Theatre of the Gods

by M. Suddain

  ‘The power business. You sell units of electrical energy to people in exchange for paper money?’

  ‘Not electricity. I sell real power: I sell influence, persuasion, authority.’ He offered his hand to his guest but the brand-new man ignored it.

  ‘Ah, you sell the invisible. That I understand.’

  ‘I make power visible. I can quantify it, store it, sell it as a real commodity. Before breakfast I brokered a meeting between one of the richest young industrialists in the Empire, and one of the most beautiful young socialites. He is eighteen. She is twelve. But together, one day, they will work for us. They will be unstoppable. I know this because I have the oracle. I can chart the course of probability and know which seeds will fruit.’

  ‘And don’t forget who showed you how to build that oracle.’

  ‘We never would. My group is honoured to serve Calligulus.’

  ‘Your group? Ah yes, the Thorn Table. You mighty captains of industry and influence.’ There was a note of sarcasm in his voice.

  ‘I am just a small player in the group. But I have the pleasure of speaking for them, and of being their eyes and ears. With your master’s help we can become even greater.’

  ‘That very much depends upon you.’ The monk stopped to rest again on the base of a statue of a muscular god holding a globe on the tip of his finger. The monk gazed up from below, breathing heavily. ‘What of the recent problems our master has asked you to solve: the Vengeance, the royal traitors, the mystical Fabrigas? What says your new oracle about that?’

  ‘That they are manageable. I have dispatched Albert to oblivion, I have sent a horde of assassins after the girl, and there is a battle fleet waiting to crush the magical mystic at Akropolis. Our master’s wishes will be fulfilled.’

  ‘I certainly hope so. Because a battle fought across dimensions cannot be won. It becomes a cascade of cosmic chaos, of agencies killing double agents before they were born, of armies massing at the sites of future battles. The war must be fought in this universe alone. That is why Master Calligulus has issued you these death orders. One old fool, and a small girl – his enemy’s daughter. So simple. Which is why we are surprised that you have not yet been able to conclude the matter. What is this liquid oozing from me?’

  ‘It is sweat. It is designed to cool the body during exertion.’

  ‘How very elegant. I do not think I will ever get used to this form. My master wishes only that your Empire conquers all others. It is his defining goal: that it grows in power as he does. He cannot yet involve himself directly from the outer worlds. This is why he has bestowed the gift of flesh on me – as painful and profoundly unpleasant as it is – and why he has lavished unfathomable gifts upon you: the gift of alchemy; the gift of dark-space travel; the new oracle.’

  ‘I know all this.’

  ‘It is worth restating all that he has done for you by bestowing upon your Empire the Thousand Gifts. Only the Xo can match your power. But not for long. The secrets he has shown you have allowed you to build an irrepressible empire. When the Great War comes you will crush your enemies.’

  ‘Right now we would settle for enough power to grind our coffee in the morning.’

  ‘You lack faith?’

  ‘No. But without energy we cannot raise our armies, we cannot expand, we cannot run the engines which keep our spheres aligned.’

  ‘Energy cannot be conjured from nowhere. That is one law of physics he cannot help you circumvent. What he will do for you in the future, though, will make these shortages seem irrelevant.

  Calligulus offers nothing less than the conquest of reality. And what does he ask in return?’

  ‘That we stick to the Master Plan.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘That we kill the girl.’

  ‘… And?’

  ‘That we destroy the wizard, destroy his engine.’

  ‘Exactly. Are you aware of the magnitude of the cruelty our master is capable of applying to servants who fail him?’

  ‘I do not believe myself a servant.’

  ‘You do not?’

  ‘No. I believe myself an accomplice.’

  ‘An accomplice!’

  ‘Please, do not shout. There are servants of mine close enough to hear.’

  ‘You are an accomplice to him as the raindrop is an accomplice to the storm. But I will be sure to pass on your views when next I channel him.’

  The monk moved off to stand in the shimmering shadow of a golden giant holding a lightning storm of glowing neon vapour tubes in his clenched fist and exclaimed, ‘Marvellous. Is there anything you people cannot do?’

  ‘I would prefer you did not pass on my views.’

  ‘You would? But surely, frank views shared between … accomplices … are the foundation of any grand partnership.’

  ‘Again, I would prefer, on reflection, that you did not convey these matters.’

  ‘Then beg me.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Beg me that I do not pass on to the master what you have said.’

  ‘I do not understand.’

  ‘Yes you do. You are one of the most powerful men in this universe. You have no doubt seen begging in your time. At least enough to be familiar with the concept.’

  ‘I have never begged a thing.’

  ‘But now you must.’

  ‘… I beg, Lord Bosch, that you do not relate this part of the conversation to our master.’

  ‘Good. Good. I think we have an understanding. Is there anything else I should know about while we are alone? Any other pressing matters? I hear word of a burnout in one of the Sentinel hubs.’

  ‘It is … fully contained.’

  ‘It is?’

  ‘Yes. We have complete information integrity.’

  ‘I hope so. For your sake. And now I will retire to my quarters. I have been on these legs but a few hours, but all I want to do is lie down. How strange. Perhaps, when my body is not jelly, I will finally try this … What is the term you use? Intercourse? For now, I bid you well.’

  ‘I will have the boy turn down your bed.’

  ‘Thank you. I am grateful for your hospitality.’ A glance up to the imperious eyes above. ‘You have a beautiful vessel. You should be very proud.’

  Once Lord Bosch had made his way slowly from the room on spasmous legs the Man in the Shadows finally had a moment to take the new messages from his pocket and read them. The message in the canister from the oracle read:

  Wizard has Vengeance, has Router, has the wind behind him.

  The second message, in its plain envelope, was equally succinct:

  I have failed. The wizard lives and goes beyond. No safe corner now. Goodbye. Mattlocke.

  I am Calligulus,

  Creator of empires,

  Destroyer of worlds,

  From the cave of forgotten souls, to the furnace of the suns,

  my name is spoken.

  Who can know my power and my mercy?

  Who can know the fury of my vengeance?

  None but the insolent, the feeble, the damned.

  I am death from above,

  And vengeance from below,

  And from behind you when you least expect it.

  I feast upon the flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains,

  And the flesh of mighty men, and the flesh of horsies,

  And of them that sit upon the horsies,

  And the flesh of all men, both free and bound, both small and great.

  Mostly small.

  Fear me, and give glory to me! For the hour of His judgement is come.

  And worship me that made the universe, and the soils, and the seas,

  and the fountains of waters, and the creatures, and the horsies,

  And the men who ride upon them.

  I am Calligulus.

  Word.

  THREE SISTERS

  Midnight in the palace of the Queen.

  ‘Things have spun out of control, sisters. Our master has asked simple t
hings from us.’ The Man in the Shadows had docked the Titanrod near the Royal Palace, and while his guest from the Empyrean was sleeping he had summoned the three sisters. ‘Kill an old man; kill a small girl. One senile fool and a tiny girl alone in a terrible universe.’

  ‘Oh, but we will crush her,’ a sister spoke, in a voice like sewing needles running over tin. ‘We’ll find that mouse.’

  ‘We’ll crush her tiny body.’

  ‘We’ll hang her by the tail.’

  ‘We’ll put her mousy head upon a spike.’

  ‘Then eat it like a pickle.’

  ‘Sister, how very gross.’

  ‘I do apologise.’

  ‘The wizard’s fleet is destroyed, sir. We signed the order to give you ships. You loaded the wizard’s boats with exploding booze.’

  ‘Already people are talking about the Vangardik attack, sir. Our younger sister will be embarrassed into abdicating. Plan UWX is one step closer. The people want blood.’

  ‘So simple.’

  ‘So elegant.’

  ‘Not simple or elegant, sisters. Mattlocke failed. The wizard escaped. His ship was not destroyed with the others. The Necronaut’s flight box was ejected and recovered. It tells us he crossed over.’

  ‘Foul news.’

  ‘Indeed. And if he survived he will surely have observed that these were not Vangardik ships, that they were our own ships in disguise.’

  ‘Sweet merciful wounds.’

  ‘It gets worse, sisters,’ said the Man.

  ‘Worse?!’

  ‘Yes, sisters, and please don’t shout. I would not like to raise Lord Bosch. The wizard is not alone. My sources say that the Vengeance did indeed reach the ship and now travels by his side. They are like a happy family.’

  ‘Sweet mercies!’

  ‘The Ministry of Secrets’ Occult Activities Division reports that he painted dark symbols on his ship to attract her. He clearly plans to use her as part of his plot to foil our Master Plan.’

  ‘Outrageous! Dark plans are our domain!’

  ‘It gets worse, sisters.’

  ‘Worse!’

  ‘How could it get worse?’

  ‘This is the greatest amount of bad news that could possibly be presented to a group of people on one occasion.’

  ‘Not so. I mentioned how a file with sensitive information regarding our pact with Calligulus has leaked.’

  ‘Noooooooooo! Do not say it.’

  ‘It’s all in the file, sisters: our plot for universal domination; the secrets Calligulus has shared with us.’

  ‘Stop hurting us!’

  ‘Our intelligence tells us that the file has materialised aboard the Necronaut.’

  ‘Dear Lord!’

  ‘The Lord can’t help you, sisters. Not if Calligulus finds out about this file. One of his messengers is sleeping just a few rooms away.’

  ‘Let us murder him!’

  ‘Sisters, let’s not lose our heads. As you know I sent a group of bounty hunters to tidy up – six of the best.’

  ‘This is good.’

  ‘Bounty hunters are good.’

  ‘Tell us they are brutal.’

  ‘They are clean and brutal. But we need more insurance, sisters. We must fire our big guns at this problem.’

  ‘What do you mean? Send the Black Watch?’

  ‘Bigger.’

  ‘… The Armagedix Homing Virus?’

  ‘Bigger.’

  ‘Surely we don’t need to involve the Postal Service in this.’

  ‘Even bigger than them, sisters.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘This young duke is right,’ said sister two. ‘Only the Pope can help us now.’

  ‘Precisely, sisters,’ said the Man in the Shadows. ‘If we can convince the Pope to embark upon a crusade he can kill these traitors, burn the ship, dispose of our spy, destroy the file, there’ll be no evidence, no recriminations, even Calligulus won’t know. We will be quieter than a mouse. Then he will finally give us the tools we need to proceed to end-game. We can smash the Wall, defeat the Vangardiks, crush the Concordat. Even the Xo will not oppose us.’

  ‘It is too much, sir!’

  ‘It is like sending the Hammer of the Gods to kill an ant.’

  ‘A god-hammer is what’s needed here, Sisters of Mercy. Calligulus has declared that his enemy’s daughter must never reach maturity. I have seen what our Dark Lord can do to those who disappoint him. The Pope is the only way. The Fleet of the Nine Churches will crush the Vengeance.’

  ‘But the Pope does not believe in other universes.’

  ‘Then we will convince him. More importantly, we’ll have to convince the Queen to turn the fires of heaven on her beloved wizard.’

  ‘Sir, you leave that to us.’

  MISFORTUNE’S QUEEN

  They called her ‘Misfortune’s Queen’. Misfortune for the age she was born into: a time of war, famine, shortages and more war. Misfortune to be born into a profoundly ruthless family whose jealousy and cruelty seemed limitless, whose passion for betrayal and violence was bountiful and brutal. Parents who would brutalise their children for sport; siblings who would throw one another on the fires of hell if it meant being a foot closer to heaven. Oh, Misfortune’s Queen, to be born into such a family, at such an age in history, and with neither brains nor looks to help you.

  But Misfortune’s Queen was built of stuff from which few are made. She did what she could with her looks – and by that I mean she declared herself a perpetual virgin: ‘The Impenetrable Princess’. The only man who was ever allowed access to her private quarters was her underwit, Barrio, whom she had rescued from the Slaughter of the Fools when she was five, who had the intellect of a toddler, and who had hardly left her side since.

  And in place of a brain she fostered a simple kind of political ruthlessness, the kind employed by young women in school corridors: with cold cunning hidden behind a veil of feigned innocence she was able to play the runt and turn her siblings on each other. She took everything fate threw at her: the shortages, the Great Depression, the threat of UWX. She was Misfortune’s Queen, but she still had her throne. And she had one last friend: Barrio. And she had her ‘sisters’. She kept her triplet cousins close, knowing that they could never steal her throne. She gently tamed their mercilessness. She let them know her plans, and let them sign executive orders on her behalf. She let them call her ‘sister’, though to hear them say it, in their voices like a warm snake running over ice, terrified her.

  ‘Sister.’

  ‘Sister.’

  ‘Sister.’

  Echoes in the chamber of the Queen. Whispering voices, a clacking clock, an envelope of light unfolds across a marble floor. Three figures penetrate the sanctum, the phantoms float through the gloom; three pale faces lean in close.

  ‘Sister.’

  Words a violet hisssssssss.

  ‘Sister. We came when you called.’

  ‘We always do.’

  ‘We’re here for you, sister.’

  ‘We’re always here in the night.’

  ‘Don’t fear, sister.’

  Words a phlegmy rattle. Towards her bed they come, three sisters with black nails on fingers pale and bony, they comb their way through tangled orange loops of hair saying, ‘Sister.’

  ‘Sister.’

  ‘Siiiiiiiiister.’

  Finding the base of the skull they scratch gently at the brittle skin. They run those delicate bewitching fingers to her cheek and tap lightly with the tip of a nail upon her eyelid.

  ‘Sister, don’t dream of that foul wizard tonight.’

  ‘No, don’t dream of him.’

  ‘Dream of us instead.’

  Their voices are like a thousand beetles dying in a marble bath. The Queen’s head lolls upon the royal pillow; she cries out in her sleep, the warble of a forgotten lamb.

  ‘There, there.’

  ‘Things always seem bleak before the daylight.’

  ‘People are talking. Saying bl
ack things.’

  ‘They say you had the Devil Girl and lost her.’

  ‘They say you sent the wizard to his death.’

  ‘But he is not dead.’

  ‘Oh no. We know he is alive. He stole the Vengeance.’

  ‘Naaaaaoooooohhhhhhhh!’ The Queen rolls and sinks oily teeth into her pillow. The clock’s dread bell springs the hour, its chimes shimmer off the marble.

  ‘There, there.’

  ‘Our spy tells all.’

  ‘We know he betrayed you.’

  ‘Traitor.’

  ‘Traitor.’

  ‘But still they blame you.’

  ‘They say you let our enemies burn our precious lovely ships.’

  ‘They say you aren’t the Queen you used to be.’

  ‘They say, they say, they say.’

  The Queen moans, heaves, her pale brow gleams in the half-light, the silvery hands caress her feverish brow.

  ‘There, there.’

  ‘We’re here for you.’

  ‘We won’t abandon you.’

  ‘We’ll fight to the end for you.’

  ‘We’ll hide you when they come for you.’

  ‘We’ll hide you and we’ll say, “We know not where!”’

  ‘We won’t let them do to you the things they did to poor old Beatrix.’

  ‘Come now.’

  ‘All is fine.’

  ‘All is fixed and fair and fine.’

  With their voice like scalding gusts of steam.

  With their voices like dry sticks burning in a kettle.

  With their voices like a silk shroud dragging over bushes.

  ‘Our fleet will crush the Vangardiks and take their lands.’

  ‘Our Pope will put to death the heathen girl and all her traitor friends.’

  ‘Your people will say you’re a good, good Queen.’

  ‘Not a sickly wet and weary fish-hag.’

  ‘Not a weak and feeble Queen.’

  ‘… My little Blackberry. Why did she leave me?’

  ‘There, there.’

  ‘It is not the time for tears and regret.’

  ‘Now is not the time for weakness.’

  ‘Now is the time for blood and action.’

  ‘Now is the time to punish traitors.’

  ‘No mercy.’

  ‘No mercy.’

  ‘We’ll always protect you.’