Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  ‘Now?’ Zhubodai grinned. ‘A night attack?’

  ‘A night attack. Wake your two quietest men and gather all the people on this list, in silence. Give them the word, but do allow them time to wake up.’

  ‘Time is for weaklings,’ Zhubodai said, only half in jest. ‘It shall be done. We shall catch them all in their beds.’

  ‘Raphael?’

  He woke instantly, looking around for the cabin windows, and then saw the colonnade, and the grass, and remembered.

  ‘Thais?’ He felt a sudden stab of fear. He’d slept. How long? Had he dreamed?

  Ithiri didn’t seem much lower in the sky to the west, the stars seemed very much in the same positions, but he’d hardly looked. It could have been five minutes, or half an hour. The scent of flowers seemed even stronger.

  And how was Thais here? He looked at her, skin like alabaster in the moonlight, her copper hair almost dark green in the moonlight, and felt the familiar tightening in his stomach. It was only right that she was here. She belonged in such serene places, and this was a place to be shared, with the right person.

  ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘I like it up here. No priestesses to give me orders.’ There was water on her forehead, but a moment later he understood when she reached over and dabbed it on his forehead, Thetis’s blessing. ‘You forgot. Though it’s holier if an acolyte does it.’

  ‘Only if . . .’ he began, and saw her smile.

  ‘Got you,’ she said.

  She was sitting very close, close enough for him to reach out and gently take her hand, feeling the warmth of her touch, the connection.

  The ice was still there, in his mind, the memories lurking, waiting, coming to the surface even as he tried to keep them down. She could take them away. But no, he wasn’t going to lose himself, not tonight.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Memories.’

  ‘Saphir Island?’

  Those were too raw to be memories. ‘Older.’ He couldn’t tell her, because she was bound to Aesonia, and she believed in the Empire he would try to destroy tomorrow.

  No, it was past midnight. Today, and he still had only the glimmerings of a plan. He couldn’t afford to relax.

  His fingers closed around her hand, and he pulled her a little closer, tracing the veins on her wrist with the fingers of his other hand.

  There was every chance, he realised, that he wouldn’t be alive this time tomorrow night. It seemed so remote, here in the moonlight without the slightest sign that they were close to the heart of Vespera, and the darkness of Ulithi Palace was another world, hidden by the trees.

  And if he were alive, he would either be a free citizen of Vespera, and the shadow lifted – but forever cut off from this acolyte who served the Empire, or he would be in chains under the Palace, waiting for whatever living death they saw fit to send him to. There would be no when this was over.

  Thais said nothing, watching him with a faint smile.

  He raised her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers, one after another. She closed her eyes.

  Was there anything he could do? If Aesonia and Valentine were defeated, perhaps killed, would she be free to choose her own path? Would she choose her own path, or would the oaths be too strong?

  If Aesonia died, Thais’s chances of freedom died with her. If Aesonia lived . . . Raphael would lose his soul.

  Thais gently slid her hand loose, reached up and pulled Raphael’s head down to kiss her, a kiss that lasted a very long time before she drew away, still holding his other hand, and Raphael saw a tear on one cheek.

  ‘Is there anything that’ll make you change your mind?’ she said.

  ‘Change my mind?’

  ‘You’re going to betray us.’

  Raphael stiffened, fear flaring up for a second, and tried to pull free, but Thais held on. ‘I’m trying to protect you, but I can’t for much longer, and I can’t if you’re going to betray us.’

  ‘I can’t forgive the Empire, not with what I know now!’

  ‘Then run, Raphael, before they can catch you. I can keep them off for that long.’

  You have a guardian angel.

  Thetis, no!

  Dream Twisters. The nightmares when he first came here, nightmares which had faded. Dreams of warm waters, a light in the sea. Of a temple on a hill above the sea, an oasis of calm.

  He jerked his hand free, throwing himself away from the pillar, almost losing his footing as he hit the grass, desperate to get away from her.

  She’d just stopped herself falling against the pillar, and now she half-knelt, half-sat on the topmost step, staring at him in shock.

  ‘Raphael?’

  ‘What a fool I was,’ he said, fury burning through him. ‘What a terrible, terrible fool not to have seen it.’

  ‘I protected you.’

  ‘You entered my mind! You read my thoughts, and you altered my Dreams. You’re a Dream Twister! You’re an abomination!’

  He couldn’t remember the nightmares, except for the white wolves, but he remembered the terror, the fear before sleep, the screams in the night.

  ‘I’m not!’ she said, heartbroken, scrambling to her feet. ‘Never call me that!’

  ‘It’s what you are!’ She’d been inside his mind, she’d altered his dreams, just as they had, all those years ago. He couldn’t defend himself against her.

  He’d trusted her, and he’d loved her. And she’d been Aesonia’s creature all along.

  ‘I’m a slave, Raphael! I don’t even control my own mind. I have no free will except when she grants it to me, no choice over whether to obey her. I can’t even take my own life, because she’d stop me before I could summon up the will to do it. Can you even imagine what that’s like? You think I serve her because I choose to?’

  ‘You’re her creature!’

  There were tears streaming down Thais’s face, but he couldn’t believe her. Thais knew him well enough to play his heart-strings, as she’d been doing all along, because Aesonia wanted to someone close enough to Raphael that she could bind him to the Empire’s cause, and what better way than in dreams, by the agency of someone he trusted?

  ‘How long would it have taken?’ he demanded. ‘How many nights before I’d have been ready to kill a thousand innocent people just to satisfy her?’

  ‘Raphael, I love you! I’ve tried to keep her out, because she’d have you arrested.’

  ‘Are you even capable of love?’ Raphael said, taking another step back as she came towards him, her composure broken, a thing of treachery and enslavement, an avatar for the Empress’s will.

  ‘Aren’t I even human in your eyes?’

  ‘You’re a Dream Twister!’

  The Dream Twisters had sent white wolves to stalk his dreams.

  ‘They made me one!’ Thais said. ‘Because I was a troublemaker, because I was like you. But I couldn’t leave, and I wouldn’t become what they wanted. I was seventeen, and they took me from my room in the middle of the night to a place above black cliffs, and for four months I lived in a nightmare, waking and sleeping, and in the end they broke me. Do you think I wanted that?’

  Was it truth or lies? He didn’t know, again because she knew him too well. How did they make Dream Twisters? However they did it, the girl he’d known at Sarthes was gone.

  ‘Please, don’t do this!’ Thais said, falling to her knees on the grass. Of course she would, because the Exiles had raised apparent submission to an art form. It was ingrained. Pose no threat. She wanted him to have pity, compassion, so she could work her way into his mind again. ‘Why can’t you accept me? Why aren’t I human?’

  As she’d been trying to do tonight. There had been a stronger smell of flowers when he’d woken up, and all he’d been doing was trying to justify his desires.

  ‘Because you warp my mind, and I have no defences against you! I have no magic, no control over my dreams, no mind-magic, nothing.’

  ‘I haven’t warped your mind, I tried to protect you.’r />
  ‘You protected me because you want me to be her slave.’ He took another step away from her.

  ‘You don’t understand that word. You don’t know what it’s like.’

  ‘I know what it’s like not to have that power, to be four years old and subject to a Dream Twister’s malice every time I fell asleep, to know that any night could be my last, that I could be punished with nightmares for no reason at all.’

  Whether those were memories or his own extrapolation he didn’t know, but remembered the white wolves, and the fear.

  ‘Maybe the part of you that was Thais once would like to protect me,’ Raphael said, pulling the stiletto out of his sleeve and advancing on her, his mind whirling with memories, and sheer fury at having believed, and fallen in love with, such a creature. ‘But you protected me because it was convenient, and if Aesonia asked you to send me nightmares, you would.’

  Thais’s eyes widened with terror, but she didn’t move. When she spoke again, her voice was dead, resigned.

  ‘Kill me, then, and set me free.’

  ‘I think not,’ came a voice from the tunnel.

  ‘It shall be done,’ Merelos said, and his aether image flickered and vanished.

  Valentine nodded in satisfaction. The last of his orders had been given, and their secrecy was still intact. There were still people sleeping in the Palace, Ulithi staff and others not important enough to be woken up. Very shortly, though, the boats would leave the watergates here and at Canteni Palace to collect the High Thalassarchs and bring them here, and it would be more difficult to keep the City in the dark. Still, with enough discretion and forceful enough threats of retribution against the High Thalassarchs’ clans, it was possible he’d get them all here in silence.

  ‘Where’s Gian?’ he asked a moment later, turning to Zhubodai. All his commanders should have been here. ‘And where’s Silvanos?’

  ‘Gian wasn’t in his rooms when I went to wake him up,’ Palladios said. ‘Silvanos isn’t in the Palace.’

  Of course not – he’d said he needed until dawn to ready his dispositions, because this scenario had never been planned for.

  But to have two of his senior people absent was unfortunate. Still, the benefits of moving now would be substantial, and outweighed the inconvenience.

  ‘Tell Plautius to recall Silvanos as soon as possible. Palladios, comb the Palace for Gian – quietly. Zhubodai, send a couple more guards down to the cells. The rest of you, you have the order. Remember, even once you lose the element of surprise, you’re by far the better troops.’

  They saluted, crisp naval salutes or tribal fist-to-heart, and filed out.

  Aesonia, sitting on the divan behind them, suddenly stiffened. ‘Thais!’

  ‘What is it?’ Valentine demanded.

  ‘She’s terrified, I can feel it from here. She must have failed.’

  ‘Deal with Raphael,’ Valentine said. ‘Anything you do, I’ll approve.’ Raphael had sworn loyalty to Valentine, in front of witnesses, and he’d broken the oath. He deserved whatever Aesonia wanted to do to him.

  ‘It’ll be done. I’ve had people protecting Thais all evening.’

  Raphael hadn’t even heard them approach.

  There were three of them, two tribesmen in Sarthien colours and a priest of Sarthes in dark blue, who’d spoken.

  ‘You were given your chance,’ the priest said coldly. ‘It was the only one you’ll get.’

  Instinctively, Raphael moved behind Thais, holding the stiletto to her throat.

  ‘If you kill her,’ the priest said, ‘you’ll dream it every night for the rest of your life. I wouldn’t. Yes, you can kill her, but it won’t change anything.’

  Two tribesmen, poised to spring like hunting cats. They carried wooden swords, sharpened to a point but heavy enough to be used as cudgels instead, and he saw the now-familiar rope loops handing from their belts.

  Thais slumped, turned her head to look up at Raphael.

  ‘I tried,’ she said. ‘They’ll do to you what they did to me, and I can’t stop them.’

  ‘I don’t need your help,’ he said, flinging her forward onto the grass so she couldn’t grab him, and backing in towards the temple. The tribesmen were armoured, but only to protect them against heavy blows. All he needed was to scratch, and he was good enough with a stiletto – but, Thetis, they were fast.

  They sprinted over towards him as the priest watched, and Raphael ducked back behind the colonnade, cutting around the edge of the pool towards the doors of the sanctuary before realising he’d be cornered, if he let them push him inside. They saw this, split up to run around either side of the colonnade, heavy wooden swords at the ready, but held to strike, not to stab. They wanted him alive.

  He lunged at the nearest as the man emerged from behind the nearest pillar, but quick as a flash, the man dodged the blade, and Raphael only pulled his arm away a split-second before the heavy edge of the blade would have struck his fingers. Another strike missed the tribesman’s hand by an inch, and the other man was already closing on him.

  The priest was standing still, a faint smile on his lips. Raphael jumped back, managing – just – to put a pillar between him and the tribesmen, and then remembered the ball, and smiled. And the second tribesman approached, he took a dancer’s step, formal, flowing, in and out, a move no-one would ever dream of doing in a fight. The second tribesman, caught off-guard, raised his arm to defend, and Raphael’s stiletto sliced across the back of his hand before he turned out of the way again, silently thanking Anthemia.

  The poison would act faster the more the man moved, but as soon as he collapsed the first tribesman would realise. They were closing on him, on from each side, and Raphael turned and ran, sprinting between them in the instant before they were close enough to strike, and clearing the pool in a running jump that brought him out on the far side of the colonnade from them, and brought a terrible jolt on his ankle. The pain, for a second, was excruciating, and Raphael stumbled to one knee.

  The tribesmen were faster. Running around the edge of the pool, they were on him before he could get to his feet again, but even as they reached him Raphael saw one frown, start, his movements suddenly jerky, and then collapse onto the grass in a clatter of armour.

  Raphael twisted himself round, still on one knee with the stiletto pointed at the first tribesman, who took a step back.

  ‘You are a coward,’ he said, in guttural Archipelagan. ‘Only cowards use poison.’

  The priest had pulled Thais to her feet, had put his arm under her shoulders to keep her up, but Raphael saw his sudden look of dismay.

  ‘You think I care for your opinion?’ Raphael said.

  ‘I think I will ask the Mother-of-Shamen to give you to us for a while, to show you how we treat such men. You will care then.’

  ‘You have to catch me first.’

  ‘I know how to deal with you now,’ he said. ‘And you are injured. Perhaps if you put your little toy down and beg like a coward, I will be satisfied, and not ask for you.’ The man was moving round, faster than Raphael could swivel on one knee, ready to come at him from his blind side.

  ‘No?’ he said. ‘Then you will pay.’

  The dart took the tribesman in the throat, above the gorget of the kraken-skin armour, and his fingers clenched convulsively, blood trickling down his throat, and toppled to the ground.

  The priest looked on with disbelief, and turned to run, but before he reached the tunnel, another dart took him in the back, and he gave a strangled cry and fell, twitching, onto the ground, taking Thais down with him in a tangle of robes.

  ‘I have waited,’ said a familiar voice from the trees, ‘a very long time to do that.’

  Silvanos walked out of the trees, holding in his hand what looked exactly like a hip-flask with a water-spray attached to the end.

  ‘That was,’ he said, ‘not bad. Try to get them both together next time, though.’ He reached a hand down and Raphael took it and pulled himself to his feet. Silv
anos rolled the nearest tribesman over with his boot, and Raphael saw the man’s sightless eyes staring up at the stars. There were two dead men and one drugged in the glade, and a horror-struck Thais pulling herself free from the priest’s body.

  ‘I can’t afford to be merciful,’ Silvanos said. ‘I’m glad you are, though. Acolyte, come here!’

  Trembling, and under the sights of Silvanos’s dart-thrower, Thais obeyed.

  ‘What is this?’ she said, looking from Raphael’s face to Silvanos’s. ‘Why are you . . .’

  ‘You think I’d stand by and watch the last of my family turned into Aesonia’s creature, as you are?’

  ‘But they were on your side!’

  ‘I’m on my own side, my dear, and you were foolish not to notice that. Now, there remains the problem of what to do with you. Raphael, do you want to kill her?’

  The anger was gone, vanished with the arrival of the tribesmen and the shock of near-capture. And Thais was broken, her face stained with tears, her face lost and despairing. She was a Dream Twister. How could he have loved her?

  ‘No,’ Raphael said. ‘Let her live.’

  ‘It would be a kindness,’ Silvanos said, and there was no trace of harshness or malice in his voice. ‘What she told you was absolutely true. She is a slave, and she’s lost the best hope of freedom she was ever going to get.’

  Raphael looked questioningly at his uncle.

  ‘If you’d asked to marry her, Aesonia would have released her from every obligation except keeping you loyal. Valentine had quite an opinion of you, and he was prepared to lose a Dream Twister to gain your loyalty.’

  ‘What do we do with her?’ Raphael said, his mind still whirling. This was a Silvanos he’d never seen.

  ‘As I said, killing her would be a mercy, but you’d spend your life wondering if there was something else you could have done. No, she has to disappear.’

  ‘And be kept awake until tomorrow night.’

  ‘I have people who can do that,’ Silvanos said dispassionately. ‘If I give them a Dream Twister, they’ll appreciate me for ever.’