by Tom La Farge
He was taken aback. “My lady,” he stammered, but she cut him short.
“No, I am not your lady, Shandimus, but I have been your cunt.” The word rang ugly, in the pause she made. “And now,” she laughed, “I am if you like the Despot’s cunt, though the uniform is grander. I can help you, but you must be frank with me.”
“My offensive will be ready in three weeks,” he muttered. “We are refitting several pieces of equipment and ….”
“It must be ready in a week. The offensive must be launched immediately after the nautomachy. Now I will tell my secret. Then you will understand your role.”
“I’m not much of an actor,” said Shandimus.
“There are no lines to be learned! Can you stand in full light and give a command? That is all your part.”
“What command must I give?”
She gathered her skirts, bent her head, then looked up and laughed. “You are not eating your salads! Fill your mouths! What I am to tell you is not to be repeated.
“The Despot’s command lets fly the brass falcon, the lighthunter. It rises, soars, and then stoops upon me, in my bright armor, standing atop the little model pharos.”
“Another allegory,” suggested Shandimus.
“But your command releases a larger missile. It will be fired from the Moon Viewing Terrace; from the place where the little boy drowned and the Despot first cursed the Pharos at Rhem. You will see it rise in flames. This one too will have a device to seek out light, but it will fly higher and aim further. It will carry a warhead strong enough to take down the pharos and more than that. The flash of that strike will be seen in the City. Our besiegers will be blinded by it. It will be seen all down the Hook, and in Gnaupoor. Your voice, Praetor, will unleash this force. Then, while our foes are still in their astonishment, you will lead the attack that sweeps them from the Motherland!”
Shandimus stood up, and Annag stood up with him.
“We are at your orders.”
“Good!” she laughed. “And let your first discipline be silence! Now, the Praetor and his wife must have a house in the City, following his victory. A home near mine! You know the Fondooq once was called the Pretoriat. Where else should the Praetor have his residence? I have been making some repairs, creating habitations for my friends — Drytung knows! For you I have arranged a suitable residence, no palace, but fitting the new spirit. I like to look ahead! You once called me ‘wisewoman’ at the Wildlife Refuge. Well, with my wisewoman’s clear seeing,” she laid fingers to her temples, “I see senators begging Borly V’Detsiny for invitations to his daughter’s home, to dine in the Pretoriat with the Reconqueror of the Hook.“
Annag’s face twisted. “’Nna! You’re not mocking us?”
“Mocking? Get away with you and see your residence! Miyano, aren’t you ever going to enter?”
“Just waiting for my cue!” Miyano V’Hastray came smiling in and seized the hands of Annag and Shandimus. “Congratulations! The Athletes’ Legion is at your orders, Praetor, for the Reconquest! But here it’s ’Nna who commands, and you are to follow me to be shown over your new home.”
“It isn’t finished! There are a few last touches that I must give it,” warned ’Nna. “But at the close of Shandimus’ Offensive, and after your wedding on the Hook, it will be ready.”
She rose and kissed Annag and then bowed to Shandimus, who was holding out his hands but had to return Miyano’s salute.
“Praetor, Corsator, shall we go?”
They left as in a spell and did not say goodbye to Drytung or to Root. Lhool came in with a steaming pot. At the smell of it Root stirred. “I remember that,” he said. “You brewed it for me at the Wildlife Refuge. It helped me step aside from pain and made me dream. Of chambers.”
“Drink it now and tell me later what you have dreamed,” said ’Nna, and turned to help Lhiss gather dishes. Drytung sat by Root; by the time the infusion had been drunk, Root was already at some distance. ’Nna nodded, and Lhool wheeled him out. Lhiss left with the tray. ’Nna sank into a chair and stared into the well of the Roohaneeya.
“How are the babies?” she abruptly asked.
He told her. “You must come visit them, ’Nna. And tend your plot!”
“My plot?” she asked, half-smiling.
“Yes, it wants attention.” He told her about the choking perfume, and she laughed.
“I cede you my garden with all that’s in it. Harvest it yourself, and then, burn the harvest! But do it downwind from my babies and upwind from my enemies. I must do my gardening here, now.” She seemed exhausted.
“You should rest, ’Nna. Your audience is gone, except for me, and I can come another day to see the second half of Dunya.”
She threw her head back and laughed. “The second half of Dunya is a very long play! But as for the part we’re rehearsing today, I am not in that, and I will go rest. Stay here or move around; see what you can see. My kisses to Piptiyya and the little ones.” She rose and was gone before he could answer.
36.
The Old Shot Tower
Drytung carried DRYTUNGS BOOK up the volcano, the sixth such book he’d drawn from store and heavy in his satchel. He’d left behind the Palace’s marble fantasies, empty now that everyone had gone down to the Artificial Ocean. Today was the day, and he’d had to wait for it in the Fondooq. No less a person than the adnomiast had come by to give him his orders.
“Two pieces, Protostrator. One an article for The New Current, and you’re paid directly by them. One for Company records. This moment,” he dictated, “is the turning point of Shandimus’ War. That is what it is to be called. You will resume your old duties as Historiographer. These documents,” he handed Drytung a fat despatch-case, “will bring you up-to-date on the preparations that the Force has been making. Top secret till we attack, of course.”
“They tell me Walwira has fallen.”
The adnomiast snorted. “Handed over without a shot fired.”
“Are we really ready to take on this enemy?” The adnomiast said nothing. “Iftooby, then,” said Drytung, and the adnomiast blinked.
“You will draw a new manuscript book and a pair of high-powered field glasses. On the day of the nautomachy, report to me at the Moon Viewing Terrace before sunset.”
Drytung saluted.
The Moon Viewing Terrace was at the top of the Last Stair. Drytung climbed through turn after turn, the geography of his life coming into view below. At the last turn Drytung paused and looked down into the City. Lights were coming on the shadowed folds and bottoms. The Fondooq was a dark blot, but Mole Place was lit. Drytung put his fieldglasses to his eyes and adjusted the focus. He found himself looking at a lit window, down in the narrow streets where he had taught school. A pair of women in indigo robes moved past one another, reaching, bending, working quick and deliberate as one does before going out. One of them paused to test the blade of a machete. Drytung wondered at that, till he remembered the canebrakes south of the City.
So lives go on and roofs must be mended, even in wartime. Drytung turned his glasses south and saw, without warning, the enemy: rows upon rows of tents, trucks, long-muzzled batteries; earthworks, zigzagging trenches, wire; tin helmets. Barges on the river; the sunset lit the Mother of Gardens, eddying, trembling, the cranes rising, swinging. He followed the stubby vehicles they loaded driving westward down boulevards where palmtrees drooped and dwellingblocks reared in their rows, till the drivers stopped with a jerk in a reedy wasteland by the bay. Drytung left them there and jumped inside the Outer Defenses. Working north, he found the fishing port, the ferry landing, the wharves and warehouses. The Old Shot Tower rose from the Inner Curtain and interrupted his view; at the top of it the searchlight came on as he looked and sent its beam into the sky, as it had done every night these last fifty years. It was powered by a museumpiece dynamo lovingly tended by the electricians of Walls. Then his glasses passed the university, shifted to the Artificial Ocean.
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nbsp; It stood out in brilliant glare. He increased the magnification, hoping to see the wonders Root had told him of. The mimic volcano gave him a start. Other details he couldn’t make out well, even under illumination that set them all in triple day. A great and colorful milling turned the viewing stands into sheets of oiled silk. Across from the Throne the black Pharos rose in hateful effigy. To compare it with its original, Drytung lifted his glasses, looked across the bay, and found Rhem. Too small to make out much, but there was no missing the Pharos. Nothing to it but defiant glare.
A few tents had been pitched nearby, alongside the mosaic floor where the eeltank had been filled in. A tall antenna rose behind a tent that uttered shrill reports and static. Farther on, a balloon was tethered, just the sort of two-passenger spotting balloon he had often gone up in while on campaign. Much patched; few ballooners knew how to land. Then he saw, behind it, a long shape angled outward. Black, unmarked, a disc of swimming opal at its tip, it troubled him so he turned away and only then remembered the Despot’s secret missile. This was the light seeker that Shandimus would fire at Rhem while the brass falcon went for ’Nna.
The adnomiast came out of the radio tent to strains of music so mantled in static, the band seemed to be playing inside a fire. “That’s the processional,” said the adnomiast. Drytung worked his glasses till he found Despot and Despina, young and elegant, waving as they walked up to the Throne built on the crest of the mimic volcano. The people in the stands rose to their feet, saluting, their cries mingling with music and static. There was Shandimus, walking by the Despot, and on his other side Miyano. All three men wore uniforms cut to suggest power, thrust, acceleration. They look like speedboats, Drytung thought. Behind the Despina, between her and the double file of Women, Lhool stalked with the little Infanta folded in her arms.
Now the sun was on the horizon. Shadow crept up toward him. Drytung turned right around and saw, on the very edge of seeing, a long bright band of copper. “That’s the escarpment,” said the adnomiast, “where the steppe ends. You should be able to see the dam and the cascade where the Mother drops down.” Drytung found a tiny white wedge and below it a glinting thread, before the north sank into night.
Shadow reached the terrace. Only the Artificial Ocean kept its artificial day, while far out the Pharos at Rhem showed as a hard bright point.
“Adnomiast!” barked the radio tent. The adnomiast hurried in. “Stand by! Repeat, stand by! Is the weapon fully armed?”
“Yes, Domestic!”
“Stand by! Maintain radio contact. The nautomachy is beginning now!” The music, still audible behind Shandimus’ squawk, had taken a graver turn. “I will give the word. Repeat, I will give the word!”
You’d better give it clearly, thought Drytung, as sleek boats shot into the basin, the grind of their engines blending with the howls of the crowd, the blare of the music, and the apoplectic sizzle of the radio to make an impenetrable sound-fog. He raised the glasses. The boats curved in at speed, throwing up arcs of glitter. They divided into two flotillas, raised blue pennants and green ones, drove through each other’s line right before the Throne; then the battle was launched.
It was marked with such scenes of heroism, cruelty, perfidy, generosity, and acrobatic violence as could only have been scripted by the Bros. Crow. Small cannon recoiled within revolving turrets, machineguns spat from every bow, torpedoes dove from tubes and plowed the basin into foam. On two occasions a boat was boarded, cutlasses scything. Boats rammed other boats, sending bodies somersaulting. The Greens, it seemed, had drawn the honor of representing the Motherland, while the Blues were the enemy and subject to more and grislier deaths. The mass of faces in the crowd passed from stillness to agitation every few seconds. The stands occupied by the Pitch Factions tossed with emerald triumph and indigo outrage.
In the foreground loomed the Throne. Behind it he could make out two heads in officers’ casques, Shandimus and Miyano, and between them the great falcon spread its wings above the Despot. Drytung kept looking to the mimic pharos but never saw ’Nna till a light came on, a bloodred beam, and there she stood, malignant in the midst of a brazen haze of armor.
A louder sputter from the tent.
“Domestic?” shouted the adnomiast. “Repeat, please!”
“Stand to quarters!” Behind him Drytung heard a stamp of boots. The lights below went out, all but the mimic pharos, which shone its blue beam at the Throne. The falcon jumped. Squirting vapor from beneath its wings, it rose, tracked by the blue beam, while the armor danced and cast impotent spells. Then the great claws spread, the great wings folded, the single eye seized the beam, and the falcon stooped on the armor; Drytung hoped ’Nna had vacated it in time. It smashed into the pharos and exploded in plumes of many-colored flames.
The crowd went mad with patriotic glee. Their rhythmic chant, “Death! Death! Death!,” rolled from the radio tent before the Despot and the Domestic spoke at once, the Despot over a loudspeaker, Shandimus into his private transmitter.
“So perish all enemies of the Motherland!” intoned the Despot, but Shandimus said, “Now, Adnomiast!”
“Launch!” the adnomiast roared, and the men and women standing around the missile each executed a movement: a tug, a twist, a stamping down, a throwing from right to left. Flames shot from the rocket’s tail, and static surged, as the light seeker flew out into the night above the bay.
At that point the action changed scripts. There was a flash from the north. All the lights died around the Artificial Ocean. Drytung turned and saw a glow above the place where he’d made out the dam. The City was dark, all of it, every street and every building, save for one. From the summit of the Old Shot Tower a finger of light still searched Protectorate lines, where every headlight, lamp, and cooking fire had been extinguished. The lonely beam paused, wavered, then turned to the Palace as if for instructions. Shandimus’ radio also had its own power source, for the radio tent rang with screams of panic. Then Drytung heard shots. “The Despot!” Shandimus shouted. “Get a doctor! The Despot has been shot!”
Oblivious, the searchlight’s beam climbed the volcano, brushed Drytung, and swept out over the bay. Then Drytung saw that the Pharos was dark. The light seeker must still be up, but what light would it seek? Just as this question occurred to him, the searchlight’s beam found it, coming in.
“Turn it off!” screamed the adnomiast as if his voice could carry across the gap between the Moon Viewing Terrace and the Old Shot Tower. The missile struck. It dropped from above and smashed down through the tower, spraying stones outward, and plunged deep down before it exploded. One great segment of the Inner Curtain, the rampart where Drytung had marveled at ’Nna’s toes, where he had seen the sally port and bees, changed to a ball of fire. Seconds later, the concussion knocked Drytung to his knees, hands pressed against his ears, and there he stayed, vomiting, while the mountain beneath him shook.
37.
The Second Half of Dunya
A boot’s toe prodded his shoulder. “Get up!” ordered the adnomiast. “You can fly a balloon, can’t you? You have to get the Domestic out. The Blues have risen. They’ve shot the Despot and Despina, they’re murdering everyone else they can. Get Shandimus out.” Drytung stood, and they ran to the balloon. The adnomiast reached into the basket and found a headset. “Put this on. That is the receiver. Crank it when power starts to fade.”
“Where do I find him?” Drytung wondered, but he was already in the air and had to attend to the balloon. This one was dirigible to a point. It had vanes adjustable by cables, and a motor turned a propellor that could be angled within a small arc. Drytung yanked a cord, engaged a gear, and the propellor spun. Luckily the night was calm, though a plume of vapor was spouting from the volcano’s cone. By the time he’d gotten the balloon moving, the headset was squawking and he put it on.
“He can’t respond, Domestic, he has no transmitter,” the adnomiast was saying. “Just talk him down to you.”
“Dr
ytung,” Shandimus croaked. “Go to the University. I have escaped the Throne. I’m going to the University. Where is the University?” and some guide muttered. ”Yes, I’ll be at the Observatory. Go there. It’s the tallest building. I will climb the tower.” Drytung heard shots, feet pounding, breath rasping. “This door is locked!” A loud shot, another. “Where is the stair? I see it! Stay here. Hold the door as long as you can, Decarch.” Then more panting, as Shandimus climbed. Meanwhile Drytung had sailed out over the bay. Turning back towards shore, he was appalled by the flaming ruin spreading from where the Old Shot Tower had stood; but fires were breaking out everywhere. A flaring below suddenly lit the halls that framed it. That tower with the slotted dome must be the Observatory.
“Ah, I see you!” said Shandimus. Drytung picked out a figure waving from the ledge that ran around the dome, but at that moment a bullet droned past. He had to maneuver around the other side, and as he went the splayed figure edged the same way around, till at last it stretched and caught the ropeladder he’d cast out. The basket rocked; then with a heave Shandimus was in and scrambling to his feet as Drytung tossed out weight and the balloon swam up out of range.
The moon rose and lit the volcano’s plume as they drew level with the Moon Viewing Terrace; across the bay the Pharos came back on. “A plot!” exclaimed Shandimus. “It was a plot!” As if to confirm his insight, the Protectorate batteries opened fire. Shells fell, briefly lighting squares, the fronts of temples, figures dashing down streets. “This has been planned! Adnomiast!”
“Domestic, at your orders.”
“We must attack. Transmit the following orders to Battle Headquarters. All units of Shandimus’ Force are to deploy in the City.”
“In the City? Domestic, the enemy is attacking!”
“No matter. Our walls will hold them out. The real enemy is inside, we’ll deal with them first. Do as I say.” And he reeled out orders, while Drytung stared down at the rents being torn in the fabric of the City.