by Tom Toner
He would have seen Eranthis sooner if her skin had not flushed a bottle-green to match the moonlight, and the resemblance to her sister was just enough to shock his heart into life—the way she carried herself, the angle of her neckline, the exact curve of her bare shoulder. Even before he saw her face.
“Lycaste.”
“Eranthis. I thought you were …”
“You were hoping for someone else?”
He resumed walking slowly back to the tower, the sounds of low conversation coming from the lighted doorway. His entire life had been spent surrounded by nudity, people clothed only in the formal colours they assumed when etiquette required. He cared for Eranthis, of course, almost as fondly as you could care for someone who was not family—but the similarities between the sisters were all too noticeable, and he found it hard to look at her now.
“She’s confused, Lycaste. She thought she could trust you more than other men.”
He hesitated, turning back. “Of course she can trust me.”
“Pentas has been through so much. She needs you—just not in that way.” Eranthis came closer in the moonlight, her features, more yellow than red without added colour, were stronger than Pentas’s. “I know you have … difficulties, that it’s not always easy for you to understand people or feel things for them, and that now you do feel something at last it’s not returned in the way you’d like—”
He shook his head. “That’s her business.”
“Give it time. All things heal with time.”
Lycaste looked off to the hills as he contemplated such an empty statement. “It is hard, for me,” he said at last. “My parents on Kipris always wanted another son, someone different.” He glanced dejectedly back at her. “I thought I’d be used to rejection by now.”
“Nonsense.” Eranthis smiled. “I’ve never known someone so in demand. Perhaps you should open the door when the bell rings once in a while. Perhaps happiness is waiting on the other side.”
He nodded solemnly, thinking that he just wanted to be home, in bed, anywhere else. Eranthis took his hand and walked him towards the gentle light of the doorway.
“She counts you as her finest friend—can’t that be enough for now?”
He smiled and looked away, opening the door for her as he knew a gentleman should. She didn’t understand what it was like to be shy, to have one’s entire life governed by self-consciousness. In Eranthis’s mind there were always others out there for Lycaste, potential suitors just a letter or a smile away. But he knew that was not so. He had found his love, even if she did not want him in return.
Inside the butler birds were drying bowls with sheets of linen, passing them to one another to be stacked. Holcus, Borago and Sonerila were each excellent—and expensive—examples of some pedigree breed Lycaste could never remember the name of, their ancestors no longer present in the world. Where wings had presumably once been, there were now four flightless twig-like arms complemented with a multitude of clawed fingers, their legs long enough for them to reach waist-high to most Tenth people. Lycaste had grown up among creatures like them and he took the birds and the services they provided for granted. They were people, in the accepted sense—along with anything able to converse—and their large grey eyes could appear unsettlingly human in the right light. Briza, Drimys’s little boy, treated the birds like aunts and uncles, entirely unconcerned with any differences between their species.
The boy had joined them, and Lycaste watched him carefully as he sat down, anxious in case the child dropped anything. He carefully positioned himself as far from Eranthis as he could.
“Tell him to use a plate if he’s going to eat something,” he reminded Drimys, pouring a final digestif and staring morosely into the darkness of the drink.
“It’s all right,” said Impatiens, preparing to leave. “He has a task—we gave him the silver to polish.” He touched the boy’s shoulder. “He has something for you, don’t you, Briza?”
Briza smiled shyly and placed a small plastic figure on the table. “Sorry for touching your dolly house, Lycaste. This is mine—you can have him.”
Lycaste took the figure and examined it. It was a wolf, standing on its hind legs like a man. The plastic was yellowed and sun-faded, but he thought with a lick of paint he could find a place for it somewhere. He glanced back at the boy, trying his best to smile.
Virginis
Looking up at the vaulted walls unfolded something in the observer’s mind, expanded it somehow. Sotiris never tired of gazing upwards, and had never sat or spoken to anyone without taking time to glance around him just once more as he considered the business before him. A person, no matter how philosophically minded, could stare into the ink of the Void without comprehension, pupils unmoved by what they hadn’t been constructed to parse, but looking at this was different. It was like peering inside one’s own eyeball, scooped of its vitreous jelly and with only the raw nerves left clinging to the inner surface. Above him arced millions of square miles of islands the colour of autumn leaves, birthed by one enormous river delta that bled across the world in mint-green tributaries. Cloud patterns whirled and drifted, a great storm hanging like a bruise across one of the small inland seas above; there would be ships crossing that glittering bay, tiny galleons too small to see tossed and blown in the gale. Stationed at the centre of the world upon a network of colossal buttresses three thousand miles above, between him and the storm, was the small, silent Organ Sun. It was dim enough to look at, its tides of fire peeling apart at a thin black band running down one side to cast an amber shadow across a wedge of the Vaulted Land a few thousand miles over Sotiris’s shoulder, high on one mountainous continent.
The dream still lingered, faint in his thoughts. As always, he’d awoken before the boat reached the harbour, but it was closer than it had ever been now. Close enough for the crew to start uncoiling heavy ropes and stand with them, smiling and waving. That was new.
Hytner, slumped back in his chair, was looking at him.
“I did suggest that we stop at Henry James.”
Sotiris sat up straighter, rubbing his eye with a knuckle. “Which book were we talking about?”
Hytner picked it up from the table, tapping the title. “Portrait of a Lady. Didn’t you read any of it?”
He tried to remember but came up blank. “Weren’t we on Dumas? Have we skipped some?”
Sotiris’s friend stared back, apparently mystified. “Last year, Sotiris. We read Dumas when I came to see you in Cancri.”
“Ah. Cancri. That’s right. I was at the September House.” He scratched his neck and frowned incredulously. “Almost a year ago.”
Hytner continued to stare, playing with the carnelian buttons of his frilled collar. “Is something the matter?”
“Something the …? No, nothing’s amiss. Keep going.” He pointed at the book in Hytner’s hand. “What did you think of it?”
His companion sighed, slapping the tiny jewelled book resembling an ancient pocket Bible back on the table. “I gave up at eighty pages.”
Sotiris smiled, stretching into his chair and watching the contented movements of the bees around them in the meadow. One drifted close enough for him to see its silver shell, beaded with orbs of fabulously expensive blue lapis: even the insects here were pampered beyond measure. Such things were of course modest in comparison to those in his home Satrapy—there the bees’ robotic counterparts were each made from a single lump of gold, hollowed precisely to make a functioning drone capable of mindless pollination. But that was Cancri, where the concept of understated opulence simply did not exist.
He watched a speck rise and drift away from the surface flames of the sun, thinking about the harbour. Across the lawns, clothed Melius acolytes were playing something with bats and balls. Beyond them rose the Virginis cathedrals, great geometric shapes in the curved haze. He heard the umpire of the game announce something, watching the play come to a brief halt.
“That was out,” said Hytner faintly, leaning
forward as if he meant to interrupt their play. He squinted, raising the flat of his hand to shade his eyes. “He’s allowed it, though.”
The two of them looked at each other as the Melius resumed their game. Eventually Hytner let out a long breath, the delicate cream lace around his chin trembling. “I suppose you’ve heard from your friend by now? What mischief is he preparing down there? Or are you not allowed to tell me?”
Sotiris smiled at him and shook his head. “I have received no letters from Maneker, though I know you won’t believe me.”
Hytner returned his gaze to the game. “So he departs for the Old World and doesn’t even tell his dearest friend.” He hesitated, battling some internal dialogue. Sotiris could almost hear it. At last he gave in. “What kind of Amaranthine has he become? What could they possibly have done to him to turn him so quickly?”
“He has been persuaded,” said Sotiris with a shrug, aware that the leisurely morning of idle talk was now at an end. “Just as the Devout were.” He watched Hytner bridle at his words.
“The Devout, indeed,” he spat. “If only His Venerable Self could be made to see that this edict should be reversed—have Maneker put away somewhere, a Utopia. At least exiled, removed somehow, and his followers punished for such presumption.” Hytner shook his head. “This new business with the Prism should count for something.”
Sotiris blinked sleepily in the sunlight, brushing another of the glinting bees from his armrest. “You think the Satrapies are in enough danger to warrant overturning an edict?”
Hytner’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t? The Prism ridicule our borders, Sotiris, pilfering what they like when our attention is engaged elsewhere. If it weren’t for the Vulgar and Pifoon standing armies, the Firmament would be overrun in months, if not less.” He leaned forward. “Perhaps not even the Vulgar can be trusted any more, since the rumours of some new …” He searched for the words. “Some new killing device being developed at Nilmuth persist.” Hytner regarded him gravely. “These primates grow too big for their cage. Its bars must be strengthened.”
Sotiris raised his dark eyebrows. “I don’t believe the Prism—as they are now—could arrange a decent invasion force for all the treasure in the Firmament, let alone develop anything new that we haven’t foreseen or manufactured ourselves.” He spread his hands. “If you are so convinced, then surely all the more reason to let the edict stand, perhaps—why not allow this Pretender to try his hand at wielding the Firmament’s might? Why be so eager to crush him before we’ve seen what he can do?”
Hytner compressed his lips to a thin, pale line before he spoke again. “If you were not the most dependable of Perennials I would consider that a treasonous comment, Sotiris. Treasonous beyond belief. His Venerable Self can only be protected by a Parliament of peers now, he’s too—”
Sotiris sat up slightly, exasperated. The man’s silence lingered irritatingly in the air. “Say it,” Sotiris replied at last. “Go on. He’s mad. Insane. Destined for a Utopia himself before too long.” He stared at his friend. “I know it, you know it, twenty thousand Amaranthine damn well know it.”
The other Perennial closed his eyes, massaging his brow. “You have to take sides this time,” he said softly. “You can’t keep avoiding these questions.”
They stared at each other, the whispering meadow appearing to amplify the sounds of the game across the lawn. Respect for Sotiris in the Firmament was a bright constant, long-lived and hardy like the artificial sun glowing overhead. He had a good many friends among Perennials on both sides of the debate. Neutrality, while on paper perhaps a cowardly trait, had ensured that he kept them. He took in Hytner, dressed in all his Virginis finery. He, of course, didn’t have that problem.
Hytner glanced away in frustration. “This supersedes friendship, Sotiris.”
Sotiris shook his head, following Hytner’s gaze. A visitor, still some way off, was heading towards them across the meadow.
“You won’t be allowed to hold on to neutrality for ever,” said Hytner when he received no response. “They won’t talk to you like this, they won’t give you a second chance.”
“They are still a minority, Hieronymus. I think you forget that in your panic. This Amaranthine, whoever he may be, however old and powerful he may say he is—though of course I severely doubt his claim—is still just one man on the Old World, with a few devout followers. The kingdom of the giant Melius is where they shall stay; they would never risk coming here, into the greater Firmament.”
“Not yet, at least. But give them time. This … Aaron, he has been quick about his work. Gliese, of all places, has already been offered to him—straight into his hands, should he want it. You think he won’t accept the capital as a coronation gift?”
“He can’t. Not until his claim has been tested.”
“All right.” Hytner leaned forward again, very close. “And what if he speaks the truth, if he is the Eldest? What are we to do then?”
Sotiris stood from his chair. “Then all follows the natural order, and we must be thankful.”
Hytner remained seated but turned to watch the man approach. It was Stone, dressed in the apparel of the Devout, the sect that harboured the man now seeking the Amaranthine crown. His sleeves were rolled down despite the mildness of the morning, their heliotrope studs twinkling as he waved away some of the bees congregating in his path.
“Must be hot in that,” said Sotiris quietly.
“What have you come here for?” growled Hytner as the Amaranthine approached. “I’m afraid illiterates aren’t welcome at our book group.”
Stone sneered. “Quiet. My message is for Sotiris, and Sotiris alone. Leave.”
“Leave? You see, Zacharia, this is why nobody likes—”
“Leave.” Stone withdrew his hand from his pocket, holding it poised against his thigh.
Hytner glanced at Sotiris coldly and rose from his chair. “I’ve no desire to spend any more time in such hopeless company.” Shaking his head, he walked away through the buttercups. “We are ruined, all of us. You’ll see, Sotiris.”
Stone watched him go with cold eyes, his fist clenched. Like all Immortals, he looked perpetually young, frozen at the moment when his cells took their last breath of mortality. The look suited some, but not Stone; his body had changed at twenty-two, his face remaining forever unfinished.
Sotiris took his hand without fear. “What is it?”
Stone’s face relaxed. “It isn’t good news. It’s your sister.”
He tensed, moving to the table. “What about her?”
“You’ll have to come with me.” Stone took hold of his arm carefully,
Sotiris looked for Hytner, retreating across the meadow.
“Come,” the man repeated.
Sea Hall
“Sotiris Gianakos.”
He stooped to a bow as he was led before the Perennials, his gowns whispering as they dragged behind him on the gleaming floors. Some were decades younger than he, children Sotiris might have chastised for being a nuisance at dinner. Here, in the golden Sea Hall of Gliese, they were his equals. Sotiris’s eyes traversed the vaulted cloisters of pocked gold as he took his seat, past pillars studded with globes of black opal to the map of the Firmament beaten in glittering relief across the vast dome above them. His skin still tingled with the shock of Bilocation—its atoms having bridged the gulf of a light-year in a matter of seconds—and he rubbed his hands together like a traveller come in from the cold as he returned his attention to the seated figures.
Stone had taken Sotiris as far as he could, too immature by half a millenium to be present alongside him now. On their way in, crossing the polished floors of beaten silver cobbled with chunks of apple-green jadeite, they had passed a weeping Melius, tall and awkward, his coloured skin blistered from dozens of lashes.
“Perennial Parliament,” Sotiris said, his Unified—the language of the Amaranthine for more than ten thousand years—crisp and formal. “I have received news of events.”
The cries of the distant Melius grew too thin and distant to be heard as twelve pairs of ancient eyes looked at him. Finally an Immortal, clothed in a shimmering blue hooded gown, stood from his chair.
“Sotiris, your sister is dead. The Terziyan Utopia protects her Immortal remains and awaits your presence.” The Amaranthine hesitated. “I am sorry to have to bring you this news.” He sat, collecting his cane from its perch at the side of the golden chair and studying its tip.
Sotiris waited for anyone else to speak in the Sighing Silence. The halls, open to the cold grey sea, reverberated like a conch when the storms swept across the Vaulted Lands and over the inlet upon which they perched.
He supposed he had known the moment Stone came for him that something had happened to her. The Insane lived only as long as fortune favoured them. To dwindle to madness and travel to a Utopia was to realise that death would follow, sooner or later.
“I would know, Perennial Parliament, the manner of Iro’s fate.”
The Perennial who had spoken—one Christophe De Rivarol—shuffled in his seat. He looked among his contemporaries, none of whom appeared to wish to speak. “Word was carried from the Old World by an Amaranthine pilgrim who had been visiting the aristocracy of Vilnius Second. I have it on good authority that she drowned. You must know that it was not unpleasant.”
Not unpleasant? he wondered. Sotiris could think of few more unpleasant ways to die.
“Thank you, Christophe.” He regarded the assemblage of Perennials. “I know that you all cared for her as I did, and that she was beloved in the Utopia. It is no great tragedy that she died in a place she called home and after many, many years of life.”
A murmur of approval percolated from the seated Amaranthine.
“Will you take sluice, Sotiris?” asked De Rivarol with something like relief, directing the attention of a pantaloon-clothed Melius to the gleaming jug at his side. The Melius moved silently to take the jug and approached Sotiris. He accepted, watching the creature pour in a flamboyant yet precisely controlled manner, and took a swig of the water. It was speckled with a silt of tiny rubies cut into the shapes of mythical creatures.
