by Tom Toner
She wiped a line of water over the paper’s crinkled surface and dabbed at it gently with a stained cloth. Wrong colour. Impatiens was pinker. She tickled some raw cadmium with the corner of the brush, rubbing it into the dirty mix on her palette, then adding white. Pentas knew the combination for her own skin without thinking, painting self-portraits in private that the others weren’t allowed to see: sienna and rust, lots of white, finished with a touch of lemon. That extra yellow could be too much; it had to be applied very carefully. Sometimes, in a certain light, she didn’t even think she could see it at all.
Pentas glanced for a little longer at the dozing man. He always sucked his tummy in. In sleep, the hidden extent of it rolled out, askew nipples and belly-button resembling a confused and idiotic face. Her hand moved about the scene, blocking and suggesting. It darted without thought to a space of blank paper just above the crown of the man’s slumped head, swiftly implying a tower.
She stopped, looking again but painting nothing more. Lycaste’s house was a wobbling haze in the thick heat beyond, its bougainvillea wailing across the distance. Several brightly coloured parrots hovered in the turbulence between the gardens; mating pairs, Eranthis said.
It was a lonely walk eastwards across the beach these days; she wouldn’t go any more without someone to accompany her. The birds still lived there, pruning and harvesting the gardens, their haul of food too much for any of them to finish, but they found it lonely, too. It had been more than a month now since Lycaste had left, his crumpled note still making little sense. Elcholtzia wouldn’t say much about the night Lycaste came to him, at first refusing to reveal anything at all. The stirrings of guilt were almost unnoticeable now as she looked at the towers, her crinkled work drying before her in the baking afternoon. Impatiens’s dappled shade began to look more and more inviting.
She exhaled gently, seeing all the places where they had sat and strolled and talked. She’d fooled herself that his looks could mend what had never been there, feelings she simply didn’t possess. He’d never have been satisfied. Life would have been unbearable for them both.
A shadow slipped across the painting, a cool, sharp drop of seawater on her shoulder. Callistemon bent to kiss her, ducking away when he saw he was dripping onto the paper.
“I like this one,” he whispered, studying the painting. Briza hummed on the grass beside her, engrossed in his own drawings.
“How was your swim?” She was glad of the chance to stop. The work would remain an unfinished study.
“Drimys came with me at last. We trod water out by the Point until he could relax. Didn’t see a thing.”
She tilted her head to look up at him. “You look better today.”
“You always say that.”
He swam twice a day at her request. The salt appeared to do something for the lesions, drying them out so that they no longer wept so much. He smiled down at her with a halo of sun behind his head and she smiled back, taking one of his fingers in hers. Though she scrubbed Callistemon each evening until the rest of his light yellow skin was smooth and shiny, his face and arms grew ever worse.
He kissed her again and sat down cross-legged next to Briza, stroking the boy’s curls as he painted. His mother had decided to extend her stay—the coastal climate congenial to her nerves—which had suited everyone. Pentas liked the way he and the boy were together, how instantly at ease in one another’s company they could be without a word uttered between them. Often she would catch them just sitting, looking out at the sea together. But Callistemon was different now, anyway—quieter. Gone was the brash self-regard he’d first shown up with. He had even begun to accept Elcholtzia and Impatiens, though the old man hardly spoke to him.
Pentas watched them both. Callistemon had taken a brush from the table and begun his own small painting. His style was quick but accurate, more line than anything else; Lycaste’s tower took shape in a succession of rapid, minimalist strokes. That look was in his eyes again, wary and far-off, as if Callistemon were witnessing something sinister moving slowly closer, something only he could see. Whatever that expression meant, it was his most private possession.
She’d often asked Callistemon about his family, whether they’d miss him now he was so far away. The subject distressed him, bringing to that serene surface more anger and sadness than Pentas had expected, sometimes even making her afraid. Yet she sensed his introspection hid more than that, carrying a greater weight behind it than simple homesickness. He’d run away from something, they all knew it—Callistemon’s duties, whatever they were, would surely never have allowed him to stay on the Nostrum coast for so long. Pentas supposed she was glad he’d ignored his job. She loved him, and knew he loved her, too. They were both strangers in this land.
He’d been looking at her while she thought, observing her own glazed expression.
“I like Impatiens just sketched in.” He smiled, pointing to the paper. “You shouldn’t do any more to it.”
She looked at it. “Good. I wasn’t going to.”
He glanced out at the parrots as they hovered in the thermals. “What were you thinking about?”
Pentas shrugged. “Lycaste.”
Callistemon nodded. “What’s going to happen with his house—did Pamianthe find out?”
“Nothing yet. His family still hadn’t replied when she enquired in Mersin. She asked about the Players when she was there, too—apparently nobody’s heard from them, either.”
He was silent for a while. “Maybe they stopped off somewhere they liked.”
“Maybe.”
Callistemon cleaned his brush in the water jug, stirring it carefully without touching the sides. “I’m going in now—are you coming?”
“Soon.”
He left for the house, his fingers trailing gently through her hair as he passed.
“Bye, Callistemon,” Briza called after him, finishing Impatiens’s balloon-like head with a satisfied click of his tongue.
Impatiens grunted gutturally, waving away a fly. That he and Eranthis missed Lycaste the most had been made explicit in the series of failed expeditions organised to find him and the dedicated study of his wandering, delirious message. Whatever Lycaste had done, it remained a mystery. His letter alluded to a crime without once explaining in the columns of tear-stained and spidery writing what it might be. The words of the Tenth were written with the flick of a hand, and if too much force was applied it changed the meaning entirely. Lycaste’s panic that night had scoured his writing almost to nonsense, and they were still translating exactly what he’d intended to say. A segment addressed to Pentas began affectionately and ended with inarticulate rage. She’d torn that section out of the note, which they still kept at his old house should anyone wish to read it again, and wept as she burned it. Somehow he’d known. She thought at first that he’d hurt Callistemon, but the Plenipotentiary had insisted the wound on the side of his head and the bruises across his back were from a fall down some stairs, nothing more. Only Eranthis, proud and perhaps still jealous, blamed her for Lycaste’s disappearance, refusing to accept her relationship with Callistemon.
Pentas took the paper by the edges and placed it on the grass so that she could stand, flexing her back and yawning after sitting in one position for so long, suddenly quite thirsty.
Wherever Lycaste was now, she hoped he was happy in whatever small way he could be. She hoped his travels might change him for the better, but also that, even if they did, he would ultimately decide not to return. It was an ugly, cruel thought, and she kept it deep inside herself. She was cured of her illness, her shame at what had been done to her lessened now, slowly admitting to herself with cultivated detachment that she had used Lycaste’s friendship and trust to get there. Maybe in time she and Callistemon would move away, somewhere they could make new memories together, hopefully more. Before that, though, he would have to get better himself. If that meant her tending to him every hour of the day, then so be it.
Cargo
The Noma
d’s course had taken it in a wide curve beneath the belly of the Firmament, traversing a fifty-four-trillion-mile trajectory to its penultimate destination, an Amaranthine Satrapy eight light-years from the Old World.
Corphuso had spent the time playing Zuo’s Ruin, a Lacaille crossbreed of Chess and Draughts, since there was nothing like a library on board. None of the Lacaille troops would deign to play against a Vulgar so he had grown accustomed to playing alone, swivelling the board in his quarters and studying each move carefully. Eventually, once Ghaldezuel had grown tired of questioning him, he began to eat in there, too, until there came a point when he barely left all day. The bare chamber they had given him was filled with a metal double bunk, the other bed mercifully unoccupied, and a washbowl/toilet combination that gave off a harsh chlorine smell whenever it was used. A black Lacaille bunk-mouse shared his tiny cell, nibbling the edges of his blanket when he slept and cuddling into his warmth as the schooner slipped through the silver light of passing stars.
After many days of listlessness, after the toilet had broken and even the mouse had found better things to do, there came a knock on his iron door. Corphuso dragged himself from the top bunk and waddled over to open it, a small bone still stuck in his mouth while he sucked out the marrow.
“Architect.” It was Ghaldezuel, resuited in his blinding, gold-shod armour. “Get yourself ready, we change ships in an hour.” He glanced into the small room, taking in the leaking toilet and litter-strewn floor, then back at Corphuso. “I do hope you’ve had a relaxing journey.”
“Where are we?” he asked, ignoring the remark.
Ghaldezuel smiled coldly, closing the door.
He was permitted to stand on the flight deck, looking out among the cockpit controls to the glowing sphere they were diving towards. It shone across the windows, about twenty feet in diameter but growing larger every second. Corphuso knew enough about their rate of flight to understand that the Vaulted Land was considerably larger than Filgurbirund, perhaps more massive even than the Old World. He could hardly blink as he watched it loom towards them, the tortured cry of the world’s reverberations echoing from the navigation equipment.
Its surface was a muddy, oxidized silver, the mineral-plated outer crust reflecting the light of its sun into the cockpit and dazzling their eyes. Where the silver continents—studded with twinkling black and blue dots like sapphires—broke apart, a great green and orange swirl, red where the silt formed beaches and strands of blown land, merged to blue and a sea that must have stretched over to the far side. Dappling the deep, hot blues of the ocean were speckled archipelagos of lighter, whirled currents and islands, spreading in their thousands towards each hemisphere like pale green algae. Not a single cloud marred the view of the stunning globe; the Amaranthine only appeared to care for weather when it could be beautiful, tolerating it on the insides of their worlds to improve the views. Ten golden orbs—Vaulted Moons—sparkled in various orbits; some were Tethered, bound to the world by delicate and impossibly long chains that glowed like fine links in a colossal necklace as the sun struck them, while others simply floated, naturally free.
Nothing in the Firmament, save perhaps the staggering interior continents and oceans of the Vaulted Lands, symbolised more the Immortals’ power and their grip on all life between the stars. Even Ghaldezuel, silent beside him, appeared impressed. Corphuso had never seen this place before, but he thought he might have a good idea as to where they were.
Soon the blue dot they were heading for in the silver wall had swelled to a gaping cerulean mouth, not quite circular and branched with connecting tributaries. Corphuso knew those glinting channels were great rivers where sailing boats scudded their way around the outer surface, sometimes taking the other waterways to the great orifice seas and into the inner world below. This, however, was no ordinary Vaulted Land, and Corphuso was glad to be seeing it at last, even if he was a prisoner once more.
This was Gliese, the capital of the Firmament.
As they closed the distance, they were joined on either side by Pifoon temeraires, sinuous old Amaranthine ships still plated here and there with nacreous green scales and the remains of snarling beast faces, sent to escort them into the orifice sea.
“And you say this is all yours now?” asked Corphuso, barely able to suppress his smile. Ghaldezuel had not struck him before as the gullible sort.
“Not yet,” the Lacaille said, turning to him. His helmet, bright with the world’s reflection, was hinged closed at the mandible, his voice deep and synthesised. “I see your smile, architect. But the new Firmamental Emperor is desperate to have these pieces—the prize was offered to me before I had time even to consider my payment.”
“Pieces?” He looked into the round, desolate eyeholes of Ghaldezuel’s new suit helmet. “There is to be extra cargo, besides my device?”
The helmet nodded but said nothing, turning back to the pilots and the huge sphere. The blue orifice sea almost filled the view now, occasionally masked as one of the Pifoon temeraires overtook and glided silently ahead in the vacuum. Sun glinted from the sea’s currents, losing itself in darker patches that were almost black.
“The sea bleeds down to the next world to make the oceans on the inner surface,” said Ghaldezuel. “We are supposed to fly straight through it.”
Corphuso stared ahead, nodding, the light in the cockpit turning a rich, tropical blue as the edges of the orifice disappeared and the view became completely one colour. “Have you ever been to a Vaulted Land before, Ghaldezuel?”
Ghaldezuel didn’t look at him. “No,” he said, inspecting a functional, many-dialled timepiece set into his gauntlet. “And I suppose you have? Accompanying rich old father?” The sneer in the voice was almost theatrical.
“Once,” he admitted, ignoring the Lacaille’s tone. “I went with my uncle on business to Epsilon India.” He remembered running off before he was supposed to, gawping up at the world walls and vomiting before he’d had time to take the seasickness medicine his uncle had given him. “It’s a fairly overwhelming sight when you first get inside.”
Ghaldezuel adjusted some settings on the timepiece. “I’ll bear that in mind,” he said, without much interest. Suddenly the speaker channels in the cockpit opened with a loud hiss of static, making them flinch.
“Voidship Pride of the Sprittno,” said a thickly accented and extremely squeaky Pifoon voice through the speakers, “reduce your speed on mark to six below point.”
“Six thousand below point,” confirmed one of the pilots.
Corphuso looked at Ghaldezuel. “Sprittno? The fishing city?”
Ghaldezuel did not answer.
“Mark,” said the Pifoon voice soon after. Abruptly, Corphuso heard the belching growl of the schooner’s engines through the cockpit, realising they were travelling within atmosphere again for the first time since Steerilden’s Land. The ruffled blue of the orifice sea looked very close, almost near enough for Corphuso to reach out and touch, like a curtain of tropical velvet stretched before the windows. A darker spot in the water—some kind of channel beneath the surface, Corphuso thought—swelled to meet them, growing until they could see that its strange marbled edges were moving. A rising mist steamed the windows for a moment before the outside wipers dragged across the plastic. Corphuso gasped, unable to contain himself.
The dark spot was a hole in the sea, perhaps a mile across; the ragged foaming of hundreds of waterfalls plunged into its black eye, their thundering mists swirling and twirling into the Nomad’s path, the suspended water droplets glinting before they could hit the windows. The ship dropped past the edge of the hole, skimming a falling cliff of dark water, the fury of the engines deadened by the roar. Corphuso stared, open-mouthed, moving as close to the starboard window as his guard Vamzuel would allow. There were other boats and even Voidships inside the curved canyons of waterfalls. One strange sailed vessel spun past in the opposite direction and raised a fluttering yellow flag at them, a tornado of mist following the screaming
rush of its engines.
“Quetterel Storm-Runner,” one of the pilots said as it passed. “Showing off.”
Corphuso smiled, warmed for a moment by the playfulness of the enemy Prism species. The superstitious Quetterel were known to flay the skins of those they caught defenceless in the Investiture, their infamy almost on a par with the fearsome Bult. Here, within a world of enforced neutrality where Gods ruled absolute, they capered like newborn lambs.
Beneath them, through a churn of suspended golden mist like upside-down cloud formations, a shimmering hint of sunlight sparkled, revealed here and there among the billowing spray that fell towards it. It enlarged to a dim orb, shadowed across its girth by the bands of some kind of apparatus. The Organ Sun, the internal lamp held aloft at the centre of a Vaulted Land, obscured by an atmosphere of churning steam.
The Nomad plunged towards the orb, a burnished gold glowing through the mist around them and twinkling from Ghaldezuel’s suit and helmet. Corphuso felt like bracing himself on something as they fell, disorientated by the vertical drop towards thousands of miles of open, empty interior space. Gradually the light burned through the mists, the waterfalls dissolving into nothing and winding away to some kind of inner, upside-down lake.
They burst from the orifice, strange sunlight washing through the cockpit, and into a haze of water droplets. The schooner banked, allowing nothing but a glimpse of the staggering vastness now above and around them, its filaments bellowing as it slipped across the blue waters of what was indeed another inland ocean, raising a ribbon of coiling steam and mist behind it.
