Dangerous Offspring (17 page)

I thought I saw something moving in it! I blinked and stared. Something was swimming in its murky abyss. It became darker and clearer as it rose close to the surface. It moved with a quick straight jet, then turned head over tail along its length and disappeared into the depths.

‘What the fuck? What was that?’

A flash of green on the sheer rock face below us. The Gabbleratchet hurtled straight out of it. Empty white pelvic girdles and scooping paws reflected in the lake.

Cyan screamed. The Gabbleratchet turned; it knew where we were.

‘Now!’ The Vermiform lifted us off our feet, through–

–Plennish–

–Infusoria Swamp–

–Sauria–

–Precambria–

–Epsilon Market–

–Somewhere dark…?

Somewhere dark! Cyan cried, ‘Are you there?’

‘I’m here, I’m here!’ I felt for her hand. I opened my eyes wide, just to be sure, but there was not one shred of light. Then, seemingly in a vast remoteness I saw a faint glow, a thin vertical white beam seemed to…
walk
past us. It stopped, turned around and began to hurry back again with the motion of a human being, though it was nothing but a single line.

‘Where are we?’ I demanded. ‘You said we were going back to the Fourlands!’

‘Stupid creature! This
is
your world. We want to hide for a while in case the Gabbleratchet comes.’

‘But…’

The Vermiform said, ‘This is Rayne’s room. That is Rayne.’

I think the Vermiform was pointing but I couldn’t see anything.

‘She is pacing back and forth. She’s anxious; in fact, she’s panicking. Can’t you feel it?’

Curiously enough, I could. The intense emotions were radiating from the white ray and putting me on edge. ‘But what’s happened to her? That’s just a thin line!’

‘Hush. If we see the Gabbleratchet’s sparks, we will have to leave fast. This is the Fourlands, the fifth to the eighth dimensions. You occupy those as well as the ones you’re familiar with, seeing as you’ve evolved in a world with ten. You can’t see them with your usual senses, but you do operate in them. We are amazed that you never consciously realise it.’

Close by, Cyan shouted, ‘It’s talking crap! Tell it so, Jant.’

‘Hey, it’s interesting.’

The Vermiform harped on: ‘Emotions impress on the fifth dimension, which is why you can sometimes sense a strong emotion or see an image of the person who suffered it, in the same place years later. What other examples can we give? Acupuncture works on the part of you that operates in the sixth dimension, so you’ll never be able to understand how it works with the senses you have. And the seventh, if only you knew of that one–’

Cyan screamed, ‘Take me home! Take me home
now
! Now! Now! Now!’ I could hear her thrashing and kicking at the flaccid worms.

‘Think of it as a shadow world,’ I told her.

‘You goatfucking son of a bastard’s bastard’s bastard!’

We waited for a long time. The Vermiform eventually said, ‘I think we’ve thrown off the Gabbleratchet. Let’s go.’

It gave us a small jolt and our worm-bonds dropped to the floor. Off balance I stumbled forward–into Rayne’s bedroom.

Rayne was staring at me, still holding the coal shovel, standing beside the bed where Cyan lay unconscious. I turned to see the cluster of worms behind me, like a tall mould–the back of my head and my folded wings were imprinted in it.

They tumbled to the floor in an inert, exhausted mass; then began to ebb away, slowly and fitfully. Their pool diminished in size as they invisibly poured back into the Shift. When it was about the size of my palm it split into three and dribbled away to the coal scuttle, under the door and between my feet under the rocking chair. I tilted the chair back, but they had gone.

Rayne, with a speed that belied her years, headed off the worms crawling towards the coal scuttle and shovelled them up. She took an empty jar from the shelf and tipped them into it. Then she pressed on the metal lid, held the jar to the light and shook it experimentally. The dollop of worms remained inert at the base.

‘T’ Vermiform, you say?’ she asked.

‘That’s right.’

‘This is a priceless sample. Are t’ worms still sentien’ when they’re separa’ed?’

‘I think so. At least, they act independently. I think they’re just exhausted.’

She put the jar on the mantelpiece. The worms inside rose up in a wave and pushed against the glass. The jar tipped up, teetered on its edge and clattered back down. The worms collected themselves for another push, so Rayne picked up the jar and wedged it safely between the cushions on the rocking chair.

Cyan jolted awake with a gasp–fell back on the bed. Her eyes were glazed and confused, socketed with deep purple shadows. Her pale lips were set in a grimace, far from her nonchalant expression of earlier. She was still breathing more shallowly than a fish in the Shift and her limbs were enervated, motionless. She turned her head to one side and vomited over the pillow.

‘Cat is addictive!’ I shouted at her. ‘Don’t do it again!’

‘Quie’, Jant,’ said Rayne.

‘How could you have even wanted to try it? It’s a cure-all for slum kids not stupid rich girls!’

‘Quie’! Look, Jant, you can help me. Gelsemium and salicin for her aches. Henbane for her tremors. Hamamelis for her bruising. Go and fetch me all these, and some cotton t’ dab in the ointmen’.’

I did, and when Rayne was concentrating on Cyan, I also slipped the jar of worms into the pocket of my new coat.

At length Rayne said, ‘I think she will take days t’ recover.’

‘She can’t stay here for days.’

‘No.’ Rayne glanced at a casement clock, then at the piles of packed equipment. ‘Especially no’ as my coach will be here within t’ hour, and I mus’ go t’ Slake Cross.’

‘Lightning did say to bring her to the front.’

‘Wha’, like tha’?’ We looked at Cyan dubiously. She lay quite still, slowly testing her relaxed body, trying to wake up without throwing up. ‘I wouldn’ wan’ t’ move her…’

‘Think of it as another leg of the Grand Tour.’

‘I’ll “Grand Tour” you! Bloody Awians.’

If we left Cyan, she would go straight back to Galt with a story in her repertoire to add to her growing collection of cool credentials. Rayne seemed to realise this. ‘All righ’. I’ll take her.’

‘Thanks.’

‘She migh’ benefi’ from some advice on t’ journey. I’ll make sure she’s well by t’ time she meets Ligh’ning.’

‘Don’t tell him,’ I said.

Rayne pursed her smooth lips. ‘I can’ promise tha’.’

A faint voice whispered from the direction of the box-bed. ‘Help…’

‘Oh, so you’ve found your voice. You are by far the most stupid girl who ever crossed paths with mine. Jook! Is that what you call it? What did you do it for? Did you think it was a laugh?’

With her eyes shut, she asked quietly, ‘Is Sharny dead?’

‘Maybe,’ I said angrily.

‘He is,’ she said, resigned. ‘He’s dead.’

She turned over and slipped out of the bed onto weak legs, staggered, and I caught her. I knew she would be seeing the room as a single flat picture and the objects as shapes. She wouldn’t be able to distinguish their depths and the light would create confusing patches of bright and shade that would seem more real and significant than the objects themselves. I delineated a chair for her from the other shapes and made her sit down.

Cyan slurred, ‘That trip…’

‘It’s over now.’ I spoke slowly and calmly to reassure her, although I knew she’d hear a scrambled version of my words, if she could hear me at all over the roar of her own pulse and breathing.

‘Pu’ her back in t’ bed,’ Rayne said.

Cyan’s eyes cleared briefly to an avid violent look. ‘I had visions.’

‘It was real,’ I said.

‘Now is no’ t’ time,’ Rayne told me warningly.

‘I dreamed about
you
.’

‘I was there,’ I found myself saying. ‘I saw it too. Trust me; I used to live with this.’

‘No!’ She grabbed the nearest object on the dresser–a bamboo birdcage. Her thin fingers sank between the bars. She hefted the cage at an angle, spilling seed and water all over the floor, and the finches inside fluttered madly. She was about to throw it at me, but she gave a little sigh, her eyes rolled up and she toppled out of the chair in a faint, the birdcage still grasped in one hand.

Rayne looked at me with a horrified expression.

‘I’ll put her in the coach,’ I said.

I watched Rayne leave at full speed in a smart coach-and-four. She would change horses at Wichert in Shivel, Shivel town, Slaughterbridge in Eske, Eske town, Carse, Clobest in Micawater, the Rachis valley coaching inns at Merebrigg village, Oscen town, Spraint, Floret and Plow.

I flew.

On the second day I headed towards Awia, passing over the bleak hills of upper Fescue, where the Brome stream meets the Rill and the Foss and becomes the Moren River. Rayne should have reached the Shivel coach stop by now. I hoped Cyan still didn’t look two days dead when she arrives at Slake Cross or Rayne is going to have a hard time explaining it to Lightning. I just hope he doesn’t connect me with Cyan’s condition.

The air was sluggish so I concentrated on its changing shapes as I flew past the quarries at Heshcam and Garron on the Brome stream. The Brome’s peaty water, the colour of beer, tumbled out of ghylls between rounded hills topped with millstone grit crags like pie crusts.

Cyan needs to learn who she is. She’s as confusing as a shot of pure cat in fourth-day withdrawal. I just hope her experience has taught her not to take the stuff again.

Tapering black chimneys poked up from a cleft between two hills. That’s my next landmark–Marram mining town. I flapped towards it tiredly, noticing my shadow on the hillside far to my right.

Marram was tucked in a valley and the roofs and chimneys of the lead and stannary furnaces seemed to take up most of it. I came in very low over the surrounding grey-purple slag heaps. A massive lead crushing wheel turned slowly in an overshot sluice, around which spots of red and yellow were the woollen shawls, head scarves and wide trousers of women picking ore fragments from the machine’s trays.

I flapped overhead and they all looked up, began shoving each other and pointing me out. The women seemed glad of a break; they started leering and catcalling. One or two had wings but most were human and they were all very raucous.

One spread her arms and yelled, ‘Hey, Comet, where are you sleeping tonight?’

‘Wherever they leave me, lover!’

They doubled up with laughter. God, I thought, I can tell this is Fescue.

I couldn’t gain height and I flapped around low, making a complete fool of myself until I remembered the smelting furnaces. I circled the tall chimneys and went up like a kite on their updraught.

The roofs of Marram began to spin under me; the smoke-stained houses built in close terraces, the steep narrow roads with ridged cobbles so horses could find purchase. At the edge of town I went over the long, bronze-green roofs of the communal latrines which, by law, all the townspeople had to use. Marram villagers save everything; even barrels of urine for use in alum extraction and the nightsoil to spread as fertiliser on their sparse oat fields.

Higher on the rock face planks and girders shored up a five-metre-wide mine mouth. A dirty piebald pony walked round and round, tethered to a pump capstan at the pit head. The men were all underground already, rooting out copper, tin and lead. These Marram villagers were hollow-eyed and blue-toothed from shale dust and lead fumes, but they were wealthier than the farmers of the Plainslands. Everyone here could own his own house: Lord Governor Darne! Fescue keeps the trade for metals fair.

I was covering distance extremely quickly now, about a hundred kilometres an hour, and in a straight line. On the twisting dirt track roads below, people take a day to travel as far as I can in thirty minutes. I passed into Awia and over Cushat Cote village on Micawater manor’s southern border. I flew past Cushat’s ‘naming court’ house, a courtroom where an Awian marriage judiciary meet. They settle disputes as to which of the two married couples’ families is the wealthier–a hot topic for status-obsessed featherbacks as the richest bequeaths its name to the children.

The Circle broke.

I blacked out–for a second–came to so quickly I was still gliding, fifty metres lower in a steep dive. The ground filled my vision. I straightened my flight, brought the horizon level, wondering what the fuck had happened.

It had been the Circle, surely? The Circle had just stopped. One of my colleagues had died–I couldn’t tell which one. Or maybe–shit–maybe the Emperor has found out I’ve been in the Shift and that jolt was him dropping
me
from the Circle. Could I be mortal again?

I held my arms out and looked at my hands. Could time be passing for me? I had no way of telling. I can’t feel the Circle like the most experienced Eszai sometimes do. I was shaking but I pulled on the air and began to ascend.

The Circle broke.

A second time. It reformed promptly and I spun out of my fall yet lower in the sky. I yelled, ‘What’s happening?’

The Circle broke.

With a slow sense of void so horribly vacant I screamed. I blanked out for a few seconds and found myself descending still lower. My wingtips touched treetops on each down beat.

I gained height, bracing myself in trepidation of it happening again. Three times! Who’d been killed? Which of us–Lightning? Serein? Frost? The last one had died horribly slowly.

What could injure three Eszai in close succession so badly that the Circle couldn’t hold them? In what circumstances could the skill and strength of three of my friends be useless? They were surrounded by troops and fortifications. Could it be a fyrd revolt?

Perhaps I was lucky not to be there. I found myself sobbing, feeling light and drifting. A second of time had passed for me, for all of us, before San reformed the connections. It felt awful, much like the shock on hearing the news that someone you love has died–which is not fair considering that few Eszai love anyone apart from their spouses.

I examined myself. Did I feel tired? Could anyone badly hurt be pulling on the Circle? I couldn’t tell.

Shit, shit, shit. Another disaster at Slake Cross and I’m not there. The Emperor will have felt it and he’ll be expecting me to come and tell him why–and I don’t know! He’ll find out I wasn’t at the front!

I was cold with rising panic but I forced myself to concentrate. I’m in deep trouble–and so is Lightning–assuming he’s still alive. I spoke aloud: ‘There’s no time to hesitate. I must reach Slake, find out what’s happening, then race back to the Castle and take San the news. I’ll have to outpace all the dispatch riders and reach the Castle before them, because if any beat me there and tell the Emperor I was absent, he’ll have my balls.’

Where the fuck was I, anyway? I looked down on the valley. The oblique morning light cast a shadow of one valley side across the other and the stone buildings of Cushat Cote village at the bottom were still in darkness. The border of Awia. Having got my bearings, I turned sharply. I must steel myself to be prepared for anything. I beat my wings powerfully and flew my fastest towards Slake Cross.