Alyssa Brugman - The Equen Queen

‘Most of us are!’ Tab told him, but even as she said it she reddened. While she preferred to make an honest living, she had ‘borrowed’ when the opportunity arose.

‘… or fools.’ Fontagu regarded her for a moment with a faint smile on his face. Then his mind turned to self-congratulation once more. He strode about, as though he were on a stage, snapping his fingers. ‘I just have an instinct! It's a gift. Like you, for example. You're not much to look at. Just a scrap of a thing really, but useful, and I saw it first! This one will be just the same. You watch.’ He crouched down next to her. ‘Go on, then. Burrow in there, little mouse.’

Tab looked down at the wretched dozing equen and realised that Fontagu was right. She wasn't going to leave her here at his mercy. She'd made a promise.

She closed her eyes and reached out for Tattoo's mind. When she found it Tab couldn't tell if what she was seeing was in the present, or the past, or sometime in the future. It was as though she was living inside the equen's dream.

Tab saw a savannah. Stunted, misshapen trees clung to the landscape like sea anemones on a tide. Spiny grasses sprouted out of the soil in patches between craters of salt and sand. In the distance high mountains loomed and shimmered a deep purple colour.

A family of fin lizards caught a breeze and sailed across the flats, their legs cycling faster and faster. Impossibly fast, they bounded into the air, their fins billowing, as they snatched buzzing insects out of the sky.

There were people, sandy-skinned, with rich, chocolate-coloured hair – the same colours as the equens, like the boy in her dream.

‘Herdsfolk’ and ‘two-legged’ were the words that popped into Tab's head when she saw them, but Tattoo didn't think in words, she thought in feelings. Her feelings about the herdsfolk were that they were safe, near and bossy. They were useful, particularly in their ‘otherness’ – in their ‘two-leggedness’.

Dotted here and there were herdsfolk sentries standing with one heel resting on the inside of their opposite knee, watching the horizon. Others squatted in groups, painting the backs of each other's legs with the round, curlicue script of the equen's tattoos.

Next she saw the herd of equens crossing the long, flat plains. Herdsfolk carried packs and wore long hooded cloaks. Tab felt warm but the air was frozen as it filled her lungs. The mountains were much closer. Some of the younger, more daring drones galloped in the shadow of the foothills. Tab felt anxious. This was the migration – necessary, but forbidding.

A new image washed over Tab and she cried out. A dark shadow passed overhead. She looked up, but was blinded by the sunlight. There was a strong smell, though, of rancid fat and decaying meat. It was such a horrifying smell that she could barely stop herself from running with fear.

She could hear the herdsfolk calling to each other and shooting at the dark shapes with their slings. Nearby an equen screamed as it was dragged into the sky with two huge sets of claws dug deep into its flesh. Tab felt ice-cold and hot at the same time as adrenaline flooded her limbs. Every muscle tensed. She felt loss and terror press against her, crushing her until she couldn't breathe. Her nostrils flared as she took in as much air as she could.

Run! Run first, and then look back, she thought. It made sense when running was what you did best of all. Tab jolted back into her own body and opened her eyes. All at once she understood what it was to be prey.

Tattoo twitched in her sleep.

‘What is it?’ Fontagu asked.

She thought about the sky-traders carting the equens around with slings under the wing craft, and how terrifying that must be for an equen. It was their worst nightmare. It was cruel.

Tab ran her hands over Tattoo's neck. ‘They live for much longer than Quentaran horses.’

‘How long?’

Tab shrugged. It was hard to quantify in Tattoo's terms. ‘Maybe two hundred winters.’

Fontagu's eyes widened.

Tab continued. ‘There is only one breeding pair in the herd. Each year the queen has two foals – one male and one female. Every five winters, all the males of age leave the herd together and go through the forest in search of a new herd. The strongest will find one.’

‘And what if they don't?’

Tab winced.

‘Oh,’ said Fontagu. ‘And what about the other mares? What do they do?’

‘They're workers. They heal the herdsfolk. It's a desert. There's not much to eat for the people. They don't get all they need to stay healthy. That can make them weak and sick. The equens heal them, and in return the herdsfolk protect them and tend to them.’

‘So the males don't do this healing?’ Fontagu pressed.

Tab shook her head. ‘She doesn't seem to think so.’ Of course, it made sense. Talisman and Trinket, the equens the sky-traders had sold them were useless, except as packhorses.

‘Splendid that we have a mare,’ Fontagu said, rubbing his hands together. ‘You know, I think I'm beginning to feel better already. Ten years younger at least.’

Tab ignored him. She knotted her fingers in the equen's mane, consumed by the image of the dark shadows overhead and the screaming. ‘In deep winter the mountains are crusted with ice and there is nothing left awake or alive in the forest, then the scavenjaws come down from the hills to find food on the plains. The mares will stand between the scavenjaws and their queen.’

‘Until?’ prompted Fontagu.

She shuddered. ‘Until the scavenjaws have no more appetite.’

‘One would want to be born the queen, wouldn't one?’ Fontagu observed. ‘I wonder if those skytraders have any more mares? If I had a few more I could probably live forever. Find out if the healing works better if you eat them. Does she have some kind of gland we could drain?’ Fontagu grinned. ‘I know a fellow who will sell me a pallet of pipettes. We can set up our bottling operation right here.’

‘Nobody is going to let you keep her. They will know you stole her!’ Tab told him.

‘Who will? Your friend Verris the pirate? Drass Nibhelline? Or did you have some other model of virtuous commercial conduct in mind? For all they know I could have bought this old nag fair and square.’ Fontagu rubbed his chin. ‘Go ahead and tell your snooty council! I dare you!’

Tab frowned at the ugly expression on Fontagu's face. She turned away as he started pacing out the space inside the slaughterhouse, muttering measurements to himself.

She stroked the mare's neck and Tattoo opened her eyes.

What if the queen gets sick, or dies from a serpent bite? she wondered. What happens to the herd if the queen has an accident? She looked in Tattoo's eyes searching for an answer. Tattoo looked beyond her shoulder, as though considering the question. Tab couldn't feel an answer. Tab guessed that the equen hadn't seen it happen.

›››Until now

Tab was startled.›››What do you mean?

The equen rocked onto her stomach and stretched her neck forward. Tab held out a hand to her.

›››I am Tattoo

Tab suddenly understood. ‘Tattoo’ stood out in her head the way that ‘herdsfolk’ and ‘two-legged’ did. The mare thought, ‘I am Tattoo’, but what she meant was, ‘I am the equen queen’. Tab felt the deep sadness sweep over her again. It was not just Tattoo's fate – there was a whole herd that relied on her, and the herdsfolk too. She remembered the scene of the migration. How many souls depended on this queen?

Tab lay down in the straw next to Tattoo and laid her hand over the equen's shoulder. She closed her eyes.

All at once there was a rumble. Tattoo's eyes widened, she set her legs wide apart to brace herself. Tab sat up, not sure how long she had slept – or whether she had been asleep at all. She looked through a window, up near the slaughterhouse ceiling. High above the city, sails whipped and slapped as the sky-sailors lashed them into place. Rigging clanked as ropes whistled through the pulleys.