I went inside, flapping my half-closed wings to dry them and flicking drops everywhere. A couple of students at a nearby table yelled, but when they looked up and saw me, they shut up abruptly.

The pub’s fittings were the most up-to-date design but the floor was sticky with spilt drinks. Square columns were bolted to the walls, all painted black but with gold lightning flashes and pointed feathers on the tops. A strikingly graceful fresco of a deer chased by hundreds of hounds fled along the walls. All the way to the rear wall the hind ran with the hounds ever at her throat and, below her outstretched legs, on a leather sofa stained with nicotine, sat Cyan.

Oh, no. I could hear Cyan’s voice from the doorway. She was too conspicuous, blissfully unaware she could be attracting every thief and rapist in Galt. She was recounting an anecdote at the top of her voice to a group of students and she hadn’t noticed me, so I approached slowly, watching.

Cyan was no longer a child. Her blonde hair hung perfectly straight to the level of her bodice top. Its straps and laces showed and so did her armpit hair. Her short skirt kept riding up and she kept pulling it down. Her stockings plunged into huge black boots. She didn’t have wings, she took after her mother, and she was willowy; slighter and more hourglass-shaped than an Awian woman.

At her hip hung a dagger, tied into its scabbard as city law dictated, and the most impressive little compound bow I have ever seen hung off the chair arm in a lacquer holster. Under the table a waxed cotton quiver held enough arrows to depopulate the whole bar. Didn’t she know it was illegal to carry a bow openly in the city?

I hadn’t seen Cyan since her mother’s funeral. Her very poise seemed to have changed; a vehemence had taken root in her previously innocent adventurousness. This was the girl I used to tickle until she was helpless with giggling. This was the girl I picked up off the shipwreck years ago-but of course she wouldn’t remember. I watched covertly, feeling special, slightly dizzy having flown such a great distance and having walked into the city-dwellers’ trivial little world. There was no way they could understand or even acknowledge my effort. To them I just appear.

As she talked animatedly an enormous ruby pendant on a gold chain rolled back and forth above her flattened breasts. Fortunately some of the other women’s glass costume jewellery was just as ostentatious, but you didn’t have to look closely to tell that Cyan’s ruby was real.

She was surrounded by lots of girls, who must mistakenly think she could arrange a rendezvous with Lightning. They started to notice me and one by one slunk or darted back to their tables. She didn’t look up until I was directly opposite her and the last of her court sloughed away leaving just one rugged-looking fyrdsman.

Cyan jumped nearly clear of the cushions in surprise. ‘Jant! Come here, come here and sit down! Why have you come all this way? Never mind; the coolest Eszai will make my night complete!’

I sank into an armchair on the other side of the table. Everyone’s eyes were prickling from the corners of the room. Cyan was overjoyed. ‘Let me introduce you. Rawney, this is the Comet Jant Shira. He flies in from the Castle to see me. Sometimes he carries ice down from Darkling for our drinks…Jant, this is Rawney.’

‘Rawney what?’

‘No. Rawney Carron.’

‘Very Morenzian. Pleased to meet you.’ Rawney Carron ignored the hand I offered him and glowered at me. He seemed to have claimed ownership of Cyan. He was not tall so I guessed he was city born and bred. He wore fyrd fatigues with the murrey fist blazon of Hacilith sewn on the breast and he also had it tattooed on his arm. He had a weightlifter’s build and he clearly fancied himself.

‘He’s a corporal,’ said Cyan. ‘And this…er…that was Sharny. He seems to have gone. Well, never mind. What are you doing here? Did Daddy send you? And why do you have soot on your eyes? Oh, it’s make-up.’

Rawney sniggered.

‘Shut it,’ I told him. I was not prepared to take any cheek from a fyrdsman. ‘Cyan, this time I’m here to bring you home.’

‘She wants to stay,’ said Rawney.

‘Go and join the rest of your squad,’ I told him.

‘I haven’t got one yet. I have to press a General Fyrd squad tonight.’

‘Are you going to the front?’

‘Yes. I’m looking forward to it. It’s better than working in the docks. It’s an adventure.’

‘Good.’ I gave him a grin.

Only the musters of Hacilith pressgang fyrd, and I knew Rawney must be professional Select Fyrd because only Select can be officers of any rank in either fyrd. He leant back on the couch and put his arm behind Cyan. I shuffled forward, as if to protect her.

‘Did Daddy send you?’ she repeated.

‘As a matter of fact I suggested it to him. Are you all right?’

‘I’m having a great time!’

‘Do you have lodgings?’

‘Yes.’

‘And money?’

‘Yes, of course. Daddy gave me pocket money for the tour, and I can always draw on my account. He fills it up now and again. He’s loaded.’

‘In that case I’ll have a double whisky,’ I said.

‘Fine.’ Cyan shook a five-pound coin from her purse.

‘Ask him to fetch them.’ I nodded and smiled at Rawney, and pushed the coin towards him.

‘Rawney, go and bring some whisky, another wallop for me and get yourself a jug of beer. They don’t take orders at your table here,’ she added to me. ‘It isn’t that Awian.’

Rawney lumbered off to the bar. I called after him, ‘And a couple of baskets of chips!’

‘I wonder where you put it all, you’re so thin.’

‘I fly,’ I said shortly. ‘Cyan, why did you run away? Lightning’s worried sick. And don’t you know it’s illegal to carry bows in the city?’ I took it off the chair arm and slipped it under the couch. ‘What are you doing here? You have to come home.’

She looked me over. ‘There’s no such thing as “have to”. I am not going back to Micawater or Awndyn. Not ever. No way. You can’t make me.’

‘Yes, I can, actually. What are you doing with that hulk?’

‘Rawney? He’s gorgeous.’

‘He’s dim. Lightning wants you to come to the front. We’re about to advance at Frost’s lake.’

‘That old eel-eater. I don’t want to go to the damn dam. I want to stay here.’

‘You’re not lodging with that Morenzian meathead, are you?’

‘That’s none of your business! Hmm…I don’t think I’ll tell you, because you’ll just flutter off back to Daddy and spill the beans. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Do you really?’

‘I was fed up with dull old Awndyn.’ She sighed. ‘I had to get away. Away from obligation! I want to stay here and live it up for a few months. I have a freedom here I never had with Swallow, with Daddy; they’re all living in a dream world. They have no idea how the real world works. This is the real world-’ Her gesture took in the bar and what little of East Bank was visible through the window ‘-This is where the real people are.’ She lit a cigarette and narrowed her eyes against the smoke. ‘I know I’m lucky and I can do anything, but I just haven’t made my mind up yet.’

‘Please come back.’

‘Don’t be crap, goat-breath. You do what you want, you always told me that. Why shouldn’t I?’

I was frustrated that I had to spell this out: ‘Hacilith is dangerous.’

‘Yeah!’

‘You can’t be Rawney’s girlfriend. You might pretend but you’ll never really understand him.’

She smiled sweetly. ‘I can play him along for kicks. He worships the ground I walk on.’

I hissed, ‘No. You might think that, but he reckons you’re his girl. If you try to leave him, he might hurt you.’

‘Whatever gave you that idea?’ she said, shocked.

‘Oh, Cyan. Please be careful. You might find it hard to get rid of the likes of him. He knows he can’t really have you, so instead he could try to make your life misery. He could blame you for the fact that he’s Insect fodder and you’re glittering with rubies.’