“Martyn was a peerless rider. I remember her perfume, her sepia and sage silk, her strong limbs, pale skin, and her auburn wings that she would spread like an excitable girl. She had seen so many forests the green of them stayed in her eyes.”

I felt like a voyeur in the undergrowth next to Lightning’s cousin as she pressed herself against him and lay between the roots of an oak tree. She pulled up her tunic, her necklace’s fine links pooled in the hollow of her throat. I peered to see a young Saker kiss her neck and full breasts and repeat her name tenderly and urgently. Her red curls spread on the crisp leaves as Saker mumbled, “We mustn’t do this,” desperately down the front of her blouse.

I felt uncomfortable because I had always considered Lightning to be sexless and celibate; the thought of him shagging Martyn was strange and a bit disgusting.

His hollow voice continued: “I see her again and again. Sometimes a woman’s beauty reminds me of Martyn, but she doesn’t act the same. Anyway, even the most breathtaking beauty only approximates to Martyn’s. If I wait long enough…well…the types of characters are not endless, and with time they recur. She looked very much like Swallow, but taller, and she resembled Savory too-remember her?”

I nodded cagily. Lightning sent me to deliver his love letters to a fyrd captain called Savory, and she let me fuck her after she read them. I was single, individualistic and hedonistic, so I took it as proof of how wrong Lightning was about women. I now keep the burden of guilt to myself, because for his peace of mind and my own safety he must never know.

He continued without noticing. “Martyn was as close to perfection as it’s possible to be. A happiness so intense can’t last long; it’s always the case that the arrows we shoot up to the stars fall back on our own heads. The Insects swarmed ever closer, decimating the First Circle, and in the year six-twenty San announced the Games. Martyn watched me win through the hundred rounds in the archery tournament but she did not travel with me to the Castle, where he made us victors immortal. I whispered to her afterward how nobody in the Circle felt immortal and we hardly believed the Emperor. I established myself, organized my lodging in the Castle, and next thing I knew, San sent us to the Front. The Wall ran on the north bank of Rachis River and we struggled very hard-they stretched the Empire to breaking point. I had no sleep for a week, I fought to the last of my strength. It took years to push the vermin back into Lowespass. It was a harder struggle than that of twenty-fifteen.

“Then San gave me leave. I visited my family, and everything looked different. They were all older.”

Lightning pulled his knees up under the blanket and wrapped his arms around them. The informal gesture made him seem shockingly smaller; I suddenly saw the boy in a man I had thought too old and awesome to contain one.

“The gentry and my brothers gave sidelong glances from the periphery of the courtroom as I knelt before Teale. She raised me to my feet, pinched my cheeks and turned my head. ‘By god, it’s true,’ she said, with both pride and envy. Their bodies changed with time, mine didn’t. The world had seen nothing like Eszai before. I seemed to be a threat although I had no power to intimidate them; I couldn’t even age. The stilted politeness of the quality crowd barely covered their distrust. I was keeping their wealthy world safe from Insects but because the Circle was successful the courtiers lost the concept of danger. They took my sacrifice for granted. They drifted, I fought.

“I proposed to Martyn but she could not deny the will of our Queen. She would not leave the court and the country. Although it would have been easy, at the time we couldn’t see how. What happened to the carefree rowdy girl in those years I was away? Martyn didn’t…Now she was older I don’t think she trusted what I’d become. I think I frightened her. I wasn’t strong enough to take her from the court, and she wasn’t as strong as I thought she was…or maybe I appeared stranger to the world than I realized. In the blink of an eye she was married, raised a family of beautiful children, was an old woman; she died. She was always very changeable. I admired her ability and loved her all the more. I adored and guarded her until the end, but I never spoke to her.

“Life seems to be more about the choices you don’t make. San decreed that I could be Eszai or King of Awia, not both. The throne passed to Avernwater. I threw myself into my work again. Eventually I saw Martyn’s own line die out. The bustle and crowds had gone from the palace and I lived there on my own. Hardly anything happened for two hundred years. I had a lot of Challenges because, after all, archery is the national sport. Next time I looked up, I barely recognized the kingdom.”

Lightning realized he was staring at nothing and seemed surprised. He gave me a sharp look and said harshly, “Never mind. I had expected to outlive you, Comet, but these are not Insects we’re fighting now. Will you carry the message to Martyn?”

His confidence overwhelmed me. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll bring her balsam blooms and chat to her on your behalf this day every year for the rest of my life, and then, if I can, I’ll pass the duty on to another willing Eszai when I die.”

“God, Jant; so generous. I am indebted. Thank you very much…” He sighed; he was too exhausted to continue. The silence that followed purged the air. We both knew that we would never mention Martyn again.

I looked at us there: a young and old immortal. The lanky Rhydanne one curled up, safe in his own self-interest, had a bright pride in his eyes because he had the chance to watch over and listen to a prince aged fourteen hundred and thirty-something, talking in a tired attempt to unpick his past. You could peel away shell after shell and still never understand Lightning, because you only get a little of him with each shell. In response I told him everything about Tern’s affair, and I asked for advice. “When Tern’s in Tornado’s rooms I’m too scared to confront them, because it’s his territory, you know.”

Lightning scowled, then surprised me by saying, “But from the start she was so keen to marry you! I can have a word with her if you like. I can explain how you feel, to show my gratitude for the favor you have promised. I once told Rayne about my cousin, but no one else. You will keep the secret?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You are a good friend.” He lay down, propped on one elbow, and said, “Leave me for the night. I have to sleep.”

Next morning I waited till the rain dwindled, then ran out of my cabin along the slick bowed deck past the wheelhouse that Mist had constructed around the helm. She had also lashed a copper rod to the mainmast like a lance. Two sailors clinging to the wheel muttered, envying my sense of balance and the way I can relax into the cold.

Stormy Petrel barreled along furiously under full sail, an arrow shot toward an as yet invisible target. The knife-sharp waves scooped up water and rushed forward, all the water slipped off, then up went the peak again, farther on.

Every time the Petrel bucked up she went “whoosh,” then slammed down “splash.” This whoosh-splash wound my muscles tight; I was sure it would tear the ship to pieces. When she pitched forward the bowsprit dipped and touched the waves. I waited for it to break off. Water sprayed over the prow, rushed down the deck, sluiced off between railings and down drain holes. I thought we were going to do a headstand on the figurehead all the way to the sea floor. Next second the bowsprit pointed straight at the sky like a flagpole. It described an enormous curve as it crunched down again. The masthead drew a wide circle in the sky as Petrel rolled.

Worse, the five-meter waves pushed by the hurricane started overtaking us, and pushed Petrel forward a little in time with each tip-up. With each tip-down the bow slammed in the waves and braked the ship, so a stop-start jolting added to the vertical lift and fall.