The Promise of the Child

by Tom Toner

  “Fight! Fight me! Pitiful excuse for a man.” The Secondling whipped him once more, jumping back slightly in case Lycaste decided to try and grab him. Lycaste sighed, rubbing his arm and glaring at the Secondling, who sneered up at him.

  “Ooh, look, he’s getting angry!” He turned to the crowd. “Who wants to see me teach this Southerner a lesson? Eh?”

  Some inchoate cheers came from the back, probably from the man’s group of friends, but most were still staring silently at Lycaste. Women whispered to each other behind their hands and smiled.

  “Fight!” the Secondling screeched, swinging his cane at Lycaste’s head. Before the blow could fall, Lycaste snatched the cane and snapped it in half, taking both pieces and hurling them at the shocked man. The ladies all stood back, the deck of the barge suddenly silent but for the sighing of the golden trees that lined the riverbank and the tug of the sails in the breeze.

  Lycaste roared and shoved the man to the deck. The onlookers took a few more steps back. He paused as he stood over the trembling Secondling, looking around. Men were pushing to the front of the crowd, some carrying even longer canes and staves.

  Lycaste stared to the bow, where brightly coloured flags trailed like fishtails in the warm river wind. He had already reflected upon boarding that even if he did jump and make it to shore, the barge—slowly travelling upriver to the next distant outpost of the First—had now looped back into Second waters, where he would no longer be free. No matter what happened, he had decided to try and stay aboard.

  “Don’t let him jump,” he heard one of the Secondlings say as they approached, and Lycaste stepped back. The shivering man at his feet crawled past the wreckage of his expensive cane and into the safety of the crowd, which parted slightly for him.

  Lycaste took a deep lungful of air, his crimson fists curling, and roared as loudly as he could at them. He spread his arms and flexed his feeble muscles, baring his teeth. The Secondlings hesitated, their sticks shaking. Finally they nodded to each other cautiously and continued their advance. Lycaste growled and lowered his head, seeing no option but to meet them head-on. The sticks were sharp-ended but not thick, and without them the smaller Second men were nothing. He charged the crowd.

  His shoulder connected with someone and he shoved them aside, reaching for the nearest outstretched staff but failing to catch it. The man holding the cane swung it and knocked Lycaste on the head as he turned and grabbed another of the Secondlings by the throat, lifting him clear off his feet and throwing the man overboard. The women, their various pets and many of the men had stampeded to the furthest end of the barge where servants cowered, or climbed a mast to get a better view of the fight.

  Lycaste spun, his fist finding someone’s face before it was seized and weighed down by two more. He deflected another blow to his head with his free hand, pushing the spike of the cane aside and kicking out. The men surrounding him ducked and jumped back, but not before someone behind grabbed hold of his other hand. Lycaste struggled like a fish in a net, throwing the men who had been holding him backwards, and shoved the closest of them towards one of the masts. The Secon-dling’s head hit the wood with a thump and he fell.

  Lycaste wasted no time, whirling on the other and snapping his arm like a dry branch. The man screamed and staggered while the crowd gasped. As Lycaste turned, he felt the spear-tip of a staff pierce his leg and drive into the muscle. He snarled, ripping it free and twirling it by the bloodied end like a sword. He’d only ever practised sword-fighting on the beach with Impatiens, but knew the basics of blocking well enough to fling away a poking stave and whack the man holding it.

  The Secondlings fell back, breathing hard. Blood ran from some cuts and grazes, but Lycaste knew they would wear him down before too long. He rumbled another threatening snarl, his breath labouring from him, and retreated towards the bow.

  Houses had begun to pass by on the riverbank, and as he glanced around, Lycaste saw that people had come to their grand steps to watch. They were screaming and shouting, but their voices were too small and distant to be heard across the wide waterway. He looked back to the Secondlings, realising that their attention was now directed towards the people on the bank as well. Almost everyone, even some of his attackers, had stopped to peer over the railings, leaving Lycaste temporarily forgotten.

  Lycaste allowed himself another moment to turn and stare. The people on the steps were carrying items and furniture in their hands. Smoke was pouring from one of the buildings as the barge drew alongside it, and Lycaste could just make out screaming from within. Suddenly a huge mounted Asiatic galloped from the entranceway and down the steps towards the people, who dropped their possessions and ran for the river. The armoured Jalan soldier raised his scimitar—a six foot blade, extravagantly coiled at the tip—and beheaded the slowest young man to a gasp from the watching crowd.

  The Asiatic pulled the mount around—an animal Lycaste had never seen before—and watched the barge as it sailed past. Lycaste saw someone fall from the smoking window into a crumpled heap beside the Asiatic, and the soldier looked up for a moment at the other Jalanbulon who had come to the window. Lycaste scanned the riverbank for the rest of the group of Secondlings that had escaped from the giants, but they had melted into the trees along the bank, their exquisite furniture abandoned.

  The barge continued on and soon the ruined house was lost from sight, but there were further signs of disaster upriver. People—mostly children—ran parallel with the bank, weaving through the trees as they glanced behind, unaware that they were running into another regiment of the Jalan pursuing them. Nobody on the barge said a word to stop them, all of Lycaste’s attackers now stunned into silence. Houses burned, their reflections staining the muddy river, while dusty silhouettes of fleeing people and animals scampered before the flames. In one building with very tall chimneys, a group of Asiatic were flinging goods from the windows while they drank, and at the next house they had chased a petite Secondling lady from her hiding place and were wrestling her to the stone courtyard facing the river. The entire barge watched in silence.

  A mounted legion of Jalanbulon cantered and splashed through the reeds at the base of the river house and past the ravaged woman. They stopped to look back, some of the soldiers dismounting so they could take a turn with her while the others, still astride their peculiar black beasts, turned in their saddles to watch the barge passing.

  Lycaste noticed the people on the barge with him whimpering and trying to hide behind the railings under the gaze of the Asiatic soldiers. He met the eye of the glitteringly caparisoned Jalan captain himself, mounted on the finest of the beasts. For a moment, the giant might have looked puzzled, perhaps wondering what a red Tenthling was doing alone among such high company. The captain said something to the soldier beside him, who quickly unshouldered his strange rifle, took aim and fired into the crowd on the barge. Lycaste flinched, ducking and running for the boat’s port side. He risked a look behind him at the people screaming and thundering across the deck, rocking the entire barge. An elderly yellowish woman with a pyramid of painted hair took refuge beside Lycaste at the port-side railings, staring up at him plaintively. He hesitated, finally extending his hand. She took it, and he lifted her under her arms and dropped her carefully over the side into the water. As he checked behind him once more, a bullet whined past and chipped splinters from the wooden railings. Lycaste lifted a leg over the smashed rail and jumped.

  For a moment there was no sound besides the roar of water in his ears, and he struck out under the river’s surface, heading in the direction he hoped would take him towards the opposite bank. When he finally surfaced, his lungs feeling as if they were about to split at the seams, the barge had sailed past and he was exposed to the Jalan on the far banks. They continued to fire at the barge—where people still milled and screamed, a few plunging overboard—but none of the Asiatic stopped to survey the water. Lycaste followed the progress of the sailing boat a moment longer, noticing holes appearing in the
sails and flags. A small fire had started to engulf the bow, smokeless in the warming afternoon. He headed for the other bank, seeing no sign of the elderly woman he had helped.

  At the riverbank, an orchard of underripe bloodfruit ran down to the water. Lycaste pushed aside the tall reeds and headed for the trees, smelling the sweet smoke that drifted from the pillaged houses on the other side of the river. He stumbled into the orchard, aware that bullets were finally making their way across to him and rustling through the trees—the pops of their firing arrived at his ears a little later—but he was too far away for them to hit him. Nevertheless, he heaved a sigh of relief as he dumped himself over a grassy, tree-lined levee, rolling down into another orchard. When he reached the bottom, he lay quite still, listening for a while before standing to a crouch. The wound in his leg still throbbed but had closed up. He looked around. The land here was flat and wooded with fruit trees, interspersed with groves of red flowers taller than he was. Through the rapidly moving clouds a glow of sun poked, drifting and dimming a moment later.

  Some even more opulent but tightly packed dwellings appeared between the trees as he ran, his breath leaving his body in torn gulps, but they were all locked up and deserted. In the maze of ornamental gardens he found more furniture and valuables abandoned, their owners presumably long gone, as well as heaps of silk that drifted in the wind and collected at the base of the trees, some blowing like coloured rain across the gardens. Lycaste stopped for a second to look at it all, but decided to keep moving. These people had seen fit to abandon their wealth, so it couldn’t be of much use now.

  At the sound of galloping hooves he paused, ducking behind a tree. The rapid clop of shod feet didn’t sound like the beasts the Jalan were riding, but still he remained hidden, peeking between the branches. The clattering grew louder, and Lycaste began to see soldiers mounted on zeltabras coming through the trees. The first of them slowed at the abandoned gardens and houses, pulling the reins to halt the animal while he surveyed the scene. They looked to Lycaste like some elite type of Secondling regiment. Their silver helms fluttered with shimmering feathers of blue and green and gold—undoubtedly from Glorious Birds, Lycaste thought—but when the rider at the front pushed up his visor, Lycaste saw that the face beneath was more white than yellow, with small, childish features. Firstlings.

  The closest rider glanced into the trees. Lycaste held his breath, but the man’s gaze moved on. It was only after the soldier had patted the striped mount and urged it on that he remembered he was coloured again to match the fruits and berries. More cavalry followed through the trees, pausing only briefly at the abandoned dwellings. Lycaste watched them all charge through the trees, the man at the rear blowing into a horn. He shivered at the haunting call, wondering if any of the Firstlings he’d just seen would make it away from the river alive.

  Lycaste moved through the trees cautiously, ears straining for any more galloping hooves, but the forests were silent save for the leaves’ swaying and whispering. At the distant sound of cantering he swung behind a tree again, waiting as a small armoured man arrived in the clearing at the edge of the gardens. The man stopped, sitting very still atop his zeltabra, which lowered its head to the flowers and began to munch experimentally. The figure leaned on the pommel of the saddle and glanced in Lycaste’s direction, finally flipping up the faceplate.

  “Didn’t I tell you not to get stabbed again, Lycaste?”

  He stiffened behind the tree—it couldn’t be. “Sotiris?” He poked his head out from behind the cover. “What are you doing here?”

  “Saving that pretty face of yours, among other things.”

  Lycaste glanced into the forest on both sides, then jogged up to the mount. Its eyes widened and it stepped back. “You can’t go that way,” he said, pointing. “They’ve taken the river.”

  “Yes.” Sotiris trotted the animal expertly in a tight circle. “I’ve brought you one of their harsants to ride.” In the woods, a little way off, he could make out a dark shape tied to a tree.

  It did not look at all startled to meet Lycaste, and he supposed he was a good deal smaller than the giants it was used to taking. The horned animal shook its shaggy red mane, its huge, glossy shoulder muscles rippling. It looked a little like an ocsin—the ones they sometimes used to plough the rocky fields on Kipris. It lifted a long, tufted tail and deposited a heap of steaming dung as he climbed atop it.

  “You have ridden before?” Sotiris asked.

  “Once or twice,” he said uncertainly. It had been just the once.

  “Good, then let’s be away.” Sotiris kicked his spur into the zeltabra’s flank and it galloped into the forest.

  “Come on, then,” he said to the harsant, patting its hard rump. It grunted and ambled after the zeltabra, picking up speed as Lycaste saw the sun shining through the trees ahead.

  Preparations

  “Reginald, you look distraught,” Holtby said, breaking from the murmuring crowd with a cup in his hand. He offered it to Bonneville. “Whatever is the matter?”

  “Nothing, nothing,” he said, looking in surprise at the cup as his reverie broke. “I’m just so very affected by the plight of the poor First-lets we oversee.” Bonneville gazed at the preparations from the rain-streaked window and composed his face. Across the wet lawns, rows of huge guns were being uncovered. Their damp sheets, heavy with moisture from the brief rainstorm, fluttered in the gathering wind.

  “I believe the term is Firstling,” Holtby replied, joining him at the warped glass. “The complexity of their language renders the former rather rude, I’m afraid.”

  Bonneville shrugged, touching the water to his lips. By microbial standards it would be teeming, unclean to the point of hazardous, but it could not affect him. He found the taste of First water rather pleasant—like iron, or blood—and reflected occasionally that it was perhaps the flavour of some pathogen new to the world to which the Melius were similarly immune. He imagined forcing it on a Prism creature and observing the effects.

  At the bottom of the stairway a large, ungainly group of yellow-white Melius, their skin bleached to appear lighter than they actually were, was jostling through the crowd of Pre-Perennials, the armoured soldiers at the rear of the procession bowing liberally whenever they chanced to touch a corner of cloth or small, delicate hand. At their front strode the forward general, one Filago, son of the late Zigadenus and now Protector of the First. The thin Melius bore the fantastically ugly features of the severely inbred, his nose long and protruding, his chin sloping to a wattle of flesh dusted with the stubble of days preparing for battle. His skinny legs were coated with brick-red mud, sloppy from the rain. Bonneville noticed with vague amusement that some had smeared the Immortals’ finery as the Melius passed. He took in their looks of consternation before his gaze returned to the new Protector’s face.

  “I still don’t see why he bothers,” he whispered to Holtby, hand at his mouth; Filago’s Unified was said to be superb.

  “Bothers?” Holtby looked at him, his soft face irritatingly earnest.

  “This,” he said, inclining his head to the window of the grand house and the teeming field of weaponry and troops beyond. “The Second is breached already—why defend the indefensible?”

  Caleb Holtby looked down at the Protector, something like admiration creeping into his voice. “I believe he does it out of love for his Province, as his father did before him.” The younger Amaranthine gulped, hesitating at Bonneville’s silence. “One supposes.”

  Bonneville felt a laugh building inside him, stirring the weak, inert currents of his blood. He wanted to scoff, not just at Holtby but also the majestic stupidity of the mingled, gaudy freaks who chattered and plotted in the great hall at the foot of the stairs.

  “I think you read too many stories, Caleb,” Bonneville muttered, spitting back into the cup and studying the crowd forming below.

  At the Melius’s side, stooped and shrouded in heavy finery that caught the candelabra light with silken flashes
, was Zacharia Stone. He was the last of the Perennials to remain in the Second, the others already on their way out of the Province by mounted escort or Vulgar clipper. Bonneville wondered if his continued presence was intended as a show of bravery, doubting the Perennial would stay longer than the Protector’s dinner later that evening. Also with them, but maintaining a respectful distance, were two Prism ambassadors, the Honourable Filch of the Zelioceti and his ally Princeling Elumo, heir to the Vulgar moon of Stole-Havish. The Princeling’s intense blue eyes locked on to Bonneville’s, then turned back to the Zelioceti ambassador.

  They came to the stairs, talking quietly, many sets of Pre-Perennial eyes following their progress. The Zelioceti Filch was robed in bold swathes of red, trimmed at the high collar with thick black fur. His rosy proboscis, almost as grand as that of a Melius, drooped to tickle the black buttons dotting the garment all the way down to his pointed slippers. Bonneville did not look at him long, having always found their faces unsettling, and instead took in Elumo’s shimmering blue evening wear. Stole-Havish was a famously filthy and dangerous place, one of the few Vulgar Kingdoms that hadn’t contributed soldiers to the Volirian Conflict and as such had been pointedly overlooked when it came to rewarding the victors. Its ruling family, a squabbling, incestuous dynasty of Vulgar only loyal to Filgurbirund when it suited them, had finally found their coffers running low and pledged themselves to the assistance of the Amaranthine. Bonneville had found Princeling Elumo, who had little to do but wait for his sickly uncle’s death, a most agreeable prospective partner in business. The group paused on the steps, looking out at the preparations. Again, Bonneville met the Vulgar Princeling’s eye.

  “You will remember Pre-Perennial Bonneville,” Stone said, indicating him to Elumo. The Vulgar gave a sharp nod and returned his attention to the guns. The Zelioceti Filch stared for longer, then whispered something to the Princeling. Outside, across the gardens, the hazy sky was turning to evening. Bonneville could just see spires of the city rising below the house walls, a flock of white birds scattering in the middle distance and disappearing behind a cluster of bell-towers. At the base of the city, a ruined bridge from another era stretched halfway across the valley floor into the temperate jungles of the Inner Second. It had been reinforced and turreted for nearly five years in anticipation of Elatine’s advance and was now patrolled by Filago’s elite Firstling cavalry. Once the dinner was finished and the important Amaranthine safely across the border, the Protector would make his way down to the front to await his father’s old foe.