Fair Rebel Read online

  FAIR REBEL

  Steph Swainston

  GOLLANCZ

  london

  Contents

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Map

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  Also by Steph Swainston from Gollancz

  Copyright

  Dedication

  To Brian

  Epigraph

  No wind ever shakes the untroubled peace of Olympus

  – Homer, Odyssey

  Map

  CHAPTER 1

  A Grave On The Seashore

  The smoke rising from the pyre was blowing into tattered, hazy scrims as it drifted out to sea. We stood in a loose arc around it, and I was at the very end of the line, staring numbly at the flames. Every figure in the arc wore black: to introduce any colour into this day would be sacrilege. Across from me, the rising heat distorted Saker’s face. He had one hand over his mouth and the other in his greatcoat pocket.

  The pyre was built from hundreds of musical instruments. Guitars of various kinds, flutes and oboes, now reduced to skeletons by the flames, surrounded the harpsichords inside like a palisade. Fire crackled up from stacks of burning violins and cellos; the tortoiseshell was peeling back off a hundred harps like fiery wings; bassoons and clarinets were aflame within their silver wire. And on top of it all, in the centre of intense heat and billowing smoke, stood Swallow’s rococo grand piano, on which her body lay.

  Swallow Awndyn was just a black, charred shape now, with flames pouring around her, hugging her tightly, and the smoke lifted up from her and drifted out to sea.

  My wife, Tern, was crying silently, pressing a silk handkerchief to her nose and mouth. I put my arm around her waist and brought her close. She was warm and yielded to me, softened by grief. To my left the arc of mourners wound behind the pyre. The heat haze rippled their figures; they seemed to sway. They had footprinted the dry sand around them into peaks and troughs, over which shadows chased and ebbed.

  I recognised some of the mourners: musicians from two National Orchestras, virtuosos from the Royal Academy, singers from the Hacilith Opera, and a few very big names in blues and jazz. They had cast their instruments onto Swallow’s pyre as if vowing their music would die with her, and now all eyes were on her last appearance. The depth of their loss was immeasurable. They were heartbroken, and so was I.

  I felt inside my shirt collar for my Castle pendant, ripped it off and turned the sunburst on its gold disc between my fingers, then hurled it into the flames. Tern squeezed my arm.

  Fire played the whole orchestra at once; it curled and roared within the piano’s casing. Pings resounded as the strings snapped. Fire poured around the necks and split the ivory pegs of the guitars, burst the membranes of the drums with squeals and booms. It flickered long fingers over the holes in the piccolos, licked its forked tongues into their tubes – each one became a chimney gushing smoke and tips of flame. Swallow took all these instruments with her into death.

  The piano bier gave a crack and its middle fell in. Great black braids billowed up and some of the women half-turned away from the flames, from the sight. I could no longer tell if they were crying or if their eyes were running from the smoke. The form atop the piano had gone; it had fallen piecemeal into the mahogany shell. A few breathed sighs of relief. Eventually the fire began to burn down into embers and the smoke lessened, spinning into clouds and carrying Swallow far out to sea. A bell tolled nine in the town behind me, doleful and low and, without a word spoken, the funeral party started to break up. Even the smoke was now thinning. Goodbye, Swallow, I thought. Goodbye.

  Saker turned from the others and walked away over the hard, corrugated sand to the edge of the ocean. Foam-edged wavelets were licking in, hissing to a halt, then another pushed in, lapped over the top and curled its knuckles on the sand. They touched his boot toes and, after a while, lapped around them.

  Parallel planes of the sea and the identical sky receded to meet at the horizon. Seldom ripples coming in on the limp sea moulded the chill sand. The mourners were silently returning to the town, leaving tracks slate grey and scuffed against the pale cream of the long strand.

  Tern nodded to me. ‘Let’s go and see him.’

  We joined Saker at the water’s edge. He didn’t look round, he knew who it was. ‘It’s over,’ I said.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Everyone’s going back to the house.’

  ‘They can wait.’

  We walked on a little way up the beach, not looking back to the pyre or the mourners, though I could still smell that smoke. Here and there flat black pebbles were embedded in the sand. Saker stooped and collected an armful, ignoring the brine soaking into his sleeve.

  ‘She loved the sea,’ I said.

  ‘Hmm.’

  Straight shafts of sunlight shone through silver-rimmed holes in the cloud cover. Their beams struck the ocean and set it sparkling.

  ‘I saw you throw your pendant into the fire,’ Saker said at length. ‘That was a nice touch.’

  ‘If Swallow couldn’t be part of the Circle I scarcely want to be, either.’

  ‘It’s not our fault the Emperor wouldn’t let her in,’ Tern said. ‘We did all we could.’

  Saker said, ‘I loved her, you know.’

  ‘We know.’

  ‘I really did love her. It was not some act. I was overwhelmed by love for her. I would have given everything. And now …’ He stopped and stared out to sea.

  ‘You’re not to blame for this,’ I said.

  ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘It didn’t surprise me, when I heard the news. It doesn’t surprise me that she would … kill herself. We should have predicted it, that Swallow would kill herself. We should have seen it coming.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Unlike Raven. He didn’t have to jump. But Swallow … dear Swallow … drinking poison – well, anyone can understand.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Tern.

  ‘No? Did you think she would continue to make music? Happily for us, for the world? Given the number of times the Emperor rebuffed her? Given the amount she was kicked around and buffeted by the world? Do you think it all comes out spontaneously just for your enjoyment? Do you think it would still flow if we continued to ignore her needs and treated her so badly?’

  ‘She had reward and acknowledgement,’ I said. ‘Everyone loved her music. We knew she was the best.’

  ‘She knew she was the best. That was the problem. She wanted to use it and join the Circle. She wanted to be immortal. How could she ever be happy while the Castle stands there and the Emperor won’t let her
in?’

  ‘She couldn’t be content,’ I said.

  ‘She’s at peace now,’ said Tern, and then, ‘Oh, god, I’m sorry.’

  Saker took one of the flat stones he had collected and skimmed it over the water, punctuating the silence. Flick … splash, splash, splash. Again: flick … splash, splash, splash.

  ‘She had one aim,’ he said. ‘One ambition, one desire. Her only determination was to join the Circle and it burnt her up from the inside out. Poor Swallow. It was a white heat so powerful that everything she did was bent towards joining the Circle.’

  ‘For god’s sake, Saker,’ I said, piqued. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’

  ‘The Emperor should have let her in because she was a genius musician and now we have lost all her music. The music she would have written if she was made immortal.’

  Flick … splash, splash, splash, splash.

  ‘He should have let her in because she suffered so much. Days and waking nights. No mortal has ever been as tortured with so great a desire to become immortal. And San thinks that’s no reason!’

  ‘It would be against his law.’

  ‘He could have made an exception.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘He has to follow his own rule.’

  ‘He could change it!’

  ‘Anyway, many mortals are driven mad by not being able to gain a place in the Castle.’

  ‘Swallow wasn’t mad.’ Flick … splash, splash, splash, splash. ‘And most of all he should have let her in because doing so would change the Castle. There was space for her music.’ Flick … splash, splash, splash. ‘There is a place for art. Not just cannon and gunpowder. Not just the sabre-swingers that San makes his slaves.’

  ‘I resent that.’

  ‘But you must admit it.’ He weighed one of the smaller, sea-wet pebbles in his hand. He turned slightly sideways and: flick: splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash.

  ‘That’s seven,’ said Tern eventually.

  ‘Oh, I can do a hundred and eight. There are people out on Tris right now saying, “What the fuck was that?” ’

  ‘Come back to the house, Saker. It’s all over.’

  He sighed and sent another stone skipping on the trail of the last. ‘The Emperor said no and she killed herself. What else could she do? Drink poison. She suffered in life so much: how she must have suffered in death. Did she suffer, Jant?’

  ‘I don’t know what drug she took,’ I admitted.

  Flick … splash, splash, splash.

  ‘The smoke is clearing,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, and the house has opened to view,’ said Tern. ‘Eleonora’s waiting.’

  Saker straightened up, folded his arms and looked out in the direction of the line of expanding concentric rings his last skipping pebble had made. ‘The tide’s coming in.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It will take away the ash.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And the wind will scatter the rest.’

  ‘Ye—’

  ‘It always will, you know. For ever. No matter what happens.’

  ‘It’ll be gone by nightfall,’ said Tern.

  ‘Poor Swallow.’ His voice cracked and he hid his face in his hand. Again we waited, Tern and me, until he emerged. ‘This is how the Castle treats talent.’

  ‘Musical talent.’

  ‘Any art that matters.’

  I agreed. We’ve made ourselves like Insects, to fight them, and without humanity we are no better than them. But still I thought this was a poor way for the King of Awia to behave.

  ‘Eleonora wants to see the house,’ said Tern.

  Saker pulled himself together, and wiped his hands on his sleeves to brush off the sand. ‘Jant. Go tell Leon we’ll meet her at the house. We’ll walk there. All right?’

  ‘All right.’ I kissed Tern, then turned and half-padded, half-splashed over the water-filled corrugations, then crunched on the dry sand, past the lines of seaweed. I slip-stepped up the slope, paused on its crest at the edge of the road, and looked back.

  Tern and Saker were now two small figures, Tern in a long, black skirt and Saker in a mourning suit, walking past the smouldering pyre with the strand ahead of them, the sea the colour of pumice and the sky the same opalescent grey, to the terracotta manor house on its grassy promontory at the head of the beach.

  The Queen of Awia’s coach waited patiently on the road, the coachman on his seat in a capecoat, and six glossy sable mares standing in harness with funereal ostrich plumes on their heads wafting in the breeze.

  Eleonora Tanager must have been watching me stamping the sand off on the road, because as I approached the coach door opened and its white eagle coat of arms swung wide revealing a moiré silk interior. She leaned out, in black but still sporty: a shaped jacket cinched at the waist and with the same pert practicality I’ve come to expect from Saker’s wife.

  ‘Jant,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry for your loss.’

  ‘The world’s loss,’ I said.

  ‘She was lifted up in the smoke. I bet she’d have liked to fly.’

  ‘Spare me that bullshit.’

  She shrugged and smiled diplomatically. I said, ‘Saker and Tern will meet us at the house.’

  ‘I see …’ She patted the seat opposite. I climbed in and shut the door. The horses’ hoof-falls blurred into one as we rolled off smoothly, leaving sand grains blowing across the cobbled road.

  Inside, was just me and Eleonora, with her fawn-brown eyes, her severely short hair, rounded breasts still high and firm; she’s athletic and looks younger than forty, tight trousers, top boots and leering smile. She leant forward and I shuffled back uncomfortably. ‘Saker’s taking it badly, the silly sod.’

  ‘What do you expect?’

  She pinned me with a glance. ‘We have much to do. His mind must be on this sale.’

  ‘I hear you won.’

  ‘Of course we won!’ She laughed. ‘Nobody could outbid the crown of Awia!’

  Not only did Swallow die intestate but she had mortgaged the whole manor. It was no longer hers. She’d mortgaged it to the Bank of Hacilith, which last week had auctioned it and Saker and Eleonora had reached out and bought it, at which point the newspapers went so crazy I flew down from Lowespass to see what was happening.

  ‘Do you know how much she mortgaged it for?’

  ‘Jant, the Bank won’t say. It’s an extraordinary sum of money, none of which remains. None. It’s nowhere to be found, and there are no accounts. Well, only sketchy ones.’

  ‘I knew Swallow was feckless, but …’

  ‘She was completely irresponsible. Who knows where the money went? Everyone says she was bad at managing Awndyn.’

  ‘She only cared about music,’ I said.

  ‘Yes. Doubtless it went on that. Funding aspiring musicians. Elaborate stage designs. Or maybe she frittered it away writing another symphony while the harvest went untended.’ Eleonora eyed me shrewdly and continued, ‘So we’re closing the deal and in an hour Awndyn will be ours.’

  I could picture her in her favourite armour – as if she was wearing plate even now. ‘We’ve achieved a lot,’ she said. ‘Saker and me have united all the manors of Awia. We own four out of six, and now we’re buying Awndyn, so we have a Plainslands manor too. And two healthy children. It’s not been a bad fifteen years’ work, don’t you think?’

  ‘Not bad at all,’ I said glumly.

  ‘Awia will never have to ask for help again.’

  ‘Well,’ I added, ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Cheer up, Jant. The world goes on.’

  She leant her cheek on the window, looking up the road as it began a slight curve, following the bay. Her breath misted on the glass. ‘Look! Gypsy carriages. Why don’t they move?’

  I pushed down the window and leaned out, though it put me too close to her for comfort. Sure enough, the road ahead was blocked by a line of Litanee wagons. The Litanee had arrived early in the morning and helped to build the pyre. They’d been
waiting all this time at a quiet distance and now they were harnessing their horses and starting to drive away, but unhurriedly.

  ‘They’re here to pay their last respects,’ I said. ‘They liked Swallow.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She was kind to them. She wanted to learn their music.’

  ‘Oh, I see.’

  They politely gave way to each other, manoeuvring their wagons, and with the clop of hooves drove on in a troupe. The wagons were covered in colourful paintings: apple trees, hayricks and sailing boats, but they were too distant for me to tell their tribe. Each had a black canvas stretched over the roof: their sign of mourning.

  ‘They’ll be gone in a minute,’ I said.

  We started up again, but now we were at the rear of their procession, so we followed them along the coast road while the uneven roofs and tall red chimney stacks of Awndyn Manor hove into view. We turned off onto its private road, laid in herringbone brickwork, and between the wet, sandy lawns either side, which the gypsy wheels had rutted. We stopped in front of the arched porch, and beyond the wing of the manor house, I could see the grey sky and ocean slanting away into a damp, metallic distance, the pyre still smoking.

  Eleonora flung the carriage door open and, with half-spread wings, marched majestically into the house. I sighed. Awndyn manor would become hers, from the rolling chalk downland and wheat fields around Drussiter, to the pretty, chaotic town of Awndyn-on-the-Strand, its bohemian streets and sweep of beach, its miles of machair; from its red cows that fed on seaweed to its pickled herring barrels sent to the Front. From Swallow’s Artists’ Almshouse, to the auditorium where she conducted open air concerts, all would be Eleonora’s. I didn’t feel good about it at all.