It was the first such incident, but, by the time the soldiers had alighted on the palace balcony, it was no longer the only one.
When Colonel Gan returned to his favourite balcony again, it was under heavy guard.
Parts of Szar were already burning. He could not believe it: his beautiful, peaceful, affluent city tearing at itself like a mad animal.
‘Look at this,’ he whispered in awe. ‘What has happened? Are we at war?’ Were there foreign agents in the streets stirring up this dissent? Agents that could work so suddenly and efficiently as to upset two decades of absolute peace?
He felt like yelling at the city, shouting at it angrily as if it were an unreasonable child. He felt that a single slap should rightfully bring the place back in line.
‘You, go fetch me the Princess,’ he pointed to one of his men. ‘And where is that new captain? None of this started until he got here!’
As the first soldier ran off, Gan saw the very same captain approaching. The man was still in his dusty armour, stepping into view while he gave some final orders to a Fly-kinden kitted in imperial uniform. The small man took flight and was heading away eastwards even as the captain saluted his superior.
‘What was that about?’ Gan demanded suspiciously. ‘What game are you playing, Captain?’
‘That was a message for the rest of my soldiers, Governor,’ the captain replied, as though it was the most natural explanation in the world.
‘The rest of your…’
‘One thousand of the imperial army, all fresh from the garrisons of Capitas,’ the captain confirmed.
‘One thousand…’ Gan stared at him aghast. ‘Captain, I demand that you tell me right now just what in the wastes you’ve stirred up here.’
‘Not I, Governor, but someone realized it was coming,’ the captain said. ‘I should introduce myself, Governor. I am Captain Berdic of the Imperial Army, also Major Berdic of the Rekef Inlander.’
Gan drew in a sharp breath. They really are everywhere. He made sure that his posture and voice did not give any hint of his disquiet at what the man had said. ‘So, am I under investigation then?’
‘That remains to be seen,’ Berdic said noncommitally. ‘What exactly is going on in your city, Governor?’
‘You tell me!’ Gan snapped at him. ‘Clearly you knew it was coming!’
Berdic shook his head. ‘Governor, there are riots everywhere on the streets of Szar. There are parts of the city now held entirely by the local insurgents, so that the north and west are closed to us until further notice. Elsewhere it is only by putting all my soldiers onto the streets that peace has been maintained. Beyond those safe limits the population of Szar is arming itself for war.’
‘War?’ Gan was dumbfounded. ‘Against me?’
‘Against the whole Empire.’ Berdic shook his head. ‘Even my thousand troops may not suffice if this entire city takes up arms. It has been a while, maybe, but I’d wager these people still remember how to fight. Were you yourself here for the siege of Szar, Governor?’
‘No, and neither can you have been since you’re far too young.’
Berdic smiled without humour. ‘I have, however, read my histories. These Szaren Bee-kinden were fanatics in battle, true berserks. That is their Art, just as we have our stings and the Ant-kinden can speak mind to mind. That, Governor, is the barrel of firepowder we must now keep the spark from.’
In spite of himself Gan felt his initial antagonism towards the man draining away, leaving a kind of cold fear behind it instead. ‘What do you advise?’ he asked quietly.
‘I heard you sending for Princess Maczech,’ Berdic said. ‘That’s a good first step. Have her speak to her people. Convince her first that if Szar rises up, then the Empire will soon put it down hard. Tell her about all the men, women and children who will be strung up between pikes, the slaves sent off to other cities, the punishments meted out to her people already settled elsewhere. Tell her all of that, for it will be nothing but the truth. Now, excuse me, I must attend to the soldiers. I will leave enough men in the palace to defend it, but the rest must be a visible presence on the streets.’
He marched straight off without a salute, leaving Gan biting his lip and trying to work out where it had all gone wrong.
They escorted Princess Maczech to him within minutes. He looked into her face for signs of the madness that had gripped his city, but saw none of it there. She even smiled at him.
‘Princess,’ he said, gratefully. ‘The people of Szar are currently engaged on a course that can only lead to their destruction. Look down there, how they are tearing up their own lives! When the Emperor hears of this, he will have one man in twenty impaled outside the city. You must address them immediately. Will you now speak to them?’
‘The Emperor already knows,’ said Maczech, so softly he barely heard her.
‘I don’t understand,’ was all he could reply.
‘How is it that everyone knows but you, Governor?’ she asked him.
He stared at her, feeling his innards twist.
‘My mother is dead,’ she told him. ‘The Queen of Szar is dead, and her funeral wake will see you burn.’
His mouth was open, lips moving, but at first no sounds came. Then finally he got out, ‘Then you are Queen! I declare you Queen now! You are still mine, so calm your people.’
Her smile cut through him, flayed him. ‘I am nobody’s,’ she announced, and the commotion started inside the palace itself.
‘I am Szar’s,’ she said, reaching out to touch his face. The acid of her Art seared him like a brand and he fell back, screaming. His guards started to lunge forward, but abruptly there were Bee-kinden everywhere – the palace servants, old men and old women, girls, even children: throwing themselves at the Wasp soldiers, literally hurling themselves on their swords, so that the Wasps were forced to cut them down, to burn them with their stings, or hack them to the ground with bloody blades. And meanwhile Maczech…
Maczech was at the balcony’s edge, and wings flowered from her back. Gan reached out an arm, hand opening to scorch her, but an aged woman grabbed at it, forcing his palm against her stomach, so that when he loosed his sting it tore through her. And Maczech was gone, already in the air and dropping towards the contested streets of her city.
Gan stood at the edge of the balcony as his soldiers killed the last of his servants, with the crisp red imprint of her hand vivid on his face, staring after her and shaking with fear and pain.
Twenty-One
The rain in Jerez had stopped, literally. The water was suspended in mid-air, a field of shimmering droplets impossibly held in place, each one with a twisted reflection of the moon glimmering in its heart. When Achaeos stepped forward, they ran against his skin or broke against his robe in a myriad dark patches.
There were people abroad this night, of course, for the locals did not mind either darkness or rain. Here they were, frozen in place with the raindrops while going about their innumerable shady errands. He paused to examine the strange Skater physiology, distinctive for those freakishly long limbs, the narrow faces with their long, pointed noses and ears.
Somewhere out there was a presence not frozen in place, a presence waiting for him to find it.
This is a dream. But there was no such thing as ‘just’ a dream for the Moth-kinden. They had dozens of categories: dreams serendipitous and dreams intentional, dreams prophetic and dreams malign. This, however, was a dream he had been seeking for many nights, for this was a seeing dream. He was trying to find the Shadow Box, but had already realized that it was a hopeless search. In Jerez he was just too close to it. Its power was everywhere, leaking out into the darkness, and he could not pinpoint it.
And now this, a proper seeing dream – but to see what?
Achaeos paced through the streets of Jerez, feeling the ubiquitous rain break across his skin and dampen his hair. When he stood still he could sense movement, others abroad this same night. He was not the only one to have this dream. That m
eant gates had been opened, tonight, that could not be easily closed.
Should I call out? But how foolish would that be? He could not simply stand here, in this dream-Jerez, and start calling for help like a lost child.
But you called for help before.
He started in shock. That thought had not been his own.
He tried to work out whereabouts in the town he was. The lake lay to his right, its expanse of water suspended in frozen ripples, dotted near the shoreline with the further-flung natives, with great stands of reeds, with little boats that had set out on clandestine errands.
A movement again: he turned, and for a second he thought there was a woman there. He had a fleeting impression of bulging red eyes and a hunger-pinched face.
Nothing there. Only the night.
We heard you call us. We call you now.
‘Who are you?’ he whispered, but he already knew, and with that knowledge he did not want to meet the thing that called to him.
You waste your time. You have not come to us. You have not found us. It was the voice of the Darakyon, but fainter, hollower. The voice of the Shadow Box.
They seek us, all of them. They are grasping even now for the line we throw only to you. Little seer, little neophyte, come to us.
‘Where are you?’ he demanded, louder, beginning to run through the frozen rain. He had another quick glimpse of one of his pursuers, a man of his own kinden wearing a silver skullcap, his face deeply lined.
Here.
And it was there.
He tried to stop, because to touch that would be to die, and he skidded, feet slipping from under him, so that he fell at its… where it rose from the earth.
There was a shape there resembling a woman, the lean frame of a Mantis-kinden warrior, except the reaching, grasping thorns and briars had pierced her a dozen times over, arcing and leaping back and forth through her flesh, that had sprouted darts and barbs like a Thorn Bug, and prickly leaves as well. Spiny brambles ran up and down her, and through her, and they twisted her skin, which was pale and human in places but elsewhere hard and shiny like the carapace of an insect. Her arms were simultaneously a Mantis woman’s with the Art-grown spines jutting from her forearms, and a mantis insect’s with great folding, raptorial hooks. Her face glittered with the facets of compound eyes, and scissoring mandibles worked inside a human mouth.
I would die… There was no doubt of that. Achaeos scrambled back a few paces, staring. Even his eyes, which knew no darkness, could not quite take in that piecemeal, shifting figure, but he knew that it was ancient and mighty – and in pain.
‘Do you… have a name?’ he whispered.
The lips and the mandibles both worked together, but neither matched the voice that now reached him,
I was Laetrimae when I lived. You must find me, Achaeos.
‘Show me,’ he said. ‘Quickly, before the others get here.’
The creature nodded and strode off into the unnaturally arrested town, without another word. Achaeos choked to watch her, for it was the naked Mantis woman who took each step forward, but once her foot touched the earth the briars and vines thrust up through it to rake across her and impale her over and over, and her skin ripped open with the barbs and thorns, and healed over in the gleaming green-black exoskeleton of her kinden’s beast.
He got to his feet and hurried after her, after it… the spirit of a Mantis woman trapped between life and death for five centuries, constantly degrading and corrupting and yet still remembering her own name.
He knew that others, many others, were presently seeking him out. The other collectors and perhaps worse, all those who had the magical skill to seize upon this open portal and follow the thread. Laetrimae was pacing ahead sedately, but each step carried her such a distance that he was forced to run even to keep her in sight, and there was perpetually a flock of shadows behind him, squabbling over his tracks.
Until the tortured Mantis-creature paused at a door, a lowly place near the lakeshore where a sprawling guesthouse sagged, its walls at conflicting angles. She grasped the doorframe with such force that the wood splintered, and thorns and creepers grew out from her into it, and split it further.
And then he knew. He looked wildly about him for landmarks. He had to remember this place, when he awoke…
And Laetrimae grasped him about the throat in a vice-like grip, killing spines razoring his skin, and he felt her thorny branches questing at his flesh, eager to drink his blood.
And she said only, Remember, and branded that place on his mind so that he would never ever forget it.
Achaeos awoke with a cry, startling Tisamon, who had been keeping watch outside. The Mantis almost kicked the door off its hinges just to get in. Beyond him, Achaeos saw that it was night still, and thus the best time to go to work.
‘I know where it is!’ he yelled. ‘We need to move now.’
‘Who’s we?’ Jons Allanbridge demanded, not a ready waker at this hour.
‘Myself,’ the Moth replied. ‘Tisamon, and Tynisa, and-’
‘And me?’ Thalric asked sardonically. ‘You brought me here, yet you’ve had precious little use of me yet.’
‘What about Gaved?’ Tynisa started.
‘No time!’ Achaeos insisted. The Wasp hunter was still at Nivit’s place, with the strange girl they had rescued. ‘Now – we go now. Allanbridge, you stay here. Can you get your machine ready to leave?’
‘It takes hours just to fill the canopy!’ the artificer informed him.
‘Well, just… do something,’ Achaeos said, almost hopping from foot to foot. ‘But we must go, please!’
‘So let’s go.’ Tisamon pushed past him out into the night. He stopped right there, as if scenting the air. Tynisa came out after him, sensing nothing. Her hand was bleeding a little, she noticed. That wound was unusually stubborn.
Achaeos had his bow ready strung, and he pushed past her, rushing off into the street and then looking left and right as if getting his bearings. For once the rain in Jerez was petering out, although the night sky was blotted with heavy-laden clouds.
Then Achaeos was off, and at a fair pace, too. Tynisa instinctively moved when Tisamon did, and it was only after she heard the running footsteps behind them that she realized that Thalric had come with them after all.
Useless, she decided. He can’t even see in the dark. But Thalric was keeping pace nonetheless, using what little light bled out from under the doors of drinking dens and brothels. Another one to watch for now. He was dangerous, and she could not trust him. He’d sell us all in an instant.
Achaeos kept stopping for bearings, but most of the time he did not even look around him. Whatever guide he was consulting seemed to be entirely within his head.
‘Did you hear that?’ he asked, but even Tisamon had heard nothing.
‘We aren’t alone.’ Achaeos stared back the way they had come, and Tynisa fought down a small sound of horror because there was a pale mark across his throat, like a jagged and irregular scar. His blank white eyes met hers for a second, and she merely shivered and shook her head. Then he was running again.
As they took off after him, Tynisa was sure that something passed overhead, but when she glanced upwards, she saw nothing.
Across the city there were others suddenly awake, but with nothing in their minds but disappointment. The young seer who had somehow merited such a guide had managed to lose then.
Sykore the Mosquito-kinden was one. She had hoped to catch even a glimpse of the place, a street even, so that she could have Captain Brodan searching each house there, but the boy had been too fast for her.
It did not matter, of course, so long as it was Achaeos who actually took possession of the thing. Sykore had her agent in the seer’s camp, unknown to all. The Blooded Ones of the Mosquito-kinden knew their trade, and they guarded secrets that even the Moth-kinden did not speak of.
What concerned her most was that it might not be Achaeos’s hands that eventually closed about the Shadow Box. She
had not been swift enough to follow, but she had a feeling that there had been one other who had. She had a sense of age and power, the musty taste in her mouth that spoke of her kind’s ancient enemies, the Moth-kinden that had driven them to near-extinction.
His name was Palearchos, and he was old now, too old for this. He who had first flown at five years old – considered unthinkably early to develop the Art – he was finding it a labour now, and even more so when he screened himself in darkness so that even a Moth-kinden’s eyes could not see him.
He had come from Tharn originally, but there were now five decades between him and the Tharen halls, and it hurt. Five decades of exile, and he had laughed at them when they cast him out.
I am a Skryre, he had told them. The world is mine to shape. I do not need you. And he had departed for his adventures, his schemes and plots, and he had revelled in his freedom from their interference. He had travelled the world, and seen things that they had only read of.
But now he was old, and he had been sick for a long time, sick for the company of his own kind and for the carved stone halls of home.
This would be his lodestone, to bring him home. This would be his invitation, so that his bones could at least be laid in the deep sepulchres, and his name remembered. But only if he possessed it. The young seer, that appallingly untrained boy, could not be allowed to take it from him.
And yet somehow it favoured him. Palearchos felt it keenly, this loss of faith. It was not just his own people had turned against him, but their whole world, too. He would therefore have to take it in both hands and force it to recognize him. How dare the box call out to this weak young stripling, and not to him!
He was an old magician and, as such, he had spent years of his life in other people’s dreams. When the Shadow Box had at last opened, and thus compromised its hiding place, he had been deft enough to pick up that trail. When the dream had snapped shut, he had leapt from the window of his meagre lodgings and begun labouring flight. It would be a race, but he was in the air whilst the fool boy remained on the ground.
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