The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  “He doesn’t look too good.”

  “Better than dead. Cassiope made a grave mistake.”

  “He’ll live out the festival?”

  “One hopes.”

  “Then that’s all that matters.”

  *

  He’d been dreaming of Jasione. But it hadn’t been a normal dream, more like the one he’d had in the field of purple plants that day, terrifying and surreal. Lycaste opened his eyes; the pain in his stomach had spread, throbbing, to his back and sides, and there was a bitter taste in his mouth as if he’d vomited nothing but bile while he slept.

  In the dream he’d rescued her and they’d gone back to Kipris Isle together, starting a family and growing old. It had felt real enough, but not as happy as he’d have wished. Silene had been there, begrudgingly accepting her mother’s choice and tormenting her new siblings. Lycaste had to pay her to keep silent, eventually granting her a yearly stipend until he died. The silken money he gave her always came from a hole in his stomach, caked with drying blood.

  The children were the only happy part of the dream: two, no, three girls. He was glad they weren’t been boys. They were beautiful.

  Lycaste tried to touch his stomach, flinching at the tenderness along his entire torso. At some point the cut had burst again, a slug-trail of blood marking his fevered progress across the floor while he slept. He felt weak, light-headed: the only part that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

  A reception had begun outside the door to his prison chamber, its rising volume and music not unlike what he’d heard on the far island. Perhaps a hundred voices conversed and laughed in High Second beyond the wall, broken by clinks of metal or glass, occasional shouts and intervals of raucous hilarity.

  The door opened carefully to avoid prying eyes and Xanthostemon slipped in, closing it gently behind him. He came to Callistemon’s repositioned plinth and stared at it thoughtfully, obviously unsure how it had moved, and pushed it over to the wall.

  “Can you walk?” he asked, gazing into the cage.

  Lycaste cleared his dry throat and tried to sit up. “I’m not sure.”

  Xanthostemon opened the door of the cage, putting a hand delicately to his nose. He squatted beside Lycaste and peered at his midriff. “You’re swollen. Here.” He took Lycaste’s arm and hauled him to his feet. It took a while; despite his emaciation, Lycaste was still over a foot taller than the Secondling.

  “Thank you,” Lycaste said through the pain. The smallest kindnesses felt magnified these days.

  “You’ve nothing to thank me for,” Xanthostemon said plainly, without looking at him. “We’ll see you pay, but not before the trial. Our sister would have caused us great shame had she succeeded.” He glanced up at Lycaste. “So give no thanks.”

  “All right.”

  Xanthostemon remained looking at him. “I … I can begin to understand how it may have been, why he died. But do not count on mercy you shall not receive.” He handed Lycaste a small crystal glass that he’d brought in with him. Lycaste took it and peered at the rapidly dissolving little pearl sinking to the bottom.

  “Drink. It will keep you awake if the pain gets too much.”

  He drank, gagging. After he’d finished, Xanthostemon led him through another door Lycaste hadn’t known was there, a recessed alcove behind the line of busts. It took them to a narrow hallway inlaid with more of the coloured stripes.

  He was made to wait in a circular stone room, unadorned except for an ornate trapeze dangling in the centre from a hook in the ceiling. A ghostly white chameleon hung by three of its limbs from the jewelled perch. Its ruby-red eyes were mounted in sockets that swivelled at him inquisitively before moving on, as if dull guests infringing on its valuable time were an all too regular occurrence. Lycaste limped to the wall to investigate the coloured stripes to see what they were, confirming his suspicion. It was money, of all the highest denominations, implanted in shining lengths along the walls. He was impressed, despite everything, and smoothed his finger over a piece to find it was buried some way beneath the surface, entombed in the resin-like depths of a superior form of translucent growthstone. The lizard strained and clasped the perch with another limb, hanging feebly upside down while it decided what to do next. A long tongue slithered from between its lips and travelled wetly across one eye.

  The door, itself also lined with the silken money, reopened and stayed ajar. Lycaste found himself looking out across a terrace of exquisite geometric hedges and fountains lit by the last of the day’s pink light. Milling about and waiting to be seated were dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people, glowingly yellow and patterned with tawny stripes of primary colour. A semicircular dining table faced him, at which a few were already seated and finishing some kind of dessert course.

  Lycaste glanced at them the longest as he made his way stumblingly into the garden while Xanthostemon looked on. They were the oldest-looking men and women he’d ever seen, elders undoubtedly now beginning—or ending—their last years of grace, though he doubted any of them were even a fraction as venerable as the Amaranthine he’d met in the Utopia. Certainly they had to be older than Elcholtzia. Their skin appeared to have slid from their hollow cheeks and down to their necks, as if the pull of the world could only be resisted for so long, and their eyes were dull and yellowed. Hair was scant between them, the last of the light gleaming from bald heads and shiny, lined brows. It was what he would look like one day, if he ever made it.

  The elders ate slowly, directing their drooping eyes about them until some ripple of conversation brought everyone’s attention to Lycaste’s arrival. He crossed his arms about himself, the waves of pain growing stronger again, and scanned the attentive audience, seeing first Hamamelis and then Melilotis, who smiled and waved cheerfully. Melilotis mouthed something Lycaste couldn’t quite catch. Callistemon’s sister Cassiope, his would-be executioner, was conspicuously absent among her family, who were seated at either end of the elders’ table.

  Beside her empty seat a small gold man slouched alone, uninvolved in the conversations that flanked him, almost as if nobody could see him. He stared straight at Lycaste without expression, as someone might absently watch a pot of water boiling. Lycaste held Sotiris’s gaze but the man didn’t respond, taking a sip of what looked like wine from a fluted goblet and swilling his mouth. Nobody appeared to notice when he spat.

  Xanthostemon took Lycaste’s arm and directed him to a veined marble seat, solidly throne-like, where everyone would be able to see him. When he was settled, his hands still pressed to his throbbing belly, the audience’s conversation diminished to a whisper, some perhaps taking in the wound across his stomach, others more enthralled, no doubt, by his appearance. An elder in the middle of the table raised a sagging arm to the assembly as a sheaf of papers was put in front of him by a secretary with extraordinarily coiffed auburn hair. He stood shakily from his chair, propping himself up with a cane whilst waving away the attentions of the secretary, and turned to the assembly.

  Lycaste watched Sotiris. The Immortal was running a fingernail along the marble tabletop and investigating its tip, not looking at the elder as the rest of the crowd applauded. Melilotis and his father stood, applauding particularly hard and attracting disapproving looks from the front table.

  The elder waggled an arthritic finger for silence, stooping over his cane. Lycaste saw a misshapen little person on a leash under the table grab at some of the old man’s dessert and scurry back into shadow beneath.

  “Dignitaries and Plenipotentiaries, youthful and old,” he intoned, not in High Second, but First. Lycaste peered into the crowd but they all looked the same, yellow and small, ducklings before a mallard. If there was a Firstling in there, he was carefully hidden.

  “This evening we process, by the Lyonothamnine Enlightenment of the First and her daughter the Second, the actions of …” He strained his eyes at the top paper when the secretary passed it to him. “Licasse, of the … Tenth Province, dishonourer of the noble House of Berenzargol
.”

  The elder paused for a sip of wine. Lycaste looked for Sotiris but his seat was vacant, as if he’d never even been there. None of the yellow people had even looked at the Amaranthine since Lycaste had ascended his stone seat. He felt cold for the first time, the pain shooting up his spine now, making him wriggle in his chair. The drink he’d taken was supposed to simply keep him alert, but he was starting to feel everything now. It hurt everywhere.

  “During these harrowing times,” the elder resumed, “when we must remind ourselves with certainty that justice shall soon find us triumphant, it does our realm great credit to be seen to continue in all splendour, to serve as a barrier against the creeping filth, this wicked Elatine and his Jalan plague, that seeks to scale our walls.”

  The crowd roared with approval, standing and applauding loudly. The elder waited patiently, acknowledging them. The little bone-white fellow beneath the table helped himself to more of the leftover dinner, glancing furtively around and up at Lycaste before withdrawing.

  “Perhaps in time, even the Third shall become to us as we are to the First, loyal and obedient in all things, the scales of power dipping for the weight of the worthy.” His stooped form, theatrically challenging, surveyed the garden. “But until that time, we must toil in the work that the First has given us, glad in the knowledge that these trials only serve to conjoin our great Provinces further.” He smiled, to more applause. “Now then, to business.” His thickly hooded eyes regarded Lycaste.

  “It is imperative that the Southern species are not encouraged to believe that they may do as they wish, that their masters are not hindered by something as trifling as geography in carrying out the venerable First statutes—” he raised his voice and turned to the audience again “—statutes we all live by here, with gratitude and humility as Second to the sovereign state. It is you privileged few, nobles of regard, who have been invited here to decide the nature of our response, and have done so graciously this very evening.”

  Cheers while the grizzled man held his hand up once more, visibly exhausted from his speech. Lycaste’s eyes widened as he thought about what the man had said. This was just a display, perhaps for any First-lings present. His own judgement had already taken place.

  “Owing to the evident difficulties Southern Cherries have in remembering simple instructions, let this be their lesson for the day. If you would all be so kind as to remain after drinks, we shall hold the festival of this desecrator’s punishment then.” He sat slowly, easing his flabby body back into whatever chair hid behind the grandly heaped table.

  Before the applause died, Hamamelis had risen quickly to his feet. At his gesture the claps subsided, not, Lycaste guessed, from respect but out of surprise. He knew approaching embarrassment when he saw it. The cadaverous Intermediary cleared his throat and inclined his head in an even more theatrical display of submission.

  “My dear Scabiosa, the effect of your words is matched only by their incisive and modest brevity, always distinguishing you as an orator of unique power from whom we can all draw inspiration.” He pointed to his chest. “I myself make speeches of similar proportions to my Second-beloved family so that they might learn to condense their more grandiose thoughts into morsels that signify the utmost consideration and wisdom.”

  Hamamelis’s deep-set eyes searched the table for a moment, but his creative well had run dry. He took a breath during which he might accept acknowledgment, but the audience was silent. He straightened, the emaciation of his frame making him appear even more elongated among the shorter people in the audience. Lycaste imagined himself standing there, taller even than Hamamelis by another hand or two.

  “I am well aware that it is not my place in this garden court to pass any judgement along with my betters, and that my sons and I are here only to provide another story of this wicked Cherry’s wrongdoing. That is of the murder of my promising and gentle son Leonotis, which has so far gone unmentioned.”

  Scabiosa, leaning backwards to see Hamamelis, exchanged glances with the other elders at the table. One old man had gone to sleep.

  “Indeed?” He sifted through the papers. His secretary pointed to a footnote.

  “I … I merely present our case so that it may be recognised and our part acknowledged,” Hamamelis said, bowing again.

  An excruciatingly thin elder inclined his head. “Your part?” he screeched in a rasping voice. “It is my understanding that you and your esteemed family allowed the Cherry to escape. Has this court been misinformed?”

  Hamamelis looked at Lycaste with alarm, as if hoping for a contribution. “We did the best we could—”

  “And—” the elder glanced at the assembly “—it is my understanding that you had no idea of the Cherry’s previous crimes. Are we misinformed in this matter as well?”

  “I had my … my suspicions,” Hamamelis stuttered, glancing at the crowd. “He claimed to be Callistemon’s servant and that his master was lost. Our family was held in high regard by the Plenipotentiary during his life. Having known him, I found this unlikely.”

  Xanthostemon, still seated, raised his eyebrows with amusement and whispered something to his sickly sister.

  Hamamelis bridled. “It was my understanding that something was amiss. My sons and I have suffered as greatly as anyone here.”

  The crowd didn’t like this. Lycaste watched several hands lifting with questions. Scabiosa, the elder who had first spoken, shook his head and eyed Callistemon’s relatives. “Sir, you may sit. If I am not mistaken, you have already been rewarded for your pains. You were granted execution rights for the three who sheltered him. They have now been put to death, yes?”

  Lycaste had been ripping at a grubby and trembling fingernail with his teeth while he listened, trying not to bite too deep whenever the pain grasped at his innards. He took it from his mouth and stared stupidly at Scabiosa, then at Hamamelis. The court had fallen silent for a moment, expectant.

  Hamamelis nodded. “That is correct.”

  “Well,” said the elder, “then you have extracted the modicum of revenge owed to you. The law here is identical to that of the Seventh. Those of position, sir, are awarded the satisfaction in events such as these.”

  Hamamelis appeared unable to think of anything further to say. Melilotis noticed Lycaste’s slack-jawed expression and smirked. He mouthed something again. Lycaste caught the last word. Alone.

  “But Scabiosa, please.” Hamamelis remained standing, inviting groans from the back. “Punishing them was no honour, at least not the honour you make it out to be; we want a say in this!”

  Uproar. The sleeping elder awoke with a start, blinking. Scabiosa covered his eyes as abuse erupted around him.

  “You embarrass yourself, go-between!” shouted an imperious-looking lady to a chorus of agreement.

  Scabiosa waved his hand weakly at the front table. “Xanthostemon, would you take the Cherry out?”

  Xanthostemon helped Lycaste down and ushered him back into the lizard’s chamber, closing the door quickly behind him again. As it creaked shut, Lycaste heard raised voices as the Secondlings took their turns berating Hamamelis.

  He sank to the stone floor, legs skidding out and splaying like a dropped puppet, his stomach starting to bleed again, bright in the white, acerbic light of the room, the naturally talented coagulants in his blood apparently giving up. It couldn’t be true. They were lying to get a reaction out of him. Somehow they’d known about his feelings for Jasione; Hamamelis must have found out.

  The chameleon had seemingly only moved one limb during the shambolic trial. It paused with another raised as Lycaste fell to the floor, caught in the act and now considering its next move even more carefully than before. Its red eye twitched at him, waiting. Lycaste scrabbled to his knees, wetness coating his lower half, and crawled along the polished floor to the recessed door. The creature hissed, flinching and raising spiny white hackles. He felt as if a blunt stick were being forced through the length of his guts, spitting him. Drops of bloo
d followed Lycaste through the door and along the passageway to the chamber where his cage stood.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Lycaste started blearily, his hand pressed to the seeping blood. Sotiris was sitting opposite him on the decorative couch, between the family busts.

  “They were lying, weren’t they?” Lycaste gasped, sinking closer to the floor. “They lied about Jasione.”

  The Amaranthine took too long to answer. “I’m sorry, Lycaste,” he repeated. “They didn’t lie.” He went to Lycaste’s side, gently taking his shoulder and turning him so that he could see the wound. Lycaste began to sob, lightly at first, but soon he found he couldn’t catch his breath. His body started shaking, his head swimming.

  “This isn’t something that’s going to get better, is it?” Lycaste asked, at last taking a breath and grimacing as the pain grew nearly unbearable. His voice had become a shuddering growl of effort. “That blade was dipped in something. Tell me the truth for once.”

  Sotiris was feeling his stomach, finding the tender parts from the way Lycaste winced. “Stay very still, even when it hurts,” the Immortal whispered, still pressing. Lycaste saw the man’s small hand was covered with bright, shining blood.

  After a moment Lycaste felt the subtle thud of blood in his ears build to a roar. His heart stuttered and pounded, working the blood faster and faster. Pain came and went, leaping through his innards and quieting again only to spring up somewhere else. At first he thought he must be dying, here and now, and marvelled in the revelation that death was not some cold and steady thing but energetic and disorderly—even chaotic. It didn’t feel so bad, he reflected as he lay there, puzzling at the swarming pins and needles. His stomach warmed, as if he were lying face down on hot sand, losing all feeling. Sweat sprang out all over his face and back, the tides coinciding with a soft tugging sensation inside his stomach. He strained his neck to check that the Amaranthine hadn’t physically pushed his hand into the hole in his belly, but Sotiris was sitting silently, staring at Lycaste, his arms folded.