by James Stone
Magmaya followed the impressions of the light to Anclyn’s compartment. She found the door unlocked and pressed her way through, finding the handmaiden asleep still. She watched her chest rise and fall, greasepaint soundly kissed upon her eyelids. Even in her slumber, and then when she awoke, her beauty persisted.
‘Trumpets are sounding.’ Magmaya’s voice was hoarse. ‘The storm’s getting worse.’
A thin slither of light from the moon guided them through the upper decks as they passed a number of sleeping servants. If the ship was sinking, then why weren’t they doing something? Was it her duty to wake them?
The higher they reached, the more violent the storm became, and the brasher the shrill rain and louder the thunder. Once they arrived on the deck and stood against the night, the wind almost tossed them out into the smoky ocean, and it quickly became clear the sea didn’t care for them at all.
Their robes and locks began to snap with the whipping of water, though the clouds above offered them no respite either. Magmaya waded her way through the lake that had gathered on the deck and fastened herself and Anclyn to the railings. It was clear enough the ship was not sinking, but instead quickening through the choppy black sea. No one else appeared to have even been startled—there was not a soul in sight amid the iron ropes and sodden crates as they tumbled from side to side on the cursed thing.
A third trumpet sounded through the rain, and the storms encircled the ship as if it was changing its course. Then there was a roar of thunder and Anclyn fell to the deck and then Magmaya. That was until a bolt of golden light ran through the heavens. It illuminated the black clouds and electrified the midnight waters, and for a moment, there was daylight. The moon was eclipsed with the white flash, and on the horizon, something peered through the veil of fog and rain.
A skyline—a skyline of arches and pillars, of trenches and towers; an empire of salt and steam.
‘Belliousa,’ Anclyn whispered through the gale.
‘Belliousa.’ Magmaya nodded, and a laugh crept to the corner of her mouth, the last of her greasepaint streaming down her face. They looked back to the buildings that lined the rocky shore and then to their centre where a mountain stood, cold and jagged against the darkness. And at its peak, there was a temple.
By morning, the rains had cleared, and yet, they hadn’t been certified to leave; the ship still sat silent upon the waves, rocking gently as it stared down the wilted shores.
Magmaya hadn’t slept since she’d awoken that night, and since the sunbeams had begun scorching Belliousa, she’d been able to make out a small gathering of people on the shoreline. They had come and gone throughout the morning, but no matter which of them left and which of them arrived, they all wore deep-red robes, forming something bloody upon the brown sand.
At the height of noon, several small landing boats were dropped from the flanks of the vessel, and the Divinicus spilt out from the ship and into the water. As Magmaya watched the servitors row them to shore, Anclyn finished dying the last of the greasepaint into her skin.
Though as the handmaiden stepped away to admire her handiwork, Magmaya couldn’t help but turn back to the knot of red on the shoreline like a carrion bird did a carcass. She took Kurulian’s vial from Anclyn’s brushes and fastened it around her wrist.
But then, a hand clamped down on her shoulder, and she almost jumped from her skin.
‘Magmaya.’ She turned to Akanah behind her, resolute in his glittery plate. She hadn’t seen much of him on the journey here, save for passing remarks and humble acknowledgement—but he looked quieter now, and far more alert. ‘Try not to damn this for us,’ he scorned and ambled away. ‘My court’s barge is this way. Make haste.’
As she followed him over to the starboard, she found Cheyne and the rest of the Small Court. Like Magmaya and Anclyn, they too had been rushed into creamy-white robes and thin opal breastplates. And then there was Krel, holding his enormous sword in such a way that if he turned too quickly, it would send the servants around him flying.
As the minutes passed, Magmaya watched as the cloaks on the horizon became figures and then people and then faces. Some fled as the armada approached, but in their place, others flocked to the water, and a few even waded through, dying for but a touch of an angel, screaming praise and hatred in anything but the common tongue.
Magmaya had been right—just a look was enough to sway them. But would it be enough for Deih?
As Akanah’s own barge began to near the shore, the locals approached in something of ecstasy. They brushed themselves against the hull of their boats and began to scrape at Magmaya’s robes with broken fingertips.
She flinched away and stared them down; there were children and elders, women and men, all sporting the red robes she had seen from the ship. Not one of them had an inch of hair across their scalps; in its place, they were inked with runes and lettering.
Krel stood tall in the barge and began to draw his blade, growling at the locals as he did. Soon enough, the boat hit the shore amid a froth of dead fish and half-drowned feathers.
The locals retreated from the shallows and back onto land as the Divinicus stormed out of the barges, holding their blades as they cleared the crowds and paved the way for Akanah. Magmaya, Anclyn and the other members of the Small Court scurried behind him as the Belliousans chanted, and the Divinicus shoved them aside.
Magmaya looked around, peering through the chittering crowds. What struck her first was the humidity; there was no summer breeze, no warm reassurance—just sweat and smog. She shook the feeling free and followed along the swathes of upturned mud and brown puddles, finding a number of crumbling stone arches and marble pillars jutting from rubble and sumps; there was not a piece of greenery in sight, no blade of grass, lone flower, shrub, nor tree. It looked as if Belliousa was dead.
‘I’ve never seen a place so desolate.’ Anclyn appeared to be able to read her thoughts. ‘I’ve heard even the Ash Wastes has trees.’
Akanah barked something at the crowds, and Krel stepped forward, raising his cleaver into the morning sun. The Belliousans began to scurry away into the shadows until, at last, the streets cleared, leading up through the hills and to the summit.
‘The First Temple,’ Akanah announced, pointing to the mountaintop. ‘That’s where we meet Deih.’
The farther inland they walked, the more the streets began to reek until the stench of faeces became almost unbearable. The children didn’t seem to mind it, though, as they looked up to them from beneath their iron huts, flies snapping around their bald heads. Magmaya noticed beneath their stretched skin, there was no meat, only bone—they were as dead as their island was.
Elsewhere, a younger woman eyed the angels with something of scorn as she carried a basket of brown water back from a pump.
And Magmaya could only watch in horror as Krel stopped his stampede and hammered a bloody fist down on her shoulder.
‘That’s not the face you look on a Divinicus with,’ he growled, and she flinched, fell back, and cradled the bucket in her arms.
‘Enough,’ Akanah said to Krel, but there was no stopping the brute. The girl shouted something inaudible in defence, but the thing of a man only boomed with laughter.
‘Whore!’ he howled and groped at her lap, tossing the milky, brown liquid into the mud. He carried on walking while the woman began to cry and paw at the droplets, licking them like a kitten did a saucer of milk before they disappeared into the earth.
Magmaya looked to the handmaiden and felt heat rise to her ears. Fabius had said the Divinicus were protectors of the peace, but if their first instigation on foreign lands was to harass the already starving locals, then they were surely more akin to semi-demons.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Krel shake his head and amble away. They could only carry on, silent in rank—before a determined scream erupted behind them.
The Small Court turned as the same woman threw herself towards Krel, a glass bottle in her
hand. And before he could react, she drove it forward, and it shattered across his skull.
He stopped and grunted.
For an instant, Magmaya almost thought he was going to ignore it. But a moment later, the cleaver was unsheathed, and the woman began screaming. The Divinicus splintered and drew their own falchions, pinning the girl down and trying to rally Krel. But he just burst from his clutches, stammering and roaring as he did.
There were protests from Akanah and yells from his advisors, but for every inch the woman was pulled away from him, Krel took a foot, hacking at the air.
‘Stop!’ Magmaya tried to call and waded over, forcing her way between the beast and the girl. But it was no use; Krel pushed his way through until it was only him and the Belliousan. He raised his blade, striking the sunbeams, and the girl cowered, her eyes either side the shadow of the sword.
And then, a voice called out, calm, and the bickering crowds turned to Krel, blade still hanging above the girl.
But between them, someone else stood. She was cloaked in the same crimson as the other Belliousans, and even though Magmaya might have been a mile away, her perfumes were intoxicating and enticing all at once; they made her head heavy and the world spin. Her body seemed to glitter too as a choir of copper trinkets fell from her hips, wrists and dangled from her chest where a nest of coloured plumes and flowers began.
‘Whores! I’ll kill you both,’ Krel roared and hammered down the blade.
And hit the earth below.
The Belliousan girl was gone, but her saviour was omnipresent, turning to Krel with all the grace of a saint.
‘You may think me a whore,’ she said, smirking, ‘but to Legatus Akanah of the Divinicus, I am Deih of the Water, Firstborn of Oquelia, High Priestess and Matriarch of Belliousa.’ She paused. ‘And so terribly pleased to meet you.’
Nineteen
At the height of summer, the gardens were no less beautiful than he remembered; each year outdid the last with flying colours as if all the ambience and divinity left of the world had been poured into one place. White alps filled the horizon beneath a striking blue sky, while fields of purple flowers littered the hills. The farther he was from the Waterborne Cities of Halo Blue, the more radiant and artistically complex the architecture grew, and the more he felt he was home again.
Fabius watched as faint blurs in the sky became marble pillars, and shimmers became arches made of starlight—and then, in the distance, there was Forlorn Despair—the palace of Astralica, the capital of Inamorata—he’d never thought a place could be so baroque, so frighteningly beautiful. How wrong he had been.
Despite how much he liked to think Astralica was a city of waterfalls and spires, the place seemed to reinvent itself with every step he took like the oceans were playing a cruel joke. But it was the most gorgeous joke Fabius could’ve dreamt of. He felt naked here, stripped of his rank, but it mattered not. None of his misdeeds, none of his false promises mattered—all that did was Astralica.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted movement in the flowerbed, and then there was laughter. From between the twisting stems, he saw a pair of naked bodies, embraced in something of ecstasy. This is the Garden of Maids, he reminded himself and rolled his shoulders back. He better not have been seen—it had been too long since he’d loved.
He turned his attention away as the couple giggled and escaped the flowers, making their way elsewhere. They made no attempt to cover themselves in front of the Divinicus, but it was no matter—an instant later, they were gone, and the palace was his again.
Seeing them like that had sent his mind to Larl, and how he’d thirsted after every last woman he’d ever met. While Fabius despised the way Magmaya had treated him, no high-born woman would have gladly accepted his nephew’s invitation to strip while also making good as a lady wife. He made a note to never take him to Astralica, though. He’d jump right in the flowers.
Some shimmer of gold in the distance brought Fabius back to reality, and he looked up, finding a nest of bronze statues towering in the skyline. They were all of angels; not like his Divinicus, but the classical angels from the lore that intrigued him so greatly—angels with eagle’s wings and rainbow haloes atop their heads. But for every angel, there was a demon too, cast in a reddish marble and sporting leathery bat wings and horns that pierced the clouds. Each time he visited, there appeared to be a new collection of monuments, and each was grander than the last ensemble.
And between the gods and devils, a third figure stood draped in a dress of liquid diamond.
And then, unlike the statues around her, she moved, and Fabius beamed.
‘Lord Commander!’ The girl bowed, shielding her eyes from the scorching sun. ‘It has been far too long.’
Fabius grinned, but when she stood, he stammered, ‘It should be me to bow.’
‘No, I insist.’ She shook her head, but he did so all the same. ‘My lord, outside the palace, I am as much a girl as any other. But never mind that. It has always been Kurulian to visit. I have missed you, Fabius.’
He rose and took her hand with a kiss. ‘As I have missed you, Zinnia.’
‘You’re all so busy,’ she remarked. ‘When I look at you, I see a heavenly man, but I suppose you’re a soldier when it comes to it. You have a life outside of paradise.’
‘I’d like to think so.’ He laughed. ‘It’s never as exciting as the faery stories. Wouldn’t want to upset the peace, would we?’
‘Of course not, Fabius,’ she said. ‘With all this talk of not seeing one another, I don’t suppose you have seen my father recently, no?’
‘It has been a number of months, I must admit.’
‘I swear it was yesterday. Every year is quicker than the last. Maybe next year will be only an hour.’ Zinnia blushed, and her eyes glistened in the sun; she always had been pretty—not beautiful (no one from her father’s loins could ever be beautiful), but she had luscious brown locks and a face like sweet cinnamon all the same. Besides, she was the crowning jewel of the empire, a symbol of prosperity. When little girls dreamt of being a princess, they dreamt of being Zinnia.
‘An hour feels like a year if you’ve nothing to do.’ Fabius grinned. ‘Now about your father?’
‘I do think the emperor has fallen ill,’ she stammered at last.
‘Ill?’ Fabius exclaimed. He’d never known a ruler that wasn’t Cardel Avont; not since the emperor was a boy-king everyone had laughed at. But he had become a fierce emperor, wise and just. He wasn’t elderly, though his appetite had always gained the better of him.
‘It’s hard to explain,’ she admitted. ‘He scarcely wants to eat, and when he does, he can’t keep food down to save his life. But you came to see him, I presume? Shall I take you?’
‘Yes, thank you,’ he said as the pair and his Divinicus guards began to make their way down the stone path, edging ever closer to the palace. ‘How’s your brother faring?’
‘My brother,’ she began, ‘is only the second most beautiful child of my father’s.’ She sniggered, but suddenly, she was serious. ‘He’s been away for several weeks now, in truth. On some pilgrimage across the Summerlands. I hear he is doing well.’
‘He ought to be.’ Fabius nodded. ‘He shall make a fine emperor someday, already doing his duties.’
‘And I, a fine empress,’ she said. ‘Or perhaps that isn’t quite how that works.’ Zinnia laughed to herself.
‘You would make a fine empress,’ he said.
‘And you, Lord Commander?’ she asked. ‘My father said you took one of the arks to somewhere far north?’
‘Gods!’ he laughed. ‘Ranvirus. I’ve never seen so much snow—I’ve never seen so much nothing, rather. It felt as if there was not a moment of sun, and when there was a glimpse of light, a war was taking place.’
‘A war?’ she asked, almost excited. ‘Did you intervene?’
‘No, no.’ Fabius shook his head, passing under a flowery arch. ‘It’s their du
ty, not ours. The only moments I spent there were those of doctrine. It seems I’m outgrowing my days of the blade.’ He thought to Highport and the scoundrels the Divinicus had slain, the rush he’d felt as they had darted towards them. His falchion’s calling was hardly outgrowing him, it appeared.
‘What were the people like?’
‘Dull. Or dead.’ He laughed. ‘Their chancellor, though.’ He shook his head. ‘A complication of sorts.’
‘Is that what you’ve come to speak with my father about?’ Zinnia asked. ‘I’m afraid all of this quite goes over my head.’
‘That,’ he said, ‘and something a little closer to home. Something in Cyrel.’
‘Oh?’
‘You wouldn’t believe the mess they’ve dug themselves into.’
They carried on wistfully down the garden path and arrived at a large gatehouse, fashioned from stone and ivory, all while the shadow of Forlorn Despair bleached the sunbeams from their faces with every step. That was until, with one look from Zinnia, the gates were thrown open, and the group sauntered inside.
Beyond the first gate, there were several more, each grander than the last and each requiring several servants with large staves to pry open. But beyond the final pair of gates, a cold spray met Fabius’ cheeks, and the crashing of water sounded through the grounds. It had been only a few months since he’d seen the sight of the capital, but each time he arrived, it stunned him as if it was his first.
It was a marvellous sight indeed—a terrace of foaming fountains, draping tapestries and braziers burning blue; for years Fabius had tried to sculpt his own manse in its likeness, but each time he came here, the comparison became bleaker.
‘Lower your blades.’ Zinnia smiled at the guards either side of the entrance, and the gateway came wide open. Astralica was an island in the centre of Halo Blue, yes, but there was something strange about seeing an open door as if anyone could just walk inside to the paradise beyond.