by Tom Toner
Marshal, you come back to us.
Ghaldezuel felt a jolt of terror. It was the voices of the Spirits.
Does this mean you will hear our terms?
“I haven’t decided yet,” he mouthed beneath the water.
Let us in, that’s all we ask, and then you can go far away from here.
The similarity to the words he’d whispered on the wall the night of the banquet were not lost on him.
We want what you want, you must know that.
“Oh yes? And what is it that I want?”
For the Lacaille to govern the Firmament and Investiture at last; for security and order to prevail. We trust that you—and you alone—will accomplish this for us.
“And?”
We want life again, life and peace.
He considered this, lulled by their voices. They had been right in their predictions that Cunctus could only take this vision so far and was now tearing down what he had helped create by challenging the Lacaille. He had taken Napp for them, as desired, and now a new ruler was needed, one who could pilot the Prism as a whole into a bright, stable future. But something niggled at his mind, still submerged in the water.
“You can see the future, you say. Surely you know whether or not I’ll help you.”
Your choice is still yours, came the reply, clear beneath the surface. With our help, you can stop the Pifoon in the Firmament from activating their Amaranthine weapons. You can protect the one you love. There is no rule that says the Firmament and Investiture must be destroyed.
Time seemed to have wound to a standstill, his lungs closing off, the outside world forgotten. Ghaldezuel’s thoughts turned to Mumpher, somewhere behind, and he pulled his head out, gasping for air.
“All right,” he whispered, wiping his dripping eyes. “I’ll think on it.”
From the window of his convoy he could just see the lagoon from the tops of the cliffs. Shanties rolled past, their chimneys and cooking pots deluging the dirt road with smoke, obscuring the visibility ahead, and Ghaldezuel began to worry that some enterprising soul might try to set up an ambush. He spoke into his radio, sending mercenaries on ahead to secure the road to Thornhill and their route back to Napp.
Soon the woods replaced the view of the lagoon, the sunlight all but obscured by spiked trees bent over the road. Mumpher, sitting up front, pointed for the benefit of his soldiers at something coming up, and Ghaldezuel pushed his face to armoured roller’s window.
Something that looked like a shrunken little Prism person watched them through empty eye sockets by the side of the road. The shrivelled thing turned to observe them pass, then disappeared out of sight.
Ghaldezuel had heard the stories, never expecting to see one this close to Napp. It was called the Whillo-hoopie by locals, and was not, despite appearances, Vulgar at all, but some odd creature that wore the skins of the Vulgar it killed in the hope of attracting similar prey. As far as he’d heard, none had ever been killed or captured before. What they looked like beneath their cloak of skin, nobody knew.
Ghaldezuel sat back in his uncomfortable seat, catching Mumpher’s attention from the front, and averted his eyes.
The Lacaille had so far requisitioned quadrillions of Truppins’ worth of lands, treasures and enemy materiel, taking hundreds of thousands of Vulgar prisoner and putting them to work in the war effort, their progress around the Investiture unstoppable. The Amaranthine, busy with their own problems, appeared to have turned a blind eye, and as such there had been relatively few casualties on the galactic scale, the Lacaille taking what they wanted with such sudden force that the Vulgar hadn’t a hope of opposing them in any meaningful way.
Ghaldezuel, from his desk in Napp’s keep, thought that the Vulgar would most probably benefit from Lacaille annexation. The Vulgar people were less progressive as a whole, their class system atrophied by archaic laws that made women and slaves even less valuable than possessions, and under Lacaille rule would begin to see how individual creativity and ambition were given a freer rein. Nobody, least of all the Lacaille themselves, who had been languishing in debt and Amaranthine sanctions until the year before, had ever thought such a sudden reversal of fortunes possible. For years, the Vulgar had been protected by the Amaranthine, their ships and weaponry subsidised and hired out to the Firmament whenever needed, and despite such a happy turn of events, it was generally thought by most in the Lacaille Empire that the Immortals had lost face, dishonouring themselves by abandoning their allies so comprehensively. The Lacaille were determined to keep the fruits of whatever whimsy had allowed them to advance so far, and were privately resolved never to make a deal with the Amaranthine again if they could help it.
Ghaldezuel read the messages from the Lacaille high command, knowing just how sick the Firmament had become. Riddled with Pifoon parasites and devoid of a sane Emperor, it could only be half a year or so before it fell completely, crashing down under the weight of its own rotten ambition. Cunctus would, by this time next year, almost certainly rule over a volume second in size only to that belonging to the Lacaille. But a year after that, who knew?
Beside the wonky desk lay a stack of some of Andolp’s most interesting treasures. Ghaldezuel had been in the process of rummaging through them, fascinated by the random trinkets the greedy little count had amassed over the years. Andolp appeared to have had a particular passion for very ancient tiles and ceramics—things Ghaldezuel wasn’t even aware the Amaranthine, during their millennia of furious collecting, had ever possessed.
He picked up the topmost parcel, a lovingly wrapped wad of glazed green shards, and unpacked them. An accompanying note, which he had already read, explained that they were said to be not thousands but millions of years old, bought at one of King Paryam’s personal auctions. Ghaldezuel’s fingers brushed the delicate surface of a tile, examining the hair-fine engravings beneath the glaze, trying to sense their age through his fingertips. He would show them to Nazithra, he supposed; she and her . . . friends would know if their provenance were real.
Ghaldezuel looked up now, the sound of scampering boots in the hall reaching him before the sluggish shadow entered the room, and turned in his chair to see the slow-motion approach of a senior Lacaille messenger wearing the short blue and white cloak of the Admiralty.
“What is it?” he asked, pushing aside his late-night dinner, hoping Jathime wouldn’t be disturbed.
“Marshal.” The Lacaille got down on both knees, as was the Admiralty custom. “It is the king.”
Ghaldezuel waited. “What? What about the king?”
The messenger looked flustered, as if he hadn’t thought he’d need to explain. “He has . . . that is, he and the Grand-Tile . . . are lost, at Gliese.”
The Admiralty man let this sink in before adding: “Along with the esteemed knights Fiernel and Pitur.”
“How?” Ghaldezuel asked, his mind racing in the slow air. He didn’t care about Fiernel and Pitur. He knew immediately that the Lacaille Empire would have been divided already between Eoziel’s inbred children, brothers and cousins. The king had one remaining sister, an unwed, ginger-haired creature Ghaldezuel had met when she’d visited Atholcualan, who would become the Investiture’s hottest property soon, when the news had burst its banks.
“He died chasing Immortality,” the Admiralty officer said simply, looking up at him, and Ghaldezuel couldn’t help but agree.
“Not a bad way to go,” he replied. The Lacaille nodded, refused a drink and left, his footsteps dying away before his shadow.
Ghaldezuel sat back in his chair, thinking. Cunctus, he was almost certain, would have tried to break up the Lacaille anyway, somehow, once he had secured enough lands. Now his job would be made that much easier for him as the dozens of children and relatives fought over whatever scraps they could get. Ghaldezuel took a wad of coarse notepaper, flicking back the lid on his scribbler, gaze wandering through the window and out across the moonlit lagoon.
Another set of footsteps brought his attenti
on back to the room.
It was the Threen witch, her helmet put aside. She stood hunched and motionless, watching him from the corner, and once more Ghaldezuel had to avert his eyes.
“Can’t you put some clothes on?” He sighed.
“Why don’t you take yours off?” the witch leered, her tongue worming from between her lips.
“This is a solemn moment,” he said. “But I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
She gazed around the room. “I know all about Eoziel’s fall. They saw it long before he did.”
Ghaldezuel’s gaze strayed to the pieces of tile beside the desk. “Did they?”
“And they see your future, too, Ghaldezuel, if you’d only let them show you.”
He gazed at her for a long time, something in him giving way, relenting. “I think perhaps you should bring them here.”
The witch nodded. “You have made a wise choice.”
He saw more of her face now, as his eyes adjusted to the corner’s darkness. The Threen, beneath bulbous nocturnal eyes and wide, sensitive ears, were afflicted with a gruesome-looking overbite of snaggled, fish-like teeth. One could almost call a Zelioceti beautiful in comparison.
“They will arrive here . . . inside your body?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Isn’t it dangerous?”
Nazithra shrugged. “Not really. I’ve done it many times, sometimes even within these walls.” He stared at her.
Nazithra licked her lips. “Oh, they’ve been here before, Ghaldezuel, with or without your permission.” She hesitated, drawing closer to the light. “You grind your teeth in your sleep, did you know that?”
Call the ship, the small, frightened, helpless part of him insisted. Call the ship now and go. He made himself breathe.
“So why do they need me?” he asked conversationally, trying to conceal his creeping unease. “If they can come here any time they like?”
She placed two sticky fingers on his knee, walking them lasciviously up towards Ghaldezuel’s crotch until he batted them away. “Because only you have seen the Shell’s transmogrification in action, my handsome Ghaldezuel, back on the Old World. Andolp built this place according to the designs, yes, but it is not known how to use them.”
He remembered: the chapel of the First, lit by candlelight, its famous ceiling lost in darkness. Aaron’s gurgling chuckle from the shadows.
The Threen twitched the hem of the curtain that separated Ghaldezuel’s office from the other rooms. “I want to meet your little sweetheart in there. Does she sleep?”
Ghaldezuel examined the slug trail on his leg, made by whatever sticky substance had coated her fingers. “I expect she does, yes—she is unwell.”
A three-fingered hand appeared suddenly at the doorway, pushing the fabric aside, and the witch retreated quickly. Jathime’s face, dim in the glow of the fire, studied her.
Ghaldezuel sat back, cautiously enjoying the stillness of their encounter. Two breeds, separated by who knew how many millennia, now face to face.
“Have you ever met a Bult before?” he asked the Threen softly.
The witch shook her head, frozen.
“You must be careful not to startle them,” he said, a smile forming on his lips as he looked at Jathime’s hungry expression. “They don’t like surprises.”
Nazithra regained her voice at last. “My friends are fascinated by the Bult, you know.” Jathime was looking at her now the way a hound gazed at someone else’s dinner. “They have some role, you see, far down the road.”
HAUBERTH
Ghaldezuel returned from the throng of Napp’s petitioners, finding his doors open. Another message, in the form of a helmet radio delivered by courier, from Cunctus, who was supposed to be on his way back.
“Marshal,” came the Melius’s scratchy voice, the hollow sound of the wind thrumming in the background. “I’ve changed my mind.”
Ghaldezuel closed his eyes, sitting heavily in his chair. So Cunctus would be pushing his luck after all.
“Keep the fires stoked while I’m away, and whatever you do, don’t let that Mirror out of your sight. Hugs and kisses! I’ll see you soon, when Filgurbirund is ours.”
Ghaldezuel had noticed a wooden box waiting for him in the hall, going to it now and kicking open its lid with his boot. Two of the dukes’ heads peered up at him like giant, rotten mushrooms, both quite violently decomposed. He closed the box carefully and pushed it over to the door. That he hadn’t caught a whiff of its contents until then spoke volumes about the stink of the city coming through the window. He supposed Jathime would like them, if she ever got used to the motion sickness of this slow place.
Cunctus had managed to claim some of the victory at Moso for himself, and now sixty thousand troops were at his command: a gypsy army of Vulgar crossbreeds sufficiently unhappy with their present rulers to take a wage from the highest bidder. The yellow flag of Cunctus now flew throughout Drolgins and Filgurbirund’s smaller moons, Nirlume and Glost, competing directly with the banners of the Lacaille for space and attention.
But Ghaldezuel knew Cunctus would never stop there. He was going to use the Wilhelmina to send a message to that snake Lazan, against all advice from those around him. At Filgurbirund, the giant planet where all their fates would be decided, a far superior battle fleet of ten thousand Lacaille ships and nine hundred thousand troops waited, clearing out the last of its crude orbital stations—hundreds of tin cities hanging in the mesosphere like lumpen, glittering clouds—and dogfighting with the last of the ragtag Vulgar jets: by the day’s end, all the skies of Filgurbirund would be in their hands.
The Amaranthine ship dropped silently towards the great globe of Filgurbirund. Specks of the Lacaille battle fleet, massed and twinkling just across the planet’s electric-blue horizon, began frantically signalling it, without effect.
“Let them see what it’s like to be ignored,” snarled Cunctus.
They passed through the thick atmosphere, repelling a sudden pulse of Vulgar ground fire like so many thrown stones. The Lacaille presence on the surface were still engaged in shoring up their supply routes from the local Voidport at Phittsh, and the Wilhelmina skated far overhead, reaching the vast capital of Hauberth a few minutes later completely alone. Turrets and small anti-aircraft fire opened up across the city, a shabby Vulgar carrier painted in the bright colours of King Wilemo loosing a stream of pulsing lumen beams in Cunctus’s direction. The Amaranthine ship’s outer fuselage repelled every bolt and beam instantaneously, sending them back on the precise trajectory from which they’d arrived, and the Vulgar carrier burst into bright, violent flame, falling towards the city and ditching in its central river.
Cunctus used the ship’s shortwave Bilocation to snap Scallywag and himself, his Zelio battletanks and a squadron of Vulgar mercenaries down to the Shantylands a mile below, cackling wildly as the ship moved slowly on overhead, pummelling the city with reflected ordnance. He looked into the skies beyond, spotting Lacaille jets tearing along the horizon, and radioed the ship. “Shoot the Lacaille down if they come any closer. This is our victory.”
The Shantylands appeared to exist in their own local gloom, the smoke of their cookpots, chimneys and the occasional simple generator blotting out much of the sunlight. Cunctus’s soldiers moved swiftly through the dwellings, setting up fizz cannons at the grubby intersections and kicking down doors, finding their way up to the rooftops for vantage. Scallywag drifted a few feet off the ground, Cunctus seated rod-straight on his back, the column of trundling Zelio vehicles bringing up the rear. This was a procession, after all, Cunctus thought; no harm could befall him with the massive bulk of the Decadence ship floating overhead, and the shanty dwellers either cheered his name or hitched up their pants and scuttled back indoors. His might was plain for all to see. Ahead lay Filgurbirund’s northern capital, still held by the Steward Lofer, son of the imprisoned King Wilemo. Cunctus would be sending that fellow back to Ghaldezuel’s wall of shame alive and wriggling.
The Amaranthine ship stationed itself above Hauberth. Cunctus knew enough about skycharges to understand that he wouldn’t see the bomb as it fell—it was Amaranthine technology and did not exist except as a suggestion, a spark of alchemy that turned all the air around it into blazing, scouring steam. He marvelled at the thought as he rode on through the shanty, wondering if the thing had fallen yet, the crackle and burble of his helmet informing him his troops were all in position.
Just as he reached to pat Scallywag, a searing, dazzling flash flickered at the corner of his eye and Cunctus brought his head up to see the city disappear beneath a blanket of rolling, flickering mist. Whoops of delight squealed tinnily through his helmet as he gripped the reins, staggered at the sight of district after district falling under the wall of heated air: Cunctus knew that nothing could survive in that seven-thousand-degree steam, rapidly cooling as it made its way into the outskirts of the Shantylands. The first breath of it, cooled now to a humid mist, was already ruffling the ribbons on Scallywag’s pommel, coiling and breezing all around them until Cunctus could barely see more than a few feet into the gloom.
The Grand Bank, buried half a mile beneath the city’s foundations, should not have been harmed, though the skycharge ought to have effectively sealed off its entrances. Cunctus watched as, precisely to plan, a beam of pale lightning shot from the shadows above, angling through the steam and into the western district of the city, opening up a glowing route down to the buried horde of Vulgar gold. The Wilhelmina’s shadowy bulk lowered, flickering another beam from its nose, and Cunctus signalled for his forces to advance.
Immediately, the first flashes of Lacaille counterfire from the surrounding hills exploded across the sky, clawed puffs of black smoke and red flashes aimed at the Decadence ship. Idiots, Cunctus thought, his old heart leaping with joy, watching the ship bat them out of the sky with a flicker of its own subcutaneously invisible weaponry. His tin-armoured troops, nothing but glimmering suggestions in the brown-grey gloaming, surged around him, a dark tank growling past.