by Kage Baker
“Oh. Well—” Lady Svnae spotted the fogbank. She blanched. “We’re nearly there, aren’t we?”
Lord Ermenwyr nodded mournfully. She sank down on the deck beside him. After a moment they clasped hands, staring together into the mist. Willowspear began to sing, quietly.
Smith ate his breakfast. A white butterfly settled on the edge of his bowl. Two more fluttered out of nowhere and landed on the helm, between Willowspear’s hands.
The current drew them on, gently. Within another hour they had entered the gray world.
Smith, watching the bank from where he sat, saw the black twigs bobbing in the reed beds before he noticed the scent. It was harsh, acrid, unforgettable.
“That’s clingfire,” he said, sniffing the air.
“That’s right,” said Willowspear, staring straight ahead as he steered.
Smith looked at the white scum high on the tideline and knew what it was, then, and when the first of the black skeletons emerged from the fog, he clenched his one fist. Gradually the fog lifted farther, and he saw the wilderness of mud and ashes that had been Hlinjerith of the Misty Branches.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” he cried.
Lord Ermenwyr shrugged.
“It wasn’t your people, at least,” he said. “It was the Steadfast Orphans. They destroyed it, lest it be profaned.”
Lady Svnae bowed her head and wept.
Smith made out the shape of the landing ahead of them. Its red-and-yellow banners were gone; a scattered mound ashore was all that remained of the caretakers’ hut.
“Please, can we put in?” he asked. “If there’s any chance one of them is still alive, I’d like to get him out.”
Willowspear steered to the bank, and brought them up against the pier like a master. At Smith’s signal Stabb and Strangel dropped the anchor. Smith got unsteadily to his feet and peered through the drizzle.
“Ai-ai-ai!” he called.
A moment later there was an indistinct response, echoing from someone unseen.
Smith looked hard. Gradually through the fog he made out shapes moving, pale upright figures in the landscape. A wind came off the river, sighing in the rigging and the waving reeds, and the mist opened, and the scene before them became clear.
There were people struggling in the wet churned ashes, turning the earth with spades, raking it level, bringing muddy armfuls of roots or even small trees to be planted. One man stalked from west to east, moving with a smooth and endless rhythm as he drew a fistful from the seed bag he carried, swung his arm wide, scattered seed on the earth like rain, dipped again.
The three standing stones were toppled, lying in a blackened tangle that had been rose briars, but there was a team at work raising one of them with makeshift levers and ropes. And on the bank of the river a woman stood, weaving hurdles from green willow wands.
She was a tall woman robed in white, though her robe was work-stained and muddy, and so were her feet and hands. Rain dripped from the wide brim of her hat. With strong hands she wove the slick palings, effortlessly shaping walls, driving them into the mud with a blow to set them; and where she struck each one it sprouted, gray catkins on the nearer, green leaves already shooting forth on the first she had set. Were the walls flowering, too? No; white butterflies were settling on them here and there.
“It’s Mother,” said Lord Ermenwyr, in a ghost of a voice.
She raised her head and looked at Smith. He caught his breath.
The woman had clear, clear eyes, and their gaze hit him like a beam of light. She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life, but somehow that fact went unnoticed by his flesh. She was spare and perfect as a steel engraving, and as ageless. She was simple as water, implacable as the white comber rolling, miraculous as rain in the desert.
They went ashore and picked their way through the ruins at the pier’s base, and the lady walked down to meet them.
Lord Ermenwyr cleared his throat. “Why, Mother, whatever are you doing here?” he inquired cautiously.
“Making a garden,” she replied. Her voice was beautiful, too.
Willowspear knelt before her, and she raised him with a hand under his chin, smiling. “Don’t worry,” she told him, and the phrase seemed to resonate with meaning, silence a hundred unspoken questions. “Now, let me see the hero.”
Smith wondered whether he ought to kneel. He had never felt so awkward in his life, obscurely ashamed of his maimed arm and the fact that no one had shaved him in three days.
“G-good morning, ma’am,” he said hoarsely. “There were some men who were stationed in—in the ruins over there. They were just watchmen. Were they killed, when the Orphans burned the place down?”
“No, they weren’t,” she said. “They got into the reeds and hid themselves. Though poor Mr. Bolter was dying of pneumonia when we arrived.” She turned and pointed at the stone, just lurching upright in its cradle of rope. Smith squinted at the figures surrounding it, and realized that three of them were Children of the Sun, covered though they were in mud and ashes like all the others there.
“Mr. Bolter!” the lady called. “Mr. Drill! Mr. Copperclad! The ship has come back. Would you like to go home now?”
The three turned abruptly, staring. They exchanged glances and began to walk across the field, but in a slow and reluctant manner. Three-quarters of the way there they stopped.
“Are you from Smallbrass?” demanded the one called Copperclad. “You can tell him, we quit. We haven’t been paid. No supply ship ever came, and she"—his voice broke—"she saved us. So we’re staying to help her!”
“Please, ma’am?” added Bolter.
“Thank you,” she said. “I would be grateful for your hard work.” They turned and walked rapidly back to the stones.
“Mother, how can you plan a garden here?” cried Lord Ermenwyr. “They’re going to build a city on it!”
The lady turned and regarded her son with a look of mild severity. He flinched, and Smith had to admire his composure; he himself would have been on his knees pleading for forgiveness.
“No,” she said. “Hlinjerith belongs to me, now. Your father made the necessary arrangements in their claim offices. When the Beloved comes again, he will find his sacred grove and his garden waiting for him.”
“Ah. How nice,” said Lord Ermenwyr, groping in his pocket for his smoking tube. “Well, I think I’ll just go on to Salesh—”
“The city will rise across the river,” his mother went on calmly. “You will build it for me, my son.”
Lord Ermenwyr froze in the act of lifting the tube to his lips. “What did you say?”
“You will build a city on that bank,” said the lady. “Bowers to shelter the pilgrims who will come. Gardens and greens, where classes will be taught. And a great library, and a guesthouse for the Children of the Sun, who are unaccustomed to living out of doors.”
“But—but—Mummy, I can’t!” Lord Ermenwyr wrung his hands in panic. “I don’t know anything about building! And I can’t live here, it’s so bloody damp and cold I’ll start growing toadstools! Why don’t you make Demaledon do it?”
“Because you would be better at it,” said his mother. “He doesn’t go among the Children of the Sun, as you do. You understand their culture, and their money, and their business practices. You will draw up plans, and order shipments of cut stone. You will hire workmen.”
“I think I’m starting to run a fever—”
“No, you’re not. I won’t see your talents wasted, my child. You’ve been running about the world on your father’s business long enough; it’s time you started tending to mine.”
“But the Children of the Sun wouldn’t come here,” Lord Ermenwyr protested.
“Yes, they would!” cried Willowspear. “I taught them meditation. I can teach them farming, and medicine.”
“Wait. Let’s consider this objectively, shall we?” Lord Ermenwyr said, widening his eyes in an attempt to look calm and reasonable. “They’re already overrunning th
e world. The only advantage we have over them is our knowledge of medicine, of agriculture, of, er, birth control and so forth. Now, do we really want to give them that knowledge?”
The lady looked at him sadly. “My child, that is a base and cynical thing to say. Especially in front of this man, who has suffered through your fault.”
Lord Ermenwyr winced so profoundly, he nearly lost his balance and fell over.
“Smith, I didn’t mean it like that! You almost wiped them out yourself, after all. Didn’t it seem the right thing to do, for a moment, back in that cave? Wouldn’t mass annihilation have solved a lot of problems? What I’m saying is, if the gods themselves thought that was a good idea, who are we to argue?”
“Maybe they’re not very nice gods,” said Smith. “If they kill their children. Maybe we should argue,”
“Perhaps,” the lady agreed. “And perhaps the gods were waiting to see if you’d give in to the temptation to destroy your world in a blaze of glory. It’s always so much easier to smash mistakes than to correct them. But if it wasn’t a test, then what can one assume but that the gods are foolish and not very powerful after all?”
She reached out and touched his shoulder. Where her hand passed, warmth flowed into him.
“I think that if your race could produce a man willing to make such a sacrifice, it’s a sign that they ought to be given another chance,” she said. “I intend to see that they have it.”
Lord Ermenwyr, who had been trying unsuccessfully to light his smoking tube in the damp air, said sullenly, “I’ll build your city for you, then. But if you’re expecting the kind of twits who sign up for meditation classes, I warn you now: They’re not interested in learning anything useful. All they want is a new religion.”
“They want it because they know there must be something better than violence and stupidity,” she told him sternly. “Their hearts are in the right places. We will make certain their minds follow. And one is coming who will lead them here, in the morning of the new world.”
Without warning she turned and looked directly at Lady Svnae, who had been edging gradually back in the direction of the landing.
“Are you so eager to go, daughter?”
Lady Svnae flushed and strode forward, muttering. She towered over her mother, but somehow looked like a gauche adolescent standing before her.
“Well, you didn’t have anything to say to me,” she said.
“I have a great deal to say to you,” the lady replied. “But you must take poor Smith home to his family first. You owe him that; if you hadn’t pried into matters that didn’t concern you, he might still have both his hands.”
“No, that was fated to happen, whatever I did,” said Lady Svnae stubbornly. “And the death of a whole people did concern me. And I’ve said I was sorry. What more can I do to atone?”
The lady smiled at her. “You can use the strength of your great heart, child. You can help your brother build the city. The library, especially.”
Lady Svnae brightened at that. Her mother surveyed her scarlet-and-purple silks, her serpent jewelry, her bare arms, and she sighed.
“But please buy yourself some sensible clothing in Salesh, before you return.”
Lord Ermenwyr sidled over to his sister.
“Cheer up!” he said. “Think of the fun we’ll have shopping.” He looked sidelong at his mother. “I’m going to spend an awful lot of your money on this. I ought to have some compensation for being a good boy.”
“You have always been a good boy,” his mother said serenely, “whatever you pretend to yourself.”
Lord Ermenwyr gnashed his teeth.
One day’s journey out upon the sea, they spied bright-striped sails on the horizon, traveling steadily though they hung slack in the motionless air.
“That’s another slaveless galley,” said Smith, waving away the butterflies that danced before him. “Maybe we should hail them for news.”
Within an hour they were close enough to distinguish the clanking oars of the other vessel, louder even than their own, and in yet another hour they saw the revelers dancing and waving to them from the other vessel’s deck.
“Ai—aiiiii!” shouted a fat man, pushing back the wreath of roses that had slipped over one eye. “What ship is that? Where d’you hail from?”
“The Kingfisher’s Nest out of Salesh, from the Rethestlin!” bawled Smith. “What ship’s that?”
“The Lazy Days out of Port Blackrock! Have you heard the news, my friend?”
“What news? Is the war over?”
“Duke Skalkin choked on a fish bone!” the man cried gleefully. “His son signed the peace treaty the next day!”
“A little death can be useful now and then,” muttered Lord Ermenwyr.
“The blockade’s gone?”
“All sailed home!” the man assured them, accepting a cup of wine from a nubile girl. He tilted his head back to drink, then pointed at the Kingfisher’s Nest, shouting with laughter. “You’ve got butterflies too!”
“They flew down the river with us,” Smith said, turning his head to look up at the ranks of white wings perched all along the yards. He looked back at the Lazy Days. “You’ve got a couple, yourself. Where’d they come from?”
“Nobody knows! They’ve been floating along in swarms!” The man peered closer. “Say, what the hell kind of crew have you got?”
“We’ve just come from a costume party,” Lord Ermenwyr told him.
“So, we can go straight home along the coast, then?” Smith asked hurriedly.
“It’s clear sailing all the way!” The man made an expansive gesture, slopping his wine.
And so it proved to be, over a sea smooth as a mirror, under a sky of pearly cloud. If not for the unbroken line of the coast that paced them, they might have been sailing in the heart of an infinite opal. Warm rain fell now and then, big scattered drops, and the sea steamed. They passed through clouds of white butterflies making their way along over open water, seemingly bound on the same journey.
Many settled on the spars and rigging, despite Lord Ermenwyr’s best efforts to bid them begone.
“Oh, what’ve you got against the poor little things?” said Lady Svnae crossly, as she spooned poppy-petal jam on a cracker for Smith.
“They stink of the miraculous,” growled her brother, pacing up the deck with his fists locked together under his coattails.
They rounded Cape Gore without incident, and by dawn of the next day spotted the high mile-castles of Salesh, with its streets sloping down to the sea and the white domes of the Glittering Mile bright along the seafront. So calm the water was, so glassy, that they were obliged to keep the boiler full the whole way, and never ran up a stitch of canvas.
But as they rounded the breakwater and came into the harbor, Smith gave the order to cut power and come in on the tide alone. Willowspear threw open the stopcock, and steam escaped with a shriek that echoed off the waterfront. The thrashing oars shuddered to a halt; but when the echoes died an unearthly silence fell, and they might have been a ghost ship gliding in.
“Oh, my,” said Lady Svnae, shading her eyes with her hand.
White butterflies, everywhere, dancing in clouds through the sky, flickering on the branches of trees like unseasonable snow. They were thick on the rigging of every ship in the harbor. They lighted on the heads and arms of the citizens of Salesh, who were standing about like people in a dream, watching them. Nobody paid much attention to the Kingfisher’s Nest or her outlandish crew as they moored and came ashore.
“This is a portent of something tremendous,” said Willowspear, striding up Front Street.
“It’s the heat wave this summer,” said Lord Ermenwyr, glaring about him at the fluttering wings clouding the sky above the marketplace. “Unusual numbers of the nasty things hatched, that’s all. Wait up, damn you!”
“He does have a wife to get back to, you know,” Lady Svnae chided him.
“We will carry you, Master,” Cutt offered.
&nbs
p; “Yes, perhaps that’s best,” said Lord Ermenwyr, and when Cutt bent obligingly he vaulted up to his shoulder and perched there, sneering at the butterflies that swirled about his head. “On, Cutt!”
“Do you often get butterfly migrations at this time of the year?” Lady Svnae inquired of Smith.
“Never that I remember,” he replied breathlessly. “How long has this been going on?” he inquired of a shopkeeper, who stood staring at the white wings clustered upon his hanging sign.
“They came in the night,” he replied. “The watchman saw them flying in from the sea. He said it looked like the stars were leaving Heaven and coming here!”
“It’s a sign from the gods!” cried a city runner, swinging her brazen trumpet to dislodge butterflies.
“ ‘Sign from the gods’! Poppycock,” said Lord Ermenwyr, and then “Aaargh!” as Cutt bore him through a particularly thick cloud of floating wings.
“At least I don’t see any signs of riots,” said Smith.
“No,” Lord Ermenwyr replied, twisting on Cutt’s shoulder to peer up the hill. “I note Greenietown’s all hung with mourning over Hlinjerith, however.”
“I just hope they know it wasn’t us,” said Smith.
“Oh, they know who did it,” said Lady Svnae grimly. “Mother’s people don’t have runners, but you’d be amazed how fast news travels through the bowers. It’s a good thing you—”
They had turned up the last curve that led to the Grand-view, and there the butterflies were thickest of all, drifting and sailing between the buildings, whitening the gardens. At the Grandview itself they beat against every window, patiently walking up the glass, seeking a way in.
“They’d better not be infesting my suite,” Lord Ermenwyr said.
“Hush,” said his sister. “Something unusual is going on. Look!”
They saw Willowspear, far ahead of them now, reach the street door and throw it open. He ran inside without bothering to close the door, and butterflies streamed in after him.
“Come on!” cried Svnae, and, putting her arm around Smith, she half carried him with her, racing up the street. Lord Ermenwyr shouted an order and Cutt, Crish, Clubb, Stabb, Strangel, and Smosh thundered after them, and the white wings parted like cloud as they ran.
