Notes from the Burning Age

by Claire North

  “A prisoner exchange will be part of any negotiation, you have my word,” Yue declared, and she didn’t believe it would happen, and said it anyway.

  “Ven is fine. Look at him – he’s practically glowing with health. Beograd burns and the kakuy sleep. What could be better?”

  “You shouldn’t be here, Yue.”

  “I am here to negotiate,” she repeated, staring now at some place behind the back of my head, as if she didn’t see me at all. “The treatment of political prisoners and prisoners of war will be a priority. Thank you.”

  For a moment, the two of us stood there, like opposite ends of a broken bridge. I do not know how long we stood, and it was probably only seconds. It was perhaps long enough for a forest to grow. Then Georg puffed in exasperation and snapped: “Well, off you go, Ven. There’s a good pup.”

  There is a knife strapped to the small of my back. I have learned how to sleep with it inches away from my fist. Tonight is the night, perhaps. Tonight I’ll do it, leap across the room in a single bound, drive the blade into the soft pink flesh beneath Georg’s chin, push it all the way up, through the hollow of his windpipe and across his vocal cords, so no one would hear him scream, just like the inquisition taught us, just like they always said I might need to do, in order to be a really good pacifist, a really generous priest.

  Then I’ll take Yue’s hand and, having heroically put her in danger and ruined everything, I’ll valiantly rescue her from this locked-down city in my bare feet, and we’ll run away to the forest and everything will be astonishingly terrible. And she will never forgive me, and quite right too.

  So much for magic. So much for prayer.

  I turned my back on them all and went quietly back to my prison cell.

  Chapter 49

  In the evening, when all else is sleeping, I drink tea with Georg.

  It has become something of a habit of his. At first, it was an accident, a casual little thing; I cleared up plates after another late-night session, and suddenly I was the only person there.

  Then I was the last person left again, and again after that, and I began to think he was calling for me to come from the kitchen a little late, so I might be the last person left behind, and then I was certain of it, and I poured floral tea without a word into a cup the colour of sage, and sometimes he talked, and sometimes he didn’t, until one night nearest the year’s end he said: “We’ll never let you go, Ven. Whatever Yue says. Here until the end.”

  I shrugged. “I know.”

  “Why don’t you do something?” A flare of anger, frustration – I hadn’t seen it so bright or hot in him before. “Why don’t you try to escape or fight? I know you can fight, I’ve seen it. Do something!”

  “I’m not sure what you expect. In Vien there were protocols, safe houses. I had shoes, support. You want me to cross the mountains in winter without any shoes?”

  “Then die fighting. Die doing something!”

  “Assassinate you, perhaps? I’ve thought about it. Killing you is far more strategically important than killing Kun Mi, given she’s just a little prancing tool. But then I have to wonder… what would she be like if you weren’t pulling her strings? What would the Brotherhood do next? I’m not at all convinced that stabbing you actually helps, though of course if the situation swings too far, I’ll be sure not to let you know.”

  For a moment, he balanced between anger and surprise. Then he slumped back into the couch, and was tired, and hurt, and he laughed. He waggled the empty tea cup in his hand; I refilled it, poured myself a cup. Outside, the city was quiet, scuttling, beetle black.

  “Temple makes people dumb,” he pronounced, head back across the top of the couch, neck exposed. “Spends so much time telling us to be grateful, to accept, to… hug a cockroach or whatever… that no one ever does anything. No sense of ambition. No sense of purpose. I was worried you were the same.”

  “You mistake a short-term sense of gain for a long-term plan. So long as you don’t mind thinking a hundred years ahead, Temple is a sparking dynamo of activity.”

  He snorted but did not deride. Then: “We’ve put a bounty on kakuy.”

  “That’s phenomenally dumb, don’t you think?”

  A half-shrug. “It was Kun Mi’s idea. You have to let her have a few, sometimes, just so she feels useful. All across the Provinces, people are shooting monsters and beasts, stringing them up at the temple door.”

  “Bears and wolves? Please. The forest will burn and the field will wither – I have yet to see you shoot the sky.”

  To my surprise, he nodded. “In the burning, things were simpler. The gods slept – or rather, the gods were on our side. They were human creatures, invested in the welfare of humanity above all else. The superior species, the chosen ones. They felt rage, and love; they were there for each unborn child, sent angels and demons to harvest souls. Then the kakuy woke, and suddenly the gods were real, and they cared as much for the ant as the human, and we weren’t special any more.”

  “You know it’s better that way, don’t you? Being part of something bigger than ourselves – it is better.”

  “I think the best of all would be a world without gods.”

  “Then you’re fine. The kakuy aren’t gods. They are… no more and no less than the wind and the sea. Georg? You do understand, don’t you?”

  He nodded again, slow, and I thought he would speak, but the nodding was heavy, lolling. I rose quietly and, for the first time in my life, saw Georg Mestri sleep.

  Balance the kitchen knife in your hand.

  Here, this way, this gleam of the blade. Quick and easy, through the windpipe; no one will hear him scream. Steal his shoes, steal his coat. I know my trade. Everything changes. Everything dies. I do not fear dying. I am not sure how I feel about killing. Kill him now, to protect a world without killing.

  Vae is pulled into the river, Lah’s final breath is my own, Yue walks away, ash in her hair and boots crunching on snow. What would they say, in this slumbering calm?

  Do it, thunders Georg. Do it, do it, do it!

  Lah sits in that place in my mind where my own thoughts should be, says nothing at all, and pretends to meditate.

  Temple has an inquisition; is there not a kind of confession there, an admittance that even the gentlest of doctrines sometimes run hard into a crueller reality?

  I have never seen Georg sleep before. He seems almost human.

  Do it, don’t do it, do it, don’t do it, what will be the consequences in a hundred years’ time? What will be the consequences now, when they kill me slow?

  I wander to his desk. Let my fingers trail over the apparatus of his life. His inkstone is secured with a passcode and a biometric sensor. His drawers contain the bare minimum for a functional spymaster – stationery, a charging cable, emergency solar battery and torch, a gun. One is locked, but largely for show. I remove the drawer above it and reach down inside the hollow to release the locking mechanism from the inside. Slide it open.

  Inside are a map and a little bee-like drone, its translucent wings folded, the solar panels on its back streaked with dried dirt and rain. Its belly has been opened to release the package it carried within, which lies next to it now – a tiny capsule, a similar size and shape to those I used to hide around Vien, all those winters ago. I unscrew one out of curiosity, find it empty, turn it this way and that, imagining its contents, the tiny coils of film it once held. Put it back. Unfold the map. It is scrawled with markings added and erased, lines flowing across Magyarzag, heading south through the ruins of Beograd, towards Isdanbul. If I had a camera, I would photograph it; all very interesting stuff that Nadira would love to…

  I do not, and she is dead.

  Instead, I smooth it out a little on the desk and study its movements. Georg should be piling in his troops to Plovdiq, but a loop circles a place further to the southeast, bypassing the city altogether. Martyza Eztok, inquisition archive. I press my index finger into the name, watching how the joint bends back under pr
essure, then release it, fold the map, close the drawer, lock it, return to Georg on the couch.

  He looks, for a brief moment, innocent. He should have been a surgeon, perhaps, or a teacher. There is another life where I would have felt confident with my life in his hands.

  I drape a blanket around his shoulders, tuck it in so the cold night does not disturb him, leave him sleeping, tea cooling on the table, and let myself out.

  That night I dreamed of dust.

  I dreamed of coal tunnels beneath the earth, of being trapped in black, of coughing blood, of flashes of light fading and the smell of sulphur.

  I dreamed of bones and children, of the forest and the flood. Temple was wrong not to build shrines in the landfill mines and the poisoned places; we were wrong not to honour the hands that made the burnt yellow wasteland. They had made it for the sakes of their children, after all.

  I dreamed of a world on fire, and no rain came.

  Chapter 50

  The end came on New Year’s Eve.

  I had no idea it was New Year’s Eve until Colas, drunk, raised a bottle and hollered, “Happy new year, Pityr! I thought they should shoot you but actually, I’ve almost grown fond of your miserable weasel face!”

  Then he poured wine for one, drained it in a single gulp, burped and started singing a Temple song, until Qathir hissed that they didn’t sing those any more and to keep his mouth shut in case someone upstairs heard.

  In the shuttered temples, Medj should have been giving talks on renewal, change, on letting go; on seeing the past with clarity, the future with hope. Instead, the radio waves played newly penned patriotic ditties, of which most would vanish without a trace and maybe one or two had a catchy, key-changing chorus that you could whistle under your breath.

  “Tum tum te tum, brotherhood and man, something something, beneath the crimson tum te tum…”

  The radio in Colas’ office had been getting more bilious as the war crawled on, no sign of peace, no sign of Yue, no sign that her visit to Georg’s office had been anything more or less than another one of his shows of power, another stupid game. “I say we firebomb Isdanbul,” offered a punter, hungry, cold, looking for something to blame. “If it saves one of our boys’ lives, it’s worth it! Council should just give up; that’s the only reasonable thing to do. Why are they hurting their own people like this?”

  The winter cold froze the pipes, put thin sheets of ice on top of even the steaming biomass pits, locked the fog in the evening air as if time had stopped when it should have billowed. It crept into every corner of the kitchen and house, sapping away warmth like a closing shadow, until everyone huddled against the stove in tighter and tighter knots, driven to it by a dark they could not overcome. Knives moved slowly down the chopping board, fingers turning numb. People shuffled, lead-legged, through the streets, blood a thick treacle in stiffened veins. Someone said there were parades later, military marches, but no one seemed very keen. The dignitaries of the house were gone elsewhere, to the Assembly perhaps, to the old, wide boulevards to watch soldiers tramp up and down through the snow; to the front lines, wherever they were. The kitchen turned the lights down early, and Colas reluctantly poured a dram of alcohol for all his staff, forgetting me, and managed a few inspirational words.

  “Well, yes. Well done. We’ll do better next year. To peace and victory.”

  “To peace and victory,” mumbled the kitchen, and no one met anyone else’s eyes as they drained their thimbles down.

  I did not stay awake for midnight. An early night was a blessing, a rare, gorgeous relief. I lay, cold, knees tucked to my chin, and thought I heard drumming and a distant snatch of song, but then the wind turned and carried it away again, and I was so deeply asleep when the bolts drew back that I didn’t wake until she shook my shoulder and called my name again.

  “Ven. Ven!”

  She hadn’t turned on the single light in the room but, behind her, her guard carried a wind-up torch, light turned to the floor beside my face. I blinked bleary recognition into my eyes, and, not quite understanding, murmured: “What in the name of sun and moon are you doing here?”

  Farii smiled. I could not remember ever having seen her smile, not even when Ull was alive. It was the tired grin of an ageing grandmother who has just been given the bad diagnosis she already knew.

  “I wish to defect to the Council. And you wish to escape, yes?”

  “Wouldn’t say no.”

  “I think we can help each other.”

  There comes a time when there is no time left.

  So here, without thought, without time to think about the consequences, only actions:

  Change into a new set of clothes, military, so warm, so thick, woven wool and the smell of nothingness, of not-sweat, not-steam, not-oil, not-damp, not-mould, the smell of clean is distracting, mustn’t get distracted.

  Put on a pair of shoes, and for a moment I fumble with the laces and can’t quite remember how this is done. There is something alien, heavy, pinching and hard wrapped around my feet; was this how shoes always felt?

  Put on a low captain’s hat, tucked down tight to hide as much of my face as possible. Turn the collar up on my coat against the cold and prying eyes. Farii’s guard is called Yoko; she has a car prepared. We are just going to walk out, the three of us, she says – it is fine, everything is settled. No one will stop us. Come, come. The time for trust is now.

  I hesitate in the doorway, and Farii looks back at me, already halfway out, a winter coat wrapped tight around her body, deerskin boots up to her knees. “They will kill me too, when they find out,” she declares, voice of stone. “They’ll kill me, just like they killed Ull, and make it look like an accident.”

  I nod, dig my hands into my pockets, tuck my chin into my chest and follow her out.

  Chapter 51

  Stairs I’ve never taken, down to a courtyard I’ve never been in. There are some guards here, huddled together against the cold. They look up, see Farii, who nods at them once, and they look away. They do not glance at me, do not question my presence. There is an electric car charging off a portable battery by the gate; I wonder where they had to drag the battery from, now that the local solar panels are covered in snow and the turbines are still in the hanging air. The front of the car has a little flag stuck to it, a stiff, pointed thing depicting the seal of the Lyvodian Assembly. Yoko sits in the front, driving. I climb into the back, the narrow middle seat separating me from Farii as the doors lock shut.

  We slither away in an electric hum, wheels drifting a little on settled black ice, crawling no faster than walking pace for the first few streets as we slip and slide towards the broader, gritted cyclists’ roads.

  It is starting to snow again. The shutters are down against the cold, and very little light peeks out through the slats. Every other street lamp has been extinguished to save electricity in this endless, deadening winter. We pass a shrine, the gate chained shut, a scorch mark up one wall where someone tried to start a fire. I do not remember the city being so big, so tall, so dark and deep. I do not remember it being so quiet.

  We do not talk until we reach the wider streets, where finally enough ice has been cleared for us to pick up speed. We pass a military convoy heading the other way, and I feel nauseous, and Farii doesn’t turn her head, doesn’t blink, doesn’t seem to see anything at all.

  A line of conifers, fat triangles rising to a bent-tipped point where the weight of ice has begun to drag the branches down. The shape of bicycles buried together beneath a mound of snow; who knows when someone will come to dig them out? A single restaurant, the lights somehow burning by a cleared rectangle of pavement, a sign on the door telling customers that if they want beer, they must bring their own.

  A checkpoint, set up beneath a bridge to protect the soldiers guarding it from the worst of the wind. There are three bicycles waiting to be cleared, and for a moment I remember fleeing the city with two novices, back when the bells rang across the water. That escapade didn’t end wel
l; right now, it is impossible to imagine this one will be any better.

  Yoko wound down her window as the soldiers approached, torchlight flashing onto our faces. She handed over three sets of papers and, with a little incline of her head towards Farii, said: “Chief Minister, on business.”

  Farii did not look at the soldiers who nodded and saluted her. One of the papers had my photo on it. I didn’t know where Yoko had found it, or what it claimed. An officer said: “Good trip, Minister,” and pulled off an awkward salute in the style of Maze, a gesture he still wasn’t quite used to yet. Yoko smiled and, slipping the papers back into her pocket, wound the window up as we accelerated away.

  On the fast road, heading east. The snow is heavier now, and we are one of only a tiny number of vehicles braving the night. All I can see through the front windscreen is falling white, picked out in cones of headlight, and the barrier of the road to our left, which we follow through a nowhere nothingland of black. The internal lights of the car are few – a couple of diodes on the dashboard, and the occasional sweep of white from a vehicle attempting to travel the opposite way. The cyclists have given up, the lanes empty and bicyclesarais full as we pass, little outposts of orange light.

  Yoko said: “We have enough to make the meet, but if they’re not there we’ll have to recharge.”

  “They’ll be there,” Farii replied, with the conviction of one who needs it to be real.

  “How are we getting across the border?” I asked. “I know that Farii’s face counts for a lot, but they won’t let her anywhere near the front line.”

  Yoko answered when Farii didn’t, eyes still fixed to the road. “We’re going to the sea. It’s all arranged.”

  “On both ends?”

  A little intake of breath, a pause. “Council has a much stronger naval presence than either Maze or Lyvodia. They dominate the Negara Sea from the Bosphorus to Azchov. If we can get past the Brotherhood patrols, we’ll be fine.”