Above the Snowline (40 page)
Unfortunately I could envisage no way to be rid of him. I had been avoiding any exchange with the outside world and I didn’t appreciate Jant barging into my peaceful, snowbound retreat, where I had planned to stay sequestered until after the festivities and long into eighteen ninety-one. I only rarely managed an escape from the parties of the self-conscious nobility or those Shatterings I feel I have to hold myself. Out here in Foin I have an excuse to decline the conviviality and the sleigh rides. The last thing I wanted was to be wedged in a sleigh with some governor’s wife shrieking with laughter, first-footing to Bitterdale and beyond, as if I needed to visit everybody’s halls again. So I had quite deliberately ensconced myself in the smallest and furthest-flung muster of my manor. The reeve knew to leave me to my comfortable melancholy; he respected my wish to be alone. The dim light and quiet woods soothed my memory of Savory. I had been spending my time at archery practice and in the weight room; long evenings standing with my violin by the fireside playing sonatinas; watching the reeve’s children build winged snowmen; watching the figures in dark coats trudging through the snow-bound woods. These were the dregs and dog-ends of the year, when the people’s weariness rubs off onto the land itself.
Now Jant appeared looking like a savage and with the apparent intent of dragging me into the machinations of the Rachiswater twins. If it wasn’t the Tanagers or Shearwater idiot Mist it was the fractious bloody Rachiswaters. I sighed and sat down. ‘Support for Raven is more widespread than you might think. You wouldn’t know, having been in the wilds, but Tarmigan is losing popularity and Raven is gaining.’
‘Is Tarmigan unpopular?’
‘He is becoming so.’
‘Why?’
‘He keeps levying taxes to reward his favourites and extend his palace. People mutter against it; they don’t like having to dip into their pockets time and again, especially with only five days until the festival. But Tarmigan will collect the taxes and Rachiswater Palace grows ever more ornate. And tasteless, incidentally.’
I looked out to the lawn, the outbuildings of the hall on either side, down to the gable end of the tithe barn just visible by the river. Ice so thick it looked like snow coated the trees uniformly white, their branches meshed like lace. The sky was pregnant with yet more snow and the morning silent. The tessellated panes of glass in the leaded window had, over the years, settled at slightly different angles, so even in this overcast light they glittered like the scales of a fish.
‘My steward told me that two days ago someone climbed Tarmigan’s statue in Rachiswater Grand Place and carved a scar on its face.’ I drew a line across my cheek.
‘A scar?’
‘Yes. Turning King Tarmigan into King Raven with one stroke of the chisel! Right in the centre of the square, bang in the middle of the capital.’
‘Do they know who did it?’
‘No, it was under cover of darkness. The night watch covered the statue straight away but enough revellers saw it for the gossip to spread. Many people are turning against Tarmigan; my steward tells me their whispering grows bolder every minute. If Raven pushes now, he may well topple him.’
Jant’s eyes widened. ‘Who would you declare for?’
‘Comet, Comet. I support the throne, no matter whose backside is on it, Tarmigan’s or Raven’s. And if no one’s is, then I support the idea that someone’s should be. I support the idea of the throne itself.’
‘Would you send archers to protect the king?’
‘The last thing I want to do is arm my manor or his.’
‘And about Dellin?’
‘What
about
Dellin?’ I paused and turned to him. His preoccupation, his appearance so unusually neglected, his adoption of their dress, the distant look in his eyes reminded me of how I felt with Savory. I studied him and grew more certain. Certain? It was obvious! ‘Tell me of Dellin?’ I offered, just to be sure, and he bowed his head. ‘You love her, don’t you?’
about
Dellin?’ I paused and turned to him. His preoccupation, his appearance so unusually neglected, his adoption of their dress, the distant look in his eyes reminded me of how I felt with Savory. I studied him and grew more certain. Certain? It was obvious! ‘Tell me of Dellin?’ I offered, just to be sure, and he bowed his head. ‘You love her, don’t you?’
‘If you’d seen her slay a bear single-handed, you’d be in . . . you-know-what too.’
‘In love?’
‘Oh god, don’t make me say it!’
Well, well. Could it be that all this time Jant simply needed to find one of his own kind? I had never thought it possible. I had thought him utterly devoid of the ability to love, not least because generosity is a prerequisite of love and Jant was so thoroughly self-centred that he had little passion to spare. In fact, I sometimes wondered whether he even realised other people had independent existences and thoughts - other than those about himself.
He kept himself as hard as his orphan days. If he had been born with the ability to love he had mislaid it in the backstreets of Hacilith or had it frozen out of him on the altiplano. Segregation had suppressed it; poverty had parched him of it; and adversity made him hate more easily than he could find it in himself to love. He could ask ‘Where’s the brothel?’ in ten languages, but he has never said ‘I love you’ in even one. He just drifts through life casually side-stepping any sort of anguish. It was completely uncharacteristic of him to submit to the most exquisite torment of all.
‘That’s why I came,’ he admitted. ‘I thought I’d ask the expert.’
‘I’m hardly an expert.’
He raised a grimy hand theatrically. ‘You said, “My love for Savory was the greatest the world has ever known. Love flowed from me like waves, the colour of waves of heat. A love as strong as this could not exist for long because its intensity threatened to drive me to madness. I struggled day and night to recover, but in vain.”’
Yes, those were my words. I can tell you what book he cribbed them from if you like. He had started sarcastically but ended miserably and added, ‘That’s how I feel.’
‘It’s pointless asking you to forget about her?’
‘Yes.’
‘So what do you want from me?’
‘Some advice.’
‘Some advice? Let me see . . . Remember what happened to Savory? Well, Dellin is at risk of dying too, and so soon - being Rhydanne she will race through life and be old before she’s forty. She’ll leave you lonely and bereft, Jant. There’s hardly enough time to befriend and court these mortal women before they die . . . Time is short. She will change so much in a year that you’d be shocked and disgusted with yourself for falling in love with her in the first place. I have known women fascinating for one night and repellent a mere six months later. For love to persist you must change at the same rate they do and, believe me, it isn’t easy. So be with her as much as possible. Isn’t it unbearable to be away even this long?’
‘Yes. But we have to stop Raven.’
‘For god’s sake, Jant. If you’re Eszai you can do both!’
I walked to the stone fireplace and stood watching the brassy flames with my back to him. I suddenly felt tired of the mortals’ constant striving for supremacy, whether a village blood feud such as ended Savory’s life, or the never-ending stream of Challengers for my position in the Circle, or the Rachiswater twins wrestling for the crown of the most powerful country in the world. No two mortals, like no two snowflakes, are identical, but their aspirations are all the bloody same.
‘The twins are stubborn,’ I said. ‘This won’t pass without bloodshed. Such a terrible waste of life . . . Aren’t the Insects enough to contend with?’
Jant shook himself. ‘All right! I’ll forget Dellin! The Empire’s business comes first!’
I doubted he would be able to give her up. Willpower is something Jant sadly lacks. I had never known him so agitated. I’ve seen him exhausted by flying and drunk seven eighths to oblivion. I’ve seen him with his shoulder broken - by myself - in a joust, but each time his natural energy buoys him up. Now it seemed to be driving him to distraction.
I glanced around the room at the oak-panelled walls, the low ceiling, the bulbous turned legs of the furniture, my violin on its stand wreathed in sheet music, my kitbox for fletching arrows, and lastly down at the now-cold coffee, plates of bacon and toast on the table. So much for my quiet New Year. So much for archery practice and long evenings stoking the memory of Savory . . . I sighed and reconciled myself to trailing north to Darkling. ‘I will come with you.’
Jant’s face lit up. Then he bit his lip. ‘But it’s three days’ ride in the snow.’
‘How long did it take you to fly here?’
‘Um . . . Just under two hours.’
I laughed, impressed, but he leapt to his feet.
‘Why should I be in love? Am I only flattering myself? Why should I go through this? What does it matter!’
Let him disown love. He twists on the hook because the emotion is new to him.
‘I shouldn’t concern myself with anything that isn’t Messenger’s duty,’ he ranted. ‘I nearly let the rot set in! Already! If I give way I’ll be prone to all sorts of luxuries . . . Love? I’m being soft! Lackadaisical. Unfit! If I go on like this a Challenger will beat me. I’ll lose my place in the Circle. It mustn’t happen!’
‘You can tear your heart out and concentrate on nothing but your work, but you’ll end up as hollow as the Architect. You should welcome feeling different for once in your life; you should make a virtue of it.’
‘A
virtue
of it? It’s horrible!’
virtue
of it? It’s horrible!’
I returned to the table and pressed his wing reassuringly. ‘Fly ahead and prepare the way - at each stage a meal and quarters for the night. I don’t need a change of horses; Balzan is better than any of theirs. Tell Raven to expect a guest for the Shattering. Send him into a scuffle for the best roast ox and hot negus, and clay for the Wishes. Don’t tell him either of us knows about the coup.’
‘What will you do?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea. I’ll only know when I see his face. But somehow we’ll check his reins. Watch for my arrival and give me the latest news.’
‘And Dellin . . . I hope she hid—I mean, moved camp.’
‘Certainly you must find her,’ I said, and this time I couldn’t keep the envy from my voice. He has a chance to be happy and I have left all my chances behind in the deep past.
He offered me his hand. ‘I’ll land at Irksdale hunting lodge, Toft coach inn, Plow reeve’s hall. I’ll tell them you’re riding, warn them to be ready: every stage, all the way through! From Plow take the Pelt Road to Eyrie village and up for six kilometres through the forest to the keep. The track’s marked by posts and notches on the trees. And . . .’
‘And what?’
‘Beware of Rhydanne. In the forest you wouldn’t even see Dellin before she lands on your neck.’
I nodded. ‘Then three days. Goodbye, Jant.’
‘Goodbye, Lightning.’ He gave me a grateful half-smile, then was out of the door. He let himself out of the porch and I watched him open his vast wings, sprint down the lawn and jump, flap up over the ridge of the barn and into the sky - smaller and fainter into the low cloud until he disappeared from view.
I quelled the surge of envy I always feel on seeing him fly. Seventy years since he joined the Circle and it’s still a novelty. My wings twitched and I spread them - if I stretch, I can just brush the mantelpiece with my feather tips, and the wall on the other side. Oh, well, maybe I will learn to fly on the day he learns to shoot straight. I reached over and pulled the bell rope.
The reeve appeared instantaneously - almost, I surmised, as if he had been listening outside the door. ‘Ready Balzan,’ I told him. ‘His winter caparison, ice shoes - everything for Darkling. I must go north for some days, perhaps weeks.’
‘But the festival, my lord?’ He was crestfallen. Months of planning, baking, preserving, ordering everything from the traditional ox to spiced apple sauce, vanished in an instant.
‘Believe me, Foin, I would stay if I could.’
‘I understand: the Castle’s duty.’ He nodded sorrowfully. ‘Does the Messenger
ever
bring good news?’
ever
bring good news?’
Soon afterward, muffled in scarf and greatcoat, my lidded quiver of arrows and two longbows in cases on the saddle, I rode out of Foin and up over the fell. The pristine snow covered the long hills seamed with drystone walls and the bristling trees in the woodland below.
The fresh air revived me and I smiled. The hog’s back hills and the sweeping vista revitalised me, with the eerie light of the lowering sky swollen with snow. Something to do at last - to pit my wits against Raven! I urged Balzan to a gallop and ice flung from his hooves. A white horse almost invisible against the white hills of Rachis Moor. Riding hard I leant forward on his neck, my mind singing with excitement. Jant in love and Raven poised to snatch the throne: the world is changing again and I will put out my hand and turn it the way I wish.
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