Daughter of Independence

by Simon Brown

  The creature leaped forward, too fast for the man to pull away, and closed his jaws around a scrawny neck. The man went down, air and blood hissing from the wound in his throat, dead before he realised what had happened. The creature took another bite, shearing the head right off, overcome with an even greater urgency than hunger, something so overpowering it did not notice the metal head of the rake or the metal clips on the shed rail or the metal buckle on the man’s belt all fiercely glow blue as if lit from some internal light.

  *

  The first thing that struck Gos Linsedd about the town of Sayenna was how . . . well . . . quaint it looked. From his vantage point atop the low ridge to the town’s northwest, it reminded him of the frescoes and paintings of fishing villages and trading ports he had seen in the houses of the Kevlerens back in Omeralt, the capital of the Hamilayan empire: quaint settlements that basked under a gentle sun.

  Gos hated quaint, and immediately decided that he hated Sayenna. Even the small keep that looked over the town seemed more decorative than useful, and houses and streets were spread around it like a pretty tablecloth. The buildings were almost all whitewashed, their roofs made from red and yellow tiles. A large dock, comprising warehouses and a single jetty that jutted out into an azure harbour, lined the foreshore.

  Its only defence, that Gos could see, was a single group of infantry armed with firegons who even now were struggling to form a line between the ridge and Sayenna. They looked bedraggled and frightened, and only half of them were dressed in anything that could have been described as a uniform.

  Gos turned to Velan and asked, ‘Where are its walls?’

  Velan’s expression looked puzzled for a moment, then he smiled with sudden understanding. ‘You expected something like Kydan.’

  Gos nodded. ‘I thought Sayenna was Kydan’s great rival in the New Land. I was expecting fortifications, military docks, barracks. Instead, I see a town that looks better suited to host Kevlerens and their families escaping from the heat of an Omeralt summer.’ He waved at the straggly line of defenders. ‘And a score or so of amateur warriors.’

  ‘We took our best with us to attack Kydan,’ Velan said defensively. Gos appeared decidedly unimpressed. Velan cleared his throat and hurried on. ‘And until your people arrived in Kydan, Sayenna really had no need for defences. And now. . .’

  ‘And now it’s too late,’ Gos grunted, and turned to his ensign. ‘Order the infantry to form a line abreast across this ridge, their right flank anchored here. The dragoons can form up behind me.’ The ensign nodded and left to give the orders.

  ‘You will not need to assault Sayenna,’ Velan said. ‘The town will offer no resistance once I explain the situation to its people. Indeed, in a sense I am its captain now that Numoya Kevleren is dead and Quenion Axkevleren is still in Kydan.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Gos said.

  ‘I proved myself with Orin of the Two Rivers,’ Velan said reasonably.

  ‘Well, you’re about to prove yourself again. And remember, you are Sayenna’s captain only for as long as it takes you to tell its people that I am now in charge.’

  ‘And what will you do with Sayenna then?’

  ‘I have my orders from the Council of Kydan.’

  ‘Which instruct you to do what?’

  ‘To secure Sayenna. To make it safe from any fresh incursion from Rivald. To make sure its people acquiesce to Kydan.’

  ‘Acquiesce? What exactly does that mean?’

  ‘Sayenna must do what it is told.’

  ‘Ah. As Kydan became a colony of the Hamilayan empire, Sayenna is to become a colony of Kydan in turn.’

  ‘Kydan is no one’s colony!’ Gos said fiercely. ‘Kydan is its own city.’

  ‘Will Sayenna one day be allowed to be its own city again?’

  ‘You forget, Velan, it has never been its own city. It was ruled by Rivald, then by Numoya Kevleren.’

  ‘And now by Kydan. For how long, I wonder?’

  ‘For as long as the council wishes,’ Gos said firmly. ‘Shall we go?’

  ‘We?’

  ‘You and me, together, to secure the town. The soldiers can wait here for the moment. There is no need to startle the natives.’

  Velan said with feigned surprise, ‘I think, perhaps, you may be learning to trust me.’

  Gos grunted and prodded his horse into movement. It did not take long for the two officers to descend the gentle ridge, and he was bemused to see the defending infantry actually retreat before them. Velan had to call out for them to hold their ground just so he and Gos could get close enough to talk. When they recognised Velan they stopped, gratefully lowered their weapons and waited to see what would happen next.

  And that is that, Gos thought to himself as Velan went on to talk to them. Sayenna is taken without a single shot. He told himself he was glad no one else need die, but part of him regretted the lack of any climax at the end of their long journey from Kydan. He had been working himself up in expectation of some action, some release of tension.

  So, peace at last in the New Land, he thought. He gazed out disinterestedly over Sayenna and its harbour, then turned in the saddle to look back up at his troops still waiting on the ridge. What use for them now?

  Indeed, he wondered, what need would the New Land have for someone like himself in the future? And then he remembered the slumbering empire across the Deepening Sea and felt foolish for even asking the question.

  1

  ‘They’ll be out of work soon,’ Warden Kadburn Axkevleren said to no one in particular.

  Strategos Galys Valera followed his gaze and looked down on Karhay, the northernmost of the three delta islands that made up the city of Kydan. From their vantage point in the Citadel they could see Hamilayan colonists building cottages, laying down bluestone for a road, and finishing a stoutly built wall that surrounded two-thirds of the island. Land that only a year ago had been reserved for grazing cattle and sheep was now a new settlement, an extension of the original Kydan that would shelter and protect all the colonists from Hamilay.

  No, Galys told herself. Not colonists. Not any more. We are all Kydans now. Our citizenship has been paid for with blood. We have twice defended this city from attack and earned the right to call it our home.

  And Kadburn was right. The newcomers were almost finished with building homes and streets and drains. What to do with them next? Some had already gone on to other occupations, mainly farming the new fields established on the north shore of the Frey River, but the majority had no trade to move into, no business to take up or resume. At least, not yet.

  ‘Unless something’s done,’ Kadburn said, ‘we’ll have several hundred jobless workers on our hands. I wish I knew what Maddyn had planned to do with them all.’

  Galys said nothing. She did not know for sure what the late Prince Maddyn Kevleren had planned for the colonists he had led to the New Land, for he had died untimely and had not confided in anyone, not even Kadburn who had been his closest companion, his Beloved. But she could make some guesses from the tradespeople he had enlisted for the expedition as to what industries he had intended to establish. Furthermore, she was not without ideas of her own, ideas she did not want to discuss with anyone before she had raised them with Kydan’s prefect, Poloma Malvara, since they would affect all Kydans, not just the recent arrivals from Hamilay.

  She looked from Karhay to Herris, the middle island and the one the Citadel dominated from the high ground in the east. Here, too, was bustling activity. Farmers worked their plots in the Saddle beneath the Long Bridge, ploughing the soil and redigging irrigation channels. On the main street south of the Saddle were dozens of stalls, with weavers and potters and bakers and metalsmiths all calling out for attention and hawking their wares to passers-by. The street was filled with carters wheeling goods and supplies to stalls and private houses. The Kydans themselves dressed in bright colours, and from the heights of the Citadel reminded Galys of a flock of exotic birds. The new settlers from Hamilay mostly st
ill dressed in their old plain woollen breeches and tunics, making them look mundane and ordinary compared to the city’s original inhabitants.

  Galys did not let her gaze settle, though, and moved on to the third and most southerly of the delta islands. Kayned had never been properly settled by the Kydans: it was hard, uneven ground, covered in heavy scrub for most of its length and mangrove swamp at its western end. It was visited only by those brave enough to risk crocodile and sea snake to set traps for crayfish and prawns, or to cast nets for the small fish that darted in between weedy banks or the slimy roots of the mangroves. But as far as Galys was concerned, the fact that Kayned was uninhabited and uncultivated was a point in its favour, for if Poloma agreed to back her ideas for the city’s future it would become the centre of an entirely new industry, one never seen before in the New Land.

  She was distracted by the sound of steel clashing against steel in the Citadel’s courtyard below, and glanced down to see one of the militia companies training with swords. Native and newcomer together, working side by side for the common good. They seemed proud to be wearing the new uniform in the old-world style, with the gold from the old Hamilayan uniform mixed with the vibrant red that so many Kydans used in their own clothing.

  And they were busy working side by side elsewhere, Galys knew. The military engineers that Maddyn had brought with him from Hamilay were diversifying, becoming civil engineers in charge of projects building roads and new irrigation channels, supervising construction teams of old and new Kydans.

  ‘The city does have a future,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, aye,’ Kadburn agreed automatically. ‘They work together well, native and colonist.’

  ‘We are a people now,’ Ensign Lannel Thorey said with absolute sincerity, his accent making the Hamilayan words sound strangely singsong. ‘Not native and colonist no more.’

  Kadburn looked askance at the ensign, but Galys noticed that Lannel did not seem to notice, or ignored the slight entirely. She understood Kadburn’s suspicion, but she herself no longer had any doubt about the man’s loyalty to the cause of a unified Kydan, not after fighting by his side to save the city. Kadburn might never forget that Lannel had once killed one of the colonists and subsequently tried to murder Poloma Malvara, but that had happened when the city was divided between itself. The magnanimity shown Lannel by the colonists after his arrest, partly because Lannel had not intended to kill his victim, had gone a long way to healing the breach and allowing Kydan successfully to defend itself against Numoya Kevleren and his invading army.

  Galys looked meaningfully at Kadburn; the Beloved took the hint and nodded stiffly. ‘You are right. Ensign,’ he said. ‘We are one people now. And not native and colonist any more.’

  ‘Yes, that is what I say,’ Lannel said, his expression slightly puzzled as if he did not understand why Kadburn felt the need to repeat what had already been stated.

  *

  Arden carried a yoke in each hand, and at the end of each yoke was a full water bucket. Other water carriers moving up and down the newly completed road to the river, each burdened with a single yoke across their shoulders, enviously glanced sideways at him, wishing his strength was theirs. He did not seem to notice them, however; his brow was furrowed and his gaze directed to the ground in front of him. When he reached his destination he stood as solid as a statue while the buckets were lifted off the yokes and their water carefully poured into wide-mouthed cement barrels, each laboriously turned by a gang of five. Other workers were taking ready cement and adding it to the framework for storehouses and a new mill in preparation for the first harvest of wheat already planted on the north shore of the Frey. When the four water buckets were empty they were hung again from the yoke, and Arden turned to head back down to the river.

  ‘What, not even a hello?’

  Arden stopped and turned to face the short, determined-looking woman who had talked to him. She was leaning against a shovel. Her bare feet and hands were spotted with dry cement, and her normally brown hair was powdery grey with dust.

  ‘Hello,’ he said dourly.

  Heriot Fleetwood offered a quick smile. ‘Something on your mind, Grim Arden?’

  ‘Not particularly.’

  ‘It’s just that your forehead was so wrinkled I thought you must have been thinking about death, destruction, the end of days. That sort of thing.’

  Arden considered her words then shook his head.

  ‘Well, I’ve been thinking,’ she said.

  ‘That’s your job as . . . how does it go?. . . Adviser on Unity to the Prefect of the Council of Kydan. Not to mention your job as head of the Colonists’ Guild.’

  ‘The Colonists’ Guild is exactly what I’ve been thinking about. It’s an issue we talked about before, if only briefly; but you agreed with me then: it’s time to dissolve it.’

  Arden again took time to consider her words, and then as before shook his head. ‘I don’t agree. I have changed my mind. We’re vulnerable here, so far from our first home. The Kydans don’t completely accept us yet. Not all of them, at any rate.’

  ‘We are Kydans,’ Heriot said seriously. ‘We’ve talked about this before too, Arden. If we don’t believe we belong here, then no one else will. From this point on, as far as I’m concerned, the Colonists’ Guild is finished.’

  Arden readjusted the two yokes in his giant fists. ‘I’ve work to do. We both have.’

  ‘We’ll talk about this another time, then,’ she said.

  ‘I could have told you that,’ Arden said as he stomped off.

  *

  For a moment it was as if his mother had not died. Poloma Malvara was sitting in his home’s main room, a large space with corridors leading from it to the rest of the house, together with many of his supporters on the council. As prefect he was supposed to be above the day-to-day politics of the council, but over time idealism had given way to pragmatism, and the prefect had increasingly become more of a prime minister, the leader of the council’s largest faction. They had been discussing routine business, and Poloma found himself wondering what Sorkro was doing. Was she in the garden? In the kitchen with Hattie, the household’s chief servant, planning the day’s meals?

  ‘We can rearrange the agenda,’ one of the councillors said in a slightly grating voice, as if he was talking around a mouthful of coins.

  Poloma felt the skin on his face and hands tighten first, as if his body realised the truth before his mind. Sorkro was dead. Had been dead for several tendays. He could not remember exactly how long. So much had happened. He wished she could have lived long enough to touch Numoya Kevleren’s dead body. It would have given her great satisfaction to know that the man who had been indirectly responsible for the deaths of so many of her family had himself now been slain. He glanced around the room, trying to catch her ghost; listened for the sound of her light, shuffling footfall.

  ‘Prefect? Are you all right?’

  Poloma nodded vaguely. ‘Go on. I’m listening.’

  Although he could hear servants working around the house, and was surrounded by his fellow councillors, he was suddenly alone, isolated from the rest of the world. His body became heavy with grief, felt as if it would never move again. He saw with unexpected detail a spider working in one corner of the room, up high.

  There were no other Malvaras in the whole world. He was the last, and with every breath he took his line came closer to its end. Before her death, Sorkro had blurted out her fear that he would die without children, and her family would disappear from the earth. It was not that he did not want to have children, but that the events of the last few years had overwhelmed him. He smiled tightly at his self-importance. The truth was, the events of the last few years had overwhelmed most of the civilised world.

  Sorkro had wanted her son to marry Galys Valera after her first partner, Kitayra Albyn, had been killed. Sorkro had thought it a good match, and had been impressed by the strategos from their first meeting. Poloma had been intrigued by the idea, but was n
ot convinced of his own feelings towards Galys, let alone her feelings towards him. They liked and respected each other, of that he was certain, but he felt no great physical attraction to her, and was not sure she felt any attraction to him, or to any man for that matter. Of course, physical attraction was not the ultimate point of marriage . . .

  ‘But it helps,’ he murmured.

  ‘Exactly my point,’ a councillor said. ‘And if the prefect himself agrees to moving the expenditure item further down the agenda, I don’t see how there can be much more to discuss.’

  And then there was Heriot Fleetwood. His smile eased at the thought of the small, courageous Hamilayan colonist who had come so far from when they had first met in Omeralt. It seemed like centuries ago, but could not have been much more than a year. There was something about her face, and the way she lifted her chin when talking, and the way she peered intently into the middle distance when walking, as if deep, deep in thought, and the way she cared for other people . . . it all appealed to Poloma at a physical and emotional level. Heriot would make a good wife, he was sure. He was less sure, however, of her feelings towards him. And then, of course, there was the giant Arden. What kind of relationship did Arden and Heriot share?

  He told himself to stop: there was nothing to be gained by thinking along these lines. If he really wanted to know, he should just ask Heriot . . .

  ‘And then the issue of which colonists to place on the council,’ said the councillor with the grating voice. His name, Poloma remembered, was Rodan Semjal. From an old family which traditionally had little political ambition but lots of money. After Maira Sygni and his fellow plutocrats had been expelled from Kydan, or killed, the city had urgently needed a new set of councillors. Semjal had been one of those hurriedly promoted to fill a vacancy.