Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  Jedda looked up from the orah-clock. The image of Wick guttered and disappeared. ‘He tried to blackmail me,’ she said softly.

  ‘And never will again, I’m sure,’ answered the Envoy. ‘Jedda, you are every bit the student I was hoping for. Congratulations. Now I want you to use your talents for our mutual benefit. As you know, you are twined with the young man Wick mentioned, the blissfully oblivious Tymon. Our operations here have a serious drawback: the orah-clock is limited by distance. We can only directly influence people and outcomes near Argos city. For the rest, we are obliged to rely on causal effect or my work with the Exchange. But a twining gives your power amplitude. You can reach Tymon, See into his heart at a far greater range than I.’ He nodded to the disc. ‘Go on. This is your first official task. I want to See where our Grafter friend is. Give him to me.’

  Jedda’s triumphant expression faded. She had used her power to undermine a person she disliked; she had not expected to be asked to betray one she privately respected, not yet at any rate. There had been a subtle shift of tone in the Envoy’s last words that caused her to shiver as he uttered them. Or perhaps it was the drop in the temperature of the library stacks, caused no doubt by Wick opening the door as he fled. She hesitated again, a fraction of a second, disconcerted by the unnerving gaze that accompanied the demand. Lace’s eyes glittered, fixing the acolyte. He was more alive and intense at that moment than she had ever seen him before. But he was also unyielding, hard as ice.

  As she bent her gaze obediently to the device, his grin widened, revealing a brief flash of sharp, yellowed incisors.

  23

  Pallas gave a whoop of triumph. ‘Do I not say we arrive by noon?’ he yelled to Tymon over the hubbub of the Maia’s propellers. He pointed to the line of the Central Canopy that closed off the Gap; a long, thin smudge of hope. Tymon breathed a sigh of relief and grinned at his companion.

  It was the second day of their journey out of Farhang. They had left the Freehold with a fortnight’s grace to complete their mission, for Galliano had agreed with some reluctance to account for their activities to the judges. Officially, they were on a scouting and research trip to the South Fringes. In arguing his case with the old man, Tymon had reminded Galliano of his willingness to help Samiha the first time she had ventured into the Central Canopy. The scientist had not proven as easy to convince again, however. He had objected strenuously to their plan during the initial debate in the hangar, pointing out that the Freeholders would be the ones blamed for breaking the terms of the treaty, if the rescue attempt was discovered. But Tymon had persevered. He knew that Galliano had little use for Grafting prophecies, and had appealed instead to his friend’s sense of justice. When rational argument had failed, he had begged. At last Galliano relented.

  ‘Just make sure the judges aren’t implicated,’ he had warned them. ‘You aren’t acting on your own anymore. Your decisions will affect other people — many other people. Mark my words, young heroes.’

  The voyage from Farhang had been uneventful so far. The rainclouds that filled the sky at their departure soon lifted, and they had fair weather for their journey — this was fortunate, as Pallas possessed no map and navigated by identifying well-known features in the canopy. By the afternoon of that first day, they had glimpsed the tawdry towers of Marak to the south. Pallas had given the city a wide berth and veered west to steer their course into the setting sun. Tymon, for his part, had not been content to play the passenger on this trip: he had seized the opportunity to learn the basics of flying from his friend, and took it in turns with Pallas to steer the air-chariot over the rolling twigs, even bringing the machine down to alight on a horizontal branch for the evening. He was determined to become at least a passable pilot before they reached Argos city.

  The two youths had spent much of their time discussing the rescue attempt. The Maia, they knew, would be central to the endeavour. They had finally decided to hide the machine in a cleft of the trunk-wall beneath the air-harbour, waiting till the moment of the execution to fly out and snatch Samiha from the very jaws of death. The Kion might be saved even as she fulfilled the Grafting prophecies. This daredevil scheme appealed to Tymon, for it did not contradict what he had witnessed in his visions. Escape was possible, perhaps even provided for in one of the subtly different versions he had Seen of Samiha’s future. The use of the air-chariot also precluded the dreaded encounter with Wick.

  It remained for them to reach the city in safety. Beyond the Gap, they would be obliged to rely on Pallas’ knowledge of astronomy to guide them, for Tymon’s recall of his Treeology lessons at the seminary was hopelessly vague. On the morning of the second day, they had left the last twigs of the Eastern Canopy behind and turned the air-chariot’s nose toward bright emptiness. They had been unsure how well the machine would navigate the wide open spaces of the Gap; Tymon had been nervous enough to leave the flying to Pallas. But the Maia made the passage effortlessly, even battling a strong breeze. There was no sign of the deadly wind-funnels Tymon remembered from his voyage aboard the Stargazer.

  For hours they had hurtled through the Void, anxiously scanning the horizon for any hint of change. At last their goal had appeared on the western horizon, causing Pallas to crow with enthusiasm. Tymon peered through one of the Maia‘s portholes at the steadily approaching wall of leaves.

  ‘Happy to be home?’ joked his friend.

  Tymon did not answer. The sight before him filled him with an unexpected nostalgia. The Central Canopy was clad in green. Green! He had almost forgotten that colour in all his dry, grey months in the East — forgotten the glossy, vibrant, living mantle that graced his old home. It had existed only in his dreams, in the Tree of Being. The vision of the wonderfully ordinary leaf-forests of Argos, growing here in luxurious abandon, stirred him deeply. Pallas too must have been impressed, for his jokes faded as they neared the first swaying towers of leaves.

  ‘Sav beni,’ he muttered, steering the Maia over the topmost blades.

  Green Thy heart, green Thy face. The words of the old liturgy rose unbidden in Tymon’s mind. He felt a twinge of sadness. No Argosians lived here, he knew, in the wild outer stretches of the Central Canopy. No one profited by this abundance. What the refugees in Marak would have done to witness it!

  They travelled the rest of the afternoon on a southwesterly bearing, high over the deserted leaf-forests. They aimed to follow the Stargazer’s course as close as possible in the opposite direction, and hoped by nightfall to spy some form of human habitation, perhaps an outlying farm or bird-keep.

  Either Tymon’s memory of his first voyage or their arrival point in the canopy must have been far off the mark, however, for they were soon traversing a type of Treescape he had never seen before. The leaf-forests were separated into tangled clumps, interspersed by wide, cloudy chasms. The supporting limbs rose up no more than two or three at a time out of the mist, hopelessly far apart and inaccessible on foot. With the approach of evening, the isolated thickets turned black and ominous, surrounded by pale rivers of fog, and a fine rain further closed the gap between sky and cloud. At last the travellers were obliged to alight on the sloping side of a branch in the fading light. They passed their second night inside the Maia without the benefit of a fire, listening to the drops patter on the roof of the machine.

  Tymon lay awake for a long while wrapped in his blankets, feverishly gauging the time it might take to reach Argos city. They had a good two weeks left before the start of Samiha’s trial. But this hopeful fact was not enough on its own to reassure him. He fell to thinking about contingencies; he wondered how and when the adverse effects the Focals had warned him about might come into play, the disastrous consequences of contradicting the Sap. For he did not discount Oren and Noni’s words entirely. Their cautions echoed in his ears. Should he allow Samiha’s fate to proceed unhindered till the last minute, he thought. Or should he contact her beforehand, catch her eye in the street perhaps, if only to show her he was there to help? He did not k
now how far he might go before inviting disaster.

  Sleep, when it finally came, was a ragged affair, interrupted by noises. On one occasion he was disturbed by an unfamiliar birdcall, so loud and so near the air-chariot that he crawled to the hatch, and peeping out into the steady rain. Nothing could be seen in the foggy darkness. A second time he was jolted awake with the distinct impression he had heard voices. He listened a moment, tense: it was only the sighing of the wind between the leaves, a sound he was no longer accustomed to. At last his waking fears gave way to unconscious ones, his dreams plagued by the uneasy awareness of space. In his nightmares a treacherous gulf opened without warning at his feet, bringing all his plans to naught. He saw Samiha fall into the abyss, again and again. He was never quick enough to catch her, grasping at thin air. So many times did he teeter on the execution dock and fail to retrieve either the Kion or his own balance, that when he awoke the next morning to the sensation of being gradually tilted over, he imagined it was yet another dream.

  It was not. A surreptitious dragging, scraping noise filled him with alarm. He staggered to his feet, almost falling over Pallas on the listing floor. The machine was being levered off the bark. He threw himself in panic against the hatch — and found it jammed shut.

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Pallas, groggily rising from his blankets.

  Tymon scrambled toward a porthole as, with a shriek of timber, the air-chariot tipped and began to slide down the side of the branch. It came to a juddering, crunching halt against an invisible obstacle. ‘Hoi!’ he cried, pressing his face to the narrow circle of a window. ‘Stop it! We’re in here!’

  For he had glimpsed human forms outside the air-chariot, heard someone give a clipped order. ‘Please!’ he begged, his heart in his mouth. ‘Don’t push us over!’

  The Maia hung poised above the Void in the morning sunlight. Someone had placed smooth twigs as rollers on the bark and inched the machine to the sloping edge of the branch while they slept. Tymon returned to the hatch and beat upon it with his fists, calling out desperately as the machine scraped and teetered on the bark. Pallas joined him in an attempt to pry open the door. Voices erupted outside in a dialect Tymon could not understand. He recognised a few Argosian words: city, and something which sounded like sky-priest.

  ‘We’re not priests!’ he shouted, desperate. ‘We mean you no harm! Please!’

  Someone released the block on the door just as he threw himself against it again. The door slammed out against the side of the machine and he tumbled headfirst on the bark, followed by Pallas. At the same time, with a wrenching groan, the air-chariot broke free of the gnarled outcrop that held it back and slithered rapidly down the side of the branch. Shooting into the abyss in a shower of splinters. The two youths picked themselves up and gaped in dismay as Samiha’s one means of escape spiralled and crashed into the leaf-forests, a dim, ruinous echo.

  ‘Green grace!’ cried Tymon, spinning around to face his adversaries. ‘Why in heaven’s name did you do that?’

  The eight individuals who stood before him on the branch were so festooned in paint and feathers that he could not tell at first whether they were young or old, male or female, or even entirely of his own species. They seemed intent on hiding all signs of their humanity. Some wore spotted pelts on their heads, perhaps those of feral Tree-cats, and had adorned their faces to match. Some wore masks with an animal theme. Around the neck of one tall figure whom he supposed was a young man, Tymon glimpsed a necklace of eagle talons, long and curved. It was this person who answered him.

  ‘You say you are no priest.’ The man’s bright eyes burned through the paint; Tymon could not immediately identify his broad, familiar accent. ‘And yet you talk like a priest, fly a piece of devilry made by a priest, and care for it more than you do your own souls.’

  ‘It wasn’t devilry. It was our only way out of here,’ protested Tymon.

  He was too angry, too dismayed by the loss of the machine, to consider that these clawed and feathered strangers had him at their mercy, and might finish the business of killing him at a moment’s notice. The people muttered to each other in their own vernacular, fingering clubs and bows hanging at their sides — clubs and bows, for the most part. They were dressed in odds and ends of mismatched clothing, some quite fine but worn and full of holes, as if they had raided the garbage heaps of the rich in Argos city. Many went barefoot on the bark though the weather was cold. They reminded him of the savages of the North Canopy he had read about in seminary textbooks. But they could be nowhere near the North, not even with a massive miscalculation in course. The faces under the paint did not resemble Cook’s, his old companion in the galley of the Stargazer. Now that he was beginning to see past the flamboyant costumes his opponents looked like typical Argosians, lean and dark-skinned.

  ‘We are not from Argos,’ put in Pallas, bowing to the man with the necklace. ‘My friend and I travel from Nurian Freehold, across Gap.’

  ‘From Nur?’ drawled the eagle-claw. ‘Sure. You’re dressed strangely enough for that. But your “friend” here was educated by priests. Which makes the fact you call him so most curious, pilgrim.’

  Pallas frowned at the appellation and shut his mouth abruptly.

  ‘What if it’s true?’ flung out Tymon, reckless in his disappointment. ‘Yes, I grew up at the seminary. I was sent to work in the colonies. I hate the priests. Like Pallas said, we were just passing through. And now we’re stuck, thanks to you.’

  He could have screamed aloud in frustration: the Maia was gone, just because of the superstitions of some obscure tribe.

  ‘You seem very anxious to leave us,’ noted the taloned man. His smile had grown bright and dangerous. He stepped toward Tymon, fingering the club at his belt. ‘I can help you do that, Not-From-Argos.’

  ‘Excuse him!’ cried Pallas hastily. ‘We mean no disrespect.’

  He glared at Tymon, who subsided in embarrassment, realising that he had behaved like a fool and might have killed them both. Another member of the band, a girl whose face was hidden behind a mask edged with plumes, approached the taloned man and whispered in his ear.

  ‘Very good,’ replied the eagle-claw. He turned to the two travellers. ‘You have a choice. You may come and see the Doctor, or go along with your devil-machine into the chasm.’

  He did not wait for an answer but stalked up the branch-slope toward the ridgeline. His companions followed suit, leaving their captives to bring up the rear, as if they considered them no further threat. Indeed, there was little for Tymon and Pallas to do but trudge after the painted troupe, wondering dismally who this ‘Doctor’ might be. When they reached the spine of the branch, they saw several dirigible barges anchored on the other side of the limb. Tymon counted ten vessels altogether, all as brilliantly painted as their owners. Their sails and ether sacks were of every colour imaginable, as were the tents and shacks on deck; merry banners floated from the ropes. The barges were linked together in a line. It was possible to board the first, tethered to the slope, and make one’s way down the length of the little fleet. Tyman gripped Pallas’ arm in realisation.

  ‘I know who these people are,’ he whispered in his friend’s ear. ‘They’re just Jays, by the bells! The masks and nonsense put me off!’

  ‘Birds with blue feathers?’ asked Pallas in confusion.

  ‘Travelling actors,’ explained Tymon. ‘You know. They come to town every so often and put on a show. But I’ve never seen any in get-up like this. I thought they were long-lost barbarians.’

  He recalled the arrival of the tribal players in Argos city every year, their colourful ships docked conspicuously in the air-harbour. He had not been allowed to attend the theatre for the priests held that all non-religious spectacle was Impure, stimulating the passions. Jays were only sanctioned in the city on specific occasions. But they were far from being ‘barbarians’ and possessed a great store of traditional knowledge. He wondered why a band of entertainers would object so strongly to the air-chariot
. The freewheeling Jays were anything but pious, at least according to the priests. Why bother to destroy a mechanical abomination?

  ‘A special tribe for actors?’ Pallas muttered to himself as they stepped onto the first barge, on the heels of the eagle-man. ‘What next, travelling cooks?’

  The vessel was a long, flat-bottomed affair furnished with a red-and-white striped pavilion. On board the members of the armed band quickly dispersed. They removed their feathers and furs, which appeared to be costumes they had worn to impress their enemies rather than any permanent mode of attire. Some squatted down to speak with the round-eyed Jay children who crowded up to them, or walked off toward the other vessels. Soon only the eagle-man and the masked woman remained on guard in full regalia. They stood silently by Tymon and Pallas at the door of the pavilion, as if awaiting a signal, and made no explanation to their prisoners or gave them any idea of what to expect.

  ‘Do you believe the Sap moves through all living things?’

  The voice might have belonged to a preacher at a pulpit, or a sleazy salesman in a market. Tymon raised his eyes to the eccentric creature stepping out of the striped doorway. The man was as long and lean as a beanpole, dressed in a threadbare suit of purple silk. He advanced in sudden jerks like a puppet on a string, his hair a mop of white above a haggard, grinning face.

  ‘Does it connect us all together, my friend?’ The man fixed his overbright gaze on Tymon and hopped toward him, a long-legged crane. ‘Does it make us one?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know,’ replied Tymon cautiously, as an answer seemed to be required. ‘I’m not very knowledgeable about such things. But if we’re your friends, why did your people destroy our air-chariot?’

  ‘Anise, Jocaste!’ exclaimed the man, ignoring the question completely and turning to his plumed helpers. ‘You have done well, my chicks. You have brought me two new souls to cherish and heal.’