He held his palms up. “You know I don’t do that. I can’t stand the hallucinations.”
“This time you do.”
He dipped his finger in it. “Damn you, Eszai.”
I knew that my tolerance would have decreased, so I took just the edge of a fingernail full and licked it. It spread on my tongue, tasted numb, slightly grassy with a crystalline metal-salt edge. This was snap-condensed. Fuck, it was good. I closed my eyes in shame as I realized what I’d done. It was five long years since I last tasted scolopendium.
“You look like the Archer tasting fine wines. It’s Pure As Darkling Snow,” he assured me, hands wide in a ham actor’s gesture. “We make it using your technique, no one else can match the quality.”
“Yes, this will help. At least until we reach the island,” I said. Cinna gave me an odd look. I explained rapidly, “No, not Grass Isle, I mean Tris. Mist told us a strange tale of a new island three months’ east of Awndyn. She tells of a fascinating culture and mouth-watering fruit like, like apples that look like pine cones. Six months’ leave from the Castle! Unless it’s some kind of mirage caused by sailors drinking their own piss. Think what it means, and not just for bored Eszai, for everyone!…But, knowing Ata, we won’t make it out of the bay before something awful happens.”
I huffed out a breath and stood up. The weight of the envelope seemed correct. I had a feel for it, like a longtime card sharp knows by touch how many cards are in a deck. I dropped it into my satchel and reached for Cinna’s packet of cigarettes, slid them toward me and pocketed them too. “Thanks. Now may I have a lantern? I’m needed back at the manor house.”
“Ah-ah. That’s a thousand pounds please, Comet. And unfortunately checks drawn on the defunct Bank of Wrought are not welcome at Bawtere Unlimited Imports.”
I haggled down this outrageous price, that would only be right for Lowespass, to a more reasonable eight hundred and eighty pounds. I counted out nine hundred from my wallet and Cinna swept the money away.
I noticed that, out of the pound coins he gave me for change, the majority were Awian, embossed with Tanager’s swan. From the other three of the Fourlands’ mints, there was only one each with the Summerday scallop shell and Hacilith fist, and a couple of the Eske mint’s “daffodils.” Currency was supposed to be produced at the same rate throughout the Fourlands, as advised by the Castle. I hoped that Awia hadn’t responded to its adversity by minting more money. It would be a typical Zascai way of thinking, a short-term solution that would just drag Awia further into the mire.
Cinna’s bristle-chinned henchman returned with the bull’s-eye lantern, muttering, “Thought Rhydanne could see in t’ dark.”
Cinna is one of the few dealers I know who has not ended up using. They take to it because drug-dealing is so wrong and they find that scolopendium is a very tempting, potent salve for all misdemeanors and open emotional wounds. However, Cinna had always stayed at the money-worshiping stage, a bit like myself when I lived in Hacilith. He was from one of the Morenzian villages and had worked hard to escape. I didn’t blame him; the Morenzian industries, law courts and markets were all in the city. The intellect of the country was leached by Hacilith’s University and its Moren Grand Theater monopolized the fame, leaving the surrounding villages lackluster and dull.
Cinna knew that everything he is or owns he has built himself on a precarious base. He is always waiting for the tiny push from an Eszai or governor that will send the whole card tower tumbling back into the dirt. “Taking cat is a waste of all-too-precious time,” he said. He held the door open for me and added, “But I have thought what immortality truly means, Jant. I’d do drugs too.”
I left the nightclub, crossed Seething Lane and went down a couple of slippery steps onto the hard expanse of the beach. The breeze blew stronger and colder here than in the sheltered town. I left no prints on the rippled wet sand. I won’t get addicted again, I told myself; this is just casual use. The empty ocean was a sucking black space; there were no lights out there. I swung my lantern but it only just illuminated the lapping water’s edge.
Far beyond the harbor mouth an obscure profile merged with the night, a motionless hulk like a premonition. It must be the
I passed the quay, the only part of town that the governor bothered to maintain properly. Small vessels were roped together across the harbor mouth, each one bore a swinging lamp. Their yellow arc reflected in the gentle ripples; they made a silent blockade. A succession of boats was rowing out toward the Stormy Petrel from the quay. I dimly saw a man in each, straining at the oars. Every boat was stacked with barrels; the last stocks of fresh water were being loaded. Mist’s night workers on the jetty stooped and rolled kegs, muttering in a smuggler’s undertone. The first rowing boat blurred into darkness but I still heard with dread the rhythmic splashes of its oars distorted by the breeze. The rower gave a shout; at his familiar voice a passage opened through the blockade.
Mist had spread the word that this voyage of discovery was no different from the others she had attempted, but if you compared the current level of secrecy to the previous expeditions you would draw a very different conclusion.
CHAPTER FIVE
The following day, the subculture of Awndyn was invisible in the bright winter sunlight. The black and amber crosstrees and crow’s nests of fishing cogs anchored in the harbor protruded above the houses as if the rooftops had masts. The harbor master’s office had sculptures of caravels in shining bronze on its tower tops, complete with wire rigging.
I met Lightning and Serein Wrenn at the quayside. They were watching the procession of boats still plying out to a deep channel called Carrack’s Reach where the tall ships were anchored. A crowd had gathered on the promenade. The air was cold but a glorious sun beat down, flattening the waves to translucent ripples that lapped up inside the harbor wall, hardly moving its heavy sheaves of green-brown bladderwrack.
Wrenn and the Archer descended to a rowing boat that was stowed with our belongings. Wrenn sat upright on the plank bench with his scabbarded rapier and sword belt gripped between his knees. Lightning leaned on the gunwale, trailing his fingers in the water, with a distant smile on his woodcut face. He carried a bow and a quiver of exquisite arrows, and the circlet around his short hair glinted in a most annoying way.
I sprinted along the jetty, wings half open to build up airspeed. I ran faster and faster still, toward the lighthouse at the end. I passed it, reached top speed; the jetty ended, I jumped off into the air. My wings met below me, I swept them up till the primary feather tips touched.
I flew over the waterfront that was lined with several hundred people. Some ducked, swearing. They had a glimpse of my boot soles and ice axe buckled across my waist. I heard their murmur of envy ripple like waves.
I leaned with my wings held up in a V-shape to circle tightly, and began to rise on a weak thermal above the chaotic roofs. I reached the height of the buff sandstone cliffs and soared above, seeing their grassy tops. Then I turned out toward the ships; the sea’s surface sped beneath me. I would miss Awndyn’s homeliness. I had taken a pinch of scolopendium with breakfast and as a result I was less afraid of the ocean. When you’re intoxicated, the balance changes between all the facets of your personality, making a different character. I was eager for Tris.
A group of people proceeded along the rough stone jetty. From high above I mostly saw their heads. The woman with a walking stick had long red hair over a green shawl held tightly closed; it was Governor Swallow, surrounded by her attendants. They stopped at the foot of the lighthouse and looked out to sea. Swallow began to sing. She keened, she swelled the dirge with all the force of her opera voice. The wind gusted the melody up to me; clear and high, it slid over eerie minor notes that prickled my skin. Her melancholy lament rose past the crowded quay, past the rowing boats to the caravels. The rowers heard it. Lightning heard it and looked back. The breeze blew it to Tris. I didn’t know why she sang a dirge, but it seemed apt.
Outside the harbor, the boats began to churn from side to side. At least I don’t have to sit in one of those little tubs. Colorful caravels lay at anchor, scattered some distance apart. As I gained height and my viewpoint widened
