Stands a Shadow (Heart of the World 2)

by Col Buchanan

  Ché had witnessed the pieces of his hung-and-quartered corpse hanging in Freedom Square, with the soldiers stationed below them chasing away the hungry crows. He’d thought that had been the end of the man. It seemed though that Sasheen had other ideas for her ex-lover.

  The Holy Matriarch turned her back to the head. She smiled at Ché, sudden mischief in her eyes.

  Sasheen raised her right hand to her mouth, licked her fingers one by one. Even as Ché watched her do this, he could see the blood rush to her skin, her eyes begin to dilate even further. She finished with a greedy smack of her lips.

  ‘Nothing like it in this whole wide world,’ she said breathlessly, and took a step towards Ché, hungry for something.

  Once more Ché fought an absurd impulse to laugh. It only worsened as she leaned down towards him, becoming a jostling pain in his chest as she placed her hand against his cheek, pressed her mouth hard against his own. Her tongue darted, parting his lips.

  So easy to kill her, he thought, right here and now, if his lips had still been smeared with venom.

  The taste of the Royal Milk was like nothing he had ever tasted before. It was neither sweet nor sour, bitter nor salty. His tongue began to sting, and then to go numb, as Sasheen continued to kiss him.

  ‘Whore,’ came the strange belching voice of Lucian from behind her.

  And then the rush of it hit Ché, like a breath of fire blossoming through the blood-ways of his body. It jolted him out of his tiredness in a snap so that his blood surged, pounding, and a sense of weightlessness overcame him, filling him with light instead, and air, and the first real glimmers of lust.

  Sasheen pulled clear with a moan, and glanced quite obviously down at his crotch. She whirled away with a satisfied smile.

  He gasped, close to losing himself entirely, and sprawled back against the settle as though falling.

  Two pulses, he thought distractedly. I have two pulses in my neck.

  ‘Ah, breakfast,’ she declared, as the old priest entered with a tray of food.

  Ché tried to move and then thought better of it. He clung to the settle as though he would fly from it at any instant, while the sounds of Sasheen preparing to eat filtered towards him from far behind.

  ‘What is this?’ snapped her voice. ‘I can hardly see them, they’re so small.’

  ‘Sandshrips are always small this time of the year, Matriarch. They are still young.’

  ‘What? And they can’t be fed up a little? And what’s this? Grubby marks everywhere. I suppose the kitchen staff are also too young this time of year to keep the silver clean?’

  ‘My apologies, Matriarch. I’m still training the new replacements in the proper ways. It will not happen again, I assure you. I can have something else prepared, if you wish?’

  ‘And wait even longer? No. You may go.’

  Ché looked at the grim face of Lucian glowering at him with his maddened eyes. With a loll of his head Ché looked to his right, where the old woman Kira still sat unmoving.

  There was a definite glimmer beneath her eyelids now – those bird eyes of hers staring across the space at Ché as though they could see right through him.

  Ché closed his own eyes and soared.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Without Wings

  Whoah, thought Coya, as a gust of wind buffeted the figure that dangled between the two skyships, and set the man swinging like the pendulum of a clock.

  ‘Hold there!’ shouted the startled deck charge, raising a palm to the crewmen heaving away on the secondary line. At once they stopped hauling, and stood there frozen in their positions, watching the swaying figure with the uncertainty of men who’d never attempted this feat before, and were aware of its possibility only because others were telling them of it.

  Out there in the gulf of air between the two vessels, bobbing from the line strung between them both, the figure on the wooden chair opened his mouth to shout: ‘In your own time, gentlemen!’

  Coya smiled despite his concerns for the man.

  ‘Bring him in, Seday, quickly now,’ he told the deck charge smartly, and although Coya appeared young for his twenty-seven years – young even with his body stooped over a walking cane – the men snapped to with the respect of earnest sons for a father, and started to haul on the rope once more.

  Just then another gust hit, stronger than the previous one, setting the distant figure pirouetting again on his seat. Coya heard the wind pressing against the silken envelope overhead, saw how the two skyships were drifting from their relative positions. Manoeuvring tubes fired along their sides, at the hurried commands of their captains. Still, the skyships drifted slightly apart, the line playing out on the far Khosian deck. The slack was lost, causing the man to bob even more dangerously beneath its tightening length. With an inrush of breath, Coya leaned forward with his weight on his walking cane and his hand clutching the ebony grip tightly.

  To lose this man now could very well equate to losing the entire war.

  ‘Quickly now!’ he urged, without taking his gaze from their charge.

  The figure was well past the halfway mark and nearing the ship at last. He looked calmer out there than Coya did merely watching from the deck. With his feet dangling over an abyss of several thousand feet all the way to the choppy sea below, he was turning his head to take in the rugged coastline of Minos, and the bay in which the city of Al-Minos lay like a gleaming pearl. Drawing closer, Coya saw his long black hair whip around his wind-reddened face; his hands with their many plain rings; his heavy bear-skin coat covering his great bulk.

  Suddenly, Coya felt his pulse grow faster from the sheer anticipation of the Lord Protector’s presence.

  ‘Easy, lads,’ General Creed boomed as they pulled him roughly onto the decking; and suddenly there he was, towering over them all, feigning an easy nonchalance when in truth Coya saw only exhilaration in his eyes.

  The crewmen released the general from his safety harness while Creed clapped a few shoulders for good show. He stepped forward to shake Coya’s offered hand.

  Coya scented hair oil, and that awful spiced goat’s cheese so beloved of these Khosians.

  ‘I’d hoped you were joking when you suggested an underway transfer,’ remarked the old general. ‘We couldn’t have met on the ground, eh?’

  Before responding, Coya caught the eye of Marsh, his own bodyguard. Marsh scowled at the gang of crewmen still pressing for a better look at this living legend from Bar-Khos, and shoved them without ceremony towards the rest of the crew gathered on the opposite side of the deck.

  ‘Too dangerous,’ Coya admitted when they were at last beyond earshot, while Marsh stationed himself close by, watching everyone on deck through his dark-tinted refractors. His eyes could be seen blinking through the lenses on the back of his head.

  ‘Someone else was hit?’

  ‘Last night in Al-Minos. The visiting League delegate from Salina had the misfortune of being strangled in her sleep. That’s eight assassinations in the last two weeks. Which would suggest a coterie of Diplomats is now at large within the city.’

  The Lord Protector nodded without expression, keeping his thoughts to himself.

  Together they watched as the transfer line was reeled back aboard the Khosian skyship that had borne him all this way from Bar-Khos. The vessel fired its tubes to assume a patrol around the Minosian vessel they now stood upon. In the silence, Coya studied the man’s profile in an attempt to judge his present condition. Creed had visibly aged since they’d last met over of a year and half before. The greying at his temples had spread into streaks of silver; the lines deeper now around his eyes. All of it from grief, Coya knew from the reports he’d been hearing.

  ‘How are you, anyway?’ he asked the Lord Protector. ‘I hope your journey was a smooth one?’

  ‘Smooth enough. I only regret that our meeting must be so brief.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Coya. ‘The Khosian council must fret whenever you are gone from the Shield for so long.’ At t
hat they both smiled, knowing it to be true. As their eyes met, unspoken between them lay the question of why Creed was here at all. ‘Still, it’s good that we can meet for this little while at least. A meal is being prepared for us in the captain’s cabin. If you wish, we can retire to some comfort and be out of this wind for a while.’

  Creed responded with a look that said he was seldom accustomed to thinking of his personal comforts. He glanced towards Marsh and the many crewmen still watching them, the captain of the ship included. ‘I’m too old to be skulking around in fear of a few assassins, if that’s your concern,’ he said. ‘Let’s enjoy the fresh air while we talk, and then we can eat.’ He paused as he looked at Coya, who was stooped and wrapped heavily against the cold. ‘Unless of course it would be better for you . . . to be inside.’

  ‘I’m fine here, if you are, thank you,’ Coya replied crisply, and bowed his head politely.

  The motion caused him pain, as all movements did. Even at his relatively young age, Coya had the arthritic bones of an ancient man. ‘Please, at least allow me to indulge you in some chee while we talk.’

  Creed welcomed the offer. Within moments the ship’s galley boy was standing before Marsh with two steaming leather cups of chee in his hands, the lad’s mouth hanging open in wonder, looking between the impressive figure of the Lord Protector and the curious display of Marsh dipping a goyum to sample the chee. With a single tendril dangling in the hot liquid, the fist-sized bag remained the same neutral colour of greyish brown. Satisfied, Marsh allowed the cups to be passed into their welcoming hands.

  ‘How’s that pretty wife of yours?’ Creed enquired through a waft of rising steam.

  ‘She’s well. She sends you her blessings.’

  How generous, Coya thought, to ask after my wife while still grieving for his own.

  ‘You never did tell me how you hooked her. Blackmail, I’m supposing?’

  ‘No need. She’s crazy about me. And I of her.’

  ‘Love then. Mercy help you both.’

  Creed’s dry wit caused Coya to blink in amusement.

  ‘You must come and stay with us when circumstances allow it. You would like it there. Rechelle ensures the house is filled always with life and other people’s children.’

  For a moment Coya thought he had said too much. But then Creed replied, with warmth, ‘Yes. I would like that.’

  They sipped their chee as they stood by the railing gazing down at the vista of land and sea below, the coastline of Minos slowly sliding by as the ship drifted around in the wind.

  The city of Al-Minos shone in the afternoon sunlight, the greatest Free Port in all the Mercian islands. Around it swept the arms of the bay, the white beaches darkened by crowds of people and clouds of red kites flying. The cityport was enjoying a festa this week, and even the presence of the First Fleet in its harbour, outfitting for battle, had done little to dampen the holiday spirits of the populace. Coya’s wife was down there somewhere in the heaving streets of the city, with his parents and his sisters’ many lively children – or perhaps by now they were watching the horse flapping on Uttico beach, and placing bets with their spare chits while wolfing down fresh quaff-eggs from the communal feasting pits.

  He felt a pang of regret that he wasn’t with them today. Coya had been dearly looking forward to spending the day with his family, of forgetting it all for a short spell at least.

  ‘Zeziké Day,’ Creed announced suddenly, as though noticing the kites and the thronged beaches for the first time. ‘You know, I’d all but forgotten.’

  Coya shrugged. ‘You’re a Khosian. It’s to be expected.’

  ‘We do celebrate the man, you know. Just not quite so fervently as you fanatics here in the west.’ He spoke lightly, but as he did so he observed the distant celebrations with something unspoken in his expression, a kind of longing, perhaps. Coya could only imagine what it was like for the man and the rest of the people of Bar-Khos, huddled as they were behind walls unceasingly subjected to bombardment and assault, living day and night on the edge of extinction.

  ‘I’m only chiding, Marsalas. It’s hardly as though you haven’t enough on your plate already.’

  The general straightened and cleared his throat. When he met Coya’s gaze, it was from one lonely height to another. ‘It must be hard on you also. They must expect a great deal from you, your people. The living descendant of the great philosopher himself.’

  ‘Hardly a burden compared to some.’

  Coya desired to change the subject, for he was not comfortable discussing his famous ancestry to the spiritual father of the democras. He observed the many warships in the harbour, and was reminded, though he hardly needed a reminder, of the Mannian fleets now heading their way.

  ‘The revolution is one hundred and ten years old this year,’ Coya stated. ‘One hundred and ten years since we toppled the High King and the nobles who thought they would take his place. Yet I wonder, sometimes, when I’m alone and feeling not quite as hopeful as I should, whether our waking dream of the democras will survive for very much longer.’

  ‘The Free Ports are hardly beaten yet.’

  ‘Come, now. We’re not far from it, Marsalas. We hold on by the skin of our teeth. The Mannians strangle our trade routes to the outside world so we are forever close to starving. Zanzahar remains our only life thread, and subsequently exploits us for all the resources that it can. Bar-Khos barely holds the line in the east. League fleets barely hold the line at sea. And in our collective resistance, we become each day a greater threat to the Empire’s dominion. Because of us, every morning the world wakes to the knowledge that there are other ways to live than Mann. It is why the Empire loathes us so fiercely. It is why it will not cease until it has defeated us, or is finished itself – and Mann hardly looks as though it’s about to fall.’

  ‘It has happened before. Great empires have been resisted and cast back upon themselves. It can happen again.’

  ‘Yes, of course. And even then, if that were to happen . . . would the ideals of the democras still survive, I wonder? Or would we have paid too much for our victory? Would we have too much a taste for war by then, and a need to exact our revenge?’

  ‘After the Years of the Sword, we settled again in peace. We can do so again.’

  ‘We settled because our victory was itself our revenge. We were sated because the nobles had been overthrown. And even then the creation of the democras was a close-run thing. Such times of transition are always chancy, Marsalas.’

  Creed listened without expression. ‘I’ve missed our talks,’ he declared suddenly, and Coya could only agree with him. He took a sip of chee, feeling himself relaxing into the gentle motions of the ship.

  ‘What news have you heard?’ Creed asked him. ‘Any movement in Q’os?’

  Coya released a hot breath of air. ‘Our agents are no further in discovering the timing and destination of the invasion. It would seem to be the best-kept secret in the Empire just now. All we do know is what they can see with their own eyes. The invasion fleet of transports remains anchored in the Q’osian harbour. The men-of-war which left port already have been spotted again by our aerial longscouts. There’s no doubt any longer. They are on a course for the western Free Ports. Another sighting arrived this morning of a second possible fleet approaching from the north-east.’

  ‘Hmmf.’

  ‘Yes. That was my reaction.’

  The general set his cup down on the rail, his hand still clasped around it.

  ‘We need League reinforcements now, Coya. I know a feint when I see one. If the invasion fleet lands in Khos, we will need our coastal forts fully manned. At present, they can resist little more than a strong wind.’

  ‘Your League delegate still maintains otherwise – you know that, don’t you? You have enough men at present, that is what he assures us.’

  ‘Ach. What do you expect from Chaskari? He’s Michinè. You know how much they fear changing the status quo. Look at how they bind my hands and make
us cower behind the Shield, hoping that the Imperial Fourth Army will simply vanish. It’s no different with all the Volunteers the League has sent to aid us over the years. The soldiers live amongst our people. The people see how they are, without superiors, without doffing their heads to authority. They remind everyone in Khos that they are members of the League and equal to all as a democras. They remind them how the Michinè are only there at their bidding, that they are leaders given the responsibility of leadership, not of rule. You should hardly be surprised that the Khosian council resists my requests for more Volunteers. That is why I’m asking you personally, as a favour: send them anyway.’

  ‘But, Marsalas, what more can I do? I’m bound hand and foot by the constitution, you know that.’

  ‘Send them anyway. Let us worry about the consequences after the storm has arrived.’

  ‘General. Believe me, I’d dearly love to dispatch every Volunteer that we could, and to do so now. We all would. Khos is our shield and every citizen of the League knows it. But the League cannot meddle in the affairs of a fellow democras, especially not at the request of one man – even if that one man happens to be the Lord Protector of Khos himself. We may only send reinforcements if they are requested of us by your delegate. It’s up to you to change your own council’s minds on this.’

  ‘I’ve tried, damn it.’

  ‘Then you must try harder.’

  Creed glowered at the cup in his hand. ‘What of your people? They’ve interfered before in Khosian affairs. They can do so again.’

  Coya frowned. ‘That was before my time, Marsalas. And we should not talk of these things here. I’m sorry. There’s nothing more the League or anyone else could do for you right now. We must wait and see.’

  It was an end to the discussion, and Creed breathed loudly through his nostrils and stared at Coya with all the force of his will. Coya held his gaze, not flinching; inside, his body was tense and pulsing. General Creed was like an arrow in flight. When you blocked him, you felt the physical shock of it.