The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  Elcholtzia’s period of grace, the seventy-five years or so of gradual decrepitude that capped three centuries of solid health, wasn’t due for a long, long time. But something was wrong with him, all the same. Impatiens watched him busying himself in the kitchen, spilling cups of this and that. Age frightened Elcholtzia, Impatiens knew, more than most elderly people. Recently the old man had been coming up with breezy asides about Impatiens finding a younger suitor for himself, perhaps one of their friends in the western port of Izmirean. Comments like that didn’t just hurt Impatiens, they enraged him—it wasn’t innocent self-deprecation, it was pretended ignorance of their love. He would not let that love be ridiculed, not by anyone. If Elcholtzia was doing it to generate a reaction, he wouldn’t receive one.

  Impatiens went to pick up a dropped fork. He knew not to try and say anything when Elcholtzia was in one of his moods, just to do his best and keep out of the old man’s way. He’d come for supper—a healthy supper to aid his waistline—but it was growing late. He wished Elcholtzia would keep servants.

  Walking out into the garden, he saw Eranthis running up the path.

  “It’s Callistemon,” she said, stopping to lean on the wall. “He needs you to come.”

  The birds had thought to bring trays, in the bizarre and unlikely event that someone might become suddenly peckish. Pentas tended to things at his side, but the Plenipotentiary did not look at her. Callistemon’s face was puffed into a pale yellow half-smile, the result of the growths beneath his eyes. When he spoke it was with a mushy slur.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Drimys bowed his head to study his feet. Impatiens wasn’t sure if he was accepting the thanks or unable to look at what had become of their friend. Pentas leaned over to kiss the man but he drew back and waved her away. Impatiens thought she looked hurt. He went and took her hand to bring her with him to the wall, but she refused, kneeling beside Callistemon once more.

  The yellow man propped himself against a stack of cushions, the tide-marks of some stiffened discharge marring their whiteness. He didn’t know how he knew it, but Impatiens realised then that Callistemon would not rise from his bed again.

  “I didn’t hear what the man who came had to say about me, but I can guess from the way I’m being treated.” He tried to smile, closing one eye as his breathing laboured on. “There’s no point in delaying this,” he continued. “I have things to say, things that must be said, things you all must know. You won’t wish to hear any more by the time I’m halfway through, but it’s essential you listen to the end. Even if, after I’m done, you decide to leave.”

  Impatiens’s forgotten belly filled with panicked butterflies. He was eager to hear the way someone can’t look away as a disaster unfolds before their eyes, but didn’t really want to. He considered leaving immediately, but the idea was nauseating. A dozen conjured-up explanations presented themselves in his head, dispersing as Callistemon resumed.

  “I’m sure you’re all wondering why I’ve stayed here so long. Before I tell you any more, I want to remind you that I stayed because I fell in love.”

  Pentas stared up at him but his eyes avoided her.

  “My life here with all of you has been the happiest time I’ve known.” He paused, one eye searching the blanket before him as he traced out his thoughts. “I also wish to tell you, before I explain myself fully, that I have renounced everything. All of it. Now, when I think of home and family and … duty, I feel nothing but shame.”

  There was expectant silence. Eranthis met Impatiens’s eye. His stomach told him whatever was coming would not be pleasant.

  Callistemon brought one arm weakly out from under his sheets and wiped carefully at his brow, navigating around clumps of pustules he knew by feel. One of his fingers must have pressed too hard, a trickle of blood running into his eye. Pentas leaned forward with a damp cloth but he pushed her away.

  “No, please, I have to say this now or I never will.” He looked at each of them in turn, as if meeting them for the first time and marking their faces in his mind. Later, Impatiens would reflect that it was the last time the man would ever see them as they were: neutral, concerned. His blooded eye settled at last on Pentas, and he stared at her for so long that Impatiens began to think the man had forgotten what he was about to say.

  “My instructions were simple,” he began, looking away from her. “I agreed to them because I loved the First more passionately than my own home, the ideals it embraced, and because I was in favour there—in line to become more than merely minor Second nobility if I did not stray beyond my brief. I was somebody. There, you Southerners are treated with derision, punished for no reason and expelled to other places. It has always been that way, or for as long as I can remember, anyway. You are treated, indeed classified, as a different species, though I now consider this a vicious untruth.”

  Eranthis looked over at Impatiens again, worry creasing her brow. Impatiens could do nothing but shrug.

  “The First has recently resurrected a decree that the outlying Provinces must fall in line with something called Standardisation. My family had long been sympathetic with this ideal, and when they came back into favour I was chosen, among others, to begin the process of unifying the Provinces through … certain methods. I wish now my family were still in disgrace—a state I have considered myself in for some time.” He covered his eyes.

  “I was told to select women, possibly even children, suitable to bear me offspring in every community I found.” He took a sharp breath. “My cousins would be doing the same in nearby Provinces.” Calliste-mon rubbed his still-closed eyelids and resumed quickly. “Surveying and quantifying the lands for the purposes of future reclamation was a secondary task. Any strong, healthy citizens I encountered were to be recommended for work details and shipped out from the nearest port once my relief arrived. I did have an allowance to purchase servants in bulk, but it was preferred that I release them from their service in whatever cost-free way I saw fit.”

  Now Callistemon opened his eyes. “Any person below the age of fertility, anyone too young for strenuous work, was to be dispatched. Culled.” He laid his head back on the cushions, staring at the ceiling. “These were my instructions.”

  The silence in the room lasted for some time. Pamianthe lifted a hand to her mouth. Drimys started forward, then rushed out of the room.

  “Briza is safe,” said Callistemon, almost to himself, looking at no one. “I could never have done it.” He held his hand up as someone tried to speak.

  “I have one last thing, the most important part, left to say. Others will come, and soon. I’m sure they’re already looking—I was expected to send word from Izmirean almost two months ago.”

  Pentas got to her feet and left the room. Pamianthe followed immediately.

  Callistemon watched them go, a tear cutting through the dried blood at the corner of his nose.

  “There is a war,” he muttered thickly, his throat clicking. “Larger men than us, true giants who oppose the ruling Provinces could well come this way from the east before the others—my relief—get here. I hope they do: you and all the Tenthlings will need them.” His tears broke through the restraint, diminishing his voice to a strained, childish choke. “The Second must fall. I want it to. I really do. I don’t expect you to believe me.”

  Eranthis shook her head, clasping her hair with her hands as if it would help her to process the information. Impatiens thought abstractly what a pointless and helpless gesture it was.

  “I had things, weapons, that might have defended you, in a travel case in my room, but Lycaste took them. So I left word and money with the Master of Mersin while I was there, and he will soon be in receipt of some powerful ordnance. I have done the best I can to save you. It doesn’t atone for my actions, I know that, but I hope it may one day begin to reverse them.”

  Impatiens shivered at the mention of Lycaste. He strode forwards, placing his hands on the bed-posts. “Enough talk. Did you kill him? Did you murde
r Lycaste? Tell us the truth.”

  Callistemon stared through teary eyes at Impatiens. “No, I promise you. We had a … he, he ran away. With any luck he’s found himself further east by now and begun a new life.”

  “How can we believe you? Any of this?” Eranthis asked him. “You’ve lied to us for so long.”

  “There are papers—instructions—under the wooden base of the fourth drawer here that I’ve kept hidden until now, in anticipation of your questions. It proves everything I say. See for yourselves.” He nodded his head painfully at the chest of drawers to the side of the bed.

  Impatiens waited for Eranthis to get them but she remained by the wall, hugging her arms as if cold. He went and fished cautiously in the chest, pulling out a light parcel. Inside he found documents wrapped in metal leaf. Eranthis was the best at Second, and she had asked the question, so he shoved the parcel across the floor to her.

  Pounding on the stair. The door flew open and Pentas burst in, screaming in a rage of agony Impatiens had to flinch away from. She leapt atop Callistemon and slapped at his face with the flats of her hands, the colours of her skin rushing through cycles of pain and hatred. Impatiens watched the beaten man first resist, then relax and lay his hands at his sides as the blows continued, jiggling the bed’s supports. Neither Impatiens nor Eranthis was prepared to stop her; Impatiens wasn’t sure if he wanted to, either. Drimys ran in and pulled her away, glaring the two of them as they watched, pressed to the wall.

  Galleon

  On the final leg of their journey to Zielon Second, he was permitted to look at the mountains as much as he liked. They loomed overhead, impossibly high and sharp, vertical sections of continent drafted to a scale he couldn’t comprehend.

  Lycaste’s lips hurt. He told the man so, but his new companion didn’t seem to hear as he chatted to birds that settled on the curved top of the train while it wove its way through the mountain passes, olive and elm making way for rougher sorts of tree that carpeted the steep-sided valleys.

  Growing like fungus from the ragged peaks were houses and spires, distant white châteaux with high, smooth walls. Some were connected by narrow bridges and arches, themselves dotted with towers and windows; others had presumably grown downwards after they had seeded to join up with other dwellings. Lycaste imagined what they were like inside, endless flights of stairs and small, poky landings. Steam or smoke curled greyly from chimney-pots, joining ragged cloud that had sunk to cling to the mountainsides. Wild charcoal-coloured mountain goats scrambled out of the way of the track with an echoing clop of hooves, and a stiff wind blew around them and into the carriage, Lycaste only noticing it when one of the baskets fell and scattered down a mountain slope. He stretched his neck to see the last of the fruit disappear far below. The Intermediary cursed and secured the rest of the food, shooting Lycaste an ugly glare.

  Eventually the carriage, having crossed a narrow bridge between two improbably vertical houses, dropped from the mountain pass, altering some state inside Lycaste’s head with a pop of brief pain, like when he used to dive too far underwater. He looked over at the Intermediary, who was shaking his head and flexing his jaw, and decided that the other man must have felt it, too.

  Lights were glowing higher in the shards of rock above; across the valley, a late sun had escaped the gloom and glittered redly off water that milled with huge black shapes: the galleons of the Inner Second. One was docked at the shore, a three-storey cup-shaped hull festooned with rippling sails and flags anchored to a jetty among the rocks. Lycaste saw people on the top deck beneath the billowing flags and rigging, perhaps looking out for the arriving train.

  They passed through a tunnel carved into the mountainside and clattered down a stepped series of diagonal runs to the wooded hillside at the water’s edge. The carriage bumped along the last of the trackway and came to rest at the jetty, red-tinged water slopping on either side.

  The Intermediary unlocked Lycaste’s cage and hauled him across the jetty to the ship’s stern, where chains and ropes as thick as his wrist secured the vessel to wooden poles on the shore. He was taken up a winding stair that traced the circular edge of the ship’s stern until he was aboard and standing on the top step of an amphitheatre sunk into the rear of the craft. The fluttering sails, pink in the setting sun, stretched high above. He looked over the side to see Secondlings releasing the ropes. At first the vessel appeared reluctant to move, its bulk rolling slightly as the gentle waves from the lake took hold of its hull, and then it began to pull away. The receding mountain valley was a striking twilight cave of lights, the dented blades of peaks looming above, cast scarlet in the fading glow.

  A man, orange in the evening glare, skipped up the steps of the amphitheatre to greet them, taking the Intermediary’s arm and turning him so that he didn’t have to make eye contact with Lycaste. The Mediary spoke with the man in rapid High Second for a while, taking his hand gratefully when it was offered, and Lycaste found himself unshackled and free once more. Without any appreciable glances in his direction, the men moved away to a table that was being carefully laid at the bottom of the ring of polished red wooden steps. Lycaste’s stomach gurgled as he smelled and watched the food arriving and being set down while the man and the Intermediary laughed together, wine already in hand, wondering what he was supposed to do now. He turned and contemplated the shore, looking to the water below. Long shapes coiled and writhed down there, and as he peered closer he saw that the object of their interest was a small Secondling girl kneeling and dropping handfuls of something from the deck of the ship. Lycaste glanced over the edge again; it was far to drop, although from his limited experience of cliff-diving most likely survivable. He glanced back at the two men, who had now sat down to eat, some lanterns around them being lit by a group of animals that Lycaste had never seen before.

  He approached the girl cautiously, apparently free to wander the galleon. She looked up happily as he neared, dropping a handful into a frenzy of slippery mouths that struggled just above the water. Lycaste watched the long green fish competing for their meal, each of them keeping one greedy eye on the girl’s hand once it was empty.

  “Hello,” she said, taking another fistful from a dish at her side. “Are you a friend of Daddy’s?”

  “Not really,” he replied, looking out across to the edge of the mountains, wondering how far it might be to swim.

  “Oh.” The girl’s hand emptied into a splash of glistening lips. “Do you want to feed them with me?”

  Lycaste nodded absently, taking some of the gritty food and dispersing it. The fish changed course wildly and sought it out, a few of them almost breaching the water.

  “Are they friendly?” he asked, pulling his hand away from one extra-large and impatient creature.

  “Daddy says they’ll eat me if I go in.”

  Lycaste guessed they were half his length; nothing but minnows compared with his own experiences. He looked at the dim line of shore.

  “Viola,” said a throaty, accented voice from the deck, “it’s getting late.”

  He looked round. Sitting on a bench by the railings further down was a gigantic person, its huge legs stretched out onto a footstool that looked like it might snap at any time. Lycaste guessed the Asiatic Melius was female, but it was hard to be sure. Across her lap lay a blanket that would have easily covered Lycaste’s bed.

  “Be there in a moment!”

  “No, you’ll come inside now,” the giant chided gently.

  The girl sighed and tossed her handful of feed in a wide arc, confusing the ravenous feeders.

  “Farewell, then,” she said to Lycaste. “You can feed them the rest if you like.”

  He caught the eye of the huge, distorted woman. The expression on her long face looked benign enough. She watched the little girl go, bending slightly to receive a peck on the cheek, and went back to the book in her lap.

  Lycaste took the bowl of feed, nibbling on some experimentally when he was sure the giant wasn’t watching. They were
delicious, so he tipped what was left into his mouth.

  “They’re popping seed.”

  He dropped the bowl, delighting the fish.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked, putting down the book.

  “A little,” Lycaste replied shyly, keeping his distance, not quite able to rule out the possibility he was about to be eaten.

  She pulled back the coverlet to reveal an apron underneath, then fished into one of the huge pockets and produced a peach. As he approached, he noticed her wide feet and branch-thick toes, large enough to crush his skull. The air around her was pungent, strong and sweaty, but not unpleasant. More like a warm, old blanket; comforting.

  “You look too thin,” she said, slicing the fruit with a blade and tossing him half after removing the stone. She had far too many fingers, some almost the length of his forearm. “Where are you from? Ten?”

  “You mean the Tenth?”

  “You look like a Tenling. Were you thinking of diving in?” She sat back. “Almost did it myself, once. Not to escape, mind you.”

  He turned to the water again, understanding then that she was a prisoner here, too. “They’d really eat someone?”

  “Lost a couple of prisoners on the last crossing,” she said, snapping her half-peach between snaggled teeth and swallowing it whole. “Specially bred, you see. The nobility didn’t want to have to start spoiling their lovely ships with gantries and cages and things once the war started, so they filled the whole lake with flesh-eating fishies to discourage anyone from jumping off.”