Amberlight

by Sylvia Kelso

  So if the enemy wins the quays with hardly a casualty, River Quarter pays dearly for the assault.

  But not dearly enough.

  “Zanza lost all but three guns. Most of the gun-crews. Prathax has run clear to the House. North Quays are lost. Terraqa, Iuras and Winsat had to concede Dead Dyke. They botched the retreat.”

  Dead Dyke gone. Numbed by the blood and uproar and massacre, by the sensation of a cutter-beam slicing human flesh, by the cumulative body-blows of guns, vehicles, people, district, city lost, the thought of Cataract tribesmen in among the Kora refugees hardly touches Tellurith. But the signaler, ice-cool as Averion herself, is going on.

  “Hill-foot is untenable. The enemy is currently massing on the Arcis road. Another force is at work on the pipeline. Terraqa gunners and troublecrew will attack them, assisted by any force available from Hezamin. Keranshah and Vannish will defend Arcis road. Telluir House, if Hafas, Jerish, and Khuss will work with you, establish a perimeter between High and Dragon Spur, using clan houses for cover. Diaman will put gun-sites on Iron Spur to harass the enemy on both sides.”

  If Amberlight’s perimeter has fallen, Averion has not.

  * * * *

  At last the prayed, longed-for, abused creeping light. Colorless illumination of false dawn. Tumult and heart-stopping uproar deny it, the lunatics pillaging their own folk in River Quarter, the groans of wounded around Telluir’s forward post. The nerve-shattering, bloody hubbub, along the southern spur-side, of a disciplined, heavy military assault. Again and again the white lance of Hafas’ guns above them, occasionally turned onto the skirmishes that swirl out of the business quarter onto their own guns. Far more often firing westward, where, the signals tell them, between Iron Spur and Canal Spur Diaman and Vannish and Keranshah are carrying the brunt of the organized assault.

  Time to consider that: the enemy has discarded the rest of Amberlight, open for the taking, to throw his forces up the citadel road. Time to pray, and drink cold coffee, and try to deal with nightmare. Defenses breached. Amberlight betrayed. The city opened like a dropped melon, no hope of concerted resistance or district defense. Amberlight does not have the military might, let alone the numbers, to reverse this.

  Time to think, and curse, and come near hate in wanting vengeance, for a cutter’s apprentice who dies with her cheek on her House-head’s knee, with her last breath murmuring about a partner on the Wasp. To help tie up Zuri, spouting blood from a slashed thigh. To literally burn a raider off Azo, in time to save her more than a rip across the throat. To physically hurl Iatha from a gun-crew and scream, “Get home! Prepare the House!”

  Because it can be only a matter of time before they are fighting behind their own walls.

  And some time in there, amid the red lost memories’ curtains, to wonder if the Coalition general co-ordinates his troops from behind the battle like Averion.

  Or if, somewhere out in that pitch-black morning river, Amberlight’s guns have already had his life.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Broad day on Amberlight, storm-haze brooding in a milky northern sky. Stained by the pillows of sullen smoke from burning shacks, street-blocks, tenements in River Quarter, the black swords that stand above blown light-guns, burnt-out vehicles, that smolder in debris-strewn streets. Wreckage of buildings and humanity beneath.

  Under Telluir House the flood-mark swirls up through the business quarter, smashed windows, burnt-out offices, fallen beams and stones. Stopping short at the verge of Hill-foot road.

  Above it, the old Amberlight lies weirdly intact: the walled demesnes, the flowering gardens and modest towers of Uphill clan and client houses. The whirling mill-vanes, the high block shapes of Khuss and Telluir and Jerish and Hafas House.

  Above that, the citadel gnaws the skyline, still defiantly, vitally flying the crossed thunderbolt standard of Amberlight.

  And between lie the gleaming moat-walls of the qherrique.

  Remember it all, Tellurith warns herself, remember now, for very soon it will be gone. As it is already gone beyond Dragon Spur, where the tide has washed clear up to Zanza and Hezamin, relayed messages from Jura telling of her House walls battered by the riot. From Zanza, since first light, “no report.”

  And northward between Citadel and Pipe Spurs, the valley commanded by Prathax and Terraqa? Or the long hill-face down to Canal Spur, under Iuras and Winsat?

  Worse still, the southern hill-side, where there has just come an awful, ominous pause in the battle tumult. So she wonders leadenly, Has the road fallen? Have they taken Vannish? And Diaman?

  And above all, Keranshah?

  There is a flutter behind her. A mirror flicker. A hoarse sound from the signaler.

  “From Arcis—the enemy wants a truce!”

  * * * *

  “The whore’s get slipped his agitators in with our Navy wounded; that’s why the exchange, no question. And I’ll lay odds they used the River to trade messages when we so kindly opened it.”

  “And River Quarter rose.”

  Zuri’s report draws no orthodox fulminations on lower-class treachery from Damas today. From Averion, soot and blood-smeared, only a steely look.

  “I expected everything from the sod but that.”

  Her party has slid down the hillside from the Arcis gate. She has no intention of meeting the envoys—“Let him go on wondering who I am. He’s already guessed too much.” When she looks out on the combs of bright Dhasdein helmets beginning to penetrate River Quarter, the taut look becomes a glower.

  “How dare he put our city back in order?” Then she cuts the rest off and folds her lips.

  “See what he wants.”

  The general, word comes back, will speak in person with Voices of the Thirteen. Preferably Telluir and Hafas House.

  “Oh, he knows the politics!” Averion bites off the laugh. Gives Tellurith’s arm a little push. “Go on, ’Rith.”

  The center of Hill-foot road feels far too vulnerable, to more than the rumor of distant riot. When the shadow of a carrion bird slides over, Tellurith has ado not to duck. She slits eyes at the military blaze, so unlike their own muslin robes, their vulnerable straw hats. Showing damage in its own way.

  “Tel . . . Tellurith.”

  Doffing the helmet, that leaves a soot-mask over brow and cheek. A pulled look about the mouth, eyes big with ghosts. That persist beyond the soundless, anomalous exhalation of relief.

  And then, more formally, “Ruands.”

  Before he begins to spell out their defeat.

  “Your city’s perimeter has fallen. Order is being restored in the Lower Quarter. Cataract’s troops have withdrawn beyond Dead Dyke. The refugees there will be removed to holding quarters, and we have confiscated their supplies.”

  The eyes hold hers, steady, yet with an undertone of grief.

  “Prathax House has surrendered. Iuras, Winsat, and Terraqa are currently under tight investment by my troops. Hezamin is besieged by River Quarter people. I regret that they have sacked Zanza House.” The eyelids crease. Distress? Pain? “Any survivors will be put in our physicians’ care.”

  Liony of Zanza. A face, a presence, life’s known quantity across a council table. Shot, stabbed, mutilated, raped?

  Quietly, Tellurith says, “And Vannish? Keranshah?”

  A pause. A sigh.

  “Ruands, up to this point we have avoided a sack. We can still avoid it. The rest of the city can be spared. I don’t even ask that you surrender. Just that you come to terms.”

  It is Zhee’s voice that asks, “What terms?”

  “The terms previously offered. In addition, after the—negotiations are completed, Amberlight resumes its freedom. As a sovereign state.”

  Oh, Tellurith thinks, her heart riving. What is crueler than a generous enemy?

  “But,” Zhee, more remote than ever, “the other terms stand.”


  Inside the military panoply, she feels him straighten. Upright, implacable, as a sword unsheathed.

  “The other terms—must—stand.”

  Another endless hiatus. Then Zhee turns slowly on her stick.

  “Grant us two hours’ armistice. We must put this to our clans and clients. To the entire House.”

  * * * *

  “S’hurre, this is now the House’s—this is now the choice before us all. Will we destroy our Houses, and let outsiders at the qherrique? Or will we resist the invader, until we are overthrown? Until we die?”

  Tellurith looks down over the faces of House and client and clan-folk gathered on the perimeter. Iatha and the Craft-heads will be passing the word uphill, in the signal-sites, the lookouts and work-wings of the House. As it will be passing in Khuss and Hafas, and, relayed on through Arcis, among Diaman, Vannish, Keranshah. And perhaps, to Winsat, Iuras and Terraqa.

  In the quiet she adds, loud and clearly, “Whoever wishes to go does so in freedom. The decision is for each alone.”

  Tellurith offers them half a glass to think. When she asks, “How do you vote?” there is a longer pause. Before the movement, slow, inexorable as the partitioning of a watershed; with reluctance, and grim determination, and shame, and regret, and grief.

  Most of the client and clan women will go.

  The House-folk, to a woman, will stay.

  “I’ll die,” says a panel-shaper face to face with her House-head, “before I see my daughter raped.”

  “I’ll die before my husband’s killed!” Behind her, a furious shout.

  “In Zanza,” another cry, “they raped them first!”

  “Called them catamites—eunuchs—bashed them, outside Prathax, while the officers stood and watched!”

  The whole crowd snarls. A babble of lurid stories about the women’s own fate. And then Ahio, thrusting up before them, shaper in hand, diamond stud and scar vivid in the morning light.

  “Telluir’s my House, and Amberlight’s my city, and qherrique’s my life! You’ll see me dead before I let some dangling outland bastard ruin that!”

  In fifteen, twenty minutes, the other votes come in. Most clients and clan folk will go. House-folk, almost unanimously, refuse.

  “Now,” Averion, red-eyed and tight-lipped amid a hugging crowd of signalers, “get them some terms.”

  * * * *

  “We require guarantee of safe-conduct for all departing folk; that they be detained if necessary, but treated honorably, and not harmed.”

  Assandar inclines his head. Behind him, there is a flurry of pen-strokes from the scribe.

  “Both women and men.”

  Some expression crosses his face. There is a bite in the voice.

  “None of my troops will lay hands on any—any more—prisoners. Woman or man. I have dealt with those who did.”

  Decency, and compassion, and clemency. Why, her heart mourns, must I have an honorable enemy?

  “The Thirteen thank you for your offer. For the rest of the House-folk, I say this:

  “‘Amberlight is our city, and qherrique is our life; before we let some outland invader destroy that, we will be dead’.”

  Let my lungs work, she wishes. Let me go on breathing, however it may hurt.

  And pain, too, in that face before her, its soot-darkened features going slowly, unmistakably, grey. Before he bows his head. And faintly, so faintly, she hears his whisper.

  “Oh, Tel . . .”

  * * * *

  A refinement of torture, then, that with nerves strung to die they are allowed to withdraw on the Houses, now the only defensible perimeter, to chew nerves and fingers for the rest of the day. While Dhasdein patrols subdue River Quarter, and troops occupy the intact Uphill streets, whence the prisoners have been duly escorted. And they wait to hear the noise of battle resume behind the spurs, and dwell on their last farewells.

  A fast one, in the end, for which Tellurith now gives paradoxical thanks. A fistful of cameos, incised memory. Damas turning from the parley group, iron-and-tawny brows, square jaw: curt, leaving-council nod. From Ti’e, a grave, silent courtesy. Inscrutable to the end. Averion, a grasp of the arm. A general’s grin. A quick, casual, “Thanks, ’Rith. Good luck.” A last glimpse of the high-nosed profile, then the slim back under the disreputable hat receding, and Tellu­rith mourning: why did we know each other just in time to part?

  Leaving Zhee: hunched on her stick, still inscrutable as a two-legged lizard. A last glimpse, under the thin whitened hair, of the folded mouth, the wrinkle-armored face. Before she says softly, “In the Work-mother’s hand”—prayer, decree, invocation? gives Tellurith the cutter’s salute, and turns away.

  Idle noon has stretched into evening when a signal from Arcis laces the dusk.

  “Conserve water. Pipeline will be cut.”

  “The bastard!” snarls Iatha, hurtling to order every bucket, dish, jar in the over-crowded House filled, and someone to lever the stone-blocks from the ancient courtyard well. With the pipeline cut it is only a matter of time till Arcis’ cistern goes dry.

  “When,” she fumes, on her Head’s balustrade in the grimy, gloomy, lurid yellow sunset, “are they going to start on us?”

  Tellurith shakes her head. Round the hill, the signals tell her, it has already started: attacks pressed on Terraqa, Iuras, Winsat, the latter two stormed, Terraqa set afire. What befell the Heads Arcis does not know. But all too clearly they have seen the casualties as House-folk, in the final pinch, defend wings, rooms, men’s towers with their lives.

  “But they haven’t touched Vannish or Keranshah. Are we too tough for him? What’s the sod trying to do?”

  * * * *

  Midnight informs them. Moon’s dark, lightning’s realm, riven by a furious outburst on the zenith sky. Flares, torches, light-guns, trumpets, war-cries, shouts, screams, pandemonium unleashed.

  A surprise attack on Arcis itself.

  “Got up the pipe-crew’s work track, took the wall with scaling ladders.” The report comes through Hafas House. “Keranshah House-head and folk escaped by the road. Acceptable casualties.”

  Acceptable loss of life, Tellurith thinks savagely, for the loss of communications, co-ordination, high ground and psychic vantage? And with Arcis in his hands, what will occur to Assandar?

  The answer to that appears three interminable days later, when the citadel wall grows, slowly as a cancer, a new silhouette.

  The head of a catapult.

  * * * *

  “Keep all unnecessary traffic from the courtyard. Clear the men’s rooms on the uphill side. Watch the garden gate from the Craft wings.” Tellurith has studied fire-paths and range calculations and the scope of a high-based battery with Averion. “Yes, we’ll have to pass signals through the attics. Yes, the well-traffic is wide open. Yes, Yath, his troops can storm the garden under covering fire, and we can’t do a thing. Do you think it’s different anywhere else?”

  Work-mother help, she prays, the fighters in Vannish and Diaman and Keranshah.

  There are ripostes. Light-gun batteries from Khuss and Hafas posted on the ends of High and Dragon Spur can harass the gunners, if not damage the three catapults, and signalers can pass word as far as Khuss, where Falla is proving an unexpectedly fiery commander, using House guns to rake the troops in Uphill both sides of Dragon Spur. As Telluir and Jerish do in their valley, leaving the catapults to Diaman and Hafas.

  “Whoreson genius,” rages Iatha, squinting out the main courtyard door, past the cover of the men’s tower, up to that ominous linear framework on the citadel’s rim. “He can cover his troops and knock holes in our defense and we can’t get at him. And we’re in perfect range. We can’t get away.”

  The ultimate pincer, Tellurith thinks. Too tired, too wrung now, for rage. Take Arcis, and the rest is only a matter of time.

 
Protracted, agonizing time. With six Houses and half Amber­light taken, with impregnable advantage in land and supplies and time, the enemy delays to haggle with each resisting House. Only after a day’s fruitless argument, says the signal from Diaman, does he finally close the pincers on Vannish.

  “They offered safe conduct if Vannish would surrender, return of the Kora holdings if they would open their mine.” The signaler’s eye glints. “The House-head told them to burn in Dhasdein’s hell.”

  But it is Vannish that burns.

  * * * *

  “Fire-bombs.” Zuri’s profile, worn, sleepless, immobile as rock, staring from an attic window into the black and copper-smeared southern sky. “You can throw them with a catapult.”

  Onto roofs and into windows raked by catapult bolts and stones to repel the fire-fighters. Women, men, children. A House’s population, trapped in a burning house.

  “Troops have attacked the garden with battering rams.”

  A charnel, a holocaust, fighters and the helpless caught between the charge of steel and fire.

  “Troops have penetrated the House.”

  No need to spell out the rest, the chaos of fighting through the power and shaper shops, hand-to-hand, the destruction, the massacre.

  Clear over High and Iron Spur, flaring across the sky, runs one brief searingly white flash.

  * * * *

  “Diaman says the top of the tower blew off. The fighting in the main House stopped almost at once. The Head must have taken the last light-guns up there. And blown them all.”

  Destroying herself, and her doughtiest fighters, and their menfolk. Preserving, beyond violation, the core of the House.

  “Diaman says the enemy has tried to parley with Keranshah.”

  Tellurith almost laughs.