Context

by John Meaney

  A smile was hovering on Jay’s lips. Tom looked at him, then returned his attention to the young officers’ strategy discussion.

  Then he asked a quiet question which stilled their voices and caused them to turn their lev-stools to face him.

  ‘You’re targeting civilians, is that it?’

  One of the young men looked at Jay—a flickering glance, as though seeking permission; Tom noted Jay’s minute nod in reply—then addressed Tom directly: ‘An outmoded concept, surely. An entire culture supports a military action, regardless of some members’ non-combatant status.’

  ‘So everyone in a culture is identical in outlook, are they?’

  There was a pause, then a young woman—the one who believed that pounding the enemy was called for—spoke up.

  ‘Definitely not, sir. That’s why isolation and continuous bombardment will make the general populace give up their military leaders, and revoke allegiance to the enemy.’

  ‘After Flashpoint,’ one of them said, smirking, ‘perhaps they’ll be all the more willing to engage in revolution.’

  Tom shook his head. ‘If someone—some external power—destroys your home, uses blockades to cut off food and other supplies, does that weaken your community spirit and allegiance to your Lord, or does it strengthen it?’

  They were silent for a moment.

  Then another young officer, who had been silently regarding the model, pointed to the heart of the glowing network. ‘Penetration,’ he said, ‘is what we need. Feints here and here, then a lancing strike, straight to the core.’

  ‘Taking out their strike capability.’ One of his colleagues nodded. ‘Nice. And effective.’

  There was a chorus of agreement. Then, with an air of expectancy, they looked at Tom.

  Across the table, Jay smiled.

  ‘It could work.’ Tom spoke slowly. ‘Say that it does. What do you do next?’

  ‘Send in massive occupying forces.’ It was the fellow who believed all targets were legitimate. He pointed into the model. ‘Spread them out, keep the population under the thumb. The iron fist, I mean.’

  ‘No . . .’ The young woman beside him shook her head. ‘Give them aid. Rebuild the med centres and the schools.’ She looked at Tom for approval.

  He smiled gently, and said: ‘And if you’re dependent on an outsider for handouts—for your very existence, I mean—what do you feel towards them? Love and gratitude?’

  ‘Ah.’ She understood immediately. ‘Bitter resentment, more like.’

  ‘Especially if the outside force,’ said her quiet colleague, ‘is a former enemy.’

  ‘Bloody Chaos,’ said the belligerent one. ‘How do you ever win a war?’

  Tom looked at Jay.

  ‘I believe,’ said Jay A’Khelikov, ‘that was Lord Corcorigan’s point.’

  Before the young officers left, Tom called to them.

  ‘You want to learn how to think strategically?’

  ‘Why we’re here, sir.’

  Their faces were expectant.

  ‘Here, tomorrow, same time.’ Tom paused, then continued, ‘You can each present a poem entitled “Freedom”, which I’ll expect you to write tonight.’

  One of the young officers laughed.

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

  ‘Sir.’

  The group bowed to Tom and Jay, then filed out quietly, failing to hide their dismay.

  After they had left, and the daistral house was deserted save for a few older officers breakfasting at the rear, Jay chuckled.

  ‘You’re an evil bastard, my Lord.’

  ‘And you, my Lord’—Tom raised a daistral cup in toast—’set me up very nicely.’

  I am not a soldier.

  Nor had he ever wanted to be one. But Tom felt strangely isolated, sitting in a rear booth in a tavern that evening, as he watched carousing troops, smiling at their songs—traditional melodies, with words their composers would not have recognized.

  The bar counter was circular, surrounding a thick round pillar of raw grey stone decorated with a collection of flasks and decanters of every hue. Around the bar, the crowd was a mass of energy; at least half of them were belting out the lyrics of ‘The Sergeant’s Weapon Is Fully Charged (Fastened to a Sticky Tag)’ to the tune of ‘The Ducal March’.

  In an alcove on the far side, Tom glimpsed Jay A’Khelikov, hunched over a solitary holodisplay.

  But then, as Tom stood up, a grizzled old sergeant-maximus called Gieson—a few people murmured his name—rubbed his big square hand across his scarred face, the stubble on his scalp, adjusted his eyepatch, then put down his tankard and began to sing in a soft sweet voice which carried through the tavern and brought every conversation to a standstill.

  It was a ballad—a young man sickened by horror, his comrades fallen and his best friend’s blood still warm upon his tunic, remembers the soft white arms of his true love as she ladles out rations in the Aqua Hall back home—and even Tom, threading his way through the crowd, stopped and held his breath as the sergeant drew his song to its bittersweet conclusion.

  In the silence, Tom blinked away moisture from his eyes.

  Then thunderous applause echoed around the tavern, delivered by soldiers young and old, of both sexes, who were unashamed of the tears which ran glistening down their faces.

  A hubbub grew then, as the emotional release spilled over into raucous conversation and renewed bouts of drinking. As the crowd’s boisterousness returned, Tom reached Jay’s alcove.

  ‘Greetings, my Lord A’Khelikov.’

  ‘Tom!’ Jay looked up hurriedly, wiping the holo with a cutting gesture. ‘I’m surprised to see you here.’

  ‘May I?’ Tom gestured towards the seat opposite Jay. ‘Or should I leave you to your inspiration?’

  For he had glimpsed the verse which Jay was writing. From choice?

  Perhaps it was just that he would not have his officers-in-training put through anything he could not achieve himself.

  ‘Ha. See him?’ Jay pointed towards a scowling, blocky-shouldered sergeant-minor. ‘His cadets call him Bastard Benjil, especially after punishment runs.’

  ‘A charming fellow.’

  ‘Yes? Well, compared to you ...What do you think my young officers are calling you right now?’

  Tom picked up a decanut from a bowl on the table.

  ‘Well, so long as they’re doing it in rhyming couplets’—he popped the nut into his mouth, and spoke while chewing—‘I really don’t give a damn.’

  His dreams that night were haunted by desires unfulfilled, hopes unrealized, through which eerily paranoid images flitted: women who called to him but slipped away through solid stone; crowds of pale strangers feasting on corpse-grey fleischbloc; inhuman high-shouldered warriors, taller than a man, with granulated faces and fiery vertical-slit eyes, behind whom butchered humans hung from ceiling hooks, their pale glistening torsos axed open to drain the blood…

  When he jerked into wakefulness next morning, he recalled nothing save the touch of women’s fingertips, their fading cries, and the febrile beating of his own heart.

  On black smartsatin sheets which folded back as they sensed his waking, Tom lay there, reflected in the bronze-tinged smoky ceiling-mirrorfield. His pale image stared back: a one-armed warrior with haunted eyes, and an air of not knowing where the Chaos life was taking him.

  He felt exhausted.

  It was early, but he dragged himself outside to run, knowing he would feel worse if he slacked off in training.

  Tom passed through a glimmering, milk-white membrane, along a short round tunnel, and came out onto a long esplanade. Beyond, the small sea’s mint-green waves gently lapped against shore and pillars, their reflections swimming upon the high cavern ceiling.

  But it was not the tranquil water or the clean, energizing air which stopped Tom dead.

  He was used to being the solitary runner, the obsessive athlete training in deserted corridors and caverns; but here, now, there were two hundred—no, thre
e hundred or more -men and women running hard in small teams beside the waves, throwing themselves through gymnastic groundwork, scrambling across obstacle courses or climbing the cavern walls.

  Interesting place.

  Then he stretched lightly, jogged onto the esplanade, and began to run.

  Afterwards, as he stripped off his sweat-sodden clothes, Tom waved his bedchamber’s holodisplay into life. He was certain there would be no message from Corduven.

  Yet the minimized tricon which hung there was enough to make him shiver.

  When he pointed, the intricate knot of multi-hued light magnified, unfurled to deliver its many-layered semantic content, full of ironic overtones: exquisite topography, for a message which was so simple at its heart.

  The Lady Sylvana would be taking breakfast in one hour’s time, in the Wyvern Gardens off Promenade Excandior, and she hoped he would be able to join her there.

  Elva...

  But the image he saw in his mind was of a pale-skinned noble beauty with upswept golden hair, who moved with a soft and easy grace, and whose blue eyes sparkled brighter than any sea, alive with intellectual energy and a subtle humour which could never fade.

  There had been times, when climbing, that Tom had thought he was about to die. But the body, flooded by adrenaline from the suprarenal glands, can deal with such emergencies on the spot.

  It would be hard to reconcile the image of that fast-reacting athlete to this dithering man, fidgeting before his wardrobe-alcove, trying to decide what he should wear.

  Get a grip, will you ?

  And then he was rushing to get ready, having left it strictly too late; perhaps it was a subconscious strategy to get his body moving fast, to deal with the heart-pounding fear.

  He practically ran out of his apartment, black cloak billowing, servitrices dropping into startled curtsies as he barrelled past them, and was outside.

  Streams of water arced overhead, forming silvery arches in the air through which tiny pastel-coloured fish with attenuated tendrils swam. There was soft sweet music, a mossy fragrance which hovered at the edge of one’s perceptions -and, seated amid the elegance, the Lady Sylvana.

  Her skin was pale ivory beneath the platinum glowglobes’ light, her long golden hair bound up with silver cords and fastened with ruby clasps. She wore a morning gown of silver and cream which left bare her arms and flawless throat; a tiny faux-moth of silver and diamonds fluttered above each shoulder.

  ‘Tom.’

  She held out her hand without rising, and Tom touched her fingertips with his own as he bowed and softly kissed the back of that smooth, perfectly formed hand.

  Then he sat down on the floating soft-cushioned chair opposite her, and for a long moment they regarded each other without speaking.

  Sylvana had lost a little weight. Unfashionably thin: it served only to enhance the ethereal quality of her presence. For Tom, she was suddenly the world’s focal point, as if all reality led inwards to where she sat: real, tangible, around whom the air almost vibrated with excitement.

  Elva. ..

  But this was here and now.

  ‘You saved my life, Tom.’

  Even her words were mellifluous song, liquid and beguiling.

  ‘Good, my Lady ... An you had not saved mine, so many years before, I’d not have had the opportunity.’

  Sylvana shook her head.

  ‘But at such cost...’ She did not look at his left shoulder. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Ah, Sylvana.’

  ‘You know ... I can’t forget the way you looked, when you dropped from nowhere onto the cruciform where I knew I was going to die. There were things I realized, in that moment, that I had never allowed myself to think before.’

  Tom swallowed. He did not know what to say; could not have spoken if he did.

  ‘Well, then.’ Sylvana leaned back and gestured a column of small tricons into being above the tabletop. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’

  ‘To tell you the truth’—Tom took a breath, released it—’food is the last thing on my mind.’

  ‘Some daistral, then.’

  ‘That would be nice.’

  They sipped from jewel-ringed cups, and when Tom shivered at the sweet taste overlaid by whiganberry and drime, it seemed that Sylvana did the same.

  He had not realized that the simple act of taking daistral could be so sensual.

  For a time they talked about history, engaged in wordplay as innocent as in their youth; they might have been back in the Sorites School, during a break between Lord Velond’s exacting tutorials.

  Finally, when the daistral was finished and Sylvana made as if to rise—Tom stood quickly, and the majordomo appeared from nowhere—he thought his heart might break: the ending of a perfect moment.

  Then, ‘I need to go back to my place,’ she said. ‘Will you walk with me, Tom?’

  ‘I— Of course.’

  A tiny smile touched her full rose-pink lips.

  ‘My Lord Corcorigan, I take nothing for granted.’

  He walked alongside her, on her left, as they passed through a lemon-tinted glassine tunnel, then a stone garden with slowly morphing gargoyles, and came out upon the esplanade.

  Sylvana slipped her arm through his.

  Finally, they rose up a polished golden ramp, walked the length of a marble gallery, and stopped before tall doors of gold and rubies, where a discreet tricon indicated this was Sylvana’s home.

  Tom looked at her.

  “Thank you. I’m—’

  She stopped him with a gentle smile.

  ‘Don’t you want to come inside?’

  On a diamond table at the side of her bedchamber stood a tricon cast in white metal: Epimenides’ paradox—this statement is a lie.

  Tom remembered the day Corduven had given it to her.

  Her dress slid from her shoulders as she turned to him, arms outstretched, and old memories slipped away as he took her incredible softness in his arm and kissed her. Her lips were silken, absorbing him.

  Her nipples were button-round, pink as though blushing; these, too, he softly kissed.

  ‘Oh, Tom…’

  It was a dream; it was reality.

  ‘My love.’

  His tunic degaussed, shed in segments onto the floor.

  Fell on the bed together.

  Her fingers were in his hair, and she whimpered, and he was inside her, a miracle. Their very cells cried out for merging, fusion into one transcendent entity, pulsing together, united with the universe, the cosmic expansion—yes, my darling—and the nova explosion which blasted all history apart—now, yes, now—and brought them into a new and different world.

  Staring into each other’s eyes.

  ‘No-one, Tom, has ever focused on me like that.’

  ‘Years of pure thought.’ He kissed her nose. ‘Self-discipline, logosophical—’

  ‘Ha.’ Her smooth, perfect arms enclosed him. ‘Come here, my pure-thinking Lord.’

  Later, entwined upon the bed:

  ‘It’s serious, Tom.’ Suddenly solemn, the music of her voice. ‘The Blight, I mean.’

  ‘Is it?’ Dreaming, still.

  ‘I mean’—with her fingertip running down his sternum -’its incursions are spreading. More than— Ah, no. Yes. No. Not now ...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Oh, Tom ...’

  And later still:

  Tom was standing naked beside a floating table, drinking water, when he heard footsteps, and hurriedly pulled on his trews. In the bed, Sylvana laughed prettily, though she tugged the smartsatin sheet up around herself.

  ‘There’s no need,’ she said, as a short grey-haired servitrix came into the chamber, and immediately headed for Sylvana’s discarded clothes.

  ‘Just the robe, Alystra.’ Sylvana gestured. ‘Leave the rest.’

  Quickly, the woman folded the robe, draped it across her forearms, and left. At no time did she look up or address Sylvana or Tom.

  ‘No need for modesty.�
� Sylvana patted the bed. ‘Come back...’

  Tom stared at the doorway for a moment, then sat beside the Lady he had dreamed of so often, for so many years.