"Dangerous Offspring" - читать интересную книгу автора (Swainston Steph)

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 hourglass-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 shipwreck years ago-but 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 breasts. Fortunately some of the other women’s glass 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 cushions 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 prickling from the corners of the room. Cyan was overjoyed. ‘Let me introduce you. Rawney, this is the Comet Jant Shira. 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 ownership 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 sniggered.

‘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.’

‘In that case I’ll have a double whisky,’ I said.

‘Fine.’ Cyan shook a five-pound coin from her purse.

‘Ask him to fetch them.’ I nodded and smiled at Rawney, and pushed the coin towards him.

‘Rawney, go and bring some whisky, another wallop for me and get yourself a jug of beer. They don’t take orders at your table here,’ she added to me. ‘It isn’t that Awian.’

Rawney lumbered off to the bar. I called after him, ‘And a couple of baskets of chips!’

‘I wonder where you put it all, you’re so thin.’

‘I fly,’ I said shortly. ‘Cyan, why did you run away? Lightning’s worried sick. And don’t you know it’s illegal to carry bows in the city?’ I took it off the chair arm and slipped it under the couch. ‘What are you doing here? You have to come home.’

She looked me over. ‘There’s no such thing as “have to”. I am not going back to Micawater or Awndyn. Not ever. No way. You can’t make me.’

‘Yes, I can, actually. What are you doing with that hulk?’

‘Rawney? He’s gorgeous.’

‘He’s dim. Lightning wants you to come to the front. We’re about to advance at Frost’s lake.’

‘That old eel-eater. I don’t want to go to the damn dam. I want to stay here.’

‘You’re not lodging with that Morenzian meathead, are you?’

‘That’s none of your business! Hmm…I don’t think I’ll tell you, because you’ll just flutter off back to Daddy and spill the beans. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Do you really?’

‘I was fed up with dull old Awndyn.’ She sighed. ‘I had to get away. Away from obligation! I want to stay here and live it up for a few months. I have a freedom here I never had with Swallow, with Daddy; they’re all living in a dream world. They have no idea how the real world works. This is the real world-’ Her gesture took in the bar and what little of East Bank was visible through the window ‘-This is where the real people are.’ She lit a cigarette and narrowed her eyes against the smoke. ‘I know I’m lucky and I can do anything, but I just haven’t made my mind up yet.’

‘Please come back.’

‘Don’t be crap, goat-breath. You do what you want, you always told me that. Why shouldn’t I?’

I was frustrated that I had to spell this out: ‘Hacilith is dangerous.’

‘Yeah!’

‘You can’t be Rawney’s girlfriend. You might pretend but you’ll never really understand him.’

She smiled sweetly. ‘I can play him along for kicks. He worships the ground I walk on.’

I hissed, ‘No. You might think that, but he reckons you’re his girl. If you try to leave him, he might hurt you.’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ she said, shocked.

‘Oh, Cyan. Please be careful. You might find it hard to get rid of the likes of him. He knows he can’t really have you, so instead he could try to make your life misery. He could blame you for the fact that he’s Insect fodder and you’re glittering with rubies.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Oh, yes. Worse still, if he believes you’re something you’re not, he could chase you unto the last of his energy and be prepared to die for what his imagination makes you into. He’d love to marry the heir to Peregrine.’

I glanced over to the bar but fortunately Rawney was taking a long time. He was chatting with a skinny, wasted-looking guy. I took a sip of Cyan’s ‘wallop’-ginger beer that was more beer than it was ginger-and went on; ‘You’ll never understand what Hacilith is like under the surface. It’s impossible, but try to grasp that I’m telling you this from my own experience. My image isn’t just an image, Cyan; I witnessed the last days of the East Bank gangs.’ I pushed my coat off my shoulder so she could see the circle with six spokes that our gang leader had carved there. ‘The other gang, the Bowyers, had arrowheads scarred on their forearms. We used to flay them off and stick them to the door of our warehouse.’

‘Wow.’

‘Yes. Well, I suppose I should never have tried to encroach on their patch. When they caught any of us, they dumped us in the canal lock. When we caught any of them, we nailed them to the struts of a waterwheel. Hence the Wheel.’ I took her hand and traced the furrows of my scar with her finger.

‘I can feel it.’

‘That’s right.’

She didn’t know whether to believe me or not. ‘Didn’t the constables do anything?’

‘Oh, I always tipped off the constables. But they left them revolving round and round for a few hours before they took them down…The Bowyers eventually traced where I lived. I came home one night and found my shop on fire. I ran in, trying to find my master…’ I continued sadly as I put my coat back on. ‘He was called Dotterel. I tried to run upstairs but the steps were burning through. I expect-I hope-he died of smoke suffocation long before the flames reached the second floor…’

Cyan said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘I couldn’t feel grief back then, only despair. It was the next inevitable avalanche to happen to me. What sort of life was Hacilith, anyway? My girlfriend pulled me out of the shop as it rose in flames about me and, right then, we determined to leave Galt. We took the road that went left over Pityme Bridge and we realised that even the Castle was possible.’

I never tell Zascai that I used to be a drug dealer, but I let them know my unfortunate adventures. It makes me seem so much more talented for having escaped them.

Cyan said, ‘Hacilith must have changed.’

‘Yes, it’s different now. The underworld is more inconspicuous and a damn sight more complicated, but it hasn’t gone away.’

She took a sip of her drink and rolled her eyes. ‘Oh god. If that’s your advice, I don’t need it. I don’t want Daddy’s advice either, and I certainly don’t want Swallow the mad diva’s homespun instruction. I thought better of you. Let me make my own mistakes!’

‘You don’t want Lightning’s advice? Fourteen hundred years of it?’

‘Fourteen hundred years of boredom, more like!’

‘You’ll inherit Peregrine when you’re twenty-one,’ I said.

‘That’s what I’m running away from! My true place in life, huh. How can I be an Awian lady when I don’t feel Awian at all? Not that being wingless matters; Awians will accept me and anyway, they don’t have a choice. But I don’t feel I belong anywhere. Daddy gave me this-’ She hooked her fingers under the chain of her ruby pendant as if she was about to rip it off and throw it away. ‘He says it’s an heirloom. But I don’t belong in Micawater either. “Come home,” you tell me, but just where home is, I can’t say. Morenzia is the only country that’s free.’

‘Don’t say that in front of Lightning.’

‘Just five families in Awia own eighty per cent of the land. Morenzians don’t have such a silly aristocracy. They don’t have to bow and scrape. You don’t know what it’s like to be a girl stuck in Awndyn.’

I nodded. That much was true.

‘Hacilith is so big! There are so many people my age! I never had friends in Awndyn. But, god, Jant, what does that mean to you? You’re bloody ancient. The Castle protects you, just like Daddy.’

‘You should have seen me at Slake Cross trying to hold my guts in with one hand.’

‘Oh, yeah. Sorry.’ She pinched her cheek and wiggled it. ‘You think you see a girl but looking out of these eyes is a very experienced woman, in experience terms at least as old as you are. Well, nearly. I’ve travelled all over the place.’

‘Did you go or were you taken?’

Her eyebrows drew together. I continued, ‘You haven’t been south of Awndyn before and you haven’t been north of Micawater.’

‘I’m here of my own accord now. So don’t misunderestimate me. Take Rawney, I only met him four days ago and he says he will do anything for me. He can get anything for me, even jook. He helped me move onto the Tumblehome.’

‘Is that where you’re staying?’

‘Oh…Yeah, it is, actually. So let me express myself. I’m not going to be cooped up in Awndyn with the mad diva.’

Rawney returned with the drinks but without any food. He didn’t give Cyan her change either but she didn’t notice. He put a whole bottle of cheap whisky down in front of me. ‘There! Get your talons round that!’

‘I don’t have talons,’ I said indignantly, but he continued to stare rudely while I poured a glass. I stared back, and he looked away.

People naturally resent anybody who gives them orders and Zascai are especially resentful of good-looking immortals who can fly. Rawney was trying to find something to feel superior about and, as usual for such people, he was concentrating on my Rhydanne heritage. There is not much in my appearance and bearing for Morenzians to identify with; all that is human in me, I have learnt. They characterise Rhydanne as a bunch of hopeless drunks; the fact that one might flap down from the mountains and start giving them commands is a further affront to their dignity. Also, if he is like most Zascai, he will think of me as the voice of the Emperor and be doubly afraid. Mortals often assume that because I have the Emperor’s ear I am somehow closer to him than other immortals. That isn’t true, and anyway why would San send me to spy on someone like Rawney?

Cyan gave an embarrassed giggle. ‘It’s so strange to be talking to one of Daddy’s workmates.’

I said, ‘As the future Governor of Peregrine, you’ll get used to it.’

‘How many times have I got to tell you? I don’t want to be governor! I hate feeling the weight of Daddy’s expectations on me all the time! It’s all right for you, flying around and never counting the cost. I’m not impressed with his plans for me. I have different plans. How dare he assume my tastes are the same as his? He doesn’t even know me!’

‘But you used to love hunting in Peregrine,’ I said.

‘Yes, I know. Weird, isn’t it? It became overfamiliar, I suppose. It disappointed me. I don’t want to see all those same faces again.’ She turned to Rawney. ‘Jant used to frustrate the fuck out of me with all his exciting plans I wasn’t allowed to realise. I loved his tales of faraway places. Now I’m in one!’

That made me smile. ‘Lightning would be furious if he knew you were sitting in a bar.’

‘Huh. Him. He doesn’t understand what’s real in life. He’s stuck with his sense of honour. I think we should feel first and act on our feelings instead. I wanted someone to know my mind, Jant. No one in Awndyn could, so it’s me who has to change. I thought: if I don’t change, I’ll die. But now the future has opened up wide!’

I poured more whisky. Every spoilt teenager talks like this, and Cyan was in full flow. ‘I’ve got my enthusiasm back. I used to feel dormant, as if I was waiting to start my own life. I was breathless and apprehensive, but I was ready and now things are starting to happen! My hatred of Awndyn wound me up like a spring and shot me out to Hacilith. I’m not stopping now.’

I said, ‘You might find the front just as refreshing. Have you ever seen a live Insect? No? Well, I can show you things even more exciting than Hacilith.’

She glanced at Rawney. ‘Bring him, too,’ I said. ‘Lightning will love him.’

She said slowly, ‘Hacilith is more cleansing. I can get lost here. Nobody knows who I am.’

‘I think they do!’

‘Bollocks, Jant. Bollocks. Listen. There are three sorts of people: the ones in Awndyn or Micawater don’t have to ask who one’s father is, because they know and they take it for granted. Then I travelled a bit and met the sort, like in Aver-Falconet’s household, who do think it’s important to ask who one’s father is. They’re surprised and a bit scared when I tell them, because they don’t really know what to say. They think they should treat me with kid gloves. I hate them. Then there are the real people, like these Morenzians. It never occurs to them to ask; as far as they’re concerned it’s a meaningless question. They treat me the same as any other girl.’

‘That’s the problem.’

Rawney said nothing but became gradually redder and redder in the face until he burst. ‘You know fuck all, immortal! You left this town! You hit the big time. Yeah, you went away and won immortality and married money. So what are you doing here? Why have you come here? Go fuck off back to the Castle. Go on-get out! You don’t belong here with your fucking smart comments and your weird old-fashioned clothes!’

I tilted my head and gave him a good look with my cheekbones. If he wanted a fight I could shove my axe up his arse in three moves. ‘I swear,’ I said softly. ‘If we didn’t send the people of Hacilith to fight Insects, they’d be fighting each other.’

Rawney flinched, glanced at Cyan and rallied. ‘Look, babe, we’re talking to a madman. A real creep. He’s two hundred years old and he’s not going to die so he must be mad compared to us mortals. He has nothing to do with us.’

Cyan pursed her lips. ‘It is off-putting that he always looks the same. It reminds me of when I was small.’

I sighed, sick of invective. ‘Please, Cyan. I don’t want to leave you here. I can’t tell Lightning this.’

‘I can’t believe you’re on Daddy’s side!’

‘I’m not. I agree that you shouldn’t sweetly follow the life he’s planned for you. Forget the governorship, if you want. That’s fine by me. But I think you’re a bit vulnerable and-’

‘I can look after myself!’ She grabbed the bow from under the sofa and before I could stop her, she slid it out of its holster.

The bar suddenly went very quiet. Every face turned towards us, but Rawney stood up and called, ‘Do you want to see another trick?’

To my astonishment they all began to applaud. Nobody slipped out to call the constables. Cyan acknowledged them with a wave. She held her bow across her knee and ran her hands over it to warm it, then carefully bent its limbs back and strung it. They were tapered, surprisingly whippy for a reflex bow. She slipped a horn ring on her thumb and pulled two arrows, shorter than fyrd standard arrows, from the quiver. She pressed ginger beer bottle corks onto their sharp bodkin points, saying, ‘I’ll show you my trick.’

‘I’ve seen this. It’s one of Lightning’s stunts.’

‘No, it’s my trick.’ She lost none of the emphasis the second time round, so I decided to let her win. ‘Go on, then.’

She did not bother to stand up. She nocked an arrow and drew it to her cheek with a pinch grip. She aimed and let fly.

A bottle on the furthest table jumped into the air, clattered down and started spinning round, flashing its empty neck and base.

Cyan shot the second arrow and it recorked the spinning bottle. The force of its impact sent it off the edge of the table. It skidded across the floor bounced off a young man’s foot. He held it up, the cork firmly fixed and the arrow protruding.

Cyan’s impromptu audience gave her another round of applause. She stretched up her arm and raised her three middle fingers, her thumb holding her little finger down. It was the archers’ salute, long ago, and now it’s a very filthy gesture.

‘See!’ she said to me. ‘All these new friends!’ And louder: ‘Let’s show Comet a good time. All the drinks are on me!’

There was a cheer and the sound of a general rush to the bar. Much impressed, I said, ‘You’re very accurate. And that’s a glorious bow.’

‘Thanks. It’s one of Daddy’s own designs.’

‘Don’t ever use it in Hacilith again when I’m not here! Why don’t you come to the front, if you’re keen on shooting? You can practise on Insects every day.’

‘I am not going to Daddy. There’ll be two bridges over the Foin before I do! The Emperor will leave the Castle, god will return and the world will end before I talk to him!’

‘He did his best. He brought you up as well as he could.’ I indicated the bow as an example of Lightning’s largesse.

‘Huh. It was his fault my mother was killed. He could have saved her but he let her die.’

I put the bottle down. ‘What? Who told you that?’

‘Carmine Dei. One of my stepsisters.’

‘She’s lying. Lightning did all he could to save your mother. I know; I was there.’ Cyan’s stepsister was as big a bitch as their mother, Ata, had been. After she died, some of her huge family remained in contact, a large clandestine organisation, and these days Carmine has the whole suspect network well under her hand. She was the city’s harbourmaster; she had failed in the last competition for Sailor, and being Sailor manqué had made her even more poisonous.

I said, ‘You mustn’t listen to anything Carmine says. Are you staying with her?’

‘No. Not quite. Carmine told me a lot of Daddy’s secrets and I know some of them must be true. After all he abandoned me with Governor Swallow Fatarse. She made me learn silly musical instruments I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in. Once, when I was little, I pretended to be an Insect under her dumb piano and I accidentally scratched it. She went totally crazy. After that being an Insect was out of the question. Silly cow. And she plays Daddy better then she plays any instrument! I visit Micawater now and then, but he doesn’t realise how long the gaps are between visits. What is he doing that’s so damn important I had to fend for myself?’

Cyan has never had to fend for herself. Everywhere she goes, servants hover to accommodate her every whim. I tilted the glass back and swilled whisky. I didn’t want any more hassle. Cyan had used up my quota of patience and I had far too much on my mind. I wasn’t sure if I was becoming wise with age, or simply exhausted; but then, if wisdom is a more prudent use of one’s time, maybe it’s exhaustion that forces us to be wise.

I shook my head. ‘Whatever. Oh, what it is to be seventeen and open to rumour. Believe what you like. I won’t tell Lightning that I found you. But when you tire of gallivanting around the city, join us at the front, all right?’

‘Great!’ She lit another cigarette and offered me one, leaning forward to light it with her own.

Rawney glanced at her jealously, but he slopped some more whisky into my glass. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. He shook the bottle, then looked at me oddly. ‘Damn. All the tales I’ve heard about Rhydanne are true.’

‘Another cretinous comment from you and I’ll post you to Ressond. Anyway, Rhydanne live above five thousand metres. We need to drink alcohol so our blood doesn’t freeze.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ he said sarcastically.

‘All true,’ I said. ‘No word of a lie. Would I lie to you? No. We have to drink alcohol constantly. And it takes Rhydanne minds off their awful food. There’s no time for cuisine between the hunting and the hangovers; I think they only bother to cook because they can’t eat it raw.’

Cyan said, ‘It can’t be true you’re the only mix of Awian and Rhydanne.’

I shrugged. ‘I’m sure there were others, and there will be others in future, for as long as Awians keep trying to conquer peaks…I keep pulling their stupid flags off and sending them back. Some Awian-Rhydanne children might have been unviable and didn’t survive. Maybe some never made it out of Darkling or weren’t able to fly, either not strong or not clever enough to learn. It took me ten years, after all. I should imagine most half-breed babies were thrown over cliffs. I would have been if it wasn’t for Eilean. A Rhydanne single mother will kill an unwanted baby that slows her down.’

Rawney said, ‘That’s brutal. Animals.’

‘No. It’s a matter of her own survival. And anyway, look who’s talking.’ I turned to Cyan. ‘Maybe we are similar. I’ve left my heritage behind me and you’re trying to.’

‘Rubbish,’ she teased. ‘You love being different. You keep turning your head so your eyes reflect.’

‘I do not!’

‘You do. And you read fortune cards. You carry them around everywhere.’

‘Only for a party trick.’ I dug in my inside jacket pocket for the battered sheaf of twenty-five squares of leather and, with a flick of one hand, spread them out. I offered them to her and she leant forward to pick one. She examined it closely, turning it over. ‘Look, Rawney. Jant has these Rhydanne fortune cards.’

‘Give me a break,’ he said. ‘Come on, babe, we ought to be going.’

‘I keep telling you to stop calling me “babe”!’

He grasped her wrist and I tensed, but Cyan twisted herself free. I saw her blood rise and for the first time I could actually believe I was talking to Lightning’s daughter. She made the most of her accent: ‘If you do that again, fyrdsman, I will leave with Comet.’ Then she said to me, as if to cover up, ‘Will you read the cards for me, Jant?’

‘All right.’ I wiped whisky off the tabletop with my sleeve. I tapped the pack to neaten them and arranged them face down.

‘How does it work?’

‘The cards…’ I swigged my drink. ‘The cards don’t tell the future. How could they? The future isn’t set. These cards tell you about yourself in the present. All you need to know, to predict the future as accurately as possible…all you can ever know, is yourself right now. Most people don’t know their own character well and these cards help you reflect. Then for the future, you extrapolate. Go ahead and make the future up-your character will be the main factor.’

‘They’re cards for the present?’

‘Rhydanne live in the present. They don’t think ahead to the future much; it’s just another present to them. You have to do the reading yourself. You’re best placed to interpret your own character.’

‘But I don’t know what the pictures mean!’

I waved my cigarette around. ‘They’re just pictures. They don’t have defined meanings. They mean whatever you think they mean. That’s how it works.’

Cyan looked daunted. ‘I think I’m too drunk for this.’

‘There are five suits: ice, rock, alcohol, goats and eagles.’ I turned over the lowest in the ice suit, the snow hole shelter. ‘That one, for example, can mean: remember to maintain your equipment or you’ll starve. This one, the goat’s kid, can mean: don’t chase a woman you’re not married to. Or don’t marry some slow-running slut whose children are all Shiras. It depends on your circumstances, you see. Pick five cards…’

Cyan did so. She set them precisely in line and turned over the first. ‘Boulders,’ I said.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘That’s from the rock suit: grit, pebbles, boulders, cliffs and mountains. Make of it what you like.’

She pondered the square of hide. ‘It means something that blocks your way, doesn’t it? An insurmountable problem. Like Daddy. You know his palace? Did you know that all the keyholes in the doors along the Long Corridor line up so well you can look down them from one end of the palace to the other? That’s how infuriating it is. It’s so finicky and stultifying it makes me sick. Every time I visited I was terrified of breaking something. I think I scare him, because he’s been trying hard to cultivate a friendly fatherly image. I hate Micawater. Boulders all right; it’s so heavy and stagnant.’

She turned the next card, and exclaimed, ‘What in the Empire is that?’

I peered at it. ‘It’s the dead goat. From the goat suit: dead goat, pastured goat, randy goat, mother goat, kid.’

‘You have got to be joking.’ She looked from the card to me. ‘It’s to do with mortality. These cards really do work, don’t they? I’m mortal and Daddy isn’t…Everyone knows that at some time in the future their parents will die. They wonder how it’ll happen. What will it be like to hear the news? How will they bury him? If they’re the eldest, they can’t help but think about the inheritance. I don’t have that. I can’t speculate. That’s one of the things I can’t stand-Daddy will always be there, exactly the same. In fact, I know that the day he buries me in a tomb on his stupid island, he’ll look just the same as he does now. The palace will be no different. I’ll never be rid of him! It makes me feel heavy…I think it’s dread.’

She opened another bottle of beer. She had not inherited Lightning’s connoisseurship but she had his ability to discourse at length. Beer begets beer, as you know, but she wasn’t as drunk as I was. I sipped the whisky appreciatively. ‘This was shit at the beginning but it’s all right now…All the nice whisky must sink to the bottom.’

Cyan turned the next card, the soaring eagle. ‘Well, that’s easy. That’s me escaping, trying to fly free of the flock and find some clear air, trying to do something different. It’s a wild animal, symbolic of freedom like my name. I’m glad I didn’t bring any belongings. I’ve stranded myself here deliberately with no past, nothing to prove I exist. I have myself, that’s all; I’m content with that…’

I waited, indulgently.

‘…I feel awkward in the city, big and clumsy. I pull at doors I’m supposed to push, push at doors that open by pulling. But I’ll get used to the city soon. I’m alone, scattered in the multitude-just as I want.’

‘To be scattered in the multitude, hey?’

She glowered at me and flicked over another card. ‘What’s this one?’

‘The nesting eagle.’

‘A nesting eagle…That must stand for domesticity, marriage. Marriage…oh, yuk, did I tell you about all the men Daddy introduced me to? They’re horrible.’

Rawney smirked. ‘Don’t the suitors suit you?’

‘They’re so superficial! They make all these unfounded assumptions!’ Cyan slipped into High Awian, which was good for talking of art, society and its insults, but not much else. ‘This is their repertoire: “You are Lightning’s daughter, really? When do you come of age?” “Oh, are you acquainted with Cyan Peregrine? Such a well-groomed blonde.” I grew up with all that small talk, it’s maddening. Their conversations revolve around themselves, they never talk about anything outside their own heads. I hated every last battalion warden of them. I didn’t bother to convey myself, I let them slip through my fingers-and I don’t care that they’ve gone.’

She looked at the window, now a mirror backed by darkness. ‘In the palace the days seemed to last forever. I went to bed an entirely different person from when I woke up. I rattled around inside that bloody great building like a piddock in a rock.’

‘Like a what?’

‘Sorry. Awndyn slang. I tried to continue from habit but I couldn’t attend to my tutor. An inertia came over me. I kept excusing myself from the dinners and going to my room. I lay on my bed and wondered why I felt such confused dislike. I goaded and rebuked myself. I turned my thoughts over until they were a thick, boiling mass. I needed someone to talk to or I would have cracked. Swallow puts a dampener on everything and she’s happy to be of no use whatsoever. So I ran.’

I folded my arms on the table and put my head down. I was at the point of drunkenness where any further drink tasted like puke. I felt my brain shrinking and my thoughts drying up.

Rawney put his big, hairy arm around Cyan’s shoulders and whispered in her ear. She nodded, preoccupied with the cards. ‘I keep toying with ideas of the future. What will happen to me? I keep imagining myself in future scenarios but I can’t see myself as Governor of Peregrine no matter how hard I try.’

‘I’m not shurprised you’re afraid of telling Saker,’ I slurred.

‘Saker? Who? Oh, you mean Daddy.’ She giggled. ‘Weird…I never think of his real name…Yes. He’s been alive forever. It’s scary to argue with him. Maybe I am conceited to disagree with him. He has an answer for everything, tried and tested, and he’s always right! He knows everything and he never gets angry, he’s so bloody patient. He just gives me more boring answers! It’s so infuriating! I want to try something new, even if it’s wrong!’

She turned the last card in the line.

‘That one…thatsh the jug of beer.’

Rawney said, ‘Well, that has to be a lucky card for Rhydanne.’

‘Mm.’

‘So everything will turn out well,’ Cyan exclaimed, getting carried away. ‘I’ll be successful in making my own way in the world. It’s beer not Micawater wine!’

‘There isn’t a card for wine,’ I murmured.

‘I’ll learn who I am. If it really did depend on blood, Lightning would know me better, wouldn’t he? I might have inherited one or two family traits, but I’ll rediscover them myself!’

So you should, I thought. My mind’s sky had thoroughly clouded over. I closed my eyes.

Cyan leant and whispered in my ear, ‘I’m living my own life from now on, where and how I choose to. Tell Daddy to forget about me. In a couple of hundred years, he will. It’s the only way.’

I woke up. The pub was unlit and deserted. An uneasy lamplight shining under the landlord’s door illuminated the shapes of chairs placed on the tables and textured lines drawn by the broom in the stickier patches on the floor. Towels hung over the pump handles.

Shit. I am absolutely pissed…and I’ve lost Cyan. She’s given me the slip. Oh, shit, I had her, and I…she…Rawney got me drunk! The bastard, and I fell for it!

I staggered over to the bar and stuck my head under a tap, pumped water into my face. The landlord must have left me sleeping there while he closed up the bar around me. Of course, he wouldn’t have dared to wake an Eszai.

I wrestled with the door bolts. Outside, the misty drizzle gave everything a slick sheen. I turned my coat collar up, but it soaked through the denim, wetting me as effectively as pouring rain.

Galt was very dark, none of the lamps were lit and the shops’ upper stories had closed their shutters. All I had to see by were occasional chinks of light between them.

Now I was back to playing hide and seek with the little cow across the entire city.