Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  He couldn’t see Tilao or Daena, but Tilao’s very bulk would have gained them passage. As they reached ground level, Odeinath saw a white plume coming towards them, the horror-struck face of the Salassa Legate.

  ‘To the cellars!’ Petroz said. ‘Get your men below ground! Call out our allies!’

  ‘I think our allies are no better off than us,’ the Legate said, issuing a string of orders.

  ‘At least two of those mortars will be firing at Jharissa Palace,’ Petroz said. ‘The other, probably at Xelestis.’

  Odeinath’s own palace, his own clansmen, though he hadn’t set foot there for decades.

  ‘Get downstairs!’ the Legate said, as another thump sounded, and they ran for the entrance of Calandra Tower, down a flight of stairs as the Palace shook again, and the lights flickered.

  ‘They hit Chiria Palace!’ someone shouted, from the top of the stairs. Salassans – Odeinath ought to call them Imbrians, but Imbria was simply the place the Salassa happened to rule. They were still clanspeople, in his mind, and they still acted like it.

  They were still dying for it.

  Chiria . . . who were Clan Chiria? They’d been allies of the Decaris once, an obscure and poor clan, barely able to maintain the two mantas to keep their title, but a very old clan. And now, whether they were involved or not, their palace had been blasted open because they happened to be in the wrong place.

  There were houses above them on the slopes of Naiad, sleeping families who’d never know what hit them if a mortar bomb went astray.

  A Salassa centurion pushed two doors open and stood to bar the way into one for all except Petroz and a few others, as someone else shouted for the air filters. A vaulted underground room with an aether table, a map of the City, the kind every clan had maintained since the invention of pulse cannon, even if they’d never been needed before because no-one, not even in the war before the Anarchy, had dared to use artillery against the City.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Petroz snarled, as attendants rushed to activate the aether tables and take the covers off the maps. ‘Send word to Berenice, she’s to engage those ships at once. And tell Arria and Hasdrubal to give a hand.’

  ‘I don’t think they can,’ Bahram said. ‘I think Valentine means to destroy this palace and Iolani’s as a lesson, and then he’ll ask the rest to surrender.’

  ‘The palace of his own ancestors! The palace his mother grew up in, and you think he’d destroy it?’

  ‘That’s what he’s doing,’ said Odeinath, as the ground shook again, and the aether lights flickered and went out.

  Raphael watched the tower crumble, a scar on the beauty of the old Palace, and then looked north. He couldn’t see the other two targets, they were both hidden behind hills, but he knew one of them, the one with the most smoke rising, was Jharissa Palace.

  A palace which would be sheltering hundreds of families from the rioting in the Portanis.

  And then he heard, unmistakably, voices, and saw the shadows of people leaving the Water Court, fanning out into the formal garden. A search party.

  ‘For you, or for me?’ Raphael asked Thais.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Please, before my courage fails me.’

  But if they were searching, properly, for him or anyone else, would the bamboo be enough? Silvanos had spoken of another way out, but where would it be? The wall up here was twenty feet high, no way to climb over it, and Raphael didn’t even know what was on the other side. Further down, there was the road which ran through and under and between the clan palaces, in tunnels a large part of the way.

  He ran down the path, pulling Thais after him. There was the stand of bamboo, and it was, indeed, completely impenetrable to the eye, and there, a path between plants wide enough for one footstep at a time.

  ‘Go on, I’ll cover our tracks,’

  Thais nodded and picked her way through; Raphael followed, brushing the ground with his fingers to remove each footprint, even when they passed under a tree and out of sight, squeezing their way through an opening between a trunk and the edge of the bamboo which seemed barely big enough for anyone. Thais fit through with little difficult; Raphael almost became stuck, and Thais had to pull him through. No tribesman would manage that opening, with armour and knives.

  They pressed on, round to the back of the thicket. There were no more voices, which was a bad sign. People searching for someone they believed friendly would be shouting, calling out. People searching for an enemy would keep quiet.

  There was the opening, just visible, in the shadows, and there, leading back through the garden, between trees and high ferns, was a path. A recently trodden path.

  But not a path which could be trodden in silence. If he went now he had a chance to elude the searchers; if he took the time to deal with Thais, it might be too late.

  ‘No time,’ Raphael said. ‘On.’

  ‘Aesonia will work out what happened,’ Thais said.

  ‘Can she take thoughts from your waking mind?’

  ‘No, but she can force me to obey her. If I’m tied up, there’s nothing I can do to stop you; if I’m with you . . .’

  ‘I’ll take that danger. Ahead of me. Come.’

  They set off down the path, Raphael urging Thais on, because he couldn’t set the pace, he needed to stay behind. The bombardment continued, and they broke into a run, a run that could surely be heard by the searchers.

  They came to the wall, and the path turned downhill, right in its shadow. This was the dangerous part; the garden narrowed further down, and at one point the wild bit couldn’t be more than twenty paces wide; anyone in the formal garden would surely hear them.

  He pressed on, under the shadow of the wall, startling a few birds and, once, a red-and-yellow snake, but it slithered out of the path rather than attack.

  Raphael slowed her when they reached the narrow section. Were those voices? He stopped, but couldn’t hear anything beyond the cicadas and the ever-present running water. If there were tribesmen hunting him he wouldn’t know until they were on top of him.

  Shouts came from above, cries of alarm. They’d found the bodies by the temple. The drugged guard would be unconscious for some time to come, Raphael didn’t have to worry about that . . .

  ‘Here!’ Thais whispered, skidding to a halt. At his shoulder-height there was a square gap built into the wall as if a window had been there. There had been bars, but someone had removed them. The smell of cypress was overpowering.

  He peered out through the opening, saw the road twenty feet below, running into a tunnel, but it was lined with cypress trees, and it was a cypress tree which hid the hole, an enormous, ancient tree.

  ‘Can you climb?’ Raphael asked Thais, and she nodded, silently. Was she fighting Aesonia in her mind? Or had what spirit remained simply gone out of her? She’d offered him what she could, and he’d refused it.

  Another detonation, and more sounds, too faint to make out.

  ‘You first, then, he said, and heaved her unceremoniously up onto the ledge, where she knelt for a moment while her hands sought strong enough branches, and then she pulled herself out, the tree swaying briefly, and began to climb down, hand over hand, oddly sure of herself.

  Something rustled nearby, and Raphael jumped up for the ledge once, missed, jumped again. There was definitely someone close by. He pulled himself up, heard more rustling and a sudden movement, and simply launched himself at the tree, wrapping his arms round it and falling.

  He fell perhaps eight feet before he caught himself, a branch tangled up in his robes. Thais had almost reached the bottom, but the tree was still swaying alarmingly. Raphael didn’t look up to find out if they’d been seen, but climbed down as fast as possible to join Thais at the bottom. The road was deserted, hardly unusual down here, when houses and shops were higher up – which way now? South into the tunnel?

  No. North, towards the City. He didn’t know the order of the palaces well enough to remember if there were any sympathetic clans cl
ose by on the south side. Alecel, perhaps, but they were small and might already have been attacked.

  Across the water, smoke was pouring from Salassa Palace. Three towers and the south wall were in ruins, and he heard screaming. Thump thump. Two more detonations, in the distance. Were they still firing at Salassa Palace?

  They ran on, Thais like an automaton, Raphael pushing himself as far as his breath would go. His robes and hair were full of cypress, and the dust from the tree had clogged his throat. He was gasping for breath now, his lungs burning, and he had to stop, give himself three or four sprays of the drug before he could carry on. The pain dulled, but it was a warning – if he ignored it for too long, his lungs would start bleeding.

  Then they were out of the avenue of cypresses, and on the left was the short road that led to the land gate of Ulithi Palace, thankfully hidden behind the trees. He could see the Palace’s walls and towers far above, so many windows looking at him, and he thought there was a pale figure hanging from the window at the very top of Geometer’s Tower, a way below the huge Imperial standard fluttering briskly in the Erythra.

  There was a vaporetto stage ahead, for the use of the houses further uphill, but no gondolas that he could see, only a small rowing boat.

  ‘Do they know what I’ve done?’ he asked Thais. ‘Do they know?’

  ‘Aesonia felt something,’ she said. ‘When you were about to kill me. They’ve found the bodies, she’ll know what happened.’

  So if he went back to the gates, they’d simply seize him. He’d saved himself, but at the cost of putting the palace walls between him and the prisoners. Would Silvanos be waiting for his help?

  Raphael had to get back inside.

  ‘I’ll take that risk,’ he said, sounding more decisive than he felt, and turned back towards the gates. Aesonia might not have put out a general alert yet, and once he was inside, he could hide.

  ‘There they are!’

  A shout from the road – someone standing by the cypress trees, more figures descending. Too late.

  He ran on, seeing the long road curving round the inlet, well over a mile away along a normally busy waterfront to Salassa Palace, which was only a few hundred paces away across the water. Why was there a small boat by the stage, he wondered? There were no boats on the water, at this time. The houses and shops along the waterfront, and the ships docked there, were largely deserted, since no-one dared to venture out in all this chaos.

  He ran to the boat, Thais alongside him, as if she didn’t know what else to do. It was a single-oared vessel, without the elegance or speed of a gondola, but what mattered was that it could be rowed by a single person. It was their best chance, because he wouldn’t outrun tribesmen on the road.

  They clambered in and Raphael pushed the boat away, telling Thais to sit in the middle where she wouldn’t drag the bow down, and took to the oar, working furiously. Ahead, he saw boats moving below Salassa Palace, a brief spurt of fire. Was there fighting there?

  The gap widened, and by the time the first tribesman reached the vaporetto stop there were three or four lengths between Raphael and the shore. He worked on, frantically, angling the boat towards the shore east of Salassa. Those must be Salassa armed launches trying to get people off.

  Then he saw the water suddenly rear up and engulf a Salassa launch in mid-spurt, dragging it under the waves to leave only a mass of bubbles, as if a great hand had reached up from the Deep. Aesonia hadn’t noticed him yet. Would she do that to him, even with Thais in the boat?’

  ‘Yes,’ Thais said, echoing his thoughts. ‘Yes, she would.’

  Raphael rowed on. Their pursuers would be running back to Ulithi Palace, calling for reinforcements from the water-gate. There was a single armed launch left there; the rest must have gone earlier, to protect the boats full of troops.

  Another detonation and a thunderous roar as the last remaining tower of Salassa Palace crumbled, falling onto the landwards side. Across the road, onto the houses and the shops behind the Palace. Maybe the people had had time to get out.

  He heard a yell, and almost before the dust had settled a wave of attackers charged into Salassa Palace from the landward side, and a hail of arrows rained down on the courtyard.

  He was more than half-way there, his breathing ragged again. Behind them, news must have reached the water-gate; there were men climbing into the armed launch. Raphael’s arms were tiring, but he made himself keep on. Thais was watching him, an odd pain on her face. He put more effort into his flagging arms, willing the boat to go faster, as if that could achieve anything. A roar as the launch’s engine started up. Aesonia must notice them soon.

  The attackers were climbing over the rubble of Salassa Palace; there seemed to be some opposition, but pitifully little.

  The launch was moving out now, turning in a wide circle, its aether engine buzzing madly, arcing out towards him over the water. He wouldn’t make it. Not at the speed the launch was going. But the gap between him and the shore was small now, if he turned to come ashore in the half-ruined, blazing palace next to Salassa, hit by one of the first mortars.

  He turned, digging his arms in frantically, watching the distance close. Sixty paces, fifty, forty, thirty. The launch was only lengths behind him now, preparing its engine. Ahead, he could see white-armoured marines fighting others. A few tribesmen, a few Canteni green, but mostly Rozzini red and brown.

  And then the boat slammed into the shore, and flames engulfed it.

  ‘Rozzini! Rozzini!’

  Odeinath heard the yell as he waited, holding a sword and an old-fashioned crossbow, wearing half a suit of borrowed armour, to die in the defence of Salassa Palace. There were perhaps thirty marines defending the ruins of Renate Tower, led by Petroz, who wore plain armour and a helmet without a plume, waiting in the stairwell, and maybe another twenty like Odeinath, clanspeople and servants armed with whatever they could find. There were two more parties of marines, much smaller, in the other two intact towers, two surviving aether hand-cannon, which despite their name needed three men to carry and operate, and a few aether crossbows, heavy and wildly inaccurate.

  The crossbows were the smallest weapon ever created with aether, and still needed an aether tank on one’s back, and worked perhaps half of the time. But Salassa Palace had been armed properly, with more than enough aether crossbows, before the bombardment had destroyed the arsenal and forced them to fight with swords, like tribesmen or Thetians from centuries ago.

  An entire palace destroyed by its own children, centuries of history and one of the most beautiful buildings in Vespera obliterated on a tyrant’s whim. Hundreds of Salassans dead, for no more crime than that they lived in the palace, as clanspeople had for centuries. To the north, only two of the mortars were still firing, probably pounding the ruins of Jharissa Palace into stone-dust by now. It was a newer, and thus a less sturdy, building than Salassa.

  Than Salassa had been.

  ‘To be destroyed by a man who believed in something, I could have borne,’ said Petroz, looking out for a moment at the advancing troops. ‘But to fall to Correlio Rozzini, a man bought by my own nephew, so venal that even his clanspeople despise him – that hurts.’

  ‘There are some tribesmen, some Canteni marines with them,’ said Odeinath.

  ‘Then I’ll die fighting the Canteni, because at least they have some honour,’ Petroz said, and then, more quietly. ‘I should have spoken out.’

  He raised his sword, as a hail of arrows arched uselessly into the courtyard. The dozen or so archers who’d managed to retrieve their bows intact from the rubble of the barracks were firing now, picking off some of the attackers, but not enough. The Rozzini troops were taking up stations in the rubble now, and bolts were whirring back and forth.

  ‘Return fire,’ Petroz ordered, his voice echoing up through the broken stairwell. The aether cannon coughed, and two Rozzini were consumed by blue fire. Others fell to arrows, bolts, but there were more and more of them pouring in.

  Wha
t an end to a life, to the life he loved on Navigator. Would they find a replacement? Could Granius ever be captain? Would someone simply seize the ship and throw his beloved crew ashore to founder, lost in a world they didn’t understand?

  He should never have come back. He owed the crew more than he owed this broken land of his, this place which could have been so beautiful, and was so dark. All those years of voyaging, of exploring, of teaching his crew and his apprentices, of delights of the mind that no cloistered scholar in the Museion would ever see.

  Odeinath risked a look out. The Canteni and tribesmen were advancing over the rubble, in front of the Rozzini, pushing forward even as they fell to arrows and cannon, desperate Salassan gunners pounding the ruins of their own palace.

  Odeinath ducked as a bolt hit a stone by his head.

  The orange groves of Mons Ferranis, the altiplano of Huasa, nameless islands and reefs beneath the stars. Thousands of plants and animals named and catalogued, islands surveyed, new peoples discovered. Of the proof of new lands far to the south, where the exiled Palatine II and Admiral Karao had gone to seek a new life. The ruins of Eridan, and that haunting memorial in the Tuonetar Senate.

  It had been a good life, but it shouldn’t have ended this way.

  ‘Wait,’ said Petroz, checking the mechanism on his bow.

  There were more bolts flying over their improvised defences now, and the Salassa marines above were being picked off one by one. The aether cannon was hit, or ran out of ammunition, and fell silent. Another wave of Rozzini troops crested the ruins of the Dariena Tower.

  To the north, the bombardment had finally stopped.

  The Rozzini, emboldened now that their more adventurous allies had silenced most of the opposition, were pressing forward, and the tribesmen drew their swords. Petroz and his remaining men were too well-hidden for bolts to do any more damage.