Steph Swainston - Dangerous Offspring

‘Well, aren’t you afraid of dying?’ Tern demanded.

Lightning lapsed into silence again. He played a little more loudly for a while, until a crunch on the gravel drive outside interrupted him.

‘A little coach is coming in!’ Tern cried.

‘Is it? What are its colours?’

‘Green and grey.’

Lightning stopped playing. ‘Green and grey is Awndyn.’

The coach slewed to a halt. In the light from the palace lamps we saw the two horses were frothing. A plump woman in a shapeless silk dress and long ginger hair, leaning on a stick and moving slowly, swayed out of the carriage, ascended the steps and disappeared into the portico.

We heard her footsteps resound loud on the Reception Hall’s terrazzo floor, then soundless as she passed into the carpeted winter south wing, through the salon and study. The door flew open and Swallow Awndyn barged in. A servant was following worriedly, close behind her. She slammed the door on him and glared at us all.

Lightning stood up. ‘Welcome!’

His fiancée took a fistful of her hair and pulled at it in fury. ‘What happened-Lightning? Have I heard right? You lost a Challenge? To your vile squab?’

‘So it seems.’ He relaxed back onto the piano stool. ‘I’m sorry you missed it, my love. I sent you an invitation.’

‘ You stupid moron! ’

Lightning quoted mildly: ‘I love my love with an S, because she suddenly shows a slanderous side. Her name is Swallow and she comes from the strand.’

‘I came straight here when I heard!’ She ground her walking stick into the carpet. ‘I can’t believe it! You never lose! I never thought I’d live to see it! I can’t even imagine it!’

Lightning offered her a glass but she didn’t register it. She was incredulous. ‘I expected to see you dejected, and here you are slamming at the piano like ten madmen. Are you insane?’

‘That is no way to speak to your betrothèd.’

‘All my life I’ve been fighting to get into the Circle and you just throw it away! Like it’s nothing! Throw your life to a stupid child like a bauble!’

‘The surprise should improve your music. It has become a bit samey over the last few years.’

‘You!’ She was speechless, and she still wouldn’t sit down. ‘How dare you!’

‘Answer me this first-do you still want to marry me?’

‘But…you’re a loser. You lost.’

Lightning closed his eyes for a second. Swallow continued, ‘You’re going to become mortal. To get older!’

‘So you don’t want me now?’

She hesitated and Lightning continued artlessly, ‘So you were interested in me for my immortality, rather than as a person?’

She looked to the books portrayed in the lush weave of the carpet and the cascades of fruit in the deep wood mouldings on the door jambs. She ground the heel of one hand into her eye. Her red wings opened slightly, pulling her gown tight across her front; she was as flat-chested as a narrow boat. Her face had become lined, and she had plucked her eyebrows into an expression of constant surprise.

Swallow was the best musician of all time, but the Emperor did not need a musician. He didn’t need music to rally the fyrd when everyone agreed Insects must be fought. He didn’t need music for propaganda when he was offering immortality. She hated the fact that the sole determiner of the value of anything was its usefulness in the Insect war. After fifteen years of the same ambitious refrain the pressure had made her diamond inside, but she wasn’t sparkling, however emptily. She was cutting.

‘I want to join the Circle ,’ she said. ‘How can you help me now? I am a musician. It’s all I do. Just like an Eszai.’

Lightning leant back, his elbow on the piano’s music stand. ‘Oh, Swallow,’ he said. ‘You never noticed for one second that I really adored you. But now I’m leaving the Circle you suddenly see me. For ten years I have been offering you a place in the Circle through my love and you were too proud to take it. Do you think I can’t tell, after hundreds of years of fending off gold-diggers? You strung me along-with your pride you believed you could make it into the Circle on your own merit and I was your back-up plan. Even if you had become Eszai, you still wouldn’t have married me, because deep down you don’t want to. I was just as wrong to court you, but I didn’t want to admit it, because I thought you were like Martyn-’ He looked momentarily surprised at himself. ‘But you are not. Now you are showing your true colours.’

‘Ha! At least I still have feelings, not like you, always controlled, living in this fucking art gallery; you’re so transparent.’

‘On the contrary, you barely noticed I existed. I wondered what I had to do. If you had wanted Donaise you could have had it. I would have done anything. Now it’s too late.’

She said, ‘You’re always deluding yourself. You with love, Jant with drugs; god knows what the rest of the immortals rely on. In a few years you won’t be able to draw any of your wonderful bows any longer because you’ll be old and weak .’

‘I am sure it will be an interesting experience,’ he said brightly. ‘I never considered what I would look like when I’m forty. Or sixty. Well, now I’m going to find out.’

Swallow couldn’t stand the fact that he was looking on it as an interesting experiment. ‘You’re a fool! And I’ve been looking after your nasty daughter all this time! I wish I’d known!’

‘Be quiet about Cyan. I have just given my life for her. I only regret I didn’t do it earlier, so I could have been with her as she grew up. I should have raised her instead of you.’

Swallow exploded with fresh anger. ‘And now you’re leaving me-where? Your bastard games will have wasted my talent! One day I’ll be just a faded memory to you Eszai-worse still!-an old governor! And you won’t hear my music any more.’

Lightning smiled and glanced away. He reached around with one hand and pressed a couple of keys, twiddling the first bars of a piece of music. Swallow stopped dead. ‘Don’t you dare play my aria.’

Lightning brought his other hand into play and expanded the music to its full glory.

‘Stop it!’

He had turned back to the keyboard. ‘What, this? You make your own immortality with every effortless opera. You are the greatest composer in the world, Swallow. What do you really want? Immortality might not give you what you really want. It didn’t for me. Ask yourself, and be true to yourself. You already have fame. You have recognition. Your music brings a great response and many friends. But you harp on the same old tune of wanting the Circle. You don’t appreciate the magnitude of your achievements, you only see the things you haven’t done.’

‘It isn’t good enough, if I’m still mortal. I don’t want to die.’

‘Everybody dies except San. Eszai just take longer. Why should you be saved?’

‘If I can make music forever, I’ll be happy.’

‘No, Swallow. Immortals are those who prize success and fame over happiness. They gain what little happiness they ever have from success. Their thirst for perfection and fear of being beaten drives them on. I no longer prize immortality in those terms, and neither should you. Learn from my example. Escape. You don’t have to forgo an Eszai’s single-mindedness. I won’t let anything get in my way, even though the obstacle in my path was immortality itself.’

Swallow made a sound of disgust. She pulled off her engagement ring and flung it in rage. It hit the inside of the piano’s upraised lid, dropped onto the strings and we heard it chime.

‘I did love you, Swallow.’

‘Liar!’ she screamed. She turned to me. ‘Jant, you’ll help me, won’t you?’