A Brief and Simple Journey in Which Nothing Has Any Reason to Go Wrong
Everyone was up early the next day, readying Nighthand’s boat the Neverfear on the dock.
‘The Flying Senate will touch down in Heletha Square in the City of Scholars at noon,’ said Irian.
‘I need to be there an hour beforehand, to register for the speakers’ gallery.
I must tell them what Vigo saw, and what Senan knows. ’
‘Aren’t you going, Nighthand?’ said Anya.
Nighthand shook his head. ‘I must stay here with Teren. And besides, Irian will speak better than me.’
‘In that case,’ said Christopher, ‘I’ll go instead of you, Nighthand.’ He handed Irian the first-aid kit.
‘The Senate won’t let you in,’ said Irian. ‘No minors.’
‘Not to speak. To protect you.’
Irian and Nighthand exchanged glances.
‘Nighthand can’t leave Glimt,’ said Christopher. ‘But if Vigo Nex is telling the truth, nobody should be going anywhere alone. I’m coming.’
‘And me!’ said Anya. ‘Obviously if Christopher’s coming, I’m coming.’
‘Mine!’ said Koo. ‘Mine, come, mine.’
‘And Koo,’ said Anya.
‘Christopher has an obsidian sword,’ said Nighthand. ‘What would you be defending Irian with?’
‘My teeth,’ said Anya, and she grinned.
The name Neverfear had a certain amount of history. Christopher had laughed when he first saw it.
‘Nighthand! Wasn’t your last boat called the Neverfear – the one that was destroyed by a kraken?’
‘You know it was. I built a new boat. The nereids found some of the old boat washed ashore, and the rest is new timber.’
‘And you called it the Neverfear, again?’
Nighthand looked surprised. ‘Of course. I always do. Ratwin and I must be on number five or six by now.’
‘But—’
‘And when this boat is wrecked, or torn apart – as I fully expect it to be, some day – I’ll build a new one, and call that one the Neverfear too.
Saves me learning a new name. If I ever had children, I’d do much the same thing: call them all Small Unsanitary Human Creature, irrespective of gender, and then they’d all come if I called. ’
‘The thing to remember about Nighthand,’ Irian had said, for Anya had looked a little put out, ‘is that he thinks of “unsanitary” as a compliment.’
The City of Scholars is the second capital of Lithia. Criss-crossed with canals, it has been a meeting point for intellectuals and lawmakers for hundreds of years. The waterways and bridges, spires and towers are famous across Glimouria for their ancient beauty.
Up in one of those towers, a telescope was trained on the Neverfear. Its lens glinted in the sun as it followed the boat across the blue of the water and into the west port. Carla Venasque spun her knife in her fingers like a baton. The thing she had longed for, for so long, was about to begin.
Christopher paced the deck of the boat, still thrumming with the feeling of the flash.
He was too excited to sit down or concentrate.
He longed to try again. He looked at Ratwin, who was perched next to the tiller, cleaning her green horn until it shone.
He tried to summon the golden flood of light.
Ratwin only raised both of her squirrel eyebrows. ‘Nice try, sparky boy. I is not letting anybodies come tip-tapping into my subconsciousnesses.’
It was the same with Jacques, whom he found in the galley. The dragon huffed and the whole world disappeared in a fog of hot smoke. When it cleared, he was glaring at Christopher.
‘You would not disturb a lady in her bath! You do not intrude upon my mind!’ He bit Christopher, and it was not a playful bite. ‘If you try that again, I’ll eat your face while you sleep. Now look lively. We are about to arrive.’
It took a long time to dock. Anya, with Gallia on one shoulder and Koo on the other, leaned out to look at the cause of the delay.
‘There’s soldiers on the quayside!’ she said. They were checking licences and papers, and there was a prickle of tension among them.
‘Increased security,’ said a soldier to Irian, when they finally found a mooring. ‘There’s been masked bandits in Atidina. They burned a dozen houses and slaughtered a herd of Erymanthian boar.’
‘Barbaric.’ Irian shook her head. She turned to Christopher and Anya. ‘We need to walk fast. We’re late.’
They headed for Heletha Square. The spirit of Midsummer was still in the air; they passed a set of triplets riding a boar-like twrch tryth, and laughing students in a punt being pulled by hippocamps down the Grand Canal.
‘I love this city,’ said Anya. She wore her favourite yellow silk, and she swished the skirts in pleasure as she walked. ‘We never had anything like this on Dousha.’
‘Nowhere has anything like the City of Scholars.’ Irian smiled. ‘It’s where I took my first degree.’
‘How many degrees do you have?’
‘Six, I think. Possibly seven.’
They walked fast, through crowded sunlit squares and over stone bridges arching across canals.
Scholars bustled past in gossiping, gesturing, eager groups, their long black gowns flapping.
One professor appeared to be having a furious argument with herself, until Christopher realised she was talking to a gagana perched on her satchel.
‘Hurry, Koo,’ said Anya.
Koo was being difficult – he refused to sit on Anya’s shoulder and tried to fly overhead, but his wings were not yet strong enough to keep up. ‘My fly,’ he croaked.
Irian laughed and tucked him into her jacket pocket.
He protested, then nestled down to sleep.
She glanced at the clock on a church tower above their heads.
‘At this rate we won’t make the opening and there’ll be no places on the speakers’ bench.
There’s a short cut this way; I’ve taken it often.
It’s not very delightful, but it will get us there. ’
She led them down a dark, narrow passageway, hurrying along a succession of canal side streets, the buildings sweeping up above their heads, rising straight out of the water. The streets grew steadily more deserted.
‘It doesn’t smell great, does it?’ said Anya. There were flies everywhere, and some buildings were crumbling into the canal, or just barely held up with wooden scaffolding.
‘Essence of dead rat,’ said Christopher, and Ratwin, following behind them at a brisk trot, huffed.
‘Disgustingtons. I knews a ratatoska who dieds of a scentification likes this one.’
‘Really?’ said Anya. A long, sleek black boat glided alongside them. A woman, tall and dark-haired, stood at the prow.
‘No. But they coulds have.’
The laundry hanging jauntily from windows gave way to industrial-looking warehouses, and the sounds of human hubbub gave way to silence and to the water of the canal slopping up against the streets. A second black boat navigated the corner, coming up behind them.
‘This is scarcely a fitting backdrop for a dragon,’ said Jacques. ‘I have smelt human entrails I’ve enjoyed more.’
Christopher turned to look, frowning, as one of the boats suddenly accelerated past them, surging ahead by fifty yards. The other dropped back, blocking the entrance of the canal.
The dark-haired woman gave an order, and three men stepped on to the path ahead of them.
They stood shoulder to shoulder, blocking the way forward.
As Christopher turned his head, three men swung down from the boat behind and ranged themselves across the paving stones, cutting off the route back.
A big man with greasy red hair pulled back in a ponytail drew a rapier.
Irian hesitated, then turned to a side alley. ‘This way. Now! Stay close,’ she said. Her voice was tight.
Christopher followed, pausing to look back as he went. The sailors were heavy men, rough in the skin and the eye. Several were armed with swords. His eyes flickered down. Each man wore a bracelet: a snake with its tail in its mouth.
The red-haired man saw him look. He gave a shout, and with a cacophony of roars and whooping the men suddenly surged towards him.
Christopher twisted and cried out. ‘Anya! Irian! Run!’ They tore sprinting down the alley, swerving left at the end of it, then left again. There was a thundering of boots on cobbles as the men came on.
‘No!’ Irian gave a cry, and Ratwin hissed in horror. It was a dead end. A high wall and a locked door, its wooden lintel rotted, its handle rusted to a stump.
‘Get behind me,’ Irian said, but Christopher drew his obsidian sword as the six men darted round the corner into the mouth of the alley. Slowly, shoes ringing on the stones, they began to advance. One man laughed. ‘Trapped like rats!’
Christopher looked wildly around as he moved towards Anya: Anya, who was unarmed, and for whom he would fight with sword and fists and spit, for she was surely what they had come for – the girl who had once been a princess.
‘Anya,’ hissed Christopher. ‘The drainpipe in the corner! Climb it! Get help! I’ll cover you.’
The red-haired man barked: ‘Get her!’
Anya threw herself towards the pipe as with a thunderous roar the men exploded down the alley towards them. Gallia fluttered after her, her wings beating in panic.
A man came at him with his rapier drawn, and Christopher swung his obsidian sword. Blade cracked against blade; Christopher hissed as the iron sliced across his cheek.
‘No!’ The cry came with a blur of wings, and Jacques was suddenly in the bandit’s face, his teeth bared, belching smoke.
Christopher lunged. In the choking smoke he swung the flat of his blade against the man’s head and saw him crumple.
Anya was halfway up the wall, her fingers seeking purchase on the lead pipe, her eyes fixed in horror on the scene below.
‘Climb, Anya!’
But the men had not come for Anya. They had come for Irian Guinne.
There was a scream from further up the alley as the bandits seized hold of Irian.
One knocked her knife from her hand, a second grabbed her hair and jerked her off her feet.
The red-haired man snatched her up bodily and began to bear her away.
Ratwin ran after them, her horn jabbing at their ankles; the man kicked her in the flank and sent her spinning into the wall.
‘Irian!’ Christopher cried. It was dreamlike, a nightmare – it could not be happening – Christopher ran towards her, sweat and blood in his eyes.
Then there was a scream, and a roar. The red-haired man halted. His hand went to the back of his head and his face twisted in astonishment at the blood coating it.
Christopher spun to see Anya – but Anya with a face transformed by fury, her teeth drawn back from her lips and a piece of wooden lintel torn from the doorframe in one hand.
She swung it again at the bandit’s head, at another’s face.
One of them released Irian and grabbed at her.
She was a whirlwind, a fever of movement; she was stronger than seemed possible.
The man reached to snatch at her and she bit him, deep into the flesh.
Christopher darted to help her as Jacques’s smoke billowed down the alley.
His sword clashed against steel; a man fell at his feet, and everything was a blur of shouts, screams, choking smoke and Gallia’s claws.
For a moment Anya, her wooden shard spinning in her hands, broke through to Irian. She caught at Irian’s hand and was pulling her backwards, and Irian was gripping her wrist, and Christopher leaped to pull too.
But there was a sudden scream in the air overhead and three birds, huge as horses, came sweeping out of the sky.
Their beaks were glinting bronze and they pecked and stabbed at Christopher’s face, at Anya’s neck and hands.
With a roar Christopher swung his sword, and one fell dead.
Their wings beat in the chaos of bodies, claws drawing blood.
And then there was a shout from the woman: ‘Drop your weapons, or Irian Guinne dies.’ The birds stilled instantly and the bandits drew back, and Christopher had a clear view to the end of the alley.
The dark-haired woman stood framed in the light.
She had one knife at Irian’s back and one against her neck.
‘I will kill her. Throw down your sword. Step away. Both of you. Backs to the wall. Do it now!’
Christopher could see the woman’s knuckles tight on the hilt of the knife, pressing down against the skin on Irian’s neck. He threw down his sword, Anya’s shard of wood clattered to the cobbles and they stood together, their backs to the wall.
The woman turned to the red-haired man. ‘Darius. Leave the children and come.’
‘But—’
‘Our orders are to take the woman. Now!’
The two black boats were waiting at the mouth of the alleyway. Darius thrust a cloth sack over Irian’s head and threw her into the boat. The woman shouted an order and almost immediately they were gone.