The Modern World (30 page)

Cyan said, ‘Oh no, look at Daddy being bloody effusive.’

I wondered what to say to her. I wanted her to stop making Lightning’s life so difficult, but on the other hand I didn’t want her to end up stuck in a palace all her life, even more jaded than she already was.

I said, ‘Lightning’s torn between his duty to the Emperor and to you. Ten years ago he put his love for you first and it cost him severely. I know in the past he hasn’t given you the attention you deserve. But he’s incredibly busy now and your attention-seeking is distracting him. Have you told him about your brush with jook?’

‘No.’

‘Well, Rayne knows. If you took it again, she would definitely tell him.’

‘God, no. I don’t want to see those
things
again.’

‘The Gabbleratchet?’

Cyan shot me a look. ‘How did you know?’

‘I was there.’

‘It was just a dream. It wasn’t real.’

‘Oh, the Shift is real, all right. San ordered me to keep it secret from Zascai. I suppose he doesn’t want mortals trying to reach it and dying in the process.’

Her quick temper ignited. ‘You pansy boy! That’s bullshit – all bullshit!’

‘I was there, Cyan.’

‘As a trick of my imagination!’

‘The Gabbleratchet is not a trick of your imagination.’

‘Gabbleratchet.’ She rolled the name over her tongue and scowled. ‘I once longed to fly like you can. I used to dream of the smell of clouds and the thin air, the way you smell. Now I have nightmares of rotting hounds. I woke up screaming last night. Daddy wanted to know what was the matter, but I told him that being lost in Hacilith had frightened me. You’re not joking, are you?’

‘No. There are more worlds than we visited but the distance to Shift would kill us. The Insects’ own domain cuts through thousands of worlds; I meant it when I said they make us look inferior.’

‘God might be in the Shift.’

I laughed. ‘Oh, don’t you start.’

‘God is on a break. Why not in the Shift?’

‘Sure,’ I said sarcastically. ‘San keeps it prisoner in Epsilon and feeds it chocolate biscuits.’

‘Are you the only person to know?’

‘No. Rayne has also been to Vista, when she was your age …’

‘What a scary thought.’

‘Yes. She was young once … so she says. Your father has seen a Shift creature but he wouldn’t discuss it with me afterwards. He won’t say a word about the Insect bridge too, even though he burned it down. It’s too weird for him.’

‘Typical of Daddy to ignore an adventure so important!’

‘He’s denied it, filed it away in the same part of his mind that he’d use if you told him you’d taken jook. He treats me with a bit more suspicion, though; as if I’m having a disordering effect on the world.’

‘I think he blames me for a sea change too,’ Cyan said. ‘But if he can’t deal with it, it isn’t my fault.’

‘Maybe in twenty years I’ll drop the Shift into the conversation and see if he responds.’

The Carniss troops filed in past us. Those on horseback were mainly women, with crossbows slung on both sides of their saddles – two crossbows, to work in duo with their reloaders. They were pulling bolts from bandoliers around their bodies and slipping them point first into the depleted racks attached upright on their saddlebows.

The crossbow bolts’ points gleamed – hard steel moulded to soft iron sockets, which cushion the shaft so it doesn’t split on impact with Insect shell but drives straight through.

Cyan stared at the division captain, who wore a rain-darkened leather apron over her lap on which a hook from her pulley belt rested. She had been spanning her crossbow in the skirmishes. Insect mandibles had slashed her boots and the metal toecaps shone brightly through the cut leather. Her sallet helmet was not as shiny; it had a golden-brown patina from being polished with sheep fat every night.

She bowed her head to me as she passed. She trailed a leash from the saddle, attached to the muzzle of the division’s mascot. It padded beside her on big paws like snowshoes, pasted with mud. Its deep, pure white fur was flattened by the rain, but its galena-grey eyes were keen.

‘What’s that?’ said Cyan.

‘A Darkling white wolf.’

Wrenn appeared beside us. ‘Don’t mind me standing here?’ he asked, risking death by dirty look from Cyan. ‘The others, they … Well, I just feel better to be around you two.’

I understood. He’s only thirty, and the average age of our colleagues in the hall was about eight hundred.

‘It’s good to see Veery again now I’m Eszai,’ he said. ‘I gave him that scar but he seems OK about it.’

‘After all, you did turn out to be Eszai-good,’ I said.

He hopped from foot to foot. ‘The Emperor, coming here! We’re in for it, aren’t we?’

I nodded. We stood there for a while, watching the seemingly endless procession. Sporadic hammering still echoed in the background; rain
drove through the spotlights around the palisade. The carpenters, proficient Peregrine shipbuilders drafted to the fyrd, were continuing through the night.

Eventually Cyan said, ‘That captain was a woman.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Not much older than me.’

‘That’s right. Come inside.’

‘I want to watch.’ She stood, stubbornly, and descended into her thoughts again.

I drew my wing closer around her. I don’t know about her, or Wrenn, but I wished I was a very, very long way from here, sitting in a bar.

OUR BRAVE BOYS ARRIVE SAFELY

The Hacilith General Fyrd began arriving at Slake Cross today. The pals from Galt and Old Town marched in with a smart step and big smiles, after 900 km by cart. The Captain of the Ninth Division, Connel, 22, said, ‘We’re raring to have a go at these flying bugs. The people have been great as we came through Awia. The Awians have a spotless record, but now the Hacilith lads are here those bugs haven’t got a chance.’

They are the best that Morenzia has, strong, keen and selfless. We wish them the best!

Smatchet, with the troops at Slake Cross fort
Hacilith Post
27.05.25

Lightning reluctantly agreed to let Cyan leave town. Since I was welcoming the governors and wardens while Lightning was holding Insects off from attacking the arriving troops, he asked me to look after her. I took her to the armoury and got her kitted up.

‘Here’s a brigandine jacket.’ I passed it to her and she let it drop dramatically almost to the floor. ‘It’s heavy!’

I helped her buckle it on. ‘It fits very well, though. Here are some greaves for your legs, made for a woman about your size.’ I showed her how to fasten them. Even if she was strong enough, I thought it too risky to give her plate armour made for another person, which wouldn’t fit properly or might have unseen deterioration. The fyrd who wear the mass-produced stuff that comes in three sizes only do so because they can’t afford better. I found her an open-faced sallet helmet with a tapered tail to protect the nape of her neck.

Then we went to the stables but Cyan didn’t want to go in. ‘I don’t know …’ she said. ‘Since the … since the Gabbleratchet … I don’t really like horses.’

It took me half an hour to convince her to enter the stables and she walked close behind me holding my hand. We passed the stalls of a hundred other mounts until I found her an exceptional piebald palfrey that in no way resembled the horses of the Gabbleratchet.

Cyan examined its hooves uncertainly. She still needed some coaxing. ‘The eternal hunt won’t come here,’ I said. ‘The Shift is so big that the chances of it reaching our world are minute. To be honest I’ve always got the impression we’re a bit of a backwater. Besides, those things weren’t horses. You know that, Cyan; you’ve been riding since you could walk.’

‘I couldn’t control that black horse. It was the only time I’ve never been able to manage one.’

‘Because it wasn’t one. The Gabbleratchet is just itself. It’s inexplicable but we left it behind.’

The stable boy brought me my sleek racehorse. Pangare butted her
buff, suedy muzzle into my hands and shook her head, flopping the neat knots of her short, hogged mane from side to side.

‘What a peculiar animal,’ Cyan said. ‘I didn’t know you had a horse.’

‘Well, now you do.’ I held Pangare’s halter. ‘These Ghallain duns have unbelievable stamina. She might not be a thoroughbred but she can outlast anything your Awian stables have to offer.’

It always takes me a long time to find a mount who can both tolerate carrying a Rhydanne and is fast enough for me. I had heard of Pangare, a seventeen hands high courser winning every race on the Ghallain pampas, and she had cost the Castle a fortune.

While the boy fitted Pangare’s bridle and buckled the wide strap of the saddle under her taut belly, I corded my satchel to the cantle through rough-cut holes and clipped my crossbow to it. ‘Come on, then.’

Cyan swung up into her saddle, ducking under the beams. ‘I’m brave, aren’t I? I got back on.’

‘Yes, you are very brave.’

‘Just like that fyrd captain? I’m as brave as she is.’

‘Of course, you could be.’

We walked our horses out of the stable and rode slowly through the commotion of the growing camp. Smoke from cooking fires rose into a pall above the lines of cream tents.

We rode off the road – it was completely packed with carts, horses, and men marching quickly – now that town was in sight they wanted to reach it as soon as possible. It was a river of humanity, and lancer escorts formed other streams on either side.

Cyan leant forward, sped to a gallop and hurtled past me. I gave Pangare rein; she loped exuberantly, kicking out with her forelegs, and caught up with the girl at once. ‘Hey! What are you doing?’

‘I’m just glad to be outside,’ she said, free for the moment of her usual ennui. ‘I’ve been cooped up since Hacilith. I think without a doubt this is the worst place I’ve ever been dragged to.’

‘I’m inclined to agree. Where would you rather be?’

‘In the city, of course. All the places I’ve lived are dreadful compared to Old Town. Where would you rather be?’

‘Up there.’ I pointed to where, far behind the town, the cliff-topped hills stretched along the horizon.

‘In the mountains?’

‘Those are just the foothills,’ I said. ‘You should see the high summits – there are so many pinnacles and valleys that a hundred Rhydanne could live there for a hundred years and never meet each other.’

‘Sounds awful.’

‘Let me show you what Pangare can do. Come on!’

We galloped beside the road. In the fresh air, it was almost as fulfilling as flying. The sky was a uniform white, with blue-grey round the edges like milk in a dish. The sun, a burnished silver coin, blazed ineffectually at its zenith. An infuriating, unsettled breeze stirred the few grass stalks still upstanding between drying, churned-up clods of mud. Higher on the hillside, bunches of heather hooped and shivered, clustered around the white rocks that looked like the moors’ uncovered bones.

Cyan kept looking down the road with a twinge of wanderlust. I would have to watch her carefully or she would try to escape again.

‘How many thousands of people?’ she asked emphatically. ‘Their line goes on into the distance.’

I checked my notebook. ‘This is just the Cobalt baggage train. The Peregrine archers should be next.’

‘Peregrine?’ she said. ‘You mean – my manor? I have fyrd?’

‘Of course! When you come of age you’ll have a fyrd of more than twenty thousand men. That’s more than we can see to the horizon.’

‘Like the Carniss men the other day?’

‘Pah. Carniss only has one muster. Cobalt here, only has two: Cobalt and Grass Isle, and their governor is too old to lead them. You have four musters. The baggage train for Peregrine is twelve hundred wagons.’

‘Can we see them?’

‘If you want.’

We rode to the end of the Cobalt carts but there was still no sign of Peregrine’s sleeping falcon standard. ‘They’re probably delayed by the traffic jam,’ I said. ‘We’ll have to stop here. I don’t want to take you too far from town.’

Cyan reined in her palfrey, halted and gazed at two standard bearers with vertical gonfalon pennants covered in knot-work. It was the Morenzian dexter red hand banner, rendered completely in interlaced lines. The standard bearers, riding wearing nothing but purple or grey singlets and breeches, were so covered in tattoos that their outlines looked blurred. The ingeniously entwined bands, alaunts biting their own legs, elongated horses and spiralling sea snakes in every colour covered them so confusingly that it was difficult to tell where their tattoos ended and their clothes and knot-work jewellery began. Old tattoos had been interlinked with new ones, storiated over their whole bodies apart from their faces.

The battalion they led marched to the beat of similarly decorated
drums on their saddlebows. Thickly accented voices burred among them.

Cyan said, ‘Wow. Who are they?’

‘The first of the Litanee cavalry.’