The Return of Fitzroy Angursell Read online

  I started with fire at the roots of the grasses nearest me, and a flurry of low notes on the harp. Hank and Wat were staring at me with their mouths open; Shorty was looking madly confused. I laughed at them in wild delight as the fires caught and my fingers remembered what they were doing.

  And then as the fire spiralled up the knobbly grass stems the words came, and I lifted up my voice in song, for I was always a poet before a musician, and my muse loves chaos.

  The fire rose and my voice lifted and the darkness and the silence of the Fens broke open like a thunderbolt striking a forest into flame.

  4

  In Which I Make a Grand Exit

  At some point in the night the Tigara tossed a large fish, already well-charred, onto the boardwalk. My companions of the night and I ate it gratefully, and drank a bottle of wine I had in my bag. It was a much finer vintage than anything the three villagers had ever had before, and they drank deeply and with great enthusiasm. I was more moderate, as it doesn’t do to mix fire, magic, and alcohol in large quantities.

  Hank and Shorty fell asleep soon after. The fire had moved away from our immediate vicinity and was dancing around grasses further off, in a widening circle out from the lake. Wat watched me for a while longer, eyes wide in the light reflecting off clouds and water.

  He spoke only once more that night. I stood up from where I had been sitting with them, stretching out the stiffness from the hour on the bicycle and the unaccustomed posture. I have contracted the unfortunate habit of restless pacing, so the walking had not been as foreign a movement, but my feet were not used to the friction of sandal straps and dust.

  “Who are you, really?” Wat asked, as I turned in a slow pirouette to consider the progress of the fire and summoned a light breeze to shift the smoke away from us. It lay in drifts over the black water, catching the faintest of golden glows from the Tigara’s deep-plunged coils.

  I shook out the scarlet mantle and replaced it, thinking of what to say. We could not see each other’s expressions, not in the dark. There was just our voices, and the distant murmur of the fire, and a few isolated plinks as burnt stems dropped into the water.

  “Who do you think I am?”

  “Shorty thought you might be the old emperor, but I don’t know … The Tigara came to speak to you.”

  “And so?”

  “I always thought you were a myth,” he said in a lower voice. “Coming out of nowhere to spark adventure …”

  He made noises indicative of doubt, shifting a bit on the boards and making the bicycle jangle softly as he knocked against the chain. I waited.

  “My granny always said you’d come—if you came—inexplicably.”

  I was not at all certain if he was speaking of Fitzroy Angursell or Crow or some other figure out of his people’s legendary. I smiled, unseen, into the dark. “Your granny sounds a wise woman.”

  “Come inexplicably, do something wild and joyous and strange, and leave even more inexplicably, with only a song and the world upended to show you’ve passed by.”

  I could not help but be wholly delighted with being given this reputation, whether or not it was in fact mine. “I shall do my best,” I promised solemnly.

  Off in the distance, a shining gold length of the Tigara arced out of the burning grasses and twisted sinuously, even sybaritically, in the air. Wat saw it as well, for he chuckled weakly and lay down next to the softly snoring Hank.

  “Oh, you’ve started well, at least,” he said with a yawn, and then, more quietly, “Thank you,” almost to himself. I noticed then that there were tear tracks reflecting the flames on his face, and did not do anything so crass as to respond to his words.

  I did not know how he and Hank and Shorty had come to be the ones who walked into the Fens in the dark of the Moon one night, believing that they would not come back, but I saluted their courage.

  Dawn came dressed in silver-grey like one of the Ouranatha.

  I had moved a little away from the three men sleeping next to the bicycle, and was playing the harp quietly as I folded the magic back into quiescence.

  There remained a few smouldering tussocks, but most of what I could see was black and grey: black water, blackened rootstocks, and grey smoke rising. Ashes spiralled by. After an attack of sneezes mercifully unwitnessed by anyone, I kept the ashes away along with the mosquitos still buzzing despite the night’s fire.

  I walked to the end of the boardwalk. The Tigara was just visible below the water, gleaming gold and bronze under the surface. The black mud was drifting back over the shining coils, and soon would hide the ancient being entirely.

  Over in the East, I could see the sun rising over the sea, visible now that the tall grasses were gone but red from the smoke. A distant oblong shape resolved itself into a building, probably the River-Horse Inn; it was much farther away than I had thought last night. I would have been sore and hungry by the time I’d reached it, if indeed I did through the midst of the Fens when I was following the lights and not my own magic.

  I am not, after all, actually immortal.

  I took a deep, pleased breath. The air was scented not of ashes but of orange-blossoms.

  I felt I made a very satisfying picture: a tall black-skinned man, regal of bearing, with the white tunic, and the scarlet silk mantle, and a golden harp in his hands, all against the backdrop of the black water and the rising smoke and the silvery-grey dawn.

  The magic was finished, the Fen spirits back in their slumbers, the Tigara down below the mud in its fresh new skin. The wind blew from the East, off the still-distant ocean, though high above me a few clouds, catching the rising sun so they glowed peach and lavender, were moving in the other direction. I turned around to ensure the fire didn’t spread out of bounds, satisfied with the night’s adventure, and saw bearing down on me across the Fens a ship.

  For a moment I stood there awestruck and amazed at the sight, mind dizzyingly full of strange possibilities and fulsome improbabilities. The wooden ship was narrow, the sides blue and green, the central keel a cheerful orange rising up to form a figurehead in the shape of a white swan. Two masts carried ranks of triangular white sails aloft against the silver sky.

  It was not in the water; it was skimming the Fens like a low-flying bird.

  Faint calls came down the wind as figures moved about the rigging and two came to the side facing me. The ship heeled over to my right and lifted a bare few feet higher off the marshes, slowing as it turned, always keeping me at the centre. It came to a near-halt over the circular lake in which the Tigara dwelled, a masterpiece of sailing I applauded. I have been on the sky ships any number of times, and never had I seen one sailed so finely so close to the ground.

  One of the figures at the railing nearest me lifted a hand to wave. “Ahoy the ground!”

  I waved back. “Ahoy the ship!”

  “All right down there?”

  The question was honest; the figure’s companion was holding an item I was fairly sure was a rolled-up rope ladder. I was touched by this concern, and mindful also of Wat’s night-time confession of his granny’s stories. I had no particular desire to leave the swamps afoot—there was no way I would be getting back on that bicycle if there were any other options to be had—so I waved at them in what they easily interpreted as a request for assistance.

  They could not halt the ship entirely, of course. By the time the rope ladder had unrolled to the point where it was accessible, they had circled around almost to the end of the boardwalk. I stowed my harp with careful haste in my replacement bag and tripped lightly to the ladder.

  It was harder to climb than I had anticipated. The ship’s deck was perhaps twenty feet above the boardwalk, and the rope ladder was unattached to anything but the railing at the top. It swung against the side of the ship under my weight, the movement exacerbated as the vessel just kissed the heavy black water and lifted again.

  “I really must work on my upper body strength,” I muttered as I reached the top of the railing and nearly fell over it in my haste to be aboard. One of the two women waiting there laughed. The other made as if to assist me upright, but I waved her away instinctively. I used to be quite a tactile person, but learned otherwise as emperor and lord magus; touching the Imperial Person without proper ritual cleansing was taboo on pain of death.

  “Ah, thank you,” I said when I had managed to rearrange the silk mantle and my bag to their approximate proper locations and ensured the harp had not suffered by being stuffed into the bag, pulling it out again until I found the case.

  The older of the two, a no-nonsense-looking woman of around fifty dressed in undyed linen tunic and trousers with a richly dyed orange silk robe overtop (by which I deduced she was probably the ship’s captain), gave me a thorough once-over. She raised her eyebrows at the end, but jerked her head over the side instead of commenting directly. “What about the others down below? They all right?”

  I smiled at her. “Sleeping off an excess of excellent wine, that’s all. They’re locals to the area, and will have a story to take home with them.”

  “Seeing as the Fens were lit on fire around them last night, I daresay they will,” the captain said. “One moment—sir.” She turned and called a series of commands, which inspired a flurry of activity amongst the ropes and rigging. A few seconds later the ship gave a shudder and angled over sharply—I grabbed the railing to catch my balance, to the other woman’s silent amusement; she stood easily upright—before the upper sails caught the wind and whoever was on the tiller angled the keel just so, and the ship lifted up like a gull into the air.

  “Now then,” the captain said, turning back to me.

  I liked her voice, which was low and a little hoarse. She was handsome, her face full of character. She had light brown skin and dark and exuberant hair.

  She saw me looking at it and lifted her hand a trifle self-consciously. “Do I have something in my hair?”

  I laughed. “No, no! I was merely reflecting that mine used to be as wonderfully wild as yours is.”

  “A long time ago, I’m guessing,” she said, with a meaningful nod towards my bald pate.

  “It was, yes,” I agreed, sighing extravagantly. “Well before the Fall, in fact.”

  I have a private theory that the aristocratic fashion for shaving the head bald originated with an ancestor of mine who did not like the way his head was balding naturally, but have never found a source for this asseveration. I also have no idea whether I personally have a tendency towards baldness nor what pattern of alopecia or silvering I might expect to discover when my hair does grow out, since it has been shaved—or to be more accurate, depilated with a special cream—since my thirty-second year.

  The captain’s eyebrow rose again. “Before the Emperor Artorin’s time, I take it?”

  I winked at her and shifted the harp slightly, so the strings chimed softly. “Just so.”

  “I take it,” the captain said after a moment’s consideration, “that I would probably regret asking you your name?”

  “I do try hard to ensure that people do not regret meeting me,” I returned, “though on the other hand, there is such a thing as plausible deniability.”

  She made an amused, agreeing gesture. “We do not, in the main, take on passengers.”

  “I could trade songs for my supper; and you need not put my name on the manifest.”

  “The officials in Tsilo may insist otherwise.”

  I shrugged. “I’m sure I will think of something before we get there. I used to be reckoned quite accomplished at improvisation.”

  The captain bit back a short laugh. “Is that so? Well, Laura, it looks as if we have a guest. Give him a berth and whatnot and we’ll have breakfast at eight bells.”

  Laura regarded me with a deep suspicion. I grinned at her and the captain snorted, which pleased me enormously. Laura sighed.

  There were only two dozen or so of the sky ships, as the floating pines that provide buoyancy rarely grow large enough to form the keels of anything much bigger than a small dinghy. The floating pines themselves were a strange natural response to the odd magic of the Fall. Discovering how to harness their buoyancy had made wealthy the princes of Amboloyo (where the pines grow) and Southern Dair (where the wizard-engineers who had designed the ships came from).

  Each of the seventeen princes of Zunidh had one, and the Ouranatha and the Imperial Guard each had three for their use, and one was the flagship reserved for mine. The remaining four or five were given over to government business, primarily the swift passage of parcels and other material goods. This one’s white sails and swan figurehead indicated it was commonly used for the post: I well remembered Kip’s glee at instituting a worldwide competition for the aesthetic scheme of his new institution.

  I had come aboard near the middle of the ship. The doubting Laura rolled up the rope ladder and handed it off to a passing sailor to deal with. The sailor asked her a question, which she answered in a moderately brisk sort of voice. I took the opportunity to look over the side.

  We had already left behind the blackened Fens, still partially obscured with smoke, and were now over the mouth of the River Dwahaii and the commercial harbour of Port Izharou. We must have been five or six hundred feet up and still rising, heading slightly north of east, so the bulk of the sails obscured the direct light of the sun. Tsilo is the second largest city in the province of Amboloyo, located on the most northerly inhabited island of Zunidh, so I presumed our direction was across the Eastern Ocean and over the northern portion of the continent of Kavanduru.

  Farther west the sun caught the golden domes of the Palace of Stars and the white city around it, and yet farther back the Grey Mountains were all pale stone outcroppings and dark green jungle. Waterfalls, thin and intermittent as they are in the dry season, flashed as the ship moved out over the Eastern Ocean.

  I turned to Laura, who was waiting almost patiently, with a broad smile. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of a bath, is there?”

  She gave me an incredulous stare and then started to laugh almost despite herself. “By the Emperor,” she said, “you certainly did your research!”

  She clearly thought I was either deliberately tricking them or entirely mad. I smiled, not in a way calculated to reassure her. “I do try.”

  Laura led me to a hatch in the prow of the ship, which opened on a short ladder descending to a corridor that mostly led back towards the stern but had three doors forward. One seemed to be the galley, from the sounds and smells drifting out of the half-closed door. I hadn’t any time to investigate this intriguing place, for Laura was opening the door to what she called the head but I would call the privy (if I ever called it anything at all; I had all sorts of code phrases to indicate to my guards I wished to visit). Private indeed it was, being barely two feet wide.

  Next to the privy was an equally narrow closet whose most obvious features were a bamboo pipe sticking out of the ceiling, brass handles on one wall, and a grooved wooden floor sloping towards an opening that appeared to lead right through the side of the ship. I regarded the space politely.

  “You’ve never been in one before?” Laura asked, then answered her own question. “Of course you haven’t. This is a water closet.”

  She indicated one of the handles sticking out of the wall beside the door. “Pull the lower one to open a trickle. Here.”

  I stepped into the space to try it and get away from her close proximity. She passed me a shallow wooden bowl and a sponge from somewhere. Tugging on the handle released a thin stream of water, which splashed over my feet onto the floor and ran off to the opening. I watched this, pleased, and Laura grabbed the bowl back out of my hand and deftly caught the water before turning off the handle.

  “When you’re done with the sponge bath, pull the other handle for an overhead sluice. Do you need a towel?”

  I was fairly certain Conju, my chief attendant, had packed me several, but before I could say anything she’d turned around again with one in her hands. This time I saw the open door of a cupboard in the hall, presumably the storage for the water closet.

  “Soap, too, I suppose,” she muttered, putting a small white patty on top of the towel. “Don’t use too much water—there’s not an unlimited supply, and this is a five-day run out and back. Leave the towel in here when you’re done and come back on deck.”

  I took the towel with the hand that wasn’t holding the half-full basin. “Thank you.”

  She gave me a shake of her head that made her long braids swing and hastened off into the galley to speak to whoever was in there.

  She must be the second in command, I mused, with that sort of practiced and practical efficiency.

  I shut the door, which latched into place with a pair of brass hooks. The water closet was narrow and not much deeper than it was wide, with the far wall curved with the side of the ship. It was quite high-ceilinged, however, with an open window letting in light and air above even my head. A brass grille prevented anything large from coming in or out.

  There were hooks—brass again—on the inside of the door. One for the towel, one for my bag, and one for my clothes, I presumed. Surely such a well-appointed closet would have somewhere cunning for me to set the basin down—and there it was, a little wooden rack that folded out of the wall next to the handles, just the right size for the basin and the sponge. There was even a little ceramic cup for the soap.

  The closet had enough elbow room that I could take off my tunic and fold it and the silk mantle into the bag without banging my extremities more than once. I hit the door with my elbow and was glad for the hooks, for I was fairly sure I would have popped the latch otherwise. I pressed the door back into place and surveyed the grey footprints I had left all over the floor. In the light of day I could see that I was thoroughly coated in dried mud that made my skin seem about eight shades lighter and several tones warmer brown than in truth.