Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  Over there. A post had been reinforced, not replaced, and offered a measure of protection close to the surface. If he could only work out where Corsina and her people were, wait until none of them was looking in his direction, he might have a chance. He edged up the reinforced post, as slowly as he dared, until his head broke water.

  There was nothing. Silence. Where had they gone? Surely they hadn’t left the searays abandoned?

  Then, too late, he felt a current against his legs where there shouldn’t have been one, and half-turned too slowly, as someone grabbed his own stiletto from its straps and held it to his throat.

  ‘Only you know what you’ve put on this, but I still wouldn’t move.’

  ‘Well done, Anthemia,’ said Corsina, turning as Raphael approached, Leonata’s daughter holding the stiletto at his back, both of them dripping onto the planking. There wasn’t any need for the stiletto; he’d tried, and failed, and he’d only make a fool of himself by trying to escape again, with five or six shipwrights surrounding him.

  He was up on the walkway now, looking out over a lagoon overlaid with a tracery of light where each of the walkways was illuminated, all branching like a tree from the main complex two miles away. The sight had its own unearthly beauty, as if Aruwe were a place out of time where light came from the sea, and the brilliant stars above were only a backdrop.

  Stars. The Tuonetar had been star-worshippers once. Had the Thetian exiles adopted their faith in defeat, turning away from the service of Thetis? After all, every single one of the major Exile orders had sided unhesitatingly with the New Empire at the beginning of the Anarchy. It had been their magic that won the day, in the end, for all Rainardo’s skill as a commander. Why would Azrian and the other clans hold true to Thetis, when she appeared to have deserted them?

  Odd, the things he was noticing.

  ‘Bring him with you to Saphir,’ said the man beside Corsina, another ash-pale Ice Runner in that black coat of theirs.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Corsina said. She looked no different from any other Thetian, that was the strange thing. He’d never expected to meet one of Ruthelo’s followers in the flesh, and even if she’d been a child at the time, she’d still been sworn to Azrian. ‘There’s no way he can escape, if we keep him here.’

  ‘We’ll bring him back here if we need to keep him secure,’ the Ice Runner said, as if Raphael weren’t there. ‘Iolani wants to see him.’

  Which could mean anything, Raphael thought, strangely calm. Perhaps his part in this wasn’t over.

  ‘What was your name?’ he asked Corsina. The Aruwe Thalassarch fixed her eyes on him, as if surprised by the question.

  ‘Carséne Tirado Azrian,’ she said proudly. ‘My mother was a clerk of the Palace, my father a centurion of marines. Their families had been in clan service since Azrian was founded.’

  ‘And you?’ he asked the Ice Runner.

  ‘Nicephorus Panazzo Aphraon,’ he said. A far smaller clan, Aphraon, small enough that Raphael couldn’t remember anything about it other than the name. ‘That’s still my name, I was never given the luxury of hiding it.’

  For a moment there was silence, and stillness, then Corsina nodded. ‘Soon, I hope those will be our names again. Anthemia, escort Raphael onto Cerulean, and make sure you collect and search all his belongings. There’s probably a lot we didn’t catch. The rest of you, get on with the loading. We need Tisiphone and Hamilcar ready to sail within the hour.’

  So Barca were in on it as well, Raphael thought, as Anthemia grabbed his arm, and reached down for a coil of rope.

  ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t try to escape, not here. You have my word.’

  ‘Is that worth anything?’ she said. ‘You didn’t keep it at the ball. And you used me.’

  ‘I thought you were working for the enemy. I turned out to be right. As for the dance, there weren’t any more.’

  ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep. If you’d treated me as a person, and not an enemy, you wouldn’t be here,’ she pointed out. ‘But you did, and now you’re my prisoner. I think you need reminding of that.’

  ‘As you wish,’ Raphael said, meeting her gaze, but changing his tone. ‘Still, perhaps you should hurry, if you want a triumphal parade to celebrate my capture. A chariot drawn by tigers? If you can persuade even two of them to pull in the same direction, that is. Now, shall we go?’

  ‘I never believed all those stories about Ruthelo’s pride until I met you,’ Anthemia said. ‘Now I’m beginning to think they were pale shadows of the truth. You really are on the wrong side.’

  ‘He lost, didn’t he?’

  ‘Not this time,’ Anthemia said, with a fierce smile, and walked Raphael landward, leaving the rope on the deck. ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Lord Emperor? Lord Emperor?’

  The voice seemed to be coming from a very long way away, and Valentine blinked, trying to clear his head. His vision was a field of flashing blue and white, actinic fire still dancing across his eyeballs.

  ‘He’s alive.’

  ‘So’s the Empress,’ came another voice, even more distant, and then a second later one Valentine recognised, though he couldn’t pin a name to her.

  ‘Physician, I need a physician . . . Commander Merelos is injured.’

  ‘Over here!’ the first voice shouted, as something heavy scraped against something else, and there was a dull, rumbling crash. The fire was beginning to fade, but as Valentine tried to sit up the pain in his head was so intense he slumped back on to the floor.

  Then another man was bending over him, shining something painfully bright into his eyes, fingers running down his arm. Valentine was aware enough to stay still, to follow the physician’s examination with part of his own mind.

  ‘Pupils dilate, no broken bones, no blood. What’s the last thing you remember?’

  A vision loomed up through the fading blue fire, of something terrible and formless rising from the deep, a shadow impenetrable even to the aether sensors. Of enemy searays engulfed one by one as Sovereign desperately turned away, then the reality of another war-manta in front of them . . . and then the explosion.

  ‘Something exploded,’ he said. ‘Just as we met the manta astern. I’m not injured . . . attend to Commander Merelos.’

  A whispered consultation, then the physician moved away. Half of Valentine’s upper body felt as if he’d been trapped under a rockslide, but nothing was broken. He managed to open his eyes this time, saw a blurry shape in cobalt blue kneeling over him.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. The voice seemed familiar, but he couldn’t place it.

  ‘Lieutenant Palladios, sir, acting captain of Unity.’

  ‘Acting captain?’

  ‘Captain Lindos and Commander Orgola were killed in an ambush. We were the manta astern of you.’ He sounded so young, and there was a note of exhaustion in his voice, but Valentine pushed himself up into a sitting position, ignoring the waves of pain which threatened to overwhelm him.

  ‘Where are we?’

  ‘Close to the Channel entrance, sir.’ He hesitated. ‘I know we were supposed to be the picket ship, but there was a whole force astern of you, so I left our escape rays to warn the others and came after you.’

  The ramifications of what he’d said finally hit through Valentine’s mind. ‘You boarded us?’

  ‘We had to, you were out of control. My people took over Engineering and got you clear, but I’m afraid your ship’s . . . rather a mess. But you’re alive, which is what matters, and we haven’t seen any pursuit. Here, sir. Drink. The physician says you need to after an aether explosion.’

  Fingers pressed a glass of water into his hand, and Valentine drained it as fast as he could bear, ignoring the searing pain in his throat. The whole of his insides felt as if they’d been dried out, but then that was a normal effect of aether explosions. At least he could see the young lieutenant’s dark, anxious face now. He’d been right about Palladios, but Lindos was a grievous loss, one of his best
captains.

  ‘How many survivors?’ Valentine asked. The bridge was a ruined mess, with gaping holes in the ceiling and blown aether conduits everywhere, panels piled on top of one another.

  ‘So far, fifty-eight,’ Palladios said. ‘We think there are another fifteen or so trapped in the assault launch, but we’re not sure. We can’t get down there.’

  Fifty-eight, out of a complement of a hundred and ten sailors and ninety legionaries.

  ‘She’s a tough ship, sir. And she’ll sail again – without all this armour and shielding none of you would have got out.’

  ‘Give me a hand, Lieutenant.’

  ‘Are you sure you should be on your feet, sir?’ It was a brave lieutenant who said that to an admiral and an Emperor, but then Palladios had already proved his courage.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure,’ he said, put up a hand and felt a fresh wave of dizziness as Palladios pulled him upright, gently held on to one shoulder as he almost fell, and then the dizziness passed, and Valentine could see what remained of his bridge. It was even worse than he’d feared, piles of debris everywhere and a huge, smoking hole in the floor where the aether table had been. There were fragments of it embedded in the polyp bulkhead, and the supports between the forward windows – it was a miracle none of the windows had been severely damaged.

  Unity’s people seemed to be everywhere, checking the wounded and performing triage for the physician and his attendant – no, that was one of Sovereign’s attendants, with most of his hair burnt off. He recognised the woman who’d spoken now – Mage Eritheina, a blanket draped over the rags of her robes, holding up Commander Merelos’s head as the physician worked on him by the twisted wreckage of the captain’s chair.

  ‘Are we still under way?’ Valentine asked Palladios, picking his way over.

  Palladios nodded. ‘It’s a risk, sir, but I thought we needed to put as much distance between us and them as we could. Even after that . . . whatever it was.’ Even he sounded afraid, as if the memory of what he’d seen was too raw to drag up.

  ‘I don’t suppose it destroyed the arkship, did it?’

  ‘No, it broke apart before it could do that.’ Palladios paused. ‘Was that really an arkship?’

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Valentine said. No arkship had been seen in Aquasilva’s seas for centuries, not since the end of the Tuonetar War.

  They had been the mainstay of the Tuonetar fleet during the War, vast ships a mile or more in length with room for dozens of smaller craft and huge invasion forces. Better suited to the deep ocean than to Thetian waters, though, which was why Thetia had remained relatively unscathed until the very end.

  But they should never have survived – it had been two hundred and fifty years! Unless the Lost Souls . . . no, they couldn’t have built one of their own.

  ‘You survived,’ Palladios said tentatively. ‘One ship, and you made it out alive.’

  ‘I did,’ Valentine said, thinking of those hundred and forty-odd men and women who’d died in the engagement, not to mention the dead of Defiance and Courageous, and however many Unity had lost. He glanced over to Commander Merelos, another of his best, prone and deathly pale. ‘Eritheina, how is he?’

  The mage looked up, blood thick on her face from where she’d bitten through her lip, desperate worry in her eyes.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve kept him alive this far, but they need to fix him.’

  ‘That’s what I’m doing,’ the physician said, without looking up. ‘Hold him steady.’

  ‘I won’t interrupt,’ Valentine said, moved over to where two more acolytes were helping his mother to her feet, and the cold rage on Aesonia’s face matched what he was beginning to feel himself.

  More than three hundred of the Navy’s own had fallen in a few hours to Jharissa, and he didn’t even know what had happened to the backup force. Another three war-mantas, packed with legionaries, almost five hundred men, and then the sailing transports behind them. They had trusted him, and they’d died for it.

  He thought he’d got their measure, but he’d never expected the Lost Souls to be so terrifyingly strong.

  ‘What is there to do?’ Aesonia asked quietly. ‘Corala is destroyed, anyone there will be dead or captured, and we’re in no condition to fight another enemy.’

  ‘No,’ Valentine said. ‘They’ll expect us to retire and lick our wounds. Their ships will be heading to Corala on rescue missions. We have a fresh cohort of mages on Glorious, and now we know how to handle whatever they can throw at us. Set a course for Saphir Island, Captain. Let’s see if we can’t pry a searay loose and tell the rest of the squadron to join us there.’

  ‘I’m a lieutenant,’ Palladios began apologetically, but Valentine cut him off.

  ‘Not any more,’ Valentine said, and heard the cheering of Unity’s crew as a stunned grin spread across the young officer’s face.

  CHAPTER XV

  Saphir Island had changed beyond recognition.

  It was the noise that struck Raphael as he stepped out from the hatch of Cerulean, closely watched by Anthemia and three other Aruwe shipwrights. The silent outpost of only a few days before had vanished, and in its place was an armed camp, a place of noise and chaos under the glow of hundreds of small waterglobes.

  There had been only one ship in the lagoon, a small transport belonging to Estarrin’s allies Clan Seithen, partners in the conspiracy. The others, if he was any judge, were at sea, engaged with the Emperor’s forces. There had been an atmosphere of nervous tension on Cerulean for the whole journey as she hurtled through the darkness. Captain Theodoros had driven her like a wild thing, twisting and turning through the kelp channels; Raphael, like everyone else on board, had spent most of the journey strapped into his chair.

  Two Ice Runners were waiting on the gangway for Corsina and Leonata, both unarmed, but Raphael could see armed Ice Runners in the shadow of the stand of trees where they had stood all those days ago. Why hadn’t Iolani disposed of them then? If Leonata had been her ally, why wait? Why not simply kill all of them where they stood, and be rid of the Emperor and his mother once and for all?

  ‘Corsina, Leonata,’ said the elder of the two, after a brisk, but undeniably warm, greeting. ‘Is all the equipment loaded?’

  ‘Everything’s away,’ Corsina said. ‘We brought a prisoner, Nicephorus told us you wanted him.’

  The Ice Runner looked beyond them, to Raphael, and his eyes widened. ‘She’ll be pleased.’

  ‘News from Corala yet?’

  The Ice Runner looked grim. ‘Fifteen fighters lost, and the harbour destroyed. We took two of their ships with us, but the Emperor got away. The man’s a demon, and we just can’t kill that battle cruiser. He even survived an encounter with Nemesis, thanks to his witch of a mother.’

  ‘You brought Nemesis this far south?’ Corsina asked, open curiosity in her voice.

  Then Catalc’s rumours of a terror in the deep were true? An arkship had survived all these centuries in the ice? It was unbelievable, but the way they spoke about the ship named Nemesis, there was nothing else it could be.

  ‘You’ll get to see her soon enough,’ the Ice Runner said. ‘Come, Iolani’s waiting.’

  They set off almost at a march, along the gangway and up the road into Saphir Island, passed defences manned by Ice Runners with those odd weapons now clearly displayed. A short, stubby tube with a larger cylinder attached to its back end, two handles, carried by a broad shoulder-strap, it was like no weapon Raphael had ever seen, but he had a feeling it was extremely destructive.

  Inland there were crowds of people, armed Ice Runners and representatives of Leonata’s allies. And wounded, being carried on stretchers or tended to inside the houses, as children were kept out of the way. Most seemed to have aether burns, a few more conventional injuries, but it was clear the battle at Corala had been a bloody one.

  Bloodier still for the Empire, if two of its ships had been destroyed. And that was despite the help of the mages.

&nbs
p; Iolani was in the square, standing by a makeshift command table with a group of her Ice Runners and representatives from at least a dozen Vesperan clans. Estarrin were there, Seithen, Rapai, Barca, Xelestis, two or three others. A select group, but a powerful one.

  And a man in green and white, emissary of the Prince of Imbria. So Petroz had thrown his lot in with Jharissa, after all. Raphael had wondered whether the close assocation with Leonata was entirely personal, but apparently it had spilled over into the political sphere as well.

  There were no representatives from either of the other two princes or the Exiles, but that didn’t surprise Raphael. The Lady of Aroth and Domenico Barrati would be keeping their own counsel, waiting for the Empire and the Vesperans to weaken each other before moving in for the kill. If they even knew what was going on, that was.

  ‘Leonata!’ Iolani said, looking up. She looked the same, but the brusqueness in her manner was gone. ‘It goes well?’

  ‘It goes well,’ Leonata said. ‘We have him.’

  There was something in her tone which made Raphael wonder – why was he suddenly so important? He wasn’t valuable enough to the Emperor to be used as a hostage, and even if Silvanos were to be confronted with a choice of his loyalty to the Empire or Raphael’s life, Raphael couldn’t believe Silvanos would care enough to save him, in the end.

  The shipwrights propelled him forward into the torchlit square and the gazes of Iolani and her circle of advisers. Those ice-blue eyes rested on him, and a smile of cold satisfaction spread across Iolani’s face.

  ‘Take him inside, I’ll see to him in a minute. Ladies, gentlemen, I hope you’ll pardon me the secrecy. We’d all be happier if this business doesn’t see the light of day.’

  Even Leonata nodded, as Raphael felt fear for the first time, but he had no chance to reply as two of the Ice Runners hustled him across the square and into one of the houses, and the door closed behind him.