by Anthony Ryan
Lizanne and Tekela had been guided to a grand room on the second floor of the building the Varestians referred to simply as “The Navigation.” The title apparently derived from the building’s original use as the home of the Loyal Guild of South Corvantine Cartographers and Navigational Experts. The map-makers and compass designers had long since been exiled back to their northern homelands, but the building remained, complete with its appropriate and overwhelming decor. Maps were everywhere, hanging in tapestry form on the walls, rendered in oils on huge canvases, reproduced as floor mosaics and even plasterwork reliefs on the ceilings. She assumed this particular chamber had been some kind of ball-room, the floor covered from end to end in a vast map of the world which, judging from the florid Eutherian lettering and place names, dated back to the early corporate era.
Apart from herself and Tekela, the only other occupants were the broken-nosed man, his handsome of face if somewhat severe of demeanour mother and a man of South Mandinorian origin clad in curiously archaic clothing. Lizanne had quickly judged this man to be the most salient physical threat, not least by virtue of his cutlass and pistol, but also his muscular frame and set features, tensed as if in constant expectation of combat. She also deduced from the way the broken-nosed man moved about the room that he was not to be under-estimated either.
“We know who you are, you see?” he went on. “Famed Defender of Carvenport, Hero of the Corvantine Revolution and, most importantly at this particular juncture, a thieving, murdering bitch in the employ of the Ironship Exceptional Initiatives Division.” All humour faded from his face, voice dropping to a murmur. “And therefore not to be trusted.”
“I know of you too,” Lizanne replied, meeting his gaze squarely. “Arshav Okanas, renowned pirate and former Chief Director of the criminal enclave known as the Hive, where I believe you lost a duel to an Islander named Steelfine not so long ago. How’s your nose, by the way?” She turned her gaze from his reddening face before he could reply, inclining her head at the primly attired woman. “And you are Ethilda Okanas, widow to the late founder of the Hive and, I’m told, possessed of a more rational mind than your son.”
“Be assured that we speak with one mind on matters of business,” Ethilda replied. She briefly read through Trumane’s letter once more before tossing it onto a near by table. “This is worthless. With Arradsia lost your Syndicate’s collapse is inevitable, along with much of the corporate world. What use will we have for your scrip then? It has always been nothing more than paper, after all, and we have sufficient kindling.”
Lizanne took a moment to scan the opulence of the room, hoping the myriad maps might spark some stratagem. “I had hoped to address the whole council,” she said, playing for time as inspiration failed to materialise. “I believe a quorum of eight is required before any decision can be reached.”
She saw Arshav exchange an amused glance with his mother. “I’m afraid you’ll have to be content with a quorum of two,” he said. “You see, upon return to our beloved homeland there was what I believe historians refer to as a vicious power struggle. Our wise Ruling Council had taken it upon themselves to declare us dead after the Corvantine attack on the Hive, helping themselves to our family holdings in the process. It took five successive duels to put the matter right, by which time the council was short five members and the remainder had decided they preferred life at sea.”
“So you see, Miss Blood,” Ethilda said, “any accommodation you wish to make will require our agreement, and as yet I find myself content to let your fleet of beggars rot where it sits.”
Lizanne looked down, biting on a frustrated sigh. She saw that her boot rested on the Barrier Isles north of the Arradsian continent, the toe covering the Strait, the portal through which so much wealth had once flowed, enough to transform an entire world.
“You’re right,” she said, raising her gaze to address Ethilda. “Without product the corporate world will fall. But what are you without the corporations? With whom will you trade when they’re gone? Whose ships will you prey upon? The Corvantine Empire destroyed itself trying to maintain the illusion it could remain separate, eternal and unchanged for all time. They failed to see a basic truth: The corporate world is the world. If it falls so does everything else.”
She lowered her gaze once more, striding across the map until her boots came to rest on Varestia. “Do you imagine you are immune here? I’m sure your spies have informed you of what befell the Barrier Isles and Feros.”
“We have defences,” Arshav said. “A great many ships and the best sailors in the world.”
“The Corvantines had the most modern fleet in the world,” Lizanne returned. “I watched it sink and burn off Carvenport. If you know as much as you claim you’ll have some inkling of the force that will come against you. An army of Spoiled controlled by a single mind. And drakes, thousands of Reds, Greens and Blues, all of them filled with hate and hunger by the thing that commands them.”
Ethilda exchanged another glance with her son, this one much more serious. “How will taking in a bunch of impoverished corporatists aid us?” Arshav asked. “It strikes me you will be more a burden than a blessing.”
Lizanne pointed at the mini-Growler. She had been obliged to surrender it on entering the room and it lay on a table close to the entrance. “That,” she said. “And many more like it, along with larger and even more powerful weapons. You also saw the craft that brought us here. Give us the means and we can make more.”
Arshav went to the mini-Growler, lifting it and pursing his lips in reluctant admiration. “A nice toy,” he said. “But expensive and time-consuming to manufacture, I would imagine.”
“There is something else,” Lizanne told him. “Something that can be fashioned in hours rather than days. I assume your men searched the aerostat. They would have found a carbine there.”
Arshav raised an eyebrow at the man in the archaic clothing, who nodded. “Bring it here, please, Mr. Lockbar,” the pirate told him.
“I’ll need a target,” Lizanne said, reaching for the Smoker when Lockbar returned with it a few minutes later. “Something you don’t value.”
“I think not, miss,” Arshav said, taking the carbine from Lockbar. “I’d rather form my own conclusions.”
He went to one of the expansive window doors lining the room’s south-facing wall and opened it. Stepping out onto the veranda beyond, he gestured for Lizanne to follow and pointed at something in the lush gardens below. A tall rectangular plinth sitting amidst a circle of flower-beds.
“The monument to the fallen members of the Corvantine Navigational Guild,” he said. “Kept intact due to the sentiment of my predecessors. Personally, I see no reason to honour the souls of those who once enslaved us.”
He put the carbine to his shoulder, chambered a round and fired. “King of the Deep,” he breathed as the top of the monument shattered. Arshav laughed, worked the lever and fired again, blasting away another chunk of the plinth. He kept on until the carbine was empty, his laughter increasing as he reduced the monument to a jagged remnant.
“After due consideration,” he said, lowering the Smoker and coughing a little as he wafted the smoke away, “I believe . . .”
“Further consideration is warranted,” Ethilda broke in, giving her son a glare of sufficient severity as to wipe the laughter from his face. Ethilda turned to Lizanne with a humourless smile. “In the meantime you and your lovely young companion will be our guests. Mr. Lockbar, please see these ladies to their room.”
* * *
• • •
Mr. Lockbar, together with a squad of five equally stern-faced guards, had escorted Lizanne and Tekela to a room on the upper floor of the Navigation. It was small with a narrow cot and a tiny window that had been nailed shut. “Servant’s quarters,” Tekela sniffed with snobbish disdain.
“I doubt we’ll be here long,” Lizanne said, sitting on the cot. Mr. Loc
kbar had relieved her of the vials of product in the Spider but she had had the foresight to conceal a vial of Blue in her hollow boot-heel. She had been permitted to keep her watch and waited the required forty-three minutes before commencing the trance at the scheduled hour.
“Listen at the door,” she told Tekela, slotting the vial into the Spider. “If they come back try to delay letting them in until I’m done.”
She found Sofiya Griffan wandering her mindscape in a black mourning-dress, her vibrant red hair the only colour to be found. Lizanne thought the woman’s mindscape must have been beautiful before her grief. She imagined dappled forest-glades carpeted with wild flowers above which butterflies danced in air scented by honeysuckle. Something almost certainly taken from a picture-book read in childhood. Now it was like walking through the same scene reimagined by an illustrator in the midst of a depression. The forest was bleached of all colour, the sky above the tree-tops an ominous smear of black and grey.
Another ship took off on its own yesterday, Sofiya informed Lizanne, her thoughts as dull and uncoloured as the environment. The second in two days.
Tell Captain Trumane to do all he can to prevent further desertions, Lizanne told her. I have a sense we will need to muster as large a work-force as possible, if our hosts choose to accept us that is.
She paused, watching as Sofiya gazed at something near by. At first glance Lizanne took it for a butterfly frozen in flight, but closer inspection revealed it to be a miniature person, a lissome young girl with diaphanous wings plucking a morsel of pollen from an orchid.
The sylph-folk would visit me when I was a little girl, Sofiya recalled. Whirl in spirals around my head as I danced. Such music they sang. Nanny said it was all in my head and spanked me for my foolishness, and in time they went away, but I never truly stopped believing. Their music was so beautiful, far beyond the mind of a child to conjure . . .
Speaking of music, Lizanne interrupted, keen to break the woman’s reverie, which she suspected might go on for some time. Has Makario made any more progress?
With your mysterious box? Not as far as I’m aware. He plays for me sometimes, when I get sad enough to start crying again. He’s very kind.
Yes, he is. And your . . . Lizanne fumbled for the right words. Her experience of pregnant women was minimal, and she had determined long ago to avoid such a mammoth complication to her own life. Condition? she decided finally.
I am vomiting less, thanks to Dr. Weygrand. He tells me it’s far too soon for such things but I feel my son kicking sometimes. Curiously, it only happens when I think of Zakaeus. I believe he’s keen to be born so he can avenge his father.
Lizanne clamped down on her own thoughts, lest the words “mad as a Blue-addled rat” leach into the shared mindscape. We’ll have to ensure that won’t be necessary, she told Sofiya. Have you had any success in contacting Northern Fleet Headquarters?
Yes. My contact there was clearly very harassed and seemed to regard my intelligence as more of a nuisance than anything. They had little to say other than that Captain Trumane is instructed to await further orders. I’m to trance again in five days.
Ask Professor Lethridge and Mr. Tollermine to provide you with blueprints for their weapons designs and memorise them. When you trance with the Northern Fleet again, make it very clear that their best course of action is to build as many of these devices as they can.
I had the impression no one is building anything at the moment. Apparently, a third of Ironship manufactories are on strike. There’s a great deal of Voter agitation in many cities and the Protectorate is fully engaged in dealing with what my contact called “urban disturbances.”
So they’re rioting already, Lizanne thought, her own mindscape filling with unpleasant memories of Scorazin and the northern march of the People’s Freedom Army. She was careful to confine the images within her own mind for fear of distressing Sofiya. If ever there was a poor time to start a revolution.
Miss Lethridge? Sofiya enquired, perturbed by the lack of communication.
Tell them also that secrecy is no protection now, Lizanne added. They need to publicise the complete and unvarnished story of what happened in Arradsia and Feros. Only truth will unite us. Tell them that.
* * *
• • •
“Blaska Sound.” Ethilda Okanas pointed to a spot somewhere in the middle of the painted map. It stood seven feet high and occupied much of the north-facing wall in the round tower that sprouted from the Navigation’s roof-top. The tower’s eastern wall was dominated by a broad window facing out to sea, the room itself liberally equipped with optical devices of varying types and dimensions. Arshav occupied himself with peering through the lens of a huge telescope whilst his mother conversed with Lizanne.
The painting was a rendering of the entire Varestian region, though the style was illustrative rather than strictly cartographical. Mountain ranges and forests were depicted in elevated perspective rather than the usual lines and text. Lizanne was also grimly amused to see that the artist had chosen to populate the Red Tides with several fancifully proportioned drakes.
She stepped closer to the map, peering at the narrow coastal channel marked in elaborate Eutherian as “Blaska Sound.” The mouth of the Sound stood perhaps twenty miles north of the Seven Walls and Iskamir. Close enough for a secure supply route, Lizanne mused. And also an easy place in which to bottle us up should they see the need.
“What facilities are there?” she asked, drawing a faint snicker from Arshav, who, she noticed, still had the Smoker slung over his shoulder.
“There’s a coal-mine ten miles in on the northern bank of the Sound,” Ethilda told her. “‘Raker’s Mount’ they call it. It’s an old Corvantine penal colony, abandoned since the Varestian Liberation. Our people have never been fond of grubbing in the dirt. The seams are still viable, so I’m told, so fuel won’t be a problem.”
“It’s also a desolate shit-hole,” Arshav added, grinning as he raised his eye from the telescope. “No roads or railways and tall mountains all around. The only way in and out is by sea.”
“We’ll need other materials,” Lizanne said. “Iron and steel, copper too. Also chemical agents for munitions. Not to mention food.”
Ethilda looked at her son, who shrugged, apparently bored with logistical details. “There’ll be stocks in the Iskamir warehouses,” he said. “All sorts of cargo’s piled up recently since trade’s been so poor.”
“Make a list before you leave,” Ethilda said and handed Lizanne an envelope. “Our formal counter-proposal.”
Seeing that the envelope had no seal Lizanne extracted the papers within, reading over the first few paragraphs. “This is a company charter,” she said, frowning.
“Indeed,” Ethilda said. “This day marks the founding of the Varestian Defence Conglomerate. I and Arshav are Co-Directors in Chief. You’ll note I’ve appointed you Director of Intelligence and Manufactory Liaison.”
“Congratulations,” Arshav put in.
“‘The Conglomerate will retain exclusive lifetime rights to any and all novel devices manufactured on Conglomerate soil,’” Lizanne read, feeling her pulse quicken. “‘Also all salvage rights over any captured belligerent vessel, including its cargo, fixtures and fittings. Plus any draconic plasma, heretoafter referred to as “product,” harvested within the established borders of the Varestian region will be regarded as Conglomerate property.’”
“Entirely fair in the circumstances,” Arshav said, moving away from the telescope and holding up a pen. “Wouldn’t you agree?”
Lizanne stared at him, thinking it would be an easy matter to take that pen and push it through his eye and into his brain.
“You’ll get your share,” Ethilda said. “As a Director you will be afforded ten percent of total company stock. How you wish to distribute the dividends is up to you. Please add your signature to the final page.” She an
gled her head, looking past Lizanne at Tekela with a fond smile. “Your delightful ward can witness the transaction.”
Lizanne set her jaw and reached for the pen. “There is one other matter,” Ethilda said, her son giving a pout of mock apology as he drew the pen out of reach. “My late husband’s granddaughter.”
“What of her?”
“You indicated a detailed knowledge of what transpired at the Hive. I wish to know how.”
“I’m an Exceptional Initiatives agent. Intelligence is my business.”
“Then be so kind as to share what intelligence you hold regarding the whereabouts of Akina Okanas. This is not a matter for negotiation.”
Seeing the hard glint in the woman’s eyes, Lizanne knew this was no bluff. She also knew it wouldn’t profit her to share too much with these people. She abruptly decided to avoid any mention of Clay’s mission to Krystaline Lake, despite what insights these two might offer regarding the explorations undertaken by Zenida’s late father. An adage from Burgrave Artonin’s translation of Selvurin folk-tales popped into her head as she took in the poorly concealed greed on the Arshavs’ faces: Feed a snake and your only thanks will be venom.
“Captain Trumane’s flagship is the Viable Opportunity,” Lizanne said. “A vessel I believe you are familiar with. I learned the story from the crew.”
Arshav took a step forward, gaze narrowing. “Is my niece aboard?” he demanded in a low, dangerous voice. “Do you have her?”
“She’s no longer on the ship,” Lizanne went on in a clipped uncoloured tone, the voice her tutors had drilled into her as the most effective when lying. Poor liars always attempt a performance, she had been told. The truth requires no theatrics. “The Viable Opportunity sailed eastward around Arradsia after departing the Hive, eventually putting in at Lossermark where Zenida Okanas contrived to escape with her daughter.”
“That’s a pile of dog shit,” Arshav growled.
