Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

There was a cheer and the sound of a general rush to the bar. Much impressed, I said, ‘You’re very accurate. And that’s a glorious bow.’

‘Thanks. It’s one of Daddy’s own designs.’

‘Don’t ever use it in Hacilith again when I’m not here! Why don’t you come to the front, if you’re keen on shooting? You can practise on Insects every day.’

‘I am not going to Daddy. There’ll be two bridges over the Foin before I do! The Emperor will leave the Castle, god will return and the world will end before I talk to him!’

‘He did his best. He brought you up as well as he could.’ I indicated the bow as an example of Lightning’s largesse.

‘Huh. It was his fault my mother was killed. He could have saved her but he let her die.’

I put the bottle down. ‘What? Who told you that?’

‘Carmine Dei. One of my stepsisters.’

‘She’s lying. Lightning did all he could to save your mother. I know; I was there.’ Cyan’s stepsister was as big a bitch as their mother, Ata, had been. After she died, some of her huge family remained in contact, a large clandestine organisation, and these days Carmine has the whole suspect network well under her hand. She was the city’s harbourmaster; she had failed in the last competition for Sailor, and being Sailor manqué had made her even more poisonous.

I said, ‘You mustn’t listen to anything Carmine says. Are you staying with her?’

‘No. Not quite. Carmine told me a lot of Daddy’s secrets and I know some of them must be true. After all he abandoned me with Governor Swallow Fatarse. She made me learn silly musical instruments I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in. Once, when I was little, I pretended to be an Insect under her dumb piano and I accidentally scratched it. She went totally crazy. After that being an Insect was out of the question. Silly cow. And she plays Daddy better then she plays any instrument! I visit Micawater now and then, but he doesn’t realise how long the gaps are between visits. What is he doing that’s so damn important I had to fend for myself?’

Cyan has never had to fend for herself. Everywhere she goes, servants hover to accommodate her every whim. I tilted the glass back and swilled whisky. I didn’t want any more hassle. 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 glass. Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all. He shook the bottle, then looked at me oddly. ‘Damn. 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 Awian-Rhydanne 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 up-your 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 slut whose children are all Shiras. It depends on your circumstances, 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.’