Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

‘I asked Lightning, but he wouldn’t say.’

‘I would never have thought anything like a one-to-one conversation could ever happen.’

‘It was in the hall at Slake,’ I said. ‘No one else was there.’

‘Couldn’t you have spied? No, stupid question.’

Eleonora spun the key to her suite around her finger on its ribbon. ‘This place is quaint. I like the marble bathrooms. But it’s not as big as Rachiswater. Or as grand as I’ve planned Tanager to be. It’s odd to think it was the capital once.’

‘It’s not bad for five four nine!’ Tern said.

‘Lightning’s town was even bigger than Hacilith back then,’ I added. ‘Hacilith took a hundred years to overtake it. He never wanted to extend it; he wanted to preserve it and the palace too.’

Eleonora spun and spun her key. ‘What a shame. Lightning rattling around in the house alone for fourteen hundred years. One hundred and forty bedrooms and no woman to share any of them with. It’s enough to turn a man’s mind. Why hasn’t he ever married? Does he bat for the other team, or what?’

Tern laughed. ‘No-oo. He’s just looking for the perfect match.’

‘Well, we’ll have to do something about that.’ The two women looked at each other. ‘He just needs to relax. Perhaps his Queen could…command him to.’

‘I think he wants some kind of red-haired huntress,’ Tern said as we settled ourselves in the stands.

‘Nonsense. He just needs the attentions of a woman au fait with her desires.’

From here was a much better view uphill to the palace. It was all warm, shortbread-coloured Donaise limestone, from the rusticated stonework on the lower storey to the rich carving in the great pediment; many strips of decorative mouldings surrounded a smooth bas-relief of the winged hounds bearing the lozenge coat of arms. Each column led up to a statue on the roof as if supporting it. Between the columns two levels of windows proclaimed how many rooms could house Lightning’s guests. The Eyas and Austringer buildings at the ends of the two wings had enormous windows with round arches giving on to the ballroom and stateroom respectively. It was built in the most regular manner rare in the country today; Awia has gone straight from Micawater’s classical to neoclassical, and now Rachiswater’s art nouveau, without ever having been through a rustic phase like the Plainslands.

‘It’s all right for some,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ said Tern.

‘Well, Lightning walked straight in to the Circle. He never had to wander around the world the way I did, before I even found out the Castle existed. He didn’t have to plot and scheme like an Awian prince, either, because he had the Castle and his immortality instead. No wonder he can pretend this noble liege fantasy.’

‘It’s how he had time to bring us together.’ Tern laid her hand on my knee.

‘I call that plotting and scheming,’ said Eleonora.

Tern said, ‘I paid him a routine visit and he mentioned I might be interested in Jant. I remember taking my coach to see Lightning one morning and I told him how Jant’s courtship was progressing. “He came to see me last night-I love his appalling timing. And do you know-his boots were covered in manure!” How we laughed!’

I snorted unhappily. Travelling from the Castle to Wrought to court her had been the start of my drug-taking. I stayed awake for two, three nights at a time, driven to extreme exhaustion by a fear of inadequacy. And apparently Tern had already decided to marry me before I started and there was no reason for me to have used scolopendium at all.

She had flicked open a pamphlet. ‘Ha!’ she said. ‘Lightning has a grotto. He never told me.’

‘A what?’

‘A grotto. How exciting. I’ve been coming here for nearly a hundred and twenty years and he never showed me. Listen.’ She read from the book: ‘ “Who would have thought that a cavern of such delightful artifice would lie at the end of the path? A passageway leads to a charming rocaille grotto with a small waterfall. Niches in the walls form shell-adorned seats, and above them is the inscription: All time not spent in loving is lost.” Ah, isn’t he sweet?’

I said, ‘The grotto’s on the other side of the secret garden. We can visit it later. What’s that?’

‘It’s a programme for the party and a tour of the grounds. All the sculptures and so forth.’

I let her chatter on, dwelling on how beautiful she was-the gentle contours of her face, her manicured hands. I thought how lucky I was that she found me equally wonderful.

Tern loved the summer sun, though her manor had a much more dismal climate. Wrought is in the rain shadow of Bitterdale; all the clouds that come in from the sea rise over the hills, drop their rain on her manor and leave the inland manors clear.

I looked down to the glistening lake. Far on our right towards its centre an artificial island was covered with trees. The pink marble pediment of the dynasty’s mausoleum, its engraved frieze, and the pinnacles of other memorials showed between the tree tops.

The still water reflected them, but further off by the sluice gate bridge, the stirred-up water scintillated as its silica flecks reflected the sunlight. Many people were promenading along the bridge, and I don’t blame them because Micawater Bridge is one of Frost’s finest legacies.

It spanned a little man-made river flowing out of the tail-end of the almond-shaped lake, once natural but artificially enhanced since Esmerillion’s time. The bridge carried the avenue through its roofed and arched arcade, and below it had square windows along its length above the span. Their shutters were closed; all were honey-coloured varnished wood to match the stone. From flagpoles along the length of the parapets, blue pennants draped down almost to the water.

There were rooms inside the bridge: all well-furnished and painted, and there was even a tiny theatre for music recitals. Lightning’s friends sometimes use it as a summer house. From the windows they can look out over the lake to watch fleets of swans, dragonflies whizzing over the water’s surface beneath them, and sometimes horse hooves clattered overhead along the avenue. So, over the centuries, Lightning has shaped the landscape much as Frost did, but for beauty and convenience. Whenever he had enlisted her help for a feat of engineering it was also a feat of elegance.

‘Look!’ said Eleonora. ‘Here he is.’

Lightning emerged from the gold pavilion, carrying a compound bow so big it looked like a longbow. Cyan was behind him in a black T-shirt, waistcoat, quiver and a bracer on her arm. Lightning strolled up to us and bowed to the Queen. ‘I hope you enjoy the tournament.’

‘I will,’ said Eleonora.

The Challenged Eszai always acts as his own master of ceremonies, conducting the Challenge himself according to his own style. It was a necessary part of the façade of unshakable confidence which is our most effective guard against Challengers. Lightning had asked his five reeves, from his musters of Micawater Town, Bitterdale, Altergate, Tambrine and Foin, to act as functionaries.

Lightning walked to the centre of the area and held out his hands to the crowd. ‘This is my standard Challenge, which I set to show I can defeat a Challenger at all kinds of shooting. There will be three rounds. The first is for distance. There will be just one arrow each, unless the bow fails. I wish the Challenger, Cyan Peregrine, to shoot first in each round.’

Cyan stood behind a dark blue pennon on a cane. She looked small next to her father and seemed very aware of the inconsequential figure she cut, with the slivers of her legs and narrow squared shoulders. Her red compound bow looked like a toy in comparison with Lightning’s. She took an arrow and nocked it to string and then, with the bow in her hands, she lost her uncertainty and became businesslike. She knew what to do, and I knew how good she was: I had witnessed her skill in the Jacamar Club.