The Weight of the World

by Tom Toner

  “He is Amaranthine?”

  “That was what I thought,” Maneker replied, eyes growing vacant.

  “That was what He told me.”

  Lycaste frowned at the boards beneath his feet, their chipped gold leaf lustrous in the light of the paper lanterns. “And this person on the far shore can help you stop Him?”

  “Yes. Perhaps. Unless the Long-Life’s spies have got to the Oratory first.”

  “You think they have?”

  “These boatmen ferried Amaranthine across not two days ago. But I have something they did not, something they never knew they’d need.”

  “The Incantation.”

  The Amaranthine pursed his mouth thoughtfully. “The Incantation.”

  Lycaste watched him slip into thought, noticing how the Amaranthine stopped blinking when his mind was far away. Behind those eyes, lost in sockets of shade beneath the golden lantern light, he must have gone very far indeed. Lycaste reached slowly for the knapsack, untying the drawstring and dropping in the letter. Looking up, he saw the captain approaching them quickly across the deck.

  “Trouble ahead, Amaranthine,” the captain said quietly, pointing. Maneker snapped from his reverie, standing and staring out into the spotting rain. Lycaste followed their gaze.

  The lights on the water, lights Lycaste had first thought to be coming from the shore, were dimming and dying like a row of candles snuffed, one after another.

  “What’s going on?” Lycaste asked the captain directly, trying out his Unified before he’d had a chance to think it over. “What’s out there?”

  The captain looked at him sharply. Maneker stared at him for a moment, too, smiling grimly. The thunder growled more distantly through the darkness, moving away to the north.

  “We aren’t alone on these seas,” the captain said. He glanced at Maneker. “Tell your little friend he can come out now, Sire. We’ll need all the help we can get.”

  Lycaste went and shook the bag until Huerepo rolled out, fussing and cursing and smoothing his hair. On his nose he wore a tiny pair of glass discs framed with wire. Across the water the sound of something large drew close, filling the darkness with the rolling roar of surf. Lycaste rooted in the knapsack, unable in his haste to find his pistol. He swore, tipping out its contents and sifting through them.

  “There!” he growled, collecting the weapon just as a tarred black hull crunched side-on into the Sloop and knocked him to the deck, the lanterns falling to tinkle around him. The mast split with a popping crack, dumping the sail on top of them as they all slid with the motion of the ship.

  As the juddering roll of the vessel halted, the shouts and curses and screams began.

  Lycaste struggled through red gloom towards where he thought the bow must be, seeing Maneker up ahead still fighting with the sail, trying to stand.

  “Lycaste, drop!” Huerepo screamed behind him, firing a bolt into the sail before he’d had time to turn. A black shape treading across the topside squirmed and fell, cutting off their route to Maneker.

  “Drop, imbecile!”

  This time he did as he was told. Another body fell and rolled, tightening the silk and pinning them down. The thumping vibrations of what must have been people leaping aboard came rippling through the material. Lycaste crawled forward, working his fingers into the hole made by the first bolt until he could tear the fabric open, finally managing to squirm out over the fallen sail.

  He froze, holding his pistol close. The remains of one oar lay shattered against the attacking vessel’s hull, its body still rammed up alongside the Sloop. Scraps of wood connected to ripped tatters of sail slid around Lycaste’s feet with the listing motion of the boat. By the light of one fallen lantern he could see what they were doing.

  Two Firmamental Melius had hold of a person-shaped bulge in the sail and were bent over busily driving their knives into it, scooping clumsily into the figure’s head. Smoke wafted from the holes made by the blades as their victim squirmed beneath them, his gashed head revealed as the sail fell away. Lycaste froze, horrified, then lifted his arm as if possessed and fired blindly in their direction. One of the attackers lost the top of his head, a clean line cut through the brain that welled with blood as he fell forward. The other took one of Huerepo’s bolts in the waist and flew into a rage, trampling over the rest of the figures beneath the sail to get to them. Lycaste shot at him in a panic, only partially finding his target and cutting his body lengthways. The cross section of the Melius fell flapping over the side.

  Lycaste heard the cries of others on the larger ship and grabbed Maneker as he would a baby, making quick soothing noises as he drew him out of the ripped sail. Huerepo scampered alongside, firing deafening shots up into the darkness.

  “Jump!” the little man screamed as he loaded another bolt.

  Lycaste flapped away the sail’s edge with his foot to release the struggling bulges of the crew and went to the bow. Maneker moaned over his shoulder. He could feel the man’s blood trickling down his back.

  “Jump, Lycaste!” Huerepo screamed again, snapping off a few shots as the first returning lumen bolts blazed across the deck towards them.

  “Stupid bloody Melius!” Huerepo howled, rising and shoving Lycaste in the rear. The force of it surprised him and he lost his footing, tumbling overboard with Maneker and into the storm.

  HOMAGE

  It ought to have been far safer to arrive in the Upper First, in the lands that bordered the magnetic pole of the Old World, but that was not the point. A show of devotion was required, a demonstration that every Perennial would risk their lives simply to pay a moment’s homage. But Bilocating from and to places other than poles wasn’t as dangerous, really, as everyone thought.

  Florian Von Schiller watched and waited as more snapped into appearance, a trail of blurred colours resolving into bolder form, wondering who here knew the truth of it and who did not. Each visitor opened his or her eyes with the pain-stricken confusion of a newly born infant, and he saw how they might have been, all those grandiose piles of rubies and fine cloth, at their own births.

  The day of homage went convivially, with ten Satraps present already. They milled and chattered in their slow way, each preparing to enter the banqueting hall adjacent to the chapel to offer their particular Vaulted Land to their new Firmamental Regent. It was Florian Von Schiller’s task to see that His Majesty Sotiris was not overwhelmed, by leading in only a few of the Satraps at a time.

  “Perennial.”

  He focused his absent gaze, taking in the fabulously speckled pink eyes of the Fallopia as they rested upon him. The only Melius allowed in the chapel for the day of homage, the magisterial family ought to have stuck out among the circulating tide of Amaranthine. He smiled, noticing how they had dressed—in great rumpled gowns of Old World silk and garnets—as if they, too, were Immortal, Homo sapiens of old.

  “I hope we aren’t too late,” the boy-king’s mother announced, a carefully upheld humour dancing in her voice. It was, after all, her house the indifferent Satraps occupied, though Von Schiller had not forgotten. He smiled. Immortality was a state of constant sobriety among the inebriated: catering to mortals more out of pity than anything else. He studied the party of Firstlings as they gathered before him; they were an odd grouping, all loosely related in the incestuous way of the First, and Von Schiller tried to decide as he ran his eyes over them which of the various cousins or sisters the king would ultimately choose for his bride. Their clothing was dyed the colours of the Elatine flower, the Festival of Ridicule—organised in haste when it appeared that the Jalan would not reach the First after all—not yet over, and so it was to a great mass of shimmering purple and black that he stepped forward.

  “Lyonothamnus,” he said, his tongue curling around the luxuriant name. “Welcome, Your Enlightenment.”

  A slender creature of seventeen separated from the group, his whitened skin clouding as it coloured from the toes up into the neutral, blotched grey of submission. Von Schiller k
new perfectly well that the ruling class fasted and bleached themselves, and that the great, idiotic irony was that the king’s family were nothing but Secondlings themselves. Florian had seen the Heraldry, noting at once how the family Berenzargol of Elblag held a better claim they could not use, their spendthrift matriarch having been bought off more than a hundred years ago.

  The boy-king nodded, extending his hand eagerly in the Amaranthine clasp. Von Schiller took it with a beaming smile, his fingers enveloped in warmth.

  “This is Sire Vonsiller, first in line,” the king’s mother said, careful not to sink into First. Florian smiled again. They’d met many times, and the Fallopia knew it.

  “His Most Splendid and Venerable Self sees your loyalty and thanks you for it,” he said, theatrically pronouncing his vowels in a language they could barely speak. It was forbidden for a Firstling to use anything other than Unified in the presence of a Perennial. They learned what they could from the three exquisitely expensive scholars provided for them or kept their huge mouths shut.

  “But how are we to be seen, Sire?” the boy asked. “The Emperor, I hear, is resting.”

  Von Schiller pointed conspiratorially through the painted gowns to the great bronze doors. “He views us all, hears our every word, through that keyhole over there. Do you see?”

  The procession nodded and mumbled appreciatively, arranging themselves foolishly for best effect. Florian encouraged them to turn about so that they might show off their finery to the distant hole, wondering if the baiting of Melius could ever grow boring.

  Lyonothamnus knelt in view of the keyhole—Florian suspected there might even be a key still lodged in it—and stood slowly, shooing his party away so that he might talk more privately with Von Schiller. When he spoke, his breath smelled of flesh, and the unguents he used exuded a whiff of high, pungent sweat beneath the drapery, like meat left to warm.

  “You have come from the Greenmoon, Sire?”

  Florian did not hesitate. “Indeed. I live there.”

  Excitement dilated the boy-king’s huge eyes. “You live there? How marvellous! I look up every night with my telescope.”

  “And we look down on you, Your Majesty.”

  The king hesitated.

  “Do not fear,” Florian whispered, drawing close. “We look away, when needs be.”

  Regaining control, Lyonothamnus whispered back, “Would you take me there, one day? I’ve longed to go, ever since I learned the Fir-mamental Secret and the presence of your kind.”

  No king had been taken from the Old World since Dracunctus II had been spirited away by the Zelioceti two hundred and fifty years before. The Prism had hoped for ransom, some supposed, but nobody paid, and the king was never heard from again. Perhaps when the Perennials were gone from here and the Old World turned over, the Prism might well grant Lyonothamnus’s request.

  “One day.” His eyes flicked to the far entrance of the chapel, where those not invited to take part in the homage gathered and waited. Pets, emissaries, fools; Lyonothamnus’s colourful, chaotic entourage swirled and jostled to see the Amaranthine.

  By all accounts, the young king was studious and reasonably bright, progressing well in his studies even as all the countries of the East waged war upon him. Elatine, after winning the Fourth from Zigadenus, had called for the boy to come forward, to offer himself in place of his people. Such a request was a win-win situation for the attacking Lord General, with any dent in the king’s prestige almost outweighing the value of his life. As a substitute, the First had sent various disgraced aristocrats, but this attempt at mollifying the rage of the Oyal-Threheng was beyond feeble. The offered nobles, far from being slain, were awarded lands, estates and armies in the new Threheng Counties—the seized Eastern Provinces that had once been owned by the First—and the king’s image degraded further. Before Elatine’s disappearance at Vilnius Second, the war had been practically won and the six-hundred-year-old Lyono-thamnine Enlightenment ready to fall. Now the First breathed a tentative sigh of relief, clinging to the Amaranthine in the hope that they might stay and keep them safe.

  The boy-king shifted his boot, its studs rasping on the brass floor, and both looked down. He’d trodden on a solidified splash of metal, plastered across the floor like thrown wax. Von Schiller held a finger up before the boy could comment, gesturing to the ceiling.

  Another stuttering kaleidoscope of colour spiralled with a whisper across the chapel, slipping through Perennials as if they were nothing but projections and alighting on the metal floor. The king wrung his hands together as he observed, fascinated, watching the Bilocating Amaranthine grow in cross-sectional slivers until she was whole. It was an unnerving sight, seeing a person’s innards squirm into place before their faces and clothes joined them; one Von Schiller didn’t like to think about when he ever travelled himself. The lady Amaranthine, one Elise, Satrap of Port Elsbet, clasped her long, gloved fingers, that look of agony gone from her face in an instant, and strode out towards her peers.

  “Here he is!”

  “The eternal Sotiris Gianakos!”

  Von Schiller presented them with nothing more than a sweep of his hand, all formality dissolving as Sotiris’s old friends crowded into the banqueting hall.

  His Majesty the Emperor Elect looked up from his documents, his dark hair slightly matted and wild. Von Schiller was gratified to see his blank expression thaw into a wide grin.

  “This is the greatest of days,” the Satrap of Alpho said, striding forward to embrace Sotiris. “Even the weather has warmed for you!”

  “It is a portent,” said Von Schiller matter-of-factly, accompanying the Satrap to the head of the enormous Melius table where Sotiris sat. “Our Emperor has turned back the seasons with his coronation.”

  “Nerida,” Sotiris said after a moment’s stiffness, leaning down from his chair to kiss the Perennial on both cheeks. “I am so glad you could come.”

  “You are glad?” the Satrap said tenderly. “I’ve been waiting centuries for this day. Our own Sotiris taking his rightful place.”

  “And the Satrap Downfield, of Wise,” Florian said gently, presenting another Perennial.

  “Samuel!” Sotiris cried, more speedily this time.

  “Eternal Majesty,” the Satrap said as he sank to one knee, all the gems in his gown flashing. “Words cannot describe this day.”

  Sotiris took Downfield’s hands as the Perennial rose to his feet. “But they can! This day is a meeting of old friends, with no more bowing permitted.”

  The Satrap beamed. “Where is your crown? We must cover that messy hair!”

  Sotiris pointed along the table, past stacks of gilded edicts already signed, at an elaborate white hat like an ancient bishop’s mitre.

  “His Majesty doesn’t like it,” Florian explained, remembering how Sotiris, in a fit of peculiar rage, had thrown it across the chamber. The Perennial sickness had him now, though the Long-Life appeared unconcerned.

  “Yes, it isn’t quite so handsome as the old crown,” Downfield admitted. “Though I remember Sabran rather liked it.”

  Von Schiller moved quickly to change the subject, noticing a look of deep confusion settling over Sotiris’s features. “But isn’t this wonderful, I believe we’re all here!”

  “Vaulted Sirius pledges unconditionally her every possession and material asset, within and without, encompassing the Tethered moons of Palestrina and Rubante, the Estate Planet of Fielem’s Land and all of that volume therein.”

  “Vaulted Elsbet,” another voice said, “pledges unconditionally her every possession and material asset, within and without, encompassing the Tethered moons of Airal, Jothem, Kifer and Kawl, the Free moons of Gimble and Stathe, the Estate Planets of Steerilden’s Land, Julem’s Land, Van-Bergen’s Land, Hume’s Land and all of that volume therein.”

  “And Vaulted Gliese,” Von Schiller began, the last of them, “pledges unconditionally her every possession and material asset, within and without, encompassing the Palace of
the Ascension and the Halls of the Sea, the Uncounted Vaults, the Foundries of the Finer Interior, the Free moons of Great Solob, Pauros, Desiduum . . .” He glanced briefly up at the Satraps sitting behind the long table, hesitating. Sotiris was gazing intently out of the window at the setting sun.

  Florian inspected his gold-painted fingernails, waiting. From a doorway to one side, a dark colonnade stretched away into still shadows, and he felt himself watched.

  Their Emperor remained motionless, as if he’d died in his chair. The Satraps murmured, sipping water, adjusting jewelled sleeves, rummaging in pockets and taking out small books or gazing up at the painted ceiling. The scenes here were not quite as grand as those in the chapel, detailing in a slightly cruder hand the life of old King Ophiopogon I, founder of the Enlightenment.

  Von Schiller looked among them. Twenty-one Satraps present. Two unaccounted for—those of Proximo and Virginis; the latter having run away, perhaps to the Investiture, after the destruction of his dominion earlier in the year. He noted their absence, considering the adequate punishment for missing a compulsory meeting of Satraps and embarrassing their Emperor. He looked at the crown, sitting limp and rumpled like a large folded napkin before him. Downfield was correct; it didn’t have the presence of its ancestor, the Crown of Decadence, out of use now for the last two millennia. Von Schiller had a suspicion the ancient crown had been hidden for safekeeping in the vaults beneath the Sarine Palace itself. He would collar some junior honorific—Holtby, perhaps—and send him down to find it.

  Just then, Florian caught a glint in the far darkness of the colonnade. The unmistakable twinkle of a predator’s eye-shine; he observed, just as he had for so long, unbeknown to them all.

  Sotiris returned his attention to the table a full hour later, casting his wide eyes about the assembled Perennials as if he’d never seen such a ridiculous assortment in all his life.