Vespera

by Anselm Audley

  ‘You’re monsters,’ Thais said. ‘Both of you.’

  ‘No more than you, and we have the same person to thank.’

  And then, from below, someone screamed, a scream that shattered the night’s peace and echoed across the hills and palaces of Vespera, and they turned and saw boats on Star Deep.

  Leonata woke.

  She was a light sleeper at the best of times, and as she grew older she’d ended up doing two or three hours of work most nights, rather than try to force herself asleep – at least she could still sleep properly during the siesta.

  Iolani’s bed was empty, unused, but when she sat up she saw the other woman lying below the window, with her head in the recess, eyes open, staring up at the stars.

  It should have been quiet, but she could hear noises from somewhere in the Palace, faintly, far away. Had that been what woken her up? Or the dreams, dreams of Anthemia which didn’t need a Twister to become nightmares.

  ‘Leonata?’ Iolani said.

  She got out of bed and padded over to where Iolani lay, now looking up at her, and sat down beside her on the floorboards. They were in a servants’ room in one of the attics, where they could be easily guarded, or perhaps it was another of Aesonia’s attempts at keeping them in their place.

  ‘Couldn’t sleep?’

  ‘Could you, with what’s coming?’ Iolani asked.

  Leonata shook her head. ‘We have a chance. Your palace is still free, we have at least two allies here.’ Valentine had told her there would be a treaty, and she knew, now, how she could buy a few hours. Half an hour of Valentine’s time, and she could delay any action until sunset. His sense of justice was heavily buried, but it was there, and she knew how to play on it. Particularly if she could catch him without Aesonia.

  ‘And if we do, then tomorrow night I’ll sleep on my own terrace, and I can look at the stars any night I want. If we don’t – I want this last chance.’

  ‘Why the stars?’ Leonata had guessed, but she wanted to be certain.

  ‘Infinity,’ Iolani said. ‘I sleep out of doors most nights, on the little terrace I had built, so I have only the sky over my head.’

  ‘Claustrophobic.’

  ‘Very. Even this room is too small, I’m sorry I snapped at you earlier.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Leonata said, and stared up through the window at the spangled sky, its lustre dimmed by the light from Vespera’s millions of waterglobes. She hardly knew the stars, beyond a few familiar constellations that all Thetian children were taught. ‘Are the skies the same in the north?’

  ‘Here, so close to the equator, you can see all the stars. Up in Thure, it’s only the northern ones, high overhead. They have different names there, I learnt the Tuonetar ones.’ Iolani twisted round. ‘Up there, the constellation we call the Kraken, with its jaws and its flippers, they call the Wolf. I wonder . . .’

  She stood up, helping Leonata to her feet, and pointed towards the north. It was a small, barred window, with a sheer drop to stone below, looking northwards towards the heart of the City.

  And then they saw, in the silver moonlight, a flotilla of boats on the Deep, making their way out from the servants’ watergate of Ulithi palace, packed with soldiers and sailors, and the wake of two searays just visible on the surface beyond them.

  Leonata felt a cold hand grip her heart.

  ‘He’s doing it tonight, while everyone’s asleep,’ said Iolani.

  Of course, a night attack would appeal to Valentine. Everything he’d told them – the announcement that the Council would be called sometime the next day, that they’d have time to look through a treaty – it had all been a sham.

  And while all palaces kept a few guards awake to man the gates every night, who bothered to post lookouts on the towers? Jharissa, perhaps, but they were far to the north, their view blocked by Triton and Siren.

  And every clan would be resting as many marines as possible for the confrontation tomorrow. Valentine had known the clans wouldn’t simply give in, even when he held so many hostages.

  ‘Iolani,’ Leonata said. ‘We can warn them. Remember last night, our impromptu singing lesson.’

  Iolani smiled. ‘You want me to sing?’

  ‘Screaming might be more effective, but you’ve by far the stronger voice, and you know how to support your breath.’

  ‘People sing all the time in Vespera,’ Iolani said. ‘All those young men with too much time on their hands, hiring singers to serenade their beloved’s balcony. There are times I want to strangle them.’

  ‘Your Ice Runners do that?’

  ‘Stars, no. Who’d sing at my balcony? I hear it, though. Must be worse down where the palaces are. A scream would be more distinctive.’

  ‘Remember, support from your diaphragm,’ Leonata said, and Iolani smiled, began taking deep, measured breaths. Leonata opened the window – if it didn’t open, they’d have suffocated earlier – and then clapped her hands over her ears.

  Iolani took a deep breath, moved to the window, and let out an ear-piercing shriek.

  The scream sounded again.

  A soprano with an untrained voice, Raphael thought. If she were trained, she’d be able to sing a Tiziano aria instead.

  That was his first thought. His second, as they looked down at the boats on the Deep, as a sick feeling in his stomach.

  ‘He’s moving early,’ Silvanos said. ‘He didn’t trust any of us.’

  ‘I can see why not,’ Thais said savagely.

  ‘We have to move,’ Raphael said, all his plans collapsing around his ears. He’d needed tomorrow. Time for Petroz to group his forces, move his ship into position. Time to have Plautius administer the silphium he and Silvanos had undoubtedly hoarded. Time for Odeinath, Bahram and the others to escape.

  Time he didn’t have.

  ‘I hadn’t planned for this,’ Silvanos said, and Raphael realised, in that instant, his uncle had no idea what to do. He was resourceful, but he was a spinner of webs, a man who planned for contingencies – and all those plans, twenty years of work, had been swept away by the wave on Saphir Island. And Silvanos hadn’t had time to make contingencies for tonight.

  ‘You planned to release the prisoners?’ Raphael said.

  ‘The guards were to be drugged.’

  ‘No time. Find your people, deal with the guards, and then send your men off to retrieve those weapons. They’re the only hope we have. I’ll help with the prisoners.’

  Thais opened her mouth, and Raphael moved, ruthlessly, to put one hand over her mouth and drove an elbow into her stomach, winding her and pushing her to her knees.

  ‘Deal with her first,’ Silvanos said. ‘Down the other path, towards the sea. Twenty paces, on the right, there’s a huge stand of bamboo, impenetrable in this light. Go round to the back, you’ll find a space in the middle. Leave her there, and make her as uncomfortable as possible so she can’t sleep.’

  His eyes met Raphael’s for a moment, no longer scornful or critical, held the connection for a second, and then Silvanos concealed his dart-thrower and walked off briskly back into the tunnel.

  The screaming continued, not as loud now, and then was cut off, suddenly. A window banged. But there were shouts now from other palaces. The warning had worked.

  ‘I can’t let you stop us,’ Raphael whispered into Thais’s ear, as she gasped for breath. He let go of her, ready to move again in an instant if she tried to warn anyone.

  ‘I wasn’t going to,’ she said, in a small voice. ‘But you didn’t give me the chance.’

  ‘I wouldn’t believe anything you told me,’ he said.

  ‘You believe Silvanos.’

  ‘We’re on the same side,’ Raphael said. ‘You and I never were.’

  ‘You have the luxury of betrayal. I don’t. I’ve never tried to hurt you, Raphael. I’m a slave, and I fell in love with you. Can’t you accept that, whatever else I might be?’

  She was pleading, and she’d lost her only chance of even a partial free
dom. One Raphael would never willingly have given her.

  But what they’d done to her, because she was a troublemaker . . . the last of his anger left him. She hadn’t been there in the mines, and he’d known her before they did anything, a girl with laughter and a smile whose only crime had been to be born with red hair, marked as an Exile.

  Not an abomination. But he had called her that, in hatred and anger. Had treated her in a way Aesonia might have approved of, come close to killing her in his rage.

  He knelt down on the grass, facing her. Love had gone, but he could give her something back.

  ‘I can,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have said those things. Would you forgive me?’

  She looked up, her eyes meeting his, but the life was gone from them. She didn’t speak.

  ‘Please?’

  Still no answer.

  ‘Please, Thais?’

  ‘I’ll forgive you,’ Thais said, ‘because Aesonia never forgives. Not because you deserve it.’

  Raphael nodded.

  ‘I have to help Aesonia, sleeping or waking,’ she went on. ‘Unless, as Silvanos said, you make it impossible for me to act or fall asleep.’

  ‘And if Aesonia dies?’

  ‘I’ll pass to whoever she chose to succeed her as First Dreamer, probably Aventine. Who’ll punish me horribly for failing to save her mother. But right now, the only choice I can make is to resist you, futilely, and waste a few minutes of your time, or to surrender, and tell you how best to stop me escaping. That’s all I can do.’

  Only then did he understand truly how powerless she was in the face of what Aesonia had done, how powerless Raphael would have been if Silvanos hadn’t intervened, the true meaning of what a Dream Twister became.

  ‘Maybe, just maybe, you’ll win,’ Thais said. ‘And a few people might not become Dream Twisters who are marked for it now. You and Iolani, for instance. So I make my choice.’

  She walked over to the drugged tribesman, retrieved the knotted ropes from his belt, and handed them to Raphael.

  ‘Don’t let this be for nothing.’

  A dull, echoing thump echoed from the hills, followed a few seconds later by the fainter, more distant sound of an explosion. Then another thump, and two more, another series of detonations.

  Raphael grabbed Thais’s wrist and ran to the gap in the trees, where a smaller path led down, and from where he could see the City properly.

  Columns of smoke were rising into the air above Vespera, the closest from a palace on the next promontory north of them, an old palace of round towers and domes stacked together. One of the domes had been shattered, and the wall of the tower was cascading away into the gardens on the shore, exposing floors and rooms which crumbled in their turn.

  Salassa Palace.

  CHAPTER XX

  The tribesman threw Iolani against the wall with sickening force. For a second Leonata thought the other woman’s neck was broken, but Iolani stumbled forward, dazed, into another punch.

  ‘You’ve silenced her, for Thetis’s sake!’ Leonata shouted. ‘Leave her alone.’

  A few minutes later Aesonia ducked through the door, and her face could have been etched with acid for the fury it held.

  ‘Take her,’ Aesonia said, ‘and hang her by her wrists from the highest window of the Geometer’s Tower. Facing north, so she can watch her people dying. Leonata, you clearly didn’t understand what my son told you on Saphir Island, so I’ll show you exactly why you’ll obey us.’

  Anthemia. Thetis, no!

  ‘You should have thought of that,’ Aesonia said, and Leonata’s plea died in her throat. ‘Mangku, take her down to the interrogation gallery. I’ll collect her daughter myself.’

  Her tribesmen hustled to obey, and the one who’d struck Iolani grabbed Leonata’s arm and pushed her roughly down the corridor, ahead of the others carrying a half-conscious Iolani. Leonata heard the Empress give more orders, refinements to her latest torture of Iolani.

  Mage, Empress, Dream Twister, mother of the finest military mind of a generation – was there anything they could do to defeat Aesonia?

  The tribesman’s grip on her arm was viciously tight, but then he was a great deal stronger than Leonata, and she forced herself to go limp, offer no resistance. She hated being so helpless! It was like acid in her throat, a constant bile of frustration.

  Was this how they would all have to live, once Aesonia won?

  They reached the stairs, and the tribesman pushed Leonata ahead of him, seemingly content in his own strength to master a mere woman, without the need for a weapon. How far was the interrogation room? They wouldn’t have such a thing above ground, it would be in one of the huge network of cellars rumoured to exist below Ulithi Palace, hollowed out by Ruthelo Azrian to store weapons for his army.

  One floor down. There were people in the corridors, Ulithi servants and tribesmen, but few, too few, given what had happened. There had been well over a thousand people in the Palace when she arrived, at a guess, probably a great many more than that, given how much space there was underground. And now most of them were gone, leaving only enough to hold the Palace.

  Which meant the rest had gone to attack the clan palaces. How many of her clanspeople would die, because she hadn’t planned how to deal with Valentine, hadn’t tried to find a military genius of her own?

  Another floor down. The tribesman’s grip showed no sign of loosening, however submissive Leonata appeared. That wasn’t going to work.

  They were stone stairs, polished and vicious, and she wondered if the tribesman was used to them, if she could . . . but it was so risky, and she’d like as not break her own neck in the process. Leonata swam a great deal, but she was no gymnast, to tuck herself into a ball for a tumble down these steps.

  But if she could escape, they’d have to hunt her down, not torture Anthemia. And she, meanwhile, could lead them a merry dance, and draw their attention away from Raphael and the traitor.

  If either of them were even in the Palace.

  She waited until they reached the last landing, one flight above court level, and on the fifth step below it Leonata uttered a quick, silent prayer, swung round, and jumped.

  Jumped on to the tribesman, who fell back against the stairs, lost his footing, arm flailing for a moment, let go of Leonata’s arm, and fell back, cracking his head against the stones before he slid down, Leonata on top of him, to a ghastly impact at the bottom. He moved, weakly, and she grabbed his knife and stabbed him in both feet, to stop him following her, wiped it on his tunic to stop it leaving a trail of blood, and ran into the nearest corridor, looking for a way down.

  A thump, and then an explosion in the distance.

  The first hit on Salassa Palace knocked Odeinath off his feet, the building shaking around him. He was hurled back into someone – Tilao or Daena – and slid down the corridor, as a wall of black smoke billowed towards him and then fell back. The came the sound of stone crumbling, a roaring avalanche that went on and on to the accompaniment of screams, some silenced too quickly. Acrid smoke was pouring into the corridor from the damaged Gaeta Tower.

  ‘We’re under attack!’ someone shouted, and the cry was repeated.

  Odeinath picked himself up, to find Daena already on her feet helping a dazed Tilao, who’d knocked his head against a lamp-stand in his effort to keep the chest with the recording safe, Bahram picking himself up behind them. The Palace was still shaking slightly, and there were flames at the far end of the corridor. ‘Get back!’ Odeinath shouted. They were in a bridge linking Gaeta and Renato Towers, and if the Gaeta’s wall failed, it would pull the bridge down with it.

  ‘Back to Petroz!’ Odeinath shouted. ‘Tilao, Daena, take that chest and put it in the deepest, safest, best-hidden place you can find!’

  They’d left Petroz a few minutes ago, shaken by what he’d seen but already conferring with them on his moves for tomorrow, as far as any of them dared with Dream Twisters in the City. Raphael’s envelope lay unopened on the table.
>
  The four of them ran, back along to the stairway at the centre of Renato Tower, where Daena and Tilao headed down, Bahram and Odeinath up to the doors of the study where they’d shown Petroz the recording. They reached it ahead of any of the Salassa servants, and Bahram simply opened it and barged in, running up the spiral stairs to the study itself.

  The smell of smoke was strong in here, although there were only wisps of it coming through the windows. Petroz was pulling himself across the floor to find his cane, dragging one leg behind him.

  ‘Who? Give me a hand!’ Petroz demanded, but they didn’t need to be told. Bahram helped the old Prince to his feet, and Odeinath retrieved the cane and handed it over. A sword-cane, if he was any judge, activated by pressing the eye of the snake carved into the handle.

  ‘Treachery!’ Petroz said, as Odeinath gave him the cane. ‘Salassa, to arms!’

  The first Salassa servants were coming up the stairs now.

  ‘We’ve got to get you down,’ Odeinath said. He hadn’t believed Valentine could be so treacherous, though the Emperor would probably call it boldness, to launch an attack unprovoked on clan palaces which held more civilians than marines.

  But then, Odeinath would believe anything of the Empire now.

  ‘I must give my orders!’ Petroz said. ‘You expect me to abandon my post?’

  ‘This tower isn’t safe,’ Bahram said, and they heard another thump from out in the bay, followed by three more. Four ships, with one bombardment mortar each. If the next one hit this tower, there was nothing they could do.

  A second later, the curtain wall of the courtyard exploded, an entire range of rooms wiped out in a second, pulling a large section of Gaeta Tower with it. Even as they watched, beyond the windows and the balcony Gaeta’s dome wobbled and then, very slowly, toppled away, outwards into the sea in a roar of crumbling stone which went on and on.

  ‘Downstairs!’ Bahram ordered, and he and Odeinath almost pushed Petroz ahead of them, sprinting out of his beautiful study with its works of art and its marble floor, a place with centuries of Salassa history, down the stairs, spiral after spiral, through crowds of other terrified Salassans. Please, let them not have hit the marine barracks.