by Stephen Hunt
Cassandra cursed herself for her defeatism. She was the heir to an imperial house, trained to rule and command and fight from the moment she had been old enough to walk. What were these gasks? Twisted leather-skinned savages, holding on to her as a favour to hairy-arsed slaves who had somehow got lucky and escaped from Vandia. If she couldn’t get away from gutter scum such as this, then she was not fit to be a celestial-caste imperial. She should be considered a mewling disgrace to her blood, breeding and house’s name. And rightly so. Her grandfather’s harem produced countless grandchildren sprung from his loins, all expected to fight and scrap for a share of what was rightfully theirs. It was how the empire kept itself strong. She was the empire’s strength. As far-called as young Cassandra Skar had ended up, she must survive and prosper, or wither and die. Unfortunately for her, Sheplar Lesh had other ideas.
Her minder had just turned up outside her quarters; a store room, originally. The one type of room that used doors in the gask city – to keep rodents away from baskets of pulses and grains that were the vegetarian people’s diet. And now, ironically, used to keep a Vandian noblewoman in. Sheplar stepped past the two gasks on guard duty outside, bowing to her. The foolish man had the face of a clown, Asiatic features buckled around a semi-permanent smile. He wore a leather flyer’s jacket dyed purple with white sheep-fur trim around its waist, cuffs and collar. An aviator. That was a joke. She had occasionally seen his people’s aircraft patrolling the border overhead, through gaps in the trees. Little wooden triangles with a single rotor at the rear powered by a primitive corn-oil fuelled combustion engine. The Rodalian barbarians wouldn’t last a minute in the air against her people’s advanced forces.
‘It is time, bumo. Lessons.’
Cassandra frowned. Always he called her bumo. Or even worse, young bumo. Whatever the term meant in Rodalian, she suspected it wasn’t respectful. Sheplar always managed to speak the common language, often known as radio, or simply trade-tongue, with a thick accent that made him sound more muddled then she suspected he already was. ‘As always, Lesh, I find I must consume your insolence for breakfast. Why do you believe your spine-skinned friends have anything to teach me?’
‘The gasks believe it is the duty of the young to learn, and so they will teach you, whatever your wishes. It will go easier if you set your mind to humility.’
‘Humility is about the only thing a slave has to teach me.’
‘The gasks have never been conquered by your people,’ said Sheplar. ‘You have only ever held one of their kind as a slave. And that arrangement did not work out very well for Vandia.’
‘All outside the empire are fit only to serve us as slaves. All countries yet to be claimed by Vandia pay tribute to us.’ Cassandra jerked a finger to the ceiling of the little wooden room. ‘The metal in the propellers on your toy aircraft comes from Vandia’s sky mines, even if you are ignorant of its origins. It has travelled along the caravan routes for centuries to reach your foul barbarian lands. When you pay travellers for metal, you ultimately pay us.’
‘I think I’m still paying for it,’ sighed Sheplar. He lifted Cassandra up by the scruff of the neck and manhandled her towards the door, the two gask guards falling in behind them as they left the room. They passed along a narrow wooden corridor; brown of course, as brown as everything in this cursed forest that wasn’t leafy and green. Even the membranes in the wall that admitted washes of emerald light were some form of solidified transparent sap. ‘You’ll discover this morning’s tribute to the empire waiting for you, bumo. Paid in the form of mathematics, I believe. A currency I hope you will find acceptable.’
Cassandra stepped through an open circle carved into the building and onto a swaying wooden walkway suspended high in the trees. She gazed down onto the forest floor seventy feet below. Like all the city’s gask hovels, the building she’d left was a shaped wooden pod grown organically around the trunk of a tree, clinging to the bark like some bizarre fungal growth. As far as the young imperial noble’s eye could see, hourglass pines rose like columns around her, thick at the base, pinched in the middle, before widening out for a final spurt to their full two hundred and fifty metre height. ‘In the imperium I was tutored by Doctor Yair Horvak, one of the greatest minds in the empire, which means the greatest mind in the world, in all of Pellas! I mastered weapons at the hands of Paetro Barca, the legion’s deadliest soldier and guardsman. Do you expect a herd of gask druids clinging to the trees to have anything to teach me?’
‘Teaching is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel,’ said Sheplar. ‘I fear that in you, they are kindling with very damp wood.’
Cassandra ignored him. They crossed the walkway on foot, a giddying prospect to someone born to finer things in the empire; where celestial-caste citizens kept air-conditioned helos with trained pilots to ferry them across the vast, towering cities. Not that one of the rotor-topped aircraft could have hovered between the trees. After a few minutes, they arrived at one of the larger communal pods used as a classroom for the younger gasks. Inside, she found twenty or so gask pupils sitting cross-legged in the floor, short bodies covered by identical brown robes resembling togas, each creature’s chest crossed by the belt of a satchel that contained their almost-holy calculator machines. In the teacher’s position at the front was a gask she recognized. Cassandra bridled. This gask had once been one of the slaves labouring in her mines. Did they really expect her to accept tuition from a lowly miner?
‘Do you expect me to accept lessons from this, this slave?’
‘An ex-slave, technically,’ said Kerge. ‘Given that I am no longer being exploited as a source of labour in Vandia’s sky mines. And in broader moral terms, gask-kind neither recognizes the concept of slavery nor practises it.’
Sheplar leant in behind Cassandra, a hint of menace infecting his usually jovial tone. ‘And as Kerge’s father gave his life to free him from your cursed empire, I suggest you count yourself lucky that the gasks are not a revengeful people and accept his tuition.’
Kerge indicated the floor. ‘Please, womanling …’
Womanling. Hardly any better than bumo. Cassandra snorted, but occupied one of the vacant wicker mats on the floor regardless. That this gask Kerge’s heart had not filled with revenge was only a symptom of his nation’s weakness. Only the weak practised pity. Those born to rule defended their position without mercy. Of course the gasks wouldn’t dare to hurt her. For if the empire ever heard that one of the emperor’s own blood had been abused by barbarians, the imperium’s forces would arrive here and burn the forest to ashes in punishment.
Kerge shuffled in front of a blackboard while Sheplar Lesh stood guard by the doorway. ‘Today,’ announced the gask, ‘we shall examine measure-theoretic probability theory, looking in detail at sample spaces as applied to Borel algebra and the Dirac delta function.’
‘If you expect me to work at your ridiculous mathematical recreations, then you shall issue me with one of your calculation machines,’ demanded Cassandra.
‘None of those studying here will be using their computation engines during the lesson,’ said Kerge. ‘Before you pick up the chisel, you must develop enough understanding of form to carve.’
‘And what use are your stupid tortuous mind games? Are they rhetoric to allow me to sway minds and lead? Military theory to allow me to conquer battlefields? Economics to help my commercial interests flourish and prosper?’
‘Their mastery allows us to navigate the true paths of the great fractal tree.’
Cassandra snorted. The savages’ faith that they could scry the future and adjust their behaviour accordingly was no better than shamans swaying on the ground in a drug-induced haze, before emerging from their trance to announce that they had seen the future, and the gods wanted everyone to pay the witchdoctors a lot more tithes. ‘And do you also expect me also to commune with the heathen spirits of your holy tree?’
‘That would be too much to ask. But no learning is ever wasted,’ said Kerge. ‘A
s long as you live, keep learning how to live.’
‘And what did you learn as the imperium worked you in my sky mine, slave?’
Kerge indicated the oval pod-like room they sat in; the vast, deep forest beyond the sap windows. ‘To be more grateful for what is free.’
‘You would be well-advised to set me free,’ hissed Cassandra. ‘For if the empire ever discovers I live, they will travel here for me and make a hell of your damn precious forests.’
‘You would still be a prisoner, even if you set out today for Vandia on one of your craft. You have not yet learned to discern the bars of your cage. Now, we begin …’
Lady Cassandra groaned, but picked up the wax tablet and sharp wooden needle needed to compose answers in the tablet’s surface. It wasn’t fair. These savages were tutored from their youngest years in such convoluted mathematical bunk. How did they expect a Vandian to keep up, when her superior education to date had been in subjects that really mattered? If only Doctor Horvak was here. He’d understand this abstract nonsense backwards and forwards, and find a way to make it intelligible. But the gasks didn’t even begin to try … they wanted to humiliate her, to make her doubt her abilities. To keep her a compliant little hostage until she became an old maid, driven insane by captivity and their outlandish, contradictory slave philosophies. At least when the empire made serfs of its barbarian inferiors, the Vandians had the kindness to make it abundantly clear what was required for a slave’s survival. Work. Obedience. Loyalty to your betters in the higher castes. Well, the gasks and the dirty human savages they counted as allies wouldn’t succeed. In Lady Cassandra, these cud-chewing primitives had bitten off far more than they could handle. She had made her mind up. Escape from this dreary perdition was worth any price, up to and including her possible death. Where there was a will, there was a way. And her will was inestimable. Cassandra set her mind to following this lesson, a confusing fug of concepts and expressions she fought her way through. The class went on for hours without a break. But an interruption did finally arrive in the form of an elderly gask. Veneration of the ancestors was one small thing Vandian culture seemed to share with these tree-hugging natives, and Cassandra could tell from the tenor of the hushed conversation that something of import was passing here between Kerge and the elder. Her suspicions were confirmed when the tutorial ended early and Sheplar joined the conversation, his body stiff with a palpable tension quite unlike the gormless, happy-go-lucky mountain barbarian.
Sheplar walked over and lifted the tablet from Cassandra’s hand, placing it in a pile on the side of the room, making no comment on her progress – or lack of it – during the lesson. Of course, the clownish Rodalian could probably barely count beyond the number of fingers on his hand, and was ill-placed to sit in judgement on any work done here. He marched Cassandra towards the classroom’s exit.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I wish to accompany Kerge to his people’s council, bumo. And as it is my duty to guard you today, you shall come with us.’
Cassandra stepped outside. The other pupils scattered across a multiplicity of walkways, travelling home or to whatever tasks they had to attend. ‘What are the gasks’ concerns to you?’
A rare look of sadness creased Sheplar’s features. ‘Kerge’s father, Khow, was a fine friend. He saved my life many times on our journey to rescue the people your empire stole from Weyland. Anything that concerns his child also concerns me.’
Cassandra travelled the roped walkway, boards swaying under her feet as she and her jailor followed Kerge and the city elder. She noted the two gask guards trailing carefully behind her, the pair’s weight adding to the path’s rocking. ‘I saw the old gask die on the battlefield during the slave revolt. He died well.’
‘With honour, perhaps. But the gasks are ashamed of giving in to their killing furies. His death was not judged well by the standards of his people. For them, Khow’s end was at best a regretful necessity borne of self-preservation and the love he held for his kidnapped child.’
‘You are a fool, Sheplar Lesh. Put the gasks in a legion and beat their pacifism from them and you would have an unstoppable force with which to hammer your enemies.’
The Rodalian aviator sighed. ‘Perhaps we have fewer enemies than your empire.’
‘One enemy is all it takes. You will discover that, when Vandia arrives for me.’
‘We shall see, bumo. My country is a member of the Lancean League, as is the kingdom of Weyland. We will fight together if your imperium raids here again.’
‘Then you will fall together. Your web of petty alliances will not be enough to challenge Vandia.’
‘It is a sin to believe evil of others, but rarely a mistake. That is a quotation you can find carved in the wind temples of my country. I never understood those words until I travelled to Vandia and saw the conditions you held your workers in at the sky mines.’
‘And travelled back again,’ said Cassandra, hoping to elicit some information she might use to help her escape. But her jailor was not to be drawn. Perhaps Sheplar Lesh wasn’t quite as daft as he looked. They reached a spiral staircase winding around a tree trunk; twisting stairs leading to a series of joined pods raised high above the web of walkways. This, it seemed, was their destination. She began climbing the stairs after the aviator, her pair of native guards treading lightly behind her.
‘Keep quiet inside,’ ordered Sheplar. ‘Kerge’s fate is bound to yours … by more than the branches of his people’s fractal tree. Your generous treatment here has partly been due to Kerge’s intervention. If you were being held in a human town by the Weylanders you mistreated as slaves, your education would, I suspect, be more arduous than some classroom learning.’
‘If you and your friends ever hope to ransom me, you’d be advised to keep me well.’
‘The imperium’s gold is just one of the many things I do not require from it,’ said Sheplar.
Cassandra climbed upward with renewed interest. So, her ex-slaves weren’t holding her for money? No ransom had been sent for, then. Cassandra wasn’t sure if her inestimable mother, Princess Helrena, would have sent gold or dispatched the price in steel, in the form of a revenge fleet to burn this barbarian backwater to the ground. It was looking more and more likely that escape was the only sure way Cassandra would depart this dreary place. And her fate was somehow tied to this gask ex-slave, or at least, the clemency of her treatment was dependent on him? She was suddenly alert to the possibilities and pitfalls awaiting her. The stairs rose through the floor of one of the pods. Cassandra found herself standing inside a large oval meeting hall, its wooden walls polished to a burnished walnut shine. She felt like a squirrel inside a tree’s hollow. But there were no acorns stored here, only seating built into the wall, some kind of council chamber judging by the number of elder gasks dotted around the room. A case that resembled a wooden cabinet had been constructed slanted across the floor’s centre. As Cassandra moved closer, she noted the cabinet was fronted with a thin sheet of glass. A complex wooden labyrinth connected inside its interior, like an oversized version of a child’s ball-in-a-maze puzzle, where marbles needed to be manoeuvred towards a maze’s centre. A series of seven jars had been fixed to the case near the floor, each a different colour glass. Was this some kind of gask gambling den? Did they drop marbles in the top of the labyrinth and make wagers as to which glass the ball dropped into? If Kerge owed a betting debt to some local lord, maybe she was here to watch the gang break his fingers as an inducement to pay? Cassandra knew such punishments were common among the criminal underworld of Vandia’s overcrowded cities, but felt oddly disappointed to think matters might unfold similarly amongst her exotic captors. Cassandra kept out of the way by the edge of the hall, standing by Sheplar Lesh, watching for what was to unfold next.
Kerge took position in the centre of the hall. He bowed towards an elderly male gask who hobbled forward from his seat. Cassandra reckoned the creature would have been better off staying seated. The elder moved
slowly, with all the cares of bones made brittle by the passage of time. The old councillor halted before Kerge and reached for the leather satchel dangling from his thin chest. The councillor removed a white ivory box. Flipping its lid up, the elder revealed a row of small brass ball-bearings. Given how rare metal was out here, she guessed they would be worth a fair amount of money.
