by Anthology
"You need me," the Red King insisted. "You've nearly killed us both out here. You'll die from exposure, like those poor bastards in the marsh."
"And you will be dead from infection long before you manage to drag yourself back into the south."
"I thought you meant to bring me before my brother alive."
"Maybe," the knight said. "Perhaps it would be easier to carry out my lord's will, rather than allow the disloyalty to…what was it? 'Haunt me in the dark quiet of the night between now and the day that I die'?"
The Red King made a short, sharp sound that started as a laugh but which quickly descended into coughs. "What are your terms?"
The knight relaxed the pressure on the Red King's throat, although he noticed that point of the sword stayed firmly where it was. "Show me the path around Y Brenin," he said. "I'll bring you before Edling Gwyn and vouch for you. Ask him to spare your life so that this war can end. For all of us."
"You had better hope that Gwyn has allies to the north with deep grain stores and deeper pockets, little knight," the Red King said. "Nothing short of the goddess herself will save this land from ruin now."
The knight stared down over the silver flex of his shield and pressed a little harder.
"What faith can I place in the word of a plough boy?" the Red King complained. "Tell me, is my brother in the habit of giving you everything you want, Ser Mercher?"
"I do not often ask," the knight said quietly. "But he hasn't yet refused me."
He drew back and offered down his hand. When the Red King let go of the sword, the knight pulled him to his feet. They stood together, shivering and bleeding, waiting for the other to move.
Finally, the knight knelt for his sword—resting on the black bottom of the lake, looking as though suspended in the dark.
"Start walking," the Red King said, turning towards the mountain. "The path is treacherous by day, but deadly on a moonless night. We need to be on the valley floor before the sun sets. With us both limping like old men, it shall not be an easy climb."
***
Across the lowland vale spread out beyond the foothills, the city of Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth boiled with smoke and flame. Voices rose from its cauldron and radiated into the morning fog, while behind its curtain wall a dozen thatched roofs oozed ugly smoke. Others were reduced to bones of blackened timber.
The knight and the Red King stood on a hillside swathed in the yellow flowers of the eithin aur which rolled out into deep folds of low pasture and bleating sheep. At their backs, Y Brenin pierced the blue morning like smoked glass.
"You are at war, Ser Mercher," the Red King said.
"Do you have a second army that you've sent north to lay siege?" the knight said, trying to stop some unnamed thread from tightening in his chest. "No. There is no war. The city has fallen in upon itself. There is nothing to eat, and the guards cannot keep order. The situation was bad when we marched south. Now the vassal lords have returned with nothing to show for all their battles. No relief, no salvation. Just the coming winter, and the famine."
The Red King tried vainly to keep the rising sun out of his face, his black eyes watering painfully. "You can't take me down there," he said. "That city is at war with itself. If you were to bring the Red King into the middle it, you and he would both be dead before we reach the keep."
The knight's shirt clung to him, mottled with sweat and dirt, marshwater, and blood. A low ache radiated out from his hip, and his left leg trembled when he tried to put his weight on it. But now they were out of the mountains, the ground was more solid under his feet than it had been since he stayed his blow on the battlefield. A shadow passed over their heads—was that an eagle, gliding north towards the city?
The knight watched it go, and realised what he had to do.
"You must leave," he said, very quietly.
The Red King frowned but did not turn his head. "Why now? Why listen to me now, when you have spent the last week ignoring every word I've said?"
"Give me your parole," the knight said. "Return to this place a year and a day from now to parley. Offer your word, Goch, then follow the North Road until you find a village, and take a cart back down into the south where you belong."
The Red King rubbed his watering eyes. "And why would I keep my word?" he asked. "Hasn't Gwyn told you I don't have a shred of honour? What's to stop me mustering whatever people I have left and marching back along this road to give my brother what he deserves?"
The knight studied the Red King. For the first time, he saw the whole of him: the set of the Red King's jaw that was so much like his lord's, and the same curl to his hair, but the narrowness of his black and watering eyes and the thinness of his mouth that set him apart as something other.
The knight smiled. "What happened to your eyes?" he asked.
The same smile twisted the corner of the Red King's mouth. He nodded and placed a hand on the knight's shoulder.
"You aren't as stupid as you look. For a plough boy." The Red King turned away. "A year and a day, then. For what it's worth, you have my word."
***
The knight's hands were sweating, and he could barely hear the screaming of the crowd or the crack of burning houses over the roaring in his ears as he climbed the stairs of the keep.
Three years ago, he had freed his lord from a tower much like this one, one cold clear night at the very cusp of winter. The guardsmen had feasted on soulcakes spiced with cinnamon and made as offerings to the dead, while the crows croaked to one another and the knight ascended the stairs of Caer Isel with a key clutched in his gauntlet.
Now the crows had come to Dinas Pair yr Arfaeth as the city collapsed into a heap of smoking timbers. This time the knight did not hold the key in his hand but felt it in his chest as he climbed. His fingers clenched and crept to the hilt of his sword. All of it evaporated the moment that he opened the door to see his lord standing before the window.
The white light streamed in through thick glass, catching in the silver strands of his lord's dark hair and on the golden flower of the eithin aur embroidered onto his surcoat. Unnoticed, the door craned slowly shut, and the whole room seemed to fill with an impenetrable silence.
The knight closed the space between them to kneel, although his left knee buckled more than it folded.
"This is not the first time you have come when all my heart has gone to ruin," his lord said. "To deliver me from following it."
The knight drew his sword with clumsy hands and laid it on the flagstones. "And I will always come, my Lord."
His lord stared out into white light and warped glass. "Where is my brother?"
Breath knotted in the knight's throat. He forced it to come slow and even. "I let him go."
The crack of his lord's palm against the stone sill was like the sound of breaking bone. "Then you have cursed us all. I trusted you. With my most important duty. And you have betrayed me."
"This city was cursed the moment that we sued for war, when we should have been petitioning our allies for aid," the knight said. "I have done everything you've asked…But that…I couldn't do that, Gwyn. And I could not bring him here. It would have undone everything.
"The south is blighted. Even if I had killed your brother, taken his lands, done everything you'd asked of me, all you would have to show for it would be more dead bodies when the snows come. There has to be a better way, Gwyn. A better way than more suffering and death."
"And who are you to decide what's best for this land?"
The knight clenched his jaw. "You are alive now because of me. Because of the night I freed you. But all that helping you to escape has brought this kingdom is more pain. You are a better man than that, Gwyn. If I didn't believe it, I would have left us both to rot up in that tower."
"You have disobeyed my orders, and disappeared into the mountains while my whole kingdom falls apart. I have not known this last week whether you even lived."
"I…" The knight ran his tongue over his lips and looked back down at
the floor. "I did not know the matter was of any importance to you, my Lord."
"You take my bastard brother captive and drag him off into the hills, then set him free, and you don't think that matter is of importance to me?"
"Of course," the knight corrected quickly. "I should have sent word. I'm sorry. That is…"
"Enough." His lord's expression creased with pain. On the other side of the glass, a raven with gloss-black feathers perched on the ledge and looked down into the burning city dispassionately. His lord watched the raven watching the kingdom burn and pushed his hand through his hair. "What shall I do, love?"
"We have to leave this city," the knight said.
His lord nodded slowly and drew a breath. "We can go north," he said. "Lady Freuddwyd has long been our ally. She will give us sanctuary."
Pain roared in the knight's hip as he pushed himself to his feet, but he gritted his teeth against it. "Her lands are three weeks' hard ride from here, Gwyn. We cannot go so far, not while people are starving. Not while our homeland is on fire."
"You would have me stay in my lands and die here?"
"I would have us stay and live, Gwyn."
"You think I haven't tried to seek aid?" his lord snapped. "Every eagle that comes back from our so-called allies bears nothing but excuses and apologies. Lord Michael is too sick to care, and Cardington too greedy…"
"Then we can go south. Beyond Y Brenin," the knight said. "Into your brother's own lands.
"You know more about the things that grow in this country than anyone I've ever met, Gwyn. We can stay on the road, move from village to village and teach the people which things they can take from the land to feed their families. Which ones they can use for medicine. You and I can help this kingdom and its people to recover, from what you and your brother have done to it. You have a knack for healing, Gwyn. I've seen you do it. I…I know you."
"It's suicide," his lord whispered. "You want us to go into his lands alone? My brother will throw everything he has after us. I'll not go back into that tower, Mercher. I can't."
The knight felt the weight of the memory more than he saw it. A high place shaped from grey stone and hard wind. The crows upon the battlements. The warmth of the key in his hand.
"Edling Goch has given his sworn word to meet us a year and a day from today," the knight said. "To parley."
"Parley?" His lord's voice curled with anger. "Have you lost your senses? You think that I will beg for scraps from the table of the man who poisoned this land in the first place?"
"You shall have to, Gwyn," the knight said, pushing the window open. "Or all you shall get is more of this."
The old-bonfire smell came first, then the sounds of raised voices, breaking glass, and screams.
Guilt and pain tore through his lord's face, and he turned aside too late to hide it. The knight reached out for his hand. Fine bone china against hard skin, dried blood, and calluses.
"I will protect you, Gwyn," the knight swore. "I freed you from Caer Isel and I shall free you from this. But you must trust me. If I am right, this land will eat again. Its people will recover. They will thrive. Even flourish."
His lord pressed his tongue against his teeth. "And if you are wrong?"
"Then they shall have to sever every fighting part of me before they harm you."
His lord tried to smile. "It is a long road south. And if the southern lands are blighted, then those furthest from here will need our help the most," he said, the white silence pierced by the mounting certainty in his voice. "You'll need your wound tended. Fresh armour. A whetstone for your blade. If we can last until a year from now, surely we will have earned this land some peace. Although…Although I shall have to re-learn how."
"In all the years I have known you, I have never once seen you fail at something, once you have set your mind to it," the knight said, saluting with a closed fist to his heart. "It will be done. By your will, my Lord."
"We shall have to pray that we will be alive to see it. The North Road is not safe for two men travelling alone. Let alone for you and I." His lord watched the raven rise through the smoke towards the dim disk of the sun, lips pressed together into a bloodless line. "If something happened…before I could do anything to fix this…"
"The North Road is not the only way into the south," the knight said, tightening his grip on his lord's hand. "There is a path beyond Y Brenin, through the marshes and the mountains.
"I know where it lies, Gwyn. I will show you its way."
Murder on the Laplacian Express(Short story)
by C.A. Hawksmoor
Originally published by Interzone
"It's all right," Shai Laren said as Anselm swung down into the driver's cabin of the Laplacian Express. "I'm almost sure I know how to fly this thing."
Anselm's stepped through the haze of bitter smoke pouring from the split control panel, almost stumbling over something obscured underneath it. "Where's the driver?"
Shai didn't look up from what was left of the controls, but the iridophores in her skin rippled blue and green with irritation. "I believe you have just found him."
"Ah." Anselm leaned out into the snarl of Martian wind. "What about landing? Can you do landing?"
Shai Laren flipped one of the switches and the thrum of the interstellar engine dropped by a full tone. "Maybe," she said. "Give me time."
Anselm rested back against the bulkhead and crossed his arms. "So long as you can do it before we plough into the side of that ravine, take all you time you need."
"Ravine?" Her eyes flashed purple then drained back to silver-blue.
Pointless trying to get the overhead display to boot up. She stepped into the open door and leaned out as he had done. The wind was a billion of grains of hard red sand, superheated by the bright white thrusters underneath the train. It was like putting her head into a blast furnace. Shai turned away. Her headtresses washed over her face as she looked back down the silver ribbon of the express train glinting blue and violet in the sunset.
She held her breath and turned back into the wind. It cracked against her ear drums and then everything went as quiet as cotton wool. Beyond the horizon, the verdant green of the agrisphere was rising in front of the night's first stars. She watched it getting swallowed by the half a mile high wall of jagged red cliff-face emerging from the rusty shadows of the desert.
Shai ducked back inside and pulled the headtresses out of her face. "Yes," she said. "I can see the problem. That isn't good."
Her eyes met Anselm's through the smoke. He was still leaning calmly against the bulkhead, the veil torn back from his face so that she could see the golden weave of filigree over his skin. She looked away quickly, but her skin flushed with thick purple stripes before she could stop herself.
"You don't look much better, I assure you," Anselm said crisply. "And no, it isn't good. I quite agree. Perhaps you would like to try and stop this thing before it stops itself and kills us all?"
Shai flipped another switch and slammed the flat of her hand against a dead section of the console. It flickered for a moment, and came to life.
"If you'll stop bothering me for just one moment, doula," she said. "Then I will see what I can do."
***
The night before, the two of them had stood in the middle of the largest interplanetary station on the surface of Jupiter, waiting for the Laplacian Express to pull up to the platform. The station was an ornate two mile dome of brass and polished glass rising out of the Jovian jungle and lit by a million hovering lanterns. Filled up with spices, animals, traders, and passengers from all over the Solar System. But to the ancient machine that nestled at the back of Shai Laren's neck and wove its filigree-light exoskeleton over her body, she was still standing in the centre of a rainforest.
It had been clear-cut more than a century ago now, but the jungle rushed in to fill the darkness behind her closed eyelids so quickly that she was almost floating in it. A cold grey sky drifted above the canopy. Leaves heavy and slapping wet a
gainst her skin. She was like polished terracotta. Lean and strong and fierce. A Jovian huntress. And she was running. Running through ruins engulfed in twisted roots and vines. Something out there among the trees. She didn't know if she was hunting it, or it was hunting her.
"Shai, pay attention."
Anselm's voice snapped her back into herself. Suddenly there was too much light and too much noise. The night was so thick outside that the glass dome was polished black. Shai almost felt the pneuma machina curling against the base of her skull, aching after that lost ruin in the jungle. She wiped at the tears that stood in her eyes, thankful for the white linen wrappings that covered the scrollwork of her exoskeleton, but also hid the deep wave of blue longing that surged up through the chromatic cells in her skin.
She glanced across at Anselm awkwardly. "Yes, doula."
He linked his hands behind his back and stared out into the crowd. "You should enter resonance when you choose," he said. "Not whenever the pneuma machina whims it."
Shai looked down at her feet. "Yes, doula."
Anselm nodded. "Good. Now then, I think our charge is here."
Shai raised her head and rolled back onto the balls of her feet to get a better view. The air was warm as bathwater, full of the smell of incense and cooking food. She focused her mind and pushed down that feeling of floating in the jungle. The prickle of strange eyes prising into her from somewhere amongst the trees. The bustle of black body armour around Chief Executive Lascelles stood out almost as much as Shai and Anselm did in the veils and simple linen wrappings of the Syzygian Church. The guards formed a wall around Lascelles that even light could barely penetrate.
Anselm put his hand onto the wrappings of Shai's shoulder. "Come on."
They wove through the crowd easily, their pneuma machina drinking in the data of their senses and performing a thousand tiny calculations on the location and velocity of every other moving creature in their paths. The data surged down the tracery of Shai's exoskeleton like blood. All she had to do was allow her muscles to relax and respond to the touch of the machine. It was not yet as intuitive to her as it was to Anselm. After a few feet she slipped in silently behind him to let him feel out the path.