a smack that jarred every bone in my body.

Lightning and Harrier ran from the harbor. Breathless, I gestured for Harrier to cut through the bindings. I lay down in a wide splay of feathers, cradling Cyan in my arms.

The girl’s eyes were still closed, her lips blue-gray and her cheeks ruddy with windburn. Harrier leaned over and carefully brushed light blond hairs from her forehead.

“Well done,” he said, so impressed that he forgot I was an Eszai.

I wheezed, “Oh, my god. Oh, my
back
.”

“Is she dead?”

“No. Thank Mist. Saved her. Look.”

Harrier put his hand to her lips the same way I had done; he smiled, his guilt relieved. But Cyan was still in danger. Mortals never allow themselves to think how close to oblivion they or their friends could be, and Harrier was no exception.

I said, “Cyan’s very cold. I’ve seen people killed by cold in the mountains and they look all pale, like this.”

Lightning was standing some distance away, with a stony expression, hands clasped behind his back. “What of Shearwater?” he asked.

“I saw him; he’s still on the wreck.” I described what I had seen, the Sailor frozen to death, the ghost vessel and its shroud of ice.

“He cared for Cyan,” Lightning said. “At what cost, I don’t yet know. We’ll have to bring him back.”

My Rhydanne immunity to all but the most severe cold meant I could not warm the girl; she was growing rainbow-colored from exposure and bruises. I passed her dead weight to Harrier. “Give her a hug and warm her up. There are some things I can’t do.”

Lightning stirred. “No. Give her to me.” He scooped his daughter from my grasp and held her close, face down to her face. He gathered the fur-trimmed riding coat into folds and wrapped her so that she was covered completely in brocade, the gray check lining and soft fur.

Harrier still thought the child was Mist’s, but not for long. I watched realization slowly dawn on him.

“What are you smiling at?” Lightning demanded.

“I’m happy to see Cyan alive.”

“My daughter,” he explained, and then said it again, more confidently. He kissed her forehead. “My favorite.”