The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  “I am, I am. I like it here.”

  “You’re happy with me?”

  “Of course. You’ve been kind, when few else were.” He thought suddenly of Sotiris, how he’d forgotten to thank the Immortal for saving his life.

  “I see much in you, much that I admire. You have charmed me, Lycaste.”

  They took each other’s hands, Lycaste’s huge fingers enfolding Envoy’s completely.

  “I wish you could stay,” the Firstling said regretfully, gazing up into his eyes.

  “Tell them to let me, then. Can’t you tell them to let me?”

  Envoy laughed at the desperation in Lycaste’s voice, suddenly nuzzling his chest. “Dance with me.”

  Time skipped in a yellow-golden blur, infused and infected by the hundreds of soft voices. As it slowed, Lycaste found himself holding Envoy tightly. The man looked up, his face very close.

  Lycaste glanced around suddenly, worried for an instant that someone in the crowded room might see, but they were completely, shockingly alone. It was very dark. He pulled away and looked at where the other man’s hand had ended up.

  “What’s the matter?” His companion’s voice was very small.

  “Don’t,” said Lycaste thickly, putting the Firstling down. “I don’t want that. What’s going …?”

  “Don’t worry, Lycaste.”

  “I’m not worrying.” He stepped away and clung to the table, abruptly aware with a hideous vertigo where he was, so far from home, as if nothing had really happened in the intervening time since he’d left the Tenth. It had all been a spell, a trick. He lurched for the door. “I’m going to bed now, Envoy.”

  “Lycaste!” the man called after him, but he was already passing the globe, ready to negotiate the broad stairs. At their top he gripped the wall, staggering sideways like a crab as the room blossomed in and out of focus. He vaguely heard his name drifting from above, but lurched on down to the archway at the bottom.

  The night was very dark. Trees sprinted past, their long fingers striking his face. Many times he fell painlessly, rolling until he could stand again. From the depths appeared the spark of light from his lodgings, far, then close.

  Departure

  Something apart from the pain made him open his eyes. There was someone outside. He shuffled to the high windows and looked out, squinting against the whitish First light, but saw nobody.

  Lycaste went to the impressively stocked larder and drank some sweet water from a silver jug, large chunks of the night before perfectly blank in his memory. Feeling a little better, he went to examine the fruit trees in the courtyard, but breakfast was still a nauseating thought. He sat on the table, his head in his hands, listening to the twitter and warble of birdsong, a word here and there interspersing the nonsense. He looked around at the artful nihilism of the chamber, beginning to remember something about dancing. He didn’t know any ladies here. Perhaps it had been a dream. Across the room the bed, huge and opulent in crumpled white silks, beckoned to him. He staggered back to it, sure he’d heard something again, too tired to care. He climbed in, scooping the cool material about him as he felt the throb of an enormous headache begin its business behind his eyes.

  The hard, cold edge of a blade slid across his neck.

  “Good morning,” said a female voice in his ear. “Look at you, sleeping in silk. Thought you’d got away with it, did you?”

  Lycaste opened an eye. Cassiope, his victim’s sister, bent over him, sweating and trembling.

  “Those two halfwits from the Fifth couldn’t get in, but they send their regards.” He tried to raise his head, despite the ache. She pressed the knife against his throat until he thought it would break the skin.

  “Stay down, foolish Cherry, that’s what this means.”

  “Cassiope.” A different voice. Envoy. Lycaste suddenly remembered the previous night.

  The pressure lifted.

  “What’s the point?” Envoy’s voice from behind them both was stern, like Lycaste had never heard him. “Lycaste is ours now. If your sow of a mother had truly wanted justice, she would not have sold him to me.”

  “You say that like she was given a choice, Tagetes.”

  “She was welcome to refuse.” Lycaste heard him walk to the bookshelf. “But all choice carries a chance of penalty. I know you’re a little light at the moment, waiting for the First to cover your debts—I understand, really, I do. But you’d be ripping the precious walls of your house down in no time to get at all that boastful silk if it weren’t for Lycaste.”

  Sure that the knife was no longer near his throat, Lycaste inched his face around. Envoy—Tagetes—was flanked by his two Asiatic guards, massive and grotesque, all watching Cassiope as she stood by his bed. He turned his face back to her, seeing finally that she had the knife to her own throat now.

  She began to cry, the blade trembling at her thin neck. “You say you understand but you don’t! None of you damn Firstlings do!”

  “Drop it,” Envoy Tagetes said, one of the guards advancing slowly towards her, his thick, oddly jointed arms extended and ready. “Drop it and we can forget the whole thing.”

  Cassiope hesitated, looking at Lycaste with brimming eyes, and tossed the knife down. She tried to run from the chamber but was intercepted by the second Asiatic, who held her tightly with one great fist.

  Lycaste sat up in bed, feeling his neck and watching as Envoy went to her. The Firstling took the dagger handed to him by the guard and looked at it.

  “In difficult times like this, the First can’t stomach disobedience—I’m sorry, Cassiope.” The girl’s eyes widened.

  He brought the blade across her exposed neck, left to right. She jerked, legs kicking in the stiffened grip of the guard, her spraying throat gurgling. A whistling sound came from the slit as she tried to draw breath.

  Lycaste pulled the covers closer, watching her spasming body, her bulging eyes meeting his. Envoy casually handed the knife back to the guard and turned to Lycaste.

  “Bred for the First’s table, Lycaste.”

  Lycaste pulled his hand free from Envoy’s grip at the ship’s steps. Tagetes looked pained but let him go. He turned only when he was at the top of the gangplank and surrounded by fascinated courtiers.

  “It was an honour, Lycaste,” Envoy called up to him.

  Lycaste stared at him but didn’t reply. He stepped backwards into the throng of people, all asking him questions at once, until Tagetes and the dock he stood on were finally lost from view.

  Tenth

  None of the Melius people they’d met on the way were listed; the maps were too old, the lands towards the strange southern coast unsurveyed since Wintering 14,551, apparently—almost a hundred years before.

  It shouldn’t have mattered; the brothers knew where they were. But it did matter. It mattered to Melilotis—it gave the tall, distorted people they questioned every few days the opportunity to lie to them.

  He left his brother and cousin next to the late-afternoon fire they were preparing by the dirt road, the air alive with cicadas, and climbed a steep hill rough with olive and fruit trees to look out over the sea. The Mediterranean Nostrum, visible at last, days after the map had promised. He’d not seen the Southern Sea since he was a boy. It looked the same shade of warm, inviting blue, even though they kept saying the weather was changing. He thought the astronomers said such things just to keep people listening. It was what he’d have done, faced with such a thankless life of study and reflection, a stack of ring books and globes instead of women to keep him company through the night.

  The Southern Cherries here had put up a good fight. They had spirit, sufficient to withstand the kind of pain that could winkle out secrets from a pampered Second man. But Melilotis had been customarily adventurous in his work. It wasn’t so difficult. Mental agony required less fuel, like a fire built from rotten logs; you didn’t have to aerate it, nurture it so much. Tell them horrible things and usually up from nowhere sprang what you wanted in the first plac
e. He’d found out what he needed to know.

  He called Ulmus over, looking out across the sea while he waited for the boy. Melilotis was well aware that his cousin had no taste for the things he’d seen done on the way and knew that once he was home the boy would become what simpletons referred to as a kind man, perhaps softer still once he took up his duties as Intermediary. As far as Melilotis was concerned it was a weakness—perhaps even cowardice—that made people appear good. He didn’t think that should be something to aspire to. His father thought differently. Hamamelis wanted a stable, successful heir. Someone boring, that was what he’d meant.

  “Look, Ulmus.” He pointed as his cousin arrived. “The sea.”

  The boy nodded, barely interested.

  “We’re here now. Not long till we can go home.”

  “How soon?” Ulmus asked him, pulling at a green olive on a branch but not removing it.

  “Soon.” Melilotis didn’t like the boy’s tone. “Remember, this is for Leonotis.”

  The boy thought for a while, brushing the leaves away from his face. “And for that Plenipotentiary.”

  “Yes, but especially for your cousin. Never forget that, you hear me?”

  Ulmus bowed his head, pulling the olive free and turning away. Melilotis took his arm. “Say it, Ulmus.”

  “For Leonotis.”

  He nodded, looking the boy up and down coldly. “Fetch Cladrastis for me.”

  He waited for his brother and studied the view, seeing how the edges of the great forest they’d travelled appeared to stop suddenly at the crest of the next rise. The lonely road they’d taken had been in good repair, indicating use of some kind every now and then, but as far as the brothers knew, they’d had it to themselves for the last four days.

  Still, something whispered at the edges of the forest whenever night fell, so subtly at first that it was almost nothing, a coastal wind tickling his ear. Melilotis had remained unconvinced, even when his own name came breathing from the palms, until Ulmus’s and Cladras-tis’s fears together had overwhelmed him. He’d encouraged his brother and cousin not to show their terror, but to laugh back at whatever was calling their names each night, all three howling at the dark trees until the voices stopped. But whatever it was never ceased for long, watching and waiting until the brothers were coiled together on the verge of sleep around their dying fire, then beginning again. The night before, he’d jerked awake—remembering that someone had once told him it was your body thinking it was dying—to see a pair of pale eyes widen and vanish, whipping back into the undergrowth. Tonight they’d build the fire high, making camp in the middle of the road for once. Only time would tell whether he’d be able to sleep.

  “I can see the sea, can you see the sea?” sang Cladrastis as he came through the olive trees towards him. He placed a hand on top of his brother’s head, taking it away quickly. “You have greasy hair, Meli. Why do you have such dirty hair?”

  Melilotis pushed a hand through his hair irritably and pointed at a path that wound down the hills past a sloping, wind-shaped dwelling, small in the distance. Its structure was clearly designed to reflect light down the path to a hidden garden like his father’s outhouses. He had no interest in that, knowing from his map that the place they sought lay in the crescent bay about four and a half miles south of there.

  “We start out tomorrow, early. Not tonight.”

  Cladrastis stared at him. “Why wait?”

  “It’ll be dark before we’re halfway there.”

  “Tonight looks clear.”

  “Dawn,” Melilotis said firmly.

  Cladrastis shrugged. “Ulmus doesn’t want to sleep here any longer, he keeps asking me when we’re going.” He scratched his elbow sheepishly. “I don’t either, Meli.”

  Melilotis shook his head, wishing he could slap his brother without starting a fight that he’d probably lose. “Listen to yourself. I used to look up to you. When Ulmus gets to keep what he wants from those houses—then he’ll be glad he came.”

  Cladrastis feigned a punch, making Melilotis flinch. “The ladies, you mean?”

  He pushed his brother’s hovering fist away wearily. “Exactly.”

  Chapel

  “Please state your names, clearly,” the hard-faced Amaranthine called Von Schiller asked them in Unified. His voice rang through the high-ceilinged chapel like a bell.

  Corphuso looked at Ghaldezuel. The Lacaille had changed into a shimmering peignoir of blue and gold, his little slippered feet poking out. His white, long-eared head was bare in the Lacaille ambassadorial custom, and Corphuso was surprised to see that Ghaldezuel had some sparse dark hair growing at the back. He was younger than the Vulgar had imagined.

  “Ghaldezuel Es-Mejor, Op-Zlan-Lacaille,” his captor said confidently into the huge space, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. Corphuso could see no one but the stooped Amaranthine in the chapel. He opened his mouth to say his own name, but the Lacaille continued, “This is my captive, the builder of your gift.”

  Von Schiller stared at them a little longer before beckoning them forward. Corphuso gazed in wonder at the ceiling, the insult forgotten when he spotted the intricacies of the Prism worlds depicted there. As he looked, he wondered that the detail was not lost on these people—it was well known that Vulgar eyes were better than Amaranthine, and he could barely make out the smallest brushwork himself.

  “I trust you had an uneventful journey?” the Amaranthine asked as they approached.

  “Reasonably,” replied Ghaldezuel. He did not look at all intimidated by the Immortal. “I was most impressed with my reward. Am I to thank your master in person?”

  The Amaranthine’s eyes narrowed, but he inclined his head and stepped back. “The master is here with us,” he said quietly.

  Ghaldezuel folded his arms and looked around, turning at last to Corphuso. Since their journey began, it had mollified the Vulgar somewhat to see that Ghaldezuel appreciated his intelligence; more than once he had asked the architect’s advice over that of the soldiers at his command.

  Corphuso shrugged in response to Ghaldezuel’s glance, shuddering as a chill passed through him. The air appeared to darken.

  “Two hominids,” said a voice all around them. It filled the space up to the ceiling, its words crisp and precise. Corphuso heard the voice in Vulgar, guessing after a moment that perhaps Ghaldezuel heard his version in Lacaille.

  “Yes, Long-Life,” Von Schiller whispered beside them. “They have brought what you wanted.”

  “Both things?” the voice said loudly, critically.

  The Amaranthine looked sharply at Ghaldezuel. He nodded.

  “Both, Long-Life.”

  The voice did not reply. Corphuso felt the tiny blond hairs on his arms and neck rise. Suddenly there came footsteps from behind them. They turned to see a man, clothed simply in Amaranthine apparel, walking slowly towards them.

  “I will have them here,” he said, his face appearing to grow from nothing in the shadows. Corphuso still heard the words in Vulgar.

  There was a pause as Ghaldezuel tried to work out exactly what was being asked of him. “Our cargo? You wish it brought here?”

  “Yes,” the bizarre man said thoughtfully, glancing to Von Schiller. “Now.”

  Ghaldezuel looked at the Amaranthine beside him. “Shall I … go and send word?”

  “Go now, yes,” replied Von Schiller simply. “Leave the builder here with us.”

  Corphuso gulped, staring at Ghaldezuel in the hope that he would deny the request, but the Lacaille nodded and excused himself, walking quickly across the chapel to the doors.

  “This is the designer?” the master asked Von Schiller as he circled Corphuso, taking in every aspect of the Vulgar. Corphuso hated it, looking back to the man as he arrived before him again.

  “What is he, precisely?” the man asked.

  “He is Paranthropus Vulgarii, Long-Life, of the pale Harboldt breed. Common within the Firmament after the Ninth Era.”

  The m
an appeared to think about this. “What was the other? Not the same, I think.”

  “Paranthropus Lacaille-Colensis, a Zalnir blue. Also common to the Firmament and Investiture. They are closely related races, sharing a recent ancestor with the Pifoon, also.”

  “Tell me about yourself, Vulgarii,” the circling man said to Corphuso. “How did you think up such a thing?”

  Corphuso could feel himself sweating as he tried to choose which language to speak. He opted for Unified. “It was an accident, really, a stroke of luck.”

  The man, the Long-Life, nodded. His vague, pleasant eyes flicked to Von Schiller. “I am indebted to you, Vulgarii. I have waited so very long for your accident to occur.”

  There was a knock on the chapel doors and Von Schiller turned. Corphuso noticed that the Long-Life’s eyes remained fixed on him.

  “My gifts are here,” he said softly, the smile spreading on his face.

  Barge

  “Look at him!” the Secondling jeered, tightening his yellow fist on the cane and grinning to the ladies. “Won’t you fight me, Cherry? Are you too afraid?”

  The man, portly and rather tall for a Secondling, gave Lycaste a flick with his stick, standing back to watch his sport’s reaction. Lycaste growled and glanced among the circle of gaily coiffed people on the deck of the river barge. Some of the ladies looked afraid of him, others laughed, but few could pull their eyes away.

  The attention had made the gentlemen on board jealous, and they had begun deliberately knocking and nudging Lycaste while the first drinks of the afternoon were served aboard the sailed barge. He was no longer tied or chained and had made the mistake of lashing out at one Second man, shocking the giggling ladies into silence.

  “Come on.” The chubby Secondling tapped him again with the cane. Lycaste’s arm was beginning to sting. He could see the man would lose face if he carried on tormenting Lycaste without effect—some of the women had already spoken up and told the Secondling to stop being so cruel. They clearly thought Lycaste defenceless despite his size. He looked into their pinkish eyes, knowing that most simply wanted to see a drop or two of blood spilled, perhaps not even caring from which man it came.