by Tom Toner
“He wouldn’t understand,” said the Amaranthine. He looked off through the night-dark trees, eyebrows set hard. “They lived side by side for centuries without recognising each other.” He leaned over to see if Well-Spoken was awake. “Hello” he said sweetly. The other Immortal giggled.
“Do they remember you?” Lycaste asked.
“They remember an idea, a scent …” He trailed off, smoothing the reddish hair on Well-Spoken’s head. “Nevertheless, if I were to spend too much time away from them it’d be very hard to persuade even Gara-mond here that he knew me.”
Lycaste considered this. “Why are you not … the same as all these people, Sotiris?”
The Amaranthine studied him again, as if he was meeting Lycaste for the first time. “I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “Tell me who you’re running from and perhaps I’ll tell you what you want to know.”
Cherry
Lycaste had used the new maps to find his way to the Artery from Chaemerion’s burned plantation, hoping that not everything Melilotis had told him would turn out to be pure invention. He found the strange causeway only by accident, noticing the hoof-prints of a donkey or zeltabra turning suddenly into the forest at the edge of the hills. There were no signposts or gates leading into the quiet line through the woodland, as if Chaemerion had wished to keep this branch of the road secret. Knowing what he knew now, Lycaste assumed he probably had.
The Artery’s floor was emerald grass, growing in a thick, flawless carpet for as far as Lycaste could see and walled in on either side by silver-barked trees. He could find no evidence that another person had ever set foot on this road: no ash from a fire, no discarded food or litter, no footprints ahead in the springy grass. He pushed sideways into the forest on more than one occasion with the ring secure on his fingers, spokes glowing, sure that Melilotis would be hiding there waiting for him. Inside the forest, the cloisters of trees were regimented in mathematically exact rows until they dwindled into shadow, perfectly dark once afternoon turned to evening. He quickly learned that the only way to find the Artery again once he’d entered the woods was to keep a fire lit on the narrow road, and had done so only by accident, struggling blindly through claw-like branches until he’d noticed the spark of his camp in the distance. The only food that grew did so in narrow margins on both sides of the lane—lose the road and you’d starve.
Lycaste measured his progress by counting Artery exits, working out their symbols on the map from a key set into the back of one of the charts and scraping notches on the metal with some pronged cutlery he’d taken from the burned house. The Artery curved north-east with every step, threading across two hundred and fifty miles of forested countryside to the southern shores of the Black Sea, where it skirted the water for the same distance again until it met a port, Pirazuz. Owned by Salix, declared the map in fanciful lettering beneath a poorly engraved portrait of an unfortunate cross-eyed gentleman.
Connecting branches of the road wound off through the trees to join each Province, but Lycaste had decided at length to wait until he found the shore before choosing an alternate route. He had always lived near the water’s edge, and if his new money could buy him anything in a distant land, it would go towards a nice little house by the sea, as accurate a copy as he could find of his last beloved home. Until then, the Artery seemed to provide a reasonably pleasant and apparently safe way to travel to his next life, however far away it might be.
But on the morning of his second day—and roughly every forty miles after that—Lycaste found them. He grew to dread each alternate day as he was forced to walk past the creaking, twisting shadows in the trees. First, two girls and a boy. Red-skinned, fresh. He’d forced himself to look briefly at their faces, still uncoated with flies. Underneath their small feet dangled a wooden sign, a mysterious demonstration quite wasted on the empty road. Scrawled in First, it read:
3/21
Done with pleasure in his name
If you love him do the same
Lycaste read it twice, mouthing the words to himself, then hurried on along the road making sure not to pass beneath them. With each new cluster of corpses he noticed one thing they had, or rather didn’t have, in common, besides their colouration. Though they all bore the same simplistic poem, every sign he encountered was written in a different hand.
Sitting in front of his small fire just off the grassy road, Lycaste began to grimly suspect that it was simply what they did here, in the northern regions of the Sixth—which was where he guessed he must be by now. There was no point ignoring what he could see plainly; the children were all like him, crimson once they’d joined colourlessly with death. Melilotis and his brother had been different—finer, daintier, with a jaundiced complexion that was almost yellow. Rather like Callistemon, he supposed.
For all of his life, Lycaste had assumed that the thinly spread people of the world were rather like him; not in appearance, perhaps, but in spirit. He’d lived without wanting to travel, content in the knowledge that there was nothing but more of the same out there in the blue haze that he regarded as the border of his Province. Kipris Isle, his rugged birthplace, was cosmopolitan and much visited, yet he couldn’t remember encountering a single person with yellow skin, let alone someone possessing the sort of murderous tendencies he’d become used to in the last few days.
The next morning, Lycaste decided to change his colour, blending an almost headache-inducing golden yellow. He wondered at the implications of appearing too well bred, for anyone who passed him would naturally assume he was of a Province a thousand miles from his own, but it struck him that the alternative might be worse. Only closer inspection of his long, narrow Southern face might tell him apart. It was misleading, really—the weight he’d gained had dissolved early in his exile, constant exercise easily counteracting his paltry appetite each night, and so Lycaste looked even more foreign than he actually was.
On the ninth day, he came upon the harsh eastward turn that he had started to think did not exist, his new map perhaps overcompensating for some error in the drawing. Once the Artery turned parallel with the inland sea he would be able to follow a tributary out to the coastline, free to choose any route he liked from then on. Lycaste began to walk faster, excited that he would soon be out of the eerie green lane and in sunlight again.
He rounded the corner. The people and animals saw him before he could duck into the woods. They were picking fruit from an orchard of wizened apple trees near the turning, birds and mammals in aprons and smocks, singing softly among themselves. In a small field by the road there was a picnic set out, presumably for their masters. There was no opportunity to hide or slip by, so Lycaste carried on walking, making sure to keep his face lowered and his stride assured.
With hushed whispers and pointing fingers they observed him, but at first made no effort to approach. Just as Lycaste thought he might get away with no more than a wave, a youngish boy caught up to him, crossing the Artery sheepishly.
“Master Plenipotentiary?”
He turned hesitantly to the slender boy, the strength of his disguise still dangerously untested. A round girl of perhaps sixteen joined the boy and took his hand.
“Would you like to share some of our lunch?” The boy indicated a pile of baskets stacked against one tree.
Lycaste tried to remember how Callistemon had sounded, recalling the dead man’s voice in his head, but he had no talent for impressions. “No, thank you. I have plenty.” He spoke his best First, hoping that because it wasn’t their dialect either, they wouldn’t notice his errors.
The girl frowned. At that moment, an older woman came walking quickly through the trees. She was tall but plain, her yellowish body looking as if it had birthed more than one child in its time. He noticed painted lines around her eyes, like the armoured woman.
“Sir?” she enquired. “How may we help?”
“I was just on my way.” Lycaste nodded modestly, turned and began to continue up the Artery.
“Won’t you
join us?” she called after him. “We’d be most honoured.”
“We’ve offered already, Mother,” said the girl.
“Might we trouble you for news before you go?” the boy called after him.
Lycaste ignored the question, continuing to take long strides away from them. He heard quick footsteps in the grass and turned once more to find the boy at his heels.
“Please join us,” the boy pleaded. “You must know something of the battles?”
Lycaste stared down at him, his disguise temporarily forgotten. “Battles?”
“We hear nothing but rumour out here,” said the woman, taking her daughter’s shoulders. “Here,” she said, pulling back the cloth lid of a basket and distributing covered bowls and bottles on the grass. “Please, eat. I am Jasione, and this is my daughter, Silene.” Silene’s frown remained, but her attention had shifted to the steaming bowls. Hot food. Lycaste hated hot food.
The young boy offered his hand in the traditional way. “My name’s Ulmus.”
Lycaste took it gingerly. “Pleased to meet you all.” He had a sense, as the girl and the boy looked at him excitedly, of what Callistemon must have felt meeting the people of the Tenth for the first time.
“You’ve come far?” asked the woman. Even the questions were the same.
“Yes,” he said simply, sitting and peering into one of the bowls to sniff at the stew.
Ulmus didn’t touch his bowl, his eyes bright with curiosity. “Have you been in the Fifth?”
“The Fifth? No.”
“You haven’t heard anything?” All eyes were on him.
“No. What should I have heard?”
“The last we knew was that Elatine had killed Zigadenus at Vanadzor, and that the stronghold is theirs now.”
“Oh.” Lycaste didn’t understand a word of what the boy was saying. It all sounded made-up.
“And that now he intends to march on Echmiadzin,” the boy continued. “Do you think he will? Then he’d only be a few days away.”
The girl, Silene, shook her head emphatically. “There’s nothing worth taking at Echmiadzin. And anyway, those Jalan cowards wouldn’t risk a fair fight by telling anyone where they’re going.”
“Stop interrogating our guest and let him eat something,” chided Jasione gently, pouring Lycaste some hot wine. He took the conical cup uncertainly, passing it under his nose.
“Now you know our names, sir,” said the woman, “would it be inappropriate to ask yours?”
“Onosma,” Lycaste said uncertainly, blurting the first thing that came to mind. It was the name of his favourite strip serial, the story of a boy and his pet monkey, hopefully local only to the Lower Provinces and Kipris.
“Onosma.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I hope you’ll excuse me, but that doesn’t sound much like a Second name.”
“Neither does his accent,” whispered Silene to herself, finishing her bowl.
“Well …” Lycaste looked off towards the edge of the orchard, where the animals were studiously eavesdropping. “In truth I’m not an actual Plenipotentiary … I’m a Plenipotentiary’s assistant.”
No one appeared to know what to say. Silene coughed into her second helping of stew.
“What happened to your master?” asked Ulmus, confused.
“He went missing. I was on my way home, to wait for him there.” They continued to stare at him silently. “I became lost on the Artery,” Lycaste added.
“Well,” said Jasione, appearing to choose her words carefully, “we’re honour-bound to put you up with us until your master comes for you.”
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding.”
“Not at all,” she said, glaring at Silene, who was barely stifling a giggle. “You’re very well coloured for a mere equerry. Lots of people must have made the same mistake?”
“A few, yes.”
Silene scowled, her giggle at last subsiding. “How did you manage to get lost on the Artery?”
“I don’t know.” He glanced back at Jasione. “You’re very kind, but I can make my own way.”
“I have to insist, Onosma. We are required to, by the law.”
“And you might get lost again,” added Silene with a sly smile. “Ulmus says there’s dangerous Cherries about.”
The boy glowered at her. “It’s true.”
She peered at Lycaste and whispered to Ulmus in a stage-aside, “Onosma looks a bit like a Cherry himself—do you think that’s why he was spared?”
Lycaste looked at her, barely concealing his dislike. “What’s a Cherry?”
“The Melius, downcountry,” she explained, as if to a child. “Ulmus says they’ve started attacking people on the Artery, stealing from them.”
The boy nodded vigorously. “They have! I saw some!”
“The cheek of it,” scoffed Silene, running her piggy eyes over Lycaste. “They come this way now, if they’re being sold.” Her voice took on note of genteel disdain. “Some are more than passably handsome, I’ll admit.”
“You should tell your master about the robberies when he comes for you,” said Ulmus.
“My master? Ah, yes, I’ll do that. He would be most interested.”
Jasione appeared to remember something. “A Plenipotentiary came through here last year, didn’t he, Silene?”
“Last year, Mother,” said Silene, quickly taking another bowl for herself before Jasione could put it away.
“Yes, that’s what I said. Do you remember his name?” She turned back to Lycaste. “He didn’t stay more than a day, his business was elsewhere.” She considered him as she spoke. “But he had no … equerry, no one else with him.”
She had a shrewd face, the mother. Lycaste didn’t think he had any more energy for deceit. He’d been fiddling with the drawstring of his pack nervously while they stared at him and now reached and pulled it open. The ring would be more than enough to threaten them until he could get away. Nobody needed to get hurt. The bag leaned over under the weight of his rummaging hand, spilling an armful of silk. Ulmus and Silene gasped. Jasione’s expression grew shrewder still.
“He’s richer than Chaemerion!” exclaimed Ulmus, wide-eyed.
“He’s richer than anyone,” said Silene quietly.
Lycaste froze, looking at the bundle of colour. He pulled a shimmering strip of blue from it and handed it hesitantly to the woman. “For everyone I meet on the Artery.” Their eyes widened further. He gave another, shorter ribbon of yellow to the girl, which she snatched with a shrill laugh.
“A gift from my master, for whom I’m afraid I must continue searching, despite your kind offer,” he said, presenting another piece that was immediately torn out of his hand by Silene. Lycaste placed his hand over his bag, beginning to see for himself the changes money could make in people, still unsure what he was doing.
Jasione retrieved the ribbon unceremoniously from the girl. “You are too generous, Onosma.” Silene whined for her taken piece. Jasione held the ribbon away from her. “Stop it! Or you won’t have that first one, either!” She looked at Lycaste sharply. “I see you can pay for your stay—we’re glad, but we don’t need gifts.” She glanced at the servants, who were scrupulously working away, and stuffed the money into one of her picnic hampers. “Silene, have the spare bedchamber aired.”
*
He’d spent the first few days keeping mostly to his cramped room at the top of their house on the outward edge of the redoubt, awkwardly passing people on landings and in quiet rooms without any real idea what he was supposed to do next, effectively imprisoned by law. Approaching it from the Artery, the citadel of Koyulhizar—in which he was now an unwitting guest—had looked quite unassuming: a series of stout walls and keeps painted with huge, gaudy murals, overlooking the boundary between the Fifth and Seventh Provinces. Turrets on the outer walls climbed a storey here and there—houses or larders for the sixty or so people who lived inside the city—looking out over walled kitchen gardens and wooded hills. His own window opened down to a terrace
of fan palms and the garden beyond, home to a russet marmoset with black ears that stared unblinking up at him from the leaves as it chewed. Leaning out of his window to peer north, he could just make out a line of iron grey—his first glimpse of the Black Sea, if it wasn’t his imagination. The air was almost imperceptibly colder, thickening his skin just after he’d felt the tang in the wind. As long as his disguise succeeded it was a fine place to stop for a while, far more comfortable than the Artery. For a quarter of a ribbon a day, it ought to be.
Silene’s father, Eremurus, was a thoughtful and softly spoken man who spent much of the day alone in his garden. He had accepted Lycaste with a warmth he hadn’t felt in a long time—almost certainly kindled by the prospect of a rich tenant and any possible favour Lycaste’s stay might generate with the Second—though he appeared to be a genuinely kind man, from what little Lycaste saw of him.
They called Lycaste for meals in the late afternoon, apparently eating only one a day, unless there were others he wasn’t invited to. The supper always involved the sort of revoltingly hot cuisine he’d been subjected to at the picnic, and Lycaste learned not to arrive at the table with high hopes. Ulmus, he discovered, was not Silene’s brother but the nephew of Koyulhizar’s Patriarch, one Hamamelis, and so lived in the centre of the citadel with his large extended family. It left Lycaste with only the three of them—Jasione, Silene and Eremurus—sitting together in the long chamber, the conversation from Eremurus’s side wilting before it could reach Lycaste’s end of the polished table.
At his first dinner, Lycaste was offered more of the hot wine in a metal cup. The rich, fruity smell of the drink made his guts turn over, as did most of the slop served up by the head helper bird, Luma. She was more attentive than he could bear, smiling encouragingly while Lycaste tried to swallow whatever it was she’d given him in grimacing silence. There were twelve courses that first day, each less edible than the last, and he wasn’t sure how much longer he could leave his planned escape, fearing that dramatic weight loss was almost a more pressing danger than being discovered as a fraud.
