‘I’m that unnerving?’
‘You were unnerving before any of this. Both of you were.’
I stepped a little closer to the raised thrones. The king and queen nodded at my approach, but said nothing.
‘I am Glass,’ I said, touching a hand to my chest. ‘At least, that’s the name I used to be known by.’ I directed an apologetic shrug at Pinky, for I was about to do exactly what he had cautioned against. ‘But I am also Warren Clavain, brother to Nevil. I think you must know Nevil. He’s been a part of your ocean for longer than you’ve swum in these seas.’
The queen – Ivril – leaned forward in her throne. One of the other mariners approached her and whispered into her ear. She nodded at intervals: that gesture, at least, had transmitted itself through all the changes wrought on these people. Ivril regarded me as she listened, then spoke back to the interpreter. She kept her voice low, but the fragments that reached me were nothing I understood.
The interpreter turned to face me. He spoke slowly, in a high, querulous, thick-accented tone that still required great concentration on my part to decipher.
‘You are . . . two . . . in one?’
‘Yes, and it’s as strange for me as it must be for you. If it makes things any easier, I’ll be taking a single name from now on. You may call me Warglass, if you wish. The first part of my name is the form that Nevil Clavain knew his brother by, when they were small. His name was Warren: War for short. Glass is the short form of Hourglass, who was the woman who used to inhabit this body.’
I waited for this to be translated. It was slow process, with much back-and-forth conferring between the aides.
Queen Ivril’s answer came: ‘You . . . are . . . blood . . . to . . . Green Man?’
I nodded sombrely. ‘Yes. I am – or was – blood to Nevil Clavain. His brother. And I saw him, in the Juggler node.’
A further exchange took place between Ivril and her interpreter.
‘We warned you. Green Man is angry. Angry and . . . powerful. This season not good season.’
‘We could not wait for a better season. But I am sorry that we misunderstood your good intentions.’ I paused, wondering how far I could go before I strained the abilities of the interpreters. They had a frowning, scholarly, faintly pedantic look to them. I supposed that they were mariners who had made a point of tracking the shifts in their language from its origins, and who retained enough knowledge of the old forms to be able to piece together my meaning and offer faltering translations of their own. ‘But you are right,’ I continued. ‘My brother was angry, and he was not happy to see me. That is my fault, or rather the fault of the part of me that was once Warren. Warren wronged Nevil and was warned not to visit him again. I came here once before, you see. Perhaps you were already here, swimming in these seas, but I did not see you and I do not think you saw me. If you had, you would have tried to stop me then.’
‘Many have come. Many have failed.’
‘I did not fail,’ I replied. ‘Not this time. There was something Warren wanted of his brother, and now I have it.’
‘We found you with nothing.’
‘He told me of a place, a world, that my friends and I must travel to. About eight years of flight from here, around another star, one called Zeta Tucanae.’ I nodded in the direction the play of light through the windows told me the sun lay.
‘We know of stars.’ This was delivered to me in a mildly chiding tone, as if I were in danger of assuming my hosts to be ignorant of their place in the wider cosmos. ‘We know of ships and worlds. We know what we were, and where we came from.’
‘I do not doubt that,’ I said.
‘You will take ship? All will leave?’
Barras met my gaze and although I would never read pigs as well as I read humans, I saw the concern and warning in his expression. I was entering troubled waters.
‘With your permission, some would remain.’
‘Why?’
‘Our ship is not designed to carry many people. Where we are going will be very dangerous. Some of us have entered this fight willingly, but that isn’t true of everyone. The ones we have left behind at First Camp . . . do you know of First Camp?’ I shook my head, amused at my own stupidity. ‘Of course. You were the ones who took my skimmer, weren’t you? And I wouldn’t be surprised if you tended those graves.’
‘No one can live in First Camp,’ said Rindi, speaking through his own favoured interlocutor.
‘Not as it stood,’ I said. ‘But we have already begun making it habitable again. The settlers there won’t trouble you unless you desire contact, and they’ll only take as much from the sea as they need.’
‘No one can live in First Camp,’ Rindi repeated. Then, after a clarifying exchange: ‘No one shall live. It is forbidden.’
I bridled. ‘They won’t be in competition with you. If you avoid those islands you need never know they’re there.’
‘It is not yours to decide.’
‘I’m afraid it is. These refugees have come from a more terrible place than you can imagine. This is no paradise, but being able to live on Ararat – to live freely, without fear – is the least that they deserve. You’ll allow it, Rindi. And you, Ivril. I’m afraid there’s no other alternative.’
‘You will be stopped.’
I shook my head, more in sorrow than in anger. ‘No. I’m afraid not. We won’t hurt you, but if you force us we’ll set up a defensive cordon around First Camp and the surrounding islands. Machines that prevent you ever reaching the settlers.’
‘Machines will fail,’ Ivril stated, drawing a nod of weary agreement from her companion. ‘Do you not see? We have no machines. They failed. Yours will fail. All shall fail.’
‘You do not know the machines my ship could make. Machines to make more machines. Machines to repair any damage the sea does to them.’ Realising that my diplomacy was running hard onto the rocks, I attempted to steer back into more clement waters. ‘I see that you are a kind and noble people, and very resourceful. You have done well to make a life here, and these chambers of yours are beautiful. But you would be unwise to resist our settlement, and you should not attempt it.’
‘It would not be us,’ Rindi answered.
‘Green Man would not allow,’ Ivril put in. ‘Green Man would grow angry. Angry-er. Angrier grow!’ She made a sharp sweeping motion with her hand, webbed fingers spread wide. ‘Green Man take.’
Barras spoke gently: ‘We’ve been over this with them. They seem to be serious. It’s not a threat. It’s a warning. Green Man . . . whoever or whatever Green Man is . . . won’t allow settlement of First Camp.’
‘It’s . . . yes,’ Probably Rose said. ‘Yes, yes. Your brother, yes. He’s the one. The one with the say, yes. He won’t let it happen. He knows it’s too yes, risky, yes yes. To be seen. Yes, from space, and verily. By the wolves. Won’t let it. Because of them, because of these, yes, yes. Because he loves them.’
Pinky picked up the same train of thought. ‘He’s protecting ’em. Them and whatever else got sucked into this ocean, over millions of years. The sea shelters the mariners, and they keep a low enough profile not to attract the interest of the wolves. And the Jugglers preserve the memory of everything else.’
‘Warren’s brother is just one mind in that mix.’
‘But a new and dominant one. A soldier. The Butcher of Tharsis! A Knight of Cydonia! I knew the man: he had his light moments but mainly he was a heavy customer. Perhaps there’s a sort of spirit, a custodial force, that he’s become part of. If so, I wouldn’t mind betting he’s dominating the room. But it doesn’t matter whether it’s him alone, or an ocean’s worth of other minds. The king and queen have laid it out for us. If we leave a settlement behind on First Camp, it’ll be swept into the sea before Scythe reaches interstellar space. And no boasting about weapons and machines is going to change that.’
‘I wasn’t . . .’ I began. But I trailed off. He was perfectly right. As soon as the mariners put an objection in my
way, I had responded with an aggressive overture.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, beginning anew. ‘There’ll be no more talk of force. This is your world, and I accept your wisdom concerning First Camp.’ I glanced at the others, desperately hoping I was not overstepping the mark. ‘We’ll . . . make no further plans for settlement. What we have done, we will reverse. Once our ship has left, there’ll be no evidence that we were ever here.’
‘The ones you speak of, who were to live in First Camp?’ Ivril enquired.
‘We’ll take them with us. They survived the crossing to Ararat, so they can survive another. It won’t be comfortable, or safe, but they’ll be alive, at least for a while, and perhaps we’ll find another world where they can make a home.’
‘They can stay,’ Rindi said. ‘But they must change.’
I wondered if I understood him. Before I could seek clarification, Ivril was speaking through her interpreter. ‘The sea will take them and change them. To become more like us. If they wish.’
‘And if they do not?’
‘The sea will still take. But they will not live.’
I needed to sit down. It was almost too much to take in, much less to think through rationally. Dizzied, I turned to Barras. ‘They must have put this to you already. Are they seriously suggesting that the refugees can become mariners, like our hosts? That all you have to do is swim, to be adapted similarly?’
‘I don’t think they’d bring it up if it wasn’t possible. But that doesn’t mean it’ll be easy, or that there’s any guarantee of success.’ He was keeping his voice low, as if he worried about offending the mariners by speaking so bluntly. ‘It’s not something they control. But it seems that if we accept this fate, they’ll petition the sea, or the Jugglers, and make it more likely that we’ll be altered the way they were. But if the Jugglers aren’t receptive, or the Green Man’s in a bad mood, or it’s just the wrong season . . .’ He shrugged. ‘This is as far as we got.’
‘Perhaps it’s all the assurance we can expect. Would they go for it, Barras, to live on Ararat?’
He tugged at a long hair springing from his chin. ‘Some would. They haven’t put down roots here, but they can see it’s better to live on a world than be squeezed into a tiny little ship and forced to sleep most of the time. And given where they came from, and what the Swine Queen meant to do with us, it’s not such a bad thing to think of throwing our luck in with the Pattern Jugglers. These . . . people . . . aren’t so bad.’ He hesitated. ‘But I don’t think they’d all go for it. It’d be different if none of us were ever planning to leave Ararat, but if some get the choice of leaving and some don’t . . .’
‘Everyone will have that choice,’ I affirmed. ‘Scythe will take as many as needed. But anyone who comes with us must understand that it’s going to be hazardous.’
‘Worse than committing ourselves to the sea?’
‘I can’t say. Everyone will need to weigh that for themselves.’
‘We told Ivril and Rindi that we’d talk it over with you. They asked us if you were our queen, and I told them that you weren’t, but you did have a ship.’
‘And now you have my answer.’ I gave him a sympathetic smile. ‘Which I imagine has only made things harder.’
‘Yes, it would have been so much easier if you’d been a tyrant and decreed we weren’t getting a ride off Ararat. What happened to the old Glass?’
‘She got fractured into lots of pieces, like one of those windows. When they got put back together, some were missing, and some had never been part of her before.’ I returned my gaze to the king and queen of the mariners. ‘I hope I am not speaking out of turn before my friends. We thank you for the honest words you have spoken. We accept that there can be no life for us at First Camp. But what has been put to us will need more than a day or two to settle. With your permission, we would like to return to First Camp and speak of this matter with the refugees. They have already met mariners, when you sent for the Temporary Floating Embassy, but it would be good if a delegation came with us.’ Seeing that my words had caused puzzlement, I added: ‘Mariners should come with us. Old, wise, strong mariners, who can speak well.’
‘This will be done,’ Ivril said, nodding sagely. ‘In a day, the winds will turn, and you shall make the voyage.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Before then,’ Rindi said deliberately, ‘there is the other matter.’
‘The other matter?’ I asked.
‘The funeral for the one who did not come back alive. It is strange, what has happened to you. But it does not avoid the fact that there is a body needing a funeral. If you have customs of your own, let them be said. But ours is to return his body to the sea.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Pinky pleaded with me not to take any part in the ceremony. Perhaps he was wise in that. But there was another wisdom guiding me, an instinct that said I needed to accept what had become of War and Glass, to embrace the fact of our union, and that witnessing the mariners’ funeral would aid that consummation. I needed to know that part of me was dead.
‘You mean well, friend,’ I told him. ‘But I have to see this through. I think it will help, too, if the mariners see we are all willing to respect their traditions. Whatever happens at First Camp, I think some of the refugees will see their future in the sea. They will need friends in the mariners, and the sooner we show our openness the better.’ Then I pressed his shoulder. ‘If one of us were to be spared this, Scorp, it should be you. You’ve buried my brother at sea already. No one would blame you for not wanting to repeat the exercise.’
‘It would be harder if I didn’t see another Clavain behind those eyes of yours.’
‘Not all the time, I hope,’ I said gently. ‘Glass has to have her time in the light as well.’ Then, emboldening myself: ‘It’s just a body. It served me well enough for a few centuries, but I think this one is better suited to the times. Glass was a warrior. And we still have a war to win.’
‘I’ll say one thing. You smell better than you used to.’
‘Trust a pig to notice that.’ I smiled. ‘Come on – we should be going down to the dock. It would be bad form to keep the mariners waiting.’
The dock was one of the embarkation stages where I had seen mariners fussing with their rafts and rigging. It faced an apron of enclosed water, mostly calm, but with a tall, arched outlet giving access to open seas, and where the more distant conches could be seen rising and dipping like children on see-saws. The sea was dark, the sky star-strewn: by mariner custom funerals were always midnight affairs.
The boat that would carry us back to First Camp was being readied for the crossing, stocked with provisions and trimmed for sail, but we would not be leaving until the following morning. It was a bigger version of the mariners’ rafts, with a base formed from eight treelike spars, and a mast from a ninth. It looked fragile, but it was the same sort of craft that had brought Barras and Probably Rose to Marl, and I promised myself not to have the bad grace to doubt either its seaworthiness or the skill of its masters.
The funeral raft lay moored to another platform, at right angles to the boat. Torchlit mariners were crowded around it in solemn preparation, some in the water and some clambering gingerly around on their webbed hands and feet. By some sign the workers attending to the boat stopped conversing, broke off from their duties, and moved around to the funeral raft. I could still see very little of it through the press of glistening bodies, but at my approach the mariners opened up like a curtain.
The raft was about as simple as any floating thing could be. It had no sail or means of steering. It was just going to be released to drift and find its own path. It would not need to do so for long.
A catafalque had been raised up on the raft, an openwork box made of interlaced struts of baleen. It was wreathed in green vines, forming a lacy connection between every part of the raft and its contents. Four lanterns were arranged on struts at the corners of this catafalque. Stretched out on top of it, facing t
he sky, and also partially wreathed, was my body.
It was an exceedingly odd thing to be looking at the dead form that one used to inhabit. For a few long moments – perhaps a minute – I thought that I was going to be able to maintain a cold objectivity, as if I had been called to a mortuary and asked to identity the corpse of a person known to me, but not intimately. The version of Warren Clavain laid out before me was both familiar and unfamiliar. I had grown used to the toll time had enacted on my body, especially in the last few years of life in Sun Hollow. Glass had undone some of that attrition, though, and I was taken aback at the vigour of the person on the catafalque. It was not youthfulness, for this was still an old man’s frame, but I looked so much younger and stronger than my mental image of myself. I had never become fat, but where muscles had begun to wither away there was tone and definition, even in death. I had been readied for something, an ordeal that never came. Or perhaps this had been the ordeal: the challenge of the sea, the defiance of my brother’s vow.
I looked peaceful. My eyes were closed, my posture restful: just a strong old man snoozing on his back. However I had died, by drowning, or some deeper intervention, there was no visible injury. My limbs were intact, unbroken, unbruised. A blanket of woven green covered me from shin to sternum, an extension of the wreaths, but I doubted very much that it was concealing any visible trauma.
Something inside me slipped. The objectivity crumbled in an instant, and I sagged, the strength going from my legs. Pinky seized me. It was no mere body on the catafalque; no mere empty receptacle, it was me. It was the last tangible thread connecting me to the life I had lived when I considered myself a better man, when I had known the love and security of family, the bonds of a small but decent community to which I had given my last strong years. Lives had touched this life. Good lives and good people, a web of love and friendship, gratitude and trust, service and dignity, responsibility and humility. I saw it, shimmering out from the catafalque. Endless quivering strands of silver light, linking Miguel de Ruyter to the rest of his tribe, and via finer extensions of that same silver web, the rest of humanity. No life was worthless, not even a life built on lies. He had made something that was better than the materials given him.
Inhibitor Phase Page 48