Notes from the Burning Age

by Claire North

  “No.”

  “You should promote Rilka. She adores you.”

  “She does. But she’s prone to finding drama in every little thing.”

  “Sohrab? He can’t translate a text, but he’ll take a bullet for you.”

  “There are plenty of people who will take a bullet for me,” Georg replied primly. “But I don’t intend to put myself in a position where that is the primary job requirement.”

  “I’m afraid I’m unavailable to draw up a job description, if that’s what this is.” Another laugh, gone as fast as lightning. I sighed, watched the candlelight flicker across the ceiling. “Why am I here, Georg? I expected poison, not tea.”

  “Why do you think you’re here?”

  “Honestly? I think it’s just another stupid bloody power play. You’ve always had a fondness for waving your willy around.” His smile was light and broken glass, a sight that had sent shivers through me when I was Kadri Tarrad. Today, I didn’t seem to care. “Jia is desperate for peace, and if she can’t have peace she’s desperate for a little more time to mobilise. Council is so desperate they’d do anything you ask, however ridiculous. ‘Fetch me this spy, I want to have tea with him,’ you say, and of course the entire thing is absurd posturing. But they’ll do it anyway. For Georg Mestri, the real power behind the Brotherhood – they’ll do whatever you want. So here I am, playing your petty little games.”

  “Here you are,” he agreed, quiet as the snow. “My man found you out before you could find him, and here you are. It is as you say. I speak; they obey. You obey. Now you have come all this way, and now you can go. Off you go, Kadri. Off you go, Ven. Go find a rock to pray to.”

  I rose slowly, drained my cup of tea, the burning welcome in my belly. Put my hands together, bowed before him. “Kin of sky and earth,” I murmured, “I do hope your leg recovers.”

  Was that a flicker in the corner of his eye? It came too fast, too tiny in the gloom for me to be sure. I straightened up, turned my back on him, and walked away at the stately, gentle pace of the old Medj of the mountains.

  Chapter 35

  Sitting by the sea as the sun goes down. There are guards somewhere behind us, Merthe keeping an eye out, but for now there is only Yue, myself, the earth that holds us and the sky that catches breath.

  I am the sky, I am the sky, breathe with me, help me, I am the sky.

  She says: I know it was just for show. Just to make us dance, waste more time. I’m sorry you were put through that.

  I say, I gasp, I am calm, I am holding my breath, let it go, I am the sky: It’s nothing, it’s fine. There was nothing in it. If anything, I feel better. He’s just a man. It’s fine.

  She says: When I was young, I thought I would be a hero. I wanted to work for Council, make things right. I would fix things, I imagined hands reaching up to me in thanks for all the good I would do; I imagined a life of sacrifice and it was good. Now there will be war and I can’t stop it. I have tried everything, everything, I have given everything, and it’s all for nothing. I am not a hero. I have no control over these things, other people have decided and they will impose their will, they will impose their power.

  There will be a war and there is nothing to be done, nothing at all, so what is the point? Why do we trick ourselves into thinking we can control anything about our lives, have any power over our fates? What is the point?

  Somewhere in Vien, there are men who think they have the answer. They point at monuments to beautiful men and graceful women, they talk of the mountains we have levelled and the triumphs we have made. See, they say, see how man becomes the hero. See this god with trident raised, how he has human form. See how we ascend.

  The evening sandflies were starting to bustle and bite. A line of seaweed marked the furthest reach of the tide, rubbery purple twists crystallised with salt. Her shoulder was pressed next to mine. I stared at my hands and said: “The river does not run because we thank it. The wind does not blow to be heroic. The leaves of the fresh green buds do not uncurl before the sun for any story, or to serve any purpose other than to reach, to live, to flower and to die. All these things will change. We are children of the wind.”

  The island has only one temple, built from the drifting plastic and saline skeletons of the sea. There is one Medj who guards it, and they were a sailor once, who talks in the sailor’s tongue of rust and sunset and endless sky. The evening bell rang, softly once, a little louder twice, the full bell at last, calling out three more times before singing away.

  Yue turned to stare at me, a glimpse of dread in her eyes. “Do you really find comfort in that? Does that make you feel… good?”

  “Sometimes,” I replied. “Sometimes I think I understand what it means, and then I feel better, for a little while.”

  “You remember the forest?” The question caught me by surprise, a moment in which my tongue tangled. “They say the fire is renewing. The old dies so the new can live. In Damasc, they believe the kakuy want blood, that when the world burned they had to sacrifice their own people to feed the earth and keep the kakuy satisfied, that the spirits of this world are violent, insane.”

  “They’re wrong. The kakuy don’t care if we spill human blood; they have no interest in us. They do not care if we live or die, only what mark we leave upon the earth. What is our blood to the soil? Nothing more and nothing less than a little drop of crimson, which will vanish. It is arrogance of the most egregious sort to think the sun will change its heat because of a knife through some poor bastard’s chest.”

  “If you believe that,” she replied, “then Vae’s death was meaningless.”

  Do I remember Vae dying? Don’t let go, don’t let go, and now I can’t remember if I said it, if I screamed it, or if it was just a thing written into my heart.

  I close my eyes, feel her hand pulled free of mine, but even this memory is false. As my hand grew bigger, hers stayed the same size, and now I remember reaching for it with my adult fingers, as she grows smaller and smaller, slipping through my grasp. Don’t let go. Memory does not hold truth, only stories. Perhaps I don’t remember her at all. Perhaps I just remember some fantastic trick, some illusionary girl I have re-imagined and re-imagined to fit my needs. A spy would know what to say. Knowing what to say would make me very suspicious of anyone I met.

  Then Yue said: “Witt says that Georg has already won. That if we are to survive, Temple must unlock its archives. Warplanes, fuelled by oil. Chemical weapons, drones with missiles and… I don’t know what else. Isn’t it absurd? The first shot hasn’t even been fired, and Maze has won.”

  “A strange attitude, for a general.”

  “A leader should be a pragmatist too.”

  “What about the kakuy?”

  “What about them?”

  “To build your planes. To drop acid on the earth. To poison rivers. Do you really think the kakuy won’t respond when you scar the earth?”

  “No one sees the kakuy these days. They don’t care what men do.”

  “They care when the forests burn.”

  “Do they?”

  “You know they do.”

  She raised her head, curious, a turn to the side. Didn’t see an answer in my face, half-shook her head, asking a question without words.

  “You saw the kakuy. In the forest. I was there. You saw it.”

  A moment in which perhaps something flickered, a glimmer of a memory that had been pressed down so deep that a forest could grow its roots and bury it for ever. She shook her head, once, twice, turned away, shook it again as if trying to clear it of the memory of smoke. “I have never seen a kakuy. You are wrong.”

  A thousand kilometres away, the forest grows. It came back to life so slowly, from root to branch, branch to leaf, leaf to the bugs that feast on sap, to the birds that feast on bugs, to the predatory cats that look for the fall of feathers, to the worms that feed on the beasts that fall to the fungus that clings in the damp gullies of the bark to the soft-nosed beasts that feed on mushrooms to t
he darting lizards that lick at rainwater caught in the upturned belly of a curling leaf, the forest grows and becomes again a living thing, where fire once blazed. I close my eyes, and in that moment cannot imagine the sky and earth being merciful to humans should the forest burn again.

  “Yue…” A thing I needed to say, a thing I needed to express, my fingers catching at hers as the root of the nursery tree tangles with its peer; but she stood up before I could, brushed sand off her trousers briskly, turned away from the setting sun, barked: “Dinner? Dinner before you go,” and was marching away without another word.

  I lingered a moment behind, then followed her.

  Yue’s idea of dinner was dinner at Jia’s hearth.

  And here they are – here they all are. The great and the good of the Provinces.

  Ull and Farii, Han and Shamim; Shahd from the Delta and Fethi from Damasc. Antoni Witt, picking at his food. Krima vaMiyani, who trusts no one and smiles, smiles, smiles, just like Georg. Pav Krillovko, telling jokes as the peace comes to an end, and Jia herself. Close up, she is tiny, impossible to imagine that she can stand unsupported, but also hard to imagine that, after so many years of refusing to break, anything will bend her now.

  One of these is Pontus.

  Who pours hot tea into a waiting cup? Who is the shadow, unacknowledged behind the elbow of some great potentate? Who wears the same face I had worn, all those months in Vien? Who let a fellow spy die in order to seal their own fate? Or maybe no, maybe Pontus was made of sterner stuff; maybe now they sat right by me, smiling and eating flatbread and fish, hands pressed together in thanks for the gift of the bounty of the sea, eyes a mirror, words a song. Who would I be, if I were Pontus, in this room?

  Ull, the Minister of my home Province, shares some desolate words with Jia, and Farii can’t meet anyone’s eye. Behind them, Merthe sits cross-legged on a cushion, eating fish one slither at a time from a round bowl as if she’s never seen food before in her life. “Ull wants to stay neutral,” murmured Yue in my ear, as I watched from my place at the bottom of the table. “He knows we don’t have the troops to defend both Magyarzag and Lyvodia. He’s right.”

  These are real words, on real matters, and yet they seem a thousand kilometres away. My home will fall; the Council will not attempt to defend it. Yet any words which do not run around the room jabbing fingers into faces and screaming, “You? Are you the spy? Are you the traitor?” seem, at this juncture, immaterial.

  “Jia thinks we can hold them at Beograd, so long as their advance is slow. Our army is trained for guerrilla warfare, not pitched battles. She has a plan.” Yue’s voice the numb declaration of the surgeon who will cut away a tumour.

  A murmur from the top of the table, a gesture. Someone scurries to my side, whispers in Yue’s ear but looks at me. Yue says: “She wants to see you now.”

  “Who?”

  A nod upwards; Jia is watching me. I stand, awkward suddenly, knees and elbows, chin and bowing shoulders. The Ministers examine me as I approach, puzzling me out. I put my palms together and bow before the old woman. “Honoured kin, this is Ven,” Yue said.

  She nodded slowly, bright eyes in a folded face, then took my hands in hers. The tips of her fingers had grown chubby and clubbed, and bones stood out on the backs of her hand between a daubing of yellow spots. “Ven. They tell me you are a Temple spy.”

  Does Pontus hear this and turn to stare? Is this some trick, to bring us together, kin of sky and earth? I glance round, but no one cares, and there is just Jia, Yue and I, talking low in a room of stone and salt.

  “I suppose that’s right.”

  “And we have you to thank for buying us time.”

  Was that what I had done? All of that, to buy some time? My eyes flickered to Yue, and I thought she shook her head, just a little, though I didn’t understand why.

  “It was an honour to serve,” I replied.

  A twitch in the corner of Jia’s mouth. She nodded at nothing much, but there was something alive in her eyes, amused. “I doubt that,” she murmured. “Temple and I have a bit of a problem, you see. We know that war is anathema. We know that the kakuy will wake, if we start tearing the world apart. We know they will crush us. Council has the terrible dilemma that we must therefore stand for peace, defend peace at all costs. Even if the only way to defend peace is by going to war. You see the difficulty?”

  “I believe I do.”

  She patted me on the arm, as a kindly grandmother might do to a child whose name she thinks she should know but can’t quite remember. “Well. That is why it is so good to have people like you around. Thank you for your conviction.” Then she bowed a little from where she sat and let me go.

  Chapter 36

  Sit upon a stone outside the hearth door, and watch the dinner guests depart.

  Krima vaMiyani talks to Yue, low, urgent, her eyes moving to every face. Krima is the one we must rely on to find Pontus, and yet slow – so slow. How has she not found them yet? Why has Krima failed? I am the sea; I drown in thoughts of Pontus.

  Krima sees me, acknowledges me, does not approach, has nothing to say. The inquisition has done its part, and I am nothing more than a blown agent, dragged halfway across the Provinces on the whim of her enemy. Yue can deal with me.

  Pav Krillovko tells a joke to Ull and Farii, and they do not get it, and are not in the mood. Antoni Witt is enduring Fethi and his pious, pompous huddle of Medj pontificating on some finer point of the kakuy – perhaps they are arguing that owning more than one pair of shoes is insulting, demeaning to the spirits of the earth, or that any glue made from animal bones is heresy, and we were meant to live on the forest floor or in caves and feast entirely on nuts and berries, as our ancestors did. Our ancestors died when they were thirty-two but well, ah well, if the kakuy demand it, so it must be.

  Fanaticism would be a wonderful cover for Pontus. The absurdity of it, the sheer excess of it all suffocates even the slightest thought of subtlety, cunning or betrayal. Does Pontus cut their arm and bleed into the dust, proclaiming, “Bless me, spirit of the sand”? Does Pontus smile to see their scars by moonlight?

  Somewhere, carried by the wind, the Brotherhood are singing. Their songs are of human endurance, spirit, passion and bravery. They are songs of heroes, bright and bold, loud enough that even Witt briefly stops arguing to turn and listen. Perhaps the world was once full of heroes, before the kakuy woke and, not even noticing what they did, crushed the great, the mighty and the bold beneath the storm.

  I move away, fumble my inkstone from my robes, try to find words in it, something meaningful, something calming. The screen is old, a crack in one corner that no one has got round to repairing yet. You have to hold the on-switch down in just the right way to get it to come on.

  Then Yue is by my side, and she says: “Not your stone?”

  “No. Borrowed from a Medj with a cataract.”

  The sound of music swells, lifted on the wind; a cry of glory and the might of man. Her head turns to it, as if it were the snap of a breaking branch in a midnight forest.

  “They’re certainly keen singers,” I mumble.

  “Worrying you chose the wrong side?”

  I shook my head. “No. You?”

  “I think it would be too late for me to change my mind, even if I did.” Her hand brushed mine, so light that for a moment I thought I’d imagined it. Then she said: “I’m leaving tomorrow. Going to Budapesht. We have to prepare for the worst. I don’t know if…” and stopped, looked away, her hand still pressed, back to back against mine.

  I tried to think of something to say.

  Georg would think of something to say.

  Then someone called Yue’s name, and she walked away.

  In the dead night of my little room, I do not pray.

  Prayers are for gifts. They are for blessed things, bestowed in mercy, compassion. They are raised up in exaltation to something unique and cry out for special attention, for the world to be something other than what it is.


  Instead, I close my eyes, and feel my feet upon the earth, and know that when I die the worms will feast on me and the forest will grow.

  She knocks on my door twice, almost too quiet to hear, then knocks again, a little louder.

  I let her in.

  All others are sleeping. The boats will carry the great and the good of the Provinces away, and tomorrow, or maybe the next day, polite people in smart shoes will deliver mutual declarations of war to each other’s doors, and children will stand by the railway line and wave at the soldiers, who will perhaps wave back, and we will become barbarians in order to survive.

  But for tonight, Yue puts her hand in mine, and kisses the backs of my fingers, and kisses my mouth, and I kiss her back.

  There is no love here. Tomorrow we will both be gone. Better to make love with someone whose death you will not mourn, when the bombs start falling; better one last night of comfort, before the world runs mad.

  She stays in my bed a little while, because together we are warm and the air outside is cold, and when I am asleep she dresses again, and is gone on the first boat of the morning tide.

  Chapter 37

  I was standing on the docks in the bright mid-morning cold, waiting for a boat back to the mainland, when the bomb went off. The wind had turned southerly in the night, carrying with it a hint of warmth and compassionate sunlight yet to come. The water was choppy without foam, a deep blue spilled over here and there by the shadows of the clouds above, or the swirling of loose silt below. Friends and enemies were returning to their cities, smiling politely at those whom they would soon be trying to kill, hands pressed together and bowing, well, well, wasn’t this nice? Such a pity; such a shame.

  It would be gratifying to say that I sensed it coming. That I realised, when I saw Ull approaching down the beach with his escort of five, that something was amiss. That I understood, on seeing Antti and his Brotherhood men waving to their skiff as it bobbed on the end of a long wooden pier, that there was something wrong with this picture. The light was dazzling, a constant flinch away from reflected glory; I could hear women chattering, the natives of the island bidding farewell to their unhelpful guests. It was a good morning to blow cobwebs from your lungs, a fine day to stroll and get salt in your hair or to sit on the edge of a cliff and dangle your legs over the side and feel free.