The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  He ascended the creaky stairs and joined the crew, also carting their baggage now, on deck, hugging each of them in turn. They were all of them sad, of course, to be leaving after so long—Sotiris had calculated one night that they had been together over a million years, long enough to form a fairly decent bond in this odd, forgetful world—but he sensed in them a restlessness now to be away. They each had their own business in the city; Wyrran and Tanatar were also looking for people, while Iymbryl sought the way out. None had been surprised to hear Sotiris’s own story. Aaron had committed so many souls to this place.

  He lifted his two bags and slung their straps over either shoulder, mule-like. The stink of sulphur rose from their agitated contents.

  “Farewell, Skipper,” said Wyrran, kissing him lightly on the cheek. “Don’t forget, never stay still. The meadowlands are moving faster apart these days.”

  Sotiris nodded, embracing her. She was right. A storm had blown in some years back, a scudding turmoil of cloud that glittered reflective at its edges, as if another world was trying to merge with theirs, and ever since the ground beneath their feet felt like it was moving away with a newfound urgency. Sotiris knew he would have to walk twice as fast to reach his destination, and they both jumped quickly down onto the bank, not even bothering to tie up the boat.

  At once, before he’d even had time to glance properly at the rearing bridge of towers, he was inside the Epir township, hiking up between conical maroon dwellings and entering a forest of brightly coloured tents strung over an apparent infinitude of silken ribbons stretching between the buildings like telegraph wires. It grew dark quickly, the world inside the tent city wrapped in the pungent smoke of bramble fires. The smoke was said to aid memory, and in the colourful shadows Sotiris thought he could recall snatches of his past lives, but he had to keep moving.

  Epir shambled about their business like wraiths around him, most of them draped in huge, billowing black gowns that covered their snouty faces, bells and chimes dangling from the baggy material around their tails. A specimen with its face uncovered gawked at him. Sotiris looked into the crimson slants of its pupils, remembering the Long-Life’s gaze.

  He entered a tent populated with jars of tiny translucent fish. The Epir were drinking them, or swilling the fish around their mouths and spitting them out. Something medicinal, he guessed, pushing his way through a brief patch of light and into the darkness of the next tent. Here, at some altitude on the slopes of the bridge, his body felt fragile once more. He would have to take care.

  In the next tent, a shadow play was in progress and a massed groan went up as he stumbled through, adding his own silhouette to the mix. The performers must have reacted quickly, adapting his intrusion to a joke, and a peal of slobbering laugher followed Sotiris out into the light.

  He turned to see that he had climbed high above the port, the patchwork colours of the tent shanty rolling away to frame the view of the canals. The bramble smoke had left the air up here; Sotiris suspected it was no longer needed. With altitude came memory, sanity returning.

  A variant of a sedan chair carried by two Epir came up to meet him. He climbed in, shouting in Leperi that he wanted to go to the city centre, and they bustled him away from the tents and into the outlying districts of the bridge itself. Sotiris’s imaginary heart pumped harder as they ascended a steep, paved hill that looked almost impossible to climb. He watched the world outside his compartment jiggle by: sun-bleached machine soothsayers squatting outside their conical houses; Epir banquets on the higher terraces; grounded flying ships sitting smoking on the roofs; washing and entertainments, moving footage from old lives projected onto walls. Through the translucent linen of an upper window, Sotiris thought he saw a pleasure trade in process, and dwelt for a moment on whether coupling souls were barren here. He had already witnessed the Epir embracing one another, having assumed it was a strictly Mammalian pastime, and thought he might be able to remember the tenderness of a hairy-pawed touch aboard his raft—

  —but then the sedan wobbled, swaying as if it were about to topple onto its side as some huge caparisoned beast lumbered past, and as the chair drifted backwards down the ever-stretching hill, the memory left him. Sotiris forgot what he was trying to recall, his attention diverted. Jutting from some steepled roofs ahead he could see enormous sculpted ears, all angled and pointing up to the star.

  This was a place preserved in time, a relic of Aaron’s memory of when the world, the world of his makers, was younger. Sotiris remembered a fleeting word as he looked at it all, breathing in the stink and heat of the place. Pompeii.

  The sedan chair stopped at an intersection, the hobbling pedestrians staring in at him, and Sotiris watched as the houses on the far side of the street visibly stretched away, suddenly double the distance. “Don’t stop!” he called, passing the Epir their payment—folded pieces of a map—early. “Take me to the bridge gate.” They hurried along, barging through the crowd and catching up with the moving place. Sotiris could already see from the distance that it would take them more than a day’s travel and settled in for the bumpy ride. He hadn’t long eaten breakfast aboard the ship, but, feeling ravenous all over again, took out some smoked meat from his bag, tearing into it while the city rolled on. The hunger overwhelmed him these days.

  CONJUNCTION

  Lungs rasping, wheezing. Heart about to burst. Shouts following him.

  Billyup concentrated on the ground, the Babbo bouncing and screaming on his back. So heavy. So loud.

  Mountains, up ahead.

  Billyup found himself in the shade of an overhanging rock, runnels of water drizzling noisily across his hood. The dim mouth of a cave reared ahead. The Babbo was slowing him down; he had to stash it.

  Gulping breath, heart pounding, he made his way to the cave’s entrance, stepping in. The hiss of his breath filled the darkness. Billyup wrinkled his nose in the blackness. There was a fresh, sharp smell here. Almost at once he heard the rattle of chains and the jangle of a little bell. Whatever was in here had scented him, too.

  Billyup backed towards the cavemouth and it came straight out after him: a shaggy, ox-sized wolf wearing a necklace of bells, some caught between its teeth.

  He turned tail and bolted, hearing the thing give chase, the scream of the chain zipping clinckety-clink across stone, jolly bells clanging madly. The bells got closer, so close they were ringing in his ears, and then vanished with a snarl. Billyup risked a backward glance.

  The wolf had run out of chain. He whooped with primal delight, watching the creature gasping and wheezing. Billyup looked past it to the following hunters—who were already firing at the wolf—turned again and ran.

  His mind calmed suddenly as he realised they would catch him. It was all over, really—

  But then the ground disappeared from beneath him.

  Xanthostemon saw it unfold even as he dodged the furious, snarling wolf in the meadow. The Awger simply disappeared.

  He ran ahead, stooped, keeping out of sight of the Westerling hunters in the hills, and came hard up against a steep, tree-lined ravine. The Awger had run straight in.

  He scanned the trickle of river below, eyes wide. Blood had already painted the water crimson. He went down.

  It was howling.

  The Awger, Billyup, was still alive.

  Xanthostemon arrived carefully at the lip of rock that overlooked the river. He peered cautiously at the thing as it writhed on the stones, seeing that half of its head had been bashed away in the fall. How it had survived such a thing was beyond him, but the sounds of its screams brought him out in shivers. He checked his footing and went down to it, looking anxiously around for the child.

  The Awger clutched at its seeping head—so broken that Xanthostemon could see a whole hemisphere of brain—and wailed. It was the sound of an animal so close to death that it could feel it, and yet it clung on to life. He pushed it over with his foot and stared into its darting yellow eyes. It wouldn’t even know its name any more. All it
would know was pain.

  He left it there, writhing. He certainly wasn’t going to put it out of its misery, at least not until the baby was found.

  The Awger started pawing at the remains of its head, clawing into the broken skull and brain, legs pumping as if still trying to run. Xanthostemon hardly noticed it, realising suddenly that the child hadn’t come down this way.

  “What have you done with her?” he yelled at the beast in every tongue he knew. “Where’s the child?”

  Arabis hung wailing in the twigs of a dropling bush above, her screams perfectly masked by the howling of the Awger. A small Westerling hand hovered into her view, caressing the top of her downy head, and pulled her up to safety.

  MARSHAL OF DROLGINS

  Ghaldezuel had become, in the space of only a few weeks, rather well off. He hadn’t been poor before, of course—living well on the proceeds of his various Bult-assisted jobs throughout the Investiture—but since his appointment as Cunctus’s marshal, a steady stream of captured loot, winding like a caravan across the hills of Milkland, had begun to arrive daily from the foreign ports Cunctus had already captured. Vibor, though kept busy in the office of deputy, had his work cut out for him squirrelling a portion of everything away each day, sending what he could to their various contacts around the Investiture.

  At around the same time, bundles of severed heads and body parts (the pieces of every ringleader and local mayor that had dared turn their nose up at Cunctus’s invitation) had begun to arrive, trickling in each day and finding their way to Ghaldezuel’s apartments like unpleasant post or the offerings of some large, carnivorous pet. He was supposed to display them, of course, on the city’s parapets, but had decided in the end that the wildlife in Milkland was frisky enough and didn’t need encouraging with more free food. And so, after being suitably scrubbed and peeled and boiled and baked, most of what Cunctus sent went to Jathime.

  If he had to put a finger on precisely when he’d lost his nerve, however, Ghaldezuel would say it was with the arrival of the prisoners. Not content with body parts, Cunctus had begun sending convoys of live Vulgar with the express instructions that they be delicately flayed of everything non-essential and hung from the walls, where they were to be fed and watered daily by soldiers on the ramparts. Under Ghaldezuel’s watch, not a single prisoner had yet died, though there was very little left of the first fellow to hang, the birds and insects picking him that little bit cleaner each night. The loud music of the city managed to drown their screams most evenings, but in the dead of night Ghaldezuel could still hear them out there, being eaten alive.

  He knew he couldn’t stay. Napp had become a microcosm of Cunctus’s plan for the entire Investiture. The witch had been right.

  It wasn’t as simple as asking for help from his own kind. The Lacaille Empire could offer no assistance; though still most assuredly disdainful of Cunctus and his plans, Ghaldezuel of all people knew they could never risk coming in hard and damaging Napp and its unique structure, let alone risk the loss of the precious Mirror. Indeed, any sort of offensive action at all, even far from Napp, would risk incurring the Wilhelmina’s wrath. And nobody knew quite how powerful the ancient Decadence ship really was.

  No, Cunctus had the Lacaille well by the short and curlies, as Ghaldezuel’s father would have said. They had no choice but to pay him lip service for as long as he desired.

  If Ghaldezuel was going to get out, he would have to do it alone.

  Luckily for him, all this newfound wealth had paid for a decommissioned Lacaille lurcher-class battleship named the Vastuz, now fully crewed and waiting in the forests of the neighbouring moon, Nirlume. The ship could—as long as the Wilhelmina kept its distance—blast its way into Napp should the need arise and take Vibor, Jathime and Ghaldezuel off the moon. But keeping a warship like the Vastuz ready had cost a small fortune itself, and in the month since they had captured the city, its defences had improved a hundredfold, with a suite of new lumen turrets crowning the keep.

  You have time, still, Ghaldezuel told himself. Had he not personally opened the chamber beneath the Thrasm and handed Cunctus the keys to the invasion? Glowing messages from the warlord arrived almost daily—he wrote constantly, firing off letters as fast as he spoke—praising Ghaldezuel in all his endeavours. Cunctus trusted him, at least enough for him to slip away when the time was right.

  At the edge of the Milkland woods lay Hag Bay, on Impio’s western shore: a pocked cove of deep, artificial rock pools, a place where strange and valuable fish were cultivated.

  Ghaldezuel and Mumpher took the zigzagging road down to the pools, squinting at the sunlight that blazed off the water. They had come from a meeting with the corpulent Vulgar sisters that ran the bay (and, coincidentally, provided the Lunatic with the ingredients for his revolting fish sauces), commandeering in the name of Cunctus the Great a fleet of well-built fishing vessels and promising in the ensuing chaos that under Cunctus’s rule, Lacaille law would be implemented, granting all Vulgar a fairer rate of exchange and relaxed trading rights in the wider Investiture. Mumpher did nothing but smirk as Ghaldezuel was sworn at and spat upon, and the two of them shown the door.

  Walking down to the pools, Ghaldezuel saw that they appeared empty, as if the sisters had sent someone ahead of them to gather up anything of value. It was certainly what he’d have done, at least. He tugged at the chinstrap of Mayor Berphio’s enormous black hat: a present from Cunctus to keep away the Sting rain when it swept in. Off to the south, he could see the hazy shapes of the sisters’ commandeered fleet already making their way across the lagoon, their elongated Cethegrande spears deployed around them, to join Cunctus’s forces at Wyemunth.

  Ghaldezuel was conspicuously aware that Mumpher had chosen to walk behind him, and that not even an Amaranthine would survive a fall on these steep cliffs. He had to assume that, for now, he was still Cunctus’s favourite; if there’d been any shift in the warlord’s patronage, he’d have known about it by now. He shuffled to one side nevertheless, eyeing Mumpher. The Wulm grinned and hobbled on past. Ghaldezuel felt a rush of irritation and fell into step, the conundrum of how to get rid of him still at the forefront of his mind. The Wulm certainly loved the local fish sauce—Ghaldezuel had watched him slurping it from his plate at Cunctus’s banquets—but there were no symptomless poisons in the Investiture that Ghaldezuel knew of; nothing that wouldn’t immediately point the finger straight at Ghaldezuel and get him killed, too.

  He continued down the steep cliff steps, feeling more trapped now than ever before, unable to shake the sense that time was draining away faster and faster, his window of escape diminishing by the hour. All he could think of now was getting Jathime out before the Pifoon in their Vaulted Lands retaliated—as they surely would before long.

  This close to the water, he could feel the eyes of those invisible presences on him again, those who said they might be able to help him, for a fee. He wondered for a moment whether they could make Mumpher have a small accident, then chided himself. He didn’t need them to escape; ask for the Spirits’ aid and he’d only be exchanging one malevolent master for another.

  Mumpher had reached the bottom of the cliff and set off across the rock pools without waiting. Ghaldezuel walked faster, not wanting to let the Wulm out of his sight, finally spotting the paler shapes of fish skimming the surface of a nearby pool. He remembered trying the fish sauce on his first trip out of the Lacaille volume, on the Vulgar moon of Nirlume, vowing then and there never to let the pungent, rotten stuff anywhere near his mouth again.

  At the water’s edge, he found a few Vulgar slaves eating their lunch. They made no eye contact when he spoke to them, simply pointing out the pools housing the intelligent fish he’d come to see. Cunctus had wanted every business in the region investigated for anything he might be able to repossess; outwardly an unenviable job—in the last three days, Ghaldezuel had been shot at and defecated upon more times than he cared to remember—until one realised the opportunities this task of
fered for skimming off the top.

  Now, as Ghaldezuel approached the pool, he felt his troubles lifting. Here indeed was a curiosity. Of course he’d heard of the speaking Cursed folk of the Old World (and other monsters like them said to exist around the Investiture) but here was something even curiouser, something that had interested Cunctus enough for him to make Ghaldezuel’s visit to the fisheries one of his top priorities.

  He crouched by the pool’s edge, his knees popping with twin cracks that startled the fish deeper. Mumpher came over and knocked the ashes of his pipe into the water.

  “Don’t do that,” Ghaldezuel muttered.

  “To hear the fish talk you must submerge your head and ears,” said one of the slaves nearby, miming a dunk by placing his hands to either side of his face.

  Ghaldezuel looked at the water dubiously. The umber shapes of fish had returned closer to the surface. He motioned to Mumpher. “You go first.”

  Mumpher pocketed his pipe and shrugged, getting down onto his knees by the pool and swiftly dunking his head. Ghaldezuel watched, knowing it would be as simple as a little pressure applied to the back of the Wulm’s neck, keeping him under. But then Ghaldezuel’s eyes moved to Mumpher’s hand, still firmly wedged in his pocket, and noticed the unmistakable shape of a blade, ready, just in case.

  Mumpher rose, ugly head dripping. He blinked and looked at Ghaldezuel and the slaves. “I hear it. They talk down there.”

  “Up,” Ghaldezuel commanded, going to the edge. He motioned for Mumpher to stand as far back as he could, gesturing until the grinning Wulm had moved some distance away, before kneeling quickly and dunking his own head.

  The sound of muttering filled his ears.

  Ghaldezuel pulled his head out, checking, but Mumpher hadn’t moved. The Wulm saluted in the Lacaille way—a series of quick gestures that might once have been claps, like their Vulgar counterparts—and Ghaldezuel went under again.