The Last Citadel

by Kevin Ashman

  ‘But the soldiers, won’t they put down the riots?’

  ‘In the beginning, yes,’ she agreed, ‘eventually, though, their weapons will become a means to obtain what they too desire. Society will collapse and the people will turn their gaze outwards, toward the towers.’

  ‘But you are safe there,’ he said, ‘there is good distance of water between…’ He left his sentence unfinished as the realization hit him. If the water level was low and the causeways uncovered, any mob would have total access to the towers.

  ‘It would only be a matter of time before they broke down the gates,’ said Petra, ‘and my girls within would be at the mercy of the crowd.’

  ’But it isn’t your fault,’ said Pelosus, ‘the moon, the water, it’s a natural phenomenon.’

  ‘You and I know this,’ said Petra, ‘but, do you think anyone will listen to reason? No, our lives will be worthless. The men will heap their frustration on my girls and kill them indiscriminately when they have finished.’

  ‘You deal in lust,’ said Pelosus. ‘That’s your trade.’

  ‘We deal in pleasure, love and feeling, Pelosus,’ she replied, ‘it is different.’

  Petra paused as she delicately sipped her ale.

  ‘Pelosus,’ she continued eventually, ‘do you recall the beautiful time we shared, all those years ago?’

  Once again his jaw dropped. After twenty years, she actually remembered him.

  ‘I thought you didn’t recall,’ he mumbled, ‘there must have been so many!’

  ‘There were,’ she said, ‘but you were different. As I recall, you were a young apprentice and spent an entire week at my side.’ She touched his face gently. ‘Do you remember?’

  ‘Every moment,’ he said hoarsely.

  ‘Me also,’ said Petra, staring gently into the Stargazer’s eyes, ‘the thing is, Pelosus, I can’t let my girls suffer the consequences of something that is not their fault, so if and when this catastrophe comes to fall, I want to be elsewhere.’

  ‘Elsewhere!’ he said simply, ‘there is no elsewhere.’

  She removed her hand and sat back to take another drink, staring at him in silence.

  ‘There is no elsewhere!’ he said again slowly, doubt creeping into his voice, ‘is there?’

  Petra stood up and walked around the room, her fingers playing along the scrolls sticking out of their slots in the walls.

  ‘Pelosus,’ she said eventually, ‘what I am about to share with you has caused the deaths of many men. You must share this with no one. Yet, I want you to devote all your time on it from now on. Is this clear?’

  Pelosus was intrigued. What was the information that was held dearer than any man’s life? Quickly, he made a decision. He was a man of knowledge and always hungered for more. He needed to know this information, whatever the price.

  ‘Yes, of course,’ he said eventually, ‘you have my word.’

  ‘You may give me your word, Pelosus,’ she said gently, ‘but if you betray me, I will also have your life. Is that understood?’

  ‘Absolutely!’

  She continued her meander around the workroom walls before eventually continuing.

  ‘Have you read all these scrolls, Pelosus?’ she asked.

  ‘Many times.’

  ‘And you have an understanding of them all?’

  ‘There are some charts that I don’t understand, but apart from those few, I believe I do.’

  ‘And what have you learned in all your years working in this tiny room?’

  ‘The makeup of the heavens, the way of the weather, the history of Bastion.’

  ‘The history of Bastion,’ she said interrupting him, ‘and what exactly have you learned about the history of Bastion?’

  ‘You know the histories, Petra’ he said, ‘the scrolls are full of them.’

  ‘Humour me!’ she said.

  ‘The histories tell us that our ancestors arrived here on the back of the great Narwl many thousands of years ago, and were saved from death when Arial made this city rise from beneath the sea.’

  ‘Do you believe the histories, Pelosus?’ asked Petra.

  ‘Not to do so would be blasphemy punishable by death,’ said Pelosus, fearing a trick question.

  ‘Clever answer,’ said Petra, ‘neither a yes nor a no, but I understand your reluctance to speak freely. Let me phrase it differently. Forget what you have been taught, what do you know, as a scientific fact?’

  ‘I know our planet is water covered and that we live and die by the actions of the sea,’ said Pelosus, ‘but the sources of information are so limited, it is difficult to prove any other theories, no matter how strange.’

  As he talked, he watched Petra slowly retrieve something from within her clothing and place it on the table before him.

  ‘Okay, Pelosus,’ she said, ‘please forgive me toying with your loyalties. I do not mean to cause conflict between your religion and your science, but there are things here we must discuss. You talk about sources of information and indeed, they are few and far between but let’s start at the beginning. Forget everything you know or think you know and start again. What do you make of this?’

  Pelosus looked down at the fabric she had laid on the table and for the third time that evening, his lower jaw opened in amazement. This time, neither he nor Petra made any attempt to close it.

  ----

  Chapter 6

  The sprawling rabbit warren of bustling streets and intriguing alleyways making up the city of Bastion, took every inch of available space between the central keep and outer city walls. High above the cobblestones, narrow arched bridges and entangled vines joined buildings at every level to provide a three dimensional aspect to the floor plan of the poor metropolis below.

  Taverns and bordellos hid behind dirty doorways, conducting their illicit but thriving businesses which had been the mainstay of humanity since time began. Families forged close bonds with their neighbours, forming strong social circles who watched out for each other and jealously nurtured their individual identities. Food was shared; quarrels with rivals supported and each clan ensured that their own members were looked after.

  Such were the inner streets of Bastion. A place where the strong survived and the weak perished. A claustrophobic warren of danger, where dark places and hidden alleyways provided sanctuary for the unsavoury and shelter for the secretive. It was dark, it smelled and it was scary, but it was a fantastic place for hide and seek!

  ----

  Amber sat in almost complete darkness with her back against the cold, stone wall, slowly chewing the hard crust she had been hoarding under her thin wrap since morning. She was in her best hiding place and had never been caught here by the throng of kids currently scouring the Citadel for her. She looked up at the light leaking down through the metal grid an arm’s length above her head, listening to the distant sounds of busy feet and occasional shouts of frustrated children seeking the un-findable.

  The long abandoned sewage shaft lay forgotten at the end of a dead end lane, dry and surprisingly smell free. Nobody else knew about this hiding place except her cousin but he had long ago grown too old and boring to play hide and seek, so this place was hers alone.

  Amber finished her crust and looked at the stone slab covering the tunnel opposite her in the gloom. Her cousin had placed the slab there many years ago to stop the smell from the live sewers below reaching the hiding place, and had filled the gap around the slab with mud, forming an airtight seal.

  The children of the Citadel loved Moon-night as though they were forbidden to join the celebrations in the keep; they had their own traditions to follow. Amber was older than all the rest and though her body was changing, she still took part in the traditional games. After dark, they dressed up in masks and costumes and roamed the streets in their respective gangs, looking to terrorize their rivals from different areas of the city. It was a mark of great honour to leave abusive graffiti in opposing areas and the adults would wander the streets the following
day, pointing out with pride whenever they saw a familiar logo in a different neighbourhood.

  But it wasn’t all fun. If you were separated from your friends, it could be a scary and lonely journey back to your own neighbourhood. Friends you played with for the rest of the month, quite happily became your deadliest enemies on Moon-night and captured stragglers often received a severe beating by their rivals.

  That was the best part of it, as far as Amber was concerned and she seldom joined her friends running around the alleyways shouting and laughing, much preferring to work alone. No one knew these streets like Amber and she would carefully plan her route in the weeks preceding Moon-night, and when the occasion finally arrived, she would patiently stalk the back lanes in silence, taking her time until she reached the deepest recesses of the rival gang’s areas.

  This was such a night. Amber had managed to get deep into the Cobbler’s quarter and was hidden down a side street in one of her favourite hiding places. There was more activity than usual tonight, with more groups of adults wandering the city. Nothing like this had happened before as far as she could recall and it was a bit frustrating as she had a particularly abusive flag she wanted to hang from the biggest Cobbler shop in Bastion.

  When the activity died down, Amber lifted the grille of the disused drain and crawled out into the darkness. Slowly she crept down the lane with her back against a wall and had gone about halfway before a running cloaked figure came hurtling into the alleyway, knocking her off her feet. She lashed out, ready to give as good as she got and as her assailant fell sideways, she pounced on his prone body, drawing her fist back to punch her rival again.

  The punch was never delivered and she froze mid-assault, holding her breath in fear as her intended victim held a knife up against her throat.

  Amber’s body was rigid. This was all wrong. Yes, a beating was a likely outcome of being caught, everyone accepted that but a knife was something totally different. She threw herself backwards against the wall and stared in astonishment as she watched the knife wielder sit up and assume a similar position against the opposite wall.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she gasped, ‘why have you got a knife?’

  ----

  An hour after the gates of the keep were locked, Kenzo finally found Leona, or rather, she found him.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked after she rushed into his arms.

  ‘I had to finish my shift,’ she said ‘and get changed out of my costume.’

  I looked everywhere for you tonight,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t see you anywhere.’

  ‘Well I saw you,’ she laughed, ‘several times.’

  ‘I scoured the grounds,’ he said exasperated, ‘but gave up. Where were you?’

  ‘Aha,’ she said, entwining her hands with his as she stared up into his eyes. ‘Therein lays the problem. You may have scoured the ground but did you scour the air?’

  Her eyes lifted upward toward the trapeze artists, carrying out death defying tricks above the very drunk crowd.

  ‘Oh no, don’t tell me you do that,’ he said.

  ‘Why, is that a problem?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘well, actually, yes, ‘it’s far too dangerous.’

  ‘Oh Kenzo,’ she laughed, ‘don’t be so silly. Trapeze Artists are trained since they start to walk and spend more time in the air than on the ground. Anyway, enough about work, come on I have finished for the night, let’s dance.’

  She dragged him deeper into the noisy throng that competed with the musicians for volume, whirling him round in circles and laughing aloud at the freedom that Moon-night brought. Gradually, Kenzo was caught up in the atmosphere and eventually all thoughts of trapeze artists, dark clad strangers and hunchback children were forgotten as he enjoyed the infectious company of the woman he loved.

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  Chapter 7

  The first thing that struck Pelosus was the material from which the fabric was made. The only fabric he had ever encountered was mostly woven from weed fronds, or the rarer were actual pieces of Narwl skin, stretched, dried and beaten until soft, but this was so much more delicate. The document was woven from a fibre finer than any he had ever seen and edged on three sides with beautiful embroidery. It was delicate beyond comprehension and shone with the lustre of the brightest star on the darkest night.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked in awe.

  ‘The fabric is called silk,’ she said, ‘and it is said it is secreted from the glands of an insect.’

  ‘An insect? Surely not, I am a man of science and I would know of such an insect. The only ones around here are the spiders and the flies that plague our summers.’

  Petra smiled.

  ‘Pelosus,’ she said sympathetically, ‘you are indeed a man of science and you are very good at what you do, but you are limited in your knowledge.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Over the years, have you ever thought that there may be more?’

  ‘I have often become frustrated at gaps in the science, but I have scoured the library and these are the only scrolls we have.’

  ‘No, Pelosus, these are the only scrolls you have access to.’

  ‘There are more?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘All in good time, but for now, you must understand that there is more to this world than you or I understand. This silk,’ she said handling the beautiful cloth, ‘is indeed woven from the secretions of an insect, but none that you or I have ever seen. It was made many hundreds of miles from here in another place.’

  ‘That can’t be right,’ said Pelosus, ‘there is no other place.’

  ‘That is what we have always believed,’ said Petra, ‘but there have always been rumours of another place, far beyond the horizon.’

  ‘Where?’ asked Pelosus.

  ‘No-one knows exactly, but that is why I am here Pelosus, I want you to find out.’

  ‘But how?’

  Petra returned to the silk handkerchief.

  ‘All we know is that many years ago, one of our previous Governesses, Sallette, accepted a commission from the Watcher’s councillor and went to their tower for a month. Normally, we do not visit other towers, for we can’t guarantee the safety of our girls, but this was different. Times were hard and the Watcher offered her a price that was too good to turn down, so despite her better instincts, Sallette crossed the causeway on Moon-day and entered the tower with him.’

  ‘And your people let her go?’

  ‘Nothing they could do or say would change her mind. Our people were starving and the price offered was too great. She insisted, but they were so scared that she would be harmed, she finally agreed to signal every night from their tower walls, just to let them know she was safe.’

  ‘And did she?’

  ‘For ten days the signal came. Then suddenly it stopped and they feared the worst, but though frantic with worry, there was nothing they could do until the waters receded. When Moon-day finally came, they hardly waited for the waters to fall before they were up to their waists banging on their gate, demanding to see her.’

  ‘Had she been killed?’ asked Pelosus engrossed in the story.

  ‘Oh no, Pelosus,’ said Petra. ‘She had suffered a fate far worse than that, she had fallen in love.’

  ----

  ‘Fallen in love?’ asked Pelosus. ‘What’s so bad about that?’

  ‘Think about it, Pelosus,’ she said, ‘this was the chief Courtesan, the one who by tradition sets the standards for all others in our tower. Falling in love was strictly forbidden. Our business, no, our very existence revolves around physical relationships with as many men, or indeed women as possible. If we fall in love with one person, it is all over. How could we share ourselves with another if we are in love with only one?’

  ‘What did she do?’ asked Pelosus.

  ‘She stayed in the tower,’ said Petra, ‘though not before coming to the gate to say her goodbyes. It was very hard and everyone wept hard fo
r the loss of their sister.’

  ‘It makes you wonder if the price was worth paying,’ said Pelosus gently.

  ‘Well that’s the thing,’ she said, ‘we never did get paid, well, not what we were expecting anyway.’

  ‘What did you get?’

  ‘Well, when she was hugging her sisters to say goodbye, she wiped one of their tears away with this handkerchief.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Before she re-entered the tower, she insisted the girl keep the handkerchief as a memento, but not before whispering a secret that has been passed down from her to me over many generations.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘She said, Guard this well, it is worth more than all the riches in Bastion. One day, it could save our sisters lives.’

  Pelosus picked up the beautiful fabric. The entire surface was a pale blue, though covered with hundreds of darker tiny spots barely visible to the human eye. Around three of the edges a representation of a rambling vine, twisted over and over on itself as it bordered the silk, but apart from that, the fabric lacked any message he could see.

  ‘What is so important?’ he asked eventually, turning it over repeatedly in his hands. ‘It is a beautiful substance no doubt, but if it is indeed proof of another place, I can’t see how it can help.’

  ‘Look again, Pelosus, though Sallette decided to stay with the Watchers, it would seem that during the month she was there, she became aware of a great secret, something of such importance that she had to encrypt and hide a clue, hoping that one day, someone would decipher it. We believe the handkerchief contains a message.’

  He examined the silk again and in particular, the flowered vine that decorated the border. Though they were of a kind that he had never seen before and more colourful than the weeds that covered the stonewalls of Bastion, he had once glimpsed the courtyard behind the Farmer’s tower gates and had seen a profusion of greenery and colours, so was aware that many such plants existed.

  ‘What is it you want me to do?’ he asked.

  ‘Do whatever it is you do, Stargazer,’ she said, ‘study the silk, compare it to your records, trawl your knowledge and give us the meaning.’