Bloodtide

defeated. Unlike Val, I suppose he means. These people have to be humoured.

'For the time being,' he begs. 'Can't you see that?'

I sigh. I half nod my head as if I'm not sure whether to believe him or not, and poor Conor thinks I'm fooled. The only person he fools is himself. Of course it seems to him that half the world wants to destroy him. They do. They're just not necessarily in the places he expects them to be.

I nod, I listen, I nod some more. I frown. 'You should have told me all this before.'

Conor sighs and smiles apologetically. How lightly he passes over the lives of all my family!

'One day, I'll free myself of them,' he promises me. 'I'll kill them, every single one of them. You'll have your revenge. But it takes time!'

Ah, Conor, my darling, your promises! So many promises made! But I'll make sure you keep this one.

'I'll have their heads before I'll have you,' I tell him.

'They will die, you will have your revenge,' he repeats eagerly. We smile and nod at each other. The imaginary enemies have become real. They are why I have to stay trapped here in the tower. They are why my legs are hamstrung, they are the ones who destroyed our love. None of it was anything to do with Conor. On the contrary, he will help me take revenge.

I have to look away. How can I keep up this agreement of lies? How long will it take?

If it takes forever, I'll keep it up forever. That's how long.

'Conor,' I say. I say it sadly. 'Oh, Conor, Conor. Don't expect me to believe anything you say for a long, long, long time. Oh yes, I still love you…' He looks up in pleasure at that lie which comes so easily to my lips. 'Yes, I still do, despite everything. But I'll have to trust you before you ever touch me again. These are the people who gave the orders for me to be crippled. The ones who forced you to destroy my father. You tell me how strong you are, but it seems to me that you must be weak for these people to bully you like this. You say yourself that you never wanted this. Very well; prove yourself. Bring me their heads.'

He lost his temper then and stormed about, angry that I called him weak and accused him of being bullied, even though that's what he'd just told me. Of course, Conor is anything but weak. He is the bully. Well, let him choke on his own lies. He flings a chair at the door, just missing me, and for a minute I think he's going to rape me. Let him. I've survived worse than that. But strange to say he never lays a hand on me when I don't want him to – not then, not ever.

In the end he broke up a few more pieces of furniture and then stormed out. I thought, it's started. My revenge. I will have those heads he's promised me, the heads of innocent people, no doubt, but they'll give him an excuse to free me. I will take everything back. Conor wants everything, to kill my father and peg my brothers out for the Pig, and then have me love him into the bargain. Mad! That's his weakness. He truly believes he can have anything he wants. Even me.

It'll take time, but now it's underway. The problem is Siggy. I'm strong, but he's weak. How can I make my brother strong? Who is there to help him? Or make him?

3

This is a story that travels across years. It begins with children and ends with grown men and women. There are babies. The babies grow tall, some of them, at least.

Conor had Val's skeleton bolted to the high gates of the Estate. The words, 'King of All He Surveys', were cast in brass and screwed into the wall above him and there he stared blindly out over the world with weeds taking root in him and the rain weeping tears down his face. A robin nested between his ribs and for a while he had a heart fluttering again inside him.

Signy couldn't see it, but she heard about it. Conor had given orders that she was to know nothing of it, but the kids took to gathering outside the tower and jeering at her, 'How's yer father? How's yer father?' Signy closed her curtains and wept Conor told her that the children were lying, put up to it by his enemies to torment her. Signy knew otherwise; Cherry never lied.

One of the children got a jackdaw nestling and trained it to speak, 'How's yer father? How's yer father?' It sat in the eaves of the houses calling out its one phrase day after day. Signy had a word with Conor, and this time she wanted action. Both the jackdaw and the child disappeared and the woods around the tower became forbidden territory to the rest of the Estate. Signy's isolation in her tower increased.

In the world beyond, Conor's campaigns continued with undiminished success. The halfman lands were scattered with bizarre skeletons, pecked and gnawed as the famine dug deep. At the other end of their territory, the halfmen begged, stole and borrowed from their creators in Ragnor and the other towns and cities around them. These people beyond did not love the halfmen, but they didn't love London either. It suited them to have Conor and the halfmen at each other's throats. It saved them having to do it themselves.

The halfmen organised, found leaders, fought back. The name Dag Aggerman became known – a terrorist to the ganglord, a bogeyman to the people of London, a freedom fighter to the halfmen. But Conor was unstoppable. Race after race of halfmen found themselves staring extinction in the face.

Conor had planned genocide of the halfmen right from the beginning, but already he was suffering the madness of tyrants. His original military aims began to mutate into a philosophy of hatred, and finally into an act of faith. The halfmen were not just the enemy, they were abominations. Only the races the gods had made must walk the earth. Anyone with even the slightest trace of animal blood in them was all beast – dirty, foul, and monstrous.

For decades there had been interbreeding and secret traffic under the Wall and over recent months many of the more human-looking of the halfman races had crept in to try ami escape the raids. Therefore the search moved closer to home, into London itself and down through the family trees. Appearances could be deceptive; the evil was cunning. Conor saw halfman blood wherever it suited him.

Now no one was safe. Conor's strange ideas about racial purity caught on like a disease with many people. Secret police were out on the streets. Ordinary people turned into spies – children against their parents, teachers against the kids. If you had so much as a cleft foot or a spotted tongue you were inhuman. More than half the population in areas close to the Wall were turned into animals overnight.

While Conor raged and fought the whole world, the greatest enemy was at home, and of the purest blood possible.

Signy had Conor caught on a hook he neither understood nor believed in. She played him with a patience born of the certain knowledge of a lifetime's captivity. One day she allowed him to kiss her and hold her; the next she wept uncontrollably when he came near. One day she told him secrets she had only ever shared before with Siggy; the next she winced in fear when he lifted his hand to scratch his cheek. One day she allowed him to open her clothes and kiss her breasts; the next she attacked him when he tried to kiss her.

Then the time came, over a year after she began her campaign, when her teasing him had its inevitable result Signy allowed herself to get carried away, and they made love. Their pillow talk was of armies and generals, of surprise attacks and strategy. Conor was deliriously happy, he thought he had everything in the world he wanted, but on his next visit Signy was desperate with frustration, humiliation and fear.

'Let me out of here,' she wept, over and over.

'I don't dare. Our enemies…'

'Bring me their heads.' Over and over. 'Bring me their heads. Destroy our enemies.' Signy knew well enough that Conor's enemies lived only in his imagination. Cherry reported everything faithfully; it had been years since there had been any useful dissent under Conor and his father Abel. The tyrant's power grew daily, but so did his madness. The enemies that he told Signy about may have begun as useful lies to deny responsibility for what had happened, but they soon became real enough to Conor. They were like nightmares; the greater his control over the world around him became, the stronger they grew.

'Just kill them. Kill them all,' said Signy. 'You've done it once. Why not again?' Conor bit his lip and shook his head. He wanted Signy here, where he could keep his eye on her. She had already half convinced him that she loved him, but trust was harder. How could Conor trust anyone, when he didn't even trust himself?

Meanwhile, Cherry was everywhere. What a spy she made in her different shapes! Cherry sat under the chairs at conferences and committee meetings. Cherry hid behind the curtains or perched on the window-sill while the security chiefs tried plan after plan, not to depose Conor, but merely to convince him of their loyalty. Cherry listened