tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74977169953785729352024-03-18T02:32:23.211-05:00Sample Chapters of Pyr Bookslynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-45267840544472118902010-12-13T14:46:00.002-06:002010-12-14T11:30:08.607-06:00Travellers' Rest by James Enge<div style="border: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2PVt5c0bast_MPfKKS6DGWNSf-89FS3id-PZKAvKdLhFw295RkQ0akICeYvB4HWAYxp5ihBY8AYQVdwB9eEFg_-OhgKhnqF5zEWrYoZZQST6vbRLoz93Rv3GebLqUPXZVE1YSBM3jaY/s1600/Travellers%2527+Rest+cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhK2PVt5c0bast_MPfKKS6DGWNSf-89FS3id-PZKAvKdLhFw295RkQ0akICeYvB4HWAYxp5ihBY8AYQVdwB9eEFg_-OhgKhnqF5zEWrYoZZQST6vbRLoz93Rv3GebLqUPXZVE1YSBM3jaY/s320/Travellers%2527+Rest+cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Travellers’ Rest</span></b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">James Enge</span></b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">INTRODUCTION</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>MAKING A VIRTUE OF WEIRDNESS</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The story you are about to read features James Enge’s wondrous character, Morlock Ambrosius. Morlock is a swordsman, an exile, a hunchback, a drunk, and a wizard, though he himself would use the term “Maker” and say he is a master of the two arts, Seeing and Making. He is a modern descendant of the sword and sorcery adventurer that was birthed in the pages of <i>Weird Tales</i> magazine, and Enge himself has been favorably compared to Fritz Leiber, Jack Vance, David Eddings, Steven Brust, and, interestingly, Raymond Chandler. His tales of Morlock the Maker have appeared in <i>Black Gate</i> magazine, in the anthology <i>Swords & Dark Magic</i>, and elsewhere, and Morlock features in the novels <i>Blood of Ambrose, This Crooked Way,</i> and <i>The Wolf Age</i>. Speaking of the novel <i>The Wolf Age</i>, <i>Locus</i> magazine wrote, “One of Enge’s great virtues as a writer is weirdness—he’s not afraid to do the unexpected, and his imagination is formidable. But there’s an underlying emotional power here, too. The author excels at depicting the bonds of friendship, the pain of betrayal, and the tragedy of well-laid plans going awry, and that emotional payload is what makes this novel into more than just an entertaining adventure story about a guy with a magical sword who fights monsters.” Which is not to say that there isn’t a magic sword, because there is, and where Morlock goes, rest assured there are always plenty of monsters. This story, “Travellers’ Rest,” is no exception. Chronologically, it takes place some years before the events of the novels. If you are new to Morlock, it should make a fine introduction to Enge’s creation, and if you are not, you will be pleased to see the return of at least one old friend. Either way, we hope that you enjoy it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sincerely,</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Lou Anders, Editorial Director</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pyr, an Imprint of Prometheus Books</div><br />
<b>Download this story as a </b><a href="http://www.louanders.com/epub/Travellers.epub"><b>free epub</b></a><b> or <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004EYSWX0?ie=UTF8&tag=louandersbook-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B004EYSWX0">Kindle format</a> ebook in celebration of Pyr's 100th title!</b><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><b>TRAVELLERS’ REST</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The awkwardly made maker and his dwarvish apprentice were passing through trackless green fields peppered with large, slow-moving shellbacked beasts. Ahead, scattered around the junction of two roads that met in the shadow of the nearby hills, were some ragged brick buildings. The town, if that’s what it was, looked worn, weather-bitten, barely populated. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The apprentice—a gray-faced, brown-bearded, dark-eyed dwarf named Wyrth—said, “Master Morlock, let’s go on to the next town.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Morlock, those beetles are taller than I am. Imagine what the bedbugs are like! Next town, please.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I believe these are cattle. Note the udder on that one.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I have better things to do than look at the private parts of cows! Um. If that’s an udder, there’s another one sprouting from the beast’s other side. Are you sure they’re cows?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No. They seem to be chewing cuds, though. If you can bring yourself to look.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You may practice your wit on me as you like, Master Morlock. It needs the practice, as God Sustainer knows. I still vote for the next town.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Since voting had nothing to do with the matter, Morlock proceeded with his loping irregular stride toward the buildings clustered at the town’s center. His lack of reply was all the reply necessary: Wyrth was free to continue to the next town if he liked, but Morlock was stopping here.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“For the conversation, probably,”Wyrth speculated at Morlock’s crooked shoulders and followed him into town.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Two roads met at the town’s center, where there was a fairly large hostel several stories high. But the facade was in poor repair, and the road running westward to the sea was ill tended and untravelled, carpeted with brown weeds. The road running north toward the hills was in a slightly different condition: the weeds carpeting it were more of a reddish gray.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Next town,” Wyrth muttered rebelliously, but followed Morlock through the broad open door of the hostelry into the shadows within. </div><div style="text-align: left;">One of those shadows was snoring behind a counter. Morlock rapped a knuckle on the counter and the shadow jumped like a startled rabbit and, rubbing its eyes, said in a professionally suave voice, “Gentlemen! Gentlemen! Your pardon!Welcome to Travellers’ Rest at Boulostreion! What can we do to assuage the weariness of the long roads you have travelled to reach us?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Couple rooms,” Morlock said. “Lunch.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Lunch. Yes. Lunch. Let’s see. Right now it’s about—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Noon.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Noon. Not really? I’ve slept the morning away. I hope my good wife and daughters have not done the same. I mean—daughter. Never mind. One moment while I check. Before I go, may I ask how long you’ll be staying with us?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock opened his hands and shrugged. When the hosteller realized that was all the response he was going to get, he shrugged himself and hurried off.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If there is cooking going on in this establishment,” Wyrth remarked, “then I’m one of those cow-beetles back there. I didn’t even see a thread of smoke from the chimneys as we approached.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They don’t see as many travellers as they once did; that’s clear,” Morlock replied.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Maybe travellers know something that we don’t and tend to travel a little further down the road? To the next town perhaps?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock travelled a little further into the hostelry, where there were many tables and benches set up in a roomy (if somewhat dim) dining hall. The benches, tables, and floor were all scrupulously clean, as far as Wyrth could tell. He was about to comment on it when Morlock gestured at something moving in the shadows nearby. It was some sort of insect fringed with dozens of feathery tendrils; it spun endlessly across the shadowy floor.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Does it eat the dust?” Morlock wondered. “Or just pick it up to deposit elsewhere?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What else does it eat besides dust?” Wyrth countered. “How will you feel when you find one crawling up your thigh in the middle of the night? The thing’s bigger than a sausage tray!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock hung his sword belt over a nearby chair, then unshouldered his backpack and took a cold-light from it. He tapped the crystalline cylinder and set it on one end of the table, giving light to the room.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth grumbled a little but eventually slid off his own pack and engaged Morlock in conversation on various topics: the weather; the state of politics in the imperial capital when they’d left it; the likelihood that the cows they’d seen were actually blood-drinkers, like bovine mosquitoes; the amount of blood it would take to satisfy such ravening beasts; and so on.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock had little to say about any of it except, “They won’t be interested in my blood.” This was perfectly true: Morlock’s blood tended to set things on fire, and few parasites made the mistake of putting the bite on</div><div style="text-align: left;">him—none made it twice. The same was not true ofWyrth’s blood at all, and reflections on this topic led him to fall into an unusually gloomy silence. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Meanwhile the hosteller returned to his counter and, not finding Morlock and Wyrth, cried out in vexation and something like despair. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Mine host!” Wyrth said. “We’re over here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ah!” The hosteller leapt eagerly toward them into the circle of light cast by Morlock’s cold-light. He was followed by a shorter, thinner, paler, female echo of himself. “Ah, gentlemen—may I know your names?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” said Morlock.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh!” said the hosteller. His plump reddish-brown face looked baffled.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth was annoyed at his master. The man had his reasons for not giving his name every time he was asked, especially south of the Dholich Kund, but you’d think that by now he’d have figured out some more diplomatic way of answering.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Canyon keep you, you surly old bastard,” Wyrth muttered at Morlock. “Mine host, this gentleman here is a secretive fellow, but he’s not dangerous when well fed and kept away from poisonous or predatory insects. I just mention that in passing, in case there are any around here. I’m his apprentice in the many arts of making, God Avenger pity me for it. My name is Wyrth, and I don’t give three chunks of chaos who knows it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The hosteller was relieved to meet someone of his own talkative turn of mind. “Well! Gentlemen, I am Sunlar; this is my house. Here is my younger daughter—I mean my daughter, Raelio; she will see to your comforts, within reason, of course.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth assumed this meant that the girl was not on the menu. That was fine with Wyrth: he himself never dated outside his species, and Morlock’s vices did not include preying on children. “Despite appearances, we’re reasonable people,” Wyrth said to the hosteller, hoping he could make himself understood without any disgusting particularities.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Excellent, excellent,” said Sunlar. “Well, I’ll leave you with Raelio. I have to go help my—I have to help with the—Some matters await my tending.” He bounced off toward the back of the house.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The child watched him go, amusement and affection gently lighting her dark-eyed weary face.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He’s awful excited,” she remarked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re the first guests in a while, I suppose?” Wyrth said.</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I wasn’t supposed to say. If I did, I’d have to count back a month or two. And they snuck out without paying, the scasp-chewing branticules. Still, it was nice to have someone in the house for a while. How long are you staying?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A while,” Morlock said. “What’s to eat?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I couldn’t exactly say. I was supposed to tell you that the house special was the best thing I’d ever eaten, but I can’t exactly say that because I don’t know what it is and I don’t want to lie.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re an honest waitress,” Wyrth said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The girl nodded. “Morlock drags you to hell if you lie. I don’t want to go to hell. So I’m not lying anymore.” Her tone was cool and pragmatic; she had thought the matter through and this was her decision about it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Er,” Wyrth said wittily. He was taken aback, and somewhat annoyed to see that Morlock himself was not: the crooked man was used to hearing these wild tales about himself. “Morlock drags liars to hell, does he?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Everyone knows that. My mother says so.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But—you don’t anticipate death soon, do you? I mean—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It can happen to anyone. At any time. Isn’t that true? They can come for you and then you’re gone. So we have to be happy and good while we can. My mother says so.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well. Well. Right she is, of course.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Who are <i>they</i>?” Morlock asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Shut up, you old fool; you’ll frighten her. Never mind him, Raelio. He doesn’t mean any harm, as a general thing, but you have to practice ignoring him.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They come for you from the hills,” the girl explained to Morlock, ignoring Wyrth instead. “And then you’re gone. We have to hope that you are dead. That’s the best we can hope for. That’s what my mother says.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And is Morlock one of those who come from the hills?” Morlock asked. (Wyrth had to admit that his interest was perfectly natural.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, silly. They kill you in the hills and then Morlock and the angel fight over your soul. But the angel won’t fight for you if you’re a liar, so then Morlock gets you. My mother says so. Do you want something to drink? I was to start you with drinks and then inveigle you in innocent conversation. I guess I inveigled first, but I don’t know what that means exactly.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Inveigled is—it means—Well, anyway, what have you got to drink?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We have wine—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No wine,” said Wyrth firmly, looking sideways at Morlock.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“—the beer’s not bad; I had some at breakfast—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No beer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well we have a little mead from over the border, but—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No mead. Have you got anything but strong drink? Water, or something of that description?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Water’s all right, I guess,” the girl said dubiously. “Our well’s a little murky and we have to pay Gar Vindisc to use the stream.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Get us some of his good water, my dear; we’ll pay you triple whatever it costs.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Her. Her water. Gar Vindisc is one of the Old Women. What do you think ‘gar’ means?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If I told you I knew, my dear, I would have some trouble with Morlock right quick.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Wouldn’t you rather have thrinnel? I love thrinnel. It’s even better than beer!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth didn’t know what thrinnel was so he asked, “Is it strong drink? Can you get drunk on it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, no. Babies drink it. It’s yummy.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well, if it’s yummy then we must have some. Now we move on to shiftier ground. What do you <i>think</i> they’re going to offer us for lunch, Raelio?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Anything you want that we’ve got. The da is that excited to have people under the roof again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What’ve you got, then?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Shellback brisket, shellback liver, shellback kidneys, shellback steaks and tripe, shellback-tail soup—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Shellbacks are those remarkable cattle we saw coming into town?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I guess.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What is there beside shellback?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Might be fish. Dry salted fish, from before winter.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Seethe some of that in Gar Vindisc’s good water and bring it to us. Bread, too, as long as you don’t make it from shellbacks.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And two shellback steaks,” Morlock added. Wyrth looked at him with a sense of deep betrayal, but Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and said, “Might as well see if it’s edible,” and Wyrth had to concede his point.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Raelio fetched them wooden mugs of thick yellowish fluid (“Thrinnel!”) and ran off to carry their order to the back of the house. Both the master maker and his apprentice could now detect the presence of several fires in the house, and anyone with ears could have detected a man and a woman shrieking at each other, with excitement rather than rage, amid the clanking of much cookware. A brief silence prevailed, in the heart of which Raelio could be heard reciting their order. There were some whispered consultations and the clanking resumed, even more purposefully than before, but with less shouting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What is this stuff?” Wyrth asked, fearfully peering into his mug. “Pus? Does ‘yummy’ mean what I thought it meant?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s buttermilk,” said Morlock after sipping some. “Reasonably fresh buttermilk.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Buttermilk?” demanded Wyrth, outraged. “And they serve it in a public establishment where anyone might drink it by accident? Civil law must have broken down entirely hereabouts.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s not so bad. Better than wine. Or beer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Er. Yes.” Wyrth was particularly worried about Morlock getting drunk these days.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Could you map a four-dimensional image of it onto three dimensions?” Morlock asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A four-dimensional image of a fluid?” Wyrth wondered. Then he realized that lesson time had begun. “Or a fluid in a four-dimensional container? Well, why not? What should I use as a medium?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Something particulate. You can use a cementing spell to retain the shape.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. If only we had some salt or something. Is there some in your pack?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There is a dish of it at your elbow.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So there is!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Someone else entered the front of the hostelry while Wyrth was occupied in his model making.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Must be a happy day for ourn host,” Wyrth remarked. “Two sets of guests in one day.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">“Eh,” said Morlock, but it was the way he said it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What do you mean? What’s wrong?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Listen.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth listened. He couldn’t catch many words, but Sunlar’s voice sounded angry or frightened. The stranger’s voice was low, steady, implacable. A third voice rang out, a woman’s, loud enough for her words to carry to the refectory.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’ve done our part!” the woman shrieked. “We gave you our other one! Leave us alone! You said you’d leave us alone. Leave us alone!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Morlock,” Wyrth said warningly. “Not our problem.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But the crooked man was already standing. Wyrth knew the crazy look in those pale gray eyes, and he feared the worst. At least Morlock left his sword hanging on the chair back, Wyrth reflected, which showed he wasn’t intending to kill anybody right away.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock walked back up the refectory hall and into the shadowy entrance hall, Wyrth following reluctantly. The door to the street was standing open and a huge hulking man stood in it. The day was warmish, but his bulk was covered by a full cloak and his flat dull-eyed face showed no suffering from heat. It showed no feeling at all as the stranger said, “I’ve come to take her, that’s all. You know what he says. She is to come with me to the hills.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sunlar, Raelio, and an older women that Wyrth guessed must be the girl’s mother were huddled together behind the counter, as if that could protect them from the stranger.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What is this?” Morlock demanded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The stranger turned to him. He didn’t seem surprised or even interested in the interruption. He said, “I am to take the girl to the hills. Kyrkylio says so, and I do as he says.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That will not be convenient for me,” Morlock said. “The girl is to serve me lunch.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The old woman can serve it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“She’s cooking it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The old man can serve it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He has other important duties around this busy house.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh.” The stranger paused, evidently not wishing to be unreasonable. “How long will your lunch take? I can bring her to the hills after you’re done.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock was usually prepared to be unreasonable, as Wyrth well knew and as the stranger was learning. “I will require lunch tomorrow also,” the crooked man said implacably, “and the next day.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How long are you staying here?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“As far as you’re concerned, forever. Go back to the hills. Tell Kyrkylio that he may not have the girl.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He won’t like that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock shrugged.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He gets angry.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This time Morlock didn’t even bother to shrug.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I get angry, too,” the stranger said. “You treat me unkindly. I am not used to that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Learn,” Morlock suggested.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No. I’m done with learning.” The stranger drew a sword from under his voluminous cloak and pointed it at Morlock. “I learned how to cut people open when they are unkind to me. That’s all I need. Now people are kind to me or I cut them open. Which is it for you? What do you say?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">What Morlock said was, “Tyrfing!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth dropped to the floor. Morlock’s sword, Tyrfing (its black-and white blade glittering in the light from the open door to the street), flew over his head and into Morlock’s open hand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The stranger looked without dismay at the sword that had suddenly come to Morlock’s hand when called. “I see it. You are a sorcerer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I am Morlock Ambrosius,” the crooked man replied.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The man and the woman screamed together and hid their faces. The girl seemed frightened, too, but she kept watching.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I have a name, too,” the stranger said slyly. “A name that makes people scream, a name they are afraid to say.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He tossed back his cloak, and Wyrth saw that his frame was not so very large after all. What made him seem bulky was the fact that he had six arms, each of them armed with a sword. “I am Iagiawôn,” the stranger said triumphantly. “Iagiawôn the Many-Handed!” He advanced, spinning the blades as if his wrists were on pivots.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I told you,” Wyrth shouted at Morlock, <i>“we should have gone to the next town!”</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Get them out of here,” Morlock said and retreated a step or two, Tyrfing raised to guard against the rippling hedge of blades.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That means you!” Wyrth shouted at the family huddling behind the counter. But only the girl seemed to hear him, and she was caught tight in her parents’ double embrace.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth muttered a brief but sincere curse and dashed across the entryway, sparing a moment to kick at the back of Iagiawôn’s left knee, spoiling his six-fold thrust at Morlock. Unfortunately it did no other harm; the joint had some sort of buglike carapace to protect it. Wyrth half expected one of the six freakishly mobile arms to swing around and stab at him with a sword, but that didn’t happen. When Wyrth realized it wasn’t happening, he knew that was important somehow, but he didn’t have time to think about it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth dragged Sunlar and his wife to their feet and pushed them across the floor into the dining hall. “Is there a back door in here?” he asked the wide-eyed girl, there obviously being no point in addressing a sensible question to the sobbing hysterical adults.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes—” the girl began.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What’s the point?” Sunlar wailed. “Morlock can find us wherever we go! Unless you think Iagiawôn can kill him?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth lived on terms of irritable cheerfulness with life, and very few things really made him genuinely angry. But this was one of them. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You snivelling swill-vendor!” he shouted up at Sunlar’s startled tearstained face. “Morlock is risking his life out there for you and your family, even though he probably doesn’t remember your names. And you’re in here hoping the monster who came to take your daughter—your second daughter as I understand it—you’re hoping he fulfills his wish and cuts Morlock open. Well, don’t worry about it. However the fight works out, you won’t have to worry about Morlock coming after you; all those old stories are lies. Go on; get out of here; run as far and as fast as you can. But remember: every day of your life from now on is the gift of Morlock Ambrosius.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He turned away from the family and grabbed a heavy drinking mug molded (badly) from pewter. He ran back into the entryway and saw Morlock was continuing a circling retreat, dodging the occasional sixfold thrust. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth threw the mug as hard as he could at Iagiawôn’s head, hoping it would bash out whatever the insectile thug used for brains. Wyrth was not hampered by any superstitions about fair fighting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Unfortunately, it did worse than no good. Iagiawôn turned slightly to face the flying mug and caught it in his spinning blades; it shattered like glass. One of the larger chunks bounced off Morlock’s knee and he staggered a bit. Iagiawôn gleefully stabbed at him with his sheaf of blades, but Morlock managed to keep his feet and fend off the blades with a sweeping slash, like a reaper mowing glittering deadly stalks of hay.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I told you to get them out!” Morlock shouted to Wyrth past his antagonist.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth hesitated. That meant Morlock thought there was a real likelihood Iagiawôn would win the fight, and Wyrth and the others would be in danger. On the other hand, Wyrth thought he could better Morlock’s odds if he stayed. On the other other hand,Wyrth hadn’t been doing a very good job of helping so far. . . . How many hands was that?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Hands. Suddenly Wyrth realized the importance of something he had noticed earlier. Iagiawôn had six hands, but he couldn’t use them independently. When he moved them, he moved them all in the same way.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He shouted to Morlock in Dwarvish. “Hwaet! Vakt sorn knektan wyruma thledhan; dal sar aknekt ma kapt!” <i>(Hey! The bug has six clever hands but just one stupid head!)</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes,” Morlock said. “Get. Them. Out.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth was about to say they <i>were</i> out when he noticed the innkeeper and his family watching the fight from the doorway just behind him. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Go,” he said, pushing them back. “Go, get out. It’s life or death for you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He led them into the dining hall, each clash of the blades feeling like a thrust through his own heart. But what could he do? If Morlock thought this was worth spending his life on, Wyrth had better make sure it was not for nothing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a clatter that caused him to look over his shoulder. Iagiawôn had leapt up on the counter to rain cuts down at Morlock’s head. The monster must have been confident about the carapace protecting his legs.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But Morlock didn’t attack him directly. The crooked man jumped to one side and shattered the counter itself with a single slash of Tyrfing’s glittering unbreakable blade. Iagiawôn hit the ground rolling on his shoulder—he had a lot of shoulder to roll on—and was almost instantly on his feet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock grabbed a stretch of the shattered counter in his left hand, extended Tyrfing, and stabbed at his enemy. Iagiawôn caught the accursed blade in a sixfold bind. Morlock swung the length of wood he held in his left hand and buried the end of it in Iagiawôn’s skull. The six-armed swordsman slumped to the splinter-strewn floor. He was dead by the time Wyrth ran up to stand by Morlock.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are you all right?” the dwarf said to his craft-master. “That chunk of metal seemed to hit you pretty hard. Sorry about that, by the way.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s all right,” Morlock said. “Wyrth.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Morlock.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“‘Out’ does not mean ‘part way into the next room.’ In case this situation comes up again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How likely is that?” Wyrth shouted back, stung. “More important, how would I carry the news to my father under Thrymhaiam that I ran away while you fought to your death against a six-armed beast?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’d prefer that to seeing you die next to me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But I <i>wouldn’t</i>, and neither would my father, as well you know.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You think too much of your father’s opinion.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And you think too little of it. No, I’ve heard what you said, Master Morlock, and I’ll consider it. You’ll note I obeyed you sufficiently as to be no damn use at all, anyway.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock’s scarred face bent slightly in a one-sided smile. “It’s a start. Let’s haul the meat into the sideyard. If that suits you, Sunlar?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The hosteller and his family had approached tentatively and were eyeing the dead body with interest and some dismay. Sunlar realized he had been addressed and jumped. Morlock repeated his question. Sunlar nodded mutely, and Morlock remarked toWyrth, “I want to have a look at his wrists, at least, before we eat.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They must be ball-and-socket joints, I guess.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Plainly. Though how the musculature attaches is not plain at all, at least to me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Will we have time to make a few incisions?” Wyrth wondered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes.” Morlock gestured at the greasy smoke billowing from the back of the house. “Lunch will be a little late.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sunlar and his wife both shrieked and ran back into the kitchen, calling for Raelio to follow them. She did, reluctantly, keeping an eye on Morlock and Wyrth as they hauled the dead body of the monstrous bravo outside.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>~~~</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Lunch, when it arrived, was more splendid than anything they had ordered. The fish were fresh, caught that very day, Wyrth guessed (from Gar Vindisc’s pricey stream, possibly). The shellback steaks were, the finicky dwarf had to admit, more than passable, and there were several of them. Wyrth kept fending off a stream of offers of expensive wines and exotic beers. But the thrinnel ran like water, and the water ran like more water, and there was nothing murky about it. Dessert was a plate of spicy custards and a bowl of</div><div style="text-align: left;">multicolored fruit, none of which Wyrth recognized but all of which were juicy, tart, and delicious.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock ate sparingly. Killing a man didn’t put him off his appetite, and Iagiawôn was a borderline case anyway, but food was just fuel to Morlock and whenever he stopped being hungry he just stopped eating. Wyrth had more expansive ideas, and finished off whatever Morlock left behind.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Through the meal they discussed how Iagiawôn had been put together. He had clearly been built through a series of surgeries; the network of scars was easy to read in his skin and his bones. By this Kyrkylio, no doubt—a lifemaker who had a dwelling somewhere in the hills north of town, it seemed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This much they discovered by inveigling Raelio in innocent conversation, but she wasn’t much inclined to talk to them. But as Wyrth was in the final stages of his victorious campaign against the magnificent lunch, she</div><div style="text-align: left;">looked straight at Morlock and said, “Is my sister still alive? They took her to the hills. I figure you’d know if she was dead. She was a terrible liar.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth would have said something, but his mouth was full of custard.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock, whose mouth wasn’t, shrugged. “I don’t fight angels over human souls,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“My mother says so.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Who gave your sister to Kyrkylio?” Morlock asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The girl turned away. “No one. No one. The monster, he—he took her. My mother said it was for the best. She said they would leave us alone now.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Why do the townspeople let the monster prey on them?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was part of a deal, a long time ago. The sorcerer he . . . I guess he gave people stuff, things they could never get otherwise.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The shellbacks,” Morlock suggested.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. Yes. I guess so. Other things, too. And they. They wanted to pay him but he wouldn’t. He didn’t want money. This was a long time ago; my mother said so. They said they would let the sorcerer take people once in a while. It was travellers mostly. For a long time it was only travellers. But now no one comes here. So the monster he . . . The sorcerer sends him out and he takes people. And people let him mostly. But you didn’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hadn’t had lunch yet.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re a liar!” the girl shrieked, tears running down her face. “Everyone lies! My mother said . . . about my sister . . . like it didn’t even matter! She’d’a said the same when he took me. When I was gone, as if I was never here. And you. I saw your face. I saw it. You hated him. Like I hated him. And you hit him. Like I wanted to hit him. When he took my sister. I wanted to hit him and hit him and hit him until he’s dead and leaves us alone, just leave us alone, why won’t he leave us alone!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hated him,” Morlock admitted. “It’s a weakness. But now he is dead and my hate is dead.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Mine isn’t,” the girl said through gritted teeth. “I went out to the yard after you were done cutting him, I was so glad you cut him, but I went out afterward and kicked him and kicked him and spit on him and cursed him</div><div style="text-align: left;">and kicked him. But it didn’t matter and now I still hate him. I think it’s because he took my sister and she’s still gone. He didn’t take your sister.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” Morlock agreed. “He didn’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth would have liked to see the late unlamented Iagiawôn try to abduct Morlock’s sister, Ambrosia Viviana, dark eminence behind the imperial throne of Ontil. The ensuing mayhem would have been entertaining to everyone except Iagiawôn. He almost said so, but he had noticed Morlock’s brief responses were getting the girl to talk more thanWyrth’s inveiglements had.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You didn’t say is she dead,” the girl said quietly. “I figure you know because she is such a liar. Her name’s Iuinoe. I love her, but she lies all the time, like about the dance and Vikels’s harp and boys and things.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t know,” Morlock said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Can you find out?” asked the dark-eyed weeping girl. “Can you find out is she dead? My mother says she is, says she must be, but I don’t know. I don’t know. You don’t know. Nobody knows. I want to know. I want her back and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry what I said to her about Vikels’s harp.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I guess we can find out for you, Raelio,” Wyrth said, reading the inevitable in Morlock’s scarred taciturn face. “It’s the least we can do for this splendid lunch.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A passing crow agreed to carry a message to Kyrkylio’s lair in the hills. He knew the place well and enjoyed going there; it was always surrounded by interesting piles of offal that exhibited a pleasing variety of decay. If he were not a crow of few squawks, like Morlock himself, really, he could have expanded in some detail about the odd sorts of carrion Kyrkylio threw out. For instance, there was this one time—</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth agreed hastily that there were times when concision was really the thing. Morlock often had to warn him about running on and boring people with extraneous detail, especially about subjects like carrion, which are really more interesting when they’re actually present.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The crow, not the swiftest bird in the sky, finally took the hint and flew off with the message clutched in his claws. The message proposed a meeting between Morlock and Kyrkylio.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Less than an hour later, a shimmering blue beetle flew in through the doorway of the Traveller’s Rest. It carried in its horns an oath, specific and binding, and a message agreeing to the meeting if the oath was sworn. An ambiguous clause in the oath would have made anyone who swore it subject to Kyrkylio’s control. Morlock struck out the clause, and sent it back via the beetle along with a note, <i>Agree to meet on fair terms or we will meet with no terms. I am Morlock Ambrosius; I will not tell you twice.</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth was skeptical of Morlock’s diplomacy, but when the blue beetle returned it carried a reasonable oath that self-bound the swearer at fearful cost not to harm Kyrkylio while visiting in his lair, except in self-defense. A talimprint interwoven with the text showed that Kyrkylio had already taken an oath swearing not to harm Morlock and Wyrth while they were in his lair except in self-defense.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Too swift; too reasonable,” said Wyrth. “We shouldn’t do this.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But they did, and the eastering sun of midafternoon saw them climbing the slope to Kyrkylio’s hill-cave lair. The adept met them, standing carefully within the shadows over the threshold, but voluble in welcome for the maker he considered his colleague. Wyrth he didn’t so much as glance at, nor waste a word on.</div><div style="text-align: left;">And Kyrkylio was a man of many words, to the extent he was a man at all. He liked to emphasize his words with a dramatic sweep of his long, bristly proboscis, and when he had said something especially decisive he</div><div style="text-align: left;">would clack his horns together—as punctuation or something, Wyrth guessed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">All this, and the spotted golden carapace that adorned his back, and the four arms with their curving clawed fingers, made it hard to think of him as a man. The lower pair of arms seemed more insectile, flexible but armored with yellow chitinous plates. The upper arms were more nearly human, though they were textured with brownish crisscrosses that seemed to have been incised into the scaly pale skin.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The eyes on either side of that buglike nose were pale blue and weary looking, deep in dark sockets. And the adept’s pale sagging cheeks were lined with pain or age (or both). But his voice soared with enthusiasm as he guided Morlock around his cave, rather like a boy showing off his bug collection.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Except in this case it was more like a bug with a boy collection. Anyway, there was an object in a wooden cage that had certainly been a boy at one time, at least in part. But the back of his head had been removed along with its burden of brain. In its place was a forest of yellowish tendrils, each one ending in a red mouthlike opening. The mouths murmured quietly to themselves as the tendrils waved back and forth, but it was not clear that the sounds had any meaning. What had been the boy’s face was as hard and immobile as a piece of wood; there was no life left there.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And here is something that might interest you,” Kyrkylio was saying. He gestured with one of his right arms while the other hung down, slowly clenching and unclenching its insectile fingers. “I developed it as an attachment for poor Iagiawôn.” Wyrth finally managed to tear his eyes away from the adept’s hands and follow his gesture. Morlock was already bemusedly examining the thing; it lay pulsating on a glass tray. It looked like a crown or necklace and it was made chiefly of eyes, strung like beads on a gleaming cable of nerve.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was intended,” Kyrkylio explained, “to give him a complete range of vision and, ideally, let him watch for dangers even when he was asleep. But you inconveniently slew him before I had a chance to perfect the instrument.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Doubt he could have used it,” Morlock said, looking away toward a glass jar or cage that stood on a rickety shelf nearby. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Why do you say so?” Kyrkylio replied, stung in his makerly pride.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Incomplete command of his augmented limbs. A lack of innate capacity maybe. The limbs themselves were well made.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth was fascinated by the struggle in Kyrkylio’s face. It was as if two different people were trying to talk through the same mouth. The face twisted; the mouth issued a rasping quack that was not clearly even intended as a word.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thank you,” Kyrkylio said at last. “Iagiawôn was inadequate in many ways. A merely human brain seems unable to effectively master multiple limbs. They rarely use to advantage the ones they were born with.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth was inclined to agree about the deficiencies of the human brain; he’d encountered few he could cordially respect. But since he was standing next to one of them, he discreetly kept his meat-hole shut. Also, he thought it was interesting that Kyrkylio referred to humanity as a group separate from himself. Was he a man who’d become part bug, or was he a bug who’d grown to resemble a man? The point was moot, perhaps. The speculations whirled within Wyrth like a cyclone, but he resolved not to speak. It was for</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock to pursue these avenues of investigation, for Wyrth to watch and learn from the master.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Hm,” said Morlock, still gazing with interest at the rickety shelf and the glass cage on it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s a big word for you,” cried Wyrth, goaded against his will into speech.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Kyrkylio had not once looked at Wyrth and he didn’t do so now. But he said to Morlock, “I can resect as well as augment, in case your servant’s loquacity troubles you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This was the perfect opportunity for Morlock to engage in some rallying at Wyrth’s expense, but as usual he failed to rise to the occasion. “If you threaten my apprentice again,” Morlock said flatly, “I will hold your oath violated.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Kyrkylio unfolded his wings in vexation, then refolded them. “I meant no threat. Certainly I would rather avoid a conflict, if possible, as I assume you would.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Hm.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You killed my servant Iagiawôn, but I do not resent it. I know your reputation, and no doubt he gave you some cause of offense. Live by the sword; die by the sword. Let me show you—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What are those?” asked Morlock, pointing at the glass cage.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Those. Oh. That. Yes. Well.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth took a closer look at the cage that so fascinated Morlock. Inside it was a cloud of bugs that seemed to consist largely of wings and teeth. They were attacking the inside of the cage and had succeeded in etching the inside of the glass. Behind them, at the bottom of the cage, was a greenish lump of flesh with a single human eye.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That was a failure of mine, I’m afraid,” Kyrkylio said. His lower, more insectile arms reached up and gently caught his upper, more human ones. Wyrth wondered if it was a gesture of concern or contemplation, like a man rubbing his hands together. “I attempted to make a single creature that was a collective of both sessile and motile parts. Unfortunately, the creature whose brain I used for the purpose was most unsuitable. It declined to reproduce and seems to resent me intensely. Periodically I must recage the collective, as the motile rovers eat through the glass. They would do me harm if they could. I could wish I had made their natural defenses a little less, oh, offensive.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Hm.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">By now the lifemaker’s insectile claws had sunk deeply into his more human arms, and a yellowish ichor began to exude from the scaly skin. </div><div style="text-align: left;">“I beg your pardon,” Wyrth said to Kyrkylio, “but you seem to be harming yourself.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What? Oh! That’s nothing. Er—thank you.” The insectile claws retracted suddenly (guiltily?) and Wyrth realized that much of the patterning on Kyrkylio’s skin must be from this sort of self-injury. The lifemaker was a being at war with himself. Wyrth wished he could bring this to his master’s attention somehow, but Morlock was still examining the rickety shelf.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You should fix this,” he observed to Kyrkylio. “If the cage fell and broke, you’d be in a bad way.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes, yes, yes. I have plans to see to it.” The horns clicked irritably.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Kyrkylio showed Morlock a few more of his experiments that once had been men, women, and children and then said, “But I suppose you will be eager to tell me the purpose of your visit. It is pleasant for solitary adepts like you and me to visit and talk shop, but we both have our work to do.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’ve come about a girl you took from the town. Her name is Iuinoe.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m afraid I don’t keep track of my subjects’ names. I give the successful ones new identities, and the others I dispose of.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s a problem.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hope this is not some sort of, well, rescue mission. Our oaths were quite explicit, and I have instrumentalities to protect me if you violate your oath.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I said I’d ask about her. So I’m asking.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well. I’m not really sure I can help you. The adults in town mostly surrender their children to me when they have a choice between that and surrendering themselves, so a lot of girls have passed through here. When was she taken?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t know. She was from the hostelry, though.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh! The one with the sister!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. She has a sister.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Now I know the one you mean. I would have shown her to you, but she isn’t finished yet. Come along; we’ll have a look at her.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Kyrkylio grabbed a lamp with one of his hands and conducted them (or Morlock, really; he still hadn’t looked directly at Wyrth) up a short corridor to a kind of cell. It was lined with glass, like the cage that held the malefic collective being.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Inside the cell was a sort of animal. It looked like a cross between a partially shaven ape and a spider. It had eight legs, except the legs were really arms, and at the end of each was a human hand. The creature’s head was set on a hump in the middle of its back. When it saw them, its eyes gaped wide in fear and horror and it backed away, twisting its head from side to side. Its mouth moved, but Wyrth could not hear the words through the glass cage. It seemed to be saying “Help me!” . . . or perhaps “Kill me!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Now, you will notice,” Kyrkylio said, with professional enthusiasm, “how ineffectively she uses her additional limbs. She has a powerful emotional impetus to cover herself, but how awkwardly her limbs answer to her desire! She really only uses one pair fully; another pair she uses like legs; and the others she hardly uses at all. I’ve tried a number of experiments to train her in their use, but they all failed and now I’m convinced there is a real lack of cerebral capacity for the purpose.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock said nothing, but Kyrkylio hardly noticed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So the next natural step would be to augment her cerebrum, or perhaps add a new one. I’ve tried attaching several external grafts, but she rejected them all—you may be able to see the scar tissue just there at the base of her neck. So my latest thought, since she talks so much of her sister, was to make use of the younger girl. The two brains seem more likely to be complementary. I hope you won’t ask me to reconsider; I’m quite set on the project.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m set against it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well. Perhaps I can find a way to persuade you. Will you be in town long?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Long enough.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“For the sake of collegial relations, I’m willing to suspend this project for a time. I don’t promise to end it, of course: I expect some collegiality in return! But perhaps we can negotiate some sort of agreement.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Maybe,” Morlock said. From his tone Wyrth knew this meant <i>Maybe when the ground gapes wide and swallows the three moons</i>, but Kyrkylio didn’t seem to be aware of it. The lifemaker’s bristly nose-heavy face beamed with professional cordiality, or something.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Kyrkylio escorted them to the exit of his cave, burbling happily about the nightmares he was compounding in its various nooks. As they passed by the rickety shelf, its glass cage buzzed with the attacks of the vengeful collective within.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I can remove that for you,” Morlock said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“As a gesture of good faith?” Kyrkylio seemed taken by the idea, yet also reluctant. “That’s very collegial of you. Very collegial indeed. I must say, I don’t know how all those horrible stories about you got started.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock shrugged. “I would take it out of here. That’s all. You’re in danger from it every moment, you know.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know. But I hate to give up on a project, even when I know it’s failed.” Kyrkylio looked at the glass cage with longing and hatred. His insectile limbs started clawing at his human ones again, but in the throes of making his decision, he didn’t seem to be aware of it. “All right,” he said suddenly. “Please take it away. I’ll be grateful to you for it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Eh,” Morlock said, and picked the glass cage up from the sagging shelf. The eye in the greenish fleshy mound looked sharply at him through the etched glass, then sharply at Kyrkylio. The vicious rovers redoubled their attacks on the glass wall.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Now,” said the weevilly lifemaker as they reached the threshold of the cave, “I decline to annul my oath, and I hope you’ll do the same. It’s a good foundation for a collegial alliance, I think. We’ll visit again soon, and perhaps I can change your mind about my little project.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock said nothing to this; instead, he and Wyrth walked out of the cave into the blue of gloaming. Kyrkylio stood on the far side of the threshold and watched them for a moment, then turned back toward the inner cave.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When Morlock had taken three strides away from the cave threshold he turned and tossed the glass cage back into the lifemaker’s lair.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The cage shattered with a satisfying crash. It was followed by Kyrkylio’s shriek, “Your oath! Your oath! I invoke it!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m not in your cave, Kyrkylio,” Morlock called. “Nor am I harming you. Reach an agreement with your failed project.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">From where they stood, the maker and his apprentice could see the battle between the lifemaker and the life he had made, or marred. The fierce little rovers were chewing through Kyrkylio’s winged carapace. He could not reach them with either set of arms, his horns, or his proboscis, though he tried with all of them. He smashed his back against the walls of his cave, against tables in his workshop, and he did succeed in smashing some of the rovers as they fed on him. But others made it through his shell, and soon they were safe</div><div style="text-align: left;">inside the lifemaker’s body. He shrieked in horror and pain and something like ecstasy as they tore through him, and finally his body fell across his own threshold, twitching and fluttering its wings uselessly. Presently it grew still. Moments later, amid a burst of yellowish ichor, a cloud of rovers emerged from the cavities where Kyrkylio’s eyes had been. The lifemaker was dead. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The cloud of ichor-stained rovers hovered in midair, looking out of the cave at Morlock and Wyrth. The dwarf was wondering if they shouldn’t retreat, lest they become the next item on the rovers’ menu. But they suddenly turned away and descended on the ruins of the glass cage.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Going back home? Wyrth wondered. Where else did they have to go?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock stepped over the corpse on the threshold and Wyrth hesitantly followed him. As he did, he saw what the rovers were doing. They were attacking the greenish lump with the human eye—the sessile portion of their collective self, if Wyrth had understood the now-dead lifemaker.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Suddenly, as one, the rovers ceased to move. The half-eaten fleshy lump was also still.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Suicide,” Morlock said. “Its vengeance on Kyrkylio was complete and it had nothing else to live for.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth nodded slowly, and then he said, “God Sustainer. There’s a whole cave of things like that in here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes, we have work to do. Go down to the Travellers’ Rest and get our backpacks. Tell them as little as you can.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth gaped at him for a moment. The crooked man opened his hands and waited. Wyrth finally took the hint. He ran out of the cave and sprinted down the hill. When he returned, Morlock had already begun the long grim task before them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>~~~</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A few days later, lost children and strangers began to wander down from the hills into the half-empty town of Boulostreion. All were seamed with scars where they had been patched together by Morlock Ambrosius and his apprentice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Some said this was the vengeance of the Evil One on them for accepting the wicked bargain with the slain lifemaker, and some said it was a trick of Morlock’s for his own amusement. Some waited anxiously for the return of their lost ones; some feared it, and the attendant explanations of why they had been sacrificed for the good of others. Not every family who had lost someone was blessed or cursed by a return, but once again there were two daughters under the roof at the Travellers’ Rest.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">One day, without talking to anyone else in her family, Raelio put aside her morning’s work and walked up into the terror-haunted hills. Few walked there still, because Morlock was now known to be living in the lair of the lifemaker he had killed and dragged to hell. But Raelio was not afraid of Morlock, because she knew they hated the same things.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Long before she saw the cave she knew where it was: there was a tall column of greasy black smoke rising like an accusing finger at the sky. She figured that was the place, and it was.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When she arrived there she saw that Morlock and Wyrth were burning things. The cave inside was bare, as far as she could see. Their backpacks were lying on the hill, laced up and ready for travel.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re going home,” she said accusingly to the crooked man’s shoulders.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He turned and looked at her with his cold gray eyes. “I have no home,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ah,” she said, after some thought of Travellers’ Rest, and the strange silences there these days, “a home’s not so great, I guess.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He shrugged.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re leaving, anyway. Not staying and taking over Kyrkylio’s business. People say you are, but they’re liars, I guess.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They’re wrong, anyway. You can tell them.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I tell them all the time, only they never listen. Listen, Iuinoe—she says . . . she said you should kill her, but you didn’t kill her.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock shrugged.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I guess you don’t say much. Anyway. I wanted to say. Thanks for not killing her. She was talking like she was going to kill herself for a while, but now I don’t think she’s going to. Not totally sure, anyway.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was hard for her,” the dwarf said. “We can’t even guess how horrible it was. Remember that, and help her all you can.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Wyrth shrugged uneasily and looked at his master. Morlock opened his hands and turned away to shoulder his backpack. The dwarf stared after him, then followed to do the same.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Goodbye,” she said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Take care of yourself,” Morlock said and walked away. Wyrth followed him, waving to her in farewell. They hadn’t gone twenty paces before the dwarf started talking about something, but Morlock didn’t seem to answer. She stood beside the greasy stinking fire and watched them go until they disappeared beyond the shoulder of a hill. Then she turned around and went reluctantly home to the Travellers’ Rest.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://pyrsf.blogspot.com/2010/12/free-epub-novelette-celebrates.html">Travellers' Rest</a> © <a href="http://www.jamesenge.com/">James Enge</a> </div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <span style="font-family: GaramondThree; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: GaramondThree; font-size: small;"><a href="http://www.chucklukacs.com/">Chuck Lukacs</a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt7sRBksJrqdDpfxVEOY2UZuyH_wYdvgNFJ6agiYJQijrGzmd8AwVEcNNZcKwh3QJ6BoMEJoczF1PunUo_tbRJ2OkiITfQkvnwT2ktKhS6HObx5BsV88FU19ZNgU2-gsa7WakjOJfGcSw/s1600/Enge%2526Constantine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjt7sRBksJrqdDpfxVEOY2UZuyH_wYdvgNFJ6agiYJQijrGzmd8AwVEcNNZcKwh3QJ6BoMEJoczF1PunUo_tbRJ2OkiITfQkvnwT2ktKhS6HObx5BsV88FU19ZNgU2-gsa7WakjOJfGcSw/s320/Enge%2526Constantine.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b>ABOUT THE AUTHOR</b></span></span><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>James Enge</b> lives with his children in northwest Ohio, where he teaches classics at a medium-sized public university. His short fiction has appeared in <i>Swords & Dark Magic</i> (Eos, 2010), in the magazine <i>Black Gate</i>, and elsewhere. His novels are <i>Blood of Ambrose </i>(Pyr, 2009), which was nominated for a 2010 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and listed on <i>Locus</i> magazine’s Recommended Reading for 2009, <i>This Crooked Way</i> (Pyr, 2009), and <i>The Wolf Age</i> (Pyr, 2010). Visit him online at <a href="http://www.jamesenge.com/">http://www.jamesenge.com/</a>.</div><b></b><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="border: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhA-n5IW4aOdt_6H4FsRor_Ynz32wq6GMQ20TKfQ5nxvcdQwzccxp13Usgru7tsC4YSPZecUFfow0uMK98Ya_IOSEkmUOjUZmkvkX6oRIPuoCc46OHb819zCEborTqHi2RBQVUk0hJ8Q0/s1600/Chuck1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" n4="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhA-n5IW4aOdt_6H4FsRor_Ynz32wq6GMQ20TKfQ5nxvcdQwzccxp13Usgru7tsC4YSPZecUFfow0uMK98Ya_IOSEkmUOjUZmkvkX6oRIPuoCc46OHb819zCEborTqHi2RBQVUk0hJ8Q0/s320/Chuck1.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times;"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><b>ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR</b></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Chuck Lukacs</b> has been illustrating for the science fiction and fantasy gaming markets for over twelve years. In 1993 he graduated from the College for Creative Studies, Detroit, Michigan, and has also spent a number of years studying the crafts of ceramics, book arts, and wood engraving. His clients have included Impact Books, Pyr/Prometheus Books, Wizards of the Coast, Paizo, Upper Deck, Games Workshop, Atlantic Records, and Alderac Entertainment. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Chuck’s paintings and prints have appeared and won awards in fine art and science fiction & fantasy conventions, galleries, and museums across the globe. He has been featured in <i>Spectrum 7, ImagineFX</i> (June 2010), and <i>Fantasy Art</i> magazine (Peking University), and has authored two fantasy art tutorial books: <i>Wreaking Havoc</i> (2007) and <i>Fantasy Genesis</i> (2010). Check out his website, <a href="http://www.chucklukacs.com/">http://www.chucklukacs.com/</a>, for more info.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>ABOUT THE PUBLISHER</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b>Pyr</b> is the science fiction and fantasy imprint of Prometheus Books. Prometheus Books took its name from the courageous Greek god who gave fire to humans, lighting the way to reason, intelligence, and independence. <i>Pyr</i>, the Greek word for fire, continues this connection to fire and the liveliness of imagination. From the outset, Pyr has set the bar high for creativity, intelligence, and quality. To find out more about Pyr and its exciting authors and novels, visit <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/">http://www.pyrsf.com/</a>.<b><br />
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</div></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com154tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-69460486558922387252010-11-23T14:32:00.000-06:002010-11-23T14:32:48.011-06:00The Cardinal's Blades by Pierre Pevel<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFzZdtVx9dVfTK4SNPBWq1gkbvLQRKCFvYu9bvZgzn3nJvb4a3w2w426fHd27Hej2Jtdwff_fvOM1fKU9GkfTk_erNBG_hAbHZQ3odNmfNWONMOZGSXZE7UBbtpYPhesr7VYrSgdrKyM/s1600/cardinal%2527s+blades_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFzZdtVx9dVfTK4SNPBWq1gkbvLQRKCFvYu9bvZgzn3nJvb4a3w2w426fHd27Hej2Jtdwff_fvOM1fKU9GkfTk_erNBG_hAbHZQ3odNmfNWONMOZGSXZE7UBbtpYPhesr7VYrSgdrKyM/s320/cardinal%2527s+blades_cover.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews calls <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/CardinalsBlades.html">The Cardinal's Blades</a></strong></em> “A fast-moving story, full of action, intrigue, and swashbuckling adventures.”<br />
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Pornokitsch.com says it's “…a wildly entertaining read with delightfully broken characters. Were I ten again, I'd be running around the park with sticks, pretending to be the half-dragon Saint-Lucq. ...this is a book of swashbuckling excess, and should be celebrated as such.”<br />
</div>“[Pierre] Pevel…makes a stunning English-language debut with this breathless, swashbuckling tale of intrigue, spying, and swordfights… Pevel's adventure is…likely to charm Anglophone audiences who enjoy action-packed adventure with a true historical sensibility.”<br />
--<em>Publishers Weekly</em> starred review<br />
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Decide for yourself. Read an excerpt now:<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Cardinal's Blades </span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Pierre Pevel</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Translated by Tom Clegg</span></strong><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><strong>I</strong></div><strong></strong><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><strong>A CALL TO ARMS</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>1</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Long and high-ceilinged, the room was lined with elegantly gilded and bound books which shone with a russet gleam in the half-light of the candle flames. Outside, beyond the thick red velvet curtains, Paris slept</div><div style="text-align: left;">beneath a starry sky and a deep tranquillity had settled on the dusky streets which penetrated even here, where the scratching of a quill barely troubled the silence. Thin, bony and pale, the hand which held the quill traced fine, tight writing, delicate yet steady, making neither mistakes nor blots. The quill paused regularly to take a fresh load from the inkwell. It was guided with precision and, as soon as it returned to the paper, continued to scratch out an unhesitating thread of thought. Nothing else moved. Not even the scarlet dragonnet which, curled in a ball, its muzzle tucked under its wing, slept peacefully by the thick leather blotter.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Someone knocked at the door.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The hand wrote on without pause but the dragonnet, disturbed, opened one emerald eye. A man entered wearing a sword and a fitted cape of red silk blazoned, on each of its four panels, with a white cross. His head was respectfully uncovered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes?” said Cardinal Richelieu, continuing to write.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He is here, Your Eminence.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Alone?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“As you instructed.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Good. Send him in.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Master Saint-Georges, Captain of His Eminence’s Guards, bowed. He was about to withdraw when the cardinal added: “And spare him the guards.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Saint-Georges understood, bowed again, and took care to close the door silently as he left.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Before being received in the cardinal’s apartment visitors normally had to pass through five rooms throughout which guards were stationed on continuous watch, day and night. All carried a sword at their side and pistol in their belt, remaining alert to the slightest hint of danger and refusing to let anyone pass without a direct order to that effect. Nothing escaped their scrutiny, which could shift at a moment’s notice from merely probing to actively threatening. Wearing their celebrated capes, these men belonged to the company of His Eminence’s Guards. They escorted him everywhere he went, and wherever he resided there were never less than sixty men to accompany him. Those not on duty in the corridors and antechambers killed time between their rounds, their short muskets always near to hand. And the Guards were not the only troops detailed to protect Richelieu: while they ensured his safety inside, a company of musketeers patrolled outside.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This constant vigilance was not a simple, ostentatious show of force. They had good reason to guard him; even here in the heart of Paris, in the ornamental palace the cardinal had built just a few steps from the Louvre.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At forty-eight years old, Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de Richelieu was one of the most powerful men, and one of the most threatened, of his time. A duke and peer of the realm, member of the Council, and principal minister to His Majesty; he had the ear of Louis XIII—with whom he had ruled France for a decade. That alone accounted for the numerous adversaries he reckoned with, the least of whom only plotted to disgrace him, while others made detailed plans for his assassination—for if the cardinal were forced into exile he could still act from abroad, and if imprisoned there was always the possibility of his escape. Such plots had come close to succeeding in the past, and new ones were no doubt being prepared. Richelieu had to guard himself against all those who hated him out of jealousy, because of his influence over</div><div style="text-align: left;">the king. But he also had to be wary of attacks orchestrated by the enemies of France, the first and foremost being Spain, and her Court of Dragons. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was about to strike midnight.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sleepy dragonnet heaved a tired sigh.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s very late, isn’t it?” the cardinal said, addressing the small winged reptile with an affectionate smile.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He looked drawn himself, both from fatigue and illness, on this spring night in 1633.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Normally he would have been in bed soon. He would sleep a little if his insomnia, his migraines, and the pain in his limbs allowed it. And especially if no one woke him with urgent news requiring orders to be drawn up hastily, or worse still, a meeting in the dead of night. No matter what occurred, he rose at two in the morning and was promptly surrounded by his secretaries. After quick ablutions, he would eat a few mouthfuls of broth and then work until six o’clock. Then perhaps he would allow himself one or two hours of additional sleep, before beginning the most challenging part of the day—the rounds of ministers and secretaries of state, ambassadors and courtiers. But tonight, Cardinal Richelieu had not yet finished with the affairs of France.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">* * *</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Hinges squeaked at the other end of the library, then a firm step sounded against the parquet floor, followed by a clatter of spurs, as Cardinal Richelieu reread the report he intended to present to the king concerning the proposed policies against Lorraine. Incongruous at this hour and echoing loudly beneath the library’s painted ceiling, the growing noise woke the dragonnet. Unlike its master, it raised its head to see who had arrived.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was a gentleman, his features marked by long service in times of war. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Large, energetic, still strong despite his years, he had high boots on his feet, and carried his hat in his hand and his rapier at his side. He wore a grey doublet slashed with red and matching hose the cut of which was as austere as the fabric itself. His closely trimmed beard was the same silver-grey as his hair. It covered much of his severe-looking face, rendered gaunt by battle and long hours of riding, and perhaps also by old regrets and sadness. His bearing was martial, assured, proud, almost provocative. His gaze was that of a man who would never look away first. And he wore a tarnished steel ring on his left hand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Letting a silence settle, Richelieu finished his perusal of the report while his visitor waited. He initialled the last page, sanded it to help the ink dry, and then blew the grains away. They rose into the air, tickling the dragonnet’s nostrils. The little reptile sneezed, raising a smile on the cardinal’s thin lips.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Apologies, Petit-Ami,” he murmured to it. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And finally acknowledging the man, he said: “A moment, if you will?” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He rang a small bell.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The chimes summoned the faithful and indefatigable Charpentier, who had served His Eminence in the capacity of private secretary for twenty-five years. Richelieu gave him the initialled report.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Before I present it before His Majesty tomorrow, I want Père Joseph to read it and add those biblical references which His Majesty likes so much and serve the cause of France so well.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Charpentier bowed and departed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The King is very pious,” the cardinal explained.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then, speaking as if his guest had only just arrived: “Welcome, Captain La Fargue.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Captain?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s your rank, isn’t it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was, before my commission was taken from me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We wish that you return to service.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“As of now?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. Did you have something better to do?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was an opening sally, and Richelieu predicted that there would be more to follow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A captain must command a company,” said La Fargue.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Or a troop, at the very least, which may be more modest in size. You shall reclaim yours.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was dispersed, thanks to the good care and attention of Your Eminence.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">That comment raised a spark in the cardinal’s eye. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Find your men. These letters, intended for them, are ready to be sent.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They may not all answer the call.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Those who respond will suffice. They were the best, and they should still be. It has not been so long . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Five years.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“. . . and you are free to recruit others,” Richelieu continued without permitting an interruption. “Besides, my reports indicate that, despite my orders, you have not severed all of your connections with them.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The old gentleman blinked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I see that the competence of Your Eminence’s spies has not faltered in the least.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I believe there are few things concerning you of which I am unaware, captain.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His hand poised on the pommel of his sword, Captain Etienne-Louis de La Fargue took a moment to think. He stared straight ahead, over the cardinal’s head who, from his armchair, observed him with patient interest.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So, captain, you accept?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It depends.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Feared because he was influential and all the more influential because he was feared, Cardinal Richelieu could ruin a destiny with a stroke of his quill or, just as easily, propel a career toward greatness. He was believed to be a man who would crush all those who opposed him. It was a significant exaggeration but as he himself was fond of saying, “His Eminence has no enemies other than those of the State. But toward them, he is utterly without mercy.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Cold as marble, the cardinal hardened his tone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is it not enough for you, captain, to know that your king recalls you to his service?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The man unflinchingly found and held the cardinal’s gaze.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, monseigneur, it is not enough.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">After a pause, he added: “Or rather, it’s not enough anymore.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">For a long moment, nothing but the hissing breathing of the dragonnet could be heard beneath the rich panelling of the Palais-Cardinal’s great library. The conversation between the two men had taken a bad turn, with one of them still seated and the other standing, each taking the measure of the other, until La Fargue gave in. But he did not lower his gaze. Instead he lifted it, looking straight ahead again and focusing on a precious tapestry behind the cardinal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are you demanding guarantees, captain?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“In that case, I’m afraid I do not understand you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I want to say, monseigneur, that I demand nothing. One does not demand that which one is due.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ah.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">La Fargue was playing a dangerous game, opposing the man said to be in greater command of France than the king himself. His Eminence knew that not all battles were won by force of arms. As the old soldier stood at unwavering attention, no doubt ready to be incarcerated in the deepest, grimmest prison for the remainder of his days, or swiftly dispatched to fight savages in the West Indies, Richelieu leaned on the table and, with a gnarled index finger, scratched the dragonnet’s head.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The reptile closed its eyes and sighed with pleasure.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Petit-Ami was given to me by His Majesty,” said the cardinal in a conversational tone. “It was he who named it, and it seems these creatures become accustomed very quickly to their nicknames. . . . In any case, it expects me to feed it and care for it. And I have never failed in that, just as I have never failed to serve the interests of France. Nevertheless, if I suddenly deprived it of my care, it would not take Petit-Ami long to bite me. And this, without any consideration for the kindnesses I had lavished upon it previously. . . . There’s a lesson to remember here, don’t you think?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The question was rhetorical. Leaving the dragonnet to its slumber, Richelieu sank back into the cushions of his armchair, cushions which he piled on in a vain attempt to ease the pangs of his rheumatism.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He grimaced, waiting until the pain lessened before continuing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know, captain, that not so long ago I let you down. You and your men served me well. In view of your previous successes and your value, was your disgrace justified? Of course not. It was a political necessity. I grant you that your efforts were not entirely unworthy and that the failure of your delicate mission during the siege of La Rochelle was in no way your fault. But considering the tragic turn taken by the events in which you were involved, the French Crown could do nothing but disown you. It was necessary to save face and condemn you for what you had done, secretly, by our order. You had to be sacrificed, even if it heaped dishonour upon the death of one of your men.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">La Fargue agreed, but it cost him to do so.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Political necessity,” he said in a resigned tone while his thumb rubbed the steel signet ring against the inside of his fist.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Suddenly seeming very tired, the cardinal sighed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Europe is at war, captain. The Holy Roman Empire has known nothing but fire and blood for the last fifteen years, and France will no doubt soon be drawn into the fighting there. The English threaten our coasts and the Spanish our borders. When she is not taking up arms against us, Lorraine welcomes all the seditious elements in the kingdom with open arms while the queen mother plots against the king from Brussels. Revolts blossom in our provinces and those who foment and lead them are often placed at the highest levels of the State. I shall not even mention the secret factions, often funded from abroad, whose intrigues extend all the way into the Louvre.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Richelieu looked La Fargue firmly in the eye.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I cannot always choose the weapons I employ, captain.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a long silence, and then the cardinal spoke again: “You seek neither fortune nor glory. And in truth, I can promise you neither. You can rest assured that I am as ready now as yesterday to sacrifice your honour or your life if reasons of State demand it. . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This frank admission surprised the captain, who raised a skeptical eyebrow and returned Richelieu’s gaze.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But do not refuse the hand I extend to you, captain. You are not one of those who shirk their duty, and soon the kingdom will have great need of a man like you. A man capable of gathering together and commanding honest, courageous, and expert swordsmen, adept at acting swiftly and secretly, and</div><div style="text-align: left;">above all, who will kill without remorse and die without regret in the service of the king. Captain, would you still be wearing your signet ring if you were not the man I believe you to be?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">La Fargue could not answer, but for the cardinal the business had been settled.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You and your men liked to call yourselves the ‘Cardinal’s Blades,’ I seem to recall. The name was never whispered lightly amongst the enemies of France. For that reason, among others, it pleased me. Keep it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“With all the respect that I owe you, monseigneur, I have not yet said yes.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Richelieu stared at the old man for a long time, his thin angular face expressing only coldness. Then he rose from his armchair, opened a curtain a little to look outside and said carelessly: “And if I said it could affect your daughter?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Suddenly growing pale, and visibly shaken, La Fargue turned his head toward the cardinal who seemed absorbed in the contemplation of the nighttime garden.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“My . . . daughter? . . . But I don’t have a daughter, monseigneur—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You know very well that you do. And I know it as well. . . . But don’t be alarmed. The secret of her existence is one guarded by a few trustworthy people. I believe that even your Blades are unaware of the truth, is that not so?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The captain surrendered, abandoning a battle he had already lost.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is she . . . in danger?” he asked him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At that moment Richelieu knew he had won. His back still turned to La Fargue, he hid a smile.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You shall understand soon,” he said. “For now, gather your Blades in preparation to receive the details of your first mission. I promise you that these shall not be long in coming.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And at last rewarding La Fargue with a glance over his shoulder, he added: “Good night, captain.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>2</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Agnès de Vaudreuil woke with a scream in her throat, her eyes wide and filled with the terrors which haunted her every night. She had sat up in a panic, and remained dazed for a moment watching the shadows around her bed. She was forced to wait while the furious pace of her heart slowed. Wait until her breathing, almost panting, finally calmed. Wait for the sour sweat to dry on her skin.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The terror left her little by little, with regret, like a pack of dogs frustrated not to have triumphed over their wounded yet tenacious prey.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The young woman sighed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A peaceful silence reigned inside as much as it did without, a clear shimmering light falling from the cloud-flecked sky and through the open window as far as the four-poster bed. Elegant and spacious, the room was richly furnished, decorated with heavy hangings, valuable miniatures, delicately painted woodwork, and gilded moldings. A certain disarray disturbed this tableau of luxury, however. A chair had toppled over. A man’s hat perched at a jaunty angle atop an antique statuette. Candles had burned down into wax stalagmites</div><div style="text-align: left;">clinging to the candlesticks. The remains of a fine supper stood on an inlaid table and an assortment of clothes were strewn across the carpet. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Leaning forward, Agnès pulled her knees up under the bedclothes, leaned her elbows on them, and slid her fingers through her thick hair, running them from the front to the back of her skull. Then she slowly raised her head, letting the palms of her hands smooth her cheeks. She felt better but the fear was only postponed, not gone for good. The pack would return, always hungry and perhaps more ferocious than ever. There was nothing to do but accept it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And live.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Agnès pulled herself together.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She rose without disturbing the man sleeping beside her, pulling a rumpled sheet with her and wrapping herself in it. Taller and considerably thinner and more muscular than her peers, who took care to remain plump in order to entice men, she was not, however, without charm. She had an elegance of gesture, a</div><div style="text-align: left;">nobility of movement, and a severe and savage kind of beauty, provocative and almost haughty, which promised failure to any who attempted to conquer her. Thick with ample curls, her long black hair framed a slender but forceful face and underlined her paleness. Her full, dark lips seldom smiled. Nor did her emerald green eyes, in which burned a cold flame. Had they shown any sign of joy, she would have been, all in all, absolutely radiant.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her left fist holding the cloth tight against her chest, Agnès trampled over the dress and the ruffled underskirts she had worn the day before. Her white stockings still sheathed her long legs. With her free hand she lifted and shook a number of wine bottles before finding one that wasn’t empty. She poured the dregs into a glass and carried it to the window, letting the warm May breeze caress her. From the first floor she had a view over the courtyard of her manor and the surrounding countryside, reaching as far as the distant glimmer of the Oise river. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Agnès sipped her wine and waited for dawn to come.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">By daybreak the sheet had slipped a little, revealing a mark on her shoulder blade—a mark which worried some of her lovers and prompted a few to comment that Agnès had something of a witch about her. Remaining at the window, she toyed distractedly with a signet ring she wore around her neck. The jewel, set in tarnished steel, was etched with a Greek cross with arms capped by fleur-de-lis, and crossed by a rapier. Agnès heard the man rise from the bed behind her. She released the ring and thought of covering her shoulder but didn’t turn as he dressed and left the room without a word. She saw him appear in the courtyard and wake the coachman sleeping beneath the harnessed carriage. The whip cracked, the horses snorted, shaking their heads, and the vehicle of this already forgotten gentleman was soon nothing</div><div style="text-align: left;">more than a cloud of dust on the stony road.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Life soon began to stir in the manor, as the surrounding village bell towers signalled the first mass of the day. Agnès de Vaudreuil finally left the window when she saw a valet taking orders from the ostler outside the stable. She performed a rapid toilette and hastily braided her long hair. She changed her stockings, did up her breeches, pulled on a wide-collared shirt, and, over it, an old red leather corset. She chose her best riding boots, then belted on the baldric and sheathed rapier which hung by the door.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The blade had been made for her especially, forged in Toledo from the best steel. She unsheathed it to admire its perfect straightness, its beautiful shine, its suppleness and keen edge. She sketched a few feints, parries, and ripostes. Finally, with her thumb, she made a spike as long as her hand spring from the pommel, fine and sharp-edged like a Florentine dagger, which she admired with an almost loving gleam in her eye.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>3</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">On its completion, the Palais-Cardinal would comprise a splendid main building, with two long wings, two courtyards, and an immense garden which stretched between rue de Richelieu and rue des Bons-Enfants. But in 1633, it was still little more than the original Hôtel d’Angennes, acquired nine years earlier, although its new, illustrious owner, determined to have a residence in Paris appropriate to his station, was busy having it enlarged and embellished. He was so determined, in fact, that when he was put in charge of the city’s new fortifications he seized the opportunity to extend his domain into the vast area which the old ramparts had occupied, rebuilding the walls further to the west from the Saint-Denis gate to the new gate of La Conférence. The capital gained as much as the cardinal from this enlargement: new streets were laid out and new districts were born where only wasteland and ditches had existed before, including the creation of a </div><div style="text-align: left;">renowned horse market and the beginnings of the neighbourhoods of Montmartre and Saint-Honoré. But Richelieu was condemned to live with the builders a while longer in the Hôtel d’Angennes. The imposing façade of his palace, on rue de Saint-Honoré, would still take years to complete.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Thus it was that, at eight o’clock in the morning, Ensign Arnaud de Laincourt entered the Palais-Cardinal by passing beneath a large scaffold which was already loaded with workmen. The musketeers who had just</div><div style="text-align: left;">opened the wrought-iron gates recognised him and gave him a military salute to which he responded before entering the guard room. This area, with its one hundred and eighty square metres of floor space and its monumental chimney, was where ordinary visitors waited to be summoned. There were already a score of them in attendance, but above all the room was crawling with men in red capes, as it was here that guards who had ensured the safety of His Eminence all night were relieved by those who, like Laincourt, had arrived to take their shift. Rows of muskets—loaded and ready to fire—were arranged on the racks. The light fell from high south-facing windows and conversations blended into a hubbub which echoed beneath the wainscoting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Slender and athletic, Arnaud de Laincourt was approaching thirty. He had dark eyebrows, crystalline blue eyes, a straight nose, smoothly shaven cheeks, and pale skin. His fine features had a strange charm, youthful yet wise. It was easier to imagine him studying philosophy at the Sorbonne than wearing the uniform of the cardinal’s horse guards. Nevertheless, he carried the plumed felt hat and the white gloves, and wore the cape blazoned with a cross, along with the sword hanging from the regulation leather baldric which crossed his chest from his left shoulder. Moreover, as an ensign he was an officer—a junior officer according to the military hierarchy then in force, but an officer nonetheless, and one who was promised a lieutenancy, so highly did Richelieu regard him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He was saluted again and, as was his habit, he courteously returned the salute with a personal reserve which discouraged idle chatter. Then he took one of the small books known as sextodecimos from his russet red leather doublet and, intending to read, went to lean against a pillar close to two guards sitting by a pedestal table. The youngest, Neuvelle, was only just twenty-six and had not been with the guards for more than a few weeks. His companion, on the other hand, was turning grey. He was called Brussand, was a good forty years of age, and had served with the Cardinal’s Guards since the formation of the company seven years earlier.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Still,” said Neuvelle in a lowered voice, “I would love to know who the man His Eminence received in such secrecy last night was. And why.” </div><div style="text-align: left;">When Brussand, leaning on the card table, did not react, the young man insisted: “Think about the fact that he did not pass through the antechambers. The musketeers who guard the little gate were ordered to do nothing but announce his arrival, and not ask questions. All the other guards were kept away. And it was Captain Saint-Georges in person who escorted him to the cardinal’s apartments and accompanied him back!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Our orders,” Brussand finally replied, without raising his eyes from his game of patience, “were to be deaf and blind to all that concerned this gentleman. You should not have watched the doors.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Neuvelle shrugged.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Pff. . . . What harm did I do? . . . And anyway, I only caught a brief glimpse of a silhouette in the corner of a very dark corridor. He could have shook hands with me without my recognising him.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Brussand, still absorbed by his game, smoothed his salt-and-pepper moustache without comment, then with an air of satisfaction laid the wyvern of spades, which had appeared at the opportune moment, upon the previously troublesome knave of hearts.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“All these mysteries intrigue me,” Neuvelle blurted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They shouldn’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
“Really? And why is that?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Although he gave no sign, Brussand, unlike his young companion, had noticed Laincourt’s discreet arrival.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Would you explain it to him, monsieur de Laincourt?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Certainly, monsieur de Brussand.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Neuvelle watched Laincourt, who turned a page and said: “Accept that there are secrets into which it is better not to pry, nor even to pretend to have stumbled across. It can prove to be harmful. To your career, of course. But also to your health.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You mean to say that—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. I mean to say exactly that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Neuvelle mustered a weak smile.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Go on! You’re trying to frighten me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Precisely. And for your own good, believe me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But I’m a member of the Guards!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This time, Laincourt lifted his eyes from his book. And smiled.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Neuvelle wore his scarlet cape with a mixture of confidence and pride, convinced, not without reason, that he was protected to the same degree that he had been promoted. Because he entrusted his life to them, Richelieu chose all his guards personally. He wanted them to be gentlemen of at least twenty-five years in age, and required most of them to have served for three years in the army. Perfectly trained and equipped, subjected to an iron discipline, they were a company of elite horsemen. The cardinal preferred them by far to</div><div style="text-align: left;">the company of musketeers—foot soldiers—that he also maintained and which recruited professional soldiers from the ranks of ordinary folk. And he rewarded his guards for their devotion by extending his protection to them in turn.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">However . . .</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“To be in the Guards, Neuvelle, is an honour which particularly exposes you to dangers that the common run of people do not even suspect—or which they exaggerate, which amounts to the same thing. We are like the fire dogs before a hearth which holds an eternal flame. This blazing fire is the cardinal. We defend him, but if you draw too near, you risk being burned. Serve His Eminence faithfully. Die for him if circumstances require it. Nevertheless, only listen to what he wishes you to hear. See only that which you are given to see. Guess only at what you are supposed to understand. And be quick to forget the rest.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His tirade complete, Laincourt peacefully returned to his reading.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He believed the matter was settled, but still Neuvelle persisted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But you—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The ensign frowned.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I mean . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Searching for words, Neuvelle’s eyes implored for help from Brussand, who rewarded him with a black look in reply. The young guard suddenly understood that he had ventured into territory which was delicate, if not dangerous. He would have given a great deal to have been suddenly transported elsewhere and was very relieved when Laincourt chose another target.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Monsieur de Brussand, have you spoken to monsieur de Neuvelle about me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The interested party shrugged his shoulders, as though excusing himself.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re often bored, when we’re on guard.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And what have you said?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“On my word, I said what everyone says.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Which is?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Brussand took a breath.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Which is that you had intended to become a lawyer, before the cardinal noticed you. That you joined the ranks of his personal secretaries. That he soon entrusted you with confidential missions. That on one of these missions you left France for two years and, when you returned, you took the cape and the rank of ensign. There. That’s everything.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ah . . .” said Arnaud de Laincourt without betraying any emotion.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a silence in which he seemed to reflect on what he had heard.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Finally, with a vague glance, he nodded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Laincourt returned to his reading while Neuvelle found other things to do elsewhere and Brussand began a new game of patience. A few minutes passed, and then the veteran guard blurted out: “To you, and you alone, Laincourt, I would say—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What is it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know who His Eminence received last night. I saw his outline as he was leaving, and I recognised him. His name is La Fargue.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This name means nothing to me,” said Laincourt.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“At one time, he commanded a troop of highly trusted men and carried out secret missions on the cardinal’s behalf. They were called, in a whisper, the Cardinal’s Blades. Then there was some nasty business during the siege of La Rochelle. I don’t know the details but it brought about the disappearance of the Blades. Until last night, I had believed they were permanently disbanded. But now—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Arnaud de Laincourt closed his book.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The same prudent advice I gave to Neuvelle also applies to us,” he said. “Let us forget all of that. Without doubt we shall be better off for having done so.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Brussand, thoughtful, nodded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. You are right. As always.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At that moment, Captain Saint-Georges summoned Laincourt. Cardinal Richelieu wished to go to the Louvre with his entourage, and his escort needed to be prepared. Saint-Georges was taking command and Laincourt, in his capacity as an officer, was to watch over the cardinal’s palace during his absence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>4</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Two coaches sat at some distance from each other in a meadow by the road to Paris. Three elegant gentlemen surrounded the marquis de Brévaux by the first coach while, by the second, the vicomte d’Orvand paced alone. He went backward and forward, sometimes stopping to watch the road and the horizon as he nervously stroked his thin, black moustache and the tuft of hair beneath his lower lip and sent impatient looks toward his coachman, who remained indifferent to the entire proceedings but was beginning to feel hungry.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At last, one of the gentlemen detached himself from the group and walked toward d’Orvand, passing through the soft, damp herb grass with a determined step. The vicomte knew what he was going to hear and struck as appropriate an attitude as possible.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He’s late,” said the gentleman.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know. I’m sorry, believe me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Will he come?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I believe so.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Do you even know where he is, right now?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No?! But you’re his second!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ah . . . well, that is to say . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A quarter of an hour, monsieur. The marquis de Brévaux is willing to be patient for a little longer—for another quarter of an hour, by the clock. And when your friend arrives, if he arrives, we—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Here he is, I believe. . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A richly decorated coach arrived. Drawn by a splendid team of horses, it stopped in the road with a spray of dust and a man climbed out. His doublet was entirely undone and his shirt hung half out of his breeches. His hat in his right hand and his left resting on the pommel of his sword, he kept one boot on the footplate in order to embrace a pretty young blonde leaning toward the open door. This spectacle did not surprise d’Orvand, who did, however, roll his eyes when he saw another farewell kiss exchanged with a second beauty, a brunette.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Marciac,” murmured the vicomte to himself. “You never change!”</div><div style="text-align: left;">The gentleman charged with conveying the marquis de Brévaux’s complaint returned to his friends while the luxuriously gilded coach made a half turn in the direction of Paris and Nicolas Marciac joined d’Orvand. He was a handsome man, attractive despite, or perhaps even because of, the disorder of his attire. He was in need of a razor and he bore a wide grin on his face. He tottered only slightly and was the very image of a society-loving rake enjoying his evening, entirely heedless of the morrow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But you’ve been drinking, Nicolas!” exclaimed d’Orvand, smelling his breath.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No!” insisted Marciac, shocked. “Well . . . a little.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Before a duel? It’s madness!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t alarm yourself. Have I ever lost before?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, but—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“All will be well.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">By the other coach, the marquis de Brévaux was already in his shirtsleeves and executing a few feints.</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">“Good, let us finish it,” Marciac declared.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He removed his doublet, threw it on the vicomte’s coach, greeted the coachman and asked after his health, was delighted to learn it was excellent, caught d’Orvand’s gaze, adjusted his shirt, unsheathed his sword, and set out toward Brévaux, who was already walking to meet him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then, after a few steps, he changed his mind, turned on his heel without fear of further exasperating the marquis, and pitched his words for his friend’s ear alone: “Tell me just one thing. . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes?” sighed d’Orvand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Promise me you will not be angry.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So be it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well then, I have guessed that I am to fight the man in his shirtsleeves who is watching me with that rough gaze. But could you give me some idea as to why?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What?” the vicomte exclaimed, rather louder than he had intended.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If I kill him, I should know the reason for our quarrel, don’t you think?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">D’Orvand was initially lost for words, then pulled himself together and announced: “A gambling debt.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What? I owe him money? Him too?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course not! Him! . . . It’s he who . . . Fine. Enough. I shall cancel this madness. I shall tell them you are unwell. Or that you—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How much?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What?”</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How much does he owe me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Fifteen hundred livres.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Good God! And I was going to kill him . . . !”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Light-heartedly, Marciac continued to walk toward the furious marquis.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He assumed a wobbly <em>en garde</em> stance and declared: “I am at your disposal, monsieur le marquis.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The duel was speedily concluded. Brévaux took the initiative with assertive thrusts which Marciac nonchalantly parried before punctuating his own attack with a punch that cut his adversary’s lip. Initially surprised, then enraged, the marquis returned to the fray. Once again, Marciac was content to merely defend, feigning inattentiveness and even, between two clashes of steel, stifling a yawn. This offhandedness left Brévaux crazed with anger. He howled, struck a foolish two-handed blow with his rapier, and, without</div><div style="text-align: left;">understanding how, suddenly found himself both disarmed and wounded in the shoulder. Marciac pressed his advantage. With the point of his blade, he forced the marquis to retreat to his coach, and held him there.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pale, breathless, and sweating, Brévaux clutched his shoulder.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Very well,” he said. “You win. I’ll pay you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I am afraid, monsieur, that a promise is not enough. Pay me now.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Monsieur! I give you my word!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You have already promised once, and you see where we are now. . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Marciac tensed his arm a little and the point of his rapier approached the marquis’s throat. The gentlemen of Brévaux’s retinue took a step closer. One of them even began to draw his sword while d’Orvand, worried, came forward and prepared to assist his friend if necessary.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a moment of indecisiveness on both sides, but then the marquis removed a ring he wore on his finger and gave it to Marciac. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are we now even?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He took it and admired the stone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes,” he said, before sheathing his sword.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Damned Gascon!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hold you in high esteem as well, monsieur. I look forward to seeing you again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And as he turned toward d’Orvand, Marciac deliberately added: “Splendid day, isn’t it?”</div> <br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/CardinalsBlades.html">The Cardinal's Blades</a> © Pierre Pevel; Translated by Tom Clegg </div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.jonsullivanart.com/">Jon Sullivan</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div> <br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DaDqH09NW3RPVqF4Qv0cL_KbPvQlg7TuhdlqyeiP-1Gp5RL_9-QKn0ljTeSX5A4xgJId_Fx1b106Gqaa0ym-NAvtle2QcL4KnMtjpLoNz3kPbt10NsCqhxdWQj-8LZEyBAnYblnFWY4/s1600/Pierre+Pevel+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6DaDqH09NW3RPVqF4Qv0cL_KbPvQlg7TuhdlqyeiP-1Gp5RL_9-QKn0ljTeSX5A4xgJId_Fx1b106Gqaa0ym-NAvtle2QcL4KnMtjpLoNz3kPbt10NsCqhxdWQj-8LZEyBAnYblnFWY4/s320/Pierre+Pevel+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: left;"><b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Pierre Pevel</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">, born in 1968, is one of the foremost writers of French fantasy today. The author of seven novels, he was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire in 2002 and the Prix Imaginales in 2005, both for best novel.</span></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com222tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-85135338165155515342010-11-02T11:18:00.000-05:002010-11-02T11:18:19.609-05:00The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book 1) by Clay & Susan Griffith<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu0VKRuGBffc6HmWRU3SVjjFBL5jdxVANQfAceTUpcyXc78kTz4AA1v2MA5VpYcRfHL8BMkqiwNG0Po0Ai2dUCx3QKg-TSbR9PK-la740f9LoQaLVRN1wQmHFBRSI-W6gYWUVqDLKreTA/s1600/Greyfriar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu0VKRuGBffc6HmWRU3SVjjFBL5jdxVANQfAceTUpcyXc78kTz4AA1v2MA5VpYcRfHL8BMkqiwNG0Po0Ai2dUCx3QKg-TSbR9PK-la740f9LoQaLVRN1wQmHFBRSI-W6gYWUVqDLKreTA/s320/Greyfriar.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>“I was blindsided by how phenomenal <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheGreyfriar.html">The Greyfriar</a></strong></em> was from start to finish. Amazing vampire mythology, a chilling alternate history, and a poignant romance that grips your whole heart and refuses to let go. …The vampires in <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheGreyfriar.html">The Greyfriar</a></em> are frighteningly fascinating. …As rich and absorbing as the vampire empire is, the heart of <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheGreyfriar.html">The Greyfriar</a></em> was the blossoming romance that grew between Adele and Greyfriar amidst the war between humans and vampires. It was moving and heartbreaking at every turn. … I’m amazed that a story as epic and lavish <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheGreyfriar.html">The Greyfriar</a></em> comes in at just over 300 pages. That’s a testament to writing ability of husband and wife duo <a href="http://clayandsusangriffith.blogspot.com/">Clay and Susan Griffith</a> who wasted not one word in their superb vampire steampunk novel. The action is exhilarating, the vampires are refreshingly sinister, and the love story a gentle force so captivating that I truly believe it will weather even the most daunting obstacles. Book two in the Vampire Empire can’t come soon enough. My rating: 5/5, Near Perfect - Buy two copies: one for you and one for a friend.” -<strong>All Things Urban Fantasy</strong> blog, October 26, 2010<br />
<br />
“The best book I've read this year...I'm hoping to convince you all to buy this book...a page turner...all-around satisfying, pick this one up. Romance fans will not be disappointed...” -<strong>VampChix</strong> blog, October 21, 2010<br />
<br />
Read an excerpt from this highly anticipated book here:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book 1)</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Clay & Susan Griffith</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER 1</strong><br />
<br />
“YOUR HIGHNESS WOULD be safer below. It’s getting dark. Vampires are very unpredictable.”<br />
<br />
“Thank you, Colonel. I believe I’ll stay on deck a bit yet. It’s quite warm. That should keep the beasties quiet. Yes?”<br />
<br />
Princess Adele noticed a slight smile on the dark, chiseled face of Colonel Mehmet Anhalt, who stood close to her, as was his habit. Under her gaze, the short but powerfully built Gurkha officer covered his bemusement by clearing his throat and offering his brass telescope. “In that case, Your Highness, would you care to have a look?” <br />
<br />
“Yes, I should. Thank you, Colonel Anhalt.” Adele crossed the quarterdeck of HMS <em>Ptolemy</em> and leapt with girlish pleasure down three steps to the ship’s waist. A crowd of redjackets from her household guard parted to make a path to the port rail. A stiff breeze rolled the heavy skirt around her calves and whipped the ends of the scarf that struggled to restrain her long auburn curls.<br />
<br />
Adele snapped open the telescope and steadied her booted feet expertly against the airship’s sway. The distant clouds were turning brilliant orange and bruise purple in the darkening eastern sky. Five miles<br />
off the port beam Adele spotted two figures floating silhouetted in midair.<br />
<br />
Vampires.<br />
<br />
The young princess felt a delicious thrill spread through her. Vampire cadavers were displayed occasionally in the streets of her home, Alexandria, and she had even viewed the purported preserved head of the clan chief of Vienna, but she had seen only a few living specimens in her days. These two lay spread-eagle on the air, vibrating in the drafts that buffeted their nearly weightless frames.<br />
<br />
Adele felt a tingle of horror when one turned its head and, she thought, stared at her, looking in her eye with its cold glare. She closed the glass with a sharp breath, going pale. Frustration swept through her that the creature should startle her so. It was not as if the beast had truly been looking at her. It merely had looked toward the ship. Struggling to regain her composure in front of her guardsmen, she resumed strolling the quarterdeck.<br />
<br />
A young boy suddenly exploded up out of the main hatch. His face was red from the exertion of racing up the companionways, as indeed he raced everywhere he went. He was barely twelve years old and still round-faced as a baby, with darker hair than Adele’s, cropped short. A flowing striped cotton Bedouin robe over breeches and sandals made him look like a ragamuffin from the alleys of Cairo.<br />
<br />
He scampered to Adele’s side, shouting, “I heard there are two of them out there!”<br />
<br />
Princess Adele cut a very different figure from her wild younger brother, Simon. She was the heir, the future empress, and her very proper traveling garb was chosen for reasons of state. Today she wore a heavy cotton shirt, a leather jacket with a Persian sash, and a long velveteen skirt covering high leather boots. In the sash, she had her prized weapon, a jewel-hilted khukri, a broad-bladed dagger that had been a gift from her mother. More, it was a Fahrenheit blade, with chemical additives in the scabbard that gave the steel an intense chemical heat when exposed to air, making it more destructive than a normal blade.<br />
<br />
The blade was not all Adele had received from her Persian mother. A light veil wrapped her head and shoulders to protect her against the sun and wind. Unlike her brother’s red-cheeked visage that he got from their father, Emperor Constantine II, Adele had olive skin and the distinctive nose of the late empress. Her appearance was a subject of murmured derision among the northern-featured courtiers who dominated the imperial court in Alexandria.<br />
<br />
“They’re very far away, Simon.” Adele put an arm around her brother’s shoulders. While two lone vampires posed little threat to a heavily armed <em>Ptolemy</em>, she still would have preferred her brother locked safely below.<br />
<br />
Prince Simon looked disappointed. “Can I look at the vampires, Colonel Anhalt?”<br />
<br />
“<em>May</em> I look at the vampires,” Princess Adele corrected with a light cuff to the boy’s shoulder.<br />
<br />
Anhalt was perspiring in his tightly buttoned uniform. “Unfortunately it’s grown too dark for observation, Prince Simon. And <em>Khartoum</em> has blocked our view.” He bowed stiffly to the eager prince, indicating a thirty-two-gun frigate maneuvering through the gathering clouds four miles off the port quarter. HMS <em>Cape Town, Mandalay</em>, and <em>Giza</em> were putting on or taking off sail, struggling to answer the signals to form the nightly cordon around the flagship.<br />
<br />
“And you’ve seen vampires before,” Adele argued to Simon.<br />
<br />
“So?” The boy craned his neck, straining to peer into the east through the billowing sails of <em>Khartoum</em>. “It’s probably the most interesting thing that will happen on this trip.”<br />
<br />
Adele noticed a stony glare on Colonel Anhalt’s face as he looked in the direction of the vampires. It was unusually harsh and uncharacteristic of the man.<br />
<br />
“Something, Colonel?” she asked, handing the spyglass back to him.<br />
<br />
The Gurkha blinked in surprise, then flushed with embarrassment. He studied his polished boots. “No, Highness. Nothing.”<br />
<br />
“Your expression said otherwise.” She stepped closer to him. “Feel free. Have I done something wrong?”<br />
<br />
The colonel looked up suddenly, mouth agape. “No! I would never—never—”<br />
<br />
“Easy, Colonel.” Adele smiled warmly and laid a hand on his forearm. “You merely looked angry. Is there something wrong?”<br />
<br />
He wrestled with his thoughts for a moment, and then said, “Forgive my bluntness, Your Highness, but I think it unwise to send you so far north on tour.”<br />
<br />
Adele nodded in consideration.<br />
<br />
Anhalt continued. “And to send both heirs. I don’t know what the court was thinking. It’s irrational.”<br />
<br />
“Politics aren’t always a matter of the most rational path. I am happy to be here, forging goodwill.” Adele, in fact, was thrilled to be away from Alexandria, on board this tossing ship. The alternative was to be at home, immersed in court tedium. When Lord Kelvin, the prime minister, had suggested the tour, Adele had leapt at the opportunity. But she couldn’t just make the argument that she enjoyed the adventure. There was a purpose, and it was one that was important to her aside from escape. “It’s imperative that the independent city-states on the frontier, such as Marseille, see the future empress of Equatoria. The connections I can make on this tour could be very helpful. There is a war coming.”<br />
<br />
This was a fact both Adele and Colonel Anhalt knew well.Within a year, conflict would begin that would reshape the world in blood. Adele was no warmonger, but she knew the fight was necessary.<br />
<br />
It had been 150 years since the vampires rose. The monsters had lurked quietly among humanity from the beginning of time, but one dark winter night in 1870 they came en masse intent on subjugating human society. It was not known why they chose that moment to attack. Perhaps a great leader had inspired them. Perhaps they sensed a particular weakness in human culture as it teetered between faith and science. And clearly, humans were not prepared; they were taken totally by surprise. Most people had even given up their beliefs in the existence of such creatures as vampires.<br />
<br />
The vampires struck at the hearts of the Great Powers of Europe, America, and Asia. They decapitated governments and armies, and destroyed communication and transportation. Order was replaced by<br />
horror, panic, and collapse. Within two years, the great industrial societies of the north were cadavers and the vampire clans divided the old world between themselves.<br />
<br />
At that time, no one had understood the true nature of the vampires. Few enough did, even today. Adele, however, had the benefit of the dons of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Alexandria to teach her what was known, or thought was known, of the biology and culture of humanity’s greatest enemy. Myths about these creatures had grown up over the centuries—myths that were based on truths, but not the truth. Vampires were far more dangerous than the old legends could have imagined.<br />
<br />
Most respected men of science stated with certainty that vampires were not the resurrected corpses of humans. The creatures were now classed as a parasitic species that thrived on human blood, and they had been categorized <em>Homo nosferatii</em>. Vampires and humans had disturbingly similar anatomies and physiologies, except that vampires had sharper teeth, retractable clawlike fingernails, and eyes acutely adapted to nocturnal hunting. Four of their five senses were magnificent; sight, smell, hearing, and taste were well beyond the level of a dog or cat. However, vampires had a stunted sense of touch, making it difficult for them to manipulate objects or use simple tools. Anatomy lessons conducted in the gaslit chambers beneath the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Alexandria had demonstrated that vampires seemed to feel no pain and rapidly healed from even the most horrific wounds.<br />
<br />
It had never been demonstrated convincingly that vampires created new vampires by infecting humans. Scholars debated with great vigor how, or even if, vampires propagated. There were many theories, but the current dominant belief among the learned was that the creatures lived forever and that there were as many now as there had ever been or would ever be.<br />
<br />
Vampires had never been seen to transform into bats or wolves, but they could travel on the wind by amazing control over their density, which was not yet fully understood. Specimens rarely lived long enough in captivity for satisfying experimentation. Sunlight did not turn them to dust, but they were pathologically susceptible to heat, which made them weak and lethargic. Hence, their tendency to come out at night and haunt northern climes.<br />
<br />
Certainly none of this latest scientific knowledge had been available to the terrified victims of the Great Killing in 1870. After those attacks, hundreds of thousands of humans had fled south toward the equator, where they sought refuge in colonial possessions and fought savagely for land in a great frenzy of cultural collapse and coalition. Eventually the shell-shocked remnants of northern humanity blended with local people and set about trying to re-create new versions of their beloved societies based on steam and iron in the wilting tropical heat where vampires rarely trod.<br />
<br />
Prince Simon scrambled to the rail again. “I think I see them!” He looked back at Colonel Anhalt with a pleading gaze. <br />
<br />
The Gurkha offered the young prince his spyglass before turning his attention back to the princess, his hand resting on the hilt of his Fahrenheit saber, an officer’s weapon. “I still think it’s foolish to waste your time currying favor with the border states. There are only two sides to this war: human and vampire. What’s the purpose of diplomacy with those who will need us once the fighting starts?”<br />
<br />
Adele sighed cheerfully. “You’re just argumentative. You know it isn’t that simple. We will need the independent states on the frontier as much as they need us. We will want their ports and facilities to move our armies into Europe. Isn’t it better to have an understanding beforehand?<br />
<br />
No one expects a human state to side with the vampires, but the border states have self-interests too. And there will be opportunities for the Empire to expand as we roll back the vampires. Our world is about to change forever.”<br />
<br />
Adele’s world was very different from the one her great-grandfather would’ve known, and which she had read about in history books. There were new Great Powers that were like the resurrected corpses of the world powers at the time of the Great Killing. Her own Equatorian Empire was built on the ruins of the British Empire. It stretched from India to South Africa, with its great capital set amid the dusty mosques of Alexandria. The American Republic was a republic in name only. It was ruled by an oligarchy of wealthy families from its center in the torrid quietude of Panama with firm control over most of Central America and theWest Indies, and growing hegemony over the southern region of the old United States.When the vampires attacked Japan, that emperor removed himself to Singapore and spread his power over the green temples of Malaya and much of Southeast Asia. The world over, a<br />
dizzying array of semi-independent city-states struggled along the vampire frontiers, where warm summers made it difficult for the monsters to extend their power on a permanent basis.<br />
<br />
Those who traced their heritage to the north remained galled by the vampire clans’ continuing domination of the old lands. They always talked of returning “home” and driving the vampires back into the darkness. <br />
<br />
Now that moment was at hand.<br />
<br />
The human states believed they were sufficiently reorganized to strike and had the proper technology to counter the swift, savage hordes of the vampire clans. A brutalWar of Reconquest would begin with the coming of spring in the north.<br />
<br />
And Princess Adele, standing windswept on the deck of <em>Ptolemy</em>, was a linchpin in the strategy. It was her birthright to be part of the bloody struggle for the future of the world. She was the matrimonial prize that would unite the two greatest human states into an allied war machine.<br />
<br />
Adele regarded the imposing figure of Colonel Anhalt and laughed at his worried scowl. “Thank you for your concern, but surely nothing will happen. We are far south of clan territory. Marseilles hasn’t been attacked in—what—fifteen years?”<br />
<br />
“Seven, Highness.”<br />
<br />
“Seven then. And the weather is quite warm. As our meteorologists predicted.”<br />
<br />
Anhalt grunted in tepid acceptance of her logic.<br />
<br />
“And I have my White Guard around me.” Adele smiled at the furrowed brow on the dark face before her. “You’ll keep me safe, won’t you, Colonel Anhalt?”<br />
<br />
There was a sudden and surprising glisten of moisture in Anhalt’s hard eyes. “With my life, Your Highness.”<br />
<br />
Adele replied, “Dear Anhalt. Where would I be without you?”<br />
<br />
“I pray you never have to find out.”<br />
<br />
“I as well.”<br />
<br />
A nervous young naval officer stopped and bowed. “The admiral’s compliments, Your Highness. He says we will have chemical lights momentarily, and perhaps you should consider moving belowdecks.”<br />
<br />
The princess replied with proper formality, “Thank you, Lieutenant Sayid.” And she noticed his surprise and pride that the imperial heir recalled his name. “I think that two vampires would hardly dare attack an imperial capital ship of one hundred guns.”<br />
<br />
“One hundred and fifteen guns, Your Highness,” the boy responded stiffly.<br />
<br />
“Indeed?” Adele smiled. “Impressive. But in any case, since vampiric vision is reputed to exceed a cat’s, surely they could easily perceive the better part of a regiment on deck.”<br />
<br />
Lieutenant Sayid raised a knuckle to his brow in salute and immediately turned to pass orders to the bosun’s mates with a less nervous voice. Then he pulled appropriate signal flags and stuffed them into<br />
hardened gutta-percha cylinders. The foot-long cylinders went into shining copper pneumatic tubes and were shot to the platforms high in the ship’s rigging.<br />
<br />
Princess Adele watched as gangs of sailors clambered up the shrouds and ratlines toward the gigantic, gas-filled dirigible overhead. The dirigible was encased in a tightly crosshatched metal eggshell designed to protect it from enemy cannon fire. A row of three wooden masts extended laterally from each side and also along the top spine of the steel frame. Sails were set in concert with filling and evacuating parts of the multichambered dirigible, to propel and steer the massive airship. It was an intricate ballet, a wonder to watch.<br />
<br />
Simon glanced at his big sister. “You want to be up there with them, don’t you?”<br />
<br />
A startled Adele began, “Don’t be silly. . . .” Then she stopped and responded honestly, “Yes. And so do you.”<br />
<br />
The boy laughed and nodded his head vigorously, craning his neck to get a glimpse of the fearless sailors. Adele dropped her arm around her brother’s shoulders and followed his gaze upward, feeling a powerful desire to climb the quivering lines alongside the sailors and scale the dizzying main topmast swaying high above the airship to feel the clouds on her face. She envied those simple men who shouted, laughed, and even sang in the wind-ripped tops with only the sureness of their grip separating them from a long but certain death.<br />
<br />
On the blustery quarterdeck, Lieutenant Sayid interrupted her thoughts by touching the brim of his cap politely. “Your Highness, if you would please step to this spot between the carronades. I would be loath for you or the prince to be struck by an inconsiderate falling airman.”<br />
<br />
Simon immediately planted himself and stared up at the swelling sails, forcing Adele to tow his rigid form against the rail. She began to say something to the young officer, but he was already engaged in another duty. With a heavy sigh, she leaned against the hardmahogany gunwale, content to monitor her restless brother in the gathering darkness. <br />
<br />
A maid appeared from below with Adele’s heavy cape and a coat for Simon. The weather was too warm for a cloak, and Adele would have refused, but the maid was only following orders. If the poor girl returned below with the cloak still in her possession it would create a crisis that would envelop Adele’s entire staff. The maid confidently informed Adele that dinner was in exactly twenty minutes. Then, on her way below, the servant exchanged light, bubbling words with the handsome Lieutenant Sayid. Adele watched them, fascinated by the mix of hesitance and boldness; a young woman, a handsome officer. Such charming simplicity.<br />
<br />
A sudden flash of moonlight reflected in the ostentatious diamond ring on Adele’s left hand and forced her to remember her wedding was barely a month away. It wasn’t so much a wedding as the starting gun for the war, the signal that Equatoria and the American Republic were one. All the linen, china, and warships would be bound to the same household. Adele thought of the beautiful gold locket that held a picture of her Intended, Senator Clark. War hero. Vampire killer. Scion of a great American house. Undeniably handsome. He had the open brashness of an American, which in another situation she might have found attractive.<br />
<br />
Still, the young woman had generally refused to think about the Impending Event because the thought of a stranger’s weight on the other side of her bed caused many sleepless nights bathed in a frightened<br />
sweat and with a shortness of breath. She couldn’t conceive of how her Intended’s war-roughened hands would feel on her skin, nor did she want to. Her spy inside the Office of Court Protocol had confided to her that the issue of sexual commerce was still under negotiation and, although it probably could not be eliminated completely, it would at least be kept to the minimum necessary to conceive an heir. The marriage was a political necessity and, therefore, Adele’s duty, but she doubted it would ever be more than that.<br />
<br />
Adele reached up absently and through her heavy blouse damp with perspiration she felt the small stone talisman hanging around her neck. She wore it instead of the beautiful gold locket with a photo of her Intended, which was buried deep in her luggage. Her revered mentor, Mamoru, had given her the religious stone talisman for protection, and it gave her a sense of solemnity and calm. But Adele kept it hidden; no one could know that their princess wore such a superstitious item. Members of court already suspected that her youthful exuberance was a dreadful portent of her failure as empress. Surely they didn’t need to know that she had a penchant for the occult and miraculous. The <span style="font-family: GaramondThree; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: GaramondThree; font-size: small;">“</span></span>better” class of people in Equatoria put religion and magic in the same category. Churches and mosques and temples still existed, and services were still held, but those who attended were viewed as quaint at best and deranged at worst. Mamoru was a very spiritual man, and Adele found that part of him fascinating. He claimed that spirituality and naturalism, as much as steel and steam, would destroy the vampires. It was<br />
only a matter of firm belief and correct practice.<br />
<br />
<em>Ptolemy</em> began to glow with the quavering blurs of chemical bulbs. The other ships in the fleet appeared as vague yellow smudges in the night sky. Far beneath the ship the earth was hidden in a swallowing blackness that had fascinated and terrified Adele since they had left the civilizing lights of the Empire for the vampire frontier of southern France.<br />
<br />
Prince Simon’s urgent voice interrupted Adele’s thoughts. “Do you think we’ll meet the Greyfriar out here?”<br />
<br />
Adele shook her head with confusion. “What? The Greyfriar? What in the world are you talking about now?”<br />
<br />
“The Greyfriar! He’s a hero who fights the vampires in the north.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, yes. No, of course not. He’s not even real, Simon. Just a story to make people feel better.”<br />
<br />
Simon narrowed his eyes at his sister’s ignorance. “He’s not a story. He’s real. I saw pictures in a book. He carries swords and guns and wears a mask. People say he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels. A hundred!” The young prince began to wave his arm around as if he had a sword, striking and slashing. “He’s a master fencer with all blades! His swords move so fast vampires can’t see them! Whoosh whoosh whoosh! Their heads are rolling before they even know the Greyfriar is there! Hah! Colonel Anhalt, you believe in the Greyfriar, don’t you?”<br />
<br />
The soldier said over his shoulder with mock solemnity, “Indeed I do, Your Highness. I heard he killed a hundred vampires in Brussels too.”<br />
<br />
“You see, Adele! I told you!”<br />
<br />
Adele replied, “Simon, be still.”<br />
<br />
“Why can’t we meet him? I’ll bet if we told him we were coming, he’d meet us. We’re the royal family of Equatoria.”<br />
<br />
“We can’t see him because he’s not real! Now stand still and mind me!”<br />
<br />
Simon huffed. “Well, then, will they let me command the ship?”<br />
<br />
No, of course not,” Adele snapped irritably. Then she blinked and said more softly, “Not now. Perhaps tomorrow when it’s light.”<br />
<br />
Adele wanted to nurture Simon’s youthful curiosity and excitement, not stifle it. His enthusiasm was important. The Empire needed men like Simon, brazen and curious. Currently at court, to her dismay, there already were far too many of the venal type of man he would become if the palace drudges got their talons on him.<br />
<br />
“Why not?” Simon wandered from her side, intent on exploring the ship’s wheel, where blazingly bright copper pneumatic tubes gathered to form something like a Baroque organ. Prince Simon was due to become an officer in the Imperial Navy, and this idea excited him.<br />
<br />
Colonel Anhalt coughed commandingly at the young prince as small hands played over the pneumo tubes. <br />
<br />
Adele darted from the rail and grabbed her brother’s arm. “Simon, don’t get in the way!”<br />
<br />
“I’m not going to hurt anything!” the boy retorted.<br />
<br />
They were interrupted by the clack of a pneumo arriving from the tops.<br />
<br />
With his back straight, Colonel Anhalt said to Simon, “Would Your Highness care to retrieve that signal from the chief of the top mizzenmast?”<br />
With a yelp of joy, Simon lifted a round copper flap, and a rubber cylinder dropped out into his hand along with a splash of dark liquid. “Ew. What’s this?” He lifted his stained fingers into the yellow light.<br />
<br />
Oil or grease, Adele thought with mild exasperation, automatically reaching into her pocket for a handkerchief. Anhalt stared at Simon’s hand with furrowed brows. He pulled the pneumo cylinder from the boy’s grasp and sniffed it.<br />
<br />
“Blood,” the rough soldier murmured. Abruptly his stern visage turned on a horrified Princess Adele. His voice was firm and demanding. “Your Highness, take your brother below, if you please.”<br />
<br />
Adele put one hand instinctively on the hilt of her dagger and with the other tugged Simon toward the main hatch as Colonel Anhalt gazed up at the vast dirigible one hundred feet over his head as if trying to see through it to the invisible topmasts above. Several naval officers on the quarterdeck stopped chatting among themselves and watched with growing interest.<br />
<br />
Suddenly the airship lurched. Adele grabbed a pneumatic tube for support and pulled her brother back to his feet. In the rigging high above, she saw a figure tumble sickeningly, flipping this way and that,<br />
unable to grasp a safe hold, until he shot past the deck into the black atmosphere below the ship. Before Adele could understand that sudden tragedy, another man fell and then another. Then she saw strange shadowy things moving with unnatural agility down through the lines, pulling hand over hand toward the deck.<br />
<br />
Two dark cadaverous figures settled to the deck amidships with no sound and lifted their bloodstained faces into the light. Adele saw true savagery for the first time. These vampires were not stories or frightening figures in the distance; they were real, covered in blood that glistened in the lamplight. She clutched her brother close.<br />
<br />
Sailors stared at the horrific intruders. A squad of redjackets raised their rifles and opened an erratic fire. One vampire was blown off his feet. The other streaked forward, a blur in the half-light, and two soldiers screamed. The wounded vampire then bounded to his feet and also rushed into the fight. It was a short, bloody affair.<br />
<br />
Two other vampires dropped onto the quarterdeck, hissing like cats, only yards from Adele and Simon. One leapt at Simon, too fast for Adele to scream or react.<br />
<br />
The vampire’s head exploded and the body tumbled.<br />
<br />
Anhalt appeared at Adele’s side with a smoking revolver extended and Fahrenheit saber in hand. “Get below! Quickly!” He fired twice, hitting the second vampire in the head, and it dropped palsied to the deck.<br />
<br />
“Form square!” Anhalt bellowed over the staccato gunfire erupting across the deck. “Fix bayonets! Up and out! Up and out!” Soldiers scrambled for the quarterdeck and gathered into a ragged square around the main hatch. The men fumbled with bayonets and tried to work their rifles as they’d been drilled, each trooper alternating his aim out or up to cover both ground and air. Some young faces were blank, others stained with horror and blood.<br />
<br />
Adele sent her brother down into the companionway. She saw the rigging over her head was full of vampires, perhaps a hundred of them squirming and crawling, like a dead tree full of caterpillars. Then the two royals were below, where soldiers and sailors raced frantically through the corridors. Officers shouted orders and counterorders that were lost in the din of tramping feet. Anhalt dropped quickly through the hatchway and detailed five soldiers to accompany Adele and Simon into the bowels of the ship.<br />
<br />
They went down and down, past the acrid-smelling chemical room, into the reeking orlop deck. They were taken to a small dark chamber, fore or aft Adele could no longer say, inhabited by goats, pigs, and crates of chickens.<br />
<br />
“You’ll be safe here, Your Highness.” A soldier shoved the royal siblings into the manger, then slammed the door shut.<br />
<br />
For a long time, neither Adele nor Simon spoke in the blackness. She hugged her brother, noticing that he was shivering, his unblinking eyes staring at a small goat that stood in the straw nearby. They strained to hear traces of the battle, hoping for hints of victory. Surely, the finest troops of the Equatorian Empire could defeat vampire raiders. The vampires would flee like vermin once they realized that this was not a lazy merchant vessel that had strayed too far north.<br />
<br />
The room shuddered and made a heart-sickening lurch to starboard. Simon screeched and squeezed Adele as they tumbled across the manger. Trying to cushion Simon’s body, she hit the bulkhead amid a pile of chicken crates. Adele lifted a crate off her brother and brought him closer.<br />
<br />
After several frightening minutes in the dark, the door flew open and Colonel Anhalt appeared with a horrid gash marring his dark face, his tunic torn and drenched in blood. He carried a trooper’s carbine and his saber, smoking with boiling blood. “Highness, quickly if you please. The ship is going down.”<br />
<br />
Adele climbed to her feet. “Lifeboats?”<br />
<br />
“No.” Anhalt shepherded the royal pair from the room. “Too unsafe.” Airship lifeboats were small gondolas attached to chemically inflated balloons; easy prey to vampires. Three soldiers moved ahead and four fell in behind. As the group climbed to the gun deck the chemical lighting went out, plunging the ship into pitch black. The hallway was listing at a rough angle, and footing was treacherous. Ahead, sailors were filling a room with mattresses and rolled hammocks. Anhalt indicated for Adele and Simon to go inside. “Stay here, Your Highness. And don’t worry.”<br />
<br />
Adele pushed Simon to the floor, where he stayed compliantly. Sliding her hand off her brother’s stiff shoulder, she moved back to her trusted Gurkha colonel and whispered, “What’s our situation?”<br />
<br />
Anhalt hesitated, but after staring into the steady eyes of the young woman he admired, and again realizing why he admired her, he said, “The vampires have destroyed most of the sails and damaged the dirigible. And we can no longer stay aloft. The White Guard is losing the deck.”<br />
<br />
“How is this possible?” she asked, incredulous. “Raiders don’t—”<br />
<br />
“These aren’t raiders, Your Highness. This is a full-scale attack by clan packs. They mean to destroy this ship. Perhaps the entire convoy.”<br />
<br />
“That’s incredible! Surely we have the firepower to stop them.”<br />
<br />
“I hope so. Vampires are desperately hard to kill. The monsters do not know they are injured until they are in pieces. Even with a Fahrenheit blade, you have to destroy a vital organ or sever the head.”<br />
<br />
“How many are there?”<br />
He shook his head and hefted his red saber without outward emotion. “Fewer now.”<br />
<br />
“How many men have we lost?”<br />
<br />
“Many,” Anhalt answered, and turned to leave.<br />
<br />
Adele noticed the bloody footprints left by the colonel and his four White Guardsmen, and anger raced through her. The door closed and she knelt beside Simon, dragging a mattress over them. She sang softly to her brother, a lullaby she used to sing to him when he was a baby. They waited.<br />
<br />
Adele heard a strange sound mixed with her own voice.<br />
<br />
But there was so much noise enveloping the ship that at first Adele dismissed the sound as just part of the battle. Then it came again from just by her ear. It was coming from the other side of the bulkhead. She strained to hear. Men running? The creaking of stressed timber? Rats scurrying for safety? There was something about it that didn’t seem to fit any of those.<br />
<br />
“What is that noise?” asked Simon in a small voice.<br />
<br />
“Nothing,” Adele responded. “It’s nothing.” But the anxiety inside her wouldn’t go away. She shifted and eased Simon away from the wall. From within her cape emerged her Fahrenheit khukri dagger. The glow from the blade gave her some small comfort, but couldn’t stop the wild pounding of her heart.<br />
<br />
Then the wall started to break apart.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER 2</strong><br />
<br />
ADELE AND SIMON were showered with splinters as a hole was punched in the wall and a thin object snaked through. Something sharp dug into the young woman’s side. There was a horrible hissing noise, almost one of pain as it grabbed her. Arching back with a cry, Adele instinctively slashed at what held her. Her blade came into contact with something long and bony. An arm!<br />
<br />
Simon was shouting. The pale arm of another vampire had reached through another hole and was dragging him toward the bulkhead.<br />
<br />
“No!” Adele grabbed Simon and stabbed the arm holding him. There was no satisfying screech of pain from behind the wall, only the smoldering stench of burning flesh from the khukri’s chemical, which<br />
would continue to burn for some time.<br />
<br />
A skeletal hand slapped the dagger from Adele’s trembling fingers, sending it skittering across the floor. Simon was yanked away from her, and he crashed against the splintering bulkhead. Claws tore at the wood, widening the hole behind Simon.<br />
<br />
Adele staggered to her feet and tore through debris for another weapon. Without one, she and Simon would be lost. Her hand landed on something metal, slender, and over two feet long; it was a marlin-<br />
spike. She spun it around and jabbed the closest vampire arm. The small grunt that echoed gave her hope that she could hurt them.<br />
<br />
“Adele!” Simon shouted in a panic as he struggled to keep himself from being pulled through the ever-widening hole. The vampire on the other side didn’t seem to care that he didn’t quite fit. It was desperate to have him.<br />
<br />
Adele struck again at the hand gripping Simon’s shoulder. “Hold on, Simon!” There was less than an inch of space between her brother and her target, but the steel tooth hit its mark and plunged through the thin wrist. The claw released Simon, and the boy scrambled around his sister.<br />
<br />
Adele held onto the spike like she had gaffed a thrashing fish. The hand twisted unnaturally and grasped the tool, ripping itself free of the spike and tearing its own wrist to shreds before pulling its arm back through the wall to safety.<br />
<br />
Glancing wildly about for the direction of the next attack, the royal siblings backed away, though there was little space for them to go. <br />
<br />
Then a wide portion of the weakened bulkhead close to the deck shattered in a cloud of dust and wood splinters. Through the haze of smoke and dust Adele was looking at the female vampire face that she had seen through the spyglass while on deck earlier. Now there was nothing to stop the vampire from coming in.<br />
<br />
Adele dragged Simon with her as she retreated. He was softly crying against her. She could feel her brother’s fear mixing with her own. But there was no time for comforting words, because the face of death appeared in the hole, head and shoulders visible as a long bony arm clawed for purchase.<br />
<br />
Determined to protect her brother, Adele reared back with the spike and stabbed again. The spike sank through ribs and flesh and embedded deep into the wood, pinning the female to the deck. The creature bared her teeth and hissed, thrashing in anger, but she couldn’t free herself.<br />
<br />
The ship shuddered and threw Adele and Simon to the deck. Their stomachs lurched as the big vessel dropped sharply. Everything in the cabin started a slow slide. Adele grabbed a mattress and tried to use it to shield them.<br />
<br />
“We’re going down!”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
HMS <em>Ptolemy</em> hit the ground.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">The impact tore Adele and Simon from under the mattress, throwing them into the air and slamming them against bulkheads. Adele tumbled for what seemed hours. Her world was noise and pain. She no longer knew up or down.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When everything finally stopped, Adele lay still in the flickering dark and choked, “Simon! Simon! Are you all right?” There was no answer. She heard nothing—no screaming, shooting, or explosions.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Clawing at the mattresses and rolled hammocks around her, she struggled to stand but was unsure how or where to put her feet. She could smell smoke; the ship was on fire. They had to get out.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele saw a small leg sticking up awkwardly into the air. The frantic girl scrambled to it and grabbed the ankle. Tearing at the wreckage, she reached down, feeling along her brother’s torso, and gathered</div><div style="text-align: left;">the front of his robe. With all her strength, she pulled Simon up out of the maw. She stared at his face; his eyes were open. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are we dead?” he asked her, coughing against the smoke and dust.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele pressed her face against his heaving chest. “No. We’re fine. We made it. Now we just wait for another ship to come and pick us up.” It was a pale attempt to reassure him, and her eyes darted around them. But no frightening faces stared back at her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Together, the imperial siblings took unsteady bouncing steps across the jumbled mattresses to the door of the cabin. A glint of light caught Adele’s eye, and she saw her dagger lying amidst the debris, the chemically heated blade now cooled into a normal weapon. She snatched it up with a small yelp of triumph and slipped it back into the scabbard at her belt to be charged once more. Adele’s shoulder and legs felt hot, but she didn’t pause to look for injuries. Better not to know for now. They kicked wreckage away from the door, which she then wrenched open. The corridor outside was a world of debris. Wooden planks and metal rods, barrels, and broken beams created a jagged landscape. Redjackets who had been standing guard outside the door were trapped in the chaos. All were dead. Adele shielded Simon’s eyes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As quickly as they could, the two made their way from the remnants of the cabins into the open gun deck. Massive iron cannons on their huge wooden carriages, each weighing several tons, had broken loose and were scattered like toys or carelessly thrown pieces of driftwood. Sailors stumbled through the wreckage, some helping comrades who were trapped or injured. The hot dusty air was filled with muted moans of pain and anguish, and the smell of smoke and blood.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele saw the night sky above through a long fissure in the ship’s bulkhead. “Up there,” she told Simon. “Let’s climb.” She helped the boy clamber his way up the tilted deck. They grabbed whatever handholds they could find. Wreckage shifted suddenly, threatening to throw them down, but they finally reached the jagged hole and emerged onto the sloping hull of the overturned hulk.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Taking in great breaths of fresh air, Adele turned to her silent brother. “Are you hurt?” She touched his limbs and head. She wanted him to talk. She wanted him to react.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The young prince flexed his elbows and knees, then shook his head. “No. Everything works.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Me too.” Adele laughed and kissed the top of her brother’s head. “We’ll be okay.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The gem of the imperial fleet had smashed through a Provençal forest, leaving behind a wasteland of uprooted trees. The airship was heeled over on her starboard side with the dirigible and its metal shell</div><div style="text-align: left;">shredded. Masts were snapped and scattered across the great mounds of earth the crashed ship had gouged up. Men crawled out of gashes across the length of the hull and wandered over the vast beached wooden whale. Adele helped several of them while speaking calmly and encouraging them as best she could. It was her duty in a crisis. Men also moved around on the ground. She saw surviving White Guardsmen among them and searched unsuccessfully for Colonel Anhalt and members of her household staff. She prayed that Colonel Anhalt was still alive. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele turned her gaze up to the cloud-filled sky, searching for the glows of the other ships in the fleet. She thought she saw a faint yellow blur, but couldn’t be sure. Then she noticed tiny, wavering shapes flitting over the face of the grey clouds.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
How was this possible? It was even warmer on the ground. Why were they still coming? What was driving them? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele tried to push Simon back inside the ship’s hull as a vampire landed near her. The creature seized Adele’s arm, but immediately released her with a screaming hiss. He stared intently at the young woman with his head bobbing like an animal. The vampire wore a mixture of military uniforms, including a general’s jacket replete with tarnished medals and badges of honor. But the weird uniform meant nothing; vampires wore what clothes they could loot from cadavers or wrecked homes. He continued to hiss in that language that no human had ever penetrated. Adele realized, without understanding how, that the thing was talking about her. She couldn’t distinguish specifics in the</div><div style="text-align: left;">horrid language, but she suddenly perceived that this entire attack was about her. The vampires were searching for her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Even more incredibly, this vampire “general” was afraid to approach her. Adele could sense his fear, and she used it. She came forward aggressively, and the thing shuffled back, brandishing his claws. Then Adele heard a short but recognizable grunt from behind. She whirled to see another vampire wrapping his pale, bony arms around her shell-shocked young brother. She lurched toward them as the thing leapt from the ship’s hull with Simon in his grasp. Adele choked a scream as she watched them plummet to the ground. The vampire landed hard on his feet and carried Simon off through the high grass into the dark forest. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele climbed down the airship’s ruptured hull. She ignored the vampire general as he continued to hover threateningly. She missed holds and slipped several times, but didn’t panic. The hard-minded</div><div style="text-align: left;">princess didn’t notice her bloody hands as she dropped to the ground and sprinted after Simon, racing headlong past dazed soldiers and sailors who were trying to fight the descending vampires. Pausing only long enough to wrest a saber from a dead trooper, she plunged into the forest, heedless of branches and thorns that scratched her face and body. Her breath tore from her throat and her heart pounded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The princess came to a stop in a grassy clearing. On the far side of he glade stood a female vampire dressed in black knee breeches and black silk stockings with no shoes, bare-breasted under a dark swallow-tail coat with gold ribbons festooning the shoulders. The female was tall and statuesque, but pale and blue-eyed, like all of her kind, and wore her ebony black hair in a braid that hung long down her back. Simon lay at her feet with his abductor kneeling nearby.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The tall female hissed and pointed with her well-formed hands. Her clawlike nails, which Adele knew vampires could deploy like a cat’s, were retracted to display her lack of fear. The female smiled and said with harsh sibilance, “Princess Adele.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele was shocked to hear a vampire speak English, particularly her own name. She stared at this vile parasite, so much like a beautiful woman.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then she heard human voices, and two of her White Guardsmen ran into the clearing beside her. The vampire who had abducted Simon was already on the attack. Both soldiers fired, and his torso exploded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The tall female vampire with the long black braid snarled and moved. The dark creature seemed to appear in front of the two soldiers as they frantically worked their rifle bolts. The two men disintegrated into a shower of viscera and bone without another shot or sound. The female paused to lick the hot blood off her hands. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele heard a sound just over her left shoulder and wheeled, catching the image of a pale figure with no splash of soldier’s red or sailor’s white. She cut through the target, feeling a brief tug on the saber</div><div style="text-align: left;">blade, and completed the spin to face the tall female vampire with the saber already back to attack position. A vampire’s head rolled on the ground; the body made a slight sighing noise as it slumped to the dirt behind her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The princess felt neither exhilaration nor disgust—only duty, and the weight of the sword in her hands. She was naturally aggressive, bursting with relentlessness unexpected in a small girl, which had</div><div style="text-align: left;">always served as an advantage. But she had never mastered defensive skills, earning her many a thumping from her tutor during fencing matches.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She charged the tall female vampire, three strokes already mapped in her mind. In the fleetest part of her brain she saw the female moving at the same time.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele looked up from the dirt. Her hands were flat on the ground. The saber was gone. Standing over her, the female vampire inspected a raw stomach wound and a slash in her brocade coat.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The female said, “You struck me. No human has struck me in a hundred years.” The creature was impassive, showing neither anger nor desire for retribution. Still, she eyed Adele curiously.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Please,” Adele breathed, “take me if you wish. But release my brother. He’s just a boy.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We will take you.” The female strolled away from Adele and continued observing her wound with the minor annoyance of someone who has lost a button from her coat. “But he’s not just a boy. He is the heir when you’re gone.” She raised her head and emitted a piercing cry like the screech of a rusted cemetery gate, a scream that seemed to slice across the countryside.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A male vampire slid into view between trees and reached for Simon. Then the creature’s head suddenly parted from his shoulders.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A booted foot shoved the decapitated carcass into the dirt. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A man stood over Simon. He was tall and thin, and his face was covered by a head wrap similar to that worn by the high desert Bedouins. Over his eyes he wore smoked, dark glasses. His clothing was dark grey, almost black, a short military-style jacket and cavalry pants with a red stripe, and knee-high, black riding boots. Over it all he wore a long cloak with a hood thrown back. He had a gun belt with two holstered pistols. In his left hand was a basket-hilted longsword; in his right was a well-blooded scimitar.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The man bounded toward the tall female vampire. “Take the boy and run!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele realized the mysterious swordsman was shouting at her. She scrambled to her feet and ran to her prone brother, already hearing the ringing of steel against claws. The stranger in grey seemed eerily</div><div style="text-align: left;">familiar. Inexplicably, she was afraid for him and afraid of him at the same time.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele gathered Simon in her arms and ran. A group of vampires dropped to the ground in front of her, but they were staring beyond her to the fight. As she stumbled past, two of them recovered their senses and flashed over to block her. Their movements were no longer blurs to her. Adele could see their actions with a clarity and purity that surprised her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She had no purpose other than to protect Simon. Holding him awkwardly with one arm, she landed a staggering blow on the jaw of one vampire. She then drove curled fingers into the face of another. The</div><div style="text-align: left;">princess blocked a swipe, locked the arm, and drove a foot into the vampire’s knee. It would’ve been devastating against a human, but she instantly realized that she’d made a mistake, because the vampire</div><div style="text-align: left;">showed no pain. The thing seized Adele’s neck, but instantly yanked his hand back with a screech.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Clawed hands surrounded Adele and wrenched Simon from her grasp. He was lifted into the air. The boy screamed. The vampire reared back and threw Simon with all its horrible strength. The boy’s little</div><div style="text-align: left;">form flew through the air as if shot from a cannon and smashed sickeningly against a tree.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele’s legs nearly gave out as she stared at the sight of her little brother lying motionless. The seemingly endless moments they had shared flashed in her brain, crowding out any conscious thought. All Simon had been, all he could have been, come to this? This was his end? A lifeless body in a forest in France. She started to move toward her brother, but slavering vampires crowded her way, reaching out, slapping sharply at her but hardly daring to touch her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman drove his scimitar down through the tall female’s shoulder. The force of the blow staggered her to her knees. He left the scimitar embedded in the vampire as he wheeled toward Adele. Three vampires moved to intercept the charging swordsman. Without breaking stride, he pulled a pistol with his free hand, aimed, and fired. One vampire spun from the impact and collapsed. The swordsman then shot a small female in the stomach and battered the other creature with the basket hilt of the longsword, knocking him onto his back. His foot pressed against the supine vampire’s throat, he plunged the sword into his heart and then fired a shot into the head of the wounded small female, who was rising to her feet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A clawed hand raked the swordsman’s shoulder, tearing his cloak. He blocked the next swipe, kicking the attacker away. He aimed for a debilitating head shot, but he sensed something behind him and twisted to dodge a savage blow from the tall commanding female that would have torn off his head.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You will die,” the female told him, with one arm hanging limp.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He wasted no words but drove the palm of his hand flat against the female’s bare chest, sending her airborne back toward the treeline. Midway she changed her density and hit the trunk of a tree with no</div><div style="text-align: left;">more than a subtle bounce. Righting herself, she stepped to the ground.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman was already running toward the princess. He swung his blade and severed the top of a vampire’s skull. With one hand he reached down to pluck a Guardsman’s saber from a motionless body at his feet and flung it end over end toward the tall female. The blade plunged into the female’s chest and into the tree behind her. The hilt of the vibrating blade stuck in her ribs. She screamed and clawed at it in a rage.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman grabbed Princess Adele roughly by the arm and dragged her into the dank forest.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>CHAPTER 3</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">ADELE STUMBLED ALONGSIDE her rescuer.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This way,” he commanded.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Simon . . .” Adele gasped. “Go back . . . my brother.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Impossible. He is lost.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her face immediately locked in an expression of horror and anguish.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m sorry, Princess. I must keep you safe.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tears grew in Adele’s eyes, though her words were angry and sharp. “Why won’t you help him? I don’t care about me!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You are next in line. Your brother is most likely already—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t you dare say it!” Adele stopped running, forcing the swordsman to turn back to her. The top of her auburn head barely came to his chin, but her eyes snapped defiance. “He could be alive!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They want you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I demand we go back for him.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“My father will hear of this!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He nodded without great interest. “We must go. Quickly. They’re coming.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele took an involuntary breath of fear.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman stared at her, the glass lenses covering his eyes hard and cold. “Once we get you to safety, I will go back for your brother, if possible.” Then he added without conviction, “With any luck your troops will have rallied and repelled the attack.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele squeezed her eyes shut and forced her emotions down. She needed to think clearly. She could hear the logic in his words; they echoed in her ears, especially what he wasn’t telling her. It was better Simon die than fall into vampire hands. The swordsman crackled with a compelling urgency, and she knew she was slowing him down in more ways than one. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Please, Princess, no more discussion.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She gathered her skirts again. “I’m ready.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman turned and was off, sprinting, practically flying over rocks and mossy, fallen trees.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A squad of determined White Guardmen broke through the trees in ragged formation. Colonel Anhalt was in the lead, a pistol and saber at the ready and two more pistols jammed in his waistband. The sturdy Gurkha had one objective: protect the royal family.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Laid out before him was a sight from his deepest nightmares. A clutch of vampires surrounded the tiny body of Prince Simon with their claws raised and teeth bared. Anhalt fired with a retort that silenced the triumphant cackle of the vampires. The head of the creature closest to the unconscious prince snapped back with a bullet lodged in his forehead, and he slammed to the ground. Anhalt shouted and ran toward his objective. He didn’t know if his men were still behind him or not.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The pistol fired again, accurate to a fault, shattering the jaw of another vampire near the boy. Anhalt blasted the temple of a third vampire as he reached the prince, sweeping his Fahrenheit saber to knock</div><div style="text-align: left;">aside a lifted claw coming from his right. A second later the creature was on the ground and two White Guardsmen were running it through with bayonets.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Form square! Protect the prince! Or die trying!” Anhalt shouted with his feet firmly planted on either side of motionless Simon. His men quickly complied. There weren’t nearly enough soldiers to form a proper barrier, but it didn’t stop them from creating the barest of defense around the remaining heir to Equatoria.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">More vampires descended from above, and the White Guardsmen lifted their rifles to the sky. Every man on the line fired, and the air filled with white smoke and blood. The front wave of monsters fell. Colonel Anhalt knelt low over his charge. When the next surge came from the vampires it too was a gruesome slaughter.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">For the first time, the creatures faltered. But the male creature festooned like a general screeched in rage behind his brethren, and they came again swiftly and without mercy.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Fire! Fire! Fire!” Anhalt shouted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A cacophony of shrieking, hissing, and rifle discharge deafened the colonel. Then suddenly the vampires were among them. Bayonets slashed flesh to the bone; pistols shattered skulls to pulp. The fighting and dying all screamed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anhalt moved not an inch from his position and hacked relentlessly with his saber. It was not elegant or superb to see, merely effectual and lethal. A vampire came in low under his blade and slashed him on the left leg. Anhalt actually felt it strike bone. He grunted, and the whites of his eyes flashed at the agony, but he twisted his saber and drove down deep into the back of the vampire’s neck, twisting and severing the spinal column. It slumped at his feet, tendrils of smoke rising from its mutilated neck.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anhalt raised his head, searching for another target, but saw instead the vampires holding back. There were only a few of them now. All bloodied, with gaping wounds, some without arms or legs. They staggered and then took to the air. The Gurkha thought they were gaining altitude for another run at his ragtag squad, but instead they veered off toward the north.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was over.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anhalt regarded his men. Most were dead, but seven were still standing, soaking in blood and gore.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well done,” he rasped as he knelt to find whether they had been defending a dead boy or a live one.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The youngster stirred. His face was covered in blood. “Where’s Adele?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Stay still, Your Highness,” the soldier answered, laying a calming hand on the boy’s small shoulder. The vampires were gone, and Anhalt could only assume they had what they wanted: the heir to the Empire. He feared the worst for the princess, but could not tell her brother yet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I want to see her,” Simon gurgled.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You can’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Where’s our ship?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t worry about the ship.” The colonel didn’t know where the remainder of the fleet was or when they might come. Or if they would come at all. The frigates could well have been destroyed in the attack.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Anhalt knew the boy was gravely injured, but his cursory examination of the prince didn’t show any mortal wounds. Still Simon had to receive medical attention soon. The ship’s surgeon was lost, and none of his aides had been found in the hours since the crash. Marseilles was not far; reachable by foot. Although Anhalt was loath to strike out overland with so many vampires abroad, it was an even greater danger to stay where they were. The prince’s life was even more crucial now, particularly if the princess was lost to them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His princess lost. That fine young spirited woman. That magnificent heir to the Empire. Gone. Taken by those animals. Subjected to such horrors and degradations. All because of Anhalt’s failure. He smelled the blood soaked into his tunic and felt shame in his gut. He had to bite his lip to prevent utter despair from welling. The gash across his face burned. He touched the butt of his revolver.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The colonel quickly shoved down the dishonor. Plenty of time for that later. He had to see through his duty to Prince Simon. He collected a squad of ambulatory men. There were only twelve, but that would have to serve. He couldn’t ignore the searing pain in his leg where the vampire had slashed him. He bound the wound as best he could, and it would have to do until the young prince was safe. The colonel gently gathered up the boy in his own red-jacketed arms and started off to the west.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was hours later when Adele and the swordsman came to the base of a small cliff. Adele couldn’t speak; she only slumped beside the kneeling swordsman with loud, painful gasping. Her quivering fingers gripped his cloak, as much for comfort as for physical support. His back stiffened as she dropped next to him. With eyes tearing in the harsh wind, she could barely see the outline of a tiny hovel embedded in the face of the cliff. Immediately she tried to stand. The swordsman grabbed her arm and yanked her down. Too fatigued to respond, her breath hissed through her lips with harsh gasps. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Why was he so unaffected? She could only wonder, and wish she were a man instead of a feeble girl as she lay muffled by her exhaustion. Staring at him through burning eyes, she wondered again why he</div><div style="text-align: left;">seemed so familiar.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then it came to her in a rush. He was the Greyfriar. Like everyone, she’d seen a picture of this man: a blurry photograph of this grey-clad figure standing over vampire cadavers on a cobblestone street. The photo had been smuggled out of the north as proof of rumors that there was an active human resistance inside clan Europe. The Greyfriar’s exploits were legendary, but as Adele told Simon, his exploits were so legendary she believed him mythical, the photograph merely fabricated to create hope. The stories, she felt, were born of more than a century of subjugation and frustration, a resurfacing of the legends like Rostam, King Arthur, or Robin Hood. It was an understandable desire for a hero to</div><div style="text-align: left;">deliver humanity from horror.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then he was in her ear, a slow low voice as if it were a mere spirit on the back of a wind.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I will make sure the way is clear. Stay here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele could do nothing but comply.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He melted away before her eyes, dissolving into the predawn twilight that leaked across the European nightscape. She huddled and tried to hear his passage over her harsh breathing. It took effort, but soon her ragged gasps slowed into rhythmic deep breaths.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Several minutes went by, and the swordsman had not returned. The shadows became large patches of pitch that could hide an army. Adele slid her hand to her scabbard, where her fingers clenched the hilt of her jeweled dagger as she pulled it to her chest for protection. She didn’t dare draw it because the glow of the blade might give away her position.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The woods were silent around her. Nothing stirred, not even insects or creatures of the night. Her heart thudded harder against her breastbone, and she struggled to still it. Could the vampires have gotten here before them? Their path had been erratic. No one should have been able to predict or follow their route. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">To her left the thicket shifted with a hiss. She spun and her blade struck.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The long steel of a sword pressed her dagger aside. The swordsman eyed the girl, but said nothing and motioned for her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Sorry.” Adele laughed weakly and lowered her small luminous weapon, slipping it back into its sheath.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The cabin was nestled at the base of the cliff. It was small and sparse, but seemed a godsend. The swordsman opened the rough-hewn door, and they went inside quickly. It was hard to see through the murky gloom that permeated the room. Still, the swordsman moved through the house and its furnishings as if it were his own home. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele stumbled against a chair and took it as a sign. She flopped between its cold padded arms, watching the Greyfriar make their meager sanctuary secure. Before she knew it her eyes had closed. She awoke what seemed like seconds later. The cabin was suffused with pale sunlight. She tightened her grip on her dagger. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her protector wordlessly offered her a meager meal of hardtack. She took it gratefully and choked it down, followed by a few swigs of water from a tin cup.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A nod of his head indicated clean linen and herbal antiseptic on the table. “For your wounds.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele’s eyebrow rose when he just moved to stand at the window. No offer of assistance came, so she doctored her hands and various other scratches. Perhaps it was more prudent that he keep watch for their enemies.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">From his place leaning against the far wall, the swordsman said, “Drink as much as you can while you can, Princess. Our flight took a lot out of you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And you too.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His forehead crinkled with what Adele could only perceive as humor. “I ate and drank while you slept. Refresh yourself now. We’ll leave soon.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Leave? Why? We’re hidden here.” She leaned back in her seat, taking another long draft of water. It had never tasted so good. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The enemy can find you here,” the swordsman pointed out. “Flay is proficient at such things.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Who?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Flay led the vampires who attacked you. The tall female.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You know it by name?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Greyfriar hesitated a moment, then nodded. “She is renowned. The most brutal warrior I have ever seen.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You sound as if you’re afraid of this Flay.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I am.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">That admission did little to comfort Adele. “Where will we go now? Back to the ship?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No. Toward the nearest human settlement.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How far will that thing follow us, this Flay? For how long?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“As long as it takes. She won’t dare return to face her master without her prize.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele gazed at her companion for the first time with real scrutiny. His face and eyes, mainly covered, revealed little. She relied more on his body movement to detect what little emotion she could.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His garb hid most of his details, save his height. He was a very tall man and thin, but made a dashing figure in his peculiar uniform. And though he tried to hide it, there was a noble way about him. Something only a princess would be able to see, despite the fact that he hunched his shoulders or stooped a bit lower when he walked. There remained poise and reserve and a touch of arrogance. Traits she knew too well.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele’s brain cast about through the various families of noble birth in an effort to place him. She leaned toward him and tried to look into his glasses again, desperate to see something familiar about him. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You are the Greyfriar, aren’t you?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He glanced quickly at her. “You’ve heard of me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course. Everyone’s heard of the Greyfriar, although honestly I thought you were just a fable. You’re very famous back home in Equatoria.” </div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman considered her words. “Do they . . . do they make books about me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele laughed softly. “Oh well, yes, I believe so. You’re certainly the talk of the ladies in court. They’ll be so jealous of me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“These books . . . have you seen them?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele replied, “Sorry, no. I don’t have time for popular reading. The life of a princess, you know. But believe me, you are a great hero to the free humans.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I see.” Greyfriar appeared to smile, although his features were draped, and Adele could hear the pleasure in his voice. But then his tone became sharper. “Your future husband is a great hero too.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This jolted the princess with surprise. “My future husband? How do you know about him?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The coming marriage of the Equatorian heir to the greatest American warlord is common news. Even in the north. The vampires fear him, and your union.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele felt the first pulse of pride she had ever taken in her Intended. “Well, he is a soldier of note, that’s true. It’s a rare man who takes the fight to the vampires.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Greyfriar nodded and turned back to the window without another word. Had she offended him? Adele wondered suddenly. “Why do you dress like that, so mysteriously?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The swordsman touched his swathed chin. “To hide myself from my enemies. And from those whom my enemies might exploit.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She couldn’t fault that logic, but still she offered quietly, “There’s no one here but me. I would keep your secret.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His shoulders bobbed with a bit of mirth as he turned toward her. “You are a hairsbreadth from being captured. It would be foolish to take such a risk.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her face fell, not only with disappointment but also with fear. “That doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He added, “Perhaps someday when the world is not so harried, I may reveal my identity.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele drew in a deep breath, but her voice did not crack. “I would like that very much. I owe you a great deal.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Greyfriar said, “Flay’s attack was both flawless and uncommonly large. It’s been years since I’ve seen such a gathering. I’d wager she threw five packs into that meat grinder. All after a single prize—you—and she risked much to seize it. The weather was against her, but she attacked anyway. She drove her army where it shouldn’t have been. Her losses were great, and she still doesn’t have what she desires.” He seemed to smile again as he approached Adele to refill her cup.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But how did you know about the attack?” the princess asked sharply.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s my business to know.” He tugged gently at his mask to adjust it. “And I tried to prevent this disaster. I sent a warning to the Empire that Flay intended to attack your fleet. My message was lost or ignored.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to doubt you. I’m not blaming you.” Adele laid a hand on his. He was chilled. She could feel it even through his glove. It made her guilt even more acute.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He jerked his hand back a bit too abruptly and stepped away. “You have every right to question me. I am nothing but myth and hearsay. I wear a mask to hide my true self.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Why did he wish not to be touched? she wondered in dismay. Was it merely because of her nobility? Was she wrong about his birth? Was he a common man?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele said, “My mentor told me once that only a fool would reveal himself to his enemies out of arrogance or for glory’s sake. I don’t see any of that in you. You want to help push the vermin back, not for accolades and riches, but because you want to see justice done.” She rose and stood beside him. “Don’t ever doubt that you are appreciated by all humanity.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thank you. Now, we should go.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele replied quickly, “I still think we should stay here. We’re hidden and the house has the mountain at its back. We can defend ourselves here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Greyfriar paused, studying his charge. “Princess, scent is a vampire’s tool. They can smell the blood of their victims from quite a distance. There is no way to mask it. Flay will have hunters on your trail. The only possible safety is to get you beyond her reach.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Adele drew a deep breath and shook her head in apology. “Of course. You’re right. I’m just scared. But why should I be? I’m with the Greyfriar. My brother would be jealous. . . .” Her words trailed off as once again little Simon’s death became real. For a brief moment she had actually forgotten. But now that she had remembered, the pain was that much more acute.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Princess, I will see you home. Trust me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Several seconds went by before Adele nodded with a pale smile. “My life is in your hands.”</div> <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheGreyfriar.html">The Greyfriar (Vampire Empire Book 1)</a> © <a href="http://clayandsusangriffith.blogspot.com/">Clay & Susan Griffith</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.christianmcgrath.com/index.html">Chris McGrath</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmfprr-YHDjWM5u-VPXM1StnFxVT9Dt-I35CCdIiW8bwh6ZwQc459TdDQlWpgfCejaLdWNqPIu25n3WClN1baqaFNBJ_jsSGxTlTXBqRlTvEcOvauR_niTXE1TSs-LihGn7pmfu7tUZRA/s1600/Clay+and+Susan+Griffith.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmfprr-YHDjWM5u-VPXM1StnFxVT9Dt-I35CCdIiW8bwh6ZwQc459TdDQlWpgfCejaLdWNqPIu25n3WClN1baqaFNBJ_jsSGxTlTXBqRlTvEcOvauR_niTXE1TSs-LihGn7pmfu7tUZRA/s320/Clay+and+Susan+Griffith.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>Clay and Susan Griffith </strong></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">are a married couple who have written and published together for more than a decade. Their credits include two novels for Bantam Doubleday Dell in the mid-1990s and another novel for Pinnacle Entertainment Group in 2002 plus numerous short stories published in many anthologies, some featuring noted genre characters like Kolchak the Night Stalker and The Phantom. They’ve also written scripts for television and published graphic novels. The authors have attended many cons over the years and are committed to doing every con they can for Vampire Empire. Visit them at <a href="http://clayandsusangriffith.blogspot.com/">clayandsusangriffith.blogspot.com</a>.</span></div></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-62578987574266822942010-10-26T12:10:00.000-05:002010-10-26T12:10:33.335-05:00Salute the Dark by Adrian Tchaikovsky<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCF-yNDDqQCjfSz7BsSy3_DPslFc2pkP9xuJ_vEn1dASYCtponXrhFx9x5z1mcsRf8gU1UVBmKwuTku6I6QsbcjcdxDNvAMSz2751mQZVHqSQKMY4w5MY61lPCbcGiFGfkj6ZROMqsGd8/s1600/Salute.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCF-yNDDqQCjfSz7BsSy3_DPslFc2pkP9xuJ_vEn1dASYCtponXrhFx9x5z1mcsRf8gU1UVBmKwuTku6I6QsbcjcdxDNvAMSz2751mQZVHqSQKMY4w5MY61lPCbcGiFGfkj6ZROMqsGd8/s320/Salute.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>“<a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/SalutetheDark.html"><em>Salute the Dark</em></a>… returns fans to the vibrant war-torn landscape of the Lowlands. Rich character development, political intrigue and layers of betrayal form a linguistic tapestry best enjoyed in the evening when the hum of insects outside adds depth to the kinden struggle on the written page.”<br />
-RT Book Reviews, 4 stars (Compelling—Page-Turner) <br />
<br />
“Fulfills the promise of the Apt series and brings its first part to an excellent conclusion, while starting new threads to be explored next. An A++ based on my three reads of the book so far and vaulting to the top of my 2010 fantasy novels.” <br />
-<em>Fantasy Book Critic</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Also by <br />
<a href="http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/">Adrian Tchaikovsky</a>:<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_193554189">Shadows of the Apt 1</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Empire.html">Empire in Black and Gold</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_193554194">Shadows of the Apt 2</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Dragonfly.html">Dragonfly Falling</a><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_193554198">Shadows of the Apt 3</a></span><br />
<a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BloodoftheMantis.html">Blood of the Mantis</a><br />
<br />
<br />
Preview an excerpt from the book:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Salute the Dark</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Shadows of the Apt 4</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Adrian Tchaikovsky</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><strong>GLOSSARY</strong></div><div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>People</strong></div><br />
STENWOLD MAKER—Beetle-kinden spymaster and statesman<br />
CHEERWELL “CHE” MAKER—his niece<br />
TISAMON—Mantis-kinden Weaponsmaster<br />
TYNISA—his half-breed daughter, Stenwold’s ward<br />
ACHAEOS—Moth-kinden magician, Che’s lover<br />
ATRYSSA—Tynisa’s mother and Tisamon’s former lover, deceased<br />
THALRIC—renegade Wasp-kinden, former Rekef major<br />
NERO—Fly-kinden artist, old friend of Stenwold<br />
FELISE MIENN—Dragonfly-kinden duellist<br />
TAKI—Solarnese Fly-kinden aviatrix<br />
<br />
LINEO THADSPAR—Beetle-kinden Speaker for the Collegium Assembly<br />
BALKUS—renegade Sarnesh Ant-kinden, Stenwold’s agent<br />
SPERRA—Fly-kinden, Stenwold’s agent<br />
DESTRACHIS—Spider-kinden doctor, companion of Felise Mienn<br />
PAROPS—Tarkesh Ant-kinden, leader of the free Tarkesh<br />
JONS ALLANBRIDGE—Beetle-kinden aviator<br />
PLIUS—foreign Ant-kinden in Sarn, Stenwold’s agent<br />
<br />
PRINCE MINOR SALME “SALMA” DIEN—Dragonfly nobleman, leader of the Landsarmy<br />
PRIZED OF DRAGONS—Butterfly-kinden, Salma’s lover<br />
PHALMES—Mynan Soldier Beetle-kinden, former brigand, Salma’s lieutenant<br />
<br />
TEORNIS OF THE ALDANRAEL—Spider-kinden Aristos and Lord-Martial<br />
ODYSSA—Teornis’ chief agent in Solarno<br />
CESTA—Assassin Bug-kinden killer in Solarno<br />
SCOBRAAN—Soldier Beetle-kinden aviator in Solarno<br />
<br />
LAETRIMAE—Mantis-kinden ghost from the Shadow Box<br />
XARAEA—Moth-kinden intelligencer in Tharn<br />
TEGREC—Wasp-kinden major and magician, governor of occupied Tharn<br />
RAEKA—Wasp-kinden, Tegrec’s body-slave<br />
<br />
KYMENE—Mynan Soldier Beetle-kinden, leader of the Mynan resistance<br />
CHYSES—Mynan Soldier Beetle-kinden, Kymene’s lieutenant<br />
HOKIAK—Scorpion-kinden black-marketeer in Myna<br />
GRYLLIS—Spider-kinden, Hokiak’s business partner<br />
<br />
ALVDAN II—Emperor of the Wasps<br />
SEDA—his sister<br />
MAXIN—Wasp-kinden general, Rekef<br />
REINER—Wasp-kinden general, Rekef<br />
BRUGAN—Wasp-kinden general, Rekef<br />
ALKAN—Wasp-kinden general, Seventh Army<br />
LATVOC—Wasp-kinden colonel, Rekef, Reiner’s aide<br />
GAN—Wasp-kinden colonel, governor of Szar<br />
ULTHER—Wasp-kinden colonel, former governor of Myna, deceased<br />
AXRAD—Wasp-kinden lieutenant and aviator<br />
UCTEBRI THE SARCAD—Mosquito-kinden slave and magician<br />
GJEGEVEY—Woodlouse-kinden slave and advisor<br />
<br />
DARIANDREPHOS (“DREPHOS”)—half-breed auxillian-colonel and master artificer<br />
TOTHO—half-breed artificer in Drephos’ cadre<br />
KASZAAT—Bee-kinden artificer, in Drephos’ cadre<br />
BIG GREYV—Mole Cricket-kinden artificer, in Drephos’ cadre<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Places</strong><br />
<br />
CAPITAS—the capital of the Empire<br />
ASTA—Wasp staging post for the Lowlands Campaign<br />
COLLEGIUM—Beetle-kinden city, home of the Great College<br />
THE COMMONWEAL—Dragonfly-kinden state north of the Lowlands, partly occupied by the Empire<br />
THE DARAKYON—forest, formerly a Mantis stronghold, now haunted<br />
HELLERON—Beetle-kinden factory city, occupied<br />
MYNA—Soldier Beetle city conquered by the Wasps<br />
SARN—Ant-kinden city-state allied to Collegium<br />
SOLARNO—Spider-ruled city on the Exalsee, occupied<br />
<br />
SPIDERLANDS—Spider-kinden cities south of the Lowlands, believed rich and endless<br />
SZAR—Bee-kinden city, conquered by the Wasps<br />
TARK—Ant-kinden city-state, occupied<br />
THARN—Moth-kinden hold, occupied<br />
VEK—Ant-kinden city-state, recently at war with Collegium<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Organizations and Things</strong><br />
<br />
THE ANCIENT LEAGUE—a Moth–Mantis alliance of Dorax, Nethyon and Etheryon<br />
ASSEMBLY—the elected ruling body of Collegium, meeting in the Amphiophos<br />
<em>BUOYANT MAIDEN</em>—Jons Allanbridge’s airship<br />
CRYSTAL STANDARD, PATH OF JADE, SATIN TRAIL—Solarnese political parties<br />
<em>ESCA VOLENTI</em>—Taki’s orthopter<br />
GREAT COLLEGE in Collegium, the cultural heart of the Lowlands<br />
LANDSARMY—force of refugees and irregulars led by Salma<br />
MERCERS—Dragonfly-kinden order of knights errant<br />
PROWESS FORUM—duelling venue in Collegium<br />
REKEF—the Wasp Empire’s secret service<br />
SHADOW BOX—an artefact holding the heart of the Darakyon<br />
SKRYRES—the magician-leaders of the Moth-kinden<br />
<em>STARNEST</em>—great Wasp airship used in the conquest of Solarno<br />
WINGED FURIES—name for the Wasp Seventh Army<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>SUMMARY</strong></div><br />
<em>Following his victory over the Sarnesh field army, General Malkan prepares to lead his </em><em>army toward Sarn itself to destroy the military capability of the Lowlands. The </em><em>alliance of powers that Stenwold brokered at Sarn is still gathering its strength, so it falls </em><em>to Salma’s Landsarmy to hinder the Wasp advance while the Lowlanders prepare. </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Over the winter the Wasps have added the Spider city of Solarno to their Empire, and </em><em>also the Moth hold of Tharn. However, careful manipulation by the Moth Skryres and their </em><em>agent Xaraea has ensured that Tegrec, the new governor of Tharn, is secretly sympathetic to </em><em>their case, being a magician who has hidden his true nature from his kin. </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Meanwhile the maverick artificer Drephos has been ordered to take his secret weapons to </em><em>the city of Szar, whose Bee-kinden people are in open revolt after the death of their queen, </em><em>whom the Empire was holding as hostage for their continued servitude. However, amongst </em><em>Drephos’ cadre is Kaszaat, a former citizen of Szar, and the lover of Stenwold’s former student </em><em>Totho.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>The mission to recover the Shadow Box has failed after Tynisa, under the control of the </em><em>Mosquito-kinden Uctebri, stabbed Achaeos, leaving him severely wounded. The box, meanwhile, </em><em>has fallen into Uctebri’s hands, and he has promised the Wasp Emperor that he will </em><em>use the artefact to make Alvdan immortal. However, at the same time, Uctebri plots with the </em><em>Emperor’s sister to dethrone her brother and make her into an undying Empress.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>ONE</strong><br />
<br />
<em>Why do these things always come to plague us?</em><br />
<br />
A fatuous thought for a man about to fight a war, but the war had not even begun and already Stenwold had seen too many people hurt—and hurt on his business too. The knot of horror he had felt when they had brought Sperra out had not gone away. And now this.<br />
<br />
<em>Achaeos this time. O poor Che, my poor Che, to have come home to this.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>And not just Che.</em><br />
<br />
“I am so very sorry,” Stenwold said softly. He tried to put a hand on Tynisa’s shoulder, but she flinched away from it and would not let him. <br />
<br />
“It isn’t me you should be sorry for,” she said. He had never seen his ward like this—Tynisa had gone through life without fear, the face and grace of her Spider mother, the lethal skill of herMantis father and a Collegium citizen’s implacable self-confidence. Now she was standing at the door of the College infirmary, afraid to go in, yet unwilling to leave. The beds were not short of patients still recovering from injuries sustained in the Vekken siege. On one bed lay Achaeos, his eyes closed, grey skin gone so pale it was almost white. He had yet to wake up, yet to speak. The College physicians would not commit themselves on whether he ever would.<br />
<br />
By his bed sat Che, holding the ailing Moth-kinden’s hand. The sight of her clearly tore into Tynisa with a raw pain, yet she could not take her eyes away. Her sword had put Achaeos where he was, though Stenwold had not needed her father’s protestations of magic to know that she could not have meant the man any harm. That itself was a tragedy, but Stenwold knew that it was the injury to Tynisa’s foster sister that cut deepest: the grief inflicted on Che, that marvel of innocence and foolishness, who would never again be quite the same.<br />
<br />
Tynisa shuddered, and Stenwold as much as saw her think, <em>I have now severed her from me for always.</em><br />
<br />
“This war is not finished with its casualties,” Stenwold murmured. He was thinking about Sperra again, his thoughts returning and returning to the moment when the Sarnesh soldiers had brought out the little Fly-kinden’s tortured form. Sperra, who was walking now, even flying a little, but who would never forget what had been done to her. <em>And by her allies! We do not even need the Wasps to maim us when we can harm ourselves.</em><br />
<br />
“Tynisa . . .” he began.<br />
<br />
“No,” she said, “I don’t care what you want, Sten. I can’t go out there again. I’m not safe now. I don’t want to do it anymore.”<br />
<br />
“Tisamon has explained to me what happened—”<br />
<br />
“My father has simply invented something to make himself feel better.” She glared round at him. “Don’t tell me you believe it?”<br />
<br />
“I believe that he truly believes it, and he knows more about such things than I.” Stenwold shrugged. “Tynisa, you’ve been to the shrine on Parosyal.”<br />
<br />
“That was different. They drugged me, and I saw . . . visions, hallucinations.”<br />
<br />
He stared down at his hands. “I used to think the way you do, but I’ve now seen so much. . . . There is more to life than just the things we can see. Achaeos would say the same, of course.”<br />
<br />
“Much good it did him.”<br />
<br />
“Tynisa . . . will you come with me to the council?”<br />
<br />
“No,” she said. “I’m sorry, Sten, but I can’t. I can’t trust myself anymore. You’ll have to find someone else.”<br />
<br />
He nodded slowly. <em>I can’t force her, for all that I need her.</em> Perhaps Tisamon would have more luck in persuading her. He spared one more look for his niece, Che, and then turned to go.<br />
<br />
So the ranks diminish, he reflected sadly, yet the Lowlands was readying itself for battle. Sarn and Collegium and the Ancient League were summoning their allies. Stenwold needed every agent he could get, and he was still short, but he could not make the numbers add up. Sperra was now lost to him, as was Achaeos, who could have proved so useful amongst his own people. Tynisa would not fight, and he had not even asked Che to help him. His resources were growing fewer even as the Wasp armies massed.<br />
<br />
He arrived at the council chamber early. Today was another war council and people were still calling him War Master since the siege. He was expecting to see old Lineo Thadspar turn up, and a score or so of other Assemblers, each with their own schemes and advice. There would be Tisamon as well, standing at the back and saying nothing, with a look of disdain on his face . . . and probably the Spider, Teornis . . .<br />
<br />
Even as he thought the name the man himself came striding into the chamber, rubbing his hands briskly. He had chosen to wear a bone and leather cuirass over a red silk robe, while a cap of chitin, adorned with the feathery fronds of moth antennae, made him look like some ancient warrior-mystic. Behind him came the diminutive form of the Fly-kinden pilot known as Taki, who had brought Che home from her birthplace of Solarno, fleeing in the face of yet another Wasp conquest.<br />
<br />
“Master Maker,” the Spider said, “times move faster than we do, I’m afraid.”<br />
<br />
“In what way?”<br />
<br />
“I’ve had news that calls me home, as swiftly as I can make the journey. I’ve arranged for an airship to take me and my retinue to Seldis.” <br />
<br />
“The Wasps?”<br />
<br />
“Camped outside our borders again, but this time it doesn’t look as though the Mantis-kinden will do our dirty work for us.”<br />
<br />
“You’ll fight, then? The Spider-kinden will fight?”<br />
<br />
“Impossible to say.” Teornis smiled. “However, retinues and mercenaries are mustering at Seldis and Everis, and once they’re gathered there I can make use of them. What’s the use of my being a Lord-Martial if I can’t lord it? Meanwhile, there’s more business afoot at Mavralis on the Exalsee, which is why I’m taking Taki here with me. I fancy the Wasps could do with being jabbed in the rear.”<br />
<br />
Stenwold nodded. “My reports seem to suggest that, with their occupation of Solarno, the Empire is becoming overextended.”<br />
<br />
Behind Teornis’ smile, something slipped aside to reveal for a moment the genuine tension within him. “My friend, we had better hope so, because if they aren’t, then there’ll soon be a great deal of black and yellow all the way down the southern coast. It may all come down to the abilities of some Wasp clerk filing supply requisitions in Asta, Master Maker. As you know, wars are fought by soldiers but won by logistics.”<br />
<br />
“And you’re happy to go with Teornis?” Stenwold asked Taki.<br />
<br />
“Sieur Maker, remember I’ve served Spider-kinden all my life. I want to free my city, and the Spiders want my city free.”<br />
<br />
“There is another travelling companion that I shall be taking from your side, Master Maker. I trust you will have no objections,” Teornis said. <br />
<br />
Stenwold looked at him blankly. For some reason he thought, <em>Tynisa?—</em>perhaps because the girl so clearly wanted to go somewhere and find some purpose to take her away from her guilt.<br />
<br />
Teornis’ smile twitched. “I believe Master Nero wishes a return to Solarno. I had not realized that the city had so exercised its . . . charms on him.” <br />
<br />
With that, Stenwold could not help glancing down at Taki and thinking, at first, <em>The old lecher</em>, and then, <em>I am in no position to judge!</em><br />
<br />
“What use he’ll be, I don’t know,” Taki remarked. “I just hope he can keep up with me, is all. But, anyway, we’ve got him, so we’ll just have to make some use of him.”<br />
<br />
The other members of the war council now were filing in and taking their places, so Stenwold clasped hands with Teornis and then with the Fly girl.<br />
<br />
“Good fortune to you,” he said.<br />
<br />
“Good fortune to all of us,” Taki corrected him.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
His stance was perfect for his blade: crouched a little, knees bent and balanced to move him forward or back at the speed of his reflexes, not of this thoughts. His arm was not straight like the arrow of a rapier duellist’s stance, but crooked in so that the claw blade ran almost down the line of his forearm, looking deceptively passive but ready to lash out and draw back just like the killing arms of his people’s insect namesake. His off-hand was held out, pointing forward, spines flexing all down his arm to the elbow, ready to beat aside an attack and thus create a gap into which his claw would strike.<br />
<br />
He looked down the crooked line of his arm and claw. He looked at her.<br />
<br />
Her stance was different in almost every particular, yet identical in its perfect poise, in its patience. She stood with one leg forward and almost fully extended, the other bent beneath her; her back straight. The sword, with its long hilt gripped in both hands, she held low and almost vertical: her entire being and energy focused on its leading edge, its diamond point.<br />
<br />
They had not moved, either of them, for what must have been ten minutes, barely even a blink.<br />
<br />
He wore his arming jacket of course, dark green padded cloth with his gold brooch, the Weaponmaster pin, on the left breast. She had eschewed her armour, instead wearing the closest she could find to Dragonfly garb: loose clothes of Spider silk pulled in tight at the waist, the forearms, the calves. She wore shimmering turquoise and gold, with a black sash for a belt.<br />
<br />
Tisamon and Felise Mienn watched each other narrowly and waited for the other’s move.<br />
<br />
His soul was focused on the razor edge of her sword. They could only spar with real blades. To propose otherwise would be an insult to their skill.<br />
<br />
Somewhere in the back of his mind was a memory of when they had fought each other on the streets of Collegium. She had thought him a Wasp agent, and for the first time in many years Tisamon had been truly fighting for his life in single combat. <br />
<br />
For ten years previously he had made a name for himself in Helleron, hiring his blade to whoever could meet his fees. The money was nothing; the fights were all. He had thought that he was taking pride in his skills, displayed in all those brawls and formal duels, but now he discovered that he had been waiting to meet the one who could properly challenge him. In Collegium she had found him.<br />
<br />
After they had fought, after she had stepped out of the fight so abruptly, she had left him so inflamed, so fiercely <em>alive</em>, that he had even spared Stenwold’s Spider traitress. In that moment it had not mattered, because only <em>she</em> signified—only this woman who had walked in and out of his world in those brief minutes, to scar it forever.<br />
Somewhere deep inside, he was now out of balance, as though he had been struck, back then, and was still reeling. Seventeen years of penance he had endured, in Helleron and other places: penance for betraying his race by consorting with the Spider Atryssa; penance for trusting in her false heart; and, at the last, penance for mistrusting her, who had died while being true to him. <em>And I loved her, and she did not betray me after all.</em> It was the most jagged wound of them all that it had been he who abandoned her, in the end. <em>How she would have hated me, had she lived.</em><br />
<br />
His eyes were now fixed on Felise’s—her eyes that were almond shaped, and shifted from blue to green even as he watched and waited for her to move. <br />
<em>It has been so long.</em> His kind bore some of their scars forever, but it had been so long. <em>And I have broken the rules before.</em> Felise’s face remained impassive. He could read nothing in it. He sensed no tension there, could foretell no gathering strike. <br />
<br />
He had been dead, he realized, those seventeen years. Only Stenwold’s return and the discovery of Tynisa had awoken him to some kind of half-life, but beneath it all some part of him had slumbered on. <em>Until Felise.</em> He had not known who she was, what her purpose, or her allegiance. He had not needed to, and would not have cared if she had served a Spider lady or been a slave of the Arcanum, or even worn the black and gold. Skill spoke a language all its own and, when he had fought her, even as her blade drove for his heart, he had thrilled to it. If she had killed him, as well she might, then he would have cried out in joy as her sword ran him through.<br />
<br />
And he knew she understood that. She was no Mantis, but her kind understood such perfection, such dedication. <br />
<br />
She moved, stepping in suddenly with a thrust. He caught it with his claw, parrying it aside, his off-hand lashing in to beat her blade aside. <br />
<br />
They stopped, that single move and countermove frozen in time, standing now within each other’s reach, face to face. She would seem beautiful to others, if made up as the Spider-kinden painted their faces, yet to him she was beautiful in every line of her body. Something within him was screaming, as he moved his hand to within an inch of her face, the spines flexing on his forearm.<br />
<br />
There was a heavy tread, heralding a Beetle-kinden approaching the silence of the Prowess Forum. It was dark outside, and had been before they began his poised vigil. Tisamon broke away first, still gazing into her face. <br />
<br />
It was Stenwold who entered, looking more haggard than ever. He nodded at the two of them but saw nothing of what had existed between them. <br />
<br />
“You weren’t at the war meeting,” he said.<br />
<br />
“I’m a soldier, not a tactician,” Tisamon reminded him.<br />
<br />
Stenwold considered that. “True, I suppose. Imissed you, though. I like to be able to look over at you and remind myself of the reality of warfare. How so many people became experts on fighting wars without ever picking up a sword I’ll never know.”<br />
<br />
He frowned suddenly, becoming aware in some small way of the tension here. “Is . . . everything all right?”<br />
<br />
“Just sparring,” Tisamon replied briefly. Then: “Tell me, you and your . . .Spider girl, you are happy together, yes?”<br />
<br />
Stenwold grinned a little sheepishly. “More than I deserve, with Arianna, yes. But you were right in what you said. After all, the war’s on us now, and who knows where I’ll be when it’s done—or where she’ll be . . .” He pressed his lips together then, no doubt imagining some harm coming to her, or to himself. “Anyway, I’ll leave you now to your practice. Four hours of talk is enough for any man.”<br />
<br />
Tisamon barely noticed as the Beetle shuffled off. He himself had said that, had he not? He had said that Stenwold should take happiness where he could, and when he could. The future was looking uncertain—less certain by the day. A hundred thousand Wasps and more were on the march beneath their black and gold banner. There was a score of battlefields ahead waiting to be filled with the fallen.<br />
<br />
Tisamon settled into a new stance, holding his claw high and back now, his pose more aggressive, more reckless. Felise countered with a low stance, one leg straight to one side, the other bent beneath her, sword held at waist level and pointing directly at his heart.<br />
<br />
There was something in her eyes that pierced him. He dared not name it, but he saw it. He felt the wound. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/SalutetheDark.html">Salute the Dark</a> © <a href="http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/">Adrian Tchaikovsky</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.jonsullivanart.com/">Jon Sullivan</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzwbPb8ccf2nbPUCPpeRBXbP_VAmMFO8dy_LnVyqGtkXGQefs2_AL46FTmBnBJES6Xguc713WKaRR210Q52wkNAYQfBOhnCrQFgqhMIWG_6UKc0TKohKelFlyk00hsZndbeN1rl_tB8E/s1600/tchaichovsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" nx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEitzwbPb8ccf2nbPUCPpeRBXbP_VAmMFO8dy_LnVyqGtkXGQefs2_AL46FTmBnBJES6Xguc713WKaRR210Q52wkNAYQfBOhnCrQFgqhMIWG_6UKc0TKohKelFlyk00hsZndbeN1rl_tB8E/s320/tchaichovsky.jpg" width="252" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>Adrian Tchaikovsky</strong></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. Catch up with Adrian at <a href="http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/">http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/</a> for further information about both himself and the insect-kinden, together with bonus material including short stories and artwork.</span></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-46831950420313189422010-10-14T14:51:00.000-05:002010-10-14T14:51:21.428-05:00The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack by Mark Hodder<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2HRWvzPqrmprYGVXyzj4T8hngDt3-qv1wJjJgl_IuMgfY2etEbk8MAU7JKzIOvMqD6gjvrxx3pANJPYX4IbwLECYNQqXR-P-3AWQqEzbB67mlPnAzyLhHR0xmu8bkA_sFqPPKmeCfr0/s1600/Spring+Heeled+Jack_COVER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ex="true" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhk2HRWvzPqrmprYGVXyzj4T8hngDt3-qv1wJjJgl_IuMgfY2etEbk8MAU7JKzIOvMqD6gjvrxx3pANJPYX4IbwLECYNQqXR-P-3AWQqEzbB67mlPnAzyLhHR0xmu8bkA_sFqPPKmeCfr0/s320/Spring+Heeled+Jack_COVER.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>“This is the book to recommend as to what Steampunk is or should be.” <br />
–The Steampunk Forum at Brass Goggles<br />
<br />
“How does <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/StrangeAffair.html">The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack</a></strong></em> stack up to the ever growing offerings of all that is Steampunk? I would say it takes the genre to a new level….Would-be Steampunk writers will now have to work double duty to top this one!” –AstroGuyz.com<br />
<br />
“This is an exhilarating romp through a witty combination of nineteenth-century English fact and fiction. Mark Hodder definitely knows his stuff and has given us steam opera at its finest.... A great, increasingly complex, plot, some fine characters, and invention that never flags! It gets better and better, offering clues to some of Victorian London’s strangest mysteries. This is the best debut novel I have read in ages.” –Michael Moorcock, author<br />
<br />
<br />
Presenting an excerpt here:<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;"><em>Burton & Swinburne in</em></span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;"></span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Mark Hodder</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>*THE FIRST PART*</strong><br />
IN WHICH AN AGENT IS APPOINTED AND MYSTERIES ARE INVESTIGATED<br />
<br />
A known mistake is better than an unknown truth.<br />
—ARABIC PROVERB<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER 1<br />
<strong>THE AFTERMATH OF AFRICA</strong><br />
<br />
Everything Life places in your path is an opportunity.<br />
No matter how difficult.<br />
No matter how upsetting.<br />
No matter how impenetrable.<br />
No matter how you judge it.<br />
An opportunity.<br />
—LIBERTINE PROPAGANDA <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
“By God! He’s killed himself!”<br />
<br />
Sir Richard Francis Burton staggered back and collapsed into his chair. The note Arthur Findlay had passed to him fluttered to the floor. The other men turned away, took their seats, examined their fingernails, and fiddled with their shirt collars; anything to avoid looking at their stricken colleague.<br />
<br />
From where she stood on the threshold of the “robing room,” hidden by its partially closed door, Isabel Arundell could see that her lover’s normally dark and intense eyes were wide with shock, filled with a sudden vulnerability. His mouth moved spasmodically, as if he were struggling to chew and swallow something indigestible. She longed to rush to his side to comfort him and to ask what tidings had wounded him; to snatch up that note and read it; to find out who had killed himself; but such a display would be unseemly in front of the small gathering, not to mention embarrassing for Richard. He, among all men, stood on his own two feet, no matter how dire the situation. Isabel alone was aware of his sensitivity; and she would never cause it to be exposed to others.<br />
<br />
Many people—mostly those who referred to him as “Ruffian Dick”—considered Burton’s brutal good looks to be a manifestation of his inner nature. They could never imagine that he doubted himself; though if they were to see him now, so shaken, perhaps it might strike them that he wasn’t quite the devil he appeared, despite the fierce moustache and forked beard.<br />
<br />
It was difficult to see past such a powerful façade.<br />
<br />
The Committee had only just gathered at the table, but after glancing at Burton’s anguished expression, Sir Roderick Murchison, the president of the Royal Geographical Society, came to a decision.<br />
<br />
“Let us take a moment,” he muttered.<br />
<br />
Burton stood and held up a hand in protest. “Pray, gentlemen,” he whispered hoarsely, “continue with your meeting. The scheduled debate will, of course, have to be cancelled, but if you’ll allow me half an hour, perhaps I can organise my notes and make a small presentation concerning the valley of the<br />
Indus, so as not to disappoint the crowd.”<br />
<br />
“That’s very good of you, Sir Richard,” said one of the Committee members, Sir James Alexander. “But, really, this must have come as a terrible blow. If you would rather—”<br />
“Just grant me thirty minutes to prepare. They have, after all, paid for their tickets.”<br />
<br />
“Very well. Thank you.”<br />
<br />
Burton turned and walked unsteadily to the door, passed through, closed it behind him, and stood facing Isabel, swaying slightly.<br />
<br />
At five eleven, he personally bemoaned the lost inch that would have made him a six-footer, though, to others, the breadth of his shoulders, depth of his chest, slim but muscular build, and overwhelming charisma made him seem a giant, even compared with much taller men.<br />
<br />
He had short black hair, which he wore swept backward. His skin was swarthy and weather-beaten, giving his straight features rather an Arabic cast, further accentuated by his prominent cheekbones, both disfigured by scars—a smallish one on the right, but a long, deep, and jagged one on the left, which tugged slightly at his bottom eyelid. They were the entry and exit wounds caused by a Somali spear that had been thrust through his face during an ill-fated expedition to Berbera, on the Horn of Africa.<br />
<br />
To Isabel, those scars were the mark of an adventurous and fearless soul. Burton was in every respect her “ideal man.” He was a wild, passionate, and romantic figure, quite unlike the staid and emotionally cold men who moved in London’s social circles. Her parents thought him unsuitable but Isabel knew there could be no other for her.<br />
<br />
He stumbled forward into her arms.<br />
<br />
“What ails you so, Dick?” she gasped, holding him by the shoulders. “What has happened?”<br />
<br />
“John has shot himself!”<br />
<br />
“No!” she exclaimed. “He’s dead?”<br />
<br />
Burton stepped back and wiped a sleeve across his eyes. “Not yet. But he took a bullet to the head. Isabel, I have to work up a presentation. Can I rely on you to find out where he’s been taken? I must see him. I have to make my peace with him before—”<br />
<br />
“Of course, dear. Of course! I shall make enquiries at once. Must you speak, though? No one would fault you if you were to withdraw.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll speak. We’ll meet later, at the hotel.”<br />
<br />
“Very well.”<br />
<br />
She kissed his cheek and left him; walked a short way along the elegant marble-floored corridor and, with a glance back, disappeared through the door to the auditorium. As it swung open and closed, Burton heard the crowd beyond grumbling with impatience. There were even some boos. They had<br />
waited long enough; they wanted blood; wanted to see him, Burton, shame and humiliate the man he’d once considered a brother: John Hanning Speke.<br />
<br />
“I’ll make an announcement,” muttered a voice behind him. He turned to find that Murchison had left the Committee and was standing at his shoulder. Beads of sweat glistened on the president’s bald head. His narrow face was haggard and pale.<br />
<br />
“Is it—is it my fault, Sir Roderick?” rasped Burton.<br />
<br />
Murchison frowned. “Is it your fault that you possess exacting standards while, according to the calculations John Speke presented to the Society, the Nile runs uphill for ninety miles? Is it your fault that you are an erudite and confident debater while Speke can barely string two words together? Is it<br />
your fault that mischief-makers manipulated him and turned him against you? No, Richard, it is not.”<br />
<br />
Burton considered this for a moment, then said, “You speak of him so and yet you supported him. You financed his second expedition and refused me mine.”<br />
<br />
“Because he was right. Despite his slapdash measurements and his presumptions and guesswork, the Committee feels it likely that the lake he discovered is, indeed, the source of the Nile. The simple truth of the matter, Richard, is that he found it while you, I’m sorry to say, did not. I never much liked the man, may God have mercy on his soul, but fortune favoured him, and not you.”<br />
<br />
Murchison moved aside as the Committee members filed out of the robing room, heading for the presentation hall. <br />
“I’m sorry, Richard. I have to go.”<br />
<br />
Murchison joined his fellows.<br />
<br />
“Wait!” called Burton, pacing after him. “I should be there too.”<br />
<br />
“It’s not necessary.”<br />
<br />
“It is.”<br />
<br />
“Very well. Come.”<br />
<br />
They entered the packed auditorium and stepped onto the stage amid sarcastic cheers from the crowd. Colonel William Sykes, who was hosting the debate, was already at the podium, unhappily attempting to quell the more disruptive members of the restless throng; namely, the many journalists—including the mysterious young American Henry Morton Stanley—who seemed intent on making the occasion as newsworthy as possible. Doctor Livingstone sat behind Sykes, looking furious. Clement Markham, also seated on the stage, was chewing his nails nervously. Burton slumped into the chair beside him, drew a small notebook and a pencil from his pocket, and began to write.<br />
<br />
Sir James Alexander, Arthur Findlay, and the other geographers took their seats on the stage.<br />
<br />
The crowd hooted and jeered.<br />
<br />
“About time! Did you get lost?” someone shouted waggishly. A roar of approval greeted the gibe.<br />
<br />
Murchison muttered something into the colonel’s ear. Sykes nodded and retreated to join the others.<br />
<br />
The president stepped forward, tapped his knuckles against the podium, and looked stonily at the expectant faces. The audience quieted until, aside from occasional coughs, it became silent.<br />
<br />
Sir Roderick Murchison spoke: “Proceedings have been delayed and for that I have to apologise—but when I explain to you the cause, you will pardon me. We have been in our Committee so profoundly affected by a dreadful calamity that has—”<br />
<br />
He paused; cleared his throat; gathered himself.<br />
<br />
“—that has befallen Lieutenant Speke. A calamity by which, it pains me to report, he must surely lose his life.”<br />
<br />
Shouts of dismay and consternation erupted.<br />
<br />
Murchison held out his hands and called, “Please! Please!”<br />
<br />
Slowly, the noise subsided.<br />
<br />
“We do not at present have a great deal of information,” he continued, “but for a letter from Lieutenant Speke’s brother, which was delivered by a runner a short while ago. It tells that yesterday afternoon the lieutenant joined a hunting party on the Fuller Estate near Neston Park. At four o’clock, while he was negotiating a wall, his gun went off and severely wounded him about the head.”<br />
<br />
“Did he shoot himself, sir?” cried a voice from the back of the hall.<br />
<br />
“Purposefully, you mean? There is nothing to suggest such a thing!”<br />
<br />
“Captain Burton!” yelled another. “Did you pull the trigger?”<br />
<br />
“How dare you, sir!” thundered Murchison. “That is entirely unwarranted! I will not have it!”<br />
<br />
A barrage of questions flew from the audience, a great many of them directed at Burton.<br />
<br />
The famous explorer tore a page from his notebook, handed it to Clement Markham, and, leaning close, muttered into his ear. Markham glanced at the paper, stood, stepped to Murchison’s side, and said something in a low voice. <br />
Murchison gave a nod.<br />
<br />
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “you came to the Bath Assembly Rooms to hear a debate between Captain Sir Richard Burton and Lieutenant John Speke on the matter of the source of the Nile. I, of course, understand you wish to hear from Sir Richard concerning this terrible accident that has befallen his colleague, but, as you might suppose, he has been greatly affected and feels unable to speak at this present time. He has, however, written a short statement which will now be read by Mr. Clement Markham.”<br />
<br />
Murchison moved away from the podium and Markham took his place.<br />
<br />
In a quiet and steady tone, he read from Burton’s note: “The man I once called brother today lies gravely wounded. The differences of opinion that are known to have lain between us since his return from Africa make it more incumbent on me to publicly express my sincere feeling of admiration for his character and enterprise, and my deep sense of shock that this fate has befallen him. Whatever faith you may adhere to, I beg of you to pray for him.” <br />
<br />
Markham returned to his chair.<br />
<br />
There was not a sound in the auditorium.<br />
<br />
“There will be a thirty-minute recess,” declared Murchison, “then Sir Richard will present a paper concerning the valley of the Indus. In the meantime, may I respectfully request your continued patience whilst we rearrange this afternoon’s schedule? Thank you.”<br />
<br />
He led the small group of explorers and geographers out of the auditorium and, after brief and subdued words with Burton, they headed back to the robing room.<br />
<br />
Sir Richard Francis Burton, his mind paralysed, his heart brimming, walked in the opposite direction until he came to one of the reading rooms. Mercifully, it was unoccupied. He entered, closed the door, and leaned against it.<br />
<br />
He wept.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
“I’m sorry. I can’t continue.”<br />
<br />
It was the faintest of whispers.<br />
<br />
He’d spoken for twenty minutes, hardly knowing what he was saying, reading mechanically from his journals, his voice faint and quavering. His words had slowed then trailed off altogether.<br />
<br />
When he looked up, he saw hundreds of pairs of eyes locked on to him; and in them there was pity.<br />
<br />
He drew in a deep breath.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry,” he said more loudly. “There will be no debate today.”<br />
<br />
He turned away from the crowd and, closing his ears to the shouted questions and polite applause, left the stage, pushed past Findlay and Livingstone, and practically ran to the lobby. He asked the cloakroom attendant for his overcoat, top hat, and cane, and, upon receiving them, hurried out through<br />
the main doors and descended the steps to the street.<br />
<br />
It was just past midday. Dark clouds drifted across the sky; the recent spell of fine weather was dissipating, the temperature falling.<br />
<br />
He waved down a hansom.<br />
<br />
“Where to, sir?” asked the driver.<br />
<br />
“The Royal Hotel.”<br />
<br />
“Right you are. Jump aboard.”<br />
<br />
Burton clambered into the cabin and sat on the wooden seat. There were cigar butts all over the floor. He felt numb and registered nothing of his surroundings as the vehicle began to rumble over the cobbles. <br />
<br />
He tried to summon up visions of Speke; the Speke of the past, when the young lieutenant had been a valued companion rather than a bitter enemy. His memory refused to cooperate and instead took him back to the event that lay at the root of their feud: the attack in Berbera, six years ago.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
Berbera, the easternmost tip of Africa, April 19, 1855. Thunderstorms had been flickering on the horizon for the past few days. The air was heavy and damp.<br />
<br />
Lieutenant Burton’s party had set up camp on a rocky ridge, about threequarters of a mile outside the town, near to the beach. Lieutenant Stroyan’s tent was twelve yards off to the right of the “Rowtie” that Burton shared with Lieutenant Herne. Lieutenant Speke’s was a similar distance to the left, separated<br />
from the others by the expedition’s supplies and equipment, which had been secured beneath a tarpaulin.<br />
<br />
Not far away, fifty-six camels, five horses, and two mules were tethered. In addition to the four Englishmen, there were thirty-eight other men—abbans, guards, servants, and camel-drivers, all armed.<br />
<br />
With the monsoon season imminent, Berbera had been virtually abandoned during the course of the past week. An Arab caravan had lingered, but after Burton refused to offer it an escort out of the town—preferring to wait instead for a supply ship that was due any time from Aden—it had finally departed. <br />
<br />
Now, Berbera was silent.<br />
<br />
The expedition had retired for the night. Burton had posted three extra guards, for Somali tribes from up and down the coast had been threatening an attack for some days. They believed the British were here either to stop the lucrative slave trade or to lay claim to the small trading post.<br />
<br />
At two thirty in the morning, Burton was jolted from his sleep by shouts and gunfire.<br />
<br />
He opened his eyes and stared at the roof of his tent. Orange light quivered on the canvas.<br />
<br />
He sat up.<br />
<br />
El Balyuz, the chief abban, burst in.<br />
<br />
“They are attacking!” the man yelled, and a look of confusion passed over his dark face, as if he couldn’t believe his own words. “Your gun, Effendi!” He handed Burton a revolver.<br />
<br />
The explorer pushed back his bedsheets and stood; laid the pistol on the map table and pulled on his trousers; snapped his braces over his shoulders; picked up the gun.<br />
<br />
“More bloody posturing!” He grinned across to Herne, who’d also awoken, hastily dressed, and snatched up his Colt. “It’s all for show, but we shouldn’t let them get too cocky. Go out the back of the tent, away from the campfire, and ascertain their strength. Let off a few rounds over their heads, if necessary. They’ll soon bugger off.”<br />
<br />
“Right you are,” said Herne, and pushed through the canvas at the rear of the Rowtie.<br />
<br />
Burton checked his gun.<br />
<br />
“For Pete’s sake, Balyuz, why have you handed me an unloaded pistol? Get me my sabre!”<br />
<br />
He shoved the Colt into the waistband of his trousers and snatched his sword from the Arab.<br />
<br />
“Speke!” he bellowed. “Stroyan!”<br />
<br />
Almost immediately, the tent flap was pushed aside and Speke stumbled in. He was a tall, thin, pale man, with watery eyes, light brown hair, and a long bushy beard. He usually wore a mild and slightly self-conscious expression, but now his eyes were wild.<br />
<br />
“They knocked my tent down around my ears! I almost took a beating! Is there shooting to be done?”<br />
<br />
“I rather suppose there is,” said Burton, finally realising that the situation might be more serious than he’d initially thought. “Be sharp, and arm to defend the camp!”<br />
<br />
They waited a few moments, checking their gear and listening to the rush of men outside.<br />
<br />
A voice came from behind them: “There’s a lot of the blighters and our confounded guards have taken to their heels!” It was Herne, returning from his recce. “I took a couple of potshots at the mob but then got tangled in the tent ropes. A big Somali took a swipe at me with a bloody great club. I put a bullet into the bastard. Stroyan’s either out cold or done for; I couldn’t get near him.”<br />
<br />
Something thumped against the side of the tent. Then again. Suddenly a veritable barrage of blows pounded the canvas while war cries were raised all around. The attackers were swarming like hornets. Javelins were thrust through the opening. Daggers ripped at the material.<br />
<br />
“Bismillah!” cursed Burton. “We’re going to have to fight our way to the supplies and get ourselves more guns! Herne, there are spears tied to the tent pole at the back—get ’em!”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir!” responded Herne, returning to the rear of the Rowtie. Almost immediately, he ran back, crying, “They’re breaking through the canvas!”<br />
<br />
Burton swore vociferously. “If this blasted thing comes down on us we’ll be caught up good and proper. Get out! Come on! Now!”<br />
<br />
He plunged through the tent flaps and into the night, where he found himself facing twenty or so Somali natives. Others were running around the camp, driving away the camels and pillaging the supplies. With a shout, he leaped forward and began to set about the attackers with his sabre.<br />
<br />
Was that Lieutenant Stroyan lying over in the shadows? It was hard to tell. Burton slashed his way toward the prone figure, grimacing as clubs and spear shafts thudded against his flesh, bruising and cutting him, drawing blood. <br />
<br />
He momentarily glanced back to see how the others were doing and saw Speke stepping backward into the tent entrance, his mouth hanging open, eyes panicked.<br />
<br />
“Don’t step back!” he roared. “They’ll think that we’re retiring!”<br />
<br />
Speke looked at him with an expression of utter dismay and, right there, in the midst of battle, their friendship ended, for John Hanning Speke knew that his cowardice had been recognised.<br />
<br />
A club struck Burton on the shoulder and, tearing his eyes away from the other Englishman, he spun and swiped his blade at its owner. He was jostled back and forth. One set of hands kept pushing at his back, and he wheeled impatiently, raising his sword, only recognising El Balyuz at the very last moment.<br />
<br />
His arm froze in midswing.<br />
<br />
His head exploded with pain.<br />
<br />
A weight pulled him sideways and he collapsed onto the stony earth.<br />
<br />
Dazed, he reached up. A barbed javelin had transfixed his face, entering the left cheek and exiting the right, knocking out some back teeth, cutting his tongue, and cracking his palate.<br />
<br />
He fought to stay conscious.<br />
<br />
Someone started dragging him away from the conflict.<br />
<br />
He passed out.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
In front of the Rowtie, Speke, driven to a fury by the exposure of the shameful flaw in his character, strode into the melee, raised his Dean and Adams revolver, pressed its muzzle against the chest of the man who’d downed Burton, and pulled the trigger.<br />
<br />
The gun jammed.<br />
<br />
“Blast it!” said Speke.<br />
<br />
The tribesman, a massive warrior, looked down at him, smiled, and punched him over the heart.<br />
<br />
Speke fell to his knees, gasping for air.<br />
<br />
The Somali bent, took him by the hair, pulled him backward, and, with his other hand, groped between Speke’s legs. For an instant, the Englishman had the terrifying conviction that he was going to be unmanned. The tribesman, though, was simply checking for daggers, hidden in the Arabic fashion.<br />
<br />
Speke was thrust onto his back and his hands were quickly tied together, the cords pulled cruelly tight. Yanked upright, he was marched away from the camp, which was now being looted and destroyed.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
Lieutenant Burton regained his wits and found that he was being pulled toward the beach by El Balyuz. He recovered himself sufficiently to stop his rescuer and to order the man, via sign language and writing in a patch of sand, to go and fetch the small boat that the expedition party had moored in the harbour, and to bring it to the mouth of a nearby creek.<br />
<br />
El Balyuz nodded and ran off.<br />
<br />
Burton lay on his back and gazed at the Milky Way.<br />
<br />
<em>I want to live!</em> he thought.<br />
<br />
A minute or so passed. He raised a hand to his face and felt the barbed point of the javelin. The only way to remove it was by sliding the complete length of the shaft through his mouth and cheeks. He took a firm grip on it, pushed, and fainted.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
As the night wore on, John Speke was taunted and spat upon by his captors. With their sabres, they sliced the air inches from his face. He stood and endured it, his eyes hooded, his jaw set, expecting to die, and he wondered what Richard Burton would say about him when reporting this incident.<br />
<br />
<em>Don’t step back! They’ll think that we’re retiring!</em><br />
<br />
The rebuke had stung, and if Burton put it on record, Speke would be forever branded as less than a man. Damn the arrogant blackguard! <br />
<br />
One of his captors casually thrust his spear through Speke’s side. The lieutenant cried out in pain, then fell backward as the point pierced him again, this time in the shoulder.<br />
<br />
<em>This is the end</em>, he told himself.<br />
<br />
He struggled back to his feet and, as the spear was stabbed at his heart, deflected it with his bound hands. The point tore the flesh behind his knuckles to the bone.<br />
<br />
The Somali stepped back.<br />
<br />
Speke straightened and looked at him.<br />
<br />
“To hell with you,” he said. “I won’t die yellow.”<br />
<br />
The tribesman leaped in and prodded the spear into Speke’s left thigh. The explorer felt the blade scrape against bone.<br />
<br />
“Shit!” he coughed in shock, and grabbed reflexively at the shaft. He and the African fought over it—one trying to gain possession, the other struggling to retain it. The Somali let go with his left hand and used it to pull a shillelagh from his belt. He swiped at Speke’s right arm and the cudgel connected with a horrible crack. Speke dropped the spear shaft and crumpled to his knees, gasping with agony.<br />
<br />
His attacker walked away, turned back, and ran at him, plunging the spear completely through the Englishman’s right thigh and into the ground beyond.<br />
<br />
Speke screamed.<br />
<br />
Instinct took over.<br />
<br />
With his awareness strangely separated from his body, he watched as his hands gripped the weapon, pulled it free of the ground, out through his thigh, and threw it aside. Then he stumbled into his attacker and his bound fists swept up, smashing into the man’s face.<br />
<br />
The warrior rocked back, raising a hand to his face as blood spurted from his nose.<br />
<br />
Speke half walked, half hopped away, his disengaged mind wondering how he was staying upright with such terrible injuries.<br />
<br />
<em>Where’s the pain?</em> he mused, entirely unaware that he was afire with it. <br />
<br />
He hobbled, barefoot, across jagged rock, down a slope, and onto the shingle of the beach. Somehow, he started to run. What tatters of clothing remained on him streamed behind.<br />
<br />
The Somali snatched up the spear and gave chase, threw the weapon, missed, and gave up.<br />
<br />
Other tribesmen lunged for the Englishman but Speke dodged them and kept going. He outdistanced his pursuers and, when he saw that they’d given up the chase, he collapsed onto a rock and chewed through the cord that bound his wrists.<br />
<br />
He was faint with shock and loss of blood but knew that he had to find his companions, so, as dawn broke, he pushed on until he reached Berbera. Here he was discovered by a search party led by Lieutenant Herne and was carried to the boat at the mouth of the creek. He’d run for three miles and<br />
had eleven wounds, including the two that had pierced the large muscles of his thighs.<br />
<br />
They placed him onto a seat and he raised his head and looked at the man sitting opposite. It was Burton, his face bandaged, blood staining the linen over his cheeks.<br />
<br />
Their eyes met.<br />
<br />
“I’m no damned coward,” whispered Speke.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
The battle should have made them brothers. They both acted as if it had—and less than two years later they embarked together on one of the greatest expeditions in British history: a perilous trek into central Africa to search for the source of the Nile.<br />
<br />
Side by side, they endured extreme conditions, penetrating into lands unseen by white men and skirting dangerously close to Death’s realm. An infection temporarily blinded and immobilised Burton. Speke became permanently deaf in one ear after attempting to remove an insect from it with a penknife. They were both stricken with malaria, dysentery, and crippling ulcers.<br />
<br />
They pressed on.<br />
<br />
Speke’s resentment simmered.<br />
<br />
He constructed his own history of the Berbera incident, excising from it the most essential element: the fact that a thrown stone had cracked against his kneecap, causing him to step back into the Rowtie’s entrance. Burton had looked around at that very instant and had plainly seen the stone bounce off Speke’s knee and understood the back-step for the reaction it was. He’d never for one moment doubted his companion’s courage.<br />
<br />
Speke knew the stone had been seen but chose to forget it. History, he discovered, is what you make it.<br />
<br />
They reached the central lakes.<br />
<br />
Burton explored a large body of water called by the local tribes “Tanganyika,” which lay to the south of the Mountains of the Moon. His geographical readings suggested that it could be the Nile’s source, though he was too ill to visit its northernmost shore from whence the great river should flow.<br />
<br />
Speke, leaving his “brother” in a fevered delirium, trekked northeastward and found himself at the shore of a vast lake, which he imperiously named after the British monarch, though the tribes that lived on its shores already had a name for it: “Nyanza.”<br />
<br />
He tried to circle it, lost sight of it, found it again farther to the north—or was it the shore of a second lake?—took incomplete, incompetent measurements, and returned to Burton, the leader of the expedition, claiming to have found, on his own and without a shadow of a doubt, the true source of<br />
the great river.<br />
<br />
They recovered a modicum of health and undertook the long march back to Zanzibar where Burton fell into a fit of despondency, blaming himself for what, by his demanding standards, was inconclusive evidence. <br />
<br />
John Speke, less scientific, less scrupulous, less disciplined, sailed back to England ahead of Burton and en route fell under the influence of a man named Laurence Oliphant, an arch-meddler and poseur who kept a white panther as a pet. Oliphant nurtured Speke’s pique, turned it into malice, and seduced him into claiming victory. No matter that it was the other man’s expedition; Speke had solved the biggest geographical riddle of the age!<br />
<br />
John Speke’s last words to Burton had been “Good-bye, old fellow; you may be quite sure I shall not go up to the Royal Geographical Society until you have come to the fore and we appear together. Make your mind quite easy about that.”<br />
<br />
The day he landed in England, Speke went straight up to the Royal Geographical Society and told Sir Roderick Murchison that the Nile question was settled.<br />
<br />
The Society divided. Some of its members supported Burton, others supported Speke. Mischief makers stepped in to ensure that what should have been a scientific debate rapidly degenerated into a personal feud, though Burton, now recovering his health in Aden, was barely aware of this.<br />
<br />
Easily swayed, Speke became overconfident. He began to criticise Burton’s character, a dangerous move for a man who believed that his cowardice had been witnessed by his opponent.<br />
<br />
Word reached Burton that he was to be awarded a knighthood and should return to England at once. He did so, and stepped ashore to find himself at the centre of a maelstrom.<br />
<br />
Even as the reclusive monarch’s representative touched the sword to his shoulders and dubbed him <em>Sir</em> Richard Francis Burton, the famous explorer’s thoughts were on John Speke, wondering why he was taking the offensive in such a manner.<br />
<br />
Over the following weeks, Burton defended himself but resisted the temptation to retaliate.<br />
<br />
Life is fickle; the fair man doesn’t invariably win.<br />
<br />
Lieutenant Speke, it gradually became apparent, had made a lucky guess: the Nyanza probably <em>was</em> the source of the Nile.<br />
<br />
Murchison knew, as Burton had been quick to point out, that Speke’s readings and calculations were badly faulted. In fact, they were downright amateurish and not at all admissible as scientific evidence. Nevertheless, there was in them the suggestion of a potential truth. This was enough; the Society funded a second expedition.<br />
<br />
John Speke went back to Africa, this time with a young, loyal, and opinion-free soldier named James Grant. He explored the Nyanza, failed to circumnavigate it, didn’t find the Nile’s exit point, didn’t take accurate measurements, and returned to England with another catalogue of assumptions which Burton, with icy efficiency, proceeded to pick to pieces. <br />
<br />
A face-to-face confrontation between the two men seemed inevitable.<br />
<br />
It was gleefully engineered by Oliphant, who had, by this time, mysteriously vanished from the public eye—into an opium den, according to rumour—to pull strings like an invisible puppeteer.<br />
<br />
He arranged for the Bath Assembly Rooms to be the venue and September 16, 1861, the date. To encourage Burton’s participation, he made it publicly known that Speke had said: “If Burton dares to appear on the platform at Bath, I will kick him!”<br />
<br />
Burton had fallen for it: “That settles it! By God, he <em>shall</em> kick me!”<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
The hansom drew up outside the Royal Hotel, and Burton’s mind reengaged with the present. He emerged from the cab with one idea uppermost: someday, Laurence Oliphant would pay.<br />
<br />
He entered the hotel. The receptionist signalled to him; a message from Isabel was waiting.<br />
<br />
He took the note and read it: <br />
<br />
<em>John was taken to London. On my way to Fullers’ to find out exactly where.</em><br />
<br />
Burton gritted his teeth. Stupid woman! Did she think she’d be welcomed by Speke’s family? Did she honestly believe they’d tell her anything about his condition or whereabouts? As much as he loved her, Isabel’s impatience and lack of subtlety never failed to rile him. She was the proverbial bull in a china shop, always charging at her target without considering anything that might lie in her path, always utterly confident that what she wanted to do was right, whatever anyone else might think.<br />
<br />
He wrote a terse reply:<br />
<br />
<em>Left for London. Pay, pack, and follow.</em><br />
<br />
He looked up at the hotel receptionist. “Please give this to Miss Arundell when she returns. Do you have a Bradshaw?”<br />
<br />
“Traditional or atmospheric railway, sir?”<br />
<br />
“Atmospheric.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir.”<br />
<br />
He was handed the train timetable. The next atmospheric train was leaving in fifty minutes. Time enough to throw a few odds and ends into a suitcase and get to the station.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER 2<br />
<strong>THE THING IN THE ALLEY</strong><br />
<br />
The Eugenicists are beginning to call their filthy experimentations “<em>Genetics</em>,” after the Ancient Greek “<em>Genesis</em>,” meaning “<em>Origin</em>.” This is in response to the work of Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian priest. A priest! Can there be any greater hypocrite than a priest who meddles with Creation?<br />
—RICHARD MONCKTON MILNES<br />
<br />
It was a fast and smooth ride to London.<br />
<br />
Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s atmospheric railway system was a triumph. It used wide-gauge tracks in the centre of which ran a fifteen-inch-diameter pipe. Along the top of the pipe there was a two-inch slot, covered with a flap-valve of oxhide leather. Beneath the front carriage of each train hung a dumbbell-shaped piston, which fitted snugly into the pipe. This was connected to the carriage by a thin shaft that rose through the slot. The shaft had a small wheeled contrivance attached to it that pressed open the leather flap at the front while closing and oiling it at the back. Every three miles along the track, a station sucked air out of the pipe in front of the train and pumped it back in behind. It was this difference in air pressure that shot the carriages along the tracks at tremendous speed.<br />
<br />
When Brunel first created the system he encountered an unexpected problem: rats ate the oxhide. He turned to his Eugenicist colleague, Francis Galton, for a solution, and the scientist had provided it in the form of specially bred oxen whose skin was both repellent and poisonous to the rodents.<br />
<br />
The pneumatic rail system now ran the length and breadth of Great Britain and was being extended throughout the Empire, particularly in India and South Africa.<br />
<br />
A similar method of propulsion was planned for the new London Underground railway system, though this project had been delayed since Brunel’s death two years ago.<br />
<br />
Burton arrived home at 14 Montagu Place at half past six, by which time a mist was drifting through the city streets. As he opened the wrought-iron gate and stepped to the front door, he heard a newsboy in the distance calling: “Speke shoots himself! Nile debate in uproar! Read all about it!”<br />
<br />
He sighed and waited for the young urchin to draw closer. He recognised the soft Irish accent; it was Oscar, a refugee from the never-ending famine, whose regular round this was. The boy possessed an extraordinary facility with words, which Burton thoroughly appreciated.<br />
<br />
The youngster approached, saw him, and grinned. He was a short and rather plump lad, about eight years old, with sleepy-looking eyes and a cheeky grin marred only by crooked, yellowing teeth. He wore his hair too long and was never without a battered top hat and a flower in his buttonhole.<br />
<br />
“Hallo, Captain! I see you’re after making the headlines again!”<br />
<br />
“It’s no laughing matter, Quips,” replied Burton, using the nickname he’d given the newspaper boy some weeks previously. “Come into the hallway for a moment; I want to talk with you. I suppose the journalists are all blaming me?”<br />
<br />
Oscar joined the explorer at the door and waited while he fished for his keys.<br />
<br />
“Well now, Captain, there’s much to be said in favour of modern journalism. By giving us the opinions of the uneducated, it keeps us in touch with the ignorance of the community.”<br />
<br />
“Ignorance is the word,” agreed Burton. He opened the door and ushered the youngster in. “If the reaction of the crowd in Bath is anything to go by, I rather suspect that the charitable are saying Speke shot himself, the uncharitable that I shot him.”<br />
<br />
Oscar laid his bundle of newspapers on the doormat.<br />
<br />
“You’re not wrong, sir; but what do <em>you</em> say?”<br />
<br />
“That no one currently knows what happened except those who were there. That maybe it wouldn’t have happened at all had I tried a little harder to bridge the divide that opened between us; been, perhaps, a little more sensitive to Speke’s personal demons.”<br />
<br />
“Ah, demons, is it?” exclaimed the boy, in his high, reedy voice. “And what of your own? Are they not encouraging you to luxuriate in selfreproach?”<br />
<br />
“Luxuriate!”<br />
<br />
“To be sure. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us. What a luxury that is!”<br />
<br />
Burton grunted. He put his cane in an elephant-foot umbrella stand, placed his topper on the hatstand, and slipped out of his overcoat. <br />
<br />
“You are a horribly intelligent little ragamuffin, Quips.”<br />
<br />
Oscar giggled. “It’s true. I’m so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I’m saying!”<br />
<br />
Burton lifted a small bell from the hall table and rang for his housekeeper.<br />
<br />
“But is it not the truth, Captain Burton,” continued the boy, “that you only ever asked Speke to produce scientific evidence to back up his claims?”<br />
<br />
“Absolutely. I attacked his methods but never him, though he didn’t extend to me the same courtesy.”<br />
<br />
They were interrupted by the appearance of Mrs. Iris Angell, who, though Burton’s landlady, was also his housekeeper. She was a wide-hipped, white-haired old dame with a kindly face, square chin, and gloriously blue and generous eyes.<br />
<br />
“I hope you wiped your feet, Master Oscar!”<br />
<br />
“Clean shoes are the measure of a gentleman, Mrs. Angell,” responded the boy.<br />
<br />
“Well said. There’s a freshly baked bacon and egg pie in my kitchen. Would you care for a slice?”<br />
<br />
“Very much so!”<br />
<br />
The old lady looked at Burton, who nodded. She went back down the stairs to her domain in the basement.<br />
<br />
“So it’s information you’ll be wanting, Captain?” asked Oscar.<br />
<br />
“I need to know where Lieutenant Speke has been taken. I know he was brought to London from Bath—but to which hospital? Can you find out?”<br />
<br />
“Of course! I’ll spread the word among the lads. I should have an answer for you within the hour.”<br />
<br />
“Very good. Miss Arundell is also making enquiries, though I fear her approach will have caused nothing but trouble.”<br />
<br />
“How so, Captain?”<br />
<br />
“She’s visiting the Speke family to offer her condolences.”<br />
<br />
Oscar winced. “By heavens! There is nothing more destructive than a woman on a charitable mission. I hope for your sake that Mr. Stanley doesn’t get wind of it.”<br />
<br />
Burton sighed. “Bismillah! I’d forgotten about him!”<br />
<br />
Henry Morton Stanley, the journalist, was recently arrived in London from America. His background was somewhat mysterious; traces of a Welsh accent suggested he wasn’t the authentic “Yankee” he claimed to be, and there were rumours that his name was false. Whatever the true facts about him, though, he was making a big splash as a newspaper reporter, having taken a particular interest in the various expeditions organised by the Royal Geographical Society. Befriending Doctor Livingstone, Stanley had sided with him against Burton in the Nile debate and had written some less than flattering articles in the <em>Empire</em>, including one that accused Burton of having murdered a boy who caught him urinating in the European fashion during his famous pilgrimage to Mecca. As Burton had been quick to point out, his disguise, skill with the language, and painstaking observation of customs were convincing enough to fool his fellow pilgrims into believing him an Arab over a period of many months; it was therefore quite unthinkable that he’d have been caught making so basic a mistake as to urinate standing up. Besides which, killing the boy would certainly have led to his exposure as an<br />
impostor and a summary execution.<br />
<br />
Stanley had also attacked Isabel in the press, vilifying her for her lack of subtlety and overly headstrong character. Burton couldn’t help but think that she was becoming a liability at this crucial point in his career, a situation which Stanley had spotted some time ago and was revelling in.<br />
<br />
“Yum!” exclaimed Oscar.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Angell had reappeared with a generous slice of pie. She handed it to the youngster.<br />
<br />
“It’s nothing special, but I hope it fills that bottomless hole you call a stomach!” she said.<br />
<br />
“I have the simplest tastes, Mrs. Angell,” declared the newsboy. “I am always satisfied with the best!”<br />
<br />
Burton ruffled the lad’s hair. “Off you go then, Quips. There’ll be a second slice waiting for you when you return.”<br />
<br />
Oscar heaved a sigh of contentment, picked up his papers, and flitted out through the door, which Burton held open for him.<br />
<br />
As he closed the portal, the explorer looked at his landlady.<br />
<br />
“You’ve heard the news?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir. May God preserve him. Itmust have been a terrible shock for you.”<br />
<br />
“He hated me.”<br />
<br />
“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, I think he was misguided.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t disagree. Have reporters been banging on the door?”<br />
<br />
“No, sir, they probably think you’re still in Bath.”<br />
<br />
“Good. If they call, empty a bucket of slops over them. No visitors, please, Mother Angell. I don’t want to see anyone until young Oscar returns.”<br />
<br />
“Very well. Can I bring you something to eat?”<br />
<br />
Burton began to climb the stairs. “Yes, please. And a pot of coffee.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir.”<br />
<br />
The old lady watched him as he reached the landing, turned right, anddisappeared into his study. She pursed her lips. She knew Burton well enough to recognise the developing mood.<br />
<br />
“Coffee, my eye!” she muttered as she descended to the kitchen. “He’ll be through a bottle of brandy before the evening is old!”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
Burton had, indeed, poured himself a large measure of brandy, and was now slumped in his old saddlebag armchair by the fireplace, his feet resting on the fender. He held the glass in one hand and a letter in the other. It was from 10 Downing Street and read:<br />
<br />
<em>Please contact the prime minister’s office immediately upon your return to London.</em><br />
<br />
He sipped the brandy and savoured the fire that sank into his belly. He was tired but not sleepy, and felt the heavy weight of depression dragging at him.<br />
<br />
Laying his head back, and with eyes half closed, he focused his mind on his sense of hearing. It was a Sufi trick he’d learned en route to Mecca. Sight was the primary sense; when another was given precedence and the mind was allowed to wander, ideas, insights, and hitherto unseen connections often bubbled up from its otherwise inaccessible depths.<br />
<br />
He heard a bookshelf creak slightly as its wood adjusted to the changing temperature of early evening; it was the only sound from within the study, aside from his own breathing and the ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. From beyond the two large sash windows, though, came the muffled cacophony of England’s capital: voices passing on the pavement below, the clatter and chugging engines of velocipedes, the cry of a street hawker, the choppy paradiddle of a rotorchair passing overhead, a barking dog, a crying child, the rumble and hiss of steam-horses, the clip-clop of real horses, the<br />
coarse laughter of prostitutes.<br />
<br />
He heard footsteps on the stairs.<br />
<br />
A question came to him: <em>What am I to do now?</em><br />
<br />
There was a soft knock at the door.<br />
<br />
“Come.”<br />
<br />
Mrs. Angell entered bearing a tray upon which lay a plate of sliced meats, cheese, and a chunk of bread. There was also a cup and saucer, a bowl of sugar, and a pot of coffee. She crossed the room and laid it on the occasional table beside Burton’s chair.<br />
<br />
“It’s getting unseasonably cold, sir—shall I light the fire?”<br />
<br />
“It’s all right, I’ll do it. Would you take a letter for me?”<br />
<br />
“Certainly.”<br />
<br />
The housekeeper, who often performed slight secretarial tasks for him, sat at one of the three desks, slid a sheet of blank paper onto the leather writing pad, and picked up a pen. She dipped the nib into the inkwell and wrote, at Burton’s dictation:<br />
<br />
<em>I am at home in London. Awaiting further instructions. Burton.</em><br />
<br />
“Send it by runner to 10 Downing Street, please.”<br />
<br />
The old lady looked up in surprise. “To where?”<br />
<br />
“10 Downing Street. At once, please.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir.”<br />
<br />
She departed with the note. A few moments later, he heard her at the front door blowing three blasts on a whistle. Within half a minute, a dog—almost certainly a greyhound—would arrive on the doorstep and, after she’d fed the animal, the housekeeper would place the letter between its teeth and<br />
announce the destination. There’d be an acknowledging wag of the tail, and the runner would race away en route for Downing Street.<br />
<br />
They were part of a fairly new communications system, these remarkable dogs, the first practical application of eugenics adopted by the British public. Each hound came into the world knowing every address within a fifty-mile radius of its birthplace and with the ability to carry mail between those locations, barking and scratching at a recipient’s door until the letter was collected. After each task was completed, the runner would wander the streets until it heard another three-whistle summons.<br />
<br />
Messenger parakeets formed the other half of the system. These phenomenal mimics carried spoken communications. A person only had to visit a post office and give one of the birds a message, the name of the recipient, and the address, and the parakeet would fly straight to the appropriate set of ears.<br />
<br />
There was one problem, an issue that had troubled the Eugenicist scientists from the start: namely, that whatever modification they made to a species, it always seemed to bring with it an unexpected side effect. <br />
<br />
In the case of the parakeets, it was that they swore at, mocked, and offended everyone they encountered. The person on the receiving end of the service would inevitably be given a message liberally peppered with insults not put there by the sender. Nothing, it seemed, could be done to correct this fault. Originally, it had been hoped that every household would have its own parakeet but, as it turned out, no one could bear the constant abuse in their own home. So the Post Office had stepped in and now each branch kept an aviary full of the birds.<br />
<br />
In the runners’ case, the drawback was nothing more serious than a phenomenal appetite. Though they were whiplash thin, the dogs required a square meal at every address they visited, so despite being a free system, those who used it often found themselves investing a considerable amount of money in dog food.<br />
<br />
Burton heard the front door close. His letter was on its way.<br />
<br />
He took a swig of brandy and reached for a cheroot; he had a taste for cheap, strong tobacco.<br />
<br />
<em>Explore Dahomey?</em> he thought, still dwelling on what he should do now that the Nile question was out of his hands; for though a new expedition was required to settle the matter once and for all, he knew that Murchison would not commission him to lead it. The Royal Geographical Society was already<br />
fractured by the verbal duel he and Speke had fought, and the president would doubtlessly offer the expedition to a neutral geographer.<br />
<br />
So, Dahomey? Burton had been wanting to mount an expedition into that dark and dangerous region of West Africa for some time but now it was going to be difficult to raise the money.<br />
<br />
A private sponsor, perhaps? Maybe a publishing company?<br />
<br />
Ah, yes, then there were the books. For a long while he’d wanted to write a definitive translation of <em>The Thousand Nights and a Night</em>; perhaps now would be a good time to begin that ambitious project. At very least he should finish <em>Vikram and the Vampire</em>, the collected tales of Hindu devilry that were<br />
currently stacked on one of his desks, with annotations half completed.<br />
<br />
Write books, keep a low profile, wait for his enemies to become bored.<br />
<br />
Marry Isabel?<br />
<br />
He looked at his empty glass, blew cigar smoke into it, held the cheroot between his teeth, and reached for the decanter and poured more brandy. <br />
<br />
For more than a year, he’d felt destined to marry Isabel Arundell; now, suddenly, he wasn’t so sure. He loved her, that was certain, but he also resented her. He loved her strength and practicality but resented her overbearing personality and tendency to do things on his behalf without consulting him<br />
first; loved the fact that she tolerated his interest in all things exotic and erotic but hated her blinkered Catholicism. Charles Darwin had killed God but she and her family, like so many others, still clung to the delusion.<br />
<br />
He sought to quell his mounting frustration with another glass. And another. And more.<br />
<br />
At eight o’clock there came a tap at the door and Mrs. Angell appeared, looking with disapproval at the drunken explorer.<br />
<br />
“Did you even touch the coffee?” she asked.<br />
<br />
“No, and I don’t intend to,” he replied. “What do you want?”<br />
<br />
“The boy is back.”<br />
<br />
“Quips? Send him up.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t think so, sir. You’re in no state to receive a child.”<br />
<br />
“Send him up, blast you!”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
Burton pushed himself up from his chair and stood unsteadily, his eyes blazing.<br />
<br />
“You’ll do as you’re bloody well told, woman!”<br />
<br />
“No, sir, I won’t. Not when I’m told by a foul-mouthed drunkard. And I remind you that though I am your employee, you are also my tenant, and I am free to end our arrangement whenever I see fit. I shall take a message from the boy and bring it to you forthwith.”<br />
<br />
She stepped back to the landing, closing the door behind her.<br />
<br />
Burton took a couple of steps toward the door, thought better of it, and stood swaying in the centre of the room. He looked around at the bookcases, filled with volumes about geography, religion, languages, erotica, esoterica, and ethnology; looked at the swords resting on brackets above the fireplace; the worn boxing gloves hanging from a corner of the mantelpiece; the pistols and spears displayed in the alcoves to either side of the chimney breast; looked at the pictures on the walls, including the one of Edward, his brain-damaged younger brother, who’d been an inmate at the Surrey County Lunatic Asylum for the past three years, a result of an incident five years ago when he was beaten half to death in Ceylon after Buddhist villagers took offence at his hunting of elephants; looked at the three big desks, stacked with papers, his half-written books, maps, and charts; looked at the many souvenirs of his travels, the idols and carvings, hookahs and prayer mats, knickknacks and trinkets; looked at the door in the wall opposite the windows, which led to the small dressing room where he kept his various disguises; and looked at the dark windows and his reflection in their glass.<br />
<br />
The question came again, and he spoke it aloud: “What the hell am I to do?”<br />
<br />
The door opened and Mrs. Angell, her expression severe and voice cold, stepped in and said, “Master Oscar says to tell you that Mr. Speke is at the Penfold Private Sanatorium.”<br />
<br />
Burton nodded, curtly.<br />
<br />
The old woman made to leave.<br />
<br />
“Mrs. Angell,” he called.<br />
<br />
She stopped and looked back at him.<br />
<br />
“My language was entirely unwarranted,” he mumbled, self-consciously. “My temper, too. Please accept my apologies.”<br />
<br />
She gazed at him a moment. “Very well. But you’ll take your devils out of this house, is that understood? Either that, or you remove yourself from it—permanently!”<br />
<br />
“Agreed. Did you treat Quips to more pie?”<br />
<br />
The old dame smiled indulgently. “Yes, and an apple and some butterscotch.”<br />
<br />
“Thank you. Now, as you recommend, I think I shall take my devils out of the house.”<br />
<br />
“But you’ll not allow them to guide you into trouble, if you please, Sir Richard.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll do my best, Mother Angell.”<br />
<br />
She bobbed her head and departed.<br />
<br />
Burton considered for a moment. It was too late in the evening to visit the hospital; that would have to wait until the morning, and if Speke didn’t survive the night, then so be it. It was, however, never too late to visit the Cannibal Club. A few drinks with his Libertine friends would help to lift his spirits, and maybe Algernon Swinburne would be among them. Burton hadn’t known the promising young poet for long but enjoyed his company immensely.<br />
<br />
He made up his mind, changed his clothes, took another swig of brandy, and was just leaving the room when a tapping came at one of the windows. He crossed to it, a little clumsily, and saw a colourful parakeet sitting on the sill. <br />
<br />
He pulled up the sash. A cloud of mist rolled in. The parakeet looked at him.<br />
<br />
“Message from the stinking prime minister’s office,” it cackled. “You are requested to attend that prattle-brain Lord Palmerston at 10 Downing Street at nine o’clock in the morning. Please confirm, arse-face. Message ends.” <br />
<br />
Burton’s brows, which usually arched low over his eyes in what appeared to be a permanent frown, shot upward. The prime minister wanted to meet with him personally? Why?<br />
<br />
“Reply. Message begins. Appointment confirmed. I will be there. Message ends. Go.”<br />
<br />
“Bugger off!” squawked the parakeet, and launched itself from the sill.<br />
<br />
Burton closed the window.<br />
<br />
He was going to meet Lord Palmerston.<br />
<br />
Bloody hell.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
The Cannibal Club was located in rooms above Bartoloni’s Italian Restaurant in Leicester Square.<br />
<br />
Burton found the enigmatic and rather saturnine Richard Monckton Milnes there, in company with the diminutive Algernon Swinburne and Captain Henry Murray, Doctor James Hunt, Sir Edward Brabrooke, Thomas Bendyshe, and Charles Bradlaugh—hellraisers all.<br />
<br />
“Burton!” cried Milnes as the explorer entered. “Congratulations!”<br />
<br />
“On what?”<br />
<br />
“On shooting that bounder Speke! Surely it was you who pulled the trigger? Please say it was so!”<br />
<br />
Burton threw himself into a chair and lit a cigar.<br />
<br />
“It was not.”<br />
<br />
“Ah, what a shame!” exclaimed Milnes. “I was so hoping you could tell us what it feels like to murder a man. A white man, I mean!” <br />
<br />
“Why, yes, of course!” put in Bradlaugh. “You killed that little Arab boy on the road to Mecca, didn’t you?”<br />
<br />
Burton accepted a drink from Henry Murray.<br />
<br />
“You know damned well I didn’t!” he growled. “That bastard Stanley writes nothing but scurrilous nonsense!”<br />
<br />
“Come now, Richard!” trilled Swinburne, in his excitable, high-pitched voice. “Don’t object so! Do you not agree that murder is one of the great boundaries we must cross in order to know that we, ourselves, are truly alive?”<br />
<br />
The famous explorer sighed and shook his head. Swinburne was young—just twenty-four—and possessed an intuitive intelligence that appealed to the older man; but he was gullible.<br />
<br />
“Nonsense, Algy! Don’t let these Libertines mesmerise you with their misguided ideas and appallingly bad logic. They are incorrigibly perverse, especially Milnes here.”<br />
<br />
“Hah!” yelled Bendyshe from across the room. “Swinburne’s as perverse as they come! He has a taste for pain, don’t you know! Likes the kiss of a whip, what!”<br />
<br />
Swinburne giggled, twitched, and snapped his fingers. As always, hismovements were fast, jerky, and eccentric, as if he suffered from Saint Vitus’s dance. <br />
<br />
“It’s true. I’m a follower of de Sade.”<br />
<br />
“It’s a common affliction,” noted Burton. “Why, I once visited a brothel in Karachi—on a research mission for Napier, you understand—”<br />
<br />
Snorts and howls of derision came from the gathering.<br />
<br />
“—and there witnessed a man flagellated to the point of unconsciousness. He enjoyed it!”<br />
<br />
“Delicious!” Swinburne shuddered.<br />
<br />
“Maybe so, if your tastes run to it,” agreed Burton. “However, flagellation is one thing, murder is quite another!”<br />
<br />
Milnes sat beside Burton, leaning close.<br />
<br />
“But, I say, Richard,” he murmured, “don’t you ever wonder at the sense of freedom one must feel when performing the act of murder? It is, after all, the greatest taboo, is it not? Break that and you are free of the shackles imposed by civilisation!”<br />
<br />
“I’m no great enthusiast for the false pleasures and insidious suppressions of civilisation,” said Burton. “And, in my opinion, Mrs. Grundy—our fictitious personification of all things oh so pure, polite, restrained, and conventional requires a thorough shagging; however, as much as I might rail against the constraints of English society and culture, murder is a more fundamental matter than either.”<br />
<br />
Swinburne squealed with delight. “A thorough shagging! Oh, bravo, Richard!”<br />
<br />
Milnes nodded. “False pleasures and insidious suppressions indeed. Pleasures which enslave, suppressions which pass judgement. Where, I ask, is freedom?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know,” answered Burton. “How can one quantify so indefinite a notion as freedom?”<br />
<br />
“By looking to nature, dear boy! Nature red in tooth and claw! One animal kills another animal. Is it found guilty? No! It remains free to do what it will, even—and, in fact, certainly—to kill again! As de Sade himself said: ‘Nature has not got two voices, you know, one of them condemning all day what the other commands.’”<br />
<br />
Burton emptied his glass in a single swallow.<br />
<br />
“For sure, Darwin has demonstrated that Nature is a brutal and entirely pitiless process, but you seem to forget, Milnes, that the animal which kills is most often, in turn, itself killed by another animal, just as the murderer, in a supposedly civilised country, is hanged for his crime!”<br />
<br />
“Then you propose an innate natural law of justice from which we can never break free, a law that transcends culture, whatever its stage of development?”<br />
<br />
James Hunt, passing to join a conversation between Bradlaugh and Brabrooke on the other side of the room, stopped long enough to refill Burton’s glass.<br />
<br />
“Yes, I do believe some such law exists,” said Burton. “I find the Hindu notion of karma more alluring than the Catholic absurdity of original sin.”<br />
<br />
“How is Isabel?” put in Bendyshe, who’d stepped across to join them.<br />
<br />
Burton ignored the mischievous question and went on, “At least karma provides a counterbalance—a penalty or reward, if you like—to acts we actually perform and thoughts we actually think, rather than punishing us for the supposed sin of our actual existence or for a transgression against a wholly<br />
artificial dictate of so-called morality. It is a function of Nature rather than a judgement of an unproven God.”<br />
<br />
“By Jove! Stanley was correct when he wrote that you’re a heathen!” mocked Bendyshe. “Burton joins with Darwin and says there is no God!”<br />
<br />
“Actually, Darwin hasn’t suggested any such thing. It is others who have imposed that interpretation upon his <em>Origin of Species</em>.”<br />
<br />
“‘There is no God, Nature sufficeth unto herself; in no wise hath she need of an author,’” quoted Swinburne. “De Sade again.”<br />
<br />
“In many respects I consider him laughable,” commented Burton, “but in that instance, I wholeheartedly agree. The more I study religions, the more I’m convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself.”<br />
<br />
He quoted his own poetry:<br />
<br />
<em>“Man worships self: his God is man; the struggling of the mortal mind to form its model as ’twould be, the perfect of itself to find.”</em><br />
<br />
Milnes took a drag from his cigar and blew a smoke ring, which rose lazily into the air. He watched it slowly disperse and said, “But this karma business, Richard—what you are proposing is that one way or another, through some sort of entirely natural process, a murderer will receive retribution. Do you then count man’s judgement—the death penalty—to be natural?”<br />
<br />
“We are natural beings, are we not?”<br />
<br />
“Well,” interrupted Bendyshe, “I sometimes wonder about Swinburne.”<br />
<br />
It was a fair point, thought Burton, for Swinburne was a very unnatural-looking man. At just five-foot-two, he had a strangely tiny body. His limbs were small and delicate, with sloping shoulders and a very long neck upon which sat a large head made even bigger by a tousled mass of carroty-red hair<br />
standing almost at right angles to it. His mouth was weak and effeminate; his eyes huge, pale green, and dreamy.<br />
<br />
Few poets looked so much a poet as Algernon Charles Swinburne. <br />
<br />
“But that aside,” said Bendyshe, “what if the murderer avoids the noose?”<br />
<br />
“Guilt,” proposed Burton. “A gradual but inescapable degradation of the character. A degenerative disease of the mind. Maybe a descent into madness and self-destruction.”<br />
<br />
“Or perhaps,” offered Swinburne, “a tendency to mix with criminal types until the murderer is himself, inevitably, murdered.”<br />
<br />
“Well put!” agreed the famous adventurer.<br />
<br />
“Interesting,” pondered Milnes, “but, I say, we all know that murders are committed either in the heat of passion, or else with intent by an individual who’s already in an advanced—if that’s the appropriate word—state of mental decay. What if, though, a murder was calculated and committed by an intelligent man who performs the act only out of scientific curiosity? What if it were done only to transcend the limitations that tell us it shouldn’t be done?”<br />
<br />
“An idle motive,” suggested Burton.<br />
<br />
“Not at all, dear boy!” declared Milnes. “It’s a magnificent motive! Why, the man who would undertake such an act would risk his immortal soul for science!”<br />
<br />
“He would undoubtedly see sense and back away from the experiment,” said Burton, his voice slurring slightly, “for once crossed, that barrier allows no return. However, his decision would be based on self-determined standards of behaviour rather than on any set out by civilisation or on notions of an immortal soul; for as you say, he’s an intelligent man.”<br />
<br />
“It’s strange,” said Henry Murray, who up until now had listened in silence. “I thought that you, of all of us, would be the one most likely to approve the experiment.”<br />
<br />
“You should take my reputation with a pinch of salt.”<br />
<br />
“Must we? I rather enjoy having a devil in our midst.” Swinburne grinned.<br />
<br />
Sir Richard Francis Burton considered the susceptible young poet and wondered how to keep him out of trouble.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
Burton was not a Libertine himself, but they considered him an honorary member of the caste and delighted in his knowledge of exotic cultures, where the stifling laws of civilisation were remarkable only by their seeming absence. He enjoyed drinking and debating with them, especially this evening, for it kept his mind engaged and helped to stave off the despondency that had been creeping over him since he’d returned from Bath. <br />
<br />
By one o’clock in the morning, though, it was dragging at him again, made worse by alcohol and exhaustion, so he bid his friends farewell and left the club.<br />
<br />
The evening was bitterly cold—unusual for September—and the roads glistened wetly. The thickening pall wrapped each gas lamp in its own golden aureole. Burton held his overcoat tight with one hand and swung his cane with the other. London rustled and murmured around him as he walked unsteadily homewards.<br />
<br />
A velocipede chattered past. They had started to appear on the streets two years ago, these steam-driven, one-man vehicles, and were popularly known as “penny-farthings” due to their odd design, for the front wheel was nearly as tall as a man, while the back wheel was just eighteen inches in diameter.<br />
<br />
The rider was seated high on a leather saddle, situated slightly behind the crown of the front wheel, with his feet resting in stirrups to either side, his legs held away from the piston arm and crank which pumped and spun to the left of the axle. The tiny, boxlike engine was attached to the frame behind and below the saddle; the small boiler, with its furnace, was under this, and the coal scuttle under that; the three elements arranged in a segmented arc over the top-rear section of the main wheel. As well as providing the motive power, they were also the machine’s centre of gravity and, together with the engine’s internal gyroscope, made the vehicle almost impossible to knock over, despite its ungainly appearance. <br />
<br />
By far the most remarkable feature of the penny-farthing was its extraordinary efficiency. It could complete a twenty-mile journey in about an hour on just one fist-sized lump of coal. With the furnace able to hold up to four pieces and with the same number stored in the scuttle, it had a maximum range of 160 miles and could operate for about twenty hours before needing to refuel. The vehicle’s main flaw, aside from the thorough shaking it meted out to the driver, was that the two slim funnels, which rose up behind the saddle, belched smoke into the miasmal atmosphere of England’s capital, adding to an already bad situation. Nevertheless, the vehicles were currently all the rage and had done much to restore the public’s faith in the Engineering faction of the Technologist caste, a group that had been much maligned of late after the disastrous flooding of the undersea town of Hydroham off the Norfolk coast, and a number of fatal crashes during the attempted—and ultimately abandoned—development of gas-filled airships.<br />
<br />
Burton watched the contraption disappear into the mist.<br />
<br />
London had transformed while he’d been in Africa. It had filled with new machines and new breeds of animal. The Engineers and Eugenicists—the main branches of the Technologist caste—seemed unstoppable, despite protests from the Libertines, who felt that art, beauty, and nobility of spirit were more essential than material progress.<br />
<br />
The problem was that the Libertines, despite producing reams of anti-Technologist propaganda, were unclear in their message. On the one hand, there were the “True Libertines,” such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, who were basically Luddites; while on the other, there were the increasingly powerful “Rakes,” whose interests ran to black magic, anarchy, sexual depravity, drug taking, meddling, and general bad behaviour, which they justified as an attempt to “transcend the limitations of the human condition.” Most Libertines, Richard Monckton Milnes being a prime example, fell somewhere between the two camps, being neither as dreamily idealistic as the one faction nor as scandalously self-indulgent as the other. <br />
<br />
As for Sir Richard Francis Burton, he wasn’t sure where he fitted. Although it was the country of his birth, England had never felt like home, probably because he’d spent most of his childhood being dragged around Europe by his restless parents. He was therefore rather surprised when he returned from the Nile expedition and found that the country’s current state of social instability somewhat suited him. The rapid changes, more intensely felt in the capital than elsewhere, might be confusing to the majority of the populace but he’d always regarded his own identity as rather a transient and changeable thing, so now he felt an odd sort of empathy with the fluctuating nature of British culture.<br />
<br />
As he walked, he slowly became aware of a tapping noise from somewhere above and realised that he’d been hearing it on and off since leaving the club. He peered up and around but saw nothing.<br />
He continued his trek home, listening, and, yes, there it was again. Was he being followed? He looked back, but there was no suggestion of anyone on his heels until a policeman started to trail along behind him, his attention attracted by the lone, obviously rather drunk man’s brutal features. After five minutes or so, the constable drew closer, saw that Burton wore the clothes of a gentleman, hesitated, then abandoned the chase.<br />
<br />
The explorer crossed Charing Cross Road and entered a long, badly lit side street. His foot hit a discarded bottle that spun into the gutter with a musical tinkle. Something large flapped overhead and he looked up in time to see a huge Eugenicist-bred swan pass by, dragging a box kite behind it through the mist. A man’s white face—an indistinct blur—looked down from the kite before it vanished over the rooftops. A faint voice reached Burton’s ears but whatever it was the man had shouted was muffled by the water-laden air.<br />
<br />
Last year, Speke and Grant had used the same form of transportation to make their way to the Nyanza, following the old route. It had taken a fraction of the time required by Burton’s expedition. They’d set up camp in Kazeh, a small town some hundred and fifty miles south of the great lake, and here John Speke had made one of his characteristic errors of judgement by failing to properly guard his birds. They’d been eaten by lions.Without them he couldn’t circumnavigate the lake, couldn’t ascertain whether it was the source of the great river, and couldn’t prove Burton wrong.<br />
<br />
A few yards farther down the road, a man shuffled from the shadows of a doorway. He was a coarse-featured individual clad in canvas trousers and shirt with a rust-coloured waistcoat and a cloth cap. There were fire marks—red welts—on his face and thick forearms caused by hours spent stoking a forge.<br />
<br />
“Can I ’elp you, mate?” he growled. “Maybe relieve you of wha’ever loose change is weighin’ down yer pockits?”<br />
<br />
Burton looked at him. <br />
<br />
The man backed away so suddenly that his heels struck the doorstep and he sat down heavily.<br />
<br />
“Sorry, fella!” he mumbled. “Mistook you fer somebody else, I did!”<br />
<br />
The explorer snorted scornfully and moved on. He entered a network of narrow alleys—dark, dangerous, and sordid—a dismal tentacle of poverty reaching far out of the East End into the centre of the city. Mournful windows gaped from the sides of squalid houses. Inarticulate shouts came from some of them—occasionally the sound of blows, screams, and weeping—but hopeless silence came from most.<br />
<br />
It occurred to him that the depths of London felt remarkably similar to the remotest regions of Africa.<br />
<br />
He came to a junction, turned left, tripped, and stumbled; his shin banging against a discarded crate and his trouser leg catching on a protruding nail and tearing. He spat out an oath and kicked the crate away. A rat scuttled along the side of the pavement.<br />
<br />
Leaning against a lamppost, Burton rubbed his eyes. The taste of brandy burned uncomfortably at the back of his throat. He noticed a flier pasted to the post and read it:<br />
<br />
<em>Work disciplines your spirit</em><br />
<em>Work develops your character </em><br />
<em>Work strengthens your soul</em><br />
<em>Do not allow machines to do your work!</em><br />
<br />
Pushing himself away, he walked along the alley and turned yet another corner—he wasn’t sure where he was but knew he was proceeding in the right general direction—and found himself at the end of a long, straight lane, its worn cobbles shining beneath the haggard light of a single lamp. It was bordered by high and featureless redbrick walls, the sides of warehouses. The far end opened onto what looked to be a main thoroughfare. He could vaguely see the front of a shop, possibly a butcher’s, but when he tried to read the sign over the window, a velocipede clattered past it, leaving a swirling wreath of smoke that further obscured the lettering.<br />
<br />
Burton moved on, trying to avoid pools of stinking urine, his shoes squelching in patches of mud and worse, kicking against refuse.<br />
<br />
A litter-crab came clanking into view by the shop, its eight thick mechanical legs thudding against the road surface, the twenty-four thin arms on its belly darting this way and that, skittering back and forth over the cobbles, snatching up rubbish and throwing it through the machine’s maw into the furnace within.<br />
<br />
The crab creaked and rattled past the end of the alley and, as it did so, its siren wailed a warning. A few seconds later, it let out a deafening hiss as it ejected hot cleansing steam from the two downward-pointing funnels at its rear.<br />
<br />
The automated cleaner vanished from sight as a tumultuous wall of white vapour boiled into the passage. Burton stopped and took a few steps backward, waiting for it to disperse. It billowed toward him, extending hot coils that slowed and became still, hanging in the air as they cooled.<br />
<br />
Someone entered the street, their weirdly elongated shadow angling through the white cloud; a figure writ dark, skeletal, and horrific by the distortion. <br />
<br />
Sudden flashes of light illuminated the roiling mist, as if it were a miniature storm. Burton waited for the shadow to shrink, to be sucked into the person to whom it belonged when he—for surely it must be a man—emerged from the vapour.<br />
<br />
It didn’t shrink.<br />
<br />
It wasn’t a shadow.<br />
<br />
Possibly, it wasn’t even a man.<br />
<br />
The steam parted and from it sprang a bizarre apparition: a massively long-legged shape—like a carnival stilt-walker—a long, dark cloak flapping from its hunched shoulders, bolts of lightning crackling around its body and head.<br />
<br />
Burton retreated hastily until his back brought up against the wall. He blinked rapidly and licked his lips.<br />
<br />
Was it human, this thing? Its head was large, black, and shiny, with an aura of blue flame crawling around it. Red eyes peered at him maliciously. White teeth shone in a lipless grin.<br />
<br />
The creature stalked forward, bent, its talonlike hands flexing, and Burton saw that his first impression was accurate: the thing walked on twofoot-high stilts.<br />
<br />
Its lanky body was clad in a skintight white scaly suit that glittered in the dim light of the single guttering gas lamp. Something circular glowed on its chest and emitted bursts of sparks and ribbons of lightning that snaked over the thing’s long limbs.<br />
<br />
“Burton!” the apparition croaked. “Richard Francis bloody Burton!”<br />
<br />
It suddenly pounced on him and a hand slashed sideways, slapping hard against his right ear, sending him reeling. His top hat went spinning into a puddle. He dropped his cane.<br />
<br />
“I told you once to stay out of it!” snapped the thing. “You didn’t listen!”<br />
<br />
All of a sudden, Burton felt icily sober.<br />
<br />
Fingers dug into his hair and yanked his head up. He felt an agonisingly powerful static charge coursing through his body. His arms and legs twitched spasmodically.<br />
<br />
Red eyes glared into his.<br />
<br />
“I’ll not tell you again. Leave me alone!”<br />
<br />
“W—what?” gasped Burton.<br />
<br />
“Just stay out of it! The affair is none of your damned business!”<br />
<br />
“What affair?”<br />
<br />
“Don’t play the innocent! I don’t want to kill you, but I swear to you, if you don’t keep your nose out of it, I’ll break your fucking neck!”<br />
<br />
“I have no idea what you’re talking about!” protested Burton.<br />
<br />
His head was shaken violently, causing his teeth to clack together.<br />
<br />
“I’m talking about you organising forces against me! It’s not what you’re meant to be doing! Your destiny lies elsewhere. Do you understand?”<br />
<br />
The creature rammed its forearm into Burton’s face.<br />
<br />
“I said, do you understand?”<br />
<br />
“No!”<br />
<br />
“Then I’ll spell it out for you,” growled the stilt-man. Dragging Burton around, it slammed him against the wall, drew back its arm, and sent a fist crashing into the explorer’s mouth.<br />
<br />
“Do what—”<br />
<br />
Again. Crack!<br />
<br />
“—you’re supposed—”<br />
<br />
Crack!<br />
<br />
“—to do!”<br />
<br />
Burton sagged back against the bricks. He mumbled through split lips, “How can I possibly know what I’m supposed to do?”<br />
<br />
The fingers in his hair jerked him up until he was looking directly into the thing’s eyes, which stared down, inches from his own. They burned redly, and Burton realised that his attacker was completely insane.<br />
<br />
Blue flame leaped from the thing’s head and licked at the explorer’s brow, scorching his skin.<br />
<br />
“You are <em>supposed </em>to marry Isabel and be sent from one fucking miserable consulship to another. Your career is <em>supposed</em> to peak in three years when you debate the Nile question with Speke and the silly sod shoots himself dead. You are <em>supposed</em> to write books and die.”<br />
<br />
Burton braced his legs against the wall.<br />
<br />
“What the hell are you babbling about?” he demanded, in a stronger voice. “The debate was cancelled. Speke shot himself yesterday—but he’s not dead!”<br />
<br />
The creature’s eyes widened.<br />
<br />
“No!” it whispered. “No!” It gritted its teeth and snarled, “I’m a historian! I know what happened. It was 1864 not 1861. I know—”<br />
<br />
A look of bemusement passed over its gaunt, horrible features.<br />
<br />
“God damn it! Why does it have to be so complicated?” it whispered to itself. “Maybe if I kill you? But if the death of just one person has already done all this—?”<br />
<br />
Burton, feeling the fingers loosening, took his chance. He jerked his head free, shoved his shoulder into his attacker’s stomach, then threw himself sideways.<br />
<br />
The apparition teetered back to the opposite wall. It clutched at it for balance and glared at Burton as he regained his footing. They stood facing each other.<br />
<br />
“Listen to me, you bastard!” snapped the creature. “For your own good, next time you see me, don’t come near!”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know you!” objected Burton. “And, believe me, if I never see you again, I’ll not regret it one iota!”<br />
<br />
Lightning exploded from the apparition’s chest and danced across the ground. The stilt-man cried out in agony, almost falling.<br />
<br />
Suddenly, its wild eyes dimmed and Burton saw a brief glimmer of reason in them. It looked down at itself, then at him, and in low tones said, “The irony is that I’m running out of time. You’re in my way, and you’re making the situation much worse.”<br />
<br />
“What situation? Explain!” snapped the explorer.<br />
<br />
The uncanny, spindly figure stepped forward and the irises of its eyes narrowed to pinpricks.<br />
<br />
“Marry the bitch, Burton. Settle down. Become consul in Fernando Po, Brazil, Damascus, and wherever the fuck else they send you. Write your damned books. But, above all, leave me alone! Do you understand? <em>Leave me the fuck alone!”</em><br />
<br />
It crouched low, glared at him, and suddenly straightened its legs, shooting vertically into the air.<br />
<br />
Burton twisted his head to look up. His assailant soared high above the top of the warehouses, and, in midair, vanished. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/StrangeAffair.html"><em>Burton & Swinburne in</em></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/StrangeAffair.html">The Strange Affair of Spring Heeled Jack</a> © <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">Mark Hodder</span></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.jonsullivanart.com/">Jon Sullivan</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht</div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>Mark Hodder</strong></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> is the creator and caretaker of the BLAKIANA Web site (<a href="http://www.sextonblake.co.uk/" title="http://www.sextonblake.co.uk/"><span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt;">www.sextonblake.co.uk</span></a>), which he designed to celebrate, record, and revive Sexton Blake, the most written about fictional detective in English publishing history. A former BBC writer, editor, journalist, and Web producer, Mark has worked in all the new and traditional medias and was based in London for most of his working life until 2008, when he relocated to Valencia in Spain to de-stress and write novels. He can most often be found at the base of a palm tree, hammering at a laptop. Mark has a degree in cultural studies and loves British history (1850 to 1950, in particular), good food, cutting-edge gadgets, cult TV, Tom Waits, and a vast assortment of oddities. </span></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-81156432096307121082010-10-04T16:21:00.000-05:002010-10-04T16:21:55.419-05:00Twelve by Jasper Kent<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKm5GNfgu33EkcXb8v7q_2VxWYsDjAMvFyy7vgMJdzRdlqryszt59HGfch0U9ftarpZUqzFLwAtsqdSvjzg8BI1rHl5APSl10RXVIrOJzjHtJgRcmHhiGG7BQnDVF8wIiUuh5-ZSeyy74/s1600/Twelve.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKm5GNfgu33EkcXb8v7q_2VxWYsDjAMvFyy7vgMJdzRdlqryszt59HGfch0U9ftarpZUqzFLwAtsqdSvjzg8BI1rHl5APSl10RXVIrOJzjHtJgRcmHhiGG7BQnDVF8wIiUuh5-ZSeyy74/s320/Twelve.jpg" width="212" /></a></div><strong>Russia, 1812.</strong><br />
<strong>It began as a last stand against Napoleon’s invading army. </strong><br />
<strong>It would end as a fight against an enemy of mankind itself.…</strong><br />
<br />
<span style="color: black; font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-size: 9.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">“Kent's sprawling historical horror debut, the first of a quintet, <b>brings blood-gushing brutality back to vampire fiction</b>… [character] self-examination doesn't impede densely detailed, hard-driving action… and the vampires are genuinely scary villains, more vivid than most of the living characters. With no romantic yearning or teen angst in sight, this is just a bloody good tale.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>–<b><i>Publishers Weekly</i></b></span><br />
<br />
Enjoy an excerpt from <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Twelve.html"><em><strong>Twelve</strong></em></a>, here:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Twelve</span></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Jasper Kent</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>AUTHOR’S NOTE</strong><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Distances</strong><br />
<br />
Averst is a Russian unit of distance, slightly greater than a kilometre.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Dates</strong><br />
<br />
During the nineteenth century, Russians based their dates on the old Julian Calendar, which in 1812 was twelve days behind the Gregorian Calendar used in Western Europe. All dates in the text are given in the Russian form and so, for example, the Battle of Borodino is placed on 26 August, where Western history books have it on 7 September.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>PROLOGUE</strong><br />
<br />
A RUSSIAN FOLK TALE<br />
<br />
Some people place this story in the town of Atkarsk, others in Volgsk, but in most versions it’s Uryupin and so that is where we will keep it. All versions agree that the events occurred sometime in the early years of the reign of the great Tsar Pyetr and all agree that the town in question was infested<br />
by a plague of rats.<br />
<br />
Rats always came to Uryupin in the summer, taking grain and bringing disease, but the people of the town, like those of any town, had learned to survive the summer months, comfortable in the knowledge that the cold of winter would kill off most of the verminous creatures—not completely wipe them out perhaps, but at least reduce their numbers so that the next summer would be no worse than the last.<br />
<br />
But although the winters had of late been as cold as one might expect in Uryupin, they had had scant effect on the size of the rat population. The number emerging in spring seemed little fewer than there had been the previous autumn, and the number each autumn was three times what it had been in spring. By the third summer the rats were everywhere and the people of the town came up with a esperate solution. They would abandon Uryupin; leave it for the rats to feed in until there was nothing left for them to feed on. Then the rats would starve and the people, after a year or two, could return.<br />
<br />
Before the plan could be carried out, late in July of that year, a merchant arrived in the town. He was not Russian but, as far as the people of Uryupin could tell, a European. He told the people that he had heard of their problem and that he could help. He had arrived with a simple wagon, pulled by a tired<br />
mule and covered with a great cloth, so that no one could see what was inside.<br />
<br />
The merchant said that what he had in his wagon would kill every rat in the town and that if this did not prove to be the case he would not take a single copeck in payment. The leaders of the town asked what it was that the merchant had inside his wagon, but he would not show them until they agreed upon his price. Few in Uryupin had much appetite for the plan of abandoning the town and many had openly declared it to be madness, so the merchant needed to do little persuading before his alternative was accepted.<br />
<br />
He dramatically (some versions of the story say ostentatiously) pulled off the cloth covering his wagon to reveal a cage; a cage containing monkeys—about a dozen of them. They had been placid in the darkness under the cloth, but as soon as the light hit them they began to scream and tear at the bars<br />
that confined them, reaching through as if to attack the onlookers who had crowded round.<br />
<br />
The monkeys were not big, perhaps up to a man’s knee, although their hunched posture made them appear smaller than if they had been standing fully upright. Their bodies, but for the palms of their hands and the soles of their feet, were covered in black fur, topped with a white ruff around the neck. Their heads were the heads of old men: fleshy, wrinkled skin, without a single hair. Some said they were more vultures than monkeys. <br />
<br />
The merchant opened the cage and the monkeys ran out into the town. On the ground they moved on all fours with most of their weight on their hind legs, their knuckles barely grazing the earth, but soon they were using both arms and legs to climb up the sides of barns or down into cellars. Within minutes they had disappeared. <br />
<br />
The people of the town waited. The merchant had warned them to keep their dogs and cats safe at home, since the monkeys were none too discriminating about their prey. Most kept their children at home too, reasoning that if one of these creatures could kill a full-grown dog, then why not a baby or an infant?<br />
<br />
With no children playing and with the adults praying for success, the town might have been quiet, but such quietness as they enjoyed was continually broken by the screeching of a monkey as it found another rat. The ecstatic scream as one leapt upon its victim could cut through the town at any time of day or night, emanating from a cellar or from a loft or from behind a wall. No one saw the merchant’s pets at work, but all could hear that they were working.<br />
<br />
And soon, within a week, the people did begin to notice that there were fewer rats. The tenth day was the last on which a rat was ever sighted, foraging amongst the bins of pig feed, oblivious to the fate of its brothers and sisters; the fate that it was soon to meet.<br />
<br />
The town’s leaders were thankful. They offered the merchant what he had asked and half as much again. But the merchant refused to take anything.<br />
<br />
“The task is not yet complete,” he explained. “My friends have not yet returned and will not return until there is nothing more for them to eat.”<br />
<br />
Sure enough, though the people of Uryupin saw no more rats, they still heard the screaming of the monkeys at work, although now it seemed to come not from the cellars and the barns, but from the trees and the hedgerows. Rats are devious creatures, the people reasoned, and so no one was much surprised that the last survivors would find such unusual places to hide.<br />
<br />
Midmorning of the fourteenth day after the monkeys had been released, the first one returned and settled down in the merchant’s caged wagon to sleep. By early evening, all had returned. The merchant locked the cage, threw the cloth back over it, took his payment and left.<br />
<br />
And the townspeople basked in the silence. For two weeks the terrifying screeching of the feasting monkeys had penetrated every corner of Uryupin and the relief at their departure, though unspoken, was shared by all. In their minds the people were glad to have got rid of the rats. In their hearts they<br />
were overjoyed to be free of the screaming monkeys.<br />
<br />
But as the days went by, the silence began to weigh on them. At first they had thought the quietness had been so noticeable only in contrast to the noise of the past two weeks, but soon people began to realize it was actually more silent than it had been before; before the merchant and his monkeys<br />
ever arrived in the town. They could cover it up with the noise of speech and of their daily lives, but beyond that, there was nothing. It was an absolute, total silence.<br />
<br />
And, as is often the case in these stories, it was a young boy, of about ten, who first noticed. There was silence because there was no birdsong. After the merchant’s creatures had done their work, there was not a single bird left alive anywhere in the town of Uryupin.<br />
<br />
Nor did any ever return.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>PART ONE</strong><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER I</strong><br />
<br />
DMITRY FETYUKOVICH SAID HE KNEW SOME PEOPLE. <br />
<br />
“What do you mean, ‘people’?” I asked. My voice sounded weary. Looking around the dimly lit room, I could see that we were all weary.<br />
<br />
“People who can help. People who understand that there’s more than one way to skin a cat. Or to kill a Frenchman.”<br />
<br />
“You’re saying that we can’t do the job ourselves?” My question came from instinctive patriotism, but I knew a hundred answers without having to hear Dmitry’s reply.<br />
<br />
“Well, we haven’t done too well so far, have we? Bonaparte is already at Smolensk—beyond Smolensk by now probably. It’s not about saving face any more. It’s about saving Russia.” Dmitry’s voice showed his exasperation. Bonaparte had rolled across Russia as if the Russian army hadn’t even been there. That was the plan of course, so we were told, but even if that were true, it was a demoralizing plan. Dmitry paused and stroked his beard, the scar on his cheek beneath reminding himof how strongly he had fought for his country; how hard we all had fought. “Besides,” he continued, “there’re only four of us. General Barclay’s idea wasn’t for us to defeat the French with our bare hands.We’re supposed to <em>work out</em> a way to defeat them.” He snorted a brief laugh as he realized he was getting above himself. “To help the rest of the army defeat them.”<br />
<br />
Dmitry’s typical arrogance and his recognition of it relaxed the four of us with a ripple of silent laughter that passed around the table, but it quickly evaporated.<br />
<br />
“You really think it’s as bad as that?” It was Vadim Fyodorovich, our leader, or at least the highest-ranking of us, who asked the question. <br />
<br />
“Don’t you?” replied Dmitry.<br />
<br />
Vadim was silent for a moment. “Yes, yes I do. I just wanted to hear it out loud.”<br />
<br />
“I wouldn’t have believed it before Smolensk,” I said.<br />
<br />
“Perhaps that was the problem,” said Vadim. “Perhaps none of us really believed what Bonaparte was capable of. That we do now gives us some . . . hope.” He rubbed his face, his fingers running through his thick, black beard. “Anyway,” he resumed, with a little more energy than before, “Dmitry, tell us about these people.”<br />
<br />
“A small group,” explained Dmitry, “expert in working behind enemy lines. Always attacking when they are least expected. Always causing maximum disruption at minimum risk.”<br />
<br />
“They sound like <em>Kazaki</em>,” I said.<br />
<br />
Dmitry sucked his bottom lip, choosing his words. “Like Cossacks, yes—in many ways.” He again thought carefully before speaking. “But not Russian.”<br />
<br />
“And how do you know them?” From Vadim’s tone, it seemed clear that he knew the answers to his questions already. He and Dmitry had had plenty of time to talk on the grim ride from Smolensk back to Moscow. It was natural—certainly natural for Dmitry—to make sure he entered a debate with half of us already on his side.<br />
<br />
“They helped us against the Turks.” Dmitry’s eyes fell on my diminished left hand as he spoke. My two missing fingers had long since rotted away in the corner of a prison cell in Silistria, severed by a Turkish blade. It was a wound that people seemed particularly sensitive about, although I had long<br />
since gotten used to it. The physical scars were the least of the horrors that the Turks had visited upon me.<br />
<br />
“So does this mean that you know these people too, Aleksei?” asked Maksim Sergeivich, turning to me. Maksim was the youngest of the four of us. Just as I had noticed that Vadim was already on-side with Dmitry’s plan, Maks was afraid that a three-to-one vote was a foregone conclusion. And that would be a big problem for Maks. He had a thing about democracy.<br />
<br />
“No, no. This is as new to me as it is to you, Maks,” I replied cautiously. I looked at Dmitry; this <em>was</em> all new to me, and it was odd—to say the least—that Dmitry had never mentioned it. “Dmitry and I never crossed paths in Wallachia. They seem to get about though, these . . . ‘people.’” I stuck with<br />
Dmitry’s original word. “Fighting on the Danube and then travelling all the way to Moscow to help us. Where do they call home?”<br />
<br />
“They’re from around the Danube; Wallachia, Moldavia—one of <em>those</em> places. They fought there from patriotism, to defend the land of their forefathers. Fighting the Turks is something of a tradition down there.”<br />
<br />
“Well, the whole thing’s out of the question then, isn’t it?” said Maks, his eager face lighting up at being able to point out a logical flaw. He pushed his spectacles back up his nose as he spoke. “The Danube is as far away from us as . . .Warsaw. Even if you sent word to them today, Napoleon would have taken Moscow and would be warming his hands by the fire in Petersburg before they . . .”<br />
<br />
Maks stopped before he finished his sentence. He was, more than any man I knew, able to detach himself from his own world. Most of us would find it hard to describe so glibly the realization of the horror we were all fighting, but Maks could conceive the inconceivable. It was a useful and at the same time sometimes frightening trait. But today, even he understood the potential reality of what he had said.<br />
<br />
Vadim bridled at the image. “If Bonaparte were to make it to Moscow or Petersburg, then the only fires he would find would be the smouldering remains of a city destroyed by its own people rather than allowed to fall into the hands of the invader.”<br />
<br />
At the time it sounded like tub-thumping bravado. We little knew how true his words would turn out to be.<br />
<br />
“Maks does have a point though,” I said. “The whole thing is academic now. If we were going to use them, we should have sent word a long time ago.”<br />
<br />
“Which is why I did,” said Dmitry.<br />
<br />
He looked round the room, into each of our eyes in turn, daring one of us to object. Vadim already knew. Maks saw no logical argument against a <em>fait accompli</em>. I was tired.<br />
<br />
“There was a letter from them waiting for me when we got back here today,” continued Dmitry. “They’ve already set off. They expect to be here by the middle of the month.”<br />
<br />
“Let’s just hope they don’t get caught up in the French lines along the way.” My comment sounded cynical, but it was a serious issue. Half of the Russian army had been dashing back from a rushed peace settlement with the Turks and had only just made it ahead of Bonaparte. Dmitry’s friends would be running the same risk. But none of the others cared to take up the point, so I let it lie.<br />
<br />
“How many of them are there?” asked Maks.<br />
<br />
“That depends,” said Dmitry. “Twenty if we’re lucky—probably fewer.”<br />
<br />
“Well, what use is that?” I asked. I sounded more contemptuous than I had intended to, but no more than I felt.<br />
<br />
“Davidov performs miracles with just a few Cossacks,” Vadim pointed out. It was below the belt; Denis Vasilyevich Davidov was something of a hero of mine. But the comparison was unfair.<br />
<br />
“A squad from a Cossack <em>voisko</em> consists of eighty men or more; not twenty. Are your friends worth four Cossacks each?”<br />
<br />
Dmitry looked me square in the eye. “No,” he said. “They’re worth ten.” I felt the sudden urge to punch him, but I knew it was not Dmitry that I was angry with.<br />
<br />
“Perhaps you should tell us what makes them so remarkable,” said Vadim.<br />
<br />
“It’s hard to describe,” said Dmitry, considering for a moment. “You’ve heard of the Oprichniki?”<br />
<br />
Vadim and I both nodded agreement, but Maks, surprisingly, had not come across the term.<br />
<br />
“During the reign of Ivan the Fourth—the Terrible, as he liked to be called—during one of his less benevolent phases, he set up a sort of personal troop of bodyguards known as the Oprichniki,” explained Dmitry. “The job of the Oprichniki was internal suppression, which is obviously not what<br />
we’re talking about here, but the method of an Oprichnik was to use absolute, unrestrained violence. Officially, they were monks. They rode around the country wearing black cowls, killing anyone that Ivan deemed should die. Although they were monks, they weren’t educated, but their faith gave them the fanaticism that Ivan needed.”<br />
<br />
“And these are the guys that are going to help us?” asked Maks dubiously.<br />
<br />
Dmitry nodded slowly. “There are similarities. My friends understand that violence is of itself a weapon. They are unhindered by scruple or fear.”<br />
<br />
“And are they religious?” I asked. “Monks, like the original Oprichniki?”<br />
<br />
“They’re not monks”—Dmitry paused, as if considering how much to tell us, then continued—“but they have their own fanaticism. Where they come from, on the borders of the Ottoman world, Christianity has always been an adaptable concept.”<br />
<br />
“Are they controllable? Trustworthy?” asked Vadim.<br />
<br />
“As trustworthy and controllable as a musket or a cannon—in the correct hands. They just need pointing in the right direction and they get on with it.”<br />
<br />
“And you’re sure they don’t expect payment?” Vadim’s question clearly referred to a conversation he and Dmitry had had in private. <br />
<br />
“They enjoy their work. Like any army, they live off the vanquished.” None of us quite followed Dmitry’s meaning. “The spoils of war. Armies live off the gold and the food and whatever other plunder they take from the enemy.”<br />
<br />
“I’m not sure they’ll find enough gold with the French army to make their journey worthwhile,” I said.<br />
<br />
“There are rewards other than gold,” said Dmitry with an uncharacteristic lack of materialism. “They are experts at taking what the rest of us would ignore.”<br />
<br />
I don’t think that any of us really liked the idea of resurrecting the Oprichniki, but the name stuck, even though we never said it to their faces. Once we’d met them, we got some sense of how Dmitry came up with the analogy.<br />
<br />
It was late and Vadim Fyodorovich brought the meeting to a close. “Well then, gentlemen, we have a week or so in which to prepare for the arrival of the ‘Oprichniki.’ That gives us plenty enough time to work out how to make best use of them.” He took a deep breath. He looked exhausted, but tried his best to instil some enthusiasm into all of us. “It’s been a tough campaign so far, I know, but this time I really feel it in my water that Bonaparte has overreached himself and that we’ve turned the corner. Eh? Eh?”<br />
<br />
He seemed, against all hope and experience, to expect some sort of rousing cheer of agreement, but he got little more than a nod or a raised eyebrow as we each left the room and headed for our beds. He was not the kind of man to whom stirring propagandist speeches came naturally, nor were we the kind to be stirred by them. That’s part of what had made us, until then, such a good team.<br />
<br />
<br />
We had ridden at almost full gallop from Smolensk to Moscow, sleeping rough when we could find no convenient lodgings. The weather of early August was oppressively hot for some, but I enjoyed it; I always loved the summer and hated the winter. Even so, it was good to sleep in a real bed again. It was the same bed I always slept in—usually slept in—when staying in Moscow, in an inn just north of the Kremlin, in Tverskaya; the same inn where we had held our meeting. It was the small hours by the time we broke up, but I did not fall asleep immediately. Instead, my mind drifted back to another meeting, the first time I had met Vadim, the time when our strange little group had first begun to assemble.<br />
<br />
“Dmitry Fetyukovich has told you what this is all about?” Vadim had asked.<br />
<br />
Dmitry Fetyukovich, as ever, had not told me much. It had been seven years before, November of 1805; less than a month before the Battle of Austerlitz. Dmitry had said he knew of a major who was trying to form a small band for “irregular operations.” I’d been interested and so the meeting had been arranged. I’d never spoken to Vadim, but I’d seen him around the camp, usually slightly dishevelled and unmilitary, but always respected by those who knew him.<br />
<br />
“Not entirely, sir,” I had replied. “Dmitry just told me it was something a bit out of the ordinary. It sounded worth a go.”<br />
<br />
“There’s no ‘sir’s here,” Vadim had told me, firmly. In those days he had been a little more austere than he became as I got to know him better, and as he became better practised at getting his way without coercion. “Respect for your superiors may be the great strength of the Russian army, but it doesn’t always encourage . . .” He could not find the word.<br />
<br />
“Thinking?” suggested Dmitry.<br />
<br />
“Exactly,” Vadim had continued. “Thinking in the army can get you into a lot of trouble.”<br />
<br />
He and Dmitry exchanged a smirk. Dmitry later told me that Vadim had once almost been court-martialled for disobeying an order. In doing so he’d captured an enemy gun emplacement and turned the tide of a battle, but the order had come from a very rich, very noble, very stupid senior officer and<br />
there were many who thought that the sensibilities of that breed of officer were of far greater significance than the winning of mere battles. Fortunately, others didn’t. Moreover, and although none would have guessed it from his manner or demeanour, Vadim was also very rich and very noble, with the added advantage of not being in the slightest bit stupid. He had been promoted to major and given a pretty free rein to do whatever he thought would best harass the enemy.<br />
<br />
“And thinking,” Vadim went on, “is what I’m told you do rather a lot of.”<br />
<br />
I smiled. “It’s more of a hobby, really. Like you say, there’s not much use for it in battle.”<br />
<br />
“Not in battle, no. In battles you obey orders—generally. When I give orders, you obey orders; but that won’t happen often. And don’t imagine you’ll avoid battles either. You’ll still have to fight like a soldier. It’s what we do between the battles that will be different.”<br />
<br />
“And what <em>will</em> we be doing?” I asked.<br />
<br />
“Espionage. Sabotage. Uncovering information and spreading chaos. Sometimes in a small group, sometimes alone. I’ll tell you what to do, then we work out how to do it. How’s your French?”<br />
<br />
Unusually, we had been speaking in Russian—something that was becoming popular amongst those who wanted to prove themselves true patriots.<br />
<br />
“Pretty good,” I said.<br />
<br />
“Dmitry tells me you could pass yourself off on a street in Paris.”<br />
<br />
“I suppose that’s true,” I ventured.<br />
<br />
“Well, if it’s true, then say it. Modesty is just another form of lying; useful with the ladies but dangerous amongst brothers-in-arms. You tell someone you’re only a ‘pretty good’ shot then he’ll start taking risks to cover for you. Then he gets killed and it turns out you’re a damned good shot, and his death’s down to you. What are you like as a shot?”<br />
<br />
“Pretty good,” I replied. Vadim frowned. “But I’m damned good with a sword.”<br />
<br />
Vadim grinned. “Good. Ideally, you won’t need to spend too much time using either. One last thing—for now: can you recommend anyone else for this? We can work as a team of three, but four or five would be better.” <br />
<br />
“Another thinker, you mean?” I asked.<br />
<br />
Vadim nodded. I thought for a moment, then turned to Dmitry. “Have you mentioned Maksim Sergeivich?”<br />
<br />
“I thought about him,” said Dmitry. “He’s very young and he’s a bit . . . odd.”<br />
<br />
“He certainly thinks,” I said.<br />
<br />
“That’s just it,” replied Dmitry. “He thinks odd things.”<br />
<br />
“Sounds ideal,” announced Vadim.<br />
<br />
And so the following day Vadim had been introduced to Maks. He had required even less persuasion than I had, but then it would have been hard to find a role that was more appropriate for him. We had all met for the first time within the space of just a few months, but already our band was complete.<br />
<br />
But now, seven years later, Dmitry had invited new members to join us—men that only he knew and only he could vouch for. Desperate diseases call for desperate remedies, but as I fell asleep I couldn’t help but feel uncomfortable about these Oprichniki that Dmitry was to introduce into our midst.<br />
<br />
<br />
Despite our late night, I woke early the following morning. We had a week until Dmitry’s “people”—the Oprichniki—arrived and, with only a little preparation to be made for them, that meant almost seven days of leisure. <br />
<br />
I walked around the still-familiar streets for the first time in nearly six months and noticed little had changed except the weather, and on this glorious summer’s day that was a change for the better. The people were much as they had been. Certainly they knew that Bonaparte was approaching, but they knew too that he must stop. No emperor whose throne was as far away as Paris could ever march his army all the way to Moscow. The fact that he had marched as far as Vilna, as Vitebsk, as Smolensk, the fact that those cities were also unassailable from Paris, they fully understood. But that didn’t change their belief that Moscow itself could not be reached. And I was in full agreement. Of everything I was to see in that long autumn of 1812, despite the almost unimaginable horrors, the most unreal was to be the sight of French troops on the streets of Moscow.<br />
<br />
Was it just that it wasn’t my home town that made me love Moscow? I’d lived in and around Petersburg my whole life. It was beautiful and comfortable and familiar. Familiarity didn’t breed contempt, simply predictability. A knowledge of every inch led to few surprises. It was odd then that Petersburg was by far the younger of the two cities. It had been only a century before—precisely a century, in 1712—that Petersburg had replaced Moscow as the capital city, less than a decade after its foundation.<br />
<br />
A city built as quickly as Petersburg, and built to the plans of so forceful a character as Tsar Pyetr, appeared to me to be precisely what it was—synthetic. Moscow was created over centuries by people who built what they needed to live. Petersburg was built to emulate the great cities of Europe, and so it would always seem counterfeit—only slightly more real than the cardboard frontages of the villages erected by Potemkin to give Tsarina Yekaterina a more picturesque view as she toured the backwaters of her empire. But Petersburg was the capital, and society adored it. Society had moved to Petersburg, but life remained in Moscow.<br />
<br />
My wife, Marfa Mihailovna, loved Petersburg in a way I never could. She was just as familiar with it and used that intimacy as the basis for seeing a depth that I could never perceive. Our young son seemed to love it too, but at five years old, nothing was yet familiar to him; everything was a new adventure. So Marfa stayed in Petersburg and, however far I travelled, returning to one meant returning to the other. Returning to either or to both felt the same—comfortable.<br />
<br />
As I meandered through the Moscow streets, I drank in each of the great sights of the city. I walked along the embankment of the river Moskva, looking up at the towers that punctuated the walls of the Kremlin. I turned north, passing beneath the lofty onion domes of Saint Vasily’s and then across Red Square, thronged with Muscovites going about their lives. Then I continued northward, back into the maze of tiny streets in Tverskaya. <br />
<br />
But perhaps I was fooling myself. Perhaps I was wandering around the streets of Moscow, marvelling at its people and its buildings, in order only to tease myself before I headed for my true destination, like a man who eats all his vegetables first, praising their subtle flavour while really trying to leave his plate empty of everything but the steak that is the only part of the meal he ever wanted. Or was I like a drunk who wakes early and realizes that there are times when it is too early in the day even for him and so kills time, trying to keep his mind off that first sharp, sweet drink?<br />
<br />
It was almost midday when I reached the corner of Degtyarny Lane and sat down again on the bench where I’d first sat the previous December. <br />
<br />
Back in the winter of 1811, I’d been there with Dmitry and Maks. Vadim had been home in Petersburg for his daughter’s wedding. I’d been at the wedding too, but had returned to Moscow almost straight after, countering my guilt at the look on Marfa’s face with the strange anticipation that something would happen, had to happen, once I got back to a city as vibrant as the old capital.<br />
<br />
But little had seemed to be going on and so the three of us had, before long and for whatever reason, found ourselves sitting on that bench in the quiet, snow-covered square exchanging jokes and watching the men (and occasional women) entering and leaving the building opposite. <br />
<br />
There had been a moment of silence as our eyes were all taken by a particularly fine-looking young lady who was leaving the building, a silence which Maks filled with an announcement made in the voice he usually reserved for describing the political affairs of nations.<br />
<br />
“It’s a brothel!”<br />
<br />
“Of course it’s a brothel,” laughed Dmitry. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed, but thinking about it, it seemed pretty obvious. Dmitry may have been bluffing too, but it always seemed best to appear worldly-wise in front of a young soldier like Maksim, so I laughed along with Dmitry.<br />
<br />
“You want to go in?” Dmitry asked Maks. “It looks like it’s something of a military establishment.” And indeed most of the clientele did seem to be cavalry officers, just like ourselves.<br />
<br />
“No thanks,” Maks had replied, in a voice that made me wonder whether he had any human desires at all. <br />
<br />
Dmitry turned to me. “Aleksei? Ah no. You’ve got the loving wife and family.”<br />
<br />
“How about you?” I asked Dmitry.<br />
<br />
“Me? No. I don’t like to play the field either.” He winked at no one in particular. “There’s a little place I use on the other side of Nikitskiy Street. Cheap and clean. I’ll stick with that.”<br />
<br />
The girl who had caught our attention earlier soon returned, clutching tight to her body the basket of fruit and other foods she had gone out to buy. She was astonishing. Her large eyes sloped slightly upwards away from her nose and her rich lips were pressed tightly shut against the wind-blown snow<br />
through which she struggled.<br />
<br />
I felt I had seen her before. Suddenly, it dawned on me.<br />
<br />
“She looks like Marie-Louise.”<br />
<br />
“Who?” snorted Dmitry.<br />
<br />
“The new empress of France,” explained Maks.<br />
<br />
“The new Madame Bonaparte,” was my description.<br />
<br />
“Ah! The old Austrian whore,” was Dmitry’s.<br />
<br />
All of our comments were to a reasonable degree true. In 1810, Bonaparte had divorced his first wife, Josephine, and wedMarie-Louise, the daughter of the Austrian emperor, Francis the Second. Josephine had been unable to provide Bonaparte with children and the emperor needed an heir. How quickly the<br />
French had forgotten what they did to their last Austrian queen.<br />
<br />
“She looks a bit like her, but not much,” said Maks.<br />
<br />
“Who knows?” I replied. “I’ve only ever seen one picture, but they are similar.”<br />
<br />
The picture I had seen enchanted me. It was just a print based on a portrait of her, but she seemed to me truly beautiful—much better than Josephine. But then, they said Bonaparte loved Josephine. That’s why they had stayed together even without children.<br />
<br />
“Better have him bed some Austrian harlot than touch the tsar’s sister,” said Dmitry. “She was too young. Very wise of Tsar Aleksandr to tell Napoleon to wait until she was eighteen.”<br />
<br />
Dmitry raised his arm. I looked up and noticed that he had made a snowball, which he was preparing to throw at the girl as she trudged her way back to the door of the brothel. However minor it was, it seemed so needlessly cruel that I shoved at his arm with my own as he threw. He was an excellent shot and, even with my hindrance, the snowball hit the wall just inches in front of her face.<br />
<br />
She glanced towards us and, because my arm was raised, assumed that I had been the thrower. The look she gave had such a combination of anger and pride, of asking why I presumed to treat her in such a way, that I felt almost compelled to go and apologize, not just to tell her that it hadn’t been me, but to explain why I hadn’t tried harder to prevent it, to be forgiven for even knowing the man who had thrown the snowball. <br />
<br />
Dmitry chuckled to himself. “Did you hear what she said to him on their wedding night?”<br />
<br />
“Who?” I asked.<br />
<br />
“Marie-Louise. To Bonaparte,” replied Dmitry, revealing a greater knowledge of French royal marriages than he had previously shown. “After he’d screwed her for the first time, she liked it so much she said, ‘Do it again.’” <br />
<br />
I joined in Dmitry’s raucous laughter, even though I’d heard the story before. Maksim didn’t laugh. At the time, I’d presumed that he simply didn’t get it.<br />
<br />
“You know what <em>she’d</em> say?” continued Dmitry through his laughter, indicating the young “lady” whose resemblance to Marie-Louise had started the whole conversation. “She’d say ‘Do it again—second time is half price.’”<br />
<br />
This time both Dmitry and Maks laughed, but I didn’t. It’s one thing to insult a French empress, another to insult a Russian whore.<br />
<br />
As it turned out, she charged by the hour.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Twelve.html">Twelve</a> © <a href="http://www.jasperkent.com/">Jasper Kent</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.artistpartners.com/portfolios/paul_young/index.html">Paul Young</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger </div> <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCuCfvmir-6GEGtsgDPL-0Fw9845wp7-8ooNDqbDvHxea7Pq0RFBugDlKAY1ylAK2_b17K4RSoeoWaM7_l6yvXd2dm0q5kTEb6e_kM63F7C505JtOW7tnS0TGjraWScPDNgLkWQrT5k8/s1600/Jasper+Kent+2+by+Gideon+Fisher+at+Elixir+Photography.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCuCfvmir-6GEGtsgDPL-0Fw9845wp7-8ooNDqbDvHxea7Pq0RFBugDlKAY1ylAK2_b17K4RSoeoWaM7_l6yvXd2dm0q5kTEb6e_kM63F7C505JtOW7tnS0TGjraWScPDNgLkWQrT5k8/s320/Jasper+Kent+2+by+Gideon+Fisher+at+Elixir+Photography.jpg" width="211" /></a></div><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><strong>Jasper Kent</strong></span><span style="color: black; font-family: Times; font-size: 11pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "ヒラギノ角ゴ Pro W3"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> was born in Worcestershire, England, in 1968. He attended King Edward’s School, Birmingham, and went on to study natural sciences at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, specializing in physics. Jasper has spent almost twenty years working as a software engineer in the UK and in Europe, while also working on writing both fiction and music. In that time, he has produced the novels <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Twelve.html">Twelve</a>, <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Thirteen.html">Thirteen Years Later</a>, Yours Etc., Mr. Sunday</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sifr</i>, as well as cowritten several musicals, including <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Promised Land</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Remember! Remember! </i>Jasper lives in Brighton, where he shares a flat with his girlfriend and several affectionate examples of the species Rattus norvegicus. Visit Jasper Kent’s Web site at <a href="http://www.jasperkent.com/">http://www.jasperkent.com/</a>.</span>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com80tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-13654168180569160682010-09-22T14:45:00.001-05:002010-10-04T16:09:28.438-05:00Tome of the Undergates by Sam Sykes<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv6klthJHzzRm0YI0Cp-bwA-vFrXK9WAgw3ahdvav5vSGG5O6kh3QlB5aYVFmmWfw2NMYncxT8d0bZdYzf45-uSwZAHRk3lkEx6zrLTNaRvDdKuojSEeqPAKCL9-x1PRL6LraMiv2vQUk/s1600/Tome.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv6klthJHzzRm0YI0Cp-bwA-vFrXK9WAgw3ahdvav5vSGG5O6kh3QlB5aYVFmmWfw2NMYncxT8d0bZdYzf45-uSwZAHRk3lkEx6zrLTNaRvDdKuojSEeqPAKCL9-x1PRL6LraMiv2vQUk/s320/Tome.jpg" /></a>One thousand lucky Dragon*Con 2010 attendees received a Pyr sample chapter book containing excerpts from ten new and forthcoming titles. The reception was so fantastic--and immediate--we've decided to offer all our readers the opportunity to preview the same forthcoming Fall and Winter books here online. Pyr books recently celebrated our five-year anniversary in March 2010. In this half decade, we are honored to have been on the Hugo Awards ballot eight times, as well as on the World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Locus Award, Chesley Award, and other prestigious award ballots. But the greatest honor has been the way readers have embraced our books. We promise the best is yet to come. </div><br />
Here, from that sampler, is an excerpt from <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TomeoftheUndergates.html"><em><strong>Tome of the Undergates</strong></em></a></em> by Sam Sykes. <br />
<br />
“Wildly descriptive slaughter-fest with a surprising pathos.”<br />
—Stephen Deas<br />
<br />
“Imaginative characters, a well-paced narrative, and enough maiming, decapitation, and evisceration to make 300 look tame. . . . A bloody good read. 9/10”<br />
—<em>Total Sci-Fi</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Tome of the Undergates:</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Aeons’ Gate, Book One</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Sam Sykes</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
PROLOGUE<br />
<br />
<strong>NO ROOM FOR HOPE</strong><br />
<br />
<em>The Aeons’ Gate</em><br />
<em>Sea of Buradan, two weeks north and east of Toha</em><br />
<em>Summer, late</em><br />
<br />
<em>Contrary to whatever stories and songs there may be about the subject, there are only a handful of respectable things a man can do after he picks up a sword. </em><br />
<em>First of all, he can put it down and do something else; this is the option for men who have more appreciable talents. He could use it to defend his homestead, of course, as protecting one’s own is nothing but admirable. If he decides he’s good at that sort of work, he could enlist with the local army and defend his kin and country against whatever entity is deemed the enemy at that moment. All these are decent and honourable practices for a man who carries a sword.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Then there are the less respectable trades.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>There’s always mercenary life, the fine art of being paid to put steel in things. Mercenaries, usually, aren’t quite as respected as soldiers, since they swear no allegiance to any liege beyond the kind that are round, flat and golden. And yet, it remains only a slightly less respectable use for the blade, as, inevitably, being a mercenary does help someone.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Now, the very bottommost practice for a man who carries a sword, the absolute dregs of the well, the lowliest and meanest trade a man can possibly embrace after he decides not to put away his weapon is that of the adventurer.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>There is one similarity between the adventurer and the mercenary: the love of money. Past that fact, everything is unfavourable contrast. Like a mercenary, an adventurer works for money, be it gold, silver or copper. Unlike a mercenary, an adventurer’s trade is not limited to killing, though it does require quite a bit of that. Unlike a mercenary, an adventurer’s exploits typically aid no one.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>When one requires a herd of cattle guarded from rustlers, a young maiden protected, a family tomb watched over or an enemy driven away, all for an honest fee, one calls upon a mercenary.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>When one requires a herd of cattle stolen, a young maiden deflowered, a family tomb looted and desecrated or an honest man driven away from his own home, all for a few copper coins and a promise, one calls upon an adventurer.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>I make this distinction for the sole purpose that, if someone finds this journal after I’ve succumbed to whatever hole I fell into or weapon I’ve run afoul of, they’ll know the reason.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>This marks the first entry of the Aeons’ Gate, the grand adventure of Lenk and his five companions.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>If whoever reads this has a high opinion of this writer so far, please cease reading now. The above sentence takes many liberties.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>To consider the term “adventure,” one must consider it from the adventurer’s point of view. For a boy on his father’s knee, a youth listening to an elder or a rapt crowd hearing the songs of poets, adventure is something to lust after, filled with riches, women, heroism and glory. For an adventurer, it’s work; dirty, dusty, bloody, spittlefilled, lethal and cheap work.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>The Aeons’ Gate is a relic, an ancient device long sought after by holy men and women of all faiths. It breaches the barriers between heaven and earth, allowing communication with the Gods themselves, an opportunity to ask why, how and what.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Or so I’ve heard.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>My companions and I have been hired to seek out this Gate.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>To address the term “companions,” I say this because it sounds a degree better than a “band of brigands, zealots, savages and madmen.” And I use that description because it sounds infinitely more interesting than what we really are: cheap labour. </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Unbound by the codes of unions and guilds, adventurers are able to perform more duties than common mercenaries. Untroubled by sets of morals and guidelines, adventurers are able to go into places the common mercenary would find repulsive. Unprotected by laws dictating the absolute minimum one must be paid, adventurers do all this for much, much less coin than the common mercenary.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>If someone has read this far, he might ask himself what the point of being an adventurer is.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>The answer is freedom. An adventurer is free to come and go as he pleases, parting from whoever has hired him when the fancy strikes him. An adventurer is free to stop at whatever exotic locale he has found, to take whatever he has with him, to stay for as long as he wants. An adventurer is free to claim what he finds, be it knowledge, treasure or glory. An adventurer is free to wander, penniless and perpetually starved, until he finally collapses dead on a road.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>It also bears mentioning that an adventurer typically does leave his employer’s charter if the task assigned proves particularly deranged. </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Thus far, my journey has taken my companions and me far from Muraska’s harbour, where we took on this commission. We have travelled the western seas for what seems like an eternity, braving the islands, and their various diseases and inhabitants, in search of this Gate. Thus far, I’ve fought off hostile natives, lugged heavy crates filled with various supplies, mended sails, swabbed decks and spent hours upon hours with one end of mine or the other leaning over the railing of our ship.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>My funds have so far accumulated to twenty-six pieces of copper, eleven pieces of silver and half a gold coin. That half came from a sailor who was less lucky than the rest of us and had his meagre savings declared impromptu inheritance for the ship’s charter.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>That charter is Miron Evenhands, Lord Emissary of the Church of Talanas. Miron’s duties are, in addition to regular priestly business, overseeing diplomatic ties with other churches and carrying out religious expeditions, as which this apparently qualifies. He has been allocated funds for the matter, but spends them sparingly, hiring only as many adventurers and mercen aries as he must to form a facade of generosity. The ship he has chartered, a merchantman dubbed the Riptide, we share with various dirty sailors and hairy rats that walk on two legs.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>My companions seem content with these arrangements, perhaps because they themselves are just as dirty and smelly. They sleep below deck even as I write this, having been driven up top by foul scents and groping hands. Granted, the arrangements are all that they are content with.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Every day, I deal with their greed and distrust. They demand to know where our payment is, how much money we’re getting. They tell me that the others are plotting and scheming against them. Asper tells me that Denaos makes lewd comments to her and the other women who have chartered passage aboard the ship. Denaos tells me that Asper mutters all manner of religious curses at him and tells the women that he is a liar, lech, lush, layabout and lummox; all lies, he tells me. Dreadaeleon tells me the</em><br />
<em>ship rocks too much and it’s impossible for him to concentrate on his books. Gariath tells me he can’t stand the presence of so many humans and he’ll kill every one to the last man.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Kataria . . . tells me to relax. “Time at sea,” she says, smiling all the while, “amidst the beauty of it all should be relaxing.” </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>It would seem like sound advice if not for the fact that it came from a girl who stinks worse than the crew half the time. </em><br />
<br />
<em>To be an adventurer means to have freedom, the freedom to decide for oneself. That said, if someone has found this journal and wonders why it’s no longer in my hands, please keep in mind that it’s just as likely that I decided to leap from the crow’s nest to the hungry waters below as it is that I died in some heroic manner.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
ONE<br />
<br />
<strong>HUMAN LITTER</strong><br />
<br />
In the span of a breath, colour and sound died on the wind.<br />
<br />
The green of the ocean, the flutter of sails, the tang of salt in the air vanished from Lenk’s senses. The world faded into darkness, leaving only the tall, leather-skinned man before him and the sword clutched in his hands.<br />
<br />
The man loosed a silent howl and leapt forward. Lenk’s sword rose just as his foe’s curved blade came crashing down.<br />
<br />
They met in a kiss of sparks. Life returned to Lenk’s senses in the groan of the grinding blades. He was aware of many things at once: the man’s towering size, the sound of curses boiling out of tattooed lips, the odour of sweat and the blood staining the wood under their feet.<br />
<br />
The man uttered something through a yellow-toothed smile; Lenk watched every writhing twitch of his mouth, hearing no words behind them. No time to wonder. He saw the man’s free hand clutching a smaller, crueller blade, whipping up to seek his ribs.<br />
<br />
The steel embrace shattered. Lenk leapt backward, feeling his boots slide along the red-tinged salt beneath him. His heels struck something fleshy and solid and unmoving; his backpedal halted.<br />
<br />
<em>Don’t look</em>, he urged himself, <em>not yet</em>.<br />
<br />
He had eyes for nothing but his foe’s larger blade as it came hurtling down upon him. Lenk darted away, watched the cutlass bite into the slick timbers and embed itself. He saw the twitch of the man’s eye—the realisation of his mistake and the instant in which futile hope existed.<br />
<br />
And then died.<br />
<br />
Lenk lunged, sword up and down in a flashing arc. His senses returned with painful slowness; he could hear the echo of the man’s shriek, feel the sticky life spatter across his face, taste the tang of copper on his lips. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes, the man knelt before his own severed<br />
arm, shifting a wide-eyed stare from the leaking appendage to the young man standing over him.<br />
<br />
<em>Not yet.</em><br />
<br />
Lenk’s sword flashed again, biting deeply into meat and sliding out again. Only when its tip lowered, steady, to the timbers, only when his opponent collapsed, unmoving, did he allow himself to take in the sight. <br />
<br />
The pirate’s eyes were quivering pudding: stark white against the leather of his flesh. They looked stolen, wearing an expression that belonged to a smaller, more fearful man. Lenk met his foe’s gaze, seeing his own blue stare reflected in the whites until the light behind them sputtered out in the span<br />
of a sole, ragged breath.<br />
<br />
He drew a lock of silver hair from his eyes, ran his hand down his face, wiping the sweat and substance from his brow. His fingers came back to him trembling and stained.<br />
<br />
Lenk drew in a breath.<br />
<br />
In that breath, the battle had ended. The roar of the pirates’ retreat and the hesitant, hasty battle cries of sailors had faded on the wind. The steel that had flashed under the light of a shameless staring sun now lay on the ground in limp hands. The stench ebbed on the breeze, filled the sails overhead and<br />
beckoned the hungry gulls to follow.<br />
<br />
The dead remained.<br />
<br />
They were everywhere, having ceased to be men. Now they were litter, so many obstacles of drained flesh and broken bones lying motionless on the deck. Pirates lay here and there, amongst the sailors they had taken with them. Some embraced their foes with rigor-stiffening limbs. Most lay on their backs, eyes turned to Gods that had no answers for the questions that had died on their lips.<br />
<br />
<em>Disconcerting.</em><br />
<br />
His thought seemed an understatement, perhaps insultingly so, but he had seen many bodies in his life, many not half as peacefully gone. He had drawn back trembling hands many times before, flicked blood from his sword many times before, as he did now. And he was certain that the stale breath he<br />
drew would not be the last to be scented with death.<br />
<br />
“Astounding congratulations should be proffered for so ruby a sport, good sir!”<br />
<br />
Lenk whirled about at the voice, blade up. The pirate standing upon the railing of the <em>Riptide</em>, however, seemed less than impressed, if the banana-coloured grin on his face was any indication. He extended a long, tattooed limb and made an elaborate bow.<br />
<br />
“It is the sole pleasure of the <em>Linkmaster’s</em> crew, myself included, to look forward to offering a suitable retort for,” the pirate paused to gesture to the human litter, “our less fortunate complements, of suitable fury and adequately accompanying disembowelment.”<br />
<br />
“Uh,” Lenk said, blinking, “what?”<br />
<br />
Had he time and wit enough about him to decipher the tattooed man’s expression, he would, he assured himself, have come up with a more suitable retort.<br />
<br />
“Do hold that thought, kind sir. I shall return anon to carve it out.”<br />
<br />
Like some particularly eloquent hairless ape, the pirate fell to all fours and scampered nimbly across a chain swaying over the gap of quickly shifting sea between the two ships. He was but one of many, Lenk noted, as the remaining tattooed survivors fled back over the railings of their own vessel.<br />
<br />
“Cragsmen,” the young man muttered, spitting on the deck at the sight of the inked masses.<br />
<br />
Their leviathan ship shared their love of decoration, it seemed. Its title was painted in bold, violent crimson upon a black hull, sharp as a knife: <em>Linkmaster</em>. And in equally threatening display were crude scrawlings of ships of various sizes beneath the title, each one with a triumphant red cross drawn through it.<br />
<br />
Save one that bore a peculiar resemblance to the <em>Riptide’s</em> triple masts.<br />
<br />
“Eager little bastards,” he muttered, narrowing his eyes. “They’ve already picked out a spot for us.”<br />
<br />
He blinked. That realisation carried a heavy weight, one that struck him suddenly. He had thought that the pirates were chance raiders and the <em>Riptide</em> nothing more than an unlucky victim. This particular drawing, apparently painted days before, suggested something else.<br />
<br />
“Khetashe,” Lenk cursed under his breath, “they’ve been waiting for us.”<br />
<br />
“Were they?” someone grunted from behind him, a voice that seemed to think it should be feminine but wasn’t quite convinced.<br />
<br />
He turned about and immediately regretted doing so. A pair of slender hands in fingerless leather gloves reached down to grip an arrow’s shaft jutting from a man’s chest. He should have been used to the sound of arrowheads being wrenched out of flesh, he knew, but he couldn’t help cringing.<br />
<br />
Somehow, one never got all the way used to Kataria.<br />
<br />
“Because if this is an ambush,” the pale creature said as she inspected the bloody arrow, “it’s a rather pitiful excuse for one.” She caught his uncomfortable stare and offered an equally unpleasant grin as she tapped her chin with the missile’s head. “But then, humans have never been very good at this sort<br />
of thing, have they?”<br />
<br />
Her ears were always the first thing he noticed about Kataria: long, pointed spears of pale flesh peeking out from locks of dirty blonde hair, three deep notches running the length of each as they twitched and trembled like beings unto themselves. Those ears, as long as the feathers laced in her hair, were certainly the most prominent markers of her shictish heritage.<br />
<br />
The immense, fur-wrapped bow she carried on her back, as well as the shortcut leathers she wore about what only barely constituted a bosom, leaving her muscular mid section exposed, were also indicative of her savage custom. <br />
<br />
“You looked as surprised as any to find them aboard,” Lenk replied. With a sudden awareness, he cast a glance about the deck. “So did Denaos, come to think of it. Where did he go?”<br />
<br />
“Well . . .” She tapped the missile’s fletching against her chin as she inspected the deck. “I suppose if you just find the trail of urine and follow it, you’ll eventually reach him.”<br />
<br />
“Whereas one need only follow your stench to find you?” he asked, daring a little smirk.<br />
<br />
“Correction,” she replied, unfazed, “one need only look for the clear winner.” She pushed a stray lock of hair behind the leather band about her brow, glanced at the corpse at Lenk’s feet. “What’s that? Your first one today?”<br />
<br />
“Second.”<br />
<br />
“Well, well, well.” Her smile was as unpleasant as the red-painted arrows she held before her, her canines as prominent and sharp as their glistening heads. “I win.”<br />
<br />
“This isn’t a game, you know.”<br />
<br />
“You only say that because you’re losing.” She replaced the bloodied missiles in the quiver on her back. “What’s it matter to you, anyway? They’re dead. We’re not. Seems a pretty favourable situation to me.”<br />
<br />
“That last one snuck up on me.” He kicked the body. “Nearly gutted me.<br />
<br />
I <em>told</em> you to watch my back.”<br />
<br />
“What? When?”<br />
<br />
“First, when we came up here.” He counted off on his fingers. “Next, when everyone started screaming, ‘Pirates! Pirates!’ And then, when I became distinctly aware of the possibility of someone shoving steel into my kidneys. Any of these sound familiar?”<br />
<br />
“Vaguely,” she said, scratching her backside. “I mean, not the actual words, but I do recall the whining.” She offered a broader smile to cut off his retort. “You tell me lots of things: “Watch my back, watch his back, put an arrow in <em>his</em> back.” Watch backs. Shoot humans. I got the idea.”<br />
<br />
“I said shoot <em>Cragsmen</em>.” Upon seeing her unregistering blink, he sighed and kicked the corpse again. “These things! The pirates! Don’t shoot <em>our</em> humans!” <br />
<br />
“I haven’t,” she replied with a smirk. “Yet.”<br />
<br />
“Are you planning to start?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“If I run out of the other kind, maybe.”<br />
<br />
Lenk looked out over the railing and sighed.<br />
<br />
<em>No chance of that happening anytime soon.</em><br />
<br />
The crew of the <em>Linkmaster</em> stood at the railings of their vessel, poised over the clanking chain bridges with barely restrained eagerness. And yet, Lenk noted with a narrowing of his eyes, restrained all the same. Their leering, eager faces outnumbered the <em>Riptide’s</em> panicked expressions, their cutlasses shone brighter than any staff or club their victims had managed to cobble together.<br />
<br />
And yet, all the same, they remained on their ship, content to throw at the <em>Riptide</em> nothing more than hungry stares and the occasional declaration of what they planned to do with Kataria, no matter what upper assets she might lack. The phrase “segregate those weeping dandelions ’twixt a furious hammer” was shouted more than once.<br />
<br />
Any other day, he would have taken the time to ponder the meaning behind that. At that moment, another question consumed his thoughts. <br />
<br />
“What are they waiting for?”<br />
<br />
“Right now?” Kataria growled, flattened ears suggesting she heard quite clearly their intentions and divined their meaning. “Possibly for me to put an arrow in their gullets.”<br />
<br />
“They could easily overrun us,” he muttered. “Why wouldn’t they attack now, while they still have the ad vantage?”<br />
<br />
“Scared?”<br />
<br />
“Concerned.”<br />
<br />
“About what?”<br />
<br />
<em>Largely,</em> he told himself, <em>that we’re going to die and you’re going to be the cause.</em> His thoughts throbbed painfully in the back of his head. <em>They’re waiting for something, I know it, and when they finally decide to attack, all I’ve got is a lunatic shict to fight them. Where are the others? Where’s Dreadaeleon? Where’s Denaos? Why do I even keep them around? I could do this. I could survive this if they were gone.</em><br />
<br />
<em>If she were . . .</em><br />
<br />
He felt her stare upon him as surely as if she’d shot him. From the corner of his own eye, he could see hers staring at him. <em>No</em>, he thought, <em>studying.</em> Studying with an unnerving steadiness that exceeded even the unpleasantness of her long-vanished smile.<br />
<br />
His skin twitched under her gaze, he shifted, turned a shoulder to her.<br />
<br />
<em>Stop staring at me.</em><br />
<br />
She canted her head to one side. “What?”<br />
<br />
Any response he might have had degenerated into a sudden cry of surprise, one lost amidst countless others, as the deck shifted violently beneath him, sending him hurtling to one knee. He was rendered deaf by the roar of waves as the <em>Riptide</em> rent the sea beneath it with the force of its turn, but even the ocean could not drown out the furious howl from the Riptide’s helm.<br />
<br />
“More men!” the voice screeched. “Get more men to the railing! What are you doing, you thrice-fondled sons of six-legged whores from hell? <em>Get those chains off!”</em><br />
<br />
Not an eye could help turning to the ship’s wheel, and the slim, dark figure behind it. A bald beacon, Captain Argaol’s hairless head shone with sweat as his muscles strained to guide his bride of wood and sails away from her pursuer. Eyes white and wide in furious snarl, he turned a scowl onto Lenk.<br />
<br />
“What in Zamanthras’s name are you blasphemers being paid for?” He thrust a finger toward the railings. <em>“Get. Them. OFF!”</em><br />
<br />
Several bodies pushed past Lenk, hatchets in hand as they rushed the chains biting into the <em>Riptide’s</em> hull. At this, a lilting voice cut across the gap of the sea, sharp as a blade to Lenk’s ears as he pulled himself to his feet. <br />
<br />
“I say, kind Captain, that hardly seems the proper way to address the gentlemen in your employ, does it?” The helmsman of the <em>Linkmaster</em> taunted with little effort as he guided the black vessel to keep pace with its prey. “Truly, sirrah, perhaps you could benefit from a tongue more silver than brass?”<br />
<br />
“Stuff your metaphors in your eyes and burn them, Cragscum!” Argaol split his roar in twain, hurling the rest of his fury at his crew below. “Faster! Work faster, you hairless monkeys! Get the chains off!”<br />
<br />
“Do we help?” Kataria asked, looking from the chains to Lenk. “I mean, aren’t you a monkey?”<br />
<br />
“Monkeys lack a sense of business etiquette,” Lenk replied. “Argaol isn’t the one who pays us.” His eyes drifted down, along with his frown, to the dull iron fingers peeking over the edge of the <em>Riptide’s</em> hull. “Besides, no amount of screaming is going to smash that thing loose.”<br />
<br />
Her eyes followed his, and so did her lips, at the sight of the massive metal claw. A “mother claw,” some sailors had shrieked upon seeing it: a massive bridge of links, each the size of a housecat, ending in six massive talons that clung to its victim ship like an overconfident drunkard.<br />
<br />
“Were slander but one key upon a ring of victory, good Captain, I dare suggest you’d not be in such delicate circum stance,” the <em>Linkmaster’s</em> helmsman called from across the gap. “Alas, a lack of manners more frequently begets sharp devices embedded in kidneys. If I might be so brash as to suggest surrender as a means of keeping your internal organs free of metallic intrusion?”<br />
<br />
The mother claw had since lived up to its title, resisting any attempt to dislodge it. What swords could be cobbled together had been broken upon it. The sailors that might have been able to dislodge it when the Cragsmen attacked were also the first to be cut down or grievously wounded. All attempts to tear away from its embrace had proved useless.<br />
<br />
<em>Not that it seems to stop Argaol from trying</em>, Lenk noted.<br />
<br />
“You might,” the captain roared to his rival, “but only if I might suggest shoving said suggestion square up your—”<br />
<br />
The vulgarity was lost in the wooden groan of the Riptide as Argaol pulled the wheel sharply, sending his ship cutting through salt like a scythe.<br />
<br />
The mother chain wailed in metal panic, going taut and pulling the <em>Linkmaster</em> back alongside its prey. A collective roar of surprise went up from the crew as they were sent sprawling. Lenk’s own was a muffled grunt, as Kataria’s modest weight was hurled against him.<br />
<br />
His breath was struck from him and his senses with it. When they returned to him, he was conscious of many things at once: the sticky deck beneath him, the calls of angry gulls above him and the groan of sailors clambering to their feet.<br />
<br />
And her.<br />
<br />
His breath seeped into his nostrils slowly, carrying with it a new scent that overwhelmed the stench of decay. He tasted her sweat on his tongue, smelled blood that wept from the few scratches on her torso, and felt the warmth of her slick flesh pressed against him, seeping through his stained tunic and into his skin like a contagion.<br />
<br />
He opened his eyes and found hers boring into his. He saw his own slack jaw reflected in their green depths, unable to look away.<br />
<br />
“Hardly worthy of praise, Captain,” the <em>Linkmaster’s</em> helmsman called out, drawing their attentions. “Might one suggest even the faintest caress of Lady Reason would e’er do your plight well?”<br />
<br />
“So . . .” Kataria said, screwing up her face in befuddlement, “do they all talk like that?”<br />
<br />
“Cragsmen are lunatics,” he muttered in reply. “Their mothers drink ink when they’re still in the womb, so every one of them comes out tattooed and out of his skull.”<br />
<br />
“What? Really?”<br />
<br />
“Khetashe, <em>I don’t know,”</em> he grunted, shoving her off and clambering to his feet. “The point is that, in a few moments when they finally decide to board again, they’re going to run us over, cut us open and shove our intestines up our noses!” He glanced her over. “Well, I mean, they’ll kill <em>me</em>, at least. You, they said they’d like to—”<br />
<br />
“Yeah,” she snarled, “I heard them. But that’s only <em>if</em> they board.”<br />
<br />
“And what makes you think they’re not going to?” He flailed in the general direction of the mother chain. “So long as that thing is there, they can just come over and visit whenever the fancy takes them!” <br />
<br />
“So we get rid of it!”<br />
<br />
<em>“How?</em> Nothing can move it!”<br />
<br />
“Gariath could move it.”<br />
<br />
“Gariath <em>could</em> do a lot of things,” Lenk snarled, scowling across the deck to the companionway that led to the ship’s hold. “He <em>could</em> come out here and help us instead of waiting for us all to die, but since he hasn’t, he <em>could</em> just choke on his own vomit and I’d be perfectly happy.”<br />
<br />
“Well, I hope you won’t take offence if I’m not willing to sit around and wait with you to die.”<br />
<br />
“Good! No waiting required! Just jump up to the front and get it over quickly!”<br />
<br />
“Typical human,” she said, sneering and showing a large canine. “You’re giving up before the bodies are even hung and feeding the trees.”<br />
<br />
<em>“What does that even mean?”</em> he roared back at her. Before she could retort, he held up a hand and sighed. “One moment. Let’s . . . let’s just pretend that death is slightly less imminent and think for a moment.”<br />
<br />
“Think about what?” she asked, rolling her shoulders. “The situation seems pretty solved to you, at least. What are we supposed to do?”<br />
<br />
Lenk’s eyes became blue flurries, darting about the ship. He looked from the chains and their massive mother to the men futilely trying to dislodge them. He looked from the companionway to Argaol shrieking at the helm. He looked from Kataria’s hard green stare to the <em>Riptide’s</em> rail . . .<br />
<br />
And to the lifeboat dangling from its riggings.<br />
<br />
“What, indeed—”<br />
<br />
“Well,” a voice soft and sharp as a knife drawn from leather hissed, “you know my advice.”<br />
<br />
Lenk turned and was immediately greeted by what resembled a bipedal cockroach. The man was crouched over a Cragsman’s corpse, studying it through dark eyes that suggested he might actually eat it if left alone. His leathers glistened like a dark carapace, his fingers twitched like feelers as they ran down the body’s leg.<br />
<br />
Denaos’s smile, however, was wholly human, if a little unpleasant.<br />
<br />
“And what advice is that?” Kataria asked, sneering at the man. “Run? Hide? Offer up various orifices in a desperate exchange for mercy?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, they won’t be patient enough to let you offer, I assure you.” The rogue’s smile only grew broader at the insult. “Curb that savage organ you call a tongue, however, and I might be generous enough to share a notion of escape with you.”<br />
<br />
“You’ve been plotting an escape this whole time the rest of us have been fighting?” Lenk didn’t bother to frown; Denaos’s lack of shame had rendered him immune to even the sharpest twist of lips. “Did you have so little faith in us?” <br />
<br />
Denaos gave a cursory glance over the deck and shrugged. “I count exactly five dead Cragsmen, only one more than I had anticipated.”<br />
<br />
“We don’t get paid by the body,” Lenk replied.<br />
<br />
“Perhaps you should negotiate a new contract,” Kataria offered.<br />
<br />
“We have a contract?” The rogue’s eyes lit up brightly.<br />
<br />
“She was being sarcastic,” Lenk said.<br />
<br />
Immediately, Denaos’s face darkened. “Sarcasm implies humour,” he growled. “There’s not a damn thing funny about not having money.” He levelled a finger at the shict. “What <em>you</em> were being was facetious, a quality of speech reserved only for the lowest and most cruel of jokes. Regardless,” he<br />
turned back to the corpse, “it was clear you didn’t need me.”<br />
<br />
“Not need <em>you</em> in a fight?” Lenk cracked a grin. “I’m quickly getting used to the idea.”<br />
<br />
“We should just use him as a shield next time,” Kataria said, nodding, “see if we can’t get at least some benefit from him.”<br />
<br />
“I hate to agree with her,” Lenk said with a sigh, “but . . . well, I mean you make it so <em>easy</em>, Denaos. Where were you when the fighting began, anyway?”<br />
<br />
“Elsewhere,” the rogue said with a shrug.<br />
<br />
“One of us could have been killed,” Lenk replied sharply.<br />
<br />
Denaos glanced from Lenk to Kataria, expression unchanging. “Well, that might have been a mild inconveni ence or a cause for celebration, depending. As both of you are alive, however, I can only assume that my initial theory was correct. As to where I was—”<br />
<br />
“Hiding?” Kataria interrupted. “Crying? Soiling yourself?”<br />
<br />
“Correction.” Denaos’s reply was as smooth and easy as the knife that leapt from his belt to his hand. “I was hiding and soiling myself, if you want to call it that. At the moment . . .” He slid the dagger into the leg seam of the Cragsman’s trousers. “I’m looting.”<br />
<br />
“Uh-huh.” Lenk got the vague sensation that continuing to watch the rogue work would be a mistake, but was unable to turn his head away as Denaos began to cut. “And . . . out of curiosity, what would you call what you were doing?”<br />
<br />
“I believe the proper term is ‘reconnaissance.’”<br />
<br />
“Scouting is what <em>I</em> do,” Kataria replied, making a show of her twitching ears.<br />
<br />
“Yes, you’re very good at sniffing faeces and hunting beasts. What I do is . . .” He looked up from his macabre activities, waving his weapon as he searched for the word. “Of a more philosophical nature.”<br />
<br />
“Go on,” Lenk said, ignoring the glare Kataria shot him for indulging the man.<br />
<br />
“Given our circumstances, I’d say what I do is more along the lines of planning for the future,” Denaos said, finishing the long cut up the trouser leg.<br />
<br />
Heavy masks of shock settled over the young man and shict’s faces, neither of them able to muster the energy to cringe as Denaos slid a long arm into the slit and reached up the Cragsman’s leg. Quietly, Kataria cleared her throat and leaned over to Lenk.<br />
<br />
“Are . . . are you going to ask him?”<br />
<br />
“I would,” he muttered, “but I really don’t think I want to know.”<br />
<br />
“Now then, as I was saying,” Denaos continued with all the nonchalance of a man who did not have his arm up another man’s trouser leg, “being reasonable men and insane pointy-eared savages alike, I assume we’re thinking the same thing.”<br />
<br />
“Somehow,” Lenk said, watching with morbid fascination, “I sincerely doubt that.”<br />
<br />
“That is,” Denaos continued, heedless, “we’re thinking of running, aren’t we?”<br />
<br />
“<em>You</em> are,” Kataria growled. “And no one’s surprised. The rest of us already have a plan.”<br />
<br />
“Which would be?” Denaos wore a look of deep contemplation. “Lenk and I have rather limited options: fight and die or run and live.” He looked up and cast a disparaging glance at Kataria’s chest. “Yours are improved only by the chance that they might mistake you for a pointy-eared, pubescent boy<br />
instead of a woman.” He shrugged. “Then again, they might prefer that.”<br />
<br />
“You stinking, cowardly <em>round-ear</em>,” she snarled, baring her canines at him. “The plan is to neither run nor die, but to <em>fight!”</em> She jabbed her elbow into Lenk’s side. “The leader says so!”<br />
<br />
“You do?” Denaos asked, looking genuinely perplexed.<br />
<br />
“Well, I . . . uh . . .” Lenk frowned, watching the movement of Denaos’s hand through the Cragsman’s trousers. “I think you might . . .” He finally shook his head. “Look, I don’t disapprove of looting, really, but I think I might have a problem with whatever it is you’re doing here.”<br />
<br />
“Looting, as I said.”<br />
<br />
Denaos’s hand suddenly stiffened, seizing something as a wicked smile came over his face. Lenk cringed and turned away as the man’s long fingers tensed, twisted and pulled violently. When he looked back, the man was dangling a small leather purse between his fingers.<br />
<br />
“The third pocket,” the rogue explained, wiping the purse off on the man’s trousers, “where all reasonable men hide their wealth.”<br />
<br />
“Including you?” Lenk asked.<br />
<br />
“Assuming I had any wealth to spend,” Denaos replied, “I would hide it in a spot that would make a looter give long, hard thought as to just how badly he wanted it.” He slipped the pouch into his belt. “At any rate, this is likely as good as it’s going to get for me.”<br />
<br />
“For us, you mean,” Lenk said.<br />
<br />
“Oh, no, no. For <em>you</em>, it’s going to get much worse, since you seem rather intent on staying here.”<br />
<br />
“We are in the employ of—”<br />
<br />
“We are <em>adventurers</em> in the employ of Evenhands,” Denaos pointed out. “And what has he done for us? We’ve been at sea for a month and all we’ve got to show for it is dirty clothes, seasickness and the occasional native-borne disease.” He looked at Lenk intently. “Out at sea, there’s no chance to make an honest living. We’re as like to be killed as get paid, and Evenhands knows that.”<br />
<br />
He shook a trembling finger, as though a great idea boiled on the tip of it.<br />
<br />
“Now,” he continued, “if we run, we can sneak back to Toha and catch a ship back to the mainland. On the continent proper, we can go anywhere, do anything: mercenary work for the legions in Karneria, bodyguarding the fashas in Cier’Djaal. We’ll earn <em>real</em> coin without all these promises that<br />
Evenhands is offering us. Out here, we’re just penniless.”<br />
<br />
“We’ll be just as penniless on the mainland,” Lenk countered. “We run, the only thing we’ve earned is a reputation for letting employers, godly employers, die.”<br />
<br />
“And the dead spend no money,” Denaos replied smoothly. “Besides, we won’t need to take jobs to make money.” He glanced at Kataria, gesturing with his chin. “We can sell the shict to a brothel.” He coughed. “Or a zoo of some kind.”<br />
<br />
“Try it,” Kataria levelled her growl at both men, “and what parts of you I <em>don’t</em> shoot full of holes, I’ll hack off and wear as a hat.” She bared her teeth at Denaos. “And just because <em>you</em> plan to die—”<br />
<br />
“The plan is <em>not</em> to die, haven’t you been listening? And before you ask, yes, I’m certain that we <em>will</em> die when they return, for two reasons.” <br />
<br />
“<em>If</em> they return,” Kataria interjected. “We scared them off before.”<br />
<br />
“<em>When</em> they return,” Denaos countered. “Which coincides with the first reason: this was just the probe.”<br />
<br />
“The what?”<br />
<br />
“Ah, excuse me,” the man said as he rose up. “I forgot I was talking to a savage. Allow me to explain the finer points of business.”<br />
<br />
Lenk spared a moment to think, not for the first time, that it was decidedly unfair that the rogue should stand nearly a head taller than himself. <em>It’s not as though the length of your trousers matters when you piss them routinely</em>, he thought resentfully.<br />
<br />
“Piracy,” the tall man continued, “like all forms of murder, is a matter of business. It’s a haggle, a matter of bidding and buying. What they just sent over,” he paused to nudge the corpse at his feet, “is their initial bid, an investment. It’s the price they paid to see how many more men they’d need to take the ship.”<br />
<br />
“That’s a lot of philosophy to justify running away,” Lenk said, arching an eyebrow.<br />
<br />
“You had a lot of time to think while hiding?” Kataria asked.<br />
<br />
“It’s really more a matter of instinct,” Denaos replied.<br />
<br />
“The instinct of a <em>rat</em>,” Kataria hissed, “is to run, hide and eat their own excrement. There’s a reason no one listens to them.”<br />
<br />
“Forgive me, I misspoke.” He held up his hands, offering an offensively smarmy smile. “By ‘instinct,’ I meant to say ‘it’s blindingly obvious to anyone <em>but</em> a stupid shict.’ See, if I were attacking a ship bearing a half-clad, half-mad barbarian that at least <em>resembled</em> a woman wearing breeches tighter than the skin on an overfed hog, I would most certainly want to know how many men I needed to take her with no more holes in her than I could realistically use.”<br />
<br />
She opened her mouth, ready to launch a hailstorm of retorts. Her indignation turned into a blink, as though she were confused when nothing would come. Coughing, she looked down.<br />
<br />
“So it’s not <em>that</em> bad an idea,” she muttered. Finding a sudden surge of courage, she looked back up. “But, I mean, we killed the first ones. We can kill them again.”<br />
<br />
“Kill how many?” Denaos replied. “Three? Six? That leaves roughly three dozen left to kill.” He pointed a finger over the railing. “And reason number two.”<br />
<br />
Lenk saw the object of attention right away; it was impossible not to once the amalgamation of metal and flesh strode to the fore.<br />
<br />
“Rashodd,” Lenk muttered.<br />
<br />
He had heard the name gasped in fear when the <em>Linkmaster </em>first arrived. He heard it again now as the captain of the black ship stood before his crew, the echo of his heavy boots audible even across the roaring sea.<br />
<br />
Rashodd was a Cragsman, as his colossal arms ringed with twisting tattoos declared proudly. The rest of him was a sheer monolith of metal and leather. His chest, twice as broad as any in his crew, was hidden behind a hammered sheet of iron posing as a breastplate. His face was obscured as he peered through a thin slit in his dull grey helmet, tendrils of an equally grey beard twitching beneath it.<br />
<br />
And he, too, waited, Lenk noted. No command to attack arose on a metal-smothered shout. No call for action in a falsely elegant voice drifted over the sea. Not one massive, leathery hand drifted to either of the tremendous, single-bit axes hanging from his waist.<br />
<br />
They merely folded along with the Cragsman’s titanic arms, crossing over the breastplate and remaining there.<br />
<br />
Waiting.<br />
<br />
“Their next bid will be coming shortly,” Denaos warned. “And <em>he’s</em> going to be the one that delivers it.” He gestured out to the crew. “They’re dead, sure, but they’re Argaol’s men. We have to think of our own.”<br />
<br />
“He’s just a human,” Kataria said derisively, “a monkey.” She glanced at the titanic pirate and frowned. “A big monkey, but we’ve killed big ones before. There’s no reason to run.”<br />
<br />
“Good,” Denaos replied sharply, “stay here while all sane creatures embrace reason.” He sneered. “Do try to scream loudly, though. Make it something they’ll savour long enough so that the rest of us can get away.”<br />
<br />
“The only one leaving will be you, round-ear,” Kataria growled, “and we’ll see how long your delusions of wit can sustain you at sea.” <br />
<br />
“Only a shict would think of reason as delusional.”<br />
<br />
“Only a human would think of cowardice as rational!”<br />
<br />
Words were flung between them like arrows and daggers, each one cutting deeply with neither of the two refusing to admit the blood. Lenk had no eyes for their snarls and rude gestures, no attention for their insults that turned to whispers on his ears.<br />
<br />
His stare was seized, bound to the hulking figure of Rashodd. His ears were full, consumed by another voice whispering at the back of his head. <br />
<br />
<em>It’s possible,</em> that voice said, <em>that Denaos is wrong.</em> <em>There are almost as many men on our ship as on theirs. We could fight. We wouldn’t even have to win a complete victory, just bloody their noses. Teach them that we aren’t worth the trouble. It’s business, right?</em><br />
<br />
“What’s the big deal over a big monkey, anyway?” Kataria snapped. “The <em>moment</em> he raises that visor, I’ll put an arrow in his gullet and we’ll be done here! No need to run.” Her laughter was sharp and unpleasant. “Or do you find his big muscles intimidating, you poor little lamb?”<br />
<br />
“I can think of at least one muscle of his that you’ll find unpleasant when he comes over,” Denaos replied, a hint of ire creeping into his voice. “And I wouldn’t be at all surprised if <em>it</em> was bearded and covered in iron, too. He’s seen what you’ve done to his men. He won’t be taking that visor off.”<br />
<br />
<em>It’s possible</em>, Lenk answered his own thought, <em>but not likely.</em> <em>Numbers are one thing, but steel is another. They have swords. We have sticks. Well, I mean, I’ve got a sword . . . fat lot of good it will do against that many, though. Running is just logical here. It’s not as if Denaos actually had a good idea here, anyway.</em><br />
<br />
“If you run, you don’t get paid,” Kataria said. “Though, really, I’ve always wanted to see if human greed is stronger than human cowardice.” <br />
<br />
“We get paid slaves’ wages,” Denaos said. “Silf, we get worse. We get <em>adventurers’</em> wages. Stop trying to turn this into a matter of morality. It’s purely about the practicality of the situation and, really, when has a <em>shict</em> ever been a moral authority?” <br />
<br />
<em>When have any of them ever had a good idea?</em> Lenk’s eyes narrowed irately. <em>I’m always the one who has to think here. He’s a coward, but she’s insane. Asper’s a milksop, Dreadaeleon’s worthless. Gariath is as likely to kill me as help. Running is better here. They’ll get me killed if we stay.</em><br />
<br />
“Well, don’t get the impression that I’m trying to stop you,” Kataria snarled. “The only reason I’d like you to stay is because I’m almost certain you’ll get a sword in your guts and then I won’t even have to deal with the terrible worry that you might somehow survive out at sea. The <em>rest</em> of us can handle things from here.”<br />
<br />
“And if I <em>could </em>handle it all by myself, I would,” Denaos said. “Feeling the humanitarian that I am, though, I would consider it a decent thing to try to get as many <em>humans</em> off as I possibly could.”<br />
<br />
“Decent? You?” Kataria made a sound as though she had just inhaled one of her own arrows through her nose. <br />
“<em>I</em> didn’t kill <em>anyone</em> today.”<br />
<br />
“Only because you were busy putting your hands down a dead man’s trousers. In what language is that decent?”<br />
<br />
<em>They’re going to die</em>, Lenk’s thoughts grew their wings, flew about his head violently, <em>but I can live. Flee now and live! The rest will . . .</em><br />
<br />
“And what would you know of language?” Denaos snarled. “You only learned how to speak ours so you could mock the people you kill, <em>savage!”</em><br />
<br />
<em>. . . waiting, waiting for what? To attack? Why? What else can you do? There’s so many of them, few of us. Save them and they kill each other . . .</em><br />
<br />
“And you mock your own people by pretending you give a single fart about them, <em>rat</em>.”<br />
<br />
<em>. . . to what end? What else can you do?</em><br />
<br />
“Barbarian!”<br />
<br />
<em>What else can you do?</em><br />
<br />
“Coward!”<br />
<br />
<em>WHAT ELSE?</em><br />
<br />
The thoughts that formed a blizzard in Lenk’s mind sud denly froze over, turning to a pure sheet of ice over his brain. He suddenly felt a chill creep down his spine and into his arm, forcing his fingers shut on his sword’s hilt. From the ice, a single voice, frigid and uncompromising, spoke.<br />
<br />
<em>Kill.</em><br />
<br />
“What?” he whispered aloud.<br />
<br />
<em>Kill.</em><br />
<br />
“I . . . don’t—”<br />
<br />
“Don’t what?”<br />
<br />
He felt a hand on his shoulder, unbearably warm. He whirled about, hand tight on his sword. The shapes before him looked unfamiliar for a moment: shadows of blue lost in the sky. He blinked and something came into view, apparent in a flash of blazing green.<br />
<br />
Kataria’s eyes, brimming with disquiet.<br />
<br />
With every blink, the sunlight became brighter and more oppressive. He squinted at the two people before him, face twisted in a confused frown.<br />
<br />
“What?”<br />
<br />
“It’s up to you, we agreed,” Kataria replied hesitantly. “You’re the leader.”<br />
<br />
“Though ‘why’ is a good question,” Denaos muttered.<br />
<br />
“Do we fight or run?”<br />
<br />
Lenk looked over his shoulder. His eyelid twitched at the sight of the pirates, visibly tensing, sliding swords from their sheaths. Behind the rows of tattooed flesh, a shadow shifted uneasily. Had it always been there, Lenk wondered, standing so still that he hadn’t noticed it?<br />
<br />
“Fight?” Kataria repeated. “Or run?”<br />
<br />
Lenk nodded. He heard her distinctly now, saw the world free of haze and darkness. Everything became clear.<br />
<br />
“I have a plan,” he said firmly.<br />
<br />
“I’m all ears,” Denaos said, casting a snide smile to Kataria. “Sorry, was that offensive?”<br />
<br />
“Shut up,” Lenk growled before she could. “Grab your weapons. Follow me.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<em>Don’t look,</em> Dreadaeleon thought to himself, <em>but a seagull just evacuated on your shoulder.</em><br />
<br />
He felt his neck twist slightly.<br />
<br />
<em>I SAID, DON’T LOOK!</em> He cringed at his own thoughts. <em>No, if you look, you’ll panic. I mean, why wouldn’t you? It’s sitting there . . . all squishy and crawling with disease. And . . . well, this isn’t helping. Just . . . just brush it off nonchalantly . . . try to be nonchalant about touching bird faeces . . . just try . . .</em><br />
<br />
It occurred to the boy as odd that the warm present on his shoulder wasn’t even the reason he resented the birds overhead at that moment.<br />
<br />
Rather, he thought, as he stared up at the winged vermin, they didn’t make nearly enough noise. Neither did the ocean, nor the wind, nor the murmurings of the sailors gathered before him, muttering ignorant prayers to gods that didn’t exist with the blue-clad woman who swore that they did.<br />
<br />
Though, at that moment, he doubted that even gods, false or true, could make enough noise to drown out the awkward silence that hung between him and her. <br />
<br />
<em>Wait,</em> he responded to his own thoughts, <em>you didn’t say that last part instead of thinking it, did you? Don’t tell her that the gods are just made up! Remember what happened last time. Look at her . . . slowly . . . nonchalantly . . . all right, good, she doesn’t appear to have heard you, so you probably didn’t say it. Wait, no, she’s scowling. Wait, do you still have the bird faeces on you? Get it off! Nonchalant! Nonchalant!</em><br />
<br />
The problem persisted, however. Even after he brushed the white gunk from his leather coat, Asper’s hazel eyes remained fixed in a scowl upon him. He cleared his throat, looked down at the deck.<br />
<br />
Mercifully, she directed her hostility at him only for as long as it took to tuck her brown hair back beneath her bandana, then looked back down at the singed arm she was carefully dressing with bandage and salve. The man who possessed said arm remained scowling at him, but Dreadaeleon scarcely noticed. <br />
<br />
<em>He probably wants you to apologise,</em> the boy thought. <em>He deserves it, I suppose. I mean, you did set him on fire.</em> His fingers rubbed together, lingering warmth dancing on their tips. <em>But what did he expect, getting in the way like that? He’s lucky he escaped with only a burned arm. Still, she’d probably like it if you apologised . . . </em><br />
<br />
If she even noticed, he thought with a sigh. Behind the burned man were three others with deep cuts, bruised heads or visibly broken joints. Behind <em>them</em> were four more that had already been wrapped, salved, cleaned or stitched.<br />
<br />
And they had taken their toll on her, he noticed as her hands went back into the large leather satchel at her side and pulled out another roll of bandages. They trembled, they were calloused, they were clearly used to working.<br />
<br />
<em>And,</em> he thought with a sigh, <em>they are just so strong.</em> He drew in a resolute breath. <em>All right, you’ve got to say something . . . not that, though! But something. Remember what Denaos says: women are dangerous beasts. But you’re a wizard, a member of the Venarium. You fear no beast. Just . . . use tact.</em><br />
<br />
“Asper,” he all but whispered, his voice catching as she looked up at him again, “you’re . . .” He inhaled sharply. “You’re being completely stupid.”<br />
<br />
<em>Well done.</em><br />
<br />
“Stupid,” she said, levelling a glare that informed him of both her disagreement and her future plans to bludgeon him.<br />
<br />
“As it pertains to the context, yes,” he said, attempting to remain bold under her withering eyes.<br />
<br />
“The context of . . .” she gestured to her patient, “setting a man on fire?”<br />
<br />
“It’s . . . it’s a highly sensitive context,” he protested, his voice closely resembling that of a kitten being chewed on by a lamb. “You aren’t taking into account the many variables that account for the incident. See, body temperature can fluctuate fairly quickly, requiring a vast amount of concentration for me to channel it into something combustible enough to do appreciable damage to something animate.”<br />
<br />
At this, the burned man added his scowl to Asper’s. Dreadaeleon cleared his throat.<br />
<br />
“As evidenced visibly. With such circumstances as we’ve just experienced, the risk for a triviality increases.”<br />
<br />
“You set . . . a man . . . on fire . . .” Asper said, her voice a long, slow knife digging into him. “How is that a triviality?”<br />
<br />
“Well . . . well . . .” The boy levelled a skinny finger at the man accusingly. “He got in my way!”<br />
<br />
“I was tryin’ to defend the captain!” the man protested.<br />
<br />
“You could have gone around me!” Dreadaeleon snapped back. “My eyes were glowing! My hands were on fire! What affliction of the mind made you think it was a good idea to run in front of me? I was clearly about to do something <em>very</em> impressive.”<br />
<br />
“Dread,” Asper rebuked the boy sharply before tying the bandage off at the man’s arm and laying a hand gently on his shoulder. To the sailor: “The wound’s not serious. Avoid using it for a while. I’ll change the dressing tomorrow.” She sighed and looked over the men, both breathing and breathless,<br />
beyond her patient. “If you can, you should tend to your fellows.”<br />
<br />
“Blessings, Priestess,” the man replied, rising to his feet and bowing to her. <br />
<br />
She returned the gesture and rose as well, smoothing out the wrinkles creasing her blue robes. She excused herself from the remaining patients with a nod and turned away to lean on the railings. <br />
<br />
And Dreadaeleon could not help but notice just how hard she leaned. The irate vigour that had lurked behind her eyes vanished entirely, leaving only a very tired woman. Her hands, now suddenly trembling, reached to the gleaming silver hanging from her throat. Fingers caressed the wings of a great bird, the phoenix.<br />
<br />
Talanas, Dreadaeleon recalled, the Healer.<br />
<br />
“You look tired,” he observed.<br />
<br />
“I can see how I might give off that impression,” Asper replied, “what with having to undo the damage my companions do as well as the pirates’ own havoc.”<br />
<br />
Somehow, the softness of her voice cut even deeper than its former sharpness. Dreadaeleon frowned and looked down at the deck.<br />
<br />
“It <em>was</em> an accident—”<br />
<br />
“I know.” She looked up and offered him an exhausted smile. “I can appreciate what you were trying to do.”<br />
<br />
<em>You see, old man? That fire would have been colossal! Corpses burning on the deck! Smoke rising into the sky! Of course she’d have been impressed. The ladies love fire.</em><br />
<br />
“Well, it would have been difficult to pull off, of course,” he offered, attempting to sound humble. “But the benefits would have outweighed the tragedy.”<br />
<br />
“Tragedy?” She blinked. “I thought you were going to try to scare the rest of them off with a show of force.” She peered curiously at him. “What were you thinking?”<br />
<br />
<em>“The exact same thing,”</em> he hastily blurted. “I mean, they’re pirates, right?<br />
<br />
And Cragsmen, on top of that. They probably still believe wizards eat souls and fart thunder.”<br />
<br />
She stared at him.<br />
<br />
“We, uh, we don’t.”<br />
<br />
“Hmm.” She glanced over his shoulder with a grimace, toward the shadows of the companionway. “And what was the purpose of that?”<br />
<br />
He followed her gaze and frowned. He wasn’t quite sure why she looked at the sight with disgust. To him, it was a masterpiece.<br />
<br />
The icicle’s shape was perfect: thick enough to drive it into the wood of the ship, sharp enough to pierce the rib cage in which it currently rested comfortably. Even as the Cragsman clung to it, hands frozen to the red-stained ice in death, Dreadaeleon couldn’t help but smile. He had expected something far messier, but the force used to hurl it through the air had been just enough.<br />
<br />
<em>Of course, she probably won’t understand that.</em> He rolled his eyes as he felt hers boring into his. <em>Women.</em><br />
<br />
“Prevention,” he replied coolly. “I saw him heading for the companionway, I thought he might try to harm Miron.”<br />
<br />
She nodded approvingly. “I suppose it was necessary, then, if only to protect the Lord Emissary.”<br />
<br />
<em>Well done, old man, well done.</em> The exuberance coursing through him threatened to make him explode. He fought it down to a self-confident smirk. <em>Talking to girls is just like casting a spell. Just maintain concentration and don’t—</em><br />
<br />
“After all,” he interrupted his train of thought with a laugh, “if he died, who would pay us?"<br />
<br />
<em>. . . do anything like that, idiot.</em><br />
<br />
She swung her scowl upon him like a battleaxe, all the fury and life restored to her as she clenched her teeth. She ceased to resemble a priestess at that moment, or any kind of woman, and looked instead like some horrific beast ready to rip his innards out and paint the deck with them.<br />
<br />
“This is what it’s all about, then?” she snarled. “Pay? Gold? Good Gods, Dread, you <em>impaled</em> a man.”<br />
<br />
“That hardly seems fair,” he replied meekly. “Lenk and the others have killed far more than me. Kataria even made a game out of it.”<br />
<br />
“And <em>she’s</em> a shict!” Asper clenched her pendant violently. “Bad enough that I should have to tolerate <em>their</em> blasphemies without you also taking pleasure in killing.”<br />
<br />
“I wasn’t—”<br />
<br />
“Oh, shut up. You were staring at that corpse like you wanted to mount it on a wall. Would you have taken the same pride if you had killed that man instead of just burning him?”<br />
<br />
“Well . . .” His common sense had fled him, his words came on a torrent of shamelessness. “I mean, if the spell had gone off as it was supposed to, I suppose I could have appreciated the artistry of it.” He looked up with sudden terror, holding his hands out in front of him. “But no, no! I wouldn’t have taken pride in it! I never take pride in making more work for you!” <br />
<br />
“It’s not <em>work</em> to do Talanas’s will, you snivelling heathen!” Her face screwed up in ways that he had thought possible only on gargoyles. “You sound like . . . like one of <em>them</em>, Dread!”<br />
<br />
“Who?”<br />
<br />
“Us.”<br />
<br />
Lenk met the boy’s whirling gaze without blinking, even as Dreadaeleon frowned.<br />
<br />
“Oh,” he said, “you.”<br />
<br />
“You sound disappointed.”<br />
<br />
“Well, the comparison was rather unfavourable,” the wizard said, shrugging. “Not that I’m not thrilled you’re still alive.”<br />
<br />
He still sounded disappointed, but Lenk made no mention of it. His eyes went over the boy’s head of stringy black hair, past Asper’s concerned glare, through the mass of wounded sailors to the object of his desire.<br />
<br />
The smaller escape vessel dangled seductively from its davits, displaying its oars so brazenly, its benches so invitingly. It called to him with firm, wooden logic, told him he would not survive without it. He believed it, he wanted to go to it.<br />
<br />
There was the modest problem of the tall priestess before him, though, arms crossed over her chest to form a wall of moral indignation. <br />
“What happened at the railings?” she asked. “Did you win?”<br />
<br />
“In a manner of speaking, yes.”<br />
<br />
“In a manner of . . .” She furrowed her brow. “It’s not a hard question, you know. Did you push the pirates back?”<br />
<br />
“Obviously, we were triumphant,” chimed a darker voice from behind him. Denaos stalked forward, placing a hand on Lenk’s shoulder. “If we hadn’t, you’d like have at least a dozen tattooed hands up your skirt by now.”<br />
<br />
<em>“Robes,”</em> she corrected sharply. “I wear <em>robes</em>, brigand.”<br />
<br />
“How foolish of me. I should have known. After all, only proper ladies wear skirts.” As she searched for a retort, he quickly leaned over and whispered in Lenk’s ear. “She’s never going to let us by and she certainly won’t come with us.”<br />
<br />
Lenk nodded. Ordinarily, that wouldn’t have been a problem. He would just as soon leave her to die if she insisted. However, she could certainly call the sailors’ attentions to the fact that they were about to make off with the ship’s only escape vessel. Not to mention it would be exceedingly bad judgement to leave the healer behind.<br />
<br />
“So just shove her in,” he muttered in reply. “On my signal, you rush her. I’ll cut the lines. We’ll be off.”<br />
<br />
“What are you two talking about?” Asper’s eyebrows were so far up they were almost hidden beneath her bandana. “Are you plotting something?” <br />
<br />
“We are discussing stratagems, thank you,” Denaos replied smoothly. “We are, after all, the brains of this band.”<br />
<br />
“I thought I was the brains,” Dreadaeleon said.<br />
<br />
“<em>You</em> are the odd little boy we pay to shoot fire out of his ass,” the rogue said.<br />
<br />
“I shoot fire out of my <em>hands</em>, thank you. And it requires an <em>immense</em> amount of brains.” He pulled back his leather coat, revealing a massive book secured to his waist by a silver chain. “I memorised this whole thing! Look at it! <em>It’s huge!”</em><br />
<br />
“He raises a good point,” Denaos whispered to Lenk. “He might try to stop us.”<br />
<br />
“I can handle it,” a third voice added to the conspiracy. Kataria appeared at Lenk’s side, ears twitching. “He weighs even less than me. I’ll just grab him on the way.”<br />
<br />
“I thought you didn’t like this idea,” Lenk said, raising a brow.<br />
<br />
“I don’t,” she replied, sparing him a grudging glare. “It’s completely unnecessary. But,” she glanced sidelong at Lenk, “if you’re going to go . . .”<br />
<br />
The moment stretched uncomfortably long in Lenk’s head, her eyes focusing on him as if he were a target. In the span of one blink, she conveyed a hundred different messages to him: requests for him to stay, conveyance of her wish to fight, a solemn assurance that she would follow. At least, he thought she said that. All that echoed in his mind was one voice.<br />
<br />
<em>Stop staring at me.</em><br />
<br />
“Yes, good, lovely,” Denaos grunted. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it now.”<br />
<br />
“Do what?” Asper asked, going tense as if sensing the sin before it developed.<br />
<br />
“Nothing,” Denaos replied, taking a step forward, “we’re just hoping to accomplish it before—”<br />
<br />
<em>“By the Shining Six,”</em> the voice cut through the air like a blade, <em>“who wrought this sin?”</em><br />
<br />
“Damn it,” Lenk snarled, glancing over his shoulder at the approaching figure.<br />
<br />
Despite rumours whispered in the mess, it was a woman, tall as Denaos and at least as muscular. Her body was choked in bronze, her breastplate yielding not a hint of femininity as it was further obscured by a white toga. <br />
<br />
Hard eyes stared out from a hard face, set deep in her skull and framed by meticulously short-trimmed black hair. Her right eyelid twitched at the sight of them all huddled together, the row of red-inked letters upon her cheek dancing like some crimson serpent that matched her very visible ire as she swept toward the companions, heedless of the puddles of blood splashing her greaves.<br />
<br />
“Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates,” Asper said pleas antly as she stepped forward unopposed, she being gen erally considered the person best suited to speak with people bearing more than two names. “We are pleased to see you well.”<br />
<br />
“<em>Serrant</em> Quillian Guisarne-Garrelle Yanates,” the woman corrected. “Your praise is undeserved, I fear.” She cast a glimpse at the human litter and sneered. “I should have been here much sooner.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, scampering in a bit late today, aren’t we, Squiggy?” Denaos levelled his snide smirk at her like a spear. “The battle was over before you even strapped that fancy armour on.”<br />
<br />
“I was guarding the Lord Emissary,” the Serrant replied coldly. “You might recall it being your duty, as well, if you could but keep your mind from gold and carnage.”<br />
<br />
“Carnage?” Kataria laughed unpleasantly. “It was a slaughter.”<br />
<br />
Quillian’s eyes sharpened, focusing a narrow glare of bladed hatred upon he shict.<br />
<br />
“You would know, savage.” She forced her stare away with no small amount of effort. “I had hoped to arrive to see at least some modicum of rite was being followed. Instead, I find . . .” she forced the word through her teeth as though it were poison, <em>‘adventurers.’</em> She spared a cursory nod to Asper. <br />
“Excluding those of decent faith.”<br />
<br />
“Oh,” the woman blinked, “well, thank you, but—”<br />
<br />
“<em>She’s</em> with us,” Denaos interjected, stepping up beside the priestess with a scummy grin. “How’s that stick in your craw, Squiggy? One of your beloved, pious temple friends embroiled in our world of sin and sellswording, eh?” He swept an arm about Asper, drawing her in close and rubbing his stubble-laden cheek against her face. “Doesn’t sit too well, does it? <em>Does it?</em> I can smell your disgust from here!”<br />
<br />
Lenk caught the movement, subtle as it was, as the rogue gingerly tried to ease his blanching captive toward the escape vessel. Dreadaeleon, too, looked shocked enough that he’d never see Kataria coming to grab him. He readied his sword, eyeing the ropes.<br />
<br />
“That would be me,” Asper snarled, driving an ungentle elbow into his ribs and ruining his plans. “Get <em>off</em>.”<br />
<br />
“The hallowed dead litter the deck,” the Serrant said, sweeping her scorn across the scene, then focusing it on Lenk. “Innocent men alongside the impure. All sloppily killed.”<br />
<br />
“What?” Dreadaeleon asked, pointing to his impaled victim. “<em>That</em> is, by far, the cleanest kill in this whole mess!” <br />
<br />
“Incredibly enough,” Lenk added with a sigh, “killing is a sloppy business.”<br />
<br />
“These vagrants should have been routed before <em>one</em> of Argaol’s men could be driven below,” she snapped. “<em>You </em>allowed this to happen.”<br />
<br />
“Me?” Lenk said.<br />
<br />
“<em>All </em>of you.”<br />
<br />
“What?” Kataria looked offended as she gestured to Denaos. “<em>He</em> didn’t even do anything!”<br />
<br />
“Yeah,” Lenk said, nodding. “How do you figure we’re at fault?”<br />
<br />
“Because of the horrid blasphemies that continually spew from your bile holes. You <em>anger</em> the Gods with your disregard for the sacred rites of combat! Your crude tactics, your consorting with heathens,” her stare levelled at Kataria again, “as well as inhuman savages.”<br />
<br />
Her eyes were decidedly warier when she swept the deck again.<br />
<br />
“And where <em>is</em> your other monster?”<br />
<br />
“Elsewhere,” Lenk replied. “Look, we have a plan, but it doesn’t need you around. Is this really—”<br />
<br />
<br />
“Respect for the Gods is <em>very</em> necessary,” Quillian said sharply. “Yes. <em>Really</em>. Bad enough that you bring your Godless savages here without questioning the divine mandate.”<br />
<br />
“Savage arrows took three already.” Kataria’s threat was cold and level. “I’ve got plenty more, Squiggy.”<br />
<br />
“Cease and repent, barbarian,” the woman replied, just as harshly. Her gauntleted hand drifted dangerously close to the longsword at her hip. “The name of a Serrant is sacred.”<br />
<br />
“I’d disagree with that, Squiggy.” Denaos chuckled.<br />
<br />
“Me too, Squiggy,” Kataria agreed.<br />
<br />
<em>Stay calm</em>, Lenk told himself as he watched the Serrant fume. <em>This might be better. Neither Asper nor Dread is paying attention. We can still salvage this, we can still</em>—<br />
<br />
<em>Kill.</em><br />
<br />
The thought leapt, again, unbidden to his mind. He blinked, as though he had just taken a wrong turn.<br />
<br />
<em>Run</em>, he corrected himself.<br />
<br />
<em>Kill</em>, his mind insisted.<br />
<br />
And, like a spark that heralds the disastrous fire to come, the sudden concern on his face sparked Quillian’s suspicion. Her glance was a whirlwind, carrying that fire and giving it horrific life as it swept from the companions, standing tensed and ready, to the escape vessel.<br />
<br />
By the time it settled on Lenk, wide with shock and fury, he could see his plan consumed in that fire, precious ash on the wind.<br />
<br />
“She knows,” Lenk whispered harshly to Kataria. “She <em>knows</em>.”<br />
<br />
“Who cares?” the shict growled. “Stick to your plan.”<br />
<br />
“What? Shove her in, too?”<br />
<br />
“No, shove her <em>over</em>. She’ll sink like a stone in all that armour.” She paused, ears flattening against her head. “It was my idea, though, so she counts as my kill.”<br />
<br />
“Deserters,” Quillian hissed, “are the most grievous of sinners.”<br />
<br />
<em>Damn it, damn it, damn it</em>, Lenk cursed as he watched her sword begin to slide out of its scabbard. <em>This complicates things. But we can still—</em><br />
<br />
<em>Kill.</em><br />
<br />
“I suppose you would know,” Denaos said with a thoughtful eye for the brand under her right eye, “wouldn’t you?”<br />
<br />
Her shock was plain on her face, the kind of naked awe that came from the knowledge of a secret revealed. Her lip quivered, her spare hand going to the red ink.<br />
<br />
“You—”<br />
<br />
“Yes,” he replied smoothly. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind scampering off to scrawl another oath on your forehead or something? We’ve got stratagems to—”<br />
<br />
“You . . .” she hissed again, brimming with rage as she hoisted her sword, “you <em>dare!”</em><br />
<br />
There was a flash of steel, a blur of black. In the time it took to blink, the Serrant’s sword was out and trembling, its point quivering at Asper’s throat. The priestess’s eyes were wide and unmoving, barely aware of what had happened as two broad hands clenched her arms tightly.<br />
<br />
Denaos peered out from behind her, grinning broadly and whistling sharply at the blade a hair’s width from the priestess’s throat. <br />
<br />
“Dear me.” The rogue clicked his tongue chidingly. “You ought to be more careful, oughtn’t you? That was nearly another oath right there.”<br />
<br />
Quillian’s eyes were wide, the bronze covering her knuckles rattling as she quivered horribly. Empty horror stared out from behind her gaze, as though her mind had fled at the very thought of what she had nearly done.<br />
<br />
It was an expression not entirely unfamiliar to Lenk, but it was usually plastered on the faces of the dying.<br />
<br />
“I . . . I didn’t mean . . .” She looked at Asper pleadingly. “I would never . . .”<br />
<br />
<em>This is it</em>, Lenk thought, <em>she’s distracted. Denaos has a grip on Asper. Time to—</em><br />
<br />
<em>Kill.</em><br />
<br />
<em>No, time to run. We have to—</em><br />
<br />
<em>KILL!</em><br />
<br />
<em>WE HAVE TO RUN!</em><br />
<br />
“Now,” he whispered.<br />
<br />
“What?” Kataria asked.<br />
<br />
<em>“NOW, GENTLEMEN, NOW!”</em><br />
<br />
The voice of the Cragsman was accompanied by many others, boiling over the railings of the ship like a stew. The panicked cries of the sailors, mingled with Argaol’s shrieks for order, were hurled into the broth, creating a thick, savoury aroma that Lenk well recognised.<br />
<br />
Battle.<br />
<br />
<em>Damn it.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TomeoftheUndergates.html"><em>Tome of the Undergates</em></a> © <a href="http://www.samsykes.com/">Sam Sykes</a> </div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.artistpartners.com/portfolios/paul_young/index.html">Paul Young</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger</div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdBMrNXVJLDTL8P21zOp6_hHKbQb-dIlz7QSb-eTWtDpDl7qFUHBZWqy0Wf-W9tLtwHSJv6HagV_F4qdSojT_Pfc0pFMqMVLUwtO1631WVss7e2DdEoLETBUhKjHpyVWonE8j2qLmwhQA/s1600/Sykes+photo+scarf.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" px="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdBMrNXVJLDTL8P21zOp6_hHKbQb-dIlz7QSb-eTWtDpDl7qFUHBZWqy0Wf-W9tLtwHSJv6HagV_F4qdSojT_Pfc0pFMqMVLUwtO1631WVss7e2DdEoLETBUhKjHpyVWonE8j2qLmwhQA/s320/Sykes+photo+scarf.JPG" /></a></div>About the author: SAM SYKES is a twenty-five-year-old author living in Arizona. <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TomeoftheUndergates.html">Tome of the Undergates</a></em> is his first book, with many more to come. He lives with two hounds in a small, drab apartment and has eaten at least one of every animal on earth.lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-53643438782479023332010-09-16T13:53:00.003-05:002010-09-22T11:59:03.264-05:00The Wolf Age by James Enge<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUEkMRTXXK4aMNrgNNO4ZOjTCgAzWWFhak0GUHl1_2MPdC_Cbh6DSz7sr8gbV0RfcUXbuX3PKrCI-jfdf2DWcHsxpf06r5eoqHWqr3W0sHLRwe72FgDlZ9eeQ8WMmWlwF5uUUy7PUqMGA/s1600/wolfage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" qx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUEkMRTXXK4aMNrgNNO4ZOjTCgAzWWFhak0GUHl1_2MPdC_Cbh6DSz7sr8gbV0RfcUXbuX3PKrCI-jfdf2DWcHsxpf06r5eoqHWqr3W0sHLRwe72FgDlZ9eeQ8WMmWlwF5uUUy7PUqMGA/s320/wolfage.jpg" /></a>One thousand lucky Dragon*Con 2010 attendees received a Pyr sample chapter book containing excerpts from ten new and forthcoming titles. The reception was so fantastic--and immediate--we've decided to offer all our readers the opportunity to preview the same forthcoming Fall and Winter books here online. Pyr books recently celebrated our five-year anniversary in March 2010. In this half decade, we are honored to have been on the Hugo Awards ballot eight times, as well as on the World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Locus Award, Chesley Award, and other prestigious award ballots. But the greatest honor has been the way readers have embraced our books. We promise the best is yet to come.</div><br />
<br />
Here, from that sampler, is an excerpt from <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheWolfAge.html">The Wolf Age</a></strong></em> by James Enge, available in October. <br />
<br />
<br />
“James Enge’s books are like a strange alloy of Raymond Chandler, Fritz Lieber, Larry Niven, and some precious metal that is all Enge’s own. They’re thrilling, funny, and mysteriously moving. I see ten things on every page I wish I’d written. I could read him forever and never get bored.”<br />
—Lev Grossman, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of <em>The Magicians</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em>coming soon</em> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>The Wolf Age</strong></span> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>James Enge</strong></span> </div><em></em> <br />
<em></em> <br />
<em>Spear-age, sword-age: </em><em></em><br />
<em>shields are shattered.</em><br />
<em>Wind-age, wolf-age:</em><br />
<em>before the world founders</em><br />
<em>men will show mercy to none.</em><br />
<em>—Voluspa</em><br />
<em></em> <br />
<em></em> <br />
CHAPTER ONE <br />
<br />
COUNCIL OF THE GODS<br />
<br />
Listen, Iacomes. This is what I see.<br />
<br />
The Strange Gods were gathering by the Stone Tree, but Death and her sister Justice had not yet appeared. Justice, they knew, would not, but they expected Death to be there before them and War was angry.<br />
<br />
“I swear by myself,” War signified, indicating by a talic distortion that the oath was not sincere or binding, “Death is the strangest of the Strange Gods. She pervades the mortal world, but she can’t manifest herself anywhere within a pact-sworn juncture of space-time!”<br />
<br />
“I am here,” Death signified.<br />
<br />
Now that they noticed her presence among them, the Strange Gods realized she had been implicit in a fold of local space-time all along, and simply had not chosen to reveal her presence to them. The other gods signified nontrivial displeasure with her.<br />
<br />
Death indicated indifference and readiness to begin the pact-sworn discussion.<br />
<br />
The Strange Gods did not submit to a ruler. In their discussions, it was common for the weakest of them to preside. So Mercy manifested herself more intensely than she would normally have done, and reminded them of their mission to destroy the werewolf city Wuruyaaria and how it was currently imperiled.<br />
<br />
“It is Ghosts-in-the-eyes,” signified Wisdom. “They are a powerful maker and necromancer—a master of all the arts we hate. Our instrument will destroy the city”—Wisdom indicated a pattern in events they all understood—“but now unless we find a way to bring down the walls of Wuruyaaria more swiftly, our instrument may also destroy great swathes among our worshippers. This goes against our nature and cannot be accepted.”<br />
<br />
Other gods indicated agreement.<br />
<br />
Death indicated chilly amusement: a laugh. “The werewolves will die,” she signified. “Their city will die. Our worshippers will die. Our instrument will die. Everything that lives must die. When the last soul is severed, this world will collapse into its component elements and drift away in pieces, flotsam on the Sea ofWorlds. All this will happen in time: let events take whatever course they will, this is their destination. If this goes against our nature, our nature is doomed.”<br />
<br />
Each of the other gods emanated anger that would have killed a material being. It was uncivil of Death to prate about these matters that were well known to every god. If Death felt any discomfort from their emanations, she didn’t show it. Her next comment was more immediately helpful, though.<br />
<br />
“I have a kind of solution to propose,” Death signified. “I would have effected it already, but the consequences will affect our pact-sworn efforts to destroy Wuruyaaria.”<br />
<br />
Mercy signified a need for more details; other gods echoed her.<br />
<br />
Death indicated a trivial detail in the pattern of events: the death of a man named Morlock.<br />
<br />
The gods expressed indifference.<br />
<br />
Death changed the details’ position in time-space.<br />
<br />
The gods meditated on the new potential patterns of events, a flowering of dark futures springing from this one seed.<br />
<br />
Most of the gods expressed surprise. Cruelty chuckled a bit, slowly shaking his heavy, many-toothed head.<br />
<br />
Death again changed the details’ position in time-space. The manifold patterns of things-to-be changed even more radically.<br />
<br />
“How can this be?” signifiedWar. “Men and women die every day and their deaths do not matter.” Mercy signified some restlessness at this, but the Strange Gods were used to ignoring the endless quarrel between War and Mercy.<br />
<br />
“The progress of our plan in the as-things-are moves very slowly,” Death signified. “There is a tension of powers: our instrument; the pact binding our powers in this nexus of events; that damned sorcerer, Ghosts-in-the-Eyes; the natural forces we do not control; and so on. If we disrupt that tension, unbalanced powers will unleash events like a torrent.”<br />
<br />
Wisdom emanated concern, a need to wait. They did wait as he juggled futures in various shapes, pondering the uncertain effects of varying causal chains. “I cannot chart the path of this torrent,” he signified finally to Death and to his peers. “It may benefit our pact-sworn intention or harm it.”<br />
<br />
“We must guide the torrent,” signified War with obvious eagerness.<br />
<br />
“We can’t,” Wisdom signified bluntly. “If we break our sworn intention we will be adrift in the torrent, effecting local changes within it but unable to determine its course. Each change will create new and interacting series of causation. There is certainty in our pact of sworn intention. In this other there is only chaos.”<br />
<br />
The Strange Gods, as one, made a symbol of protection against the name of this alien god. It had shocked them, as Wisdom intended, lending an unusual force to his signs.<br />
<br />
“Certainty only of failure,” Cruelty signified. “I was against the proposed instrument from the beginning. It is clear now that I was right and others were wrong. Why should the pact be sacred? Only our wills are sacred, or we are not gods.”<br />
<br />
“The pact is our will,” signified Loyalty. “It is our will united to act as the Strange Gods. To break that is to blaspheme against ourselves.” He continued for some time and stopped only when he visualized that the assembly was against him.<br />
<br />
Everything he signified was true, but they would not accept failure. On the other hand, Wisdom had frightened them with his tomorrow-juggling and his metaphorical torrents.<br />
<br />
“I propose a compromise,” signified Stupidity. “Death alone will be freed from the pact-oath. The rest of us will abide by it. That should reduce the chaos in events.” The Strange Gods impatiently made again the symbol of protection against the name of Chaos. Stupidity’s use ofWisdom’s trope emanated contempt and mockery, as was his intent. The gods were annoyed with Stupidity, but he did succeed in making them think less of Wisdom. Suddenly, Wisdom’s fears seemed less wise, more fearful.<br />
<br />
“That hardly matters,” Wisdom signified warningly, but the gods were not prepared to listen. They wanted to do something, and this compromise allowed them the illusion of keeping to their plan even as they adopted a new one.<br />
<br />
The compromise, in the end, was assented to by all the Strange Gods (except Justice), and Death alone was released from the pact.<br />
<br />
“I go,” signified Death, who ceased to manifest herself.<br />
<br />
The rest of the Strange Gods stood conferring worriedly under the Stone Tree until the sun rose in the west and they fled like ghosts to hide with the darkness underground.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER TWO <br />
<br />
DEATH BY WATER <br />
<br />
Morlock Ambrosius shuffled the deck and dealt again. He was sitting by the side of an empty field on the great northern plain, using the surface of a broad stump as a card table.<br />
<br />
He threw a set of cards in a spiral pattern, crossed each card with another drawn from the pack, and then sat back to contemplate them. He again saw the drowned sailor, crossed by the Death card, the Lady of the Rocks. There were some variations: the one-eyed merchant bore the blank card of Mystery, the Wheel was crossed by the man with three wands looking out to sea. This was the third time he had thrown the cards, and each time they had prophesied the same fate: death by water.<br />
<br />
He had invented the cards as a way to gather signs from the future without using his Sight. That was dangerous for him now: he knew that Merlin had broken loose from his earthy prison and might be exerting his own powers of Sight to track or trap Morlock. He had left his horse with a friend and let his choir of flames run wild in an open seam of coal. He had walked away from everyone and everything he knew so that when the final battle came between him and Merlin, as few people as possible would be destroyed. (In fact, he didn’t much care if he himself survived the battle, but he hated the thought of losing to his old embittered <em>ruthen</em> father.) And now, instead of telling him anything about the conflict he knew was coming, the cards kept predicting his death by drowning.<br />
<br />
Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders and gathered up the cards. It was the nature of any type of mania to reveal things that were useless until one met them in the context of a living Now. He slipped a band on the deck and tucked the cards into a pocket in his sleeve. Then he stood and walked northward up the road to the next town.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~</strong></div><br />
Morlock Ambrosius knew the town would be empty before he got there. He had seen enough of them on the northern plains to read the clues by now: the lack of smoke, even from the local smithy, was the clearest sign. What he didn’t know was why the town was dead. It had not been for long. There was meat fresh enough to eat in the pantry of the town’s sole cookhouse. Morlock cooked and ate it, along with some slightly stale bread and withered mushrooms he had also found there. He left the deck of cards on the counter in payment, even though he had a feeling the owners of the place would never return to claim it. <br />
<br />
The place bothered him, so he didn’t sleep there. He hopped a wall and walked due north across the brown stubbly fields, averting his eyes from the sun setting in the east. That was how he saw the raiding party approaching from the west.<br />
<br />
Morlock was so old he didn’t bother to keep count of the years anymore and had seen things like this before. The mystery of the empty towns stood explained: they had fled the raiders who were now returning toward the northern road after having caught at least some of the townspeople. The only question now was how Morlock could avoid being swept up by the raiders.<br />
<br />
He knew a few invisibility spells, but they would all make his presence felt to a seer, if they had any in their party. Mundane concealment would be better than any spell, but there were no buildings near enough to be of any use. He settled for sitting down with his back to a wall facing east and waiting for them to pass. <br />
<br />
It almost worked. The raiders had some trouble with their prisoners at the wall, which they were crossing somewhat north of Morlock. A few children made a break, running away northward, and a few raiders had to round them up while the others supervised the prisoners’ crossing of the wall. They had much to trouble them without looking about for stray travelers.<br />
<br />
Morlock, on the other hand, had a chance to observe the raiders and their prisoners quite closely. The raiders were rather odd looking, with long hatchet-narrow faces and necklaces strung with varying numbers of long sharp teeth. <br />
<br />
They had with them several doglike creatures who were not, in fact, dogs. Some of them took orders and obeyed them with more-than-canine shrewdness. Others seemed to be barking orders that the men (or manlike raiders) would obey.<br />
<br />
Morlock watched their shadows to confirm his guess. They were long, distorted by the low angle of the setting sun. But where they fell upon the wall it was clear: the dogs or wolves cast shadows like a man crouching on all fours, while the men cast shadows like wolves standing on their hind feet.<br />
<br />
It was a raiding party from the werewolf city somewhere to the north. Morlock forgot the name, if he had ever known it. His sister could have told him, if she were here.<br />
<br />
The prisoners were mostly older folk and children. The healthy adults had obviously been able to escape from the raiding party. A rational choice, Morlock supposed: one must bury one’s parents eventually, and one can always have more children. He eyed the few mature adults among the prisoners with some interest. Merely slow-footed?<br />
<br />
Morlock felt a twinge of pity for the children. There was nothing in store for them but life as slaves at best, or death as prey at worst. Or maybe it was the other way round: Morlock had never been a slave and he wasn’t eager to make the experiment. He kept quiet and still and waited for the raiders to pass.<br />
<br />
It almost worked. The prisoners had all crossed the wall; the runaways had been rounded up. The rearguard of the raiding party crossed the wall and began to follow the main group eastward. Perhaps Morlock released an incautiously energetic breath of relief. Perhaps his luck was just out. In any case, one of the wolves in the rearguard lifted his nose and then turned to look directly at Morlock, slumped against the wall. He barked a quiet word to his manlike comrades. <br />
<br />
Two of the raiders armed with pikes looked over at Morlock and moved toward him, shouting in a language Morlock did not understand. Since all hope of concealment was over, Morlock stood and drew his sword, Tyrfing, holding it at an angle meant to warn rather than threaten.<br />
<br />
The two pikemen stopped moving toward him and stared at the dark crystal of the blade, woven with veins of paler crystal, glittering in the red light of the eastering sun.<br />
<br />
The wolf who had spotted him first yowled a warning to the whole raiding group. All the raiders stopped and looked at him. Things were going from bad to worse.<br />
<br />
Morlock backed away one deliberate step, paused, then took another step back. He growled slightly. From what he knew of wolves, he thought this might show that he was not prepared to attack, but would fight if he must.<br />
<br />
The two pikemen and the wolf who commanded them took two steps forward, the pikemen shouting something and the wolf barking furiously. Oddly, he understood the wolf better than the pikemen. The wolf seemed to be saying that Morlock should hide his teeth or he would be bacon by morning.<br />
<br />
Morlock suggested, in the same snarling language, the werewolf perform an act made possible by lupine agility. It was one of the few insults he knew for a wolf, and it was gratifyingly effective. The two wolf-shadowed pikemen were rocked back on their heels; the man-shadowed wolf charged forth with fiery eyes, silent now, eager to kill.<br />
<br />
Morlock waited. When the wolf poised himself to leap,Morlock dodged forward and brought Tyrfing down on the werewolf’s shoulder, shattering the bone. <br />
<br />
Tyrfing was a focus of power as well as a weapon; to kill with it was an act of grim consequence, tantamount to enduring death itself. But the werewolf, of course, was not dead, merely wounded, and Morlock found he could shake off the shock of its suffering relatively quickly. He hoped the wolf would not heal soon; he had other trouble at hand.<br />
<br />
The two pikemen were bearing down on him. Their weapons were excellent for keeping a party of unarmed prisoners in line, less effective against a skilled swordsman. Morlock ran to meet them and was past the range of their pikeheads before they could stab at him. He wounded the nearer pikeman on the arm with Tyrfing, and reached past him with his free hand to break the neck of the one beyond. The dying one fell like a stone, gasping his last breaths out uselessly; the other staggered backward, yammering, and strove to stab at Morlock with his pike.<br />
<br />
Morlock spun aside and rolled over the nearby wall. He made as if to back away; the wounded pikeman lunged at him recklessly. Morlock evaded the pike’s hooked blade, waited until the pikeman was fully extended, and then struck down with Tyrfing. The glittering edge hit the pikeman’s arm lying across the surface of the wall and severed it at the elbow like a butcher’s cleaver cutting through a joint<br />
of meat. The pikeman shrieked words of fear and hate, staggered backward, and fell out of sight, groaning behind the low wall. <br />
<br />
Morlock shook off the horror of the pikeman’s suffering. A werewolf he might be, but he was as mortal in human form as Morlock was, and it was unlikely he would survive two such terrible wounds. But Morlock had many deaths on his conscience already; adding the death of a slave taker or two did not bother him much.<br />
<br />
The others were coming for him now. Since there was nothing he could do to stop it, he encouraged it. He made clucking noises he hoped they would find insulting. He croaked out some abuse he had learned from crows. He tapped the edge of his sword on the bloodstained surface of the wall and waggled his free hand at them. Soon many of the raiders, manlike and lupine, were running toward him. At the moment he judged right, he turned and ran south along the stone wall.<br />
<br />
He heard some of the raiders scrambling or leaping over the wall. Others were running along the eastern side of the wall. That was all right with him: his enemies had effectively halved their own forces. <br />
<br />
His bad leg was troubling him, but he kept running as fast as he could until he heard the grating gasp of a wolf’s breathing just behind him. He spun and braced his feet in a fighter’s crouch, his sword at full extension. The wolf at his heels was impaled on the blade before he knew what was happening. The frightened howl had an unpleasantly human quality. Morlock repressed the horror of the other’s suffering and shook him off his sword. He kicked the moaning wolf out of his way and lunged at the next one leaping at him. This one didn’t howl; Tyrfing had passed through her throat, nearly severing her neck. She, too, was out of the fight until she healed. Morlock leaped past to meet the next raider.<br />
<br />
Neither men nor wolves run all at the same rate. A disciplined military force learns to move as a group, applying a maximum of power at the expense of moving a little more slowly. These raiders weren’t that disciplined, and Morlock planned to take advantage of it. During his sprint his pursuers had strung behind him in a long line, and what had been an unwinnable battle of one against many was now just a string of single combats in which Morlock had, at least briefly, the advantage of surprise.<br />
<br />
His next opponent was a wide-eyed man armed only with a long pole. He was already skittering to a halt as Morlock came up to him. While he was still off balance, Morlock struck off his weapon-bearing hand with Tyrfing and punched him in the throat. The man fell gagging to his knees. Morlock kicked<br />
him in the face as he passed, and the man went down to the ground.<br />
<br />
By then Morlock was facing another antagonist: a lean woman with roan-colored hair and a long pointed sword. Morlock fenced with her for a few grim moments, then struck home with a thrust through her upper right chest. He wrenched the sword from her grip with his free hand and she fell, spouting blood from her lips, into the dust of the stubbly field.<br />
<br />
The woman’s sword was rusty, bent, unbalanced, notched along both edges—inferior to Tyrfing in every way but one: he could use it to kill with impunity. He ran on to fight his next antagonist.<br />
<br />
After a few more single combats, Morlock looked about to see wolves and men gathering in a group to attack him. He turned and, leaping back over the wall, ran southward. His would-be attackers followed. Glancing back, he saw that their pursuit had broken up into smaller groups again, some on each side of the wall. He leaped back to the west side and ran north to attack again.<br />
<br />
He was running out of breath by now, but he strove not to show it: they would be more likely to break off the battle if they thought him tireless. And, in a strange way, the grim prophecies of the cards buoyed him up: if he was doomed to die by drowning, he needn’t worry about being ripped open by werewolves in an empty field.<br />
<br />
He had struck down a few more men and wolves, and was thinking of a new retreat when horns and wolf-calls sounded to the north. His antagonists fled northward to answer them. When he was sure they were leaving he slumped gasping against the wall and watched them run.<br />
<br />
There was some sort of fight going on back at the main body of the raiding party. In the failing light it wasn’t at first clear to Morlock what was happening. Then he realized: encouraged by the absence of so many raiders, the captives had seized the opportunity to fight back.<br />
<br />
Their chances didn’t look good.<br />
<br />
Morlock, of course, could improve them.<br />
<br />
He shook his head, wearily. It was not his fight; he was already tired. This was his chance to flee south and escape the raiders.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the field was dry. Absent a sudden downpour, he was unlikely to drown.<br />
<br />
He stood pondering alternatives and getting his wind back. He saw a raider lift the struggling body of a child, impaled on a spear point. As the raider brandished the spear, shouting in triumph or threat, the body grew slack.<br />
<br />
Morlock found himself running forward then in long irregular strides. The slave takers, intent on their rebellious captives, didn’t notice his approach until he was almost upon them. Then he lashed out with both swords, torn by the sudden rage from within and the talic shocks from Tyrfing. He struck and struck. He was bleeding now, and his fire-laden blood lit smoldering fires in the stubbly fields. The werewolves, manlike and wolf-formed, seemed more dismayed by this than anything. Now many of the former captives had seized weapons from raiders that had been killed or wounded. The raiders still had greater numbers, but seemed to lack stomach for fighting. Soon they fled, north and east, away from the bitter low wall and the bodies of the slain and wounded and the harsh vengeful cries of their former captives.<br />
<br />
Morlock stepped aside and sat down on the low wall, ripping strips from his cloak to bandage his wounds. He kept an eye on the former captives as he did so. It was possible they would resent him as much as the werewolves. He knew nothing of these people, not even a word of their language.<br />
<br />
He saw one woman with iron gray hair struggling with a long spear gripped in the hands of a dead raider. She was sobbing quietly. He kept a cautious eye on her; it was possible that some of the captives were quislings or traitors, and perhaps she was one. Otherwise why weep over the dead raider? Then he saw what was on the end of the spear: the child’s body he had seen raised up as a rebuke or a threat to the captives. She was struggling to remove the spear point from the body without doing it further damage.<br />
<br />
He got up from the wall and walked over to her. He brushed her hands away from the shaft of the spear, and she let him. The blade of the spear was barbed and had caught in the child’s body. The child was dead, of course; it had been a girl, perhaps ten years old. Morlock put one foot on the corpse and tore the spear loose from the body.<br />
<br />
The old woman screamed and struck at his face with weak fists. He ignored it. He broke the spear shaft with his hands and cast the pieces aside. Then he opened his hands and looked her in the eye.<br />
<br />
She stopped hitting him. She stood back, still sobbing from exhaustion, fear, grief—or all three. The sobbing slowed to a halt.<br />
<br />
Silence surrounded them.<br />
<br />
<em>“Kree-laow,”</em> said one of the former captives, pointing at Morlock.<br />
<br />
<em>“Venbe tand kree-laow,”</em> said another.<br />
<br />
An argument broke forth. One of the issues seemed to be whether Morlock was or was not <em>kree-laow</em>—whatever or whoever that might be.<br />
<br />
Many of the captives lay dead on the field. If they had been Morlock’s kith he would have felt the impulse to bury them. But circumstances were obviously unsuitable for a funeral, no matter how hasty. The sun had now set, and the blue eyes of the minor moons, Horseman and Trumpeter, were opening in the gray sky of gloaming. In the shadows along the low bitter wall, darker shadows were lurking, wounded werewolves licking their wounds audibly, healing probably, readying for a new attack almost certainly.<br />
<br />
Morlock knelt down by the dead girl. The old woman jumped at him, croaking angry words. He held up his hand. Then he tore another strip from his ragged cloak and bound up the dead girl’s left hand.<br />
<br />
“My people,” he said to the old woman, without any hope she would understand, “the people who raised me: they taught me to do this for those I would honor, but could not bury.” He tore another strip of cloth and bound the girl’s other hand.<br />
<br />
The old woman knelt down by the dead girl on the other side. She tore a strip from her own ragged clothing and put it across the dead girl’s face. She met his eye and nodded grimly. They both stood.<br />
<br />
<em>“Kree-laow!”</em> said one of the former captives decisively, and this time no one argued. The survivors set about hastily honoring their fallen dead. Morlock patrolled back and forth as they did so, watching the wolf-eyed shadows that were gathering in the dark.<br />
<br />
Then the others were done. Some of them tugged at Morlock’s arm and shoulder; they said words he didn’t understand. Their expressions were hard to read in the ice-pale moonlight, but they seemed to want him to come with them. They kept pointing north: perhaps they had a refuge there, or simply planned to join another band of refugees. <br />
<br />
He considered it. On the one hand, not too far to the north lay the Bitter Water, an inlet from the western ocean. If he were truly destined to die by drowning, that would be a likely scene for it. On the other hand, if he walked southward alone, the werewolves would likely follow him. He knew from experience how relentless werewolves could be in the pursuit of a single prey, even one who had given them less cause to be angry than Morlock now had. And he had no silver nor wolfbane in his nearly empty pack.<br />
<br />
He touched his chest and pointed north. “I’ll go with you,” he said.<br />
<br />
They understood, their faces creased with relief and a kind of happiness. He thought it odd.<br />
<br />
They went northward as quickly as they could, stumbling through the empty fields in the moonlit shadows. Eyes followed them in the dark—never too near, nor ever very far away.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~</strong><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was the last bright call* [*A “bright call” is the time (roughly 7.5 days) when Trumpeter, the smallest and fastest moon, is aloft.] of Cymbals, the first month of winter. The air on the northern plains should have been pitilessly cold, the land covered with many layers of snow. The wind that rose at their backs was chilly and many of the refugees shivered as they walked, but it was more like early autumn than the beginning of winter. Morlock had never known weather like this, but it was true that he didn’t know the northern plains as well as other parts of Laent. He’d have liked to ask the refugees (the other refugees, he supposed he should call them: he was one of them now) about the weather, but he couldn’t understand a word they said, and none of them could understand any of the languages he spoke to them.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">About the middle of the night, they began to hear the sound of surf, and the air came alive with salty wet scents. The refugees were increasingly excited, but Morlock was feeling rather gloomy: it was as if he could feel Death gripping him more tightly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They came in sight of the shoreline, and there were other refugees there, and the coarse cheerful sounds of wood being worked. Morlock’s companions picked up their feet and ran down to the shore, laughing and crying and greeting the others there. Morlock followed more slowly. He noted that the woodworking sounds were coming from a small flotilla of boats that the refugees were making with lumber salvaged from demolished buildings. There were some foundations, gaping open at the cold sky, not far away from the shore.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Many explanations had already been made before Morlock arrived at the rocky beach of the Bitter Water. Some of Morlock’s companions were standing around an older man wearing a ceremonial headband. Morlock heard the by-now-familiar <em>kree-laow</em> several times.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The old man, some sort of leader or priest, looked up as Morlock approached. His lined face had been frozen in a skeptical expression, but that melted as he took in Morlock’s limping crooked form. He said several things directly to Morlock, who opened his hands and looked expectantly, waiting for the old man to understand that he didn’t understand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The old man was annoyed that Morlock didn’t understand him. He waved off some explanations from some of the other refugees and spoke over his shoulder to a boy who wore a version of the same headband. The boy ran off, returning a few moments later with a small codex book. He handed it to the old man, who leafed through it for a few moments and then turned to hand it to Morlock.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock took the book reluctantly. It seemed to be some book of ceremonies or prophecies, and he had found that participating in someone else’s religion could become abruptly dangerous, even when he understood what they were saying. He was even more dismayed when he saw what the old man wanted him to see: through the middle of the text strode a crook-shouldered man, a torch in one hand and a black-and-white sword in the other. Around him was a ring of wolves with human shadows.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>“Kree-laow!”</em> shouted the old man, as if he could make Morlock understand that way.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Possibly,” said Morlock, handing back the book. “I hope not, though.” If he disliked being entangled in someone else’s religion, being entangled in their destiny seemed almost unsanitary.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Three children ran up, one of them bleeding. They were talking excitedly and gesturing southward. They may have been posted as lookouts; obviously, they had met a werewolf. More than one: one of the boys kept on flashing all his fingers, which Morlock guessed meant the numbers of the enemies: <em>ten and ten and ten. . . .</em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The old man said something; other men and women wearing headbands repeated it, and the men, women, and children all rushed to the boats, pushing them out from the rocky beach into the water.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock was in two minds about whether to join them. He hated the water and would almost rather die on land than be saved on the sea. But he thought about the boy’s hand signals: <em>ten and ten and ten. . . .</em> Too many tens. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock waded into the cold shallows of the BitterWater. Many cold moonlit faces turned eagerly toward him from the boats; they spoke to him. Everyone seemed eager to have the <em>kree-laow</em> (if that’s what he was) on their boat. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He climbed on one at random. It did not, thank God Avenger, have the old man with the ceremonial headband; Morlock had taken a dislike to him in the few seconds he had known him. A younger man wearing a headband appeared to be the priest-captain of the boat. He took Morlock by the hand and welcomed him, then took him to one side of the boat where there was a bench and an oar for rowing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I understand,” said Morlock. He threw his backpack and his two swords under the bench, sat down, and took hold of the oar. Some of the crew were already frantically splashing the blades of their oars in the water. He waited until the sides had established a rhythm, along with a chant led by the headband-wearer (who sat at the stern at the steering oar). When the other oars were swinging in rhythm he extended his own and started to push the water with the blade.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">On the bench in front of him was an old woman. He wasn’t sure if it was the same one whom he had met among the captives. There were no passengers in the middle of the boat, and many of the benches were empty: the refugees had been expecting more people than actually arrived.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">That was unfortunate; they could have used the arms. And Morlock wished he had arrived early enough to give them some advice on boat building. (He was no sailor, but he knew something about shipmaking.) The boats were all flatbed rafts—none of them seemed to have keels. They would fare badly on the rough waves of the Bitter Water.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was bad at first, but no worse than Morlock expected. The flat bottom of the boat hit each wave on the rough gray waters like a broadhead hammer. Morlock’s mouth filled with a greasy fluid. He was near vomiting, but struggled against it. He didn’t know how soon he would eat again, and he couldn’t afford to lose a scrap of food to the cold dark sea.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The waves kept pushing the flatboats backward even as they struggled forward—and the boats slid sideways as often as they made any progress. When they had been paddling for more than an hour, Morlock looked backward. The shore was still in sight, terribly near for all their efforts. In the chill light of the minor moons, he saw that the smooth beach bristled with the forms of men and wolves.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He turned back to plying his oar. He met the eye of the old woman rowing in front of him: she too had been looking back.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There’s no going back,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She grunted and said something he didn’t understand. They bent themselves to their rowing. The night was still strangely warm for winter, but a cold wind came off the gray gleaming water; no one was sweating much. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Presently it grew still worse. There was a shout from one of the other boats, and everyone turned their eyes to the east. Morlock followed their gaze, but at first he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. He had never seen anything like this before.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Emerging from the blue broken clouds, high above the moonslit eastern edge of the BitterWater, were gray shapes like teardrops, riding through the sky like ships. Their prows were pointed; their sterns were wide and rounded. Under each midsection hung chains suspending a long black craft, snakelike in form.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What are they?” he wondered. “Are they alive?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">No one answered. No one understood him. But the townsfolk knew something about them. Some turned back to their oars with renewed panicky energy; others put their hands over their faces, resigning themselves to their fate.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock was not the resigned type. He struck out at the water savagely with his oar, but turned often to watch the approach of the airships. At first they were headed toward the center of the Bitter Water, but then they turned their prows slightly to intercept the flatboats. The sharp ends of the airships tilted slightly forward, and the snakelike gondolas slid forward on their chains.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The old woman in front of him said something and he turned to look at her. She said it again. He shrugged and opened his free hand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She grunted and gestured impatiently back toward the shore. Then Morlock did understand: the airships had something to do with the werewolves. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock was impressed. He also felt a savage covetous longing to know how the things were made, how they worked. But the main thing at the moment was to survive, and that looked increasingly unlikely.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The airships were clearly coming in to attack the flatboats. They were close enough now that he could see the windows lining the snakelike gondolas. And in many of the windows a warm, welcoming red light shone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re done,” he remarked grimly, and turned back to his oar. He still wasn’t the resigned type.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Soon the airships were nearly overhead, and he could see the bowmen in the windows, their arrows alive with red light.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ware fire!” he shouted, though he knew no one could understand him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The bowmen shot, and burning arrows struck all around them, in the water and on the decks. Few seemed to have been wounded, a fact that struck Morlock as ominous. The arrows largely fell in the center of the boats, on open planking. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock reached under his bench for his nearly empty backpack. He swung it over the rail and passed it through the water. Then he ran with it, still soaking, to the nearest arrow burning on the deck and tried to douse the flame. But he managed to do nothing except set the soaked backpack alight: the burning arrows were treated with some agent that burned even in water. And it burned fast and fierce: he tossed the backpack off the boat, but it was already half consumed, and the fires were chewing deep holes in the flatboats. As he watched bemusedly, boiling water began to bubble upward amidst the spreading flame. This boat was sinking, and a glance around showed him that the other flatboats</div><div style="text-align: left;">were as well. People were abandoning them on every side.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Now was the time for the crews of the airships to attack again, if they were seeking to kill the refugees. But they didn’t. In fact, Morlock saw that they were lowering something from the airship gondolas on long chains. Nets. They were nets. As they hit the water, people already adrift on the waves started to crawl into them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock could not imagine what use the werewolves could have for humans except as meat animals or slaves. He expected his fiery blood would keep him off the menu card, so he wasn’t concerned about that. But he had never been a slave.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He had no interest in trying the profession.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He turned back to his bench and grabbed Tyrfing from its sheath. He struck with the dark glittering blade, severing the bench from the deck. He tossed the bench into the water and jumped in after it, sword still in hand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He flipped the bench on its back and lay Tyrfing across its underside. The bench seemed buoyant enough to carry him and his sword, at least until it absorbed some water. Looking back, he saw the old woman who had been rowing in front of him. She was sinking under the silver surface of the Bitter Water. He reached out with one hand to rescue her, but she scornfully struck it aside and let herself sink. Soon she passed from sight: a gray shape lost in the gray moonslit water.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock looked up. One net full of dripping refugees was already being drawn up toward the gondola of an airship. The others were still gathering willing victims.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Maybe they were right, Morlock realized. It was a warm night for winter, but it was still a winter night on the Bitter Water. Death was there, in the chill of the water if nothing else. He might live longer if he resigned himself to his fate, as they were doing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But he wasn’t the resigned type. And he had never been a slave.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Eh,” he said, and paddled grimly away into the night.</div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~</strong></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">His plan was to swim westward and then turn south toward the shoreline, hopefully landing at a place not thick with angry werewolves.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He hadn’t much hope. The weather was warm, perhaps, by the frosty standards of the north, but the Bitter Water was cold—far colder than his blood. There was a fire in him, but he knew that water quenches fire. Still, he would not surrender. Death was in the water. He knew it; he felt it. But he would fend it off as long as possible.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A current, even colder than the other water, caught him and dragged him off the course he thought he was taking. Soon he couldn’t even remember where he had thought land was. If he could hold out until dawn. . . .</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He did not hold out. The cold sank deep teeth into his aching limbs. His mind began to fog. He forgot to raise his head occasionally to look for signs of land. He found himself drifting occasionally, his feet motionless in the killing water, loosely grasping the bench, his eyes closed. Every time it happened it was harder to kick his feet into motion. And eventually the time came when he found himself adrift, half submerged in the water, the wooden waterlogged bench lost on the dark sea. He kept his limbs moving as long as he could, but eventually the darkness in the cold water entered his mind and he sank, already dying, into the killing water.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Death was there under the surface of the sea. He had known it from the beginning, but now he saw her reaching out for him with long, dark fingers, bristling with darkness like a spider’s legs.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She embraced him with her many arms, and her bristling fingertips touched his face.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She introduced talic distortions into his fading consciousness, like words.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>I am not ready for you to enter my realm,</em> she signified. <em>You have been a good servant to me, but I have more work for you to do in the world.</em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Without speaking, he rejected her service—rejected all the Strange Gods.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She signified an amusement even colder than the BitterWater, and his mind went dark.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But it was not the darkness of death. He came to himself later—it must have been hours later, because the western sky was gray with approaching dawn. He was coughing up salty vomit as he crawled across the stony margin of the Bitter Water.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">In the same instant he saw two things: his sword, Tyrfing, gleaming in the shallow water and the dim gray light. The other was a crowd of shadows, manlike and wolflike, standing farther up the beach. He looked up and saw men and women with wolvish shadows, wolves with human shadows.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His throat was closed like a fist; he couldn’t call Tyrfing to him. He leapt toward it, but the werewolves were on him before he reached it. They didn’t use swords or teeth, but clubs and fists. They wanted him alive.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He fought as hard as he could, but they were too many and his strength was failing. Before he lost consciousness he felt them put the shackles on his neck and arms.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Morlock had never been a slave. Until today.</div><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/TheWolfAge.html">The Wolf Age</a></em> © <a href="http://www.jamesenge.com/">James Enge</a> </div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.dominic-harman.com/">Dominic Harmon</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke</div><br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyC5jzVpw8hbl8A7uz7qZZDX4zt6D1sM8FpFtKgE4sLYfTE4BHXs_TITPfnsHS16WJauaSeiMHPq0Oq2Ogi8ynZ4Ifjd4g1Qy5NYB2jotvsYKLYNad63o7IzIiLZDvye2NrwXrvESa0Y/s1600/Enge&Constantine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" qx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYyC5jzVpw8hbl8A7uz7qZZDX4zt6D1sM8FpFtKgE4sLYfTE4BHXs_TITPfnsHS16WJauaSeiMHPq0Oq2Ogi8ynZ4Ifjd4g1Qy5NYB2jotvsYKLYNad63o7IzIiLZDvye2NrwXrvESa0Y/s320/Enge&Constantine.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">JAMES ENGE lives with his children in northwest Ohio, where he teaches classics at a medium-sized public university. His short fiction has appeared in <em>Swords and Dark Magic</em>, in the magazine <em>Black Gate</em>, and elsewhere. His previous novels are <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BloodofAmbrose.html">Blood of Ambrose</a></em>, which was listed on <em>Locus</em> magazine’s Recommended Reading for 2009, and <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/ThisCrookedWay.html">This Crooked Way</a></em>. Visit James’s Web site at <a href="http://www.jamesenge.com/">http://www.jamesenge.com/</a>.</div></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com29tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-31822578249640565892010-09-14T10:39:00.003-05:002010-09-22T11:58:37.613-05:00The Buntline Special—A Weird West Tale by Mike Resnick<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Aw486FdyWP4lwjwmRyskpn0DSepg9ZTBmDbV7MVUFKJWH5HT1CU-WS-QlwwoHh5GK0Z6Y0YPaw1zGeY6Ak9Qb0Go8FizYicSedBNK3plc-AY7kAsjiC3b03ASVUrULKMXOOJn-OvCFA/s1600/Buntline_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Aw486FdyWP4lwjwmRyskpn0DSepg9ZTBmDbV7MVUFKJWH5HT1CU-WS-QlwwoHh5GK0Z6Y0YPaw1zGeY6Ak9Qb0Go8FizYicSedBNK3plc-AY7kAsjiC3b03ASVUrULKMXOOJn-OvCFA/s320/Buntline_cover.jpg" /></a>One thousand lucky Dragon*Con 2010 attendees received a Pyr sample chapter book containing excerpts from ten new and forthcoming titles. The reception was so fantastic--and immediate--we've decided to offer all our readers the opportunity to preview the same forthcoming Fall and Winter books here online. Pyr books recently celebrated our five-year anniversary in March 2010. In this half decade, we are honored to have been on the Hugo Awards ballot eight times, as well as on the World Fantasy Award, Nebula Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Locus Award, Chesley Award, and other prestigious award ballots. But the greatest honor has been the way readers have embraced our books. We promise the best is yet to come.</div><br />
<br />
Here, from that sampler, is an excerpt from <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com//BuntlineSpecial.htm">The Buntline Special—A Weird West Tale</a></strong></em> by Mike Resnick, available ~December 2010~<br />
<br />
“Nobody spins a yarn better than Mike Resnick.”<br />
—Orson Scott Card<br />
<br />
“Mike Resnick is a journeyman in a world of apprentices, one who knows his craft.”<br />
—Raymond Feist, of the Magician trilogy<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><br />
<em>coming soon</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Buntline Special: A Weird West Tale</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Mike Resnick</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
PROLOGUE<br />
<br />
<em>From the September 7, 1881, issue of the</em> Tombstone Epitaph<br />
<br />
<br />
THE BRIGHTEST LITTLE TOWN IN THE WEST<br />
by John P. Clum, Publisher<br />
<br />
<em>TODAY MARKS ONE FULL YEAR since Tombstone became the first city, not just in America but in the world, to be illuminated by artificial electric light, thanks to our two resident geniuses, Thomas Alva Edison and Ned Buntline. The Epitaph thinks it’s time to salute these two gentlemen, without whom life in our fair city would certainly be less bright.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Ned Buntline moved to Tombstone from Dodge City three years ago, and since that time he has invented a type of brass that cannot be penetrated by bullets. Most of the outlying ranch houses and barns are now covered by this remarkable material, and of course those who live in town daily pass buildings constructed of Mr. Buntline’s brass, which was also used in the construction of our lovely and ornate lampposts.</em><br />
<br />
<em>Mr. Buntline invited his friend, Mr. Edison, to immigrate to Tombstone exactly one year ago today, and it is Mr. Edison who is responsible for the harnessing of electricity to power not only the street lights but also the Tombstone Territory Stage, which has since been renamed the Bunt Line. Remarkably it is now impervious to attack by highwaymen or Indians.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Perhaps the pair’s most remarkable creation is Mr. Edison’s artificial arm. The original had to be amputated after it was shattered by a bullet during a failed assassination attempt, and Mr. Buntline, under Mr. Edison’s direction, crafted the appendage that is now attached to Mr. Edison’s shoulder. According to Mr. Edison, it is stronger and works better than the original—and of course is immune to pain. This principle has since been used by Mr. Buntline in other experiments, while Mr. Edison has just completed work on the phonograph and is working on something we have not yet seen, which he calls the “telephone.” </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>When asked what they plan to create next, Mr. Buntline merely shrugged and said, “The sky’s the limit.” </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Mr. Edison then added, only half smiling, “There’s no reason why it should be. Leonardo didn’t accept that, so why should we?”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Whatever they come up with next, Tombstone is proud to have it invented right here. Happy first anniversary, Mr. Edison!</em><br />
<br />
<br />
FIGHT AT THE ORIENTAL<br />
<br />
<em>There was another disturbance at the Oriental Saloon last night. No shots were fired, and according to Marshal Virgil Earp, both Curly Bill Broscius and One-Armed Kelly will be spending the next forty-eight hours as guests of the county jail, as the city jail is currently being outfitted with Mr. Buntline’s</em><br />
<em>brass bars.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
LOCAL LADIES PROTEST<br />
<br />
<em>Sheriff Johnny Behan’s office has received a petition signed by seventeen local ladies demanding that Mr. Buntline cease and desist certain unspecified experimental work. According to Sheriff Behan, Mr. Buntline has broken no laws, and he is dismissing the petition. Mrs. Eleanor Grimson has told the Epitaph that if Mr. Buntline continues his activities, her group plans to picket his office.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
CLANTONS BEAT CHARGE<br />
<br />
<em>In a trial that lasted less then fifteen minutes, all charges were dropped against Ike, Finn, and William Clanton, who had been arrested for stealing horses and cattle. The case was dismissed when none of the prosecution’s witnesses showed up to testify.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
CLAIMS AND MINES<br />
<br />
<em>Three new silver mines were opened this week, and claims were filed for fourteen more at the Assay Office.</em> <br />
<br />
<br />
ANOTHER TRAGEDY IN THE COUNTY<br />
<br />
<em>Morgan Earp reports that, acting on a tip from a cowboy who was looking for strays, he found the burned remains of a covered wagon at the eastern end of Cochise County. There were no survivors. It is assumed they were killed for their horses by local Apaches. As Geronimo has never declared war on Tombstone, it is likely that they were renegades who acted independently.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
SOCIAL NEWS<br />
<br />
<em>Actress Josephine Marcus, a close friend of Sheriff Behan, has announced her intention to remain in Tombstone and become a resident here when the rest of her theatre company moves on to California next week. Miss Marcus is, we believe, the first person of the Jewish faith ever to live in Tombstone, and we welcome her.</em> <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>1.</strong> <br />
<br />
THE TALL, LEAN MAN with the thick, droopy mustache entered the saloon and looked past the faro dealers and poker players, past the portrait of Lily Langtry, until his gaze fell upon a well-dressed lone <br />
man seated at the side of the room. The man smiled and waved a hand. The tall man, oblivious to the stares and whispers of the patrons, walked over.<br />
<br />
“Mr. Earp?” said the seated man, and the newcomer nodded. “I’m so glad you agreed to come.”<br />
<br />
Wyatt Earp seated himself, filled an empty glass with whiskey from the open bottle in the middle of the table, took a swallow, and wiped his mouth off with the cuff of his black jacket.<br />
<br />
“All right,” he said. “You sent for me, Mr. McCarthy. You do the talking.”<br />
<br />
The man extended a hand. “I’m pleased to meet you,” said McCarthy. “Your reputation precedes you, and of course your brother has informed me of your current activities.”<br />
<br />
“Which brother?” asked Earp. “I’ve got a lot of them.”<br />
<br />
“Virgil,” answered McCarthy. “He’s a good man.”<br />
<br />
“I notice you didn’t send for <em>him</em>.” <br />
<br />
McCarthy smiled. “I’m sure all his time is taken up with being deputy marshal of Tombstone.”<br />
<br />
“He keeps busy,” said Earp, not returning the smile. “Now suppose you tell me what this is all about, Mr. McCarthy.”<br />
<br />
“Call me Silas.”<br />
<br />
“After I find out why I’m here, Mr. McCarthy.”<br />
<br />
McCarthy looked around the saloon. “Shall we go outside?” he said. “I’d prefer not to be overheard.”<br />
<br />
Earp shrugged. “Suit yourself.”<br />
<br />
They got up from the table, walked through the swinging doors, and went out into the street of Deadwood, Colorado.<br />
<br />
“That’s a magnificent animal,” said McCarthy, gesturing to a roan<br />
<br />
that was tied to the hitching post in front of the saloon. “He wasn’t<br />
<br />
there when I arrived. Yours?”<br />
<br />
Earp shook his head. “We don’t have much use for horses in Tombstone, not anymore.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, I’ve heard about that.”<br />
<br />
“I suppose word gets out.”<br />
<br />
“Chilly, isn’t it?” said McCarthy, as they turned a corner and began walking down a side street.<br />
<br />
“I’ve seen worse,” replied Earp. He stopped and turned to McCarthy. “I’ve come a long way at your request, Mr. McCarthy,” he said. “I’m hungry, and I’m tired, and I’ve got a blister on my left foot, and I’ll be damned if I’m inclined to walk all around town until you’re sure no one can hear your voice or read your lips, so why don’t you just stand still and tell me what’s on your mind?”<br />
<br />
McCarthy nodded. “Might as well. It’s a legitimate request.”<br />
<br />
He took one last look around. “Mr. Earp, your country needs your help.”<br />
<br />
“I was born too late for the War Between the States, and I’m not aware that we’re fighting another one,” said Earp.<br />
<br />
“You’re wrong,” said McCarthy adamantly.<br />
<br />
Earp looked mildly surprised. “England? France? Maybe Mexico?”<br />
<br />
McCarthy shook his head.<br />
<br />
“I’m not real good at guessing games, Mr. McCarthy,” said Earp.<br />
<br />
McCarthy studied him silently for a long moment, and then spoke. “Why do you think the United States ends at the Mississippi River?”<br />
<br />
Earp shrugged again. “Nothing much on this side of it. Couple of gold and silver mines, a few ranches, maybe a couple of hundred settlements, and a bunch of Indians.”<br />
<br />
“It’s the Indians that we’re at war with.”<br />
<br />
“Dumb,” said Earp firmly. “You go to war with the Apaches and the rest, you’re going to lose. They’ll kill you all.”<br />
<br />
“I notice they let <em>you</em> live,” noted McCarthy.<br />
<br />
“I’m not at war with them,” answered Earp. He pulled out a tobacco pouch and began rolling a cigarette. “Tombstone is a silvermining town, and they have no interest in silver. We haven’t got anything they want, and they haven’t got anything <em>we</em> want.”<br />
<br />
“Well, they have something the United States wants,” said McCarthy, swatting a fly away from his face.<br />
<br />
“What?” said Earp, lighting the cigarette.<br />
<br />
“The western half of the continent, of course.”<br />
<br />
“Why?”<br />
<br />
“It’s our destiny to reach the Pacific Ocean,” said McCarthy with absolute conviction.<br />
<br />
“I’ve heard that manifest destiny crap before,” said Earp.<br />
<br />
“If you want all that land, why don’t you just buy it from them?”<br />
<br />
“We haven’t bought one square inch of the United States!” snapped McCarthy. “We’re not about to start.”<br />
<br />
“Seems to me you bought New York from the Indians. Twenty-four dollars, wasn’t it?”<br />
<br />
“That was a totally different situation,” said McCarthy defensively.<br />
<br />
“The government of the United States didn’t do that, because there <em>was</em> no United States at the time.”<br />
<br />
“Okay, it’s your destiny to own all the land from one ocean to the next,” said Earp. “Good luck taking it from them.”<br />
<br />
“That’s where you come in, Mr. Earp.”<br />
<br />
Earp looked amused. “You think <em>I’m</em> going to scare the Apaches and Sioux and Cheyenne and the western tribes into giving you their land and hightailing it to Canada or Mexico?”<br />
<br />
McCarthy returned the smile. “That was never our intention.”<br />
<br />
“Well, then?”<br />
<br />
“Let me explain. The reason that we stopped our expansion at the Mississippi was not that the Indian armies were too much for us. No, Mr. Earp, we defeated the British, and we could defeat the Indians,<br />
tribe by tribe or all together, on a field of battle.” He grimaced. “But what we can’t do is defeat the magic practiced by the medicine men of the western tribes. We may have the cannon and the Gatling gun, but the Southern Cheyenne have got Hook Nose, and Goyathlay of your local Apaches is almost as powerful.”<br />
<br />
Earp frowned. “Goyathlay?”<br />
<br />
“You know him as Geronimo,” said McCarthy. “Those two, and scores of less well-known medicine men, have used their powers to keep us on our side of the Mississippi.”<br />
<br />
“You’re wrong,” said Earp. “They haven’t kept me and my brothers there, or a hell of a lot of other men.”<br />
<br />
“You’re allowed in the West on sufferance,” continued McCarthy. “You represent no threat to them. You don’t make war on them, you don’t hunt the game they need for food, and while there’s not much<br />
water there’s enough for them and the small handful of whites they allow to live in their territories.”<br />
<br />
“They let more than white men come out here,” noted Earp. “Damned near every tribe has got an escaped or freed slave as a translator. That way they don’t have to learn our language, and we don’t have to learn theirs.” He paused. “Okay, so now you’ve explained why the United States stopped at the Mississipppi, but you still haven’t told me what you want of me. I hope you don’t think I’m about to wage a one-man war against the Apaches.”<br />
<br />
“No, of course not,” said McCarthy. “We’re taking steps to counteract their magic.”<br />
<br />
“Then why the hell did I travel all the way from Tombstone to Deadwood?” demanded Earp irritably.<br />
<br />
“You and your brothers own the Oriental Saloon in Tombstone, do you not?”<br />
<br />
“Two of them.”<br />
<br />
McCarthy seemed surprised. “Two saloons?”<br />
<br />
“Two of my brothers: Virgil and Morgan. We’ll be sending for James and Warren when the saloon’s a little more prosperous.”<br />
<br />
“What would you say if I offered to let you keep running the Oriental while you and your brothers work for me, and paid you double whatever it makes, month in and month out?”<br />
<br />
“I’d ask who you wanted me to kill—Geronimo or President Garfield?”<br />
<br />
McCarthy uttered an amused chuckle. “I hope you won’t have to kill anyone.”<br />
<br />
There was a momentary silence. Finally Earp said, “I’m waiting.”<br />
<br />
“First I want your agreement that anything I tell you will be kept confidential.”<br />
<br />
“It’s been nice knowing you, Mr. McCarthy,” said Earp, starting to walk back toward the saloon.<br />
<br />
<em>“Wait!”</em> cried McCarthy.<br />
<br />
Earp stopped and turned. “I don’t make blind promises, Mr. McCarthy. I probably won’t tell anyone what you want to tell me, but I won’t promise it until I know what it is.”<br />
<br />
McCarthy considered the statement. “Fair enough,” he said at last. “What do you think of Tombstone?”<br />
<br />
Earp looked puzzled. “I like it fine. Certainly better than Dodge or Wichita.”<br />
<br />
“As well you should. You know, New York’s and Boston’s streets are still illuminated by gas, and our main form of transportation is by foot: either our two or our horses’ four.”<br />
<br />
Earp stared at him. “This has got something to do with Tom Edison, right?”<br />
<br />
“He is the most brilliant scientific mind the country has yet produced. Ben Franklin proved there was awesome power in electricity, but it took Thomas Edison to harness it. The potential in this electricity<br />
of his is limitless. Yes, Mr. Earp, this has got <em>everything</em> to do with Thomas Edison. Why do you think he moved to Tombstone? He could make ten times the money in New York or Baltimore.” McCarthy didn’t wait for a reply. “He’s in Tombstone because we paid him to go there, to secretly study the medicine men and see what he could concoct to counteract their magic.”<br />
<br />
“You want me and my brothers to protect him,” said Earp. It wasn’t a question.<br />
<br />
“That’s right. Outside of Sheriff Behan, whose reputation is, shall we say, <em>questionable</em>, you’re just about all the law there is out there. I know how you cleaned up the criminal elements in Dodge and<br />
Wichita, and Virgil was just as successful in Prescott.”<br />
<br />
“You’ve got to understand,” said Earp. “Virgil is the Tombstone Territory marshal. We don’t have any US marshals out here. His authority isn’t very well defined; the mine owners invented the position because Behan still has two years to serve and nobody trusts him. The truth of the matter is that Virgil’s more of a private lawman than a public one.”<br />
<br />
“Details,” said McCarthy impatiently. “You’ve <em>got</em> to protect Edison!”<br />
<br />
“Against who?”<br />
<br />
McCarthy shrugged helplessly. “We have no idea. As more and more whites have settled in the West, some of the tribes have started to feel threatened. We’ve kept it quiet, but five towns have been destroyed, burnt to the ground, every citizen slaughtered. Tombstone’s getting to be a popular destination, thanks to its silver strike. . . .”<br />
<br />
“And to Edison’s and Buntline’s improvements,” interjected Earp.<br />
<br />
“That, too,” agreed McCarthy. “Mr. Earp, we can’t lose Thomas Edison. He is our best hope, maybe our only hope, of fulfilling America’s destiny. This land was put here for us, and nothing is going to keep it from us.”<br />
<br />
“And you don’t know who’s planning to kill him, or even if anyone is,” said Earp.<br />
<br />
“We’re hearing rumors,” said McCarthy. “We can’t pinpoint them, but Edison’s too important for us to ignore them. It will be your job to protect him. It could be the Indians, or a jealous rival, or an entrepreneur who wants to steal his secrets and get rich off them. It could be a hired killer, working in the employ of any of those I just named. <br />
<br />
We don’t know who will try, just that someone will, and you have to prevent it.”<br />
<br />
“That’s a tall order, Mr. McCarthy.”<br />
<br />
“I know. To that end, I’ve contacted William Masterson.”<br />
<br />
Earp frowned. “William Masterson?” he repeated, puzzled.<br />
<br />
“The two of you brought law and order to Dodge City.”<br />
<br />
Suddenly Earp smiled. “You mean Bat Masterson.”<br />
<br />
“I guess I do,” said McCarthy. “At any rate, he has accepted our offer and is on his way to Tombstone even as we speak.”<br />
<br />
“It’ll be good to work with him again,” said Earp. “You couldn’t ask for a better lawman.”<br />
<br />
“Well, that’s four lawmen—you, your two brothers, and Masterson,” said McCarthy. “Hopefully that will prove sufficient against any threat that may arise.”<br />
<br />
“I need one more,” said Earp.<br />
<br />
“Another lawman?”<br />
<br />
Earp smiled grimly and shook his head.<br />
<br />
“A medicine man from a friendly tribe, perhaps?”<br />
<br />
“This man makes his own medicine—with his gun.” <br />
<br />
<br />
“Is he willing to face death for you?”<br />
<br />
“He looks death in the eye every morning,” said Earp.<br />
<br />
“Every morning?” repeated McCarthy, puzzled.<br />
<br />
“When he looks into the mirror.” <br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com//BuntlineSpecial.htm">The Buntline Special—A Weird West Tale</a> © <a href="http://www.mikeresnick.com/">Mike Resnick</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration and Interior Illustrations © <a href="http://www.seamasgallagher.com/default4.asp">J. Seamas Gallagher</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht </div> <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibJ-uq-mcfTlLZlZ3jIHUhudOkSm6ykWzXIKpiAqGp5YXytxL2XbHZ4YpPk2WSzAVvVz4guo3ntLCQ3UETDb7XeMfG_exS0sjatwruVLAHnxstuuqwlGBVzCD86ZXRDSkUwS2plKdA1ig/s1600/Mike+Resnick+(photo+by+Lezli+Robyn)l.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibJ-uq-mcfTlLZlZ3jIHUhudOkSm6ykWzXIKpiAqGp5YXytxL2XbHZ4YpPk2WSzAVvVz4guo3ntLCQ3UETDb7XeMfG_exS0sjatwruVLAHnxstuuqwlGBVzCD86ZXRDSkUwS2plKdA1ig/s320/Mike+Resnick+(photo+by+Lezli+Robyn)l.jpg" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">MIKE RESNICK has won an impressive five Hugos and been nominated for twenty-eight more. He has sold fifty-eight novels and more than two hundred short stories. He has edited fifty anthologies. His work spans from satirical fare, such as his Lucifer Jones adventures, to weighty examinations of morality and culture, as evidenced by his brilliant tales of Kirinyaga. The series, with sixty-seven major and minor awards and nominations to date, is the most honored series of stories in the history of science fiction. Visit him online at <a href="http://www.mikeresnick.com/">http://www.mikeresnick.com/</a>.</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-10461306068951146782010-09-10T10:56:00.000-05:002010-09-10T10:56:45.537-05:00Shadow's Son by Jon Sprunk<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOA_qh3n2r5CfUcBDfRDHTFGRD_sah5j7KIgdIi_c3Y_D7bBgecWCkJVIyqbXm-WxjwM-H_I68SZwWjaX8MBT7W1iKXC0GWQLwYF2QmaA6P3lFaQyG6370qredSS7Z8tnf3gDNcaiAoYI/s1600/Shadows+Son_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOA_qh3n2r5CfUcBDfRDHTFGRD_sah5j7KIgdIi_c3Y_D7bBgecWCkJVIyqbXm-WxjwM-H_I68SZwWjaX8MBT7W1iKXC0GWQLwYF2QmaA6P3lFaQyG6370qredSS7Z8tnf3gDNcaiAoYI/s320/Shadows+Son_cover.jpg" /></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">Caim makes his living on the edge of a blade, but when a routine job goes south, he is thrust into the middle of an insidious plot. In this fight for his life, Caim trusts only his knives and his instincts, but will they be enough? To unmask a conspiracy at the heart of the empire, he must claim his birthright as the Shadow’s Son . . .</span></span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">“Jon Sprunk mixes the rich details of his fantasy world with compelling characters and a fast-paced plot – a masterful and addicting debut novel.”</span><span style="font-size: small;"></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">–<em>New York Times</em> bestselling author Maria V. Snyder</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-size: small;">“<em>Shadow's Son</em> will have me coming back for a sequel… a thoroughly entertaining read that had me wondering if perhaps all assassin stories aren’t the same after all…” </span></div></div><div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: small;">–<em>Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review</em></span></div><div align="left" style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><strong><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Shadow's Son</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Jon Sprunk</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER ONE<br />
<br />
A killer stalked in the shadows.<br />
<br />
Hidden within the gloom shrouding the hall’s lofty ceiling, he crept across the rafters to the flicker of the torch fires below. As unseen as the wind, silent as Death itself.<br />
<br />
Festive music rose from the chamber beneath him. The flower of northern Nimea, two hundred lords and ladies, filled the great hall of Ostergoth Keep. The sharp crack of a whip cut through the din. The centerpiece of the evening was an aged hillman, stripped to the waist and bound to a wooden frame. Livid welts oozing blood crisscrossed his shoulders and back. While Duke Reinard’s guests gorged on fine victuals, his torturer performed for their entertainment.<br />
<br />
The bullwhip cracked again and the old man shuddered. The duke laughed so hard he spilled wine down his ermine-lined robes and spoiled the yellow dress of the pale, shuddering girl on his lap. She quivered as he blotted at her bodice with a stained napkin and then squeaked at an indiscretion committed under the table. She tried to squirm away, but the duke held her fast and laughed all the harder. <br />
<br />
Caim’s gloved hands curled into fists. It was time to go to work.<br />
<br />
He dropped down to an empty balcony outthrust from the stone wall. Crouched behind the railing, he unslung a satchel from his shoulder and took out its contents. With sure movements he assembled a powerful bow made from two curved shafts of laminated horn. He opened a lacquered case and took out three arrows. Each projectile ended in brilliant indigo fletching, the design favored by the hill tribes of eastern Ostergoth, as requested by the client.<br />
<br />
Caim fit an arrow to the string and lifted the bow. He took a deep breath as he sighted along the shaft. An uneasy sensation rumbled in the pit of his stomach. <em>Nerves.</em><br />
<br />
He adjusted his aim to allow for distance and declination. The girl managed to escape the Duke’s lewd embrace, at least for the moment. <br />
<br />
<em>Don’t worry, honey.</em> Caim pulled the bowstring to full tension. <em>He won’t ever bother you again.</em><br />
<br />
Just as he was about to shoot, his target leaned over to chortle into the ear of a lovely noblewoman beside him. The duke’s ringed fingers fondled the strands of pearls looped across the lady’s plunging décolletage. Caim held his breath and counted by the slow, measured rhythm of his pulse.<br />
<br />
<em>Three . . . four . . .</em><br />
<br />
Any moment now, the Duke would sit up and present the perfect target.<br />
<br />
<em>Seven . . . eight . . .</em><br />
<br />
His aim was dead-on, his hands were steady.<br />
<br />
<em>Eleven . . . twelve . . .</em><br />
<br />
A feathery tickle caressed his shoulders. Not taking his eyes off the Duke, Caim caught a glimpse of silver.<br />
<br />
“Hello, lover,” her voice whispered in his ear.<br />
<br />
Ghostly fingers tickled Caim’s waist, but his gaze never left the target. “Hello, Kit.”<br />
<br />
“Putting another notch in your belt, I see.”<br />
<br />
He winced at the volume of her voice as it carried over the revel. It didn’t matter that no one else could hear her. She was throwing off his cadence.<br />
<br />
“I’m busy. Go find a nest of bunnies to play with until I’m done here.”<br />
<br />
Kit pressed her face against his cheek to peer down the arrow shaft. Although he couldn’t exactly feel her, tiny itches radiated everywhere she touched his skin. A strand of her silver hair fell across his left eye. Caim resisted the urge to blow it away, knowing it wouldn’t do any good if he tried, and strained the bowstring another inch.<br />
<br />
“Bunnies live in holes, not nests,” she said. “And you’re aiming too low.”<br />
<br />
“Leave me alone. I’ve got the shot.”<br />
<br />
“You’re going to miss his neck by half a foot.”<br />
<br />
Caim ground his teeth as the duke turned away from the noblewoman to slap the back of Liram Kornfelsh of the Kornfelsh merchant syndicate.<br />
<br />
The syndicate was backing Duke Reinard to the hilt, hoping to ride his rise to power all the way to the inner sanctums of the capital. <br />
<br />
“I’m aiming for his heart. Now leave me alone for a minute.”<br />
<br />
Kit hopped up on the banister, as light as a butterfly in flight. Short for a human woman, she possessed a figure out of any man’s fantasies. Tiny-waisted yet buxom, she had creamy skin with a faint olive sheen. The dress she wore, tight-clinging with an absurdly short skirt, barely left anything to the imagination. Caim supposed it made no difference, since no one could see her but him.<br />
<br />
Balancing on her bare toes, she clucked her tongue. “What if he’s wearing a coat of mail under that atrocious shirt?”<br />
<br />
“The head is piled for penetration.” Caim thrust his chin at the arrow’s reinforced point. “Anyway, he doesn’t wear armor. Detests the weight of it. That’s why he surrounds himself with so many soldiers.”<br />
<br />
He rechecked his aim anyway. The duke was still manhandling his guests. Caim wished he would sit up straight. His fingers were getting numb.<br />
<br />
Kit spun around and sat on the narrow railing. “For all the good they’ll do him. Are you going to finish this anytime soon? It’s loud in here. I can hardly hear myself think.”<br />
<br />
“Just a moment.”<br />
<br />
The duke leaned back in his chair, his shoulders framed by the wide oaken back. Caim released the bowstring. In that moment, the target glanced upward. Wine ran down Reinard’s blubbery chins as their gazes met.<br />
<br />
The arrow sped across the hall like a diving falcon. It was a perfect shot, a sure kill. But just before it struck, the torchlight flickered. Cups tipped over. Plates crashed to the floor. Caim’s neck hairs tingled at the sight of Liram Kornfelsh, sprawled in front of the Duke. The arrow’s blue feathers quivered above the emerald brooch nestled in the hollow of his throat.<br />
<br />
Screams echoed off the hall’s high walls as guests bolted from their seats, all except for Kornfelsh, who they left lying across the high table like an overstuffed ham. The duke grasped his hands together as his soldiers rushed to surround him.<br />
<br />
Caim grabbed the other arrows and fired in rapid succession. The first caught a bodyguard through the left eye. The second penetrated the boss of a soldier’s shield and through the forearm holding it, but the duke remained unscathed. Caim tossed the bow aside and raced down the balcony.<br />
<br />
Kit skipped along the railing beside him. “I told you the shot was off. You have a contingency plan, right?”<br />
<br />
He clenched his jaws tight together. The only thing worse than making a grand mess of a job was doing it in front of Kit. Now he had to get down and dirty. He reached behind his back and drew a pair of <em>suete</em> knives. Eighteen inches of singled-edged steel gleamed in the torchlight.<br />
<br />
A sentry appeared at the end of the catwalk. Caim flowed past him, close enough to smell the wine on the man’s breath, and the sentry stumbled against the wall, his life spilling through his fingers from a bloody gash across his throat.<br />
<br />
On the floor below, the duke was ushered by his bodyguards through a door at the back of the hall. Caim vaulted over the railing, jumping right through Kit. For a moment as their bodies merged, he was covered from head to foot by tingling goose bumps. A thrown spear flashed just inches in front of his face as he landed on the central trestle. Flagons and dinnerware went flying as he dashed down the polished length of the table.<br />
<br />
“He’s getting away.” Kit floated above his head.<br />
<br />
Caim bit back a rude response. “Then how about you go follow him?”<br />
<br />
She sped off with a huff.<br />
<br />
Caim kicked open the door. The duke would be heading to his quarters on the top floor of the donjon where he could hole up until reinforcements arrived. If that happened, Caim was well and truly fucked. But he had never failed to complete an assignment before; he didn’t plan to start now.<br />
<br />
The corridor beyond was unlit. He started inside, but a nagging sense of caution made him pause. That hesitation saved his life as a sword blade swept through the empty space where his neck would have been. Caim ducked and jabbed with both knives. His left-hand <em>suete</em> cut through a colorful surcoat and got caught in links of mail underneath, but the righthand blade found a gap in the armor. A gurgle issued from the shadows as the hidden guardsman slumped forward. Caim jerked his knives free and swept down the hallway.<br />
<br />
A single staircase led to the higher levels. The steps spiraled clockwise around a thick stone newel post. Caim sprang up the stairs two at a time. As he came around the first landing, the twang of a crossbow string reached his ear a split second before a quarrel zipped past. Caim threw himself against the wall. From somewhere above echoed the staccato clack of a hand crank.<br />
<br />
Caim pushed off from the wall and darted up the steps as fast as his legs would propel him. If there was a second archer lying in wait for him, he would be dead before he knew it. He rounded another turn. A lone crossbowman stood on the landing above, furiously turning the iron crank to reload his weapon. The soldier dropped the crossbow and grabbed for his sword, but Caim cut him down before he freed the weapon.<br />
<br />
Caim crept up the last flight of stairs to the keep’s highest level. The upper landing was empty. Candles dripping wax from brass sconces on the wall illuminated a juncture of two hallways. He put his back to the cool stone and peered around the corner into the corridor that led to the master suite. So far, the duke had shown an exceptional affinity for sacrificing his men to preserve his own hide. Two bodyguards were down. Two more to go. Decent odds. Caim sidled down the hallway. The door to Reinard’s suite was reinforced with thick iron bands. It would be barred from the inside. Nothing short of an axe would get through the door, but he had another idea.<br />
<br />
Caim was moving toward a shuttered window on the side of the hallway when Kit’s head and one shapely shoulder poked through the door.<br />
<br />
“You better hurry,” she said. “He’s packing up to run.”<br />
<br />
A cool breeze ruffled Caim’s hood as he swung open the shutters. A sixty-foot drop yawned on the other side.<br />
<br />
“He doesn’t have anywhere to go.”<br />
<br />
“Not quite. There’s a hidden passage that leads outside the grounds.”<br />
<br />
“Damn it! Why didn’t you mention that earlier?”<br />
<br />
“How was I supposed to know it was there? It’s pretty well hidden, behind a wardrobe case.”<br />
<br />
Caim swung a leg over the sill. Time was running out. If the duke got outside the compound, he would be near impossible to catch. <br />
<br />
“Keep watch on that secret tunnel, Kit. Follow Reinard if he makes it outside. I’ll catch up.”<br />
<br />
“Will do.”<br />
<br />
She vanished back inside the chamber. Caim leaned out the window. He still didn’t know what had gone wrong in the great hall. The shot had been set up perfectly. Nothing he could do about it now except to correct his mistake and get out fast.<br />
<br />
As he climbed out onto the sill, he spotted the outline of another window on the same level thirty paces away. Pale light flickered from within. Exit scenarios played through Caim’s mind as he ran his fingers over the outer wall. Once the job was finished, he could drop down to the keep’s courtyard to make his escape, or he could use the duke’s secret tunnel. Either plan held its own set of risks. He’d hoped to be gone by now. Every passing minute reduced his chances for success.<br />
<br />
The broad ashlar blocks of the keep’s outer shell provided strong protection against siege weapons, but their wide seams made good purchase for climbing. He found a crevice in the wall and grabbed hold without stopping to consider the prudence of his actions. He hated rushing a job, but he was running out of options at this point. He focused on his holds. <br />
<br />
A prickling itched down his spine as he reached a point halfway between the windows. He froze, clinging to the sheer stone face. Something drew his gaze toward the heavens. A thick blanket of clouds veiled the night sky. The light of torches from the courtyard below flickered upon the keep’s crenellations. He saw nothing at first. Then, something moved among the battlements. Caim held his breath as a silhouette passed above him, a sinuous shape gliding through the dark. For one terrible moment he thought it had seen him, but then it was gone.<br />
<br />
Caim waited several heartbeats before he dared to breathe again. What was going on? He didn’t have time to waste. Trying to put the specter out of his mind, he lunged for his next hold.<br />
<br />
Seconds later, he was at the window. The clear glass casement opened with a slight rattle, but no one inside noticed. The window led into the master bedchamber. Beyond it Caim could see entrances to other rooms and the stout door leading to the hallway he had vacated minutes before. Both bodyguards stood at the barred door, swords out, watching the portal as if expecting Caim to burst through at any moment.<br />
<br />
The duke hunched over a heavy trunk. “Ulfan, leave off that damned door and help me!”<br />
<br />
One of the bodyguards turned around as Caim crawled through the window. He opened his mouth to shout a warning, but never got the chance. Caim hurled a knife with a whip of his hand. The bodyguard jerked back, a runnel of blood streaming down his collar as he fell to his knees with the <em>suete’s</em> smooth handle protruding from his throat.<br />
<br />
Reinard dropped a heavy sack that clinked as it hit the floor. “What—?”<br />
<br />
Caim drew his other knife and crossed the room just as the second bodyguard turned. As the man raised his sword arm to strike, Caim lunged in close and drove his weapon full length into the joint under the man’s armpit. The bodyguard gasped and slid off the knife.<br />
<br />
“Caim!” Kit shouted from behind him.<br />
<br />
He turned, knees bent with his knife at the ready. From this vantage he could see the wardrobe Kit had mentioned. It was pulled aside, and a black tunnel mouth yawned in the wall beyond. A young man in the duke’s livery with fair hair and a short goatee emerged with a bared arming sword in his hand. Caim pivoted out of the path of the falling sword and thrust his knife into his opponent’s side. The point struck a rib. Caim twisted the blade and punched it through the connective tissue between the bones.<br />
<br />
The young man’s last breath wheezed from the wound as he crumpled to the floor.<br />
<br />
The duke cringed beside a massive, four-post bed. “Please.” His jowls trembled as he held out his hands before him. An angry welt marred one of his palms. “I’ll give you anything you want.”<br />
<br />
“Yes.” Caim crossed the floor. “You will.” <br />
<br />
The duke died with considerably less effort than his bodyguards. Caim left the body stretched out on the bed with a bloody hole carved into the chest. He hadn’t been able to take out Reinard in front of his dinner guests. His clients would have to be satisfied with butchery. The message was sent.<br />
<br />
Caim retrieved his other knife and scanned the chamber. If he hurried he could be over the walls and outside the keep before the duke’s men organized any meaningful pursuit. He didn’t expect them to trail him for long. With their liege dead, they would be more concerned with finding and protecting Reinard’s heir. By all accounts young Lord Robert was a decent boy, a far cry from his monstrous father. The duchy would be a better place.<br />
<br />
Caim’s gaze fell on the young man sprawled at the tunnel entrance. He had never set eyes on Lord Robert, but he had a reliable description. Twenty-two years old, light brown hair with a wisp of a beard and blue eyes. The youth on the floor matched the description too closely to be a coincidence. Caim cursed under his breath. So much for leaving these lands in the care of a kinder, more tolerant liege.<br />
<br />
Kit walked through the door to the hallway. “You’re going to get some company very soon.”<br />
<br />
Caim considered the open window. “How many?”<br />
<br />
“More than you can handle. Believe me.”<br />
<br />
“I do. What about outside?”<br />
<br />
“All those pretty ladies and gentlemen have stirred up quite a commotion in the yard. Every exit is sealed and extra men have been put on the walls. Search parties are scouring the grounds.”<br />
<br />
“And the tunnel?”<br />
<br />
Kit gave him a sassy grin. “Lots of stairs and the rest of the duke’s bodyguards wait at the other end. They might not be happy to see you come out before their boss.”<br />
<br />
Caim wiped his knives clean on Lord Robert’s tabard. Nothing was going his way tonight. He was going to have to use his last option. By the amused expression on her face, Kit knew it, too. He hated admitting she was right, but he’d probably hate dying even more.<br />
<br />
He went around the room snuffing candles and lamp wicks to plunge the chamber into darkness except for a single lantern resting beside the tunnel mouth. He passed the Duke’s traveling trunk and the sacks spilled on the floor without a glance. Just one of those purses would set him up for a year, but he was an assassin, not a thief. <br />
<br />
Fists banged on the door.<br />
<br />
“You’d better hurry,” Kit said.<br />
<br />
Caim tried to ignore her as he pressed his back against a wall in the darkest part of the room. There amid the shadows, he closed his eyes and shut out the outside world. He focused on the sliver of fear quivering at the center of his core. Fear was the key. It was always there, hidden beneath layers of denial and repression. Caim hated this. He had to tap into that feeling, allow it to possess him. At first, he didn’t think he could. There were too many distractions. The pain was too far removed. But then a memory seized hold of him. It was an old memory, full of pain.<br />
<br />
<em>Raging flames painted the night sky in hues of orange and gold, and threw shadows across the yard of the villa where the tall bodies sprawled. There was blood everywhere, pooled in the gravel, splattered across the face of the man kneeling in the center of the yard, running down his chest in a great black river.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Father . . .</em><br />
<br />
Caim opened his eyes as the dark came alive.<br />
<br />
It gathered around him like a cloak. By the time the guards battered down the door, he was hidden within its inky folds. Just another shadow. The soldiers flitted about like bees from a jostled hive. Some dashed into the tunnel with lit firebrands. Others stood over the corpses of the duke and his son. None of them detected the shade that glided out the door and down the stairs.<br />
<br />
Once outside, Caim scaled the keep’s curtain wall and disappeared into the countryside. Dappled moonlight splashed over him like a gossamer rainstorm. A quarter mile away from the stronghold, he released the cloying darkness. He grabbed the trunk of a sapling to hold himself upright as a wave of disorientation overloaded his senses. The darkness swam before his eyes in a thousand shades of gray and black. Something lurked in the distance, just beyond the limit of his vision. He didn’t know how he summoned the shadows. The power had resided within him for as long as he could remember, lurking within him, threatening to erupt whenever he was frightened or angry. He had learned to control those feelings over the years, but he never got used to it.<br />
<br />
After a minute, the weakness passed and the normality of the night returned, and Caim resumed his trek through the fog-strewn moor. Kit danced ahead of him in the distance like a will-o’-the-wisp. The faint tune of a tavern song reached his ears. Same old Kit. Nothing fazed her. Yet he couldn’t share in her frivolity. Not even the prospect of the sizable bounty he would soon collect lifted his spirits. Apprehension welled up inside him, rising up like the deep arm of the sea, dragging him into unknown depths. His steps slowed in the fog.<br />
<br />
Overhead, a lone star pierced the cloud cover. Like a man grasping a lifeline, he stumbled toward it, following its shimmer through the gloom. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER TWO<br />
<br />
Josephine rushed from the carriage and into the house faster than the footman burdened with her purchases could follow. Her cheeks stung from the brisk autumn chill.<br />
<br />
As she brushed past Fenrik, their family steward, she shed her jacket and the new hat she’d bought. He collected her garments with his usual aplomb. <br />
<br />
“Welcome home, mistress. I trust your excursion was pleasant.”<br />
<br />
“Marvelous! Is Father upstairs? I must see him right away. I have amazing news! Anastasia is to be married this Yeartide Day and to such a dashing man. His name escapes me at the moment, but he’s very tall and handsome. Did I mention he was an officer in the Sacred Brotherhood?”<br />
<br />
“No, mistress. But—”<br />
<br />
She flew past him without waiting for another word. Father would be ensconced in his study with his books and papers. Retired from his government post for four years, he still maintained his connections in political circles, a thing for which she was especially grateful. Someday those connections would net her a smart match like Anastasia had just made.<br />
<br />
Josey paused on her way to the stairs. An unfamiliar overcoat hung from the brass rack on the wall.<br />
<br />
“Fenrik, who visits with my father?”<br />
<br />
“A man from the palace, milady.”<br />
<br />
“From the palace?” She raced up the wide marble steps.<br />
<br />
“He does not wish to be disturbed.”<br />
<br />
Of course Father would want to see her straightaway. A visitor from the palace could only mean one thing. Her father was finally making a match for her hand, and to a man from an outstanding family. Her heart was ready to burst from her chest. Just to think, she and Anastasia could both be married by this time next year.<br />
<br />
A curtseying maid passed on her way to the study. Josey paused for a moment at the door. She couldn’t remember it ever being closed. She glanced down the hall. The chambermaid was gone. On an impulse, she pressed her ear against the wooden panels. The voices of two men murmured on the other side. A tendril of guilt knotted in her belly, but she didn’t pull away. If this visitor was here to discuss her matrimonial options, it concerned <em>her</em> more than anyone. But she couldn’t make out what was being said. She wished they would speak up.<br />
<br />
The voices ceased and Josey jumped back as the door opened. She smoothed the front of her dress and did her best to look as if she had just arrived. The guest was a tall gentleman, younger than she imagined. A sigil of crossed keys was emblazoned on the breast of his gray mantle, which he wore over a suit of the same color. He had a sallow face with a nervous look about him, a look that amplified Josey’s anxiety. Had their discussion not gone well? Had Father not offered an adequate dowry? She was bursting with questions. The man bent in a stiff bow before striding past her to the stairs.<br />
<br />
Josey peeked inside. Her father sat at his perennially cluttered desk with a hand pressed to his forehead. The light from an open window illuminated his pate, bald save for a halo of sparse white hair around the crown. He would be sixty-two this winter. She remembered how strong and tall he had looked when she was a child. Now, he spent most of his time in this study, surrounded by the trappings of his former power. The room was stuffy and warm, but he kept a blanket wrapped around his legs.<br />
<br />
He straightened when he saw her. “Josey. I didn’t hear you return. How was your shopping? Did you find Anastasia well? I want to hear everything.” <br />
<br />
“Father.” She entered and sat in the leather chair beside his desk. “Who was that man? Fenrik said he came from the palace.”<br />
<br />
He reached out to take her hand. His fingers were thin and cold.<br />
<br />
“His father was a friend of mine. In younger days, the two of us were powerful men. Members of the Court vied for our attention and would give much for our patronage, but now he’s dead and buried and I am an old man.” <br />
<br />
“You are still a great man. I just had this notion your visitor was calling about something . . . more auspicious.”<br />
<br />
“Ah.” He placed a finger alongside his nose. “You thought he came with a betrothal offer.”<br />
She tried to blush, but it was a trick she’d never mastered. “It was silly of me. I’m only seventeen, I know.”<br />
<br />
“Seventeen and as lovely as a rose in bloom. I wish I had such an offer, Josey. Sadly, the news is not so gay. There are rumors of strange troubles in the north. Banditry and worse. Envoys have gone missing and things are deteriorating here in Othir. How would a voyage suit you?”<br />
<br />
His question caught her off guard. “Suit me? Father, I can’t leave Othir. Anastasia is to be married. That’s what I’ve come to tell you. She’s asked me to be her maiden of honor.”<br />
<br />
“I’m quite serious, Josephine. The political tide is shifting faster than I anticipated. I had hoped we could weather the storm, but I fear it’s not safe anymore.”<br />
<br />
“Not safe? Why not?”<br />
<br />
He eased back in his chair, suddenly looking old and feeble. “Affairs on the Capitoline are in disarray.”<br />
<br />
Father still used old-fashioned terms like the Capitoline, even though the Nimean Empire had died out ages ago and everyone else had taken to calling it Celestial Hill.<br />
<br />
“There is unrest in the streets,” he continued. “And the prelate’s ability to contain it grows weaker. Just the other day, a man was killed not three blocks from our doorstep. Suffice it to say I wish you to adjourn to a safer location until these problems pass.”<br />
<br />
“I was out the whole afternoon and I didn’t see anything amiss. The city is as calm as a summer day. Anyway, Anastasia is my best friend. I can’t miss her wedding, Father. Not for anything.”<br />
<br />
“Josey, my dear. I promised your mother I would always see to your well-being. And I act from my own selfish desires. I couldn’t bear to see you come to harm. You possess the key to my heart.”<br />
<br />
She placed a hand on her bosom. Under the lace fronting of her dress, the cool hardness of a pendant pressed against her skin. She knelt before him and folded her hands on his lap.<br />
<br />
“Mother wasn’t afraid of anything. She wouldn’t want me to leave your side.”<br />
<br />
He brushed a rogue curl from her face. The corners of his eyes drooped amid folds of wrinkles. “She would want you to trust my judgment and obey my wishes. Please, Josey, pack your things. I have arranged for a ship.” <br />
<br />
“Father, please!”<br />
<br />
“No, Josey. My mind is adamant on this. You will go to Navarre and remain there until I send for you. The new exarch is a good man and as trustworthy as we’ll find in times such as these. He will see you safe—”<br />
<br />
Josey jumped to her feet, her entire body trembling. “I won’t go! You cannot make me.”<br />
<br />
“It is settled. Chide me no more on this subject, Daughter.”<br />
<br />
Cheeks wet with tears, she dashed from the study, brushing past Fenrik in the hallway loaded with wrapped bundles from the carriage. She slammed the door to her room and stood at the foot of the feather bed, hands clenched at her sides. How could he be so cruel? Why couldn’t he see that she couldn’t leave? They needed each other. She had no other family. Only him, and now he was sending her away. What would she tell Anastasia?<br />
<br />
Josey took deep breaths and composed herself. Tears wouldn’t get her anywhere. She sat down at her dressing table and began to brush her hair with short, hard strokes. She needed to think, to devise some argument to sway her father. She had to convince him to let her stay. She had to.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~</strong></div><br />
<em>Raging flames painted the night sky in hues of orange and gold, and threw shadows across the yard of the villa where the tall bodies sprawled. Caim peered through the wooden slats of the fence.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“We have to go,” a voice whispered behind him.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Caim wanted to turn away, but his limbs had turned to stone. The frigid wind flogged his small body. The cold slid through his veins like ice water. There was blood on his hands. He wiped them on his shirt, but they wouldn’t come clean. </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>The world shimmered and he was standing in the yard. A large man slumped at his feet. Strings of red-black blood ran from the wound in his chest. A tremor ran through Caim as the corpse opened its eyes, black spheres without irises or whites. A whisper issued from blue-tinged lips.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“Justice . . . , my son.”</em><br />
<br />
<br />
Caim opened his eyes and was greeted by a razor-sharp moonbeam that pierced through the slats of the window shutters. A cool breeze flitted over his chest as the last vestiges of the dream—the images of fire and death—sifted through his mental grasp. He settled back into the fabric of the cot under him and stared at the ceiling, debating whether to get up or try to fall back asleep for another hour.<br />
<br />
With a sigh he threw back the woolen blankets and dropped to his chest on the cold floorboards. His muscles stretched and contracted through a routine of exercises: push-ups, stomach tighteners, lunges, and handstands. Thirty minutes later he was sweating freely. After splashing his face with water from a chipped clay pitcher, he stood before his only extravagance, a full-length cheval glass in a bronze stand. Hard eyes stared back at him from the wavy depths of the mirror, chips of granite set in deep cavities beneath his thick, black brows. He ran his hands across his torso, examining the damage; a few scrapes and cuts, broken skin at his elbows and the backs of his hands, but all in all he was in better shape than he probably deserved. Fragments of the dream scudded through his mind. The words of his father’s ghost haunted him. <em>Justice.</em> Had it been served in Ostergoth?<br />
<br />
He pulled a clean chiton and breeches from his footlocker and went out into the kitchen. The rest of his apartment lacked for furniture: a plain table stood with a single chair, a coldbox and small brick oven in the kitchen, and a pantry. The living area was bare except for a wide mat and assorted pieces of exercise equipment, sand-filled bags suspended from the ceiling. A charcoal etching of a lighthouse drawn by a street artist hung on the wall in a plain wooden frame. In the picture, black frothing waves battered at the rocky base of the lighthouse as its beacon shone bravely in the face of the storm. Tiny lights flickered in the distance. They made him think of Kit. <br />
<br />
He put on a pair of scuffed leather boots and wondered where she was. Kit came and went as she pleased. Sometimes he wouldn’t see her for days, and other times he couldn’t get rid of her. He didn’t know what Kit was, not exactly. When he was a boy he had thought of her as an imaginary friend, but as he grew older and she did not leave, he began to suspect something else. No one else had invisible friends who tagged after them. But she was real. She knew things he didn’t, things he couldn’t know.<br />
Countless times she’d warned him of danger before it materialized.<br />
<br />
His ability to meld with the shadows was another mystery. He had always been good at going about unnoticed, even as a boy, but where did the power come from? Had he been born with it or was he cursed? More trouble than anything, it was another quirk of a past he remembered only in murky fragments. Maybe he didn’t want to.<br />
<br />
Caim strapped on his knives and covered them with a fustian cloak as he went to the door, its olive green paint peeling away in strips to reveal the slab of old wormwood underneath. He peered down the hallway in both directions. As he secured the door’s rusty latch, a small, pale face stared up at him from across the hall. He had seen the girl a few times before, playing alone in the hallway at odd hours. Her wheat-colored hair hung down across her thin shoulders in tangled skeins. She couldn’t have been older than six, or maybe seven. Angry voices echoed from beyond the door beside her. Caim walked away.<br />
<br />
He descended a flight of creaking stairs and passed through the dirty foyer. The tenement building might have been a stately manor house in its former days before the neighborhood took a turn for the worse. Still, he liked its location and found the current owner’s policy of studied indifference toward his tenants convenient. As long as the rent was paid on time, the old geezer never asked questions.<br />
<br />
As Caim reached the street, a stench assaulted him like a wet sock full of rotten eggs, a combination of sea air and human refuse that clogged his head and clung to the back of his palate. It was worse in the summer. <br />
<br />
The ancient stone buildings of Low Town, once the heart of the city according to the local salts, were stained with centuries of weather, soot, and foul air. Over the years, the inner city had grown upward as well as outward. Buildings four and five stories tall hung precariously over the narrow streets. With the defeat of the pirates of the Stormcatcher Islands fifty or so years back and the subsequent expansion of trade on the Midland Sea, those with the means to capitalize on the sudden influx of new<br />
goods left the neighborhood to build bigger homes on the hills above the Processional. So High Town was born, eventually to become the glowing jewel of Othir. Things had only gotten worse for the Low Towners in recent years, such as increased taxes to pay for distant wars and expensive public works like the new cathedral under construction in the city center, and food shortages. The poorest families were put out on the street by landlords feeling the pinch. He saw them every day, begging on the main<br />
thoroughfares, selling their children in back alleys.<br />
<br />
As he hopped over a fetid puddle on Prior’s Cross, Caim caught a glimpse of the horned moon, perched over the roof of an abandoned dyer’s factory like a silver sickle. Its otherworldly beauty, forever out of reach, always made him uneasy in a way he couldn’t rightly describe. It was like being homesick, but for a home he had never known. <br />
<br />
Othir had been his home for six years. He had originally begun plying his trade as a sellsword in the western territories. He’d done time in various mercenary crews during his teen years, earning his silver with one hand and spending it with the other. But after a bit of nasty business in Isenmere, his gang was run out by a posse bent on revenge. He drifted from town to town, always watching over his shoulder. When no lawmen showed up to arrest him, he passed into a new life.<br />
<br />
A right turn onto Serpentine Way brought Caim to a tangle of back streets and alleyways known as the Gutters. Here the buildings were built of old, crumbling brick covered in dingy whitewash. Their sooty slate roofs tilted sharply, with tall steeples and shuttered gables. The Gutters were home to every sort of crook and deadbeat imaginable. It was a place to tread lightly, where anything could happen and often did. <br />
<br />
Caim strode down the center of the street. Footpads slunk deeper into their hidey-holes as he passed by. Muggers found business elsewhere. He’d drenched these cobblestones in blood more than once. Still, he kept his cloak tight around his shoulders and one hand on a knife.<br />
<br />
His first contract had been right here in Othir. Dalros was a luxuries trader whose business had suffered a turn of bad fortune. When he couldn’t cover his debts to the local usurers, they decided to make an example of him. Caim was tapped for the job. It was a simple break-andstab, nothing fancy, but Caim would never forget the shakes he’d suffered that spring night as he scaled the low wall surrounding Dalros’s home. He was in and out in less than fifteen minutes. With the merchant’s blood on his hands, he’d crept past a lounging sentry, slipped back over the wall, and gone on his way. He was paid twenty gold soldats for that job, a fortune to him in those days.<br />
<br />
A shout from behind made Caim spin around. His knife slid out of its sheath as a squadron of soldiers on horseback rode down the street. On their bloodred breastplates gleamed a blazing sunburst in gold, the symbol of the Sacred Brotherhood, or the Knights of the Noose, as they were called behind their backs—a jest about the manner in which their patron saint had gone to meet his Maker. Some in Othir said they were the real power behind the prelacy, but Caim paid little heed to politics. It made no difference to him who ruled as long as he could count on them to sow discord and corruption; unrest made for good business in his line of work. And over the past few years, business had been extraordinarily good.<br />
<br />
Caim slipped into the shadowed doorway of a cobbler’s shop and sheathed his blade as they rode past. The soldiers’ presence in the Gutters at this hour made the skin between his shoulder blades itch. The denizens of these squalid alleys were typically left to their own devices after sunset.<br />
<br />
Once the soldiers passed from sight, he continued on his way. Another three blocks brought him to Chirron’s Square. A marketplace by day, it brokered a different type of commerce after sundown. Pimps and drug peddlers lounged amid the marble pedestals of broken statuary. Ladies of the night trolled for interested buyers. In the center of the plaza rose a scaffold. Its weathered timbers supported a massive crossbeam from which dangled five bodies, adult, probably male, but it was impossible to tell for sure. They had been burned before they were hanged, their hands and feet lopped off, their eyes gouged out. No one paid the bodies any mind. Who had they been? Robbers? Rapists? Or just some poor souls foolish enough to criticize the ruling powers in public? Caim continued on his way, but the spectacle lingered in his thoughts.<br />
<br />
He turned onto Cutter Lane. Windows were thrown wide open down the length of the street despite the chill in the air, spilling the rosy light of a dozen taverns and festhouses onto the grimy cobblestones. Pipers and lutists competed with the din of hard drinkers. <br />
<br />
He ducked into the third house on the left. The cracked placard over the door depicted three buxom ladies in short frocks. Bright light filled the Three Maids. Wooden tankards clanked on the tabletops, and rough hands clapped in time with a zithern while a scrawny girl clad in only her snow-pale skin and long red locks danced under the glassy stares of tradesmen and stevedores. A shore party of sailors—Arnossi by their accent and swarthy features—sang sea ballads in a corner. <br />
<br />
Caim threaded his way to the bar. Big Olaf was tending tonight. He grinned through a row of uneven teeth as Caim approached. <br />
<br />
“Hey, boyo. You should’ve been here last night. I had to toss out a pair of uptown rakes with a mean-on. Swear they flew a dozen paces before they hit pavement. Each.”<br />
<br />
Caim slid a silver noble, double-penny weight, across the bar. “Is he in?”<br />
<br />
The coin disappeared, and Olaf jerked a sausage-thick thumb at the back stairs. Caim headed around the bar. Mathias, the owner of the Three Maids, also handled several of the biggest fish in Othir’s murder-for-hire game. He was their broker, their middleman, the one who ferreted out the contracts and matched them with the right talent for the job. He lived above the tavern, he claimed, to be closer to the people, and always acted hurt when anyone insinuated he was a miser. Caim didn’t know why<br />
Mathias continued to live amid the dregs of the city. With the commissions he’d made in the last year alone, he could afford a comfortable house in High Town. Some folks couldn’t bear to leave their roots, no matter how high they climbed. Caim had never had that problem.<br />
<br />
The back stairs were unlit. As he started up, Caim heard the whisper of leather glide over wood a moment before a shape appeared above him. An image flashed through his mind: clinging to the walls of Duke Reinard’s keep, gazing up at a mysterious black figure crawling along the battlements. A twinge quivered in his chest. Both <em>suete</em> knives were out in an instant, held low and pressed against his thighs to hide their shine. His knees flexed, ready to leap back or lunge ahead.<br />
<br />
Two white circles appeared in the gloom above him, a pair of hands held open. “Peace,” said a low voice. “Good evening, Caim.” <br />
<br />
“Ral.” Caim slipped the knives back into their homes, but he left an inch of each blade free. “If you’ve got business with Mathias, I’ll wait below.”<br />
<br />
Ral descended a step. The faint glow from the common room highlighted his features. Bright blue eyes peered from beneath coiffed spikes of stark blond hair. Dressed all in black leather, he melded with the shadows of the stairway. The intricate silver cross-guard of a cut-and-thrust sword jutted from his belt. Glints of steel at his wrists, waist, and boots hinted at other weapons; Ral was notorious for all the hardware he carried. <br />
<br />
“No, we are concluded.” His lazy way of talking reminded Caim of a dozing cat, always a moment from showing his claws. “I heard you did quite well up north. Reinard and his bodyguards slain in front of a hundred witnesses, but not a single person could identify the killer afterward. Not bad.”<br />
<br />
Caim chewed on his tongue. He didn’t like discussing his business, especially where idle ears could overhear. He leaned against the wall of the stairwell, trying to appear casual. <br />
<br />
“It’s done. That’s all that matters.” <br />
<br />
Ral came down another step. “Exactly, but you should be careful.<br />
There’s been a citywide crackdown these past couple days.”<br />
<br />
“I saw the display in the square.”<br />
<br />
Ral chuckled. Despite his butter-smooth voice, it wasn’t a pleasant sound. “A gang of roof-crawlers got pinched robbing a vicar’s home. All involved were caught and hanged, but not before they tortured his entire family for the location of a cache of jewels. Word says they even cut off the youngest boy’s fingers and toes.”<br />
<br />
<em>A leader of the True Faith, supposedly sworn to vows of poverty and chastity, keeps a house in High Town with a wife and children, and no one cares to comment. But why should they? Large sins are easily forgotten. It’s the little ones that gnaw at your soul in the lonely hours of the night.</em><br />
<br />
“Of course,” Ral said, “the fops up on Celestial Hill are terrified out of their wigs that it’s another movement toward rebellion.”<br />
<br />
Caim nodded, uncomfortably reminded of young Lord Robert. “If you’ll excuse me, I have business of my own with Mathias.”<br />
<br />
“I’ve no time for palaver myself. I’m heading out of town.”<br />
<br />
They passed each other on the stairs and Ral turned. “You know, Caim. It’s not fair.”<br />
<br />
Caim paused with a foot on the top step. “What isn’t?”<br />
<br />
Ral opened his hand and a slender throwing blade appeared, too fast for the eye to follow. Caim tensed.<br />
<br />
“Here we are,” Ral said. “Two of the deadliest men in the city. We should be running things, lording it up in the palace. It’s all wasted on those powdered fools whose only claim is their family name.” His eyes lit up as he spoke.<br />
<br />
Caim looked down at the other man without a shred of empathy. According to the rumors, Ral was a son of privilege who had enjoyed many a night rutting in Low Town until his inheritance ran out. Then, broke and desperate, he had weaseled his way into the assassination trade. He must have found the taste to his liking, because he came back again and again between benders on Silk Street. Knifings in the merchant district in broad daylight, pregnant mistresses found floating in the harbor—those were Ral’s stock in trade.<br />
<br />
<em>What does that make you? A vigilante with bad dreams or a thug just smart enough to stay one step ahead of the law?</em><br />
<br />
Searching for a way to end the conversation without giving insult, Caim decided on brevity. “It is what it is.”<br />
<br />
“I suppose so. Farewell, Caim. I’m off to a warmer clime to take care of some business. We’ll talk another time.” <br />
<br />
Not if he had any choice in the matter, Caim thought as he climbed the last step. He was tired. He just wanted to get his money and go home. Maybe he would take some time off. He approached the only door on the upper floor, knocked twice, waited a heartbeat, and gave two more knocks. He opened it without waiting for an invitation.<br />
<br />
If Mathias acted the skinflint with his patrons below, he spared no expense to make his living space look and feel like a mansion. Overlapping hand-woven carpets covered the floors. Silken arrays embroidered with eastern-style hunting scenes decorated the walls, hiding the bare panels underneath. Heavy furniture in glossy hardwoods cluttered the room, along with marble tables and expensive bronze artwork.<br />
<br />
Mathias came through the archway on the far side of the parlor, dressed in a gaudy teal robe splashed with tiny golden cranes. He was a heavyset man past his middling years. He still had most of his hair and employed dyes to keep it black and lustrous except for a pair of silver wings brushed back over<br />
his ears. An admission of inevitability, he called them.<br />
<br />
“Our good friend returns from the north!”<br />
<br />
They shook hands, and Mathias offered him a choice of seats. Caim sat down on a high-backed chair with no armrests or cushion. <br />
<br />
Mathias fetched a bottle and two glasses from a malachite sideboard. “By the gods above and below, I am glad to see you back.”<br />
<br />
“Blasphemy, Mat? At your age?”<br />
<br />
“Aye. I’m too old to care anymore what the Church thinks. What has that prattle ever done for anybody? Nothing. But forget about that. Everything went well, yes?”<br />
<br />
Caim accepted a glass of amber brandy and settled back into the hard seat. “Well enough, although trying to get anywhere in this country is becoming a right pain in the ass. The roads are a mess and tollhouses have sprung up over every hill.”<br />
<br />
Mathias flumped onto a banquette and sloshed liquor on his expensive robe. “The realm is coming apart like an overripe melon. Every warlord who can put together a dozen half-trained men-at-arms is trying to carve out a piece for himself. It’s almost enough to make one long for the good old days of imperial law and order. Almost.”<br />
<br />
“Anyway, I stayed in Ostergoth long enough to hear the bells ring His Grace’s departure from the world of the living before I left.”<br />
<br />
Mat lifted his glass. “To another job completed and another villain vanquished.”<br />
<br />
Caim took a sip before setting the glass down. “I’ve gathered there was some trouble in town while I was away.”<br />
<br />
“I had nothing to do with it.” The rubies encrusting Mat’s pinky ring gleamed as he placed a plump hand over his flabby breast. “You know I never touch that sort of smash-and-grab work. It’s an unsavory business and a trifle pathetic. Now we all have to suffer through a few weeks of heightened security, but things will settle down. They can’t stay on full alert forever, eh? More brandy?”<br />
<br />
“I’ll just have my fee and leave you in peace.”<br />
<br />
Mathias smiled. “That’s the man I know. All business—and business is good!” He reached under his seat and tossed a bulging leather sack to Caim. “Five hundred soldats, just as the contract stated.”<br />
<br />
Caim caught the bag and slipped it into his shirt.<br />
<br />
“Not going to count it?”<br />
<br />
“No need to. I know where you live.”<br />
<br />
“Right enough. You’re acquiring quite a reputation, Caim. That’s why I know you’re just the man for another job I’m sitting on.” <br />
<br />
Caim rose to his feet. “No thank you, Mat. I don’t want to see anything you’re sitting on. That cushion looks like it’s had enough.”<br />
<br />
“It’s not like you to pass up money, especially for a worthy cause.”<br />
<br />
“I’m sure. Another priest with a fetish for children, or a landlord who squeezes every last crumb from his destitute peasants. No thanks. I’m going to take some time off. Like you said, the city’s heating up.”<br />
<br />
“That’s why I’m turning to you, Caim. Believe me when I say this job is easy. So easy you could do it blind and one-handed.”<br />
“Not an image I want to ponder.”<br />
<br />
Mathias brushed the air with his pudgy fingers. “You know what I mean. But it has to be done fast.”<br />
<br />
He headed for the door. “Sorry, Mat.”<br />
<br />
“Caim, I’m desperate!”<br />
<br />
Caim stopped with his hand on the knob. Mathias wasn’t a stranger to theatrics, but he sounded genuinely worried, and Mathias Finneus never worried. The look of relief on his face was almost comical as Caim came back and stood by the high-backed chair.<br />
<br />
“What’s the job?”<br />
<br />
“Please, sit, my friend,” Mathias urged. “More brandy?”<br />
<br />
“No more drinks. Tell me about the job.”<br />
<br />
“It’s very simple. One target, living in High Town.”<br />
<br />
Caim’s hand hovered over his glass, resting still on the table. “Inside the city?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, you’ve done local work before.”<br />
<br />
“Who is he?”<br />
<br />
“A retired general, a real hard case from what I’ve heard. He was responsible for some big massacre during the war. Up in Eregoth, I believe. You’re from those parts, aren’t you?”<br />
<br />
Caim considered the carpet between his feet as a jumble of old feelings knocked around in his chest. “What makes you say that?”<br />
<br />
“Nothing much. You just have a northernish look about you.”<br />
<br />
Caim looked Mathias in the eye. “I told you before. I’m from the western territories.”<br />
<br />
But he wasn’t. As far as he could piece together from his shambled memories, his family had hailed from Eregoth, one of several border states that had once been part of the Nimean Empire. But it was a past he didn’t want known, for no better reason than it was personal.<br />
<br />
“Oh yes.” Mathias winked. “I forgot.”<br />
<br />
“Go on.”<br />
<br />
“Well, what makes me nervous is the timing. This job has to be done in two days.”<br />
<br />
“Impossible. You know I don’t do rush jobs. Go find some desperate sailor deep in his cups and slip him a few silvers.”<br />
<br />
“Caim, this client isn’t someone to disappoint, if you get my meaning. It must be done quickly, and with no mistakes. That’s why I need you. You’re the only one I can trust with a job like this on such short notice.”<br />
<br />
“I want to help you, Mathias, but there are too many things to consider. I spent weeks stalking Reinard before I took him down. I would need time to study the target, learn his habits and movements. After that I would have to do the same for his family and bodyguards.”<br />
<br />
Mathias bounced off the chaise and waddled to a rolltop desk against the wall. He held up a bundle of papers bound together with a red cord.<br />
<br />
“I have all the particulars here: daily itinerary, personal security details, interior layouts, everything you’ll need. He lives with a young daughter, but don’t worry about her. The mother’s dead. He doesn’t keep any guards, just a broken-down manservant who sleeps like a log. It will be the easiest money you ever made.”<br />
<br />
Mathias held out the bundle, but Caim didn’t take it.<br />
<br />
“Who gathered all this?”<br />
<br />
“A mutual friend. I vouch for its authenticity.”<br />
<br />
“It was Ral, wasn’t it?”<br />
<br />
“Why does it matter? Just take it.”<br />
<br />
“Damn it, Mat. He took the assignment and then dumped it back in your lap when a better job came up, didn’t he? No wonder he was so chummy. No thanks. I’m passing.”<br />
<br />
Caim took two steps toward the door. Mathias reached out as if to grasp his sleeve, but drew his hand back before it made contact. Caim stopped as the bundle of papers was thrust in front of him.<br />
<br />
“It’s his loss!” Mathias said. “In and out, and a thousand soldats in your pocket.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t clean up other people’s messes.”<br />
<br />
Mathias cocked his head to the right. “My friend, that’s precisely what you do. Please, don’t make me beg. I’ll throw in half of my end.<br />
<br />
That’s another three hundred in gold. Then you can take a nice, long sabbatical.”<br />
<br />
Caim sighed as Mathias shook the papers at him. He couldn’t do it, couldn’t let down the man who had given him a chance as a young man on the run, a vagabond with no contacts or vouchers.<br />
<br />
Caim took the papers. “All right. I’ll do it. But hang on to your fee. You’re getting old, Mathias. You should think about retiring soon.”<br />
<br />
Mathias gathered his robe around him as he returned to his chair. “I don’t know what I’d do with myself if I ever retired.”<br />
<br />
“Buy a big villa somewhere nice. Live the life of a country gentleman.”<br />
<br />
Mathias laughed so hard he almost choked on his wine. “Can you see me as a country squire? I wouldn’t last a month. Good fortune, my friend. I’ll see you when the job is done.”<br />
<br />
Caim tucked the papers into his tunic. The bundle made a lump under his arm opposite the money pouch. He crossed to the door, but hesitated with his hand on the knob.<br />
<br />
“By the way, what was the other job Ral took?”<br />
<br />
“What?” Mathias twisted around to look at Caim over his shoulder. “Oh, something in Belastire. He’ll be bow-legged and as dusty as a beggar by the time he returns.”<br />
<br />
“Belastire? It’ll be cold on the Midland coast this time of year.”<br />
<br />
Mathias nodded. “Cold and bitter. The blackheart should feel right at home, eh?”<br />
<br />
Caim thought back to the conversation on the stairs. Hadn’t Ral mentioned a warmer clime? What game was he playing?<br />
<br />
Caim checked his knives out of habit as he departed the Three Maids. Revelers accompanied by torchbearers filled the benighted streets, pushed out the door by exhausted tavernkeeps. The sun would be rising in another couple hours. He would have liked to go back home and crawl into bed for a couple sennights, but he had work to do. Two days wasn’t enough time.<br />
<br />
Tucking the pouch and the papers deeper into the confines of his shirt, Caim pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. The broadcloth wrapped around him in a warm cocoon as he delved back into the Gutters.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER THREE<br />
<br />
Josey had nearly worked herself into another bout of tears by the time her carriage stopped outside Anastasia’s house on Torvelli Square. She couldn’t get the conversation with Father out of her head. She’d never felt so helpless in her life. The only thing she could think of was to talk to her best friend about it. Between the two of them, she was certain they would find a solution.<br />
<br />
An elderly footman ushered her inside. Handing her mink-lined cloak to one of the house girls, its silky hairs stiff from the chill, Josey filed away the changing seasons as another potential argument against her departure. Now was hardly the best time of year to undertake a sea journey. That wouldn’t be enough on its own to sway her father, but when she talked to him again, she intended to have an arsenal of reasons why it would be best for her to stay in Othir, at least until after Yeartide.<br />
<br />
“Josey!” Anastasia’s cheery voice echoed through the atrium as she hurried down a winding staircase. They clasped hands and kissed each other’s cheeks.<br />
<br />
Anastasia stepped back to arm’s length, concern written across her pretty features. With her honey gold hair, coiffed in wavy marcels, and her ocean blue eyes, Anastasia was a true beauty, doll-like in her perfection. Next to her, Josey had always felt homely, her complexion too pale, her hair too dark and stringy. <br />
<br />
“What’s the matter, Josey? Come in here.”<br />
<br />
Josey let herself be pulled into an adjourning parlor room and seated alone on a padded settee with tiny green leaves embroidered on the cushions.<br />
<br />
Anastasia kissed her again. “Something’s wrong, Josey. Tell me.”<br />
<br />
Josey told Anastasia about her father’s decision to make her leave. By the time she finished, she was sobbing openly.<br />
<br />
Anastasia lent Josey a handkerchief to wipe her face. “That’s simply not fair. Othir is as safe as a nursery. Forgive me, Josey, but I fear your father may be feeling his dotage. You know how old men get. They see specters in every dark corner.”<br />
<br />
“I know. But no matter what I said, he refused to budge on the matter. I don’t know what to do. That’s why I came to see you. You have to help me, ’Stasia. I cannot miss your wedding. It will be the happiest day of my life!”<br />
<br />
“You have to be there!” Anastasia looked on the verge of tears herself.<br />
<br />
Before her friend started to cry, Josey rushed on. “I will be. I promise. But I need a plan. Father won’t give in to emotional pleas.”<br />
<br />
“You could stay here with me. With the armsmen we keep, this house is virtually a fortress at night.”<br />
<br />
“I’m not sure Father would feel that’s adequate. My safety has always been his chief concern. There were bodyguards everywhere when we lived in Navarre. Sometimes I could hardly breathe.”<br />
<br />
“But the westlands are abysmally lawless. This is Othir. It’s entirely different.”<br />
<br />
“I know. I just don’t know how to convince Father of that.”<br />
<br />
Anastasia squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry, darling. We’ll find a way.” She reached up and touched the pendant hanging from Josey’s neck. “I’ve always admired this piece, Josey. It’s beautiful. So simple, but elegant.”<br />
<br />
Josey lifted the pendant, an antique-style key in gold. “Father gave it to me for my fourteenth birthday. It’s my favorite piece of jewelry.”<br />
<br />
“It must be. You never wear anything else.”<br />
<br />
“Father says it’s the key to his heart, that it would give me everything I ever wanted and more. Sometimes he’s the sweetest, kindest man in the world. I wish he would see reason and let me stay here until your wedding day.”<br />
<br />
“It will work out, Josey. I know! We’ll go to the basilica and say a prayer for it.”<br />
<br />
Josey dabbed her face with the silken cloth. “I don’t think praying is going to solve anything, ’Stasia. This is serious.” Then she saw the stricken look in her friend’s eyes. “Forgive me. I’m just overwrought. Yes, let’s go.”<br />
<br />
As they made to leave, a servant appeared at the entrance of the room. “Pardon, milady. A visitor has arrived for you.”<br />
<br />
“Let him in.” Anastasia turned to Josey. “That must be Markus. He’s been coming by every day since the engagement was announced. He’s such a romantic. Do you like him, Josey? Tell me true.”<br />
<br />
Josey hugged her friend and laughed, glad to speak of something else. “He’s a dream come to life. You two will be as happy together as a pair of larks.”<br />
<br />
Anastasia giggled. “Markus is nearly a knight, you know. Well, very nearly. Second prefect is a worthy rank, and soon he’ll be promoted. I’m sure of it.”<br />
<br />
They turned to the clack of hard boot steps as a tall shape filled the doorway.<br />
<br />
“Markus!” Anastasia ran to him and they embraced beside a bronze bust of one of her famous ancestors. Then, as if noticing Josey for the first time, the couple parted and came over to sit with her.<br />
<br />
“I adore this uniform on you, Markus.” Anastasia brushed her fingers over the circle emblazoned on his jacket. “It makes you look so handsome.”<br />
<br />
He smiled, revealing rows of large, white teeth. He was starting to grow a mustache and sideburns in the military style. Josey squinted, trying to imagine him with a full face of hair. Something in the way he looked at her made her uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
“What do you think?” Markus asked. “Does it make me look dashing?”<br />
<br />
Josey dropped her gaze to the floor. “Yes, quite dashing.”<br />
<br />
Anastasia patted Josey’s knee. “Poor darling. Her father’s sending her away, and we’ve been trying to concoct a scheme to keep her here.”<br />
<br />
“Sending you away?” The note of real concern in his voice touched Josey. Perhaps he was as genteel as a knight after all. “Whatever for?”<br />
<br />
Josey folded the loaned handkerchief into a square on her lap. “He says it isn’t safe here in the city anymore. He says people have been assaulted, even killed.”<br />
<br />
“How horrible!” Anastasia said. “Is it true, Markus?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, it’s not for you to worry about. The Low Towners are forever at each other’s throats, like a pack of curs fighting over a bone. That’s where most of the attacks have taken place.”<br />
<br />
“Most?” Josey asked. “But not all?”<br />
<br />
He brushed at the breast of his uniform, dismissing the idea. “Some times a matter spills over across the Processional, but it’s nothing to trouble you ladies. You’re as safe as lambs in their pens.”<br />
<br />
Josey wasn’t sure she liked his description, but she put on a smile for her friend. “I hope I can convince Father of that.”<br />
<br />
“I have a wonderful idea,” Anastasia said. “Markus could escort you home and tell your father just what he said to us. I’m sure it will comfort him, coming from an officer of the Sacred Brotherhood.”<br />
<br />
“Would you?” Josey asked. She didn’t like the idea of riding home with him, but she was willing to make sacrifices if it meant being allowed to stay in Othir.<br />
<br />
Markus stood with a shake of his head. “I’m sorry, but I cannot. I have business to attend this afternoon. I just stopped by to remind Ana of our date for a late supper this evening.”<br />
<br />
Anastasia rose to embrace her betrothed. “I didn’t forget. I’m having Maya make something special for us.”<br />
<br />
“Excellent.” He bowed to Josey and gave Anastasia a peck on the cheek. “I shall see you later.”<br />
<br />
Josey remained behind as Anastasia walked Markus out. They whispered their good-byes out of eyesight. Several minutes passed before Anastasia returned to the sitting room. Her eyes danced with joy as she plopped down beside Josey.<br />
<br />
“Isn’t he magnificent? I’m so happy, Josey. I feel like a cloud floating high above the world.”<br />
<br />
Josey hugged her friend and murmured the words Anastasia wanted to hear, but she couldn’t shake the suspicion that things might not remain so congenial between husband and wife after the wedding day. Markus was polite enough in mixed company, but his cavalier manner didn’t suit her friend, who was the picture of a perfect lady, refined and unassuming. Yet Josey kept those fears to herself. Anastasia was clearly smitten, and there was no use spoiling her good feelings. And some part of Josey wondered if she wasn’t just the tiniest bit jealous that her friend had found such love while she was still alone, chaste and waiting for the man of her dreams.<br />
<br />
Josey listened with half an ear while Anastasia chattered about visits to the seamstress, finding the right orchestra, and all the other minutiae required to plan a wedding. She nodded at the appropriate places and made polite noises, but the greater part of her thoughts were on her own problems. Her ship departed in two days. The matter couldn’t wait until she devised an airtight argument. She had to speak with Father tonight.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~</strong></div><br />
Ral watched them from the shadow of the Emperor Tronieger monument in the center of Torvelli Square, the strapping officer of the Guard and the young daughter of a respected statesman, as they shared a deep kiss on the front steps of the manse. The prefect’s hands slid down to clutch his lady’s <br />
slender bottom in broad daylight. Ral smiled to himself. The wagging tongues of High Town would wear themselves ragged. <br />
<br />
Ral didn’t understand the fascination with romance. Oh, he enjoyed the company of women aplenty, the sorts who were attracted to a man of means, and the girl was a pretty slip of a thing, but he didn’t have time for anything that outlasted the night. Perhaps after his work was done he would take the time to find a companion, someone suitable for an upcoming man with a bright future.<br />
<br />
Finally, Markus bid the girl farewell. Ral followed him, keeping his distance. The prefect, in his scarlet coat, was simplicity itself to shadow through the broad streets of Opuline Hill.<br />
<br />
The sights and sounds of High Town did not distract Ral. Growing up, he had sampled every type of excess that wealth could buy. His life might have turned out differently if his father had lived to a ripe old age, but fate had intervened in the form of news off an Arnossi trader bound for Illmyn. Both of his father’s ships had disappeared in a storm off the Hvekish coast, lost with all hands. In an instant, he went from a boy to a man of means. He sold his interest in the shipping company and bought a big house. He found new friends in the sons and daughters of the city’s finest families, hosted lavish parties that went on for days, and lived the life he’d always wanted. Until the money ran out. Then the loan sharks started circling. He borrowed to keep up his sumptuous lifestyle, and then again when that ran out. By the time he realized the depths to which he had sunk, it was too late.<br />
<br />
They found him dead drunk in the back room of a Low Town dive. Five big men with cold eyes propped him on a rickety chair and lashed his hands behind his back.<br />
“Mr. Ayes isn’t happy with you,” the biggest of them rumbled. “You been spending his money like it’s piss, and he ain’t seen nothing back in more than a fortnight.”<br />
<br />
Another thug flashed a long-bladed dirk, so big it was almost a sword. “Not a smart thing to do, making Mr. Ayes angry. Now we come to collect.”<br />
<br />
They cut off his clothes and shook them out, but Ral laughed at them, too drunk to care whether or not they killed him.<br />
<br />
The man with the big knife rested the point between Ral’s legs and whispered in his ear. “If you can’t pay, friend, then you have to make good some other way.”<br />
<br />
They gave him a simple choice: lose his skin or do one small favor for his debtor in exchange for wiping the books clean.<br />
<br />
All he had to do was kill a man.<br />
<br />
That job changed him forever—the apprehension as he stole into another man’s home in the dead of night; the tingling of his skin as he found his quarry abed, oblivious to the doom looming over him; the euphoria that surged through his veins when he drove the knife into that soft belly. His victim’s death moan had been a paean of rebirth, setting him free from all the constraints that had been ingrained into him by a society blind to his needs, apathetic to his desires. That night he had stepped into a world where the power over life and death rested in his hands. He had never looked back.<br />
<br />
Ral followed Markus through the old Forum with its afternoon strollers out for their constitutional amid the rows of vendor stalls. The shouts of hawkers punctuated the susurrus of the crowd. Markus strode straight ahead like a charging bull, never glancing to his left or right. Complete obliviousness to the city’s dangers, great or small—that was the prerogative of being an officer in the Sacred Brotherhood. Markus’s stride didn’t even slow to the sound of cracking whips.<br />
<br />
Ral slipped behind a stack of cloth bundles as a band of men in bloodred robes burst from a merchant’s tent. Their scourges split the air as they flung the object of their ire onto the dirty pavestones. The man was dressed in the tattered remains of a fine suit. His round cap rolled in the dust. The Flagellants surrounded him—Ral could now see he was the owner of the stall—and proceeded to beat him without mercy while a scrawny woman, possibly his wife, wrung her hands and sobbed in the tent’s doorway. What had been the man’s crime? Ral couldn’t guess. It could be almost anything, from cheating his customers to failing to display a proper image of the prelate within his establishment. Like the Brotherhood, the Flagellants were a law unto themselves, answerable only<br />
to the Church.<br />
<br />
Ral skirted the scene. He found his quarry on the other side of the forum and followed him into the Temple District. A few streets farther, Markus entered the Pantheon, a converted pagan temple. While the prefect entered the stolid building through the front via a set of immense bronze doors, Ral went around to a side entrance located in a constricted alley. Avoiding piles of garbage, he wedged the tip of a dagger into the keyhole and snapped the simple lock. The door accessed a crowded storage room. The deep tones of choral singing filtered through another door on the other side of the room. Ral took a moment to rummage through a varnished wardrobe, selected a white cassock, and pulled the garment over his head. A red stole stitched with circles in gold thread went around his shoulders. Smiling, he slipped through another door.<br />
<br />
The Pantheon’s circular walls bowed over the main worship chamber of the church. The building was an architectural masterpiece, dating back to imperial days when Nimea had enjoyed an era of magnificence unmatched by any nation in the world. The ceiling was open to the sky, another sign of its pagan origins. Prayer mats formed orderly rows on the floor’s red-and-white checkerboard flagstones where priests and trains of dutiful acolytes walked among the faithful, swinging pots of smoking incense and murmuring prayers.<br />
<br />
Ral pulled up the robe’s hood and slipped behind a gaggle of old women in black shawls, their eyes downcast as they walked the stations around the perimeter of the great chamber. He slowed as they stopped before a hollow niche inhabited by the gray stone statue of some saint. So pious, they made him sick as they whispered fervent prayers over clenched fists. If any of them dared to raise their eyes high enough, they would see the marble base of the original statue that had adorned this shrine before<br />
the advent of the True Faith. Perhaps it had been the likeness of Torim, the Storm Lord, or Hisu, the patron goddess of love and nauseating poetry. Whichever god it had been, the name had been chiseled out of the pedestal as if it never existed. Ral smirked under the hood. It was a shame people couldn’t be eliminated as easily as deities. His life would be a lot simpler.<br />
<br />
As the old women shuffled off to the next station, Ral sank down beside Markus, who knelt in the last row, his large hands clasped together. <br />
Markus barely looked over. “No, thank you, Father. I’m—” Then the prefect caught sight of his face. “Ral? God’s breath! Isn’t anything sacred to you?”<br />
<br />
Ral glanced at the massive sculpture of the Prophet of the True Faith. Lord Phebus, the Light of the World, towered above the high fane at the end of the nave. The statue was clothed as a simple peasant, but glittering rays chased in real gold radiated from his bloodied brow.<br />
<br />
“I’ll worry about God when he starts worrying about me.”<br />
<br />
Markus looked around. “Someone could see you.”<br />
<br />
Ral had already checked during his approach. No other worshippers were in earshot.<br />
<br />
“Not likely. These bleaters are too busy worrying about saving their souls. With all this praying, you’d think there was an army of Shadowmen banging at the gates, eh? Or old King Mithrax riding from the grave with his Hellion Host.”<br />
<br />
The scabbard of Markus’s sword scraped on the floor as he shifted position. He moved easily for a big man. “What are you doing here?”<br />
<br />
“Just making a last-minute visit. I take it you haven’t heard the latest?”<br />
<br />
“No, what?”<br />
<br />
“Your grand master has been arrested.”<br />
<br />
“On what charges?”<br />
<br />
Ral put his hands together as if to pray. “Treason. Sedition. It doesn’t matter. Our benefactor will make sure he never sees the light of day again.”<br />
<br />
“I never thought—”<br />
<br />
“That’s your problem, Markus. You never think. But now that the head of your order is out of the way, the way is clear for new blood to rise to the top. Especially for those with allies on the Elector Council.”<br />
<br />
Markus sucked in a deep breath.<br />
<br />
Ral let him ponder that idea for a moment. “Is everything in place?” <br />
<br />
“Sure. The plan is simple. I’ll get there a candlemark after sundown. The signal is—”<br />
<br />
“How many men are you bringing?”<br />
<br />
Markus glanced over, a flicker of annoyance passing across his pale blue eyes. “I got a few boys on board, just like you told me. A couple of them owe me money, and another guy is bucking for a promotion so he can move out of his mother’s house. They’ll do what I say without question.”<br />
<br />
“And afterward?”<br />
<br />
“They’ll keep their mouths shut.”<br />
<br />
“They’d better. Our patron doesn’t forgive mistakes. If one of these men talks—”<br />
<br />
“I know what I’m doing.”<br />
<br />
Ral leaned into Markus, hooking his right arm through the man’s elbow. His left hand pressed into the prefect’s side, the needle-sharp point of the stiletto held in his palm pricking through both surcoat and mail to touch the flesh beneath. Markus huffed and strained to remain still.<br />
<br />
Ral pitched his voice to a low whisper. “Listen to me. You don’t have to worry about the boss. If you mess this up, I’ll peel your worthless hide from your back myself. Do you understand me?”<br />
<br />
Markus nodded. With a hiss, Ral released him. The stiletto vanished into his sleeve. Markus clutched his side and stared at the floor with his lips compressed into a tight line. The prefect wasn’t used to being manhandled, but he had to understand and fast. Both their lives hung in the balance if he messed up.<br />
<br />
“Get more men,” Ral said.<br />
<br />
The prefect rolled his shoulders. “I’ll need more money for that. God’s soldiers don’t come cheap.”<br />
<br />
Ral wanted to laugh, but he didn’t let it touch his features. He reached under his cassock. Markus stiffened, one hand dropping to the hilt of his sword, but he relaxed as Ral passed him a heavy pouch.<br />
<br />
Ral stood up and rested his hand on the prefect’s beefy shoulder, the very picture of a pastor counseling one of his flock.<br />
<br />
“Remember, Markus. No mistakes. No loose ends.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry. We’ll arrive just a moment too late to save them.”<br />
<br />
“And their killer?”<br />
<br />
An evil grin dimmed the prefect’s chiseled features. “Sadly, he’ll be killed trying to elude capture.”<br />
<br />
“Perfect.”<br />
<br />
A moment later, Ral was out the side door and down the alley, heading toward home. He had his own preparations to finalize. A horse was waiting for him at the west gate, reserved by the offices of the Elector Council, with remounts at every roadhouse and garrison station between here and his target. Tomorrow night, the culmination of his dearest ambition would begin. He would rise higher than his departed father had ever dreamed. Soon people would call him the most feared man in the city, and<br />
in the process he would eliminate his only true rival to that title.<br />
<br />
Tomorrow night Caim, Low Town’s favorite son, would die.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER FOUR<br />
<br />
Kit showed up while Caim stalked down a narrow lane between two dark rows of houses. One moment he was strolling by himself, eyes darting back and forth in search of hidden threats, and the next she was walking beside him. Or rather, she levitated beside him; her dainty feet never touched the cobbles. <br />
<br />
“Welcome back, Kit. Off gallivanting again?”<br />
<br />
“I <em>don’t</em> gallivant, darling. I might flit about sometimes, or stop to watch a caterpillar weave its cocoon. Did you know they could do that? It’s amazing! But I never, ever gallivant. As it happens, I was looking after <em>your</em> interests.”<br />
<br />
Kit flipped over so she was hovering upside down in front of him. In defiance of gravity, her long silver hair stayed curled around her slim shoulders. Her violet eyes twinkled mischievously as she regarded him, and it was all he could do not to chuckle.<br />
<br />
Those eyes were his first memory, peeking over the side of his cradle when he was a babe. She claimed to have been searching for a little brother and stopped when she found him, but with Kit the truth was often difficult to ascertain. Whether real or imaginary, she was without a doubt the most interesting person he’d ever met. She’d been everywhere, it seemed, and seen everything there was to see. She could fly so high into the sky he lost sight of her, or dive into the earth and return with tales of the secret lives of voles and worms. After he’d lost his parents, Kit had become his family. She was all he had left. If there were times, such as during his turbulent adolescence, when he tried to drive<br />
everyone else away, Kit always did as she chose. No one could sway her once her mind was made up. In that they were much alike, to his constant chagrin.<br />
<br />
“Forgive me.” He turned onto one of Low Town’s many crooked, unnamed streets. “What interests are those, dear lady?” <br />
<br />
A pair of drunken merchant marines passed him in the gathering dusk. If they thought him odd for talking to himself, they said nothing, but murmured behind his back once they were past. Caim chewed on the inside of his cheek and ignored the itch in his palms.<br />
<br />
“Hubert’s on his way to the Vine,” Kit announced.<br />
<br />
He touched the heavy lump of the purse inside his shirt. “Good. That’s where I’m headed now.”<br />
<br />
“And he’s not alone.”<br />
<br />
“Is that right?”<br />
<br />
“He’s got a whole gang of roughnecks with him. Most of them look like vagrants, but a couple might be able to handle themselves. One is the disinherited son of a former pimp.”<br />
<br />
Caim smiled to himself. Ever since he had taken up his current lifestyle, Kit had endeavored to be useful to him. He had to admit she was an exemplary judge of people’s capabilities. She could look at someone and spy out what they hid from others. That ability had saved his ass too many times to count. The trouble was that Kit couldn’t be relied upon to always be where he needed her. She had a disturbing penchant for leaving him for days at a time and, even more unnerving, showing up with<br />
knowledge of things she shouldn’t know, things no one could know.<br />
<br />
“Should I be worried?”<br />
<br />
Kit shrugged, turning around to stand right side up again. “He seems in a good mood. I’d say he was scheming something, but not against you.”<br />
<br />
“Then I have nothing to worry about.”<br />
<br />
The faded sign of the Blue Vine appeared around the next corner. One of the oldest wineshops in Othir, it had been owned by innumerable men and women over the centuries, passed down through families and sold off dozens of times. The current owner was Mistress Clarice Henninger, but everyone called her Mother.<br />
<br />
She spotted Caim as soon as he pushed through the rickety door. “Caim!”<br />
<br />
He held open his arms as she waddled across the common room to wrap him in a fierce embrace. A thick-waisted woman on the hoary side of fifty, she was every bit as saucy as a wench half her size and a third her age. The money purse tucked in his shirt ground against her massive breasts.<br />
<br />
“Happy to see me, sweetling?”<br />
<br />
Kit giggled while Caim disentangled himself as politely as he could manage. The Vine’s taproom was dim, its windows tightly shuttered. The only light came from small oil lamps suspended from the ceiling and two stone-lined hearths. Thick shadows clung to the brick-and-niter walls. It was crowded this night. Most of the Vine’s patrons were teamsters and porters, large men who made their living by the sweat of their brows and the strength of their backs. A few nodded his way. He returned the gestures with a slight dip of his chin.<br />
<br />
“Want your usual table?” she asked.<br />
<br />
Mother led him to a dim corner, swaying her wide hips with every step. Caim took off his cloak and slid around the table to sit with his back to the walls. From here he could see the front entrance as well as the door to the back room where the wine casks were stored.<br />
<br />
“A cup of Golden Swan?”<br />
<br />
Caim started to nod, but stopped himself. “No, I’ll have the Asper tonight. In a clean cup, please.”<br />
<br />
She laughed, grasping her breasts with both hands. “Of course, sweetling. All Mother’s cups are clean!”<br />
<br />
A pair of oldsters in shabby coats cackled over their stones game as she waddled back to the bar to fetch his order. Kit perched on the table and regarded Caim. Her large eyes glowed like purple jewels in the dim lighting.<br />
<br />
“So you took another job?”<br />
<br />
He flipped a penny to the wench who delivered his wine. She flashed him a welcoming smile, but he returned only a curt nod and leaned back into the shadows.<br />
<br />
As the girl flounced off, he said, “You were eavesdropping?”<br />
<br />
Kit twirled a wisp of silver hair in her fingers. “Mathias talks so loud I could hear him half the world away. I thought you were going to take a break.”<br />
<br />
Caim took a sip and sighed as the cool wine trickled down his throat. “I was, but sometimes people need killing. That’s what I do.”<br />
<br />
“It didn’t sound like you were too eager to take it.”<br />
<br />
“Well, I couldn’t stand to see Mathias beg.”<br />
<br />
“You never say no to him.”<br />
<br />
“He’s a friend.”<br />
<br />
Kit reclined on an elbow, staring up at him. “A friend wouldn’t put you in danger for a few pieces of gilt.” <br />
<br />
Before he could think of an answer, the door opened and a young man entered. The newcomer’s colorless eyes swept around the room as the door closed behind him. He was alone.<br />
<br />
“Hubert’s here,” Caim said. “Why don’t you go keep an eye on his roughnecks?”<br />
<br />
Kit hopped off the table with a spin. “It doesn’t sound like you need my help. Maybe I’ll go watch fireflies instead.”<br />
<br />
“As you like.”<br />
<br />
As Kit vanished through a wall, Caim focused on the youth crossing the wineshop. Hubert Claudius Vassili looked every inch the foppish noble’s son he was, from the floppy, wide-brimmed hat cocked roguishly on his head, complete with a ridiculous sky blue feather, to his fine cavalry boots, polished to a high shine. A slender rapier hung on his left hip, more of a showpiece than a real weapon.<br />
<br />
Hubert stopped in front of Caim’s table with a hand on his sharp, smooth-shaven chin as if considering where to sit, and said, “The blue falcon hunts at midnight.”<br />
<br />
Caim kicked out a chair. “Sit down before you draw more attention to us than you already have.”<br />
<br />
Hubert dropped his hat on the table and called for a cup of the house best before he settled into the seat. “Ah, Caim. It’s good to see you again, but you don’t have to worry. Every man in here is an ardent supporter of the Azure Hawks. They’ve pledged not to give up the fight until the theocrats are dragged down from their gilded thrones.” <br />
<br />
Caim glanced around the taproom. “Gathering quite the little army, aren’t you? I thought I saw a few tinmen shaking in their armor tonight.” <br />
<br />
Hubert spread his hands as if delivering a benediction. “The people clamor for freedom, Caim. I am but a humble servant of the public welfare.”<br />
<br />
Caim tossed the purse onto the table. “And regular infusions of my money don’t hurt either, do they?”<br />
<br />
Hubert covered the purse with his hat and pulled it into his lap. “Not at all. The Hawks are very grateful for your generosity. It’s donors such as yourself that fuel the engines of our progress.”<br />
<br />
Caim couldn’t resist. “You’ve had progress?”<br />
<br />
Hubert didn’t notice the jibe. “Naturally. Our forces are marshalling. Plans are being laid. One day we will free the people from the Council’s tyranny. One day very soon!”<br />
<br />
He glanced around as if expecting a chorus to support his claim. A few tired drinkers nodded in his direction, but most simply stared into the depths of their cups.<br />
<br />
“Well.” Hubert turned back to Caim. “It will happen. And we’ll have you to thank.”<br />
<br />
“So why did you feel the need to bring a gang of strong-arms to our meeting?”<br />
<br />
“How—?” Hubert gave him a weak smile. “I should have known. They are merely waiting outside for my protection. The streets are dangerous these days. I would never dream of insulting a man of your<br />
talents.”<br />
<br />
“Good. I wouldn’t want any misunderstandings, Hubert. I respect what you do, misguided though it may be at times. However, this will be my last donation for a time.”<br />
<br />
“But we need your support now more than ever. Things are heating up. We’re staging demonstrations nearly every day.”<br />
<br />
“I understand, but I’ve got my own problems.”<br />
<br />
“But—”<br />
<br />
“Look, Hubert. I’m taking some time away from the contract game.”<br />
<br />
“How long?”<br />
<br />
“I’m not sure. A couple months, maybe more.”<br />
<br />
Hubert leaned across the table. “Then come join us. We could use a man like you.”<br />
<br />
Caim pushed his empty cup away. “No offense, but I’m not interested. Your little enterprise has been interesting, and anything that keeps the bigwigs off balance is good for business, but you don’t need my help to burn down storefronts and break into warehouses. You’ve got plenty of supporters now, right?”<br />
<br />
“Sure, I can assemble disgruntled clerks and teamsters by the hundredhead, but I need fighters, Caim. Sooner or later we’re going to have to face the Reds head-on. We’ll need you.”<br />
<br />
Caim sat back deeper in the shadows. He knew what Hubert wanted: another pawn to push around in his game of politics. But Caim wasn’t interested. He had his own battles to fight. Giving to the Hawks had seemed like a good idea, a way of giving back some of the blood money he earned to help a worthy cause. Now he could see it had been a mistake. <br />
<br />
“No, Hubert. I agree things in Othir are getting worse, but I’m not a revolutionary. I work alone.”<br />
<br />
Hubert put his hat back on as he stood up. “The offer’s always open if you change your mind.”<br />
<br />
“I won’t.”<br />
<br />
Hubert started to say something when Kit phased through his body. He didn’t notice, of course, but the look on Caim’s face must have been unexpected, because he stopped talking in midsyllable.<br />
<br />
“Caim!” Kit blurted. “You’ve got comp—”<br />
<br />
The front door crashed open. Conversations stopped as a crowd of City Watchmen filed into the common room. Without preamble they pulled patrons out of their chairs and pushed them against the walls. A stout man with an oily beard made a break for it. He got to the threshold of the front door before a soldier cracked open the back of his head with a baton. Everyone jumped to their feet. Even the old codgers stood up and shook their bony fists, but by then the watchmen were circulating through the room, seizing anyone who made a commotion.<br />
<br />
“Your men couldn’t bother to give us a warning?” Caim hissed.<br />
<br />
“Some of them are new.” Hubert inched away from the table. “And others may have outstanding warrants on their heads.”<br />
<br />
“Wonderful.”<br />
<br />
Caim surveyed the room, measuring distances in his head. “Go for the back room. There’s a delivery entrance that leads into the alley.”<br />
<br />
“Good idea.”<br />
<br />
Hubert headed in that direction, but not fast enough. Most of the soldiers were patting down patrons, but a pair and their commander moved to intercept Hubert. Their mail armor rattled as the tinmen ran to catch the young noble.<br />
<br />
Caim rose from his seat and reached behind his back. If he drew his knives, men would die. That would draw unneeded attention to himself and the Vine, but he didn’t want to see Hubert apprehended either. True, he was a rabble-rouser and a hypocritical demagogue, but his heart was in the right place. Most of the time.<br />
<br />
Caim let his hands fall to his sides and closed his eyes.<br />
<br />
He only meant to release a tiny bit of his powers, just enough to conceal Hubert’s escape behind a curtain of darkness, but the taproom’s shadows swarmed around him like moths to a flame. The Vine was drenched in an impenetrable gloom so thick Caim couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of him, which was fine by him, but there was more. As he slid along the wall, a cool sensation prickled at the nape of his neck. <br />
<br />
The hairs on his arms stood on end and his mouth went bone dry as <em>something</em> entered the taproom. He couldn’t see it. Whatever it was, it blended perfectly into the darkness. But he felt it moving through the room like a monstrous beast.<br />
<br />
Shouts and curses filled the wineshop. Glassware shattered. Shutters banged open as someone scrambled out a window, or was tossed out. Throaty mews whimpered from the direction of the bar.<br />
<br />
Caim sidled over to the back door and found it ajar. With one hand on the hilt of a knife, he ducked out, and left the taproom cloaked in darkness like a covered grave.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
CHAPTER FIVE<br />
<br />
Caim leaned into the Vine’s dingy whitewashed siding as the sickness washed over him. Black lines wriggled before his vision. His stomach tried to squirm up into his throat, but he fought it back with firm determination.<br />
<br />
Twilight’s veil was drawing over the city. Angry shouts resounded from inside the wineshop. What had happened inside? His talent had never reacted like that before. It usually took every ounce of concentration he could muster to conjure a few flimsy shadows, but this time they had flocked to him like flies to a corpse, and whatever else had emerged from the dark . . .<br />
<br />
He took a deep breath.<br />
<br />
Stars filled the darkening sky. No light shone from the new moon, hidden as it crossed the heavens. A Shadow’s moon, a night when the shades from the Other Side could cross over to walk in the mortal world. He shivered. The sweat under his shirt had turned cool. Gods-damned legends. Stories to spook little children. <em>Then why are you shaking?</em><br />
<br />
Caim pushed off from the wall and started walking. The alley was empty. Kit, as usual, was nowhere to be found. Neither was Hubert, which was a good thing. <em>Maybe he’s learning.</em><br />
<br />
Kit appeared over his head. Her violet eyes shone in the twilight gloom. “Fun night, huh?”<br />
<br />
“Sure. A little more fun like that and I could be enjoying the comforts of a pinewood box.”<br />
<br />
Caim glanced over his shoulder. An uneasy sensation had settled in the pit of his stomach, the feeling he was being watched. He tried to pass it off as his imagination, but it refused to leave. There was something in the air tonight. The city, never a safe haven for fools, seethed with barely restrained frustrations. Like a boiling kettle, the steam needed to vent before it exploded.<br />
<br />
“Oh, Caim. I’d never let that happen to you.”<br />
<br />
“I’m serious. Something happened in there.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah. You finally let loose. Felt good, didn’t it?”<br />
<br />
He shook his head. It had been terrifying to feel that much power flowing through him, out of his control. “That’s never happened before, Kit. Why this time?”<br />
<br />
Her dainty shoulders lifted in a shrug. “How should I know?”<br />
<br />
“You’re supposed to know about this kind of stuff, but you never tell me anything useful.”<br />
<br />
“Well then, since I’m not useful . . .” With a mighty huff, she disappeared in a shower of silver and green sparkles.<br />
<br />
Caim sighed and continued on his trek.<br />
<br />
Three streets later, he turned a corner and stopped before a monolithic structure. The dark mass of the city workhouse eclipsed the skyline like a colossal black glacier. The building had been closed years ago, but the specter of its presence hung over Low Town like a bad dream. Among the Church’s first creations in the chaotic years following its rise to power, the workhouse had been heralded as an opportunity for the unlawful to repay their crimes against society. Thousands of convicts had entered its iron doors. Most of them died before their sentences were complete, killed by either sadistic guards or the miserable conditions. A mournful wail rose from behind the weather-stripped walls. It was the wind, no doubt, blowing through a broken window, but it was unnerving nonetheless.<br />
<br />
Caim picked up his pace to put the unpleasant edifice behind him. He wished now he’d been smart enough to turn down Mathias’s offer. With the city in such a state of turmoil, the last thing he wanted was to risk his neck doing Ral’s secondhand work. This job had better be the easiest he’d ever done or someone was going to regret it. Hell, he regretted it already. <br />
<br />
A pair of painted slatterns called out to Caim with promises of earthly delight from the mouth of a cramped alley and flicked their chins at him as he walked past. The street branched ahead of him, both lanes crowded with street-level shops and sprawling tenement houses above. Murmurs of life filtered through their faded, whitewashed walls, sounds of laughter and tears, talking voices and wordless moans. The city was a living creature, hungry and untamed beneath its thin veneer of civilization.<br />
<br />
In the kaleidoscopic days and weeks after the attack on his family’s home, he and Kit had trekked across the countryside like hunted animals, moving at night, holing up during the daylight hours under whatever cover they could find. He ate whatever came his way—wild berries and nuts, the few animals he was able to catch or knock down with well-aimed stones, stolen goods from the occasional farmstead. Chicken coops were his favorite. He became adept at pilfering eggs without disturbing the<br />
sleeping hens.<br />
<br />
The towering gray walls of Liovard, the first real city they encountered on their flight south, amazed him. They stretched up to the sky several times the height of a grown man. Beyond those mighty stone ramparts protruded the peaks and turrets of more buildings than he had ever seen in one place. His father’s estate, including the fields and bordering woods, would have been lost inside the walls, and Liovard, as he would learn later, was petite compared to the great cities of the south: Mecantia, Navarre, and Othir were all larger and more diverse. Yet, walking through the iron-shod gates was like passing into another world, a realm of noise and commotion where everyone hustled on vital business. <em>Business </em>was a new word he’d learned in Liovard. Just the sound of it quickened his pulse. That’s what he wanted to be reckoned: a man of business.<br />
<br />
It didn’t take him long to learn about the messy underside of city life. For a young boy with no family and no prospects, the city was a frightening place. He slept in alleyways and inside piles of garbage. A stack of discarded shipping crates provided shelter for almost a month until the street cleaners took them away. He moved from place to place, always hungry, always searching for his next meal. If he thought he was safe from harm amid the bustle of the city, he learned better the first time he encountered a street gang. He’d been rooting through a barrel of half-rotten apples when cutting laughter erupted behind him. A dozen older boys surrounded him. As a lesson for trespassing on their territory, they beat him bloody. After that, he learned to avoid them. He snuck like a rat through the slums with Kit, his only companion.<br />
<br />
But if the street toughs were dangerous, the tinmen were worse. The bully boys only wanted your food and whatever you had hidden in your pocket, and maybe to rough you up a bit. Yet when he was dragged into a backstreet by two looming guardsmen after stealing a pomegranate from a vendor’s stall, he knew with sinking certainty they wanted more than to thrash him. While Kit swatted ineffectually at their heads, one held him fast while the other ripped open the laces of his breeches. He<br />
struggled, but they cuffed him hard across the face, knocking him to the ground. A white-hot ember of rage burned in the pit of Caim’s chest as he remembered that day, but also a thread of euphoria, for no sooner had the guards begun pawing at him with their big, clumsy hands than something erupted inside him. At first, he thought he was going to be sick as the feeling bubbled in his belly. Then, the colors of the waning day faded before his eyes. As he was turned onto his stomach, a new spectrum of<br />
shades emerged from the bleak drabness of the alley, blacks and grays of marvelous, vivid tones. While his tears mingled with the dust beneath his face, something extraordinary happened.<br />
<br />
A shadow moved.<br />
<br />
He had seen shadows move before, when a cloud passed in front of the sun or the object casting the shadow shifted, but this shadow stretched out from under a heap of broken boards like a black tentacle of tar. Strangely, he wasn’t afraid as it oozed toward him, and the guardsmen were too distracted to notice. One held him down by the shoulders while the other tugged down his pants. Caim didn’t recoil; he wanted to know what it was, this crawling, amorphous darkness. When it touched his hand, he yelped as a sensation of burning cold slid over his skin, like dipping his hand into a bucket of ice water. More shadows crawled into the light, swarming over the alleyway until Caim couldn’t see the ground under his nose. The guardsman holding him down shouted and let up enough for Caim to wriggle. He kicked and scratched. When a hand seized his face, he bit down hard until warm, salty blood filled his mouth. A strangled scream pierced the gloom, and then he was free.<br />
<br />
He didn’t hesitate, but hitched his breeches around his waist and ran. Fear thundered in his ears with every stride.<br />
<br />
Caim let the memory fade away as he turned his footsteps toward High Town. Two things were clear to him. First, he couldn’t risk using his powers until he figured out what had happened at the Vine. He<br />
couldn’t risk losing control. And second, he would avoid contact with the Azure Hawks for the time being. Those decisions made him feel a little better. Then he remembered that he’d left his cloak back in the taproom. <br />
<br />
Caim hunched his shoulders against the night’s chill and hurried through the umbrageous byways of the city. Yet the haunting images of his past followed him down every street.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/ShadowsSon.html">Shadow's Son</a> © <a href="http://www.jonsprunk.com/">Jon Sprunk</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.komarckart.com/">Michael Komarck</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgofIrBPccoaKBP4Xexr2nkqHJ3enCx6KzsMSkB4sdWoeg2BrbnP3afpcAeEucyaZdzM3x73R7i6qJKq9z2aoFpeAgx_zVlesRuDCl1SE4hapRHQ561Y6zlvwsTb1SNxyyaqQfWE87vi-o/s1600/(c)+Jenny+Sprunk+DSCF2142.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ox="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgofIrBPccoaKBP4Xexr2nkqHJ3enCx6KzsMSkB4sdWoeg2BrbnP3afpcAeEucyaZdzM3x73R7i6qJKq9z2aoFpeAgx_zVlesRuDCl1SE4hapRHQ561Y6zlvwsTb1SNxyyaqQfWE87vi-o/s320/(c)+Jenny+Sprunk+DSCF2142.JPG" /></a></div>Jon Sprunk lives in central Pennsylvania with his wife and son. When not writing, he enjoys travel, collecting medieval and ancient weaponry, and pro football. Shadow's Son is his first novel. Visit him online at <a href="http://www.jonsprunk.com/">http://www.jonsprunk.com/</a>, on Facebook (Jon Sprunk), or Twitter @jsprunk70.</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-69736385410014851162010-08-04T14:21:00.001-05:002010-08-04T14:46:40.673-05:00The Dervish House by Ian McDonald<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUvSdttvGx-IAzCGDcm6DsmzssUDsVB2bUUxUNfRGANbtuXF6WetYPZYdUmEvKGQ8NAjNZzURsc1SHxKIM7V9o0eNRscNo566MUuv5c9-sHZCrxT0AXlJZZnI87RycZGZXU4a9hNg12c/s1600/dervishhouse.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" bx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUvSdttvGx-IAzCGDcm6DsmzssUDsVB2bUUxUNfRGANbtuXF6WetYPZYdUmEvKGQ8NAjNZzURsc1SHxKIM7V9o0eNRscNo566MUuv5c9-sHZCrxT0AXlJZZnI87RycZGZXU4a9hNg12c/s320/dervishhouse.jpg" /></a></div><em><strong>Ian McDonald is...</strong></em><br />
<br />
“One of the most interesting and accomplished science fiction writers of this latter-day era… the Frank Herbert, William Gibson, or arguably even Thomas Pynchon of the early twenty-first century.” –<em><strong>Asimov’s Science Fiction</strong></em><br />
<br />
“…a writer who is becoming one of the best SF novelists of our time.” –<em><strong>Washington Post</strong></em><br />
<br />
“The field is very lucky to have Ian McDonald working in it.” –<strong>Cory Doctorow</strong>, BoingBoing.net<br />
<br />
<em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DervishHouse.html">The Dervish House</a></strong></em> <strong>is </strong>seven days, six characters, three interconnected story strands, one central common core –the eponymous dervish house, a character in itself—that pins all these players together in a weave of intrigue, conflict, drama and a ticking clock of a thriller. Read the excerpt below for a taste...<br />
<br />
Also from <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/">Pyr</a> by <a href="http://ianmcdonald.livejournal.com/">Ian McDonald</a>:<br />
<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/AresExpress.html">Ares Express</a></em><br />
<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/brasyl.html">Brasyl</a></em><br />
<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/CyberabadDays.html">Cyberabad Days</a></em><br />
<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DesolationRoad.html">Desolation Road</a></em><br />
<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/riverofgods.html">River of Gods</a></em><br />
<em></em><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Dervish House</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;"> Ian McDonald</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<br />
Turkish Spelling and Pronunciation: <br />
In 1928 the new Republic adopted a modified Roman alphabet of twenty-nine letters.<br />
Consonants are similar to English, except that<br />
<em>c</em> is pronounced <em>j</em> as in <em>j</em>oy<br />
<em>ç</em> is <em>ch</em> as in <em>ch</em>air<br />
<em>ğ</em> is an almost-silent aspirate that lengthens the preceding vowel<br />
<em>j</em> is pronounced as in the French <em>je</em><br />
<em>ş</em> is <em>sh</em> as in <em>sh</em>ip<br />
<em>h</em> and <em>y</em> are pronounced as consonants, as in <em>h</em>it and <em>y</em>ellow<br />
<br />
Vowels:<br />
<em>a</em> as if f<em>a</em>ther<br />
<em>e</em> as in p<em>e</em>n<br />
<em>i</em> as in p<em>i</em>n (the capital also carries the dot, which I have not reproduced here<br />
for typographic reasons)<br />
<em>ı</em> has no direct sound in English, the closest being an unrounded vowel<br />
sound similar to <em>er</em><br />
<em>o</em> as in p<em>o</em>t<br />
<em>ö</em> as in the German, or the French <em>eu</em><br />
<em>u</em> as in r<em>oo</em>m<br />
<em>ü</em> as in the German, or the English f<em>ew</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>MONDAY</strong><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<strong>1</strong><br />
<br />
The white bird climbs above the city of Istanbul: a stork, riding the rising air in a spiral of black-tipped wings. A flare of the feathers; it wheels on the exhalations of twenty million people, one among ten thousand that have followed the invisible terrain of thermals fromAfrica to Europe, gliding one to<br />
the next, rising up from Lake Victoria and the Rift Valley, following the silver line of the Nile, across the Sinai and the Lebanon to the great quadrilateral of Asia Minor. There the migration splits. Some head north to the shores of the Black Sea, some east to Lake Van and the foothills of Ararat; but the greatest part flies west, across Anatolia to the glitter of the Bosphorus and beyond it, the breeding grounds of the Balkans and Central Europe. In the autumn the stork will return to the wintering grounds in Africa, a round-trip of twenty thousand kilometres. There has been a city on this strait for twenty-seven centuries, but the storks have been crossing twice a year for time only held by the memory of God.<br />
<br />
High above Üsküdar, storks peel off from the top of the thermal, wingtips spread wide, feeling the air. In twos and threes they glide down towards the quays and mosques of Sultanahmet and Beyoğlu. There is a mathematics to the wheeling flock, a complex beauty spun out of simple impulses and algorithms. As the stork spills out from the top of the gyre its sense for heat tells it there is something different this migration, an added strength to the uplift of warm air. Beneath its wings the city stifles under an unseasonable heat wave.<br />
<br />
It is after the hour of prayer but not yet the hour of money. Istanbul, Queen of Cities, wakes with a shout. There is a brassy top note to the early traffic, the shrill of gas engines. Midnotes from taxis and dolmuşes, the trams on their lines and tunnels, the trains in their deeper diggings through the fault zones beneath the Bosphorus. From the strait comes the bass thrum of heavy shipping: bulk carriers piled high with containers edge past Russian liquid gas carriers like floating mosques, pressure domes fully charged from the terminals at Odessa and Supsa. The throb of marine engines is the heartbeat of Istanbul. Between them scurry the opportunistic ferries. Sirens and horns, call and response; motors reversing and burbling as they warp into Eminönü’s quays. Gulls’ cries; always gulls. Dirty, conniving gulls. No one builds platforms on their chimneys for gulls to nest. Gulls are never blessings. The clatter of roller shutters, the bang of van doors. Morning radio, pop and talk. Much talk, of football. Champions’ League quarterfinal. Galatasaray/London Arsenal. The pundits are in full flow from a hundred thousand balconies and rooftop terraces. Pop, football and heat. This is the tenth day of the heat wave. Thirty-three degrees in April, at seven in the morning. Unthinkable. The climate-pundits speculate on whether it could be another Big Heat of ’22 when eight thousand people died in Istanbul alone. That was insane heat. Now some witty phone-in caller is fusing the two punditries together and speculating that if it flattens those pale English footballers, can that be such a bad thing?<br />
<br />
Over all, through all, the chorus of air conditioners. A box in a window, a vent on a wall, an array of fans on a rooftop—one by one they spin up, stirring the heat into ever-greater gyres of warm air. The city exhales a subtle breath of spirals within spirals, updrafts and microthermals.<br />
<br />
The stork’s pinfeathers feel out the rising airscape. The city’s waste heat may save it those few wingbeats it needs to carry it to the next thermal or away from the stooping eagle. Its life is an unconscious algebra, balancing equations between energy opportunity and energy expenditure. Black feather tips flutter as it slides down across the rooftops. The explosion goes almost unnoticed in the greater roar of the waking city. A flat crack. Then silence. The first voices are the pigeons and gulls, bursting upwards in clattering wings and shrieks. Then come the voices of the machines: car alarms, security alarms, personal alarms, the hip-hop of call tones. Last come the human shrieks and cries.<br />
<br />
The tram has come to a halt in the centre of Necatibey Cadessi a few metres away from the halt. The bomb detonated at the rear; the blue roof is bellied up, the windows and doors blown out. A little smoke leaks from the back end of the second car. The passengers have made their own escapes onto the street and now mill around uncertain about what to do. Some sit on the ground, knees pulled up, deep in shock. Pedestrians have come to help. Some offer coats or jackets; some are making cell calls, hands trying to describe the scene; more stand around feeling the need to offer help but uncertain what to do. Most stand back, watching and feeling guilty for watching.Afew without guilt shoot video on their cepteps. The news channels pay money for citizen journalism.<br />
<br />
The tram driver goes from group to group asking, Is everyone there? Is anyone missing? Are they all right? And they are all right. She doesn’t know what to do either. No one knows. Now come the sirens. Here are people who will know what to do. Lights flash beyond the press of bodies; the crowd parts. It’s hard to tell victims from helpers; the blood is smeared everywhere. Necatibey Cadessi is a street of global banks and insurance combines, but the ripples from the blast have spread out along the lines of the light rail system. Station by station, street by street, tram by stalled tram, Beyoğlu seizes up. Everyone knows about the bombing now.<br />
<br />
From the eye of a white stork riding in from the Bosphorus the paralysis can be seen spreading out from the heart of the outrage. Its eye has no comprehension of these things; the sirens are just another unremarkable note in the clamour of a waking city. City and stork occupy overlapping but discrete universes. Its descent carries it over the bombed-out tram surrounded by flashing blue lights and into the heel of the next thermal. Then the rising heat plumes of Istanbul spiral the stork up in a wheel of white bodies and black wings, up above the eastern suburbs, up and onwards into Thrace.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">~~~</div><br />
Necdet sees the woman’s head explode. He was only trying to avoid more direct, challenging eye contact with the young woman with the good cheekbones and the red-highlighted hair who had caught him looking in her direction three times. He’s not staring at her. He’s not a creep. Necdet let his eyes unfocus and wander mildly across the passengers, wedged so politely together. This is a new tram at a new time: twenty minutes earlier, but the connections get him into work less than an hour late, thus not upsetting Mustafa, who hates having to act the boss. So: his tram-mates. The boy and girl in their oldfashioned high-button blue school uniforms and white collars that Necdet thought they didn’t make kids wear anymore. They carried OhJeeWah Gumi backpacks and played insatiably with their ceptep phones. The gum-chewing man staring out the window, his mastication amplified by his superb moustache. Beside him the smart man of business and fashion scanning the sports news on his ceptep. That purple velvet suit must be that new nanofabric that is cool in summer, warm in winter, and changes from silk to velvet at a touch. The woman with the curl of silver hair straying over her brow from under her headscarf and the look of distant rue on her face. She frees her right hand from the crowd, lifts it to touch the jewel at her throat. And detonates her head.<br />
<br />
The sound of an exploding skull is a deep bass boom that sucks every other sound into itself so that for a moment after the blast there is only a very pure silence.<br />
<br />
Then the silence shatters into screaming. The tram jerks to a halt; the momentum almost throws Necdet from his feet. To go down in this panic is to die. Necdet can’t reach a handrail and steadies himself against the bodies of roaring passengers. The crowd surges against the still-locked doors. Their bodies hold the headless woman upright. The man in the fine velvet suit shrieks in an insane, high-pitched voice. One side of his purple jacket is dark glossy red. Necdet feels wet on his face, but he can’t raise a hand to test it or wipe it away. The doors sigh open. The press is so tight Necdet fears his ribs will splinter. Then he spills out onto the street with no sense of direction or purpose, of anything except a need not to be on the tram.<br />
<br />
The tram driver moves from group to group asking, Is anyone missing, is anyone hurt? There is nothing really she can do, but she is a representative of IETT so she must do something, and she hands out moist wipes from a pull-tube in her large green handbag. Necdet admires that her tram has been suicide-attacked but she’s remembered to bring her bag with her.<br />
<br />
The wet wipe smells of lemon. To Necdet the folded cone of white is the purest, most holy thing he has ever seen.<br />
<br />
“Please move away from the tram,” the driver is saying as Necdet marvels at the little square of cool citrus white. “There may be another explosion.” She wears an expensive Hermes headscarf. It links Necdet to that other scarf he saw around the woman’s head. In the final moment he had seen the wistful regret on her face resolve as if she had received a revelation into some long-rooted family woe. She had smiled. Then she had touched the jewel at her throat.<br />
<br />
Passengers crouch around the schoolchildren, trying to ease their crying with words of comfort, offered hugs. <em>Can’t you see the blood on your faces is scaring them all the more?</em> Necdet thinks. He remembers the warm, wet spray into his own face. He looks at the wet wipe balled up in his hand. It isn’t red. It wasn’t blood.<br />
<br />
Everyone looks up at the beat of a helicopter. It slides in over the rooftops, defying talk and phone calls. Now sirens lift above the morning traffic noise. It will be the police before the ambulances. Necdet doesn’t want to be near police. They will ask him questions he doesn’t want to answer. He has ID; everyone has ID. The police would scan it. They would read the carbon debit Necdet used to buy his ticket that morning and a cash withdrawal the night before and another carbon debit that previous evening at eighteen thirty. They might ask about the cash. It’s grey but not yet illegal.<br />
<br />
And is this your current address?<br />
<br />
No, I’m staying at the old Adem Dede dervish house in Eskiköy. With my brother.<br />
<br />
Who is your brother? Here they might find they had more questions.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">~~~</div><br />
Ismet had replaced the padlock with the new one he had bought. Bright brass, a golden medal on a chain. The tekke’s shuttered wooden balconies overhung the steps; this was a private, shadowed entrance, behind the industrial steel bins of the Fethi Bey tea shop, miasmic and greasy with the ventings from the kitchen extractor fans. The door was of old Ottoman wood, grey and cracked from centuries of summer heat and winter damp, elaborately worked with tulip and rose motifs. A door into mysteries. It opened onto gloom and the acidic reek of pigeon. Necdet stepped gingerly into the enfolding dark. Light fell in slats through the closed and barred window shutters.<br />
<br />
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Necdet whispered. It was an architecture that commanded whispers. “People live here.”<br />
<br />
“Some old Greek and a married couple at the front. And an office girl on her own. And that shop for blasphemies in the old semahane. We’ll sort that eventually. This end’s been left to rot for fifty years, just falling apart.” Ismet stood proudly in the centre of the floor. It was his already. “That’s the crime here. God wants this to be what it was before. This is where we’ll bring the brothers. Look at this.”<br />
<br />
Ismet flung open a matching door across the dusty room. Colour flooded in and more than colour: a growing verdure of clipped box; the perfume of sunwarmed wood; the burble of water and the sudden song of birds. Ismet might have opened a door onto Paradise.<br />
<br />
The garden was six paces across, but it contained a universe. A shady cloister walled with floral Iznik tiles ran around the courtyard affording shade or shelter in every season. The fountain was a single piece of sun-warmed marble, releasing water over a lily-lip into a basin. A jewel-bright lizard started from repose in the sun and dashed along the scalloped rim to vanish into the shade beneath. Herbaceous plants grew tall and cool in small box-bordered beds. The soil was dark and rich as chocolate. A green place. House martins dipped and bobbed along the eaves of the wooden gallery directly above the cloister. Their shrills filled the air. A copy of yesterday’s Cumhuriyet lay sunyellowing on a marble bench.<br />
<br />
“It’s all still here,” Ismet said. “The redevelopers never got around to the back. The old cells are being used for storage—we’ll clear them out.”<br />
<br />
“Someone looks after this,” Necdet said. He could imagine himself here. He would come in the evening, when the light would fall over that roof onto that bench in a single pane of sun. He could sit and smoke blow. It would be a good place for a smoke.<br />
<br />
“We’ll be all right here,” Ismet said, looking around at the overhanging balconies, the little rectangle of blue sky. “I’ll look after you.”<br />
<br />
Necdet can’t let the security police know he has moved into the dervish house that his brother intends to make the home of the secret Islamic order to which he belongs. The police think secret Islamic orders blow up trams. And if they look at his old address, they’ll see what he did, back there in Başibüyük, and why Ismet Hasgüler took his brother of the flesh under his care. No, he just wants to go to work quietly and soberly. No, no police thank you.<br />
<br />
The air above the still-smoking tram thickens in buzzing, insect motion. Swarmbots. The gnat-sized devices can lock together into different forms for different purposes; above Necatibey Cadessi they coalesce like raindrops into scene-of-crime drones. The sparrow-sized robots flit on humming fans among the milling pigeons, sampling the air for chemical tracers, reading movement logs from vehicles and personal cepteps, imaging the crime scene, seeking out survivors and photographing their blood-smeared, smoke-stained faces.<br />
<br />
Necdet drifts to the periphery of the mill of survivors, haphazard enough to elude the darting drones. Two women in green paramed coveralls crouch with the tram driver. She’s shaking and crying now. She says something about the head. She saw it wedged up under the roof behind the grab-bars, looking down at her. Necdet has heard that about suicide bombers. The head just goes up into the air. They find them in trees, electric poles, wedged under eaves, caught up in shop signs.<br />
<br />
Necdet subtly merges with the circle of onlookers, presses gently through them towards the open street. “Excuse me, excuse me.” But there is this one guy, this big guy in a outsize white T-shirt, right in front of him, with his hand up to the ceptep curled over his eye; a gesture that these days means: <em>I am videoing you.</em> Necdet tries to cover his face with his hand, but the big man moves backwards, videoing and videoing and videoing. Maybe he is thinking, <em>This is a couple of hundred euro on the news</em>; maybe, <em>I can post this online.</em> Maybe he just thinks his friends will be impressed. But he is in Necdet’s way, and Necdet can hear the thrum of swarmbot engines behind him like soulsucking mosquitoes.<br />
<br />
“Out of my way!” He pushes at the big man with his two hands, knocks him backwards, and again. The big man’s mouth is open, but when Necdet hears the voice say his name, it is a woman’s voice speaking directly behind him.<br />
<br />
He turns. The head hovers at his eye level. It’s her. The woman who left her head in the roof of the tram. The same scarf, the same wisp of grey hair coiling from beneath it, the same sad, apologetic smile.A cone of light beams from her severed neck, golden light. She opens her mouth to speak again.<br />
<br />
Necdet’s shoulder charge sends the big man reeling. “Hey!” he shouts. The surveillance drones rise up, fizzing at the edges as they prepare to dissolve and re-form into a new configuration. Then they firm back into their surveillance modes and swoop around the flashing blue lights that have only now made it through the citywide traffic jam rippling out from the destruction of Tram 157.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">~~~</div><br />
In the hushed world of Can Durukan the explosion is a small, soft clap. His world is the five streets along which he is driven to the special school, the seven streets and one highway to the mall, the square in front of the Adem Dede tekke, the corridors and balconies, the rooms and rooftops and hidden courtyards of the dervish house in which he lives. Within this world, lived at the level of a whisper, he knows all the noises intimately. This is new, other.<br />
<br />
Can looks up from the flat screen in his lap. He turns his head from side to side. Can has developed an almost supernatural skill at judging the distance and location of the nanosounds that are allowed to enter his world. He is as acute and weird as a bat. Two, three blocks to the south. Probably Necatibey Cadessi. The living room has a sliver of a view down onto Necatibey Cadessi, and if he squeezes right into the corner of the rooftop terrace that leans out over Vermilion-Maker Lane, a silver shard of the Bosphorus.<br />
<br />
His mother is busy in the kitchen with the yoghurt and sunflower-seed breakfast she believes will help Can’s heart.<br />
<br />
<em>No running!</em> she signs. Şekure Durukan has many faces she can put on to augment the hands. This is furious-tired-of-telling-you-concerned face. <br />
<br />
“It’s a bomb!” Can shouts. Can refuses to sign. There is nothing wrong with his hearing. It’s his heart. And there is nothing wrong with his mum’s hearing either. Can often forgets that.<br />
<br />
Can has found that his greatest power in the first-floor apartment is to turn his back. Half a world can be ignored. His mother will not dare shout. A single shout can kill.<br />
<br />
Long QT syndrome. A dry, form-filler’s name. It should be called cardioshock; sheer heart attack; like a title you would give to the kind of freak-show TV documentary featuring a nine-year-old boy with a bizarre and potentially fatal heart condition. Patterns of chaos flow across Can’s heart. Potassium and sodium ions clash in wave fronts and graphs of fractal beauty like black tulips. A shock can disrupt those synchronised electrical pulses. A single loud sudden noise is enough to stop his heart. The shriek of a car alarm, the clang of a shutter dropping, the sudden blare of a muezzin or a popped party balloon could kill Can Durukan. So Şekure and Osman have devised a tight, muffling world for him.<br />
<br />
Odysseus, ancient sailor of these narrow seas, plugged the ears of his crew with wax to resist the killing song of the Sirens. Jason, a subtler seafarer, drowned them out with the lyre-work of Orpheus. Can’s earplugs are inspired by both those heroes. They are smart polymer woven with nanocircuitry. They exactly fit the contours of his ears. They don’t drown out reality. They take it, invert it, phase shift it and feed it back so that it almost precisely cancels itself. Almost. Total precision would be deafness. A whisper of the world steals into Can’s ears.<br />
<br />
Once a month his mother removes the clever coiled little plugs to clean out the earwax. It’s a fraught half hour, carried out in a specially converted closet at the centre of the apartment into which Can and his mother fit like seeds into a pomegranate. It is padded to recording studio standards, but Can’s mother still starts and widens her eyes at every muted thud or rattle that transmits itself through the old timbers of the tekke. This is the time she speaks to him, in the softest whisper. For half an hour a month Can hears his mother’s voice as she tends to his ear canals with medicated cotton buds.<br />
<br />
The day the sounds went away is the earliest memory Can trusts. He was four years old. The white hospital was square and modern, with much glass, and seemed to flash in the sun. It was a very good hospital, his father said. Expensive, his mother said, and says still, when she reminds Can of the health insurance that keeps them in this dilapidated old tekke in a faded part of town. Can had known it must be expensive because it stood by the water. Beyond the window of the ear clinic was a great ship loaded high with containers, closer and bigger than any moving thing he had seen before. He sat on the disposable sanitised sheet and swung his legs and watched more and more ship come into view until it filled the window. They were looking at his ears.<br />
<br />
“How does that feel?” his father said. Can turned his head one way, then the other, sensing out the new presences in his ears.<br />
<br />
“There will be some discomfort for a few days,” the ear doctor said. On came the great ship, huge as an island. “You will need to clean them once a month. The electronics are very robust; you’ve no need to worry about<br />
<br />
breaking them. Shall we try it? Can . . .”And his hearing had flown away, every sound in the world driven to the farthest edge of the universe. The doctor, his father, became like tiny birds. His own name turned into a whisper. The ship sailed past silently. Can thinks of it as the ship that took all the sound in the world away. When he goes up onto the terrace to peer down steep Vermilion-Maker Lane at that tiny vee of Bosphorus, he still hopes that he will see the ship that brings it back again, a different sound in each container.<br />
<br />
His mother had made aşure that night. A special pudding for a special time. Aşure was a big treat in her family; they were from the east. Can had heard the story of Noah’s pudding, how it was made up from the seven things left uneaten when the ark came to rest onArarat, many times from his mother and his grandmother when she was still alive, but that night Mum and Dad told it with their hands. High on sugar and twitching at the discomfort in his ears, Can had not been able to sleep. Airbursts flashed onto the Barney Bugs wallpaper. He had flung open the shutters. The sky was exploding. Fireworks blossomed above Istanbul, dropping silver rain. Arcs of yellow and blue stabbed up into the night. Bronze fire cascaded silver from starbursts of gold so high Can craned hard to see them. All in a hush of muffled thuds and whispered whooshes, detonations muted as a bread crust breaking. The near silence made the lights in the sky brighter and stranger than anything Can had ever seen. The world might be ending up there, the seven heavens cracking apart and raining fire onto the earth.Mortars lobbed their payloads higher and higher. Can heard them as pops on the edge of his perceptions, like pea pods releasing their seeds. Now luminous armies battled above the solar water heaters and satellite dishes of Istanbul: battalions of blazing janissaries armed with flash and artillery against swift, sparkling sipahis who galloped from one side of the sky to the other in a whisper. Above, a little lower than the stars themselves, the angels of the seven heavens warred with the angels of the seven hells, and for one searing moment the sky blazed as if the light of every star since the birth of the universe had arrived at once over Istanbul. Can felt its silver warmth on his upturned face.<br />
<br />
As the light faded, so the city returned the gift. From the Bosphorus first, the soft flute of a ship’s siren, building in a chorus of tankers, ferries, hydrofoils and water taxis. The streets replied with tram hooters, delicate as prayers, <br />
then the brassier, flatter blare of car and truck horns. Can leaned forward, trying to hear. He thought he could make out dance music spilling from the Adem Dede teahouse. He could feel its beat, a pulse against his own. Beneath it all, human voices, cheering and whooping, laughing and singing, shouting nothing at all except for the joy of making pure noise; all bleeding into an aggregate of <em>crowd</em>. To Can it was a hiss of static. The people packed the streets and the little square with its two teahouses and one minimarket. Many carried little flags; more had bottles. Can could not believe so many people lived in tight, enclosedAdem Dede Square. Cars sounded their horns in exuberance and flew flags from their windows; the white-on-red crescent and star of Turkey, and a blue flag bearing a circle of golden stars. Those same flags were in the hands of the people in Adem Dede Square: crescents and stars. Can watched a young bare-chested man swing along the balcony of the konak on the corner of Vermilion-Maker and Stolen Chicken Lanes, his country’s crescent and star painted white on his red face. The crescent made him look as if he were smiling. He turned to wave down to the crowd. They waved up. He pretended he was going to jump down. Can held his breath. It was the same height as his viewpoint. The crowd now seemed to be cheering the man on. Suddenly he let go. Can always remembers him falling through the streetlight, his skin shiny with sweat, his face eternally grinning in the face of gravity. He vanished into the crowd. Can never learned what happened to him.<br />
<br />
He only knew his mother was beside him by the touch on his arm.<br />
<br />
“What’s happening?” Can asked. His own voice seemed small as a lizard’s. His mother knelt beside him, pressed her lips close to his ear. When she spoke he felt its tickle as much as heard the words.<br />
<br />
“Can, love, we’re Europeans now.”<br />
<br />
Can runs through the hushed corridors of the dervish house. He knows all the best vantages onto the world beyond. Can runs up to the terrace. It smells of hot wooden patio furniture and desiccating geraniums. Can lifts himself up on his tiptoes to peer over the wobbly wooden shuttering. His parents will condemn him to a world of whispers, but they never think that he might just fall off the terrace. He sees smoke rising up between the circling storks. There is not very much of it. Necatibey Cadessi, as he thought. Then his fingers grip white on the age-silvered balcony rail. The air above Adem Dede Square fills with grainy motion, as if from a dust dervish or a plague of locusts. The flock of insect-sized swarmbots barrels through the middle air, flowing around streetlights and electricity cables, channelled into a stream of furious motion by the close-pressing apartment blocks. Can beats his fists on the rail in excitement. Every nine-year-old-boy loves bots. Right in front of his eyes they turn in midair and pour down steep Vermilion-Maker Lane like water over rocks. In the open sky above the rooftops, the dancing-hall of storks, the wind would overwhelm their nanofan engines and disperse them like dust. Can finds flocks within flocking, flows within flows, strange currents, fractal forms, selforganising entities. Mr. Ferentinou has taught him to see the blood beneath the world’s skin: the simple rules of the very small that build into the seeming complexity of the great.<br />
<br />
“Monkey Monkey Monkey!” Can Durukan shouts as the tail end of the swarm vanishes around the twists and staggers of Vermilion-Maker Lane. “After them!”<br />
<br />
A stir in the still-shadowed corners of the dining room, a scurrying in the intricate woodwork of the terrace screen. From nooks and crevices the machines come clambering, scampering, rolling. Tumbling balls fuse into scuttling crabs; many-limbed climbing things link and twist into arms. Piece by piece the disparate units self-assemble until the last section locks and a plastic monkey leaps up onto the rail, clinging with hands and feet and prehensile tail, and turns its sensor-dotted head on its master.<br />
<br />
Can pulls the smartsilk computer out of his pocket, unfolds it and opens the haptic field. He flexes a finger. The robot monkey twitches alert. Can points, and it is off in a thrilling spring up onto the power line and a hand-and-foot gallop over the street to a coiled jump to the balcony opposite where the Georgian woman insists on hanging her underwear out to dry. Up up and up again. Can sees it perched on a parapet, a shadow against the sky.<br />
<br />
Can’s toy BitBots cannot compare to the police machines that flocked past him, but Mr. Ferentinou has pushed them far beyond the manufacturer’s specifications. Can clicks the Monkey icon. Bird, Snake, Rat and Monkey are the four manifestations of his BitBots. Between their four elements, they create the city that is barred to Can. He sees through their eyes. Can giggles in excitement as he falls in behind Monkey’s many sensors and careers across rooftops, weaves through mazes of aerial and cable, leaps the thrilling gaps between close-shouldering konaks. By map and the point-of-view camera link Can steers his eyes down through the roofs of crumbling old Eskiköy. Only a boy could do it. He is part superhero, part extreme-sports free-runner, part cityracer, part ninja. It is the greatest computer game. Parapet to parapet to pole to hands feet and tail scramble down the plastic sign of theAllianz Insurance. Can Durukan arrives at the scene of the blast, clinging upside down to the bottom of a giant letter I.<br />
<br />
It disappoints. It is not a very big explosion. There are ambulances and fire trucks and police cars with flashing lights and news crews arriving by the minute, but the tram hardly looks damaged at all. Can scans the crowd. Faces cameras faces cameras. A face he recognises among the onlookers; that ratfaced guy who has moved into the empty quarter of the old house; the one with the brother who is some kind of street-judge. At first Can resented their squatting. The deserted rooms filled with dust and pigeon shit were his undiscovered country. He had thought of sending Monkey—the only one of his agents with hands—to move things around, pretend to be the ghosts of old unquiet dervishes. But Rat-Face might lay a trap for mischievous Monkey and capture him before he could split into his separate units and slip away. Observation was the game.<br />
<br />
Rat-Face is trying to slip away. He almost starts a fight with a big man in a white shirt.What is he doing now? He looks as if he’s seen a ghost. Now he’s barging his way through the crowd. If the scene-of-crime bots see him they’ll needle him with their stings. That would be exciting. Can still wishes ill on Rat-Face and his kadı brother, defilers of his sacred space. No, he’s made it out.<br />
<br />
Monkey uncurls his tail from the stanchion and prepares to swing back up onto the rooftops. Nothing decent to post online. Then Can notices a glint of movement in the Commerzbank sign on the building to the left. There’s something in there. Monkey swivels his sensor-studded head and zooms in. Click click click. Movement, a glitter of plastic. Then the disparate motions come together. Can holds his breath. He looks close up into the face of another manyeyed monkey bot.And as he stares the head turns, the smart-plastic camera eyes bulge and focus and stare back.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">~~~</div><br />
The confectioner Lefteres used to say that all the Greeks in Eskiköy could fit into one tea shop. Now they fit around one table.<br />
“Here he comes now.”<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou waddles across Adem Dede Square. <em>Square</em> is too grand for what is little more than a widening of the street that runs past the Mevlevi tekke. An old public fountain stands in a niche in a wall, dry longer than any Eskiköy resident’s memory. Room enough for two çayhanes, Aydin’s kiosk on the corner of Stolen Chicken Lane with its spectacular display of Russian porn clothes-pegged to the bottom of the canopy, Arslan’s NanoMart, the Improving Bookstore that specialises in colourful publications for elementary school children, and That Woman’s Art Shop. Aydin the pornographer takes his morning tea in the Fethi Bey çayhane, on the insalubrious staircase on the derelict side of the dervish house. Adem Dede Square is small enough for two tea shops but big enough for rivalries.<br />
<br />
“Hot,” Georgios Ferentinou wheezes. He fans himself with a laminated menu. The order is immutable as the stones of Aghia Sofia, but Bülent the çayhane owner always lays out the menus. That cheap bastard Aykut across the square never takes that trouble. “Again.” He sweats freely. Georgios Ferentinou is a fat bulb of a man, balanced on tiny dancer’s feet so that he seems permanently on the teeter-totter. None of his çayhane compatriots have ever seen him in anything lesser than the high-waisted trousers and the white linen jacket he wears today. A hat perhaps, in the highest of summers, like the terrible ’22, and when the sun gets low and shines through the slot of sky along Vermilion-Maker Lane, a pair of tiny, round dark glasses that turn his eyes into two black raisins. On those increasingly rare days when snow falls in Adem Dede Square and the tea drinkers are driven inside behind breath-steamed windows, a red woollen scarf and a great black coat like some old Crimean trader from the last days of the empire.<br />
<br />
“Hot as hell,” Constantin agrees. “Already.”<br />
<br />
“We’ve saved you a leg.” Lefteres pushes a plate across the small café table. Upon it a marzipan lamb lies slaughtered, its body broken. Delicate red frosting crosses adorn its grainy, yellow flanks. For over one hundred and fifty years since they arrived from Salonika into the capital of the empire, the family Lefteres made marzipan Paschal lambs for the Christians of Constantinople. Lambs for Easter; crystallised fruit made lustrous with edible gold and silver foils, the gifts of the Magi, for Christmas. Muslims were not ignored by the Lefteres: sesame candies and brittle sugary confection dishes for Sweet Bayram at the end of Ramazan. Boxes of special lokum and pistachio brittles for wedding calls and sweetening conversations. Family Lefteres sold the shop before the end of the century, but the last of the line still makes his sweet lambs and jewelled fruit, his Bayram delights for Adem Dede Square. And he is still known as Lefteres the Confectioner.<br />
<br />
Bülent sets down Georgios Ferentinou’s invariable glass of apple tea.<br />
<br />
“Here’s the Father now,” he says. The last of the four old Greeks of Adem<br />
<br />
Dede Square sits down heavily in his ordained seat beside Georgios Ferentinou.<br />
<br />
“God save all here.” Father Ioannis stretches his legs painfully out under the table. “God damn my knees.”Without a word Bülent sets down the Father’s linden tea in its delicate tulip glass. Father Ioannis takes a sip. “Ah. Great. Bastards have been at it again.”<br />
<br />
“What are they doing this time?” Bülent asks.<br />
<br />
“Someone slopped a bucket of piss into the porch. Half of it ran under the door into the sanctuary. I’ve been up since four trying to scrub it all off. Bastards.What I can’t figure is, they must have been storing it up for days. All those teenagers standing around pissing in a bucket and giggling to themselves.”<br />
<br />
“This is assuming,” says the most quiet of the Adem Dede çayhane divan, “that it was actually human urine. It could have been some large animal.”<br />
<br />
“In the middle of this city?” says Father Ioannis. “Anyway, God and His Mother preserve me, I know what human piss smells like.”<br />
<br />
Constantin the Alexandrian shrugs and examines the cigarette burning close to his yellow fingertips.<br />
<br />
“It’s going to take a lot of incense to get rid of the stink before Easter, and who’s going to pay for that?” Father Ioannis grumbles. “I can’t even get the Patriarchate to fix that tile on the roof.”<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou thinks this Easter he might visit the shrine of Aghia Panteleimon. He has no belief—faith is beneath his dignity—but he enjoys the designed madness of religion. The minuscule church is tucked away down an alley off an alley off an alley. Older than any name in Eskiköy, Aghia Panteleimon let the district grow up around it like a fruit around a seed. It houses the sword that bent rather than behead its eponymous martyr (until he so decided) and a fine collection of icons of its patron saint, some in the alternate, Russian style, with his hands nailed to his head. The woman who owns the art gallery in the former dancing hall has made Father Ioannis a fine offer for his macabre icons. They are not his to sell. If he does go this Easter, Georgios Ferentinou knows he may well be the only attendee. Perhaps a couple of old widows, come from Christ-knows-where in their raven black. Even before the ethnic cleansing of 1955 the tide of faith had ebbed from Eskiköy. Yet lately he has sensed it stealing back in little seepings and runnels, feeling its way over the cobbles and around the lintel stones. It’s a more strident faith than that of either Aghia Panteleimon or the Mevlevi Order. It has an easterly aspect. It’s rawer, younger, more impatient, more confident.<br />
<br />
“It’s the heat I say, the heat,” says Lefteres the Confectioner. “Makes them fighting mad.”<br />
<br />
“And the football,” Bülent adds. “There’ll be some English fan stabbed before the end of the week. Heat and football.”<br />
<br />
The Greeks of the Adem Dede teahouse nod and murmur their agreement.<br />
<br />
“So have you finished that lampoon then?” Father Ioannis asks.<br />
<br />
Lefteres unfolds a sheet of A4 and slides it to the centre of the table. It is blank white.<br />
<br />
“I have decided not to do this one.”<br />
<br />
Lefteres, master of sugar and succulence, paschal lambs and gilded fruit, is the resident lampoonist of Eskiköy. A pestering boyfriend, an unrecovered debt, unwelcome loud music or somebody fly-tipping in your Dumpster: go to Lefteres at the Adem Dede çayhane. Pay him what he asks. It will not be cheap. Quality is never cheap. But the very next morning Eskiköy will wake to find a single sheet of A4, always handwritten, thumbtacked to the offending door, gaffer-taped to a window, gunged to the windshield of a parked car. In the best Turkish verse and scansion and the highest of style, every vice is listed and shamed, every personal attribute ridiculed. Every intimate detail is excoriated. Lefteres’s research is immaculate. It works without fail. The crowd at the door is an ancient and powerful sanction.Word of a new lampoon travels fast. People come from far beyond Eskiköy to read and marvel. There are international Web sites dedicated to the lampoons of Lefteres the Confectioner of Eskiköy.<br />
<br />
“Have you told Sibel Hanım?” Georgios Ferentinou says.<br />
<br />
“I have indeed,” Lefteres says. “She wasn’t happy. But I told her that part of my commission is that I must be absolutely satisfied myself that there is just cause as well as clear social need. That’s always been the case. Always. The woman is not a prostitute. Simple as that. Georgian she may be, but that doesn’t make her a prostitute.”<br />
<br />
Since the Caucasus and central Asia found that the front door to Europe now opened onto theirs, Georgians, Armenians, Azeris, Ukrainians, workers from as far as Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, Syrians, Lebanese, Iranians, Kurds in their tens of thousands have flooded across Anatolia, the buckle strapped across the girth of great Eurasia, Istanbul the pin. And that is how Georgios knows Lefteres’s reasons for not accepting the lampoon. Istanbul was a city of peoples before and knows it shall be again, a true cosmopolis. The time of the Turk is ending. Georgians, Greeks: sojourners alike.<br />
<br />
“Here, do you know who I saw yesterday on Güneşli Sok?” Constantin asks. “Ariana Sinanidis.”<br />
<br />
“How long is it since she went to Greece?” asks Lefteres.<br />
<br />
“Forty-seven years,” says Georgios Ferentinou. “What’s she doing back here?”<br />
<br />
“Either a will or a property dispute. What else does anyone come back for?” Constantin says.<br />
<br />
“I haven’t heard of any deaths,” Father Ioannis says. In as small and intimate a community as the Greeks of Istanbul, every death is a small holocaust. Then the bomb goes off. The sound of the explosion echoes flatly, flappingly from the house fronts. It is a little blast, barely distinguishable from the growl of morning traffic, but the four men at the table look up.<br />
<br />
“How far was that?”<br />
<br />
“Under a kilometre, I’d say.”<br />
<br />
“Well under a kilo. It might well have been just the detonator.”<br />
<br />
“Whereabouts would you say?”<br />
<br />
“I would guess down towards Tophane Meydanı.”<br />
<br />
“No guesses. This is an exact science.”<br />
<br />
Constantin taps up news feeds on the smartpaper lying among the tea glasses and coffee cups.<br />
<br />
“Necatibey Cadessi. Tram bomb,” Constantin says.<br />
<br />
Behind the counter, Bülent clenches a fist.<br />
<br />
“Yes!”<br />
<br />
“Bastard!” says Lefteres. “What’s he made now?”<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou pulls out his ceptep. His thumb moves unswervingly over the icons.<br />
<br />
“The Terror Market is up twenty points.”<br />
<br />
“Lord Jesus Son of God have mercy on us,” says Father Ioannis. His fingers tie a knot on his prayer rope.<br />
<br />
“Breakfast is on the house then,” says Bülent.<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou never saw economics as the Dismal Science. To him it is applied psychology, the most human of sciences. There are profound human truths in the romance between want and aversion; delicate beauties in the meshing intricacies of complex financial instruments as precise and jewelled as any Isfahan miniature. The blind wisdom of the mass still amazes him as it did when he first discovered it in a jar of plushy toys. The jar had sat on the desk of Göksel Hanım, his morning-school teacher. She had brought it back from a visit to her sister in Fort Lauderdale. Seduced by the Mouse, she had gone on a plushy spree across Disneyworld. Goofies and Mickies, Plutos and Stitches and little Simbas were packed together like pickles, eyes gazing out at eight-year-old Georgios Ferentinou. Çiftçi, Göksel Hanım had insisted on calling him. A Turkish transliteration of his name. Çiftçi had found the compressed figures strangely attractive. It would be quite good, he thought, to be squeezed into a jar full of other soft bodies.<br />
<br />
“Guess how many there are,” Göksel Hanım said to her class, “and you will win them.”<br />
<br />
Çiftçi was lazy. He was told that every day by Göksel Hanım. Lazy and dull. He wanted the bodies in the jar so he did what any lazy and dull boy would. He asked his classmates. Their answers ranged for fifteen to fifty. Dull, lazy and reluctant to commit to decisions, Çiftçi added the answers and divided them by the number of pupils in the class, rounding up for luck.<br />
<br />
“Thirty-seven,” he said confidently to Göksel Hanım. Thirty-seven there were, exactly. Göksel Hanım gave him the jar grudgingly. He stared at it for months, on his bedside table, enjoying their captivity. Then one day his mother had taken them away to clean them. She returned them all to their confinement, but damp had got in, and within two weeks they were green and bad smelling and were thrown out. It was his first exposure to the power of aggregation. The mass decides.<br />
<br />
There is a market for anything. Debts. Carbon pollution. The value of future orange harvests in Brazil and gas output in the Ukraine. Telecommunications bandwidth. Weather insurance. Buy low, sell high. Self-interest is the engine; aggregation, like the class of ’71, the gear-train. Georgios Ferentinou has merely extended the free-market principle to terrorism.<br />
<br />
The market is played this way: A network of a thousand traders is strung across Istanbul. They range from economics students to schoolchildren and their mothers to real traders on the Stamboul Carbon Bourse. All night AIs sift the news networks—those deep channels that Georgios Ferentinou took with him when he left academia, and less exalted sources like chat rooms, forums and social- and political-networking sites. By dawn they have drawn up a long list of potential future news. Georgios Ferentinou’s first task of the day, even before he takes his breakfast tea at the Adem Dede teahouse, is to draw up that day’s list of tradable contracts in his pyjamas and slippers. By the time he shuffles across the square to his table, the offers are out across the city like softgliding storks and the bids are coming in. I’ll buy twenty contracts at a settlement price of one hundred on Galatasaray beating Arsenal two–one on Thursday. How much do you want to pay for them? That depends on how likely you think it is that Galatasaray will beat Arsenal two–one. This is the easiest future contract, a straight sporting bet. There is a clear termination point at which the contract is fulfilled—the sound of the referee’s final whistle in the Galatasaray Stadium—and a simple payout. All you have to do is decide how much you will buy that payout for, and for others to decide how much they will pay to buy that contract off you. All trading is betting.<br />
<br />
How much would you pay for a contract with a settlement of one hundred on a bet that the price of gas will rise by 15 percent by close of trade next Monday? Thirty? Fifty, for a hundred payout? What if you see the price rising on the Carbon Bourse? Seventy, eighty? Turn those prices into percentages and you have a probability; you have a prediction of future news.<br />
<br />
Thirty, fifty, one hundred, what are these? Kudos: the artificial currency of Georgios Ferentinou’s Terror Market. A light, odourless virtual money, but not without value. Kudos are not points in a game. They can be exchanged for other virtual-world or social-networking or online-game currencies, some of which can be converted up into real-world, pocketable cash. They can be traded. That is another one of Georgios Ferentinou’s behavioural economics experiments. Kudos are worth something. Georgios Ferentinou understands there is no market without real gain, and the possibility of real loss. The money makes it work.<br />
<br />
Here’s another contract. Settlement price one hundred kudos. There will be a suicide strike on Istanbul public transport on a major arterial during the current heat wave. Do you buy it?<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou checks the closing price. Eighty-three kudos. High, given the plethora of speculative factors: the time since the bombing at the bus station; Ankara’s announcement of a clampdown on political organisations opposed to the national secular agenda; the possibility that the heat wave might break in glorious lightning among the minarets of Istanbul. Then he tracks the price since the contract was offered. It has risen as steadily as the thermometer. This is the miracle of the Terror Market. Buying and selling, petty greed, are more powerful prophets than the experts and artificial intelligence models of the National MIT security service. Complex behaviour from simple processes.<br />
<br />
The woman who runs the religious art shop in the bottom of the dervish house crosses the square. She squats down to unlock the security shutter. Her heels come a little off the ground as she balances on the balls of her feet. She wears good boots and patterned tights, a smart skirt not too short, a well-cut jacket. Hot for this weather but stylish. Georgios Ferentinou watches her run up the shutter with a rolling clatter. Such unconscious ease costs gym fees. Her ceptep rings, the call tone a spray of silvery sitar music. Georgios Ferentinou looks away with a small grimace of regret. He was admired once too. A disturbance in the air draws his eyes up, a shiver like heat haze, a plague of tiny mites, the visual equivalent of the glittering glissando of the art-shop woman’s call tone.<br />
<br />
The swarm of gnat-sized machines swirls in the choked air of Adem Dede. Even the boy bringing the sesame-dusted simits from Aydin’s kiosk looks up. Then the cloud of nanorobots pours down Vermilion-Maker Lane like water over a weir, following the stepped terrain beneath them, flowing around the schoolchildren, the women, old Sibel Hanım labouring up and down the steps. Follow the flock. Avoid near neighbours but try to maintain an equal distance from them. Cohesion, alignment, separation. Three rudimentary rules; the well of complex liquid beauty.<br />
<br />
In the corner of his vision Georgios Ferentinou glimpses the little monkeybot go helter-skelter across the electricity line and jump to the offending Georgian woman’s balcony. A strange world that boy inhabits, he thinks. A world of whispers, of distant tintinnabulations on the edge of hearing, like angel voices. But is it any stranger than four old Greeks, flotsam adrift for decades in the crash and suck of history, gathering over tea and doughnuts to divine the future? And Ariana is back. Almost half a century and she is in Eskiköy. No deal, no play of trades and future outcomes could have predicted that. Ariana is back and nothing is safe now.<br />
<br />
<div align="center">~~~</div><br />
The yalı leans over the salt water, balcony upon balcony. Adnan opens the roof terrace’s wooden shutters. The heat of the morning beats in mingled with coils of cool from the Bosphorus. The current is dark. Adnan has always felt the Bosphorus to be dark, dark as blood, dark as the birth canal. It feels deep to him, deep and drowning. He knows where this fear comes from: from his father’s boat and the endless sunlit afternoons of a childhood lived on water. This is why his seal of success has always been a place by the edge of the water. It is the lure of the fear, the reminder that everything you have won may be lost in an unconsidered moment. The early sun turns the side of a Russian gas carrier into a wall of light. It is a monster. Adnan Sarioğlu smiles to himself. Gas is power.<br />
<br />
“One million two hundred you say?”<br />
<br />
The real estate agent waits by the door. He isn’t even properly awake, but he’s shaved and suited. You have to get up early to sell to the gas lords. A dealer knows a dealer.<br />
<br />
“It’s a very sought-after location, and as you can see, you can move straight in. You have your own boat dock and waterside terrace for entertaining.”<br />
Adnan Sarioğlu shoots some video.<br />
<br />
“We’ve had a lot of interest in this property,” the realtor presses. “These old yalıs do go fast.”<br />
<br />
“Of course they do,” says Adnan Sarioğlu. It is not a real yalı; those were all bought up long ago, or are collapsing under the weight of their decaying timbers in forgotten coves along the Bosphorus, or have burned decades since. It is a fake, but a good fake. Turkey is the land of the masterful fake. But it is far far from that hateful little eighth-floor apartment huddling between the roar of the expressway and the blare of the mosque.<br />
<br />
He pans the ceptep across the terrace. Already he is filling the space with skinny Scandinavian furniture. This could be an office. It would just be leather sofas and old Ottoman coffee tables, lifestyle magazines and a killer sound system. He would come in the morning and summon his avatars to spin around him, hauling in spot prices from Baku to Berlin. The big dealers, the paşas, all work this way; from the boat club, from the gym, from the restaurant. Perfectly weightless. Yes, this is a house to start his dynasty. He can’t afford it. The realtor’s background check will have disclosed that. But they will have shown that he is the kind of man who could have money, very very much money, and that’s the reason the agent has got up in the predawn and showered and shaved and scented and put on his good suit.<br />
<br />
He pans the ceptep across the reach of the waterway. He blinks the zoom in on the pastel houses along the European shore. Bigger cars, faster boats, deeper docks, farther from their neighbours’ shadows. Money and class have always clung to the edge of Europe. He double-takes, pans back. Between the shiny slick twenty-first-century yalıs with their low-sloping photosynthetic roofs is a pile of timbers, grey and lone as a widow, roof caved in, front wall slumping towards the water, window frames eyeless and half closed. A ghost of a house, abandoned and neglected among its young, tall, brilliant neighbours. A true yalı. It may have stood, decaying year upon year, from the Ottoman centuries. He blinks closer onto its empty windows, its sagging lintels and eaves. He cannot begin to imagine how much it would cost to return it to habitability let alone make it a place to raise a family, but he knows where he will go next. He begins here; he ends on the shadow of the bridge, on the toes of Europe.<br />
<br />
On the edge of his vision he glimpses smoke. The plume goes up straight as a flagpole into the clear blue air. In an instant he has zoomed in on it. Amap overlay gives him a location: Beyoğlu. Now a news mite bursts into the steady procession of gas spot prices across his retina: TRAM BOMBING ON NECATIBEY CADESSI. PIX TO FOLLOW.<br />
<br />
Ayşe rides that tram.<br />
<br />
Her ceptep rings three times four times five times six.<br />
<br />
“Hi there.”<br />
<br />
“You took your time.”<br />
<br />
“That shutter’s sticking worse than ever. It’s going to need replacing.”<br />
<br />
“So you totally missed the bomb, then?”<br />
<br />
“Oh that was down on Necatibey Cadessi.Aswarm of police bots just went past.”<br />
<br />
Adnan wonders if Ayşe’s otherworldliness is her natural aristocratic nonchalance or some emanation from the art and artefacts that surround her. That shop, for all the hedge fund managers and carbon paşas looking for a little investment in religious art; it’s not a proper business. It’s a lady’s pursuit. She’ll give it up when they move in here, when the babies start to come. <br />
<br />
“It was your tram.”<br />
<br />
“Do you not remember I said I was going in early? There’s a potential supplier calling before work.”<br />
<br />
“Well, you watch yourself. These things never happen in ones.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll keep an eye out for suicide bombers. How’s the yalı?”<br />
<br />
“I’ll send you the video. I may be late back. I’m trying to get a meeting with Ferid Bey tonight.” The name-drop is as much for the realtor as for his wife. There is a beat of radio silence that is the equivalent of an exasperated sigh. “I’ll see you when I see you then.”<br />
<br />
At some dark hour he will slip back through the curve of taillights arching over the bridge to the eighth-floor apartment. She may be watching television, or half-watching it while she puts on laundry, or if his meetings have hauled on and on, be in bed. Then he will slip in without turning on the lights, a quick mumble as she surfaces through sleep like a dolphin, in behind her to press the rough warmth of his dick against the bed-heat of her smooth ass and the return press, then down with her, lured down into sleep so fast there is not even time for the twitch of the terror of drowning. All around, the sweet incense of fabric conditioner. It’s no way to live. But he has seen the end of it. A few more days of effort and it’s over.<br />
Adnan Sarioğlu snaps off his ceptep.<br />
“One million two hundred thousand you say?” he asks.<br />
“We’ve had a number of offers,” the realtor says.<br />
<br />
“I’ll give you one million one.”<br />
<br />
"Offers are generally in excess of the asking price.”<br />
<br />
"I’m sure they are. But this isn’t an offer; this is a price. In cash.”<br />
<br />
The realtor flusters. Adnan drives home his advantage.<br />
“One point one million euro in cash to your office by noon Friday.”<br />
<br />
“We, ah, don’t usually deal in cash.”<br />
<br />
“You don’t deal in cash? Cash is king, is what cash is. Do anything with cash, you can. Friday, lunchtime. You have the contract on the desk and I’ll sign it and shake your hand and you take my fucking cash.”<br />
<br />
Three minutes later Adnan Sarioğlu’s car leans into the on-ramp to the bridge, accelerating into a stream of Europe-bound vehicles. Autodrive makes microadjustments to the car’s speed; the other vehicles read Adnan’s signals and correspondingly adjust their distances and velocities to accommodate him. All across the Bosphorus Bridge, through every arterial of vast Istanbul, every second the ceaseless pump of traffic shifts and adjusts, a flock of vehicles. <br />
<br />
<br />
Drive-time radio news at the top of the hour. The tram bomb is already downgraded. No one dead besides the suicide bomber. A woman. Unusual. No promise of Paradise’s rewards for her; just eternity married to the same old twat. Something in the family. It always is. Men die for abstractions, women for their families. No, the big story is the weather. Hot hot hot again. High of thirty-eight and humidity 80 percent and no end in sight. Adnan nods in satisfaction as the Far East gas spot-price ticker crawls across the bottom of the windshield. His forty-eight-hour delivery put-options on Caspian Gas will hit their strike this morning. Nice little earner. He’ll need the premiums for a few small necessary purchases on Turquoise. Cash is always king. Adnan slips the nozzle of the inhaler up his nostril. The rush of inhaled nano breaks across his forebrain and the numbers become sharp, the focus clear. He hovers high above the golden fabric of deals and derivatives, spots and strikes. Only the concentration-enhancing nano makes it possible for Adnan to pick a pattern from the weave of transactions. The old traders use more and more to keep pace with the young Turks. He’s seen the shake in their hands and the blur in their eyes as he rides down the express elevator with them to the underground parking lot after the back office has settled out. Nano, Caspian gas, CO2 and traders: all the many ways of carbon.<br />
<br />
<br />
Music: the special call tone of his paşa, his white knight. Adnan clicks him up on the windshield.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Adnan Bey.”<br />
<br />
“Ferid Bey.”<br />
<br />
He is a fat-faced man with skin smooth from the barber’s razor, almost doll-like in its sheer buffed finish. Adnan recalls from his research that Ferid is very vain, very groomed.<br />
<br />
“I’m interested in this. Of course I’ll need much more detail, but I think we can do business. I’ll be at the Hacı Kadın baths from seven thirty.” He laughs hugely, though there is no comedy in his words.<br />
<br />
“I’ll see you there.”<br />
<br />
The call ends. The Audi stitches itself in and out of the traffic, and Adnan Sarioğlu beats his hands on the dashboard and whoops with delight. A new call chimes in; a poppier tune, the theme from an animated TV series that Adnan and his three fellow Ultralords of the Universe grew up with.<br />
<br />
“Hail Draksor.”<br />
<br />
“Hail Terrak.”<br />
<br />
Adnan and Oğuz graduated from the MBA and entered Özer together. Adnan floated into lofty hydrocarbons and the realm of abstract money; Oğuz was pumped into Distribution, the all-too-solid domain of pipelines and compression stations, tanker terminals and holding centres. It’s lowly, unglamorous; very far from lunch at Olcay and champagne at Su come bonus time. Too easily overlooked. That was why, when the idea of Turquoise struck in its full, lighting intensity as he rode the elevator up the glass face of the Özer Tower, Oğuz was the first call of his old college friends.<br />
<br />
“Volkan’s got a fitness test at twelve.”<br />
<br />
“He’ll never make it,” Adnan says. “Fat bastard’s so out of condition he can’t even touch his toes.”<br />
<br />
Oğuz’s face grins in the smartglass of the windshield. The four Ultralords of the Universe are also ultra-Galatasaray fans. On their bonuses they could easily afford a corporate box atAslantepe, but they like to be in the stands, with the fans, with their kebabs and their small flasks of sipping rakı. Cimbom Cimbom Cimbom! Fighting stuff that rakı. The Ultralords understand going to games. It is not about sport. There is no such thing as sport. It is about seeing the other team lose. One million goals would not be enough to crush the opposition. When he is up there with the rest of the boys, Adnan wants to see the opposition all die on stakes. The Romans had it right. It’s fighting stuff. Give us blood.<br />
<br />
“So where are you?” Oğuz asks.<br />
<br />
Adnan flicks on his transponder. A map of mid-Istanbul overlies Oğuz’s grinning face on his windshield. Oğuz is on the Fatih Sultan Bridge to the north. The distances are comparable; the driveware calculates traffic densities. A little jockey-programme generates odds. Oğuz’s grin widens. He likes those odds.<br />
<br />
“I’ll go five hundred euro.”<br />
<br />
“Eight hundred.” Adnan likes those odds too. “And the tip.” There is etiquette to the Ultralords of the Universe’s street races. The tip is that the loser pays the winner’s traffic fines.<br />
<br />
“Element of Air assist me!” Adnan shouts. “In three. Two. One.” He grabs the steering handset and flicks off the autodrive. Warnings blare through the car. Adnan ignores them and floors the pedal. The gas engine barely raises a note, but the car leaps forward into the traffic. The self-guiding cars fluster and part like panicked chickens as Adnan piles through. There is a time to peel out from the flock. Adnan Sarioğlu laughs as he spears through the traffic. The Audi leans like a motorbike as he crosses lanes. Cars peel away like the bow-wave of a Russian gas tanker. The game is on. Adnan feels the roar build inside him, the roar that never goes away, that is in the kick of the nanotuned gas engine of his street-sweet German car, that wells in him when Ayşe moves against him on those nights he slips home in the dark, when she murmurs so and opens to let him press inside her; but most, most in the shriek of gas hurtling down the Blue Line, under the Bosphorus, out into the world of money, that is the deal, every deal, every closing. The roar that never, never stops. In seven minutes he will take Oğuz for five hundred euro and a dozen traffic-cam fines. Tonight he will meet the manager of one of Istanbul’s fattest hedge funds. On Friday he will slap down a briefcase full of notes in front of that piss-eyed realtor in his hideous shiny little Lidl suit and set the name of Sarioğlu down by the waters of the Bosphorus. It is the game, the only game and the always game.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
The angel is blind and shackled by an iron band around his right foot. His eyes are blank stone orbs. He is naked and wreathed in flame, male, marvellously muscular and lithe yet sexless. He flies by the power of his own will, arms outstretched, intent but ignorant, blind to his own blindness, straining against the single shackle. The blind angel’s left arm claws for the child. He craves it with sense other than sight.<br />
<br />
The second angel cradles the child away from that grasp. He too is male, defined yet kept chaste by the leg of the child. He stands on a ribbon of cloud low on an indefinite sea. He looks to the blind angel with an expression of incomprehension. The child, a sturdy lad improbably muscled, faces away. His arm is held up in a plea for help. His hair is very curly. The succouring angel looks like a prig. All the passion, all the energy, is in the blind, burning angel.<br />
<br />
“William Blake, <em>The Good and Evil Angels</em>,” Ayşe Erkoç says, leaning close over the print. “I love William Blake. I love his vision, I love the prophetic fire that burns through his art and his poetry, I love the completeness of his cosmology. I’ve studied William Blake, I’ve read William Blake, I’ve seen William Blake, in folio, and in London. On very rare, very special occasions, I’ve sold William Blake. Original William Blake. This is not William Blake. This is garbage. The paper’s all wrong, the line is like a five-year-old’s, I can smell the bleach from here, and there’s a spelling error in the text. This is an insult to my professionalism.”<br />
<br />
Topaloğlu’s cheeks quiver in embarrassment. Ayşe thinks of them as two slabs of condemned liver. Offal propped apart by a wide, rural moustache. “I mean no insult, Mrs. Erkoç.”<br />
<br />
“There’s a world—no, a universe—of difference between unclear provenance and a Grand Bazaar fake,” Ayşe continues. “If I can see it, my buyers can see it. They know at least as much as I do. These are collectors, aficionados, investors, people who purely love religious art, who love nothing else. They may not care where or how I get a piece. They care very much that it’s genuine. The moment they hear I’m selling fakes, they go to Antalya Fine Arts or the Salyan Gallery.”<br />
<br />
Topaloğlu’s humiliation deepens. <em>He is a cheap little peddler with the soul of a carpet seller</em>, Ayşe thinks. Abdurrahman recommended him to Ayşe as a man who could get Isfahan miniatures. She will have to have a word with Abdurrahman Bey.<br />
<br />
“I may have to reconsider our business relationship.”<br />
<br />
He’s pale now. Hafize, the gallery assistant, eavesdropper and interferer in concerns not hers, dips in and haughtily sweeps away his tea glass on her tray. She’s wearing the headscarf again. Ayşe will have to have a word with her. She’s become bolder in her flaunting of it since the tarikat, the Islamic study group, began meetings in the old kitchen quarters. Ayşe’s seen how the young men look at her as she locks the gallery shutter of an evening. They want her and her idolatrous images out. Let them try. The Erkoçs have good connections and deep purses.<br />
<br />
“What else have you got?” Ayşe asks.<br />
<br />
Topaloğlu sets out miniatures like fortune-telling cards. He has donkey teeth, yellow plates of enamel. They make Ayşe feel ill. She bends over the miniatures laid out on the table in the private viewing room and clicks down the magnifier lens in her ceptep eyepiece.<br />
<br />
“These are genuine,” Topaloğlu says.<br />
<br />
<em>But very poor</em>, Ayşe thinks, scanning the brushwork, the framing, the fine detail of the backgrounds. In the Isfahan and Topkapı schools, miniatures were the work of many hands. Each artist had his specialisation and spent all his life perfecting it. There were masters of roses, of cloudscapes, of rocks; there were maestros who never painted anything but tilework. These are obvious apprentice pieces. The contrast between the exquisitely drawn figures and the crude backgrounds is glaring. The fine eye, the minuscule detail has not yet emerged. The great miniaturists, anonymous all of them but for their style, could paint a trellis, a window screen, a tiled wall, with a single hair. These are productionline works for volumes of Sufi poetry, the kind that minor paşas and beys bought by the shelf to impress their inferiors.<br />
<br />
“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish. Is that it? What’s in the shoebox?”<br />
<br />
Topaloğlu has been keeping it by his side, half hidden under the flap of his jacket. A Nike box, a style from five years back, Ayşe notes. At least he is wearing proper gentlemen’s shoes for this meeting, decently polished. Shoes speak loud, in Ayşe’s experience.<br />
<br />
“Just a few of what you might call trinkets.”<br />
<br />
“Show me.”Ayşe does not wait for Topaloğlu to open the box; she snatches off the lid. Inside there is indeed a rattle of junk: Armenian crosses, Orthodox censers, a couple of verdigrised Koran covers. Grand Bazaar tourist tat. Amidst the tarnished brass, glints of silver. Miniature Korans. Ayşe greedily lays them out in a row along the table. The recessed ceiling bulbs strike brilliants from the thumb-sized silver cases.<br />
<br />
“These I’m interested in.”<br />
<br />
“They’re twenty-euro pilgrim curios,” Topaloğlu says.<br />
<br />
“To you, Mr. Topaloğlu. To me, and to the people who collect them, they’re stories.” She taps the cover of a twentieth-century electroplate silver case, the crystal magnifier an eye, a good-luck boncuk charm. “A boy goes off to military service; despite her best efforts his mother can’t get him into a soft option like the jandarmeri or the tourist police, so gives him a Holy Koran. Keep the word of God close and God will keep you folded into his breast.” An early nineteenth-century gold shell case, exquisitely filigreed. “A merchant from Konya, after years building up his material goods, finally frees himself from his worldly obligations to undertake the Hac. His concubine gives him a keepsake. Remember, the world will be waiting.”<br />
<br />
“How can you tell it’s a Konya piece?”<br />
<br />
“It’s in the Mevlevi style, but it’s not a souvenir from the Rumi pilgrimage—those usually are cheap mass-produced tourist junk. This is altogether a much more fine work. There’s money and devotion here. Once you learn to see, you begin to hear the stories.”Ayşe rests her finger on a tiny silver Koran no larger than a thumb, delicate as a prayer. “This is eighteenth-century Persian. But there’s only half a Koran. A Holy Koran, divided?” She opens the case and sets the little Persian scripture in the palm of her hand. “What’s the story there? A promise made, a couple divided, a family at war with itself, a pledge, a contract? You want to know. That’s the market. The Korans, as you say, are trinkets. Stories; people will always buy those.” Ayşe sets the tiny hemi-Koran back into its case. “I’ll take these three. The rest is rubbish. Fifty euro each.”<br />
<br />
“I was thinking three hundred would be more appropriate.”<br />
<br />
“Did I hear you say that they were only twenty-euro pilgrim curios? Two hundred.”<br />
<br />
“Cash.”<br />
<br />
“Cash.”<br />
<br />
Topaloğlu shakes on two hundred.<br />
<br />
“Hafize will arrange payment. You can bring me more of these. Then we’ll see about the miniatures.”<br />
<br />
Topaloğlu almost bares his rural teeth in a smile.<br />
<br />
“Good to do business, Mrs. Erkoç.”<br />
<br />
Footsteps on the stairs and along the wooden gallery; Hafize’s heels.<br />
<br />
Modest headscarf and fashion heels. A tap at the door. The look on her face is part puzzlement, part suspicion.<br />
<br />
“Madam, a customer.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll see him. Could you deal with Mr. Topaloğlu? We’ve settled at two hundred euro for these three.”<br />
<br />
“Cash,” Topaloğlu says. Hafize will screw another 20 percent off the price; her “administration fee.” For a young woman with aspirations to respectability, she’s as tough a bargainer as any street seller spreading his knockoff football shirts on the quay at Eminönü.<br />
<br />
From the encircling balcony Ayşe looks down into the old semahane, the dance floor where in another age dervishes spun themselves into the ecstasy of God. A man bends over a case of Torahs. The great brass chandelier hides him, but Ayşe catches a ripple of gloss, like oil sheen in an Eskiköy puddle, across his back. Nanoweave fabric. Expensive suit.<br />
<br />
As Ayşe descends the stairs Adnan warbles a video clip onto her ceptep. She glimpses wide Bosphorus, a white boat at a jetty, dipping gulls, a slow pan along the strait to the bridge. A gas tanker passes. So Adnan lets the camera linger on the gas tanker. His palace, his dream, when he closes Turquoise. Still the wrong side of the Bosphorus, Anatolian boy. She needs to get back to Europe. <br />
<br />
“I am Ayşe Erkoç.”<br />
<br />
The customer takes her proffered hand. Electronic business cards crackle from palm to palm.<br />
<br />
“Haydar Akgün. I was just looking at your Jewish manuscripts. There is some very fine micrography here.” Moiré patterns, blacker on black, mesh across the fabric of his suit. Silver at his cuffs. Ayşe admires silver. There is restraint in silver.<br />
<br />
“It’s actually double micrography. If you look closely you’ll see there is calligraphy within the calligraphy.”<br />
<br />
Akgün bends closer to the page. He blinks up his ceptep. Lasers dance across his eye, drawing a magnified image on the retina. The folio is from a Pentateuch, the panel of lettering set within a decorative frame of twining flower stems, trellises and fantastical heraldic beasts, dragon-headed, serpenttailed. The decoration teases the eye; the look beyond the surface dazzle shows the outlines to be made up of minuscule writing. It is only under magnification that the second level of micrography appears: those letters are in turn made up of chains of smaller writing. Akgün’s eyes widen.<br />
<br />
“This is quite extraordinary. I’ve only seen this in two places before. One was a dealer in Paris; the other was in a codex in the British Library. Sephardic, I presume? Spanish, Portuguese?”<br />
<br />
“You’re correct on Portuguese. The family fled from Porto to Constantinople in the fifteenth century. The micrographic border is a genealogy of King David from the book of Ruth.”<br />
<br />
“Exceptional,” Akgün says, poring over the weave of calligraphy.<br />
<br />
“Thank you,” Ayşe says. It is one of her most adored pieces. It took a lot of discreet envelopes of euro to get it away from the police art crime department. The moment her police contact showed the Pentateuch to her, she had to possess it. For others it might be the prestige they could garner, the thrill of control, the money they could make. With Ayşe it was the beauty, that cursive of beauty spiralling through Aramaic and Syriac texts to the demotic Greek of the Oxyrhynchus, the painstakingly squared-off Hebrew of the Talmudic scholars of Lisbon and Milan, the divine calligraphy of the Koranic scribes of Baghdad and Fes and learned Granada. It flowed into the organic lines of gospel illumination from monasteries from St. Catherine’s to Cluny, in the eternal light of Greek and Armenian icons, through the hair-fine, eye-blinding detail of the Persian miniaturist to the burning line of Blake’s fires of Imagination. Why deal in beauty, but for beauty?<br />
<br />
“You wonder how far down it can go, writing within writing within writing within writing,” Akgün says. “Nanography, perhaps? Do you think it could be like nanotechnology, the smaller it gets, the more powerful it becomes? Are there levels so fine we can’t read them but which have the most profound, subliminal influences?”<br />
<br />
Ayşe glances up to the balcony where Hafize is guiding Topaloğlu to the back stairs down into the old tekke cemetery. She subtly unfolds three fingers. Thirty percent discount. Good girl. Gallery Erkoç needs every cent it can find.<br />
<br />
“Pardon?”<br />
<br />
“A nanography that slips into the brain and compels us to believe in God?”<br />
<br />
“If anyone could it would be the Sephardim,” Ayşe says.<br />
<br />
“Asubtle people,”Akgün says. He unbends from the codex. “They say you can get hard-to-find items.”<br />
<br />
“One should always take the praise of one’s rivals with a pinch of salt, but I do have a certain . . . facility. Is there a particular piece you’re looking for? I have private viewing facilities upstairs.”<br />
<br />
“I think it’s unlikely you’d have it in stock. It is a very rare, very precious item, and if it can be found anywhere it will be in Istanbul, but if you can source it for me I will pay you one million euro.”<br />
<br />
Ayşe has often wondered how she would feel if a life-transfiguring sum of money walked into her gallery. Adnan talks of the fist-solid thrill of the leveraged millions of his gas trades solidifying into profit. Don’t let it seduce you, he says. That way is death. Now a thousand-euro suit offers her a million euro on a Monday morning, how could she not be seduced?<br />
<br />
“That’s a lot of money, Mr. Akgün.”<br />
<br />
“It is, and I wouldn’t expect you to embark on such a project without a development fee.”<br />
<br />
He takes a white envelope from inside his jacket and gives it to Ayşe. It’s fat with cash. She holds the envelope in her hand and orders her fingers not to feel out the thickness and number of the notes.<br />
<br />
“You still haven’t told me what you’d like me to find.”<br />
<br />
Hafize has returned from exitingMr. Topaloğlu. Her customary haste to make tea—tea for every customer, tea, tea—is frozen by those words, <em>one million euro</em>.<br />
<br />
“It’s quite simple,” Akgün says. “I want to buy a Mellified Man.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
Leyla on the Number 19, wedged hard against the stanchion in her good going-to-interview suit and business heels. Her chin is almost on the breastbone of a tall foreign youth who smells of milk; behind her is a fat middle-aged man whose hand keeps falling under social gravity to her ass. What is keeping the tram? Five minutes ago it jolted to a stop dead in the middle of the Necatibey Cadessi. Doesn’t IETT know she has an interview to get to? And it’s hot, getting hotter. And she’s sweating in her one and only going-to-interview suit.<br />
<br />
The driver announces an incident on the line ahead. That usually means a suicide. In Istanbul the preferred self-exit-strategy is the dark lure of the Bosphorus, but a simple kneel and prostration of the head to the guillotine of the wheels will do it quick and smart. Down in Demre, where the sun glints bright from the endless polytunnel roofs, it was always the hose pipe through the car window.<br />
<br />
“There’s been a bomb!” shrieks a woman in a better business suit than Leyla’s. There is a ceptep over her eye; she is reading the morning headlines. “A bomb on a tram.”<br />
<br />
The effect on the Number 19 is total. The sudden surge of commuters lifts little Leyla Gültaşli from her feet and swings her so hard into wandering-handman that he grunts. People push at the doors, but they remain sealed. Now everyone is thrown again as the tram lurches into motion. It’s going backwards. Wheels grind and flange on the track.<br />
<br />
“Hey hey, I’ve got an interview!” Leyla shouts.<br />
<br />
The tram jolts to a stop. The doors open. The crowd pushes her out onto the same halt at which she boarded. She has thirty-five minutes to get to this interview. Her shoes are trampled and her suit is rumpled and her hair is ruffled and she is lathered in sweat but her face is right, so she puts her head down and pushes out through the turnstile into the traffic.<br />
<br />
Leyla had organised the interview preparations like a wedding. With the hot night greying into day outside her balcony she was striding around in her underwear, unfolding the ironing board, flicking water over her one good suit and blouse as she applied the hot metal. She has got into terrible habits since Zehra announced she was moving back to Antalya. While the suit relaxed on the hanger, losing the just-ironed smell of fabric conditioner, she showered. The water was as mean and fitful as ever. Leyla wove and shimmied under the ribbon of tepid water. Seventy seconds, including shampoo. No more. The landlord last week had slipped a leaflet under every door explaining that the municipal water charges were going up again. Unquenchable Istanbul. The hair straighteners were already plugged in and coming up to temperature. Leyla Gültaşli got jiggly with the hair dryer and went over her pitch.<br />
<br />
Gençler Toys. Toys for boys. Six- to eleven-year-olds. Lead lines: Battle-Cats TM; Gü-Yen-Ji, their ceptep-handshake trading card game, was EU Toy of the Year two years ago. Their success is built on BitBots. The creepy kid upstairs has them. Leyla’s sure he watches her with them. But they have a vacancy in their marketing department and Leyla is Marketing Girl, so she’ll talk BitBots and BattleCats TM as good as any of them.<br />
<br />
The suit, then the slap. One hour twenty to get to Gençler. Plenty of time. Bag; a good brand not so high-marque as to be obviously a fake. Which it is. A girl of business needs one convincing accessory in her wardrobe. And the shoes and out.<br />
<br />
Twenty-two minutes now, and she curses herself for not thinking to wear trainers. Put the good shoes in the bag and change in the ladies room when you’re making the final adjustments to your face. She can run—just—in these shoes. But the crowd is growing thicker on Necatibey Cadessi, and now she hits the police line, and before her is the tram with its windows blown out and its roof bowed up and people standing around among the crisis vehicles with their red-and-blue flashing lights. The road is sealed. Leyla gives a cry of frustration.<br />
<br />
“Let me through let me through!”<br />
<br />
A policeman shouts, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?” but Leyla plunges on. “Hey!” To her left is a narrow sok, more stairs than is sensible in this heat and these shoes. Fifteen minutes. Leyla Gültaşli takes a deep breath, slings her bag over her shoulder, and begins to climb.<br />
<br />
Once there were four girls from the south. They were all born within fifty kilometres of each other within the smell of the sea, but they didn’t discover that until the dervish house. The condition of Leyla moving from the plasticland of Demre to Istanbul was that she place herself under the care of Great-Aunt Sezen. Leyla had never met Great-Aunt Sezen or any of the distant Istanbul side of the family. Their third-floor apartment in the sound-footprint of Atatürk Airport had a Turkish flag draped over the balcony and a Honda engine under the kitchen table and was full of noisy, clattering relations and generations over whom Great-Aunt Sezen, a matriarch of seventy-something, ruled by hint and dint and tilt of head. The country girl from the Med found herself plunged into an involuntary soap opera of husbands and wives and children, of boyfriends and girlfriends and partners and rivals and feuds and makings-up, of screaming fights and tearful, sex-raucous reconciliations. In the midst of this storm of emotions Leyla Gültaşli tried to work, seated at the kitchen table, her knees oily from the manifold of the Honda engine while her extended family raged around her. They thought her dull. They called her Little Tomato, after her hometown’s most famous export. That and Santa, its other global brand. Her studies suffered. She began to fail course elements.<br />
<br />
She went to Sub-Aunt Kevser, grand vizier of the Gültaşlis, who called Leyla’s mother in Demre. The two women talked for an hour. It was decided. Leyla could share an apartment with suitable girls, provided she report to Sub-Aunt Kevser every Friday. No boys of course. There was a respectable girl from Antalya at the Business College who had a place, very central, very good value, in Beyoğlu. So Leyla entered the dervish house and discovered that it was central because it was tatty, sorrowful Eskiköy and good value because the apartment had not been renovated since the declaration of the Republic a century ago. Among three Marketing and Business students, Leyla had even less peace than she ever knew in Honda kitchen. They still called her Little Tomato. She liked it from the girls. Sub-Aunt Kevser called faithfully every Friday. Leyla answered as conscientiously. After two years she graduated with honours. Her parents came up on the bus for her graduation. The Istanbul branch moved family members around rooms like tiles in some plastic game to find space for the Demre tomato-growers in Runway View Apartments. Her mother clung to her father throughout the event at the campus. They gave her gold and had their eyes closed in every single photograph.<br />
<br />
So: these four girls from the south who shared a small smelly apartment in Adem Dede tekke. They all graduated from Marmara Business College on the same day. Then one went to Frankfurt to work in an investment bank. One moved out to a Big Box start-up on a bare hill outside Ankara. Five weeks ago the third one announced she was moving back to Antalya to marry a hitherto-unsuspected boyfriend, and Leyla was left friendless, cashless and jobless in the crumbling old dervish house, the only one not to have secured some shape of future. Istanbul was overcommodified with bright young girls with diplomas in marketing. Day by day, bill by bill, the money was running down, but one thing was sure: she was never moving back to that apartment full of screaming lives and jet engines.<br />
<br />
Leyla’s counting the steps: thirty-one thirty-two thirty-three. The lie of the streets is familiar: there’s the end of Vermilion-Maker Lane. She’s within a couple of hundred metres of home. She could slip back for comfortable shoes. Twelve minutes. If she can get up onto Inönü Cadessi there are buses and dolmuşes and even, though they would consume the last of her cash, taxis, but it all has to connect sweet, and this is Istanbul. Her fingers shake from exertion. There is a humming in her ears. God, she is so unfit. Too many nights in front of the television because it is voices and lives in the apartment. Then Leyla realises it’s not the thrum of her own body. This is something outside her. She is fogged in a cloud of mosquitoes. She waves her hand at the swarm—shoo, evil things. The bulge of black sways away from her hand and thickens into a hovering dragonfly. Her breath catches in fear. Even Leyla Gültaşli has heard of these things. Up and down Vermilion-Maker Lane morning people stand in place while the dragonfly bots ascertain identities. The machine hovers on its ducted-fan wings. Hurry up hurry up hurry up. She’s got an interview in ten minutes, minutes ten. Leyla could crush the thing in her hand and be on her way, but it scares her. Soldiers you can flash eyes at, flirt a little to make their day and they’ll nod you on. Soldiers are men. These things carry poison darts, she’s heard, evil little nanotechnology stings. Defy them at your peril. But it’s slow slow slow and she’s late late late. She blinks at a wink of laser light: the security drone is reading her iris. The dragonfly bot lifts on its wings, then blows into a puff of mites. On your way now. Up and down the stairs, along Vermilion-Maker Lane, the dragonflies evaporate into smart smoke. She’s passed, but she’s horribly hideously fatally late.<br />
<br />
All the traffic that has been diverted from the bomb blast has been pushed onto Inönü Cadessi. Leyla wails at the immobile mass of vehicles, nose to tail, door to door. Horns blare constantly. She squeezes between the stationary cars. A little bubble citi-car rocks to a sudden stop and Leyla shimmies in front of it. The driver beats his hand on the horn, but she sashays away with a cheeky wave of the hand. There’s a bus there’s a bus there’s a bus. She dances a deadly bullfighter’s dance through the pressing traffic, closer, ever closer to the bus. The line of passengers is getting shorter. The doors are closing. Damn these stupid shoes, what possessed her to put them on? Men never look at shoes. The bus is pulling away from the stop, but she can make it she can make it. Leyla beats on the door. Two schoolboys leer at her. She runs alongside the crawling bus, banging on the side. “Stop stop stop stop!” Then a gap opens in front of it and it surges away from her in an aromatic waft of biodiesel. Leyla stands and curses, the traffic steering around her; good, long, southern tomato-grower curses.<br />
<br />
Dolmuş dolmuş dolmuş. There’s a cluster of them, slope-backed minibuses huddling together like pious women, but they’re too far down the street, too distant from the stop, and even if she could hail one it would have to travel at the speed of light to get there on time. Faster. Not even the Prophet on Burak could get to Gençler Toys in time for the interview. Leyla wails, throws up her arms in despair in the middle of gridlocked Inönü Cadessi. Her ceptep alert chimes to reinforce her failure. Out of time. Over. No point even calling. Istanbul is too too full of Leyla Gültaşlis.<br />
<br />
“I could do that job!” she shouts to the street. “I could do that job easy!”<br />
<br />
She’s sick to her stomach, sick in her suddenly stupid and vain suit and shoes, her cheap knockoff bag. She needs that job, she needs that money, she needs not to go back to Runway View Apartments, but most of all she needs never again to see the sun glinting from the endless kilometres of plastic roof over the fields and gardens of Demre and breathe in the cloying, narcotic perfume of tomatoes. Leyla is very close to crying in the middle of traffic-clogged Inönü Cadessi. This won’t do. She can’t be seen like this. Go home. Tomorrow you can pick yourself up and smarten yourself and get out there again and show them you’re good. Today, rage and cry and kick things around where no one can see you. Why why why did this have to be the day that a suicide bomber decided to blow himself up to God? It’s so selfish, like any suicide.<br />
<br />
She is halfway down the steps toAdem Dede Square when her ceptep calls. Sub-Aunt Kevser. The last person she needs to talk to. Her thumb hovers over the reject icon. She can’t. You are always available. The mantra was drummed into her at business school.<br />
<br />
“You took your time.” As ever when she talks with Leyla, she looks like a schoolteacher.<br />
<br />
“I was just doing something.”<br />
<br />
“Doing?” There’s always been the assumption that Leyla’s aspirations are dispensable. The women drop everything for the family: it was the way down in Demre; it’s the way up in Istanbul.<br />
<br />
“It’s all right, nothing much.”<br />
<br />
“Good good good. Remind me, what was that course you did?”<br />
<br />
<em>You know full well what I do</em>, Leyla thinks. <em>I can’t see her, but Great-Aunt Sezen is behind you directing this from her chair</em>.<br />
<br />
“Marketing.”<br />
<br />
“Would that include raising finance and finding backers?”<br />
<br />
“It does.”<br />
<br />
“Hmm.”<br />
<br />
<em>Just tell me, you bad old crow.</em><br />
<br />
Sub-Aunt Kevser continues, “Did you ever meet Yaşar Ceylan?”<br />
<br />
“Who’s he?”<br />
<br />
“He’d be your second cousin. Smart boy. University educated.”<em> Rub it in, sterile spinster. Yes, I only went to a business college</em>. “He’s set up this new business start-up thing over in Fenerbahçe with some boy he did his doctorate with. I’ve no idea what it is; some new technology thing. Anyway, they’re very smart, very clever but useless at anything practical. Yaşar wants to expand but doesn’t know how to get to the people with the money. He needs someone to get him to the money men.”<br />
<br />
<em>You see, you knew all the time.</em><br />
<br />
“When does he need someone?”<br />
<br />
“Right away. But you said you were doing something, so I don’t know . . .”<br />
<br />
“Has he got any money?” Ever the drawback to working with family.<br />
<br />
“He’ll pay you. So you’ll do it?”<br />
<br />
“I’ll do it. Give me his number.” Sub-Aunt Kevser’s face is replaced by a ceptep number. Leyla stores it quickly. God God thank you God. Sometimes family is your friend. She almost skips down the last few steps into Adem Dede Square. From desolation to ludicrous exultation in seven steps. Fenerbahçe. Business start-up. New tech. Fresh university graduates. It all means only one thing. The big one, the one that promises to build the future and change the world, the one where you can really make your name.<br />
<br />
Nanotechnology.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>2</strong><br />
<br />
The alien robot is an ungainly spider thing concealed among the graphics of the Commerzbank. Can observes it from his hiding place in the shadows of Allianz Insurance. An ugly boxy yellow industrial unit; a Xu-Hsi, or maybe a customised General Robotics. Licence number covered up with gaffer tape. An inspection machine would carry warning chevrons and flashers. Can Durukan knows his robots like other kids know cars or footballers or Chinese comics. An industrial bot wouldn’t pay a wink of interest even if the world were ending down there. What else could it be? On his adventures high above Eskiköy Can has encountered photodrones: machines set wandering on month-long journeys across the city by art students to capture the random and spontaneous. Those pause, shoot, stalk on. He has also met unofficial press bots upon the rooftops: stealthy, secretive surveillers used by investigative journalists and photographers looking for the news behind the press releases. Ghost machines that can flash-burn their memories to slag if detected by the state and its agents. Everything deniable. If this is a press drone, the photographer’s timing is brilliant. Too brilliant. And then there are the black drones: the ones they like to mutter about on the conspiracy sites. Invisible to official police bots, surveilling the surveillers. If this clunky chunk of yellow plastic is a legendary black drone, it’s in some very deep cover altogether. And then hide the licence number? This is none of these. This is a proper mystery. Can’s monkey creeps closer, hand by careful hand, prehensile tail coiling and uncoiling, trying to see better without being seen. The mystery bot is scanning the bomb victims inside the police cordon. Its sensory arrays, clusters of fly-eye lenses, rotate and refocus from survivor to survivor. Click whir click whir. That woman with blood speckled all over her face like freckles. Those shivering children in blue with schoolbags so big they could fold themselves inside. That dazed-looking businessman clutching his briefcase. That man, wandering away from the main group, between the ambulances, not wanting to be seen. Can watches Rat-Face, the guy from the tekke garden, move slowly, mingle subtly, merge with the crowd beyond the Do Not Cross lines. So intently does Can watch, so tightly does he hold his breath in excitement, that he almost misses the ninja robot detach itself from its roost and slowly, subtly, with no sudden movements to catch the attention of the police bots, work its way up the stanchions to the roof of the Commerzbank building. He sees a flash of anonymised yellow vanish over the parapet. Hissing in frustration, Can willsMonkey up onto the roof of the Allianz building. There: the mystery surveiller is working along the building tops, following Necatibey Cadessi. Slowly, stealthily, Can follows. His eyes are wide, his tongue rolled in concentration, his heart loud with excitement. This is mystery. This is adventure. This is what every boy and his robot want.<br />
<br />
“Aie!” Can stifles the involuntary cry of excitement. Too loud too loud; it’s far too easy to be too loud when the world is reduced to a whisper. But it’s a huge huge discovery. The rogue robot is following rat-face Necdet. Up in the balcony Can almost gibbers at the excitement. This isn’t just curiosity, or even a mystery anymore. This is a case. He is Can: Boy Detective now. The case is afoot!<br />
<br />
Carefully carefully, with one half of his eyes on the stalker, the other half on the crazed, reeling guy down in the street, Can creeps across the rooftops of Beyoğlu. Release a hand here, take a grip there. Mystery bot is following Necdet, stoner-boy. Of all people to follow. Like the lizard stalking the hunting mantis feels the shadow of the hawk; it’s only Can’s overcompensating secondary senses, that instinctive knowing before knowing, that makes him stab his hand out and make Monkey roll forward, out of the pincer jaws that would have fried his BitBot circuitry with EMP.<br />
<br />
As he was the follower, he too was followed. He reconfigures his eyes as he gallops away from the attacker. Another anonymous hack-drone. He has stumbled into the surveillance range of another watcher and triggered an alert. It’s big and it’s fast and it’s strong. It can take Can’s BitBots to pieces. It’s behind him, and Can’s power-management panel is telling him he is down to two-thirds battery power. He has to bringMonkey back, but it will lead the pursuer straight to him.<br />
<br />
Run robot run. Monkey leap, monkey scuttle. Behind him, half a roof away, comes the destroyer. Can gasps in mental exertion and flexes his hand to send his monkey up a wall in two bounds, over a parapet and across a sheltered green-painted garden where morning washing hangs limply in the heat-weary air. The hunter follows. It’s bigger, faster and even closer. Can flicks a glance at the battery meter. Half charge now, and at this rate of exertion Monkey eats power. And leap. Even as Monkey is in midair Can reconfigures him into a ball. The BitBot hits and rolls, bounding from the air-conditioning fans and photosynth panels to crash hard against the farther parapet. The hunter bounds after him, crossing the roof in a few strides, but the BitBot has morphed back into Monkey mode and is hand-over-handing it down the fire escape for the leap to the roof of the adjoining building. Can has stolen a few dozen metres.<br />
<br />
Can doesn’t hear the door open. Can doesn’t hear anything. The chase across the rooftops is silent. He only looks up from the robot-versus-robot action when light from the open door dazzles him. A shadow, a sun-blurred spindly alien-thing. His mum. She signs. Can frowns. He always sits facing the door so that he will know when someone comes in but also because the visitor can’t see what he is doing on his computer. Can isn’t allowed excitement. She would cry. Unable to shout or shake or strike, she’s forced into self-martyrdom. See how you’ve made me feel?<br />
<br />
She signs again. <em>Have you got a clean shirt for school this afternoon?</em><br />
<br />
Can knows better than to nod. That would make her feel hurt because he was being rude and disrespectful. She might even ask what was so important he couldn’t talk to his mother. His hands can’t afford the time away from the screen but he signs: There’s one in the wardrobe.<br />
<br />
<em>Good</em>, she says. The silhouette moves in the bright light as if to go, then turns back. <em>What are you doing anyway?</em><br />
<em></em><br />
Can’s heart flutters.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Just playing with Monkey.” It’s no lie.<br />
<br />
<em>Well, just you don’t go annoying anyone with him, all right?</em> Then she vanishes into the light and the door closes. Can lets out a hiss of concentration and bends over his roll-up screen. Speed power navigation security. A cat flees as Monkey and its hunter gallop across the rooftop and swing up a water-tank gantry onto the next roof. Distance five metres, power at 12 percent. Can wonders who is behind those insect eyes; what face lit by what screen.<br />
<br />
<em>Whoever you are, Can Durukan Boy Detective will amaze and bamboozle you!</em> Can clenches his fist to summon the reserves from the batteries, then flings his hand open to send Monkey leaping high over the concrete coaming. The hunter-bot leaps after him. <em>Got you! You thought there was a roof, but there is nothing but twenty metres of empty air</em>. Can brings his hands together in a silent clap. Falling Monkey explodes into its component BitBots. Nanorobots rain down onto Vermilion-Maker Lane. Can crosses his thumbs and waggles his fingers. The cloud of mite-machines ripples, darkens into smoke and coalesces into a pair of gossamer wings. A bird; Can’s Bird. Power is critical, but Bird beats its wings, swoops over the heads of the men squatting on their tea-shop stools, so low they duck. Three beats four, and he pulls up out of Vermilion-Maker Lane. In his rearview camera he sees the hunting bot smashed like a porcelain crab on the cobbles. Shards and splinters and scraps of yellow shell. He turns over Adem Dede Square, a great white stork sliding home.<br />
<br />
Can’s hands shake. There’s a tightness in the back of his throat and nose of wanting to cry, and he needs a pee. His heart thuds tight in his chest; his breath flutters in his throat; his face burns with excitement now that he realises he was in danger. While he was running it was a game—the best game he has ever played. Now he can think about what would have happened if the men behind the robot had followed him, had come to his door and knocked on it. Now he can be afraid. But he is proud; more proud of escaping the hunter than of anything he has ever done. He wants to tell people. But the kids in the special school are too stupid to understand or they have something very wrong with them. His parents: Can knows he would never crawl out from under his mother’s self-flagellation and his father’s silence.<br />
<br />
Mr. Ferentinou. He will listen. He will know.What he doesn’t know he can guess, and his guesses are always right. He was famous for that, so he tells Can. Can Durukan goes to the edge of the balcony, peers into the brilliant morning breaking over Eskiköy and lifts a hand to catch Bird coming home.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
You are a fine gentleman of Iskenderun, old Alexandretta, sometime in the middle decades of the eighteenth Christian century, a subject of Sultan Osman III. His empire has ebbed far from its zenith at the gates of Vienna. It is the magic blue hour of the house of Osmanli. All seems radiant and still and suspended as if it might carry on in this shell-like turquoise forever. But the night draws inexorably in. Imperial Constantinople may console itself in grand buildings of mosques and baths and imperial tombs, but Alexandretta is far from the Sublime Porte and feels the winds from the east and the north more closely. It has always been a cosmopolis of many races and confessions, where the trade routes from Central Asia meet the sea lanes from Italy and the far Atlantic. In those caravanserais and hans you made your wealth. In your prime you were a travelled man, west to Marseilles and Cadiz, east to Lahore and Samarkand; to the north,Moscow and, as befits a religious man once in his life, south to Mecca as a hacı. Now you are old; you have retired to your shaded house where the cool sea breeze brings news from the corners of the empire and the greater world beyond. The great age of peace and prosperity is ending. Your wife is dead these five years; your sons manage your interests, and your daughters are adequately married. Life’s obligations are fulfilled. It is time to leave. One morning you order your staff, <em>Bring me a bowl of pine honey</em>. You eat it all up with a silver spoon in a quiet room of your house that has no clocks. Again, for your midday meal: <em>Bring me a bowl of pine honey</em>. In the evening; a bowl of pine honey. Only honey.<br />
<br />
By the third day of nothing but honey the servants have gossiped it abroad. By Friday prayers it is all across the city. Your many friends come to call, a river of them, for you are a household name in Alexandretta, but not before your sons and daughters. The women weep, the men ask, <em>What possessed you to choose this bizarre act?</em> You say, <em>A tumour the size of a pomegranate. I can feel it inside me, it is months since I could enjoy a piss without pain. It would be the death of me and I can’t defeat that, but I can arrange a different appointment with Azrael</em>. By now the servants have soaked the curtains in vinegar to keep the flies from you.<br />
<br />
Doctors are called, European trained. They come from the room that now smells of sweet honey-sweat to tell the waiting sons and sons-in-laws that there is nothing they can do, that you are set upon this process and it will take its course. Not even the imam can sway you from what you have decided to become. It is unusual, but it has a long and noble history.<br />
<br />
In the second week of your transformation you express a taste for exotic and rare honeys: the blends and the regionals, from the potent aphid-sucked honeydew of the fir forests of the Vosges and Southern Germany to the delicately floral Thousand Flower honey of Bordeaux. In the third week of your transfiguration you explore honeys of theft and peril: wild acacia honey of the savage hives of Africa, where the foragers have grown immune to stings that would kill lesser men; honey from the Sundarbans of Bengal, where tigers stalk the hive-hunters in the mangrove forests; the carob honeys from the bazaars of Fes, stolen in the high Atlas from legendary hives the size of houses. In your moments of lucidity between swimming in golden sugar hallucinations you realise that you are now the empire’s greatest connoisseur of honey and that this precious knowledge could easily pass from the world. You hire an amanuensis, a tarikat-trained boy of a good family and excellent calligraphy to write down your ravings on the honeys that your servants now drip by the spoonful onto your tongue. In the fourth week you explore the high paths of sweetness; the single-flower honeys. Such is your skill now that you can taste a single drop and say that is a myrrh honey from Arabia, that is a thyme honey from Cyprus, that is orange-blossom honey from Bulgaria and that, unmistakably, is cedar honey from the Levant. Beyond the borders of the empire you discover sleep-scented lavender honey from Spain and the cactus honey of Mexico. For two days you savour and describe the bitter, mentholic darkness of the Sardinian Corbozello honey made from the flowers of the wild arbutus. Over three days you are gripped in hallucinations of the rhododendron honey of the Himalayas. Towards the end there are days when you are lost entirely in the golden light that glows behind your permanently drawn blinds and you utter honey-prophecies and oozing sugar-visions, but when you ask your secretary to read your ravings back there is not one word written on his page. By now your pores exude not sweat but a gold-tinged ichor. Your urine is as sweet as a confection, your excrement a soft amber unguent. Honey permeates every vessel of your body; honey swaddles your organs and drips in oozing globules through the spaces of your brain.<br />
<br />
The transition from waking world to dream, from dream to coma, and from coma to death is sweet, subtle and as slow as the fall of a tear of honey from a spoon. The doctor confirms with his little mirror that all breath has left your body. Your secretary stands shaking with hidden tears, clutching his treatise on honey as the blinds are thrown open. Your daughters are already keening; your sons have one last task to perform. The imam makes the consignment as the servants wash the corpse that smells of thyme and lavender, pine and myrrh and orange flower. Now your sons must work fast. The great stone coffin, an ancient pagan Roman thing, has already been filled with honey. Your body is slowly submerged in it; great bubbles rising slowly through the amber liquid as you sink. The lid is slid into position, and as it is sealed with lead the remaining spaces are filled with yet more honey poured through a hole bored through the mouth of the pagan goddess until a single drop of gold forms on her lips. Then that too is sealed with molten lead. Men and many horses—all the men of goodwill who knew you in life—carry you through the streets of Alexandretta to the warehouse where you have caused the grave to be dug. The marker is set in the place of the paving slab. It reads, Hacı Ferhat, 1191–1268—and a second date: Berat Kandili 1450.<br />
<br />
Every trade has its fabled beasts, its rocs and Cyclops and djinni that can whisk you from the dome of Baghdad to Samarkand in a thought. Lawyers have monster murderers and celebrity defendants who defamed Turkishness or merely pulled off a breathtaking scam. Traders have their stellar players who read the market in one moment of piercing insight and made unimaginable fortunes. The media is rife with the vices of actors and the eccentricities of editors, producers and directors. Musicians’ whims and contract riders are legendary. The neglected, dusty corner of antiquarians and manuscript dealers is no different. There are its grails, its lost codices, forbidden grimoires and Hands of Glory and, stalking the honeyed path between them, the Mellified Man.<br />
<br />
They are creatures of antiquarians’ legends, Mellified Men. Once in a lifetime one may turn up in the vast bazaars of Damascus or Cairo, walking out of a remote and alien history. They command fearful prices, insane money, for they are the embodiment of powerful magics. Even the djinn respect a Mellified Man. At the due date on the tombstone the casket is unsealed. When the lid is removed what remains is a human confection. Honey suffuses every channel and organ; honey fuses with flesh; honey permeates every cell. Sugar is a powerful preservative and antibacterial. The unfamiliar sun turns the thing in the coffin to gold. Now the Mellified Man’s true work begins.<br />
<br />
The body is broken up into pieces the size of a cube of baklava. These are applied to cure all manners of ill and wounds. The flesh of a Mellified Man, soft as semolina halva, has the power to cure diseases, heal wounds, mend broken bones. Smeared on the eyelids it melts away cataracts; it can restore hearing to deaf ears. Spread on the genitals, it renews potency. Taken internally is the most efficacious method. A tiny dose melted on the tongue will dissolve cancers, clear phlegm from clogged lungs, refresh the great organs, stoke up cooling digestive fires, eradicate any stone or gall or ulcer. Even the hair from the mummy’s head, thick and syrupy as a strand of kedayıf pastry, is a famous cure for baldness.<br />
<br />
“You don’t work for any length of time in this business without someone boasting that they’ve seen a Mellified Man,” Ayşe says. She is very aware of her own breathing. “And I am aware that they’re more than just legends, but in my experience they were strictly medieval.” A void has opened in the sanity of things, and she teeters on the brink. The Persian miniatures of Belkis and the Prophet that line the walls swirl without ever changing position. This is an echo of the age of miracles in this third decade of the twenty-first century. But if there is one place where a Mellified Man could walk out of magical time, where the fantastical and the mundane routinely come into contact, where the djinn touch toe to earth, it is surely Istanbul. <br />
<br />
“Oh no no no,” says Akgün. In the private viewing room Ayşe can closely study her guest. The nanoweave fabric of his suit has closed in the air-conditioned cool, and his clothing shimmers like Damascus steel. The watch is high-marque, the manicure exquisite from the tips of his nails to his cufflinks. The shave is business-close, but there is something about the man that does not smell right. His cologne is Arslan. Even an ultra Cimbom fan like Adnan would never wear an aroma branded for a Galatasaray striker. “People put too much faith in Li Shizhen’s account. There is good evidence that a Mellified Man was sold in Tashkent to traditional Chinese medical practitioners as recently as 1912.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, but that’s a long way from an eighteenth-century Mellified Man from Alexandretta.”<br />
<br />
“You are absolutely right to be sceptical. That’s why I’ve brought provenances.” Inside the impact-carbon briefcase is another, in supple honey-coloured leather. It would not surprise Ayşe if it were human skin. It carries a small tulip-shaped tattoo. Her scanners tell her the mark is a blossom of tracker molecules. Within the case is a waxed-paper wallet, within that the folio itself, leather bound with an ornate rosette in gold leaf set on a medallion on the cover.<br />
<br />
“May I?”<br />
<br />
Akgün slides the book across the table. It lies beside the envelope of cash. Ayşe wills down the lights as she studies the binding. The stitching seems authentic, strong linen thread; the header tapes of their time. Dust falls from the right places and the leather smells of old skin and is creased where a book should be, like a face lined with experience. It crackles as Ayşe opens it. Inside is in the swift, clear Sumbuli script of a lad who has transcribed the Holy Koran from memory, setting down the thoughts of God as they form in his memory like water welling from a spring.<br />
<br />
<em>Heather honey, from the uplands of the barbarous realm of Scotland that comprises the northernmost part of the island of Britain. Heather is a small ground-covering plant, with springy woody boughs and small, thyme-like leaves which commonly grows on the sides of the hills and mountains that characterise that country. Trees are almost entirely unknown in upland Scotland due to the proximity of the pole and the general inclemency of the weather, which is of a wet, gloomy and sunless nature and of a boggy disposition.</em><br />
<br />
“So?”<br />
<br />
“On a cursory inspection it looks authentic, but we are the world capital of fakery. To be sure I’d need to carry out a molecular analysis,” Ayşe says. The small room is filled with the cedary perfume of an old book opened to the light. Smell is the djinni of memory; all times are one to it. As she pores over the book, her eyewriter scanning the calligraphy, Ayşe is simultaneously in her grandfather’s bookstore in Sirkeci that rambled through a series of seemingly arbitrarily connected rooms (were they in different cities, different ages, different universes?), the books becoming older and more compressed the deeper and darker you went, like a geology of words. As a nine-year-old she would close her eyes and wander surely through the warren, guided by the sharp, spicy ketones and esters of modern pulps and A-format paperbacks through the teetering towers of remaindered hardbacks and the glossy, oily tang of coffee table books to the musks and spices of the antiquarian volumes on their sagging shelves, many of which were written in letters she could not understand and that read the wrong way. Understanding did not matter;Ayşe could wander, entranced, for hours along the lines of Arabic cursive. Often it was enough to stand, eyes firmly shut, under the little coloured mosque lamps with their low-voltage bulbs and breathe in the perfume of history, the pheromones of the dead. “It would involve destroying a small sample.”<br />
<br />
Akgün’s shock is genuine. Here is a man who knows and loves books, Ayşe thinks. <em>And cannot countenance any violence to them. He would return borrowed paperbacks on time, their spines uncracked, the covers of their corners unfoxed. But he doesn’t know that with modern nano-assay chips the clipping is a few fibres of paper, a few molecules of ink</em>. That he doesn’t know that is another circling suspicion. After the adrenaline always comes clarity and judgment. A Mellified Man: the blood burns, the brain blazes at even the possibility of it being true. But like djinn in a house, her doubts will not be driven out: of all the shops of all the dealers and all the antiquarians in all of Istanbul, why this shop, this dealer? The world is simple, but it is never neat. This man in the right suit and the wrong aftershave is too neat. Ayşe Erkoç closes the book and slides the envelope of five-hundred-euro notes across the table.<br />
<br />
“You tempt me but I can’t take this commission.”<br />
<br />
“May I ask why?”<br />
<br />
“You said I can obtain hard-to-get items; that’s because I’ve built up a network of dealers and antiquarians and experts. I’ve built it up by word of mouth. I guard it very jealously. This is a very small business. Everyone knows everyone else and rumour moves like wildfire. You live or you die by reputation. When word got around that Ünal Bey was passing Kazakhstani fakes off as Timurid miniatures he was shunned. Two weeks later he drove his car through the crash barrier of the Bosphorus Bridge in shame. Maybe you heard about it on the news? I know my suppliers and my agents and I know my clients—many of them are very wealthy and influential men, but everything is done by personal recommendation. Now, I have no doubts that your provenances are genuine and that this Alexandretta mummy has washed up in Istanbul, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t very very tempted. But there’s an etiquette in this business. I am very sorry, Mr. Akgün.”<br />
<br />
He chews his lower lip, flicks his head.<br />
<br />
“You have my card.” He straightens the cuffs of his shirt. “I hope you’ll reconsider.”<br />
<br />
“Trust me, nothing would give me more pleasure than to track down a Mellified Man,” says Ayşe. She extends a hand. Akgün’s grasp is firm and dry. No spark of data between them. She waits on the balcony as Akgün descends the stairs. Hafize’s eyes are wide and her hands spread in astonishment as the street door closes behind him. She has been watching, as she always watches, the deal on the security cameras. Her hands say, <em>You turned down a million euro?</em><br />
<br />
<em>Yes</em>, Ayşe will tell her when Akgün is gone. <em>You didn’t smell his aftershave</em>.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
His was love in a time of military rule. It was the late summer when Georgios Ferentinou looked up from the beautiful abstract weave of statistical regressions and complexity algorithms and saw the tumbling curling hair and magnificent sullen cheekbones of Ariana Sinanidis across Meryem Nasi’s pool. A fresh and zealous undergraduate, he had been engaged in a season-long combative correspondence with a New York–based Lebanese economist. Georgios’s enemy argued that random events beyond the predictions of theory shaped the world. People and lives bobbed in a storm of probability. Georgios argued back that complexity theory folded the spikes and pits of randomness back into the everyday, the humdrum. All storms whimper out in the end. That summer they argued across the Atlantic by flimsy blue airmail while in Istanbul demonstrators marched and protestors rallied and political parties formed and drew up manifestos and made alliances and schismed into new parties and bombs went off in Istiklal Cadessi litter bins. In Ankara generals and admirals and jandarmeri commanders met in each other’s houses. In the university library Georgios Ferentinou—thin and lithe and luminous-eyed as a deer—worked on, as oblivious to the deteriorating political climate as to the season.<br />
<br />
Then the invitation came to Meryem’s party. Meryem Nasi was as close as modern Istanbul came to aristocracy, of an intellectual Jewish family that claimed to have lived by the Bosphorus since the Diaspora. Of no special gift herself, she was hopelessly attracted to talented people. She collected them. She enjoyed bringing disparate, even antagonistic talents together to see if they would achieve a critical mass, if they would fuse or fission or generate some other burst of creative energy.<br />
<br />
“If there is one thing will kill Turkey,” she would say, “it is a famine of ideas.”<br />
<br />
No one in her coterie dared mention that if anything was killing Turkey it was a surfeit of ideas, too many political visions and ideologies. But the head of the school of economics did mention a particularly bright and aggressive undergraduate who was fighting a ridiculous but valorous battle against an American academic of ten times his experience and a hundred times his reputation. Three days later the invitation arrived on Georgios Ferentinou’s desk. Not even his unworldliness could ignore a summons from Meryem Nasi. So he found himself stiff as a wire in a hired suit and cheap shoes clutching a glass on her Yeniköy terrace, grimacing nervously at anyone who moved through his personal space.<br />
<br />
“Darling, there’s someone I want you to meet.” Meryem was a short, big-haired, gravel-voiced fifty-something in shoulderpads and wasp-waist jacket, but she seized Georgios Ferentinou by the arm like a wrestler and hauled him to the group of men by the pool steps. “This is Sabri Iliç from <em>Hürriyet</em>, Aziz Albayrak from the State Planning Organisation, and Arif Hikmet from the faculty you already know. This is Georgios Ferentinou; he’s the bad boy’s been baiting Nabi Nassim at Columbia.”<br />
<br />
In the warmth of an early September evening their talk turned to the oil crisis of the previous winter when old women froze in their apartments in Istanbul. Stammering at first in such prodigious company, Georgios suggested that a more secure energy future could be fuelled by natural gas. It was less subject to the political price fluctuations of OPEC, the TransCaspian area had so much of it they burned it off in tail flares, and it would hook Turkey back into its traditional hinterland of the Caucasus. Arif Hikmet, with a wink to his student, said that the Americans would not look well on their prime security partner in the Middle East tying itself to its ideological enemy for energy policy. Sabri Iliç, <em>Hürriyet’s</em> new business editor, commented that it was the Americans who had driven the oil prices up in the first place. Aziz Albayrak from Ankara maintained that Turkey must always look west, not north, to the EEC, not the USSR. Georgios was nineteen years old in a funeral suit and bad shoes, and people whose opinions shaped the nation nodded when he spoke. He felt weightless, filled with light ready to burst from every pore, giddy with intellectual excitement yet at the same time assured and controlled. He could trust his mouth not to open and scuttle him. Now they were energetically debating the ongoing effects of the lira’s evaluation and convertibility; how it opened the Central Bank to international markets and investors but also made it vulnerable to currency speculators. What did Georgios Bey think? Georgios Bey had been glancing away from the debate for a moment, but in that moment a woman in equally rapt conversation across the pool also looked away. Their eyes met. That look wiped away all thought. Georgios Ferentinou was struck by the lightning of his oldest gods. Her gaze moved on; the moment was gone. She returned to her conversation, but he was lost. With the skill of an academic son used to studying between television, blaring radio, shouts and calls and raucous animated conversations, he screened out his own party and tuned, like a radio telescope eavesdropping on a distant and radiant star, to hers. She was talking politics with a group of entranced men, sitting around on the marble poolside benches like the <em>demos</em> of ancient Athens. She was theorising on the Deep State: that enduring Turkish paranoia that the nation really was a conspiracy run by a cabal of generals, judges, industrialists and gangsters. The Taksim Square massacre of three years before, the Kahramanmaraş slaughter of Alevis a few months after, the oil crisis and the enduring economic instability, even the ubiquity of the Grey Wolves nationalist youth movements handing out their patriotic leaflets and defiling Greek Churches—all were links in an accelerating chain of events running through the fingers of the Derin Devlet. To what end? the men asked. Coup, she said, leaning forward, her fingers pursed. It was then that Georgios Ferentinou adored her. The classic profile, the strength of her jaw and fine cheekbones. The way she shook her head when the men disagreed with her, how her bobbed, curling hair swayed. The way she would not argue but set her lips and stare, as if their stupidity was a stubborn offence against nature. Her animation in argument balanced against her marvellous stillness when listening, considering, drawing up a new answer. How she paused, feeling the regard of another, then turned to Georgios and smiled.<br />
<br />
In the late summer of 1980 Georgios Ferentinou fell in love with Ariana Sinanidis by Meryem Nasi’s swimming pool. Three days later, on September 12, Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren overthrew the government and banned all political activity. <br />
<br />
Now Ariana is back in this tangle of streets, on this square beneath him. He tries to imagine how time might engrain itself in her face, deepening lines, accentuating her sharp features, adding shadows. She would not have coarsened, grown gross like him. She would always move like a muse. Why has she come back? He’s old; it’s been forty-seven years. Dare he seek her out?<br />
<br />
All minorities possess a sense for being watched. Georgios turns slowly in the creaking chair. The snake clings to the wall, fixing Georgios in its jewel-bright eyes. Georgios Ferentinou nods to the watching robot and lumbers down the stairs to his library. He is so stiff today. The machine slides ahead of him along the wall.<br />
<br />
That same old Fener-Greek instinct introduced Georgios to neighbour Can Durukan. Poring over his smart-paper screen one winter afternoon with the Karayel, the Black Wind, seeking out the gaps in the window frame, a prickle on the back of his neck had made him look up. There, a tiny watcher tucked into the carved wooden fitting for the chandelier. He stood up on his chair to peer at it and the thing dropped to the floor and made a break for the door. But Georgios was in the heart of his demesne. In a thought he whipped his jacket from the back of his chair and flung it over the scuttling thing. He snatched it up, only to drop the jacket, startled. It squirmed and boiled as if infested. A swarm of tiny spider robots scattered in every direction. Georgios shook his head with wonder. As the last spider headed for the gap at the bottom of the library door he grabbed a glass and brought it down over the device. “I’ve got you!”<br />
<br />
An hour later came the knock on his apartment door.<br />
<br />
“Come on in,” he said. “I think I have something of yours.” The boy frowned, leaned forward. Of course. The heart condition. Like every other occupant of the dervish house Georgios received a note under the door every New Year reminding him to avoid rows, heavy footwear, power tools, excessive thumping or dropping heavy pans and keep the volume on his music and television down. It was twenty years since Georgios Ferentinou kept anything heavier than a kettle for tea in his cramped kitchen and, unusually for a mathematician, he had no ear for music. <em>It’s down in the library</em>, he wrote in propelling pencil on the wall by the door. The boy goggled at such nonchalant vandalism.<br />
<br />
“This is a library?” Can said in his too-loud, flat voice. He stared around at the simple whitewashed dervish cell with its single brass lamp and small, shuttered window. “The woman downstairs has hundreds and hundreds of books.”<br />
<br />
But those are not books for reading, Georgios wrote on the smartpaper sheet on the old Ottoman desk. <em>A library full of books that are never read is not a library</em>. He let the words erase themselves, letter by letter. <em>This library has only one book, but it is every book in the world</em>.<br />
<br />
<br />
He set the BitBot under the upturned tea glass in which he had imprisoned it on the desk. He wrote, <em>This is clever technology</em>. He gestured for Can to lift the glass. The little robot ran up the boy’s forefinger, under the sleeve of his T-shirt to curl in the hair at his temple. <em>It could be so much more than just a toy</em>.<br />
<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
<br />
<em>We could reprogramme it. Make it do really interesting things.</em><br />
<br />
Can blinked twice at him.<br />
<br />
“I have to go now. My mum will wonder where I am. She wouldn’t like it if she knew I’d been to see you. She thinks you’re a paedo. I know you’re not but I’m still going.”<br />
<br />
<em>Come back</em>, Georgios thought at the closing door. Can did return the next day, Monkey riding on his shoulder. The slow, careful education began.<br />
<br />
In a different season of another year Can waits in the Library of All Books. He beckons. Snake scurries across the ceiling and drops. In midair it breaks into its component mites; then the cloud of microrobots reconfigure into Bird. It flies up to perch on his shoulder. Can carefully carefully removes the plugs from his ears. Georgios always holds his breath as Can extracts the delicate technology. He seems not himself today. He fidgets; his face is flushed. Georgios makes tea. Two glasses, two saucers, two spoons. Man to man across the tiny white table.<br />
<br />
“Mr. Ferentinou, I went to look at the bomb. You know, down on Necatibey Cadessi.” Georgios stirs the lazy sugar crystals in the bottom of his glass. Can’s small world is full of big stories. Can continues in his slightly-too-loud voice, “I hid up on the front of the Allianz building, and there was another robot on the building next door, hiding like me. I thought it was watching the bomb, but it wasn’t. It was watching the people, the ones caught on the tram. It looked at all of them, and then it followed one. Mr. Ferentinou, it was following Mr. Hasgüler from downstairs.”<br />
<br />
“Ismet?” Georgios fears Shaykh Ismet. He is the antithesis of his life.<br />
<br />
“No, the other one.”<br />
<br />
“Necdet. I didn’t know that Necdet had been caught in the bombing, but why would anyone be interested in him?”<br />
<br />
“Well, it was following him; and it wasn’t the only one. There was another robot: I didn’t see it, but it saw me. It came right up behind me, and it would have had me if Monkey hadn’t jumped just in time. It chased me, Mr. Ferentinou.”<br />
<br />
“Chased?”<br />
<br />
“Over the roofs. It was scary but really brilliant. It was big and fast. But it wasn’t as clever. I did this trick I’ve been practising where I jump and morph into Bird in midair. It thought there was another roof there. It fell and smashed. Just out beside Kenan’s.”<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou’s spoon slips from his fingers and takes a quadrant off the fragile, tulip-shaped tea glass. The tea floods the table. He will clean it up later.<br />
<br />
“It knows where you live?”<br />
<br />
“No, like I said, I tricked it and killed it.”<br />
<br />
“Just outside Kenan’s, you say? I wouldn’t mind taking a look at that.”<br />
<br />
Can is on his air-soled feet, Snake riding his shoulder like a wave. Georgios points him back down into his seat.<br />
<br />
“You stay there. Whoever sent it could have come looking for it. I don’t think these people should know that you live here.”<br />
<br />
“Do you think it’s a conspiracy?”<br />
<br />
“Mr. Durukan, if God is dead then everything is conspiracy.”<br />
<br />
Can presses his forehead against the window of the tiny tearoom. Mr. Ferentinou waddles painfully down the steps, greets Bülent and Aydin the simit seller and pokes around behind the Coke machine outside Kenan’s. <em>Right to your right</em>, Can mouths at him, mutely waving him toward the street door. <em>There there, right there!</em> Georgios Ferentinou prods and pokes, hunkers down, face red like it could explode. He opens his hands in a gesture of incomprehension. <em>Nothing</em>.<br />
<br />
“There was a robot, there really was, it really chased me and I did kill it,” Can says on Mr. Ferentinou’s return.<br />
<br />
“Oh I believe you,” Georgios says. “They’ve already taken it away. They will have video footage of your robots. And, if for some reason they are interested in Mr. Hasgüler, they will come back to this dervish house.”<br />
<br />
“But then if they’re watching that Necdet guy, then I could watch them.”<br />
<br />
“Mr. Durukan, I think you and your robots should keep a low profile.”<br />
<br />
“But I know places in this building that no one else does. I know all the secret places. No will ever find me.” <em>I watch you</em>, Can thinks. <em>I watch that Leyla girl, the one who watches too much television too and she never knows. I watch everyone</em>.<br />
<br />
“I forbid it. I would be very angry if I thought you were doing that.”<br />
<br />
“But it’s a conspiracy, only it’s on my own doorstep. It’s cool. A real conspiracy!”<br />
<br />
“Mr. Durukan, take it from my own personal experience, real conspiracies are not cool. Real conspiracies are dangerous and bewildering and exhausting and so, so frightening. In real conspiracies, you are all on your own. Whatever this is, it’s no matter for a nine-year-old boy. Leave it.”<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou gets a sponge and mops up the tea, careful of the shards of glass.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
Necdet sees the first djinni perched on the hot-air hand dryer as he exits the toilet cubicle. The djinni is like a grossly obese baby, slit-eyed and puff-faced. And it’s on fire. Necdet can feel the heat from the toilet door. It seethes and roars like burning fat.<br />
<br />
“I’d, uh, kind of like to dry my hands? It’s hygienic?”<br />
<br />
The djinni cocks its bloated head to one side and holds out its pudgy hands. Necdet lifts his own hands towards them. The heat is incredible. His hands are dry in an instant.<br />
<br />
“I’m going now.”<br />
<br />
The question strikes him in the corridor: why didn’t the hand dryer melt? Necdet ducks back into the toilet. Nothing, of course. Djinn are never there when you look for them. Then the shakes hit. Necdet leans over the sink, stomach heaving. He presses his head against the cool porcelain. It is solid; it is dependable; it is cool certainty. He daren’t look up. It could be there again, perched on the hand dryer with its horrid horrid baby face. Or there could be something worse. Or the head of the woman who blew herself up on the tram. Necdet puts his mouth under the tap and gulps down clear cold water, lets it run down his face, into his eyes. Wash away what they have seen today. When he looks up the toilet is still empty.<br />
<br />
In the lobby Mustafa practises his pitch shots. Mustafa is never without a plan. None have ever earned him a cent, let alone broken him out of this subterranean barn of a Business Rescue Centre, but his theory is that if he generates enough ideas one of them will stick. His latest is to exploit the fact that he is trapped in a Business Rescue Centre by turning it into an Urban Golf Facility.<br />
<br />
“It’s a new urban sport,” Mustafa says. “Turn a building into a golf course. Corridors become fairways; offices are greens. But what makes it much much cooler than just golf is that you have to get your ball around corners and up flights of stairs. All the office furniture and partitions and workstations: those are like hazards and bunkers and all that stuff. You’re never quite sure where your ball is going to go. Sort of like handball or squash—or three-d crazy golf? Maybe we should include safety helmets and goggles, what do you think? I’m going to write up a prospectus; I’m sure I can raise some venture capital. It’s another great Turkish idea.”<br />
<br />
Mustafa hits a five-iron down the corridor from his tee-off position on the empty reception desk. A sweetly angled shot, the ball strikes the wall just before the turn and ricochets around the corner. Mustafa swings his club over his shoulder. He has a lot of time to practice. You could walk over and around the Levent Business Rescue Centre and never know it was there. Hundreds do every day. It is forty thousand square metres of office space built into the underpinnings of the Emirates Tower. Cavernous halls, office spaces, corridors and meetings rooms, storage and kitchen and toilet facilities, even a recreation room and a gym, buried away never seeing the light of day. Should earthquake, fire or flood ever strike down those shining towers, a corporation could seamlessly move its business down to the Rescue Centre. It’s big enough to handle the entire Istanbul Stock Exchange. In the year and a half Necdet has been here, the red telephone has rung once, and that was a wrong number. Mustafa has been here since day one. Necdet is Mustafa’s only partner to stick it out more than six months. Mustafa likes the dusty, neon-lit solitude of the rows of empty workstations, the meeting rooms with their chairs all set at perfectly regular intervals around the oval tables. It’s room for creative thought. A thousand flowers have bloomed among these server farms.<br />
<br />
“On for even par,” says Mustafa with a golfer’s follow-through air punch. “What’s with you? You look like you saw a ghost.”<br />
<br />
“Not a ghost. I did see a djinni in the toilet.”<br />
<br />
“Well, that is a traditional haunt of djinn.” Unfazed, Mustafa swings his club over his shoulder and jumps off the reception desk. He has time—buckets of time—to become a minor expert on everything. “According to those mystics and Sufis who make a study of such things, you’re supposed to ask permission every time you piss.”<br />
<br />
“It was on the hand dryer, and it was a baby. A burning baby.”<br />
<br />
“Ah. That’s different then. Carry these for me, would you?” Mustafa hands Necdet a pitching wedge, putter and a clatter of irons. He is only three years older than Necdet—they’ve talked about their ages, they’ve talked about everything down in the bunker—but he conducts himself like a worldly-wise cosmopolite. “I incline to the theory that djinn are spare thoughts left over from creation, memories of the Big Bang, so to speak. That would fit with them being creatures of fire. There’s a new theory among the imams who have a little quantum physics that the djinn are ourselves in a universe at an angle to ours. But I think in this case they are most likely to be some lingering trauma from being in the epicentre of a tram bomb. You don’t just walk away from these things, you know. I’m sure they have counselling available. If it were me, I’d have given you the day off, but it’s not mine to give, alas.” The Levent Business Rescue Centre is managed by Gum-Chewing Suzan. When she phones in twice a week to make sure Necdet and Mustafa haven’t killed each other with the fire axes she sounds as if she is chewing a wad of gum the size of a car. Neither Necdet nor Mustafa have ever met her. “Either that or all that skunk you smoke is finally catching up with you. Pitching wedge, please.”<br />
<br />
<em>And that would also explain the floating luminous head of the suicide bomber,</em> Necdet thinks as he picks the wedge out of the clutch of clubs in his grasp<em>. I didn’t tell you about her because I thought that too. But I felt the heat of the djinni of the hand dryer on my face. I dried my hands on it. Traumas don’t dry hands.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
Mustafa addresses the ball. He has a good lie in the centre of the corridor, well positioned for a chip up the staircase at the end onto the return. Mustafa wiggles his ass. A flicker in the corner of Necdet’s vision makes him glance over his shoulder. Behind the glass wall is the main back office; twenty-seven thousand square metres of dusty desks, tucked in chairs and outdated workstations. Every monitor, as far as Necdet can see into the regress of screens, crackles with static and the ghost of a face from another universe.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
The Roman Emperor Vespasian said that money has no smell. The emperor lied. Money is every breath Adnan Sarioğlu takes on the trading floor. The smell of money is the ionic charge of Özer Gas and Commodities; sweat and musk, electricity and the hydrocarbon scent of power-warmed plastics, time and tension. To beach-boy-turned-commodities-trader Adnan, money is the smell of a wetsuit worn by a woman.<br />
<br />
The commodity pit is a cylinder at the heart of Özer’s glass tower, eight floors ringed around a central shaft and capped with a stained glass dome that throws shards of colour across the traders ranged around the Money Tree. That is Adnan’s name for the IT core that runs from floor to ceiling, tier upon tier of suspended servers and network links, each level keyed to a specific commodity. Gas is lowly, so its traders are on the second tier, one above crude and dirty oil, and Adnan is only rarely surprised by a shard of blue or gold falling through the jungle of routers and servers and power conduits onto his face. Carbon is the highest, right up there under the dome. Carbon is exalted; carbon is pure.<br />
<br />
Adnan Sarioğlu reaches up and slides trading screens around the branches of the Money Tree. He brings in new panes of prices, expands some, pushes others away into the recesses of the central tree. To the virtual eye of the Özer trader, the information core at the centre is dense with leaves of information, almost impenetrable in their total coverage of the global markets. Commodity trading floors, once roaring pits of open-outcry bids and buys, have all become silent as dervish monasteries now that trading information is beamed directly onto the eyeball and AI assistants murmur in the inner ear. Adnan knew the old pit of the ITB exchange only as a red-jacket junior, but the roar of the traders screaming into each other’s faces shook his blood vessels, echoed in the ventricles of his heart.When the bell rang, when trading closed and he stepped out to the back office, the hush hit him like a breaking wave. Now he only gets that breaker of sound on the terraces of Aslantepe Stadium.<br />
<br />
In the new bourse the clamour is visual. Adnan moves through a storm of information, screens and panels swooping around him like starlings on a winter afternoon. The traders are peacock bright, far from the formal colour coding of dealers, traders, and back office teams. Many have customised their jackets with panels of nanoweave or had them cut from whole animated fabric. Flickering flames at cuffs, hem and lapels are the thing. Others sport Heavy Metal devils, roaring dinosaurs, spinning euro signs, nudes or football team logos. Onur Bey’s bandwidth trading team has adopted the Lâle Devri tulip motif. Adnan thinks that decadent and effeminate. He wears the front-and-back quartered red and silver of Özer. Simple, direct, unaffected; what a man should have on his back. His single affectation is his tag; it reads <em>DRK</em>. Draksor: once an Ultralord of the Universe, always an Ultralord of the Universe.<br />
<br />
Adnan reaches up and flicks open a screen from the cloak of display panels wrapped around him. Ten minutes to the closing bell at the Baku Commodity Exchange, the big central Asian gas market. In that rush to close price differences open between Baku and Istanbul. In those few seconds while the market reacts, dealers like Adnan Sarioğlu can make money. It’s all about arbitrage. Özer’s man in Baku is Fat Ali. Adnan met him on an Özer away-day trailbiking in Cappadocia. Adnan wasn’t a very good trail-biker. Neither was Fat Ali. They both preferred cars. They left the corporate boys to their leathers and dust and spent the afternoon drinking wine on the hotel’s rooftop terrace and speculating if buying the winery might be a sound investment. They drank a lot of wine. As well as car and wine enthusiasts they were both Cimbom fans. They work well together. But Fat Ali isn’t an Ultralord.<br />
<br />
Adnan’s eyes flick from screen to screen to screen. Every two seconds Adnan checks the prices on Baku June delivery. The nano blowing in gales through his head makes this level of concentration sustainable.<br />
<br />
“Four forty-six and trading small,” Adnan says. “Someone out there long? Come on Ali; one of your camel-fuckers has to be going long.”<br />
<br />
The angel of arbitrage is the angel of the gaps. The AI agents can react to a market more quickly than any human, but when they attempt to push that market any real intelligence can see them coming like a train. Some of the dealers rely heavily on their agents. Adnan trusts his own wit and his ability to see patterns those value-adding few seconds before they appear on the screens. <em>Come to me, angel of the gaps</em>.<br />
<br />
“Four forty-seven and pretty thin stuff,” Fat Ali says in Baku. But at some point as the clock ticks down to the bell there will be some local trader buying in Baku who does not have a seat in Istanbul’s central ITB and so cannot trade there. The price will move in Baku, and for the few seconds before the market shifts in Istanbul, Adnan Sarioğlu and Fat Ali can make money.<br />
<br />
<br />
“What’s Branobel doing?”<br />
<br />
“Sitting long.”<br />
<br />
The Baku screen swoops to a halt in front of Adnan. “We’re at four forty-five.” And there is the gap. Now all he needs is a way to exploit it. Adnan whirls screens around him. “Someone wants to sell fat. Come on, you bastard. I can feel you.”<br />
<br />
“Flush him out and we’ll shoot him down.”<br />
<br />
Adnan moves his hands: a dance, a code. A new offer of four hundred and forty-five dollars flows out from him across the many screens of the Money Tree like a wind rippling leaves. Instantly theAIs swarm. This’ll rattle you out, Adnan thinks. There will be a seller out there with a limit on the daily downward movement of his contracts. Adnan’s scare-price is designed to look as if the market is headed down farther yet. Faced with the possibility of unlimited loss, that trader will be forced to sell. And there. One star, burning bright in laser light on the back of Adnan’s retina. The stop-loss seller. Adnan buys two hundred. In the same instant Fat Ali sells those same two hundred across the price gap in Baku. Buy Istanbul at four forty-five; sell Baku at four forty-seven. Forty thousand euro profit for two seconds’ work. Another two seconds later the market adjusts and closes the differential. The angel of the gaps moves on. At no time does anyone sniff the gas that Adnan has arbitraged. That would be a grievous error. This is the secret of Özer Gas and Commodities: never carry any gas, never inventory any commodities, never get left holding. Promises and options of future prices are the currency.<br />
<br />
Adnan’s AIs book the sale and throw it to Kemal in the back office. Forty thousand euro. A waft of woman-warmed sun-scalded neoprene waves across his money. It was a sweet deal and few play it better than Adnan Sarioğlu and Fat Ali, but it’s not where the real money lies. Commodities money will always be quickie money, money you have to cajole into coming to you, wit and speed money. For you to make it means someone has to lose it. It’s a closed system. There are no draws in Özer. But Turquoise, that’s real money. That’s money enough to get out of the wheedling and the carpet selling. Turquoise is magic money, that comes out of nowhere. Five minutes to close in Baku, an hour to the bell in Istanbul.Adnan Sarioğlu opens his hands, pulls the twenty-four-hour spot-price screen in before his face. There’s something in there: a shadow of a pattern, a watermark in a banknote. <em>Now how can I make money here?</em><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
Leyla at the Nano Bazaar. This wall of pressed construction carbon business units is the caravanserai of the business of the infinitesimally small. Banners and windsocks share the roofline of Big Box industrial units with the Turkish crescent moon and the European Union stars. The street wall is decorated with a huge mural depicting the orders of magnitude of the universe, from the cosmological on the left to the quantum on the extreme right, worked in the flora abstractions of Iznik ceramics. The centre represents the human scale. As Leyla reads the wall of Nano Bazaar a dozen trucks and buses and dolmuşes draw up or depart; mopeds and yellow taxis and little three-wheel citi-cars steer around her. Leyla’s heart leaps.<br />
<br />
<br />
This is always always always what she wished a bazaar to be. Demre, proudly claiming to be the birthplace of Santa Claus, was direly lacking in workshops of wonder. Small corner stores, an understocked chain supermarket on the permanent edge of bankruptcy and a huge cash-and-carry that serviced the farms and the hotels squeezed between the plastic sky and the shingle shore. Russians flew there by the charter load to sun themselves and get wrecked on drink. Drip irrigation equipment and imported vodka, a typical Demre combination. But Istanbul; Istanbul was the magic. Away from home, free from the humid claustrophobia of the greenhouses, hectare after hectare after hectare; a speck of dust in the biggest city in Europe, anonymous yet freed by that anonymity to be foolish, to be frivolous and fabulous, to live fantasies. The Grand Bazaar! This was a name of wonder. This was hectare upon hectare of Cathay silk and Tashkent carpets, bolts of damask and muslin, brass and silver and gold and rare spices that would send the air heady. It was merchants and traders and caravan masters; the cornucopia where the Silk Road finally set down its cargoes. The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul was shit and sharks. Overpriced stuff for tourists, shoddy and glittery. Buy buy buy. The Egyptian Market was no different. In that season she went to every old bazaar in Sultanahmet and Beyoğlu. The magic wasn’t there.<br />
<br />
This, this is the magic. This is dangerous, like the true magic always is. This is the new terminus of the Silk Road; central Asia’s engineers and nanoware programmers the merchants and caravan masters of the Third Industrial Revolution. Leyla steps boldly through the gate. The air of Nano Bazaar air is heady; every breath a new emotion. She reels from blissed-up euphoria into nervy paranoia into awed dread in as many steps. Dust swirls in front of her, glittering in the pinhole sunbeams shining through the patchy plastic awning. The dust coalesces into a ghostly image of her face. It frowns, moves its lips to speak, and is gone in a burst of glitter. Tiny ratbots scuttle around her heels. Windows flicker with oil-sheen television pictures, rolled-down shutters drip Big Brand logos; all the lovely labels she will enjoy when she gets proper marketing-job money. Bubbles waft across her face; she recoils as they burst, then gives a little “oh!” of delight as each delicate detonation plays a fragment of Gülsen’s last-summer hit Şinaney. The birds that look down from the gutters of the industrial units aren’t birds. Atatürk’s face on a passing T-shirt suddenly turns its eyes on her and scowls. Leyla wants to clap her hands in wonder.<br />
<br />
“Unit 229?” she asks a bearded man with curly hair. He’s bent over the engine of a little three-wheeler delivery truck. BEKŞIR BORSCHT AND BLINI, it says on the side. She’s heard Russian food is very fashionable with these tech guys. Vodka freezing in the reactor cooling cells. The lad frowns at her and mutters something in Russian. She knows it well from too many drunken tourists. Aguttural, peasant tongue to her, next to the music of Turkish, but here it’s exciting, salty, exotic. Two dozen languages from as many nations ring around this former military airbase on the cheap edge of Fenerbahçe.<br />
<br />
“Unit 229?”<br />
<br />
The guy has just bought coffees from a franchise wagon; one in each hand, those Western-style coffees that are just flavoured milk and come in cardboard buckets with wooden stirrers. He’s tall and sallow and lanky with an older face than his clothes, a slightly overdefined jaw and thoughtful puppy eyes that keep darting away from her gaze.<br />
<br />
“That’s over in Smaller.”<br />
<br />
“Where?”<br />
<br />
“We’re arranged in order of technology scale,” he says. “Milli, micro, nano. Small, Smaller, Smallest. Small is beautiful. Size matters. I’m going that way.”<br />
<br />
Leyla offers a hand. Her business card is primed. The man lifts high his buckets of coffee in apology.<br />
<br />
“I’m Leyla Gültaşli; I’m a freelance marketing consultant; I’ve an appointment with Yaşar Ceylan from Ceylan-Besarani.”<br />
<br />
“So what do you want with Yaşar?”<br />
<br />
“He wants me to build a business development plan to upscale the company. Access finance, White Knights, venture capitalists, that sort of thing.” <br />
<br />
“Venture capitalists.” He sucks in breath. “You see, I find money talk kind of scary.”<br />
<br />
“It’s not when you know what to do with it.”<br />
<br />
Despite Sub-Aunt Kevser’s explanation Leyla still isn’t clear how she’s related to Yaşar, but he was nice and polite when she called him, interested with none of the geeky self-fascination.<br />
<br />
“Fenerbahçe, yeah, got that.” It was a trek; five different modes of transport. With good connections it was an hour and half. Give it three. Once again she showered in costly water, ironed out the frustration rumples in her going-to-interview suit, set out with plenty time.<br />
<br />
“Nanotechnology.”<br />
<br />
“Sort of, yes.”<br />
<br />
Nanotechnology, even sort-of nanotechnology; what does she know about nanotechnology? What does anyone really know about nanotechnology, except that it is the hot new revolution that promises to change the world as radically as information technology a generation before? Leyla has no preparation other than a well-ironed suit and her own insuperable belief in her own ability. This is as far as she could possibly be from Demre.<br />
<br />
“Unit 229.” The man gestures with his coffee cups. He follows Leyla through the low door into an anonymous single-bay front office. “Yaşar, this is Leyla Gültaşli. She’s our freelance marketing consultant.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, ah, yes; pleased to meet you.” Leyla fights down the blush of her mistake as she shakes the hand of the young man getting to his feet from the cramped seat pressed up by the desk against the wall. Yaşar Ceylan’s hair is too long and his belly is too big and he has facial hair, but his eyes are bright and he holds her look and his grip is sincere. Information crackles, palm to palm, business card to business card.<br />
<br />
“I see you’ve already met Aso, my business partner.”<br />
<br />
“Business partner, yes, of course, I should have guessed. Aunt Kevser didn’t tell me, partner, of course.” She’s gabbling, gabbling; gabbling girl from the sticks.<br />
<br />
“And Zeliha.” The fourth person in the tiny office is a woman in her late twenties almost lost behind the piles of invoices and printouts that cover her tiny desk. She frowns at Leyla, looks baffled and buries her face in one of the coffee buckets. Two desks, three chairs, a filing cabinet with a printer on the top, a row of too too fashionable ugly Urban Toy figures on the window ledge behind Yaşar. The four of them fit into the tiny office like segments of an orange.<br />
<br />
“So what is it you actually do here?”<br />
<br />
Yaşar and Aso look at each other.<br />
<br />
“Programmable nucleic bio-informatics.”<br />
<br />
“Okay,” says Leyla Gültaşli. “Maybe this is the point where I should tell you that I haven’t a clue what that means.”<br />
<br />
“And you’re not really a marketing consultant either,” says Yaşar. “Sorry. Aunt Kevser. She told me.”<br />
<br />
Zeliha sniggers into her coffee.<br />
<br />
“But we still need you,” Aso adds quickly. “We know as little about marketing as you do about programmable nucleic bio-informatics.”<br />
<br />
“Except that if I’m to pitch it, I need some comprehension of what it is.”<br />
<br />
Yaşar and Aso look at each other again. They’re like comedy presenters on children’s television.<br />
<br />
“You see, we’re small,” Yaşar says.<br />
<br />
“But not smallest,” Aso concludes.<br />
<br />
“We’re not microrobotics and smart sand.”<br />
<br />
“Neither are we true nano, let alone femto.”<br />
<br />
“We’re kind of in-between.”<br />
<br />
“Cellular.”<br />
<br />
“Technology that becomes like biology.”<br />
<br />
“Biology that becomes technological.”<br />
<br />
“Bio-informatics.”<br />
<br />
“Stop,” says Leyla Gültaşli. “Maybe I’m not a marketing executive—yet—but I do know that if you talk to a venture capitalist like that, they’ll throw you straight out.”<br />
<br />
“Okay okay.” Yaşar holds his hands up. “Let’s go back to basics. The scales. Small tech: microrobotics, swarm computing, that kind of scale.”<br />
<br />
“Like BitBots,” Leyla says brightly. “Or police bots.”<br />
<br />
“Okay,” Yaşar says. “And at the other end of the scale, there’s smallest—if you don’t count quantum dots—which is nanotechnology, which only starts at the scale of a tenth of a wavelength of light.”<br />
<br />
“It’s what I snort when I need to remember stuff or have to concentrate or want to play at being someone else for a while,” Leyla says. “It’s what makes pictures on T-shirts move and lets you have smartpaper and scrubs extra cholesterol out of your arteries or alcohol out of your liver. It’s why my ceptep and car, if I had a car, recharge in five seconds flat.”<br />
<br />
“Well, there is a bit more to it than that,” Yaşar says.<br />
<br />
“There’s a scale in between, which is Smaller, and that’s the scale we work at. We’re working with the cells of the human body,” says Aso.<br />
<br />
“What, like little submarines in the bloodstream?” Leyla asks.<br />
<br />
They both look at her. Zeliha sniggers again.<br />
<br />
“I think you’ll find that is science fiction,” Aso says.<br />
<br />
“You see, at the cellular level, the viscosity of blood is so enormous—”<br />
<br />
“Stop. Enough of the double act. Tell me, this isn’t to do with those replicator things?”<br />
<br />
Yaşar and Aso look aghast, as if she has accused them of paedophilia. Even Zeliha is ruffled.<br />
<br />
“We do bio-informatics,” Yaşar says.<br />
<br />
“Studies into replicators are subject to strict government licence and oversight,” Aso says. “Replicator experiments can only be carried out at government-approved research facilities, and they’re all in Ankara.”<br />
<br />
<em>So someone in this bazaar of wonders is experimenting with replicators</em>, Leyla thinks. Would that be Small, Smaller or Smallest? Replicators were danger. Replicators were the new nuclear. Replicators got you shot, no questions no appeal. Replicators were end-of-the-world creeping up one relentless atom after another. An enduring childhood terror: unable to sleep, Leyla had gone down the stairs. Quietly quietly, no one hearing. Mummy and Daddy were there on their respective sofas and chairs, big brother Aziz and sister Hasibe sprawling across the floor. News time; their faces were blue with the world pouring from the flat screen that occupied an entire wall. At that scale the horror can’t be avoided. The world was coming to the worst possible end. Later Leyla learned that there was a name for this apocalypse; the Grey Goo scenario. She saw a slow tide of grey devour a town like Demre. Houses, streets, the mosque, the shopping centre, the bus station, the buses, the cars in the street—all were gradually overrun by this creeping corruption, silver as the botrytis mold that stalked the greenhouses and reduced tomatoes and aubergines to undulating velvety grey. There were no people in this death-Demre. But the film did show a cat, a black cat with white feet and tail, cornered by the inevitable grey, swamped, reduced to a cat-shaped patch of silver carpet that heaved and kicked for a few moments and then melted. She started screaming.<br />
<br />
“It’s all right, darling, it’s only the television, it’s just made up, just a silly old thing.” Her mother scooped her up as her father flicked away to some psychic show. But Leyla had seen the logo in the corner of the screen and knew what it meant. This was the news; this was true. Where had this come from, where was it going? She was seven, maybe halfway to eight, but the image of her world, her parents, everything and everyone she loved, but especially Bubu the cat who hunted polytunnel vermin, being turned to grey mold still gave her screaming nightmares. Years later, when she retold the story at a family gathering, she had finally learned that it was an opinion piece in response to Ankara announcing special economic status for new nanotechnology developments to boost Turkey’s research status as an EU candidate state. It was a clever computer animation of runaway replicator nanotech devouring the world. The prophet of nanotechnological doom was a tight, elegant man with a very well-trimmed grey moustache and the narrowest eyes she had ever seen. She’s seen Hasan Eken many times since—he’s still the expert-of-choice on the dangers of the race to nanotech: Dr. Goo, the columnists call him. But that night he was the angel of death. He terrified her more purely than anyone before or since. Replicators are death.<br />
<br />
She’s accused her potential new clients of being geek boys and criminal replicator-runners. This isn’t how it works in the client management handouts.<br />
<br />
“Okay, so we have DNA—that’s the material in the nucleus of every single cell of your body that programmes how the proteins that build living material are put together,” Yaşar says.<br />
<br />
“I know what DNA is.”<br />
<br />
“Well, bio-informatics looks at DNA not so much from the point of view of inheritance and cell building, but as information processing; programming almost. Each strand of DNA is a complex piece of biological software that the ribosomes process to print out proteins. DNA can be used to make chemical computers, and I’m sure even you’ve heard of biochips—there are half a dozen labs here working on biochip projects. The media are always on about them: direct interface between technology and the human brain, the self as the final frontier, opening up the skull, ceptep calls right into someone else’s brain, sending pictures straight into someone’s visual cortex. All you have to do is think a thought at someone and it will go through the ceptep net straight into their brains.”<br />
<br />
“Now that sounds like science fiction to me,” says Leyla. She’s only said this because she’s noticed that Aso, when he tried hard to explain, has a nice, introverted frown, as if he must convince himself before he tries to persuade anyone else.<br />
<br />
“Do you know what noncoding DNA is?” Yaşar asks.<br />
<br />
Leyla tries to think of a smart answer but shakes her head.<br />
<br />
“Well, the human genome has massive redundancy—that means that two percent of the DNA does all the work of instructing the ribosomes that build the proteins that make up the cells of your body. Ninety-eight percent of your DNA just sits there doing nothing. Taking up space in the gene.”<br />
<br />
“To bio-informaticists, that’s memory going begging,” says Aso. “Wasted processing power. Until the Besarani-Ceylan Transcriber.”<br />
<br />
“Ceylan-Besarani Transcriber,” Yaşar says quickly.<br />
<br />
Aso holds up a finger. He has started, so he will finish.<br />
<br />
“The Besarani-Ceylan Transcriber is a molecular engine that takes information from bloodstream-programmed nano and transcribes it onto junk DNA.”<br />
<br />
Leyla knows she is supposed to look impressed here.<br />
<br />
“This transcriber writes information onto the spare capacity of this noncoding DNA,” she says.<br />
<br />
They’re still waiting.<br />
<br />
“Okay.”<br />
<br />
“Think a minute about the implications,” Aso says.<br />
<br />
“You’re storing information inside cells.” They’re expecting more. “You’re turning living cells into . . . tiny computers?”<br />
<br />
They’re looking happier now.<br />
<br />
“And how many cells are there in the human body?” Yaşar asks.<br />
<br />
“As many as there are stars in the sky!” declares Zeliha unexpectedly.<br />
<br />
“Ten trillion cells,” Aso says. “And inside each cell are thirty-two thousand one hundred and eighty-five genes, three billion bases, eighty-five percent of which are noncoding.” There’s an odd, fundamentalist look in his eyes now.<br />
<br />
“So multiply the numbers,” Yaşar cajoles. Leyla has never been very good at carrying zeroes in her head.<br />
<br />
“A thousand billion,” she says uncertainly. “Zillion.”<br />
<br />
Yaşar shakes his head. “No no no. One thousand three hundred and fifty zettabytes of information, storable inside every human being. That’s <em>zetta</em>bytes. These are numbers they haven’t made up names for yet. And what can write can also read. And what is a computer other than something that reads an instruction in one place and writes the answer in another?”<br />
<br />
“All human music ever written fits into your appendix,” Aso says. “Every book in every library is a few millimetres of your small intestine. Every detail of your life can be recorded—and replayed. That’s maybe the size of your stomach. You can live other people’s lives. Talents and abilities and new skills can be downloaded and stored permanently. Not like now where it wears off as the nano is purged from the system. The Besarani-Ceylan Transcriber writes it into the cells of your body. You want to play the piano? It’s yours. You want to memorise a play, or you want to memorise every test case in the law library? Foreign languages, home plumbing, programming code, physics, chemistry—you’ve got them. Now, what you do with them once you’ve got them, what you make of them, that’s up to you. We don’t guarantee expertise, only that it’s there, coded into your DNA.”<br />
<br />
“Come and see,” says Yaşar. Everyone shuffles round to let Yaşar out from behind his desk and round to the door in the back wall.<br />
<br />
The warehouse behind the door is as dark and cool and spacious as the front office is bright and hot and crammed. It smells of fresh cinder block, still drying cement, paint and electronics. Aso clicks on batteries of lights. In the centre of the unit stands a single bladeserver tower, swathed in pipes that run to a massive cooling unit on the ceiling. Other than that the unit is the domain of cobwebs and birds’ nests glued under the eaves and dust sparkling in the light that slants through the narrow, high windows. She draws an arc with the point of her good shoes in the dust on the concrete floor.<br />
<br />
“What am I looking at exactly?” Leyla Gültaşli shouts. The roar of fans and cooling pumps and dust extractors from the black monolith defeats conversation.<br />
<br />
“A real-time modelling farm running X-cis, Atomage and Cell-render 7,” Aso announces proudly. <br />
<br />
“Licensed copies,” Yaşar adds.<br />
<br />
“You’re looking at forty thousand euro of high-end commercial molecular modelling ware,” Aso shouts.<br />
<br />
“And that’s a reconditioned ex-EnGen render unit,” Yaşar says. “We’ve made ten thousand euro worth of modifications and upgrades—it’s a Refiğ Brothers custom overclock; that’s almost five hundred terraflops Rpeak. You don’t want to know how much electricity and water this things eats.”<br />
<br />
“I’m looking at a big computer.”<br />
<br />
“You’re looking at a state-of-the-art real-time molecular design and modelling suite.”<br />
<br />
“Let me get this right: you don’t actually make anything here.”<br />
<br />
The men looked as shocked as if she has accused them of running a porn studio.<br />
<br />
“We’re designers,” Yaşar says. “Nobody who’s anybody makes stuff. That’s just production.”<br />
<br />
“I think you need to see it,”Aso says. “What’s the bandwidth on your ceptep?”<br />
<br />
Leyla meekly offers up the base unit from her bag. The boys huddle over it, stork and starling, turning it over in their hands, taking it without a word from each other.<br />
<br />
“It should be all right, but you’ll need these.” Aso gingerly fits a pair of lensless spectacle frames on Leyla’s face, adjusting their set on her nose with an optician’s care. “You really only get the full idea in 3D.”<br />
<br />
Leyla blinks and flinches as the write-lasers drop down in front of her eyes. Her ceptep rings in her bag; then she is dropped face-forward into the world of DNA. The dusty concrete vault is filled with helical hawsers like the bridge cables reaching out before her, through the walls of the fabrication unit. They rotate along their axes, corkscrews, spiral staircases,Archimedes screws. DNA; the double helices linked by rungs of base pairs. The atoms waltz around her, stately, relentless. It is engulfing, huge, hypnotic yet deeply relaxing. Leyla is thinking how she could market it as a spa experience when she becomes aware of movement up ahead of her. Little scurrying whirligig things, like the beetles she used to see on the water tanks back at home, gyring around on the surface tension, haul themselves atom by atom up the endless spiral staircases of the DNA helices. The simulation focuses on a cluster of DNA strands, bringing Leyla in closer, close until the DNA climbers seem the size of buses. This is the atomic scale; a Tinkertoy universe built from balls: beach balls and footballs and tennis balls and tiny bouncing Ping-Pong balls. Cogs made of linked spheres, cranks and levers and wheels, built from balls. Balls made from smaller balls from smaller balls. It’s a crèche playroom reality, everything soft and rounded and playful. But these are not soft children’s toys. They are purposeful, tireless, unstoppable crawlers, base pair by base pair heaving the thread of DNAthrough their interiors, snapping the bases, fusing them together behind them, but changed. She watches molecular shears cut bonds and reweave them into new patterns. Heave, shear, weave, heave. Atom by atom up the endless chain of DNA.<br />
<br />
When she was a tiny thing, Leyla had gone down with a raging tonsillitis that spread into her brain and unfolded into full fever. For two nights she had bumped along the ceiling of death, sweating, hallucinating things like these atom-crawlers; unstoppably climbing endless spirals yet never advancing one single centimetre forward. This was an unending fever-march through the molecules of her body.<br />
<br />
She takes off the eyewriter frame.<br />
<br />
“What is it you want me to do?”<br />
<br />
They go back out into the front office for the money talk.<br />
<br />
“We’re going to go to a production prototype,” Yaşar says.<br />
<br />
“Proof of concept,” Aso adds. This double-act is starting to grate.<br />
<br />
“We’ve budgeted at two hundred and seventy-five thousand euro at this stage. We’re looking for venture capital, a White Knight of some kind, even an established industry. In return we put up fifty percent of the company.”<br />
<br />
“Okay,” says Leyla. “This sounds doable. I can certainly look at the business plan and draw up a funding strategy. I can also front up a pitch. Now, my fees—”<br />
<br />
“Two things before you rush into agreeing to anything,” saysAso. He looks at Yaşar. Yaşar sucks in his bottom lip.<br />
<br />
“We need to move fast on this. There is a rival project.We’ve heard they’re about to move into a production model.”<br />
<br />
“How fast?” Leyla asks.<br />
<br />
“Two weeks, max.”<br />
<br />
“There is another thing,” Aso says. Yaşar winces uncomfortably.<br />
<br />
“The company’s not entirely ours.”<br />
<br />
“How much do you own?”<br />
<br />
“Fifty percent. We needed money up front for the modelling farm and the software.”<br />
<br />
“Where did you get it?” Leyla asks.<br />
<br />
“Where do you think two boys just out of postdoc with no credit history are going to get fifty thousand euro?” Yaşar says.<br />
<br />
“Family,” says Aso. “His family. Your family.”<br />
<br />
“Mehmet Ali.”<br />
<br />
“Who?” Leyla asks.<br />
<br />
“Second cousin,” Yaşar explains. “He’s one of these relatives can always get things.”<br />
<br />
“Is there a contract?” Leyla asks.<br />
<br />
“It’s an informal agreement,” Yaşar says. “A family thing. There’s a token: whoever owns it has half of Ceylan-Besarani.”<br />
<br />
“Why do I get the feeling this isn’t going to be as simple as just making Mehmet Ali an offer he can’t refuse?”<br />
<br />
“No one’s heard from Mehmet Ali for a couple of months. He’s not answering calls.”<br />
<br />
“And the token?”<br />
<br />
Yaşar opens his hands in helpless supplication.<br />
<br />
“You have to get this token back. If some dodgy distant relation can saunter in, slap a piece of paper down and claim fifty percent . . .”<br />
<br />
“It’s not a piece of paper.” Aso fishes in his jacket pocket and offers an object in his palm to Leyla. “It’s a miniature Koran, the kind people buy as souvenirs after visiting saints’ tombs. Quite a nice one; an old family heirloom. I heard someone say it was Persian.At some point in its history it got cut cleanly in half.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
The Ultralords of the Universe eat köfte at the Kebab Prophet’s kiosk across Levent Plaza from the Özer Tower. They sit in order of Elemental Mastery on their assigned stools at the tin counter and eat very good, very messy meatballs, their napkins tucked into shirt collars. They are coming down from nano-high. It works this way. First they talk a lot, incessantly, chirruping and clattering. In this stage bets are settled and forfeits like speed camera fines are paid. In the second phase everyone is very quiet, very withdrawn and introspective. Distance vision blurs so that the glass and money towers of Levent sway like reeds. Then the close vision smears so the diners at the Kebab Prophets have to hold their hand-meals at arm’s length to focus on them. Then comes the killing, killing low, which if it lasted any more than a couple of minutes would send you off a bridge or under a tram. And then you are just yourself again and the Ultralords of the Universe go back to being merely men.<br />
<br />
Kemal bangs down late onto his red-topped bar stool between Adnan and Kadir Yinanç in Risk Management.<br />
<br />
“Element of Fire, fight with me!” he shouts. The Kebab Prophet slaps the paper-wrapped kebab down on the mirror-bright counter.<br />
<br />
“Element of Air, assist me!” Adnan cries.<br />
<br />
“Element of Water, wage war with me,” says Kadir. He’s always known he has the shit line.<br />
<br />
“Element of Earth, empower me,” mutters Öguz.<br />
<br />
Draksor Ultror Terrak and Hydror. Once there were, once there weren’t, in a land not so far away and as close as the atrium of Özer Gas and Commodities, four fresh faces and sharp suits. They had things in common. They were men, they were part of a group of new recruits starting at Istanbul’s biggest and shiniest commodities firm on the same day, and they were all mad mad Cimbom fans. The supercilious woman leading the induction had in the course of her tour given her party a glimpse of the heavenlike golden luxury of the boardroom: And who knows, you may even make it all the way up to a seat around this table. The cocky don’t-give-a-fuck one from the south coast made the comment, Looks more like Slavor’s Temple of Doom. Three caught the reference to the old kids’ cartoon and creased up in suppressed laughter. Afterwards they sought each other out and the Ultralords of the Universe were born. None have yet made it to that golden temple. Instead, they’re planning the financial coup of the decade. Ultror, Ultralord of Fire, put the business plan together in the back office; a hundred AI devoting a fragment of their bandwidth, each a part, none comprehending the whole.<br />
<br />
Terrak, Ultralord of Earth, will disguise it as just another Baku gas deal, barrelling down the Nabucco Line from Erzurum.<br />
<br />
Hydror, Ultralord of Water, will conceal it in the labyrinth of Özer’s audit systems, like a mystic name of God within a mosque’s ornate calligraphies.<br />
<br />
Draksor, Ultralord ofAir, makes the deal. He gets the money.And when he has the money, when the deal is down, when the price is right and only when the price is right, he gives the word to all the other Ultralords to swing Turquoise into operation.<br />
<br />
“I’m seeing Ferid Bey again tonight,”Adnan says. “He says he needs more information.”<br />
<br />
“More?” says Kemal. He’s always been an irritable man, but this is beyond nature or nano. “He’s got the business plan.”<br />
<br />
“He wants the market analysis.”<br />
<br />
Kemal rolls his eyes again. The heat, Adnan thinks. <em>It draws the strength out of us and makes us brittle and edgy as street dogs, but as long as it lasts, Turquoise lives</em>. Kemal offers a hand over the debris of köfte and bread. Adnan takes it.<br />
<br />
“Here’s your fucking market analysis.” Information sparks between them, page after page of breakdowns and charts and forecasts. It’s a fine and dark art for which Adnan has neither the talent nor the patience. The deal, the handshake, the people—those are his gifts.<br />
<br />
“Where are you meeting him?”<br />
<br />
“At a private executive bathhouse.”<br />
<br />
“Watch out he doesn’t stick it up you,” snorts Öguz.<br />
<br />
“That’ll be the sweetest your balls have smelled all year,” says Kemal.<br />
<br />
“And if he bites?” Kadir asks. Ferid Bey is far from the first oligarch the Ultralords of the Universe have approached. But he is the first to have fixed a second meeting, the first to ask for more detail.<br />
<br />
“Is the Iranian still in town?”<br />
<br />
“I can arrange that.”<br />
<br />
“Then it’s champagne in the box,” declares Adnan.<br />
<br />
“And the ball in the back of the net,” chorus the Ultralords and the Kebab Prophet.<br />
<br />
“Did you look at that yalı?” the Kebab Prophet asks. He is called the Prophet because he restores harmony, heals souls, subtly guides the words and thoughts of four Levent money boys blazing with autistic levels of focus and synthetic aggression. He’s the ultimate come-down treatment.<br />
<br />
“I certainly did,” Adnan says. “And I shall make them an offer.”<br />
<br />
“Too close to the water for me,” says Kemal. “You get vermin. Rats the size of fucking dogs. I’ve seen them. Cats are scared of them. Give me one of those new-builds up in Ulus.”<br />
<br />
“Sure, Adnan wants to raise an old-fashioned Ottoman dynasty,” says Kadir.<br />
<br />
“Well, I wouldn’t raise any kids there,” says Öguz. “You get bad vapours from the Bosphorus. I know what I’m talking about here. All that marine pollution just hangs there. It’s like smog. And then that double-tide thing; the water never really gets changed. Sewage can hang around for a week or even longer. And there’s worse. I know this—don’t argue—this cop friend of mine told me when something goes in off the bridges, the bodies can go up and down for months.”<br />
<br />
“Well girls,” Adnan says, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin. “If we’re quite finished discussing suicides, shit and the cleanliness of my testicles, let’s do some work, shall we?”<br />
<br />
Kemal scrunches up his kebab paper and shies it towards the refuse sack in its hoop at the back of the stall. He misses. The Kebab Prophet picks it up and disposes of it in the black plastic bag.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
The man of words and the man of numbers see a white room differently. To the writer it’s a cube of horror, a blank needing to be filled with the spurt of imagination. It is that space you write about when you have looked at nothing else for days. It is writing about writing. To the mathematician it’s the void, the pure white light that, falling through a prism of analysis, breaks into the numbers that are ultimate reality. The walls of the white room are the walls of the universe, and beyond them lies mathematics.<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou does not fear his white, one-book library, as austere as a monk’s cell. The one small window, guarded by a pierced wooden screen, allows glimpses of Adem Dede Square and its stooping apartment buildings. In the white room, the walls open onto other Istanbuls where the streets and buildings are drawn by their inhabitants’ supermarket spending habits or their diseases and medical interventions or the subtle interactions of their geographical, social and religious affiliations. There are the restless Istanbuls of traffics and tracks and tunnels. There are wiry Istanbuls, nervous as a skinned man, of gas and power and data. There are Istanbuls built entirely out of football gossip. For every commodity, for every activity that can be analysed and modelled, there is a city.<br />
<br />
To Georgios Ferentinou economics is the most human of sciences. It is the science of wants and frustrations. It is psychology subject to the abstract, amplifying forces of mathematics. An individual bet on a news story, one elementary schoolchild’s guess at the number of Disney plushies in a jar, is a product of value and experience.Aggregate them, by a simple average or financial instruments with the promise of future gain, and they become oracular. Mathematics is the power that lies behind the white walls of the one-book library. Georgios is an old agnostic who can’t believe in any god who would believe in him, but increasingly he feels it is a Platonic universe. Mathematics is too unfeasibly accurate in its ability to describe physical and human reality. At the bottom of everything is number. When he dies, and Georgios thinks about that a little every day, as old men should, he will evaporate into carbon atoms. He will become white and merge with the walls of mathematics and pass through them into those other Istanbuls.<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou’s thoughts meander, as an old man’s should, a walk through the intricate city of memory, to Ariana. He pictures her in Eskiköy’s steep streets. She hasn’t aged a day. She can’t have aged. Time has been suspended since he saw her walk from the ferry to the station. As the Greek community has grown smaller, it has grown tighter. He could find her easily, but Georgios wonders not if he can find Ariana, but if he dare. Why has she come back after forty-seven years?<br />
<br />
Georgios shakes himself out of his meanderings. He looks again at the jerking footage Can sent him from his BitBot. A watching robot implies that the tram-bomber was not a lone agent. Lone killers are usually socially inept males and need the theatre of their own apotheosis. They post elaborate sermons of alienation on social-networking sites before they strap on the guns and walk into the school or mall or government office. Suicide bombers, female or male, deliver diatribes of social justice and transformation and promises of paradise. There is a structure behind this desperate, headless woman. Turkey’s many terror groups each have their own signature. The Kurds tend to the theatrical. They need to attract global attention to themselves as a nation. The anti-EU Grey Wolf nationalists see themselves in the romantic tradition of theYoung Turks and favour individual assassinations and street shootings. This is a classic Islamist martyrdom on a Number 119 tram. It is the violence of a faithful family dog that turns and rends the baby, the neighbour who stabs her husband, the unexplained suicide of a work colleague. Forces unseen and unsuspected press for years, warping lives and relationships. The organisation behind the Necatibey bomb—probably a cell of three or four individuals, certainly with a ridiculous name—would want to record the moment of immolation. Wa’habist sites are full of explosions and martyrdoms, with homebrew graphics and heroic music. So why risk that information chasing the boy’s BitBot? Why the need to hack the signal? Why try to follow it back to this house? Strange indeed here. Strange is that grain of order in the seethe of randomness. Strange is information.<br />
<br />
The jerky, disjointed images hurt Georgios’s eyes. He looks up to the visual peace of his white walls. The door buzzer is so loud, so sudden it stabs his heart. A man at the door. Georgios’s heart hammers. They’ve found him; they’ve come for him. They know everything. They are at his door. His heart flutters, unable to land on the beat. Be logical. Killers would not ring the doorbell. They would kill quietly; strangle him like an old Ottoman prince.<br />
<br />
The buzzer jars again. The man looks up into the camera.<br />
<br />
“Georgios Ferentinou?” He is well spoken, educated. They usually are. Fanaticism is a middle-class vice. Decent suit, clean shirt and neatly knotted tie. “My name is Heydar Bekdil.” Georgios sits back from the screen. The smartpaper can’t see him, but the man at the door frowns as if he is looking right into the room. A third buzz. “Mr. Ferentinou, it’s quite important that I talk to you.” He presses a palm to the doorplate. An identification flows through his hand to the computer. MIT. The National Intelligence Organisation. What interest could the intelligence services have in him? “Mr. Ferentinou?” Georgios buzzes him in.<br />
<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry about the dust,” Georgios apologises as he shows the visitor into his living room. The room is another converted cell; two sofas face each other rather too closely over a long narrow table. “I’ve grown rather accustomed to my own rules of living. After a few months the dust doesn’t seem to get any worse, I’ve found. You’ll take some tea.”<br />
<br />
In the adjoining kitchen Georgios Ferentinou boils the kettle and finds two unbroken glasses of the same design. He balances a cube of Lefteres’s sesame halva on the edge of each saucer. The visitor has wiped a small section of the table clean with a handkerchief, a landing pad for the hovering saucer.<br />
<br />
“If it’s about the news feeds . . .” Georgios says. He lowers himself heavily onto the sofa. The two men’s faces are close over the table, too intimate for strangers.<br />
<br />
“It’s nothing to do with the news feeds.” The man smiles to himself. “No that’s a . . . privilege. No, that will continue, you’ll be glad to hear.” He is nervous; his glass rattles. “Mr. Ferentinou, I have a confession to make. I am actually a player. I’m a trader in the Terror Market.” Now Georgios realises that the man may be in mild awe of him. “Longsightedson?”<br />
<br />
Georgios cannot conceal his distaste. Anonymity is part of the rules. He likes it that the man at the low table at the Fethi Bey çayhane across the square, that driver tapping his fingers on the steering wheel impatient at traffic lights, that woman he passes at the frozen food section on his weekly trip to the supermarket, may be Terror Traders incognito.<br />
<br />
“Thank you. I’m glad the game enjoys attention at such high levels. So what does MIT need with me?”<br />
<br />
Bekdil puts his hands together.<br />
<br />
“You are aware of the Haceteppe Group?”<br />
<br />
“I was a founding member.”<br />
<br />
“Forgive me. I was not aware. You may not be aware that MIT has recently set up a second research group with a much lower profile, working in parallel with the Haceteppe Group, based in Istanbul and using unorthodox and speculative techniques. We believe that the creative tension between the two methodologies may yield fresh insights into our security situation.”<br />
<br />
Georgios Ferentinou turns his tea saucer so the spoon lies like a compass needle trained on Bekdir’s heart.<br />
<br />
“You want me to join this group.”<br />
<br />
“We do.”<br />
<br />
Georgios laughs to himself, a heaving grunt of humour.<br />
<br />
“Security must be in a pretty sorry pass if you need me to save the country. Why do you think I should have any desire to be part of this . . . ?”<br />
<br />
“Kadiköy Group. Curiosity, Mr. Ferentinou?” Bekdir takes a small plastic phial with an inhaler nozzle from the jacket of his cheap suit and sets it on the little dusty table. “There’s a one-use number in there. Your questions will be answered there. The memory carbon is coded to your DNA, so if anyone else tries all they’ll get is a brief auditory hallucination of bird wings.” It does not surprise Georgios that MIT still holds his DNA. The State is always reluctant to relinquish its grip. “I’d be quick about it, though; the nano is time-coded. You’ll forget it one hour exactly after you inhale it.Well, thank you for the tea, Mr. Ferentinou, and whatever you choose, I will keep playing the Terror Market. It’ll be a different username though.” Bekdir offers a hand. Georgios shakes it dazedly, hypnotised by the unlabelled translucent phial.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
The djinn are waiting for Necdet as he comes blinking up the concrete steps from the Levent Business Rescue Centre into the sun-blast of drive-time. Djinn by the flock, djinn by the blizzard, watching from every rooftop and balcony and elevator shaft and window-washing cradle, perched on every streetlight and road sign and advertising hoarding, every electricity and telecom cable, jammed together on the roof of every passing bus and dolmuş, peering down from the glass cornices of the towers of Istanbul and the minarets of the ugly new mosque with its cheap silvery dome—there especially. The djinn have always been drawn to mosques. They flicker in and out of reality like cold flames, more than there are souls in great Istanbul.<br />
<br />
“What?” he shouts at the waiting djinn. “What is it?” A woman bustling homewards stares. Eccentric is suspicious in this time when everyone has a grudge and a means to express it. Necdet glares at her; when he looks away, the plaza is empty, a million soap bubbles bursting silently, simultaneously.<br />
<br />
Necdet takes the dolmuş. Bombs haunt the trams and metro. Most of Levent has made the same calculation. The Gayreteppe Road is clogged with trucks, intercontinental executive coaches, citi-cars and blue-and-cream dolmuşes. The little microbus starts and fits a metre at a time through the clog of traffic. Horns shout on every side; traffic policemen blow whistles. A three-quarters-empty tram sweeps past. Necdet is buried at the back of the dolmuş behind a ruck of cheap business suits, fearing djinn. He dreads the head, the woman’s head, the shining head. He glances out the window. A still, blue flame, as motionless as if carved from sapphire, hovers over the hood of every vehicle on Cumhuriyet Avenue. The djinni of internal combustion. Necdet closes his eyes and does not open them again until he hears the shared taxi pull into the great roaring traffic gyre of Taksim.<br />
<br />
Walking down the sweating alleys between the lowering, exhausted apartment blocks, windows open, air conditioners rattling, Necdet feels the djinn as a closer heat, heat-within-heat, knots and whirls of electrical energy trapped between the old buildings. In Adem Dede Square, dark and filled with the whistlings of pigeon wings, they swirl, feeding on the exhalations of the trapped day-heat and the stench of rancid cooking fat from the Fethi Bey çayhane, making themselves solid. Necdet fumbles for the key to the big brass padlock. They’re at his back, piled high as a thunderhead. He can smell them like cooking oil.<br />
<br />
“Necdet.” A woman’s voice, a voice he knows though it’s never spoken directly to him before. It’s the girl who helps at the art shop, walking down the steps between the dervish house and the teahouse. She is upside down. She is inside the earth. The steps, the square, the buildings are obdurately solid, but by some trick of djinn-sight Necdet can see into the earth and the woman walking there, her feet to his feet. She is identical to the shopgirl except that she is pregnant. She leans back, takes it easy on her back, her knees as she climbs the staircase. She stops on the step ahead of Necdet and looks up at him between her feet. She rests her hands lightly on her belly, sighs and labours on up the steps, climbing the imperceptible upward curve of her hollow world. A karin. They are minor spiritual beings—theologians differ over whether they are creatures of clay, like men, or fire, like the djinn—but they are no less capable than the djinn of envy and petty spite. Maiden aunts and dervishes and backstreet healers sometimes sense them; shaykhs hear and speak with them and may command them. All agree that each karin is a mirror, underneath the earth, of the life lived aboveground, guardians of the happiness and peacefulness of their siblings. Necdet staggers against the tekke door; it falls open.<br />
<br />
“Ismet! Ismet! Man, I need you. Ismet!” Necdet stumbles into the kitchen, heart hammering. Ismet sits on one side of the cheap Ikea table, the Holy Koran in his hands. Ismet Hasgüler is one to whom the book speaks. His readings from the Holy Koran are light and musical and delight the ear. They cure ills, banish baleful influences, purify houses and bless children. When a woman comes knocking on the door with a question that has no answer in this world—and they are invariably women—in Ismet’s hands the book always falls open at the perfect ayah. Two women in headscarves sit across from him, close together.All look up, startled, as if guilty at having been caught divining God’s will. It’s her. The girl from the art shop, the sniffy one who’s never tried to conceal her contempt for Necdet. The one he saw upside down under the earth a few footsteps ago.<br />
<br />
“I saw you,” Necdet stammers. He points. The woman recoils. The other woman, older, an aunt most likely, clings to her arm. “I saw you, outside. Just this second. Your karin, your earth sister. I saw her under the ground. She said my name. I saw you and you were pregnant.”<br />
<br />
The young woman’s mouth and eyes are wide. Then her face crumples up into tears. She wails and hugs her aunt mother older sister.<br />
<br />
A sign, a sign!” the older woman says, hands held up in praise. “God is good! Here, here.” She pushes euro notes at Ismet. He steps back out of his chair as if the money is poisoned.<br />
<br />
“What?” Necdet asks. “What is it? What’s going on?”<br />
<br />
“You are a real shaykh,” the art shop girl says, and Necdet realises that she’s weeping in shivering joy. “I heard about your brother, that he’s a good judge, very straight, very fair, very fast; so Uncle Hasan said after he sorted the problem with his cousin at the sports shop. And Sibel Hanım said he was very good with the word of God too after he drove the djinni out of her daughter’s bedroom mirror. But you, you’re the master of djinn. Two brothers together; that’s a force from God. Thank you, thank you so much, thank you!”<br />
<br />
Necdet scoops up the soiled notes and throws them at the women. “Here, here you are then. Are you answered?”<br />
<br />
“Yes,” says the art-shop girl. She touches her hand to her belly, the same gesture her sister under the earth had made. “Oh yes I am. God is very good indeed.”<br />
<br />
Auntmothersister hears the crazy in Necdet’s voice, takes the art-shop girl by the hand and bustles her out of the kitchen into the street. The cash she leaves where it lies on the table among the tea glasses.<br />
<br />
“What was that about?” Ismet demands. “You were incredibly rude to those women. Bundling them out like that. God willing, I’m trying to build some kind of reputation here, and that’s never going to happen if you scare away people who need my help.”<br />
<br />
Necdet closes his eyes. The room swarms with half-glimpsed spiritual and emotional forces; the air buzzes with dread and energy.<br />
<br />
“Listen. I was on that tram today, you know, the one where the bomb went off. I was on the tram. I saw the woman who did it. I saw her pull the strings and her head blew off. I was on that tram.”<br />
<br />
“Oh man, why didn’t you tell me? You should be in hospital. Necdet, you need to go to the hospital.”<br />
<br />
Necdet shakes his head, trying to shake off the dizzying buzz of another world.<br />
<br />
“Doctors won’t help me. I see djinn. Do you understand that? I see djinn.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
Needles of yellow light fall onto Adnan Sarioğlu prone on the marble octagon. Steams wisps around him. Sweat pools on his belly—more fat there than he likes—trembles a moment, then rolls down his side onto the warm marble. He stretches. His skin pulls against the slab. Every bone and sinew glows as if hammered in a forge. The tellak’s steel fingers left no muscle unraked, no joint uncracked.<br />
<br />
Ferid Adataş, proprietor of one of Turkey’s largest nonmilitary investment funds, is a member of the newest and most exclusive private bathhouses in the city. The hamam is fashionable again. The old bathhouses are appointment only; new private-members’ hamams open every week. It’s another post-EU incongruity. Spas are sissy, indulgent, European. Hamams are authentic and Turkish.<br />
<br />
Drained on the slab under the starry dome—that bastard tellak had tried to get him to squeal like a virgin—Adnan melts into perfect relaxation. Muscles he did not know he possessed release and purr. Every cell is electric. Adnan gazes up into the dark dome pierced with concentric rings of circular skylights. He might be alone in a private universe.<br />
<br />
Water splashes and runs in a film across the glass floor suspended above the mosaics. The Hacı Kadın hamam is a typical post-Union fusion of architectures; Ottoman domes and niches built over some forgotten Byzantine palace, years and decades of trash blinding, gagging, burying the angel-eyed Greek faces in the mosaic floor; century upon century. That haunted face was only exposed to the light again when the builders tore down the cheap apartment blocks and discovered a wonder. But Istanbul is wonder upon wonder, sedimented wonder, metamorphic cross-bedded wonder. You can’t plant a row of beans without turning up some saint or Sufi. At some point every country realises it must eat its history. Romans ate Greeks; Byzantines ate Romans; Ottomans ate Byzantines; Turks ate Ottomans. The EU eats everything. Again, the splash and run as Ferid Bey scoops warm water in a bronze bowl from the marble basin and pours it over his head.<br />
<br />
“Great!” he roars. “Great.”<br />
<br />
Ferid Bey hauls himself up from the warm glass and waddles across the floor to the steam cubicle. He is not a fat man or greasy from luxury, but his chest hair is grey and he is stiff in the hips. Adnan unseals himself from the slab and follows him into the marble-walled steam room. Beneath the glass floor, subtly lit Patriarchs and Palaeologi gaze up at his balls. Ferid Bey spreads his legs wide and settles back against the marble wall. Adnan matches Ferid Bey’s comfort. For the first time in months he feels properly alive.<br />
<br />
“I’ve had a look through your more detailed projections,” Ferid Bey says. Water drips from the hem of the peştemal wrapped around his waist. “The only obvious flaw is that you’re asking me to become a gas smuggler.”<br />
<br />
“We think of it as an alternative supply chain.”<br />
<br />
“Tell that to the judge if you get caught.”<br />
<br />
It’s in the air. It’s that long ball crossed into the box that the wind gets underneath and floats. Anyone could get to it. Adnan must trust his own skill.<br />
<br />
“They’re just flaring it off. The Tabriz pipeline can’t handle the volume, so they burn it. Whoosh. Like setting a match to a suitcase full of euro.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t believe it’s as simple as turning a stopcock with a spanner.”<br />
<br />
“Oğuz our pipeline man says it’s two commands on a computer. Close that; open this. Clickety-click.”<br />
<br />
“So tell me, how did you find out about this?” The two men lean close to each other in the tomb-narrow confines of the steam room.<br />
<br />
“While everyone else spent their military service in the Land of Opportunity bitching and whining about how the Kurds were going to turn them into eunuchs if they caught them, I used my time a little more profitably.”<br />
<br />
“And how did you find the East?”<br />
<br />
“It’s a shit-hole. But it’s our shit-hole.”<br />
<br />
Sweat gathers in a bead on Ferid Bey’s chin, swells, drops to the glass floor, a flaw in the eye of the mosaic saint.<br />
<br />
“I’m an investor, not a scientist, but I need to be sure it’s safe. I can’t go irradiating Greeks, much as I’d like to.”<br />
<br />
Adnan smiles at the joke, but he thinks, <em>He said</em> I. I <em>can’t go irradiating Greeks</em>. He’s buying into it.<br />
<br />
On that day everyone remembers Adnan had been repairing wetsuits on the quay. That day was bright and the sun was high; it was early in the season and the first dive boats were going out to the drowned Lycian towns. Fresh-looking Swedish girls and short intense Danes were the best of the early arrivals. Scandinavians liked a man who looked busy in an intricate task. News burbled on the flatscreen set up under the awning at the Octopus Bar for the sport. Adnan worked on the quay, not the boats, and so always knew what was happening before anyone else, and what it might mean. So that day at the wetsuits his half-listening ear picked up the newsreaders’ change of tone and he turned his full attention to the screen. Grave expressions, a ticker along the bottom of the picture, shaky camera work of a sky lit by flashes beneath the horizon. Adnan set down the glue gun and drifted toward the edge of the bar. <em>Adnan’s interested</em>. Every head on the quayside turned. Men left their ropes, their dive gear, their boats, their vans and mopeds. The Swedes and Danes hung back, unsure of their right to participate in whatever the screens in the harbour bars were showing.<br />
<br />
At eleven twenty Ankara time, Fandoglu Mountain in western Iran’s Azarbaijan province had been struck by forty missile-borne thermobaric warheads. Satellite footage showed blossom after blossom after blossom of flame unfold from the mountain-creased earth; beautiful as tulips. Fireball after fireball after fireball. New pictures, cell phone shot, showed a perfect mushroom cloud of fire climbing into the sapphire sky; then another. Then another. Then the footage shook and ended.<br />
<br />
“Are those nukes?” a voice asked. “Someone’s using nukes!”<br />
<br />
“No, it’s not nukes,” Adnan said, staring at the screen. “Vacuum bombs; they’re supposed to be safe and clean, though it’s pretty fucking academic if you get caught by one.”<br />
<br />
“And how would you know?” an idle old man asked.<br />
<br />
“I saw it on the Discovery Channel. They’re specifically designed for use against underground bunkers.”<br />
<br />
“What would they have out there? It’s a hole in the ground.”<br />
<br />
“It is now,” someone muttered.<br />
<br />
“Only one thing,” Adnan said. “Real nukes.”<br />
<br />
“That was Qom; the UN inspected it. Everyone knows that!”<br />
<br />
“Qom was the one they wanted you to see.”<br />
<br />
Then a voice simply said, “The Jews.” Topal had worked for twenty years out of Northern Cyprus up and down the Levant and was considered the most cosmopolitan man in Kaş. “The fucking Jews have finally done it!” The Octopus Bar exploded into roaring voices and waving fists.<br />
<br />
“Shut up, I want to hear what’s happening,” Adnan shouted.What he could see of the screen showed a graphic of a red plume, like a cypress tree or a feather, going up thousands of metres into the air, leaning to the east like a pillar of smoke, towards Tabriz. The look on the newsreader’s face was beyond grave. This was apocalyptic. “Shut the fuck up!” Adnan roared into a momentary lull in the uproar. There was silence. “Thank you. Listen. Listen!”<br />
<br />
Adnan tried to imagine the CG simulation onto real flesh and lives. A single thermobaric strike would turn the tunnels beneath Fandoglu Mountain into hell. Shock waves pulped human organs and shattered limbs and rib cages. The firestorm raced at near-supersonic speeds along corridors, through rooms into every level of the facility; those that survived incineration suffocated as the inferno consumed all available oxygen.What Discovery never showed was what happened when forty strikes, arriving in succession to create a continuous rolling explosion, were aimed at a pressurised water nuclear reactor. At the heart of Fandoglu Mountain, the controls were incinerated, backups turned to slag, fail-safes melted and jammed. Cooling systems failed; core temperature soared. Containment breached; the molten mass of the fuel core hit the cooling water. A titanic steam explosion sent a geyser of radioactive material blasting out from the tunnels and vents into the atmosphere. Carried on a westerly wind, the radiation plume was now fifteen kilometres high and a hundred long. Under Fandoglu Mountain not even a bacterium was alive.<br />
<br />
The good-cheekboned Swedes and the chubby Danes had slipped away.<br />
<br />
All the Kaş men were in the bars, the restaurants, the çayhanes, watching television. In their homes the women came together around their flatscreens. The terror unfolded. The plume had touched down on the Marand gas field eighty kilometres to the east. Everything died. The field would be unusable for a generation. Tabriz was being evacuated. Prime Minister Yetkin had promised the help of the Turkish people. Adnan watched footage of an old woman hosed clean of fallout particles. She held her hands up, turned her face up to heaven, not knowing that it was from there that the poison dropped. The Knesset confirmed in a press conference that it had attacked and destroyed Iran’s nuclear facility at Fandoglu Mountain. Silence became muttering. Two words were said again and again: <em>fucking Jews</em>. Then someone threw a stool. It struck the TV and set it swinging on its stand. A cheer went up. Hands tore down the traitorous screen. Tables were smashed, chairs broken. The bottles behind the bar were shattered one by one and the hanging mosque lamps torn down and ground into the floor. The men ransacked the Octopus Bar. That was not enough. Someone set a fire. It fed greedily on the smashed wood and alcohol. When the staff tried to fight it with extinguishers the men pelted them. At midnight the roof fell in in a spray of coals and sparks. The next morning the building was still too hot to approach. Adnan could not understand it. In their anger at the Jews and their American stoolpigeons the people of Kaş had destroyed the livelihood of their own neighbours. All across Turkey, across the reach of Islam, that self-mutilation was mirrored in burnings and bombings and small pointless martyrdoms.<br />
<br />
For a time the world teetered on a brink. But Israel had calculated shrewdly. Iran threatened to close the straits of Hormuz to oil traffic; the US fleet moved against it. With millions displaced, Tehran realised it could gain the upper hand by playing the victim. Pakistan blew and blustered and bombed embassies but backed down faced with the patient might of its superpower neighbour India. Afghanistan continued its long self-immolation, as exquisitely worked as a carpet. Syria’s call for the destruction of Israel was no more than posturing, a ritual shouting of insults. Those thermobaric cruise missiles and worse were only minutes from Damascus. China protested and threatened sanctions, but its own slow environmental apocalypse was more intimate and threatening. India showed refined displeasure. The European Union lectured. The South Americans mouthed moral outrage, but they were downwind of no one’s fallout. The US Security Council veto blocked any formal condemnation from the UN. The Russians issued stern reprimands and thin threats but were secretly pleased that the massive Western Iranian gas fields had effectively been put of production for decades, buried beneath the slow snow of radioactive dust that was all that remained of the Fandoglu Mountain nuclear facility. The world staggered, then picked up its step again. The general dance spun on.<br />
<br />
And in Turkey, by the turquoise Mediterranean, on the day after that day everyone remembers, a seaside surf-shop boy brought in a case of cheap ninety-nine-bead rosaries and sold them all within the hour at 300 percent markup.While Kaş waited for the sky to open and the Mahdi to utter the secret hundredth name of God to end the world, Adnan witnessed a different miracle, that of the market.<br />
<br />
Fifteen years after Fandoglu Mountain, Western Iran is still a radiological burn zone, the border closed and its pipelines internationally embargoed. But that same surf-shop boy-turned-trader has found a way to channel unsalable gas through a long-disused, almost forgotten branch into the Nabucco pipeline that runs from the Caspian Sea to the Adriatic. Gas so cheap the Iranians are almost giving it away, gas that will net a fortune in the crazy heat of the Istanbul spot markets.<br />
<br />
The deal is clever and intricate but robust. Adnan sets up the deal with the Iranians. The White Knight—Ferid Bey—puts up the liquidity. The Ultralords swap full-price Caspian gas for cut-price Iranian at a pumping station out in the deep east where the old, sealed-off Green Line from Iran meets the Nabucco pipeline from Baku. Everyone profits when the gas is sold on the spot market in gas-hungry Istanbul. Everyone ends in the money. But the deal is dead until Ferid Bey’s chop is on the contract.<br />
<br />
“When do you close the deal?” Ferid Bey leans back against the hot marble. His belly lolls over the cheap plaid-weave cloth.<br />
<br />
“The day before the weather breaks.”<br />
<br />
“You can predict the weather? Then what do you need my money for? Tell me, I’m not the first; who else turned you down before you came to me?”<br />
<br />
To let Adnan into this hot room, this hararet, this private Turkish bath, Ferid Bey will have researched him so thoroughly he will spot a lie before it’s on Adnan’s lips.<br />
<br />
“A fair few of them are here tonight.” <em>And you’ve already talked to them</em>.<br />
<br />
Ferid Bey stands up, slaps his thighs, his belly, shakes drops of sweat from his thick hair.<br />
<br />
“Right. Enough of this. Come and rinse off. I like you, Adnan Bey. I know your paperwork, I know your figures, but I don’t know you. You’ve got balls, but I don’t like to do business with people I don’t know. Come to dinner, tomorrow. My place on Heybeliada. There’ll be a boat at Eminönü at eight. Are you married, have a significant?”<br />
<br />
“My wife’s Ayşe. She trades in religious artwork.”<br />
<br />
“Does she now? I like that. Women should have careers. I’d like to meet her.”<br />
<br />
“There are the others I work with.”<br />
<br />
“You’re the one I’m doing the deal with; you come and bring your wife. I’ll have a few other friends over.”<br />
<br />
“So when can I expect a contract?” Adnan says as Ferid Bey slips into his wooden hamam clogs and totters across the wet glass to the basins.<br />
<br />
“Plenty of time. We’ll talk tomorrow. Dress informal.”<br />
<br />
Adnan Sarioğlu bows his head and lets sweat beads roll down either side of his nose, merge at the tip to swell and drip into the glass floor. He breathes in the hot, aromatic vapour. It burns his nostrils, but it smells of money.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
The air in the bedroom is hot and clinging and motionless, but Ayşe in her underwear shivers and dives into the new dress. Once you leave your childhood bedroom you can never be comfortable or warm in it again. She shakes the dress down over her breasts and shoulders, adjusts the fall and hang, then turns to look at herself in the mirror on the old closet. So many reflections, so many dresses and undresses in that mirror, so many admirings of herself: the flatness of her belly, the fullness of her breasts, the cut of her jaw and the firmness of her arms, the quest for the first curl of a pube or the proud swell of a tit that marked the end of childhood and the flowering of womanhood. Ayşe remembers the first set of killing lingerie she smuggled in at the age of seventeen from the bold and brash new Agent Provocateur at Cevahir Mall, the long, luxurious ritual of putting it on, item by item, hooking and buttoning and strapping up all its complicated and inefficient fastenings, getting her pose just right so that when she turned to face the mirror it would be like a model swirling on a catwalk or a smoky twentieth-century lady spy meeting a contact in her red velvet boudoir. The static rub of thigh against thigh had amazed her, the tiny pink bows placed just so: that she could be so sexy. She could not keep her fingers away from the lace and mesh and gloss. She felt worth all the riches in Istanbul. Ayşe had lounged for hours on her bed exploring the sensations and emotions five pieces of gauzy fabric could bring out in a seventeen-year-old; catching sight of herself as a wild thing in that plain, stolid wardrobe mirror. She sat, legs wide, on the edge of the bed, smoking, studying her image. She dreaded and half hoped that the bedroom door would open and her mother catch her. She had discovered a sensual woman in this old room with its posters of girlie pop stars on the walls.<br />
<br />
“Here I come, what do you think?” Ayşe strides down the hall that has smelled of cooking onions and trapped grease as long as she can recall and into the living room. Her mother sits in her chair in the window bay where she can survey both inner and outer worlds. “Now, it’s not designed to be worn with these boots, but will it do?”<br />
<br />
“Do for what?”<br />
<br />
“I told you ten minutes ago, this dinner with Ferid Adataş tomorrow.”<br />
<br />
“Ferid who?”<br />
<br />
Tulip Apartment was a House of Memory. Ayşe had first encountered these <br />
<br />
edifices in the pages of Renaissance writings from fifteenth-century Florence. There masters of the art of memory constructed fabulous Palladian palazzos of visualisation in which every hall and room and painting and statue, every piece of furniture and ornament on that furniture was the key to a painstakingly remembered fact. Contracts, legal cases, poems and discourses were parsed into phrases of memory and assigned to locations in the mnemonic palace. A walk from the portico through the vestibule and along the loggia could be a complex argument in logic; another walk from that same starting point, by way of a certain niche, into the withdrawing room to a balcony overlooking a formal garden of cypress trees like dark flames could be a family genealogy or a marriage contract. As the ties between Fatma Hanım’s memories grew less coherent Ayşe’s mother devised her own informal art of memory, investing the lamps and ornaments and family photographs, the books and years-out-of-date magazines and little jewelled boxes she loved so much with moments and recollections. She had set them at precise angles that Dicle the cleaner was forbidden from moving, for that would completely change the memory. A shift of twenty degrees might transmute a school prize into a cousin’s wedding; the brother’s graduation in the silver frame on the table beside the sagging sofa could, by a single move to the other side of the table, turn into New Year fire works for the turn of the century and be utterly lost. As even those associations disintegrated, Fatma Hanım had taken to sticking yellow Post-its inscribed with cryptic, SMS-like memos to her mementoes. She raged with the spectacular spite of the old at Dicle when the little <em>aides memoires</em> started disappearing. What had happened was that the glue dried out and the sun-paled yellow notes, the handwriting faded almost to invisibility, fell through the dusty air to the ground like leaves. Memory by memory Fatma Hanım was being indexed onto the Erkoç apartment. To Ayşe it seems like the necessary entropy of Fatma Hanım’s life as family archivist. While she and her sisters and brother, her cousins and aunts and the whole carnival of the extended Erkoçs ran around going to school and falling in love and getting married and having babies or careers or both and splitting up and living big and wide, her mother picked up the memories, cleaned them off and arranged them in sense and place for when they might be needed, years or lifetimes later. Now the house was too full of rememberings and Fatma Hanım too empty of them. To her that was success: it was all written, had you eyes to read it.<br />
<br />
“Mother, what do you think?” Ayşe’s sister Günes calls. Fatma Hanım’s gaze had been sliding fromAyşe to the veins on her hands folded in her lap, the annotated ornaments on the mantel, the blue flicker of the television in the corner farthest from the light. The ebb of her mother’s memory had grown stronger in the past three months, sucking details and names and even faces out into forgetting. Fearful of water left running and gas hissing in the kitchen, Günes had moved in with the children. Recep and Hülya, her nine- and five-year-old, cantered around the apartment heedless of meaningless heirlooms and carefully positioned aides memoires, liberated by the sudden spaciousness of the generous old Ottoman rooms. Ibrahim, her husband, remained at the crammed little modern apartment at Bayrampaşa. Günes had been waiting years for this. She had long wanted the messy and unpredictable being-married part of her life to be over so she could fold herself back into family. She had always been a carer and a coper. Ayşe had always been a chaser and a smoker. Günes’s haughty moral superiority, her mother’s enduring grey disappointment that Ayşe had married beneath herself, did not trouble Ayşe anymore. God or DNA had ordained it. You don’t argue with them.<br />
<br />
“Yes, lovely dress dear; what did you say it was for?” Fatma Hanım asks.<br />
<br />
“The dinner, out on the Princes’ Islands.”<br />
<br />
“The Princes’ Islands? Who would you know out there?”<br />
<br />
“Ferid Adataş.”<br />
<br />
“I think you mentioned that name. Who is he? Do we know him?”<br />
<br />
“He’s an investment fund manager. A businessman, very successful.”<br />
<br />
Fatma Hanım shook her head.<br />
<br />
“Sorry dear.”<br />
<br />
A diplomat, a bureaucrat or a nouveau eurocrat; even a member of that most endangered species, a prince: that was the kind of society the Erkoçs enjoyed in the Princes’ Islands when Fatma and the most dashing captain in the Northern Sea Command would be whisked out to a ball in a navy launch by smartly uniformed ratings, the red star and crescent billowing behind them. Businessmen have fingers yellow with money. Businessmen have beady peery eyes from looking at the bottom line, not the dazzling horizon of the blood-dark Black Sea.<br />
<br />
“He’s a friend of Adnan’s.”<br />
<br />
Fatma Hanım’s gaze slides away again. That’s it said now, good and proper. Business. Not a decent society thing at all. Across the room in the chair by the window where the light is good for needlework, Günes presses the tip of her tongue to her lips in a soft lizard-hiss of disapproval. That name is not to be spoken in front of Fatma Hanım’s cameras and microphones. Any reminder of what her youngest daughter could have and refused to marry into moved the easy tears of old age.<br />
<br />
Ayşe kisses her mother on the forehead. The camera will show glossy lips parting, swelling; her face filling up the recorded memory. As she closes the living room door Fatma Hanım asks again, “Where is it she’s going?”<br />
<br />
“The Princes’ Islands,” Günes says patiently.<br />
<br />
The Marmaray out from Sirkeci is solid with bodies. Ayşe strap-hangs under the Bosphorus. The carriage smells of electricity and the light is migrainous. There is fear in the train: everyone knows where there was one bomb there will be another, from the same group or from another wanting a shine of the glory. Ayşe tries not to imagine a bomb in this deep tunnel. She tries not to imagine the blast of white light, the roof cracking open, the tunnel splitting, the water blasting in like a knife under millions of tons of pressure. The train sways over points; blue lighting illuminates the tunnel. Ayşe knows everyone else thinks the same thought. Deep tunnels, tall buildings, fast trains and high-flying aircraft—all these things are irresistible to angry males. All these things defy God.<br />
<br />
A million euro and she never has to do this again.<br />
<br />
Tonight the dolmuş winds interminably between the spindly apartment blocks of Ferhatpaşa. Roads; eroded, dusty verges; concrete façades and the scrubby hillside are doused in yellow light. Ayşe can no longer stand the ugliness. Amillion euro would take her across the Bosphorus, back to Europe again. Kids hang around the lobby of the apartment block. Doesn’t the new mosque run some kind of youth club? He’s not home. He won’t be for hours. After the hamam, there’ll be drinks, more talk. She won’t wait up for the signature purr of the Audi pulling into the parking lot. The apartment is still with trapped heat and smells of fabric conditioner. Ayşe can hear upstairs’ television through the floor. Whatever channel they watch seems to consist of constant cheering. She drinks cherry juice from the carton, so cold it hurts. Ayşe lays out tomorrow’s clothes on her dresser. It is bliss to unzip and slip off the boots, a ridiculous fashion in such weather, but the fashion nonetheless. She slips naked beneath the sheet, but even that is too much covering. Sleep won’t come. Ayşe tries her comfortable side, her less-comfortable side, her back, moving to the cooler part of the bed, arranging one leg over the other so, one arm under the other so. Nothing. Her mind races. She sees Adnan at the bathhouse, so serious, as he is so beautifully serious when he does business; Adnan over drinks—he loves a party, but he will always be at least one drink behind his host. She imagines the dinner tomorrow; the men talking to each other about football and politics and deals, the women around the table discussing family and gossip and society. <em>And what do you do to pass the time, Ms. Erkoç?</em> I’m on a quest for a Mellified Man. Which is more absurd in Istanbul, a legend bubbling up out of a magical past or turning down a million euro on the smell of a man’s aftershave?<br />
<br />
She pulls on a robe to make the call. Akgün takes a moment to recognise her name.<br />
<br />
“Ms. Erkoç. Forgive me, what can I do for you?” She catches a phantom wisp of Arslan aftershave.<br />
<br />
“Your Mellified Man.”<br />
<br />
“Yes?”<br />
<br />
“I’ll do it.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DervishHouse.html">The Dervish House</a> © <a href="http://ianmcdonald.livejournal.com/">Ian McDonald</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.martiniere.com/">Stephan Martiniere</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5H5Kn7EFpJ1Q8wcy1522xDYacRmf9wTqdg4S0XALVcnO6gVnMUOE7xiOCuVbszFqHUieSjIXDmaFu0z_y30sBD6kjGFwSlb0falRVJTBSWlYZII5SRP0y25kiA0ZB0_sC3WDwa60QUI/s1600/IanMcDonald2%5BLT%5D2006+copy.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" bx="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5H5Kn7EFpJ1Q8wcy1522xDYacRmf9wTqdg4S0XALVcnO6gVnMUOE7xiOCuVbszFqHUieSjIXDmaFu0z_y30sBD6kjGFwSlb0falRVJTBSWlYZII5SRP0y25kiA0ZB0_sC3WDwa60QUI/s320/IanMcDonald2%5BLT%5D2006+copy.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including <em>Brasyl, River of Gods, Cyberabad Days, Desolation Road, King of Morning, Queen of Day, Out on Blue Six, Chaga</em>, and <em>Kirinya</em>. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the BSFA Award, and a Hugo Award, and has been nominated for a Quill Book Award, and has several nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Visit him online at <a href="http://ianmcdonald.livejournal.com/">ianmcdonald.livejournal.com</a>.</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-54272612217996505752010-07-07T10:31:00.000-05:002010-07-07T10:31:24.521-05:00The Office of Shadow by Matthew Sturges<div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibf8rnJEG9zjm3nSpBD8FWElYTZnOOp4U569iF1p4tcORYs5D1BX8NykpW8WkcnA7f_-yXZXrAX7_Gyghy9X0SyNyAT2yfDYBaSw9lp8qTK0fzxYNtMb4m52cVgw_Cka8epFaNRmqbBJ8/s1600/Office+of+Shadow.01.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" rw="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibf8rnJEG9zjm3nSpBD8FWElYTZnOOp4U569iF1p4tcORYs5D1BX8NykpW8WkcnA7f_-yXZXrAX7_Gyghy9X0SyNyAT2yfDYBaSw9lp8qTK0fzxYNtMb4m52cVgw_Cka8epFaNRmqbBJ8/s320/Office+of+Shadow.01.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;">Midwinter has gone, but that cold season has been replaced by a Cold War in the world of Faerie, and this new kind of war requires a new kind of warrior. Seelie forces drove back Empress Mab at the Battle of Sylvan, but hostilities could resume at any moment. Mab has developed a devastating new weapon capable of destroying an entire city, and the Seelie have no defense against it. If war comes, they will almost certainly be defeated.</span></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div align="left"><br />
</div><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-size: small;">In response, the Seelie reconstitutes a secret division of the Foreign Ministry, unofficially dubbed the “Office of Shadow,” imbuing it with powers and discretion once considered unthinkable. They are a group of covert operatives given the tasks that can’t be done in the light of day: secretly stealing the plans for Mab’s new weapon, creating unrest in the Unseelie Empire, and doing whatever is necessary to prevent an unwinnable war. </span></div><span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div align="left"><br />
</div><br />
<div align="left"><span style="font-size: small;">“A book this good, that breaks so many rules, should be illegal. A novel should not be allowed to mix high fantasy and cold war thriller, throwing together ancient gods, magic-wielding spies, sorcerous super weapons, and political machinations. Matthew Sturges, however, combines all these elements and sets them off like one of the book's spellbombs. <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/OfficeShadow.html"><strong>The Office of Shadow</strong></a></em> [excerpted below] is a fast-paced adventure that is outrageously entertaining, and like nothing you've ever seen.”</span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size: small;"></span></div><div align="left"><span style="font-size: small;">—Daryl Gregory, author of <em>Pandemonium and The Devil’s Alphabet</em></span></div><br />
<span style="font-size: small;"></span><br />
<strong><br />
</strong><br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><strong>The Office of Shadow</strong></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Matthew Sturges</strong></span></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Part One</strong><br />
<br />
Uvenra slept among the ash at Belekh; the daughter of Uvenchaud was dead by the hand of Uvenchaud and slept among the ash. For a week and a day the king wept. Then Uvenchaud took his chariot and drove it to Prythme, where the gods dwelled. To confront the gods he went there. He shook his sword at the gate; he shook his shield at the gate. Uvenchaud struck the earth with his sword and the earth trembled. The gate opened. At Uvenchaud’s threat did it move upon its mighty hinge.<br />
<br />
Uvenchaud went into the courtyard at Prythme. In the courtyard Uvenchaud called out. “I am Uvenchaud, whose fist is iron, who united the wild Fae clans; the Fae clans have submitted to my will. As the ruler of them I demand parley.”<br />
<br />
Uvenchaud stood in the courtyard for a week and a day. For another week and for another day he stood and there was no answer. Uvenchaud struck the earth again with his sword and called out. One of the gods came. The bearded god Althoin, god of Wisdom whose Gift is Insight, came to match his wits against Uvenchaud.<br />
<br />
“Why do you come here?” said wise Althoin. “Why does Uvenchaud come here to disturb the thoughts of the gods?”<br />
<br />
“Uvenra my daughter sleeps among the ash. She is dead by my hand, for she betrayed me to my enemy<br />
Achera, the dragon who has slain many.”<br />
<br />
“You have come here to be judged by the gods.”<br />
<br />
“I do not come to be judged by the gods. I come to defy the judgment of the gods.”<br />
<br />
Althoin spoke. He said, “You cannot escape the judgment of the gods. We are seated above you to judge you and to command you.”<br />
<br />
“Who seated you there?”<br />
<br />
“We seated ourselves.”<br />
<br />
“Then I will unseat you.” Uvenchaud struck the earth with his sword, and the god laughed at the sword.<br />
<br />
“You cannot kill a god,” said Althoin.<br />
<br />
Uvenchaud struck at Althoin for a week and a day. After a week and a day he stopped and Althoin was<br />
unharmed. “You cannot kill a god,” said Althoin.<br />
<br />
Ein, god of War, whose Gift is Leadership, came to match his strength against Uvenchaud. For a week and a day Uvenchaud struck Ein with his sword. For a week and a day they struggled, but Ein was not slain.<br />
<br />
“You cannot kill a god,” said Ein.<br />
<br />
“What I cannot kill I can bind,” said Uvenchaud. Uvenchaud had a rope, made of fibers from the tuluk<br />
plant. The rope was dipped in dragon blood. Uvenchaud bound Ein with the rope. Ein strained at the rope, but he was bound.<br />
<br />
One by one the other gods came to answer the challenge, and Uvenchaud bound them. He bound Senek. He bound Urul. He bound Penithe and Althoin. He bound Tur and Loket. Obore and Reinul he bound. Ehreg and Purek he bound.Tenul he bound.<br />
<br />
In this way did Uvenchaud bind each of the twelve gods at Prythme.<br />
<br />
In Prythme the gods lie. In Prythme they are bound.<br />
<br />
In Prythme they are held by tuluk fibers and dragon’s blood.<br />
<br />
No god judged Uvenchaud for the slaying of Uvenra.<br />
<br />
—from <em>The Chthonic Book of Mysteries</em>, translated by Feven IV of the City Emerald<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>chapter one</strong><br />
<br />
The sun in Annwn perches eternally on the horizon, swimming in lazy circles that allow it to fully rise for only three hours each day. Never lighter than morning nor darker than dusk, Annwn exists in perpetual transition—always arriving, never arrived.<br />
<br />
Annwn was discovered by the Fae long ago and was, for many centuries, a bastion of the pure Elvish folk. But it was later discovered by men from the Nymaen world, those called human, and conquered by them. Over time the two races mingled, and have now become one. Neither Fae nor Nymaen, they are simply Annwni,with some of the qualities of each.<br />
<br />
There are many villages in Annwn, but only one city, named Blood of Arawn. The city is built upon seven great ramparts of earth and stone dug out of the otherwise flat grasslands of that world. The oldest buildings of that city—the coliseum, the Penn’s villa, the temples—are built of marble, but many of these structures have since crumbled and have been replaced with more modest structures of brick. Only the obelisk at the center of the great market, called Romwll’s Needle, remains unblemished<br />
after fifteen centuries. Conventional wisdom holds that a pair of thaumaturges sit in a stone room beneath the obelisk, whispering bindings without cease, for it is believed that if the needle were ever to fall, then Blood of Arawn would fall soon after, and all of Annwn crumble into dust.<br />
<br />
—Stil-Eret, “Light in Annwn,” from <em>Travels at Home and Abroad</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Five Years Ago</strong><br />
<br />
The flashes of witchlight began to streak the horizon shortly after midnight and continued through the night, growing closer by the hour. Paet ran through the dappled darkness, ignoring the sky.<br />
<br />
The attack had come as no surprise to anyone, but Mab’s Army had beaten even the most alarmist estimates in its timing. Back at the Seelie Embassy, the packing and burning of documents, which had begun in an orderly fashion three days earlier, had become a frenzy of activity. Bags were hurriedly packed; valuables were sewn into the linings of garments; empty kerosene barrels were stuffed with dossiers and set aflame.<br />
<br />
None of this was of any concern to Paet.<br />
<br />
Blood of Arawn was an ancient city. Not as old, perhaps, as one of its Seelie counterparts, but it appeared much older as a result of governmental indifference down the ages. The cobbles in the streets were uneven, some missing, and Paet could hear carts and carriages jouncing across them in the street beyond his darkened alley. He could also hear shouts and occasional shrieks, as certain of the populace considered the reputation of the encroaching conquerors and decided not to take their chances. Paet could hardly blame them; life under the Unseelie was certain to be a disappointment for those who decided to stay.<br />
<br />
A group of a dozen Chthonic coenobites clattered past Paet, their faces calm, their legendary indifference suiting them well this night. Their saffron-dyed robes brushed the cobblestones, the bells sewn into their fabric quietly jingling. As the state religion in all but name, the Chthonics would be allowed to continue so long as they acknowledged Mab as a goddess, and superior to their own. This the Chthonics would happily agree to do, praising Mab publicly and ignoring her in private. Their own deities had been subdued eons earlier and could scarcely take offense. Or so the stories went; Paet had no use for religion.<br />
<br />
There was a scintillating flash in the sky. A moment later the ground shook and Paet stumbled. He stopped and listened as the low rumble of reitic concussions echoed down the alley.Waves of heat from the battle outside had begun to roll over the walls before Paet had left the embassy, and now the city both felt and smelled like a tavern kitchen: stifling, stinking of sweat and overripe food. Paet felt the prickling of perspiration beneath his heavy linen shirt. He continued running.<br />
<br />
The district of Kollws Vymynal covered the smallest of Blood of Arawn’s seven hills. The East Gate was set into the wall at the foot of Kollws Vymynal, which put it closest to the fighting outside. Here Paet could just hear the clash of blades and the shrieks of horses and men mixed in with thundering hooves and reitic blasts.<br />
<br />
How long had it been since he’d left the embassy? His internal time sense told him it was only about twenty minutes. That gave him just enough time to retrieve Jenien and make it to the Port-Herion Lock before the Masters shut the thing down, stranding them in Annwn. Not the end of the world, but close enough.<br />
<br />
The streets of Kollws Vymynal twisted and doubled back upon themselves, and what signs existed were printed in tiny ancient script that beggared deciphering. The district’s inhabitants had either bolted themselves inside their homes, drawing the curtains and shutters tight, or had joined the frantic knots of refugees. Most were headed toward the Southwest Gate, which meant that Paet was fighting against their current. From the city they would beg passage to a different world or strike out southward, hoping to disappear into the plains villages.<br />
<br />
The clock in a nearby Chthonic temple struck three and Paet whispered a curse. This was taking too long.<br />
<br />
Paet finally found the address he was looking for at the end of a small culde-sac, a four-story tenement that smelled heavily of burnt cooking oil and pepper and rot. This was the address Jenien had written down in her logbook when she’d left the embassy that morning, long before word of Mab’s invasion<br />
had reached the city. Just the address and a name: Prae Benesile. All she’d told Paet was that she was going to visit a “person of interest,” which could mean just about anything. By nightfall, while Blood of Arawn convulsed in preparation for its imminent surrender, she still hadn’t returned. Paet had waited for her until he could wait no longer and had then gone after her.<br />
<br />
“We won’t hold the lock for you,” Ambassador Traet had told him diffidently. Everything about Traet was hesitant and noncommittal; his appointment had been a sinecure, and laughably so. In happier times, Annwn had been a cozy assignment. Now Traet was in over his head, but at least had the<br />
sense to realize it. “If you’re not back by sunrise,” Traet had said, stuffing a valise haphazardly with documents, “you’re on your own.”<br />
<br />
Paet breathed deeply ten times. He consciously slowed his heart and forced out the remainder of the prickly heat that filled his blood. The fear of the body could be controlled easily, but for the fear of the mind there was no cure. Only action, despite it.<br />
<br />
At the end of the street someone smashed the window of a bakery and grabbed a basket of bread amid surprised shouts.<br />
<br />
Paet let himself into the tenement building and hurried up the stairs, making no sound that any Fae or Annwni could hear; of course, the things he was most concerned about were neither, and had excellent hearing. Still. The stairway was filled with cooking smells and body odor. When he reached the third floor he stepped carefully out of the stairwell. The narrow hallway was empty; several doors along its length were open, their inhabitants apparently not seeing the point of locking up behind them. Many of the older, poorer residents of Annwn had fought against Mab’s Army in the Sixweek War twenty years previously, and had apparently had enough of the Unseelie for a lifetime.<br />
<br />
The apartment Paet was searching for was near the end of the hall. Its door was open as well, though light still burned within. Paet took a long, serrated knife from within his cloak, testing the blade with his thumb by force of habit. He pushed the door open gently and waited, listening. His hardlearned<br />
caution warred in his mind with his sense of urgency. If ever there was a time to take a risk, this was it. He swore under his breath and stepped into the apartment.<br />
<br />
It was small, a single room lit by a lone witchlamp sconce set into the wall. The long-untuned bilious green light cast harsh shadows over the furniture, placing imagined adversaries in every corner. A tattered cot slumped beneath the waxed-paper window. A chipped chamber pot sat in the corner.<br />
Books and bits of paper and parchment were everywhere, piled on the floor, leaned in uneven stacks against the wall, scattered across the cot. There was no sign of Jenien.<br />
<br />
Stop and think. Breathe. Relax and smooth the edges of consciousness. Paet picked up a book at random and opened it. It was written by Prae Benesile himself, a work of philosophy, something to do with the history of the Chthonic religion. He put it down and picked up another. This one was a collection of Thule religious poetry, prayers to the bound gods, hymns of supplication, prophecies of liberation and doom. A sampling of the rest of the books revealed most of them to be of a kind: works of philosophy, sacred texts—many regarding the Chthonics, but also some Arcadian scrolls, a few<br />
codices from the Annwni emperor cult. Some were written in languages that Paet didn’t recognize. There was nothing here to indicate that Prae Benesile was anything other than a reclusive scholar.<br />
<br />
Paet sniffed. Blood. Blood had been spilled in this room, and recently. He knelt down and examined the dusty floorboards. Too many shadows. Paet glanced toward the window, shrugged, and created a stronger, pure white witchlight that suffused the entire room. The blood on the floor was tacky<br />
and brown, smeared in a scuffle. Paet heard the choking cough from beneath the cot just as his eyes followed the trail of drying blood toward it. He tested his grip on the knife and then channeled Motion and drew the cot quickly backward with a twist of his mind.<br />
<br />
Jenien lay curled in a fetal position, clutching her abdomen, breathing raggedly. She looked up at him, and her eyes went wide in her pale face. <br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>“Watching,” she whispered. “Bel Zheret are here.”<br />
<br />
Paet’s heart leapt forcefully at the name. He stood and whirled, brandishing the knife. Nothing moved.<br />
<br />
He turned back to Jenien and knelt before her. “If they were here I either slipped past them, or they’re long gone.<br />
<br />
“Said they’d be back for me,” Jenien wheezed. She was having trouble breathing. Paet gently pulled her hands away from her belly, pulled aside her shredded blouse. Jenien was going to die; there was nothing he could do for her. These were wounds that not even a Shadow could recover from.<br />
<br />
Paet found a pillow on the overturned cot and put it under Jenien’s head. Her hair was wet with perspiration. She reached for his wrist and grabbed it with weak fingers.<br />
<br />
“Mab’s coming,” Jenien observed. “Thought we’d have a few more days.”<br />
<br />
“Things at the embassy have become frantic to say the least.”<br />
<br />
Jenien chuckled softly. “Traet running around like a headless chicken?”<br />
<br />
“Yes.”<br />
<br />
“Is that knife sharp, Paet?” she said after a brief pause.<br />
<br />
“I’m getting you out of here,” he said. “Just rest a moment longer.”<br />
<br />
“Remember that night in Sylvan?” she asked. She was starting to slur her speech. Her body trembled. “The little theater with the terrible play?”<br />
<br />
“I remember,” Paet said, smiling.<br />
<br />
“I bet if we were normal we could have fallen in love that night,” she said, sighing.<br />
<br />
Paet felt his emotions receding as she spoke. The world became flat. Jenien was an object; a bleeding thing with no impact. A problem to be solved. Was this lack of feeling something he’d always had, or something he’d developed? He couldn’t remember. Had he become empty like this when he became a Shadow, or was it the emptiness that qualified him for the job? It didn’t seem to matter.<br />
<br />
“It was the mulled wine,” he said, sitting her up. “It was strong. Hard to tell through the cinnamon and cloves.”<br />
<br />
She winced as he maneuvered himself behind her. “You looked very dashing. You had one of those red cloaks that were so popular back then.”<br />
<br />
“Just blending in,” he said. Then, after a moment, “What was so important about Prae Benesile, Jenien?”<br />
<br />
She shook her head sadly, worked to speak clearly. “Someone from the City of Mab had been to see him. Five times in the past year. I was just curious. Bel Zheret showed up when—” She winced.<br />
<br />
Paet brought up the knife. “They take him?”<br />
<br />
Jenien nodded. “He struggled; they killed him.”<br />
<br />
“Ah.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t want to die,” she said. It was a statement, merely an observation.<br />
<br />
“We’ve been dead for a long time,” he whispered in her ear. He drew the knife across her throat in a quick, sure motion, and pulled her neck back to hasten the bleeding. She shook; her chest lurched once, then twice. He waited until he was certain she was dead, checking her eyes. He looked into them<br />
until all the life had gone out of them. It took time. Dying always took time.<br />
<br />
Paet took a deep breath and braced his knee against her back. He put the serrated blade of the knife to Jenien’s throat again, using the original cut as a guide. He buried his other hand in her hair and pulled, hard, as he began to saw.<br />
<br />
Ligament popped. Metal ground against bone. With a sickening crunch, vertebrae parted. A few more strokes and the remaining skin tore loose soundlessly. Jenien’s head swung obscenely in his grasp.<br />
<br />
He laid it gently on the floor and reached into his cloak. Among the few items he’d brought with him from the embassy was a wax-lined canvas bag, for just this purpose. He unfolded the bag and placed Jenien’s head, dripping with blood and sweat, gently inside.<br />
<br />
That’s what you got for being a Shadow.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
He didn’t hear them so much as feel the disturbance of the air as they flowed into the room.<br />
<br />
Paet turned and saw two tall, dark figures flanking the door. For an instant they looked as surprised as he, but to their credit, they recovered more quickly than Paet did. The first one had his sword out before Paet could begin to react.<br />
<br />
Paet stepped back, feeling the position of the corpse behind him and moving easily around it. He stepped into a ready stance, his knife already warm in his hand.<br />
<br />
The first swordsman closed on Paet, and Paet got a good look into the man’s eyes. Black, empty black, stretching inward to infinity.<br />
<br />
Bel Zheret.<br />
<br />
Paet was a dangerous man. But going up against two Bel Zheret in a closed space was suicide. He backed up, toward the dingy window of waxed paper.<br />
<br />
“You’re a Shadow, aren’t you?” said the first swordsman. He smiled pleasantly. “My name is Cat. It would be my sincere pleasure to kill you.”<br />
<br />
“It would be my sincere pleasure for you not to.”<br />
<br />
“Just so. But I must insist. I have never killed one of you.”<br />
<br />
Oh. In that case I’m not going to fight you,” said Paet, sheathing the knife.<br />
<br />
The Bel Zheret stopped short, flicking his blade in the air. The grin faded, replaced with sincere disappointment. “Why not?”<br />
<br />
“If I’m going to die anyway, I’d prefer to give you neither the pleasure nor the experience of engaging me in combat. The next time you come against a Shadow, I’d prefer that you have no personal knowledge of our tactics, our speed, or our reflexes. That way, you can be more easily defeated then<br />
by one of my colleagues.”<br />
<br />
Cat pondered this, never taking his eyes off of Paet. “Well,” he said, shrugging, “we can still torture you.”<br />
<br />
He waved the other Bel Zheret forward. “Restrain him, Asp,” he said. <br />
<br />
Asp moved with astonishing fluidity and quickness. He didn’t seem to tread through the room so much as unfold across it, his limbs elastic, perhaps even multijointed. No matter how many times Paet saw this skill employed, it unnerved him.<br />
<br />
Paet took a deep breath and unsheathed his knife again, rearing back for a sudden forward attack against Cat, carefully weighing the cloth bag in his other hand. Cat prepared to block Paet’s attack, but no attack came. Paet instead added to his rearward momentum by shoving off with his back foot,<br />
launching himself toward and through the window. The third-story window.<br />
<br />
Falling backward, unable to see the ground, Paet considered his chances for survival. The descent seemed to go on for eternity. He concentrated and slowed his heart again, deliberately let his muscles go slack. He even willed his bones to soften and become more flexible, though he had no sense of<br />
whether it was a good idea, or whether it would even work.<br />
<br />
Finally, he hit the cobblestones on his back, at the angle he’d desired. Jenien’s head made a sick, muffled thump as it struck. In his hurry, Paet had forgotten the knife in his left hand, and felt the snap of his wrist as it was wrenched by the hilt’s impact. How many of Paet’s wrist bones broke simultaneously he couldn’t guess. More than one. There was no pain yet, but that would come in a few seconds.<br />
<br />
More prominent at the moment were the pain along his spine and his inability to breathe, the sharp crack of his skull against stone. So perhaps not exactly the angle he’d intended. He was still alive, however, and his legs felt fine; that was all that mattered.<br />
<br />
Paet climbed slowly to his feet, looking up at the window. Cat was already drawing his head back inside the room. The waxed-paper windowpane fluttered down crazily in the shifting breeze of the cul-de-sac. He could already hear the steps on the stair, Asp already dispatched. He picked up the sack containing Jenien’s head and ran. <br />
<br />
Blindly at first, Paet raced out of the cul-de-sac and turned right, for no particular reason. He would need to make his way back west, but not by the most direct route, nor by the most secretive. He would have to split the difference, taking random turnings and inconvenient doublings in order to throw off a pair of Bel Zheret, who would already be considering all of the things that Paet was currently thinking. They outnumbered him, they weren’t fleeing, and neither of them had just fallen out of a third-floor<br />
window. These were tangible assets that Paet couldn’t at the moment figure out how to turn into disadvantages. On the positive side, the night that he fled into was growing more chaotic by the minute.<br />
<br />
He kept running, the ringing in his ears from the fall replaced by the sounds of battle, ever closer, the clatter of feet and hooves on stone, shouting. He smelled smoke; somewhere nearby a building was burning. On some of the faces he passed, worry was being replaced with panic. The Unseelie were no longer <em>coming</em>; they were <em>here</em>. Life in Annwn was about to change significantly.<br />
<br />
As Paet turned another corner into the wide avenue leading back toward Kollws Kapytlyn, his left hand, still somehow grasping the knife, slammed hard into the post of a pottery merchant’s cart being pushed in the other direction. His vision dimmed and his gorge rose as the pain from the broken wrist leapt up his arm, into his brain and then his stomach. Continuing to run, though slower, he considered dropping the bag. He couldn’t defend himself while he carried it.<br />
<br />
Looking back, he saw Asp now entering the market from the same alley that Paet had. The Bel Zheret caught his eye and moved toward him, shoving a fruit vendor’s cart aside with a strength that made Paet wince. Empress Mab’s operatives were getting stronger, faster, more intelligent. Whatever the black art was that grew them in the bowels of her flying cities, it was improving with every year.<br />
<br />
So there was one. Where was the other one? Had he run ahead, plotting a tangential course, or was he behind the one he’d just seen? Which had been at the window? Which at the stairs? In the pain and hurry, Paet couldn’t remember.<br />
<br />
Scattered thinking kills quicker than poison. That was one of Master Jedron’s favorite adages.<br />
<br />
Paet ducked into a doorway and risked closing his eyes just long enough concentrate and cut off the pain from his wrist, slow his heart, and clear out the essence of fear in his blood. Better to lose a moment of his head start than to give up his mind to panic and pain.<br />
<br />
Again he ran, now turning into a blind alley that was dark and cool, the walls close together. It was quieter here; the commotion beyond became a homogenous roar. The smell of smoke, though, was stronger. Nearer the fire.<br />
<br />
Condensation dripped down the moss-covered stones. Though Paet knew Blood of Arawn well, and had spent hours poring over maps a few days earlier, he wasn’t exactly sure where he was at the moment, or whether this alley would take him to another street or to a dead end. Still, it was the unexpected thing to do, and that was his primary defense at the moment.<br />
<br />
The alley opened on a wide street, and Paet hurried into the center of the city, where the giant obelisk atop the Kapytlyn rose up and vanished into the blankness of night. Asp was nowhere to be seen. The crowds were thicker here, the city’s dependents waiting for news or instructions. Paet knew that those instructions wouldn’t come until Mab’s officers took control of the place. The rightful governor was long gone, having taken refuge in the Seelie Kingdom earlier that day, along with a score of top officials. Most everyone else in government had already fled to the countryside.<br />
<br />
Paet stopped a moment to get his bearings—he’d actually been running away from the Port-Herion Lock, not toward it. Inwardly cursing himself, he turned and began again. Thankfully the chaos surrounding him, which would normally have been a hindrance, worked in his favor. At any other<br />
time, a limping, sweating Fae brandishing a bloody knife would undoubtedly be noticed. The first rule of Shadows was to draw no attention; that was the ostensible meaning of the nickname. Though not the true one.<br />
<br />
Paet breathed deep and concentrated again, hoping to heal the wrist enough to fight. He was running low on re, having used up much of his stored magical essence in his various reachings-in today. He did the best he could, then headed toward a side street that led to the Kollws Ysglyn, and the Port-Herion Lock beyond.<br />
<br />
The Bel Zheret named Cat was there waiting for him, sword drawn.<br />
<br />
Paet dropped the bag and rushed him, praying that his momentum would be enough to take the man down, but the Bel Zheret stayed on his feet and, though unable to bring his blade to bear, punched Paet hard in the stomach. There was something on his hand, turning his knuckles into spikes, and the Bel Zheret twisted those spikes into Paet’s midsection, not hard enough to draw blood through Paet’s cloak, but still painful.<br />
<br />
Paet pulled back, stepping hard on the side of Cat’s knee, a lucky move, and the Bel Zheret crumpled, falling backward against the wall. Paet knew from experience that having your knee kicked out of its socket was one of the more painful things that could happen in a fight, short of being run through, and he was amazed that Cat was still standing, let alone continuing to swing his blade.<br />
<br />
For an instant, fear tumbled into Paet’s mind and he was certain that he was going to die. Right here in this alley, carrying the severed head of a woman with whom he’d once made love. All his regrets spilled onto the dank cobblestones. Where was Master Jedron with a homily against the inevitability<br />
of death? Certainly one existed, and it was something stoic and tough. Well. Better to die here in an alley than in a dimly lit room with the Bel Zheret. They would torture him slowly and effectively, and despite his training they would cut his knowledge out of him. With their teeth.<br />
<br />
There was a sound in the alley. A pair of burly city guards were approaching, their clubs out and ready. Both looked tense and afraid. They’d been given instructions to remain and to keep the peace until the bitter end. Neither one appeared happy about it.<br />
Cat spun Paet around and shoved Paet’s face hard against the wall. A knife pierced his back, went deep, and Paet felt something in his body give. A kidney? The knife traced a path across his back and caught on something hard, a vertebra. With Paet’s enhanced sensitivity toward his own body, he felt it in excruciating detail, felt the nerve tissue shredding like spiderweb. Another hard shove and Paet’s nose smashed into the bricks of the wall.<br />
<br />
Paet slid down the wall and watched Cat begin a methodical slaughter of the two guardsmen, who barely had time to shriek before he began hurting them. One of the Bel Zheret’s few weaknesses was that they took a bit too much pleasure in causing pain; perhaps it was an unintended side effect of<br />
whatever it was that created them. Perhaps, worse, it was intended.<br />
<br />
With the very last of his <em>re</em>, Paet attempted to repair those nerves, to find his way into the kidney and send healing toward it. These were still killing wounds, but perhaps they would kill a bit more slowly now, and give him time to reach the lock before he died. Paet now reached out, out of his body and out into Blood of Arawn, looking for life, looking for re that he could steal. Two children in an adjoining house, huddling in bed. He drew as much from them as he could without killing them. They’d be sick for a few days, nothing more. It would be the least of their worries. He would kill the children if he had to, but not unless it was absolutely necessary. And it wasn’t absolutely necessary. Not yet.<br />
<br />
While the Bel Zheret continued its work on the guards, Paet exited the alley in the other direction as silently as possible, picking up the bag as he ran. The knife wound seared through his back, making the broken wrist seem mild in comparison. He could sense fluids in his body mixing that should not<br />
mix, blood leaking into places where blood did not belong. Despite his best efforts, he might not make it.<br />
<br />
Again he considered abandoning Jenien. A loose cobblestone would do the trick, crush her brain until it was utterly unreadable. But he couldn’t do it. Killing her had been bad enough. Nor could he simply toss the cloth bag into one of the now-many burning buildings that lined the street along which he staggered.<br />
<br />
A clock in the main temple struck the hour, and Paet felt what blood remained in him drain toward his feet. The Port-Herion Lock would be shut down soon. Any minute now. They would not wait for him.<br />
<br />
Running. Breathing hard in his chest. Now no longer caring whether he was seen or what kind of impression he made. Get to the gate, through the lock, onto Seelie soil. This was all that mattered now.<br />
<br />
There was a side street that ran along the base of Kollws Kapytlyn, where the Southwest Gate stood, and Paet reached it, out of breath, after what seemed like hours. The street was empty. It ran along a ridge line, overlooking the endless prairies of Annwn. In the distance, one of the giant, tentacled boars, the Hwch Ddu Cwta, raised its head to the sky in the dark, amidst the noise.<br />
<br />
Paet’s legs felt like they’d been wrapped in cold iron; his breath came like knife thrusts. Blood dripped down his back, thickening along the length of his thigh. He stumbled once, then again. He should have killed those two children; it had been necessary after all. He was sworn to protect the children of the Seelie Kingdom, not the children of Annwn.<br />
<br />
He struggled again to his feet. The pain in his back, in his chest, in his wrist—they all conspired against him, hounding him. Each had its own personality, its own signature brand of hurt.<br />
<br />
The city gate was up ahead, left open and unguarded. Beyond he could see the lock glowing in the distance. The portal was still open!<br />
<br />
One of the Bel Zheret tackled him hard from behind, his shoulder biting into the knife wound. The bag containing Jenien’s head tumbled away. Whether his attacker was Cat or Asp he couldn’t tell; not that it mattered now. If it was Cat, then he’d get his wish to kill a Shadow after all.<br />
<br />
But he wouldn’t get Jenien. Paet crawled toward the bag, allowing the Bel Zheret free access to his back, which his assailant readily exploited, kicking him hard in the kidney.<br />
<br />
Paet collapsed on top of the bag and, with the last of his strength, crushed Jenien’s skull with his hands. It was harder than he would have thought. Mab wouldn’t learn any of her secrets now.<br />
<br />
The Bel Zheret knelt over Paet and began delivering efficient, evenly timed blows to Paet’s spine, then turned him over and dealt equally with Paet’s face. Paet felt his nose crack, his lower jaw split in two. Teeth rolled loose on his tongue; he swallowed one. He felt ribs crack, first one, then two more. Something popped in his chest and suddenly he could no longer breathe. There was no sound except the dull rush of blood in his ears. The world spun; the beating, the pounding receded, then faded altogether.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
A few minutes later Traet, the Seelie ambassador, followed by a pair of clerks lugging baggage and valises thick with papers, literally stumbled over Paet’s body.<br />
<br />
“Oh, dear!” Traet cried. “How awful!”<br />
<br />
“Is he alive?” asked one of the clerks, kneeling.<br />
<br />
“We don’t have time for that,” Traet muttered, walking past. “There will be casualties.”<br />
<br />
“Sir, it’s Paet!”<br />
<br />
The ambassador quickly turned, his eyes wide. “Gather him up, then! Quickly!”<br />
<br />
The kneeling clerk felt for a pulse. “He’s dead, sir. Perhaps we oughtn’t to bother. . . .”<br />
<br />
“Don’t be a fool,” said Traet. “Hand me your bags and take him. Now!”<br />
<br />
Neither the clerks nor Traet noticed the cloth bag that had fallen from Paet’s hand, now resting in a clump of bushes just outside the gate.<br />
<br />
Once the ambassador’s party was safely through the lock, the Master of the Gates opened a small door on the side of the massive portal. He adjusted the ancient machinery, and a loud hum joined the cacophony of flames and the percussion of war from across the city. While a sextet of extremely fiercelooking members of the Seelie Royal Guard held back the small knot of would-be refugees that had surrounded the lock, the Master closed the door, carrying a heavy part of the lock’s inner workings with him. He stepped through and beckoned the guardsmen to follow. They backed slowly into the silken portal, not so much disappearing as gliding out of existence. The tips of their swords were the last things to vanish. The instant the last of them was through, the portal went dark, revealing behind it only a veneer of highly polished black stone. The desperate crowd banged their fists against it, some weeping, others shouting.<br />
<br />
Just before dawn a tocsin sounded in the city and the Unseelie flag was raised upon the obelisk. All was quiet. The crowd at the Port-Herion Lock hesitantly turned away from the dead portal and went their separate ways—some back into the city, their heads hung low; some out into the pampas, not<br />
looking back.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>chapter two</strong><br />
<br />
Titania is the land and the land isTitania. She reads the song of birds and feels the brush of the plow upon her skin.<br />
<br />
—Anonymous, “Ode to Titania”<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Today</strong><br />
<br />
Regina Titania, Fae Queen of the Seelie Lands, Purest Blood of Pure Elves, sat upon her stone chair, chin in hand, swinging her feet. The lights were dim in the throne room, and the sound of her heels clicking against the floor echoed in the gloom.<br />
<br />
She looked at her husband, King Auberon, the son of Aba himself, who slouched insensate in his own seat. He had not spoken in centuries, not since she had stolen his power and his mind on the day of their marriage. <br />
<br />
“A change approaches, husband,” she said softly. “Long ago you warned me this day would come, and I scoffed. Now I stand chastened.”<br />
<br />
Auberon’s head lolled to the side, and he sobbed quietly.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>chapter three</strong><br />
<br />
All Gifts are Gifts of Aba, who is God beyond gods. To him who sees clearly, this is not a matter of faith; it is axiomatic.<br />
<br />
—Alpaurle, <em>The Magus</em>, translated by Feven IV of the City Emerald<br />
<br />
<br />
Silverdun sat in the antechamber to the abbot’s office, shivering. Tebrit had forced the novice robes over Silverdun’s head without giving him the opportunity to dry off first. He was dripping onto the floor. <br />
<br />
After a few minutes, Abbot Estiane opened the door to his office and ushered Silverdun in, groaning at the sight of him. The office was cramped, but warm—the abbot was allowed a small brazier in his office, due to his rheumatism. Or, at least, that’s what he told everyone. Silverdun knew, however, that<br />
Estiane simply didn’t like to be cold, and had, in his words, “spent enough years as a coenobite freezing my ass off for no reason.”<br />
<br />
Estiane said nothing for a minute or two, busying himself with digging through the dozens of scrolls and books littering his desk for something in particular, then giving up and reaching beneath the desk for a metal flask, which he unstoppered and handed to Silverdun.<br />
<br />
“Here,” he said. “This’ll take the edge off.”<br />
<br />
Silverdun took a pull from the flask and was rewarded with a swallow of some of the best brandy he’d ever tasted. “The queen’s tits, Father, where did you get this?”<br />
<br />
Estiane smiled. “We all have our little secrets, Silverdun. Do you think I’d still be running this place after all these years if I didn’t have a few strings to pull?”<br />
<br />
Silverdun nodded and took another sip.<br />
<br />
“You’ve pissed off Tebrit again, I see,” said Estiane.<br />
<br />
“Not a difficult task.”<br />
<br />
“Missed morning prayers, did you?”<br />
<br />
“I think it was the hangover in particular that got me sent up to you.” Silverdun shrugged. “Just between you and me, I don’t think Tebrit likes me much.”<br />
<br />
Estiane waved the thought away. “Nonsense. Tebrit is simply fulfilling his obligations as Prior to ensure that your novitiate is a period of cleansing, separating you from the things of the world in as complete a fashion as possible.”<br />
<br />
He took the flask back from Silverdun and had a nip from it himself before returning it to the desk. “Oh, who am I kidding? The man despises you. And with good reason.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t think it’s very holy of him to take such pleasure in it.” Silverdun sniffed.<br />
<br />
“Allow the man his small comforts. He has a very difficult and thankless job. Believe it or not, you’re far from the least holy novice that’s ever passed through this temple.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, really?”<br />
<br />
“I was much worse. Why, during my novitiate I actually snuck a pair of twin sisters into the sacristy and got them drunk on the holy wine.” <br />
<br />
Silverdun slapped the desk. “You cad! And they still ordained you?”<br />
<br />
“They never found out.”<br />
<br />
“I knew there was a reason I liked you,” Silverdun said. “Well, I suppose<br />
<br />
you’ve got to punish me. Garderobes for a month, is it?”<br />
<br />
“Two, actually. One for missing morning prayers and one for drinking in the presence of your abbot.” Estiane smiled and leaned back in his chair. “Ha! Didn’t see that one coming, did you?”<br />
<br />
“You old bastard. How you ever got to be a religious leader is beyond me.”<br />
<br />
“It’s simple, really,” said Estiane, leaning forward, the smile fading. “Look around you. Do you see any parishioners? Any lost souls other than your own coming to me for spiritual guidance? I’m a civil servant. If I was any good at being religious then I’d be out there practicing religion.” Estiane sighed.<br />
“Being promoted to abbot isn’t a reward; it’s more of a punishment, really.”<br />
<br />
Silverdun felt his body finally beginning to warm in the lovely heat of the brazier. “Ah, so you say. But I knew Vestar at the Temple Aba-E in Sylvan. A more holy man I’ve never met in my life!”<br />
<br />
What remained of Estiane’s smile vanished and he looked down. “Oh, you had to bring the old man into it, didn’t you, Silverdun? Just when I was having such a lark with you.<br />
<br />
“Sometimes we in this business put on a bit of a blasphemous face when we can in order to fend off the ills of the world with good humor. We’re all corrupt in the eyes of Aba, who sees all. But some of us hew very, very close to the ideal. Some of us are so strong that they don’t need any robe betwixt them and the wind. Vestar was one of those.”<br />
<br />
“So you admit you’re a lousy abbot,” said Silverdun, smirking.<br />
<br />
“I admit no such thing!” said Estiane. “Vestar was a saint. It’s just that there are more churches than there are saints, that’s all. We do the best we can with the gifts we’re given. Most of us are forced to make compromises in order to maintain our sanity. The fact that Vestar never did so is a testament<br />
to his unique virtue.”<br />
<br />
“His unique virtue got him murdered,” said Silverdun. “He stood up to Purane-Es when he could have run and saved himself.”<br />
<br />
“There’s that,” said Estiane. “There’s that.”<br />
<br />
“Will that be all then?” asked Silverdun. “Or do you have any pies or custards hidden back there that I might have a bite of before I head down to the Frater for my morning gruel?”<br />
<br />
“As if I’d share my pie with you,” Estiane said, adjusting his robe.<br />
<br />
Silverdun stood to go, and the abbot waved him back down again. “Listen, Silverdun. Since I’ve got you here, there’s something I’ve been meaning to discuss with you.”<br />
<br />
“If it’s twin sisters you’re after, I’ll need a few days and the key to the sacristy,” said Silverdun.<br />
<br />
Estiane said nothing; all the humor had left him.<br />
<br />
Silverdun pulled his robes around him. “Well, what is it then?”<br />
<br />
“I’ve been debating whether or not to mention it at all, but I suppose it’s best if I do. I’ve received word that Lord Everess would like to speak with you.”<br />
<br />
Silverdun sat up. “Really? And how does Everess even know that I’m here? Isn’t my presence here supposed to be something of a sacred trust?” <br />
<br />
“Settle down, Silverdun. You must be aware that Lord Everess knows what he wants to know. The truth is, I told him you were here.” <br />
<br />
Silverdun scowled. “Why would you do such a thing, Abbot? I don’t want to be involved in the affairs of the world. I just want to be left alone. That’s why I came here in the first place.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, and that’s the wrong reason for coming here, and that’s also why you’re such a rotten novice. If it’s solitude you’re after, there are any number of uninhabited islands in the Western Sea you could have chosen.” <br />
<br />
“I want to follow Aba,” said Silverdun weakly.<br />
<br />
“A man can enjoy telling a joke without joining the circus, Silverdun.”<br />
<br />
“What’s that supposed to mean?”<br />
<br />
“It means that just because you want to please Aba doesn’t mean you have to become a monk. And you know it.”<br />
<br />
“Enough, enough. What does any of this have to do with Everess? What does he want with me?”<br />
<br />
“I’ll let him tell you,” said Estiane. “And I suggest you hear him out. Now shall I let him know you agree to see him, or shan’t I?”<br />
<br />
Silverdun thought in silence. The fog in his head was lifting, but his mind didn’t want to think—it wanted to be carried off by the warmth into a comfortable silent place. This was, he thought ironically, the closest thing to true prayer he’d experienced since coming to the monastery.<br />
<br />
“Fine. I’ll see him,” said Silverdun. “But I reserve the right to ignore everything he says.”<br />
<br />
“Excellent,” said Estiane. “I’m glad you feel that way, since I already invited him. He’ll be here tomorrow.”<br />
<br />
Silverdun glared at the abbot. “You really are a bastard, you know.”<br />
<br />
Estiane’s smile returned. “I believe you’ve got some garderobes to clean, Novice. I suggest you get started now, or else you’ll have to spend all of midday prayer smelling like a latrine.”<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
The next day was windy as well as cold, and the rain came even stronger. Autumn had settled over the monastery and seemed intent on making its presence known. Thus, Tebrit gleefully assigned Silverdun to the gardens, where he dutifully, if angrily, weeded the cabbage. After an hour his back ached, he was covered in mud up to his shins, and he could no longer feel the tips of his fingers. He tried to stir up a bit of witchfire from time to time, but on each occasion the wind rose up and immediately extinguished it—Aba was watching, it seemed, and wanted to make sure that Tebrit’s punishments<br />
were exacted in full.<br />
<br />
The Temple Aba-Nylae stood on a wooded hill just outside the walls of the City Emerald, so there was no protection from the Inland Sea wind that blew over the hill, leaving the grounds wet and cold even when the sun was shining brightly in the city.<br />
<br />
Silverdun was down on his knees, yanking away at a recalcitrant root, when he heard a familiar voice boom from across the yard. <br />
“By Auberon’s hairy ass! Is this Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, or a rude villein?” The voice then broke out into laughter.<br />
<br />
Silverdun looked up and saw Edwin Sural, Lord Everess, standing beneath the cloister loggia, beaming and waving.<br />
<br />
“Well, come in out of the rain, Silverdun!” goaded Everess. “I didn’t come all this way to watch you play peasant.”<br />
<br />
Silverdun stood slowly, spitting out rainwater. His hair was soaked through, lying in thick tangles around his neck. His novice’s robes, likewise, were drenched, and his hands and feet were thick with mud. He closed his eyes for a long moment before beginning the long squelching trudge across the garden.<br />
<br />
“I must say, Perrin Alt,” chuckled Everess, once Silverdun was within easy speaking distance. “I do not think the religious life agrees with you.”<br />
<br />
Silverdun had never much liked Everess, who enjoyed his taunts a bit too much for Silverdun’s taste. “One gets used to it,” he said. Whatever witty rejoinder he might normally have come up with was drenched as surely as his witchfires.<br />
<br />
“By her teeth, Silverdun! It’s true what I’ve heard—you are changed!” Silverdun automatically touched his face. He could feel the nose, once straight and patrician, now angled with a slight bump. The cheekbones were lower now as well, and the chin not quite so prominent. He had angered the<br />
wrong woman, and she had taken her revenge on his appearance. Faella, the young mestine, who for some reason he could not get out of his mind. Queen Titania had told him that Faella was special, that she possessed the so-called Thirteenth Gift, the Gift of Change. He had a feeling that Titania had not<br />
told him this merely as a point of information.<br />
<br />
“It’s the country air,” said Silverdun. “It does wonders for the complexion.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, come in out of the wet and stop sputtering inanities.We’ve important business to discuss.” Everess waved Silverdun toward the calefactory, for which Silverdun was inwardly grateful. The warming-room was the only space in the entire monastery in which a fire was allowed to be lit at all times.<br />
<br />
They stepped into the calefactory and almost immediately Silverdun’s wet robes began to steam. There was a washbasin filled with hot water in one corner of the room, and before Silverdun could even begin to acknowledge Everess again, he washed his face and hands and feet in the basin, wincing<br />
with pleasure as the feeling returned to his extremities with sharp needles of pain.<br />
<br />
The calefactory was empty other than the two of them, which was remarkable for this time of day—it was a rest period, and on a cold afternoon one could expect to find easily half the monks of the abbey clustered here, playing cards, drinking the watered-down swill they called wine, or just sitting idly. The fact that it was empty told Silverdun that Estiane had gone out of his way to ensure that the meeting between him and Everess was a private one.<br />
<br />
Once Silverdun felt himself to be sufficiently presentable, he sat down at the long table by the fireplace, where Everess was already seated. Everess had his pipe out and was carefully stoking it.<br />
<br />
“I’m pleased that you agreed to see me, Perrin,” Everess began warmly, all trace of banter put aside. “What I have to speak with you about is a matter of great importance.”<br />
<br />
“I see,” said Silverdun. “Though I should tell you that I did not, in fact, agree to see you. That bastard Estiane agreed on my behalf without consulting me on the matter.”<br />
“And yet here we are face-to-face, are we not?”<br />
<br />
“There’s a fire in here.” Silverdun sighed. He found the repartee tiring.<br />
<br />
Everess looked little different from the last time that Silverdun had seen him, which had been in the House of Lords some five years earlier. Still stout and red-faced, with the same bristling brown whiskers spotted with gray. His eyes were narrow and partially hidden beneath bushy eyebrows, giving him a permanent squint. He sucked on his pipe, and a small tendril of smoke emerged from it. Silverdun waved a finger at the smoke, and it formed itself into interlocking rings, twisting and spinning up toward the ceiling.<br />
<br />
“Oh, do stop fooling around, Silverdun,” said Everess. “There’s much to discuss, and I’d like to get back to the city before the road out there washes out entirely.”<br />
<br />
“You have my complete attention,” said Silverdun.<br />
<br />
“It’s time for you to come out of hiding,” said Everess. “I understand your need to get away from things for a time, but you’re needed elsewhere.”<br />
<br />
“Quite the contrary. I’m happy here.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, don’t be stupid, Silverdun. You’ve had your fun playing monk, but that time is over and you and I both know it. You don’t belong here. You never have and you never will. You’re not meant to be confined like this.”<br />
<br />
“I was confined for quite a long time at the prison of Crere Sulace. And you never once came to visit me.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, and when Mauritane offered you a way out, you took it, even though by all accounts you were riding off to your own death.”<br />
<br />
“Mauritane told me he’d kill me himself if I didn’t go.”<br />
<br />
“Stop acting like an idiot!” said Everess, suddenly angry. “The point is that you <em>did</em> go. You left Crere Sulace a criminal, and you emerged from the Battle of Sylvan a hero. You’ve proved that you have the ability to do what must be done for the good of the kingdom, and that’s what I need from you now.”<br />
<br />
“I disagree. I’m quite content where I am.”<br />
<br />
“Really?” said Everess. “Look around you, man. From where I’m standing, all you’ve done is trade one cell for another.”<br />
<br />
No witty response from Silverdun’s typically bottomless well of them was forthcoming, so he simply stood and began to turn away.<br />
<br />
“Come into the city, Silverdun,” Everess called after him. “Hear what I have to say. And then if you don’t like it, you can come back here and keep rotting for all I care.”<br />
<br />
That stung.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A messenger on a sturdy mare watched Lord Everess’s carriage vanish into the rain from the hilltop overlooking the temple. Once he was certain that Everess’s departure was assured, he gingerly walked the horse down the grassy slope to the temple’s stable.</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><strong></strong><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><br />
<div style="text-align: left;">He handed the reins to a passing monk, assuring the man that he’d be back momentarily. Good to his word, a few minutes later, he returned from the monastery, mounted, and rode off without another word. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun left the calefactory feeling warm, but also a bit dizzy. He and Everess had never been friends—they’d known each other in passing in the halls of Corpus, and Silverdun’s second cousin had married a nephew of Everess’s, but Silverdun hadn’t even attended the wedding. So why was Everess coming for him now?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div>Silverdun sneaked carefully through the refectory and back into the dorter. All of the monks’ rooms were empty now—rest period was over, and afternoon prayers had already begun. Silverdun couldn’t have cared less. He sunk onto his cot and leaned against the wall, letting the cool stones calm him.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">On a shelf above the bed was a duffel bag that contained the day suit he’d worn when he’d entered the place ten months earlier. It had been washed and pressed. His boots, polished and supple, were lined carefully next to the bag, and beneath them both was the sword that Mauritane had presented him at</div><div style="text-align: left;">the celebration following the Battle of Sylvan. Engraved in the blade was the Silverdun crest surrounded by five stars: one for each of his companions on the journey that had led him out from exile at Crere Sulace and back into life. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Of those five, two were dead: Honeywell had given up his own life to save them at the beginning of their journey. Gray Mave had betrayed them, and died for his sins. Brian Satterly was off somewhere rescuing human babies from Changeling traders, and good riddance. Raieve, now Mauritane’s wife, had returned to Avalon to help win the peace there. Mauritane was on leave from his post as captain of the Royal Guard, no doubt fighting alongside her. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Or so he believed. He hadn’t seen anyone from his former life in months. He missed them. He even missed the foolish human Satterly. That was depressing.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a knock at the door and Silverdun braced for another assault by Tebrit, but instead it was Estiane who stepped into the cell. The abbot shut the door quietly, an odd expression on his face. He held an envelope in his hand, and Silverdun recognized the broken seal as that of Marcuse, the queen’s chamberlain. Estiane sat at the edge of Silverdun’s cot, turning the envelope in his fingers. He held it delicately, as if it were a dried flower or a piece of fine china.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Let us be perfectly honest with one another, shall we?” said Estiane. “No banter, no gamesmanship. No hidden agendas.We are both men of Aba, who do our best to serve the Good, and often fail miserably along the way. Agreed?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun sat up. A witticism reared up in his mind and he choked it down. “Fine,” he grunted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know why Everess came to see you today,” said Estiane. “He and I have had a number of rather serious conversations over the past few months.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div>“Really?” said Silverdun. “Is Everess an Arcadian? He never struck me as the type.”<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">“No, no,” said Estiane. “These conversations were of a purely political nature.We don’t like to advertise it, of course, but the Church is as immersed in the world of politics as any other large organization. We have power and influence and knowledge, and it has to be wielded.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Estiane tapped the envelope gently against his fingers. “As you may know, the Church has a rather sizable network of believers among the Unseelie. Not even we know exactly how many of us there are across Mab’s empire because the Bel Zheret enjoy torturing names out of Arcadians, and we like to offer them as few as possible.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Much of the useful information our queen possesses regarding the Unseelie comes from us. We have believers at almost every level of government and at every rank in the military. Sometimes their consciences guide them to reveal certain things.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun smiled. “And you barter that knowledge for influence at Corpus and with the queen’s court.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course we do,” said Estiane, his voice rough. “We’d be fools not to. This all has very little to do with serving Aba, but the Church is not itself holy. The Church is an organization that exists in space and time, and it must do what it must in order to survive and thrive. If you’ll recall, when you were a boy, Arcadianism was practically illegal.” Estiane unsuccessfully attempted to hide the guilt he clearly felt. “And that brings us to you, Perrin Alt. Lord Silverdun.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun sighed. “I was wondering when something would bring us to me. What’s this about?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m not exactly sure, to be honest,” said Estiane. “I know that Everess is very keen to bring you back to the capital, but I don’t know why. Something to do with the Foreign Ministry, I should imagine.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Honestly, Abbot!” said Silverdun. “Where’s the holiness in that?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Holiness?” Estiane hissed the word. “Holiness is a privilege granted to blessed souls like Tebrit, your tormentor. Tebrit doesn’t have to make decisions about how the Church’s influence is used to direct affairs, or whether those affairs ought to be directed, or what the dire outcome for the Church and its followers will be if those affairs are ignored. Tebrit will not have any blood on his hands if a new war begins because there is nothing he could do to help prevent it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I, however, am required to make those decisions. There is no way for me to do this without getting blood on my hands. I don’t have the luxury of being spotless.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun leaned back again, nodding. “I understand now. Everess needs your information, and you’ve decided to exact payment. He agrees to take me on in whatever role he’s dreamed up for me, knowing that I’ll be acting as your proxy, and in return you’ll provide information.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not just information,” said Estiane.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Money as well?” Silverdun was shocked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re being honest, are we not? Silverdun, you don’t read the reports that I read, the list of martyrs’ names that come across my desk day in and day out. The Unseelie take perverse joy in hunting down and murdering Arcadians. What do you think would happen if they were to take down Regina Titania? The Church would cease to exist. Aba’s work in Faerie would be finished.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div>Estiane leaned in, and Silverdun could detect the faintest trace of brandy on his breath. “I will not allow that to happen.” <br />
<div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun stood and pulled his sword down from the shelf above the bed. He unsheathed it and flicked it back and forth in frustration. “And what if I refuse? What if I just want to be a monk?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Estiane stood and smoothed his robes. “You never wanted to be a monk, Perrin. You just needed a place to hide for a while. Your hiding time is over—I’m kicking you out.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You can’t do that!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m the abbot. I can do whatever I want.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun swung the sword harder in the air, striking at an intangible foe.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Fine,” said Silverdun. “Kick me out. I’ll go back to Oarsbridge and live out my days as an eccentric country gentleman. Find a pretty, dumb daughter of a nearby baron to marry to keep me warm at night. How’s that?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Estiane smiled. He walked to the door. “It’s not that simple, Perrin. Life never is.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It can be.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Here,” said Estiane, holding out the envelope. “This was delivered just after Everess left. There were two notes inside. One was addressed to me, the other to you. My note simply asked me to pass yours along to you before I allowed you to leave here.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun took the envelope, again noting the chamberlain’s seal. Inside was a single sheet, printed in a flowing, beautiful hand. It was not the script of Chamberlain Marcuse. Silverdun knew whose script it was, though. He knew it without needing to be told.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun:</em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><em></em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>When last we met, I warned you that there would come a time when I would call on you by name. That time has come. Consider well what has been asked of you. You are one who, like a prize racehorse, thrives only when placed upon the track. Go where you will thrive.</em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The note was not signed, but it didn’t need to be. It had been penned by the queen herself.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Shit,” said Silverdun. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He reached up to the shelf and pulled down his boots.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>chapter four</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The difficulty, which has yet to be resolved, is as follows. For an Elemental unbinding at a distance, the standard formulation requires the spoken trigger (i.e., the binding word) to interact physically with the binding. Given a distance, <em>d</em>, and the speed of sound, <em>r</em>, the effects of an unbinding word should require time <em>t</em>, where <em>t</em> = <em>d/r</em>. It has been demonstrated in controlled circumstances, however, that the unbinding occurs simultaneously with the trigger.Thaumaturges have debated this question for centuries, but no satisfactory explanation has ever been offered. Since reitic force decreases exponentially over distance, this is rarely a problem in practice. Students are encouraged to use the standard release-chain formulation in most circumstances.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">—<em>Dynamics</em>, Chapter 7: “Indirect Mechanisms of Release in Distributed Systems”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was dawn, and Ironfoot was still awake, his head throbbing, poring over the map. The thing was so big that he’d had a local craftsman create a table for the sole purpose of holding it unrolled. It was a topological map, commissioned some number of years ago by a local governor with a penchant for</div><div style="text-align: left;">geography and dreams of wealth from silver mining. The map had been of no use whatever to the governor, save perhaps feeding his ego. But to Ironfoot it had become invaluable.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The readings came in from across the site, and Ironfoot meticulously added them as points of data, using a ruler to draw perfectly straight lines of radiance from one point to the next. A pattern was beginning to emerge, but it still wasn’t enough.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He slammed the table with his fist. Years as a scholar had never tempered the wild part of his nature. He knew it and it infuriated him. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He rubbed his eyes and took a long sip of coffee. His mug had been holding down the lower left corner of the map, and now it tried to roll up a bit. He absently smoothed it with his hands. He reached for the next slip of paper and there were none left.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He stood, feeling the ache in his shoulders and back, feeling the fatigue that flowed through him. He could have himself spellrested by the on-site medic, but that false rest affected only the body and not the mind. He needed sleep. Real sleep.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He opened the flap of the tent and was assaulted by the dusty wind that assailed the site day and night. The dust got into everything: clothes, boots, instruments. Some of it was blown south from the Unseelie steppes, but some of it—and this he tried carefully not to think about—was the incinerated</div><div style="text-align: left;">remains of Fae men, women, and children. The descendants of the founders of the oldest Elvish city.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Armin,” he called out to his assistant, who stood at the edge of the crater, sipping water from a metal cup. Armin was young, still a student, but already teaching classes of his own at the university and almost certain to be made full professor once they returned to the City Emerald.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Over here, Master Falores,” Armin said, still looking down into the crater. Ironfoot joined him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I wish you’d call me Ironfoot like everyone else does.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m sorry; my mother wouldn’t approve,” said Armin. He was a careful, dutiful student. It was fine if he wanted to be a bit old-fashioned.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Below, the team of students walked the remaining sections of the site, testing each bit of rubble, bone, and metal. Each student carried an intensity gauge, and every few moments would lean down and carefully take a reading, noting the result on a slip of paper that would go to feed Ironfoot’s map. The</div><div style="text-align: left;">students had caviled at the assignment at first, having not really understood what it was they were volunteering for, but they quickly got over their reservations. The promise of free food and even the smallest of stipends would, Ironfoot was sure, convince any common student to freely give up a limb.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Shall we have a look?” asked Armin. “See how things are progressing?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot nodded. “It won’t be long now. Another day or two and we’ll have all we can get.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They had both unconsciously begun breathing through their mouths; they started down into the crater that had, a year ago, been the Seelie city of Selafae.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was a peculiar smell down in the crater, one that nobody could quite recognize, though it had components upon which everyone could agree. There was a hint of cinnamon to it, a bit of roasted pork, almost pleasant but undercut with an ugly tarlike stink that lingered in the nose. They’d been here for six weeks and no one had yet gotten used to it. Some of the students wore cloths tied around their faces, but these didn’t seem to help much. A visiting professor of Elements had offered to remove the odor with a simple transmutation, but Ironfoot had refused, not wanting to contaminate the site. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The students and researchers knew better. At Ironfoot’s insistence, not a single breath of <em>re</em> was to be expended at the site. No little luck charms, no cantrips to sing the pain out of aching muscles.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Walking among the ruins, the smell crept into Ironfoot’s senses and he flinched away from it. There was something about it that he couldn’t quite put his finger on, something that might be important. It was a memory, an experience from long ago; he could sense it in the way that any unique smell might recall a memory of younger days, but he couldn’t place it and it was driving him crazy.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How goes it, Mister Beman?” Armin said to one of the students, a tall pale boy who looked as if he hadn’t had a decent meal since his schooling had begun, and was only now beginning to fill out under Ironfoot’s auspices.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Coming along, Professor. I hope to have my section finished by lunchtime.” He beamed, patting his intensity gauge.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot scowled and took the gauge from him. “You’re not holding it quite right,” he said, demonstrating. “It needs to be held as far from the body as possible, so your own re doesn’t affect the readings. See?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The intensity gauge was something Ironfoot had developed in his own student days, working under the Master Elementalist Luane, who had almost single-handedly invented the field of inductive thaumatology. The instrument consisted of a brass tube, about the height of Ironfoot’s waist, with a</div><div style="text-align: left;">silver tip on one end and a series of graded markings lining the outside of the tube. Inside was a silver plate, opposite a plate of cold iron. In the absence of <em>re</em>, the silver and iron plates nearly touched, their natural repulsion negligible. But when the tip was applied to an object or creature that was imbued with the magical essence, the silver plate repelled the iron plate in proportion to the strength of the field, moving a needle along the graded markings. Ironfoot was more than a little proud of it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He handed the gauge back to the student, who seemed relieved when he and Armin continued on their way. He knelt to inspect a few of Beman’s readings: Each item, from the tiniest pebble to the largest section of wall, had been marked with runes designating the direction and intensity of <em>re </em>embedded in it. All food for the map.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Once everything had been marked, all the data cross-checked and analyzed for errors, and the artifacts corrected for the many interlocking auras of <em>re</em> that permeated any Fae city, then Ironfoot’s work could begin in earnest. Fortunately for him (though clearly not for the citizens of Selafae), the blast</div><div style="text-align: left;">that had destroyed the city was massive, its reitic force so potent that it had nearly annihilated any background essence that existed in the city before its impact.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot was eager to have this done. Eager to solve the problem and move on. Solving problems was what Ironfoot did. The specific problem didn’t usually matter to him, so long as it was interesting and got him out of the city. But this one was different. This one would linger.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Once the map was complete, then, he would return to Queensbridge, and would perform what he sincerely hoped would be the greatest feat of investigative thaumatology to date: He would reverse-engineer the monstrous magic that had destroyed an entire city in an instant. He would recreate the Einswrath weapon using only its aftermath as a guide. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And after that? Then what? Would anything seem as important after this? That part of him that was the source of his anger and impatience was singing to him again lately, as it had more and more often over the last few years: time to move on.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He and Armin continued their walk, listening to the sounds of the instruments clinking against the rubble, and the light conversation of the students at their work. Someone was singing an old, sad Arcadian hymn: </div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Lower me down into the hallowed earth.</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Let your spirit cover me.</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Guide me through the changes that lead me to rebirth,</em></div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>and through soil, wind, and wave recover me.</em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The tune was haunting and lovely, and it struck Ironfoot that what he was strolling through was not simply a project, not merely a research site. It was a massive graveyard, a charnel house of unprecedented proportions. Those white bits of debris scattered among the torn-up cobblestones were not pebbles—they were fragments of bone. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He left Armin with one of the students who had a question about an anomalous reading and continued walking, careful not to tread on anything other than dirt.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot was a scholar, but he had at one time been a soldier as well, and these echoes of violence stirred thoughts of revenge and aggression that he liked to believe belonged to his younger self. The drive to win that had never quite left him. And there was no good that could come of thinking about</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>that</em>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">So he pushed it away, all of it. There was work to be done, and he had no time for his old regrets.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When Ironfoot returned to his tent an hour later, there was a middle-aged nobleman waiting for him, holding a cloth over his face against the smell. Armin was nervously preparing tea over the small camp stove.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A Lord Everess to see you, Master Falores,” said Armin.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess bowed slightly toward Ironfoot. “A pleasure to meet you, Falores. A genuine pleasure.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He wasn’t the first noble to come sniffing around the site. Most wanted a tour of the wreckage and a brief talk with Ironfoot regarding his theories about the weapon. Some of them appeared to have genuine concerns about the Einswrath weapon, though some others seemed to have come out of</div><div style="text-align: left;">nothing more than ghoulish curiosity. He couldn’t tell from looking at him which one Everess was.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The pleasure is mine, Lord Everess,” said Ironfoot, with the requisite deeper bow. “How can I be of service?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess smiled. “Ah,” he said. “That’s the question, isn’t it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s certainly the one I just asked,” said Ironfoot.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A scholar, and a wit as well.” Everess smiled. If he was insulted by Ironfoot’s somewhat insolent comment, it didn’t show. “I can see that you’re a busy man, so I’ll be as direct as possible. Come walk with me, won’t you?” He picked up a walking stick that had been leaning against his leg and pointed outside.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot took Everess through the camp to the edge of the crater, and waved him forward. “This is the best place to go down,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, I don’t need to go down there,” said Everess. “I’ve been here once before, the week after it happened. Once was enough for me, I can assure you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot was stymied. “Sorry, Lord Everess, but if you’re not here to tour the site, what is it you’re here for?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You,” said Everess. “I’m here about you, Master Falores.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Please, call me Ironfoot, sir. Most everyone does.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Indeed,” said Everess. “Well, where can we walk where it doesn’t smell like a tannery and we may speak in private?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“In the mornings the wind comes from the north; it smells nice down by the river.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Lead the way,” said Everess. “Ironfoot.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They walked down the path toward the river, to the spot where the team did their laundry. The river snaked around the wreckage of the city to the north, and Ironfoot headed in that direction.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re a very interesting fellow, you know,” said Everess. “A study in contradiction, as they say.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thank you, sir,” said Ironfoot. “I like to think myself unique.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A shepherd’s son from a tiny village who managed to parlay a single tour in the Gnomic War into an admission to Queensbridge. And now here you are years later, a respected thaumaturge, and a tenured professor at the most prestigious university in all of Faerie. That’s beyond interesting. That’s damnably impressive.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thank you,” said Ironfoot. “Though fortune played a large part in it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Fortune only takes one so far,” said Everess. “You’ve got a fine mind and you’re a fine soldier.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t mean to be critical, sir, but I’m well aware of who I am and what I’ve done. May I ask what it is you’re leading up to?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess laughed, a barking noise that made Ironfoot uncomfortable. Ironfoot smiled in return.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess let his smile fade. He looked out over the river. The light from the rising sun behind them skipped across its surface. “I’m aware of what it is you’re doing here, what it is you’re trying to accomplish,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is that so?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I also know that the dean of your college at Queensbridge thinks it’s impossible, and is attempting to have the project suspended.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s expensive,” said Ironfoot. “And for all I know it may come to nothing.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“For all your talent, son, you’re not the best politician.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not something I’ve ever aspired to be.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They came to a steep rise in the path, and Everess stopped talking for a moment to pick his way up it, using his walking stick to climb. When they reached the top he stopped, admiring the view. The ruined city was behind them, and the river valley below them was farmland, much of it gone fallow now that the city it once fed was gone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Do you know what my position is, Ironfoot?” asked Everess.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t, I’m afraid. As you pointed out, knowledge of politics isn’t among my many astonishing qualities.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m the minister of foreign affairs, which means I have a great responsibility to this land. And in order to execute that responsibility I must have only the best and most talented men and women working under me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are you offering me a job, sir?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What if I told you that if you were to come work for me, I would fund any thaumatic research you chose to pursue while at the same time allowing you some physical diversion as well?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Sir?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was you who stole across the border through the Contested Lands in order to examine an ancient Arami excavation, was it not? An Unseelie expedition, at that?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It <em>was</em> interesting.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Indeed! We thought you were a spy for the longest time until we vetted you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’ve been watching me? I don’t understand.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Only the best and most talented,” repeated Everess. “I don’t approach just everyone with these offers.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What makes you think I’d leave the university?” asked Ironfoot.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know exactly why you’d leave it, and that you’re considering leaving already.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You do? And why is that?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Because you’re bored.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot had no rejoinder to that.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I appreciate the offer,” said Ironfoot after a moment, “but as you’re well aware, I’m in the middle of something fairly important here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, I quite agree,” said Everess. “And one of my preconditions for your coming to work at the Ministry would be that you complete that work. As you can guess, we’re more than a little interested in its outcome.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know,” said Ironfoot. He turned away from the river and looked down at the crater. “I’m not sure I know how I feel about potentially handing the plans for the thing that did<em> that</em> over to anyone.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If it’s to be used,” said Everess, “I prefer that it be used on the Unseelie rather than us.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes,” said Ironfoot. “I suppose I do, too.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Good then.When you get back to the City Emerald, I’ll send you a sprite.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They stood silently together, looking down at what was once Selafae, and then turned and walked back down the path.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;">Four days later it was finished. Ironfoot collected the last of the readings, which would be mapped in the comfort of his rooms back at Queensbridge. The tents were struck, the army guard removed. The Arcadian priests and loved ones, kept away for so many months, streamed into the ruined city—the priests to administer beatitudes; the relatives looking for keepsakes, bones, trinkets . . . anything to remind them of what they’d lost. It was an emotional moment, and Ironfoot had no desire to get caught up in it any further than he already was.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Returning to the Queensbridge campus was like coming home. He couldn’t remember the air in the City Emerald smelling so fresh, or the colors being so vivid. For weeks and weeks his entire life had been gray dust and acrid tar, and nights spent hunched over the map. Despite his urgent need to finish the project, he was almost pleased that the minor emergencies that had cropped up in his absence took him away from it for a time. He needed to get some distance from it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There were message sprites lined up against the office window, bored out of their little minds, all of them clamoring to be the first to deliver its message and disappear. He took them all in turn, scribbling little notes to himself. A dinner invitation from a love-struck female colleague; a meeting request from the dean that could certainly wait. And a simple message from Lord Everess.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He says he wants you to come over to his office and talk and so on and so forth,” said Everess’s sprite.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot took the tiny creature in hand and said, “Maybe you could just tell him I’m busy.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sprite’s face took on an air of abused hospitality. “Well, he’s not going to be too pleased with that, I can tell you. He’s a lord, you know. Very fancy. He wears a hat and smokes a pipe. I don’t see you with a hat or a pipe, so I guess he wins. Ha!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot had a soft spot for message sprites, though he wasn’t quite sure why.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You think so?” he asked. “You think I don’t have a pipe and a hat around here someplace?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sprite sniffed. “I know you don’t because yesterday I got really bored and I rifled through all of your stuff.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Clever sprite.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You think so? You really think so? Because nobody else thinks so, that’s for sure. Do you have any roast beef?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Excuse me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I like roast beef. I like the smell of it, and I like people who like it. But I can’t eat it myself because sprites are herbivores, and it’s the greatest tragedy of my life except for when my family died that time.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Sorry,” said Ironfoot. “No roast beef.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Darn,” said the sprite.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Go on,” said Ironfoot. “Send back my message. I think I have some parsley somewhere around here. You can have that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Uh, yeah, funny thing about that parsley,” said the sprite, flitting up toward the open window. “Remember what I said about rifling through your stuff?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot had done every errand he could think of, returned every message, even cleaned his apartments and straightened the papers in his office. What was he trying to avoid? He’d been so impatient to get back to the city, and now that he was here, he couldn’t stop stalling.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The map loomed from the corner of his office. It was rolled up and stored in a tube that was taller than he was, sealed with his own university signet. It called to him, and part of him wanted to answer it, but part of him wanted to set fire to it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Why? Was this guilt? Was he worried about working on a weapon, about providing the key to re-creating the thing? He didn’t think so, to be honest. As much as it might bother him intellectually, it didn’t spur this gut reaction. Was it the eeriness of it, the smell of death and tar and gray dust that seemed to emanate from it, even though it produced no actual scent? No, that wasn’t it, either.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He knew what it was, but couldn’t admit it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The next morning he awoke early, poured a strong cup of coffee, and forced himself to face the map. He unrolled it in the small parlor of his apartments, where it took up the entire floor, requiring him to lug the settee into the kitchen. He had the final measurements from the intensity gauges stacked neatly on a small stool next to his mug. He took quill and ruler in hand, and began working.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Once the data were entered, there were calculations to be done. These he did on lined sheets of linen paper that he ordered specially from the campus stationery. With each result, a new line appeared on the map. A web was emerging, a pattern. That was good. But still, that unsettling feeling would not leave him. The feeling was linked to that tar smell that he couldn’t quite place, the memory it spurred that he could not recall. As the pattern grew, so did the feeling of dread inside him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When he next looked up, the clock on the mantel read after midnight. The fire had died down in the fireplace, and he realized that he was cold. He stoked the fire, poured himself a whiskey, and went back to work. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He finished the formulaic interpolations around dawn. He’d lost count of the pots of coffee he’d drunk, now measured only in the level of queasiness in his stomach and the frequency with which he’d had to visit the privy. The web was complete, more or less. Some of the data had been lost. Some of the measurements, he was certain, had been faked. One region in particular was a total loss, the readings totally inconsistent with any of the others. It had been handled by the son of a lord whose father had pressed him into the assignment believing that it would reinforce the boy’s character. Ironfoot could have told him that there was nothing there to reinforce.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Regardless, what he had was enough, and now the work could begin in earnest. He copied the pattern from the map onto a new sheet of linen paper—large, but not so big as the original map. Only the pattern remained, with detailed figures noting the invocative spectra, the normalization factors. The web stood in front of him, begging to be understood. It was a pattern, yes, but what did it mean? In his imagination about this moment, he’d assumed that the answer would leap out at him at this point. These exact physical components. This precise juggling of Elements, Motion, and Poise, and perhaps any four other Gifts that he could theorize being involved. He was damn clever. It should all have been there, leaping out at him. But it wasn’t. The pattern implied nothing. The pattern meant nothing. It was only itself. It suggested things, certainly, but only impossibilities.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot awoke. It was late afternoon. He’d fallen asleep at some point, still contemplating the pattern, still frustrated. He opened the shades and let the (morning? afternoon?) sun illuminate the pattern. Still nothing. He stood it upside down. Nothing. He held it up to the window, viewing the pattern through the back of the page. Still nothing. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It gnawed at him, this sensation that the key to its mystery was just outside his grasp. The Einswrath was an explosive—there had to be an Elements component to it. It was a delayed reaction, so it had to use the Gift of Binding as well. But what components? Which bindings? There was no binding ever created to hold in that amount of Elemental force, and no way to trigger it from such a distance. So what, then? It was right there in front of him. So why couldn’t he see it?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The dread inside had grown into a fever. This was what he’d truly been afraid of. This was the source of the dread that had been welling up inside him ever since he’d returned to Queensbridge.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He had the pattern complete in front of him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">And he didn’t understand it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He turned toward the wall and lashed out with his fist, making a strangely satisfying crack in the plaster, though the pain that followed wasn’t worth it. Raw failure sunk into him like a stone through mud. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>You can do better than this</em>, came the voice from inside.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>~~~</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;">He was disturbed from his misery by a message sprite tapping at the window. It looked familiar.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Hey, handsome! Open up!” the thing shouted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He tried to ignore it, but it just kept rapping on the windowpane, calling, then shouting, then howling expletives. He pulled himself out of the chair and shuffled across the room, stepping on the map and not caring. He opened the window, and the sprite flew in and alit on the edge of the chair in which he’d been sitting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What do you want?” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Wow, it took you long enough,” said the sprite, sticking its tongue out for emphasis. “What are you, deaf or something? You weren’t deaf last time. Did you stand too near something really loud? Because that can happen sometimes.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot stared at the sprite, all of his fondness for it having evaporated in his desolation.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I have feelings too, you know!” said the sprite, stamping its foot soundlessly. “Of course, my feelings are quite shallow, and can easily be repaired with a yummy stalk of parsley, or better yet . . .” The sprite paused, rubbing its tiny hands together. “Celery!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Enough already!” Ironfoot shouted, stunned at the anger in his voice. The sprite fell backward, swore loudly, then flitted up again, raising its head gingerly above the back of the chair.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Wow, you sure got mean.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m sorry,” said Ironfoot, trying to be patient. “I’ve had a hard day. What’s your message?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Lord Everess replies that he’s extra-sad you won’t come see him. Except he said it in a less nice way.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sprite thought for a moment, tapping its finger on its forehead. "There was something else, too. Something important. Let’s see. Lord Everess . . . extra sad and so on . . . celery . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It snapped its tiny fingers. “Oh, yeah! He wants to know if you’re done with your map-thingy yet. He was just blah blah blah about that map.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I see,” said Ironfoot. “Thank you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, happy day, you like me again!” it said, looking at him with a loopy grin. “You want to be my boyfriend? I realize that there’s a serious size difference that could present some interesting physical challenges, but I’m willing to work through it if you are.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ironfoot sighed. Maybe this was what he liked about message sprites: their absurdity. Nothing could ever truly upset them because they had no real feelings to begin with.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sprite flew up and wrapped its arms around his finger. “I want to have your big fat Elvish babies!” it cried theatrically. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Tell Everess I’ll come and see him tomorrow,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Okay! This is the best day ever!” shouted the sprite, and it zipped out of the window.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>chapter five</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The city is old, older than anyone knows or suspects, save its ruler. There are myriad tales of the founding of the Seelie Kingdom and the birth of the City Emerald. Some are religious explanations; some are histories cobbled together by scholars based on the evidence of stones and documents so ancient that to expose them to light is to destroy them. Still others are the writings of retrocognitives, though even they will admit that theirs is an art rather than a science.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There is the official history, of course, taught to schoolchildren, that Regina Titania caused the ground to be leveled and the stones of the Great Seelie Keep to rise into place during the <em>Rauane Envedun-e</em>, the Age of Purest Silver. Like most legends of the <em>Rauane</em>, however, the story is often told with a wink, and the queen’s official biographers parrot it with a telling blandness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The city’s original name was Car-na-una, which in Thule Fae meant “the first true thing,” or perhaps “the basis of reality,” and whatever the origin of the name, it is evocative of the feeling that the city often arouses in visitors; there is a weight, a feeling of solidity and eternity that resonates in the stones and in the art of their arrangement.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The poet Wa’on remarked in his <em>Journals</em> that “it is not the city itself that provokes this emotion, this unconscious awe. Rather, it appears as if it is something <em>beneath</em> the city, a deeper truth upon which it was built. The City Emerald is ancient, yes, but what lies beneath it is older still. Something older than Fae, older than words or memories. A giant that slumbers, while the city and its inhabitants crawl across its massive frame like fleas on a dog, each unaware of the others’ presence. As I passed through the gates I had a sudden fear that the leviathan might awake and stretch its limbs and I would be crushed. By the morning, however, the feeling was gone, and I would not have remembered it save that I had noted it in the margin of a book.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The City Emerald has a reputation as the most beautiful city in the Seelie Kingdom and perhaps in the entire world of Faerie. Even its most ardent admirers, however, have sometimes felt a momentary chill within its walls, sensing the presence of something just outside the edge of perception; something too large to be real; something that has already swallowed them whole.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">—Stil-Eret, “Unpopular Reflections on the Capital,” from <em>Travels at Home and Abroad</em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Evergreen Club was the most exclusive in the City Emerald. As a Seelie lord, Silverdun was granted a lifetime membership, and had spent a considerable amount of time here during his all-too-brief years as a carefree young noble.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A quiet servant met him at the entrance and guided him down a hallway of polished mahogany paneling that glinted in the light of perfectly tuned witchlamps in silver sconces. They passed through the main dining room, a sea of white tablecloths and expensive clothing and aristocratic half-smiles. Heads rose as he passed, but few of the diners recognized him, and even these looked away, uninterested. Before his imprisonment at Crere Sulace, before his long journey with Mauritane, before his disfigurement at the hand of Faella, they would all have known him, the ladies especially. But those days were gone. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As always, thoughts of Faella haunted him. Despite what she’d done to his face, he could not blame her, or be angry with her. He’d deserved it. And if not for breaking off their brief affair, then for any number of similar insensitivities in his checkered past.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The servant stopped at the entrance to a private dining room, where Lord Everess sat with a man Silverdun recognized as Baron Glennet, who held one of the highest posts in the House of Lords, and an elderly woman he didn’t recognize. They were sipping on a floral broth that smelled wonderful.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess and Glennet rose when Silverdun entered, and the woman nodded. Her sash identified her as a guildmistress. </div><div style="text-align: left;">“Am I late?” asked Silverdun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not at all,” said Everess, pumping his hand. “Right on time!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun bowed. “Baron Glennet I know by reputation, but I’m afraid the guildmistress and I haven’t had the pleasure.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course,” said Everess. “Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, may I introduce Guildmistress Heron, our illustrious secretary of states.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hardly think myself illustrious,” said Heron. “The foreign minister exaggerates, as is his wont.” She was elderly, just this side of ancient, but her eyes shone with intelligence. She cast a slight disapproving glance at Everess, who did not miss it. Silverdun liked her already.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Come, Silverdun, sit,” said Glennet. “We’ve much to discuss!” Glennet had a long reputation as a conciliator; he’d engineered any number of compromises within the House of Lords, and between the House of Lords and the House of Guilds, two bodies that could scarcely agree on the time of day, let</div><div style="text-align: left;">alone governance. He too was old, but his exuberance gave him a semblance of youth.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m afraid my conversational skills have atrophied in recent months,” said Silverdun, sitting. A waiter noiselessly placed a bowl of broth in front of him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ah, yes,” said Glennet. “The aristocrat monk! I’m pleased we were able to steal you from your contemplation for dinner.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It would appear that monastic life does not suit me,” said Silverdun, a bit embarrassed and trying not to show it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well, you are to be commended for attempting such an . . . unusual path,” said Heron. “But I believe that the wider roads are wider for a reason, if you take my meaning.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course,” said Silverdun, taking her meaning and liking her somewhat less as a result.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m just glad Baron Glennet was able to pull himself away from the card table in order to join us,” said Heron.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Glennet’s easy smile faltered. “We all have our little sins, Guildmistress.” Not “Secretary.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Secretary Heron was about to comment further when waiters appeared, removing the broth and replacing it with roasted quail, in a sauce of raisins and bee pollen and a liquor Silverdun couldn’t identify. He took a slow bite and waited for someone to tell him what the point of this dinner was. Not a social gathering, to be sure, as Everess and Heron clearly disliked one another.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Glennet dabbed at his chin as though it were a fine art. “Secretary Heron,” he asked, “what news have we of Jem-Aleth? Has his social life improved at all?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” Heron said primly. “Our beloved ambassador to Mab continues to be politely tolerated at court, mostly ignored, and never invited to state dinners. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Or teas. Or children’s spinet recitals.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He told me that a city praetor invited him to a mestina once,” said Everess, “but it was one of the bawdy type and he left ten minutes in.” </div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes,” said Secretary Heron, rolling her eyes, “but what Jem-Aleth didn’t tell you is the that only reason Praetor Ma-Pikyra invited him in the first place was that he’d confused him with somebody else.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun watched the back-and-forth, mildly interested in the idle chatter, but his thoughts were more concerned with the reason for his own presence here. “I knew Jem-Aleth in school,” he said, reminding them that he was still in the room. “Nobody liked him then, either. The reason for the</div><div style="text-align: left;">Unseelie cold shoulder may be personal as well as political.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Quite the contrary,” Everess said, unable to allow Silverdun to have useful information that had not come from him. “Before last year’s Battle of Sylvan chilled our relations with our Unseelie neighbors substantially, Jem-Aleth was quite well liked in the City of Mab. Though whether that’s a compliment to Jem-Aleth or an insult to the Unseelie, I can’t say.” He chuckled, looked around for an answering chuckle, got none, and plowed ahead. “Regardless, we’ve received not a whit of useful information from him in a year. He sends his dispatch each week, filled with scraps of information culled from publicans, maids, and would-be courtiers and sycophants, but even if there were anything useful buried in them, we have no method of responding to them in . . . useful ways.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess shot a glance at Silverdun and narrowed his eyes, smiling at Silverdun as though he were a prize pupil. “And there could not be a more urgent time to follow up, I fear. Don’t you agree, Silverdun?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">All eyes turned to Silverdun. He flashed his trademark charming smile, but he found Everess’s look discomfiting.What was Everess getting him in to? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’ve been indisposed, Lord Everess,” he said after a long sip of wine. “Perhaps you’d care to educate me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess sighed, annoyed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You are aware, perhaps, that the Seelie Kingdom was nearly dragged into a full-scale war with Mab last year. You were there when it happened, after all.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I seem to recall, yes.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And you recall further that during the course of that altercation, the Unseelie unleashed a weapon so powerful that it destroyed the entire city of Selafae in a single blast?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun’s smirk faded a bit. “Yes. I remember that as well. The Einswrath, I believe they call it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes,” said Secretary Heron, scowling. “After the Chthonic god of war. Most unseemly.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess ignored her. “Then you are aware, Silverdun, that things have changed.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Here we go,” said Heron, her scowl widening. “Foreign Minister Everess’s stock lecture has begun in earnest.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Now it was Silverdun’s turn to ignore her. “What things, exactly, have changed, as you see it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess clenched his teeth, looking at Silverdun as though he were a child. “Everything, man. The balance of power, the status of relations between our kingdom and the other nations of the world and other worlds. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The very nature of warfare itself.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It was true, Silverdun knew. The implications of a weapon powerful enough to level an entire city were enormous. No one, however, seemed to agree on what those implications might be. But clearly Everess was about to tell him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Go on,” Silverdun said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess reached for a glass of brandy, took a generous swallow, and launched into what Silverdun assumed was the stock lecture to which Heron had referred. “Certainly you can see that we have reached the end of an era, Silverdun. A cornerstone of propriety has been annihilated before our eyes. Your compulsory army days were long after my own, but you were certainly taught as I was: cavalry, battle mages, infantry in evenly spaced lines politely slaughtering one another on the battlefield. All those pretty tactics and stratagems, all those brilliant battles of old, always applicable. We used them against the Western Valley upstarts the first time they rebelled; we used them against the Gnomics a dozen years ago, and against the Puktu barbarians in Mag Mell a thousand years before I was born. But now all that has come to an end.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I understand what you’re saying, Everess,” said Silverdun. “But what of it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If Mab had one of those things, then she’s certainly got more of them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">We can only assume that she hasn’t got a flying city full of them, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation today. We’d be in an Unseelie work camp fetching water, or we’d be ashes in a hole somewhere.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It tells us nothing of the kind,” said Heron. “I believe that what it tells us is that she <em>hasn’t</em> got any more of them.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What this tells us,” continued Everess, “is that the kind of war we were trained to fight has become obsolete in a single blaze. This new weapon of Mab’s means that an army is no longer necessary at all! All one needs is a trebuchet and a tailwind and he can lay waste to anything he sees fit, from a safe and happy distance.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Nothing will stop war,” said Heron. “And war with Mab will soon be inevitable, as it has been twice before, and nearly was a year ago. </div><div style="text-align: left;">“I could not disagree more,” said Everess. “We are entering the age of a new kind of war. What matters now is not just where our troops are placed. What matters is information and influence. We need to know what Mab’s game is. We need to know what Mab’s allies are up to, and where our own allies stand. We need to know how many of these accursed things Mab’s got, how many she plans to build, and how long before she decides to fly south and begin incinerating the Seelie Kingdom. And we need to do whatever we can to disrupt that process at all costs.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He stared at Heron. “With the right tools, we <em>can</em> prevent that war.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess smiled at Silverdun. “And I believe that you are just the man to help in that endeavor.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You want me to be a spy?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“More than that,” said Heron drily. “He wants you to become a Shadow.” Heron made a melodramatic spooky face at him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You mean the mythical spies from the Second UnseelieWar?” asked Silverdun. “I was under the impression that they didn’t actually exist.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, but they did,” said Everess. “And they shall again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This is a lovely fantasy,” said Secretary Heron. “But the way to stop Mab is through diplomacy and, if it comes to it, war. All of your playing at spies won’t change that, Everess.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Glennet had been observing without comment. “I understand your objections, Madam Secretary,” he said, leaning in. “But I’m afraid that the Foreign Committee in Corpus is willing to give Lord Everess the benefit of the doubt.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He paused, giving Heron a conciliatory look. “For the time being.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He looked at Silverdun. “And for what it’s worth, I agree that Lord Silverdun would be an excellent choice.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Fine,” said Heron. “Play your games. But understand that I will expect complete reports of all your activities.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Done,” said Everess. “I’d be a fool not to keep you apprised of our progress.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div>“And if I find out you’ve been keeping vital information from me,” she said, “there will be repercussions.”<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">“If all goes as you believe, Secretary Heron,” said Everess, sniffing, “then there will be nothing of value to withhold.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The conversation moved on to other topics, though the chill between Everess and Heron never thawed. Silverdun, however, barely paid attention. “What the hell was that all about?” said Silverdun. They were at a table at a café on the Promenade, just outside the Foreign Ministry building, a few blocks from the Evergreen Club. It was night, and the Promenade Green was filled with musicians, jugglers, and solo mestines. It was dark, the Green illuminated only by witchlit lanterns. Nightbirds sang from hidden perches. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If there’s one thing that ought to be obvious,” Silverdun continued, “it’s that I have no interest in politics or governance. When I left school and took up my title, I sat in Corpus exactly once, and I was so bored I stopped paying attention after about ten minutes. I voted on six bills, and to this day I have no idea what they were.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, stop it,” said Everess. “That’s not why I asked you here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Then why am I here? You come to the temple with vague presentiments of doom, talk me out of my cozy monastic life, and now suddenly you’re offering me a job as a spy?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess took two glasses of brandy from a passing waitress, a wisp of a girl with conjured wings who fluttered a few inches off the ground. He handed one of the brandies to Silverdun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Calm down, lad. There’s someone I’d like you to meet before we begin the sales pitch.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess looked up over Silverdun’s shoulder. “Ah. Here he comes now.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun turned and looked. At first he saw no one. No one that Everess might be referring to, anyway. A jongleur, a skald, a mestine conjuring dancing bears. “Who might that be?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As he said it, he noticed someone approaching, someone vaguely familiar. The recognition of his presence was like that of an optical illusion in which the eye is required to swap the foreground of an image for the background. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Two faces or a vase. No one there or someone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This no one was nearly upon them before Silverdun recognized him. Odd. Not only did his dress and manner cause him to stand out boldly in the mostly upper-class Promenade, but he also walked with a heavily pronounced limp, dragging his left leg behind him, using a thick wooden cane in its place.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Lord Silverdun, I’d like you to meet Chief Paet. Paet, Lord Silverdun.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Hello,” said Paet simply. His expression was affectless, his eyes slightly squinted though it was night. The winged waitress was passing back by, and Paet took a drink from her tray without her noticing. He sat.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m no expert on manners,” said Silverdun drily, “but I believe you’re supposed to bow and tug a forelock when you meet a lord of the realm, Paet.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paet looked Silverdun in the eye and shrugged. “Drag me before the Sumptuary Court then.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun looked to Everess, who was saying nothing. “Well, this is a kick in the teeth, isn’t it? Insolent one, this Paet.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s ‘Chief’ to you, milord,” said Paet. His expression hadn’t changed at all during this exchange.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun frowned. “I believe I’m supposed to kill you for talking to me like that. I’m an iconoclast, however, so I’ll wait to hear why Everess here has inflicted you on me before I do.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess laughed out loud. “Ignore him, Paet. He won’t really kill you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paet shrugged. “He’s welcome to try.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess sighed. “Now, now. This isn’t how I wanted this meeting to go at all. Paet, calm yourself. Silverdun, shut your mouth for a moment and listen.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paet and Silverdun eyed each other carefully. Silverdun wasn’t as disapproving of Paet as he’d let on. The impropriety was nothing; he’d been treated far worse at Crere Sulace, by prison guards who, due to their low birth, could have been hanged for looking him in the eye. It was important to keep up appearances, however, lest someone mistake him for a tiresome social reformer. Still, there was something disquieting about Paet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Earlier this evening,” said Everess, “we discussed the Shadows. The ‘mythical spies,’ as you put it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun pointed at Paet. “Are you telling me that this fellow here is a Shadow?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not<em> a</em> Shadow,” said Paet. “The Shadow. There’s only one. Now, anyway.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This is true?” asked Silverdun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He’s quite serious,” said Everess, nodding. “When the group was disbanded after the Treaty of Avenus, it was decided to keep one Shadow in service into perpetuity. In case they were needed again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And you believe they are needed.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It requires a certain type of person to do the work that must now be done. And I know that you are exactly that sort of person.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I?” said Silverdun. “The ‘rude villein’ whose most recent distinction was being the first monk in history ever to be given the sack?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paet smiled at Everess. Under the squint, which appeared to be a permanent feature, the smile looked rueful, whether it was or not. “He makes a fair case against himself, Everess. Perhaps he’s not the man you thought.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes he is,” said Everess, who had developed his own squint now. Silverdun had a feeling this wasn’t a good thing. “And despite his endless protestations, he knows it. He only needs to realize it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So, what? You want me to become the new Shadow? Take over from Paet here?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” said Everess. “You’re going to lead a small team of Shadows. The group is being re-formed. Chief Paet here runs the day-to-day affairs of the Information Division. You’ll be the lead Shadow.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You want me to work for him?” said Silverdun, incredulous. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You need him,” said Everess.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“More than you can possibly know,” said Paet.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun scowled. “Are you always this . . . ominous?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Paet tapped his cane on the ground. “You’ll be hearing from me shortly,” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun and Everess watched him leave. Silverdun blinked, and that same odd trick of the eye occurred, foreground into background, and Paet was gone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Interesting fellow, isn’t he?” said Everess, once he’d vanished.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I can’t say I’m in love.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Everess chuckled. “Give him time. Paet’s a good man. His experience has made him what he is. All for the love of Seelie. The Seelie Heart; isn’t that what Mauritane called it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Mauritane excels at convincing others to fling themselves at death in the service of abstractions.” Silverdun sighed. “You’re not helping your cause.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This is good work,” said Everess. “We need you. And let’s be frank. You need us.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A remark leapt to Silverdun’s lips, but he suppressed it. Perhaps if he stopped arguing the point, Everess would shut up about it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Tell me this, Everess,” said Silverdun, quiet. “Was I chosen for this because of my strengths or because of my ability to get intelligence from the Arcadians?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I never do anything for only one reason,” said Everess. “Either way, it’s time for you to stop pissing around and get to work.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Silverdun wanted to disagree, but couldn’t.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong> </strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong> </strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong> </strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/OfficeShadow.html">The Office of Shadow</a> © <a href="http://www.matthewsturges.com/">Matthew Sturges</a> </div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.christianmcgrath.com/">Chris McGrath</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong><br />
</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-iseeaejllRbH1Fk-M3d1DjDDTzGXhd-KtyhRMSmmeGqkfBNgBIx2XQMuxPxO9vSitsjgRSqRq0uETvSSGpRAJRrykqe060IGXPiYT-xx3VOGD9TdhwZyCV7Bo5Te4ueDlsDSQnzWKw/s1600/matthew_sturges_muy_authorial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" rw="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr-iseeaejllRbH1Fk-M3d1DjDDTzGXhd-KtyhRMSmmeGqkfBNgBIx2XQMuxPxO9vSitsjgRSqRq0uETvSSGpRAJRrykqe060IGXPiYT-xx3VOGD9TdhwZyCV7Bo5Te4ueDlsDSQnzWKw/s320/matthew_sturges_muy_authorial.jpg" /></a></div>Matthew Sturges’s works include the comic book series <em>House of Mystery, Shadowpact, Justice Society of America, Blue Beetle</em>, and the Eisner Award-nominated <em>Jack of Fables</em>, co-written with Bill Willingham. He is the author of the novel <em>Midwinter</em>, and his short stories have been published on RevolutionSF and in the anthologies <em>Live without a Net</em> and <em>With Great Power</em>. He lives in Austin, Texas with his wife and two daughters. Visit him online at <a href="http://www.matthewsturges.com/">http://www.matthewsturges.com/</a> and <a href="http://www.clockworkstorybook.net/">http://www.clockworkstorybook.net/</a></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-43912632178991671552010-05-20T15:36:00.000-05:002010-05-20T15:36:44.799-05:00The Devil in Green by Mark Chadbourn<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4KKmNECozqLNmPdaofix3sSlIpIn6sGG-p4hdRufcIi_saZyoibry7p97WcxHEuPus9uGwjAldtB9hgNDERQ8KklVeusxuW4XS369glPX3guLZRZNg6czbc-nQr50nPlzX8tITL6m-iI/s1600/Devil+in+Green_COVER.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4KKmNECozqLNmPdaofix3sSlIpIn6sGG-p4hdRufcIi_saZyoibry7p97WcxHEuPus9uGwjAldtB9hgNDERQ8KklVeusxuW4XS369glPX3guLZRZNg6czbc-nQr50nPlzX8tITL6m-iI/s320/Devil+in+Green_COVER.jpg" /></a></div>Praise for <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DevilGreen.html">The Devil in Green</a></strong></em> (excerpted below): <br />
<br />
"The modern world has given way to a nightmare realm in which creatures from myths and legends roam the land. A resurgent Christian Church has resurrected both the Knights Templar and the Inquisition to battle evil, yet they lack the resources possessed by only one group—the practitioners of an older religion. From the ranks of the Templars, a cynical mercenary becomes the first of five champions to carry on the battle against the darkness despite his unbelief. Chadbourn's series opener continues where his "Age of Misrule" trilogy left off, introducing a new group of champions to continue the fight for humanity in a world left to the mercy of the gods. VERDICT This powerful, well-informed epic fantasy based on Celtic legends should appeal to a wide readership."<br />
--Library Journal<br />
<br />
“Chadbourn does a fine job of showing how religion can easily become corrupted by the agendas of unstable fundamentalists, and that blind faith in leaders—or anything—will get you killed.” --SFSite <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Devil in Green</span></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">The Dark Age: Book 1</span></strong></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Mark Chadbourn</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
Also by Mark Chadbourn<br />
<br />
The Dark Age:<br />
The Devil in Green<br />
The Queen of Sinister<br />
The Hounds of Avalon<br />
<br />
The Age of Misrule:<br />
World’s End<br />
Darkest Hour<br />
Always Forever<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHRONICLES OF THE FALLEN WORLD</strong><br />
<br />
One night, the world we knew slipped quietly away. Humanity awoke to find itself in a place mysteriously changed. Fabulous Beasts soared over the cities, their fiery breath reddening the clouds. Supernatural creatures stalked the countryside—imps and shape-shifters, blood-sucking revenants, men who became wolves, or wolves who became men, strange beasts whose roars filled the night with ice; and more, too many to comprehend. Magic was alive and in everything.<br />
<br />
No one had any idea why it happened—by order of some Higher Power, or a random, meaningless result of the shifting seasons of Existence—but the shock was too great for society. All faith was lost in the things people had counted on to keep them safe—the politicians, the law, the old religions. None of it mattered in a world where things beyond reason could sweep out of the night to destroy lives in the blink of an eye. <br />
<br />
Above all were the gods—miraculous beings emerging from hazy race memories and the depths of ancient mythologies, so far beyond us that we were reduced to the level of beasts, frightened and powerless. They had been here before, long, long ago, responsible for our wildest dreams and darkest nightmares, but now that they were back they were determined to stay forever. In the days after their arrival, as the world became a land of myth, these gods battled for supremacy in a terrible conflict that shattered civilisation. Death and destruction lay everywhere.<br />
<br />
Blinking and cowed, the survivors emerged from the chaos of this Age of Misrule into a world substantially changed, the familiar patterns of life gone: communications devastated, anarchy ranging across the land, society thrown into a new Dark Age where superstition held sway. Existence itself had been transformed: magic and technology now worked side by side. There were new rules to observe, new boundaries to obey, and mankind was no longer at the top of the evolutionary tree.<br />
<br />
A time of wonder and terror, miracles and torment, in which man’s survival was no longer guaranteed.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>chapter one</strong><br />
<strong>IN THESE TIMES</strong><br />
<br />
<em>“It is not bad luck, but right and just that you have found yourselves travelling this road, far from the beaten track followed by others. It is right that you should learn all things and develop the unshakeable heart of well-rounded truth, unlike the opinions of men that contain no truth at all. You shall learn how mere appearances seem as though they actually exist.</em><br />
-Parmenides<br />
<br />
<br />
The weight of a man’s soul is greatest in the dark hours before dawn. On a night when even the moon and stars were obscured, Mallory carried the burden of his own intangible more heavily than ever. He was in the thrall of an image, a burst of fire in the night like the purifying flame of some Fabulous<br />
Beast. It was clear when he closed his eyes, floating ghostly across his consciousness when he opened them, both mysterious and haunting. Yet a deeply buried part of him knew exactly what it meant, and that same part would never allow it to be examined.<br />
<br />
He had briefly been distracted by the passage of a man in his midtwenties who looked unusually frail, as if gripped by some wasting illness. He was hunched over the neck of his horse, buffeted by a harsh wind hurling the first cold stones of rain. Autumn was drawing in. Mallory was protected from the elements in his Porsche, which he had reversed behind a hedgerow so that it couldn’t be seen from the road; he’d felt the need to clear his head before continuing on to his destination.<br />
<br />
Briefly, he caught his reflection in the rearview mirror: shoulder-length brown hair framing a good-looking face that took its note from an ironic disposition. It sent a shiver through him, and he looked quickly away.<br />
<br />
Obliquely, Mallory wondered if Salisbury was no longer there, like the rumours he had heard of Newcastle and some of the villages in the Scottish borders. The night had been so impenetrable as he drove south that the whole world could have been wiped away.<br />
<br />
If he’d had a choice in the matter, he would have travelled in daylight. The countryside was filled with gangs armed with shotguns and knives, raiding villages and the outskirts of towns for food; life had become infinitely more brutal since everything had turned sour. But it was the other things that cast more disturbing shadows across life. The silhouettes of little men moving slowly across the open fields under the stars. The thing he’d glimpsed up close once, emerging from an abandoned pig farm: eyes like saucers, scales that glinted in the moonlight and fingers that were too, too long. It only confirmed the stories that kept everyone confined to their homes once the sun set: the night didn’t belong to man <br />
anymore.<br />
<br />
Mallory watched the traveller’s slow progress and wondered obliquely what was on his mind.<br />
<br />
The rider bowed his head into the rising storm, pulling his waterproof cloak tighter around him as the gusts of wind threatened to unseat him. Seeking shelter was undoubtedly the wise thing to do, but the hard weight of his fear wouldn’t let him. To rest in a place where he could be cornered was more than he could bear to consider; at least on the road he had the <em>chance</em> to flee. Single-minded determination was the only thing that kept him going. He didn’t even glance behind him, because he knew his imagination would conjure faces in the trees and hedgerows, the rustling noises of pursuit, the presence of something coming up hard to drag him from his horse.<br />
<br />
<em>Nothing there</em>, he told himself. <br />
<br />
He’d planned his journey to skirt Salisbury Plain—it was a no-man’s-land and anyone who was stupid enough to venture in never came out again—yet even the surrounding countryside felt unbearably dangerous. But if he made it to Salisbury, it would all be worth it. Finally: salvation, redemption, hope.<br />
<br />
The thunder made him start so sharply that he almost jumped from the saddle. It was the roar of a giant beast bearing down on him. The lightning came a few seconds later, turning the inky fields and clustering trees to stark white. <br />
<br />
<em>Nothing there</em>, he confirmed with relief.<br />
<br />
To his right, the stern mount of Old Sarum rose up in silhouette. Soon he might see a few flickering lights—candles, probably, to light loved ones home. Perhaps someone had even got a store of oil to keep a generator running. He was surprised at how much that simple thought gave him a thrill.<br />
<br />
More thunder, another flash of light. His thighs were numb beneath sodden denim; he couldn’t feel his fingers. He wished it were still high summer. <br />
<br />
The wind deadened his ears and started to play tricks on him. A gust eddying around the cochlea became a song performed by a string quartet; a breeze penetrating deeper was the whisper of an old friend. The blood banging around inside his head only added to the dislocation that made him ignore his most vital night sense. When the high-pitched whistle came, it was nothing more than the protest of the trees’ uppermost branches.<br />
<br />
The second time the whistle rose, he clung on to the desensitised state protecting him from the night fears; but the third blast gave him little space to hide: it was closer, and had an insistence that suggested purpose. Even then he couldn’t bring himself to look around. He gave a futile spur to the horse, but its weariness made it immune. Even his illusion of having the freedom to escape had been taken from him.<br />
<br />
<em>A whistle is nothing to be scared of</em>, he told himself, while at the same time picturing the bands of skinhead men with blue tattoos and dead eyes, signalling to each other that it was time for the attack. He was armed for defence, but he wasn’t ready; he never had been a violent man, but he could learn to change. The kitchen knife was in a makeshift scabbard of insulating tape against his thick hiking socks and the cricket bat with the nails hammered through it was slung over his back in a loop of washing line. Which would be the best for use on horseback?<br />
<br />
The whistle became insistent and continual, the high-pitched screech somehow unnatural, not the product of men or musical instrument. Suddenly it was <em>all</em> he could hear, and it was like nothing he had ever heard before. It was growing louder, the unfortunate pitch making him feel sick and disoriented; he wanted to plug his ears or sing loudly to drown it out.<br />
<br />
Instead, he forged on. So near to Salisbury, with its medieval cathedral rising up to proclaim the majesty of God, with its ordered streets, its gentility, its cafés and pubs, intelligence and history. Salisbury, the New Jerusalem in the West.<br />
<br />
<em>Whistling is nothing compared to what I’ve been through</em>, he thought, but the notion only made him feel worse.<br />
<br />
As the road drove down steeply, the trees drew in to create a funnel channelling the blasting wind. He felt like ice, and not just because of the weather. To add to his discomfort, the rain started, quickly becoming a downpour.<br />
<br />
Shortly before he passed the first stretch of abandoned houses, he allowed his gaze—stupidly—to wander away to the field on his right. A flash of lightning brought it up like snow: across it dark shapes bounded; not men.<br />
<br />
He raced through the possibilities of what he might have seen, but nothing matched the reality and the impossibilities were infinitely more terrifying. Salisbury grew distant.<br />
<br />
The whistling pierced deep into his brain, no longer a single sound but a chorus of alien voices. Now he wanted to claw at his ears until they bled. It was a hunting call.<br />
<br />
He urged himself not to look around, but the magnetism was irresistible. Tears blurred his eyes as he turned, and he had to blink them away before he could see what was closing in on him. Another flash of lightning. Across the countryside, the shapes fluttered eerily like paper blown in the wind, drawing in on the road; some were already amongst the nearby trees, dancing around the boles or swinging from the branches. Their whistling grew louder as they neared, scores of them, perhaps even more than a hundred. They had his scent. <br />
<br />
He dug his heels hard into the weary horse’s flanks, but all he could get out of it was a burst of steaming breath and a shake of sweat. A cry caught in his throat. He wanted to wish himself somewhere else, he wanted his parents, but the shakes that swept through him drove everything away.<br />
<br />
Though the blasting wind made his eyes sting, he kept his gaze fixed on the wet road ahead, but soon his peripheral vision was picking up motion. He was caught in a pincer movement. Some of them could have had him then, but they were waiting for the others to catch up. Briefly, the hellish whistling faded, but that was only because it was drowned beneath the constant low shriek that rolled out of his own mouth. Dignity no longer mattered, only his poor, pathetic life.<br />
<br />
And then the things were at the side of the road, tracking the horse with wild bounds. With rolling eyes and flaring nostrils, his mount found some reservoir of energy.<br />
<br />
In a brief instant of lucidity, he remembered the cricket bat. His panic made him yank at it so wildly that the clothesline caught around his neck. Frantically, he tried to rip it free, but it was plastic and wouldn’t break. His actions became even more lunatic until, miraculously, the makeshift weapon came loose. He whirled, ready to beat off the first of the wave.<br />
<br />
One of the things was already at his side. It moved with the easy grace and awkwardness of a monkey, long arms flipping it forward as fast as the horse could gallop. It had orange-red fur like an orangutan and it reeked of rotting fish. Then it turned its head toward him and it had the face of a child.<br />
<br />
It said, in its infant voice, “Your mother has cancer. You will never see her again.”<br />
<br />
He almost fell from the horse in shock. A thought . . . a secret fear . . . plucked from the depths of his mind. The creature bared its teeth—a horrifying image in the innocent face—and then launched itself at him. He brought the bat down sharply, but as the creature caught on to the saddle its long arm snaked up, snatched the bat from his grip, and snapped it in two with the force of one hand.<br />
<br />
His shrieks rose above the wind as he attempted to slap the thing away with the hand that wasn’t clutching the reins. It was an emasculated gesture, filled with hopelessness; the creature didn’t even attempt to defend itself. It brought its young-boy face up closer and the big eyes blinked. As he stared into their depths, he was sickened by the incongruous sight of something hideously old and filled with ancient fury. The beast bared its teeth again, ready to attack.<br />
<br />
He threw back his head and cried out to God. In a burst of blind luck, his flailing arms caught the creature under the chin just as it jumped and it flipped head over tail behind him. It did him little good; the other beasts were already preparing to rush in.<br />
<br />
Above the wind and the whistling came the throaty rumble of a car engine. At first he barely recognised it, so lost to his terror was he; and it had been an age since he had heard that sound. But as it roared closer and bright light splayed all around him, he looked back in disbelief. Twin beams cut a swathe through the creatures as they scrambled to avoid the light. Whoever was driving floored the pedal, swerving across the road to hit the beasts slowest at getting out of the way. He winced: their screams actually sounded like those of small children.<br />
<br />
A body slammed across the hood, leaving a deep dent. Another turned part of the windshield to frost. Others were flattened, midscream, beneath the wheels. <br />
<br />
The headlights burned toward him as the car accelerated. He wasn’t going to be torn apart by a pack of supernatural creatures, he was going to be run down in a world where you rarely saw a car anymore. The irony didn’t really have much time to register.<br />
<br />
At the last moment, the car swerved until it was running alongside him. The black Porsche was still bright with showroom gleam. His mount jumped and shied in terror, almost throwing him under the wheels.<br />
<br />
<br />
The passenger window slid down electronically and Mallory leaned across the seat while steering blindly; the rider squinted to make out his face. “Are you doing this for sport?” Mallory called out. <br />
<br />
The rider gave a comical goldfish gulp, his comprehension flowing treacle-thick. Mallory shook his head dismissively, then readjusted the wheel as the car drifted dangerously close to the horse. “You’d better get off that and get in here,” he called again.<br />
<br />
His words broke through the rider’s fug. Along the weed-clogged pavement the creatures were jumping up and down, their whistling unbearably shrill and threatening. The horse didn’t want to be reined in, but the rider slowed it enough to dismount, wincing as he landed awkwardly on his left ankle. Mallory brought the Porsche to a screeching halt and flung the passenger door open. The rider gazed worriedly after his departing mount until Mallory yelled, “It’ll be fine. It’s not horse meat they’re after. You’ve got about two seconds to get in—” <br />
<br />
The rider dived in and slammed the door. The creatures bounded closer in fury; it seemed as if they might even risk the light. As the car jolted off with a spin of wheels, the rider threw his head forward into his hands, sobbing, “Thank God.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t thank Him yet. I’ve been running on empty for the last mile or so. We’ll never make it to Salisbury.” The rider noted Mallory’s expensive black overcoat that looked as new as the car and couldn’t mask his discomfort that both had plainly been looted.<br />
<br />
Mallory checked over his shoulder before reversing the Porsche at high speed, eventually swinging it around sharply through a hundred and eighty degrees. The rider clutched his stomach and groaned. “Now, let’s see if we can get some of those bastards.” Indecent pleasure crackled through Mallory’s voice.<br />
<br />
He hit the accelerator, popped the clutch, and at the same time launched the car toward the edge of the road. Golden sparks showered all around as the undercarriage raked up the curb. The rider squealed as the expensive car tore through long grass and bushes, then squealed more as the creatures failed to get out of the way. They slammed against the already fractured windshield, their bodies bursting to coat the glass with blood so black it resembled ink. <br />
<br />
The beasts were too intelligent to be victims for long. One of them dropped from an overhanging branch, clutching on to the windshield with its phenomenally long arms. It fumbled for the spot where the glass was most frosted and hammered sharply. Tiny cubes showered over the rider, who threw up his hands to protect himself. The creature drove its arm through the hole it had created and clawed toward his face. The rider squealed again like a teenage girl and attempted to scramble into the back of the car. His eyes fixed on a shotgun lying across the rear seat just as Mallory shouted, “Use the gun!”<br />
<br />
The creature tore chunks out of the windshield and thrust its head partway into the car. The black eyes ranged wildly in the freckled, pink-cheeked face, the teeth snapping furiously.<br />
<br />
“I can’t use a gun!” the rider shrieked.<br />
<br />
“Give it here!” Mallory said with irritation. “It’s already loaded.”<br />
<br />
The rider snatched up the shotgun and threw it at the driver as if it were red hot. Mallory cursed before grabbing it, and then in one simple movement he shouldered it, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The thunderous blast in the confines of the car made their ears ring. The creature’s faceless body flapped at the windshield like a piece of cloth before the air currents dragged it away behind.<br />
<br />
The cold night air rushing through the hole cleared the rider’s senses. “Where can we go?” he whimpered.<br />
<br />
Mallory accelerated from the trees along the road out of Salisbury. He pointed to the silhouette of Old Sarum towering over the landscape.<br />
<br />
<br />
The car died on them on the steep slope to the parking lot between the high banks of prehistoric ramparts constructed for defence more than 2,500 years earlier. Jumping into the driving rain, Mallory and the rider headed along the road, which ran straight for around four hundred and fifty feet to a wooden bridge across a deep inner ditch. Beyond were the ruins of the Norman castle built in the heart of the Iron Age hill-fort. Although the car hadn’t taken them far, they’d earned themselves enough breathing space to cover the remaining distance on foot.<br />
<br />
“Shouldn’t be long till dawn,” Mallory said as they ran, head down against the deluge. “They’ll leave us alone at first light.”<br />
<br />
The rider was finding it hard to keep up with his twisted ankle. “How do you know?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t.”<br />
<br />
“Are you sure we’ll find somewhere to hide out up there?”<br />
<br />
“No, but we haven’t got much choice, have we? Unless you want to stand and fight?”<br />
<br />
The rider didn’t answer.<br />
<br />
They came to the wooden bridge barred by a gate with signs warning of the dangers of crumbling ancient monuments. Mallory laughed, then hauled himself over, yanking the rider behind him.<br />
<br />
The whistling assailed them as they ran through the broken remains of the gatehouse; the wild shapes were already loping along the road past the parking lot. Lightning revealed the bleak interior of the inner bailey: a flimsy wooden ticket office and shop to their right, and then a wide expanse of sodden grass and ruins that were barely more than four feet high in most places.<br />
<br />
“Shit, fuck and bastard,” Mallory said.<br />
<br />
The rider whimpered. “What do we do now?”<br />
<br />
“Firstly, you stop getting on my nerves by whining. Secondly . . .” Mallory scanned the site as best he could in the storm, then with a resigned sigh broke into a run. The rider jumped and followed, looking over his shoulder so much that he slipped and fell several times.<br />
<br />
Mallory picked out the shattered block of the keep on the far side of the inner bailey. It was useless for any kind of serious defence, but it was the best place to make a stand until the shotgun shells ran out. They found an area protected on three sides by the only remaining high walls on the site, which also served to shelter them from the worst of the storm.<br />
<br />
“We’re going to die,” the rider moaned.<br />
<br />
“Yep.” Mallory began to count out the remaining cartridges; there weren’t as many as he had thought.<br />
<br />
“You don’t seem bothered!”<br />
<br />
Through an iron grille, Mallory could just make out frantic activity near the gateway. He positioned the shotgun to pick off one or two as they advanced across the open space, then waited. After five minutes it was clear the things weren’t coming in.<br />
<br />
“They’ve stayed at the gate.” Even as Mallory spoke, the wind picked up the insistent whistling, now moving around the ramparts as if searching for access. It became increasingly sharp, frustrated. Mallory sank back down into the lee of the wall.<br />
<br />
“Why aren’t they coming in?” The rider looked at Mallory accusingly, as if he were lying.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know,” Mallory snapped. “Maybe they don’t like the décor.”<br />
<br />
It was so dark in their defensive position that they could only see the pale glow of their faces and hands. Above and around them, the wind howled mercilessly, drowning out their ragged breathing but not the whistling, which, though muted, still set their teeth on edge.<br />
<br />
<br />
After a while, they’d calmed down enough to entertain conversation.<br />
<br />
“I’m Jez Miller.” The rider appeared keen for some kind of connection, comfort, someone to tell him things weren’t as bad as he feared, though he realised instinctively he was talking to the wrong person.<br />
<br />
“Mallory.”<br />
<br />
“It’s lucky you came along when you did.”<br />
<br />
“That’s one way of looking at it.” Mallory examined Miller surreptitiously. Though in his midtwenties, he had the face of a man twenty years older, lined through screwing up his features in despair, hollow-cheeked from lack of sustenance, made worse by scruffy shoulder-length hair already turning grey.<br />
<br />
“Where did you get the car?” Miller asked, plucking at his sodden trousers.<br />
<br />
“Stole it. In Marlborough.”<br />
<br />
Miller thought for a second until the realisation hit him. “You drove across Salisbury Plain!” An uninterested silence hung in the dark. “You don’t see many cars these days. Everyone’s trying to save petrol, for emergencies.”<br />
<br />
“It was an emergency. I had to get out of Marlborough. Dull as ditchwater, that place.”<br />
<br />
Miller couldn’t read Mallory at all and that plainly made him uncomfortable. “So you were going to Salisbury?”<br />
<br />
“I heard they were hiring down at the cathedral. At least, that’s the word going around. Thought I’d take a look.”<br />
<br />
Miller started in surprise. “Me too!” Excitedly, he scrabbled around to face Mallory. “You’re going to be a knight?”<br />
<br />
“If the pay’s right. These days food, drink, and shelter would probably swing it.”<br />
<br />
“I couldn’t believe it when I heard! I thought the Church had gone the same way as everything else. You know, with all that’s been happening . . .” He struggled for a second. “With the gods . . . what they call gods . . . all that happening every day . . . all the time . . . people said there wasn’t any need for a Church. Why should you believe in a God who never shows up when all that’s going on around you? That’s what they said.”<br />
<br />
“You a Christian, then?”<br />
<br />
“I wasn’t particularly. I mean, I was christened, but I never went to church. I’m a Christian now. God’s the only one who can save us.” Miller slipped his fingers around the crucifix he’d picked up from the broken window of the jeweller’s. <br />
<br />
“Well, it’s not as if we can save ourselves.”<br />
<br />
Miller wrinkled his brow at the odd tone in Mallory’s voice. “You don’t believe.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t believe in anything.”<br />
<br />
“How can you say that?”<br />
<br />
Mallory gave a low laugh. “Everyone else is doing a good job believing. You said it yourself—miracles all over the place. I’m the only unbeliever in a born-again world.” He laughed louder, amused at the concept.<br />
<br />
“But how can you work for the Church . . . how can you be a knight?”<br />
<br />
“They’re paying men to do a job—to protect their clerics. The new Knights Templar. That sounds like a good deal. A bit of strong-arm stuff here and there, nothing too taxing. These days, it’s all scratching in the fields to feed the masses, or making things, or sewing—all the rubbish people think’s necessary to get us back on our feet. If I had a list of ways to spend my remaining days, planting potatoes would not be on it.”<br />
<br />
“They won’t have you.”<br />
<br />
“I’m betting they will. They’ll have anybody they can get, these days.”<br />
<br />
“That’s cynical.”<br />
<br />
Mallory grunted. “We’ll see.”<br />
<br />
Miller scratched on the floor, listening to the rise and fall of the whistling as it moved around the ramparts. “What are they?” he asked eventually.<br />
<br />
“No idea.”<br />
<br />
“Where did all these things come from?”<br />
<br />
“No idea.”<br />
<br />
“One of my mates saw a dragon.” When Mallory didn’t respond, Miller pressed on, “Why are we being made to suffer like this?”<br />
<br />
“You say <em>made</em> as if there’s some intelligence behind it. The sooner you accept there isn’t, the easier your life will be. Things happen, you deal with them and move on to the next. That’s the way it goes. You’re not being victimised. You don’t have to lead some deviantly perfect lifestyle just to get a reward in some next life. You make the most of what you’ve got here. It’s about survival.”<br />
<br />
“If that’s all there is, what’s the point?”<br />
<br />
Mallory’s laugh suggested that the answer was ridiculously obvious.<br />
<br />
Miller became depressed by Mallory’s attitude. Everything about Miller said he wanted to be uplifted, to be told there was some meaning to all the suffering everyone was going through. “Is Marlborough your home?”<br />
<br />
“No.” Mallory considered leaving it there, but then took pity on Miller. “London. I wasn’t born there, but that’s where I spent most of my life.”<br />
<br />
“Is it true the whole place has been destroyed? That’s what people say.”<br />
<br />
“I got out before the shit hit the fan. Went north. Birmingham for a while.” His voice trailed away.<br />
<br />
“No family?” Mallory’s silence told Miller this was a question too far. “I’m from Swindon,” Miller continued, to fill the gap. “My mum and dad are still there, and my sister. I suppose I could have stuck it out, too. Life isn’t so bad. People are pulling together, setting up systems. They’ve just about got the food distribution sorted out. I reckon they should get through this winter OK.” He paused as the harsh memories returned. “Not like last winter.”<br />
<br />
The thoughts stilled him for a while, but he found it hard to deal with the pauses that magnified the dim whistling outside. “I had to get out in the end. My girlfriend, Sue . . . we were going to get married, been in love for ages . . . couldn’t imagine being with anyone else.” His voice took on a bleak tone. “Then one day she dumped me, just like that. Said she was moving in with this complete moron<br />
. . . a thug . . . God knows what sort of things he was involved in. And she’d always hated him, that was the mad thing! But she said he made her feel safe.”<br />
<br />
“These are dangerous times. People do what they have to, to survive.”<br />
<br />
“But I didn’t make her feel safe, you know?” Miller made no attempt to hide his devastation; he reminded Mallory of a child, emotional, almost innocent.<br />
<br />
“That’s what made you decide to come down here, to sign up?”<br />
<br />
Mallory obviously wasn’t really interested; it was a friendly gesture, but after the rigours of the night it felt to Miller as if Mallory had clapped his arms around him. “Partly. I mean, I’d been thinking about it for a long time. I knew I wanted to do something. To give something back. So many people were making sacrifices for the greater good and I didn’t feel as if I was doing anything at all. I know you don’t believe, but it felt as if God had put us through all this suffering and spared some of us for a reason.”<br />
<br />
Mallory made a faint derisive noise.<br />
<br />
“No, really. Sometimes when you sit back and think about it, you can see patterns.”<br />
<br />
“There aren’t any patterns, just illusions of patterns. It’s the human condition to join the dots into something cohesive when all there is . . . is a big mass of dots.”<br />
<br />
“I can’t believe that, Mallory. When you see some of the goodness that has come out of all this . . . the goodness people have exhibited to others. They could have wallowed in self-preservation.” His voice became harder as he went on, “Just done things to survive, like you said.”<br />
<br />
“Well, I’m not going to try to change your mind.”<br />
<br />
Miller’s shoulders sagged so that the rainwater ran from his crown to drip into his lap. He suddenly looked burdened by some awful weight. “It’s hard to be scared all the time, do you know what I mean? Life was difficult enough before everything changed, but now there’s just . . . threat . . . everywhere, all the time. It wears you down.” He trembled with a deep, juddering sigh. “Why isn’t the<br />
government doing something? Where’s the army, the police?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t think they exist anymore.”<br />
<br />
“But if it’s left to people like us, what’s going to become of us all?”<br />
<br />
Mallory couldn’t answer that.<br />
<br />
They sat in silence for a while until Mallory said, “Well, it’s not all bad.”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean?” Miller mumbled.<br />
<br />
“No more <em>Stars in Their Eyes</em>.”<br />
<br />
Miller brightened. “Or Euro-disco.”<br />
<br />
“Or public-school boys getting drunk at Henley, or . . .” He made an expansive gesture, just caught in a flash of lightning. The depressive mood evaporated with their laughter.<br />
<br />
It was echoed by another laugh away in the dark, only this one was an old man’s, low and throaty. Miller yelped in shock, pushing himself back until he felt the stones hard against him. The shotgun clattered as Mallory scraped it up and swung it in an arc, waiting for another sound to pinpoint the target.<br />
<br />
“I’ve got a gun,” he said.<br />
<br />
The laugh sounded again, slow and eerie, though with a faint muffled echo as if it were coming through the wall.<br />
<br />
“Who’s there?” Miller whined. He shivered at the haunting, otherworldly quality of the laughter.<br />
<br />
“My names are legion,” the old man said.<br />
<br />
Miller started to whimper the Lord’s Prayer.<br />
<br />
“He’s playing with you,” Mallory said. “Aren’t you?”<br />
<br />
The old man laughed again. “No fooling you, Son of Adam.”<br />
<br />
“No!” Miller said. “He’s lying! It <em>is</em> the Devil! And he always lies!” “There are devils and there are devils,” the old man snorted. “You must know the Devil by the deed.”<br />
<br />
Miller hugged his knees to his chest. “What are you?”<br />
<br />
“Not of the Sons of Adam.” The statement was simple, but edged with an unaccountable menace.<br />
<br />
Not wishing to antagonise whatever was nearby, Mallory’s tone became slightly less offensive. “What do you want?”<br />
<br />
“The question, more likely, is what do <em>you</em> want? My home has looked out over this place since before your kind rose up.”<br />
<br />
“We didn’t realise,” Miller protested. “We don’t want to trespass—”<br />
<br />
“We’re sheltering,” Mallory said. “We’ll be gone at first light, if that’s all right with you.”<br />
<br />
“Perhaps it isn’t and perhaps it is. I would have to say, in this day and age I’m not wholly sure where the boundaries lie. You may be trespassing, and then again you may not.”<br />
<br />
“We’ll pay you,” Miller said. “Anything!”<br />
<br />
“No.” Mallory’s voice was sharp, cutting Miller dead.<br />
<br />
“You’re very cautious,” the old man said slyly, “but are you as wise as you seem, I wonder?”<br />
<br />
Mallory replaced the shotgun on the floor, instinctively knowing it was useless. “You like questions—”<br />
<br />
“I like questions and games and riddles because that’s what everything is about, is it not? One big riddle, and you trying to find out what the answer is.” He chuckled. “Trying to find out what the question is.”<br />
<br />
“And you have all the answers, I suppose,” Mallory said.<br />
<br />
“Many, many, many. Not all, no. But more than you, Son of Adam.”<br />
<br />
The wind dropped a little, the crashing rain becoming a mere patter. Mallory remained tense. “Do you want something of us?”<br />
<br />
A long silence was eventually ended by words that were heavily measured. “Curiosity was my motivation. Few venture up this hill in these times. I had a desire to witness the extent of the bravery in our latest visitors.” A smack of mockery.<br />
<br />
Tension filled the air, driving Mallory into silence. It felt as if they were in the jungle with some wild animal padding slowly around them, content in the knowledge that it could attack at any time. Mallory decided it was better to engage the old man in conversation rather than allow any lulls where other ideas might surface.<br />
<br />
“Perhaps you’d like to provide us with some answers, as we’re so sadly lacking,” he said.<br />
<br />
The old man mused on this for a time, then said, “Answers I can give, and questions too. But if you seek my advice, it’s this: keep your head down doing honest work and give offence to none. Avoid drawing unwanted attention at all costs.”<br />
<br />
“What kind of attention?”<br />
<br />
“Ah, you should know by now,” the old man said with a cunning tone, “that when the mouse gets noticed by the cat, it won’t leave him alone . . . until he’s long gone.”<br />
<br />
“What’s going to happen?” Miller was whimpering again.<br />
<br />
“Many things,” the old man said, pretending it was a question for him, purely for the sake of malice. With another chuckle, he added, “The wormfood will come up for air, and the quick will go down for a way out, but find none. There’ll be a man with three hands, and one with one eye. Some will be bereft in more profound areas. Friends will be found in unlikely places, but where friends should really be, there will at times be none. And consider this: a religion isn’t as good as its god, only as good as its followers.”<br />
<br />
“Is that supposed to help?” Mallory said.<br />
<br />
“The joy of a riddle is twofold: in the solving, or in the enlightenment that comes from hindsight. Riddles are lights to be shone in the darkest corners, where all secrets hide.”<br />
<br />
“Secrets?”<br />
<br />
“Everybody has secrets,” the old man said pointedly.<br />
<br />
“Thank you for your guidance,” Mallory said with irony. “We’ll take it with us when we leave.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, you will be back, Son of Adam. Back here, and back there. Sylvie doesn’t love you anymore. It’s a hopeless case.” Then, “Your sins will always find you out.”<br />
<br />
The tension in the air dropped slowly until they realised they were alone, which was an odd way of considering it because they had no idea where the presence had been. Slowly, Miller’s body folded until his face was in his hands. “What did he mean?” he said bleakly. When Mallory didn’t answer, he asked, “What was that?”<br />
<br />
“Probably best not to talk about it right now.” Mallory illuminated his watch. The green glow painted his face a ghastly shade, the shadows defining the skull beneath.<br />
<br />
“He can still hear us?”<br />
<br />
“I think he . . . and what he represents . . . can always hear us.” He stood up, shaking the kinks from his limbs. “It should be dawn any minute.” The whistling no longer floated around the building; instead they could just make out birdsong dimly coming over the ramparts. “Want to risk it?”<br />
<br />
“I guess.”<br />
<br />
“<em>I tell you this. No eternal reward will forgive us for wasting the dawn</em>.” Mallory cracked his knuckles.<br />
<br />
“What’s that?”<br />
<br />
“Words from an old singer.”<br />
<br />
“You like music?”<br />
<br />
“That’s a funny question. Doesn’t everyone?”<br />
<br />
“No, not really,” Miller said.<br />
<br />
<br />
They walked out into the inner bailey, the ruins and windswept trees now grey ghosts. The rain had blown away and there was an optimistic bloom to the edge of the sky. The monkey-creatures were nowhere to be seen. <br />
<br />
The morning had the fresh smell of wet vegetation. Mallory took a deep breath, still surprised at how sweet the air tasted now that it was pollution-free. They made their way back along the track and prepared to walk the short distance into Salisbury. As they breached the crest of the hill and headed down into the city, the mother sky turned golden, framing the majestic spire of the cathedral protruding through the treetops ahead. Miller was overcome with a rush of Glory and turned to Mallory, beaming; Mallory shook his head and looked away.<br />
<br />
The corpses of the monkey-creatures ploughed up by the car had vanished. A little further on they came across Miller’s horse, grazing at the side of the road. Miller patted its flank affectionately.<br />
<br />
“We can take it in turns to ride,” Miller said brightly.<br />
<br />
“It’s all yours. I like a good walk of a morning, gets the blood flowing.”<br />
<br />
They took the empty road slowly and within the hour the outskirts of Salisbury drew around them. It was still odd for both of them to see the empty houses and factories, the abandoned petrol stations and corner shops without any of the trappings of the modern world. No vehicles moved, no electric lights burned, no fast-food wrappers blew up and down the streets. Instead there was the smell of woodsmoke hanging in the air and some homes were illuminated by candlelight. The air of the makeshift lay across the city: handmade signs pointing to the farmers’ market or the council offices, piles of wood obviously prepared for nighttime beacons, repairs carried out to broken windows with plastic sheets. Wild dogs roamed the streets and furtive rats skulked out of front gardens.<br />
<br />
They came upon a sentry box roughly constructed out of crates and perspex. A grey-faced man in an adapted police uniform was boiling some water on a small fire. As they approached, he rose suspiciously, holding a handmade truncheon close to his thigh.<br />
<br />
“What’s your business?” His eyes were hard on their faces.<br />
<br />
“We’re going to the cathedral,” Miller said with bright innocence, “to become knights.”<br />
<br />
The guard didn’t attempt to hide his disdain. “Good luck,” he sneered, rolling his eyes.<br />
<br />
“The police are still going?” Mallory asked.<br />
<br />
The guard glanced down at the uniform, which had SPM sewn on to the left breast. “I used to be with the force,” he said. “Still got my warrant card. These days it’s the Salisbury People’s Militia.” He waved them through, nodding toward the spire. “I don’t think you’ll get lost.”<br />
<br />
“Have many people come to join up?” Miller asked as he rode by.<br />
<br />
The guard laughed indecently loudly. “I shouldn’t worry about having to queue.”<br />
<br />
“It’s early days yet,” Miller said when they were out of the guard’s earshot. <br />
<br />
“Look on the bright side,” Mallory replied wryly. “At least the standards will be low.”<br />
<br />
<br />
At that same time of day, the outskirts of the city were deserted. In the bright dawn light, it could have been any time before everything changed; the fabric was, in the main, intact, although a few shops had been burned out in looting, and others had been adapted to fill more immediate needs. An electrical goods store had been converted into a cobblers and leatherworkers. A video shop now housed carpenters and builders.<br />
<br />
They made their way down Castle Street and before they had got to the end of it they could hear loud voices, jocularity, cursing, life going on. The farmers’ market was in the process of being set up, with red-faced workers loading piles of cabbages and bags of potatoes on creaking stalls. Many places appeared to have quickly established a local economy and regular food supply, but everyone was still fearing the winter, Miller noted. Mallory pointed out that nothing would have worked if the population hadn’t been decimated.<br />
<br />
Their attention was caught by an area of brightly coloured tents and tepees on a park on the other side of a river bridge. They clustered tightly together like a nomadic enclave within the wider city. A flag bearing red and white intertwined dragons flew over the largest tent.<br />
<br />
They followed the High Street past the shells of Woolworth’s and Waterstone’s. The horse’s hooves echoed dully on the flagstones; the atmosphere in that area was strangely melancholic.<br />
<br />
But as they came up to High Street Gate, the historic entrance to the Cathedral Close, they were confronted by ten-foot-high gates of welded metal sheets, the ancient stone surround topped with lethal spikes and rolls of barbed wire. Beyond it, the cathedral looked like a fortress under siege.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>chapter two</strong><br />
<strong>OPUS DEI</strong><br />
<br />
<em>“A man’s character is his fate.”</em><br />
-Heraclitus<br />
<br />
The reinforced gates were rust eaten, stained, and covered with foul graffiti. Mallory tried to decide whether they had been erected out of fear, or strength; to keep the outside world at bay, or to keep those inside pure. Which ever was the right answer, first impressions were not of an open religion welcoming all souls into a place of refuge from the storm of life. He’d only been there a moment<br />
and he already doubted the judgment of those in charge. Situation normal.<br />
<br />
He could feel Miller’s uncertain gaze on his back, urging him to do something to dispel the disappointment his companion was starting to feel. With a shrug, Mallory strode up and hammered on the gates. When the metallic echoes had died, a young man with a shaven head and an incongruously cherubic face peered over the stone battlements.<br />
<br />
“Who goes?” he called, with a faint lisp.<br />
<br />
Mallory turned back to Miller. “Well, that’s scared me off.”<br />
<br />
“We want to join you,” Miller shouted.<br />
<br />
The guard eyed them suspiciously, focusing particular attention on Mallory.<br />
<br />
“We want to be knights,” Miller pressed. His voice held a faint note of panic at the possibility that after all he’d been through he might still be turned away.<br />
<br />
“Wait there.” The guard bobbed down. Several minutes later, they heard the scrape of metal bars being drawn on the other side. The gates creaked open just wide enough for Mallory and Miller to pass through in single file. On the other side were five men armed with medieval weaponry: pikes, swords, and an axe, which Mallory guessed had been taken from some local museum.<br />
<br />
The guard stepped forward. “Enter with humility before God.” An implied threat lay in his words.<br />
<br />
Mallory looked at him askance. “Does everyone talk like that around here?”<br />
<br />
Miller gazed back at the fortified gate uncomfortably. “Why all that?” he asked.<br />
<br />
“Times are hard.” It wasn’t enough of an answer, but the guard turned away before Miller could ask him any more.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><strong>*</strong></div>Mallory was intrigued by what he saw within the compound. He’d seen photos of the cathedral in the old days, had even caught the last of a TV Christmas carol service broadcast from there, seen through an alcoholic haze after a late night at the pub. The serenity of the expansive lawns that had once surrounded the cathedral was long gone. Now wooden shacks clustered tightly, some of which appeared to have been knocked up overnight, offering little protection from the elements. Mallory also spied vegetable and herb gardens, stables, a small mill, and more. The grass was now little more than churned mud with large cart ruts running amongst the huts. The entire scene had an odd medieval flavour that discomfited him.<br />
<br />
The houses appeared to consist of only a single room, two at the most, with small windows that could not have allowed much light inside. They were arranged, more or less, on a grid pattern, the cathedral’s own village, although there were still a few remaining lawns around the grand building to form a barrier between the sacred and the profane.<br />
<br />
Once they were well within the site, they could see that fortifications had been continued on all sides to create a well-defended compound. Most of the wall was original, constructed in the fourteenth century with the stone from the deserted cathedral at Old Sarum, but where gaps had appeared over the years,<br />
makeshift barriers had now been thrown up. Abandoned cars, crushed and tattered, building rubble, corrugated sheets, had all been riveted together to become remarkably sturdy. Of the original gates, three remained, all as secure as the one through which Mallory and Miller had passed.<br />
<br />
Enclosed within the new fortifications were several imposing piles that lined the Cathedral Close, including the museums on the western edge, which appeared to have been pressed into Church use. The weight of history was palpable, from Malmesbury House, partly built by Sir Christopher Wren and where Charles II and Handel had both stayed, to the grand Mompesson House with its Queen Anne façade, through the many stately buildings that had offered services to the Church. Beyond the houses, the enclosure ran down to the banks of the Avon past a larger cultivated area providing food for the residents.<br />
<br />
And at the centre of it was the cathedral itself. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the grey stone of the gothic medieval building gleamed in the morning light, its perpendicular lines leading the eye toward the four-hundred-foot spire that spoke proudly of the Glory of Almighty God. Even in that broken world, it still had the power to inspire.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong>*</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;">They were led through a door near the west front to an area next to the cloisters that had once held a café. The surly guard guided them to a windowless room containing three dining chairs and a table. He sent in some water and bread before leaving them alone for the next hour.</div><div align="left" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What do you think?” Miller asked in an excited whisper.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory tore a chunk off the bread and inspected it cautiously before chewing. “They’re worse off than I imagined.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What do you mean?”</div><div align="left" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“All that graffiti on the walls—looks as if they’ve had a falling out with the locals. And the walls themselves, what message are they sending out?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller wasn’t going to be deterred. “Still, it’s great to be here, finally,” he said with a blissful smile.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You really are a glass-half-full kind of person, aren’t you.” Mallory spun one of the chairs and straddled it. “They’d better not bury us in rules and regulations. You know how it is with God people. Thou shalt not do this, thou shalt not do that. Bottom line for me: no vows of celibacy, no abstinence from the demon drink.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We might not get accepted.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Right,” Mallory said sarcastically. “We’re going to get accepted.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How can you be sure? They might think we’re not . . . devout enough. We’re supposed to be champions of God’s Word.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So what does God want? That His Word gets out there. Do you think He really cares if it’s being transmitted by some cynical money-grabbing toe rag who doesn’t believe one syllable of it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course it matters!” Miller stared at Mallory in disbelief.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Why? The job’s still getting done. People are still being led away from the dark side to the Path of Righteousness. Or is it more ideologically pure if the unbeliever doesn’t do it and they all stay damned?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It . . . matters!” Miller looked as if he was about to burst into tears again. Mallory’s weary attempt to backtrack was interrupted when the door swung open, revealing a man in his late forties, balding on top, but with long, bushy grey hair. He carried with him an air of tranquillity underpinned by a goodnatured, open attitude visible in his untroubled smile. He wore the long black</div><div style="text-align: left;">robes of a monk.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“My name is James,” he said. “I realise things may seem strange to you here. It’s strange for all of us.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We want to be knights,” Miller said firmly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s my job to greet the new arrivals,” James continued. “Help them adjust to the very different life we have here, facilitate an easy transition from the world without to the one we are attempting to build here in the cathedral precinct.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So you’re the official counsellor,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James didn’t appear troubled by the less than deferential tone. “I suppose that’s one way of describing my work.” The cast of his smile suggested he knew exactly what game Mallory was playing. “Come, walk with me and I’ll show you the sights, introduce you to a few people. And I’ll explain why things are the way they are.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Getting your apologies in first?” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I think it’s true to say things are probably not how you expected them, how we all expected them to be. But everyone is still coming to terms with the Fall.” The euphemism for the chaos that had descended on the world made Mallory smile. James continued, “It has necessitated a particular approach which may be . . . surprising at first impression.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory gestured for him to lead the way. “I love surprises.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James took them into the cathedral nave, crossing himself briefly as he faced the altar. Inside, the building was even bigger than Mallory had imagined. The magnificent vaulted roof soared so high over their heads it made them dizzy when they looked up, dwarfing them beneath the majesty of God as the original architects had intended. Further down the quire, a few men knelt in silent prayer.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It will be packed at vespers,” James noted with a sweep of his hand from wall to wall.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I haven’t seen any women since I came in,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.” James appeared uncomfortable at this observation, but he didn’t give Mallory time to follow up. “This is the last outpost of Christianity, at least in Great Britain. Within this compound you will find Anglicans, Catholics, Methodists, High Church, Low Church, representatives of the fringe evangelical</div><div style="text-align: left;">movements, all worshipping side by side in a manner that could never have been anticipated at a time when the Church was thriving. Then, there were too many rivalries. Now we are all forced to work together for the common good.” He smiled benignly at Mallory. “I’m sure there is a lesson in there somewhere.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The last outpost?” Miller appeared to be hearing James’s words in a time-delay.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What happened over the past year and a half shattered the Church.” James led them slowly along the nave. “Even in our darkest moment we could never have foreseen . . .” He shook his head dismally.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It obviously wasn’t as strong as you thought,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The Church remains as indefatigable as always,” James parried.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Then perhaps the people didn’t live up to your expectations.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James thought about this for a moment, but did not deny it. “With miracles happening on every street corner all day every day, with gods . . . things that call themselves gods . . . answering the calls of anyone who petitioned them, it was understandable that there would be a period of confusion.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller turned in a slow circle, dumbfounded. “This is all that’s left?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The congregations fragmented. Yes, some became more devout because of the upheaval they witnessed, but many lost their way.” He took a second or two to choose his words, but could find no easy way to say it. “Including many of our ministers.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sun gleamed through the stained-glass windows, but without any electric lights to illuminate the loftier regions there was still an atmosphere of gloom. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“With the lines of communication shattered, the situation rapidly became untenable,” James continued. “Belief was withering on the vine. The leaders . . . the remaining leaders . . . of the various churches held an emergency conference, a crisis meeting, at Winchester.” He had led them to the Trinity Chapel where the window glowed in blues and reds in the morning sun. Slender pillars of marble rose up on either side to support a daringly designed roof of sharply pointed arches. “It was decided that a period of retrenchment was necessary. The Church would fortress itself if necessary, reestablish its strength before taking the Word back out to the country.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory examined the images on the windows. The design was called <em>Prisoners of Conscience</em>. “You really think you can do it?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If faith is undiminished, anything can be achieved.” James watched him carefully. “And why are you here?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory didn’t look at him. “Food, shelter. Security.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is that what you believe?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You <em>are</em> looking for knights?” Miller ventured hopefully.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James turned to him with a pleasant aspect. “At the same Council of Winchester, the decision was taken to reestablish the Knights Templar. Do you know of them?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A bit,” Miller said uncertainly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“According to historical sources, most notably the Frankish historian Guillaume de Tyre, the Knights Templar were formed by nine knights under the leadership of Hugues de Payen in 1118,” James began. “After Jerusalem fell to the Crusaders in 1099, it became a Christian city and the nine, under the name</div><div style="text-align: left;">of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, vowed to devote themselves to the protection of all pilgrims travelling along the dangerous roads to the Christian shrines. They took quarters next to the temple and from then on became known as the Knights Templar.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James led them from the Trinity Chapel into the presbytery and then into the quire, the “church within a church” where the canons’ stalls faced each other beneath the shining pipes of the organ.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Ten years after their establishment, their fame had spread,” James continued. “No lesser an authority than Saint Bernard, the abbot of Clairvaux, wrote a tract declaring the Templars to be the epitome and apotheosis of Christian values. They were soon officially recognised and incorporated as a religious- military order, Christ’s militia, if you will, soldier-mystics, warrior-monks, combining the spirituality of the Church with a fighting ability that struck terror into Christianity’s enemies.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Until the God-fearing royals of Europe had the Church brand them heretics,” Mallory noted wryly, “because they had the misfortune to become too successful, right? Too rich and powerful . . . a challenge to the established order. Had their leader slowly roasted alive in the square of some French city . . . nice . . . had the knights hunted down and slaughtered, launched a propaganda assault to completely destroy their reputation.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re obviously an educated man. But don’t confuse the Church with the people who claim to administer God’s Word,” James cautioned. “Humans are fallible.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Pardon me for pointing it out, but you seem to have had your fair share of the fallible in your history,” Mallory countered, unmoved.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We are all fallible.” James turned his attention to the high altar at the focal point of the cathedral. “The decision to reestablish the Knights Templar was taken for practical reasons, and for symbolic ones. The new Knights Templar will protect our missionaries as they move out across the country. It’s a dangerous land out there . . . worldly threats, supernatural threats, spiritual threats . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s a tough job,” Mallory said. “You’ll need tough men.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Tough, yes. Not just physically or psychologically, but spiritually. It will be demanding, with little reward in this world.” There was pity in his smile. “Many who wish to join will not be suitable. You need to understand that. But there will always be a role here for people willing to carry out God’s Word.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not many perks, though,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James laughed. “Sorry, no company cars! On the plus side, the Council decided not to continue with the strict rules under which the original Templars existed—shaven heads, beards, poverty, chastity, and obedience—though we have adopted a distinctive dress for our knights so that everyone will know them when they see them coming.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory pointed to James’s habit. “You’ve got your own strict dress code as well.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Indeed. It was felt, with the various . . . strands . . . of the Church coming ogether, that a uniformity was necessary to bind everyone here into a single community.” He was choosing his words carefully, Mallory noted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You had some friction, then? A little local rivalry?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There was a danger of that, yes. So it was decided that we adopt elements of the Rule of Saint Benedict, which was written in the sixth century as a guide to the spiritual and administrative life of a monastery. Although we are not a monastic order—we are a chapter of canons—it was agreed that a certain level of . . . discipline was necessary.” He didn’t appear wholly to agree with this, although he attempted to mask it with a smile. “But you’ll find out all about that later.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As they turned to leave the quire, they were confronted by two men who had been making their way toward the altar. One of them was very old, possibly in his eighties, Mallory estimated. Hunched over his walking stick, he resembled a crane, both awkward and frail; he didn’t appear to have the strength to walk any distance at all. Helping him along was a man in his late twenties with shoulder-length black hair and a long, pointed nose that reminded Mallory of some forest animal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James knelt and formally kissed the hand of the old man. “Our bishop,” he said when he rose.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The old man smiled; his eyes were uncannily bright and sharp. “Cornelius,” he amended in a rural Scottish accent. “New arrivals?” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“More recruits for the knights,” James said. “They’re growing fast. It shouldn’t be long before we have a full complement.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Then our community here owes you our gratitude,” Cornelius said to Mallory and Miller. “You are our future. Your bravery will not go unrewarded.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He began his slow progress along the aisle, but his companion held back. With a surreptitious glance at the bishop, he caught James’s arm and said, “The dogs have started to gather.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James’s expression darkened. “Surely they won’t make their move yet.” He, too, glanced after the bishop. “Surely not yet.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They’re driven by ideology. Common sense doesn’t come into it.” He moved off quickly to catch the bishop’s arm.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Who was that?” Mallory asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Julian. A good man. He’s the precentor, responsible for the choir, the music, and a few other recently added duties, mainly to do with the services and spiritual life of the cathedral. He’s one of the four Principal Persons who oversee the Chapter of Canons, our guiding body.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James appeared briefly distracted, then, sensing Mallory’s interest, shepherded them quickly away before they could ask any more questions.</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong>*</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James took them throughout the main body of the cathedral and its ancillary buildings; it was important, he said, for every new arrival to understand both the facts and the symbolism of their new home. “This will be our Jerusalem,” he said. “In England’s green and pleasant land.” He detailed the history of the cathedral from its construction between 1220 and 1258 following the decision to move it</div><div style="text-align: left;">from its original location at Old Sarum, through to modern times, so that by the end Mallory thought he was going to go insane if he heard another date. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The new cathedral was entrusted to Nicholas of Ely, a master mason, who encoded many mysteries in the sacred geometry of the building, utilising the vast secret knowledge of numbers, angles, and harmonics passed down through the masonic guilds of medieval times,” James commented as they stood in the south quire aisle. “They say the great secrets of our religion were locked in the stone,</div><div style="text-align: left;">but much of the knowledge has since been lost. Who knows what the length of this column, or the angle of that beam, was meant to imply? What we do know is that the building itself was seen as an act of worship. Here, God is in the detail and in the greater design.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is that why you made your base here?” Mallory asked. “What was wrong with Winchester? Or Glastonbury?” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James thought deeply before replying. “Those places were certainly considered, as were several others. In the end, the decision was made to come to Salisbury for one very important reason.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory read his face. “But you’re not going to tell us what it is.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James grew serious. “We like to keep a few secrets.” He winced as if he’d said too much, and Mallory was intrigued to see him change direction, leading them now up a winding stone stairway rising from the south transept. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We have an excellent library here,” James said rather awkwardly, as if continuing the previous conversation. “Its most famous item is a copy of the Magna Carta, but it has long been praised by academics for its ancient manuscripts, including a page of the Old Testament in Latin from the eighth century and two Gallican psalters from the tenth century.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’ll have to book those out on a quiet night,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The more important books are less well known,” James continued. “Within, there are sacred texts the outside world has never been allowed to see since the cathedral was established. Indeed, part of its reason for existing was as guardian and protector of old truths—or lies, depending on your point of view.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Surely the great Church wasn’t afraid of a few words on paper?” Mallory said. “Or was it that these things were too dangerous for the common man to find out?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James laughed quietly. “I’m just a lowly member here. But I’ve heard it said that the potency arises not from any individual volume, each of which presents one particular view, but in the totality. Each is a fragment that together reveal a large secret.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller appeared troubled at this. “Religious secrets?” he asked anxiously.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not wholly,” James replied. “The library also contains a collection of the earliest scientific, mathematical, and medical books, including William Harvey’s<em> De Motu Cordis</em>, which identified the circulation of the blood for the first time. They were bequeathed by Seth Ward, who became bishop in 1667. But before that he’d been Professor of Astronomy at Oxford and a founding member of the Royal Society.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I thought scientists and the religious were always at each other’s throats,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Apparently not in the old days.” James’s smile was enigmatic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At the top of the stairs they were confronted by two men installing large locks in the door that led to the library; through the opening they could see the stacks of ancient books and smell the warm atmosphere of dusty paper. The workers were being overseen by a man in his late fifties, overweight beneath his black robes, with a balding pate and a goatee beard. His eyes were dark and piercing and instantly fell on the new faces. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Good morning, Stefan,” James said brightly. “What have we here?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The library is now off-limits, on the orders of the bishop.” Stefan tried to return James’s smile, but it was an awkward attempt that looked out of place on his face. The shadows under his eyes suggested a saturnine nature, and he quickly returned to a gloomy countenance.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh?” James said, puzzled. “I can’t understand that. The library is a vital resource for everyone here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Nevertheless, the decision has been made. Requests for specific books can be presented to the librarian, who will put them to the new library committee for consideration.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That sounds like an unwieldy process. How often does the committee meet?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We haven’t yet reached agreement on all the details, but as chairman of the committee I will certainly do my best to expedite matters.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James nodded and smiled, but as he moved Mallory and Miller on, he was plainly uncomfortable with what he had heard.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Looks as if your back-to-basics approach is gathering speed.” Mallory couldn’t resist prodding. “What next—services in Latin?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I think I’ll raise this with the bishop myself,” James said. “Those books are so important in these days when knowledge is at a premium. The people here need—” He waved a hand to dismiss his thoughts, though they obviously lay heavily on him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Stefan’s another big shot?” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He’s the chancellor. He looks after the education of everyone here. Like all the Principal Persons, he was instrumental in bringing the Church to Salisbury.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As they exited the cathedral, it was as if some tremendous gravity was reluctantly releasing them. Outside, there was an ethereal quality to the bright morning sunlight. James took them into the sprawling mass of houses, now fully alive with men of all ages cutting wood, feeding cattle and chickens, and cleaning out pigsties. “This is where we house all those who have come to us since we established our new base,” James noted. “As you can see, we’ve just about reached the limits of occupation. Quite what we’re going to do from here is open to debate, though we are loathe to allow our own to live beyond the walls for fear of victimisation.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is there much of that?” Miller asked apprehensively.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not a great deal, though there have been several severe incidents. There are some who see us as a threat, others who feel our time is done. In the light of all that has happened, it appears everyone has their own peculiar belief system to try to make sense of the upheaval. I think they feel let down by the Church because we did not explain the events, or care for them in their hour of need, or simply because they feel what we offer has no relevance to the difficult times we all live in. What need do we have for a hidden, mysterious God when solid, physical gods have walked amongst us? Obviously the answers to that question are easy for us to voice, but who has the time or inclination for theological argument? The only way we can win them back is by playing a long game, by letting the Word filter out organically. And that is where the knights come into the equation.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Finally, James took them to an area at the rear of the former Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum where the knights were sequestered. Several men were learning the art of sword fighting, while others attacked scarecrows with halberds. All faces were intense and deeply introspective, the movements fluid and powerful. Distinctive uniforms marked them out: black shirts bearing the Templar cross in red against a white square on the breast and right shoulder, hardwearing black trousers, heavy-duty boots, and black belts.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">There was another cadre of knights removed from the core group who duelled with each other with a frightening ferocity, at times lithe, then vicious, their speed and dazzling turns and dives revealing skills that set them apart. Their uniforms were also slightly different, with a blue stripe gleaming on the</div><div style="text-align: left;">left shoulder.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The commander stood off to one side, watching the activity, his authority apparent in his rigid bearing. Up close, Blaine had a face that registered such little emotion that at times he resembled a wax dummy. He was in his mid-forties, his black hair badly dyed. Hard muscles filled out a uniform carrying the red Templar cross more prominently on the front. His heavy brows cast a shadow around his eyes so that he appeared on the verge of sickness, yet there was a street-hardness about him that gave a commanding presence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He remained impassive when James introduced him as Blaine. “It won’t be a free ride here,” he said, with a Belfast accent. “We had a couple in who thought they’d get fed and watered without having to give anything back. They didn’t last the week.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’ll do what’s expected of us,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You see that you do . . . if you want to stay here. You’re getting a shot at something people would give their right arm for. There’s not much of value out there anymore. But in the next few years you’ll see that being a knight will be a mark of respect. The country will come to love you. But you have to earn it.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What do we need to do?” Miller asked. The knights had adopted a routine akin to tai chi, with measured, graceful movements, the weapons whipping rapidly around their bodies a hairsbreadth from causing them harm. Their movements looked easy yet unbelievably difficult at the same time. “How long did it take them to learn that?” Miller continued, agog.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Blaine’s gaze flickered lazily toward James. “You’re sure you want to give them a shot?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I always go on first impressions. Besides, if we are here for anything, it is to offer hope, to take in those who come to us . . . for whatever reason . . . and give them a chance.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Blaine grunted in a way that implied his complete disagreement with everything James had said, yet without seeming the slightest bit disrespectful. He turned back to Miller. “You’ll get full training. It’ll be hard, and fast. We need men out there quickly. I warn you, a lot aren’t up to it. We need to get you to the peak of physical fitness. You have to learn how to use weapons you’ve probably only seen in museums. You’ve got to learn skills—medicine, astronomy, herbalism, cookery—” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And don’t forget the spiritual guidance,” James said, with a smile.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And you’ll need to know the Good Book back to front,” Blaine continued without missing a beat. “The poor . . .” He fumbled for an acceptable word. “. . . people out there will be looking to you for guidance. They don’t want you telling them that Thou Shalt Not Pick Your Nose is one of the Ten</div><div style="text-align: left;">Commandments.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t worry,” Mallory said. “We’ll make sure they don’t covet any oxen.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Blaine laid his gaze heavily on Mallory; it said, <em>I’ve already got you marked as a troublemaker, and you’ll have it knocked out of you in a day</em>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory didn’t flinch.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">James was winningly courteous as he took his leave. “These are desperate times, but also momentous,” he said. “I feel that the Chinese were correct when they said there are no crises, only opportunities. This is an opportunity to reenergise Christianity and to bring it into the lives of the people once again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;">After Blaine, his gentleness was even more pronounced.</div><div align="left" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Blaine summoned his second-in-command to lead them to their quarters. Hipgrave had barely broken into his thirties, and he appeared much younger. His features carried a permanent sneer, but it looked theatrical, as if he thought it gave him gravitas. “You’ll be out of here before the week’s through,” he said in a light voice attempting to disguise its upper-middle-class origins.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” Mallory hadn’t seen anything he couldn’t handle.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Hipgrave gripped Mallory’s upper arm and spun him round. “The knights may be temporal but they operate along strict military lines. There is a chain of command. Insubordination is punished. There’s no room in the ranks for weak links.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller flinched, knowing that if Mallory remained true to his nature they could both be ejected. But despite a brief moment of tension, Mallory stayed calm and Hipgrave strutted off in front.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Please, Mallory,” Miller whispered, “don’t ruin this for me. You don’t know how much I need it.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Give me credit,” Mallory replied. “I’ve got some self-control—I’m not a complete thug.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Their footsteps echoed along empty corridors as Hipgrave led them to the second floor of the old museum and into a large room at the front overlooking the Cathedral Close. Ten camp beds were laid out at regular intervals beneath medieval wall tapestries. Two other men were already billeted there. One of them, a muscular, good-looking black man, was cleaning his boots with furious brush strokes</div><div style="text-align: left;">while the other, a rangy white man in his early fifties, knelt in prayer at a tiny altar beside his bed. They rose and faced the new arrivals for Hipgrave’s cursory introductions. Daniels was in his late thirties, intelligent, with an air of amused sophistication. Gardener, in contrast, was a Geordie with a rough working-class attitude, long greying hair tied in a ponytail, and a face that had the leathery appearance of meat left out for days in the sun.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When Hipgrave had departed, Mallory chose a bed from the remaining eight nd lay on it, staring at the ceiling.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I wouldn’t get used to that position if I were you,” Daniels said wryly. He’d resumed polishing his boots with a verve that bordered on obsession.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They work you hard?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re twinned with a Soviet Gulag. Their idea of downtime is a face-wash with river water and a turnip to gnaw on.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t listen to him. He’s a soft Southern bastard. Drinks wine with his little finger stuck out,” Gardener called over.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“At least I know what wine is, you beer-swelling Philistine.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Aye, you whine all the time.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels walked over to Gardener, brandishing his brush. “You know, you’d think some of my innate style and breeding would have rubbed off on you after the weeks we’ve been stuck here, but I’m starting to think you’ll remain a troglodyte forever.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You know you’re not supposed to use big words around me. Now bugger off, I’m trying to pray.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Despite their fractiousness, it was obvious to Mallory that a deep affection underpinned their relationship, a clear case of opposites attracting. In his voice and body language, Daniels seemed gay, though Gardener, as far as Mallory could tell, was straight—at least, he sported a worn wedding ring—and they obviously came from different backgrounds. But the camaraderie made him think it might</div><div style="text-align: left;">not be so bad there after all.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory and Miller were allowed only half an hour to settle in before another knight was sent to fetch them. He had red hair and freckles and a fastidious manner that irritated Mallory the moment the knight opened his mouth. He had been ordered to give them a wealth of instructions, none of which he was prepared to repeat, so they had no choice but to listen.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Everything here is based around discipline,” he said, “to focus the mind. Your day will be mapped out for you, and it’s a long day, believe me. This isn’t a place for the lazy.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He marched ahead of them with the stiff gait of a well-drilled military man, which made Mallory’s loose-limbed amble seem even more lazy. Miller hopped and skipped to keep up like a pony on a rope.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The knights, however, have a slightly different timetable from the rest,” the red-headed man continued. “There’s a lot of studying, a lot of training. For most people out there—” He motioned toward the sprawl of wooden huts visible through the window. “—the day begins at six a.m. with prime. That’s a full service in the cathedral, plainsong, the works. The prayer and chant continues</div><div style="text-align: left;">through the day, seven days a week. Terce at nine a.m., sext at midday, none in midafternoon, vespers at the end of the afternoon, and compline at dusk. After that, everyone retires to their rooms for <em>the great silence</em> and the cathedral is locked. At midnight everyone rises for the night office, followed immediately by the lauds of the dead. It lasts about two hours in total, and then you’re off on the</div><div style="text-align: left;">cycle again. You will be expected to attend services when you are not involved with your other duties.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory glanced at Miller; the younger man was clearly enthralled at the strict routine that left Mallory feeling an uncomfortable mixture of depression and defiance.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Your routine will be individually tailored, depending on where your strengths and weaknesses lie,” the knight continued. “For the first week or so, it will mainly centre on physical fitness and weapons training.” He eyed them askance. “To see if you have what it takes to meet the exacting standards required of a Knight Templar.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory knew enough about the military mind-set to understand what that meant: they could look forward to days of gruelling and unnecessary exercises to see if they had the strength of character to continue. And then Blaine—a military man at some level, Mallory guessed—would begin the long task of breaking their spirit so they would obey orders without question.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“After that period, the physical and weapons training will be confined to the early morning, after prime. Then you’ll be studying herbalism for treatment of wounds out in the field. The supply of drugs won’t last long and there’s no infrastructure to manufacture any more. Astronomy is . . . difficult.” His jaw set. “But you’ll need to navigate by the stars. And then there’s the Bible study and philosophy classes. Those are the main ones.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He brought them into a large oak-panelled room on the first floor. On one wall was fixed a plain wooden sign carved with the legend: <em>“Let nothing have precedence over divine office”—The Rule of St Benedict. </em></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At the other end of the room was a heavily fortified door beside a window that opened onto a small office stacked with boxes. The knight hammered on the windowsill to attract the attention of a man with a scar that turned his left eye into a permanent squint. He was introduced as Wainwright, the knights’ quartermaster.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Two uniforms?” he said, mentally measuring Mallory and Miller before disappearing into the bowels of the store. He returned a second later. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Perfect for a torchlight rally,” Mallory said, holding the black shirt up for size.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Uniforms are to be worn at all times,” the red-haired knight said. “And that means <em>all times</em>. Being caught without it means the disciplinary procedure.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory considered asking what this entailed, but he knew it would only depress him further.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The rest of the day was spent in a process that fell somewhere between induction and confession: names, education, abilities, criminal record, past transgressions, hopes, fears. Miller gave them a detailed account of his relationship with his parents and the breakdown of his romance, the catalyst that had propelled him toward Salisbury. Mallory changed his story several times, often during the same strand, before delivering a complex list of dates, times, names, and anecdotes that would have taken days of investigation before it was discovered that it made no sense at all.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They were very nice,” Miller said afterward, as they picked their way amongst the huts toward the refectory, a large, newly constructed building a stone’s throw from the cathedral.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“When you say <em>nice</em>, do you mean prying, interfering, compulsive control freaks?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller looked at him, puzzled. “No. Nice. They were nice. Didn’t you think they were nice?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I worry about you, Miller. You’re going to be the first person ever to die of unadulterated optimism.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller sighed. “I don’t know why you came here, Mallory. We’re going to be part of something big and good. Something important. All you’ve done is criticise. You’re a cynic.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Look, there’s Daniels.” Miller nodded toward the knight sauntering ahead of them; he carried himself with confidence, seemingly above the bustle he passed. Mallory noted how many looked at Daniels with respect, if not awe; was it the uniform or the person? “Come on, let’s catch him up,” Miller continued.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So how long have you been here, Daniels?” Miller asked as he skipped up beside him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Two months.” He eyed Miller’s skittishness wryly. “It was this or the circus.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That must be when the call first went out. Where were you?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels looked bemused at Miller’s effervescent questioning. “Bristol.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I heard some of the cities were tough in the early days,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A shadow crossed Daniels’s face. “It was, in some parts, for a while. The riots had died out by the time the call filtered through—no one had the energy left. But there were still some parts of the city you didn’t go into, if you know what I mean.” He looked across the huts at the darkening sky.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels had an impressive charisma that underscored his bearing. Mallory could imagine him in his civilian days, well groomed, wearing expensive, fashionable clothes, maybe in some professional job; maybe a lawyer. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How are you finding it?” Miller had such a bright-eyed-puppy manner that Daniels couldn’t help but lighten.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Hard, but rewarding.” He smiled. “You’ll enjoy it here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Any missions yet?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, but it’s only a matter of time. They want to be sure before they send anyone out there.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What made you come?” Mallory asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You don’t think I came out of obligation? An overarching desire to give something back to Christianity? To the world?” Daniels eyed Mallory as if he knew exactly what was going through the new arrival’s head.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t mind him,” Miller said. “He’s just an old cynic.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” Mallory replied. “I don’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels shrugged in an unconcerned way. “My partner was killed in the fighting. We’d been together for a while. It left . . . a big hole.” He chose his words carefully. “There was nothing for me in Bristol. I thought there might be something for me here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m sorry,” Miller said. “Were you planning on getting married?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Gareth was the religious one,” Daniels said directly to Mallory. “He was the one who went to church every week. I could take it or leave it. But he died with such dignity. Faith right up to the last. That was my moment of epiphany.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s a good enough reason,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">With some kind of unspoken agreement made amongst them, they set off together for the refectory.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You don’t seem much of a Christian, Mallory,” Daniels noted wryly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m not much of anything.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes, he is,” Miller said brightly. “He just doesn’t know it yet.” He proceeded to tell Daniels how Mallory had saved him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Self-preservation,” Mallory said. “Two were a better defence against those things.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Pants on fire,” Miller gibed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They joined the queue filing into the refectory. The aroma of spiced hot food floated out into the cooling twilight, setting their stomachs rumbling. The air was filled with the hubbub of optimistic voices, the sound of people who still couldn’t believe they were getting a square meal.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Tell me,” Mallory said to Daniels, “when we met Blaine earlier, there was another group of knights in training, away from the main lot. They had a blue flash on their left shoulders.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The Blues? They’re the élite. I think they used to be squaddies stationed at one of the army camps out on Salisbury Plain—it would take me years to get to their level of training. Blaine keeps them apart from the rest of us, but that’s OK by me—you can see it in their eyes.” He waved a pointing finger in front of Mallory’s face. “Army eyes. You know what I mean?” Mallory did. “Anyway, they’re involved in some ongoing mission. They go off for days at a time. Come back exhausted and filthy.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t bother asking questions, Mallory. You’ll soon find that no one tells you anything here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The refectory was a long, narrow barn with a high roof and open beams permeated by the smell of new wood. They picked up trays and cutlery before passing by tables at one end where the kitchen staff loaded up plastic plates with a stew of carrots, potatoes, parsnips, and oatmeal; bread; and a small lump of cheese. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No meat?” Mallory protested.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Once a week,” Daniels said, “They’re keeping a tight rein on supplies. Just in case.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“In case of what?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels shrugged.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They sat together at the end of a long trestle table reserved for the knights, away to one side. On the other tables, about a hundred and fifty people packed into the first sitting, their freedom from the day’s chores making their conversation animated. Gardener joined them soon after, taking a seat opposite Mallory with a gruff silence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What did you do in the old days, Gardener?” Miller asked chirpily.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Binman.” Gardener stuffed an enormous mound of vegetables into his mouth. “And I tell you,” he mumbled, “this is better than having your hands covered in maggots and shit every morning.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t want to hear about your sex life, Gardener,” Daniels said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hear the Blues headed off hell for leather at noon,” Gardener continued. “Don’t know what got them all fired up, but Blaine had a face that could curdle cream. And Hipgrave was pissed off because Blaine didn’t send him out as leader. Again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He is <em>so</em> desperate,” Daniels said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You know what he did this morning—” Gardener cut off his sour comment when he spotted Hipgrave heading across the room with his tray. The captain had lost his sneer and appeared uncomfortable in the crowd. He hesitated briefly when he noticed Gardener and the others watching him and then veered off his path to another table so he wouldn’t have to sit near them.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thanks for small bloody mercies,” Gardener muttered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory spotted a table on the far side of the room where all the diners sat in complete silence, intermittently praying and eating. He pointed it out to Daniels.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Headbangers,” Daniels said, chewing slowly on a piece of potato. “The price we pay for bringing all of the Lord’s flock under one roof.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Leave them alone.” Gardener continued to tuck into his dinner with gusto.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You would say that—you’re one of them.” Daniels turned to Mallory. “They’re Born-Agains, or evangelicals, or whatever it is they call themselves. They have a hard-line view of the Lord’s Word—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They stick to the text of the Gospel,” Gardener said, “unlike some of the weak-willed people in here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There are so many branches of the Church in here . . . sects—cults, even . . .” Daniels shook his head. “Some of them, they’re like a different religion. I don’t know where they’re coming from at all.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You don’t have a monopoly on God’s Word,” Gardener noted. “It’s open to different interpretations.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory stabbed a chunk of parsnip with his knife, then thought twice about eating it. He noticed Miller looking dreamily around the refectory. “You’re going to say this is like Disneyland for you, aren’t you?” he said. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller grinned at how easily Mallory had read his thoughts. “Well, it is a onderful place. All these people . . . all this hope . . . and faith . . . under one roof. It’s what I wanted to find. I just never really expected I would.” A shadow crossed his face.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“But?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s a bit weird, too.” He looked guilty at this observation.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You don’t know the half of it.” Gardener had so much in his mouth that he spat a lump of mushed vegetables back onto the plate with his words. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels shook his head wearily. “I’m asking Blaine to include etiquette in his tiresome list of lessons to be taught.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There’s been talk,” Gardener said. “Some strange stuff happening around here.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, here we go again.” Daniels rolled his eyes. “Lights in the sky. Mysterious this and strange that. Usually reported by people who’ve had the Toronto Blessing one time too many.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re a cynical bastard, Daniels, and no mistaking.” Gardener swallowed his mouthful and stifled a belch. “See? Etiquette.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Heavenly,” Daniels replied. “Which finishing school did you go to again?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What strange stuff?” Miller said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Gardener leaned across the table conspiratorially. “Ghosts, for one. And not just one. Some old bishop . . . Seth Ward, someone said . . . he was seen crossing the nave. One of the brothers saw a man’s face pressed up against the windows in what used to be the old cafeteria . . . all hideous, like. A cowled figure in the cloisters . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I can’t believe you fall for that nonsense!” Daniels said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“How different is it from the manifestation of the Holy Spirit?” Gardener waved his fork in Daniels’s face.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels batted it away. “Very different. It’s not real for a start.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And there were lights, floating over the altar,” Gardener continued. “Beeson heard voices when he was praying in the cathedral . . . calling to him, saying . . . worrying things.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What kind of things?” Daniels said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t know.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, because it’s a story, and a feeble one at that. They never have any detail. Just someone heard this, or someone saw that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t believe it, then,” Gardener said with a shrug. “See if I care.” He turned to Miller and Mallory. “But the smart folk here think it’s wise to keep your wits about you, and to stay away from the lonely places at night—” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Has anyone been hurt yet?” Daniels asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Then why are you making out like it’s the Amityville Horror? You’re such an old woman, Gardener.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Gardener smiled tightly at Miller and Mallory. “You know what it’s like out there in the world. And it’s the same in here. Nothing’s what it seems.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Their conversation was disrupted by a commotion near the door. Diners peeled away to allow a small entourage to move slowly into the room. At its centre was the bishop, walking with the aid of a cane and the support of two attendants. Julian and Stefan followed behind. All eyes followed Cornelius’s</div><div style="text-align: left;">excruciating progress.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels’s brow furrowed. “He normally eats in the palace.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He looks as if he hasn’t got the strength to get across the room,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“His legs are a bit shaky, but don’t go underestimating him. He’s sharp as a pin,” Gardener said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What are the others like?” Mallory’s attention was fixed on Stefan.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels pointed with a carrot impaled on his knife. “Stefan’s a bit of a cold fish. He used to be some businessman up in Manchester before he saw the light, I think. Julian’s OK. A bit too quiet for me, thoughtful, you know, but he’s got a very liberal view of life. He wasn’t involved in the Church before the Fall, but they promoted him out of nowhere because he’s brilliant, or so they say. Very learned about philosophy, comparative religion. I don’t know if he was an academic, but he’s a sharp guy, definitely.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Cornelius made his way to a table not too far from the door, which was hastily vacated for him. His attendants lowered him into a chair while Stefan brought over a plate of food that he proffered with a formal bow. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This is a show,” Mallory said quietly. “A little spin-doctoring. To let the common man know the bishop is just an ordinary joe. He’s not larging it in the palace. He can eat vegetable mush with the rest of the suckers.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Be respectful,” Miller hissed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory began to mop up his gravy with his bread while gently fantasising about pizza.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And that is Gibson,” Daniels said, pointing to the last imposing figure in the group. He must have been twenty-five stone, with a comically jolly face that appeared to be permanently on the point of a guffaw. His cheeks were bright red, his hair tight grey curls; large silver-framed spectacles surrounded eyes fixed in a humorous squint.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t tell me,” Mallory said, “he’s the Canon of the Pies.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The treasurer, actually. Looks after all the ornaments, vestments, and gold plate tucked away in the vaults.” Daniels smiled as he ate. “But he does oversee the kitchens as well.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So we’re in their hands.” Mallory didn’t attempt to hide his dismissiveness.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Them and their advisors,” Gardener said gruffly. “There’s a whole bunch of arse-kissers following them around, whispering in their ears. Keeping them informed, supposedly, because the top dogs don’t have time to spend finding out what the rest of us are thinking. But the arse-kissers are guiding them, really. They’re the power behind the throne.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels snorted. “Oh, not that routine again! You’re only upset because they’re not whispering about you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s true. You’ve got to watch out who you’re talking to round here. Everybody’s got some sort of thing going on.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>“Thing?”</em> Daniels shook his head and sighed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Come on, you know it’s true,” Gardener said. “This whole place is split down the middle. The modernisers think we should build on the state the Church had reached just before the change, make it acceptable to modern thinking. The traditionalists want a hard-line approach. Everybody’s plotting.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well, as much as I’m enjoying your comedy double-act,” Mallory said, “I don’t think I can stare at these vegetables anymore without gnawing on my own arm.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You should eat it up,” Gardener said, cleaning up the last of the gravy on his plate. “You’ll be desperate for it tomorrow when Blaine’s got you scrambling over that assault course.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s not as if you’ve got anywhere to go,” Daniels said. “It’s compline next, or had you forgotten? You’ll soon get used to realising you have no time of your own.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory rocked back in his chair. “You know, this place is just too much fun.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Despite Mallory’s disgruntlement, the atmosphere in the cathedral was deeply affecting. Outside, dusk had fallen, the darkness licking over a chilly landscape freed from electric lights. Inside, the stone walls basked in an ethereal golden glow from hundreds of candles. Incense and tallow smoke cocooned the worshippers who stood shoulder to shoulder along the nave and the quire. The plainsong rose up, filling the vast vault with a mesmerising, heady sound that reached deep into Mallory, tugging at emotions he barely thought he still had. It was a single voice made by hundreds of people, simple and pure yet powerful on so many levels. Mallory glanced over at Miller to see tears streaming down his cheeks.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Briefly, Mallory felt a sense of belonging that put all the unpleasantness of his past life into the shade. Perhaps there still was a chance for him: a fresh start, although he’d long ago given up that childlike whimsy of believing that some Higher Power took enough of an interest in the ants that swarmed the earth to give them a second chance. The fleeting hope, that weak thing he thought he’d scoured from his system, was a simple by-product of the perfect confluence of music and moment, he told himself. But still, it tugged at him. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He was examining the odd thoughts pulled from him by the intensity of faith when his concentration was broken by a figure he could just glimpse on the edge of the congregation, slightly ahead of him and away to the left. His face was obscured by his black cowl pulled far forward, unusual in itself as everyone else there went bareheaded. But there was no other reason why Mallory’s attention should be drawn to him so powerfully that he couldn’t look away. The figure was still, his shoulders slightly hunched. He didn’t appear to be singing, merely watching or perhaps listening, deep in thought.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory couldn’t understand why the figure made him feel uneasy, or why the tingling that had started in the small of his back was slowly spreading up his spine. Some deeply buried part of him was trying to break out of his subconscious to issue a warning.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As he watched for some sign that would give him an explanation for his reaction, the figure began to turn toward him, as if he sensed Mallory’s eyes upon him. Inexplicably, this filled Mallory with dread. He didn’t want to see the face inside that cowl.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He looked down at his hands, then up toward the altar, and when he did finally glance back, the figure was gone.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Outside in the night, Mallory tugged Miller away from the uplifted worshippers treaming back to their huts for a few hours’ grace before the whole round started again. He found a shadowed spot next to the cathedral walls and said, “Let’s hit the town. We can dump our uniforms and explore. There’s got to be some life out there. Maybe we’ll find someone who’ll take pity on us and buy us a beer.” He</div><div style="text-align: left;">knew his bravado was a response to the sobering but stupid fear he had felt in the service.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are you crazy? You heard what they said—being caught without the uniform—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re not going to get caught.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“—is a punishable offence. And we’re not supposed to go out of the compound after curfew. I don’t even know if we’re supposed to go out there at all.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I told you, we’re not going to get caught. Who’s to know? Don’t you want to find out what your new neighbours are like?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller protested fulsomely, clearly afraid of jeopardising everything he felt he’d gained, but Mallory chipped away at him on the way back to their quarters so that by the time they arrived, Miller reluctantly agreed to the secret foray. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Daniels and Gardener still hadn’t returned, so they quickly changed into their street clothes and slipped out. “How are we going to get away?” Miller hissed as they flitted from hut to hut.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I had a look around earlier. There’s a spot not far from the gate where we can slip over the wall. When we come back we can give the guard some bullshit about being on a secret mission or something. He’s bound to let us in.” Miller didn’t look convinced, but he allowed himself to be swayed by Mallory’s confidence.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The camp was still as they made their way past the gate. But before they could climb the ladder to the runway around the top of the wall, the sound of running feet and frantic raised voices rapidly approached from the other side. Mallory pushed Miller back into the shadows. </div><div style="text-align: left;">An insistent cry hailed the guard. Mallory couldn’t make out what was said, but the guard responded by hand-winding an old-fashioned klaxon before opening the gates.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Nine knights rushed in through the widening gap, the blue flash on their shoulders clear in the flickering flame of the torch mounted above the gate. Their swords were drawn as they constantly scanned all around with their army eyes. They were in a terrible state, their uniforms torn and charred, their bare skin covered with cuts and bruises; some had bound deeper wounds with makeshift bandages torn from their shirts, the material now stained black. Their faces were grim with determination.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">In the middle of the group, two knights hauled what Mallory at first thought was burned log. It was only when he saw its rolling white eyes that he realised it was a man, his skin seared black; Miller turned away from the smell of cooked flesh. The knight was still alive, but he wouldn’t be for long.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The ones at the rear gathered around one of their number who had a wooden box clutched tightly to his chest. They drove hard into the compound then yelled at the guard to close the gates.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A group of five men hurried from the direction of the cathedral to meet them. The only one Mallory recognised was Stefan, his balding head gleaming like a skull. Ignoring the suffering of the wounded knight, he went directly to the captain and said something in hushed, insistent tones that Mallory couldn’t make out. The captain nodded and motioned to the one with the box; Stefan barked an order to his four assistants and then the whole group moved speedily in the direction of the cathedral.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When they’d gone, Miller whispered dismally, “That poor man!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Looks as if he stood a little too close to the barbecue.” Mallory stared at the silhouette of the cathedral blocking out the stars, trying to make sense of what he’d seen. “What was in the box?” he mused to himself. “What was so important?” After a moment, he set off for the ladder. “Ah, who cares? Come on, let’s hit the town.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They climbed quickly, keeping one eye out for the guard. When they reached the top, Mallory led Miller to a part of the wall that was lower than the rest where they could easily drop down to the street. They paused for a moment at the foot of the wall, and when they were sure no one had seen them, they ran toward the town, keeping well to the shadows.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Once the walls had been swallowed by the dark at their backs, Miller heard Mallory’s voice floating back to him as they ran. “You know how you get that little tingling sensation when something’s going to end in tears? Or is that just me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>chapter three</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>THE EVIDENCE OF THINGS NOT SEEN</strong></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em>“Just as children seem foolish to adults, so humans seem foolish to the gods.”</em></div><div style="text-align: left;">-Heraclitus</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Salisbury’s streets were oddly otherworldly in a flood of light from flaming torches that had been attached to the now-useless lampposts; their sizzling pitch added a spicy quality to the cooling air. More people milled around than Mallory would have expected with the encroaching night. Many shops remained open, their trade carried out by candlelight. Friends chatted beneath the crackling torches, freed from the rigour of days that had become unduly hard. Children played in the gutter without fear of cars or buses, although the occasional horse-drawn cart moved by them at an alarming clip. Outside the Maltings shopping centre, a teenager strummed on a guitar while his friends danced or drank homemade cider. Others flirted or kissed each other in the shadows.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The population had adapted remarkably well to the inversion of their lives. Indeed, from the good humour evident all around, they appeared to be relishing it. Mallory and Miller moved through them, watching silently, enjoying the normality.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Near Poultry Cross, where tradesmen had hawked their goods for centuries, a man with lank grey hair to his shoulders stood on an old kitchen chair and preached passionately to a small detached crowd. He seemed to be proclaiming the glory of a god that lived at the bottom of his garden. Further on, three</div><div style="text-align: left;">women prayed silently around a picture of George Clooney framed with wild flowers. At the marketplace, there were more individuals preaching to no one at all, or large groups singing of the wonder of some deity or other. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They’re crazy,” Miller muttered.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Your God’s more real, is that it?” Mallory noted.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes.” Miller knew Mallory was baiting him but couldn’t resist responding. “He’s been worshipped for millennia, not ten months.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So in a couple of thousand years, old Clooney—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, shut up.” Miller tried to stop there, but he couldn’t. “There’s a whole coherent philosophy behind Christianity—” His ears burned at Mallory’s laughter. “There is!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You don’t have to sell it to me, Miller. Just don’t try pretending you’re better than these poor sods.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They continued to wander, exploring the sights. As a new city, Salisbury had the benefit of being planned on a rectangular checkerboard pattern like some Roman metropolis. Most people gathered in a small square that ran from the market to the Maltings and up to Crane Street and New Street, a continuous thoroughfare that was the closest to the cathedral.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As Mallory and Miller wandered along the path at the side of the culverted river, watching the trout, grayling, and dace swim in the light of an occasional torch, they were disturbed by the sounds of a scuffle coming from further along the lonely path where no light burned. Mallory was ready to ignore it, but when Miller jumped to investigate he felt a weary obligation to follow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Barely visible in the gloom, three men were hunched over a still shape on the floor. Before Mallory could utter a caution, Miller was already yelling, “Leave him alone!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Against his better judgment, Mallory ran in behind Miller, who was rapidly closing on the three. The gang half-heartedly squared up to him, then saw Mallory behind and decided it was too much trouble. They turned and ran off into the dark, but not before Mallory saw that they were all wearing black T-shirts marked with a bright red V from shoulders to navel.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Have you lost your mind?” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller was kneeling next to the shape on the floor: a young man crumpled in a growing pool of blood. “We’re knights. We’re supposed to help people in trouble.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m going to have to have a word with you about the difference between fantasy and reality.” Mallory checked the victim’s pulse. “Dead.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Poor man. Who shall we tell?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No one.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We can’t leave him here,” Miller said. “He’ll have a family—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Someone will find him soon enough. Listen, we’re strangers here. They’re likely to think we did it. Not everyone has a naïve belief that all people speak the truth.” He knelt down and started to go through the victim’s pockets.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What are you doing?” Miller said, aghast.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory fished out a wallet and went through the contents. “Look at this.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They’ve got their own currency going on here. A local economy.” He took the amateurishly printed notes and stuffed them in his pockets.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You can’t do that!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“He can’t take it with him.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re as bad as the people who killed him!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, I’m not, because <em>I didn’t kill him</em>. Come on, we’ll have a drink on him.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I will not,” Miller said peevishly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Then you can sit beside me while I have a drink. You’ve got to get your head around how the world works these days, Miller.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What, without ethics or morals?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Something like that.” Mallory sighed. “No, I don’t mean that. But you’ve got to be hard, Miller. There’s no safety net in this world anymore. No Welfare State to help you out. Everybody’s watching their own backs—that’s the only way to survive.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t believe you, and you’ll never convince me otherwise. Basic human nature is decent.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And then you woke up. Are you coming or not?” Mallory walked back toward the lights. Miller hovered for a moment, sad and angry at the same time, then followed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They found a pub overlooking the market square. The bright green doors of the Cornmarket Inn were thrown open to the night, tempting passersby into the smoky interior lit by just enough candles and torches to provide shadows for those who preferred to drink out of plain view. The customers were a mixed bunch: some rural workers, grime on their clothes and grass seeds in their laceholes, some weary-eyed traders and shopkeepers who had finished up for the night, and a large group who all appeared to know each other. They ranged from teenagers to pensioner age, but the smattering of dreadlocks and shaved heads, hippie jewellery and colourful clothes made Mallory think of New Age travellers.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">True to his word, Miller eschewed a drink, but he appeared happy enough surrounded by the high-spirited pub-goers. Mallory ordered a pint of ale brewed in the pub’s back room and they retreated to the only free table. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What do you think those Blues were up to?” Mallory mused as he sipped on his beer. “The <em>élite</em> group,” he added with mockery.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller didn’t appear to have given it a second thought. “Nothing for us to worry about.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory looked at him in disbelief. “Of course it’s something for us to worry about. <em>Everything</em> is something for us to worry about.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Blaine—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The bishop, the canons, all of them . . . You don’t put your trust in people who set themselves up as leaders, Miller. In religion, in politics, in the military, in business . . . the simple act of seeking high office is a signifier of a peculiar, unreliable, controlling, unpleasant pathology that means they shouldn’t be <em>allowed</em> any kind of power. And I’ll keep saying that over and over again until everyone on this planet listens.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s ridiculous. If we followed that line of thought we wouldn’t have any leaders at all.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And your point is?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You can’t have a religion without leaders—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Who says?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller squirmed with irritation. “I hate it when you do this. Why are you picking on me?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Because your life’s just too perfect, Miller. You need to be brought down to everyone else’s level. Just see me as your own personal tormentor, a living horsehair shirt for the soul.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller took a deep breath. “You can’t have a religion without leaders because you need discipline—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, you don’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“—to help the followers find the true path to God through all the confusion.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You can do it yourself.” Mallory jabbed a finger sharply into Miller’s sternum.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No, I can’t.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You just don’t think you can. You can do anything you want, Miller.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Thanks for the vote of confidence, but you don’t know me. Besides, that sounds faintly blasphemous.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller started to brood over what Mallory had said, chewing on the nail of one of his little fingers. Mallory returned to his beer, hiding his smile, but after a moment he was drawn back to the neo-hippies whose humour was both infectious and comforting. Mallory realised how rarely he had heard anyone laugh in recent times.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">His attention fell on a woman who was doing nothing out of the ordinary but who had a presence like a beacon. He realised he’d been aware of her from the moment he walked in the pub, even though he couldn’t recall looking at her; all around people were glancing at her as if they couldn’t tear their eyes away. She was in her mid- to late twenties, wearing a faded hippie dress beneath a bright pink mohair sweater; a clutter of beads and necklaces hung around her neck. The others in her group, even the older ones, deferred to her, nodding intently when she was serious, laughing at her jokes. Mallory liked the sharp, questioning intelligence he saw in her face, but it was coupled with a knowing quality around the eyes that was deeply sexy. To him that was a winning combination.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Do you like her?” He had been so lost in his appraisal that he hadn’t noticed Miller studying him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“She’s put together OK.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller chuckled. “Is it the hair?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I wouldn’t be so shallow as to be attracted by the merely physical.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You make me laugh, Mallory!” Miller put his hands behind his head. “What I see is long brown hair that you just want to touch, full lips that curl up at the corners, and big, big eyes—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Steady on, Miller. They’ll have to hose you down when we get back.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The woman stared at Miller, her brow furrowing; she’d obviously caught him watching and talking about her. Miller blushed furiously and looked away. Mallory jabbed a thumb at him, then raised one eyebrow at the woman. She shook her head wearily.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Mallory!” Miller protested. “She thinks I’m after her now!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’ll teach you to stare.” Mallory chortled to himself before downing the remainder of his pint in one go.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’re such a <em>lad</em>.” Miller sighed, becoming gloomy as memories surfaced. “Did I tell you I was going to get married?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Sue and me had been going out since we were at school. I thought we’d always be together. No great beauty . . . not too smart, either . . . but that didn’t matter. She really made me laugh. She didn’t mind that I was a brickie’s mate, didn’t nag me to get a better job.” He was staring at the floor, lost to his</div><div style="text-align: left;">thoughts. “You know how it is when you’re with someone so close it’s like you’re with yourself?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You don’t have to put on any act,” Miller continued dismally, “you can be the same sad loser you know you are without pretending to be anybody else and they still love you.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I said, no.” Mallory pretended to concentrate on his glass while surreptitiously watching the woman, wishing he were in a position where he could talk to her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“At least, I thought it was like that,” Miller continued to himself. “But I was just fooling myself, wasn’t I? Maybe if I’d acted like somebody else she’d still be with me . . . and everything would be all right again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He mumbled something else that sounded as if he thought it was important, but Mallory’s attention was deflected by sudden activity outside the window: a flash of a figure running by in the dark, then another, then several people sprinting. It was a perfectly mundane image, but a tingle of apprehension ran up his spine nonetheless.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Others had noticed it. An old man in a window seat pressed his face against the glass. Someone else ran out into the street and grabbed hold of a passing teenager who at first struggled to get free before pointing behind him, gabbling animatedly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller’s chattering in his ear was a distant drone; Mallory was drawn by the scenario unravelling outside.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As the teenager ran off, the man who had emerged from the pub looked back down the street. A subtle change crept across his face, amused detachment giving way to incomprehension, then a dull, implacable fear.</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I think we need to see this,” Mallory said quietly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As he replaced his glass on the table, other drinkers were already making their way out onto the street. Mallory pushed his way into the centre of the road with Miller trailing behind him. They were instantly transfixed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Though it was a dark, moonless night with heavy cloud cover, the sky was filled with light. Flashes of angry fire illuminated the clouds, every now and then bursting through to form pillars of flame that rammed down to the earth. Occasionally, it limned a shape moving with serpentine grace on large batlike wings that beat the air lazily. Mallory thought he glimpsed the shimmer of jewels on its skin, rich sapphires, emeralds, and rubies; echoes of another image surfaced from the depths of his subconscious, of fire in the dark. Whatever it was, it was filled with power, but there was something in the way it moved that suggested a terrifying fury: it was hunting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But that wasn’t the worst thing. Behind it, along the horizon but sweeping forward, Mallory could make out something he could only describe as a presence: a thick white mist was unfurling like cloth, billowing at its central point and folding around at the edges so that it had an unnatural substance and life. It moved quickly across the landscape toward the city. Occasionally, the mist would take on aspects of a face—hollow eyes, a roaring mouth—before some other disturbing shape appeared; Mallory saw something that resembled an animal, another that looked like a bird. Gradually, it coalesced into a smoky horned figure towering over the city, insubstantial but filled with primal fears.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The Devil,” Miller whispered, terrified, “and the Serpent.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The air was infused with a palpable sense of dread. Everyone standing on that chill, dark street could only look up at it and remember years of religious imagery, laid on them since childhood, of damnation and torment. Whatever it was, it had come from the outer dark to the city, and its intent appeared apparent. Those of a Christian bent crossed themselves, and some who had not called themselves Christian for a long time did so, too.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller was whimpering quietly, whispering, “The Devil . . . the Devil . . .” until it became a mantra of Evil rippling through the crowd.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Even Mallory, who thought he was numb to most things, felt a crackle of fear as he looked up at the ancient image. He didn’t know what it was, or tried to tell himself he didn’t, but he knew he could feel the presence of a cold, alien intellect, and the threat it brought with it.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The Devil’s come to town.” Someone laughed, though without humour.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">It drifted for a moment in the thermals above the cooling city before breaking up as something dark at its core drove forward with a monstrous purpose. Screams rang throughout Salisbury, one voice lifting up in terror.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory glanced back in the direction of the cathedral. Miller’s sagging expression showed they both shared the same thought: even if they got back to the gates, there was little chance they’d be able to get inside in time. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Come with us.” The voice at Mallory’s shoulder was low, warm, and accentless, though insistent. He looked into the face of the woman he’d been admiring, and for the briefest instant he was so dazzled by her large, dark eyes that the threat faded into the background.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’ve got a concrete bunker with ten-foot-thick walls?” he said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Something like that.” Her gaze felt as if it was cutting through all his carefully prepared defences and he quickly looked away.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">A teenager with dreadlocks bleached a brilliant white appeared beside her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Come on, let’s move.” His eyes flickered furtively toward the Devil in the sky.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The group Mallory had decided were New Age travellers headed quickly down the street, the woman at the heart of them, pausing only briefly to see if Mallory was following.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“What are we going to do?” Miller asked anxiously.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Stand here or run.” Mallory didn’t wait to see Miller’s choice.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They veered away from the cathedral along Crane Street, over the river bridge to Queen Elizabeth Gardens where the tent city sprawled. The cries had become a nerve-jangling chorus, rising up all around as though everyone in the city was aware of what was bearing down on them. The horned shape had dissipated, to be replaced by a rushing wind that had substance and its own inner darkness</div><div style="text-align: left;">screaming in at roof height. Chimney pots crashed down, sending slates showering into the street. The glass of streetlights exploded as if crushed by a malicious hand.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As they ran toward the tents, they were all knocked from their feet by the shock wave of a powerful blast. Rubble rained down all around, most of it reduced to less than the size of a fist. With ringing ears, Mallory looked back to see part of the shopping quarter on fire, a column of thick black smoke rising up to the serpentine winged creature, now clearly visible.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A Fabulous Beast.” The woman sat nearby, rubbing at her temple, which was now streaked with brick dust. “And it’s angry?” She threw off her daze and hauled Miller to his feet, urging him to move. Mallory was surprised to feel a twinge of jealousy for the touch of her hand. “We need to get within the camp,” she said, which Mallory found faintly ridiculous when the only shelter there was a thin covering of canvas or plastic.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The travellers surged into the camp before scuttling beneath trees to avoid the still-raining debris that took out more than one tent. The bursts of fire screaming from the sky were like some hellish vision of a wartime air raid, but the dark presence that fell across everything was far worse; it was as if shadowy fingers were plucking at their souls.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We can’t stay here!” Miller squealed impotently. “We need to find a hiding place!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Chill.” The dreadlocked teen slapped a hand on Miller’s shoulder, pressing him down. “We’re safe, if we don’t get brained by a flying brick. See—protected.” He pointed to a post hung with strings of crystals, feathers, and small animal bones. Similar posts were staked out around the perimeter as far as</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory could see.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Kill me now,” he said. “We’re doomed.” He tried to discern the location of what the woman had called the Fabulous Beast, but the glare from numerous torches lighting the camp made it difficult to see. The devil-wind rushed around the boundaries of the camp before delving back into the city.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Can’t you feel it?” Miller rubbed at his skin as if he had scabies. Mallory could: the touch of some intelligence so far beyond him he couldn’t begin to categorise it, creeping through the labyrinth of his mind, swinging open locked doors, bringing wild panic into the civilised centres, dark and hateful and very, very old. Despite himself, he shuffled back until he felt the security of a tree trunk.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Gradually, the panic passed. The Fabulous Beast and the dark wind accompanying it had focused on another part of the city. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It won’t come this way. We can’t be seen,” the woman said, to reassure him.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Right. We pretend we’re trees. Or do we just cover our eyes really, really tight?” Mallory watched the sky, having decided he’d run for cover under the river bridge when the things came back. “What’s your name?” he asked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Sophie Tallent.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Mallory. And that person trying to burrow under the soil is Miller. You’re the boss?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Here? No, of course not.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You really believe this . . .” He nodded to the posts. “. . . is going to keep you safe?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Do you see the Fabulous Beast and that other thing attacking us?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And if you wish hard enough the sun might come up tomorrow.” He grabbed Miller roughly by the collar of his jacket and lifted him off the ground. “Come on—we might still be able to make the compound.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As they moved toward the perimeter, they were surprised by the insistence in Sophie’s voice as she called, “Don’t cross the boundary!” She was right behind them, one imploring arm stretched out. “You’ll be seen. Really. You need to believe—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her voice was drowned out by the rushing wind sweeping through the streets at hurricane force. Hidden in the noise was the sound of screaming voices that brought a chill to Mallory’s spine. A building collapsed nearby. The force rushed toward the cathedral, dragging what seemed like all hell in its wake. When it reached its destination, there was a sound of thunder and a metallic crashing before it soared high into the air. Screeching, it continued to circle the cathedral compound.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pale and shaking, Miller made the sign of the cross.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Let’s sit. You can’t go out there till things have quietened down,” Sophie said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Every rational argument told Mallory to ignore her, but he was already under her spell; the attraction had been instantaneous—he had never met anyone he wanted to know so keenly, though he couldn’t put his finger on exactly what it was that entranced him. With a shove, he encouraged Miller to follow her toward the fire, though they both continually glanced over their shoulders at the oppressive presence over the city.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">By the time they found a quiet spot away from the other pockets of travellers and sat down, Mallory had almost started to believe that the thing wouldn’t attack. They were joined by the dreadlocked teenager who appeared to be less of a friend and more of an assistant to Sophie. He introduced himself as Rick. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller crossed himself again, craning his neck upward fearfully. “That’s the Devil,” he said, hoping someone would dissuade him of the notion.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It was certainly scary,” Sophie said, “though I’m not much of a believer in the Devil myself.” She leaned over and gave Miller’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “You’re safe here.” He visibly calmed at her touch.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller looked to Mallory for support. “It’s like in Revelations. The Last Days. The Church has collapsed . . . I mean, it’s not gone,” he added guiltily, “but it’s barely hanging on. We’ve had war, and starvation, and . . . and . . .” Panic crossed his face once more. “It was the Devil . . . you saw it . . . you felt it . . . the fear. Everything’s ending.” He hugged his arms around himself tightly, staring blankly into the middle distance.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">In a glance, something passed briefly between Sophie and Rick, then she leaned over and rested a small crystal from a pouch at her waist against Miller’s forehead. There was an instant reaction: Miller’s posture shifted, his shoulders loosening, his features becoming brighter, almost as if a shadow had been drawn from his face. Mallory looked at her curiously, but she studiously avoided his eyes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This is like a little town,” Miller said with incongruous brightness. “How long are you staying here?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“For good.” A breeze caught Sophie’s hair. Despite the now-faint screeching high above them, a surprising tranquillity lay over the camp. Sophie noticed Mallory’s recognition of the calm. “There’s a deep spirituality in the land here,” she said. “That’s why we’ve come. That’s why we’ll continue to come, from all parts of the country.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“A ley line—” Rick began.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory snorted derisively.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I might have expected that response before the Fall,” Sophie said, “but things are different now, surely you know that? We’ve got our technology back, but these days spirituality is just as potent a force—”</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller nodded. “The power of prayer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There’s an energy in the land, an energy that runs through us, too. You can call it spirit, or soul, but everything is tied together by it—” Sophie’s face hardened slightly at Mallory’s dismissive laughter. “I believe in it because I feel it,” she said, “and because it works.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s Sophie’s power source.” Rick smiled at them. “Her battery. You should see what she can do.” The awe in the teenager’s voice was affecting.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The discussion touched something in Miller. “It’s true, Mallory. Back in Swindon, I saw an old woman lay her hands on a baby that was about to die . . . and it lived. It’s like, if you believe in something strongly enough, you can tap into something, make it real. All the atheists used to say there was no evidence of God, but now He’s here, answering prayers.” A notion dawned on him. “Perhaps it’s because these really are the Last Days. Good and Evil preparing for the last battle . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They’ve been saying the Last Days are here ever since the Book of Revelation was written, Miller. I’m not going to start running my life around something composed at a time before underwear had been invented.” He waved away Miller’s hurt expression. “These days, everybody’s desperate to find something to believe in,” he continued. “They can’t face what a nightmare the world’s turned into . . . how many people have died . . . how <em>hard</em> it’s become. It’s made children of everyone. They’re wishing for a way out because the alternative is decades . . . at the very least . . . of hardship and suffering as we try to crawl back to some measure of the society we had before. Look around . . . we’re back in the Dark Ages.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sophie listened carefully, but gave no sign of what she was thinking. “And what do you believe in, Mallory?” she asked. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Nothing. That’s what I believe in.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Everyone believes in something. But sometimes they don’t recognise what they put their faith in. Money, drugs, sex—” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That works for me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her eyes narrowed as she examined his face. “No, it’s none of those things. There’s something there, but I can’t tell exactly . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling that she was trying to read his mind. He broke eye contact. “You’re just being dazzled by my charisma and earthy sex appeal.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She smiled ironically. “That must be what it is.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller hugged his knees. The firelight actually gave some colour to his normally pallid face. “Who are you people?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Pagans, philosophers,” Rick began. “Environmentalists, travellers, freethinkers—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There’s a movement going on all over the country, Mallory. We’re just one sign of it,” Sophie said passionately. “We’re rebuilding a new Celtic Nation from the ground up. You don’t have to have Celtic blood to be a part of it, but we’re using that ancient culture as a template—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“If you’re trying to get some kind of historical credence, you’re off to a bad start,” Mallory interrupted. “There was no Celtic Nation, just a bunch of tribes—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“With a similar culture, music, belief system—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Fragmentary. The Romantics built them up into something bigger . . . a fantasy . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Exactly.” She leaned forward, emphasising the word with a blow of her palm to the ground. “You’ve obviously read the right books, Mallory, but you’re missing the point. We <em>want</em> an ideal. The system we had before was woefully bereft. It worked for a few, the élite, the Establishment, and disenfranchised the many. We’ve got a chance here to start with a clean slate and we want something better.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“So you’re going to cover yourself with blue paint and go into war naked?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Her smile was a challenge. “If we have to. I love to see cynics proved wrong, Mallory. As an aside, don’t go basing your views of the Celts on the writings of some tired old Romans. The victors write history and they disempower the vanquished. What we want is a society of equality, a strong community that looks after the weakest members, that’s close to nature, that emphasises the arts and spirituality over making money and personal greed—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Well, when you put it like that . . .”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She watched him cautiously with those big, unnaturally dark eyes, slowly getting the measure of him. He relished her attention, enjoyed the fact that, liked or disliked, he had somehow been raised above the herd in her eyes. “If we don’t do it, there’ll be plenty ready to take us back to the old, failed ways,” she said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“OK, that seems a reasonable motivation,” Mallory conceded, “but all this other stuff . . .” He waved a dismissive hand toward the perimeter posts.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s part of the human condition to be arrogant.” Her smile was as confrontational as Mallory’s words. “Everyone thinks they know exactly how the world works. Everyone.” Irony laced her comments. “What do you think that suggests? We’re all fumbling in the dark toward an answer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The calming atmosphere in the camp had almost made them forget the devastation going on in the city beyond. Occasionally, they would be distracted by a sudden pillar of fire, or when the wind with its chilling voices rushed close by, but generally they felt cosseted in an atmosphere of security that made Mallory face up to the possibility there might be something in the travellers’ magical thinking.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">They continued their conversation well into the night. Mallory enjoyed the challenge of sparring with Sophie’s sharp intellect, and it soon became apparent that Sophie found something intriguing in Mallory, too, though whether she liked him was a different matter. She maintained eye contact, spoke to him much more than she did to Miller, and underneath it all there was definite sexual tension.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sophie spoke warmly of her background, growing up in Cambridge, father a doctor, mother a lawyer, studying English at university before feeling there was more to life. She committed herself to campaigning: for the environment, for Amnesty International, was briefly arrested during a protest against the World Trade Organisation that got out of hand. Mallory was taken by the rich depth of</div><div style="text-align: left;">her beliefs and the passion she exhibited. She was so full of life he felt revitalised being next to her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">He, in return, told her nothing, but he did it in a humorous enough way to win her over.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Other members of the community came and went during the night hours, occasionally bringing them food—roasted vegetables, branded snacks that had a desirable rarity post-Fall—and cider. They were uncommonly cheerful; most of the people Mallory encountered in life were surly, suspicious, broken, or downright violent. Probably all on drugs, he thought, yet he felt oddly disturbed that they were genuinely pleased to see him, and never once questioned who he was or from where he came.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">At one point, an impromptu music session broke out, with guitars, harmonicas, saxophones, and makeshift percussion, intermingling old pop songs and traditional folk tunes. It was the first time he had heard them since the Fall and he was surprised at how powerfully they tugged at his emotions.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">But there was also something about the idyll that irritated Mallory: they had no right to be so content when the rest of the world had a cast of misery. “So who’s in charge here?” he said. “Or is it one of those idealistic communes where everything starts to fall apart the moment the washing-up rota comes into play?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sophie thought briefly, then said to Rick, “How is she?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“She’ll probably be asleep.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Let’s check. She likes the night.” She stood up and motioned for Mallory and Miller to follow. They picked their way amongst the tents, past many smaller fires, to a larger tent outside which two torches blazed. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sophie disappeared inside, emerging a moment later to say, “She’ll see you.” </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The interior of the tent was shadowy, warm, and perfumed with lavender. The front section contained a few chairs, rugs, pot plants—one of them cannabis, Mallory noted—and ornaments with a faintly occult bent, including the skull of a cow.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">The second section lay behind a purple velvet drape. Here, it was even gloomier and it took a second or two for their eyes to adjust. There was a large wooden bed that appeared medieval in origin and must have been brought from somewhere in the city, and on it lay a woman in her late forties, her long black hair streaked with silver. Despite the heat emanating from a brazier in one corner, she sprawled beneath several thick blankets. Her face was nearly white and drawn, as though she had some debilitating illness. Her gaze, though, was incisive, and she fixed instantly on Mallory.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“This is Melanie,” Sophie said quietly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory introduced himself and Miller. The woman gave off a peaceful air, as if whatever lay in the ground at that site had been absorbed by her.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I hope my friends have been looking after you.” Her voice was hoarse, almost a whisper.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You’ve got a good crowd here,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">That appeared to please her. “Sophie seems to think the two of you are very likeable, too.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory glanced at Sophie, who blushed and looked away.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We’re trying to fit in with the locals,” Melanie continued. “We want people to see that what we’re doing here is right.” She ended her sentence with a deep, tremulous breath.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Mallory here is very sceptical.” Sophie eyed him slyly. “He doesn’t believe in ley lines or the power in the land. And he especially doesn’t believe we can create a boundary that will make us invisible to Fabulous Beasts.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Sophie, dear, not everyone is a forward thinker, even in this newly enlightened age.” She smiled weakly. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mallory, I’m teasing you. If you’re hard and fast in your views, I wouldn’t dream of trying to change them. But this is the way it was told to me. Millennia ago, the power in the land flowed freely through everything and everyone. We call it the Blue Fire, but it has many other</div><div style="text-align: left;">names: chi to the Chinese . . .” She waved a hand to suggest this wasn’t important. “It healed, but it could also be destructive when used against the enemies of life. It could be shaped and directed by will alone and it could cause effects at a distance.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Magic, in a word,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Very perceptive,” Sophie said, with mild sarcasm.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The Blue Fire formed a global network that kept the world . . . nature . . . healthy. It was fuelled by spirituality, by the faith of ancient people in tune with the land. They erected the standing stones and established the old sacred places at points where the Blue Fire was the strongest. But as civilisation advanced we lost touch with the energy. It became increasingly dormant, and the land suffered</div><div style="text-align: left;">accordingly. There were still people who could use it to achieve things, but it was hard work and the effects were both hit or miss and not particularly great. The Craft, we call it. The great Wiccan tradition.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller gasped audibly and took a step back. Mallory saw a glimmer of panic in his face. <em>Please don’t shout “Burn the witch!”</em> Mallory thought.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Melanie smiled at his reaction. “Forget the old clichés. We’re not all <em>double, double, toil and trouble</em>. This is a religion, if you will. We have our rituals, the same as the Christian Church. We have our ministers and silly little trappings that make us feel happy. And we do good works. But I digress—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The Blue Fire is back in force.” Sophie’s eyes gleamed, her voice quiet but intense. “And we can do great things again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Just like that,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yes. Just like that.” She looked to Melanie. “When everything changed with the Fall, it regained its old vitality. The Fall was a signifier that we’d moved into a new age—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“The dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” Mallory joked.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Not everyone has the ability to work subtle magics, in the same way that not everyone can be an artist. But those who are able are very, very able. Supercharged,” Melanie said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I remain to be convinced,” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Of course you do,” Melanie replied. “This is a hard topic for many people to swallow. They get taught things when they’re young . . . things about the way the world works . . . and they don’t like to give them up easily. It makes them feel uneasy. Destabilised.” Melanie nodded to Sophie. “Darling, be a dear and tell Mr. Mallory about Ruth Gallagher.” Her eyelids drooped shut.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’ve heard that name,” Miller said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“You should have. Everyone should have, but the word is still getting round.” Sophie tried to read Mallory’s face to see if he had become any more receptive. “After the Fall, there was a group of people who fought for humanity. They were heroes. And one of them was Ruth Gallagher. The gods gifted her with a tremendous power. She became an ultimate adept at the Craft—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“An Über-witch.” Mallory couldn’t restrain himself, but Sophie was unfazed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“She could do amazing things. She could shake the world if she wanted. After the final battle, she set out across the land, spreading the word, teaching those who came to her. And Melanie was one of the first. They met in the Midlands, near Warwick, and Melanie took to it phenomenally. Her potential was off the scale. And she taught me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“And Sophie’s potential is great, too.” Melanie’s eyes were open once more, but she looked even more weary.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I still think you’re fooling yourself,” Mallory said. “But I’ll bite. Go on, show me.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” Sophie said indignantly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We don’t perform, Mr. Mallory.” Melanie threw a scrawny arm over her eyes. “We use the Craft sparingly and for the right reasons. We use it as Christians would prayer. It’s not something to be taken lightly.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Oh, well, then, that’s all right. You <em>can</em> show me, you just don’t feel like it,” Mallory said. “You’ve convinced me. I’m a believer.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Are you always like this?” Sophie’s eyes blazed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Actually, he is,” Miller said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory flashed him a look that suggested he was a traitor. “As you said earlier, everyone out there thinks they know the way the world works. And they’re all wrong. So why should you be right?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller moved to the foot of Melanie’s bed. His curiosity had been caught by the way the blankets were lying; it didn’t look right. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said gently, “what’s wrong with you?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sophie’s face grew hard. “What’s wrong with her?” Rick suddenly appeared near to tears. “She was trying to do some good and she was attacked and beaten for it!”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I’m sorry,” Miller said. “We have access to medical care . . . well, herbs and the like. If we can help—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“There’s not much that can be done, I’m afraid.” Melanie gently pulled back the blankets. Both her legs were missing from the knee.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller recoiled. “My God, what happened?”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“She was attacked by a group of bastards from the cathedral!” Rick said, his eyes brimming over.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller blanched and glanced at Mallory in disbelief.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We were at Stonehenge,” Sophie continued, her face like stone. “It used to be a dead site . . . all the energy leeched from it because of exploitation . . . but after the Fall it came back with force. We were investigating some reports that a Fabulous Beast had settled in the area when—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They came out of nowhere!” Rick raged. “Black-shirted bastards with a red cross on the front—we’ve seen them around the cathedral! Think they’re some kind of knights—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No!” Miller exclaimed, waving his hands as if he were trying to waft away the notion.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They did that?” Mallory said.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“They tried to drive us off,” Sophie replied. “Came at us on horseback with swords and pikes and all sorts of medieval weaponry.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I couldn’t get out of the way in time,” Melanie said. “I fell beneath the hooves. They weren’t able to save my legs.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” Miller repeated, backing toward the purple drapes. “I don’t believe it.” Sophie, Rick, and Melanie looked at him in puzzlement.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“It’s true,” Sophie said. “We wouldn’t make something like that up. They knew who we were—unbelievers—and they rode her down. They didn’t try to help or anything, just drove us away. They didn’t care if we lived or died.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“No,” Miller said again. “We’re knights—we’re from the cathedral. And no one there would do anything like that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory’s heart sank. Miller’s denial was too strong, bolstered by his own need to believe that there was no truth in the story. Mallory had been focusing on Rick’s face; the puzzlement hung there for an instant while he processed what Miller had said and then his features hardened.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Is this true?” Sophie said directly to Mallory. A hint of betrayal chilled her eyes.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We only signed up today,” Mallory replied.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rick looked as if he would leap across the room and attack them. “They’re all the same!” he raged. “They hate anyone who’s not a Christian—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“That’s not true!” Miller protested, close to tears himself.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Please,” Melanie said weakly, “no arguments.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory could see that the warm atmosphere had already evaporated. The extent of Melanie’s tragedy meant any attempt to argue their innocence would be offensive. “Come on, Miller, this isn’t the time,” he said, grabbing the young knight’s arm. Miller threw it off, preparing to defend his Faith further, and Mallory grabbed him tighter this time, dragging him back. “Get a grip,” Mallory hissed in his ear. “Look at what’s happened to her—have some heart.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Yeah, get out of here,” Rick said, “and tell your lot we’ll never forget what they did.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Melanie closed her eyes; the strain was telling on her. Mallory tried to imagine the pain and horror of having two legs amputated without recourse to anaesthetic or an operating theatre. “Come on, Miller,” he said, softening. Slowly, his companion unclenched and turned to go.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller paused at the drapes and said, “I’m sorry. I truly am.” But the look on the faces of Sophie and Rick showed they both realised Melanie was probably dying and there were no words that could make amends for the crime that had been committed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sophie exited with them while Rick tended to Melanie. The frostiness of her mood made Mallory feel as if he’d lost something truly valuable; she didn’t meet his eyes any more.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I know it’s not your fault,” she said, “but I have a very real problem with anyone who subscribes to a belief system that condones something like that.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mallory wanted to tell her he’d only signed up for a job of work, but at that point it would have sounded so pathetic it wouldn’t have achieved anything. Instead he said, “I’m sorry things ended like this.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">She didn’t wait to hear any more.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">As they trudged across the camp, the first light of dawn coloured the eastern sky. The screeching wind ended as if someone had flicked a switch, nor was there any sign of the Fabulous Beast.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller had been lost to his thoughts until he said, “It can’t be true, Mallory. No one at the cathedral would stand by that kind of behaviour.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“I don’t know, Miller—it only takes one bad apple . . . or one psycho . . . and everybody gets tarnished. Any club that has me as a member can’t have a very strict vetting procedure.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“We should tell James . . . or Blaine—”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Right, and say we dumped our uniforms and slipped out under cover of darkness to spend time with a bunch of witches. That should merit a crucifixion at least.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“Don’t joke about that, Mallory!” Miller’s emotions were all raging near the surface, but he managed to calm himself. “I’m sorry. But I’m not like you, Mallory. I believe in things, and it hurts me when you take the piss out of them.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">“OK. I won’t do it again.”</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Miller eyed him askance to see if he was joking, but couldn’t begin to tell. Mallory’s thoughts, however, had already turned to seeing Sophie again and ways that he might bridge the gulf that lay between them. It wasn’t insurmountable, he was sure, but he would need time away from the strict regime of the cathedral.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">When they walked along High Street up to the main entrance, what they saw brought them to an immediate halt. The enormous iron gates were bowed, almost torn asunder, hanging from their hinges by a sliver. The Devil had come calling. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DevilGreen.html">The Devil in Green</a> © <a href="http://www.markchadbourn.net/">Mark Chadbourn</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.johnpicacio.com/update.html">John Picacio</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUCrlukKe8n0RKbJpFJEFM7XiDIz5ECnszT0MjHW7FIlZig2JOQLCmihtytuokrYLJzHwMMRl7zvqTKW-GDItiCXwBJEjTNqbA46LFb3t_JA_Yz-zbcosAyGnXVxiwOB3jPD6b70T740s/s1600/Chadbourn,+Mark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" gu="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUCrlukKe8n0RKbJpFJEFM7XiDIz5ECnszT0MjHW7FIlZig2JOQLCmihtytuokrYLJzHwMMRl7zvqTKW-GDItiCXwBJEjTNqbA46LFb3t_JA_Yz-zbcosAyGnXVxiwOB3jPD6b70T740s/s320/Chadbourn,+Mark.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;">Mark Chadbourn—a two-time winner of the British Fantasy Award—is the critically-acclaimed author of sixteen novels and one non-fiction book. A former journalist, he is now a screenwriter for BBC television drama. His other jobs have included running an independent record company, managing rock bands, working on a production line, and as an engineer’s ‘mate’. He lives in a forest in the English Midlands. Visit him online at <a href="http://www.markchadbourn.net/">http://www.markchadbourn.net/</a>.</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-18862790016869170642010-04-30T10:40:00.002-05:002010-04-30T11:13:03.794-05:00Ares Express by Ian McDonald<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1OeL_zS9g7LU1nSeWFGPM_eVOuVGR2cbsI81MEi101b40G5ze_ZXc_UhAtNOcOU4UXFHcMM6aobPBlvjbNiHZna7tCmwCeREdHwSCYLRzzevSI6bSTbWaTRhRWnsk8uhlgS2k_p_Q5z0/s1600/aresexpress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1OeL_zS9g7LU1nSeWFGPM_eVOuVGR2cbsI81MEi101b40G5ze_ZXc_UhAtNOcOU4UXFHcMM6aobPBlvjbNiHZna7tCmwCeREdHwSCYLRzzevSI6bSTbWaTRhRWnsk8uhlgS2k_p_Q5z0/s320/aresexpress.jpg" tt="true" /></a></div>A Mars of the imagination, like no other, in a colorful, witty SF novel; Taking place in the kaleidoscopic future of Ian McDonald's <em>Desolation Road</em>, <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/AresExpress.html"><strong>Ares Express</strong></a></em> is set on a terraformed Mars where fusion-powered locomotives run along the network of rails that is the planet's circulatory system and artificial intelligences reconfigure reality billions of times each second. One young woman, Sweetness Octave Glorious-Honeybun Asiim 12th, becomes the person upon whom the future - or futures - of Mars depends. <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/AresExpress.html">Ares Express</a></strong></em> is a wild and woolly magic-realist SF novel, featuring lots of bizarre philosophies, strange, mind-stretching ideas and trains as big as city blocks.<br />
<br />
“Hugo-winner McDonald’s virtues have long been underappreciated by major North American publishers… McDonald’s fantastic Mars is vividly detailed and owes much to Bradbury’s Martian stories. ...entirely worthy of its rightly lauded predecessor [<em>Desolation Road</em>].” --Publishers Weekly<br />
<br />
Read an excerpt from the book, here:<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Ares Express </strong></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;"><strong>Ian McDonald</strong></span></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>1</strong><br />
<br />
Here comes Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th. She is eight, and this is the manner of her coming.<br />
<br />
First, you see the sand. It is red and of a particular grain type produced only by wind action. It smells electric; there is much iron in it. It draws lightning out of the occasional clouds; once or twice in a long year, rain. Where the lightning strikes, veins of slag-iron strike deep into the sand. This is rust-sand, strewn profligately about this contourless landscape. Red sand, rust-sand, red dust, a desert of iron studded with ugly stones. The wind never ceases out here on the plains of the high high north. It has teased the sand into steep-sided ridges, long meandering sifs, crescent moon barchans. This is a sinuous, sensual landscape, curves and seductions from the slip-sliding dunefaces to the curve of the close horizon.<br />
<br />
A solitary hard erection confronts the soft northern desert of iron. Five metres high, a slim steel shaft, scabbed by the excoriating winds, scarred by summer lightning. It is a natural victim for summer lightning. On top of the shaft, three lights, red topmost, amber in the middle, on the bottom, green. <br />
Signal lights. In the middle of a rust-desert.<br />
<br />
Now you see the rail. Two perfectly parallel lines of Bethlehem Ares steel, rolled in the mills of New Merionedd, married together by pourstone sleepers, tied down by figure-of-eight tie-bolts: pinned, plated and bolted. Straight and absolute as a geometrical proposition. Get down. Hunker down—not too low, under this sun your cheek will stick to the hot rail and rip. Just enough to sight along them, gun-barrels aimed at the place where horizon and heat-dazzle meet and melt. Straight and absolute. You can go over the edge of the world and they’ll run straight and absolute for seven hundred kilometres. In the cabs of the big transcontinentals there are red buttons that the engineers must touch every twenty seconds or the brakes will automatically apply. It’s easy to fall asleep over the speed levers out here. It’s a hypnotic land. It draws your soul out through your staring eyes along the twin steel rails, to whatever dwells in the silver shimmer at the edge of the world. Occasional track-side tangles of sand-polished metal prove the dangers that lie in the long straight track.<br />
<br />
But we drive ahead of ourselves here. We must stay a while at the signal light, and ask questions. Why signal what? What is there in this dust and rust of any significance? Two things. The first is the passing loop. This patch of desert is the only place within two hundred kilometres where trains may pass and gain access to the single mainline. Here crews exchange ancient brass tokens—part key, part shield—to unlock the line. Conversations too, news and gossip, sometimes family members, or body fluids, if they are the big slow ore-haulers whose timetables allow a little society. The second thing is that, if you look up the line, you will see it part company with itself. This is Borealis Junction: one line drives forcefully on into the snow country of the north pole, where the cold can glue an Engineer’s hand to the throttles as this heat will seal flesh to steel. Up and over the top of the world, and down into the old lands of Deuteronomy and Dioscu: green places replete with grazers and herd-beasts, where every village roof-tree is high and holy with prayer kites. The other line drifts to port until it curves out of sight among the thunderous chasms of Fosse mountains, spanned by treacherous trestle bridges and pour-stone viaducts, that disgorge nerve-wracked Engineers out on to the bleak mesa-lands of Isidy. For half a quartersphere the lines are drawn together by mutual magnetism until they meet once again at Schiaparelli Junction to run westward along the vast synclinorium of Great Oxus and the thousand towns of Grand Valley, where theWorldroof sparkles on the horizon like a reef of morning-lit cloud.<br />
<br />
So this signal light is more than an arbitrary stop-go in the wilderness. It is the prefect of line safety, it is guardian of the line tokens, it is the gateway to new landscapes. And, no less than any of these, it is Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer l2th’s Uncle.<br />
<br />
It is time she made her entrance.<br />
<br />
You become aware that the rail burning the sole of your desert boot is trembling. Bend down—don’t touch! Yes. Rail humming. Train coming. You squint under the shade of your hand down the long straight line. What is real and what is potential is still undecided in that haze. But the rails are singing now: a deep, tight, harmonious keening. A sharp dry clack. You have to look around at the nothingness several times before you can see the small but significant change. The points have switched on to the passing loop. <br />
<br />
Peer again: shapes moving in the haze, flowing so you cannot be certain it is one thing or many. Silver in silver. Then the shadows flow, silver out of silver: a winged woman, wing-arms folded back, breasts out-thrust, hair streaming in the wind. In your amazement you almost do not notice that the<br />
track is roaring. Red dust bounces up from between the sleepers. Now you realise your mistake. This is no angel. Its shadow flows out behind it into a shield of darkness: you are looking at the boiler-cap and figurehead of a great train. A very great train indeed: the faceless land has been playing tricks with your perspective. You had thought the winged woman pixie sized, maybe a medium-grade Amshastria, but close and manageable. No. This silver angel-woman is enormous, the curved prow of the boiler gargantuan. The train is kilometres away. But it is very very big. Airship big. City-block big. Ocean-liner big, if this world had oceans fit for liners. The buffer plates, held out like a prize-fighter’s weaving fists, are three metres across. The cowcatcher, baroquely ornamented with figures from the Ekaterina Angelography, could sweep entire phyla from its path. The eight bogies are each the height of a decent house: the spokes of the drive wheels are the crucified arms of windmills. The drive shafts, the thickness of a thick man’s body, pump with the regular, tireless ease of a Belladonna sweat-house laddie. The headlamp is a monstrous cyclops eye, furious with heat, all revealing. It is hooded now, but with the magic hour, it sends its sheer white shaft kilometres ahead of it, a vanguard of the divine. The steam that blasts from the sharply raked stack is so hot that it travels a third the length of the fusion boiler before it condenses into visibility. This train leaves a pure white contrail downtrack for ten kilometres.<br />
<br />
Another glance at that smoke-stack. Down at the base, where it flares into the main caisson, is that a <em>handrail</em>? Are those <em>staircases</em>, is that a <em>balcony</em>? Those gleams of highlight, could they be <em>windows</em>? There, just above the halo of the Bethlehem Ares Railroads angel, is that an arc of glass, like the bridge<br />
of a ship? And balancing precariously on the swept-back piston housings, spilling steps and ladders over the buffer cylinders, what else can those be but low <em>buildings</em>? A swathe of bungalows clings to the skirts of Bethlehem Ares Railroads Class 22 Heavy Fusion Hauler <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em>. And there, on that perilous railed-in viewpoint underneath the smoke-stack, is that a <em>figure</em>?<br />
<br />
Nearer now. Yes, a sun-brown lank of a female dressed in the uniform orange track vest of her clan over a flirty floral-print frock. A tousle of black curls tosses around her face, combed back from great cheekbones by the speed of passage.<br />
<br />
And <em>now</em> you notice how close the train is to you. Too much time spent staring at the girl on the high balcony. It’s on top of you. You should—you must—run. But you cannot. The whole world is quaking to the pound of the engines, and you are transfixed in its track like a hopper in headlights. A steel avalanche rears over you. Crushing death pants in your face. The black and silver angel looms over you like judgement, and turns away. <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> swings on to the passing loop, tucking her three kilometre tail neatly behind her. Brakes shriek, steel and grit bite and grind. It takes a lot of space for the big transpolars to stop. This is by no means the largest. There are tripleheaders hauling ten kilometres out of Iron Mountain. The magic thousand trucks. Those mothers are visible from orbit, like steel rivers. <br />
The caboose clears the points. It’s a frantic congeries of railroad utility and Cathrinist whimsy. <em>No Step Here</em>, with hand-painted round-eyed icons of the Seven Sanctas. Grit boxes and prayer flags, now windless and limp. The Bassareeni are a gaudy people. Socially below the salt, but the Engineers have<br />
always got on well with them, outside the Forma. There was a mingling of genes some generations back. The Stuards have never forgiven, never forgotten, but the Stuards are a notoriously anal Domiety. <br />
<br />
A trickle, a creep, a hiss of steam. Thirty-three thousand tons of Bethlehem Ares steel balances on two ten-centimetre ribbons of metal under the hot, high sun.<br />
<br />
Clunk. The points have switched over again, back to the mainline. The signal light has gone from caution to green. New train coming. But that is not part of your story. Your story is ended here. Your part as observer of these events is complete. Your eyes have shown us what only the desert things and<br />
God the Panarchic see, at this forsaken junction in the high polar desert. You are dissolved back into a greater story that begins here, the story of Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>2</strong><br />
<br />
Naon Sextus Solstice-Rising Engineer 11th always experienced a little death when he took his hands off the drive lever. Post coital. He coyly shrugged the thought away—exaggeration—but that first time when his own father Bedzo 10th had taken his hand and laid it on the drive bar, when he lifted it off again, had there not been a tiny damp spot on the fly of his pants?<br />
<br />
Twenty years rodding and railing had made him acute to every whisper and vibration of his machine. The fusion fires ebbing in the magnetic pinchtorus was a languid decay, a sorrowful limpening. Flaccid. He was never truly himself while the fusion engines slumbered. He grew distracted and irritable. All his family had learned this decades ago and were wise.<br />
<br />
He called up a track report from North West Regional Track at Suvebray. The mottled quartersphere resolved in the projector focus, the mainlines a web of throbbing vessels like the arteries of a womb. The fast Northern Lights Express was still twenty minutes down despite its Engineers rattling every valve up into the ochre on the long Axidy incline. Derailment at Perdition Junction, down to a single track. Damn locals, jammed with commuters and roof-riding goondahs, stopping at every hole in the hedge.Woolamagong! Serendip! Acacia Heights! Atomic Avenue! Naon Sextus was not a man who bore delays with grace. Every lost second felt pared from the exposed end of his life, like hard salt<br />
cheese. As a child he had read and memorised timetables. For fun. He snatched the monocular from its peg, peered impatiently down the branchline but even the vantage of the bridge of <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> could not penetrate the haze. <br />
<br />
“Tcha!”<br />
<br />
Casting around for an object on which to flog his annoyance, he noticed through the grille of the catwalk overhead a pair of yellow desert-boot soles. He turned his lenses on them.<br />
<br />
“Mother of plenty, has that child no shame?”<br />
<br />
A woman’s voice answered from behind him: Child’a’grace, Mrs. Asiim Engineer 11th, floury to the elbows, folding samosas in the domestic galley.<br />
<br />
“What, dearest?”<br />
<br />
Firmness was as much a part of Naon Sextus’s character as good timekeeping. Many a time the unexpected voice of his wife had almost tricked him into speaking but he had never lapsed, not once, in four years. He tightened his lips, gave the nasty cough that was the sign for his wife to look at him. Naon Sextus turned from the control board, enough to glimpse Child’a’grace, but not so much that she might think he was looking at her. <br />
<em>No underwear</em>! his fingers said, shaking with indignation.<br />
<br />
“It’s a fine day,” Child’a’grace commented, deftly sealing a pastry triangle and flipping it into hot fat.<br />
<br />
<em>The shame</em>! Naon Engineer signed.<br />
<br />
“Who’s to see?”<br />
<br />
<em>Every staring soul on the thirteen twenty-seven Northern Lights Express!</em> For something was emerging from the liquid light dazzle. <em>Due in three and a half minutes!</em> As a coda, his thumbs added, <em>What will they think?</em><br />
<br />
“They will think,” said Child’a’grace breezily, here fishing samosa from the fry-bath with a chicken-wire scoop, “That there is a fine young woman of nearly nine with the body of an Avata and the impatience of a rat whom you and I both know, husband, should long since have been married.” She drained the golden oil back into the pan. “And if by some chance, the passing winds should blow<br />
that skirt up—which they might, for if I remember, it is quite short and floaty—and they see that she wears not underpants, then the more fortune to them and I hope their sleeps are tormented by wants for many a night.”<br />
<br />
Before leaving her family at an unnamed water stop under the volcanoes, Child’a’grace had been Susquavanna, a catering people who for two long centuries had hawked hot savouries up and down the platforms of the northwest quartersphere. Pastry was in their genes, like steam in the blood of the Engineers, but she resolutely refused to observe the proprieties of caste, namely the eternal distinction between <em>track</em> and <em>platform</em>. This was deeply grievous to Naon Sextus, a son of his father and his line before him. Truly, the dowry had cleared up the matter of the remortgage, but he frequently wished that Grandmother Taal had matched him with someone a little less <em>platform</em>. But after eleven years, the food was still exciting. The sex can go, the conversation will go, the respect may be trodden into a familiar track of predictability, but by the Mother of Mercies, cooking endures.<br />
<br />
But the girl had no underwear, and one under-dignified marriage was enough. Women with no knickers ended married to Bassareenis and dropping their sprogs in the caboose. His fingers prepared to riposte this to Child’a’grace but the shapes were blown away by the sudden slam of the express train’s passing.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>3</strong><br />
<br />
There was a moment that Sweetness Asiim Engineer treasured above all other distinct moments. She had travelled long enough around the globe to admit it as almost sexual, but it was entirely her own. It began with a brief flutter, an intake of breath, a stirring of hair and clothes: the pressure shift. At this point you obtained best effect by closing the eyes and listening to the swelling thunder of wheels. Hold the dread: fight the instinct to look at the source of that unholy noise. Then, the second pressure point:<br />
there. Sweetness opened her eyes. The fast train reared like a cliff before her. The world was nothing but steel and steam and blasting, shattering sound. Sweetness unleashed the deep, dark fear: <em>You’re on the wrong track, the points have failed, sixty thousand tons of train are about to meet head on at three hundred and fifty kilometres per hour, and you’re right between them!</em><br />
<br />
It would be quick, and glorious.<br />
<br />
The mountain aimed itself at her heart and, at the last instant, turned away.<br />
<br />
The pressure wave punched her hard, blinded her with steam and dust. Then the slipstream yanked at her: You, come. Sweetness needed no invitation. She leaped after the blur of chrome and black. Along clattering catwalks. Down iron staircases. Across vertiginous gantries, over platforms, hurdling the sprawling legs of brother Sleevel, lolling idle with his best mate Rother’am watching the afternoon pelota on a handheld.<br />
<br />
“Sle.”<br />
<br />
“What? Uh. Just my sister.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness raced the faces behind the tinted window glass but the faces were always going to win. The wind that dragged her was failing. It dropped her in a little iron-framed oriole high on the side of the starboard tender coupling. She leaned out over the brass railing, raised her hand in salute to the glass observation car, the rattle in the express’s tail. On the open rear balcony was a fine city lady in a sheer lace dress. Wake turbulence tugged her parasol from her fingers. It soared up and away, a bamboo and waxed-paper flying saucer. The city lady looked up, vexed, and in that moment her eyes met those of the black-haired girl in the orange track vest in the wrought-iron carbuncle on the flank of the big hauler. <br />
<br />
Lady and train were a thin black snake winding across the red desert. Carried high on the winds, the parasol floated into invisibility. The haze swallowed all. Gone again.<br />
<br />
“You’re a fool to yourself,” the voice said after a decent interlude. The thunder of wheels had masked his approach, but Sweetness had deduced Romereaux’s presence from his smell. All the Deep-Fusion people had a distinctive musk, like electricity and cool evenings after hot days, or concrete after rain. Sweetness imagined it was what atoms smelled like.<br />
<br />
“You think.”<br />
<br />
He was leaning against the turret door in the easy-pleasey way men can when it’s not important for them to be looked at. Romereaux’s people shared hair colour and quality with the Engineers—and body fluids, certain generations ago—but he was slight and pale, with a narrow shadow of attempted<br />
goatee. The sun did not get to the Deep-Effs in the heart of the big train.<br />
<br />
“Two hundred years of Engineer tradition says I know what I’m talking about.”<br />
<br />
He was a year and a half Sweetness’s senior and, bad genes or not, next corroboree he would marry a Traction daughter off the Class 88 <em>Four Ways</em>. She would miss him.<br />
<br />
“There’s a first time for everything.”<br />
<br />
He saw the way she looked down the long straight track and wanted to lie, to promise unpromisable things, but he had never been able to lie to Sweetness in all their years growing up together on <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em>.<br />
<br />
“Sle will be Engineer 12th. You know that.”<br />
<br />
She did, she knew it like she knew the sun would rise tomorrow, but she still growled, “All Sle’s interested in is pelota and grab ass. And he’s not even any good at them.”<br />
<br />
Romereaux smiled palely. She went on.<br />
<br />
“There are other branches of the Domiety have women drivers. The Slipher Engineers. The Great Western folk. Down in New Merionedd every other Engineer is a woman. And couldn’t you just pretend, eh? Couldn’t you just for once tell me, yeah, sure, Sweetness, you’ll drive, you’ll be up there<br />
with your hand on the drive lever? Would that be so hard, for once?”<br />
<br />
“Sweetness . . .”<br />
<br />
“I know.”<br />
<br />
He said, “Have you been to see your uncle yet?”<br />
<br />
“Mother’a . . . I near forgot. How long’ve we got?”<br />
<br />
“About five minutes.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll go now, then. You coming?”<br />
<br />
“If you don’t mind.”<br />
<br />
<em>Trainpeople</em>, Sweetness thought as she waited for Ricardo Traction to crank down the access ladder. We can go any place we like in the whole wide world but only as long as we stay on the rails.<br />
<br />
“Regards to your uncle!” <em>Tante</em> Miriamme Traction called from the tiny window of her laundry room as Sweetness hopped down on to the red sand. Stay on the rails. Bad luck will come in the night and climb up through your nose and through your ears if you wander off the safe track. Superstitions, litanies, observations. Casual coincidences that have become baked over years into causes and effects. Believed truths. Like daughters don’t drive. But she still glanced over her shoulder when she could no longer feel the psychic closeness of <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> on the back of her neck. The big train stood like a black monolith fused out of rust sand.<br />
<br />
Romereaux paid his respects first. A quick press of the palm to the sandscoured shaft of the signal light. Everyone—crew, that was, <em>passengers</em> never counted—on <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> was related in some way, even the boisterous Bassareenis, but Romereaux’s connection with Uncle Neon was tenuous and he had never really believed that a soul could exist in a railroad signal. That might have been why he had never felt anything but Bethlehem Ares galvanised steel, Sweetness thought. He bowed and stood back.<br />
<br />
Sweetness clapped her hands twice. The sound was small and flat in the huge and flat desert. She uncapped the flask she had collected from <em>Madre</em> Marya Stuard and poured a libation of cold tea. It frothed and stained the red sand like urine. Sweetness closed her eyes and boldly pressed her hand against the shaft. As ever, it began with sound-shadow, steel-slither, the hum-thrum of wind and wheels on rails, a memory of a life in rapid motion, twin ribbons of metal singing like the tines of a tuning fork. Her hearing opened like wings, was down at the bottom listening to the strum of the silicon and the songs the stones sing, then up through the wind-tumbled grains, listening to them building into harmonies of sand, a slow sea breaking grain by grain. Outward still, until she could hear everything contained within the girdling horizon. The rhythms and pulses of her own body joined with the chord of sand song. For a divine moment the great northern desert was a single quantum wave function, modelled in sand like a Shandastria scrying-garden. Sweetness stood at the locus of maximum probability.<br />
<br />
She opened her eyes. As ever, she was somewhere else. In this place there were no rails and no train and where the desert met the far mountains the red bled up into the sky. Blood-red sky, a pink zenith. No clouds in that sky, neither hope nor memory of rain. The rocks around her feet were salted with<br />
frost. The sand on which she stood seethed with static electricity. In all the world there were only two things, her and the upright of the signal light, rooted obstinately in the alien earth.<br />
<br />
Sweetness had always understood three things about this place. First, that neither of them should really be here at all. Second, that it should be as instantly lethal to her as if the soil were acid. Third, that this was their private place, her uncle and her, and that she could never tell anyone about it. Not even her family. It had been bad enough with Little Pretty One. They had talked Flying Therapist. This . . .<br />
<br />
“Uncle.”<br />
<br />
When he spoke, he sounded less like the practical, piratical man she remembered, and more like she imagined God the Panarchic. In a voice that seemed to come from a great distance, he asked, “What year is it?” <br />
<br />
“Same as last time.”<br />
<br />
“When was last time?”<br />
<br />
“Duoseptember. The autumn equinox. The Cadmium Valley contract?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, yes.” Like a sandstorm subsiding. “What year is that, exactly?” She told him. He said, “I lose the track, here.”<br />
<br />
As she knew that these conversations with her uncle took place outside normal space, Sweetness also understood that they occupied a special time, neither past nor present nor future, but other, real-time inverted. Dream time. <br />
“So,” Uncle Neon said. “Sle . . .”<br />
<br />
“Still thinks he’s going to be a big pelota star. ’Cept he’s got two right feet and a fat gut and his head is fried from too much television and wanking.”<br />
<br />
“He hasn’t married that Cussite girl with the fifteen gold ear-rings, yet?”<br />
<br />
“Not yet.”<br />
<br />
“Has he . . .”<br />
<br />
“Met her yet? Not that, either.”<br />
<br />
“Ah. I see.” He did too, much and wide, but unfocused, like a distorting lens. Sweetness frequently tripped over Uncle Neon’s nostalgias for futures that might never happen. And sometimes the branching future he picked in this mother of marshalling yards was the mainline ahead.<br />
<br />
“They want you wed,” he said.<br />
<br />
“Tell me.”<br />
<br />
“To a Stuard. A <em>Ninth Avata</em> Stuard, on the Llangonedd run.”<br />
<br />
“Mother’a’grace . . .”<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry yourself.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry myself? You’ve just told me I’m going to blow my wild years brewing samovars of mint tea for Cathar pilgrims.”<br />
<br />
Uncle Neon had an appropriately scary laugh. It felt like sand scouring the inside of your skull. Sweetness winced.<br />
<br />
“Sweetness, your wild years are far from blown,” he said, and sang an old nursery rhyme about a sailor who sailed across the sky and brought back his love a silver fig and a diamond rattle. He did not sing well, even in death, but Sweetness was patient with relatives. When he had finished she left a polite pause before asking, “Is that it?” <br />
<br />
“That what?”<br />
<br />
“I’m going to marry a Stuard and my wild years are far from over?”<br />
<br />
In the pause that followed, Sweetness imagined the three-bulbed signal light cocked to one side, quizzically.<br />
<br />
“Yes. That’s it. Don’t worry, though. Trust me. Now, tell me, how is she?”<br />
<br />
By “she,” Sweetness understood <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> and that she would see no more of her future. She huffed through her nose in exasperation at the unruly oracle.<br />
<br />
“The aft containment field still isn’t seating right.”<br />
<br />
“Is it making a sound like this?” <em>This</em> being a twittering, hissing whistle.<br />
<br />
“More like this.” Sweetness added a tweeting click, on a rising cadence.<br />
<br />
Uncle Neon clicked his tongue.<br />
<br />
“You want to get that seen to. What are those Deep-Fusion folk about? I don’t know, since I died, she’s gone to pieces. No one has any respect for good machinery any more. <em>He</em> certainly doesn’t. His head’s completely up his arse, and I don’t just mean trains. Look at that poor sow he married—your sainted mother, I mean.” Uncle Neon’s telepathic apology felt like two crossed fingers circling Sweetness’s frontal lobe in blessing. She loved the feeling. It made her purr. “He’s still not talking to her.”<br />
<br />
“Not a whisper. He signs.”<br />
<br />
Another neural tut.<br />
<br />
“It should be you. I’ve always said that. You’d get that field generator set right <em>toute suite</em>.”<br />
<br />
“I wouldn’t have let it get into that state in the first place,” Sweetness said proudly. Too many dead-end tracks toppling into glossy green craters were the monuments to sloppy tokamak maintenance. The Tracksters laid fresh rail around them but the blast craters stayed hot for lifetimes, glowing sickly in the high plains night. Thinking of them, Sweetness flared, “But I’m going to marry a poncing Stuard on the God-shuttle and make tea and almond slices, amn’t I?”<br />
<br />
“You are?”<br />
<br />
“You said you saw it.”<br />
<br />
“I see a lot more than I say. That I can say.”<br />
<br />
<em>Says who?</em> Sweetness wanted to say but the words were sucked off her lips by the sudden dust wind whipping up around her, a dust she knew was not dust, or rust, but moments. Granulated time. She was being drawn back. The journey home was always quicker and more precipitous than the way out: a swooping giddiness, a rustling blackness, a sense of wings wide enough to wrap the world, and then <em>there</em>; the big big desert and the hot hot sun.<br />
<br />
Romereaux was squatting on his heels by the rail, scooping up palmfuls of dust and trickling them through his fingers. Idling time away.<br />
<br />
“How do you do that?” he said.<br />
<br />
“Do what?” The other place took a moment to blink away, like grit in the eye.<br />
<br />
“Whatever it is you do. Wherever it is you go.”<br />
<br />
“Go?” Suspicious: what had he seen? “I don’t go anywhere. I mean, you’re there, but you’re not there.”<br />
<br />
“But where are you?”<br />
<br />
“What’s this about?”<br />
<br />
Romereaux shrugged, opened his hand, looked at the earth and small stones clutched there.<br />
<br />
“I’m just interested in what you do, where you go.”<br />
<br />
“Well don’t be.”<br />
<br />
“You’re very defensive.”<br />
<br />
“I’ve got to have something for myself.” On a train where five families live on top of each other in a tapestry of territories and societies. “Some place for me.”<br />
<br />
“So you do go somewhere.”<br />
<br />
“What’s this to you?”<br />
<br />
“Nothing. They’ve whistled.”<br />
<br />
That brought her up.<br />
<br />
“What? How many times?”<br />
<br />
“Twice.”<br />
<br />
“Mother’a . . .”<br />
<br />
Three whistles and the train left. With or without you. Fare or family. We’ve got a railroad to run, don’t you know? Timetables to keep. As Sweetness sprinted for <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em>, steam plumed up from the calliope mounted where the main boiler joined the tender. The impudent notes of “Liberty Lillian’s Rag” swaggered across the desert as Madre Mercedes Deep-Fusion’s asbestos-gloved fingers hopped across the seething keys. All aboard that’s coming aboard! All a-ground that’s staying behind. Skirt hitched around her thighs, Sweetness pounded down the track. Romereaux passed her ffortlessly. Behind them, Uncle Neon closed his amber eye and opened his green eye. <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> cleared her cylinders with a shout of steam. Cranks flailed, wheels spun. Like a crustal plate shifting, the behemoth began to move.<br />
<br />
Sweetness saw Romereaux snatch at the bottom rung of the companionway as it retracted. Then it was past her head and moving in utterly the opposite direction. Sweetness spun on her heel and raced after the receding ladder. House-high wheels churned beside her head. Romereaux crouched on the lowest step, hand outstretched. Mother’a’grace, it was going to be close. <br />
<br />
“Romereaux!”<br />
<br />
The reaching hand was pulling away. With the dregs of her strength, Sweetness leaped. Romereaux’s hand was an iron manacle around her wrist. Sweetness slammed into the relief valve on the luff housing. Winded, she swung from Romereaux’s grip. Drive shafts hammered beside her ear.<br />
<br />
“I can’t . . .” Romereaux’s face read; youthful strength overstretched by sharp reality. Sweetness swung, tried to kick herself toward the diamond tread of the rung. Nailtips grazed steel. The sleeper-ends beneath her were a blur of concrete. Fall now, and it would be worse than miss the train. She<br />
kicked again, reached.<br />
<br />
“Ahhh!”<br />
<br />
Fingers locked around metal rung. Romereaux pulled her up until both hands had a firm grip. He gathered a fistful of track jacket and floral-print summer frock and hauled Sweetness on to the companionway. Metal scraped bare shin, she paddled with her feet. Boot treads found stair treads.<br />
<br />
Home.<br />
<br />
“Close one,” <em>Tante</em> Miriamme called, sheets a-folding as Romereaux and Sweetness scurried past her window. “And Sweetness, in the desert? A true lady never forgets her underwear.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>4</strong><br />
<br />
Two hundred kilometres up, the orbital mirror caught sunlight from beneath the edge of the world and winked it into Naon Engineer’s eye. Momentarily blinded, he dropped the thread of his argument to the floor of the Confab Chamber.<br />
<br />
“Erm . . .”<br />
<br />
“The marriage portion,” svelte, dangerous Marya Stuard hinted.<br />
<br />
Blithe and holy, the five-kilometre disk of silverskin wheeled down the orbital marches after the setting sun.<br />
<br />
“Oh yes. Of course. What had I suggested?”<br />
<br />
“Five thousand dollars in the chest.”<br />
<br />
“Ah, yes.”<br />
<br />
A glance at Grandfather Bedzo, drooling in the Remote Steering Cubby under the copper curls of the cyberhat. Tanking up should be straightforward enough a process to entrust to the decrepit old Engineer, but Naon 11th did not like the way the old man’s wall eye was rolling.<br />
<br />
“Plus . . .”<br />
<br />
“What?”<br />
<br />
“Two percent on the next five years.”<br />
<br />
A beat of fist on the live wood conference table. Grandfather Bedzo started in his decades-deep senescence. He remembered the hard edge of his wife’s hand.<br />
<br />
“Never!” Grandmother Taal declared. She was a little, pickled kernel of a woman, packed with meat and life and potential. At forty-two she still shunted the weightiest of bargains when the locodores in their red flannel tailcoats came loping in their sedan chairs into the sidings to call the day’s contracts. Her eyes were sharp little black flies. “One percent, over three years.”<br />
<br />
Naon Engineer 11th glanced again at his sire. He was banging his foot against a riveted bulkhead in time to the swash of water through the reservoir pipes. Naon prayed the Lords of the IronWay that Bedzo would resist an incontinence attack. It would make the marriage bargaining so very much harder.<br />
<br />
“One and three quarter percent and four years.”<br />
<br />
Engineer and Stuard matriarchs locked eyes over the bargaining table. On this oval of wood, reputedly an Original Branch from the Tree ofWorld’s Beginning, the Articles of Operation had been signed twelve generations and a billion kilometres back by Engineer and Stuard the First.<br />
<br />
“Were he of your lineage, <em>Tante</em> Marya, I might concur,” Grandmother Taal said. “But this . . .”<br />
<br />
“Narob,” piped Salam Serene Stuard, youngest of the Domiety, first time at the big table and blessedly ignorant of the social games the formidable old ladies loved to play. His great-aunt glared at him.<br />
<br />
“. . . is a lad of <em>prospects</em>.” Meaning, <em>and your granddaughter is just a daughter. A womb, a ladder to history.</em> “He is <em>Chef du Chemin</em>. He has his own galley.”<br />
<br />
“In stainless steel,” Youngest Salam said, with some envy. He had only just been promoted to Linen and Tray Service. Grandmother Taal scooped up his unwise attempt to recover coup like a hot <em>nimki</em> from a station tray-hawker. <br />
<br />
“On the <em>Ninth Avata</em>!” she said.<br />
<br />
“Yes!” Naon exclaimed, feeling as if he had missed a couple of turns in the game. “One and a quarter percent, and three and a half years!”<br />
<br />
“Naon!” Mother-to-son voice. “You are without doubt the finest throttleman in this quartersphere, but that is exactly the reason men drive and women bargain. Now . . .” She turned to her adversary. “She is Engineer born in the bone. She has steam in her soul and oil in her heart and iron in her thighs and fusion fire in her eyes, she has left a million used-up kilometres behind her, she is true granddaughter of this grandmother and know this, she will carve up your <em>Chef du Chemin</em> Narob with his own fine knives, in his own stainless steel galley and serve him with a little salt and chilli to his clients and that is why she will go to <em>Ninth Avata</em> for nothing less than one and half percent for three years and twenty-four months. Stick. Stop . . .”<br />
<br />
But before Grandmother Taal could call stay and seal the deal, Marya Stuard worked her thumbs behind the gold-embroidered lapels of her tunic and called out, “Yes, Engineer, <em>but what is she doing now?”</em><br />
<br />
It was an evil blow that ricocheted across the table from open mouth to raised eyebrow, deflected off Naon Engineer’s dismayed brow, through the porthole, two hundred kilometres up into the evening sky to bounce off the reflecting dish of the big vana, as it slid over the terminator into night, back<br />
down to earth two and half kilometres north to the Inatra Fillage Number Six Water Storage Cistern in which Sweetness Engineer joyfully swam. She felt it as a prickle of gooseflesh on her bare back as she stroked toward the concrete lip where Psalli sat, toes teasing the water. Sweetness glanced up; the knuckled rim of the escarpment had risen above the sun. That would explain the sudden shiver. Magic hour. The triskelions of the wind-pumps were lazy silhouettes on the deep blue.<br />
<br />
“You going to be much longer?” Psalli called as Sweetness tumbleturned into another length. She was a solid, sullen-faced creature, a true Traction. At eight-and-not-a-day more she was Sweetness’s closest female contemporary, thus friend, though Sweetness wondered would she have been had their lives been less mobile. She could be a whining cow.<br />
<br />
“You go on back if you’re cold,” Sweetness said, elbows hooked over the further ledge of the tank.<br />
<br />
“Nah,” Psalli grunted.<br />
<br />
“Don’t let me stop you, now.”<br />
<br />
The girl shrugged her meaty shoulders. Sweetness kicked off from the far end of the cistern. Two strokes brought her sliding in front of Psalli.<br />
<br />
“Why not?”<br />
<br />
Psalli glanced beyond the stepped terraces of water tanks to the truck gardens.<br />
<br />
“They won’t bother you,” Sweetness said.<br />
<br />
“They keep looking and waving.”<br />
<br />
“So? Okay. Then we’ll give them something to look and wave at.” A heave brought Sweetness out of the water in a cascade of fat drops. Balanced like a gymnast on the narrow lip, she drew herself up to her full one point seven five bare-ass metres. Honey-skin dewed with billion-year-old fossil water. She scraped her hair behind her ears, put her fingers in her mouth and whistled. It pierced the indigo cool of Inatra like a stiletto. All the dark doll figures that had been clinging to the tall foliage at the edge of the irrigation canals turned as one.<br />
<br />
“Hey! Boys! See this?” Sweetness wiggled her hips. “Well, you can never, ever have this.” She turned a slow cartwheel on the edge of the pool. The watching boys of Inatra were each and every one struck through the eyes so that ever after they could not love right because tattooed on their retinas was a vision of unattainable youth and loss with arcs of old, cold water flicking from its heels. Sweetness bounced upright. “Just thought you should know, right?” The figures slunk away into the greenery.<br />
<br />
Hands on hips, she surveyed her conquest. Inatra was a spring-line town, a place of wells and shafts and pumps, of water shivering silkily down mossy runnels from cistern to cistern, of gurgling irrigation canals and sagely nodding <em>yawnagers</em>, of aloof water-towers and lithe brown children who pranced in the rainbow spray from the leaking fill-hoses. Here the gradual tilt of the great Tanagyre plain cracked like a broken paschal biscuit into the kilometre uplift of the Praesoline Escarpment. Here the big fusion locos paused for a long drink of water before the toil up the ramps and switchovers of the Inatra Ascent. Here, while the trains drank, train people played in water.<br />
<br />
“Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer, you have no shame,” Psalli said.<br />
<br />
“Great, isn’t it?”<br />
<br />
By now her piercing, two-finger whistle had penetrated <em>Catherine of Tharsis’s</em> Domiety Chamber and, though weak, it still had enough strength to climb into Marya Stuard’s ear. She smiled. Everyone around the table had as good a guess as her as to its source. She laid her hand palm upright on the polished wood.<br />
<br />
“Three thousand, one point seven percent and three years thirty months. Stick stop stay.”<br />
<br />
She held Grandmother Taal’s look. The old Engineer woman shrugged.<br />
<br />
“Tinguoise.”<br />
<br />
“Major’s Gate.”<br />
<br />
“Ethan Soul.”<br />
<br />
The formula was complete. No one living or undead knew its source, neither could they unsay anything it sealed.<br />
<br />
“I’ll contact the <em>Ninth Avata</em> people and have the contract drawn up.”<br />
<br />
Marya Stuard rose from the table with her delegation. As she swept out, Child’a’grace muttered, “Too cheap.”<br />
<br />
Her husband roared.<br />
<br />
“Tell that woman . . .” he commanded Grandmother Taal but she had departed in a rustle of many-layered skirts, so he signed, <em>She is only a daughter! </em>His fingers added, <em>Half a daughter</em>.<br />
<br />
Child’a’grace rose in a blossom of sudden fury.<br />
<br />
“Never . . .”<br />
<br />
<em>Sorry sorry my mistake</em>, Naon Engineer signed. He had committed a cardinal sin. He knew that he had handled the negotiations badly. His hands might be on the throttles but he was afraid of Marya Stuard. Afeared, and indebted: no one in any of <em>Catherine of Tharsis’s</em> Domieties was let forget that she had single-handedly faced down the notorious Starke gang as they fleeced a carriage of Lewite Pelerines. Her defiance had cost her a needle in the hip that troubled her when it was political for it to do so, but her example had woken the demons in the milk-mannered pilgrims. As one they had risen, seized the dacoits and ejected them at the next mail drop. Marya Stuard herself had been so incensed at the needle in her side that she had laid out old, dreaded Selwyn Starke with a silver salver flung frisbee-style.<br />
<br />
“Some day, and, please God, soon, that woman’s account will be overdrawn,” Naon Engineer mumbled as he went to clean Grandfather Bedzo’s tubes and change his bags.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>5</strong><br />
<br />
It was full dark now over Inatra. Under the first glimmerings of the moonring, that tumble of orbital engineering that sustained the world’s fragile habitability, Sweetness walked home alone along the tracks. Psalli had made the most of the space caused by Sweetness’s display and slipped off to her cabin before the rude boys drummed up a scrap of courage between them. She walked between the sleeper-ends and the shanties. Sweetmeat and patty vendors roused themselves from their scavenged human-dung smudgefires, then settled back into repose at the sight of an Engineer orange track vest. Androgynously thin boygirls, ungendered by hunger, shook fistfuls of copper charm bangles at her. <em>Good luck, good luck girlie, a prayer on every strand.</em> Sweetness shook her head. The wire was filched from switchgear relays. Aside from the occasional electrocuted bangle-wallah, a prayer on<br />
every strand often meant a derailed front end.<br />
<br />
<em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> rose from the night, as monolithic as the scarp she was preparing to climb. Riding lights twinkled, windows beckoned. But a whisper turned Sweetness aside at the last booth before home.<br />
<br />
“Sees all hears all knows all. Past present future. Uncurtain the windows of time, lady.”<br />
<br />
The voice was a reptilian whisper, but strangely attractive for that; a reptile with a gorgeous jewelled skin, an ornate crest, a coiling blue tongue. An unsuspected seduceability in Sweetness responded. She heard herself say, “Oh, all right then. How much is it?”<br />
<br />
“Very little,” lizard-tongue replied. The booth was a sagging leopard-spotted yurt. As she ducked inside, the door flaps brushed Sweetness’s nape. They felt like <em>skin</em>.<br />
<br />
“It’s kind of little in here.”<br />
<br />
Littler than the exterior hinted. She could hardly make out the lizard-lips man across the octagonal table. He seemed small and hairless, his skin oddly dark even among a dark-skinned people. She could have sworn it was green in the dull glow from everywhere and nowhere.<br />
<br />
“Shouldn’t you be asking me to cross your palm with centavos?” Sweetness asked. The yurt smelled ripely of green and growing, mould and leaf, pistils and fresh-spaded soil.<br />
<br />
“If you like,” the fortune-teller said.While she fiddled in her hip bag for silver, he placed a device like an overweight egg-timer on the table. Its upper hemisphere was filled with small white beans. Their progress to the lower hemisphere was prevented by a <em>cheval de frise</em> of spills inserted through a mesh.<br />
<br />
“This do?”<br />
<br />
The fortune-teller scooped the trickle of centavos up to his mouth and swallowed them.<br />
<br />
“Should you . . . ?”<br />
<br />
The huckster leaned toward her. He was green and the source of the smell of verdure. He flared his nostrils.<br />
<br />
“You’ve been swimming.”<br />
<br />
“My hair’s wet, o great detective.”<br />
<br />
“You smell of water. Here.” Quick as a striking rat-snake, he whipped a spine out of the hour-glass. It had a blue tip. Burned on with a hot needle were the words “Fulfillingness First Finale” and “One for free.” The little green man studied the motto. “Worse places to start.” He laid the spill on the table. “Now, you play. Remove any stick you like, and the aim of the game is not to win, because you can’t win a game like this, but to delay the fall of the beans as long as possible. Then we shall begin our reading.” <br />
<br />
“No problem.” Sweetness reached for a stick.<br />
<br />
“One rule. Whatever you touch, you must draw.”<br />
<br />
“I get ya.” She confidently drew the stick at which she had aimed her finger. The first five moves were simple, even mindless; then, as the beans rattled and sagged, it became a true game, with demands of thought and foresight. She sucked her lower lip in concentration and hovered between two spills that crossed deep in the heart of the bean heap.<br />
<br />
“So, how does this work anyway?”<br />
<br />
“You pull the sticks. Gravity supplies the rest.”<br />
<br />
“I mean, how does it tell the future?”<br />
<br />
“How should I know?” the green man said. “All I know is it does.”<br />
<br />
Her fingers seesawed, decided, decided again, locked firmly around the spill that stuck out at thirty degrees. She could feel the beans grind over the wood as she withdrew the stick. A lurch. A solitary bean hit the bottom of the future-machine. She found she had been holding her breath, and released<br />
it in a relieved sigh.<br />
<br />
“Some beans will always fall,” the green man said, taking the stick. “Hm.<br />
<br />
Queen’s Canton.”<br />
<br />
“Is that good or bad?”<br />
<br />
“It is, that’s all.” He laid it next to the others in an orderly row.<br />
<br />
“I’ve got an uncle can see the future,” Sweetness said matter-of-factly. She squatted low, hands on the table, eyes level with the web of spills.<br />
<br />
“Indeed?” said the green man.<br />
<br />
“Though he’d tell you it’s not so much seeing the future, it’s more like having a wider now.”<br />
<br />
“An interesting perspective.”<br />
<br />
“That’s what he says. But then, he is a signal light.”<br />
<br />
“That would give . . . novel . . . insights.”<br />
<br />
“He was working on the pylon when he got hit by lightning.” Sweetness drew a stick like a Belladonna rapieree drawing a swordstick. “There!” <br />
<br />
“Bravo,” said the green man.<br />
<br />
Three sticks later there was a click and a sag and all the beans hit the bottom of the jar like goondah-flung pebbles on a widow’s window. <br />
<br />
“Oh,” said Sweetness. The green man was now crouching, studying the pattern of the remaining sticks. He turned the future-ometer over in his hands. Sweetness noticed that he was frowning. She thought of ploughing.<br />
<br />
“Bone Sandals in parallel with Boy of Two Dusts, crossing Innocent Excesses obliquely. But Boy of Two Dusts overruns Scent of Lavender, then exits hole eight eight, upper right quadrant; the Deserted Quarter.” <br />
<br />
“Meaning?”<br />
<br />
The green man raised a finger to his lips. He held the hour-glass up to the light that came from everywhere.<br />
<br />
“See? Golden Thumb-ring is quite, quite horizontal, and in an isolated quadrant; notice that the only stick that approaches it is Eternal Assistance.<br />
<br />
Your family wants you wed.”<br />
<br />
His eyes—which Sweetness noticed had yellow irises—challenged her to be amazed.<br />
<br />
“That’s not hard. A trackgirl, my age? You’re going to have to do better than that.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t see a marriage, though.”<br />
<br />
“That’s more like it. You mean, ever?”<br />
<br />
The green man held the future-ometer out to Sweetness.<br />
<br />
“Not within the frame of the story.”<br />
<br />
“What story would that be?”<br />
<br />
“The one you’re in. The one we’re all in. This.” The green man’s hands cupped the wasp-waisted glass torso. “Stories are made up of lives but not all of life is a story. Only parts have the narrative construction, the dramatic energy, the confluence of incident, desire and coincidence that are the elements of <em>story</em>. Within here”—he again caressed the glass—“is the story of your life. Here and here”—he touched either green-tipped end of a scryingstick—“are where you fade out of the once-upon-a-time and into the happy-ever-after. The rods, of course, go on forever.” His fingers described extensions in the air. An instant of other-sight: Sweetness saw them stretching out beyond his reach, through him, through her, through the soft walls of the yurt and the softer walls of night and time. “You think that everything that has happened to you in your life thus far has been chance? To be so blessed! Everything you have been leads to this place, this story-jar, this confluence of forces. Of course, you can look at it the other way.” His chartreuse hands turned the oracle one hundred and eighty degrees. A different phalanx of quills menaced Sweetness. “If the universal laws are as reversible as the sages insist, then it is also true that the what-you-will-become influences your<br />
decision of what-you-are-now.”<br />
<br />
“And these beans, are they like God’s shit, going to fall on me if I do this or don’t do that?”<br />
<br />
The green man pursed his lips.<br />
<br />
“If you consider that, to me, shit is an excellent fertiliser, and to these people, how they warm their lives, maybe. Then again, you could consider them the weight of undecided events that must be shed for the bones of your story to emerge.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness cocked her head and folded her arms and looked a challenge from under her fringe of dark curls.<br />
<br />
“Do I get to drive a train or not?”<br />
<br />
“You do a lot of driving.”<br />
<br />
“Driver, or driven?”<br />
<br />
The green man rotated a spill between thumb and forefinger.<br />
<br />
“Grey Lady’s Visit, crossing Trumpet of Alves, acute. Both, my dear. Words of advice. Hold on tight to fast-moving objects. Don’t trust too much to appearances; then again, first impressions are lasting impressions. When climbing, look at the hands, not the feet. Be aware that the marvellous is always around you. Don’t discount family. Don’t drop litter. Always expect unexpected assistance. Take a toothbrush and at least one change of underwear. Small change is bulky and too easily rolled out of pockets. Keep notes in your sock. Angels exist, if you know how to use them. Read a little every<br />
day. The desert teaches drought, the city bathing. Your body odour is usually worse than you think. Some day, soon, you will cost the world a moon. Your grandmother loves you very much. Easy on the throttle until the cylinders expand. The world is very much more than it seems. When you see green,<br />
trust it, for it’s all one with me and I will be there in some form or another. Never pay good money to trackside hucksters.”<br />
<br />
The green man pulled the remaining sticks and set them beside the others on the octagonal table. The future was spoken.<br />
<br />
“That’s it?” Sweetness asked, in case it wasn’t.<br />
<br />
“Yes, that’s it,” the green man said with the same considering look, as if Sweetness’s every syllable was loaded with wise ore.<br />
<br />
“Keep your eyes open and bring a change of underwear? Anyone could tell you that. What happens to me, where do I go, what do I do, who do I meet?”<br />
<br />
“You want me to give the story away?” the green man said.<br />
<br />
“This is balls,” Sweetness Asiim Engineer declared. “I want my money back.”<br />
<br />
“Have beans instead,” the green man said and threw a fistful of legumes at Sweetness’s face. The beans flew apart into dust. Sweetness reeled back from the blinding beige fog that, as it settled, became common Inatra road dust. The soft skin yurt and its resident were, of course, both gone.<br />
<br />
“Hey!”<br />
<br />
In the dust at her feet Sweetness saw three gleams of silver. Her coins. A hissing: she looked up: wisps of steam were leaking from <em>Catherine of Tharsis’s</em> shaft couplings. The Ascent beckoned. A flicker in her peripheral vision distracted her; a wink of light, minute as a five centavo piece, floated over the<br />
top of the escarpment. Quick as silver it slithered between the wind-pumps, leaped over the zigzags of the Ascent, glimmered across the tank terraces. Every moment it grew in size: over the trucks, gardens, the water-towers and hose gantries, aimed true and proper at Sweetness. Fear and wonder transfixed<br />
her. The spotlight from heaven dashed across the sidings, over the cardboard roofs of the poor, swept over Sweetness. And stopped. She was embedded in light. The air about her seemed to sing. Dust rose from the ground. The night smelled electric. Sweetness held out her hand. The three centavos in her<br />
palm shone like burning platinum. But she was not afraid. She shaded her eyes with her hand and squinted up the beam to the orbital mirror at its source. The light squeezed tears from her eyes.<br />
<br />
“Thanks, but I got to go now!”<br />
<br />
She stepped out of the enchanted circle. The spotlight followed her.<br />
<br />
Sweetness giggled nervously.<br />
<br />
<em>Be aware that the marvellous is always around you.</em><br />
<br />
She stowed the three centavos in her hip-bag and walked home shrouded in light.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>6</strong><br />
<br />
Shortly after four a.m. <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> completed its climb up the Inatra Ascent and dragged the last of its hundred ore-cars over the escarpment lip on to the down-grade into Leidenland. At twenty to five Sweetness Asiim Engineer 12th was woken in her narrow bed-box back of the aux-com by a burning tingle along her left flank, hip to floating rib. By the time she was fully awake, Little Pretty One was crouching in the mirror on the cabinette door. As ever, she was dressed in the clothes Sweetness had been wearing the previous day.<br />
<br />
“They’ve done the dirt,” she said without preamble, as was her way.<br />
<br />
“What time is it?” Sweetness asked.<br />
<br />
“’Bout three hours from Juniper. Look, if you’re not interested . . .”<br />
<br />
“You’ll tell me anyway.”<br />
<br />
Eight and a half years teaches you the moods and toyings of your imaginary friend. But not as much as being joined flesh to flesh, bone to bone, organ to organ, hip to floating rib.<br />
<br />
Twins were a blessing among trackpeople: two firm rails on which to run a common life. So when the mountainously pregnant Child’a’grace had felt something stir in her waters and Naon Engineer (then speaking words of love to her) had rushed full-throttle up to the floating Midwife at Dehydration, and the midwife had run her foetoscope over Child’a’grace’s belly and pronounced definitely, “twins,” there had been rejoicing. Even if they were girls. So no one had really listened when the midwife added, “They seem close. Very close.”<br />
<br />
How close became apparent five months later, in the Obstetrarium of the Flying (as opposed to Floating) Midwife’s dirigible, docked like an egg in a cup in an old impact crater just south of the high, lonely Alt Colorado line. <br />
<br />
“A girl!” No surprise. “And another girl!” So quickly? Naon Engineer had peered at the tangle of limbs and blood and tubes. Suddenly it all made visual sense, and he let out a cry of pure superstitious dread.<br />
<br />
Siamese twins.<br />
<br />
“Seen worse,” said the Flying Midwife, a great, ugly-lovely woman called Moon’o’May as she ran her scanner over the squawling, raisin-faced humans. “See?” Naon Engineer could make nothing of the false-colour images of bones and organs and pulsing things. “Shared kidney—could be a problem<br />
with that, later. Same with the ovary. But no neural interconnection. The spinal columns are clear, and the hips are anatomically ideal.”<br />
<br />
“So you can separate them,” Naon Engineer said, even as his wife was sweating and smiling and trying to make sense out of the unexpected complexity that had unfolded from her uterus.<br />
<br />
“It should be straightforward.”<br />
<br />
“Then do it.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll come back in a year, when they’ve grown stronger and the organs have settled.”<br />
<br />
“No, do it now.”<br />
<br />
Afterward Naon Engineer would always justify it by arguing that you could not have twin-trunked creatures obstructing <em>Catherine of Tharsis’s</em> narrow corridors and gangways. If there were a pressure leak, or, please God, a plasma breach, the creature would not only endanger itself but the lives of every other family member. Child’a’grace, still vertiginous from the birthing drugs, had understood<br />
that he feared others might suspect bad genes in the Engineer Domiety. Too close to the tokamaks. Uh huh. And there’s a shallow grave, just off the McAuleyburg branch. Oh yes. Well, of course there’s nothing left now, the condors get everything. But just you look at the collar bones, and count the vertebrae. <br />
<br />
“So,” the Flying Midwife said as she printed out the consent forms and laid the little red squawling thing on the white table under the white lights, “who gets the kidney and who gets the ovary?”<br />
<br />
“She gets the kidney.” Naon Engineer pointed. “And she gets the ovary.”<br />
<br />
“Okie dokie,” the Flying Midwife said, and called up the surgeon she worked with in Belladonna. He was on a marriage-repair weekend on the canals of New Merionedd, so the locum slipped his hand into the waldoglove and put on the cyberhat. In his windowless office on the fifth underdeep of<br />
Belladonna he waggled his fingers. In an Alt Colorado impact crater, scalpel blades danced over the infants. The robot arms wove, the fingers flashed and at the end of it the one with the kidney lived and the one with the ovary died and in truth there was a shallow grave, by the side of the branchline,<br />
unmarked but much spattered by the soft, bloody faeces of condors.<br />
<br />
Child’a’grace, half-joyful, half-despairing, hung a mobile of mirrored birds over the survivor’s cot and that night, Little Pretty One came into them and watched over her sibling, though the eyes of Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer 12th had yet to learn to focus.<br />
<br />
That was the story as told by Little Pretty One.<br />
<br />
“I just hope you like the smell of hot fat,” the twin ghost said in her bedroom mirror.<br />
<br />
Sweetness surged out of her bunk with as great a surge as her tiny couchette would allow.<br />
<br />
“Grandmother Taal . . .”<br />
<br />
“She’s got powers but she’s not omnipotent. She got as good a deal as she could . . .”<br />
<br />
The night, the dust, the gentle rock of the rails beneath her, the warm presence of constant velocity, the background bass hum of the tokamaks, the cool of the ancient waters of Inatra, the reek of dungfires, the verdant perfume of the green man’s booth; all drowned out by the rattle of pans and plates and<br />
the blatting of orders down the gosport. Sold. To a Stuard.<br />
<br />
“<em>Ninth Avata?</em>”<br />
<br />
“Who told you?”<br />
<br />
“My uncle.”<br />
<br />
Little Pretty One pouted, put out. She disliked having an oracular rival in the family.<br />
<br />
“Did your uncle tell you his name?”<br />
<br />
“Tell me.”<br />
<br />
“Narob Chi-Ora of the Southern Circle Stuards.”<br />
<br />
“Is he?”<br />
<br />
“Cute enough. Black hair. Nice ass. Nice eyes too. He’d be kind. He’s got ambitions. Catering director for the entire North West Quartersphere. He could get it too.”<br />
<br />
After eight years, Sweetness knew that Little Pretty One’s <em>coulds</em> usually meant <em>will</em>. Somewhere in the Panarch’s ninety-seven nested heavens, she suspected her ex-Siamese twin had met others.<br />
<br />
“When?” Heavy question.<br />
<br />
“Next corroboree.” Heavier answer. Twice a long year, on the spring and autumn equinoxes, the Trainpeople gathered on the great sidings of Woolongong flats, ten trains to a track, five hundred tracks. Five thousand noble locomotives, tenders and cabooses decked with bunting and flower garlands and hard-won iron rosettes for speed and endurance and bravery and heavy hauling. Here the Domiety heads boogied and the daughters were traded away. Economies of money and honour were exchanged out on the shimmering flats and, often as not, were that same day lost over card and snooker tables. Commodius vicus of recirculation of the commodifiable. Sweetness had seen the young women in their mothers’ dresses, bags in hands, nuptial kerchiefs on their heads. Seen, pitied, resolved never to join. <br />
“Oh God!”<br />
<br />
The big ore-load was bound for the foundries of Steel River. Three days deadhead from there up to Shelby to pick up a forest fermenter—raw trees at Shelby, fifteen kinds of liquiplastic and hydrocarbon fuel by the time it decoupled at Wisdom. There, an immediate shunt on to a pilgrim charter to the Murmuring Mountain at Chernowa, then a fast run to Belladonna for a month heading up the pride of Bethlehem Ares Railroads itself, the Ares Express. And after that the sun would stand vertical over the equator and divide the world into equal day and night and she would get to live in a<br />
strange man’s galley and her black curls would smell forever after of hot fat. So little time, so few kilometres.<br />
<br />
“You can’t let this happen!”<br />
<br />
In the mirror, Little Pretty One spread her hands in the way ghosts do when they tell the living, <em>I’m a ghost, remember</em>.<br />
<br />
Sweetness did remember. Something else.<br />
<br />
“The green man!”<br />
<br />
For the first time Sweetness saw Little Pretty One taken aback.<br />
<br />
“The what?”<br />
<br />
“The green man. He said . . .”<br />
<br />
“You met a green man? Where? I didn’t see that. This changes everything.”<br />
<br />
<em>He said, I don’t see a marriage yet</em>, was what Sweetness would have said but for the smart rap on the cabin door, followed by the swift, fierce itch that was Little Pretty One exiting the mirror and entering the long scar up her side.<br />
<br />
Brother Sle opened the porthole and bellowed.<br />
<br />
“Uncle Billy!”<br />
<br />
The formula was ancient, irrevocable and universally respected. Not even the Domiety historians agreed who Uncle Billy had been, if he had been any more than legendary, but he had saved generations of Engineers from peril, crime, police, debt, rivals, badmaashes, wanderlust and misjudged relationships. He had warned of threats gross and subtle, shysters, dunners, weighbridgemen, <br />
bindlestiffs and freeloaders.<br />
<br />
“Whereaway?” Sweetness called.<br />
<br />
“Railrat,” Sle answered.<br />
<br />
A roofrider. A freeloader. A faredodger. Pausing only to scratch her haunted wound, Sweetness threw on shorts, shoes, shirt. Sle was waiting in the corridor with the flashlight and djubba-stick.<br />
<br />
“You be careful with that,” he scolded as Sweetness reacquainted herself with the short, chubby railfolk’s weapon.<br />
<br />
“What, like this, brother?” She aimed the blunt club-head at Sle. He danced back; the compressed gas charge could shoot out the djubba-stick with force enough to dislodge the most tenacious roof rider.<br />
<br />
“Don’t waste the gas,” he said sourly. Sweetness gave his retreating back a thumb of disgrace as he exited the port sidewalk. She popped the overhead iris hatch with a gasp of steam and shinned up on to the roofwalk. Up on the roof had always been the place Sweetness had gone to think and feel and be alone, a savoury delicacy on crowded, bustling <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em>. Here, on the brilliant nights when the moonring was a diamond prizefighter’s belt, Child’a’grace had always known she could find her daughter out of all of a big train’s hundreds of hiding places. Sweetness unclasped her hair and shook it out in <em>Catherine of Tharsis’s</em> eternal slipstream. With the innate grace of the trainborn, she poised herself against the slow rock of the engine. She breathed in the night air. Steam wreathed around her. Several times since sprouting hair she could sit on, she had come up to take her clothes off and let the white vapour and the night caress her. At first she had felt perverse and sinful. Midnight<br />
nudist and aspirant engine drier. Then one night, buttoning up her blouse, she had spied Nugent Traction not merely take his gear off, but enjoy a slow, nocturnal wank, launching his effort in an elegant arc over the side of the water tender.<br />
<br />
Tonight, an Uncle Billy. Sweetness instinctively checked her tunnel-warning beacon, though there was no tunnel within two hundred kays, hitched the djubba-stick to her belt and set off down the gently swaying roofwalk toward the tender.<br />
<br />
A sound.<br />
<br />
She froze on the top rung of the tender companionway. Her inquisitive torch beam swung hither and yon. Romereaux’s grin greeted her from the lee of the main water inflow.<br />
<br />
“Don’t do that man, I could’ve djubba-ed you.”<br />
<br />
“Sorry, did I spook you?”<br />
<br />
“Nah. Course not.”<br />
<br />
She saw Romereaux’s face change and knew what he was going to say. She did not want to hear it. He did anyway.<br />
<br />
“About . . .”<br />
<br />
Sweetness flared.<br />
<br />
“How come everyone hears about this before me?”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry . . .”<br />
<br />
<em>Well, Engineers can’t marry Deep-Fusion people anyway, so you’re scuppered there</em>, she thought of saying but he really did not deserve words like that so she said, coolly, “Where’ve you checked?”<br />
<br />
“Starboard side’s clear. Suleiman is still down port. Chagdi’s coming up from the caboose.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll do the tops of the trucks.”<br />
<br />
“Okay.” A pause. “Sweet . . .”<br />
<br />
“Don’t talk. Okay?”<br />
<br />
It was good and physical to leap over the dark chasms between the orecars and flash her torch down among the clanking couplings.<br />
<br />
“Come out come out.”<br />
<br />
She sent her beam dancing over the angled planes of the truck roof. Behind this one, three hundred more. More distant than she had imagined, another sway of light, Chagdi working his way up.<br />
<br />
Father Naon had tried to impress the family horror of railrats on Sweetness but she had seen the indignity of old tramps impaled on signal stanchions and sad goondahs, shaken from the bogies, guillotined in half by the wheels, and the dreadful look in the eyes of the bums as they spat red dust<br />
from their mouths and banged red dust from their coats and then saw five hundred kilometres of it on every side of them. Freeloading was stealing but every time she was sent up on the roof Sweetness regretted that she must be part of the punishment. Were tales of the terrible fates of roofriders not told<br />
among the indigent orders that breed and were buried under the great termini? Or was whatever they were escaping worth any risk?<br />
<br />
Escape.<br />
<br />
A noise. Not family this time. The torch beam dodged left. Movement down on the sloping flank of ore-car eleven. Behind the vent stack. Sweetness hurdled the gaps between trucks, light fixed on the hexagonal mound of the vents. Steel mesh clanged beneath her feet. Yes. Yes. There. Fingers. She<br />
crouched by the handrail, sent her light this way, that. Her right hand unhooked the djubba-stick. Fingers, pale knuckled around the metal vent. Thin fingers, dust ingrained in the knuckles, black jam under the nails.<br />
<br />
Sweetness considered the fingers for a long time. Then she laid the djubba-stick on the roofwalk and said, softly, “Hey. You’re taking a wild risk, you know.”<br />
<br />
The fingers were silent.<br />
<br />
“You get all kinds of stuff gassing up off the ore. A kind of relative of mine fell in once when they were unloading. Came out like a teacher’s handbag. True. If that thing valves, it’ll blow you clear off the car.”<br />
<br />
The fingers twitched.<br />
<br />
“You know, I wouldn’t pick that place at all. Hanging down the side? You want to get gravity working for you, not against you, see? I’d go right up the front, down on the cow-catcher. It’s right in front of everyone but it’s kind of like a blind spot, you can’t see it from the bridge. True. Really. But, well, you’re here, so what you need to do, when you fall off, is make sure you land right between the tracks. That way the train goes right over your head. Mind you, you have to get down kind of fast, you don’t want to get anything tangled up in the grit pipes. You could be dragged for like kilometres.”<br />
<br />
The fingers twitched in her torch beam.<br />
<br />
“So, how long’ve you been down there?”<br />
<br />
Nothing. Then, a whisper almost lost in the wheel rumble, “Since Little Rapids.”<br />
<br />
“Mother’a . . . Your fingers must be coming off.”<br />
<br />
“Yes,” came the small reply that was full of knotted nerves and locked sinews and muscles numb to everything but dumb survival. Sweetness came to a decision.<br />
<br />
“I’m going to send something down to you. Grab ahold of it.”<br />
<br />
“No,” came the answer.<br />
<br />
“You what? I’m trying to help you.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t trust.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness was sincerely perplexed at the rejection of her offer of rebellion.<br />
<br />
“Why so?”<br />
<br />
“Trick. Try to knock me off.”<br />
<br />
“Listen, if you’ve been hanging on there since Little Rapids, you don’t need me to knock you off. Sooner rather than later, my friend.”<br />
<br />
The train lurched over points. Fingers groaned. Fingers slipped a fraction. Sweetness ducked under the handrail, anchored her feet over the lip of the roofwalk and stretched down over the sloping truck side. One-handed, she aimed the djubba-stick as close as she dared to the fingers.<br />
<br />
“This is going to come fast, so don’t shy away or anything stupid like that.”<br />
<br />
A second lurch threw her aim. The club-head shot within a whisker of the pale soft hand. The fingers almost flinched. Almost. <br />
<br />
“Grab hold!” Sweetness shouted. “It’ll hold you.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah,” came the voice as the fingers felt for the telescopic shaft of the stick. “But can you?”<br />
<br />
“I can hold any damn thing,” Sweetness said, affronted. One hand, then the other grasped the stick. The sudden tug almost tore her loose.<br />
<br />
“Hang on,” she gritted, to herself. She fumbled for the retract key. And <em>twist</em>. The djubba-stick kicked like Nugent Traction’s organ as first the hands, then the arms, then between them, a hunger-sunken face beneath the mat of black hair were hauled up over the edge of the car.<br />
<br />
<em>He’s kind of young</em>, Sweetness Asiim Engineer thought between the rip in her shoulders and the tear in her calves. <em>What, just gone eight</em>?<br />
<br />
They were almost face to face, lip to lip. Sweetness felt the last of her strength go.<br />
<br />
“Grab the rail!” she hissed. He seized it just as the djubba-stick fell from her fingers and clattered down the side of the ore-car into the dark. Sweetness rolled on to her back. The railrat knelt over her, head cocked to one side like an inquisitive songbird.<br />
<br />
“Why are you doing this? You could have knocked me clean off.”<br />
<br />
“Have,” Sweetness panted. “Plenty. So”—a swallow—“what ya called?”<br />
<br />
He was desperately thin. The fall would have snapped his little chicken bones. He had big brown suspicious eyes that mistrusted everything in the universe from under his urchin fringe. He was desperately cute. Worth saving just to look at.<br />
<br />
“You saved me, you tell first.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness sat up.<br />
<br />
“My name,” she said, “is Sweetness Octave Glorious Honey-Bun Asiim Engineer. The twelfth.”<br />
<br />
“You trainies have big names.”<br />
<br />
“So, how big’s yours?”<br />
<br />
“Pharaoh,” the boy said.<br />
<br />
“Pharaoh something? Something Pharaoh?”<br />
<br />
“Pharaoh nothing.”<br />
<br />
“Just Pharaoh.”<br />
<br />
“It’s enough, where I come from.”<br />
<br />
“And where would that be, little-name?”<br />
<br />
“Meridian.”<br />
<br />
“That’s . . .”<br />
<br />
“I know how far Meridian is.”<br />
<br />
Half a planet.<br />
<br />
“How?”<br />
<br />
“I won the meat lotto.”<br />
<br />
“What is this?”<br />
<br />
A crossing bell clanged away into the past.<br />
<br />
“Everyone puts up a steak. Then the Boss of the Roof draws the feathers.”<br />
<br />
“Whoa whoa whoa. Everyone? Who is this?”<br />
<br />
“The people. All of them. The underfolk.”<br />
<br />
“Ah.” The deep dregs; the faces you glimpsed looking up at you from between the sleepers in Meridian Main; the hands that reached out from under the platform when you dropped a centavo and it rolled over the lip. Small loss to you, to the fingers down there in the access tunnels and bogieways, food and glam and power. “You lived there like for always?”<br />
<br />
“This life, the one before it, probably the one after it too.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t get cute, railrat.”<br />
<br />
“We got names for you people, underneath. Anyway, you dropped your punch-stick over the side, remember?”<br />
<br />
“Yeah, well I can still pick you up and throw you off.” They knelt, challenging each other under the circling moonring. “So, how old are you?”<br />
<br />
“I’m near ten.”<br />
<br />
“Had you for younger.”<br />
<br />
“How much younger?”<br />
<br />
“Younger. So, what steak?”<br />
<br />
Kid Pharaoh finger-combed back his lank hair. No left ear, instead, a puckered grin of deaf scar.<br />
<br />
“An old woman bought it. She had cancer of the lobe.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t get a lot of that, cancer of the lobe.”<br />
<br />
“Sometimes, when the wind’s right, I can hear what she’s hearing, in here.” He tapped the earless curve of his skull. “That’s how I know who got it, after.”<br />
<br />
“What did you win for that?”<br />
<br />
“The ticket out. Anywhere. And the golden purse. A thousand dollars.”<br />
<br />
A tangential thought demanded Sweetness voice it before it faded.<br />
<br />
“So, how many times did you go in for the, ah?”<br />
<br />
“Meat lotto? Second time lucky.”<br />
<br />
“The first time?”<br />
<br />
44 Ares Express<br />
<br />
“A big toe. Don’t balance too good.”<br />
<br />
“Who got the toe?”<br />
<br />
“Don’t know. Not much sense in a toe.”<br />
<br />
“I suppose there’re one’s’ve been up for it a lot of times?”<br />
<br />
“Well, there’s a kind of natural limit . . .”<br />
<br />
“I suppose so.” Up ahead in the night, Naon Engineer whistled. Three short blasts, one long. Coming up on Juniper. Sweetness felt the great train shudder beneath her, brakes gently gripping.<br />
<br />
“So, what happened? I mean, if you had a thousand dollars . . .”<br />
<br />
“Got stiffed.”<br />
<br />
“Where?”<br />
<br />
“Suniyapa. Three big girls. Must’ve heard that they give out the Golden Purse with the lotto. They were looking for poor kids riding rich. They had suits. Looked like regular coh-mute-ers. Big damn blakey-toe boots, but.”<br />
<br />
“Sorry.”<br />
<br />
“What for? You were going to knock me off your train, so? Any road, they throw me off at High Plains and then I hitch a ride on some shit deadheader across Chryse because Mr. Engineer he’s expecting to ride the whole rig with me hanging off his lizard and when I don’t he dumps me out.<br />
<br />
Walked three days to Little Rapids.”<br />
<br />
“I’m an Engineer,” Sweetness said quietly.<br />
<br />
“Yeah, and like I said, you were going to knock me clean off. Anyway, I wait there and one two three trains go by, and then you come along and you’re the biggest by a way and I reckon, bigger the train, better to hide, and then one of youse spies me and I have to hide down over the edge, so.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness gave him her full regard a moment. She rocked back on her heels.<br />
<br />
“So, where’s this all going to end?”<br />
<br />
“Grand Valley, I’d hoped.” No hesitation. “I’m not comfortable ’cept there’s a roof on the sky.”<br />
<br />
The brakes were squealing now, biting down hard on raw steel. Within their familiarity, Sweetness was able to make out another sound, a Bassareeni voice, calling over the car tops.<br />
<br />
“Quick,” Sweetness ordered. “There.” She pushed Pharaoh toward the gap, mimed with her hands for him to crawl face flat and hushed. <br />
<br />
“Down there?” he whispered, peering down the ladder into grinding darkness.<br />
<br />
“Down there,” Sweetness hissed. “And be quiet about it.” Railrat Pharaoh slid over the top rung. His upturned face caught the moonslight.<br />
<br />
“Hello? Who dat dere?” Chagdi Bassareeni called from too damn close.<br />
<br />
“Listen up,” Sweetness hissed down into the dark abyss. “We’re pulling up for Juniper. Don’t wait for the train to stop, there’s always someone looking out when we pull up. Wait until we’re dead slow, <em>dead</em> dead slow, then do what I told you back there, drop down between the carriages on to the track. There’s plenty of room if you lie flat, on your back, not your face. Wait until you can’t see the taillights any more, then you’re safe. Juniper’s a <em>merde</em>-hole, but the Xipotle Slow Stopper’s through in a couple a days and they’ve no dignity. You can ride the roof for two centavos. When it gets to<br />
Xipotle, it splits; front half goes on to become the Grand Trunk Rapido. Take you right to Grand Valley.”<br />
<br />
She glanced over her shoulder. Fat-thighed Chagdi was standing at the far end of the truck, sending his torch beam swinging around like a jive-dancer.<br />
<br />
“Got to go. Luck.”<br />
<br />
“Thank you. I owe you.”<br />
<br />
“You do, but I don’t mean to collect, so I’ll write it off.”<br />
<br />
“Sweetness Octave, why did you do this?”<br />
<br />
Heavy feet on steel roof.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know, I haven’t time.”<br />
<br />
“I want to know.”<br />
<br />
“Okay, okay. I don’t like seeing people getting trapped in things they can’t get out of. Especially by other people.”<br />
<br />
“That’ll do.”<br />
<br />
“That’s all you’re getting.”<br />
<br />
The face was swallowed by the grating black. <em>This is the last time I will ever see you, Pharaoh</em>, Sweetness thought. <em>Quick and desperate and unprepared</em>. But all partings should be sudden. Sweetness stood up. Chagdi’s beam dazzled her.<br />
<br />
“Watch it with that thing.”<br />
<br />
“It is you.”<br />
<br />
Light-blinded, then night-blinded. Phosphenes flocked like bats across Sweetness’s retinas.<br />
<br />
“You find anything?”<br />
<br />
A soft, gritty thud, then the brakes reached a crescendo. Can’t see a smile in the dark.<br />
<br />
“Hey, what happened to your djubba-stick?”<br />
<br />
“Bastard caught hold of it. Took it with him.”<br />
<br />
“You djubba him?”<br />
<br />
“Right off.” A whistle and a downward curve of the hand.<br />
<br />
“And is he?”<br />
<br />
“Couldn’t see. Don’t think so.”<br />
<br />
Plump Chagdi’s face resolved out of the dazzle. He looked piqued. He had a reputation for capturing and tormenting caboose vermin and probably resented that his had not been the thumb on the djubba-stick trigger.<br />
<br />
“Pity you lost the stick, but.”<br />
<br />
“Yeah.” Sweetness sized up the dark gulf she must leap to get back home. “Pity.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>7</strong><br />
<br />
Forty-two long years on the iron road buys a woman a measure of dignity. When Grandmother Taal made one of her increasingly rare progresses down <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em>, she stopped, and the train moved for her.<br />
<br />
“Honoured Grandmother,” <em>Tante</em> Miriamme cooed from her cubby by the crew companionway. Grandmother Taal grunted acknowledgement and shuffled down another painful step. God smite these shoes.<br />
<br />
“Fine morning, <em>Amma</em> Taal,” called Finvar Traction, penduluming across the feed pipes and plasma buffers in his abseil harness. No one believed that all this swinging and dangling was necessary to his routine repairs but he clearly enjoyed it and he was one of the sights of the railroad.<br />
<br />
“Umph.” Too damn hot in layered skirts and tight-laced bodice on a day like this. Electric blue sky. The hottest colour. <br />
<br />
“Regards to thee and thine!” hailed cheery Silva Deep-Fusion, eternally white to the elbows in flour.<br />
<br />
Grandmother Taal nodded and grabbed for the handrail as the train jolted over points. Son and heir he might be, but Naon was no part of the Engineer his father had been, in his day. But neither was he cyberhatted into the autonomic systems, the drooling autopilot on the long, boring straights. Grandmother Taal waited for the last creak of brake and huff of steam before stepping down to the ground. A tip of the finger to Prevell Watchman Junior in his shunting turret.<br />
<br />
“Grandmo’r!” he yelled in warning. She was already pulling on her track vest. Not so old, nor yet so incontinent, as to forget the laws of the universe. <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> dragged her long load past Grandmother Taal. She fished in her waist purse for her needle case. Her thick thumb opened the leather wallet, felt out the smooth shaft of the delicate obsidian needles, anticipating power and pain. Had they no respect for a woman in her forties, that they make her stand under hot sun and stitch coloured silk through the pallid skin of her forearms? But her magic had never been respected. It was too useful, despite its limitations. Her clients found creative ways of bringing their woes into its peculiar bailiwick. Had there been someone she could have thanked and cursed, she would have, copiously, but her power was not a gift. It had just happened, the day of her womaning. The best she could work it out was that the power had gone out of her into the brown smear in her pants, then<br />
from there to every other brown thing in the world.<br />
<br />
The ore-trucks clunked past. The tail of the beast appeared around the slow bend. Henden Stuard was waiting at the foot of the galley stairs, hat of office outheld in salutation. He whispered into the gosport. Three hundred cars forward, Naon Engineer applied the brakes. The companionway came to<br />
a halt with such precision that Grandmother Taal need only step up.<br />
<br />
“What is your need?” she asked.<br />
<br />
“He is constipated,” suave Henden said.<br />
<br />
Junior Stuard kitchen hands and vegetable peelers bowed out of Grandmother Taal’s way as she moved through the galley car to the Pursery. There Brellen Stuard greeted her gravely.<br />
<br />
“He is constipated.”<br />
<br />
Shafto Stuard sat enthroned among golden cushions in the observation box. Light stained by painted glass dappled his strained features. <br />
“It is eight days now,” Brellen whispered.<br />
<br />
“You have tried dried fruit?” Grandmother Taal said.<br />
<br />
“And marmalade,” Shafto said, uncomfortably.<br />
<br />
A slight lurch told Grandmother Taal <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> was under way again. She watched the track unfold from under the bay of the observation box and wondered how it might flavour a family’s soul, to be always looking at where you have come from and never where you are going.<br />
<br />
“I suggested a hemp bandage, soaked in oil of paraffin,” Brellen said.<br />
<br />
“But he could not swallow more than a finger of it.”<br />
<br />
“Nor I,” said Grandmother Taal.<br />
<br />
“Please help me,” Shafto pleaded.<br />
<br />
Grandmother Taal contemplated a moment. It was good for the mystique.<br />
<br />
“It is doable.”<br />
<br />
“Is there anything you require?” Brellen asked, head bowed. Mint tea would have been good but Grandmother Taal remembered that once Brellen’s Aunt Mae had offered her tea in a smeared glass. Her opinion of the Stuards as a Domiety had never recovered.<br />
<br />
“Nothing, thank you.” She took out her needle case. “Children are advised not to watch.” She squinted in the stained-glass light to thread the right silk through the proper needle. The track outside, she noted, was now a blur of sleepers. She felt more secure in her power with fast steel beneath her. Immobility troubled Grandmother Taal. She uncapped her fountain pen and bared her forearm.<br />
<br />
“Try to be concise, but poignant. It should express all your feeling.”<br />
<br />
Shafto Stuard looked the old woman in the eyes, then took the pen and wrote STRAIN in bad lettering on the veined pale skin.<br />
<br />
“Very well.” Grandmother Taal picked up the purple thread and commenced the humming. It had no significance and little tune—a medley of toe-tappers off that All-Swing Radio the young ones listened to—but it kept her voice busy while she embroidered the word <em>strain</em> on to her forearm.<br />
<br />
It still hurt.<br />
<br />
She tried something more closely related to the pain, reading the memories of past magics in the white scarifications of her arms. Those arcs and loops, buried under successive woundings like the surface of a cratered moon, had been that time she moved the big earth-making machine off the line when it<br />
had upped and died inconveniently. Easier done, alive and dead. At least the teams slopping brown paint over its orange and blue mottled hide had been spared the moaning and hectoring about fine points of contractural detail endemic among earth-makers. That time the magic had been strong enough, and the paint sufficient to hold it, to flip the cussed thing half a kilometre into an old impact crater. Odd, that the power was not a scalar thing. It had been so much more difficult and painful to change Levant Traction’s brown eyes blue for one night of passion with a track surveyor for Lombarghini. Her wrist bore the memory of his few, sweaty hours; the white scar of the word <em>pretty</em>.<br />
<br />
She glanced down. On the “A.” Blood welled from the stitches, soaked the silk, stiffened. Bad to put in, worse to take out. Brellen looked politely revolted.<br />
<br />
“How are we?” Grandmother Taal asked her client.<br />
<br />
“I can feel something,” Shafto said with a curious light in his eyes. “Moving.”<br />
<br />
“Deep within?” Brellen asked. Shafto nodded. Grandmother Taal kept stitching.<br />
<br />
“Oh,” cried Shafto.<br />
<br />
“Ah,” murmured Grandmother Taal. Almost there. The downward slash of the “N,” then the blissful ascent to the finish. Done.<br />
<br />
“Ohh,” moaned Shafto Stuard. Brellen mopped his brow with a paper coaster.<br />
<br />
“Ah,” said Grandmother Taal, letting the needle fall and swing on the end of its silk. Blood paraded in thick drips down the thread.<br />
<br />
“Oooh,” Shafto said, eyes opening in wonder. “Oohhh.”<br />
<br />
“Ah,” said Grandmother Taal, feeling behind her for a chair.<br />
<br />
Eeeeeee, said an entirely new voice. Eeee. Eeee. Eeeeeeee. For an instant, puzzlement on every face. Then realisation: <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> herself was crying out, the top-C shriek Grandmother Taal had last heard the night Marya Stuard had driven off the Starke gang.<br />
<br />
The emergency whistle.<br />
<br />
All hands rushed for their duty stations, never to reach them. A tremendous wrench threw everyone from their places. Shafto was flung hard against the stained-glass bay and went down in a heap. Brellen floundered among golden cushions. Grandmother Taal found herself toppling eyes-first toward her neatly arranged needles. She grabbed at a cupboard handle and twisted herself aside. Cutlery and crockery sprung from racks, a full samovar of tea flung itself from the spirit-burner to spill boiling liquid across the floor. Chairs tumbled, tables capsized, antimacassars flew. Grandmother Taal was rolled toward the spreading stain of scalding tea. Somewhere she was conscious there was a sharp pain in her hip. She would bother with that later; if any of them survived this thing. She kicked her legs and swung herself away from the deadly tea on the hinged door.<br />
<br />
What was happening? A wreck? A derailment? Yet more dacoits? God forfend, a head-on, a containment breach? No, not that, the failsafes would blow the tail of the train free and send the locomotive shrieking on ahead to its final thermonuclear immolation.<br />
<br />
And it ended. Like that. With as little warning or manners as it had begun. Everyone lay where they had fallen, stunned motionless. The silence was eerily oppressive. Not even the familiar creaks and clicks and hisses of track life. <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> stood on the mainline, inexplicably halted.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>8</strong><br />
<br />
The dead stop jerked the bone slug out of Sweetness’s ear. Before it had even hit the decking, she was out of the cabinette door on to the sidewalk. The little gristly device muttered surds and improper fractions to whoever had ear to attend. Education abandoned, Sweetness swung around the stanchion on to the port observation deck. What she saw stopped her as surely in her tracks as it had stopped <em>Catherine of Tharsis</em> in hers.<br />
<br />
They have a saying for it in the <em>patois</em> of Old Belladonna, whispered from the perfumed balconies, tier upon tier upon tier lining the great cavern walls, growled in the dripping, fetid runways under the deepest of underdeeps: <em>gobemouche</em>. Mouth catching flies. Flygobbed. Sweetness stared at the precise circle of alien landscape dropped foursquare across the Trans Oxiana mainline.<br />
<br />
What she saw first was <em>colour</em>. Oranges, yellows, deep blues blobbed like a drip-painting on to the burned beige of the highlands. Once a Flying Optometrist had tested her for colour-blindness with patterned discs that reminded her of this; dots, swirls, crazily eddied colour. Try and make out a<br />
pattern. This was what she saw next; <em>shape</em>. More difficult by far than an Optometrist’s numbers and letters; these shapes were completely other, so entangled she did not at first know what she was looking for. Then she caught edges, curves, lines. <em>Those</em> tall, ribbed things were three-sided derricks,<br />
<em>those</em> low, curved things that caught the light as they flapped in the wind, some kind of kite-aerofoil. <em>Here</em> there seemed to be knots of thorny vine-pipe, <em>there</em>, that bright blur might be some kind of rotor. <em>This</em> was a whip-tipped aerial-thing, tall as a house, that was a translucent bladder that swelled and ebbed, swelled and ebbed like the throat pouches of painfully unpleasant frogs.<br />
<br />
<em>Shape</em> gave <em>substance</em>. The little rigs that supported the whizzing rotors looked as if they were made from purple bone; the sheets of the kites had the gloss of pure nylon, the guys that tethered them grew gas bladders like seawrack. The orange-green ground cover had the nap of a handwoven carpet, the cups of the big flowerheads looked like nothing more than satellite dishes spun from styrene foam. Plastic, a polymer jungle, a Bakelite rain forest.<br />
<br />
From <em>substance</em> to <em>purpose</em>. What was this? Did it have a name? A nature? Laws, ethics? Business? Predictabilities: was this all there was of it, would it expand, would more of it appear, like chicken pox? Would it disappear as abruptly as it, apparently, had arrived? Was it friendly to people and their<br />
trains? Did big terrible things hunt in its heart? Was God to be found there, navel-deep in a pool of crystalline water? How had it come here? Dropped out of the sky? Just growed? Miraculously verbed into being by the angels of the Panarch? Domestic magic? Had some herder kid been mucking with the<br />
Stones of Saying, despite all the Prebendaries’ sermons to the stern contrary?<br />
<br />
What was it, where had it come from, how had it got here, how were they going to get rid of it?<br />
<br />
All of which, clamorous in Sweetness Octave’s head expressed itself in one soft, awestruck, “Wow.”<br />
<br />
Others had joined her on the balcony. Miriamme Traction had forsaken her scullery. Marya Stuard stood agape. Naon Sextus had even relinquished the drive rods to stand and stare. A whirr, Grandfather Bedzo had unhooked himself from the cyberhat and was haltingly negotiating the ramps and sharp corners in his power-chair. Onlookers moved aside to give him a place at the rail. His bleary eyes rolled over the circle of otherness that lay square across the track. His words spoke for everyone.<br />
<br />
“What the sweet suffering frig is that?”<br />
<br />
The young were organised into scouting teams while the Domiety elders gathered in confab. Things were hideously amiss forNorthWest Regional Track not to have issued a warning. Somehow—impossibly—it had slipped in under every single one of the thousands of watching eyes up in the moonring.<br />
<br />
“Bugger <em>hows</em>,” Uncle Tahram Septus Engineer boomed over the great table. “Give me <em>whens</em>.” He was contracts clerk, but spoke for everyone’s fear of missed connections, rescheduled haulage deals, cancelled contracts and Wisdom’s bankers in their ground-scraping beige coats and little round purple data-specs. Customary inter-Domiety bickering was forgotten. Clan heads drew up schemes and hurried to their various stations to expedite it. <br />
<br />
Equipped for the alien with track vests, notebooks, walkie-talkies and djubba-sticks, Sweetness and Romereaux eyed the intruder with mistrust.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know,” Sweetness said. She stood between the rails, a few steps from where they disappeared into the other. “What if it smells bad, or something?”<br />
<br />
Romereaux leaned forward, took a generous sniff.<br />
<br />
“Smells okay to me. Sort of like when we haul a forest-fermenter.”<br />
<br />
“It might be poisonous.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t think so.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness took a hesitant step toward the borderline. The rails were not smothered in other-growth. They stopped. Terminated, clean as a laser cut. Likewise, where the plastic factory-jungle abutted the everyday world the plant-machines were sliced though with surgical precision. A parasol-like leaf was sectioned along a chord, a windmill gantry was exposed down one side. Stems and vines were neatly truncated, oozing ichor the colour of longdead batteries.<br />
<br />
“I mean,” Sweetness said, “if we go in there and . . .”<br />
<br />
“One way to find out.” Romereaux unholstered his djubba-stick. He positioned himself <em>en-garde</em> to the line of division, shuffled an uncomfortable moment or two, aimed the weapon. “Right then.” He pressed the trigger. The club-head shot out, clacked off a gantry upright well beyond the line of<br />
division. The shaft remained whole, unparted. He retracted the device.<br />
<br />
“So.”<br />
<br />
“So.”<br />
<br />
But Sweetness still tippy-toed across the boundary, like an old seabather testing the water. Then something darted at her, feathery and diaphanous and whirring, and darted away as she swiped at it. She glimpsed helicopter rotors, a fragile crystalline body, great blinking eyes framed, incongruously, with long eyelashes. It was no larger than her hand. The autogyro-bug blinked at her, emitted a soft purr and released a stream of phosphorescent spores from its belly. The spores settled on Sweetness’s skin like thistledown. They sparkled in the sun. She heard faint far tintinnabulations, smelled summer <br />
and palm wine and spent fireworks, felt delicious weals of cold stitch across her flesh.<br />
<br />
“Oh,” she said. And, “Ah.”<br />
<br />
The thing blinked again, dipped on its rotors and spun away. Without understanding the impulse, Sweetness followed. The will-o’-the-wisp led her into wonder. In groves of derrick trees five, six times her height she ducked under swooping sails. Gentle breezes scented with syrup and electricity<br />
fanned her face. Through copses of translucent orange bottle-plants, wide bellied, tight lipped, corked with plugs of matted fibre. Within, coiling things somersaulted in thick liquid. Luminous midges swarmed in her face, shifting patterns of light and density. As she moved inward, Sweetness heard<br />
the potplants uncork like deeply resonant belches. Looking back, she saw them ejaculate hundreds of long silver streamers. On, and in, over a carpet of glistening blue pebbles that, when she stepped on them, grew legs and fled from her. She padded through a parting sea of iridescent beetles. She stopped<br />
to pick one up, yelped, dropped it. The thing had hit her with an electric shock. It lay on its back, thrashing its cilia legs until one by one they locked and froze.<br />
<br />
Onward; parting webs of thick, pulsating vines to be sure she was on the track of the fluttering lure. Bulbs and nodules burst between her fingers, staining them with coloured juices that smelled of stale beer, cinnamon, fresh buttery plastic, window polish, Grandmother Taal’s herb <em>tisanes</em>. One smelled<br />
so powerfully of ginger sorbet she remembered from a trip to Devenney on the Syrtic Sea she almost sucked her long fingers. Almost. <br />
<br />
Onward: through curtains of transparent lace; along narrow twisting alleys confined between towering crimson tube walls, like the neatly coiled intestines of an eviscerated giant; crawling under umbrella-canopies of ground-kissing mushrooms; through flocks of creatures like tiny silver flies suspended from gossamer balloons that wheeled and darted with surprising agility from the touch of her shadow.<br />
<br />
At some point Sweetness remembered that Romereaux was not with her, had never been with her. At another point, she realised she had been walking much much longer than she should have been able to. At yet another, she saw that the edge of the world was a good deal closer than she had expected. <br />
Another still, and she discovered she had no idea where she was. Further yet, she realised she did not care.<br />
<br />
Pushing through swags of knitted moss, she failed to see the glitter of water and almost fell headlong into the pool. Sweetness grabbed fistfuls of moss, they tore like widow’s curtains. She fell to her hands and knees in shallow, metallic-smelling water. Water. She remembered who what where she was. She looked around. The flying tantaliser was gone, of course. She looked up at the sky. It was a shade or two darker than the norm. Verging indigo. She thought of that other strange sky, in the place where Uncle Neon dwelled alone in his steel pole. Was this like that, another other? Was what had fallen on to the Trans Oxiana mainline a circular door, an infinite number of ways in, so that when you were on the other side, you found that it was bigger on the inside than the outside? The twenty-seven heavens of the Panarch were stacked like that, each inside the one below it, each larger than the level that contained it. She had walked a long way; the sun—if that was the sun she knew—was close to the edge of the world.<br />
<br />
A panicky thought. Some doors open only one way. Once through this door, could she get back? Could she even get back to where she could get back <em>from</em>?<br />
<br />
Something moved in the water. A face, pale, framed by writhing black snakes. St. Catherine preserve us, the Lamia of the Pool. The snakes were black curls. The face was her own. But it was not a reflection. Little Pretty One lay under the shallow water, rising slowly through the rippled surface. A hand thrust out of the water. Sweetness seized it, pulled her psychic twin out of the pond. Little Pretty One was dressed in the work shorts, tie-waist T and big boots Sweetness had worn the day she refused to djubba Kid Pharaoh off the side of the ore-car. Little Pretty One gobbed and hawked out a mouthful of water.<br />
<br />
“What were you doing in there?” Sweetness asked.<br />
<br />
“Drowning, tit-breath,” Little Pretty One spat. “Sweet Mother of sewage . . .”<br />
<br />
“No, I mean, how did you get here?”<br />
<br />
“You’re asking particularly inane questions today,” Little Pretty One said, wringing out the hems of her shorts. She and Sweetness stood facing each other ankle-deep in the strange water. “Same way I always get anywhere.”<br />
<br />
“Where are we?”<br />
<br />
Little Pretty One squatted, dripping, on a gnarled fist of translucent, spark-speckled polymer. Sweetness found a perch on a swag of liana. <br />
<br />
“Now, what would have been a much better question is ‘when’ are we rather than ‘where’?”<br />
<br />
“Well, when then?” For a psychic twin, Little Pretty One was damn irritating.<br />
<br />
“That’s tricky.” Little Pretty One stretched her fingers out and examined them. “God! Bloody prunes!” She held up wrinkled pads for Sweetness’s perusal. “I mean, if you think of time as a railway line, you have a problem. There isn’t anywhere but forward or back. Think of it more like a shunting yard . . .”<br />
<br />
“But one with many thousands of tracks . . . Done this one before.”<br />
<br />
“Where? When? You didn’t tell me.”<br />
<br />
“My uncle.”<br />
<br />
“Oh. Him. And where is your uncle, exactly?” Little Pretty One looked theatrically around her. “So, did he tell you it’s a probability thing?”<br />
<br />
“He didn’t tell me anything. I thought it up myself. When I was there.” Conversations concerning invisible relatives tended to the surreal of the metaphysical, Sweetness had found.<br />
<br />
“Well, my little mathematician, if you can imagine that the tracks closest to the mainline are more likely than the ones on the outside. Like a train to get on to a track has to roll three dice. So, to get on to the outside tracks you need a three, or an eighteen; it’s going to be much easier to get on to the ones where you need a twelve. Except, the odds are way way longer than that. Like rolling a hundred Eagle-Eye-Jacques in a row. Maybe less likely, but the thing is, it can happen, and you’d be on that track way way<br />
out there. It can happen first time, even. Space-like time. Time-like space, but that’s something else.”<br />
<br />
Railway children grew up natural relativists, where time and distance were freely interchangeable as they moved at speed across whole landscapes. <br />
<br />
“So, where does this when come from?” Sweetness asked. A cellophane rustle. Little Pretty One looked up. Her eyes opened. In a trice she dived back inside Sweetness. She left a damp stain on Sweetness’s shirt and track jeans.<br />
<br />
Pink plastic fronds parted. Fingers pushed through. A face followed. Romereaux’s. Sweetness saw him, frond-freckled. Romereaux saw her, waterdappled. And it went <em>crack</em> between them, the thing that had been here every moment in every breath and word and look between them, that they had never dared talk about, that the ways of the Domieties and the customs of the trainfolk and the Forma had denied, but here, in a place outside the Forma, outside the world of laws and formas, they could play. <em>Crack</em> like Uncle Neon in the middle of routine signal maintenance, flashed into somewhere else.<br />
<em>Like that</em> Sweetness found her fingers untying the draw strings of his pants. Loosening the elasticated waistband from the crinkled skin. Like that she found her track vest floating in the water, found fingers working up and under her T, found Romereaux’s attempted goatee prickling her chin. Then<br />
<em>tongue</em>. Then <em>tongue</em> back and the pants dropped around his ankle like a vanquished battle flag and the discovery that he, too, flouted Domiety prescriptions on underwear.<br />
<br />
“Ooh, you filthy bugger,” Sweetness giggled as it kicked hard in her hand like a pet lizard and he just smiled.<br />
<br />
“In there.” He nodded at the pool.<br />
<br />
“In the water?”<br />
<br />
“The water.”<br />
<br />
“So, you’ve always wanted to . . .”<br />
<br />
“In water. Ah hah.”<br />
<br />
“You are a filthy bugger.”<br />
<br />
She unbuttoned her shirt. It fell in surrender like Romereaux’s many-pocketed pants. Sweetness took a step backward. Cool alien water sucked at her heels.<br />
<br />
“Hello?”<br />
<br />
She turned to stone. Romereaux was paralysed. The windmills wound and the whirligigs whirled and fritillaries frilled while they stood, two statues, too stunned even to pull their clothes on.<br />
<br />
“Hello? There’s someone there, isn’t there?”<br />
<br />
The little pet house lizard had gone down, limp and sad.<br />
<br />
“There is someone there. I’m sure of it. Hello?”<br />
<br />
The trance was broken.<br />
<br />
“Cock piss bugger bum balls!” Sweetness scooped up her shirt and fled into the pink frond forest while Romereaux struggled, one legged like a stoned stork, to pull on his sodden pants. They were both sliding into their track vests as the figures emerged from the finger-forest on the further shore<br />
of the pool.<br />
<br />
“Hi there!” Romereaux waved with one hand. The other scraped back his tousled hair.<br />
<br />
“Hi yourselves!” called the leader of the other party, a cheery-faced, chubby man in his early tens. With him was a spookily thin girl who squatted on pinched thighs and looked resentful, and a dumb-looking seven-year-old boy whose face said <em>I’m hugely confused here</em>. Track vests and djubbasticks<br />
marked them as track. “Where are you from?”<br />
<br />
“<em>Catherine of Tharsis</em>,” Romereaux shouted.<br />
<br />
“Back there,” Sweetness added.<br />
<br />
“Ah!” cheery-face called. “<em>Bishop of Alves</em>!”<br />
<br />
Sweetness knew the train, a good, tough little Class 14 freight hauler. Well-maintained and proud, but definitely second class.<br />
<br />
“Where’s yours?” Sweetness asked.<br />
<br />
“Back there.” The Bishoper pointed back through the finger-forest. “You walked long?”<br />
<br />
“Seems like it. Couldn’t say.”<br />
<br />
The Bishoper nodded.<br />
<br />
“We must’ve been walking for a couple of hours. This place seems to get bigger the further in you go.”<br />
<br />
“I think this is the middle, though,” Sweetness said.<br />
<br />
“Thank God,” the chubby man called. “My name is Esquival Nonette D’Habitude Dharati Engineer 5th. Do you mind if we come round?”<br />
<br />
“We’ll meet you halfway,” Romereaux said. But neither party took a single step, for with a rushing like the wings of all the angels in the Ekaterina Angelography beating at once, the sun was eclipsed.<br />
<br />
Everyone looked up. An edge of something huge and dark, and curved almost as gently as the world, moved over the trainfolk. Projections, protuberances, masts, aerials, unobvious sticking-out bits: then they were in deep shadow. Not darkness: the belly of the great machine was starred with lights. A clutch of those lights unfolded, swept fingers of light across the canopy of the plastic jungle before capturing each of the trainfolk explorers in a personal spotlight.<br />
<br />
Sweetness shaded her eyes with her fingers and peered up into the beam. As she had half expected, a voice spoke out of it. As she had also expected, it was big and booming.<br />
<br />
“Caution humans,” it said, not in the air, but inside Sweetness’s skull. “This is ROTECH Real-systems Repair Monitor eleven thirty-eight. You are in peril. There has been a reality dysfunction in this sector. You are advised to leave forthwith. Further slippages may result in your being marooned when the breach is repaired. Please follow the moving lights. They will guide you to the exits.”<br />
<br />
Sweetness did not listen beyond the fifth word from the sky. Danger, reality breaches, so? ROTECH was here, stooped down from heaven to touch the earth. The people who made the world had come. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/AresExpress.html">Ares Express</a> © <a href="http://ianmcdonald.livejournal.com/">Ian McDonald</a></div><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.martiniere.com/">Stephan Martiniere</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke </div> <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKjjGGekydBPig0XPo67xbWfmS0UVkiqnaH_pRWDsObP_nh6mf5gid3rwH-ZZpKOgIyskJOs5brLvBSCKnRyZGqd0UPKr1C6ssoC3DvLwS6d6eBZLJ8RjaQFyEETG4jmTyBX7PYAoAwig/s1600/McDonaldCrop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKjjGGekydBPig0XPo67xbWfmS0UVkiqnaH_pRWDsObP_nh6mf5gid3rwH-ZZpKOgIyskJOs5brLvBSCKnRyZGqd0UPKr1C6ssoC3DvLwS6d6eBZLJ8RjaQFyEETG4jmTyBX7PYAoAwig/s320/McDonaldCrop.jpg" tt="true" /></a></div>Ian McDonald is the author of many science fiction novels, including <em>Brasyl, River of Gods, Cyberabad Days, Desolation Road, King of Morning, Queen of Day, Out on Blue Six, Chaga</em>, and <em>Kirinya</em>. He has won the Philip K. Dick Award, the BSFA Award, and a Hugo Award, and has been nominated for the Nebula Award and a Quill Book Award, and has several nominations for the Arthur C. Clarke Award. He lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Visit Ian McDonald online at <a href="http://ianmcdonald.livejournal.com/">ianmcdonald.livejournal.com</a>.lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com28tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-78938107184928777792010-04-19T10:36:00.001-05:002010-04-19T11:29:44.801-05:00Ghosts of Manhattan by George Mann<strong><span style="font-size: large;"></span></strong><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><div align="left"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnbqNfGqImVRnzY1JESE9_E79oBUqac8o08bUWkMX8pNqZNfjlYQHd2B8LqvDmcdqxoRKPpazYp9bLdzIZ23Gj9Id3WUC_v1-7intDCwDd8Q4Z87Sh7v-61quTrOkOyBrR9p97g5S386A/s1600/ghostsofmanhattan_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnbqNfGqImVRnzY1JESE9_E79oBUqac8o08bUWkMX8pNqZNfjlYQHd2B8LqvDmcdqxoRKPpazYp9bLdzIZ23Gj9Id3WUC_v1-7intDCwDd8Q4Z87Sh7v-61quTrOkOyBrR9p97g5S386A/s320/ghostsofmanhattan_cover.jpg" wt="true" /></a></div><strong>INTRODUCING THE WORLD'S FIRST STEAMPUNK SUPERHERO</strong><br />
<br />
1926. New York. The Roaring Twenties. Jazz. Flappers. Prohibition. Yet things have developed differently to established history. America is in the midst of a cold war with a British Empire that has only just buried Queen Victoria, her life artificially preserved to the age of 107. A series of targeted murders are occurring all over the city. This is a time in need of heroes. It is a time for The Ghost. <br />
<br />
The trail appears to lead to a group of Italian-American gangsters and their boss, dubbed 'The Roman'. However, as The Ghost soon discovers, there is more to The Roman than at first appears. As The Ghost draws nearer to him and the center of his dangerous web, he must battle with foes both physical and supernatural and call on help from the most unexpected of quarters if he is to stop The Roman and halt the imminent destruction of the city. <br />
“A very enjoyable read. It is pure pulp entertainment… <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Ghosts.html"><strong>Ghosts of Manhattan</strong></a></em> makes for excellent entertainment on dark, rainy evenings.”<br />
-Gatehouse Gazette<br />
<br />
“Turns out that a Jazz-Age-superhero-steampunk-occult thriller is a perfect concoction.”<br />
-Booklist<br />
<br />
Let yourself get caught up in the action. Scroll down to read an excerpt from the book:<br />
<br />
</div><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Ghosts of Manhattan</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">A Tale of the Ghost</span></strong></div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">George Mann</span></strong></div><br />
<br />
<em> I have no name.</em><br />
<em> I am the judgment that lives in the darkness, the spirit of the city wrought </em><em>flesh and blood.</em><br />
<em> I was born of vengeance and I have no past. I am both protector and executioner. </em><em>I represent the lives of the helpless; those who will not or cannot help </em><em>themselves. I show no mercy.</em><br />
<em> </em><em>I exist only in the shadows. The alleyways and the rooftops are my domain. </em><em>I feel the heartbeat of the city, like a slow, restless pulse; I flow unimpeded </em><em>through its street map of veins.</em><br />
<em> </em><em>I live to keep the city clean, to search out the impurities and deliver retribution.</em><br />
<em> </em><em>I am Life and Death, Yin and Yang.</em><br />
<em> </em><em>I have no name . . .</em><br />
<em> </em><em>And I know where to find you.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER ONE</strong><br />
<br />
DOWNTOWN MANHATTAN,<br />
NOVEMBER 1927<br />
<br />
Something stirred in the shadows.<br />
<br />
“Fat Ollie” Day flicked the stub of his cigarette toward the gutter, watching it spiral through the air like a tumbling star. It landed in a puddle of brackish rainwater and fizzed out with a gentle hiss. Nervously, he rested his sweaty palm on the butt of his pistol and edged forward, trying to see what had made the noise. It was too dark to make out anything other than the heaps of trash piled up against the walls of the alleyway, illuminated by the silvery beams of the car’s headlamps. The air was damp. Ollie thought it was going to rain.<br />
<br />
Behind him, the car engine purred with a low growl. He’d left it running, ready for a quick getaway. Ollie had stoked it himself a few minutes earlier, shoveling black coal from the hopper into the small<br />
furnace at the rear of the vehicle, superheating the fluid in the water tank to build up a head of steam. It was a sleek model—one of the newer types—and Ollie couldn’t help grinning every time he ran his<br />
hands over its sweeping curves. Who said crime didn’t pay?<br />
<br />
Now his smart gray suit was covered with coal dust and soot, but he knew after they’d finished the job they were doing, he could buy himself another. Heck, he could buy himself a whole wardrobe full if he had the inclination. The boss would see him right. The Roman knew how to look after his guys.<br />
<br />
Inside the tall bank building to his left, the four men he’d ferried downtown in the motorcar were carrying out a heist—their third in a week—and once again he’d been left outside to guard the doors. It<br />
suited Ollie just fine; he’d never had a stomach for the dirty stuff.<br />
<br />
Being on the periphery didn’t worry him—as long as he still got his share of the proceeds.<br />
<br />
There was another scuffing sound from up ahead, like a booted foot crunching on stone. Ollie felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle with anxiety. The pressure valve on the vehicle gave an expectant<br />
whistle, as if in empathy, calling out a shrill warning to its driver. Ollie glanced back, but the car was just as he’d left it, the side doors hanging open like clamshells, waiting for the others to finish the job inside.<br />
<br />
“Who’s there?” He slid his pistol from its holster, easing it into his palm. “I’m warning you. Don’t you mess with Ollie Day.”<br />
<br />
There was a sudden, jerky movement as a nearby heap of trash was disturbed, causing cardboard boxes to tumble noisily to the ground. Ollie swung his pistol round in a wide arc. His hand was shaking. He couldn’t see anything in the gloom. Then more movement, to his right. Something crossed the beam of the headlamps. He spun on the spot, his finger almost squeezing the trigger of his pistol. . .<br />
<br />
. . . And saw a black cat dart across the alley, scuttling away from the pile of boxes. Ollie let out a long, wheezing sigh of relief. “Hey, cat. You got Ollie all jumpy for a minute there.” He slipped his pistol<br />
back into its holster, grinning to himself. “Man, I gotta learn to take it easy.” He looked up.<br />
<br />
Two pinpricks of red light had appeared, thirty feet further down the alleyway, hovering in the air at head height. Ollie stood silent for a moment, trying to figure out what was going on. For a minute he<br />
thought he was seeing things, and made to rub his eyes, but then the lights began to move, sweeping toward him through the gloom.<br />
<br />
Footsteps running. Ragged breath. Ollie fumbled for his weapon, but he was already too late.<br />
<br />
The man sprang at him from nearly ten feet away, hurtling through the air toward him like a panther, body coiled for an attack. Ollie caught only glimpses of his assailant as the man was crisscrossed by the headlamp beams: dressed fully in black, a long cape or trench coat whipping up around him, a fedora on his head. And those glowing red eyes, piercing in the darkness. Ollie thought they might bore right into him, then and there.<br />
<br />
He got the gun loose just as his attacker came down on him, hard, causing the weapon to fly from his hand and skitter across the ground toward the car. It clattered to a stop somewhere out of sight. The man was fast, and Ollie was hardly able to bring his hands up in defense before he was punched painfully in the gut and he doubled over, all of the air driven out of his lungs. The man grabbed a fistful of Ollie’s collar and heaved him bodily into the air. Ollie tried desperately to kick out, or to cry for help, but was able only to offer an ineffectual whimper.<br />
<br />
Before he knew what was happening, Ollie felt himself being flung backward. He sailed through the air, his limbs wheeling, and slammed down across the hood of the car. He felt the thin metal give way<br />
beneath his bulk. But he had no time to lament the damage to his precious vehicle. Pain blossomed in his shoulder. He realized that his arm had been crushed and was hanging limply by his side. The back of his head, too, felt like it was on fire, and he could sense a warm liquid—blood?—running down the side of his face. He emitted a heartfelt wail, just in time to see the grim face of his attacker looming over him. <br />
<br />
The man was unshaven and unkempt. His eyes—his real eyes—were obscured by a pair of glowing goggles, strange red lights shining bright behind the lenses, transfixing the mob driver as he struggled to inch backward on the car’s hood, to get away from this terrifying apparition of the night. He had nowhere to go. He was going to die. He squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the fatal blow. Seconds passed. He peeled his eyelids open again.<br />
<br />
The man was still hovering over him. After a moment, he spoke. His voice was gruff and filled with ire. “In there?” He gestured toward the set of double doors that the others were planning to use as their<br />
escape route from the bank.<br />
<br />
Ollie nodded. He knew he was likely signing his own death warrant by giving them away, but all he could think about was getting free from this maniac, this . . . vigilante. He could taste blood. If the<br />
car would still drive . . .<br />
<br />
The stranger grabbed the front of Ollie’s jacket with both fists and hauled him into the air again. “Oh no. No, no, no . . .”<br />
<br />
Turning, the man charged at the double doors, swinging Ollie in front of himself like a battering ram. Ollie’s shoulder connected painfully with the heavy wooden doors as they burst through, causing<br />
the hinges to splinter and the doors to cave inward with a huge crash.<br />
<br />
Stars bloomed in his field of vision. His head spun. He couldn’t remember what it was like not to feel numb with pain. He felt as if he was going to die, and realized that he probably was.<br />
<br />
They were standing in the main lobby of the bank. The scene inside was one of utter chaos. Around thirty or forty civilians were scattered over the polished marble floor, lying prone on their bellies, their<br />
hands behind their heads, their distraught faces pressed to the ground. Another of the Roman’s men was standing over them with a gun, keeping guard. Two further men were standing by the bank tellers as they stuffed cloth bags full of paper bills, and a fourth was up in the gallery overhead, surveying the scene below, a tommy gun clutched tightly in his hands.<br />
<br />
A huge holographic statue of Pegasus dominated the lobby space, flickering ghostly blue as it reared up on its hind legs, its immense wings unfurled over the swathe of terrified civilians below. Above that, an enormous chandelier shimmered in the bright light.<br />
<br />
Silence spread through the lobby as everyone turned at once to see who had burst through the doors in such a violent fashion. A woman screamed. The four mobsters offered Ollie and the other man a silent<br />
appraisal before raising their weapons.<br />
<br />
Ollie was struggling to catch his breath. He couldn’t feel his left arm anymore, and he didn’t know if this was troubling or a blessed relief. He didn’t have time to consider it any further before he found<br />
himself unceremoniously dumped against the wall.<br />
<br />
“Stay there.”<br />
<br />
The man in black stepped forward, glancing from side to side. Ollie could see now that his billowing trench coat concealed a number of small contraptions, including what looked like the long barrel of a<br />
weapon under his right arm. Dazed, he watched the chaos erupt again before his eyes.<br />
<br />
His attacker spread his arms wide, facing the rest of the Roman’s men. “Time’s up, gentlemen.”<br />
<br />
One of the mobsters opened fire. There was a series of loud reports as he emptied his chamber, yelling at the others to take the newcomer down. The man in black seemed unconcerned by the spray of bullets, however, waiting as they thundered into the wall behind him, failing even to flinch as the mobster went wide with his shots, too hasty to take proper aim. Ollie watched in dismayed awe as the man gave a discreet flick of his right arm, causing the long brass barrel of the concealed weapon to spin up on a ratchet and click into place along the length of his forearm. It made a sound like a steel chain being dragged across a metal drum.<br />
<br />
The man swung his arm around toward the crook who had fired on him and squeezed something in his palm. There was a quiet hiss of escaping air, and then he gave his reply. A storm of tiny steel fléchettes burst out from the end of the strange weapon, a rain of silver death, hailing down on the crook and shredding him as they impacted, bursting organs and flensing flesh from bone. It was over in a matter of seconds. The shattered body crumpled to the floor, gore and fragments of human matter pattering down around it in a wide arc. The teller who had been standing beside the felon dropped to the floor in a dead faint, the pile of cash in his hands billowing out to scatter all around him as he fell.<br />
<br />
The vigilante didn’t wait for the stutter of another gun. He rolled forward and left, moving with ease, and came up beside the holographic statue, his weapon at the ready. Another hail of fléchettes dropped the man in the gallery above, sending him tumbling over the rail, his face a mess of blood and broken bone fragments. He crashed to the marble with a sickening crunch, his limbs splayed at awkward angles.<br />
<br />
The mobster guarding the civilians—who Ollie knew as Bobby Hendriks—wasn’t taking any chances. He leapt forward, grappling with one of the women on the floor and dragging her to her feet. Looking panicked, the heavyset man pressed a knife to her throat, which gleamed in the bright electric light as he turned the blade back and forth, threatening to pull it across her soft, exposed flesh. The woman—a pretty blonde in a blue dress—looked terrified and froze rigid, trying not to move in case she somehow made the situation worse.<br />
<br />
“I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!” His voice was a gravelly bark.<br />
<br />
The man in black flicked a glance at Hendriks, and then back at the other mobster guarding the tellers, who were still furiously emptying the cash drawers. He stepped toward Hendriks and the hostage.<br />
<br />
Hendriks stepped back, mirroring the movement. He pressed the blade firmly against the woman’s throat, drawing a tiny bead of blood. She wailed in pain and terror.<br />
<br />
A shot went off. The man in black flinched as a bullet stroked his upper arm, tearing a rent in his clothing and drawing a line of bright blood on his skin. He turned on the gunman, but Ollie realized he<br />
wasn’t able to get a clear bead due to the tellers. Instead, the man reached inside his trench coat and gave a sharp tug on a hidden cord.<br />
<br />
There was a roaring sound, like the deep rumble of a distant explosion. Bright yellow flames shot out of two metal canisters strapped to the backs of the man’s boots, scorching the floor. Ollie stared on, bewildered, as the stranger lifted entirely into the air, propelled by the bizarre jets, and shot across the lobby at speed, flitting over the prone civilians and swinging out above the mobster’s head. He didn’t even need to fire his weapon. Bringing his feet around in a sweeping movement, he introduced the searing flames to the gunman’s face, who gave a gut-wrenching wail as his flesh bubbled and peeled in the intense heat. He dropped on the spot, still clutching his gun, hungry flames licking around his ears and collar. <br />
<br />
The man in black reached inside his coat and pulled another cord. The flames spat and guttered out. He crashed to the floor, landing in a crouch on one knee. All eyes were on him. He climbed slowly to his feet and stood, regarding the last of the felons.<br />
<br />
“I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!” Hendriks was swinging the girl around as he looked for an escape route, edging away from this terrifying man who had come out of nowhere and murdered his companions. “I’ll kill her! I’ll kill her!”<br />
<br />
When he spoke, the vigilante’s voice was drenched in sorrow. “You already have.”<br />
<br />
Hendriks looked down at the girl in his arms. Sudden realization flashed on his face. His knife was half-buried in the woman’s throat, blood seeping down to drench the front of her dress, matting the fine hairs on his forearm. Shocked, he stumbled backward, allowing the dead woman to slide to the floor, the knife still buried in her flesh. “Oh crap. Oh crap. I didn’t mean to do it. Hey, mister, I didn’t <em>mean</em> it! I just—”<br />
<br />
There was a quiet <em>snick</em>. Something bright and metallic flashed through the air. Hendriks’ head toppled from his shoulders, the stump spouting blood in a dark, crimson fountain. The body pitched forward,<br />
dropping to the floor. The head rolled off to one side. Ollie glanced round to see a metal disk buried in the wall behind the body. He started to scramble to his feet.<br />
<br />
All around, people were screaming, getting up off the floor, and rushing toward the exits. The massacre was over. Or at least Ollie hoped it was over. He needed to get to his car, fast.<br />
<br />
The man in black stooped low over the body of the dead hostage. He seemed to be whispering an apology, but Ollie wasn’t quite able to hear over the noise of the crowd.<br />
<br />
Ollie backed up, edging toward the burst double doors. His arm was hanging limp and useless by his side, he was sure his rib cage had been shattered, and he was still bleeding from the back of his skull.<br />
Even if he made it out of there alive, he’d never be the same again.<br />
<br />
He saw the stranger’s red eyes lift and fix on him from across the lobby. He didn’t know what to do, didn’t dare turn and run or take his eyes off the stranger for a second. The man watched him for a moment, unmoving. Then in three or four graceful strides, he was on top of him. He grasped Ollie by the collar and the fat man whimpered as the vigilante leaned in close. He could feel the hot breath on his face, smell the coffee and whisky it carried. Ollie’s heart was hammering hard in his chest. Was this how it was going to end?<br />
<br />
“Today, you get to live.”<br />
<br />
Ollie nearly fainted with relief. “I . . . I—”<br />
<br />
“But you take a message to the Roman for me.”<br />
<br />
Ollie nodded enthusiastically, and nearly swooned from the movement.<br />
<br />
“You tell him he’s not welcome in this town anymore.”<br />
<br />
The stranger dropped Ollie in a heap on the ground and then stepped over him, making slowly for the exit, his boots clicking loudly on the marble floor.<br />
<br />
Ollie’s mouth was gritty with blood. He called after the mysterious figure. “Who . . . who are you?”<br />
<br />
The man shrugged and kept on walking. “Death,” he said, without bothering to look back.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER TWO</strong><br />
<br />
“Eggs! I need eggs, Henry. Two of them. With a side of toast.”<br />
<br />
Gabriel Cross dropped the morning paper onto the breakfast table and leaned back in his armchair, stretching his weary limbs. He was a thin, wiry man in his mid-thirties, clean-shaven, with hair the<br />
color of Saharan sand. He was dressed in an impeccable black suit, of the expensive variety, but wore his collar splayed open, betraying his innate sense of informality. Some, he knew, would call him louche for such behavior, but he preferred to consider himself freethinking, unbound by the stuffy conventions of the age. In truth, he was simply unbound by the conventions of money; he had about him the casual air of the exceptionally rich.<br />
<br />
Yawning, Gabriel surveyed the aftermath of the prior evening’s entertainment. His eyelids were heavy with lack of sleep. All around him, devastation reigned. The drawing room was cluttered with discharged glasses, a few still holding the remnants of their former owners’ drinks. Accompanying these were the pungent stubs of fat, brown cigars and pale cigarettes; even a woman’s red silk scarf and a man’s topcoat, abandoned there in the early hours by drunken lovers, carefree and searching for intoxication of a different kind.<br />
<br />
Gabriel had a love/hate relationship with New York society; it loved him—or rather, it loved his wealth and status—and he hated it. He disliked “society” as a concept. To him it was a metaphor for the socially inept, the “upper” classes, a means of filling one’s head with notions of self-import and grandeur. Yet he adored people. He needed people. He surrounded himself with them, night and day. He was an observer, a man who watched life. An artist without a canvas, a writer without a page. He lived to amuse himself, to attempt to fill the vacant space where a real life should have been.<br />
<br />
Gabriel Cross was a nothing. A man defined by his inheritance, characterized by his former life. He’d heard people whispering in hushed tones at the party, huddled in small groups under the canopy<br />
on the veranda, or leaning up against the doorjambs in the drawing room, drinks in hand. “Yes, it’s true! He used to be a soldier. I heard he fought in the war.” Or, “A pilot, I heard. But now he just throws parties. Parties! Who needs parties?”<br />
<br />
Gabriel knew they were right. Yet they swarmed to his Long Island parties like honeybees searching for pollen, intent on finding something there that would make their own lives that little bit easier to<br />
bear. He had no idea what it was. If he did, he would administer it to himself in liberal doses.<br />
<br />
Gabriel rubbed a hand over his bristly chin. “Better send a Bloody Mary with those eggs, Henry. God knows, it’s going to be one of those days.” He turned and looked out of the window at the sound of a<br />
motorcar hissing onto the driveway in the watery morning sun. Its wheels stirred the gravel track, whilst black smoke belched from its rear funnel. He recognized the sleek curves of its ebony bodywork, as well as those of its owner, who sat in the driving seat, her head and shoulders exposed to the stiff breeze. It ruffled her shock of bright auburn hair as she turned toward the house and saw him watching. Smiling, she raised her hand and offered him a brief wave. Gabriel smiled and raised his own hand in reply. He watched her climb out of the car’s side door, swinging her shapely legs down from the cab. Gabriel felt his heart beat a little faster in his breast. Celeste. Celeste Parker.<br />
<br />
He’d missed her at the party. Missed the opportunity to peel away with her to a quiet spot and blot out the presence of everyone else. But he was also pleased, in a sense, that she hadn’t come. She didn’t need the party, not like everyone else needed the party. And for that reason, if no other, he was very much in love with her.<br />
<br />
Gabriel listened to the sound of her heels crunching on the gravel, a soft rap on the front door with a gloved fist, Henry’s footsteps as he crossed the hallway to let her in. Smiling, Gabriel retrieved the newspaper from the breakfast table and rustled it noisily, as if intent on continuing with an article he had earlier abandoned. He attempted to exude his most nonchalant air. He knew Celeste would see through this ruse, but then, such was the game they played.<br />
<br />
A moment later the drawing room door creaked open. Gabriel didn’t look up from the newspaper to watch Celeste enter the room. She hovered for a moment at the threshold, silent save for her soft<br />
inhalation, awaiting his acknowledgement. The moment stretched. Gabriel turned the page and pretended to scan the headlines.<br />
<br />
Finally, the visitor broke the silence. “You look terrible, Gabriel. I see the party was up to its usual . . . standards.” Her voice was soft and melodious; it had broken many hearts.<br />
<br />
Gabriel folded the left page of his <em>New York Times</em> and peered inquisitively over the crease, as if he’d only just realized she was there. Framed in the doorway, the soft light of the morning streaming in<br />
from the hallway, she seemed to him like an angel; surrounded by a wintery halo, beautiful, ethereal. She dressed with the confidence of a woman who knew she would turn heads: a black, knee-length dress, stockings, high-heeled shoes, and a black jacket. Her auburn hair was like a shock of lightning, bright and electrifying, her lips a slash of glossy red.<br />
<br />
“You didn’t come.” It was a statement, not a question.<br />
<br />
“Of course I didn’t come. Did you expect me to come?”<br />
<br />
“You were missed.”<br />
<br />
Celeste laughed. She stepped further into the room, placing her handbag on the sideboard beside the door. Gabriel crumpled the newspaper and tossed it on the breakfast table, where it disturbed the ashtray, sending a plume of gray dust into the air. He wrinkled his nose. “Yes, it does rather make a terrible mess of one’s house.” He paused, as if thoughtful. “I think next time we’ll stay outside. We’ll all have to wear beach clothes. A bathing party, out by the pool.”<br />
<br />
Celeste looked confused, despite herself. She offered him a wan smile. “In November? Whatever are you talking about?”<br />
<br />
Gabriel grinned profusely. He leaned forward in his chair. “Yes! Why not! There’s that place down in Jersey selling some new-fangled contraption. A thing that heats your pool. The Johnson and Arkwright<br />
Filament, they call it. Just imagine. It would be a showstopper! I’ll order one next week. A pool party in November! Oh, do say you’ll come?” He knew she wouldn’t come. But he had a role to play, and so<br />
did she.<br />
<br />
“I’m busy.”<br />
<br />
He glanced out of the window. His voice was quiet. “Yes. Of course.”<br />
<br />
“Oh really, Gabriel. You need a drink. And I need a cigarette.”<br />
<br />
Gabriel smiled. He reached for the small silver cigarette case he kept in his jacket pocket. It was engraved with his initials: GC. “Do you want eggs? Henry’s making eggs. Sit down.”<br />
<br />
She sat. “No. Not eggs.” She reached over and took one of his proffered cigarettes. He noticed her fingernails matched the color of her hair. She crossed her legs and leaned forward, pulling the tab on the end of her smoke so that it sparked and ignited. A blue wreath encircled her head.<br />
<br />
“Are you singing tonight?”<br />
<br />
“Yes. At Joe’s. Will you come?”<br />
<br />
“I’m busy.”<br />
<br />
“Yes. Of course.” Her lips parted in a knowing smile.<br />
<br />
Gabriel grinned. Celeste was a jazz singer at a club in downtown Manhattan. That was where Gabriel had met her, six months earlier. He’d taken a pretty girl named Ariadne, a perfectly lovely young thing, all lipstick and short skirts and oozing sexuality. But Celeste had stolen his attention. It had nothing to do with romance; it was dark and harsh and exotic, an attraction of a different kind. When she’d parted her lips at the microphone the entire world had ceased spinning. Her voice carried truth. It spoke to him—not to <em>Gabriel Cross</em>, but to the real man who hid behind that name. It carried knowledge of the world, and poor Ariadne hadn’t stood a chance.<br />
<br />
He’d driven Ariadne home in silence; abandoned her on the front steps of her house. She’d been sanguine yet desperate, resigned yet somehow wanting more. She still came to his parties, sometimes,<br />
floating around ethereally in her sequined dresses, catching his eye as he showered platitudes and cigarettes on his other guests. She needed a reason, an understanding of what had passed between them. She needed to know what she had done wrong, what fatal act of sabotage she had committed. But Gabriel couldn’t bear to tell her the truth, couldn’t bear to strip away civilities and reveal to her the hollow reality of the matter: that poor Ariadne was just another girl in just another city. That her life filled with parties and laughing and booze didn’t<em> mean</em> anything. That she could never compare to a woman like Celeste. She couldn’t see the world for what it was.<br />
<br />
Ghosts. New York was full of people like that. So were his parties. People who drifted through life as if it didn’t matter, as if it were simply something that they had to do. Get up in the morning, pass time, sleep, fuck, die. Even <em>Gabriel Cross</em> was a member of that illustrious set, as much as he hated to admit it. But Celeste was not, and her allure had been unavoidable, her effect on Gabriel predetermined from the outset. He had been ensnared, and for the rest of that night he had lain awake in the stifling summer heat, drunk on whisky and desire, replaying the sound of Celeste’s voice over and over in his mind.<br />
<br />
The next night Gabriel had returned to the club by himself in search of the jazz singer. He’d found her haunting the bar; drinking orange juice laced with cheap, illegal gin. He’d bought her drinks, offered her cigarettes, watched her as she brushed aside the other men who each lined up to make a play for her attention. At first she’d seemed amused by his presence—the confident interloper—intrigued by the fact that he had returned to the club so soon after his previous visit, this time without the pretty embellishment on his arm. But Gabriel had seen where the other men had tried and failed. He wouldn’t make the same mistakes. Not this time. So, instead, he had simply offered her a final cigarette for the evening, before retiring. He didn’t leave his name or his number. He didn’t need to.<br />
<br />
A week later he had found her playing cards in his breakfast room with three other girls whose names he could never remember. His party was in full swing; it was dark outside, but drunken men strutted<br />
loudly on the lawn by the light of the moon, and women laughed gaily as though being treated to the height of theatrical endeavor. All around them the house was full of bustle, of noise and tension and sex and booze. Of people looking for a way to force some feeling into their lives, or else to numb the pain. But when Celeste had turned to smile at him, he’d wanted nothing more than for them all to disappear. He’d wanted the world to stand still again, like it had a week before, the night he’d first watched her open her mouth to sing. <br />
<br />
He’d fucked her that night at the party, hot and fast and urgent.<br />
<br />
And in the morning, as the sunlight streamed in through the window to dapple the pillow where she had lain, he knew then that he was in love with her.<br />
<br />
He looked up. She was watching him now whilst she gently rolled the end of her cigarette around the rim of the cut-glass ashtray. He turned to meet her gaze. “Have you read the papers?”<br />
<br />
Celeste shrugged. “It’s not news, you know, Gabriel. Not real news. It’s just hearsay and opinion. It’s what people tell each other to make the time go by.”<br />
<br />
Gabriel smiled. “But what about this ‘Ghost’? Did you hear about that? The crazy vigilante who burst in on that bank job and killed all the crooks? Now <em>that’s</em> news.”<br />
<br />
Celeste shrugged, pursing her lips. “Yes, I suppose it is. But I don’t know why it’s so surprising. It was only ever a matter of time before someone tried to take the law into their own hands. Crooks and vigilantes, they’re just different sides of the same coin. He’s as bad as the rest of them.”<br />
<br />
Gabriel nodded. “Perhaps you’re right. The papers certainly share your opinion. But I can’t help wondering if the guy is actually a hero. He saved people’s lives.”<br />
<br />
“And took others. He caused that woman’s death. The hostage.”<br />
<br />
Gabriel fingered his cigarette case before turning it over, flicking the catch, and withdrawing a cigarette. He pulled the tab, and met Celeste’s penetrating gaze through a brief wall of smoke. “Perhaps . . . but I’d still be inclined to blame that on the crook who put the knife in her throat, rather than the guy who tried to save her.”<br />
<br />
Celeste looked as if she was about to speak, but then she turned to watch Henry, the valet, enter the room through another door. On a tray he bore a plate of toast and eggs, with a Bloody Mary on the side. He smiled genially when he saw her looking. “Will Miss Parker be taking breakfast this morning?” He’d made her breakfast before, on more than one occasion.<br />
<br />
Celeste folded the stub of her cigarette into the ashtray. “Not today, Henry. I have rehearsals. And I think Mr. Cross could use some more sleep.”<br />
<br />
Henry nodded politely and placed the silver tray on the table beside the crumpled newspaper. He straightened his back, glancing at his employer. “Will that be all, sir?”<br />
<br />
Gabriel nodded. “Yes, that’ll be all, Henry.” He glanced at the eggs. His stomach growled. “I’ll be taking a trip into town later. I intend to watch Miss Parker’s show this evening. Could you ask Graves<br />
to prepare one of the cars?”<br />
<br />
“Very good, sir.”<br />
<br />
Celeste flashed Gabriel a wry smile. Gabriel offered her an abundant grin.<br />
<br />
“I’ll leave you to your breakfast.” She regarded him with something approximating satisfaction, and then stood, collecting her handbag from where she’d left it on the sideboard. “Until this evening, then.”<br />
<br />
Gabriel dropped his still-smoldering cigarette into the ashtray and pushed himself up out of his easy chair, riffles of blue smoke billowing from his nostrils. “I’ll walk you out.” He took her arm and led her into the hall.<br />
<br />
“What about your eggs?”<br />
<br />
“Never mind the eggs.” He stopped her at the foot of the stairs and took her face in his hands, pulling her near, kissing her deeply on the lips. Once again he felt his heart hammering in his chest. He wondered if she could feel it too.<br />
<br />
They stood for a moment, staring into one another’s eyes. Then Celeste broke away, moving toward the door. She pushed it open and Gabriel felt a cold breeze sweep into the hallway. He shivered involuntarily.<br />
<br />
Celeste crossed to her motorcar, the gravel crunching noisily with every step. Gabriel followed to open the door for her, watching as she smoothly lowered herself into the driver’s seat. A moment later the<br />
engine roared, a shot of black smoke belched out from the exhaust pipe, and the vehicle hissed away. Celeste didn’t look back.<br />
<br />
Gabriel watched the car slide off into the distance, steam rising from the rear funnels to leave long vapor trails in the crisp morning air. As he turned back to the house, already lamenting the fact that she’d had to leave so soon, he noticed a small, dark bundle on the ground, resting on the driveway at the bottom of the step. He crouched so that he could get a better look. It was a dead bird, its black feathers ruffling in the breeze. It looked as if it had been mangled somehow, caught and abandoned by a predator, perhaps, its head twisted awkwardly to one side, its wings broken out of shape. He’d seen a man like that once, lying in a ditch in France. His neck had been broken, too, blood caked ominously around one ear, eyes glazed and milky-white. If it hadn’t been for the startled look of terror frozen on the dead man’s face, Gabriel could almost have imagined he was resting, his head on a soft pillow of mud, watching the plumes of distant explosions as innumerable airships drifted lazily above, relentlessly bombarding the landscape below.<br />
<br />
Sighing, he stood. He wished his mind wasn’t full of such memories. He’d have Henry come and clear the remains of the bird away later. Now, he needed eggs. And he needed to clear his head. The<br />
Bloody Mary would help.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER THREE</strong><br />
<br />
Felix Donovan was having a terrible day.<br />
<br />
He’d been dragged from his bed at five-thirty by the buzzing of the holotube, only to find his sergeant on the line, nervously informing him there’d been a homicide. From the look of the flickering blue<br />
image that appeared in the mirrored cavity in his holotube terminal, he’d been able to tell that Mullins was calling from a private booth in a hotel or bar, and that he very much considered himself out of his<br />
depth.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, for a moment Donovan had actually considered going back to bed. It wasn’t as if murders were anything new or unusual in downtown Manhattan. Another dead body on another<br />
apartment floor. He was sure it could wait until a reasonable hour of the morning, at least until he’d showered and eaten his breakfast. But then Mullins had told him who had been murdered, and suddenly everything had changed.<br />
<br />
Now, at a quarter after eleven, his head was still thick with lack of sleep, and he was desperately in need of a coffee.<br />
<br />
“Inspector?”<br />
<br />
Donovan turned to see Mullins standing sheepishly behind him. The sergeant was a portly man who sported a short, clipped moustache and appeared to Donovan to have a permanently ruddy complexion. He was currently dressed in a long, gray overcoat, which covered his disordered blue suit: a symptom of being roused from his bed at such an ungodly hour of the morning. The inspector could forgive him that. Donovan himself, however, was dressed immaculately, as usual; his black suit and crisp white collar were pressed and pristine, and he had taken the time to freshen up before driving out to the scene of the crime. It was a small, fruitless rebellion, but it made him feel better just the same. After all, he was alive and the victim was dead, and the dead man wasn’t going anywhere in a hurry. Regardless, the man had been an odious toad. Politicians, Donovan found, were very rarely anything <br />
else. <br />
<br />
He regarded Mullins with an impatient eye. “What is it, Sergeant? Have you finally managed to search out some coffee?”<br />
<br />
Mullins wouldn’t meet his eye. “No, sir. Not coffee. But there’s a gathering crowd of reporters out front, and they’re calling for a statement. Are you planning to say anything?”<br />
<br />
Donovan looked round at the tall revolving doors of the lobby. Beyond, through the glass panes, he could see a gaggle of reporters and photographers being shepherded back from the sidewalk by a couple of uniformed men. Flashbulbs blinked, reflecting in the glass and causing miniature, shimmering coronas to burst momentarily to life.<br />
<br />
He and Mullins were standing in the lobby of the Gramercy Park Hotel, all plush modernity and chandeliers. It was a bit rich for Donovan’s decidedly down-to-earth palate. He gritted his teeth. “No.<br />
They can wait.” He looked back at Mullins. “They can wait like everyone else. We haven’t even informed his wife yet, for God’s sake.” He was muttering now, as if to himself more than to his sergeant. “How the hell are we going to break it to his wife?” A sigh. “And then there’s the matter of the scandal. The Commissioner might want to keep the details out of the press.” He gestured at Mullins. “Tell them to get back to the gutter.”<br />
<br />
Mullins sucked in his breath. For a moment Donovan thought he looked even redder in the face than usual. He hadn’t thought that was possible. “They’re asking, sir, if it’s the work of the Roman.”<br />
<br />
“Well, yes. I’d very much imagine they are.” Donovan gave another, plaintive sigh. His voice was tinged with weariness. “Mullins, do me a favor and find that coffee. And let’s have another look at the<br />
crime scene. Then the ambulance crew can take the bodies to the morgue. After that—we’ll see about facing those reporters.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, sir.” Mullins nodded and shot off in the direction of the kitchens.<br />
<br />
<br />
The murder of James Landsworth Senior had taken place in the early hours of the morning on the top floor of the Gramercy Park Hotel. It was a sordid affair, and Donovan, standing on the threshold of the<br />
room with a cigarette dangling from his lips, didn’t quite know what to make of it.<br />
<br />
The dead man was a senator—a well-respected one at that—and this whole affair, Donovan had concluded, had been set up to discredit him. There was no doubt the scene inside the hotel room had been posed; a grisly diorama intended to embarrass the government.<br />
<br />
Landsworth was—or had been, Donovan corrected himself—a middle-aged man of about fifty, with a full head of graying hair and a significant paunch, and he had built his career on a foundation of right-wing policies and conservative opinions. He supported Prohibition. He had a healthy hatred for the British Empire and he campaigned against “progress,” claiming that science was “dehumanizing” the American people. He sold himself as a family man, and was often seen around town with his wife and two young children. He never attended parties or large social gatherings, and the newspapers had a<br />
dog of a time digging up anything about the man that could even be considered controversial.<br />
<br />
But nevertheless, here he was, his pants round his ankles, chained to a bedpost, wearing rouge, a half-drunk bottle of illegal whisky on the bedside table. His chest was covered with cigarette burns and there was lipstick all over his prick. His mouth was hanging slack-jawed and two small Roman coins had been placed over his eyelids. They glinted in the lamplight as if they had been freshly minted.<br />
<br />
Across the room, a dead whore lay on the floor, her skirt pulled up around her hips, stockings torn, her face bruised and split where she had been viciously beaten. Donovan couldn’t even tell what she had looked like before the beating, except for the fact that the lipstick smeared across her lower face matched the color of that now found on Landsworth’s corpse. Mullins had told him she’d been asphyxiated, but Donovan hadn’t yet brought himself to take a proper look. He’d needed a coffee and a cigarette before even contemplating that.<br />
<br />
Donovan looked from one body to the other, and shuddered. The reporters were right to be asking. This was clearly the Roman’s handiwork. It was the third murder in as many weeks, and each victim had been a man of standing: a councilor, a surgeon, and now a senator. Each of them had also been found with identical Roman coins resting on their eyelids, a calling card, of sorts, from the mob boss responsible for their deaths. Donovan had had the coins analyzed, assuming them to be recent copies that he could somehow trace through the city’s dealers, but had been startled to discover they were actual Roman coins, dating from the reign of Vespasian. They looked as fresh and new as if they had been pressed the day before, not nearly two thousand years in the past. He didn’t know what to make of that, either. <br />
The Roman had seemingly come from nowhere, but had quickly risen to become one of the most powerful mob bosses in the city. His network of heavies, informants, and petty criminals was unparalleled, and he managed to inspire an unflinching dedication in his men. Donovan suspected it was a reign of terror, but so far he hadn’t managed to get close enough to find out.<br />
<br />
No one had ever seen the Roman. That was the most bizarre factor in the whole matter. It was supposed he was Italian—thus the moniker—but the truth of the matter was that the police had been<br />
unable to establish any information regarding who he really was, or even where he could be found.Whoever he was, the only certainty was that he had somehow managed to bring the city to its knees. And it was Donovan’s job to find a means to stop him.<br />
<br />
He took another draw on his cigarette and then stubbed it out on the doorframe, ignoring the appalled look this inspired from his sergeant. As if in response, he nonchalantly handed the butt to Mullins, who accepted it with a surprised expression, and then, seeing no obvious place to discard it, slipped it into the pocket of his overcoat without a word.<br />
<br />
Donovan crossed to the bed, screwing his face up in disgust. Landsworth was a mess. He couldn’t let the papers get hold of the details, of that much he was certain. He might not be able to put right what the Roman had done, but he could prevent him gaining any satisfaction from it. He turned to Mullins. “Do you think he was already here, with the good-time girl, before the Roman’s men . . . interrupted<br />
things?”<br />
<br />
Mullins shook his head. “No. I think he was killed elsewhere and brought here later. The girl was killed here, though. There’re signs of a struggle.” He indicated for Donovan to follow him across the hotel suite. “Watch you don’t step on the bloodstains, sir.”<br />
<br />
Donovan swallowed. The girl had been viciously brutalized. He couldn’t be sure, but she must only have been nineteen, twenty years old.<br />
<br />
Mullins lowered his voice, as if trying to mask his horror. “What a waste of life.”<br />
<br />
Donovan didn’t know whether he meant the fact that she’d been murdered, or the fact that such a young girl had been forced into whoring herself to unscrupulous politicians and gangsters. Either way,<br />
the sergeant was right.<br />
<br />
Donovan glanced around. An overturned table, a smashed lamp, a rug all ruffled up at one end. Yes, there’d been a struggle here. She’d been a spirited girl. “She probably thought she had a good paying gig here, at this hotel, before all this.” He shook his head and glanced at the uniformed officer who was still lurking in the doorway. “Cover her up,” he said, with a resigned gesture. He wondered what they’d made her do before they killed her. It didn’t bear thinking about.<br />
<br />
“Is there anything here, Mullins, that might give us any clues? Anything different about this one? Different from the others?”<br />
<br />
Mullins shook his head but remained silent. Just like Landsworth’s corpse, splayed out on the bed, unable to tell Donovan what the hell he should say to the Commissioner when he got back to the station. Unable, too, to bring him any closer to understanding who the Roman was, or how on earth he was going to set about bringing him to justice for his crimes.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER FOUR</strong><br />
<br />
The man looked out, surveying the scene across the city. Electric lights glowed like pinpricks in the darkness, causing apartment blocks to take on the appearance of jewel-encrusted towers. Police dirigibles drifted lazily overhead, their searchlights punctuating the gloaming with long, brilliant columns of white. Above them, a full moon hung low over the city like the smoldering tip of a cigarette, shrouded in wispy clouds.<br />
<br />
He’d heard it said that New York was a city that never slept, but his own experience told him that wasn’t entirely true; Manhattan spent its days in a state of bleary-eyed lethargy, only truly coming alive after nightfall. That was the city that most people didn’t see, the city full of urgency and emotion and life, the city he had grown to know and to need, and that—more than ever—needed someone like him in return. The police operated with one hand tied constantly behind their backs. They could never do what was necessary, bound as they were by law and convention. Yet the city was falling to crime and corruption, the government and politicians giving way to an endless series of crime lords. It was a war, and it called for brutal measures. The wound needed to be cauterized before the festering grew worse.<br />
<br />
The man the newspapers were calling “the Ghost” shifted slightly, reaching inside his long coat to produce a packet of cigarettes. He popped the lid and extracted one of the thin white sticks. With his<br />
gloved fingers he pulled the tab on the end of it and watched it flare, briefly under-lighting his face, before bringing the cigarette to his lips and taking a long, deep draw. The nicotine flooded his lungs, giving him a light-headed rush. He left the cigarette drooping from his bottom lip as he once again surveyed the city streets below.<br />
<br />
From his vantage point atop the roof terrace on Fifth Avenue—above his city apartment—the Ghost watched the comings and goings of the people down below. Coal-powered cars hissed along the road,<br />
whilst lonely pedestrians drifted along the sidewalks, solitary specters in the wan light thrown down from the surrounding buildings. If it hadn’t been for—<br />
<br />
He stopped, suddenly, snapping his head to the right. He’d caught a sound, carried to him on the stiff breeze that rumpled the tails of his long coat. The sound of a man calling out in pain, from somewhere far below. Leaving his position at the front of the building, he rushed over to the other side of the terrace. He scanned the streets below. Nothing.<br />
<br />
Reaching up, the Ghost felt under the brim of his hat until his fingers located the rim of his goggles. He tugged them down over his eyes, turning the lenses slowly away from the bridge of his nose. Everything took on a red sheen. Targeting circles floated, disembodied, before his vision. He cranked the lenses once again, tiny cogs whirring inside the device, and the view suddenly magnified, becoming sharp and bright. He could see the sidewalk five stories below as if he were only a few feet away.<br />
<br />
The sound came to him again, a stifled cry. The Ghost tracked along the sidewalk toward where he thought it had originated. There, by the mouth of an alleyway, was a large armored car, thick iron plates cladding its sides to form a tank-like vehicle, the windshield just a slit in the otherwise impenetrable metal sheeting. The engine was running, and the exhaust chimney was belching oily black smoke as it burned coal at a furious rate. Behind this, in the alleyway itself, he sensed movement. He decided to investigate.<br />
<br />
The Ghost flicked a switch on the side of his goggles and the lenses snapped back into place, returning his vision to normal. He glanced along the edge of the building, looking for the quickest route down to street level. Just a few feet away, a steel fire-escape ladder was fixed to the outside of the building. Shrugging to loosen his shoulders, the Ghost pulled himself up onto the stone lip of the building, ran sure-footed but carefully along the top of it, and dropped easily onto the metal platform below. His heavy boots rang out into the quiet night. Then, gripping the railings with his gloved fists, he used his weight to slide down from platform to platform, hitting the sidewalk a matter of moments later.<br />
<br />
The alleyway was only a hundred or so yards away. At street level, the sound of the car engine was a constant background growl. He’d use that to his advantage, muffling his footsteps as he crept closer to the mouth of the alleyway. He liked having the element of surprise on his side; it usually meant he avoided getting shot.<br />
<br />
The Ghost drew opposite the parked vehicle, trying to ascertain whether there was anybody inside. He guessed the driver would be waiting behind the wheel, keeping the engine running, ready for the<br />
others to make their getaway when they were done.<br />
<br />
Whatever was going down, he knew it involved the mob. Only the Roman’s men could afford an armored car like the one across the street from him, and only the Roman’s men would ever have a use for it. The thought rankled him. Dealing with the Roman’s lackeys was like dealing with the symptoms of an infection. Sooner or later, he’d need to root out the cause of the infection itself. For now, though, it sounded like someone needed his help.<br />
<br />
The Ghost crossed silently toward the car, as graceful as a cat sneaking up on a bird. Careful to avoid any of the viewing slots that had been cut into the armor plating, he peered over the roof of the<br />
vehicle at the scene unfolding on the other side.<br />
<br />
A middle-aged man in a shopkeeper’s apron was on the ground. He twitched unconsciously as two men in black suits carried on with their indiscriminate assault, kicking him viciously in the face, chest, and stomach. Their victim had long since lost the will to defend himself and now his arms and legs were splayed out on the damp flagstones as he silently accepted each blow. The two men in black suits were laughing with each other as they went about their business. It was clear to the Ghost almost immediately what was happening. He’d heard from others that the Roman had started a protection racket, and either this man had bravely refused to pay up, or else he couldn’t afford to meet his payment.<br />
<br />
Whatever the case, he didn’t deserve the kind of treatment he was receiving at the hands of the two goons.<br />
<br />
He stood back from the car, flexing his gloved fingers and stretching his neck muscles. He could feel the tension in his shoulders as he prepared himself for a fight. <em>In and out</em>. He didn’t plan to linger. He’d take down the two stooges and then be gone with the unconscious shopkeeper before the driver had chance even to consider pulling a pistol.<br />
<br />
He glanced at the weapon that was folded away beneath his right arm. The long brass barrel gleamed in the moonlight. For a moment he considered shooting the two men from a distance, safe behind the<br />
cover of the car. Then, almost imperceptibly, he shook his head. He couldn’t kill in cold blood. He had to let them shoot first. That was his code, the thing that separated him from them. If they shot first, they died. For now, his fists would have to do the talking.<br />
<br />
The Ghost glanced around him to make sure there was no one else nearby. Then, without further ado, he heaved himself up onto the roof of the car, his black trench coat billowing around him in a sudden gust. Almost simultaneously, the two mobsters turned to look at the interloper. Their kicking ceased.<br />
<br />
“Hey, Mickey, it’s that freak who shot up the guys at the bank.” This from the goon on the left. The man’s hand went inside his coat, searching for a pistol. “Let’s plug him.”<br />
<br />
The other man, wide-eyed, looked less convinced by this course of action and remained standing, rooted to the spot, staring up at the imposing figure of the vigilante atop the armored car.<br />
<br />
“Mickey!” The stooge’s pistol barked loudly as he roared at his companion, just as the Ghost dived forward, swinging his arm out to catch the gunman beneath the chin. The man went down, heavily, his<br />
weapon skittering away across the sidewalk. He groaned and rolled to the side, clutching at his throat. The Ghost didn’t have time to worry about what the gunman was going to do next, however, as the report of the gun had somehow stirred the other man—Mickey—back to life. He swung at the Ghost, his fist glancing painfully off the vigilante’s jaw as he turned quickly to face his new opponent. A lesser man would have gone down from such a blow, but the Ghost was ready for it and simply shook his head, steadying himself for the next attack.<br />
<br />
Mickey was clearly a boxer. The Ghost could tell from the way he handled himself, from his stance and the power and accuracy of his blows. But the Ghost had boxed during his army years and knew what was coming. A swift jab with the left, a hook with the right, and the mobster was reeling. The Ghost brought him down with a sweeping kick that took his legs out from under him, sending him crashing into the garbage bins heaped in the alleyway beside the store.<br />
<br />
The Ghost glanced back at the first goon, the gunman, but he was still on his knees, clutching at his throat and gasping for breath. The shopkeeper was still out cold, and blood was pooling around his head from a number of nasty-looking wounds. His nose was clearly broken, smeared halfway across his face, and a cursory glance suggested his cheekbone had been cracked, as his face was swollen and sagging. The Ghost knew that there would be internal injuries too; the man would be lucky to pull through after the beating the Roman’s men had given him. <br />
<br />
From behind him, the Ghost heard the sound of the car door creaking open. The driver. He hadn’t been quick enough. He swept round, bringing his arms up in defense but expecting the impact of a<br />
bullet at any second. But the sight that greeted him was not at all what he was expecting.<br />
<br />
If there was a driver, he was still seated in the front of the armored car, and his door remained closed. Rather, the two doors at the rear of the vehicle had sprung open, and two enormous figures had emerged. They were huge, both at least seven feet tall, and dressed in long overcoats and trilby hats. Their faces were lost in shadow. They walked with a shambling gait that did not look entirely natural.<br />
<br />
The Ghost stepped back, swinging his right arm in a circle so that the long barrel of his fléchette gun ratcheted up into place along his forearm. His breath steamed before his face in the cold night air. The<br />
two men were slowly shambling toward him, menacingly, but so far their arms remained limp at their sides. They showed no sign of bearing any weapons.<br />
<br />
The Ghost wasn’t about to let himself get pinned in the alleyway by these giants, especially as the two goons were stirring. The odds were suddenly not in his favor.He decided his best recourse was to take them by surprise: charge them and try to smash his way through to the street beyond. At least then he’d be out in the open and he’d have more chance of getting away if he needed to bolt. But then there was the shopkeeper . . .<br />
<br />
He had to act. He’d fight the men, but he needed to change the odds. Steeling himself, he charged, aiming squarely for the space between the two giants, hoping to knock them aside as he rushed past.<br />
He’d then fling himself over the armored car and duck for cover while he worked out his next move.<br />
<br />
The Ghost dipped his head and presented his shoulders to the two men. Too late he saw them close ranks, and he was unable to stop his forward momentum. He crashed into the mobsters at full speed, still hopeful that his weight would carry him between them. But instead he rebounded painfully, his head and shoulders smarting as if he had charged into a solid wall. He fell to the ground, shaking his head groggily, his nostrils filled with the scent of damp earth.<br />
<br />
Regaining his senses just in time, he rolled to the left as a powerful fist came slamming down, narrowly missing his head. He hit the alley wall and sprang to his feet, using the brickwork to steady himself. Who were these men? He’d barely had time to ask himself the question when another fist came flying at him, and he had to duck to one side to avoid its crushing impact. It crashed into the wall where he’d been standing with enough force to shatter all of the bones in its owner’s hand, but the man seemed hardly to notice, simply wheeling around in an ungainly fashion to take another swing at the vigilante. He didn’t even grunt with the pain or the exertion.<br />
<br />
The Ghost kicked out, catching one of the giants in the midriff. The mobster didn’t react, didn’t even acknowledge the blow, whilst the Ghost came away with a sharp pain in his leg, as if his booted foot<br />
had just encountered solid iron. He could hear one of the goons laughing in the background somewhere. “Hey, Mickey, looks like the Roman was right about these things, eh?”<br />
<br />
Trapped against the wall, the two giants closing in on him, the Ghost decided that the only thing he could do was shoot his way out. He flicked his right wrist and the pneumatic trigger for the fléchette<br />
gun slid into his palm. He squeezed, showering first one of the lumbering figures, then the other, in a hail of tiny steel blades. He heard the fléchettes strike home, embedding themselves in the giants’ torsos with a rapid series of dull thuds. But again, his efforts appeared to have no effect on the men, and they continued their assault regardless. He had no idea what the things were, but it was becoming clear to him that they weren’t human. There was no way a human being could have withstood a spray of steel blades like that and carried on walking.<br />
<br />
Unsure what else he could do, the Ghost tried to duck away again, but one of the giants’ fists struck home, powering deep into his stomach. He doubled over, clutching at his belly, unable to stop himself<br />
from slumping to the ground. All of the wind had been driven out of his lungs by the impact of the blow. Gasping, he glanced up, realizing with horror that, beneath their hats, these giants—these <em>monsters</em>—had no faces.<br />
<br />
The creature loomed over him. The Ghost thrashed out in desperation, clawing at its throat. His fingers sank into something soft and pliable and he tore at it, gouging a handful of the stuff in an effort to <br />
stop the giant in its tracks. With dismay he realized the monster was entirely unaffected by the action. He glanced down at his hand. His fist was filled with soft moss and crumbling earth. He was filled with a sudden sense of creeping terror. The things were formed from clods of clay; golems in the shape of men, somehow animated to create deadly foot soldiers, and dressed in coats and hats for disguise.<br />
<br />
He raised his arm in defense as the golem reared up again, ready to strike another blow, and he saw that he’d exposed a strut of gleaming brass where its throat should have been, a metal skeleton buried deep beneath its earthy flesh.<br />
<br />
He knew then it was over. There was nothing he could do to stop these things. None of his weapons would work. He could see no way out. He waited for the killing blow, baubles of light dancing before his eyes as he tried to suck oxygen back into his lungs.<br />
<br />
“That’s enough.” It was the voice of the goon who had shot at him earlier. The Ghost looked up, still gasping for breath, to see the two golems retreating to make way for the crook. “I want the pleasure of<br />
finishing this one myself.”<br />
<br />
The man came into view, a snide expression on his thin, pale face. He brandished his gun in front of him. The Ghost realized the goon must have retrieved it whilst he was engaged with the moss men. “So, you’re the guy who took out Bobby Hendriks, eh? Don’t look too much to me.” He laughed, glancing over at Mickey.<br />
<br />
That was his fatal mistake. The Ghost took his chance. He swung his arm around, squeezing the trigger in his fist and loosing a storm of silver blades in the direction of the gangster’s head. The fléchettes<br />
struck home, ripping into the man’s face, flensing flesh from bone as the relentless stream of razor-sharp metal turned the man’s head into a bloody pulp. He was dead in seconds. The Ghost didn’t wait to see how the others would react. Still crouching, he reached inside his trench coat and pulled the cord that ignited the canisters strapped to the backs of his boots. There was a flash of bright yellow light, and then the Ghost shot into the air, up the side of the wall toward a windowsill. He howled in agony as he realized, too late, that the canisters weren’t adjusted properly. The hungry flames scorched his ankles through the tough hide of his boots. He could feel his skin bubbling and blistering under the intense heat. Anything, though, was better than death. <br />
<br />
Bullets ricocheted off the wall behind him. Mickey had found his automatic, and his confidence. But it had come too late. Using the wall to spin himself around, the Ghost kicked his legs out and propelled<br />
himself through the second-story window, covering his head with his arms so that the splintering glass wouldn’t lacerate his face. He shot into the dark room beyond, striking his head hard against the ceiling. Dazed, he reached inside his jacket, pulled the cord, and fell, with a loud, painful bump, to the floor. By the remains of the window, tiny flames were licking at the edges of the curtains like mischievous imps. He lay there on his back for a moment, breathing hard. The room was dark and devoid of life. The backs of his legs were agony, and he had a pain deep in his stomach were the moss man had struck him the blow. He closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.<br />
<br />
Then, rolling onto his side, he scrambled to his feet, using the back of a sofa as leverage, and began to hobble—painfully—toward the door. He had to get out of there before Mickey sent the moss golems<br />
after him. He was in no fit state to continue the fight. He presumed the apartment must belong to the shopkeeper, and felt a momentary surge of guilt. He’d failed. He’d been unable to help the man. But it<br />
wasn’t over yet. He’d be back, and the Roman’s men would know vengeance. For now, though, he had to find his way back to his apartment before any other of the Roman’s goons discovered he was hurt. He was already sure the mob boss had half of the city looking for him, and he didn’t want to get caught out in the open unprepared.<br />
<br />
A moment later he had crossed the room, opened the internal door, and slipped out into the dark passage beyond, heading for the rooftops, and home.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER FIVE</strong><br />
<br />
Donovan quit the restaurant with a heavy heart. It was late, and he knew Flora must have been in bed for hours. He’d thought about calling her from the holo-booth in the back of La Campagna—the<br />
Commissioner’s favorite eatery—but even then he knew he’d left it too late. Still, he sighed to himself, he supposed she was used to it. Such was the life of a woman married to a police officer. That was the advice the Commissioner’s wife, Patricia Montague, was regularly heard passing out to the wives of the junior officers: get used to the eccentric hours, the lack of calls, the fact he’ll probably forget your birthday—or leave now. There was a strange irony in that, of course: the Commissioner hardly kept unusual hours, and Mrs. Montague, with her flashing red talons, eyeliner, and short skirts, had a reputation for being one of the biggest flirts in town. It was hardly a model relationship.<br />
<br />
The Commissioner had invited Donovan to dinner to talk over the situation regarding the Roman, or rather, to apply another liberal dose of pressure to the inspector while the older, portly man took his fill of pasta. As if that was what Donovan needed right now, to be reminded that he had to do a better job whilst watching the Commissioner eat. <br />
<br />
Commissioner Montague had explained that he was anxious to bring the situation to a head. He wanted to break the Roman’s hold on the city, and to put an end to the recent spate of murders attributed to<br />
the Italian’s mob. “And Felix,” the Commissioner had said, leaning over the table with a cigar in his hand, his bushy gray moustache twitching as he spoke, “what’s it with all these funny names, hmmm?<br />
‘The Roman.’ ‘The Ghost.’ You go ahead and tell them that I’m ‘the Commissioner,’ won’t you, and that I won’t hear any more of it, hmmm. Not one bit of it!”<br />
<br />
And with that he had rocked back in his chair, grinning wolfishly at his young wife, his smoldering cigar clamped firmly between his teeth. That outburst, apparently, was going to help Donovan to solve<br />
the case and smash the mob. It was all he could do not to throw his drink at the man and storm out of the place.<br />
<br />
Instead, he had nodded appreciatively, assured the Commissioner that he was doing everything in his power to close the net on the Roman, and that he would redouble his efforts in the morning. As far<br />
as this “Ghost” was concerned, he would keep his ear to the ground and try to anticipate any further activity. What he didn’t add was that, in his opinion, this “Ghost” had actually done them a favor, and that he wished the Commissioner would grant the police a little more leeway to do the same.<br />
<br />
He’d had to sit through coffee, listening to anecdotes he’d heard a thousand times before and feeling embarrassed by the attention that Mrs. Montague was lavishing on the handsome young waiter. Then,<br />
finally, it was over, and he’d been set free to go about his business.<br />
<br />
“Remember to tell them what I said, won’t you, Felix?”<br />
<br />
He’d bunched his fists in his coat pockets so hard that he’d probably drawn blood.<br />
<br />
Now it was a quarter after eleven and he knew that by the time he was home, he’d only catch a few hours’ sleep before morning. Poor Mullins would have to suffer another day of tired imprecations.<br />
<br />
Donovan turned the corner and stopped to draw a cigarette. He pulled the ignition tab but it didn’t spark. Cursing, he discarded the useless white stick and took another from the packet. It was dark on<br />
43rd Street. People had retired for the night, and the roads were still and empty. Dark shapes hulked in the shadows: garbage cans; railings; an old easy chair, abandoned in the middle of the sidewalk. Above, in the distance, searchlights reflected off the underside of pregnant clouds and the moon was hazy and lost behind a thick screen of mist.<br />
<br />
The deafening roar of a rocket firing overhead momentarily punctuated the silence, causing Donovan to look up. A biplane had just taken off from the roof of one of the nearby buildings, its rocket launcher burning with brilliant light as it surged away into the sky on a great plume, leaving a shimmering trail in its wake. Donovan watched it as it banked to the left and disappeared around a skyscraper, its rocket booster fading to a dull glow as the propellers engaged. A moment later, the sky was clear once more.<br />
<br />
Donovan shook his head. The world was changing. Already, the airships of his youth were becoming outmoded, archaic, a thing of the past. They still used them, of course. They were faster than steamships, and the new airplanes were only reliable over short distances. But he knew it wouldn’t be long before something else came along to replace them. The Cold War would see to that. With the British to spy on, technology was being driven forward at an incredible rate.<br />
<br />
Still, for all this technology, the criminals remained the same. They never changed. They were always after power and money. No matter what tools they had at their disposal, what new schemes they<br />
cooked up, a crook was a crook, plain and simple. The Roman was the same. Just another guy who thought the world owed him an existence, and who’d decided to take it regardless, no matter how many people put themselves in his way.<br />
<br />
The Ghost . . . He was different, although Donovan had yet to put his finger on the guy’s motivation. What was it that inspired someone to don a black suit and head out into the night to stop a bank job? He could see why it made the Commissioner nervous. It showed the police force up for what it really was: a bureaucratic bunch of peacekeepers who didn’t truly have the power or the means to put a stop to the organized crime that was infecting the city. He needed to find out who this “Ghost” character was. Then he’d have to decide whether to shake him by the hand or lock him in a cell and throw away the key. If only he co—<br />
<br />
Donovan pulled up short, his previous thought dissolving as he stared, fascinated, at the strange sight before him. There, on the sidewalk, were three dead birds. They were pigeons, he thought, although he couldn’t be certain in this light, as their bodies were so contorted<br />
and mangled. They could have been rooks. This was the third time he’d encountered a similar sight in different locations around the city, and he looked up inquisitively, trying to ascertain whether they had<br />
fallen from the sky this way, or whether they had been caught by some sort of predator and then later abandoned. There was no way of telling.<br />
<br />
Donovan grimaced. His cigarette was burning low, wreathing him in pale blue smoke. He was feeling edgy. He needed to get home.<br />
<br />
He turned to see a long, sleek-looking car purr up to the sidewalk a few feet from where he was standing. It was a new, expensive model; black and pristine, its headlamps gleamed in the darkness and steam curled from the tall exhaust funnels at the rear. The windows were black and glassy, and he couldn’t see anyone inside. He eyed it warily, unsure of the significance of its appearance.<br />
<br />
Presently, just as Donovan was considering heading on his way, the front passenger window rolled down and a fat, porcine face peered out. The man was wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a black jacket. He looked at Donovan with a haughty amusement. “Hey, Donovan. There’s a man here who’d like to speak with you.” He nodded at someone unseen in the back seat and the rear door nearest the curb<br />
clicked open, swinging out toward him.<br />
<br />
Donovan peered inside the vehicle, but all he could see was shadows. He cleared his throat. “I’m busy.” He flicked his cigarette butt at the wall and started slowly on his way. He knew it was dangerous<br />
to turn his back on these people—he might easily end up with a bullet in it—but he knew also that getting inside that car would be an even more reckless pursuit. The police did not parley with the mob.<br />
<br />
Keeping his head down, Donovan picked up his pace. He did not look back at the car. He made it about fifty yards before he became aware of the slow hissing sound of the vehicle as it reversed along the curb, and a moment later it pulled alongside him, creeping slowly so as to keep pace with him as he walked.<br />
<br />
Donovan glanced over. The rear door was still hanging open, with its sinister invitation to climb inside. He continued to walk. <br />
<br />
“Inspector Donovan. I really think it would be in your best interest to take me up on my offer to talk.” The voice was thin and reedy, highpitched for a man, and all the more minacious because of it. It<br />
emanated from the rear of the vehicle.<br />
<br />
Donovan could see that the crook hanging out of the passenger window was now brandishing a snub-nosed automatic and was waving it in his direction. His options looked pretty limited. If he went for his own weapon, he’d likely be dropped by the goon before he had chance to draw it. But who was the character in the back of the car, and what the hell did he want? Was it some sort of elaborate trap? Was he going to end up like that poor bastard Landsworth? He shuddered at the thought.<br />
<br />
Donovan stopped walking and turned to regard the vehicle. The driver hit the brakes and the car swung in alongside the curb. Donovan felt his pulse quicken. The back of his neck was damp with perspiration, despite the chill. He held his arms out in front of him to show that he had no intention of making any sudden moves. But he did not approach the vehicle. “Why don’t you come out here and talk?” He gave a wry smile. He knew he was walking close to the line. “I have difficulties with confined spaces.”<br />
<br />
The goon in the front waved his weapon more forcefully in Donovan’s direction. “It doesn’t do to refuse a direct invitation from Mr. Gideon, policeman. I suggest you get into the car now.”<br />
<br />
Shrugging, Donovan approached the open door. If it was a choice between that and being riddled with bullets on the sidewalk, well, at least this way he had a fighting chance. Resting a hand on the roof of the vehicle, he peered inside. A thin, spidery man, silhouetted by the weak light thrown out by the burning end of his cigar, sat in the back of the car, one leg folded atop the other. He was dressed in an exquisite black evening suit. He turned to look at Donovan and offered him a wicked smile. “You see, Inspector, we’re not going to bite.” The man chuckled, and the sound was like ice water running down Donovan’s spine. “Please, get in, take a seat. It’s late. Allow me to escort you home.”<br />
<br />
Donovan cringed at the thought that these people—whoever they turned out to be—knew where he lived. Still, it was too late to make a run for it now.<br />
<br />
Dipping his head, Donovan slid into the car beside the thin man, clicking the door shut behind him. It was dark, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. The man in the back was like a pale specter, the glowing end of his cigar the only source of light in the whole vehicle. The front seats were separated from the rear compartment by a glass partition. Donovan wrinkled his nose. The vehicle was filled with the scent of damp earth, intermingled with the pungent stench of the cigar smoke. <br />
<br />
Donovan leaned back against the firm leather seat as the car purred softly away from the curb. He was reassured by the weight of the automatic in his pocket, and the fact that the goon in the front no longer<br />
had a bead on him, although he was quite sure that any wrong moves now would be swiftly and efficiently punished. Reaching into his pocket he carefully withdrew his packet of cigarettes, placed one between his parted lips, and pulled the tab. Then, trying to maintain his nerve, he glanced at the man who had, effectively, taken him prisoner. “So . . . Mr. Gideon?”<br />
<br />
The man leaned forward and his face loomed out of the murk, stark and white. “Gideon Reece. I work for the Roman.”<br />
<br />
So that was what this was all about. The Roman. Donovan almost gave a sigh of relief. At least he had some idea of what he was dealing with. He took the cigarette from his lips and allowed a riffle of smoke to flood from his nostrils. “The Roman, eh? So tell me, is he an affable sort of boss?”<br />
<br />
A smile curled at the edges of Gideon Reece’s lips, and he turned his head as if listening for something that wasn’t there. For the first time since getting into the vehicle, Donovan noticed that the other man was missing the uppermost half of his left ear. “Affable enough, Inspector, as long as one pays one’s due respects. Are you a respectful man?”<br />
<br />
“Respect has to be earned, Mr. Reece.”<br />
<br />
“Yes. I believe it does. But it can also be bought.” The man reached inside his coat and produced a brown paper envelope. He rubbed his hand over it in a bizarrely ritualistic gesture, and then placed it ceremoniously on Donovan’s knee. Donovan picked it up, unfolded the flap, and looked inside. The envelope was stuffed with used bills. There must have been a thousand dollars in there. He closed his eyes for a moment, took a long draw on his cigarette.<br />
<br />
“The Roman would like to offer you a token of <em>his</em> respect. He understands that you’ve been finding things . . . difficult . . . of late, and would like to compensate you for your trouble. He’s aware that<br />
you’ve been having problems sleeping, Inspector. Anyone in your position would. It’s understandable. You’ve seen some terrible things. The state of poor Mr. Landsworth, for example. I’m sure you’d rather just blank the entire affair from your mind . . .”<br />
<br />
Donovan grinned. So this was a payoff. Forget about the murder of an odious old politician and walk away with a cool thousand in dollar bills. Flora would be ecstatic with that. For a moment, he was almost tempted. But he was a better cop than that. He was a better <em>man</em> than that. And besides, he knew it would never stop there. Once he’d taken the Roman’s paycheck, it would only be a matter of time before someone was leaning on him again. He knew how it worked; he’d seen it a hundred times before.<br />
<br />
Sighing, he laid the envelope neatly on the seat beside him. “You can tell the Roman that, whilst I appreciate his offer, my memory is in good working order, and I’m sleeping just fine.” He took another long draw on his cigarette, listening to the sound of the paper crackling as he pulled the nicotine into his lungs. There was silence for a few moments, save for the hissing sigh of the steam vents at the rear of the car as it slid along the road.<br />
<br />
Finally, Gideon Reece spoke once more. “I’m not sure you fully understand what’s being offered to you, Inspector Donovan. This is a gift. To refuse it would be to, well . . . to fail to show respect.” He<br />
paused, sucking thoughtfully on the end of his cigar. “We’ve already discussed the importance of respect. Landsworth had no respect.” Another pause. He turned to regard the inspector and his eyes flashed with menace. “I’m sure that makes things clearer for you?”<br />
<br />
Donovan didn’t answer. He understood only too well what was being intimated. He was being presented with an ultimatum: take the money and dine with the devil, or end up dead in a backstreet, or worse, with his pants around his ankles in a hotel suite like that poor bastard Landsworth. He knew it wasn’t an idle threat. But somehow that only worked to strengthen his resolve. Now it was him or the Roman. And what was more, he knew they were getting nervous. Why else would they try to buy him off?<br />
<br />
Donovan glanced out of the window. They were in his neighborhood. He met the other’s penetrating stare with a steady gaze. “Can I think about it?”<br />
<br />
Reece laughed again, a cruel, terrible laugh. He spread his hands in a placatory gesture. “Of course, Inspector. Of course.” He waved his fat cigar beside his head, as if somehow plucking thoughts out of thin air. “But if I may, I’ll leave you with some well-intentioned advice. Don’t go against him. He’s been at this game for a long time. A <em>very</em> long time. Longer than you could possibly imagine. He knows how to get what he wants.” He smiled, leaning back in his seat. “I’ll need your answer by midnight on Friday.”<br />
<br />
Donovan nodded. “Then you can let me out here, Mr. Reece. This is my neighborhood, and I’d be thankful for the walk.”<br />
<br />
Reece nodded and rapped on the glass. The vehicle swung toward the sidewalk and pulled to an abrupt stop. <br />
Donovan glanced at the brown paper envelope, and then, without looking back at the other man, pushed the door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The cold air hit him like a rush.<br />
<br />
He turned and clicked the door shut behind him, and a moment later the car swerved away into the road and growled off into the night. Donovan watched it go.<br />
<br />
He had four days to get something concrete on the Roman. Four days to find his way out of this mess. He’d spent weeks on the case already and hadn’t even got close. But now it was different. Now he<br />
finally had a lead: Gideon Reece.<br />
<br />
Donovan pulled his overcoat tight around his shoulders and set off for home. He needed some sleep, and he wanted to see Flora. More than anything else in the world, he wanted to see his girl.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>CHAPTER SIX</strong><br />
<br />
The Ghost flung his apartment door open and pushed his way inside, leaning heavily on the doorjamb. The drawing room was dark, the only light leaching in through the wide panoramic windows that<br />
looked out across the city far below. Shafts of silver moonlight pooled on the soft carpet, casting everything in a strange, ethereal glow. <br />
<br />
He was breathing heavily. His ankles were bloody and blistered and he was finding it painful to walk. He’d made his escape across the rooftops, crossing four or five buildings before he’d had to force open a fire escape and swing down to street level, five stories below.<br />
<br />
The Roman’s men—or what was left of them—clearly hadn’t chosen to give chase. In that he’d been lucky: the moss golems had been slow and lumbering but effectively unstoppable, at least with the<br />
weapons he’d had at his disposal. He wondered where they had come from, what was controlling them. He’d never seen anything like them before. Automata, yes—but these were something different, something dangerous and new. Twice during the encounter he’d thought he was finished, and if the fight had continued, he knew it would only have been a matter of time. Tiredness would have seen him off. Tiredness and ineffective weapons. He needed to do something about that.<br />
<br />
He’d hobbled the rest of the way back to his apartment building, being careful to stick to the shadows. The streets weren’t busy, but he knew that in this city there were prying eyes at every corner, behind<br />
every blacked-out window. At one point, half-delirious with pain, he’d stumbled out in front of an oncoming car, its headlamps cutting wide channels in the gloom. The vehicle had skidded to a screeching halt, the driver leaning out to shout abuse at the strange, shambling figure in the road. The man had probably assumed he was dealing with a drunken bum. In some respects, he wouldn’t have been far off. He certainly intended to open a bottle of whisky, just as soon as he’d cleaned up his<br />
wounds. The entire evening had been a less than successful enterprise.<br />
<br />
Pushing the door shut behind him, the Ghost limped across the room, pausing by the window. Outside, from this height, the night looked still and silent, but the city was still shimmering with bright<br />
electric lights. The distant trails of biplanes crisscrossed the sky. He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was early, only ten o’clock. He was meant to be somewhere else. But the stinging pain at the back of his legs and the tender flesh where he’d received blows from the moss men meant that any thoughts of other activity that evening had to be put aside.<br />
<br />
He turned away from the window and stumbled toward the bathroom. He had blood on his hands. He laughed at the irony of that thought. There was no redemption for him now.<br />
<br />
This time, however, it was his own blood, from a gash in his palm. He must have sliced it as he crashed through the window.<br />
<br />
He grunted as he pushed the door open with his shoulder. The lights blinked on, triggered by an automatic sensor, flooding everything in harsh electric yellow. He winced at the sight of himself in the<br />
mirror. He was still wearing his long black coat and hat, but his face was smeared with blood, his bottom lip split and still bleeding. His chest ached as if he’d cracked a rib, and he didn’t dare consider what state the backs of his legs would be in once he’d managed to strip away the ruination of his boots.<br />
<br />
He swept his hat off his head, casting it through the open door into the drawing room, not bothering to note where it landed. Then, leaning heavily on the edge of the sink, he cranked the hot tap. Water spat into the basin, swirling around the plughole. He thrust his hands into it, watching the red stains mingle with the running water and disappear, leaving a long, puckered cut across his palm.<br />
<br />
<em>If only it was that easy.</em><br />
<br />
He knew that not all blood could be washed away like that. He thought of the war, of what had happened to him out there, in France. Those events had come to define him, to forge the shape of his future life. The anger still burned deep inside him. He doubted it would ever be quelled. Time had not done it. Perhaps this, perhaps the <em>fight</em> would help? Perhaps it would be enough to still the maelstrom at the center of his being?<br />
<br />
In truth, however, he doubted it. He’d never be able to scrub the stains of that time away. They were indelible now; a part of who he was: a burned-out old soldier with a grudge.<br />
<br />
He looked up, meeting his own gaze in the mirror. For a moment he didn’t even recognize himself. The eyes of the man looking back at him were haunted, and the face was pale and unfamiliar. He no longer knew who he really was. He wasn’t <em>the Ghost</em>—that construct of the reporters and their overzealous headlines, as useful as that moniker had proved to be—and he wasn’t that other man, either. That character was just as much a construct, a proxy; he existed only in the same world as<br />
the Ghost. He only existed at all because of necessity.<br />
<br />
The Ghost sighed. Only one person had seen to the core of him, and he couldn’t even be himself with her. The irony was not lost on him.<br />
<br />
He lowered his face to the sink and splashed water over himself. Then, gingerly, he set about stripping his clothes. He unbuckled the straps that tied his fléchette gun to his forearm and allowed the weapon<br />
to clang noisily to the floor, the barrel skittering away across the smooth ceramic tiles. He looked down at his feet. He was going to have to bandage his ankles. And, he laughed to himself, wincing as he began peeling away the scorched leather, he was going to need to invest in some new boots.<br />
<br />
<br />
An hour later the Ghost lowered himself into an easy chair by the window and broke the seal on a bottle of illegal bourbon, sloshing a generous measure into a glass and downing it in one long motion. He shuddered as the alcohol did its work. He poured himself another glass, studying the amber liquid as he held it up to the moonlight. It would numb the pain. All of it.<br />
<br />
On the table before him sat a large device. It was the size of a wireless receiver, but looked more like a miniature holotube terminal; three large glass valves were set into an old wooden case, arranged like a<br />
crown of glass teeth around a small mirrored chamber. A series of buttons and dials on the front of the device were unmarked. A wire trailed from the back of the unit, snaking away to disappear into the corner of the room, its destination lost in shadow.<br />
<br />
The Ghost downed his second tumbler of whisky and placed the glass on the table with a clink. Then, turning to regard the strange device, he reached out and twisted one of the dials. The unit gave an<br />
electrical buzz and flickering blue energy crackled to life inside the three glass valves. The device began to hum as it warmed up. After a moment, the Ghost flicked another switch and a small holographic image shimmered into being inside the mirrored cavity. It was a woman. She was standing beside a microphone, her hair pinned to one side of her face, wearing a long, flowing dress. Her makeup accentuated her features, and the dress accentuated her hips. The backdrop was fuzzy and indistinct, but it appeared to be the inside of a nightclub.<br />
<br />
The Ghost reached for the bottle of bourbon and moved to pour another measure into his glass. Then, changing his mind, he sat back with the bottle in his fist and took a long slug from it. He stared for a<br />
moment at the unwavering image of the woman. Then, like some sort of mysterious god, he twisted another dial on the machine and imbued the woman with life.<br />
<br />
The Ghost fell back listlessly in his chair. The woman swayed slightly from side to side, clasping the microphone stand, and then the music started, the faint strains of a piano, tinny through the imperfect<br />
speakers of the improvised recording device.<br />
<br />
The woman—Celeste Parker—parted her lips and sang, and her voice, even relayed through the fizzing static of the holograph machine, was a thing of beauty. The words were immaterial. The<br />
cadence of her voice carried all of the emotional significance, all of the necessary sentiment. It was a lament for lost love. It was raw, and it was true.<br />
<br />
The Ghost stirred, taking another long pull on the whisky bottle. He knew those emotions, knew what it was like to lose someone. Knew what it was like to feel unrequited love for another.<br />
<br />
He glanced at the holograph. What the hell did she see in that buffoon, Gabriel Cross? How could she stand to be around him? He only hoped that she could see something others could not, that her perception of the man was different from that of those hordes of partygoers who gathered at his Long Island home to pay homage to their debauched leader. He was a libertine, yes, but he was also a fool, an emotionless caricature of himself. The Ghost could not understand how Celeste could bring herself to endure the man’s company, let alone his bed.<br />
<br />
He watched her as she continued with her plaintive song. It was a private performance, just him and the machine, but all the while it felt to the Ghost as if there was more than one man in the audience.<br />
<br />
Presently, the song ended and the holograph stuttered to a halt, the image frozen once again, a moment captured in time. He considered starting it over, then held the bottle of whisky up to the light. It was<br />
half-empty. Enough.<br />
<br />
Carefully, he swung his legs down from the footrest and tested them with his weight. It was painful, but he could walk. The bandageswould hold. The burns had looked worse than they were—his boots<br />
had taken the brunt of the scorching. His ankles were badly blistered, but he’d be able to carry on. He pulled himself to his feet. <br />
<br />
The bathroom light was still on, throwing a sheet of electric yellow into the room, creating bizarre shadows that seemed to come to life as he crossed the drawing room toward the rear of the apartment. He passed the bedroom door, which hung open, revealing a bed that had been slept in and not made, the sheets thrown back and abandoned. This he ignored, continuing on until he reached another door, almost hidden in the shadows at the far end of the apartment. It was the same as all the others, outwardly at least—four panels, painted with white gloss—save for the fact that nowhere on its surface was there any sign of a handle.<br />
<br />
The Ghost approached the door and gave a series of sharp knocks, each one carefully placed and timed to perfection. He paused for a moment. Then, as if in conspiratorial acknowledgement of his secret code, there was a pneumatic hiss from beyond the wooden frame, accompanied by the grinding of gears, and the door eased back from the frame and slid to one side with a metallic clang.<br />
<br />
Light flooded the apartment. The Ghost had to shield his eyes for a moment to protect them from the glare. The room beyond the door was bathed in the brilliant radiance of an arc lamp, which curved across the entire extent of the ceiling. There were no windows, but the walls were plastered with drawings and schematics, blueprints and technical diagrams. At the far end was an old wooden writing desk, pushed up against the wall. Its once smooth surface was now covered with a series of pockmarks and scars, and it was piled high with all manner of bizarre paraphernalia, from empty ammo casings to filament wire, steam valves to canisters of propulsion fuel. Likewise, a vast array of<br />
equipment and components lined the walls, or was otherwise heaped against them: a rack of long-barreled guns; a plastic bucket of fléchettes; two black trench coats; a spare pair of goggles.<br />
<br />
He crossed the threshold, bathing himself in the bright light of the arc lamp. This was his workshop: the Ghost’s true home. <br />
<br />
He’d been an engineer during the war, as well as a pilot, and this was his haven, the place where he was able to create. That he created mostly weapons designed to incapacitate or kill others was a fact that did not sit well with him, but he reconciled this knowledge with the understanding that he wielded those weapons for the right reasons . . . and that he always allowed the crooks to shoot first. Violence was the language of the enemy, and he had learned to speak it well.<br />
<br />
The Ghost approached the desk and used his left arm to brush away the surface debris with a long, sweeping motion. Papers, batteries, and clockwork components scattered to the floor around his feet<br />
in a tinkling shower. Then, his eyes gleaming with the glassy patina of alcohol and enthusiasm, he searched the floor around the desk until he located the device he was looking for. It was almost identical to the fléchette launcher he’d been carrying earlier: a long, thin barrel attached to a ratchet mechanism that clipped to his forearm, with a small pneumatic trigger that trailed on a rubber cable and a toploading canister for the ammunition. Unlike the other weapon, however, the barrel of this device had been finely engraved with a thinly traced pattern of roses and thorns. He weighed it in his hands for a moment. Then, popping the lid free of the canister, he tipped the weapon over so that the fléchettes inside it spilled out over the desktop in a scatter of shimmering steel. He placed the weapon carefully back on the floor and lowered himself onto a stool, which he extracted from the chaotic mess beneath the desk. <br />
<br />
Picking one of the small arrow-shaped blades from the heap, he turned it over in his fingers appraisingly. If they were going to prove effective against the moss golems, he’d have to rethink his approach.<br />
<br />
He grabbed a small blade from the nearby stack of tools and slipped it between the two metal plates that comprised the fléchette. Being careful not to shred his fingers on the razor-sharp rim, he prized the<br />
two pieces of metal apart with the blade, just enough so that he could see inside. There was a tiny cavity in the head of the wedge. He smiled with grim satisfaction. He knew what he could do with that.<br />
<br />
He dropped the fléchette to the desk and stood, heading back into the darkness of the drawing room. When he returned a few moments later he was bearing the half-empty bottle of bourbon. He set it down beside the pile of ammunition and returned to his seat.<br />
<br />
It was going to be a long night, and he had much work to do.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Ghosts.html">Ghosts of Manhattan</a> © <a href="http://georgemann.wordpress.com/">George Mann</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.blancfonce.com/">Benjamin Carré</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke </div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpcYDq7QPuGgziotozh7PkwIMv0blzvoZCbR7qnxVKyja3v26EJCmBRF0F0RWjMC6r-2rMT0HMCEjJxD3nwURl4HP7sviaUYdnjphDSf9aNQpnD8AYLNUyA15_FCfVrhaa2PhO9411gc/s1600/Mann+Photo+%231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGpcYDq7QPuGgziotozh7PkwIMv0blzvoZCbR7qnxVKyja3v26EJCmBRF0F0RWjMC6r-2rMT0HMCEjJxD3nwURl4HP7sviaUYdnjphDSf9aNQpnD8AYLNUyA15_FCfVrhaa2PhO9411gc/s320/Mann+Photo+%231.jpg" wt="true" /></a><strong>George Mann</strong> is the author of <em>The Affinity Bridge, The Osiris Ritual</em> and <em>The Human Abstract</em>, as well as numerous short stories, novellas and an original <em>Doctor Who</em> audiobook. He has edited a number of anthologies including <em>The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy</em> and a retrospective collection of classic Sexton Blake stories, <em>Sexton Blake, Detective</em>. He lives near Grantham, UK, with his wife, son and daughter. Visit him at http://georgemann.wordpress.com/.</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-9884501832748723302010-02-17T11:25:00.003-06:002010-02-17T11:32:22.630-06:00Empire in Black and Gold by Adrian Tchaikovsky<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhMHYdcDlMPw2DxlVRMHZLmngwI5IGaa6-ioNJ3zeg70v6nxMwunaOj8mLo0nCqLhFgfOUraQSHu87EzRjT3OvpyAx3hLlOced4OU-qVBv4VlokSUU62KE9aMEgJkcS6q6ue9RVXAx8SI/s1600-h/empireinblack_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhMHYdcDlMPw2DxlVRMHZLmngwI5IGaa6-ioNJ3zeg70v6nxMwunaOj8mLo0nCqLhFgfOUraQSHu87EzRjT3OvpyAx3hLlOced4OU-qVBv4VlokSUU62KE9aMEgJkcS6q6ue9RVXAx8SI/s320/empireinblack_cover.jpg" /></a></div>“<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Empire.html">Empire in Black and Gold</a></em> has enough going for it to make it one of the most enjoyable books that I’ve read so far this year. I want more and there’s nothing I can do but sit it out and wait…” <br />
--<em>Graeme’s Fantasy Book Review</em><br />
<br />
The city states of the Lowlands have lived in peace for decades, bastions of civilization, prosperity and sophistication, protected by treaties, trade and a belief in the reasonable nature of their neighbors. But meanwhile, in far-off corners, the Wasp Empire has been devouring city after city with its highly trained armies, its machines, it killing Art . . . And now its hunger for conquest and war has become insatiable.<br />
<br />
Only the ageing Stenwold Maker, spymaster, artificer and statesman, can see that the long days of peace are over. It falls upon his shoulders to open the eyes of his people, before a black-and-gold tide sweeps down over the Lowlands and burns away everything in its path.<br />
<br />
But first he must stop himself from becoming the Empire's latest victim.<br />
<br />
<br />
Don't let the suspense kill you; read an excerpt from the book here:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Empire in Black and Gold</span></strong><br />
<strong><span style="font-size: large;">Shadows of the Apt: Book 1</span></strong></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Adrian Tchaikovsky</span></strong> </div><div align="left" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div align="left" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><br />
<strong>One</strong><br />
<br />
After Stenwold picked up the telescope for the ninth time, Marius said, “You will know first from the sound.”<br />
<br />
The burly man stopped and peered down at him, telescope still half-poised. From their third-storey retreat the city walls were a mass of black and red, the defenders hurrying into place atop the ramparts and about the gates.<br />
<br />
“How do you mean, the sound?”<br />
<br />
Marius, sitting on the floor with his back to the wall, looked up at him. “What you hear now is men braving themselves for a fight. When it starts, they will be quiet, just for a moment. They will brace themselves. Then it will be a different kind of noise.” It was a long speech for him.<br />
<br />
Even from here Stenwold could hear a constant murmur from the gates. He lowered the telescope reluctantly. “There’ll be a great almighty noise when they come in, if all goes according to plan.”<br />
<br />
Marius shrugged. “Then listen for that.”<br />
<br />
Below there was a quick patter of feet as someone ascended the stairs. Stenwold twitched but Marius remarked simply, “Tisamon,” and went back to staring at nothing. In the room beneath them there were nine men and women dressed in the same chain hauberk and helm that Marius wore, and looking enough like him to be family. Stenwold knew their minds were meshed together, touching each other’s and touching Marius too, thoughts passing freely back and forth between them. He could not imagine how it must be, for them.<br />
<br />
Tisamon burst in, tall and pale, with thunder in his expression. Even as Stenwold opened his mouth he snapped out, “No sign. She’s not come.”<br />
<br />
“Well there are always—” Stenwold started, but the tall man cut him off.<br />
<br />
“I cannot think of any reason why she wouldn’t come, except one,” Tisamon spat. Seldom, so very seldom, had Stenwold seen this man angry and, whenever he had been, there was always blood. Tisamon was Mantis-kinden, whose people had, when time was young, been the most deadly killers of the Lowlands. Even though their time of greatness had passed, they were still not to be toyed with. They were matchless, whether in single duel or a skirmish of swords, and Tisamon was a master, the deadliest fighter Stenwold had ever known.<br />
<br />
“She has betrayed us,” Tisamon stated simply. Abruptly all expression was gone from his angular features but that was only because it had fled inward.<br />
<br />
“There are . . . reasons,” Stenwold said, wishing to defend his absent friend and yet not turn the duellist’s anger against himself. The man’s cold, hating eyes locked on to him even so. Tisamon had taken up no weapon, but his hands alone, and the spurs of naked bone that lanced outward from his forearms, were quite enough to take Stenwold apart, and with time to spare. “Tisamon,” Stenwold said.<br />
“You don’t know . . .”<br />
<br />
“Listen,” said Marius suddenly. And when Stenwold listened, in that very instant there was no more murmur audible from the gates.<br />
<br />
And then it came, reaching them across the rooftops of Myna: the cry of a thousand throats. The assault had begun.<br />
<br />
It was enough to shout down even Tisamon’s wrath. Stenwold fumbled with the telescope, then stumbled to the window, nearly losing the instrument over the sill. When he had the glass back to his eye his hands were shaking so much that he could not keep it steady. The lens’s view danced across the gatehouse and the wall, then finally settled. He saw the black and red armour of the army of Myna:<br />
men aiming crossbows or winching artillery around. He saw ballista and grapeshot-throwers wheel crazily through the arc of the telescope’s eye, discharging their burdens. There was black and gold now amongst the black and red. The first wave of the Wasp divisions came upon them in a glittering mob:<br />
troops in light armour bearing the Empire’s colours skimming over the tops of the walls, the air about their shoulders ashimmer with the dancing of nebulous wings. For a second Stenwold saw them as the insects they aped, but in reality they were armoured men, aloft in the air, with wings flickering from their backs and blades in their hands. They swooped on the earthbound defenders with lances and swords, loosing arrows and crossbow bolts and hurling spears. As the defenders turned their crossbows upward toward them, Stenwold saw the bright crackle as golden fire flashed from the palms of the attackers’ hands, the killing Art of the Wasp-kinden.<br />
<br />
“Any moment now,” Stenwold whispered, as though the enemy, hundreds of yards away, might overhear him. From along the wall he heard a steady thump-thump-thump as Myna’s huge rock-launchers hurled missile after missile into the ground troops advancing beyond the wall.<br />
<br />
“They’re at the gate.” Marius was still staring into space, but Stenwold knew that one of his men was positioned on a rooftop closer to the action, watching on his behalf.<br />
<br />
“Then it must be now,” Stenwold said. <em>“Now.”</em> He tried to focus the jittery telescope on the gates, saw them flex inward momentarily and heard the boom of the battering ram. “Now,” he said again uselessly, for still nothing happened. All that time he had spent with the artificers of Myna, charging the earth in front of the gates with powder, and <em>nothing</em>.<br />
<br />
“Perhaps they got it wrong,” Marius suggested. Again the ram boomed against the metal-shod gates, and they groaned like a creature in pain before it.<br />
<br />
“I was practically looking over their shoulders,” Stenwold said. “It was ready to go. How could they have . . . someone must have . . .”<br />
<br />
“We are betrayed,” said Tisamon softly. “By Atryssa, clearly. Who else knew the plan? Or do you think the people of Myna have sold their own to the slaver’s block?”<br />
<br />
“You . . . don’t know . . .” But Stenwold felt conviction draining from him. Atryssa, so expected but so absent, and now this . . .<br />
<br />
“Spider-kind,” Tisamon spat, and then repeated, “Spider-kind,” with even keener loathing. On the walls the vanguard of theWasp army was already engaged in a hundred little skirmishes against the shields of the defenders. Tisamon bared his teeth in utter fury. “I knew! I knew you could never trust the Spider-kinden. Why did we ever let her in? Why did—Why did we trust her?” He was white knuckled, shaking, eyes staring like a madman’s. The spines flexed alarmingly in his forearms, seeking blood. Stenwold stared into his face but barely heard the words. Instead he heard what Tisamon had left unsaid, and knew not fear but a terrible pity. Spider-kinden, as Tisamon said. Spider-kinden, as subtle and devious as all that implied, and still Tisamon, with a thousand years of race hatred between<br />
them, had let her into his life and opened the gates of his soul to her. It was not just that Atryssa had betrayed her friends and betrayed the people of Myna; it was that she had betrayed Tisamon, and he could not bear the hurt.<br />
<br />
“It has been a long time,” Marius said quietly. “A lot can happen that even a Spider cannot predict.”<br />
<br />
Tisamon rounded on him, livid with anger, but just then with a great scream of tortured metal, a thundercrack of splintering wood, the gates gave way.<br />
<br />
The ramming engine was first through, no telescope needed to see its great brass and steel bulk as it blundered over the wreckage it had created, belching smoke from its funnels. A ballista atop its hood hung half off its mountings, mangled by the defenders’ artillery, but there were eyelets in its metal sides from which spat crossbow bolts and the crackling energy of the Wasps’ Art. Swarming either<br />
side of it were their line infantry, spear-armed but shieldless. Clad in armour too heavy to fly in, they pushed the men stationed at the gate back through sheer force, while their airborne divisions were beginning to pass over the city. The guardians of Myna were a disciplined lot, shield locked with shield as they tried to keep the enemy out. There were too many of them, though; the assault came from before and above, and from either side. Eventually the defenders’ line buckled and fell back.<br />
<br />
“We have to leave now,” Stenwold said, “or we’ll never get out. Someone has to know what’s happened here. The Lowlands have to be warned.”<br />
<br />
“The Lowlands won’t care,” said Marius, but he was up and poised, and Stenwold knew that, below them, his soldiers would be ready with shield and sword and crossbow. They went down the stairs in quick succession, knowing that, now their single trick had failed, nothing would keep the Wasps out of Myna. Their army had five men for every defender the city could muster.<br />
<br />
<em>What a band we are.</em> The thought passed through Stenwold’s mind as he took the stairs, bringing up the rear as always. First went Marius, tan-skinned and dark, with the universally compact build of his race: he had abandoned his people to come here, gone renegade so that he could fight against the enemy his city would not believe in. After him came Tisamon, still consumed with rage and yet still the most graceful man Stenwold had ever known. His leather arming jacket bore the green and gold colours, even the ceremonial pin, of a Mantis Weaponsmaster. Stenwold had never seen him without it and knew he was clinging to his grudges and his honour like a drowning man.<br />
<br />
<em>And then myself: dark of skin and receding of hair; stout and bulky, loud of tread. Not my fault my folk are so heavy boned! Hardwearing leathers and a scorched apron, a workman’s heavy gloves thrust through my belt, and goggles dangling about my neck. Not at first sight a man ever intended for war. And yet here I am with a crossbow banging against my legs.</em><br />
<br />
Down in the room below, Marius’s soldiers were already alert and on their feet, Some had their heavy square shields out, swords at the ready, others had slung them and taken up crossbows. Two carried the baggage: a heavy leather bag containing Stenwold’s tools, and a long wooden case. Even as Stenwold got sight of the room they were unbarring the door, throwing it open. Immediately two of them pushed out, shields first. Stenwold realized that he had paused halfway down, dreading the moment when there would no longer be a roof above him to keep off enemy shot. Tisamon and most of the soldiers were gone. Marius, however, was waiting for him, an unspoken urgency hanging in his gaze.<br />
<br />
“I’m coming,” Stenwold said, and hated the shaking of his voice. He clumped on down the stairs, fumbling for his crossbow.<br />
<br />
“Leave it, and just move,” Marius ordered, and was out of the door. Following behind Stenwold, the final pair of soldiers moved in to guard the rear.<br />
<br />
And then they were out into the open air. The sounds of the fighting at the gate were very close, closer than he could have thought, but this street had seen no blood—not yet. There were citizens of Myna out and about, though, waiting in a scatter of anxious faces. Men and women, and boys and girls still too young to be here at all, they were clutching knives and swords and staves, and waiting.<br />
<br />
At his unheard direction, Marius’s soldiers formed up: shields before and shields behind, with Stenwold, the baggage and the crossbows in the middle. Marius was at point, already setting a rapid pace down the narrow street. His troop’s dark armour, its single purpose, moved people quickly out of the way without need for words or action.<br />
<br />
“I can’t run as fast as your lot,” Stenwold complained. He already felt out of step and was just waiting for the men behind to jostle or stumble over him. “Where’s Tisamon, anyway?”<br />
<br />
“Around.” Marius did not look back or gesture, but then Stenwold caught a glimpse of the Mantis warrior passing through the crowd like an outrider, constantly pausing to look back toward the gate and then move on. He wore his armoured glove, with the blade jutting from between the fingers, flexing out like a sword blade one moment, folded back along his arm the next. It was an ancient tool of his kind and a laughable anachronism, save that Stenwold had witnessed what he could do with it.<br />
<br />
“What about your man, at the gates?” Stenwold called, trying desperately to fall into step with those around him.<br />
<br />
“Dead,” was the officer’s curt reply.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry.”<br />
<br />
“Be sorry when you know the full tally,” said Marius. “We’re not out of it yet.” There was a ripple among the people of Myna, and not from the passage through them of this little squad of foreigners heading for the airfield. Stenwold realized what it must mean. All around now, they were brandishing their swords or workman’s hammers or simple wooden clubs. It would not be quick or easy to capture this city, but the Wasps would have it in the end. Their dream of a black-and-gold world would accept no less.<br />
<br />
Stenwold was Beetle-kinden and in the Lowlands his people were known for their industry, their artifice, even, as he liked to think, for their charity and kindly philosophy. The people of Myna were his distant cousins, being some offshoot of Beetle stock. He could spare them no charity now, however. He could spare no thought or time for anything but his own escape.<br />
<br />
A brief shadow passed across him as the first of the Wasp vanguard soared overhead in a dart of black and gold, a shimmer of wings. Three more followed, and a dozen after that. They were heading in the same direction that Stenwold was moving.<br />
<br />
“They’re going to the airfield. They’ll destroy the fliers!” he shouted in warning.<br />
<br />
Instantly Marius and his men stepped up the pace and Stenwold wished he had not spoken. Now they were jogging along, effortlessly despite their armour, and he was running full tilt within a cage formed by their shields, feeling his gut lurch and his heart hammer. Behind him there were screams, and he made the mistake of looking back. Some of the Wasps, it seemed, were not heading for the airfield, but had stopped to rake across the assembled citizens with golden fire and javelins and crossbow bolts, circling and darting, and coming back to loose their missiles once again. This was no ordered attack, they were a frenzied mass of hatred, out solely for slaughter. Stenwold tripped even as he gaped, but the woman closest behind caught him by the arm and wrenched his bulk upright again, without breaking stride.<br />
<br />
A moment later his rescuer herself was hit. There was a snap and crackle, and the stink of burned flesh and hot metal, and she sagged to one knee. Stenwold turned to help but nearly fell over the man reaching to drag her upright. TheWasp light airborne troops were all around them now, passing overhead, or diving at the citizens to drive them off the streets. A crossbow bolt bounded past Stenwold like a living thing.<br />
<br />
The injured woman was on her feet once more. She and the man beside her turned to face the new assault. Marius and the rest kept moving.<br />
<br />
“Come on, Stenwold! Hurry!” the officer shouted.<br />
<br />
“But—”<br />
<br />
“Go,” said the injured woman, no pain or reproach in her voice. She and the man with her locked shields, waiting. Stenwold stumbled away from them, then turned and fled after Marius and the others.<br />
<br />
Tisamon was beside him in an instant. He had a look on his face that Stenwold had never seen before, but he could read it as though the Mantis’s thoughts were carved there. Tisamon wanted a fight. He had been betrayed. He had been broken. Now he wanted a fight that he could not win.<br />
<br />
“Get a move on, fat-Beetle,” he hissed, grabbing one strap of Stenwold’s apron and hauling him forward. “You’re getting out of here.”<br />
<br />
“We are,” corrected Stenwold, too out of breath by now to say any more. He watched Tisamon snatch a Wasp spear from the air in his offhand and then the Mantis spun on his heel, launched it away into the sky behind them, and was immediately in step once again. Stenwold did not pause to look, but he had no doubt that behind them some Wasp soldier would now be dropping from the sky, pierced through by his own missile.<br />
<br />
Myna was a tiered city and they hit a set of steps then, a steep, narrow twenty-foot ascent. Stenwold tried to slow down for it but Tisamon would not let him, grabbing his arm again and pulling him upward, exerting every muscle in his lean frame.<br />
<br />
“Keep moving,” the Mantis snapped at him through gritted teeth. “Move your great big fat feet, you Beetle bastard!”<br />
<br />
The sting of that insult got Stenwold to the top of the steps before he realized. There were more citizens up there, all trying to head in the wrong direction, directly toward the gates. Something in Tisamon’s face or body language pushed them easily aside. Ahead, Stenwold could see Marius’s squad taking the next set of steps at a run.<br />
<br />
And Stenwold ran, too, as he had never run before. His toolstrip, and his sword and crossbow, all clattered and conspired to trip him up. His breath rasped as he dragged ever more of it into his lungs, yet he ran, because up beyond those steps lay the airfield. Then he would know if he could stop running or if it was already too late.<br />
<br />
There were Wasp soldiers scattered across the airfield. At the far end, the great bloated bulk of an airship balloon was slowly settling into itself, gashed in a dozen places and deflating. Some half a dozen dead men and women were strewn like old toys between the flying machines, but a dozen more were putting up a final desperate defence, letting off their crossbow bolts at the circling Wasp soldiers from<br />
whatever shelter they could find. If the Wasps had been arrayed in military order they could have swept the place clean in a minute, but they were mad for blood, each one on his own.<br />
<br />
Stenwold noticed one old man frantically stoking the boiler of a sleek orthopter that stood there like a tall ship, its slender wings folded together and pointing up toward the sky. A Wasp soldier passed close and caught him by the collar, hauling him ten feet away from the machine before touching down again<br />
and putting his sword through the old man once, twice, three times. A moment later a bolt caught the same soldier between the shoulder blades. He pitched forward, trying even as he fell to reach behind him and pull it out.<br />
<br />
“That one!” wheezed Stenwold, stumbling toward the now deserted orthopter. It was stoked. It was ready to go. “Come on!” he gasped.<br />
<br />
In a moment Marius’s men were around him, and then they were past him, deliberately moving away from the machine and making a brief wall of their shields with crossbows poised behind it, guarding the retreat as effectively as they could.<br />
<br />
“Can you fly this?” Marius demanded. Stenwold merely nodded, because he had no more breath to speak, and no room left for doubt. The officer clapped him on the shoulder. “Get it moving. We’ll join you.” And then, as Stenwold hurried past him, “Watch out for Tisamon. He does not want to leave this place.”<br />
<br />
<em>I know why.</em> But Stenwold did not have the breath for it. <br />
<br />
Tisamon was already at the orthopter, hand reaching for the hatch, then stopping. He looked back at Stenwold with an agonized expression. “I—how . . .”<br />
<br />
“The handle. Turn the handle.”<br />
<br />
Hand on the lever, the Mantis shook his head, baring his teeth. One of Marius’s men arrived just then, ducked neatly under his arm and hauled the hatch open, hurling Stenwold’s toolbag inside. Stenwold reached the orthopter so fast that he bounced back off the scuffed wood of its hull. The soldier had already unslung his crossbow and was running to join his colleagues. Tisamon turned and went with him.<br />
<br />
“Wait—” Stenwold got out, but the Mantis was already sprinting across the airfield with his blade drawn back ready for action. Even as Stenwold hauled himself up into the machine, the Mantis leapt and caught a passingWasp by his black-and-gold boot, dragging the flailing man out of the sky and lashing the two-foot edge of his metal claw across the invader’s throat. It would be a poor day for any<br />
Wasp who met with the Mantis just then.<br />
<br />
Stenwold shouldered his way through the cramped interior of the flier toward the cockpit, there finding a single seat too small for him and unfamiliar controls. He was an artificer, though, and had lived with machines all his life. A moment’s observation told him which glass bar indicated the boiler pressure, which lever unleashed the wings. A Wasp soldier darted across the large and wide-open ports that were mainly what Stenwold had between him and the fighting outside. Then the wings clapped down and outward with a roar of wood and canvas and the soldier was sent spinning by the concussion of air. Stenwold’s feet found pedals in the narrow confines of the footwell. The boiler pressure was now closing on the optimal. He put his head back, peering through the open hatch for any sign of his comrades.<br />
<br />
Half of Marius’s men were already dead, he saw, and this jolted his heart. They fought beautifully: even he, though no warrior, could see that. Each man knew by heart the thoughts of his fellows, so they moved as one. They were so few, though, and the Wasps swarmed all over the field. Shield and crossbow were no defence against their numbers.<br />
<br />
“Come on!” Stenwold bellowed. “Let’s go now!” He could not believe that they would hear him over the din of combat but one of them must have, and so they all did. They began to fall back, shields held high. Even as he watched, another was lanced in the side by a crossbow bolt, falling awkwardly before rising to one knee. The others continued to retreat, and Stenwold might have thought it heartless of<br />
them had he not been so sure that the fallen man would be exhorting them to go, to leave him there. Stenwold realized that he knew none of their names, had not even heard many of them speak.<br />
<br />
Ant-kinden, he would never understand them or their communal world. Or how Marius had managed to leave that world and not look back.<br />
<br />
The hatch went suddenly dark. AWasp soldier forced his way in, the dance of his wings dying behind him. One open hand still crackled with the fire of his sting but he was now leading with his sword. Stenwold was lurching backward even as the man’s shoulders cleared the entrance, hurling the first thing that came to hand, which happened to be a mechanic’s hammer. It thumped into the Wasp soldier’s shoulder and knocked him half out of the hatch. Then Stenwold was upon him, grabbing for his sword arm with one hand, lunging with the other. He never got hold of the man’s sword, but his right hand somehow managed to draw his own, and he rammed it up to its narrow guard in his adversary’s armpit.<br />
<br />
The Wasp spat at him and he recoiled in shock, then recoiled again as he saw the blood stringing across the man’s lips. Then the dying soldier was falling out of the flier, the weight of him taking Stenwold’s sword from his suddenly nerveless fingers.<br />
<br />
He had just killed another human being. <em>There’s a first time for everything. </em>One of Marius’s soldiers now reached the hatch and cast the wooden case inside. Marius himself and three of his men were still inching their way back, painfully slow.<br />
<br />
“Tisamon!” Stenwold called out. “Tisamon!”<br />
<br />
He saw him then, the Weaponsmaster, moving in and out of the Wasps as they tried to corner him. But he stepped through the golden energy of their stings, their crossbow bolts that fractured on the hard earth of the airfield. He caught their spears easily and hurled them back. His blade, twisting and darting too swift to see, was never still for a second. It moved as naturally as his wrist and hand and arm could, and there were always the spines of his arms to cut and tear at anything the metal missed. Tisamon was going to die, but he would have more company on his journey than he knew what to do with.<br />
<br />
“Tisamon!” Stenwold shouted and the Mantis-kinden broke off from the fight, danced across to him, casually cutting down a Wasp that tried to put a spear in him.<br />
<br />
“Get Marius inside and go!” Tisamon commanded. “Go! Just go!”<br />
<br />
Stenwold’s face twisted up in anger and fear. “You bloody-handed bastard! If you stay here then you’re taking me with you! I’m not going without you!”<br />
<br />
Even as he moved to meet the next attacker Tisamon’s face showed how utterly unfair he felt that threat was. Even so, he was returning to the orthopter in the very next instant.<br />
<br />
“Marius, now!” Stenwold shrieked, and at last Marius and his two survivors broke into a run, shields temporarily slung on their backs. Stenwold ducked away from the hatch and even as he did so a lance of energy blasted a smoking hole in the rim. Hands shaking, he squeezed himself back into the pilot’s seat, and began to pedal fast. He felt the entire frame of the flier creak as the wings moved, first up<br />
and then down, powered by the steam boiler but guided by his feet.<br />
<br />
Someone vaulted into the flier, and Stenwold flinched in fear, but it was only Tisamon, face grim. He set on the wooden case immediately and tugged at the buckles, his bladed glove now removed. A moment later a woman belonging to Marius’s squad climbed in too and turned to help her commander aboard. By now Stenwold had the wings working smoothly and felt the orthopter lurch as though<br />
eager to be gone from here.<br />
<br />
Marius was halfway in when he arched backward without warning and began to fall away. The female soldier caught his belt and dragged him to safety, but Stenwold caught a glimpse of the leather vanes of the crossbow bolt buried deep in the commander’s lower back beside the rim of his shield.<br />
<br />
“Any more?” He could barely keep the machine on the ground.<br />
<br />
“No!” the woman yelled to him, and he doubled his pace and the orthopter sprang into the sky, spinning a couple of Wasps out of their way with the displaced air.<br />
<br />
Stenwold risked a single glance behind him to see what was happening. Marius was lying on his side, his skin turned from tan to ashen grey, his sole remaining soldier investigating the wound. Tisamon had opened his case and was stringing his greatbow. Another relic of the Bad Old Days, Stenwold knew, but he would not have swapped such a bow in Tisamon’s hands for the latest repeating crossbow. The<br />
Mantis crouched at the still-open hatch and nocked an arrow. A moment later he loosed it and Stenwold saw, as he circled the airfield, another Wasp go whirling downward, sword spinning off separately, outreaching him as he fell.<br />
<br />
“Away would be good!” Tisamon snapped, reaching into the case for another arrow.<br />
<br />
“I have to gain height first,” Stenwold told him, knowing that the Mantis would not understand. He was pulling the orthopter into a ponderously slow upward circle of the airfield as the steam-driven wings worked up and down. None of the other Mynan flying machines had got off the ground. He did not want to think about what might be happening in the city below them. He just pedalled and steered, watching a rising circle ofWasps below them, flying men with swords and spears milling in a furious swarm. Tisamon leant far out, securing his position with one knee and one elbow, and drew back the string.<br />
<br />
<em>High enough.</em> Stenwold decided, and wrestled the orthopter out of its curve. But he had misjudged the angle and ended up sending it straight out over the teeming city. Below him a dozen Wasp soldiers passed by, oblivious, but Stenwold’s attention was by now somewhere else.<br />
<br />
“Hammer and tongs!” he swore. “Will you look at that!”<br />
<br />
It was ugly as sin and it hung in the air as elegantly as a hanged man, but nevertheless it stayed up and there had to be some craft in that feat. A heliopter in Wasp colours, a monstrous, uneven metal box with three spinning blades straining to keep it from crashing to the ground. There must have been hatches in its underbelly, he realized, because there was a stream of missiles falling constantly from it<br />
onto Myna. He thought they were rocks at first but, on seeing the explosions, decided they must be firepots or firepowder grenades.<br />
<br />
<em>Why am I still flying at it?</em> He wrenched quickly at the simple wooden stick and the orthopter veered away, theWasp heliopter sliding out of his frame of vision as he cast his newly acquired vehicle across the city and out over the walls. The orthopter was a simple piece of machinery, and the artificers back at his native city of Collegium, hundreds of miles away, would have called it “prentice stuff.” It was<br />
all Stenwold needed, though, for it could outpace the Wasp light airborne, and in only minutes their pursuers were dropping back, turning for the city again, and Tisamon could lower his bow.<br />
<br />
The Wasp heliopter, however—that was a crude and primitive piece. Any self-respecting artificer would have been rightly ashamed of it. And yet it flew, and only five years ago the Wasps had possessed nothing like it.<br />
<br />
“Marius . . .” he began. He could crane over his shoulder, but even while letting the machine glide on its canvas wings he dared not take his attention from the controls. “Marius, talk to me.”<br />
<br />
“He is sorry,” said the woman, and after a moment’s blank surprise Stenwold realized that Marius must now be too weak to speak, but strong enough to send his thoughts into her mind.<br />
<br />
“We have to tell them what has happened here,” Stenwold continued. “Marius, we have to tell Sarn. We must warn your city.”<br />
<br />
“He says we are considered renegades there,” the woman replied impassively. “He says we can never go back.”<br />
<br />
Beneath them the fields and small villages that were Myna’s tributary settlements swept past. “But Marius only left because he thought this was for your people’s good,” Stenwold said stubbornly. “He saw the threat even when they did not. You know this, and you have to tell them.”<br />
<br />
“We can never go back there,” the woman said, and he realized she was speaking for herself this time. “Once the bonds of loyalty are broken, we can never go back.”<br />
<br />
“But Marius—Sarn isn’t like the other Ant cities any more. There have been changes. There are even some of my own kin on the council there,” Stenwold insisted.<br />
<br />
There was a lengthy silence from behind him, and he assumed that Marius must have died. He choked on a sob, but then the woman put a hand on his shoulder in a strong soldier’s grip.<br />
<br />
“He says you must do what you can,” she told him softly, and even her intonation resembled Marius’s own. “He says he regrets that things have ended this way, and he also regrets that the others, Atryssa and Nero, were not with us, but he does not regret following you from his city, and he does not regret dying in this company.”<br />
<br />
Stenwold wiped a hand across his eyes and felt the first shaking of his shoulders. “Tell him . . .” he managed, but then the woman’s hand twitched on his shoulder, just once, just for a moment, and he knew that Marius was dead.<br />
<br />
He let out a long, racked breath.<br />
<br />
“We can tell nobody about this, because nobody will listen,” Tisamon said. “We tried to warn your people at Helleron that theWasps were coming, and what did they say? That nobody would invade Helleron. They claimed that the city was too useful. That Wasps needed to trade and deal in arms like everyone else. They look upon the Empire as just another Ant city-state.”<br />
<br />
“And if we told your people?” asked Stenwold bitterly.<br />
<br />
“Then they would simply not care. They have quarrels a thousand years old that they have yet to settle. They have no time for new ones.” And Stenwold heard, to his surprise, an equal bitterness in Tisamon’s voice. The Mantis was hinging his metal claw forward and back, rolling his fingers about the crosspiece to lay the blade flat against his arm, then bringing it out to jut forward from his knuckles. It was not a threat, but just the man seeking reassurance in his old rituals.<br />
<br />
“We saw their map,” Stenwold whispered. That one glimpse he had caught, of the Wasps’ great map, had been a harsh education. A map of lands he had never seen, extending down to lands he knew all too well, the Lowlands of his home, and all sketched out with lines of advance and supply. A map of a projected conquest that stopped only with the Wasps’ knowledge of their world.<br />
<br />
“Nobody will care,” Tisamon repeated, and there was a rare wisdom in his voice. “What is the Lowlands, anyway? A half dozen feuding city-states, some holdovers from the Days of Lore, when things were different, and perhaps a few men like yourself, trying to make sense of it all. The Wasps are a unity, we are a motley.” The gloom about him deepened, and Stenwold knew that his thoughts<br />
were turning inexorably toward Atryssa, toward the betrayal. Stenwold wished he could find some other way to explain her absence and their failure at the gates.<br />
<br />
“What will you do,” he asked the Ant-kinden woman, “if you cannot go home?”<br />
<br />
“I will not be the first Ant renegade to go mercenary. If you now take us to Helleron I will sell my sword there,” she said. “The market for us is good, and like to get better.”<br />
<br />
“The same for me,” Tisamon confirmed.<br />
<br />
“Tisamon—”<br />
<br />
“No.” There was more finality in the Mantis’s voice than Stenwold had ever heard from him. “No return to Collegium for me, Stenwold. No debate and diplomacy. No society. No kind words, ever again. I followed you down that path once, and see where I am now.”<br />
<br />
“But—”<br />
<br />
“I will stay at Helleron and I will oppose theWasps the only way I can.”With careful movements Tisamon replaced his greatbow in its case. “You yourself have other means, Sten. You must go back to your college and your clever, machine-fingered people, and have them make ready. Of all of us, you were always the real hope of the future.”<br />
<br />
Stenwold said nothing as, below them, the last of the straggling fields gave out, and a scrubby, dry landscape passed beneath them without so much as a whisper.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Two</strong><br />
<em>I cannot even claim that I did not have time to prepare.</em><br />
<br />
For they had not come, not then. He had fled to Collegium, returning home, and there had been no black-and-gold tide on his heels. The Empire of the Wasps had given him a stay of execution, it seemed. Instead of westward, their armies had struck elsewhere: undertaking a brutal war of conquest against their northern neighbours. Oh, there had been merchants and travellers, and even the occasional diplomat sent by the Black and Gold, but no armies. Nobody could say that Stenwold had not been allowed all the time he could use.<br />
<br />
<em>Have I squandered it, or was there no more I could do than this?</em> <br />
<br />
“You’re sure of this news?” he asked the messenger. She was a little Fly-kinden woman, barely more than three feet tall, standing in his comfortable study like a child.<br />
<br />
“I’m just the voice, Master Maker, but the information’s sure. They can’t be long behind me,” she told him.<br />
<br />
<em>I knew this would come.</em><br />
<br />
It would come masked. There would not be armies at first. The Wasps would come with smiles and open hands, promising peace and prosperity, but Stenwold’s spies had told him of the march of thousands, the sharpening of swords. All the prescience in the world did not take the edge off the fear he felt. The fall of the city of Myna was flooding through his mind again, and no matter how long ago<br />
that had been. He knew the Empire had not been sitting idle. It had been keeping its blade good and sharp these past seventeen years.<br />
<br />
Seventeen years? And what had Stenwold made of them, save to grow older and fatter, and to lose his hair? From artificer and idealist he had become politician and spymaster. He had his cells of agents established across the Lowlands, and he used them to wrestle with the Wasps’ own spies. He had tried to spread the word of invasion to a people who did not want to hear. He had settled back comfortably<br />
in his home city, made himself influential, taken on the mantle of a master at the Great College. Teaching an unorthodox history, to the annoyance of his peers, he had fought with words against the conservative nature of his people, who just wanted to be left to their commerce and their provincial squabbles. He had stood before the Assembly of Collegium and made speeches and arguments and pleas of warning until they had begun to stay away whenever his name was listed as speaker.<br />
<br />
“Go back to Scuto,” he now told the Fly woman. “I will be coming to him with my latest crop. Have him get everyone under arms and ready.”<br />
<br />
She nodded and ran to the open window, vaulting onto the sill. A moment later her Art had sprung shimmering wings from her back, little more than a blur in the air, and she was gone across the rooftops.<br />
<br />
Stenwold stood slowly, looking about him. <em>If they had come straight on my heels, all those years back, I would have been more ready for them.</em> He had since become the College Master indeed. The more time they had given him, the more he had assumed he would have, and now the Wasp Empire was coming to Collegium at last and he was not ready for it.<br />
<br />
<em>At least the latest crop is ready. Or half ready.</em> Stenwold grimaced at the thought. He had been recruiting agents from among the College students for years. Now the time had come for him to foot the bill. This time it would not just be strangers that he would be sending into the flames.<br />
<br />
Which reminded him. The wheels of Collegium did not stop turning just because an aging spymaster received a piece of bad news. He was needed at the duelling court, for his new blades were to be tested in the fire.<br />
<br />
<br />
They called her Che, or at least she made sure they called her that as far as possible, because being named Cheerwell was an appalling burden to carry through life. Cheerwell Maker was the catch-up girl: she was always running to get where everyone else could walk to. It was all such a contrast to Tynisa, who was her . . .what? The word “sister” should have served well, save that neither of them was the daughter of Stenwold Maker, though he treated them both as such. Che was his niece, which was simple enough, while Tynisa was his ward, which was more complicated.<br />
<br />
Che was always early for appointments. She had been waiting now for a half hour at the door of the Prowess Forum, dressed up as a duellist without a fight. Here, at last, came Tynisa and Salma, and so at least she would not have to go in alone and feel even more foolish waiting friendless before an audience. <br />
<br />
Looking at Tynisa she thought, as she always thought, <em>Such a difference between us!</em> Genuine sisters surely never had to suffer so. Che, like most Beetle-kinden, was short, somewhat plump and rounded, solid and enduring. She had tried her best with fashion, but it wanted little to do with her. Her hair was currently cut short and dyed pale—which was how people liked it last year—but this year the fashion,<br />
inexplicably, was for longer hair. How was she supposed to keep up?<br />
<br />
Tynisa, of course, had long hair. She was fashionable whatever she wore, and would look more fashionable still, Che was sure, if she wore nothing at all. She was tall and slender and her enviable hair was golden, and most of all she was not squat, ungainly Beetle-kinden at all. How in the world Stenwold had come by a Spider-kinden ward, or what strange dalliance had produced her, had always been a matter of speculation. Nobody held it against her, however. Everyone loved Tynisa.<br />
<br />
“All ready?” She grinned at Che as she came to the Prowess Forum. <br />
<br />
Che nodded morosely.<br />
<br />
“Are we quite sure about that name?” asked Salma. As Che was dragged down by the name “Cheerwell,” in truth “Salma” was the exotic Salme Dien. He was beautiful, as nobody was more aware of than himself. Golden-skinned and midnight-haired, he was a foreign dignitary from a distant land who, it always seemed, had just deigned to favour them with his presence.<br />
<br />
“I like the name,” Che said. It had been her major contribution to their duelling team. “Everyone’s always ‘the sword of this’ or ‘the flashing that,’ for duelling teams. ‘The Majestic Felbling’ is <em>different.</em>”<br />
<br />
“If I had known what a felbling was,” Salma said, “I’d have had words.” Felblings were the flying furry animals that people across Collegium kept as pets. They were unknown to the Dragonfly-kinden of Salma’s homeland, however, and he did not consider them dignified.<br />
<br />
They passed on into the Prowess Forum, where a healthy crowd had already gathered, since Salma and Tynisa, at least, were always eminently watchable. Che started on seeing that the fourth of their number was already within. His name was Totho and he was as much of a catch-up as she was, she supposed. He was only here because she had been studying mechanics when they formed the group, and he had been the one helping her through the equations. He was a strong-framed, dark youth with a solid jaw and a closed, careful face that bore the stamp of mixed parentage.<br />
<br />
“I think they assumed we weren’t coming,” he said, glancing at the assembled watchers, as the others sat down beside him. <br />
<br />
“The Majestic—”<br />
<br />
The Master of Ceremonies, a greying, stocky man with a lined but otherwise deadpan face, rechecked his scroll, and decided to leave it at that.<br />
<br />
“I told you they wouldn’t go along with it,” said Tynisa. “They’re all about dignity, that lot.” She lounged back against the Prowess Forum wall, arms folded beneath her breasts, giving the Master one of her looks. He was an old, impassive Ant-kinden, though, and adroitly managed to ignore her.<br />
<br />
“Well . . .” Che Maker started defensively, but before she could elaborate, the Master of Ceremonies called out, “Who sponsors the Majestic?” and then her uncle Stenwold stepped forth to meet with him.<br />
<br />
He was a big man, Uncle Stenwold. He was broad across the waist, and his belt wrestled daily with his growing paunch in a losing battle. He moved with a fat man’s heavy steps. This hid from many people that his sloping shoulders were broad, purposeful muscle moving there and not just the aimless swing of his belly. He was an active sponsor of the duelling houses now, but he had been a fighter himself years<br />
before. Che knew in her heart that he could be so again, if he ever wanted. So much of his manner toward the world was calculated to put it off its guard. <br />
<br />
He shook the hand of the Master of Ceremonies, while looking back toward them.<br />
<br />
“Kymon,” Stenwold acknowledged. The Ant-kinden raised his hand to his mouth, a soundless cough that perhaps hid a small smile.<br />
<br />
“My apologies. Master Gownsman and Armsman Kymon of Kes,” Stenwold continued formally, and the Ant granted him a fraction of a bow.<br />
<br />
“Master Gownsman Stenwold Maker,” he replied. “The Collegium Society of Martial Prowess recognizes your sponsored house and invites you to name your charges.” He flicked a finger at a Beetle-kinden scribe who had been staring, awestruck, at Tynisa, and the young man started guiltily and poised his pen.<br />
<br />
“I give the Prowess the Prince Salme Dien of the Dragonfly Commonweal and Tynisa, a ward of my household. I give you Cheerwell Maker, niece of my family, and also Totho, apprentice artificer,” Stenwold announced, slowly enough for the scribe to copy down. The two score or so of idling spectators gave his foursome the once over, skipping over Che and Totho, giving their full attention to the elegantly lounging Tynisa, and Salma’s foreign good looks. Stenwold stepped back as the Master of Ceremonies read from his scroll again.<br />
<br />
“The Golden Shell?” he stated. “Who sponsors the Golden Shell?”<br />
<br />
Stenwold watched as another Beetle came forth. This was a good example of the way the affluent classes of Collegium were heading, he reflected sadly: a squat man with a receding hairline who was clad in robes of blue, red and gold woven from imported spider silk. There were rings cluttering his hands and a jewelled silver gorget beneath the third of his chins, to let the world know that here was a<br />
man interested in things martial. Each item of clothing and jewelry was conspicuously expensive, yet the overall picture was one of vulgarity.<br />
<br />
<em>I should use a mirror more often</em>, Stenwold thought wryly. He might himself own only to the white robes of a College Master, but his waist was approaching the dimensions of this merchant lord’s, and the tide of his hair had receded so far that he shaved his head regularly now to hide its loss.<br />
<br />
“Master Gownsman and Armsman Kymon of Kes,” said the newcomer with a flourish.<br />
<br />
“Master Townsman Inigo Paldron,” Kymon acknowledged. Master Paldron pursed his lips and made an urgent little noise. Kymon sighed.<br />
<br />
“Master Townsman <em>Magnate</em> Inigo Paldron,” he corrected. “Forgive me. The new titling is but a tenday old.”<br />
<br />
“I do think that, when the Assembly of the Learned spends more time debating modes of address than civic planning, something has gone seriously wrong with the world,” Stenwold grumbled, not quite joking. “Just plain ‘Master’ was always good enough for me.”<br />
<br />
Master Townsman Magnate Paldron’s expression showed that, in titles as in other ornament, he was unlikely ever to have more than he was happy with.<br />
<br />
“The Collegium Society of Martial Prowess recognizes your sponsored house and invites you to name your charges,” Kymon told him.<br />
<br />
“Well, then,” said Paldron with a broad smile. “Fellow Masters, I give you Seladoris of Everis,” his broad hand singled out a slender Spider-kinden man, who stood slowly. “Falger Paldron, my nephew.” A Beetle lad who seemed a year younger even than Che. “Adax of Tark.” Adax remained seated. His narrowed eyes were boring into Totho across the width of the Prowess Forum. “And . . .” Paldron’s<br />
contented smile grew broader still, “I present you with the esteemed Piraeus of Etheryon.”<br />
<br />
<em>Piraeus!</em> The last name tore through the spectators like a gale through leaves. Not a name they would have expected at some little apprentices’ house friendly. As if on cue he entered, pausing in the doorway nearest to his teammates, a straight, slender stiletto of a man. He had been the duelling champion of the previous year with never a bout lost. So few of the Mantis-kinden ever joined Collegium’s homely little duelling society—it was a frivolous thing to them; they were above it—and Piraeus was the exception.<br />
<br />
“How much did you put out to catch him?” Stenwold asked Paldron softly. The magnate smiled beatifically at him.<br />
<br />
“The poor lad misses his College friends, no doubt,” he said dismissively. It was, Stenwold reflected, just another problem with the great and good of Collegium today. Give them a famine, a war, a poverty-stricken district or a child shorn of parents and they would debate the symbolism and the philosophy of intervention. Give them some competition or empty trophy and they would break every<br />
rule to parade their victories publicly through the town.<br />
<br />
“But fighting alongside Seladoris?” Stenwold said. “<em>Alongside</em> Spider-kinden?” <br />
<br />
Paldron glanced back at his team. There was indeed a pointed distance between Piraeus and the Spider youth, and neither acknowledged the other. Theirs was a race hatred with roots lost in the mists of time. It was remarkable that mere money had now built over it.<br />
<br />
“Not such a problem,” Paldron told him. “Who knows, he might even end up contesting against <br />
your . . .<em>ward</em>.” He said the word with a sneer barely disguised within the walls of polite conversation. Stenwold bore it stolidly, for it was hardly the first time. He glanced back at his team to see how they were taking the news. To his relief, rather than seeing them dispirited or alarmed, they were gathered in<br />
a close huddle, talking tactics.<br />
<br />
“I could take him,” Tynisa was murmuring. “You know how good I am.”<br />
<br />
“We do,” Che acknowledged. “And you’re not <em>that</em> good. We saw him fight last year. I’ve never seen anything like it.”<br />
<br />
“There’s more to fighting than jabbing a sword about, little Che,” Tynisa said, casting another glance at the opposition. She had been pointedly staring on and off at Seladoris, and he was already looking ill at ease. In the cities of the Spider-kinden it was the women who pulled the strings and made the laws, and also the women who held the deadliest name in private duel, and he knew it. “Let me have a chance to work on Master Mantis over there, and I’ll have him,” she added.<br />
<br />
“I don’t think so,” Che said stubbornly. “Look at him. Look how he looks at you.”<br />
<br />
Tynisa had indeed gained Piraeus’s attention, but he did not look at her in the way the spectators did. Instead there was a cold, bleak hatred there, dispassionate and ageless.<br />
<br />
“So who do we put up against him, if not me?” Tynisa asked. <br />
<br />
“He’s really <em>that</em> good?” Salma had not been in Collegium last year.<br />
<br />
“Better,” confirmed Totho, the apprentice, gloomily. “He can beat any of us.”<br />
<br />
“Che should fight him,” Salma decided.<br />
<br />
“What?”<br />
<br />
“With the best will in the world, Che, you’re our . . . you’re not our best fighter.” Salma shrugged, but without real apology. “There it is. It means we can win by the numbers.”<br />
<br />
“He’ll go easy on you, probably,” Tynisa told her.<br />
<br />
“He won’t,” Totho said darkly.<br />
<br />
“Look, this is all assuming that we even get to choose,” said Che hurriedly. “Quiet now,” hissed Tynisa. “Look, they’re calling it.”<br />
<br />
Kymon held out a fist from which projected the corners of two kerchiefs. Stenwold indicated that Master Paldron should choose first. The magnate squinted at the Master of Ceremonies’ hand suspiciously, and then tugged at one corner. The kerchief that he drew out had one red-stained end.<br />
<br />
“Now that’s a shame,” said Salma, as the townsman waved the rag triumphantly at his team.<br />
<br />
“Golden Shell, the first match is your choosing,” Kymon announced.<br />
<br />
There was dissent in the ranks. Piraeus was arguing with his teammates as to precisely who should have the honour of fighting him. From his jabbing finger it was clear that Tynisa would be his choice and, despite her earlier boasts, the Spider girl compressed her lips together nervously. The casting vote seemed to be with Falger, old Paldron’s nephew.When the Mantis-kinden stepped forward he looked<br />
sullen and dissatisfied, pointing at Salma.<br />
<br />
“Piraeus the Champion to fight the foreign prince,” announced Kymon, stepping forward. Stenwold and Paldron hurriedly found seats out of harm’s way as the Master of Ceremonies strode to the very centre of the Prowess Forum. A circle of bare, sandy earth was there, raked level after every bout, contained within a square of mosaic whose corners boasted martial scenes picked out in intricate detail. No tile was greater than a quarter inch across and yet the vignette of a breach in an Ant city wall was as vibrant and clear as the two Beetle-kinden duellists that opposed it, forever saluting, across the circle. Beyond the mosaic, by a prudent distance, were the three tiers of stone seats, and beyond them the walls that, by ancient tradition, each had an open door. The roof above was composed of translucent cloth and wooden struts, as was the way with most of the public buildings in Collegium these days. <br />
<br />
“No worries,” Salma said with an easy smile.<br />
<br />
“Do you even have real Mantids where you come from?” Tynisa asked him. She seemed more worried for Salma than she had been on her own account. “The man is good.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, we have them,” Salma confirmed, sending his opponent a grin. “We have more of them than you’ll ever see around here. Up to our elbows in them, back in the Commonweal.”<br />
<br />
Piraeus and Salma stepped forward until they were just beyond the circle. There was an excited whispering amongst the small audience, the knowledge that this would be a spectacle to earn drinks with in the tavernas afterward. Stenwold was struck with the similarity of the two. Dressed as they were, in padded arming jackets and breeches tied at the knee, in sandals and one heavy offhand glove, they looked as if they could almost have been relatives. Piraeus was taller, of the angular Mantis build. His long fair hair was tied back, but what should have been a handsome face was marred with ill temper and harsh feelings. His arming jacket was slit to the elbow to accommodate the spines jutting from his arms. Salma was dark, his hair cut short and his skin golden, and he had been the ache in plenty of maidens’ hearts since he arrived in Collegium from his distant homeland. He possessed<br />
a grace, though, that was not far short of the Mantis’s. The two of them stood quietly and sized each other up, one with a scowl and one with a smile, and there was nevertheless a commonality about them.<br />
<br />
Kymon took a deep breath and held out the two swords: each of them mere wood covered with a thin layer of bronze, but there was nobody in that room who had not discovered just how hard they could strike home.<br />
<br />
Kymon looked from one to the other. Stenwold knew that the old man was still a military officer of the city-state of Kes, which could call him back from his prestigious civilian position at any moment. It had been twenty years from home for old Kymon, however. Here he stood, in a Beetle’s white robes rather than armour, and he no longer missed the voices of his Ant-kinden people in his head.<br />
<br />
“Salute the book,” Kymon directed. Piraeus and Salma turned to the north quarter of the room and raised their mock blades. The object of their salute was affixed to the wall: a great brass blade within the pages of a book carved from pale wood. On the open pages, one word to each, were scribed <em>Devotion and Excellence</em>.<br />
<br />
“Clock,” said Kymon, and the mechanical timepiece hanging opposite the book groaned into life. The antagonists turned to one another as Kymon left the ring. The moment his back foot lifted from the arena they were in motion.<br />
<br />
The first blow took place in the first moment of the match. Piraeus’s strike had come with blinding speed, aiming to break the nose of the foreigner, at the very least. Salma swayed backward without shifting his feet, and the champion’s lash, at full extension, passed a few inches from his face. He had, indeed, seen Mantiskinden fight before.<br />
<br />
Then the fight proper was on and, to the thrill of the spectators, Salma was immediately on the offensive. He was fighting in proper Prowess style, leading with the edge of the blade, feet tracing a geometry of arcs and sudden straight advances. His free hand was up at chest height, leather gauntlet ready to deflect the Mantis’s strikes. There was nothing that was not book-perfect, from the prints in the fencing manuals, until every so often he threw in something else. A lunge, a sweep, a brief discontinuity of footwork, that was his alone, some style of his own people. Though he knew how Mantids fought, Piraeus had never duelled a Dragonfly-kinden before. There was an edge there that let him keep up the offensive long after Piraeus should have wrested it from him, but the edge was eroding from moment to moment. Soon the Mantis would get the measure of him.<br />
<br />
And, without warning, without anything in his stance or movement signalling it, Salma was far too close, virtually up the other man’s nose, within the circle of his arms, and—they all saw it—there was a moment when Piraeus had his arm up, spines extended, about to gash across the foreigner’s face. It would have maimed Salma, perhaps blinded him, but it would have seen Piraeus thrown out of the fight, his team disqualified, and of all things he wanted to win. In that moment of hesitation Salma brought his blade up to lightly tap the back of the Mantis’s head.<br />
<br />
They broke. Salma was at the edge of the circle, casting a bow to his teammates. Piraeus stood, utterly still, with that anger peculiar to his kind that burned cold and forever. Salma and his teammates would, everyone knew, regret what he had just done, and it might be now, or next tenday, or next year, but they would meet Piraeus again. Mantids were all about vengeance.<br />
<br />
“First strike to the foreign prince,” Kymon declared impassively. “Salute the book. Second pass. Clock!”<br />
<br />
Things went downhill from there, of course. Piraeus was not one to let anger get in the way of skill and he had Salma’s style now. Salma danced and ducked and swayed, but he never recaptured the offensive, nor could he hold his adversary off until the clock had wound down. The second blow of the match was a slap to his shoulder that he rolled with, barely felt, but it was a touch nonetheless. The third came when he blocked with his glove, and the Mantis dragged the rebound into a cut that bounced off his elbow and numbed his entire arm. Traditionally Mantiskinden loved to fight, and loved a good fight too. They were supposed to respect a noble adversary, given all the old honour stories that they told. There was none of that in Piraeus, however. His look, as Salma clutched at his elbow, was one of sheer arrogance and disdain. None of it could disguise the truth. He might have won, but Piraeus winning a duelling pass was no news in Collegium. Instead, the taverna crowd would be telling each other how Salma had struck the Mantis <em>first</em>, and how the foreign lord had made the champion, for once, work for his fee. <br />
<br />
Salma walked back to his comrades, still smiling despite the pain. “I’ve done better, I’ve done worse,” he admitted. “So, you could have taken him?” he added for Tynisa’s benefit.<br />
<br />
For a second she grimaced, but then said, “It’s not my fault he was scared of me.”<br />
<br />
“Speaking of which,” Totho said. “They’re waiting for us.”<br />
<br />
“Can you take Seladoris?” she asked him. “Or Adax?”<br />
<br />
“Adax will choose me,” Totho said glumly, “if he gets the chance. Frankly, I’d rather face him than the Spider. I’ve not got the speed for that.”<br />
<br />
“Settled then,” Tynisa said, even as Che tried to get a word in. The Spider girl walked out to the edge of the circle and picked out her kinsman from the opposite team.<br />
<br />
“Tynisa the Maker’sWard will now fight Seladoris of Everis,” Kymon dutifully announced, passing them the two swords. “Salute the book.”<br />
<br />
It was a short fight, half the length of the last bout. Since Seladoris had walked in, Tynisa had been working on him, fixing him with her stare, prying at his mind with her Art. All the while Piraeus and Salma had danced, Seladoris had never been free of her. Now, as he stepped forward, even Che could sense that she had unnerved him. It was not just Spider sexual politics—Spider-kinden made good<br />
duellists because they were so adept at reading others—but Tynisa was naturally quick, having quite a reputation amongst the little duelling houses. Seladoris was no novice himself and his technique was just as good as hers. What he lacked was her skill in disseminating a reputation. When he stepped into the ring he knew from her history that she was good and from her stare that she was better than he was. She had won even before their swords ever crossed.<br />
<br />
Within two minutes she had scored two straight hits, the second of which jabbed his knee and toppled him out of the circle. Smiling a hard little smile, Tynisa bowed elaborately at Piraeus. <em>Look what you could have had,</em> she seemed to be saying. The spectators were vocal about her too. She was a favourite with the crowd.<br />
<br />
Totho was already standing up as she returned, not even waiting for the Golden Shell’s second choice. There was a heavy, set expression on his face, which was a serious one at the best of times. Across the ring, the Ant-kinden was standing. It was said, with good reason, that the people of the Ant loved nothing more than fighting their own kind, their brothers from behind different city walls. In truth, there was one thing they took even more joy in, and that was punishing half-breeds. Totho attended at the Great College on an orphan scholarship and there was Ant-kinden and Beetle-kinden blended in his ancestry. Even on Collegium’s cosmopolitan streets, a half-breed had a hard life. In the harsher world<br />
outside it meant exile, slavery or, in the last resort, law breaking.<br />
<br />
“Adax of Tark to fight Totho,” Kymon noted, and even in his clipped pronunciation of the name there was censure.<br />
<br />
“Here we go,” said Totho tiredly. “Time for me to take a beating.” <br />
<br />
Che touched his arm as he made to leave. “You’ll be all right.” <br />
<br />
He managed half a smile for her. Only when he had gone to enter the circle did Salma say, “He’s going to get a beating, no two ways.”<br />
<br />
“Oh surely,” agreed Tynisa.<br />
<br />
“Can’t you two have a little faith?” Che asked them.<br />
<br />
Salma spread the fingers of his good hand in a lazy gesture. “Dear one, I’m fond of the little halfway and I’m sure he does his . . .” Another vague gesture.<br />
<br />
“His tinkering like a master, but he’s not so good at this.”<br />
<br />
Totho squared up against Adax of Tark. His Ant-kinden opponent was taller and as broad across the shoulders but leaner of build. He looked like a proper warrior as all Ants did. Every one of them was used to carrying a short sword in their hands since the age of five, and they grew up inspired by all the martial minds around them.<br />
<br />
<em>Which means I can outthink him</em>, Totho decided. He gave Stenwold a little nod as Kymon handed out the swords, for Totho was very keen to have Stenwold, of all people, see him in a favourable light, perhaps look past the accident of his birth. <br />
<br />
“Salute the book,” Kymon intoned, stepping back, and then, “Clock!”<br />
<br />
Adax attacked, before Totho was quite ready, cracking him a swift blow on the shoulder. If he had reacted a moment later it would have been his head. Totho heard Kymon sigh.<br />
<br />
“First strike to Adax of Tark,” announced the Master of Ceremonies. “Clock!”<br />
<br />
Totho got out of the Ant-kinden’s reach quickly, because he knew his opponent would try the exact same move again, as indeed he did. There was no gap for a riposte in there, as Adax pressed and pressed at Totho’s guard, but Totho was not looking for an opening. Totho could do little more than defend himself, keeping up a steady, curving retreat about the perimeter of the circle, with Adax following him step for step.<br />
<br />
<em>Outthink him</em>, thought the half-breed grimly, but there was precious little room for any planning. Adax was intent on keeping up a constant, efficient battering: only half a dozen different moves, but fast and always remorselessly on target. The Ant’s face was set in an expression of dislike that had probably soured in place there as soon as the fight started. Totho realized that the next blow that landed on him would be delivered with all of the man’s considerable strength. Still he managed to keep the Ant-kinden off him, by a hair’s breadth. Always he was a step too far back, or his sword cut a parry with a only second to spare, and always the clock was grinding down, the ticks slower and slower, and Adax was a hit up, and not looking ready to give any points away.<br />
<br />
To pull the match back Totho knew that he would have to do something spectacular at this point, and knew equally that he had nothing spectacular to give. Yet he was holding, holding. His parries were sloppy, but solid. His footwork was better, and Adax was getting frustrated.<br />
<br />
Totho put an expression of unconcern on his face and kept up his guard. He had one thing that Adax did not, for whatever unknown parent had given him Beetle blood had passed on that breed’s stamina. Adax had been battering at him full tilt for over a minute and there was now a sheen of sweat blooming on the man’s forehead.<br />
<br />
<em>If only these matches went on longer. I could parry him to death.</em> Totho grinned suddenly at the thought, and his opponent’s calm collapsed.<br />
<br />
“Fight me, slave!” Adax snapped angrily, his sword stilled for a moment, and Totho, without really planning to, hit him across the face for all he was worth, spilling the arrogant Ant-kinden to the ground.<br />
<br />
He almost dropped his sword in surprise, because there was a great deal of blood and he thought for a moment he had maimed the other man for life. When Adax did look up from a wounded crouch, his nose was evidently broken, and Totho wondered about the state of his cheekbone, too. <em>I hit him bloody hard, I did. </em><br />
<br />
“Time!” Kymon called. The ever-slowing ticks of the clock had finally finished with the legendary solid “clunk” that every duellist knew. The match was over. <br />
<br />
“No!” Adax spat, voice sounding somewhat muffled.<br />
<br />
“Time!” Kymon repeated. “One strike apiece, so a draw, I’m sorry to say. And, for most of it, the dullest pass of fencing I have seen for many years.”<br />
<br />
Totho couldn’t help but grin, though. He didn’t care much that Kymon didn’t approve of him. He only cared that he had not actually lost. He looked over at his comrades for their reaction.<br />
<br />
“Watch out!” Tynisa shouted in warning, and then something barged into him, knocking him out of the circle to stumble across the mosaic floor. He ended up amongst the spectators, almost in the lap of a middle-aged Beetle woman, craning frantically to see what had happened. Adax now lay sprawled right across the circle, one hand to his shin and the other to the back of his head. Kymon stood over him impassively, a mock sword in his hand.<br />
<br />
Adax had tried to rush him once off his guard, Totho realized. Strictly against the rules, such behaviour, and had the victim been anyone but a lowly half-breed, perhaps it would have even led to the whole team being disqualified. Inigo Paldron was already bustling up to make his unctuous apologies, however, and Totho knew it would not go any further. Kymon shot him a look, though, as he went to rejoin his colleagues, and it had a certain recognition in it. Adax was from the city of Tark, Totho reflected, and Kymon himself from the island city of Kes, and so perhaps the old man had not minded seeing a traditional enemy brought low. <br />
<br />
“Not bad for a trainee pot-mender,” Salma conceded as he joined them. “You had a plan, I take it?”<br />
<br />
“Something like that.” Totho nodded to Tynisa. “Thanks for the warning.”<br />
<br />
She raised an eyebrow, shrugged slightly. He was not sure whether it was saying, I won’t be there next time, or <em>You’re one of us now.</em> Tynisa always made him feel especially awkward and ugly, and he had long ago decided to avoid her attention as much as possible.<br />
<br />
He sat down beside Che. “Any good?”<br />
<br />
She glanced at him distractedly. “What?”<br />
<br />
“Was I . . . all right?” He realized that she had not really been concentrating on his round. She was, of course, thinking all the time about her own fencing pass. Even now, Paldron’s nephew was taking his place across the circle.<br />
<br />
“He’s, what, a year younger than you?” Totho said encouragingly.<br />
<br />
“And no great shakes,” Salma added. “He’s yours, so just go and take him.”<br />
<br />
“He’s only in the team because of his uncle,” declared Totho before he could stop himself, and then he grimaced at the look of hurt that Che tried desperately to hide.<br />
<br />
<em>Because of his uncle</em>, she was thinking. <em>Well, that’s a broad net these days.</em> She glanced at her own uncle, in whose household she had been living for ten years. More than an uncle but less than a father, and she had certainly never been in a position to monopolize his affections. He could be hard work, Stenwold Maker: he expected so many things of his niece, and never quite acknowledged when she<br />
tried. Whether at scholarship, artificing or, of course, the fight . . . and here she was, now . . .<br />
<br />
<em>Just a game. A sport.</em> True, the city was mad on sports just now, with the Games commencing in a mere tenday’s time, but this duelling was still only an idle pastime for College students. It didn’t matter whether she won or lost here. The taking part was the thing.<br />
<br />
Except, of course, it was all on her shoulders now. If only Totho had lost his bout, then the best the Majestic Felbling could have managed was a draw. After drawing, the chosen champions of each team would then fight to decide it, and Piraeus would no doubt emerge victorious, and so, if she lost, it wouldn’t matter. But now, after Totho’s maddening stalemate, victory was apparently hers for the<br />
taking.<br />
<br />
She took up her place opposite Falger Paldron. He was a little taller than she was, a dark-faced young Beetle lad, still slightly awkward in his movements. He was no fighter, she decided.<br />
<br />
<em>But nor am I</em>. She was a girl with her hair cut short and her physique cut broad. No Mantis-grace for her, no Ant-precision or Spider-tricks. She was just poor, lamentably named Cheerwell Maker, and she was no good at sports or swords or anything else.<br />
<br />
“Salute the book!” Kymon barked out, and she realized that she already had a sword in her hand. Behind her, the others were clearly watching her every move.<br />
<br />
<strong>Three</strong><br />
<br />
They muttered and moaned as he took the rostrum. These middle-aged merchants, the old College masters, men and women robed in white, reclining comfortably on the stepped stone seats of the Amphiophos. Some of them whispered to each other, scribbled agreements and concluded deals. One Master, stone deaf, read through the writing of his students and tsked loudly at each error he noted. Stenwold gazed upon them and despaired. <br />
<br />
<em>The heart of culture,</em> he told himself. <em>The wonder of the civilized world. The democratic Assembly of Collegium. Give me a thousand Ant mercenaries, let me command where now I can only beg. </em>Then<em> we might get something done!</em><br />
<br />
<em>Then I would be just like a Wasp indeed, in all but fact. That is why this is worth </em><em>fighting for.</em> He looked across their bored, distracted faces, writ large with their wealth and rivalries and vested interests.<br />
<br />
“You know why I am standing here speaking before you, on today of all days.”<br />
<br />
There was a jeering undercurrent of murmurs, but no outright mockery. <em>Just get on with it,</em> they seemed to say.<br />
<br />
“I’ve stood here before,” Stenwold told them. “You all know that. I have stood here often enough that all of you must have heard me at least once. I am no great musician. My tune remains the same.”<br />
<br />
“Can we not simply refer to your previous speech and save ourselves an afternoon?” someone called, to a ripple of laughter.<br />
<br />
“If I thought,” snapped Stenwold, loud enough to quash them, “that one of you, even <em>one</em> of you, would do so, or had ever done so, then perhaps we would not be here, inflicting this ordeal upon each other!” They stared at him in surprise. He was being <em>rude</em>, and members of the Assembly did not shout at each other. He bared his teeth in frustration, wished for those Ant mercenaries again, and then pressed on.<br />
<br />
“I do not think,” he said, “that you’re likely to endure many more of my speeches, Masters. I do not foresee a future where any of us will have liberty for such polite debate. I swear on my life that, when what I have foreseen comes to pass, I shall not stand here before you then and tell you I was right. I shall not need to, for there will be none of you who won’t remember how I warned you.”<br />
<br />
The resentful muttering was building again, but he spoke over it, muscling through it like the ram had broken the gates atMyna. “Fourteen years ago,” he called out, “I made my first speech here before you, not even a Master then, but just a precocious artificer who would not be silent. How long ago it seems now! I told you of a people in the east, a martial people, who were prosecuting war upon their neighbours. I told you of cities whose names were known to some of you, those of you who do business in Helleron perhaps. Cities such as Maynes, Szar, Myna. Not Lowlander cities, true, but not so very many miles beyond. Cities under the yoke of an empire, I said, and you listened politely, and said, ‘But what is this to do with us?’ Foreigners will fight, you said, and so the men and women of Maynes and Myna and Szar went with backs bowed, into slavery and conscription, and you shed not a tear.”<br />
<br />
They sighed and fidgeted. The Speaker for the assembly, old Lineo Thadspar, made a “hurry-up” gesture. He had allowed Stenwold this speech for old time’s sake, and looked as though he now regretted it.<br />
<br />
“Eight years ago I told you that the Empire was engaging in a new war, a war on a scale unprecedented; that the Empire was making war upon our northern neighbour, the great Commonweal of the Dragonflies. You heard from me how the armies of the Wasps had killed in their hundreds and their thousands, and no doubt you remember the answer that the Assembly thought fit to give me then.” <br />
<br />
He gave them a chance, noticed defiance in some, disinterest in others. He remembered it keenly, that answer, though he barely recalled which of the fat, dismissive magnates had uttered it. In his mind the words echoed, still sharp enough to wound him.<br />
<br />
<em>“Master Maker comes before us again to prate about the Wasps,”</em> they had said.<em> “He tells us they are fighting again, but that is their business. When the Ants of Kes land a force ashore and march on the walls of Tark, Collegium does not raise a voice. Why should we? Some kinden are warlike and therefore fight each other.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“Master Maker tells us that we should beware them because they are an empire, and no mere city-state, and so seeks to fright us with semantics. If the Mantids of Felyal decided to call themselves an empire, would we suddenly be tasked to descend upon them with sword and crossbow? I think not, for all the occasional provocation they give us.”</em><br />
<br />
There had been a murmur of laughter at that. Stenwold remembered it keenly.<br />
<br />
“<em>And Master Maker also tells us they are fighting the Commonweal</em>,” the magnate had continued, all those years ago. “<em>And I say to that, so what and so let them!</em>” (They had cheered, back then, at this.) <em>“What do we know of the Empire, beyond Master Maker’s ravings? We know that they are Apt and industrious, like us. We know that they have built a strongly governed state of many kinden, with none of the internal strife that beggars relations within the Lowlands. Are we, who claim to prize civilization, meant to despise them for theirs? We know that their merchants receive our goods avidly. Those of us </em><em>with interests in Helleron and Tark know they will buy dear and sell cheap, when they know no better.”</em> (Laughter) “<em>And what do we know of the Commonweal? We know that they do not receive our emissaries, that they forbid any airship over their borders, that they have neither artificers nor engineers nor anything but a moribund and backward society of tilling peasants. We know that they will not even deal with our merchants, not at any price, that they would rather see grain rot in their fields than sell. All this we know, and can we really know the cause of the quarrel between these so-different people? What have the people of the Commonweal done to lay claim to our love, that we should turn on those that seem like our close brothers in contrast?”</em><br />
<br />
Looking now at these same faces, these same expressions of petulance, indifference, hearing those words echo in his mind, he thought, I am wasting my time here. It was pure spite that then made him go on, so that he could say, despite his promise, <em>I told you so</em>.<br />
<br />
“Masters,” said Stenwold, and they hushed, for something in his voice must have touched them, some hitherto unmined vein of sincerity in his tone. “Masters,” he said, “listen to me now. I have come before you and I have spoken to you before, and always you have let my words fall at your feet. Hear me now: theWasp Empire’s long war with the Commonweal is done. They have swum in the blood of the Commonweal until even the vast Commonweal could bear it no longer. They have forced the<br />
signing of a surrender that places three principalities into imperial hands, an area of the Commonweal that would span a whole quarter of the Lowlands, were it placed here. Has the Empire put down the sword and taken up the plough? Has the Empire turned to books and learning, or the betterment of its poor and its slaves?” <br />
He stared at them, waited and waited, until someone said, “I’m sure you’re going to tell us, Master Maker.”<br />
<br />
<em>“No!”</em> he shouted at them. “No, you tell me! You with your mercantile interests in Helleron, you tell me how many swords you have forged for the Empire! Tell me of the crossbow bolts, the firepowder, the automotive components, the engine parts, the flier designs, the tanks of fuel and the casks of airship gas that you have sold to them at your costly prices! Tell me of the men you have met with<br />
and talked money, and never asked why they might need such vast stocks of arms! For, I tell you, the Empire is not an Ant city-state where the citizens can all take up arms and fight if they must, be they soldier or farmer or artisan. The Empire is a great nation where every man is a warrior and nothing else. The work, the labour, the harvests and the craft, they leave for their slaves. There is not a man of the Empire who is not also a man of their army, and what can they do with such an immense force save to use it? Open your eyes, you merchants and you academics, and tell me where next such a force might march, if not here?” <br />
“I think,” said the Speaker, old Thadspar, “that I shall stop you at that question, Master Maker. You must, if you will riddle us so, give us a chance to respond. Well, Masters, it is a weighty gauntlet that Master Maker has cast down before us.”<br />
<br />
“Yet again,” said some anonymous wit, but Thadspar held up a sharp hand.<br />
<br />
“Masters! Respect, please.Will someone take this gauntlet up?” He drew back as one of the Assemblers stood and approached the rostrum.<br />
<br />
“Master Maker makes a fine spectacle, does he not?” The man who took the stand was named Helmess Broiler, but it might equally have been any of them. He said no more until Stenwold had resumed his seat, smiling with infinite patience at the maverick historian. “And I do wonder what we would do without him. These gatherings would lack their greatest source of wild imagination.” Polite<br />
laughter, which Broiler acknowledged and then went on.<br />
<br />
“Yes, yes, the Empire. We all know about the Empire, if only because of Master Maker’s two-decade hysteria about that realm. They are certainly a vital pack of barbarians, it’s true. I believe they’ve made great inroads toward becoming a civilized nation recently. They have a government, and taxes, and even their own currency, although I understand their merchants prefer to deal in our coin.” More<br />
laughter, especially from the trade magnates. Broiler was grinning openly.<br />
<br />
“Apparently they’ve had some trouble with their neighbours,” he said. “But haven’t we all? I remember well when the armies of Vek were at our gates, as do most of you. How many of you wanted to take a force of soldiers back to their city and teach them their place? I know I wasn’t the only one, and perhaps we should have done it. The Empire did it. Faced with militant neighbours that threatened<br />
their emerging culture, they secured their own existence with force. Can we blame them? They would be in no position to send their ambassadors to us now if they had let their neighbours run roughshod over their borders before.” Broiler shook his head sadly. “And the Commonweal, and their war—what do we truly <em>know</em> of those causes? We here do not have that great and silent state looming nearby to<br />
overshadow us, for geography intervenes. If the Commonweal, with all its vast resources, should take exception to us, what would we do? And their habitual sullen attitude gives us no clue that they hold us in anything but disdain. If the Wasps have clawed a victory and peace terms from such a mighty state, then surely we must congratulate them, and not castigate them. I have no doubt that if they wished to drive the Commonweal back, it was because such a brooding state on the Empire’s very borders was cause for great concern.”<br />
<br />
He put on an exasperated expression. “And so,” he said, “Master Maker insists that they are coming for us.” He was serious now, daring them to laugh. “He tells us of the growth of their armies, the vast numbers of their soldiers, their strength of arms and their skill in battle. The fact that they have had to preserve their young state from so many hostile influences does not convince Master Maker that they<br />
might require these forces merely to defend themselves.” Broiler slammed his hands down on the lectern, looking angry.<br />
<br />
“And now they come for <em>us</em>, we are told!” he cried out. “The dreaded Wasps come for the Lowlands?Well, yes, yes, they do. Of course they do. They come with ambassadors. They come with trade, and an open hand. These last three years there has been a treaty standing between the Empire and the Council at Helleron, and everyone has profited by it. In only days their people will be here to formalize relations between their Empire and our great city, in just the same way. They recognize the central role we play in our turbulent Lowlands. They wish to know us better, to trade and prosper alongside us. Perhaps they will seek our guidance, like a young student come to learn from the old master.” His face, his hands, begged them to understand. “Have any of you read the Treaty of Iron? There are copies in<br />
our libraries, so I encourage you to read one. This document happily recognizes the autonomy and friendship of both Helleron and Collegium. It sets down in clear type how their military strength is to protect what they have, not to gather more than they could possibly need.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, they do,” Stenwold snapped, despite Thadspar’s frantic gestures at him. “And all the while they mass their armies and, on the strength of their empty signature on a scroll, we let them!”<br />
<br />
“Oh they have their soldiers and their armies, Master Maker,” Broiler retorted. “but there is only one possible reason they should turn them against us! It is because some fool here fires us up into a warlike fury against them! It is because we greet them with swords, and not friendship! Master Maker wishes to make his own prophecies come true by turning us against men who want only our recognition and support!”<br />
<br />
Stenwold stood abruptly, leaving Broiler with his mouth open, bereft of words. He approached the rostrum, and for a second the man shrank back as though Stenwold would strike him.<br />
<br />
“The Masters will excuse me,” Stenwold said. His tone was quiet, but there was no sound to compete with him. “I must leave you to your talk, but for some reason I feel suddenly ill.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Four</strong><br />
<br />
Salma was writing a letter. It was something he was out of practice with. This was not because the people of Collegium were not accustomed to writing letters. On the contrary, the literate middle classes were constantly penning each other missives, jokes, invitations and political pamphlets. Rather, the sheer fecund exuberance of it put him off. In the Commonweal of his birth one spent time in the writing, even in scribing the very characters themselves, but most especially in the thought that was behind it. Besides, for Salma, a letter home was no mere matter of sending a servant a few streets, or having someone take it to the engine depot or the airfield. It was going to cost a pretty price to get this where it was going.<br />
<br />
He looked down at what he had written.<br />
<br />
<em>Most Highly Respected Prince-Major Felipe Shah of the Principality of Roh at his court in Suon Ren.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>In the name of our most gracious Commonweal and the Monarch thereof, and by the love and affinity that I bear you by the Obligation of my Birth and the honour in which I hold your family.</em><br />
<em> Fortune prevailing I have found in this place of strangers one of a like mind and aims to my own, who sees with our same clarity in the dawn’s light where others may turn their heads against the glare, and so have taken him for a Mentor.</em><br />
<em> He is a man for enquiries, especially where the sun rises, and there are many who answer the questions he poses. I myself am to be set an examination of questions, and some others with me, that I have leagued with.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
Meaning that the wily old man knows what is brewing in the east, and perhaps he’s the only one in Collegium to fathom it. And meaning also that he wants me for an agent, and that suits me. And I thought, and they all thought, that when I took this place at their vaunted College, that I would be going to sit around in the muck with a pack of coarse-grained primitives. But if Master Maker can find it in his heart to give me a blade and point me at the Empire, then I’m all for it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<em>Look for me in dark places. You will recall the gloom that fell when our cousin Daless lost her way. There you may find me, in the dawn’s light.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
Salma remembered Felipe Daless. She had been what he had always wanted to be: a Mercer warrior elite, in her shell and steel armour. It had been four years now since the Principality of Prava fell. He had heard, from survivors, that she had made a good showing at the end.<br />
<br />
He reread his missive, noting with a frown that he had been using the metaphors of dawn and darkness for the same thing. For poetic logic perhaps someone should persuade the Wasps to invade from the west for once. Ah well, nothing that was worth writing was worth writing simply.<br />
<br />
<em>In exile, this token of my esteem I send to you.</em><br />
<em>Prince-Minor Salme Dien</em><br />
<br />
He finished the name with a flourish of his shard pen. He knew that the Beetle epistlers would have found this quaint, but he had no comprehension of their complex reservoir pens. A stylus of chitin was good enough for the Monarch of the Commonweal, and so it would be hubris in Salma himself to desire more.<br />
<br />
“I’m ready,” he said, and the diminutive figure by the door stepped forward. She had been waiting for almost an hour while he wrote, without fidget or complaint, and he had a lot of respect for that in a place as bustling and assertive as Collegium.<br />
<br />
“You are sure that you are capable of this?” he asked her. “Most everyone in this town seems to think my homeland belongs in a storybook.” <br />
The Fly-kinden stood about eye to eye with the seated Salma, a lithe young woman with blue-grey skin, and the circular badge of their Messenger Guild on her plain black tunic. “Actually, sir, there are Guildhouses in both Drame Jo and Shon Fhor, and I can find my way from there to Roh.”<br />
<br />
Salma folded the letter and sealed it with a disc of putty, using a thumbnail to press in a stylized little crest. It looked deceptively simple, but he knew any forger would go mad trying to imitate his precise style.<br />
<br />
“No reply is expected,” he told the Fly. “Odds are, anyway, I won’t be where you might look for me.”<br />
<br />
The Fly-kinden messenger took the sealed scroll from him and bowed minutely. A moment later she was at the window, and then gone: a flurry of briefly glimpsed wings and a small figure receding in the sky.<br />
<br />
Salma took a deep breath. The moment the letter had left his hands, he had cast himself off on a journey of no return. At least his would not be a lonely one; the thought quirked his lips into a smile. He determined that he would now indulge in one of his favourite pastimes, and go and annoy Tynisa.<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
~~~</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div>She knew from the boldness and the pattern to his knock that it was Salma, come to call on her because he was bored. Tynisa paused before her glass, debating whether to play dead or to call out to him. It was a shame, she thought, that he usually did seek her out from ennui. She kept a fair number of young men at any given time who would seek her out with gifts, with flowers or some trinket of jewelry, a good poem stolen or a bad one written. Salma sought her out merely because her company amused him, and that was not the same thing after all. <br />
<br />
But it was why he interested her so much, she realized. It was because he was proof against all her looks and smiles and subtle words. <em>And</em> he was a prince. There were tacticians’ sons aplenty in Collegium, and the heirs of industrialists, lords of commerce or of learning or strategy. None of them was a <em>prince</em>, though. The Lowlands did not possess any with that kind of cachet.<br />
<br />
She was wearing her favourite silks, that swept down from her throat and left her shoulders bare: clothes suitable for a lady’s private chamber. So many men would have given so much, she thought proudly, for the privilege of seeing her thus adorned, but Salma would just come in and throw himself straight on the couch, and not really care all that much about her looks.<br />
<br />
“Oh come in then, if you have to,” she said, trying to sound annoyed by the intrusion. She supposed that she should at least be glad that it was always her he sought to alleviate his routine, but the thought didn’t help that much. It was not that he did not have an eye for girls. He had his choice, almost, of the female students, and choose he did. Toward her, though, he was . . . different.<br />
<br />
He sauntered in, pausing in the doorway to pass his robe to Stenwold’s long-suffering servant. “Well now, a work of art half done,” he commented, leaning against the doorframe. “Don’t let me stop you. I’m always one for watching an artist at work.” <br />
<br />
She gave a wry smile and turned her face toward him, seeing just the barest start of surprise break his poise. <br />
<br />
“Careless,” he said. “How did that happen?”<br />
<br />
She touched the bruise which extended from cheekbone to chin on the left side of her face. “You’re the clever foreigner who knows all our ways inside out, Salma, so <em>you</em> tell me.”<br />
<br />
He rolled his eyes. “You didn’t.”<br />
<br />
“Didn’t I? Then how else did I get it, your royal principalness?” She turned back to the glass. It was a Spider-made artefact. All the best ones were. It was not that the Spiderlands craftsmen had superior skill, more that they knew what to look for. <em>Being so fond of their own image, as I am.</em><br />
<br />
“Piraeus.” Salma stepped into the room at last, casting himself down on the couch.<br />
<br />
“I told you what I wanted with him,” she confirmed. There was a whole alchemy of makeup spread out before her, Spider-harvested and prepared, all of it. She made several delicate passes across her face, first with one brush and then another.<br />
<br />
“And?”<br />
<br />
“And I told him I wanted to fight him, a duel, and he laughed at me. He looked at me down his nose, like the Mantids always do. I was beneath his notice, for I was a Spider. I was a thing of contempt, not fit to draw blade against.” <br />
<br />
“He said all that?”<br />
<br />
“Oh, posing, posing. You know how it is. I was talking too, though. When he finished speaking he had no more to say. When I finished he had agreed to meet me at the Forum.”<br />
<br />
“And that must have gone well,” Salma noted dryly. She looked straight at him, over her shoulder.<br />
<br />
“He beat me. He beat me by two strikes to none,” she admitted. “I’ve another bruise on my side that’s a little short of this one for size, but lovely for colour, like a flower bouquet. You can see it if, you want?” She tilted her head, mockingly coquettish.<br />
<br />
He shrugged indifferently, one hand tracing patterns on the wall. “I’m no chirurgeon,” he said with a blithe smile, “but if you want. So what, then? Or did you really think you could beat him?”<br />
<br />
“I wanted to see if I could make him <em>fight</em>, Salma. That was the object. This . . .” she passed another brush over the bruise. “This is a medal for the sort of wars I’ll be fighting in.”<br />
<br />
“Spider wars.”<br />
<br />
“Your people don’t play that game, Salma?”<br />
<br />
She had him there, and he laughed. “Well, perhaps, but nobody plays as well as the Spider-kinden. Even one, it seems, brought up by Beetles. It must be in the blood.”<br />
<br />
“In the blood and in the Art,” she agreed. “And I needed to know. Now that Stenwold’s come clean with me, with us, I needed to be sure of myself.”<br />
<br />
“For a woman with a bruise the size of Lake Sideriti you certainly sound sure of yourself.”<br />
<br />
She turned from her paints and powders again, a face now unmarked, devoid of blemish. “What bruise?” she asked sweetly. “And besides, I’ll have him again sometime, and that time I’ll win. It’s not just the Mantids who remember a grudge.”<br />
<br />
<div align="center">~~~</div><br />
Cheerwell Maker, Che, was meditating. There was a room for that in any decentsized house in Collegium, while in the poorer areas of the city there were civic buildings set aside just for this silent communion. If she had gone into the Ant city of Vek, miles down the coast, she would have found great echoing halls filled with men and women, and especially the young, each seeking to communicate<br />
with the infinite. In the Mantis holds of Etheryon and Nethyon, deep amidst the trees, there were glades and groves where no sword was ever drawn, where only the mind was unsheathed.<br />
<br />
This was not about gods. Well read, she knew the concept. Even in the Bad Old Days before the revolution, this had not been about gods. Long ago, when her people had been no more than gullible slaves to charlatan wizards, there had been no idols or altars. The imaginary spirits and forces that the Moth-kinden rulers had believed in were invoked and commanded and harnessed: religion but not worship.<br />
<br />
Meditation was different to that old quackery. Nobody doubted how important it was. The tactile evidence was all around them. Meditation was the Ancestor Art, the founding basis of all the insect-kinden. Whether it was meditation to make the Fly-kinden fly, and the Ants live within each other’s minds; to make the Mantids swift, the Spiders subtle, meditation was the Art that lived within them<br />
all, waiting to be unlocked.<br />
<br />
Cheerwell Maker was very bad at it. It was not that she was slow, for being slow would probably have helped. She had a quick mind, and it chafed too easily at inaction. No sooner had she approached some contemplative plateau than it buzzed off after some other trail and instead left her uncomfortably aware of her surroundings. Such as now.<br />
<br />
The duelling match hadn’t helped. It might even haunt her for the rest of her days. When she closed her eyes, trying to find tranquillity, what she saw instead was the inside of the Prowess Forum. Falger again was standing across from her, sword gripped too tight in one hand. He was a gormless-looking youth, Falger, and none too fit. She had realized that she really should be able to beat him.<br />
<br />
All eyes had been upon her, and she had hated that. It was Tynisa, not her, who basked in the public regard. Che had felt herself becoming flustered, though. It was not the spectators: it was her comrades behind her, their eyes drilling her back full of holes. Most of all it was Uncle Stenwold, because she so wanted to prove to him that she could actually <em>do</em> this.<br />
<br />
But meditation? She recaptured her train of thought and placed it under close arrest. This was not something that should be a challenge to her. Most children started this at eight or ten and took to it without trouble. All over the world Beetle-kinden men and women, and all the other races of mankind, sat cross-legged as she was now and opened themselves up to their ideal. Primitive peoples might have gods, and the Bad Old Days had their totem spirits, but sensible Beetle thinkers had conjectured the Ideal Form. All ideas, they said, possessed a most perfect theoretical expression, and what she bent her mind toward was the Ideal Beetle. Her people, all of them, across the Lowlands and beyond, had imagined and explored and refined the Ideal, drawn strength from it, for thousands of years, since long before the first word of history was written.<br />
<br />
Now all she had to do was to prise open her mind sufficiently to allow the enveloping perfection of that Ideal into her life, and to accept its gifts. And yet her mind still battered against the recent past like a fly at a window pane. <br />
<br />
Had this been easier when she was younger? No, she had always lived with too many expectations of her and under that kind of pressure she could never concentrate. She had always been the fifth wheel, passed from hand to hand. Nobody had really known what to do with her. Even her natural parents had been quick to get shot of her. True, it had been a wonderful opportunity offered, but for her or for them? Her father was a small-time trader in one of the Agora-towns tributary to Collegium. Theirs was a large family and everything had always been scarce. In retrospect Che wondered whether it had all been scarce because her father had his image to maintain among his mercantile friends and contacts. Certainly he had never gone without a good coat ornamented in the latest fashion.<br />
<br />
And then he had got in touch, after rather a long period of mutual silence, with his brother who was now a Master at the Great College. Che suspected he had got in touch with that brother <em>because</em> he was a Master at the Great College, and her father was a socially ambitious man. Shortly thereafter she had found herself, at the age of eight, waiting at the depot with her bags packed for the engine to<br />
arrive.<br />
<br />
Oh it had surely been a blessed opportunity for her, to grow up in the house of a College Master. She now had her education, her social standing, everything to be thankful for, and yet . . . and yet, of course, it had not been merely kinship that had won her the chance. Stenwold had motives. Stenwold always had motives. Stenwold, of course, had a young ward already, and he was delighted to find for her a companion of her own age.<br />
<br />
A young, female ward—and what was the gossip there? She could only imagine how the respectable people of Collegium had babbled to each other when Stenwold Maker returned home with a Spider child.<br />
<br />
But she was supposed to be meditating, not counting over old hurts like a miser.<br />
<br />
The Ancestor Art, it so eluded her: had her ancestors proved as incapable as she was, then the human race would have perished. In the way-back, before steam engines and metalwork, the world had been a savage place. With nothing but fire and flint, her distant forebears had faced creatures that had no fear of man: hives of ants as large as children; spiders that strung webs thirty feet across; scorpions in the deserts that could rip up iron with their claws; praying mantids lurking in the darkest woods that would feed on man by choice and preference. Against these perils there was only the Ancestor Art. It bred a link, a kinship, between naked, helpless man and the great armoured beasts that ruled his world. A kinship first, and later a bond of communication, the opening of a whole chest of treasures.<br />
<br />
All of which lore she had learned, of course. She had received excellent gradings from her history and metaphysics teachers but none of that helped her actually put such wisdom into practice.<br />
<br />
And she would soon need it, so very soon. With very little time to prove herself, here she was, like a guilty student just a day before the examination, trying to rush through her neglected studies.<br />
<br />
Stenwold would train a new batch of special students every few years. Her childhood in his house had been punctuated by them. They had all gone away, and later Che realized that this was because Stenwold had <em>sent</em> them. For Stenwold, mild College Master and historian, deployed a string of agents working for him in far places. Boring old Uncle Stenwold thus became a man of mystery.<br />
<br />
And it was easy enough to decipher where his eyes were fixed. “History,” to the College, meant the history of the Lowlands, that great flat expanse of land lying between the sea and the Great Barrier Ridge, considered the cradle of civilization. Except that, during his classes, Stenwold would talk of other places, for human civilization did not stop when you passed the Barriers or came to the Dryclaw Desert, he explained. Che might have thought this was a wondrous thing but for the tone of voice which implied Stenwold alone had seen a storm on that distant horizon, and nobody around him would go home for their coats.<br />
<br />
<em>Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.</em> But it was like trying to will herself to sleep. Instead of lulling herself into a deep contemplation she was wide awake and excruciatingly aware of everything around her, with the word “concentrate” branded on the inside of her skull.<br />
<br />
“I’ve got to get this <em>right</em>,” she told herself in a desperate little whisper. The Art, the Ancestor Art, was all important, and she didn’t know <em>anyone</em> who was as hopeless with it as she was. There were youths of twelve who had acquired a better mastery. <br />
<br />
The Art was common to all the kinden, yet unique to each. It grew the spines on Mantis arms and gave the Mantids their prodigious speed and skill. It was the silent voice with which the Ant-kinden spoke to each other, mind to mind, to coordinate their battles. It made some strong, others resilient. It could cloud enemy minds, or climb enemy walls. It could make the earth-bound fly . . . oh, she would so like to fly. Alas, Beetle-kinden were proverbially bad at it, clumsy and thunderous, but to be able to <em>fly</em>, to just soar into the air without a machine or a mount to carry her. Fly-kinden and Moths and the others might sneer at her, but she would not care how ungainly, how slow.<br />
<br />
<em>I think too much</em>, she decided. <em>I’m too much of a rationalist</em>. Not that the Art was irrational, not like the old spurious magics the Moths still clung to. It was just poorly understood and utterly beyond her grasp. <br />
<br />
She sighed. It was hopeless. It was all still getting away from her. She had no need, right now, to feel any more of a failure.<br />
<br />
She wondered if it might have changed things if she had won her bout against Falger. She had made the first strike, too, a stinging rap to Falger’s ungloved hand, and it had then seemed a foregone conclusion. He was as inexperienced as she was, and he seemed frightened of being hurt, and he had his fat uncle in the background growling and unsettling him, and she had him. He was hers for the taking.<br />
<br />
And then she had started <em>thinking</em>. It was always such thinking that tripped her up. If she had been a dull girl, as Falger was a dull boy, then none of this would be a problem. Instead of concentrating solely on her next move, she had started thinking, and he had clipped her shoulder with a narrow blow. And then she had been thinking even more about how to stop him doing it again, and so he had done it again. His blade, with a horribly clumsy lunge, had poked her in the stomach, and so he had won. And his fellows had won, and his uncle had won, and she had lost, not only for herself, but everyone else. They had tried to tell her it didn’t matter, but she knew in her heart that it did, and that she had let them all down. Again. <br />
<br />
When, two years ago, Stenwold had opened his latest duelling school, he had started it around Tynisa and then set about looking for recruits. How Cheerwell had badgered him, morning, noon and night, practising ostentatiously outside his study window, breaking a vase in the hall with her practice parries, nagging at him and distracting him until he had let her join. And now his initial caution had proved to be so well founded.<br />
<br />
<em>That must be why</em>, she thought. <em>That must be why he isn’t taking me, too.</em> Because she knew his plans now. Something was happening far off that he wanted to see for himself, something in Helleron away to the east. He was departing in just a few days, and he was taking Tynisa and Salma to act as his agents there.<br />
<br />
He was leaving her behind.<br />
<br />
She stood up. Clearly meditation was not the order of the day. He could not begin to know how much he had hurt her, when he had come in to ask Tynisa to join him and said nothing to Che, even though she was right there in the same room. Some way or other she would make him take her too because staying here at home with the rejection would hurt her far more than anything that might happen to her in Helleron. <br />
<br />
She tidied her crumpled robes. She could not give up now. She would just have to find him and <em>tell</em> him. There was no more to it than that.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
Traditionally the houses of Collegium’s richest and most privileged citizens were ranged up against the Great College itself. Perhaps it was considered inspiring to watch the students prepare for the governance of tomorrow’s world. Besides, many of the great and the good were current or past College Masters, and probably felt at home close by.<br />
<br />
There was, however, one straggle of buildings not favoured by either the great or the good, and that was the wing housing the Halls of Artifice. For the furnace burned day and night, and the air above was ahaze with smoke and steam, while the immediate neighbourhood smelled of oil, molten metal and burning chemicals. Anyone trying to sleep anywhere near the Halls would need earplugs, and few of Collegium’s industrialists relished being reminded of the source of their wealth when they opened their shutters. Instead the housing round about was home for lowly College staff and students who could afford no better.<br />
<br />
Stenwold arrived at the main portal leading to the Halls of Artifice and gazed at the curving line of workshops and smithies stretching away in front of him, remembering. They had added two new buildings since he had made his own prentice pieces here. Meanwhile two decades more of grime had settled on the hardedged stonework around him. Forget the politics, the arts martial, the philosophy<br />
and history, here was the engine that had driven Collegium since the revolution which had ended the Bad Old Days. This was the hub that made the Beetle city great: not fighters, not schemers, not tatty mystics, but <em>makers</em>. And Stenwold was not alone in possessing this surname. Amongst his industrious nation the names of Maker, Smithy and Wright were as common as dirt.<br />
<br />
He went inside, his clean robes already flecked with soot and ash, and swept past the porter with a nod, passing on through clamouring hall after hall, lit glowing red by furnaces, clogged with steam, until he finally located Totho. <br />
With the excitement and distraction of the Games so close no ordinary student could be expected to be working today. But artificers were an odd breed. Totho was not the only one of them at work in the machine-heavy confines of the workshop. The few others were all true-bred Beetle-kinden, with a single Tarkesh Ant standing out bleach-pale amongst them. They were all bound together by their<br />
dedication to their craft. Among them Stenwold recognized an artisan’s son and the daughter of a prominent silk merchant hard at work, each absorbed in some private mechanical dream. Totho was no different, as he stood hunched over a pedal lathe, staring through dark goggles and sheets of sparks, as he machined a section of metal into shape.<br />
<br />
Stenwold approached him, but did not distract the youth from his task. There were half a dozen mechanisms already lying on the bench beside him, all seemingly versions of the same artefact, and all meticulously detailed. Stenwold had heard how good Totho was at his chosen business. It was a shame, then, that the lad was a poor half-breed and an orphan. If he had come with a finer provenance the word his masters would have used of him was “great.” Collegium had spent centuries in the pursuit of freedom for all, opportunity for everyone, and if Totho had been in any other city he would have been a slave at worst, or at best an unskilled labourer. Here in Collegium he had acquired scholarship and skills, but the weight of his ancestry was like a chain about his ankles. He had all the written rules on his side, and all the unwritten ones working against him.<br />
<br />
Stenwold picked up one of the finished items to inspect. It was a tube about as big as his fist, and he could see there was some manner of pump within it, but the precise purpose of it eluded him. Totho glanced at him briefly, then stopped pedalling and stepped away from the lathe. With the goggles, the gauntlets, the apron and the leather cap, he could have been any apprentice artificer in that busy little group, but Stenwold had recognized him instantly from the inward hunch of his shoulders, the slight downturn to his head.<br />
<br />
“Did you want me, Master Maker?” the youth asked. His voice was an artificer’s through and through: not loud but specially pitched to carry across the machine noise.<br />
<br />
“I trained in this very hall,” Stenwold told him, unconsciously slipping into the same register. “But it’s been a while since I had to weld a join or fix a spring.<br />
<br />
What <em>is</em> this thing?”<br />
<br />
“It’s an air battery, Master Maker.”<br />
<br />
“You don’t need to be formal with me, Totho,” Stenwold told him, then added, “I don’t recall air batteries being part of the syllabus.”<br />
<br />
“Just a personal project, sir,” Totho said. “Only, with everyone else away at the Games, it seemed a chance to . . .”<br />
<br />
“I know, yes.” <em>Nothing I didn’t do myself, at his age. I thought I was going to be an artificer for life, when I was young.</em> “I feel embarrassed to ask, because I’m sure I should already know, but what exactly is an air battery?”<br />
<br />
The change in the youth was remarkable. The animation in him built momentum like a machine itself as he explained, taking his creation apart with gloved hands. “You see, sir, there’s a chamber here with air in . . . see the one-way valve I’ve put in here . . . now it’s full and . . . you cock it like a repeating<br />
crossbow, with this lever here—just with your thumb, though, three or four times . . . and then you’ve put the air under pressure, lots of pressure . . . and then, with this lever here, you can release it all at once . . . and you produce almost as much force as a firepowder charge.”<br />
<br />
“Hammer and tongs,” Stenwold murmured, impressed. “And what were you intending to use it for?”<br />
<br />
Totho pushed back his goggles, revealing two lighter circles in his grime-darkened face. “Weapons, sir.”<br />
<br />
“Weapons?”<br />
<br />
“Projectiles, sir.” The life that had taken hold of him began to ebb a little. “That’s . . . what I want to go into. If they’ll let me, sir.”<br />
<br />
“No worries there, Totho. If not here, then Sarn, perhaps. A Collegium-trained weaponsmith commands a high price there.” The words rang a little hollow. Stenwold toyed with the air battery and put it down. “Ever fancy going to visit Helleron?”<br />
<br />
The youth’s eyes went wide. “Yes, sir, of course.” He probably dreamt about it longingly. In a warlike world, a fair proportion of the Lowland’s weapons were made in the foundries of Helleron, ranging from swords by the thousand to land-ironclads and siege artillery. The city of Helleron was the acknowledged queen of the industrial age, and produced almost everything that could be manufactured, but it was the arms trade she was best known for.<br />
<br />
“Well,” said Stenwold, and let things hang there for a moment as he considered further. Tynisa and Salma he had absolutely no qualms about: they could look after themselves if things went wrong. But Totho here was an unknown quantity: a half-breed, a quiet lad who kept very much to himself. He had only come to Stenwold’s attention at all because Cheerwell had needed to take some lessons in things<br />
mechanical, and it had been through Totho’s quiet help that she had passed her examinations. Still, Stenwold had been impressed by his conduct in the duel with Adax. Kymon might dismiss it as tedious, but Stenwold privately thought that Totho, who possessed little and had done better than he should, had proved rather more than Piraeus, who possessed a lot and had done worse than he might.<br />
<br />
“I’m travelling that way in a few days’ time,” he informed the youth, as idly as he could. “I might have some work there that a few young hands could help me with. So do you want to come?”<br />
<br />
He had expected an instant, eager affirmation, but Totho squeezed just a little more respect out of him by weighing up the offer carefully.<br />
<br />
“Sir, will Che—Cheerwell—be going as well?”<br />
<br />
Stenwold frowned a little. “I hadn’t planned it—”<br />
<br />
“Yes. Yes, I will,” Che told him, from the doorway behind. “I don’t care what you say, you can’t keep me here.”<br />
<br />
When Stenwold spun round he found her standing there with clenched fists, her courage screwed up to the hilt, more evidently ready for a fight than she had ever seemed in the Prowess Forum.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Five</strong><br />
Stenwold closed his eyes resignedly. For all her shortcomings, the girl had <em>timing</em>. “Totho, would you—?”<br />
<br />
“You can say what you’ve got to say in front of him,” Che told him. “I want to go. I want to do whatever it is you’re doing.” She was standing there fiercely in her best white College robe amidst the sparks and grime.<br />
<br />
Stenwold turned on her. “Absolutely not,” he said, his face leaden. <br />
<br />
She confronted him defiantly with her hands on her hips, a solid young Beetle-kinden girl. A College scholar. <em>My niece</em>.<br />
<br />
“I am a <em>part</em> of this,” she insisted.<br />
<br />
“Cheerwell, you don’t even know what ‘this’ is,” he said reasonably. “I am just going east on business, nothing more.” <br />
<br />
“Business that includes Totho and Salma, and . . . and Tynisa, but not me?” She had wanted to be so calm about this, to pick him apart with clever words, but now he was here, now he was here talking with <em>Totho</em>, like some clandestine recruiting officer. She found that she was losing it. Quietly, the studious artificers were creeping out of the room. Only Totho had not moved, staring somewhere at<br />
the ground behind Stenwold.<br />
<br />
“What I’m about, it’s best you don’t know,” he tried.<br />
<br />
“But you can tell everyone else? All my friends, but not me?” And suddenly she realized it was all going to come out. All of it, that she had been stewing, was just going to vomit out of her. “Not me, though, is it? Never me. Please, Uncle Sten, I want to go. I want to do what you’re doing. I know it’s important.”<br />
<br />
“Cheerwell, listen,” Stenwold said, still with a hand on reason, “I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t know exactly what to expect, but, worst to worst, it could be dangerous.”<br />
<br />
“Yet you always claim the whole world’s dangerous,” she insisted. The whole of the last few days was crashing in on her, the failed meditation, the bitterness of humiliation in that duel.<br />
<br />
“Very dangerous,” he said. “Helleron, points east . . . and there are things happening out there I don’t want you involved in. It’s not safe for you.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t care,” she told him. “I can look after myself.” Looking at him there she could not stop herself. “I’m not some . . . well I’m not an old . . . fat man.<br />
<br />
What makes you think—?”<br />
<br />
He moved then, just a little motion, a tug at his cuffs, but it changed his stance and cut her off, because there was something more than history books in his personal history. His face was mild still as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Cheerwell, I don’t want to put you in danger. What would I be able to say to your father?”<br />
<br />
“You don’t care. When did you last speak to him? Or write?” She actually stamped her foot. “Why <em>not</em>? Why not me, Uncle Sten? Go on, say it. Just say it. What’s wrong with me?”<br />
<br />
“Cheerwell—”<br />
<br />
“I’m never good enough, am I? I’m just stupid Cheerwell with the stupid name, and I’ll just bumble along behind everyone else, shall I?”<br />
<br />
“Will you find some calm?” he said, starting to lose his own. “It’s simple. There’s no great conspiracy. You’re my niece, my family, and I want to see you safe.”<br />
<br />
“Blood, is it?” she said. She had thought it might come to this.<br />
<br />
“If you want.” He gave a great hissing sigh. “Cheerwell—”<br />
<br />
“Only”—she choked on the words, reached desperately for her courage—“from all that’s been going on, I could . . . could have sworn that it was <em>her </em>you count as your own flesh and blood, and . . . and not . . . not <em>me</em> at all.”<br />
<br />
And so it was said, and a silence fell on them, the three of them, like cinders from a pyre. Behind Stenwold, Totho was visibly cringing, hands clenched into fists over his apron. Che realized that she was shaking, not just a little but hard enough to make her teeth rattle. Her breath was coming out in short gasps and she knew that any moment she was going to break out in tears and make everything<br />
so much <em>worse</em>.<br />
<br />
Stenwold was staring at her intently, and for a moment she thought he was really angry, angry enough to hit her, and she flinched away from him. <br />
<br />
But he had never struck her before, and he was not going to do so now. The expression on his face was one she had never seen previously. He had gone pale and sick-looking, and very, very sad, and full of something else: some guilt or horror of his own making. All of this was evident in his face before he turned to leave them. <br />
<br />
“I—” she said, but he was already going, walking out past her, away. “Uncle. . . please!”<br />
<br />
He stopped, his back still toward her, broad with sloping shoulders.<br />
<br />
“Totho,” he said, without looking round, “nobody gains by any of this being repeated.”<br />
<br />
Totho just nodded, which Stenwold couldn’t have seen, but there was obviously an understanding between the two of them.<br />
<br />
“Uncle . . .” Che said again. He turned, gently, slowly. His expression was still very sad, very thoughtful.<br />
<br />
“You cannot come with me, Cheerwell,” he said. “I have done a great many things that I regretted when the time came. This will not be one of them. I am sorry, though. Sorry for . . . I am <em>sorry</em>.”<br />
<br />
Totho watched her dart into Stenwold’s arms, still shaking, watched Stenwold’s hurt, remorseful look. After a long while the apprentice cleared his throat, and the older man’s eyes locked onto him.<br />
<br />
“The . . . athletes will be arriving for the Games. We should . . . go and see.”<br />
<br />
Stenwold’s nod told of his gratitude for this diversion. “So we should. Come on, Cheerwell. Dry your eyes.” He sighed again. “Unless I’m mistaken, you’ll see something of my purpose today. Let that something be enough for you.”<br />
<br />
<br />
There was a crowd the length of the Pathian Way, the great northern avenue that led to the heart of Collegium. The wealthy and the more prosperous artisans rubbed shoulders unselfconsciously, sitting on the great tiered stone steps that lined the route. The ritual of the Games and the procession of the athletes were older than the College itself. These steps had been thronged like this when the city had still been called Pathis and the Beetle-kinden were second-class citizens and slaves, back in the Bad Old Days.<br />
<br />
Before those comfortable steps thronged the poor, of course—standing room only—but they made up for it with noise and cheer. Being poor in Collegium was only a relative thing, for the poor of Collegium enjoyed ample work, and sewers and clean wells with pumps, and there was food to be had from the civic stores when times were lean. Governance by academics, philanthropists and the wealthy<br />
was hit or miss, but in Collegium it hit the mark more often than not. Most importantly, it had always been fashionable to be seen doing charitable work for the lower orders. Even the greediest magnate wanted to be <em>seen</em> to be generous, and even false generosity could fill bellies.<br />
<br />
There was a roar moving along the crowd, a wave of sound making a steady progress matching the speed of the athletes themselves. People began craning forward, even pushing out into the Pathian Way, though there was a scattered line of the city guard to keep them in check, mostly middle-aged men in ill-fitting chain mail. Their presence was enough, though, and every tenth man was a Sentinel<br />
wearing the massively bulky plate armour that only Beetle-kinden possessed the sheer stamina to wear. The throng of spectators eddied back into place, but the cheering grew only louder and louder, for Collegium’s own athletic best were the first band of heroes to enter the city by the Pathian Way.<br />
<br />
Che stood up from her place on the steps, not because she was so very keen to see but because everyone else around her had. She tried to work out how many of the participants she could put a name to. In the lead, bearing the standard with Collegium’s gold, red and white, was “Dash” Brierwey, a slim, short-haired woman who was the only Beetle-kinden in living memory to win a short-run foot race. A pace behind, to one side of her, was a much older man whose name Che forgot, but who had contested in the long-run and the armour races before she ever came to the city. On the other side, balding and stout, was what’s-his-name Pinser who had won the epic poetry recital the previous year. Behind these followed seventeen more stalwarts, some of them veterans and some of them hopefuls: runners, jumpers, warriors, musicians, wrestlers and poets, and she knew many of them had trained at the Great College itself. <br />
<br />
Helleron’s team came close behind, and Che glanced back at Stenwold to see if he might be thinking about their heated argument earlier. She would have given a great deal if Totho could invent a machine to take back hasty words. There were things that come to roost in the mind that should never be let out.<br />
<br />
Stenwold was staring absently down the line, and she could tell he was tense, even though he was trying not to show it. <br />
<br />
The Helleron team, marching under their bronze, red and black scarab banner,<br />
were fed a little less crowd approval than the city’s home-grown heroes, but they received cheers nonetheless. They were mostly Beetle-kinden, and they and Collegium took the honour of that race with them to the field. Che could not hope to name any of them, but she knew that the big Beetle bearing their standard was a champion crossbow marksman, while the Ant-kinden just behind him was a renegade from Tark and known as a brutally efficient wrestler.<br />
<br />
Traditionally, the Ant cities came next in the procession, and it was Collegium’s dry humour to bring them in order of their victories in the previous year, to whet the fervour of a kinden already madly competitive. The cheers even picked up a bit, because the first platoon of neatly marching Ants hailed from Sarn, which in the last few decades of political reform had become Collegium’s nearest ally.<br />
<br />
They were a uniform breed, tan of skin, regular of feature, and all equipped in dark armour, every one of them selected from that city’s army. Che examined them keenly, for Ants were always competitors worth watching in any event. She felt a shiver pass through her as the block of perfectly disciplined soldiers passed by, each in step, looking neither to the left nor the right. She wondered what unheard<br />
words would be passing through their minds.<br />
<br />
The cheering began to subside as the Kes team followed next, looking to Che much like their predecessors save for the coppery tone of their skins, and then the pale Ants of Tark following on their heels. After their passage, there was a distinct mutter of disapproval, for there was an ominous gap to represent the team from Vek, who had not attended yet again. There were enough still alive here who had fought to prevent Collegium becoming a Vek protectorate. Stenwold still remembered the scar of madness and confusion it had left on his childhood.<br />
<br />
A showing from Seldis and Everis came next, a score of Spider-kinden, both men and women, and each of them as beautiful as heredity and cosmetics could conjure up for them. Che recognized a few from last year: duellists, gymnasts, exquisite poets, leaving the more brutal events for the coarser races to bicker over. Behind them was the combined Egel-Merro team of Fly-kinden, a jostling pack of little people casting looks at the crowd that were full of bravado and sly humour. They would take away most of the aerial races and acrobatics, of course, and, in all probability, a certain amount of the citizens’ personal property.<br />
<br />
And last, of course, straggled whatever the other two kinden of the Lowlands had managed to put together for a team this year. There were just eleven of them, far short of any of their competition, and nine of these were Mantids. They looked down their noses at the patronizing crowd, stalked with a killer’s grace between the great packed masses of Collegium like hostage princes entering into captivity. They had come, though. No amount of disdain could hide it. They had come, and<br />
these would walk away with most of the sashes for single combat. The fact that an occasional champion was an Ant or a Spider only went to show how good the competition really was.<br />
<br />
Amidst the Mantids were a couple of others, grey-skinned and grey-robed, shorn of any ornament, staring fixedly at the ground. These two were not official delegates from Mount Hain in the north, where the Moth-kinden had one of their few remaining strongholds. They were radicals, renegades. Like the few Moth teachers employed at the College, whose faces occasionally changed, but whose<br />
number somehow remained exactly the same, they were the exceptions to their race who had come to see the world beyond their insular homes. The Beetle spectators looked on them with amusement nowadays: these mystics from the mountains, these bugbears of myth, shakers of skulls and fetishes, clinging stubbornly to an age long consigned to the history books. There was no ire left, among the people of Collegium, for a race whose reach had once shadowed all of the Lowlands. That they had even held Pathis, the city of Collegium that was, before the revolution and the change of name, was near forgotten.<br />
<br />
Che watched them, and wondered. She had never met a Moth-kinden, never even been close to one. Their lecturers at the College taught subjects that she would not dream of taking, reeking of stale mysticism and quackery. The city Assembly was always muttering about banning such anachronisms, but they clung on, in their dark little studies and dingy rooms, instructing a handful of students apiece.<br />
<br />
There was now a murmur running through the crowd and she was broken from her reverie as Stenwold gripped her shoulder. She started, stared. For there was, this year, another team.<br />
<br />
They brought up the rear, consigned there because the organizers had not known what to do with them. Her heart skipped when she saw their banner, their colours, repeated in their clothes, their armour, even the hilts of their weapons.<br />
<br />
Black and gold. All of it black and gold.<br />
<br />
They were men, every one of them. Some were pale and some were darker, and most were fair-haired, and handsome when they smiled. They smiled a lot, too, at the crowd, at the sky, at the city before them. Some of them wore banded armour and some simply cut clothes, and all of them had short swords at their belts. They were not the rigid lattice of the Ants, but their step was close in time. If she had seen just one, she might have taken him for a half-breed of some kind, one she could not instantly have assigned any special ancestry to. Seeing them, all of them together, the people of Collegium understood that a new race, a new power, had entered fully into the Lowlands.<br />
<br />
They smiled openly, and the people of Collegium smiled back, but nervously. Everyone knew, though many thought little of it, that there were other kinden settled beyond the mountains and the Barrier Ridge, to the north and to the east. But the Lowlands had spent a long time looking inward: the squabbling Ant citystates and the reclusive Mantids and Moths. The people of Collegium should have<br />
been better aware, but the doings of foreigners beyond the Lowlands interested them little. They knew that in eastern Helleron their kin traded with all kinds of other kinden who came seeking out the legendary Beetle industry and artifice. They realised that Prince Salme Dien was proof of the Commonweal lying north, beyond the Barrier Ridge that so frustrated any serious travel, and they knew that down the silk road and across the sea extended the vast and enigmatic Spiderlands, realms of infinite wealth and cunning. They knew increasingly that, where there had been a scattering of little city-states not so long ago, now to the east of Helleron was a unified empire. Any serious trader with an interest in the east had been trying to grab a piece of the imperial business that had recently proved so lucrative. Fortunes had been made by holding a hand out to these people. Still, there was a ripple of unease that passed through the crowd, after the newcomers had gone by. That insistent black and gold, the brisk military step, the fierce energy, was something they had not seen here before. Enough people had business in the east to know that these Wasp-kinden were <em>soldiers</em>, just like the Ants were soldiers. Many had perhaps found that there were an awful <em>lot</em> of them, and all of them with smiles and swords and uniforms. A few had actually listened to the speeches of a certain Master Maker. In the wake of the Wasp athletes, and only when their backs were turned, people looked to their neighbours and wondered, <em>Are we sure about this, then?</em><br />
<br />
Che could not have said what her thoughts might have been otherwise, but Stenwold’s grasp was tight on her shoulder, and she had been to his classes: his histories, which were not the histories of the other Masters, and which went further and deeper. These, in their resplendent livery, represented the Wasp Empire, and Stenwold had been warning his students about them for ten years.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">~~~</div><br />
On the night before the Games it was all Collegium’s duty to celebrate. The tavernas would be thronging with men and women debating the merits of both the foreign and the local favourites. Bets would be made casually with friends and unwisely with strangers. Fights would start. In the houses of the middle classes private parties would be thrown, each grading itself according to which of the athletes and performers they had managed to attract.<br />
<br />
Che’s cadre of duellists had been invited to the villa of a prospering grain magnate, although it was no secret that it was Tynisa who had been in the man’s mind when the invitation had been issued. It was a middling affair, as the social strata went. Their host had managed to bag a brace of Fly-kinden racers who left after the first turn of the hourglass—and took several silver spoons with them. Then there was the champion poet, Pinser, whose epic verse had been found subjectively excellent by the home-grown judges, but whose everyday persona and conversation made him the most atrocious bore. This party might have been doomed to a brief and frosty life had not their host also secured the presence of one of the Mantis-kinden duellists. She was a poised, sharp-featured woman, pale of skin, fair of hair. Her expression suggested that she was not entirely sure what she was doing there, but she was undoubtedly an attraction. The well-to-do of Collegiate guests came along eagerly to look at this strange, fierce warrior in their midst.<br />
<br />
All the hosts across the city had vied to secure one of the Wasp newcomers, and failed. They had marched through Collegium down the PathianWay and vanished into the College itself, where they were being billeted as guests of the Assembly. The city was alive with speculation: the words “Wasp-kinden” frequently employed. Everyone had a question about them for his or her neighbour, but nobody had a sure answer. <br />
<br />
Che had so far spent the evening avoiding people. Pinser had tried to corner her with some new verse of his, somewhat (he claimed with alarmingly wide eyes)<em> racy</em>, but perhaps a young lady would find it of interest . . . ? This was one encounter that Che wished had gone, as they usually did, to Tynisa. Then she had been busy avoiding Totho, who obviously wanted to speak to her. She knew she was being unfair, and that he would be having an even worse time than she was, but he had been <em>there</em> and had heard all those stupid, stupid things that she had said. She did not feel that she could face him just yet.<br />
<br />
Finally the four of them convened on the roof garden. It was a mild night, though stuffy inside. There was a cool breeze off the sea, and all around them the air sang with the city’s debauchery. Tynisa sat at one edge of the roof like a lady holding court, and Che, worn down by the day’s misadventures, sat docilely at her feet.<br />
<br />
“So they’re here now,” Che said. “Not just a merchant or a single diplomat or a soldier of fortune, but a whole pack of them. Or a swarm of them, whatever.”<br />
<br />
“And you’re surprised?” Tynisa snorted. “Stenwold kept saying they’d make their move sooner or later.”<br />
<br />
“I suppose I just thought it would be later,” Che murmured. Totho was looking at her, or perhaps at the two of them. She avoided his gaze.<br />
<br />
“How dangerous can they really be, if it’s taken them this long to get here?” the Spider-kinden said airily.<br />
<br />
Salma had meanwhile been playing some obscure game with the fist-sized moths that came to batter at the lanterns, catching them and letting them go, over and over. Now he gave a short laugh. When he turned, there was a decidedly superior look on his face.<br />
<br />
“You Lowlanders amaze me.”<br />
<br />
“It’s easily done, O foreign flytrap. Why so this time?” Tynisa said.<br />
<br />
“You’d barely even know that the Dragonfly Commonweal existed, if I hadn’t made this trip.” He held his hands cupped together, the insect’s wings fluttering within. “There are people just beyond your own borders shouting at you, and you just turn away and close the shutters because it’s rude to shout, and because you’d rather not hear. It’s not as if the Wasp-kinden were hiding all these years. It’s not<br />
as though they haven’t been making good use of what the Lowlands will offer.”<br />
<br />
“You’ve always known about the Wasp-kinden, haven’t you?” Che said. “I mean, before you came here and met Uncle Sten.”<br />
<br />
“And your uncle knows I know.” He spread his hands suddenly and the bewildered moth bustled off back to the lamps. For a moment he had been something hard edged, the enigmatic foreigner, filled with secrets. Then he was just Salma again with his customary smile, leaning back with his elbows on the garden wall. He would not be drawn further by their questions. <br />
<br />
<br />
Stenwold’s best robe, brought out of storage and newly retailored to accommodate a larger waist, felt crisp and sharp on him. Keeping him on edge, he reckoned, and perhaps that was for the best. It was his formal Academy Master’s gown, with all the folds and creases that implied. He normally slung on any old garment but this time he felt he was here in a more formal capacity, and he knew everyone else<br />
would rather he stayed away.<br />
<br />
Back to the Amphiophos then, that he had so recently walked out of: the circular chamber that the Assembly of the Learned met in, that had been used for the city governance before the revolution. The wall tapestries had been renewed since then, and the central stone of the ceiling had been replaced, with great artifice, with a geometric stained-glass window that cast red and gold and blue shards of<br />
light across the circular tiered seating which radiated out from the speaker’s dais.<br />
<br />
Stenwold had found himself a seat at the back and was moodily watching the doors to the antechamber. About half the Assembly were present, too: Masters of the College and magnates of the town.<br />
<br />
<em>I knew there would come a day</em> . . . But not this way. He had expected the sword first, in truth. He had expected the black and gold to show its true colours. Not through an embassy, not with this subtle cunning.<br />
<br />
Seventeen years ago they would have come straight to the gates of Tark or Helleron with an army. <em>Seventeen years of war and conquest for them, and they have still found time to learn cleverness. I wonder who their agents have been, here, that I have not detected.</em><br />
<br />
The murmur of conversation waned and the Assembly waited as footsteps approached from the anteroom outside the hall. Two sentinels strode in, faceless in their helms, their heavy armour giving them a rolling gait. And there, behind them, were the Wasps.<br />
<br />
Oh they had clearly learned a lot. Stenwold had seen the delegation sent to Myna, all armed threat and demands. Here, however, they wooed the Assembly with a show of imitation, for what else would best feed Collegium’s ego? Their leader, square-jawed and fair, wore a decent approximation of the College’s own ceremonial robes, with an intricate design of black and yellow interlocking along<br />
the folds. He even carried the hem of it partly slung over one arm, as a native would. There were three behind him, and one was obviously a guard: no sword at his belt, but there were barbed spurs of bone jutting forward from the backs of his hands. He held himself in a casual, relaxed pose that Stenwold recognized from watching alert military the world over. Unlike his master he wore a plain white<br />
tunic, almost the garb of a simple servant or slave. The man next to him wore the same garment, but held himself quite differently. Stenwold was a better observer than most, for he had been taught by a Spider-kinden long ago, and realized that this other man, for all his standing in the shadow of his fellows, was the one in charge. Stenwold saw it at once, from the way he watched his fellows closely, and the way they did not dare look at him.<br />
<br />
The fourth ambassador was their master stroke. He wore a pale yellow tunic with a black sash, and he was a Beetle, a man of middle years and benign expression who could have made a home in Collegium without anyone turning a sidelong glance at him. This was no local, though: he was clearly an Imperial. <em>We are like you</em>, the Empire was saying, and only Stenwold knew how untrue it was.<br />
<br />
Old Lineo Thadspar came forward with his hands clasped before him, a gesture of welcome that the lead Wasp copied smoothly.<br />
<br />
“Noble visitors from distant lands,” he began, “may we show you as much honour in our welcome as you have shown us in attending our Great Games.”<br />
<br />
“What more honour could any wish than to be permitted to show our mettle against the best of this city and its neighbours?” The lead Wasp smiled about him at the curious onlookers. “May I humbly present myself as Godran, ambassador designate from our lands to your august Assembly. Thalric here is my chief aide, and able to speak my heart as well as I myself.” He indicated the man whom Stenwold had already picked as the true commander. <em>Of course he can</em>, the historian thought. <em>Better, even</em>.<br />
<br />
“However, I suspect you may be more inclined to speak to my friend Honory Bellowern,” continued the smoothly smiling Godran, as the Beetle-kinden stepped forward. Stenwold, watching for it, saw the glance the Beetle gave to Thalric as he did so. <em>“My friend,” is it? Master Bellowern had best be word perfect,</em> he judged, <em>or his diplomatic career shall be a short one</em>.<br />
<br />
“Noble councillors of Collegium,” said Honory Bellowern in a rich, pleasant voice, “I bring you greetings from the Consortium of the Honest, of which I am a factor. Already we have profited greatly from such dealings as we have had with Collegium, and I hope your brothers in Helleron have had no cause for complaint either. While men of more athletic stature shall take to the games, I hope there<br />
shall be those amongst you who will spare me the time to talk of such matters as trade agreements, diplomatic ties, terms and treaties and the like. Now that we find ourselves reaching out into the world, we are keen to formalize the bonds of friendship and prosperity between your Lowlands and the Empire.”<br />
<br />
And Stenwold noticed a twitch in Thalric then, and realized that word, Empire,” had not been spoken before, just “our lands” and similar terms. A misstep for Master Bellowern, then, but not a fatal one, for the mere mention of trade had the townsmen Assemblers’ mouths watering. Ambassador Godran then put a comradely hand on Bellowern’s shoulder and the two of them shared a rehearsed smile.<br />
<br />
Stenwold watched as other members of the Assembly came up to make their names and businesses known. Not all, it was true: some sat back because they did not deign to meddle in the affairs of outlanders, while others, Stenwold thought, were reticent because they were not overly quick to give their trust. Indeed there was the look in some faces, of men who had over-eaten on a dish they now found slightly bitter. Heads turned in his direction and he sensed a tremor of anxiety there, as all of Stenwold’s dusty warnings began turning over in their minds. Even the greediest of merchants would have seen enough, and heard enough, to know that Stenwold was no mere fantasist when he spoke warningly of the Empire, and now the Empire was <em>here</em>, standing in the Amphiophos itself, smiling and talking. But their eyes were very cold.<br />
<br />
“Pray!” old Thadspar called out, to attract the general attention, and then, “Pray, shall we not have . . . refreshment?” He mugged at his fellows and, at the word, a thing of glittering brass and steel came in from the antechamber. It was formed in the image of a robed Beetle man bearing a tray in its hands, and it resounded hollowly with the sound of gears and levers. Its course took it straight toward the ambassadors and Stenwold was pleased to see them start away from it in alarm. <em>Something your own artificers haven’t done yet, then?</em> He saw Thalric’s hand twitch, not moving to an absent sword, but the fingers flexing, clearing the palm. The Assemblers were laughing a little at the foreigners’ confusion as the construct paused in the centre of the hall with its drinks ready for plucking, and after a moment the visitors awkwardly joined in. Old Thadspar was attempting to take the Wasp Godran gently to one side, now that the first rush of well-wishers had abated, and Stenwold shouldered through the crowd to hear.<br />
<br />
“. . . remarkable indeed, Master Godran,” Thadspar was murmuring as Stenwold drew closer. “Your empire’s achievements have been instructive for us all, that you have done so much from such small beginnings, and grown so very prosperous.” His eyes sought out Stenwold, unexpectedly, just a sideways flicker over Godran’s shoulder. “We understand that war can be the fire that forges a great state. . . but war, of course . . .” The old man smiled apologetically. “We value philosophers, here in Collegium. You know how they must always think about <em>everything</em>.”<br />
<br />
Godran’s smile was quick and easy. “Oh, Master Thadspar, we have only just torn ourselves free of the Commonweal’s ruinous war. We have a great deal to rebuild and repair. Simply feeding and clothing the Empire is a monumental task. We are like the man who fights all night with his wife, and in the morning does not feel like going off to work.”<br />
<br />
There was a ripple of laughter at that, and Stenwold thought, <em>He even knows Collegiate jokes</em>. Stenwold would have spoken then, perhaps, but one of the College’s other historians was heading toward him, a hand held up to catch his attention. The historian stepped aside to meet him, drawing back out of the Wasps’ earshot. <br />
<br />
“Master Maker.”<br />
<br />
“Master Linewright.”<br />
<br />
The younger man raised his hands. “Master Maker, the Assembly has asked me to relay a request.”<br />
<br />
Stenwold smiled a little. “Pray relay, Master Linewright.”<br />
<br />
“It is no secret what you think of our new guests,” said Linewright testily.<br />
<br />
“I have done my best to tell it at every opportunity,” Stenwold said flatly.<br />
<br />
“There was talk of banning you from here today, but that we could find no precedent. Maker, this is perhaps the most important embassage to come to Collegium in a generation.”<br />
<br />
“No argument from me,” Stenwold said reasonably.<br />
<br />
“The Assembly does not accept your view of these people,” Linewright snapped. “How could we believe in civilization if such a monster as you foretell was even possible? And . . .”<br />
<br />
“And?”<br />
<br />
Linewright glanced over his shoulder at the Wasps. “And just say you were right—I don’t believe it, of course, nobody does—but just suppose you were right . . .”<br />
<br />
<em>He’s terrified</em>, Stenwold realized. Hammer and tongs, he knows I’m right and he’s scared to death.<br />
<br />
“Just suppose you’re right,” Linewright said, his voice suddenly hoarse. “What could we <em>do</em>? Don’t you think it’s still better to befriend them than provoke them?”<br />
<br />
“You’re worried I’m going to denounce them openly as monsters and murderers. Believe me, I have no intention of provoking these people, or even speaking with them. Go back and join the festivities,” Stenwold added with heavy irony. “Enjoy yourself.” Past the man’s shoulder he could see the controversial visitors. Whilst Godran and his Beetle-kinden henchman were clasping hands and<br />
speaking homilies, Thalric was staring directly at Stenwold. He felt a shock as their eyes met. Had he seen this man before, as one soldier amongst many? Thalric seemed almost too young to have fought at Myna. The Wasp nodded, though, a private and personal nod for Stenwold alone.<br />
<br />
<em>I know you.</em> That nod spoke volumes. <em>Don’t think that I, that we, don’t know all about you.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
Past midnight, and the windows of Collegium were darkening one by one, leaving the streets picked out in a web of gas lamps. Tynisa and Che were heading for home, bidding Totho good night where he turned away for the Charity Hall where he kept a room. He had spent the entire evening wanting to speak with Che, and she knew it. Now he had on him such a mournful expression that she wished she<br />
had not avoided him, but too late for that.<br />
<br />
Salma was not with them, of course. Salma, to Tynisa’s annoyance and derision, had left the party arm in arm with that Mantis-woman athlete from Nethyon. “I hope she eats him,” Tynisa had said dismissively, but she was surprised to find how it rankled. When Salma took his pick of the local girls, adoring Beetle-kinden maids that she knew he felt nothing for, then she did not mind. It was not as<br />
though she had not romanced her share of industrialists’ heirs, or young Ant officers away from home for the first time. Some she bedded and some she did not, but all of them gave her gifts and did as she wished. She was a Spider by birth, if not by upbringing. She cultivated her webs as a warrior would practise his swordplay, because it might be needed in earnest, come the time. This Mantis-kinden,<br />
though—Salma had bowed low before her, some elaborate ritual from his people, and she, who had seemed bored and alone only a moment before, had bowed back and taken his hand. And Mantis-kinden were not rumoured to be <em>casual</em> about their partner or anything else.<br />
<br />
When they got back inside, Stenwold was waiting for them. They could smell his pipe on the air, so they peered through his study doorway. He was sitting in his favourite chair, ornate Mantis-carved work, and staring into the fire. <br />
<br />
“Uncle?” Che said. “I . . . we didn’t think that you would still be up at this time.”<br />
<br />
“Come in, both of you,” Stenwold said, not taking his eyes from the fire. “Are the rest of the Majestic with you? No, I see not. Well I’ll speak to you two now, and to them in the morning.”<br />
<br />
“This is about the Wasp-kinden, isn’t it?” Che guessed.<br />
<br />
“It is. Tynisa, could you be prepared to leave for Helleron with me tomorrow?”<br />
<br />
“And miss the Games?” Tynisa replied instantly, and then: “Well, yes, I could . . .”<br />
<br />
“Get together what you need. Travel light and travel armed.” There was a great purpose in Stenwold’s voice. “Years, I’ve waited—and now it’s on me faster than I thought. Some ‘Dancer’ I am.”<br />
<br />
Tynisa understood that, although she didn’t like the sound of it. Dancing was the Spider word for the politics beneath a city’s skin. She had then wanted to ask more, prise more from him, but that one word made it all real and immediate for her. She left for her room upstairs.<br />
<br />
“Don’t say it,” Stenwold cautioned after she had gone, so Che clenched her fists and held her peace.<br />
<br />
“You won’t be idle here. You’ll have things to do that I can’t do if I’m away. You won’t feel much better hearing this, but I need you here. And I don’t want you to come to harm, Cheerwell. I want you to believe this.”<br />
<br />
<em>And the others? What about them?</em> But Che knew that the others, even Totho, would have a chance to save themselves from the sword, from the bolt. Stenwold had judged her, and found her wanting. He wanted to keep her safe but still it hurt.<br />
<br />
<em>No more arguments now, not if he’s leaving tomorrow.</em> That was a strangely calming thought. She would now play the dutiful niece for him, and in that way he would have less to worry about, and perhaps that would keep <em>him</em> safe. Two could play at this game.<br />
<br />
“If you’re travelling tomorrow, you should retire to bed now, Uncle,” was all she said, to which he grunted an affirmative, levering himself up from the chair.<br />
<br />
“Come on,” he offered, starting up the stairs. “We’ll have enough to say to each other in the morning.”<br />
<br />
There was a window on the landing which looked out onto the Siplan Way and the sea, and though Stenwold stomped on past it, Che paused, for it was open.<br />
<br />
“Uncle—” she began, in warning, and then Stenwold roared in outrage.<br />
<br />
In the passage right in front of him there was a man, wrapped in dark cloth. A short sword glinted. He must have been sitting in the shadows of the landing, waiting silent and patient, but he was all movement now.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center">from <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Empire.html"><em>Empire in Black and Gold</em></a> © <a href="http://shadowsoftheapt.com/">Adrian Tchaikovsky</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.jonsullivanart.com/">Jon Sullivan</a></div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizgW0Y3SJxyqKM11Q5tu7mH4FFEzikCj1ecoINiJJsEGZtjcdg0PxWawUfJvbFCeHP_nWOIF28SKiCuhi-TTL7BQFGjuHsmoATI4FYDWY6ZttwV-uc7U2HVkgG8LdVkpxx6_IodvcuF0c/s1600-h/tchaichovsky.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ct="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizgW0Y3SJxyqKM11Q5tu7mH4FFEzikCj1ecoINiJJsEGZtjcdg0PxWawUfJvbFCeHP_nWOIF28SKiCuhi-TTL7BQFGjuHsmoATI4FYDWY6ZttwV-uc7U2HVkgG8LdVkpxx6_IodvcuF0c/s320/tchaichovsky.jpg" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>Adrian Tchaikovsky</strong> was born in Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire before heading off to Reading to study psychology and zoology. For reasons unclear even to himself he subsequently ended up in law and has worked as a legal executive in both Reading and Leeds, where he now lives. Married, he is a keen live role-player and occasional amateur actor, has trained in stage-fighting, and keeps no exotic or dangerous pets of any kind, possibly excepting his son. Catch up with Adrian at <a href="http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/">http://www.shadowsoftheapt.com/</a> for further information about both himself and the insect-kinden, together with bonus material including short stories and artwork. </div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-11450621736106263482010-01-22T11:18:00.003-06:002010-01-22T16:04:44.267-06:00Prince of Storms by Kay Kenyon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjywTYr02eKAXCIHfxt2zrlIzpXCyTK6DTqLNx3N7B0GhO3I57JHBf5MxC2jc2xOgXtw-aO4wfsupJ6kiEdEg2eWTXEwVqRXueBDd_QTFLbRWd5ThqE89racN1VoG6wo-9rHEpPY6OaT6A/s1600-h/princeofstorms_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" mt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjywTYr02eKAXCIHfxt2zrlIzpXCyTK6DTqLNx3N7B0GhO3I57JHBf5MxC2jc2xOgXtw-aO4wfsupJ6kiEdEg2eWTXEwVqRXueBDd_QTFLbRWd5ThqE89racN1VoG6wo-9rHEpPY6OaT6A/s320/princeofstorms_cover.jpg" /></a><br />
</div>KENYON’S MOST VIVID AND COMPELLING SOCIETY YET. REVIEWERS HAVE CALLED THE UNIVERSE ENTIRE “A GRAND WORLD,” “AN ENORMOUS STAGE,” AND “A BRAVURA CONCEPT.” ENTER BOOK FOUR, <strong><em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/PrinceofStorms.html">PRINCE OF STORMS</a></em></strong>... <br />
<br />
Finally in control of the Ascendancy, Titus Quinn has styled himself Regent of the Entire. But his command is fragile. He rules an empire with a technology beyond human understanding; spies lurk in the ancient Magisterium; the Tarig overlords are hamstrung but still malevolent. Worse, his daughter Sen Ni opposes him for control, believing the Earth and its Rose universe must die to sustain the failing Entire.<br />
<br />
Taking advantage of these chaotic times, the great foe of the Long War, the Jinda ceb Horat, create a settlement in the Entire. Masters of supreme technology, they maintain a lofty distance from the Entire’s struggle. They agree, however, that the Tarig must return to the fiery Heart of their origins. With the banishment immanent, some Tarig lords rebel, fleeing to hound the edges of Quinn’s reign.<br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Quinn’s wife Anzi becomes a hostage and penitent among the Jinda ceb, undergoing alterations that expose their secrets, but may estrange her from her husband. As Quinn moves toward a confrontation with the dark navitar, he learns that the stakes of the conflict go far beyond the Rose versus the Entire--extending to a breathtaking dominance. In this rousing finale to Kenyon’s celebrated quartet, Titus Quinn meets an inevitable destiny, forced at last to make the unthinkable choice for or against the dictates of his heart, for or against the beloved land.<br />
<br />
“Kenyon’s saga of ambitious power grabs, black-hearted betrayals, and star-crossed romance draws to a generally satisfying conclusion in this challenging novel [<em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/PrinceofStorms.html">Prince of Storms</a></em>]... New readers will struggle with the complexities, but the broad themes, exotic setting, and advanced technology are charmingly reminiscent of golden age SF.” --<em>Publishers</em><em> </em><em>Weekly</em><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
<strong>Also by Kay Kenyon</strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BrightofSky.html">Bright of the Sky</a></em></strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BrightofSky.html">Book One of The Entire and the Rose</a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em><strong><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1264176694639">A World Too Near</a></strong></em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/WorldTooNear.html">Book Two of The Entire and the Rose</a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><em><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1264176694611">City without End</a></em></strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/CitywithoutEnd.html">Book Three of The Entire and the Rose</a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><em>Please enjoy this excerpt from</em><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Prince of Storms</span></strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;"></span></strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Book Four of The Entire and The Rose</span></strong><br />
</div><strong></strong><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><strong><span style="font-size: large;">Kay Kenyon</span></strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>Prologue</strong><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">And their mouths will be stopped with silver.</span></em><br />
</div><em><span style="font-size: x-small;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">—from the Book of the Drowning Time</span></em><br />
<br />
SHE SAT ON THE THRONE, insane, but no one blamed her for that. Ghoris was a navitar. Titus Quinn shifted under her unnerving gaze, trying to believe she was a friend. Could a navitar know compassion and loyalty, or only the frazzled mysteries of the Nigh? A frisson of awe crept over him as he looked into her inhuman eyes.<br />
<br />
Out the porthole he saw the Sea of Arising, its shining, flat expanse darkened in the distance by the shadow of the Ascendancy. <br />
<br />
Quinn glanced at Mo Ti, who sat on the ship keeper’s bench. Mo Ti had cared for Ghoris, but even he could not really understand her, and he was offering no help now. Quinn needed answers; he must frame them so that Ghoris could understand. She looked down at him from her seat on the pilot’s dais.<br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
“War,” Quinn said. “Will it come to that?” War had been massing up against a slim barrier: Titus Quinn’s promise to Sydney that she would rule the Ascendancy. She didn’t. Titus Quinn did. Such was the simple frame of the approaching conflict.<br />
<br />
“War not with dirigibles and cannon. But in the Nigh, Ghoris. Have you seen it? In the binds?”<br />
<br />
“All die,” Ghoris said with precise enunciation.<br />
<br />
The trouble with prophecy was that it might be the answer to the wrong question. Everyone dies. He wanted to know the manner of death.<br />
<br />
He tried a different tack. “Tell me about the other navitar.” He had been warned that his daughter’s navitar-advisor, Geng De, could alter future events.<br />
<br />
Ghoris nodded, smiling, as though he had finally figured things out. “Twists,” she said. “Twists the threads.”<br />
<br />
The cabin darkened. Perhaps they had drifted under the Ascendancy’s footprint—unless fear colored his perceptions. <em>Twists</em>. Was it true, then, that his daughter had forged a bond with a sorcerer? He longed not to believe this. But, as to <em>threads</em>—these he’d seen himself. He’d been on a ship of the Nigh and seen how the navitars—Ghoris, for one—reached into the thin air, bringing the threads of reality into their hands, carving a path through the Nigh and across the light-years, viewing the futures as they went. But never had a navitar tried to <em>twist</em> those futures. Until now. Such power would warp a plain man into something grotesque. Something capable of unnatural evil.<br />
<br />
“Does the navitar try or does he succeed?” How did such power come to this wretch? Why, of all navitars, <em>this one</em>, the one who would burn the Rose and restart the terrible engine? Why this one?<br />
<br />
Ghoris shrugged her bulky shoulders.<br />
<br />
He turned to Mo Ti. “Help me. You’ve lived with her. Ask her.”<br />
<br />
Mo Ti shifted on the ship keeper’s bench. “She does not know. She sees only visions. And they have made her mad.” He rose and made for the cabin door. “I will not work against Sen Ni. I do not like her boy-navitar, but I will not work against her.”<br />
<br />
Quinn stepped between Mo Ti and the door. “Would she have such a creature around her? One who’d pervert the future?”<br />
<br />
“You do not know your own daughter.”<br />
<br />
“No. Not with the boy at her side.”<br />
<br />
“You do not know what a sentient might do to keep their world alive?”<br />
<br />
Under the warrior’s gaze, Quinn forced himself to answer. “She’d do whatever it took.”<br />
<br />
“As you should have.” Mo Ti pushed past him, saying as he closed the door, “Find another ship keeper. I am done.” It had been a temporary duty, after Quinn and Mo Ti sent Ghoris’s last ship keeper on a mission to find Su Bei. But Mo Ti didn’t owe Ghoris or Quinn any more time.<br />
<br />
Ghoris watched him leave. A smile creased her globular cheeks. “That one will kill you in the end.”<br />
<br />
He hardly cared how he would die. But he cared how the Rose would die. If Geng De <em>wove</em> reality, then Quinn would have to stop him.<br />
<br />
Alone now with Ghoris in the pilot’s cabin, Quinn’s voice broke: “Will I have to strike my own daughter down?”<br />
<br />
“She will fall, oh fall. It is the strong thread.”<br />
<br />
His heart cooled. “Find me a future where that isn’t so.” Desperation made him ask.<br />
<br />
The navitar gathered her robes about her and slowly rose from her chair. “Traveler, we will go.”<br />
<br />
It took him a moment to realize that she meant into the binds. <br />
<br />
He’d come here to see what Ghoris knew, and now she was saying, <em>see for yourself</em>. She raised her arms and as she did so the ship jolted. He heard the great funnel at the prow clang as it dropped into feeding position.<br />
<br />
Taken by surprise, his guards would no doubt try to stop her, but it was all happening too fast. Ghoris thrust her hands into the membrane over the dais and the ship nosed steeply down. Normal light evaporated from the cabin. They dove into the Nigh. Shouts came from the deck below.<br />
<br />
The cabin door opened and one of his Chalin guards staggered in, calling his name.<br />
<br />
“We’re diving,” Quinn said. “Sit down. Or fall down.” Already he was fighting off lethargy. He braced himself against the wall. The guard reached out for the support of the bulkhead.<br />
<br />
“You must have your vision,” Ghoris crooned. She had dropped back into her seat, dripping with the slime of the Nigh, or appearing to. <br />
<br />
Sleep crept in like a slowly closing door, but he thrust a foot into the opening. Stay awake, stay . . . His guard staggered, then slid down the bulkhead, his consciousness drowning in the river.<br />
<br />
Ghoris sat in her pilot’s chair, swirling her fingers and staring at them in an unsettling way. “Ah, the future. It comes.”<br />
<br />
A gauze fell over his vision and Ghoris faded. At the same time a second and more vivid form stood up beside her. It was also a navitar, red-robed and rotund. The second pilot reached for something. A cane came into his hand, and he leaned heavily on it.<br />
<br />
A quiet voice: “I never knew you for a navitar, yet here you are, half awake in the river.”<br />
<br />
Quinn recognized that voice from somewhere. The memory was a ripple on water, receding. The boy—that was what he seemed, a boy, by his soft features, his indeterminate sex—looked warily toward the cabin door. He was blind. Or blind to Quinn.<br />
<br />
“Yet here you are,” repeated the figure in red. “How strange. And Ghoris, the old hag. I thought she was about done with the Nigh. Not many old navitars. Ever notice?”<br />
<br />
Quinn heard himself say, “They drown themselves in the Nigh.” But what were they talking about?<br />
<br />
“True.” The young man turned, looking for the source of Quinn’s voice. “Sen Ni finally gave up on you. I predicted you’d betray her.” He brought his cane down savagely on the back of Ghoris’s chair. “And you did.”<br />
<br />
Startled by the cane’s blow, Quinn reeled against the bulkhead, feeling half drunk. “Sen Ni gave up . . .”<br />
<br />
“On you, Titus Quinn. Let’s have that clear. On you.” He swayed his head from side to side like an animal trying to catch a scent.<br />
<br />
The red-robed figure was hunting, his movements strong and fluid, while Quinn was weak, clutching the edge of reality with slipping fingers.<br />
<br />
Quinn inched along the bulkhead, using a hand to steady himself, his legs like pillars of cement. It was important to keep moving, to not be in the same place as before. “You are . . . a navitar.”<br />
<br />
The young man knifed his cane in Quinn’s direction, turning it. He peered into the air, blind but for the probing cane that was an extension of his hand, his will. “You know me, Titus Quinn. You are in my world now. The river belongs to Geng De, not to you. Isn’t that right, Ghoris?” Geng De glanced in her direction.<br />
<br />
She remained immobile, cocking her head, listening. <br />
<br />
“Weaving,” Quinn rasped as he moved away from the cane. “Navitars swear not to. Broken vows.”<br />
<br />
The cane slowly came around, following his voice. “Broken vows. Perhaps you’ll not want to dwell too long on that concept. But yes, I’m different than the old woman. I am a child of the Nigh. You should have made friends with us, Quinn.”<br />
<br />
In a startling gesture toward the unconscious guard, Geng De swung around and shot a hand forward, grabbing at the empty air. As he did so, the guard toppled sideways, crashing heavily to the floor. At this sound, the navitar sidled down from the dais and moved toward the guard, prodding him with his cane. He looked confused. “Not alone, here. You have helpers, then. I’ll remember his threads. He’ll be mine.”<br />
<br />
Quinn was now wedged between Geng De and the dais. He stepped up next to Ghoris.<br />
<br />
His proximity seemed to agitate her. “Overflows,” she moaned. “The children swim, their mouths stopped with silver.” She held in her hand a mass of threads, hopelessly tangled.<br />
<br />
Geng De saw this and lunged his cane into the mass, dispersing it. Regaining his balance, he spun around and growled. “Where are you? By the deep Nigh, where?”<br />
<br />
“Following you,” Quinn whispered. The frame of a portal behind him pushed into his back. “You can’t have it, Geng De.” He couldn’t have the Rose for burning. But hadn’t he settled that already? Ahnenhoon, shut down. Lord—whoever it was, some lord—shut it down. “Can’t have it.”<br />
<br />
Geng De thumped his staff along the floor as he searched the cabin, not thinking to look on the dais. “I’ll have it. But that is just the beginning. You won’t want to be here. Leave the Ascendancy. Leave the Entire. I’ll spare you, then.”<br />
<br />
Ghoris smirked, now sitting more alert in her chair. “He’d have killed you by now if he could, Titus.”<br />
<br />
Geng De pivoted in her direction, nodding at her. “That’s right. I can’t touch his threads. He’s the one rogue strand, or I would have dropped him from the Ascendancy the day he took it from Sen Ni.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll never give you the Entire,” Quinn heard himself say. “Or the Rose.”<br />
<br />
Geng De turned and looked right at him. He had him, now. Saw him at last. The navitar’s staff seemed to thump on the floor as he approached. Stepping up to the dais, Geng De stalked forward and thrust his cane at Quinn, pinning him against the bulkhead. The cane went through him like a knife through a dream.<br />
<br />
Geng De whispered, “What do you . . .” He thrust the cane deeper. “What do you <em>want</em>? Power?”<br />
<br />
“No, I’ve never . . .”<br />
<br />
Still holding the cane like a spit through Quinn’s heart, he whispered, “That is a lie. You do want power. You’ve had just a taste, and already you’re corrupt.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t . . . I’m not . . .”<br />
<br />
Geng De smiled. “And don’t even know it, do you?” He lowered his cane, leaning on it, inches away from Quinn’s face. His voice went very soft as though confiding a secret. “As a babe, I fell in the Nigh. They made me a navitar at the age of four. I haven’t had a life, but that will change—change, because of your daughter. I saw Sen Ni in the strands, a pure form, a destiny of beauty, but choked by you unless I weave—weave very well. I’ve sworn to her I will. And if your strand evades me, there are always others.”<br />
<br />
“Nooo,” Ghoris moaned.<br />
<br />
Geng De glanced at her. “Yes, old woman. Yes.” He said to Quinn, “Your ties of the heart. Oh, I see those, touch those.”<br />
<br />
But Quinn would always love who he loved. “You can’t change me.”<br />
<br />
“You’re already changing. You should leave before you become something you wouldn’t like.” He shook his head at Quinn’s confusion. “Never mind.” He twiddled his hands in front of his face, staring intently. “Here are your lovely ties, the little threads of the ones you especially like. Nicely visible,<br />
burning hot.” He examined his hand, scanning it as though its movement trailed stories.<br />
<br />
Ghoris moaned. It seemed a kind of summons. Geng De murmured, “I’ll take them one by one, until no one is left.” He turned from Quinn and shambled toward Ghoris’s chair. “Move over, hag.”<br />
<br />
Stiffly, he lowered himself down, merging with her. As his form faded, his voice hovered for a moment in the cabin. “One by one . . . one by one.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>PART I</strong><br />
<strong>THE BURNING LORDS</strong><br />
<br />
<strong>Chapter One</strong><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>Titus Quinn threatened the Tarig access to their homeland. His control of the Heart augured the end of Tarig reign. But their downfall began with their very birth. The lords were not alive in the normal sense, or so the sentients of the Entire came to believe. Minds that fused in the Heart—the Tarig congregate state—were not true individuals, were not even comprehensible. In the end, the Tarig fell because the Entire despised what the lords were more than what they could</em> do.</span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">—from <em>Annals of a Former Prince</em></span><br />
<br />
“THE JINDA CEB ARE COMING HOME.” Cixi had been saying this for an arc of days, and still no one seemed to grasp the point, least of all Geng De.<br />
<br />
Next to Cixi, in the burrow of the undercity, Sen Ni stood, lovely and strong. The wavering light of the Nigh limned her silks with silver, gave her a glamour of power. Yet she deferred to the pudgy navitar.<br />
<br />
“Yes, I’ve seen this,” Geng De said, as though that answered everything. <em>I’ve seen this, I’ve seen that</em>. Cixi was mightily weary of his <em>seeing</em>, though she’d only been with them for forty days. She would have forbidden him to utter it, except that she was no longer the high prefect, as it jolted her to recall.<br />
<br />
Sen Ni went to a small table, where she dipped a cloth in water. She dabbed Geng De’s flushed temples. The two of them were backlit by the floor-to-ceiling Nigh view port, creating a tableau of cloying devotion.<br />
<br />
“Master Geng De,” Cixi said with what sweetness she could muster, a tone, she noted with chagrin, that she had once reserved for the Tarig, “the Jinda ceb Horat can certainly restart the engine. We shall have need of the engine in due time.” There, that was the understatement of the age. A little sarcasm often moved a discussion along.<br />
<br />
“Your Brilliance,” Geng De began, using the odious title, “my hands are heavy with threads. The Jinda ceb is not yet one that comes to my hand. Patience. Patience.”<br />
<br />
“Perhaps if you reached a little further.”<br />
<br />
Sen Ni glanced up, flashing disapproval.<br />
<br />
The navitar put a quieting hand on Sen Ni’s arm. “They are not here yet. But the Tarig are.” He closed his eyes for a moment, and even while seated, leaned heavily on his cane.<br />
<br />
“The Tarig are the ones that shut down Ahnenhoon,” Cixi answered. “The Tarig will soon be banished to the Heart. Why do they care what happens to our land? They are leaving.”<br />
<br />
“Do you say so?”<br />
<br />
“My spies say so. Quinn will send them back to their swarm.” She might be deposed from the Magisterium, but some were still devoted to her.<br />
<br />
“Lord Inweer is the strand,” Geng De said. “That is the one needing weaving. I pursue his traces.”<br />
<br />
Inweer, was it? But Quinn would certainly send home the last of the ruling Five. He didn’t need the Tarig to run the great mechanics and mysteries of the All. The Jinda ceb Horat were the Tarig’s equals. In their own interests, the Jinda ceb—when they finally arrived, which was imminent, their messages had implied—would run the industries of the Entire, whether the bright, the storm walls, or the mundane matters of trains and ships of the Nigh and cleaning of streets. How convenient for Quinn that the Jinda ceb had lived in accelerated time and had grown so wise. Perhaps in their wisdom they would quickly be rid of him. It was why Sen Ni must establish a bond with them and persuade the creatures to her side.<br />
<br />
Creatures. Cixi couldn’t bring herself to think of the Jinda ceb as quite . . . reputable. They were reported to have taken Chalin form, but they grew their clothes on their backs, like beku. And then there was the matter of their <em>art,</em> also grown on the their backs, if reports were to be believed. And what they <em>actually</em> looked like, before they changed themselves, the Miserable God only knew.<br />
<br />
Slowly, and stifling a groan, Geng De rose from his chair. His voice wavered. “I will rest now. The binds asked much of me today. Pardon me if I retire, my sister. High Prefect.”<br />
<br />
“But,” Cixi persisted, “Sen Ni must at least make overtures to the Jinda ceb. She will travel to the Inyx sway in any case. The minoral of the Paion is nearby.”<br />
<br />
“Jinda ceb Horat,” Geng De corrected. “<em>Paion</em> is the old word, we must remember.”<br />
<br />
Oh, he dared to correct her! “But <em>Paion</em> is how the All has thought of them for archons of time. <em>Paion</em> is the face they must overcome if they wish acceptance in the sways. They will need Sen Ni’s support to send sweet dreams of them into the land. Sen Ni should win them over. Before Titus Quinn does.”<br />
<br />
The navitar turned to the view port, gazing out as though he saw strands there even without immersion. He did seem to wish to be t<em>here</em> rather than <em>here</em>. What did he do for days at a time in that crystal chamber beyond the view port? Weaving, so he said. If it could be believed.<br />
<br />
He leaned close to Sen Ni. “Do not reach out to them when they first arrive, Sister. Begin the dream war against your father first. See your beloved Riod. Make sure he loves you as I do.”<br />
<br />
He kissed Sen Ni briefly on the mouth. Ever so brotherly, but Cixi wanted to beat him senseless with his cane.<br />
<br />
<br />
Sen Ni supported Cixi on her arm as the two of them climbed the passageway up to street level. The underground chamber allowed Geng De to enter the river in secret, rather than in an exposed ship. Her father would be looking for Geng De; they had met in the binds, and Geng De had tried to drive Titus home with threats. It hadn’t worked, as she could have told Geng De if he’d asked her first.<br />
<br />
Cixi was slow, but stronger than she looked. She had, after all, killed a Tarig lord with her own hands. <em>Stiletto in the eye</em>, Cixi had smirked. <em>Of course he was quite softened up by then</em>. . . .<br />
<br />
Cixi said, “The Jinda ceb did not fight for a thousand thousand days to build their house on a mist.”<br />
<br />
“Are we a mist, Mother?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, dear girl. Mist. The Entire will fade. Geng De spends too much time in the river to notice, perhaps. The Jinda ceb must engage the engine again.”<br />
<br />
“Let me think on it.” A great deal of work lay ahead of them, and Geng De was right: The Jinda ceb were not even here yet. Titus should be exposed as a danger to the land. Titus, the man who once had said he had no wish to rule and who now ruled in fact. The pain of that was too fresh to revisit.<br />
<br />
Cixi murmured, “When the bear looks upon you the first time, he decides if you are meal or master.”<br />
<br />
First impressions. Would the Jinda ceb see her as the cowed young daughter of the king?<br />
<br />
“Give me time, Mother.” Cixi’s power was still remarkable; she had learned almost every intelligence that had come to Titus in the days since he banished the high prefect. She knew most of what Ji Anzi was teaching Titus about the Jinda ceb: that they had never ridden on the backs of their automatons of war. Those entities had been war creatures, bred for the fight. Cixi had also learned that the Jinda ceb possessed a visionary field called Manifest where they decided civic matters in common. The spies had also reported that the Jinda ceb wanted foremost to come home. And by <em>home</em> they meant the place where they had heretofore been, at the Scar in the Long Gaze of Fire Primacy, where they would reattach their minoral—adrift these many ages. So, in the end, it had been another great Tarig lie that the Scar marked the scene of a Paion incursion and heroic battle. The Tarig had even gone so far as to say they themselves had fought there, as though the fiends would have exposed themselves to danger!<br />
<br />
Sen Ni opened the door to the navitar vessel’s lower cabin, a connection obscured from observation by a small pavilion set up to look like a tent that expanded Geng De’s living space. Passing through the empty cabin to the outer deck, Sen Ni noted her guard led by Emar-Vod, standing on the quay.<br />
<br />
Cixi looked up as a large shadow fell across the deck. “Couldn’t we go by litter?”<br />
<br />
“Beesha makes a gentle ride, Mother.” They needed a quicker route to the summit of the bridge than a litter now that Sen Ni’s popularity made it difficult for her to travel anywhere in Rim City without attracting a crowd.<br />
<br />
“Beesha stinks, dear girl, it must be said.”<br />
<br />
Even Cixi’s scowling could not constrain Sen Ni’s happiness in being by her side. She recalled that awkward moment a few days ago when she had first called Cixi <em>mother</em>. The old prefect had frozen for a moment, and Sen Ni feared she had made a ghastly error. Then a painfully slow smile stretched Cixi’s lips a fraction. Cixi, she discerned, was pleased.<br />
<br />
The great Adda hovered above, and at a signal from her handler, began the descent to the quay, caparisoned with a garland of silver bells and woven tassels. Denizens of the city came running, hoping that Sen Ni might be there, as they saw the old Celestial bearing down on the wharf.<br />
<br />
Beesha settled her hanging ladder on the ground with a clatter of cartilage and bells, to the cheers of onlookers. Sen Ni waved to them and called out a name from a face she recognized.<br />
<br />
Emar-Vod came forward, steadying the ladder. “A litter might suit one’s dignity,” Cixi muttered. But she took hold of the gristly ladder and climbed one rung. A crippling look warned Emar-Vod away from assisting her.<br />
<br />
Sen Ni followed Cixi into the cavity, finding a place next to her, sitting cross-legged on the floor. The high prefect drew out a small box from her sleeve and flipped open the top, taking a dainty sniff to fend off Beesha’s yeasty odor. Sen Ni shook off a sudden annoyance at this show of delicacy. The old woman<br />
had been through a harrowing time. Stripped of her vast powers, humiliated by banishment. It was said that her subprefect Mei Ing had openly celebrated the hour that Cixi had walked out the door of the Magisterium. A short-lived festivity, however, when Titus appointed Yulin’s wife Suzong to the top post.<br />
<br />
She cajoled Cixi. “A view of the city from an Adda—such a sight, Mother! You have seen so many wonders, but I am still a girl of the steppes and I love this.”<br />
<br />
“Girl of the steppes! Let no one hear such nonsense. Queen of the Entire, I declare it.”<br />
<br />
“Look.” Sen Ni lay on her stomach to gaze out the egress cavity. “The sea coming into view, the biggest sea in all the universes.”<br />
<br />
Cixi slapped Sen Ni on the shoulder. “Back with you. If anyone should see you peeking out of an Adda hole!”<br />
<br />
But Sen Ni paid her no mind. Under them Rim City hove into view with its teeming streets and huddled adobe towers. Her sway. Then up, up, with the great crystal bridge revealed yard by yard, its sparkling undersides built of steeled glass, then the black and viney gardens of her mansion. There, a glimpse of the orphanage Sen Ni had built next to her quarters, and finally the great viewing porch.<br />
<br />
Beesha hovered expertly over the veranda. Because of the railing, she could not descend as far as she might, but now servants were there to hand Sen Ni and Cixi down.<br />
<br />
“Thank you, Beesha,” Sen Ni sang out to the Celestial, who blinked ponderously and waited for the servants to hoist up sacks of grain.<br />
<br />
Even so short a journey filled Sen Ni with a strange euphoria. Or perhaps it was Beesha herself, whose silence and dignity reminded her so strongly of Riod.<br />
<br />
Sen Ni leaned on the balustrade, watching Beesha wend away on the prevailing counterclockwise wind. She thought of the winds that way, but it was a darkling term, a thing of the Rose, an artifact of a world that had given her up for dead. She owed nothing to them. If one place must die, why must it be this one?<br />
<br />
She looked over the Sea of Arising, the galactic scale ocean, with the arms of Rim City embracing it. The mirror of the sea reflected the bright, a twicebrilliant field. Sandwiched between, the Ascendancy cast a circular shadow on the sea.<br />
<br />
Next to her, Cixi stared at the floating city. “Quinn crouches up there in fear,” she murmured. “He has the Entire. And God has noticed him.”<br />
<br />
Sen Ni made a warding sign. “But he is king.”<br />
<br />
“Mmm. And look what the Woeful God brought upon our <em>last</em> kings.” She tapped her long nails on the railing, indulging a tight smile. “He’s caught a dragon in his embrace. What happens when he lets go?”<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Chapter Two</strong><br />
<br />
<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">The more buried a desire, the more vibrant.</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">—from <em>The Twelve Wisdoms</em></span><br />
<br />
DEEP EBB TINGED THE GREAT PLAZA LAVENDER. No Tarig were abroad, nor any other sentient of the Ascendancy. Outside the regent’s pavilion Tai adjusted his ceremonial sword in its sheath and scanned the emptiness between the canals and bridges, assuring himself, despite the guards, that it was safe to go to bed. The Tarig were in their warrens on the Palatine Hill, and the functionaries in their cells of the Magisterium. Still, Tai would not sleep just yet, not until Master Quinn did.<br />
<br />
It had been forty days since the Tarig lost the Ascendancy. It was still a tense and confusing time. Add to that, Anzi’s situation. To everyone’s great relief she had managed to come back from the Rose, sent back by—Tai struggled to keep English names straight—<em>Stefan Polich</em> and <em>Caitlin Quinn</em>, who allowed her to enter the terrible pool at <em>Hanford</em> and come home. But then it became clear that before she had stepped into the Rose she had been somewhere else. With the Jinda ceb Horat. The Paion.<br />
<br />
Tai entered the central chamber of the pavilion, noting that everyone had retired for the ebb. However, he heard the regent speaking behind the curtain to Anzi, so Titus Quinn did not sleep as yet and still might have need of him. <br />
<br />
That was just as well. Tai had a long list of English words to memorize—<em>ocean, newsTide, moon, World Alliance, mSap, hamburger</em>—given him by John Hastings, the man of the Rose, the only survivor from Hel Ese’s plot. John had repented of that crime; still, it was hard to forget what he had done.<br />
<br />
A noise behind him. Zhiya stood at the open curtain of her sleeping area. Not dressed as a godder these days, she wore a padded jacket and laced trousers like a soldier. Although only the height of Tai’s breastbone, she still looked formidable.<br />
<br />
Zhiya nodded toward the master’s suite. “Is he retired for the ebb?”<br />
<br />
“Yes. You wish to see him?”<br />
<br />
“Is she with him?”<br />
<br />
“Of course.”<br />
<br />
Zhiya smirked. “Of course. Where else would his wife be at this hour?” She nodded at him, a perfunctory good ebb, and closed her curtain.<br />
<br />
Tai glanced at the regent’s quarters. Zhiya wanted to know if Master Quinn and Ji Anzi were still sleeping together. Well, they would do what moved them. Tai hoped the regent was moved to pleasure his wife. She did not look unattractive, considering the shocking revelation that she had lived among the Jinda ceb Horat for five thousand days. Because of this, she was now older than her husband. Still attractive, yes, but not aged with the restraint of the Entire, where lives were long. Love, however, would overcome such things, would it not?<br />
<br />
He glanced at the curtain. Surely it was past time for talking.<br />
<br />
<br />
Quinn watched as Anzi sat at the writing desk working on her letter. It was very late, but he wished not to disturb her if, as now, she seemed to be finding the words that had eluded her. Propped up on the bed, pillows behind him, he enjoyed her company, even if she was preoccupied.<br />
<br />
“Husband, how shall I say <em>regret</em>? <em>One is regretful</em>, or <em>I regret</em>? Is <em>I regret</em> too obvious, too direct?” She stared at her scroll, frowning, although when she finished it, how would she send it to the Jinda ceb?<br />
<br />
“You know their ways, my love.” He had his own worries, worries he’d hoped to put aside so late in the ebb. With Anzi preoccupied, he considered the bizarre meeting with Geng De, and the boy navitar’s threats. To weave the world. Could it be done? The future altered by design? Zhiya had warned him; her own mother swore it was true. But Jin Yi was half mad, like all navitars. <br />
<br />
“But how to say it?” Anzi persisted, still worrying her verbs.<br />
<br />
“I would say <em>unintended consequences</em>. If there were any.” Anzi had told him that she didn’t know if her manner of departing the Jinda ceb had caused offense. She guessed that it had. She wanted to cement relations with the Jinda ceb when they arrived. It would not be helpful if she had offended them.<br />
<br />
Over the last days he had been learning about Anzi’s exile among the Jinda ceb Horat. They had saved her life by retrieving her from the void. But time passed differently in their universe, and she had endured a long and poignant separation from her world and from him. The story of her time among them had spooled out over the days since their reunion. For himself, the lapsed time was almost impossible to imagine—fourteen years. How much worse it must be for her . . . but she accepted it bravely. She would<br />
have perished, otherwise, like Su Bei.<br />
<br />
There had hardly been enough time to let all this sink in. There were other adjustments, too: his wounds, healing slowly and perhaps imperfectly; holding the Tarig at bay. And always on his mind these last weeks, his brother’s death, reported by Anzi. Killed by a man who was like an uncle to him. Lamar . . . God, how deeply the world had changed. <br />
<br />
“Come to bed, Anzi.”<br />
<br />
“Yes.” She continued to write. <br />
<br />
And then there was the Rose and its politics, and the near impossibility of communicating with them. Unless the Jinda ceb, when they came, could help him. And if he could communicate with Earth, what could be said in a message, and to whom should it be directed? It seemed no matter how he tried to sort it that he was on his own.<br />
<br />
“Anzi, leave off. Come to bed.” <br />
<br />
“In a moment.” With her back to him, her emerald green silk robe brought out the startling white of her arms and neck. He watched her as she bowed her head over her work, exposing the nape of her neck. Anzi’s hair was very short now, a concession she’d made to fit in better with the Jinda ceb among whom she had lived so long. It made her look especially beautiful, in the way of a handsome forty- or fifty-year-old woman. But time-in-years meant little. The Entire had no years, and who knew how to calculate the passage of time in the universe of the Jinda ceb?<br />
<br />
“If one could do over what cannot be undone,” Anzi murmured, biting the tip of her stylus. She bent to her writing.<br />
<br />
It was too much. He sprang from the bed. “No. You did it for the Rose.” They had been over and over what happened with her Jinda ceb teacher just before they sent her home. Who knew how the Jinda ceb really felt? “They’re asking too much.”<br />
<br />
Still seated, she looked up at him, stylus in hand. “They haven’t asked anything of me. We haven’t spoken. This is just in case.”<br />
<br />
The thought came to him that by this late ebb letter she was avoiding being with him. She felt inadequate. Though he’d said <em>you are beautiful to me</em> a hundred times, she sometimes pointedly turned her face from him.<br />
<br />
She turned back to the desk. He snapped up her scroll, holding it away from her.<br />
<br />
Anger flashed in her eyes, he noted with satisfaction. At last a real emotion. The polite dance of what could be said, what could be trusted—it made him crazy. <em>You haven’t changed in my sight</em>. But, as with the letter, was that too direct?<br />
<br />
Relenting, he put the scroll in her hand, touching her wrist as he did so. Her skin was cool, and he suddenly wanted her.<br />
<br />
She saw that in him. “Put out the light.”<br />
<br />
“No need.”<br />
<br />
She bent to the lamp to darken it, but he came between her and the light. He took her by the hand and led her to the sleeping platform, laying her down on the covers, taking the scroll from her.<br />
<br />
“Bring down the curtain,” she whispered.<br />
<br />
He lowered one of the cloths tied up near the post. Shadow fell over them. He pulled the robe from her shoulders, using his good arm, since the other barely responded. With his good left hand he traced the line of her neck, the hollow at her throat, her heavy, perfect breasts.<br />
<br />
Voices outside. It sounded like Zhiya and Tai talking. Anzi propped herself up on her elbows. “Your work calls you.”<br />
<br />
“It can wait.” He loosed the low slip she wore over her hips, and it fell into a puddle around her.<br />
<br />
The voices continued. Anzi said, “Let me ask Tai.”<br />
<br />
“Dressed like this?” He pushed her back, and she let him, sprawling beneath him.<br />
<br />
But she turned her face away. “Perhaps Mei Ing comes to call.”<br />
<br />
Mei Ing? The vacuous subprefect? “Let her wait, then.”<br />
<br />
“But she would be a worthy wife, Titus. Your own age.”<br />
<br />
“Mei Ing is of no interest to me. You are. Especially now, woman. Can you stop talking?”<br />
<br />
She smiled, but her eyes were still earnest. “I am too old to bear children.”<br />
<br />
That gave him pause. “Fourteen years, Anzi.” <em>Jinda ceb years</em> he wanted to say, as though that made the time passage of even less account. “Five thousand days. You are not too old. But if you were, have I ever said I wanted children?” God knew he had not done well in that arena and wasn’t sure he would<br />
ever try it again.<br />
<br />
Anzi pulled her robe around her and rolled over until she could sit up and face him. “I am happy to be second wife, truly.”<br />
<br />
Happy would not be the word he would use to describe her. “You are my first wife. My only wife.”<br />
<br />
“If not a wife, a concubine. She could soothe you.”<br />
<br />
“No, Anzi. <em>Enough</em>.”<br />
<br />
“But—”<br />
<br />
He pulled her across the bed and stopped her words with his mouth. Grasping her close, he managed to pull off her robe and throw it from the bed. A faint perfume came to him from the folds of the vanished robe, and more, the musk of her. He ran his hand between her legs, hearing her caught breath softly in his ear. The pulse of his blood came into his skin, his belly, his sex.<br />
<br />
“Titus,” she whispered.<br />
<br />
Her hand came around him, bringing an unbearable and sweet pressure, an acute hunger. <em>Do not speak</em>, he urged her silently. And she didn’t. He knelt between her raised knees. Pulling her hips forward, his full length went into her, and he paused, breathless.<br />
<br />
He leaned back enough to look at her face. She was everything he wanted, everything. When she would have said something, he shook his head, whispering, “Silently.”<br />
<br />
She moved on him, making their connection long and short, deep and shallow. He heard her gasping against his throat as he bent over her. “Shhh,”he said, forbidding her even that articulation. He meant to have their union in holy silence, and it made them all the more pent up with the waiting release. Leaning on his elbows, he began his own rhythm—with just enough strength at the elbows to hold him above her, and no weakness lower than that. The tent filled with the pulse of their lovemaking.<br />
<br />
When she could bear it no more, she arched her back, shuddering, letting go, the only sound her contorted breaths. Then his own release, churning from him, silent too, as he had demanded of her.<br />
<br />
They were still. Metered by the curtain, the lamp shed a glow on them, burnishing sweat-drenched skin. Outside, the pavilion had gone deeply quiet.<br />
<br />
They lay unspeaking, afraid to break the compact: I won’t say. And you won’t hear. Without words, we are saved.<br />
<br />
<br />
<em>Honorable Jinda ceb Horat and Most Beautiful Ones.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>I came among you, a foreigner. Lost in the great void, I found rescue among you. </em><em>You knew the pain of separation and abandonment in the void, and mercifully brought </em><em>me to a saving ground. For that I give you humble thanks.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Then I was a stranger in the cocreation of your great people. I did not speak your </em><em>language or sit in Manifest. You did not know my heart, nor I yours. To learn, I asked </em><em>for the tutelage of Nistoth, and as a Beautiful One, he accepted me, making me a </em><em>member of those he instructed. For this I thank him with great fervor.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Even though the Jinda ceb were kind, I missed my husband and my land. Time </em><em>was a slow dance for my husband. We did not know what would happen to him, </em><em>though you graciously allowed me to view him in his different world. I looked in upon </em><em>him and I could barely perceive that he moved. He looked still as stone, but that was </em><em>wrong. He did move, like a seed moves in the soil toward germination, he advanced </em><em>toward his terrible fate. Thousands of days passed for me, during which time I suffered </em><em>to know what would become of him. I looked every day, each time seeing a different </em><em>position for him. He was moving toward things we could not know.</em><br />
<br />
<em></em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>When I finally saw that the Tarig meant to kill my husband, having him in </em><em>prison, and Lord Ghinamid risen from his bier, I feared the death of the last hope of </em><em>the Rose (that dark and splendid realm). I begged Nistoth to intervene though it would </em><em>be an aggression, and not properly shared in Manifest. I urged the Beautiful One to </em><em>haste. The Rose will die. My husband will die. Bring me into the Entire, I pleaded, </em><em>and for the love the Beautiful One bore me, he carried me over.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>I do not know what effect this had in Manifest. I do not know if my departure </em><em>was seen as ill considered. If there were unintended consequences I wish to express my </em><em>deep remorse. I owed you nothing but honor and to submit to instruction as I had asked. </em><em>I value every day I spent in the artistry of your lives, though it was an ache in my </em><em>heart to be far from home.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>I did not say good-bye. My hope was to see my Jinda ceb friends again when you </em><em>came home to the Entire. By my husband’s decree, that will be soon.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>I look forward with joy to seeing Nistoth again and my many Jinda ceb friends. </em><em>I will be at your disposal to help you, if someone so unworthy as I can have anything </em><em>to offer your most honorable selves.</em><br />
<div style="text-align: right;"><em>—Ji Anzi</em><br />
</div><br />
<br />
With his advisors, Quinn listened to the messenger’s report. <br />
<br />
“It was as quiet as an Adda floating to ground. As gentle as a curtain opening.” The sturdy Jout spoke with a poetic sensibility. But the subject was cosmic geography: the minoral of the Jinda ceb brought into conjunction with the Entire.<br />
<br />
The Jout had finished his description of the great reconnection of the lost minoral of the Paion, although he had only witnessed the opening of the Scar to reveal the new minoral behind. He was a godder, it appeared. All of Zhiya’s operatives were godders or had pretended to be. This one wore a white sash as evidence of his calling.<br />
<br />
Quinn sat on a bench in the main room of the command tent. His occupation force—such as it was—looked like a camp. Some might wish for him to have formal quarters.<br />
<br />
Zhiya was one. She hated the title he’d adopted. But: “Regent,” she said, this being a council meeting, “the Jinda ceb may need a protective force near their minoral. They’re hated. An incident wouldn’t be helpful.”<br />
<br />
“They beat back the Tarig for a thousand thousand days.” Quinn thought the Jinda ceb could take care of themselves.<br />
<br />
Tai stood by, wearing his jeweled sword as always and with active scrolls in case something needed recording.<br />
<br />
Anzi sat serene and warmer toward him today, if he judged aright. Thinking of her tangled in green silk robes sent a flash of desire through him.<br />
<br />
Ci Dehai sat in the fifth chair. He had chosen to swear an oath to the regent of the Entire. Quinn trusted this decision, though Ci Dehai’s ravaged half-face could not be read and although swearing to Quinn put him directly against the Entire. The general of the Long War had answered, <em>That is a war for another day.</em> Quinn accepted the statement at face value. <em>If it comes to war, you may decide again, General.</em> Ci Dehai had bowed, the bargain struck.<br />
<br />
Quinn glanced at Anzi. She responded to Zhiya: “Let us ask the Jinda ceb when they arrive. They may want no reminders of wartime.”<br />
<br />
A delegation of Jinda ceb would control and stabilize all the mechanics and physics of the Entire, as the Tarig had once done. So they would be tech masters. Without the Jinda ceb, he could never send the Tarig back to the Heart—where they were going as soon as might be arranged. They were already massed at the Ascendancy, every one of them, having been summoned home by Ghinamid before the fight that felled the Sleeping Lord. As far as Quinn knew, they sat up in their manses in that quasi sleep they used to alleviate boredom. They did not stir out, under his threat of using the mSap to close their door home once and for all.<br />
<br />
Sometimes Lord Inweer came onto his balcony to gaze out. He was a true Tarig individual, or as close to one as a Tarig got. Those like him called themselves <em>solitaires</em>, who preferred never to mix with the general swarm in what the Lady Demat had called their <em>congregate state</em>. It gave Quinn pause, the thought of forcing the solitaires back to that primeval pool. But they had all—all of them—planned to burn the Rose. Banishment was a merciful punishment.<br />
<br />
After the messenger left, Ci Dehai spoke. “Where will we billet the Jinda ceb representatives when they arrive at the Ascendancy?”<br />
<br />
After a pause in which Quinn gave no opinion, Anzi offered hers. “The plaza. To keep some distance between them and the Tarig.”<br />
<br />
Zhiya said, “So long as they are not next to us.”<br />
<br />
“The farther away, the more exposed to a raid,” Ci Dehai countered.<br />
<br />
“My godders do not like the Paion.”<br />
<br />
Ci Dehai muttered, “A soldier does not have to like the company he gets.”<br />
<br />
“My godders are not soldiers.”<br />
<br />
Quinn held up a hand. “Ask your operatives, Zhiya, how they can best protect the Jinda ceb when they arrive. Report back to me.”<br />
<br />
A brief nod as she cut a glance at the general. “We have all lost those we love to these creatures.”<br />
<br />
Quinn sighed. So much for the peace of the Entire. How, by the Miserable God, had he arrived at this place, holding the Tarig at bay, changing the geography of minorals, inviting an ancient enemy home? The Rose, Anzi always reminded him. <em>We have done it all for the Rose. Otherwise, husband, would</em><br />
<em>we not be in a far sway, finding peace in each other’s arms?</em> That must have been in the first days after her return, before she decided that, next to him, she looked old.<br />
<br />
“Without the Jinda ceb,” Quinn went on, “the Entire will roll up like a rug. Tell this to your godders, Zhiya, and make sure they understand. We need the Jinda ceb, or the Tarig will have to stay and keep things running. I may be the regent, but I’m not a lord and never said I was.”<br />
<br />
Zhiya said, “We’re putting the All in the hands of those we hardly know.”<br />
<br />
What choice did they have? Compared with the Tarig, the Jinda ceb were vastly preferable, at least from Anzi’s reports. They had rescued her when she had drifted between branes. Quinn was very predisposed to think well of them.<br />
<br />
Quinn put iron in his voice. “Nevertheless, Zhiya, the Jinda ceb will take charge.”<br />
<br />
“Regent,” she said, evenly enough.<br />
<br />
“When the representatives arrive,” Anzi said, “I should greet them. It is best if they see a face they know. If they send a Beautiful One, then Titus, in respect you must come forward to see that individual.”<br />
<br />
“Not without a guard,” Zhiya said.<br />
<br />
Quinn shook his head. “No guards.”<br />
<br />
“If they wish to kill us,” Anzi said, “they don’t need proximity.”<br />
<br />
“If they were strong, they would have won the Long War,” Ci Dehai said.<br />
<br />
Anzi sighed. “They were afraid that the Entire would . . . roll up like a rug. They kept their war small. We should never forget their restraint.”<br />
<br />
Quinn declared, “I’ll meet any Beautiful Ones personally, without a guard.”<br />
<br />
He looked around at his emergency council. Protocols with the Jinda ceb were the least of their issues.<br />
<br />
There was Sydney, who wanted to preserve the Entire at any cost. Her goal would doubtless be to restart the engine at Ahnenhoon. To do so she needed either the Tarig or the Jinda ceb. He meant to banish the one and persuade the other. If either could be done.<br />
<br />
There was also Geng De’s claim to weave the future against him. Zhiya especially took this seriously. Because it was a navitar’s vision—her mother’s—she gave this idea more credence than he did. Despite Zhiya’s mother, despite the mutterings of Ghoris, Quinn doubted anyone could direct the<br />
future, or reach out to constrain a person’s will. Nevertheless, Zhiya had her operatives busy in Rim City, watching everything Sydney, Cixi, and Geng De did. So far, Sydney’s plans were impenetrable.<br />
<br />
“We should arrest Geng De,” Zhiya said, matching his thoughts.<br />
<br />
“We’re not strong enough even if they had given us provocation.”<br />
<br />
“You have the brightships.”<br />
<br />
And he could fly them, too. That had been John Hastings’s first assignment, to figure out how to pilot them. Using the mSap, it had not taken long. <br />
<br />
Ci Dehai said, “We could bring the army from Ahnenhoon. My forces would overwhelm the Rim City compound.”<br />
<br />
Quinn wouldn’t hear of an attack on the crystal bridge. “We have no proof.”<br />
<br />
Ci Dehai countered, “No intelligence is ever perfect. With the stakes so high, strike first.”<br />
<br />
“No,” Quinn said. He gazed at each one, locking his decision in.<br />
<br />
Ci Dehai muttered, “The army has nothing to do. An idle force goes soft.”<br />
<br />
“Not a reason for war.”<br />
<br />
Zhiya snorted. “We have every reason.”<br />
<br />
“We’ll do nothing until the Jinda ceb arrive,” Quinn said. He looked at each of them. For the first time it occurred to him that any one of them might be influenced by Geng De. Geng De might want a precipitous action to incite the Entire against him or even to influence the Jinda ceb by showing him as aggressor.<br />
<br />
He shoved the thought away, not wanting to believe such things were possible.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, the thought hovered.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Chapter Three</strong><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><em>Adopt no customs of foreign climes, lest you become a stranger in your own sway.</em></span><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">—from <em>Admonitions for Travelers</em></span><br />
<br />
BELLS CLANGED AND THREE-STRINGED INSTRUMENTS WHINED as the tenth course of dinner came around. Unless it was the fifteenth course. Sen Ni hadn’t kept count, having been satiated hours ago.<br />
<br />
“I can’t eat another thing,” she whispered to Cixi as another platter made its way toward the head table.<br />
<br />
“Her favorite dish,” Cixi murmured to the servant. “A large helping.” And once more Sen Ni’s plate was full. “Give no insult, dear girl. You can purge later.”<br />
<br />
Cixi was in her element, officiating among clamoring servants, bestowing nods upon magistrates who’d come expressly to see her, and also to see the mistress, and of course to gape at Geng De, a personage of great curiosity, said to be Sen Ni’s religious tutor. Lover, even.<br />
<br />
The room stank of incense and sharp, spicy food. As it should: the mistress of the sway—the quite new sway, the sway that had never been a sway before—was embarking on a journey of great distance. Rumor had it that it would take three navitar vessels to carry her silks as well as presents for her<br />
favorite barbarian, Riod of the Inyx. The undertaking became an excuse for festivities, if Rim City needed a reason for a party, which it normally would not, except that dark times had befallen the city, the scene of riots and the Tarig quelling. All the more reason to be happy if circumstance allowed.<br />
<br />
On Sen Ni’s other side, Geng De had fallen asleep. He had gamely partaken of the feast and listened carefully to the Red Throne priests’ Admonitions for Travelers, but now, at the late hour, had closed his eyes.<br />
<br />
Sen Ni rose from her place. “The wash stall, Mother.”<br />
<br />
She made her escape through the crowd of merchants, officials, and hangers-on. Followed by Emar-Vod and another Hirrin guard, Sen Ni passed from the dining hall into the cool corridor, making straight for the wash stall so that no one would intercept her.<br />
<br />
In the Entire, bathrooms were very large and the various apparatuses for washing and relieving functions were extensive. All Sen Ni’s wash stalls had mirrors—an innovation. She splashed water on her face and dried herself, noting with annoyance her hair arrangement, a tangle of knots at the back of<br />
her neck along with colorful spiked tassels protruding. Riod would hardly recognize her when she went home.<br />
<br />
No, Riod knew her by her heart, so it hardly mattered that she looked like a mandarin princess who couldn’t sit a tall chair much less an Inyx. Silks so fine they wouldn’t survive an hour’s ride under the bright . . .<br />
<br />
Oh, Riod, my heart. Look what has happened. The Tarig felled. We found their weakness, the place they cross over. Y<em>ou</em> found it, Riod. And my father used it to own the Entire. Look at me, a princess in silks. Presiding over platters of food . . . She yanked at the knots in her hair, throwing the tassels in the waste channel, and ran her hands through her hair, freeing it.<br />
<br />
By the time she got to her gardens, Emar-Vod had taken the correct measure of her mood, and held well back.<br />
<br />
Kicking off her shoes, Sen Ni walked barefoot on the soft ground cover, releasing a pungent scent of cloves. From between the trees came a glimmer of the sea, never far from sight on this great bridge over the Nigh. The orphanage lay beyond the garden, its scalloped roofs graceful against the Twilight Ebb sky. Geng De had urged her to start the home. Cynically, he was all for the public gesture; she had taken his measure early on. As a babe, he had fallen in the Nigh and came out minus a heart, but with a talent for weaving. A terrible trade. Yet she called him her brother because she needed his powers, now that her father had betrayed her, as Geng De had predicted he would.<br />
<br />
In moments of clarity she knew that it wasn’t father against daughter—a question merely of who would rule. It was about which world would survive. The Rose was vast and endowed with mass and sustaining economies of physics; the Entire was constructed, and would need resources from the Rose<br />
to sustain itself. The darklings should by rights share resources, but they would not. Even if they might claim they would, who would trust the Rose not to send a killing nan to eliminate a competitor? For this reason Helice Maki’s proposition to have it all burn immediately had been the Entire’s only true safety. But Helice was dead. And not only that, but Ahnenhoon was shut down. Soon, when Riod told the people what was at stake and how Titus Quinn had doomed them, the Entire would rise up and drive him off his throne.<br />
<br />
Given the justice of this cause, it seemed diabolically unfair that Titus was the<em> one rogue strand</em>, the one sentient whom Geng De couldn’t grasp in his hands. Why did heaven bestow such protection on Titus Quinn? Geng De was working very hard to tame that rogue strand, she knew.<br />
<br />
Approaching the garden gazebo, she glimpsed a shock of white hair in the bushes nearby. A very small child bent over a ball and, laughing, threw it up in the air. It bounced onto the ground cover, where the child raced to fetch it.<br />
<br />
He was so young that he still ran like he would fall over any minute. Dressed in a long tunic with his hair cropped close, he was too focused on the ball to notice Sen Ni’s approach. He squatted down to pick up the ball once more, and then tossed it with a heave of his arm. She watched him, finally <br />
ascending the gazebo stairs to take a seat on the bench inside.<br />
<br />
With jerky strides the boy pursued the ball into a tangle of vines. Once found, the ball flew out of the boy’s hands again. This time it landed in the gazebo, rolling under the bench. He spun around, looking.<br />
<br />
“Tiejun!” came a voice in the distance. “Tiejun!”<br />
<br />
Now the boy saw Sen Ni, and at the same time, the ball that had come to rest near her feet.<br />
<br />
“Tiejun!”<br />
<br />
Sen Ni picked up the ball and held it out to him. “Here it is.”<br />
<br />
The child stood soldier-still, considering her. Then he took a step toward the gazebo, his face suggesting that this interloper was something of a thief.<br />
<br />
She rolled the ball across the floor toward him.<br />
<br />
Just as he was about to pounce on it, a servant burst into the clearing, spying her quarry. “Tiejun! You are so bad a child!” She stalked forward and swept him up.<br />
<br />
She noticed a woman in the gazebo. “Oh! Is that you, Yali?” Then, seeing her mistake, she quickly bowed. “Mistress, pardon!”<br />
<br />
“No harm. Tiejun was entertaining me.”<br />
<br />
The servant misjudged Sen Ni’s mood, hastening to explain. “He ran and we tried to find him, but he wouldn’t sleep . . . and this ball, we’ve had no end of trouble with the ball and then—”<br />
<br />
Sen Ni stopped her with a wave. “Your name?”<br />
<br />
“Ling, Mistress.”<br />
<br />
“Well then, Ling, let him run free when you can. The children should play as much as possible, yes?” Sen Ni approached the nurse and child, holding out the toy. “Here, Tiejun. But bedtime now. Tomorrow, throwing again.”<br />
<br />
The boy took the ball, not smiling, but eyes more forgiving now that she had not kept his prize.<br />
<br />
<em>That’s right, small boy. Do not trust too easily.</em><br />
<br />
“My sister.” A voice from behind.<br />
<br />
Geng De had come into the clearing. “Here is a small party, escaped from the larger one.”<br />
<br />
“Yes,” Sen Ni said. “We’ve been throwing a ball.”<br />
<br />
On hearing the word <em>ball</em>, Tiejun thrust his fat fists in the air, holding the ball in two hands.<br />
<br />
“Sen Ni is good to give you the ball, young one.” Geng De flicked a glance at Ling. “Is she not?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, Master Navitar.” Ling’s demeanor was now all formality, with two personages catching her in the errant duty of containing Tiejun.<br />
<br />
“It was your mistress who made the orphanage and bid the children come. Remember to tell those you see.” He turned to Tiejun. “Can you say ‘Sen Ni’?”<br />
<br />
The boy solemnly stared. “Sen Ni,” Geng De repeated.<br />
<br />
“He has few words yet, Master,” Ling said.<br />
<br />
“Oh? I am not used to children. Do they not talk from the start? I did. But no matter; it was the Nigh that taught me.”<br />
<br />
Sen Ni waved Ling away, and the two figures disappeared into the shadows of the garden.<br />
<br />
“The people love you for the children’s sake,” Geng De said, watching Tiejun and the nurse depart.<br />
<br />
“That’s not why I wanted the orphanage.”<br />
<br />
“It’s why I thought of it.”<br />
<br />
The youngsters’ parents had been slaughtered by the lords in the midst of the city. Some of them fell before their own children’s eyes. “You have no heart, Geng De.”<br />
<br />
“No. Is it good to have one?” He sounded like he wanted to know.<br />
<br />
It gave her pause. “I’m not sure.” When had <em>having a heart</em> ever given her anything but the most exquisite pain?<br />
<br />
<em>Oh Riod</em>, she thought. Tomorrow’s journey would take her to him. If things could be as they had been—on the steppe with her one true friend—she would gladly give up the crystal bridge, the people’s love. The coming war.<br />
<br />
<br />
The old Jout had seen villainy in his day, but never murder. Now four citizens lay in their own blood on the Ascendancy’s hangar floor, struck down by Tarig lords.<br />
<br />
Breund felt sickened and angry, and though he was old and no great personage, he spat out at the nearest lord, “These deaths will be remembered.” The lord’s hand came up, claws extruded.<br />
<br />
“Leave him be.” Lord Inweer had moved between Breund and the other lord. “He is mine.”<br />
<br />
The claws retracted. “Kill him yourself, then.”<br />
<br />
Breund steeled himself, though his petaled skin would make him hard to kill with mere claws. Lord Inweer resented him, he felt sure. Constantly at the lord’s side, ready to report any irregularities. But Inweer made no move.<br />
<br />
Across the hangar, Tarig crowded into the brightships. Just the solitaires, of course. The ones who feared the Heart.<br />
<br />
The lord who had threatened him said, “We must all leave at once. Choose your ship, Cousin.”<br />
<br />
Lord Inweer’s deep voice came softly. “But all these ships are going to the same place. Therefore there is no difference among them.”<br />
<br />
“No, my lord, we will separate. We will spread out.”<br />
<br />
“Still. The brightships will fall from the sky.” Lord Inweer surveyed the five ships, adding, “Each one.”<br />
<br />
“Ah? That never fell from the sky before?”<br />
<br />
“A manner of speaking, Cousin. But you will all perish. Where can you go? We are hated, blamed for the Long War, despised for our very selves. Better to stay.”<br />
<br />
Breund allowed a deep breath to fill his chest. Lord Inweer would stay. Breund would keep his prisoner. The regent had chosen a congregant of the Red Throne to watch over Lord Inweer, and it would not redound to the society’s credit should he fail.<br />
<br />
The other Tarig stared blackly. “Titus Quinn will force us back to the Heart. We will lose our particularity. You are one of us, Cousin. You wish to reform in the fire?”<br />
<br />
“One does not wish it, but Titus Quinn can reprieve. He needs us.”<br />
<br />
“He does not. He will have the Jinda ceb Horat. You are foolish, Cousin. With our lesser cousins, you will walk into the fire.” He turned and strode toward the nearest brightship.<br />
<br />
Lord Inweer watched as the lord leapt through the open access hatch of the ship. The gap closed behind him. Inweer murmured, “Your regent will not banish this bright lord, Breund. Do not fear losing your post.”<br />
<br />
Breund had never asked to be the lord’s keeper and did not, in fact, fear losing his position so much as his good name.<br />
<br />
A shimmer overhead. The shield above the hangar had evaporated. Without pause, the brightships leaped from their berths, rushing into the air like a flock of dragons. In perfect synchronicity, they shot out at angles, separating toward what might be their destinations in the five primacies. But who knew the Tarig mind? Surely not Breund, a retired merchant, an elder of the Red Throne, a common sentient who never knew the Ascendancy until the change of power came upon them.<br />
<br />
He watched as the brightships vanished into the bright. What could they hope to do, these solitaires? Who would they rule, or where would they find mansions to contain them? Titus Quinn would pursue them. Oh, but now all the ships were gone. Perhaps, when the Jinda ceb came, they would build new ones.<br />
<br />
The lord gestured toward the nearest doorway, flicking his wrist in a casual gesture. “Make your report, Breund.”<br />
<br />
“First we look to the wounded.” Breund kneeled down beside the nearest guard.<br />
<br />
“When a Tarig means to kill, success is usual.”<br />
<br />
The lord might be right, but Breund knelt to his task, by each of the four guards. The solitaires had dispatched all of them with a stroke to each throat. So close to the bright, the bloody floor shimmered in its glare.<br />
<br />
“Remain here, Lord Inweer,” Breund said. He left with what haste his old legs could muster. He would be the bearer of dark news, indeed: The solitaires fled. And toward what machinations?<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Chapter Four</strong><br />
<br />
<em><span style="font-size: x-small;">They fought, Titus Quinn and Lord Hadenth, a match that could have but one outcome, being a human against a Tarig. Titus had a knife; the lord, boot blades and extruded claws. But the Tarig had ridden a brightship through the silver fire of the sky. His skin was gone, and the last scraps of his mind. Titus </span></em><em><span style="font-size: x-small;">closed for the kill. But the lord, still proud, turned and walked into the embrace of the storm wall.</span></em><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">—from <em>Annals of a Former Prince</em></span><br />
<br />
IN DEEP EBB, Quinn moved among a contingent of guards across the plaza, making for the hill of mansions. <br />
<br />
At his side Zhiya said, “Let me take stock of the hangar. No need for you to come among them.”<br />
<br />
“If they wish me dead, easily done.” Four hundred eighty lords remained.<br />
<br />
“Why hand them the knife, my dear?”<br />
<br />
He didn’t believe these Tarig posed a danger. They still feared the mSap. He could activate it and destroy their door home. They wanted to go home, now that it was inevitable, now that, he suspected, they no longer cared about staying—the whole charade being over: the radiant land, the gracious lords, the patriotic war.<br />
<br />
Zhiya said, “The worst is, they took the brightships.”<br />
<br />
He nodded. A major blunder that they had let the brightships get away.<br />
<br />
Zhiya’s guards, twenty strong, clattered in full weaponry behind him. Her ready force of supposed godders provided him with bodyguards if not a fighting force. They crossed two plaza bridges and began climbing the steps, now moving double-file, Quinn and Zhiya in the lead.<br />
<br />
“Send Ci Dehai to Ahnenhoon,” Zhiya said, “to stand watch over it.”<br />
<br />
He had thought that he should send the general. But it did little good to hold the fortress when the engine could be activated remotely. Had the solitaires that power? He thought that they did.<br />
<br />
But why would the solitaires want to restart Ahnenhoon? The game was over for them. They would now be a small, despised fragment of the Tarig elite. They could not, even with all their powers, hope to control the population unless by the consent of the masses. Ahnenhoon was likely safe from them; they had fled for their lives, as simple as that. And yet it was safest to order Ahnenhoon reduced to rubble.<br />
<br />
“What happens if I take Ahnenhoon down? Dismantle the engine.” They ascended past the terrace where he had once hidden with Lady Demat when Ghinamid was on the hunt. Then, a few steps more, and off to the left lay the garden of the child he’d known only by the term of endearment Small Girl. His history was all here, woven into the adobe stone of the mansions where he had been prince, fugitive, prisoner. They went past the mansion of Chiron, climbing.<br />
<br />
“I could have the army take it apart. Rebuilding might be impossible for a handful of lords.”<br />
<br />
“Time to do it, Titus.”<br />
<br />
But taking away the thing that fueled the Entire might paint Quinn as an enemy of the Entire. “Sentients might see it as the Entire’s death sentence. They might favor Sen Ni.”<br />
<br />
“Then she takes control. But without Ahnenhoon’s engine, she is declawed. Tear it down, I say.”<br />
<br />
They entered the hangar. Empty of ships, as he had known; but still, a shock. Twenty-three solitaires had escaped, all of them except Inweer, who waited in the shadows against the distant wall. The enormous shelter with its wedge-shaped ship bays was a lonely and bloody scene. Zhiya went forward, kneeling by the nearest body.<br />
<br />
Breund came forward. “Master Regent, Inweer is still here.”<br />
<br />
“Thank you, Breund. Did Lord Inweer raise a hand against these guards?”<br />
<br />
“No, Regent.”<br />
<br />
“Or threaten you?”<br />
<br />
“No, Master Regent.”<br />
<br />
Well, then. Inweer would live to see another day. Quinn turned to a guard. “Take the bodies away, please. See to the place.” The guard left to summon workers.<br />
<br />
Zhiya crouched by a Chalin woman, stocky and older. “Her name was Weng.”<br />
<br />
“The last to die at the hands of the Tarig. I’m sorry, Zhiya.”<br />
<br />
Zhiya’s long braid had fallen over her shoulder, dipping onto the floor, where it wicked up blood. “The last?” She looked toward the edge of the hangar where the ships had launched. “It will be the last when they all swim in the fire.”<br />
<br />
Quinn walked over to the lip of the hangar, very close to the edge. Below, the spires and roofs of the lords’ mansions, and beyond, the glare of the Sea of Arising. Above, the dome of the silver sky. It was as though he stood in a void, with a few floating houses at his feet, habitations of creatures he could<br />
not understand although he had spent long years among them.<br />
<br />
Breund came to his side again. “Lord Inweer asks to join you, Regent.”<br />
<br />
Quinn stared at the roofs below. Little specks of black littered the roofs and pinnacles. Bird drones. Stopped in place, encrustations on the roof tiles. He wanted no flying spies, though he could have used some to warn him of this disaster.<br />
<br />
“He may come.”<br />
<br />
Breund glanced at the precipitous fall. “Will you have a guard, Regent?”<br />
<br />
“Let him come.”<br />
<br />
Breund ducked away.<br />
<br />
He had driven the solitaires to this escape. They, of all the Tarig, were averse to the undifferentiated consciousness of the Heart. He should have banished them first, not waited like this. He could have demanded their Tarig cousins send them home. But how to tell which were solitaires and which were not? And, further reason to wait, of all the Tarig he might have trusted the solitaires to protect the Entire’s functions, its arts and devices that bloody well kept it humming. Why should the others care who had their homeland and for whom the Entire had only been a diversion? So he’d delayed, and given them time to conspire.<br />
<br />
He heard Lord Inweer’s approach. “Where did they go?” Quinn asked him without turning.<br />
<br />
“To hide.” Inweer moved next to him, gazing out also. “They did not tell me where they would go; perhaps they do not know.”<br />
<br />
No apology. Well, Inweer took no responsibility for this, Quinn guessed.<br />
<br />
“They might go to live in another cosmos.” He snaked a look at Inweer. “Or they might shore up the engine at Ahnenhoon.”<br />
<br />
“If they do, let me prevent them.”<br />
<br />
So this was his leverage. “What do you want, my lord?”<br />
<br />
“My true life.”<br />
<br />
It gave Quinn pause to hear the lord state a humble wish to live. Add to that, Inweer no longer affected the twisted pronouns. Maybe this was one way that he asserted his new individualism. Behind them, Quinn heard the arrival of attendants who came to take charge of the bodies. It reminded him of all that the lords had done against him and those he loved. <br />
<br />
Perhaps Inweer guessed these thoughts. He said, “We lose our particularity in the congregate state. It is a horror to those who have kept separate these thousands of days. Perhaps you will grant a reprieve, ah?”<br />
<br />
“Do you ask for all of them, or only yourself?”<br />
<br />
“In your place, I would banish them. Twenty-three Tarig is a force. One is not.”<br />
<br />
Quinn turned to look at Inweer at last. He stepped back a pace so that he did not have to look up at such an angle. “You can’t go free.”<br />
<br />
“I wish to be free.”<br />
<br />
“No, my lord. Your crimes . . . I can’t, I won’t pardon them.” Inweer had been at Ahnenhoon, the one charged with keeping the machine ready.<br />
<br />
Inweer countered, “You do not know the Jinda ceb Horat. You will be at their mercy, for the disciplines required to preserve things.”<br />
<br />
“It’s their home. They’ll preserve things.”<br />
<br />
“But perhaps not the Rose.”<br />
<br />
That was the ugly thought that was never far from his mind. That the Jinda ceb would solve the resource issues by the easiest course just as the Tarig had.<br />
<br />
“In that case you and I, Lord Inweer, can’t prevent them.” Inweer would have to offer more than policing of Ahnenhoon.<br />
<br />
“There is Johanna, though,” Inweer said.<br />
<br />
A gust of wind scoured into the hangar, taking with it the remains of the conversation. Irrelevantly, Quinn remembered that since the brightships had just flown, the force field that kept the hangar protected would still be suppressed.<br />
<br />
“Johanna,” Quinn said, low and wary. <br />
<br />
“Her story is different than you know.”<br />
<br />
The lord stood under the scalding bright, his skin glinting bronze, impervious. Quinn felt an urge to back the lord against the lip of the hangar. To see him fall.<br />
<br />
“Tell me, by the Miserable God.”<br />
<br />
Breund and the attendants approached with queries written in their expressions.<br />
<br />
“Leave us!” Quinn snapped. He turned to Inweer, struggling for control.<br />
<br />
The lord narrowed his eyes at this display of temper, and said, more conciliatory, “I sent her to safety. I gave out that she was buried at Ahnenhoon where she fell. The Five had to be placated, and she was a traitor to my cousins. For myself, I understood her.”<br />
<br />
Quinn tried to understand what he was hearing. Johanna’s death. A lie. Relief moved through him, strong and fresh. She had not deserved what she got when he’d left her to the Tarig revenge. He remembered that terrible hour at Ahnenhoon: He had had the nan, and it was leaking, and he had to give it to the Nigh before it destroyed the plains of Ahnenhoon, and everything with it. So he fled and Johanna lay dying. Mo Ti reported her dead.<br />
<br />
“Where is she?”<br />
<br />
“That knowledge is, you understand, my last advantage.” Inweer went on, “I am a lord of the Tarig consensus. I am a part of the Tarig <em>will</em> that created the Entire. Now I have become less, a separate being, a particular entity. I do not know what I am, altogether. But I will not give up Johanna’s truth<br />
without an advantage. You would do the same, against me. Give me the honor of a bargain.”<br />
<br />
Quinn moved to the very lip of the hangar, trying to catch another breath of wind, but it was all calm and hot. “Is she well? Is she free?”<br />
<br />
“She is as free as one could devise. Her wounds are healed.”<br />
<br />
“What is the bargain?”<br />
<br />
“Leave me free for a thousand days. Then learn her fate.”<br />
<br />
Quinn turned back to the lord, letting bitterness come into his voice. “A thousand days? Not a long life, for a lord of the Tarig consensus.”<br />
<br />
“After a thousand days say whether I am a danger or not. If not, let me stay.”<br />
<br />
Quinn waved Breund forward, eager for a practical problem to resolve. “What?” he asked Breund.<br />
<br />
“Regent, the attendants need the shield back, to make active the cleaning devices that will do for the stains.”<br />
<br />
Bloodstains. The molecular cleansing of the Ascendancy might not work with the shield gone, lest the function somehow interfere with ships coming or going. Well, why didn’t they trigger the dome in that case? Then he realized that he stood too near the edge for the shield to be safely activated.<br />
<br />
“Yes, Breund, activate it.” Moving back from the edge, he approached Inweer. “A thousand days is too long.” The lord was begging for his life. It seemed pathetic that Inweer had fallen so far. “Go back to your quarters, my lord. Give us respect for our dead.” He walked away, heading back through the hangar, leaving them all to their duties. Overhead the shield fell over the place in a soft buzz and a waver of light.<br />
<br />
He went down the outside steps alone, waving off the guards, thinking, <em>Johanna is still alive.</em><br />
<br />
Lord Inweer was using her once again.<br />
<br />
<br />
“When the Jinda ceb come, Titus, let them heal your arm.” Anzi murmured this as they sat together in bed reading scrolls that Tai said needed their attention. She stroked his forearm, where a deep scar made a furrow.<br />
<br />
“I may not need that arm.” He smiled at her, trying to make light of the infirmity, the one he kept in penance. Penance for killing the Tarig child, for drowning that being who was no child at all but who always would be mixed up in his mind with another child he had betrayed. His own.<br />
<br />
“We have need of everything,” Anzi said. Every advantage, she thought, every strength. For what was coming. When the Jinda ceb arrived, she would persuade them to safeguard the Rose. She knew them and was their friend. Especially, she was Nistoth’s friend. She would never forget his kindness in<br />
delivering her into the fray when the Ascendancy was coming apart and she feared for the loss of her husband and the Rose. Had he not acted quickly, she might have been too late; had he stopped to consult Manifest, it all would have been too late.<br />
<br />
Outside, Deep Ebb brought silence to the plaza, the only sound the soft passage of water through the nearest canal.<br />
<br />
Titus passed a scroll to her, saying absently, “The list of senior functionaries that Suzong proposes to keep in the Magisterium.”<br />
<br />
Evening was the only time they were alone to talk, and though she hated for him to lose a quiet moment, still, she said, “Do you trust him?”<br />
<br />
He put down his scroll. “Inweer? Trust—I wouldn’t say trust.”<br />
<br />
“What would you say?”<br />
<br />
But Titus had no answer, staring at the tent wall as though hoping for a clue written there.<br />
<br />
Anzi’s heart sank. He couldn’t be thinking of letting Inweer remain. Who had more reason to hate Titus, to hate the change of regime? “Then send him home.”<br />
<br />
“He didn’t run with the solitaires.”<br />
<br />
Strangely, Titus was softening by the hour to Inweer’s proposal. Why? Was it Johanna? Inweer had said she was free and well. What more did Titus need to know on the subject of Johanna? But Anzi knew very well what more he might need. Anzi had met Johanna. Defiant, brave, beautiful. Young.<br />
<br />
She put down Suzong’s scroll and turned to her husband. “He might want to appear trustworthy, only to turn on us later.” When Titus didn’t answer, she offered a compromise, “Pardon him if you must, but keep him under control in the Ascendancy.”<br />
<br />
“Why do you fear him so, Anzi?”<br />
<br />
“Why do you favor him?”<br />
<br />
At the sharpening tone of the conversation, they both paused. They were on the edge of things Anzi did not wish to speak of. Johanna’s return, for one. <br />
Perhaps it was best if she did return, if it was what Titus wanted. It was beneath Anzi to quibble about the status of a woman who had suffered so much, and for whose fate Anzi was originally responsible. And while Anzi was content for him to take other lovers, Johanna was different. Somehow different.<br />
<br />
Titus laid his work aside. “You may be right, Anzi. Let me think on it.” He kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll walk out.”<br />
<br />
She wanted to go with him, but he was walking out to be alone. So the conversation had separated them further, and she had not even said the worst things.<br />
<br />
“I love you,” she whispered.<br />
<br />
“And I you. Desperately and forever. Be sure of that.”<br />
<br />
But she wasn’t sure. They had been separated for so long. She was no longer young—a thing Titus claimed made no difference. But was she the same Anzi who he had loved before? She would become that Anzi again, if she knew how. But the passage of time and her stay among the Jinda ceb had changed her subtly, in ways she could never untangle. He no longer knew her. How could he love her, then? His protestations did little to reassure her.<br />
<br />
It would be like him to say the honorable thing.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><br />
</div><div align="center">from <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/PrinceofStorms.html">Prince of Storms</a></em> © <a href="http://www.kaykenyon.com/">Kay Kenyon</a><br />
</div><div align="center">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.martiniere.com/">Stephan Martiniere</a><br />
</div><div align="center">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke<br />
</div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXnuUMFVnQls70_c14JgfkxzdPkHzRnDIFsxRA5mczgETl_c_QS_ilxUeH8Ys8pA0ml_AfuU6yop6uzZQx5csQXRn5qIOt2Kz8XurXJ_v7t1sJXR40nEz8kUhmH8Qz0GHUcDRgPzQ3_A/s1600-h/IMG_1709-1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" mt="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSXnuUMFVnQls70_c14JgfkxzdPkHzRnDIFsxRA5mczgETl_c_QS_ilxUeH8Ys8pA0ml_AfuU6yop6uzZQx5csQXRn5qIOt2Kz8XurXJ_v7t1sJXR40nEz8kUhmH8Qz0GHUcDRgPzQ3_A/s320/IMG_1709-1.JPG" /></a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><strong>Kay Kenyon</strong>, nominated for the Philip K. Dick and the John W. Campbell awards, began her writing career in Duluth, MN as a copywriter for radio and TV. She is the author of nine sf/f novels including <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BrightofSky.html">Bright of the Sky</a></em>, <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/WorldTooNear.html">A World Too Near</a></em>, and <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/CitywithoutEnd.html">City Without End</a></em>. Recent short stories appeared in <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/FastForward-2.html">Fast Forward 2</a></em> and <em>The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Vol. Two</em>. Her work has been translated into French, Russian, Spanish and Czech. When not writing, she encourages newcomers to the field through workshops, a writing e-newsletter, and a conference in eastern Washington State, Write on the River, of which she is chair. She lives in Wenatchee, WA with her husband. Visit her online at <a href="http://www.kaykenyon.com/">http://www.kaykenyon.com/</a><br />
</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-34261165604241378142009-12-18T14:07:00.003-06:002009-12-21T12:30:32.517-06:00The Silver Skull—Swords of Albion by Mark Chadbourn<div style="text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpr2_dSBHPjYZhIh0QrD6pRV8esCepmxAqNpCMgj3N06fNtmZwKvnrNTqw13_X9lI7AZ21VC-C8TPDaYb9b4PequB4FmJR-mrA-hPsUbD6skRcGPjIf8f8gwOK3XvmvoHP0HFrHpToZ2I/s1600-h/silverskull.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpr2_dSBHPjYZhIh0QrD6pRV8esCepmxAqNpCMgj3N06fNtmZwKvnrNTqw13_X9lI7AZ21VC-C8TPDaYb9b4PequB4FmJR-mrA-hPsUbD6skRcGPjIf8f8gwOK3XvmvoHP0HFrHpToZ2I/s320/silverskull.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div align="left"><b><em><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1261151698006">The Silver Skull—</a></em></b><b><em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/SilverSkull.html">Swords of Albion</a></em> features a devilish plot to assassinate the queen, a cold war enemy hell-bent on destroying the nation, incredible gadgets, a race against time around the world to stop the ultimate doomsday device…and Elizabethan England’s greatest spy. </b><b></b><strong></strong><br />
</div><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">Meet Will Swyfte – adventurer, swordsman, rake, swashbuckler, wit, scholar and the greatest of Walsingham’s new band of spies. His exploits against the forces of Philip of Spain have made him a national hero, lauded from Carlisle to Kent. Yet his associates can barely disguise their incredulity – what is the point of a spy whose face and name is known across Europe?<br />
</div><div align="left"><br />
</div><div align="left"><br />
</div><div align="left">But Swyfte’s public image is a carefully-crafted façade to give the people of England something to believe in, and to allow them to sleep peacefully at night. It deflects attention from his real work – and the true reason why Walsingham’s spy network was established.<br />
</div><div align="left"><br />
</div><div align="left">A Cold War seethes, and England remains under a state of threat. The forces of Faerie have been preying on humanity for millennia. Responsible for our myths and legends, of gods and fairies, dragons, griffins, devils, imps and every other supernatural menace that has haunted our dreams, this power in the darkness has seen humans as playthings to be tormented, hunted or eradicated.<br />
</div><div align="left"><br />
</div><div align="left">But now England is fighting back!<br />
</div><div align="left"><br />
</div><div align="left">Magical defences have been put in place by the Queen’s sorcerer Dr John Dee, who is also a senior member of Walsingham’s secret service and provides many of the bizarre gadgets utilised by the spies. Finally there is a balance of power. But the Cold War is threatening to turn hot at any moment…<br />
</div><div align="left"><br />
</div><div align="left">Will now plays a constant game of deceit and death, holding back the Enemy’s repeated incursions, dealing in a shadowy world of plots and counter-plots, deceptions, secrets, murder, where no one… and no thing…is quite what it seems.<br />
</div><strong><br />
</strong><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><em>RT Book Reviews</em> not only gave <em><strong><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/SilverSkull.html">The Silver Skull</a></strong></em> 4 1/2 stars, but also called it, “Fantastic—[a] keeper,” ...the new Swords of Albion series, set in an alternate Elizabethan England, gets off to a smashing start. The historical detail sets a believable backdrop, and the main character, a spy, could pass for a fantastical James Bond. Chadbourn sets a fast pace, pitting his characters against supernatural threats with a bit of horror thrown in.”<br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Here is your chance to read an excerpt, below:<br />
</div><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-size: large;">The Silver Skull</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Swords of Albion</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br />
</b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Mark Chadbourn</span></b><br />
</div><br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Prologue</b><br />
<br />
Far beneath the slow-moving Thames, a procession of flickering lights drew inexorably towards London from the east. The pace was funereal, the trajectory steady, purposeful. In that hour after midnight, the spectral glow under the black waters passed unseen by all but two observers.<br />
<br />
“There! What are they, sir?” In the lantern light, the guard’s fear was apparent as he peered over the battlements of the White Tower, ninety feet above the river.<br />
<br />
Matthew Mayhew, who had seen worse things in his thirty years than the guard could ever dream in his worst fever-sleep, replied with boredom, “I see the proud heart of the greatest nation on Earth. I see a city safe and secure within its walls, where the queen may sleep peacefully.”<br />
<br />
“There!” The guard pointed urgently.<br />
<br />
“A waterman has met with disaster.” Mayhew sighed. With a temper as short as his stature, the Tower guards had learned to handle him with care and always praised the fine court fashions he took delight in parading.<br />
<br />
The guard gulped the cold air of the March night. “And his lantern still burns on the bottom? What of the other lights? And they move—”<br />
<br />
“The current.”<br />
<br />
The guard shook his head. “They are ghosts!”<br />
<br />
Mayhew gave a dismissive snort.<br />
<br />
“There are such things! Samuel Hale saw the queen’s mother walking with her head beneath her arm in the Chapel of Saint Peter ad Vincula.Why, the Tower is the most haunted place in England! The Two Princes, Margaret Pole, Lady Jane Grey . . . all seen here, Master Mayhew. Damned by God to walk this world after their deaths.”<br />
<br />
Mayhew studied the slow-moving lights, imagining fish in the deep with their own candles to guide their way through the inky dark.<br />
<br />
The guard’s fear made his lantern swing so wildly the shadows flew across the Tower.<br />
<br />
Steadying the lantern, Mayhew said, “When this great fortress was built five hundred years gone, King William had the mortar tempered with the blood of beasts. Do you know why that was?”<br />
<br />
“No, no. I—”<br />
<br />
“Suffice it to say,” Mayhew interrupted wearily, “that you are safe here from all supernatural threat.”<br />
<br />
The guard calmed a little. “Safe, you say?”<br />
<br />
“England’s defences are built on more than the rock of its people.”<br />
<br />
The lights veered away from the centre of the river towards the Tower of London where it nestled inside the old Roman walls, guarding the eastern approach to the capital. Mayhew couldn’t prevent a shiver running up his spine.<br />
<br />
“Complete your rounds,” he said sharply, overcompensating in case the guard had seen his weakness. “We must ensure that theWhite Tower remains secure against England’s enemies.”<br />
<br />
“And the prisoner you are charged to guard?”<br />
<br />
“I will attend to him.” Mayhew pressed a scented handkerchief against his nose to block out the stink of the city’s filth caught on the wind. Sometimes it was unbearable. He hated being away from the court where the virtues of life were more apparent, hated the boredom of his task, and at that moment hated that he was caught on the cold summit of the White Tower when he should have been inside by the fire.<br />
<br />
He cast his eye around the fortress where pools of darkness were held back by the lanterns strung along the walkways among the wards. The only movement came from the slow circuit of the night watch.<br />
<br />
The Tower of London was an unassailable symbol of England. Solid Kentish ragstone formed the bulk of the impregnableWhite Tower, protected by its own curtain wall and moat, with a further curtain wall and thirteen towers guarding the Inner Ward beyond. Finally, there was the Outer Ward, with another solid wall, five towers, and three bastions. Everything valuable to the nation lay within the walls—the Crown jewels, the treasury, the Royal Mint, the armoury, and England’s most dangerous prisoners, including Mayhew’s personal charge.<br />
<br />
As he made his way down the stone steps, he was greeted by the clatter of boots ascending and the light of another lantern. William Osborne appeared, his youthful face and intelligent grey eyes unsettled. Mayhew contemptuously wondered if he now regretted giving up his promising career in the law to join the Queen’s Service out of love for his country, not realising what would be asked of him.<br />
<br />
“What is it?” Mayhew demanded.<br />
<br />
“A disturbance. At the Traitors’ Gate.”<br />
<br />
<i>Where the river lights were heading</i>, Mayhew thought. “The gate remains secure, and well guarded?” he asked.<br />
<br />
Osborne’s face loomed white in the lamplight. “There are six men upon it, as our Lord Walsingham demanded.”<br />
<br />
“And yet?”<br />
<br />
Osborne’s voice quavered with uncertainty. “The guards say the restraining beam moves of its own accord. Bolts draw without the help of human hand. Is this what we always feared?”<br />
<br />
Pushing past him with irritation, Mayhew snapped, “You know as well as I that the Tower is protected. These guards are frighted like maidens.” For all his contempt at his colleague’s words, Mayhew’s chest tightened in apprehension.<br />
<br />
<i>Walsingham said it could never happen, he reminded himself. He told the </i><i>queen . . . Burghley . . .</i><br />
<br />
Trying to maintain his decorum, he descended to the ground floor with studied nonchalance and stepped out into the Inmost Ward. The whitewashed walls of the Tower glowed in the lantern light.<br />
<br />
“Listen!” Osborne’s features flared in the gloom as he raised his lantern to illuminate the way ahead.<br />
<br />
The steady silence of the Tower was shattered by a cacophony of roars and howls, barks, shrieks, and high-pitched chattering. In the Royal Menagerie, the lions, leopards, and lynxes threw themselves around their pens, while the other exotic beasts tore at the mud of their enclosures in a frenzy.<br />
<br />
“What do they sense?” There was a querulous tremble in Osborne’s voice.<br />
<br />
Scanning the Inmost Ward for any sign of movement, Mayhew relented.<br />
<br />
“You know.”<br />
<br />
Osborne winced at his words. “Are you not afraid?”<br />
<br />
“This is the work we were charged to do, for queen and country. Raise the alarm. Then we must take ourselves to the prisoner.”<br />
<br />
Within moments, guards raced to their positions under Osborne’s direction. Venturing to the gate, they peered beyond the curtain wall to where the string of lanterns kept the dark at bay.<br />
<br />
“Nothing,” Osborne said with relief, his voice almost lost beneath the screams of the animals.<br />
<br />
Mayhew kept his attention on Saint Thomas’s Tower in the outer curtain wall. Beyond it was the river, and beneath it lay the water entrance that had become known as Traitors’ Gate, after the enemies of the Crown who had been transported through it to imprisonment or death. The guards had disappeared inside, but there was no clamour.<br />
<br />
After five minutes, Osborne’s relief was palpable. “A false alarm, then. Perhaps it was only Spanish spies.With the country on the brink of war, they must be operating everywhere. Yes?”<br />
<br />
A guard emerged from Saint Thomas’s Tower, pausing for a moment on the threshold. Mayhew and Osborne watched him curiously. With an odd, lurching gait, he picked a winding path towards them.<br />
<br />
“Is he drunk?” Mayhew growled. “His head will be on the block by noon if he has deserted his post.”<br />
<br />
“I . . . I do not . . .” The words died in Osborne’s throat as the guard’s path became more erratic. His jerky movements were deeply upsetting, as if he had been afflicted by a palsy.<br />
<br />
Mayhew cursed under his breath. “I gave up a life at court for this.”<br />
<br />
As the guard neared, they saw his hands continually went to his head as if searching for a missing hat. Despite himself, Mayhew reached for the knife hidden in the folds of his cloak.<br />
<br />
“I am afraid,” Osborne whispered.<br />
<br />
“Do you hear music?” Mayhew cocked his head. “Like pipes playing, caught on the breeze?” As he breathed deeply of the night air, he realised the foul odour of the city had been replaced by sweet, seductive scents that took him back to his childhood. A tear stung his eye. “That aroma,” he noted, “like cornfields beneath the summer moon.” He inhaled. “Honey, from the hive my grandfather kept.”<br />
<br />
“What is wrong with you?” Osborne demanded. “This is no time for dreams!”<br />
<br />
Mayhew’s attention snapped back to the approaching guard. As he entered a circle of torchlight, Mayhew saw for the first time that something was wrong with the guard’s face. Revolted yet fascinated, he tried to see the detail behind the guard’s pawing hands. The skin was unduly white and had the texture of sackcloth. When the hands came away, Mayhew was sickened to glimpse large dark eyes that resembled nothing so much as buttons, and a row of stitches where the mouth had been. An illusion, he tried to tell himself, but he was left with an impression of the dollies the old women sold in Cheapside at Christmastime.<br />
<br />
“God’s wounds!” Osbourne exclaimed. “What has happened to him?”<br />
<br />
Before Mayhew could answer, a blur of ochre and brown burst from the shadows with a terrible roar, slamming the guard onto the turf. Claws revealed bones and organs, and tearing jaws sprayed viscera around the convulsing form. But the most chilling thing was that the guard did not utter a sound.<br />
<br />
<i>He could not</i>, Mayhew thought.<br />
<br />
The lion’s triumphant roar jolted Mayhew and Osborne from their shock.<br />
<br />
“The beasts have escaped the Menagerie!” Mayhew thrust Osborne back towards the White Tower, where they ordered the guards who remained within to bar the door and defend it with their lives.<br />
<br />
On the steps, Osborne rested one hand on the stone and bowed his head, fighting the waves of panic that threatened to consume him.<br />
<br />
Mayhew eyed him contemptuously. “When you volunteered to become one of Walsingham’s men, you vowed to deal with the great affairs of state with courage and fortitude. Now look at you.”<br />
<br />
“How can you be so hardened to this terror?” Osborne blinked away tears of dread. “When I stepped away from my quiet halls of study, it was to give my life in service to England and our queen, and to protect her from the great Catholic conspiracy . . . and the . . . the Spanish . . .” He swallowed. “The threats on her life from those who wish to turn us back to the terrible rule of Rome. Not this! I never foresaw that my soul would be placed at risk, until it was too late.”<br />
<br />
“Of course not,” Mayhew sneered. “If the common herd knew the real reason why England has established a network of spies the envy of all other nations, they would never rest in their beds. Do not fail me. Or the queen.”<br />
<br />
Osborne steadied himself. “You are right, Mayhew. I act like a child. I must be strong.”<br />
<br />
Mayhew clapped him on the shoulder with little affection. “Come, then. We have work to do.”<br />
<br />
They had only climbed a few steps when a tremendous crash resounded from the great oak door through which they had entered the Tower. Flashing a wide-eyed stare at Mayhew, Osborne took the steps two at a time. As they raced along the ringing corridors, Osborne asked breathlessly, “What is coming, Mayhew?”<br />
<br />
“Best not to think of that now.”<br />
<br />
“What did they do to the guard? I knew him. Carter, a good man, with a wife and two girls.”<br />
<br />
“Stop asking foolish questions!”<br />
<br />
The scream of one of the guards at the door below echoed through the Tower, cut short mercifully soon.<br />
<br />
“Let nothing slow your step,” Mayhew urged.<br />
<br />
In the most secure area of the White Tower, they came to a heavy oak door studded with iron. The walls were thicker than a man’s height. After Mayhew gave three sharp bursts of a coded knock, a hatch opened to reveal a pair of glowering eyes.<br />
<br />
“Who goes?” came the voice from within.<br />
<br />
“Mayhew and Osborne, your Lord Walsingham’s men.”<br />
<br />
While Osborne twitched and glanced anxiously over his shoulder, the guard searched their faces, until, satisfied, he began to draw the fourteen bolts that the queen herself had personally insisted be installed.<br />
<br />
“Hurry,” Osborne whined. Mayhew cuffed him across his arm.<br />
<br />
Once inside, Osborne pressed his back against the resealed door and let out a juddering sigh of relief. “Finally. We are safe.”<br />
<br />
Mayhew didn’t hide his contempt. Osborne was too weak to survive in their business; he would not be long for the world and there was little point in tormenting him further by explaining the obvious.<br />
<br />
Six guards waited by the door, and another twenty in the chambers within. Handpicked byWalsingham himself for their brutality and their lack of human compassion, their faces were uniformly hard, their hands rarely more than an inch from their weapons. At any other time they would have been slitting the throats of rich sots in the stews of Bankside, yet here they were in the queen’s most trusted employ.<br />
<br />
“The cell remains secure?” Mayhew asked the captain of the guard. His face boasted the scars of numerous fights.<br />
<br />
“It is. It was examined ’pon the hour, as it is every hour.”<br />
<br />
“Take us to it.”<br />
<br />
“Who attempts to breach our defences?” the captain asked. “Surely the Spanish would not risk an attack.”<br />
<br />
When Mayhew did not respond, the captain nodded and ordered two of the guards to accompany the spies. A moment later they were marching past rooms stacked high with the riches of England, gold seized from the New World or looted from ships from the Spanish Main to the Channel.<br />
<br />
Beyond the bullion rooms, one of the guards unlocked a stout door and led them down a steep flight of steps to another locked door. Inside was a low-ceilinged chamber warmed by a brazier in one corner and lit by sputtering torches on opposite walls. Two guards played cards at a heavy, scarred table. On the far side of the room was a single door with a small barred window.<br />
<br />
“I do not see why he could not have been kept with the other prisoners,” Osborne said.<br />
<br />
“No, of course you do not,” Mayhew replied.<br />
<br />
“The Tower’s main rooms have held two kings of Scotland and a king of France, our own King Henry VI, Thomas More, and our own good queen. What is so special about this one that he deserves more secure premises than those great personages?” Osborne persisted.<br />
<br />
“You have only been assigned to this task for two days,” Mayhew replied. “When you have been here as long as I, you will understand.”<br />
<br />
Crossing the room, Mayhew peered through the bars in the door. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom within, he made out the form of the cell’s occupant hunched on a rough wooden bench, the hood of his cloak, as always, pulled over his head so his features were hidden. He was allowed no naked flame for illumination, no drink in a bowl or goblet, only in a bottle, and he was never allowed to leave the secure area of the White Tower where he had been imprisoned for twenty years.<br />
<br />
“Still nothing to say?” Mayhew murmured, and then laughed at his own joke. He passed the comment every day, in full knowledge that the prisoner had never been known to speak in all his time in the Tower.<br />
<br />
Yet on this occasion the light leaking through the grille revealed a subtle shift in the dark shape, as though the prisoner was listening to what Mayhew said, perhaps even considering a response.<br />
<br />
Mayhew’s deliberations were interrupted by muffled bangs and clatters in the Mint above their heads, the sound of raised voices, and then a low, chilling cry.<br />
<br />
“They are in,” he said flatly, turning back to the room. <br />
<br />
Osborne had pressed himself against one wall like a hunted animal. The four guards looked to Mayhew hesitantly.<br />
<br />
“Help your friends,” he said. “Do whatever is in your power to protect this place. Lock the door as you leave. I will bolt it.”<br />
<br />
Once they had gone, he slammed the bolts into place with a flick of his wrist that showed his disdain for their security.<br />
<br />
“You know it will do no good,” Osborne said. “If they have gained access to the Mint, there is no door that will keep them out.”<br />
<br />
“What do you suggest? That we beg for mercy, or run screaming, like girls?”<br />
<br />
“Pray,” Osborne replied, “for that is surely the only thing that can save us. These are not men that we face, not Spaniards, or French, not the Catholic traitors from within our own realm. These are the Devil’s own agents, and they come for our immortal souls.”<br />
<br />
Mayhew snorted. “Forget God, Osborne. If He even exists, He has scant regard for this vale of misery.”<br />
<br />
Osborne recoiled as if he had been struck. “You do not believe in the Lord?”<br />
<br />
“If you want atheism, talk to Marlowe. He makes clear his views with every action he takes. But I learn from the evidence of my own eyes, Osborne. We face a threat that stands to wipe us away as though we had never been, and if there is to be salvation, it will not come from above. It will be achieved by our own hand.”<br />
<br />
“Then help me barricade the door,” Osborne pleaded.<br />
<br />
With a sigh and a shrug, Mayhew set his weight against the great oak table, and with Osborne puffing and blowing beside him, they pushed it solidly against the door.<br />
<br />
When they stood back, Mayhew paused as the faint strains of the haunting pipe music reached him again, plucking at his emotions, turning him in an instant from despair to such ecstasy that he wanted to dance with wild abandon. “That music,” he said, closing his eyes in awe.<br />
<br />
“I hear no music!” Osborne shouted. “You are imagining it.”<br />
<br />
“It sounds,” Mayhew said with a faint smile, “like the end of all things.” He turned back to the cell door where the prisoner now waited, the torchlight catching a metallic glint beneath his hood.<br />
<br />
“Damn your eyes!” Osborne raged. “Return to your bench! They shall not free you!”<br />
<br />
Unmoving, the prisoner watched them through the grille. Mayhew did not sense any triumphalism in his body language, no sign that he was assured of his freedom, merely a faint curiosity at the change to the pattern that had dominated his life for so many years.<br />
<br />
“Sit down!” Osborne bellowed.<br />
<br />
“Leave him,” Mayhew responded as calmly as he could manage. “We have a more pressing matter.”<br />
<br />
Above their heads, the distant clamour of battle was punctuated by a muffled boom that shook the heavy door and brought a shower of dust from the cracks in the stone. Silence followed, accompanied by the cloying scent of honeysuckle growing stronger by the moment.<br />
<br />
Drawing their swords, Mayhew and Osborne focused their attention on the door.<br />
<br />
A random scream, becoming a sound like the wind through the trees on a lonely moor. More noises, fragments of events that painted no comprehensive picture.<br />
<br />
Breath tight in their chests, knuckles aching from gripping their swords, Mayhew and Osborne waited.<br />
<br />
Something bouncing down the stone steps, coming to rest against the door with a thud.<br />
<br />
A soft tread, then gone like a whisper in the night, followed by a long silence that felt like it would never end.<br />
<br />
Finally the unbearable quiet was broken by a rough grating as the top bolt drew back of its own accord. His eyes frozen wide, Osborne watched its inexorable progress.<br />
<br />
As soon as the bolt had clicked open, the one at the foot of the door followed, and when that had been drawn the great tumblers of the iron lock turned until they fell into place with a shattering clack.<br />
<br />
“I . . . I think I can hear the music now, Mayhew, and there are voices in it,” Osborne said. He began to recite the Lord’s Prayer quietly.<br />
<br />
The door creaked open a notch and then stopped. Light flickered through the gap, not torchlight or candlelight, but with some troubling quality that Mayhew could not identify, but which reminded him of moonlight on the Downs. The music was louder now, and he too could hear the voices.<br />
<br />
A sound at his back disrupted his thoughts. The prisoner’s hands were on the bars of the grille and he had removed his hood for the first time that Mayhew could recall. In the ethereal light, there was an echo of the moon within the cell. The prisoner’s head was encompassed by a silver skull of the finest workmanship, gleaming so brightly Mayhew could barely look at it. Etched on it with almost invisible black filigree were ritual marks and symbols. Through the silver orbits, the prisoner’s eyes hung heavily upon Mayhew, steady and unblinking, the whites marred by a tracing of burst capillaries.<br />
<br />
The door opened.<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 1</b><br />
<br />
Even four hours of soft skin and full lips could not take away her face. Empty wine bottles rattling on the bare boards did not drown out her voice, nor did the creak of the bed and the gasps of pleasure. She was with him always.<br />
<br />
“They say you single-handedly defeated ten of Spain’s finest swordsmen on board a sinking ship in the middle of a storm,” the redheaded woman breathed in his ear as she ran her hand gently along his naked thigh.<br />
<br />
“True.”<br />
<br />
“And you broke into the Doge’s palace in disguise and romanced the most beautiful woman in all of Venice,” the blonde woman whispered into his other ear, stroking his lower belly.<br />
<br />
“Yes, all true.”<br />
<br />
“And you wrestled a bear and killed it with your bare hands,” the redhead added.<br />
<br />
He paused thoughtfully, then replied, “Actually, that one is not true, but I think I will appropriate it nonetheless.”<br />
<br />
The women both laughed. He didn’t know their names, didn’t really care. They would be amply rewarded, and have tales to tell of their night with the greatWill Swyfte, and he would have passed a few hours in the kind of abandon that always promised more than it actually delivered.<br />
<br />
“Your hair is so black,” the blonde one said, twirling a finger in his curls.<br />
<br />
“Yes, like my heart.”<br />
<br />
They both laughed at that, though he wasn’t particularly joking. Nathaniel would have laughed too, although with more of a sardonic edge.<br />
<br />
The redhead reached out a lazy hand to examine his clothes hanging over the back of the chair. “You must cut a dashing figure at court, with these finest and most expensive fashions.” Reaching a long leg from the bed, she traced her toes across the shiny surface of his boots.<br />
<br />
“I heard you were a poet.” The blonde rubbed her groin gently against his hip. “Will you compose a sonnet to us?”<br />
<br />
“I was a poet. And a scholar. But that part of my life is far behind me.”<br />
<br />
“You have exchanged it for a life of adventure,” she said, impressed. “A fair exchange, for it has brought you riches and fame.”<br />
<br />
Will did not respond.<br />
<br />
The blonde examined his bare torso, which bore the tales of the last few years in each pink slash of a rapier scar or ragged weal of torture, stories that had filtered into the consciousness of every inhabitant of the land, from Carlisle to Kent to Cornwall.<br />
<br />
As she swung her leg over him to begin another bout of lovemaking, they were interrupted by an insistent knocking at the door.<br />
<br />
“Go away,” Will shouted.<br />
<br />
The knocking continued. “I know you are deep in doxie and sack, Master Swyfte,” came a curt, familiar voice, “but duty calls.”<br />
<br />
“Nat. Go away.”<br />
<br />
The door swung open to reveal Nathaniel Colt, shorter than Will and slim, but with eyes that revealed a quick wit. He studiedly ignored the naked, rounded bodies and focused his attention directly on Will.<br />
<br />
“A fine place to find a hero of the realm,” he said with sarcasm. “A tawdry room atop a stew, stinking of coitus and spilled wine.”<br />
<br />
“In these harsh times, every man deserves his pleasures, Nat.”<br />
<br />
“This is England’s greatest spy,” the redhead challenged. “He has earned his comforts.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, England’s greatest spy,” Nathaniel replied acidly. “Though I remain unconvinced of the value of a spy whose name and face are recognised by all and sundry.”<br />
<br />
“England needs its heroes, Nat. Do not deny the people the chance to celebrate the successes of God’s own nation.” He eased the women off the bed with gentle hands. “We will continue our relaxation at another time,” he said warmly, “for I fear my friend is determined to enforce chastity.”<br />
<br />
His eyes communicated more than his words. The women responded with coquettish giggles as they scooped up their dresses to cover them as they skipped out of the room.<br />
<br />
Kicking the door shut after them, Nathaniel said, “You will catch the pox if you continue these sinful ways with the Winchester Geese.”<br />
<br />
“The pox is not God’s judgment, or all the aristocracy of England would be rotting in their breeches as they dance at court.”<br />
<br />
“And ’twould be best if you did not let any but me hear your views on our betters.”<br />
<br />
“Besides,”Will continued, “Liz Longshanks’ is a fine establishment. Does it not bear the mark of the Cardinal’s Hat? Is this land on which this stew rests not in the blessed ownership of the bishop of Winchester? Everything has two faces, Nat, neither good nor bad, just there. That is the way of the world, and if there is a Lord, it is His way.”<br />
<br />
Ignoring Nathaniel’s snort, Will stretched the kinks from his limbs and lazily eased out of the bed to dress, absently kicking the empty bottles against the chamber pot. “And,” he added, “I am in good company. That master of theatre, Philip Henslowe, and his son-in-law Edward Alleyn are entertaining Liz’s girls in the room below.”<br />
<br />
“Alleyn the actor?”<br />
<br />
“Whoring and acting go together by tradition, as does every profession that entails holding one face to the world and another in the privacy of your room. When you cannot be yourself, it creates certain tensions that must be released.”<br />
<br />
“You will be releasing more tensions if you do not hurry. Your Lord Walsingham is on his way to Bankside, and if he finds his favoured tool deep in whores, or in his cups, he will be less than pleased.” Nathaniel threw Will his shirt to end his frustrated searching.<br />
<br />
“What trouble now, then? More Spanish spies plotting against our queen? You know they fall over their own swords.”<br />
<br />
“I am pleased to hear you take the threats against us so lightly. England is on the brink of war with Spain, the nation is torn by fears of the enemy landing on our shores at every moment, we lack adequate defences, our navy is in disarray, we are short of gunpowder, and the great Catholic powers of Europe are all eager to see us crushed and returned to the old faith, but the great Will Swyfte thinks it is just a trifling. I can rest easily now.”<br />
<br />
“One day you will cut yourself with that tongue, Nat.” <br />
<br />
“There is some trouble at the White Tower, though I am too lowly a worm to be given any important details. No, I am only capable of dragging my master out of brothels and hostelries and keeping him one step out of the Clink,” he added tartly.<br />
<br />
“You are of great value to me, as well you know.” Finishing his dressing, Will ran a hand through his hair thoughtfully. “The Tower, you say?”<br />
<br />
“An attempt to steal our gold, perhaps. Or the Crown jewels. The Spanish always look for interesting ways to undermine this nation.”<br />
<br />
“I cannot imagine Lord Walsingham venturing into Bankside for bullion or jewels.” He ensured Nathaniel didn’t see his mounting sense of unease. “Let us to the Palace of Whitehall before the principal secretary sullies his boots in Bankside’s filth.”<br />
<br />
A commotion outside drew Nathaniel to the small window, where he saw a sleek black carriage with a dark red awning and the gold brocade and ostrich feathers that signified it had been dispatched from the palace. The chestnut horse stamped its hooves and snorted as a crowd of drunken apprentices tumbled out of the Sugar Loaf across the street to surround the carriage.<br />
<br />
“I fear it is too late for that,” Nathaniel said. <br />
<br />
Four accompanying guards used their mounts to drive the crowd back, amid loud curses and threats but none of the violence that troubled the constables and beadles on a Saturday night. Two of the guards barged into the brothel, raising angry cries from Liz Longshanks and the girls waiting in the downstairs parlour, and soon the clatter of their boots rose up the wooden stairs.<br />
<br />
“Let us meet them halfway,” Will said.<br />
<br />
“If I were you, I would wonder how our LordWalsingham knows exactly which stew is your chosen hideaway this evening.”<br />
<br />
“Lord Walsingham commands the greatest spy network in the world. Do you think he would not use a little of that power to keep track of his own?”<br />
<br />
“But you are in his employ.”<br />
<br />
“As the queen’s godson likes to say, ‘treason begets spies and spies treason.’ In this business, as perhaps in life itself, it is best not to trust anyone. There is always another face behind the one we see.”<br />
<br />
“What a sad life you lead.”<br />
<br />
“It is the life I have. No point bemoaning.”Will’s broad smile gave away nothing of his true thoughts.<br />
<br />
The guards escorted him out into the rutted street, where a light frost now glistened across the mud. The smell of ale and woodsmoke hung heavily between the inns and stews that dominated Bankside, and the night was filled with the usual cacophony of cries, angry shouts, the sound of numerous simultaneous fights, the clatter of cudgels, cheers and roars from the bulland bear-baiting arenas, music flooding from open doors, and drunken voices singing clashing songs. Every conversation was conducted at a shout.<br />
<br />
As Will pushed through the crowd towards the carriage, he was recognised by some of the locals from the inns he frequented, and his name flickered from tongue to tongue in awed whispers. Apprentices tentatively touched his sleeve, and sultry-eyed women pursed their lips or thrust their breasts towards him, to Nathaniel’s weary disdain. But many revealed their fears about the impending invasion and offered their prayers that Will was off to protect them. Grinning, he shook hands, offered wry dismissals of the Spanish threat, and raised their spirits with enthusiastic proclamations of England’s strength; he played well the part he had been given.<br />
<br />
At the carriage, the curtain was drawn back to reveal a man with an ascetic demeanour and a fixed mouth that appeared never to have smiled, his eyes dark and implacable. Francis Walsingham was approaching sixty, but his hair and beard were still black, as were his clothes, apart from a crisp white ruff.<br />
<br />
“My lord,” Will said.<br />
<br />
“Master Swyfte. We have business.”Walsingham’s eyes flickered towards Nathaniel. “Come alone.”<br />
<br />
Will guessed the nature of the business immediately, for Nathaniel usually accompanied him everywhere and had been privy to some of the great secrets of state. Will turned to him and said, “Nat, I would ask a favour of you. Go to Grace and ensure she has all she needs.”<br />
<br />
Reading the gravity in Will’s eyes, Nathaniel nodded curtly and pushed his way back through the crowd. It was in those silent moments of communication that Will valued Nathaniel more than ever; more than a servant, Nathaniel had become a trusted companion, perhaps even a friend. But friends did not keep secrets from each other, and Will guarded the biggest secret of all. It ensured his path was a lonely one.<br />
<br />
Walsingham saw the familiar signs in Will’s face. “Our knowledge and our work are a privilege,” he said in his modulated, emotionless voice.<br />
<br />
“We have all learned to love the lick of the lash,” Will replied.<br />
<br />
Walsingham held the carriage door open forWill to climb into the heavy perfume of the court—lavender, sandalwood, and rose from iron containers hanging in each of the four corners of the interior. They kept the stink of the city at bay, but also served a more serious purpose that only the most learned would recognise.<br />
<br />
Hands reached in through the open window for Will to touch. After he had shaken and clasped a few, he drew the curtain and let his public face fall away along with his smile.<br />
<br />
“They love you, Master Swyfte,” Walsingham observed, “which is as it should be. Your fame reaches to all corners of England, your exploits recounted in inn and marketplace. Your heroism on behalf of queen and country is a beacon in the long dark of the night that ensures the good men and women of our land sleep well in their beds, secure in the knowledge that they are protected by the best that England has to offer.”<br />
<br />
“Perhaps I should become one of Marlowe’s players.”<br />
<br />
“Do you sour of the public role you must play?”<br />
<br />
“If they knew the truth about me, there would be few flagons raised to the great Will Swyfte in Chichester and Chester.”<br />
<br />
“There is no truth,” Walsingham replied as the carriage lurched into motion with the crack of the driver’s whip. “There are only the stories we tell ourselves. They shape our world, our minds, our hearts. And the strongest stories win the war.” His piercing eyes fell upon Will from the dark depths beneath his glowering brow. “You seem in a melancholy mood this night.”<br />
<br />
“My revels were interrupted. Any man who had his wine and his women dragged from his grasp would be in a similar mood.”<br />
<br />
A shadow crossed Walsingham’s face. “Be careful, William. Your love of the pleasures of this world will destroy you.”<br />
<br />
His disapproval meant nothing to Will. He did not fear God’s damnation; mankind had been left to its own devices. There was too much hell around him to worry about the one that might lie beyond death.<br />
<br />
“I understand why you immerse yourself in pleasure,” Walsingham continued. “We all find ways to ease the burden of our knowledge. I have my God. You have your wine and your whores. Through my eyes, that is no balance, but each must find his own way to carry out our work. Still, take care, William. The devils use seduction to achieve their work, and you provide them with a way through your defences.”<br />
<br />
“As always, my lord, I am vigilant.” Will pretended to agree with Walsingham’s assessment of his motivations, but in truth the principal secretary didn’t have the slightest inkling of what drove Will, and never would. Will took some pleasure in knowing that a part of him would always remain his own, however painful.<br />
<br />
As the carriage trundled over the ruts, the carnal sounds and smells of Bankside receded. Through the window, Will noticed a light burning high up in the heart of the City across the river, the warning beacon at the top of the lightning-blasted spire of Saint Paul’s.<br />
<br />
“This is it, then,” he said quietly.<br />
<br />
“Blood has been spilled. Lives have been ruined. The clock begins to tick.”<br />
<br />
“I did not think it would be so soon. Why now?”<br />
<br />
“You will receive answers shortly. We knew it was coming.” After a pause, he said gravely, “William Osborne is dead, his eyes put out, his bones crushed at the foot of the White Tower.”<br />
<br />
“Death alone was not enough for them.”<br />
<br />
“He did it to himself.”<br />
<br />
Will considered Osborne’s last moments and what could have driven him to such a gruesome end.<br />
<br />
“Master Mayhew survived, though injured,” Walsingham continued.<br />
<br />
“You have never told me why they were posted to the Tower.”<br />
<br />
Walsingham did not reply. The carriage trundled towards London Bridge, the entrance closed along with the City’s gates every night when the Bow Bells sounded.<br />
<br />
Echoing from the river’s edge came the agonised cries of the prisoners chained to the posts in the mud along the banks, waiting for the tide to come in to add to their suffering. Above the gates, thirty spiked decomposing heads of traitors were a warning of a worse fate to those who threatened the established order.<br />
<br />
As the driver hailed his arrival, the gates ground open to reveal the grand, timber-framed houses of wealthy merchants on either side of the bridge. The carriage rattled through without slowing and the guards hastily closed the gates behind them to seal out the night’s terrors.<br />
<br />
The closing of the gates had always signalled security, but if the City’s defences had been breached there would be no security again.<br />
<br />
“A weapon of tremendous power has fallen into the hands of the Enemy,” Walsingham said. “A weapon with the power to bring about doomsday. These are the days we feared.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 2</b><br />
<br />
In the narrow, ancient streets clustering hard around the stone bulk of the Tower of London, the dark was impenetrable, threatening, and there was a sense of relief when the carriage broke out onto the green to the north of the outer wall where lanterns produced a reassuring pool of light.<br />
<br />
Standing in ranks, soldiers waited to be dispatched by their commander in small search parties fanning out across the capital. Robert Dudley, the earl of Leicester, strutted in front of them, firing off orders. Though grey-bearded and with a growing belly, he still carried the charisma of the man who had entranced Elizabeth and seduced many other ladies of the court.<br />
<br />
A crowd had gathered around the perimeter of the green, sleepy-eyed men and women straggling from their homes as word spread of the activity at the Tower. Will could see anxiety grow in their faces as they watched the grim determination of the commanders directing the search parties. Fear of the impending Spanish invasion ran high, and in the feverish atmosphere of the City tempers were close to boiling over into public disturbance. Spanish spies and Catholic agitators were everywhere, plotting assassination attempts on the queen and whipping up the unease in the inns, markets, and wherever people gathered and unfounded rumours could be quickly spread.<br />
<br />
Ignoring the crowd’s calls for information about the disturbance, Walsingham guided Will to the edge of the green where a dazed, badly bruised, and bloody Mayhew squatted.<br />
<br />
“England’s greatest spy,” Mayhew said, forming each word carefully, as he nodded to them.<br />
<br />
“Master Mayhew. You have taken a few knocks.”<br />
<br />
“But I live. And for that I am thankful.” Hesitating, he glanced at the White Tower looming against the night sky. “Which is more than can be said for that fool Osborne.”<br />
<br />
“You were guarding the weapon,” Will surmised correctly.<br />
<br />
“A weapon,” Mayhew exclaimed bitterly. “We thought it was only a man. A prisoner held in his cell for twenty years.”<br />
<br />
Walsingham cast a cautionary glare and they both fell silent. “There will be time for discussion in a more private forum. For now, all you need know is that a hostile group has freed a prisoner and escaped into the streets of London. The City gates remain firmly closed . . .” He paused, choosing his words carefully. “Although we do not yet know if they have some other way to flee the City. The prisoner has information vital to the security of the nation. He must be found and returned to his cell.”<br />
<br />
“And if he is not found?” Will enquired.<br />
<br />
“He <i>must</i> be found.”<br />
<br />
The intensity in Walsingham’s voice shocked Will. Why was one man so important—they had lost prisoners before, though none from the Tower—and how could he also be considered a weapon?<br />
<br />
“Your particular skills may well be needed if the prisoner is located,” Walsingham said to Will before turning to Mayhew. “You must accompany me back to the Palace of Whitehall. I would know the detail of what occurred.”<br />
<br />
Mayhew looked unsettled at the prospect of Walsingham’s questioning, but before they could leave, the principal secretary was summoned urgently by Leicester, who had been in intense conversation with a gesticulating commander.<br />
<br />
“They call your name.” Mayhew nodded to the crowd. “Your reputation has spread from those ridiculous pamphlets they sell outside Saint Paul’s.”<br />
<br />
“It serves a purpose,” Will replied.<br />
<br />
“Would they be so full of admiration if those same pamphlets had called you assassin, murderer, corruptor, torturer, liar, and deceiver?” Mayhew’s mockery was edged with bitterness.<br />
<br />
“Words mean nothing and everything, Matthew. It is actions that count. And results.”<br />
<br />
“Ah, yes,” Mayhew said. “The end results justify the means. The proverb that saves us all from damnation.”<br />
<br />
Will was troubled by Mayhew’s dark mood, but he put it down to the shock of the spy’s encounter with the Enemy. His attention was distracted by Walsingham, who, after listening intently to Leicester, summoned Will over. “We may have something,” he said with an uncharacteristic urgency. “Accompany Leicester, and may God go with you.”<br />
<br />
At speed, Leicester, Will, and a small search party left the lights of the green. Rats fled their lantern by the score as they made their way into the dark, reeking streets to the north, some barely wide enough for two men abreast.<br />
<br />
“On Lord Walsingham’s orders, I attempted to seek the path the Enemy took from the Tower,” Leicester said, as they followed the lead of the soldier Will had seen animatedly talking to Leicester. “They did not pass through the Traitors’ Gate and back along the river, the route by which they gained access to the fortress. None of the City gates were disturbed, according to the watch. And so I dispatched the search parties to the north and west.” He puffed out his chest, pleased with himself.<br />
<br />
“You found their trail?”<br />
<br />
“Perhaps. We shall see,” he replied, but sounded confident. <br />
<br />
In the dark, Will lost all sense of direction, but soon they came to a broader street guarded by four other soldiers, from what Will guessed was the original search party. They continually scanned the shadowed areas of the street with deep unease. Will understood why when he saw the three dead men on the frozen ruts, their bodies torn and broken.<br />
<br />
Kneeling to examine the corpses, Will saw that some wounds looked to have been caused by an animal, perhaps a wolf or a bear, others as if the victims had been thrown to the ground from a great height. They carried cudgels and knives, common street thugs who had surprised the wrong marks.<br />
<br />
“Were these men killed by the Enemy?” Leicester asked, his own eyes flickering towards the dark.<br />
<br />
Ignoring the question, Will said, “Three deaths in this manner would not have happened silently. Someone must have heard the commotion, perhaps even saw in which direction the Enemy departed. Search the buildings.”<br />
<br />
As Leicester’s men moved along the street hammering on doors, bleary-eyed men and women emerged, cursing at being disturbed until they were roughly dragged out and questioned by the soldiers.<br />
<br />
Will returned to the bodies, concerned by the degree of brutality. In it, he saw a level of desperation and urgency that echoed the anxiety Walsingham had expressed; here was something of worrying import that would have consequences for all of them.<br />
<br />
His thoughts were interrupted by a cry from one of Leicester’s men who was struggling with an unshaven man in filthy clothes snarling and spitting like an animal. Three soldiers rushed over to help knock him to the frosty street.<br />
<br />
“He knows something,” the man’s captor said, when Will came over.<br />
<br />
“I saw nothing,” the prisoner snarled, but Will could see the lie in his furtive eyes.<br />
<br />
“It would be in your best interests to talk,” Leicester said, but his exhortation was delivered in such a courtly manner that it was ineffectual. The man spat and tried to wrestle himself free until he was cuffed to the ground again.<br />
<br />
Leicester turned to Will and said quietly, “We could transport him back to the Tower. I gather Walsingham has men there who could loosen his tongue.”<br />
<br />
“If we delay, the Enemy will be far from here and their prize with them,” Will said. “The stakes are high, I am told. We cannot risk that.” He hesitated a moment as he examined the man’s face and then said, “Let me speak with him. Alone.”<br />
<br />
“Are you sure?” Leicester hissed. “He may be dangerous.”<br />
<br />
“He is dangerous.” Will eyed the pink scars from knife fights that lined the man’s jaw. “I am worse.”<br />
<br />
Leicester’s men manhandled the prisoner back into his house, and Will closed the door behind him after they left. It was a stinking hovel with little furniture, and most that was there looked as if it had been stolen from wealthier premises. The prisoner hunched on the floor by the hearth, pretending to catch his breath, and then threw himself at Will ferociously. Sidestepping his attack, Will crashed a fist into his face. Blood spurted from his nose as he was thrown back against a chair, but it did not deter him. He pulled a knife from a chest beside the fireplace, only to drop it when Will hit him again. As he scrambled for the blade, Will stamped his boot on the man’s fingers, shattering the bones. The man howled in pain.<br />
<br />
Dragging the man to his feet, Will threw him against the wall, pressing his own knife against his prisoner’s throat. “England stands on the brink of war. The queen’s life is threatened daily. A crisis looms for our country,” Will said. “This is not the time for your games.”<br />
<br />
“This is not a game!” the man protested. “I dare not speak! I fear for my life!”<br />
<br />
Will pressed the tip of his knife a shade deeper for emphasis. “Fear me more,” he said calmly. “I will whittle you down a piece at a time—fingers, nose, ears—until you choose to speak. And you will choose. Better to speak now and save yourself unnecessary suffering.”<br />
<br />
Once the rogue had seen the truth in Will’s eyes, he nodded reluctantly.<br />
<br />
“You saw what happened out there?” Will asked. <br />
<br />
“I was woken by the sounds of a brawl. From my window, I saw a small group of cloaked travellers set upon by a gang of fifteen or more.”<br />
<br />
“Cutthroats?”<br />
<br />
The man nodded.<br />
<br />
“Fifteen? At this time? They cannot find much regular trade in this area to justify such a number.”<br />
<br />
“It seemed they knew the travellers would be passing this way. They lay in wait. Some of them emerged only after the battle had commenced.”<br />
<br />
This information gave Will pause, but his prisoner was too scared to be telling anything but the truth. “Who were these cutthroats?”<br />
<br />
The man shook his head. “I did not recognise them. But if they find I spoke of them they will be back for me!”<br />
<br />
“I would think they now have more important things on their minds.<br />
<br />
What happened?”<br />
<br />
“They surprised the travellers.” He hesitated, not sure how much he should say. “The travellers . . .” He swallowed, looked like he was about to be sick. “They turned on the cutthroats. I had to look away. I saw no more.”<br />
<br />
“The faces of the travellers?”<br />
<br />
He shook his head. “They moved too fast. I . . . I saw no weapons. Only the slaughter of three victims. It was madness! The other cutthroats fled—” <br />
<br />
“And the travellers continued on their way?”<br />
<br />
“One of them was different . . . his head glowed like the moon.”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
<br />
The man began to stutter and Will had to wait until he calmed. “I do not know . . . it was a glimpse, no more. But his head glowed. And in the confusion, two of the cutthroats grabbed him and made good their escape into the alleys. He went with them freely, as though he had been a prisoner of the travellers.”<br />
<br />
“And the travellers gave pursuit?”<br />
<br />
“Once they saw he was missing . . . a minute, perhaps two later. By then, their chances of finding him would have been poor.”<br />
<br />
The frightened man had no further answers to give. Out in the street, Will summoned Leicester away from his men’s ears.<br />
<br />
“The prize the Enemy stole from the Tower was in turn taken from them by a band of cutthroats,” Will told him. “Put all your men onto the streets of London. This threat may now have gone from bad to worse.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 3</b><br />
<br />
Will clung on to the leather straps as the sleek black carriage raced towards the Palace of Whitehall, a solitary ship of light sailing on the sea of darkness washing against London’s ancient walls. Lanterns hung from the great gates and along the walls. From diamond-pane windows, candles glimmered across the great halls and towers, the chapels, wings, courtyards, stores, meeting rooms, and debating chambers, and in the living quarters of the court and its army of servants. At more than half a mile square, it was one of the largest palaces in the world, shaped and reshaped over three hundred years. Hard against the Thames, it had its own wharf where barges were moored to take the queen along the great river and where vast warehouses received the produce that kept the palace fed. Surrounding the complex of buildings were a tiltyard, bowling green, tennis courts, and formal gardens, everything needed for entertainment.<br />
<br />
The palace looked out across London with two faces: at once filled with the sprawling, colourful, noisy pageantry of royalty, of a court permanently at play, of music and masques and arts and feasting, of romances and joys and intrigues, a tease to the senses and a home to lives lost to a whirl that always threatened to spin off its axis; and a place of grave decisions on the affairs of state, where the queen guided a nation that permanently threatened to come apart at the seams from pressures both within and without. Whispers and fanfares, long, dark shadows and never-extinguished lights, conspiracies and open rivalries. The palace was a puzzle that had no solution.<br />
<br />
The carriage came to a halt under a low arch in a cobbled courtyard so small that the buildings on every side kept it swathed in gloom even during the height of noon. Few from the court even knew it existed, or guessed what took place behind the iron-studded oak door beside which two torches permanently hissed. The jamb too was lined with iron, as was the step.<br />
<br />
The door swung open at Will’s knock and admitted him to a long, windowless corridor lit by intermittent pools of lamplight. The silent guard closed the door and slid six bolts home. Will’s echoing footsteps followed him up one flight of a spiral staircase into the Black Gallery, a large panelled hall. Heavy drapes covered the windows, but it was lit by several lamps and a few flames danced along a charred log in the glowing ashes of the large stone fireplace.<br />
<br />
A long oak table filled the centre of the hall, covered with maps, and at the far end sat Mayhew, one louche leg over the arm of his chair. His head was tightly bound in a bloodstained cloth and his left arm was in a sling. He was taking deep drafts of wine from a goblet, and appeared drunk.<br />
<br />
Will always found Mayhew difficult. He was hard, in the manner of all spies forced to operate in a world of deceit, and had little patience for his fellows, more concerned with the latest courtly fashions. He liked his wine, too, when he was not working, but he was a sullen, sharp-tongued drunk.<br />
<br />
Walsingham emerged at the sound ofWill’s voice, his features drawn. He listened intently as Will told him about the attack on the Enemy and their loss of the mysterious prisoner from the Tower, but he passed no comment.<br />
<br />
“The queen has been informed?” Will asked once he had finished his account.<br />
<br />
“I advised her myself,” Walsingham replied. “She is fully aware of the magnitude of what lies ahead.”<br />
<br />
“Which is more than I am.”Will expected a terse response, but the principal secretary was distracted by the sound of slamming doors and rapidly marching feet.<br />
<br />
Through a door at the far end of the hall, two guards escorted a man wearing a purple cloak and hood that shrouded his features. The guards retreated as the new arrival strode across the room to the fire.<br />
<br />
“I can never get warm these days,” he said, holding out aged hands to the flames. “It is one of the prices I pay.”<br />
<br />
The man threw off his hood to reveal a bald pate and silvery hair at the back falling over his collar. As he turned to face the room, fierce grey eyes shone with a coruscating intellect and a sexual potency that belied his sixty-odd years.<br />
<br />
“Dee!” Mayhew visibly started in his chair, slopping wine in his lap.<br />
<br />
Dr. John Dee cast a disinterested eye over Mayhew. “You have not aged well,” he said, before slipping off his cloak and throwing it over a chair.<br />
<br />
To the outside world, Dee was a respected scholar and founding fellow of Trinity College in Cambridge who had been an advisor and tutor to the queen, whose <i>General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Arte of Navigation </i>had established a vision of an English maritime empire and defined the nation’s claims upon the New World. Few knew that Dee had been instrumental in helping Walsingham establish the extensive spy network, providing intelligence and guidance as well as designing many of the tools the spies used to ply their dangerous trade.<br />
<br />
But Will had heard other rumours: that Dee had turned his back upon his studies of the natural world for black magic and scrying and attempts to commune with angels. Will had presumed this had contributed to Dee’s fall from favour—for five years he had been absent from the court in Central Europe. The last any of them had heard of him was in Bohemia a year ago.<br />
<br />
“No word must be uttered of Dr. Dee’s appearance here. He has been engaged on official business in Europe under my orders and will return there shortly,” Walsingham stressed, in full understanding of what was passing through Will and Mayhew’s minds.<br />
<br />
“It appears there are secrets kept even from the gatekeepers to the world of secrets,” Will noted.<br />
<br />
“That is the way of things, Master Swyfte.” Walsingham poked the fire absently, sending showers of sparks up the chimney.<br />
<br />
“It was fortuitous that I arrived at this time to deliver the information I had secured.” Filled with pent-up energy that revealed no hint of fragility, Dee prowled the room. “Events set in motion one year past are now coming to fruition. The Enemy are about to play their hand, and we must divine their secrets quickly before it is too late. Time is short. The queen’s life and all of England are at stake.”<br />
<br />
Will carefully studied the way Walsingham held himself as he moved around the room. To the unfamiliar eye, there was an unruffled indifference to his seemingly detached state, but Will had observed the spymaster carefully since the day he had been brought from his chambers at Cambridge University to be inducted into the ranks of the secret service network. Although he had been overcome by grief and haunted by images of his loss, Will had seen from the first that Walsingham was a man whose deep thoughts were revealed in only the subtlest signs: the relaxation of the taut muscles around his mouth, the tension of a finger, a stiffness in his back.Walsingham was a man forged in the crucible of the secret war they fought, and a symbol of the toll that battle took. Though he hid it well, his mood at that moment was grim.<br />
<br />
“Where is the weapon now?” Dee asked.<br />
<br />
Once Will had spoken his piece, Mayhew added, “The operation was well planned and efficiently executed.” He cast a furtive eye towards Walsingham. “When I was given my post, I was told the Tower was under special protection, even beyond the protection that keeps England safe.”<br />
<br />
“It is,” Dee replied. “And how those defences were breached remains a mystery.”<br />
<br />
“That need not concern us now,” Walsingham interrupted. “Master Swyfte, you are charged with finding the weapon before it can be used and bringing it back to our control, or destroying it, whichever course is necessary. But first you must be apprised of the facts of the matter.”<br />
<br />
Sifting through the charts on the table, he came to one of the New World and traced his finger along the coastline until he came to the name San Juan de Ulúa in the Spanish territories, the main port for the shipment of silver back to Spain.<br />
<br />
“A poor harbour by English standards,” Walsingham said. “Little more than a shingle bank to protect it from the storms. Twenty years ago, on December 3, 1568, John Hawkins put in for repairs to his storm-damaged trading fleet, including two of the queen’s galleons.”<br />
<br />
“Into a Spanish port?” Mayhew said, surprised.<br />
<br />
“Hawkins paid his taxes and more besides. In the past the Spanish had always left him alone once their coffers were full. But on this occasion their own spies had told them there was more to Hawkins’s visit than the repair of rigging and the patching of hulls.” Walsingham looked to Dee.<br />
<br />
“Since I first arrived at court,” Dee began, “I have been advising the queen on the threat that has faced England since the Flood. Every moment of my life has been directed towards finding adequate defences to protect the Crown, the people, the nation.”<br />
<br />
“And you have succeeded. England has never been safer,” Will noted.<br />
<br />
“We can never rest, for the Enemy are wise as snakes, and all of their formidable resources are continually directed towards recapturing the upper hand they once enjoyed. And so we too search for new defences, new weapons.” In Dee’s eyes, the gleam of the candles suggested an inner fire raging out of control.<br />
<br />
“My enquiries into the secrets of this world pointed me towards a weapon of immeasurable power that the Spanish were attempting to unlock in the hills not far from San Juan de Ulúa,” Dee continued. “So fearful were they of the weapon that the king had insisted it be tested far away from the homeland. A weapon that had brought devastation to the great rulers in the far Orient. A weapon that had surfaced during the Crusades and had been fought over by the Knights Templar and the enemies of Christendom.” Dee looked from one to the other, now incandescent with passion. “With a weapon like that, England would be a fortress. The Enemy would retreat to their lakes and their underhills and their lonely moors and we would be safe. Finally.”<br />
<br />
“What is the nature of the weapon?” Will asked.<br />
<br />
“Therein lies the greatest mystery of all.” Kneading his hands, Dee paced the room. A tremor ran through him. “It is a mask, a silver skull etched with the secret incantations of the long-forgotten race that first created it. A mask that must be bonded with a mortal to unleash its great power. But all we have are stories, fragments, hints. The nature of that power is not known. All that is known for sure is that nothing can stand before it and survive.”<br />
<br />
“So Hawkins was charged with seizing the weapon from the Spanish,” Will surmised.<br />
<br />
“That, at least, was England’s fervent hope,”Walsingham replied. “While his fleet was being repaired, Hawkins, Francis Drake, and a small group of men slipped secretly into the interior. Five men gave their lives to secure the skull from the Spanish, but before Hawkins could reach his ships, the viceroy, Don Martin Enriquez, took his fleet into the harbour and launched an attack while the English guard was down. Hawkins, Drake, and a small crew escaped in two ships, but the remainder of the English party were tortured and killed by the viceroy as he attempted to discover what we knew about the skull.” A shadow passed over Walsingham’s face that was like a bellow of rage against his usual detachment. “One of the few survivors, Job Hortop, told how the Spanish dogs hanged Hawkins’s men from high posts until the blood burst from the ends of their fingers, and flogged them until the bones showed through their flesh. But not a man spoke of the skull. Heroes all.”<br />
<br />
Nodding in agreement, Mayhew bowed his head for a moment.<br />
<br />
“Hawkins and Drake returned in two storm-torn ships with just fifteen men,” Walsingham said. “Eighty-five stout fellows had starved to death on the journey home. But the skull was ours.”<br />
<br />
Several elements of the story puzzled Will. “Then why did we not use this great weapon to drive back the Enemy, and our other, temporal enemies. Spain would not be so bold if it knew we held such a thing,” he asked.<br />
<br />
“Because the skull alone is not enough,” Dee replied sharply to the note of disbelief in Will’s voice. “The stories talk of three parts—a Mask, a Key, and a Shield. All are necessary to use the weapon effectively, though its power can be released without direction and with great consequences for the user by the Mask and Key alone.”<br />
<br />
Mayhew refilled his goblet, his hands shaking. “And the Key and the Shield?”<br />
<br />
“The last twenty years were spent in search of them, to no avail,” Walsingham replied. “They were for a time in the hands of the Knights Templar, this we know for sure.”<br />
<br />
“And those warrior monks fought the Enemy long before us,” Dee stressed. “The Templars must have known of the importance of these items and hid them well.”<br />
<br />
“Then who was the prisoner in the Tower?” Will enquired.<br />
<br />
“Some Spaniard who had been cajoled into trying to make the Mask work.What he cannot have realised is that, once bonded, the Mask cannot be removed until death,” Dee said. “You are a slave to it, as it is to you.”<br />
<br />
Will finally understood. “And so he was locked away in the Tower for twenty years while you attempted to find the other two parts.”<br />
<br />
“We could not risk the weapon falling into the hands of the Enemy in case they located the Key,”Walsingham said, “and brought devastation down upon us all.”<br />
<br />
“But after twenty years, the Enemy chose this night to free the prisoner from the Tower,” Will pressed. “Why now, unless the Key is already in their hands?”<br />
<br />
Walsingham and Dee exchanged a brief glance.<br />
<br />
“What do you know?” Will demanded.<br />
<br />
“The Enemy’s plans burn slowly,” Dee replied. “They do not see time like you or I, defined by the span of a man’s life. Their minds move like the oceans, steady and powerful, over years and decades, and longer still. Yet we knew some great scheme was in motion, just not its true nature.”<br />
<br />
“When the defences of the nation were first put in place, all was quiet for many years.” Walsingham stood erect, his hands clasped behind his back. “The hope grew that finally we would be safe. But then there came the strange and terrible events surrounding the execution of the traitor Mary, Queen of Scots, one year ago and we glimpsed the true face of the terror that was to come.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<b>Chapter 4</b><br />
<br />
<i>18th February 1587</i><br />
<br />
<em>All through the bitter winter’s night, Robert, earl of Launceston, had ridden, and finally in the thin, grey morning light his destination fell into view on the rain-soaked Midlands terrain. His fingers were frozen on the reins, his breeches sodden and mud-splattered, and his bones ached from the cold and exhaustion.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Launceston was hardly used to such privation, but he could not refuse his orders to be the eyes and ears of Lord Walsingham for the momentous event about to take place. Though thirty-eight, he looked much older. His skin had an unnatural, deathly pallor that many found repulsive and had made him something of an outcast at court, his nose long and pointed, his eyes a steely grey.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>When Walsingham called on him, it was usually to have a throat slit in the middle of the night, a Spanish agent agitating for Elizabeth’s overthrow or assassination, sometimes a minor aristocrat with unfortunate Catholic sympathies. He had forgotten how many he had killed.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>At least this time he would only be watching a death instead of instigating it. Just beyond Oundle, Fotheringhay Castle rose up out of the flat, bleak Northamptonshire landscape on the north side of the meandering River Nene. On top of the motte was the grand stone keep, surrounded by a moat, with ramparts and a ditch protecting the inner bailey where the great hall lay alongside some domestic buildings. The gatehouse stood on the other side of a lake crossed by a bridge. Lonely. Well defended. Perfect for what lay ahead.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>As he drew towards the castle, Launceston feared he had missed the event. Mary’s execution had been scheduled for the cold dark of seven a.m. and the hour was already approaching ten, but he could hear music from the courtyard and the distant hubbub of an excited crowd.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Encouraging his horse to find its last reserves, he pressed on through the deserted Fotheringhay village, across the bridge, and the drawbridge, and into the courtyard.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“A ghost!”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“An omen!”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>When they saw his ghastly features peering from the depths of his hood, a shiver ran through the crowd of more than a hundred who had come to see history made. He hated them all, common, witless sheep, but to be fair, he disliked his own kind at the court just as much.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>As they slowly realised he was only a man, they returned their attention to the grey bulk of the great hall. Some waved placards with Mary drawn as a mermaid, a crude insult suggesting she was a prostitute. She had no friends there on the outside, but the long wait had reduced the baying to a harsh murmur. The air of celebration was emphasised by a band of musicians, playing an air that usually accompanied the execution of witches. It could have been considered another insult, except Launceston k</em><em>new that Walsingham had personally requested the playing of the dirge.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Dismounting, he strode towards the hall where his way was barred by the captain of the sheriff’s guard in breastplate and helmet, halberd raised. “Launceston,” he said, “here at the behest of your Lord Walsingham, and our queen, God save her. I am not too late?”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“The traitor has been at her prayers for three hours,” the captain replied. “She has read her will aloud to her servants, and prepared for them her final instructions. My men have been instructed to break down the door to her quarters if she delays much longer.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Launceston pushed his way into the great hall where two hundred of the most respected men in the land waited as witnesses. They had been carefully selected for their trustworthiness, their numbers limited so that whatever happened in that hall, only the official version would reach the wider population.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Though logs blazed in the stone hearth, it provided little cheer. Black was the abiding colour in the room, on the drapes surrounding the three-foot-high platform that would provide a clear view of the proceedings to the audience, on the high-backed chair at the rear of the dais, on the kneeling cushion and the executioner’s block. It was there too in the clothes and masks of the executioner and his assistant. Bulle, the London hangman, was ox-like, tall and erect, his hands calmly resting on the haft of his double-headed axe.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Launceston could feel the stew of conflicting emotions, the sense of relief that the traitorous whore’s lethal machinations would finally be ended, the anxiety that they were embarking on a dangerous course into uncharted waters. Spain, France, and Rome watched and waited. The killing of one of royal blood was not to be taken lightly, especially one so many Catholics believed to be the rightful ruler of England. Her execution was the right course of action; Mary would always be a threat to England as long as she lived.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>A murmur ran through the assembled group, and a moment later the sheriff, carrying his white wand of office, led Mary into the hall accompanied by the earls of Shrewsbury and Kent. Six of her retinue trailed behind.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Launceston had never seen her before, but in that instant he understood why she loomed so large over the affairs of several states. She exuded a rapacious sexuality that was most evident in the flash of her unflinching eyes. A glimpse of her red hair beneath her kerchief was made even more potent by the shimmering black velvet of her dress. She would not be hurried, her pace steady as she clutched on to an ivory crucifix. A gold cross hung at her neck, and a rosary at her waist.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Launceston was surprised to find himself captivated like every other man in the room. The blood of two men lay upon her, yet that only served to increase her magnetism; she appeared to be a woman who could do anything, who could control any man. She climbed onto the platform and sat in the chair, levelling her gaze slowly and dispassionately across all present.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Walsingham’s brother-in-law, Robert Beale, the clerk to the Privy Council, caught Launceston’s eye and nodded before reading the warrant detailing Mary’s crime of high treason for her constant conspiracies against Elizabeth, and calling for the death sentence. The earl of Shrewsbury asked her if she understood.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Mary gave a slight smile that Launceston found unaccountably chilling. “I thank my God that He has permitted that in this hour I die for my religion,” she intoned slyly.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>No one in the room was prepared to listen to a Catholic diatribe, and the dean of Peterborough stood up to silence her. Mary suddenly began to sob and wail and shout in Latin, raising her crucifix over her head.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Launceston had the strangest impression that he was seeing two women occupying the same space; this Mary was devout, believing herself to be a martyr to her religion, not sexually manipulative, not threatening, or cunning. The change troubled him for it did not seem natural, and he was reminded of the coded warning Walsingham had given him before his departure: “Do not trust your eyes or your heart.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>After she had pleaded passionately for England to return to the true faith, she changed again, her eyes glinting in the firelight, her lips growing cruel and hard. </em><br />
<br />
<em>As Bulle the executioner knelt before her and made the traditional request that she forgive him her death, she replied loudly, “I forgive you with all my heart, for now, I hope, you shall make an end of all my troubles.” It was a stately comment, but Mary twisted it when she added in a whisper that only a few could hear, “But not your own.” As she looked around the room, she made it plain that she was speaking about England.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Bulle went to remove Mary’s gown, but she stopped him with a flirtatious smile and summoned her ladies-in-waiting to help. “I have never put off my clothes before such a company,” she said archly.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>A gasp ran through the room as her black gown fell away. A bodice and petticoat of crimson satin flared among the dark shapes. It was a bold, almost brash statement, and in it Launceston once again saw two opposing faces: crimson was the colour of the martyr, but it was also the colour of sex, and Launceston could see the effect it had upon some of the elderly men around. Though forty-four, Mary was still a beautiful, alluring woman. She flaunted the swell of her bosoms and displayed her cleavage, as though she was available for more than death.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“Death is not the end,” she said. “For me. And there are worse things than death by far, as you will all come to know.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>With a flourish of her petticoat, she knelt, pausing briefly at the level of Bulle’s groin before placing her head upon the block. Launceston had the briefest sensation that she was looking directly at him. With another disturbing smile, she stretched out her arms in a crucified position and said, “In manus tuas, Domine.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Bulle’s mask hid whatever he thought of this display, if anything. He swung the heavy woodcutter’s axe above his head and brought it down. It thudded into the block so hard Launceston was sure he could feel the vibrations. Mary made no sound, did not move, continued to stare at the assemblage, still smiling. Bracing himself, Bulle wrenched the axe free and brought it down again. The head lolled forwards, hanging by one piece of gristle that Bulle quickly cut.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Stooping to pluck the head by the hair as he had been ordered, Bulle called out, “God save the queen.” All apart from Launceston responded, “Amen.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>But Mary had played one last trick on her executioner. Her auburn hair was a wig that now flapped impotently in Bulle’s hand, the grey-stubbled head still rolling around the platform.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>His breath tight in his chest, Launceston kept his gaze upon it, aware a second before the others that the eyes still swivelled in their sockets.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>The head came to rest at an angle and Mary surveyed her persecutors. “Two queens now you have plucked in your arrogance,” she said, a slight smile still lying on her lips, “and the third that will fall shall be your own.”</em><br />
<br />
<em>The knights and gentlemen cried out in terror, making the sign of the cross as they pressed away from the platform. Even the sheriff’s guards lowered their halberds and shied away.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“Against you in the shadows, the powers align,” Mary continued. “Death, disease, destruction on a scale undreamed of—all these lie in your days ahead, now that long-buried secrets have come to light. Soon now, the thunderous tread of our marching feet. Soon now, the scythe cutting you down like wheat. The shadows lengthen. Night draws in, on you and all your kind.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Two hundred men were rooted as their worst fears were confirmed and a mood of absolute dread descended on the great hall. As Mary’s eyes continued to swivel, and her teeth clacked, Bulle fell to his knees, his axe clattering noisily on the platform. Launceston thrust his way through the crowd to Beale and shook him roughly from his daze.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“Yes, of course,” Beale stuttered, before hailing two men who waited at the back of the crowd. Launceston recognised them as two of Dr. Dee’s assistants. Rushing to the platform, they pulled from a leather bag a pair of cold-iron tongs which one of them used to grip the head tightly. Mary snarled and spat like a wildcat until the other assistant used a poker to ram bundles of pungent herbs into her mouth.When the cavity was filled, the snarling diminished, and the eyes rolled slower and finally stopped as the light within them died.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>A furore erupted as the terrified crowd shouted for protection from God, or demanded answers, on the brink of fleeing the room in blind panic.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Leaping to the platform, Launceston asked the captain of the guard to lock the doors so none of the assembled knights and gentlemen could escape. Grabbing Bulle’s dripping axe, he hammered the haft down hard on the dais, once, twice, three times, until silence fell and all eyes turned towards him.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“What you have seen today will never be repeated, on peril of your life.” His dispassionate voice filled every corner of the great hall. “To speak of this abomination will be considered an act of high treason, for diminishing the defences of the realm and putting the queen’s life at risk from a frightened populace. One word and Bulle here will be your final friend. Do you heed my words?”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Silence held for a moment, and then a few angry mutterings arose. </em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>“Lest you misunderstand, I speak with the full authority of the queen, and her principal secretary Lord Walsingham,” Launceston continued. “Nothing must leave this room that gives succour to our enemies, or which turns determined Englishmen to trembling cowards. I ask again: do you heed my words?”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>In his face they saw the truth of what he said, and gradually acceded. When he was satisfied, Launceston handed the axe back to Bulle and said, “Complete your business.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Still trembling, the earl of Kent stood over Mary’s headless corpse and stuttered in a voice so frail few could hear, “May it please God that all the queen’s enemies be brought into this condition. This be the end of all who hate the Gospel and Her Majesty’s government.”</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>With tentative fingers, Bulle plopped the head onto a platter and held it up to the window three times so the baying crowd without could be sure the traitorous pretender to the throne was truly dead.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Immediately, the doors were briefly unlocked so Henry Talbot, the earl of Shrewsbury’s son, could take the official news of Mary’s death to the court in London. As he galloped through the towns and villages, shouting the news, a network of beacons blazed into life across the country and church bells were rung with gusto.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>At Fotheringhay, Launceston spoke to each of the knights and gentlemen in turn, studying their eyes and letting them see his. Then he oversaw the removal of Mary’s body and head to the chapel, where prayers were said over them as Dee’s assistants stuffed the remains with more purifying herbs and painted defensive sigils on the cold flesh. Everything she had worn, and everything her blood had touched, was burned.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>Few beyond that great hall knew the truth: that terrible events had been set in motion, like the ocean, like the falling night, and soon disaster would strike, and blood and terror would rain down on every head.</em><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>Chapter 5</strong><br />
<br />
After Walsingham had finished speaking, silence fell across the Black Gallery, interrupted only by the crackle and spit of the fire in the hearth.<br />
<br />
“The Enemy has been planning the assault on the Tower for more than a year,” Mayhew said eventually.<br />
<br />
Will now understood the depths of the worry he had seen etched into Walsingham’s face earlier that night. <em>“Long-buried secrets have come to light,”</em> he repeated. “Then we must assume they have the Key, or the Shield, or both, and are now able to use the weapon.”<br />
<br />
“We have spent the last twelve months attempting to prepare for the inevitable,” Walsingham said, “listening in the long dark for the first approaching footstep, watching for the shadow on the horizon, every hour, every minute, vigilant.”<br />
<br />
“And now all our souls are at risk,” Mayhew said. Upending the bottle he’d been steadily draining, he was disgusted to find it empty. “So that traitorous witch Mary was in the grip of the Enemy. Is no one safe from their sly control?” he added. “How much of the misery she caused was down to her, and how much to whatever rode her?”<br />
<br />
“We will never know,”Walsingham replied. “The past matters little. We must now concern ourselves with the desperate situation that unfolds.”<br />
<br />
“It is the nature of these things that the waiting seems to go on forever and then, suddenly, there is no time at all when the wave engulfs us,” Dee added. “Yet fortune has given us a gift. The Enemy has lost the weapon almost as soon as it fell into their hands.”<br />
<br />
“For now. But they will be scouring London, even as we do. If time has been bought for us, it will not be long.” With one hand on the mantelpiece as he peered into the embers,Will turned overWalsingham’s account of Mary’s execution. “You said the thing inMary’s head spoke of <em>two queens</em> plucked in arrogance.”<br />
<br />
“Elizabeth’s father provided ample candidates,” Mayhew said. “That is of little import. Of more concern are the actions of the Catholic sympathisers and our enemies across the water. Will Spain seize upon our distraction with this crisis to launch an attack upon England?”<br />
<br />
“Philip of Spain is determined to destroy us at all costs and will use any opportunity that arises,” Walsingham replied. “He makes a great play of English <em>heresy</em> for turning away from his Catholic faith, but his hatred is as much about gold. He is heartily sick of our attacks on his ships, and our constant orays into the New World, the source of all his riches.”<br />
<br />
“But war can still be averted?” Mayhew said hopefully.<br />
<br />
Walsingham gave a derisive snort. “The spineless fools at court who nag Elizabeth believe so. They encourage her in peace negotiations that drag on and on. In the face of all reason, our lord treasurer, Burghley, is convinced that peace will continue. He will still be advocating gentle negotiation when the<br />
Spanish are hammering on his door. Leicester opposes him as much as possible, but if Burghley wins the queen’s ear, all is lost.”<br />
<br />
“War was inevitable when Elizabeth signed the treaty to defend the Dutch against any further Spanish demands upon their territories. Philip saw it as a declaration of war on Spain,” Will noted.<br />
<br />
“Now the duke of Parma sits across the channel with seventeen thousand men, waiting for the moment to invade England. And in Spain, Philip amasses a great fleet, and plots and plans,” Walsingham continued. “The invasion <em>will</em> come. It is only a matter of when. And the Enemy has chosen this moment to assail us from within. Destabilised, distracted, we are ripe for an attack.”<br />
<br />
“Spain and the Catholic sympathisers are in league with the Enemy,” Mayhew spat. “We will be torn apart by these threats coming from all directions.”<br />
<br />
“No, this business is both greater andmore cunning than that.”Will turned back to the cluttered table. “In this room, we know there is a worse threat than Catholics and Spain. Our differences with them may seem great, but they are meagre compared to the gulf between us and the true Enemy, whose manipulations set brother against brother when we should be shoulder to shoulder. Religious arguments mean nothing in the face of the threat that stands before us.”<br />
<br />
Will could see Dee agreed, but Mayhew cared little, and Walsingham was steadfast in the hatred of Catholics that had been embedded in him since his early days at the defiantly Protestant King’s College at Cambridge.<br />
<br />
“There are threats and there are threats. Some greater and some lesser, but threats nonetheless, and we shall use whatever is at our disposal to defeat them.” Walsingham’s voice was stripped of all emotion and all the more chilling for it. “Barely a day passes without some Catholic plot on Elizabeth’s life coming to light. We resist them resolutely. We listen. We watch. We extract information from those who know. And when we are ready we act, quickly, and brutally, where necessary.”<br />
<br />
An entire world lay behind Walsingham’s words, and Will fully understood its gravity. Elizabeth had chosen her spymaster well. Walsingham was not hampered by morals in pursuit of his aims; he believed he could not afford to be so restricted. The tools of his trade were not only ciphers, secret writing, double and triple agents, and dead-letter boxes, but also bribery, forgery, blackmail, extortion, and torture. Sometimes, in unguarded moments, the cost was visible in his eyes.<br />
<br />
“This war with our long-standing Enemy has blown cold for many years, but if it has now turned hot, we shall do what we always do: trap and eradicate them at every level,” Walsingham continued.<br />
<br />
Will watched the evidence of Walsingham’s cold, monstrous drive and wondered what had made him that way. The war shaped them all, and never for the better.<br />
<br />
“We must move quickly, and find this Silver Skull before the Enemy does,” Walsingham stressed. He turned to Will and said, “All of England’s resources are at your disposal. Do what you will, but keep me informed at every step. Take Mayhew here, and Launceston.” He considered his options and added, “Also Tom Miller, a stout fellow, if simple, who has just joined our ranks. He has yet to be inducted in the ways of the Enemy, so take care in bringing him to understanding.”<br />
<br />
Will attempted to hide his frustration. Putting an agent into the field without time to educate them in the true nature of the Enemy was cruel and dangerous. More than one spy had been driven out of their wits and into Bedlam after the heat of an encounter.<br />
<br />
“And John Carpenter,” Walsingham concluded.<br />
<br />
Will flinched.<br />
<br />
“I know there has been business between the two of you, but you must put it behind you for the sake of England, and our queen.”<br />
<br />
“I would prefer Kit.”<br />
<br />
“Marlowe is your good friend and true, but he wrestles with his own demons and they will be the end of him. We need a steady course in this matter.”<br />
<br />
Will could see Walsingham’s mind would not be changed. He turned to Dee and asked, “Have you developed any new tricks that might aid me?”<br />
<br />
“Tricks, you say!” Dee’s eyes flared, but he maintained his temper. “I have a parcel of powder which explodes in a flash of light and heat and smoke when exposed to the air. A new cipher that even the Enemy could not break. And a few other things that will make your life more interesting. I will present them to you once I have apprised Lord Walsingham of my findings in Bohemia.”<br />
<br />
Briefly, Will wondered what matter Dee could be involved in that was as pressing as the search for the Silver Skull. But the thought passed quickly; the burden he had been given was large enough and it would take all his abilities to shoulder it.<br />
<br />
“There are many questions here,” Will said. “Who took the prisoner from the Enemy and why? Were they truly rogues, or were they Spanish spies, and the Silver Skull is now in the hands of a different enemy?”<br />
<br />
“And can we possibly find one man in a teeming city before the Enemy reaches him first?” Mayhew added sourly.<br />
<br />
“Let us hear no more talk like that, Master Mayhew,” Will said. “Time is short and we all have a part to play.” As Mayhew grunted and lurched to his feet, Will turned to Walsingham. “Fearful that their hard-won prize might slip through their fingers, the Enemy will be at their most dangerous at this time.”<br />
<br />
The log in the hearth cracked and flared into life, casting a ruddy glow across Walsingham’s face. “The next few hours will decide if we march towards hell or remain triumphant,” he replied. “Let nothing stand in your way, Master Swyfte. God speed.”<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center">from <em><a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_1261170479181">The Silver Skull—</a></em><em><a href="https://www.pyrsf.com/SilverSkull.html">Swords of Albion</a> </em>© <a href="http://www.markchadbourn.net/">Mark Chadbourn</a><br />
</div><div align="center">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.christianmcgrath.com/">Chris McGrath</a><br />
</div><div align="center">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke<br />
</div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div align="center"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVy1s4pu3ERxEfEVK6Hbu85-YjmDzzCHWU888an_R0QsDRdXYLiq9BNqAbGL6Rg_oaviBcLaaK-T3m52fl1Wz6g4NRIOswpReBmVpLNr33cTZR1Xn9DblzBd-05cROUGsroIvWY5cogro/s1600-h/Chadbourn,+Mark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" ps="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVy1s4pu3ERxEfEVK6Hbu85-YjmDzzCHWU888an_R0QsDRdXYLiq9BNqAbGL6Rg_oaviBcLaaK-T3m52fl1Wz6g4NRIOswpReBmVpLNr33cTZR1Xn9DblzBd-05cROUGsroIvWY5cogro/s320/Chadbourn,+Mark.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div align="left">A two-time winner of the British Fantasy Award, <strong>Mark Chadbourn</strong> is the critically-acclaimed author of eleven novels and one non-fiction book. A former journalist, he is now a screenwriter for BBC television drama. His other jobs have included running an independent record company, managing rock bands, working on a production line, and as an engineer’s ‘mate’. He lives in a forest in the English Midlands. Visit him online at <a href="http://www.markchadbourn.net/">http://www.markchadbourn.net/</a>.<br />
</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-27607653484090194492009-11-12T12:42:00.010-06:002009-11-17T15:16:45.780-06:00Sasha: A Trial of Blood & Steel by Joel Shepherd<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim78xLxeSWU1U11c8whv7NU5c3jzMx8PtebZ8gdefA-bikIDh1pEa1X1RHBdmEFWHgtm6rCMQ61UZWyH2FND3GXDEmXknh4mFKObiSVopRw5Q5U_4WUl80B9B3DTTATVvMbqnbUAZYLNQ/s1600/Sasha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim78xLxeSWU1U11c8whv7NU5c3jzMx8PtebZ8gdefA-bikIDh1pEa1X1RHBdmEFWHgtm6rCMQ61UZWyH2FND3GXDEmXknh4mFKObiSVopRw5Q5U_4WUl80B9B3DTTATVvMbqnbUAZYLNQ/s320/Sasha.jpg" yr="true" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUc25r6ui9XK27zOwH8MH5O-fUUvZDXr-iReQysWyzoGaf91VK8qRced7IfamAznxRhE30C4P8XXjygggMA_dvEofmpTfzRi01RM1u1mJ0klAW5YV9F6Z9VJ5lpD-fWzM7O8B8QUaDMWI/s1600-h/Sasha.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Sasha.html">SASHA</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"> IS A FIGHTER, THE LIKE OF WHICH THE HIGHLAND COUNTRY OF LENAYIN HAS NEVER SEEN.</span></span></span><span style="font-size: large;"></span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Spurning her royal heritage to be raised by the great warrior, Kessligh, her exquisite swordplay astonishes all who witness it. But Sasha is still young, untested in battle and often led by her rash temper. In the complex world of Lenayin loyalties, her defiant wilfulness is attracting the wrong kind of attention. </span><br />
</div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Lenayin is a land almost divided by its two faiths: the Verenthane of the ruling classes and the pagan Goeren-yai, amongst whom Sasha now lives. The Goeren-yai worship swordplay and honour and begin to see Sasha as the great spirit—the Synnich—who will unite them. But Sasha is still searching for what she believes and must choose her side carefully. </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">When the Udalyn people—the symbol of Goeren-yai pride and courage—are attacked, Sasha will face her moment of testing. How will she act? Is she ready to lead? Can she be the saviour they need her to be?</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">Scroll down and read the excerpt below to find out. </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“The whole book had me hardly able to put it down, and my perpetual human need for sleep continually stood in the way of decent reading time. The vague allusions towards what will come in the sequel … has me eager to read more. This is definitely a book you will want to pick up … downright and thoroughly enjoyable.” </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">--Fantasy Book Review</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“…I thought Sasha was excellent, especially given that this is Joel Shepherd's first fantasy novel. It offers a huge fantasy world, a fascinating heroine, heart-pounding descriptions of both small-scale sword fights and full-on warfare, several characters that genuinely grow and change, and — maybe most importantly — the hint that this is just the start of what could become a great series…Sasha is an excellent epic fantasy novel that promises great things for the rest of the series. Recommended.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">--Fantasy Literature.com<br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“The second half of the book crackles with intriguing characters, witty banter and vivid, realistic battles, leaving readers optimistic about the planned sequels.”</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">--Publishers Weekly </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">“Those who savor the intricacies of rival religions, vividly choreographed fights, and lots of bloody battle will enjoy [Sasha]…. this heroic fantasy should please fans of, say, George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice novels.” </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">--Booklist</span> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Sasha: A Trial of Blood & Steel</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Joel Shepherd</span></b><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</b><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: large;">Blood & Steel Characters</span></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
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</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lenayin</span></i></b><br />
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</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Valhanan</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha ...................former Princess of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh Cronenverdt . . . . . . . warrior, former Commander of Armies </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Peg ....................Sasha’s horse </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Terjellyn ................Kessligh’s horse </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Teriyan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . leather worker </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lynette . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Teriyan’s daughter </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaegar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . headman of Baerlyn town </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Andreyis ................Sasha’s friend </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Kumaryn Tathys . . . . . . Great Lord of Valhanan </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tarynt ..................councilman of Yule village </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tyree </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd Nyvar ..............heir to Great Lordship of Tyree </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Aystin Nyvar . . . . . . . . . Jaryd’s father, Great Lord of Tyree </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Captain Tyrun . . . . . . . . . . . . Commander of Tyree’s Falcon Guard </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lieutenant Reynan Pelyn . . . . Falcon Guardsman </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Tymeth Pelyn . . . . . . . . Tyree noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sergeant Garys . . . . . . . . . . . . Falcon Guardsman </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tarryn ..................Jaryd’s younger brother </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wyndal .................Jaryd’s brother </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Redyk ..............Tyree noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Paramys .............Tyree noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Arastyn .............Tyree noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Galyndry ................Jaryd’s sister </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Pyter Pelyn ..............nephew of Lord Pelyn </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rhyst Angyvar . . . . . . . . . . . . Tyree noble youth </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Baen-Tar</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Prince of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Torvaal Lenayin ...........King of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Krystoff ................Prince of Lenayin, <i>deceased</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Koenyg .................Prince of Lenayin, heir to the throne </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Wylfred .................Prince of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">WynaTelgar .............Koenyg’s wife </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sofy ....................Princess of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Marya . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Princess of Lenayin, married in Torovan </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Petryna .................Princess of Lenayin, married </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Alythia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Princess of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Myklas ..................Prince of Lenayin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Queen Shenai .............Queen of Lenayin, <i>deceased</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anyse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Sofy’s maid </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Archbishop Dalryn . . . . . . . . . Lenay archbishop </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Hadryn</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Rashyd Telgar . . . . . . . . Great Lord of Hadryn, <i>deceased</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Usyn Telgar . . . . . . . . . . Rashyd Telgar’s son, Great Lord of Hadryn </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Farys Varan ..............Hadryn noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Udys Varan ..........Hadryn noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Heryd Ansyn .............Hadryn noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Martyn Ansyn ............Hadryn noble </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Taneryn</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Krayliss .............Great Lord of Taneryn</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Captain Akryd ............Taneryn soldier</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Udalyn</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Daryd Yuvenar ............Udalyn boy</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rysha ...................Daryd’s younger sister</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Essey ...................Udalyn horse</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chief Askar ..............Udalyn chief</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Banneryd </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Captain Tyrblanc . . . . . . . . . . Banneryd Black Storm captain </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Cyan ...............Great Lord of Banneryd </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Corporal Veln . . . . . . . . . . . . . Black Storm soldier </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Isfayen</i> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Faras ...............Great Lord of Isfayen</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Neysh </span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Aynsfar .............Neysh noble, <i>deceased</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Parabys .............Great Lord of Neysh</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ranash</span></i><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lord Rydysh .............Great Lord of Ranash</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Bacosh</i></b> </span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Duke Stefhan .............Larosan duke</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Master Piet ..............Larosan bard</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Saalshen </span></i></b><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Rhillian .................serrin leader in Petrodor</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Aisha ...................female serrin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Errollyn .................male serrin, archer</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Terel ...................male serrin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tassi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . female serrin</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><i><b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Others</span></b></i><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Jurellyn .................senior Lenay scout </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Aiden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nasi-Keth from Petrodor, Kessligh’s friend </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b><i>Historical Figures</i></b> </span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;">Hyathon the Warrior . . . . . . . Goeren-yai mythical hero </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Markield ................Cherrovan warlord </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Leyvaan of Rhodaan . . . . . . . . Leyvaan the Fool, King of Bacosh </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tharyn Askar .............great Udalyn chieftain </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Essyn Telgar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Hadryn chief </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Soros Lenayin . . . . . . . . . . . . . former king, head of Liberation army of old </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Chayden Lenayin . . . . . . . . . . former king, Soros’s son </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tullamayne . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Goeren-yai storyteller </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">One</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">SASHA CIRCLED , a light shift and slide of soft boots on compacted earth. The point of her wooden tanch marked the circle’s centre, effortlessly extended from her two-fisted grip. Opposite, Teriyan the leather </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">worker matched her motion, stanch likewise unwavering, bare arms knotted with hard muscle. Sasha’s eyes beheld his form without true focus. She watched his centre, not the face, nor the feet, nor especially the wooden training blade in his strong, calloused hands. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">An intricate tattoo of flowing black lines rippled upon Teriyan’s bicep as his arm flexed. Thick red hair stirred in a gust of wind, tangled where it fell long and partly braided down his back. High above, an eagle called, launched to flight from the row of pines on the northern ridge overlooking the Baerlyn valley of central Valhanan province. The westerly sun was fading above the ridge, settling among the pines, casting long, looming shadows. The valley’s entire length was alive with golden light, gleaming off the wood-shingled </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">roofs of the houses that lined the central road, and brightening the green pastures to either side. Nearby, several young horses frolicked, an exuberance of hooves and gleaming manes and tails. From a nearby circle, there came an eruption of yells above the repeated clash of wooden blades. Then a striking thud, and a pause for breath. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Of all of this, Sasha was aware. And when Teriyan’s lunging attack came, she deflected and countered with two fast, slashing strokes, and smacked her old friend hard across the belly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Teriyan cursed, good-naturedly, and readjusted the protective banda that laced firmly about his torso. “What’d I do?” he asked, with the air of a man long since resigned to his fate. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha shrugged, backing away with a light, balanced poise. “You attacked,” she said simply. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Girl’s gettin’ cute,” Geldon remarked from amidst the circle of onlookers. Sasha flashed Geldon a grin, twirling her stanch through a series of rapid circles, moving little more than her wrists. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Always been cute, baker-man,” she said playfully. Guffaws from the crowd, numbering perhaps twenty on this late afternoon session. Strong men all, with braided hair and calloused hands. Many ears bore the rings of Goeren-yai manhood, and many faces the dark ink patterns of the wakening and the spirit world. Lenay warriors all, as fierce and proud as all the lowlands tales, a sight to strike terror into the hearts of any who had cause to fear. And yet they stood, and watched with great curiosity, as a lithe, cocky, short-haired girl in </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">weave pants and a sheepskin jacket dismantled the formidable swordwork of one of their best, with little more to show for the effort than sweat. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Teriyan exhaled hard, and repeated his previous move, frowning with consideration. “Bugger it,” he said finally. “That’s as good an opening stroke as anyone’s got. If someone has a better suggestion, I’m all ears.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Improve,” Tyal remarked. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Kessligh says the low forehand is a more effective opener than the high,” Sasha interrupted as Teriyan gave Tyal a warning stare. “For a man your size, anyhow.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ah,” Teriyan made a mock dismissive gesture, “that Kessligh, what would he know about honest swordwork? You and him can stick to your sneaky svaalverd. Leave the real fighting to us, girlie.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Look, do you want to know how I do it, or not?” Sasha asked in exasperation. There weren’t many men in Lenayin who would dare call her “girlie.” Teriyan was one. Kessligh Cronenverdt, the greatest swordsman in Lenayin and her tutor in far more than just swordwork for the past twelve years, was another. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Teriyan just looked at her, a reluctant smile creeping across a rugged face. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A bell clanged from the centre of town, midway up the valley. Stanches lowered, and all commotion about the training yard ceased as men turned to look, and listen. Again the bell, echoing off the steep valley sides, and then again, as someone got a good rhythm on the pulley rope. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Rack your weapons!” yelled Byorn, the training hall proprietor, above the sudden commotion as men ran, boots thundering up the steps from the outside yard to the open, broad floorboards of the inner hall. “No haste in this hall, respect the circles!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Despite the haste, men did keep to the dirt paths between tachadar circles, careful not to disturb the carefully laid stones, nor the sanctity of the space within. Sasha moved with less haste than some, seeing little point in </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">elbowing through the crush of young men taking the lead. She walked instead with Teriyan and Geldon, up the dividing steps and into the high-ceilinged interior, unlacing her banda, and taking time to select her real </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">weapons from the wooden rack where she’d hung them earlier. With weapons, Kessligh had instructed her often, one never rushed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Most men did not own horses and began running up the trail toward the main road. Sasha fetched Peg from his field beside the training hall, used a stone paddock wall to mount, and galloped him in their wake... but before she could go racing to the lead, she spotted a familiar bay mare coming up the road to the training hall, a slim, red-haired girl upon her back, waving one-handed for Sasha’s attention. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha brought Peg to a halt, and waited. Lynette arrived with a thunder of swirling dust and flying hair, eyes wide with in a freckled, paleface. She was panting and the mare—Chersey—was sweating profusely. May be enough for as even- fold ride at speed, Sasha reckoned with a measuring eye, knowing Chersey’s abilities every bit as well as Peg’s. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sasha, ”Lynette gasped, “it’s Damon. Damon’s here.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha frowned. “Damon came to Baerlyn? With what?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I thi...think it’s the Falcon Guard.” She brushed a ragged handful of curling red hair from her face as a gust of valley wind caught it. Herlong dress was pulled well above her knees, with most unladylike decorum, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">exposing a pair of coarse- weave riding pants beneath. And leather boots in the stirrups. “I’m not sure...I was taking Chersey for a ride out past Spearman’s Ridge when I saw them coming, so I turned around and came back as fast as I could... They had the banners out, Sasha, it was full armour and full colours! They looked magnificent!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha’s frown grew deeper. The Falcon Guard had been lately posted in Baen-Tar.“You didn’t speak to them? You don’t know why they’re here?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lynette shook her head. “No, I came straight back and told Jaegar, and he sent some one to ring the bell, and then I came looking for you...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Damnit. Lynie, I want you to go and get Kessligh—he went to buy some chickens.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“He’ll hear the bell ringing, surely?” Lynette asked in confusion, as more men mounted nearby, and went galloping up the road. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Kessligh takes his chickens very seriously,” Sasha said wryly. “Just try and hurry him along a bit.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’ll try,” said Lynette doubtfully. Sasha kicked Peg with her heels, and </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">went racing up the road as Lynette pulled Chersey about in a circle and followed as best she could. A short way along, Sasha came across Teriyan, Geldon and several others, running at a steady pace. She pulled Peg to a trot alongside and extended an inviting hand to Teriyan. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Come on,”she said, “council heads should get there first.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Leave it, girl,” Teriyan answered without breaking stride. “I still got some pride left, you know.” Sasha scowled. Lynette went racing past on Chersey. “Hey, where’d you send my girl off to?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ask her yourself, if you ever catch her,” Sasha snorted, and galloped once more up the road. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The road wove between paddock fences and low stone walls, catching the full face of the sun before it vanished behind the ridge. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She was gaining fast on two men ahead as she reached the main Baerlyn road. Upon the wooden verandahs flanking the road, Baerlyn folk had gathered—mothers with their children, elderly folk in light cloaks or knitted shawls, and the men now walking or running along the road’s broad edge, keeping the middle clear for horses. Peg loved a target, and passed the leading horses in a thunder of hooves. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The road wound past Geldon’s bakery, then past the trading houses and side alleys leading to warehouses, and the workshops of jewellers, potters, furniture makers and Teriyan’s own leather shop. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Up ahead she saw a gathering of horses and dismounted men in armour blocking the road, milling before the stone facade of the Steltsyn Star, Baerlyn’s only inn. Heraldsmen held banners, gusting now in the light valley </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">wind, indicating that Damon was still in the vicinity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha pulled up beside several men from the training hall and surveyed the scene. There appeared to be an effort underway to lead the regiment’s horses down the Star’s side lane, to the stables and paddocks that stretched to the southeastern valley wall at the rear. Her searching eyes found Jaegar, Baerlyn’s headman, upon the Star’s verandah gesticulating in earnest discussion, then waving a thick, tattooed arm across the semi-organised mass of waiting men and horses. He spoke with Damon—tall, darkly handsome and notable by his purple and green riding cloak, the gold clasp at his neck, and the gleaming silver pommel of his sword at one hip. Now twenty-three summers, by her reckoning, and seeming tired and dishevelled from his ride. All the men held a respectful distance, except the Falcon guard captain and a young man in lordly clothes, eagerly surveying the conversation, whom Sasha did not recognise. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Then the guard captain turned upon the step and shouted above the snort and stamp of hooves, the jangle of armour and the busy discussions of men, “In units down the lane! The stables are already half full, fill them as </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">you can, then fill the barn—it should take another ten! The rest, there’s three more properties behind the inn toward the valley side, there should be enough room in those barns, if not, move down and knock on the next door. Be polite, I want not a hay bale disturbed without permission, nor a chicken’s feather plucked, nor a sow’s tail pulled. I’ll not have the good folk of Valhanan saying the Falcon Guard make poor guests! Tend to your mounts, then gather back here for a good hot meal on the king’s own coin!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">That got a rousing cheer from all present. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Men of Baerlyn!” bellowed Jaegar, with a barrel-chested volume that surpassed even the captain. He was a stocky man of middling height but with massively broad shoulders. The angling light appeared to catch only one side of his face, leaving the other darkly ominous . . . except that the darker side as facing the light. Upon closer inspection, the spirit-mask of Goeren-yai manhood revealed its finer intricacies of weaving curls, waves and flourishes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sunlight glinted on the many rings in his ears, and upon the silver chain bout his broad, sculpted neck. His long hair, parted cleanly down the middle, bound down the centre of his back in a single, leather-tied braid. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Those with space available indoors, please find a sergeant or corporal and say so!” Jaegar continued. “There’s no need for any more than the horse tenders to spend a night in the cold! Illys, we’d welcome some music inside tonight!” There was a cheer from the Baerlyn townfolk who had encircled the Falcon Guard, in all curiosity and eagerness to help. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"And Upwyld with the ale!” yelled someone from the periphery. “Don’t forget the ale!” And that got an enormous cheer from everyone, soldiers and locals alike. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaegar held both calloused hands skyward to quieten the racket, and then bellowed, “It is the honour of Baerlyn to receive this most welcome visitation! Three cheers for the Falcon Guard!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Hoorah!” yelled the Baerlyners. “Hoorah! Hoorah!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Three cheers for Master Jaryd!” with an indication to the young man beside them on the verandah. Again the cheers. The young man held up a hand with a cheerful grin. Something about the glamorous cut of his clothes, and the self-assured smile on his lips, made Sasha’s breath catch in her throat. The Falcon Guard were all from neighbouring Tyree province of central Lenayin. He must be one of Great Lord Aystin Nyvar of Tyree’s sons. Not Jaryd <i>Nyvar</i>? Surely the spirits would not be so cruel to her? “And three cheers for Prince Damon!” And those three cheers, to Sasha’s mild surprise, were loudest of all. Damon, she noted, glanced down at his riding boots and looked uncomfortable. She repressed an exasperated smile. Same old Damon. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Three cheers for Baerlyn!” yelled the captain, and the soldiers answered back in kind. “Let’s move!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">With little more fuss, the soldiers began filing down the Star’s cobbled side lane. Sasha finally completed her rough headcount, and arrived at perhaps eighty men and horses, their numbers clustering a good way up the road past the inn. The strength of standing companies varied from province to province—in the north, the great armoured cavalry companies numbered closer to a thousand each. The Falcon Guard company, by her reckoning, should have about five hundred at full strength. Perhaps this contingent had left in a hurry and the others were following. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She left Peg in the care of a farmer she knew well. Damon and the young Tyree lordling stood in continued conversation with Jaegar, now joined by another two Baerlyn councilmen, similarly tattooed and ringed as Jaegar. Sasha eyed that contrast as she approached unseen, slipping between soldier-led horses—the Baerlyn men rough and hardy Goeren-yai warriors. And Damon tall, clipped and elegantly attired, a Verenthane medallion—the eight-pointed star—prominently suspended on a chain about his neck. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Rural Goeren-yai and city Verenthanes. The old Lenayin, and the new. The Goeren-yai believed in the ancient spirits of Lenay hills, the Verenthane in the foreign, lowlands gods. Sasha was born Verenthane, but lived amongst Goeren-yai . . . and was raised by Kessligh as Nasi-Keth, the followers of the teachings of far-off Saalshen. She sometimes wondered if she’d done something to offend some gods or spirits in a previous life to have deserved such a complicated fate. She often thought things would be so much simpler if she could just choose one or the other . . . or the third. But no matter which she chose, her choice would offend countless powerful people. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha thrust the doubts aside, cleared the gathering about the steps, and trotted briskly up. Damon saw her at the last moment and straightened stiffly. Nearby commotion abruptly slowed, and conversation paused, as </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">people turned to look. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Damon,” said Sasha, managing a half-genuine smile as Jaegar quickly made way for her atop the steps. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sashandra,” Damon replied, similarly ill-at-ease. And then, with meaningful emphasis, “Sister.” And spread his arms to embrace her. Sasha returned the hug, the first time she had embraced her brother in nearly a year, by her immediate reckoning. From about the verandah, and upon the road, there was applause and some cheering. Beneath Damon’s riding clothes, Sasha felt the hard weight of chainmail, which was sometimes decorative custom for a travelling prince, and sometimes not. This, she guessed from the size of the company, was not. They released each other, and Damon put both gloved hands upon her shoulders and looked at her. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’re looking well,” he remarked. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Liar, Sasha thought. Little though she’d seen him of late, she knew well his true opinion of her appearance these days. In Baen-Tar, the seat of Lenay kings, the ladies all wore dresses, and hair so long you could trip on it. Some of her wry amusement must have shown on her face, for Damon barely repressed a smile of his own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"You too,” Sasha replied, and meant it. “What brings you to my humble town?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well,” said the young prince with a hard sigh. “Therein lies the tale.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">~~~~</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’re still not clear exactly what happened,” Damon said to the table, his voice raised to carry above the mealtime clamour. Changed into a clean shirt beneath a patterned leather vest, covered again by the riding cloak in regal purple and green, he looked to Sasha’s eyes far more comfortable now than in the armour. His fingers toyed absently with the wine cup. “We only received word that Great Lord Rashyd Telgar is dead, and that Great Lord Krayliss is responsible.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha stared sullenly at the open fire upon the centre of the Star’s main floor. Flames blazed within the stone-lined pit as several kitchen hands hurried about and rotated the three sizzling spits. Men clustered at long tables between ceiling supports as Baerlyn youngsters served as waiters, hurrying back and forth with laden plates and mugs of ale. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Voices roared in conversation, and heat radiated from the fire, as music and the smell of good food filled the confined air beneath the Star’s low ceiling. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’re sure it was Krayliss that killed Rashyd?” Jaegar pressed from his seat alongside Captain Tyrun, commander of the Falcon Guard. Tyrun and Sasha were sitting on either side of Damon at the head of the table. On Sasha’s left sat Teriyan, widely regarded as Jaegar’s right-hand man in Baerlyn, due mostly to his swordsmanship and exploits in battle. The young Master Jaryd completed the group, ignoring the breathless stares that the serving girls sent his way. At the end of the table, a chair for Kessligh sat empty. If Damon were offended at his absence, he didn’t show it. Probably he knew that Kessligh was Kessligh, and did as he pleased. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m not sure of anything,” Damon replied to Jaegar, somewhat testily, but recovered from his outburst no sooner than it had begun. Same old Damon indeed, Sasha noted sourly. Damon took a breath. “I only know what word reached us in Baen-Tar. The messenger said his lord was dead and that revenge must follow. Against Krayliss.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon took another bite of his roast, then cleaned up the remains of his vegetable raal with a piece of bread. The table exchanged sombre glances, an oasis of silence amongst the raucous din. Sasha met no one’s gaze and simply stared at the central fire. Lord Rashyd was dead, and Hadryn province, the greatest of Lenayin’s three northern provinces, was now without its leader. And now the Falcon Guard were riding from Baen-Tar to take revenge on Lord Krayliss of neighbouring Taneryn province. It seemed that the age-old conflict between Hadryn and Taneryn had flared once more, with all the ancient, treacherous history that entailed. Sasha did not trust herself to speak, lest some slip of caution unleash the seething in her gut. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lenayin had ten provinces—eleven, if one counted the city lands of royal Baen-Tar. A century earlier the Liberation had permanently established long-disputed borders and created a class of nobility to rule over them. In all of the provinces save one, the nobility were Verenthane. The one exception, of course, was Taneryn. Lord Krayliss was the only Goeren-yai great lord in Lenayin. No surprise then that the Hadryn–Taneryn border remained the most troubled in Lenayin. To all the many causes for countless centuries of </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">war between the Hadryn and Taneryn, the Liberation had added religion. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">As grand as the Liberation had been, not all the Lenay peoples had shared in its benefits. For the Udalyn peoples, the Liberation had proven a disaster. Today, they lived trapped in their valley within the boundaries of Hadryn, holding fiercely to the old ways, despite the Hadryn’s attempts to convert them or kill them. The Taneryn considered them heroes. The Hadryn, heretics. It remained perhaps the most emotive of unresolved conflicts in Lenayin. For Goeren-yai across Lenayin, the Udalyn represented antiquity, the old ways from before the Liberation, too strong to die, too proud to give up the fight. If the Udalyn were somehow involved in this latest calamity, Sasha reckoned, then matters could become very grim indeed. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Rashyd’s men were on manoeuvre, we heard,” said Captain Tyrun, downing his mouthful with a gulp of wine. Tyrun had a lean, angular face, like the falcon from which his unit took its name. His nose was large, his </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">moustache broad and drooping. Less well clipped, Sasha noted with reluctant curiosity, than most Verenthane officers, although his face bore no sign of the ink quill, nor his ears of rings or other, pagan decoration. Most likely he was no Goeren-yai, although if he wore a Verenthane medallion, it lay hidden </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">beneath his tunic. “It seems he was killed within Taneryn borders. What he was doing there, if he was there, we don’t know.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Making nuisance, most likely,” Teriyan remarked around a mouthful. “Hadryn’s claimed the western parts of Taneryn for centuries, damn Rashyd’s been angling for a war since his father died.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Words were exchanged,” Tyrun continued, ignoring the dark look that Damon fixed on Teriyan. “A fight ensued between Rashyd’s men and Krayliss’s. Some were killed on both sides. And Krayliss killed Rashyd personally, with clear intent. So the messenger said.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“He might not have seen it all, ”Jaegar cautioned. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Or might be lying through his teeth to protect the honour of his ass of a lord, Sasha thought to herself. Still, she forced herself to remain silent. It would not befit anyone to be speaking ill of Lord Rashyd so soon after his death. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The calamity was beyond her immediate comprehension. No one in these parts liked Lord Rashyd Telgar, with his arrogant, northern ways and strict Verenthane codes. But for Krayliss to kill him... There were some who’d said that Lord Rashyd sat at the king’s right hand. And others who’d said that the king, at Lord Rashyd’s... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tyrun heard Jaegar’s caution and shrugged. “As you say,” he said. “We have yet to discover what happened. But Krayliss has taxed the king’s tolerance for a long time now, and there comes a time when even our tolerant king must put his foot down. In this, we are the heel of his boot.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Our king,” said Master Jaryd, somewhat tersely, “is vastly long on tolerance. He is a merciful man, a man of the gods, for surely they favour him. My father says that Lord Krayliss has preyed upon this mercy as a spoilt child preys upon the tolerance of a doting parent. Like the spoilt child, Krayliss deserves a spanking. With His Highness the Prince’s blessing, I intend to administer it personally.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd downed a mouthful of ale with a flourish, lounging in his chair as an athletic man might, who wished others to observe the fact. Sasha observed him with a dark curiosity, having never seen this particular young noble face-to-face before. Jaryd Nyvar was a name known the length and breadth of Lenayin, and even those like Sasha who tried to avoid the endless gossip of Verenthane nobility knew something of his exploits. At no more than twenty-one summers, Jaryd Nyvar was the heir of Tyree. His mother was a cousin to Sasha’s father—King Torvaal Lenayin—which made her and Jaryd related, she supposed. It was hardly uncommon amongst Lenay nobility—she was probably related to far more arrogant young puss-heads than Jaryd Nyvar. But it made her uneasy, all the same. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Every year at one of the great tournaments, Jaryd Nyvar would win personal honours of swordwork or horsemanship. His flamboyance was famous, his dancing reputedly excellent, and it was said he made grand gestures to the ladies before every bout. Sasha had heard it said jokingly that Jaryd’s swordwork was so excellent because he’d spent most of his days beating off hordes of girls, and their mothers, with a stick. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Looking at him now, she grudgingly conceded the stories of his appearance were not too far-fetched. He <i>was</i> very pretty, with light brown hair worn somewhat longer than most Verenthanes, just above the collar at the back, and large, dark brown eyes that promised fire and mischief in equal measure. She had not heard of his command posting to the Falcon Guards. Perhaps his father grew tired of his pointless gallivanting and thought to put his skills to some decent, disciplined use. And his father, they said, was dying. Perhaps that added to the urgency. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The Falcon Guard was posted to Baen-Tar for the summer?” Teriyan asked Jaryd. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The latter half of the summer, aye,” Jaryd agreed. He took a grape from the table and tossed it easily into his mouth. “We trained with the Royal Guard and others . . . gave them a right spanking too, I might add. Right, Captain?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Aye, M’Lord,” Captain Tyrun agreed easily. “That we did.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’ve served in both Hadryn and Taneryn,” Teriyan said, chewing on a slice of roast meat. “That entire border’s full of armed men waiting for an incident. I wonder if the Falcon Guard will be enough. You’re damn good, sure, but eighty men can’t be everywhere at once. If this gets serious, there’ll be hundreds runnin’ around like headless chickens. Thousands, maybe.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Three more companies are several days behind us,” Damon said. “Each of those is promised at closer to their full strength—five hundred men in total. Most of the Falcon Guard were on manoeuvre about Baen-Tar. That’s another hundred. We left in too much haste for anything more.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’d have gathered a Valhanan company on the way through,” Captain Tyrun added, “but there’s none standing ready at present. We did think it common sense to gather Yuan Kessligh on the way through, however. If he’s willing.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He glanced toward the empty chair. Sasha shrugged. “I can’t speak for him,” she said. “But I’d be surprised if he weren’t.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd slapped the table with one hand, delighted. “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “To ride with Yuan Kessligh! I’ve dreamed of that since I was a lad—smiting evil-doers at Kessligh’s side! That fool Krayliss won’t know </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">what hit him.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Krayliss is the evil-doer?” Sasha asked, implacably cool. “We have yet to establish what occurred surrounding Lord Rashyd’s death. Until such a time as we know for sure, Lord Krayliss deserves the benefit of any doubt, surely? Or has my father’s law changed so drastically when I wasn’t watching?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd smiled broadly, in the manner of a masterful warrior challenged to a duel by a raggedy little farmer’s girl with a stick. “M’Lady,” he said, with a respectful, mirthful nod, “surely you know what Lord Krayliss is like? The man is a bigot, a . . . a rogue, a thief—a vain, strutting, pompous fool who is a blight upon the good nobility of Lenayin! And now, apparently, a murderer, though this will surely surprise no one who knows his type.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’ve met Lord Krayliss, Master Jaryd. Have you?” Jaryd gazed at her, his smile slowly slipping. “I’ve met Lord Rashyd too. And strangely, I find your description could just as readily describe him as the other.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I too have met Lord Rashyd, several times,” Jaryd said coolly. Sasha wondered if he’d ever conversed with a young woman on a matter that did not involve her giggling shyly with starry eyes. “He is...or rather was...a hard man, at times confrontingly so. But at least he was not a...a shaggy-headed, mindless, chest-thumping...” he waved a hand, searching for a new, derogatory adjective. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Pagan?” Sasha suggested. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd just looked at her for a moment, realisation dawning in his eyes. Sasha shifted her gaze to Jaegar, beneath meaningful, raised eyebrows. Jaegar coughed, and sipped at his drink. From this angle, the spirit-mask on the left side of his face was not fully visible, but gold glinted from his ear, and upon his fingers. The long braid, also, was like nothing a respectable Verenthane would ever stoop to wear. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Anger flared in the future Great Lord of Tyree’s eyes.“ You put words in my mouth, M’Lady,” he said accusingly. “I meant no such thing!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You young Verenthane lords put words in your own mouths,” Sasha retorted, “and scarcely a thought before putting them there. Remember whose guest you are. They’re <i>far</i> too polite to say so. I’m not.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Shut up, both of you!” Damon snapped before Jaryd could reply. The young man fumed at her, all trace of cool demeanour vanished. Sasha stared back, dark eyes smouldering. “Please excuse my sister, Master Jaryd,” said Damon,with forced calm. “Her tempers are famous.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And her allegiances,” Jaryd muttered. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh pray do tell us all what that means?” Sasha exclaimed, as Damon rolled his eyes in frustration. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I have many Goeren-yai friends, M’Lady,” Jaryd said, levelling a finger at her for emphasis. “None of them admire Lord Krayliss even a jot. You, on the other hand, seem all too pleased to rush to his defence.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’ve heard those stories too,” said Sasha. “The Hadryn and their cronies have never been friends to either me or Kessligh. They accuse me of sedition, of plotting against my father.” She put both hands up on the table with firm purpose. "Are <i>you</i> accusing me of sedition, Master Jaryd?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd blinked. Sedition, of course, was punished by death, with no exceptions. A person so accused, without reasonable proof, had obvious grounds for an honour duel. Those, also, ended in death. With very few exceptions. Jaryd started to smile once more, disbelievingly. No man about the table seemed to share his humour. Jaryd Nyvar, tournament champion of Lenayin, seemed barely to notice. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” he said, offhandedly, with an exasperated raise of his eyes to the ceiling, as though he felt his dignity severely pained to have to tolerate such dreadfully silly people. Fool, Sasha thought darkly. “Of course not. Your tempers delude you, M’Lady. I have nothing but admiration for so great a Verenthane beauty as your own.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Tell me, young Master Jaryd,” said Teriyan, leaning forward with evident amusement, chewing on some bread. “Have you ever sparred against a warrior trained in the svaalverd?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“As a matter of fact, no,” Jaryd said mildly. “The only two people so trained in Lenayin, I believe, are Kessligh Cronenverdt and his uma. And the visiting serrin, of course, but they never enter a swordwork contest, even though I have often seen them at tournaments.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And have you ever wondered why the serrin don’t enter swordwork contests?” Teriyan pressed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd smirked. “Perhaps they are afraid.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Not afraid, young Master,” said Teriyan. “Just polite.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">~~~~</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon strode angrily along the upper corridor, the Star’s old floorboards creaking underfoot, as the sounds of merriment continued from below. Sasha followed, conscious that her own footsteps made far less noise than her brother’s, and that their respective weights were only half the reason why. When they reached </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">his room, Damon ushered Sasha inside, closed the door and threw on the latch. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was a good room, as Lenay accommodation went. Four times larger than most of the Star’s rooms, its floorboards covered with a deer-hide rug, and small windows inlaid across the stone walls. Against the inner wall, two large beds, with tall posts and soft mattresses beneath piles of furs and fine, lowlands linen. Between the two beds, a fireplace, crackling merrily, and a small pile of firewood in the wicker basket alongside. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why do you have to go and do that?” Damon demanded at her back. Sasha walked to the space between the two beds, where heat from the fire provided some comfort. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Go and do what?” she retorted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And this!” Damon exclaimed, striding over, reaching with one hand toward the tri-braid upon the side of her head . . . Sasha ducked away, scowling at him. “What in the nine hells is that?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s a tri-braid, Damon. One braid for each of the three spirit levels. Don’t they even teach basic Goeren-yai lore in Baen-Tar any more?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why, Sasha?” Damon demanded, angrily. “Why wear it?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Because I’m Lenay!” Sasha shot back. “What are you?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Cut it off. Right now.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha folded her arms in disbelief. “Make me!” she exclaimed. Arisen from the dinner table, there was a sword at her back now, and more weapons besides. Damon, unlike Master Jaryd, knew better. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Good gods, Sasha,” he exclaimed, with a sharp inhaling of breath. He put both hands to his head, fingers laced within his thick dark hair, looking as he would never wittingly appear before his men—utterly at a loss. “A year since I’ve seen you. A full year. I was almost looking forward to seeing you again . . . almost! Can you believe that? And this is the welcome I get!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha just stared at him, sullenly. Her temper slowly cooling as she gazed up at her brother. Not all the Lenayin line were blessed with height—she was proof enough of that. But Damon was. A moderately tall young man, with a build that spoke more of speed and balance than brute strength. He would be very handsome indeed, she thought, if not for the occasionally petulant curl of his lip and the faintly childish whine in his tone whenever he felt events going against him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">He was the middle child of ten royal siblings, of whom nine now survived. With Krystoff dead, Koenyg was heir. Wylfred would be next, had he not found religion and committed to the Verenthane order instead, with their father’s blessing. Then came Damon. Second-in-line now and struggling so very hard beneath the burden of expectation that came of one martyred brother who was already legend, and an overbearing stone-head of a surviving elder brother. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m not a Verenthane, Damon,” Sasha told him, firmly. “I’ll never be a Verenthane. You could cut my braid, stick me in a dress and feed me holy fables until my mind dissolves from the sheer boredom, and I’ll still not be a Verenthane.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well that’s all fine, Sasha,” Damon said, exasperated. “You’re not a Verenthane. Good for you. But you have a commitment to our father, and that commitment includes not making overt statements of loyalty toward the Goeren-yai.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why the hells not?” Sasha fumed. “Goeren-yai are more than half of Lenayin last I looked! It’s only you lordly types that converted, and the cities and bigger towns . . . most of Lenayin is just like this, Damon! Small villages and towns filled with decent, hard-working folk who ask nothing more than good rulers and the right to continue being who they are without some shaven-headed, black-robed idiot strolling into their lives and demanding their fealty.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sasha, your last name is Lenayin!” Damon paused, to let the impact of that sink in. Wiser than to rise to her provocations. That was new. “The family of Lenayin is Verenthane! It has been for a century, since the Liberation! Now, whether your arrangement with Kessligh means that your title is officially “Princess” or not, your family name remains Lenayin! And while that continues to be so, you shall not, under any circumstances, break with the continuity of the line of Lenayin!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha waved both hands in disgust and strode across the floor to lean against a window rim. Looking northeast up the valley, small lights burned from the windows of the houses that lined the road, then the dark, ragged edge of the upper treeline, separating the land from the vast expanse of stars. Hyathon the Warrior sat low on the horizon, and Sasha’s eye traced the bright stars of shoulder, elbow and sword pommel raised in mid-stroke. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sasha.” Damon strolled to her previous spot, blocking the fire’s warmth. "Master Jaryd speaks the truth. There have been rumours, since the call to Rathynal, of Krayliss courting your approval...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The nobility talks, Damon,” Sasha retorted, breath frosting up on the cold, dark glass. “Rumour is the obsession of the ruling class, everyone always talks of this or that development, who is in favour with whom, and never a care for the concerns of the people. That’s all it is—talk.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Just who do you think you are, Sasha?” Damon said in exasperation.“ A champion of the common people?Because I will tell you this, little sister—it’s precisely that kind of talk that breeds rumours. Krayliss and his kind cannot be dismissed so easily, they <i>do</i> have a strong following amongst some of the people...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Vastly overstated,” Sasha countered, rounding on him. She folded her arms and leaned her backside against the stone windowsill. “The rulingVerenthanes simply don’t understand their own people, Damon. And do you know why that is? It’s because there are so <i>few</i> Goeren-yai among the ruling classes. Krayliss is the only provincial lord, and he’s a maniac!” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“A maniac who claims ancestry with the line of Udalyn,” Damon said sharply. “You of all people should know what the Udalyn mean to Goeren-yai all across Lenayin. Such appeals cannot be taken lightly.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I of all people <i>do</i> know,”Sasha said darkly.“ You’re only quoting what Koenyg told you. And he knows <i>nothing</i>.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon broke off his reply as the door rattled, held fast against the latch. Then an impatient hammering. Damon looked at first indignant, wondering who would dare such impetuosity against Lenay royalty. Then realisation, and he strode rapidly to the door, flung off the latch and stepped back for it to open. Kessligh entered, holding a wicker cage occupied by three flapping, clucking chickens. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ah good,” said the greatest swordsman in Lenayin, noticing the fire. He carried the cage across the creaking floor with barely a glance to Damon or Sasha, and placed the cage between the two beds. The chickens flapped, then settled. “These lowland reds don’t like the cold so much. Makes for bad eggs.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And he appeared to notice Damon for the first time, as the young prince r elatched the door and came across with an extended hand. Kessligh shook it, forearm to forearm in the Lenay fashion. Damon had half a head on Kessligh and nearly thirty years of youth. Yet somehow, in Kessligh’s presence, he seemed to shrink in stature. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Yuan Kessligh,” Damon said, with grea tdeference. “Yuan,” Sasha reflected, watching them from her windowsill. The only formal title Kessligh still retained, and that merely denoting a great warrior. An old Leay tradition it was, now reserved for those distinguished by long service in battle, be they Verenthane or </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Goeren-yai. It remained one of those traditions that boundt he dual faiths of Lenayin together, rather than pulled them apart. But Kessligh, of course, was neither Goeren-Yai nor Verenthane. “An honour to see you once more.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Likewise, young Damon,” Kessligh replied, his tones trong with that familiar Kessligh-edge. Sharp and cutting, in a way that long years in the service of refined Lenay lords had never entirely dulled. Hard brow neyes bore into Damon’s own, beneath a fringe of untidy, greying hair. “And are you the hunter,this time? Or merely the shepherd, tending to errant sheep?” With a cryptic glance across at Sasha. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha made a face, far less impressed by the gravitas of the former Lenay Commander of Armies than most. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh,well...” Damon cleared his throat. “You have heard, then? About Lord Rashyd?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I was just talking downstairs,” Kessligh said calmly. “Catching up with old friends, learning the news, such as it is. So Master Jaryd will live to see past dawn, I take it?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon blinked, looking most uncertain. Which was often the way, for those confronted with Kessligh’s sharp irreverence on matters that most considered important. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It appears that way,” Damon said, with a further uncertain glance at Sasha. Sasha watched, mercilessly curious. “Please, won’t you sit? I’ll have someone bring up some tea.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Already done,” said Kessligh, “but thank you.” And he sat, with no further ado, crosslegged on the further bed, with the chickens murmuring and clucking to themselves on the floor below. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha considered the study in profiles as Damon undid his swordbelt and made to sit on the bed opposite. Damon’s face, evidently anxious, his features soft and not entirely pronounced. And Kessligh’s, rugged and lined with years, with a beakish nose, a sharp chin and hard, searching eyes. Like a work of carving, expertly done yet never entirely completed. He sat straight-backed on the bed, legs tucked tightly beneath, with the poise of a man half his years. It was a posture that wasted not a muscle or sinew, an efficiency born of lifelong discipline and devotion to detail. And his sword was worn not at the hip, as with most fighting men of Lenayin, but clipped to the bandolier on his back, as with all fighters of the svaalverd style. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon sat with less poise than Sasha’s teacher—or uman, in the Saalsi tongue of the serrin—placing a foot on the bedframe and pulling up one knee. At his feet, the chickens clucked and fluttered at the further distur-</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">bance. Damon looked at the chickens. And at Kessligh. Struggling to think of something to say. Sasha tried to keep an uncharitable smile in check. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“These are good chickens?” he managed finally. Sasha coughed, a barely restrained splutter. Damon shot her a dark look. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well I’m trying to broaden the breeding range,” Kessligh replied serenely. “These are <i>kersan ross</i>, from the lowlands. The eggs have an interesting flavour, much better for making light pastries.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You traded for these?” Damon asked, attempting interest, to his credit. It was Lenay custom that no serious talk could begin before the tea arrived. Poor Damon was horrible at small talk. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“A local farmer placed an order through his connections,” Kessligh replied. “A wonderful trading system we now have with the Torovans. Place an order with the right people and a Torovan convoy will deliver in two or three months. They’re becoming quite popular.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“As with all things Torovan,” Sasha remarked. Damon frowned at her. Kessligh simply smiled. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Ah,” he said. “Thus speaks she of the Nasi-Keth. She who fights with Saalshen style, loves Vonnersen spices in all her foods, washes regularly with the imported oils of coastal Maras, lives off the wealth from the Torovan love of Lenay-bred horses, speaks two foreign tongues, and has been known to down entire tankards of ale with visiting serrin travellers while playing Ameryn games of chance. But no lover of foreigners she.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh’s sharp eyes fixed upon her, sardonically. Sasha held her tongue, eyebrows raised in a manner that invited praise for doing so. There had been times in the past when she had not been so disciplined. He grunted, in mild amusement. Then came a knocking on the door, which Sasha answered and found the tea delivered on a tray. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She set the tray on a footstool for Kessligh to prepare, then settled into a reclining chair with a sigh of aching muscles. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon accepted his tea with evident discomfort. Prince or not, few Lenays felt comfortable having Kessligh serve them tea. But that had not stopped Kessligh from cooking for entire tables of Baerlyn folk when suitable occasions arose. Sasha had always found it curious, this yawning gulf between the popular Lenay notion of Kessligh the vanquishing war hero, and her familiar, homespun reality. Kessligh the son of poor dock workers in lowlands Petrodor,trading capital of Torovan, for whom Lenay was a second (or third) language, still spoken with a tinge of broad, lowlander vowels that others remarked upon, but Sasha had long since ceased to notice. Kessligh the Nasi-Keth—a serrin cult (or movement, Kessligh insisted) whose presence had long been prominent amongst the impoverished peoples of Petrodor. Kessligh, serrin-friend, with old ties and allegiances that even three decades of life and fame in Lenayin had not managed to erase. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh considered Sasha’s evident weariness with amusement, sipping at his tea. “Did Teriyan wear you out?” he asked. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"More demonstrations,” Sasha replied wryly, stretching out legs and a free arm, arching her back like a cat. Her left shoulder ached from a recent strain. It seemed to have altered the balance of her grip, for the tendon of her left thumb now throbbed in sympathy where her grip upon the stanch had somehow tightened, unconsciously. The knuckles on her right hand were bruised where a stanch had caugh ther, and several more impacts ached about her ribs, causing a wince if one were pressed unexpectedly. The front of her </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">right ankle remained tender from where she’d turned it several days ago, during one of Kessligh’s footwork exercises. And those were just the pains she was most aware of. All in all, just another day for the uma of Kessligh Cronenverdt. “They all want to see svaalverd, so I show them svaalverd. And rather than learning, they then spend the whole time complaining that it’s impossible.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh shook his head. “Svaalverd is taught from the cradle or not at all,” he said. “Best they learn little. It makes an ill fit with traditional Lenay techniques. Men who try both get their footing confused and trip themselves up.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We could try teaching the kids,” said Sasha, sipping her own tea. “Before Jaegar and others get their hooks into them.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The culture here is set,”Kessligh replied. “I’m loath to tamper with it. Tradition has its own strength, and its own life. And I fear I’ve caused enough damage to Lenay custom already.” Meaningfully. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha snorted. “Well I <i>would </i>be a good little farm wench, but it’s difficult to fight in dresses, and impossible to ride...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You could have kept your hair long,” Kessligh suggested. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And worn a man’s braid?” With a glance at Damon, who listened and watched with great intrigue. The former Lenay Princess and the former Lenay Commander of Armies. To many in Lenayin, it still seemed an outrageously unlikely pairing. Many rumoured as to its true nature.“ I couldn’t wear it loose like the women because then it would get in the way, but I can’t wear a braid like a man because then I’m not allowed to be a woman at all. The only option left was to cut it short as some of the serrin girls wear it. I don’t do <i>everything</i> just to be difficult, you know, I did actually put some thought into it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The evidence of <i>that</i> doesn’t equal your conclusion,” Kessligh remarked with amusement. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha gave Damon an exasperated look. “This is what passes for entertainment in the great mind of Kessligh Cronenverdt,” she told him. “Belittling me in front of others.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“What’s not entertaining about it?” Damon said warily. Sasha made a face at him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I assume you’ve made comment on Sasha’s new appendage?” Kessligh continued wryly, with a nod at her tri-braid. “She insists it’s all the fashion. Myself, I wonder why she can’t hold to Torovan jewellery and knee-high boots like good, proper Lenay children.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha grinned. Damon blinked, and sipped his tea to cover the silence as he tried to figure out what to say. “You approve?” he said finally.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh made an expansive shrug. “Approve, disapprove...” He held a hand in Sasha’s direction. “Behold, young Damon, a twenty-year-old female.In the face of such as this, of what consequence is it for me to approve or disapprove?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon shrugged, faintly. “Most Lenay families are less accommodating. Tradition, as you say.” Sasha raised an eyebrow. It was more confrontational than she’d expected from Damon. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“This is my uma,” Kessligh replied calmly. “I am her uman. In the ways of the serrin, and thus the ways of the Nasi-Keth, it is not for uman to dictate paths to their uma. She will go her own way, and find her own path. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Should she have chosen study and her ball ore instead of swordwork and soldiery, that would also have been her choice...although a somewhat poorer teacher I would have made, no doubt. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“So she feels a common cause with the Goeren-yai of Lenayin.” He shrugged. “Hardly surprising, having lived amongst them for twelve of her twenty years. The mistake you all make, be you Verenthanes or romantics like Krayliss, is to think of her as anything other than my uma. What she does, and what she chooses to wear in her hair, she does as uma to me. This is a separate thing from politics. Quite frankly, it does not concern you. Nor should it concern our king.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Our king concerns himself with many things,” Damon said mildly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Not this,” said Kessligh. “He owes me too much. And King Torvaal always repays his debts.” Damon gazed down at his tea cup. “Baerlyn is not the most direct line from Baen-Tar to Taneryn. What purpose does this detour serve?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon glanced up. “Your assistance,” he said plainly. “You are as greatly respected in Taneryn as here. My father feels, and I agree, that your presence in Taneryn would calm the mood of the people.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The king’s justice must be the king’s,” Kessligh replied, a hard stare unfixing upon the young prince’s face. “I cannot take his place. Such a role is more yours than mine.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We have concern about the people of Hadryn taking matters into their own hands,” said Damon. “Lenayin has been mercifully free of civil strife over the last century. The king would not see such old history repeated. Your presence would be valued.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I claim no special powers over the hard men of Hadryn,” said Kessligh, with a shake of his head. “The north has never loved me. During the Great War, my successes stole much thunder from the northern lords, and now Lenay history records that forces under my command saved them from certain defeat. That could have been acceptable, were I Verenthane, or a northerner. But I’m afraid the north views Goeren-yai and Nasi-Keth as cut from the same cloth—irredeemably pagan and godless. I do not see what comfort my presence there could bring.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“But you will come?” Damon persisted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh sipped his tea, his eyes not leaving Damon’s. “Should my Lord King command it,” he said, in measured tones. “Of course, you understand that Sasha must therefore accompany me?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon blinked at him. And glanced across at Sasha. “These events make for great uncertainty. I had thought for her to remain in Baerlyn, with a complement of Falcon Guard for protection.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’d <i>what</i>?” Sasha asked, with no diplomacy at all. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh held up a hand, and she held her tongue, fuming. He unfolded his legs, in one lithe move, and leaned forward to pour some more tea from the earthen-glaze teapot. “She’s safer at my side,” he said. And gazed closely at Damon. “And her continued presence here, away from me, would only create an inviting target, wouldn’t you say? In these uncertain times, it’s best to be sure.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Two</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’M SAFER AT YOUR SIDE?” Sasha whispered incredulously, as she walked with Kessligh out through the inn's rear exit, and into the paved courtyard at the back. “What am I, some Baen-Tar noble wench to be </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">protected at every turn?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">The night chill was sharp, breath frosting before her lips as she spoke. The remains of a declining fire burned within the courtyard, surrounded by a great many men, with a cup in hand, or placed somewhere nearby. Kessligh walked so as to keep well clear of the fire’s light, and to get her they passed unnoticed in the dark. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Damon’s not here for me, Sasha,” Kessligh said grimly, hands in the pockets of his jacket as he strode. “He’s here for you.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“For me? He doesn’t even want me along...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Damn it, pay attention,” Kessligh rebuked her, with more than a trace of irritation. “Haven’t you grasped it yet? Despite everything I’ve been telling you, with your friends and drinking sessions, and that new growth </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">sprouting from the side of your head? Krayliss is making his move, Sasha. It’s a desperate, stupid, foolish move, but no more so than one might have expected from Krayliss. He threatens martyrdom. If we’re all not extremely careful, he might just get it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha frowned. She didn’t like it when Kessligh got like this. He made everything seem so complicated. Why couldn’t he just accept what she was, and how she felt? Why couldn’t everyone? “Krayliss... ” and she shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “Krayliss can’t use me as a figurehead.” Trying to be rational. “I’m a woman, he’d never accept a woman as his symbol of Goeren-yai revival...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’re worse than a woman,” Kessligh cut in, “you’re Nasi-Keth. Krayliss hates all foreigners, Sasha—that means me, the lowlanders and the serrin equally, he makes no distinction. But you’re the closest thing to a genuine Goeren-yai within the royal line that he’s got, and he might just be desperate enough. Have you seen the condition of the Falcon Guard’s horses? Damon made the ride from Baen-Tar <i>fast</i>. He came to secure you, to make sure Krayliss couldn’t reach you first. That’s the doing of your father’s advisors. Your father has little enough fear of you. They have plenty.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"My father’s advisors now include Wyna Telgar,” Sasha muttered. “To hear Sofy tell of it, anyhow. I’m sure my eldest brother’s wife would not have been pleased to hear that her father is dead. I wonder why Koenyg did not come himself, with that dragon breathing fire down his neck.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Prince Koenyg is a stickler for the rules,” Kessligh said grimly. “Rathynal approaches and the heir should not go gallivanting off to the provinces to bash some lordly heads together. That’s what junior princes are for.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Lamps lit the stables ahead where several guardsmen were talking with local Baerlyn men, some of them regular stablehands. Several lads carried heavy blankets, or lugged saddlebags, or shifted loads of hay. The air smelled of hay, manure and horses—to Sasha’s nose, a most familiar and agreeable odour, tinged with the sweetness of burning lamp oil.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s the Rathynal, isn’t it?” Sasha said, arms wrapped about herself, only partly to repress the shivers brought on by the cold air. “That’s why everyone’s so jumpy.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“There’s a lot to be jumpy about,” said Kessligh, raising a hand in answer to the horsemen’s respectful hails. “Such a large meeting can only reopen old wounds. Especially with foreign lowlanders invited. There’s war in the offing, Sasha. Us old warhorses can smell it in the air. Damn right we’re jumpy. You should be too.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“There won’t be a war,” Sasha said, with forced certainty as they walked down the long line of stables. “I just can’t imagine we’ll get involved in sometupid war in the Bacosh. It’s all too far away.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s nearer than Saalshen,” Kessligh said grimly. “And serrin come here all the time. Be careful of Master Jaryd—I know you derive great joy from boxing the ears of stuck-up young idiots like him, and I sympathise. But Rathynal is a time for all the great lords to make great decisions, and this Rathynal shall be greater than most. Lord Krayliss is a huge obstacle in such meetings—so long as he continues to sow division, Lenayin shall be forever divided, and the Verenthane nobility will never have its way on any great issue. Lord Krayliss delights in twisting the knife and ruining their grand plans at the most inopportune moments. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Whether you like it or not, Verenthane nobility hear the rumours connecting you to the Goeren-yai, and to Krayliss, and they worry. In Lord Aystin’s eyes, there may not be very much difference between you and </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Krayliss at all, and so I’d be surprised if his heir Jaryd feels differently. You can be certain Lord Rashyd and the northerners are not the only Lenay lords who would love to see Krayliss deposed and the entire ruling line of Taneryn replaced with a good Verenthane family. It would not surprise me to find that whatever incident has occurred, it was cooked up by Lord Rashyd with support from other Lenay lords, possibly including Great Lord Aystin Nyvar of Tyree himself.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’re telling me that the gallant and dashing Master Jaryd Nyvar may wish to plant a knife in my back?” Sasha suggested with some incredulity.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m telling you to be careful. Verenthanes frequently claim that all the old blood-feuds and bickering disappeared with the Liberation and the coming of Verenthaneism—don’t believe it. It’s still there, just hiding. It’s sneaking self-interest disguised beneath a cloak of smiling Verenthane brotherhood, and that makes it even more dangerous than when it was out in the open, as in older times . . . or more dangerous, at least, if you are its target. Trust me—I was born in Petrodor, and I’ve seen it. In such disputes of power, it’s always the knife you <i>can’t</i> see that kills you.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’d prefer the old days,” Sasha snorted. “At least then rival chieftains killed their opponents face to face.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Don’t be stupid,” Kessligh said shortly. “A thousand corpses honourably killed is no improvement on a handful of victims strangled in the night.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Terjellyn hung his head over the stable door, having heard them coming. Kessligh gave him an affectionate rub as a stable boy hovered, awaiting anything Baerlyn’s two most famous residents might require. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’ll be with Jaegar all night?” Sasha asked. The unhappiness must have shown in her voice, for Kessligh gave her a sardonic look. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I think you can handle your brother for one night,” he remarked. “It would be nice if I could discuss Baerlyn’s affairs with Jaegar before we ride. We might be gone several weeks.” Terjellyn nudged at his shoulder. The big chestnut stallion was a direct descendant of Tamaryn, Kessligh’s mount during the great Cherrovan War thirty years gone. He’d ridden Tamaryn all the way from Petrodor, a mere sergeant among the Torovan volunteer brigades that had flooded into Lenayin following the invasion of the Cherrovan warlord Markield. The Liberation seventy years gone, the Archbishop of Torovan had not wished to see the thriving “Verenthane Kingdom” of Lenayin lost to a raging barbarian mob and had commanded Torovan believers to ride west on a holy war. Kessligh, however, had not ridden for faith. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tamaryn had then borne him through the better part of an entire year’s fighting, in the wooded valleys and mountains of Lenayin, during which Kessligh had risen to lieutenant, then captain, and then Commander of </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Armies for all Lenayin, and inflicted a thrashing upon the Cherrovan from which they had not recovered to this very day. Ever since, Kessligh had never had a primary ride that was not a descendant of Tamaryn—Terjellyn’s great-grandfather. It was the only superstition Sasha had ever known him to concede. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Be nice to Damon. Try not to provoke him too much.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha stared elsewhere as Kessligh opened the stable door, and gave Terjellyn a once-over before mounting bareback. The big stallion, a more mature and refined gentleman than her Peg, walked calmly into the courtyard.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’ll be off before dawn,” Kessligh told her from the height of his mount .“We’ll go home first, get the gear, then rejoin the column on the way to Taneryn.” Sasha nodded, arms folded against the cold. “What’s your </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">problem?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">"What’ll happen to Krayliss?” she asked. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You care that much?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">About the fate of the Goeren-yai?” Sasha shot back. “How could I not?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh exhaled hard, glancing elsewhere with a frown. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said finally. “You chose this path for yourself...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I did not,” Sasha retorted, sullenly. “It chose me.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You are still your father’s daughter, Sasha. Whatever new role and title you bear now.” His eyes refixed upon her with narrowed intent. “None of us can escape the accidents of our birth so easily.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“That’s not what you told Damon back there. What was all that about me being your uma, and nothing more should matter?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“One side of an argument,” Kessligh said calmly. “I’m sure Damon can provide the other side himself.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You should have chosen another uma. One without the family baggage.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh’s lean, wry features thinned with a faints mile. “I don’t recall that I did choose you. In that, you chose me.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha gazed up at him. Kessligh’s expression, alive with the dancing shadows of lamplight, was almost affectionate.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Don’t sleep in,” he warned her. “And for the gods’own sakes, stay away from that rye beer. It’s murder.” And he nudged Terjellyn with his heels, clattering off up the dark, cobbled path to the courtyard, and the laughing merriment of men. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">~~~~</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sleep did not come easy. For a long time, Sasha lay beneath the heavy covers and gazed at the ceiling. The room glowed with the orange embers from the fire. From the second bed, furthest from the door, she could hear little sound from Damon’s bed.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She would have preferred her own, separate room, as was the usual arrangement when she had cause to stay overnight at the Star. But Damon having acquired the lordly quarters, form dictated that one royal should not sleep in lesser accommodation than the other. Such an occurrence might spread rumours of a division. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha hated it all. Hated the gossip and sideways looks, hated the out-of-towners who stared and whispered, hated the northerners who sneered and made smirking comments amongst themselves. Had always hated it, in all her living memory. And her memory, Kessligh had frequently noted with something less than pleasure, was vast. She recalled the echoing stone halls of Baen-Tar Palace all too well, with their expensive tapestries and paintings. Recalled well the texture of the grass in the little courtyards between buildings where she had sat for lessons on a sunny day, and found far greater interest in the beetles and flower gardens than in classical texts or Torovan history . . . to say nothing of scripture, or embroidery. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Recalled the look her instructors, servants and various assorted minders had given her, the “Sashandra-always-in-trouble” look, that expected bad behaviour and was frequently presented with such. She’d never understood those rules. Should a deep-cushion mattress <i>not</i> be used for jumping? And what on earth was wrong with throwing scraps of food to the pigeons that sat upon her bedroom window ledge? And running in hallways, what possible harm could it cause? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Unladylike,” had been the routine answer. And undignified, for arincess of Lenayin. “Then I don’t want to be a princess of Lenayin!” had been her typically untactful, six-year-old reply. They’d locked her in her room and given her a composition assignment to fill the time. She recalled even now the blank page of paper sheaf, and the little, sharp-tipped quill that looked like it had once been a waterbird feather. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Was that natural? To recall the experiences of a six-year-old with such detailed clarity? Kessligh had said, only half-seriously, that it stopped her from growing up, so tightly did she clutch to the memories of her past. Sasha had answered that on the contrary, it spurred her to leave that time even further behind. But now, lying in the warm, orange glow of the Star’s lordly quarters, she wondered. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">She recalled throwing the sheaf of papers out the window, scattering pigeons from the ledge, and papers all over the gardens below. Not being able to do what one chose had seemed a great injustice. Her minders had concluded that she was spoiled, and had determined to make life more difficult, removing more privileges, and increasing the severity of punishments. That had only made her angry. The next time she’d thrown something out of the window, it had been heavy, and she hadn’t opened the window first. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon, of course, had since challenged her recollections of those times. It had not been all her minders’ fault, he’d proclaimed, upon her first visit back to Baen-Tar in four years, at the ripe old age of twelve. He’d been fifteen, somewhat gangling and with two left feet – not an uncommon condition for boys, Kessligh had assured her, and one reason why girls were easier to train. She’d been born wild, Damon had insisted. Wild like a bobcat, breaking things and biting people from the moment she’d learned how to walk. They’d only been trying to stop her from killing someone—most likely herself. And all of it had been no one’s fault but her own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Twelve-year-old Sasha had punched him in the nose. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Whatever the cause of the madness, Krystoff had been the cure. Krystoff, the heir to the throne of Lenayin, with his flowing black hair, his easy laugh, and his rakish, good-humoured charm. Eleven years her senior, the second eldest after Marya, who was now safely married to the ruling family of Petrodor. Sasha suffered a flash of very early memory...hiding behind a hay bale in a barn, watching Kessligh and Krystoff sparring with furious intensity. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Gods she must have been young. She tried to recall the dress—her memory of dresses was particularly excellent, much the same way as a long-time prisoner must surely recall various types of shackles and chains. The frilly, tight-stitched petticoats? Yes, it must have been, she remembered yanking at them beneath her pleated, little-girl’s dress, trying to stop them from tugging as she crouched. She’d been five, then, that night in the barn ...and it had been night, hadn’t it? Yes, she recalled the flickering lamp-light and the musty smell of burning oil behind the familiar odour of hay. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">But there hadn’t been any fire damage to the northern wall in that memory. She’d nearly burned it all down at the beginning of her sixth year, when she’d been caught sneaking and forcibly removed. She’d grabbed and </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">thrown a bale hook in her fury as they’d carried her away, striking a nearby lamp and sending hay bales up in roaring flames. Serrin oil, she’d later learned—long-lasting, but very flammable. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh had seen that throw, however, and been impressed. That had been about the time Krystoff had begun to take pity on her, taking an interest in one of his sisters at an age when the others, save for Marya, might as well have been invisible. She recalled him entering her room the day following the fire, an athletic and well-built seventeen, and surely the strongest, most handsome man in all Baen-Tar to her worshipful eyes. She’d been crying. He’d asked her why. And she’d explained that she was to be kept under lock and key for a week. No sunlight, save what fell naturally through her bedroom window. No natural things, save the pigeons that squabbled and made silly sounds on her window ledge. No grassy courtyards. No running, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and definitely no chance to sneak to the creaky old barn in the old castle and watch the Lenayin Commander of Armies attempt to whip her eldest brother into a respectable heir and Nasi-Keth uma. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Krystoff had melted. And suddenly, in the following days, she was free. He’d promised her that if she just behaved herself, she could come and watch him train that night. She’d been courteous and attentive all through that day, and had performed all her required tasks without so much as fidgeting. Her minders had been incredulous. And Krystoff, true to his word, had found her a nice, high hay bale to sit on and watch proceedings in the barn that evening after dinner . . . for Krystoff trained twice a day, she’d been amazed to learn, and did many other exercises in between. He was going to be not only heir of Lenayin, but Nasi-Keth, like Kessligh. She had not, of course, grasped anything of the broader significance of this historic fact, nor the disquiet it had surely caused amongst devout Verenthanes everywhere, despite assurances that in Petrodor, most Nasi-Keth were also Verenthanes, and found no conflict between the two. All Sasha had known was that it seemed awfully exciting. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh, with curious humour, had even shown her some basic footwork when big brother Krystoff had needed a rest. She’d gotten it first go, slippered feet dancing on the dust and loose straw. Krystoff had encouraged her with typically infectious enthusiasm. They’d found her a broomstick, broken the end off and she’d used it for a practice stanch. She’d managed the basic taka-dan first time also—some of which had come from spying, and some from simple inspiration. She’d even gotten the tricky wrist-angle, and how it </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">shifted with different footing. Krystoff had been excited enough to pick her up and spin her about, where another man might have felt slighted, upstaged by his little sister with a broomstick. Very few pupils ever simply “got” the svaalverd first time, not even serrin. Kessligh had just watched, his expression unreadable. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">From then on, within the privacy of the barn at evenings, there’d been instruction for Sasha also. Lessons and exercises, too, for her to perform in her room in early mornings, before the servants arrived to fill her morning bath, and dress her in their latest torture contraption, and brush her long, flowing hair. She’d kept that half-a-broomstick beneath her mattress, and when it was found and confiscated, she’d used the fire poker in her room instead. Those exercises had been her wonderful secret—something her minders could never take away—and she’d practised every time she’d found a private moment. Her minders did not approve of Krystoff’s increasingly active role in her life, despite her improved behaviour. With improved behaviour had come high spirits, and a happy, rambunctious little Sashandra Lenayin had been every bit the challenge that a sullen, moody one had presented. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">They’d been kindred spirits, she and Krystoff. She recalled helping him to raid the kitchens when soldiers just arrived from impromptu exercises were hungry and unhappy at being told to wait until mealtime. Recalled </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Krystoff flustering the chief cook, and sweet-talking the giggling, blushing kitchen maids, while Sasha had stood on a chair, and loaded loaves of bread and bowls of soup onto trays for the queuing soldiers, who’d grinned at her and ruffled her hair. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Another time, he’d somehow talked the proprietor of the training hall into admitting her—Krystoff had been said to own the knack of talking fish out of water, or chickens into flight. (Or virtuous Verenthane maidens into his bedchambers, many had also said, when they thought she couldn’t hear.) There she’d watched athletic Lenay warriors drenched in sweat, pounding each other’s defences with utmost confidence and swagger . . . until they’d come up against Krystoff’s svaalverd, and found it like trying to swat a fly from the air with a wheelwright’s hammer. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Yet another time, rather naively, he’d introduced her to horses, and his little sister had fallen in love for a second time. Little Sashandra would abandon classes to go wandering around the stables, watching the stable boys and pestering the trainers for desperately coveted knowledge. And when the Royal Guards put on a formation display for a visiting foreign lord . . . well, no locks nor bars nor solid stone walls could hold her. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Those had been the best days, when her newfound confidence had blossomed, and with it, her first true sense of self. She’d even made peace with her other brothers and sisters . . . or no, she reflected now as she gazed at the ceiling—maybe not peace. More like a truce. An uneasy and often hostile one, with occasional breaches caused by either party, but usually resolved in short order. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Given nine headstrong siblings, that had been no mean achievement. Other than Krystoff, Marya—the eldest—had been her best friend, and her marriage and departure for Petrodor had been a sad day indeed. Koenyg, then second-in-line for the throne behind Krystoff, had long been jealous of his elder brother’s carefree popularity, and had spent much of his life attempting to become everything that Krystoff was not—disciplined, calm and sober. Her sister Petryna, now married to the heir of Lenayin’s Yethulyn province, </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">had been studious and sensible, and no lover of outrageous antics. Wylfred had preferred his own company and spent much of his free time in temple with his books. And then there was Damon, only a boy himself in all her Baen-Tar memories, and oh-so self-conscious and awkward in the presence of his overbearing, talented elder brothers. And Alythia, the glamorous one, who loved everything princessly that Sasha hated, and loved even more to demonstrate that fact to the world. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And then, of course, there were her two younger siblings, Sofy and Myklas . . . and her eyes widened. She had not asked anything about Sofy! Gods and spirits, how could she be so forgetful? She rolled her head upon the pillow and cast a glance across at Damon, apparently asleep beneath the covers. But there might be no time tomorrow, she reasoned. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Damon,” she called across the beds. “Damon. Are you awake?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“If I said no, would you leave me alone?” came Damon’s reply, muffled in the pillows. Sasha wasn’t fooled—he couldn’t sleep either. No wonder, given how heavily the weight of command usually sat upon his shoulders. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“How is Sofy?” Sasha asked him. “In all this fuss about Krayliss, I forgot to ask.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Like Sofy,” Damon retorted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Is she enjoying her studies?” Sasha pressed determinedly. Damon wasn’t going to get off that easily. “She seemed happy in her last letter, but I sometimes wonder if she tells me everything.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sofy’s always happy,” Damon muttered. As if there were something vaguely offensive about that. “She asks about you a lot.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Does she?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh yes. Every time a noble traveller arrives in court, having passed within scent of Valhanan, she never fails to corner him and ask for news of you.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha smiled. “But she’s well? Her last letter spoke of Alythia’s wedding. She seemed very excited.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Not nearly as excited as Alythia,” said Damon. And rolled onto his back, appearing to abandon hope of sleep, at least for the moment. “But yes, Sofy is helping with the preparations. Alythia scolds her, and tries to be upset at her interference . . . she was unhappy with Sofy’s suggestions for the ordering of vows and ceremonies, thinking that she knows best in everything. But of course, on reflection, she agreed that Sofy’s ideas were best. As always.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">For all Sasha’s differences with Damon, they shared a common affection for their younger sister Sofy. It was mostly thanks to Sofy’s mediation that Damon and Sasha had arrived at their present truce. Sasha was yet to be convinced of Sofy’s faith in Damon, but she had conceded that her previous, less flattering impressions of him had been wide of the mark. But then, that was Sofy, always intervening, always drawing compromise from the most hardened of opinions. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And the holy fathers are pleased with the wedding preparations?” Sasha asked, having heard a little of that controversy. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s ridiculous,” Damon sighed. “Father Wynal now protests that the arrangements are not in full accordance with the scripture, but Alythia protests that she wants a traditional Lenay wedding like Marya and Petryna had...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Marya and Petryna’s weddings were anything <i>but</i> traditional,” Sasha snorted. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well, they had the fire and the dancing with hand painting...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“That’s <i>hanei</i>, Damon,”Sasha corrected. “And the fire is <i>tempyr</i>, the purifier, the door between states of being. Its ymbolises a couple’s transition into married life, the <i>athelyn</i> ,the destruction of the old, making way for the new. It’s the foundation of the Goeren-yai view of the universe.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sounds serrin,” Damon remarked, with less interest than Sasha might have hoped. The ignorance of so many Verenthanes toward the old ways disgusted her. They had been their ways too, a hundred years before. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Serrin and Goeren-yai belief has much in common,” Sasha agreed, keeping her temper in check. Outbursts and lectures would serve no good purpose, she told herself firmly.“It’s one reason the Goeren-yai and serrin </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">have had such good relations for so long.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Anyhow,” Damon said dismissively. “Alythia thinks it’s pretty, and the hand painting—the <i>hanei</i>—is. And so much more glamorous than a traditional Verenthane wedding.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m glad I’m not the only one who thinks so,” Sasha said sourly. “Verenthanes have to be the most morbid bunch, Damon. I hear in some parts of the Bacosh and the rest of the lowlands, women aren’t even allowed to <i>dance</i>. Can you imagine?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I can’t imagine,” Damon admitted, frowning at the ceiling. “But then, being a Verenthane means different things from one land to another. Lenayin will always be Lenayin. That is one thing Goeren-yai and Verenthane shall always have in common in this land. I think I shall always have more in common with a Lenay Goeren-yai than with a lowlands Verenthane.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We’ll see if you still believe in Lenay brotherhood should you have the misfortune to encounter Family Telgar on this ride,” Sasha said darkly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The men of the north are brave,” Damon said shortly. “I won’t prejudge them.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s not their bravery I question,” said Sasha. “It’s their humanity.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon made an annoyed face, looking across the space between their beds. “Seriously, Sasha, need you always pick a fight? You of all people who can afford it <i>least</i>. I'm well aware what you think of the Verenthane north, you don’t need to hurl it at me at every opportunity. I can form my own opinions.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha bit her tongue with difficulty. “And how is Myklas?” she asked, determined to prove to herself that she <i>could</i> simply move on and not spill blood upon the floor. Kessligh would be proud. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Well,” said Damon, with a note to his voice that suggested he too was surprised at the ease of his victory. “He’ll become a fine swordsman. He’s better than I was, at his age. Better than Koenyg, maybe. It’s certainly not from hard work. It must be talent.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Some things can’t be taught,” said Sasha, putting a hand behind her head upon the pillow. The air was cold upon her arm, whatever her undershirt and the fading warmth of the fire’s embers. But beneath the heavy </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">weight of skins and blankets, the warmth was delicious. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon gave her a long, curious glance, the fireplace illuminating one half of his face upon the pillows. “I heard that you fought,” he said. “Last summer, when the Cherrovan pressed Hadryn hard. I heard tell of some stories. Deeds of yours.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“All lies.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The stories were greatly in your favour,” Damon added.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Then they were all true,” Sasha corrected, with a faint smile. The incursion had been, for the most part, yet another ridiculous waste of Cherrovan life. A new chieftain had required a blooding, the story went. And a blooding he had received, most of it his own. Surely the Cherrovan had not been so stupid during the centuries when they had ruled Lenayin and all the mountain kingdoms as their own. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I had doubted your abilities, once,” said Damon. “Even with Kessligh as your uman . . . I’d thought he’d only chosen you for other purposes. But the men bearing these stories are honest. It seems I was mistaken. And I apologise.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha gazed across at him with great surprise. And smiled. Sofy had always told her to try being nice to Damon, rather than arguing with him all the time. Good things will come of it, she’d insisted. And once again, it seemed, her little sister was right. “Apology accepted,” she said graciously. “You’re not the only man to make such a judgment. There are thousands who believe such, up in the north.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon snorted. Then, “Has Kessligh told you of your standard? One story came from a man who was himself a master swordsman. He said he’d never seen anything like it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha sighed. “Praise from Kessligh is rare. He hates complacency.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Can you best him sparring?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sometimes. Maybe one round in three. More on good days, less on others.” But Damon looked <i>very</i> impressed. Besting Kessligh at all was said to be a worthy achievement. Most men would have been happy with one round in ten. But then, for those who did not fight with the svaalverd, it was no fair contest. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I still don’t see how it’s possible,” Damon said, with a faint shake of his head. “For a woman. I have bested three Cherrovan warriors in combat. Combat is exhausting, for the fittest, strongest men.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Never “frightening,” Sasha reflected. No Lenay man would ever admit so. “Yes, but you waste strength when you fight,” she told him. “<i>Hathaal</i>, serrin call it. There’s no direct translation in Lenay . . . energy, perhaps. Or maybe a life force, though serrin have too many names for that to count. A symmetry. A power derived from form, not bulk. The straight, sturdy tree is more <i>hathaal</i> than the crooked one, even if they are both as tall. You are stronger than me. But using svaalverd, I am more <i>hathaal</i>. And you cannot touch me.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Damon snorted. “So confident are you. We’ve never sparred.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Tomorrow, perhaps?” Sasha said mildly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“We ride first thing in the morning.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Convenient.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You know much of serrin lore,” Damon remarked, ignoring her barbs. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Of course. I am Nasi-Keth.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Do you love the serrin?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha frowned. Footsteps creaked in the corridor outside, the last of the revellers coming upstairs to their beds. The dying fire managed one last, feeble pop. “I’ve yet to meet a bad or unpleasant one,” she said after a moment. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“That doesn’t answer my question.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">And it was not, Sasha knew, such an innocent question. There was war afoot between the Bacosh and neighbouring Saalshen. Visiting merchants fuelled a wildfire of rumour, serrin travellers had been rare of late, and Kessligh’s mood grim. She didn’t like to think on it. There had been bad news from the Bacosh before—for many, many centuries, in fact, one endless succession of terrible internal wars over power, prestige and matters of faith. Those had come and gone. Surely these latest rumblings would follow. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The serrin are a good and decent people,” she answered. “Much of their lore, skills and trades has improved human lives beyond measure, from irrigation to building to medicines and midwifery . . . sometimes I wonder how we ever managed without them. Anyone who would make war on them will not gain my sympathy.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“They live on lands that are not theirs,” Damon responded flatly. “Many include Verenthane holy sites. Sites of the birth of Verenthaneism itself. The Bacosh are the eldest and most powerful of Verenthane peoples, they’ll not let the matter rest.” Sasha rolled beneath her covers to fix her brother with an alarmed gaze. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“What have you heard?” she asked accusingly. Damon shrugged, his mood sombre. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“There is much anger. Talk of the Verenthane brotherhood uniting to take back the holy lands.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">In all recent history, the Bacosh had only been united once. The man who accomplished it, Leyvaan of Rhodaan, had named himself king, and repaid the serrin who’d assisted his rise with invasion and slaughter. The serrin response had been devastating, crushing Leyvaan and his armies, and taking the three nearest Bacosh provinces for themselves. That had been two centuries ago, and today, the so-called “Saalshen Bacosh” remained in serrin hands. Many in the priesthood called those lands holy, and wanted them back, out of the clutches of godless, pagan serrin. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Such talk has existed since Leyvaan the Fool created the whole mess in the first place,” Sasha retorted. “The Saalshen Bacosh is a happy place. The only unhappy people are those outsiders who resent that fact. Besides, there is no Verenthane brotherhood. It’s a myth.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Even so,” Damon said tiredly. “People talk, is all. Perhaps it will fade, I hope so. We have enough troubles in Lenayin without lowlands concerns thrust upon us also.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Hear hear,” Sasha murmured. But Kessligh’s words remained with her: “War is in the air. Us old warhorses can smell it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’re not going to ask after Father’s wellbeing also?” Damon queried into that silence. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,” said Sasha. And tucked her warm, heavy blankets more firmly down about her neck. “Father has advisors enough to see to that already.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<b><span style="font-family: inherit;">Three</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">JARYD NYVAR RODE at the head of the Falcon Guards as the road wound uphill from Baerlyn, with Prince Damon at his left stirrup. The morning dawned bright and clear across rugged hillsides of thick forest and sparkling dew. Cold air nipped at his cheeks, and the steaming breath of horse and men mingled about the column, so that it moved along the road like some great, puffing beast. The land in these parts was as beautiful as Jaryd’s native Tyree. Birds sang in the trees, and on the way out of town, a pair of handsome deer had startled across the road. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">At the distance of perhaps one fold from Baerlyn, they encountered a pair of riders waiting for them on the road beside a narrow trail through the trees. Kessligh Cronenverdt and his brat uman. That trail, then, would lead to their horse ranch in the wilds. Prince Damon acknowledged them with a wave, which both returned. They fell into line several places further back, in plain cloaks to ward the morning chill, their back-worn swords invisible beneath those folds. An unremarkable and plain-looking pair, they seemed, amidst a </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">column of Tyree green-and-gold, gleaming silver helms and polished boots. Unremarkable, that was, but for their horses—both stallions, one light bay, the girl’s a charcoal black, and both beautiful to behold. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was a reminder of Cronenverdt’s past service, of the debt owed to him by the king. Jaryd had heard the mutterings of his father’s men, that Cronenverdt was little more than a hired sword who had commanded from the king a steep ransom for his services. Jaryd thought it somewhat rich for wealthy nobles to accuse Kessligh of being a mercenary considering the plainness of the man living out here in the wilds with his uma. Cronenverdt could have commanded a far larger sum and lived in a grand holding, with lands and gardens and prospective wives clamouring for his hand. Instead, when Prince Krystoff had met an unfortunate end, he’d left the king’s service and asked for nothing more than a grief-stricken, impossible brat of a princess to replace the uma he’d lost, and some horses. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd thought it far more likely that his fellow nobility were jealous of the man, partly for his accomplishments, and partly for the way in which he showed up their expensive tastes. It was surely not unreasonable that a man who had freely <i>given</i> his services, instead of being born into the obligation of service, should receive some gift in return? How to criticise such a man, who did not play by the rules that others understood? No wonder he made so many enemies amongst the ruling classes. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">After a while riding along the forested hillside, Prince Damon fell back in the column to talk with Kessligh. Lieutenant Reynan took his place at Jaryd’s side. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The brat was up before dawn,” said the lieutenant, rubbing sleepy eyes beneath his helm. “I’d thought to follow her, but that horse of hers is fast and doesn’t mind a night-time torch. Mine gets all flighty near a flame.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Jaryd frowned at him. Lieutenant Reynan Pelyn was the brother of Lord Tymeth Pelyn, head of one of the twenty-three noble families of Tyree, and close allies of Family Nyvar. He was a big man, with a round head, small eyes, and a barely discernible chin. He had not served with the Falcon Guards for long—barely a year, in fact, just a short time longer than Jaryd had been in command. Jaryd did not think that the men were particularly fond of him. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“You’d follow her to her home?” Jaryd asked. He kept his voice low, and there was little chance of anyone overhearing above the stamp of hooves and jangling harnesses. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reynan shrugged. “Lord Tymeth told me to keep a close watch on her at all times. I’m keeping a close watch.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“So much effort for one girl,” Jaryd mused. “One might think your brother actually believes the tales the Goeren-yai tell about her swordwork.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“It’s not her sword that’s the bother,” Reynan said darkly. “That little bitch causes enough trouble with the Goeren-yai as is, and the king’s gone too teary-eyed since Prince Krystoff’s death to do anything about it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Do about it?” said Jaryd. “Lieutenant, who said anything about doing something about it?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“My Lord brother said to keep a close eye on her,” Reynan said stubbornly, “and that’s what I’ll do. Make sure she doesn’t cause any trouble.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“She’s just a girl,” Jaryd said shortly. “How much trouble can she cause?” And why, he thought, be so much more worried about her than about Cronenverdt? Cronenverdt held the real power, surely. The brat was just a distraction. A distraction for Cronenverdt himself, some said, in a meaningful way. A plaything for a man who’d developed strange tastes in sword-wielding women while amongst the serrin and Nasi-Keth of Petrodor. Some claimed he wished to sire a son from her, who might then claim the throne. Surely the </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">nobles of Tyree did not believe such nonsense? There were so many before her in the line of succession, after all... </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reynan gave his commander one of those weary, superior, adult looks that Jaryd disliked so much. “Never you mind, Master Jaryd,” he said tiredly. "You just concern yourself with the road ahead, and leave the other business to me. Just remember to call on me if you need any advice—you’re a fine warrior, Master, but older heads have ridden this road before.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I have plenty of advice from Captain Tyrun,” Jaryd replied, annoyed by the older man’s patronising tone.“ He’s ridden these roads far more often than you.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reynan’s face hardened. “Master Jaryd,” he said in a low, harsh voice, “that man is not noble born. He’s a peasant, little better than a pagan...” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Captain Tyrun is a true Verenthane and a veteran warrior!” Jaryd retorted in rising temper. “He rose from lowly status because he was the best, as is the tradition in the Guard! Do you question that tradition, <i>Lieutenant</i> Reynan?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Reynan’s jaw clenched. So <i>that</i> was the sore spot, and the reason why the other men disliked him. A lieutenant, after just one year. True, Jaryd was in command after a shorter period, but he was heir to all Tyree, and made no bones that Captain Tyrun remained in true command. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“No,”Reynan bit out. “I would merely advise, Master Jaryd, that you give some serious thought to where your future interests lie, for yourself and for Tyree.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">~~~~</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">It was midday before the column took its first rest, the men dismounting upon a broad, open shoulder of the Ryshaard River. Kessligh and Sasha found a large rock in the river shallows and spread out their food, whilst Peg and Terjellyn remained on the shore with a handler. Horses splashed in the shallows nearby, drinking deep, and men gathered to share rations. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Across the wide, wild bend of river, cliffs rose near-vertical in a broken, granite wall. Atop the cliff, trees lined the high ridge. Above those, an eagle circled. Sasha shaded her eyes against the bright sun as she ate, gazing upward. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Oh look!” she exclaimed. “That’s a silvertip. She must have a nest up there somewhere. There must be good fishing in the river.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“How do you know it’s a she?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t. But Lenay men have this silly habit of assuming every dangerous animal is a he, when in fact the females are usually more dangerous.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">High above, the eagle cried. Across the riverbank, men were gazing sky-ward, and pointing. Goeren-yai men in particular had a love of wild things, and birds of prey had a special place in their hearts. “Do silvertipped eagles have a legend to go with them?” Kessligh asked wryly. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha frowned as she thought about it, watching the eagle’s circling flight. “Not that I can recall. Although it is said that a white-headed eagle swooped down to carry Hyathon the Warrior away from the fire mountain to escape the dark spirits. But white-headed eagles are much bigger than silvertips.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“All nonsense,” Kessligh pronounced, and took a bite of his roll. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why?” Sasha demanded. “Just because it’s not what <i>you</i> believe?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Sasha,” Kessligh said around his mouthful, “if you’d seen as many people killed as I have, all because one of them believes this thing and the other believes this other thing, you wouldn’t think it was all so harmless. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Tales and legends are fun, but beliefs, Sasha. Beliefs are dangerous. Be very careful what you believe in, for <i>beliefs</i> are far more dangerous than swords.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And you believe in the Nasi-Keth,” Sasha retorted. “That makes you just as dangerous and misguided, doesn’t it?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh nodded, vigorously. “Aye. But the Nasi-Keth take their learnings from the serrin, and the serrin simply don’t think like us. They don’t believe in truth. They don’t believe in anything they can’t prove, and they won’t construct these elaborate fantasies with which to advance their own power and kill each other. That’s the whole point of the Nasi-Keth, Sasha—it’s an attempt to help humans to think rationally. And that’s difficult, I know, because humans are fundamentally irrational. But it’s worth a try, don’t you think?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Hmmph,” said Sasha, chewing her own mouthful. “What’s rational?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Exactly the question the serrin ask each other constantly.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And what’s irrational about the Goeren-yai beliefs?” Sasha continued. “It’s rational, surely, that people survive as well as they can? Goeren-yai legends tell us much about these lands, and the animals, and the ways people can live and survive well out here. And the serrin have come here for centuries—<i>they</i> find Goeren-yai culture fascinating! So why should you, who takes his inspiration from the serrin, be so dismissive?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“I’m not dismissive of the process, Sasha, just the conclusions. I’m dismissive of any culture that thinks it knows everything.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“The Goeren-yai don’t . . . !” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh cut her off with a raised hand. “I’m dismissive of any person who lives his or her life like a frog down a well—all it knows is that well, and those walls, with no interest in what lies outside. I’m trying to make you think, Sasha. That’s all I’ve ever tried to do. That’s all the Nasi-Keth as a whole have ever tried to do. To make people think before they commit some terrible evil in the name of their various truths, if it is at all possible that they might be wrong.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Aye,” Sasha replied, “well maybe that’s the difference between me and you. You lead with your head, I lead with my heart.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Hearts can be rational too,” said Kessligh. “They just need a little training.” Sasha knew better than to try and get the last word in. “How was Damon last night?” he asked then, changing the subject. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Nervous,” she said. “He slept a while, I think. His temper’s short, but that’s normal. Best not to push him.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“With any luck, he won’t make me. He’s second from the throne, in truth. It’s best he learned to deal with these kinds of things on his own.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha stifled a laugh behind her hand. “Damon. King!” She swallowed a mouthful, shaking her head in disbelief. “I can’t imagine it.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Men have similar difficulty picturing you as my uma,” Kessligh replied, unmoved by her humour. His eyes flicked toward the riverbank. Sasha looked, and saw Master Jaryd Nyvar talking animatedly with a corporal. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Their conversation was about swordplay by the look of their moving hands. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha snorted. “Only because those men have never thought women good for anything but babies and housework.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“What’s wrong with babies and housework?” Kessligh said with a faint smile. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha shrugged expansively. It was pointless to get annoyed. Kessligh simply liked contradicting her. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh swallowed his mouthful. “Before I came to Lenayin, I hadn’t thought women good for much but babies and housework.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha frowned at him. “Oh come on! There are serrin everywhere in Petrodor! What about all of these wonderful serrin women you keep talking about, the ones you studied with as a Nasi-Keth uma yourself?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Serrin women, exactly,” said Kessligh around another bite. “Petrodor has a very conservative branch of Verenthane belief where women are concerned. My mother died when I was young and from then on the Nasi-Keth were my family. I saw many serrin women, but the human women I knew were very fixed in their notion of what a real woman was. Even when I rode to Lenayin for the war, I didn’t see Lenay women as much different. It’s only when I met you that I truly realised that a human woman might be born with </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the aptitude to be my uma.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha smiled. “Well at least I know what kind of behaviour impresses the great Kessligh Cronenverdt—bratish, noisy and overactive. I could revert, if you like?” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Revert?” Kessligh asked in mock surprise. Sasha kicked him lightly on his boot and scowled. “My point,” Kessligh continued, “is that people never know what they shall be, and how they shall respond, until the moment of testing arrives. I can assure you that very few of my Nasi-Keth elders and peers suspected that I could rise to such heights from my beginnings. As a student I was quiet, uncooperative and solitary. I loved serrin teachings because they seemed to me to offer the best solution I’d yet seen to all humanity’s obvious ills. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“But I was always frustrated that neither my uman nor my other tutors seemed to grasp the implications of those teachings fully. And so I enjoyed the company of the serrin more than humans. Serrin never judge. Through them I learned to see the world as it is, and myself as I am, rather than what I might want or expect them both to be. Which is how I recognised your talents, while other men would not. I realised I was wrong about human women. Many men cannot admit this about themselves. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Always be aware that you may be wrong, Sasha—about anything and everything. I rose to Commander of Armies during the Great War simply because I learned from my mistakes, and the mistakes of others, and when something did not work, I stopped doing it and did something else. Many commanders did not, due to pride or stubbornness, and killed not only themselves, but many good men as well. The unquestioned belief in one’s own supremacy and righteousness is the surest road to ruin yet devised by man. Avoid it at all costs.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha listened sombrely, chewing the last of her lunch as the river bubbled about their rock. Kessligh did not lecture often, yet she was not surprised that he chose to do so now. A Hadryn–Taneryn conflict was surely the most serious calamity she had yet ridden into. An uman’s role was to teach, and to prepare his uma for trials to come. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“Why have the Nasi-Keth not spread more through Lenayin?” Sasha asked suddenly. “I mean . . . you led Lenayin to victory over Chieftain Markield, you risked your life and became a Lenay legend—all because you <i>volunteered</i> to come from Petrodor. The popularity of the Nasi-Keth and the serrin was surely never so high in Lenayin as then. And yet there are so few other Nasi-Keth here.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh nodded slowly, as if faintly surprised at the question. “Your father tried,” he said. “He believes in providence, in signs from the gods. When Markield was beaten, your father saw that the gods favoured the Nasi-Keth, and thus surely they favoured the teachings of Saalshen. That was a time when the king was least persuaded by the northern fanatics, since the north had failed to defeat the invasion without help as they’d insisted they would, and had protested my ascension to commander at every turn. Trade with Saalshen improved dramatically, and many senior serrin were invited to visit the capital. And, of course, he declared that Krystoff would be my uma, binding the kingdom and the Nasi-Keth inextricably together. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“But the response of the Verenthanes was not good, especially in the north. And precious few Nasi-Keth from Petrodor have felt inspired to follow me to the highlands.” He shrugged. “Perhaps it would have been different had Krystoff lived. Then Lenayin would have had a king both Verenthane and Nasi-Keth, as are so many in Petrodor.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“And we have the Hadryn to thank that it didn’t happen,” Sasha muttered. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Kessligh fixed her with a hard stare. “Sasha. What happened to Krystoff is old history. It hurt me as much as it hurt you. But we’re riding into this mess now on the king’s business, and the king must be impartial. If you feel that will be a problem for you, best that you tell me now.” </span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">“They killed him,” Sasha said darkly. “Not by their own hands, but nearly.” </span><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I know,” said Kessligh. “It changes nothing.” </span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And who are you to be accusing me of partisan loyalties?” Sasha retorted. “Saalshen is losing credit fast with Father, and doubtless the Nasi-Keth with them. And now you come on this ride claiming to act in Father’s interests?” </span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I have always been your father’s servant,” Kessligh said flatly. “I’ve fought in his service since I rode to Lenayin thirty years ago.” </span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“And should Father act against the Nasi-Keth?” Sasha persisted. “What then?” </span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Then,” said Kessligh, “I shall cross that bridge when I come to it.”</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">from<i> </i></span><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Sasha.html"><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sasha: A Trial of Blood & Steel</span></i></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> © </span><a href="http://www.joelshepherd.com/"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Joel Shepherd</span></a><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.dvpalumbo.com/">David Palumbo</a><br />
</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger</span><br />
<br />
<div style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyvtnFzWl8oaz0FfLf_sTldlFm8Nd5eIqb0LZOGOcaZ00Ppzx742pR11-cc3jeumhHjjPjlmtVw6xWPWqMzISUBS3AruRgI_LkDZx6khZB3tIYuq2BzNHLnaDpo-GTWQmDXM-7jHP4_M0/s1600-h/Shepherd+,+Joel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyvtnFzWl8oaz0FfLf_sTldlFm8Nd5eIqb0LZOGOcaZ00Ppzx742pR11-cc3jeumhHjjPjlmtVw6xWPWqMzISUBS3AruRgI_LkDZx6khZB3tIYuq2BzNHLnaDpo-GTWQmDXM-7jHP4_M0/s320/Shepherd+,+Joel.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><b>Joel Shepherd</b> was born in Adelaide in 1974. He has studied film and television, international relations, has interned on Capitol Hill in Washington, and travelled widely in Asia. His first trilogy, the Cassandra Kresnov Series, consists of <i>Crossover</i>, <i>Breakaway</i> and <i>Killswitch</i>. Visit Joel Shepherd’s Web site at www.joelshepherd.com.</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"> </span><br />
</span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-33774015793615558562009-10-15T12:07:00.000-05:002009-10-15T12:07:02.130-05:00This Crooked Way by James Enge<img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5392853133254140210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiG1jWRIc86JPGwowgFSDpR9anknhDFDnTyThbMte-m2CNJJ2QyyskMRSIUAiUyNp2cWv4Fz-9Qzz88wbSKfNwVkoVQIchw5sQ1eegG8zAAGv94tiYtg8w_Jz1c06luNRVgwmAJRhkwIs/s320/thiscrookedway_cover.jpg" style="cursor: hand; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; width: 213px;" />Morlock Ambrosius returns in <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/ThisCrookedWay.html">This Crooked Way</a></em>: <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
Travelling alone in the depths of winter, Morlock Ambrosius (bitterly dry drunk, master of all magical makers, wandering swordsman, and son of Merlin Ambrosius and Nimue Viviana) is attacked by an unknown enemy.<br />
<br />
To unmask his enemy and end the attacks he must travel a long crooked way through the world: past the soul-eating Boneless One, past a subtle and treacherous master of golems, past the dragon-taming Khroi, past the predatory cities of Sarkunden and Aflraun, past the demons and dark gnomes of the northern woods.<br />
<br />
Soon he will find that his enemy wears a familiar face, and that the duel he has stumbled into will threaten more lives than his own, leaving nations shattered in its chaotic wake.<br />
<br />
And at the end of his long road waits the death of a legend. <br />
<br />
“James Enge writes with great intelligence and wit. His stories take twisty paths to unexpected places you absolutely want to go. This isn't the same old thing; this is delightful fantasy written for smart readers,” says Greg Keyes, <em>New York Times</em> bestselling author of The Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone series.<br />
<br />
Paul Cornell, Hugo-nominated writer of Doctor Who and Marvel comics, declares, “James Enge's work is like Conan as written by Raymond Chandler: rich, witty, aware of its genre's traditions but not bound by them, with a new surprise of plot or turn of phrase every moment.” <br />
<br />
Praise for James Enge's <em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BloodOfAmbrose.html">Blood of Ambrose</a></em>:<br />
“Enge's precise and elegant language and some darkly harrowing scenes are sure to tug on readers' heartstrings. ...this coming-of-age narrative makes for an engaging journey.”<br />
--<em>Publishers Weekly</em><br />
<br />
Scroll down to read an excerpt from Enge's latest, <em>This Crooked Way</em>. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<div align="center"><span style="font-family: arial;"><strong>This Crooked Way</strong></span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><strong>James Enge</strong></span><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><br />
<div><span style="font-family: arial;"><strong>I: THE WAR IS OVER</strong></span><br />
</div><span style="font-family: arial;"><strong></strong><br />
</span><br />
<div>The crooked man rode out of the dead lands on a black horsewith gray sarcastic eyes.<br />
</div><br />
<div></div>Winter was awaiting him, as he expected. In the deadlands it never rained or snowed, and the nearness to the seakept the lifeless air mild. But it was the month of Brenting, late in winter,and as they crossed into the living lands the air took on a deadly chill and the snowdrifts soon became knee-high on his horse.<br />
<br />
Morlock Ambrosius dismounted awkwardly and took the reins in hishand. “Sorry about this, Velox,” he said to the horse.<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
Velox looked at him and made a rude noise with his lips.<br />
</div><br />
“Eh,” Morlock replied, “the same to you,” and floundered forward through the snowdrifts, leading the beast. He was a pedestrian by temperamentand had spent much of his long life walking from one place to another. He knew little about the care of horses, and what little he knew was not especially useful, as Velox was unusual in a number of ways. But, although he had considered it, he found he could not simply abandon Velox or trade him to some farmer for a basket of flatbread.<br />
<br />
<div></div>But Velox wanted food in alarming horse-sized amounts. Morlock had tried feeding him dried seaweed from the coastline, and Velox had eaten it, since there was little else. But Morlock suspected it wasn’t enough for the grumpy beast, and he was going to have to go to a farm or even a town to buy some horse feed.<br />
<br />
<div></div>This was a problem, as Morlock was a criminal in the eyes of imperial law. He had reason to suppose the Emperor was not interested in seeing him dead, but no local Keeper of the Peace was likely to know this. It was dangerous for him to be seen, to be recognized.<br />
<br />
<div></div>On the other hand, his horse was hungry.<br />
<br />
<div></div>Nearly as grumpy as Velox, Morlock led the beast eastward through the bitter white fields until they reached the black muddy line of the Sar river, running south from the Kirach Kund. Alongside the river ran a hardly less muddy road; at intervals on the road were stations of the Imperial Post; clustering around some of these stations were towns where one could buy amenities like hay and oats.<br />
<br />
<div></div>Morlock mounted his horse and rode north toward Sarkunden. Presentlyhe came, not to a town, but (even better for his purposes) to a barn. The doors of the barn were open and several dispirited farm workers were carrying pails of dung out of the barn and dumping it in a dark steaming heap that contrasted strangely with the recent snow.<br />
<br />
<div></div>Morlock reined in and said, “Good day. Can I buy some oats or something?”<br />
<br />
<div></div>The workers stopped their work and stared at him. Others came out ofthe barn, and also stopped and stared. After a while, one who seemed to betheir leader (or thought he was), said, “Not from us, Crookback.”<br />
<br />
<div></div>“Do you own this place?” Morlock asked.<br />
<br />
“No, but we’ll keep him from selling to <em>you</em>.”<br />
<br />
“Unlikely,” Morlock replied, and dismounted. The men were gripping their dungforks and shovels and whatnot more like weapons now. If there was going to be a fight he wanted to be on his own feet, for a number of reasons.<br />
<br />
“Know who I am, Crookback?” the leader of the workmen asked.<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
“This help?” He brushed some muck off his darkish outer garment. Morlock saw it was embroidered with a red lion.<br />
<br />
“Not much,” Morlock said.<br />
<br />
“My name is Vost. I was Lord Urdhven’s right-hand man. His closest friend. You killed him. Destroyed him. And now you come here. And ask me for oats.”<br />
<br />
“The man was dead before I met him,” Morlock said. “We’ve no quarrel.”<br />
<br />
“You lie,” Vost said, sort of, through clenched teeth.<br />
<br />
“Then,” Morlock replied. He drew the sword strapped to his crooked shoulders. The crystalline blade, black entwined with white, glittered in the thin winter sunlight.<br />
<br />
“I hate you,” Vost hissed, raising the dungfork in his hands like a stabbing spear. “I hate you. Nothing will stop me from trying to kill you until you’re dead.<br />
<br />
”Morlock believed him. He was beginning to remember this Vost a little: a fanatical devotee of the late unlamented Lord Protector Urdhven; he had lived and died by his master’s expressions of favor or disfavor. His life had lost its meaning when he had lost his master, and he had to blame someone for his freedom. Evidently he had settled on Morlock.<br />
<br />
<div></div>Morlock extended his sword arm and lunged, stabbing the man through his ribs. Vost’s face stretched in surprise, then went slack with death. Morlock felt the horror of his dissolution through the medium of his sword, which was also a focus of power, very dangerous to use as a mundane weapon. A dying soul wants to carry others with it, and Morlock had to free himself of Vost’s death shock and the dead soul’s death grip before he was free to shake the corpse off the end of his sword and face Vost’s companions.<br />
<br />
They must have made some move toward attacking him, because Velox was in amongst them, rearing and kicking. One man already lay still in the dirty snow, a dark hoofmark on his forehead. As Morlock turned toward them, his sword dripping with Vost’s blood and his face clenched in something not far removed from death agony, they took one look and fled, running up the road past the barn.<br />
<br />
<div></div>“Hey!” shouted a man coming out of the farmhouse with an axe in his hand. He was a prosperous gray-haired man with darkish skin, and he carriedthe axe like he knew how to use it. “Why are you killing my workmen?”<br />
<br />
<div></div>Morlock was cleaning his blade with some snow; he wiped it on his sleeve and sheathed it.<br />
<br />
“The man annoyed me,” he said at last.<br />
<br />
“And the other one?”<br />
<br />
“Annoyed my horse.”<br />
<br />
“You know what annoys me? People who come into my barnyard and leave dead bodies lying all over the place. I find that annoying.”<br />
<br />
"I was going to dump them into the river. Unless you have some strong objection.”<br />
<br />
The farmer blew out his cheeks and thought it over. “No, I guess not. They were no friends of mine, just some tramps working for the day.”<br />
<br />
“Then.” Morlock hauled Vost’s corpse out of the yard, across the road, and threw it face down into the muddy water of the Sar. The corpse sank almost out of sight; the sluggish waters tugged it away from the bank and it floated downstream.The last casualty in Protector Urdhven’s civil war, or so Morlock hoped.<br />
<br />
When he returned, he found the farmer had laid down his weapon and was crouching over the workman Velox had struck down. “This one’s stillbreathing,” the farmer said. “Your horse is hurt, though.”<br />
<br />
Morlock saw this was true: blood was dripping off Velox’s neck and running down his left foreleg, staining the dirty snow. Morlock grabbed some snow from a clean patch and held it to the ragged wound on the horse’s neck. It was already healing, but Morlock thought the cold might help counter the pain. If Velox felt pain: that was one of the things Morlock wasn’t sure about.<br />
<br />
Presently he turned away and grabbed a bagful of herbs from the pack strapped behind the saddle. He knelt down in the snow next to the fallen man and examined the wound on his head.<br />
<br />
“The skull doesn’t seem to be broken,” Morlock said. “The man may wake up, or not. If he doesn’t, he’ll be dead in a few days; toss him in the river. If he does wake, give him tea made with this, once a day for a few days.” He tossed the bag to the farmer. “It will help him heal.”<br />
<br />
<div></div>“What is it?”<br />
<br />
“Redleaf.”<br />
<br />
“Uh. All right. Wait a moment, I’m supposed to look after this tramp? I’ve got a farm to run.”<br />
<br />
Morlock reached into a pocket and tossed him a gold coin. “It’s on me.”<br />
<br />
The farmer’s eyes opened wide as he looked at the coin, weighed it in his hand. “All right,” he said.<br />
<br />
Morlock pointed at the red lion, faintly visible on the supine man’s dirty surcoat. “You should get rid of this, in case an imperial patrol comes by. This man must be one of Lord Urdhven’s soldiers, the dead-enders who wouldn’t accept the new Emperor’s amnesty.”<br />
<br />
“I didn’t know.”<br />
<br />
“It’s better if <em>they</em> don’t know. Better for you. For him.”<br />
<br />
“I’ll get rid of it. Let’s carry this poor virp into the barn; it’s a bit warmer there. And I don’t want him in the house.”<br />
<br />
They bedded the fallen workman down in the loft, and then the farmer said, “It occurs to me that you came into my yard for some reason.”<br />
<br />
“I need some food for my horse, something I can carry with me. Oats or something.”<br />
<br />
“Not a horsey type, are you? That horse isn’t going anywhere for a while. It’s wounded pretty bad.”<br />
<br />
“He’ll be fine by now.”<br />
<br />
The farmer shook his head and said, “You may be a murderous son-of-abitch, but you don’t strike me as cruel. And I tell you it’d be cruel to expect him to carry you and your baggage for a while. Leave him with me; I’ll takecare of him. Or sell him to me, if you don’t plan to be back this way. I’ll give you a fair price.”<br />
<br />
“Just sell me some oats.”<br />
<br />
The farmer wanted to haggle over the price, but Morlock just handed him another gold coin and said, “As much as this will buy.”<br />
<br />
The farmer sputtered. “You and the horse couldn’t carry that much.”<br />
<br />
“As much as he can carry, then.”<br />
<br />
“It shouldn’t be carrying anything!”<br />
<br />
Morlock went with the farmer down to look at Velox, who was quietly stealing some hay and hiding it inside himself. The wound had closed and ascar was forming.<br />
<br />
“There’s something weird about this,” the farmer said.<br />
<br />
“He’s an unusual beast,” Morlock conceded.<br />
<br />
They bagged up some oats and strapped them across Velox’s back. Morlock took the pack off, strapped it to his own back, and they threw more bags of oats onto Velox.<br />
<br />
“That’s thirsty work,” the farmer remarked. “You want a mug of beer before you go?<br />
<br />
”Morlock considered it and, when he realized he was considering it, said, “No.”<br />
<br />
“We’ve got a jar or two of wine from foreign parts—” the farmer continued, doubtful of his ground but willing to be sociable.<br />
<br />
“If you offer me a drink again,” Morlock said evenly, “I’ll kill you.”<br />
<br />
The farmer did not offer him a drink again. He said nothing at all as Morlock led Velox out of the yard and away, northward up the road to Sarkunden.<br />
<br />
<div></div><br />
<strong>II: INTERLUDE: TELLING THE TALE</strong><br />
<br />
More or less at the same time, young Dhyrvalona said,<br />
<br />
<div></div>“I don’t understand?” <br />
“Why didn’t he take the drink?” <br />
“Was he afraid it was poisoned?”<br />
<br />
“A harmony,” her nurse sang to her. “A harmony of meanings, Dhyrvalona dear. You may have three mouths, but I don’t have three minds. Harmonize your questions the way you harmonize your voices; let your wisdom vibrate in the listener’s mind, and she may return the favor.”<br />
<br />
Little Dhyrvalona’s three adorable mouths harmonized three different but related obscenities she had heard her armed guards use.<br />
<br />
Gathenavalona, Dhyrvalona’s nurse, snapped her mandibles and extended all three of her arms in angular gestures of rebuke.<br />
<br />
After a tense moment, young Dhyrvalona covered each of her three eyes with a palp-cluster, an expression of grief or sorrow—in this context, an apology. She peered through her palps to see how her nurse was taking it.<br />
<br />
Gathenavalona relaxed the tension in her mandibles, giving her pyramidal face a less forbidding appearance. Her arms changed from harsh angles to soothing curves, and she stroked the top of Dhyrvalona’s pointed head with one gentle palp-cluster.<br />
<br />
Humbly, Dhyrvalona sang,<br />
<br />
“But I still don’t understand.”<br />
“Learning is a lasting joy.”<br />
“Ignorance is an endable grief.”<br />
<br />
Gathenavalona gestured strong approval and replied, more prosaically,“You know how the one-faced fill their one-mouths with rotten grape juice and old barley water?”<br />
<br />
“Ick.”<br />
“So nasty.”<br />
“A single mouth! How ugly and stupid!”<br />
<br />
The remarks didn’t harmonize in sound or sense, but the nurse was not inclined to be strict with her charge these days. Young Dhyrvalona was growing up; soon she would take the place of old Valona in the Vale of the Mother. That would be a proud and sad day for the nurse, and she wanted the days and nights until then to be less proud and less sad.<br />
<br />
“The juice makes some one-faceds happy; it makes some sad; it makes some sick. For Morlock—"<br />
<br />
“Maker!”<br />
“Traveller!”<br />
“Destroyer!”<br />
<br />
“—for Morlock Ambrosius, it does all these things. The farmer did not intend to harm him. His kindness would have harmed him, though. Do you understand?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
“Neither do you.”<br />
“The Destroyer is beyond understanding.”<br />
<br />
Gathenavalona sang.<br />
<br />
“Empty your mind of lies.”<br />
“Fill your mind with truth.”<br />
“Nothing is beyond understanding.”<br />
<br />
Young Dhyrvalona opened her eyes and her ear-lids, indicating a willingness to be instructed.<br />
<br />
The nurse sang.<br />
<br />
“Kindness can kill.”<br />
“Enmity can heal.”<br />
“Surgeon and destroyer both wield sharp blades.”<br />
<br />
Young Dhyrvalona gestured acknowledgement, but incomplete understanding.<br />
<br />
The nurse sang.<br />
<br />
“We are nothing to Morlock.”<br />
“Morlock is nothing to us.”<br />
“Yet, on a day, we met and wounded each other.”<br />
<br />
The nurse paused and resumed.<br />
<br />
“A mother was wounded.”<br />
“A mother was slain.”<br />
“A mother stood waiting in death’s jaws.”<br />
<br />
The nurse paused and resumed.<br />
<br />
“Morlock stole the hatred of the gods.”<br />
“The gods stole our hatred of Morlock.”<br />
“That end/beginning was our beginning/end.”<br />
<br />
The nurse paused and resumed.<br />
<br />
“That is why, once a year, we wear the man-masks.”<br />
“That is why, once a year, we curse the gods-who-hate-us.”<br />
“That is why, once a year, we sing of who destroyed us.”<br />
<br />
Young Dhyrvalona cried out impatiently,<br />
<br />
<div></div>“All right, I’m trying to be good.”<br />
“Night is falling; the time for tales is ending.”<br />
“You haven’t even told me about the horse!”<br />
<br />
Gathenavalona blinked one eye in amusement and sang indulgently.<br />
<br />
<div></div>“A horse is almost like us.”<br />
“Horses have four legs, anyway, not two.”<br />
“For a man to lose a horse is a serious thing . . .”<br />
<br />
Young Dhyrvalona snuggled down into her nest and prepared to be entertained. She knew this part of the story well, of course: the nurse told her a little more every year, but this was one of the earliest parts and she had heard it many times.<br />
<br />
This year, her nurse had promised, she would tell her the whole tale, even if it took many nights, every night of the annual festival. The grown-ups of the Khroic clan of Valona’s heard the whole story every year, and now she would too. That was because, the nurse had explained to her, she was almost a grown-up now. Young Valona could see that this made the nurse sad, but she herself was very happy; she couldn’t wait to grow up. And she was so glad it was the season of Motherdeath, the happiest time of the year.<br />
<br />
<br />
<strong>III: BLOOD FROM A STONE</strong><br />
<br />
Morlock awoke because the earth was shuddering beneath him. He’d been raised under the mountains of Northhold and he knew in his bones that, if the ground moved, he had better move, too.<br />
<br />
He rolled to one side to free himself from his sleeping cloak and leaped to his feet. By then the stone monster had plunged its fist or paw deep into the ground where Morlock had been lying.<br />
<br />
The stone monster. It was clearly made of stone; at first he thought it was striped like a tiger, but then he saw that it was ringed or ridged down its long leonine body to the end of its four limbs. It swung its heavy maneless head toward him, clicking oddly as it moved; the stone teeth in its crooked ill-matched jaws streamed with some red fluid in the gray morning light. Its eyes gleamed like moonlit crystal or water as they focused on him and it prepared to leap.<br />
<br />
“Tyrfing!” Morlock shouted, and held out his hand for his sword. It didn’t come to him: even though he was not in rapture, he felt the talic impulse as it tried to reach him. Something was holding it back.<br />
<br />
The stone beast jumped at him and he leaped to one side. The old woundin his leg was already aching; he hoped he wouldn’t have to try to outrun this thing. He reached down and grabbed two fistfuls of dirty snow and threw them at the stone beast’s eyes.<br />
<br />
It responded strangely, like a startled animal, blinking fiercely and shaking its head to get the grit from its eyes.<br />
<br />
Morlock’s opinion, those eyes were made of glass or crystal in some maker’s workshop; the beast’s whole body was a cunningly made puzzle, its joints clicking as pieces shifted so that it could move. He doubted that the thing could feel as an animal’s body feels.<br />
<br />
But it <em>acted</em> as if it could feel the dirt in its eyes; it expected to feel discomfort from the snow. At the very least, it was perplexed when somethingobscured its vision.<br />
<br />
That told him something: he was not facing a golem. Golems do only what they have been designed to do, fulfilling the instructions on their lifescrolls. It was unlikely that a maker would waste scroll space telling a golem to react emotionally like an animal when something got in its eyes. Somehow a living entity was directing the motions of the stone monster.<br />
<br />
And if it was alive, it could be killed.<br />
<br />
Morlock’s back was against the trunk of an oak tree, its crooked limbs leafless and whistling in the breeze of the winter morning. He reach up and tore one of the limbs loose from the trunk.<br />
<br />
The stone beast, floundering through the snow, charged Morlock, who circled behind the tree. If he moved carefully, he could keep to the hardened crust of snow and move faster than the beast. It lunged toward him; he continued around the tree and, leaping into the trench of snow left in the stone beast’s wake, he struck the beast as hard as he could across the back of its lumpy head.<br />
<br />
The stone beast snarled, a grinding sound of rock on rock, and swung about to face him. Morlock fled back around the tree. The stone beast rose upon three legs and struck the trunk of the tree with its right forepaw. The oak tree shattered, the trunk split down the middle.<br />
<br />
Giving vent to the turbulence of his emotions, Morlock said “Eh,” and ran.<br />
<br />
The beast was after him in a moment, but he took a twisting path though the nearby trees, keeping to the surface crust of snow when he could, and managed to stay barely ahead of the thing. Twice he managed to get inmore blows to its head—once from the side, once from behind—and he thought that its movements were getting more sluggish, the beast groggier.<br />
<br />
His twisting course took him toward the nearby Sar River. His thought was that, if worse came to worst, he could swim away from his stone enemy (although the cold water in this cold weather might kill him faster than themonster could).<br />
<br />
As he zigged to avoid the stone beast’s lumbering zag, he glanced over his shoulder and saw that one of the thing’s glass eyes was cracked. The stone head kept twitching and shaking, as if to free the eye of some obstruction. (The shattered eye itself?)<br />
<br />
He whirled about and swung the branch with both hands, striking thebeast on the side of its head with the broken eye. The glass fell away and allthat remained was a dark hole in the stone beast’s face. It drew back, as if aghast. A thin trickle of blood, like tears, ran down the gray stone face from the empty eye socket.<br />
<br />
Morlock turned on his heel and ran straight toward the river.<br />
<br />
It was after him in a moment, but he had reached the icy marsh along the river’s edge before it caught up with him. It came forward in a great leap and knocked him off his feet in the shallow ice-sheathed water as it landed behind him. The great stone body surged as Morlock scrabbled for his club on the icy surface of the water and struggled to regain his feet in the soft ground. The moments passed like hours; it seemed impossible that the beast would not recover and strike him dead before he could arm himself. But, in fact, it didn’t. When he regained his feet he saw why.<br />
<br />
The beast was stuck in the mud under the shallow water, unable to free its deadly limbs from the soft ground. Morlock realized this was his chance; he vaulted past the beast’s snapping jaws and one-eyed face to land on its broad shoulders. Standing there he delivered savage blow after savage blow to the back of the beast’s head. The stone body writhed and chittered beneath him, but in time it began to move slower and slower. At last it fell still; its snout slumped into the icy stream, and bloody water bubbled from the empty eye socket. The thing was dead.<br />
<br />
Morlock staggered off the beast’s back and tossed aside his now splintered club. He took a few moments to breathe and gather his strength. But not too long: the cold was a pain gnawing at him, especially the limbs that had been soaked in the river.<br />
<br />
He went to change into dry clothes, shivering by the smoking remains of last night’s fire. He saw his sword, Tyrfing, bound in its sheath to a nearby boulder; he doubted that the stone beast’s paws could have managed that, even if its brain could have planned it. That bothered him. He saw Velox nowhere, and that bothered him very much. He remembered the red fluid on the stone monster’s stony teeth.<br />
<br />
In dry clothes, after freeing Tyrfing, he went in search of Velox. And he found what he had feared he might: what was evidently the scene of a struggle, some distance away from Morlock’s camp. There were the marks of savage bloody blows in the snow and the stiff unyielding earth below. There were some stray horsehairs, bloody hoofmarks in the snow and earth, but nobody, not even stray bones or flesh.<br />
<br />
He had seen something like this in his youth, where a monster had dismembered and eaten a horse on the long road facing the western edge of the world.<br />
<br />
“Doubtful,” Morlock reminded himself. There was more, or perhaps less, to this scene than met the eye.<br />
<br />
He spent the rest of the morning dragging the dead body of the stone beast from the swampy margin of the river. He took his time because he wanted to avoid getting soaked again, using xakth-fiber ropes and a pulley system to haul the thing up from the water to an open area not far from his camp.<br />
<br />
Not pausing for breakfast or lunch—eating didn’t seem advisable, given his plans—he took Tyrfing and gutted the stone beast, laying bare its insides from its stumpy tail to its blunt snout.<br />
<br />
There was indeed some kind of fleshy brain in the rocky skull. It was badly swollen from the beating Morlock had given it, but he didn’t think it was a man’s or a woman’s brain. A dragon’s? A dwarf’s? Something else? Morlock couldn’t tell. He was no connoisseur of brains.<br />
<br />
The contents of the stone belly told an interesting tale indeed. There were multitudes of splintered bone fragments, a cracked hoof or two, an oddly familiar pair of black horse-ears, a brown equine eye, other more horrible things, all swimming in a strange pale fluid that stank like a torturer’s conscience.<br />
<br />
That was enough. Morlock wiped his sword carefully and sheathed it, then walked away. The stone belly told an interesting tale: that the beast had killed and eaten Velox before attacking Morlock. And the tale was a lie. Most black horses have brown eyes, but Velox did not, and there simply was not enough bulk in the stone beast’s belly to account for an entire horse.<br />
<br />
Morlock boiled water, washed his hands, made tea, and thought.<br />
<br />
Every lie is shaped by the truth it is meant to conceal. What did the lie in the stone beast’s belly tell him?<br />
<br />
That Velox was probably alive, for one thing—seized by a maker skilled enough to make the stone beast and ruthless enough to use it. He knew of only one such, but there might be many; it would be best to keep an open mind.<br />
<br />
Normally he would have sought out a crow who might have seen something, for he had an affinity for crows, but they were rarer in this region than they had been once. Using his Sight to search for the maker and his stolen horse might be a mistake, though. There were traps that could be set in the realms of vision that could capture or harm even the wary. Still, he needed more information before he set out in search of Velox. And there might be a way. . .<br />
<br />
He went to his pack and sorted through it until he found a certain book.<br />
<br />
He had written it himself in the profoundly subtle “palindromic” script of ancient Ontil. Each page was a mirror image of the one it faced; both pages had to be inscribed simultaneously. There was a page for each of the days of the year, and one for each day of the “counter-year” that runs backward as time moves forward. It was useful for reading the future or the past; merely to possess it sometimes gave one clairvoyant experiences. He had fashioned it over a long period, beginning last year, after he had some indication that he might have to confront a maker as gifted as himself whose talents in the Sight were even greater than his.<br />
<br />
He turned to the day’s date and read the palindromes for that day and its counter-day. Most of them meant nothing to him. But there was one that he came back to again and again.<br />
<br />
<em>Alfe runilmao vo inila. Alinio vo amlinu refla.</em><br />
<br />
Which might be rendered: <em>From the skulls, [he] walked south. A maker goes into the north.</em><br />
<br />
“The skulls” might be “the River of Skulls”: the Kirach Kund (to give it the Dwarvish name by which it was generally known). It was the high pass that divided the Whitethorn and Blackthorn ranges, the only way past those towering mountains . . . for those who had the courage to take it.<br />
<br />
This didn’t make his decision for him: like any omen it might mean anything or nothing. But his intuition confirmed it: he would go north.<br />
<br />
Another man might have weighed the odds on recovering the horse against the fact that he preferred to walk. He would have thought twice about whether getting the horse back was worth it.<br />
<br />
But there was a bond of loyalty between Morlock and Velox, and Morlock was not the sort to question that bond, or the obligations it might entail.<br />
<br />
Also, he had nothing else to do. He struck camp and, before the sun had descended much from its zenith, he was walking along the river northward to Sarkunden.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div><strong></strong><br />
</div><strong>IV: PAYMENT DEFERRED</strong><br />
<br />
The thug’s first thrust sent his sword screeching past Morlock Ambrosius’s left ear. He retreated rather than parry Morlock’s riposte; then he thrust again in the same quadrant as before.<br />
<br />
While the thug was still extended for his attack, Morlock deftly kicked him in the right knee. With a better swordsman this would have cost Morlock, but he had the measure of his opponent. The thug went sideways, squawking in dismay, into a pile of garbage.<br />
<br />
The point of Morlock’s blade, applied to the thug’s wrist, persuaded him to release his sword. The toe of Morlock’s left shoe, applied to the thug’s chin, persuaded him to keep lying where he was.<br />
<br />
“What’s your story, Slash?” Morlock asked.<br />
<br />
“Whatcha mean?”<br />
<br />
Morlock’s sword point shifted to the thug’s throat. “I’m in Sarkunden for an hour. You pick me out of a street crowd, follow me into an alley, and try to kill me. Why?”<br />
<br />
“Y’re smart, eh? See a lot, eh?”<br />
<br />
“Yes.”<br />
<br />
“Dontcha like it, eh? Dontcha like to fight, eh?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
“Call a Keep, hunchback!” the thug sneered. “Maybe, I dunno, maybe I oughta—” He raised his hand theatrically to his mouth and inhaled deeply, as if he were about to cry out.<br />
<br />
Morlock’s sword pressed harder against the thug’s neck, just enough to break the skin. The shout never issued from the thug’s mouth, but the thug sneered triumphantly. He’d made his point: Morlock, as an imperial outlaw, wanted to see the Keepers of the Peace—squads of imperial guards detailed to policing the streets—even less than this street punk with a dozen murders to his credit. (Morlock knew this from the cheek rings in the thug’s face. The custom among the water gangs was one cheek ring per murder. Duels and fair fights did not count.)<br />
<br />
“Ten days’ law—that’s what you got, eh?” the thug whispered. “Ten days to reach the border; then if they catch you inside it—zzccch! When’d yourtime run out, uh, was it twenny days ago? Thirty?”<br />
<br />
“Two months.”<br />
<br />
“Sure. Call a Keep, scut-face. By sunrise they’ll have your head drying on a stake upside the Kund-Way Gate.”<br />
<br />
“I won’t be calling the Keepers of the Peace,” Morlock agreed. The crooked half-smile on his face was as cold as his ice-gray eyes. “What will I do instead?”<br />
<br />
“You can’t kill me, crooky-boy—” the thug began, with suddenly shrill bravado.<br />
<br />
“I <em>can</em> kill you. But I won’t. I’ll cut your tendons and pull your cheek rings. I can sell the metal for drinking money at any bar in this town, as long as the story goes with it. And I’ll make sure everyone knows where I last saw you.”<br />
<br />
“There’s a man; he wants to see you,” said the thug, giving in disgustedly.<br />
<br />
“Dead?”<br />
<br />
“Alive. But I figure: the Empire pays more for you dead than this guy will alive.”<br />
<br />
“You’re saying he’s cheap.”<br />
<br />
“Cheap? He’s riding his horse, right, and you cross the road after him and step in his horse-scut. He’s gonna send a greck after you to charge you for the fertilizer. You see me?”<br />
<br />
“I see you.” Morlock briefly weighed his dangers against his needs. “Take me to this guy. I’ll let you keep a cheek ring, and one tendon, maybe.”<br />
<br />
“Evil scut-sucking bastard,” hissed the thug, unmistakably moved with gratitude.<br />
<br />
“The guy’s” house was a fortresslike palace of native blue-stone, not far inside the western wall of Sarkunden. Morlock and the limping thug were admitted through a heavy bronze door that swung down to make a narrow bridge across a dry moat. Bow slits lined the walls above the moat; through them Morlock saw the gleam of watching eyes.<br />
<br />
“Nice place, eh?” the thug sneered.<br />
<br />
“I like it.”<br />
<br />
The thug hissed his disgust at the emblems of security and anyone who needed them.<br />
<br />
They waited in an unfinished stone anteroom with three hard-faced guards until an inner door opened and a tall fair-haired man stepped through it. He glanced briefly in cold recognition at the thug, but his eyes lit up as they fell on Morlock.<br />
<br />
“Ah! Welcome, sir. Welcome to my home. Do come in.”<br />
<br />
“Money,” said the thug in a businesslike tone.<br />
<br />
“You’ll be paid by your gang leader. That was the agreement.”<br />
<br />
“I better be,” said the thug flatly. He walked back across the bronze doorbridge,strutting to conceal his limp.<br />
<br />
“Come in, do come in,” said the householder effusively. “People usually call me Charis.”<br />
<br />
Morlock noted the careful phrasing and replied as precisely, “I am Morlock Ambrosius.”<br />
<br />
“I know it, sir—I know it well. I wish I had the courage to do as you do. But few of those-who-know can afford to be known by their real names.”<br />
<br />
<em>Those-who-know</em> was a euphemism for practitioners of magic, especially solitary adepts. Morlock shrugged his crooked shoulders, dismissing the subject.<br />
<br />
“I had a prevision you were coming to Sarkunden,” said the sorcerer who called himself Charis, “and—yes, thank you, Veskin, you may raise the bridge again—I wanted to consult with you on a matter I have in hand. I hope that gangster didn’t hurt you, bringing you in—I see you are limping.”<br />
<br />
“It’s an old wound.”<br />
<br />
“Ah. Well, I’m sorry I had to put the word out to the water gangs, but they cover the town so much more thoroughly than the Keepers of the Peace.Then there was the matter of your—er—status. I hope, by the way, you aren’t worried about that fellow shopping you to the imperial forces?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
Charis’s narrow blond eyebrows arched slightly. “Your confidence is justified, ”he admitted, “but I don’t quite see its source.”<br />
<br />
Morlock waved a hand. “This place—your house. No ordinary citizen would be allowed to have a fortress like this within the town’s walls. You are not a member of the imperial family. So I guess you have a large chunk of the local guards in your pocket, and have had for at least ten years.”<br />
<br />
Charis nodded. “Doubly astute. You’ve assessed the age of my house to the year, and you’re aware of its political implications. Of course, you were in the Emperor’s service fairly recently, weren’t you?”<br />
<br />
“Yes, but let’s not dwell on it.”<br />
<br />
Charis dwelled on it. Knotting his eyebrows theatrically, he said, “Let’s see, what was it that persuaded him to exile you?”<br />
<br />
“I had killed his worst enemy and secured his throne from an usurpation attempt.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, my God. Well, there you are. I don’t claim your own level of political astuteness, you understand, but if I had been there to advise you I would have said, ‘Don’t do it!’ I never do anything for anybody that they can’t repay, and I never allow anybody to do anything for me that I can’t repay. Gratitude is painless enough in short bursts, but few people can stand it on a day-to-day basis.”<br />
<br />
They ascended several flights of stairs, passing several groups of servants who greeted Charis with every appearance of cheerful respect. Finally they reached a tower room ringed with windows, with a fireplace in its center and two liveried pages in attendance. Charis seated Morlock in a comfortable chair and planted himself in its twin on the other side of the fireplace. He gestured negligently and the pages stood forward.<br />
<br />
“May I offer you something?” Charis asked. “A glass of wine? The localgrapes are particularly nasty, as you must know, but there’s a vineyard in northern Kaen I’ve come to favor lately. I’d like your opinion on their work.”<br />
<br />
“I’m not a vintner. Some water for me, thanks.”<br />
<br />
This remark set Charis’s eyebrows dancing again. “But surely . . .” he said, as the demure dark-eyed servant at his side handed him a glass-lined drinking cup.“<br />
<br />
I don’t drink when I’m working, and I gather you want me to do a job. What is it?”<br />
<br />
Charis leaned back in his chair. “Let me begin to answer by asking a question: What do you think is the <em>most</em> remarkable thing about this remarkable house of mine?”<br />
<br />
Morlock accepted a cup of water from a bold-eyed blond-haired page. He drank deeply as he mulled the question over, then replied, “I suppose the fact that all the servants are golems.”<br />
<br />
The comment caught his host in midswallow. Morlock watched with real interest as Charis choked down his wine, his astonishment, and an obvious burst of irritation more or less simultaneously.<br />
<br />
“May I ask how you knew that?” Charis said carefully, when he was free for speech.<br />
<br />
“From the fact that all the servants we’ve met, including your guards, have been golems, I deduced that your entire staff consisted of golems.”<br />
<br />
“Yes, but surely, sir, you understand the intent of my question: How did you <em>know</em> they were golems? For I think, sir, as a master in the arts of Making, you will admit they are excellent work—<em>extremely</em> lifelike.” Charis’s frank and inquisitive look had something of a glare in it. Clearly he had made the golems himself and was vexed because they had not deceived Morlock.<br />
<br />
“Mostly the eyes,” Morlock said. “The golems are well made, I grant you, and the life-scrolls must be remarkably complicated and various. But you can’t quite get a natural effect with clay eyes.”<br />
<br />
Charis turned his gaze from Morlock to the dark-haired modest page at his left hand. Morlock watched the struggle in his host’s face as he realized the truth of the observation.<br />
<br />
“What would you use?” Charis asked finally. “If I may be so bold.”<br />
<br />
“Molten glass for the eyes proper—the eyeball and the cornea. I’d slice up some gems and use a fan-ring assembly for the irises. You’re using black mirror-tube for the visual canals? I think that would work very well.”<br />
<br />
“You can’t use glass,” Charis said sharply, sitting on the edge of his chair. “I’ve tried it. The vivifying spell induces some flexibility in the material, but it’s not sufficient.”<br />
<br />
“It would be necessary to keep it molten until the vivifying spell is activated,” Morlock replied.<br />
<br />
“It seems to me, frankly, that the problems are completely insuperable.”<br />
<br />
“I can show you,” Morlock said indifferently.<br />
<br />
“Frankly, you’ll have to. That will have to be part of the deal. Frankly.”<br />
<br />
“What deal are you offering?”<br />
<br />
Charis leapt to his feet, walked impatiently all around the room, and threw himself back down in his chair. “You have me at a disadvantage,” he remarked. “As you no doubt intended.”<br />
<br />
“We both have something the other needs.”<br />
<br />
“Thank God! I thought for a moment—no matter what I thought. As you guessed: except for myself, all my household are golems. I do business every day in the city—a very large business in very small spells—and, frankly, when I come home I detest the human race. But I have the normal human desire for a sociable life.”<br />
<br />
Morlock, who had none of these problems, inclined his head to acknowledge them. “And the golems are your solution.”<br />
<br />
“A most effective one, by and large. Except that I will never be able to look one of the damned things in the eyes again!”<br />
<br />
“That can be fixed,” Morlock pointed out. “Also, there must have been something else, or you wouldn’t have been looking for me.”<br />
<br />
“Yes. Yes. As you noticed, I’ve been at some pains to give each of my golems a distinctive character, physically and otherwise. A desert of a thousand identical faces and minds would hardly satisfy my social instincts.”<br />
<br />
“No golem has a mind,” Morlock observed. “A limited set of responses can be incorporated into any life-scroll.”<br />
<br />
“A difference that is no difference, sir. What does it matter to me whether they really have minds or not? If they <em>seem</em> to have minds, my social instincts will be satisfied.”<br />
<br />
<div></div>Morlock thought this unlikely, but did not say so. “Then?”<br />
<br />
“The trouble is that, since <em>I</em> inscribed their life-scrolls, nothing they say or do can ever surprise me. You see? The illusion that they have identities collapses. My social instincts are not satisfied. Frankly, it’s dull.”<br />
<br />
“Then. You would have me make a new set of lifelike golems, at least some of whose responses you will not expect.”<br />
<br />
“In an unthreatening and even charming way. Play fair, now.”<br />
<br />
“I can’t undertake to provide charm,” Morlock said. “We can rule out danger, insubordination, and incivility.”<br />
<br />
“Very well. I’m sure I can trust your esthetic instincts. Also, you must show me your method of constructing their eyes.”<br />
<br />
Morlock nodded.<br />
<br />
“The question arises, ‘What can I do for you?’ I take it that mere gold will not . . . ? No.”<br />
<br />
Morlock shook his head. “I understand the Sarkunden garrison still runs scouting missions into the Kirach Kund,” he said, naming the mountain pass to the north of Sarkunden.<br />
<br />
"Ye-e-es,” Charis said slowly.<br />
<br />
“I can’t remain in the empire, as you know. I can’t go west—”<br />
<br />
“No one goes into the Wardlands.”<br />
<br />
“In any case, I can’t. I dislike Anhi and Tychar, and therefore would not go east.”<br />
<br />
"You intend to cross the Kirach Kund!”<br />
<br />
“Yes. It is done from time to time, I believe.”<br />
<br />
"By armed companies. Nor do they always survive.”<br />
<br />
Morlock lifted his wry shoulders in a shrug. “I have done it. But I was once taken prisoner by the Khroi and am reluctant to risk it again.”<br />
<br />
“The Khroi take only prey, never prisoners. You will excuse my being so downright, but we live in the Khroi’s shadow, here, and we know something about them.”<br />
<br />
“They made an exception for me, once. They may not make the same mistake again. It would be better for me if I knew what the imperial scouts know—what hordes are allied to each other, which are at war, where the latest fighting is, where dragon-cavalry has been seen.”<br />
<br />
“I see.” Charis’s face twisted. “I have never meddled with strictly military matters before. It will strain my relationship with the garrison commander.”<br />
<br />
Morlock lifted his crooked shoulders in a shrug. “You could hire anumber of human servants. If—”<br />
<br />
“No!” Charis shouted. “No people! I won’t have it!” His nostrils flared with hatred; he neglected to move his eyebrows expressively.<br />
<br />
“Very well,” he said at last. “I’ll get you your news. You make me my golems.” And they settled down to haggle over details.<br />
<br />
<br />
On the appointed day, Charis strode into Morlock’s workroom, unable to disguise his feelings of triumph. “Oh, Morlock, you must come and see this. Say, you’ve been cleaning up in here!”<br />
<br />
A shrug from the crooked shoulders. “My work’s done. I hope you like your golems.”<br />
<br />
“They’re <em>marvellous</em>. I’m so grateful. One of them speaks nothing but Kaenish! And I don’t know a word!”<br />
<br />
A smile was a rare crooked thing on Morlock’s dark face. “You’ll have to learn, I guess.”<br />
<br />
“Wonderful. But come along to my workshop. The guardsman will be along presently, and I badly want to show you this before you depart. Oh, do leave that,” he said, as the other began to reach for the sword belt hanging on the wall. “You won’t want it, and there’s no place for it in my room.”<br />
<br />
They went together to Charis’s workshop. Body parts fashioned in clay of various shades lay scattered all over the room. There was a positive clutter of arms on the worktable—Charis had mentioned to Morlock at supper last night that he was “on an arm jag,” and now it could be seen what he meant.<br />
<br />
Charis worked by inspiration, crafting dozens of arms or legs, for instance, as the mood took him, getting a feel for the body part and creating subtle differences between the members in the series. In the end he would construct golems like jigsaw puzzles out of pieces he had already made, and improvise a life-scroll that suited the body. His other skills as a sorcerer were quite minor, as he freely admitted, but his pride as a golem maker was fully justified.<br />
<br />
So far, though, irises had defeated him. In everything else he had proved a ready pupil to Morlock, even in the manipulation of globes of molten glass, a difficult magic. But creating the fan-ring assemblies of paper-thin sheets of gem had proved the most challenging task of Making he had ever undertaken.<br />
<br />
His latest efforts lay on the worktable, two small rings of purple amethyst flakes, glittering among the chaos of clay arms. He watched anxiously as the other bent down to examine them.<br />
<br />
“Hm.” A hand reached out. “An aculeus, please.” Charis quickly handed over the needlelike probe. The skilled hands made the artificial irises expand, contract,expand again. Finally the maker’s form straightened (insofar as it ever could, Charis thought, glancing scornfully at the crooked shoulders), saying, “Excellent. You should have no trouble now making lifelike eyes for your golems.”<br />
<br />
Charis sighed in relief. “I’m so glad to hear you say so. Really, I’m deeply in your debt.”<br />
<br />
A shrug. “You can pay me easily, with news from the pass.”<br />
<br />
“I’m afraid that would hardly cover it,” Charis said regretfully, and pushed him over, onto the table. The clay arms instantly seized him and held him, a long one wrapping itself like a snake across his mouth, effectively gagging him.Charis carefully swept the artificial irises off the table into his left hand and, moving back, commanded, “Table: stand.” <br />
<br />
The table-shaped golem tipped itself vertically and, unfolding two stumpy human legs from under one of its edges, stood. Its dozens of mismatched arms still firmly held Morlock’s struggling form.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry about this—I really am,” Charis said hastily, in genuine embarrassment. “When push came to shove, though, it occurred to me that my relationship with the garrison commander simply couldn’t take the strain of fishing for secret military information. You’ve no idea how stuffy he is. Also, I’m not convinced the news would be as useful to you as you think, and you might hold a grudge against me. You’ve given me so much, and I’m afraid—that is, I don’t like to think about you holding a grudge, that’s all. So this is better—not for you, I quite see that. But for me. Guardsmen!”<br />
<br />
From a side door three imperial guardsmen entered, the fist insignia of Keepers of the Peace inscribed on their breastplates. They eyed the inhuman golem and its struggling victim with distaste and fear.<br />
<br />
“Have it let him go,” the senior guard directed. “We’ll take him in.”<br />
<br />
“Are you out of your mind?” Charis exploded. “This man is the most powerful maker in the worlds, and a dangerous swordsman besides. If you think that he is going to quietly walk between you to his place of execution, you—Look here: let’s not quarrel. You’ll get your reward whether you bring him in dead or alive. I simply can’t risk his surviving to take revenge on me, don’t you see? Cut his head off here. That’s what we agreed. Don’t worry about the golem; it was made for this purpose.”<br />
<br />
“They say Ambrosius’s blood is poison,” one of the other guardsmen offered quaveringly. “They say—”<br />
<br />
"Gentlemen, it is your own blood you ought to be concerned about,” Charis remarked. “This man is lethal. He has been condemned to death by the Emperor himself. You have him helpless. I’ve paid you well to come here, and you’ll be paid even better when you bring his head to your captain. What more needs to be said?”<br />
<br />
The senior guard nodded briskly and said, “Tervin: your sword.”<br />
<br />
“Hey!” shouted the junior addressed. “I’m not going to—”<br />
<br />
“No. I am. But I’m not going to use my own sword. I paid a hundred eagles for that thing, and I don’t want it wrecked if his blood eats metal, like they say. Your weapon’s standard issue. Give it to me.”<br />
<br />
Tervin silently surrendered his sword; the senior guard stepped forward and remarking, in a conversational tone, “In the name of the Emperor,” lopped off the head of the struggling victim. The sword bit deeply into the table-golem; several of the arms fell with the severed head to the floor.<br />
<br />
The senior guard leapt back immediately to avoid the gush of poisonous Ambrosial blood, then took another step back when he saw that there was no gush of blood. The headless form in the table-golem’s arms continued its useless struggle.<br />
<br />
“No,” croaked Charis, his throat dry. “This can’t be happening.”<br />
<br />
He stepped forward, as if against his own will, and touched the gleaming edge of the severed neck. It was clay. He reached down into the open throat and drew out a life-scroll inscribed in Morlock Ambrosius’s peculiar hooked style. The body ceased to move.<br />
<br />
“They told me you were cheap,” Morlock’s voice sounded behind and below him.<br />
<br />
He turned and, looking down, met the calm gray gaze of the severed head that looked like Morlock’s.<br />
<br />
“They told me you were cheap,” the severed head remarked again, “so I expected this. I am somewhere you can’t reach me. Have the information ready when I send for it and I’ll hold no grudges. But do not betray me again.”<br />
<br />
“I won’t,” whispered Charis, knowing he would have nightmares about this moment as long as he lived. “I promise. I promise I won’t.” Then he turned away from the suddenly lifeless head to soothe the frightened guards with gold.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div></div>That night the unbeheaded and authentic Morlock lay dreaming in the high cold hills north of Sarkunden, but he wasn’t aware of it. To him it seemed he was lying, wrapped in his sleeping cloak, watching the embers of his fire,wondering why he was still awake.<br />
<br />
An old woman walked into the cool red circle of light around Morlock’s dying campfire. He could not see her face. She bent down and took the book of palindromes from Morlock’s backpack and flipped through it until she reached the page for that day. She carried it over and showed it to him. Her index finger pointed to a palindrome:<em> Molh lomolov alinio cret. Terco inila vo lomolhlom.</em><br />
<br />
Which might be rendered: <em>Blood red as sunset marks the road north. Son walks east into the eastering sun.</em><br />
<br />
He looked up from the book to her face. He still could not see it. He wasn’t able to see it, he realized suddenly, because he never had seen it. Then he awoke.<br />
<br />
He opened his eyes to find the book of palindromes open in his hand. It was his index finger resting on the palindrome he had read in his dream.<br />
<br />
Morlock got up and restowed the book in his pack. Then he settled down and built up the fire to make tea: he doubted he would sleep any more that night.<br />
<br />
He was caught up in some conflict he didn’t understand with a seer whose skill surpassed his own. Any omen or vision he received was doubly important because of this, but it was doubly suspect as well.<br />
<br />
He much preferred Making to Seeing: the subtleties of vision were often lost on him. In a way, he had made the book of palindromes so that he would have some of the advantages of Seeing through an instrument of Making. He thought the omen pointing him northward was a real omen, and it was possible that this one was, too. But it was possible that one or both had been sent by his enemy to mislead him.<br />
<br />
Morlock drank his tea and thought the matter over all night. By sunrise he had struck camp and was walking along the crooked margin of the mountains eastward, keeping his eyes open for he knew not what.<br />
<br />
<br />
<div><strong>V: FIRE AND WATER</strong><br />
</div><br />
One morning, after many days of travel eastward, Morlock awoke to find his pack had been slit and the book of palindromes stolen. He spent some time thinking about why the thief had stolen that one thing, and what the theft might mean. In the end, he shouldered his violated pack, belted on his sword, and took after the thief.<br />
<br />
Morlock was a master of makers, not trackers, but the ground was soft in early spring and the track fairly easy to follow, perhaps too easy. The trail led north and east, toward a place Morlock had particularly wanted to avoid.<br />
<br />
When the thief’s trail took him as far as the winterwood, as he had known it must, Morlock Ambrosius sat down to think. To enter there was to gamble with his life, and Morlock hated gambling: it was wasteful and he was thrifty—some said cheap. Still, there was the book. . . . And the note. It had been staked to the ground, just next to his slit pack . . . staked with a glass thorn from the same pack. (The chamber of the thorn was broken and the face inside was dark and lifeless. Another score to settle!) The message was simply a stylized figure of a hand with the fingers pointing northward. . . toward the forest of Tychar, the winterwood. The meaning was as clear as the slap in the face the symbol represented: <em>Forget your book. It’s gone where you can’t follow.</em> The note was addressed “Ambrosius.”<br />
<br />
So it was someone who knew him, someone bold enough to rob him, someone who had preferred, when he was vulnerable, to insult him rather than kill him. He had a desire to meet this person.<br />
<br />
As he sat, pondering the dark blue trunks of the winterwood, he found the desire had not faded.<br />
<br />
He kindled a fire with the <em>Pursuer</em> instrumentality. As he was waiting for it to grow to optimal strength, he took off his pack and set about repairing the slit. There was a patch of gripgrass not far away; he spotted it by the long deerlike bones of an animal it had killed. He drew a few plants from the ground, taking care not to break the stems or tear the central roots. He sewed up the slit in his pack, carefully weaving the gripgrass plants into the seam.<br />
<br />
The fire was high enough, then, so he took the thief’s note and burned it in the <em>Pursuer</em> fire with a pinch of chevetra leaf. The smoke traveled north and east, against the wind, toward the forest: that was the way the thief had gone.<br />
<br />
They called it “the winterwood.” The trees stood on high rocky ground; it was cold there, even in summer. The trees there, of a kind that grew nowhere else, flowered in fall and faded in spring. They resembled dark oaks,except their leaves were a dim blue and their bark had a bluish cast.<br />
<br />
Just now it was early spring; patches of snow lay, like chewed crusts, beneath the hungry-looking trees. The leaves, crooked blue veins showing along the withered gray surfaces, were like the hands of dying men. They rustled irritably in the chill persistent breeze, as if impatient to meet and merge with the earth.<br />
<br />
Morlock did not share their impatience. When he saw the smoke from his magical fire enter the tree-shadowed arch of a pathway (a clear path leading deep into those untravelled woods) he shook his head suspiciously.<br />
<br />
So he sat down again and took off his shoes. After writing his name and a few other words on the heel of his left shoe, he trimmed a strip of leather from the sole and tied it around his bare left foot at the arch. He did the same withthe other shoe (and foot). He muttered a few more words (familiar to those-who-know). Then he picked up the shoes, one in each hand, and tossed them onto the path. They landed, side by side, toes forward, about two paces distant.<br />
<br />
He stood up and moved his feet experimentally. The empty shoes mimicked the motion of his feet. He stepped forward onto the path; the shoes politely maintained the two-pace distance, hopping ahead of him step by step. Morlock nodded, content. Then he strapped his backpack to his slightly crooked shoulders and walked, barefoot, into the deadly woods.<br />
<br />
Morlock first became aware of the trap through a sensation of walking on air.<br />
<br />
He stopped in his tracks and looked at his shoes. They stood on an ordinary stretch of path, dry earth speckled with small sharp stones. But just in front of his bare feet he saw a dark shoe-shaped patch of nothingness.<br />
<br />
Morlock nodded and scraped his right foot on the path; the right shoe mimicked it, brushing away a paper-thin surface of earth suspended in the air, revealing the nothingness beneath.<br />
<br />
“Well made,” Morlock the Maker conceded. No doubt the pit beneath the path concealed some deadly thing—that was rather crude. But Morlock liked the sheet of earth hanging in the air, and would have liked to know how it was done.<br />
<br />
Carefully approaching the verge of the pit, he peered through the empty footprint. The pit was about twice as deep as Morlock was tall. At its bottom was a fire-breathing serpent with vestigial wings, perhaps as long as the pit was deep. The serpent wore a metal collar, apparently bolted to its spine; the collar was fastened to a chain anchored to the sheer stone wall of the pit. The serpent, seeing Morlock, roared its rage and disappointment.<br />
<br />
“Who set you here, serpent?” Morlock asked.<br />
<br />
“I set myself,” the worm sneered. “This chain is a clever ruse to deceive the unwary.”<br />
<br />
“I have gold,” Morlock observed.<br />
<br />
The serpent fell quiet. Its red-slotted eyes took on a greenish tint.<br />
<br />
Morlock reached into his pocket and brought forth a single coin. He swept away the dirt hanging in the air and held the coin out for the serpent to see.<br />
<br />
It saw. Its tongue flickered desperately in and out. Finally it said, “Very well. Throw me the coin.”<br />
<br />
Morlock dropped the gold disc into the pit. “Tell me now.”<br />
<br />
The serpent roared in triumph, “I tell you nothing! Only a fool gives gold for nothing. Go away, fool.”<br />
<br />
Morlock (he knew the breed) patiently reached back into his pack and brought forth a handful of gold coins.<br />
<br />
Silence fell like a thunderbolt. Morlock held the gold coins out and let the serpent stare at them through his fingers.<br />
<br />
“Tell me <em>now</em>,” Morlock said at last.<br />
<br />
“It was a magician from beyond the Sea of Worlds,” the serpent replied, too readily. “He said I could eat your flesh, but must leave the bones. I said I would break the bones and eat the marrow, and no power in the world could stop me. He called me a bold worm, strong and logical. He agreed about the bones. Then he rode away on a horse as tall as a tree.”<br />
<br />
Morlock allowed a single coin to fall into the pit.<br />
<br />
"More!” The word rose on a tongue of flame through the mist of venom blanketing the serpent.<br />
<br />
“I will give you two more. For the truth.”<br />
<br />
“All!” shouted the worm. “All! All! All!”<br />
<br />
“The truth.”<br />
<br />
“It was a Master Dragon of the Blackthorn Range. He—”<br />
<br />
Morlock snapped the fingers of his left hand twice. The two coins that had fallen into the pit rose glittering out of the cloud of venom and landed on his outstretched palm.<br />
<br />
“Thief!” the serpent screamed.<br />
<br />
“Liar,” Morlock replied. In the language they were speaking it was the same word.<br />
<br />
There was a long silence, broken by the serpent’s roar of defeat. “I don’t <em>know</em> who he was! He came on me while I was asleep. I didn’t wake up until he drove this bolt into my neck. Take your gold and go!”<br />
<br />
“What did he look like?” Morlock demanded. “Describe him.”<br />
<br />
“Describe him! Describe him!” the serpent hissed despairingly. “He was no different from you.”<br />
<br />
Morlock shrugged. He’d met serpents better able to distinguish between human beings. But he had never supposed his interlocutor a genius among worms. He opened both his hands and scattered gold into the pit.<br />
<br />
As he rose to go the serpent called, “Wait!”<br />
<br />
Morlock waited.<br />
<br />
“I’m hungry,” the serpent said insinuatingly.<br />
<br />
“Then?”<br />
<br />
“Must I be more explicit? I was promised a meal, yourself, if I permitted myself to be staked in this pit. I am staked in this pit, and have been denied the meal by the most offensive sort of trickery. You are the responsible party, and your double obligation is clear. I ask only that you remove any buckles or metal objects you may have about your person, for I have a bad tooth—”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
“But this tooth—”<br />
<br />
“You may not eat me.”<br />
<br />
“Be reasonable. I won’t eat you all at once,” the serpent offered hopefully.<br />
<br />
Morlock shook his head, declining this reasonable offer. “Nevertheless, ”he added slowly (for it occurred to him this creature would certainly die if it remained staked in the pit), “I will set you free for some slight charge. Perhaps a single gold coin.”<br />
<br />
There was a pause as the worm struggled between the prospect of certain death or the loss of any part of its new wealth. “Never!” it snarled at last.<br />
<br />
Morlock walked away. The worm’s voice followed him, carrying threats and abuse but never an offer to change. Morlock ignored it and presently it ceased.<br />
<br />
The path came to an end just beyond the pit. This left him at something of a loss as to where to go next, but there was one good thing about it: he could put his shoes back on.<br />
<br />
He sat down and tugged the leather strips from his dusty feet, breaking the spell. He heard footsteps and looked up to see his shoes running away into the dense bluish woods.<br />
<br />
Morlock was aghast. Some spirit or invisible creature had clearly stepped into his shoes as they preceded him down the path. When the spell was broken they had stolen the shoes.<br />
<br />
He had to recover those shoes. He had made them with his own hands; he had worn them for months; he had written his own name and other magical words on them. He would never be safe if he did not recover them.<br />
<br />
Leaping to his feet, he heard footsteps crackling eastward through the blue-green underbrush. Heedlessly he followed them.<br />
<br />
It was not long before the poisonous blue leaves began to sting his bare feet.These had already been scratched and bruised by his barefoot walk down the stony path. The slight pain from the poison naggingly reminded him that if he walked for long in these woods without protection for his feet the poison would accumulate in his lower limbs and they would die. Then he would face the unpleasant alternatives of self-amputation or death.<br />
<br />
The shoes seemed to be aware of his danger. At every turn they plunged into the thickest underbrush, treading down hard to leave a path sharp with broken sticks and poison leaves.<br />
<br />
But their strategy was not an unqualified success. Whatever their guiding intelligence was, it did not provide Morlock’s sheer physical mass: an undoubted advantage in storming through wild shrubbery. The shoes became entangled for long moments in places where Morlock simply brushed through or leapt over, and he closed steadily.<br />
<br />
In a gap without trees he drew to a halt and listened, knee-deep in leafy poison. Silence fell in the winterwood. The crashing through blue bracken and greenish underbrush had ceased. His shoes had taken cover somewhere.<br />
<br />
His heart fell. He was bound to lose a waiting game. He seized the first heavy branch that came to hand, tore it loose from its tree, and began to beat savagely about the dense covert of bushes.<br />
<br />
It was sheer luck he glanced up to see his fugitive shoes weaving and dodging among the close-set trees on the opposite side of the narrow clearing. Morlock gave a crowlike caw of dismay and dashed off in pursuit. But almost as soon as he spotted them they disappeared in the woods beyond.<br />
<br />
Morlock forced himself to halt at the place he had last seen the shoes. He listened. Again a sly chill quiet had descended on the winterwood. There was no light footfall, no crunch of leaf or snap of twig—not so much as the rustle of leather soles edging forward in the grass. The shoes had taken cover again. And they were nearby; he was sure of it.<br />
<br />
He turned slowly, a full circle, examining every rock, stone, bush, or tree in sight. He saw no trace of his shoes. He moved forward, as quietly as possible, striving to make no sound that might cover the shoes’ retreat. He saw nothing. He heard nothing.<br />
<br />
After taking ten paces forward, he halted. He had missed them somehow; they could not have come much farther than this. He turned and looked back the way he had come. Then, on a bitterly sharp impulse, he glanced up at the forest roof. Far out of reach, the shoes stood nonchalantly upon a blue-black tree limb.<br />
<br />
He crouched down and groped about on the forest floor. Latching on to a fist-sized rock, he rose again and pegged it with deadly accuracy at the rakishly tilted right shoe. Then he held the branch, like a crooked javelin, ready in his other hand in case he needed something to throw at the other shoe.<br />
<br />
But he didn’t. The right shoe tumbled almost to the ground before the other followed it, hurtling from the bough like a stone shot from a sling. Morlock wasted a moment wondering about the nature of the thing that had stepped into his shoes. Before he shook off his speculations the shoes began hopping like a pair of leather toads across the forest floor.<br />
<br />
Then, in an instant, the chase was over.<br />
<br />
The left shoe had hurled itself forward to land in a dimly blue patch of gripgrass (less greenish in color and finer than the weed carpeting the poisonous wood). In doing so it had bent the stems and torn the central roots of dozens of blades of the bluish grass.<br />
<br />
Each offended blade divided into several long wire-tough lashes that instantly wrapped around the first solid object they touched. The left shoe was swiftly bound to the forest floor. Moreover, some of the released lashes inevitably snapped across their quiescent brethren; in less than a human vein-pulse the whole patch of gripgrass had come to greedy life. It snatched the right shoe, flying overhead, and bound it to the earth next to its mate. Even then a faint blue cloud of yearning tendrils floated on the air until the unoccupied blades re-formed themselves and slowly sank back into quiescence.<br />
<br />
Their more fortunate kin clung tightly to their new prey, so that its death and corruption might provide food for the whole patch, not to mention serve as bait for an unwary carrion eater. This time they had caught nothing more nourishing than a pair of old shoes, but even if they had known they would not have cared; it is not in the nature of gripgrass to be choosy, and what they possess they do not surrender.<br />
<br />
<em>“Hurs krakna!”</em> muttered Morlock, giving vent to one of the many untranslatable idioms of his native language. Then he sat down and began to bind up his feet, using strips torn from his cloak.<br />
<br />
It is not every master maker who carries a choir of flames in his backpack. For one thing, few master makers have backpacks, being typically as sessile as clams. Also, flames are not readily portable; they require care of a peculiar sort; they are fickle and given to odd ideas. Nevertheless Morlock, a gifted maker of gems, knew that there was nothing so helpful in tending a seedstone as a choir of wise old flames.<br />
<br />
The sphere of smoke clinging to the choir nexus was dense and hot, so Morlock kept his face well out of the way as he removed the dragon-hide wrapping of the nexus; there were the signs of a heated conversation in progress.<br />
<br />
“In a former—”<br />
<br />
“How do you expect—”<br />
<br />
“—life, I was a salamander. Mere words can’t imagine how much I meant—”<br />
<br />
“—expect me to <em>breathe</em>?”<br />
<br />
“—to myself, bright as a brick in the Burning Wall . . .”<br />
<br />
“Remember lumbering through fossil-bright burning fields?”<br />
<br />
“I prefer wood to coal. Would you feed us more? Would you? Eh? <em>Would</em> you?”<br />
<br />
A shower of bright sharp laughs, like sparks, flew up into the dim air of the winterwood.<br />
<br />
“I’m hungry!” cried a lone flame, when the laughter had passed. “Feed me! I’M GOING OUT! <em>FEED</em> ME!”<br />
<br />
Morlock glanced into the nexus. “Friends,” he said patiently, “fully half the coal I gave you last night is unconsumed. You needn’t go out.”<br />
<br />
“Coal is boring!” the desperate flame cried. “Death before boredom!”<br />
<br />
<em>“Death before boredom!“</em> the choir cried as one.<br />
<br />
“Most of us like coal, you understand,” a flame confided agreeably. “But we all support the principle.”<br />
<br />
<div></div>“Principle first, always,” another flame agreed. “And more coal, please.”<br />
<br />
“It makes my light so dark and heavy. And all those strange memories!”<br />
<br />
“Strange memories, yes. Remember all those fish!”<br />
<br />
“I remember remembering. Strange to be a fish.”<br />
<br />
“No coal!” hollered the desperate flame. “No coal!”<br />
<br />
“Snuff yourself.”<br />
<br />
“Friends,” said Morlock, “I come to offer you variety.”<br />
<br />
“Variety,” one observed snidely. “How dull!”<br />
<br />
“I have a task for a single flame—outside the nexus.”<br />
<br />
This shocked them into silence. It was the nexus that sustained them beyond the ordinary term of flamehood, giving them time to develop their intelligence. In twenty years of life, many of them had never blown a spark outside the nexus.<br />
<br />
“Well, what is it?” one flame demanded matter-of-factly.<br />
<br />
With equal matter-of-factness, Morlock held up one of his clothbound feet. “My shoes have run away into a plot of gripgrass. I want one of you to eat them free.”<br />
<br />
He waited patiently while the choir exhausted itself in laughter and jeers.<br />
<br />
“Gripgrass is something none of you has tasted,” Morlock continued. “Furthermore, if one of you volunteers I will give the whole choir two double handfuls of leaves, the smoke of which is poisonous to man.”<br />
<br />
“Nonsense!” cried a panicky voice, in which Morlock thought he recognized the coal-hater. “Coal’s good enough for us! Nothing better! More coal or nothing!”<br />
<br />
"I like coal well enough,” the matter-of-fact voice said, “but it will never taste so good to me unless I try gripgrass.”<br />
<br />
“Then,” Morlock said, and snapped his fingers. The flame hurtled up and landed in Morlock’s palm. Morlock immediately fed it with a strip of bark from the branch he still carried.<br />
<br />
“This bark tastes a bit odd,” remarked the flame smokily.<br />
<br />
“It is kin to gripgrass,” Morlock replied. “Do not talk, but listen. Time is your enemy as long as you are outside the nexus. Yonder is the gripgrass hiding my shoes. Do you see them?”<br />
<br />
"Smell ’em.”<br />
<br />
“Then. I’ll place you on the forest floor; work your way into the gripgrass and burn the shoes free, then proceed to the far side of the patch. The nexus will be there and you can climb back inside. Do not speak unless you are in trouble; then I will do what I can for you. Do not propagate or you will lose yourself in your progeny. Plain enough?”<br />
<br />
The red wavering flame nodded and danced anxiously. Morlock put it down and watched it burn a black smoking beeline for the dim blue patch of gripgrass.<br />
<br />
Morlock absently brushed the pile of ashes from his palm, but did not check for blisters. It took a flame hot enough to melt gold to do harm to his flesh; like his crooked shoulders and his skill at magic, that was the heritage of Ambrosius.<br />
<br />
Having placed the nexus beyond the gripgrass patch, just out of lashreach, Morlock sat down beside it and began to whittle idly at the branch he still held in his hand. The pale bluish scraps of wood he fed to the flames were still resident in the nexus.<br />
<br />
“This wood has a cold marshy taste,” a flame remarked, not disapprovingly.<br />
<br />
“I don’t think I like it,” another said. “But I’d need more to be sure.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t blow the smoke over here,” said Morlock, annoyed. He’d taken enough poison today as it was; his feet were numb with it. He tossed another pile of wood scraps in the nexus; that was when the gripgrass plot lashed out again.<br />
<br />
Morlock had been expecting this. If a plant’s central stem was burned through it would not (because it could not) unleash. The central stem would respond to the burning of a peripheral stem, and some central stems would fall and set off the inevitable chain reaction.<br />
<br />
Still it was alarming. The air currents totally dispersed the smoke trail by which Morlock had been gauging the flame’s progress. Even after some moments the smoke did not return.<br />
<br />
“Are you all right?” Morlock called out.<br />
<br />
“Yes,” replied the flame, its voice muffled by the tightly woven roof of gripgrass.<br />
<br />
“Can you breathe?”<br />
<br />
“<em>Yes</em>,” replied the flame, with overtones of annoyance.<br />
<br />
Morlock took the hint and returned to his whittling.<br />
<br />
Presently the flame’s bright wavering crown appeared, like the point of a knife, through the blue mat of gripgrass. It swiftly ran around and cut a smoking shoe-sized hole in the still tightly lashed grass.<br />
<br />
“One shoe free,” the flame announced curtly and disappeared.<br />
<br />
Finally the wavering crown reappeared and repeated the procedure.<br />
<br />
“Second shoe—” it began.<br />
<br />
Then the flame was nearly extinguished by the passage of both shoes leaping backward up and out of the gripgrass patch. Landing with a double thump on the forest floor, they immediately began to run away again.<br />
<br />
Morlock hurled the improvised javelin he had carved out of the tree branch, spearing the leather sole of one shoe. The other, farther off, kept on hopping away. Morlock bided his time. Finally throwing his knife, he transfixed the shoe, in midleap, to a nearby tree. Both shoes struggled briefly and fell still.<br />
<br />
“You’d better get yourself some sensible shoes,” suggested a matter-of-fact voice behind him. Before he could respond, the flame had reentered the nexus and was lost among the choir.<br />
<br />
He fed the choir their double handfuls of leaves and sat aside while they smokily consumed and discussed them. As he waited he carefully removed every trace of the spell he had written on the shoes; he sewed up the holes with the leftover strips of leather from the spell.<br />
<br />
The reek of poisonous smoke was still heavy in the air when he finished, and he glanced impatiently over toward the nexus. If he’d known they were going to take this long he would have picked drier leaves. (They preferred leaves moist or, as they said, “chewy.”)<br />
<br />
“We’ve been done for centuries!” cried a flame defensively as he approached. He saw this was essentially correct; the leaves had all been consumed,and they were working again on their lump of coal.<br />
<br />
“We think the forest may be on fire,” the matter-of-fact voice observed.<br />
<br />
"It may be,” Morlock agreed. “Friends, I am going to wrap you up again.”<br />
<br />
He took their complaints and bitter insults in good part. But he wrapped the nexus in its dragon-hide covering and stowed it in his backpack.<br />
<br />
Shoes firmly fastened to his feet, pack comfortably strapped to his crooked shoulders, Morlock wandered casually toward the source of the poisonous smoke. On his way he was attacked by several white wolfish or canine beasts that had black beaks and narrow birdlike faces. He killed one of them with the accursed sword Tyrfing. He had no chance to examine the dead predator’s body; although its companions fled howling, the corpse was immediately set upon by a cloud of small catlike creatures with long leathery wings ending in reticulated claws. These were apparently scavengers that followed the birdwolf pack. They descended with pitiless delight on the dead predator; their brown triangular cat-faces were soon black with blood.<br />
<br />
Several of the scavenger catbirds orbited around Morlock, as if searching for a place to land and feast. He knocked them away. One scored a long bloody gash along his left forearm, but as the wound was shallow he decided against treating it at that emergent moment.<br />
<br />
He was further delayed by the passage of a fire-breathing serpent taller than himself and as long as a caravan. The approach of this monster was evident from five hundred paces away in the afternoon gloom of the woods. Deciding to take cover until the thing passed, he climbed a tree with comparatively dense foliage, most of which was still blue-black from winter, and wrapped himself in his black traveling cloak to complete the camouflage.<br />
<br />
He could feel the blood from his wound soaking into the cloak, which began to cling to his skin. And his torn, bruised, and poisoned feet had had enough trouble today without perching for an appreciable chunk of the evening on a tree branch. Plus, there was the inevitable sharp object intruding on his wounded arm—he didn’t want to move away from it in the serpent’s presence. (Fire breathers do not hear or smell very well, but they have bitterly keen eyesight.) He grinned wryly and waited it out. Most annoyingly, and most trivially, leaves from the tree (he assumed that was what they were) kept brushing against him and tickling his skin unbearably.<br />
<br />
The giant worm rumbled away into the woods. Morlock sighed with relief. Now for some free movement . . . and a good scratch!<br />
<br />
He threw back his cloak. The catbirds that had settled down on and around him (whose feather-fur he had mistaken for leaves) leapt screaming into the air and began to circle the tree.<br />
<br />
Morlock shouted several croaking insults a crow had once taught him, then plucked one of the catbirds out of the air and snapped its neck. He killed a second with a well-thrown knife and dropped the first body where the second one fell.<br />
<br />
The scavengers having gathered on the ground to feed on their fallen comrades, and Morlock dropped down beside them, branch in hand. He killed several more scavengers by methodically flailing about before the survivors flew off to a safe distance. It was an ugly business, and as Morlock stood over the crushed catbirds and heard their fellows screaming at him from a nearby tree, he was not pleased with himself.<br />
<br />
But it had been necessary. This demonstrated to the deadly catbirds that he was not merely a wounded prey staving off death but a predator in his own right. They would be more cautious in following him thereafter; perhaps they would leave his trail entirely. And if nothing else, these corpses would entertain the survivors while he got away.<br />
<br />
Having retrieved, cleaned, and sheathed his knife (the grip was covered by razor-thin teethmarks), Morlock made his way into the woods. He looked back once and saw that the forest floor where the dead catbirds had been was alive with dark winged forms.<br />
<br />
Heading straight into the smoke-bearing wind, he walked until he found the fire. By that time night had entirely risen, and he could see from a distance that it was a kind of campfire. A tree had been cut and sectioned, certain sections quartered and several of the quarters set afire, all with considerable labor, no doubt. The hapless campers, one man and one woman, lay unconscious before the fire. You might have thought them overcome by weariness until you noticed their faces, greenish even in the red firelight. Apparently they’d been poisoned by the fire they’d set and were in danger of dying.<br />
<br />
Morlock felt the tug of sympathy; he also felt there was something wrong with this scene. But out of the corner of his eye he saw the cloud of scavenger catbirds settle silently down on a nearby tree. He found he couldn’t walk away and leave these as catbird fodder.<br />
<br />
He beat down the flames with his hands and heaved earth over the fuming coals. He sat down some distance away from the pair and bound up his wounded arm as he waited for them to awaken.<br />
<br />
Morlock kept thinking he should get about his own business. But the scavengers were still out there in the darkness watching what he would do. He waited, thinking long, slow thoughts to pass the time. Twice he roused himself to kill several large carnivorous beetles the size and temperament of snapping turtles who were approaching him hungrily. He tossed the dead beetles out into the wood, where the catbirds devoured them.<br />
<br />
Finally the woman stirred. A long yawn broke off in a gasp as she sat suddenly up.<br />
<br />
“Vren,” she said, in the lingua franca of the Ontilian Empire, “the fire has gone out!”<br />
<br />
“Not exactly ‘gone out,’” Morlock observed, in the same language. “I extinguished it.”<br />
<br />
Now both man and woman were standing. “Who are you?” the woman demanded. “<em>Where</em> are you?”<br />
<br />
“I am a traveller,” Morlock said cautiously. He rarely gave his name, of the Whitethorn Range. “I am somewhat behind you and off to oneside, as you can tell from my voice. Passing by, I noticed your fire and found you overcome with its fumes.”<br />
<br />
“Oh,” said the woman. “Are the trees poisonous, too?”<br />
<br />
“Yes. You will find all life in Tychar inimical to you.”<br />
<br />
“Including yourself?” she shot back.<br />
<br />
"Possibly,” Morlock admitted. “There are some strange things about you two. How did you happen to fell, section, and burn one of these trees without noticing its nature?”<br />
<br />
“We tell you nothing,” Vren said sullenly.<br />
<br />
“Be quiet, Vren,” the woman said without heat. “We had the <em>kembril</em> do it, traveller. We had a spell, and we spoke it, and the <em>kembril</em> came. It brought us fire and food, as we commanded. The food was good, at least. The fire was. . . local.”<br />
<br />
Morlock did not recognize the word <em>kembril</em>, but he thought he understood the gist of the story. “You are sorcerers, then?”<br />
<br />
“We are thieves, mostly,” the woman said frankly. “(Be quiet, Vren! He saved our lives.) But we steal magic by choice. We are going to rob a sorcerer who lives in the winterwood. Maybe then we’ll be sorcerers, with a little practice.”<br />
<br />
“There is a sorcerer in the wood?”<br />
<br />
"Yes,” said the woman reverently, “the greatest and evillest in the world: Morlock Ambrosius himself. He has settled in Tychar.” <br />
<br />
“Hmph,” said Morlock, glad of the darkness. “This is news to me.”<br />
<br />
“Well,” said the woman complacently, “few know of it. We were lucky enough to rob one of his sorcerous correspondents in Sarkunden, our hometown. We thought . . . well, for such as us it is the opportunity of a lifetime. We have a map.<br />
<br />
”Morlock had expected nothing else, except an offer to join their quest. That was forthcoming in another moment; he accepted with a thoughtful glumness that seemed to surprise his new companions.<br />
<br />
The two thieves, Urla and Vren, went back to sleep, trusting as children, after Morlock offered to stand guard for the rest of the night. Or perhaps they were not so childlike, Morlock reflected: he had already had his chance to rob or kill them; they had more reason to trust him than he did to trust them, which was why he had taken the watch.<br />
<br />
They walked all the next day and into the next night, avoiding death narrowly on a number of occasions. Each time, however, the catbird scavengers fed well on the corpses of their attackers. Morlock believed they had come to look on him as their patron predator. He found this annoying; there was nothing he could do about it, though.<br />
<br />
That night they slept in shifts. Morlock took the last watch—something of a risk, perhaps. He had come to trust his companions, although he had occasion to think them somewhat timorous.<br />
<br />
And he needed sleep. It had been long since he had woken up, south of the forest, to find himself robbed. His arm wound was infected and the poison in his system was slow to dissipate. He expected that tomorrow would be a very bad day indeed.<br />
<br />
It was all too soon when Urla’s voice woke him from a hellish dream and he crawled out of his sleeping cloak to stand watch over his companions. He sharpened a stick and absentmindedly speared any of the carnivorous beetles who crawled too near him or the sleepers. There was no fire, so he watched by the starlight and moonlight that managed to filter through the blue-black branches and leaves. He found that his left arm was swollen and sluggish, and so used his right hand almost exclusively.<br />
<br />
At last dawn came. Morlock, having viewed the thieves’ crude map several times the previous day, spent the last few moments of his watch calculating how long it might take them to reach the house of “Morlock.”<br />
<br />
He glanced idly back along the way they had come, noting that their trail was vividly marked by silver dew on the blue-green coarse grass of the winterwood. His eyes moved on; it was time to wake Urla and Vren—then he looked sharply back. <em>His</em> trail was visible: grasses bent by his passage dark among their silvery kin, footprints clearly outlined in the mold of the forest floor. But there was no sign of any others beside his.<br />
<br />
Troubled, he looked down on his companions, now waking on their own in the dim blue dawn. He was sure they were real—that is, they were not mere illusions; they did not have the talic aura an illusion must project. Yet if they had left no trail in the woods, they could hardly be real.<br />
<br />
Real, yet not real. He stared at them as they greeted one another, chatted, shook the dew off their blankets. . . . The grass moved beneath their feet, he noticed. But did it move enough for a real man and woman?<br />
<br />
Vren was groaning. “Back to the packs! I thought mine would split my shoulders yesterday.<br />
<br />
”Urla sympathized and Morlock stepped over. “Let’s trade,” he suggested .“I’ll carry yours, and you mine.”<br />
<br />
Vren looked surprised, then glanced at Morlock’s formidable pack. “It’s probably worse than mine,” he grumbled.<br />
<br />
“It’s not so bad as it looks,” Morlock insisted. “Give it a heft.”<br />
<br />
Vren hesitated. Both he and Urla wore tense troubled expressions. Morlock bent down and picked up Vren’s pack. It was as light as a spiderweb.<br />
<br />
Morlock dropped it and straightened; reaching out with both hands, he seized his companions under their chins. Pulling up strongly, he tore off both their faces.<br />
<br />
In the holes that had been faces there were forests of silvery spines. They vibrated tensely for a few moments, then grew still. The skins of Urla and Vren separated and fell away, exposing the creatures that had worn them as a hand wears a glove . . . or a puppet. These “hands” had small insectlike bodies and hundreds of long silvery legs that took a roughly spherical shape around the central body.<br />
<br />
Morlock had heard of such things. Given the outer shell of a person, and having fed on that person’s brain, they could sustain his or her living likeness. But they had no muscle or significant mass of their own, so that the seeming person would be light as gauze. They were marginally intelligent; at least they could feign an intelligence suited to the guise they wore. But shorn of their disguise they would unthinkingly return to their creator for protection and guidance.<br />
<br />
So these did, rolling away in the dim blue woods. Morlock shouldered his pack and followed them. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a few of the catbirds drop down and devour the discarded skins. The rest of the cloud followed silently on his trail.<br />
<br />
The silver-spine creatures were not moving quickly, but Morlock was dazed with poison and fever; he almost lost them twice. Using his left arm had torn the wound open again, and it throbbed with each leaden heartbeat. Still he kept moving. The hunt was almost over.<br />
<br />
They came at last to a dark stone house in the dim blue woods. The spheres of silver tines paused, then began to wander aimlessly along the walls, seeking ingress.<br />
<br />
Morlock found two dead bodies lying against the door of the house. One had been a man, the other a woman. They had been flayed, their skulls broken like eggshells and drained. Carrion eaters had torn their flesh. These, Morlock guessed, were the originals of Urla and Vren. Morlock covered the bodies with earth and deadwood, sealing their quasi-comradeship.<br />
<br />
Then he turned to the wooden door of the stone house. It was locked; he crouched down to examine the lock with his fingers. Only then did he understand how ill he was; his right hand was trembling too much to perform any subtle work and his left hand was swollen into useless immobility.<br />
<br />
Morlock stood back and unslung his pack. He drew out the choir nexus and unwrapped it. He explained the matter in a single terse sentence; a moment later, fifteen volunteer flames were eating their way into the door around the lock. When they had passed through Morlock cried “Stay clear!” and kicked in the door.<br />
<br />
He paused for a moment on the threshold, shuddering with fever chill and pain. (The blood-beats of exertion were agony to his wounded arm.) Then he passed into the entry hall and swore. The flames had stayed clear all right. From burn marks in the many rugs and tapestries it appeared they had scattered in search of adventure and interesting combustibles.<br />
<br />
Well, he had no time to look for them. He stowed the nexus in his backpack and took that on his shoulders again. The hallway led him to a winding stairway; Morlock ascended it, feeling that the sorcerer’s workroom would be on the upper floor.<br />
<br />
It was. In fact, the workroom occupied the entire upper floor of the house. As he entered it, his enemy, at the far end of the long room, rose to greet him.<br />
<br />
The room was full of water. It was lit (quite apart from the tall unglazed windows) by glass cylinders filled with a bubbling white fluid that emitted a harsh bluish light; these were set like torches along the walls. The stained worktables that lined the room were crowded with retorts, alembics, beakers, tubes, and tubing, all of them emitting or gathering liquid. In the middle of the room was a circular sheet of gray bubbling water, suspended in mid air.At the far end of the room was a crystal globe fill with very bright, very clear water. Morlock guessed this was the sorcerer’s focus. At any rate, he was seated before it with a fixed inward stare when Morlock entered the room, and he turned around and smiled broadly, as if in welcome.<br />
<br />
“There are flames like rats loose in my house,” he explained, rising. “Fortunately they have proven rather easy to detect and extinguish. I hate flames, I suppose as much as you love them. Mine is a watery sort of magic, as you will have guessed.”<br />
<br />
The stranger advanced through the room as he spoke, his manner suggesting that Morlock was an expected guest and he himself was a slightly remiss host. He wore garments of white and blue; otherwise he was a mirror image of Morlock: the same dark unruly hair, the same weather-beaten features, the same alarmingly pale gray eyes. The stranger even had crooked shoulders and walked with a slight limp, as Morlock did.<br />
<br />
“Unimpressive,” Morlock remarked. “Certainly not original.”<br />
<br />
The stranger looked surprised, then amused. “Oh, my appearance. But I assure you, my dear fellow, it is no mere ploy. Years of labor have gone into this work, and perhaps the rest of my life will go into perfecting it. You see, I have decided to usurp your personality.<br />
<br />
”Morlock shrugged.<br />
<br />
“I’m not joking, either,” the stranger continued. “Not that I’m surprised by your indifference. That’s what gave me the idea, in a way.<br />
<br />
“You see, I was sitting in a tavern (forgive my loquacity, but I have so looked forward to telling you all this) and a drunk was singing some nasty ghost story you were supposed to have had a part in. And I was thinking how. . . well, how unlike your legend you are. (Most of those-who-know know that.) And I thought, too, how little use you have put your legend to. It really is a remarkable resource, coupled with your true abilities. You are truly feared, south of the Kirach Kund. Yet you wander from place to place like. . . like some kind of magical tinker, when you might command fear and respect the way a general commands an army.<br />
<br />
”Morlock shrugged irritably. “Why?”<br />
<br />
“Why?” repeated the stranger incredibly. “For everything a man could want!”<br />
<br />
“There is not much that I want.”<br />
<br />
“That is your problem. It is not mine. Mine is (or was) that I had no legend. Like most makers, I have pursued my studies in solitude; we are too unworldly, most of us. I would have labored in obscurity, only to totter into some local fame when I was too infirm to put it to effective use. You have the advantage of us there; we aren’t all descended from demi-mortals like you are.<br />
<br />
"Then I realized (sitting in the tavern, you understand) that if <em>you</em> weren’t going to use your legend, it was only fair that <em>I</em> do so. And to that I have bent my life ever since. I built my house here in the winterwood; I changed my appearance; I began to conduct correspondence with other sorcerers in my new person. Things were developing nicely, even before I ran into you along the trail the other night.”<br />
<br />
“So it was an accident.”<br />
<br />
“Some such meeting was inevitable,” the stranger said superciliously. “Anyway, I managed to slit your pack and extract the book of palindromes (which has proven most instructive, by the way). But the protective spell over your person was so subtle I could not even guess its attributes. So I decided to lure you into my own territory. . . .”<br />
<br />
Morlock was smiling wryly.<br />
<br />
“I suppose that sneer means there was no spell,” the stranger said bitterly. “Well, that doesn’t matter. You are here, now, and your pack is here, and there are no risks involved. Or maybe you’re thinking I’m an inferior sorcerer because I had to appropriate your legend. But I’m not. Your legend is a historical accident. I can’t be held responsible for not being the beneficiary of a historical accident.”<br />
<br />
“It was political slander, originally,” Morlock observed, a little weary of the subject.<br />
<br />
“Really? That’s most interesting. Take some political slander, let simmer a few hundred years, add seasoning, and dish up. Fearful legend, serves one. Very nice.<br />
<br />
“Now arises the question of whether I will spare your life or not. I feel you might possibly be a useful adviser, under restraint—sort of the world’s expert on having been Morlock, if you see what I mean. Also, I’m sure some of the most interesting artifacts in your pack would be damaged in a mortal combat. So . . .”<br />
<br />
Morlock said nothing.<br />
<br />
“Oh, come now,” the stranger said irritably. “Don’t try to be forbidding. I know exactly what shape you’re in. I watched every step of your journey; don’t think I didn’t. I knew the forest would do my fighting for me! I saw you scrabbling at the lock on my door (what a pitiful performance that was!)and I see now that you can barely stand.<br />
<br />
“And where do you stand? In my place of power. Never doubt it, Morlock: I have a thousand deaths at my beck and call as I stand here. Do you doubt it? You still are silent?” The stranger shrugged. “Very well. Why should you take my word for it?” He waved his hand and spoke an unintelligible word.<br />
<br />
The weight on Morlock’s crooked shoulders was suddenly heavier by several pounds. In sudden alarm, he unslung his pack and lifted out the choir nexus. Water poured out through the dragon-hide wrapping. The choir was dead.<br />
<br />
“You killed my flames,” Morlock said hoarsely. His eyes were stung by abrupt surprising tears.<br />
<br />
The stranger laughed incredulously. “‘Killed’? The notion is jejune. I extinguished them. That water might as easily have gone in your lungs instead, or—heated to steam—in your heart or brain. Then it is you who would have been <em>extinguished</em>. I killed my hundreds perfecting the techniques, Morlock, and they work. Never doubt it—again.”<br />
<br />
“I doubt you will find your own death jejune,” Morlock replied. Tears were still running down his face; he supposed it was a symptom of the fever.<br />
<br />
“Don’t threaten me, you battered tramp!” the stranger snarled. “You were about to hand me your pack, that I might spare you what remains of your life. Do so now.”<br />
<br />
A long moment passed, in which Morlock seemed to consider. Then he slowly lifted the pack, holding it out to the stranger.<br />
<br />
The stranger laughed and took the proffered edge. This, the only convenient hold, happened to be the place where he had slit the pack two days ago.When his grip was firm, Morlock pulled back, as firmly. The stranger’s grip, resisting the tug, tore the gripgrass woven into the sewn seam.<br />
<br />
The gripgrass, starved for nutriment, exploded into dozens of thin wire-tough lashes, binding the stranger’s hand inescapably to the repaired slit. The stranger emptied his lungs in an instinctive cry of pain and surprise.<br />
<br />
Morlock pulled him off his feet, by way of the pack, hauled him over to the nearest window, and, still holding on to the pack, threw the stranger out. His body slammed against the stone wall of the house and he stared up at Morlock for a long moment, as if gathering breath to speak.<br />
<br />
Then his body was dark with winged forms. The catbird scavengers had been waiting for their predator, and he had not disappointed them. In a matter of minutes the stranger was dead, dismembered, and devoured. Morlock drew in a pack stained with blood, shining blue threads of satiated gripgrass woven into the sewn-up slit.<br />
<br />
Morlock carefully unwove the grass. It had caused him considerable trouble, preserving its integrity, and it served no purpose now. When he finally disentangled the gripgrass, a matter-of-fact voice near his feet inquired, “Do you want that?”<br />
<br />
He looked down to see a single red flame burning a hole in the wooden floor. “Because if you don’t want it,” the matter-of-fact flame remarked, “I’ll take it.”<br />
<br />
Morlock dropped the grass on the floor and the flame casually devoured it.<br />
<br />
“A little <em>too</em> chewy,” the flame remarked smokily.<br />
<br />
“The whole business was somewhat chewy,” Morlock replied. “But it’s over now, I guess.” Taking some water from a nearby table, he set about sponging the blood off his backpack.<br />
<br />
Morlock set the flame-nexus out to dry and searched the dead sorcerer’s house for his stolen book of palindromes. He found it finally, or what was left of it, in a glass jar submerged in watery acid that was eating away the book’s pages. It had passed the point of uselessness, so Morlock left it where it was.<br />
<br />
Had Morlock been led to the dead sorcerer, or he to Morlock? Was the whole purpose of the encounter to deprive Morlock of the book of palindromes? He suspected as much.<br />
<br />
If so, he should trust the book’s last omen and continue his journey eastward.<br />
<br />
He didn’t know what awaited him there, but he gave it some thought as he left the watery sorcerer’s house burning behind him in the winterwood.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/ThisCrookedWay.html">This Crooked Way</a></em> © <a href="http://www.jamesenge.com/">James Enge</a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.dominic-harman.com/">Dominic Harman</a><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke<br />
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</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ6wY6CLRtAh1ei1yP2Ds10tcgEZvrcBRrlz4dPQsLjts1fyQXtlRCpeZ7Er5BZnUu7qwEXO0RvpQyIYrhaXH8V3GEh_S0tiZpZ1Yr0kKeEBgdCQA60ubOaLL-j4NBjG_3kvdAHBw6FHo/s1600-h/Enge&Constantine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img $r="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ6wY6CLRtAh1ei1yP2Ds10tcgEZvrcBRrlz4dPQsLjts1fyQXtlRCpeZ7Er5BZnUu7qwEXO0RvpQyIYrhaXH8V3GEh_S0tiZpZ1Yr0kKeEBgdCQA60ubOaLL-j4NBjG_3kvdAHBw6FHo/s320/Enge&Constantine.jpg" /></a><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">James Enge’s fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Flashing Swords, and everydayfiction.com. He is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. Visit him online at http://www.jamesenge.com<br />
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</div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-65344537944007068982009-09-23T10:16:00.023-05:002009-09-28T09:59:45.998-05:00The Quiet War by Paul McAuley<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW3mgZ38AeEonu7rHKiWG28JtnMvOD4YxX2w3DFSQ2FV14TOCgDLmsZe2Y15KZtxUSKtfLpZ-q3Dr5SGKXWS5EpUtEO6Z_XaCug4QHwCe71qykANnXm311FgRVkHxOXVig7E5eSdDnk9Y/s1600-h/quietwar_cover.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385491259166063442" style="FLOAT: right; MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 213px; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW3mgZ38AeEonu7rHKiWG28JtnMvOD4YxX2w3DFSQ2FV14TOCgDLmsZe2Y15KZtxUSKtfLpZ-q3Dr5SGKXWS5EpUtEO6Z_XaCug4QHwCe71qykANnXm311FgRVkHxOXVig7E5eSdDnk9Y/s320/quietwar_cover.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:100%;">From the teeming cities of earth to the scrupulously realized landscapes of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, <a style="FONT-STYLE: italic" href="http://www.pyrsf.com/QuietWar.html">The Quiet War</a>, </span><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:100%;">an exotic, fast-paced space opera, turns on a single question: who decides what it means to be human?</span><span style="font-size:100%;"><br /></span><div><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />Twenty-third century Earth, ravaged by climate cha<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzEojKEL1y9vRIZsCM7Fr1Cvv564ylUdt_IS4NN6loh0bKPNFmInaVFMfKqkApyUGoaZp11Hi1enCiTnbA6tDH2HUKoHnUZEcLe5FqkCfveUbxT6jNr_BuwTIKTPD-Rdlp7W3At6XUPZw/s1600-h/Paul+McAuley3.jpg"></a>nge, looks backwards to the holy ideal of a pre-industrial Eden. Political power has been grabbed by a few powerful families and their green saints. Millions of people are imprisoned in teeming cities; millions more labour on Pharaonic projects to rebuild ruined ecosystems. On the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, the Outers, descendants of refugees from Earth's repressive regimes, have constructed a wild variety of self-sufficient cities and settlements: scientific utopias crammed with exuberant creations of the genetic arts; the last outposts of every kind of democratic tradition. </span><br /><div><br /><div><div><span style="font-family:arial;">The fragile detente between the Outer cities and the dynasties of Earth is threatened by the ambitions of the rising generation of Outers, who want to break free of their cosy, inward-looking pocket paradises, colonise the rest of the Solar System, and drive human evolution in a hundred new directions. On Earth, many demand pre-emptive action against the Outers before it's too late; others want to exploit the talents of their scientists and gene wizards. Amid campaigns for peace and reconciliation, political machinations, crude displays of military might, and espionage by cunningly wrought agents, the two branches of humanity edge towards war . . .</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">“Shortlisted for this year's Arthur C. Clarke Award, this sweeping interplanetary adventure is also a thoughtful examination of human nature... McAuley…moves deftly among five well-drawn characters in the thick of the action: a cloned spy, a hotshot pilot, a ruthless scientist, a bluntly independent biological engineer and an unscrupulous diplomat. They all, in different ways, must choose between the familiar and the new, struggling to reconcile conflicting desires. This compelling tale opens vast panoramas while confronting believable people with significant choices,” according to a <em>Publishers Weekly</em> Starred review.</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;"><em>Locus </em>says that <em>The Quiet War</em> “combines the damn-the-torpedoes, full speed ahead narrative impetus of a Peter F. Hamilton, with the detailed, even meticulous attention to world-building and character development that distinguished Kim Stanley Robinson's classic Mars sequence. McAuley has always been a stylish writer, but he outdoes himself here. <em>The Quiet War</em> marks Paul McAuley's triumphant return to full-bore space opera.”</span></div><br /><div><span style="font-family:arial;">Read an excerpt from the book here:</span></div><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-family:arial;">The Quiet War</span></strong><br /></div><div align="center"><strong><span style="font-family:arial;">Paul McAuley</span></strong></div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong><span style="font-family:arial;">Part One</span></strong><br /><strong><span style="font-family:arial;">The Quickening</span></strong></div><br /><br /><div align="left"><span style="font-family:Arial;"><strong>Chapter 1</strong></span></div><br /><div align="left"><span style="font-family:arial;">Every day the boys woke when the lights came on at 0600. They showered and dressed, made their beds and policed the dormitory, endured inspection by one of their lectors. Breakfast was a dollop of maize gruel and a thimble of green tea. They ate quickly, each boy facing one of his brothers across the long table, no sound but the scrape of plastic spoons on plastic bowls. There were fourteen of them, tall and pale and slender as skinned saplings. Blue-eyed. Their naked scalps shone in the cold light as they bent over their scant repast. At two thousand six hundred days old they were fully grown but with traces of adolescent awkwardness yet remaining. They wore grey paper shirts and trousers, plastic sandals. Red numbers were printed on their shirts, front and back. The numbers were not sequential because more than half their original complement had been culled during the early stages of the programme.<br /></span></div><br /><div align="left"><span style="font-family:arial;">After breakfast, the boys stood to attention in front of the big screen, flanked by their lectors and the avatars of their instructors. A flag filled the screen edge to edge and top to bottom, a real flag videoed somewhere on Earth, gently rippling as if caught in a draught. Its green light washed over their faces and set sparks in their eyes as they stood straightbacked in two rows, right hands starfished on their chests as they recited the Pledge of Allegiance.</span></div>'I thought you already had all that stuff. I mean, you're the economist. Don't you need it to do your work?''Believe me, we would prefer not to ask you to do this,' Fox-face said. 'But it is the only way forward. It may be the only way to save the project.'<span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><div align="left">The same rituals every morning. The same video. The same flag rippling in exactly the same way. The same scrap of blue visible for half a second in the upper left-hand corner, the blue sky of Earth.<br />One of the boys, Dave #8, looked for that little flash of blue every day. Sometimes he wondered if his brothers looked for it as well, wondered if they too felt a yearning tug for the world they had been created to defend yet could never visit. He never talked about it, not even to his best friend, Dave #27. Things like that, feelings that made you think you might be different from your brothers, you kept to yourself. Difference was a weakness, and every kind of weakness must be suppressed. Even so, at the beginning of every day Dave #8 anticipated the fugitive glimpse of that scrap of Earth's sky, and every time he saw it he felt a flutter of longing in his heart.</div><br /><div align="left">Their lectors and instructors recited the Pledge of Allegiance, too. Fathers Aldos, Clarke, Ramez and Solomon in their white, rope-girdled habits; the instructors' faces floating in the visors of the man-sized, man-shaped plastic shells of their avatars. On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays it was instructors for ecosystem management, engineering, and sociology; the rest of the week it was theory of war, psychology, economics, and Hindi, Japanese, Mandarin, and Russian -- the boys were already fluent in English, the lingua franca of the enemy, but some enemy communities still used the languages of the homelands of their ancestors, and so the boys had to learn those, too.</div><br /><div align="left">The instructors taught theoretical classes in the morning and the lectors taught practical classes in the afternoon and evening. Maintenance and repair of pressure suits, construction and deployment of demons and data miners, vehicle and flight simulators, immersion scenarios that acquainted the boys with every aspect of everyday life in the cities of the enemy. They practised martial arts, bomb-making, and sabotage, and trained with staffs, swords, knives, and every other kind of blunt and bladed weapon. The practise versions were weighted so that they would find the real thing easier to handle. They learned to strip down, repair, and use firearms in all kinds of conditions. In the dark; in a centrifuge that buffeted them in every direction; in extremes of heat and cold and combinations of rain, snow, and high winds in the weather chamber. Sealed in their pressure suits. Underwater.</div><br /><div align="left">Every tenth day they were led in single file down a long umbilical passage to the cargo bay of a shuttle that took them into orbit. Floating weightless in the padded, windowless tube, where each move had to spring from the body's centre of mass and every blow caused an equal and opposite reaction, they had to learn hand-to-hand combat and use of weapons all over again.</div><br /><div align="left">The lectors punished every mistake. Father Solomon, who supervised the classes in martial arts, was quickest with the shock stick. Dave #8 and his brothers exhausted themselves in bruising bouts of boxing, capoeira and karate to win his approval, but most of them suffered at least one shock in each and every session.</div><br /><div align="left">Sometimes the practical classes were visited by an avatar that wore a woman's face. The lectors treated her with a deference they showed no one else and were quick to answer her questions. Usually she said nothing at all, watching the boys work for a few minutes or an hour before her face vanished from the avatar's visor and it marched out of the gymnasium and returned to its rack. The woman's name was Sri Hong-Owen. The boys had long ago concluded that she must be their mother.</div><br /><div align="left">It didn't matter that she looked nothing like them. After all, they'd been cut to resemble the enemy, treated with the same gene therapies, given the same metabolic tweaks, the same so-called enhancements. But the enemy had been human before they had perverted themselves, so the boys must have started out as human beings, too. And because they were clones, which was why they had numbers and why they were all called Dave (a casual joke by one of the instructors which the boys had incorporated into their private mythology), they must all have the same mother . . .</div><br /><div align="left">Although they had no proof that the woman was their mother, they had faith that she was. And faith was stronger than any mere proof because it came from God rather than the minds of men. She did not visit them often. Once every fifty days or so. The boys felt blessed by her presence, and worked harder and were more cheerful for days afterwards. Otherwise their routine was unvaried, dedicated to the serious business of learning how to kill and destroy. Learning how to make war.</div><br /><div align="left">In the evenings, after Mass, supper, and the struggle sessions in which the boys took turns to confess their sins and suffer the criticism of their brothers, it was politics. Videos crammed with motion and bright colours and swelling music told stories of courage and sacrifice from the history of Greater Brazil, showed how the enemy had betrayed humanity by sheltering on the Moon during the Overturn, how they had refused to return to Earth and help in its reconstruction but had instead run away to Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, how a group of Martians had later tried to attack Earth by nudging one of the Trojan asteroids, whose elliptical orbits around the sun crossed the orbit of Earth, into a collision course. The plot had failed, and a suicide mission of righteous heroes had exploded hydrogen bombs over the Martian settlements at Ares Valles and Hellas Planitia, and deflected the trajectory of a comet falling sunwards. The comet had been broken up by more hydrogen bombs and its fragments had stitched a string of huge craters around Mars's equator and wiped every trace of human life from the face of the red planet. But the enemy were plotting still in their nests and lairs on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn; were actively engaged in elaborating the greatest crime in the history of mankind by the anti-evolutionary engineering of their genomes.</div><br /><div align="left">The boys always knew which type of video would be shown because of the meal before it. Their favourite foods, sweet and swimming with fats, before history and heroes; gruel and plain boiled vegetables before crimes against humanity.</div><br /><div align="left">In snatched moments, they discussed the heroes they most admired and the battles they would have most liked to have fought in, and speculated about where they might go and what they might do after they had finished their training. Although war had not yet been declared, it was obvious that they were being trained to fight the enemy. Dave #27, who took extra instruction from Father Aldos on aspects of faith and the nature of Gaia, believed that if they were especially heroic they would be remade into ordinary human beings. Dave #8 wasn't so sure. Lately he'd been troubled by a simple paradox: if he and his brothers had been created by technology that was evil, how then could they ever do good? He brooded on this for a long time, and at last confided his thoughts to Dave #27, who told him that every kind of goodness can spring from evil, just as the most beautiful flowers may be rooted in filth. Wasn't that the story of the human race? Everyone was Fallen. Everyone who had ever lived was tainted by original sin. Yet anyone could achieve Heaven if they atoned for their sins by cultivating their faith, praising God, and tending His creation. Even the enemy had the potential to be redeemed, but they refused God because they wanted to be little gods themselves, ruling little heavens of their own making. Heavens that were heaven in name only, and were doomed to become hells to spite their creators' hubris because they lacked the grace that flowed only from God.</div><br /><div align="left">'We are sinful in origin and aspect, but not in deed,' Dave #27 said. 'We do not use our talents to rebel against God, but to serve Him. We might even be a little closer to angels than other men, because we are wholly dedicated to serving the Trinity. Because we are holy warriors who will gladly and eagerly lay down their lives for God, Gaia, and Greater Brazil.'</div><br /><div align="left">Dave #8, alarmed by the shine in Dave #27's eyes, warned his brother that he was committing the mortal sin of pride. 'Our lives may be dedicated to the defence of God and Gaia and Greater Brazil, but that doesn't mean we're in any way like the heroes of the great stories.'</div><br /><div align="left">'What are we, then?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Soldiers,' Dave #8 said. 'No more, no less.'</div><br /><div align="left">He did not want to be special. It helped that he did not excel or outshine his brothers in any aspect of training or instruction, that he lacked Dave #27's love of discourse and argument, Dave #11's limber athleticism, Dave #19's skill in electronic warfare. He wanted to believe that lack of any kind of singular talent was a virtue, for differing in any way from the ordinary might foster pride that would lead him astray and make him fail in his duty.</div><br /><div align="left">One day Father Solomon caught him trying to examine his reflection. This was in the gymnasium. There were cases of weapons down one long wall -- short spears and javelins, stabbing swords and long swords, fencing foils and bouquets of knives, staffs, maces, bludgeons, truncheons, halberds, and pikes, longbows and crossbows and their arrows and quarrels, as well as the grinding stones and bottles of mineral oil and diamond-dust polish and files used to keep edges sharp and metal clean. There were projectile and energy weapons, too. Machine-pistols, target pistols, and sniper rifles; glasers whose beam could cook a man from the inside out; tasers that fired clouds of charged tags; pulse rifles that fired plasma needles hot as the surface of the sun. Ranged along the far wall of the cavernous room were racks of armour, pressure suits, and scuba suits with integral airpacks. That was where Dave #8 sat cross-legged with his brothers, the components of the pressure suits they had dismantled during a routine maintenance exercise laid out in front of them.</div><br /><div align="left">Dave #8 was holding the chest-plate of his pressure suit at arm's-length, turning it this way and that. Its polished black curve gave back only distorted fragments, but there were no mirrors anywhere in the warren of chambers the boys called home and this was the best he could do. He was trying to see if there was something different in his face. If there was, then he would know that his suspicion that he thought differently was true.</div><br /><div align="left">He did not notice Father Solomon creeping up behind him on rubber-soled sandals, thumbing back the snap that fastened his shock stick to his belt.</div><br /><div align="left">When Dave #8 came round, with an all-over cramp and blood in his mouth, Father Solomon was standing over him and lecturing the other boys about vanity. Dave #8 knew that he was in trouble so deep that the exercise Father Solomon gave them after his lecture, assembling their pressure suits in a howling snowstorm in the weather chamber, would not be enough to atone for it.</div><br /><div align="left">In the struggle session that evening, each of his brothers stood up in turn and denounced him ringingly, as he had denounced them in other sessions after they had committed sins of omission or commission. He could not explain that he had been trying to catch sight of hidden faults in the reflection of his face. It was forbidden to attempt to excuse or explain any sins, and he was conditioned to believe that every punishment was just. He was being punished because he deserved it.</div><br /><div align="left">The theme of Father Clarke's sermon at Mass took as its text Ecclesiastes, chapter one, verse two. Vanity of vanities, said the preacher; vanity of vanities and everything is vanity. It was a favourite of the lectors, but that evening Dave #8 knew that it was directed straight at him, a righteous X-ray laser shrivelling his soul.</div><br /><div align="left">Burning with misery and shame and self-loathing, he sat through a video that documented in gruesome detail the brute lawlessness and cannibalism that had swept over the great North American cities during the Overturn. He was certain that he had failed especially badly. That he was a candidate for disappearance. For although the last disappearance had occurred when the boys had been very much younger, over one and a half thousand days ago, it had been drilled into them that their survival was forever provisional and they must struggle to attain perfection every hour of every day.</div><div align="left"><br />The disappearances had always happened at night. The boys would wake to find one of their number gone, his bed stripped bare, his footlocker open and empty. No explanation had ever been given; none was needed. Their brother had disappeared because he had failed, and failure was not tolerated.</div><br /><div align="left">In bed after the lights had been switched off, Dave #8 struggled to stay awake, but his conditioning soon won out over his fear. He slept. And in the morning was surprised to discover himself still in his narrow bed, with the bustle of his brothers rising and dressing all around him. It was as if he had been reborn. Nothing had changed, yet everything was charged with significance.</div><br /><div align="left">Full of joy, he stood with his brothers in front of the rippling flag on the big screen and with his right hand over his heart recited the familiar words with renewed ardour. </div><br /><div align="left"><em>I pledge allegiance to the flag of Greater Brazil and to the undertaking for which it stands, one Earth under Gaia, indivisible, restored, replenished, and purged of all human sin.</em></div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Chapter 2</strong></div><br /><div align="left">Cash Baker was just twenty-six, with eight years' service in the Greater Brazilian Air Defence Force, when he was selected for the J-2 singleship test programme. From inauspiciously ordinary origins in a hardscrabble city in the badlands of East Texas he'd risen through the ranks with astonishing speed. Luckily, he'd received as good an education as anyone in his neck of the woods could reasonably expect, and one of his teachers had spotted his preternatural mathematical ability and given him extra tutoring and steered him towards the Air Defence Force. He scraped into the top percentile in the induction tests, was streamed straight into basic pilot-training at the academy in Monterrey, and a year later, on a hot, thundery day in August, marched at the head of the graduation parade for the class of 2210. He started out flying fat-bellied Tapir-L4s on supply missions to remote camps of the Wreckers Corps east of the Great Lakes, was quickly promoted to the combat wing of the 114th Squadron, flying fast, deadly little Raptors, and distinguished himself in a string of air-support missions during the campaign fought by General Arvam Peixoto's Third Division, clearing bandit settlements in and around the ruins of Chicago. The bandits were organised and highly disciplined, but for the most part poorly armed, although one time someone fired a reconditioned smart missile at Cash's bird and he had a hairy couple of minutes flying all over the sky before his battle AI broke the encryption of the missile's fierce little mind and it incontinently exploded.</div><br /><div align="left">Then he was transferred to the big base outside Santiago and flew long-range intercept patrols out across the Pacific during the Cold War between Greater Brazil and the Pacific Community, when for a little while it looked as if war might break out over possession of Hawaii. After the Cold War cooled down, he was selected for test-pilot school, and worked on a new generation ground-to-orbit fighter, the Jaguar Ghost. A dream to handle in orbit, but a pig during re-entry. After three of the eight prototypes crashed and burned when their engines flamed on erratically or not at all while planing back into the atmosphere, and two more burnt up because of flaws in their lightweight diamond-paint heat shields, the programme was cancelled. But Cash had a lot of fun in the six months he spent testing the craft, loved the way the horizon flexed beneath him and the sky darkened until the stars came out as he arrowed out of the atmosphere, loved the serene oceanic feeling of seeming to float above the Earth while travelling at several thousand klicks a second. Up there, the terrible wounds left by the industrial age and anthropogenic climate change and the Overturn were mostly invisible. The dead zones in the oceans, the flooding along the shorelines of every continent, the deforested deserts of the Amazonian basin and Africa, the vast and tumbled deserts of North America, the ruined cities . . . All was lost in the shining vastness of the beautiful blue planet. Cash wasn't especially religious, but in orbit he understood for the first time what the green saints meant when they said that the Earth was a living organism whole and entire.</div><br /><div align="left">After the Jaguar fiasco Cash was returned to combat status, but by now he had a bad jones for test flying, and for space. He was chasing down rumours of a new kind of space plane when General Arvam Peixoto's office reached out to him. The general remembered Cash from the Chicago campaign, and Cash volunteered for the test programme as soon as he was asked if he wanted to come aboard.</div><br /><div align="left">So he went to the Moon, and the Earth seemed lovelier than ever, a lonely blue-white pearl floating in the black sky above the lunar wastelands. A hundred and fifty years ago some of Earth's richest, brightest, and most powerful people had underwritten the construction costs of a tented city, Athena, east of Archimedes Crater on the edge of the Imbrium Basin, moving there to escape the devastation and disorder caused by climate change and dozens of brush-fire wars fought over dwindling resources. Strip mines had processed lunar regolith for helium-3, and there was a sprawling site where sunshade mirrors had been manufactured and slung into orbit at the L1 point between the Earth and Moon. The helium-3 had been used in fusion reactors; the swarm of mirrors had cut down insolation and helped to stabilise the Earth's climate during the wild years of the Overturn, when runaway global warming driven by vast surges of methane released from Antarctic clathrates had threatened to cause mass extinction on a global scale. The mirrors were in orbit still, maintained by international crews. It would be at least another century before the effects of the Overturn and global warming were entirely ameliorated.</div><br /><div align="left">When it had become clear that the new supranational states that had emerged after the Overturn were determined to take control of the strip mines and shut down everything else on the Moon, the construction workers and the science crews, along with their families and many of the private citizens and their families and employees, had lit out for Mars and the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Greater Brazil had claimed the city they had abandoned in place, and it had been refurbished by members of the Peixoto family, its most enthusiastic proselytisers for an expansion of the space programme. They had built a small fleet of long-range ships, had recently established links and trade routes with cities and settlements in the Jupiter and Saturn systems, and their skunk works had developed all kind of technological miracles, including a new kind of combat space plane.</div><div align="left"><br />Directly after disembarking from the shuttle from Earth, Cash and the other volunteers for the test programme were taken to a briefing room where General Arvam Peixoto walked them through the specs of the prototype of the new plane, the J-2 singleship. It was a hot bird, all right. A self-guided missile equipped with a new kind of fusion motor that used antiprotons to drive a fission/fusion chain reaction in microdroplets of deuterium and tritium, and was far more powerful than any currently in operation. There was a pressure-suit-sized life system at the J-2's sharp end, it had cut-back wings for atmospheric sorties, and it was armed with a pumped-pulse X-ray laser, a drum of single-shot gamma-ray lasers, a rail mini-gun that fired depleted-uranium flechettes, a variety of conventional missiles, and manoeuvrable proxies that after being fired from a fat cannon could do all kinds of imaginative damage when they caught up with their targets. Its flight guidance system, using long-range and sideways radars, and GPS and contour maps accurate to within ten centimetres, could fly it completely around the Moon at an average altitude of a hundred metres, and then do it all over again, with exactly the same flight profile. And it was so agile and so fast, General Peixoto explained, that in combat situations it demanded superhuman qualities from its pilots.</div><br /><div align="left">The general was a powerfully built man with shoulder-length white hair brushed back from his craggy face. He talked with an easy informal style, as if to members of his own family, making eye contact with everyone in the room. When his glance fell on Cash for a moment, the young pilot felt his heart swell with pride and passion.</div><br /><div align="left">'You are already the most able pilots in Air Defence,' General Peixoto said. 'There are none better than you anywhere on Earth or the Moon. But it is possible to make you even better. I'm not familiar with all the techniques involved, and I think it only fair that you should understand completely what we are asking of you. So I'm going to hand you over for a few minutes to Professor Doctor Sri Hong-Owen, who will walk you through what the procedure entails.'</div><br /><div align="left">Later, one of the pilots, Luiz Schwarcz, whose family had a background in medical science, told the others that Sri Hong-Owen was a stone-cold genius who had risen to the top of her field under the sponsorship of the Peixoto family's green saint, that she'd designed a radical new photosynthetic system, created all kinds of vacuum organisms, developed many of the techniques that family members used to extend their lives, and much else. But at the time, during the briefing, Cash Baker didn't think much of her. Severe and awkward, dressed in the same blue coveralls everyone wore around the base, she was a plain woman of indeterminate age with a shaved, gleaming scalp and the palest skin he'd ever seen. She talked too fast, addressed the checklists, diagrams, and videos she conjured in the memo space rather than her audience, and answered questions with a brisk, take-no-prisoners manner, as if she thought the pilots were goddamned fools who'd failed to grasp the simplest of facts about the procedure.</div><br /><div align="left">Which was, when all the jargon and doubletalk was boiled away, some kind of rewiring or augmentation of their nervous systems that would allow them not only to plug directly into the plane's control systems, but also to briefly boost their neural-processing speeds. When Sri Hong-Owen was done, General Peixoto addressed the pilots again, telling them that it was an extremely radical procedure, that there was no guarantee that it would work in every case, or that everyone would survive it. If any of them wished to walk away and return to normal duties, there would be no dishonour in doing so, no shame, and no mention of it on their service record, he said, and asked those who wished to volunteer to raise their hands.</div><br /><div align="left">Cash stuck his arm straight up. So did everyone else. Someone down at the front was waving both his hands above his head. Because, hell, who didn't want to be a better pilot?</div><br /><div align="left">The first operation was performed under general anaesthetic and laid an artificial neural network around Cash's spine. The process of bedding in, as the network interfaced with his peripheral nervous system, was tedious and sometimes agonising, and during the seemingly endless rounds of tests that followed he found it weirdly unsettling to watch his right or left arm move by itself and his hands dance through a memo space with robotic swiftness and precision, solving spatial and kinetic problems without any conscious intervention on his part.</div><br /><div align="left">There was worse to come. He had to stay awake throughout the second operation, when the interfaces of the network were laced into his motor and sensory cortices, because the surgical team had to check that not only were his new talents in place and functioning, but also that nothing else, from his spinal reflexes to his memory, was damaged during the procedure that inserted them. So although he was given a nerve block and felt no pain, Cash had to endure the vibration and smell of burnt blood and bone as the bone saw cut open his skull, felt the sucking lift as the cap of his skull was lifted away, heard the mosquito whine of the bush robot that worked on his brain with manipulators that divided and divided a thousand times into clouds of cutting and recording tips nanometres in length, not much bigger than the neurons on which they operated. And although the brain has no pain receptors, he felt waves of phantom pain burn through his limbs as the bush robot tested each and every connection, was overwhelmed by discordant symphonies of emotion and taste and sound and hallucinatory shapes of every colour. Afterwards, he was knocked out for two days while final tests were made, and then he and the rest of the pilots on the wing began their long convalescence.</div><br /><div align="left">They had to learn to use their bodies all over again, but they were young and fit and determined. They made rapid progress and turned everything into a contest. Laying bets on who would be the first to walk from bed to jakes unaided, who threw up the most (at first they all suffered from balance and inner-ear problems), who could deliver the greatest volume of piss when the doctors asked for a sample. Later on, when they were allowed to use the gym, they competed to see who could do the most press-ups or sit-ups, who could cycle or run the furthest on the machines, who could bench-press the heaviest weights.</div><br /><div align="left">Aldo Ruiz started to get into arguments with an invisible presence, hectoring the air in front of his face with passionate anger. He was taken away after he started to punch and slap himself, and the rest of the wing never saw him again.</div><br /><div align="left">The next week the tests started in earnest.</div><br /><div align="left">Complete physicals to begin with, more intensive than any they'd endured during induction. Then psychological testing, answering all kinds of questions about hypothetical situations and having to complete puzzles while wearing caps that monitored their brain activity. They also wore the caps while carrying out basic exercises on simulations of the J-2. Two of them were weeded out at this stage, for reasons never explained. The rest went forward into the testing and training programme.</div><br /><div align="left">No one bothered to tell Cash what would happen the first time his new abilities were activated. He was lying on a couch, surrounded by the usual gaggle of doctors and medical technicians, and then everything around him slowed. His hearing faded, leaving only a faint rumble; it felt as if he was sinking deep in tar; his field of vision dopplered down to red and narrowed to a patch about the size of his thumbnail held at arm's length. He couldn't turn or raise his head but could slowly track his eyes, moving that tiny patch of acuity like a spotlight to study a tech's ponderous blink (one eye squashing shut just before the other), watch another make a laborious mark on a slate. And then, just as suddenly, the world came back to normal. He was hot and horribly breathless, as if he'd just run twenty kilometres in full gear. His chest heaved as he tried to suck down air and his heart was slamming against his ribs and then the taste of metal flooded his mouth and he briefly fainted.</div><div align="left"><br />The doctors and techs wouldn't tell Cash if he'd passed or failed, wouldn't explain exactly what had happened to him, wouldn't tell him that it had been okay to faint. So he didn't know if he'd scratched out until he was returned to the ward, and found that everyone else had fainted when they'd been accelerated into what the techs called hyper-reflexive mode for the first time. In the night, Eudóxia Vitória and Bris Lispector both threw full-blown epileptic fits and the doctors took them away and the rest of the wing never saw them again. After the second day of testing Chiquinho Brown didn't come back, and Luiz Schwarcz claimed that he'd overheard one tech telling another that Chiquinho had died of a heart attack.</div><br /><div align="left">Those were the last casualties. Five weeks later, the survivors were passed as fit and fully integrated. They had each logged over a hundred hours on simulations, both with normal HUD controls and with their neural systems wired directly into control and guidance systems. Because they might be zipped into their birds for weeks at a time in a war situation, they'd all had their teeth extracted and replaced by contoured plastic ridges. Their appendices had been removed, too. Now they were let loose on the J-2 prototypes, flying with only HUD controls at first, basic point-to-point flights and simple combat simulations. After two weeks of these bedding-in trials, Cash Baker was selected to be the first pilot to fly in fully-wired mode.</div><div align="left"><br />It was a live-round discriminatory target exercise. He flew west -- the bird was basically flying itself, but Cash was extended into every corner of its airframe -- out across the dark plain where more than three and a half billion years ago lava had flooded the raw impact crater of the Imbrium Basin. When the target area in the slumped rim mountains at the far edge of the basin came around the horizon, the transition from being merely wired in to flying by wire was fantastically smooth: the J-2's trim altered by less than point zero one arc of a minute. It wasn't like flying the plane. It was like being the plane. Like having sex with it, Luiz said later, although as far as Cash was concerned, that first time, he couldn't remember when he'd ever had sex that good.</div><div align="left"><br />He'd been taught to visualise the trigger for his hyper-reflexes as a big red button in the centre of his head. He pressed that button now, and everything went dream-slow. He felt each individual jolt as the rail mini-gun loosed a hail of depleted-uranium flechettes that shredded a simulated pressure dome, located the two rolligons with friendly markings moving across the plain amongst six others tagged as enemy, and targeted those six and crisped their control systems with precise gamma-ray laser shots within a second, and used missiles to take out a series of pop-up targets. Then the target area was behind him, and he gave up command and control to the J-2's battle AI and pushed the imaginary red button again. He'd learned how to stay conscious during the switch-over by now, and was able to acknowledge the range officer's confirmation of his kills.</div><div align="left"><br />That evening there was an official celebration of the programme's success. The pilots hung in a tight group and sipped water and fruit juice while senior officers and scientists and techs tossed down shots of pulque and rum and tequila and grew loud and animated. General Peixoto made a short speech, was videoed shaking the hands of the pilots, and disappeared. Officers and the science crew toasted the pilots and each other with grand and florid eloquence, shattered empty glasses on the floor. The pilots left when one of the suit techs was persuaded to take off her shirt and the party started to get serious -- they had medical tests the next morning just like every other morning, 0530 - 0630, and then an hour in the gym before the daily briefing over breakfast before they started work.</div><br /><div align="left">Everyone in the Air Defence Force believed that there was going to be another war with the Outers. The so-called peace and reconciliation initiatives would never amount to anything other than a colossal waste of time; the Outers had to be brought under control before they threw another comet at Earth, or developed some weird posthuman tweak that made them invincible. There was going to be war, and Cash Baker, raised on stories of the heroic deeds of his forefathers, couldn't wait. Meanwhile, he and the other pilots continued to work on the J-2. They flew solo missions and flew in formation. They flew over every type of lunar landscape, practised intercept missions in orbit around the Moon and Earth, tested their birds at every level of Earth's atmosphere. When they weren't flying in real time, they honed specific skills in simulations, attended seminars on redesign and improvements of their craft, and updates in combat theory, endured endless suit fittings, medical tests, psychological evaluations . . .</div><br /><div align="left">One day, about six months after Cash's maiden flight, the intelligence officer delivering the usual briefing session after breakfast gave way to the colonel in charge of the J-2 programme, who said without preamble that Maximilian Peixoto, the husband of the President and Commander-in-Chief of the Greater Brazilian Air Defence Force, had died late last night. He told the pilots that there would be no test or training flights until after the funeral, which would take place in ten days' time, and said that he had been instructed to choose four pilots who would fly their J-2s over the cathedral in Brasília at the end of the funeral service to honour the man who had been their commander. He named Cash Baker and Luiz Schwarcz and two others, and announced that there would be a special Mass in one hour.</div><br /><div align="left">Afterwards, Luiz told Cash that this changed everything.</div><br /><div align="left">'Maximilian Peixoto wasn't just our Commander-in-Chief. He was also chair of the Committee for Reconciliation, one of the champions of making peace with the Outers. He set up the first embassies out there thirty years ago. He'd been working steadily ever since to establish trade links. And he naturally had the ear of the President. Now he's dead, his friends will have much less influence.'</div><br /><div align="left">'This means what?'</div><br /><div align="left">'You really are an ignorant son of a bitch,' Luiz said.</div><div align="left"><br />'Maybe I am,' Cash said. 'Or maybe I don't much care for politics.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Well, you should. There are many people in the government who think it is pointless and dangerous to try to make friendly overtures to the Outers. They are not yet in the majority, but now they will be able to argue openly against peace and reconciliation. And General Arvam Peixoto is one who has always opposed reconciliation very strongly. You watch out. Pretty soon I believe that he will get the green light to put the J-2 into production.'<br /></div><div align="left">'So we're finally going head to head against the Outers.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Not quite yet, but we're a step closer.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Well it's about time,' Cash said.</div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Chapter 3</strong></div><br /><div align="left">It was the most important funeral to have been held in Brasília for more than twenty years. The avenues around the Catedral Metropolitana Nossa Senhora Aparecida were clogged with limousines and flitters. Drivers and security details eyed each other with professional interest. Drones wove amongst treetops. Helicopters beat wide circles under the hot blue sky. Wolves prowled the long park, Eixo Monumental, and half the city was paralysed by interlocking rings of security.</div><br /><div align="left">Inside the cathedral the harmonies of the Agnus Dei laced the air, soaring above solemn strings and the earth-shaking reverberation of the organ whose ranked pipes rose like a pleated steel curtain behind choir and orchestra. In front of the pure white block of the limestone altar, a tulipwood coffin rested on a bank of sweetly odorous lilies and orchids. Here lay Maximilian Pietro Solomon Cristagau Flores Peixoto, husband of the President of Greater Brazil, Commander-in-Chief of the Greater Brazilian Air Defence Force, Grand Wizard of the Order of the Knights of Viridis, Steward of the Northern Territories, Chair of the Committee for Reconciliation, Rector of the Universities of Montevideo, Caracas, Mexico City and Denver, and so on and so forth, a great power in the world who had died from systemic organ failure at the age of one hundred and seventy-two. The dead man's dark face peeped still and solemn above the linen sheet that wrapped his body. His famous moustache waxed to sharp points. His eyes closed by gold coins salvaged from the wreck of a Spanish galleon.</div><br /><div align="left">His coffin was elevated above the sleeve of water that cut across the equator of the cathedral's circular nave. The water was as black as oil, disturbed here and there by spreading ringlets as fish tasted the underside of its skin. On the far side, the congregation in funeral finery packed three broad tiers of seats like a parliament of rooks. Almost every member of the Peixoto family was present, occupying forty rows of the middle tier, ranked by consanguinity. The widowed President sat on a canopied chair at the centre of the first row, resplendent in fuliginous robes, now and then reaching under the veil that covered her face to capture a tear in a tiny vase of cultured diamond. Behind the family rose solemn phalanxes of senators, senior officers of the armed forces glittering in ceremonial uniform, ambassadors and politicians from every country on Earth, and the representative from Rainbow Bridge, Callisto. On the flanking tiers were members of the other great families, ministers, governors, senior civil servants, and the servants of the Great House: an audience of two thousand people, with millions more watching pictures relayed from static cameras.</div><div align="left"><br />Professor Doctor Sri Hong-Owen didn't have a single drop of Peixoto family blood in her veins, yet she and her fifteen-year-old son, Alder Topaz, were sitting with the family nonetheless, on the far left-hand side of the fortieth row of the central tier. They were attending the funeral in place of one of the senior members of the family, Sri's sponsor and mentor, the green saint Oscar Finnegan Ramos, who these days never stirred from his hermitage in Baja California, even for an occasion as grand and important as this.</div><div align="left"><br />The long service was crammed with intricate ritual. Mass, a sermon celebrating the dead man's life, the service for the commitment of the dead, and now the requiem. No doubt the music was glorious, but Sri was tone-deaf and quite unable to appreciate it. As was her habit when forced to endure some tedious ceremony or committee meeting to which she had nothing to contribute but her presence, she retreated into her head, meditating on the latest tests of a promising new refinement of the standard gerontological treatment. Alder, thoroughly engaged with the occasion, nudged her when choir and orchestra and organ achieved an ecstatic climax. The archbishop, dressed in green and gold mitre and robes, glided towards the bier and asperged the corpse with holy water and with his thumb printed its brow with oil. Then he stepped backward and made the sign of the cross and loop, and the coffin soundlessly tilted above its bed of flowers and the body shot out feet first, shedding its linen shroud and knifing into black water that boiled up in a fierce flurry as hungry fish began to feed, returning Maximilian Peixoto's store of carbon and other elements to Gaia.</div><br /><div align="left">A moment later, the whistling roar of a wing of J-2 singleships flying low above the city in 'missing man' formation shook the entire cathedral, and the choir and organ launched into the<em> In Paradisum</em>.</div><br /><div align="left">Sri's honorary position meant that she was among the first to leave the cathedral at the end of the service, but her lowly rank meant that she had to wait a long time for her ride. People streamed past and climbed into limousines that pulled away as others nosed forward. Flitters descended and ascended like bees at a hive.</div><div align="left"><br />Rothco Yang, the representative from Rainbow Bridge, Callisto, stepped out of the crowd and greeted Sri and Alder and told them that he had been most impressed by the solemn and splendid occasion. 'One thing puzzled me,' he said. 'The fish.'</div><div align="left"><br />'The fish?'</div><br /><div align="left">'The fish in the pool or moat or whatever it is called.' Rothco Yang, dressed in black silk pyjamas and a black broad-brimmed hat, was fastened inside the cage of the exoskeleton that supported him against the pull of Earth's gravity. 'I was wondering what happens to them afterward. After they are . . . finished.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I really don't know,' Sri said, 'but I could look it up.'</div><br /><div align="left">Alder said, 'Nothing happens to the fish. They are holy, I think.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Holy?'</div><div align="left"><br />'Blessed by the archbishop,' Alder said.</div><div align="left"><br />Rothco Yang's smile gleamed under the brim of his hat. His head was propped by a padded neck-brace. 'And is this how all people are, what is the phrase, returned to Gaia?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Only the most important,' Alder said.</div><br /><div align="left">'And the rest?'</div><br /><div align="left">'People who can afford it are buried in green cemeteries. Woods, wildflower meadows. Everyone else is directly recycled.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I see. Another example of the stratification caused by personal wealth. Are you waiting for someone, by the way?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Our limousine appears to be stuck in the queue,' Sri said.</div><div align="left"><br />'If you are going to the reception I can give you a lift in my flitter.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I have too much work to do,' Sri said. She had not been invited to the reception at the Palácio da Alvorado, but she wasn't about to admit that to Rothco Yang.</div><div align="left"><br />'Of course. In three weeks you leave all this behind.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Three weeks if all goes to plan.'</div><br /><div align="left">'This changes nothing in the short term. As for the long term, we must work harder to convince the waverers and naysayers.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Of course,' Sri said, but she knew that Rothco Yang knew that it would not be so simple.</div><br /><div align="left">Maximilian Peixoto had been at the forefront of the movement to build and strengthen diplomatic and economic connections between Earth and the Outer communities. He'd overseen the establishment of missions in every major city of the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, sponsored academic and artistic exchange programmes, won a sizeable budget for the development and construction of a new generation of interplanetary ships. And when the legendary gene wizard Avernus and Sri's mentor, Oscar Finnegan Ramos, had conceived the plan to gift the city of Rainbow Bridge, Callisto with a biome as a symbol of the new spirit of reconciliation, it had been Maximilian Peixoto who had steered the bill authorising funding for construction of its ecosystem through the reefs and snags of Greater Brazil's Senate, whipping up a scant majority by calling upon every favour he was owed and shamelessly using his privileged position as consort of the President. He'd hosted a grand reception for the construction crew just ten weeks ago, on the eve of their departure for Callisto. And now he was dead. The biome project would go ahead -- the construction crew would reach Callisto in a few days, and in any case it was too late to cancel it without massive loss of prestige -- but Maximilian Peixoto's death had thrown the alliance for peace and reconciliation into disarray. Sri's advisers had gamed the consequences, and most of the outcomes were grim.</div><div align="left"><br />Tiny motors in the joints of Rothco Yang's exoskeleton hummed as he leaned closer to Sri and her son. 'I'll tell you a little secret. Although I'm no believer, I offered up a prayer for the success of our venture. In the spirit of Pascal's wager. If there's no God, what harm can my little prayer do? And if there is, then what better place and time to ask for His intercession? This is a fine and wonderful thing you and I are involved in. We must do all we can to see it through, and build on its success. Are you looking forward to seeing Callisto, young Alder?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Very much, sir,' Alder said. 'And Europa, too.'</div><br /><div align="left">Rothco Yang mentioned several people in Rainbow Bridge who Sri and Alder simply had to meet, and tick-tocked away towards his flitter. People continued to stream out of the cathedral. Few spared Sri and Alder so much as a glance. Sri called her secretary and he apologised and told her that it would be at least ten minutes before her limo could reach her. She was thirsty and tired and irritable. Tropical sunlight burned across the plaza, flared from the shells of limousines and flitters. A helicopter circled incessantly above the crown of the cathedral. Sri retreated into her thoughts until the limousine arrived and she could at last sink into its cool upholstery and sip a glass of chill water and use the encrypted uplink to deal with the messages that had piled up, while Alder recounted details of the funeral service to her secretary.</div><div align="left"><br />The limousine moved slowly down the avenue, passing through roadblock after roadblock. Stopping and starting and stopping again. Then someone was rapping on the tinted window beside Sri. She looked up, startled. The man, an Air Defence Force officer, rapped again, made a brisk, impatient gesture. Jackknifed on the jump seat, Sri's secretary, Yamil Cho, spoke the word that lowered the window and asked the officer what he wanted.</div><div align="left"><br />'The general wishes to speak with you,' the officer said, looking straight at Sri.</div><br /><div align="left">He stepped back smartly as she climbed out into hot dry air, led her past armoured vehicles that squatted toadlike under a line of royal palms. Soldiers stood in small alert groups, pulse rifles slung across their chests. Faces masked with black visors. The officer opened the rear hatch of an armoured personnel carrier and Sri climbed into a kind of cockpit lined on either side with screens and panels of robust switches and pinlights and joystick controls.</div><br /><div align="left">General Arvam Peixoto sprawled in one of the low seats. Sri sat opposite him and said, 'This is a ridiculously public place to meet.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Not at all. As I'm in charge of security, I can assure you that there will be no record of this.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Ah. That is why you weren't at the service.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I thought it would be best if someone in the family supervised the <em>cordon</em> <em>sanitaire</em>. But I did allow myself a quiet moment of contemplation when the body was committed to the hungry little fishes.'</div><div align="left"><br />The general was dressed in crisp green fatigues, combat boots laced high up his shins. His white hair, vivid against his dark brown skin, was pulled back in a ponytail that coiled over the five stars on his shoulder tab.</div><br /><div align="left">'By the by,' he said, 'what did your good friend Rothco Yang have to say to you?'</div><div align="left"><br />'He offered his condolences,' Sri said.</div><div align="left"><br />'Is that all?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Didn't your security drones pick it up?'</div><br /><div align="left">'I prefer to get my information firsthand wherever possible. Indulge me.'</div><div align="left"><br />Arvam Peixoto put his head to one side as Sri gave an account of the brief conversation. A habitual gesture that invariably reminded her of a praying mantis. A cold insectile calculation about where to take the first bite. Where to slide in the sting.</div><div align="left"><br />'Hard work,' he said, when she had finished. 'Does he really think that hard work will rescue the peace initiative? Do you?'</div><br /><div align="left">'The peace initiative hasn't failed yet,' Sri said. 'So unless you know something I don't, I'm still going to Callisto.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Your business is the future,' Arvam Peixoto said. 'You dream up new technologies that you hope will give it shape and direction. What direction do you think it will take now? Will it be vertical or horizontal?'</div><div align="left"><br />'You <em>do</em> know something.'</div><br /><div align="left">'You see the future as a rising curve. Always improving. Always something new. But other people, they see the future as a plane. Horizontal. Spreading out. A process of consolidation. That's what this is all about. The horizontal versus the vertical. True humans versus dangerous fanatics who are creating monsters out of their children.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Or overheated propaganda versus clear, rational thinking.'</div><div align="left"><br />'One day, if you are not careful, that flippancy of yours will get you into serious trouble with the wrong people. What do I know? Let me tell you what I know. Let's get down to why you're here. This isn't just about poor Maximilian's death, although it has of course changed everything. I thought you might like to know that in a few months, the Air Defence Force will begin joint manoeuvres in cislunar space with the air force of the European Union. Why? Because we will be leasing the new fusion motor to the Europeans, part of a new trade agreement.' Arvam Peixoto studied Sri and said, 'You didn't know this.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I knew that negotiations were taking place. I was not of course privy to the details.'</div><div align="left"><br />'The negotiations are more or less over. A few snags and wrinkles have to be dealt with, nothing serious. As soon as the President comes out of mourning there will be a signing ceremony in Munich. What does this have to do with you? It is quite simple. The Europeans withdrew from the biome project and the rest of the hearts-and-minds nonsense because hardliners won control of their government. And now, after the unfortunate death of the Consort, after supporters of reconciliation with the Outers lost their most powerful voice, our own hardliners will be pushing for an end to the biome project too. I know that you feel a sentimental loyalty to our green saint because he discovered you and nurtured you. But he's an old man, and he's isolated himself in that beach hut of his. He's out of touch. More or less out of the loop.'</div><div align="left"><br />The general's tone was teasing, but his steady, slightly cross-eyed stare showed no spark of amusement. The screens behind him displayed different views of the cathedral and the lawns and treetops of the Eixo Monumental and the avenues on either side. People were still coming down the cathedral steps, climbing into limousines and people movers. Household servants, civil servants. People like Sri.</div><div align="left"><br />She said, 'Is this why you took the enormous risk of talking to me here? Something we have already discussed exhaustively? Let me say this again. Whatever happens, I am loyal to the family. To the family, and to Greater Brazil.'</div><div align="left"><br />'The family appreciates all you have done in its service,' Arvam Peixoto said. 'Unfortunately, the family is not in agreement about what to do about the Outers. There are two sides. At least two sides. Yes, we have talked about this many times. But this is no longer a theoretical matter. This is real, Professor Doctor. It is what it is. And you're in the middle of it, and you're going to have to choose which side you are on. Sooner rather than later. And should you make the wrong choice, then I'm afraid that the fruits of your work and your reputation will not exempt you from the consequences.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I see. Is that all?'</div><div align="left"><br />There was a faint singing in Sri's ears and her palms, pressed together in her lap, were unpleasantly damp, but otherwise she felt lucidly calm.</div><div align="left"><br />'I have a gift for you,' the general said, and lifted a flat wooden box from one of the panels behind his chair and handed it to Sri.</div><div align="left"><br />Inside, glasses with thick black plastic frames lay on a pair of meshback gloves.</div><div align="left"><br />'They are spex,' Arvam Peixoto said. 'What the Outers use instead of phones. The lenses use virtual light to project pictures and text and whatnot directly onto your retinas. The gloves are tipset gloves, you can use them to type on a virtual keyboard, move virtual objects around . . . Well, I am sure you will soon master them. Before you thank me, there's a little more to it. One of my tech teams added a camera, and a memory chip with a very high capacity and quantum encryption. You can download a small AI onto it, all kinds of things. And should you see something interesting, or attend an especially useful meeting, perhaps you could record it for me. I'm sure you'll know the kind of thing I might be interested in.'</div><div align="left"><br />Sri understood at once. The Peixoto family was sending a team of negotiators to Rainbow Bridge, but because Arvam Peixoto was not part of the faction promoting peace and reconciliation with the Outers, he was out of the loop. So he was asking her to be his spy, gathering information for his analysts and strategists. Firsthand information, the kind he liked.</div><div align="left"><br />Arvam Peixoto said, 'You'll have plenty of time to think everything through on your voyage to Callisto. When you return, I hope to have an answer, one way or the other. Oh, and bon voyage, as the Europeans would say.'</div><div align="left"><br />Back in the limousine, Alder asked if she was in trouble.</div><div align="left"><br />'Not yet,' Sri said and told her secretary to tell the driver to get a move on. 'I have work to do.'</div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Chapter 4</strong></div><br /><div align="left">Much later, Macy Minnot would come to believe that Emmanuel Vargo had been the first casualty of the war. But when she first heard about the ecosystem engineer's death she thought that it was nothing more sinister than bad luck. A freak medical mishap. An accident.</div><div align="left"><br />Like Macy and the rest of the construction crew, Emmanuel Vargo spent the twelve-week voyage from Earth to Jupiter in the deep sleep of artificial hibernation, drugged and chilled and consuming a minimal amount of oxygen and water while the Brazilian cargo ship fell through eight hundred million kilometres of sunlit black vacuum. He was still asleep when the ship went into orbit around Callisto, the outermost of Jupiter's four large Galilean moons, and first-class passengers and hibernation coffins and cargo pods were offloaded onto a tug that descended to the port, a cluttered slab cantilevered above a dusty plain west of the city of Rainbow Bridge. The tug touched down on a scorched landing apron with the lumbering delicacy of a hippopotamus attempting ballet. A mobile crane unlatched from the tug's cargo frame the truck-sized pod that contained the hibernation coffins and transported it to a pressurised hangar where the coffins were extracted one by one and loaded onto flatbed carts that trundled through subsurface tunnels to the medical facility at the edge of the port. That was where Emmanuel Vargo began to wake, and that was where he died.</div><div align="left"><br />Usually, revival from hibernation was routine. Most people woke with nothing worse than a shrivelled stomach, concrete bowels, and an existential hangover. But like every medical procedure, revival had its risks -- signature syndromes, systemic organ failures, metabolic storms. After his core temperature had been gently raised to 37.5° Centigrade, his blood chemistry had been adjusted, and he'd been injected with a cocktail of GABA receptor stimulants, Emmanuel Vargo suffered an episode of chaotic neurological decoupling. Instead of quickly and spontaneously developing the usual pattern of dynamic multi-locus activity, as in waking from ordinary sleep, his neurons began to fire at high rates without any kind of synchrony, disrupting consciousness and coordination of respiration, heartbeat, and blood pressure.</div><div align="left"><br />Most victims of CND survived with varying degrees of memory loss and aphasia, but Emmanuel Vargo's episode was exceptionally severe. The electrochemical activity of his brain writhed like a bag of worms. A crash team tried and failed to induce synchrony with microtonic pulsed magnetic fields. His blood pressure collapsed and his heart stopped and did not respond to defibrillation, injection of norepinephrine, or direct massage. While he was being hooked up to a heart-lung bypass, he suffered a major clonic seizure. Two more seizures followed in quick succession. After the third, brain stem activity ceased. Thirty minutes later he was declared brain-dead, and life-support was disconnected.</div><div align="left"><br />Emmanuel Vargo had been one of the prime movers of the project to construct a biome at the city of Rainbow Bridge, Callisto, a symbol of cooperation and reconciliation between Earth and the Outer System, and a major step in the long campaign to defuse tension between Earth's radical green conservatism and the smorgasbord of radical doctrines and utopian philosophies of the Outer System's city-states and settlements. Avernus, the Outer System's most notorious gene wizard, had drawn on her prodigious stores of karma to sponsor the biome's construction, and Maximilian Peixoto and the green saint Oscar Finnegan Ramos had persuaded the Brazilian government to underwrite the cost of designing and quickening of its ecosystem. Although the green saint's great-great-grandson, Euclides Peixoto, had been appointed titular head of the construction crew, Emmanuel Vargo had been responsible for every aspect of the planning and organisation of Greater Brazil's contribution. He'd collaborated with Oscar Finnegan Ramos's protégée, Sri Hong-Owen, in the design of the ecosystem, liaised with the Callistan crew during the construction of the biome's tent, and would have been responsible for supervising the elaboration and quickening of the ecosystem from start to finish.</div><div align="left"><br />Euclides Peixoto said all this and more two days after Emmanuel Vargo's death, in a short speech at the ceremony that marked the official beginning of the construction crew's work. This was on the broad lawn at the northern tip of the biome's main island. Euclides Peixoto stood at a podium with the empty lake bed stretching behind him under the gigantic tent of diamond and polymer panes and fullerene struts, and his audience seated in front of him on a crescent of folding chairs: the Brazilian ambassador and his retinue of aides, members of the Peixoto family's trade mission, a colourful medley of representatives from the Callistan congress and the city council of Rainbow Bridge, the men and women of the construction crew. A little shoal of drones hung at different levels in the air, transmitting the ceremony to citizens of Rainbow Bridge and other cities and settlements on Callisto, Ganymede, and Europa, and to the mining camps on tiny, distant Himalia and Elara.</div><div align="left"><br />Sitting amongst the rest of the construction crew, Macy Minnot had to admit that Euclides Peixoto definitely looked the part. Handsome in a two-piece suit whose chlorophyll hue matched the coveralls of the construction crew, a black armband fastened around his left sleeve, he spoke in a sonorous but engaging tone. Eulogising Emmanuel Vargo's contribution to the project, recounting a couple of well-judged anecdotes, winding up by saying that despite their grievous loss everyone in the crew was determined to work as well as they could to bring to life a beautiful and robust biome, and honour the memory of an extraordinarily talented ecosystem engineer, someone he was proud to have considered a friend.</div><div align="left"><br />Hard to believe this was the same man who just two days ago had badly botched the announcement of Emmanuel Vargo's death. The crew had assembled for what they'd believed would be an ordinary briefing, and without any preamble Euclides Peixoto had told them that Maximilian Peixoto, the husband of the President of Greater Brazil, had died while they'd been in hibernation during the voyage from Earth to Callisto. And before they'd had a chance to absorb that bombshell, he'd blurted out that Emmanuel Vargo had died too, during the revival process. Before he could say anything else, Ursula Freye had spoken up from the back of the room. Ursula and Emmanuel Vargo had become lovers soon after she'd been recruited to the construction crew. Trembling and grimly pale, she'd said that it was obvious that Manny had been murdered by enemies of the project, and demanded an immediate investigation. Speller Twain, the crew's security chief, had tried to hustle her away and there'd been an undignified struggle. Shouts, jeers, shrieks. The meeting had erupted into chaos, and Euclides Peixoto had fled without explaining how the project would proceed after the death of its engineer.</div><br /><div align="left">Now, as the applause at the end of his speech pattered into silence, Euclides Peixoto invited the young girl who had won the lottery to step forward. Eight years old, tall and slender in a simple white dress, the child took the remote control from him and without ceremony pressed its red button. At dozens of points along the eastern and western shores of the lake, gouts of water burst roaring from fat pipes and crashed down to the lake floor. Vast clouds of spray billowed up, softening the glare of the chandelier lights strung along the high ridge of the tent and filling the cool air with a fresh, steely odour. Above another wave of applause, Euclides Peixoto declared in ringing tones that the quickening of the biome had begun.</div><div align="left"><br />Macy Minnot had never had much time for Euclides Peixoto. The man was not only a political appointee who'd been given his job because of an accident of birth, he was also a strutting fool who couldn't draw a trophic web, resurrect dead mud or even plant out a flowerpot, much less a forest or marsh, to save his life. But she'd liked and respected Emmanuel Vargo, who'd risen from humble beginnings to become one of the best ecological engineers on Earth, and had shown her many small kindnesses and courtesies after he'd selected her to be part of his crew.</div><div align="left"><br />That had been a little over a year ago, when Macy, recently promoted to gang leader, had been working with Reclamation and Reconstruction Crew #553 at Lake Champlain, on the northern border of newly conquered territory gifted to the Fontaine family. Guerrillas, wildsiders and tribes of squatters had been pushed out of the region after a decade of fierce fighting, and R&R #553 had moved in to undo a couple of centuries of ecological damage. Before the crew began its work, nothing much had lived in the lake but blooms of blue-green algae, mitten crabs, snake-fish, and a pernicious variety of tweaked water hyacinth, fast-growing and hardy, that had been introduced to many freshwater bodies in the middle of the twenty-first century during early but misguided attempts at remediation. And thanks to the oil-burning culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, a characteristic layer of sediment, polluted with fossil-fuel residues and heavy metals, covered the bottom of the lake: anaerobic, stinking, tarry-black, and completely lifeless. Macy Minnot was in charge of the gang that had the job of transforming this oleanthropocene sludge into honest-to-goodness mud. They used big pumps to suck up sediment and pump it, through baffles impregnated with polymers and plastizymes that removed heavy metals and other highly toxic substances, into a series of fermentation tanks where cocktails of tweaked microbes digested organic material; at the end of the process, the pristine mud was mixed with a balanced microbial population and pumped back onto the lake bed. It had taken three months to work down from the northern end of the lake to Malletts Bay. The crew had been hit by a couple of big storms and harassed by wildsiders and bandits -- in the middle of one raid Macy had seen a smart RPG miss a pumping platform by no more than a metre, the thing making a long, lazy turn in midair and beginning to shark back in when its motor ran out of gas and it plunged into the lake and blew about a gazillion litres of water all over the crew barge. Mostly, though, the work was gravy. Hard and dirty, for sure, but tremendously worthwhile.</div><div align="left"><br />After its sediment and water had been processed and cleansed, the lake would be stocked with phytoplankton and waterweed, invertebrates and fish: an entire trophic web built from scratch and set running. Macy gave only lip service to worship of Gaia, but as far as she was concerned the restoration of a ruined, near-dead lake to something close to its pristine state was pretty much a religious experience. She loved her work and woke up every morning happy and grateful, eager to get going.</div><br /><div align="left">R&R #553 was commanded by Roxy Parrish, an experienced, sharp-minded woman in her fifties who took no bullshit from anyone, asked from her people only competence, hard work and loyalty, and in return provided them with unstinting support and protection from the worst whims and fancies of family bureaucrats. Every week or so she stopped by Macy's floating complex of barges, pumping platforms and coffer dams to check progress, discuss snags, and exchange gossip about the other R&R crews working the region. One summer evening, Roxy and Macy were up on the flying bridge of the crew barge, drinking beer and watching the sunset burnish the wide sweep of calm water that stretched out to low hills clad in ragged patches of newly planted forest at the eastern shore. A skein of geese laboured northwards across the dark blue sky, calling each to each. Macy, as happy as she had ever been, took a sip of beer and thought that next year those geese would find a good home here, if they wanted to stop awhile. She said something to that effect to her boss, and Roxy asked her what she thought she would be doing this time next year.</div><div align="left"><br />'When this project is finished? I guess it depends where we're sent,' Macy said. She was tilted back in her canvas chair, auburn hair loose about the shoulders of her denim shirt, roughened hands cradling her beer bottle against the waist snap of her jeans, work boots cocked on the rail of the flying bridge.</div><div align="left"><br />'This is a pretty good crew, so I can understand why you'd want to stick with us. But you're young, you have some talent, and you need all the experience you can get. I think you ought to take a look at this,' Roxy said, pulling her slate from her sling bag.</div><div align="left"><br />That was when Macy first learned that the green saint Oscar Finnegan Ramos and the infamous gene wizard Avernus were sponsoring construction of a biome in the city of Rainbow Bridge on Callisto, Jupiter's second-largest moon, and the Peixoto family were assembling a crew that would engineer its ecosystem from scratch.</div><div align="left"><br />'Why me?' Macy said. 'This is landscaping. It's a big job and it's in a weird place, but that's all there is to it.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Read the specs,' Roxy said. 'Most of the park will be a freshwater lake. They need people who'll be able to quicken it, and one of those people will be responsible for the microbial ecology. It's interesting work and it will stretch you in all kinds of interesting ways. The engineer slated to lead the crew, Emmanuel Vargo, is at the top of his game, and I bet you could learn all kinds of new wrinkles from the Outers. They'd been developing and maintaining closed-cycle ecosystems for more than a hundred years. And then there's the chance to meet and maybe work with Avernus, who's about as famous as Darwin or Einstein or any other scientist you care to mention.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I appreciate the hard sell,' Macy said. 'But it's an awful long way to go, and there must be a hundred people more qualified to work on this thing than me. A thousand.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I wouldn't be too sure. You're one of the best microbial jockeys I know. You have a frank manner that sometimes causes friction with other gang leaders, but you're a hard worker, and you're young and smart and ambitious. And this kind of opportunity comes but once in a lifetime, Macy. You might not see that now, but you will.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I'm beginning to get the feeling that I don't have much choice about volunteering.'</div><br /><div align="left">'There's that frank manner I mentioned,' Roxy said. 'I'll be just as frank. I was hoping you'd go for this straight away. Not just because it would make my job easier, but also because I really do believe that this is a great opportunity for you, and of all my people you're the best candidate. So if you don't volunteer, then yes, I'll have to put your name forward, and you won't get to have any say in the matter. We aren't the Army or the Air Defence Force, but we do have a chain of command. And you're somewhere near the bottom of it.'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy thought about that for a little while. Staring off at the V of geese dwindling away towards the darkening rim of the world, saying at last, 'Can I at least ask you who asked you to ask me?'</div><div align="left"><br />'As a matter of fact it was the governor of this region.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Louis Fontaine?'</div><div align="left"><br />'The same. Apparently he's still paying attention to your career.'</div><div align="left"><br />'The governor doesn't owe me anything any more,' Macy said. 'And even if he did, I'm not sure if I'd kindly thank him for this.'</div><div align="left"><br />Four years ago Macy had been working as an R&R labourer in Chicago, helping to remove the last traces of buildings and roads from the lake shore. It was one of the biggest reclamation projects in the Fontaine family territory. The downtown skyscrapers had been cleared years ago, but work on the suburbs and exurbs seemed never-ending. A runaway without any qualifications or patronage, Macy would have been working as a labourer still if Fela Fontaine, high on three different tailored pyschotropic drugs, hadn't crashed her stolen flitter.</div><div align="left"><br />The little aircraft had skimmed low and flat above hectares of tree stumps and rubble, sending people running in every direction, and had made a wide turn and had come back for a second pass, which was when it had clipped the rusted skeleton of an electricity pylon and lost its tail rotor. Spinning like a sycamore seed, it had augered into the lake a couple of hundred metres offshore, and Macy had jumped into a boat and raced to where it was sinking amidst a spreading pool of burning fuel, suffering third-degree burns to her hands and arms when she'd pulled the unconscious girl from the wreckage.</div><div align="left"><br />Fela Fontaine's father was the governor of the Northeast Region. He'd visited Macy in hospital, paid for her medical treatment, and arranged a scholarship that put her through college, but she'd had no further contact with him or the rest of the family. Six months later, she learned that Fela Fontaine had committed suicide. As far as she was concerned that was the end of the matter. Sure, she'd been given an opportunity to better herself, but four years down the line she felt that she had proven her own worth. She'd graduated at the top of her class and worked hard at her first posting, the city-sized treatment plant out on Lake Michigan, where she'd solved a knotty washout problem in the remediation reactors and had earned promotion to gang leader. She'd always be grateful for the push she'd been given, but she wanted to put that behind her, wanted to be defined by what she could do, wanted to make her own way in the world without any help or patronage.</div><div align="left"><br />So she felt a spark of anger and resentment at the way the governor had casually reached out and interfered with her life; when Roxy Parrish tried to convince her that it really was a good opportunity, she said, 'What does this have to do with him anyway? The biome is the Peixoto family's thing, not the Fontaine's.'</div><div align="left"><br />'You really should start paying attention to politics. Otherwise your pristine ignorance will get you into serious trouble one of these days.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I know about the Outers. We had a war with them a hundred years ago. Some people want to make up to them. Some other people want to go to war with them again, because they're barely human any more. Some might call that politics,' Macy said. 'I call it foolishness. We got enough to do right here without trying to stamp on a bunch of people who don't happen to live the way we want them to.'</div><div align="left"><br />'That's exactly the position of the Fontaines,' Roxy said. 'That's why we've been supporting the Peixoto family's attempts to reach some kind of reconciliation with the Outers, and that's why we support this biome project. Most of the other families opposed it, but the Fontaines and a few others stood shoulder to shoulder with the Peixotos when the bill went through the Senate. And because the Peixotos needed our votes, there'll be a couple of places for our people when they get to picking the crew. As for that, you're not the only microbial jockey being put forward. There are people from every region, but I think you have a good shot at this. I think you might just make it. You're young, but you're good. There's that work you did at Lake Michigan, and the way you make dead mud come back to life is a sweet thing to behold. Your reversion rate is so low it barely registers.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Like you always say, it's easier to get it right the first time than do it over.'</div><div align="left"><br />'It's easier, but it also takes a lot of skill.'</div><div align="left"><br />'If I do get picked, it better be because of what I can do,' Macy said.</div><br /><div align="left">'I don't think that Emmanuel Vargo is going to pay any attention to anything else.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Well all right then. I guess you can tell them I volunteered.'</div><div align="left"><br />Roxy took a sip from her bottle of beer. 'Just this morning, a couple of my labourers stumbled on the remains of a wildsider shrine in the basement of some big old ruin -- automobile parts, bones, a pyramid of more than a hundred human skulls. Some of them are small, children's skulls . . . The world is badly fouled up, kid. It's going to take a long time and a lot of work to fix it. If you do go up and out, I can promise you that there'll be plenty to do when you get back.'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy tried not to think much more about it. She told herself that she had little chance of getting a place on the crew, that if it did happen she'd deal with it then, and meanwhile she had plenty of work to do. So she was surprised that she felt a keen pang of disappointment when, two weeks later, she heard that she hadn't made the first cut. She threw herself back into her work. The Lake Champlain project was winding down when Roxy called and told her that Emmanuel Vargo wanted to talk to her.</div><div align="left"><br />The engineer arrived in a tilt-rotor plane that stooped low over the treetops and touched down neatly in a meadow at the edge of the lake. He was a tall, square-shouldered man, dark-skinned and bald as a bullet, dressed in blue jeans and an expensive but rumpled yellow silk jacket with a coffee stain on one lapel. He shook Macy's hand with a hardbarked grip, studied her with a keen, searching gaze.</div><div align="left"><br />'Let's go for a walk in the woods,' he said.</div><div align="left"><br />It was a beautiful crisp day in the middle of October. They rambled under trees laden with glorious reds and golds. Soldiers armed with pulse rifles moved ahead of them and behind them. </div><br /><div align="left">Emmanuel Vargo asked perceptive questions about Macy's work before coming to the point and telling her that the person originally appointed to construct the microbial ecology of the Rainbow Bridge biome had resigned from the project.</div><div align="left"><br />'He's from the European Union, the Couperin family. Ten days ago the head of the Couperins died, and his successor cleaves to the hard line against the Outers. One of the first things he did was withdraw the three people his family had put up for the crew. Bad luck for them, good luck for us, because now we can appoint three Brazilians as replacements. That is why I am here, Miz Minnot. To ask you to consider joining the crew.'</div><br /><div align="left">They were standing in a little clearing. The leaves of a clump of maple saplings glowed red as fresh blood in the low afternoon sunlight. There was a chill edge to the clean air.</div><br /><div align="left">Macy said, 'Can I ask you a question, Mr Vargo?'</div><br /><div align="left">Emmanuel Vargo's smile showed crooked brown teeth and his eyes shone with fine good humour. 'Anything you like.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Are you here because someone high up in the Fontaine family recommended me?'</div><div align="left"><br />'I'm here because you're the best of all the microbial ecologists who were put forward. Unfortunately, political nonsense meant that I had to select someone else in the first instance. Fortunately, that same political nonsense gives me a chance to remedy the situation. You don't have much experience, but neither do most of the other candidates -- the other families have been reluctant to volunteer senior personnel. It doesn't matter. In this case, where we are working in a new and unknown arena, ability counts for more than experience. And I believe that you are more than capable of doing the work. That's why I came out here to personally ask you to do me the honour of joining my crew.'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy wasn't the kind of woman most men would look at twice, but when she smiled, her face lost its habitually guarded expression and was as utterly transformed as a shuttered room suddenly flooded with sunlight. She smiled now, saying, 'Haven't I already volunteered? When do you need me?'</div><div align="left"><br />'How quickly can you pack?'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy flew out with Manny Vargo an hour later. The next day she started training with the rest of his crew. And now she was on Callisto. Now she had to prove her worth all over again.</div><br /><div align="left">It was going to be difficult. Not just because of Emmanuel Vargo's death, although that was bad enough, but also because Euclides Peixoto had taken over the day-to-day running of the construction crew. And although he was good at making speeches and flattering diplomats and representatives of Callisto's government, Euclides Peixoto knew nothing about ecosystem engineering and had never shown any interest in the design of the biome or in the training of the crew. That hadn't prevented him from telling Emmanuel Vargo how to do his job on more than one occasion. His ignorance about ecosystem engineering was perfectly matched by his lack of talent in people management, and like many men born into privilege and protected by that same privilege from the consequences of failure, he had no time for the advice of people he believed to be his inferiors.</div><br /><div align="left">Professor Doctor Sri Hong-Owen, who had helped Manny Vargo design the biome's ecosystem, would arrive at Rainbow Bridge in four weeks' time, riding a freighter fitted with the new fusion motor. In the interim, the project would have a better chance of success if the Peixoto family agreed to allow one of the local engineers to take over. Someone who knew what they were doing. Someone who could work alongside the crew and listen to their opinions. But that was not only politically unpalatable, it also involved a point of pride. And so the crew was stuck with Euclides Peixoto and his unpredictable whim of iron. Although he could draw on the advice of Sri Hong-Owen and a team of experts, it was entirely possible that he might take it into his head that he knew better than they did because he was on the spot and they were almost billion kilometres away. Or if he was confronted with some problem that needed solving right away, no time to consult with anyone back on Earth, he might either freeze up or make a bad decision and out of pride refuse to back down. And of course, most of the crew couldn't gainsay him. The Peixoto family was far more conservative than the Fontaines, and even under the Fontaines it wasn't prudent to talk back to anyone with the smallest degree of consanguinity, although you could at least bitch about the bosses behind their backs. Even that was too much of a risk under the Peixotos. Anyone caught criticising the people who owned their hides could be accused of treason, there were spies and snitches everywhere, and the punishments for disloyalty were severe, so everyone owned by the Peixotos kept their opinions to themselves. Macy was pretty sure that not even Ernest Galpa, now the most senior member of the crew, a decent old fellow who had worked with Emmanuel Vargo for twenty years, who had openly wept at the news of Manny's death, would dare challenge Euclides Peixoto if he decided on some course of action that threatened the success of the project.</div><div align="left"><br />Theoretically, crew members from other families could stand up to him with a degree of impunity. But Cristine Quarrick and Patrick Alan Allard came from the Nabuco family, which was even more old-school than the Peixotos, everyone knew that César Puntareñas was no more than a spy who reported directly to the Fonseca family council, and although Ursula Freye had a thirty-second degree of consanguinity within the Fontaine family, being the daughter of a second cousin of their only green saint, she was consumed by paranoid fantasies of a conspiracy that had murdered her lover. Macy could only hope that when Euclides Peixoto screwed the pooch -- and she reckoned that <em>when</em> was much more likely than <em>if</em> -- it wouldn't have anything to do with her sphere of responsibility. Because if he ordered her to do something idiotic, she'd probably be stupid enough to refuse, and then he'd cut her off at the knees, blacken her name, and send her back to Earth with a reputation as a wrecker. After that, she'd be lucky if she could get a job breaking rocks.</div><br /><div align="left">Fortunately, she didn't have much time to worry about the different ways the man could crash the project. She had plenty of work to do, and she had to do it quickly.</div><div align="left"><br />To begin with, the biome's microbial ecosystem -- the combined metabolic repertoire of trillions of microscopic workers that underpinned the cycles of carbon fixation, nutrient recycling, and organic decomposition -- had to be up and running before the lake could be planted out and stocked with fish and invertebrates. Macy needed to grow up starter cultures to seed the reed beds and stromatolite reefs that would filter the lake water and recycle nutrients, and she also had to liaise with the plankton team to produce a mixed culture of bacteria, blue-green algae and diatoms that would clarify the lake water by attaching to suspended fines and elaborating mucopolysaccharide threads to form fluffy accretions heavy enough to sink out of the water column. This process of flocculation, which would not only allow photosynthesis to take place at all depths of the lake, but would also produce an organic-rich layer of mud, would be initiated by injection of large volumes of the mixed culture into every sector of the lake during the formal opening ceremony. That was due to take place in thirty-two days, after Sri Hong-Owen had arrived and the lake had reached its final level. It was an inflexible deadline. But as soon as they started work, Macy and the plankton team ran into a serious problem: the diatom they planned to use, a tweaked strain of <em>Skeletonema costatum</em>, wasn't growing as fast as it should when cultured in the melt water that was filling the lake. If they couldn't get the doubling rate up to where it should be, they'd not only be short several hundred kilograms of diatom biomass, they'd also have to adjust the growth rates of all the other microorganisms.</div><div align="left"><br />It was the kind of problem that Macy enjoyed solving. Biome engineering was more of an art than a science, an intricate game or puzzle in which everything affected everything else, its complexity increasing exponentially with the addition of each new species. Plants competed for the nutrients and light; animals grazed on plants or preyed on other animals; microorganisms broke down dead organic material and recycled nitrogen and phosphorus and sulphur into forms that other organisms could use. If a single species was removed from or added to this web, the relationships between every other species were changed in large and small ways that could not always be predicted. Macy had the useful knack of being able to hold models of nutrient and energy flow in her head and examine them from every angle, visualising their interlocking checks and balances, predicting how changes in one parameter would propagate through the system. She wasn't as good at it as Manny Vargo, who'd been able to conduct the equivalent of two or three symphonies at once, with choirs and bells and thundering organs. But she was competent, she was used to hard work and impossible deadlines, and the city had given her two good assistants and sole use of a well-equipped facility on the west bank of the lake. She had every confidence that she would succeed.</div><br /><div align="left">The facility was set in and around the footing of one of the big arched struts that, elaborated from spun threads of fullerene, supported the biome's tent. At its base, the strut flared into a gourd-shaped structure ten storeys high, hollowed out with terraced apartments and rising above a plaza beside the empty black bowl of what would be a shallow bay when the lake was filled. Macy's laboratory was on the ground floor of the hollow strut, and the bioreactors where she and her two assistants were growing pure and mixed cultures of microorganisms had been set up in the plaza. That was where she was working when the crew's security chief, Speller Twain, and the youngest and newest member of the Brazilian diplomatic team, Loc Ifrahim, came for her.</div><div align="left"><br />It was eleven days after the lake had started to fill. Macy and her two assistants, Argyll Hall and Loris Sher Yanagita, were in the middle of a discussion about the problematical diatom culture when the two men walked in.</div><br /><div align="left">'We need to talk to Miz Minnot,' Speller Twain told Macy's assistants. He was a burly man with a blond crew cut and a pinched, sour glare. The sleeves of his coveralls had been ripped off, displaying muscular arms covered with military tattoos. 'It's crew business, so take off, why don't you?'</div><br /><div align="left">'They have work to do,' Macy said. Although she'd been expecting something like this, she was suddenly dry-mouthed and her heart was beating quickly and lightly. 'Plus, you might want to get out of range of the cameras in here -- believe it or not, there are citizens who have nothing better to do than watch me work. If you want to talk privately, we'd best do it outside.'</div><div align="left"><br />The two men looked at each other and the diplomat shrugged and said, 'Why not?'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy led them past the bioreactors to the jetty that stretched out into bay's dry bowl. She headed straight for the end, ankling along in the heel-and-toe shuffle that was the best way of walking in Callisto's light gravity, putting some distance between herself and the two men. She needed a little time to compose herself and to let go of the anger and dismay kicked up by their presumption.</div><div align="left"><br />When she turned, she saw that Speller Twain had stopped halfway along the jetty, leaning against the rail like a casual sightseer as Loc Ifrahim shuffled towards Macy. 'Why don't you tell me exactly what's troubling you?' she said to the diplomat. 'Then I can tell you why I can't do anything about it and get back to my work.'</div><br /><div align="left">Loc Ifrahim smiled. 'They told me you spoke plainly.'</div><br /><div align="left">He was only a few years older than Macy, his narrow, clever face framed by black hair twisted into dozens of tight braids that brushed the shoulders of his white silk suit. Officially, he was part of the trade delegation, but everyone knew that he was a government spy.</div><br /><div align="left">'I won't apologise for my way of speaking, Mr Ifrahim,' Macy said. 'I wasn't raised with your advantages.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Actually, my childhood had precious few of what you might call advantages,' Loc Ifrahim said. 'But I was lucky enough not be raised in the bosom of some strange sect that believes universal truth can be found by playing mathematical games with pi. I'm curious -- do you still believe in that, Miz Minnot?'</div><br /><div align="left">Macy was used to taunts about her odd upbringing. She'd had to put up with them ever since she'd signed up to become an R&R labourer. 'I've outgrown my childhood, Mr Ifrahim. How about you?'</div><br /><div align="left">'I acquired all kinds of old-fashioned virtues which I still try to apply to the way I conduct my life,' Loc Ifrahim said. 'Loyalty to one's family and friends, for instance. How about you, Miz Minnot? I know you have no loyalty to your family because you ran away from them. But are you loyal to your friends? Do you feel any loyalty to Ursula Freye, for instance?'</div><br /><div align="left">There it was, just as she'd thought.</div><br /><div align="left">'I'm not sure that she'd want me to call her a friend,' she said. 'We're from the same territory, but that's about all we have in common. Plus, Ursula has consanguinity, and she's a stickler for protocol. She made that pretty clear during training.'</div><br /><div align="left">'She likes to pull rank on you. Even so, I'm sure you'd help her if she was in trouble.'</div><br /><div align="left">'What kind of trouble?'</div><br /><div align="left">'How does Miz Freye seem to you?' Loc Ifrahim said.</div><br /><div align="left">'I don't know. Tired and a trifle manic, I suppose. Like all of us.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Manic, mmm,' Loc Ifrahim said, seeming to like the taste of the word on his tongue. 'Has she told you what she's been up to?'</div><br /><div align="left">'You seem to have a problem with coming to the point, Mr Ifrahim. Since it isn't exactly a secret, let me speak plainly and get it out of the way. Ursula thinks that Emmanuel Vargo's death was no accident. She thinks he was murdered. She's been running around looking for clues, and now I would guess that it has caused you some kind of trouble. How am I doing?'</div><br /><div align="left">Loc Ifrahim's glossy black braids were strung with beads, different sizes, different colours. They rattled and clicked as he turned from Macy and gripped the rail at the end of the jetty with both hands and looked out, or pretended to look out, across the little bay. His cinnamon skin was flawless. He wore rings on every one of his fingers, and he had the neatest fingernails Macy had ever seen (her own, even though she kept them trimmed short, were ragged and broken, and the nail of her right thumb was bruised black from where she had jammed it in the sampling lock of one of the bioreactors). His perfume hung in the cold air between them, a sharp odour like orange peel and burnt sugar.</div><br /><div align="left">At last he turned back to look at Macy, and said, 'Do you think that Mr Vargo was murdered?'</div><br /><div align="left">'If you're working your way around to asking me to help you find out what Ursula's been doing, you should know that I'm no snitch, Mr Ifrahim.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I don't want you to help me. I want you to help her,' Loc Ifrahim said.</div><div align="left"><br />'Do you have consanguinity, Mr Ifrahim?'</div><div align="left"><br />Loc Ifrahim's smile didn't alter, but something changed behind his eyes. 'No one in the diplomatic service has any degree of consanguinity. It ensures that we are entirely impartial.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I don't have any either. But Ursula Freye, she has a thirty-second degree of consanguinity in the Fontaine family. And the Fontaine family own my ass. So if you want someone to persuade her to stop looking into the circumstances of Manny Vargo's death, I'm not the person to do it. If for whatever reason you don't want to talk to her, maybe you should ask Mr Peixoto to deal with this. He's full-blood family, and he's supposed to be in charge of this crew.'</div><div align="left"><br />'Oh, this isn't the kind of thing I want to concern him with.</div><br /><div align="left">''I don't think it concerns me, either.'</div><br /><div align="left">'You're wrong, Miz Minnot. There are many people in Rainbow Bridge who are not at all sympathetic to this project, or to Greater Brazil. By pursuing her inquiries, Miz Freye may play into their hands and damage us all.'</div><div align="left"><br />'So keep her in the biome. Have Mr Twain put her under house arrest.'</div><br /><div align="left">Loc Ifrahim said, 'We could try to silence her, but Mr Twain thinks it would cause more trouble than it's worth. And I have to say that I agree with him. We would have to explain to Miz Freye's immediate family why we had to do it. And we can't stop Outers coming into the biome, of course, and we can't tell them why they shouldn't talk to Miz Freye. No, it really would be best for all concerned if you had a quiet word with your compatriot. If you told her that we know what's she doing, that we understand her grief, and that we want to help her in any way we can.'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy said, 'Is that an order, or are you asking me a favour?'</div><div align="left"><br />'I could ask Mr Twain to persuade you to do it,' Loc Ifrahim said. 'But I would prefer you to volunteer out of friendship and loyalty. Friendship to your compatriot, and loyalty to the crew and their mission. Because if Ursula Freye doesn't stop her silly little crusade, she'll cause trouble for the rest of the crew, she could well damage a lot more than this little project, and she'll most certainly damage the reputation of the Fontaine family. And even though you have no consanguinity, that will also damage your reputation, Miz Minnot. People will say that you should have done something about it. They will say that you were implicated in Miz Freye's crazy and completely unfounded imaginings. And I very much doubt that the Fontaine family will be pleased to hear that you stood by and did nothing to help.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Dress it up any way you like, you want me to do your dirty work.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Talk to Miz Freye. I have persuaded Mr Twain to allow you two days' grace. After that, he will want a report on your progress. For your sake, I suggest you have something positive to tell him,' Loc Ifrahim said, and sketched a quick bow and shuffled away down the jetty towards Speller Twain, who pushed from the rail and touched the corner of one eye with his forefinger and then aimed it at Macy like a gun. Telling her, <em>I'll be watching you</em>.</div><div align="left"><br />After she'd run away from the sect, Macy had spent a couple of years on the streets of Pittsburgh. She knew all about good-cop/bad-cop routines. It would be funny, really, if she hadn't seen how Speller Twain operated. Like at the progress meeting two days ago, when Delmy March, the man in charge of the fish and mammal crew, had corrected Euclides Peixoto on some point about the timetable of the quickening. Euclides Peixoto had taken offence and told Delmy he wouldn't tolerate that kind of mealy-mouthed wrecking talk, and Speller Twain had detached himself from the wall where he'd been leaning and crossed the room in two lithe bounds and grabbed Delmy in an armlock and stuck the black spike of a jammer behind Delmy's ear, putting him into convulsions so bad he'd pretty near bitten off his tongue.</div><br /><div align="left">So instead of walking past the two men, who no doubt wanted to give her the benefit of some parting advice, Macy vaulted the jetty's rail and floated down four metres and strode away across the floor of the bay. Her thoughts were snarled up and some kind of physical activity was usually a good way of freeing them, but most of all, right there and then, she wanted to get away from everything, and as she came out of the bay's wide mouth she broke into a run, long fluid strides that quickly ate up distance, passing a low sandy promontory planted with young cabbage palms and yuccas, running on under the clear white light of the chandeliers and the irregular quilting of the tent towards the long oval of water that occupied the deepest part of the lake. A little to the south was the low black wall of the coffer dam that circled the site where an archipelago of tiny islands was being constructed, a last-minute change in the landscaping specifications, and beyond that was the terraced shape of the main island. The lake floor was constructed from the same material as the coffer dam, a thin skin of light and incredibly strong fullerene composite, black and finely striated like muscle, laid over an insulating substructure several metres deep that anchored it to the adamantine ice, shaped and contoured with shallows and slopes, trenches and raised table reefs. It was like running in an enormous, half-full bathtub.</div><div align="left"><br />Macy was beginning to sweat now. She pulled off her cap and ran on with her hair streaming behind her like the tail of a rusty comet. Running was much easier than walking in Callisto's low gravity, but changing direction was difficult because you still had the same mass but far less traction; you had to think ahead, make wide arcs around obstacles, and slow down gradually, because attempting a sudden stop was liable to make you tumble head over heels. Bill Highbridge had bruised a couple of ribs when he'd slammed into one of the boulders planted on the ridge of the main island, and Pilgrim Greeley had broken a wrist in a bad fall, but Macy had been running out on the lake bed every morning before breakfast, letting her thoughts settle out, getting ready to tackle whatever problems the day would throw at her, and she swung south easily and smoothly, moving parallel to the edge of the water that each day rose a little higher.</div><div align="left"><br />The water filling the lake bed from the centre outwards was now about half a kilometre across at its widest point. In another week it would be lapping at either shore, and Macy would have to take her morning constitutional along the rim road. It was already an impressive sight: a broad channel of tawny water agitated by dozens of fast streams feeding it from the infall pipes along either shore, waves running back and forth, clashing in white riffles. There was no shortage of water on Callisto of course -- the moon was entirely covered in water ice, a frozen world ocean wrapped around a core of silicate rock -- but at around -170° Centigrade the ice was hard as granite. To create the lake, it had to be mined and melted, processed to remove sulphur compounds and drive off excess carbon dioxide and add oxygen, and then pumped through kilometres of heated pipes into the biome's chamber. The outfall of one of those pipes jutted from the embankment a few hundred metres away, water steaming as it spewed out in a flurry of foam, the wild smell of it electrifying Macy's blood. The ice had been frozen for billions of years, but all it needed was a little free energy to weaken hydrogen-to-hydrogen bonding and effect a phase change from solid to liquid. Like bringing a fossil back to life.</div><br /><div align="left">The three huge machines that mined, processed, and melted the ice, the huge tent that housed the biome, and the biome itself, represented a enormous outlay of engineering, energy, and human work and imagination. Macy was determined to honour the Outers' grandiose plans with her own contribution, but although her skills hummed in her brain and trembled in her fingertips, although she'd spent several hundred hours planning every last detail with the plankton crew and poor Manny Vargo back in Greater Brazil, back on Earth, she'd been having sleepless nights ever since she'd arrived. The dreaminess of the low gravity and the strange taste of the air, the odd noises echoing in the high-ceilinged space in the hollow base of the strut (she had taken to sleeping in the lab), all contributed to her insomnia, but it was mostly due to nagging anxieties about everything and anything that could go wrong. She was ready and willing and able to do the work she had to do, but felt as if she was surfing a standing wave of exultation and apprehension. She was here. She had made it. Yet a single misstep might wipe her out.</div><div align="left"><br />And now, on top of everything else, she had to deal with this little job gifted her by Speller Twain and Loc Ifrahim, that smooth-talking smiler. The problem was, Manny Vargo's death might have broken Ursula Freye's heart and made her desperate and more than a little crazy, but the woman was also a crashing snob, stubborn and aloof. No matter how distressed and lonely she might be, she wasn't about to take advice from someone as low-born as Macy, and Macy couldn't think of anyone else in the crew who might help out. Most of them belonged to the Peixoto family, and despite all the exercises designed to unify them during training they'd quickly split into like-minded factions, little groups of three or four that crossed sexes and specialities and excluded outsiders. As for the rest, Cristine Quarrick and Patrick Alan Allard, from the Nabucu family, were married and inhabited a cosy little world of their own making with no time for anyone except themselves, and César Puntareñas was an unsympathetic character who enjoyed playing up to his reputation as a rogue agent.</div><div align="left"><br />Macy ran alongside the edge of the lapping water until she reached one of the streams that frothed down a moulded channel a couple of metres wide. She jumped the channel with ease but landed awkwardly and tumbled headlong, a long sprawling slide that knocked the wind from her lungs. Sitting up, flexing her arms and legs, discovering nothing worse than a scraped palm and what was going to be a spectacular bruise on her behind, she saw one of the little camera drones that infested the biome hanging above the edge of the lake, a fat blimp about a metre long, its underslung camera pointing in her direction. She laughed and gave it the finger, wondering just how many citizens had watched her little pratfall, and then was struck with a notion of how best to reach out to Ursula Freye.</div><br /><div align="left">When she got back to the lab, she told her two assistants that she believed that they might be able to help her deal with a little personal business. She put a finger to her lips when they began to question her, led them out of the lab and along the jetty, and said that what she was about to tell them was confidential, they had to swear they wouldn't tell anyone else about it.</div><br /><div align="left">The assistants exchanged glances. They were both in their forties but looked about Macy's age, slim and fine-boned, looming over her like a pair of friendly giraffes. Argyll Hall with his paper-white complexion and cockatoo's crest of bright red hair; Loris Sher Yanagita with her bright green eyes, pupils slitted like a cat's. Macy liked both of them. She didn't doubt that they were reporting on her every move, but they were hard-working, competent, and, in their different ways, enthusiastic. Loris was quiet, someone who liked to listen rather than talk, and talked only when she felt that she had something worth saying, but she had an intense, slow-burning ardour for her work; she reminded Macy of the way wildsiders carried fire from camp to camp, smouldering punk caught inside a fold of clay. Argyll was a more vivid character, quick-minded and impulsive, brimming with half-formed ideas, talkative and endlessly curious about how things were done on Earth, and Macy's reactions to the way things were done here. Although Macy tried to appear unshockable, she was shocked, more than a little, by the tweaks Outers made to their bodies. Argyll had spotted this at once, and made a point of letting Macy know all about his little differences from the human norm. Physiological adaptations to microgravity, cellular mechanisms that enhanced repair to radiation damage, speedier reflexes and a ballet dancer's sense of balance, changes in his corpus callosum that enabled him to survive on catnaps for months at a time or enter a sleep as profound as hibernation, and a dozen lesser tweaks, from the reflective membrane at the back of his eyes that increased his night vision to perfect pitch. When Macy had given it back to him, asking why Outers didn't go all the way and grow hands at the ends of their legs instead of feet, Argyll had shrugged and smiled and said that maybe one day they would, and Loris had said, 'Have you ever tried walking on your hands all the time? Even in our gravity, it's hard. They just aren't built for it.'</div><br /><div align="left">'How about tails?' Macy had said, trying to be provocative.</div><div align="left"><br />Loris had thought about this for a moment, calm and serious and imperturbable. 'I think they tried that in Camelot, Mimas. Of course, the gravity is lower there . . .'</div><br /><div align="left">Which had made Macy laugh. She liked Loris. Loris was a lot like her.</div><br /><div align="left">Now, before Macy started to explain why she was about to ask them for a very big favour, Argyll jumped right in and said, 'I bet this is about Mr Vargo's murder.'</div><br /><div align="left">Macy felt a twinge of unease. 'Were you eavesdropping, just now? Can people listen to us out here?'</div><br /><div align="left">Loris shook her head.</div><div align="left"><br />'We guessed,' Argyll said. 'I mean, it's pretty obvious. What else would that diplomat and the security chief want to talk to you about? So, do they think they know who did it?'</div><div align="left"><br />'They don't think it was murder, and neither do I.' Macy paused, struck by an uncomfortable thought, then added, 'Do people in the city think he was murdered?'</div><br /><div align="left">'I think the latest poll has it that around sixty per cent believe Mr Vargo was killed,' Argyll said.<br />'There are polls on this?'</div><div align="left"><br />'Anyone can run a poll on anything,' Argyll said. 'How else can you find out what people are thinking?'</div><br /><div align="left">Loris said, '<em>I</em> don't think he was murdered, but Argyll does. You should ask him what they're saying on the thread about Mr Vargo. The conspiracy nuts are having a great time.'</div><div align="left"><br />Macy said, 'I shouldn't tell you what I'm about to tell you, but I need your help. So promise you won't mention this to anyone, on this conspiracy-theory thread or anywhere else. Okay?'</div><div align="left"><br />Argyll drew an infinity sign on his chest with his forefinger and said, 'Hope to die before I do.'</div><div align="left"><br />'It means he won't,' Loris said. 'And neither will I.'</div><div align="left"><br />'We want to help,' Argyll said.</div><br /><div align="left">'Let's see if you can,' Macy said. 'It seems that one of my colleagues has been going out and about in the city. I need to know where she goes, if she's meeting anyone. Don't tell me you can't do it. I know that there are cameras all over the city. And they all feed into the city's net.'</div><div align="left"><br />She'd decided that the first thing she needed to do was find out if Loc Ifrahim had been telling the truth, find out if Ursula really had gotten herself involved in some kind of clandestine chicanery. If the woman's visits to the city were innocent, if there was nothing to Loc Ifrahim's story but devilment, then Macy could tell him to leave her the hell alone and let her get on with her work. But if she had hard evidence that Ursula was involved with malcontents or hardliners, she could use it as leverage when she confronted the poor woman and tried her damnedest to convince her that they didn't have her best interests at heart.</div><br /><div align="left">Argyll looked disappointed, saying, 'Is that all?'</div><div align="left"><br />Loris said, 'Who is she?'</div><div align="left"><br />'Ursula Freye,' Macy said. 'And before you start asking me questions I can't possibly answer, this isn't anything to do with Mr Vargo's death. It's all about helping a colleague of mine who's gone a little crazy with grief.'</div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Chapter 5</strong></div><br /><div align="left">Two days later Macy rode a tram to the free zone at the northern edge of Rainbow Bridge. She'd visited the city twice before, but each time it had been to attend official functions -- a kind of reception where she and the rest of the crew had been exhibited like exotic animals, and a theatre piece involving musicians, dancers, tableaux and projections in what had been billed as an interpretation of universal creation myths. Macy had recognised a couple of fragments from Genesis, but the symbolism of most of the performance had been impenetrable, the music had sounded like a train-wreck, and she'd had a hard time staying awake. So despite her forebodings about the enterprise, she felt an exhilarating mix of anticipation and liberation as she rode through the city on her own.</div><br /><div align="left">Rainbow Bridge occupied a froth of pressurised tents and geodesic domes, different sizes. Inside them, low-rise apartment blocks much like those Macy had helped to demolish in the ruins of Chicago were strung along streets radiating out from a central park, scattered at random across parkland, or, in the oldest parts of the city, crammed side by side, their roof gardens connected to each other by slender bridges. There were a few blocks of workshops for small-scale industries and crafts, but most of the city's factories were located in smaller domes outside the city's cluster, amongst vacuum-organism farms and refineries. The tram carried Macy through woods and meadows, down the centres of wide tree-lined streets. She got off at the last stop and put on the spex that the city had given her after she'd been woken from hibernation. Argyll had shown her how to use the navigation function, and its virtual display set a series of fat red arrows floating in the air that winked out one by one as, trailed by two drones, she followed them along a white gravel path between two- and three-storey apartment blocks with narrow gardens on set-back terraces and balconies hung with flowering vines or shaggy waterfalls of mosses and ferns. It was late in the evening. The panes of the dome polarised black, paths lit by tiny biolamps like green stars and a few dim street lights, and not many people about, for which Macy was thankful. She was dressed in a costume borrowed from Loris, baggy shorts and a pale blue T-shirt that hung to her knees, but most passers-by seemed to recognise her as she ankled along, and several stopped her to ask her how she liked their city, or simply to say hello.</div><br /><div align="left">The last of the red arrows winked out as she stepped onto the escalator that carried her down into the city's free zone. One of the drones that had followed her across the city angled away; the other, no doubt run by Speller Twain, parked itself in the air at the head of the escalator, vanishing from sight as Macy descended.</div><br /><div align="left">Everyone knew everyone else's business in the city. It was a small, crowded place, and as in all the city-states and settlements of the Outer System, which preserved democratic traditions long vanished on Earth, there was a custom of public candour and open access to surveillance systems and every kind of stored information. At least half the population posted unflinching details of their everyday lives on the net; everyone expressed opinions about anything and everything; anyone could attempt to gain any public position by participating in popularity contests, and the winners of those contests had to facilitate decisions arrived at through a combination of public debate and expert advice, and took part in regular question-and-answer sessions about their work. This tradition of open exchange of information was giving the construction crew all kinds of problems. Hundreds of people visited the biome every day. They picnicked on the main island, flew kites, watched the water level in the lake rise centimetre by centimetre, wandered in and out of labs and worksuites and pestered the crew with pointless questions about Earth and their work. Yesterday, while taking a short stroll along the rim road before supper, Macy had been accosted by an earnest young man who'd had plenty of ideas about what she was doing wrong. She'd only just been able to keep her temper while she countered his points one by one. Others were having a harder time dealing with the inexhaustible curiosity of the Outers; Cristine Quarrick had lashed out with considerable verbal inventiveness at a little girl who'd come up to her and asked her why she was so ugly, the girl had burst into tears, and everything had been caught by a passing drone and had nearly caused a diplomatic incident.</div><br /><div align="left">The city's free zone was the only place where its citizens had any privacy. There were no cameras in the free zone; nothing that accessed or fed into the net. All the city's ordinances, apart from those covering basic human rights, were suspended. After putting a data miner to work in the records of the city's camera system, Argyll had discovered that Ursula Freye visited the zone each and every day. Usually she spent an hour or two there before returning to the biome, although sometimes she came out only a few minutes after she'd gone in, and once she'd stayed the night. No wonder Loc Ifrahim had been so vague when Macy had asked him who Ursula had been talking to; no wonder he and Speller Twain were so anxious to put a stop to it. Ursula had found the one place where no one could spy on her. Where the citizens would respect her privacy. Where Macy would have to go if she wanted to find out what the woman was up to, who she met with, what she talked about.</div><br /><div align="left">Macy had escaped from the Church of the Divine Regression and survived the gangs and cops in the slums of Pittsburgh, as well as numerous encounters with wildsiders and bandits in the borderlands: she was pretty sure that she could play this situation and come out in front. Even so, she felt a flutter of apprehension as she rode the escalator down into the free zone. She really hoped that this didn't have anything to do with Ursula Freye's determination to root out the truth about Manny Vargos's death, that Ursula was visiting the zone because she was looking for something clean and simple like sex or drugs, some release from her unreasoning grief.</div><br /><div align="left">It was always night, down there in the zone. A broad avenue followed the curve of the tent's coping wall, intermittently illuminated by multicoloured holos and neon. There were people wearing body-enveloping cloaks and masks, people wearing nothing but morph paint, patterns and images drifting across their bare skins like clouds, but most were dressed in the colourful tatterdemalion clothing that passed for everyday wear in the city. Short backless jackets like yokes, jackets with rubber spikes or armoured plates, jackets patched from feathers or fur, ruched and intricately pleated shirts and cut-off kimonos that shimmered like water or mercury, kilts, baggy shorts, tights with ridiculous codpieces, plain shifts . . .</div><br /><div align="left">Some of them, recognising Macy and surprised to see her there, broke protocol and stared openly. She stared right back. She didn't feel in the least bit intimidated. Compared to the brawling streets of Pittsburgh, the zone seemed as artificial and safe as a children's playground. She passed body-mod shops, wireshops, smokehouses, meat markets where citizens bought or sold or gave away all kinds of sex. Even on the main drag, at least half the places were no more than recessed doors that gave away nothing about what went on inside. Others stood under gaudy and elaborate signs. The Gilded Palace of Sin. Fight Club. Lies, Inc. There were vanilla bars and restaurants, too. Macy hit those first, found Ursula Freye in the third place she checked out, a bar that called itself Jack Frost.</div><br /><div align="left">The name glowed red inside a holo of a melting block of ice hung above a narrow doorway. Macy followed two men into a passage hung with fur coats. They had to be artificial, cultured or machine-made, but the sight of them hanging in dense rows gave Macy a little shock. She had to swallow her queasiness before she could emulate the men she'd followed and pull on one of the soft, heavy furs and push through the rest into a dimly-lit cave.</div><br /><div align="left">It was freezing cold, covered in ice. A floor of rough black ice, booths and tables carved from ice dyed different shades of red, ribbed ice walls and a low ceiling supported by columns of fused giant icicles in which scattered lights shone like dim, frozen stars. Tinkling music hung in the air, delicate as smoke. Robots shaped like squashed crabs crawled over the ceiling and around and about the icicles, taking orders, scurrying off, returning to lower with whiplike tentacles drinks and tiny plates of food to table tops. The decor and dim lighting confused the transition between the interior and video windows displaying views of the moonscape outside the city.</div><br /><div align="left">It was only the second time that Macy had seen the surface of Callisto. She stepped towards one of the windows and its view of a cratered plain stretched to a horizon curved sharp and clean against a black sky where Jupiter's banded disc hung like a marvellously detailed brooch, didn't notice Ursula Freye until the woman walked towards her through the cone of light cast by the old-fashioned lamp post (exactly like one Macy had once seen in the preserved section of Pittsburgh) that stood in a continuous flurry of snow at the centre of the bar.</div><br /><div align="left">'It was Mr Twain, wasn't it?' Ursula Freye said.</div><br /><div align="left">Macy nodded. She had decided to be as candid as possible, hoping that Ursula would be candid in return. 'Him and Loc Ifrahim.'</div><br /><div align="left">'The diplomat?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Yup. He did the talking and Speller Twain hung around in the background, flexing his muscles.'</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula Freye thought about this for a moment. She and Macy were sitting on the fur-covered bench of a booth now. Two of Ursula's companions had left without speaking a word. The third sat next to Ursula, robed in a hooded floor-length white fur coat and, like the two who'd left, wearing a mask, this one in the form of a fox's sharp-snouted features.</div><br /><div align="left">At last Ursula said, 'When he asked you to talk to me . . . Did you get the impression that it was government business, or something else?'</div><br /><div align="left">'That's what I've been wondering,' Macy said. 'He seemed to imply that it wasn't exactly official. That he wanted to do you a favour. To talk to you, tell you -- '</div><div align="left"><br />'I know what he wants to tell me. What did he tell you?'</div><div align="left"><br />'Only that you were meeting with people who could cause trouble.' Macy looked across the table at the robed, fox-faced person who sat beside Ursula. 'No offence. He said that, not me.'</div><br /><div align="left">Fox-face didn't reply, but for a chilling moment the mask's amber gaze seemed to swallow Macy whole. It was uncannily realistic, every hair on the muzzle (white on the underjaw, auburn above) in place, every whisker. Its black lips were slightly parted, revealing a hint of sharp white teeth.</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula said, 'Mr Ifrahim told you that I was meeting with people. Did he tell you anything else?'</div><br /><div align="left">'He said that it could compromise the project.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Do you believe him?'</div><br /><div align="left">'I don't trust him.'</div><br /><div align="left">'You realise that you can be arrested for intruding on my privacy,' Ursula said. 'That's one of the few things that is against the law down here. I could cause all kinds of trouble for you, Miz Minnot. And if I did, I expect Mr Ifrahim and Mr Twain would let you take the fall.'</div><br /><div align="left">'That would only be fair,' Macy said, feeling a warmth growing on her forehead and cheeks despite the chilly air, 'because it was my idea to come here, not theirs. I thought we could talk freely here. But if all you want to do is threaten me, then fine, I'll go.'</div><br /><div align="left">'And what will you tell your friends?'</div><br /><div align="left">'They're not my friends. I'll tell them that you didn't want to talk to me about whatever it is you're doing down here. That if they want to find out they'll have to come talk to you themselves.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Do you think they will be satisfied with that?'</div><br /><div align="left">'I doubt it. But if they ask me to do anything else, I'll tell them that maybe I need to talk to Mr Peixoto about it first. Get it all out in the open.'</div><br /><div align="left">'And is <em>that</em> a threat?'</div><br /><div align="left">Sitting straightbacked in a black fur coat, shining blonde hair combed and neatly parted into wings that slanted either side of her face, Ursula Freye didn't looked in any way touched by grief or craziness. She looked cool, utterly self-possessed. She was more than twice Macy's age, but her skin was unlined and porcelain-perfect apart from tender pouches under her eyes, and her sharp blue gaze was lively and acute. Back on Earth, she could have had Macy flogged or jailed for insubordination. Or flogged and jailed, for that matter. But this wasn't Earth, they were sitting at the heart of a zone where ordinary rules had been suspended, and Macy felt emboldened.</div><br /><div align="left">'Whatever you're doing here is your business,' she said. 'And as long as it stays here I'd have no reason to tell Mr Peixoto or anyone else about it. But if it affects the project, then it affects all of us.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Have you ever been in love, Miz Minnot?'</div><br /><div align="left">Macy hesitated for only a moment. She had decided to be candid, and as long as she could keep Ursula talking she might learn something. 'There was a boy once. We thought we were in love for a little while.'</div><br /><div align="left">'What happened?'</div><br /><div align="left">'I wanted to do better than scuffling a living in the streets, looked into joining the R&R Corps. Jax said no way he was going to leave Pittsburgh. It was where he grew up. It was all he knew. So . . . '</div><br /><div align="left">'You went your way, and left him behind.'</div><br /><div align="left">Macy shrugged. 'Something like that.'</div><br /><div align="left">She remembered how she and Jax had argued about it for most of that summer. Finally, Jax had told her to do what she wanted, just as long as they didn't have to talk about it any more. She'd signed up the next day. By the time she shipped out for basic training, two weeks later, she and Jax had broken up. And then she'd been so busy, learning Corps discipline, how to use a gun and a pickaxe, that she hadn't had time to think of him that much, although she had wondered now and then, in the brief quiet time between lights-off and sleep, if he ever thought of her.</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula Freye said, 'If you loved him, you would have stayed with him.'</div><br /><div align="left">'We were both pretty young.'</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula looked somewhere else for a few seconds, then pressed the button set in the centre of the table and told the robot that responded to the call that she wanted two brandies. Looking at her silent, fox-faced companion, saying, 'Unless you want one too.'</div><br /><div align="left">The figure shook its head once, right to left.</div><br /><div align="left">'One thing I know,' Ursula said to Macy. 'You don't choose to fall in love. It's something that happens to you, like a wonderful accident. I didn't plan to fall in love with Manny or anyone else on the crew. But it happened the first time we saw each other, right at the beginning of talks between our family and the Peixotos. It caused a political problem and it caused me all kinds of personal problems too. But it happened. People I thought were close to me, my friends, tried to get me to resign from the project or promise to stop seeing Manny. But I wasn't going to give him up, there was no one else of my rank remotely qualified to join the crew, and I was able to persuade the people who mattered that I was still loyal to the family, and that my relationship with Manny would help forge a closer alliance with the Peixotos. It caused Manny a fair amount of grief, too. Although he had already done most of the design work on the biome there were people in the Peixoto family who wanted to throw him off the project. But Oscar Finnegan Ramos had the final word on that, and he said let it be. So it worked out. We stayed together, and we came here. But if Manny had been forced to quit, I would have quit too. It wouldn't have been easy, because I would have had to go against the wishes of my family, but I would have done it. And now I wish that he<em> had</em> been forced to quit . . . '</div><br /><div align="left">There was a scratching noise overhead as the robot returned. It lowered two balloon glasses with swift precision, retracted its tentacles, scuttled away. Ursula Freye cupped her glass in both hands and raised it to her face and breathed in the fumes of the little puddle of amber liquid before drinking. After a moment, Macy took the smallest possible sip from her own glass. It was good stuff, a whole universe away from the jackleg liquor that R&R crews brewed from sugar and wild apples or cherries. Smoothly coating her tongue with a biting sweetness, burning a hot wire to her stomach.</div><br /><div align="left">'I'm going to tell you something that you can pass on to Mr Twain and Mr Ifrahim,' Ursula said, sounding like a boss for the first time since she'd surprised Macy, decisive and definite. 'They already know about it, but they didn't trouble to tell you. So if you tell them about it, they'll know that you really did talk to me. You understand?'</div><br /><div align="left">'Before we go any further, maybe you can tell me who your friend is.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I can't do that. And really, you should know better than to ask. It's not just horribly rude down here; it's also illegal. What I want you to do now is listen carefully. Because I'm going to tell you why I know that Manny was killed.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Okay.'</div><br /><div align="left">'After I was told that Manny had died, I asked to see his body. And that's when I found out that something was wrong. I found out,' Ursula said, looking straight at Macy, 'that his slate had gone missing. And I knew right away that someone had killed him. They killed him, and they took his slate.'</div><br /><div align="left">Macy waited, hunched in her heavy fur coat, cradling her balloon glass of brandy, feeling the cold of the ice table on the backs of her hands, the heat of her own blood on her face. Feeling that she had stepped over the edge of something.</div><br /><div align="left">'There are at least three different ways he could have been killed,' Ursula said. 'Someone could have sabotaged his hibernation coffin, or spiked him with drugs, or with a failed form of neuronal therapy that causes damage very similar to CND . . . Well, the details don't matter right now. All that matters is that Manny was murdered, and his slate was stolen.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Do Mr Ifrahim and Mr Twain know that it's missing?'</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula nodded. 'And if you tell them that I told you about it, they'll know that you talked to me. That you did what they asked you to do.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I guess I should ask you what you're planning to do about it.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Would you tell your two friends about it if I did?'</div><br /><div align="left">'If you tell me, sure. Why not? You're telling me what you want them to hear, aren't you?'</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula studied Macy for a moment, a smile touching her lips, gone. 'I believe they may have underestimated you.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I'm counting on it.'</div><br /><div align="left">'Perhaps you think that I am crazy. That I have constructed a paranoid fantasy because I can't accept that Manny's death was a tragic accident. Oh, I wouldn't blame you if you did. I admit that I wasn't especially rational back then, and I can't have made a good impression when I burst into that meeting and vented my frustration. But I am rational now. I am utterly calm. And I know what I know. Part of what I do, a large part of it, is to locate and define places where emergent phenomena might arise from the interaction of two or more ecological parameters. In other words, I'm very good at spotting patterns before they have fully formed. So if you think that I'm seeing a conspiracy where none exists, let me assure you that it's as real as this glass,' Ursula said, finishing off her brandy in a quick swallow and setting the glass down on the slab of black ice and sitting back, fixing Macy with a bright, starry gaze. 'Maximilian Peixoto did so much to make sure that this project would be a success, and he died a few days before we arrived here. Our chief supporter in the European Union, Val-Jean Couperin, also died. And now Manny . . . They could have killed all of us, of course. Blown up the ship that brought us here, say, or the shuttle that took us up to the ship. But that would have been too obvious. Mass murder. There would have been a massive investigation, and it might have uncovered their identity. And at the moment, the enemies of the alliance between Greater Brazil and the Outer Colonies very much want to work under cover. They are not ready to reveal themselves because it would be a declaration of war. And they do not yet have the means to go to war.'</div><br /><div align="left">A deep, purring voice said, 'There will be no war.'</div><br /><div align="left">Macy started. It was the fur-robed, fox-faced figure who had spoken. She realised that the person wearing the mask must be subvocalising through a throat patch that disguised his or her voice, but the effect was uncanny nonetheless.</div><br /><div align="left">'There will be no war if we can help it,' Ursula said.</div><br /><div align="left">A silence stretched, and when it became clear that fox-face was not going to say anything else Ursula took up the thread of her argument again.</div><br /><div align="left">'When I was told that Manny had died during revival, I thought at once that it could have been murder. Because if they hoped to damage the project by killing one of us, Manny was the obvious target. He was the ecosystem engineer. He oversaw the design of every detail of the biome's ecosystem. He was responsible for recruiting and training the crew. And it was his will and personality that welded us into a single unit. But I couldn't be <em>sure</em> that he had been murdered until I found out that his slate was missing. Then I knew. I knew that they had killed him, not just because of who he was but because his slate contained something that his killers wished to keep hidden. Not the plans of the ecosystem. There are plenty of copies of those. I have a full set, fully annotated. So does Euclides. And people here in the city also have copies. No, they killed him because, even though he didn't know it, he was close to finding something they wanted to remain hidden.'</div><br /><div align="left">'You don't know what it could be,' Macy said. 'This hidden thing.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I have several ideas, of course. But no evidence pointing towards one or another.'</div><br /><div align="left">'And you don't know who . . . '</div><br /><div align="left">'There are plenty of candidates. It could be someone in the Peixoto family who wants to diminish the considerable power of Oscar Finnegan Ramos. It could be a pro-war anti-Outer faction in one of the other Brazilian families, or the families of the Pacific Community or the European Union. Not to mention the numerous factions in the city states of the Outer Colonies that want nothing at all to do with Earth . . . At this point, it doesn't matter who did it. It only matters why they did it. And that's where you can help me, Miz Minnot. I won't ask if you are loyal to our family. I know very well that most of the people in our territory aren't. But are you loyal to this crew, to what Manny was trying to build? Do you want it to succeed?'</div><br /><div align="left">'That's why I'm here. For the crew. The project.' Macy was having a hard time meeting Ursula Freye's starry gaze. She knew what was coming and she dreaded it and she didn't know how to stop it.</div><br /><div align="left">'I have made friends here,' Ursula said. 'You and I want this project and all it stands for to succeed. So do they. I want to help them. And you can help them too.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I'm here because I was told that you might be putting the project at risk,' Macy said.</div><br /><div align="left">'And you can see that it's quite otherwise.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I see no such thing. I'm sorry, but I don't. All I see is someone chasing after something that might not exist -- '</div><br /><div align="left">'It exists. You will help me prove that it exists.'</div><br /><div align="left">'You know something?' Macy said. 'You're just like them. Like Loc Ifrahim and Speller Twain. They want to use me to get at you. You want to use me to get at them.'</div><br /><div align="left">'I understand that I am putting you in a delicate position -- '</div><br /><div align="left">'I don't think you understand it at all,' Macy said, so loudly that the group of Outers at the next table, bulked like seals in their fur coats, turned to look at her. She hardly noticed, transported by a sudden rush of anger. 'People like you, you don't see how it is for people like me. You float above it all. As far as you're concerned, life is effortless. But people like me, we're down in the muck. When things go wrong, we're the ones who suffer. We're the ones who get hurt. You have a whim: we pay for it.'</div><br /><div align="left">She felt her pulse beat in her head, felt a giddiness that was nothing to do with the exiguous gravity. She didn't care, at that moment, what Ursula Freye did to her. This was the free zone, wasn't it? Well, she'd spoken freely.</div><br /><div align="left">Ursula surprised her. She laughed, a delicate, girlish chime, and said, 'You really don't have any idea, do you? You think that I'm free to do what I want? My whole life has been shaped by service to the family. The same family that protects you, makes sure that you have a job, food, shelter . . . All my life, I've done what I was told; what was best for the family. All my life, until I met Manny, and fell in love. We fell in love. We weren't supposed to, but we did,' Ursula said, looking down at Macy from the remote height of her desolation.</div><br /><div align="left">After a moment, the fox-faced person spoke. 'We will get to the bottom of it, Ursula.'</div><br /><div align="left">'And that's another thing,' Macy said. 'Why should I consider for even a second helping out someone who won't even show their face?'</div><br /><div align="left">'This isn't about you and it isn't about me,' Ursula told her. 'It's about the project. It's about Manny. I know you respected him. I know you know that he was the heart and soul of this project. If there's even a remote chance that he was murdered, don't you think it's worth following through?'</div><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">'Believe me, we would prefer not to ask you to do this,' Fox-face said. 'But it is the only way forward. It may be the only way to save the project.'</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><div align="left">Macy's first impulse was to get up and walk away. But she was in enemy territory, she didn't know how many people in the bar, the free zone, the whole strange, low-rise city, were involved in this. She had been given privileged information and there was no telling what might happen if she didn't agree to help. So she took a deep breath, and said, 'All right. I guess I'm fucked if I do and fucked if I don't, so tell me what you want and I'll see what I can do. For the sake of the project. Nothing else.'</div><div align="left"><br />'It isn't anything,' Ursula said. 'Really it isn't. All I need are copies of the records and logs of everything that has been done since the crew started work on the biome. I can use them to run a dynamic reconstruction and integrate it. Look for emergent patterns, conjunctions -- anything that might hint at potential sabotage.'</div><div align="left"><br />'I have been locked out of the crew's database by Mr Twain. If I need anything, I have to go through him. He's watching me, Macy. He downloaded a spy into my slate -- for my own protection, he said. And he follows me everywhere. Everywhere but here. But you can do it, and besides, it really isn't anything. All you have to do is access the database and make a copy of the work logs and pass them to me. That won't be so hard, will it?'</div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: right"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/QuietWar.html"><span style="font-family:arial;"></span></a><span style="font-family:arial;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3hmqQdYHoHnU0elVnU-_cn9xj6i5cjG3EeNpz6nKzPi79edXovTL2oULF2oDal6-oaf37EyHPDWqBlCAvjOErY2ti5g2ZxifxXjjm9iqo_tBu9JSxocwwfjoFc_m8eS8TtnmaS7iCwY/s1600-h/Paul+McAuley3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5385489815050774706" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 156px; HEIGHT: 200px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii3hmqQdYHoHnU0elVnU-_cn9xj6i5cjG3EeNpz6nKzPi79edXovTL2oULF2oDal6-oaf37EyHPDWqBlCAvjOErY2ti5g2ZxifxXjjm9iqo_tBu9JSxocwwfjoFc_m8eS8TtnmaS7iCwY/s200/Paul+McAuley3.jpg" border="0" /></a></span><em><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/QuietWar.html">The Quiet War</a></em> © <a href="http://unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com/">Paul McAuley</a><br />Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.sparth.com/">Sparth</a><br />Design by Jacqueline Nasso Cooke</div></div></span><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: right"><br /></div>Paul McAuley's first novel won the Philip K. Dick Award and he has gone on to win almost all of the major awards in the field. For many years a research biologist, he now writes full-time. He lives in London. Visit Paul McAuley online at http://unlikelyworlds.blogspot.com/<span style="font-family:arial;"><br /><br /><br /></span></div></div></div></div>lynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-72088392608647054082009-09-14T13:48:00.018-05:002009-09-17T08:47:59.980-05:00Dawnthief (Chronicles of the Raven) by James Barclay<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQHHQwMqy6TjQqN_cnxVrStM2rbENMMsLNL6t5l_ge1FuhvB6JnLBm0fAuBlMhVcJvTefAgP45SunlYbAaPtrMzje0eN1_ZojlSCs_3Qj9zo68DZxxvKHax5r-RlEopbYSte9YfeABW0/s1600-h/dawntheif_cover.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381783909234902114" style="margin: 0px 0px 10px 10px; float: right; width: 214px; height: 320px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvQHHQwMqy6TjQqN_cnxVrStM2rbENMMsLNL6t5l_ge1FuhvB6JnLBm0fAuBlMhVcJvTefAgP45SunlYbAaPtrMzje0eN1_ZojlSCs_3Qj9zo68DZxxvKHax5r-RlEopbYSte9YfeABW0/s320/dawntheif_cover.jpg" border="0" /></a>The Raven: six men and an elf, sword for hire in the wars that have torn apart Balaia. For years their loyalty has been only to themselves and their code. But, that time is over. The Wytch Lords have escaped and The Raven find themselves fighting for the Dark College of magic, searching for the location of Dawnthief. It is a spell created to end the world, and it must be cast if any of them are to survive. <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Dawnthief.html"><em>Dawnthief</em></a> is a fast paced epic about a band of all-too-human heroes.<br /><br /><em>RT Book Reviews</em> gives <em>Dawnthief</em> 4 stars and calls it a "compelling page-turner" and "a thoroughly fun read from beginning to end,” while <em>SFX</em> calls it "action fantasy at its best.” Check out the excerpt below to decide for yourself...<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><div align="center"><strong>Dawnthief</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>Chronicles of the Raven</strong></div><div align="center"><strong>James Barclay</strong></div><br /><br /><div align="left"><strong>Prologue</strong></div><br />The hand over her mouth stifled her screams as she awoke. Beside her in the bed, Alun was still. A face, shadowed by night, leaned into hers. She could make out his lean features and hard eyes. The hand pressed harder as her eyes bored into his.<br /><br />“If you cast, your boys will die. If you struggle, your boys will die. If you don’t cooperate, your boys will die. Your husband will remain as witness that we can take your kind from anywhere—even from the heart of a College City. Think on that while you sleep and curb your anger when you awake. We have a great deal to talk about.”<br /><br />The thoughts crashed through her mind in time with the hammering of her heart. Her foolish determination to live a quiet life outside of the security of the College walls had put in jeopardy everything she loved. The man had mentioned her boys, her beautiful twin sons in whom she had so much faith and nurtured such great power. So young, so innocent. Her body quailed as she fought against the thought of what men such as these might do. They had no compassion. They saw what they believed to be evil and had vowed to destroy it. They didn’t see the purity and the magic of what she was creating and their blindness made them so dangerous.<br /><br />Voices struck notes of caution in her mind. The Masters of the College, who had sympathised with her desire for family life but had warned against the complacency of comfort in times when people could be open in their animosity toward the College and all for which it stood. Hers was an experiment, the Masters had reminded her; it was not a simple desire to settle down. Her children were children of the College, they had said, and their development was critical research.<br />But, as usual, she had had her way. After all, they were her sons and Alun had no wish to live in the College. She cursed herself for her stubborn stupidity and for her overconfidence in her ability to keep them all safe. Tears of frustration and anger welled up but they, like the voices of the Masters in her head, were echoes of warnings that were ignored too long and were heeded too late.<br /><br />The man’s other hand came across her vision. It was clutching a cloth which he pressed against her nose and mouth. The drug took swift effect and her struggle was that of an animal caught in a trap as the dogs close in. Futile, desperate, short. Brophane. The last thought through her mind was how ill she would feel when she opened her eyes.<br /><br /><br /><strong>Chapter 1</strong><br /><br />Blue light seared across the late afternoon sky, flaring against the broken low grey cloud and throwing the sheer opening of Taranspike Pass into sharp relief. A heavy explosion sounded. Men screamed.<br /><br />The Raven made a calm assessment of the situation, looking out from the castle which controlled the pass, across the courtyard and on to the battlefield from their vantage point high up on the keep.<br /><br />The left-hand end of the defensive line had been shattered. Bodies, burning and broken, were scattered across scorched grass and the enemy redoubled their efforts all along the battle front. They surged.<br /><br />“Damn it,” said The Unknown Warrior. “Trouble.” He raised a clenched fist above his head, spread his fingers then whirled his arm in a wide circle. Instantly, the flagmen in the turrets signalled the order. Five cavalrymen and a mage galloped out of a side gate.<br /><br />“There. Look.” Hirad pointed toward the devastated line. Perhaps fifteen men were running through the gap, ignoring the battle as they rushed toward the castle walls. “Are we in?” he asked.<br /><br />“We’re in,” said The Unknown.<br /><br />“About time.” Hirad smiled.<br /><br />“Raven!” roared The Unknown. “Raven with me!” He swept his two-handed sword from the scabbard leaning against the ramparts and charged over to the steps, chest plate catching the dying rays of the sun, his massive frame moving with a speed and agility that remained a fatal surprise to many and his shaven head bobbing on his bull neck as he started down at a dead run.<br />The stairs led down from the ramparts along the inside of the wall before joining the roof of the keep. From there the way to the courtyard was through either one of the two turrets and down their spiral stairways.<br /><br />The Unknown led the six leather- and chain-clad warriors and one mage who made up The Raven to the left-hand turret, threw the door open, barked the guard aside and took the stairs two at a time, leaning into the outside wall to steady himself.<br /><br />Halfway down, a second, bigger explosion sounded, shaking the castle foundations.<br /><br />“They’re through the courtyard wall,” said Hirad.<br /><br />“Almost there,” said The Unknown. The door at the base of the turret was open and Hirad doubted whether The Unknown would have paused had it been closed, such was his speed. The Raven sprinted out into the waning amber sunlight and headed for the left-hand corner of the courtyard where dust from the explosion filled the air.<br /><br />From the fog of the dust, and picking their way through the rubble they’d created, came the enemy. The warriors, leather armoured and cloth masked, spread into the courtyard. Behind them, Hirad could see another making his way through the debris, seemingly at leisure. He too was wearing shining leather armour but also a black cloak that billowed behind him. A pipe smoked gently in his mouth and, if Hirad’s eyes didn’t deceive him, he was stroking a cat whose head poked out from the neck of the cloak.<br /><br />Behind him, he heard Ilkar, the elven mage from Julatsa, curse and spit: “Xetesk.” Hirad paused in his stride and glanced back. Ilkar waved him on.<br /><br />“Get on and fight,” said the elf, his tall, athletically slim frame tense, his flat-oval hazel eyes narrowed beneath short dark hair. “I’ll keep an eye on him.<br /><br />”The enemy fighting men began to move to The Raven’s left at an even pace, trotting toward the bare rock wall along the base of which grain, tool and firewood sheds ran from outer defences to keep.<br /><br />The Unknown Warrior immediately changed direction, cutting off the new approach. Hirad frowned, unable to take his eyes from the solitary black-cloaked figure behind the swordsmen.<br /><br />The sounds of battle from outside the wall began to fade as Hirad focused on the task ahead. Seeing them, the enemy, who outnumbered The Raven by almost three to one, moved to intercept. Five warriors were ahead of the main group, running on, swords held high, shouts ringing from the walls as they came, confident in their numerical superiority.<br /><br />“Form up!” shouted The Unknown, and The Raven switched seamlessly into their fighting line as they advanced. As always, The Unknown himself took the centre of a slight-angled and uneven chevron. To his left ranged Talan, Ras and Richmond and to his right, Sirendor and Hirad. Behind them, Ilkar prepared the defensive shield.<br /><br />The Unknown tapped the point of his two-handed blade rhythmically on the ground with each pace and Hirad, searching for recognition in the eyes of their adversaries, bared his teeth as he found it, noting the ghost of a break in their stride.<br /><br />“Shield up,” said Ilkar. It sent a shiver through Hirad even now, ten years on. And the reality was that he couldn’t actually feel anything. But it was there; a net of security from magical attack, a momentary shimmering in the air. The Unknown ceased tapping his sword point, and a beat later, The Raven joined battle.<br /><br />The Unknown brought his sword up in a right-to-left arc, making a nonsense of his opponent’s defence. The man’s blade was knocked aside and his face split from chin to forehead, blood spraying up from The Unknown’s weapon as it exited.<br /><br />The man was hurled backward, crashing into two of his colleagues, not even raising a scream as he died.<br /><br />To the right, Sirendor caught a blow on his kite shield before sweeping his sword through the enemy’s ribcage and Hirad evaded a clumsy overhead with ease, swaying right then jabbing two-handed into the neck of his opponent. Others were hesitant to fill the gap. The barbarian fighting man grinned and stepped forward, beckoning them on with a hand.<br /><br />To The Unknown’s left, the going was less straightforward. Ras and Talan were trading blows with competent shield-bearing warriors while Richmond, distracted, was on the defensive, his quick, fluid strikes causing his enemy great difficulty nonetheless.<br /><br />“Spellcaster moving. Our left,” he said. He parried a blow to his midriff and shoved his opponent back.<br /><br />“I have him,” said Ilkar, his voice distant with the effort of maintaining the shield. “He’s casting.”<br />“Leave him to Ilkar,” ordered The Unknown. His blade thudded against the shield of an enemy. The man staggered.<br /><br />“Still moving left,” said Richmond.“Leave him.” The big man slashed open the stomach of the man in front of him as Talan, immediately adjacent, finished his first victim, taking a cut on his arm.<br /><br />The enemy mage barked a command word. Heat scorched the air and in the moment’s ensuing silence, both sides paused, falling back half a pace.<br /><br />“Ward!” yelled the mage, and buildings along the back wall exploded, clouding the air with splinters and hurling broken planks to spin and tumble across the courtyard.<br /><br />Chaos.<br /><br />Half a plank thumped into Hirad’s standing foot. His balance gone, he sprawled forward, trying to turn on to his back even as he fell. To his left, The Unknown took the force of the explosion on his broad back with barely a flinch. Thundering his blade through waist high, he cut the man in front of him clear through to the spine.<br /><br />“Shield down!” shouted Ilkar. The shock of the detonation had pitched him to the dirt, breaking his concentration. He was up on his feet immediately. “I’ll take the mage.”<br /><br />“I’ve got him.” Richmond, who had all but fallen into his opponent’s arms, recovered the quicker of the two and rammed his sword into the man’s midriff. He turned from the battle.<br /><br />“Stay in line!” roared The Unknown. “Richmond, stay in line!”<br /><br />Hirad was staring straight into the eyes of the man who was about to kill him. Hardly believing his luck, the man swung his sword toward the helpless barbarian but the blow never reached its target. Instead, it clattered against a kite shield. Legs straddled Hirad, and Sirendor’s sword uppercut into the man’s neck. Sirendor stooped and helped Hirad clear.<br /><br />The half dozen paces Richmond took away from the line before he realised his error were fatal. Ras, engaged with one man, was not aware that his left flank was totally exposed. Seizing his chance, the second enemy stepped quickly around his companion and buried his sword in the Raven warrior’s side.<br /><br />Ras grunted and collapsed, clutching at the wound as blood soaked through his armour, falling against Talan’s legs with enough force to unbalance his friend. Talan just about defended one strike but was in no position to avoid the next.<br /><br />“Shit!” rasped The Unknown. He set his blade horizontally across Talan’s path, fielding two blows aimed at the struggling warrior, and kicked out straight with his right foot, connecting with his opponent’s lower abdomen.<br /><br />Richmond crashed back into the battle. At the same time, Talan recovered to stand across the stricken Raven man, skewering another enemy through the chest and wrenching his blade free, the man’s screams turning to gurgles as he drowned in his own blood.<br /><br />And behind the battle, Ilkar could only watch as the Xetesk mage, running toward the wall he’d exposed by destroying the wooden buildings, paused, turned to him, smiled, said one word and disappeared on his next pace forward.<br /><br />Ilkar gritted his teeth and switched his attention back to the fight. Ras was lying curled and motionless. The Unknown hacked down another man, and to his right, Sirendor and Hirad killed with practised efficiency. Only Richmond’s blade flailed, the whole set of his body giving away his feelings. Ilkar strode forward, forming the mana shape for a holding spell. It was enough. The remains of the enemy unit saw him, disengaged and ran back the way they had come.“<br /><br />Forget them,” said The Unknown as Hirad made to chase the fleeing enemy. The barbarian stopped and watched them go, hearing the jeers of the castle garrison help them on their way. Elsewhere, cheers rose from the ramparts as horns sounded retreat across the battle ground.<br /><br />For The Raven, though, victory was hollow.<br /><br />A pool of silence spread across the courtyard from where they stood, and as it reached out, others fell quiet, turning to see what few had ever seen. When Hirad looked around, all but Ilkar were crouched by Ras. Hirad joined them.<br /><br />He opened his mouth to ask the question but swallowed his words hard. Ras, his hands still clamped to the horrible wound in his side, was not breathing.<br /><br />“All day sitting around and now this,” said Hirad. “We’re never taking a reserve force job again.”<br /><br />"I don’t think this is the time or the place for this discussion,” said The Unknown softly. He was aware of a crowd beginning to gather.<br /><br />“Why not?” Hirad rose, arm muscles bunching beneath his heavy padded leather armour, his braided russet hair bouncing as he jerked to his feet. He jammed his sword back into its scabbard. “How much more evidence do we bloody well need? If you spend a day up on the ramparts you aren’t sharp enough when it comes to the fight.”<br /><br />“There’s a few here that wouldn’t agree with you,” snapped The Unknown, gesturing at the slain enemy.<br /><br />“We’ve lost three men in ten years, all of them in contracts we shouldn’t have taken on. We should be hired to fight, not to sit around watching others do it.”<br /><br />“This was a good money contract,” said Ilkar.<br /><br />“Do you think Ras cares?” shouted Hirad.<br /><br />“I—” began Ilkar. He put a hand to his head, his eyes losing focus. He squeezed The Unknown’s shoulder.<br /><br />“This discussion and the Vigil will have to wait. The mage is still in here,” he said. The Raven were on their feet in a moment, each man ready.<br /><br />“Where?” growled Hirad. “He’s a dead man.”<br /><br />“I can’t see him,” said Ilkar. “He’s under a CloakedWalk. He’s close by, though. I can sense the mana shape.”<br /><br />“Great,” said Sirendor. “Sitting targets.” His grip tightened on the hilt of his blade.<br /><br />“We’re all right. He’ll have to lose the Cloak before he casts again. I just want to know what he’s doing here.” Ilkar’s face was set, his frown deep.<br /><br />Hirad switched his gaze up to the keep and round the ramparts. A closing of the cloud hastened the setting of the sun and the fading light washed grey across the castle. A light rain had begun to fall. All activity had ceased and a hundred eyes stared at The Raven and at the body they encircled. Taranspike Castle was quiet, and even as victorious soldiers walked back into the courtyard, their voices caught and faded when they saw the scene.<br /><br />The Raven’s circle moved gradually outward, with Ilkar separate from it, always with one eye on the newly exposed wall.<br /><br />“How could he miss us with that spell?” asked Talan, indicating the debris of wood and grain scattered about them. “He was practically standing on top of us.”<br /><br />“He couldn’t,” replied Ilkar. “That’s why I’m—”<br /><br />The mage was by the wall. He had blinked into view with both his hands on it. They probed briefly and a section of the wall moved back and left, revealing a dark passageway. The mage stepped into it and immediately the opening closed.<br /><br />Ilkar ran to the wall and examined the section minutely, the others crowding around him.<br /><br />“Open it, then,” said Hirad. The elf turned to stare at the barbarian, his leaf-shaped ears, pointed at the top, pricking in irritation.<br /><br />“Can you open it?” asked Talan.<br /><br />Ilkar nodded. “I’ll have to cast, though. I can’t see the pressure points otherwise.” He switched his attention back to the wall and the rest of The Raven gave him space. Closing his eyes, Ilkar spoke a short incantation, moving his hands over the wall in front of him, feeling the mana trails sheath his fingers. Now he placed his fingertips on the stonework, searching. One after another, his fingers stopped moving, finding their marks.<br /><br />“Got it,” he said. No more than half a minute had passed. The Unknown nodded.<br /><br />“Good,” he said. “But you—” he indicated the stocky figure of Talan, his short brown hair matted with sweat and the old scar on his left cheek burning bright through his tanned skin—“stay and get that cut seen to, and you—” spitting the words at Richmond—“start the Vigil and think on what you’ve done.”<br /><br />There was a brief silence. Talan considered objecting but the blood dripping from his arm, and his drained face, told of a bad wound. Richmond walked over to Ras, sighting down his long thin nose, tears in his pinched blue eyes. He folded his tall frame to kneel by the body of the Raven warrior, his sword in front of him, its point in the dirt and his hands clasped about the hilt guard. He bowed his head and was motionless, his long blond ponytail playing gently in the breeze. It was he, along with Talan and Ras, who had joined The Raven as an already established and respected trio four years earlier, after the only other battle that had seen the death of a Raven warrior; in this case, two of them.<br /><br />The Unknown Warrior came to Ilkar’s shoulder.<br /><br />“Let’s do it,” he said.<br /><br />“Right,” said Ilkar. He pushed. The wall moved back and left. “It’ll stay open. He must have closed it from the inside.”<br /><br />There was light at the end of the passageway, wan and flickering. The Unknown trotted into the passage, Hirad and Sirendor right behind him and Ilkar bringing up the rear.<br /><br />As The Unknown Warrior moved toward the light, a shout of terror, abruptly cut off, was followed by a voice, urgent and loud, and the scrabbling of feet. The Unknown increased his pace.<br />Rounding a sharp right-hand corner he found himself in a small room, bed to the right, desk opposite and firelight streaming in from a short passage to the left. Slumped by the desk, and in front of an opening, was a middle-aged man dressed in plain blue robes. A long cut on his creased forehead dripped blood into his long-fingered hands and he stared at the splashes, shuddering continuously.<br /><br />With The Raven in the room behind him, The Unknown knelt by the man.<br /><br />“Where did he go?” Nothing. Not even recognition he was there. “The mage? In the black cloak?”<br /><br />“Gods above!” Ilkar elbowed his way to the man. “It’s the castle mage.” The Unknown nodded. Ilkar picked up the man’s face. The blood from his wound trickled over gaunt white features. His eyes flickered everywhere, taking in everything and seeing nothing.<br /><br />“Seran, it’s Ilkar. Do you hear me?” The eyes steadied for a second. It was enough. “Seran, where did the Xeteskian go? We want him.” Seran managed to look half over his shoulder to the opening. He tried to speak but nothing came out except the letter “d” stuttered over and over.<br /><br />“Hold on,” said Sirendor. “Shouldn’t that wall let back on to—”<br /><br />“Come on,” said The Unknown. “We’re losing him the longer we wait.”<br /><br />“Right,” said Hirad. He led The Raven through the opening, down a short corridor and into a small, bare chamber. In the dim light from Seran’s study, he could see a door facing him.<br /><br />He moved to the door and pulled it open on to another, longer passage, the end of which was illuminated by a flickering glow. He glanced behind him.<br /><br />“Come on,” he said, and broke into a run down the passage. As he approached the end, he could see a large fire burning in a grate set into the wall opposite. Sprinting into the chamber, he glanced quickly left and right. There was a pair of doors in the right-hand wall perhaps twenty feet away, set either side of a second, unlit fireplace. One of them was swinging slowly shut.<br /><br />“There!” he pointed and changed direction, not waiting to see if any were following. His prey was close.<br /><br />Hirad skidded to a stop before the door and wrenched it open, stepping back to look before dashing in. It was a small antechamber, set with massive arched double doors opposite. They carried a crest, half on each side. The walls were covered in runic language; braziers lit the scene. Hirad ignored it all: one of the big doors was just ajar and a glittering light came from inside. The barbarian smiled.<br /><br />“Come to Daddy,” he breathed as he ran through the gap and into the chamber beyond.<br /><br />“Hirad, wait!” shouted Sirendor as he, Ilkar and The Unknown raced into the larger chamber.<br /><br />“Get after that idiot, Sirendor,” ordered The Unknown. “Time to take stock, I think.”<br /><br />Above the fire hung a round metal plate, fully three feet across. On it was embossed the head and talons of a dragon. The mouth was wide, dripping fire, and the claws open and grasping. Otherwise, the room was bare of ornament. The Unknown moved toward it, half an eye on Sirendor as the warrior hurried toward the door through which Hirad had chased. He stopped suddenly, glanced behind him and frowned.<br /><br />“What is it?” asked Ilkar.<br /><br />“This isn’t right,” said The Unknown. “Unless I’ve gone badly wrong, this ought to be the kitchens and that end of this room—” he pointed right to the two doors flanking the unlit fire—“should be in the courtyard.”<br /><br />“Well, we must be under it,” said Ilkar.<br /><br />“We haven’t gone down,” said The Unknown. “What do you think?” But Ilkar wasn’t paying attention to him any more. He was staring at the crest over the fire, his face paling.<br /><br />“That symbol. I know it.” Ilkar walked over to the fire, The Unknown trailing him.<br /><br />“What is it?”<br /><br />“It’s the Dragonene crest. Heard of it?”<br /><br />“A few rumours.” The Unknown shrugged. “So what?”<br /><br />“And you say we should be standing in the courtyard?”<br /><br />“Well, yes, I think so but . . . ?”<br /><br />Ilkar swallowed hard. “Gods, we’d better not have done what I think we’ve done.”<br /><br />It was the size of the hall he entered that first slowed Hirad’s advance, and the heat that assailed him the moment he was inside. Next it was the odour, very strong, of wood and oil. Pervasive and with a sharp quality. And finally, the huge pair of eyes regarding him from the opposite side of the room that brought him to a complete standstill.<br /><br />“Gods, Hirad, calm down!” Sirendor yanked open the door to the right of the fireplace and ran inside, seeing the crested double doors in front of him. He pulled up sharply, the dark-cloaked mage appearing suddenly before him. He raised his sword reflexively and took a pace backward, realising the mage’s abrupt appearance was caused by the dispersal of a CloakedWalk spell. Probably in his late thirties, the mage would normally have been handsome beneath his tousled black hair and unkempt short beard, but now he looked pale and frightened. He held out his hands, palms outward.<br /><br />“Please,” he whispered. “I couldn’t stop him, but I can stop you.”<br /><br />“You’re responsible for the death of one of The Raven—”<br /><br />“And I don’t want another one to die, believe me. The barbarian—”<br /><br />“Where is he?” demanded Sirendor.<br /><br />“Don’t raise your voice. Look, he’s in trouble,” said the mage. There was movement in his cloak. A cat’s head appeared briefly at its neck then disappeared once more. “You’re Sirendor, aren’t you? Sirendor Larn.” Sirendor, standing still once again, nodded. The mage continued. “And I am Denser. Look, I know what you’re feeling but we can help each other right now and, believe me, your friend needs help.”<br /><br />“What kind of trouble is he in?” Sirendor’s voice was low too. He didn’t know why, but something about the mage’s attitude worried him. He should kill the man where he stood but he was obviously scared by something other than the prospect of death at a Raven warrior’s hand.<br /><br />“Bad. Very bad. See for yourself.” He put a finger to his lips and beckoned Sirendor to him. The warrior moved forward, never taking his eyes from the mage nor the slightly shifting bulge on one side of his cloak. Denser motioned Sirendor to look through the doors.<br /><br />“Great Gods above!” He made a move to go in but the mage restrained him with a hand on the shoulder. Sirendor turned sharply.<br /><br />“Take your hand off me. Right now.” The mage did.<br /><br />“You can’t help him by rushing in.”<br /><br />“Well, what can we do?” hissed Sirendor.<br /><br />“I’m not sure.” Denser shrugged. “I might be able to do something. You might as well get your friends. They won’t find anything out there and they could prove useful in here.”<br /><br />Sirendor paused in the act of heading for the door. “Nothing stupid, you understand? If he dies because of you . . .”<br /><br />Denser nodded. “I’ll wait.”<br /><br />“See that you do.” Sirendor left the antechamber at a sprint, not realising he was about to confirm all of Ilkar’s fears.<br /><br />Hirad would have run, only he’d come too far into the room, and anyway, he didn’t think his legs would support him, they were shaking that badly. He just stood and stared.<br /><br />The Dragon’s head was resting on its front claws and the first coherent thought that entered Hirad’s mind was that from the bottom of its lower jaw to the top of its head, it was getting on for as tall as he was. The mouth itself must have been more than three feet across, the whole muzzle probably five in depth. Those eyes sat atop, and at the base of, the muzzle. They were close set, rimmed with thick horn, and the pupils were narrow black slits, ringed in a startling blue. A pronounced ridge of bone ran away over the Dragon’s head toward its spine, and Hirad could see the mound of its body behind it, huge and shining.<br /><br />As he watched, it carefully unfurled its wings and the reason for the size of the room became all too obvious. With their roots at the top of the torso, above the front limbs, the wings stretched to what must have been forty feet on either side, and flapped lazily. With the balance afforded by them, the Dragon picked its head from the floor and stood upright.<br /><br />Even with its slender, bone-edged neck arched so its eyes never left Hirad, it towered sixty feet into the hall. Its tail curled away to the left and was thicker than a man’s body even at its tip. Stretched out, the Dragon would surely have been well in excess of one hundred and twenty feet in length, but now it rested on two massive rear limbs, each foot carrying a quartet of claws bigger than the barbarian’s head. And it was gold, all over—skin glistening in the firelight and sparkling on the walls.<br /><br />Hirad could hear its breathing, slow and deep. It opened its mouth wide, revealing long rows of fangs, and saliva dripped to the floor to evaporate on contact.<br /><br />It raised a forelimb, single hooked claw extended. Hirad took an involuntary pace backward. He swallowed hard, sweat suddenly covering his body. He was quaking from head to foot.<br /><br />“Fuck me,” he breathed.<br /><br />Hirad had always believed that he’d die with his sword in his hand but, in the moments before the huge claw dismembered him, it seemed such a futile gesture. A calmness replaced the instant’s fury that had itself so quickly followed his fear, and he sheathed his blade and looked straight into the creature’s eyes.<br /><br />The blow never came. Instead, the Dragon retracted its claw, unarched its neck and moved its head down and forward, coming to a stop no more than three paces from Hirad, hot, sour breath firing into his face.<br /><br />“Interesting,” it said in a voice that echoed through Hirad’s entire being. The barbarian’s legs finally gave way and he sat heavily on the tiled floor. His mouth was wide, his jaws were moving but no sound came.<br /><br />“Now,” said the Dragon. “Let us talk about a few things.”<br /><br /><br /><strong>Chapter 2</strong><br /><br />“Who are these Dragonene, then?” hissed Sirendor.Ilkar turned to him. “All mages. They have, I don’t know, an affinity, you know, with Dragons.” He gestured uselessly.<br /><br />“No, I don’t bloody know! Dragons don’t exist. They are just rumour and myth.” Sirendor’s voice was still barely more than a whisper.<br /><br />“Oh yeah? Well that’s one hell of a big myth I can see in there!” Ilkar’s ears pricked.<br /><br />“Does it really matter?” The Unknown’s voice, though quiet, still carried all its power. “We only have one question that needs answering now.”<br /><br />The Raven trio and Denser were all crowded around the partially open door to the Dragon’s chamber, animosity forgotten for a while. Hirad sat with his back to them, his hands on the floor behind his back, and his legs drawn half up. The Dragon’s head was scant feet from the barbarian’s, the huge mound of its body resting on the ground, its wings folded. It was the scale of it all that Ilkar found so hard to take in.<br /><br />Never mind that he had only half believed the books and the teaching. He had still imagined Dragons and he imagined they would be big; but Hirad looked so tiny in comparison that he had to look away and back before he decided that Sirendor was wrong and they weren’t seeing an illusion. And he still didn’t really believe it.<br /><br />“He should be dead,” muttered The Unknown, his hands tightening and untightening around the hilt of his sword. “Why hasn’t it killed him?”<br /><br />“We think they’re talking,” said Denser.<br /><br />“What?” Ilkar couldn’t hear a thing. As far as he was concerned they were just staring at each other. But as Ilkar watched, his powerful eyes giving the scene complete clarity, Hirad shook his head and straightened his back so he could use his hands to make a gesture. He indicated behind him and said something but the mage couldn’t pick out the words. The Dragon cocked its head to one side and opened its mouth, revealing the massed ranks of its fangs. Liquid dripped to the floor and Hirad started.<br /><br />“What do you mean, ‘we’?” demanded Sirendor. Denser didn’t reply.<br /><br />“Later, Sirendor,” said The Unknown. “We have to think of something to do. Quickly.”<br /><br />“What the hell can they be talking about?” No one had an answer. Ilkar looked back to the unreal scene in the huge chamber and a glint caught his eye. For a moment he assumed it was a reflection off the Dragon’s beautiful scales but it wasn’t a golden colour, more a steel or a silver.<br /><br />He stared hard, using all the range that his eyes afforded him, and there it was: a small disc, maybe a palm’s width across and attached to a chain which seemed to be caught around one of the Dragon’s large hind-foot claws. He pointed it out to Denser.<br /><br />“Where?” asked the other mage.<br /><br />“Its right foot, third talon along.” Ilkar pointed the way. Denser shook his head.<br /><br />“Those are good eyes, aren’t they? Hold on.” Denser mumbled a few words and rubbed a thumb on either eye. He looked again and tensed.<br /><br />“What is it? Don’t try to—”<br /><br />“Just pray Hirad keeps it talking,” said Denser, and he began mumbling again.<br /><br />“What are you talking about?” hissed Ilkar. “What have you seen?”<br /><br />“Trust me. I can save him,” said Denser. “And just be ready to run.” He took a pace forward and disappeared.<br /><br />“Look, this is really hard for me to take in,” said Hirad. The Dragon put its head on one side and stretched its jaws a little. A line of saliva dripped from a fang and Hirad moved his leg reflexively to avoid it.<br /><br />“Explain,” ordered the Dragon, the word bypassing the barbarian’s ears on its way to thump through his skull.<br /><br />“Well, you have to understand that never in my wildest drunken dreams did I ever imagine I’d be sitting and talking to a—a Dragon.” He gestured and raised his eyebrows. “I mean I . . .” He trailed off. The Dragon flared its nostrils and Hirad felt his hair move in the breeze of its breath. He had to fight himself not to gag at the smell, rotten with that burned sourness.<br /><br />“And now?” it asked.<br /><br />“I’m absolutely terrified.” Hirad felt cold. He was still shivering intermittently and he felt as though his sweat was freezing on his body, yet the room was hot, very hot. Large fires crackled and snapped in ten grates set around the far half of the hall, surrounding the Dragon on three sides, and the beast himself was sitting in what looked like soft wet mud. He rested back on his hands once again.<br /><br />“Fear is healthy. As is knowing when you are beaten. That is why you are still alive.” The Dragon twitched its left wing. “So, tell me, what are you doing here?”<br /><br />“We were chasing someone. He came in here.”<br /><br />“Yes, I thought that you would not be by yourself. Who were you chasing?”<br /><br />The barbarian couldn’t help but smile; the whole situation was getting quite beyond him. Although he was, he was sure, talking to a beast he had only heard of in rumour, he couldn’t dispel the idea that it was all some kind of illusion. Something with a sensible explanation, anyway.<br /><br />“A mage. His men killed one of my friends. We want him . . . have you . . . seen anyone?” said Hirad. It was simply too much. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m having trouble even believing you exist.”<br /><br />The Dragon laughed, or at least it was a sound that Hirad thought was laughter. It boomed around his skull like waves striking a cliff and he juddered and closed his eyes as the pain that followed smashed at his brain. And then those fangs were inches from his face and the nostrils blew gouts of hot air into his eyes. Hirad started violently but before he could experience the shock of the Dragon’s speed of movement, it twitched its head up, catching him on the point of his jaw. He was hurled backward to slide across the tiles, coming to rest, dazed. He sat up and massaged his chin, blood running from a deep graze.<br /><br />“And now, little man, do you still have trouble believing I exist?”<br /><br />“I . . . No, I don’t think so . . .”<br /><br />“And nor you should. Seran believes in me, although he has failed me now. And your friends beyond that door. I am sure they believe.” The Dragon’s voice inside his head was louder now. Hirad got to his feet and walked toward the beast, shaking his head to clear his mind of the fog that encased it.<br /><br />“Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to offend.” Hirad’s heart was pounding in his throat once more. Another sound from the Dragon. Perhaps another laugh, but this time it sounded dismissive, somehow.<br /><br />“But you questioned my very existence,” said the Dragon. “Perhaps you are lucky that I am slow to offend. Or perhaps that I am slow to question yours.” Hirad tried to slow his breathing and think, but there seemed to be no way out. The only question remaining was how long before the Dragon tired of the game and snuffed out his life.<br /><br />“Yes.” Hirad shrugged and waited to die. “But you must understand that you were the last thing I expected to find here.”<br /><br />“Ah.” Feelings of amusement arose in Hirad’s mind. “Then I have disappointed you. Perhaps I should be apologising to you.” The Dragon laughed again. More quietly this time, more in thought than in mirth.<br /><br />There was a faint rustling by Hirad’s left ear, then a voice, just audible:<br /><br />“Don’t react to my voice and don’t say anything. I am Denser, the man you are after, and I’m trying to help you.” He paused. “So when I say run, run hard. Don’t argue and don’t look back.”<br /><br />“Now, little man. Ask me a question.”<br /><br />“What?” Hirad blinked and returned his attention to the Dragon, amazed that he could forget, however momentarily, that it was there.<br /><br />“Ask. There must be something you want to know about me.” The Dragon withdrew its head somewhat, its neck arching high above the mound of its body.<br /><br />“All right then. Why didn’t you kill me?”<br /><br />“Because your reaction in putting up your sword set you as different from other men I have encountered. It made you interesting, and very few humans are interesting.”<br /><br />“If you say so. So what are you doing here?”<br /><br />“Resting. Recovering. I am safe here.”<br /><br />Hirad frowned. “Safe from what?” The Dragon shifted. Moving its hind feet slightly further apart, it placed its head on the floor once more and stared deep into Hirad’s eyes, blinking slowly.<br /><br />“My world is at war. We are devastating our lands and there is no end in sight. When we need to recover our strength we use safe havens like this.”<br /><br />“And where exactly is this?” Hirad’s gaze took in the high roof and the scale of the chamber.<br /><br />“At least you have the sense to know you are not in your own dimension.”<br /><br />“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about with dimensions. I’m sorry. All I know is that Taranspike Castle does not have a room this size.”<br /><br />The Dragon chuckled again. “So simple. If only you knew the effort it took for you to stand here.” It lifted its head slightly and shook it from side to side, closing its eyes. It spoke again without opening them. “The moment you left Seran’s chambers, you entered a robing room. That room is not placed in any one dimension, neither is this chamber nor the prayer chamber you also must have seen. If you like, this is a corridor between dimensions, yours and mine. Its existence is reliant on the fabric of your dimension remaining intact.” Now the head raced in again, the Dragon’s wings bracing slightly to compensate for the sudden movement. “My Brood serve as protectors for your world, keeping you from the attentions of enemy Broods and withholding from you that which should never have been created.”<br /><br />“Why do you bother?”<br /><br />“Do not think it is for any liking of your insignificant peoples. Very few of you are worthy of our respect. It is simply that if we allowed you the means to destroy yourselves and you succeeded in so doing, we would lose our haven forever. That is also why the door to your world is kept closed. Other Broods might otherwise choose to travel here to rule.”<br /><br />Hirad thought on that for a moment. “So what you’re saying is that you hold the future for all of us.”<br /><br />The Dragon raised the bone ridges that served as its eyebrows. “That is certainly one conclusion you could reach. Now—what is your name?”<br /><br />“Hirad Coldheart.”<br /><br />“And I am Sha-Kaan. You are strong, Hirad Coldheart. I was right to spare you and speak to you and I will know you again. But now I must have rest. Take your companions and go. The entrance will be sealed behind you. You will never find me again, though I may find you. As for Seran, I will have to find another to serve me. I have no time for a Dragonene who cannot secure my sanctuary.”<br /><br />It took the barbarian several heartbeats to take in what he had just heard and he still didn’t believe it. “You’re letting me go?”<br /><br />“Why not?”<br /><br />“Run. Hirad. Run now.”<br /><br />The Dragon’s head swept from the floor at speed, eyes ablaze, searching for the source of the new sound. But Denser remained invisible. Hirad hesitated.<br /><br />“Run!” Denser shouted, the voice some way to Hirad’s left.<br /><br />The barbarian looked up at Sha-Kaan and their eyes met for an instant. He saw raw fury. “Oh, no,” he breathed. The Dragon broke eye contact to look down at its right hind foot. Hirad turned and ran.<br /><br />“NO!” Now Sha-Kaan’s voice was there for all to hear, and it echoed from the walls. “Give back what you have taken from me!”<br /><br />“Over here!” shouted Denser, and as Hirad glanced right, the mage appeared briefly some thirty paces right along the wall from the double doors. The Dragon cocked its head and breathed in his direction, fire scorching a wall, rolling up to the ceiling and incinerating wood and tapestry, but Denser had already disappeared. An oppressive wave of heat washed over Hirad. He stumbled, crying out, gasping momentarily for breath, the roar of the flame and its detonation in the air shaking him to his core. The entire hall seemed to be ablaze; the sweat beaded on his face. Through the smoke and burning threads of tapestry he saw The Unknown appear at the door, holding it open for him. A shadow passed through it and then he heard the Dragon rise to its feet. The Unknown paled visibly.<br /><br />“Run, Hirad. Run!” he screamed. The Dragon took a pace forward, and then another, Hirad feeling the ground shudder beneath its feet.<br /><br />“Bring back what you have stolen!” it boomed. Hirad made the door.<br /><br />“Close it!” shouted The Unknown. He and Sirendor leant their weights against it. “Go, go!” They scrambled for the doors into the central chamber. Ilkar and Denser sprinted away with Sirendor in close pursuit. Sha-Kaan breathed again and the huge double doors exploded inward, fragmenting, sending wood and metal against the walls to splinter, twist and smoulder. The shock sent Hirad sprawling and he crashed into the wall that backed the unlit fireplace, burning shards of wood covering the floor and his boots, the intense heat suffocating him. He lay confused for a second, seeing nothing but flame, then looked straight at Sha-Kaan as the Dragon drew more air into its lungs, its head thrust through the wreckage of the crested doors.<br /><br />The barbarian closed his eyes, waiting for the end, but a hand reached round and grabbed his collar, hauling him to his feet and through the right-hand of the two doors into the central chamber. The Unknown dragged him under the overhang of the fire grate as twin lances of flame seared through the openings, one to either side of them, disintegrating wood and howling away toward the opposite wall, melting the metal of the Dragonene crest above the fire to the right.<br /><br />“Come on, Hirad. It’s time to leave,” said the big warrior, and he pushed Hirad toward the exit passage after the rest of the retreating party.<br /><br />“Bring back the amulet!” roared Sha-Kaan. “Hirad Coldheart, bring back the amulet!” Hirad hesitated again, but The Unknown shoved him into the passage as another burst of flame lashed the large chamber, its pulse of heat stealing breath and singeing hair.<br /><br />“Quickly!” shouted Sirendor from up ahead. “The exit is closing. We can’t hold it.”<br /><br />The two men upped their pace, tearing down the passageway and into the robing room. Another roll of flame boiled into the prayer chamber, its tendrils lashing down the passage, licking at Hirad’s back, the heat crinkling leather. Down the short entry tunnel Hirad could see Ilkar, arms outstretched, sweating in the light of a lantern as whatever spell he had cast kept the door at bay. But as he ran, he could see it inching closed. Ilkar sighed and closed his eyes.<br /><br />“He’s losing it!” yelled Denser. “He’s losing it. Run faster!” The door was sliding closed, the mage’s bedroom disappearing with every step. Sha-Kaan’s howls were loud in their ears. The Unknown and Hirad made it through, bowling Ilkar on to the floor as they did so. The door closed with a dull thud and the Dragon’s voice was silenced.<br /><br />Ilkar, Hirad and The Unknown picked themselves up and dusted themselves off. The barbarian nodded his thanks to the big man, who in turn nodded at the now closed entrance. There was nothing, no mark in the wall at all to suggest that there had ever been a door there.<br /><br />“We were in another dimension. I knew the proportions were all wrong in there.”<br /><br />“Not exactly another dimension,” corrected Ilkar. “Between dimensions is more accurate, I think.” He kneeled by the prone mage. “Well, well, well. Seran a Dragonene.” He felt for a pulse. “Dead, I’m afraid.”<br /><br />“And he won’t be the only one.” Hirad turned on Denser. “You should have run while you had the chance.” He advanced, sword in hand, but Denser merely shrugged and continued to stroke the cat in his arms.<br /><br />“Hirad.” The Unknown’s voice was quiet but commanding. The barbarian stopped, eyes still locked on Denser. “The fight is over. If you kill him now, it’s murder.”<br /><br />“His little adventure killed Ras. It might have killed me, too. He—”<br /><br />“Remember who you are, Hirad. We have a code.” The Unknown was standing at his shoulder now. “We are The Raven.”<br /><br />Eventually, Hirad nodded and put up his sword.<br /><br />“Besides,” said Ilkar. “He’s got a lot of explaining to do.”<br /><br />“I saved your life,” said Denser, frowning. Hirad was on him in a moment, pinning his head to the wall with a forearm under the chin. The cat hissed and scrambled to safety.<br /><br />“Saved my life?” The barbarian’s face was inches from Denser’s. “That’s your phrase for having me all but burned to a crisp, is it? The Unknown saved my life after you risked it. You ought to die for that alone.”<br /><br />“How—” protested the mage. “I got its attention to let you run!”<br /><br />“But there was no need, was there?” Hirad grunted as he saw confusion in Denser’s eyes. “It was letting me go, Xetesk man.” Hirad stepped back a pace, releasing the mage, who felt his neck gingerly. “You risked my life just to steal. I hope it was worth it.” He turned to the rest of The Raven.<br /><br />“I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath on this bastard. We have a Vigil to observe.”<br /><br />Alun shoved the note across the table, his hands shaking. More hands covered his, they were strong and comforting.<br /><br />“Try to be calm, Alun, at least we know they are alive, so we have a chance.”<br /><br />Alun looked into the face of his friend, Thraun, whose powerful body was squeezed in on the other side of the table. Thraun was huge, better than six feet in height, with massively powerful shoulders and upper body. His heavy features sprang from a young face and his shining-clean blond hair was gathered in a ponytail which reached halfway to his waist. He was regarding Alun with his yellow-ringed deep green eyes, earnest and concerned.<br /><br />He flicked his head, the ponytail swishing briefly into view, and looked around the inn. It was busy with lunchtime traffic and the noise of the patrons ebbed and flowed around them. Tables were scattered around the timbered floor, and here and there, booths like the one in which they sat gave an element of privacy.<br /><br />“What does it say, Will?” Thraun’s voice, as deep and gravelled as his barrel chest might suggest, cut through Alun’s misery. He removed his hands from Alun’s. Will sat next to him, a small man, wiry, bright-eyed and black-bearded, thinning on top. Will pulled at his nose with thumb and forefinger, his brows arrowing together as he read.<br /><br />“Not a lot. ‘Your mage wife has been taken for questioning concerning the activities of the Dordovan College. She will be released unharmed assuming she cooperates. As will your sons. There will be no further communication.’”<br /><br />“So we know where she is, then,” said the third member of the trio whom Alun had enlisted. An elf, Jandyr was young, with a long and slender face, clear blue oval eyes and a short tidy blond beard that matched the colour of his cropped hair.<br /><br />“Yes, we do,” agreed Thraun. “And we know how far we can trust the words on that note.” He licked his lips and shovelled another forkful of meat into his mouth.<br /><br />“You’ve got to help me!” Alun’s eyes flicked desperately over them all, never coming to rest. Thraun looked right and across. Both Will and Jandyr inclined their heads.<br /><br />“We’ll do it,” said Thraun, through his chewing. “And we’ll have to be quick. The chances of him releasing them are very slim.” Alun nodded.<br /><br />“You really think so?” asked Will.<br /><br />“The boys are mage twins,” said Thraun. “They will be powerful and they are Dordovan. Alun will tell you himself, when they’ve finished with Erienne, they will probably kill them. We have to get them out.” He looked back at Alun. “It won’t be cheap.”<br /><br />“Whatever it costs, I don’t care.”<br /><br />“Of course, I’ll work for nothing,” said Thraun.“No, my friend, you won’t.” A half smile cracked Alun’s face. Tears glinted in his eyes. “I just want them home.”<br /><br />“And home they will be. Now,” Thraun rose, “I’m taking you home. You rest, we’ll plan, and I’ll be back later in the day.”<br /><br />Thraun helped Alun from the bench and the two men walked slowly from the inn.Richmond and Talan had moved Ras’s body to a quiet chamber carved out of the mountain into which the castle was built. Candles burned next to him, one for each point of the compass. His face was clean and shaven, his armour sewn and washed, his arms lay by his sides and his sword in its scabbard was laid along his body from his chin to his thighs.<br /><br />Richmond did not look up from his kneeling position as Hirad, Sirendor, The Unknown and Ilkar entered. Talan, standing by the door, inclined his head to each of them as they passed him.<br /><br />Ranged around the central table on which Ras lay, The Raven, heads bowed, paid their respects to their fallen friend. Each man remembered. Each man grieved. But only two spoke.<br /><br />As the candles burned low, Richmond stood and resheathed his sword.<br /><br />“My soul I pledge to your memory. I am yours to command from beyond the veil of death. When you call I shall answer. While I breathe, these are my promises.” His last was a bitter whisper. “I wasn’t there. I am sorry.” He looked to The Unknown, who nodded and moved to the table, walking around it. Beginning at Ras’s head, he snuffed the candles as he reached them.<br /><br />“By north, by east, by south, by west. Though you are gone, you will always be Raven and we shall always remember. The Gods will smile on your soul. Fare well in whatever faces you now and ever.”<br /><br />Again silence, but now in darkness.<br /><br />Denser remained in Seran’s chambers. The dead mage was lying on his bed under a sheet. For his part, Denser couldn’t work out why he was still alive, but he was grateful. The whole of Balaia would be grateful, but no City would be breathing easier than Xetesk that the barbarian had been stopped.<br /><br />The cat nuzzled his legs. Denser sagged down the wall and sat.<br /><br />“I wonder if this really is it,” said Denser, turning the amulet over and over in his hands. “I think it is but I have to know.” The cat gazed into his eyes. No clue there. “The question is, do we have the strength to do it?” The cat jumped into his cloak, nestling into the warmth of Denser’s body.<br /><br />It fed.<br /><br />“Yes,” said Denser. “Yes, we do.” He closed his eyes and felt the mana form around him. This would be difficult but he had to know. A communion over such a distance was a strain on mind and body. Knowledge and glory would come at a price if they came at all.<br /><br />They buried Ras outside the castle walls, branding the ground with The Raven mark; a simple profile of the bird’s head, single eye enlarged and wing curved above the head.<br /><br />All but Richmond left the graveside, tired and hungry. For the lone warrior, kneeling in the cool damp of a windy, moonless night, the Vigil would last until dawn.<br /><br />Sitting at a table in the huge kitchens, Ilkar described the events through the dimension door to Talan. It was only then that Hirad started to shake.<br /><br />Picking up his mug of coffee from the table, he stared at it wobbling in his hands, liquid slopping out over his fingers.<br /><br />“You all right?” asked Sirendor.<br /><br />“I’m not sure,” said Hirad. “I don’t think so.” He raised the mug to his lips but couldn’t close his mouth on it. The coffee dribbled down his chin. His heart slammed in his chest and his pulse thumped in his neck. Sweat began to prickle his forehead and dampen his armpits. Images of Sha-Kaan’s head flooded his mind. That and the fire all around him, hemming him in. He could feel the heat again and it made his palms itch. He dropped the mug.“<br /><br />Gods in the ground, Hirad, what’s wrong?” Sirendor’s voice betrayed alarm. The barbarian half smiled. He must look as terrified as he felt. “You need to lie down.”<br /><br />“Give me a moment,” said Hirad. “I don’t think my legs’ll carry me anyway.” He glanced around the table. They were all staring at him, their food forgotten. He shrugged. “I didn’t even believe they existed,” he said in explanation. “So big. So . . . so huge. And right here!” He put a quivering palm in front of his face. “Too powerful. I can’t—” He broke off, shuddering the length of his body. Plates and cutlery on the table rattled. Tears fogged his vision and he felt his heart trip-hammering. He swallowed hard.<br /><br />“What did it talk about?” asked Ilkar.<br /><br />“Loud. He thundered in my head,” said Hirad. “He talked about dimensions and portals and he wanted to know what I was doing. Huh. Funny . . . that huge and he cared what I was doing. Me. I’m so small but he called me strong.” He shivered again. “He said he’d know me. He had my life. He could have crushed me just like that. Snuffed me out. Why didn’t he? I wish I could remember everything.”<br /><br />“Hirad, you’re mumbling,” said Sirendor. “I think we should leave this for another time.”<br /><br />“Sorry, I think I’ll lie down now, if you’ll help me.”<br /><br />“Sure thing, old friend.” Sirendor smiled. He pushed back the bench and helped Hirad to shaky feet.<br /><br />“Gods. I feel like I’ve been sick for a week.”<br /><br />“You’ve been sick all your life.”<br /><br />“Sod off, Larn.”<br /><br />“I would, but you’d fall over.”<br /><br />“Make sure he drinks plenty of hot, sweet liquid,” said The Unknown as the friends shambled past. “Nothing alcoholic.”<br /><br />“Is the Xetesk mage still here?” asked Hirad. The Unknown nodded.<br /><br />“In Seran’s chambers,” said Ilkar. “Asleep. Hardly surprising after the casting he’s done today. He won’t be leaving until I’ve spoken to him.”<br /><br />“You should have let me kill him.”<br /><br />The Unknown smiled. “You know I couldn’t.”<br /><br />“Yes. Come on, Larn, or I’ll collapse where I’m standing.”<br /><br />The two men sat in low chairs either side of a fire long dead. Night hurried to engulf the College City of Xetesk and, in response, lanterns glowed, keeping the dark at bay and lighting up the massed shelves of books that stood at every wall in the small study. On a desk kept meticulously tidy, a single candle burned above the ribboned and titled sheaves of papers.<br /><br />Far below the study, the College quietened. Late lectures took place behind closed doors, spells were honed and adjusted in the armoured chambers of the catacombs, but the air outside was still.<br /><br />Beyond the walls of the College, Xetesk still moved, but as full night fell, that movement would cease. The City existed to serve the College, and the College had in the past exacted a heavy price for its own existence. Inns would lock their doors, patrons staying until first light; shops and businesses feeding off those who fed off the College would shutter their windows. Houses would show no light or welcome.<br /><br />No longer did Protectors issue from the College to snatch subjects for experiment. And no longer did Xetesk mages use their own people for sacrifice in mana-charge ceremonies. But old fears died hard and rumours would forever fly through the markets that bustled by day but echoed silence at night.<br /><br />As darkness fell, a malevolent quiet still emanated from the College in a cloying cloud of apprehension and anxiety like fog rolling in from the sea. Countless years of blood ritual would never be forgotten and forever hearts would quicken at the sound of wood splintering in the distant dark, and cries would be stifled as footsteps were heard slowing by locked doors. Dread ran through the veins of Xetesk and the foreboding receded only with the lightening of the sky on a new morning.<br /><br />It made the job of City Guard simple, as at dusk they closed the gates of the only fully walled City in Balaia and patrolled the empty streets. Fear stalked the alleyways as it had done for centuries. But now it was a legacy. It had no substance.<br /><br />Change was so slow and the City was suffocating. Few native Xeteskians had left to enjoy the freedom granted them by the latest Lord of the Mount as his first action on assuming the mantle of the College’s ruling mage. And in the twelve years since, Styliann had encountered nothing but reluctance to cast aside the old ways, as if his people drew perverse comfort from living in fear of everyone they met. Yet now, his failure to change the collective will and mind of his people could work to his advantage.<br /><br />Styliann was an imposing figure, well in excess of six foot, with the body of a forty-year-old disguising his true age of somewhere over fifty. His hair, receding halfway across his skull, was long, dark and brushed hard into a ponytail that reached beyond his shoulders. He wore dark trousers and a shirt of deepest blue, and his cloak of office, gold-trimmed black, was draped about his shoulders. His nose was long and thin, his jaw set harsh and his cold green eyes scared all they looked upon.<br /><br />“I take it she escaped Terenetsa unharmed?” asked his companion across the fireplace.<br /><br />Styliann blinked several times and shook his head to clear his mind of his reverie. He regarded Nyer, a senior aide and archmage, for a few moments, remembering the old maxim concerning where to keep your friends and enemies. He thought he had Nyer, a wily political animal and sharp thinker, placed about right.<br /><br />“Yes, she did. Just. And she’s now well clear.” He shivered at the memory of his recent contact with Selyn, anxious for the mage spy’s safety. Even under a CloakedWalk, she had been at risk from those she watched and the manner of her escape from Terenetsa, a small Wesmen farming community not far west of the Blackthorne Mountains, would trouble his dreams that night. He reached a slightly tremulous hand down to a low table and picked up his wine, a deep and heavy red that had not kept as well as he’d hoped. He felt tired. Communion over such a range sapped the strength and he knew he would need to visit the catacombs for prayer later that evening.<br /><br />“But something is troubling you, my Lord.”<br /><br />“Hmm.” Styliann pursed his lips, knowing any reluctance to speak would be taken by Nyer as a personal slight. He couldn’t afford that. Not yet. “She saw everything we have been fearing. The Wesmen are subjugating villages near the Blackthornes. She heard the Shaman offer them life for crops and obedience. The evidence is just overwhelming. They are massing armies, they are united and the Shaman magic is strong.”<br /><br />Nyer nodded, pushing his hand through his long greying hair.<br /><br />“And Parve?” he asked.“I have asked her to travel there.”<br /><br />“Selyn?”<br /><br />“Yes. There is no one else and we must have answers.”<br /><br />“But, my Lord—”<br /><br />“I am well aware of the risks, Nyer!” snapped Styliann. His expression softened immediately. “My apologies.”<br /><br />“Not at all,” said Nyer. He placed a comforting hand briefly on Styliann’s knee.<br /><br />“We must be so careful now,” said Styliann after another sip of wine. “Are our Watchers sure the Wytch Lords are still held?”<br /><br />Nyer breathed out, a long, sighing sound. “We believe so.”<br /><br />“That isn’t good enough.”<br /><br />“Please, Styliann, let me explain.” Nyer’s use of his Lord’s name was against protocol but Styliann let it go. Nyer was an old mage who rarely followed etiquette. “The spells to determine that the Wytch Lords are still in the mana cage are complex and are nearing completion for this quarter. Delays have been caused through unusually high activity in the interdimensional space in which the cage is located.”<br /><br />“When will we have an answer?” Styliann pulled an embroidered cord next to the fireplace.<br /><br />“In the next few hours. A day at most.” Nyer raised his eyebrows in apology.<br /><br />“You know it’s only a matter of time, don’t you?”<br /><br />“My Lord?”<br /><br />“The evidence is all there.” Styliann sighed. “The unification of the Wesmen tribes, Shamen at the head of war parties, armies building in the southwest . . .”<br /><br />“Must it be the Wytch Lords?”<br /><br />“You don’t really need me to answer that question, do you?” Styliann smiled. Nyer shook his head. There was a knock at the door.<br /><br />“Come!” barked Styliann. A young man entered, short red hair riding above a face taut with trepidation.<br /><br />“My Lord?”<br /><br />“Bring up a fire and another bottle of this rather average Denebre red.”<br /><br />“At once, my Lord.” The young man left.<br /><br />The two senior mages paused in their conversation, contemplating the future and not liking what they saw.<br /><br />“Can we stop them this time?” asked Nyer.<br /><br />“I fear that rather relies on your man,” replied Styliann. “At least as much as the timing of the Wytch Lords’ escape. He has reported, I take it?”<br /><br />“He has, and we now hold the amulet.”<br /><br />“Excellent!” Styliann slapped the arms of his chair with the palms of his hands and rose. He walked over to the window, hardly daring to ask his next question. “And?”<br /><br />“It is Septern’s amulet. We can make progress now, assuming we get the right help.”<br /><br />Styliann breathed deeply and smiled as he looked out of his Tower high above the College. The Tower dominated the College and its encircling balcony gave him unrivalled views of the City and its surrounds. The night was cool but dry. A thin cloud was bubbling up from the southeast, threatening to obscure the countless thousands of stars whose pale light pinpricked the dark. The smell of oil fires and the heat of the City wafted on a slight breeze, not unpleasant to the senses. Beyond the College walls, the quiet was growing.<br /><br />Styliann’s Tower was encircled by those of his six Mage Masters but stood far taller. Looking down, he saw lights burning in Laryon’s Tower too. The most recently appointed Master, he was a man who would now have to join the inner circle, completing the seven-tower bond.<br /><br />“This could mean everything to us,” he said.<br /><br />“Laryon has worked hard,” said Nyer, coming to his side. “He has earned the credit.”<br /><br />“And your man. He’ll see the necessary help is obtained?”<br /><br />“I have every confidence.”<br /><br />Styliann nodded and gazed out over Xetesk, at ease that his people would obey his every order without question. The first step had been successfully taken but now the way would become fraught and those who knew enough would have to be kept close.<br /><br />“I think, Nyer, that when the wine arrives, we may permit ourselves a small celebration.”<br /><br /><strong>Chapter 3</strong><br /><br />She lay back on the bed again, the pounding in her head bringing sweeping nausea through her body. She shuddered, prayed that she’d been sick for the last time but not really believing she had.<br /><br />Every muscle ached, clotted with pain, every tendon strained. Her skin felt so tight across her chest it would split if she dared breathe in deep, and her shallow, gasping intakes drew whimpers as they stretched her tortured lungs. It would subside. However, having no idea how long she had been out, she had no idea when the symptoms would fade.<br /><br />But the physical pain coursing through her body was as nothing to the well in her heart and soul, opened by the loss of her sons. Her reason to live. For them, her body quaked and shivered. She reached out with her mind, striving to touch theirs but knowing she could not and cursing her decision to delay the teaching of communion.<br /><br />Where were they? Were they together? Gods, she hoped so. Were they alive? The tears came as the drug eased its hold on her body just a little. Great heaving sobs tore through her being and her cries echoed around her prison. Eventually, exhausted, she slept again.<br /><br />Dawn and a second waking brought no relief from the agony of her loss. Pale light came through a single window high up in her circular room. She was in a tower, that much was certain. The room contained a small pallet bed, a desk and chair, and a woven rug whose red and gold had long ago faded but whose weight gave welcome insulation from the stone-flagged floor. She was still wearing the nightgown they had taken her in. She had not been wearing any socks, let alone shoes, and the room was chill. Dust covered every surface, puffing into the air around her body as she shifted uncomfortably on the bed. She pulled the blanket up around her shoulders.<br /><br />A single door commanded her attention. It was locked and bolted, its heavy wood flush in the stone frame of the tower wall. The tears came again, but this time she was strong enough to force them back, driving her mind to seek the mana and a way out of the tower. It was there, pulsing within her and flowing around her, never stopping, always shifting and changing, urgent and random in its direction. Escape was just an incantation away. The door would prove no barrier to her FlameOrb.<br /><br />But even as she readied to cast, the words came back. If you cast, your boys will die. Her senses returned and she found she was standing. She sagged into the chair.<br /><br />“Patience,” she said. “Patience.” Anger in a mage could be so destructive, and while she didn’t know the fate of her sons, she couldn’t afford to lose the famously short Malanvai family temper.<br /><br />While the yearning in her heart and the ache in her womb intensified with every passing second, her mind was beginning to see clearly at last. They had known she was a mage because they took her from Dordover for something specific. But they also wanted control. And controlling a conscious mage is difficult without restraint and violence. But they had found a way to chain her through her sons. It was for that reason she believed them alive. And not only that, close. Because whoever took her must know she wouldn’t help them without seeing her boys first. Hope surged within her but the flicker of joy she felt at an imminent reunion died as she saw her locked door.<br /><br />Her heart turned over at the thought of her boys, so young, so alone and so frightened. Snatched in the middle of the night and locked in a place they wouldn’t recognise or comprehend. How must they feel? Betrayed. Abandoned by those who claimed to love them the most. Terrified by their solitude and helplessness. Traumatised by separation from their mother.<br /><br />Fury bubbled beneath the hurt.<br /><br />“Patience,” she murmured. “Patience.” They would have to come soon. While a jug of water had been left on the desk, there was no food in the room.<br /><br />She fixed her eyes on the door while hatred for her captors seethed in her veins, the brophane dragged at her strength and her body pulsed mana and love to her children.<br /><br />But when the key finally turned and the man she had dreaded seeing stood before her, she could do nothing but sob her thanks at his words.<br /><br />“Welcome to my castle, Erienne Malanvai. I trust you are recovering. Now, I think we had better reunite you with your beautiful little boys.”<br /><br /><em>It was cold and he sat alone on cracked earth in a vast featureless empty space. There was no wind yet something was moving his hair and when he looked in front of him the Dragon was there. Its head was big, he couldn’t see the rest of its body. It breathed on him and he just sat there as the skin was burnt from his face and his bones darkened and split. He opened his mouth to scream but nothing came out. He was flying above the land and it was black and smouldering. The sky above him was thick with Dragons but on the ground nothing was moving. He looked for his hands but they weren’t there and he felt for his face but the flesh was gone. It was hot. He was running. His arms were pumping hard but his legs moved so slowly. It was catching him and there was nowhere to run. He fell and there it was in front of him again. It breathed and he just sat there as the skin was burnt from his face and his bones darkened and split. There was nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide and the heat scorched his eyes though he could not close them. He opened his mouth to scream.</em><br /><br />Hands were about his face. He was sitting up but there was no Dragon, no blackened land. The fire was roaring in the grate. Ilkar put down the poker he’d been using to whip up the flames. Hirad thought it must be cold but he felt hot. Very hot. Talan and The Unknown were sitting up in their beds and it was Sirendor who was cupping his face.<br /><br />“Calm down, Hirad. It’s over. Just a dream.”<br /><br />Hirad looked the room over again, breathing deeply, his heart beginning to slow.<br /><br />“Sorry,” he said.<br /><br />Sirendor patted his cheeks and rose to his feet. “Scared the life out of me,” he said. “I thought you were dying.”<br /><br />“So did I,” replied Hirad.<br /><br />“You and the rest of the castle,” said Ilkar, stretching and yawning.<br /><br />“Loud, was I?” Hirad managed a smile.<br /><br />Ilkar nodded. “Very. Do you remember what you were dreaming about?”<br /><br />“I’ll never be able to forget. It was Dragons. Thousands of Dragons. And Sha-Kaan. But it wasn’t here. Wherever it was was dead. Their world, I think. Sha-Kaan told me they were destroying it. It was black and burned. And Sha-Kaan burned me but I didn’t die. I just sat and screamed but there was no sound. I don’t understand. How can there be another world? Where is it?” He shivered.<br /><br />“I don’t know. All I do know is, I’ve never been so scared. Those things don’t exist.”<br /><br />“Yes they bloody do.”<br /><br />“You know what I mean,” said Sirendor. “You’ll have to talk to Ilkar. But later. Maybe we all should. All this talk of dimensions and Dragons. I don’t know.” He stopped. Hirad wasn’t really listening.<br /><br />“What time is it?”<br /><br />“Dawn’s about an hour away,” said The Unknown after hitching a drape aside.<br /><br />“I think I’ll pass on more sleep,” said Hirad. He got up and started pulling on his breeches and shirt. “I’m going to the kitchens for some coffee.” A look passed between Sirendor and the other three. Hirad couldn’t fathom it. “No problem, is there?”<br /><br />“No,” said Sirendor. “No problem. I’ll join you.”<br /><br />“Thanks.” Hirad smiled. So did Sirendor, but it seemed an effort for him. They left the room.<br /><br />The castle kitchens never closed and heat filled the cavernous rooms from six open fires. Work and eating tables covered much of the floor space, and on racks around the walls hung pots, pans and utensils, some of which defied understanding. Smoke poured up chimneys and steam through open windows high above. The heat of the fires gave the kitchens a consoling warmth, and the sounds of orders mixed with laughter and carried on the smells of roasting meat and the sweet aromas of freshly baked bread brought back memories of a home life long lost.<br /><br />On one of the fires a huge pot of water was kept boiling. Mugs and coffee grounds sat on trays near by. Ensconced at a table away from the clatterings of cooks and servants, the two men talked across their drinks.<br /><br />“You’re looking glum, Sirendor.” The friends locked eyes. Sirendor’s seemed sorrowful. His brow was furrowed and his whole face wore trouble like an ill-fitting shirt. Hirad wasn’t used to it.<br /><br />“We’ve been talking.”<br /><br />“Who?”<br /><br />“Who do you think? While you were asleep earlier.”<br /><br />“I don’t think I like the sound of this.” Whatever it was, it was serious. He hadn’t seen Sirendor like this for years.<br /><br />“We’re not getting any younger.”<br /><br />“You what?”<br /><br />“You heard.”<br /><br />“Larn, I am thirty-one! You’re thirty and the big man’s just thirty-three and he’s the oldest! What are you talking about?”<br /><br />“How many hired men do you know who are over thirty and still front-line quality?”<br /><br />Hirad drew breath. “Well, not many but, I mean . . . we’re different. We are The Raven.”<br /><br />“Yes, we are The Raven. And we’re getting too old to fight.”<br /><br />“You’re kidding! We hammered that lot yesterday.”<br /><br />“That’s the way you saw it, is it?” Hirad nodded. Sirendor smiled. “I somehow thought you might. The way I saw it is we didn’t have our edge.”<br /><br />“That’s because we spend too much time standing and watching. Like I said, if we don’t do it, we’ll lose it.”<br /><br />“Gods, Hirad, you’re stubborn in the face of the facts. Do you think it’s a coincidence that we’ve slowly taken fewer front-line contracts and more advisory and back-up jobs over the last couple of years?” Hirad said nothing. “What we had, that edge, has gone. When we were called in yesterday, we almost weren’t up to it.”<br /><br />“Oh, come on, Larn . . .”<br /><br />“Ras died?!” Sirendor looked around, then lowered his voice. “You could have died. Richmond made an unbelievable mistake and Ilkar lost the shield. If it hadn’t been for The Unknown we could have been wiped out. Us. The Raven!”<br /><br />“Yeah, but the explosion . . .”<br /><br />“You know as well as I do that two years ago we’d have been through them and at the mage before he had time to cast that spell. We have to adapt . . .” Sirendor trailed off. He took a gulp of his coffee. Hirad just stared at him.<br /><br />“Hirad, I want us to be able to look back on the good days in another ten years’ time. If we try and keep The Raven going as it is, there won’t be any ten years.”<br /><br />“One dodgy fight and you want to give up.”<br /><br />“It’s not just about one fight. But yesterday was a warning of what could happen any time. We’ve seen the signs these past two years. We all have. It’s just that you chose to ignore them.”<br /><br />“You want to disband The Raven, the rest of you?” asked Hirad. He was only half surprised to find his eyes moistening. His world was dropping to pieces before him and he couldn’t see a way out. Not yet.<br /><br />“Not necessarily. Perhaps just a rest to take stock.” Sirendor leant back a little and spread his hands wide. “God knows, none of us needs the money any more to be comfortable. I sometimes think we must own half of Korina between us.” He smiled briefly. “Look, the reason I’m bringing this up is that we want to have a meeting when we get back to the City. We need to talk it through, all of us, when we’ve had a little time to think.”<br /><br />Hirad stared into his coffee, letting the steam warm his face. Silent again.<br /><br />“If we go on pretending it’s still like it was a few years ago, one day we won’t be fast enough. Hirad?” The barbarian looked up. “Hirad, I don’t want to lose you the way we lost Ras.” Sirendor sucked his lip, then sighed. “I don’t want to see you die.”<br /><br />“You won’t.” Hirad’s voice was gruff. He swigged back his coffee and stood up, having to push his lips together to be sure they wouldn’t tremble. “I’m going to see to the horses,” he said at length. “We may as well make an early start.” He strode out of the kitchens and through the castle to the courtyard, where he stopped, staring at the place that might have witnessed The Raven’s last fight. He wiped angrily at his eyes and headed for the stables.<br /><br />Ilkar too decided against further rest and went instead to Seran’s chambers. The mage from Lystern, smallest of the four College Cities, had been moved to a low table in his study, a sheet covering his body. Ilkar pulled the sheet back from Seran’s face. He frowned.<br /><br />The dead mage’s skin was taut across his skull and his hair completely white. He hadn’t looked that way the previous evening. And the cut on his forehead, now it was clean, looked as if it had been made with a small claw.<br /><br />He heard movement behind him and turned to see Denser, the Xetesk mage, standing in the doorway to the bedroom. His pipe smoked gently in his mouth and the cat was in his cloak. Ilkar found the pipe incongruous. Denser was by no means an old man, though his exertions had given him an appearance well beyond his mid-thirties years.<br /><br />“An unfortunate result, but inevitable,” said Denser. He looked terribly tired. His face was grey and his eyes dark and sunken. He leaned against the door frame.<br /><br />“What happened to him?”<br /><br />Denser shrugged. “He was not a young man. We knew he might die.” He shrugged again. “There was no other way. He wanted to stop us.”<br /><br />“We.” In Ilkar’s mind, the coin dropped. “The cat.”<br /><br />“Yes. He’s a Familiar.”<br /><br />Ilkar pulled the sheet back over Seran’s head and moved toward Denser. “Come on, you’d better sit down before you fall down. There’s questions I need answering.”<br /><br />“I didn’t think this was a social call.” Denser smiled.<br /><br />“No.” Ilkar did not.<br /><br />Once seated, Ilkar looked at Denser sprawled on Seran’s bed and didn’t have to ask his first question. The Xeteskian wouldn’t have had the strength to try leaving the castle last night.<br /><br />“Overdid it yesterday, did you?” asked the Julatsan.<br /><br />“There was work to do once I had recovered this,” agreed Denser, pulling the amulet from his cloak, where it hung from its chain round his neck. “I presume this is what you wish to talk about.”<br /><br />Ilkar inclined his head. “What sort of work?”<br /><br />“I had to know whether it was the piece we were after.”<br /><br />“And was it?”<br /><br />“Yes.”<br /><br />“Xetesk sent you?”<br /><br />“Of course.”<br /><br />“And this battle?” Ilkar waved a hand around vaguely.<br /><br />“Well, let’s just say it was fairly easy to place me in an attack force but it wasn’t staged for my benefit, if that’s what you mean.”<br /><br />“So why didn’t you just join the garrison defence?”<br /><br />“With a Dragonene mage in residence? Hardly.” Denser chuckled. “I’m afraid Seran and Xetesk didn’t see eye to eye.”<br /><br />“Surprise, surprise,” muttered Ilkar.<br /><br />“Come now, Ilkar, we are none of us that different from each other.”<br /><br />“Bloody hell! Is the conceit of Xetesk that great that your Masters really believe all mages are essentially alike? That is an insult to magic itself and a failing in your teaching.” Ilkar could feel the anger surging in him. His cheeks were hot and his eyes narrowed to slits. The blindness of Xetesk was sometimes staggering. “You know where the power comes from to shape mana for the spells you were casting yesterday. There is no blood on my hands, Denser.”<br /><br />Denser was quiet for a while. He relit his pipe and picked his cat out of his cloak, dropping it on to the bed. The animal stared at Ilkar while the Dark Mage ruffled its neck. Ilkar’s temper frayed further but he held his tongue.<br /><br />“I think, Ilkar,” said Denser at length, blowing out a series of smoke rings, “that you shouldn’t accuse my Masters of failings in their teaching until you are aware of the shortcomings in your own.”<br /><br />“What are you talking about?”<br /><br />Denser spread his palms. “Do you see blood on my hands?”<br /><br />“You know what I mean,” snapped Ilkar.<br /><br />“Yes, I do. And you should also know that a Xeteskian mage has more than one source for his mana. As, no doubt, have you.”<br /><br />There was silence between them, though around them the castle corridors were beginning to echo with the sounds of another day.<br /><br />“I will not discuss College ethics with you, Denser.”<br /><br />“A pity.”<br /><br />“Pointless.”<br /><br />“A shortcoming in your teaching, Ilkar?”<br /><br />He ignored the jibe. “I need to know two things. How did you know about Seran and that amulet, and what is it?”<br /><br />Denser considered for a while. “Well, I’m not about to divulge College secrets, but unlike you, apparently, Xetesk has always taken Dragonene lore seriously—patchy though it may be. Our work in dimensional research has led us to develop a spell that can detect the kind of disturbance caused by the opening of an interdimensional portal, like the one we went through yesterday. We suspected Seran—I won’t tell you why—we targeted his chambers and got the desired result. I was sent to retrieve Dragonene artefacts and I got this.” He took the amulet from its chain and tossed it to Ilkar, who turned it over a couple of times, shrugged and threw it back.<br /><br />“It has Dragonene lore on it, written in all four College lore scripts,” said Denser, rehanging it on its chain. A brief smile touched his lips. “It will be incredibly useful to our research and, when we’re done with it, we can simply name our price. You would not believe what collectors will pay for a piece like this.”<br /><br />“And that’s it?” asked Ilkar flatly.Denser nodded. “We all need money. You of all people should know that research is not cheap.”<br /><br />Ilkar inclined his head. “So what now?”<br /><br />“I have to get this piece into the right hands, quickly,” said Denser.<br /><br />“Xetesk?”<br /><br />Denser shook his head. “Too far and too dangerous. Korina. We can secure it there. You’re going that way, I take it?”<br /><br />“Yes.”<br /><br />“I would like The Raven to bodyguard me. You will be well paid.”<br /><br />Ilkar gaped at him, making sure he’d heard correctly. “You have got to be bloody joking, Denser. After what happened yesterday? You’ve got some nerve, I’ll give you that. Hirad still wants to kill you as far as I know. And even if the others didn’t mind, do you really think that I would ever stoop to work for Xetesk?”<br /><br />“I’m sorry you feel that way.”<br /><br />“But you can’t possibly be surprised.” Ilkar got up and dusted himself down. “You’ll have to find someone else. There are plenty still here looking for paid passage back to the City.”<br /><br />“I would prefer The Raven. It seems the least I can do in recompense.”<br /><br />“We don’t want your money,” said Ilkar. “I’ll be making a report to Julatsa when I get back to Korina. You understand there will be a representation from the three Colleges to Xetesk over this whole incident.”<br /><br />“We look forward to it.”<br /><br />“I’ll bet.” Ilkar turned as he reached the door. “You hungry? I’ll show you the way to the kitchens.”<br /><br />“Thank you, brother.”<br /><br />Ilkar’s embryonic smile disappeared. “I am not your brother.”<br /><br /><strong>Chapter 4</strong><br /><br />Erienne sat on the double bed in the isolated tower room, a son cradled beneath each arm. Her body knew peace, however fleeting, and her children had ceased their crying.<br /><br />But they had doubted her and the moment of their reunion would live with her forever. Left alone at the top of the spiral stairway, she had grasped the handle and opened the door, half expecting to see them dead. Instead, they were sitting together on the edge of their bed, talking in whispers, food and drink ignored and cooling on the table that made up the only other furniture but for two chairs. Even the floor had no covering for its cold stone.<br /><br />She’d taken them in in an instant, brown bobbed hair a little untidy, round faces, pale blue eyes, small noses, slightly jutting ears and long-fingered hands. Her boys. Her beautiful boys.<br /><br />Their faces had turned to her in symphony and she’d held out her arms. It was then she knew hatred like she’d never felt before. Because for a moment they hadn’t seen her, their mother and protector. They’d seen a betrayer, someone who had let them be taken, let them be afraid.<br /><br />And as she’d stood in the doorway, dishevelled in her bare feet, her nightgown stained and torn, her face displaying the effects of the brophane and her hair tangled, the tears had flooded her eyes and smeared a clean track on her dust-darkened cheeks.<br /><br />“I’m here. Mother’s here.” They’d run into her arms, the three crying until nothing was left but to hold on in case they should ever be separated again. Now they sat, all three on the bed, the boys nuzzling her chest while her arms bound them and her hands stroked their sides.<br /><br />“Where are we, Mummy?” asked Thom, sitting to her left.<br /><br />“We’re in a castle far from home, full of bad men,” said Erienne, gripping her boys closer and glaring at the closed door, outside which, she knew, Isman would now be standing. “I’ve got to help them, answer some questions about magic, and then they’ll let us go.”<br /><br />“Who are they?” Aron looked up into his mother’s eyes, lost and confused. She felt his hand grip at her back.<br /><br />“When we get home, I’ll tell you all about them. But they are men trying to understand magic and what men don’t understand frightens them. It always has.”<br /><br />“When will we go home?” Aron again.<br /><br />Erienne sighed. “I don’t know, my loves. I don’t know what they want to ask me.” She smiled to ease the tension. “I’ll tell you what. When we get home, I’ll let you choose what you want to learn about next. What will it be?”<br /><br />The boys leaned forward, shared a glance, nodded and chimed in concert:<br /><br />“Communion!”<br /><br />Erienne laughed. “I knew you’d say that. Bad boys! Just so you can talk without me hearing you.” She tickled their stomachs, the boys giggling and squirming. “Bad boys!” She fluffed their hair then held them close again.<br /><br />“Now,” she said, eyeing their plates with distaste. “I want you to eat the bread on those plates but nothing else, do you hear? I’m going to go and see about getting us home. I’ll be back to teach you later, so I hope you haven’t forgotten what I told you last week!” She made to rise but the boys clung on.<br /><br />“Do you have to go, Mummy?” asked Aron.“The sooner I do, the sooner we’ll all be home with your father.” She hugged them again. “Hey, I won’t be gone long, I promise.” They both looked up at her. “I promise,” she repeated.<br /><br />She unlocked their arms and went to the door, pulling it open on a surprised-looking Isman. The rangy warrior lurched to a standing position from his slouch against the wall, the flaps of his leather tunic clapping together over his worn brown shirt.<br /><br />“Finished so soon?” he asked.<br /><br />“Just in a hurry,” said Erienne brusquely. “I’ll answer your questions now. My boys need their father and their own beds.”<br /><br />“And we are just as anxious as you to see you are held here for as short a time as possible,” said Isman smoothly. “The Captain will question you shortly. Until then—”<br /><br />“Now,” said Erienne, closing the door at her back with one last smile at her boys, who waved at her.<br /><br />“You are in no position to make demands of us,” sneered Ismam.<br /><br />Erienne smiled and moved close to Isman. As she did so, her face hardened, the smile seeming to freeze on her cheeks.<br /><br />“And what if I walk past you now?” she hissed, her face paling. “What are you going to do?” Their faces were scant inches apart, his eyes flickering over her. “Stop me? Kill me?” She laughed. “You’re scared of me because we both know I could kill you before your sword left your scabbard. And we’re alone, so don’t tempt me. Just take me to your Captain right now.”<br /><br />Isman pursed his lips and nodded.<br /><br />“He said you’d be trouble. We had you watched for months before we took you. He said your kind knew much but were arrogant.” He pushed past her and led the way down the spiral stairs. He turned at the bottom. “He was right. He always is. Go ahead, kill me if you think you can. There are three men outside this door. You can’t get far. We both know that too, don’t we?”<br /><br />“But I’d have the satisfaction of seeing you die,” said Erienne. “And I’d see the fear in your eyes. Think on it. Unless you watch me all the time, you’ll never know if I’m about to cast. Never know when you’re about to die.”<br /><br />“We have your children.” The sneer was back on Isman’s face.<br /><br />“Well, you’d better see you look after them, then, hadn’t you? Don’t turn your back, Isman.”<br /><br />The warrior let out a contemptuous laugh, but as he turned to open the door, Erienne thought she saw him shudder.<br /><br />Denser sat at the end of a bench table full of men who, not many hours before, would have killed him. The barbarian, Hirad Coldheart, was not there. Seeing to their horses, Sirendor Larn had said. Denser shivered inwardly, laid down his fork across his half-eaten breakfast of meat, gravy and bread, and sipped at his coffee. His cat purred as it lay on the bench beside him, luxuriating in the warmth cast by the range of fires in the kitchens.<br /><br />They’d been prepared to die then, at the barbarian’s sword. Their inner calm had been complete. And had they died, he in a crush of bone and his cat in a screaming mental explosion, the whole of Balaia might have died with them.<br /><br />Denser looked up at The Unknown Warrior. They all still had a chance because of him. Him and the simple code The Raven had always followed. The reason why they above all other mercenary teams remained in demand, successful and so very effective. While killing was legal within the rules of battle, and in witnessed defence of self and others, outside of these boundaries it was murder. And The Raven, perhaps alone, had stood in battle lines for ten years with robbers, bandits, bounty hunters and other hired men little better than murderers, with their collective conscience clear.<br /><br />There were plenty who said it was the total adherence to their code that made them strong and feared by opponents; and Denser had no doubt that the perpetuation of this myth helped them enormously. Mainly, though, he considered it was because while as individuals they were outstanding, if not brilliant, as a team they were simply awesome.<br /><br />Yet it was the code that swung the balance when the cost of their hire was considered. It meant that their employers could expect the contract to be upheld and the battle to be fought by The Raven within the rules.<br /><br />The Code: Kill But Never Murder.<br /><br />So simple that many tried to live by it on taking up the career as a hired warrior or mage. But most lacked the discipline, intelligence, stamina or skill to keep true in the heat of battle, victory or retreat, and aftermath. And certainly none had done so for ten years without blemish.<br /><br />It would be easy to cast them as heroes, but Denser had seen them fight more than once and what they were was, to him, obvious. They were a team of terribly efficient killers. Killers but not murderers.<br /><br />But as Denser looked around the table at the men eating in silence, each walking the privacy of his own mind, he thought they looked tired, and a pang of fear flooded his gut lest they should ultimately refuse him.<br /><br />Because he needed them. Xetesk needed them. Gods, all of Balaia would need them if the information the spies were sending back proved to be the prelude to the rising of the Wytch Lords. But could he convince them of what had to be done, and would Xetesk try to bring the Colleges together?<br /><br />Despite the knowledge of what could be to come, Denser wondered whether he wasn’t facing his most difficult challenge now.<br /><br />The Raven.<br /><br />Even if they heard the truth, he was pretty sure it wouldn’t make any difference. They didn’t take a contract because they believed in the cause. In fact the cause was largely irrelevant. The job had to be made worth their while, worth their reputation and worth their attendance. Worth the risk. That’s why the truth was pointless, at least until he could hide it no longer. No compensation could possibly be worth the risks he would be asking them to face.<br /><br />Denser took another mouthful of food. It was a great pity he hadn’t met The Raven in Korina as planned. There he might have been able to conceal his College identity for long enough. Their being part of Taranspike Castle’s defence hadn’t figured in Xetesk’s plans. Now he was truly up against it and right now he couldn’t even persuade Ilkar to let him pay them to ride with him to Korina, the City they were headed for anyway.<br /><br />He glanced up and caught The Unknown’s eye. The warrior calmly held his gaze, swallowed his mouthful and pointed his knife at Denser.<br /><br />“Tell me something,” he said. “Ever see a Dragon before?”<br /><br />“No,” said Denser.<br /><br />“No. And what would you have done had Hirad not managed to distract it so effectively while you stole your prize?”<br /><br />Denser smiled ever so slightly. “That is a very good question. We hadn’t planned on a Dragon being there.”<br /><br />“Clearly. My guess is you would have died.”<br /><br />“Possibly.” Denser half shrugged. Actually he thought he would have been fine but he could see where the line was leading and it gave him a chance.<br /><br />“Definitely.” The Unknown smeared a chunk of bread around his plate and then placed it carefully in his mouth. “There is an argument, therefore, that says we helped you take the amulet, however unwittingly.”<br /><br />Denser inclined his head and refilled his mug from the copper pot on the table.<br /><br />“What sort of percentage did you have in mind?”<br /><br />“Five per cent of sale value.”<br /><br />Denser blew out his cheeks. “That’ll be a lot of money.”<br /><br />It was The Unknown’s turn to shrug. “Call it compensation for the death of a Raven man. Or for the countless nights we wake up shaking and sweating from the visions of what we saw in there. I don’t mind telling you, it took all the control I had not to turn and run.”<br /><br />“That would be a first ever,” said Ilkar eventually into the void. The Unknown inclined his head.“<br /><br />He wouldn’t have been the only one,” said Sirendor. More nods around the table mixed with the odd smile.<br /><br />“And none of you know the half of it.” All heads turned to see Hirad standing in the doorway of the kitchen. He walked toward them slowly, his face drawn and pinched round the eyes.<br /><br />“You all right, Hirad?” asked Sirendor.<br /><br />“Not really. I was outside remembering what Sha-Kaan said, and if that doorway was still there I’d be taking the amulet back to him.”<br /><br />“Why?” Sirendor again, and Denser held his breath.<br /><br />“Something he said. About holding the portal from his world to ours and guarding something we shouldn’t have made. Whatever it was, he is angry now, so what if he chooses not to hold the portal any longer?”<br /><br />“I haven’t got a clue what you’re talking about, Hirad.” Sirendor for the third time.<br /><br />“Neither have I really,” said Hirad. “Just that if we ever see a Dragon in the skies of Balaia, it’ll be the end for all of us.”<br /><br />“What do you mean, exactly?” asked Denser.<br /><br />“What do you <em>think</em> I mean?” snapped the barbarian. “We’ll all die. They are too powerful and there are too many of them. Trust me.” He moved to the cooking pots and ladled himself some meat into a bowl.<br /><br />“Look. Going back a little.” Denser’s attention was once again on The Unknown Warrior. “I’ll agree to the five per cent if you agree to bodyguard me back to Korina.”<br /><br />Ilkar swung round from where he had been staring at Hirad as if he had been slapped in the face. “I have already told you that we will not work for Xetesk.” His voice was low, steady and certain.“<br /><br />Just exactly how much do you think that thing is worth, Xetesk man?” asked Hirad.<br /><br />Denser raised his eyebrows. “Well, though I can’t guarantee it, I think we’re talking in the region of five million truesilver.” There was a brief pause of slack-jawed disbelief.<br /><br />“We’ll take the job.”<br /><br />“Hirad!” snapped Ilkar. “You do not understand.”<br /><br />“It’s good money, Ilkar.”<br /><br />“It’s unbelievable, more like,” said Talan. “That’s a quarter of a million truesilver for taking a passenger down a road we’re already travelling.” Hirad just mouthed the figure.<br /><br />“You know something, Hirad, I just cannot believe that you of all people would agree to this. He all but had you killed.” Ilkar’s tone bordered on contempt.<br /><br />“Yeah, so he owes me.” Hirad kept his face away from the Xeteskian as he spoke. “I don’t have to like him. I don’t even have to look at him. In fact I can go on hating him. All I have to do is put up with him riding near by on the way back to Korina. Then he pays us a great deal of money and we never see him again. I think I can handle it.”<br /><br />“Anyway it’s not that simple,” said Ilkar.<br /><br />“Yes it is.”<br /><br />“It isn’t and I have a real problem with it,” began Ilkar, but the barbarian loomed over him.<br /><br />“I know you don’t agree with the Xetesk morality—”<br /><br />“That’s an understatement and a half—”<br /><br />“—but considering what you lot have been about behind my back, I don’t think it’s the kind of money we should turn down, do you? It might be the last we ever make.” He straightened. Ilkar just scowled at him. “Face it, Ilkar, you’ll be outvoted. Don’t make it difficult.” Ilkar’s eyes narrowed to slits.<br /><br />The Unknown reached a hand across to Denser. “We have a contract. Talan will write it and you and I will sign it. No actual value will be mentioned but the percentage and intention to pay will be registered.”<br /><br />“Excellent,” said Denser. The two men shook.<br /><br />“Indeed it is.” The Unknown drained his mug. “You know what, I can feel a Rookery party coming on.”<br /><br />The door to the kitchens opened again.<br /><br />“I hear you couldn’t save my mage. A pity. He was a good man, Seran.”<br /><br />The Raven turned to look at their employer, and Denser his erstwhile opponent for the first time. Baron Gresse was middle-aged with a powerful mind and a quartet of sons to make up for his own fading strength. Spurning rich man’s clothes—and he was among the top five Barons in terms of wealth—he walked in wearing practical riding garb, cloak over one arm, leather jerkin, woollen shirt and leather thighed cloth trousers.<br /><br />He dismissed his men at arms from the door and waved away the babbling kitchen folk as he made his way to The Raven’s table. He studied them all through his large brown eyes, his balding grey head moving smoothly as he did so. He reached out a hand.<br /><br />“The Unknown Warrior.”<br /><br />“Baron Gresse.” The men shook.<br /><br />“A pleasure to make your acquaintance.”<br /><br />“Likewise.” The Unknown glanced along the table. “Get the Baron some coffee, Talan.”<br /><br />“Well, well, The Raven. Hardly a surprise we won the day. Seran always chose well.” Gresse chewed his lip. “Where will I find another like him, eh?”<br /><br />“Julatsa,” said Ilkar. “At least we’re consistent.”<br /><br />Gresse chuckled. “Do you mind if I sit down?” He gestured at the bench. Ilkar moved along and he sat. Talan placed coffee in front of him. He nodded his thanks.<br /><br />An awkward silence fell around the table. Denser scratched his beard nervously. The Unknown gazed at the Baron, impassive as always. Ilkar’s ears pricked.<br /><br />“I shan’t keep you in suspense,” said Gresse, sipping at his beverage, a smile playing about his lips. “But I was hoping you might be able to back up something I’ve heard.”<br /><br />“Of course,” said The Unknown. “If we can.”<br /><br />“Good. I’ll be brief. I have been called to a meeting of the Korina Trade Alliance concerning deteriorating conditions to the west of the Blackthorne Mountains. There are rumours that the Wesmen have stepped up activity, broken the Understone Pass Right of Passage agreement, and there are fears of incursions into the east—although I should point out that the garrison at Understone itself has reported nothing out of the ordinary. I need to know whether you have picked up any rumours. I understand you were fighting with Baron Blackthorne himself not long ago, and he is unable to attend the meeting.” Gresse’s eyes twinkled.<br /><br />“We only fought with him so The Unknown could get a better deal on his wine.” Sirendor smiled.<br /><br />“I feel sure you did not.”<br /><br />“As it happened, that was part of the agreement,” said The Unknown. “As regards rumours, we heard plenty while we were there, but this is six months ago we’re talking about.”<br /><br />“Anything you heard, even in passing, that I could bring to the table would be useful.”<br /><br />“Put it this way,” said Ilkar. “If you believed everything you heard, the Wytch Lords are back, Parve is a bustling city once again and the Wesmen are torching everything west of the Blackthorne Mountains.”<br /><br />“And you give these rumours no credence,” said Gresse.<br /><br />“Nothing a Wesmen war party might do would surprise me,” said Ilkar. “But aside from that, no.”<br /><br />“Hmmm.” Gresse was thoughtful. “Interesting. Thank you for your help yesterday, by the way. I understand you lost a man. I’m sorry.”<br /><br />“It’s a risk, let’s be honest,” said Hirad, though his tone was unconvincing.<br /><br />“Nevertheless, to lose a friend cannot be easy. I am sorry and I am grateful. Yesterday’s was a battle I couldn’t afford to lose. Literally.”<br /><br />“You make it sound as though you’re on your uppers,” said Talan.<br /><br />Gresse shrugged. “Taranspike Castle is of major tactical importance. The owner negotiates rights of passage through one of the principal routes in and out of Korina. Had I lost it to Baron Pontois, he would have controlled both of my key transport routes to the capital as well as holding land on two sides of my estate. He could have chosen to deny me access or price it out of my reach, either way bankrupting me over time. My best alternative route takes days, not hours.”<br /><br />“Unless you chose to take one back by force,” said Hirad.<br /><br />“That is always an option. Expensive but an option.” Gresse’s face hardened.“<br /><br />And yet you’ll sit down with Pontois at the Korina Trade Alliance,” said Talan.<br /><br />“Yes. Strange, I know, but reality. Such is the malaise of the KTA. The word ‘alliance’ rings very hollow these days.” There was more than a hint of sadness in his tone.<br /><br />The table fell silent for a time. The Unknown Warrior studied the Baron while he drank his coffee. The big warrior smiled, Gresse caught his expression and frowned in response.<br /><br />“It seems to me that you omitted to tell us any rumours you might have heard,” said The Unknown.<br /><br />“I did, and I have something rather more than rumour, I’m afraid. I have evidence that the Wesmen, far from burning, are subjugating, building and uniting again.”<br /><br />“What do you mean, again?” asked Hirad.<br /><br />“I’ll teach you the history later,” said Ilkar with a shake of his head.<br /><br />“How could you—” Denser bit his lip and closed his mouth.<br /><br />“Something to say, Xetesk man?” Hirad growled.<br /><br />“I was merely curious how he came by such information.” Denser’s recovery was betrayed by a face that displayed his surprise.<br /><br />“Everything has its price,” said Gresse, coolly. “Might I ride to Korina with you this morning?”<br /><br />“Be our guest,” said Hirad. “Denser’s paying, after all.”<br /><br />“Good.” Gresse rose, shooting Hirad a quizzical look. “My party will be ready in, shall we say, one hour?”<br /><br />“It suits us perfectly,” said The Unknown. “Gentlemen, The Rookery beckons.”<br /><br />Erienne and the Captain met in the library. Warmed by two fires and lit by a dozen lanterns, the immaculately kept house of books was testament to his intelligence if not his morals.<br /><br />Five shelves high, covering three sides of the room, perhaps fifteen by twenty-five feet, books loomed around her. A fire stood either side of the only door. Rugs covered the floor and a reading desk dominated the far end. She had been told to sit in a large green leather-upholstered chair near one of the fires, and when the Captain came in, followed by a warrior carrying a tray of wine and food, he said nothing before setting himself in a similar seat at right angles to her.<br /><br />She had locked her gaze on the fire to stop her eyes catching sight of him, allowing the light of the flames to mesmerise her, only dimly hearing the clink of glasses, the glug of a pouring bottle and the metal sound of knife on carving tray.<br /><br />“Once again, welcome, Erienne Malanvai,” said the Captain. “You must be hungry.”<br /><br />Erienne let her eyes travel over the tray that sat on a low table between them, surprised at the quality of its content.<br /><br />“How dare you offer me that, when the muck you served up for my boys is hardly fit for a dog, let alone frightened young children?” she said. “They will each have a plate of this now.”<br /><br />She could sense the Captain’s smile. “You heard her. Fresh lamb and vegetables for the boys.”<br /><br />“Yes, sir.” The door closed.<br /><br />“I am not unreasonable,” said the Captain.<br /><br />Erienne’s face was pure disgust. “You have taken two innocent children from their homes in the middle of the night and locked them terrified in a cold tower. You have kept me from them and fed them muck I wouldn’t give to my pigs. Don’t talk to me about reason.” Still refusing to look at him, she selected some meat and vegetables and ate in silence. She poured herself a glass of wine and drank staring at the fire. All the while, the Captain watched and waited.<br /><br />“So ask,” she said, placing her empty plate on the table. “I doubt I have any secrets from you.”<br /><br />“That would certainly make things simpler,” said the Captain. “I am glad you are being so cooperative.”<br /><br />“Don’t feel it’s out of any fear of you or your band of lame monkeys,” Erienne said haughtily. “I care for my sons and any way that I can help them that does not compromise the Dordovan College is fine by me.”<br /><br />“Excellent.” The Captain refilled his glass. “I do wish you’d look at me.”<br /><br />“To do so would make me nauseous. To utter your name is an affront to my College and to speak with you is tantamount to heresy. Now get on with your questions. In an hour I want to see my sons again.” Erienne kept her face turned to the fire, drawing comfort from its warmth and colour.<br /><br />“And so you shall, Erienne, so you shall.” The Captain stretched out his legs toward the fire; a pair of scuffed and age-cracked brown leather riding boots moved into Erienne’s vision. “Now then, I am becoming very disturbed by the extent to which so-called dimensional investigation and research is damaging the fabric of Balaia.”<br /><br />“Well, you’ve clearly been very busy in here, haven’t you?” said Erienne after a pause.“Clever remarks will get you hurt,” said the Captain, his tone leaving her in no doubt that he meant it.<br /><br />“I was trying to say that very few people have any knowledge of the existence of dimensional magics, never mind the potential for their danger.”<br /><br />“No.” The Captain reached down and scratched his left leg, Erienne glimpsing his greying hair, thinning from the crown. “Contrary to popular belief, I believe in the value of magic in the right place. But I also understand its dangers because I have taken the time to find out for myself. Meddling with dimensions could, I believe, destabilise the world balance that currently exists.”<br /><br />“You’re talking to the wrong College,” said Erienne.<br /><br />“Well, Xetesk mages are just a little harder to come by,” said the Captain testily.<br /><br />“I’d love to say I was sorry,” retorted Erienne. And at last, she looked at him. He kept his grey hair close-cropped and his beard, which still held flecks of brown, was similarly well trimmed. Skin was sagging under his eyes and his red-patched cheeks and nose were evidence of a reliance on the bottle. He was getting fat, too, as he breasted middle age, a fact which his leather coat and shirt failed to hide. He ignored her sudden attention.<br /><br />“But Septern was a Dordovan mage.”<br /><br />“We’ve already established that you’ve done your homework.” Erienne refilled her glass. “It also no doubt told you that he’s been presumed dead for about three hundred years.”<br /><br />“And there the information ends?” said the Captain. “I was rather hoping a Dordovan Lore Mage like yourself could fill in a few gaps.”<br /><br />“And now the misunderstanding is yours,” said Erienne. “Because you assume we have secret texts.”<br /><br />“But Septern was a Dordovan mage,” repeated the Captain.<br /><br />“Yes, he was. And a genius. And so far ahead of his time that we still haven’t managed to re-create all of his work.” Erienne plucked some grapes from the fruit bowl and ate them, spitting the stones into her hand and throwing them into the fire.<br /><br />The Captain leaned forward, frowning. “But surely he reported his findings. I understood that to be a requirement of every mage.”<br /><br />“Septern didn’t live by those rules.” Erienne sighed as the Captain’s frown deepened. “Look, you need to understand. Septern was a throwback to the days before the Colleges split.”<br /><br />“So he wasn’t just ahead of his time, he was behind it as well.” The Captain smiled, pleased at his own joke, revealing lines of brown, rotting teeth set in flame-red gums.<br /><br />“Yes, I suppose so. The point is, his mind was able to accept lore at the very base level, and that let him read and understand Dordovan, Xeteskian and Julatsan lores with varying degrees of success. It made him brilliant but it also made him arrogant. He lived outside of the College, rarely reported on his work, made only cryptic logs of his research and not all of those logs are in our library. Xetesk has some, others are lost at his house—assuming he wrote anything at all about some of the things we know he was capable of.” Erienne took a sip of wine. “Could I have some water, please?”<br /><br />“Certainly.” The Captain rose and pulled the door open. The sound of a man dragging his feet to attention echoed in the corridor outside. “Water and a glass. Now.” He returned to his seat. “An interesting history. Of course, I am aware of his house. I have had men at the ruins on several occasions. So tell me, what is the state of your development of dimensional research, and what do you hope to achieve?”<br /><br />Erienne opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, pondering her answer. It was all too easy. The Captain was nothing like she had been led to believe. That she would hate him forever for the kidnap of her children was certain, but his behaviour was confusing. Here she sat in a warm room, where she had been fed with good food and asked gentle questions about her College activities. So far he had asked her nothing he couldn’t have found out by knocking on the College’s front door. There had to be more, it was just a question of when he dealt it to her. She had the uneasy feeling she was being softened up for a heavy blow. She determined to keep her mind sharp.<br /><br />“What we know of Septern tells us that he achieved a great deal in terms of dimensional magics. He created a stable, self-sustaining portal for travelling between nominated dimensional spaces and we believe he travelled widely—some of his wilder writings suggest as much.<br /><br />“Dordover is nowhere near his level of sophistication in dimension doors. We can’t travel, we can’t see in, all we can do is plot other dimensions and chart land and sea features. To progress more quickly, we need Septern’s lost texts because we believe this magic mixes College lores.”<br /><br />“And where do you hope this research will take you?”<br /><br />“Into other dimensions. To explore, to chart, to meet other races. The possibilities are endless.” Erienne was enthused in spite of herself.<br /><br />“To conquer, to subvert, to rule, to steal.” The Captain’s tone was hard but not unpleasant.<br /><br />“Is that the basis for your concern?”<br /><br />He inclined his head. “I believe we have no place interfering in other dimensions. We have our own and it is difficult enough to control without linking it to other places and times. I see nightmare scenarios where others might invade to avenge what we have done. No one will be safe anywhere because no one will ever know when or where a door might be opened.”<br /><br />“All the more reason to complete our research and understanding,” said Erienne.<br /><br />“Neither of us is naive enough to believe that Dordover and Xetesk research this magic to benefit the population of Balaia, are we? I would hate to think you were opening doors which you were then powerless to close.” The Captain scratched an ear. “Tell me, is Xetesk further advanced than Dordover?”<br /><br />Erienne stared at him blankly. “If and when the missing elements of Septern’s dimensional texts are recovered, we may be forced to form a research group,” she said slowly. “Until that time, communication remains minimal.”<br /><br />“I understand.”<br /><br />“It was a stupid question to ask a Dordovan.”<br /><br />“Stupidity sometimes elicits the real gems.”<br /><br />The door opened and a man entered carrying a jug of water and two glasses. He set them on the table and withdrew. Erienne filled a glass and drank it back in one.<br /><br />“Anything else?”<br /><br />“Oh, a good deal,” said the Captain. He drained and refilled his wine glass. “I have hardly begun, although your information is gratefully received. I should let you get back to your children but think on this. Given that you appear to know all you can about dimensional magics already, I find it disturbing that there has been such a recent surge in interest surrounding Septern’s research.<br /><br />“Mastery of dimensional magic wasn’t his only triumph, was it? There was one of even greater notoriety. He created a spell, didn’t he? And I want to know why Xetesk has suddenly put all its muscle behind looking for it.”<br /><br />Erienne’s face became deathly white.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtl-zAxlJvBDS0xHBbVrmkidMRVEDGAia26zV9EBQYSx_d1WMwuK0rBhhmDZkrDlU37KVwxK2Re3BSVNmRLwIP7nrvYlAqIakcNpN7QvSa9EEzMcln73d7qAXcEY2AGuD4q4O84NbPOnc/s1600-h/James+Barclay+2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5381785385867017426" style="margin: 0px 10px 10px 0px; float: left; width: 189px; height: 200px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtl-zAxlJvBDS0xHBbVrmkidMRVEDGAia26zV9EBQYSx_d1WMwuK0rBhhmDZkrDlU37KVwxK2Re3BSVNmRLwIP7nrvYlAqIakcNpN7QvSa9EEzMcln73d7qAXcEY2AGuD4q4O84NbPOnc/s200/James+Barclay+2.jpg" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/Dawnthief.html"><em>Dawnthief</em></a> © <a href="http://www.jamesbarclay.com/">James Barclay</a><br />Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.hadleyart.com/">Sam Hadley</a><br />Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht<div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>James Barclay is in his forties and lives in Teddington in the UK with his wife and son. He is a full-time writer. Visit him online at www.jamesbarclay.comlynnp77http://www.blogger.com/profile/02328953956204527625noreply@blogger.com27tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-55353647708028609882009-05-04T10:56:00.012-05:002009-06-09T15:01:47.201-05:00Darkest Hour (Age of Misrule 2) by Mark Chadbourn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiExsRtL1DbbKUpfwODbJAR72Wwi_NZPndBgfpDk3aMP2kqB5gI7fYDfNFJz9TaXSqkgZjvL-TTTAshrHSOm3AL66GfTJ7YSe1C5FdHW-0m7xHNlEELBgFB1sPfd9o3qEzLLcvgK_pOiVg/s1600-h/DarkestHour.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiExsRtL1DbbKUpfwODbJAR72Wwi_NZPndBgfpDk3aMP2kqB5gI7fYDfNFJz9TaXSqkgZjvL-TTTAshrHSOm3AL66GfTJ7YSe1C5FdHW-0m7xHNlEELBgFB1sPfd9o3qEzLLcvgK_pOiVg/s320/DarkestHour.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5331999742882334962" border="0" /></a>Mark Chadbourn embarked on an unprecedented depth of historical research and a detailed examination of real-world prehistoric sites around the UK to provide a compelling background for his <span style="font-weight: bold;">Age of Misrule</span> series. His studies bring to light hidden connections among myth, the Arthurian romances, folklore, and history, challenging the reader to draw the line between truth and imagination. The sizable excerpt from <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DarkestHour.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Darkest Hour</span></a> below demonstrates why SF Site says that this is an "edge of the seat, highly credible, page turner which I found compulsive reading ...essential dark fantasy.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Darkest Hour</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Age of Misrule 2</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Mark Chadbourn</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">a prologue</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">life during wartime</span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">May 2, 8 a.m.; above the English Channel:</span><br /><br />“Somebody must have some idea what’s going on.” Justin Fallow fiddled uncomfortably with the miniature spirit bottles on his tray as he watched the dismal expressions sported by the air stewardesses. It was amazing how little fluctuations in the smooth-running of life were more disturbing than the big shocks. Those looks were enough to tell him something fundamental had changed; he had never seen any of them without those perfectly balanced smiles of pearly teeth contained by glossy red lipstick.<br /><br />“I wouldn’t lose any sleep over it. Everything will be back to normal in a few days.” Colin Irvine stared vacuously out of the window at the fluffy white clouds. The reflection showed a craggy face and hollow cheeks that seemed older than his years. The trip to Paris had been better than expected; the business side tied up quickly, then two days of good food and fine wine, and one brisk night at a brothel. His head still felt fuzzy from the overindulgence and he would be happier if Justin shut up at least once before the plane landed.<br /><br />“Well, I wish I had your optimism.” Fallow’s public school accent was blurred by the alcohol and he was talking too loudly. He flicked back the fringe that kept falling over his eyes and snapped his chubby fingers to attract the attention of one of the stewardesses. “Over here, please. Another vodka.”<br /><br />“I like a drink as much as the next man, but I don’t know how you can get through that lot at breakfast,” Irvine said, without taking his gaze away from the clouds.<br /><br />Fallow slapped his belly. “Constitution of a horse, old chap.” When the vodka arrived, he brushed the plastic glass to one side and gulped it straight from the bottle.<br /><br />“Steady on, eh?” Irvine allowed himself a glance of distaste.<br /><br />“But what if it isn’t going to be sorted out in a few days?” Fallow drummed his fingers anxiously on the tray. “You know, we have no idea what’s going on, so how can we say? A sudden announcement that all air traffic is going to be grounded indefinitely doesn’t exactly fill one with confidence, if you know what I mean. Now <span style="font-style: italic;">that</span> sounds serious.”<br /><br />“We were lucky to get the last flight out.”<br /><br />“I mean, the country could be on its knees in days! How will business survive?” His startled expression suggested he had only just grasped the implications of his train of thought. “Never mind your bog-standard business traveller who has to get around for meetings—they can muddle through with a few netcasts and conference calls in the short term. But what about import—export? The whole of the global economy relies on—”<br /><br />“You don’t have to tell me, Justin.”<br /><br />“You can sit there being sniffy about it, but have you thought about what it means—?”<br /><br />“It means we won’t be able to get any bananas in the shops for a while and international mail will be a bastard. Thank God for the Internet.”<br /><br />“I still think there’s more to it than you think. To take such a drastic step . . . Trouble is, you can’t trust those bastards in the Government to tell you anything important, whatever political stripe they are. Look at the mad cow thing. It’s a wonder we’re not all running around goggle-eyed, slavering at the mouth.”<br /><br />“You obviously didn’t look in the mirror last night—”<br /><br />“This isn’t funny. Go on, tell me why you’re so calm. What could cause something like this?”<br /><br />“Let me see, Justin.” Irvine began counting off his fingers. “An impending strike by all international air traffic control which we haven’t been told about for fear it causes a panic. You know how much pressure they’ve been under recently with the increase in the volume of flights. Or some virus has been loaded into the ATC system software. Or the Global Positioning Satellite has been hit by a meteorite so all the pilots are flying blind. Or all those intermittent power failures we’ve had recently have made it too risky until they find the cause. Or they’ve finally discovered that design glitch that’s had planes dropping out of the skies like flies over the last few years.”<br /><br />“I’d rather we didn’t talk about this now, Colin.”<br /><br />“Well, you started it.”<br /><br />Justin sucked on his lower lip like a petulant schoolboy and then began to line up the miniature bottles in opposing forces. “I suppose all the trolley dollies are worried they might be out of work,” he mused.<br /><br />A crackle over the Tannoy heralded an announcement. “This is your captain speaking. We anticipate arrival in Gatwick on schedule in twenty minutes. There may be a slight delay on the—” There was a sudden pause, a muffled voice in the background, and then the Tannoy snapped off.<br /><br />Fallow looked up suspiciously. “Now what’s going on?”<br /><br />“Will you calm down? Just because you’re afraid of the worst happening doesn’t mean it’s going to.”<br /><br />“And just because you’re not afraid doesn’t mean it isn’t.” Fallow shifted in his seat uncomfortably, then glanced up and down the aisle.<br /><br />What he saw baffled him at first. It was as if a ripple was moving down the plane towards him. The faces of the passengers looking out of the starboard side were changing, the blank expressions of people watching nothing in particular shedding one after the other as if choreographed. In that first fleeting instant of confusion, Fallow tried to read those countenances: was it shock, dismay, wonder? Was it horror?<br /><br />And then he abruptly thought he should be searching for the source of whatever emotion it was, but before he had time to look, the plane banked wildly and dropped; his stomach was left behind and for one moment he thought he was going to vomit. But then the fear took over and it was as if his body were locked in stasis as he gripped the armrests until his knuckles were white. He forced his head into his lap. Screams filled the air, but they were distant, as though coming at him through water, and then he was obliquely aware he was screaming himself.<br /><br />The plane was plummeting down so sharply vibrations were juddering through the whole fuselage; when it banked again at the last minute, the evasive action was so extreme Fallow feared the wings would be torn off. Then, bizarrely, the plane was soaring up at an angle that was just as acute. Fallow was pressed back into his seat until he felt he was on the verge of blacking out.<br /><br />“It can’t take much more of this punishment,” he choked.<br /><br />Just as he was about to prepare himself for the whole plane coming apart in midair, it levelled off. Fallow burst out laughing in hysterical relief, then raged, “What the <span style="font-style: italic;">fuck</span> was that all about?”<br /><br />Irvine pitched forward and threw up over the back of the seat in front; he tried to get his hand up to his mouth, but that only splattered the vomit over a wider area. Fallow cursed in disgust, but the trembling that racked his body didn’t allow him to say any more.<br /><br />One of the stewardesses bolted from the cabin, leaving the door swinging so Fallow could see the array of instrumentation blinking away. She pushed her way up to a window, then exclaimed, “My God! He was right!”<br /><br />The whole planeload turned as one. Fallow looked passed Irvine’s white, shaking face into the vast expanse of blue sky. The snowy clouds rolled and fluffed like meringue, but beyond that he could see nothing. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a shadow moving across the field of white. At first he wondered if they had narrowly avoided a collision with another plane, but the shadow seemed too long and thin; it appeared to have a life of its own. There was a sound like a jet taking off and then the colour of the clouds transformed to red and gold. A belch of black smoke was driven past the window.<br /><br />Fallow rammed Irvine back in his seat and craned his neck to search the sky. Beside and slightly below the plane, flying fast enough to pass it with apparent ease, was something which conjured images from books he had read in the nursery. Part of it resembed a bird and part a serpent: scales glinted like metal in the morning sun on a body that rippled with both power and sinuous agility, while enormous wings lazily stroked the air. Colours shimmered across its surface as the light danced: reds, golds and greens, so that it resembled some vast, brass robot imagined by a Victorian fantasist. Boned ridges and horns rimmed its skull above red eyes; one swivelled and fixed on Fallow. A second later the creature roared, its mouth wide, and belched fire; it seemed more a natural display, like a peacock’s plumage, than an attack, but all the passengers drew back from the window as one. Then, with a twist that defied its size, it snaked up and over the top of the fuselage and down the other side.<br /><br />Shock and fear swept through the plane, but it dissipated at speed. Instead, everyone seemed to be holding their breath. Fallow looked around and was astonished to see that faces that had earlier been scarred with cynicism or bland with dull routine were suddenly alight; to a man or woman, they all looked like children. Even the stewardesses were smiling.<br /><br />Then the atmosphere was broken by a cry from the aft: “Look! There’s another one!”<br /><br />In the distance, Fallow saw a second creature dipping in and out of the clouds as if it were skimming the surface of the sea.<br /><br />Fallow slumped back in his seat and looked at Irvine coldly. “Everything will be back to normal in a few days,” he mocked in a singsong, playground voice.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">May 2, 11 a.m.; Dounreay Nuclear Power Station, Scotland:</span><br /><br />“I just don’t know what they expect of us!” Dick McShay said frustratedly. He threw his pen at the desk, then realised how pathetic that was. At 41, he had expected a nice, easy career with BNFL, overseeing the decommissioning of the plant that would stretch long beyond his life span; a holding job, no pressures apart from preventing the media discovering information about the decades of contamination, leaks and near-disasters. Definitely no crises. He fixed his grey eyes on his second-in-command, Nelson, who looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I have no desire to shoot the messenger, William, but really, give me an answer.”<br /><br />Nelson, who was four years McShay’s junior, a little more stylish, but without any of his charisma, sucked on his bottom lip for a second; an irritating habit. “What they want to do,” he began cautiously, “is make sure most of Scotland isn’t irradiated in the next few weeks. I don’t mean to sound glib,” he added hastily, “but that’s the bottom line. It’s these power failures—”<br /><br />McShay sighed, shook his head. “Not just power, William, technology. There’s no point denying it. Mechanical processes have been hit just as much. I mean, who can explain something like that? If I were superstitious . . .” He paused. “. . . I’d still have a hard time explaining it. The near-misses we’ve had over the last few weeks . . .” He didn’t need to go into detail; Nelson had been there too during the crazed panics when they all thought they were going to die, the cooling system shut-downs, the fail-safe failures that were beyond anyone’s comprehension; yet every time it had stopped just before the whole place had gone sky-high. He couldn’t tell if they were jinxed or lucky, but it was making an old man of him.<br /><br />“So we shut down—”<br /><br />“Yes, but don’t they realise it’s not like flicking off a switch? That schedule is just crazy. Even cutting corners, we couldn’t do it.”<br /><br />“They’re desperate.”<br /><br />“And I don’t like <span style="font-style: italic;">them</span> being around either.” He glanced aggressively through the glass walls that surrounded his office. Positioned around the room beyond were Special Forces operatives, faces masked by smoked Plexiglas visors, guns held at the ready across their chests; their immobility and impersonality made them seem inhuman, mystical statues waiting to be brought to life by sorcery. They had arrived with the dawn, slipping into the vital areas as if they knew the station intimately—which, of course, they did, although they had never been there before. <span style="font-style: italic;">For support</span>, they said. Not, <span style="font-style: italic;">To guard</span>. Not, <span style="font-style: italic;">To enforce</span>.<br /><br />“All vital installations are under guard, Dick. So they say. It’s all supposed to be hush-hush—”<br /><br />“Then how do you know?”<br /><br />Nelson smirked in reply. Then: “We might as well just ignore them. It’s their job, all that Defence of the Realm stuff.”<br /><br />“What are they going to do if we don’t meet the deadline? Shoot us?”<br /><br />Nelson’s expression suggested he thought this wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility.<br /><br />“I just never expected to be doing my job at gunpoint. If the powers that be don’t trust us, why should we trust them?”<br /><br />“Desperate times, Dick.”<br /><br />McShay looked at Nelson suspiciously. “I hope you’re on our side, William.”<br /><br />“There aren’t any sides, are there?”<br /><br />A rotating red light suddenly began whirling in the room outside, intermittently bathing them in a hellish glow. A droning alarm pitched at an irritating level filled the complex. The Special Forces troops were instantly on the move.<br /><br />“Shit!” McShay closed his eyes in irritation; it was a breach of a security zone. “What the fuck is it now?”<br /><br />Nelson was already on the phone. As he listened, McShay watched incomprehension flicker across his face.<br /><br />“Give me the damage,” McShay said wearily when Nelson replaced the phone.<br /><br />Nelson stared at him blankly for a moment before he said, “There’s an intruder—”<br /><br />“I know! It’s the fucking intruder alarm!”<br /><br />“—in the reactor core.”<br /><br />McShay returned the blank stare and then replied, “You’re insane.” He picked up the phone and listened to the stuttering report before running out of the room, Nelson close behind him.<br /><br /><br />The inherent farcical nature of a group of over-armed troops pointing their guns at the door to an area where no human could possibly survive wasn’t lost on McShay, but the techies remained convinced someone was inside. He pushed his way past the troops on the perimeter to the control array where Rex Moulding looked about as uncomfortable as any man could get.<br /><br />Moulding motioned to the soldiers as McShay approached. “What are this lot doing here? This isn’t a military establishment.”<br /><br />McShay brushed his question aside with an irritated flap of his hand. “You’re a month late for practical jokes, Rex.”<br /><br />“It’s no joke. Look here.” Moulding pointed to the bank of monitors.<br /><br />McShay examined each screen in turn. They showed various views of the most secure and dangerous areas around the reactor. “There’s nothing there,” he said eventually.<br /><br />“Keep watching.”<br /><br />McShay sighed and attempted to maintain his vigilance. A second later a blur flashed across one of the screens. “What’s that?”<br /><br />The fogginess flickered on one of the other screens. “It’s almost like the cameras can’t get a lock on it,” Moulding noted.<br /><br />“What do you mean?”<br /><br />There was a long pause. “I don’t know what I mean.”<br /><br />“Is it a glitch?”<br /><br />“No, there’s definitely someone in there. You can hear the noises it makes through the walls.”<br /><br />McShay’s expression dared Moulding not to say the wrong thing. “It?”<br /><br />Moulding winced. “Bob Pruett claims to have seen it before it went in there—”<br /><br />“Where is he?” McShay snapped.<br /><br />As he glanced around, a thickset man in his fifties wearing a sheepish expression pushed his way through the military.<br /><br />“Well?” McShay said uncompromisingly.<br /><br />“I saw it,” Pruett replied in a thick Scots drawl. He looked at Moulding for support.<br /><br />“You better tell him,” Moulding said.<br /><br />“Look, I know this sounds bloody ridiculous, but it’s what I saw. It had antlers coming out like this.” He spread his fingers on either side of his head; McShay looked at him as if he had gone insane. “But it was a man. I mean, it walked like a man. It looked like a man—two arms, two legs. But its face didn’t look human, know what I mean? It had red eyes. And fur, or leaves—”<br /><br />“Which one?”<br /><br />“What do you mean?”<br /><br />“Fur, or leaves. Which one?”<br /><br />“Well, both. They looked like they were growing out of each other, all over its body.”<br /><br />McShay searched Pruett’s face, feeling uncomfortable when he saw no sign of contrition; in fact, there was shock and disbelief there, and that made him feel worse. Moulding suddenly grew tense, his gaze fixed on the monitors. “It’s coming this way,” he said quietly.<br /><br />Unconsciously, McShay turned towards the security door. Through it he could hear a distant sound, growing louder, like the roaring of a beast, like a wind in the high trees.<br /><br />“The temperature’s rising in the reactor core,” Nelson called out from the other side of the room. The second tonal emergency warning began, intermingling discordantly with the intruder alarm; McShay’s head began to hurt. “The fail-safes haven’t kicked in,” Nelson continued. He pulled out his mobile phone and punched in a number; McShay wondered obliquely who he could be calling.<br /><br />“It’s nearly here,” Moulding said. McShay couldn’t take his eyes off the security door; he was paralysed by incomprehension. That horrible noise was louder now, reverberating even through the shielding. He couldn’t understand how the troops could remain immobile with all the confusion raging around them; their guns were still raised to the door, barrels unwavering.<br /><br />The one in charge glanced briefly at McShay, then said, “If it comes through, fire the moment you see it.”<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What’s the point?</span> McShay thought. <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s been in the reactor core and it’s still alive! </span>He was overcome with a terrible feeling of foreboding.<br /><br />There was a sudden thundering at the door and it began to buckle like tinfoil; McShay thought he could see the imprints of hands in it. Despite their training, some of the troops took a step back. The roaring which sounded like nothing he had ever heard before was now drowning out the alarms.<br /><br />“I don’t wish to state the obvious, but if that door comes down, it will take more than a shower to decontaminate us,” Moulding said in a quiet voice that crackled with tension.<br /><br />McShay came out of his stupor in a flash; the thought that a security door designed to survive a direct nuclear strike might ever be breached was so impossible, his mind hadn’t leapt to consider the consequences of what was happening.<br /><br />“Everybody fall back!” he yelled. “We need to seal this area off—”<br /><br />The next second the door exploded outwards. McShay had one brief instant when he glimpsed the shape that surged through and then the gunfire erupted in a storm of light and noise, and a second after that a wave of soft white light came rushing from the reactor core towards them all.<br /><br /><br />The first person to see what had happened to Dounreay Nuclear Power Station was a farmer trundling along the coast road in his tractor. The sight was so bizarre he had to pull over to the side to check it wasn’t some illusion caused by the sea haze. The familiar modernist buildings had been lost behind an impenetrable wall of vegetation; mature trees sprouted through the concrete and tarmac, ivy swathed the perimeter fences and buildings, dog roses and clematis clambered up the side of the administration block, cars were lost beneath creepers; all around squirrels, rabbits and birds skittered through the greenery. And if anyone had decided, for whatever reason, to check for radiation, they would have found none, not even in what had been the reactor core. Nor would they have found any sign of human life.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">May 2, 8 p.m.; News International: Wapping, London:</span><br /><br />“There’s no point in us being here.” The accent was pure Mockney, hiding something from the Home Counties. Lucy Manning repeatedly punched the lift button, then shifted from foot to foot with irritation as she watched the lighted numbers’ soporific descent. She was in her twenties, dyed-blonde hair framing a face that had the cold hardness of a frontline soldier.<br /><br />Beside her, Kay Bliss could have been a mirror image or a copycat sister, but the look and the accent were all part of the office politics; a game they both knew how to play. “Oh, fuck it, Lucy, we’re getting paid, aren’t we? It’s nice not to be out doorstepping some twat until the early hours for a change.” Her voice had the hard vowels of a Geordie, though she could hide it when she had to.<br /><br />“There’s some idiot from Downing Street permanently in the newsroom,” Lucy continued, “going over every piece of copy with a fine-tooth comb. D-Notice on this, D-Notice on that. We’ll be like some fucking cheap local rag soon. Golden wedding stories and photos from the Rotary lunch.” Lucy strode into the lift the second the doors opened, then rattled her nails anxiously on the metal wall. “Come on. Why are these things so fucking slow? All the technology we’ve got in this place, you’d think they’d be able to get lifts that worked quickly.”<br /><br />“We’re not even supposed to be using them. All those technology crashes—”<br /><br />“Like we’ve got time to walk up and down flights of stairs all day.”<br /><br />Kay held her breath until the doors opened on the newsroom floor. She’d spent an hour stuck in it with three monkeys from the loading bay and it wasn’t an episode she wanted to repeat.<br /><br />Lucy was still talking as she dodged out between the opening doors, “It started with that terrorist strike on the M4—”<br /><br />“Damon covered that.” Kay looked puzzled for a second. “Terrorists?”<br /><br />“It had to be terrorists. It wasn’t that long before the Martial Law announcement.”<br /><br />“Someone said a Yank plane had gone down carrying nukes.”<br /><br />Lucy shrugged. “And there were all those phone calls from the great unwashed claiming they’d seen some fire-breathing monster.” She flung open the swing doors. “Sometimes I wish I worked for the <span style="font-style: italic;">FT</span>.”<br /><br />The newsroom was quiet now that all the dayshift had departed. The night news editor stared at the slowly scrolling Press Association newsfeed on his computer while lazily chewing on a cheese roll. One of the sports reporters whistled loudly.<br /><br />“’ello, darlin’,” Kay shouted back with a cheery wave.<br /><br />“It’s all right for them,” Lucy muttered moodily, “their Ludo tournaments never get censored.”<br /><br />“You’re in a right mood, aren’t you?”<br /><br />They’d walked on a few paces before Lucy said, “I had the splash today and they pulled it.”<br /><br />“Oh, that explains it. Bitter and twisted at not getting any front page glory. What was the story?”<br /><br />“A whole unit of Royal Marines slaughtered up in the Highlands. A hot tip from my man at Command Headquarters.” She stuck out her bottom lip like a sulky child.<br /><br />“Wow. A <span style="font-style: italic;">proper</span> story. No <span style="font-style: italic;">EastEnders</span> stud getting bladdered in that one,” Kay said with what Lucy thought was an unreasonable amount of glee. “But you didn’t really expect to get it through, did you?” Lucy shrugged. Kay’s expression gradually became troubled. “Slaughtered? In Scotland?”<br /><br />“Hey, it’s the Barbie twins!” Kevin Smith, one of the sales managers, had been lurking around the news desk. The hacks hated him for his retro-yuppie look and his aftershave stink, but he insisted on pretending he was one of the boys.<br /><br />“Fuck off, Kevin,” Kay said with a mock-sweet smile.<br /><br />“Careful you don’t cut yourself with that.” He patted the desk so they could both sit next to him, but they studiously went round to the other side where they could talk to the handful of freelancers doing the night shift.<br /><br />“What’s up?” Lucy perched on the edge of the desk so she could tease the newbies with a flash of her thigh.<br /><br />“Don’t bother the fresh meat!” the news editor barked. “Get over here!”<br /><br />Kay was first over. “What is it, chief?”<br /><br />He tapped the screen as he spoke through a mouthful of cheese roll. “PA says the PM’s making an announcement at nine. Half the cabinet is getting the boot and they’re setting up a coalition with the other parties. Government of National Unity or something.”<br /><br />“Good policy. Get all the losers in one place. It’ll probably be as successful as their Martial Law that they haven’t got enough manpower to enforce.” Kevin had wandered over and was reading the newsfeed over the night news editor’s shoulder.<br /><br />“I’ll take that one,” Lucy called out.<br /><br />“You’re both working on it.” The night news editor rammed his chair backwards into the sales manager’s groin. Kevin exhaled sharply, but continued to force a smile.<br /><br />Kay tore off a sheet of printer paper to make notes. “Blimey. Two proper stories in one day. It’s a sign—the world really is coming to an end!”<br /><br />They all stopped what they were doing as the night news editor leaned forward to peer at the screen, swearing under his breath. “Somebody must have rattled Downing Street’s cage. There’s a whole load of stuff coming up here. Flights grounded earlier, now we get ‘train services limited . . . No international calls . . . maybe extended disruption of the phone network . . . orders to shoot looters on sight . . .’ What the fuck is going on?”<br /><br />A middle-aged man in a smart dark suit moved slowly from the editor’s office towards the news desk. He had a nondescript haircut and bland features and he carried himself with the stiff demeanour of a civil servant.<br /><br />“When are you going to tell us what the fuck’s going on?” the night news editor bellowed. “It’s a fucking outrage! The people have a right to know—”<br /><br />The dark-suited man dropped a sheet of paper on the desk. “This is tomorrow’s page one story. ‘PM Launches Battle of Britain.’”<br /><br />They all looked at it, dumbfounded. “You can’t do that!” Lucy could see another byline disappearing before her eyes.<br /><br />The night news editor scanned the paper, then hammered it beneath the flat of his hand. “We can’t print this! It doesn’t fucking say anything! Just fucking PR guff! Nobody has any idea what’s going on, they don’t know who the fucking enemy is! It could be a fucking coup for all anyone knows! There’ll be panic in the streets—”<br /><br />“This has been carefully designed to prevent panic,” the man said calmly. “The problem is internal, but not a coup. That is for your information only. The Government needs to act quickly and efficiently and that means the public must not get in the way—”<br /><br />“It’s like <span style="font-style: italic;">1984</span>!” The night news editor’s face was flushed bright red.<br /><br />The civil servant held up a hand to quieten him, which served only to irritate him more. “This is being done with the full approval of your editor—”<br /><br />“Does <span style="font-style: italic;">he</span> know what’s happening?”<br /><br />“He’s been briefed by the PM personally, as have all media editors—”<br /><br />“What’s it got to do with all the technology blackouts?” Kevin interjected. “There’s stuff happening there that makes no sense at all. And all those freak calls we’ve been flooded with . . . people claiming they’ve seen UFOs and God knows what. I mean, someone said their dead uncle had come back to haunt them. And some farmer said his cows were giving up vinegar instead of milk. I mean, what’s that all about?” He looked from face to face; everyone was staring back at him as if they had a bad smell under their nose. “The switchboard keeps putting them through to my office.”<br /><br />“I wonder who arranged that?” Kay eyed the night news editor, who gave nothing away.<br /><br />“We will be making a full and clear statement as soon as the situation demands it,” the civil servant said blandly. “We have no intention of a cover-up. There is a state of emergency for a very good reason and our primary directive has to be to deal with that. It is taking all our resources. You have to believe me on this. Keeping everyone informed comes a very distant second.”<br /><br />The night news editor read the replacement story one more time, then lounged back in his chair with his hands over his face. “I don’t know why I’m even bothering. We might as well all go down the pub—”<br /><br />“You can’t go out,” the civil servant said. “There’s a curfew once the sun goes down.”<br /><br />“And you’re going to stop me personally, are you, you cunt?” The night news editor glared at him venomously. Kay noticed a strange note in her boss’s voice, something that was a little afraid; a suspicion of how bad things really were.<br /><br />She glanced back to the civil servant who sported a curious expression; it reminded Kay of the look some older people, burdened by life’s problems, gave to teenagers acting stupid and frivolous; a <span style="font-style: italic;">one day you’re going to have a rude awakening</span> look. He masked it quickly with expert precision, shrugged as if everything were beneath his notice, then sauntered slowly back to the editor’s office.<br /><br />Kay shrugged too. What did he know? Boring, jumped-up twat.<br /><br />Once the office door had been closed the night news editor said, “I think I might have to kill the bastard.”<br /><br />“I’m getting a bit worried about this.” Kevin chewed his lip, his gaze still fixed on the office door. “It seems really bad.”<br /><br />“If it’s a war I could be a war correspondent.” Lucy made a paper aeroplane, but it died midflight.<br /><br />“Aren’t you worried?” Kevin asked.<br /><br />She eyed him contemptuously. “What’s to worry about? You want to try getting a drink up the road when all the circulation twats are in trying to pinch your arse. That’s dangerous.”<br /><br />“Hang on.” The night news editor was staring intently at his terminal.<br /><br />“Not more bad news,” Kevin said.<br /><br />The PA newsfeed seemed to be melting, the letters sliding down the screen into a mass at the bottom. Eventually the whole screen was clear. A second later a single word appeared in the top lefthand corner: WARE.<br /><br />“What does that mean?” Kay asked. “Software?”<br /><br />The word began to repeat until it filled the whole screen.<br /><br />“It might mean Be-WARE,” Kevin said. “Some kind of warn—”<br /><br />“Lucy, get on to Systems.” The night news editor threw the phone across the desk. “This fucking thing isn’t much use to us at the moment, but at least I can see what PA are doing.”<br /><br />Lucy picked up the phone and instantly dropped it as ear-piercing laughter shrieked from the receiver. “Fuck! What was that!” She stared at the phone as if it were alive.<br /><br />“Interference,” Kay said wearily. “Try the other one.”<br /><br />The same inhuman laughter burst from that one too. They had an instant to look at each other in puzzlement and then all the lights and the computer screens winked out, plunging the entire windowless office into total darkness.<br /><br />There was a long period of deep, worrying silence until everyone heard Kay say, “Fuck off, Kevin.”<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">May 2, 11 p.m.; Balsall Heath, Birmingham:</span><br /><br />“What did your dad say?” Sunita chewed on a strand of her long, black hair while she watched Lee’s face. The night was uncomfortably muggy against the background stink of traffic fumes drifting in from the city centre.<br /><br />Lee shifted uncomfortably as he scrubbed a hand across his skinhead crop. “What do you think he said?”<br /><br />The glare from the streetlamp over their heads seemed to draw out the sadness in her delicate features; her large eyes became dark, reflecting pools. “That he doesn’t want his son going out with some Paki.”<br /><br />“He’s not my dad anyway,” Lee said defensively. “Stepdad.”<br /><br />They both subconsciously bowed their heads as across the road a crowd of youths making their way back from the pub made loud kissing noises. Once they’d passed, Lee slipped his arms around her back; she felt so fragile against the hardness of his worked-out muscles that he just wanted to protect her.<br /><br />“Why do we get all this shit?” She rested her head on his chest. “I’m not even twenty yet! We should be having a good time, enjoying it all. Sometimes I feel like an old woman.”<br /><br />He knew how she felt. When they’d first started seeing each other a year ago he had been almost overwhelmed by the <span style="font-style: italic;">frisson</span> of doing something wrong, at turns both exciting and deeply disconcerting. And the fact that he did feel that way made him queasy because he knew how much his stepfather had corrupted his thought processes. There was nothing wrong with their relationship, but he’d had to keep it secret from his stepfather through what seemed like a million minor deceptions and big lies. It had cast a shadow over everything, when they should have been revelling in the feeling of falling in love; that pure sensation had been lost to them and he hated his stepfather for that loss. There was relief when he finally discovered who Lee was seeing after spotting them holding hands on New Street, but that had brought with it a whole different set of problems, the most worrying of which was that Sunita might no longer be safe. His stepfather’s <span style="font-style: italic;">associates</span> from his weekly meetings were brutal men with a harsh view of life that didn’t allow such weak concepts as love the slightest foothold, and they were relentlessly unforgiving.<br /><br />Sunita knew all this, and she knew it would be safer for her to leave Lee well alone, but how could she? The choices had been made and imprinted on their souls; they had to live with the consequences. “What are we going to do? Carry on as normal, just . . . going to different places?”<br /><br />“You know we can’t do that. They know where you live.” He took a deep breath. “We’re getting out of Birmingham.” He paused while he watched her expression. “Least, that’s what I think. I know it’ll be hard with your family—”<br /><br />“It’ll be a nightmare! My dad’ll go crazy, my mum . . . all that wailing!”<br /><br />“You’re old enough—”<br /><br />“That’s not the point.”<br /><br />He winced at being so insensitive, but he found it hard to see anything from the perspective of a loving, caring family. “I’m sorry, Sunny, but, you know, we’ve got to do something—”<br /><br />“Where were you thinking of going?”<br /><br />“Down south somewhere. Just hit the motorway and see where we end up. They’ll never be able to track us.”<br /><br />She sighed. “It’s not just your dad. It’ll be good to get out of this city. Sometimes it seems like it’s choking the life out of me. There’s something . . . a meanness . . . it just gets me down.”<br /><br />“I know what you mean.” He listened to the drone of city centre traffic drifting over the wasteland and abandoned houses waiting for demolition. “It’ll be good, a fresh start.”<br /><br />“Do you think it will work out?”<br /><br />“I know it will.” He wondered if he could tell her why he was so sure; saying it out loud made even him feel like he was crazy; and he’d been through it. “Come on, let’s walk.” He took her hand and began to lead her in the direction of the house.<br /><br />She looked uncomfortable. “Your dad—”<br /><br />“He’s at one of his meetings, wishing we still had an empire.”<br /><br />The familiar streets were thankfully empty, adding to the wonderful illusion that they were the only people left in the world. Away from the wasteland the air was a little fresher. They turned down the hill from the imposing big houses towards the line of pokey semis where Lee had lived all his life. It felt odd to think he might not walk down there again. He’d miss his mum, and Kelly, but not Mick; he’d be happy if he never heard Mick’s voice again.<br /><br />“When are you thinking of going?” Sunita asked.<br /><br />“Now. Tonight.”<br /><br />“Oh.”<br /><br />He couldn’t tell her that his stepdad’s beetle-browed cronies might act after they’d finished their rebel-rousing for the night. They had to be as far away as possible from Brum before everything blew up. But even though he didn’t say anything, he could tell from Sunita’s response to the tight deadline that she understood the dangers.<br /><br />“Mum and Dad will understand,” she said confidently. “I’ll call them once we’re on the road. They’ll be asleep when I get back to pack. Though you know, things aren’t so different between us. They both wish I was with a boy who knew the Koran back to front.”<br /><br />He shrugged, said nothing. There were always too many people wanting to interfere in everybody’s life.<br /><br />Sunita slipped her arm through his and gave it a squeeze. “We’ll never be able to agree on the music for the car, you know. There’ll be me with my Groove Armada and Basement Jaxx and you with some ancient old toss like The Redskins or one of those other old fogey bands you like. I don’t know how you got into all that stuff. Most of them were playing before you were born.”<br />“You’ve got to appreciate the past to know where you’re going.”<br /><br />“You’ve been reading books again, haven’t you? I told you it was bad for you.” She smiled, but it drained away once she realised they were standing outside his home. Over the year her imagination had turned it into some kind of nightmarish haunted house, the place where all bad things originated. Even on the few times she’d been into the empty place there’d been an unpleasant atmosphere mingled in with the cheap cigarette smoke and smell of fried food. “Are you sure he’s not in?”<br /><br />“He never misses a meeting.” Lee led her round the side of the house. The small back garden was in darkness; a few items of clothing still fluttered on the washing line.<br /><br />“What about your mum and Kelly?”<br /><br />“They’ll have stopped off for a drink after the bingo.”<br /><br />“Lee, why are you bringing me here?”<br /><br />“There’s something I want to show you. To put your mind at rest.”<br /><br />“About what?”<br /><br />“That everything’ll be all right.” She still seemed unsure, so he took her hand and tugged her towards the shed in the shadows near the rear fence. It was much larger than average. Mick had put it up when he was thinking about breeding racing pigeons, but he’d never got round to that, like so many other things in his life.<br /><br />“You don’t want to get down to it here one more time, do you?” she said with a sly smile.<br /><br />“Wait and see.” They stepped into the darkness of the shed and its familiar smell of turps and engine oil. He took her hand and waited a couple of seconds before saying in a clear voice, “Come out. It’s me.”<br /><br />In the dark Sunita looked at him in puzzlement; she could feel his hand growing clammy. “Who are you talking to?”<br /><br />He hushed her anxiously. He kept his gaze fixed firmly on the back of the shed and when he didn’t get whatever response he had been expecting, he tried again, a little more insistently. Still nothing. “Please,” he said finally. “This is Sunita. I told you about her. She’s okay, you know that.”<br /><br />He waited for another moment and then sighed. “We better go,” he said reluctantly.<br /><br />Outside, she gave him a peck on the cheek. “It’s a good job I love mad people. Now are you going to tell me—”<br /><br />“You better not laugh!”<br /><br />“Of course not.”<br /><br />“Promise?”<br /><br />“I promise, idiot. Now get on with it.”<br /><br />He bowed his head with the odd, wincing expression which she knew signalled deep embarrassment. “It started a couple of weeks ago. I kept hearing noises in the shed.”<br /><br />“Noises?”<br /><br />“Yes, you know . . . voices. They kept chattering in there. I thought some smackheads had broken in, but every time I went to check there was no one in there.”<br /><br />“Ooh, spooky!”<br /><br />“Yeah, that’s what I thought. But then last week there was someone there.”<br /><br />Sunita eyed him askance, trying to predict the punchline. “Who was it?”<br /><br />He rubbed his chin, obviously not wanting to continue. Finally he said, “Do you believe in fairies?”<br /><br />“Fairies?” She burst out laughing.<br /><br />“You said you weren’t going to laugh!”<br /><br />“Sorry, but . . . You can’t be serious!”<br /><br />He looked away grumpily.<br /><br />“Okay, go on!” she said, tugging at his sleeve. “What did they look like?”<br /><br />“They looked like fairies! Well, a fairy. Small, pointed ears, green clothes. It was just like one I’d seen on a book I had when I was a lad.”<br /><br />It took him another ten minutes to get her to take him seriously, but eventually she accepted it. “Okay, there’s been a lot of strange stuff going on all over. If you say fairies, I believe fairies,” she said, bemused. “So there are, really and truly, fairies at the bottom of the garden.”<br /><br />“I don’t know why I even bother with you,” he sighed. “Just listen then, if you’re not going to believe me. I tell you, I thought I was going loopy to start with, but every time I went in, there he was, so I had to accept it. And we started talking.” He snorted with laughter at the ridiculousness of the idea. “I told him all about you, about my dad, about . . . well, everything.”<br /><br />“I bet he had a good fairy laugh at all that,” she said bitterly.<br /><br />“No, actually. He said his people always looked after young lovers. ‘Simpletons and those in love,’ that’s what he said.” He laughed. “Same thing, I suppose. Anyway, I told him I was going to leave town and he said not to worry, everything was going to be all right for us.”<br /><br />“So where was he just?”<br /><br />Lee looked troubled. “I don’t know. He’s been in there every time I’ve been in recently. Maybe he doesn’t appear if there’s more than one person . . .” His voice faded away as he recognised how stupid he sounded. “Or maybe all the stuff with Mick really has turned my brain to jelly.”<br /><br />“Jelly boy!” She danced a few steps ahead before he could pinch her; instead he swore forcefully. “Okay, okay!” she laughed. “But there’s one thing I never could quite work out as a girl. Can you really trust fairies?”<br /><br /><br />From the darkened lounge Mick Jonas watched his stepson and the Paki bitch step into the shed, obviously for a quick touch-up, and he was still watching when they headed back towards the road. He quickly switched on his mobile phone and hit the speed dial. “They’re on their way now,” he said in his thick Birmingham accent. “Follow ’em till they’re outside Brum then get ’em off the road. You can do what you like to the cunt, but just give our Lee a good fucking hiding. Teach him a lesson.” He listened to the voice on the other end for a second, then added, “If you want to use a can of fucking petrol on her, pal, you do it. Just make sure Lee doesn’t get burned up. The old woman would kill me.”<br /><br />He switched off the phone and lit a cigarette before lowering his overweight frame into the frayed armchair he had made his own. He felt a triumphant burst, that he’d got one over on his lefty, Paki-loving stepson who thought he was so fucking superior. But Mick had seen him sneak the suitcase out and store it in the boot of his old banger. He knew what the little shit was planning.<br /><br />He closed his eyes and sucked deeply on the cigarette, enjoying the moment and the certain knowledge that a blow had been struck against the fucking multicultural society. But when he opened his eyes a moment later he was almost paralysed by shock. Through the window he could see something moving rapidly across the lawn from the bottom of the garden. He couldn’t tell what it was—its shape seemed to be changing continuously and his eyes hurt from trying to pin it down—but it was horrible. The scream started deep in his throat, but it hadn’t reached his mouth before the window had imploded, showering glass all around him. And then it was on him.<br /><br /><br />Maureen and Kelly returned from the local five minutes later. They tiptoed through the front door, just in case Mick was dozing after a few pints. They’d both pay the price if they woke him. But the moment she was across the threshold, Maureen had the odd feeling something was wrong. There was a strained atmosphere, like just before a storm, and an odd smell was drifting in the air. While Kelly went to the bathroom she crept into the lounge to investigate.<br /><br />The first thing she saw was the broken window and felt the glass crunching underfoot. Her mind started to roll: burglars; some of those shabby youths who didn’t like Mick’s little club.<br /><br />And then she looked into Mick’s armchair and at first didn’t recognise what she was seeing. It was black and smoking and resembled nothing more than a sculpture made out of charcoal. A sculpture of a man. And then she looked closer and saw what it really was, and wondered why the armchair hadn’t burst into flames as well, and wondered a million and one other things all at once.<br /><br />And then she screamed.<br /><br /><br />“I don’t believe we did it!” Lee was bouncing up and down with excitement in his seat as the car pulled on to the M6 heading south.<br /><br />“Well, your fairy told us, didn’t he?” Sunita said with a giggle.<br /><br />He gave her thigh a tight squeeze. “This is about us now. We can do anything we want. We can really enjoy ourselves, just the two of us. God, I love you!”<br /><br />She smiled and blew him a kiss. “Things are strange right now, aren’t they?” she said dreamily as she stared out of the passenger window into the night. “People seeing all those weird things. You and the fairies. Uncle Mohammed having those dreams that came true.”<br /><br />“Maybe it’s a sign.”<br /><br />“Of what?”<br /><br />“I don’t know. Of hope. That things are going to get better.”<br /><br />She shook her head, her smile not even touching on the endless happiness she felt. “You’re a hopeless romantic.”<br /><br />And the road opened up before them.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center; font-weight: bold;">chapter one<br />what now my love<br /></div><br />Smoke still billowed up from the ruins of the Kyle of Lochalsh across the water, sweeping a curtain of grey across the bright moon. Here and there small fires continued to burn like Will-o’-the-Wisps. The night was thick with the reek of devastation and despair, the smell of a world winding down.<br /><br />Jack Churchill, known to his friends as Church, sat on the sea wall at Kyleakin next to Laura DuSantiago, and together they surveyed what little of the carnage they could make out on the mainland. It provided an odd counterpoint to the tranquillity that came from the gently lapping waves and the wind which blew through the deserted village. They were both exhausted after the nerve-racking journey across Skye in an abandoned car they had found in Kilmuir. The oppressively claustrophobic atmosphere was brought down by their fears of an ambush at every bend in the road, and magnified by the eerie stillness of the surrounding countryside, devoid of any sign of human life; it had been eradicated as easily and completely as a germ culture on a microscope slide. Nor were there any bodies; whatever the Fomorii had done with the former inhabitants did not bear considering. By the time they reached Kyleakin they had to accept that the Fomorii had deemed them too small a threat to pursue them any longer, and somehow that was even more jarring than the constant fear of attack. They were worthless.<br /><br />“Well, it could be worse.” Laura brushed a stray strand of dyed-blonde hair out of her eyes as she shuffled into a more comfortable position on the wall.<br /><br />Church, his dark hair emphasising the paleness of his wearied face, looked at her askance. “How could it possibly be worse?”<br /><br />“We could be going to work tomorrow.”<br /><br />She kept her gaze fixed firmly across the water, but Church had learned to read the humour in her deadpan expression. Their relationship, if that was what it was, still surprised him. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her. On the surface they had nothing in common, but deep down it seemed that something had clicked; after so long in the emotional ice-field following Marianne’s death it felt good to reconnect with another human being, and the sex had been great. He hoped it was more than a simple alliance forged through the desperation of terrifying times, but there was no point losing sleep analysing it; it would find its own level soon enough, he was sure of it. Cautiously he reached out and took her hand. She was so unpredictable he half-expected her to snatch it away and accuse him of being a romantic idiot, but her fingers closed around his, cool and comforting.<br /><br />“Do you think the others have forgiven me for screwing up so badly?” he asked. The notion drove a pang of guilt through him.<br /><br />“They didn’t give it a second thought. They might look like morons, but they can see you’re all right. For a dickhead. And let’s face it, you only acted like a human being. One who doesn’t tell his friends anything, but a human being nonetheless. Who’s going to fault you for that?”<br /><br />Despite her words, Church couldn’t stop the guilt growing stronger. The Tuatha Dé Danann had been right in their brutal assessment of his worth; it was his own weaknesses that had dragged them down. If he had told the others about the visitations of Marianne’s spirit, about the Kiss of Frost that had corrupted him and brought about the Danann’s contempt, the world might have been saved.<br /><br />“Did you ever hear <span style="font-style: italic;">Beyond the Sea</span>?” he asked, staring into the chopping black waves.<br /><br />“Is that by one of those dead, old white guys you enjoy so much? Some Sinatra shit?”<br /><br />“Bobby Darin.” He didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s the best metaphor for death I’ve ever heard. Just a simple little song, but when you think about it in those terms it becomes almost profound.” He sang a few bars: “<span style="font-style: italic;">Somewhere beyond the sea, somewhere waiting for me, my lover stands on golden sands</span>. So sad, but so optimistic. I’d never really thought about it like that until just now, you know, about it talking about what lies beyond death—”<br /><br />“Or it could just be a simple little song.” The comment would normally have been concluded with some note of mockery or contempt, but when none came he turned to look at her. Laura’s face was still and thoughtful, and when she spoke again her voice was uncommonly hesitant. “How do you feel?”<br /><br />“What do you mean?”<br /><br />“All that stuff floating around inside . . .” She was skating around the edge of an issue that was so monumental it was almost impossible to put it into perspective.<br /><br />“I feel okay, under the circumstances. Different, though I’m not sure how. Sometimes I get a wave of cold when the Fomorii corruption seems to get the upper hand. Sometimes I feel like I’ve got liquid gold in my veins, thanks to whatever the Danann did to me. The rest of the time I just feel like me.”<br /><br />“Must be a real head-fuck to die and get reborn.”<br /><br />“Yes.” In his darker moments he wondered if it meant he was still human, still alive, even, in any sense that people understood. How could you die and then come back? What scars did that leave on the soul, if such a thing existed? And what did it mean for the rules that were supposed to give a structure to existence? He combatted such black thoughts by trying to consider his rebirth an opportunity to leave the past and all his weaknesses behind, to become something much more valuable. It was the only way to stop himself from cracking up.<br /><br />“When you died, you know, what was it like? Inside?” It was obvious Laura wasn’t about to let the subject drop. Though her face remained impassive, there was a deep gravitas at the back of her eyes that showed how much the issue meant to her.<br /><br />He threw his mind back to when he was lying half in the stream, his blood mingling with the water, his body racked with pain. “Like slipping into a hot bath and just carrying on down and down.”<br /><br />She nodded thoughtfully. “And after that?”<br /><br />He winced. “I don’t remember.”<br /><br />“Nothing at all?”<br /><br />His sigh was uncomfortable. “Just fragments . . . nothing that makes sense. And it’s all breaking up like a dream after you wake.”<br /><br />“But you remember something?”<br /><br />“Just something that looked like a big church.” There was a sharpness to his voice that he regretted, but couldn’t control. “Or a cathedral. Massive, going right up past the clouds. That’s it.”<br /><br />“Okay, I won’t bug you about it any more.” She made to leave, but he caught her arm and pulled her back. She gave a wry smile. “Getting frisky?” Before he could answer, she pushed him back off the wall and followed him down.<br /><br /><br />“You ever wonder why there aren’t any bodies?” Ryan Veitch put his street-hard shoulder muscles to the rear door of the grocery shop and heaved one final time; it burst open with a crack.<br /><br />“I don’t want to think about that.” Ruth Gallagher looked around uncomfortably. Even though she knew they were the only ones in the area and that the laws of the land probably didn’t hold much sway any longer, she still didn’t feel right breaking and entering.<br /><br />Veitch didn’t have any such qualms. His increasingly long hair hid his expression from her as he headed through the doorway, but she could have sworn he was actually enjoying it. Inside the store her fears were confirmed when the makeshift torch illuminated his hard, handsome features; he was grinning. “I’ll be happier when the power comes back on,” he said.<br /><br />“Maybe it’s gone for good this time,” Ruth said morosely, as she reluctantly followed him in. Cartons of tins and breakfast cereals were piled around and it smelled warmly of fruit and bread. “Enough of the talk. Just get the provisions we need and let’s get out of here.”<br /><br />“I like to talk. Anyway, who’s going to rumble us here?”<br /><br />Ruth pushed past him with a flick of her head that sent her long, brown hair flying. She began to fill a dustbin bag with packets of muesli. “Perhaps we should leave a note for the owner. Tell him why we took the stuff. Offer to pay him back—”<br /><br />Veitch gave a derisory snort. “You’re living in cloud cuckoo land, you. Get real. He’s not coming back. None of the poor bastards are. The Fomorii have hauled them off to their larder.”<br /><br />Ruth glared at him, but his words made her feel numb and she quickly returned to her petty pilfering.<br /><br />Veitch helped her halfheartedly and then said out of the blue, “Are we going to start getting on?”<br /><br />“We’re stuck in this together. We don’t have any option.”<br /><br />“That’s not good enough.”<br /><br />Her eyes flashed. “Well—”<br /><br />“No, listen to me. I know I’ve done some bad things in my life, but you can’t keep on blaming me for what happened to your old man—”<br /><br />“How can you say that! You shot my uncle!” As she turned to face him her elbow clipped a box of <span style="font-style: italic;">Special K </span>and sent it flying across the storeroom; all the emotions which she had bottled up for so long rumbled to the surface. She fought to hold back tears that seemed to come too easily, then said, “I’m sorry. I heard what the Danann said—”<br /><br />“That’s right! It wasn’t my fault. They made me do it, like they made all of us suffer.”<br /><br />Ruth remembered the horror she felt when the Danann explained how all five of them had been forced to experience death as some sort of preparation for the destiny that had been mapped out for them.<br /><br />“I might be a stupid little two-bit crook, but I’ve never killed anybody in my life before!” Veitch continued. “I’m not that kind of bloke. I wish you could know how much it screwed me up when I saw I’d shot your uncle . . .” He winced at the memory. “Listen, all I want to do, all I’ve <span style="font-style: italic;">ever</span> wanted to do in my life, is do something that’s right, you know what I mean? Be a good guy for a change. But even when I try, it seems to go wrong. I just want a chance to show what I can do.”<br /><br />His pleading was so heartfelt, Ruth couldn’t help feeling sympathy.<br /><br />“Because I like you,” he continued. “I like all of you. You’re all trying to do the right thing, whatever it might mean to you, and I’ve never been around people like that before. I don’t want you all thinking bad of me all the time.”<br /><br />Ruth read the emotions on his face for a long moment, then returned to her packing. “Okay,” she said. “I forgive you. But it’s not going to be forgotten just like that—”<br /><br />“I know. I just want a chance.”<br /><br />“You’ve got it.”<br /><br />She could feel him staring at her like he couldn’t believe what she had said, and then he started loading up his bag with gusto. Once they’d got everything they might need for a few days, they headed back out. As they slipped away from the shadows at the back of the shop, a dark shape flashed out of the sky and circled them, drawing closer. Veitch was instantly alert, ready for defence.<br /><br />“It’s okay,” Ruth said. The owl, her gifted companion, glided down and landed on her shoulder; she winced as its talons bit into her flesh, then pushed her head to one side for fear it would start flapping its wings. It was the first time it had come close enough for her to touch. The owl turned its eerie, blinking eyes on Veitch, who was grinning broadly.<br /><br />“What’s his name?” He reached out a hand, but the owl snapped its beak in the direction of his fingers and he withdrew sharply.<br /><br />“Who says it’s a he?”<br /><br />“Well what’s <span style="font-style: italic;">its</span> fucking name then?”<br /><br />“It hasn’t got a name.” She paused. “Not one that I know, anyway.”<br /><br />“Well, don’t you think you should give him one? Or her. It. If it’s going to be on the team—”<br />“Maybe I’ll ask it later.” Her eyes sparkled.<br /><br />Veitch looked at her for a second or two, but he couldn’t tell if she was serious or teasing him. He decided to opt for the latter and responded in kind with a faint smirk. “Witch.”<br /><br />“Fuckhead.”<br /><br />Their eyes locked for a long moment, then they burst out laughing. Turning, they threw the bags over their shoulders and marched towards the seafront.<br /><br />“So what exactly can you do?” Veitch said.<br /><br />Ruth shrugged. “I don’t know yet. It’s like spending all your life as a man and then someone coming up to you and telling you you’re actually a woman. How do you get your head round something as monumental as that? How can you comprehend you’ve been chosen by the gods for some task?”<br /><br />“Sounds pretty cool to me. I wouldn’t mind.”<br /><br />“You might think differently if it actually happened to you. It’s hard enough understanding that the world’s changed. That different rules operate now, fundamental rules, about the way everything works. The woman I met in the Lake District—”<br /><br />“The old magic-biddy?”<br /><br />“The Wiccan. She’d spent years practising certain rites and not getting anywhere. Then, earlier this year, she woke up and suddenly found out things <span style="font-style: italic;">happened</span>. At her command.”<br /><br />“What kind of things?”<br /><br />“Altering the weather. Controlling animals . . .” Ruth had a sudden flashback to the spirit-flight she experienced and was surprised at the depth of her yearning to savour it again. “I don’t think it’s a matter of having any kind of power. It’s just an aptitude for controlling things. Like physicists bending nuclear power to their will. You have to learn how to access it.”<br /><br />“Any luck so far?”<br /><br />“I haven’t really tried. I’m a little nervous.”<br /><br />“I read sex helps with magic.” He didn’t look at her, but she could sense his grin.<br /><br />“Don’t go down that road. You’re still on probation.”<br /><br />“Okay. Just offering my services if you need me.”<br /><br />“Thanks, but I’d rather put my eyes out.”<br /><br />For a brief moment the wind shifted and the omnipresent stink of burning was replaced by the salty aroma of the sea and the heady tang of green hills. They both stopped and breathed deeply.<br /><br /><br />The fire roared as Tom threw on another broken dining chair, the glow painting a dull red over his wire-rimmed spectacles. Shavi sat cross-legged in front of his tent, staring deep into the flames. His long hair hung limp around his face, his perfect Asian features so still he could have been a mannequin. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Tom eyed him surreptitiously as he turned from the blaze.<br /><br />“It was a terrible experience, but you gained wisdom from it.” He adjusted the elastic band holding his grey ponytail in place.<br /><br />Shavi’s eyes flickered, as if he were waking from a dream. “At the moment that seems little consolation.”<br /><br />“There’s always a price to pay for knowledge. What you did was a great leap forward in your abilities.” Tom sat next to him, but far enough away so as not to encroach on the invisible barrier Shavi had placed around himself.<br /><br />“I feel something has broken inside, deep in my head. Only I cannot tell exactly what. I simply feel different, damaged.”<br /><br />“You projected your consciousness, your very self, out of your body and into an unthinking beast. It was a triumph of your shamanistic abilities. Unfortunately there will be short-term repercussions—”<br /><br />“I have no wish to talk about it further.” Shavi fell silent for a few minutes, then said, “I am sorry. I am being very insensitive. What I have experienced is nothing compared to your suffering over the centuries in Otherworld.”<br /><br />“It wasn’t centuries when I was there.” Tom paused. “Although it felt like it.”<br /><br />“And was the wisdom you gained from your experience worthwhile?”<br /><br />Tom looked away into the night.<br /><br />“What does your power of prophecy say for us, True Thomas?” Shavi lay back so he could watch the stars twinkling through the gaps in the smoke. He felt a twinge of deep regret that his experience with the serpent on the crossing to Skye had left him with such a black depression that he could no longer truly appreciate them.<br /><br />“There are hard times ahead.”<br /><br />“Even Ryan could have predicted that.”<br /><br />“It’s not as if I see the future rolled out before me like a map. There are flashes, glimpses through different windows on a winding staircase. I prefer not to say too much. Guessing at the meaning of a future image can alter the way one would react in the present.”<br /><br />“Do you know who will live and who will die?” Shavi’s voice floated up hollowly.<br /><br />Tom remained silent.<br /><br />A second later they heard the sound of the others approaching up the road from Kyleakin. Church had his arm around Laura’s shoulders, while Ruth and Veitch carried the bags of provisions. They were all laughing at a joke.<br /><br />“Come on, you old git. It won’t ruin your image if you smile. It’s not as if you’re going to get any more wrinkles,” Laura shouted to Tom. He looked away haughtily.<br /><br />Shavi forced a smile. “Any fine food for dinner?”<br /><br />Ruth upended her bin bag. “Beans, fruit salad, muesli, pasta or any combination of the above.”<br />“Better get your cauldron on then,” Laura said to her tartly.<br /><br />“There’s meat for those who eat it.” Tom motioned to a brace of pheasants that lay on the outskirts of the camp.<br /><br />“How the hell did you get those?” Veitch asked in amazement. He picked up one by the claws and searched for any kind of injury.<br /><br />“Don’t ask him that,” Church said. “It’ll just give him a chance to put on his mysterious-but-wise Yoda routine.”<br /><br />“Well, meat for me.” Veitch threw the bird down. Laura wrinkled her nose in distaste.<br /><br />While Tom set about preparing the birds, Ruth got out the cooking utensils they had picked up from the camping shop where they’d also, in Laura’s words, <span style="font-style: italic;">liberated</span> the tents. Tom jointed the pheasants with his Swiss Army Knife and they cooked quickly over the campfire, while Veitch prepared pasta and beans to accompany them.<br /><br />After they’d eaten, they all sat back listening to the crackle of the fire. It was Church who spoke first, and from the way they turned to him as one he realised they had been waiting for him. “I think,” he began, “it’s time to decide what we’re going to do next.”<br /><br />“Let’s weigh up the options.” Church watched Ruth’s face grow serious as she turned her sharp lawyer’s mind to the mountainous problems that faced them.<br /><br />“Rolling over and doing nothing, always a popular favourite. That’s my number one.” Laura began to count off on her fingers. “Driving off until we find a nice, secluded beach somewhere. Taking a boat and getting away across the Channel. Taking a shedload of drugs and spending whatever time we’ve got left blissed out.” She paused thoughtfully. “Um. Burying our heads in the sand—”<br /><br />“Or,” Veitch interrupted, “we could do the right thing.”<br /><br />“And what’s that?” Laura sneered. “Rob a building society?”<br /><br />Shavi leaned forward, his eyes pools of darkness despite the firelight. “We are Brothers and Sisters of Dragons. After all that has happened, there is no denying it. For better or worse, we, of all the people in the world, have had responsibility thrust upon us. We can no more turn our back on what is expected of us than we could on life itself.”<br /><br />“Speak for yourself,” Laura sulked.<br /><br />“And what <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> expected of us?” Church said, although the answer was obvious.<br /><br />Shavi moistened his lips. “To oppose the powers that threaten to drive humanity into the shadows. To shine a beacon of hope in the night. Whatever the cost.”<br /><br />“Plain English,” Veitch interjected. “To overthrow the bastards or die trying.”<br /><br />Ruth raised her eyes and muttered, “Thank you, John Wayne.”<br /><br />They all fell silent for a long moment, and it was Laura who gave voice to the thought on all their minds. “Look at us. What can <span style="font-style: italic;">we</span> do?”<br /><br />“I can give you all the clichés,” Church began. “David and Goliath. The ant that moved several times its own weight—”<br /><br />“Okay.” Laura smiled falsely. “Now let’s talk about the real world.”<br /><br /><br />“There’s some way out there,” Veitch said adamantly. “We don’t have to go out in a blaze of glory like the Wild Bunch. There’s guerrilla warfare. There’s—”<br /><br />“—different rules now,” Church said. “Powers out there we can use. Like the artefacts we uncovered.” He still felt troubled that objects of such great power were in the hands of such an unpredictable race as the Tuatha Dé Danann.<br /><br />“Guerrilla warfare,” Ruth said. “I like that. We turn our weakness into a strength. Move fast, strike hard and be away before they can respond.”<br /><br />“Excuse me? Are we living in the same world?” Laura said. “These are things that can crush us faster than you can get on a high horse.”<br /><br />“Get a spine.” Ruth turned to the others. “We all know what’s going to happen next.”<br />Every head dropped as one.<br /><br />“Somebody’s got to say it—”<br /><br />“Let’s not, and say we did.” Laura tried to make out it was more sour humour, but they all heard the faint undertone in her voice: fear.<br /><br />Ruth looked around the circle slowly. “They’re going to try to bring Balor back. If we don’t try to stop them—”<br /><br />“Why us?” Laura no longer made any pretence of humour.<br /><br />“But that is why we have been brought together,” Shavi said quietly. “That is the reason why we contain this nebulous thing called the Pendragon Spirit, this thing that none of us truly understands. But it has been gifted to us so we can defend the land against this overwhelming threat.”<br /><br />Laura winced. “If you can believe all that—”<br /><br />“You don’t believe it?” Veitch asked sharply.<br /><br />“You know what? I don’t feel any different to before I met all you. You’re just fooling yourselves, playing at being heroes. We’re normal. Some of us, worse than normal. Weak, pathetic little shits. And the only time you’re going to realise what a fantasy it is, is that second before you die in a gutter.” Her features were flinty; it was obvious she wasn’t going to back down.<br /><br />There was a long period of silence filled only with the crackle of the fire. Then Tom began slowly, “It is all right to be scared of Balor. This is not some Fomorii like Calatin or Mollecht, who are frightening, but within our power to beat. As the Fomorii are to us, so Balor is to the Fomorii. He is their god, the embodiment of darkness, evil, death, chaos . . .” He shook his head slowly. “He is more than a force of nature, he is an abstract given form: destruction. You only have my word for this, but I can see from your faces your fear goes beyond what I say. Because you know. In the furthest reaches of your worst nightmare, in the dimmest purview of your race memory, in your primal fear of the night, he lives. If Balor returns, it truly will be the end of everything.”<br /><br />No one spoke. They listened to the wind whistling across the hills of Skye and somehow it seemed harsher, colder, the night too dark.<br /><br />“Then we really do have no choice,” Church said.<br /><br />Laura turned away so the fire didn’t light her face.<br /><br />“How are they going to bring him back?” Ruth asked finally.<br /><br />“None of those ancient races truly die,” Tom said. “They flitter out of this existence for a while. Time is meaningless, space insignificant. They simply need to be anchored and dragged back.” He shrugged. “How? I have no idea. Some ritual using the powerful distillation they have been amassing which we saw in Salisbury and under Dartmoor.”<br /><br />“Then we’ve got to stop the bastards before they start the ritual.” There was an innocent optimism in Veitch’s voice that raised all their spirits slightly.<br /><br />“But where will they be doing it? And when?” Ruth asked.<br /><br />“The when I can answer,” Tom said. “The ritual of birthing will not be conducted until the next auspicious date when there is a conjunction of power and intent. What the Celts named the feast of Lughnasadh, the Harvest Festival. August 1.”<br /><br />“Three months.” Church mulled over this for a second or two. “Doesn’t seem very long. But we managed the unthinkable by our last deadline—”<br /><br />“With no time to spare,” Tom cautioned. “This task is far, far harder. The essence of Balor will already be contained in the birthing medium, ready for the ritual, and the Fomorii will have it hidden in their deepest, most inaccessible stronghold. To them, this thing is more valuable than anything in existence. Imagine if you held the spirit of your God? How much would you fight to protect it?”<br /><br />“Do you think they’ve got it at that fortress we saw them building in the Lake District?” Ruth asked.<br /><br />Tom shook his head. “It will be somewhere none of their enemies will have seen, beneath ground, certainly, and protected against all eventuality.”<br /><br />The wind came howling down from Sgurr Alasdair high in the Cuillin Hills, whipping up the fire so the sparks roared skywards like shooting stars. Looking up into the vast arc of the heavens, they felt suddenly insignificant, all their plans hopeless.<br /><br />“Then how are we going to find it?” Ruth asked. “If they’ve gone to such great pains to make it safe for them, we’re not just going to stumble across it.”<br /><br />Tom nodded in agreement; slowly, thoughtfully. “We need guidance. There is a place we could go, a ritual I could conduct—”<br /><br />“Then let’s do it as soon as possible.” Church looked around at their faces; they were watching him with such intensity it made him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t want the responsibility they were forcing on his shoulders.<br /><br />“So you’ve decided, then.” Laura’s expression hid whatever she was thinking. “We’ve been lucky so far.” Her hand went unconsciously to the scars on her face. “If you can call barely surviving luck. But sooner or later someone’s going to die, and I don’t intend it to be me.”<br /><br />“No one wants—” But she had risen and marched off into the night before Church had a chance to finish. He sighed and waved his hand dismissively. “We better get some sleep. We can start at first light.”<br /><br />Veitch and Shavi headed off to their tents while Tom lit a joint from his rapidly diminishing block of hash and wandered off beyond the light of the campfire.<br /><br />Ruth sat down next to Church, slipping a tentative arm around his shoulders to give him a comforting squeeze. “No rest for the wicked.”<br /><br />“No rest for anyone.” Church sighed. “I wish I had some Sinatra to play. He always makes me feel good at a time like this.” Overhead a meteor shower set pinpricks of light flashing in the black gulf. “You remember when we sat in that café after we first got dragged into all this under Albert Bridge? You asked me if I was scared. I didn’t even know what the word meant then. Now every morning when I wake up, it hits me from a hundred different directions: fear of screwing up again, fear of dying, fear that the world doesn’t make sense any more, that there’s no secure place anywhere.” He paused a second before continuing, “Fear of what this nightmare means on some kind of spiritual level. That there is no meaning. That we’re just here as prey for whatever things are higher up the food chain than us. Fear that the whole mess doesn’t even end with death.”<br /><br />“You think too much.” Ruth gave him another squeeze before removing her arm. “That morning in the café? It seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? I barely knew you then.”<br /><br />Church looked up, unable to pinpoint the tone in her voice. She was smiling, her eyes bright in the dying firelight.<br /><br />“I think you should look for meaning in the small picture, not the big one,” she continued. “It seems stupid with all the upset and suffering, but on that micro level my life is better now than it ever was before. I was in a job I hated, just going through the motions because I knew it would have made my dad happy, not really having any idea who I was at all. Now everything in my life seems heightened, somehow. Even the smallest thing has passion in it. You know I’m not one to get poetic, but compared to how I live my life now, I was dead before. Maybe that’s where the meaning lies.”<br /><br />“Maybe,” he answered noncommittally, but he knew what she meant.<br /><br />“And I feel like my life’s been enriched for knowing you and the others. I feel closer even to the ones I don’t particularly like than anyone I knew before. Maybe when the rulebook was redrawn, the dictionary was too.” She laughed at her metaphor.<br /><br />“What do you mean?”<br /><br />“I know what friendship means now.” Her smile slowly faded until her features were sadly introspective. “I don’t know how to say this, but at this point, with all that shit lying ahead, it seems important.”<br /><br />“So what does friendship mean?” He tried to raise the mood with a smile.<br /><br />“It means being prepared to lay down your life for someone.”<br /><br />“If we’re careful, that’s something we won’t even have to think—”<br /><br />“Church, be realistic. If we go into this, we’re not all, maybe not any of us, going to come out of it alive. You know that. Don’t insult me by pretending it’s not true.”<br /><br />He was hypnotised by what he saw in her eyes.<br /><br />“You’ve changed too,” she continued. “You’ve grown in a lot of ways, in just a few short weeks.”<br /><br />“Yeah, well, you know how it is. Pressure is the catalyst for change.”<br /><br />“It’s a shame we have to lose our innocence.” Although she said <span style="font-style: italic;">we</span>, Church felt she was talking about him.<br /><br />“You can’t stay innocent and face up to sacrifice and death and war. Those bastards killed my innocence when they arranged for Marianne to die. <span style="font-style: italic;">To forge my character</span>,” he added with a sneer.<br /><br />“You mustn’t let it eat you up.”<br /><br />“I won’t. I let that happen before, when I thought I was somehow complicit in Marianne’s <span style="font-style: italic;">suicide</span>. It’s not going to happen again. I’m going to find whoever killed Marianne and I’m going to get my revenge, but I won’t be <span style="font-style: italic;">consumed</span> by it. This is different. It’s colder, harder.” He could tell she wasn’t happy about what his words implied about the change in his character, but on this subject he didn’t care. “I’m not stupid. I’ve read the classics and I know how revenge destroys people. But for the kind of suffering that’s been caused to all of us, there has to be some kind of payback.”<br /><br />The fire was starting to die down and a chill crept across the campsite, belying the summer that was just around the corner.<br /><br />“What’s to become of us all?” Ruth said with a troubled smile.<br /><br />It was a rhetorical question, but Church felt the need to answer it nonetheless. “We’ll do the best we can and damn the consequences.”<br /><br /><br />The morning was clear and fresh. The fires on the mainland had mostly burned themselves out, but there was still the occasional tendril of smoke snaking up into the blue sky. Shavi was the first to rise and he immediately went to the sea wall to survey the stretch of water that separated Skye from the blackened ruins that remained of the Kyle of Lochalsh. Returning to the camp as the others prepared breakfast, he announced that the serpent which had patrolled the waters seemed to have departed with the Fomorii presence. Only Ruth caught the glimmer of relief in his face.<br /><br />After they had eaten an unappetising breakfast of muesli and water, they found a boat on the sea front and Tom steered it across the strait to where they had abandoned their van the previous day. By 10 a.m., they were on their way north along deserted main roads. Ten miles outside of the Kyle of Lochalsh, they saw a farmer attending to hedges away on a hillside, and the further they progressed the more signs of life they encountered, until it seemed the devastation they had encountered was just an aberration.<br /><br />When they stopped at a pub in Achnasheen for lunch, they were chased away by the landlord and some irate locals. The explanation came at an old-fashioned garage further along the road. When the owner shuffled out to fill their tank, checked cap raised over a ruddy face, he told them of a rumour circulating in the area that the Government’s imposition of martial law and the censorship of the media was to prevent panic because a plague was loose in the country; what kind of plague, no one was quite sure. He didn’t believe it himself. The view among his own particular group was that the “bastard politicians” had finally been overcome by their innate corruption and were using a manufactured crisis as a smokescreen to get rid of the democratic process. It had all started with the gun laws, he said. The tragedy at Dunblane was the excuse, but the weapons had really been controlled to prevent an armed uprising. But, he said conspiratorially, a few landowners had held on to their shotguns and were stockpiling them for use “when the soldiers come.” At this, he decided he had said too much and took their money in silence before retreating to his dusty shack.<br /><br />The further north they travelled, the more the people seemed to be untroubled by everything that was happening. They stopped at one farm for supplies of milk, bacon and eggs, only to discover the farmer’s wife who served them knew nothing of the martial law. “We don’t have a telly,” she said in her thick Highlands accent, “and we’re too busy to listen to the radio.”<br /><br /><br />The final leg of the journey took them on a road that was straight as a die through the Beinn Eighe nature reserve, where pine trees and gorse clustered hard against the road. The wildness of this no man’s land made them all uncomfortable; they felt as if humanity had been driven out by an angry, hateful nature for all the crimes it had committed; the new occupants were more respectful of nature’s rules, and unforgiving of anyone who dared venture back into that dark, green domain. Sometimes strange movements could be glimpsed among the shadows beneath the trees; occasionally the quietness was disturbed by cries that came from no bird or animal they could recognise.<br /><br />The oppressiveness eased slightly when the road took them along the banks of Loch Maree, which was so clear and still it looked like the sky had been brought down to earth. The scenery all around was breathtaking. Across the loch, the banks rose up sharply to soaring, rocky hillsides which were dappled by purple cloud shadows interspersed with brilliant patches of sunlight. From the top, white waterfalls cascaded down gloriously.<br /><br />Soon after they arrived at Gairloch, a small fishing village perched on the edge of a sheltered sea loch. It was a balmy late afternoon with the seagulls screeching overhead and the smell of the day’s catch mingling with the salty aroma of seaweed all along the harbour front. Boats sat up on trailers everywhere, but only the gentle lapping of the waves disturbed the lazy atmosphere.<br /><br />After parking the van overlooking a tiny jetty, Veitch clambered out and stretched his muscles before turning to survey the thickly wooded slopes all around. “I thought we were driving up to the bloody top of the world. Who the hell are we supposed to be seeing up here?”<br /><br />Ruth turned her face to the warmth of the sun. “Come on, Tom. You’ve kept us in suspense all day.”<br /><br />“You know, the old git only does it because he knows if he tells us everything we’ll dump him in the nearest rest home.” Laura adjusted her sunglasses, studiously avoiding Tom’s fierce glare.<br /><br />“You’ll wait until the time’s right,” he said icily. “If you had a little patience and started listening a little more, you might actually gain a little wisdom. We won’t be doing anything until sunset so you may as well make yourself busy.”<br /><br />They unloaded the camping equipment and split it between them before setting off on foot along a valley that ran up into the hills. They walked for two hours until they were exhausted, continually scanning among the trees for any sign of danger. When they broke above the treeline they pitched camp on the sunlit, grassy slopes, admiring the amazing views across the wildly beautiful countryside. After lighting a fire Shavi cooked the bacon and eggs and prepared beans on toast for Laura, which they devoured hungrily after their exertion.<br /><br />Tom avoided all their questions in his usual irritatingly brusque manner until the sun started to ease towards the horizon, and then he marshalled them and led them across the slopes and around rocky outcroppings where the only sound was the whistle of the wind. Finally they mounted a bank and looked down on the remnants of a stone circle.<br /><br /><br />It was only identifiable as a henge at close inspection; to the cursory observer the arrangement of rocks looked almost natural, an illusion that was added to by the few recumbent stones which had not survived the passing of the centuries. Set on the grassy plain, with a vista across the forested landscape towards the setting sun, they could fully understand why their ancestors had located it in that spot; there was a sense of awe from simply being there with only nature all around. A respectful silence came over them the instant they laid eyes on it and, automatically, they all bowed their heads in respect. When they were just a few feet away, Church dipped down and stretched out his fingers to the short grass. A blue spark leapt up from the earth to his fingertips and disappeared up his arm.<br /><br />“It’s true,” Ruth said. “Can you feel it?”<br /><br />Shavi closed his eyes and put his head back beatifically. “Yes. The earth power.”<br /><br />“A few weeks ago I didn’t feel a thing in any of these old sites. Now I’ve got a tingling in my legs, my hands.” Ruth looked round curiously. “A feeling of—”<br /><br />“Well-being,” Tom interrupted. “The Pendragon Spirit within you has grown stronger through your experiences. The spirit and the earth power come from the same source. Naturally, you sense an affinity.”<br /><br />“If the spirit inside us grows stronger, where will it end?” Shavi asked with an expression of wonder.<br /><br />Tom smiled enigmatically. “Millennia ago, when the blue fire pulsed through the arteries of the earth, all men experienced what you feel now. And perhaps they will again. Once you have awakened the sleeping king.”<br /><br />They processed into the centre of the circle and looked around. All was silent apart from the breeze humming in their ears. The sun was fat and scarlet on the horizon, about to tip below the distant hills, the sky red at the lowest point, merging through purple to dark blue.<br /><br />“There’s no one anywhere near here,” Veitch protested. “We just going to sit around till somebody turns up?”<br /><br />“No,” Tom replied. “We are going to summon the Gruagaich and petition them for aid.”<br /><br />There was suspicion in all their faces, to which Church gave voice. “We’ve had enough of being manipulated by any supernatural force that happens to cross our path—”<br /><br />“Don’t worry,” Tom interjected sharply. “This time we turn to our own.”<br /><br />“What do you mean?”<br /><br />Tom motioned to the stones. “This has been a place of summoning for as long as people have settled in the area. You see that stone over there? It is the <span style="font-style: italic;">clach na Gruagaich</span>, one of several by that name scattered around Scotland. This site is hardly known by anyone outside the locals, who would leave an offering in its hollow for the spirits they knew could be contacted here—mainly milk, for protection of the cattle. They believed the spirits were brownies or some other <span style="font-style: italic;">daoine-sith</span>.” He smiled contemptuously. “The <span style="font-style: italic;">good neighbours</span>, their euphemistic term for the beings of Otherworld, or Elfame as they called it. Faerie.”<br /><br />“But they weren’t?”<br /><br />“No. The clue is in the name. <span style="font-style: italic;">Gruagaich. Long-haired ones</span>.” He watched the sun for a long moment. Only a thin arc was visible now above the silhouetted hills. “The first among the old tribes. The people who took up the mantle of the power discovered by the ones who put up these stones. The Celts.”<br /><br />After a long pause, Veitch said doubtfully, “You’re going to talk to ghosts?”<br /><br />“We will summon the Celtic dead,” Tom stated emphatically.<br /><br />Ruth’s brow knit. “What can they know that could help us?”<br /><br />“In the spirit world, all vistas are open. And these are not just any spirits. They are linked to you through time, the first Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.”<br /><br />Tom’s words sent a shiver running through all of them just as the sun slipped completely below the horizon and darkness swept across the land. But a second later, a cloud drifted away and the moon cast its silver light on the circle, limning every stone, throwing long shadows across the grass.<br /><br />“It’s time,” Tom said.<br /><br />From his left pocket, he took a plastic bag which appeared to contain pieces of twig and dried vegetable matter. “The sacred mushroom,” he said.<br /><br />“You’re a regular drugstore.” Laura’s normally confident tones were softened by apprehension. “I know where to come when I want to get blasted.”<br /><br />Tom ignored her. He took a handful of the psychoactive mushrooms from the bag and moved among them, placing small quantities in their mouths. They chewed the rubbery, metallic-tasting pieces and swallowed with distaste.<br /><br />Tom ingested several himself, then took out the battered tin in which he kept his hash and meticulously constructed a joint. When he was done, he lit it and inhaled before walking over to the altar stone. There, he blew out the smoke gently. It rose like a ghost in the moonlight. Using his lighter, he charred the edge of the remaining hash and crumbled some of it into the hollow on the stone. Then, head bowed, he took a few paces back and sat cross-legged, drawing the pungent smoke deep inside him.<br /><br />Veitch and Laura shifted uneasily, but Shavi, Church and Ruth were overcome by an atmosphere of sanctity. On some level they couldn’t quite comprehend, they sensed a change begin to take place around them, as if the air itself were growing heavier, filled with the weight of what was to come. Church swallowed and tasted iron filings in his mouth; his heart began to beat faster as a tingling sensation ran from his groin along his spine to his head. He wondered how much was the drugs and how much was actually happening.<br /><br />It felt like they waited for an age, feeling the wind gently brush their skin, filled with the summery scent of the warm pine forests. But then they noticed a distant movement away in the night. Initially it seemed to be only moonshadows on the rolling terrain, except it became too insistent; the blurred edges of the shadows hardened, the undulating movement became more defined into smaller units. Slowly, Church scanned the area, squinting to draw form from the gloom. Another shiver ran through him when the images finally took shape.<br /><br />Figures were separating themselves from the landscape in a wide arc, advancing slowly on the stone; he estimated there must have been about a hundred of them, mostly men, but some women. At first they were just silhouettes against a lighter dark, but in their eerie, silent advance, details began to emerge. Long, dark hair; skin that was swarthy where visible but in the main covered by what appeared to be mud, as if they had camouflaged themselves for guerrilla warfare; with the furs and hides that kept them warm and the way they moved, in a low, loping way, they resembled some odd half-beast creatures.<br /><br />Finally they came to a halt thirty feet from the stone. The breeze blew among them, rustling hair and furs, but they were so unmoving in the gloom they merged with the stones and the outcropping rocks. It was impossible to discern their faces; pools of shadows filled their eye sockets, leaving Church and the others with the horrible sensation that if the shadows cleared, there would be no eyes there at all. The night was suddenly alive with anxiety and danger; Church knew in some instinctive way that however insubstantial the revenants appeared, they were not passive creatures; he couldn’t shake the feeling that, with the wrong word or movement, they would attack. From the corner of his eye he could see the others staring at Tom, silently urging him to break the oppressive mood.<br /><br />After what felt like an age, Tom rose to address the dark assembly; he held out his hands in the universal sign of friendly greeting.<br /><br />“What do you want, teacher?”<br /><br />The voice seemed to be in Church’s head. The words rumbled with a strange accent, but they were clearly modern English, although he couldn’t begin to understand how the communication was taking place. One of the figures moved out of the mass. He didn’t appear to walk; it was almost as if, in the blink of Church’s eyelid, the figure had shifted forwards several feet. There was nothing about him that signified he was a leader or spokesman.<br /><br />“We come in this time of crisis to call upon your great wisdom, revered ancestor.” Tom’s head was slightly bowed in respect.<br /><br />“It must be a matter of import to summon us back from the Grim Lands.” There was a worrying note in the words, but then the speaker inclined his head slightly towards Church and the others and his tone became more respectful. “I sense in these the shimmering blue fire of the Great Mother Bridgit.”<br /><br />“They are Brothers and Sisters of Dragons.”<br /><br />The Celt bowed his head. “The fire of life has found a good home.”<br /><br />Church felt a sudden surge in his heart. In the Celt’s words was a regard and acceptance that cut through his own fears about his abilities.<br /><br />“In our hearts and spirits, we make our offerings,” Tom continued. “Will you hear me?”<br /><br />“We know you too, brother. Your kind administered to us from the sacred groves. It is good to know the lore survives the years. We will hear you.”<br /><br />Church saw the tension go out of Tom’s shoulders. “You will be aware, as in the first days, that there is darkness on the land and blood in the wind. The Fomorii have returned.” A tremor seemed to run through the throng; Church’s heightened senses felt a wave of threat. “They wish to trap the people in the Eternal Night. That must never happen again. We can no longer rely on the comfort of the Children of Danu. But, as in your days, though the arm is weak, the heart is strong. Yet, still, we need something more to aid us in our struggle. Guide us with your wisdom.”<br /><br />There was a moment of hanging tension when Church thought the spirits weren’t going to answer. Then: “You must find the Luck of the Land if you are ever to unleash the true power of the people.”<br /><br />“What is the Luck of the Land?”<br /><br />Silence; just the soughing of the wind. Tom chewed on his lip. “Then tell me this, I beseech you: in the Grim Lands, all existence is laid out before you. Where is the Fomorii nest where Balor will be reborn?”<br /><br />“The Heart of Shadows will rejoin this world betwixt here and there, but he will find his home where the Luck of the Land is kept.”<br /><br />Church could sense Tom fighting with his normally irritable nature at their opaque answers, but the Rhymer knew a word out of line would not only ruin their opportunity to discover more information, it could prove fatal to them. The spirits may once have been kin, Church thought, but their time in what they called the Grim Lands had changed them immeasureably; he didn’t want to antagonise them at all. Cautiously scanning the massed ranks for any sign of attack, he saw a shape that seemed familiar. It was only a fleeting glimpse of a profile against the starlit sky, but it struck a chord with him. He lost it almost instantly and before he had chance to seek it out again, Tom’s measured tones distracted him.<br /><br />“Revered ancestors, is there any guidance you can give us which will aid us in our great task? Anything at all?”<br /><br />“Wise teacher, in my words lies your salvation. You require more? Then heed this: for the source of threat, look within as well as without. For direction, follow your hearts south to the city of the Well of Fire. For success in battle, cleanse the darkness from the spirit of your chieftain. And remember this: an ally already stands tall among the Children of Danu. Treat him with respect to keep his comfort close. Now, your offering was gratefully received, but it will buy no more of my patience. If you require anything else, you must pay for it with a life. Do you wish to proceed?”<br /><br />Suddenly, the arc of Celts seemed too close, ready to cut off any retreat. As Church looked round, they seemed to waver like an image in a heat haze and for a moment he sensed something very like hunger; anxiety began to turn to fear deep in the pit of his stomach.<br /><br />“Revered ancestor, we have been enlightened by your wisdom,” Tom began. “And we offer our gracious thanks for your time. We shall delay you no more. We wish you well on your return to the Grim Lands.”<br /><br />The Celt who had addressed them lowered his head slightly in parting and, for the briefest instant, the shadows that covered his eyes seemed to clear; what Church glimpsed there made his mind squirm and he had to stop himself fleeing back to the campfire.<br /><br /><br />It was several minutes after the Celts had melted back into the landscape before anyone spoke. It was as if they were coming out of a dream, one tinged with incipient menace where strange truths had been made known, so strange that they could barely be comprehended upon awakening. The feeling was heightened when they realised they could only hazily remember what they had seen, although the words still rang out in their minds.<br /><br />“Did we actually experience that, or was it the mushrooms?” Ruth asked. Church saw she was gripping her hands together to prevent them shaking.<br /><br />“A little of both,” Tom replied.<br /><br />Shavi nodded in agreement. “The mushrooms are the key to opening the doors of perception.”<br /><br />Tom smiled suddenly. “I remember seeing Jim Morrison perform in Florida—”<br /><br />“Most old gits talk about the war,” Laura interrupted. “We get reminiscences of the happy hippie trail. Now can we get back to the fire—it’s freezing out here.”<br /><br /><br />Veitch pulled out a bottle of single malt he’d found in the grocery store on Kyleakin and they drank it from plastic cups around the fire.<br /><br />“So, correct me if I’m wrong, but that was just a load of cryptic bollocks that wasted our time, right?” Although Laura sat next to Church, she was careful not to make the others feel uncomfortable by showing any sign of her affection for him, though Church had sensed an obvious proprietary instinct in the way she had taken her seat just as Ruth was walking up.<br /><br />Tom shook his head. “They didn’t make it easy for us, but all the information they offered is vital.”<br /><br />“Except we probably won’t crack the code until it’s too late,” Church noted. “What’s the Luck of the Land?”<br /><br />“I have no idea. The Celts believed it was dangerous to name a sacred thing by its true name, which is why these exercises end up in irritating circumlocution.” Tom took a deep swig of the whisky and then said tartly, “But we can pull some pearls from the verbal ordure. The city of the Well of Fire is Edinburgh. There’s an extinct volcanic feature in the city called Arthur’s Seat.”<br /><br />“More Arthurian code for a site linked to the earth power?” Church mused.<br /><br />“It’s a very powerful source, the most powerful in Scotland. The Well lies under Arthur’s Seat.”<br />“Then that’s where we’ve got to go. Shouldn’t take too long from here.” Veitch lay back with his hands behind his head.<br /><br />“The ally is obviously Cernunnos.” Ruth examined the mark that had been burned into the flesh of her hand by the nature god. She had a sudden flashback to the rainswept night in Manorbier, the terrifying power she had seen in the being as its body melted and changed like oil on water.<br /><br />“Your ally,” Veitch noted. “You’re his big pal.”<br /><br />“As long as I’m with you, he’s with you. But how are we supposed to show him respect?”<br /><br />“These beings,” Shavi mused, “seem to expect deference from those beneath them in the hierarchy of power.”<br /><br />“I’ll just tug my forelock in front of the toffs,” Veitch sneered. “Blimey, talk about things being the same all over.”<br /><br />“The Celts rightly believed islands were prime places for carrying out rituals,” Tom stated. “Not far from here, in Loch Maree, there’s an island called Eilean Maree, with a sacred grove dedicated to the Tuatha Dé Danann, where we can make an offering to—”<br /><br />“How do you know all these things, <span style="font-style: italic;">wise teacher</span>?” Laura asked pointedly.<br /><br />Shavi eyed Tom incisively. “Tom knows all of the lore of the Celts, is that not right? You told us you were tutored by the people of the Bone Inspector—”<br /><br />“And so the knowledge of being a freak is passed down,” Laura sniffed.<br /><br />“And the Bone Inspector spoke of his people, an unbroken line of guardians of the <span style="font-style: italic;">old places</span> stretching back through history,” Shavi continued.<br /><br />Church threw another branch on the fire. “Well, we all know what cleansing the darkness from the chieftain means,” he added sombrely, “though a little guidance on how to go about it wouldn’t have gone amiss.”<br /><br />“There was one other thing,” Ruth said. “What did <span style="font-style: italic;">for the source of the threat, look within as well as without</span> mean?”<br /><br />“As if you don’t know.” Laura stared deep into the heart of the fire. “It means one of us is looking to earn thirty pieces of silver.”<br /><br /><br />After the others had retired to their tents, Church and Laura sat warming themselves by the dying embers. In the midst of all the chaos and tension, Church felt remarkably comforted to have Laura curled up next to him. With his arm around her and her head on his shoulder, the emotional closeness to another human filled him with a sense of well-being.<br /><br />“This is what it’s all about,” he muttered to himself.<br /><br />“You’re talking to yourself again.”<br /><br />Although they were entwined, Laura still seemed a little stiff and distant. He had started to strip away the many defences she had erected to protect herself, but he knew it would be a long time before she gave her inner self up freely. In fact, the more he got to know her, the more he felt the acid-tongued, confident, aggressive Laura was a character that had been completely constructed, and whatever lay within was something he might not recognise at all. But that sense of protecting the vulnerable heart of their being was something they shared, and possibly what had attracted them in the first place.<br /><br />“So this Marianne must have been a big thing in your life,” she said after a long period of introspection.<br /><br />“We’d been together a long time. We were going to get married. So, yes, she was a big thing.”<br /><br />“I suppose that explains why you were knocked so out of whack when she died. Do you think you’ll ever get over it?”<br /><br />“I don’t think anybody ever gets over something like that. You just learn to accommodate it.”<br /><br />She thought about this for a moment, then said, “What was she like?”<br /><br />“Oh, I don’t know—”<br /><br />“Go on, I want to know. Was she a good person?”<br /><br />“I suppose. I never really thought of her like that. She was pretty much a malice-free zone. But she had her bad qualities—who doesn’t?”<br /><br />“Yeah, right. But it’s a balancing act, isn’t it? There aren’t any real goodies or baddies. Most people manage to keep that scale just right, a little bit up, a little bit down, over the course of a life. And just a few go up one side or the other.” She dug him sharply in the ribs with her elbow. “Christ, it’s like getting blood out of a stone with you.”<br /><br />“I think that’s a black kettle and pot situation.” He sighed. “She was smart. She read a lot. She liked to talk about ideas, about things that mattered. She made me laugh. She took the piss out of me when I was being pompous. She didn’t take the piss out of me when I was talking about a list of dreary finds from some boring dig in Somerset. She could argue the case for northern soul when I was banging on about guitar music. She’d watch <span style="font-style: italic;">Star Wars</span> with me and wouldn’t beg me to watch <span style="font-style: italic;">Jean de Florette </span>with her. And she allowed me to be weak.” He paused, feeling the rawness of some of the emotions that were surfacing. “Life’s good as long as you don’t weaken—that’s a pretty good rule of thumb. We all have to keep up a resilient front, but you know you’ve found someone good when you can let the barriers down to show that weak, pathetic, character-destroying side of you, that part that you have to let out every now and then or go mad, but you normally have to do in the privacy of your room.” He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Is that good enough for you?”<br /><br />“It’ll do. For now.”<br /><br />“Why did you want to know? For the sake of comparison?”<br /><br />“No. What’s gone is gone. That doesn’t bother me. But you can find out a lot about someone from the way they view the love of their life.”<br /><br />Her words made him give pause. “Very lateral thinking. So what did you find out?”<br /><br />“You don’t think I’m going to tell you, do you?”<br /><br />“Okay. Tell me about the love of your life.”<br /><br />She laughed. “You must think I’m a real sucker. Sorry, pal, my past is a closed book.”<br /><br />He pulled her in tight and gave her scalp a monkey scrub.<br /><br />“Ow! Just because you can’t compete with my intellect.” She pinched him hard until Veitch hollered from the depths of his tent for them to be quiet. Then they giggled like schoolchildren and continued their conversation in hushed tones.<br /><br />“So,” Church said eventually, “do you and I get a happy ending, do you think?”<br /><br />There was a long pause that surprised him, and when he looked up at her face he saw the humour had drained from it. “Come on, Church, you’re a big boy now. Look around you. There aren’t going to be any happy endings.”<br /><br />Church sighed. “Why’s everyone so pessimistic? Ruth said something similar.”<br /><br />“Yeah, I knew she’d been talking to you. Well . . . maybe it’s a chick thing. You boys have no perception. No happy endings. We just have to make the most of what we’ve got for as long as we’ve got it.” There was a note of deep sadness in her voice, but a second later she had forced herself to brighten and was tugging him towards the tent. “Come on. I want my brains removing and you’ve got just the tool to do it.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/DarkestHour.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Darkest Hour</span></a> © <a href="http://www.markchadbourn.net/">Mark Chadbourn</a><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.johnpicacio.com/blog.html">John Picacio</a><br />Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVISNjH4vbWifH-DEowInmUukzqE5QNNsB7pZ0P4UTwRS-ZAtqpwnvhEnOrLSwo7CuFfsoh-E0Ut7VEF87ILLsxVRBmxtIlVJgJJBeY9aSfR2tJoEto-Z4Y6T7cbDmQi2bpxTnYYParjQ/s1600-h/Mark_chadbourn+hi+res.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 132px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVISNjH4vbWifH-DEowInmUukzqE5QNNsB7pZ0P4UTwRS-ZAtqpwnvhEnOrLSwo7CuFfsoh-E0Ut7VEF87ILLsxVRBmxtIlVJgJJBeY9aSfR2tJoEto-Z4Y6T7cbDmQi2bpxTnYYParjQ/s200/Mark_chadbourn+hi+res.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327558044400299346" border="0" /></a>A two-time winner of the British Fantasy Award, Mark Chadbourn is the critically-acclaimed author of eleven novels and one non-fiction book. A former journalist, he is now a screenwriter for BBC television drama. His other jobs have included running an independent record company, managing rock bands, working on a production line, and as an engineer’s “mate.” He lives in a forest in the English Midlands. Visit him online at www.markchadbourn.net.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-70042161333258105372009-04-15T14:07:00.020-05:002009-12-18T16:17:28.926-06:00World's End (Age of Misrule 1) by Mark Chadbourn<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCaCAu-u4uk6-lUBDqeD2c1Vu8qvwvm28rh-nO38z2b5v3RR1MqqnDXoEnKX4q0z4WPQ8bhy5vdTCZxliimaFO5COupeyjBJSHZHRCsYXWGY69CRLpMiwSU27i0NLGNycTPW1-NWuCK9c/s1600-h/WorldsEnd(web).jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327564607227874242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCaCAu-u4uk6-lUBDqeD2c1Vu8qvwvm28rh-nO38z2b5v3RR1MqqnDXoEnKX4q0z4WPQ8bhy5vdTCZxliimaFO5COupeyjBJSHZHRCsYXWGY69CRLpMiwSU27i0NLGNycTPW1-NWuCK9c/s320/WorldsEnd(web).jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 320px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 214px;" /></a>Mark Chadbourn embarked on an unprecedented depth of historical research and a detailed examination of real-world prehistoric sites around the United Kingdom to provide a compelling background for his Age of Misrule trilogy, which kicks off with the book <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/WorldsEnd.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">World's End</span></a>. The result is the last word on the real meaning of Arthurian mythology, wrapped up in an action-packed narrative that <span style="font-style: italic;">Grasping for the Wind</span> calls, "exciting and riveting...a grand adventure, having as much in common with the myths and legends it twists to its own ends as it does the best of modern fantasy." <span style="font-style: italic;">Neth Space</span> proclaims <span style="font-style: italic;">World's End</span> is, "a wild ride through lands where modern Britain connects with the ancient past... Highly recommended." Here are the first three chapters of this pedal-to-the-floor, high-octane fantasy thriller that pitches magic and wonder into a pop culture mash-up of the modern world.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">World's End</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
Age of Misrule 1</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
Mark Chadbourn</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">prologue</span><br />
<br />
</div>And now the world turns slowly from the light. Not with the cymbal clash of guns and tanks, but with the gently plucked harp of shifting moods and oddly lengthening shadows, the soft tread of a subtle invasion, not here, then here, and none the wiser. Each morning the sun still rises on supermarket worlds of plastic and glass, on industrial estates where slow trucks lumber in belches of diesel, on cities lulled by the whirring of disk drives breaking existence down into digitised order. People still move through their lives with the arrogance of rulers who know their realms will never fall. Several weeks into the new Dark Age, life goes on as it always has, oblivious to the passing of the Age of Reason, of Socratic thought and Apollonian logic.<br />
<br />
No one had noticed. But they would. And soon.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">chapter one</span><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">misty morning,</span><br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;">albert bridge</span><br />
</div><br />
It was just before dawn, when the darkness was most oppressive. London was blanketed by an icy, impenetrable, February mist that rolled off the Thames, distorting the gurgle and lap of the water and the first tentative calls of the birds in the trees along the embankment as they sensed the impending sunrise. The hour and atmosphere were unfriendly, but Church was oblivious to both as he wandered, directionless, lost to thoughts that had turned from discomfort to an obsession, and had soured him in the process. If anyone had been there to see his passing, they might have thought him a ghost: tall and slim, with too-pale skin emphasised by the blackness of his hair and a dark expression which added to the air of disquieting sadness which surrounded him. The night-time walks had become increasingly regular over the past two years. During the routines of the day he could lose himself, but when evening fell the memories returned in force, too realistic by far, forcing him out on to the streets in the futile hope he could walk them off, leave them behind. It was as futile as any childhood wish; when he returned home he could never escape her things or her empty space. The conundrum was almost more than he could bear: to recover meant he would have to forget her, but the mystery and confusion made it impossible to forget; it seemed he was condemned to live in that dank, misty world of not-knowing. And until he did know he felt he would not be whole again.<br />
<br />
But that night the routine had been different. It wasn’t just the memories that had driven him out, but a dream that God had decided His work, the world, had gone irrevocably wrong and He had decided to wipe it away and start again. Inexplicably, it had disturbed Church immeasurably.<br />
<br />
There was a clatter of dustbins nearby, some dog scavenging for food. But just to be sure, he paused, tense and alert, until a russet shape padded soundlessly out of the fog. The fox stopped in its tracks when it saw him, eyed him warily for a second, until it seemed to recognise some similar trait, and then continued across the road until it was lost again. Church felt a <span style="font-style: italic;">frisson</span> of some barely remembered emotion that he gradually recognised as a sense of wonder. Something wild and untamed in a place shackled by concrete and tarmac, pollution and regulations. Yet after the initial excitement it served only to emphasise the bleak view of the world he had established since Marianne. Perhaps his dream had been right. He had never really been enticed by the modern world. Perhaps that was why he was so drawn to archaeology as a child. But now everything seemed so much worse. If there <span style="font-style: italic;">was</span> a God, what would he want with a world where such a vital force as a sense of wonder was so hard to come by? Although most people seemed to hark back to some golden age where things were felt so much more vibrantly, it seemed to Church, with his new eyes, that they didn’t even seem to have the passion to hate the world they lived in; they were simply bowed by the boredom of it: a place of routine and rules, where daily toil was the most important thing and the only rewards that really counted were the ones that came in currency. There wasn’t anything to get excited about any more; nothing to believe in. You couldn’t even count on God. Churches of all denominations seemed to be in decline, desperately stripping out the supernatural wonder for some modernist sense of <span style="font-style: italic;">community</span> that made them seem like dull Oxfam working parties. But he had no time for God anyway. And that brought him in an ironic full circle: God was preparing to wipe the world clean and God didn’t exist.<br />
<br />
He snorted a bitter laugh. Away in the mist he could hear the fox’s eerie barking howl and for a hopeful second he considered pursuing it to a better place. But he knew in his heart he wasn’t nimble enough; his legs felt leaden and there seemed to be an unbearable weight crushing down on his shoulders.<br />
<br />
And then all the thoughts of God got him thinking about himself and his miserable life, as if there were any other subject. Was he a good person? Optimistic? Passionate? He had been once, he was sure of it, but that was before Marianne had turned everything on its head. How could one event sour a life so completely?<br />
<br />
It wasn’t the damp that drew his shiver, but he pulled his overcoat tighter nonetheless. Sometimes he wondered what the future held for him. Two years ago there had been so much hope stitched into the direction he had planned for his life: more articles for the learned magazines, a book, something witty and incisive about the human condition, which also instigated a quiet revolution in archaeological thinking, building on the promise he had shown at Oxford when he had become the first member of his family to attain a degree. At twenty-six, he had known everything about himself. Now, at twenty-eight, he knew nothing. He was flailing around, lost in a strange world where nothing made sense. Any insight he thought he might have had into the human condition had been expunged, and poking about in long-dead things suddenly hadn’t seemed as attractive as it had when he’d been the leading light of his archaeology course. It sounded pathetic to consider it in such bald terms, and that made it even more painful. He had never been pathetic. He had been strong, funny, smart, confident. But never pathetic. He had potential, ambitions, dreams, things that he thought were such a vital part of him he would never be able to lose them, yet there he was without any sign of them at all. Where had they all gone?<br />
<br />
The only work of which he had felt capable was hack journalism, turning technical manuals into plain English and writing PR copy, bill-paying rather than future-building. And all because of Marianne. Sometimes he wished he could channel his feelings into bitterness, maybe even hate, anything that would allow him to move on, but he just wasn’t capable of it. She’d dragged him out of life and left him on a mountaintop, and he felt he would never be able to climb down again.<br />
<br />
With a relief that was almost childlike in its intensity, his thoughts were disturbed by a splashing of water which jarred against the sinuous sounds of the river. At first Church thought it might have been a gull at the river’s edge, another sign of raw nature intruding on his life, but the intermittent noise suggested something larger. Leaning on the cold, wet wall, he waited patiently for the folds of mist to part as the splashing ebbed and flowed.<br />
<br />
For several minutes he couldn’t see anything, but as he was about to leave, the mist unfurled in a manner that reminded him of a theatre curtain rolling back. Framed in the white clouds at the river’s edge was a hunched black shape, like an enormous crow. As it dipped into the eddies, then rose shakily, Church glimpsed a white, bony hand. An old woman, in a long, black dress and a black shawl, was washing something he couldn’t see; it made him think of pictures of peasants in the Middle East doing their laundry in muddy rivers. The strangeness of a woman in the freezing water before dawn didn’t strike him at first, which was odd in itself, but the more he watched, the more he started to feel disturbed by the way she dipped and washed, dipped and washed. Finally the jangling in his mind began to turn to panic and he started to pull away from the sight. At that moment the woman stopped her washing and turned, as if she had suddenly sensed his presence. Church glimpsed a terrible face, white and gaunt, and black, piercing eyes, but it was what she held that filled his thoughts as he ran away along the footpath towards Albert Bridge. For the briefest instant it appeared to be a human head, dripping blood from the severed neck into the cold Thames. And it had his face.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ruth Gallagher had a song in her head that she couldn’t quite place; something by The Pogues, she thought. Then she considered the holiday she hoped to take in the South of France that summer, before admiring the pearly luminescence of the mist as it rolled across the surface of the Thames. And when she opened her ears again Clive was still whining irritatedly.<br />
<br />
“And another thing, why do you always have to act so superior?”<br />
<br />
Clive gesticulated like he was berating a small child. He didn’t even look at her; he had been lost in his rant for so long that she was no longer needed in the conversation.<br />
<br />
“I don’t act superior, I am.” It was the wrong thing to say, but Ruth couldn’t resist it. She had to stifle a smile when a sound like a boiler venting steam erupted from his throat. It didn’t help that at nearly six foot, she towered above him. Such nastiness wasn’t normally in her nature, but he had treated her so badly throughout the evening she felt justified, while still acknowledging the whiff of childishness in her response.<br />
<br />
When they had met at the Law Society dinner six weeks earlier, she went into the relationship with the same hope and optimism as always; it wasn’t her fault that it hadn’t worked out. In fact, after so many previous failed relationships, she had tried especially hard, but Clive was like so many other men she had met in recent times: self-obsessed, nervous of her intellect and wit while professing the opposite, quickly becoming insecure when they realised she wasn’t so desperate to hold on to them that she’d kowtow to their every whim and turn a blind eye to their many insufferable qualities. It didn’t take her long to see that Clive equated long, dark, curly hair and refined, attractive features with some pre-war view of femininity which he could easily control.<br />
<br />
That sort of attitude could have made her blood boil, but the simple truth was she had realised that night that she felt so far removed from him it was hardly worth losing sleep over.<br />
<br />
But Clive was just symptomatic of a wider malaise. Nothing in her life seemed fixed down, as she had expected it would be by the time she approached thirty; the job, her great ambition since her father had instilled it in her at thirteen, left her feeling empty and weary, but it was too late to go back and start over; she was ambivalent about London; the best word she could find for her friends and social life was <span style="font-style: italic;">pleasant</span>. It was as if she was holding her breath, waiting for something to happen.<br />
<br />
She hummed The Pogues’ song in her head, trying to recall the chorus, then turned her attention once more to the marvellous way the mist smothered the echoes of their footsteps. Not far to go until she was home, she thought with relief.<br />
<br />
“And another thing—”<br />
<br />
“If you say that one more time, Clive,” Ruth interjected calmly, “I’ll be forced to perform an emergency tracheotomy on you with my fountain pen.”<br />
<br />
Clive threw his arms in the air. “That’s it! I’ve had enough! You can make your way home alone.”<br />
<br />
He spun on his heels and Ruth watched him march off into the fog with his head thrust down like some spurned, spoiled child. “The perfect gentleman,” she muttered ironically.<br />
<br />
As his footsteps faded away, Ruth became acutely aware of the stifling silence. She wished she’d left the club earlier, or at least countermanded Clive’s order for the cab to pull over so they could have a “quiet chat” as they walked the last few hundred yards to her flat. London wasn’t a safe place for a woman alone. Her heels click-clacked on the slick pavement as she speeded up a little. The rhythm was soothing in the unnerving quiet, but as she approached Albert Bridge other sounds broke through: scuffles, gasps, the smack of flesh on flesh.<br />
<br />
Ruth paused. Her every instinct told her to hurry home, but if someone was in trouble she knew her conscience wouldn’t allow her to ignore it. She was spurred into life by a brief cry, quickly strangled, that seemed to come from the river’s edge in the lonely darkness beneath the bridge. Two itinerants fighting over the remnants of a cheap bottle of wine, she supposed, but she had seen too many police reports to know the other possibilities were both many and disturbing. She located the steps to the river and moved cautiously down until the mist had swallowed up the street lights behind her.<br />
<br />
<br />
When he heard the same struggle, Church’s heart rate had just about returned to normal, but his nerves still jangled alarmingly. The image of the woman’s terrible face wouldn’t go, but he had almost managed to convince himself he had been mistaken in his view of what she was holding. Just a bundle of dirty clothes, a trick of the light and the fog. That was all.<br />
<br />
He had been approaching Albert Bridge from the opposite direction to Ruth when the scuffling sounds provided a welcome distraction. Negotiating the treacherously slick steps down to the river, he found himself on a rough stone path that ran next to the slim, muddy beach at the water’s edge, where an oppressive smell of rotting vegetation filled the dank air. A slight change in the quality of light signalled that somewhere above the mist, dawn was finally beginning to break, but the gloom beneath the bridge was impenetrable.<br />
<br />
With only the soothing lapping of the Thames around him, he wondered if he had misheard the source of the fight. He paused, listening intently, and then a muffled cry broke and was instantly stifled. Cautiously he advanced towards the dark.<br />
<br />
Keeping close to the wall so he wouldn’t be seen, odd sounds gradually emerged: heavy boots on stones, a grunt, a choke. Finally, at the edge of the darkness, his eyes adjusted enough to see what lay beneath the bridge.<br />
<br />
A giant of a man with his back to Church grasped a smaller man by the lapels. The victim looked mousily weak, with tiny, wire-framed spectacles on a grey face, his frame slight beneath a dark suit. There was a briefcase lying on the ground nearby.<br />
<br />
The taller man, who must have been at least seven and a half feet tall, turned suddenly, although Church was sure he hadn’t made a sound. The giant had a bald head and long, animalistic features contorted by a snarl of rage. In the shadows, his pale, hooded eyes seemed to glow with a cold, grey fire. Church shivered unconsciously at the aura of menace that washed off him in a black wave.<br />
<br />
“Put him down.”<br />
<br />
Church started at the female voice. A woman with long dark hair and a beautiful, pale face was standing on the other side of the bridge, framed against the background of milky mist.<br />
<br />
The tall man’s breath erupted in a plume of white as it hit the cold; there was a sound like a horse snorting. He looked slowly from Church to the woman and back, effortlessly holding his victim like a rag doll, his gaze heavy and hateful. Church felt his heart begin to pound again; something in the scene was frightening beyond reason.<br />
<br />
“If you don’t put him down, I’m going for the police,” the woman continued in a calm, firm voice.<br />
<br />
For a moment Church thought the victim was dead, but then his head lolled and he muttered something deliriously. There was contempt in the attacker’s face as he glanced once more at Church and the woman, and then he hauled the smaller man off the ground with unnatural ease. Transferring his left hand to his victim’s chin, he braced himself, ready to snap the neck.<br />
<br />
“Don’t!” Church yelled, moving forward.<br />
<br />
In that instant, for no reason he could pinpoint, Church felt fear explode in every fibre of his being. The giant glared at him and Church had the disorienting sensation that the mugger’s face was shifting like oil poured on water. He flashed back to the old woman at the water and what she was holding, and then his thoughts devolved into an incomprehensible jumble. His brain desperately tried to comprehend the retinal image of the giant’s face becoming something else, and for a moment he almost grasped it, but the merest touch of the sight was like staring into the heart of the sun. His mind flared white, then shut down in shock, and he slumped to the ground unconscious.<br />
<br />
<br />
Dawn had finally come when Church woke to the sensation of hands pulling him into a sitting position. There was a spinning moment of horror when he thought he was still staring at the changing face, and then he became dimly aware of the dampness of his clothes from the wet ground and a flurry of movement and sound around him. He grappled for some kind of understanding, but there was a yawning hole in his memory from the moment of his collapse, as raw as if he had been slashed with a razor.<br />
<br />
“Are you okay?” A paramedic crouched in front of him, shining a light into his eyes. When the flare cleared, Church saw uniformed police and what were obviously plain-clothes detectives hovering near the river’s edge.<br />
<br />
Church remembered the mugger and his victim and suddenly lurched forward. The paramedic held him back with a steady hand. “Did you see what happened?” he asked.<br />
<br />
Church struggled for the words. “Some kind of fight. Then . . .” He glanced around him curiously. “I suppose I fainted. Pathetic, isn’t it?”<br />
<br />
The paramedic nodded. “She said the same thing.”<br />
<br />
Nearby was the woman Church had seen earlier. A blanket was draped around her shoulders; a medic checked her over while a detective tried to make sense of her replies. As Church watched, she looked up at him. In the second when their eyes met, Church had a sudden sensation of connection that went beyond the shared experience: a recognition of a similar soul. It was so intimate that it made him uncomfortable, and he looked away.<br />
<br />
“Do you feel up to a few questions, sir?” The detective offered a hand and Church allowed himself to be hauled to his feet. The CID man seemed unnaturally calm for the activity going on around them, but there was an intensity in his eyes that was disturbing. As they headed towards the water’s edge, Church saw the body in the glare of a camera flash; the neck had been broken.<br />
<br />
“How long was I out?” Church asked.<br />
<br />
The detective shrugged. “Can’t have been long. Some postman on his bike heard the commotion and we had a car here within five minutes of his call. What did you see?”<br />
<br />
Church described hearing the noise of the fight and then seeing the tall man mugging his victim. The detective eyed him askance, a hint of suspicion in his face. “And then he attacked you?”<br />
<br />
Church shook his head. “I don’t think so.”<br />
<br />
“So what happened to you and the young lady?”<br />
<br />
There was an insectile skittering deep in his head as he fought to recall what he had seen; he was almost relieved when the memory refused to surface. “I was tired, the ground looked so comforting . . .” The detective gave him the cold eye. “How should I know?” Church looked round for a way to change the subject. “Where’s his briefcase?”<br />
<br />
“We didn’t find one.” The detective scribbled a line in his notebook and seemed brighter, as if the disappearance of the briefcase explained everything; a simple mugging after all.<br />
<br />
Church spent the next hour at the station, growing increasingly disturbed as he futilely struggled to express his fears in some form the police could understand. In reception, he bumped into his fellow witness, whose expression suggested she had had a similar experience.<br />
<br />
“Look, can we go and grab a coffee? I need to talk about this,” she said without any preamble. She ran her fingers through her hair, then lightened. “Sorry. Ruth Gallagher.” She stuck out a hand.<br />
<br />
Church took it; her grip was strong and confident. “Jack Churchill. Church. They weren’t having any of it, were they?”<br />
<br />
Ruth sighed wearily. “No surprise there. I’m a solicitor, in court every day. I found out pretty early on that once the police have discovered the most simplistic idea out there, they’re like a dog with a bone. If they want to file this under M for Mugging, by God they’re going to, and nothing I’m going to say will change their minds.”<br />
<br />
“A mugging. Right. And JFK got roughed up that day in Dallas.” Church watched her features intently, trying to discern her true thoughts.<br />
<br />
She looked away uncomfortably, disorientation and worry reflected in her face.<br />
<br />
There was an intensity about her that Church found impossible to resist. They went to a little place on St. John’s Hill at Clapham Junction, filled with hissing steam from the cappuccino machine, the sizzle of frying food and the hubbub of local workers taking an early breakfast. They sat opposite each other at a table in the window and within seconds all the noise had faded into the background.<br />
<br />
Sipping her coffee hesitantly, Ruth began. “What did we see?”<br />
<br />
Church chewed on his lip, trying to find the words that would tie down the errant memory. “It seemed to me that his face began to change.”<br />
<br />
“Impossible, of course,” Ruth said unconvincingly. “So there has to be a rational explanation.”<br />
<br />
“For a changing face?”<br />
<br />
“A mask?”<br />
<br />
“Did it look like a mask to you?” He tapped his spoon in his saucer. The merest attempt at recollection made him uncomfortable. “This is what I saw: a man, much bigger than average, picked up someone with a strength he shouldn’t have had, even at that size. Then he turned to us and his features started to flow away like they were melting. And what lay beneath—” He swallowed. “—I have no idea.”<br />
<br />
“And then we both went out at exactly the same time.”<br />
<br />
“Because of what we saw next.”<br />
<br />
Ruth gave an uncomfortable smile. “I’m not the kind of person who has hallucinations in a moment of tension.”<br />
<br />
Church glanced out of the window, as if an answer would somehow present itself to him, but all he could see was a tramp on the opposite side of the road watching them intently. There was something about the unflinching stare that disturbed him. He turned back to his coffee and when he looked again the tramp was gone.<br />
<br />
“This whole business is making me paranoid,” he said. “Maybe we should leave it at that. We’re not going to discover what happened. Just put it down to one of those inexplicable things that happen in life.”<br />
<br />
“How can you say that?” Ruth exclaimed. “This was real! We were right at the heart of it. We can’t just dismiss it.” She leaned forward with such passion Church thought she was going to grab his jacket. “You must have some intellectual curiosity.”<br />
<br />
“I find it difficult to get curious about anything these days.” There was a hint of surgical dissection in the way she eyed him; he almost felt his ego unpeeling.<br />
<br />
“At least give me your number in case one of us remembers any more details,” she said. It was too firm to be a request. Church scribbled the digits on a paper serviette and then took Ruth’s business card for her practice in Lincoln’s Inn Fields with her home number on the back.<br />
<br />
As he rose, she said, in a quiet voice that demanded reassurance, “Were you frightened?”<br />
<br />
He smiled falsely, said nothing.<br />
<br />
<br />
The days passed bleakly. Winter receded a little more, but there was still an uncomfortable chill in the air that even the suffocating central heating of Church’s flat seemed unable to dispel. Once spring was just around the corner, he always used to feel an urge to get his hands dirty in some dig or other, grubbing around for flaking bits of pottery or corroded nails which used to instil in some people a depression for the fleeting nature of life, but always filled him with a profound sense of the strength of humanity. At that moment, as he dredged deeply for any remaining vestige of enthusiasm to help him complete a manual for spreadsheet software, the feeling seemed further away than ever. It was compounded by a terrible uneasiness brought on by what he now called that night; whatever secret his mind held pressed at the back of his head like a tumour, sometimes feeling so malign it unleashed a black depression of such strength he found himself considering suicide, a feeling he had never countenanced before, even in the worst days after Marianne had left.<br />
<br />
Dale, one of his few friends from before (he always saw his life as two distinct units, Before Marianne and After Marianne), was so shocked by his latest state of mind he almost attempted to press-gang Church into getting some kind of medical help. After a wearying struggle, Church had convinced him it was simply a passing phase, while secretly knowing neither Prozac nor EST could put him back on the road to well-being. The only option was to lance the boil, unleash the memory, and how could he do that when it was so unbearable in the first place?<br />
<br />
“You’ve got to start getting out, you know.” Dale, always the most irresponsible of his friends, suddenly sounded like some geriatric relative. Church, seeing how he was infecting others, winced with guilt.<br />
<br />
“It’s not as simple as that.”<br />
<br />
“I know it’s not as simple as that. I’m not stupid,” Dale bristled. He swigged from his beer bottle, then suddenly flicked it in a loop in the air and caught it without spilling a drop. “Hey! That was good, wasn’t it?”<br />
<br />
“Marvellous.”<br />
<br />
“Okay. This weekend. We get a bootful of cans and take off for Brighton. Drink them all under the pier, a few burgers, a mountain of candy floss, then off to the pleasure beach and see who’s first to vomit on the rides. You know it has to be done.”<br />
<br />
Church smiled wanly; two years ago he would never have guessed Dale would have been the one to stick around. “It’s a good idea, but I’ve got too much work on. Financial planning software, for my sins. It’s got to be in by Monday.”<br />
<br />
Dale said, resignedly, “You remember the time you cancelled your holiday in Cyprus and bundled us all into the car for a week in Devon to cheer up Louise after her dad died? That was spontaneous fun.”<br />
<br />
Church shrugged. “Cyprus would have been too hot that time of year, anyway.”<br />
<br />
“You don’t fool me. You’d been planning for that holiday for months. Years probably, knowing you. And you gave it up in an instant.”<br />
<br />
“I’m so selfless,” Church said sarcastically. He caught Dale examining him as if searching for the person he remembered. “Of course, I’ve still got the photo of you at that gig we drove up to in Oxford.”<br />
<br />
Dale blanched. “Not the one where I lost my trousers when I was stage-diving?”<br />
<br />
“Boxers too. Jesus, that was a horrible sight.”<br />
<br />
“I was expecting you to catch me, not take photos!” Dale said indignantly. “If I ever find out who pulled my keks down—”<br />
<br />
“Serves you right for stage-diving. The rest of us were respectfully enjoying the music,” Church mocked.<br />
<br />
“Yeah, you were a real muso, weren’t you? You were like the bleedin’ HMV computer. Name a CD and you’d list every track on it. And you could play the guitar <span style="font-style: italic;">and</span> the drums. Bloody show-off.”<br />
<br />
“You know you needed me. I provided the intellectual conversation while the rest of you were drinking your own weight in alcohol.”<br />
<br />
Dale chuckled at the memories. “We had some laughs too, right? You, me, Pete, Kate, Louise, Billy . . .”<br />
<br />
And Marianne.<br />
<br />
“That was a long time ago,” Church said.<br />
<br />
Dale visibly winced at his faux pas. “Listen to me. I sound like some old git reminiscing about the war.” His voice trailed off, and he looked Church in the eye a little uncomfortably. “We can’t keep talking around it, you know.”<br />
<br />
“I’m okay,” Church protested. Here it was, as he feared, coming up on him from his blindside. “I’m not some sap mooning around who can’t accept his girlfriend’s gone. It’s been two years!”<br />
<br />
“Bollocks. We both know it’s not about the fact she’s not here. It’s the way it happened. And what you saw. That would be enough to screw anybody up.”<br />
<br />
“Are you saying I’m screwed up?”<br />
<br />
“Are you telling me you’re not?” Dale dropped his bottle and the contents flooded out. “Shit. Now look what you’ve made me do.”<br />
<br />
“Forget it.”<br />
<br />
Dale scrubbed the beer into the carpet with his boot. “You shouldn’t tear yourself apart. It wasn’t your fault, you know.”<br />
<br />
“You think she’d have gone like that for no reason? Of course it was my fault.”<br />
<br />
“Listen, you’re a good bloke. I’ll never repeat this in company, but you’re probably the most decent bloke I’ve ever met.” He paused thoughtfully. “I know about your doctorate, you know.”<br />
<br />
“What are you talking about?” Church looked away.<br />
<br />
“Billy’s a screw-up—he always was. But you gave him that money you’d been working round the clock for a year to save so you could go back and get that qualification you’d been dreaming about ever since you were a kid. Don’t deny it, Church—he told me, even though you tried to keep it a secret. I know your family never had much and you had to get a job to send some cash back to them. And then you saved Billy from all that disgrace and now look at him—the fattest of fat-cat accountants in the West End. Thanks to you. And all it cost you was your life’s dream—to be a doctor of digging-up-crap. Not much to anybody else, but I know how much it meant to you. So don’t go beating yourself up thinking you’re some little shit because of Marianne.”<br />
<br />
Church shook his head dismissively. Dale didn’t understand—how could he?<br />
<br />
“I’m only saying these things because I’m a mate.” Dale was on a roll now; Church recognised the gleam in his eye. “I remember what you used to be like. You used to enjoy yourself, all the time, even when the rest of us were miserable and it was pissing down with rain and some club wouldn’t let us in because Billy was dressed like a stiff again. When Louise and Pete had one of their irritating arguments, you’d always find something positive to get them back together. You used to read more books and see more films and hear more music than anybody I knew. And now—”<br />
<br />
“I don’t.”<br />
<br />
“Exactly. Now you don’t do anything. You’ve lost all focus. What’s done is done. You’ve got to start living again.”<br />
<br />
Church made some concilatory sounds, but it didn’t convince Dale; he’d heard it all before. In the end he departed in irritation, but Church knew he’d be back to try again. He was good like that. But Dale couldn’t be expected to understand the depth of the problem, how many futile hours had been spent looking at it from every angle; if there was an easy solution he would have found it long ago. The worst thing was he felt so bad about how he’d made Dale feel over the months, he couldn’t bring himself to talk about the experience under Albert Bridge.<br />
<br />
For the rest of the evening he kept flashing back to the moment before he fainted that night, interspersed with too many memories of Marianne: on the banks of Loch Ness, at her birthday in Covent Garden, the Sunday morning she brought him a champagne breakfast in bed for no reason apart from the fact that she loved him. Finally sleep crept up on him.<br />
<br />
<br />
“Ruth. My office. Now!”<br />
<br />
Ruth dropped the pile of files at Milton’s barked order and then cursed under her breath as she scrambled to collect them. What was wrong with her? She wasn’t the nervous type, but since that morning by the river she had been permanently on edge, jumping at shadows, snapping at colleagues. Her work had always been the calm centre of her life where she could do no wrong, but now it seemed dangerously askew.<br />
<br />
Dumping the files on her desk, she marched into Milton’s glass-walled office, sensing the atmosphere before she had crossed the threshold. The senior partner glowered behind his desk.<br />
<br />
“Close the door,” he growled, his repressed anger bringing out his Highland brogue. That was always a bad sign. Ruth waited for the fireworks.<br />
<br />
“What’s wrong with you, Ruth?” he asked. “Is it drugs? Drink?”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know what you mean, Ben.”<br />
<br />
He tapped a letter that was placed precisely in the centre of his blotter. “Sir Anthony is absolutely livid. He says you hung up on him yesterday.”<br />
<br />
“It was an accident,” she lied. She’d always been able to cope with the peer’s toffee-nosed pomposity and condescension, but, for some reason, yesterday she’d had enough. She knew at the time she should have called him back, but she couldn’t bear to listen to any more of his bluster.<br />
<br />
“He’s our top client, for God’s sake! Do you know how much money he brings into this firm? And he was your client because you were the best and you could be trusted.”<br />
<br />
Ruth didn’t like the sound of the past tense. “It won’t happen again, Ben.”<br />
<br />
“It’s not the only thing, Ruth. Not by a long shot.” He angrily flicked open a thin file. “During the last two weeks you’ve overcharged three clients, undercharged two. Your brief to the barrister in the Mendeka case was so incompetent it’s possibly actionable. You were so late in court on Friday the case had to be rescheduled. Two weeks for at least three sackable offences. Jesus Christ, what kind of a firm do you think this is?” Her ears burned. “To be honest, I don’t want to know what’s wrong,” he continued. “I just want it sorted out. Anybody else would have been out on their ear by now, but your past record has been exemplary, Ruth. I hope you’ve not simply become aware of that and you’re resting on your laurels.”<br />
<br />
“No, Ben—”<br />
<br />
“—Because even our best man can’t go about pissing off the clients who make this a premier league firm thanks to their patronage and their money. At your best you’re still an asset to us. I want you to find out where that best has gone.”<br />
<br />
“Ben?”<br />
<br />
“You’ve got some time off, unpaid of course. The next time you’re here I want it to be the old Ruth.”<br />
<br />
He lowered his attention to the paper on the desk in a manner that was both irritating and insulting. Ruth had never liked him, but at that moment she wanted to grab him by the lapels and punch him in the face. The only thing that stopped her was that every word had been true.<br />
<br />
In the toilet, she blinked away tears of frustration and rage and kicked the cubicle door so hard it almost burst off its hinges; her hatred for the job made her feel even worse. It had never been what she wanted to do, but her father had been so keen she hadn’t been able to refuse him. But that wasn’t the real cause of her sudden bout of incompetence; it was the scurrying, black lizard-thing that had taken up residence in her head.<br />
<br />
For the first time she had an inkling how the victims of abuse suffered in later life from the hideous repressed memories that manipulated their subconscious. Whatever had truly happened that early morning beneath Albert Bridge had turned her into a different person: depressive, anxious, underconfident, hesitant, pathetic.<br />
<br />
She put her hands over her eyes and tried to hold the emotions back.<br />
<br />
<br />
Church was spending too long surfing the web and he knew his phone bill would be horrendous, but there was something almost soothing in the crashing waves of information. It was zen mediation for the new age; every time he felt an independent thought enter his head he would click on the hotlink and jump to a new site with new images and words to hypnotise him. He had been around a score of different subjects—cult TV, music, new science, even delving into some of the archaeology sites, but somehow he had found himself at www.forteantimes.com—and everything had gone horribly wrong.<br />
<br />
He knew vaguely of the magazine the website represented. The journal of strange phenomena, <span style="font-style: italic;">Fortean Times</span> it called itself, an erudite publication which examined every odd happening, from crop circles and UFOs to contemporary folklore, bizarre deaths to crazy coincidences, with a ready wit and a sharp intellect. He always flicked through copies in Smiths, but he’d never gone so far as buying one.<br />
<br />
On the lead page was a brief story:<br />
<blockquote>In the last few weeks the world has gone totally weird! As you know, we continually compile all reports of strange phenomena from around the globe for an annual index to show if the world is getting weirder. Since Christmas the number of reports has increased twentyfold. Postings on the Fortean newsgroup {alt.misc.forteana} indicate an astonishing increase in all categories, from electronic voice phenomena and hauntings via amazing cryptozoological sightings to UFOs and accounts of more big cats in the wilderness. What’s going on!?!<br />
</blockquote>Church went through the report twice, feeling increasingly unnerved for reasons he couldn’t explain. Briefly he considered how he should have read it—as cranky but fun—but it sparked disturbing connections in his mind. He clicked on the hotlink to Usenet. When alt.misc.forteana appeared, he scrolled slowly through the postings. In Nottingham, a sound engineer for Central TV had recorded strange giggling voices when his microphone should have been picking up white noise from a radio. A rain of fish had fallen on Struy in the Scottish Highlands. Mysterious lights had been seen moving slowly far beneath the surface of Ennerdale Water in the Lake District. A postmistress from Norwich wrote passionately about a conversation with her dead father late one evening. Unconnected incidents, but as he worked his way down the neverending list of messages he was staggered by the breathtaking diversity of unbelievable things happening around the country, to people from all walks of life, in all areas. The accounts were heartfelt, which made them even more disturbing. It put his own odd experience into some kind of context.<br />
<br />
One posting leapt out at him from LauraDuS@legion.com. It said simply:<br />
<blockquote>All this is linked. And I have proof.<br />
Email me if you want to know more.<br />
</blockquote>He vacillated for a moment or two, then rattled off a quick reply requesting more information.<br />
<br />
Further down the list there was a message from one of the Fortean Times editors, Bob Rickard, talking in general terms about the magazine’s philosophy. With a certain apprehension, Church typed out the details of his experience at Albert Bridge and sent it off for Rickard’s views. Then he returned to the list and immersed himself in the tidal wave of weirdness.<br />
<br />
With bleary eyes and a dry mouth, he eventually came offline at 1 a.m. feeling an odd mixture of excitement, agitation, concern, and curiosity that left his head spinning. It was a pleasure to feel anything after two years of hermetically sealed life.<br />
<br />
Away from the computer, he became aware once again of the hidden memory’s horrible presence at the back of his head; his mood dampened instantly and he knew there would be no relief for him until that desperate event was put into some kind of perspective. He was so lost in his introspection that at first he didn’t notice the figure outside as he began to draw the curtains. But a passing car disturbed him and within seconds he had grown rigid and cold. From his first-floor vantage point, the figure was half-hidden by the overhanging branches of the tree across the road, but the subtle way the body was held was as unmistakable to him as his own reflection.<br />
<br />
And a second later he was running through the flat and down the stairs, feeling the first tremors of shock ripple through his body, wincing as the cold night air froze the sweat that seemed to be seeping from every pore. Desperation and disbelief propelled him out into the road, but the figure was gone, and although he went a hundred yards in both directions, there was no sign of the person who had been watching his window. Finally he sagged to his knees at the front gate and held his head, wondering if he had gone insane, feeling his thoughts stumble out of control. There were tears where he thought he had exhausted the well. It had been Marianne, as surely as the sun came up at dawn.<br />
<br />
And Marianne had been dead for two years.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">chapter two</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
different views</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
from the same window</span><br />
</div><br />
Inactivity did not sit well with Ruth and it seemed only right that her enforced absence from work should be put to good use. Although she knew the buried trauma of Albert Bridge was responsible for her daytime confusions, black moods and constantly disturbed nights, she was determined she would not be paralysed by it; practicality was one of the strengths which had seen her rise so rapidly in the firm.<br />
<br />
No one had been arrested for the Albert Bridge murder, although photofits based on Ruth and Church’s descriptions had been given wide circulation throughout the media; the suspect had appeared so grotesque that Ruth found it hard to believe he hadn’t been picked up within hours. Yet the investigation had drawn repeated blanks and as the days turned to weeks it became increasingly apparent it wasn’t going anywhere. One advantage of Ruth’s position with Cooper, Sedgwick & Tides was her direct access to the Met, where she found plenty of contacts who weren’t averse to allowing her a glimpse into a restricted file or digging up some particular snippet of information. So it was relatively easy to find herself that morning in an empty room, bare apart from a rickety table, with the murder file.<br />
<br />
The victim was a low-grade Ministry of Defence civil servant named Maurice Gibbons, a fact which had at first raised suspicion of some shadier motive beyond a simple mugging. When it became apparent the only secrets Gibbons had access to centred on the acquisition of furniture for MoD property, all conspiracy scenarios were quickly discarded. He was forty-eight and lived with his wife in Crouch End; both their children had left home. The only gap in the information was exactly what he was doing at Albert Bridge at that time of night. He had told his wife he was calling in at his local for a pint and she had gone to bed early, not realising he hadn’t returned home. She didn’t remember him leaving with his briefcase, although it was possible he had picked it up from the hall on the way out; why he had felt the need to take a briefcase to the pub was not discussed. And that was about it. He had no enemies; everything pointed to a random killing. Ruth jotted down Gibbons’ address, phone number and his wife’s name and slipped out, pausing to flash a thankful smile at the detective lounging by the coffee machine.<br />
<br />
While there could be a completely reasonable explanation for his appearance at Albert Bridge—an illicit liaison, hetero or homo—to ignore it wasn’t the correct way to conduct an investigation. Ruth knew she would have to interview the wife.<br />
<br />
Her decision to take action had raised her mood slightly, but it seemed morbidity and depression were still waiting at the flat door, emotions so unnatural to her she had no idea how to cope. Bitterly, she set off for the kitchen to make a strong coffee in the hope that a shock of caffeine would sluice it from her system. As she passed the answer machine, the red light was flashing and she flicked it to play.<br />
<br />
It was Church. “We need to talk,” he said.<br />
<br />
<br />
They met in the Nag’s Head pub in Covent Garden just before the lunchtime rush. Church had a pint of Winter Warmer and Ruth a mineral water, which they took to a table at the back where they wouldn’t be disturbed. Church felt in turmoil; he had barely slept since the shock of seeing—or thinking he had seen—Marianne outside the flat. He had tried to convince himself it was a hallucination brought on by all the turbulence in his subconscious, but it added to the queasy unreality that had infected his life. It had had one good effect, though: it had shocked him so severely that he could no longer passively accept what had happened to him.<br />
<br />
“I didn’t think I’d be hearing from you again. The last time we spoke you didn’t sound too enthusiastic about opening this can of worms any further,” Ruth said.<br />
<br />
“You can only bury your head in the sand for so long. That is, if it’s been affecting you the same way it’s affected me,” Church began cautiously. He tapped the side of his head. “I can’t remember a thing about what happened, but my subconscious can see it in full, glorious Technicolor, and that little bastard at the back of my head won’t let me rest until I sort it out.” Ruth nodded. “So,” he added, almost dismissively, “what I’m saying is, you were right.”<br />
<br />
“I do love to hear people say that.” Ruth appraised Church carefully behind her smile. She instinctively felt he was a man she could trust; more than that, she felt he was someone she could actually like, although she couldn’t put her finger on exactly what it was that attracted her. There was an intensity about him that hinted at great depths, but an intriguing darkness too. “So what do you suggest?”<br />
<br />
Church took out a folded printout of the email he had received from Bob Rickard, the <span style="font-style: italic;">Fortean Times </span>editor. “I made a few enquiries online about what options are available for people with repressed memories.”<br />
<br />
“This happens all the time, does it?”<br />
<br />
“You’d be surprised. Apparently, it’s de rigueur if you’ve been abducted by aliens. You thought that aching rectum was just haemorrhoids? Here’s how you find out you’ve really had a nocturnal anal probe. Regression hypnosis. To be honest, the expert I contacted wasn’t, let’s say, enthusiastic about its effectiveness. Some people think it can screw you up even more. There’s something called False Memory Syndrome where your memory’s been polluted by stuff that’s leaked in from your imagination, things you’ve read, other memories, so your mind actually creates a fantasy that it believes is real. The Royal College of Psychiatrists has banned its members from using any hypnotic method to recover memories, so this guy says. But then there’re a whole bunch of other experts who claim it does work.”<br />
<br />
“And the alternative?”<br />
<br />
“Years, maybe decades, of therapy.”<br />
<br />
Ruth sighed. “I’m not too sure I’m comfortable with someone stomping around with hobnail boots in the depths of my mind.”<br />
<br />
“So we’d only do it if we were desperate, right?” Church’s statement hung in the air for a moment before he turned over the printout to reveal several scrawled names and numbers. “I’ve got a list of qualified people here.”<br />
<br />
Ruth closed her eyes and jabbed her finger down at random. “They say a leap of faith can cause miracles.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t go getting all religious on me,” Church said as he circled the name. “I have enough trouble sleeping as it is. The last thing I need is you telling me it was the Devil we saw.”<br />
<br />
<br />
The appointment was fixed for three days hence. As the time grew closer, Church and Ruth found themselves growing increasingly anxious, as if whatever lay deep in their heads sensed its imminent removal and fought to stay in the comforting dark. Church received his first email from LauraDuS@legion.com. She was Laura DuSantiago, a software designer at a computer games company in Bristol. She didn’t actually say how the strange phenomena were connected, but she dropped some broad hints of a personal experience which had given her a unique insight. The ever more disturbing aspects of his own life had left Church oddly intrigued by what she had to say and he fired back an email straight away.<br />
<br />
The day was bleakly cold, with depressing sheets of rain sweeping along Kensington High Street as Church and Ruth made their way west from the tube. There was no hint of spring around the corner. The street scene was a muddy mess of browns and greys, with the occasional red plastic sign adding a garish dash of colour. A heavy smog of car fumes had been dampened down to pavement level by the continuous downpour.<br />
<br />
“When you’re a kid the world never looks like this. What happened to all the magic?” Church said as they negotiated the honking, steaming traffic which was backed up in both directions for no apparent reason.<br />
<br />
“Didn’t they pass a law or something? It was putting the workers off their toil.” Ruth led them to shelter in W. H. Smiths’ doorway for a while in the hope that the cloudburst would blow over, but their anxiety to reach the therapist’s office soon drove them out again with Ruth holding a copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Marie Claire</span> over her head.<br />
<br />
Their destination lay up a side road just off the High Street. They buzzed the entryphone and dashed in out of the rain. “The pubs are open now,” Church suggested. Ruth smiled wanly; for a second she almost turned back.<br />
<br />
The reception smelled of new carpets and polished furniture. It was functional and blandly decorated, with a blonde Sloane smiling behind a low desk. Stephen Delano, the therapist, stepped out of the back room the moment they entered, as if they had tripped some silent alarm. He was in his forties, with light brown hair that had been blow-dried back from a high forehead and a smile that wasn’t exactly insincere, but which made Church uneasy nonetheless. He strode over and shook their hands forcefully.<br />
<br />
“Good to see you. Come on through.” He led them into the rear office which was dark, warm and filled with several deep, comfortable chairs. The blinds were down and it was lit ambiently by a couple of small, well-placed lamps. Several pieces of recording equipment were sitting near the chairs. “Welcome to the womb,” Delano said. “I think you’ll feel comfortable and secure here. You need to feel at ease.”<br />
<br />
Ruth slipped into one of the chairs, put her head back and closed her eyes. “Wake me when it’s over.”<br />
<br />
“You’re absolutely sure you want to go through this together?” Delano continued. “I think it would be more effective to do it separately, if only to prevent what one is saying influencing the other. This isn’t like surgery. Memories are delicate, easily corrupted by outside sources.”<br />
<br />
“We do it together,” Church said firmly. When they had discussed it earlier, they both instinctively felt it was something they could only face up to together.<br />
<br />
“Well, you’re the bosses.” Delano clapped his hands, then ushered Church into a chair next to Ruth’s and manoeuvred a reel-to-reel recorder between them. “So we have a good record of what you say,” he explained. “I can transfer it to a cassette for you to take away, and I’ll store the master here.”<br />
<br />
After a brief explanation of the principle, he dimmed the lights even further with a hand-held remote control. Church expected to feel sleepy in the gloomy warmth, but the anxiety had set an uncomfortable resonance which seemed to be buzzing around his body. He turned to look at Ruth, her face pale in the dark. She smiled at him, but the unease was apparent in her eyes. Delano pulled up a chair opposite and began to talk in measured tones that were so low Church occasionally had trouble hearing him. After a minute or two, the words were rolling in and out of his consciousness like distant thunder and he was suspended in time.<br />
<br />
For what could have been one minute or ten, the sensation was pleasurable, but then Church began to get an odd feeling of disquiet. On a level he couldn’t quite grasp, he was sensing they were not alone in the room. He wanted to shout out a warning to Ruth and Delano, but his mouth wouldn’t respond, nor would his neck muscles when he tried to turn his head so he could look around. He was convinced there was a presence somewhere in the shadows in the corner of the room, malign, watching them balefully, waiting for the right moment to make its move. When the sensation faded a moment later, Church convinced himself it was just a by-product of Delano’s hypnosis, but it didn’t go away completely.<br />
<br />
“It is the morning of February 7,” Delano intoned calmly. “Where are you, Jack?”<br />
<br />
Church found himself talking even though he wasn’t consciously aware of moving his mouth. “I can’t sleep. I’ve gone out for a walk to wear myself out so I’ll drop off quickly. I have bad dreams.” He swallowed; his throat felt like it was closing up. “It’s foggy, a real pea-souper. I’ve never seen it like that before, like something out of Dickens. I see a woman washing something in the river . . .” A spasm convulsed him. “No . . .”<br />
<br />
“It’s okay, Jack. You rest a moment,” Delano said quickly. “Ruth, where are you?”<br />
<br />
Ruth’s chest grew tighter; she sucked in a deep breath until her lungs burned. “I’ve been to The Fridge. Clive is whining on. He realises we’ve got nothing in common.” Her voice turned spontaneously singsong: “‘Why don’t you do this? Why don’t you do that?’ He doesn’t really want me, just the woman he thinks I am. He gets wound up . . . blows his top . . . walks off. I’m a bit frightened—it’s so quiet, so still—but I try not to show it. I can make it home in a few minutes if I walk quickly. Then I hear the sound of . . . a fight? . . . coming from under the bridge.” Her breath became more laboured. She wondered obliquely if she was having a heart attack.<br />
<br />
“Jack, do you hear the fight now?” Delano’s voice seemed to be floating away from both of them.<br />
<br />
“Yes. I was frightened by the old woman, but when I hear them fighting I forget her. I could walk on . . . ignore it . . . but that’s not right. I’ve got to try to help. Somebody might be in trouble.”<br />
<br />
“Are you afraid for yourself?”<br />
<br />
“A little. But if I could do something to help I’ve got to try. Too many people walk by. I find the steps down to the river. They’re wet . . . I go down slowly. There’re more scuffling noises. A grunt. I wonder if there’s an animal down there. Maybe a dog or . . . something. I can smell the river. Everywhere’s so damp. My heart’s beating so loud. I edge along the wall.” Another spasm. He thought he almost saw something; was it in the room or in his head?<br />
<br />
“Take a rest, Jack. Ruth?”<br />
<br />
“I go down the steps. I’m ready to run at any moment, but I’m aware I’ve got heels on. If the worst comes to the worst I’ll have to kick them off. They’re expensive though . . . I don’t want to lose them. It’s dark under the bridge. I can’t see anything. I move closer. I think I’ve bitten my lip . . . I can taste blood.” She heaved in another juddering breath; each one was getting harder and harder. “There’re two men. They just look like shadows at first. One of them’s big, the biggest man I’ve ever seen. He’s shaking the smaller one. I look over and there’s another man there watching the fight. I can see he’s come from the other side. I’m relieved . . . I’m not alone.”<br />
<br />
“Is it Jack?” Delano asked quietly.<br />
<br />
“Yes, yes, it’s Church. He’s got a strong face. He looks decent. He makes me feel safer. We both look at the two men—”<br />
<br />
“Is he dead?” Church suddenly interjected, his voice too loud. “Christ, I think he’s dead! No . . . he’s moving. But the giant’s picking him up. How can he be so strong? Just one arm . . . what’s going on? . . . he’s going to break his neck!”<br />
<br />
“Calm down,” Delano hushed.<br />
<br />
“Don’t do it or I’m going to call the police!” Ruth yelled. She snapped forward in her seat, then slumped back.<br />
<br />
“Take it easy now,” Delano said soothingly. “Be peacef—”<br />
<br />
“Stop!” Church thrashed to one side. Delano placed a comforting hand on Church’s forearm, but Church knocked it away wildly.<br />
<br />
“He’s looking—” Ruth was wheezing, but she couldn’t seem to draw any breath into her lungs.<br />
<br />
“—at us!” Church continued.<br />
<br />
Delano was alarmed at the paleness of her face. “I think that’s enough now,” he began. “It’s time to take a break. We can come back to this.”<br />
<br />
“My God! Look at—” Church gasped.<br />
<br />
“—his face! It’s changing—”<br />
<br />
“—melting—”<br />
<br />
They were convulsing in their seats. Delano grabbed both their wrists, gripped by anxiety that he was losing control; they were all losing control. He stood up so he could place his head between them. “On the count of three . . .”<br />
<br />
“Not human!”<br />
<br />
“His eyes—”<br />
<br />
“—red—”<br />
<br />
“—a demon!” Ruth gasped. “Twisted . . . monstrous . . .” She leaned to one side and vomited on to the carpet.<br />
<br />
“One . . .”<br />
<br />
“Evil!” Jack cried. “I feel evil coming off it! It’s looking at me!”<br />
<br />
“Two . . .”<br />
<br />
Ruth vomited again, then stumbled off the chair to her knees.<br />
<br />
“I can’t bear to look at its face!”<br />
<br />
“Three . . .”<br />
<br />
For a second, Delano was terrified he wouldn’t be able to bring them out of it, but gradually they seemed to come together, as if he were watching them swim up from deep water. Church bobbed forward and put his face in his hands. He felt like he was burning up, his hair slick with sweat. Ruth levered herself back into the chair and sat there with her eyes shut.<br />
<br />
Delano was visibly shaken. There was sweat on his own brow and his hands were trembling as he switched off the tape recorder. Frantically he thumbed the remote control until the light flared up too bright and drove the shadows from the room. “Well that was an unusual experience,” he mumbled bathetically. He fetched them both water, which they sipped in silence. Then called in his assistant to clean up the carpet. It was a full ten minutes until they had recovered.<br />
<br />
“That was unbelievable,” Church said eventually. His voice was like sandpaper in the arid stillness of the room.<br />
<br />
“You’re right,” Ruth responded, “because it’s not true.”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean?” Church eyed her curiously. “We saw the same thing.”<br />
<br />
Ruth shook her head emphatically. “Think about it, Church. There must be a rational explanation. We have to use a little intellectual rigour here—the first answer isn’t always the right one. We were talking about how memories can be corrupted by other aspects of the mind’s working. That can happen, can’t it?” she said to Delano. He nodded. “Remember in the pub you made some throwaway comment about us seeing the Devil, so that’s exactly what we did see. You placed that thought in both our heads and our subconscious turned it into reality. It was self-fulfilling.” She looked to Delano for support.<br />
<br />
“Your reactions were very extreme, which suggests a serious trauma buried away, but if you witnessed a particularly brutal murder, as you told me on the phone, that would explain it,” the therapist said. “What you recalled today is known as a screen memory. You create it yourself to protect your own mind from further trauma. Yes, it was quite horrible, but the unbelievable elements allow you to dismiss it within the context of reality as you perceive it so it’s not as threatening as it first appears. The true memory that lies beneath is much more of a threat to you. I think we’ll need a few more sessions to get to it, to be honest.” Delano’s smile suggested he was relieved by his own explanation. “I must admit, I was a little worried. I’ve never come across anything quite like that before.”<br />
<br />
Church wasn’t convinced. “It was pretty real.”<br />
<br />
“Sorry about the carpet,” Ruth said sheepishly. Church thought she was going to burst into a fit of embarrassed giggles.<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry,” Delano said. “Let me just check the recording and I’ll make arrangements to get your cassette copy.”<br />
<br />
He knelt down and rewound the tape. When he pressed play there was a blast of white noise and what sounded like an ear-splitting shriek of hysterical laughter. Delano’s brow furrowed. He ran the tape forward a little and tried again. The white noise hissed from the speakers. A second later the giggling started, fading in and out as if it was a badly tuned radio signal, the laughter growing louder and louder until Church’s ears hurt; it made him feel sick and uncomfortable. Delano snapped off the recorder in dismay.<br />
<br />
“I’m terribly sorry. That’s never happened before,” he said in bafflement. “It must have picked up some stray signal.”<br />
<br />
“Remind me not to book with that mini-cab service,” Church said.<br />
<br />
<br />
Outside, the rain had stopped briefly to allow a burst of insipid sunlight, but the oppressive experience with Delano clung to them. Their reclaimed memories, even if false, were now free, scurrying round, insect-like, in the back of their heads, making them feel queasy and disoriented.<br />
<br />
“I feel much better after that, even if we didn’t find out exactly what happened,” Ruth said, trying to put a brave face on it. She gave Church a comforting pat on the back. “Come on, don’t let it get to you. It was a bad dream, that’s all.”<br />
<br />
Church looked round at the black office windows above the shops, unable to shake the feeling they were being watched. “I need a drink.”<br />
<br />
“Let’s see what we can do about that.”<br />
<br />
She took him for lunch to Wodka, a Polish restaurant nestling in the hinterland of well-heeled apartment blocks on Kensington High Street’s south side. Over blinis and cream and ice-cold honey vodka, they discussed the morning’s events and what lay ahead. Church was taken by Ruth’s brightly efficient manner and sharp sense of humour which helped her see the inherent farce in even the bleakest moment.<br />
<br />
“You always seem like you’ve got something on your mind,” Ruth said when she felt comfortable enough to talk a little more personally.<br />
<br />
“You know how it is.” Church sipped at the strong Polish coffee, but if Ruth noticed his discomfort she didn’t pay it any heed.<br />
<br />
“Anything you want to talk about?”<br />
<br />
“Nothing I should burden you with.”<br />
<br />
“Go on, I’m a good listener. Besides, after an experience like that we’re a minority of two. We have to stick together.”<br />
<br />
It would have been easy to bat her questions away, but there was something in her which made him feel like unburdening himself; a warmth, an <span style="font-style: italic;">understanding</span>. He took a deep breath, surprised he even felt like talking about it. “I had a girlfriend. Marianne Leedham. She was a graphic designer—magazine work, some book covers, that kind of thing. We met soon after I’d left university. I had a seedy flat in Battersea, just off Lavender Hill, and Marianne lived round the corner. We’d see each other in the local Spar or in the newsagents. You know how it is when you see someone and you know it’s inevitable that sooner or later you’re going to get together, even if you haven’t spoken?” Ruth nodded, her eyes bright. “I felt like that, and I could tell she did too. The local pub, the Beaufoy Arms, used to hire a boat to go along the Thames each year. It was an overnight thing, lots of Red Stripe, jerk pork and dancing, up to the Thames Barrier and then back again for dawn. I went with my mates and Marianne was there with hers. We both knew something was going to happen. Then just before sunrise we found ourselves on deck alone.” He smiled. “Not by chance. We talked a little. We kissed a lot. It was like some stupid romantic film.”<br />
<br />
Ruth watched his smile grow sad. “What happened, Church?”<br />
<br />
His sigh seemed like the essence of him rushing out. “It was all a blur after that. We saw each other, moved in together. You know, people think I’m lying when I say this, but we never argued. Not once. It was just the best. It was so serious for both of us we never even thought about getting married, but Marianne’s mum was getting a bit antsy, as they do, so we started muttering about getting engaged. Everything was fine, and then—” His voice drifted away; the words felt like heavy stones at the back of his throat, but somehow he forced them out. “Two years ago, it was. I’d been out for the night. When I came back the flat was so silent, I knew there was something wrong. Marianne always had some kind of music on. And there was this odd smell. To this day I don’t know what it was. I called out for her—there was nowhere else she could have been at that time of night—and my heart started beating like it was going to explode. I knew, you see. I knew. I found her face down in a pool of blood on the bathroom floor. She’d slashed her wrists.”<br />
<br />
“Oh, God, I’m sorry,” Ruth said in dismay. “I shouldn’t have pried.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry, it’s okay. It doesn’t hurt me to think about her any more. I’ve got over all that grief thing, although sometimes I feel a little . . .” His voice trailed off, but her smile told him she understood what he was trying to say. “It’s how she died that I can’t cope with. There hasn’t been a single day gone by since then when I haven’t tried to make sense of it. There was no reason for it. She hadn’t been depressed. We’d never, ever argued. As far as I was concerned, everything in our lives was perfect. Can you imagine what that’s like? To discover your partner had this whole secret world of despair that you never knew existed? Enough despair to kill herself. How could I have been so wrapped up in myself not to have even the slightest inkling?” He couldn’t find the words to tell her what it was that had soured his life since that night: not grief, but guilt; the only possible explanation was that he, in some way, was complicit.<br />
<br />
But Ruth seemed to know exactly what he was thinking. She leaned across the table and said softly, “There could be a hundred and one explanations. A sudden chemical inbalance in her brain—”<br />
<br />
“I’ve been through them all. I’ve weighed it up and turned it inside out and investigated every possibility, so much that I can’t think of anything else. To answer your original question, that’s why I always seem so preoccupied. Nothing else seems important beside that.”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry—”<br />
<br />
“No, <span style="font-style: italic;">I’m</span> sorry. It’s selfish of me to be so wrapped up in myself. We’ve all got problems.” He looked out into the puddled street. Briefly he considered telling Ruth about Marianne’s appearance outside his home, but to give voice to it would mean he would have to face up to the reality of the experience and everything that came with it; besides, it was too close to his heart right now. “I wish I could put it all behind me, but there are so many things about it that don’t make sense. Only hours before, she’d been making plans for the wedding.” Church grew silent as the waitress came over to pour more coffee; it broke his introspective mood and when she left it was obvious he didn’t want to talk about it any more. “This is a good lunch. Thanks.”<br />
<br />
Ruth smiled affectionately. “My philosophy is eat yourself out of a crisis.”<br />
<br />
“Yet you stay so thin!” he said theatrically. They laughed together, but gradually the conversation turned to what they had seen beneath the bridge, as they had known it would. “So whose face lies behind the Devil?” he asked.<br />
<br />
Ruth’s expression darkened. “I don’t know. Why should our reactions in the trance have been so extreme, and identical?” Church understood her confusion. “But it’s strange. For the first time in months, I feel like I’ve got some kind of direction. I really want to keep going until we get to the heart of it.”<br />
<br />
Church was surprised to realise he felt the same way. “How ironic can you get? It takes a brutal murder to give us some purpose in life.”<br />
<br />
“Of course, there’s also the danger that if we let it drop now that awful memory will start its destabilisation again, and I could really do without wrecking my career at this stage in my life.” She called for the bill and paid it with a gold Amex.<br />
<br />
“So where do we go from here?” Church asked.<br />
<br />
Ruth smiled. “Elementary, my dear Watson.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Maurice Gibbons had lived in a three-storey terrace in a tree-lined avenue; not too imposing, but certainly comfortable; it looked like it could have done with a lick of paint and a touch of repointing here and there. The lights were already ablaze in the twilight as Church and Ruth opened the front gate and walked up to the door, shivering from the chill; the night was going to be icy. They’d spent the afternoon quietly at Ruth’s flat, drinking coffee, talking about comfortingly bland topics, but now they were both feeling apprehensive. Susan Gibbons was a quiet woman who looked older than her years. Her grief still lay heavy on her, evident in the puffiness of her eyes, her pallor and her timidity as she led them into the lounge where condolence cards still gathered dust on the mantelpiece. She accepted at face value Ruth’s statement that they were looking into her husband’s murder and sat perched on an armchair listening to their questions with a blankness which Church found unnerving, if only because he recognised something of himself in her.<br />
<br />
“I know you’ve probably been through all this before, Mrs. Gibbons, but we have to go over old ground in case there’s anything we’ve missed,” Ruth began.<br />
<br />
Mrs. Gibbons smiled without a hint of lightness or humour. “I understand.”<br />
<br />
“Your husband had no enemies?”<br />
<br />
“None at all. Maurice wasn’t what you would call a passionate man. He enjoyed his job and he did it well, but he didn’t really have any ambition to move on, and everyone recognised that and accepted it. No one felt threatened by him.” Her hands clutched at each other in her lap every time she mentioned her husband’s name.<br />
<br />
“I know he told you he was going to the pub. Do you have any idea how or why he ended up south of the river?”<br />
<br />
“No.”<br />
<br />
A look of panic crossed her face, and Church moved quickly to change the subject. “Had your husband been acting any differently in the days or weeks leading up to his death?”<br />
<br />
There was a long pause when Mrs. Gibbons appeared to have drifted off into a reverie, but then she said quietly, “Now that you mention it, Maurice was a little . . . skittish, perhaps. He was jumping at the slightest thing.”<br />
<br />
“He was frightened of something?” Church pressed.<br />
<br />
“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far. Not frightened, just . . . uneasy.” She let out a deep sigh that seemed to fill the room. “He went to church on the Sunday before he passed on. That was so unlike Maurice. Do you think he might have sensed something, wanted to make his peace with God?”<br />
<br />
“Perhaps he did,” Ruth said soothingly. Church was impressed with her manner; her caring was from the heart, and he could see Mrs. Gibbons being visibly calmed.<br />
<br />
“Would you like to see his room?” Mrs. Gibbons asked. “Maurice had so many interests and he had a room where he could be alone to think and read. That’s where he kept all his things. You might find something of interest there. Lord knows, there’s nothing I can tell you.”<br />
<br />
She led them up two flights to a little box room lit by a bare bulb. It was quite tidy, uncluttered by any kind of decoration; just a cheap desk and chair, a filing cabinet and a bookshelf. A pair of plaid slippers were tucked in the corner.<br />
<br />
“I’ll leave you to it. Make a cup of tea, how about that?” Mrs. Gibbons slipped out, closing the door behind them.<br />
<br />
“Why do you think he was uneasy just before he was killed?” Church said as he sank on to the chair and opened the desk.<br />
<br />
“Don’t start extrapolating. You’ll end up with all sorts of hideous conspiracy theories.”<br />
<br />
“‘Just the facts, ma’am.’”<br />
<br />
“Exactly.” Ruth crouched down to examine the bookshelf. “I think one of us should pay a visit to the local vicar. You never know, Maurice might have seen fit to bare his soul.”<br />
<br />
“Wouldn’t that be nice and simple. He fingers his murderer to the vicar and everything falls into place.” He started to go through the sparse contents of the desk aloud. “Pens, envelopes, writing paper. Look at this, typical anally retentive civil servant—a big pile of receipts, most of them for cabs.”<br />
<br />
“Nothing wrong with being anal retentive,” Ruth said tartly.<br />
<br />
“Hoping for some tax deduction, I suppose,” Church continued. “A notebook—”<br />
<br />
“A lot of these books are new,” Ruth mused. “UFOs, Von Daniken, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Occult</span> by Colin Wilson, <span style="font-style: italic;">Messages from the Dead: A Spiritualists’ Guide</span>. Looks like he’s been reading that magazine you were rambling on about.”<br />
<br />
“That’s a bit of a coincidence.”<br />
<br />
“Sure. Life’s full of them. Anything in the notebook?”<br />
<br />
“The first few pages have been torn out. There’s only one thing in it: a phone number. Barry<br />
Riggs. Crouch End UFO Association.”<br />
<br />
“Great. Little Green Men got him,” Ruth said wryly. “We should check it out anyway. You never know.”<br />
<br />
They caught a cab back to South London and dropped Ruth off first. Church felt chastened by Mrs. Gibbons’ grief. Afraid that the depression would come back to ruin the first halfway-normal mood he had felt in a long time, he quickly switched on the computer and went online. There was an email waiting for him from Laura DuSantiago.<br />
<blockquote>Greetings, Churchill-Dude (No relation, I hope. I don’t want to picture you with a big, fat cigar.)<br />
<br />
I get the impression from your last email that you think I’m full of hot air, but you’re too polite to say so. Well, I’ll stop teasing, big boy—I wouldn’t want a *premature* withdrawal on your behalf. Everyone else who emailed me has scarpered before I had the chance to get down to the *meat*. And I better stop now before this becomes a bad Carry On film . . .<br />
<br />
Here’s the dope: the increase in paranormal activity that all the net-nerds noticed started on the same day. Coincidence? I don’t think so. There’s stuff happening around the globe, but the epicentre is the UK—and most of it is happening around places of significance to our pagan/Celtic ancestors. Now, statistically, I know that’s not difficult in an island like ours, but look at the big picture, not the details. I’m not going too fast for you, am I?<br />
<br />
And here’s the big story, Morning Glory. I saw something that changed my life. Me, technohead, feet-on-the-ground Laura DuS. Something that all the crazies and geeks of the UFO/Spirit World would give their right arms to see. And losing their right arms would really hamper those types. This was a drug-free, alcohol-free experience, and it talked to me. You want to know what it said, you’ll have to meet me on my own turf. I’m not spreading this stuff around online so I can be branded as another nut.<br />
<br />
But here’s a tip: don’t go making plans for the next millennium...<br />
<br />
Your new best friend, Laura.<br />
</blockquote>And there, at the end, was the thing that hooked him and made his blood run cold.<br />
<blockquote>PS Before we meet I need to know if this name means anything to you: Marianne.<br />
</blockquote>Church read the line three times, trying to work out if he was going insane, then wondering if someone was playing a nasty trick on him. It could have been another coincidence, but the way they were piling up gave him an eerie feeling of some power behind the scenes manipulating his life. He turned off the computer and busied himself with mundane tasks for the better part of an hour, but it wouldn’t leave him alone and it was only a matter of time before he returned to the keyboard to type out his reply. Then he retired to bed without once looking out of the window into the dark, quiet street.<br />
<br />
<br />
Ruth reached the church shortly after 9 a.m. It was a bracing morning, with the wind sending the clouds streaking across the blue sky. Standing in the sun, peering at the skeletal trees through screwed-up eyes that cropped out the buildings, Ruth could almost believe she wasn’t in London, away from the smog and the traffic noise and the omnipresent background threat. Sometimes she hated the modern world with a vengeance.<br />
<br />
The vicar was in the churchyard, in his shirt-sleeves despite the chill, trimming the hedge with an electric cutter. He was tall with a red face—although that might have been from the exertion—and a balding head with white hair swept back around his ears. The drone of the cutter drowned out Ruth’s first attempt at an introduction, but she eventually caught his eye.<br />
<br />
“I said, shouldn’t you have a gardener to do that?” she said.<br />
<br />
“Oh, I like to get my hands dirty every now and then. What can I do for you?”<br />
<br />
“My name’s Ruth Gallagher. A solicitor. I’m looking into the death of Maurice Gibbons. I was told you knew him.” She was still surprised how quickly people parted with information once she announced her legal background; it was almost as if they considered her a policewoman-in-waiting.<br />
<br />
The vicar nodded ruefully. “Poor Maurice. Still no suspect, I suppose.”<br />
<br />
“Not yet, but no one’s giving up. There was one particular line of enquiry I wanted to discuss with you. It might be nothing, but Mrs. Gibbons mentioned he came to church the week before his death which was unusual—”<br />
<br />
“He was a very troubled man,” the vicar interjected. “He came round to the rectory after the service for a chat. I can’t betray the confidences of the people who come to me . . .” He paused, weighing up his options. “But with Maurice dead, I don’t see the harm, especially if it gives an insight into his state of mind.” Folding his arms, he stared up at the steeple. “Maurice was concerned about spiritual matters. We discussed, amongst other things, the return of the spirits of the dead, ghosts, you know, and possession by demonic entities. He wanted to know how easy it would be to arrange an exorcism if necessary, and I told him something of that magnitude would have to be sanctioned by the bishop.”<br />
<br />
“He thought he was possessed!” Ruth said incredulously.<br />
<br />
“No, I didn’t feel that. It was more as if he was talking in general terms, but he was certainly very anxious. He seemed to fear being tormented by the more malignant aspects of the spiritual realm.”<br />
<br />
The memory unleashed by the therapist returned in force, and Ruth stifled a shudder.<br />
<br />
“Are you feeling all right?” the vicar asked, concerned.<br />
<br />
“Fine. Just a chill.” She forced a smile. She didn’t believe in those kind of things, but the coincidence was hard to ignore.<br />
<br />
<br />
The Victorian house could have been stately, but it had been indelibly scarred by thoughtless <span style="font-style: italic;">improvement</span>: cheap, UPVC window frames and door, grey plastic guttering, an obtrusive aluminium flue for a gas boiler. Barry Riggs smiled broadly when he answered the door to Church, but it seemed forced, almost gritted. He was around forty, slightly overweight, with a doughy face and glasses that were a little too large. He smelled of cheap aftershave fighting to mask body odour. Inside, he seemed to have the builders in. Planks leaned against the stairs, an empty paint can stood in the hall, there were dust sheets everywhere and a pristine toilet bowl stood in the lounge, but he made no mention of the mess and there was no sound from anywhere else in the house.<br />
<br />
“I know why you’re here,” Riggs said conspiratorially as Church was ushered on to the sheet that covered the sofa.<br />
<br />
“I did tell you on the phone,” Church replied dryly.<br />
<br />
“No, the <span style="font-style: italic;">real</span> reason. Something much bigger than Maurice Gibbons.” He nodded knowingly.<br />
<br />
“You better fill me in from the beginning, Barry.” Church was already harbouring doubts about the validity of his visit. As “chief investigator” of the Crouch End UFO Association, Riggs had sounded more authoritative on the phone than he appeared in his natural habitat.<br />
<br />
“Maurice heard of my investigations on the grapevine,” Riggs began, sitting a little too close to Church for comfort. “People talk. There’s never any coverage in the media, but you talk to people in the street and they know of the importance of my work. It’s the future, isn’t it? Anyway, I digress. Maurice knew I’d uncovered some unarguable evidence about Government knowledge of the UFO threat. I’m not going to go into details now, but let me just say <span style="font-style: italic;">secret base</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">St. Albans</span>. We can talk about that later if you want.”<br />
<br />
“Why did Maurice come to you, Barry?”<br />
<br />
“Alien infiltration, Jack. Plain and simple. Maurice was a Government employee. He knew he was a target. He was frightened, Jack, very frightened, and he came to me looking for any information that might protect him. ‘They walk among us,’ he said. I remember it well. He was sitting just where you are, with his little briefcase. He’d got classified information in it, but he wasn’t ready to show me just then. It was a matter of building trust, but they got to him before he could divulge what he knew.”<br />
<br />
“Who got to him?”<br />
<br />
“The aliens! In the future, Maurice will be seen as a hero. He was a whistleblower, ready to open up the whole can of worms about the Government selling us down the line for alien experiments.”<br />
<br />
Church stared out of the window at the sinking afternoon sun, wishing he had opted for the vicar. “And he told you this? That aliens were after him?”<br />
<br />
Riggs paused. “Not in so many words. But he wanted to know everything about my investigations. We ran through the dates and times of sightings, witness reports, everything. He was particularly interested in the descriptions of different races, the Greys and the Nordics and all that. And alien abduction scenarios. What the abductees experienced in real detail. What they heard, lights in the sky. I tell you, Jack, he was here for hours.”<br />
<br />
Church stood up quickly before he was overpowered by Riggs’ body odour. “Thank you, Barry. You’ve been very helpful.”<br />
<br />
Riggs grinned. “You know, that’s just what Maurice said. ‘People need to know what’s out there, Barry. They’re sleepwalking into a disaster.’”<br />
<br />
<br />
“So here are the options. Maurice was crazy. Maurice was overworked and suffering from stress-induced psychosis. Or Maurice was crazy. Either way, it’s a good explanation for why he was wandering along by the river at the crack of dawn.” Church sprawled on the sofa in Ruth’s lounge, looking out at the city lights against the early evening sky.<br />
<br />
“Do you think you could possibly be a little more glib?” Ruth said ironically.<br />
<br />
Over a take-out curry and a bottle of Chilean red, they had spent half an hour trading information and finding there was no common ground whatsoever.<br />
<br />
“You were the sceptical one,” Church replied. “This was supposed to be taking us away from the Devil living under Albert Bridge. Now we have one man thinking Gibbons is being hunted by aliens, another convinced our man is being haunted by ghosts and demons.”<br />
<br />
“You’re still skating on the surface, Church. Dig a little deeper.”<br />
<br />
“Do you think you can patronise me a little more? I haven’t had my fill yet.”<br />
<br />
She laughed and topped up his glass. “The important fact is that Maurice Gibbons was a frightened man. Something was disturbing him enough to seek out the vicar and your UFO loon for information. He knew something.”<br />
<br />
“Or he was crazy.”<br />
<br />
“He was a civil servant, down-to-earth. If he was frightened, why was he keeping it to himself? There must have been hundreds of people he could have discussed it with, not least his wife.”<br />
<br />
“Perhaps he was waiting until he was sure.” Church took a deep swig of his wine and then said out of the blue, “Do you believe in ghosts?”<br />
<br />
Ruth looked at him in surprise. “Why do you ask?”<br />
<br />
“It doesn’t matter. So where do we go from here? I can’t think of any other lines of enquiry... hang on a minute.” He suddenly stared into the middle distance, ordering his thoughts, then he snapped his fingers. “There’s something we’ve missed.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Susan Gibbons welcomed them in forty-five minutes later after Church’s phone call had convinced her their visit would only take a few minutes. In Maurice’s room, he went straight to the desk and pulled out the pile of taxi receipts, riffling through them quickly. They were all for a Monday evening and for the same amount.<br />
<br />
“So where was he going on a regular basis?” Church asked pointedly. Mrs. Gibbons had no idea. “I think the police looked into this, but didn’t get anywhere,” she said. Church wasn’t deterred. He called the minicab firm. The receptionist asked around in the office and a few minutes later came back with an address.<br />
<br />
<br />
The house was a small semi in High Barnet; half-rendered, with more UPVC windows and a paved-over front garden where a few yellow weeds forced their way among the cracks. The light that glared through the glass of the front door seemed unpleasantly bright. They rang the bell and it was answered immediately by a woman with dyed black hair and sallow skin. She dragged on a cigarette, eyeing them suspiciously while Ruth ran through her patter. She reluctantly allowed them into the hall, which smelled of cigarettes and bacon fat.<br />
<br />
“He came round to see my uncle every week,” she said, glancing at a photo of Gibbons which his wife had lent them. “Queer duck, but he used to perk the old man up. He’s not well, you know. Hasn’t left his bed in weeks. I got lumbered looking after him.” She wrinkled her nose in what could have been disgust or irritation.<br />
<br />
“Can we see him?” Church asked.<br />
<br />
The woman nodded, then added combatively, “I’m going out soon.”<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry, we can let ourselves out,” Ruth said disarmingly. “What’s your uncle’s name?”<br />
<br />
“Kraicow,” the woman snapped as if that was all she knew.<br />
<br />
She led the way up the stairs and swung open a bedroom door on to a painfully thin old man, his limbs just bone draped in skin. He lay on the top of his bed in striped pyjamas with one arm thrown across his eyes. His hair was merely tufts of silver on his pillow.<br />
<br />
“Is it okay if we talk to him?” Church said.<br />
<br />
“Just one of you,” the woman said. “He gets very confused if there’s more than one person speaking.” She added obliquely, “He’s an artist, you know. Used to be quite well known.”<br />
<br />
The woman left them alone, and Church went to sit by the bed while Ruth watched from the door. Church remained quiet as Kraicow twitched and moaned beneath his arm, but eventually the old man removed it from his face and looked at Church with clear grey eyes, as if he had known he had a visitor all along.<br />
<br />
“Hello, I’m Jack Churchill,” Church said quietly. “I hope you don’t mind me coming to see you.”<br />
<br />
Kraicow looked away and mumbled something; Church wondered if he’d be able to get any sense out of him at all. But when Kraicow looked back he spoke in a clear, deep voice. “I’m pleased to see any human face after looking at that miserable bitch all day long. She never leaves me alone.”<br />
<br />
“You don’t know me,” Church continued, “but I wanted to talk to you about Maurice Gibbons.”<br />
<br />
Church wondered how he would be able to discuss the matter without upsetting Kraicow about Gibbons’ death, but the old man said simply, “He’s dead, isn’t he?”<br />
<br />
Church nodded.<br />
<br />
“I warned him.”<br />
<br />
A hush seemed to descend on the house. “Warned him about what?”<br />
<br />
Kraicow levered himself up on his elbows so he could look Church in the face. For a moment the old man’s eyes ranged across Church’s features as if he was searching for something he could trust, before slowly lowering himself down with a wheeze. “Maurice saw my breakdown . . . what the bastards at the health centre call my breakdown,” he began in a voice so low Church had to bend forward to hear him. “It was in the street, in Clerkenwell—where I work. I was making too much noise. Ranting, I suppose. Not surprising under the circumstances. Maurice overheard some of the things I said, and he knew straight away I was telling the truth because he’d seen the same thing too.”<br />
<br />
“What had you seen?” Church whispered.<br />
<br />
Kraicow licked his dry lips. “You know much about the old myths and legends?”<br />
<br />
“It depends which ones.”<br />
<br />
“The final battle between Good and Evil. The end of this cycle and the start of something new.” The front door slammed loudly; Kraicow’s niece had gone. “The legend is the same all over the world. The End-Time.” Kraicow grabbed Church’s wrist with fingers which seemed too strong for his feeble state. “They’re coming back.”<br />
<br />
“Who are?” Church’s mood dampened; more craziness. “Aliens? Demons?”<br />
<br />
“No!” Kraicow said emphatically. “I told you, the old myths. Not fairytales, no, no, not folklore!” His eyes rolled back until all Church could see were the whites. “The legends are true.”<br />
<br />
“Are you okay?”<br />
<br />
Kraicow threw his arm across his face again. “The legends said they’d be back for the final battle and they were right! Do you think we stand a chance against them?”<br />
<br />
“Take it easy,” Church said calmly. “Why did Maurice come to see you?”<br />
<br />
“He knew they were back! He’d seen them too. He knew they were biding their time, but they’ll be making their move soon—they won’t wait long. The doors are open!”<br />
<br />
“Did Maurice say—”<br />
<br />
“He wanted to know what to do! He was so frightened. So frightened. He knew they wouldn’t let him have the knowledge for long . . . they’d get to him. But who could he tell? The bastards put me in here!”<br />
<br />
Church sat back in his chair in disappointment; he was getting nowhere. Was Gibbons as crazed as Kraicow, or were his visits some kind of altruistic act? He glanced at Ruth, about to take his leave, but Kraicow grabbed his shirt and dragged him forward.<br />
<br />
“Remember the old legend: <span style="font-style: italic;">In England’s darkest hour, a hero shall arise.</span> It’s there. It’s been written.” He took a deep breath and some degree of normalcy returned to him. “You don’t believe me, do you?”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry—”<br />
<br />
“No, no, it’s crazy talk. I’ve spent too long breathing in those paint fumes.” He chuckled throatily. “Look in the top drawer.”<br />
<br />
Curiously Church followed his nod to the bedside cabinet. In the drawer was an envelope; an address was scribbled on the front. “That’s my studio. You go there, you’ll see.”<br />
<br />
“I can’t—”<br />
<br />
“You’ll find what you’re looking for. Peace of mind. Direction. You’ll know what happened to Maurice. It’s up to you now.” He pushed Church away roughly and rolled over. “Go!”<br />
<br />
Church glanced at the envelope one more time, then reluctantly took it. At the door, he silenced Ruth’s questions with a simple, “Later.” Downstairs was in darkness. In the gloom, Church felt eyes on his back although he knew the place was empty, and he didn’t feel safe until they were outside, dialling a cab on Ruth’s mobile.<br />
<br />
<br />
Kraicow’s studio was at the top of a Victorian warehouse in one of the many unredeemed backstreets that formed the heart of Clerkenwell. From the outside it seemed almost derelict: smashed windows filthy with dust, graffiti and posters for bands that had long since split up. Unidentified hulks of machinery were scattered around the ground floor, which stank of engine oil and dirt. But when they climbed out of the service lift at the summit, Kraicow’s room presented itself to them in a burst of colour and a smell of oil paint and solvent. An enormous, half-completed canvas was suspended over the centre of the floor, but it was impossible to tell from the splashes of colour exactly what it would eventually be. Other canvases of all sizes were stacked against various walls. The floor was bare boards, but clean, and there was a small camp bed in one corner where the artist obviously snatched a rest during his more intense periods of work. On an uneven table was a collection of tubes of oil, dirty rags, a palette and a jar filled with brushes.<br />
<br />
“Do you ever get the feeling you’re wasting your time?” Ruth said as she looked around at the disarray.<br />
<br />
“You were the one who insisted we go down every avenue, however ridiculous,” Church replied. “Personally, I think you’ve been reading way too much Sherlock Holmes.”<br />
<br />
Ruth began to search through the stacked canvases. “What are we looking for?”<br />
<br />
“God knows.” Church busied himself with an investigation of a pile of rags and empty paint pots near the window. On the top was a sheet of sketch paper where Kraicow had written <span style="font-style: italic;">El sueño de la Razon Produce monstruos</span>. Church read it aloud, then asked, “What does that mean?”<br />
<br />
Ruth paused in her search and dredged her memory for a translation. “‘The sleep of reason brings forth monsters.’ It’s the title of—”<br />
<br />
“—a painting by Goya. Yes, I remember.”<br />
<br />
Ruth leaned on the canvases and mused, “It’s strange, isn’t it? We go about our lives thinking the world is normal and then we stumble across all these people who obviously have a completely different view of reality, indulging in their paranoid fantasies.”<br />
<br />
“Are you including the vicar in that?”<br />
<br />
Ruth laughed. “The UFO guy and Kraicow and obviously Gibbons, all feeding each other. And obviously Mrs. Gibbons had no idea what was going on in her husband’s head.”<br />
<br />
Church moved on to another collection of canvases, older, judging by the thick layer of dust that lay on the top. “Well, paranoia’s like a fire. It quickly gets out of control and suddenly the norm looks weird and the weird becomes perfectly acceptable.”<br />
<br />
“You’d know, would you?” Ruth jibed. Church didn’t respond.<br />
<br />
Their search continued for fifteen minutes more, becoming increasingly aimless as the futility of the task overcame them. Church, for his part, was afraid to stop; he didn’t want to return to his empty flat with its bleak memories. Their hunt for meaning in their experience had released a whole host of emotions with which he hadn’t had time to come to terms.<br />
<br />
Ruth let the final canvas drop back with a clatter. “We should call it a day,” she said. Church noted a hint of gloom in her voice. After a second she added morosely, “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere and I’m afraid if we don’t sort out what happened I’m never going to get back to who I was. That morning was so destabilising I feel like every support for my life has been kicked away.” She wandered over to the window and hauled up the blind to look out over the city.<br />
<br />
“I know exactly what you mean,” Church said, remembering the morning after Marianne’s terrible death with an awful intensity. “Sometimes you never get straight again.” He checked the final canvas, a surreal landscape with hints of Dali. “Nothing here. I don’t know what Kraicow was talking about. Serves us right for listening to the views of a mental patient. So what do we do next?”<br />
<br />
There was no reply. Church turned slowly. Ruth was standing at the window with her back to him, so immobile she could have been a statue. “Did you hear me?”<br />
<br />
Still no answer. He could tell from her frozen body something was wrong. A hum of anxiety rose at the back of his head, growing louder as he moved towards her. Before he had crossed the floor, her voice came up small, still and frightened. “He was right.”<br />
<br />
Church felt his heart begin to pound; somewhere, doors were opening.<br />
<br />
When he came up behind her, he could see what it was that had caught her attention. On the window ledge was a small sculpture in clay, rough and unfinished, but detailed in the upper part. It was a figure with a face so hideous in its deformity and evil they could barely bring themselves to look at it.<br />
<br />
And it was the perfect representation of the <span style="font-style: italic;">devil</span> they had recalled during Delano’s therapy session. Kraicow had seen it too.<br />
<br />
It existed.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">chapter three</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
on the road</span><br />
</div><br />
For the rest of the night they sat in Ruth’s lounge, talking in the quiet, clipped tones of people who had suffered the massive shock of a sudden bereavement. The discovery of the desperately crafted statue left them with nowhere to turn. Suddenly the shadows were alive, and life had taken on the perspective of a bottle-glass window.<br />
<br />
“What the hell’s going on?” Ruth looked deep into the dregs of her wine. She had drunk too much too quickly, but however much she told herself it was an immature reaction, she couldn’t face up to the immensity of what the statue meant and what they had truly seen that night. For someone immersed on a daily basis in the logic and reason of the law, it was both too hard to believe and impossible to deny; the conflict made her feel queasy.<br />
<br />
Church rubbed his tired eyes, at once deflated and lost. “We can’t walk away from it—”<br />
<br />
“I know that.” There was an edge to her voice. “I never thought one moment could change your life so fundamentally.” She walked over to the window and looked out at the lights of the city in the pre-dawn dark. “We’re so alone now—nobody knows what we know. It’s a joke! How can we tell anybody? We’ll end up getting treated like Kraicow.”<br />
<br />
“And what do we know? That there’s some kind of supernatural creature out there that looks like a man one moment and something too hideous to look at the next?”<br />
<br />
“We know,” she said dismally, “that nothing is how we imagined it. That if something like that can exist, anything is possible. What are the rules now, Church? What’s going on?”<br />
<br />
Church paused; he had no idea how to answer her question. He drained the remainder of his wine, then played with the glass thoughtfully. “At least we’ve got each other,” he said finally.<br />
<br />
Ruth looked round suddenly, a faint smile sweeping away the darkness in her face. “That’s right. You and me against the world, kid.”<br />
<br />
Church mused for a moment. “Kraicow must know more. He’d seen something, the same as Gibbons.”<br />
<br />
“Then,” Ruth said pointedly, “we should pay him another visit.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Unable to sleep, they arrived at Kraicow’s house at first light and sat outside in Church’s old Nissan Bluebird until a reasonable hour, dozing fitfully. His niece answered the door, her recognition giving way instantly to anger.<br />
<br />
“Did you two have something to do with it?” she barked. Church and Ruth were taken aback by her fury, their speechlessness answering the woman’s question. “He’s gone,” she snapped.<br />
<br />
Church’s puzzlement showed on his face; Kraicow had seemed too weak to move. “Where—”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know where, that’s the problem!” Anxiously, she looked past them into the empty street. “They came for him in the night. I had the fright of my life when I opened the door.”<br />
<br />
“Who was it?” Church asked.<br />
<br />
“I don’t know! They didn’t tell me!” She back-pedalled, suddenly aware they might judge her for not questioning the men further. “They were coppers,” she said unconvincingly. “Looked like a bloody funeral party, all dressed in smart suits and ties. I don’t know what the old man’s done. He never tells me anything.”<br />
<br />
Church and Ruth looked at each other uneasily. “Do you know where they took him?” Ruth said.<br />
<br />
The woman shook her head. “They said they’d let me know. They told me it was in his best interests!” she protested pathetically before slamming the door.<br />
<br />
<br />
“What was that all about?” Ruth asked once they were comfortably in heavy traffic heading back into town.<br />
<br />
“Could be the murder squad. They might have linked Kraicow to Maurice Gibbons.”<br />
<br />
“Could be.” Her voice suggested she didn’t believe it. “Seems more like the kind of thing Special Branch would do. Or the security services.”<br />
<br />
“What would they want with Kraicow?” The question hung uncomfortably in the air for a moment until Church added, “Let’s not get paranoid about this.”<br />
<br />
“If this whole episode isn’t a case for paranoia, I don’t know what is. We haven’t got any more leads now. Where do we go from here?”<br />
<br />
They crawled forward through the traffic for another fifteen minutes before Church found an answer. “There’s a lot of weird stuff going on around the country just like this. I mean, not people turning into devils, but things that shouldn’t be happening.” Church explained to her at length about the massive upsurge in supposed paranormal events he had read about on the net. “I don’t know . . .” He shrugged. “It may be nothing. All the nuts coming out of the woodwork at once. But it seems to me too much of a coincidence.”<br />
<br />
Ruth sighed heavily and stared out of the passenger window at the dismal street scene; no one seemed happy, their shoulders bowed beneath an invisible weight as they headed to the tube for another dreary day at work. It depressed her even more. “I can’t get my head round this at all.”<br />
<br />
“Let’s just pretend it’s not happening,” Church snapped, then instantly regretted it; he was tired and sick of nothing in his life making sense.<br />
<br />
Ruth glared at him, then looked back out of the window.<br />
<br />
“Sorry.”<br />
<br />
She ignored his apology frostily; Church could see she was tired herself. “Gibbons was killed to prevent him telling what he’d seen,” she mused almost to herself. “But what did he see?”<br />
<br />
“I’ve had some emails from a woman who says she saw something which could throw some light on what’s going on,” Church ventured. He considered telling her about Laura’s mention of Marianne, but thought better of it; he could barely handle the implications himself.<br />
<br />
“You really think all that stuff’s linked to what we’re dealing with?”<br />
<br />
“Who knows?” he said wearily. “These days, everything’s a leap in the dark.”<br />
<br />
“So is she going to tell you what she knows?”<br />
<br />
“She wants to do it face to face. I was going to see her anyway, you know, just out of curiosity.” He winced inwardly at the lie about his motivations. Ruth didn’t deserve it, but how could he tell her he wanted to find out how this woman knew about his dead girlfriend? It sounded a little pathetic, worse, like an obsession.<br />
<br />
“Why the hell not. Where is she?”<br />
<br />
“Bristol.”<br />
<br />
Ruth moaned. “Oh well, I’ve got no job to keep me here. Just give me a couple of hours to pack. Looks like we’ve got us a road trip.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Although it had been two years since he had last felt the warmth of her skin, Marianne’s presence still reverberated throughout the flat. On the wall of the hall hung the grainy black and white photo of the two of them staggering out of the sea at Bournemouth, fully clothed, laughing; Marianne had had it framed to remind them both how carefree life could be if they ever faced any hardship. In the kitchen, in the glass-fronted cabinet, stood her blue-and-white-hooped mug with the chip out of the side. Church couldn’t bear to throw it away. He saw it every day when he made his first cup of tea, and his last. The dog-eared copy of <span style="font-style: italic;">Foucault’s Pendulum</span> which they had both read and argued about intensely sat on the shelf in the lounge, next to the pristine edition of <span style="font-style: italic;">Walking on Glass</span> which Marianne had given him and which he had promised her he would read and had never got round to. The paperweight of a plastic heart frozen in glass which they had bought together in Portobello. The indelible stain of Marianne’s coffee on the carpet next to her seat. A hundred tiny lies ready to deceive him in every corner of his home. Sometimes he even thought he could smell her perfume.<br />
<br />
With the TV droning in the background and the holdall still half-packed on the bed, Church suddenly found himself taking stock of it all in a way he had not done since the immediate aftermath of her death. For months the reminders had simply been there, like the drip of a distant tap, but as he trailed around the flat, they seemed acute and painfully lucid once more. Perhaps it was the bizarre, disturbing mention of her name in the email, or what he thought he had seen in the street, but he had to visit each one in turn with an imperative which he found disturbing.<br />
<br />
But he was sure he could give it all up, turn back to the future, if he could somehow understand what had driven her to suicide and how he had been so blind to the deep undercurrents that must have been in place months before. He had played over every aspect of their relationship in minute detail until he was sick of it, but the mystery held as strong as ever, trapping him in the misery of not-knowing, a limbo where he could not put the past and all its withered, desperate emotions to rest. No wonder he was seeing her ghost; he was surprised it hadn’t come sooner, lurching out of his subconscious to drive him completely insane.<br />
<br />
In the lounge, the TV news had made an incongruous link from an account of a bizarre multiple slasher murder in Liverpool to details of a religious fervour which seemed to be sweeping the country; the Blessed Virgin Mary had allegedly appeared to three young children on wasteland in Huddersfield; a statue of the Hindu god Ganesh had given forth milk in Wolverhampton, and there were numerous reports of the name of Allah spelled out in the seeds of tomatoes and aubergines when they were cut open in Bradford, Bristol and West London. Church watched the item to the end, then switched off the TV and put on a CD. The jaunty sound of Johnny Mercer singing Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive filled the flat as he returned to his packing.<br />
<br />
He picked up Laura’s email confirming the details of their meeting and then checked the road atlas. Church hoped his car would make the trip to Bristol. It had seen better days and very few long journeys, but he had bought it with Marianne and hadn’t been able to give it up.<br />
<br />
A haze of chill drizzle had descended on the city just after he had dropped Ruth off and by the time he began to load up the car, it seemed to have settled in for the day. The world appeared different somehow; there was a smell in the air which he didn’t recognise and the quality of light seemed weird as if it was filtering through glass. Even the people passing by looked subtly changed, in their expressions or the strange, furtive glances which he occasionally glimpsed. He felt oddly out of sorts and apprehensive about what lay ahead.<br />
<br />
When he stepped out of the front gate, a group of children splashing in the gutter across the road stopped instantly and turned to face him as one, their eyes glassy and unfocused. Slowly, eerily, they each raised their left arm and held up the index finger. “One!” they shouted together. Then they splayed out their fingers and thumb. “Of five!” Some stupid catchphrase from a kids’ cartoon, Church thought, but he still felt a shiver run down his spine as he hurried up the street to the car.<br />
<br />
As he threw his bag into the boot, he heard the shuffle of feet on the pavement behind him. He whirled, expecting to catch the children preparing to play a prank, only to see a homeless man in a filthy black suit, his long hair and beard flattened by the rain. He walked up to Church, shaking as if he had an ague, and then he leaned forward and snapped his fingers an inch away from Church’s face.<br />
<br />
“You have no head,” he said. Church felt an icy shadow fall over him, an image of the woman at the riverside; by the time he had recovered the man had wandered away, humming some sixties tune as if he hadn’t seen Church at all.<br />
<br />
On his way to Ruth’s, Church passed through five green lights and halted at one red. Nearby was a poster of a man selling mobile phones; the top of the poster was torn off and the man’s head was missing. Further down the road, he glanced in a clothes shop to see five mannequins; four were fine, one was headless.<br />
<br />
And as he rounded the corner into Ruth’s street, a woman looked into the car, caught his eye, then suddenly and inexplicably burst into tears.<br />
<br />
He finally reached Ruth’s flat just before 1 p.m. She was ready, with a smart leather holdall and Mulberry rucksack. “I can’t help believing all this will have a perfectly reasonable explanation and we’ll both end up with egg on our faces. God help me if the people at work find out,” she said.<br />
<br />
“Let’s hope, eh.”<br />
<br />
<br />
Church drummed his fingers anxiously on the steering wheel as they sat in the steaming traffic in the bottleneck of Wandsworth High Street. Ruth looked out at the rain-swept street where a man in a business suit hurried, head bent, into the storm with a copy of the <span style="font-style: italic;">FT</span> over his head—as if it could possibly offer any protection. “You know,” she mused, “I have the strangest feeling. Like we’re leaving one life behind and moving into a different phase.”<br />
<br />
“Too much Jack Kerouac.” Church’s attention was focused on the rearview mirror; he had the sudden, uncomfortable feeling they were being followed.<br />
<br />
“It’s frightening, but it’s liberating too,” Ruth continued. “Everything was set in stone before—my job, where I was going. Now it feels like anything is possible. Isn’t that weird? The world has turned on its head and I feel like I’m going on holiday.”<br />
<br />
“Sunny Bristol, paradise playground of the beautiful people. I hope you packed your string bikini.”<br />
<br />
“Have you got any music in this heap?” Ruth flicked open the glove compartment and ferreted among the tapes, screwing up her nose as she inspected each item. “Sinatra. Crosby. Louis Armstrong. Billie Holiday. Anything from this century?”<br />
<br />
“Old music makes me feel secure.” He snatched <span style="font-style: italic;">Come Fly with Me</span> out of her fingers and slipped it into the machine. Sinatra began to sing the title track. “And old films and old books. <span style="font-style: italic;">Top Hat</span>, now there’s a great movie. Astaire and Rogers, the perfect partnership, elegance and sexuality. Or <span style="font-style: italic;">A Night at the Opera</span>—”<br />
<br />
“The Marx Brothers. Yeuckk!” Ruth mimed sticking her fingers down her throat.<br />
<br />
“Or <span style="font-style: italic;">It Happened One Night</span>. Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Romance, passion, excitement, great clothes, great cars. You can’t get better than that.”<br />
<br />
Ruth smiled secretly when she saw Church’s grin; he didn’t do it enough.<br />
<br />
“Life was great back then.” He waved his hand dismissively at the jumble of shops on Upper Richmond Road. “Where did it all go wrong? When did style get banned from life?”<br />
<br />
“When they decided big money and vacuous consumption were much more important.”<br />
<br />
“We need more magic. That’s what life is all about.”<br />
<br />
Ruth flicked her seat into the reclining position and closed her eyes while Sinatra serenaded the joys of “Moonlight in Vermont.” The traffic crept forward.<br />
<br />
<br />
The journey through southwest London was long and laborious. In rain, the capital’s archaic transport system ground to a halt, raising clouds of exhaust, steam from hissing engines and tempers. By the time they reached the M4 more than an hour later, Church and Ruth were already tired of travelling. As the planes swooped down in a neverending procession to Heathrow, they agreed to pull in at Heston Services for a coffee before embarking on the monotonous drag along the motorway. By the time they rolled into the near-empty car park, Church’s paranoia had reached fever pitch; at various stages on the journey he had been convinced that several different cars had been following them, and when a grey Transit that had been behind them since Barnes proceeded on to the services too, it had taken all of Ruth’s calm rationality to keep him from driving off.<br />
<br />
Beneath the miserable grey skies, the services seemed a bleak place. Pools of water puddled near the doors and slickly followed the tramp of feet to the newsagents or toilets where the few travellers who hung around had a uniform expression of irritation; at the weather, at travelling, at life in general.<br />
<br />
As Church and Ruth entered, they could see through the glass wall on their right that the restaurant was nearly empty. They proceeded round to the serving area where a couple of bored assistants waited for custom and bought coffee and Danishes before taking a seat near the window where they could see the spray flying up from the speeding traffic. Through the glass, distant factory towers lay against the grey sheet of sky, while beneath the fluorescent lighting the cafeteria had a listless, melancholy air. Despite the constant drone from the motorway which thrummed like the bleak soundtrack to some French arthouse film, they spoke quietly, although there were only three other travellers in the room and none of them close enough to hear.<br />
<br />
“This is killing me,” Church mused. “Every time I look behind I think someone’s following us.”<br />
<br />
Ruth warmed her hands around her coffee mug; she didn’t meet his eyes. “A natural reaction.”<br />
<br />
Near the door, a tall, thin man was casting furtive glances in their direction, the hood of his plastic waterproof pulled so tightly around his face that the drawstrings were biting into the flesh. At a table on the other side of the room, an old hippie with wiry, grey hair fastened in a ponytail was also watching them. Church fought his anxiety and turned his attention back to Ruth.<br />
<br />
“When I was a boy this would all have seemed perfectly normal,” he said. “You know how it is—you’re always convinced the world is stranger than it seems.”<br />
<br />
“That just goes to show we lose wisdom as we get older, doesn’t it,” Ruth replied edgily. “We’ve obviously been spending all our adult lives lying to ourselves.”<br />
<br />
“When I was seven or eight I had these bizarre dreams, really colourful and realistic,” Church began. “There was a woman in them, and this strange world. They were so powerful I think I had trouble distinguishing between the dreams and reality, and it worried my mother: she dragged me off to the doctor at one point. They faded after I reached puberty, but I know they affected the way I looked at the world. And I’m getting the same kind of feeling now—that all we see around us is some kind of cheap scenery and that the real business is happening behind it.” He glanced around; the man in the waterproof had gone, but the hippie was still watching them.<br />
<br />
“I’m finding it hard to deal with, to be honest,” Ruth said. “I’ve always believed this is all there is. I’ve never had much time for ghosts or God.”<br />
<br />
Church nodded. “I always thought there was something there. An instinct, really. You know, you’d look around . . . sometimes it’s hard to believe there’s not something behind it all. But these days . . . I don’t have much time for the Church . . . any churches. After Marianne died, they weren’t much help, to say the least.”<br />
<br />
Ruth sipped her coffee thoughtfully. “My dad was a member of the Communist Party and a committed atheist. I remember him saying one day, ‘The Bible’s a pack of lies, written by a bunch of power-hungry men who wanted their own religion.’”<br />
<br />
“Christmas must have been a bundle of fun in your house.”<br />
<br />
“No, it was great. It was a really happy, loving home.” She smiled wistfully. “He died a couple of years ago.”<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry.”<br />
<br />
“It was sudden, a heart attack. His brother, my uncle, was murdered and it just destroyed my dad. It was the unfairness of it . . . the complete randomness. Uncle Jim was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and some desperate, pathetic idiot killed him. You know, I work in the law and I see all the motivations for crime, but if I came across that bastard today I’d probably kill him with my bare hands. No jury, no legal arguments.” She bit her lip. “Dad just couldn’t cope with it. It didn’t fit in with the ordered world view, you see. He tore himself apart for a couple of days and then his heart gave out. And in one instant I could understand the need for religion.” Emotions flickered across her face. “Of course, by that stage it was too late to suddenly start believing.”<br />
<br />
Church felt an urge to comfort her, but he didn’t know how. “The time when the Church had any relevance to people’s lives is long gone, yet we all still have these spiritual needs. So where do we turn when things get dark?”<br />
<br />
“We look into ourselves, I suppose,” Ruth said quietly.<br />
<br />
The hippie’s unwavering stare was beginning to unnerve Church; behind his wire-rimmed spectacles, his eyes were cold and grey, sharply intelligent and incisive. One hand rested protectively on a faded, olive-coloured haversack bearing a large peace symbol and a CND badge.<br />
<br />
Ruth drained her coffee and stood up. “I had better go to the toilet or we’ll be stopping all the way to Bristol.”<br />
<br />
As she wandered out, the hippie watched her intently. Church gnawed on his Danish while keeping one eye out to make sure Ruth wasn’t followed. The man didn’t have an unpleasant face; the skin was the kind of brown that only came from an outdoor life, the lines around the mouth suggested more smiles than tears or rage. But there was a world-weariness to him that had added a touch of bitterness or cynicism around the eyes. A large gold ring hung in his left ear and he wore a tie-dyed and faded pink T-shirt, old army fatigues and a pair of rugged walking boots.<br />
<br />
He did nothing further to arouse suspicion and after a while Church’s attention wandered, but when ten minutes had passed he began to grow anxious. He finished his coffee and went to stand outside the toilets, but although he tried to wait patiently, alarm bells were ringing in his head. He swung open the door and called Ruth’s name. When there was no reply, he headed to the newsagents, but she wasn’t there either. The car park was deserted. She hadn’t slipped by him and returned to the cafeteria. Suddenly his heart was pounding as his uneasiness worried into a pearl of panic in his gut.<br />
<br />
He decided the best option was to get security to put out an announcement, or at the very worst he could check to see if they had seen her on the surveillance cameras. The office lay at the furthest point of the thoroughfare, through a windowless door and up a short flight of stairs. Church stepped on to the stairs, desperately trying not to think the worst. But he had barely climbed three steps when he became starkly aware the temperature was dropping rapidly. By the time he reached the top, his breath was pluming and shivers rippled through him. The main office door creaked open noisily. Against one wall there was a curved desk with a bank of black-and-white monitors showing scenes from the car park, the Travelodge, the cafeteria and others. An uncomfortable silence lay heavy over everything, punctuated occasionally by sudden bursts of static from the radio speaker on the desk. But what caught Church’s eye first was the glittering cobweb of frost that dappled everything—the desk, the equipment, the walls and floor. His head was spinning as he advanced slowly; it didn’t make sense. A high-backed leather chair was turned away from him at the desk; he could just make out the tip of the head of a man sitting in it.<br />
<br />
“Hello?” he said hesitantly.<br />
<br />
His voice echoed hollowly; all remained still and quiet. He stared at the man’s unmoving head, hoping the guard hadn’t heard him, knowing in his heart that wasn’t the answer. And suddenly he wanted to run out of there, not turn the chair around, not find any answers at all, but he forced himself to move forward. His footsteps sounded crisp, his breath was clouds of white. He spun the chair round in one movement and his stomach contracted instantly. The guard was frozen as solidly as if he had been left out in an Antarctic night; frost rimed his eyebrows and hair. His stare was glassy, his bloodless skin blueish beneath the unforgiving striplight. Church backed away, unable to come to terms with a situation that both terrified and baffled him. But as he turned, another shock brought him up sharp. Behind the door, hidden from his initial view, several bodies had been stacked. He recognised one of the women he had seen working in the cafeteria; the others also seemed to be staff from the services. Church felt like his head was fizzing as ideas banged into one another without forming one coherent thought. He rushed through the door and down the stairs two steps at a time.<br />
<br />
When he crashed through the door into the main thoroughfare, the hippie from the cafeteria was waiting for him. “They’ve taken her,” he said, with a faint Scottish brogue. He glanced around furtively. “Outside. Don’t draw attention from any of the staff.”<br />
<br />
“Who’s got her?” Church snapped, the anxiety cracking his voice.<br />
<br />
“Quiet,” the man said sharply. “They want you both dead. They already know who you are.”<br />
<br />
“Ruth—”<br />
<br />
“—is not dead yet. But she will be soon and you’ll be next. Now, come.” He led the way to the car park, Church following like a sheep, confused, but slowly regaining his equilibrium. The hippie gazed around the bleak, puddled car park until his eyes settled on the grey Transit Church had earlier believed was following them. “There,” he said.<br />
<br />
Church looked into the man’s face, wondering if he should trust him, and then he threw caution to the wind and set off weaving among the parked cars. As he neared the Transit, he could see it shift slightly on its suspension, although the windows were too dirty to see who was in the back. Without a second thought, Church grabbed the handle and yanked the rear door open.<br />
<br />
There was a roar that wasn’t human and a stink that reminded him of the monkey house at the zoo. Ruth was unconscious on the floor of the van. Standing over her, his face wild with rage, was the man in the waterproof Church had seen at the door of the café, his beady, darting eyes like an ape’s behind the mask of his face, which had a strange waxy sheen. The man snarled and lashed out. Church caught a glimpse of a silver-bright knife that almost curved into a crescent near the end, and then he was yanked back suddenly.<br />
<br />
Church’s new associate stepped to his side. “Stay out of his reach. He’s too strong for you.”<br />
<br />
Church was overwhelmed with sensations; the stench coming off the man making his head spin; the way the black-pebble eyes were filled with a monstrous anger Church couldn’t begin to comprehend; the rasp of breath deep in the man’s throat; the flash and glimmer as the blade danced in the air between them; and then the instinctive knowledge that this was what he had seen under the bridge. Ruth’s captor jabbed the knife at Church and said what sounded like, “Arith Urkolim.”<br />
<br />
“What did he say?” Church snapped.<br />
<br />
At Church’s voice, Ruth stirred slightly, and his relief that she was okay surprised Church with its force. He edged to one side, looking for an opening, but there didn’t seem any way he could get past the knife, and Ruth’s captor was already trying to manoeuvre into a position to close the rear doors; strangely, he seemed wary of Church, ensuring the knife was always between the two of them, when he could probably have snapped Church’s neck with one flex of his fingers. At the same time, he was changing; his skin seemed milky, then translucent and Church thought he could glimpse scales glistening just below the surface, while his tongue had grown forked at the tip like a snake’s; when it wriggled out over his thin, dry lips it was accompanied by that deep, disturbing rasp from the back of his throat.<br />
<br />
Ruth’s eyes flickered open and briefly met his. Church saw an instant of panic as she took in the surroundings and then her natural control reasserted itself. At that moment her attacker lunged forward to grab the door handle. Knowing all would be lost if it shut, Church fumbled, then grasped the edge, feeling his knuckles pop and his tendons stretch to breaking as, effortlessly, Ruth’s captor began to drag it closed.<br />
<br />
“Get away!” the hippie barked. “He’s going to use the knife!”<br />
<br />
Church looked up to see the blade at throat level, drawn back to strike. The snake-man said something in the same guttural language, his eyes now black with a red-slit pupil.<br />
<br />
Suddenly Ruth’s boot struck her attacker’s calf with such force he overbalanced. Before he could recover, she had tangled both her feet among his legs. Church seized the moment, shifting his weight to fling the door shut so that with the force of the snake-man’s pull it slammed into his face like a hammer. The dirty window glass exploded in a shower of crystals as the attacker crashed backwards over Ruth. In a sudden burst, Ruth scrambled out from under him, kicked open the door and tumbled out on to the wet tarmac, but Church’s attention was still focused on the knife. He half thought about grabbing it when it clattered on to the floor of the van, but before his eyes it shimmered, then changed shape into something that resembled a silver spider which scurried away into the shadows.<br />
<br />
“Let’s get away from here,” the hippie hissed, dragging them both by their jackets. “Where’s your car?” The snake-man was already pulling himself to his feet, his face a mess of blood and torn flesh. An ear-splitting, inhuman roar erupted from its throat as they ran to the Nissan, and for a second of pure terror, Church thought it was coming after them. As he pushed the key in the lock, Church couldn’t help glancing back, and instantly wished he hadn’t; framed in the open van doors, he saw the snake-man howling terrible monkey cries as he tore at his clothes and face which was transforming, melting, shifting into something so awful Church gagged and turned away.<br />
<br />
When they were safely inside, he fired up the engine, gunning the accelerator, and then they were lurching forward in a screech of tires.<br />
<br />
Only when they had pulled off the slip road into traffic did Church’s heart start to return to normal. He turned to Ruth in the passenger seat. “Are you okay?”<br />
<br />
She nodded, her face pale and drawn.<br />
<br />
“That thing in the van,” he stuttered, “it was the same as whatever we saw under the bridge. Not the same one, though. So there’s more of—”<br />
<br />
“They can put on human faces,” the hippie interrupted from the back seat.<br />
<br />
“They’d taken the place of all the staff there!” Church said, finally accepting what he’d seen.<br />
<br />
“Waiting for you,” he continued. “I think, if we took the time to investigate, we would find something similar at the airport and at other sites on all the arterial routes out of the capital.”<br />
<br />
Church felt queasily like things were running out of control. “They’re after us?” he said dumbfoundedly.<br />
<br />
“I was in one of the cubicles when I heard someone else come into the toilet and hang around outside. When I started to come out, the door burst in. Caught me a right one.” Ruth tenderly touched the ripening bruise on her temple. “The first thing I thought was, ‘What a geek,’ because he had that hood pulled so tightly round his face you could only see the little circle of his features. He looked like a mental patient. And then I thought, ‘You’d better make some noise because this bastard is going to try to rape you.’ And then his face changed. Just a bit, like a flicker in transmission or something, but I got a hint of what was behind it.”<br />
<br />
Church shook his head in disbelief. “They’re after us?” he repeated stupidly. “I thought we were after them?” Gradually his thoughts started to come together and he turned and briefly examined the hippie before returning his gaze to the road. “And who are <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span>?” he asked then. The man’s cold eyes had been impossible to read; Church thought he might have done too many drugs, something to take him one step away from normal human experience.<br />
<br />
“Tom,” he replied. “I’ve never had much need for any other name. But Learmont is my family name.”<br />
<br />
“That wasn’t what I meant. You’d better start explaining.”<br />
<br />
Tom removed his glasses and cleaned them, then checked through the window at the quality of light; although it was mid-afternoon, night did not seem far away. He smiled inscrutably. “Life is a poem and a new verse is about to start.”<br />
<br />
Ruth saw the anger flare in Church’s face and calmed him with a hand on his forearm. She turned round in her seat and stared at the hippie coldly. “You’ve been speaking like you know what’s happening. You’ve been acting like you were waiting for us, even though we didn’t even know we were going to stop here. I’ve just had the most frightening experience of my life. Don’t play games with us.”<br />
<br />
Tom removed a small tin from his haversack and began to roll himself a thin cigarette. To Church’s irritation, he remained silent until the blue smoke clouded his face, and then he said, “The world you grew up in is dead. It simply doesn’t know it yet. This society is like some dumb animal that’s had its throat cut and is still wandering around as if nothing has happened. You see, the most enormous conceit of this time is that the rules of the game are known. The scientists have fooled the populace—and themselves—that the universe is like clockwork, and that grand lie will cost everyone dearly. The universe is not like clockwork. The universe is like stoats fighting in a sack, bloody and chaotic, and any rules there might be could never be glimpsed by you or I.”<br />
<br />
He sucked on his cigarette, choked a cough in his throat. Church felt odd licks of anxiety, while Ruth waited for the punchline.<br />
<br />
“The one true law of the universe is duality,” Tom continued. “You would think even the most confused of philosophers would see that, but it seems to have eluded all the apologists for this so-called Age of Reason. Hot and cold. Life and death. Good and evil. And what would be the flipside of science?”<br />
<br />
He addressed the question to Ruth, but it was Church who answered: “Magic?”<br />
<br />
Tom smiled slyly. “The seasons have turned. The Age of Reason has passed. We’re on the cusp of a new age.”<br />
<br />
Church laughed dismissively. “I thought all that Age of Aquarius rubbish went out with flower children and love-ins.”<br />
<br />
“The Age of Aquarius is one way of making sense of it, but it isn’t the whole of it. Yes, we are entering an era of spirituality, wisdom and magic. But there will also be blood and brutality. All I’m saying is you must let go of old certitudes, keep an open mind. That’s the only way you’ll be able to face the trials that lie ahead.”<br />
<br />
“You’re not telling us anything,” Church protested.<br />
<br />
“This isn’t the time or the place. We need to move quickly. What happened back there wasn’t the end of it. They won’t be happy till you’re both dead.”<br />
<br />
When Church looked in the rearview mirror he could tell from Tom’s set face that he was not about to reveal any more. A small nugget of anger made him want to drop the man off at the next services in retaliation, but he knew he couldn’t dismiss the one person who seemed to know something about what was happening in his suddenly chaotic life. He glanced at Ruth, who smiled back as warmly as she could muster, but her eyes were still terribly scared.<br />
<br />
<br />
They hadn’t gone much further when Ruth’s mobile phone rang. She answered it, then said to Church, “It’s someone called Dale for you.”<br />
<br />
“He’s a friend. I gave him your number for emergencies.” He nursed the phone against his shoulder as he drove. “What’s wrong, Dale?”<br />
<br />
“You tell me.” Dale’s voice was drawn and worried. There was a long pause, then he said, “You’ve had some trouble at your flat.”<br />
<br />
“What do you mean?”<br />
<br />
Dale sighed. “Well, there’s no easy way to say this . . . It’s been burnt out.”<br />
<br />
“What?” Church almost dropped the phone.<br />
<br />
“Someone broke down the door, then set fire to it. The fire brigade got there before it took out the rest of the house, but . . . well, I’m sorry, Church, everything’s a write-off.” Another pause. “That’s not all. I’ve had the cops round here asking after you. I don’t know how they found out where I worked, how they even knew we were friends . . .” Dale’s voice faded; he sounded disorientated, worried. “They wanted to know where you were. I got the feeling it was about more than the fire.”<br />
<br />
“What did you tell them?”<br />
<br />
“Nothing, honest. Listen, if you’re in any trouble—”<br />
<br />
“Don’t worry, Dale. It’s probably just a mix-up. But I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell them where we are.”<br />
<br />
“I don’t know where you are!”<br />
<br />
“Then you won’t have to lie.”<br />
<br />
After he’d switched off the phone, he told Ruth what Dale had told him. “They have probably done the same to your home too,” Tom said to Ruth. “And if either of you had been there you would be lying in the ashes now.”<br />
<br />
“Who are <span style="font-style: italic;">they</span>?” Church snapped; he felt at breaking point.<br />
<br />
Tom sniffed at Church’s tone, then lay across the seat and closed his eyes. “Later,” he said dismissively. However much Church protested, he wouldn’t respond, and in the end Church and Ruth were forced into a desperate silence as the sun slipped towards the horizon.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/WorldsEnd.html"><i>World's End</i></a> © <a href="http://www.markchadbourn.net/">Mark Chadbourn</a><br />
Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.johnpicacio.com/blog.html">John Picacio</a><br />
Design by Nicole Sommer-Lecht</div><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVISNjH4vbWifH-DEowInmUukzqE5QNNsB7pZ0P4UTwRS-ZAtqpwnvhEnOrLSwo7CuFfsoh-E0Ut7VEF87ILLsxVRBmxtIlVJgJJBeY9aSfR2tJoEto-Z4Y6T7cbDmQi2bpxTnYYParjQ/s1600-h/Mark_chadbourn+hi+res.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5327558044400299346" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhVISNjH4vbWifH-DEowInmUukzqE5QNNsB7pZ0P4UTwRS-ZAtqpwnvhEnOrLSwo7CuFfsoh-E0Ut7VEF87ILLsxVRBmxtIlVJgJJBeY9aSfR2tJoEto-Z4Y6T7cbDmQi2bpxTnYYParjQ/s200/Mark_chadbourn+hi+res.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 132px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 200px;" /></a>A two-time winner of the British Fantasy Award, Mark Chadbourn is the critically-acclaimed author of eleven novels and one non-fiction book. A former journalist, he is now a screenwriter for BBC television drama. His other jobs have included running an independent record company, managing rock bands, working on a production line, and as an engineer’s “mate.” He lives in a forest in the English Midlands. Visit him online at www.markchadbourn.net.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com24tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7497716995378572935.post-47823867476192920912009-04-05T08:00:00.001-05:002009-04-05T20:54:09.602-05:00Blood of Ambrose by James Enge<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6dx3pkK9We7E6AZNgobKai65VfNa_VOFENktQkRcu71EbWuvrV4A4JrvR6wElMhNfJuyHRhdyF6B3C5SdADDlfAdQFDyUoZoDapvmGPt6CnOBo0XsrdsNJKrfg14qtiVF_O4q3nVlPpY/s1600-h/BLOODofAmbrose.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 130px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6dx3pkK9We7E6AZNgobKai65VfNa_VOFENktQkRcu71EbWuvrV4A4JrvR6wElMhNfJuyHRhdyF6B3C5SdADDlfAdQFDyUoZoDapvmGPt6CnOBo0XsrdsNJKrfg14qtiVF_O4q3nVlPpY/s200/BLOODofAmbrose.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315304714305956114" border="0" /></a>James Enge's <a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BloodofAmbrose.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Blood of Ambrose</span></a> is swords & sorcery fantasy in the tradition of such greats as Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard, and Michael Moorcock, but with a modern slant. Enge mixes dark humor with gritty action in a similar vein to such contemporary authors as Joe Abercrombie and Scott Lynch. In the words of <span style="font-style: italic;">New York Times</span> best seller Greg Keyes, “James Enge writes with great intelligence and wit. His stories take twisty paths to unexpected places you absolutely want to go. This isn't the same old thing; this is delightful fantasy written for smart readers.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blood of Ambrose</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />James Enge</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: right;">The glories of our blood and state<br />are shadows, not substantial things.<br />There is no armour against fate;<br />death lays his icy hands on kings.<br />-James Shirley, <span style="font-style: italic;">Ajax and Ulysses</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Part One: Arms of the Ambrosii</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: right;">Marshall, demand of yonder champion<br />the cause of his arrival here in arms.<br />Ask him his name and orderly proceed<br />to swear him in the justice of his cause.<br />--Shakespeare, <span style="font-style: italic;">Richard II</span><br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter One</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Summons</span><br /></div><br />The King was screaming in the throne room when the Protector’s Men arrived. He knew it was wrong; he knew he was being stupid. But he was frightened. When the booted feet of the soldiers sounded in the corridor outside, he belatedly came to his senses. Dropping to the floor, he crawled under the broad-seated throne where the Emperor sat in judgement, next to God Sustainer. (Only there was no Emperor now, and Lord Urdhven, the Protector, made his judgements in his own council chamber. Did the Sustainer dwell there now? Or still upon the empty throne? Was there really a Sustainer? Would the Protector’s soldiers kill him, like all the others?)<br /><br />He pulled in his legs just as the soldiers entered the room, their footfalls like rolling thunder in the vast vaulted chamber. He’d hoped they couldn’t see him. (Would God Sustainer protect him? Was there really a Sustainer?) But the soldiers made straight for the throne.<br /><br />If the Sustainer was not with him (and who could say?), the accumulated precautions of his assassination-minded ancestors were all around. As he pressed instinctively against the wall behind the throne, it gave way and he found himself tumbling down a slope in the darkness. Briefly he heard the shouting voices of the soldiers turn to screams, and then break off suddenly. Because the passageway had closed, or for another reason? His Grandmother would know; he wished she were here. But she was far away, in Sarkunden—that was why the Protector had moved now, killing the family’s old servants like pigs in the courtyard. . . .<br /><br />He landed in a kind of closet. There were cloaked shapes and bits of armor lying around in the dust that was thick on the floor. Perhaps they were, or had been, things to help an endangered sovereign in flight or self-defense. He thought of that later. But just then he only wanted to get out; by flailing around in the dark he found the handle of a door and plunged out into the bright dimness of a little-used hallway.<br /><br />Hadn’t he been here before? Hadn’t Grandmother told him to come here, or someplace like here, if something happened? He hadn’t been listening. Why listen? What could happen in the palace of Ambrose, with the Lord Protector guarding the walls . . . ? And they had cut his tutor’s throat, cut Master Jaric’s throat, and hung him upside down to drain, just like a pig. He had seen it once at a fair, and Grandmother had said he must never, never do that again.<br /><br />The sudden memory renewed his terror; he found himself running down the corridor in the dim light, the open doors on either side of him yawning like disinterested courtiers. There was a statue of an armed man standing over a broad curving stairway at the end of the hall. The King was almost sure Grandmother had mentioned a place like this, but without the statue. If he went down the stairs, perhaps that would be the place, and he would remember what Grandmother had told him to do next—if she had told him.<br /><br />But as he passed the statue it moved; he saw it was not a statue—no statue in this ancient palace would be emblazoned with the red lion of the Lord Protector. The Protector’s Man reached for him.<br /><br />The King fell down and began to scuttle away on all fours, back down the corridor. The Protector’s Man dropped his sword and followed, crouching down as he came and reaching out with both hands.<br /><br />“Now, Your Majesty,” the soldier’s ingratiating voice came, resonating slightly, through the bars of his helmet. “Come along with me. No one means to harm you. Just a purge of ugly traitors who’ve crept into your royal service. You can’t go against the Protector, can you? You found that out. And stop that damned screaming.”<br /><br />The King was screaming again, weary hysterical screaming that made his body clench and unclench like a fist. Looking back, he saw that the soldier had caught hold of his cloak. There was nothing he could do about the screaming, just as there was nothing he could do about the soldier.<br /><br />Then Grandmother was there, standing behind the Protector’s Man, fixing her long, terribly strong hands about his mailed throat. The soldier had time for one brief scream of his own before she lifted him from the floor and shook him like a rag doll. After an endless series of moments she negligently threw him down the hall and over the balustrade of the stairway. He made no sound as he fell, and the crash of his armor on the stairs below was like the applause that followed one of the Protector’s speeches—necessary, curt, and convincing.<br /><br />Before the echoes of the armed man’s fall had passed away, Grandmother said, “Lathmar, come here.”<br /><br />Trembling, the King climbed to his feet and went to her. Grandmother frightened him, but in a different way than most things frightened him. She expected so much of him. He was frightened of failing her, as he routinely did.<br /><br />“Lathmar,” she said, resting one deadly hand on his shoulder, “you’ve done well. But now you must do more. Much more. Are you ready?”<br /><br />“Yes.” It was a lie. He always lied to her. He was afraid not to.<br /><br />“I must remain here, to keep them from following you. You must go alone, down the stairway. At the bottom there is a tunnel. Take it either way to the end. It will lead to an opening somewhere in the city. Go out and find my brother. Find him and bring him here. Can you do that?”<br /><br />“How . . . ? How . . . ?” The King was tongue-tied by all the impossibilities she expected him to overleap. He was barely twelve years old, and looked younger than he was, and in some ways thought still younger than he looked. He was aware, all-too-aware, of these deficiencies.<br /><br />“You know his name? My brother’s name?”<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">His</span> name?” the King cried in horror.<br /><br />“Then you do know it. Say it aloud. Say it to many people. Say, ‘He must come to help Ambrosia. His sister is in danger.’ By then I will be, you know.”<br /><br />The King simply stared at her, aghast.<br /><br />“He has a way of knowing when people say his name,” the King’s grandmother, the Lady Ambrosia, continued calmly. “That much of the legend is true. But more is false. Do not be afraid. Say the name aloud. You are in no danger from him; he is your kinsman. He will protect you from your enemies, as I have done.”<br /><br />From the far end of the corridor echoed the sound of axes on wood.<br /><br />“I had hoped to go with you,” his Grandmother continued evenly, “but that will not be possible now. You will have to find someone else to help you; I wish you luck. But remember: if you do not find my brother, I will surely die. Your Lord Protector, Urdhven, will see to it. You don’t wish that, do you?”<br /><br />“No!” the King said. And that, too, was a lie. It would be a relief to know he had failed Grandmother for the last time.<br /><br />“Go, then. Save yourself, and me as well. Find—”<br /><br />Knowing she was about to say the accursed name, her damned brother’s name, he covered his ears and ran past her, skittering down the broad stone steps beyond. He passed the corpse of the fallen soldier. He kept on running.<br /><br />By the time the light filtering from the top of the stairway failed, he could see a faint yellowish light gleaming below him. When he reached the foot of the stair, he found a lit lamp set on the lowest step.<br /><br />His feelings on reaching the lamp were strong, almost stronger than he was. He knew that his Grandmother had set it here to give him not only light, but hope. It was a sign she had been here, that she had made the place safe for him, that he need not be afraid. As he lifted the lamp, he felt an uprush of strength. He almost felt he could do the task his Grandmother had set him. He swore in his heart he would succeed, that he would not fail her this time.<br /><br />Choosing a direction at random, he walked along the tunnel to its end. There he found a flight of shallow stairs leading upward. He climbed them tentatively, holding the lamp high. At the top of the stairs was a small bare room with one door. The King turned the handle and looked out.<br /><br />Outside was a city street. It was long after dark, and wagon traffic was thick in the streets, in preparation for the next day’s market. (Cartage into the city was forbidden during the day, to prevent traffic jams.)<br /><br />The King closed the door and sat down on the floor next to his guttering lamp. But presently it occurred to him that sooner or later the Protector’s Men would discover the tunnel and draw the obvious conclusion. No matter how dangerous the city was at night (he had heard it was; he had never set foot in the city unattended, day or night), he knew he should leave this place.<br /><br />He stood impulsively and, leaving the lamp behind him, stepped out into the street.<br /><br /><br />Night to the King meant a dark room and the slow steps of sentries in the hallway outside. Night was an empty windowcase, a breath of cold air, the three moons, wrapped in a smattering of dim stars, peering through his windows, and the sullen smoky glow of Ontil—the Imperial city—to the east. Night was quiet, and the kind of fear that comes with quiet, the fear of stealth: the poisoned cup, the strangler’s rope, the assassin’s knife.<br /><br />This night was different: a chorus of shouting voices, the roar of wooden wheels on the cobbled street, the startled cries of cart-horses. It was like a parody of a court procession, with the peasants in their high carts moving in stately progress—when they moved at all. The King, who had never been in a traffic jam (though he had caused many), wondered why they were moving so slowly, when they were all so obviously impatient. Then he saw that they all had to negotiate a sort of obstacle at the end of the street: a row of stone slabs stretching across the way, so that each cart had to slow to fit its wheels through the gaps in the stone causeway, and all the carts behind it perforce slowed as well. When the stones were higher than a cart’s axles, or when no gap in the stones corresponded to the width of a cart’s wheels, the delay was longer; the cart had to be pulled over, or unloaded and lifted over, or shunted aside.<br /><br />Above the chaos of lamps the stars were almost invisible, but the King could see Trumpeter, the third moon, standing bright beneath the sky’s dim zenith. The major moons, Horseman and great Chariot, were down—this was the month of Remembering, the King remembered. (He didn’t have to bother much with days or months; he just did as he was told when someone told him to do it.)<br /><br />Fascinated, the King crept along the narrow stone walkway toward this center of activity. Before reaching it he saw that, beyond the relatively narrow street, there was a great square or intersection into which several other streets emptied out. All of the traffic converged on one very large way that seemed to lead to the great marketplace or market district. (The King was hazy about the geography of the Imperial city, one of the two that he, in law, ruled.)<br /><br />It was horrible, with the noise and the dust and the reek of the horses—sweat and manure—and the shouts of the peasants and the glare of the cart lamps (dazzling in the darkness of the otherwise lampless street). Horrible but fascinating. The King believed that the noise, the dirt, the confusion would drive anyone mad. But the peasants did not seem mad, only annoyed. The King had no idea where they were coming from, and only the vaguest as to where they were going, but did not doubt there was backbreaking drudgery at either end. The King was not exactly sure what “backbreaking drudgery” entailed, but it was something (he had been told many times) that was not expected of him. This relieved him greatly, as he considered his life hard enough as it was. Surely none of these peasants had a Grandmother like the Lady<br />Ambrosia, or an uncle like Lord Urdhven.<br /><br />On the far side of the street he saw three figures, cloaked, masked, booted, gloved, all in red. They carried something between them . . . he saw an arm trailing on the ground and realized it was a dead body. So the red figures must be members of the Company of Mercy, the secret order that tended to the sick and buried the bodies of the city’s poor—no one knew where. There were strange stories about the red Companions; no one ever saw their faces, or knew where they came from. There were bound to be stories.<br /><br />One of the red-masked faces turned toward him as he stood on the sidewalk, open-mouthed, watching the traffic pass, and it occurred to him again that the Protector’s Men would be coming for him soon. At the moment he was just another mousey-haired, underdeveloped, twelve-year-old boy in dark clothes wandering the city streets. But when the Protector’s Men started asking questions, some of the people passing by might remember that they had seen him. He had to get on his way, and immediately.<br /><br />But where should he go in the dark city before him? What was he to do? To find Grandmother’s brother, of course. But he would have to ask someone. There were many people here, many of them from outside the city, some of them, perhaps, from very far away. This was the place to begin.<br /><br />The King shrank from the thought of what he was about to do. But the memory of the lamp in the dark tunnel returned to him, renewing his hope and his strength. And there was a trembling exultation in the thought that if he succeeded, he would bring hope to his Grandmother as she had brought hope to him. He had never done anything like that before.<br /><br />Not allowing himself to think, he leapt away from the wall and hopped from stone to stone across the intersection, as if they were the stepping-stones in his garden stream in the palace. A cart was slowly being pulled through the gap in the stones.<br /><br />“The Strange Gods eat these roadblocks,” the driver was cursing. “They should make them all the same size. How’s a man supposed to bring his goods to market?”<br /><br />“We could market at Twelve Stones,” the driver’s shadowy companion observed.<br /><br />“They won’t pay city prices, my lad. When you—Hey! What do you want?”<br /><br />This last was addressed to the King, who had leapt over to cling to the side of the cart.<br /><br />“Help me!” the King said.<br /><br />The driver turned to look at him. He was a heavy-shouldered peasant in a dark smock. His face was sun-darkened; it had flat features and flat black eyes like stones, and a flat gray beard. “Help you what?” he asked reasonably. Beyond him the King could see his companion, a gaping young man with straw-colored hair and the barest beginnings of a beard.<br /><br />“Help me find . . .” the King began, then stopped. Who? <span style="font-style: italic;">Grandmother’s brother.</span> But she wasn’t really his grandmother—he just called her that because it was shorter than “great-great-great-great-etc. grandmother.” And what did you call the brother of your great-great-who-knows-how-many-greats grandmother? He didn’t think there was a word for that.<br /><br />“My . . . she . . . I’m . . . my . . . my . . . my—”<br /><br />“Get your story straight,” advised the driver as the cart surged forward into the open; with dispassionate skill, he lifted his whip and cut the King across the face.<br /><br />Too shocked even to scream, the King felt, as from a great distance, his nerveless fingers let the cart go; he fell to the filthy cobbles of the open square. Dazedly he watched the lamplit cart roll away in the dark toward the other lights clustering at the thoroughfare entrance.<br /><br />Slowly the King rose to his feet. The whipcut was a red lightning-stroke of pain across his face, and other dark fires were burning on the side of his head, his right side and limbs where he had fallen. He did not fully understand why the driver had done what he did. But he guessed that the same thing would happen unless he did as the driver had advised, and got his story straight.<br /><br />He would not tell them about his Grandmother. (That would only frighten them away, because she was the Protector’s enemy, and the Protector ruled everything now.) He would not tell them anything—except what she had told him to say. <span style="font-style: italic;">Say the name aloud . . .</span><br /><br />He climbed back up on the stepping-stones and bided his time. Presently a cart came through and, while it was fully engaged in passing through the line of the stepping-stones, he jumped into the tarp-covered back of the wagon, landing on his feet, and prepared to dodge whip-strokes.<br /><br />“Hey, thief!” shouted the driver, a heavyset elderly man raising his whip (as the King had feared).<br /><br />“No, Rusk!” the passenger, a woman of the same age, cried. “It’s a little boy!”<br /><br />The King did not think of himself as “a little boy.” He had seen little boys from far off, playing in the streets below the walls of the palace Ambrose, and he was not much like them. He usually thought of himself as “a child,” since that was how others referred to him when they thought he was not listening, often quoting the ancient Vraidish proverb “the land runs red when a child is <span style="font-style: italic;">king</span>.”<br /><br />“They’re the worst thieves of all!” Rusk grumbled, but lowered the whip. “Hey, boy! You’re spoiling our vegetables!”<br /><br />“I’m sorry,” the King said. “I need help.” He shifted to the side of the cart, to avoid treading on their goods. The cart jerked as it pulled free of the stepping-stones, and the King almost fell into the square again. “I need to find somebody!” he cried, clutching at the wagon’s side.<br /><br />“Who?” the woman asked.<br /><br />The King paused. Now that he came to it, it was difficult to speak that awful name aloud. “The Crooked Man,” he said then; it was one of many euphemisms for Ambrosia’s brother.<br /><br />Rusk, looking forward now to guide the cart-horses, gnashed his teeth in irritation. “Boy, you should know that beggars don’t come out at night. Besides, we’re not city people; we don’t know any beggars, crooked or straight.”<br /><br />“I don’t understand what you mean,” the King said slowly. “I mean . . . I am looking for . . . Ambrosia’s brother. The Dark Man.”<br /><br />The woman gave a sharp intake of breath, and Rusk shouted, “Lata, this is on your head. Throw that rat off our wagon before he says the name and brings a curse on us—”<br /><br />“Morlock!” shouted the King in despair, as the woman reached back in a vague swatting motion. “Morlock! Morlock! Morlock! Your sister is in danger! <span style="font-style: italic;">Morlock</span>!”<br /><br />He had expected (well, half expected) the Crooked Man to appear in a gush of flame, as legends said he did when his name was spoken, to work dreadful wonders, or haul traitors off to hell. So he was half disappointed when nothing of the sort occurred. A cart with a lamp (Rusk and Lata’s had none) passed them; a wash of golden light passed over the old woman’s seamed face, catching a speculative wondering look on ’her features as she met the King’s eye.<br /><br />Rusk had reined in and was turning around, shouting, whip in hand. As he raised his arm to strike, Lata snatched the whip away from him and said in a breathless voice, “Shut up, Rusk, you fool—and you, too, sir, if you please,” she added, glancing back at the King. “Sit down there, out of the passing lights, sir, and you’ll be quite comfortable.”<br /><br />“<span style="font-style: italic;">Sir!</span>” exploded Rusk.<br /><br />“Don’t you understand?” Lata said insistently. “It’s the little king!”<br /><br />Rusk drew himself up, then glanced back at the King, who had settled himself down obediently into the shadows. “It’s impossible,” Rusk said, but his voice was quiet and lacked all conviction.<br /><br />Lata, her voice equally quiet, drove the point home. “Who counts the coins on market-day, Rusk? I do. If I’ve seen his face once I’ve seen it a hundred times. And you remember what the gate guard said, about the disturbance at Ambrose. If the Protector and old Ambrosia are finally having it out, she might call on her brother (the Strange Gods save us from him; I name him not). What’d be more natural?”<br /><br />“‘Natural’!’ <span style="font-style: italic;">Those</span> ones . . .” Rusk’s voice was sardonic, but held no disbelief. Hope beat suddenly in the King’s heart.<br /><br />“Then you’ll help me?” the King said. “You’ll help me find Morlock?”<br /><br />“Shut that filthy-mouthed brat up.”<br /><br />“Shut up yourself, Rusk. It’s different for him; the Crooked Man (I name him not!) is his kin, in a manner of speaking. Yes, little sir, we’ll help you as best we can. Bless you, it’s our duty now, isn’t it? Just pull some of these blankets over you and lie down on the side of the cart, there. There now. There now. That’s fine.”<br /><br /><br />Lata and Rusk did a good deal of low-voiced talking, but the King didn’t bother to listen to it. He had done his part; he had succeeded; it was up to the others, now. He hoped they would be in time to save Grandmother—how proud she’d be of him, for once! He wondered at the power of the Crooked Man’s name, which frightened others even more than it did him. Lata had said, <span style="font-style: italic;">it’s different for him</span>, and he saw how true that was.<br /><br />“Morlock,” the King muttered, and felt the ancient blood of Ambrosius glow in his veins. “Come help us, Morlock. Help Grandmother. Hurt the Protector. He killed my parents, Morlock, I’m almost sure of it. . . .” The King whispered to Morlock in the dark what he had never dared to say aloud to anyone, even Grandmother. But he didn’t have to be afraid anymore; it was a wonderful feeling.<br /><br />He peered through the boards of the wagon side. Would Morlock appear magically out of the darkness, as he was supposed to do when someone said his name? Would he be hunched over and crooked, as the legends said? Would his fiery servants appear alongside him? Was his hand really bloodred, from all the killing it had done? But Morlock never appeared.<br /><br />That was all right, though. The King knew it was because they were going to meet him. Lata and Rusk seemed to know more or less where to go. Rusk was expressing delight at how empty the streets were; the King guessed that people avoided the streets, because that was where Morlock lived.<br /><br />After a while the King grew tired of muttering Morlock’s name in the dark. He risked peering out of the wagon past Lata and Rusk. He saw the high twisting towers of a palace, the windows glittering with light. He wondered dimly if Morlock had his own palace, his own court, a kind of secret Emperor. . . . But that was impossible. He knew those towers. He had seen them, looking up from the palace walls, as he walked with the sentries. . . . It was Ambrose. They were taking him back to Ambrose.<br /><br />“You’re taking me back!” he shouted, throwing off the blankets. “You lied! You said you’d help!”<br /><br />Rusk said nothing, flicking the reins to make his horses go faster. But Lata turned toward him, her etched face expressionless in the shadows, her voice troubled and concerned. “Now, now, young sir. We are helping. It’s best you not be mixed up in that nasty old witch’s plots. And you can’t be wandering the streets at night, no, no. Why, who knows what might happen? You’ll be safer at home in . . . in the palace, there. Let the grownups settle things between themselves. Now, don’t be afraid. Don’t cry. No matter what happens, they won’t hurt a boy like you.”<br /><br />The King was crying, in fear and frustration. If the Protector had murdered the Empress, his own sister, why would he stop at killing anybody? They had killed Master Jaric and drained him like a pig, and who did Jaric ever hurt? The King wanted to call out Morlock’s name again—Morlock who was death to traitors—but the power to do so had left him.<br /><br />He wondered, briefly, fearfully, what would happen if he jumped away from the wagon and ran away into the dark streets. He didn’t know. He didn’t know. He didn’t do anything. There was no point in doing anything. He had done something and it hadn’t worked. The King sat, weeping as the wagon pulled up in front of Ambrose’s City Gate. He did not even listen as Rusk and Lata began their marketplace chaffering with the guards on duty.<br /><br />“Wait, wait, wait!” the guard captain said finally. “You two—go over there and claim that person these two are talking about. You see him there, in the back?” The King heard booted feet approaching, and felt himself lifted gently out of the wagon by his shoulders, then carried bodily to the gate. He opened his eyes to meet those of the guard captain, who swore furiously, “Death and Justice! It’s true. Thurn and Veck: take His Majesty back to his apartments and stay with him. Don’t be drawn off <span style="font-style: italic;">by anyone</span> or I’ll feed the one ball you have between you to the goats. Carnon: notify the Protector’s Man napping upstairs in the inner guardhouse that we have recovered the King. I know; I know! Then you go <span style="font-style: italic;">with him</span> while he reports to the Protector, and just you mention it to everyone you meet. Nobody’s falling down a stairway on my damn watch.”<br /><br />“Wait, now!” Rusk said hoarsely. “Little sir, won’t you speak up for us? This soldier man is trying to cheat us of our reward! Didn’t we help you get home safe, all right? Won’t you mention us to your Protector?” And through this the King saw Lata tugging at Rusk’s arm, begging him to be quiet and come away. Then the soldiers carried the King through the gate, onto the open bridge over the river Tilion, towards the yawning gate of Ambrose on the far side of the river, and the darkness, and the fear.<br /><br />The guard captain’s voice, now lazily threatening, echoed back through the City Gate. “Hold on. This isn’t some sack of beans you’ve brought to market. It’s the royal person, His Majesty Lathmar the Seventh, the King of the Two Cities and (the Strange Gods willing) your future Emperor. As to the Protector hearing your names, there’s little doubt of that. Now—what are your names? Where do you live? How did you become involved in the abduction of His Majesty? Which one of you slashed his face?” The gate of Ambrose shut behind the King.<br /><br /><br />Grandmother was condemned to death the next evening, along with all the people the Protector’s Men had killed the night before, in a special session of the Protector’s Council. The King never remembered much about the ceremony, just that Grandmother (in the plain brown robe of the accused, her empty hands hanging loose from the wrist as if they had been broken) looked at his face once and turned away.<br /><br />They had given him a statement to read before the Council, but he burst into tears and couldn’t say anything. They took him away and put him to bed. After a while he stopped crying or moving so that they would think he was asleep and go away. When they did, he lay there in the dark room, thinking.<br /><br />The last thing he thought, many hours later, when he really was falling asleep, was that the things they said about the Crooked Man were all lies. He would never believe a legend again, or his Grandmother either.<br /><br /><br />As for Lata and Rusk, they had been released that morning, after a bitter night of questioning. It soon proved that no one really believed they were involved in a plot to abduct the King. The guard captain, Lorn—not a Protector’s Man, one of the City Legion—who assumed charge of their interrogation was simply furious at them. He referred several times to their attempt to “sell the King like a sack of beans.” But he kept the Protector’s Men away, and finally dismissed them when it was too late to make it to the Great Market (which ceased to admit vendors at dawn), contemptuously declining to confiscate their goods. As they drove their wagon away from Ambrose, Lata felt obscurely ashamed, yet intensely angry—as if she had tried to cheat someone, only to find herself cheated instead.<br /><br />Rusk’s feelings were less ambiguous, and he gave vent to them all the way back to their farm. He cursed everyone they had dealt with, from the Protector on down, not excluding the King (“that foul-mouthed fucking little brat”) or Ambrosia (“the evil venom-spewing bitch”). Frequently he exclaimed, “Morlock take them all!” because he considered himself to have been ill used, if not positively betrayed.<br /><br />They sold most of their goods at Twelve Stones, for a fraction of what they would have gotten at the Great Market. Their ride home was another long litany of curses, this time including the day’s buyers and competing sellers, but concentrating as before on the Protector, the guard captain, the ungrateful King, and that inhuman crook-back witch Ambrosia. Rusk invited Morlock to show himself and cart off each one in several directions.<br /><br />Lata, whose shame had grown as her anger faded, finally told him to shut up. But the grievance became something of an obsession with Rusk, and for years afterward he was liable to mutter, “Morlock take them! Morlock take them all!” particularly when he was doing some dirty or disagreeable task.<br /><br />The pattern for all this was set on that first day, when they returned home to find the young nephew they had hired to watch their farm missing, their scarecrow stolen, and a murder of crows feeding in their wheat field. Before anything else, Rusk had to rush hither and thither through the field, waving his arms like a madman to scare away the crows. This he did while screaming out such treasonable abuse of the imperial family that even the crows were shocked. The repeated references to Morlock caught their attention, too, for they had a treaty with Morlock. It was the treaty, rather than Rusk’s ineffectual gesticulations, that caused the murder to rise up into the air, showering Rusk with seeds and croaks of abuse, and fly off into a neighboring wood for a parliament.<br /><br />They settled between them how much they actually knew of the story—this took some time, since crows are quarrelsome and apt to suppose they know more than they do—and they agreed on who was to carry the message. They then determined Morlock’s location by the secret means prescribed by the treaty and dispatched the messenger. Their duty discharged, the parliament adjourned and the murder flew back to pillage Rusk’s wheat field again.<br /><br />But the messenger-crow flew east and north till night fell and day followed night. He flew on, pausing only to steal a few bites of food now and then, and catch an hour’s sleep in an abandoned nest. At last, after sunset on the second day, the messenger flew over a hillside where a dwarf and a man with crooked shoulders were sitting over the embers of a campfire; the man was juggling live coals with his bare fingers. The messenger-crow settled down on his left shoulder and spoke into his ear.<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter Two</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Gravesend Field</span><br /></div><br />The judicial murder of a royal person is not something that can be done lightly, nor should it be done in secret. Rightly performed, it is a piece of theater, and the murderer—who is, as it were, the director and producer of the piece—must select the audience carefully. They must be numerous and they must be (collectively at least) powerful. But they must not be so numerous nor so individually powerful that they can intervene on behalf of the victim if they are so inclined. They must be forced to watch the murder without seeming to be forced; they must watch it without protest, so that they will forever after support the party of the murderer, having become his accomplices. The forms must be observed, so that they can accept their complicity with something like good conscience.<br /><br />If both they and the murderer live to old age they may actually become proud of their complicity. “It had to be done,” they’ll say. “You can’t know what it was like. Bad times need strong men.”<br /><br />And if the murderer comes to grief, his one-time accomplices will be sadly conscious of their own innocence. “We ourselves did nothing; we did what we had to do, and waited. But bad men come to bad ends. . . .”<br /><br />Wyrtheorn, as a dwarf and a voluntary exile from the Wardlands, had a professional interest in such matters. At least that was how he put it in the rug shop of Genjandro, just off the Great Market in the Imperial city of Ontil. “At first it was just professional,” he confided to Genjandro himself, over a friendly mug of beer. “These men and women and their great thumping quarrels were affecting business. So I made it my business to know about them, but I ended up by becoming interested. They are a bloodthirsty lot, these Vraidish barbarians.”<br /><br />Genjandro, a native Ontilian and no friend to the Second Empire, allowed himself a thin smile but no more. A smile might mean anything.<br /><br />“Now, let me see,” Wyrtheorn continued, understanding fully Genjandro’s reticence. “The last time I was in the city must have been a hundred round years ago. Uthar the Fifth was Emperor then. A strong ruler, so they said. I thought he had banned these trials by combat.”<br /><br />Genjandro grunted. “That is so, though I had forgotten it. I was not born then, of course”—a dig at the dwarf for having thoughtlessly referred to his racial longevity—”but my father mentioned the matter to me once. Uthar the Fifth was a great man, but he did not live forever unlike—well, you know who I mean. His grandson had a long minority, and the Regency Council of the time restored the combats. The nobility will always prefer combat; they have the longer swords, as the expression is.”<br /><br />“I suppose Ambrosia sat on the council.”<br /><br />“At its head. But when the nobles clamored, she let them have their combats. Some say her powers were slipping, even then, but I don’t see it. She’s a noble herself, of a sort.”<br /><br />“Ye-es—she would have had a kind of inheritance in the Wardlands, but that she was born after old Merlin’s exile.”<br /><br />“I meant because of her association with the Imperial family.”<br /><br />“Eh? Oh, yes—them.”<br /><br />Genjandro, heir to a culture nearly as old as that of the Wardlands, favored this remark with another thin smile. “Now if she is to live, it’s the combat that will save her,” he added.<br /><br />“Will she live, then?”<br /><br />“No. The young King’s Protector, Lord Urdhven, leaves nothing to chance. Sir Hlosian Bekh is the champion of the Crown.”<br /><br />“A good fighter?”<br /><br />“No. Not particularly. But he always wins.”<br /><br />“I don’t understand,” the dwarf said patiently.<br /><br />“I watched him win the Tournament of Zaakharien three years ago. He stood aside until all the members of his side had been struck down. Then he killed the members of the other side, one by one. The wounds he took that day! His surcoat was red all through, and his armor looked as if it were enameled; it was after that he came to be called the Red Knight. It was horrible and wonderful and a little boring, to tell the truth. You found yourself yawning as he struck off another knight’s helmet. Then you saw the blood seeping into the dust and you remembered: that was a man, that was a man’s head in there. But enough of that. . . .”<br /><br />“Do you really think someone has arisen who will challenge the Red Knight?”<br /><br />Genjandro ran his fingers through his beard and looked thoughtful. “Nobody believes it,” he admitted. “Although a token of challenge was given: they found a lance with black pennons thrust into the Lonegate of Ambrose.”<br /><br />Wyrth expressed some surprise at this, though he felt none. (He had, in fact, placed the lance there himself.) “Then you think . . .”<br /><br />“Witchcraft!” Genjandro said, nodding. “They say there’s no limit to what Ambrosia can do. Somehow she worked it, to put a snake in the Protector’s chamber pot.”<br /><br />“And did it?”<br /><br />“They say he pulled the lance from the gate with his own hands and broke it. Then he took the pieces to her and threw them at her feet. And they say the old bitch just sat there with her hands folded. And smiled, you know. She’s brave and bad, that one.”<br /><br />“An age will end if she dies, sure.”<br /><br />“It’s because it is ending that she will die,” Genjandro disputed.<br /><br />“But if she’s as powerful as you say . . .”<br /><br />“Her charms aren’t powerful enough to stop Hlosian. She can’t whistle up a champion from nowhere. I’m not saying she has no supporters, but none will dare to challenge the Red Knight.”<br /><br />“Then why the trial at all?”<br /><br />“She claimed the right; the token appeared. In law, he cannot deny her. And, frankly, I doubt he wishes to. It is a great show, as you say. And if no champion appears, it will hardly be less. They will burn her at the stake.”<br /><br />“Hmph,” said the dwarf. “Yet they used to say, in my youth, that the Ambrosii could not be slain by fire. It was supposed to go with the unnaturally long life and the, er, uneven shoulders.”<br />The rug merchant smiled and stroked his beard. “Of course! The clearest proof of witchcraft. Then Urdhven will boldly have someone lop her head off, and the audience will go home with a sound moral lesson.”<br /><br />“Ah. What is that, exactly?”<br /><br />“No doubt we will be required to learn it by rote before we depart,” said Genjandro, no longer troubling to conceal his distaste.<br /><br />“Well, it sounds most interesting to me. Politics in action, as it were. And you say your attendance has been, er, requested.”<br /><br />“Required. I would gladly send you in my place.”<br /><br />Wyrtheorn laughed and said, “If only it were possible! But let’s talk of other things.”<br /><br /><br />Genjandro the rug merchant duly made his appearance the next day at the tournament enclosure of Gravesend Field, three miles east of the city walls. He was greeted by a captain of the soldiers whom he happened to know, one Lorn, who was glumly marking an attendance roll.<br /><br />“Genjandro, good day! I am glad I can strike you off the list of our Protector’s enemies.”<br /><br />“That list will be much shorter after today,” Genjandro said, stroking his beard.<br /><br />“It will be at least one name shorter, Genjandro—like the imperial family tree.”<br /><br />Genjandro scented a political conversation in the offing, something he particularly wanted to avoid at the moment. He nodded vacantly and would have led his horse through into the enclosure.<br /><br />Lorn stopped him. “Genjandro! Have you heard the prophecy that Ambrosia and the last descendant of Uthar the Great will die in the same year?”<br /><br />“I had not heard that prophecy.”<br /><br />“It is a very recent one.”<br /><br />“Lorn, I am here from necessity, no other reason.”<br /><br />“And I likewise. Nor do I really care what happens to an old witch who has already lived too long.”<br /><br />“Of course not.”<br /><br />“But Ambrosia was always the merchant’s friend. We . . . One would have hoped they would show more loyalty.”<br /><br />“Ambrosia had her supporters among the army, did she not? She led them to victory many a time. Yet there is a prophecy, a very recent prophecy, that she is destined to die without a single armed champion.” The rug merchant glanced pointedly at the sword swinging from the other’s belt. “Had you heard that saying, Lorn?”<br /><br />The soldier looked straight at him. “Yes. Now is not the time or the place. But the King, Genjandro. If the King were—”<br /><br />The rug merchant turned on him in fury. “Your ‘times’ and your ‘places’! Go back to your lists, Lorn. The Protector’s Man will be along for them, presently.”<br /><br />The soldier stood back, obscure emotions twisting his face. The rug merchant limped past, leading his horse off to the stables. He paid three silver coins for a separate stall without comment, though several occurred to him. He insisted on tending to his mount himself, saving himself a silver coin or two more, and the stable boy left him alone in the stall.<br /><br />“Three fingers of silver to keep a horse for half a day!” he complained to the animal.<br /><br />“Someone has to pay for this kind of circus, Genjandro,” the horse replied. “Be glad it wasn’t three fingers off your hand. Money can be lost and gotten again.”<br /><br />Genjandro grunted. He watched with horrified interest as the horse yawned wide, the jaws split, the whole front opened up, and the dwarf Wyrtheorn stepped out. Afterward the simulacrum of a horse re-formed itself and casually lumbered off to the far end of the stall, where there was a pile of hay.<br /><br />“That’s not a very dwarvish philosophy,” Genjandro observed, to cover up his dread.<br /><br />“How would you know?” the dwarf countered. He tossed Genjandro a leather bag that sang with coins. “For your trouble, my friend. We had better leave separately—and I advise you not to recognize me if we meet outside. However, I’ll remember your help. Good fortune.”<br /><br />“What are you planning to do?” Genjandro asked, pausing at the door of the stall.<br /><br />The dwarf grinned deep in his gray-flecked brown beard. “Something very like treason, if I were you, my friend.”<br /><br />The Ontilian took the hint and left with a curt nod. The dwarf spent a few moments unweaving the “horse” and stowing it in his pockets, and then strolled out himself. The day’s light was already strong and hot, and the carnival air of the enclosure was thick with dust and the anticipation of death.<br /><br /><br />Hlosian Bekh, the Red Knight, lay on a table, his gray flesh cold and lifeless, as the Lord Protector and Steng, his chief poisoner, argued over him.<br /><br />“Still: make the golem stronger,” the Protector was saying. “If he does appear—”<br /><br />“It hardly matters, my lord,” the poisoner replied with deferential soothing contempt. “If the Crooked Man (assuming there is such a person) turns up, he will be subject to the same limitations as any other challenger. The law is clear. Magic is forbidden at the trial by combat; its use compels the user’s side to forfeit.”<br /><br />“But <span style="font-style: italic;">we</span> are using it,” the Protector pointed out.<br /><br />The chief poisoner smiled as he wondered whether stupidity was an inevitable consequence of hereditary power. After all, had any of the descendants of Uthar the Great and Ambrosia really matched the ferocious supple intelligence of their forbears? And, though Urdhven was Protector merely by virtue of his late sister’s marriage with the late Emperor, his ancestors had been warlords on the northern plains before the Vraidish tribes broke through the Kirach Kund to conquer the lands of the south and found the Second Ontilian Empire on the ruins of the First. “We may safely break the law,” the poisoner explained, “since we enforce it. The Crooked Man must come, if he does, with ordinary sword and shield to kill our champion. And that he cannot do, since Hlosian cannot die.”<br /><br />“Nevertheless,” said the Protector, returning to the point at issue, “make him stronger.”<br />Steng stood motionless for a moment or two. He realized that the question was no longer Hlosian’s strength, but the Protector’s. And the poisoner was forced to admit to himself that the Protector would have his way, no matter what the cost. Perhaps that was what made his power more than merely hereditary.<br /><br />The poisoner turned away to his worktable, where the golem’s life-scroll lay. Taking up his pen, he dipped it in a jar of human blood and added a number of flourishes to the already-dried dark brown script.<br /><br />“These are intensifiers,” he explained over his shoulder to Urdhven. “They focus the pseudo-talic impulses—”<br /><br />The nobleman waved him silent with imperious distaste. “I don’t wish to know about it. Just do it properly.”<br /><br />The poisoner finished his task in silence. When the new figures had dried, he rolled up the scroll and sealed it with wax (tinted with blood). He turned back to the prone form of Hlosian and placed the scroll in the gaping hole in its back. He drew to him several bowls of red mud and clay and began to trowel it into the breach between the Red Knight’s shoulders. He worked steadily, pausing only to inscribe certain secret signs in the drying clay with a peculiar pointed stylus. Finally he was done. He spoke a secret word, and the stench of cold blood grew hot and dense in the workroom.<br /><br />“Hlosian arise!” Steng cried.<br /><br />The golem rose from the table and stood before them.<br /><br />“Hlosian Bekh,” the poisoner said, “seize yonder stone—yes, the one I have marked seize it from the wall and crush it.”<br /><br />The golem roared and swept the table out of its way. In ten breaths the stone was smoking rubble at the Protector’s feet.<br /><br />“Hlosian,” the poisoner asked, “what is your purpose?”‘<br /><br />“I will kill the witch’s champion.”<br /><br />“Why?”<br /><br />“The witch Ambrosia must die.”<br /><br />The poisoner glanced at the Protector, who had hardly moved as his monster performed for him.<br /><br />“You’ve done well,” the Protector said.<br /><br />“Thank you, my lord.”<br /><br />“Arm him and bring him to the enclosure.”<br /><br />“His squire will arm him, my Lord Protector. There will be less talk that way.”<br /><br />The Protector nodded in agreement.<br /><br />They walked together into the corridor and, by some peculiar mischance, they encountered Ambrosia as she was being escorted up from the dungeon in the green robe of an appellant.<br /><br />“What’s this? What’s this?” cried Ambrosia, as genially as if she were still preeminent in the empire, as if the death-house watch were an honor guard. She carried the chains on her broken wrists like royal jewelry. “Protector, poisoner, and champion—celebrating your victory in advance, I take it. That’s always safest, isn’t it?”<br /><br />“Take the prisoner out to the field,” the Protector said, his voice as flat and expressionless as his face had become.<br /><br />But Ambrosia braced her feet and lifted her limp, swollen hands. “Urdhven, you don’t look as triumphant as you did a moment ago. Perhaps it’s come into your mind that if you hadn’t had my hands broken, I’d be riding as my own champion today—and yours would be nothing but a breathing dead man.<br /><br />“Speaking of breathing,” she continued, “what’s that reek I smell? Is it mud or blood—or is it both? It is both, isn’t it, Steng, you dog? I see the clay under your fingernails.”<br /><br />Ambrosia laughed engagingly, as if they were all parties to some slightly disreputable secret. She leaned confidingly towards the poisoner, who was blushing a deep unpleasant shade of maroon. “But surely,” she remarked, in a low but audible tone, “surely, Steng, you must know that when we were young, my brother’s and my favorite hobby was killing golems. We killed them with fire, we killed them with water. We killed them with words—an easy thing to do, Steng, for a golem’s life is simply words, magical words inscribed on a name-scroll, which other words can interrupt and make meaningless. Did you think you could defeat Morlock dragonkiller with a golem?”<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />“Take her away!”</span> the Protector said, white-lipped with anger or fear.<br /><br />“Better yet,” Ambrosia continued, as if Urdhven had not spoken, “suppose I simply pointed at this thing out on the field and cried: ‘Golem! The Protector’s champion is a golem!’ For it strikes me that the Protector is guilty of trying to harm my champion by magic—the legal definition of witchcraft. A capital offense, I believe. You might be burned at the stake, my Lord Protector.”<br /><br />“A witch’s lies mean nothing,” the Protector said mechanically. “But she might utter spells to twist men’s minds. Therefore—gag her, soldiers. Do it now. See that her mouth is bound throughout the ceremony.”<br /><br />“The <span style="font-style: italic;">trial</span>, my Lord Protector,” Ambrosia said, as the guards tore away the hem of her robe.<br /><br />“The <span style="font-style: italic;">execution</span>, my Lady Ambrosia,” the Protector retorted as they knotted the gag tight across her mouth. She made no attempt to reply, but her eyes were bright with vengeful triumph as she was led away.<br /><br />“If she had not spoken now, who knows what might have happened?” the Protector muttered to Steng. “Ambrosia’s temper was always quicker than her wit.”<br /><br />Steng looked at him almost pityingly. “The chances that any would have heard her on the field were small, and who would have dared believe her?”<br /><br />“But—”<br /><br />“She spoke for the guards,” Steng said gently.<br /><br />“Ah. I see.”<br /><br />“They will remember. They will talk. They saw you were afraid to have the story spread—”<br /><br />“I said, ‘I see.’ Have your people take care of them, Steng. Make it look natural.”<br /><br />“Yes, my Lord Protector.”<br /><br />There was a brief silence. Then out of his own thoughts, the Protector said accusingly, “And you blushed.”<br /><br />“Ambrosia is my better, my lord.”<br /><br />“She is not mine,” Urdhven snarled. “I have beaten her, point by point, and today she dies.”<br /><br /><br />“Let the fire of death cleanse the world of this witch’s evil,” the King said, in a clear, firm voice.<br /><br />“Excellent, Sire,” applauded Kedlidor, the Rite-Master of Ambrose. “That should be audible for quite a distance, even in the tournament enclosure. The Protector’s Men will conduct any further ceremonies attendant on the execution of the sentence. You may properly depart at any point after the inarguable death of the witch—there is no formal close of the ceremony, any more than there is an end to death itself.<br /><br />“Now,” Kedlidor continued, “should Ambrosia’s champion vindicate her—”<br /><br />“What chance is there of that?” cried the King despairingly.<br /><br />The withered old man, the only one of the family servants spared in the recent purge, focused his dim gray eyes on his king. “That is of no concern to me, Sire. I am not a gambler, but the Rite-Master of Ambrose. I am charged with knowing and teaching the proper ceremonies for every possible occasion. The Lady Ambrosia’s acquittal is a possible occasion; therefore I will teach you the proper ceremony.”<br /><br />The King stared sullenly at the floor of the room. The Rite-Master dispassionately struck him across the face. “Attend, Sire. Say—”<br /><br />“I know all that stuff,” muttered the King, and he did. He had spent the night reading the ritual book, wondering whether he would be more relieved by Grandmother’s acquittal or her death.<br /><br />“Show me that you know, Sire. Take a breath, speak loudly and clearly . . .”<br /><br />There was the thunder of booted feet in the hallway outside and the door flew open. The King’s uncle, Lord Urdhven, was there with a troop of men wearing his personal device, a red lion standing against a black field. Behind Urdhven was the poisoner Steng. He met the King’s eye and smiled gently.<br /><br />“It’s nearly noon,” the Protector remarked. “Bring his Majesty, Kedlidor.” He turned to go.<br /><br />“No, Lord Urdhven,” Kedlidor replied.<br /><br />The Protector, resplendent in gold armor, enamelled with his own black-and-scarlet device on the breastplate, paused and smiled ominously down at the gray shadow of a man. “Why not?”<br /><br />“It is not fit that I be seen with the King at this ceremony. My rank is too low. Further, your poisoner may not be there.”<br /><br />“He won’t be. Is there anything else?”<br /><br />“Yes. The King ought to precede you. He is of higher rank, you know.”<br /><br />The Protector turned his red smile on his nephew. “I do know it. Naturally, <span style="font-style: italic;">Sire</span>, you must go first. All the forms will be met for this ceremony.”<br /><br />The King walked past the Protector and the poisoner into the hall of armed men. They fell in behind him, the sound of their feet in the hallway like a stone giant gnashing its teeth. He passed out into the golden light of the enclosure, and there was a unanimous shout from the crowd as the royal procession was recognized. There were soldiers before him, clearing a path, so he didn’t have to decide what was the right way to go. While seeming to protect him, they took him to the wooden stair that led to the royal box, above the Victor’s Square, at the midpoint of the lists.<br /><br />Already the stands of benches on either side were crowded with spectators. The King had never been to a formal combat before, and he was amazed at the mixture of somberness and hilarity among the onlookers. He seated himself amid dutiful cheers, which sounded louder and more impassioned—even hysterical—as Lord Urdhven the Protector appeared and took his place at the King’s left hand.<br /><br />Opposite the stands stood the prisoner, chained to a stake, her mouth bound with a green rag torn from her appellant’s robe. Beyond her was nothing but the dead lands between the two cities that bore the name Ontil. Somewhere beyond the gray hills was the Old City, capital of the First Empire. No one lived there now—it was under the curse of the Old Gods; even the river Tilion had been diverted when the New City was founded by Uthar the Great and Ambrosia centuries ago. But, in name, Lathmar was King of that city too. He had often daydreamed of escaping from the New City to the Old City, where he would find his true subjects, and make war on the people who had killed his mother and his father. . . .<br /><br />At a curt gesture from the Protector, the heralds blew on their trumpets, shattering the King’s reverie. Vost, the High Marshal (since the recent execution of the one appointed by the King’s late father), stood forth in the Victor’s Square and cried the challenge.<br /><br />“Lady Ambrosia Viviana, accused of witchcraft, has claimed her right of trial by combat. If her champion is present, let him come forth and enter the lists, or her life is forfeit to the King (the Strange Gods protect His Majesty).”<br /><br />The heralds blew another blast on their trumpets, and the excitement of the crowd died down. They could see, as well as the King himself, that one end of the lists was vacant, and that at the other end stood the Red Knight. Perhaps this would only be an execution and not a combat after all.<br /><br />Then the muttering of the crowd changed slightly. The King, leaning forward, saw that someone else had entered the lists—someone shorter than the King was himself, who bowed low before the prisoner.<br /><br />The crowd was half-amused, half-thoughtful as the unarmed dwarf marched past them up the lists to Victor’s Square.<br /><br />“Have you come,” the High Marshal said as the dwarf drew to a halt before him, “as champion for the Lady Ambrosia?”<br /><br />“If need be,” said the dwarf, with unassumed confidence.<br /><br />“If you are not a champion you must depart from the lists.”<br /><br />“Heralds can be in the lists, before the combat and at intervals. So can squires.”<br /><br />“Are you herald or squire?”<br /><br />“Both! Herald, squire, apprentice, and factotum to my <span style="font-style: italic;">harven</span>-kinsman, Morlock Ambrosius, also called syr Theorn. I am Wyrth syr Theorn.”<br /><br />“Sir Thorn—”<br /><br />“I’m not a knight. Wyrth. Syr. Theorn. Wyrtheorn to my friends.”<br /><br />“Wyrththyseorn—”<br /><br />“Not bad. Take a deep breath and try again.”<br /><br />“—you must take up arms for the Lady Ambrosia or leave the field. The trial has begun.”<br /><br />“You don’t have the authority to make that judgement, Sir Marshal. I appeal to the Judge of the Combat. My principal has been delayed, but he is coming. On his behalf, I ask that the combat be delayed for a time.”<br /><br />Vost, the High Marshal, looked uncertainly up toward the royal box. The King realized abruptly that the decision was his. He was the Judge of the Combat, as the highest-ranking male present. He looked at Urdhven, who made a slight gesture of indifference, his golden face impassive.<br /><br />“How much time?” he called down.<br /><br />“As much as I can get,” the dwarf replied cheerfully. “Morlock is horrible old, you know, and doesn’t move as fast as he used to.”<br /><br />The King put his hand to his head. There was nothing in the rites Kedlidor had taught him about this. But there should have been: it seemed a reasonable request. But he didn’t know what a reasonable answer would be.<br /><br />“Let me come up and explain,” the dwarf proposed. “For I have messages from your kinsman Morlock, not meet for the common ear.”<br /><br />“Uh . . .” The King gestured indeterminately. The dwarf took this as permission and hopped into the Victor’s Square. Shouldering the High Marshal aside, he swarmed up the wall beneath the royal box and threw himself over its rail to land on his feet before the King.<br /><br />“Hail, King Lathmar the Seventh!” he cried. “(You are the seventh, aren’t you? Good, good, good. I was afraid I’d missed one.) Hail, King of the Two Cities, the Old Ontil and the New! Hail and, well, well-met. Good to see you. Eh?”<br /><br />“Are these the private messages Morlock sends to his kinsman?” the Protector inquired, his face split by a leonine smile.<br /><br />“Not at all. The Lord Protector Urdhven, I believe? No, Morlock sent me chiefly to inquire after the King’s <span style="font-style: italic;">health</span>. But he said not to do it right out in front of the crowd. I suspect he thought you might be sensitive on the subject, what with your sister and brother-in-law and all their trusted servants dying so suddenly in recent days. Do you suppose they caught that fever that’s been spreading through the poorer parts of the city—or was it a disease that only strikes in palaces?”<br /><br />The Protector’s smile was gone, but the predatory look remained. “The King’s health you may assess yourself,” he said flatly. “If there is nothing else—”<br /><br />“Nothing from Morlock, but I believe that, speaking as the agent of the champion of Lady Ambrosia, the forms have not been met. Isn’t the champion entitled to a representative in the judge’s box, to argue points of honor, foul blows, that sort of thing?”<br /><br />“None came forward—” Urdhven began, but stopped as the dwarf tapped his chest modestly. “Very well,” he conceded. “(Daen, bring another chair.) But it is a mere point of honor, Wyrtheorn, since there will be no combat here today. Your champion has forfeited.”<br /><br />“The Lady Ambrosia’s champion,” the dwarf corrected him gently, as he sat down on the King’s right hand. “But, with respect, that word is not yours to say. The King is the judge of this combat, and he may grant my request if he chooses.”<br /><br />The Protector turned his masklike golden face on the King, who found he could not speak. He knew what his uncle wanted him to say. He knew what the dwarf wanted him to say. He knew what his Grandmother would want him to say. But he didn’t know what to say. There was no rule to go by, no ceremony to tell him whose wishes he must obey.<br /><br />The silence grew long. It spread from the royal box to the crowd on either side. A quiet fell on the dusty enclosure. In it, all heard the dim cry of a horn sounding to the east.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapter Three</span> <span style="font-weight: bold;">Trial by Combat</span><br /></div><br />The horn sounded from the dead lands masking the broken city in the east. It grew louder as they listened. It ceased for a moment; when it returned it was louder yet. Soon, looking east, they could see the source of the call: an armed man on horseback appeared at the crest of a gray hill, the horn raised to his lips. The ululating call was unfamiliar to everyone in the enclosure. But it rang with defiance.<br /><br />The armed rider disappeared, plunging down the slope of the hill to be hidden by another. Presently he topped that one and could be seen more clearly. The horse was a powerful black stallion; the rider’s armor was black chain mail; a long black lance with pennons was slung beside him. A black cloth covered his shield, but as he rode onto the plain where the enclosure stood, he threw the horn away and shook the cloth loose from the shield. Blazing out from a black field, the device was a white hawk in flight over a branch of flowering thorn—the arms of Ambrosius.<br /><br />“I withdraw my request, Your Majesty,” Wyrtheorn said with relief he did not even attempt to hide. “Ambrosia’s champion is here.”<br /><br />Urdhven turned to him, his face a golden mask of fury. “If he uses sorcery he will die. It was not for nothing I brought my army here! He will die and she will die and you, too, will die, little man.”<br /><br />“I am not a man,” the dwarf replied. “Further, what is your army to Morlock or to me? Had we chosen to steal Ambrosia by night, or in the open day, you could have done nothing to stop us. But we desire that Ambrosia again be able to walk the streets of her city—”<br /><br />“It is not <span style="font-style: italic;">her</span> city.”<br /><br />“It <span style="font-style: italic;">is her</span> city. It exists because she created it. She has spent her life defending it. Her children have gone on to conquer half a world. The palace she designed and built justly wears her great ancestor’s name. If Ambrosia is to enter it again, the lies about her must be crushed; she must be acquitted in law. Therefore, Morlock will use no magic. I tell you, he needs none to best any living man with the sword.”<br /><br />The Protector laughed derisively.<br /><br />The armed rider was now approaching the enclosure fence. He did not slacken his speed but bent forward, as if he were talking to his charger. It cried out and cleared the fence in a magnificent leap, landing in the center of the field.<br /><br />A shout of admiration went up from the watching crowd, quickly stifled as they remembered the soldiers watching them. The armed rider, neglecting the traditional salute to the sovereign, lifted his left hand in greeting toward the prisoner. She did not move or change her expression in any way, but her eyes were on him.<br /><br />Now the Red Knight moved forward in the lists and, setting his spear to rest, spurred his horse to charge. The black knight was hardly able to unsheathe his lance before the other was upon him, so he lashed out with the spear in a hasty but powerful parry, knocking aside the Red Knight’s lance. The Red Knight thundered past, and the black knight roused his steed to a canter, riding to the opposite end of the lists.<br /><br />“Your champion does not stand on ceremony,” Wyrth remarked to the Urdhven.<br /><br />“Sir Hlosian Bekh is the champion of the Crown,” the Protector replied stiffly.<br /><br />“Ah. Well, at least <span style="font-style: italic;">you</span> stand on ceremony.”<br /><br />The Protector smiled his leonine smile. “Ceremony is very well,” he conceded, “but they”—he gestured at the crowd—”will not be won by ceremonies, or kept by laws. They are only impressed by victory, by power.”<br /><br />“You know,” the dwarf replied, “I disagree with you. When Morlock wins—”<br /><br />“That is not possible.”<br /><br />“Then this <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> simply a ceremony, not a trial. Or is that what you’ve been telling me?”<br /><br />The Protector’s silent smile was ominous.<br /><br />Now both knights had repositioned themselves at opposing ends of the lists. The heralds’ trumpets sounded three times, the call to attack. Then both champions charged into the narrow field, their spears at rest. As they drove toward each other the Red Knight’s lance swung back and its point struck full on the white device of the black shield. But the Red Knight’s spear shattered like glass and the black knight rode past unshaken.<br /><br />No one dared cheer. But the silence grew as dense as the clouds of dust rising to obscure the noon-bright air.<br /><br />“A good shield is worth its weight in spears,” Wyrth remarked cheerfully to the King, who smiled doubtfully.<br /><br />The delay between passes was greater this time, as the Red Knight needed a new spear. Finally the trumpets sounded again; the combatants thundered again into the lists, their armor gleaming dimly through the descending mist of dust.<br /><br />Spear-points wavered in the air, then one struck home. The Red Knight’s spear hit the black knight just under the helmet, a killing blow, throwing Ambrosia’s champion from the saddle. He struck the dusty ground, his armor singing like the cymbals of Winterfeast, and he lay there.<br /><br />The tension in the crowd perceptibly relaxed. There were mutters of relief, and sighs that were unmistakably disappointed. Ambrosia’s champion had fallen as so many of theirs had fallen, so many of their kinsmen, sacrifices to the prowess of the Red Knight.<br /><br />Ambrosia’s iron-gray gaze was as impassive as ever, and still fixed on the fallen knight.<br /><br />Wyrth’s gaze followed Ambrosia’s, and he laughed aloud. The black knight was moving. “The old fool was right!” he muttered.<br /><br />Meeting the King’s astonished eye, he explained, “You see, Your Majesty, Morlock insisted on making his own armor for the combat. That’s why he was late for the trial. I said it was a waste of time, and they’d be stringing his sister’s guts across the gateposts of the city before he got here. He got this <span style="font-style: italic;">look</span> on his face—you’ve probably seen Ambrosia wear it—and we did things his way. It probably saved his neck just now.”<br /><br />“Dead or defeated, it does not matter,” the Protector said, rising. “The combat is over.”<br /><br />“Your champion doesn’t think so,” the dwarf retorted. “Look!”<br /><br />The Red Knight had turned to contemplate his dead opponent. Seeing the black knight alive seemed to drive him to fury, and he turned his horse about to charge down on the dismounted knight. Only by rolling to the side of the lists did the black knight avoid being trod under the hooves of the Red Knight’s horse.<br /><br />A rumble of discontent, even contempt, arose from the crowd.<br /><br />“This is not the game, as it was handed down from days of yore,” the dwarf remarked, “is it? Why, if a combatant tried a trick like that back in the Vraidish homelands, north of the Blackthorns, the Judge of the Combat would have his head on the spot.”<br /><br />“We are not in the Vraidish homelands,” replied the Protector, sitting down again.<br /><br />“Evidently not. Here he comes again.”<br /><br />The Red Knight indeed had turned his horse and was charging down the lists again, intent on trampling his opponent. The crowd watched in stony silence; even the Protector seemed ill at ease.<br /><br />But the black knight had not remained lying in the dust. He had recovered his spear, at least (his horse was down at the far end of the lists), and stood with it in hand, awaiting the Red Knight’s onset. When the Red Knight’s horse was almost upon him he dodged across its path with an agility that was astounding in a fully armored man and, lifting his lance like a club, struck the Red Knight from the saddle.<br /><br />A roar of spontaneous applause drowned the crash of the Red Knight’s fall. Wyrtheorn crowed with delight, then shouted, “Ambrose! Ambrose! Merlin’s children!”<br /><br />A sudden silence followed this shocking slogan, which reminded the crowd of the political realities behind this combat. Since that was what Wyrtheorn intended to do, he continued to shout into the silence, <span style="font-style: italic;">“Ambrose and the Ambrosii! The Royal House!”</span><br /><br />“The King,” suggested someone near at hand. Wyrth thought he recognized his friend Genjandro’s voice.<br /><br />“The King!” Wyrtheorn agreed vociferously. “Justice for the King! The King!”<br /><br />There were a few faint echoes in the enclosure, but no answering roar. Still, there was a frozen thoughtfulness on many faces in the crowd. Wyrth had hoped for no more and sat back satisfied. The glittering stare of hatred the Protector had fixed on the squirming King did not escape him. But he doubted anything he could do would intensify the Protector’s already lambent hatred for the last descendant of Uthar the Great.<br /><br />The Red Knight had risen from the ground, meanwhile, dust like wreaths of smoke in the air about him. He said nothing, but drew the heavy sword swung from his belt.<br /><br />The black knight, waiting at one side, lightly tossed away his spear and drew his own blade, narrow and long, with a deadly point.<br /><br />The King looked curiously at Wyrth.<br /><br />“No, Your Majesty,” the dwarf said, answering the unspoken question. “That is not the accursed sword Tyrfing. Tyrfing is not merely a weapon but a focus of power; to kill with it is an act with grim consequences. Morlock would not carry it into a combat such as this. Besides, the ban on magic forbids it.”<br /><br />“Tyrfing is a fable,” the Protector remarked, “and Morlock is a ghost story. I wonder who is really wearing that armor—some pawn of Ambrosia afraid to use his own name, I suppose.”<br />The King looked fearfully at his Protector, as if he had thought the same thing. Wyrth laughed, but did not argue.<br /><br />The knights on the field awaited no formal preliminaries to the second part of the combat. Before the heralds had raised the trumpets to their lips, the Red Knight’s broadsword had crashed onto the black-and-white Ambrosian shield. The black knight thrust forward simultaneously with his bright deadly blade and the Red Knight was forced to retreat. The blade of the black knight gleamed red as he leapt forward in pursuit.<br /><br />“First blood to Ambrosius!” Wyrth said grimly. “You see, Lord Urdhven, the ghost story that is sweating down on yonder dusty field learned his fencing from Naevros syr Tol, the greatest swordsman of the old time. He is not like anyone your champion has met before.”<br /><br />The Protector was still smiling. “They have all been different,” he remarked. “They all came from different places, wearing different colors, skilled in different skills. They have one thing in common, dwarf: Hlosian killed them all.”<br /><br />Wyrtheorn shrugged and turned back to the fight. Urdhven’s wholly unassumed confidence disturbed him more than he was willing to admit. It also disturbed him that there was no doubt in the faces of the crowd. They watched in fascination, but there was no suspense. They clearly expected the Red Knight’s victory, though he was wounded in three places now.<br /><br />The clash of steel against steel continued as the sun sank from its zenith and the heat of the day grew worse. When the black knight had wounded the Red Knight at least once in each limb, and twice in the neck, he began a furious offense clearly aimed at bringing final victory. Sword strokes fell like silver sheets of rain, varying with sudden lightning-bright thrusts.<br /><br />The Red Knight backed slowly away two more steps under this onslaught and was wounded several times—it was hard to say how many, because blood did not stand out on his red-enamelled plate armor. But his manner hardly changed throughout the fight, despite his wounds. It occurred to Wyrtheorn that he was waiting for something.<br /><br />The dwarf glanced over at the prisoner’s stake and saw that Ambrosia’s gray eyes were fixed on him. He shrugged uneasily, but her expression did not change. She looked back at the combat.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">She knows something,</span> Wyrth thought. What puzzles me does not puzzle her. He drummed his fingers on his knees and looked meditatively back to the field.<br /><br />The black knight’s assault slowed visibly. He had actually hacked holes in the Red Knight’s plate armor over his right arm and left leg. But Sir Hlosian Bekh still defended himself with the same lumbering vigor and the same mediocre skill.<br /><br />Then it happened. The black knight’s sword—no longer bright and keen, but notched along its edge and stained dark with drying blood—lashed out in an attack on the Red Knight’s sword arm. The black knight’s sword caught in the gap between the forearm plate and the upper arm plate, where the Red Knight’s chain mail was visible. Instead of retreating, the Red Knight trapped the black shield with his own and struck a thunderous blow with his heavy sword on the black knight’s helm.<br /><br />Ambrosia’s champion staggered like a drunk. The Red Knight braced himself and struck out with his shield. The black knight was forced back a step. Hlosian struck again with sword and shield, and again the black knight was forced back.<br /><br />“It is always the same,” the Protector’s voice said. Wyrth turned to him: the golden lord seemed almost sad as he returned the dwarf’s glance. “Your friend, whoever he is, fought well. Better than any I have ever seen, perhaps, and I have been coming to the combats for thirty years. Hlosian, as you have seen, does not fight well. But he always wins.”<br /><br />“He has magical protection,” the dwarf guessed.<br /><br />The Protector replied, with a shrug, “He is strong enough to outlast any opponent, and he is not afraid of death. That is all the magic he needs. Look at the crowd, dwarf. This is nothing new to them. They have seen it all before.”<br /><br />Stonily, Wyrth turned his gaze back to the field. But he could not help noticing, with the corner of his eye, the patient, unsurprised faces of the crowd. They were fascinated, but they were not really in suspense. To them this was not a combat but a ritual death. They <span style="font-style: italic;">had</span> seen it before.<br /><br />Wyrtheorn was seeing what he had never seen before: the black knight being driven back, step by step, toward defeat. The Red Knight now had his back toward the Victor’s Square, and he was forcing his opponent toward the far border of the lists. If forced across, the black knight would be defeated.<br /><br />“It will be over soon,” the Protector said thoughtfully. “I hope he does not try to flee under the rail. It is unpleasant to see a friend killed while groveling on the ground—”<br /><br />“Morlock Ambrosius will never flee,” the dwarf said flatly.<br /><br />“He, or whoever is pretending to be him, has never faced Sir Hlosian Bekh. There is something frightening about Hlosian, something different.”<br /><br />“Will he not allow his opponent to yield?” the little king asked suddenly. Wyrth, glancing at him, saw his eyes were wide with concern—he had probably never seen a man killed in combat before.<br /><br />The Protector shook his head, smiling. “Sir Hlosian never offers mercy. Like defeat, it is foreign to his nature.”<br /><br />It seemed to Wyrth, as he looked back at the combat, that the black knight was giving way to panic. To the dwarf’s way of thinking, the only chance the black knight had was to disable the Red Knight’s sword arm or one of his legs. But the black knight had ceased attacking these entirely. From the looks of things (the Red Knight was partially eclipsing Wyrth’s view), the black knight was hacking and stabbing repeatedly at his opponent’s breastplate. The likelihood of breaking through this (and the chain mail that surely lay beneath) for a fatal blow was so slight that Wyrth had to believe the black knight was no longer rational.<br /><br />The black knight ceased retreating, his heels at the border of the lists. The Red Knight let his shield fall to his shoulder and began to deal his blows two-handed. Very unwisely, in Wyrth’s opinion, the black knight did likewise. This gave Sir Hlosian the opportunity to land a crashing blow on the black knight’s right shoulder that drove him to one knee.<br /><br />Snatching up his shield, the black knight leapt back to his feet. The Red Knight had recovered and struck again, a terrible two-handed stoke on the upraised shield of Ambrosius.<br /><br />Visibly, the black knight’s knees began to give way, then stood straight. But Wyrth saw with horror that he was holding his shield with both hands; he had lost his sword somewhere. (It didn’t seem to be on the ground, but perhaps the dust was covering it.)<br /><br />The same thing was noticed by others; an anticipatory mutter ran through the crowd, a whisper of approaching death. The Red Knight landed another blow on the Ambrosian shield, which the black knight held over his head, as if to protect himself from a downpour. The blow drove him to his knees.<br /><br />Wyrth watched in disbelief as the Red Knight raised his sword over his head for what would surely be the deathblow. He shuddered to think with what force that blow would fall. The Red Knight threw his head back; the flat beak of his helmet could be seen, outlined against the far sky. Wyrth wondered if the victorious knight was about to give a barbaric scream of triumph.<br /><br />Then he bent back further, from the waist, and Wyrtheorn realized he was not bending, but falling backward. The black knight’s sword protruded from the shattered red breastplate. In complete silence, the Red Knight fell back to the earth and lay still.<br /><br />The crash of his bloody armor on the field was the signal for a thunderous outburst from the watching crowd. They rose, like the clouds of dust rising from the fallen knight, crying out at the top of their voices, heedless of the Protector and his soldiers—seized at last by surprise, by triumph, by their own secret anger. The invincible Red Knight who had killed so many of their own champions, defeated so many of their causes, was dead at last. They could not help but triumph; they could finally afford to hate.<br /><br />But all such thoughts were driven from Wyrth’s mind as he looked at the black knight. The victor remained on his knees, his helmet slumped back against the rail of the lists as if he were staring speculatively at the sky. His fingers had gone slack, and the battered black-and-white Ambrosian shield lay flat on the ground, its device shrouded with dust.<br /><br />“With your leave, Majesty!” Wyrth shouted at the frightened child beside him and leaped down into the Victor’s Square. He jumped from there down into the field and ran as fast as his short legs would carry him to where the knights were.<br /><br />Wyrth paused by the Red Knight. He glanced at the cruelly notched blade buried in the dead knight’s chest, marvelling that anyone could land one blow and begin another with such a wound. Then the smell hit him—not the blood (he had expected that) but mud—the unmistakable reek of mud and wet clay. . . .<br /><br />Wyrth whistled thoughtfully. Now he saw it all! Hlosian was a golem—somehow the black knight had realized it (probably from the smell of its blood, as Wyrth had), and that accounted for his attack on the Red Knight’s breastplate. Only by severing or somehow destroying the name-scroll in the golem’s chest cavity could the golem be beaten. The black knight had planted his sword in the golem’s chest, and had lost his grip on it. The golem had severed its own name-scroll when lifting its arms to dispatch the black knight.<br /><br />The dwarf turned toward Ambrosia’s champion, fearing the worst as he approached. The victor was hardly moving, issuing knife-edged wheezing sobs in the dusty air, like a horse that has been ridden nearly to death.<br /><br />“Morlock!” said Wyrth. “Morlock Ambrosius!”<br /><br />There was no answer, but the sobbing sounds continued.<br /><br />Dreading what he would see, Wyrth pulled back the visor of the black helmet.<br /><br />Eyes closed, head resting comfortably against the rail, Morlock Ambrosius was snoring. Wyrth could smell the stale wine on his breath.<br /><br />“You pig!” shouted Wyrth, really furious.<span style="font-style: italic;"> “Wake up!</span> There’s <span style="font-style: italic;">work</span> to do!”<br /><br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ie7MV3AJtXBWH12t6Ppa_MPlexUw0xm3ioASdswwcJIMAwe6AIhhUVN7eAP3cjKJm-jr5fZlQMDBnLVnnBn1ib6yh6lKznWMZXwYdlCk1Ph6sLdUdldxR4SJTSdDzy8GcghK-CTtYjU/s1600-h/JE&Constantine.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3ie7MV3AJtXBWH12t6Ppa_MPlexUw0xm3ioASdswwcJIMAwe6AIhhUVN7eAP3cjKJm-jr5fZlQMDBnLVnnBn1ib6yh6lKznWMZXwYdlCk1Ph6sLdUdldxR4SJTSdDzy8GcghK-CTtYjU/s200/JE&Constantine.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5315302795401594978" border="0" /></a><a href="http://www.pyrsf.com/BloodofAmbrose.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Blood of Ambrose</span></a> © James Enge<br />Cover Illustration © <a href="http://www.dominic-harman.com/">Dominic Harman</a><br />Interior Illustrations © <a href="http://www.chucklukacs.com/">Chuck Lukacs</a><br /></div><br /><a href="http://www.jamesenge.com/">James Enge</a> is an instructor of classical languages at a Midwestern university. His fiction has appeared in <span style="font-style: italic;">Black Gate, Flashing Swords</span>, and everydayfiction.com.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com13