The Promise of the Child (40 page)

He lay baking on the roof, hearing the search draw closer to the as-yet-unnoticed stage. The searcher began to rummage directly beneath where Lycaste was sprawled, his hesitation evident as he regarded the intricate toy. There was a thump and Cladrastis entered the room.

“Look at this.”

“What is it?”

“One of her toys. A theatre. Look, she has all the actors.”

Cladrastis's silence was unimpressed. “There are fingerprints. Check inside those holes.”

“These? Ah.”

There was nothing. She hadn't hidden the money there. He should have known from the dust—Silene would never have thought of using it.

They moved on without replacing the slides. Lycaste wished he didn't know the admiring voice so well. The bed creaked and one of them uttered a gasp.

“That's more like it!
Look
at all that. Did you know Chaemerion had this much?” A pause as it was sifted through. “Is that the weapon he used?”

“That's the one,” the new voice said.

“Good. Take half. We can come back for the rest later when Pap's gone to bed. Put it in that, the theatre.”

As the footfalls thumped out of the room, Lycaste stretched, edging towards the parapet for a glimpse of the people in the front garden. Little by little he saw the tops of their heads, then their faces, their feet. Hamamelis was glancing at the house, ignoring his three neighbours, who sat dejectedly on the side of the path just outside the garden wall. Jasione glared sullenly at the dust while her daughter's shoulders heaved and bobbed. Cladrastis, less weedy and misshapen than his father, appeared from under the shadow of the tower, tossing Hamamelis the ring, followed by his brother.

Lycaste leaned, eyes trained on the back of the brother's head as he handed his father the money and turned to the people sitting in the road. Melilotis.

“Did you ever see such a wealthy Cherry?” exclaimed Hamamelis, holding up a fistful of ribbons. He waved the jaunty tassels in Eremurus's face. “Stolen!”

“That's his money,” said Eremurus tiredly, his eyes on the path.

“
It's not his money
!” screamed Hamamelis in a sudden, shaking rage, striking the man. “That monster killed my Leonotis and you sheltered him, you looked after him! What did he promise you, Eremurus? Tell me that much—what did he promise you to hide him here?”

“We didn't know he was the one!” sobbed Jasione. “We believed him.”

Hamamelis turned to the house and scanned the walls and gardens.

“What are you going to do with us?” asked Jasione.

Hamamelis stretched his arm behind his back, like a swimmer before a race. “I think you both know.”

Tell Me

Lycaste flexed his finger again in demonstration, still tender from that day at Koyulhizar, but Sotiris didn't see. He was staring into the woodland where hanging lanterns glowed, as if he'd managed to fall asleep with his eyes open.

Lycaste took a breath, continuing uncertainly. “I climbed back in and waited until the evening, just before they closed the gates. When the brothers returned I managed to slip away, risking the north road forest.”

He waited for the man to give some sign that he'd heard even one word of the tale.

Sotiris stirred, his shoulders rising. Lycaste could not see his eyes in the soft night lights. “Do you feel better?”

He thought about it. “A little.”

The Amaranthine began tapping a finger at his mouth. “There is one part of your tale I would know more about.”

“Yes?”

“This old man from the Tenth.
Jotroffe.
Tell me about him.”

Nomad

The Nomad was a famous class of schooner, known throughout the Investiture as the pride of the Lacaille fleet, and yet Ghaldezuel had told him they possessed only three—the other two presently sitting in a hangar somewhere, too old and dangerous to take to the skies. Cor-phuso was granted chaperoned visits to the engine compartments to look at the tetraluminal filaments, the calibre of which he freely admitted his own empire did not possess, at least to his knowledge. The filaments, looming darkly in their housings like gigantic bundles of wound copper wire, were of course Amaranthine-made and fabulously old, a present from the Age of Decadence before the Immortal's relationship with the Lacaille had soured. They were cared for night and day by a separate crew, the Lacaille High Commission fully aware of their value. Corphuso understood well enough how to build a filament of his own, but also that achieving any speeds greater than the basic minimum was a feat the Amaranthine had taken with them into senility. Being given the chance to see such treasures firsthand was a rare honour, and he thanked them for it.

The encounter with the Vulgar privateer on Steerilden's Land had resulted in substantial losses, the captain of that ship—whoever he was—proving capable enough to evade and roast one of the legions that had escorted them from the battleship over the Threen moon of Port Obviado. The damage to the Nomad itself had proved debilitating enough to require an extra day's work, during which Corphuso had been permitted time to stretch his legs in the wild pink poppy fields. There was nowhere he could run to, and so he had apparently not been watched as he walked, exploring the small green islet's forests in wonder.

Dutifully returning to find the schooner in good health again, Ghaldezuel had announced to Corphuso that they would be increasing their speed towards Firmament centre. The Lacaille knight had handed him a heavy thrombosis suit made from capsules of a reeking yellow gel and watched as he put it on. The few suits aboard were given only to the highest-ranking Lacaille, and many unprotected troops died on high-speed journeys. Corphuso mumbled his gratitude, wondering briefly who might be going without so that he could be given such protection.

They sat together, upon finishing a large evening meal of Steerilden hare, in the aft hangar of the Nomad, its progress from the Satrapy of Port Elsbet measured in Lacaille code beeped via the intercom. Around them the vessel growled, the speed of their descent through the Firmament expanding the tin, steel and rubber fabric of the hull. Beyond them, the Shell, still encased in the giant metal chest, sat like a gunmetal block under the hangar's fluorescents.

Corphuso had ceased speaking Vulgar with Ghaldezuel, choosing instead to practise his Lacaille. It appeared from all angles as if his future now lay with the rival empire and their new, if inexplicable, loyalty to certain factions within the Amaranthine. It occurred to him that little had really changed—he was being transported in relative comfort and ease to the Vaulted Lands, and much faster than he might have been had his party of Vulgar not been betrayed. Honours and privileges could still await among the Amaranthine, and a chance to leave the Prism Investiture forever. He'd decided on his walk through the poppies that he should also begin his new life by brushing up on Unified, the Immortal language. It was a difficult tongue, filled with short, clipped words that shared a frustrating number of meanings, but it would stand him in good stead when the Nomad eventually reached its final—and as yet still undisclosed—destination.

He could see from the buckles on the huge metal case that the Shell had been inspected during his absence, perhaps even tested, but decided not to ask Ghaldezuel directly about such things. He knew that it worked perfectly, that they would not be disappointed should they find some poor fellow to test it on, but still the possibility of somehow failing them, after all they had done to secure him and his machine, unnerved him. The Soul Engine was unlike anything ever conceived of before, of that he was sure; it would be the start of a new age of daunting, unfathomable possibilities, perhaps even, he feared, levelling the power of the Firmament—a power held so long and so tightly—once and for all. Corphuso also knew, though, that whatever eventual peace it brought, whatever equality it ripped from the Immortals' indolent hands, his machine would still be an engine of death for generations to come, a plague against which there would be no defence. But change, he reflected, always began that way, destroying what was already there to make room for the new. He would do his best to warn those who finally took charge of the Shell, though he knew somewhere deep down that even they would not listen.

“We are at fourteen million miles per hour,” said Ghaldezuel, taking a sip of water as he listened to the code from the intercom. He drank no ales or wines on principle and allowed Corphuso none, either. “I advise you not to do anything strenuous for the remainder of the journey as we increase velocity.”

“I wasn't planning on it,” replied Corphuso in Lacaille, the stink of the thrombosis gel reaching his nostrils again. He knew he would have to get used to it and was trying to breathe in as much as possible.

Ghaldezuel nodded, his Voidsuit replaced by a lighter though still preciously inlaid variant with superior inbuilt shock-absorption. “Your Lacaille improves already with practice. What other Prism-speak do you know?”

He shrugged. “I am fluent in Pifoon, and my Low Oxel is fairly good. I can speak limited but conversational Threen, Zelioceti One and Two, Wulmese Fifth Dialect and some rusty Unified, as well as a smattering of Quetterel.” He thought for a moment. “I suppose I could also get by in First, should we crash-land in the Old Satrapy.”

Ghaldezuel did not look at him as he wiped his mouth. “An excellent education.”

Corphuso knew well the resentment in Ghaldezuel's voice. “My family traded with the Vaulted Land of Epsilon Eridani. It was profitable.”

“I am sure,” replied Ghaldezuel, looking off towards the stacked columns of rusted white half-tracks at the other end of the hangar. “Shall we take a look at your machine? I am eager to gain an appraisal of its abilities.”

Corphuso glanced at the huge case. “You doubt the cargo?”

Ghaldezuel's sky-blue eyes looked into his. “Perhaps I doubt the inventor.”

Sulthumo Leorgin had been a free Vulgar boot polisher working in the court of Count Andolp of Filgurbirund, a wealthy landowner and occasional financier of clever inventions. When Leorgin died after a short bout of breathworm—known by the Amaranthine as tuberculosis, and at that time a very common cause of death among the Vulgar scrape classes—he was inspected perfunctorily by one of the count's physicians and taken to be interred in the Serf Ponds.

What happened next astounded the various undertakers who carried his corpse, and would go on to capture the imagination of the whole Investiture. At first it appeared, after the body began violently shaking and wheezing, that Sulthumo was not dead at all and might begin to make a recovery. Only after he died a second time—being officially pronounced expired in the arms of the undertakers once more—did they resume moving him to the ponds to join his family plot. When Leorgin woke for a third time, his carriers decided they had little more patience for a body that could not make its mind up whether to live or die and called the physicians once more.

Leorgin died and came back to life again thirty-one times before they decided to shoot him, after which he apparently expired for good. As far as Corphuso could tell, the boot polisher was dead still, but developments would later make him question even that assumption.

Opening him up, Count Andolp's personal physician discovered that Sulthumo Leorgin's body contained certain abnormalities in Vulgar anatomy never before recorded; in his notes, carefully studied during the intervening years, the doctor wrote of channels in the brain and neck that were oddly formed, opening here and there into hollows where the spinal column should have grown vertebrae. It was a stroke of luck for the unfortunate Leorgin that he had never broken his feeble spine, although later discussion of the matter concluded that he would likely have returned to life even if he had. The channels and loops and caves of space, equivalent perhaps in size to a Vulgar digestive system, may have accounted for the “reflux of life,” as the physician put it, that resulted in poor Sulthumo waking repeatedly after his own death, and casts were made of his exceptional interior in order to study it further.

Almost a year later, a young medical student discovered, through the accidental shining of an electric torch into the cast, that light behaved
unusually
within its confines, and apparently remained within its structure to glow long after the torch had been shut off. The news of such magic drew philosophers and alchemists from around the kingdom, and Count Andolp grew rich from the display of his ex-polisher's astounding innards. Before long, the news percolated beyond the Vulgar borders, attracting Prism travellers and magicians from all over the Investiture, and, eventually, Amaranthine.

Corphuso Trohilat, then a young architect engaged through family connections in designing a mausoleum for the prince of Drolgins, visited the Count's museum of oddities to view the casts, paying handsomely to see the exhibit alone. He understood, after taking careful measurements, that there might be further applications for the curiosity, known by now as Andolp's Astounding Light-Trap.

He appealed to his family and within a year had secured the funds to buy the Light-Trap from the count, who parted with it on the condition that he retained rights to a high percentage of all future profits made. Corphuso accepted willingly, knowing that such profits would be enough to buy Filgurbirund itself one day, and perhaps a good deal more.

Despite probable sabotage in which the original casts were destroyed, Corphuso's timely measurements assured he was able to build a larger-than-life-sized replica of the hollows and tubes, situating them within a surrounding case and experimenting over the years with different materials in the construction. It appeared that the geometry of the shapes had to be reproduced exactly—to within a fraction of an inch of the original measurements—for anything unusual to happen, such as light and even sound somehow remaining stuck for a time within the hollows, and Corphuso began to speculate at the incredible odds of finding such a freak of nature at all. When all was ready, he excitedly began the first phase of his experiments, purchasing Lacaille prisoners from jails and labour camps across Filgurbirund with the promise that, should the experiment succeed, they would be pardoned to a man for their crimes against the Vulgar and released.