by Stephen Hunt
‘You are probably the first Vandian to visit, bumo,’ said Sheplar. He huddled next to Kerge on the wagon’s footplate while the gask held the reins. He sported a rabbit-fur-trimmed aviator’s hat, the fur dyed purple, with its leather earflaps worn down. She was more than a little envious of its obvious warmth. ‘Naimzeraw merely wants to test you. To see what sort of person comes calling.’
‘Why would any of my people want to come to this barren, forsaken place?’
‘The clear air and a view from heaven’s doorstep?’ suggested the Rodalian, condescendingly.
‘These winds are intolerable.’
‘These are hardly winds, bumo,’ said Sheplar. ‘We call this Sogo, the windless region of Rodal. In trade tongue, porch.’
‘You are joking.’
‘He does not joke,’ said Kerge from the front of the wagon. ‘Rodal is not known as the walls of the league just because it holds back the steppes’ nomads. It’s also a containing chamber for weather systems that form when cold air from the league nations meets warm air from the steppes, mixed in with massive quantities of moisture from the Lancean Ocean to the west. Rodalian winds are a thing of legend and terror.’
‘Not to us,’ said Sheplar. ‘We respect the spirits, but we never fear them. This is our home and they are our guides. Rodal has given me everything.’
‘You must forgive me my apprehension, then,’ said Kerge. ‘Given the choice, we gasks prefer not to venture far from our forests. We live in the shadow of the mountains but few of our traders travel this far. As much as we appreciate the protection of your heights, Northhaven streets are as far-called as we wish to explore.’
‘Given the choice.’ Sheplar glared back at Cassandra.
‘You should have stayed in Vandia,’ she goaded. ‘You could have joined the spiky one as a slave in the sky mines. You keep boasting about what an excellent pilot you are. You could be put to service flying transporters between our mines.’
‘It is not a boast when it is a statement of fact,’ said Sheplar. ‘And Kerge, son of Khow, will never be your slave again. He is a free gask.’
‘That is so, yet I may never be considered a gask again,’ said Kerge. ‘The universe moves, but my mind may no longer move ahead of it. Without the gift of prediction, what am I? Little more than a common pattern manling with a few poisoned spines running along his skin.’
‘Your future sight may return to you,’ said Sheplar. ‘Your ranger friend Slell was hopeful.’
‘I fear he is too optimistic. To survive in the sky mines is to have your soul stolen. I, among very few, escaped. My lifetime’s luck has been depleted,’ said Kerge.
‘It had better not be,’ said Cassandra. ‘For when the empire comes for me, you will need a great deal of good fortune.’
Sheplar shook his head. ‘There is nobody on the road to hear her cries, but I am sorely tempted to gag her.’
‘Find cloth to cover my ears rather than my mouth and you will find me silent enough.’
Sheplar pulled himself off the footplate, rummaged around inside the covered wagon’s boxes and came out holding a cape with a fur-lined hood. He dropped it over her head and re-joined the gask at the front of the wagon. ‘Keep to your word, bumo.’
She snorted but held her peace. She had been filled with hope since realizing that the imperium’s local agents were sweeping the land for her. The very fact these barbarians had moved her so suddenly from the gasks’ forests spoke volumes of how much they feared she would be located, secured and returned to the empire. It didn’t matter where they took her now. Vandia would not give up on her. Not, she understood, out of any deep or abiding love for her. But because Lady Cassandra Skar carried divine blood, the emperor’s blood. To be held like this was to insult Vandia and all that was Vandian. Her only worry was that the empire’s agents would prefer see her dead than left a living hostage to remind Vandia’s enemies of the empire’s fallibility. It was all too feasible that if she was chained in some Rodalian mountain nest and proved too hard to rescue alive, the alternative – a little poison slipped into one of her meals – might seem a pragmatic solution to the kind of foreign intelligencers kept on the imperium payroll. Still, if her mother had anything to do with the matter, being retaken alive would be the only scheme they countenanced.
They rode on for the best part of the day. The back of the wagon’s cover was tied up against the elements but she could see well enough out of the front between her two captors. Green grassland covered the lower mountain slopes and valleys between the rises, giving way to mottled white where snow covered dark rock. They rattled slowly along a high path carved out of the mountainside, barely wide enough to accommodate the wagon. A vertiginous view to the left, only a few wooden markers with colourful pennants whipping in the breeze to mark places where they might fall to their deaths, wispy clouds drifting past below. There was little sign of the aviator’s countrymen along the path. Only the flags showed that anything sentient had passed this way or considered it, literally, a highway. The sun was going down, snow along the distant peaks glowing orange, when she spotted what looked to be a town or perhaps a large village. Blocky white-washed buildings had been carved out of the slopes of the mountains opposite, flat vertical walls dotted by hundreds of narrow windows sealed by sliding stone storm shutters. There were a few slanted lines where external staircases ran and a long flat stretch of rooftop for a skyguard plane to set down. The bulk of the space was no doubt burrowed inside the mountain face itself. Cassandra could hear a constant clacking from exposed rotating cylinders turning in the wind. No sign of electric lights, though, so the drums weren’t wind turbines. Prayer wheels, perhaps. Rice terraces sat in the shadow of the town’s underhang, narrow ledges as carefully carved from the mountainside as the buildings. There was no bridge across the chasm to the town, however. It seemed the three of them wouldn’t be spending the night there, whatever that place was called.
‘Your artisans have yet to master suspension span engineering,’ said Cassandra.
‘We can build bridges when necessary,’ said Sheplar. ‘But they are more use to our enemies than us.’ He pointed towards the town opposite. ‘To reach Salasang we would need to take a road down to the valley floor, cross the valley and then travel up again. Maybe two days, by foot. That is two days in which we can see our foe approaching and prepare for attack.’
It was a good point. Although who was around to attack this godforsaken land apart from mountain goats and eagles, she did not know. If it had been closer to Vandia she supposed they would have conquered it, installed an imperial governor and extracted annual tribute from the kingdom. The barbarian country would be considered a hardship posting, though, and thin pickings for the calculators of the empire – unless you valued snow, ice, granite and baskets of rice. They could always have found a use for Rodal’s pilots in the legions’ levies, she supposed. Anyone who could set an aircraft down on that thin long building in the gusty winds and survive the landing might make a passable pilot for imperial service. Maybe they were all mad, though, like poor clown-faced Sheplar Lesh. She almost laughed at the thought. An air legion of loons. Mad enough to call these bleak rocks home. Crazy enough to fly here.
They rode on, leaving the mountain with the town behind. The party continued their slow, careful journey through the high mountains for days, passing small villages and towns in the distance but never stopping. At one point they crawled past a structure she mistook for a dam, a sloping wooden structure built across a valley between two mountains, squatting in the shadow of a stone temple nearby. But when Cassandra asked about the angled doors opening and closing in the wood by a complex system of rope pulleys – with no sudden torrents of water released – the aviator told her it was one of the nation’s many wind walls. They channelled and managed the worst of the winds that flew through Rodal, mitigating the gales that would otherwise lash the valleys. Priests here, it seemed, did more than pray for clemency from their gods, they also operated as wind ke
epers on their high walls. A primitive solution compared to the cloud seeding that the empire used to guarantee the provinces’ harvest, but a reminder that you underestimated barbarians such as these mountain tribes at your peril.
It was getting close to dark when they took a fork in the road and headed away from the cliff edge, rock walls on either side of them, following a winding path until they reached a dead-end – a circular space for a caravan halt with a single building. They drew to a stop in front of a low brick building that resembled a windmill, stripped with vanes replaced by rope webbing hung with dyed pennants – devoid of houses’ arms and sigils, but fluttering in every imaginable colour. It was as though a party of children had descended on the bleak place and decided to decorate it with silks cut from their mothers’ dresses. The high rock walls and the winding road managed to cut off the worst of the wind, and the building, while simple grey brickwork and little more sophisticated than an oversized kiln, would keep any rain and snowfall off their heads. There was a small well next to the building but, given the small stream running down one of the walls, it seemed superfluous. Then she realized it must serve as a toilet. It seemed they were not the only travellers staying over. A horned yak had been tied up outside, its flanks warmed by a woollen saddle – a patchwork of colours every bit as bright as the fluttering flags – thrown across the leathery-skinned creature. It must make for an uncomfortable, slow mount. But then, what use a fine racing stallion on these dangerously high roads? The dull creature chewed at mossy grass that grew from cracks in the walls, oblivious to the newcomers.
Kerge gazed at a line of firework-like rockets dangling from a basket on the yak’s side. ‘A military patrol?’
Sheplar Lesh shook his head as he dismounted. ‘There is a hold of the Guild of Radiomen on one of the peaks nearby. What you see are postal rockets to fire bundles of messages across to villages and towns too small or poor to have their own guild receiving station.’ He left Cassandra’s leg irons on but untied her hands so she might eat, administering a stern warning about what to expect if she tried to escape. She shuffled after them. There was no door, but a blanket had been hung over the entrance. It was warmer inside the squat domed building than outside, if a little pungent. There was a single room with a lonely fireplace, and what she took to be dried yak shit acting as fuel for an iron pot simmering with rice. The room’s sole occupant glanced up from stirring the meal. An ancient man with lazy eyes, smothered in a brown fur coat that looked like the best part of a bear wrapped around a bony, wrinkled old stick.
Sheplar bowed towards the guild courier and introduced the party, one by one, condescendingly omitting Cassandra’s titles, as though she were no better than a common goat herder. The postal courier’s name, it transpired, was Gephal. He introduced himself by sweeping off his embroidered hat that had a wide white-fur brim and a tall crown elaborately sown with yellow and black mountain peaks.
‘You come from Weyland,’ said Gephal, more of a statement than a question, his curious gaze taking in the gask and Cassandra.
Sheplar nodded. ‘That is so.’
‘An aviator without a plane is a rare sight,’ said Gephal.
‘I buried her bones in the mud of Northhaven,’ said Sheplar, sadly. ‘Lost in combat.’
‘There will be more of that in the south,’ said Gephal. ‘I read many of the messages sent by the wireless voices. Hopefully their troubles will stay far from us.’
‘We travel to the skyguard station at Talatala,’ said Sheplar. ‘For passage on to the capital.’
‘The roads are open. Snow has been light here this winter. The winds from the steppes have blown angry and warm. That is never a good augury. Still, share my rice, Sheplar Lesh, you and the bumo and the man of the deep forests.’
‘You are kind.’
The old man handed the wooden spoon to Sheplar to stir and used a metal-tipped walking staff to hobble over to the door to check his yak. On the way he stopped and gazed thoughtfully at Cassandra. ‘You are not a Weylander.’
‘I am a noble daughter of the imperium, old man. One day I will be a princess.’
He grunted. ‘I have three daughters. They are all princesses. And my wife acts as if she is the greatest empress of all the ages.’
‘It is true,’ said Cassandra, irritated by the thin old man’s lack of respect.
He raised a bony finger to point at the cloak she wore. ‘Is that why the skyguard keeps you chained … you are so royal that you will float away, otherwise? Wear your clothes looser. Allow air to circulate, or you will sweat, and sweat turns to ice here, bumo. Unless princess’s bones have special protection against the mountain spirits.’ He grunted again and walked outside, muttering in a sarcastic imitation of her voice.
Dogs, I am surrounded by low-born dogs. She cursed him but sat down to eat his simple brown rice. It was astounding how hungry you could get when your body had to work so hard to stay warm. She drank from a clay pitcher of water filled from the mountain spring outside, so cold that it was almost hot. After the meal she lay down on one of the mats on the hard floor and covered herself in rough woollen blankets. Sheplar Lesh made the small concession of binding her hands in front of her rather than behind her back, so she could at least pull the blankets closer as she tried to sleep through their racket, the two Rodalians jabbering like monkeys as they supped warm rice wine from a glazed clay bottle. At least the gask did not join in their antics, happy to sit by the fire and drink spring water.
When she woke again it was the dead of night. The fire had gone out under the metal pot and she could feel the winter cold from outside pressing on her face. She was dog-tired, but her bladder was full and demanding a trip to the toilet. Cassandra really didn’t want to leave the warmth of her blankets, but the pressure was too great, there was no way she was going to sleep comfortably now. She kept the blankets wrapped around her as best she could as she shuffled slowly outside, pushing under the heavy blanket acting as door. It was every bit as freezing as she’d been dreading with little light from the stars and moon, the sky hidden by clouds. Her chains clinked against the rocky ground as she sat down and fumbled for her belt, shivering as she balanced on the primitive well-like structure. Her business done, she stood up, and suddenly noticed something was terribly wrong. The yak had vanished, its basket filled with postal rockets resting on the ground accusingly, chiding Cassandra for her woeful lack of observation. That was when a tattooed hand clamped a damp, sweet-smelling cloth around her mouth and an almost impossibly muscular arm yanked her off her feet as easily as a hurricane ripping a leaf from a tree. She struggled, trying to let out a muffled warning scream. But it was lost to the spinning blackness as the sweet hot stench of the cloth overwhelmed her.
Carter was getting used to moving in the shadows. At the end of their journey, the pirate carrier Plunderbird had unceremoniously set Carter, his father and Tom Purdell back down on the waves in the same flying boat which had picked them up; a night-time rendezvous with a crew of thoroughly anonymous smugglers inside a fishing boat. The boat sailed them to Weyland’s capital along with their catch – legal and illegal – before the three of them travelled by wagon to Arcadia’s fish market, merging with the early morning crowd of merchants and traders. They booked rooms in a cheap guesthouse frequented by market workers and porters and remained inside their rooms, Carter chafing to take the next step. To do something – anything.
Somewhere in Arcadia and its environs, Willow was being held against her will, drugged and insensible, waiting to be sold off like a prize cow by her family. It seemed like an age before a nameless messenger arrived carrying details for a meeting between Jacob Carnehan and their old patron and protector, Prince Owen. When the party left the guesthouse, Carter’s father led them around the corner to an army wagon waiting for them with two horses in front that had seen better days, a single army teamster in its seat. They sat under the wagon’s canvas bow as they rattled through the cobbled streets and Carter had his first proper look
at the capital by daylight. There were no dirt roads here, every street either cobbled or covered in a smooth coating of asphalt. Arcadia would have counted as a proper city even before an army of navvies had set to improving it. Northhaven could have been squeezed into the corner of a single district. Wide boulevards, paved streets flanked by oil lamps, trees and statues; all of the roadways were congested with streetcars, riders, carts and private carriages. Mansions and gardens in the shadow of the dust and flurry of fresh building works, new metal-framed buildings rising above the city like the skeletons of giant beasts. Below the new works sat the old, street after street seemingly without end: hotels, shops, pavilions, churches, monuments, stately apartments, galleries, stables, guild railway termini, partially concealed courtyards and open sweeping crescents. Carter realized he felt ill staring like a rube at all this conspicuous wealth. How much of this was unknowingly purchased with human lives? My mother; all of my friends murdered in the sky mines.
Arcadia’s noisy crowds had other concerns; gentry and workers, shop assistants and hawkers, all utterly oblivious to a far-called northerner’s disquiet. Not just ignoring his worries, either. There were far too many people begging in the gutter, as well as long lines of unemployed men and women lined up for wagons that might come calling for day workers in the fields and factories. Carter’s love and life with Willow had seemed as large as the world up in Northhaven. Down here, it was too easily diminished; swallowed by the racket and throngs of the endless populace. He tried to stop himself brooding and worrying. If he was going to help Willow, it had to be done in the present, not a past he couldn’t change or in a future that had yet to arrive. The wagon brought the three travellers to a massive five-sided fort overlooking the capital’s harbour, high sloping granite walls lined with heavy guns protruding from fire holes, a wide sweep of fire over the navy’s monitors and ironclads resting in the water below alongside hundreds of trading vessels, starlings sweeping through the sky above. Gates opened in the gorge wall and gave them access to a parade ground the size of a small village. There was an efficient bustle about the place far removed from supposedly sleepy garrison life: cavalry horses being exercised in fenced paddocks, companies of crimson-uniformed soldiers drilling with rifles, artillerymen cleaning the large cannons and mortars on the ramparts above. They were preparing for trouble, Carter realized. And try as hard as he could, he couldn’t see a future where their efforts would prove unnecessary. A large sergeant appeared, to lead them inside the fort, taking them to a room filled with old friends for such unhappy times. Prince Owen and Anna Kurtain. It felt strange to greet them like this, in normal clothes rather than the slave’s robes they had all worn when he had worked and fought alongside them in the sky mines. They waited around a large wooden table with an obviously important officer, white haired, ruddy faced and perhaps seventy years old; he had enough medals and braid across his green uniform to drown him if he fell into the sea outside.
