Children of Artifice

by Danie Ware

  So, he’d just got on with it. Tried to provide basic housing, clear though-routes from Vanchar and from the harbour – shelter and food were his priorities, and clean water. He was trying to clear the sewers and untwist the tramlines. One day, perhaps, he could even make the trams run again, as his mother had wanted. But not today.

  He was also learning to play again, to prise open that part of himself so long missed. The learning hurt, but it was like the itch in a healing wound – and it was good thing.

  As Darrah came to sit down, Caph put the zanyar on the table. It rang softly, a gentle note of farewell.

  The manager glanced at it, then chugged a hefty swig of the spirit. ‘Couldn’t sleep either?’ The words were different now, no bitterness, no sarcasm.

  ‘Nightmares,’ Caph said. He poured himself a measure, raised the glass at Darrah in a silent toast. ‘Every time, I wake up sweating…’ He downed it in one. ‘I came down here to do something else.’

  ‘I get them too.’ Darrah said. ‘Why do all the monsters live in the small hours of the morning?’

  ‘Because that’s when we feed them,’ Caph told him.

  Nodding, Darrah extended a hand for the bottle, and took a second, sizeable swig.

  Caph knew what Darrah had done, what haunted his nights. It was Darrah that had betrayed the mines, Darrah that had let Raife into the Caphen grounds to burn the house. He’d done it for status, for the rank that Caphen had never given him, for a promise of power in Raife’s new world. He’d confessed, in the Hospital, shaking with tears of shame; he’d told Caph he would leave and never come back…

  But this new world was not the one that Raife had planned. It was one of rubble and doubt, of hunger and loss, of strife and riot and unrest, and of terrifying new learning. And Darrah hadn’t known the sheer horror of what Raife would do until it was too late; he’d tried to save Jularn as the house had come down around them.

  In the moonlight, his burn-scars bespoke his guilt.

  And they reminded Caph of Proteus, of the real face that now lay in the Hospital, unmoving.

  He wondered if he would ever not miss him. Ever wake up in the morning wondering if today was the day he would wake. Ever not sit beside him, zanyar across his lap, stealing moments of music and hope and quiet, all away from the chaos of the city. Ever ask Austen, every time he came to the house, ‘Is he awake?’

  He had at least done one thing – Aden’s friend Jay had been found and restored to his original post. Ebi had come with him, and their forthcoming wedding was a tiny sparkle of something good among the ruins. Caph had sponsored it personally and he hoped it would have made Proteus happy.

  Hoped he would get the chance to tell him – one day.

  He refilled the tumbler, drained it again. ‘I’ve got a meeting in the morning,’ he said. ‘We need to get the city under control and Dion Molnek, surprisingly, has offered her help. She’s the senior ranking officer surviving, and if we have her on side, the greycoats will follow…’ He let the sentence offer its own endings. He’d told the old soldier that Ganthar had died a hero, and he would never tell her anything else.

  Darrah nodded.

  Caph said, ‘And I need you at the harbour, surveying the damage to the mines. The shift-workers are restive – the city can’t afford to pay them until the mines re-open.’

  ‘Sir.’

  ‘Bec’s looking at infrastructure. The Taar’s still blocked all along the eastern dockyards, and she needs to knock some sense into the… ‘ He blinked at Darrah’s expression. ‘What’s funny?’

  ‘You,’ Darrah told him, grinning. ‘Your father would be proud of you.’

  Caph dropped his gaze, frowning at the zanyar. ‘I miss him. Evil old sod.’

  ‘Of course you do.’ With a final swig, the manager set down the bottle and stood up. ‘It’s hard thing, suddenly finding out that you’re the grown up.’ When Caph glanced up, unsure what the comment had meant, Darrah smiled at him, the raw flesh of his burns moving oddly with the expression. ‘But you’re Caphen to your core, and you deserve your name completely.’

  His amber gaze paused on Caph’s face, his expression thoughtful, and then he turned away, as if he’d dismissed an idea. ‘Goodnight, Caph,’ he said. ‘If you like – and when you’re ready – maybe we can do this again.’

  Picking up the zanyar, Caph watched him leave.

  THE END

  The Evolution of

  Artifice

  'Caph and Proteus first met in 1992, in a story called ‘Til Death Do Us Part’.

  Their tale was different then. One was an Oxbridge graduate, engaged to be married and in hefty denial, the other was a spy, and a character that (let’s face it) I couldn’t write for toffee. It was all set in South London, and in the near-distant future of 2005.

  Over the years, it’s been rewritten several times. Caph’s story has stayed much the same – his family, their disapproval, Molly and his fingers, they’ve all come with him from those early days. He did lose the fiancée, but I’ll come back to that in a minute.

  Proteus, however, has come a long way from his original concept – something I wanted to explore and could never get quite right. He’s been a gaming character, a spy, an infiltrator, an assassin, any combination of the above. Austen used to be his boss; Lyss was a later addition. Getting him right, finally, has been a real achievement.

  The important thing, though, has always been how they’ve felt about each other. And a critical part of the original tale, the part that needed the fiancée, has gone. The world is changing, and more than anything, I didn’t want to write the standard 'gay love story' that's all closests and guilt and tragedy (and I didn’t want to write M/M dino porn either – I’ll leave that to the experts). I just wanted to write a tale, about two people who fall in love, even through they shouldn’t.

  Preview of

  Book 2

  PROLOGUE

  Dawn was breaking over the city, old stone softened by the rose tint of the sky. By the light of his single sodium lamp, the physician Jay sat at his desk, carefully inked diagrams blurring on the page in front of him. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, cursing the twin compulsions of academic research and a busy schedule.

  At first, he thought he was imagining it.

  He was shivering – a chill, perhaps, conjured by tiredness and by a long night’s work. Drafts in the old Hospital were common and he rubbed his shoulders, looking around.

  But the sensation was not in his skin.

  It grew deeper, a vibration in his chest and behind his ears, a noise he could feel. Then his arched window split from top to bottom, a crack as bright as the sunrise, as sharp as a slap.

  The suddenness of it brought him to his feet.

  Jay was the senior physician for his wing, a man of twenty-five years experience. And his first flash of fear was congealing into certainty, even as the door to his room juddered, scraping against the stone…

  He knew what this was.

  He’d been waiting for it.

  The shock of understanding made him reach for his robe, throw his arms into the sleeves and sash it closed. He kicked his feet into his soft shoes and flung open the still-shuddering door.

  The stone passageway was empty, but he could hear voices, the first grumbles, the calls of questions and confusion. He heard older tones, querulous, a man wanting to know if it was breakfast-time, because the bell had not been rung.

  People were starting to tumble out into the passage.

  Pushing past them, Jay broke into a run. His shoes and robe flapped, but he had no use for his dignity, not now.

  He barked instructions. “Nothing to worry about, go back to bed. Everything’s fine.” Several of the staff heeded him, and turned to help with the spread of unease. And then he was past them, round the corner and heading for the very far end of the building, for the quiet, si
ngle room where no-one went without his permission, for the room that was sponsored and paid for by Caphen himself…

  The room where Caph’s lover lay sleeping.

  Jay felt a wash of nervousness, and a stronger, almost eager, rise of pure curiosity. He’d missed the second great storm, the Destruction of the upper city, twenty-five years before; he’d been spared the panic and the screaming, the tumbling exodus down the stairways, the people plunging, screaming, from their edges. Jay had been one of the lucky ones – when the storm had hit, he’d been in prison.

  He stumbled to a halt by the closed door. His heartrate hammered, and he stopped to breathe deeply, hoping he wasn’t going to give his fool old self a heart attack, sprinting like that.

  As his breathing calmed, he listened.

  And then, wondering what the hells would be waiting for him, he pushed open the door.

  The man lay on the cold stone floor, no bed, no blankets.

  He was perhaps thirty, blandly handsome, one side of his jaw marred by faded burn scars that he must have acquired as a child. His eyes were closed, his expression unmoving. His arms were crossed over his chest. He’d not aged or changed in the long years he’d been in here; he had no need for medical support of any kind. Jay could remember watching, stunned, as the stone had grown into the sleeper like spears of frost, holding him in statis, and protecting him.

  He remembered Caphen saying, the loss like an ache, “Take care of him, Jay. If anything happens, if he as much as blinks, tell me. I’ll be here… whenever I can be.”

  There was a bench in here where Caph still came to sit. In the early years, he’d come often, filled with hope and nervousness, flexing his new fingers and carefully relearning his zanyar. Many, many times, he’d tried to reach the sleeper with his music, to conjure him to wakefulness, always ending in failure. Other times, he’d come in with books, or he’d just come to just watch – needing the break, perhaps, from the work he was doing outside. These days, he came less, but his stays were still poignant, as though he couldn’t let go of the ghost, of the fantasy, of the myth, that this man had become.

  Jay had tried to talk to him about it, but Caph had only chuckled, touched by his concern – and knowing full well the foolishness of his actions.

  And yet, it had been twenty-five years, and he still came.

  Now, that bench was empty and shivering with tension – like Jay’s chilled skin, like the Hospital itself – as if it could feel the sleeper beginning to stir.

  Jay’s hands twitched for a notebook, but he wasn’t going back for one now.

  He stared, mesmerised, at the man on the floor.

  The man’s breathing was shifting, beginning to change from the deep, slow pulse of the living stone to something more human, swift and almost superficial by comparison. There was the faintest hint of a snore. As Jay watched, the stone in the man’s skin was slowly retracting, sending more shudders through the floor. His lips parted with warm air. Under his eyelids, his eyes began to flicker.

  He was dreaming.

  And what in the hells, Jay wondered, did you dream about when you’d been held prisoner by the living stone for twenty-five bloody years?

  “Jay?” One of the other physicians had paused in the doorway. “Is everything all right?”

  “Get Caph,” Jay said. “Find him, get him the hells up here.”

  The woman nodded. The sleeping man’s fingers were moving now, beginning to twitch as the stone released him. His hair was falling free, light and loose. Colour was returning to his skin.

  The woman was staring at him, her mouth open. “You’re joking—“

  “Nope,” Jay said. “Better get some tea – for him too. And my notebook. And can someone tell Ebi I won’t be home for breakfast!”

  The woman nodded again, still staring at the waking sleeper. Then she tugged herself away and pulled the door shut behind her. Jay turned back to watching the floor.

  Caph’s direction had been clear: when the man woke, he was to know. He was to be here, no matter what. He had been waiting half his life for this moment and Jay… well, he had no idea what the hells would happen next.

  The physician blew out his breath and sat on the bench, fascinated by the awakening. Somewhere in these last years, he had honestly stopped believing that this day would ever come.

  Yet now, as much as he wanted the happy ending for his friends, something in his heart was afraid.