Dangerous Offspring Part 5

The land began to look crumpled, like a sheet that had been shaken and left rucked and folded. I was rising up over the tail of the Awndyn Downs. I went over Coutille town in its muster, all uncobbled roads and self-consciously traditional half-timbered homes. The walls of the oldest buckled outwards so they looked as if they were about to collapse and concertina down in a pile of thick thatch.

More signs of the city dotted the south Awndyn Downs: the handsome private houses of Hacilith industrialists or lawyers; litigious and venal merchants, s.h.i.+pmen, and businessmen. They were not interested in owning land because it's more respectable to be a merchant in Hacilith, but they were eager to display their wealth.

All along the horizon white figures cut into the chalk hills were turning pink in the twilight. They were miniscule in the distance but just distinguishable as the badges of the adjoining manors, the dolphin of Awndyn, Eske plough, Hacilith fist and s.h.i.+vel star, cut and maintained by their fyrds.

Hacilith cast an upwards glow on low cloud base; the pale yellow of cannel coal fires in thousands of homes. I could smell the coal tar already. Closer, and the larger buildings loomed into familiarity; I could name every one. The field of vision narrowed, the roofs increased in size, and the suburban tatter of the Pityme district opened out beneath me. It extended in a ribbon along both ca.n.a.l banks and for a shorter distance up the Camber Road as if stuck to it.

I cruised at the rate of two beats a minute, my legs straight and pressed together in quick accipitrine flight, above the road as it ran across the single, flint-faced span of Pityme Bridge, the oldest on the ca.n.a.l, carrying the Camber Road into the city of Hacilith and the republic of Morenzia.

The Moren River was silted and sluggish, seemingly a solid bulk. It reflected dully, as if sh.e.l.lac varnished, the lights glimmering on its far bankthe Marenna Dock piers and waterfront way over in Brandoch manor.

The Moren is tidal as far as Hacilith and its banks are brackish. I saw a dismal grazier wandering on the marsh, looking after emaciated sheep. Then the huge iron lock gates at the end of the HacilithAwndyn ca.n.a.l hove into view and the marsh ended in a continuous stretch of wharves.

This immense ca.n.a.l was Frost's grand waterway; it took her fifty years to complete and it ensured the rise to prominence of the Wrought armouries. The ca.n.a.l made Awndyn's fortune too, but it turned Diw harbour into a ghost town, as s.h.i.+ps no longer needed to risk rounding Cape Brattice.

Below me, the rough Galt district docks sprawled along the whole east bank of the Moren, surrounded by refuse tips and the shacks of 'mudlarks' who sc.r.a.pe an existence by beachcombing the mudflats. The paddletrams had been decommissioned decades ago, and their waterwheels had been dismantled, but the decaying supports reared like spires out of the river.

Fat chimneys, squat chimneys of pottery and slate. All the mucky house backs with alleys hung with was.h.i.+ng and piled with so much refuse it was turning into soil.

I made very sharp turns and fell steeply with my wings fanned out and my legs dangling. My descent and angle of vision became more acute: the shop fronts too sheer to see, just lines and lines of roofs running in the same direction. I seemed to be going faster the lower I dropped, because I could measure my speed against every ridge and gutter. Landing is the most hazardous time and I concentrated completely on finding a safe place. It was impossible. I couldn't glide down any of the roads without hitting a shop front.

I turned and the exclusive Fiennafor district tilted into view ahead. The tall eighteenth-century town houses were regimented in quarter-circle curved terraces. Aver-Falconet's bronze-clad palace front glowed dully in the street lights. Puddles glinted among the cobbles on its wide parade.

Here was the arc closest to the palace, all double sash windows, Neo-Tealean white fronts with plain columns flat against the walls. The gates in their iron railings gave onto the parade, around an immaculate oval lawn with a spreading plane tree. It was The Crescent, and Lightning's house was number one.

I descended in front of it. I thrust my wings forward and the feathers spread flat automatically to stop me stalling. Wings' fingers open, legs down: my boot toes skimmed over the surface of a puddle leaving two long ripples. I stepped down out of the air and began walking without a pause, folding my wings behind me.

The yellow wheels of a glossy coach rolled past an arm's length away. I let it pa.s.s, crossed the road and walked up the steps to the black painted door.

The door knocker was so highly polished it looked unreal. I rapped it and looked around as I waited for the major-domo to answer. The sky was heavy with more rain and the evening still.

The major-domo showed me a room. She laid out a dressing gown of the best Awian silk and took my clothes to be cleaned and pressed. She spread the table with hot coffee and pancakes. When I had eaten I stripped all the covers off the bed and slept on the floor.

CHAPTER 5.

I began searching for Cyan and thought it best to try the fas.h.i.+onable district first. I walked around Fiennafor and looked in Aver-Falconet's palace, then Lorimer Street with The Moren Grand Theatre, The Bourse and The Old Almshouse Cafe. I found no sign of Lightning's daughter anywhere.

I hired a carriage and drove east to Moren Wells, a very upmarket spa town recently swallowed by the fringe of the city. I searched for Cyan in the Sinter Spa and Calandra Park, but no one there had heard any news.

The next morning I wondered what to do. I only had one day left and I doubted I could find her. I decided to work my way south through Galt into Old Town. That way I could visit Rayne at the university before leaving. I made sure my wallet was safe, b.u.t.toned my coat pockets tight, and submerged myself in Galt, the largest of the five districts.

The further I walked, the more I realised that I would never find Cyan but, ever hopeful, I walked slowly and looked around carefully, especially at the girls, as I pa.s.sed the: Scuttleb.u.t.t Casino c.o.c.kfighting pits Prize-fighters' boxing booths Clutchfut Vintners Inglenook Hostel The bull ring The paper mill The bra.s.s hammer mill The denim mill The cartwheel lathes The markets: The cattle market The hides and skins' market The broadcloth Furbelows Market The woodwork Treen Market The gla.s.s and pots Frit Market The fish and salt Gabelle Market The Meal Market, where s.h.i.+ploads of corn change hands The Meat Market, its drains running with blood The Mop Market, where job seekers sell their own services The Crimp Market for mountains of coal The Whispering Market for perfumes and objets d'arta covered arcade where the stalls are packed so closely together that business is done at a whisper in case anybody hears the deals Past the b.u.t.terstone at the markets' end Past the Cooper's yard Past the Atilliator's yard Past the rope walk Past East Sea Customs House Past the dry dock, where s.h.i.+ps were repaired To the wet dock where goods were being unloaded.

I paused there and looked out over the river, a solid ma.s.s of insh.o.r.e galleys, barges, tugs and flyboats; waiting to load, register, enter the ca.n.a.l or extricate themselves from the chaos. Upriver, a single armed caravel watched the teeming industry with a constable's eye.

The incredible number of wagons, drovers' turkeys with pitch on their feet, grain storehouses full to the roof, the stink of coal tar and the hubbub of the markets reminded me of the queues coming into the battlefront. I didn't stand any chance of finding Cyan if she was lost in these crowds.

I bought a kebab on a stick, and a copy of Lammergeier fas.h.i.+on magazine to see what my wife, Tern Wrought, was doing this season. I scanned her column, called 'Ageless Taste', but it had nothing about me. I had not seen Tern this happy since last century; she had paid off most of her debts with the booty from Tris and was supervising the rebuilding and redecorating of her manor house. Wrought isn't called the fas.h.i.+on capital of Awia for nothing; Tern was working hard, from party to party, trailing people without noticing them, except for when they itched.

It began to drizzle and the damp Hacilith chill sank into everything. I turned away from the river and walked deeper into Galt, heading towards Old Town. The houses here were all back-to-backs with alleys between them; no yards but one outside toilet shared by each alley. Rainwater chuckled along the gutter, was.h.i.+ng over some rotting pamphlets from the recent elections.

The poverty was obvious here; many lived in the streets. Everyone wore hats, endless designs of cloth caps and liripipes. A beggar was shouting, 'Fists and daffodils! Swans and sh.e.l.ls!' I riffled through my wallet and dropped him a couple of ten-penny notes with the Summerday sh.e.l.l.

I glanced over to the s.h.i.+eld factory's covered courtyard. Boys from the workhouse were laying out unpainted s.h.i.+elds for their glue to dry. I could just see onto the factory floor where craftsmen were making them by hand.

I stopped and looked around. I knew I was still heading towards Old Town because the university's tower, with turrets at each of its four corners, projected above the shambling roofs. I was deep in Galt now but I felt weirdly disorientated. I had expected to recognise my old haunt, but it bore no resemblance to the Galt I knew. There was no ground plan left of the streets, no trace whatsoever of the old docks. It's been two hundred years, Jant, I told myself; what do you expect? It was unfamiliar...no, so nearly familiar, that it was giving me the creeps.

A cart laden with rubbish went past; the whiskery driver bellowing, 'Raag and Bo-one! Raag and Bo-one!'

What was that about? Where were all the wharves? All this used to be open groundit seemed impossiblehow could so many houses have been fitted into it?

I was sure I should have pa.s.sed the Bird in the Hand Awian strip joint, but there were just more houses. Either I was completely in the wrong place or the very roads had changed. Well, I thought, the chemist's shop where I used to work would have been over there. I'll walk down and see if I'm right.

When I lived here, the city way of thinking trapped me, narrowing my horizons just as the factories block out the sky. I didn't even want to leave. I put all my energy into misguided actions and negative reactions until I couldn't pull myself from the mire. Back then, the roads out of Galt led in two directions. To the left, the streets thinned out and one road wound over Pityme Bridge into the beginning of gra.s.sy hills in the distance. I could have taken that road and escaped, but I never did; not until I was forced out. That road may as well have not existed. Every night I went right, down the other alley to the strip joint with a sign promising 'Great t.i.ts!' in the window. I convinced myself that I'd had enough of travelling, should stay in the shop and read books, and visit wh.o.r.es. It never even crossed my mind that the Castle would want my talent, until my life in Hacilith was in ruins.

I had liked working in Dotterel's chemist shop, it was dim and quiet; the gang's fear of employment made it a safe refuge. With the shutters down, every customer who entered saw me, a boy slouching on the counter who had already looked them over, a freak perhaps, tall and skinny even for adolescence, but a perfect confidant.

My time looking for Cyan was nearly up. It's hopeless, I thoughtI'll go and see Rayne instead, if she hasn't already left for Slake, and then I'll head back. At least I'll be able to tell the others when Rayne should be arriving.

I reached an open plaza and stopped. This should be Cinder Street. Maybe...that row of shops was along the same line. I looked around. If this was Cinder Street, then the Kentledge pub would have been at the far end...And my chemist's shop would have been...there. And the Campion Vaudeville! That should be on the next street over! I ran quickly towards it, remembering the peeling playbills fluttering on its boards, the shards of gla.s.s that topped the walls around it, the masks and scrolls around the windows in its leaking mansard roof.

The street ended at an empty plaza with a row of smart boutiques and some sort of trendy wine bar. The Campion Vaudeville had totally gone.

They've redeveloped my street! How dare they? Yes, it had been run down but I had liked it! There was no trace of the second-hand shops full of individual texture I had loved so much. That corner was where I busked with Babbittand now it had all been swept away.

The new shops had no character; time hadn't given them any unique pattern of wear. They blocked my view of the ca.n.a.l towpath, pressed up tall and narrow against each other as if someone had put a hand at each end of the plaza and squeezed them together. Their colour-washed fronts were rose pink, yellow, pale blue, chalky green and grey. They proudly announced they'd pa.s.sed inspection, with firemark, ratmark and lousemark tin badges tacked to their walls.

I walked along the row, half whited-out by drizzle. Streams of water dripped from the sign of the horrendous new bar at the far end and pattered into concentric rings on the paving stones. That bar would be more or less on the place where the Kentledge pub used to be, where our gang leader carved the Wheel scar into my shoulder. The power of the memory made me shudder: I outlast whole streets, and now Cinder Street and everything I remembered was no more.

This must have been exactly where Dotterel the chemist picked me up; when he made me his apprentice. I stood and stared at the row of shops until I could call up an image of the Campion two hundred years ago. It seemed larger in memory, closer and brighter than the shops it overlaid. Its smoke-stained stone had flaked off here and there showing clean, biscuity spots.

I heard a whir, a paddletram!It sounded like it could be...but it wasn't. Simply flocks of starlings screaming and swirling in to roost.

A vision of my younger self jumped down from the Campion's portico and ran past me, soundlessly though his footsteps should have splashed. He vanishes. He reappears again in the alley by the Kentledge; transparentthen solida lanky fifteen-year-old in a filthy parka. He ducks his head and wipes his nose on his sleeve.

Lines of coaches are waiting outside the Campion Vaudeville, and wisps of smog are curling through and around their wheels. Oil lamps are guttering out with gin-blue flames since it is three in the morning and the late show is just ending. The act closes to half-hearted acclaim and people begin to stagger out into the street. Linkboys hang around in a curious cloud, their tapers scribbling lines of smoke into the air above them. The Rhydanne boy hates them, because they understand each other. They know how to buy bustard burgers and tablet fudge. They swagger with the all-encompa.s.sing importance of their job.

From the end of the street there are raised voices, lads shouting to each other about the can-can dancers. Paddletrams groan past in the background, grinding cabbage leaves and hawked-up chewing tobacco into a black sludge between the rails. The boy is faster than sight; he pauses to draw breath and ducks behind the frame of a waiting coach. The nearest human moves on and the boy relaxes.

He moves in quick bursts, waiting behind lamp post and coach wheel, doorway and alley. He crooks his elbow and tears the Insect wing windows of all the coaches along the line.

'I saw you!' calls a voice from somewhere in the fog. Quick as a rat the boy leaps onto the top of the carriage, which hardly rocks at all on its flat springs. He crouches, nose streaming, piercing eyes in a grimy face.

An old man emerges from the porch of the Campion. His head is bowed and his face is in shadow. This is a trick the boy very much admires. The man looks up; his face is padded, deeply wrinkled and his nose veined cranberry red. Wisps of hair too white for Galt adhere to his bald head. He is wearing a long, grey coat and carrying a cane with a silver handle, which he points at the boy. The boy simply crouches further on thin haunches and spreads his wings.

The man knows that if he takes a step or even stares too hard, the boy will run. Very querulously he says, 'Who are you?' but he says it in Scree.

'You speak Scree? How? At last! What is this place? Er...I haven't spoken to anyone since last melt season. I'm ill all the time. I've never been this ill before. I have to hunt for myself! And I c-can't make any one understand! No one'

's.h.!.+ Slower, boy; don't gabble. You're alone?'

'You're observant!'

'Why did you break the windows?'

The boy shrugged. What else could he do to show his anger or make his presence felt? He sat cross-legged on the coach roof, reached a hand down through the torn window and brought out an apple. He began to examine it with the delicacy of mime.

'They don't belong to you, Dara.'

'I'm a s.h.i.+ra. That could be the reason why I am finding it so entertaining to break them.'

'You're quick,' said the old man, smiling.

'I'm the quickest,' said the boy.

The man took a tight grip on his cane and tapped the cobbles for a while in thought. The boy, seeing this, threw down his apple which rolled under the folds of the man's long coat. Enthralled, the boy watched it, head on one side. His instincts were to bolt, but this man was the first person he had spoken to in a year. Indecision rooted him to the spot. He swore in Scree, but all those insults about goats didn't seem too relevant in Hacilith.

The man gave a rustle of coughing laughter. 'Well, I need an a.s.sistant, but I never thought I would have to tame one...I will turn now and walk away,' he continued slowly. 'You can follow me if you want. No one will hurt you. No one will force you, but it will be best for you if you come.'

The man walked on and did not look back, and gradually disappeared into the smog. He did not seem to be a threat; indeed, he could be a saviour. The boy watched from his precarious perch, then fluttered down and sauntered after him, still prepared to run.

Dotterel and the boy walked through the wall of the bar and disappeared. I sighed. Any Rhydanne would have been naive in the city, but I had been naive even by Rhydanne standards. I was quite the little foreigner; it's a wonder I survived at all.

I need a drink after seeing that, and besides, the rain was running down my neck. I investigated the bar, plated with brushed and burnished bronze along its whole front. Smooth almost featureless metal statues with folded arms and stylised wings like blades stood with heavy elegance on either side of its doorway. It was done up to look like Aver-Falconet's square palace, in the new Decorative Art. Its sign said: The Jacamar Club. An Awian pub, then, the sort popular with the few tourists who came out this way from Fiennafor. As if to prove my thought, some frightful shrieking laughter resounded from inside. I have never understood why travellers and expats feel the need to go to a pub mocked up with all the features of a bar of their homeland to drink wine at ten times the price. There were any number of Morenzian inns nearby where they could drink beer, eat boar pie and hear the citizens speaking their own language.

I went inside, flapping my half-closed wings to dry them and flicking drops everywhere. A couple of students at a nearby table yelled, but when they looked up and saw me, they shut up abruptly.

The pub's fittings were the most up-to-date design but the floor was sticky with spilt drinks. Square columns were bolted to the walls, all painted black but with gold lightning flashes and pointed feathers on the tops. A strikingly graceful fresco of a deer chased by hundreds of hounds fled along the walls. All the way to the rear wall the hind ran with the hounds ever at her throat and, below her outstretched legs, on a leather sofa stained with nicotine, sat Cyan.

CHAPTER 6.

Oh, no. I could hear Cyan's voice from the doorway. She was too conspicuous, blissfully unaware she could be attracting every thief and rapist in Galt. She was recounting an anecdote at the top of her voice to a group of students and she hadn't noticed me, so I approached slowly, watching.

Cyan was no longer a child. Her blonde hair hung perfectly straight to the level of her bodice top. Its straps and laces showed and so did her armpit hair. Her short skirt kept riding up and she kept pulling it down. Her stockings plunged into huge black boots. She didn't have wings, she took after her mother, and she was willowy; slighter and more hourgla.s.s-shaped than an Awian woman.

At her hip hung a dagger, tied into its scabbard as city law dictated, and the most impressive little compound bow I have ever seen hung off the chair arm in a lacquer holster. Under the table a waxed cotton quiver held enough arrows to depopulate the whole bar. Didn't she know it was illegal to carry a bow openly in the city?

I hadn't seen Cyan since her mother's funeral. Her very poise seemed to have changed; a vehemence had taken root in her previously innocent adventurousness. This was the girl I used to tickle until she was helpless with giggling. This was the girl I picked up off the s.h.i.+pwreck years agobut of course she wouldn't remember. I watched covertly, feeling special, slightly dizzy having flown such a great distance and having walked into the city-dwellers' trivial little world. There was no way they could understand or even acknowledge my effort. To them I just appear.

As she talked animatedly an enormous ruby pendant on a gold chain rolled back and forth above her flattened b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Fortunately some of the other women's gla.s.s costume jewellery was just as ostentatious, but you didn't have to look closely to tell that Cyan's ruby was real.

She was surrounded by lots of girls, who must mistakenly think she could arrange a rendezvous with Lightning. They started to notice me and one by one slunk or darted back to their tables. She didn't look up until I was directly opposite her and the last of her court sloughed away leaving just one rugged-looking fyrdsman.

Cyan jumped nearly clear of the cus.h.i.+ons in surprise. 'Jant! Come here, come here and sit down! Why have you come all this way? Never mind; the coolest Eszai will make my night complete!'

I sank into an armchair on the other side of the table. Everyone's eyes were p.r.i.c.kling from the corners of the room. Cyan was overjoyed. 'Let me introduce you. Rawney, this is the Comet Jant s.h.i.+ra. He flies in from the Castle to see me. Sometimes he carries ice down from Darkling for our drinks...Jant, this is Rawney.'

'Rawney what?'

'No. Rawney Carron.'

'Very Morenzian. Pleased to meet you.' Rawney Carron ignored the hand I offered him and glowered at me. He seemed to have claimed owners.h.i.+p of Cyan. He was not tall so I guessed he was city born and bred. He wore fyrd fatigues with the murrey fist blazon of Hacilith sewn on the breast and he also had it tattooed on his arm. He had a weightlifter's build and he clearly fancied himself.

'He's a corporal,' said Cyan. 'And this...er...that was Sharny. He seems to have gone. Well, never mind. What are you doing here? Did Daddy send you? And why do you have soot on your eyes? Oh, it's make-up.'

Rawney sn.i.g.g.e.red.

'Shut it,' I told him. I was not prepared to take any cheek from a fyrdsman. 'Cyan, this time I'm here to bring you home.'

'She wants to stay,' said Rawney.

'Go and join the rest of your squad,' I told him.

'I haven't got one yet. I have to press a General Fyrd squad tonight.'

'Are you going to the front?'

'Yes. I'm looking forward to it. It's better than working in the docks. It's an adventure.'

'Good.' I gave him a grin.

Only the musters of Hacilith pressgang fyrd, and I knew Rawney must be professional Select Fyrd because only Select can be officers of any rank in either fyrd. He leant back on the couch and put his arm behind Cyan. I shuffled forward, as if to protect her.

'Did Daddy send you?' she repeated.

'As a matter of fact I suggested it to him. Are you all right?'

'I'm having a great time!'

'Do you have lodgings?'

'Yes.'

'And money?'

'Yes, of course. Daddy gave me pocket money for the tour, and I can always draw on my account. He fills it up now and again. He's loaded.'