Read Online Above the Snowline by Steph Swainston - Free Book Online

wine; she thought it much too valuable.
     
    She finished the chicken, then batted the tray aside and pulled another, of ham arranged in a spiral, towards her. I tried to slow her but she glared, her eyes sparking and her hair wild. I could almost see her putting on weight.
     
    ‘You must be ravenous?’ I asked, amused.
     
    ‘I haven’t eaten since last night. When I saw the spire I started running.’
     
    ‘Tell you what, I’ll eat the salad.’
     
    She paused in the act of screwing ham rind into a little ball so she could fit it into her already full mouth. ‘Who were those men in pale blue?’
     
    ‘Only servants.’
     
    ‘They must be excellent hunters,’ she said, in a tone indicating that perhaps she should be talking to them rather than me.
     
    ‘No, we Eszai do the hunting. I am a hunter; they just cook the food.’
     
    ‘How do you stop them stealing it, then?’
     
    ‘I know it’s hard to believe, but there’s enough to spare.’
     
    ‘Then you must have a lot of time on your hands.’ She nodded towards my silk shirt. ‘No wonder you have such good clothes.’
     
    ‘I don’t make my own clothes either.’
     
    ‘Ha! I knew there was something wrong with you.’
     
    ‘Dellin! For god’s sake! Try to understand. I’m not ill, or disabled, or childish, or slow. I’m rich ! Well, I’m far from being rich, but the Castle is. Extremely wealthy, and I live here because I’m the Emperor’s Messenger, called Comet, the fastest man in the world.’
     
    I explained my position, which took a very long time because Scree doesn’t have the words. I told her that the Emperor makes the Circle’s warriors immortal, and maintains our immortality through the Circle, for each who is the best in the world at his speciality. I said there were fifty of us, but each could be replaced if someone beats them in a fair and open competition. Tornado was the strongest man in the world and Lightning the best archer, and they prove it every time they are Challenged.
     
    It was even more difficult to relate my childhood in Darkling, because she thought being a goatherd was lowly, and I kept shrinking from the images that came to mind of that terrible time. To admit my past was to recognise memories that were more like unfocused patches of pain than clear recollections. I skirted round them with care.
     
    ‘So you see,’ I finished. ‘The Castle buys more meat every day than in all the cliff-fall hunts you’ve ever seen put together.’
     
    ‘The silver man is powerful.’ She smiled.
     
    ‘He stops time from ageing us. What greater power can there be? For example, I am ninety-five - or thereabouts - because I don’t know the exact year I was born.’
     
    She just gave me an incredulous look: the number was too large. It was several Rhydanne lifetimes and completely at odds with my appearance.
     
    ‘Ninety-five melt seasons, ninety-five freeze seasons.’
     
    Her gaze wandered over me steadily, noting the lack of bangles and beads and, worse still, the clothes of a soft flatlander and the scent of aftershave redolent of male Awians. She turned her attention pointedly back to a tray of succulent pink venison. ‘So many flavours,’ she murmured, scooped the meat up and tipped it into her rucksack.
     
    ‘You don’t have to do that!’
     
    In went the rest of the venison and a whole bowl of granary rolls. She was dropping them into a sort of leather pouch in the main sack.
     
    ‘Stop! It’s disgusting!’
     
    She picked up a tray of songbirds wrapped in vine leaves and stowed a handful carefully behind the cushion on my divan. I tried to take the platter, but she wouldn’t let me.
     
    ‘You don’t have to cache it! We can order more any time!’
     
    ‘You can’t have my food! Go find your own food!’ She escaped with the platter and jumped the double step to my bedroom. She piled stuffed quails on the sill behind the shutter, checked they were hidden from view, and cached all the