Lightning nodded, warming to his subject. 'When in four-fifteen the Insects first appeared in Awia, the chaos they caused led to the collapse of the governments in every country. The Insects extended their Paperlands and Awian families began moving south to escape them. Everyone knows that account, but my ancestors were among them. Our records don't stretch back that far; we were not notable then. We were unplanned settlers but we had courage and intelligence. We settled Pentadrican land. They were in anarchy and grateful for the order we brought. We also brought the knowledge of how to fight Insects. We lived in harmony with the Pentradricans who remained. Soon King Murrelet made a decision to s.h.i.+ft the boundaries of Awia south. All the land from the rivers Moren to Rachis was Pentadrican land back then. If you know what you're looking for, Eleonora, you can still see vestiges of the Pentadrica todaythe Dace River, that was one of their fish names, like the Trisians still use. Awia stretched from the Rachis river to the north coast of the continent, all under paper now.

'My family staked a claim on bountiful land in Mica River valley. We founded the manor and took the river's name for our family name. Then gold was discovered in Gilt River, my family started to mine it and we flourished. We married into the Sheldrake family and gained all the land south of the river mouth. Our rise in influence seemed unstoppable.'

'Look,' I said. 'We know all this.'

Eleonora said, 'Shut up, Jant. He's talking to me'

She gave Lightning an encouraging nod and he continued, unfortunately: 'The Murrelets held the throne for centuries. They had claimed the Rachis Valley, but they died out in five four nine and we inherited the throne. Queen Esmerillion was the first of our dynastyher charm was legendary. She moved the capital from Murrelet to Micawater town. She built the palace, away from the best land, obviously, but she gave it the best vista.

'Ninety years pa.s.sed. Then my grandfather, King Gadwall, married Minivet Donaise and we gained her manorthe whole of the Donaise hills were added to Micawater. Gadwall and Minivet had two daughters, the firstborn being Teale. Teale Micawater married a warrior called Garganey Planisher and, though their childrenmy siblings and menumbered nine, we were the last generation...until Cyan was born.' Lightning sighed and folded his arms.

I drained my gla.s.s noisily and declared, 'G.o.d, I needed that.'

'I understand, even if Jant doesn't,' said Eleonora. 'We live forever through our descendants.'

'I prefer to live forever through being the fastest messenger in the world,' I said. 'Lightning, do you want some more wine?'

'Thank you. But, you know, I was only fourth in line for the throne and I was never expected to inherit so I was not brought up knowing how to run the manor as were my brothers Peregrine, Gyr and Shryke. I made many mistakes in the first few years.

'Peregrine knew he was dying of cancer. He speculated that I would live longer than a whole mortal dynasty so he placed the manor in my hands, but Gyr should have inherited. Gyr was the last of my brothers left alive but he was the black sheep of the family; he had been embittered by the death of his sister decades before. We quarrelled...I handled it badly. You see, the Castle had made me a soldier not a statesman. I beat him around the Great Hall and I threw him out. Every harsh word is still burnt into me.

'That was in the year six eighty-seven and it was the end of our dynasty. Gyr wanted to put some distance between us, so he married b.l.o.o.d.y Korhaan Allerion. He wanted to change his name but the process was the same then as now; the name of the wealthier parents' family was pa.s.sed on to the children. The Allerions could never be wealthier than the Micawaters, so Gyr changed his name completely. He called his dynasty after the river that flowed through the lands he carved off from my manor. His lack of originality was the final insult.

'Eventually the Avernwaters yielded the throne to the Piculets and I knew there was not a drop of my family's blood left in the world, apart from me...' His forehead creased, then he shrugged and sipped claret.

'I try to trace my line as far as the Rachiswaters, but I am only fooling myself,' he added. 'So, when I say the seventh century was our golden age, I mean it. I have managed to keep my manor preserved at the peak of my dynasty's expansion and achievement. We brought stability to our manor, then the whole of Awia, and we stopped the Insects coming further southward. I have always thought that's the reason why San let me keep the land when I became Eszai. It also meant that Awia couldn't expand its borders any further into the Plainslands. Adventurous dynasties like the Tanagers beat north against the Insects instead, and the Rachiswaters pushed west.'

Frost had been talking to Gayle on her other side, but she caught a fragment of our conversation and smiled. 'No one can better Lightning on the ebb and flow of featherback dynasties. He remembers them all.'

Lightning raised a finger shrewdly and drunkenly. 'I knowed...I mean...I knew them all.'

'We realise. Why don't you have some of this?' I said, offering him a slice of fudge cake which would be well-nigh impossible to talk through.

Lightning refused it for the chance to show Eleonora his knowledge. 'Our court was in power from five forty-nine until six eighty-seven. My mother held the throne at the time of the Games. The Avernwaters followed, from six eighty-seven to the year one thousand; they held out a long time but their town is now only a Tanager muster. The Piculets rose in power, from the year one thousand until ten eighty-one. Then the Pardalotes were very successful, ten eighty-one to thirteen twenty-six, when Insects killed the last. The Piculets returned from thirteen twenty-six to thirteen ninety-eight. I liked them, but I didn't think much of the Fulvetta dynasty (thirteen ninety-eight to fifteen sixteen), very debauched in the fifteenth century. The exhilarating times of new Awia had long gone. They used to tell me, "Be decadent while you still can. The Insects will destroy us too." Well, the last one, Lanare Fulvetta, poisoned her family and was imprisoned for patricide. Then rose the Scoters (fifteen sixteen to fifteen thirty-six) until a flu epidemic put an end to them and tens of thousands more. They were followed by an interregnum and I was champing at the bit then, let me tell you. The Falconets were merchant arrivisteswith sporadic insanitywho filled the vacuum from fifteen thirty-eight to sixteen forty-one. I had to sit through that; they were all quite mad. There was a schism in the family and poor Petronia Falconet went to Hacilith, but his son did well as the first Aver-Falconet. Then the Tanagers appeared, a famous warrior family' He smiled at Eleonora 'and succeeded to the throne. They restored some of the wonderful original vigour from sixteen fifteen until eighteen twelve...'

'Financial problems,' put in Eleonora graciously.

'Financial problems,' Lightning concurred. 'The Rachiswaters rose to power (eighteen twelve to twenty fifteen). They founded Carniss but an Insect swarm ended them, and back came the Tanagers...twenty fifteen until who knows when?'

Eleonora said, 'That's the way you see mortals, isn't it? Just offshoots of family lines, just the latest kings or servants or soldiers.'

Lightning prodded a finger at the table top. 'That is a very involved question. So in simplest yes and no terms, let me just say, perhaps.'

'I expect you think there's no point in getting to know them personally.'

The smile spread over his face again. 'You, Eleonora, are an excellent personification of the Tanagers.'

'We may have been good warriors but we weren't so successful in peaceful times. My forebears didn't care as much about money as yours must have done.'

Lightning said, 'Nevertheless, I think you'll last. Pa.s.s the wine, please.'

'You've drunk enough.'

'I...have drunk enough claret in my life to fill Micawater lake. 'S true. I worked it out. A whole d.a.m.n lake of calret. Claret.'

'Only Awia has such royal splendour,' Eleonora continued. 'I feel sorry for the other countries.'

I felt sorry for Lightning's daughter. He seemed to want her to begin his dynasty once more, so this time he could watch over it properly, but evidently he couldn't even look after her. I said, 'If I find Cyan, I'll explain all this to her. Besides, I've been at the front for a long time; I'd welcome a change of scene.'

'You all have your priorities wrong!' Frost wailed.

Lightning said to her, 'I wouldn't let Jant go if I didn't think he could do it. Cyan knows and likes him. She listens to him.'

'I know the underworld, too,' I said.

'Oh, G.o.d...Good luck.'

'What do you want me to do if I find her?'

Lightning propped his head on his hand. 'Hmm. Send her to the palace. No, on second thoughts, bring her here. I can keep an eye on her. Otherwise she might run away again. Harrier may be growing too long in the tooth to keep up with her.'

'She can watch us drawing up the troops,' Eleonora suggested.

'Yes. It might do the uncouth young lady good to see the fyrd in action. She needs a firm hand. She calls herself Cyan Peregrine, as she should, because she will inherit the manor when she's twenty-one. I am glad she accepts it, but everything else she does these days seems designed to cause me pain. If...If the worst has happened and you need constables, or horses, ask Aver-Falconet. Cyan was supposed to be meeting him anyway...Harrier had to make all kinds of excuses.'

Frost shook her head and clasped her hands around her coffee cup. 'I don't like it. I'm busy with my speciality as San wants us to be. I don't branch out. I don't have pastimes; I work all the time. But, Lightning, when you're not playing geopolitics you're playing family history!'

He asked her, 'Will you be able to work without Jant?'

She bristled. 'Yes, of course! I coped for hundreds of years before he flew in!'

'Use my couriers,' I said.

'Typical. Everything to be done at the pace of a nag rather than the pace of an eagle.'

Lightning said, 'Give him six days, Frost. You never give anybody enough time off. Including yourself, I suspect.'

'How else would I have built the dam?' she asked, then turned to Eleonora. 'Your Highness, be my witness that I object to this ridiculous errand.'

Eleonora shrugged. 'As you wish, but we're at the front so I can't intervene in an argument between Eszai.'

Frost could see she was outnumbered and I felt a twist of guilt because the advance is supposed to be our priority. However, I can manage both and she's probably just annoyed that I'm more busy than her. She said, 'Jant, when you return, report straight to me. I'll have a stack of letters for you by then.'

I picked my jacket off the back of the chair, leant over the table and gathered some cheese rolls.

Lightning said, 'Wait a minute.' He struggled to his feet and threw an arm around my shoulders. He was taller than my one metre eighty-five and nearly twice as broad as I am. He accompanied me to the door with a confidential air, saying, 'Jant, you must know that...Um...I have my own doubts. Um...Oh, G.o.d knows I have always tried to show you the right way but you are far too easily tempted...'

'What?'

'Cyan is a very attractive girl.'

'Good,' I said.

He rubbed the tips of his fingers over the scar on his right hand. 'I'm not sure if...if she pretty how knows she is. Knows how pretty she is. It might have an effect on certain men...On certain men who have volunteered to find her.'

'What!' I said indignantly. 'I promise I won't touch her!'

'You never know what you are going to do, Jant, so don't bother promising. I wish for once you would plan ahead rather than living in the instant and rus.h.i.+ng into things. I remember how you were when you first joined the Circle, eagerly looking for ways to destroy yourself. You still pride yourself on being dangerous.'

It took him some time to say this and I waited patiently. 'Lightning, you have old-fas.h.i.+oned ideas.'

'With time you'll learn they're the safest. If you...If you take advantage of Cyan I'll have your guts for bowstring. I will do you more damage than that battle did...I'll break every one of your weird-looking fingers.'

'G.o.d. You really know how to get through to a Rhydanne. There's no need to worry, trust me; I told Cyan to think of me as her brother.'

He nodded, mollified. 'Well, my town house and hunting lodges are at your disposal, as usual. Oh, and Jant, if you can't find her in the six days, you must return. Don't let your tremendous energy tempt you to ridiculous feats. The Emperor would dismiss us both.'

CHAPTER 4.

I found my pace and the wind was with me; I flew over the convoys coming in to Slake Cross. I was glad to be flying in the opposite direction, against the flow, at right angles to society. I was enjoying myself; I live for flight. I felt light and ethereal.

The wind buffeted my wings. I exerted my strength and held them steady, like struts. I respect the winds, because at a touch some gales could snap my bones and tear my muscle, so to be weather-wise I study the clouds.

Flying long distances is a very fulfilling challenge, because it has taken me all my life to learn the rules of the sky. It is always laid out like a chessboard halfway through a game, a confusion of risks and potentials. Flying puts the minutiae of life into perspectiveIwas concentrating so hard playing out the moves, I didn't dwell on any of the daily worries.

I looked for the small, fluffy white clouds that sit on top of thermals. They had been forming all morning and were drifting with the wind to make an archipelago, each cloud a signpost in a corridor of updraughts that would carry me south.

I entered the first thermal and felt a jolt of lift. I turned and circled close to its centre, the tips of my wings spread wide to catch the rising air. The moorland spun under me as I rose smoothly, and all the time I was looking around, trying to predict the next source of lift. After a few minutes the warm air bubble faded and no longer bore me up, but I had already gained so much height I could glide out towards the next one.

This is the best way of flying. From birds I learnt the trick is not to flap all the time but glide as much as possible to save effort. It's a game of wits for me, though. When I was on drugs, I took the overfamiliar countryside for granted; flying around in a daze, delivering letters or failing to. No longerI was seeing it with new eyes, full of gladness that I'm clean at last. The excitement of the real world made me highthe sky was more vivid than a triphow could I have forgotten the scenery's intense beauty when in love with all the s.h.i.+ft worlds to which cat could take me? The Fourlands was so much better.

I pulled my little round sungla.s.ses down from my forehead and looked out far in advance. The shape and colour of the ground influences the wind currents and spots where thermals form.

As I left Lowespa.s.s the lines of trenches fell behind, but pillboxes and platform towers dotted the border of Awiaplaces to seek refuge from Insects. I could tell I had crossed into northwest Awia when I went over the Rachis River, a thin silver thread s.h.i.+ning like flax unspooling through flower-spotted water meadows.

I was flying over the upper Rachis valley, patchwork farmland thickly and evenly spangled with villages. This was the muster of Plow. All manors are divided into musters of roughly equal population, with the original purpose of marshalling fyrd. Each muster is administered by a reeve who is appointed by the manor lord. The reeve's family change their surname to match the muster, a system created in the distant past, probably to make it easier for us immortals to remember them.

I caressed the air over Plow, the largest town in its muster, but still not much more than the reeve's moated farm around which gathered stone granges with red-tiled roofs and courtyards. They belonged to the tenant farmers who work the land under the reeve, and the vavasours who sub-rent from the tenant farmers.

All the barns were empty of hay and the cattle turned out into the fields. Men and women looked up and pointed me out, pausing from their work bent double pulling up weeds from between shoots of wheat and barley. I waved and motion flourished all over the fields as hundreds of people simultaneously waved back.

No wonder Plow muster is called 'the bread basket of Awia'. Rock dust ground by glaciers in the mountains blows down in the high air streams and settles across the area, where the rivers add loam and make the most fertile land in the Empire. Awia is fortunate that the country is so fruitful; it would otherwise soon be ruined since it bears the brunt of the Insect incursion while the rest of the Fourlands can prosper free of any fighting.

I pa.s.sed over Toft town, built of ivy-clad marble tracery salvaged from old palaces. It was once famous for being the seat of the Fulvetta dynasty, and now famous for nothing but its ruins.

The land started to b.u.mp up into gra.s.sy slopes. The last thermal failed me and I had to ascend by flapping. I beat strongly, breathing deeply to quell the pain in my wings and stomach muscles. When I fly long distance I try to dissociate from the pain by counting off the landmarks and seeing how soon I can pa.s.s them. It's just like running a marathon; it gets harder and harder until a certain point. If I can break past that point I feel I can go on for ever.

I crested Irksdale, the heather grouse moor, into Micawater manor. The land dropped steeply in limestone bands and escarpments, leaving me gliding high above fresh beech and old oak woods. This was no wild wood but Lightning's carefully managed purlieu, a hunting ground popular for the revels of ladies and gentlemen. They come up from the Awian palaces and the summer homes of Hacilith businessmen further down the valley. Every time I fly over it brings home to me how rich Lightning is, with all these thousands of people paying rent to him. His manor alone was probably worth half the Plainslands. Long accustomed to immortality, he plans far ahead and his people profit from his vast experience. He looks after them well; in fact, n.o.body lives as a cottar in Micawater.

Lightning would be even richer now his investment in Trisian trade is starting to pay off. But I'm not envious. What would I do with all that cash, hey? I have twenty primary feathers and the blue dome of the sky!

A herd of fallow deer caught sight of me and panicked. They were so far below, they looked to be the size of hares; they bounded beneath the trees, white tails flas.h.i.+ng. I could only see them occasionally, grey-brown backs and the stags' antlers in velvet, but I drove them along in front with glee. They reached the edge of the woods and waded out into the shallow Foin River, where I left them standing in the fast current. The Foin is fordable along its length, giving rise to the proverb, 'When there are two bridges over the Foin'; that is, never.

I looked directly down and found myself staring into the grounda rocky chasm. I was over the fuming torrent of the Gilt River in a breath and above the trees again. The Gilt cascades down from Darkling where it rises in the mountains' black granite and schist, from which it abrades tiny translucent flakes. They sparkle in the water all the way downstream and embed themselves in the plashers of waterwheels from Kettleholes to Micawater town that glitter as they turn.

The shadows were lengthening and already the evening was drawing in. It was better to cut my journey short today and enjoy Lightning's hospitality, than to press on, gain a few more kilometres but have to spend the night in a grim Fescue coaching inn. I leant my weight and swung left, to follow the river down to the next village, Chalybeate. A long skein of geese straggled into view, a few hundred metres below me. Their honking and whirring wings awoke my ingrained hunting l.u.s.t. I let them pa.s.s under me, then swung into a standing position, folded my wings and fell, feet first. I hit the last bird in the line with the soles of my boots and knocked it stone dead. It dropped out of the air and crashed through the branches.

I landed, picked it up then ran to find the path, kicking up clouds of spores from puffball fungi. The stalks of bluebells on the bank were invisible; their flowers hung in the air like fine eye-shadow dust. Silky beech leaves were unfolding like fans from the buds, ferns uncurled like green question marks, up from the ground covering of dog's mercury and herb robyn.

I knocked on the door of Chalybeate Chase, one of Lightning's picturesque and immaculate hunting lodges. I have a delightful privilege as Messenger: I can ask for lodging anywhere. It always amuses me to see great lords scrambling to give their best suites to a junkie ex-street kid. The caretaker's surprised face appeared in the doorway.

I held up the goose and he broke into a grin.

Every centimetre of Chalybeate Chase's inside walls was crammed with hunting trophies. The table, where I was sitting to eat my roast goose dinner, was a gla.s.s-fronted cabinet containing a display of stuffed wildfowl. Hundreds of deer heads surrounded me, mounted looking left and right to fit their antlers into every available s.p.a.ce. Pink and orange paper chains draped all over themthe debris left by Lightning's last party hadn't been cleared up yet. He has a habit of announcing that it is his birthday at random intervals. Sometimes he has two or three in a year, sometimes none for a decade. The first time he asked me to deliver invitations I thought it really was his birthday until Rayne explained it was nothing but an excuse for a party and no one knows when his real birthday is. According to Lightning, immortals' birthdays don't count.

Next morning I headed out of Awia, flying south and watching the Plainslands expand. It was fantastic, so refres.h.i.+ng! If one day I crash and die flying, then it will all be worth it. Look at me, the Emperor's Messenger! I hold all the rights of pa.s.sage. My strength, my speed, the scars of Slake Cross Battle seemed to burn in my flesh. G.o.d, but it was good to be alive, in the chill exhilarating air!

I waved my arms from sheer exuberance but that didn't seem to help dissipate it. All I need now is my old guitar, so I can coax 'The Frozen Hound Hotel' out of it while I ride.

I glanced up to another layer of fine, thin cloud thousands of metres above. I have tried, but it's impossible to fly that high. I can't breathe up there and I come down covered in ice. I usually travel long-distance at about one and a half thousand metres and never higher than five thousand, much lower than the valley where I once lived in Darkling.

In such fine conditions I can glide a hundred kilometres without flapping once, but I could no longer see much detail. Navigation was easy; all I had to do now was follow the Moren to Hacilith. The river was speckled with barges sailing upstream to the mining villages. Their sails were angled and they had white mounds on their decks, probably sacks of coal being s.h.i.+pped in from the collieries of Avernwater and Fusain muster in Wrought. As the terrain flattened, the Moren began to meander lazily back and forth. Fescue manor continued on its south side, all poor sandy heath interlaced with dirt-track drove roads. Little more than gorse grew in central Fescue.

By early afternoon I pa.s.sed over the Castle itself. From this alt.i.tude the grey octagonal walls, corner towers and the Emperor's palace fitted inside looked as if they could sit on the palm of my hand. I couldn't distinguish the elaborate buildings but I saw sunlight reflecting with a flash on the gold sun finial topping the Throne Room spire. A spur from the river fed the gleaming double moat. On the smooth glacis lawn gra.s.s I recognized various outbuildings; the oval amphitheatre adjoining the square gymnasium and the stables' courtyard. The archery fields and jousting lists looked like green tiles.

It was strange to think the Emperor was sitting on his throne directly beneath me, not knowing I was gliding thousands of metres above his head. I unpacked my sandwiches and let the paper fall. It tumbled away and dropped behind me amazingly quickly, suddenly giving me something to judge my speed against. I hoped the Emperor was standing on his balcony and it fluttered down onto his head.

The Castle's curtain wall dwarfed Demesne village just west of it, past the series of mirror-like fishponds. The Castle's servants live in Demesne village and it is the only land the Castle has ever owned. The land on which it and the Castle stands is independent of any manor but much smaller than any muster. Its fields can only sustain the village itself and not the Castle, which is dependent on the good will of the Empire; San's deliberate wish, to symbolise that the Castle is the Empire's servant.

Pinchbeck town crowded into a bend in the river. Open, blunt-prowed barges no bigger than apple pips nosed onto its jetties. Timber-framed cranes were swinging sacks onto their decks. Here was the first sign of the cityHacilith sucks in a vast amount of producethe whole Plainslands and the rest of Morenzia can't match the quant.i.ties its markets buy and sell. My excitement began to groweven out here in s.h.i.+vel you can feel the pull of Hacilith.

Heavier barges sat low in the water, carrying millstones and masonry from the Heshcam quarries. Felled logs b.u.t.ted among them, floating in huge rope corrals, to be drifted downstream to the hungry capital.

Pinchbeck diminished and I flashed by plain farmland; all beehives, tariff barns, cow sheds, pigsties, duck ponds, thres.h.i.+ng sheds, oil-presses. Before me, s.h.i.+vel, the second-largest Plainslands town, spread out from the river, flat over the land like lichen.

s.h.i.+vel manor house was just outside the town on the main road. I contemplated how unlike most Awian manor houses that was. They're usually at a distance from town in their own parkland, but the Plainslands governors live near their citizens. That may encourage their people, but I'm dubious, because for all their physical proximity the Plainslands aristocracies are even more distant from their tenants than are those of Awiaand the corrupt oligarchy of Hacilith, living in the same streets as their citizens, may as well be in a different world.

Further on, I pa.s.sed over a scatter of reed-thatched, run-down hovels, the dwellings of cottars who sc.r.a.pe their existence by hiring themselves to the tenant farmers at sowing and harvest, at little more than subsistence levels. In the months between, they labour at any odd job availablewomen were pegging linen on lines to dry. All the men seemed to be busy building another hovel from clay cob. Kids ran about barefoot and chickens scratched around under their ladders; the cottars let their scrawny livestock live in their own houses.

I lifted my wings a touch from the horizontal to glide efficiently. They cut the air; it forced over their hard, smooth upper surfaces with a swish like sword blades. I was having to fly faster now, to get enough lift, and I had neck ache from keeping my head up and looking forwards.

A squad of archers were marching along the road, just dots with long shadows stretching before themprobably a patrol returning from the downsall governors use them to keep the main roads clear of highwaymen. The horse jumps in the next field looked no bigger than matchsticks and dainty trotting palfreys were like models. I felt I could reach down and move them about.