Empress of the Sun

by Ian McDonald

  ‘Steady there, Mr Singh.’ A troop of Jiju palace guards, crests red and haloes all displaying the same pattern of colours, opened ranks to admit Princess Kakakakaxa. Kax turned and beckoned for Everett and Sharkey to follow, a human gesture.

  ‘What was that worldly song you quoted me, when we went down in the pits of the Nahn?’ Sharkey said.

  It took Everett a moment to recall the song and the occasion. ‘“You’ll Never Walk Alone”,’ he said.

  The escort fell in on either side of them. The stairway down to the glowing gateway in the tower was steep and precipitous.

  ‘Remind me how it goes again.’

  *

  Sen took a sip from the mug but could not hide the wince.

  ‘Too much chilli,’ Captain Anastasia said. ‘Isn’t there?’

  ‘It’s good, Ma,’ Sen said.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ Captain Anastasia said.

  ‘Only Everett can do Everett’s chocolate.’

  Sen was perched on the flip-down seat in the Captain’s latty. It had been a long time since Captain Anastasia heard the tap-de-la-tap at her latty door, but she knew the code at once. Palare: Can I talk?

  ‘No!’ Sen raised a finger. ‘Rule one of palare!’ Rule one of palare was rule only of palare. Girls’ talk. No men, no boys. Just girls talking together. Sen slid the chocolate cup away from her across the small fold-down table.

  ‘It’s not that bad,’ Captain Anastasia said.

  ‘Yes. No. Maybe. I don’t know!’ Sen flared suddenly. She fidgeted on the narrow seat. ‘Why are we sitting here drinking hot chocolate when those lizard-polones have the ship and they’ve cut all those holes in the hull and they’re taking us the Dear knows where, and okay, I know it’s omis, but Everett and Sharkey, they don’t even know what’s happened to us and we need to do something about it right now. It’s the ship.’

  Captain Anastasia took a sip of her chocolate.

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like I don’t know. Like something. You’re the Captain. You think of something. You always think of something. Like that time at Tromso.’

  A sudden blizzard driving down out of Svalbard and Tsar Alexander Land had pinned down half of Europe’s Scandia liners from Narvik to Helsinger. At the same time St Petersburg had moved against one of the frequent, regular and doomed Scandic uprisings. The crew of Everness – Sen a rambunctious and lippy ten-year-old – anchored down, battened in and drank hot toddies while the sound of automatic weapon fire rattled among the wooden houses of Tromso. Five days and then out of the storm came a ragged group of refugees and revolutionaries, Norgic separatists, beaten and bloody. They had begged for passage to England. They had gold. Roberto Henninger had been weighmaster then; he and Mchynlyth had argued fiercely against giving the Norgic haven, but Captain Anastasia knew the savagery of the Tsar’s Kazaks. On the sixth day the blizzard swirled off over High Deutschland, Everness lifted and was immediately hailed by a flotilla of Imperial frigates. They searched the ship. They searched every span and spar, every sheet and square foot of her. They didn’t search the ballast tanks, where Captain Anastasia had submerged her stowaways, breathing through air-hoses.

  ‘Yes, it’s hypothermic,’ she said. ‘You want to be hypothermic in my ballast tanks or hypothermic in a Siberian Penitence Camp?’

  It took the entire flight to England for the refugees to get warm again. Captain Anastasia left them on the coast of Old Anglia, far from the eyes of customs inspectors, and took their gold.

  ‘I had the luck of the Airish. If the Kazak captain had looked down instead of up …’

  ‘So why can’t we do something like that? We need to, I don’t know, fight back. There are only those three.’

  ‘And three whole shiploads just out there.’ The latty’s porthole was dark as night, the light shut out by a metal tentacle. The three Genequeen skysquids had Everness tightly wrapped in a web of claspers and tendrils. Captain Anastasia winced in pain every time she heard tentacle rasping over the skin of her beautiful, dancing airship. ‘Maybe you didn’t see what the Jiju did to those ground-pounder soldiers, but I did. We wouldn’t last two seconds.’ The Jiju had carefully removed every last body part of Charlotte Villiers’s strike squad. Captain Anastasia imagined deep explorations of human anatomy. The ship still smelled of blood. It would for a long time.

  ‘Well, we need to do something,’ Sen declared.

  ‘We are doing something. We’re drinking hot chocolate and having a palare,’ Captain Anastasia said.

  Once again Sen twisted uncomfortably on the fold-down seat. ‘I cannot sabi this: Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth, my ma—’

  ‘Sen.’ Captain Anastasia’s voice was sharp now. ‘I am Captain.’

  ‘Sorry. It’s just …’

  ‘It’s not the ship, is it?’ Captain Anastasia knew that with her adopted daughter truth was like buried water. Drill right, drill deep and the true feelings would fountain out of her.

  ‘It is. But … Ma, them Jiju, you know, that took the palari out of me. Well, when they did that, they like put something in.’

  ‘They did what?’ Captain Anastasia’s eyes bulged in anger. Her rage filled the tiny wooden latty. Sen shrank back. She had seen her mother’s fury like this only three times before and it awed her as much as scared her. It was a force of nature. The lioness roused.

  ‘Sorry, sorry, that didn’t come out right. Didn’t mean to scare you.’

  ‘If they’ve hurt you, there are not enough Jiju in this entire universe to keep them safe from me—’

  ‘No, they didn’t hurt me, honest, bona. It’s more like a two-way flow. They get some of me, I get some of them. Ma, I saw … stuff.’

  ‘What sort of stuff?’

  ‘Fighting. Always fighting. Everywhere, everywhen. They fights from the moment they hatches out. Millions of them, and only one or two makes it through. Oh, I saw it and heard it. But there’s more. They fight each other. Like Kax said, there are big families run everything? Like the Bromleys back in Hackney? ’Cept there’s six of them. What did Kax call them?’ Sen closed her eyes. ‘Nah, I can’t remember the words. But I can see them.’ She touched fingers to her forehead. ‘In here. There’s seas so big no one’s ever sailed across them. The ones what weave weather into storms. Living cities. Fields of crops that go on and on and on. There’s the ones what throw space-rocks around and blow up planets. Then there’s the ones what control the sun. If you controls the sun, you controls everything. I saw them all, in here, and I seen them all fighting, forever. I seen them living cities blasted to ash by lightning storms. I seen all those fields of crops turn brown and die from drought. I seen like tidal waves a thousand feet high; I seem them turn off rivers and whole oceans disappear like someone pulled a plug. I seen them throwing rocks down out of space … the size of cities, the size of countries. I heard the whole Diskworld ringing like a bell – like a cymbal on a drumkit. The sun … I seen the sun stop on one side of the world – like night for a hundred years. Ma, they’ve fought thousands of wars – millions of wars!’ Sen broke off. Her face was ghost-pale.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Captain Anastasia asked.

  ‘Yeah. Bona. It’s just kind of … intense. I see it, and I feel it. Ma, I’s been thinking. Like, on our world, when did the dinosaurs die out?’

  ‘I think it’s about sixty … seventy million years,’ Captain Anastasia said. ‘I can look it up. I think Mchynlyth has the comptator system up and running again.’

  ‘Sixty, seventy, whatever,’ Sen said. ’Here’s the thing. That’s like … mad time. Like, if the lizards had that much of a head start on us, there wouldn’t just be one Diskworld, there’d be hundreds of them. It’d be Jiju all the way up and all the way down. They’d be all over the Nine … Ten Worlds. We wouldn’t be here. What did Kax call us? Apes. I don’t think she meant that as a joke. I don’t think Jiju even know what jokes are. The Jiju’d be like gods. But they ain’t. So: why ain’t they?’

  Sen looked long and har
d at her ma, asking her to arrive at the same conclusion she had.

  ‘The wars keep knocking them back,’ Captain Anastasia said.

  ‘They build it all up, and then along comes another war and bangs it all flat again. Thing is, Diskworld’s so big, they can’t get everyone, so someone always survives, and they creep out of their holes and start all over again. Thing is, they’re kind of overdue for another one. I got the idea that it was Kax’s people—’

  ‘The Sunlords,’ Captain Anastasia interrupted.

  ‘The Sunlords versus everyone else. I got the feeling that the last time the Sunlords almost killed everyone else – the only thing that stopped them was that it would have killed all of them too. And I think it’s all built up and up and wound in and in and it’s balanced so fine and delicate that the weight of a fly might tip it over to one side or the other.’

  ‘Or the weight of an airship,’ Captain Anastasia said.

  Sen nodded.

  ‘We do not want to be in the middle of a barney between coves can throw asteroids around and shut the sun down,’ Captain Anastasia said. ‘But on the other hand …’

  ‘It’s like an opportunity,’ Sen said.

  ‘The Sunlords’ adversity may be the Airish opportunity,’ Captain Anastasia. ‘We’ll show them what apes can do.’

  ‘Everett’s not the only one can do the big thinking,’ Sen said and then clapped her hands over her mouth. ‘Rule one!’

  *

  The hall was Sunlords all the way in and all the way out. Sunlords rustling and twittering like a cave of birds. Sun-lords, haloes shimmering, taking a thousand different shapes and colours. Heads turned as Kax led her guests into the Presence Hall. The ripple of attention fanned out across the vast chamber, haloes flashed as they turned to scan the strange new thing among them. The birdsong fell silent. At the far end of the aisle, miles away it seemed, something moved in the light radiating from the Sun Throne.

  Everett felt every eye on him. He straightened up, drew his stomach muscles in, pulled his shoulders back, clenched his ass cheeks. He might be smudged and smeared with Crechewood dirt, wearing a badly cut-off T-shirt and rugby socks, but he could make the most of himself. He saw Sharkey spruce himself up, take a deep, chest-filling breath. It was all about making an entrance.

  ‘Approach,’ said a voice from everywhere. In the radiance of the throne, a clawed hand beckoned.

  ‘She’s learnt our palari already,’ Sharkey said quietly. ‘Stay sharp.’

  Everett and Sharkey fell into step behind Kax. Solemn procession was tricky in the micro-gravity, but Everett kept in step with Sharkey. The Presence Hall was a cavernous half-egg that would be impossible to construct under any greater gravity. Stars and constellations moved across the vaulted roof, so high it almost seemed a sky. The Sun Throne of the Empress of the Sun occupied the smaller end of the half-egg. It was well named. It blazed so bright that Everett had to squint to make out details: spines and spikes, like crystal thistledown. Light streamed from between the rays. It didn’t seem entirely connected to the ground. The dark silhouette at its heart seemed larger and differently shaped from the Jiju that pressed into the body of the hall.

  ‘Luke Skywalker and Han Solo,’ Everett whispered to Sharkey. They were halfway to the throne. Everett’s confidence grew with every step. ‘Getting the medals after they blow up the Death Star.’

  ‘Wish I knew what you were cackling on about,’ Sharkey whispered back. ‘But if it makes you feel better …’

  Hissing whispers rippled out through the Jiju on either side as the procession passed.

  ‘My sisters are jealous,’ Kax threw back. ‘There has been nothing like this in the Worldwheel for ten thousand days.’

  ‘Sure are a lot of princesses,’ Everett whispered to Sharkey.

  ‘There’s always a lot of princesses,’ Sharkey said. ‘It’s one of the problems of monarchy. I can tell you, I’ve known a few princesses. Known in the Old Testament sense of the word, sabi? Never any of the ones who might inherit anything though. Funny that.’

  ‘Hey, where are the boys?’ Everett said. ‘Have you seen any?’

  ‘See those tiny little mini-Jiju, scuttling around?’

  Everett had noticed miniature Jiju-creatures, thin and finely featured, knee-height and furtive, darting between legs, hiding behind patterned skirts, blinking wide eyes at the aliens.

  ‘I thought those were pets.’

  ‘I reckon those are the omis. You don’t need that many if all they have to do is squirt some boy-juice on to a pile of eggs. It’s a woman’s world up here.’

  The glare from the Sun Throne dimmed with every step Everett took towards it. Now he could see details of its occupant. The Empress of the Sun was impressive. Half again as tall as Kax, she was heavily built and massively muscled. The minute scales on her biceps and thighs and abdominals rippled with oil sheen as the muscles moved. Her crest was long and fell on either side of her head to her waist, like rainbow-coloured dreadlocks. The fighting claws on her thumbs were long and curved and worked with exquisite silver filigree. Her forehead was studded with jewels, gold wires inlaid into the skin. Everett could see no halo. Then he realised: the throne on which the Sun Empress sat was her halo. Kax’s halo had absorbed that of her dead rival; it must be like that for each successive Empress of the Sun. Kax had said that her people did not live very long, but Diskworld and the line of the Sunlords was very old. Halo upon halo, memory upon memory, life upon life: there must be millions of them. Tens of millions of them. The true throne must be enormous, the size of this castle. Maybe it was this castle.

  ‘Head up, Mr Singh.’ Sharkey must have noticed that, step by step, the bravery was leaking out of Everett. The Empress of the Sun leaned forward in the heart of her floating sunray throne, flared her nostrils. Everett took a deep breath, felt it carry oxygen to every muscle and nerve, igniting them, filling them with energy. It was a trick he used on big football games, on the walk out from the dressing rooms to the goal-line. It was always a long walk. But this was longer.

  ‘Mother and Mary and sweet Saint Pio,’ Everett whispered: the old Sharkey family battle cry and private oath.

  ‘Fine sentiment, sir, fine sentiment.’ Sharkey straightened the feather in his hat. ‘Leave the talking to me. This is my bailiwick. A little old-school Atlanta chivalry can sweeten the sourest of social situations.’

  ‘You ever been to a Punjabi wedding?’ Everett asked.

  ‘You have me at a disadvantage there, sir.’

  ‘Let’s just say, you’re not the only guys can do old-school chivalry.’

  Everett stopped before the hovering throne. From the heart of a dazzle of light rays, the Empress of the Sun looked down at him. His pride, his little tricks to make himself confident, all evaporated in the searing light. The sense of power and presence made him want to turn and run. This creature made the sun dance for her amusement. He had never felt more like a mammal, like a small, scuttling, fraidy-male. Everett pulled himself upright, pressed his hands together in a namaste and dipped his head in a brief bow. Sharkey whipped off his hat and bent a leg in a theatrical bow.

  ‘Miles O’Rahilly Lafayette Sharkey at your service, Your Majesty,’ he declaimed.

  ‘Everett Singh: goalkeeper, mathematician, traveller, planesrunner,’ Everett said. The same formula he had recited when he had first been introduced to Sharkey, right after the weighmaster had tried to throw Everett off Everness.

  The Empress of the Sun sat motionless. Not a movement. Not a word. For a long time. I know what you’re doing, Everett thought. You’re making us feel like little squeaking apes. It’s working.

  The great Hall of the Presence was silent. Not a claw clicked on the polished floor.

  The Empress of the Sun blinked her eye-membranes.

  ‘Welcome, Planesrunner. I am Gapata Hehenrekke Exto Kadkaye, Empress of the Sun, Clade-Mother of the Sunlords, Chatelaine of Palatakahapa. Welcome to my lands, demesnes and cities.’ The Empress of the
Sun’s voice was soft and light and maddeningly familiar to Everett. ‘You’ve come a long way. Please enjoy the hospitality of the Sunlords.’ He had it now. The Empress of the Sun spoke in his mum’s voice. Everett wasn’t sure what shocked him more – that Kax had dragged a memory of his mother out of his head and given it to her own mother, or that he hadn’t immediately recognised Laura’s voice. Either way, it was one of the creepiest things he had ever heard. ‘My daughter has told me so much about you. What a thrill!’ Kax’s skin flushed a delicate turquoise, her crest turned crimson. ‘When the probe from your universe came through to the Worldwheel, we knew it would only be a matter of time before you returned. And you have come with a gift that none of us could have imagined. We are a people who enjoy gifts. In the exchange of objects – gifts, ideas, hostages, family members – we show ourselves to be civilised beings, don’t you think? It shows willingness and appreciation.’

  Everett’s voice was as cold as the lump of dread in his heart. ‘I know what you want.’ He saw Sharkey glance at him, a tiny nod of the head: do it. It’s the only way. ‘You want the Infundibulum.’

  ‘Want is such a cold word,’ the Empress of the Sun said, and Everett felt sick inside because her tone was the same tone Laura used when she was very, very angry but all she wanted to show was her deep, deep disappointment. Hurt was crueller than anger. ‘We would appreciate a token from you, in return for what we’re doing for you. A consideration. The Genequeens are an uncouth, rough people, with no manners and less culture, but they do respect protocol. They claim you and your ship by right of it having landed in Crechewood, which they stubbornly and against the sense of all the other clades believe to be their territory. By the Treaty of Hedrehedd Larsweel the crechewoods were established as common grounds eight thousand years ago – things may be different on the Outward Rings, but there are cold and barbarous creatures out there, far from the light of the sun. Barely sentient at all. My esteemed daughter Kakakakaxa has filed a claim that you enjoy the protection of my clade as our honoured guests.’ Kax’s shade of turquoise deepened. Pride, Everett guessed. The newest princess in this hall of a thousand princesses had outshone all the others. What were the colours for jealousy and resentment? Everett suspected that Kax’s battles to the death were not over yet. ‘Our lawyers have formed a case. The High Magisterium is weighing it. We expect judgement within the hour. The High Magisterium’s judgements are always honoured, but we’ll send a detachment of skyqueens. An escort, an honour guard. The Genequeens can be sullen, petty creatures. Your friends and ship will be returned to you by sunrise.’