by Col Buchanan
Such a dynamic could only provoke tensions on a long voyage such as this one. Sasheen and Romano despised each other at the best of times, even when they conversed with seeming civility. Ché wondered how long it would be before they were at each other’s throats, and before he himself was dragged into it.
He tried to breathe all the nonsense from his head and return to the peaceful state of before. It was no good. His calm mood had been spoilt.
Ché made his way through the sailors and marines and priests on the weatherdeck and headed for the forward hatchway. On his way he passed a squad of Acolytes training naked in the sunshine, serious young men and women much the same age as himself, with a handful of older veterans amongst them. They were taking turns sparring with each other, or limbering their muscles while they waited their turn.
‘Watch it,’ one of them snapped as he backed into Ché.
For an instant, Ché wanted to grab his arm and break it.
‘Eat shit,’ he snapped back at him without breaking step.
Before Ché descended the steps he noticed Sasheen eyeing him from her vantage above. She raised a flask of wine in a toast, and he bobbed his head at her, and quickly descended.
Blackness smothered Ash for every day and night he lay down there in the bilge of the ship, this fat rolling transport where he’d stowed himself aboard as the fleet had left Q’os harbour. Blackness, and a closeness of air so foul it was hardly fit to inhale, and a battering of noise never-ending: the ballast of sand and loose gravel shifting against the hull; the creaks and bangs of the hull; the splashes of the rats in the darkness – all of it conspired to unhinge him.
Ash had found a space above the slosh of the water on which to lie, a projection of wood near the aft of the bilge, a few feet in width, where he had wedged himself next to his sword. He lived like one of the rats down there, and although he couldn’t see the rising and setting of the sun, he knew when it was dawn by the pounding of feet overhead as the shifts were changed, and when it was night by the raucous sounds of laughter and songs.
Like a shy scavenger he stole out in the dead of night to find water and what scraps of food he could to sustain himself, creeping silently through the black spaces of the ship while most of the crew were asleep. Upon his return from these ventures he would sit on his narrow ledge and eat, and what was left he would feed to the small colony of rats that lived down there with him, muttering to them quietly in the darkness. Soon, they stopped trying to eat him in his sleep. Some even began to climb onto his body and huddle there for warmth.
His usual headaches subsided, perhaps due to the lack of any sunlight, which was fortunate, for he’d almost run out of his precious dulce leaves. Constantly he shivered from the dampness, though, and knew it was getting into his chest. His breathing was becoming tight and restricted. He feared he would develop pneumonia.
Ash thought of dying down here in this black hole, and imagined his corpse floating from one side to the other in the rancid bilge water, the rats making good use of him until he was nothing but bones settling loosely upon the ballast. He tried at times to dry his clothes – the leather leggings lined with cotton, the sleeveless tunic – by wringing them out then spreading them against the curve of the hull, but, like his boots, they refused to dry. One night, he took a risk and was lucky enough to steal a heavy oiled cloak from one of the sleeping crew above. He wrapped his naked body in it and hoped it would do.
Occasionally, Ash found himself wondering where the fleet was headed. He recalled seeing a map in the Storm Chamber when he and Aléas had finally breached it, something denoting movements of fleets. He hadn’t looked at it properly, though, and try as he might he failed to picture any details now.
Mostly, he just wondered how soon the fleet would reach land. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could stand it down here in this bilge that had become his private misery.
Ash was sixty-two years of age, long past the life expectancy of a Rōshun still working in the field. The years had certainly taken their toll on him; his body felt stretched thin and taut these days. His joints ached from arthritis, and his muscles tended to complain whenever he moved too swiftly or demanded too much of them. It took longer for him to heal; even now, the minor knife wound in his leg from the vendetta was still festering, so that daily he had to squeeze the pus from it and clean it out with seawater.
In a way, Ash didn’t mind further confinement in this black pit he had crawled into. Within his own depths he felt as if he deserved to be there, that he would gladly suffer an eternity of this desolation if it meant bringing Nico back from to the living. Beneath the oiled cloak, he could feel the small clay vial of ashes lying cold and dead against his chest.
CHAPTER TEN
A Matter of Diplomacy
‘The Holy Matriarch requests a moment of your time,’ cooed Guan, standing there with his twin sister, both watching him with their hooded, arrogant eyes.
Ché gripped the open cabin door a little harder as they all swayed with the violent motions of the ship. All around them, the flagship groaned and complained against the buffeting of the heavy seas. The sister was studying him closely, and he stared back at her, her face as sharp and lean as her brother’s, her thin lips slightly parted on one side.
He held his forefinger up. One moment.
Ché closed the Scripture of Lies in his hand, making sure they saw it first, then replaced it on his neatly made cot in plain sight. He stepped out into the passageway and followed them.
He was glad of a chance to stretch his legs, despite his usual sense of foreboding whenever he was summoned by the Matriarch. He hadn’t ventured out much these several days past, the weather being too poor for dallying out in the open. Today was the worst so far. The ship pitched so steeply from side to side they had to walk with their hands along the walls of the passageway to keep their balance.
One by one they stepped up onto the main deck and bent into the blasts of wind. A gust sent the sister stumbling sideways, tottering with outstretched hands before her brother tugged her by the sleeve back to his side. A wave crashed against the hull and threw a froth of water hissing over the decking, knocking over a few sailors so they went sliding amongst it in their rainslicks.
The three priests wiped their faces dry, and in a line made for the steps that zigzagged up the flank of the quarterdeck, where they started to haul themselves up.
‘A little choppy today!’ the sister, Swan, called back at him.
Guan looked back too, his expression cool.
The man hadn’t spoken with Ché for some days now. Perhaps Guan had finally taken his hint about wanting to be left alone.
Still, there was a look in his eyes; something wounded in them. Not the reaction he would have expected if these twins really were Regulators in disguise. Perhaps he was simply being paranoid after all.
This is why I am without friendships, he thought.
At the door of General Romano’s cabin they passed a pair of Acolytes stationed as guards, sheltering as best they could beneath the tiny porch. Within, even over the din of the gale and the waves, the raised voice of Romano could be heard cutting through the laughter of his people. Like many, the young general had been revelling in drink and narcotics since the bad weather had confined them all to their quarters.
On the topmost floor, at the door to Sasheen’s private cabins, the three of them stood within the porch as the honour-guards searched them for weapons. The sister was last, and as she was carefully patted down Ché noticed how her brother watched the process with a frown. She ignored his scrutiny, though, looked at Ché instead with her features softened by a delicate smile.
Pretty, he thought, and glanced down at her body without subtlety, her wet robe clinging to it.
‘Clear,’ said the Acolyte as he finished, and his partner knocked on the door.
Heelas, Sasheen’s personal caretaker, beckoned them into the salon, where priests of the entourage lounged in a subdued silence. Heelas led the th
ree of them across to the door of Sasheen’s private cabin and rapped a knuckle on it gently, then opened it and passed through without waiting for a response.
The moment Ché entered the room he could feel it, the anger in the air. Sasheen sat on her great chair at the rear of the spacious cabin. She was wrapped in a fur coat over plain robes. Her chest was rising and falling quickly. Ché noticed a broken wineglass at the foot of the wall, and drops of red wine amongst the shattered glass, running one way then the other as the floor pitched from side to side.
Around the Holy Matriarch were gathered those of her inner circle. Her old friend Sool was there, sitting by her side on a cushioned stool, turned half around so she could stare out through the windows at the ragged sea and clouds beyond. Klint the physician was as ruddy faced as always as he pulled absently on one of his piercings. Alarum, vaguely known to Ché as a spymaster in the Élash, offered a congenial nod of the head, eyes keenly observing him. Lastly, Archgeneral Sparus, the Little Eagle, stood in the centre of the room as though he had just stopped pacing, one eye covered with an eyepatch, the other pinning Ché in its glare.
Ché ignored him and glanced around the room itself. His quick search took in the jar of Royal Milk bracketed on a table behind Sasheen, then stopped at the two bodyguards standing outside on the balcony, huddling beneath their hoods.
‘Diplomat,’ Sasheen declared with a rueful twist of her lips. She was intoxicated, he could see, though it was only obvious by her reddened cheeks and nose, for the Matriarch spoke with focus. ‘I have a task for you, Diplomat.’
Ché bowed his head. ‘Matriarch,’ he said with false calm.
‘I need you to send a message to General Romano. As swiftly as you can manage it.’
Ché stifled the beginnings of a smile. And so it begins.
‘And what is the tone of this message, Matriarch?’
‘A warning only,’ rumbled the Archgeneral Sparus with a glance to Sasheen. ‘His catamite lover should suffice.’
‘Make an example of him,’ drawled Sasheen. ‘A fitting one. Do you hear me?’
Another bow of his head. ‘Is that all?’
Sasheen pinched the bridge of her nose, not responding.
‘You may go,’ replied Sool.
The twin priests accompanied him back outside. Ché hesitated in the shelter of the porch. He looked to the brother and was about to address him when he changed his mind, spoke to the sister instead.
‘Any notion as to what this is about?’
She looked amused by his directness. The brother shifted by her side, glanced to the two guards standing behind them.
‘Romano has been slandering the Holy Matriarch,’ Guan replied before she could speak. ‘In his chambers, intoxicated with his entourage.’
‘In what way?’
Swan leaned towards him, her piercings dripping water. ‘Her son,’ she said quietly. ‘He’s been slandering her son.’
Ché blew an exasperated breath of air from his lips, understanding at last.
That afternoon they caught their first sight of Lagos, ill-fated island of the dead.
The bad weather finally settled down, as though it wished to strike a more solemn chord for the occasion; really it was only that they had sailed into the lee of the island. South they headed towards the harbourage of Chir, with the rest of the fleet tightening up around them. White cliffs rose along the coastline, and green slopes covered by grey flecks that were the famous Lagosian long-haired goats.
It seemed that every one of the thousand souls onboard the flagship now crowded along the rails. Ché watched the Matriarch where she stood on the foredeck, flanked by her two generals and their entourages.
He studied the trio closely, curious as to how they must feel gazing upon green Lagos, that island of insurrection, its entire population so famously put to the torch. The Sixth Army, still stationed there, now due to become part of the Expeditionary Force, had been led by Archgeneral Sparus when they’d finally put down the rebellion. And it had been Sasheen herself who had given the order to kill the majority of the citizenry in retribution for their support of the rebels, even against the protests of many within the order itself, horrified by the loss of so much potential revenue in slaves.
In doing so, the Matriarch had stamped her authority on the pages of history. She would never be forgotten for this act of genocide.
Yet now, facing Lagos for the first time, Sasheen offered nothing but stiff-necked formality as she stood by the rail, while around her, the gathered priests of her entourage seemed more proud than anything else at having reacquired this most prized of possessions.
Back in Q’os, the news-sheets were filled with stories of the island’s pacification, and how the land was now open to immigrants from across the Empire. They played down the true extent of the slaughter wrought upon the Lagosians, and blamed them when they did mention the burnings and the clearances by pointing out how the rebellion had first begun: as a protest by the surviving Lagosian nobility, unable to stomach the continuing losses of their tenanted lands to their new Mannian masters.
Only a single detail betrayed anything of Sasheen’s inner condition. Beside her, on the rail, she had planted the living head of Lucian – the first time she had chosen to display him in such a way in public. The Matriarch held a palm against its scalp to keep it there, so that the leader of the insurrection could look upon his desolated homeland in his own unfathomable silence.
Horns sounded from the foremost ships of the fleet ahead. They were approaching the harbour of Chir at last, one of the greatest marvels of the known world. Soon, as they rounded a rocky headland, Ché gazed open-mouthed at the legendary Oreos as it rose impossibly high before him, that colossal arch which spanned the natural mouth of the harbour inlet of Chir, the clouds of mist rolling beneath it.
The cityport of Chir, once rich from its trade in wool and salted meat with Zanzahar, and the former high seat of the Lagosian civilization, sprawled around a rocky inlet that formed the largest natural harbourage in the Midèrēs. The city had constructed the Oreos across its harbour entrance as the grandest of statements to the world. Cast in iron, it resembled a blade bent into a curve so that its flatness cut the wind in two, gleaming a brilliant painted white beneath a sky that had finally broken to reveal the sun.
He’d never before travelled to Lagos or its port of Chir, though he’d read much about them, and of the feat of art and engineering that he now gazed at. The mists were caused by seawater pumped by the motion of the waves into the body of the arch itself, and out through the countless nozzles arrayed along its underside to create the finest of sprays.
On some days, banded colours could be seen within the hazy span of the Oreos. It was common to see four or five or even six rainbows stretching through the spray or reflecting across the surface of water. The Rainbow Catcher, the people of Lagos often called it, with affection. Or they had done, when they had still lived here.
Ché could see one now, a bow of vibrant colours like a second archway, and beyond it, tinged by its hues, the sprawl of the city around the banks of the harbour, with imperial ships already at anchor there. He shaded his eyes with a hand and squinted up to the top of the Oreos. He could make out tiny figures up there, white-robed priests gathered along a railing, taking in the sights of the cityport from its high elevation.
Ché would have studied the scene for longer, but his eyes just then caught movement up on the foredeck. It was Romano’s catamite, Topo, striding over to the general and the woman in his lap to exchange a flurry of heated words.
Topo whirled away and stamped towards the steps.
With a final glance cast at the approaching Oreos, Ché pushed himself from the rail. He tracked the youth as he returned alone to Romano’s cabin, red-faced and shoving past the guards at the door. Ché waited a few moments longer to ensure that no one was joining him, then set about delivering his message.
He entered Romano’s chambers silently via the rear balcony, whil
e everyone overhead, including the guards, stood on the landward side taking in the sights of the harbour.
In the cabin, with the sounds of splashing water coming from the bathroom, Ché murdered a bodyguard with the slash of a knife across his throat.
He stepped back from the mess as the man collapsed onto the rug.
‘Hello?’ came a voice from the bathroom beyond.
Ché stood still for some moments while the man gargled blood at his feet. He listened until he heard the gentle splash of water once more from the other side of the door. With a garrotte dangling from one hand, he pushed the bathroom door slightly ajar. Steam escaped around his shaven head.
He looked in to see the man lying in the wooden bathtub, muttering to himself with his eyes squeezed shut. Ché slipped inside, and stopped behind his head as he gripped the garrotte in both fists. He gazed down on Romano’s young lover. There were fresh scars over his pale, lean body; scabbed bruises the size of bite marks.
Ché observed the great bronze pot of a water-heater sitting on the stove at the foot of the tub, and knew what he must do.
The young man jerked, and snapped his eyes open as Ché looped the garrotte around his neck and pulled hard on the cork handles.
Brown eyes, Ché noted, near popping out of their sockets; and there, within the glassy pupils, a shadow, Ché himself looming large. The youth snorted and wheezed for air, his face bulging. His hands scrabbled at the garrotte around his throat. His legs flailed in the water spilling in waves over the side to splash around Ché’s sandalled feet. The Diplomat maintained his steady pressure. He thought of nothing as he performed the act, though he felt, strangely, a rising sense of anger.
