Aijlan

by Andy Graham

  “He’s waiting outside, sir,” Beth said, keeping her voice level. “I reminded you, but you wanted to watch the footage again.”

  The president looked up from the ink-stained pages of his diary, his forehead creasing. “Well, go and get him then. I’m not watching it anymore. Aren’t secretaries supposed to anticipate? You should be where you’re needed to be before you’re needed, precisely so you’re not needed. Your aim is to make yourself redundant.”

  Beth’s fingers tightened on her notepad. “Yes, sir.” Just like your previous permanent secretary, she thought. She bobbed her head and left the room.

  De Lette had tried to make her curtsy once, had held it up as an example of good etiquette and manners. She’d refused pointblank. He’d eventually laughed it off, saying that he’d rather look at a pretty face that couldn’t curtsy than an ugly sow that could. She’d spat in his tea every day since then.

  Up to that point, she’d thought petty vengeance was for losers. She hoped there wouldn’t be too many more principles sacrificed to get where she wanted to be. When she did get there, that chair was going to be the first thing to go.

  The door closed with a click. Beth glanced around her office, at the soldier sitting bolt upright on the bench, and smiled. “How are you, Rick?”

  He pushed himself to his feet, wincing as he did. “Happy to be free of the wards. If twelve weeks of hospital food isn’t enough to destroy you, then a dozen weeks of shoulder rehab will. They kept me there for twice as long as normal. Can you believe it?”

  Beth’s smiled faded. Her hand strayed up to the mole on the tip of her nose. “That long? I guess they wanted to make sure you could shoot OK.”

  “Wanted to make sure I can salute properly, more like. I never want to see another colour-coded, stretchy rubber band in my life. There must be another way to fix shoulders than that.”

  They stumbled into a handshake that became not quite a hug, and an awkward peck on the cheek. Beth smoothed down the front of her jacket, spots of pink in her cheeks. “How is the shoulder?”

  “Better than you by the looks of it.” Rick coughed into a fist, and nodded to the closed door. “Is he?”

  Beth puffed her cheeks out, screwing her forehead into lines. Air exploded out of her mouth in a fit of hurriedly suppressed giggles.

  Rick grinned. “You wanted the job, Beth. The VP’s permanent secretary at twenty-two and the president’s at twenty-four: the youngest ever person to hold the position. It was impressive, even for you.”

  “Hamilton wasn’t pleased, but De Lette insisted,” she said. “I was flattered to be asked, but a little put out that the VP let me go so easily. Hamilton never did give me a clear answer why,” she added, frowning.

  “A president trumps a VP?”

  Beth shook her head. “It’s never that simple in politics.”

  “Whatever the reason, I’m still not sure why you put yourself through the hassle you did to get here.”

  She picked up a heavy china cup from her desk. There were brown stains trickling down the side, covering the presidential seal. She spat into a hanky and polished them clean. “The answer’s hidden in the job title: secretary. The secretary holds the secrets, and the secrets hold the power.”

  Rick rubbed the front of his shoulder. He was moving as if he was trying not to crease the fabric.

  “You know you could have made much more elsewhere,” he said.

  She sighed and put the cup down. “The money’s nice, Rick. I’ve never been able to afford things I wanted before.” She pointed down at the white suit she was wearing. It was smart but simple, elegant but understated. She smoothed the material over her hips, emphasising the curves that were not quite hidden.

  Rick clasped his hands behind his back, and glanced over her shoulder at the door to De Lette’s office.

  She poked him in the chest. “But I’m not here for the money. It’s a lame cliche, but I have other plans.”

  “I remember. ‘Pennies don’t change the world, policy does.’”

  Beth winced and grabbed the mug. She spun it in lazy circles on her desk. “Not my best sound bite. It’s very noble, but I got it completely backwards. I’m glad you remember me saying it, though. Back then life didn’t seem so slippery.”

  “I’m surprised I remember you saying it. I think we were a little drunk at the time,” Rick said, “pretending to be lost on a desert island.”

  “The island where we wanted to build a library. Or at least section A of the library.” She flashed her eyebrows at him.

  Rick coughed, shuffling on the spot.

  Beth flicked a minute thread speck off his arm and grinned up at him. “I thought my twin could drink, but you could outdrink a tree. Something to do with all those 100 percent proof baptisms you people in the towns hold?”

  The intercom on her desk crackled into life, and Beth’s smile vanished. “When you’re done flirting, Laudanum, bring, uhhh, Franklin in, would you? Then make me some tea.”

  Beth’s head dropped. She let out a long sigh and counted down from ten, exaggerating the shape of each number. Stretching the smile back onto her face, her father had called it.

  “You’d better get in there.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “His concentration span isn’t so good; he’ll have forgotten your name again by now. How that genetic throwback managed to get where he has, I have no idea.”

  “The usual: rich parents, the right schools, and balls dangling between your legs.”

  “Your own, or someone else’s?”

  Rick opened his mouth to answer.

  Beth held up a hand. “Whoever’s, it still seems to be the main qualification to progress in this so called progressive society of ours.”

  She stepped closer to adjust his tie and tugged his jacket straight. Her forearms pressed into his chest. “Thryn got herself a good man, Rick, never forget that.” Her blue eyes met his. She nodded to his arm. “And those new stripes suit you.”

  He plucked at his sleeve. “They feel a bit heavy, and this uniform must have been washed in saltwater. I get the feeling I’m walking around with a giant neon arrow over my head, too. It’s pointing to the idiot who made a mistake that cost the lives of so many, and got rewarded for it. I still want to retch when men twice my age and experience salute me. They know what I did. I know, they know.”

  “Just accept the promotion; everyone else will. It’s the easiest way. You’ll make Thryn and your little girl proud.”

  She picked up the cup from the desk, and cleared her throat heavily. “Now, I’m going make a particularly frothy cup of tea.”

  VI - Sun-Fans

  One of the stand lamps in the room buzzed. It needed checking, probably the wiring. The camera in the room was a fake, too, that was obvious. There’d be a real camera somewhere; he just wasn’t sure where. Rick knew where he would’ve put it, but he hadn’t outfitted this office.

  He’d been changing light bulbs and fuses since before he could count. He’d been a consultant on the lunar mining project. His recent proposals for a new energy source based on Stann’s throw-away comments had been snapped up: the proposal for the hovering energy farms that would convert wind, sunlight, and reflected light from the moons into electricity. He had just assessed the president’s office at a glance, could do all this without a second thought, but he had failed to spot a faulty connection that had cost nigh on an entire platoon their lives. The thought made his insides churn, and the film being played to him spun that visceral whirlpool even tighter.

  Edward De Lette hadn’t said a word to Rick since his arrival. The president was absorbed in the video from Castle Anwen. Rick had seen it once before when a film crew had come to his hospital room to ask for a voice-over. They’d shown him the unedited footage from inside the castle, the stiff, sightless corpses of his colleagues. They’d brought a photo of the woman Stann had shot, too. Lying in the mortuary, scrubbed clean of the camouflage paint, she hadn’t looked a day older than sixteen. Rick had emptied
his stomach over the hospital floor. The film-makers hadn’t been back: the memories had.

  He rubbed the heel of his hand against his other wrist. They were starting to itch; they always did when he got stressed. He’d been told the pain would stop eventually. Most days he didn’t feel it, but today the discomfort in both his shoulder and his wrists was very present. The longer he was away from home, the worse it got.

  The president shuffled forwards, his shirt struggling to hold back his girth. He started the video again.

  Rick suppressed a groan. He watched the video being replayed over and over. Each time the feeling inside him hardened. The stretcher-bearing soldiers were sprinting to relieve him of his bloody burden, of Stann. His memories of that evening in the castle were hazy, but what he was being shown now seemed different to what played through the sweat-soaked dreams that haunted him. This footage looked unnaturally slow, for a start.

  “So, Major Franklin. What do you think? The video?”

  “It’s not how I remember it, sir.” There wasn’t any music playing that night, he thought.

  De Lette twisted his head to look at Rick, staring up at him through his thick eyebrows. “Nonsense, of course it is. You saved that man, your colleague, and the handful of other soldiers that survived. The whole country has seen this video now. The nation owes you a debt of thanks. And the rebels in Somer learnt a valuable lesson. If it hadn’t been for your heroics, who knows what would have happened?”

  Rick gripped his hands behind his back. “Sir, it wasn’t quite like that. I detailed it in my report. I made a mistake, and—”

  The red leather chair swung round. The brass studs framing the chair glinted in the sharp light of the room, malevolent twinkles in the eyes of a sadistic prankster on Any Fool’s Day.

  “Read the press release again, Major. Commissioned officers in the Aijlan Army do not make mistakes. You were promoted, well promoted, because of your heroism, not because of your mistake. You got your reward, you keep your mouth shut. That’s how it works in business, and like it or not, I am your CCO. And what the Chief Commanding Officer says is law. Or if you are so keen on honesty, we can look at the second marriage ceremony you undertook with your wife.”

  “That was purely ceremonial, sir,” Rick said. “The legal wedding was held according to Aijlan law. The second was purely symbolic, a chance to celebrate our marriage according to her traditions.”

  The president laced his fingers together over his belly, a jowly pulse throbbing in his neck. “I’m not sure if that technically invalidates the weddings and your wife’s status here, but I’m sure provision can be made. Do you understand?”

  Rick snapped to attention, his heels rubbing on the thick carpet. “Yes, sir.”

  He settled into parade easy, focusing on the throbbing in his shoulder. De Lette picked a pencil off his desk and rolled it between his fingers.

  Things like pencils were getting rarer, more often found in memorabilia shops as curios than anywhere else. Rick’s daughter would have done near anything for a whole pencil like that with its sharp midnight-black point in the soft almost-pink nib.

  Rose had spent hours sitting on her grandfather’s knee learning her letters before his recent death, and had insisted on speaking at his cremation. She had worked for days writing out her speech on a pristine sheet of paper. She’d crossed out spelling mistakes with a ruler as she sniffed back the tears. Then she had been denied the opportunity. They had been informed that Staff Sergeant Donarth Franklin was to receive a set of post-humous medals, and be buried in the military cemetery in the capital. He had been the last of Rose’s extended family. Now there were only the three of them.

  De Lette rapped the pencil on the desk, denting its side, jerking Rick out of his reverie. “And while we’re on the subject,” he said, “these new ideas of yours are yours, and yours alone. We’ll let you work out what you’re going to do with this power aqueduct before we make any decisions there, but the name of the colleague you rescued will not appear on the patent.”

  Rick gasped. “But, sir, Sub-Corporal Taille gave me the idea. It was Stann’s idea as much as mine. I just came up with a tech solution for it.”

  The pencil cracked. The sound of it snapping seemed louder than it should be.

  “Thryn, I believe? Thryn Ap Svet was her maiden name. A name she refused to change after your marriage, a custom which I believe is so traditional in our country it’s stronger than law. You know the public dislikes people who break tradition even more than lawbreakers. Especially when those people have a penchant for bombing our people.”

  Rick nodded, gritting his teeth together.

  “Just something to bear in mind, young man.” The president ground the nib of the pencil into his desk, leaving a dust puddle of graphite shards. “I’m not as forgetful as my secretary seems to think,” he said. “Bethina Laudanum will amount to nothing; her sun is already setting. She was lucky to get this far, but is going no further. Trust me on this, I’m a very good judge of these things. I know you two are friends, and I know you’ll try and do the noble thing by warning her of this conversation. Please do. Exhort Bethina to watch her step, if you wish. I have enough people doing that at the moment that one more person won’t make a difference.”

  De Lette threw the pencil halves into a bin by his feet and dusted his hands off. He prodded the remote control with a podgy finger, and the video started up. “Aijlan is overdue a new hero, someone to galvanise the nation. What we don’t need is a couple of heroes. Credit shared is credit diluted. For us to have real combat footage to add to your wonderful ideas is too good a gift to ignore. Don’t be fooled that you have something special about you, Franklin. You were merely in the right place at the right time, unlike your colleague. A hero who can’t fight is not the message we want to send out. The public has no appetite for real injuries. They want movie injuries that soldiers can shake off with grit and gumption. You can’t do that with missing limbs and digits. And I know you’re bright enough not to repeat this to anyone, no matter how old or young.”

  There was a quiet knock on the door. Beth brought in a steaming cup of tea. She placed it on De Lette’s desk and swished out of the room, giving Rick a wink as she went.

  De Lette’s lips parted, exposing a line of sharp teeth as clean as a toddler’s. “I trust your daughter, Rose, is well, by the way? She’s five now I believe.”

  Rick managed a stiff nod.

  “Good.” De Lette took a sip of the frothy tea. “Now, you wanted to talk about your former colleague?”

  Rick interlaced his fingers behind his back. “No, sir.”

  De Lette slow clapped him. “Well done, Major, well done. I like a man who learns fast. Just not too fast.” He flipped open a cigar box on his desk. Rick caught a glimpse of metal before De Lette spun the box away from him. There was a delicate clicking noise. De Lette plucked out one pencil from the rows lying next to each other. He held the immaculate point up in front of his eyes, twirling it between finger and thumb.

  “Let it not be said that I am indifferent to the needs of a hero such as yourself. I will take a personal interest in the treatment of your old friend. I’m sure you’ll work much harder knowing he’s being taken care of.”

  He placed the pencil down, flicking it with his middle finger. It traced a gentle curve, rocked to a standstill, and hung precariously off the edge in front of Rick.

  “What was his name?” De Lette asked.

  “Taille, Stann—”

  “Of course, one moment.” The president rustled through a large pile of papers on his desk and pulled out a brown Manila file. “Discharged. This morning. Convalescing at home. Send him my regards, Major. And take the pencil. Once you’ve completed the design of the sun-fans, give it to your daughter. Tell her it’s a belated birthday gift. You can claim it’s from you, if you wish.”

  VII - Return to Tear

  The road was more dirt track than concrete. Cracks and potholes split the surface, the camber cr
umbling into the brown ditches that flanked either side. To Rick’s left, the sun was steadily climbing. From the lab where he’d been helping with the sun-fans over the last few months, he had slowly watched the arc of the setting sun change. It had creaked from the vertical drop of summer to the slow, elliptical sweep of autumn. Last night it had punched ragged crimson holes through the cloud cover. His wife called it a jealous sky, the Devil reaching out to touch the world.

  To Rick’s right, Tear’s long cross-shaped pigsty was quiet. Lenka, his neighbour, had messaged him to say that the pig herder had been ordered to restock his farm with pigs from Aijlan. The public wanted authentic local produce with traceable blood lines. It was to be marketed as a cleaner type of meat with the balls of red, but the benefits of white, so the producers had to provide it. Finn Hanzel, the pig herder, who had a mouth that looked as if half of his teeth were bullying the others, had rarely been seen since carrying out the compulsory slaughter order.

  Thryn had taken the killing in her stride, another odd custom from Aijlan that made no sense to her. The locals in Tear, and nearby Old Town where the tannery was sited, had grumbled about it, but kept their mouths shut. There had been a few comments skulking around that old Hanzel had it coming for his stinginess at the Hallowtide fires. The comments were usually from the same people who claimed that their own work and time was too valuable to give away for free. But after the last of Finn’s pigs had been burnt, and the blanket-wrapped bones buried in a lime-lined pit, no one had mentioned it again.

  Rick’s car ground to a halt, tyres scrunching over the dirt. He pulled up outside the wooden gates to his family home. It had been in his family since the time that some of the local legends were still fresh gossip traded over fences and between beers. The car spluttered and stalled, the engine choking. He mumbled a curse and took a swig of water. It was too hot this month; his throat had been getting drier by the mile on his trip here. Wiping his hands either side of the line ironed into his trousers, he stared through the window.