Chapter 71
a face haunts me
a face haunts me
sometimes my own
sometimes lying skin
lying bones
—Inscription at the foot of the Waxward Lintel,
above the western cliff drop
It’s about a foot long, notched along the blade and the hilt worn smooth. His palm is drawn to it. The cross-guard’s light on his knuckles like a kiss.
Fallon unlocks the cabinet, runs a finger through the thick dust. The room at the top of the tower is warm, stifled in the drip-down light of afternoon.
The cabinet’s glass is streaked, muddled by lazy rags.
Half his face catches there, hung with scars, his moustache weird, unkempt, months of growth pushing the grey out to the edges.
He runs the back of a wrist across his mouth and winces.
His head is ringing with brandy-bells; teeth furred as a cat.
Outside, the endless clattering thunk of war rolls in the streets of Hesper, metal beats and bites onto metal.
The whole city sweating under the sun: strong backs, worn arms, itchy balls and stinking cunts.
A plague on summer wars. A plague on this one in particular.
He fucking hated wars. Hated the grime of them.
The blood never washed off, just crusted and dried and scabbed again.
Beneath your nails, your gloves, your gums. Fallon had got his fill of war long ago.
Days and weeks on the march, or cooped in some stone-walled rathole, skin slick with oil and fat, the smell of yourself pressing against your armour.
The wasp-click of a loose buckle. A sword that smacked the back of your legs in flat, irregular slaps with every step, every stumble over rocks and sand.
A pox on summer wars.
His hands fall off the blade – let it sleep in the dust. He slumps to the desk, toes the bottom drawer open. Uncorks, pours. Peace slopping out in greedy little gobbets. Swilling the bottom of cup. He screws his eyes shut, drinks. Better.
Outside, the ceaseless, dog-breathed rasp of war.
Ropes strung tight to the outer walls, lashed to the bed of the rock, thick with tar.
Murder to climb, but able to be lit in a pinch, kindling fast enough to wreath Hesper’s skirts in flame on the whole landward side.
Hot nests for crows; for anyone Crowkisser brought with her.
Above the walls, stark, squat towers had grown blades, sharpnesses, thundering catapults.
Balanced ballistae on the coastal edge, bright steel eyes scanning the waves, muttering for blood and blood and blood.
He drinks again, shuffles a hand through maps, manifests, port reports.
The only problem being, of course, that she wasn’t coming.
His whole city set up to crack her like a nut, and that slit had marched merrily pass on the landward side, close enough for his scouts to set his teeth gnashing, but not so close that he could risk reaching out with the marines to pull her back into the city’s grasp.
A fucking mess, and he’s a sheep-brained shit not to have seen it coming.
Of course she’d sped right past them, as fast as her raggedy skirts could carry her.
When had that black-feathered bitch ever not headed straight for the main prize?
Thell was the real threat. For all it stung his pride, Hesper was just a dangerous afterthought, clinging to the coast like an angry barnacle.
Of course, Crowkisser would hie straight to the mountain like all the old dogs of the hills were on her heels. She couldn’t afford to stay penned in the south, and she didn’t have the numbers to pry Hesper open, on salt-side or land.
He swigs again, swishes the booze around his teeth. And of course, she’d follow wherever her father led. They all should have seen that. Instead, they’d all jumped like frogs into the pot.
So not just one sheep-brained shit. Three. That didn’t make it any easier to bear.
He’s pulled from his sour mood by a thunderous crash from outside.
A cart overturned. Pottery smashed. Cobbles thick with curses.
A rueful smile curdles on his face. He shoves the bottle back into the drawer.
As he does, the ghost of a memory slips into his head.
He regards the desk handles ruefully, remembering a small head meeting them, running too fast on quick little feet, wanting to be lifted and spun and whirled.
And oh, the tears afterwards. Barely suppressed laughter rattling in his chest at the melodrama of it all.
His wife standing behind them both, mussing the baby’s hair.
Blowing tiny bubbles into its cheeks until it remembered it was alive.
Little Quickfish was always half a breath from tears or laughter, the dearest thing.
Declan had soothed him down in an old crib that had lived in the corner of this room.
It caught the sun in the mornings, let it go in the afternoon.
They’d hung it with ships, spinning around on tiny red masts, forever lost on a non-sea.
He drinks again, tightens his fingers around the handle, feeling that old stiffness in his chest. A familiar heartache, wrapped like soft leather around his hopes. How many more lonely mornings with only the dust and drink for company?
Enough was enough. He could still make himself useful.
He sets the cup down and fumbles clumsily for the tools he needs. Paper and ink, hawk-scrolls to be bound tight. If he’s miserable, he’s going to make sure the rest of the world is too.
He starts to write, heavy-handed and unsteady:
To Kinghammer and all in the Republic,
To those illustrious in the shadow of the mountain, to that which has risen from the ashes of empire, greetings from the city by the sea. The last great jewel of the West. The Grey Towers. Hear me, Lord Declan Fallon, Lord of Hesper, named and proud.
The quill stops. He writes, scores through, blots, sands. Too fucking flowery by half.
He starts again.
She marches past us. She’s coming for you.
Wants us out in the open. Thinks if she can pull us across the country, away from our walls and the sea, that she might stand a chance.
She wants us to chase her. We can’t do that.
We’ll die. Which just leaves you. She thinks she can break your spine inside its shell.
Send in the shadows. Eat you up from the inside out.
Scoop out that mountain of yours. Watch for her, she’s a tricky one.
Watch better still for her ratshit lover.
He’s got a disregard for gates and walls that twists my gut. Ward everything precious to you.
His hand lingers a moment as he searches for the words. Finally,
Friends are coming. Old friends. If you’re smart, you’ll trust them. They saved you once. They’ll do it again, if you let them.
A pause, a scratch.
This isn’t a time to be proud. If they say run, you run. Go west and south. I can have ships waiting. Send a hawk with white wingtips a week before you need them.
There, that’s the last dregs of his pride swallowed down. They don’t taste as bad as he’d thought they might.
This doesn’t mean I’ve forgotten that you left us alone against her for near twenty years, or forgiven it. But this is close as you’ll get. This is a hand of friendship.
A few lines blank, then:
I know you have my son.
He pauses, runs his fingers through his hair. And hadn’t that been an awkward conversation, his spymaster’s wiry hair brushing his ear as she muttered sotto voce. ‘Your boy’s in the mountain.’
Just that, then off into the dockside roil leaving him with a singing heart and a burning rage.
He steeples his fingers against his temples, and swears quietly.
This was what his wife would have called a ‘delicate situation’.
He wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. After a beat, he drains the cup, and writes:
Keep him safe. Or I’ll kill you all myself. As many times as it takes.
That was about as much as he had patience for. He finishes off with a few perfunctory stabs of the quill.
In greatest salutation, from one proud city to another, in these parlous times, when we are surrounded by murderous cunts.
Fallon
He folds the letter, seals it. The early afternoon air is clotting around him, thick with tanner’s stink and gunpowder smoke. He needs some fucking daylight.
Slowly, he levers himself up with the blackwood cane, stretches. Cocks an ear to footsteps on the stairs, fast and light. He can hear them echoing up through the tower.
Old instincts kick in, images of Slickwalker rattling through his brain. His eyes flick to the cabinet. The blade leaves it easily enough. He switches the cane to his other hand, finds a balance, and waits.
The door bursts open, the messenger’s eyes widening at sword-point before the startled lad skids to a stop and Fallon recognises him enough to compose himself.
They both watch each other for a second. The messenger’s breath racing with enough urgency to tangle his tongue.
‘Your wife, Lord. Sh-she’s awake.’
Fallon’s moving before the words fade from his ears, dropping blade and cane and barrelling past startled cries.
The stairs are a blur, a shadow. He moves across them like a storm to the high tower, towards the sound of gulls and the low voices of a gaggle of physickers, preening like gannets.
One of them moves, placatory, his arms outspread – he goes down like a sack and the others scatter.
And there, in the bed, in the light, with open eyes and a smiling face is Arissa, her name as light in his head as a rung bell.
He throws himself on her, knits his arms to her, feels the shape of her.
The back of her head against his hands. The angle of her ribs beneath her shift.
He kisses her, and the world closes in on itself.
Doors shut and the howling gale of worry stops.
His mind falls quiet. The shudder of war slides off the walls and for the first time in years his heart knows peace.
He twines his fingers in her hair and marks the line of her jaw, tears springing from a deep place he’d forgotten.
Distantly, he feels her trace his temples, the new scars, the shaven hair.
She laughs. He feels it bubble inside her and presses her face to his neck for the joy of her breathing, peppering her cheek with small, hot kisses.
Her laughter slides to sobbing, great retches of relief.
‘It’s OK,’ he whispers into her hair. ‘I’ve got you, Riss. I’ve got you.’ He holds her, her hammering heart, her sweat-salted hair, her warm skin.
The physickers flock around them like sparrows, fluttering with news.
He waves a hand over her shoulder, gestures. The room clears.
He kisses her again and feels a disordered world slotting into place as she lingers on his lips. They sit. He smooths the tangles from her hair with thick fingers. She rests her fingertips on his lips, his neck, his sides.
‘Riss,’ he says.
She turns to look at him. She hears her name. He only now notices that he can speak it. The oil, the weight on his tongue, gone. He kisses her again. She tastes of spice and warmth. The light hangs golden around them.
He takes her face in his hands. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he says. He breaks as he says it, his voice fracturing into something smaller. Relief takes him like a soft wave and he falls forwards into her.
After the relief, sorrow, dug from the heart of him. She cradles him as he weeps, as he comes back from the shadowed places, brushes the dust from his heart and takes it like a bird into the light.
He holds her as if she was a treasure, a gift, a memory. ‘Is it real?’ he finally asks, and the question is almost too sharp to bear.
She shushes like a lullaby and pulls him close. ‘It’s real, love,’ she says, and her hands run down his broad back. She looks down at him, and smiles. ‘I’ve had the most beautiful dream.’