by Tom Toner
It was the hottest Quarter, mercilessly free of shade and breeze. In the high flowers and grasses around him there was no sign of anything edible. He cursed himself for eating everything before he’d reached the wall, hoping he wouldn’t find the land ahead barren and need to backtrack. He scowled and flashed mahogany, his first colour since leaving home, trying hard to think of what he had in his bag that might get him over the top of the wall.
At last he looked the stick up and down, thinking he could maybe use it as a pole vault, something he’d not tried since childhood. He couldn’t even remember how to do it properly, planting its base experimentally in the soil and rushing towards the wall, both hands at its splintered tip. He slammed side-on into the unforgiving surface. The second attempt was more successful, ending with a graceless scrabble at the parapet. He heaved a long brown leg over the edge and sat straddling the crest, grinning with satisfaction, his skin leaching back to crimson. Hoisting his weight to the other side, he dropped carefully into the high grove of violet plants, bending and snapping stalks with his weight. There was shade here under some of the more sprawling leaves that had begun to defy their boundaries. The paths between them were too straight to have been long-neglected, and he flushed a politely neutral grey in wary anticipation of company, setting out among the rustling lines of plants.
Lycaste hoped he wouldn’t see anyone. The longer he shunned social contact, the harder he knew it would be to take up again, finding he forgot how to talk to people entirely after periods of solitude. Grey was a formal introductory colour in the Tenth, the sort of shade he supposed you wore when straying onto someone else’s land. It suited him and implied a degree of modesty that gold—the other acceptable colour for strangers in someone’s home—could not. They were the rules he’d been taught, and he adhered to them purely out of ignorance regarding any other fashion, hoping that if he had to meet someone, he might achieve safe passage with little more than an awkward how do you do and a respectful nod.
There was little to be seen ahead but purple. At a possibly imagined deviation in the path about a mile away, Lycaste thought he could make out the domed roof of the building he’d noticed before he climbed the wall. It was only the apparent ruler-straightness of the pathways that convinced him he was still heading north as he hopped experimentally through borders and into the next clear avenue. The tall plants gave off a sappy, sour aroma, and he vowed not to eat anything until he reached the other side, practising what he would say should he be discovered. He was a traveller, off the boat from Kipris Isle. He wished to head into the Central Provinces where he had family. People might well leave him alone if they heard he had connections in the Second. He would need a better chart, too. Consulting the map before he reached the wall had told Lycaste nothing. He was certain he was not far into the next Province, either the Ninth or Eighth (confusing due to the spiral nature of where one Province ended and another began) but the valleys and groves did not appear in the basic metal plates he’d inherited from his uncle. Instead, the spaces were filled by tracts of blank land spotted with engravings of spear-tipped trees all the way to the northern shores of the inland sea, where a monster’s portly Melius face reared from the triangular waves, spouting fountains of water from its nostrils. He’d studied its crude, laughing face by the light of the last evening fire, thinking it wasn’t all that different from the creatures that swam in his cove.
A sudden echoing boom froze him in his tracks, and birds that he hadn’t known were there bolted from the surrounding purple groves in multicoloured flocks. Lycaste had no idea where the sound had come from, immediately crouching among the stalks. He rose slowly until his eyes were level with the tops of the plants. A head, outlined against the blue, stared suddenly in his direction.
He ducked too late. Clattering footfalls bounded in his direction. He swung his neck out of the grove and into the path, catching a glimpse of the woman dashing towards him, her body strung with hammered green plates of what looked like copper armour. Lycaste sprinted to his right, crashing through each lane in an attempt to slow the woman’s progress, hoping the suit was as cumbersome as it looked. The metallic clanking behind him grew louder, as did the grunts as she pushed her way through the plants after him.
He veered into another avenue, soil leaping from his feet, and chanced a look behind him at the grove he’d just left. The whinnying of donkeys, or maybe even zeltabras, drifted over the nearest hedge. A stable. Taking his hammer from the pack, Lycaste slowed to a stop in the dust. He thought of running and mounting an animal, but he hadn’t ridden since the Kipris fair and now wasn’t the time to relearn. He breathed heavily, waiting.
The woman leapt from a clump of stalks ten feet closer than he’d expected, almost tripping as her breastplate swung away from her waist. She aimed a couple of ringed fingers before he had time to duck, firing a burst of light and smoke at the gravel just in front of him. He swore and sprinted into the next row, grazed shins bleeding from the ricocheted stones. He was going to die, at last, after everything he’d been through. Jumping that damn wall was the worst idea he’d had since murdering a Plenipotentiary. Lycaste raced from path to path, pushing head first through each line of purple plants, his heart feeling like it was going to explode. Strong-smelling sap began to coat his body, startling him with an idea he should have had much, much earlier.
Twisting north again, he snapped his skin the same colour as the groves, bending his legs and sandwiching himself between two high shrubs. The jostling of his pulse was enough to make the leaves shake about him as he waited. A minute went by before he could make out the clattering of the woman’s approach. She’d tired, he could have made it if he’d carried on running. Now Lycaste had to focus on remaining still.
He turned his face away from the line, hoping to present as much blank purple flesh as he could.
She came closer, panting and clanking. He peered from his stoop at her as she neared, curious despite his hammering heart. She was red-skinned like him, with a peculiarly attractive face and tousled dark hair. She came closer; it was as if she’d painted her features on, somehow complementing the length and darkness of her eyelashes with thick black outlines. His cautious gaze slipped to her armour. It was carefully made but basic, with notches and grooves where other pieces could be added. She wore an oversized cuirass that she had to keep tugging towards her throat as it sagged and a couple of shin guards. The metal was indeed worn, greenly oxidized copper, not the grown stuff that never turned bad. The weapon on her fingers, two conjoined rings gnarled with inelegant knobs and spokes, flashed in the sun. He wondered if it used light, like the heirloom he’d gone and forgotten to bring with him, having seen no projectiles in the blur of the attack. She approached his hiding place, muttering something unintelligible under her breath, exquisite eyes probing the groves to either side. In a couple of seconds she’d look directly at him. Cold sweat pricked Lycaste’s face.
Her gaze found him, dark brown eyes, almost black, searching, and moved on. She walked past.
Lycaste exhaled softly and shakily, metering out his breath. He studied her from behind, seeing pink lines tracing her neck where the breastplate’s old cloth ties had chafed. The woman’s body was slightly too thin for that painted face, the muscles of her lower back and calves scrawny and wasted, though there was no way she could be older than forty. Still being schooled, perhaps. He tried to think of some explanation for her condition as she disappeared up the path, her head still twitching this way and that, alert. Shuddering, Lycaste squatted in the foliage to relieve himself, trying to imagine how he might have disarmed her. He still had to escape this walled trap, and that weapon would have made a persuasive bargaining tool. When he’d finished, he inched his head from the grove and into the avenue, peering at the distant figure.
Far ahead, he saw the corner of a structure. Its low dome was strung with paper flags and weathervanes. There was no alternative, he’d have to retrace his disorientated steps to the meadow wall and go around.
It would be madness to try to sneak past the house.
Without much thought, he tugged a couple of leaves from one of the purple plants and chewed on them, considering his next move. They tasted better than they smelled, so he pulled down a handful, stuffing the wild things into his mouth and crawling away through the stalks from the subliming puddle he’d made. He’d need to pop his head up again to find the wall, deciding to leave it a little while. Working his way slowly through the foliage, he saw large brown spiders dash into holes in the ground, one of them rearing meaty forelegs at his approach. He went around it, watching carefully where he put his feet, back aching as he ducked his long neck. The spider shuffled to face him in a tight semicircle, blank little eyes following him as it waved its feelers.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” Lycaste whispered at it in a soothing voice, feeling distinctly odd. He pointed feebly. “Just going this way.”
He looked ahead. The violet plants were a close, shifting pattern in his face, their shadows and stalks bafflingly complex and beautiful. It worried him faintly that he couldn’t focus on detail, his eyes unable to find their own range. He didn’t think you had to do that consciously. He carried on pushing through the leaves, not caring about the spiders. Somehow he knew they wouldn’t hurt him.
A breeze in the warmth altered the flamboyant patterns and he sat down to watch them move. Creamy, sumptuous purple. It looked delicious. What was wrong with him? He shouldn’t stop—she might come back. But so what? More like a girl, so young. She really was very attractive. They’d fall in love. He could live here with her, she’d hide him if he asked her, everything would be fine.
“I think I love you,” he whispered, giggling to himself. “Beautiful painted eyes. Beautiful.”
It was so warm and comfortable in the girl’s garden, and the wall would keep them out, all those people who would surely come after him. They’d never find him here.
The sky above him was flushed, late. Lycaste remembered running and running, faster than he thought he could, his legs feeling longer than they should be. He remembered glimpsing things as he sprinted—faces in the purple drifts—and hearing far-off thunder. He’d seen so many curious things that it was hard to recall them all. He’d sung and laughed and screamed and bellowed. His throat felt scrubbed raw. He sat up in the plants. Something skittered over his arm in a flash of mottled brown. So the spiders had been real, at least.
He was badly frightened. He was in a strange place far from home and something terrible and quite ungraspable had happened to him. The evening groves looked peaceful enough, so he stood up.
He was near the house. Churning smoke, fuchsia in the setting sun, curled thickly from one window in a fat column that drifted eastwards across the field. The surrounding plants had been charred to stubble, their sour reek far stronger than the burning wood from the building, which smelled almost pleasant by comparison.
Lycaste crept onto the closest dirt path, keeping his head low. The smoke was diminishing slowly above the field, golden sky peeping through it. Whatever had happened appeared to have stopped happening now; Lycaste remembered the faces from his trance—there were more people around somewhere. His feet met the warm, stinking ash of the ruined bushes and he crunched, still crouching, past the house. Only the far wall mattered.
Something multicoloured poked out of the plant ash, catching his attention as he passed a window. It was a melted child’s toy, plastic. There were more, all deformed by the heat. He stooped, resting his hand on the hot wall. That a child, or maybe even a family, lived here had never crossed his mind. He heard something smash and clatter distantly inside, as if from a basement or chamber below. Then an angry voice berating a softer one. Lycaste stayed leaning on the wall, his ear not quite pressed to it as the heat radiated out.
He had no business trying to help anyone; he didn’t even know what had happened. He had been lucky, extraordinarily lucky, and if he weren’t careful that particular ration would run out. Besides, the woman had tried to kill him, why should he help her? Small children were not his problem. Lycaste walked slowly away, keeping the west-facing wall of the house to his back, worried that he might be seen from the northern side. He would curve around through the groves and hit the edge of the field, wherever it might be. He cursed quietly under his breath—the stick was missing. He’d have to find some other way of getting over. Soon he saw the large gate, hope bursting inside him.
Before it lay a crumpled figure face-up in the path, light glinting off green armour. It was the woman, one of her knees bent as if she were resting, staring straight at him. He froze, looking into her painted face. She was dead, he was quite sure, but the angle from which he approached meant that he locked eyes with her. A few more steps and he could make out the wound at her throat, the lifeless distraction in those dazzling eyes. Lycaste had now seen two dead bodies in a week, the previous tenants of both having tried to harm him. There was something feral in her face that he’d not seen in Callistemon’s, an animal look; he supposed it was the bared teeth, dry in their gaping mouth.
Lycaste stepped around her, noticing the ring lying closer to the gate. He went and picked it up, examining it briefly and looking back towards the smoking house. The grizzly spokes of the weapon were sharp, their power almost tangible. Now that it was his he could do whatever he liked. He ran for the gate, Callistemon’s case swinging against his hip with repetitive insistence, a poking finger pointing out that there was something he could do, one little thing that might just perhaps be of use to someone in trouble.
“You bastard, Callistemon,” he muttered breathlessly. He shook his head and walked towards the house.
Melilotis
Lycaste checked the ring again and slipped it on as he came to the dim entrance of the ruined building, hoping it wasn’t out of charge or whatever powered it. He’d fired one once, at the same fair when he’d ridden the zeltabra, the man who’d owned it telling him that such weapons relied only on the magnetism of a person’s body. Lycaste couldn’t test it now without alerting whoever was inside. His heirloom—handed down with a brace of ancient keys that appeared to fit no locks—had always looked too old and dangerous to experiment with, and he’d kept it shut away.
He stood in the black remnants of the ground floor, looking up into the crumbled hulk of a twisting staircase. The whole place was a cinder, there was nobody here. He squinted into the smoke, remembering the sounds had appeared to come from deep in the house, and began to search among the ruined furniture. The entrance to the basement was in the corner of the room, much like each of his own towers. Small steps led through a smashed trapdoor and down into cool hollows under the ground, and he knelt in the ashes, eyeing them with suspicion and contemplating the staircase above him, hoping it wouldn’t fall in. More distant shouts and curses some way along the tunnel. Lycaste climbed clumsily down, trying to keep his ringed fingers raised. He crept along the smooth, tubular corridor. The walls were panelled with carved scenes, somehow untouched by the fire, only the pleasant smell of charred wood giving away any sense of the destruction above. Dim light pulsed with his heart, quickening as he noticed it might give him away. Kinetic lanterns—ever the perfect method of lighting for generations unremembered—must have ruined a fair few games of hide-and-seek. Ahead he could see a series of corridors branching off at different angles from a central circular landing and shuffled forwards, regretting his impulse not to run for the gate. By now he could have been back in the valley again, heading east towards the inland sea.
He hugged the wall as he heard speech, stopping nervously then moving closer. Though quite foreign, the intelligible accent was also slightly familiar.
“We’ll find it eventually, Chaemerion.”
Another voice, softer: “I told you—they come and get it, once a month. How many times do I have to say the same thing before you’ll believe me? There’s nothing here but stock.”
A third, nasal: “You have nothing left now, no family, no future—why not just t
ell us the truth?”
“What have you done with them?” Chaemerion’s tone was suddenly livid. “Tell me where—”
“Your pretty little lady?” replied the first voice, silencing him. “Your little—”
“You can look!” Chaemerion interjected. “There’s nothing here!”
“We’re sick of people like you, Chaemerion—the time has come to cut you down to size.”
There was a snap and a scream. Lycaste shuddered, his limbs tingling.
“Leo!” The first voice cried. “Have you …? Now what?”
“That was nothing! All I did was bend it.”
“We’re going to have to look for ourselves now! I don’t want to see that, roll him over.”
Something clattered to the floor, objects being moved. Lycaste still couldn’t see around the bend in the tunnel. He moved another two inches and a yellowish elbow became visible.
“What about the man we saw in the field?”
“He’d gone when I went back up. Why? You think he’s still here?”
“He might still be in the bushes somewhere. We should have taken him when we saw him on the hill.”
