Cyan has never had to fend for herself. Everywhere she goes, servants hover to accommodate her every whim. I tilted the gla.s.s back and swilled whisky. I didn't want any more ha.s.sle. Cyan had used up my quota of patience and I had far too much on my mind. I wasn't sure if I was becoming wise with age, or simply exhausted; but then, if wisdom is a more prudent use of one's time, maybe it's exhaustion that forces us to be wise.

I shook my head. 'Whatever. Oh, what it is to be seventeen and open to rumour. Believe what you like. I won't tell Lightning that I found you. But when you tire of gallivanting around the city, join us at the front, all right?'

'Great!' She lit another cigarette and offered me one, leaning forward to light it with her own.

Rawney glanced at her jealously, but he slopped some more whisky into my gla.s.s. Maybe he wasn't so bad after all. He shook the bottle, then looked at me oddly. 'd.a.m.n. All the tales I've heard about Rhydanne are true.'

'Another cretinous comment from you and I'll post you to Ressond. Anyway, Rhydanne live above five thousand metres. We need to drink alcohol so our blood doesn't freeze.'

'Oh, yeah,' he said sarcastically.

'All true,' I said. 'No word of a lie. Would I lie to you? No. We have to drink alcohol constantly. And it takes Rhydanne minds off their awful food. There's no time for cuisine between the hunting and the hangovers; I think they only bother to cook because they can't eat it raw.'

Cyan said, 'It can't be true you're the only mix of Awian and Rhydanne.'

I shrugged. 'I'm sure there were others, and there will be others in future, for as long as Awians keep trying to conquer peaks...I keep pulling their stupid flags off and sending them back. Some AwianRhydanne children might have been unviable and didn't survive. Maybe some never made it out of Darkling or weren't able to fly, either not strong or not clever enough to learn. It took me ten years, after all. I should imagine most half-breed babies were thrown over cliffs. I would have been if it wasn't for Eilean. A Rhydanne single mother will kill an unwanted baby that slows her down.'

Rawney said, 'That's brutal. Animals.'

'No. It's a matter of her own survival. And anyway, look who's talking.' I turned to Cyan. 'Maybe we are similar. I've left my heritage behind me and you're trying to.'

'Rubbish,' she teased. 'You love being different. You keep turning your head so your eyes reflect.'

'I do not!'

'You do. And you read fortune cards. You carry them around everywhere.'

'Only for a party trick.' I dug in my inside jacket pocket for the battered sheaf of twenty-five squares of leather and, with a flick of one hand, spread them out. I offered them to her and she leant forward to pick one. She examined it closely, turning it over. 'Look, Rawney. Jant has these Rhydanne fortune cards.'

'Give me a break,' he said. 'Come on, babe, we ought to be going.'

'I keep telling you to stop calling me "babe"!'

He grasped her wrist and I tensed, but Cyan twisted herself free. I saw her blood rise and for the first time I could actually believe I was talking to Lightning's daughter. She made the most of her accent: 'If you do that again, fyrdsman, I will leave with Comet.' Then she said to me, as if to cover up, 'Will you read the cards for me, Jant?'

'All right.' I wiped whisky off the tabletop with my sleeve. I tapped the pack to neaten them and arranged them face down.

'How does it work?'

'The cards...' I swigged my drink. 'The cards don't tell the future. How could they? The future isn't set. These cards tell you about yourself in the present. All you need to know, to predict the future as accurately as possible...all you can ever know, is yourself right now. Most people don't know their own character well and these cards help you reflect. Then for the future, you extrapolate. Go ahead and make the future upyour character will be the main factor.'

'They're cards for the present?'

'Rhydanne live in the present. They don't think ahead to the future much; it's just another present to them. You have to do the reading yourself. You're best placed to interpret your own character.'

'But I don't know what the pictures mean!'

I waved my cigarette around. 'They're just pictures. They don't have defined meanings. They mean whatever you think they mean. That's how it works.'

Cyan looked daunted. 'I think I'm too drunk for this.'

'There are five suits: ice, rock, alcohol, goats and eagles.' I turned over the lowest in the ice suit, the snow hole shelter. 'That one, for example, can mean: remember to maintain your equipment or you'll starve. This one, the goat's kid, can mean: don't chase a woman you're not married to. Or don't marry some slow-running s.l.u.t whose children are all s.h.i.+ras. It depends on your circ.u.mstances, you see. Pick five cards...'

Cyan did so. She set them precisely in line and turned over the first. 'Boulders,' I said.

'I beg your pardon?'

'That's from the rock suit: grit, pebbles, boulders, cliffs and mountains. Make of it what you like.'

She pondered the square of hide. 'It means something that blocks your way, doesn't it? An insurmountable problem. Like Daddy. You know his palace? Did you know that all the keyholes in the doors along the Long Corridor line up so well you can look down them from one end of the palace to the other? That's how infuriating it is. It's so finicky and stultifying it makes me sick. Every time I visited I was terrified of breaking something. I think I scare him, because he's been trying hard to cultivate a friendly fatherly image. I hate Micawater. Boulders all right; it's so heavy and stagnant.'

She turned the next card, and exclaimed, 'What in the Empire is that?'

I peered at it. 'It's the dead goat. From the goat suit: dead goat, pastured goat, randy goat, mother goat, kid.'

'You have got to be joking.' She looked from the card to me. 'It's to do with mortality. These cards really do work, don't they? I'm mortal and Daddy isn't...Everyone knows that at some time in the future their parents will die. They wonder how it'll happen. What will it be like to hear the news? How will they bury him? If they're the eldest, they can't help but think about the inheritance. I don't have that. I can't speculate. That's one of the things I can't standDaddy will always be there, exactly the same. In fact, I know that the day he buries me in a tomb on his stupid island, he'll look just the same as he does now. The palace will be no different. I'll never be rid of him! It makes me feel heavy...I think it's dread.'

She opened another bottle of beer. She had not inherited Lightning's connoisseurs.h.i.+p but she had his ability to discourse at length. Beer begets beer, as you know, but she wasn't as drunk as I was. I sipped the whisky appreciatively. 'This was s.h.i.+t at the beginning but it's all right now...All the nice whisky must sink to the bottom.'

Cyan turned the next card, the soaring eagle. 'Well, that's easy. That's me escaping, trying to fly free of the flock and find some clear air, trying to do something different. It's a wild animal, symbolic of freedom like my name. I'm glad I didn't bring any belongings. I've stranded myself here deliberately with no past, nothing to prove I exist. I have myself, that's all; I'm content with that...'

I waited, indulgently.

'...I feel awkward in the city, big and clumsy. I pull at doors I'm supposed to push, push at doors that open by pulling. But I'll get used to the city soon. I'm alone, scattered in the mult.i.tudejust as I want.'

'To be scattered in the mult.i.tude, hey?'

She glowered at me and flicked over another card. 'What's this one?'

'The nesting eagle.'

'A nesting eagle...That must stand for domesticity, marriage. Marriage...oh, yuk, did I tell you about all the men Daddy introduced me to? They're horrible.'

Rawney smirked. 'Don't the suitors suit you?'

'They're so superficial! They make all these unfounded a.s.sumptions!' Cyan slipped into High Awian, which was good for talking of art, society and its insults, but not much else. 'This is their repertoire: "You are Lightning's daughter, really? When do you come of age?" "Oh, are you acquainted with Cyan Peregrine? Such a well-groomed blonde." I grew up with all that small talk, it's maddening. Their conversations revolve around themselves, they never talk about anything outside their own heads. I hated every last battalion warden of them. I didn't bother to convey myself, I let them slip through my fingersand I don't care that they've gone.'

She looked at the window, now a mirror backed by darkness. 'In the palace the days seemed to last forever. I went to bed an entirely different person from when I woke up. I rattled around inside that b.l.o.o.d.y great building like a piddock in a rock.'

'Like a what?'

'Sorry. Awndyn slang. I tried to continue from habit but I couldn't attend to my tutor. An inertia came over me. I kept excusing myself from the dinners and going to my room. I lay on my bed and wondered why I felt such confused dislike. I goaded and rebuked myself. I turned my thoughts over until they were a thick, boiling ma.s.s. I needed someone to talk to or I would have cracked. Swallow puts a dampener on everything and she's happy to be of no use whatsoever. So I ran.'

I folded my arms on the table and put my head down. I was at the point of drunkenness where any further drink tasted like puke. I felt my brain shrinking and my thoughts drying up.

Rawney put his big, hairy arm around Cyan's shoulders and whispered in her ear. She nodded, preoccupied with the cards. 'I keep toying with ideas of the future. What will happen to me? I keep imagining myself in future scenarios but I can't see myself as Governor of Peregrine no matter how hard I try.'

'I'm not shurprised you're afraid of telling Saker,' I slurred.

'Saker? Who? Oh, you mean Daddy.' She giggled. 'Weird...I never think of his real name...Yes. He's been alive forever. It's scary to argue with him. Maybe I am conceited to disagree with him. He has an answer for everything, tried and tested, and he's always right! He knows everything and he never gets angry, he's so b.l.o.o.d.y patient. He just gives me more boring answers! It's so infuriating! I want to try something new, even if it's wrong!'

She turned the last card in the line.

'That one...thatsh the jug of beer.'

Rawney said, 'Well, that has to be a lucky card for Rhydanne.'

'Mm.'

'So everything will turn out well,' Cyan exclaimed, getting carried away. 'I'll be successful in making my own way in the world. It's beer not Micawater wine!'

'There isn't a card for wine,' I murmured.

'I'll learn who I am. If it really did depend on blood, Lightning would know me better, wouldn't he? I might have inherited one or two family traits, but I'll rediscover them myself!'

So you should, I thought. My mind's sky had thoroughly clouded over. I closed my eyes.

Cyan leant and whispered in my ear, 'I'm living my own life from now on, where and how I choose to. Tell Daddy to forget about me. In a couple of hundred years, he will. It's the only way.'

I woke up. The pub was unlit and deserted. An uneasy lamplight s.h.i.+ning under the landlord's door illuminated the shapes of chairs placed on the tables and textured lines drawn by the broom in the stickier patches on the floor. Towels hung over the pump handles.

s.h.i.+t. I am absolutely p.i.s.sed...and I've lost Cyan. She's given me the slip. Oh, s.h.i.+t, I had her, and I...she...Rawney got me drunk! The b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and I fell for it!

I staggered over to the bar and stuck my head under a tap, pumped water into my face. The landlord must have left me sleeping there while he closed up the bar around me. Of course, he wouldn't have dared to wake an Eszai.

I wrestled with the door bolts. Outside, the misty drizzle gave everything a slick sheen. I turned my coat collar up, but it soaked through the denim, wetting me as effectively as pouring rain.

Galt was very dark, none of the lamps were lit and the shops' upper stories had closed their shutters. All I had to see by were occasional c.h.i.n.ks of light between them.

Now I was back to playing hide and seek with the little cow across the entire city.

CHAPTER 7.

All the oil lamps stood disused, their gla.s.ses fly-spotted and filthy. Whale oil was scarce these days, reserved for lighting homes, not streets. It had soared in price since some enormous sea snakes had taken up residency in the ocean. Their main source of food seemed to be whales.

The paving of the plaza outside the bar was covered in a sheen of water, mixed with mud trekked in from the towpath. I looked down, at the palimpsest of footprints spreading out from the door. Could it be possible to track Cyan? I searched around and found the fine mud drawn into a distinctive print of a thick-soled boot, too small for a man. Those are Cyan's expensive boots. I followed them slowly, careful not to miss any. They were few and far between, but if they were hers she seemed to have walked along the towpath.

I carried on, beside the dark ca.n.a.l, shunning the varicose hookers and their crisp pimps revealed by the night. The mud squashed under my boot soles. I was heading east towards Old Town, but I wasn't out of Galt yet, and horrible sights loomed in alleys and alcoves. I pa.s.sed quickly by a wh.o.r.e with bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s and ragged shorts, her razor ribs showing through the stretch marks on her sides.

I lost the trail under furrowed bike ruts and glanced all around, overly aware of how Rhydanne I looked. I learnt how to track on visits to the mountains. Veering towards the ca.n.a.l, a smooth leather imprint with a firm, mannish step could be Rawney's. Yes, there was one partially obscuring Cyan's smudged trace. I continued, thinking; I really tried not to be like a Rhydanne in Hacilith but other people's expectations kept throwing me back on it. I often found myself playing out the solitary self-centred flightiness they expected. But what the f.u.c.k, it meant they gave me leeway. They might be patronising but they also didn't expect too much, and they left me free to do what I liked.

There was a strong smell of fried food grease, as if every citizen had scoffed a newspaper-full of chips, then belched simultaneously. I pa.s.sed out of Galt into Old Town. The ca.n.a.l basin has obliterated most of it, but the remaining buildings, replaced many times over, are still so close together there isn't room to fit one more between them. Awian towns are sometimes destroyed by Insects and rebuilt in one go, but here old buildings persist, with a mishmash of modern styles between them. New houses spring up in the wake of fires and the residents continually improve their city so much of Old Town was quite new. I ran under the merchants' tall houses. Their baroque gables sprouted pulleys and platforms to bring in goods they store in their own attics. I walked by the mooring of the River Bus that shuttles to Marenna Dock on the west bank. I pa.s.sed a roast chestnut stand littered with paper bags and dripping with rain. I cut past Inhock Stables, making the rum-sellers' pannier donkeys bray uneasily. Horses were tethered here, since they weren't allowed in Old Town's narrow streets.

I pa.s.sed the wharfinger's office and came to a deserted part of the navigation, heading towards a footbridge. I swore as I walked; the whisky was smearing all my thoughts together and the rain was getting worse. All storms arrive first in Hacilith from the sea, all seasons seemed to start here too, and the spring rain fell with a vengeance.

The gutters drained into the soupy ca.n.a.l basin where timber narrow boats were moored. Some were impossibly s.h.i.+ny, others rotting hulks. Several were a full thirty metres, others no more than boxes. Their curtains were closed and they were silent. The darkness muted their paint to different shades of grey.

I went under the bridge, lit by the lamps of a narrow boat moored on its own. The tracks ran into a ma.s.s of scuffed ground, so many other prints I couldn't tell what had happened at all. Some led back towards Galt; Rawney's was among them but Cyan's weren't. She had stopped hereor the men had carried her.

I searched for her tracks further away, my task made easier by the lights on the boat. In fact, the rotund lamps at its prow and stern were glowing as brightly as if there was a party on board, but it was quiet. Who would desert a boat and leave its lamps burning?

The small barge was bottle green with red panels and bra.s.s trim. Its tiller was polished with use and wound with ribbons, and by it hung a bell to sound instructions to the locksmen. I casually looked down to its bow, just above the level of the quayside paving stones. Red and white diamonds like sweets decorated the top of its transom, either side of the nameplate that read: Tumblehome. Underneath in small white capitals: Carmine Dei. Registered: Old Town.

I crouched down to the leaded windows. A rug had been tacked over them on the inside. I tapped the gla.s.s and called, 'Cyan! Hey, Cyan? Rawney?' Silence.

I listened, aware of all the sounds of the nightat a distance the noise of Old Town had merged into a low murmur. Ducklings were cheeping, somewhere in the undergrowth on the far bank. I called, questioningly, cheerfully, politely, and finally with a firm demand, but it only produced more silence.

I'm the Emperor's Messenger and I'm not standing for this! I grabbed the rail on its roof and jumped onto the flat ledge running all the way round the boat. It bobbed slightly and I felt its keel b.u.mp off the fetid slime of the ca.n.a.l bed. I really cannot stand boats. I could all too easily imagine it turning turtle, pitching me into the black water. I edged towards the stern, feeling my boots grip on the grit embedded in its paint.

I stepped down onto the stern deck, ducked under the tiller, and pushed open the varnished, cupboard-like doors. I wedged into the little entrance. The air inside was warm and stuffy.

I looked down into a long rectangular room. A draught of wind blew in past me and started tinkling some capiz sh.e.l.l mobiles. Discs of coloured gla.s.s clattered against the windows. A hanging lantern with moons and stars cut out of its sides sent their projections spinning round the walls.

From a futon, which was a piled mess of quilts and sheepskins, projected a slender blue-white arm, and a limp hand hanging down. I gasped. Cyan!

She sat upright among cus.h.i.+ons, her head lolled back and away from me, her legs apart and her skirt rucked up. A thin man lay on the floor at her feet, head back and foam dried into a crust around his mouth. He was stone dead.

OK. This is nothing to do with me.

Yes, it is. She's Lightning's daughter!

I stretched a leg down the steps and shuffled in on my backside. The dead man was lying wedged between the wall and the futon. He must have had a fit and thrashed around because he'd kicked a potbellied stove free of its tin flue. It stood at an angle on its platform. I turned him over; he was so stiff that when I propped him on his side, his arm stuck up in the air. His blank eyes no longer stared at the ceiling but at me instead. I checked his dog taghis name was Sharny. As I did so, something fell to the floor and rolled across the rag-rug. I leant down and felt around until my fingers closed on a gla.s.s hypodermic. Sharny's sleeves were unb.u.t.toned; I pushed one up. His arm was covered in red pinpoints, packed so densely his veins had collapsed, looking like they were open to the air. The skin inside his elbow was juicy with infection.

s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t, s.h.i.+t. Not cat, surely? Not Cyan? When I use, I try to s.p.a.ce out the tracks so that they can't be seen when I'm at the podium, to keep the veins fat and easy to hit. Sharny, on the other hand, had sunk lower than the dregs.

I turned Cyan's face towards me gently. Her eyes were rolled back, only showing white slivers under half-closed lids. Her lips were blue, she was hardly breathing; just a little sigh every so often. Two sips of the air, another ragged sigh with a high-pitched whistling sound. From elbow to shoulder her right arm was a solid bruise. I loosened the tourniquet above her elbow, hooked my thumbnail in it and pushed it down. I could only see one needle mark in the crook of her arm but that didn't necessarily mean this was her first time.

I tried to ignore the thought of her fast dropping into unconsciousness, helplessly watching Sharny's avid experimentation with the needle in the back of his cold hand.

I pressed my finger inside her fingers, waiting for a grasp response but nothing happened. 'Cyan, can you hear me? Breathe. Breathe in. And out. Again. Keep going. Can you squeeze my finger? No? OK...'

I must get her outside, into fresh air. I lifted her; she folded like silk, gave every impression of being dead. I laid her completely relaxed body on the bedspread and wrapped it around her.

A table beside the stove caught my attention. It carried a decanter of water, a spoon, a razor and an unfolded paper of fine white powder standing in a peak. Some had been nicked away.

I recognised it immediately. It called me like a lover and the next second I was down on my hands and knees. Don't look at it! I thought; steady! Turn away. If I so much as touch it I'll be hooked again. I'll be hooked before I know it! Where did Cyan get cat? Where the f.u.c.k did she get so much? I felt sick and giddy. I knew I was going to pick it up. I moved with no volition of my own; the drug there on the table had more control over my limbs than I did.

Let me explain what craving is. Craving is when your friend manages to talk you out of the corner and gets you to put the knife down. Craving is when you ask to be locked in, because otherwise you'd fly all night from the court to score. Craving is when you wear your fingernails to b.l.o.o.d.y stumps trying to pick the lock.

What was she doing, playing with cat? But they hadn't called it cat or scolopendium. What was their word? Jook? Jook, don't you know, it's the latest thing, all the rage. If I just take a little bit no one will mind. The Emperor won't be able to tell. Shut up and help Cyan. I realised I had been holding my breath for so long my ribs were hurting. I swallowed hard, then stood up. Very slowly and judiciously I refolded the fat wrap of cat and dropped it into my pocket, where it burned.

I bundled Cyan out of the double door, hoisted her onto my shoulder and jumped onto the bank in a bound that set the pool of lamplight lapping up and down. It slid up the inside of the bridge's brick arch, then quickly down to the mooring loops. Viscid water sloshed around the Tumblehome's ridged hull.