Read Online The Year of Our War by Steph Swainston - Free Book Online

times!”
    “Oh, not just any old times, those precious hours we spent together in Hacilith, my negligent boy.” He tried to pinch my bum but I was too fast for him.
    Dunlin was staring with an expression of bleak despair, his powerful arms crossed over his chest. Before I could compose myself Felicitia was pulling pints of beer for us. He was making the most of his life in the Shift, had sequined stockings, layered hair, and moved like well-shagged smoke.
    “Would you like pizza?” he said.
    “No.” I try to eat as little as possible in the Shift, at least since the Tine took over the burger chains.
    “Automato sauce and monsterella cheese? Angstchovies?” I shook my head and he sighed dramatically. “You’re so thin these days.”
    “You should see what I look like in the Fourlands now.”
    “Would that I could, my lascivious lad! And who is this?” he exclaimed, pretending to notice Dunlin for the first time.
    “Dunlin Rachiswater. The King of Awia.”
    Felicitia smirked, realized I was serious. “Can’t be. Tanager’s the ruling family,” he said in a stage whisper.
    “In your time, but not now.”
    “Oh, Jant, my forgetful friend, you never keep me up to date.” He dropped a neat curtsey to Dunlin, who put one hand over his eyes. “How did a Rachiswater get here?”
    “Same way we did. My lord, this is Felicitia Aver-Falconet, from Hacilith. I…ah…That’s Hacilith two hundred years ago.” Dunlin said nothing, although he must have been aware of Felicitia’s gaze on his biceps.
    “Jant, is this someone you’re setting on me to stop me having a good time? I’m dead and I intend to keep partying.”
    “I hoped you’d act as a tour guide,” I admitted.
    “Whatever you ask, my beneficent boy.” Felicitia was wearing a white miniskirt and shiny boots which added ten centimeters to his tiny figure. He had a chemise of stretchy lacy material, which clung to his little muscled chest. “You can come with me wherever ,” he added to Dunlin.
    “The Aver-Falconets are an Awian family,” Dunlin stated.
    Felicitia grinned. “So I am,” he said. He spread little brown wings, stretching the blouse thin as it rode up over them. The feathers were highlighted with silver and cinnabar red.
    Dunlin was shocked. “I wish to return home.”
    “Can’t be done.” Felicitia minced over and looked him up and down—although more up than down as Felicitia was so short. “Jant and I go back a long way,” he said. “Two hundred years! Well, and I’ve been holding a candle for him all that time. Two hundred years and I never even got my fingers burned.”
    I said, “This is hardly important at the moment.”
    “He’s so shy . But yes! We should drink! We should celebrate! Keziah—beer for his Kingness. Whiskey for the Rhydanne. Pour yourself a tomato juice.”
    “Don’t mind if I do,” said the lizard.
    “Happy Demise-day, Your Highness.”
    “Jant. I should skin you alive.”
    The King found himself immersed in raucous camaraderie, while dusk gathered and snow began to build up against the bull’s-eye–paned windows.
     

    I was halfway through explaining the Shift to Dunlin, when the heat-blistered door shuddered open, the bar fell quiet, and my voice rang out loud in the sudden silence. A Tine lumbered in and walked to the bar, creaking the floorboards. Keziah handed him a liter-jug of red juice which he downed in one, received a refill, and seated himself on the table we were using, squashing the ashtray and levering the far end of the table high into the air.
    The Tine had transparent plates like flexible glass sewn into his arms and legs, surrounded by thick seams of scar tissue, and at every movement his muscles’ pink mass stretched and smeared against them. Blue tattooed dots, the size of pennies, ran in lines over his face; his silver-white hair streaked a wispy blue and purple, starched into long spines; and at least twenty thin silver rings pierced the edge of one ear.
    He was