by Tom Toner
“. . . The Tethered moons of Elebastial, Ophos, Magior . . .” Florian continued, returning smoothly to the inventory in his head.
“When you have all you’ve ever wanted, there is such a fear of change,” Sotiris suddenly interjected. He pushed a hand through his wild hair and rubbed his eyes. “I’m so very sorry, Lycaste. I shall go to bed now.”
Florian continued speaking, raising a finger as the muttering among the Satraps increased. When he had finished the oaths of fealty, he pointed to the fabric crown in the centre of the table. “Vyazemsky,” he said, noticing Sotiris already stepping down from his chair. “If you would.”
“Certainly,” the fat Perennial said happily, fetching the crown and making his way towards Sotiris. “Majesty, I hereby—”
“No!” Sotiris cried, batting the hat away in wide-eyed horror. It fell to the floor accompanied by muted gasps from some of the Satraps.
“Get it and put it on him,” Von Schiller muttered, busying himself with the collection of the piles of edicts and bulls before they could be pushed over and mixed up. A mystified Firstling took them from him.
“Majesty,” Vyazemsky whined, tottering after Sotiris with the crown in his hand. “It only need be on your head for a moment.”
“I’m going to bed!” Sotiris roared, flailing his arms and pushing past him. “I have business to attend to!” The still uncrowned Emperor threw open the door and leapt into the hallway. Florian cursed and grabbed the crown, following him out.
“Highness.” He sighed, stalking after him through the painted halls. “You may sleep after this one little act.”
Sotiris ignored him, making for the great entrance to the chapel. Florian knew it was empty, cleared specially for the Satraps to take out their telescopes and appreciate the ceiling, but quickened his pace.
Beneath the vast painted dome the new Emperor staggered, almost tripping, only running again when he saw Von Schiller close behind. Florian heard the click-clack of unseen claws following parallel through the shadows, stalking, watching.
“Think of your sister!” Florian hissed. “Iro needs you now!”
Sotiris turned, staring blankly back into Florian’s eyes.
They both registered the sound of the claws slowing, and Sotiris’s expression appeared to clear.
“Go and get her,” Florian said, soothing, “and then take up your rightful place.”
MIDNIGHT
Calm, after the storm. Half-empty glasses stood on every conceivable surface, their used waters cloudy. Florian sat on one of the still-intact cathedra, contemplating the shattered pieces of its neighbour. They’d spilled in a fan shape across the floor, remaining untouched at his decree.
Night drew in, the pink air beyond the window warbling with half-spoken birdsong. Flies danced in the air, attracted to the smells and industries of the palace.
“He’s coming,” the Fallopia said, standing at the window.
Florian’s eyes rose to the king’s mother. He admired the boldness with which she spoke to him. Unlike her son she wore Shamefashions at all times, not just in the presence of the Amaranthine, and this evening had chosen a rumpled apricot gown that spilled across the floor behind her. Florian, in a moment of blissful forgetfulness, thought she looked beautiful.
A knock, and someone entered, walking quickly across the chapel floor. He thought he’d seen this man before—the tall Secondling was one of Filago’s generals, Florian seemed to remember, who had disgraced himself by abandoning his territory in the face of Elatine’s legions.
The general arrived before them, a broad smile in a bearded face, and it was clear at once that the Melius had taken something, a narcotic of some kind.
“Tribulus,” the Fallopia said, taking the general’s hand. “Are you ready?”
He began manically kissing her fingers. “Oh yes.”
Florian indicated the door, not waiting for homage. He wanted it over and done with.
The Fallopia nodded, a jewelled brooch catching a slant of light, and pulled her hand away. Tribulus sniggered, swallowing, and passed without further prompting into the boy-king’s former apartments. Flo-rian watched as dimness swallowed him.
The king’s mother went immediately to the crack in the great doors and peered through. Florian stood, stepping over her gown, and made his way out.
“Florian.”
Von Schiller stirred in his grand bed, the whisper almost beyond hearing. He looked out at the green moonlight that fell through the windows, remembering slowly where he was.
He followed the voice to the black mouth of the tall chapel doors. Peering through them, the great painted ceiling was lost in shadow, nothing but ink-black space above him. The smell of wax hung in the dark air, the ghostly remnant of spent flames. Deeper, his outstretched hand encountering nothing in the dim, green-tinted shadows, and he was within the private royal apartments. Something growled in the darkness and was hushed. There were others here, awake or dozing.
He followed the moonlight.
Sotiris’s face, the nostrils flaring lightly with every breath, looked milky-green, decomposed. Von Schiller gazed down at the sleeping form, his eyes adjusting.
Poor Sotiris. The first of a new kind of ruler, determined not by age but merit, and yet not long for this world. Who could say, once he had gone, that there would be any more? Florian truthfully had no idea. That imbecile Sabran was finished, ruling nothing more than the barren ranges of his unhollowed worlds, and that was for the good. Now there could be no impediment; every edict Sotiris signed would pass unopposed, even by the moderate Satraps of Vaulted Ectries and Tamilo who had fought the reopening of the Foundries in the capital.
He swallowed, his mouth dry. It was hard to believe the structured simplicity with which the Long-Life had taken control of so enormous a volume of space, and Florian wondered, not for the first time, whether a less brutal method might have been possible—whether Aaron might have got what he wanted simply by asking. As things stood, at least seven of the twenty-three Vaulted Lands were already looted, their Immortal masters slain in creatively horrific ways. The Vulgar-Lacaille War blazed on a hundred fronts. Looking at his sleeping Emperor, Von Schiller saw now that the Amaranthine would fall much sooner, and much harder, than expected.
He started, a sharp intake of breath. Two glimmering green marbles were watching him from the shadows beside the bed. The reflected points of light blinked and breaths approached him in the shadows, the light of the window blotted. Florian felt for a moment as if he’d fallen into a tiger’s cage.
“How will the Firmament be governed now?” he asked, voice hushed, knowing full well that Sotiris would not wake to any sound.
The darkness chuckled. “Do you fear the Prism? What they will do to you?”
Florian hesitated. “Yes.”
“Our friends are thinly spread,” Aaron said. “Between here and my goal there lies nothing but greed. The Prism can be used as an obstacle only for so long, before someone among my enemies manages to mobilise them.”
“Impossible, I believe,” Florian said, careful to lend a smile to his voice.
“Not impossible, Florian. Not impossible at all. Indeed, I would do the same, given more time.” The creature exhaled; a thin, whistling sound. “But I have gone from having nothing but time to no time at all, and there is only one last force I can buy before I leave.”
“Who?”
“There stands a prison somewhere on a little Tethered moon—you know the one. I will give its occupants what they need to guarantee my escape.”
Florian did know the one. Every Amaranthine did. He envisaged the place as he had last seen it, a dangling spike of dusky red brick deep within a snow-veiled valley. “He would be as good a choice as any, Sire.”
“You agree?”
“Though I don’t envy whoever’s landed with the task of persuading him.”
“I’ve known a thousand men like him,” Aaron muttered. “He won’t refuse what I offer.”
; “The Apostate isn’t like other men,” Florian said under his breath. “There has never been a criminal like him.”
“Well, then,” Aaron replied sourly, reflective eyes turned to him, “I shan’t be sending you.”
“Name my trial—please,” Florian said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Give me a task to demonstrate my loyalty, so that I may accompany you from here.”
The breaths moved to the curtains, which opened wider until the full green moon was entirely visible. The creature began to dress. Flo-rian watched it from the corner of his eye, a pale, skeletal presence in the moonlight.
“You will sit a while?”
Florian looked up at the voice, drawn in by the lure of the thing’s plaintive, almost piteous tone. The Long-Life had clothed the scars of his body in a bespoke suit of Amaranthine finery, gossamer-thin around the sleeves and collar. It pulled on a pair of gloves and looked at him, eyes glowing with crescents of moonlight.
“The year grows late, and for once I feel it.”
Aaron indicated another chair beside his own and they sat together in the dimness. He wrapped his claws around the domed silver lid of a dish, removing it to expose a large haunch of something gleaming and cold, soused in what appeared to be Bulberry wine.
Florian looked at it, understanding that he’d seen its owner, the disgraced General Tribulus, barely a few hours before. The dark sauce was laced with a complex stew of probiotics, a teeming serum drawn from the bellies of Firstling aristocrats desperate to be of service in some way. It was hoped by many of the Perennials that sprinkling the Long-Life’s meals with modern bacteria would imbue the rotten, ice-burned cadaver’s intestinal flora with some kind of protection from disease, perhaps even one on a par with that of a Melius. So far, after almost seven days of mortality, the experiment appeared to be holding up. The Amaranthines’ efforts, however imperfect, would simply have to do for the time being, at least until the Long-Life had access to the Collection, as he would soon.
Von Schiller couldn’t envisage what physical law would allow the spirit to leave now, when he had been unable to before. His soul appeared unchanged, simply rehoused, and if anything his situation looked vastly more precarious. Florian was not about to ask; a mind did not spend eight hundred thousand centuries dreaming up careful plans only for them to be so flawed. Or so one hoped.
Aaron picked up a fork and stabbed at the haunch, turning it to reveal previous teeth marks. Von Schiller reached out to help him, selecting the cleanest plate and watching as the Long-Life deposited a lump of cold meat upon it. As he did so, a piece of his own sagging skin detached and plopped into the meal. Florian stared at the strip of seventy-nine-million-year-old flesh lying on the plate, gradually darkening as it absorbed the sauce mixture, and kept his hand steady.
At length, after chewing and swallowing with pained slowness, the Caudipteryx appeared to remember Von Schiller’s presence. “Very well. You have your chance.”
The ladle in Von Schiller’s hand dipped as he spooned more of the Bulberry sauce, almost spilling it. “Anything.”
He climbed to the ramparts, the entire Sarine City revealed below in a chalky maze of streets and rooftops, hazed by a rising cloud of perfumed chimney smoke. Beyond, the russet plantations of blood-fruit stretched forty miles along the great Southern Artery until it turned west into the Second, the coloured specks of travellers and traders disappearing into the distance. Heavy cloud shadows moved across the landscape, dulling it to a bluish tinge until they reached the high plaza Von Schiller stood upon, where they vanished as if dissolved into a greater patch of shade.
Rising above them like an industrial reflection of the capital hung the inverted citadel of the Grand-Tile, the three-mile-wide Lacaille flagship. One of three Colossus-class battleships present above the Old World, its departure would signal the opening of the holy planet to every Prism kingdom intent on spoils and territory, permitting them leave to feed like a lion tired of a carcass. Looking up, Florian could feel on his face the soft rain of rust shavings and pattering sewage that floated down from its scarred bulk, sensing the metallic stench of the thing while his gaze wandered over its great hanging turrets, painted in patches of white and grey and stained with blood-red oxidation from two centuries of service. It was far from the most efficient and modern of the Lacaille navy’s various Voidcraft, simply the largest, the most dominantly threatening. Its single vast hangar could hold nine thousand Voidjets and seven hundred bombers, accommodating nearly sixty thousand Vacuum troops. Two internal factories could theoretically manufacture, with sufficient deliveries of purloined materials, any number of smaller ships, tanks, submarines, jets and even rolling fortresses. It could fire poorly manufactured shells the size of houses from battery chambers in its towers, as well as an arsenal of rigged superluminal engines like ineffectual bombs— the equivalent of throwing stones capable of erratic flight, more in the hope of terrifying the opponent than any reasonable expectation of destruction.
Florian knew the Prism as a whole had never enjoyed an industrial revolution; they neither understood nor appreciated the spare parts gifted them by the Amaranthine, and perhaps this was for the best. Atomic power—that ancient, divine spark—would remain beyond their comprehension, effectively lost forever.
Nevertheless, just one Colossus could conquer the entire Lyono-thamnine Enlightenment, and with the arrival of Prism warships of every kind within the month, the Old World would become a furnace, a bright spot of conflict visible across the Firmament.
The battleship dropped, smoke churning from its kraken belly across the sky, until parts of its spiked undercarriage had fallen level with the plaza. Stained white metal scraped along the flagstones towards Von Schiller, squealing and buckling. He could see a hatchway unscrewing, its complex system of airlocks unwinding, and two pale, feral Lacaille faces peered out at him.
The procession was small; more like a subtle stealing away than a victorious conqueror departing for newly won territory. He stood back a little, the platoon of Lacaille that had brought the Shell strutting past him across the plaza followed by Hui Neng and De Rivarol, both smiling piteously at him, quite oblivious now to his age. Ghaldezuel—the fortuitously placed Lacaille knight—followed behind, his polished white plackart reflecting Von Schiller as he stood to watch.
At the rear, dwarfed between two golden Firstlings—one holding a parasol against the dripping sewage—the Voidsuited Caudipteryx strode airily to his private warship, tail flicking out behind. Beneath the creature’s composure, Florian detected a tightly controlled impatience: the Long-Life’s gloved hands were scrunching open and closed, and his head—encased in smooth white material so that it was nothing but an inexpressive hooked triangle sprouting nodes and fronds—faced forward at all times, not once turning to look at his servant as he passed. It was understandable. He was leaving the world for the first time, perhaps never to return, and those he left behind he would likely not see again.
Florian bowed his head, shuddering as the outermost long cannon exploded into a hundred-gun salute, a rage of echoes rattling across the city.
The partially deafened party ascended without further ceremony, the Firstlings hefting luggage inside. Von Schiller stepped back, uncovering his ears and wondering what the city’s Firstling inhabitants, still tense from nine years of war, would have made of it all. Pink and green birds cried and wheeled around him, scared up into the battleship’s thermals as it rose again to belch smoke onto the city, its hatchway bolting shut with a slam like a pistol shot.
Slowly the plaza grew dark as the thick, churning cloud from the Grand-Tile‘s exhausts rolled over the highest towers. Florian watched it rise through the dimness, a pale smudge growing smaller, until there was nothing left but him in this strange, forlorn place, and nothing left to contemplate but the single, absurd task that had been set for him. He’d assumed the Venerable Sabran would be left alone, happily out of the way on his distant, icy world. But the Long-Life wanted no contest to the elec
ted Sotiris, not now, as close as he was to achieving his desires.
LETTERS
Igoumenitsa, Permet, Elbazannion. Names he hadn’t heard for years upon years upon yet more years. Jatropha tasted them on his tongue as the Wheelhouse rattled along, their forms taking the place of other, barely remembered flavours from long ago. Alongside each neatly painted word on the sign was a jumble of figures in Melius Crules, the splendidly unreliable miles of the Old World. A Crule was never the same for any two travellers, expanding or shrinking with the quality of the terrain and weather. Depending on the winds and seasons, Mostar— their next stop—was anywhere between three and seven hundred miles away. As a general rule, one snipped the greatest given distance in half, as Jatropha had always done.
Bordering the Artery, expanses of cultivated land sighed with cypress trees taller than the Wheelhouse. Where Cursed People worked, poetry drifted through the fields: the oral histories of the Nostrum Sea. Once, at the edge of a stream that crossed the Artery’s path, Jatropha spied a clutch of smooth man-high stones that poked at angles from the olive groves. He pulled the Corbita over to one side so that the girls could see the ancient megaliths, now home to a resting Butler Bird and his baggage, but they hadn’t been very interested. With a tug of disappointment, he rumbled the Wheelhouse back onto the road. It was a pity. They were rare and wonderful things indeed, the stone circles; that particular arrangement was eighteen thousand years old, pre-dating even Jatropha himself.
A drifting memory reminded him of other things he’d found in the tall grasses of the world, things even more ancient, and less benign.
“Mostar?” Eranthis asked beside him. Together they’d been at the tiller for more than a Quarter, staring silently out at the world as it rolled by. A cloth parasol bought in Acropolo shaded them as the sun rose, patterning their skin where the light shone through its weave.
Jatropha pointed in the rough direction. He’d started clothing himself again as they climbed north, buying fine fabrics and sun hats and taking them in with a needle and thread. Amaranthine felt the cold keenly, and where they were going, the iron-grey light of old winter could still sink to the land.