Samiha's Song

by Mary Victoria

  Roused by the strident tones of the soldiers outside, Tymon hastily mounted the first set of stairs in the benches to his right. He tried to maintain the pretence of being a late arrival, pushing past the rows of people to reach the highest and darkest seats. The great oval of the bleachers was pierced by two narrow corridors, one leading to the door he had just come through and the other to a performers’ entrance on the opposite side of the tent. He peered furtively into the corridor immediately below him, only to see the soldiers barrelling through the tent-flap, hissing curses. A third man had joined the two others in the interim. Tymon drew back into the shadows as the three men strode toward the foot of the ring.

  He was trapped. The soldiers began a methodical search of the bleachers, borrowing lanterns from the stage floor, and one of the men moved up each flight of stairs by the entry corridor, peering at the people on the benches. The third marched around the circumference of the stage to the far end of the pavilion. The Jays glanced up at the interruption but carried on with their performance. The members of the audience whispered and nudged each other, staring at the soldiers, but no one paid much heed to Tymon. He took advantage of their absorption in the drama unfolding below to crawl on his hands and knees behind the back row of bleachers, toward the performers’ entrance and away from the nearest guard. But even in that direction there was no escape. The soldier at the rear of the pavilion had chosen Tymon’s half of the bleachers to search first. Another lantern bobbed toward the young man in the darkness.

  Tymon stared in dismay at the approaching guards. There was no way of avoiding them. He crouched behind one of the empty benches in the top row, midway between the two soldiers, and racked his brains for a way out of his predicament. It seemed he had been blocked and stymied at every turn. All he could do was to put off the inevitable arrest. His pulse had slowed after the race on the quays and his body was chilled and sore. The last thing he wanted to do was to run, yet again.

  He looked on, distracted, as the Jays performed their number. The whole troupe was looping and re-looping about the stage, forming a series of concentric rings. The dance was familiar to Tymon though he could not for the moment put a name to it. The drum rolled on, hypnotic. He lowered his face into his hands. He felt weary, weary to the bone, and unable to accomplish any more daring escapes. There was no course he could choose that had not been foreseen by the Dean. All his plans had come to nothing. Pallas had probably been arrested, joining Bolas and Masha in the city jail. He was unable to help a single one of his friends. He would never talk to Samiha again.

  The papers she had given him made an uncomfortable bulge in his belt. Not knowing what else to do, he withdrew the bundle, smoothing out the crumpled sheets on his knees as he hid from the soldiers. The bundle was heavy, containing all that could not be said face to face. Do not fear darkness and defeat … He could just distinguish the words on the top page in the faint gleam of the lanterns, a dark, blood-like trail. He put the papers on the floor beside him, for he did not have the courage to read them.

  In the ring, the drumrolls quickened and the audience gasped with admiration as several Jays leapt onto the bowed backs of their partners. The lower circle of dancers straightened up without missing a step, carrying their comrades on their shoulders. They were performing a rendition of the Tree Dance, Tymon grasped numbly, the traditional tale of the birth of the world. God had just risen up out of the Storm to carry her children into the light. He must have been taken to such a performance as a child; it occurred to him, in a simultaneous and unrelated thought, that Samiha’s papers would be confiscated when he was arrested and probably thrown away. He had failed her even in that small task of keeping her story safe.

  The soldiers’ lanterns drew closer, baleful orange points in the gloom. As Tymon stared dejectedly at the Jays’ dance, he seemed to hear again the voice of the Oracle, exhorting him during the walk from Cherk Harbour: A sorcerer is half blind. He can only See the outcomes he would choose himself. Up jumped another group of acrobats from the centre of the ring, clinging to the backs of their fellows. The ones at the base of the Tree continued to dance under the added weight, marching improbably on as the new arrivals clambered onto their shoulders. The multi-levelled Tree shrank in girth as it grew tall. The dancers on the third tier stretched out their right arms, clasping the others’ hands to form a turning pivot. The audience clapped and cheered.

  It was an astounding feat of balance and control, but Tymon barely noticed it. His eye was drawn to a gap, a small opening between the bleachers and the canvas wall of the tent. He crouched down in the darkness behind the bench to inspect it. The space was too small for him to squeeze through himself but might just be wide enough to take the paper bundle. The bleachers were hollow underneath, a frame of lightwood planks.

  The rhythm of the dance had grown fevered, the dancers circling ever faster as the drummer swayed in his seat by the performers’ door. The act in the ring was nearing its conclusion. As the final group of child acrobats climbed onto the revolving trunk of dancers, hanging off their colleagues to form the branches of the Tree, Tymon undid the laces on his boots with shaking fingers and wrapped the string around the paper bundle. The soldiers were only a few rows away: he could hear exclamations of annoyance from people in their path. He pushed the bundle through the gap and behind the bleachers, letting it fall into the space below. The sound it made was lost in scattered applause from the audience. He leant against the bench, trembling.

  A figure in white had appeared on the Jays’ moving tower, climbing swiftly up the tiers of bodies to reach the top of the Tree. Tymon recognised Jocaste. Dressed in her feathered cloak and crown, she was the graceful bird on the spinning summit of creation. She moved in the opposite direction to the rest of the dancers, jumping nimbly from one acrobat’s shoulders to the next without concern for the dizzy space beneath her feet. All at once, she raised her arms and dropped through the hollow centre of the Tree, only to be caught by her colleagues just before she hit the floor. The audience burst into rapturous applause. The Jays slipped with pliant ease off each others’ shoulders, alighting in the sawdust ring to deafening cheers just as the soldiers’ lanterns converged on Tymon.

  ‘You. You’re under arrest,’ snarled one of the men, slapping a hand like a slab of meat on his shoulder.

  He made no answer but meekly rose. People turned to stare curiously at him as he was led away. The applause continued, a dim thunder. The faces of the soldiers were dour, thrusting him down the stairs and out of the pavilion. But his own heart was unexpectedly light. He felt, to his surprise, that all was as it should be.

  The wavering image above the orah-clock showed Tymon crouched behind the bench. The soldiers’ approach was inexorable. But before reaching its conclusion, the scene winked out. The image hanging above the orah simply vanished. Fallow drew back from the disc, his brows furrowed; opposite him at the desk in the luxurious new office, Wick stared at the gleaming instrument in disappointment, as if it had just caused his heart’s desire to evaporate. His fellow acolyte, Jedda, was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘What happened?’ asked the Saint, craning to look at the Envoy standing behind him. ‘I thought we had this situation under control?’

  Lace’s eyes were two murky wells, lidded. He paused only an instant before responding.

  ‘The interference of our enemies,’ he answered smoothly. ‘It matters little, Holiness. Whatever the boy does, the guards will apprehend him. We made sure of that.’

  ‘Why did he just sit there?’ muttered Wick. ‘He didn’t even try to run …’

  ‘I think we may have overestimated our young friend,’ chuckled the Envoy. ‘He obviously didn’t have the gumption we credited him with. It’s as I suspected in Cherk Harbour: he has lost his grip on power, given up the will to fight. We need trouble ourselves no more about him. Direct the orah to the Letter of Dominion, Holiness. We can finish this tonight.’

  But no matter how hard the Dean tried to coax the jitt
ering dials into the proper position on the instrument, they slid away from his grasp. Even the Envoy’s hand on his shoulder made no difference. This time, the orah stubbornly refused to be controlled. At last, Fallow pushed the instrument from him with an exclamation of rage and sent it careening across the table, where it snapped to a different setting before losing its glow.

  ‘Loss, Loss, Loss!’ cried the Dean, rising from his chair in frustration. Wick hurriedly followed suit. ‘I’ve had it with these womanish methods, Lace. We’ve been sitting here like spinsters over this piece of embroidery for far too long. I want to do something real.’

  The Envoy’s face was immobile, registering neither surprise nor disapproval at the outburst. ‘What sort of reality did you have in mind, Holiness?’ he asked, unruffled.

  ‘You know precisely what sort. It’s time for me to take my proper place as ruler of the Four Canopies,’ declared Fallow. ‘I have waited and watched until the time was right for the high King to return. Is it not right?’

  ‘It is,’ observed Lace dryly. ‘There couldn’t be a better time, actually.’

  ‘Then we do it.’ Fallow strode to the darkened casement near his desk, peering through the glittering sap-pane into the flat, black night. ‘We set the whole thing in motion. I’ve had enough of dabbling in the lives of old women and kitchen boys.’

  ‘As you wish, Holiness,’ murmured Lace.

  He motioned Wick toward the door with a curt jerk of his chin. The acolyte bowed and scurried out of the office.

  ‘So. Where do we start?’ asked Fallow, turning from the window impatiently.

  ‘Lantria,’ said the Envoy without hesitation.

  ‘He wants to what?’

  The captain of the guard was a corpulent, ill-shaven man, with an air of petulant confusion stamped on his flabby face. He had for much of his career divided his time between the quadroom at the city jail where he threw dice with a companion to fill the empty hours, and the local tavern, where he drank himself under the tables at least twice a week. But times had changed in Argos. He was now expected to be an example of virtue to his men, and a ruthless executor of the Saint’s decree. There were standards to be maintained, cells to be swept clean and a fresh, uncomfortably stiff green uniform to wear.

  The captain felt beleaguered by all this crisp efficiency. He was equally flummoxed by his new sergeant, an eager young man with a chin like a hardwood axe, foisted on him by the seminary. The obnoxious creature insisted on standing to attention while speaking to him.

  ‘He wishes to confess, sir,’ announced the sergeant stiffly. ‘Says he’s had a change of heart. Says we’ve arrested innocent people in conjunction with recent security breaches in the city, sir, and wants to take responsibility.’

  The captain gave an explosive sigh. It was nearing midnight on the day before the heretic’s execution, and the last thing he wished to do was process more paperwork. It was supposed to be a holiday, for the love of the Tree.

  ‘Can’t this wait until tomorrow, Pumble?’ he whined. ‘From what I can see, this fellow is already accused of treachery and conspiracy with Nurians, as witnessed by no less a person than Admiral Greenly himself. Very touching, I’m sure, that he’s sorry, but what do we gain by it? Is he actually grubbing for a pardon?’

  ‘Well, that’s just it, sir. He doesn’t want a pardon for himself.’ The young Pumble squinted down at the names written on a scrap of leaf in his hand. ‘He says he’ll confess to whatever crimes we charge him with, in exchange for the freedom of one Masha Genty of number seventeen, Linnet road, and a Bolas Brightwell, journeyman architect at Hemp and Sons. He says he’s to blame for everything they’ve done.’

  ‘You mean he’s claiming to organise this absurd rebellion of choirboys?’ objected the captain. ‘Why should we believe him?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have bothered you with it, sir,’ the sergeant said, clearing his throat, ‘if I didn’t think after hearing his story that there may be something to it. I suspect that running off with Nurians and inciting local unrest may all be part of something deeper, sir.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘He didn’t exactly say so in so many words, sir, but I’d guess he’s in the pay of foreign powers. He was sent here to make trouble.’

  ‘So, what’s new?’ The captain leaned his chair precariously back on two legs, wobbling against a nearby wall. ‘He joined one of those dirty Nurry Freeholds. They sent him here on some fool rescue mission to save their queen. Dirty turncoat.’

  Sergeant Pumble eyed the creaking piece of furniture with anxiety. ‘I don’t think he’s been spying for the Nurians,’ he muttered. ‘They’re small fry. I had him give me a list of his movements in the past six months. He’s been to Cherk Harbour, sir.’

  The captain lowered the chair down to its rightful position, much to his sergeant’s relief. ‘Lantrians?’ he breathed.

  ‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ The crisp young man drew himself up, if possible, a little straighter. ‘I thought it might be worth running by management, sir.’

  ‘You thought right,’ remarked the captain softly. ‘Good work, Pumble.’

  30

  The Day of Judgment did not so much dawn as lower. The fine weather of the past few days had given way to rolling clouds from the north and there was a chill tang to the air, the sharp odour of snow. The city woke up from its first night of festive cheer to a collective hangover and the witnesses’ gongs clanged mournfully in the streets.

  The evening before, after a conversation with the sergeant — a man fairly bristling with efficiency — Tymon had found himself transferred away from the public cell he shared with a howling drunkard and three simpering prostitutes to a small room equipped with a high barred window, a bucket full of vomit and two piles of mildewed straw. It contained only one other occupant, a shrivelled-looking character who lay face-down in his bedding and made no move when Tymon was thrust into the cell.

  The night was short and uncomfortable, and the young man woke early to a throbbing pain in his ankle. He sat up and looked about him. The patch of sky in the window above was a roiling grey. The brief rush of conviction he had felt at the moment of his arrest had faded away, replaced by patient sadness. He hunched over his knees on the straw. That morning, Samiha would die. He was powerless to help her. But he could at least help those people his arrival in the city had put at risk — Bolas and Masha. He had heard nothing in the crisp sergeant’s questions that led him to suspect Pallas had been apprehended, and allowed himself a gleam of hope on the subject. He did not care for his own safety. He was willing to lie through his teeth, even claim responsibility for the Argosian Resistance, if it freed his friends. He regretted only the impossibility of sending a message to Jocaste, to tell her about Samiha’s papers.

  ‘It’s a conspiracy,’ slurred a voice from nearby. ‘A damned-to-root c-conspiracy.’

  The man sharing his cell had woken up and was sitting half-upright, gazing at Tymon. He seemed either drugged, or ill, or both. His face was blotched and sunken and his eyes rimmed with red. He stuttered as he spoke, leaning forward on the straw.

  ‘By the bells — bells, my boy. Never thought I’d see you again. Wh-what luck!’

  Tymon gazed at the ruined creature before him in confusion. He could not recall ever having met him. It was a long, uncomfortable moment before he recognised his former employer.

  ‘Father Verlain!’ he gasped in shock.

  The priest had lost all his fleshy corpulence in the past few months. The skin of his face and neck hung in folds, the skull stark beneath. His laughter was a death rattle.

  ‘Capital times we had — had together in Marak, eh my friend?’ wheezed Verlain. ‘Remember Bi-Bi-Bibi’s cooking? How we lived, eh? Fan, fantastic times. Glad to s-see you again.’

  ‘What happened, Father?’ asked Tymon. ‘Why did they put you in jail?’

  The ex-priest attempted to raise his body higher then gave up, collapsing back on the straw. He tapped his shrunken skull wit
h a forefinger.

  ‘Too much — too much up there,’ he cackled. ‘I know it’s a r-rooted conspiracy. Had to get me out of the way, didn’t they? It’s all a l-lie.’

  Tymon frowned ‘You mean the Rites?’

  Verlain shook his head, beckoning him over. The young man’s right ankle had swollen over the course of the night and he could not put much weight on it; reluctantly, he dragged himself over to the other pile of straw, gagging on the smell of urine and vomit. When he came within reach, Verlain clapped a hand on his shoulder. The yellowed finger-ends gripped him with surprising force.

  ‘S-salamanders,’ he hissed, as Tymon flinched away from his sour breath. ‘Those who walk — walk in fire. They’re everywhere. Be careful, young fellow. You can’t trust them, they shed their s-skin.’

  Tymon gently disengaged himself. The madness of his former nemesis was as obvious as his smell. He could not help but pity him.

  ‘I’ll be careful,’ he promised, for Verlain clutched him like an anxious child. ‘Don’t worry.’

  At that moment, a soldier rattled through the door of the cell, cutting the conversation short.

  ‘You: traitor,’ he snapped. ‘You’re wanted upstairs. Follow me.’

  It was impossible for Tymon to walk unaided, however, and the guard was obliged to heave him out of the cell under his arm, cursing in loud and florid language.

  ‘They know it’s time,’ Verlain gabbled after them. ‘They’ve been to H-Hell and back: they’ve read the shining letters. But they won’t tell the rest of us, oh no.’ He was still choking up words after the guard had locked the door and turned away.

  A few minutes later, Tymon was seated on a stool opposite the captain of the guard at his cramped desk. The square-jawed sergeant who had interviewed him the night before stood beside them, positively gleaming. His superior officer had evidently also attempted to shave that morning, with rather less success. He held up a mirror disc of polished hardwood as he spoke to Tymon, inspecting his cut chin.