‘Most assuredly, my Lord. I am accompanying the young felon to his dormitory, where I will personally confine him for the duration of the Festival.’
‘Personally?’ echoed the stranger. A note of dry humour crept into his voice.
‘Yes—that is, if you think it—if you approve…’ Rede opened and shut his mouth several times in confusion, emitting no further sound. He looked very like a margoose chick begging for slops, Tymon thought. His elbows were raised like wings, and his oversized head on its scrawny neck twitched from side to side, mouth agape.
‘I’m sure he can find his own way to the dormitories,’ the Envoy interrupted smoothly. ‘I must detain you, Father. I need your advice.’
The priest’s chest puffed out visibly with pride, and not a little relief. He gestured imperiously to Tymon.
‘Back to your quarters, boy. I do not wish to see your face until breakfast,’ he announced. ‘We shall determine what to do with you in the morning.’ He propelled Tymon through the doors with a final shove between the shoulder blades.
As he stumbled into the College courtyard, the boy cast a furtive look behind him. The Envoy had his arm through Rede’s and was steering the little priest down the ramp in the direction of the air-harbour. Tymon waited in a shadowed corner of the courtyard, his heart pounding, until the two were out of sight. Then he turned his back resolutely on the tunnel leading to the dormitories and hurried across the empty quadrangle towards the library building. A solitary messenger bird sounded a warning from the eaves as he mounted the steps.
Free. He was free. By a fluke, a marvellous chance. He hardly dared believe his good fortune. He padded down the plush carpet of the library corridor, his breath rasping in the stillness of the building. The place was deserted; even the most reserved and bookish of the priests had been bullied into joining the festivities. The Prayer Room was dim and quiet, its shutters closed. He picked his way between the piles of loose leaves to the Nonian liturgies. After taking a last stock of his provisions, he tied everything up in a bundle with a long cord, slung it over one shoulder and strode briskly out of the room. He hoped to take full advantage of the warden’s absence from the College gates.
He almost bumped into Wick in the corridor.
‘Stop—Ty—hullo,’ panted his friend unintelligibly. He had evidently just arrived at a run and was out of breath. ‘You were going to leave without saying goodbye,’ he gasped. ‘Lucky I knew about your stash here. I’d have missed you otherwise.’
Tymon felt a stab of compunction. ‘I’m sorry, Wick. It was a last minute thing,’ he said. ‘Rede didn’t give me much choice.’
Wick grimaced. ‘I saw him poking you along the quays. I thought to myself, that’s it, Ty’s off. Why did he bar you?’
‘Oh, for nothing, really,’ lied Tymon. He did not wish to waste time relating the circumstances of his disgrace. He scuffed the floor with his heel, eager to be gone but reluctant to be brusque with Wick. ‘I was talking to someone. Should have been more careful, I suppose.’
‘I’m glad I caught you. I told you, I have news for you. You might change your mind about leaving, once you hear what I have to say.’ Wick drew a deep breath. He moved closer to Tymon in the panelled darkness of the corridor. ‘What if you had something to look forward to, Ty? Something good, right here, right now, in the city? Would you still risk everything to go with that crazy scientist?’
‘Something to look forward to?’ Tymon’s gaze strayed to the end of the corridor and the main entrance lobby. He dreaded an early return of the warden or a reappearance of the mysterious Envoy. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean—’ Wick spoke slowly, deliberately ‘—My father—now, I’m not guaranteeing anything —but he might be able to work something out for you. Get you an introduction at the Fair. Would that convince you?’
Tymon’s eyes snapped back to rest on his companion in consternation. It was one matter for a rich man’s son to cultivate egalitarian habits while a student at the seminary. For such a blessed one to offer his less fortunate classmates real and tangible assistance was far more unusual. Tymon had simply never heard of it happening.
‘You’d do that?’ he gasped, with a rush of gratitude. ‘You’d ask your father to introduce me to someone? That would be amazing, Wick—I never thought—’
He stopped abruptly. In the midst of his happy astonishment, the pilgrim girl’s accusation tolled out in his memory, a death-knell to pleasure. Collaborator. His excitement drained away as if it had never been. How could he accept Wick’s offer now?
‘Well, no need to cry about it,’ remarked his friend wryly, as Tymon’s expression reflected a rapid succession of emotions. ‘Just consider the idea. Maybe you don’t have to go so far to get what you want. What do you say? Will you stay with me?’
Wick’s smile was winsome. He watched Tymon with a curious intensity. There was a vulnerability to his expression, a chink in his usual shell of confidence, as if some personal choice of his own rested on Tymon’s decision. It was with difficulty that the other boy finally dredged up an answer.
‘I can’t abandon the old man, Wick,’ he replied sadly. ‘I wish I could just call it quits. But I owe Galliano some help on the test flight, at least. We’ve been building up to this—he needs me.’
There was a moment of silence between the two young people.
‘Well, the offer stands, if you change your mind,’ said Wick with a shrug. His tone had grown distant.
‘Don’t get me wrong,’ Tymon stumbled over himself in an effort to reassure his friend. ‘It’s a very generous thing you want to do for me. I just feel—I have responsibilities…’
‘Naturally. Do what you have to do,’ answered Wick. The momentary openness was gone, replaced by his usual front of easy confidence. He smiled. ‘You were sly to get away from Rede so quickly, anyway. How d’you do it?’
‘There was a fellow at the gates. The Envoy. He wanted to speak with him. You should have seen Rede’s face…’ Tymon shook his head, puzzled. ‘Do you know who he is, Wick? I’ve never seen him in Argos city before.’
His classmate’s eyebrows had risen at the mention of the Envoy. ‘The Special Envoy of the Council,’ he said. ‘Their man in the colonies. Over and above the Colonial Board. He doesn’t come here much—when he does, you can be sure something’s up.’
‘Well, he may be special, but I gave him the slip,’ said Tymon rakishly. He still wished to impress Wick, even now. ‘But he’ll be back. I have to go while I can. Sorry to rush you.’
‘Not at all.’ Wick stepped aside to allow him room to pass.
‘I’m glad we had the chance to say goodbye,’ Tymon threw back at him, as he hurried down the corridor. ‘Take care of yourself, guild-rat.’
‘You too, bound-boy.’
Tymon paused at the end of the passage where it turned a corner to join the entrance lobby, and glanced over his shoulder. Wick’s moon-like face glistened dimly in the shadows behind him.
‘I’ll be coming home one day,’ he called to his schoolfellow softly. ‘You’ll see. I’ll have a dirigible of my own, like I always said. What do you want me to bring you?’
Wick’s laughter sounded hollow in the panelled corridor. ‘Silesian bellweed,’ he replied. ‘Some of that in Rede’s cup would make him dance till dawn. Better than gluing him to his chair, any day.’
As he watched Tymon disappear around the corner, the mirth faded from Wick’s face. He waited in the dim corridor a few minutes longer, then abandoned his post and moved cautiously towards the lobby. It was empty. Tymon had slipped outside. Instead of leaving the building in his wake, however, Wick turned to the right and approached the imposing door to the main library. The stacks beyond were usually forbidden to novices. The carved black knob turned smoothly in his hand and the door swung open.
‘Come in, master Wick,’ said a voice. The man in black looked up from a table near the door, smiling his slight smile. ‘I trust you have completed your task?’
Wick nodded, closing the heavy door behind him.
8
Tymon quit the College after his meeting with Wick, enveloped in his travelling cape, the bag of provisions and all-too-green holiday robes hidden beneath its folds. As he hurried through the deserted streets of the town, his eyes darted up to the trunk-wall in a constant, nervous reflex. The Path of Sacrifice was plainly visible above the rooftops of the lowest tier. Tymon’s anxious gaze hovered near the summit of the dark, jagged line. He expected at any moment to see a flash of crimson against the grey trunk, the flame-like signature of the pilgrim’s empty cloak held aloft by the Dean. The hum of the Festival reverberated in his ears, buzzing through the empty city. The noise would escalate to an exultant howl on Fallow’s reappearance. The boy shivered and hunched his shoulders under his cloak. He avoided the major thoroughfares down to the air-harbour, passing through obscure alleys and by-ways to reach the lowest tier. He intended to take a back road out of the city, one that would keep him as far as possible from the Festival and the quays.
On the sleepy northern borders of the town, on the opposite side of the supporting branch to the air-harbour, a pedestrian gate opened onto a small footpath that wound up the trunk. It was used by local farmers to graze their herds of spotted, mosseating shillees and amounted to little more than a shelf of crumbling bark, scarcely wide enough to allow two of those nimble animals to pass abreast. The trail gave the black slit of the Mouth a wide berth, meandering northwards up the trunk for two miles before doubling back in a long arc to join the main road at a point slightly higher than Galliano’s branch. It was a time-consuming and indirect route to the old man’s workshop, but the only one that enabled Tymon to leave the city unobserved.
He reached the small door at the end of its blind alley without incident. No guard occupied the abandoned post under the trunk-wall and he passed unchallenged onto the footpath. He was soon above the level of the closest rooftops and climbing steadily, a sheer drop to his left. Slivers of bark rolled away from his feet to spiral into the abyss. He walked quickly, his boots sliding and slipping on the ledge; he did not want to be near the city, near the Mouth, when the Rites procession re-emerged. Had the pilgrim already jumped? he wondered, gloomily. Did the madman have to be pushed over the edge of the Tree-rift in the end—thrust into that other, interior chasm? He tried to shut out the memory of the Nurian youth, his face shining with sudden clarity as he offered up his life to the Dean. He told himself that it was not his fault the stranger would die, that he should not waste time worrying about the inevitable. He had not had any part of it. He had not stood by as a man was thrown to oblivion. None of this was his fault, he told himself furiously.
He stumbled when he finally heard it, stubbed his toes on the uneven ledge and almost fell as the triumphant shout went up from the air-harbour. Screams and cheers echoed over the city, piercing the afternoon. The Dean’s gesture had been sighted. The Rites were over. The boy regained his balance and steadied himself against the bark wall to his right, but did not pause to look over his shoulder. In any case, the mouth would be hidden now, obscured by a swelling ridge in the trunk. He felt rather than saw the procession returning to the quays. The distant drums filled his blood with throbbing repetition. He scrambled away from the pounding beat, lurched up the herdsmen’s trail until the noise had diminished to a dim pulse beneath his feet and faded at last to nothingness. Sweating in his cloak and holiday robes, he climbed on one hot mile, then two. Despite the fact that he had left the Festival and the air-harbour behind, he was gripped by a sense of uneasiness. He reached the point at which the footpath doubled back on itself. The silence was complete: even the birds nesting in the trunk-face made no noise. He pressed on, dogged, his breath rasping in the stillness of the Tree.
The sun was sinking below the western leaf-line by the time he staggered onto the main road at last, his tired muscles aching from the climb. Over the side of the ramp, some distance below, he could see Galliano’s branch, the track between the terraces a pale line wriggling along its upper ridge. The long shadow of the humped knot at its centre stretched back across the vine-frames to touch the crossroads. Although Argos city was obscured by the bulk of the limb, the faint sound of revelry reached his ears, a drifting echo of the festivities on the quays. It was not until he had almost reached the path to the workshop that he noticed the bowed form on the ramp ahead. A slight figure sat hunched on a gnarled twig-stump by the side of the road, its grey cloak almost blending into the bark.
For an instant he thought it was her—thought that the pilgrim girl had somehow, improbably, taken him up on his offer and arrived early at their meeting point. But a moment more of observation caused him to utter a cry of surprise and sprint the rest of the way down to the crossroads. There sat Galliano, immobile, his face bowed in his hands.
‘What’s going on, Apu? Are you alright?’ blurted Tymon.
The scientist raised his head and nodded absently in greeting, but did not look directly at him. Tymon peered anxiously into his friend’s face. He had noticed a suspicious purple swelling under Galliano’s left eye.
‘I’m paying the price,’ murmured the scientist thoughtfully.
‘The price for what?’ The boy frowned. There was no doubt: the spreading stain of a bruise disfigured the old man’s cheek. Had he taken a fall?
‘I’ve been reminiscing,’ sighed Galliano, glancing up at him at last. ‘Fifty years ago today, I went to the Rites with the rest of my class. I was eager to be a priest.’ He snorted derisively. ‘And for what? Knowledge. Power. Ancient secrets. A pittance.’
The mention of secrets reminded Tymon of his plans for the next day. He still had to broach the subject of departure with his friend. He would enlist Galliano’s help, he decided, whether the pilgrim girl came with them or not. There was still a chance she might change her mind.
‘Apu, there’s something I need to tell you—’ he began.
‘I wanted to speak to them again, you know,’ the scientist continued, interrupting him. ‘I rolled my old bones down to the air-harbour this afternoon. I had a few things to say to Fallow and his clique. But the Festival guards detained me on the road. It appears I’ve been declared “Impure”—a deviant, a sub-citizen, whatever you want to call it. I’m not fit to appear in the city on public occasions. In fact, I’m no longer welcome at all.’
Tymon gazed at him in consternation, his own concerns forgotten. This, then, had been the altercation he had seen from the air-harbour at the start of the Rites procession. The Council guards had beaten Galliano, bullied a defenceless old man. And he had not been there to help.
‘They did that!’ he exclaimed, pointing at Galliano’s cheek. ‘They roughed you up, Apu, like a common beggar!’ He had never heard of an educated citizen, however eccentric, meeting the same fate as the vagabonds in the militia’s cages.
‘A senile old tramp, yes. An embarrassment. A non-citizen.’ The scientist shook his head mournfully. ‘Told me to move on, I wasn’t wanted. It’s all very neat. Half a century later I lose the last of the so-called privileges I was so eager to obtain during the Rites as a young fool. I’m no longer even a man.’
He looked so crestfallen that Tymon sat down beside him on the twig-stump. He felt too awkward to extend his gesture of sympathy any further, however, and could only answer with forced cheerfulness.
‘Well, we don’t care about them. We’re getting out of here, aren’t we? I’ve been meaning to ask—why not just leave tomorrow, once and for all? The machine is ready. I’m ready.’ He smiled. ‘We can even set sail for the Storm, if you like.’
The offer was only half in jest. Since his encounter with the pilgrim girl, he had ceased to worry about where he would go, so long as he was able to go at all.
‘I’m not leaving,’ replied Galliano quietly. ‘I’ll stay here and face the consequences of my actions.’
‘Stay here?’ the boy gulped in surprise. ‘Don’t you want to see what’s below the Storm an
y more, Apu?’
‘It was just a foolish dream. We pay the price for our dreams. We pay the price for everything. I have no right to dream. All this is my fault.’ The scientist nodded towards Tymon’s green robes, half-visible beneath his cloak. ‘The Rites are my fault. The Sacrifice. One life for many and all that claptrap.’
Tymon burst into laughter. Nearby, a bird emerged from the vine-frames in a flurry of wings and raucous alarm, orange-bright in the last rays of the sun.
‘Don’t be silly, Apu,’ he said, getting the better of his mirth. The old man’s face was serious, however; he obviously believed himself guilty. ‘The Rites aren’t your fault. How could they be?’
‘I told them.’ Galliano’s voice was small, miserable. ‘Years ago—the year after my initiation, actually. The Tree is dying. I proved it. I was so eager to prove it, to make my second degree in Applied Treeology. Levels of Tree-water, sap-flow, leafgrowth. Graphs and measurements. Diagrams and core samples. Talked to all the brightest minds in the College. They listened. They took notes. They thanked me. A year later, they started bringing in the foreigners. I had no idea it would lead to that.’
‘What, you mean…’ Tymon gaped at him in disbelief. ‘There was never a Sacrifice before? No one jumped into the Mouth?’
‘Never,’ pronounced the scientist, solemnly. ‘No one came to harm in the old days. Back when I was a young man, the Rites were symbolic. They were all about letting your former life go, about being born again, so to speak. It doesn’t matter what actually happened during the ceremony. The point is, they changed it. By special order of the Council. They changed it because of my findings, my experiments.’
Tymon sat silent on the stump. Faint and merry, the sound of music rose from the invisible city, a raucous pipe and a sawing fiddle. His heart beat wildly. There was so much to take in, so many new ideas to absorb from what Galliano had said that he could not find the words to speak.
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