The Year of Our War (5 page)

I didn’t blame her for wanting to watch from a distance, and I was pleased that she should want to observe me at all. Possibly she was playing a game with her own emotions as well as mine. She was teasing her fear, creeping as close as she could to the edge of the abyss. She was also placing a strong trial on my desire. I kept walking, as she sped through concealed corridors. I imagined her climbing over the ridges of broken-tiled roofs, past cisterns, pantries, cluttered kitchens; running through halls where men looked up in surprise. The image made me growl:
I am an Eszai. This sort of lechery won’t do
. But I knew that if I wanted to, I could catch her.

I
came to the church, which was part of the main complex inside the imposing walls. As I walked past the glass-paneled door, Ata Dei emerged from the gloom inside. I immediately stopped thinking about Genya; Ata’s hair was a beautiful distraction. There was hardly any light in the square church porch, but her hair still shone.

“Hello cat-eyes,” she said, looking through me. I had thought her face to be shaded, but as she strode nearer I saw that the shadow was really a bruise. It covered the bridge of her nose and one eye, swollen from lower lid to cheekbone. The bruise was dark, and pinpoint red showed vivid where the skin had been broken.

“Did you get that in the battle?” I asked.

Her bloodless lips twisted. “Oh, aye. But it was nothing to do with the Insects. Mist hit me. I wish I didn’t need him!”

“Why did he hit you?” I asked warily. I knew better than to get involved in a fight between husband and wife. Anyone caught in the crossfire between Ata and the Sailor fares worse than either of them. Long practice had made their sparring into an art form, and I didn’t know the rules.

Ata spat. “Because Dunlin and his guard rode straight past us. I say, ‘Let’s follow,’ because it looks to me like he needs backup, and you’re telling Tawny the same thing. Mist says, ‘No, stay here.’ He’s frankly fucking awkward. He’s been alive too long. So I say, ‘You stupid bastard, I’ll do it then,’ and I’m just about to call the Islanders when he flings out a fist and smacks me in the face.”

“Ow.”

“I tried to stab the dim git but he parried and then I realized the fyrd were watching. I thought you would intercept Dunlin; you were quicker than a curse in a courtroom.”

“I couldn’t stop a charge.” Wingless humans, like Ata, and the Awians, who are winged but flightless, will never understand that while I can view the battlefield from the air, I can’t control it.

“Aye,” she breathed. “Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself.” I stayed mute until she added, “Dunlin requested eight thousand troops. If you’d mustered them from the Plainslands rather than the coast like he told you they’d have been here by now. We were short of at least a thousand men this morning, and I doubt the sanity of his plan if we had twice as many.”

I was wary of Ata; her mind set us apart. I’m smart, but not so farsighted. My best strategy is to stay out of her vicinity. She has a mind like a steel trap—people are either in or out. Those caught in the middle when it springs shut are generally cut in half.

“If you had followed Dunlin, you would have lost the Island fyrd,” I said.

“Well, I know that there were too few lancers, and Lightning may infer the same. Let us hope the Emperor doesn’t guess.”

“I hope you don’t inform him.”

She smirked and said, “What are you doing here, anyway?”

I waved my hands in the air vaguely. “Organizing things.”

She indicated the church door. “If you’re looking for a place to shoot up, this is not it.”

“I’m clean,” I lied automatically. When found out, I suffer intense remorse and indignation—a weird feeling of wanting to crawl and apologize as well as rebel and confront. The danger of being found guilty became a pleasure for me a long time ago, and now I can’t quit.

“Aye, right. You’re not even walking in a straight line.” She folded her arms, which detracted from the impression of motherly authority it was intended to give because it also gave her an impressive cleavage. I told her she looked wonderful, but she diminished the compliment with a shrug. She put no effort into her appearance but her hair was still mesmerizing. She had pure white hair, almost translucent against her tanned skin. Her hair hung straight down her back and over it she wore a maline veil, twisted into a wreath.

“How’s the King?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

“For an official response, that is completely crap, Jant Shira. I thought you had more imagination.”

“He’s dying.”

“Aye. Mmm. And without children, the royal fool. How will King Staniel repel the Insects? Death by sonnet?”

I giggled, wrapping my arms around my waist, a gesture which Ata scrutinized until I boiled with humiliation. I hopped from foot to foot, feeling slightly strung out.

Ata joined the Castle Circle by marrying the Sailor, becoming immortal four hundred years before me. Those who dislike Mist have said that he proposed to her because he was anxious she would Challenge him for his place in the Circle. By marrying Ata he sated her craving for eternal life, but the wedding also guaranteed that she would be nearby to quarrel with him for the rest of his existence. And like the other Eszai who have joined the Circle through marriage, Ata is dependent on her spouse’s continued Circle membership for her immortality.

Ata’s shirt was diaphanous, pale blue gauze with a layer of saffron yellow beneath it. What I took to be a skirt was really wide trousers; from her slack leather belt hung a rapier with a basket hilt so fine it was steel filigree. She had been frozen at age thirty-five for six hundred years.

“Watch out, Jant. The last thing the Emperor needs is a translator who’s taken so many mind-expanding drugs that he can’t fit it back in.”

“Leave me alone.”

Ata shrugged, and did so, saying, “Your Rhydanne mistress has seen you. She wants to know what you’re doing.”

“You’ve spoken to Genya?” I said, too hastily. She nodded, and walked away.

R
ayne had a room on the far side of Lowespass keep, which she ordered to be built within the keep when it was constructed. She tried to keep the room supplied with medicines, gauze and water. When she worked at the front, she stayed in the fortress and the wounded were brought to her.

I thought about Dunlin, and I felt, rather than thought, about cat. It seemed that the best thing to do was pay Rayne a visit, for the sake of the kingdom of Awia and my own state of health.

In the Inner Ward I moved syncopated through sleeping snarls of people. I avoided them, feeling uneasy and empty inside. The hard muscles moved under my skin, my belt pulled across to the very last notch, the stringy flat arms of my wings hugging and rustling against my back.

Boots handmade in Morenzia clicked on the worn cobbles, the beads in my hair bounced off my backside. Jackdaws sped between the towers, sparks in negative. Good for them, I thought. This reminded me—what am I walking for? It only took a couple of seconds to struggle airborne and join them, and then I quietly let myself into Rayne’s hospital.

D
unlin was lying on a plain bed against the gray wall of the first room, which had no windows and no decoration. Firelight glowed through a nearby doorway, the bustle of servants preparing food and medicines, and soldiers moaning, screaming. I closed the door and noiselessly watched over the King.

The signature of pain in Dunlin’s face changed his whole appearance. Lines between his eyebrows and a furrowed forehead made him look fearsome; his body was braced against the pain. His short hair was matted with dried blood, and Rayne had cut it even shorter on one side, to sew up a gash along his neck from earlobe to collarbone. His lips were dry, with blood at the sides of his mouth. The rings had been stripped from his hands, which lay like dead leaves on the cover, and he wore the padded white shirt that lancers have for protection under their armor. Nobility was written in his face there with the pain.

The other thing I noticed was the scent, not of blood but of time. No matter how old people are when death is approaching, there is the smell of age. It clings to clothes and lingers in rooms, an earthy tang which made me whimper. The King’s eyes flickered open, drugged and bloodshot.

“Don’t move,” I advised, in Awian. “We thought we lost you, and I’m not sure exactly what Rayne’s done.”

“Is…?”

“Don’t try to speak either,” I added softly. “I can’t tell if you can understand me, but you should know that Staniel’s beside himself. He’s so highly strung he could pass for a Rhydanne. I tried to calm him down. Lightning just intimidates him.”

Dunlin croaked for a bit and then coughed. His square face was dead ashen under a leathery tan.

“I hope the Insects take years to recover,” I said vaguely. “I’d like to think it was all worth it.”

He coughed until he could speak, managed, “This is…
agony
.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’ll stop soon. You’re lucky.”

I leaned closer to hear him as he said, “I wanted to be immortal,” and a smile played across his face without touching his lips at all. There was a silence. What could I say? I felt a creeping guilt that he will die and I could not. But the world isn’t fair; it was only in the Emperor’s power to make a man immortal. I contemplated whether to tell him about the Shift. I couldn’t stand the risk he might still be capable of ridicule or disbelief.

“This pain…” Dunlin whispered.

I thought about the trouble I would be in if anyone found out. But who would know? His crusted eyes were fading; he was outwardly oblivious. Blood seeping through the sheet sealed it to the cuts in his sturdy throat, which armor had left unprotected. His wings were fragments of bone with some muscle still clinging. They shocked me.

“There’s the Shift…” I ventured.

“Mm…?”

“It’s another land. Another world, I mean. If you die here, you can stay there.”

“Mm. Really?” There was the smile again, more sardonic than regal. “How?”

I clicked open my compass, took out the folded paper. “With this,” I said. Dunlin sighed. He didn’t have enough energy left to try to understand. He didn’t care.

“It’s immortality, of a sort.”

“Then do what you can.”

Lightning might boast of a golden age under Teale Micawater, but I couldn’t recall any time when Awia was as well treated and trusted, as under this King. I bit my nail to the quick, stood mournfully feeling like the last of the wine at a funeral. I spoke to Dunlin for a few more minutes and he dictated his will, which I copied word for word onto the sheet.

On a low table by the bedside was a pewter cup, a pitcher of water, and a plate with a sponge. Dunlin’s ring was there, blue agate set into a silver bevel, engraved with the seal of Rachiswater.

I sniffed at the cup; it was half full of liquid that smelled of cinnamon. I tipped in the powder from the paper wrap, stirred it with a finger, and replaced the cup.

T
hat was compassion, I think. I justified my action by recalling the ending of
The Complete Herbal
, which I owned when I lived in Hacilith: “It is our duty to correct illness, to alleviate suffering and ease pain; a noble duty.” Rayne wrote that book hundreds of years before I was born.

I don’t know whether it is correct to ease pain by hastening death, but at the time it seemed right. He was certain to die, and I wanted it to be with more dignity. I couldn’t bear to see the King, who had always been my friend, so altered by agony that he seemed a different person. I told myself that had he been Eszai, he would have survived. If we could have taken him to Rayne’s hospital in the Castle, then I could have done more for him, but recently in Lowespass there was a shortage of everything, and the dregs of medicines were god knows how old. I hope I never have to make the choice again, but if so, I would do the same, and I remember leaving him with a light conscience and a smile of goodbye.

Compassion? Regicide? The question is always in my mind and will only be resolved if I am found out. If that happened, I would have to resign my place in the Castle. I’ll fall over that hurdle when I come to it.

O
nly two beds in the next room; on one I recognized an Awian lady who was paper-pale and only stirred when I kissed her hand. The other body was a shallow mess of mandible cuts criss-crossed with bandages. On the floor, lying full length or leaning against the wall, were roughly fifty soldiers. Two tried to stand, but I waved them down again as kindly as I could. I went through to Rayne’s private room, slipped past her and she sighed. “Dunlin’s asleep,” I informed her cheerfully.

“At las’. It’s good t’see you, snake-eyes.” I hugged her, the soft covering of fat on an old body. She had a long, stained brown satin dress, and a bloodstained apron. Her wrinkled face just reached the level of my chest.

I glanced at the shelves cluttered with little bottles and vials, sticky cordials and spirits, powders and pillboxes. The light was too dim for me to read the browning ink on their ancient labels and as I peered over her shoulder Rayne realized what I was doing and pushed me away. “No!”

“Please. I really need some cat.” My voice slipped into a hateful whine.

“How is Staniel?” She tried to change the subject.

“Put me together a fix and I’ll tell you.”

“Already? Damn i’, Jant. I thought you had enough to las’ you the res’ of the century.”

“What will you trade?” I asked.

Rayne gave me her
you’re-not-human-are-you?
look. I dislike being stared at. With feeling I said, “The Circle is really going to need me tomorrow and I’ll be no use by then if I don’t have some soon.” A familiar tension was settling around my eyes; my joints and back ached. Soon I would be able to add shivers and nausea, at which point I would probably panic and fly to Hacilith in an injudicious attempt to score some more. “Can I help you at all? What can I make for the hospital?”