The Gospel According to Verdu (a Steampunk Novel) (The Brofman Series) (30 page)

“Too risky,” Fenimore said, dismissing the plan. “It counts on a last-minute switch on their part, which gives us zero chance to plan ahead. I don’t think it will work.”

The three fell into contemplative silence, each thinking on what could be done to save Candice. Ahy-Me sighed heavily and thought at Pranav Erato,
It doesn’t seem fair. The professor is going to be the victim of the emperor’s vanity, just a way to prove his force. She’s a tiny thing. If you didn’t know her character as we do, well, her execution will be like watching someone kick a puppy.

“That’s it!” Pranav Erato shouted, causing a rumbling in the earth around the mouth of the cave. He clasped his hands over his mouth to still the power of his voice, but his elbows bounced along with his knees in excitement.

Fenimore laid a finger on the suddenly ebullient holy man and raised an eyebrow to indicate he was waiting for a less ground-shaking form of explanation.

She’s tiny
, Pranav Erato thought at them.
And we are going to get her out of there before she even knows she’s going to live.

“Try it now!” Germer yelled into the open flare of the brass tube mounted on the wall of the main motor room on the
Brofman
. The great heart of the ship, silent now for almost a week, shuddered and turned, a spark flashing deep within the cogs and pistons. The smell of oiled parts and the tangy, metallic scent of electricity filled the air. The
Brofman
was alive again. The chief engineer mopped his brow with a soiled handkerchief and shouted into the tube once more.

“That’s got it! She’s up and running. After a few more tests at idle, we will be sittin’ pretty to depart in the morning for sure.”

The reply that echoed down the tube from the wheelhouse pleased Germer not at all. “No—we’re going to shove off now!” the captain said.

Germer ground his teeth together. “Sir, I can’t advise it. If she seizes up and we are out over the Tugrulian desert, we are dead. We need to fly her easy for a bit, make sure we don’t throw a rod or some-other. She’s just been put back together—we need to take it slow.”

No reply came from the tube. Germer’s answer was a series of whistles wafting through the ship. The engineer gulped as he took in the smooth rise and fall of the main crank; it was what he imagined heaven looked and smelled like. He prayed he had done one hell of a job overseeing the repairs to his engine, because there was no turning back now. The
Brofman
was departing—full speed ahead.

Germer swabbed at the sweat on his face. “And I thought the stab wound was going to kill me,” he said to his beloved engine.

The knocking was urgent to the point of desperation. Verdu rolled over onto his side and pushed the pink frilly pillow off of his head. Startling as it was to have the unexpected banging snatch him from his slumber, he was almost grateful. The dreams were not pleasant tonight, filled with the spilled blood of his friends and distant murky relations. The posters announcing the professor’s execution were there on the inside of his eyelids, and he was unable to dislodge the sight with any amount of blinks or even sleep.

Feeling under the rumpled, lacy sheets, his fingers curled around a knife from his dinner tray. Dull but strong, it was still something he felt he could defend himself with if he had to. “Come!” he shouted, feeling a bit silly. Would an assassin really knock?

Bateem practically fell through the door, his face sweaty with exertion. “Master Verdu!” he pleaded as he wrung his hands and danced over to the table where Verdu’s new-and-improved leg brace lay. He snatched it up and trotted to the crippled prince, who was rubbing his sleepy face. Light streamed through the open door, stabbing Verdu’s eyes. The clatter of Bateem with the brace offended his ears. He idly wondered what sense the clerk would annoy next.

“Highness, you must come quickly—the emperor! He wants to see you. Now!” He started throwing the blankets aside and grabbing for Verdu’s bad leg, but the prince put a stopping hand on the overeager servant’s leg.

“Bateem, please. I can do it. Now calm down and tell me what is going on.”

“The emperor called for you, that’s all I know. He calls, you come. Fast.” Bateem looked at Verdu and then to the open door, then back to Verdu, who grinned as he casually tightened the straps and threw his good leg off the bed. Bateem seemed to him like a dog needing to be let out, afraid to bark his urgent insistence for fear that he might make a spot on the rug. Just like a dog, Bateem hung his head and whimpered as Verdu got to his feet.

“I finally get to meet the emperor,” Verdu’s voice whispered in wonder. Bateem leaped for the door to lead the way. With the servant’s back to him, Verdu slipped the knife into the back of his pants, and let his shirt blouse over the handle. A summons in the dark of night from the emperor—a man who by all accounts wanted him dead—wasn’t likely to be for warm milk and cookies.

“What hour is it?” Verdu asked.

“Three hours until dawn, Highness,” Bateem said, looking for all the world like he was wrestling with the idea of grabbing Verdu by the hand and pulling him along.

“What do you think this meeting is about, Bateem?”

The man shrugged. “Don’t know. Really, a servant isn’t permitted to say, even were I privy to it anyway. The emperor would frown on that—mostly with heavy lashes or worse.” The man sheepishly looked over his shoulder and trudged on through the palace. “I would, however, tell
you,
my lord, if I knew.”

Verdu smiled, unsure of what he had done to earn the man’s loyalty, and said, “Thank you, Bateem. You’re a good sort.”

Bateem quivered in nervous anticipation. He thought Verdu was a good sort as well. “We are almost there, Highness. He shouldn’t be kept waiting. It would be bad. Hurry . . . hurry!”

Bateem raced toward an archway of finely carved stonework. Faces, bold and strongly wrought in the smooth marble, stared down, looking at him as if he were unworthy to pass. Bateem stopped at the threshold and danced to the side. Verdu could just see two ceremonial guards standing, partially hidden, through the arch. They snapped their heels together on some unseen signal, asserting their presence and their attention as Verdu approached. His eyes swept the room as he confidently strode through the arch. Half his mind was looking for danger, while the other half made peace with the possibilities of what this night could bring: violence, confrontation, perhaps even death. The tension kept him alert, and the resolution flexible. The pain in his leg under the pinching brace reminded him he was still alive.

The room, scented with delicious aromas of burning herbs and resins, had piles of thick carpets and stout cushions in every direction. Other than the lavish furnishings, the space was empty. A door across from him, the only other obvious exit from the room, stood open. Beyond it glistened a spiral of stars and nebulae, glittering in a blue-black sky. The sweet scent of the desert, swirling cool and fragrant in the night, blew through the open door.

Verdu stepped toward it, so tantalizing. A vast expanse of open sky was like a shock to his soul. Seeing the sun in the marketplace the day before had been a joy, but the stars, unobstructed by the cage of his former cell high in the tower—it was like a miracle. It had been so very long. The last time he had stood in open starlight was the night he sealed his companions into Ma-Took’s pickle-brining tub on the pier in Nivarta. Ages ago. He hardly remembered who he had been then; so much of him had changed. He took a step out onto the balcony. He tried to listen to that part of his brain that commanded him to be more cautious, more calculating about his own safety, but the starlight captured his attention almost entirely.

“Have you a son?” a wizened voice inquired from Verdu’s left. He spun so quickly he almost collapsed onto the polished mosaic floor of the balcony. Only the stiff leg brace kept him standing. Verdu’s eyes met those of the emperor.

The old man sat on a low bench shrouded in the shadows far to the left of the broad balcony. Verdu was surprised that the emperor seemed so small, sitting as he was wrapped in a blanket to keep out the night’s chill. His head was bare, allowing the wind to tease at his wisps of graying hair, and a few stray strands danced across his nose. A thin hand swept the mutinous hairs back and then lifted a cup to the old man’s lips. He noisily sipped and carried on, “Merely curiosity, that’s all. I wonder if you will be able to know the agony of having lost one, or in my case
all
. You see, you killed my boy. You and your Pramuc.” He spit to prove his disgust.

Verdu was at a loss. His humanity, and custom the world over, dictated that he express condolences to a father who felt the pain of having lost a son. But to offer comfort would abandon the ruse that the boy’s death had been Verdu’s ploy. He had to maintain the illusion that he sought to gain position in the Tugrulian dynasty. He carefully crafted his next words.

“Life is often cruel, and many losses bring pain to others.” Verdu worked to keep his voice compassionate but strong.

“Oh, just you wait. I am going to show you just how cruel I can be. Starting with that professor. I understand you know her well.”

“Candice Mortimer is a dear friend of mine, yes,” Verdu answered. He was being as careful as he could in his tone. “We are, she and I, Companions to the Pramuc. The bonds between us are strong.”

“Ah, yes. I read your book. Your folktale of blasphemy. I was not impressed. The One True God will smite you for this, and I will be the hand to do it.”

Verdu shook his head and stepped over to the edge of the balcony. The emperor seemed to have no intention of leaving his spot in the shadows, and Verdu was still thrilled by the night sky, so he turned his back to the palace and looked over the mostly dark city below and the rising bowl of mountains surrounding it. Lights dotted much of the view of Kotal, the city he shared a name with: a candle in a window here and there, glowing hobs in the open-air kitchens, traveler’s fires off the main roads leading into and out of town, candles around various shrines. It was a carpet of stars to match the heavens.

He could not miss the patch of complete darkness in the very center, the ruins of the Dia Orella. The place was devoid of light, of life. Chenda might have collapsed the temple, but the theology remained in this city. Verdu realized that as long as the man in the shadows behind him believed, the Tugrulians would always be followers of the One True God, and every other belief would be crushed to preserve the idea.

“What were they to me?” Verdu asked casually. “Did they love me and care for me when I was born? No. They cast me away. My crewmates, my friends—they’re the ones who are my family. The Mae-Lyn before them. They are my family as well. My grandfather was an emperor, but he never bounced me on his knee. ”

Verdu turned to the emperor. “Can you not see? There is no family but the one we build in love. I was born to this house, but where is my mother? Where is my father? They know me not, nor I them. My family in the Mae-Lyn loved me because I was theirs to love. They did not vex themselves with perfection. Friends are the family one chooses.”

Verdu shifted his weight, half thinking to step toward the emperor and continue his arguments sitting beside him on the bench as two philosophers might do, but he recalled his purpose and kept his distance. He continued, “There
are
gods that are more than what the Tugrulians allow, than what
you
allow. Of all the gods and religions in the world, why are you so sure the ‘One True God’ is the only way to salvation? Are we Tugrulians full of such vanity to believe that only we have it correct?”

The emperor sipped from his cup. “You are mistaken once again, ignorant boy. I am the emperor and I say there is but one. One god. One nation. One language. One emperor. This is the basis of Tugrulian life.”

“I have been in the presence of the continuum of gods; I have felt them through their messenger, the Pramuc. Your ‘One True God,’ if he is the only one—the powerful one—show him to me. Let him take the vision of the collective of gods from my eyes.” Verdu opened his hands to the sky and waited.

The emperor sighed as though he was having to explain to a child. “He is all around us. He lives in the space between the water and the shore, the skin and the muscle, the breath and the lung. In his great wisdom, he chooses to be beyond our sight. It is not for you to question, but I see his face in every leaf and blossom, in the very flutter of the butterflies’ wings.”

Verdu sniffed and looked around. “I’ve seen enough of the Tugrulian countryside, the way the people live in fear. How they just scrape by—existing but not living. If I were your One True God, if this was the best I could do, I would hide as well.”

Quicker than Verdu thought possible, the emperor leaped from his bench. The emperor’s cup crashed to the ground as he rushed toward Verdu. He landed two blows around the younger man’s ears before Verdu could twist away and limp backward. The emperor, shouting all the way, pursued the object of his rage back through the doors into the carpeted room. Servants, attracted by the sudden clamor, flooded in, saw the fury on the face of the emperor, and turned tail. They gathered, most astutely, that they were not needed at present.

“I will beat you to death myself, you vile flea! There is naught but what
I
say there is in this land!”

Verdu, defiantly covering his head as he scrambled out of reach of the enraged emperor, shouted back. “You will not convince me to deny thoughts that I have achieved through my own reason. I believe. And, more than that, I
know
. The Tugrulians are ready to live without the yoke of a dictator. They will be free.”