Coglifter’s hands trace the horse’s heaving flanks, the burrs and scratches. ‘Just saying as I see. You hie on, you’ll see the gates soon enough. They might even open for you.’
Shipwright smiles. ‘Fallon’s an old friend of ours.’
Coglifter tips her head, rolls dirt between her fingers. ‘Is henow?’ She pauses, smiling slowly. ‘That’s good. Best of luck to you. Come on, sprat.’
She turns her back, as behind her the column moves on, the heavy beat of the great horse taking the lead again. ‘Who were they, Cog?’ the boy says.
‘No one that matters, boy,’ She pauses, narrows her eyes on the wandering column, the tattoos black and red and black again. ‘No one that matters anymore.’
She takes his hand in hers, his nails soft in her callused palm.
‘Will you be staying for dinner, Cog? There’ll be fire-bakes. It’s nearly time.’
She squeezes his hand. ‘It’s not time for me, little man.’
He frowns, fidgets with the ribbon. ‘What time is it then, Cog?’
She just smiles, taps his rear and sends him home.
Only when she sees the door lock does she turn back to the column, watching its ragged tail fade toward the towers of Hesper.
‘What time indeed?’ she mutters. A half-cut laugh, as the muscles in her back twitch and sting. Wearily, she takes a pipe, fills, it, fumbles for light and strikes, watching the sparks drift off into the bug-swarmed sky.
‘What other time, little man? Time for a burning of ships.’
87
No miracles without the gods. Except the sun. The air. The song that keeps singing itself.
—Notes on the Destruction, Wicktwister
Hesper’s great gates heave open with protest, followed by a cloud of roiling dust, tinged with gunpowder and sulphur. The city has a reputation: the port of dock rats; fleet-fingered Hesper. Tired shoulders and chipped teeth. It’s not a city for strangers, not a city for foreigners, unless they have too much coin and dignity, and are keen to lose both.
The streets throng with traders, the clatter from their throats promising food, water, charms wrought with split steel and bone. In response, the refugees pull together like a worm contracting. At their head, Shipwright lets the roan do the work, hooves thundering without a care for questing hawkers. Her eyes are fixed on the horizon, waiting for the slope of the road to throw up the thin line of a mast, bright against the sky. Not yet. Not quite yet.
Plenty else on the skyline. Above, on the battlements, spikes and cannon have bristled outwards. The song of Hesper stamped out in chain and sweat and fire. Beyond the metal, ranks of solid men and women, their arms loose on blade and bow, their gold armour washed red by the lowering sun, silhouettes rendered slim and sharp by the helms pressed down on their brows. Old seafarers’ gear. The mark of the vulture by the ocean.
Brighter than them all, in full regalia, stands the bear of the twin towers, Declan Fallon. Dipped in copper, black and bravado, swilling the streets with curses and commands.
Fallon’s horse is as bullish as he is, a scarred charger that drives through the crowds of hawkers and peddlers like the prow of asweat-flecked ship. The cracked stone of his voice is like a call to home for Shroudweaver. Not so for the merchants. They flinch back like a struck animal, teetering on the edge of the canals.
‘Move you scoured gutterfucks. Clear a path, shift your corpses before I make more.’
One of Fallon’s broad hands holds a blackwood club to the sky, the tip swooping with promise. He rises in the stirrups, shoulders a broad slant against the spread of the opening road. ‘Let’s welcome our neighbours.’
A marked change then. The merchants are pulled back, bodily. Into their place step sturdy men and women, their confident hands taking bridles and wrists, pouring fresh water over dusty lips. They slip arms around hips, under armpits, steadying legs too tired of the ground to walk.
Hesper’s medicine is almost as aggressive as the rest of the city. Bandages slathered in ointments that glow with a fierce, sinking heat, and blackstick, that Hesper specialty: thick, square pieces of a tacky substance that smells of fruit and tastes of pepper and salt. It’s given to sailors too long off land, to horses run too hard. To the foundry workers in the embers of this smoke-strained port.
Shroudweaver rolls the blackstick around his gums, and feels the shaking in his muscles slow and stop. He grins at Shipwright, black and tarry and she beams back, lips the colour of coal.
‘Two beautiful Hesper smiles.’ Fallon’s voice is different for them, warmed like spirits over a fire. ‘Hello, you idiots.’
Shipwright edges her horse next to his, leans across. His arm takes her in a fierce embrace and she returns it with a swell of relief in her heart.
Fallon sways slightly, lifts his free hand towards Shroudweaver. ‘Come on, skinny. Come here.’
Shroudweaver joins them and for a second, for one blessed second, everything is OK. Sweat and warmth and holding, with the distant sense of the crowd at their back.
