It's been nearly a year since I last wrote some of this- it'll probably have some inconsistencies. Enjoy!
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SILVETERA MOURNS ROYAL TRAGEDY.
The Kingdom of Silvetera has initiated a state of mourning today in the wake of the tragic death of Princess Elile, 20. As yet there has been no official statement as to the cause of death, although security around the Palace has been tightened, leading to fears that an outside party might have been involved…
… in an unusual move, all trade has been suspended and movement in or out of the country forcibly forbidden until further notice…
***
“I don’t like it,” Riarna muttered, her voice barely audible over the low-key hum of the busy tavern. Her eyes flickered anxiously around the room before returning to contemplate the crackling fire.
“It’s not right. Things aren’t right. They haven’t felt right for weeks,” her sister replied, swirling the dregs of her drink in agitated little circles.
The buzz in the room dropped suddenly quieter and the two girls looked up, following the focus of the room to the doorway. An enormous figure stood framing the opening, his dark bulk outlined by curls of insinuating mist, creeping in from the frosty night outside. With a slight shiver, the bear-like creature completed his shift and stepped forward into the room, his heavy footsteps reverberating slightly in the increasingly silent tavern.
“It is good to see so many of you here on such a bleak night,” the man began in his deep, carrying growl. “I have learnt little more than what we knew at our last meeting.” He broke off and began to pace the room, rubbing his bearded face pensively.
“It doesn’t look good,” Srynia whispered, leaning close to her sister’s ear. Riarna nodded her assent, watching the perturbed reactions of those townspeople who’d been able to gather that night.
“Arrozale continues to insist that it harbours no hostile intentions towards its neighbours. The latest news is that King Falos and his Queen will be entering the city of Silvetera within the next couple of days. If I hear of any changes before then, I will post news of another meeting on the town’s message board.”
“And what of Silvetera? Will she trade?” an aggrieved voice called from a crowded but shadowy recess of the pub.
“No more news on that front, Perephus,” the man answered resignedly, but placing a rather pointed emphasis on the name.
“But my good Lord Urlof,” the same aggrieved voice replied, as Perephus himself stepped forwards from the crowd, “how can we sustain ourselves? Why bother with anything if our products will find no market?”
The background noise of the tavern rose slightly, with more raised voices throwing out opinions. Lord Urlof held up his arms in a gesture for quiet and the people quickly subsided.
“There are other markets, although less lucrative than Silvetera, that will sustain free-moving trade.” The noise level began rising again and Urlof quickly cut across it. “But give it time! A few more days and we will have news about the success of the diplomatic visit of King Falos to Silvetera and then we will know if any of this worrying was necessary in the first place!” He paused to draw breath, looking sternly around the room, waiting for the next challenge. None would dare to reply and even Perephus looked slightly cowed.
“Until the next meeting then!” Urlof raised his arm in farewell and strode across to the room, wrenching back the door and leaping through in bear-form once again. There was a moments stunned silence before the pub resumed the low-key hum that it had had before his arrival.
***
Captain’s Journal; entry 325.
12th Auldary 4376
Storm predicted 14th Auldary. Likelihood severe gales. Journey needs delay but passengers insist urgency. Plan test emergency drill procedure tomorrow. Hope this enough. I have doubts.
From: Famous Last Words: a Compendium.
***
“Abandon Ship!” the Captain called again and again, his voice hoarse from shouting, his body rent by the rips and burns his ship had put him through in the past few hours he’d tried to save her. He clung on to one of the few remaining pieces of upright timber on the creaking wreck of the hull. He could not see beyond the driving rain, but he knew that his crew should be fine; he only employed aquatic shifters for a reason. It was the passengers that worried him.
Suddenly, he caught sight of a figure stumbling across the remainder of the deck. “Who goes there?” he called to it, squinting in the gloom. A flash of lightning dazzled him briefly, but lit up the person well enough for him to realise who it was.
“Your Highness! We must abandon ship! She’ll not withstand much more of this storm,” the Captain called across, praying that the wind was not snatching away his words.
“I have never been a strong swimmer, Captain,” the Queen replied, her shout barely audible.
“You must shift!” he yelled back, just as a particularly violent wave ripped up through the leaking hull, causing the timbers to shriek with strain. The Queen stumbled and the water pushed her from her feet, slamming her against the raised border between the ship and the churning ocean.
“Shift!” the Captain called again, but her body remained propped limply against the boards. He mustered up what remained of his strength and threw himself across the deck, scrambling over to her side.
“Your Highness!” he shook her shoulder, but got no response. “Vinthia!” he tried her informal name in a desperate bid to wake her.
“Can’t…” she muttered, her voice sounding painfully cracked.
“You must! There is no other way now. The ship is lost,” he swallowed that painful thought and tried again to shake her.
“No!” she replied, looking up at him with savagery in her eyes. “We have been betrayed! I can’t shift. We have been poisoned!” With a desperate gargling, the Queen’s face contorted violently, as if in a silent scream. A dark shadow moved across her prone body, just in time for the Captain to turn and witness the curve of the enormous wave engulf the ship. Instinctively the Captain shifted into a sea lion, gliding effortlessly through the crashing water.
He knew he must find shore, he must tell someone, if only he knew who he could tell. His ship sunk; his Queen gone; no sign of the King. He was lost in his thoughts, so lost that he did not notice his sea lion instincts niggling at the corner of his mind.
With a crude thump he collided with a solid mass in the water and paused to regard it with slightly dazed senses.
“Dayvi?” he chirped in sea-lion.
“Cap’n,” the creature replied in whale, rolling over slightly in the water, revealing where massive chunks of flesh had been torn from it.
“What’s happened?” the Captain barked, the nauseating taste of blood in the water grating on his senses.
“One of Them is here,” Dayvi gurgled in response, his voice low and weak. “In the water. I saw it take the others, but I could not swim fast enough. It left me for last…” he broke off, his pitiful groaning echoing through the ocean.
“Them? Here?” he barked back, his mind in turmoil, quickly scanning the water around him.
“Too late… too late,” Dayvi moaned and choked, struggling in the turbulent storm waters. “Go now and there might still be a chance for you.”
The Captain paused, torn by indecision, a cold tingling creeping up his spine. Turning too late, the flash of jaws screaming across his vision, before nothingness and the dark crushing oblivion of the waves enveloping him. Its face fixed in a permanent grimace, the shark turned back to the whale, fixing his blank black discs of eyes on his victim.
LAST ONE
***
“… but out of the darkness of this tragedy might come the light of change…”
Excerpt from “King Penry’s Seminal Speeches.”
***
“I don’t want it and I never have done,” Dyl spat at his uncle, pacing the room in agitation.
“Well, you do realise, spoilt princeling or not, that you are the only direct heir to the throne?” Penry replied with amused condescension. “What would you have me do? Run your Kingdom for you?” He smiled darkly at this, looking away from his nephew briefly.
“I’d rather that!” Dyl replied vehemently, swiping irritably at the air around him.
“Do be serious, boy,” Penry replied, taking a firmer tone, “Your Kingdom is not just a pretty palace with lots of treasures and fine clothes for you to wear. It is a powerful nation, not to be idly toyed with. Its military strength alone is only matched by one other Kingdom in this world!”
Dyl looked shrewdly across at his uncle.
“A strength I‘m sure you‘d put to much better use than I would,” he replied pointedly.
“It is true that with the combined strength of our two Kingdoms, there would be no power in this world that could equal us!” Penry stood up, grasping his nephew’s shoulder and fixing his eye in his.
Dyl edged out from under his uncle’s hand.
“Silvetera would never bow under Arrozalan rule again,” he replied in agitation.
“No and why should it?” Penry replied fervently, “It has long been the most powerful Kingdom; its influences reach to every corner of this world! Our wealth could buy the Arrozalan army twice over and why shouldn’t it?”
Dyl backed away, getting increasingly alarmed.
“But how? How could you even begin…”
“Do not worry about the hows! All I need from you is one thing,” Penry replied, striding across the room and pulling a scroll of parchment from his desk.
“What’s this?” Dyl asked, whilst desperately trying to scan the densely packed legal jargon.
“It is a peace treaty between our Kingdoms. All I need is for you to sign,” Penry held up a pen and Dyl took it without thinking.
“But we’re not at war! We haven’t been at war for decades!” Dyl looked from the pen in his hand to his uncle’s contorted face.
“A minor war at best, of no real concern. That is, as long as you’re willing to sign the peace treaty,” Penry’s voice dropped and his eyes narrowed, fixing his nephew in a long, calculating look.
Dyl looked again at the parchment and at the pen and at his uncle.
“I’ll need some ink.”
Monday, 10 March 2008
Sunday, 9 March 2008
Cymru - Chapter 8
GWILYM
Gwilym walked quietly between the stables in the landing tower, breathing in the scents of the merod dozing in the stalls. He could smell hay, sweet and summery; the alkaline odours of saddle soap and leather polish, the sharp tang of pine-pitch burning on the torches. He’d never appreciated his olfactory senses quite so much before, which seemed most remiss of him. The world of scent was beautiful, and yet so… ignored.
But then, every detail suddenly felt clearer to him. Someone had tried to kill him.
Gwilym ran one finger carefully along the arrow shaft he held. Wicked barbs stuck out along it, most of them showing a dull reddish-brown in the torchlight. Awen hadn’t just caught that arrow, she’d also held on while it sliced her hand open. He couldn’t imagine how that had been possible. He wondered if she’d noticed it cutting her at the time. You heard stories about Riders, and how they could go into these strange mental states where everything was all focused and intense. Gwilym wondered if Awen could teach him it; it would probably help speed up paperwork no end.
He looked around at the merod. Normally, these ten were the stables of Aberystwyth’s Alpha Wing, but as they were off threatening Northlanders into going to the Archwiliad the stalls had been given over to whichever Wing was visiting. Nine animals stood there now, and Gwilym wondered if Awen would be flying in to meet him. He’d only seen her briefly after she’d returned the would-be assassin, but she’d looked rather disturbed. Probably not the best mood for riding in.
One of the merod, a massive animal with muscles that were probably sentient, jerked awake and looked about suddenly, his ears pricked forward. Gwilym wandered over to his stall and held out a hand. The meraden stepped willingly forward and nuzzled his palm, the short whiskers of his muzzle tickling slightly. Gwilym grinned.
“He likes it if you scratch his chin,” Awen’s voice said softly behind him. Gwilym glanced over his shoulder at her.
She was leaning against the doorframe with her left arm hanging strangely and both shoulders slumped. She looked exhausted. Her eyes watched him with a peculiar intensity that he wondered at; they hadn’t done so this morning.
Obediently, Gwilym scratched the meraden’s chin. It made a sort of groaning noise in its throat and stretched its head forward, rustling its wings contentedly. Awen came over to stand beside him, looking at the meraden with a tired affection.
“His name’s Brân,” she said. Brân gave a low whicker. “And he’s actually a pest, don’t let him fool you. He just acts cute to impress people.”
“He knew you were here,” Gwilym said thoughtfully. “He woke up before you arrived apropos of nothing and looked all expectant.”
“Instinct,” Awen said. “Riders imprint themselves on their merod when they’re born.”
“A duck imprinted itself onto me, once,” Gwilym said. He paused. “I’m sorry, I thought there was more story there than there actually was. This anecdote has no interesting end.”
Awen smiled. It was a small smile, and not a shadow of the one she’d had barely twelve hours earlier, but it was genuine.
“It’s a good anecdote, though,” she reassured him. “I rather liked it. Do you still have the duck?”
“No,” Gwilym admitted. “My brother and I managed to wean it off me. It flew south and I never saw it again.” He considered that. “Or maybe I have, but, you know. It’s a duck. It looks like the others.”
Brân snorted, and stepped up to his door to push at Awen with his nose. She raised her right hand to touch him, and Gwilym saw the bandage wrapped around it, slightly loose and heavily bloodstained. He looked properly at her. Up close he could see a similar bandage in a similar state mostly hidden under the collar of her uniform. As she moved he could see the stiffness in her left side, particularly through her shoulder. She looked pale.
Which meant Awen had been in one hell of a fight with what had seemed to Gwilym to be an adolescent boy who was still unconscious in his cell.
He held up the arrow, coloured by her blood still, and took her injured hand. She didn’t resist as he slid the bandage off the wound, jagged edged and long. Gwilym sighed.
“I feel incredibly guilty about this,” he confessed. More so now he could see it: it looked unbelievably painful.
“Don’t, honestly,” Awen smiled gently. “It’ll heal, and you’re still alive.”
“You know, this happened at dinner,” Gwilym chided before he could stop himself. “Why haven’t you had it stitched yet?”
Awen looked away, shifting her left shoulder slightly. Brân tossed his head anxiously.
“Our medic is…” She bit her lip. “Our medic is gone,” she finished at last, looking up at Gwilym with a haunted expression. “You met him. Owain. I’d have gone to him otherwise.”
“Where’s he gone?” Gwilym asked quietly. He didn’t need to be told it was serious. Wings were raised together. They were families. They never left each other.
“I don’t know,” Awen said hopelessly. “He wouldn’t say. But he’s not working for the Union anymore, I don’t think. He’s gone rogue.”
That was where she got the other injuries, then. Including that throat wound. With a surge of outrage, it suddenly hit home to Gwilym what it meant: he’d tried to kill her. All of Gwilym’s family were dead, now – well, except Uncle Sion, who’d left for Erinn to become Aunty Sioned and now worked on a potato farm in exchange for free lodgings and a sack of coal a week – but he had memories of them. He tried to imagine how it would have felt if his sister had tried to kill him.
Or maybe not his sister. She’d been an Angry Person.
“Is that why you haven’t had this looked at?” Gwilym asked as delicately as she could.
Awen smiled a humourless smile.
“Owain was our medic,” she stated. “I’ve not been to anyone else since I was about ten and he first specialised. I mean, I have in the field, but in the field it’s either me or one of the others, not… Not a trained medic.” Awen looked at him dully. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Gwilym said gently. “Yes, it does.” But that cut still needed stitching, and the one on her neck definitely did. He glanced around the stable block and saw the medkit in the corner of the manager’s station. Inclining his head, he led Awen over there, realising as he sat her on the tall stool that he’d had hold of her hand for the entire time, and hadn’t noticed. It seemed she hadn’t, either.
“You know,” he told her conversationally, “my father never spoke to me much about how to rule a city. My sister was older, and then my brother, so… you know… It didn’t seem necessary, I suppose. But he did used to take me on tours of the city sometimes anyway.” Gwilym had loved it. His father had, by necessity, not been around much. When he could, they’d do the tours and it was like a family day out, a treat for them all. “I loved them because they meant I got to see the whole city. He never kept to only the good areas. He’d go to the poor, run-down areas too. We were going through one on one occasion, and I remember seeing a load of fishing families there. Most of the workers were missing limbs.”
“Missing limbs?” Awen cocked her head at him. It was an incredibly endearing sign of attention that was favourably reminiscent of his duck. “Entire limbs?”
“Some of them,” he nodded. “Some just bits. A foot here and there, a few fingers. Either way: it turned out that there had been a storm a few months before, a really bad one. Most people on the boats had hell’s own job of getting them into dock, and they’d picked up injuries, some bad, some not so bad. The point was, they were too poor to afford a doctor at the time, so in almost every case the wounds had become gangrenous.”
Awen winced. “That’s awful.”
“Yes,” said Gwilym sadly. He’d cried himself to sleep that night.
“I will be getting this looked at before that stage, though,” Awen smiled. It was still a shadow of her smile earlier that day. He grinned anyway.
“Not where I was going, actually,” he said. “I trained as a medic for the next three years and sneaked out of the palace at night to run a clinic for the poor. Free of charge.”
Awen stared at him incredulously. “You did what?”
“Oh, yes.” Gwilym smiled reminiscently. “My training was very basic, of course, so there were an awful lot of people I couldn’t help, but I did my bit. And, most relevant to this situation, the first thing I ever learned was how to stitch up an open wound.” He looked at her. She didn’t look away. “I’m not a medic, Rider. I just know how to help, if you want me to.”
Awen snorted and looked at Brân, her smile wry.
“Thank you,” she said. “Well negotiated. I see now why you’re Sovereign.”
He did her throat wound first, deeming it more important than her hand. She was an impressive patient; she didn’t even flinch at the seaweed solution, and sat motionless as Gwilym sewed her skin back together. Fortunately it was a shallow wound: clearly she’d stopped Owain before he’d had chance to do more.
Finally he finished it, and turned his attention to her palm. It was less life-threatening, but a nastier injury.
“Thank you,” he said quietly as he used the seaweed solution again. Awen shook her head.
“Any Rider would have done it, Sovereign,” she said. “I’m just glad I was there.”
“No one’s ever tried to kill me before, you know,” Gwilym sighed. Carefully, he began the stitches along the jagged edges. “It’s quite upsetting.”
Awen chuckled. “As I understand it, Sovereign, it’s par for the course in your line of work. Chalk it up to experience.”
“Does this mean I need one of those nubile slaves to be a food taster now?” Gwilym asked. “Hordes of dancing girls trained as ninjas? A flock of trained mutant birds to attack anyone who looks a bit shady?”
“Definitely,” Awen grinned. “Although how are you defining ‘shady’, because you may need to put up signs warning innocent people to leave their wide-brimmed hats at home on pain of mutated bird.”
“No,” Gwilym said. “I’m in a position of power. My definitions will vary by the day and only I will be aware of their nuances.”
“Oh,” Awen said thoughtfully. “Well in that case you should also replace all your advisors with the nubile food tasters and dancing girls and have a marvellous time while the city crumbles around you.”
“Damned good plan.” Gwilym negotiated the middle of the cut carefully, trying not to lose any more of Awen’s skin. It was tricky: it ran right across the crease in her palm. “We still don’t know who the boy is, by the way,” he told her. “He’s not woken up yet. You did a good job on him.”
“I didn’t,” Awen sighed. “Adara did. I was busy with Owain at the time.”
“He did this, then,” Gwilym said. He didn’t let it be a question. His anger toward the man surprised him, but he didn’t try to push it aside. Awen nodded, watching the needle.
“He wanted me to let the boy go,” she said quietly. Gwilym paused and stared at her. She carried on. “I think he was in on it. He wouldn’t say why, he just asked me to trust him.”
“I’m sorry,” Gwilym said, and he truly was.
“So am I,” Awen said expressionlessly. “Mostly because I didn’t see it coming. I keep looking back over things he’s said or done, and in retrospect I don’t know how I didn’t see it. Something was wrong.”
She was fingering the beads in her hair with her left hand, running her fingers along the wires. Gwilym pulled another stitch closed carefully.
“You didn’t see it because he was your brother,” he said gently. “Or as good as. No one expects their family to do something like this.”
“I’m trained to see things like this,” Awen said. She swirled the beads faster. “I just… I think the problem was that I never really got on with him that well. He was always a good tactician, and he was very practical. If something needed doing he’d get it done. It’s why he was Deputy.”
“But?” Gwilym asked.
“But… It’s not that his ruthlessness was a problem, because you need that in a warrior to some degree. And it was good to have someone in the Wing who could be ruthless like Owain was.” Brân stamped his hoof in his stall. Gwilym wondered how much of Awen’s emotions the meraden picked up. “But Owain applied that ruthlessness to everyone. He was manipulative, but in the worst way, because I don’t think he ever saw anyone as a fellow person.” Awen shook her head. Her hair glimmered gold. “People were things to Owain, for him to use as he needed. I mean, I can see this now…”
Awen trailed off, and Gwilym wished he was doing something even fractionally more comforting to her right now than stabbing her repeatedly in the hand. Somehow it just didn’t seem to give off the right vibes. He settled for rubbing the back of her hand with his fingers as he prepared the final stitch; she gave him a small smile.
“What will you do now?” he asked her. Awen’s eyes hardened.
“Find him,” she said. “And I will. And when I do, I think I might just finish chopping his bloody fingers off.”
Well, that was scary. Riders were scary. Gwilym was scared.
“I want to know who he’s working for and why,” Awen said quietly. “And why he – they – want you dead. And then I’m going to haul whatever’s left of him in front of the Union, and they can deal with it.”
Well, Gwilym supposed, it would be nice if she could stop the people who were trying to kill him. Nubile food tasters were just so pretentious. He tied off the last stitch and carefully re-bandaged her hand. Awen inspected his handiwork and smiled.
“Good job,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Gwilym said mildly, packing the equipment away again. “Now, what’s wrong with your shoulder? You haven’t moved your left arm since you came in.”
“It had an argument with a stone floor,” Awen said, using her freshly fixed hand to touch it gingerly. “Now it’s bruised to hell and back. It’ll be fine, though; I’ll see a druid before we go about all of it.”
Gwilym was glad to hear her say that, but gladder still he’d stitched her up himself. Druids could do a good job of speeding up the healing process to a few days but in the case of large wounds like that stitches were still required for a full heal, and druids weren’t good at it.
“In the meantime, let me poke at it,” he said. “It’ll free up the muscles at least.”
Awen cautiously tried to raise her arm and winced.
“Alright,” she agreed. “Just don’t poke the bruised bit. That still hurts.”
“That was the bit I wanted to poke,” Gwilym told her. “I’m intrigued to see if you ever show pain like normal people.”
Awen chuckled dryly, and Gwilym walked around her stool to get to her shoulder better. Her muscles were densely packed; it was like kneading a stone.
“So,” Gwilym said as he worked. “What exactly did you want to talk to me about up here before our lives got turned upside down earlier?”
“Oh,” Awen sighed, “conspiracies and that. How well do you know Lady Marged?”
“She makes me socks,” Gwilym said. He was wearing some now, they were lovely. “And she sells me green dyes cheaply. I can’t say I’ve had all that many meetings with her that were in any way official, though.”
“Well, we think she’s trying to set up a big power vacuum of anarchy with herself set to benefit,” Awen said. Her shoulder twitched involuntarily under Gwilym’s hand, and relaxed slightly. “Or so Flyn thinks, anyway. We know she’s doing something, she’s sending dissenters into other cities to tell the people that they should have power and not the Sovereigns.”
“That doesn’t sound like Marged,” Gwilym smiled. “Unless she’s doing something else and for entirely altruistic reasons, and that’s just what it looks like.”
“Well, quite,” Awen agreed. “Now Flyn… I’ll be honest with you. Flyn thinks that what she’s doing, motivations aside, is destabilising the Sovereigns, and for obvious reasons is therefore tipping the country into war again, since having fixed Sovereigns rather than lots of power plays is what dragged us out of war last time.”
“Partly,” Gwilym agreed. Awen waved her right hand dismissively.
“Yes, I know, but this is Flyn’s thought process,” she said. “The point is that’s what Flyn thinks. His counter plan, therefore, is to cement the power of the Sovereigns by having one rule all the others, so none can step out of line like Lady Marged. A king and regents. If a regent misbehaves, the king can simply get all the others together and remove that regent, and replace them with someone of his choosing.”
Gwilym stopped kneading for a moment to stare at Awen. “He wants ultimate power?”
“I think so,” Awen said glumly. She shifted her shoulder in a mute appeal for him to continue; Gwilym took the hint. “Which would be better than, you know, anarchic wars again, but only if that’s actually Marged’s plan.”
“Ah.” Gwilym nodded in dawning comprehension. “You want me to go and talk to Marged and find out what the crap she’s up to.”
“If you could,” Awen agreed. “That would be lovely.”
Politics. Gwilym hated them so.
Gwilym walked quietly between the stables in the landing tower, breathing in the scents of the merod dozing in the stalls. He could smell hay, sweet and summery; the alkaline odours of saddle soap and leather polish, the sharp tang of pine-pitch burning on the torches. He’d never appreciated his olfactory senses quite so much before, which seemed most remiss of him. The world of scent was beautiful, and yet so… ignored.
But then, every detail suddenly felt clearer to him. Someone had tried to kill him.
Gwilym ran one finger carefully along the arrow shaft he held. Wicked barbs stuck out along it, most of them showing a dull reddish-brown in the torchlight. Awen hadn’t just caught that arrow, she’d also held on while it sliced her hand open. He couldn’t imagine how that had been possible. He wondered if she’d noticed it cutting her at the time. You heard stories about Riders, and how they could go into these strange mental states where everything was all focused and intense. Gwilym wondered if Awen could teach him it; it would probably help speed up paperwork no end.
He looked around at the merod. Normally, these ten were the stables of Aberystwyth’s Alpha Wing, but as they were off threatening Northlanders into going to the Archwiliad the stalls had been given over to whichever Wing was visiting. Nine animals stood there now, and Gwilym wondered if Awen would be flying in to meet him. He’d only seen her briefly after she’d returned the would-be assassin, but she’d looked rather disturbed. Probably not the best mood for riding in.
One of the merod, a massive animal with muscles that were probably sentient, jerked awake and looked about suddenly, his ears pricked forward. Gwilym wandered over to his stall and held out a hand. The meraden stepped willingly forward and nuzzled his palm, the short whiskers of his muzzle tickling slightly. Gwilym grinned.
“He likes it if you scratch his chin,” Awen’s voice said softly behind him. Gwilym glanced over his shoulder at her.
She was leaning against the doorframe with her left arm hanging strangely and both shoulders slumped. She looked exhausted. Her eyes watched him with a peculiar intensity that he wondered at; they hadn’t done so this morning.
Obediently, Gwilym scratched the meraden’s chin. It made a sort of groaning noise in its throat and stretched its head forward, rustling its wings contentedly. Awen came over to stand beside him, looking at the meraden with a tired affection.
“His name’s Brân,” she said. Brân gave a low whicker. “And he’s actually a pest, don’t let him fool you. He just acts cute to impress people.”
“He knew you were here,” Gwilym said thoughtfully. “He woke up before you arrived apropos of nothing and looked all expectant.”
“Instinct,” Awen said. “Riders imprint themselves on their merod when they’re born.”
“A duck imprinted itself onto me, once,” Gwilym said. He paused. “I’m sorry, I thought there was more story there than there actually was. This anecdote has no interesting end.”
Awen smiled. It was a small smile, and not a shadow of the one she’d had barely twelve hours earlier, but it was genuine.
“It’s a good anecdote, though,” she reassured him. “I rather liked it. Do you still have the duck?”
“No,” Gwilym admitted. “My brother and I managed to wean it off me. It flew south and I never saw it again.” He considered that. “Or maybe I have, but, you know. It’s a duck. It looks like the others.”
Brân snorted, and stepped up to his door to push at Awen with his nose. She raised her right hand to touch him, and Gwilym saw the bandage wrapped around it, slightly loose and heavily bloodstained. He looked properly at her. Up close he could see a similar bandage in a similar state mostly hidden under the collar of her uniform. As she moved he could see the stiffness in her left side, particularly through her shoulder. She looked pale.
Which meant Awen had been in one hell of a fight with what had seemed to Gwilym to be an adolescent boy who was still unconscious in his cell.
He held up the arrow, coloured by her blood still, and took her injured hand. She didn’t resist as he slid the bandage off the wound, jagged edged and long. Gwilym sighed.
“I feel incredibly guilty about this,” he confessed. More so now he could see it: it looked unbelievably painful.
“Don’t, honestly,” Awen smiled gently. “It’ll heal, and you’re still alive.”
“You know, this happened at dinner,” Gwilym chided before he could stop himself. “Why haven’t you had it stitched yet?”
Awen looked away, shifting her left shoulder slightly. Brân tossed his head anxiously.
“Our medic is…” She bit her lip. “Our medic is gone,” she finished at last, looking up at Gwilym with a haunted expression. “You met him. Owain. I’d have gone to him otherwise.”
“Where’s he gone?” Gwilym asked quietly. He didn’t need to be told it was serious. Wings were raised together. They were families. They never left each other.
“I don’t know,” Awen said hopelessly. “He wouldn’t say. But he’s not working for the Union anymore, I don’t think. He’s gone rogue.”
That was where she got the other injuries, then. Including that throat wound. With a surge of outrage, it suddenly hit home to Gwilym what it meant: he’d tried to kill her. All of Gwilym’s family were dead, now – well, except Uncle Sion, who’d left for Erinn to become Aunty Sioned and now worked on a potato farm in exchange for free lodgings and a sack of coal a week – but he had memories of them. He tried to imagine how it would have felt if his sister had tried to kill him.
Or maybe not his sister. She’d been an Angry Person.
“Is that why you haven’t had this looked at?” Gwilym asked as delicately as she could.
Awen smiled a humourless smile.
“Owain was our medic,” she stated. “I’ve not been to anyone else since I was about ten and he first specialised. I mean, I have in the field, but in the field it’s either me or one of the others, not… Not a trained medic.” Awen looked at him dully. “Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Gwilym said gently. “Yes, it does.” But that cut still needed stitching, and the one on her neck definitely did. He glanced around the stable block and saw the medkit in the corner of the manager’s station. Inclining his head, he led Awen over there, realising as he sat her on the tall stool that he’d had hold of her hand for the entire time, and hadn’t noticed. It seemed she hadn’t, either.
“You know,” he told her conversationally, “my father never spoke to me much about how to rule a city. My sister was older, and then my brother, so… you know… It didn’t seem necessary, I suppose. But he did used to take me on tours of the city sometimes anyway.” Gwilym had loved it. His father had, by necessity, not been around much. When he could, they’d do the tours and it was like a family day out, a treat for them all. “I loved them because they meant I got to see the whole city. He never kept to only the good areas. He’d go to the poor, run-down areas too. We were going through one on one occasion, and I remember seeing a load of fishing families there. Most of the workers were missing limbs.”
“Missing limbs?” Awen cocked her head at him. It was an incredibly endearing sign of attention that was favourably reminiscent of his duck. “Entire limbs?”
“Some of them,” he nodded. “Some just bits. A foot here and there, a few fingers. Either way: it turned out that there had been a storm a few months before, a really bad one. Most people on the boats had hell’s own job of getting them into dock, and they’d picked up injuries, some bad, some not so bad. The point was, they were too poor to afford a doctor at the time, so in almost every case the wounds had become gangrenous.”
Awen winced. “That’s awful.”
“Yes,” said Gwilym sadly. He’d cried himself to sleep that night.
“I will be getting this looked at before that stage, though,” Awen smiled. It was still a shadow of her smile earlier that day. He grinned anyway.
“Not where I was going, actually,” he said. “I trained as a medic for the next three years and sneaked out of the palace at night to run a clinic for the poor. Free of charge.”
Awen stared at him incredulously. “You did what?”
“Oh, yes.” Gwilym smiled reminiscently. “My training was very basic, of course, so there were an awful lot of people I couldn’t help, but I did my bit. And, most relevant to this situation, the first thing I ever learned was how to stitch up an open wound.” He looked at her. She didn’t look away. “I’m not a medic, Rider. I just know how to help, if you want me to.”
Awen snorted and looked at Brân, her smile wry.
“Thank you,” she said. “Well negotiated. I see now why you’re Sovereign.”
He did her throat wound first, deeming it more important than her hand. She was an impressive patient; she didn’t even flinch at the seaweed solution, and sat motionless as Gwilym sewed her skin back together. Fortunately it was a shallow wound: clearly she’d stopped Owain before he’d had chance to do more.
Finally he finished it, and turned his attention to her palm. It was less life-threatening, but a nastier injury.
“Thank you,” he said quietly as he used the seaweed solution again. Awen shook her head.
“Any Rider would have done it, Sovereign,” she said. “I’m just glad I was there.”
“No one’s ever tried to kill me before, you know,” Gwilym sighed. Carefully, he began the stitches along the jagged edges. “It’s quite upsetting.”
Awen chuckled. “As I understand it, Sovereign, it’s par for the course in your line of work. Chalk it up to experience.”
“Does this mean I need one of those nubile slaves to be a food taster now?” Gwilym asked. “Hordes of dancing girls trained as ninjas? A flock of trained mutant birds to attack anyone who looks a bit shady?”
“Definitely,” Awen grinned. “Although how are you defining ‘shady’, because you may need to put up signs warning innocent people to leave their wide-brimmed hats at home on pain of mutated bird.”
“No,” Gwilym said. “I’m in a position of power. My definitions will vary by the day and only I will be aware of their nuances.”
“Oh,” Awen said thoughtfully. “Well in that case you should also replace all your advisors with the nubile food tasters and dancing girls and have a marvellous time while the city crumbles around you.”
“Damned good plan.” Gwilym negotiated the middle of the cut carefully, trying not to lose any more of Awen’s skin. It was tricky: it ran right across the crease in her palm. “We still don’t know who the boy is, by the way,” he told her. “He’s not woken up yet. You did a good job on him.”
“I didn’t,” Awen sighed. “Adara did. I was busy with Owain at the time.”
“He did this, then,” Gwilym said. He didn’t let it be a question. His anger toward the man surprised him, but he didn’t try to push it aside. Awen nodded, watching the needle.
“He wanted me to let the boy go,” she said quietly. Gwilym paused and stared at her. She carried on. “I think he was in on it. He wouldn’t say why, he just asked me to trust him.”
“I’m sorry,” Gwilym said, and he truly was.
“So am I,” Awen said expressionlessly. “Mostly because I didn’t see it coming. I keep looking back over things he’s said or done, and in retrospect I don’t know how I didn’t see it. Something was wrong.”
She was fingering the beads in her hair with her left hand, running her fingers along the wires. Gwilym pulled another stitch closed carefully.
“You didn’t see it because he was your brother,” he said gently. “Or as good as. No one expects their family to do something like this.”
“I’m trained to see things like this,” Awen said. She swirled the beads faster. “I just… I think the problem was that I never really got on with him that well. He was always a good tactician, and he was very practical. If something needed doing he’d get it done. It’s why he was Deputy.”
“But?” Gwilym asked.
“But… It’s not that his ruthlessness was a problem, because you need that in a warrior to some degree. And it was good to have someone in the Wing who could be ruthless like Owain was.” Brân stamped his hoof in his stall. Gwilym wondered how much of Awen’s emotions the meraden picked up. “But Owain applied that ruthlessness to everyone. He was manipulative, but in the worst way, because I don’t think he ever saw anyone as a fellow person.” Awen shook her head. Her hair glimmered gold. “People were things to Owain, for him to use as he needed. I mean, I can see this now…”
Awen trailed off, and Gwilym wished he was doing something even fractionally more comforting to her right now than stabbing her repeatedly in the hand. Somehow it just didn’t seem to give off the right vibes. He settled for rubbing the back of her hand with his fingers as he prepared the final stitch; she gave him a small smile.
“What will you do now?” he asked her. Awen’s eyes hardened.
“Find him,” she said. “And I will. And when I do, I think I might just finish chopping his bloody fingers off.”
Well, that was scary. Riders were scary. Gwilym was scared.
“I want to know who he’s working for and why,” Awen said quietly. “And why he – they – want you dead. And then I’m going to haul whatever’s left of him in front of the Union, and they can deal with it.”
Well, Gwilym supposed, it would be nice if she could stop the people who were trying to kill him. Nubile food tasters were just so pretentious. He tied off the last stitch and carefully re-bandaged her hand. Awen inspected his handiwork and smiled.
“Good job,” she said. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” Gwilym said mildly, packing the equipment away again. “Now, what’s wrong with your shoulder? You haven’t moved your left arm since you came in.”
“It had an argument with a stone floor,” Awen said, using her freshly fixed hand to touch it gingerly. “Now it’s bruised to hell and back. It’ll be fine, though; I’ll see a druid before we go about all of it.”
Gwilym was glad to hear her say that, but gladder still he’d stitched her up himself. Druids could do a good job of speeding up the healing process to a few days but in the case of large wounds like that stitches were still required for a full heal, and druids weren’t good at it.
“In the meantime, let me poke at it,” he said. “It’ll free up the muscles at least.”
Awen cautiously tried to raise her arm and winced.
“Alright,” she agreed. “Just don’t poke the bruised bit. That still hurts.”
“That was the bit I wanted to poke,” Gwilym told her. “I’m intrigued to see if you ever show pain like normal people.”
Awen chuckled dryly, and Gwilym walked around her stool to get to her shoulder better. Her muscles were densely packed; it was like kneading a stone.
“So,” Gwilym said as he worked. “What exactly did you want to talk to me about up here before our lives got turned upside down earlier?”
“Oh,” Awen sighed, “conspiracies and that. How well do you know Lady Marged?”
“She makes me socks,” Gwilym said. He was wearing some now, they were lovely. “And she sells me green dyes cheaply. I can’t say I’ve had all that many meetings with her that were in any way official, though.”
“Well, we think she’s trying to set up a big power vacuum of anarchy with herself set to benefit,” Awen said. Her shoulder twitched involuntarily under Gwilym’s hand, and relaxed slightly. “Or so Flyn thinks, anyway. We know she’s doing something, she’s sending dissenters into other cities to tell the people that they should have power and not the Sovereigns.”
“That doesn’t sound like Marged,” Gwilym smiled. “Unless she’s doing something else and for entirely altruistic reasons, and that’s just what it looks like.”
“Well, quite,” Awen agreed. “Now Flyn… I’ll be honest with you. Flyn thinks that what she’s doing, motivations aside, is destabilising the Sovereigns, and for obvious reasons is therefore tipping the country into war again, since having fixed Sovereigns rather than lots of power plays is what dragged us out of war last time.”
“Partly,” Gwilym agreed. Awen waved her right hand dismissively.
“Yes, I know, but this is Flyn’s thought process,” she said. “The point is that’s what Flyn thinks. His counter plan, therefore, is to cement the power of the Sovereigns by having one rule all the others, so none can step out of line like Lady Marged. A king and regents. If a regent misbehaves, the king can simply get all the others together and remove that regent, and replace them with someone of his choosing.”
Gwilym stopped kneading for a moment to stare at Awen. “He wants ultimate power?”
“I think so,” Awen said glumly. She shifted her shoulder in a mute appeal for him to continue; Gwilym took the hint. “Which would be better than, you know, anarchic wars again, but only if that’s actually Marged’s plan.”
“Ah.” Gwilym nodded in dawning comprehension. “You want me to go and talk to Marged and find out what the crap she’s up to.”
“If you could,” Awen agreed. “That would be lovely.”
Politics. Gwilym hated them so.
Thursday, 6 March 2008
Cymru - Chapter 7
AWEN
The banqueting hall was long and beautiful, with mythic tapestries and statues gracing the walls. It smelled of wood smoke and mead, sweet and rich, and harp music filled the room melodiously, providing a lively and pleasant counterpoint to the chatter of the gathering guests along the long tables. Awen listened to it with a bard’s ear, constructing harmonies and descants in her head as she watched the rest of her Wing take their seats below her, Adara nimbly stealing the seat Owain was about to take as her red kite settled in the rafters above them.
Awen had been expecting to sit with them. They were in a good position, at the top end of the hall, central table and closest to the Top Table on its raised dais, filled with local visiting gentry, druids and Riders sworn to the city. On arriving, however, she’d been ushered up to the Top Table herself and sat in the chair to the Sovereign’s right: the place of honour in the entire hall. It was incredibly flattering; Awen hadn’t thought she’d made that much of an impression on Lord Gwilym.
The drawback was that generally speaking, druids weren’t all that good at social niceties and gentry-folk usually acted as though social niceties didn’t actually apply to them, and neither tended to be scintillating conversationalists. Which, ordinarily, should have left the Riders; but with less than two weeks left before the Archwiliad, Aberystwyth’s Alpha Wing had flown. Awen was left alone with a mumbling druid and a raucous local Lord and Lady as her nearest companions. She hoped Lord Gwilym would arrive soon.
“The trouble these days,” Lord Sieffre said in that effortlessly loud voice that people who thought they ‘called a spade a spade’ always seemed to have, “is that there seem to be far too many people who aren’t…”
He trailed off, waving a plump hand in the air as he searched for words.
“Who just aren’t like us, you know?” he finished. His wife – Blodwen, was that her name? – nodded solemnly. They both looked at Awen.
“I’m afraid not, Nobleman,” Awen said politely. She did know. She was hoping he’d drop the subject; she could see where it was headed.
“Ah! The innocence of youth!” Sieffre answered airily in what he probably thought was a knowing, fatherly tone. It was just condescendingly offensive. “Well, you see, there are people like us, Rider: people who were clearly born and bred here, in Cymru, who understand the whole country. But then! Then there are people who came here from somewhere else, like… Like Saxonia, or Erinn or somewhere, or whose family did, and they just don’t understand the country, you see? They’ve got other ways of doing things.”
Potentially, that was treason in Aberystwyth. Awen hadn’t checked Gwilym’s family tree, but his colouring – dark hair, pale green eyes – certainly suggested an ancestor or two from Erinn. It was a shame no one official was listening. Lady Blodwen nodded. The druid mumbled.
“But then, there’s the problem with border cities, in my opinion,” he continued, and Awen managed heroically not to wince. “The old families there. All specially bred for leadership, but they’re not all Cymric! Tainted. No offence to your Lord Flyn, of course,” he added. Awen smiled.
“None taken, Nobleman,” she answered tightly, and mercifully, at that moment, the harp music stopped and the harsh brass fanfare blared. A man by the massive double doors with a nose like a spout intoned, “Lord Gwilym, Sovereign of Aberystwyth,” and stepped aside. Everyone in the hall rose to their feet, and the chatter ceased.
Lord Gwilym strode down the hall, a vision of nobility and grace in Caerleuad Green brocade that was overtly fancy and – to Awen’s highly trained eyes – he clearly hated. She could see it in the set of his broad shoulders, the slight jar to his stride, and she wondered how anyone had managed to make him wear it. When they’d met that morning he’d seemed vaguely harassed, but there was a deep air of competence to Lord Gwilym. Maybe he wasn’t aware of it himself. Maybe only Awen was: she was trained for this sort of thing.
As he neared, she found herself studying his face for any Erinnish markers. There were some, definitely. His profile was delicately aquiline, although it was also set against higher cheekbones than were usually seen in Erinn. His lips were certainly Erinnish, however: full and sculpted, although hidden slightly behind the freshly trimmed beard. He was, in fact, rather handsome in his own unusual kind of way –
Surprised at herself, Awen bit back that thought, and buried it.
Lord Gwilym stopped before her seat as custom required and she bowed to him. He gave her a slightly resigned smile, as though he found the whole process tedious, and rounded the table to sit in the elaborate seat to Awen’s left.
“Please be seated,” intoned the man with the spout-like nose. As one the people sat, servants began serving the starter, and the harp began again.
“No chance to redecorate just yet then, Sovereign?” Awen asked, her face professionally straight. Gwilym put on a superb ‘polite smile’, although his eyes twinkled and gave it away.
“Sadly not,” he said conversationally. “Although I have put it high on my list of things to do. Somewhere between feeding the poor and paying my Riders.”
Awen grinned down at the food being placed in front of her, which looked to be some sort of fancy concoction with laverbread. Sadly, Lady Blodwen chose that moment to speak.
“You’re redecorating, Gwilym?” she asked snootily, with a fine disregard for his title and social status. Evidently, she thought he was twelve. “But I understand that the decorations in this palace have been here for generations!”
“Well yes,” Gwilym said calmly. “But when they were first installed I daresay that whatever they replaced had also been there for generations. And I mean some specific decorations anyway.”
“With a specific redecorative style,” Awen added. She tried the starter. It was actually surprisingly nice, considering that it looked like regurgitated seaweed and partly was. The harper struck an erroneous note and she winced.
“Well, might I ask which decorations?” Blodwen asked. She seemed incredulous. Lord Gwilym shrugged.
“I do believe you might,” he said with polite disinterest. It was superb. Another note went wrong on the harp, and Awen looked around for the harper.
“Well, which are you removing?” Blodwen asked, affronted.
“The statues,” Gwilym said decisively. “They’ve got to go. I’m replacing them with all-natural living willow statues in the shapes of naked people.”
Awen barely heard Blodwen choking. The harper was just to one side of the large double doors, sitting on the Bardic Chair to play. His face was down, making it hard to see, but Awen could see the tension in him, tripping his fingers as they danced over the strings. A few other harpers and apprentices were sitting around behind him, still cloaked and waiting for their turn to play. Awen watched them; beside her, unnoticed, the druid stopped mumbling and fell silent, turning to look at Awen.
“Naked - ?”
“Oh, hush, Blodwen!” her husband broke in. He’d had far too much mead considering they’d only just been given the first course. “At least he’s got his priorities right! Riders never seem to do anything worth actually paying these days, am I right? Eh?”
Which was a staggering social faux pas. Awen barely heard it. One of the men behind the harper was getting up to take his turn, covered in a black cloak.
“I’m afraid you’re not, Sieffre,” Gwilym said, quiet but firm. “The Riders remain invaluable.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Sieffre scoffed, waving a hand. They live free of charge in your city, eat your food… What return do you get, exactly? There’ve been no wars for forty years!”
“Largely because of the Riders,” Gwilym said flatly. The harper stumbled on the strings. The cloaked man stepped forward. Awen watched. “I’m afraid I –”
“Yes, but that was forty years ago, m’boy! Now? Unless they’re sworn to you they don’t actually –”
The cloaked man’s arms whirled up, and Awen moved even before she saw the arrow, instinct operating her like a puppet. It left the man’s bow almost in slow motion, and she was on her feet, reaching around in front of Gwilym, right hand grasping –
She caught the arrow a foot in front of Gwilym’s face, but the shaft slid through her ungloved hand, stopping a mere four inches from him. The entire hall froze, all conversations abruptly halted as everyone turned to stare in shock at the Top Table. Awen watched the cloaked man. Her eyes had never left him.
“The cloak,” she said, and the Wing stood instantly. It broke the spell: the cloaked man bolted for the door. Adara threw what looked suspiciously like one of the steak knives at him, which pinned his cloak neatly to the heavy wood of the double doors. The Wing advanced, but he wriggled free of the cloak, revealing an adolescent boy, barely into his late teens. He yanked the door open and ran.
Awen dropped the arrow with a resounding clatter and practically hurdled the table.
“Front Riders, defence!” she commanded. “Check the harper! Others with me!”
And she was gone, out of the hall and after the boy, her hunt instincts taking over. She could hear the others on her heels, Owain’s oddly wheezing breath, Adara whistling to Gwenhwyfar, the bird swooping almost silently over their heads.
He was fast, this boy – Awen had to give him that. Unfortunately, he also had a good head-start on them. He fled down corridors, hurling himself around corners and down staircases. At first, Awen cursed, mentally. Evidently this boy knew the palace well, whereas the Wing knew only the layout of the main rooms; they hurtled into the servant’s quarters, a veritable maze of narrow corridors, bustling people and piles of linen, rope and straw. Awen ran harder.
It was as a blast of cold wind hit her that she realised where the boy was leading them: the courtyard. She grinned. If he did know his way around, he was stupid. Out in the open he’d pretty much lost every chance he’d had of escaping them. As the doorway loomed up ahead, slowly swinging shut behind him, Awen dropped back, allowing the ranger Riders to overtake so as to give them a clear shot. Caradog had even brought his bow. Adara whistled as she ran past, Gwenhwyfar swooping closely behind her, and Awen grinned. Gwenhwyfar could easily outrace the boy outside; the other three would knock him down, and all she and Owain would have to do was stroll on up and punch him once or twice.
They were two metres from the door when Owain cannoned into her, knocking her into one of the side rooms. They crashed onto the stone floor, unfortunately missing the pile of freshly dried linen from the courtyard with the kind of luck that had made Awen decide, long ago, that the universe probably hated her. She rolled as she landed, her mind already alert for some new threat. Another bowman? One of the servants? She was releasing the wrist blades from their sheathes and rising to her knees when Owain’s forearm grabbed her shoulders, his other hand holding his dagger to her throat.
Awen froze, heart thumping painfully hard in her chest. Owain wheezed slightly, getting his breath back.
“You have to let him go,” he said at last. “The kid. You have to let him go.”
“Why?” Awen hissed. Her senses were in full battle mode, registering every detail with distracting clarity. The stone was agonisingly painful beneath her knees, cold and hard and pressing up; the walls had been whitewashed, but the paint was chipping and flaking off around the doorframe; the laundry smelled of lavender and heather, mingling with the smell of rising damp, musty and thick; the kitchen was nearby, the cooks clanging cauldrons and spoons; and damn her hand hurt. She could feel Owain’s chest rising and falling against her back as he breathed, feel the slightly shaky adrenaline-fuelled tension in both his arm and his dagger blade. The blade was cold, and already painfully sharp despite having broken no skin yet.
“I can’t tell you,” Owain said, the words rushing out. “Not yet. Please, Awen? This is really important. You have to trust me.”
“You’ll appreciate that since I’ve known you and trusted you since birth and now you’ve pulled a dagger on me I’m feeling a little bit betrayed and untrusting, Owain.”
“You wouldn’t have stopped otherwise,” he said. “You wouldn’t have listened.”
“Please don’t mistake me for you,” Awen spat through gritted teeth. Her left shoulder hurt where she’d landed, a dull, throbbing ache that contrasted wonderfully against the sharp agony of her right hand. “I actually care about other people and what they have to say. This is largely why I am Wing Leader and you’re not. Now get the hell off me before I have to hurt you.”
“You have to let him go!” Owain insisted urgently. “Don’t twist this into being about us! This is important!”
“He just tried to murder someone before our very eyes, Owain,” Awen said steadily. “And now you’re holding a knife to my throat. I absolutely don’t care what this is about. We’re Riders: we belong to the Union. We don’t allow this kind of thing. Now you’ll either let go, or I’m going to have to take you to the Union for violation of your Oaths.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Owain said self-righteously. “But I have to do this.”
And that was the problem with Owain, Awen reflected. He spoke and behaved as though he was the star of a play and everyone was watching: anyone normal would have just cut her throat at that, but Owain narrated himself. It was his undoing.
She was moving before he’d even finished the sentence, wrist blades flashing upwards. One she embedded in the arm holding her shoulders still, feeling it hit the bone. The other bit into the fingers holding the dagger. He screamed, abruptly dropping the dagger and pulling back before he lost any fingers, and Awen drove her elbow backwards into Owain’s nose.
It was a fairly short fight. One more kick to the head left Owain concussed and twitching slightly, lying prone on the floor. Awen looked down at him, feeling suddenly tired.
“If you run I will find you,” she said simply. His eyes rolled around, unfocused.
“You have to let him go,” he whispered. “You don’t… understand…”
Awen turned, and walked out to the courtyard.
One side of the courtyard was simply a row of pillars holding up a walkway, so there was a spectacular view of Aberystwyth nestled in the valley below and opening out onto the sea, the fortress of Caerleuad glittering out in the bay. The sun was setting in a glorious fusion of russet and green, the moon a pale coin rising above Caerleuad. The air was the pure, sweet smell of evening; it soothed Awen, calming her raging heartbeat. In the middle of the courtyard, suspended between Caradog and Llyr, hung the inert form of the boy, his bow still strapped to his back. Adara had Gwenhwyfar on her wrist and was feeding her small pieces of meat from a pouch at her belt, which probably meant, as Awen had predicted, that the bird had taken the boy down herself. Awen watched them near, feeling empty.
“Good gods, what have you done?” Adara asked in alarm as they stopped in front of her. “What happened to your neck?”
“Owain.” Awen raised her left hand to check, wincing as her shoulder protested the motion. A long but mercifully shallow cut met her fingertips, and immediately started to hurt. “He wanted to stop us from getting this boy. I don’t know why.”
They stared at her. She understood.
“Our Owain,” Awen confirmed the unspoken question. “I think he’s working for someone outside the Union, I don’t –”
She was cut off as Adara stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. Her pain in her shoulder intensified sharply, but she didn’t care. Right now she needed the comfort more; needed to reaffirm her faith in other members of the Wing. There was a soft, organic ‘thump’ of someone hitting the floor, and then Caradog and Llyr had joined in, Caradog’s massive frame almost the size of the three of them put together.
“We should have realised,” Adara said in her mild, comforting voice. “He had a terrible quiff. He was clearly a deranged lunatic.”
“That’s true.” Awen forced a smile, amazed to find herself fighting back tears. “And he had a weird voice.”
“That’s because he was an oily,” Adara said sagaciously. “Also an ugly. He was dreadful, really.”
“And he was a terrible Deputy,” Caradog put in, his voice deep and rumbling. “I always preferred being led by you.”
She nearly did cry then, but managed to pull herself back from the edge.
“Thanks,” Awen smiled at him. Caradog clapped her on the back, or tried to. He hit Llyr’s arm instead, making the other man yelp and leap back. Adara caught Awen’s eye, and grinned: Llyr had been crying.
“Girl,” Adara accused him.
“I am not!” Llyr insisted, wiping his eyes. “I’m just emotionally free. And Caradog nearly broke my arm just now.”
“That’s because he’s a clumsy,” Adara supplied.
“And I have to say I’m glad he did, sorry,” Awen said, disengaging from the group hug. “Since he was aiming for my spine. You took one for the team, there.”
They scooped up the boy from where they’d dropped him and steered him back inside. Outside the laundry room they stopped, steeling themselves for what was to come. After a few seconds of hesitation, Adara pushed past Awen and marched inside.
“Awen,” she called back, her voice flat. “Come in here.”
Oh, gods, had she killed him? Was his still-warm corpse ruining the fresh laundry? Dreading it, Awen opened the door, and looked in.
Owain had gone.
The banqueting hall was long and beautiful, with mythic tapestries and statues gracing the walls. It smelled of wood smoke and mead, sweet and rich, and harp music filled the room melodiously, providing a lively and pleasant counterpoint to the chatter of the gathering guests along the long tables. Awen listened to it with a bard’s ear, constructing harmonies and descants in her head as she watched the rest of her Wing take their seats below her, Adara nimbly stealing the seat Owain was about to take as her red kite settled in the rafters above them.
Awen had been expecting to sit with them. They were in a good position, at the top end of the hall, central table and closest to the Top Table on its raised dais, filled with local visiting gentry, druids and Riders sworn to the city. On arriving, however, she’d been ushered up to the Top Table herself and sat in the chair to the Sovereign’s right: the place of honour in the entire hall. It was incredibly flattering; Awen hadn’t thought she’d made that much of an impression on Lord Gwilym.
The drawback was that generally speaking, druids weren’t all that good at social niceties and gentry-folk usually acted as though social niceties didn’t actually apply to them, and neither tended to be scintillating conversationalists. Which, ordinarily, should have left the Riders; but with less than two weeks left before the Archwiliad, Aberystwyth’s Alpha Wing had flown. Awen was left alone with a mumbling druid and a raucous local Lord and Lady as her nearest companions. She hoped Lord Gwilym would arrive soon.
“The trouble these days,” Lord Sieffre said in that effortlessly loud voice that people who thought they ‘called a spade a spade’ always seemed to have, “is that there seem to be far too many people who aren’t…”
He trailed off, waving a plump hand in the air as he searched for words.
“Who just aren’t like us, you know?” he finished. His wife – Blodwen, was that her name? – nodded solemnly. They both looked at Awen.
“I’m afraid not, Nobleman,” Awen said politely. She did know. She was hoping he’d drop the subject; she could see where it was headed.
“Ah! The innocence of youth!” Sieffre answered airily in what he probably thought was a knowing, fatherly tone. It was just condescendingly offensive. “Well, you see, there are people like us, Rider: people who were clearly born and bred here, in Cymru, who understand the whole country. But then! Then there are people who came here from somewhere else, like… Like Saxonia, or Erinn or somewhere, or whose family did, and they just don’t understand the country, you see? They’ve got other ways of doing things.”
Potentially, that was treason in Aberystwyth. Awen hadn’t checked Gwilym’s family tree, but his colouring – dark hair, pale green eyes – certainly suggested an ancestor or two from Erinn. It was a shame no one official was listening. Lady Blodwen nodded. The druid mumbled.
“But then, there’s the problem with border cities, in my opinion,” he continued, and Awen managed heroically not to wince. “The old families there. All specially bred for leadership, but they’re not all Cymric! Tainted. No offence to your Lord Flyn, of course,” he added. Awen smiled.
“None taken, Nobleman,” she answered tightly, and mercifully, at that moment, the harp music stopped and the harsh brass fanfare blared. A man by the massive double doors with a nose like a spout intoned, “Lord Gwilym, Sovereign of Aberystwyth,” and stepped aside. Everyone in the hall rose to their feet, and the chatter ceased.
Lord Gwilym strode down the hall, a vision of nobility and grace in Caerleuad Green brocade that was overtly fancy and – to Awen’s highly trained eyes – he clearly hated. She could see it in the set of his broad shoulders, the slight jar to his stride, and she wondered how anyone had managed to make him wear it. When they’d met that morning he’d seemed vaguely harassed, but there was a deep air of competence to Lord Gwilym. Maybe he wasn’t aware of it himself. Maybe only Awen was: she was trained for this sort of thing.
As he neared, she found herself studying his face for any Erinnish markers. There were some, definitely. His profile was delicately aquiline, although it was also set against higher cheekbones than were usually seen in Erinn. His lips were certainly Erinnish, however: full and sculpted, although hidden slightly behind the freshly trimmed beard. He was, in fact, rather handsome in his own unusual kind of way –
Surprised at herself, Awen bit back that thought, and buried it.
Lord Gwilym stopped before her seat as custom required and she bowed to him. He gave her a slightly resigned smile, as though he found the whole process tedious, and rounded the table to sit in the elaborate seat to Awen’s left.
“Please be seated,” intoned the man with the spout-like nose. As one the people sat, servants began serving the starter, and the harp began again.
“No chance to redecorate just yet then, Sovereign?” Awen asked, her face professionally straight. Gwilym put on a superb ‘polite smile’, although his eyes twinkled and gave it away.
“Sadly not,” he said conversationally. “Although I have put it high on my list of things to do. Somewhere between feeding the poor and paying my Riders.”
Awen grinned down at the food being placed in front of her, which looked to be some sort of fancy concoction with laverbread. Sadly, Lady Blodwen chose that moment to speak.
“You’re redecorating, Gwilym?” she asked snootily, with a fine disregard for his title and social status. Evidently, she thought he was twelve. “But I understand that the decorations in this palace have been here for generations!”
“Well yes,” Gwilym said calmly. “But when they were first installed I daresay that whatever they replaced had also been there for generations. And I mean some specific decorations anyway.”
“With a specific redecorative style,” Awen added. She tried the starter. It was actually surprisingly nice, considering that it looked like regurgitated seaweed and partly was. The harper struck an erroneous note and she winced.
“Well, might I ask which decorations?” Blodwen asked. She seemed incredulous. Lord Gwilym shrugged.
“I do believe you might,” he said with polite disinterest. It was superb. Another note went wrong on the harp, and Awen looked around for the harper.
“Well, which are you removing?” Blodwen asked, affronted.
“The statues,” Gwilym said decisively. “They’ve got to go. I’m replacing them with all-natural living willow statues in the shapes of naked people.”
Awen barely heard Blodwen choking. The harper was just to one side of the large double doors, sitting on the Bardic Chair to play. His face was down, making it hard to see, but Awen could see the tension in him, tripping his fingers as they danced over the strings. A few other harpers and apprentices were sitting around behind him, still cloaked and waiting for their turn to play. Awen watched them; beside her, unnoticed, the druid stopped mumbling and fell silent, turning to look at Awen.
“Naked - ?”
“Oh, hush, Blodwen!” her husband broke in. He’d had far too much mead considering they’d only just been given the first course. “At least he’s got his priorities right! Riders never seem to do anything worth actually paying these days, am I right? Eh?”
Which was a staggering social faux pas. Awen barely heard it. One of the men behind the harper was getting up to take his turn, covered in a black cloak.
“I’m afraid you’re not, Sieffre,” Gwilym said, quiet but firm. “The Riders remain invaluable.”
“Oh, nonsense!” Sieffre scoffed, waving a hand. They live free of charge in your city, eat your food… What return do you get, exactly? There’ve been no wars for forty years!”
“Largely because of the Riders,” Gwilym said flatly. The harper stumbled on the strings. The cloaked man stepped forward. Awen watched. “I’m afraid I –”
“Yes, but that was forty years ago, m’boy! Now? Unless they’re sworn to you they don’t actually –”
The cloaked man’s arms whirled up, and Awen moved even before she saw the arrow, instinct operating her like a puppet. It left the man’s bow almost in slow motion, and she was on her feet, reaching around in front of Gwilym, right hand grasping –
She caught the arrow a foot in front of Gwilym’s face, but the shaft slid through her ungloved hand, stopping a mere four inches from him. The entire hall froze, all conversations abruptly halted as everyone turned to stare in shock at the Top Table. Awen watched the cloaked man. Her eyes had never left him.
“The cloak,” she said, and the Wing stood instantly. It broke the spell: the cloaked man bolted for the door. Adara threw what looked suspiciously like one of the steak knives at him, which pinned his cloak neatly to the heavy wood of the double doors. The Wing advanced, but he wriggled free of the cloak, revealing an adolescent boy, barely into his late teens. He yanked the door open and ran.
Awen dropped the arrow with a resounding clatter and practically hurdled the table.
“Front Riders, defence!” she commanded. “Check the harper! Others with me!”
And she was gone, out of the hall and after the boy, her hunt instincts taking over. She could hear the others on her heels, Owain’s oddly wheezing breath, Adara whistling to Gwenhwyfar, the bird swooping almost silently over their heads.
He was fast, this boy – Awen had to give him that. Unfortunately, he also had a good head-start on them. He fled down corridors, hurling himself around corners and down staircases. At first, Awen cursed, mentally. Evidently this boy knew the palace well, whereas the Wing knew only the layout of the main rooms; they hurtled into the servant’s quarters, a veritable maze of narrow corridors, bustling people and piles of linen, rope and straw. Awen ran harder.
It was as a blast of cold wind hit her that she realised where the boy was leading them: the courtyard. She grinned. If he did know his way around, he was stupid. Out in the open he’d pretty much lost every chance he’d had of escaping them. As the doorway loomed up ahead, slowly swinging shut behind him, Awen dropped back, allowing the ranger Riders to overtake so as to give them a clear shot. Caradog had even brought his bow. Adara whistled as she ran past, Gwenhwyfar swooping closely behind her, and Awen grinned. Gwenhwyfar could easily outrace the boy outside; the other three would knock him down, and all she and Owain would have to do was stroll on up and punch him once or twice.
They were two metres from the door when Owain cannoned into her, knocking her into one of the side rooms. They crashed onto the stone floor, unfortunately missing the pile of freshly dried linen from the courtyard with the kind of luck that had made Awen decide, long ago, that the universe probably hated her. She rolled as she landed, her mind already alert for some new threat. Another bowman? One of the servants? She was releasing the wrist blades from their sheathes and rising to her knees when Owain’s forearm grabbed her shoulders, his other hand holding his dagger to her throat.
Awen froze, heart thumping painfully hard in her chest. Owain wheezed slightly, getting his breath back.
“You have to let him go,” he said at last. “The kid. You have to let him go.”
“Why?” Awen hissed. Her senses were in full battle mode, registering every detail with distracting clarity. The stone was agonisingly painful beneath her knees, cold and hard and pressing up; the walls had been whitewashed, but the paint was chipping and flaking off around the doorframe; the laundry smelled of lavender and heather, mingling with the smell of rising damp, musty and thick; the kitchen was nearby, the cooks clanging cauldrons and spoons; and damn her hand hurt. She could feel Owain’s chest rising and falling against her back as he breathed, feel the slightly shaky adrenaline-fuelled tension in both his arm and his dagger blade. The blade was cold, and already painfully sharp despite having broken no skin yet.
“I can’t tell you,” Owain said, the words rushing out. “Not yet. Please, Awen? This is really important. You have to trust me.”
“You’ll appreciate that since I’ve known you and trusted you since birth and now you’ve pulled a dagger on me I’m feeling a little bit betrayed and untrusting, Owain.”
“You wouldn’t have stopped otherwise,” he said. “You wouldn’t have listened.”
“Please don’t mistake me for you,” Awen spat through gritted teeth. Her left shoulder hurt where she’d landed, a dull, throbbing ache that contrasted wonderfully against the sharp agony of her right hand. “I actually care about other people and what they have to say. This is largely why I am Wing Leader and you’re not. Now get the hell off me before I have to hurt you.”
“You have to let him go!” Owain insisted urgently. “Don’t twist this into being about us! This is important!”
“He just tried to murder someone before our very eyes, Owain,” Awen said steadily. “And now you’re holding a knife to my throat. I absolutely don’t care what this is about. We’re Riders: we belong to the Union. We don’t allow this kind of thing. Now you’ll either let go, or I’m going to have to take you to the Union for violation of your Oaths.”
“Then I’m sorry,” Owain said self-righteously. “But I have to do this.”
And that was the problem with Owain, Awen reflected. He spoke and behaved as though he was the star of a play and everyone was watching: anyone normal would have just cut her throat at that, but Owain narrated himself. It was his undoing.
She was moving before he’d even finished the sentence, wrist blades flashing upwards. One she embedded in the arm holding her shoulders still, feeling it hit the bone. The other bit into the fingers holding the dagger. He screamed, abruptly dropping the dagger and pulling back before he lost any fingers, and Awen drove her elbow backwards into Owain’s nose.
It was a fairly short fight. One more kick to the head left Owain concussed and twitching slightly, lying prone on the floor. Awen looked down at him, feeling suddenly tired.
“If you run I will find you,” she said simply. His eyes rolled around, unfocused.
“You have to let him go,” he whispered. “You don’t… understand…”
Awen turned, and walked out to the courtyard.
One side of the courtyard was simply a row of pillars holding up a walkway, so there was a spectacular view of Aberystwyth nestled in the valley below and opening out onto the sea, the fortress of Caerleuad glittering out in the bay. The sun was setting in a glorious fusion of russet and green, the moon a pale coin rising above Caerleuad. The air was the pure, sweet smell of evening; it soothed Awen, calming her raging heartbeat. In the middle of the courtyard, suspended between Caradog and Llyr, hung the inert form of the boy, his bow still strapped to his back. Adara had Gwenhwyfar on her wrist and was feeding her small pieces of meat from a pouch at her belt, which probably meant, as Awen had predicted, that the bird had taken the boy down herself. Awen watched them near, feeling empty.
“Good gods, what have you done?” Adara asked in alarm as they stopped in front of her. “What happened to your neck?”
“Owain.” Awen raised her left hand to check, wincing as her shoulder protested the motion. A long but mercifully shallow cut met her fingertips, and immediately started to hurt. “He wanted to stop us from getting this boy. I don’t know why.”
They stared at her. She understood.
“Our Owain,” Awen confirmed the unspoken question. “I think he’s working for someone outside the Union, I don’t –”
She was cut off as Adara stepped forward and pulled her into a hug. Her pain in her shoulder intensified sharply, but she didn’t care. Right now she needed the comfort more; needed to reaffirm her faith in other members of the Wing. There was a soft, organic ‘thump’ of someone hitting the floor, and then Caradog and Llyr had joined in, Caradog’s massive frame almost the size of the three of them put together.
“We should have realised,” Adara said in her mild, comforting voice. “He had a terrible quiff. He was clearly a deranged lunatic.”
“That’s true.” Awen forced a smile, amazed to find herself fighting back tears. “And he had a weird voice.”
“That’s because he was an oily,” Adara said sagaciously. “Also an ugly. He was dreadful, really.”
“And he was a terrible Deputy,” Caradog put in, his voice deep and rumbling. “I always preferred being led by you.”
She nearly did cry then, but managed to pull herself back from the edge.
“Thanks,” Awen smiled at him. Caradog clapped her on the back, or tried to. He hit Llyr’s arm instead, making the other man yelp and leap back. Adara caught Awen’s eye, and grinned: Llyr had been crying.
“Girl,” Adara accused him.
“I am not!” Llyr insisted, wiping his eyes. “I’m just emotionally free. And Caradog nearly broke my arm just now.”
“That’s because he’s a clumsy,” Adara supplied.
“And I have to say I’m glad he did, sorry,” Awen said, disengaging from the group hug. “Since he was aiming for my spine. You took one for the team, there.”
They scooped up the boy from where they’d dropped him and steered him back inside. Outside the laundry room they stopped, steeling themselves for what was to come. After a few seconds of hesitation, Adara pushed past Awen and marched inside.
“Awen,” she called back, her voice flat. “Come in here.”
Oh, gods, had she killed him? Was his still-warm corpse ruining the fresh laundry? Dreading it, Awen opened the door, and looked in.
Owain had gone.
I Remember, Part 2
“But you said I smiled.”
We were sitting by the harbour in the sunshine, and the question had been bothering me for a while. I had put my shoes and socks neatly beside me and was dangling my legs beside his over the edge.
“Not a very happy smile, though,” he replied. “I wish we had a bit more information.”
We had played the “I would say that if” game all afternoon, and got nowhere, partly because I couldn’t be honest. I can only really think of one possible reason that an older version of myself might say something like that. I don’t think I would have caused him pain, because it wouldn’t have led me to smile when I saw him young again. I think he must have died. I can imagine that I might be a coward in grief, that I might wish him away entirely rather than cope with seeing his stuff lying around everywhere. But I didn’t want to admit it. James is an open and brave man, and I couldn’t admit to such a failure of heart. I like to think it is just a moment of weakness that sends me into the past, and that afterwards I learn to reconcile myself to the pain, but I don’t know. Now, with all this potential knowledge of him in front of me, I can’t wish him away. So I know two things: one, that I loved him enough to find his memory unbearable, and two, that we never have children. I’m sure, my God, I hope, that I’d never be so selfish as to wish them out of existence.
But this is mad! We’ve known each other two weeks, and already I’m planning our lives for us. I don’t even know if he feels like sticking around with me. He told me last night that he wants to keep in touch just out of curiosity. But then, he believes, I think, that I really was tricking myself, and setting off a happy train of events.
I’ll say this for that argument: If I loved him as completely as I think I might come to, I’d savour every instant, because I’m so aware of the ending.
*****
Right, it’s the evening now, and I told him what I really thought. It was probably a stupid thing to do, but we were drunk and it was dusky and summer and warm, and I felt so happy that I just wanted to be as open with him as I could possibly be, and that was my only secret. It’s not the only thing he doesn’t know, but it’s the only thing I actually hadn’t told him.
We’d just been dancing to some jazz at a little mini-festival they hold here every year. He dances in a sort of ironic way until he forgets to be cool, and then he’s much better – sort of fluid and unassuming. My skin was still hot from the sun. And I told him the truth because it seemed so important. He laughed at me. It was a fantastic relief to hear him laugh at what I’d been so sure would make him walk away. I thought he’d say: “Well, if that’s how much love is worth to you, then maybe that’s why you had the sense to scare me off you.” But he didn’t.
He said: “I thought you had something on your mind! Look, think how determined you were to find out all about this when I told you. You won’t even let a conversation go until it’s resolved. You’d never have walked away from a set-up like this. And you know it.”
“But I didn’t go back in time to myself. I went back to you. Maybe that’s why – I thought you’d stay away altogether.”
“No way. If you knew me as well as we’re assuming, you wouldn’t think that. I’d never give up on even the chance of this. Well, you know, the chance of something like she was talking about.”
I realised then that we’d both basically been assuming we were together now, and that was it.
There was a moment of real awkwardness, and then I broke it.
“Would you care to dance?” I said. He would.
Hmmm. Possibly this is an illustration of what happens when I don't write a plan. Ah, well! :-)
We were sitting by the harbour in the sunshine, and the question had been bothering me for a while. I had put my shoes and socks neatly beside me and was dangling my legs beside his over the edge.
“Not a very happy smile, though,” he replied. “I wish we had a bit more information.”
We had played the “I would say that if” game all afternoon, and got nowhere, partly because I couldn’t be honest. I can only really think of one possible reason that an older version of myself might say something like that. I don’t think I would have caused him pain, because it wouldn’t have led me to smile when I saw him young again. I think he must have died. I can imagine that I might be a coward in grief, that I might wish him away entirely rather than cope with seeing his stuff lying around everywhere. But I didn’t want to admit it. James is an open and brave man, and I couldn’t admit to such a failure of heart. I like to think it is just a moment of weakness that sends me into the past, and that afterwards I learn to reconcile myself to the pain, but I don’t know. Now, with all this potential knowledge of him in front of me, I can’t wish him away. So I know two things: one, that I loved him enough to find his memory unbearable, and two, that we never have children. I’m sure, my God, I hope, that I’d never be so selfish as to wish them out of existence.
But this is mad! We’ve known each other two weeks, and already I’m planning our lives for us. I don’t even know if he feels like sticking around with me. He told me last night that he wants to keep in touch just out of curiosity. But then, he believes, I think, that I really was tricking myself, and setting off a happy train of events.
I’ll say this for that argument: If I loved him as completely as I think I might come to, I’d savour every instant, because I’m so aware of the ending.
*****
Right, it’s the evening now, and I told him what I really thought. It was probably a stupid thing to do, but we were drunk and it was dusky and summer and warm, and I felt so happy that I just wanted to be as open with him as I could possibly be, and that was my only secret. It’s not the only thing he doesn’t know, but it’s the only thing I actually hadn’t told him.
We’d just been dancing to some jazz at a little mini-festival they hold here every year. He dances in a sort of ironic way until he forgets to be cool, and then he’s much better – sort of fluid and unassuming. My skin was still hot from the sun. And I told him the truth because it seemed so important. He laughed at me. It was a fantastic relief to hear him laugh at what I’d been so sure would make him walk away. I thought he’d say: “Well, if that’s how much love is worth to you, then maybe that’s why you had the sense to scare me off you.” But he didn’t.
He said: “I thought you had something on your mind! Look, think how determined you were to find out all about this when I told you. You won’t even let a conversation go until it’s resolved. You’d never have walked away from a set-up like this. And you know it.”
“But I didn’t go back in time to myself. I went back to you. Maybe that’s why – I thought you’d stay away altogether.”
“No way. If you knew me as well as we’re assuming, you wouldn’t think that. I’d never give up on even the chance of this. Well, you know, the chance of something like she was talking about.”
I realised then that we’d both basically been assuming we were together now, and that was it.
There was a moment of real awkwardness, and then I broke it.
“Would you care to dance?” I said. He would.
Hmmm. Possibly this is an illustration of what happens when I don't write a plan. Ah, well! :-)
My Adventures, Part 2
I stuck to the shadows. In my line of work you get used to the dark. I guess we’re not much for ice cream parlours and picnics, you know? And I was tailing, which was a little tricky on account of my stiletto heels, but they come with the job. I had my shooter tucked into my garter, but on a night like tonight I was hoping I wouldn’t be using it.
The mark was coasting, so I could tell that I was unobserved. He dropped in through a little door which I happened to know led to the nearest speak easy so I thought ‘what the hell?’ I doubled back to his office and took a look.
It was a traditional kind of a place – nicotine walls, blinds down, and a hat stand that makes you think what a blunt instrument can do. And one fat cigar still smouldering in its tray on the table. I should have sussed then I was in trouble, but I noticed the filing cabinet and headed over. That schmuk had left his files where anyone with a skeleton key could find them. I found the one I wanted – the Portos file. I’d got it out and half way to my handbag when I felt the cold metal on my neck.
“OK, Casey, why don’t you just give that over?”
I hate when he uses my Christian name.
I turned around, real slow, and let him take in the scene. I’d worn the scarlet dress he always liked best as a precaution against this eventuality. I put the paper down on the desk, flat, and reached for my cigarettes.
“Mind if I smoke?”
He was just looking at me, so I took that as a yes and lit up. He picked up his fat cigar – it suited him so well I almost laughed – and went back to staring.
“So Casey”, that guy always talks like his mouth’s full, “how you been?”
“Oh, just fine,” I told him. “You been anywhere nice lately?”
“You should know.”
He kinda had me there, but I guessed he was bluffing. OK, it was midnight and I was in his office in a cocktail dress, but I figured he didn’t know I was onto him. I led him a dance.
“OK, Carter. You got me. I’m your shadow. But I’ll level with you. I got nothing. You think I’d be here alone if I did?”
He was buying it, so I kept up the tale. “All alone like this? You know me, Carter, I don’t go rifling through cabinets. It’s not my style.”
“You’re a classy lady, I’ll give you that. Beats me why you never worked as one of my girls.”
I swallowed my sneer and kept my mouth shut.
“But you don’t think I’m gonna let you walk?”
I knew he wouldn’t. But by now I’d opened the window lock behind my back. Two metres to the fire escape.
“You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
He turned away and bent down, totally eclipsing the filing cabinet with his sizeable derriere.
I picked up the paper, pulled off my shoes and jumped. I was half way down the fire escape before I heard him roaring. I didn’t get the time to feel too smug because I heard a voice I knew.
I walked round a corner to see the guy from yesterday. Now, you gotta understand that there is nothing strange in this. The same faces, the same people, they turn up everywhere, and the circumstances change around them. A bad egg in one place is no better if she’s a cocktail waitress or a chicken farmer. But this guy captured my attention because he knew me. It was just a flicker, and then he got back to what he was doing, which was trying to persuade a gang of heavies that they did not want to rough him up, although it seemed to me self-evident that they wanted to do exactly this.
“Now fellas,” he began. This is not a good way to begin. A bunch of guys armed with what the investigators will call “assorted weapons” do not like to be patronised.
“Now fellas, I am convinced that we can come to some kind of amicable understanding. You are all men of reason…”
At this point I thought it best to intervene because I did not want to see such a handsome face being scraped off the sidewalk.
“Hello, boys”, I said. For some reason when a chic says this, no-one is offended. “Looks like you’re causing some kind of a disturbance.”
“No ma’am”, says the nearest guy.
“Well, that is good.” I shifted a little so the holster of my gun was on show. Henchmen always fear a femme fatale, because they know only an ex-lover can kill her. They backed off.
“I guess you’ll be heading down to Joe’s place, boys.”
They scurried off.
The guy I knew looked at me hard.
“Thanks, doll. I was stumped. Now, I don’t wanna break the walls, but would you let me take you for ice cream?”
The mark was coasting, so I could tell that I was unobserved. He dropped in through a little door which I happened to know led to the nearest speak easy so I thought ‘what the hell?’ I doubled back to his office and took a look.
It was a traditional kind of a place – nicotine walls, blinds down, and a hat stand that makes you think what a blunt instrument can do. And one fat cigar still smouldering in its tray on the table. I should have sussed then I was in trouble, but I noticed the filing cabinet and headed over. That schmuk had left his files where anyone with a skeleton key could find them. I found the one I wanted – the Portos file. I’d got it out and half way to my handbag when I felt the cold metal on my neck.
“OK, Casey, why don’t you just give that over?”
I hate when he uses my Christian name.
I turned around, real slow, and let him take in the scene. I’d worn the scarlet dress he always liked best as a precaution against this eventuality. I put the paper down on the desk, flat, and reached for my cigarettes.
“Mind if I smoke?”
He was just looking at me, so I took that as a yes and lit up. He picked up his fat cigar – it suited him so well I almost laughed – and went back to staring.
“So Casey”, that guy always talks like his mouth’s full, “how you been?”
“Oh, just fine,” I told him. “You been anywhere nice lately?”
“You should know.”
He kinda had me there, but I guessed he was bluffing. OK, it was midnight and I was in his office in a cocktail dress, but I figured he didn’t know I was onto him. I led him a dance.
“OK, Carter. You got me. I’m your shadow. But I’ll level with you. I got nothing. You think I’d be here alone if I did?”
He was buying it, so I kept up the tale. “All alone like this? You know me, Carter, I don’t go rifling through cabinets. It’s not my style.”
“You’re a classy lady, I’ll give you that. Beats me why you never worked as one of my girls.”
I swallowed my sneer and kept my mouth shut.
“But you don’t think I’m gonna let you walk?”
I knew he wouldn’t. But by now I’d opened the window lock behind my back. Two metres to the fire escape.
“You want a drink?”
“Sure.”
He turned away and bent down, totally eclipsing the filing cabinet with his sizeable derriere.
I picked up the paper, pulled off my shoes and jumped. I was half way down the fire escape before I heard him roaring. I didn’t get the time to feel too smug because I heard a voice I knew.
I walked round a corner to see the guy from yesterday. Now, you gotta understand that there is nothing strange in this. The same faces, the same people, they turn up everywhere, and the circumstances change around them. A bad egg in one place is no better if she’s a cocktail waitress or a chicken farmer. But this guy captured my attention because he knew me. It was just a flicker, and then he got back to what he was doing, which was trying to persuade a gang of heavies that they did not want to rough him up, although it seemed to me self-evident that they wanted to do exactly this.
“Now fellas,” he began. This is not a good way to begin. A bunch of guys armed with what the investigators will call “assorted weapons” do not like to be patronised.
“Now fellas, I am convinced that we can come to some kind of amicable understanding. You are all men of reason…”
At this point I thought it best to intervene because I did not want to see such a handsome face being scraped off the sidewalk.
“Hello, boys”, I said. For some reason when a chic says this, no-one is offended. “Looks like you’re causing some kind of a disturbance.”
“No ma’am”, says the nearest guy.
“Well, that is good.” I shifted a little so the holster of my gun was on show. Henchmen always fear a femme fatale, because they know only an ex-lover can kill her. They backed off.
“I guess you’ll be heading down to Joe’s place, boys.”
They scurried off.
The guy I knew looked at me hard.
“Thanks, doll. I was stumped. Now, I don’t wanna break the walls, but would you let me take you for ice cream?”
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
I Remember
I remember I’d spent almost the whole day making bunting out of coloured paper. It’s a lovely thing, to devote yourself so industriously to something so fundamentally trivial. It took all 6 of us house mates to hoist it onto the ceiling once it was made, but it looked perfect. And what with cooking for everyone who came early, and deciding how much make up looks like you haven’t really made an effort, the party started before I had time to agonise about it.
I didn’t notice him at first. No, sorry, let’s start again. I want to tell the story with no foreshadowing, because real life so rarely gets any. There were a few new people at the party, and I did my hostess duty and introduced myself to most of them, then folded myself into a corner with two of my best friends for come catching up. A guy I didn’t know kept looking at me from across the room, and every time he did, he got less subtle until it was very hard to politely pretend not to have noticed. Amy and Gemma kept exchanging glances about him, because he was good looking and it’s usually the ones who aren’t who exhibit the most sleezy behaviour. Not that he was being sleezy, of course, as it turned out, but that’s how it seemed. He sidled up to me eventually, and asked if I could show him which room was the coats room. It’s a big house, so I had to go with him. As soon as we were alone, he said:
“It’s you, isn’t it? I know you.”
This being one of the worst lines ever, I was as brisk as it was courteous to be. He carried on, though.
“Sorry, that sounds awful. I’m not trying to chat you up. It’s just…you’ll never believe it anyway. This is stupid. Sorry.”
Of course, there was no way I was going to let that go, so I poked and poked but all I could get out of him was some shadow play about how he had to be sure for his own sanity. Then he said something like:
“Look, you already think I’m mental,” (this was true) “so I might as well ask: do you own a necklace with a bright yellow stone set into a sort of coiled nest?”
I breathed in pretty sharply. I didn’t have that necklace, but I didn’t have it because the woman in the jewellers had put it behind the counter for me and promised faithfully not to sell it until I had saved up enough to buy it from her. At that point, I think it had been in the shop about 3 months.
“Right,” he said. “There is definitely a perfectly logical explanation for this.”
“Really? Do go on.”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then plunged in.
“I think I’m just going to tell you everything.”
He looked at the bed, and then at me, and I remember thinking how strange it was that he was asking permission to sit down when he was talking about something so open. I gestured that he should sit, and then listened to his story.
“I was on my way home last night – not drunk, before you ask – and I was on a fairly isolated bit of road…sorry, this pre-amble isn’t helping. I saw an old woman, basically, standing directly in my way, and looking straight at me. I couldn’t see her expression from there, but I saw she was wearing a dressing gown. I thought…there must be a home somewhere around here, and she’s got out and now she’s lost, so I slowed down and tried not to look intimidating. Then she said, “James”. That’s my name. I said “hello” and something awful like “have we met”, and she looked very sad, but she smiled at that. She said no, we hadn’t met. I started to notice a few more things about her, then. She wasn’t senile, for a start. Her hair was tidy and her dressing gown was clean and well-kept. And she wasn’t there. I can’t explain how I knew that. For a start, it was raining a bit and she was completely dry, but I noticed…you know how you can feel it when someone’s looking at you? I couldn’t feel that. She was reaching from somewhere else, I’m sure. Or else I am going mental. She said, “James, you’re going to meet me tomorrow night, and it’s very important that you stay away from me. Go to the party, if you like, learn who I am, and then stay away. It causes only pain, in the end.” I noticed she was carrying a sleek bit of technology in her hand, then – it shimmered, it wasn’t like anything I’ve seen elsewhere – and she held it up. “Oh,” she said, “my name is Katie.” She pressed something on the device and vanished.”
He wouldn’t look at me after he’d finished, and I think it might have been that that made me think he might be telling the truth. And no-one knows about my necklace. I like to keep things sacred, so I’ve kept that just for myself – secrets can feel like talismans. The funny thing is, no-one calls me Katie. My dad did, but to everyone else I’ve always been Katherine.
“Katie,” he said, and I’ve never heard anything sound so natural as my name on his tongue. I just said “yes”, and he looked up. “What do you think?”
Naturally, I had no idea what to think, and none of the options were particularly good, but there was a sort of a hint of something funny in this ludicrous situation, so I smiled a bit. He did, too, and it was amazing how much his face changed – I think he must have been fretting a lot.
“Well,” I said, “I think either this is a wind-up, and somehow you’ve found out about my necklace, or you’re mental and the biographical details are flukes, or else a future version of myself has travelled back in time to the night before we met to warn you off me. For some reason.”
“I swear it’s not a wind-up. Maybe I’m mental, but the only place I’ve ever seen that necklace is on her.”
“Just before she vanished?”
“Look, I’ve acknowledged it sounds mental.”
“Sorry. All right. We might as well indulge this for the sake of discussion. She…I, possibly…must have had a pretty good reason for wanting to undo something from 50 years ago. Thing is, I never want to change the past. Honestly. Even when bad things happen, it’s still part of my experience. I don‘t want a time machine, I don’t want to be perfect.”
“So what could possibly make you do that?”
“I don’t know. Someone else’s pain, possibly. Or just something really awful…”
“There’s another possibility, of course.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we wouldn’t be talking now if she hadn’t turned up.”
“You think my future self was match making?”
“Why not? She could have remembered this conversation, and known what she had to do. She might have known I’d be scared off if she said she was my girlfriend or something.”
“Ever heard of a temporal paradox?”
“Yes, but time travel existing at all means there must be a way round it – either both are physically impossible, or neither are.”
“So you’re saying we should get to know each other precisely because she went to the effort of going back in time to stop us?”
We laughed at that. It’s strange how funny things that are really quite awful can seem, and he is such nice company.
“What if we fell completely in love and then you died and that was the source of the pain?”
“Can you imagine wishing a life-long relationship away?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine being old at all. Maybe, just afterwards, or if it was my fault in some way.”
“What do you want to do, then?”
“What, take her advice literally and never see each other again, or assume she was either being clever, or blinded by grief, and do the exact opposite?”
“Flip a coin?”
“Why not!”
I didn’t notice him at first. No, sorry, let’s start again. I want to tell the story with no foreshadowing, because real life so rarely gets any. There were a few new people at the party, and I did my hostess duty and introduced myself to most of them, then folded myself into a corner with two of my best friends for come catching up. A guy I didn’t know kept looking at me from across the room, and every time he did, he got less subtle until it was very hard to politely pretend not to have noticed. Amy and Gemma kept exchanging glances about him, because he was good looking and it’s usually the ones who aren’t who exhibit the most sleezy behaviour. Not that he was being sleezy, of course, as it turned out, but that’s how it seemed. He sidled up to me eventually, and asked if I could show him which room was the coats room. It’s a big house, so I had to go with him. As soon as we were alone, he said:
“It’s you, isn’t it? I know you.”
This being one of the worst lines ever, I was as brisk as it was courteous to be. He carried on, though.
“Sorry, that sounds awful. I’m not trying to chat you up. It’s just…you’ll never believe it anyway. This is stupid. Sorry.”
Of course, there was no way I was going to let that go, so I poked and poked but all I could get out of him was some shadow play about how he had to be sure for his own sanity. Then he said something like:
“Look, you already think I’m mental,” (this was true) “so I might as well ask: do you own a necklace with a bright yellow stone set into a sort of coiled nest?”
I breathed in pretty sharply. I didn’t have that necklace, but I didn’t have it because the woman in the jewellers had put it behind the counter for me and promised faithfully not to sell it until I had saved up enough to buy it from her. At that point, I think it had been in the shop about 3 months.
“Right,” he said. “There is definitely a perfectly logical explanation for this.”
“Really? Do go on.”
He looked uncomfortable for a moment, then plunged in.
“I think I’m just going to tell you everything.”
He looked at the bed, and then at me, and I remember thinking how strange it was that he was asking permission to sit down when he was talking about something so open. I gestured that he should sit, and then listened to his story.
“I was on my way home last night – not drunk, before you ask – and I was on a fairly isolated bit of road…sorry, this pre-amble isn’t helping. I saw an old woman, basically, standing directly in my way, and looking straight at me. I couldn’t see her expression from there, but I saw she was wearing a dressing gown. I thought…there must be a home somewhere around here, and she’s got out and now she’s lost, so I slowed down and tried not to look intimidating. Then she said, “James”. That’s my name. I said “hello” and something awful like “have we met”, and she looked very sad, but she smiled at that. She said no, we hadn’t met. I started to notice a few more things about her, then. She wasn’t senile, for a start. Her hair was tidy and her dressing gown was clean and well-kept. And she wasn’t there. I can’t explain how I knew that. For a start, it was raining a bit and she was completely dry, but I noticed…you know how you can feel it when someone’s looking at you? I couldn’t feel that. She was reaching from somewhere else, I’m sure. Or else I am going mental. She said, “James, you’re going to meet me tomorrow night, and it’s very important that you stay away from me. Go to the party, if you like, learn who I am, and then stay away. It causes only pain, in the end.” I noticed she was carrying a sleek bit of technology in her hand, then – it shimmered, it wasn’t like anything I’ve seen elsewhere – and she held it up. “Oh,” she said, “my name is Katie.” She pressed something on the device and vanished.”
He wouldn’t look at me after he’d finished, and I think it might have been that that made me think he might be telling the truth. And no-one knows about my necklace. I like to keep things sacred, so I’ve kept that just for myself – secrets can feel like talismans. The funny thing is, no-one calls me Katie. My dad did, but to everyone else I’ve always been Katherine.
“Katie,” he said, and I’ve never heard anything sound so natural as my name on his tongue. I just said “yes”, and he looked up. “What do you think?”
Naturally, I had no idea what to think, and none of the options were particularly good, but there was a sort of a hint of something funny in this ludicrous situation, so I smiled a bit. He did, too, and it was amazing how much his face changed – I think he must have been fretting a lot.
“Well,” I said, “I think either this is a wind-up, and somehow you’ve found out about my necklace, or you’re mental and the biographical details are flukes, or else a future version of myself has travelled back in time to the night before we met to warn you off me. For some reason.”
“I swear it’s not a wind-up. Maybe I’m mental, but the only place I’ve ever seen that necklace is on her.”
“Just before she vanished?”
“Look, I’ve acknowledged it sounds mental.”
“Sorry. All right. We might as well indulge this for the sake of discussion. She…I, possibly…must have had a pretty good reason for wanting to undo something from 50 years ago. Thing is, I never want to change the past. Honestly. Even when bad things happen, it’s still part of my experience. I don‘t want a time machine, I don’t want to be perfect.”
“So what could possibly make you do that?”
“I don’t know. Someone else’s pain, possibly. Or just something really awful…”
“There’s another possibility, of course.”
“Go on.”
“Well, we wouldn’t be talking now if she hadn’t turned up.”
“You think my future self was match making?”
“Why not? She could have remembered this conversation, and known what she had to do. She might have known I’d be scared off if she said she was my girlfriend or something.”
“Ever heard of a temporal paradox?”
“Yes, but time travel existing at all means there must be a way round it – either both are physically impossible, or neither are.”
“So you’re saying we should get to know each other precisely because she went to the effort of going back in time to stop us?”
We laughed at that. It’s strange how funny things that are really quite awful can seem, and he is such nice company.
“What if we fell completely in love and then you died and that was the source of the pain?”
“Can you imagine wishing a life-long relationship away?”
“I don’t know. I can’t imagine being old at all. Maybe, just afterwards, or if it was my fault in some way.”
“What do you want to do, then?”
“What, take her advice literally and never see each other again, or assume she was either being clever, or blinded by grief, and do the exact opposite?”
“Flip a coin?”
“Why not!”
My Adventures
In the world of the musical, the morning song was a dirge sung by the commuters as they dragged their feet to work, the slap-slapping providing the drone, and the rhythm. At least, so it seemed from a distance. As I got closer, I came to perceive melodies in the drone. I realised that what I had heard as one long, endless tune was in fact made from each individual person’s separate song. And the songs were fast! That was the amazing thing! It was like one of those pictures made from thousands of tiny little pictures – all the images are busy but as part of the wider picture they mean only one thing. White, for example, or shade. The scale is very important. All these private little songs were so busy, so lively, that it was amazing to step back and hear again how they melded into the soulless commuters’ drone. Only their bodies were truly closed up and sad.
I asked a man for directions, and he left his private melody to join mine for a while. We rose above the drone, always harmonising with it, and provided, briefly, a tune. But I was aware that at the same time I was still part of the drone myself – still backing for other melodies that I was too distant to perceive.
In my line of work, I occasionally run into trouble. But it was incredible here. I had notice, of a sort. I walked around the corner, and just at the moment my body tensed because I sensed that something was wrong, a chord in the background made me sure that I was correct. It articulated my unease. I jumped behind a discarded crate and I found I had more agility than I had before I entered this world. When the threat itself appeared in the form of a drunken reprobate, there was an uncommon co-ordination to his falling about, a muscular power behind his wild lunges. I suppose if it hadn’t been real, his movements might have been beautiful. I dealt with him kindly – I did not want him to remember anything that would cause him to punish himself too heavily in the morning – and moved on.
By now, the endless tide of the commute had ceased, and the 11am crowd had appeared with the falling away of the morning fog. The song had become lively, but not exuberant – the kind of happiness that can be sustained all day because there is nothing wild in it. They sang about the weather, and how much they enjoyed coffee, and how they would deal with a difficult scene – most of the 11am crowd are writers and artists. They sang from the coffee shops and the parks, and they moved with the energy reserved for those who habitually rise at 10am. I knew it was him immediately. His was the only melody I could pick out from the chorus, so that to me they were all his accompaniment, and he darted and leapt between them down the centre of the road towards me, all life and youth. The tune slowed to a refrain when he saw me, and I caught my own monologue joining perfectly with his.
In the land of the musical, first meetings are brief, so I should not have been surprised when, moments later, everyone I had ever met approached and surged around me, carrying me away from him. I was part of a lively number now, mostly concerned with whether we could all skip work that afternoon and go to the open air movies instead, but as I glanced back I caught a snatch of his dumbstruck ballad as he stood motionless in the centre of the street.
I asked a man for directions, and he left his private melody to join mine for a while. We rose above the drone, always harmonising with it, and provided, briefly, a tune. But I was aware that at the same time I was still part of the drone myself – still backing for other melodies that I was too distant to perceive.
In my line of work, I occasionally run into trouble. But it was incredible here. I had notice, of a sort. I walked around the corner, and just at the moment my body tensed because I sensed that something was wrong, a chord in the background made me sure that I was correct. It articulated my unease. I jumped behind a discarded crate and I found I had more agility than I had before I entered this world. When the threat itself appeared in the form of a drunken reprobate, there was an uncommon co-ordination to his falling about, a muscular power behind his wild lunges. I suppose if it hadn’t been real, his movements might have been beautiful. I dealt with him kindly – I did not want him to remember anything that would cause him to punish himself too heavily in the morning – and moved on.
By now, the endless tide of the commute had ceased, and the 11am crowd had appeared with the falling away of the morning fog. The song had become lively, but not exuberant – the kind of happiness that can be sustained all day because there is nothing wild in it. They sang about the weather, and how much they enjoyed coffee, and how they would deal with a difficult scene – most of the 11am crowd are writers and artists. They sang from the coffee shops and the parks, and they moved with the energy reserved for those who habitually rise at 10am. I knew it was him immediately. His was the only melody I could pick out from the chorus, so that to me they were all his accompaniment, and he darted and leapt between them down the centre of the road towards me, all life and youth. The tune slowed to a refrain when he saw me, and I caught my own monologue joining perfectly with his.
In the land of the musical, first meetings are brief, so I should not have been surprised when, moments later, everyone I had ever met approached and surged around me, carrying me away from him. I was part of a lively number now, mostly concerned with whether we could all skip work that afternoon and go to the open air movies instead, but as I glanced back I caught a snatch of his dumbstruck ballad as he stood motionless in the centre of the street.
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