Tymon's Flight

by Mary Victoria

  ‘Apu!’ Tymon muttered huskily. A gulp of laughter, half hysterical, escaped his lips. He had thought that the old man must surely be dead this time.

  ‘Ah, so you came after me, my friend. I was afraid of that.’

  Galliano’s voice was racked with pain. The boy manoeuvred himself to his side, shunting awkwardly on his rear across the floor of the hold. The scientist was stretched out at an unnatural angle on his heap of rags.

  ‘I was caught in the workshop blast,’ he gasped. ‘A big beam fell right on top of me. Thought I was done for. But no, here I am. Can’t see, can’t walk, can’t do a damn thing to help anyone, but here I am. And I managed to get you into trouble on top of it.’

  Tymon shook his head. ‘I got myself into trouble. But why did you go back to the workshop, Apu? What were you hoping to do?’

  ‘You’d think I’d learn,’ Galliano sighed. ‘I…I was shocked by the attack. The Council was sworn by its own articles of law not to use blast-shot, though the device is an old one—ah, very old. Who knows what logic they concocted to get around that blasphemy? I’m well aware of how to make blast-poison: second degree in Applied Treeology, after all. I’d always held off giving it to the Freeholders. Principles, don’t you know. But after I saw what the fleet was doing to the village, to the Tree, I changed my mind. I went back to get ingredients. I was going to beat the Council at their own game. I didn’t tell Jamil because I knew he wouldn’t agree.’

  ‘I agree,’ murmured Tymon grimly. ‘I wish you’d had the chance to make your secret weapon, Apu.’

  ‘No, no!’ The old man strained up from his bed of rags. ‘It was the best thing in the world that I didn’t! If I had, we’d have been just like them, don’t you see?’

  Tymon sat in sullen silence. Before the attack, before Solis’ death, he would probably have agreed with Galliano. Some things were sacred. It was a terrible crime to reduce the Mother of all things to ash and debris. But now he was not so sure. He had come to hate the Council so much that it seemed worth the loss of a branch or two to be rid of the murdering invaders. He could hear soldiers barking orders on the deck above, the renewed sigh of ether filling the dirigible’s balloons. They were quitting the hangar. He wondered where they would be taken and what life of misery awaited them.

  Galliano reached out and caught hold of his tunic. ‘Believe me, you don’t want that kind of power,’ he rasped, urgent. ‘You pay for it in other ways.’

  They were interrupted as another soldier came clattering down the stairs into the hold. A hardwood blade flashed briefly in his hand as he bent over Tymon. The boy barely had time to flinch before his bonds were cut and he was pulled roughly to his feet.

  ‘Up,’ leered the soldier. ‘You’re going to see the boss.’

  He gave Tymon a push towards the stairs and scooped up Galliano’s thin, desiccated form in his arms. The scientist gave a faint groan. Tymon sprang back to his side with a cry of concern.

  ‘I said “up”,’ snapped the sentry, with a wellaimed kick at his shins. ‘Or don’t you “speaky the Argosi”, Nurry?’

  He was thrust up the stairs to the deck without further ceremony. The ship had risen well above the twig-thickets already, leaving the smoke and afterglow of the fires behind. The wind carried stinging drops of water, grey and cold, rain and ash mixed together. He shivered as the soldier propped Galliano against the dirigible’s main mast like a lifeless puppet. A few of the dirigible’s sailors hung in the rigging, staring inquisitively at them, and two more Argosian sentries loitered on either side of a squat contraption to one side of the deck. Tymon gazed at the blast-cannon with distaste. It was mounted on wheels and seemed smaller than its counterparts on the greatships. But it had that same evil snout, that air of smug destruction. A long box with a lock lay at its foot.

  ‘Well, well, if it isn’t our two prodigal sons,’ remarked a voice behind him, as cool and biting as the rain-filled wind. ‘Welcome home, both of you.’

  Tymon turned with heavy reluctance to find Lace standing on the deck. The Envoy grinned.

  ‘Come here, acolyte,’ he said, calling over his shoulder to someone just inside the door of the captain’s cabin. ‘This will be educational for you.’

  Tymon fully expected Verlain to emerge from the doorway and was startled to see a thin, youthful figure step onto the deck. A boy approached the group by the mast.

  ‘Study the lesson,’ continued Lace. ‘These are the wages of folly and pride. Consider this heretic, who persisted in his stubborn beliefs. See what he has come to. Consider also your former comrade, who chose to serve the wrong Master.’

  ‘Wick?’ Tymon gasped in amazement. ‘Is that you?’

  His classmate was almost unrecognisable. Wick’s face had hardened before its time. His expression was aloof as he surveyed Tymon.

  ‘Yes, it’s me, old friend,’ he replied, his tone bright and careless.

  ‘So—old friend—are you enjoying yourself?’ Tymon could not keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘Are you happy now that you can lord it over me again?’

  Wick shrugged. ‘I’m not happy to see what’s become of you, Tymon. You always choose the wrong side, then blame other people when things fall apart. Don’t hold it against me if I’ve taken a wiser path.’ He smiled coldly. ‘While you were grubbing in the bark with rebels and heretics, I was learning about the real Power in the world—a secret you couldn’t even begin to understand, poor Ty.’

  ‘He understands more than you’ll ever know,’ interrupted Galliano, shifting himself against the mast with a grimace of pain. ‘Tymon’s way beyond you and always will be, young Master Wick. But I think you realise that.’

  ‘Shut up, old man,’ hissed Wick. His façade of calm gave way and he rounded on the scientist, quivering with rage. ‘Shut up and eat your useless tongue! I don’t want to hear you—no one wants to hear you!’

  He fingered something around his neck as he spoke, and Tymon caught a bright flash, a drop of trapped sunlight inside his former schoolmate’s collar. Orah, he thought, with a pang.

  ‘Blind and dumb,’ declared Wick, drawing himself up as if he were reciting a magic spell. ‘Blind you were, so now be dumb.’

  Galliano emitted a strange, strangled noise. His head fell forward on his chest and he fainted. Tymon rushed to him, aghast, catching the scientist in his arms as he lolled to one side. The sense of wrongness he had experienced on the catapult platform, of things not as they should be, gripped him again. His own pendant pulsed with heat, indignant.

  ‘Study the lesson, acolyte,’ Lace reiterated softly. ‘It’s useful to be able to control a person, certainly. But better to exploit his natural inclinations without him even realising it.’

  ‘What have you done to him?’ cried Tymon, when he was able to force the words out of his tight throat. ‘What have you done, Wick? He’s just a helpless old man!’

  ‘Relax, it’s only a Seeming.’ Wick’s face was dark with sweat, triumphant. ‘It won’t last. He’s always giving out unwanted advice. Now he has to take some of mine.’

  The scientist seemed to be plunged into a deep sleep. Tymon readjusted his head and propped him back against the mast, unable to do more. He eyed Wick askance.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’ve been learning, Wick, but it’s not Grafting,’ he said quietly.

  ‘I’ve been learning about Power.’ His friend gave a hard laugh. ‘Which is something you’ll never have, Ty. Why, don’t you know I’m a deputy of the Council? I’ll be heading my own missions to Marak soon. With what the Fathers have taught me, no one will be able to stand in my way. I can do what I like.’

  ‘What you seem to like is being a murdering bully.’

  ‘Boys, boys!’ admonished Lace. ‘Play nicely!’ He walked over to the dirigible’s deck-rail, his white kerchief fluttering in the wind. ‘My young colleague does have a point, Tymon,’ he said. ‘You have no control over your talents right now, sometimes with tragic consequences. Think: if you had be
en able to focus your ability, you would have easily avoided the ambush that killed your Nurian friend.’

  Tymon glared at him, wordless. Somehow, it was more distasteful to hear the truth coming from the Envoy’s lips than a lie.

  ‘Look at the progress Wick has made,’ continued Lace. He leaned over the rail, searching the canopy below. ‘You’d do the same if you were taught to use the Sight properly. You might still come back with us and learn, you know.’

  Wick wheeled about in surprise to face his mentor, and opened his mouth as if he were about to say something. Then he thought better of it and subsided with a scowl, his arms folded tightly across his chest.

  ‘You can offer all you like,’ muttered Tymon. ‘I’ll never serve the seminary again.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t really expect you to be reasonable,’ yawned Lace. He glanced up at the soldiers waiting by the cannon. ‘Ready the shot,’ he ordered.

  The two soldiers rolled the engine to the starboard side of the ship, some distance from where the Envoy was standing, and wedged it against a special gap in the deck-rail. The cannon looked heavy, as if it were carved of solid hardwood.

  ‘What are you doing?’ asked Tymon suspiciously.

  They were very high over the promontory now, close under the threatening clouds. Thunder rolled, a warning rumble, and the spots of water on the wind had become gusts of freezing rain. There were no targets for the blast-cannons here.

  ‘Finishing up our business on the Freehold,’ answered Lace. ‘Come and see for yourself.’

  The boy walked cautiously to the deck-rail, keeping a healthy distance between himself and the Envoy. He peered over the swelling curve of the dirigible’s belly to find the ruin of the Freehold spread out beneath him. They were high enough now, drifting about a hundred feet above the village and a little to the south, that he could see the extent of the damage done to the promontory. Smoke wreathed the base of the outcrop; its summit still burned like a torch. Tymon drew a sharp breath and clutched the rail, for he recognised that image, knew it intimately. There below him was the fiery vision he had experienced in Samiha’s house. There was the glimpse of the burning city. You think that you’re a Grafter, but you cannot even understand what you have Seen, the Envoy had taunted him in his dream. And so it was. He had Seen the attack on the Freehold after all, been warned of it by the Focals all the way back in Marak, and missed the point entirely.

  Apart from providing him with that crushing insight, however, he could not understand why Lace had decided to bring them up here to such a height. The battle for the promontory was clearly won. The Freehold lay in smoking ruins. The rest of the Argosian fleet had abandoned the village and withdrawn to the lower canopy in preparation for the rainstorm. The last greatships were sinking into the thickets about half a mile westwards, their sails tightly stowed. What unfinished business could the Envoy have among the clouds?

  ‘Downwards, and a little to the right,’ said Lace casually.

  And then Tymon noticed it. A tiny gap pierced the twig-thickets, a treacherous opening that showed clear through to the branches south of the promontory. The gap lay in a direct line two hundred feet beneath the dirigible. It would have been hidden from any other vantage point. Small, vulnerable, barely visible through the veil of smoke, figures marched like ants along a subsidiary limb before disappearing again under the sheltering thickets. Your friends are all dead, or soon will be, repeated the sneering dream-voice in Tymon’s memory.

  ‘No,’ he exclaimed, horrified. ‘No, you can’t do that.’ Samiha was down there.

  ‘I can and I will, young fellow.’

  Tymon faced the Envoy, wild-eyed. ‘There are innocent women and children in that convoy. They’re just refugees. Don’t do it, sir!’

  Lace sighed, as if explaining something simple to an idiot. ‘There are no innocent Nurians, only insurgents. Who do you think prepares the sweet little rebels of tomorrow? They get a taste for it in their mother’s milk. Best wipe out the problem in the bud.’

  One of the Argosian soldiers opened the box at the foot of the cannon and took out a gleaming, black ball. His companion stoked the engine’s nozzle.

  ‘I’ll do anything you want!’ pleaded Tymon. ‘I’ll go back with you to Argos! I’ll study Grafting! I’ll do what you tell me to do!’

  ‘Who do you think you are?’ The Envoy’s eyes glinted with cold humour. ‘I already made that offer and you refused. I’m not interested any more, and even if I was, it wouldn’t change a tactical decision during wartime.’

  He turned his back on Tymon, intent on the view over the deck-rail. On the other side of the boy the soldiers loaded the blast-shot into the cannon. Gingerly, as if it were a live thing, they slid the black ball down the engine’s gullet.

  ‘No!’ cried Tymon again, desperately.

  He was between Lace and the cannon. He could not take on the two soldiers at once, so he threw himself at the Envoy in the vague hope of wrestling his enemy over the deck-rail. It would not save the Freeholders and would in all probability get him killed, but he could not bear to stand by and do nothing. Wick jumped forward to stop him with a warning cry, but Lace had already gestured briefly, almost negligently, in Tymon’s direction.

  ‘Down,’ he drawled, without bothering to look behind him.

  Tymon felt a grinding weight descend on his shoulders. He fell to his knees on the deck, unable to move. The sense of wrongness emanating from the Envoy was so strong that it made him nauseous. His mind seemed to go to pieces, as it had in the presence of the Dean. But this time it was impossible to resist, to hold out against despair. Weak, weak, weak, chanted the dream-voice in his mind. You’re weak, and deluded, and pathetic. And he believed it. He was what the voice said he was. He had never been anything more. He lost all hope and crouched where he was on the deck, defeated.

  As he sat there, staring dully ahead, one of the soldiers opened a small hatch at the back of the cannon and struck a fire-stick. Perhaps people would die, Tymon thought, distantly, but it didn’t much matter. Nothing mattered any more. Part of him had dislocated, detached itself from what was happening, and the scene on the deck seemed unreal. Thunder echoed, a booming crack directly over the dirigible. In the flicker of lightning that followed, he saw with surprise that a man wearing a long travelling cloak stood beside him. His green gaze searched out Tymon’s and held it steadily. He had not been there before, did not belong on the ship with the others, the boy thought. Who was he?

  ‘Don’t be afraid of weakness,’ said the newcomer quietly. Tymon could not be sure if his lips moved. ‘In weakness find strength.’

  The calm directive—it was more of an incantation, or a prayer, perhaps—was vaguely familiar to the boy. It required a supreme effort to dredge up the memory but he recalled that once, what felt like a very long time ago, he may have heard words like that, words that gave hope.

  ‘In weakness find strength,’ he whispered to himself. Even if the hope was only an illusion, it was a comforting one.

  The soldier in charge of lighting the cannon was having some trouble coaxing his fire-stick alive in the driving wind. He bent over the resincoated sticks, cursing. His fellow sentry came around the back of the engine to help him.

  ‘Take out the pith and the Sap flows,’ said the green-eyed man. He nodded encouragingly. ‘In emptiness—’

  ‘In emptiness, power,’ murmured Tymon.

  There was no doubt about it: he knew the words. Slowly, haltingly, the pendant about his neck began to glow, warming his chest. They were Grafting words, he remembered. He had time to reflect that the pendant glowed because it was orah, and that orah focused a Grafter’s power, protecting him from—

  He glanced up in sudden, belated recognition at his companion on the deck. There stood the fifth Focal. There was the dead man. The apparition fixed him with bright eyes, summoning him back to himself. The sense of helplessness and blank indifference vanished. He knew again who he was and what he was capable of. How had he for
gotten so quickly?

  ‘Worlds that were severed,’ prompted Ash with a smile.

  ‘Worlds that were severed, we now bind together.’ Tymon finished off the Grafters’ song, his voice stronger. He smiled back at the fifth Focal.

  ‘What?’ snapped Wick, beside him. He did not appear to see the dead man. ‘What are you mumbling about, Ty?’

  Tymon ignored him and stood up. He felt light and joyful and gazed about him in happy astonishment. It was as if a veil had been lifted from his eyes. The world blazed with a marvellous fire as it had the night in the arena. The soldiers on the deck, the sailors climbing through the rigging, all were playful knots of shadow and flame. Beauty washed through everything. The figure of Wick, peering mistrustfully at him, was a guttering candle, fragile and needy. His own body was no different, made of liquid light. A glad heat brimmed up inside him. It was the Sap, he realised wonderingly. This was the Sap.

  ‘Concentrate,’ warned the Focal’s voice, a soft breath in his ear.

  Ash was no longer visible, but the knowledge of what he had to do coursed through Tymon like a wave. He was no longer afraid, no longer in doubt. Events and people were connected. There was no time to lose. The light under the clouds had turned almost green and thunder cracked resoundingly overhead. Lightning flashed on the deck immediately afterwards. He saw that the soldier by the cannon had made his fire-sticks work at last. A blue spark leapt in the man’s cupped hands.

  ‘Fire,’ Tymon called out urgently as he strode towards the engine.

  ‘What’s all this nonsense?’ Wick hurried after him. ‘What do you think you’re doing, Ty? You can’t do anything—’

  ‘Fire!’ shouted the boy again, through his schoolmate’s question. He sidestepped Wick and waved insistently to the soldiers. ‘Watch out! It’s on fire!’