Riding the Serpent's Back (25 page)

He allowed his gaze to wander up and down her body. He reached out and touched the sudden swell of her hips, ran a finger up her side, then brushed her breasts with the back of his hand. “A most beautiful piece of work,” he said. His hand went to her face, her lips.

He stepped towards her and finally she moved. Her eyes met his, her tongue moistened her lips.

He leaned forward and pressed his mouth against Estelle’s. For a brief moment their four lips became one burning mouth, then Red pulled away, and looked around. “Where’s your husband?” he asked.

“It’s all right,” said Estelle, relaxing her rigid pose and reaching out to take his hand. “He’s busy. Let’s walk.”

They strolled through the Garden of Statues, Estelle’s hand tucked into the bend of Red’s arm, her taste still on his lips.

“I’ve hardly seen you,” said Red.

She sighed. “Such a busy life,” she said. “So many things to do and so little time.” She stopped and faced him. “Sometimes,” she said, “one has to be very direct.”

Taking his cue, Red said, “I think I love you, Estelle. I try not to, but I can’t help it. If I was to leave Totenang, would you join me? I can’t offer you the life Pieter does – all I have to give is myself, but you can have that freely if you’ll come with me.”

She shook her head, as he had known she would. Then she took his hands and backed away from him, pulling him towards an ancient stone summer house set into a tall yew hedge.

“Why should I choose?” she said, smiling lewdly. “When I can have both?” She released one of his hands and turned towards the summer house’s heavy door.

“It’s locked,” said Red. “Has been for centuries.”

“Ah,” she said, “but I have the key.”

He heard the rattle of the lock, then she pulled the door open.

Inside, the summer house smelt musty and damp. Red pushed the door shut behind him and looked around. When his eyes had adjusted to the murk, they returned to Estelle. She was pulling her cotton dress up over her head.

A moment later, she stood before him again, her chin tilted up in the pose she had adopted as a statue. He stared at her, taking in her beauty. Her legs were shaved in the latest fashion – smooth and pale, all the way up to where they disappeared beneath the frills and ruches of her fancy silk underwear. Her corset emphasised the narrowness of her waist, rising up in a perfect inverted cone to where her breasts spilled out over the top.

He stepped towards her, reached out, touched her cheek tenderly, then moved his hands down to enclose her waist. She held herself aloof from his attempted kiss and then turned away.

In a voice so quiet he could barely hear it, she said, “Unlace me.”

He swallowed, then reached out for the ties of her corset. He was only doing what the Principal’s wife commanded, after all.

As the gathering broke up, sounds of disturbance came from the end of the alleyway.

“What is it?” asked Cotoche clutching Chi to her chest.

Leeth gestured for her to stay with Lili, then went after Joel, Sawnie and Marsalo to investigate the raised voices.

A small group of people were skirmishing in Jacaranda Street. In the light spilling out from the neighbourhood fires, Leeth recognised the forms of two women and a man he knew from Chi’s police struggling to restrain another stranger.

Leeth caught Sawnie’s eye and said, “Another of Donn’s children?”

Sawnie nodded, then said loudly, “Release her – she’s a friend.”

The police looked to Joel for guidance. The horseman nodded. “Kester,” he said. “I didn’t think you could be far away.”

The woman broke free and straightened, moving with the poise of an athlete, or a soldier. She was of average height, her braided collar-length hair as dark as Chi’s, her jaw jutting arrogantly, just as Leeth recalled so well from the adult Chi he had once known. As Sawnie and Petro were so clearly sister and brother then so too were Kester and that former Chi.

Cotoche emerged from the shadows at the end of the alleyway, Chi twisting in her arms so that he could see better. Suddenly, he wriggled free and ran out into the street.

Kester looked startled, then took a step back as Chi threw himself at her. “What...?” she gasped. “Who are you? Where’s my brother? What’s happening?”

Chi pushed himself back in her arms and smacked his chest. “It’s
me
, Kester! Can’t you see?”

She stared at him, clearly shocked. “I think...” she said. “I think I need something to drink.” Then she added, “And if you really are Chichéne, I expect you’ll have one too.”

~

Some time later, the small group sat around the fire outside Chi’s home.

“Your ragged little friend only said you needed me,” said Kester, when Chi had finished his story. “She didn’t tell me anything else. I came here as fast as I could. No, that’s not true: first, I went to Totenang to see Red Simeni, because your messenger told me he had refused to come.”

“You saw Red?”

“I couldn’t persuade him to join us,” said Kester. “He disowned his family ties. He said his mother and father were dead and he owes us nothing. He refused even to acknowledge that I am his half-sister. ‘My father died in battle,’ he kept saying. ‘My father was a great soldier.’ I think he’s told the lie so often he might even believe it.”

“I feared Red might react like this,” said Chi. “He always said he was different from the rest of us. He believed that he was never really part of Donn’s plans, that he was just the accidental result of a dying man’s last fling. He never displayed the faintest sign of a Talent and he used that as proof of his unwanted status. In the short time I was with him I tried to explain that the old man’s legacy could only be randomly scattered amongst us: there was no guarantee that Donn’s Talents would all be manifested in the next generation, and no guarantee that those that were passed on would be equally divided among us. I thought I had reassured him that he had a place.”

“He didn’t want to know,” said Kester. “And anyway, he’s in love. You wouldn’t drag him away from Totenang with a team of wild mokes.”

“Have you come here alone?” asked Sawnie. All evening, Leeth had noted how pointed were her questions: she wanted to know exactly who was here, what their forces were, what their capabilities were. Steadily, she was building up a detailed picture of the situation in her head.

Kester nodded. “From Totenang I could either have come by boat, through the lakes and then down the Hamadryad, or as I did – riding directly across the Heartlands and then through the Zochi jungle by the banks of the New Cut. Either way I had to pass through heavily militarised areas – I couldn’t risk drawing attention to myself by travelling with support.

“Chi, I know why you’ve called us here. I’ve heard all the stories. I saw what was happening in the Heartlands.”

The boy nodded. “You were a child the only time we met,” he said, oblivious to the incongruity of his words. “But I knew you would come. Grenny must have found you in good time for you to be here so promptly.”

Kester nodded. “She’s a good kid,” she said. “She stayed behind in the north: she says she’s decided to be a spy.”

Chi laughed. “That’s Grenny,” he said. Then he added, “I dreamed you were coming while I was tied up in Tezech’s basement. Donn came to me and said I could rely on you.”

Kester leaned forward, so that her features danced in the light of the fire. “He came to me too,” she said. “The night before Grenny came I dreamed of him for the first time in a decade. I set out as soon as Grenny brought her message.”

~

Kester Etheram had grown up in Totenang, youngest daughter of one of the longest established of the city’s True Families. Throughout childhood she had known Donn as the elderly adviser who paid irregular visits to her father, to consult with him on affairs of the Senate. There had always been a special bond between the old mage and Kester and when, on the day before her sixteenth birthday, he had taken her out on a skiff to the mouth of the Little Hamadryad and told her that she had two fathers he had merely confirmed something she had long suspected. He had issued his declaration cautiously – he later told her that he had been prepared for tears and accusations: the reason they were on the boat was that she could not run away from him until they returned to shore. Instead, she abandoned her rowing and threw herself into his arms, hugging him so hard he begged with her to consider the frailty of his aged bones.

Her parents had agreed that she could travel with Donn for a few weeks. The two went to Tule and Laisan, and they sailed out through the mouth of the lakes into the great northern sea. It had been a time of growing, as Kester reassessed her self-image in the light of her newly discovered ancestry. She thought about her mother, about her cuckolded father, her two sisters who were suddenly no more than half-sisters. She travelled in the hope that she would discover previously unrealised Talents, but instead her time with Donn merely confirmed that she had none.

“You know yourself far better now,” Donn told her. “You know your strengths, and you know your weaknesses. Better to use what you have to your fullest ability, than to possess great gifts and squander them.” Despite his words, she had been aware of his disappointment.

During their journey the old mage’s health deteriorated sharply. Eventually, he decided that his days of travel were over and they left ship in one of the holiday settlements set up for Tule’s aristocracy on the western shore of Lake Lai. Kester had envisaged nursing him to the end – she assumed that was the real reason he had taken her away – but instead he instructed her to leave him.

When she returned to Totenang it was as if she was arriving in a foreign place. She saw everything as if for the first time: the delicate beauty of the buildings, the parks and the river- and lake-side terraces.

While she had been away, her family had gone.

She went to Mish Carmen, a junior senator who had been close to her father. Reluctantly, he had explained: her father had finally accepted the governorship of Jaspera he had refused for so long.

“Why?” she asked. Jaspera was an upland region a hundred leaps east, where the foothills of a chain of long-dead volcanoes marked the edge of the Rift valley. It was a poor region, with a peasant agriculture that was barely above subsistence level; the population thinned as the mountains climbed; beyond the mountains there were only the barren continental wastelands where the rain rarely fell and little could grow or survive for long. Kester saw no reason why her father should finally move to Jaspera: the offer had only ever been made in order to engineer another senatorial opening for the Embodiment.

Mish was reluctant to explain further, but she persisted. “Your parents,” he began. “Your mother...They suffered a disturbing time.”

“Why? What do you mean?”

“They became unhappy together. Senator Etheram came to me in great distress: your mother had explained to him why Donn had taken such interest in your upbringing. The Senator had thought Donn wanted you as a wife – he did not know he already had you as a daughter.”

So the governorship of Jaspera had been a fresh start for the family. Without Kester. She felt solely responsible and she decided that she should keep away from them in the hope that her absence would allow the wounds of betrayal to heal.

Mish Carmen had persuaded her otherwise. “Your father loves you,” he said. “For sixteen years you have been his daughter. Go.” Kester recalled the phrase Donn had used to break the news to her: that she had
two
fathers, not that she had a different father.

Following Mish’s advice, she had sought her father out. Their reconciliation had been difficult but ultimately successful, and for nearly twenty years Kester had acted as his most faithful servant and adviser.

Then one day a ragged child had caught her attention in the street. Such signs of poverty were not unusual in Jaspera, but this child had a hardened look which marked her as different. “Madam Kester Etheram?” she said, running after her horse.

Kester stopped and let the child catch up.

“I’ve got a message for you,” said the child. “From your brother, Chichéne. He says he’s needing you, says it’s urgent and you’ll know he’s serious.”

Kester had only ever met Chi on one occasion: on her trip with Donn, they had stopped off in a small lake port where they had found a wild-looking man with long hair and beard presiding over the loading of a boat. “This,” Donn had said, introducing them, “is Chichéne, your brother.” Normally forward for a girl of her age, Kester had felt slightly in awe of this stranger who was her brother. He seemed so purposeful and intense, a violent energy bubbling close to the surface.

“I’m moving on,” he had said, in answer to the mage’s enquiries. “I’m making a new start. I’m taking this little boat down the Hamadryad and I’m going to find something new. Who knows? Maybe I’ll just ride it right over the Falls.”

“No one can hide from destiny,” Donn had said. “Not even you.” Then he turned to Kester and said, “One day, Chichéne will need you. I want you to promise me, Kester: promise that you will answer his call.”

Kester had stared at her new brother, who she was convinced was just a little mad. She nodded. “If he needs my help, then I’ll be there,” she said.

A short time after the ragged child found her, Kester set out.

~

“Why have you called us together?” she asked, now. “How are you going to tackle the Embodiment?”

“We are building our defences,” said Chi. “Our priority is to preserve the freedom of the south. We cannot tackle Lachlan directly yet – the imbalance of power is far too great. Subject to Sawnie’s approval, we will continue to strengthen our defences here and then we will send out guerrilla forces into the north to try to stir things up and increase resistance to the Embodiment’s rule. One day, I swear, our forces will march north.”

“I think we should establish control of the Junction,” said Sawnie. “It would be a strong bargaining counter.”

“When we are ready,” Chi continued, “we will spread out through the Rift in order to secure as much support as we can. Sawnie and Petro have promised arms and soldiers from Halstrand. I have already informed allies throughout the Rift that the time is approaching when they will have to choose sides. We have to be ready for Lachlan to make his move.”