Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

She looked at him and then found herself laughing. It was partly hysterical, to be sure, but it was still so, so funny, his deadpan voice. Half his face cracked, mud falling off it, as his mouth lifted at one corner into a grudging grin. He turned and kept his hold on her upper arm, pulling her along with him as she sucked in helpless gasping breaths and tears slowly cleared her eyes of the last of the dirt.

  She was quiet by the time they saw lights ahead. As they got closer, the burr of the cicadas in the trees was intense but they heard voices through it, unmistakable Imperial tones of guards changing duties. Tralane hesitated but Tzaban pulled her forwards, her arm aching.

  ‘It is really them. Karoo don’t use lights.’

  Well, she thought, that answers that question. She was nearly too tired to care either way but she mustered enough force to tug at his hand, ‘Let me go.’

  He did so and she wished she hadn’t said it. Walking after him was ten times harder than before. They finally made it to the high wall of broken fencing and she called out, ‘Engineer Huntingore, reporting for duties! Hey there! Where is the gate?’

  ‘Say, what?’ There was some commotion on the other side as they debated, like she had, the truth of what they were hearing but then an officer’s voice came forwards, short on words but forceful in them.

  ‘The Empress’ Consort is with me. Don’t shoot him,’ she added as loudly as she could once they heard the rumble of wood being dragged about and saw movement as a makeshift door was opened in the line of staves and vines.

  More orders to stand back, stand down, be ready and then she saw the flash of colours and glint of metal on shoulder studs and a helm.

  ‘Engineer Huntingore, this way.’

  She recognised his voice from the ball. ‘General Borze.’

  They were taken inside a compound with a black mass at its heart which she at once realised must be the pit. Around it a large number of small fires burned, giving off pungent smokes – another effort to curtail the effects of Karoo vapours she thought. The people around them huddled tight together, too much so for ordinary rest. The familiar expressions of horror that had faded to exhaustion were in every lit circle. Glances fixated unstoppably on Tzaban, slid away, returned balefully.

  Only Borze appeared to remain his usual self – the only concession to disaster a flattening of his brow and the addition of another line above it. His raking gaze took in both of them. ‘Come and take a moment’s rest. We’ve drink and food. City food,’ he added after a second, and escorted them with two other men to a battered tent where some chairs were set around a trestle table. Tralane clutched the chair as she sat, not trusting her legs. She was given hot watery wine with sugar in it and dry bread, a piece of hardening cheese set to the side. Borze gave her a look she didn’t understand, taking her in perhaps, judging how to say what he had to say but when he spoke he was direct.

  ‘What is the state of the portal?’

  ‘Disabled,’ Tralane said, holding up the powerpack for a moment. She thought for a second, watching Tzaban sip the drink given him and then put it aside. ‘I could probably fix it, given a few days.’

  Borze nodded. ‘My orders are very clear. I am to escort you into the structure and then guard it until you are ready to leave.’ He passed a sealed paper to her. ‘These are for you.’

  Tralane reached for the heavy woven royal sheet and broke the wax sealing it with Torada’s stamp. For a moment she was baffled to read Isabeau’s regimental handwriting inked across it, then recalled Isabeau saying something about an apprenticeship, administration duties at the palace. Her hand started to shake, making it harder to read so she put it down on the table and flattened it with her dish.

  After the declarations it said simply, ‘Enter the structure. Assess its total worth and any functionality you are able to. Liaise with all other science officers on site. Prepare removable items for immediate withdrawal. Send an immediate report to me by range transmitter. Use the code enclosed in this letter. If the city cannot arrive to provide support, expect enemy arrival. In the event of becoming overwhelmed you are to employ standard sabotage strategies. The general is to follow your instructions from now on until Our arrival. Be careful.’

  She assumed the last words had been added by Isabeau, although there was no way to know for certain. Torada’s waywardness was not above personal niceties: her waywardness, Tralane thought, was not above civil war. When does one call that madness?

  She looked up into the general’s face. ‘Do you anticipate this moment of calm will last, General?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘The Karoo were stirred up by the storm gun. When it was used against the Mudlander assault they attacked without warning. None were unable to stand against them. I am sure you can guess it from your own journey here. Minister Alide was killed, as was everyone within a hundred metre radius of the gun itself and it was destroyed. They used fire. A weapon of their own that I cannot get any straight story of from those that witnessed it. I understand… That is…’ He hesitated. ‘You had some responsibility for that gun.’

  ‘Yes. In a way.’ She explained the supply chain of the crystals, why she had done it and the fact that she had not had firsthand experience of the actual weapon. ‘I assumed it was done by specialised military engineers or, perhaps acquired some other way from another city.’

  ‘The gun you carry on your person, is that the same?’

  ‘I would think it is similar,’ she said, glancing down at her leg where the item sat firmly in its holster, crusted with grass and muck. It occurred to her she should offer it to him, and she did so, explaining how it worked, but he handed it back to her.

  ‘I’ll stick with what I know. Besides, from what I hear you might need it.’

  She swallowed, almost choking on her drink. ‘There are enemies inside the artefact?’

  ‘There are Karoo inside it, sometimes. It seems.’ He spoke stiffly with the discomfort of one who hates suppositions and has had insufficient evidence. ‘Not all of the science officers have returned. There are reports of – noises. Things. I can’t send more men in with you. But you’ll be all right most likely.’ He gave Tzaban a long look and the Karoo lifted his head. ‘What happened to you? Whatever it was it’s not going to make anyone happier. You should both go now, before we run out of time or someone decides their bow hand is itchy. There’s a lot of that around.’

  Tralane’s heart plunged in her chest with horror but she stood up, absently cleaning the gun off with the end of her scarf. ‘How many have you lost here?’

  ‘What you see is what’s left. A hundred and ten, some casualties in the med tent.’

  She almost didn’t think she could have heard him correctly but she daren’t ask for a repeat. ‘Who is in charge of extracting the items for the city?’

  ‘I am,’ he said. ‘But I received a message the city will come for them. Guess they won’t be that fast given the portal is down.’

  ‘How long can you hold out?’

  ‘When we’re down to the last twenty we’re coming inside with you,’ Borze said. ‘The one door will be defensible for a while at least, whatever they do to the outside. The science team inside is forty-one, with some guards and most of the supplies are kept in there. Whatever’s inside causing trouble hasn’t come out.’

  She understood his calm now. He didn’t expect to get away from this. He was determined not to concede to Alide’s position and call Torada mad, that she had led them here. There were too many dead soldiers on his account for that. He looked across at Tzaban again.

  ‘Are you considered a traitor now then, among them?’

  ‘No.’ Tzaban got up too. ‘If you stay inside the fences here, you will survive. At least, for now. Everyone wants whatever is in that case.’

  Tralane noticed how careful he was to say that the Karoo did not have a way to decipher what was in the case, other than by consuming those that had. Her arms itched. Borze eyed her scratching.

  ‘I don’t know where your loyalties lie, Cons
ort.’ He managed the word without choking. ‘Do I assume that once someone comes out with a discovery that we will be overrun again?’

  Tzaban looked at him directly. ‘I warned you not to come.’

  The general looked down, absorbing this implicit confirmation. ‘So you did. And now, do you have any more wise words? Did you, as they say, corrupt the Empress?’

  Tzaban considered for a moment. ‘I did not. She was already on the way here before I arrived, if you recall. I came to stop her. I was no match for her. Not as an opponent, at least.’ He moved to Tralane’s side. ‘Rest now. There will be a chance to escape when the city arrives. You should send me word when it nears.’

  Borze nodded. ‘Is there some reason I should trust you?’

  ‘I never lied to you,’ Tzaban said. ‘And the Queen has bound me to this woman. So whatever happens, my life is tied to hers now.’

  ‘THIS woman?’ Borze stared anew at Tralane. ‘What for?’

  ‘The Karoo have no engineers,’ she said. ‘But they can always use someone else’s.’ She didn’t want it spelled out in front of her. Tzaban was guarding the queen’s next meal. How far his loyalties went – that would be the taxing question to test next.

  ‘The city should be anywhere but here,’ Borze said grimly. ‘Come, I’ll take you to the door.’

  They went with two guards at their backs, more to stop them leaving than help, Tralane thought. Tzaban was tense. In his new skin he was more readable now. His attention was on Borze, waiting for an attack. She saw the sense of it, Borze could use many reasons, all good, to dispose of Tzaban, and no doubt he had thought all of them through. However, even though they had been away for some time. his devotion to the Empress was too powerful. With Tzaban as Consort any idea of getting rid of the cuckoo in the nest was out of the question. They must instead just watch and wait to see what he became. For the first time, Tralane’s thought stopped dead in contemplation of the Empress’ actions. Normally it was beyond her to consider questioning the Imperial mind either, so far beyond that even to do so was a sacrilege. Her sense of violation was weaker here, however. What had seemed a great romance and a wonderful gesture in Glimshard looked downright odd, verging on the suicidal now. Torada had put Tzaban beyond reach, and so had his own queen. There was more to this than she understood, and she felt the uncomfortable sensation of a mental shiver as she tried to do so – the telltale sign that she was overreaching herself. She let it go, but sensed that she was not untalented for this, only that she had never paid attention to it before.

  However the trek down the pit took all her attention. They went by the witchlight she cast and progressed slowly, watched over by archers. The cicadas were their only witnesses however. At last they came to the thing itself and Tralane looked up at the enormous metal cone. A hatch in its side was tilted at an angle to the already angular ramp – dizzying in combination. She stood with her jaw open looking up at the vast, starless triangle it cut out of the night sky.

  TZABAN

  Tzaban trod carefully at the side of the engineer. He could smell and feel the tension of the others like a set of weighted sheets winding about him. His mouth still held the tang of the drink they had poisoned. He didn’t blame them for that nor was it the first he’d tasted. The toxin made him a little slow and lightheaded.

  The attack at the door was expected but even so he was slow to move, almost taking a dagger to the back as he and the guard staggered forward together. He let the man’s impetus slam his head into the metal wall, helping just a bit, and straightened with the knife in his hand and an inch deep slash in his side. The engineer screamed as he pushed her behind him. An arrow thunked into the object with a sudden clang that startled everyone, even Borze, drawing his sword but on his back foot as Tzaban thrust the dagger forwards. They froze there at impasse for a few moments, the witchlight flickering weakly and immersing them in moments of darkness.

  The woman said something and the general answered her, ‘I’m sorry.’ He did not stand down however. The guard looked to him for instruction, pale and shaking in intermittent flashes – Tzaban counted him useless, his nerve was gone.

  ‘If you kill me there is no reason for Karoo not to overrun you now,’ Tzaban said and the general’s shoulders sank a notch in recognition of this truth. He straightened and put his sword away, signalled to his man to pick up the unconscious guard.

  He looked beyond Tzaban to the woman. ‘It was for the city. For you. She is not here. She doesn’t know.’ In the next flicker his face was that of a broken man but in the next second that had been replaced so that anyone who did not see it would never have known it was there.

  Tzaban knew he had no more to fear from that quarter, turned and found the engineer with her back to the door, staring at them all with wide eyes. She had one hand stretched out towards him and he moved to her until she could grab his arm and use it to pull herself back to her feet proper.

  ‘Let’s forget it,’ she said, though her wide eyes betrayed her generosity. ‘A momentary lapse of judgement under duress. Now, the door.’ She did something with her hand and the witchlight died to a tiny glow beside them so that archers would struggle from any distance to see it. She made sure she blocked it with her body.

  A man’s voice called out of the darkness close by but Borze made a signal for stand down. He did something near the opening and the metal flap opened, rolling silently into the wall beside it. From the interior of the metal cask an odour of long dead air escaped in a sigh, full of the tales of frightened people and their waste. The sounds of the jungle night echoed oddly from it, as if they rebounded, while within the echoes of distant, lost taps and knocks came tremulously out. Tzaban scented Karoo in there, yes, true, but males, not females. He was growling before he knew it until the stifled intake of breath from the engineer told him he was making her afraid.

  Borze stood at attention, ‘I wish you speed and luck. Empress’ fortune with you,’ he said, heartfelt with it because he was longing for them to go inside, away, become their own business and not his.

  The engineer straightened and turned, went in, dismissing him with her silence. Tzaban melted around her, a protective shadow, finding his new body lighter, smaller, more agile – more suited to the interior universe of the vessel as his mind was more suited to understanding the people.

  The door closed behind them with a soft hiss and a thunk that carried from one hard surface to another so that he could see suddenly, as if light had switched on, though there was no light but the witchlight of the engineer. They were on a platform the size of the commander’s tent, surrounded by crates and cables, with a single exit leading on to a ramp that led down below the level of the ground outside. It opened into a larger space, and beyond that were warrens and halls that stretched further than he could grasp on that single echo.

  There was a sound, a voice of a kind, and then lights came up in long streamers rigged from the walls and hanging from overhead like ropes made of fireflies.

  ‘Hello?’ someone called from further down, uncertainly.

  ‘Carlyn? Is that you?’ The engineer’s voice was hoarse, near desperate as she replied, pushing around Tzaban to go to the edge of the platform where a waist-high rail prevented her moving further.

  ‘Lane?’ There was a sudden increase of light and then a hammering of feet on iron stairs. ‘Sorry about the lights it’s just a precaution.’ A small female appeared at the top of the walkway and hurled itself forwards. Tzaban watched the women hug. The new, smaller one was exhausted from terror, he could smell it, and feel her fear as she looked over her friend’s shoulder and saw him there. As she went rigid, Tralane noticed and drew back to turn around.

  ‘I guess there’s a lot to explain,’ she said. ‘He’s all right.’ It was the same voice she had used to reassure the general.

  Tzaban felt a new emotion try to take possession of him; shame. He resisted it though it made him want to hunt and kill the other males immediately. Memories of his early days
appeared with unpleasant vitality; blood on his hands, bodies hanging in the trees, intestines like liquid wax dripping down to the ground, a pure, puissant feeling of absolute victory in every vein and nowhere to put it so that his pleasure soon turned to frustrated rage and in the absence of further enemies upon whom to vent his wrath he had left to find a new purpose for himself. Instead, with every blood-rich victim, it had found him and led him here. A brief elation in his own mastery had been crushed now by the queen. This fresh denial of his value from the human only highlighted that, much greater, hurt. As the two women stared at him, finding only discomfort from him, he felt he ought to make a submissive gesture but, as ever, he couldn’t. He looked back with his own contempt and disappointment in them and was pierced with sad longing for something he couldn’t identify.

  ‘There are things…’ the other woman began hesitantly.

  ‘He is here to protect us from them,’ the engineer said firmly.

  ‘But he is one of…’

  ‘Yes. That doesn’t change things. The Empress claimed him.’ Her glance told him she knew well that claim was waning with every passing hour away from the presence but she didn’t show it to the curly-haired one and the statement had the desired effect of ending the conversation. The one called Carlyn led them down the ramp, down stairs, along walkways, deeper into the structure of the building until they were well below the line at which it protruded from the earth. The grip of the ground muffled the echoes in new ways though where halls opened out into what he had determined to be a central, empty core, sounds travelled far and described areas of ever-increasing size.

  Tzaban paid only tangential attention to their conversation, following because he must. They underwent the same uneasy meetings in several large rooms that smelled strange, of things he didn’t have names for. All were lit by the strange light ropes, sometimes in the roof, sometimes the walls, sometimes all over the place. A few short fights sorted out those of the guard or the men who didn’t want him around. A woman tried to argue for his removal but they were all too convinced by now that he was on their side – the forgotten seal of the Empress on his hand persuaded them. He found it funny, to take a mark like that as a token. The only marks worth considering were scars or those in the scent and taste of a thing. Tralane apologised for him, made peace, though he never did. He remained at her side, ate what she gave him, drank when she gave him water. Few people spoke to him but he spoke to them if they wanted it. He listened and watched. Wherever they went he hunted the other Karoo, but they had gone far into the depths.