by Tom Toner
“Even with a claim, your princess shall be challenged. Are there even blood-tasting papers left in Sarine City to prove her line?”
Jatropha sighed. “I’ve not spent these months idly. It is already proved, and I have assurances of support from Yire to the Scarlet Lands.”
“Assurances mean nothing.”
“They mean enough—especially if I decide to rule myself, until the time is right.”
“And let them see you?”
He nodded, patting the Monkman. It closed its eyes at the softness of his touch, arching its back.
Liatris laughed. “An invincible queen under divine protection, all the First and Second in her debt. I have not heard the likes of it before— and I was born during the peculiar reign of Dracunctus, don’t forget.” She smiled at him. “Great success or great disaster beckons, though I cannot tell which.”
He grinned, his eyes tracing the silhouette of the spirit Prism in the trees as it swung its dangling legs.
The Plenipotentiary Callistemon’s arrival in the Tenth the previous summer had been presaged, included as a footnote in letters from contacts all across the Provinces: a procession of Secondling prefects moving southwards to the Nostrum, they stay at fine houses, causing a stir. Watch now, Sire Amaranthine, how the children disappear.
Jatropha hadn’t taken much note, his interests remaining wrapped up in the fronts and developments of the war, though some small locked box squirrelled away in his labyrinthine memory had banged and thumped at the name Berenzargol, keen to be opened.
The family Berenzargol: traceable heirs by right to Sarine City and throne of the Provinces, through their ancestor the FirstLord Genioste-mon, half brother to the ancient King Convolvulus. Few but the royals remembered the claim and so it was hushed, purchasable only at an expense beyond the reach of anyone but the boy-king Lyonothamnus himself, and all records redacted within the First.
But their own lofty plans of Standardisation—weeding out the mongrel races of the Melius world—had brought them down. Cal-listemon, Jatropha had discovered, was to be a breeder. He strolled and charmed and catalogued, taking a woman here and there, dispatching anyone who got in his way. And all the time Jatropha watched him, watched with sharp interest where his seed would land. The Amaranthine, of course, knew of the Shameplague and its symptoms, understanding that in making this journey, Calliste-mon went to his death. It was penance enough, Jatropha reckoned, for in the host of Pentas a princess would arise, his to mould from birth.
Arabis I, Queen of the fifteen Provinces between Sligos and Jahra, Empress of Mansour and the Isles of Storn and Argostolio. If a peace could be brokered with the Oyal-Threheng then the Old World lay open to a bold new future. The process might take years; the lifespan of a healthy Melius queen ought to do it—and there was just enough Seventhling in Arabis to ensure she would survive the Shameplague with only minor scarring, Jatropha thought.
“Here,” said Liatris, having noticed his long silence for what it was. She passed him a piece of party food from a tray. “Even an Amaranthine must have good and bad luck.”
Jatropha took the sugar animal and stood. “They run together, I find.”
“Well, gift the Gheal your piece for me and ask him to send me your luck.”
Together they threw their nibbles up into the tree. Nothing fell back down again.
“He’s lived on my estate for forty years,” she said, “growing fat and happy from my finest scraps. Not a bad life.”
“Not bad at all. The Skylings would be envious of their cousins here.”
The shadow hooted in the trees, as if in gratitude, tucking the treats into its mouth with long fingers. They were said to dance in the wild, when they thought they were unobserved. Out on the lake, a ship spouted fireworks from its deck.
“That’s not for you, is it?”
“Oh, it all is,” Liatris said. “But I daresay the guests will enjoy it more. I’ve seen hundreds of the things, every blasted birthday.”
Jatropha folded his blanket carefully. “I fear I have taken too much of your time.” He bent and took her hand. “Thank you for the autograph. I shall treasure it.”
“You must have a lot of treasures,” Liatris said, still seated, not wanting him to leave. “Do you have a favourite?”
Jatropha hardly needed to think. “Peace of mind. Always peace of mind.”
“Really? Nowadays I rather like some drama.”
“You’ll grow out of that.”
Liatris grinned, revealing a set of notably stained chops. “I fear I won’t.”
Jatropha paused, becoming aware of a meek person watching them from the doors.
Liatris turned in her seat. “What is it, Cosmos?”
The person hesitated, stepping out. “An uninvited guest, Mistress Albina, very insistent.”
Liatris snorted. “But they are all uninvited, Cosmos!”
Jatropha saw the figure shrink a little by the door. She’d clearly been instrumental in compiling the guest list.
“This young lady is . . . bloody, Mistress.”
“Bloody?”
Jatropha touched a hand to the back of her chair.
“She asks for someone, but I do not know them—”
He nodded quickly to the authoress and moved towards the doors. The secretary looked suddenly afraid as he swept forward. “Take me to her,” he said.
The party still swirled and hummed; a golden vortex of giant, ugly faces made all the stranger by the wailing of the Orestone. Jatropha shoved his way through, attenuating his fears into a blade of unease that parted the crowd like a breeze through grass. They stopped short of the great stair, the secretary staring about.
Pentas’s bony, blood-streaked face appeared in the throng, the only Seventhling in the place. He gazed at her, taking in her lost, hopeless expression. Someone, a Westerly man, was attempting to hand her a cup of hot wine.
The child was gone, then.
The Wheelhouse stood, lanterns lit, surrounded by the depleted remains of the hired guard crew from Tristel. Eranthis talked to them from the balcony, a small spring rifle held awkwardly in her arms.
Jatropha shrugged away Pentas’s grip and climbed aboard, dropping his Westerly disguise. “What happened?”
“We lost her. I lost her. An Awger came—that one we saw on his push-gig—”
Jatropha thought back. A scrappy-looking thing, dressed in tattered Shameclothes and riding a homemade wooden contraption. It was always the little things, the things you don’t give a second’s thought.
“But how did it get aboard?”
Eranthis didn’t seem to want to answer. “It was my fault,” she said at last. “Pentas ran off while I was in the scullery. She just . . . she just wanted to leave this place, with her baby. She wanted to go her own way.”
He stepped down, calling the guard to him and distributing silk along with a bundle of spring rifles. “Find the child tonight. Do not come back without her.” When they’d gone, he clapped his hands together, and a handful of red birds—not his birds, but birds all the same—came fluttering down from their roosts in the poplars that lined the court. He levelled a finger at them as they perched on the balcony railings. “Awger on the roads or in the woods. Rip the soles of its feet and bring it to me.”
He went back to the cabin of the Corbita, dragging out more lanterns and blowing their embers into life. When all were lit, he tossed some to Eranthis and unlatched the brace, steering the Wheelhouse back onto the cobbles of the palace forecourt and cranking the gears. The house rumbled out into the night, all aboard save one precious girl, the flock of Liatris’s post birds whirling up to momentarily blot out the stars. Pentas said the Awger had pedalled north, but that didn’t mean north was where it was going.
He leaned out into the breeze for a few minutes, the night air drumming in his ears, gaze searching the dim shapes of the trees where they met the cobbled road, then ducked back inside.
Dumped on his chair was a new letter, no
t from one of his contacts abroad. Eranthis had sliced it open already, seeing to whom it was addressed. Jatropha picked the letter up, holding it to the cabin lantern between peeks outside, unconcerned that she might have read it. It was coded, from the same source as all the others that had piled up since their sad departure from the coast.
Sweet Bidens—no word from you here? We are worried. Last heard that you had left Mostar with all aboard, and that she is true Berenzargol.
His eyes moved down the page. Correct in assuming ambush went to plan? Reply at once with whereabouts.
Penalties to remuneration with all extra delay.
Jatropha saw no point in telling the girls; the boy had paid sufficiently. He had a special surprise in store for Bidens’s father, back in Mostar, but that would have to wait now.
Jatropha read quickly through the message again, knowing perfectly well where here was. The bird that had brought the message was a fast blue roller, one of thousands that belonged to him. This letter had been written in Sarine City, the capital of the First. He studied the wobbly, overly expressive hand, knowing it anywhere. The boy-king’s mother, the Fallopia.
SEPULCHRE
A hearth of dim embers lit the inside of the fallen guard tower, Ghaldezuel’s eyes taking some time to adjust.
She was Threen, though of a breed he didn’t recognise. Ghaldezuel knew her gender not because of her face (which was concealed—reasonably, for a light-hating breed—within a great Pifoon basinet plumed with feathers), but because her naked white teats hung almost to her shins.
“Take off your clothes.” The helmet, unconnected to any sort of electrics, hollowed her cackle like someone speaking through a drainpipe.
Ghaldezuel hesitated at the extraordinary sound, collecting himself. He unbuckled his entire suit of armour, letting it fall at his feet, until he stood naked in the gloom. When she spoke again, it was more than the chill of the ruin that made him shiver.
“I smell Bult on this one.”
Ghaldezuel understood why the gang had kept her alive. She was their lucky charm, their witch.
He moved forward, seeing the hint of a spindly chair beside the fire.
“Sit,” she said, running a finger over his shoulder. “The light is low, for me,” she whispered, sniggering and going to stand beside the backrest.
He took his seat, hearing the grunt as she removed her helmet behind him, and without warning the drizzling dampness of a warm tongue was exploring his ear. Ghaldezuel angled his head primly, letting the tongue slide along and down to his neck, saliva pooling in the hollow of his collarbone. A mad heartbeat pulsed inside her fingers where they gripped his shoulders, their touch as light as a bird’s.
Another presence made itself felt in the room. Ghaldezuel turned minutely, forgetting the slathering heat of the tongue on his skin, and saw a Lacaille girl sitting by the fire beside him.
His heart jumped. He looked away, into the embers. When he glanced back, the place was empty.
The witch gave him a final slurp and swallowed thoughtfully. “They say they cannot see your dreams.”
Ghaldezuel kept silent, the saliva that ran down his shoulders growing chilly.
“But I saw you in mine,” she said. “Someone would come here in the years before the Third Kingdom won the war. That someone was to become a king themselves.”
He wiped gently at some saliva that had run down to the corner of his mouth. “A king?”
“A king of the Investiture.”
Ghaldezuel nodded. “You mean Cunctus, then.”
“No, oh no—I mean you.”
He hesitated, sitting more rigidly in the chair. “I don’t think he’d like to hear that.”
“Hush now, it’ll be our secret.”
Ghaldezuel looked around. He saw the glinting embers reflected in the pupils of a set of wide oval eyes. He’d heard nothing about a Threen woman on the prisoner manifest. “What did you mean, before the Third Kingdom won the war? You’re talking about the four Vulgar kings? Is that it? The war between the Lacaille and the Vulgar?”
“Vulgar kings? No. They don’t matter. I meant up in the Thunderclouds, in the Third Great Domain, Triangulum. That belonging to the Glutton Sarsappus.”
His eyes, adjusting to the dark, could now make out the swirled colours of her own: spirals of light whipped around deep, dark cores. He thought he knew that name, Triangulum. It was an ancient Amaranthine word for somewhere on the fringes of the sun charts, yet to be translated into any Prism-speak.
“And who is this . . . Sarsappus?” he asked, watching transfixed as the spirals revolved.
“Someone so important that nobody suspects he exists at all.” She tittered, giving his ear another playful lick. “There is so very much happening all around us, you see. My friends here, they tell me all about it.”
“Your friends the prisoners?”
“They’re prisoners, I suppose. They’ll never be free, in that sense. Not like Cunctus and his gang, whom I assume you are taking with you, yes?”
Ghaldezuel tore his gaze away, the darkness stained with afterimages. “Yes.”
They looked together at the vast hole in the valley floor, where a party of Cunctus’s bandits were already assembled at the edge and reeling out lengths of rope. The witch was, surprisingly, the first to enter. The esteem in which Cunctus held her was clear to Ghaldezuel as he watched the Threen being winched down on a litter, the Wulm at the lip of the hole straining at their ropes.
Homemade tea was brought out to where they sat on the lowest of the Thrasm’s steps. Ghaldezuel took the offered cup, a cracked blue porcelain thing that must have been one of their few treasured possessions. Beside him at the broken table, Cunctus raised his own with a trembling hand and toasted their meeting in the Amaranthine custom. “To us, then.”
Ghaldezuel nodded, lifting his to his lips: charcoal and meltwater—boiled, at least. The snow had ceased and in the low sun, Cunctus’s sagging skin began to glow a golden orange. The bristles of his great beard were thick white wires that caught the light, almost but not quite obscuring a wide, drooly mouth closely packed with pointed teeth. Everything Ghaldezuel had heard began to make sense, now: a warlord immune to disease, capable of breaking even the largest Prism folk with his bare hands. Not once had Ghaldezuel assumed it was anything other than hyperbole, the sort favoured by those of a small disposition.
The witch had accompanied them at first, whispering through her rusty helmet into the Melius’s ear. Ghaldezuel hadn’t been able to take his eyes from her; in the weak afternoon sunlight, the snaking blue veins beneath her skin were almost hypnotic. Her dangling teats, which she licked periodically, were veined like the surface of a leaf, more blue than cream.
Cunctus lifted the silver pot in trembling hands, pouring a messy puddle around Ghaldezuel’s cup. It was clear that the Melius was immensely old—perhaps approaching his third century—and yet none of his body’s decrepitude appeared to have reached his mind, a mind plainly accustomed to power.
“She told me you’re the one with the Bult. Jaldessel.”
He sighed. “Ghaldezuel.”
“Ha!” Cunctus croaked. “They’ll get that wrong ‘til the end.”
Ghaldezuel smiled then, looking out across the valley. Cunctus, out of apparent politeness, was speaking to him in Regal Lacaille, and it was pleasant, almost exotic, to think in his own tongue again, with all its loops and Zs.
The Melius looked shrewdly at him. “But how do you pay them? Vulgar corpses?”
“No, actually. Simple, inedible Filgurees will do. Ducats when I can get them.”
“But it’s the Vulgar they hate the most.”
Ghaldezuel could see the giant’s mind working. He shrugged. “Presently.”
The teapot rattled as Cunctus poured himself another cup, spilling steaming water across the table. Ghaldezuel thought the Melius was about to drop it and reached out a tentative hand, only for it to be waved away. A fresh cheroot, made from what appeared to b
e wood shavings and cloth, lay wetted on the table.
“Hmm. Well, Ghaldezuel, we’ll put them to some good use when the time comes.”
He studied his hands, astonished at the new deftness with which Cunctus had pronounced his name. The Melius clearly had an ear for Lacaille. Ghaldezuel wondered how many languages he spoke.
“Yes,” Cunctus breathed. “Once I’ve evicted that imbecile Count Andolp from Drolgins we can set about correcting things, gathering my supporters.” His trembling hands swept dangerously close to the teapot before he folded them in his lap. “And we shall have to take a Vaulted Land, quickly. The honoured Pifoon that grew fat on their surfaces will be making their way inside to block them off.”
“The Pifoon are still loyal to the Amaranthine.”
Cunctus coughed a laugh, almost knocking the pot over once more. “I’ll wager Mawlbert of Cancri’s moved in already, while they weren’t looking.”
Ghaldezuel thought back to a time before he knew how to fire a spring gun, to a time before he’d learned to read. The countless children of Dozo had fought with pebbles and wood splinters, suffocating one another in the night with plastic wrapping and fat-greased paper. He might be sitting in a lofty place discussing the fate of the Investiture with its most famous outlaw, but it wasn’t really any different from his boyhood days.
“That Threen,” he asked. “She wasn’t a prisoner here?”
Cunctus settled the teapot as carefully as he could. “She’s native, would you believe it? A Maelstrom local. Every night she’d climb the Thrasm for warmth and visit us in our cells. Through her we learned the secrets of the galaxies, the forbidden histories, of which we primates are but a tatty endnote.” Cunctus, smiling at his own turn of phrase, looked abruptly serious then, displaying that same dribbling intensity Ghaldezuel had seen when they’d first met. “She is very precious to me.” He’d begun to knot his beard anxiously, twining individual hairs while he thought.
“The galaxies,” Ghaldezuel echoed. “She said some odd things.”
“What did the spirits say?” Cunctus asked, apparently casually, leaning forward and resting his head in his hands while he fidgeted with his beard. He regarded Ghaldezuel, the stained hollows of his eyes making them appear even larger than they were. “My witch was vague.”