Orphans of Chaos tcc-1

by John C. Wright

  A third step. Where was he? Standing on the headboard?

  A fourth. Maybe I had been wrong about where we started. Could he be climbing from one shelf to another in the wardrobe? Only if the wardrobe were tilted back at an angle would he have room.

  I heard the window slide up. Both his hands were still on me. I felt the ice-cold air flow over me, freezing. How had he opened the window?

  I said, “Quentin. You’re not going to jump! Put me…”

  He kissed me.

  Warm, passionate, firm. No apology, no hesitation. Just his lips on mine.

  I waited till he was done, and then I slapped him.

  He said, “Whoa!” and his grip tightened on my shoulders and knees.

  We were standing on the ledge of the window, I knew. I raised my hands to pull off the goggles, but he sort of pushed my shoulders and knees together, crunching me into a ball, while at the same time he put his cheek against my cheek, to prevent me from getting at the blindfold.

  I made my fingers into claws and pulled on his hair, trying to get his face out of my face.

  He wobbled.

  I held still. He was balanced on a ledge, after all.

  He said, “Could you let go of my hair, Amelia?”

  I said, “I was saving that kiss. That was my first kiss. Now you’ve ruined it.”

  He said, “Could you… please… let go of my hair, Amelia?”

  I said, “I am taking at least half of your scalp with me, you little twerp.”

  He said, “It is really quite painful.”

  I said, “I hope I am drawing blood.”

  He wobbled again. “Don’t say such things. It is just as bad for us if they start giggling.”

  “Put me down.”

  “Let go of my hair, and I will put you down.”

  “Put me down, and I will think about letting go of your hair.”

  He lowered his left hand, releasing my knees. I felt a surface underneath my boot toes. Then I remembered how narrow the ledge was on which we were standing. With a little yelp, I put my boots right up against his shoes, and grabbed him around the shoulders, pulling myself close to him.

  His arms came up under my arms, as if he were a man about to embrace his lover. I was too afraid to push him away, for fear that we would both fall three stories to our doom.

  But he was not hugging me. He gently tugged the buckle holding the goggles. They slid loosely around my neck. He pushed back my cap, so it hung by its chin-strap. He plucked at the knot holding the scarf.

  I blinked in the sudden moonlight.

  4.

  We were on a rooftop. We were standing on a scaffolding. Underfoot was a sea of tiles. To our left and right, dormer windows peered West toward the main Manor House. Before us and above us rose the dome of the Great Hall. Little round windows, piercing the base of the dome, were ablaze with light. There was a noise of voices issuing up from below us. There was a metal door, built on an acute slope like the door to a cellar, abutting the dome.

  I looked left and right in wonder. Then I realized I was still hugging Quentin, staring at the scene over the top of his brown hair.

  I stepped back, and slapped him again. This time, I could put my shoulder into it, and it was a solid blow.

  He staggered, winced, and rubbed his jaw. He said, “If you had said ‘put me down,’ they would have dropped us. That’s why I kissed you. You didn’t need to slap me twice.”

  I said, “The second time was for a different reason. My first flight through the air! My first time flying, and I missed it!”

  He rubbed his jaw and said nothing.

  I said, “I was expecting a sensation of motion.”

  “The air moves with us. There’s no wind.” He bent down, and picked up his walking stick, which just happened to be lying at his feet.

  “So you really are a magician.”

  He snorted. “Don’t be an ass, Amelia. There is no such thing as magic. This is the One True Science.”

  “How did you do that, if it wasn’t magic?” I said, pointing at his jackal-headed cane. “Did it follow you on its own? And what did you step up on to get to the window? How did you open the window with no hands?”

  He just shook his head. “Jaw numb. Can’t talk.” He pointed with the walking stick at the metal service entrance.

  “That is what you want me to lift?”

  “It’s not locked, just heavy.”

  I strode up the tilted surface of the tile, with Quentin coming after me, his too-long cape sliding on the tiles. I put my hands on the door, tugged.

  “You’re right,” I said. “It is massive.”

  “Let me get on the other side.”

  “Just stand back.”

  5.

  I closed my eyes for a second, trying to picture the door in my mind’s eye. It was both an object in space and an event in time. This door had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Because time and space were actually one thing, one substance, this thing before me was not merely an object, it was an object-event.

  Weight was not a property of that object-event. Weight was an action, a behavior, if you will. Earth was distorting the local space-time continuum in such a fashion that this object-event selected toward-earth paths, rather than away-from-earth. As they moved forward through time, those paths seemed to manifest themselves as the energy-conserving behavior known as toward-earth acceleration, what Quentin incorrectly called weight.

  If space-time were folded in any other way, the toward-earth behavior could be deflected into other energy channels.

  I opened my eyes, stooped, put my shoulder to the door, and lifted it aside easily. I set it down without making a sound.

  The two of us stood, looking down into a circular staircase. Gloomy steps wound around and around. There was a light at the bottom.

  6

  The Board of Visitors and Governors

  1.

  He said, “I should tell you that I suspect a trap, Amelia.”

  “Why? Did the Headmaster expect you to know how to fly?”

  “If you told me the correct wording of your oath…”

  “I did.”

  “…Doesn’t it strike you as particularly lax? And he unlocks the door on the one night he knows we are all dying to find out what is going on here. Vanity says the door is watched. And the meeting is being held at midnight. Why not at nine o’clock, when we are all in class, being watched?”

  “You said Fell put sleeping powder in the medicine.”

  “Not part of Headmaster’s plan, I assume. They don’t necessarily all talk to each other, or agree when they do.” Quentin’s voice was solemn and quiet. “If I had been forced to say the prayers you and Vanity were told to say by Mrs. Wren, half of my demonstrations would be impossible to me. I cannot imagine they want me to learn the things I learned, or talk to the type of things I am trained to hear. So why didn’t they sic Mrs. Wren on me? It must simply be an oversight.”

  “Are we talking about the same Mrs. Wren?” Of all the adults on the estate, she seemed the simplest to me, the easiest to get around when we wanted something.

  He looked away over the moonlit snow below, at the insubstantial black shadows of the manor and outbuildings. “Her sorrow gives her strength. Frightening strength. Those who dwell in the middle air below the Moon weep when she weeps, as do their humbler vassals in the stream and field and arbors. Do not be deceived that she is kindly toward you and Vanity; it is because she has no cause to fear.”

  He looked down at his walking stick, frowned, and raised it to his face. He stuck the muzzle of the little brass jackal-head in his ear.

  He nodded, said thank-you to the walking stick, and said to me, “One comes.”

  2.

  I jumped down three steps and crouched, draping my body along the stairs, with just my nose sticking over the doorjamb. Because the tiles were slanted, I could see the snowy lawn below.

  I yanked on Quentin’s pants leg. “How about getting down? So we’r
e not seen?”

  He lay down beside me.

  I squinted. There. Quentin had been right. Again.

  A tall man was coming from the direction of the Barrows. At first, we could see only his outline: an upright, athletic figure with a staff or pole in his hand, and long wings of flapping fabric around his ankles, as if he wore a cloak or long coat. There was a round bundle over his shoulder.

  He stepped into one of the angles of light a window cast across the snow.

  There were black scars crisscrossing his right hand. Old wounds. The pole in his hand was a short spear, three feet of metal spike and three feet of wood, with a heavy weight mounted at the butt end. A javelin, really. The round thing over his shoulder was flat, not a bundle. It was a Roman shield with an iron boss in the center, eight-sided, with images of lightning bolts etched in gold radiating out from the boss.

  The coat was long. I thought it might be the skin of coral snakes, for it was pebbly and as red-brown as dried blood. It was lined on the inside with fur of light pink. The elbow-length sleeves were long and loose, and allowed full motion to the man’s arms. A fur hood formed a triangle between his shoulder and head.

  At first, I thought his hair was metal. He wore a coif of coppery scales over his skull; more scales covered his neck. He wore a jacket of red coppery scales beneath his ruddy cloak. Below he wore a leather skirt studded with metal bosses. His boots of shark leather rose to his knee.

  A wide web-belt cinched his waist. A Japanese katana, bright with a swinging tassel, rode one hip. At the other, a leather holster held a heavy pistol.

  There was something in the way he walked—stiff, yet relaxed, calm, yet somehow tense—that told of miles upon miles of marching to the music of the drum and fife.

  He passed in front of a lamppost that stood in the carriage circle before the East Wing of the Manor House. The light made a slight rainbow effect as it slid around his body.

  I said, “He is distorting the local time-space metric. Light is bending toward him as it would toward a black sun. He must be affecting the probability world-lines intersecting this moment in time.”

  I looked over. Quentin was not looking at the man. He lay with his face not six inches from mine, staring thoughtfully at my lips. He had been studying my profile.

  Quentin raised his eyes to mine. “You can tell at a glance?”

  I said impatiently, “No. It is obvious, though. His gravity is normal, otherwise he would sink to the Earth’s core with every step. What else could disturb time-space, if not gravity? If it is not a space warp, then it is a time warp. He is not moving fast or slow. So it must be a distortion of world-lines. Q.E.D.”

  I felt heat in my cheeks. I was blushing. Blushing! Because little Quentin, of all people, had been staring at me. At the lips he had kissed, and claimed for his own.

  I said, “The Red Soldier isn’t human, no matter who he is.” He said, “I know. Apsu can’t see normal people.”

  3.

  The soldier passed below the level of our vision. There came a noise of a door opening. A triangle of light spilled out across the snow, magnifying the shadow of the soldier. There was a mutter of voices. One sounded calm, measured, certain. The voice of a man in control of whatever situation he entered. The other was the voice of Mr. Sprat, who sounded nervous, uncertain. Maybe even frightened.

  From the tones of voice, the words half-heard, it sounded as if the Red Soldier wanted to enter, and Mr. Sprat was reluctant to let him in.

  Footsteps. A second shadow spilled out across the snow. This one wore a mortarboard and long robes. His voice was louder, and we caught the words. Headmaster Boggin asked, “Protector, we were not expecting Your Lordship in person. Where is Your Lordship’s entourage?”

  We did not hear the words, but the calm voice made some brief, sardonic answer.

  Boggin laughed politely. “I suppose that is true, Your Lordship. Who would be qualified to bodyguard you?”

  The calm voice again. A question.

  “Why, yes, Your Lordship. She is here. Her Ladyship came with her…ah… with her husband’s retainers, of course. Will you come in? I will have to ask you to leave your weapons at the door. Emissaries are supposed to be unarmed.”

  The Red Soldier must have turned his head, for this time, we heard his answer plainly. “I am never unarmed.”

  The shadows on the snow moved; the soldier pushed his way past Headmaster Boggin, the javelin still in his hand. We could hear the metallic thud of the butt of the javelin on the floorboards.

  Mr. Sprat’s shadow slid close to Headmaster Boggin’s. A fearful whisper. A friendly-sounding answer from Boggin. Again, Boggin’s voice carried. “It is not as if we have any choice, Jack, now, is it? We’re at their mercy.”

  The door swung to. The angle of light narrowed and disappeared.

  4.

  We had a whispered consultation about whether to close the big metal door or not. On the one hand, it would let in cold air and outside noise that someone might notice. On the other, we wanted an unblocked escape. The workmen had been pulling up and putting down tile these last few days, and their scaffold still reached from roof to ground, like a fire tower.

  “We are going to have to be quiet going down,” he said.

  “Well, obviously, Quentin! I’ll tell you when it’s safe to talk. I am your senior, you know.”

  “Then enlighten me. What does the thing you said mean? About world-lines?”

  “Is this the time for a physics lesson?”

  “Indulge me, please, Amelia.”

  “OK. This is a summary. Imagine every object as a worm, or an umbrella, drawing a line through time. The one line toward the direction of lesser-entropy we call ‘past,’ and its position is determined within the limits of quantum uncertainty. The multiple lines toward the direction of greater-entropy, we call ‘future,’ and their locations, to simultaneous observers, occupy the set of all possible locations to which the object could move in a given time. Put two gravitating bodies near each other and their sets of possible motion lines bend toward each other. The line defined by the least energy expended is inert motion, or free fall. This free-fall line, which would otherwise be straight, is distorted by a gravitating body so that it curves in a conic section. Got it?”

  “So what did you see around him? His Lordship?”

  “Something other than gravity was distorting the world-lines passing near him, including the event-paths of things like photons. An aura of probability distortion.”

  “He has a charmed life.”

  “Um. I don’t think that is what I said.”

  “You were seeing destiny. He has a charmed life.”

  “You are confusing an effect of physics with your…”

  “Let’s go, Amelia. We can debate definitions later.”

  And he started down the stairs.

  I crept after him, tight-lipped with anger.

  Since when did he get the right to be giving orders to me? A boy steals a kiss and he thinks you’re his harem slave.

  It was time to dunk his head in the sink again. Wash a few dumb notions out of that haunted house he calls his brain. I was strong enough to lift a door he could not budge, wasn’t I? He was not so old that I could not push his head under water for a while.

  The stair ended at a half-open door. Beyond the door was a small alcove, half-hidden behind Mrs. Wren’s potted plants. The alcove looked out on the balcony which entirely encircled the Great Hall below.

  It was perfect for spying. We crawled on our bellies across the carpet of the balcony, and peered through the heavy marble railings. There were no lights on at this floor. The gigantic chandelier that normally hung near the dome had been lowered on its massive chain so that it was partly lowered through the hole the balcony surrounded. The great chandelier was slightly below us, putting the lights between ourselves and the people below. Even if they should look up (and who ever looks up?) the light would dazzle them, and the shadows would hide us.

&nb
sp; And yet the whole scene was less than twenty feet below us. Had we wanted to, we could have spit upon the people seated there.

  The massive green marble table occupied the center of the hall. Half of the circumference had no one seated there. The chairs were empty. The other half had people standing behind their chairs, but no one was seated.

  No one except for the Lady. She was beautiful beyond all beauty, somehow both innocent and sweet, yet filled with voluptuous sensuality. She was dressed in a simple robe of white, with slim jeweled sashes crossed between her breasts, and circling her trim waist. Her neck was like a swan’s. Her hair was piled atop her head to show off the line of her neck.

  She was a brunette, with tremor of gold running through the strands. She had meltingly soft brown eyes. She did not wear any makeup, and yet her lips were red, her cheeks touched with blush.

  It was only when looking at her that I realized (finally realized after Gabriel-knows how many years) what makeup was for. The sparkling eyes eyeliner tries to impersonate; the blood-red lips lipstick mimics; the cheeks flushed red; are what one sees on a girl when she is flushed with love. If someone had told me this Lady had stepped not five minutes ago from her lover’s arms, I would not have doubted it.

  The Lady was toying with a hand mirror she held in her hand; holding it to one ear, then the other, turning her eyes sideways, as if she were trying to glimpse her own profile. She laughed her crystal laughter at herself; she prodded her hair with a slim white finger, teasing curls down before her eyes, which she went cross-eyed to stare at. Then she smiled again to see herself cross-eyed. She tossed her head when she laughed, like a girl half my age. It was as if she were in love with life itself, and every moment in it, and she could not restrain her joy.

  Behind her were three women, who, if I had seen them on the covers of fashion magazines, would have called them beautiful. Next to the laughing one, however, they only seemed fair.