sourced silks, kept both its wings as symmetrical as the day it was first completed. I thought the fact he was tinkering with it and not helping Tornado and Queen Eleonora clear the remaining Paperlands that the Insects had built in northern Awia showed he had time to spare.
Mist addressed him: “You can’t sulk for a whole generation. Do you want your world view to become obsolete and eccentric like the portraits that hang in your house? Jant, listen to this: Lightning’s family portraits have been repainted many times, about every two hundred years once they start to fade. The artists try to be accurate but scarcely perceptible changes creep in accidentally, flattering trends to the ideal of the era. Next time, those alterations are copied along with the rest and new ones are made. His portraits are as idealized as his memories. Saker, how can you tell what’s real and what isn’t when you rely on the past? If you don’t want to know of new discoveries, how long will you last as an Eszai? Suppose the island has better bows than Awia? A better type of wood?”
“Without Insects to inspire them, I doubt it. Let them come with their Challenges.”
The camera obscura was growing even stuffier and I was gasping for air. I nudged the door wide, looking for my chance to escape. Serein Wrenn caught sight of us and strolled over with a limber gait. I wondered what he thought, seeing three Eszai in an alcove. When everything else at his party was so perfect, we stood out as a great anomaly. “What are you talking about?”
“We beg your pardon,” said Lightning. “This is a private discussion.”
Wrenn bowed and was about to leave us to it, but Mist sized him up. “No, wait…What time is it? We have to tell the truth for an hour.” I could virtually hear her mind calculating. She took in his shirt buttoned down the left side showing his strong torso off to the best advantage, his small round stand-up collar and sharp-styled hair, the worn cherry-red leather thigh boots with the tops folded over his knees.
Out came her travel-worn notebook again. “You need experience. You’ll find this interesting,” she said, and set her plans on him like wolves.
The others blocked my view of the party, so I turned again to the pinhole image. The beam angled by the half-open door illuminated the wall next to me, unfocused and with washed-out contrast. Fuzzy figures rippled over the uneven surface, so small that their activities looked quaint but nonetheless unsettling. I checked them one by one: Gayle exchanging a few words with the Emperor, Frost crammed into a ball gown and wearing steel-toed boots. I couldn’t see Tern. Where was she? Why wouldn’t Mist let me out? I tried to edge away from the stifling corner but Mist stood firm, talking hotly into my face, toes pressing against my toes, only the logbook between me and her ample breasts. Tern’s figure must be in my shadow, but though I inched forward I couldn’t see her waltzing on the wall. The perfume on Mist’s long white hair tickled my sinuses; there was also the pong of Wrenn’s gravy breath. His shoulder was up against mine and the bright love of adventure in his eyes would enthuse the entire fyrd. It was even worse to think I would be on the ship with him.
“…so the Empire must explore Tris,” Mist concluded eventually. Lightning glared; he rightly thought that we were making unnecessary problems for ourselves.
“Are you worried?” she asked Wrenn.
“Nothing worries me,” he said.
“Nothing!” I said. “Poor lad, there’s quite a lot of it out there.”
He stared at me. “I haven’t even unpacked my rucksack. I’m ready to go.”
“Aye, thought so. Gentlemen, you will be discreet and keep this a secret. You must go out into the party with knowledge that no one else in the whole world has. Smile; you’ll find it hard. I will see you at Awndyn by the end of the week; the
Lightning beckoned a butler and said, “Go down to the cellars and bring me a bottle of Micawater wine. The oldest you can find.”
The party sashayed and shone around me. I walked through it, dead to the heart and scarcely seeing Tern in a clumsy two-step with the Strongman.
I ran out to the balcony and jumped to the balustrade, threw myself off. Beating hard and yelling with fury I reached eighty k.p.h. between two spires, just brushing stone with my wingtips. I zigzagged close to tightly packed walls near-missing by a centimeter on every familiar turn. I exploded out of the fog, still climbing to the clear starry sky. The tallest towers poked though the mist’s cotton blanket like black sea stacks; lights flickered deep among them. I reached the top of my trajectory, for a second hung there. Somersaulted. Fell, headfirst, masonry soaring past, the mist’s surface undulating.
I splashed through it, silently.
I flew circuits of the Castle until I slowed down and my anger wore off, turning into hopelessness. I landed on the sill of the Northwest Tower, bounded down into my room, sprang onto the four-poster bed and ripped its curtains together. In its gloomy, ivy-entwined brocade cave I sat and thought. Drugs, that’s what I need. Drugs.
CHAPTER THREE
Next morning I decided to seek an audience with the Emperor and appeal against the terrible orders that he had given me. I left Tern sleeping in the four-poster bed; I had pretended to be asleep when she came in late. I dressed, ate breakfast and shut the door as the Starglass struck ten. I ran down the frescoed spiral steps three at a time, at a speed that may well be the death of me one day. I ignored the thick rope that serves as a handrail and opened my wings for balance as far as was possible on the dizzying staircase. I hurtled around the last corner and crashed into Lightning, who was climbing up. “Huh? Get out of my way, Micawater.”
“Jant! I have to talk to you. The Emperor’s just asked me to put Gio out of the Castle!”
“Who?”
“Gio Ami. The Swordsman for four hundred years until last night.”
Gio was from Ghallain, a bleak town on the tip of an inhospitable cape. His wealth and acumen were entirely self-made. Three-letter names were often used among the coastal Plainslanders, a tradition dating back as far as the Emperor’s birth. Like Awian names, they’re not gender-specific. I thought, Gio really belongs in sixteen thirty- nine. What the fuck is he going to do out there, in the twenty-first century?
We walked toward the Simurgh Passage on the extreme eastern side of the palace, and along past Lightning’s rooms where pale watercolor paintings covered the walls completely, their frames touching. The Archer said, “Gio refuses to leave. I have sometimes seen defeated Eszai act this way. He has lived a long time in the Castle; he may fear the outside world although he’ll never admit it. It has changed since he was last mortal.”
I remembered Gio’s arrogance and said, “More like he can’t accept that anyone could beat him.”
“Yes, I agree.”
“Well, I hope he isn’t armed.”
“Oh, of course he is armed. That’s why I need your help to evict him.”
We walked up a flight of steps to the attic of the passage and the quarters traditionally appointed to Serein. Bucklers were displayed on the walls outside his doorway, with dusty bullfighting cloaks and wood-and-leather dusack swords for practice. Broadswords and falchions were arranged in circles and fans, next to sail-hilted daggers and Wrought katanas with naked blued steel. There were ceremonial two-handed swords with curlicued quillions and flamberge blades inlaid with gold wire, and several portraits of Gio. Servants passed us, carrying boxes and suitcases down to the ground floor. One wore a sallet helmet and the others had shirts wrapped around their heads.
Lightning and I peered into the awkwardly shaped room, which had a sloping ceiling. It looked like the den of a sports-obsessed teenager. It smelled of rubber-soled shoes, canvas ingrained with sweat, the wooden grips of polearms smoothed and varnish worn away with use. Twinned rapiers in cases and practice foils in holdalls were stacked along the wall, under a shabby dartboard with a fistful of darts jammed into the bull’s-eye. A beautiful schiavona cut-and-thrust sword with a basket hilt and a sharkskin grip hung in pride of place on the opposite wall.
In a big glass tank at the far end of the room enormous yellow koi carp cruised back and forth, their mirror scales glinting like plate armor. Two servants were indiscriminately stuffing the clutter into boxes and moving it out.
