10
‘Hey, Gorvat, brother, what are you doing? What is it, my friend?’ came a strong, cheerful voice.
Lefty saw a tall man in an open white greatcoat striding towards them.
‘What are you up to, you wild head? Can’t leave you alone for a second. There are bodies in the yard already. Well, what’s happened?’ he asked, loudly and without malice.
Gorvat had plainly been quite ready to roar the instant he reached three, but the man in the greatcoat had stopped him. Now he sat rigid, his face red and knotted, his eyes clouded, choking on his own roar as though on red-hot razors. The newcomer patted him good-naturedly on the back.
‘Honestly, my friend. You nearly made a fine mess. Who were you going to roar at? This boy? Damn you. Calm down, brother.’
The rescuer with the strong, kindly voice fearlessly thumped Gorvat’s back, like a master patting his vicious but obedient dog. Gorvat let out a hoarse breath. Suppressing a cocked roar was like swallowing a cup of boiling oil in one gulp, and he looked the part: red blotches on his lean cheeks, a sweaty forehead, dazed and watery eyes. The man in the white greatcoat patted his shoulder.
‘How could you fail to recognise our oratai brothers-in-arms? Remember the battle beneath the Tower, in May of eleven? Well? This is Mammoth-Noah, and this is Var-Gurevich.’
Gorvat looked wearily at the two senseless giants.
‘I remember… Rigard got burnt because of the wet guest.’
‘Yes. And Mammoth-Noah pulled him out. Come now! Settle down, my friend. Have a bite, have a drink. You know what’s still ahead of us, so go easy on the fuel.’
Gorvat went limp and slumped, releasing the last clots of murderous breath from his beard.
‘Gorvat, move away from that window. It’s a bad spot,’ the man in the greatcoat advised with concern.
‘I’m a bad spot all by myself. Who cares? Besides, have you seen what they’ve got here?’
Gorvat took a slice of fish pie from the mountain of pastry and wearily bit into it. Warm beluga juices ran over his fingers. Hot tea arrived; he noisily sipped it with greasy lips, then returned to the pie, snuffling and staring heavily into the filling.
‘All right, lads, see you! Keep well!’ said their rescuer in the most natural, agreeable voice. He turned on his heels and strode to the far end of March. Two tables had already been pushed together there. A battle map lay spread across them among steaming glasses of tea, coffee mugs and platters of March’s pies. The elders of the regimental council stood around it, silently awaiting their commander.
Lefty had recognised his rescuer at first glance: the impostor, the False Tsarevich, False Stavr—or, in truth, Duke Buslayev.
He was indeed a man of regal appearance, exactly as tsareviches were drawn in books about those fabulous times when they rescued beauties from dragons’ claws and feasted at the same table as beast-forms, sirens and ancient rykars. Duke was tall, broad and well made. His movements were fluid, his gait a little languid, as though he were walking across carpets from his study to the throne room in brocade palace slippers rather than rykar battle boots. When he tamed Gorvat, his voice had been soft and even, as though he expected not the slightest resistance from his rabid hound. Lefty disliked this lordly ease, before which doors were evidently meant to open of their own accord, chairs slide forward and puddle water part. When Duke spoke, his lips scarcely moved amid his golden beard, and it seemed an actor’s handsome, trained voice was dubbing him from somewhere offstage. Plainly he had long grown used to nobody interrupting or hurrying him, and to a chronicler recording his best remarks while leaving out the rest.
Against his will, Lefty sincerely admired Duke. Forgetting Gorvat, he watched every gesture of this royal beast. Beneath the leonine languor of his habits lay a swift strength; heaps of muscle rolled beneath soft bear fur; a mighty basilisk’s tail hovered above the ground, its sting glinting at the tip. His gaze was calm, yet seemed to look out from the depths through the eyes of a sea beast, and his friendly smile concealed four rows of murderously sharp, devilishly strong teeth.
Legends of Duke Buslayev’s mighty voice had circulated since the first year of Solovar, when he was about sixteen and his rare gift as a rykar had revealed itself. Captain Rigard himself had begun making notes about the young Duke in the ship’s log, about a voice whose strength and weight were far beyond his years. Lefty had enjoyed reading those notes when they appeared in military and rykar journals. With considerable expertise, Rigard analysed the shades and devices of Duke’s vocal technique, placing his voice in the constellation of such masters of deathly singing as Polich the Parting, Valuy the Novice and Oleksander Bestuzhev.
Even a voice hunter came to the Seventeenth: the archivist of the capital’s opera repository, considered the foremost authority and connoisseur of rykar art. He immediately wanted to see the young man, hear him and establish that he was no Bestuzhev. Duke, just returned from a minor skirmish with the Solo, was presented to the hunter. The recent fight was still twisting the young rykar’s body. Nevertheless, with great pleasure he showed the hunter his favourite trick. He removed the helmet from a Solo corpse obligingly lying nearby and, with a powerful throw of his strong arm, sent it high into the sky. When, after several somersaults, the headpiece began to fall, Duke uttered so devastating and precise a ‘FA—!’ that the helmet turned inside out. He continued the battle verse in a soft, astonishingly even bass: ‘—thers mine, O fathers dear,’ and finished in a tenor clear as noon: ‘I fell in love against my mother’s will.’ At least, so the legend went.
They said his voice was now enough not only to cover himself and his warhorse in an impenetrable shield, but to set grass and forest alight and extinguish them for forty paces around. With the rykar tremor, they said, he could wield ancient ritual swords, split armour with his voice and strike high-flying birds with a whistle. Lies. Surely not quite all that. Wasn’t it rather much for an impostor?
There had been pretenders hanging about the Fieldlands before, false Stavrs known as forest kings. As recently as the spring there had been at least two. But they were unabashed bandits who made no effort to resemble the real Tsarevich Stavr, who, had he lived, would then have been nineteen. One false tsarevich, nicknamed Komyl, looked over forty. The other, Dobuk, was younger, but unlike the fair-haired Stavriches he shamelessly sported curly black hair. The fact was that in the best days, five years or so before, dozens of forest kings had roamed the Fieldlands. All fought each other, the Scyllas and the government detachments, and the survivors were simply those who survived, not those who were young and fair-haired.
Against all that rabble, Duke might seem to people, if not the true tsarevich, at least a worthy graftling of the Stavrich line. Yes, with such regal qualities, nobody would demand accuracy or conviction from his story of miraculous escape. If he defeated the Scyllas, they would put the birch crown of Stavria on his head at once and rejoice in their new tsar.
Duke was a wild-blooded orphan. Born of some chance rykar seed, he had neither a coat of arms on his wing(*) nor an ancestral song, because he did not know his ancestry. And now a chain bearing the Stavrian arms lay on his chest; he entered Vasilkov to the Stavriches’ ancient marching lullaby; and everyone, willingly or unwillingly, cried, ‘Glory to the tsarevich! Glory to Stavria!’ Look at this Duke: a true and glorious hero, carried in fortune’s arms. He would restore dignity to the remnants of Stavria and give them protection. Let him call himself Stavr Stavrich and reign by the right of the graftling. Let God’s heavens reward his beauty, strength and good nature with victory… Lefty grimaced. It was so unfair. The whole regiment, the entire ark’s crew had supported this imposture. Traitors.
Beside Duke at the table, a man in a leather captain’s tunic and a leather headset helmet was moving a black-gloved hand over the map. Burns had disfigured his face; in fact, there was scarcely a face at all: brown, scarred hide, a hole for a mouth, two holes for nostrils and spectacles on a strap. Lefty’s heart lurched. It was Rigard, captain of Khoron.
Lefty had heard of his injury, but had not known how badly he had been maimed. He tried to remember what he had looked like before and clearly saw a long, thin face that had seemed very intelligent, probably because of the round spectacles. Lefty stared so hard that the captain felt his gaze and looked towards the strange young man. Lefty lowered his eyes…
A little apart from the table sat a short, pink-cheeked man, gazing wearily at the floor. His fur hat was pulled tightly down, his winter watch jacket was three sizes too large, and he was swaddled in a scarf, like the overripe grandson of a solicitous grandmother. This was Rainbow, the ark’s spirit keeper, and he must not catch cold. Lefty scarcely remembered him. All spirit keepers were alike: gentle, quiet, doll-faced; their whole lives lay inside the spirit machine, while outside was a dangerous, dull dream full of strangers.
Ivanka tugged Lefty’s hand and whispered, ‘Let’s go.’ Lefty picked up his hare mask and nodded.
Gorvat raised his eyes to the sweet young couple. He had reproached himself a hundred times for sitting in this accursed spot. The Field was misbehaving: an invisible madness seemed to be writhing in the seat on his left, inviting him to look, sending tentacles tipped with bad ideas through his left ear. Never mind. Bearable. Gorvat would show his mettle. He would calmly finish his pie, which tasted of a fish’s sorrow, and decorously drink up his wet tea.
Lefty and Ivanka rose to leave. They did not seem inclined to say goodbye.
‘You were lucky, little finch. The man you said that about… saved your life. Remember it, and get out.’
To give the boy his due, every movement of his body made it clear he was in no hurry. In other words, he had got away with everything: refusing to shout glory, and telling the truth about Duke.
‘Get a move on, before I make you crow like a cockerel,’
Gorvat ordered irritably.
Lefty stopped and looked down at him… Of course Gorvat knew nothing of the story with the snake, or how it had ended. Just as the snub-nosed viper was ready to strike Lefty, three hounds had suddenly burst from the road and raced past nearby. The snake immediately lost interest in him and crawled into a bird-cherry bush.
Once he had caught his breath a little, Lefty looked at Margarita. She had quite recovered and was smiling at him with a mocking narrowing of her eyes. Hurt twisted him all over. He clenched the stick in his fist and went after the viper into the bird cherry. He had scarcely fought two paces through the fragrant, scratching thicket before he saw the thick, scaly body again. It had reached a heap of rotting leaves: its nest, with a clutch of greenish, leathery eggs. Now it was the snake that froze, watching the boy with the stick, and seemed to realise this might end badly for itself and its young.
The snake reared, hissed, prepared to strike at a thin, sunburnt leg—and took a dry blow to its fragile skull. Then blows rained down on its slack body and delicate ribs, then on the nest and the leathery eggs with their little vipers inside. The snub-nosed one stopped writhing. The nest lay wrecked; the little vipers lay still in slime and scraps of shell. Little Lefty stood gripping his stick, drunk on a mixture of triumph and disgust. Footsteps and snapping twigs sounded behind him. Rita stopped at his side.
‘You are my serpent-slaying knight,’ she said, looking at the dead snake and its slaughtered young. Even now Lefty did not know whether she had meant it seriously or in mockery.
‘How many times?’ Lefty asked.
‘What?’ said Gorvat, genuinely surprised.
‘How many times do I crow? Usually one crows by the clock. Tell me, what time is it?’ Lefty clarified, trying to seem calm. Gorvat glanced at his watch.
‘A quarter to noon,’ he answered warily.
‘No, that won’t do. We’re on Field time here. There, through the window—see Guernica? What time does the town-hall clock say?’
Gorvat smirked. He was plainly and openly being dared. Well, the boy had not disgraced himself; under the threat of certain death he had held out until rescue came. Fortunately, Gorvat was beginning to grow used to the Field’s pressure. A drill seemed to be turning slowly into his left temple; something peered into his ear and whispered into his eye; the sun rubbed its prickly fur against his cheek, making his nose itch and his eyes water. But that was nothing, a mere inconvenience. Gorvat would look into the Cursed Field, find out the time on the town-hall clock, and then make the boy crow as many times as he pleased.
Gorvat turned towards the window and looked into the Cursed Field. At once it was as though the cool fingers of an invisible hand took him by the moustache and gently drew him into the night mirage on the horizon. So far it was only the faintest sensation: a chill inside his head, a slight stirring of the sofa beneath him, like the back of a beast coming to life. Nothing at all. Shake your forelock and it would vanish… Only how was he to make out the clock? The town hall itself was barely visible in the distance. And yet… Look closely, and it was perfectly visible. Night all around, but clear as day. What a marvel. A smell of bitter snow; electric voices whispering together in the air. A little more, and he would distinguish the hands on the dial. And then what? How would he get back? He had not a thread of clothing on him; even his skin was transparent. He was helpless prey. Every hair on his body suddenly became a little toothed viper and bit into his flesh. The roots of his eyelashes wriggled briskly into his eye sockets, into his brain, and inside it everything was already empty, alien. An unknown man in the town-hall window beneath the clock was looking at Gorvat, and his gaze was disappointment and rage.
Lefty watched Gorvat with sympathy. The unfortunate man’s head began tilting unnaturally sideways, his eyes clouded, and slow, greasy spasms crawled across his face.
‘Come on, quickly,’ Ivanka whispered, pulling at Lefty’s sleeve.
With the nonchalance of inexperienced criminals, the two made for the red door into March’s inner rooms and entered the red corridor. Ahead, around the corner, they could hear the riflemen guarding the kitchen talking. Better not go past them. Then suddenly, behind them in the dining room, Gorvat gave a wild, drawn-out shriek, as though he were being torn apart.
‘Six twenty! Six twenty!’ he howled in a voice not his own.
Then the shrieking choked off. The Lady of a Face and a Half must have arrived. Her voice rang out: ‘What are you standing there for? Hold him! He’ll tear his whole beard out.’ Trampling feet, the rykars’ bewildered mumbling.
‘Can’t he read? It says everywhere: “Do not look into the Field.” You think this is a joke?’
Footsteps approached around the corner: the riflemen were coming from the kitchen. Ivanka ran to a little table with a vase choking on a broom of dead flowers, moved it aside, pulled some New Year tinsel off the wall, pressed something and slid aside a wall panel, revealing a secret passage even Lefty had not known about. Quick! Lefty ducked through the low opening, Ivanka after him; the panel went back—click… Darkness, the riflemen’s quick footsteps from the kitchen. They ran past. Barely containing her breath, which was galloping with excitement, Ivanka caught Lefty by the collar and, breathing hotly, fastened on his lips. Again Gorvat’s wild howl, long and desolate. Someone else ran down the corridor. The two froze, Lefty’s lip painfully caught between her teeth. Ivanka released her bite and whispered right into his ear, ‘Serves him right. You got him good.’ A short, stifled laugh. That would teach them.
Lefty’s eyes adjusted a little to the dark. They were in a small, cramped vestibule, with a massive door before them. Ivanka took out a key, felt for the keyhole, turned it and opened the door onto a dark corridor leading deep into the bowels of the Crematorium.