was clean-shaven and, through long practice, fastidiously neat. Living on a ship for three months is like camping at the Front and Lightning knew how boredom, bad conditions and long waiting cause men’s discipline and ultimately their behavior to degenerate. The bandages under his barn-owl-yellow coat were fresh and crisp.
He said, “I worry about Cyan; I need to see her more. I only have a short opportunity to raise her and I can’t depend on Swallow to do it properly. This is such appalling timing; last century the Emperor could have done without me for a decade. Poor Cyan, she always looks delighted when I visit, though she’s different every time, she grows so fast. Jant, one day you might find that you rely on prominent features to recognize people from one decade to the next.”
He veered from Low to High Awian, an outrageously complicated language in which every noun has a case, a tense, one of three genders and one of two social classes. Most of the verbs are irregular, and the least slip in the forms of address can cause offense. I am not sure whether High Awian became so intense through its long evolution in their aristocracy or deliberately to discourage aspiring farmers, tenants and Morenzians.
“This is the longest time I have failed to practice. I’ll be in a sadly Challengeable state when we reach Tris, but it is my responsibility to catch Gio. This hurts, Jant; it certainly hurts. I can still feel the steel piercing my side-cold and inflexible. Have some brandy. I’m not drinking much, it would be disastrous for my aim, but it really is better than ours.”
“It’s the only decent drink on board,” I said. “Mist left in such a hurry that we’ve taken Gio’s leftovers for rations. My guts are shrinking; I’ve had nothing but soup and juice all week. Can I bring you any?”
“No, stay awhile and talk. I have a Messenger’s errand for you…”
“What is it?”
“It is somewhat unusual.” Lightning stared into the center of the cabin. It was easy to underestimate how debilitated he was, with those overdeveloped shoulders. I waited patiently; perhaps he was rambling. The warm round smell of wax pervaded the berth, making it rather cozy. The rain smelled green; the ship’s oakum soaked it up and stank like a wet dog. Thankfully it was difficult to envisage the breakers tearing over the main deck; above us the shredded topsail cracked and plaited. The driving waves caught red dusk like smallpox as sunset flashed under a suffocating sky, transforming the sailors’ frantic activity into a series of stills.
Lightning breathed, “It is autumn again…her birthday. I should be with Martyn. Since the Circle was founded I have never missed the date, my long-kept secret. If I could order
“Count me in!”
He gave a bitter smile. “I knew that at some point I would fail Martyn. It matters not, when Gio is persuading mortals to massacre us. But although my tradition is just a whim, I find breaking it makes me uncomfortable and I fancy she will miss me.” He looked away. “I suppose you are eager to know what has been eating me up for one and a half thousand years…”
Lightning stared into space for a long while. He judged the time was right and suddenly said, “Jant, I want you to carry a message to a dead woman. If I am killed fighting the rebels, you must visit the mausoleum and speak to her about the circumstances of my end. Explain why I can no longer come to see her.”
He feigned interest in his brandy. “My cousin’s body lies in an aventurine casket near the tombs of generations of my family, in a high-ceilinged sepulchre. You will find it among the trees on the man-made island in Micawater lake, in the palace grounds. I visit her once a year; I should be there today. I always leave the door ajar so that a shaft of light falls across Martyn’s tomb. She loved the lake, you see. She used to trail her hand in the water, for the suspended mineral flecks that reflect the sunlight.
“You will see one clear track that my steps have made through the dust that lies thickly over every surface, from the entrance to the head of her vault. I sit beside the inscription that I keep free of dust. For the space of a few hours I tell her all the events of the previous year. I say that I visit as promised, because I still love her.
“I always bring balsam flowers. I store them in the underground bow room, which you have not seen. It is near the ice house, a beehive-shaped cellar, a cool, homeostatic store where the bows hang horizontally on stands. The flowers must be white because they set off her magnificent deep red hair so well. They must be balsam, as in the rhyme that no one even remembers anymore: balsam for lovers, willows for brides, briar for maidens, lilies for wives.
“When I have finished telling her the news I leave the balsam, gather up the dried remains of last year’s bouquet and row back across the lake.”
Lightning rubbed his forehead and sipped at the brandy. In his mind’s eye he stroked the glistening green stone, sitting on the plinth while maple leaves fell past the mausoleum portal and doves cooed in the baroque cote.
“Martyn and I were struck with pure and sincere love,” he said very sourly. I was startled, but I suppose nothing causes bitterness so much as a downfall from ecstasy. “I don’t know why. Maids of honor packed my mother’s entourage. There were ballrooms full of girls, all very pretty and accomplished, but not one of them was real.
“As a child Martyn was often at the palace. Then one banquet night we noticed each other and everything changed. We fell through into a panorama of hidden possibilities. We stared at each other across the laden table; nothing else existed. Without a word we rose together and left the hall. She was nineteen years old, I was twenty-nine. My conscience made me hesitate; she took my wing and led me to the antechamber, where she pushed me into the cloaks hanging on the wall and allowed me to kiss her.
“We rushed to the stables at midnight. ‘Don’t you want to escape?’ Martyn said. She was wild, she didn’t care. She charged her white hunter at hedges and ditches, taking the jumps at a mad speed and I galloped beside her.”
An unruly smirk that I had never seen before appeared on Lightning’s face. He looked almost boyish. “‘Don’t you want to escape?’ We escaped a lot after that-every opportunity we had.” He held his index fingers ten centimeters apart. “I was this far from quitting the court, marrying her and exiling ourselves. We were this far, one fistmele, from escaping properly. I wish I had had the courage; she would still be alive today. She would be here
“I sometimes fought Insects but my lineage shielded me. Martyn and I spent most days in a world of our own. My family never mentioned it but they knew. Oh yes, they knew. The court thrived on Mother’s blissful love for Garganey, but my love for her sister’s daughter was taboo.
“We talked for hours and rode great distances, far from the palace to converse in the forest. All those long conversations, words came so easily. At dinners we were careful to sit apart. In dances she was serene and unperturbed while I tried hard not to look.
“Martyn was a peerless rider. I remember her perfume, her sepia and sage silk, her strong limbs, pale skin, and her auburn wings that she would spread like an excitable girl. She had seen so many forests the green of them stayed in her eyes.”
I felt like a voyeur in the undergrowth next to Lightning’s cousin as she pressed herself against him and lay between the roots of an oak tree. She pulled up her tunic, her necklace’s fine links pooled in the hollow of her throat. I peered to see a young Saker kiss her neck and full breasts and repeat her name tenderly and urgently. Her red curls spread on the crisp leaves as Saker mumbled, “We mustn’t do this,” desperately down the front of her blouse.
I felt uncomfortable because I had always considered Lightning to be sexless and celibate; the thought of him shagging Martyn was strange and a bit disgusting.
His hollow voice continued: “I see her again and again. Sometimes a woman’s beauty reminds me of Martyn, but she doesn’t act the same. Anyway, even the most breathtaking beauty only approximates to Martyn’s. If I wait long enough…well…the types of characters are not endless, and with time they recur. She looked very much like Swallow, but taller, and she resembled Savory too-remember her?”
I nodded cagily. Lightning sent me to deliver his love letters to a fyrd captain called Savory, and she let me fuck her after she read them. I was single, individualistic and hedonistic, so I took it as proof of how wrong Lightning was about women. I now keep the burden of guilt to myself, because for his peace of mind and my own safety he must never know.
He continued without noticing. “Martyn was as close to perfection as it’s possible to be. A happiness so intense can’t last long; it’s always the case that the arrows we shoot up to the stars fall back on our own heads. The Insects swarmed ever closer, decimating the First Circle, and in the year six-twenty San announced the Games.