Vile
Keith Crawford
Copyright © Keith Crawford 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner, except for the use of quotation in a review.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
First Edition
Cover Art by AutumnSky.co.uk
Published by Little Wonder Books –
[email protected]
www.keithcrawford.org
For Owen, Stephen, and my beloved wife Myriam.
Without the three of you, this book and I would never have made it this far.
Contents
Title Page
Epilogue:
Day 1
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Day 2
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Day 3
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Day 4
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Day 5
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Day 6
Chapter 86
Prologue
About the Book
Epilogue:
The Durançon Academy, 2218
In one of the great towers of the university, where the High Singers sent those they thought could learn the secrets of form and function, of shaping and being shaped, Arinlun hid his guilt by staring out of the window. He watched the skyway bringing students up the mountain for afternoon classes, delivery drones buzzing back and forth between pylons, and the shifting cranes building a new spaceport. His fingers danced across the surface of his tablet as if he were taking notes.
“The Shadowgate Massacre,” Professor Burkengat said. The Professor had probably looked like a forty-year-old man for two-hundred years, and his brown jacket might well have been older. “26th Ventros 1682, which made it, like today, the brink of spring. Why did it matter? What did it have to do with the formation of the Empire?”
There were only three students in the tutorial. Arinlun had arrived late. Sesongage sat with a science-fiction paperback clutched in his trembling hands and his longhand notes scrunched up on his lap. Even Arinlun, with his love of all things ancient, found Sensongage’s anachronistic affectations odd. Fesenthes, the third of their group, had called it a weakness to Sensongage’s face. She had taken a seat as far from the window as possible, so there was no way to tell if she had received Arinlun’s text message and no way to tell if she even cared.
“The death of the Warden?” Sesongage said.
Burkengat sat back against his desk and sighed. “There were Wardens in all communities of note by 1682. Peacekeepers from the Northern Federations, they were nominally there to protect their barbarian neighbours from the commonwealths to the west. The death of the Shadowgate Warden was more a symptom than a cause.”
“Barbarians?” Fesenthes had a talent for furious speech, for focussing on the word that angered her and separating it from any and all context attached.
“I accept barbarian is a strong a word. The capital of Trist had running water, literature, an Academy of science. The Northern Federation, however, had electricity, microchips, and rudimentary cybertechnology, even as the Commonwealth was taking great strides in genetic analysis and body modification. The people of Trist may have been a developed culture, but to the peoples of the North, and indeed of the Commonwealth, I can assure you they appeared quite barbaric.”
Had the Professor noticed his own hand drift to the portrait on his desk? The picture was of a bearded man with lank dark hair, presumably a long-dead husband of the Professor, and in this part of the world predated photography. It wasn’t polite to ask how old the Professor was, or how many faces or names he had had, but that didn’t stop Arinlun wondering.
“The capital?” Sensongage said. “You mean Lutence?”
“Lutense—with an s, not a soft c. And you’ll notice in most of our primary sources that the North is referred to as Northern Kingdoms rather than Federation. Stick with it. It takes time to see things from, shall we say, a contemporary perspective.”
Arinlun’s tablet buzzed. He glanced down, first at the message he had sent, then at the one he had just received.
ARINLUN (1332): HE KNOWS.
FESENTHES (1345): AFTER TODAY IT WON’T MATTER.
Last night, at the Club of Thirty, Fesenthes had kissed him for the first time since she’d transitioned to present as female, since she had changed her face in tribute to the legend. It had tasted wrong. The Choir had words for people who felt the way Arinlun felt, so he would speak of it to no-one.
“Arinlun?” the Professor said. “Why was the Shadowgate Massacre important?”
What were these classes for? Maybe the endless arguments about causality, objectivity, and rationality were just a display, a fakery of mysterious knowledge to stop the students thinking for themselves. The point of the Club of Thirty had been to ask these questions, to explore other paths to knowledge, but now Fesenthes wanted to turn it into a movement, a revolution against their teachers, even against the High Choir. Arinlun just liked old things. Was he afraid because the politics were dangerous? Or was he thinking about the kisses lost to him, the kisses from before she had changed?
“Elianor Paine,” Fesenthes interrupted.
“Well, well, well,” Professor Burkengat said. “There’s always one. Anybody else know the name Elianor Paine?”
Arinlun kept his mouth firmly shut.
“What if I tell you most historians no longer call her that? No? Let us try a different approach. Who were the Magistry? Sensongage?”
“They were a
sort of police force and judiciary.” Sensongage shuffled his papers and glared at Fesenthes. “An Imperial death cult.”
“Trist was not an Empire in 1682, and the Magistry were old even then. You might say they were a police force, but what made them who they were?”
“Power,” Sensongage said. “They had the right to kill.”
“They could tell when someone was lying.” Fesenthes said. “They had Truthsense.”
“They believed they had Truthsense.” Professor Burkengat snorted. “What about you, Arinlun? In what else did the Magistry believe?”
Old things, old values, old places. Surely the past had the answers the present lacked.
“They believed in justice,” Arinlun said.
“I see,” Professor Burkengat said. “Maybe we have two.”
He turned to his board and wrote one word on the display.
“Racialism,” he said, “is the belief that people are divided by race, and thus by lineage. Aristocrats and peasants. Queens, soldiers, and workers. Some born to lead, some born to follow. Truthsense was an ability with which one was born and, as such, propagated the notion that some people are inherently better than others.”
Fesenthes rolled her eyes. “Professor, all of us, including you, were selected by ability that, at least in part, was identifiable from birth. You don’t get to ignore genetics just because you want to believe in equality: reality doesn’t care about political convenience.”
“Race isn’t genetics. Race is a story.” Professor Burkengat took the science-fiction paperback from Sensongage’s still trembling hands. “Orphaned princes destined to save the world. The child who wins wargames and defeats an alien race while his siblings take over the world. Stories are small enough to understand. But the real world is big. It is not built by heroes.”
“How can you be a professor of history and fail to see history is the product of great people?”
“Observation? Understanding of survivor’s bias? Have you even sampled the reading list, Fesenthes?”
The Professor threw the book back to Sensongage, but he wasn’t looking, and the paperback bounced off the desk to knock a bowl of walnuts to the floor. The throw was so comedically inaccurate someone should have laughed. Yet Sensongage looked as though he didn’t dare pick the book back up, while Arinlun only clutched the edges of his chair and prayed Fesenthes would stop talking.
“Survivor’s bias? Racialism? Clever words don’t change reality.” Fesenthes got to her feet. She hadn’t even brought her bag, and, finally, Arinlun realised she had only come here to leave. “The entire history of Trist is that of an oppressed people. The North. The Wardens. Then the High Choir. But we are a distinct nation, with our own racial heritage and our own culture. The Empire will come again, Professor, and when it does, Trist will be for the Tristians.”
Arinlun wondered how somebody who had learned to change every part of their body, right down to hormone and blood type, could seriously believe in race. Yet the words she spoke now came straight from her speech last night and, somehow, when she spoke them, they felt real. Just.
“I’ve already sent a message to the Chamber,” Fesenthes said. And now she turned to him. “Come with me, Arinlun. Accepting defeat isn’t worth learning: we can make Trist great again.”
Arinlun wanted to be the sort of person who would leap up and make a dramatic statement, but when he opened his mouth out came the words “I need the credits to finish the year.”
With his cowardice came revelation: last night I wasn’t your lover, I was your audience.
“Fine,” Fesenthes said. “I’ll do this on my own.”
After she was gone, it took the Professor some time to speak. He picked up the paperback and handed it back to Sensongage with a quiet apology, then turned to face the picture of his dead husband.
“If you are to survive your passage to the Singing House, you must understand this: history is built from the corpses of people who thought they were born special.”
It sounded clever but it felt wrong. Some people are special, Arinlun thought. I just wish I was one of them. As if the Professor had heard the thought, he turned from the painting, drew up the now spare chair, and set himself down on a level with them.
“Fesenthes thinks that face she has taken is clever, but I have walked Trist for more than a thousand years. I knew Elianor Paine and I saw what she did to Shadowgate. She wasn’t like you think.”
A thousand years? Those who mastered shape could, in theory, live for as long as there was form in the world. Few lasted more than a couple of centuries. Living was a choice you had to make every day, dying just once.
“May I sing you a story?” the Professor said, and offered his hands, one to each of his remaining students.
Day 1
18 Ventros 1682
To return to the capital in time, Elianor must complete her mission and leave Shadowgate within 6 days.
Chapter 1
“We won’t make it to Shadowgate Castle.”
A howl had startled the cart driver, a haunting shriek from some animal that stalked the mountain trails above, provoking the first words the young man had spoken in the four-hour ride from Durançon. Elianor shifted her hand to the flintlock pistol at her side. She was a Magistrate of the Peace, empowered to uphold the laws of the Kingdom of Trist as she saw fit: fearful silence was normal, disobedience was not.
“My father’s tavern is closer,” the driver continued. “We can try again at first light.”
He had the deep-set brown eyes and wide chin of a peasant. He was also clean-shaven, and shouldn’t a cart driver be plain-spoken? Elianor was wedged in the back of the cart, between her chest of belongings, her rapier, and her precious rifle. Firearms were forbidden to the general populace: her rifle and pistol marked her as special as much as her Truthsense. From here the mountainside was lines of white on white, boulders mounted with snow, shadows between scattered spruces. Her view of the driver was restricted. The howling could be anything. This could be a trap. Even a more experienced Magistrate needed time and conversation to establish Truthsense, and a sophisticated opponent knew that.
“What is your name, boy?”
He was a couple of years older than she: anger might reveal truth.
“Derec. My father is Gwyion Garn.”
He said it as though she should know the name. What had he seen when he’d offered her a ride from town? A small girl in a large coat? He should have paid more attention.
“Citizen Garn, I have urgent business with Senator Vile. Lives depend on you getting me to Shadowgate.”
The second howl came before he could answer. They both jumped. Was it a wolf? Did wolves scream that way?
“My lady, these mountains are the last barrier between the Kingdom and the Kindred.” Derec pointed towards the right-hand path, the one that led to Shadowgate Castle. “There is a monster on the mountain. We call it the Black Dog, and it does not care who you think you are or how brave you might be. We must find shelter before dark.”
A Black Dog? Seven local women reported missing in the last twelve months, no bodies found, no signs of struggle, no possessions lost. Elianor’s master had sent her to investigate, a pretence that legitimised her presence in Shadowgate while she achieved her true mission. He had been very clear that he couldn’t give a damn about lost peasants, but it seemed obvious to Elianor that a Magistrate who failed to uphold the law lost the moral authority to judge other citizens. How could she sustain the Truthsense if she acted upon a lie?
“This is not my first investigation, Citizen. When women go missing, you talk to the father, you talk to the husband, you look for lovers and male friends. Not mythical monsters.”
It was her first solo investigation, but no need to tell Garn. She had seen a flicker in his eyes when she had said ‘lovers and male friends.’ He was a suspect.
“If we don’t turn away now, we will both die,” Derec said.
It would explain everything if Derec were impl
icated in the disappearances. Magistrate Grime had warned she might be expected. Elianor drew the flintlock pistol and pointed it at Derec’s head.
“You will die faster if you do.”
There was a tremble in his voice when he next spoke.
“Please, my lady. We will be safer at my father’s.”
“My pistol shall determine the direction we take.”
A third howl wailed from between the rocks and behind the shadows. It felt closer. Sweat gathered on Derec Garn’s forehead and Elianor saw she had miscalculated. Something out there frightened him more than her pistol.
“I can protect you against wolves,” she said.
“My lady, forgive me, but that is not a wolf.”
Derec shouted and cracked the reins. The cart lurched forward; Elianor was thrown back. The tail board collapsed and almost threw her from the cart. She clambered forward, trying to get her pistol up at Derec’s head. His eyes wide with panic, he shoved at her with his free hand, losing grip on the reins. He caught her face just as she got up alongside him. Her pistol slammed against the cart and discharged, with a cloud of smoke and a bang loud enough to drown out the clatter of hooves. The horse, startled twice, charged away down the left-hand path. Elianor tipped backwards over the side.
She crashed through the snow. The compacted ice on the road beneath smacked the breath from her. Elianor rolled to her feet, grabbed the pistol, and took aim at the driver. His head and shoulders were barely visible beyond her belongings, which were still strapped to the back of the vanishing cart, bearing left and away from the mountain. It didn’t matter: Elianor needed to reload before firing, and she had more pressing problems. The sound of the misfire still echoed down the mountainside. Whatever creature was howling, it knew exactly where she was.
Chapter 2
Elianor was fixed like a rabbit about to be devoured by something nasty.
“Be calm,” she said aloud, having learned as a child she was the only person worth talking to. “Maybe wolves howl like this. You do not know what frightened Citizen Garn. Deal with the facts of the case as they present themselves.”
Vile Page 1
