The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  Just as the heat became almost too much to take, it died away. An empty, gnawing hunger remained where the pain had been only moments before. Lycaste felt his belly carefully, taking some time before sitting up and looking at himself. All that remained of the wound was a pink, cruelly hook-shaped scar a few centimetres above and to the right of his navel. He prodded it, expecting it to burst open again, but the skin was firm, shiny with new growth. Sotiris looked on solemnly. Lycaste pointed at his stomach, unable for the moment to frame his question.

  “How …?”

  “It hasn’t finished healing, so don’t pick at it.” The Immortal smiled softly. “And try not to get stabbed again.”

  Lycaste sniffed his bloody hand, the metallic scent confirming he had been wounded, at least at some point, and shook his head dreamily. Sotiris’s palms were still red.

  “You took your time about it,” he croaked, crossing his legs carefully in case he ripped the seam open again.

  “Even I have trouble getting onto some guest lists.”

  “The owl? Garamond’s message?”

  “You did well to last so long, not to try and escape.”

  “I certainly thought about it.” He swallowed, realising how hungry he’d become in such a short space of time, and how sad. “So we’re leaving now? I just want to get out of here. Please, let’s just go.”

  The Amaranthine’s solemn look returned. “I can’t let you do that yet, Lycaste.”

  He stared at him in exasperation, his grief darkening to something else. “What?”

  “Something is happening. It’s bigger than both of us, any of us. I need to you to stay here for the moment.”

  Lycaste uncrossed his legs and stood, towering over the Immortal.

  “You’re leaving me again? After what they did to me?” He wanted to shake the Amaranthine, to throttle the ridiculously enduring life out of his petrified neck, but glared miserably at the floor instead, eyes crumpling. He went and sat, looking at the busts through a glimmer of tears. “They killed her, Sotiris. They’ll kill me, too.” In his mind’s eye he saw her colouring bashfully into that of her flower. It doesn’t matter. What you may or may not be. That doesn’t matter to me at all, not one bit.

  “You won’t be harmed again, Lycaste. I have seen to it,” Sotiris whispered, coming over to sit at Lycaste’s side and placing a small hand gently on his shoulder. Lycaste wanted to shrug it away, rip it off and throw it across the room. He had the strength, perhaps, Sotiris’s wrists were very narrow. But he let the hand stay. Without it, he had nothing.

  He sensed Sotiris breathing softly beside him and speculated detachedly on how the Immortal still needed to do what they all did, to breathe, how he was no better or more efficient at it after so many thousands of years of life.

  “Lycaste,” he said gently, “there’s more. Just after you left, Scabiosa decided to compensate Hamamelis further, perhaps just to shut him up. His sons have been granted permission to make their way to the Tenth.”

  Lycaste sniffed and cleared his throat. “What for?”

  “To punish the people there, your friends, for their complicity.”

  “Complicity?”

  “Knowing, and not telling anyone.”

  Lycaste let the Amaranthine’s hand slide from his shoulder, shuddering slightly at its delicate weight. He could hardly picture his old friends any more.

  “I’ve sent word. They’ll be protected when the time comes.”

  “But … you’re leaving me now? Going somewhere else?”

  Sotiris stared at his hands, lingering on the edge of the long ornamental bench. “Yes. I must.”

  “We’ll see each other soon?”

  “We will. I promise.”

  Silence. Lycaste waited for more, eventually turning back to the patch of shadow the Amaranthine had been sitting in, but he wasn’t there any more.

  The door to the half-glimpsed hallway stood open. He saw Penstemon watching him through the crack.

  “Who were you talking to? Who are you going to see soon?” he asked, stepping cautiously into the room. He had an ornamental, rather rusty-looking ring pistol on one finger, pointed roughly in Lycaste’s direction.

  “Nobody,” Lycaste replied meekly, beginning to climb back into his cage. There was a word Eranthis had taught him once, when something was all just your imagination. A figment.

  “No, no, you don’t have to be in there any more,” Penstemon said, pointing the ring squarely at him now. Lycaste stared at the weapon, beginning to raise his hands.

  Xanthostemon burst into the room behind his brother, slamming back the door in a rattling cacophony. He threw Penstemon against the wall, pinning his hand and disarming him with one swift expert move, and shouted a torrent of quick, gabbling High Second, shaking the ring furiously. Penstemon came to his senses and grappled him, grabbing it back and aiming at Lycaste. He fired, the angle of the shot flicked upwards by a blow from Xanthostemon, who grabbed Penstemon by elbow and shoved him to the wall, knocking a plinth sideways.

  Lycaste stood slowly, the blood pulsing in his ears and beneath the thinned skin around his scar. There was no pain anymore, only a growing, restless strength. He watched them fight, suddenly no longer afraid. The brothers looked so small, so weak to him now. He hated their puny voices and faces. He hated them all.

  He picked up the bust of Callistemon with ease and advanced upon them. The brothers hesitated against the wall, their eyes registering the enormous Melius’s new healthy state and the clean pink mark on his waist. He gripped Xanthostemon by the hair in one swift movement, feeling a surge of power on top of the ravenous hunger, and threw him to one side, the ring clattering off towards the cage. Penstemon cowered, covering his face as Lycaste brought the plinth up and smashed it down across his shoulder, roaring in inarticulate rage and despair. Callistemon’s head went spinning through the open door, chips of stone flying from its extremities. Lycaste rounded on Xanthostemon, who was crawling for the ring, and kicked him hard in the ribs, pulling him by his ankle back towards his moaning brother in the corner. Penstemon quailed and hobbled for the door, his arm looking loose, perhaps broken. Lycaste followed him out, still dragging Xanthostemon, the wash of euphoria dulling only slightly when he saw the Firstling standing in the hallway, one of the man’s monstrous Asiatic escorts apprehending Penstemon. He dropped Xanthostemon’s leg, hearing the knee crack on the hard, patterned floor.

  “You must be Lycaste.” The childlike, white-gold person smirked, signalling his guard to release Penstemon and see to the boy’s crushed arm.

  Xanthostemon moaned. “He’s all yours, Envoy. Get him out of here.”

  The Envoy directed the second of his giants to attend to Xanthostemon. He inspected Lycaste’s healed knife wound as he came closer. “Ah, that is good. I’d begun to worry you were seriously injured.”

  “Nothing serious,” growled Lycaste, considering his chances against the huge guard. He knew he could get a grip on Penstemon’s neck before they could stop him, perhaps finish the job.

  “That is good,” the Firstling repeated, his strange eyes flicking to the scar once more. He looked up, dipping his head gently. “Well, now that you’re well enough, I’d like very much to invite you to dinner, Lycaste.”

  Iro

  He looks at her, seeing her face as it was before she became immortal.

  “You can’t even set foot on the shore?”

  Iro shakes her head, looking down to the warm planked deck they’re both sitting on. The elegant sailing boat he saw her on the first time is now moored in the middle of the harbour, majestic under the beating sun.

  “I must stay at sea now, Sotiris.”

  Sotiris glances to the harbour’s edge, where the specks of small figures wander about their daily business. His eyes travel to the café, but he cannot see Aaron. He and his sister appear to be alone together.

  “I could sail this boat to shore myself.”

  She puts a hand to her brow. “You mustn’t do
that. He will not allow it.”

  “Does he speak to you?”

  Iro closes her eyes, shakes her head again. “Let’s not talk about him.”

  He takes her hand gently, prising it away from her eyes. Her skin feels somehow insubstantial, his fingers sliding from her own. At last she looks back at him, managing a smile before her eyes crinkle with tears. She looks quickly off to the cerulean water.

  Sotiris tries to take her hand again. “What must I do? Tell me what I can do.”

  *

  “I need your answer, Sotiris.”

  He blinks. Aaron walks past his chair, setting the coffee down himself this time. There is a round cinnamon biscuit balanced on the edge of his saucer, like an absurd bribe.

  “Why?” he asks. “Why ask anyone to rule in your stead? Why should you care what happens to the Firmament?”

  Aaron sits down to his own cup, blowing on the black surface of the coffee before taking a sip. For a moment, Sotiris sees something reflected in the ruffled liquid, a monstrous shape, but then it is gone.

  “I have my reasons. If you refuse me, your Firmament shall be torn down by the Prism and Iro will be lost to you for ever.”

  “Torn down?”

  Aaron sighs, draining his cup. It is clearly still very hot but he doesn’t even wince. “I know everything about the legions marching on me. This Commander Elatine of yours is vain and stupid. He will not succeed—but even if by some chance he does, the Prism shall not hesitate to follow.”

  Sotiris pushes his coffee cup to one side, staring at the surface of the table. “Permit me one more question.”

  Aaron shrugs irritably. “Go on.”

  “My friend, Maneker. That wasn’t him I spoke to, was it? He was never there. It was just a part of you.”

  The man-shape stares impassively back.

  “What have you done with him? Locked him up somewhere? Killed him?”

  “Your answer, please.” He points at the sailing boat in the harbour. Sotiris stands from his chair to see. There are Melius aboard—Firstlings, judgeing by their gleaming yellow skin. The one at the stern pulls up the anchor, hauling it over the railing and onto the deck. Another strides up from below with Iro struggling and screaming in his arms. Sotiris tightens his fists, glaring back at Aaron.

  “Your answer, Sotiris.”

  Embassy

  The islands speckling the fjord were closer to blue than green, with boats and ships crossing lazily between them. White and pink towers peeped from among the wooded hills to look out over the frigid, crystalline-blue water, where plump reddish trees sheltered barges and jetties around the base of the far spires, their leaves beginning to fall and blow twisting out across the lakes. With daylight the Second had become peaceful—when looked at from the safety of the First—as if everything Lycaste had experienced the night before was nothing but a dream. Between the grassy slope Lycaste stood on and the water’s edge was an invisible border known instinctively by all those who lived in these lands, the small gatehouses that punctuated the woodlands representing the closest thing there was to a wall between the two Provinces. He was safe; he had the Envoy’s assurance of that, but it would take more than a morning’s unbroken sleep in a luxurious bed to convince him of it.

  “You know my name,” said Lycaste as they climbed up the slope towards a thicket of sighing trees. “What’s yours?”

  “Just call me Envoy,” the Firstling said brightly as he walked beside him.

  The embassy rose into view, the giant parent of the building where they had just breakfasted together, a geometric edifice that might have been sculpted by a pair of huge flattened hands. Green flags of the First fluttered from spires rising above its cupola, snapping against the light grey sky.

  “Do you live in there alone?” Lycaste asked.

  “Yes, most of the time.”

  “All that space, just for one person?”

  Envoy gave the monolith only a fleeting glance, returning his gaze to the islands. “In the First there is too much space. You get used to it, you begin to crave it when it is denied.”

  They walked across the summit of the hill to where a small cultivated forest sank into a trough in the land, hiding the towering embassy from them once more. Bluebells brushed Lycaste’s ankles and Envoy’s shins. The woodland was not like the Menyanthes; the foodless trees appeared to have been planted for aesthetic considerations only, pleasing the eye at every turn as the Firstling guided Lycaste through them. Envoy explained that he didn’t come here much, having grown bored of the garden’s limited size, but that it gave him new pleasure to be able to show it to someone else, someone as wild—if he didn’t mind the adjective—as Lycaste. Lycaste walked and listened and looked, understanding more than he’d expected thanks to the unexpected plainness of the man’s First.

  Envoy admitted to Lycaste how he actually enjoyed being away from the capital, finding his new life—clearly intended as a demotion for some past misdemeanour he hadn’t yet revealed—quite enthralling after the confines of the Lyonothamnine Court. Lycaste’s eyes followed the Firstling’s mouth while he spoke, noticing the small, pointed teeth that peeped between his lips with each word. A carnivore’s teeth.

  They came to a gap in the trees that revealed a glittering river valley and a grand house jutting into the lake.

  “The house of Goniolimon Berenzargol. Where you were staying.”

  Lycaste looked at it with more interest. He hadn’t seen much on his journey out of the estate with Envoy that night. “That’s Calliste-mon’s father?”

  “Mmm. He was due to return for your trial but the war has kept him east, I believe.”

  “It was me the brothers were fighting over. Penstemon didn’t want you to take me.”

  Envoy shrugged. “He’s just a boy. He will learn his place in things.”

  Lycaste nodded, as if he understood. He stole a glance at the man’s body as they walked side by side. The image from Silene’s book had been no exaggeration. The Firstling’s golden body was proportionately that of a child: smooth and undistorted by the type of masculinity Lycaste understood, yet strangely beautiful, as if made for dancing or some peculiar acrobatic sport.

  He noticed Envoy looking at him and cleared his throat. “I heard the war, when I came here from the Utopia.”

  “Loud, isn’t it?”

  “Like thunder.”

  The trees opened up to the edges of the embassy gardens, the air dampening. Lycaste noticed how grey the clouds had become, like old linen, and the trees moved more restlessly in the wind than they had anywhere else he’d been. Once the landscape dulled as a passing cloud obscured the vague light, and Lycaste felt an imagined chill pass through him.

  “Well, we’re secure up here,” Envoy said. “There are Protocols, things made clear by those to whom the boy-king listens. Even if Elatine succeeds in the Greater Second, the First shall endure.” He laughed quietly to himself and sighed. “Listen to me—I’m sorry, Lycaste, we talk about the war up here like we discuss the weather, you must be very bored of hearing about it.”

  Lycaste shook his head. “No, I know so little about it all. We are safe from them? The Asiatic?”

  “Quite safe. My own guard are loyal, raised from infancy here at the embassy.”

  Lycaste looked about, always hoping to see one of the giants following them through the woodlands, but he and Envoy appeared to be alone. He still couldn’t believe he was safe from the Berenzargols simply because of an ancient border only visible on maps.

  “I still don’t think I understand, Envoy.” He pointed stupidly at his face. “You took me away, delivered me from those people—even though I had been tried and found guilty—because of how I look?”

  Envoy smiled broadly, nodding at the apparent ridiculousness of the situation. “Because of how you look, Lycaste.”

  Lycaste couldn’t help but smile back. “And they—Callistemon’s family—had no choice but to accept your decision.”

  The Firstling s
hrugged modestly. “Oh, not my decision. My instructions came from higher up, from court. Do you understand? From His Enlightenment, Lyonothamnus the Second himself.”

  Lycaste took a moment to digest what the Firstling had said. “What would the king want with me? I was famous in the Tenth already, he could have come to see me then.”

  “Indeed? Well, you’re famous in the First now, a different thing entirely.”

  They were back in the garden again, passing ornamental bushes and scampering serving finches. Lycaste turned to watch them run, smiling. A light drizzle floated in the grey air. Envoy stretched, yawning silently. Lycaste glimpsed the teeth again, tiny white triangles against his golden skin.

  “You mentioned coming from the Utopia, Lycaste. I heard you were there for quite some time?”

  “A little while.” Lycaste felt less at ease when the man asked him questions in return.

  “How did you find them? I heard they are all quite mad—is that so?”

  Lycaste shrugged. “Have you never been?”

  “Well, I did the grand tour, like most First men. Dutifully introduced myself to my ancestors and strolled the ruins of Olimp and Terziyan. All very lovely, but I found their company understandably lacking.”

  “Well, then, you’ve been there—you’ve seen them.”

  “Most were mad, in a way.” He glanced at Lycaste, creamy eyes narrowing. “But they’re not all like that, are they, Lycaste?”

  He looked blankly back, waiting.

  “It’s all right, this isn’t an interrogation.” Envoy leaned forward. “I’ve met one, too, you see.”

  Lycaste put his hands behind his back stiffly and continued walking, sensing Envoy wished to stop a while or sit.

  “You are most privileged, Lycaste,” the Firstling continued, lengthening his stride to keep up. “These particular Amaranthine only appear to people for a reason, you know.”

  “And why were you honoured so?” Lycaste asked quickly, unwilling to slow his pace.

  “I still don’t know.”

  He finally stopped and turned. “How did you know about …?”