The Weight of the World

by Tom Toner

  As they rode level with the figures, Lycaste saw in the artificial evening light that they were Melius like himself. The workers paid him little attention, their sluggish, uninterested gazes alighting briefly on Huerepo, still seated upon Lycaste’s shoulders, before moving on. At the sight of Maneker, however, they paused and doffed their wide hats.

  The Amaranthine had ridden a little behind, consulting some signs at the edge of the road. Now, as he clopped his ferdie forward, he spoke to the plantation workers in a clear voice. Huerepo leaned close to whisper translations into Lycaste’s ear, even though he’d begun to find them slightly redundant.

  “Is your master at home?”

  The nearest of the pickers hesitated, perhaps a little put off by the sight of the rags that Maneker still wore. “The Satrap is in attendance, Sire.”

  Maneker gestured impatiently. “Go and fetch him, then.”

  The picker appeared to think about this for a moment, worry crossing her face. Then she hitched up her trailing shawl and padded barefoot onto the road, skipping where it was still hot from a full day’s sun. At the sight of her, two children came running out from the bushes and sprinted off towards the palace. She turned expectantly to Maneker, beckoning them all to follow.

  Maneker twisted in his saddle to look at Lycaste and Huerepo, his eyes sharp. “Don’t speak to anyone. Follow me and keep quiet.”

  Together they trotted after the Melius picker, taking in the miles of plantation around them. The bushes buzzed with cottony white moths that floated sleepily from leaf to leaf, the two ferdies snorting as some rose to flutter at their ears and noses. Lycaste waved them away, one of the moths catching softly in his hand, pacing along his palm and over to his knuckles. He noticed that, like the bees, it was heavily ornamented with a jacket of silk and miniature stones. All along its tufted wings there glittered golden flecks and spots of lapis, a milky emerald the size of a grapeseed complementing each wing tip. He considered catching the clumsy, weighted-down insect for Huerepo, who still hadn’t appeared to notice the riches that busily floated among them, but let it go on its way.

  Some distance from the road, Lycaste could see thick wooden poles, about twenty in all, rising from the bushes. With a start he realised there were people hanging upside down from them, their heads brushing the plants.

  “Are they dead?” he blurted. The woman turned briefly at the sound of his voice.

  Maneker glanced off towards the poles, remaining silent, perhaps noticing as the closest hanging Melius turned his head in their direction. His skin had been painted with something thick and shiny, like brown oil or tar. Lycaste remembered Impatiens’s awful tales of Provincial schooling, where as punishment children were cloaked in fabric so that nobody could see their colours.

  A squeal of delight from Huerepo snapped Lycaste’s thoughts away. The Vulgar passed him down a crushed moth, patting his shoulder as he caught another. Lycaste dutifully pocketed them, hoping the Satrap wouldn’t mind.

  “Aceris moths,” Maneker said without turning, as if reading Lycaste’s mind. “These are silk plantations.”

  At a junction in the silver road, the woman inexplicably picked up her pace, clasping her children’s hands and running ahead. Maneker did not urge his ferdie any faster at the sight of her disappearing up the road and so they clopped the last of the way alone, observed by other silent pickers from the edges of the groves.

  Once inside the enormous formal gardens, Maneker hopped from his mount, leading it to a sculpted holly tree with blunted, age-worn leaves. Lycaste trotted along behind, tying his own ferdie to a lower branch and stretching his back. He looked around at the gardens while Huerepo rummaged in the saddlebags, observing arches that led darkly into inner, more private courtyards within the palace’s quarter-mile-long facade.

  Maneker swigged from his bottle, calm as he waited, apparently, for any sign that their picker would return.

  “Old World silk,” Huerepo said softly from atop the ferdie, munching on something stale from the packs and taking in the sights. “Might buy someone a Province, all of this.”

  “It already has,” Maneker said beside them, leaning against his own mount and spitting into the grass.

  Lycaste and Huerepo looked at him, then back at the ornamented grandeur of the palace before them. Every inch of its colossal bulk appeared to have been worked upon in some exquisite way, garlanded with rococo florets, scrollwork and sculpted acanthus all painted with a chipped veneer of ancient gold leaf. Over the arches, scenes played out in polished green marble inlaid with more gold, the shadowy interiors between the pillars dripping with gilded chandeliers. Tawny columns a hundred feet high led their eyes to the upper floors, where balconies fit for banquets looked out over the silk fields, and then further to the dome as it brooded marvellously, cast like the green shadow of the sun across the sky. Only a mouldy and weather-beaten white marquee erected flush against the balustrades of the lower balconies looked unworthy of the place, the remains of some heady celebration long since over still festering within. Barring this imperfection of piled bones and wilted flowers, the sight was everything Lycaste had hoped it would be, the imagined opulence of his old doll’s house made real. Just standing before it, he felt his nagging fear of Maneker beginning to diminish— someone who owned such a place would surely outrank the sour-faced Amaranthine, or at least have the authority to suggest that Lycaste and Huerepo be taken home in safety at the first opportunity.

  He thought of his old friend Impatiens, picturing the astonishment on the man’s face when he returned to them brimming with extraordinary tales. Perhaps Pentas would be there, though for some reason he thought it unlikely. He could not see them meeting, could not imagine what he would say to her, if he even said anything at all. They had both wronged each other to some degree, though he knew he was a fool to think she’d committed the greater crime, and there was nothing now between them, no friendship that could ever be rekindled even once the gulf of light-years was removed. He supposed he hoped now that he would simply never see her again; at least that way his old life could safely be forgotten and a new one made in its place.

  “Here comes someone,” Huerepo said, swinging carefully down from the ferdie’s spotted rump and giving it a friendly pat.

  Squinting into the gloom beneath the arches, Lycaste thought he could make out the shape of a wide person hurrying between the pillars. He straightened as the figure emerged into the light.

  Lycaste didn’t think he’d ever seen such a corpulent, sweaty specimen of a Melius in all his life. The man approached them at a breathless jog, perspiration reflecting brilliantly from his blotchy brow and beading on the tips of his waxed moustaches. In his fists he clasped swatches of striped material, and a mighty paunch strained inside his exquisite black waistcoat. Lycaste glimpsed Huerepo studying the half-dozen silver, scarlet-stoned rings squeezed onto the man’s fingers and almost smiled. The fat Melius—a butler or something similar, he guessed—was much like those who had accompanied them here, Lycaste thought; a family of men similar but not quite the same as Thirdlings and Secon-dlings, generally smaller and more finely boned than himself, though that was hard to see in this specimen.

  The butler arrived before Maneker and checked his posture, his hands furiously kneading the swatches of material.

  “Gentlesire. The afternoon’s greetings. We’d have been gratified to receive advance notice,” the butler said in the noises of Unified. “If you would follow me.”

  At the Amaranthine’s gesture, he made an about-turn and headed for the arch at a gentler pace, checking every now and then to see that they were following. He ushered them into the shadows, shooting Lycaste and Huerepo the briefest of distasteful glances, and through to the inner courtyards.

  Sensing the impatience of their guide, Lycaste strove to keep at Maneker’s heel as he caught glimpses of the opulence beyond the open basilica. He formed the impression they might be interrupting something important, or would be if they didn’t hur
ry. Huerepo, somewhere behind, grumbled as he scuttled, his little legs tapping a staccato of frustration on the tiles. Above them, painted frescoes arched dimly across the vaulted ceilings, scenes of incomprehensible Amaranthine magnificence.

  Sunlight broke through the last of the arches as they arrived in the courtyard, the unlit chandelier at its mouth twinkling glassily above. Their sweaty escort had ventured from the middle of the lawn to the edge of a squat fountain and was bending in a grotesquely elaborate curtsy to a small Amaranthine clothed only in a nightshirt of torn, patterned linen. Lycaste straightened, blinking, aware that the picture of this man in his mind’s eye had been very, very wrong. The Immortal cradled a pear-shaped stringed instrument—what looked to Lycaste like a Hioul, from home—in his bony hands, and had been plucking something reasonably jolly until the interruption. The Satrap listened to his butler, casting foxy, shrewd glances in his new guests’ direction, and put his instrument to one side. Lycaste couldn’t help noticing the visible erection the Amaranthine sported beneath his nightshirt as he stood and turned to them, as well as the dozens of retainers and servants who lingered around the edges of the courtyard.

  “Satrap Cirillo Vincenti,” Maneker said, his voice taking on a lighter, friendlier intonation that Lycaste hadn’t heard before. “A pleasure.”

  “Introductions, Higginbottom?” the Satrap grumbled, hitching up his nightshirt until its hem was perilously close to the bulge at his groin and tottering towards them.

  The butler stammered, looking to the new arrivals. “I’m afraid I—”

  “Hugo,” Maneker said, striding forward with his hand outstretched.

  Vincenti clasped the offered hand weakly and peered at Lycaste. “What a beauty, to be sure, but I will not have nude Scatalogicus here, Perennial.” He swivelled back to Higginbottom. “Take him to the fitting room with Dung and Hardship.” The Satrap returned his attention to Maneker. “Hugo,” he said, thoughtfully. “Hugo Maneker. I was not expecting someone so senior within the Devout.”

  Lycaste strained to listen to the gist of their conversation as the butler swept past, hurrying him on.

  “They send their most singular and sincere thanks,” Maneker replied. “His Imperial Majesty will honour you above all others for your support.”

  “Scatalogicus!” Higginbottom snapped, turning and beckoning Lycaste to heel. Maneker and the Satrap twisted briefly to look before resuming their conversation. Huerepo met Lycaste’s eye with something like sympathy, glancing away.

  Lycaste glowered at Maneker and squared his shoulders, tears stinging his eyes. The butler tapped his feet, fussing with a button on his sleeve. So this is how it will be. Lycaste supposed he couldn’t have asked for anything more. Huerepo was right; it was Sotiris who had sent him here—Sotiris who had used Lycaste’s life for his own gain, stopping only long enough to repair him so he could be whisked back into service. Here, flung who knew how far from home, they were no more Manek-er’s responsibility than a fly trapped behind a windowpane. He glanced back at Higginbottom and nodded, noting the expression of relief on the Melius’s big, sweaty face.

  The butler scuttled up a huge flight of steps, ducking beneath a hanging shred of torn linen into a chamber stuffed with padded, silk-upholstered chairs. Folds and swatches of patterned material lay scattered everywhere, a twinkling assortment of pins and clasps all over the rugs ready to impale Lycaste’s bare feet. Two young, skinny Melius— presumably the poor masters Dung and Hardship—were skulking in one corner. At the sound of Higginbottom storming in, they abruptly halted their conversation, sheepishly gathering up some of the cloth at their feet.

  “You’re not even dressed!” Higginbottom cried, outrage darkening his colouration. “What have you been doing all this time?”

  Lycaste went to a window as Higginbottom ripped off his coat and threw it over a chair, gathering up swatches and holding them against each young Melius with a look of feverish panic.

  “You haven’t tried anything!” he screeched, scooping up an embroidered long-tailed jacket and showing them the sleeves. “The pins are still in these! No no no no no no no,” Higginbottom muttered, fretting at the jacket and finally throwing it at the Melius to his left. “Unpick that and put it on!” He yanked another jacket from the pile, pulling the tail to admire it briefly before tossing it to the other Melius. “This one. I’ll do the inexpressibles.”

  Lycaste moved out of the way as the butler shoved past, watching the other two shrugging on their garments. He chewed a fingernail absently. Noticing that nobody appeared particularly interested in him, he stepped back and quietly left the room.

  His disappointment was almost physical, a solid, dull ache in the stem of his throat that he remembered well from youth. Of course the Satrap was nothing like he’d hoped—nothing, and nobody, ever was. Lycaste rounded a corner, his hand running desultorily over the bald scalp of a marble bust, and came to a window that looked down into one of the courtyards. It was filled with assorted statues and sculptures swaddled in artful folds of carved drapery, many of them blackened by soot and grime.

  He would make his own way from here. Perhaps Huerepo would be allowed to stay, though something in Vincenti’s demeanour suggested otherwise. Lycaste pulled the Amaranthine pistol from his bandolier to examine it again, brushing his thumb along its milky, scratched exterior. It was like a single lump of semi-precious stone, a polished crystal pebble of a weapon sleeker than anything he’d ever seen, let alone held. He wondered at its worth—or rather how much it might be valued back home; he might not need to detour and dig up all that silk after all.

  He continued on through the palace, conscious of that dreadful butler perhaps already on his tail, and considered how terrified he might have been in this same situation barely a year earlier. This Lycaste, fast approaching his fifty-second birthday, a Firmamental pistol clutched in his not entirely inexperienced hand, was extremely capable of shooting any man who presumed to bar his way back home. He’d come too far and lost too much to care anything now for consequences, and knew how easy it was to take a life. He thought of the people he’d killed as he made his way through the palace, faces never far from his thoughts. When he was home again, this half-year nightmare concluded, he would allow himself to feel better.

  Passing some huge storerooms, he found an immense larder stocked to the ceiling; bottles and barrels and jars almost large enough for Lycaste to hide inside, all arranged on magisterial shelves of maroon rosewood that encircled the chamber up to its decorated cornices. He stopped to examine the place, pulling cork stoppers from jars and sniffing their contents—cured meats and pastries and dried fruits much like those he remembered from home—and scooped what he could with a ladle into a cloth sack he’d found by the door, nibbling a pastry. At the bottom of one of the barrels he spotted some porcine lumps that looked suspiciously like ears and noses, some with thick, curled yellow hairs still protruding from them. Lycaste gulped down the last of the pastry and closed the barrel with mild disgust. Sweating, he hoisted the sack over his shoulder, noting how the evening sun—not setting but narrowing, a band of black working its way across the face—reddened the deep shade of the wooden shelves and that of his own skin.

  He went to the pantry window, observing that the twinkling battle, at one point so bright that it had blurred the sun’s outline earlier in the day, appeared to have ended. He’d seen the Prisms’s greed, not least in that little man Huerepo, and couldn’t imagine the victors would be content for long. Smoke like crumpled satin drifted almost motionlessly from one of the sun’s vast buttresses, fanning into a mist of thick coils when it reached a zone around the star and appearing to drop back to the world like falling soot, the light glowing amber through the curling brown cloud. He thought about what Huerepo had told him, that six of the Vaulted Satrapies contained a vast mounted candle at their centre instead of a sun, for reasons now lost to history. He imagined it, a naked flame a hundred miles high, burning black soot at its ruddy tip. They even us
ed wax, Huerepo claimed.

  He left the pantry, the pistol, sufficiently heavy to feel dangerous, gripped in his free hand. The halls of the palace glowed the colour of the false sun, the reflected light of Lycaste’s skin bouncing crimson down the corridor. Beside a pair of tall, flung-open doors, a Melius wearing stained pantaloons worked quietly at some plaster, spooning the wet paste onto his trowel and applying it with hushed care. He didn’t look up as Lycaste stepped past, absorbed for who knew how long in work that Lycaste couldn’t imagine the Satrap ever noticing. The stillness in the air brought out a ringing in Lycaste’s ears as he watched the man carefully scraping at his task, eyes fixed on the veins of a sculpted leaf, his mind far away.

  Through the open doors, he found a ballroom draped with more linen sheets, its size hard to judge thanks to the washing lines of fabric that stirred in the breeze from the open windows. Lycaste continued on through another tall door that swung open and shut in the hot evening air to the balconies beyond.

  He came out into the shadow of the dome, starting a little when he saw the drop beneath the stone balustrade to the plantations below. The view swept out beyond the fields to the forests they’d emerged from earlier that afternoon, and on to where the land began to curve massively upwards to join the rest of the world. Beneath a fluttering awning along the balcony there were some wooden chairs upholstered with jaunty cloth, their frames angled for sunbathing. Lycaste went and sat, digging a hand into his supplies and eating while he looked out over the sea of silk bushes. Pickers worried distantly at the netting, or sat and fanned themselves with their hats, apparently quite at ease with their work. He considered how lucky he’d been to escape a life such as this, following the progress of a moth as it fluttered aimlessly in the air before the balcony, thinking on what he could do next.