The Promise of the Child (41 page)

One thousand and seventeen Lacaille prisoners climbed, one at a time, into the massive machine Corphuso had built, thin extension tubes connecting them to the coils and hollows within. Once inside, the hatch was sealed, suffocating them in a matter of minutes.

The same one thousand and seventeen Lacaille returned to their cells over the course of the trial, alive and fully functional, delighted with the prospect of their pardon.

The Soul Engine was a success. The year was 14,636 AD, Amaranthine Standard, and death had finally been conquered.

Corphuso studied the scratched metal surface of the table, glowing under the hangar lights, and the dead remains of the hare on its platter. Its buck-teeth were still visible, poking slightly from its splayed lips. The meat around its cheeks and eyes had been cut away. No one within the Prism Investiture, not least the Vulgar, appeared to be concerned by the implications of such a revelation. All they saw was a functional solution to a problem that plagued far too many in the kingdoms of the Investiture, as well as another way of gaining influence within the Amaranthine and punishing their Lacaille enemies further. Corphuso shook his head gently. His machine had found the
soul
, ensconced in its hiding place since the evolution of the ancient mammal phyla that had birthed the lines that would make the Amaranthine, Melius and Prism alike. His findings spoke not just of immortality—perhaps an even more perfect immortality than the sadistic decadents of the Firmament had ever dreamed of—but also the possibility that there was indeed something that came after, some world just beyond glimpsing. He had found the evidence of life after death. And it didn't even stop there. Corphuso's first fully formed emotion after realising his device worked was one of profound fear. It raised the implications that there might, after all, be a God.

He looked back at the hare, stretched and cold, its yellowish fur tinged with the blush of the vast Steerilden poppy fields, wondering where its animal soul had travelled to, and where it might reside now.

The Lacaille prisoners' pardons were later rescinded by the Vulgar kingdom, the high courts of Filgurbirund never really believing that such a thing would be possible and deeming the release of over a thousand prisoners an almost treasonously stupid act, and all were put to death again, this time without the help of the Shell.

By then, news of the life-conjuring engine was deliberately being hushed-up by Filgurbirund, the princes and dukelings deeming it a vital asset in the three-hundred-year Lacaille-Vulgar hostilities. Corphuso was arrested and forced to sign away his invention to the Principality of the moon of Drolgins, with all profits to be handed over immediately, and relocated to the fortress of Nilmuth to resume his work. There he remained a virtual prisoner, confined to his libraries and workshops with a force of technicians, most of whom had now either died in the siege or on Port Obviado, up until the day the Amaranthine had arrived.

“So,” said Ghaldezuel, watching as the chest was unbuckled, “you were working to make it smaller.”

Corphuso shrugged as the two Lacaille vacuum troopers swung open the chest at last and pulled away the gold-thread cloth, revealing the gleaming expanse of the machine. “It was hoped that we could make a wearable piece for each soldier, so that death would become nothing more than a minor irritation on the battlefield.”

Ghaldezuel looked at him shrewdly. “But the device only succeeds if no part of the body is permanently damaged—I understand nothing messier than asphyxiation is viable.”

Corphuso stepped up to the Shell, checking to make sure that it had not been damaged, beginning to feel possessive of it all over again. “A team of surgeons would accompany the armies—at least, that was the plan—to stitch them back together as quickly as possible. With the contraption on rapid circulation it would ensure continual healing and prevent brain death, even if our soldiers were shot through with bullets.” He glanced at Ghaldezuel, who was standing with him at the edge of the machine. “In practical situations, I don't believe it was as simple as that. I was charged with ironing out the problems.”

The Lacaille knight remained silent for a while, examining the shifting colours on the Shell's surface. “How far did you progress?” he asked at last, turning back to Corphuso.

The architect hesitated, having known for some time that this question would be put to him at some point. His only remaining power lay in what he had yet to publish to the Principality before his capture, information still locked away in his head. “I achieved little more than the early trials,” he said, looking directly at the Lacaille. “The Soul Engine is not a machine for rejuvenation—that grail is still yet to be found, or”—he added thoughtfully—“remains in the possession of the Amaranthine alone. This device does one thing only, but does it well: it restores life energy to a corpse, capturing and, with my modifications,
returning
what we can only call its immortal soul. The state of the body within which this aura then finds itself is not a fault of the Soul Engine, but rather a fault of those who performed the killing.”

Ghaldezuel sat again, taking up his plastic glass of recycled water. “Defensively put.” He drained the water. “The Amaranthine will find its true potential now.”

Corphuso went and sat at the table, too, the troops closing the case and returning to their positions at the huge doors of the hangar. A beep on the tannoy told them the Nomad was increasing its speed again, though it would be a couple more days before it passed the nearest Satrapy.

“Something has troubled me,” he said to Ghaldezuel, maintaining eye contact. “Why would the Amaranthine begin the process of moving the Engine, the Shell, only to suddenly hire the Lacaille to do it, thereby sabotaging all they had just achieved? I mean no offence when I say that the Lacaille were never the trusted allies to them that the Vulgar have been.”

Ghaldezuel snorted, perhaps at the obviousness of the statement. “My dear, innocent, Corphuso—as a scientist you make a dangerous assumption, assuming a constant that is no longer there.”

“A constant?” He grasped the meaning only after he had spoken.

“Yes. The Amaranthine. They are broken at last.”

“They are at war with one another? I had not heard this …”

Ghaldezuel shook his head, turning the cup over and placing it on the table. “They have crowned a new king. And this one pays whoever gets the job done fastest.”

Message

“They say he's brought other Glorious Birds with him,” tweeted the little white and red messenger bird. “They say they are at least as beautiful.”

Lycaste didn't understand. “Why?”

The creature twitched. “There will be
such
jealousy.”

Lycaste looked sidelong at it, wondering if he'd ever get a straight answer from anything in the Utopia. The Glorious Bird hadn't been seen in the garden for days, disappearing the same morning as the strange Amaranthine. Now the bird was returning to the fringes of the Utopia with a flock of his peers, Glorious Birds from other gardens around the Black Sea, and rumours were spreading. Mated pairs squabbled in the branches and around the lakes as the females preened to be wooed again, anxious that their plumage look as good even out of season.

Lycaste thanked the bird and nibbled on some breakfast, his appetite disappearing. He stepped over a crushed egg pushed from a conjoined blister of nests in a tall tree.

Their arrival was announced with growing volume, as if Lycaste's ears were being slowly unplugged. The background whistles and screeches increased as each successive mile of trees spotted the thin, bright line gliding over the Utopia. He looked up, shading his eyes. They were flying in formation, perfectly straight and very high. He couldn't see their colours. As they drew overhead, the foremost bird angled its wings and soared diagonally, looping beneath the others as they held their formation. It spiralled down until Lycaste recognised their Utopia's Glorious. A group of riotously coloured peacocks arranged themselves to meet the Glorious Birds on a lawn not far from where Lycaste stood with some of the Amaranthine, their senile muttering suddenly excited.

As he watched the display, a parakeet landed with a flutter on his shoulder, its talons puncturing his skin.

“How goes it, Lycaste?”

He stiffened, grimacing as the talons bit deeper, looking up into the creature's gimlet eyes.

“Who do you think they've come for?” it whispered.

“What?” He flinched and tried to sweep it away, feeling blood run from the punctures. The parakeet dodged and skipped to his other shoulder, clacking its black beak in a laugh. “Thought you got away with it, didn't you?”

Lycaste grabbed at it, bending in an attempt to shake the bird free.

“The Most Great and Glorious hears everything,” it cackled, hopping to the back of his neck. “We've had your sort trying to hide in here before. Killing-men, despoilers, rapists. This garden is closed to you now.”

The line of Glorious Birds above them dispersed, each plummeting towards him as the parakeet finally flapped away. Lycaste watched them javelin over the trees, trying to absorb what was happening. They knew, somehow. He turned to run, the crowd of birds and Immortals parting before him.

To Lycaste's side, a bird swooped low under the branches, aiming for his head. He ducked, striking out as he felt the breeze of its wings. Talons scraped and dug into his back. He tripped, the arm that was meant to break his fall held by something above and behind, and landed on his face in the shit-smeared grass beneath the tree. The Glorious Birds fell and covered him, prodding and scratching.

Lycaste heaved his shoulders and shook a screeching bird free, crushing its wing beneath his arm.

“His eyes!” screamed the Glorious.

A bird pounced on Lycaste's head and pecked frantically at his brow. He shouted incoherently and rolled again, digging his face into the grass.

“Stop!” he cried, his voice muffled. “
Stop
!”

“Roll him,” said one of the birds. Lycaste turned himself, staying as limp as he could while trying to avert his face from their manic beaks.

The Utopia's own Glorious Bird landed weightily on his chest.

“Men who kill men are found out. They cannot hide, not even in here. The noble family of Callistemon Pallidus Berenzargol, Second-Prince,” it said, looking around the lawn at the surrounding Amaranthine and birds, “expect you for trial.”

There was only one nest large enough to serve as Lycaste's cage, that belonging to the Glorious Bird himself. After some deliberation he was forced within. He shoved aside objects and cloth, snapping shelves and pulling down hanging things until he was half-comfortable in the fishy-smelling hovel, his weight sagging the branches that held the nest up and drooping it almost to the ground. One of the colourful birds pushed the shutters closed and he was alone again.

Lycaste breathed in the odour and laid his head against the nest wall, his ear pressing painfully against a sharp piece of something woven into the structure. He began to cry, his convulsions jiggling the cage, part of him wondering how long it had been since he'd last wept. It was over, done. Imprisoned at last for some moment of thoughtlessness that he couldn't yet identify. He would have to accept what was coming to him.

He was awoken by a tapping on the shutter. It was perfectly dark, so dark that if he tried hard he could pretend he was confined to a full-sized room. A patch of grey appeared as the shutter opened.

“Sotiris?” he whispered.

The grey light chuckled. “Yes, yes. Sotiris is gone now. You are big and yet I am small.”

He tried to remember Well-Spoken's real name, the one Sotiris had used. “Garamond?”

“Garamond,” the voice replied. “Sebastian Saul Garamond. The good ship S. S.
Garamond
.”

“You remember your name?”

“I am Sebastian. You are big, I am small. Here.” He passed Lycaste a little bundle of wrapped linen, his supper. Lycaste hadn't realised how hungry he was until he saw it. He needed to piss, but somehow knew they wouldn't let him out to do it.

“And a message from Sotiris, yes,” added the Amaranthine.

Lycaste paused, a berry in his mouth. “A message? From Sotiris?”

“Sotiris says be patient, you will see.” Garamond chuckled again and closed the hatch.

Lycaste waited in the darkness, food forgotten, but apparently that was it. He wasn't sure what to make of it all. Was the message, brief as it was, something he could believe? He had been starting to consider, before Garamond's arrival, the terrible notion that Sotiris himself might have betrayed him to the Utopia's guardians. But that was impossible—why would he? Lycaste still knew nothing about the Immortal; a group of returning Amaranthine had interrupted their talk in the clearing and demanded that everyone dance. The next morning, Sotiris was gone.

He nestled his head into the side of the basket, knees drawn up to his chin. Perhaps it was just a hiccup in Garamond's mind, a replayed message meant for someone else centuries, even millennia ago. It meant nothing at all, really. He couldn't allow it to give him hope, not yet.

Song

The peculiar man plunged and sank, opening his eyes after a few moments of darkness. Far below his slim white legs the sand was eerily clean, like unbroken desert dunes. Not a single fish or crab sifted the rippled floor. He had swum in the coves of the Tenth Province for hundreds of years, returning almost every Midsummer to the cool green of the Nostrum sea where serpents slithered in the depths. He treated it like a holiday from his long exile on the Old World, staying at the finest guest houses on his way through, walking the near-endless fruit forests and listening to their whispers as night fell, the stars around which his fellows still lived twinkling in the cobalt evening skies.

The giant Southern Melius here were some of Jatropha's favourites—he knew them all by name, their daily lives, habits and desires. He loved them like his children, which, at a certain remove, he supposed they almost were. Of course they thought him odd, as prior generations had, but that was the price he had to pay. Jatropha liked to believe he had never been the self-conscious sort.