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‘Luche?’ asked Tighe.

Vievre sighed noisily, waving his hands in an exaggerated gesture. ‘It is ballio to jentolle speaking, your questions don’t end. I do not have the tempievre, do you understand it?’ He turned to go and then turned back with another sigh. ‘Luche is making bodies well at war, not killing or outanutelle. Do you understand it?’

Tighe nodded and said nothing. He had deduced that Vievre was in the army from his uniform, and he had clearly been spending his time returning Tighe to health, so if he had thought about it he could probably have worked out what
luche
meant by himself.

The language was coming a little more easily each day. Some days Vievre was full of laughter and good spirits, and Tighe felt emboldened to ask after the meanings of more of his words. Some of these stayed in his memory, occasionally he forgot some, but in general it seemed to him that he forgot fewer than he might have expected. Other days Vievre was in a worse mood, swearing and slapping with the palm of his hand.
Jentolle
meant ‘fucking’, as Vievre once vividly mimed in response to a question from Tighe.

The word ossionetta for the thing in Vievre’s hair came from a word that meant bone. At first Tighe thought it meant ‘finger’ because that was what Vievre used to demonstrate the word. Tighe even used the word in conversation with that meaning and Vievre did not object. But later on Vievre was explaining how the ossionetta in Tighe’s knee had been cracked but not broken (which Vievre demonstrated by cracking and then breaking apart a piece of bread) and he realised the true meaning of the word.

Each member of the army had a bone to indicate rank, it seemed; the bigger the bone the higher the rank. It was often tied into the hair to make sure of not losing it, but some officers, it seemed, had them woven on to their uniforms, or even pierced through their cheeks. Their cheeks? Tighe asked, horrified, patting his own cheek to make sure he had the right part of the body with the word. Yes, said Vievre, nodding seriously. Through there.

This rank-bone was, despite its name, not actually a bone. It was in fact made of some hard substance. In the light Tighe could see that it was the colour of urine, and when he touched it it felt warm, heavy, like some very high-quality polished plastic. He could even see the tiny scratches where the polishing had taken place.

‘Not plastic, said Vievre. ‘It’s metal. Prise it is called. We have stores of it in Vale Ounlempre, where I was given this.’ He tapped the rank-bone with his fingernail. ‘It was lou-paral a Cardinelle herself who gave me this, at a military cue doffo ourelle. When I was raised up from ordinary medical-soldier to under-prelette.’ He smiled. ‘There was a large crowd. Many hundreds. All sal-darra and happy to watch the army of the Empire come up the world to fight the enemy.’

Vale Ounlempre
, as Tighe understood it, meant simply ‘City of the Empire’. It seemed to be, from Vievre’s reports, a city of enormous proportions – scores of shelves, hundreds of ledges ‘broad enough to walk ten abreast’, many thousands of crags and smaller eyries.
Thousands
of people living there: thousands. It seemed incredible to Tighe, but when he expressed polite amazement Vievre was adamant. Imperial City was the greatest city in the world, he insisted. The centre of the Empire, home to the Three Popes, the most
valepul
city on the world.

Valepul was a word presumably related to vale, city, but Tighe couldn’t
figure out exactly what it meant. ‘The most cityish city’ didn’t make much sense to him.

The Imperial City, it seemed, was some distance downwall. It was clear, also, because so much of Vievre’s conversation related to this fact, that the Three Popes had sent an enormous army – thousands, said Vievre, flashing the numbers with his fingers to build up to the enormity of the number – thousands on top of thousands of soldiers – upwall to defeat a mighty enemy.

Tighe found
thousands
a very hard concept to accept. Could there be that many people on the whole of the world?

Thousands, Vievre insisted. A mighty army. That was why Vievre himself was here, with his three luchombes, his three nurses (homb meant man, but one of the medical assistants was a woman), and his medical equipment. He was to be ready for after the battle, when many injured would come in. But before the battle there were few soldiers who needed any medicine or care. Vievre was bored, that was the truth. And then you fell!

‘Yes,’ said Tighe, his stomach tightening. ‘I fell.’

Why hadn’t Tighe died as a result of his fall? Tighe thought of the ways of phrasing this question for Vievre.

Died
was not a linguistic problem. One day two soldiers carried in a third so bloody his uniform looked black and wet instead of the usual blue. He had fallen, too, from the sky, it seemed. He was flatar.

Vievre worked busily, wiping away the blood from this boy’s pale face; but it flowed back out as soon as he wiped it away. The boy’s breathing was extraordinarily loud, it filled the low-ceilinged ward. Pink bubbles like spiders’ eggs congregated in a mass at the boy’s half-open mouth. His breathing had a liquid, gurgling quality that sounded to Tighe like farting. Tighe was horrified by his injuries, but then there was that noise and he felt himself giggling. It was so comical a noise. He tried to stop laughing and even prised his lips together between his thumb and finger to lock the noise in, but he could barely contain himself.
Prrprr-ahh. Prrprrphrprl-ahh
. It was appalling and hilarious at the same time.

Then the breathing stopped.

Vievre and his helpers stood around the corpse for a few minutes; then they wrapped it in a blanket and two of the assistants carried it out of the ward. Vievre himself mopped up some of the spilt blood, a menial job he would usually have delegated.

There was a gloomy mood in the ward for an hour or so after that; but it didn’t last for ever. A military medic cannot afford to let himself be too moved by death.

‘Who was that?’ Tighe asked, when Vievre came to check on him later on.

‘Some boy.’

‘Some boy,’ repeated Tighe.

Vievre made a gesture with his right hand. ‘He merden.’
Died
, there it was. Tighe knew what the world meant without having to ask any further questions.

‘How?’ he asked.

‘He was flatar,’ said Vievre. ‘Soldier in the sky. They practise in the sky and he fell. It is sorry. A sorry thing.’

‘Flatar?’ asked Tighe.

Vievre wrinkled his face. He clearly wasn’t in much of a mood to explain words today. ‘Flatar,’ he said. ‘Flatar.’ He made a swooping gesture with his hand flat.

‘Like a bird?’ Tighe pressed.

‘And what is
buhhd
?’ Vievre asked, without much energy.

‘A thing in the sky,’ said Tighe. He put both palms together at the thumbs and flapped them like wings.

‘No, no, that is owso, owso,’ Tighe would have asked him more, but Vievre was walking away now, walking through the door and out into the light.

The next day Tighe didn’t see Vievre at all. The assistants served him food in their silent way, and then sat together by the door looking out and chatting amongst themselves in low voices.

Tighe was full of fidgets these days. He could barely keep still. His knee still hurt if he pressed it or put weight on it, as he did from time to time, walking around the ward supported by the medics. But his foot in its mud casket had long since stopped hurting; now it mostly itched and Tighe wriggled in an ecstasy of discomfort when that happened. Or he just wriggled around anyway. He was so bored. He sat up and strained to see through the open doorway.

‘What is flatar?’ he asked one of the assistants, but she ignored him as she usually did.

Vievre came back the following day. ‘Good new day to you, my little bird,’ he said, laughing and flapping his hands together in wing-shapes. ‘My little bird! The boy who fell! How are you?’

‘My foot itches,’ said Tighe. ‘It very itches.’

‘You should say
it itches badly
,’ said Vievre. ‘But no language teaching today! Today I have a conversation with the Sky Cardinelle of the whole army! He is very interested in you, my little bird. Escoutiens have gone up the wall, up the wall, and there are no people for ten miles or more. Think of it! Some paucie ledges, some solitarris, but no people, no villages, no
cities. Ten miles.’ A
mile
, Tighe had learnt, was some two thousand arms’ lengths; nearly two leagues.

‘If there are no ledges,’ said Tighe, ‘then how did your people go up there?’

Vievre laughed at this. ‘They went up in the air,’ he said, ‘of course. Derienne, they travelled up for many miles and there is nothing there.’

‘Nothing at all?’ asked Tighe.

‘Think how far you must have fallen, my little bird,’ said a delighted Vievre. ‘To fall so far and still to live! It is a mark of God’s especial gressa. So Master Elanne will have a conversation with you, he tells me.’

‘Master Elanne?’

‘Master Elanne is the Sky Cardinelle of the whole army – think of it! Assistant-at-war to the War Pope himself. A very great man. A
very
streesha man.’

‘He will speak with me?’

‘You are a good fowlel – a good thing for the future, a good sign. You know?’

‘Omen,’ said Tighe. ‘We say.’

‘Fowlel –
ommen
– yes. To fall so far and not to die. All the men and women in the army think so, a good omen for the future. To fall so far and not to die.’

‘Vievre,’ said Tighe, ‘how
did
I fall so far and not die?’

Vievre laughed aloud at this. ‘Admiraculla!’ he declared. ‘It has never been known before. The army was gathering itself, setting its camp – yes? – in this place. We go to war with the enemy. We bring thousands of men and women in the army to know this part of the wall. Master Elanne was readying the flatars and the calabashen, those parts of the sky army.’

‘What are they?’ asked Tighe. ‘What is flatar?’

‘Part of the army. A flatar is’, he paused, ‘a thing. Each with a boy or a girl.’ Vievre made the swooping gesture with his flat palm. ‘You will go walking outside, on the ledge outside, soon; then I will show you. And a calabash is a bag, yes? Full of air, the hot air. It is a big thing.’ Vievre mimed a great sphere in the air in front of him. ‘A big thing that goes up in the air. The army has a dozen. Two dozen.’

Tighe tried to picture this strange thing, but had no imaginative purchase.

‘Well,’ said Vievre, a little downcast that his explanation had brought no flicker of recognition from his charge, ‘you do not know the calabash in your land?’

‘No,’ said Tighe.

‘Well,’ said Vievre, ‘you doubesse your life to the calabash. When you came it happened that one was being exhalpenen, made big with hot air. It
was half fall, beginning to rise. Then you fell on to it! One boy saw you far up, then everybody saw you, shouted, pointed. You fell from high and landed – pouff!’ (Vievre blew all the air out of his lungs through his mouth to make the noise) ‘– on to the calabash. Pushing the air out of it, nan al-derienne all covered up in it like a blanket at the end. So! The fabric of a calabash is thick – yes? But your left foot entrelatte, pushed through it. This is why your foot was all souped’ – there was the word for soup, poltete, used as a verb. ‘All mashed’ – another food word. Vievre made a face. ‘But otherwise, you were alive! Many bruises, cuts. Much blood. You slept – yes? De conaissep. But alive!’

‘Alive,’ whispered Tighe.

‘So Cardinelle Elanne will speak with you tomorrow or the tomorrow after that.’ Vievre was clearly delighted with this development. A genuine military celebrity to visit his ward!

For much of the rest of that day Vievre fussed about Tighe: preparing him, he realised, for the visit of the high-ranking officer. With one of his assistants he walked Tighe round and round the ward, calling off ‘One, two, one two,’ in time to the steps.

Over the course of his stay Tighe had learnt to count up to twelve in his new language. And, of course, he knew the word for
thousands
.

They rested for a meal, and after that Vievre called for some equipment – Tighe’s ear was not skilled enough to overhear exactly what kind – and he folded his legs under himself to sit at the foot of Tighe’s mattress.

‘I shall remove the cast, now, my little bird,’ he announced. His face was beaming and he was actually cooing in his happiness.

‘Vievre,’ said Tighe. Then, to be more respectful, ‘Master Vievre.’ Vievre looked up at him. ‘I have a question.’

‘You have?’

‘What is your family?’

Vievre’s head tilted a little. ‘How do you mean?’

‘You have family?’ Tighe rephrased.

‘Father and mother,’ said Vievre. ‘Brother and sister.’ He might have been answering, or he might have been clarifying for Tighe what the word
family
meant.

‘You are father,’ said Tighe, blushing a little. ‘Pahe and pashe, we say in my land. To me, you play at father.’ He didn’t want to use the word meaning
play
, but he couldn’t think of a word that meant ‘act’ in the more serious sense. But having said it, it didn’t sound right. He tried again, ‘You work at father to me,’ but that sounded wrong as well.

Vievre was looking at him in a slightly puzzled way. With a flurry, wondering if he had somehow offended the medic, Tighe coughed, and tried again. ‘You must have a son,’ he said, ‘I think. You are good, I think.’

‘I have no son,’ said Vievre in a distant tone.

Tighe looked up, but Vievre’s face had taken on a frightening, stony aspect.

There was a silence. One of the medical assistants came through carrying
a leather satchel. Tighe wanted to say,
I hope I have not offended you
–
it was not my intention to offend you
, but he did not have the language for it.

In silence Vievre took the satchel and the orderly withdrew, leaving them alone together again. He opened the bag and brought out a serrated spatula.

‘Vievre,’ said Tighe, again. He felt – for some reason – close to tears. ‘I say: thank you.’