by Stephen Hunt
‘It is time,’ said the elder, simply.
Kerge took the box and removed a ball. He turned to the case. Before he dropped the ball into the open top, he spoke. ‘Blue.’ Kerge dropped the ball in at the top of the case. He took a lever at the side and pulled it forward, causing a hidden mechanism to wobble the case left and right, a rhythmic clicking noise like the pendulum of a grandfather clock. The ball Kerge inserted began to drop through the maze, rolling through the labyrinth of slats. What were the stakes of this game? Hopefully nothing that involved Lady Cassandra’s good treatment? Kerge was out of luck. A minute later, just as the case’s movement stilled, the ball emerged at the case’s edge, tinkling into the red jar. The gask repeated the exercise for each sphere sitting in the ivory box, announcing a colour, loading a ball and then setting the case into action until each jar had been filled. Cassandra sucked her breath in. Kerge had truly appalling luck. He hadn’t got a single guess right. She didn’t know if the gask had much of a family inheritance owing him, but at this rate, he was going to end up a pauper. She could see the gask who had once worked as her slave growing unhappy at this turn of events, turning his face to stare at the chamber’s floor as if he might find coins dropped there to pay off his wager.
The gask elder didn’t seem pleased, either. He turned to the councillors sitting around the hall. ‘It is as I warned you. Kerge’s golden mean has been poisoned. I will not humiliate him further by repeating the test. We must now retire to decide his fate.’
Sheplar Lesh stepped forward. ‘I would speak.’
‘Then do so, manling,’ said the elderly gask. ‘We shall hear you address our council in respect of the millennia of friendship we have shared with the manlings of Rodal.’
‘I ask that you give Kerge another chance.’
‘Kerge’s fate is not yet decided. We are never hasty in such matters. We shall commune at length and decide where his position should be.’
‘His place is here, with his own kind. Alongside you!’
‘As an aviator of the Rodalian Skyguard, it is said that you commune with the spirits of the wind to ride the fierce cross-winds of the mountains. This is true, is it not? You studied in a temple as well as studying the mechanics of flight and the engineering that keeps your flying wings aloft.’
‘It is so,’ said Sheplar.
‘In a similar fashion to your fliers binding with the spirit of the wind, we of the gask-kind are bound to the numbers that describe and detail us. What you and your expedition did in rescuing Kerge, son of Khow from being far-called at such vast distances, that was a rare feat. Some would call it impossible.’
‘There was no part of the journey that was easy,’ agreed Sheplar.
‘You observed the testing. Before Kerge left our forest, he was possessed of a golden mean. We could have asked him to roll the ball a thousand times and call the colours, and he would have predicted their true course a thousand times without error. Now? Seven balls and he cannot call one correctly, when crude chance should have given him that blessing at least once.’
‘That is no reason to exile him.’
‘Kerge’s luck has been exhausted by being returned here alive. In surviving his impossible journey, his golden mean has been poisoned. In addition to exhausting his store of luck, Kerge’s father died in his arms. Sometimes the shock of grief can unhinge a gask’s position in fate. Doubts erode his confidence in his own talents. I fear such an illness has infected Kerge.’
‘You must reconsider—!’
‘I believe it is now dangerous to Kerge to remain in the great forest. It is dangerous for us, as well. Dark futures multiply, blocking the branches of the fractal tree that lead to life and prosperity. Kerge’s presence among us will bring no happiness to either Rodal or the gask-kind. Nor will that foreign womanling’s presence.’ He pointed at Cassandra and she recoiled at being involved in their nonsensical witchdoctory. The strong made their own luck. Only the weak blamed the stars and the auguries of chicken entrails. ‘Her place is no longer among us. Neither is the true path of Kerge, son of Khow.’
‘It won’t be safe to hold the Vandian girl in Northhaven,’ said Sheplar. ‘You must have heard how the affairs of Weyland turn. The country is deeply divided over who should be king.’
‘There is often violence outside the great forest. Those beyond know little serenity. This is not a new thing, is it, manling? As long as your people have lived in the mountains, you have clashed with the nomadic savages of the endless grasslands north of your country.’
‘We defend ourselves when we are attacked. Rodal’s mountains are the walls of the league,’ said Sheplar. ‘And those walls protect your people here in the great forest as much as we protect the entire league to the south.’
‘The trees are our protection,’ said the elder. ‘And while we offer peace to all, only fools stick spears in a gask to see what will happen.’
Cassandra had to agree with that.
‘Please,’ begged Sheplar.
Kerge reached out to lay a hand to the aviator’s shoulder. ‘I thank you for speaking for me, but the council makes its judgements based on the kindest branches of our likely futures. My vision is clouded. They must choose, not I. What they choose will be best for everyone.’
Best for everyone? Cassandra’s eyes narrowed. Not, by the sounds of it, anywhere close to the best for her. If Cassandra was thrown on the goodwill of her ex-slaves, ending up dangling at the end of the noose after a lynching might be one of the kinder fates awaiting her. She had to escape. And soon. These barbarians had left her no choice.
Kerge and Sheplar departed down the spiral stairs. Cassandra marched behind them with her pair of native guards. She caught up with the mountain savage. ‘Perhaps now you will consider sending a ransom note to my family.’
Sheplar snorted. ‘Your price has already been paid in blood.’
‘Reconsider.’
‘Be quiet, bumo. You mistake me for a merchant. I am an aviator of the Rodalian skyguard, bound by our warrior’s code, not one of your tame slave traders.’
She switched her attention to her ex-slave. ‘And what do you say, gask?’
‘What is to be is yet to be chosen,’ said Kerge. ‘For me as it is for you. We are on the great fractal tree together.’
Cassandra was about to argue further when she heard a shout from the forest floor below. There were two human visitors walking below, one of them she recognized. Carter Carnehan. Another ex-slave from the sky mines. The one whose father had arrived in Vandia to help lead the slave revolt. Cassandra’s mother had ordered this boy whipped more than once, but the only lesson it seemed the young barbarian had learnt was rebellion and insolence. By all accounts, it was this young savage’s father who had carried her away from the battlefield, conveying her to a life of captivity here. Oh yes, she had cause to loathe the Carnehan family. They were the authors of all her current troubles and a fair few past ones as well. Sheplar Lesh obviously didn’t feel the same way. The clown’s face widened into a broad smile and he raced down the stairs to the forest floor to meet the visiting Weylanders. Cassandra was carried along in his wake like an afterthought. For someone who was used to being the centre of attention, able to control lessers with a flick of her fingers, her unacceptable demotion in position rankled like an open wound. She watched them shake hands, the second Weylander introduced as Tom Purdell from the Guild of Librarians.
‘How does the day find you, Kerge, Mister Lesh?’
‘I have a feeling we will soon need to relocate our guest,’ said Kerge.
Sheplar nodded in agreement. ‘Our welcome here is quickly being worn out.’
Carter scowled towards Cassandra as if all of this was her fault. The damnable impudence of the slave. The blame for her predicament lay squarely on his broad shoulders in the first place. ‘I’d chain her in down in the rectory’s storm cellar, but I’d need to employ a food tester to make sure someone in town doesn’t poison her.’
‘Food
tester. A fitting enough position for you, slave,’ said Cassandra.
‘No sky mines here, your ladyship,’ said Carter, hooking his finger under his coat and revealing a flash of his holster, ‘but we’ve got plenty of remote farms with cold, hard winter fields that need ploughing. Maybe I can find one of your old mine workers with a swine shed for you to bed down in, a plough harness small enough to fit you, and a soul sweet enough not to impale you on the end of their pitchfork.’
‘I don’t fear you. Where I stand, the empire stands too.’
He grunted dismissively. ‘I’ve received a message from the capital that you must hear,’ Carter said to Sheplar and Kerge, ‘but—’ he nodded towards Cassandra ‘—not in front of her. Mister Purdell, if you’d be so good as to keep an eye on her little ladyship here …’
The locals walked out of earshot, deep in conversation. She burned to know what they were talking about. Something that might give her heart and hope, if that damned escaped slave Carter Carnehan didn’t want her to hear about it. Perhaps concerning distant Vandia, even? She tried to edge forward, but a hand from one of the pair of gasks behind her fell instantly on her shoulder.
Tom Purdell gazed at her, as insolent as the rest of them. ‘You’re not exactly the most popular person around here, are you?’
‘Do I look like I care what a mere barbarian thinks of me? One day Carter Carnehan will encounter my nation again, and his insolence will be burnt out of him inch by inch by an imperial torturer.’
‘That’d be a shame,’ said Tom Purdell. ‘He seems like a nice enough fellow.’
‘He’s property which we paid for. His very presence here amounts to theft.’
Purdell smiled. ‘Here’s a little advice, even if it is unasked for. Never annoy the man who gets to decide the class of pig shed you end up sleeping in.’
‘You’re correct, it was unasked for.’
Purdell shrugged, seeming to find their exchange amusing. More than she did, at any rate. The meeting over, the other two men and their gask ally returned. Cassandra ran forward and grabbed at Carter’s coat. ‘Don’t let them take me away from here! At least these gask savages aren’t escaped slaves with a grudge against me!’
Carter pushed her away. ‘Please, I’ve seen better acting during the local amateur dramatics night.’
‘That’s my fault,’ said Tom. ‘I told her if she was nice to you, you might find her a sty with a blanket, rather than just straw and wet mud.’
Carter rubbed the scar slanting across his face. Cassandra remembered her mother had laid her whip on the impudent devil to make a point. ‘Our hospitality’s been a sight friendlier than yours ever proved, Vandian. You’ll damn well travel where we send you.’ Her escaped slave shook the mountain aviator’s hand in farewell, and then the gask’s. ‘I know this isn’t exactly what you trained for in the skyguard, Sheplar, but mind her well. Kerge, look after yourself. Just remember, whatever happens, it’ll never be a tenth as bad as what we survived in the empire.’
Kerge nodded. ‘You speak the truth, old friend.’
‘It is a strange wind that has blown us together,’ said Sheplar. He glanced at Cassandra. ‘An annoying one, too, at times. But I still follow my honour.’ He called out to Carter and the other young Weyland man before they were lost among the giant trees, immense bark columns standing like sentinels in the green cathedral. ‘And remember, if it comes to it, there are wind temples in Rodal where it takes half an hour in a basket to be winched up to the monks.’ The two men disappeared into the emerald twilight. Sheplar Lesh patted Cassandra on the shoulder in an irritatingly familiar manner. ‘Yes, bumo, there are always long corridors that need sweeping and meals of rice and root that require preparing inside the temples.’
Cassandra didn’t retort with the first thought that leapt into her mind: that she would find it a lot easier to prepare meals as their drudge, now she had slipped one of Carter’s two daggers out of his belt while pretending to throw herself on the barbarian slave’s mercy. The blade was concealed up her sleeve. Not that she would be using the weapon to peel vegetables. It was going to come in very useful for dislodging the floor of her makeshift cell this night, and it never hurt to have a blade to dig into bark when scaling down tree trunks, either. Handy for cutting a gask sentry’s throat too. Cassandra’s acting might not be up to much, but when it came to sleight of hand and armed combat, she had been tutored by masters.
FOUR
FOR THE HONOUR OF
THE HOUSE
Duncan watched Princess Helrena moving around the duelling hall, sweating and cursing as she thrust and parried, warily circling her trainer. Helrena had been pushing herself hard for the best part of an hour, as though trying to exorcise her demons. The princess’s squat, bullet-headed head of security, Paetro, stood alongside Duncan at the edge of the hall, passing little comment beyond a grunt or two as the two combatants whirled around each other. Helrena trained today with a foreign weapons master, a man expert in the fighting style the empire knew as long-and-short-stab; the long being a single-edged thirty-five inch long sabre; the short, a slightly curved dagger with a basket hilt designed to block a sword. To look at the princess, you would hardly know she’d had her leg crushed, the best part of a warship’s bridge crumpling around her when the great stratovolcano had erupted during the slave revolt. Duncan touched his chest at the battle’s memory. There was still shrapnel embedded inside him, too close to his heart for removal to be risked even given the almost supernatural skills of the imperium’s surgeons. Not shrapnel from Jacob Carnehan’s bullet, precisely aimed at his heart, but pieces of the medallion that had saved his life even while being driven deep inside his body. Who would have thought Northhaven’s pastor possessed such accurate aim? Not Duncan Landor, certainly.
The wound was part of him, now. A reminder, as if any were needed, to never underestimate your opponents. His friend, Paetro, carried the scars of the same encounter – and not just physical wounds. Paetro’s pilot daughter had died, gunned down by Jacob Carnehan as she tried to protect Lady Cassandra. Not a day went by when Duncan didn’t regret his little charge’s absence. What was the poor girl enduring, now? Nothing good he feared; captured by Weylanders who had been held as slaves. Taken for what? Revenge? Ransom? Protection? Some vengeful sense of symmetry on the part of the pastor? Your empire stole my son for a slave, so I’ll take your daughter? Ultimately, Duncan knew the motivation mattered little. Only the perilous pragmatic reality of the situation. Duncan trusted his once-friend Carter appreciated the sacrifice the pastor had made for him. Attempting the near impossible journey to the empire. All that way, all that blood on the road, not to mention the fierce fight at the other end. Duncan should never have expected his father to do the same. Of course not. Why would old Benner Landor bother joining the rescue party when he could stay at home, count his coins, manage his estate and pay for others to go off and do the dying for him? It was only his son and daughter that had been snatched during the slavers’ raid. Jacob Carnehan had made that trip for his son without a second thought, knowing the odds were he’d die on the way, if not at the destination. He’d turned up a different man, half insane and the remainder feral. But he’d turned up. Carter Carnehan should take time to appreciate what it was to have a real family. Not a father for whom the jingle of silver meant more than the lives of his own blood. Or a sister who Duncan had rescued from the sky mines, only to be betrayed when she threw in with the rebel slaves. It was good to think about them from time to time, Willow and his father, to remember the pain of their betrayal. It made his new life here in the empire all the easier to bear. Not the son of a great man, but his own man. Self-made, become a citizen through his own talents and deeds.
Paetro wouldn’t talk about what had happened during the battle. But then, the old soldier had been responsible for Lady Cassandra’s protection. Paetro had kept the girl alive from enemies within and without the house from almost the moment she’d been born. And he had allowed her to be
snatched out of the empire by nothing more than a rag-tag bunch of exhausted travellers and a dirty mob of escaped slaves. Assisted by Duncan’s failure in that battle, too, of course.
Helrena back-stepped on the duelling floor, her trainer’s sword sliding through the space her head had occupied a second earlier.
‘Too slow,’ muttered Paetro.
‘She’s wearing practice armour,’ said Duncan. ‘She’d move faster without gel-padding and face guard.’
‘Not fast enough,’ said Paetro. ‘Her leg hasn’t healed fully. Look how she becomes unsteady on the left leg when the weapons master forces her to pivot on it. Anyone with half an eye will notice her bad leg in a duel and use it against her. Slide in, exploit the weak spot and gut her.’
‘Nobody has managed to do it yet.’
‘We’ve been lucky, lad. The challenges have been fought in private, no one surviving long enough to tell another where our mistress is weak. Circae’s not sent her best fighters yet. She’s been testing the princess; waiting to see how the other great houses side before making her real move.’
‘Given that Circae is Cassandra’s grandmother, you’d think that she’d be looking to help us rescue her rather than hindering us.’
‘Circae only ever desired custody of the little highness to pain her daughter-in-law,’ snarled Paetro. ‘Do not mistake anything the old witch does as love or care for Lady Cassandra. The little highness can only rely on us for that. Circae scents our house’s blood in the water and plans to strip us of our position and wealth. She will feed, and it matters little who gets in the way.’
‘Still,’ said Duncan. ‘Her son’s only child … taken hostage.’
‘A son Circae as good as murdered to get her own way,’ said Paetro. ‘Circae has played matchmaker for the emperor for generations now, filling his harem with hundreds of wives, producing thousands of children and countless more grandchildren. Everyone within the celestial caste is related to everyone else inside it. Whoever the princess guts in a duel, she’s severing a branch of the imperial family’s tree. You tread on your relatives to get to the top here.’