The Year of Our War (6 page)

“More birch bark ointmen’?”

“Done.”

“Aqua absynthii?”

“Done.”

“Papaver?”

“Yes.”

“Moly?”

“Ah—done.”

“An’ you can cross my palm wi’ silver, as well.” Rayne flashed her scrimshaw grin. I kissed her cheek, dashed across and picked a clear glass bottle from the shelf. The label said:
scolopendium, 10%
. That’s Centipede Leaf Fern, which in Hacilith is called cat. I don’t recommend that anyone try it. Behind me, Rayne made small talk but I was too preoccupied to reply. She watched me with professional concern. “Do y’think i’could be a good way t’die?” she asked dreamily.

“I don’t know! I never have!”

“Do y’know there’s a spli’ second of peace when t’heart stops and before t’brain congeals? Tha’s when you no’ice how noisy your body always was. Y’see a las’ graying picture frozen through your eyes, and slowly lose comprehension of wha’ i’is. Even fas’ dying has got t’seem slow.”

I sighed. “Rayne, this is becoming an obsession.”

“Jant, don’ you talk t’me about obsession.”

“I’m an addict, not an obsessive. Please don’t talk to me about death.”

I searched through little velvet-lined drawers for a clean glass syringe. I pushed the needle through the seal of the phial and pulled clear liquid back into the barrel. My resistance broke down and the symptoms overwhelmed me. The muscles in my arms twitched, and shivers ran down my back, ruffling my feathers. I settled my wings and folded them in a fluid movement. My hands remained rock steady; I watched them making these precise actions, my mind elsewhere.

Rayne’s assistants bustled back and forth outside the door to her room. I paused to calculate how much. Some. More. This is not an exact science.

If I double what I usually take, it should be enough.

I untied a black silk scarf from around my neck. It was fairly ragged, but I twisted it into a tourniquet and looped it round my arm. A vein swelled up underneath. Then I licked my arm and watched distantly as the point dented the skin and broke it. I loosened the makeshift tourniquet and pushed the plunger home. A bead of blood and cat welled up. The shot hit hard. I decided it would be a good idea to lie on the floor.

I smiled, I was happy with the floor. The worn carpet was warm and bits of me were merging into it. Rayne just looked worried. I tried to reassure her but I couldn’t manage the shape of the words. Some. More. Way, way too much.

Now I am not my problem. I smiled faintly and fainted, smiling.

I
was jolted into the Shift harder than ever before. I was so badly disoriented that I had to stand with my hands over my eyes, thinking: oh god. Oh god, oh god, Jant, you are really going to regret this.

As I lowered my hands the brightness of Epsilon came through. I was standing in the marketplace. Sweet air was ravaged by the shouts of stallholders.

There were stalls with sacks of spices, jangling curtains of lazulite jewelry, brass and glass ornaments on striped rugs, pyramids of cloth rolls, incense; stalls with meats and vegetables, and some things which could have been meat or vegetables, half-rotten fruits, cages with live animals in, which flapped and pecked.

There was the sound of hooves as quandries rocketed past along narrow cobbled streets, pulled by teams of four whorses. Humans and some naked Equinnes sat at a round table outside a café, supping wine. Jeopards—leopards with square spots—purred on the City Hall steps or sat hunched beneath stalls waiting for tidbits. Jeopards ran sleek and fast, but only in straight lines, as they couldn’t see curves, which meant that Epsilon citizens had to spend a fair amount of time rescuing them from the fountain.

Two men crouched against a stained white marble wall, behind a blanket spread with bronzes, strass, and tombac chains, rings, all cheap stuff. One of them was smoking, and I could smell his apple tobacco, which above all made me believe in the reality of the Shift. I was here, and still alive.

Living dirigibles floated and jostled low in the sky. A fiber-toothed tiger prowled embarrassed through the crowd, receiving gleeful pats and strokes down the length of its striped back. A couple of children looked scared, then pointed and laughed as they realized its teeth were made of string.

I waited for a long time, while people and Constant Shoppers milled about in the marketplace. Tine strolled up and down, wire baskets on their polished tortoise backs. I watched the archaic and spicy bazaar, where men thumbed dog-eared fortune cards and the edges of secondhand sabres. The market sprawled beneath a gleaming building, a complex of meteoric chromium, concrete, leafy restaurants, and elevators carrying shrieking kids.

I wait, I wait, I wait; and just as I was thinking my plan must have failed, I saw him. I sprinted across the square and took his arm. Dunlin was standing, spear-straight, with his hands over his face, where I had appeared at the edge of the market. At my touch, he jumped in panic. I had made myself more powerfully built, tanned, with a dark pinstripe suit and some bronze spines in auburn hair. It took a little rearrangement of these improvements before he recognized me. “Comet?”

“King Rachiswater.”

“What happened?”

“You died. I think you’d better sit down.” I led him across to the little fountain and propped him on its low wall. He was gaping at the noisy market like a fish in thin air. “Welcome to the Shift,” I said.

He stopped gaping at the market and began to gape at me. “Remember Lowespass?” I prompted.

He flexed his arms, realizing that all the pain had ceased. “I didn’t believe there was an afterlife,” he murmured.

“There isn’t.” I smiled. It’s a human story used to calm frightened children. “This is the Shift.” I gestured at the market. “The Squantum Plaza, in the City of Epsilon.” Dunlin, a paranoid gaze in his eyes, looked at me with an expression that said I had explained precisely nothing. I was afraid what his reaction might be, so I dropped my hand to the hilt of my dagger. “There’s a drug called cat. It’s a painkiller. If you take too much, it lets you come here. But I’m afraid that for mortals, it’s a one-way trip.”

“I see…I think. Shira! I’ll
never
see Rachis again?”

I bowed my head. There will always be a time when mortals have to die and those left behind them suffer a sense of loss, although they lose only one person from their lives. Dunlin had forfeited everything, and I felt the inconsolable depth of his loss; it even muted the tumult of the market.

“You’ll get used to it,” I said. “Some things are the same. Good company. Food. Women. Insects. I know you’ll have questions.”

“That’s the understatement of the century.”

“Don’t dwell on it. I’ll introduce you to someone who can answer.” I indicated some golden biotic buildings on the possibly north side of the Plaza and we began to walk toward them through the crowd and between the stalls. Although still stifling and savannah-bright, the shadows were lengthening to late evening, which seemed strange because when I arrived it was only midday. I couldn’t tell the time from these dual suns; I had a watch but it melted.

“You look different,” Dunlin said.

“Yes, well. If you were half Rhydanne, wouldn’t you want to change your appearance?”

“Do you mean we can look like whatever we want?”

“No, no. I can because I’m not really here. I’m still in Lowespass and I’m afraid I’ll have to return there shortly. You…can’t go back.”

“There’s nothing to go back to.”

“My lord.”

Dunlin led me aside into the shade of a paper lantern stall. God, he was strong. “Did I just hear you say there are Insects here too?” he demanded.

“There are Insects almost everywhere.”

Dunlin ground his teeth, infuriated. “Who else is here? When do you come here? Why didn’t we know?”

I shrugged. “The Fourlands has locked itself in a darkened room,” I said, with melancholy so profound it could have been rehearsed.

He shook me. “I’m stranded here, you total bastard! You callous immortal bastard!”

“Let go! I don’t have much time left!”

It was evident that Dunlin was stronger than me even here. Physically more powerful, and he was taking to the Shift like a goat to Scree. I had assumed practice would make me more proficient, until I saw the wild light glittering in his eyes. I had never seen anything approaching Dunlin’s vitality, especially for a dead man. I began to be a little afraid of him.

A
t that time, Felicitia was working in Keziah’s bar. After landing the King of Awia in the Shift, I thought it was hardly kind to leave him with Felicitia, but Felicitia had the advantage of coming from the same world. I mean, if Dunlin hasn’t a life of his own yet, at least he can tag along with someone else’s. I couldn’t resist introducing them so I asked Dunlin to follow me, through the shopping mall and beyond the Tine’s quarter, to the low thatched building of a bar called the Bullock’s Bollocks. Dunlin cheered up when he saw the pub, since it looked superficially like a Fourlands inn, and inside I installed him on one of the wooden benches around a scarred table.

I found Felicitia propping up the bar. “Jant!” he exclaimed, raced across, and embraced me. The bar fell over. “Have a drink, on the house, on the rocks! What would you like?”

“Get off!” Bad memories made my pulse race. “If you do that again I’ll rip you wing from wing!”

“A kiss, at least, for old times’ sake.”

“There never were any old times!”

“Oh, not just any old times, those precious hours we spent together in Hacilith, my negligent boy.” He tried to pinch my bum but I was too fast for him.

Dunlin was staring with an expression of bleak despair, his powerful arms crossed over his chest. Before I could compose myself Felicitia was pulling pints of beer for us. He was making the most of his life in the Shift, had sequined stockings, layered hair, and moved like well-shagged smoke.

“Would you like pizza?” he said.

“No.” I try to eat as little as possible in the Shift, at least since the Tine took over the burger chains.

“Automato sauce and monsterella cheese? Angstchovies?” I shook my head and he sighed dramatically. “You’re so
thin
these days.”

“You should see what I look like in the Fourlands now.”

“Would that I could, my lascivious lad! And who is this?” he exclaimed, pretending to notice Dunlin for the first time.

“Dunlin Rachiswater. The King of Awia.”

Felicitia smirked, realized I was serious. “Can’t be. Tanager’s the ruling family,” he said in a stage whisper.

“In your time, but not now.”

“Oh, Jant, my forgetful friend, you never keep me up to date.” He dropped a neat curtsey to Dunlin, who put one hand over his eyes. “How did a Rachiswater get here?”

“Same way we did. My lord, this is Felicitia Aver-Falconet, from Hacilith. I…ah…That’s Hacilith two hundred years ago.” Dunlin said nothing, although he must have been aware of Felicitia’s gaze on his biceps.

“Jant, is this someone you’re setting on me to stop me having a good time? I’m dead and I intend to keep partying.”

“I hoped you’d act as a tour guide,” I admitted.

“Whatever you ask, my beneficent boy.” Felicitia was wearing a white miniskirt and shiny boots which added ten centimeters to his tiny figure. He had a chemise of stretchy lacy material, which clung to his little muscled chest. “You can come with me
wherever
,” he added to Dunlin.

“The Aver-Falconets are an Awian family,” Dunlin stated.

Felicitia grinned. “So I am,” he said. He spread little brown wings, stretching the blouse thin as it rode up over them. The feathers were highlighted with silver and cinnabar red.

Dunlin was shocked. “I wish to return home.”

“Can’t be done.” Felicitia minced over and looked him up and down—although more up than down as Felicitia was so short. “Jant and I go back a long way,” he said. “Two hundred years! Well, and I’ve been holding a candle for him all that time. Two hundred years and I never even got my fingers burned.”

I said, “This is hardly important at the moment.”

“He’s so
shy
. But yes! We should drink! We should celebrate! Keziah—beer for his Kingness. Whiskey for the Rhydanne. Pour yourself a tomato juice.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” said the lizard.

“Happy Demise-day, Your Highness.”

“Jant. I should skin you alive.”

The King found himself immersed in raucous camaraderie, while dusk gathered and snow began to build up against the bull’s-eye–paned windows.

I
was halfway through explaining the Shift to Dunlin, when the heat-blistered door shuddered open, the bar fell quiet, and my voice rang out loud in the sudden silence. A Tine lumbered in and walked to the bar, creaking the floorboards. Keziah handed him a liter-jug of red juice which he downed in one, received a refill, and seated himself on the table we were using, squashing the ashtray and levering the far end of the table high into the air.

The Tine had transparent plates like flexible glass sewn into his arms and legs, surrounded by thick seams of scar tissue, and at every movement his muscles’ pink mass stretched and smeared against them. Blue tattooed dots, the size of pennies, ran in lines over his face; his silver-white hair streaked a wispy blue and purple, starched into long spines; and at least twenty thin silver rings pierced the edge of one ear.

He was easily the biggest creature in the bar, and his arms and legs were knotted muscle-columns, his only clothing a thin blue silk rag wound round his waist. His back was covered by the round, highly polished plates of his oval shell, like a tortoise shell. A crack across it had been badly riveted together, and the bronze studs were turning green with verdigris. Wires crusted with dried lymph, and bound into a bundle with yellow and red tape, ran from under it and disappeared into his spine at the small of his back.