Ruin's Wake

by Patrick Edwards

  Kelbee didn’t dare move.

  ‘Beautiful,’ said the Guide in her deep voice. It was a voice that was felt as much as it was heard. ‘Where did you find such a specimen, Lance Colonel?’

  By her side Kelbee felt the Lance Colonel snap to attention. ‘My wife is from the provinces, Venerable Guide,’ he said.

  ‘Which one, I wonder? That hair…’ The finger left Kelbee’s chin and traced the edge of her forehead, running along a blue-black lock that hung loose.

  The Lance Colonel hesitated, and the Guide tutted gently, the edges of her mouth curling into something approaching a smile. ‘You should know your wife better, Lance Colonel. The Seeker places family above all things.’ She turned back to Kelbee, and her eyes crinkled at the corners.

  She knows me, screamed the voice in her head. She knows everything.

  ‘You’re doing fine work, Lance Colonel. Particularly with regards to our little northern problem. You are to be commended.’ The eyes had moved away from her, though Kelbee still felt transfixed.

  The Lance Colonel flushed. ‘An honour, Guide. I live to serve.’

  ‘A pity it’s taking so long.’

  The Lance Colonel tensed and his blush was replaced by an icy pallor.

  The Guide gave a low chuckle. ‘Oh, I’m teasing. I’ve seen the progress reports – he’s very close now.’

  The Lance Colonel stuttered in his rush to get his words out. ‘I will notify you as soon as the asset is—’

  He was cut off by a low murmur of acknowledgement. The Guide inclined her head and both Kelbee and the Lance Colonel bowed deep, and when they straightened she had moved on.

  The Guide’s retinue made it to the other end of the hall just as Kelbee thought she might collapse; the balls of her feet were throbbing from standing in place for so long. The Lance Colonel regained his composure.

  He looks more scared than I do, she thought. For a split moment she wanted to reach for his hand to reassure him.

  The bugles blew again. She saw the Guide and her entourage mount the private dais and take their seats. This was the signal for the lines to break up; people returned to milling. Waiters in red tunics appeared from the doors that led off from the lobby and began to circulate with trays, offering iced fruit juices and flutes of wine. After the tension of the procession, the room began to relax back into the ebb and flow of conversation, watched over by the chosen few on the dais. Kelbee saw the Guide wave away a drink before she disappeared from view.

  ‘Moving up in the world, Seregad!’ The voice boomed from a grey-moustachioed officer in a high-collared uniform of sparkling white. He was older, his barrel chest laden with medals and his belly jutting like a white dome.

  It had been so long since she’d heard his name that it took Kelbee a moment to remember that it belonged to the Lance Colonel.

  Her husband didn’t quite manage to hide his annoyance. ‘Brigadier,’ he said.

  The newcomer slapped the Lance Colonel on the back, jarring the drink in his hand and seeming not to notice the frostiness of the reception. ‘I still remember you as a junior lieutenant, all britches and no balls, what!’ The jowls turned to Kelbee. ‘And now look at you, all grown up and with this fine thing on your arm.’ He grinned a mouthful of discoloured teeth. Kelbee bowed her head.

  ‘That was many years ago, sir,’ said the Lance Colonel. ‘How goes your command?’

  ‘If you can call it that,’ said the Brigadier, rolling his eyes. ‘Pushing boys with piss-stained trousers through the snow. The north really is the most atrocious place; I don’t know how the natives bear it. Low expectations, I have to conclude. I get away as often as I can. The scenery’s more pleasant in these parts.’ He gave Kelbee a look that made her jaw clench.

  The Lance Colonel’s face coloured dangerously.

  The Brigadier saw the flush and chuckled. ‘Come off it, Seregad! Banter between old chums.’ He addressed Kelbee. ‘We go way back, your man and me. The stories I could tell…’

  Her husband’s voice was cold. ‘Perhaps now is not the time.’

  Another look from the Brigadier tried to worm its way through Kelbee’s clothing. ‘You’re very fortunate, as I said. What I wouldn’t give for something soft in my bed – it’d make those long Death nights fly by.’

  ‘You forget yourself—’

  Ignoring him, the Brigadier raised Kelbee’s hand to his lips. His moustache was like a hard brush. ‘How are you at cards, my dear?’

  The Lance Colonel whipped the Brigadier’s hand away. His voice was white with fury. ‘That is my wife.’

  The Brigadier stepped back, startled. Then his face went puce under his whiskers. ‘No, you forget yourself, boy. That’s tantamount to striking a superior officer. I taught you better than that.’

  The Lance Colonel paused, then smiled a thin smile. He stepped in close enough so that only the three of them could hear.

  ‘This boy will outrank you sooner rather than later. Enough to pick his own staff. Perhaps he’ll treat them well. Perhaps he won’t.’

  The Brigadier spluttered but was cut off.

  ‘Stay away from me, old fool. And from her.’

  For a moment the air crackled between the two men. The Brigadier gave in first with a quiver of jowls. He grunted, spun on his heel, and disappeared into the throng.

  The Lance Colonel was breathing deeply, but his eyes were wide with elation. He looked at Kelbee and smiled, and for the first time she saw the boy he might once have been. ‘Always wanted to do that,’ he said.

  This time, she did take his hand.

  * * *

  It was past midnight when they returned home. Kelbee lit candles and he sat in his favourite chair, a glass of rakk warming in his palm. As she went to leave him, to go and remove her heavy outerwear, he stopped her with an outstretched hand.

  ‘Have a drink for yourself when you come back.’

  Kelbee slipped into her nightclothes and returned to him, pulling off his boots before pouring herself a small tumbler of dark ale from the bottle in the cooler – this invitation called for something other than water. He waved her to the chair by his side and sat quietly while she joined him. She’d rarely tasted the stuff before; it was thick, almost creamy, but with a bitter aftertaste. A polite sip, then she leaned back in her armchair; for once the silence in the room was something like comfortable.

  ‘She was right,’ he said, ever so slightly slurred. He turned his glass against the light, watching the candle flames dance through it. ‘I should know more of you.’

  ‘My life started when I came to the city.’ The words came so easily.

  ‘No, really. Where were you born? Tell me of it.’

  Kelbee toyed with her glass before replying. ‘It was a small farmer’s village. Poor, but very pretty, in the hills.’ She paused, then added, ‘Though of course the Seeker provided for us, as with everyone.’

  The Lance Colonel’s eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘Perhaps he provides more for some than others.’ He picked at a loose thread on his cuff, and Kelbee made a mental note to fix it. ‘What did you farm?’

  ‘Father had three fields. For rice. Sometimes he hunted.’

  ‘How many of you?’

  ‘Him, my mother and me. She drowned in a river when I was seven. Then we were alone.’

  He sipped his rakk. ‘Young, to have to see that.’

  ‘It was a hard life. It’s why I didn’t mind him selling me.’

  A look of discomfort passed over his face, perhaps the first time she’d seen it. Guilt? It was hard to decipher. She felt a momentary pang of remorse for causing it.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked, then added, ‘Sir.’

  He waved a hand. ‘You don’t have to call me that. Not here.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  He was quiet for a while; she decided he wasn’t going to answer. When he spoke, his eyes were distant.

  ‘My father was a soldier, just a common private when I was born. It was here, in Karume. I onl
y ever knew buildings and streets before I earned my commission. Sometimes, I wanted to go and live somewhere very like your village. In the green.’

  Kelbee thought of the tiny hamlet, dilapidated by the Death’s storms and sucked dry by penury. Empty eyes, listless days. ‘I don’t think you would have liked it.’

  ‘Perhaps not. You always want what you don’t have. My father was killed by a sniper and I was educated on his death dues. Mother… was not a kind woman, though she made me strong.’

  It was hard to imagine him, Seregad – the name felt so alien – as a child.

  He chuckled softly. ‘I’d hide under the stairs when she had one of her turns, and pretend to be on patrol in enemy territory, like my father.’ The image was so absurd she burst out laughing, then slapped a hand to her mouth.

  He didn’t scowl, as she was expecting, but smiled back. ‘Can you imagine it?’

  ‘I would hide up a tree when Father was drunk. He was very angry with the world.’ This was something else, she thought. It felt like the first time they’d ever talked.

  ‘You look sad,’ he said. ‘Was he cruel?’

  ‘No, I think he was just… lost. Lonely, after Mother passed. Sometimes he could be kind.’

  The Lance Colonel leaned forwards and placed a hand on her knee. It didn’t feel like it normally did, the lead up to him demanding what he wanted. No, it was amiable; comforting, even.

  ‘I’m…’ he paused, unsure, then continued. ‘I’m glad I have you. And the child. The last few weeks… have made me think.’

  She felt herself go cold inside, though she masked it. She knew this was a shatter-point, an instant that, had it occurred six years before, could have led to such a different life. But it hadn’t.

  She held his hand as she lied to him. ‘I’m glad I have you too.’

  He grunted, then drained the last of his rakk. ‘I’m going to bed.’ He rose and made for the bedroom, his step only a little unsteady. Then he held up, remembering something.

  ‘I had the tests back today, about…’ he waved his hand at her. ‘It’s all fine.’

  Her eyes sprang water and she had to force herself to breathe normally. ‘That’s… good news. Thank you.’

  ‘Mmm.’ It was either the drink or the flickering light, but he didn’t seem to have noticed her tension. ‘Goodnight.’

  She heard him pulling off his clothes and collapsing into their bed. He was snoring in minutes while she sat in the silent lounge, listing to the odd ticks and cracks of the building around her. Her cheeks were soaked, her breathing ragged. All fine, he’d said. That had to mean the paternity test as well.

  Either that, or he really is the father.

  She silenced the thought, daring to hope Nebn had come through as he’d promised.

  She sat back and tried to relax, watching the candle flames dance through her closed eyelids. A ghost sensation tickled her, a tiny movement below her navel. Was that a churn she felt, a small vibration inside? Was it just the fluttering of her own heart, bowels, muscles clenching and unclenching? She knew it wasn’t, was certain of it. It was new life, the life she’d made, stretching out to touch the boundaries of its close, warm world.

  It had to have been Nebn. He’d somehow made the danger go away. Maybe now, soon, he could get them out of here.

  A Parting

  First days of the Wake, raw as a blade on his skin. Late snow in the front garden, pockmarked by grass that refuses to die, jabbing upwards towards light and air, unbowed by the Death.

  Ras, come and make the world new again.

  Aime has been a long time at the village – why isn’t she back yet? They’d come so far to meet him here but soon he’ll be gone. She’ll know how to fix this, smooth this, heal this.

  So much anger in this small house. There he is, the boy on the other side of the table, arms crossed over a pressed green tunic. The peaked cap is on the table.

  The peaked cap is on the hook that he whittled from a branch Aime found in the woods behind the house.

  The peaked cap is on the floor where he threw it… Why is Bowden so angry?

  Why do you always get in the way? he asks Bowden’s stern face.

  No, it’s all wrong. He is the other one, the stern one, the still one. But also angry, that the boy has learned nothing, knows nothing. As if all those years, all those warnings meant nothing, nothing, nothing.

  Bread is charring, unattended and alone in the oven. Aime worked so hard, kneading and mixing and shaping it with care and love. Burning now, all burning.

  Hubris brought down the old world. They reached further than they should have and toppled because of it. That is what you’re doing. You dream of uniforms and polished boots on parade grounds, but the truth is mud and blood.

  I’m a man. I decide my fate. Enough of your stories. Now Bowden’s face moves with the words.

  The laugh in his throat is bitter.

  A little red bird lands on the wall outside. It shivers its plumage, making itself fat for a heartbeat, then it is gone again. Red, white. Blood on snow.

  Blood in his heart, veins, eyes, ears; throbbing, pumping. It’s fear, he realises now, not anger. The crash and boom of guns, pitter-patter raindrops of bullets; whump-whump goes the plasma fire, blue death to all it touches. It freezes him even as he burns inside, the memory of a war. No glory there, only death.

  His boy. His boy. Running towards that symphony of pain and murder with a heart full of stories told by other men that drowned out his own.

  I’m a man, he says again.

  You know nothing!

  Bowden is on his feet and words slice the air. Failure, coward. He’d abandoned them. And now there is this little cottage with furniture that barely stands, which he made himself and a young wife in his bed and the past is swept away like crumbs.

  He tries to speak but his voice is choked.

  What good were you ever, old man? Go ahead and rot in your hovel with your new toy. Leave me to my own life.

  He hadn’t said anything then, when it was real and the walls were solid and the smell of the bread burning in the oven matted the air, because there had been too much inside him; fear, rage and foolish, foolish conceit, but now he shouts and screams at Bowden’s back as it recedes through the doorway. He wants to catch him, hold him back with the painful love that stretches his skin to breaking point, grown from a soft flood of memory. Every half-recalled image of a speck that grew into a pink, wrinkled, tiny creature; a fat little thing that tottered on unsteady legs; a child that was inches taller every time he came back from his own wars and met him at the door with a scratched face and worn knees and a smile that was a mirror that stole age and sorrow away in a golden moment; the angry young man that turns his back on him and walks away, he adores with his bones and his breath.

  But his feet are rooted, stuck deep into the ground; his body is fixed in space. Even his voice is stolen away by the thick air.

  Aime will be so disappointed. To come all this way, to make everything right. A peace offering, a greeting, an invitation. There had been so much war; she wanted only peace, for all of them.

  The green uniform is gone now. It marches on parade grounds and embarks ships and accepts the rifle that is given to it, polishing it over and over, ready for the day when it will be tested in fire and anger.

  When it was real, when the oven was extinguished and the black loaves lay on the table like a mockery of their efforts, Aime was there with soft words and softer hands. Her bag of groceries left propped at the door, greens spilling onto the flagstones. There would be another time, she told him, another place for them all to be calm, together. Whole. Her hair had brushed his face and the weave of her clothes had cushioned him, the honey smell of her.

  Not now. Now he is alone in the room with the burned bread and there is no rage any more, just emptiness. It had never happened, he’d never come home. One day, neither did she.

  The peaked cap is in his hands.

  He wants to squeeze it ti
ght, press his face into it, but he doesn’t dare crease it, this last piece of the son he drove away with nothing so base as pride. It smells of his hair.

  His face splits with his howl and everything shatters all at once.

  Bask 59 – 499

  Disaster. They did it, the fools. I have never felt such a bone-crushing rage, for what they did and what it did to him.

  I am writing this on the way back to civilisation in a dilapidated truck – Fermin took the skimmer when he bolted. I have to get back and stop him from releasing his findings – they will come north, and they will destroy the best chance we have for a better world. And I’ll have my due for what that fucker took from me.

  Mason and I woke in our bed around midnight three nights ago. Both of us felt the odd sensation, like the walls were vibrating and the air thrumming. We threw on clothes and sprinted for the funicular – which was at the bottom of the shaft as I’d feared, the seals around the door broken. Waiting for it to rise back up felt like an aeon.

  When we entered the torus, we saw the two morons standing by the central pillar, hand in hand with the others flat against the surface material, like they were performing some manner of damned ritual! The blue haze was thicker than I’d ever seen it and the heat was unbearable, the pressure making my ears pop. The pair were upright but unconscious – I recognised that look on their faces. They were inside the corpus! Neither would be able to call the other back. The Spark was pulsing like a racing heart and had turned a deep magenta. Then the screaming began.

  The male started first, then the female, their mouths hanging slack, an ululating wail that bounced from the walls, though they didn’t let go. I watched, paralysed, as the skin at their temples began to darken, then blister, then fire erupted from their mouths and eye sockets. The Spark made that horrid groaning noise, only this time louder than ever before. Then it uttered two words with dread finality.

  Unsuitable. Purge.

  Before I knew what had happened, Mason had pulled me backwards into the funicular and was slamming the ascent button. The doors began to close just as the temperature spiked. I huddled in the corner as I felt the motors of the car take the strain; the doors were a metre apart, half a metre, a few centimetres, then the gap became a white-hot band as if Ras had fallen on the other side.