The Promise of the Child (51 page)

Another Callistemon look-alike entered, though he was much older than the last. Perhaps the elder brother the Plenipotentiary had once mentioned.

“I am Xanthostemon,” said the broad man in accented Tenth, presumably because he thought Lycaste wouldn't understand anything else. He pointed casually at a bust Lycaste hadn't come to yet, his own. The man's skin was very yellow, with a whitish tinge around his palms and lips. He looked like he might be reaching his century. Xanthostemon walked over to the cage and checked inside.

“Penstemon said you were fair, handsome.” He looked over his shoulder, eyebrows raised. “Penstemon—the one who brought you here, my younger brother.”

Lycaste waited to see what the man would do while he stood awkwardly by the closed door.

“We read your …
note
,” Xanthostemon said, opening the cage aperture a little wider and leaning on it. “It would be best—and for your own safety—if you got used to your new home.” He pointed at the cage. Lycaste stared stupidly at him, looking for the trap. “There's water inside for you,” the man said, waiting.

He shuffled forwards and climbed in.

Xanthostemon swung the cage shut and left the chamber, the distant weeping drifting through the momentarily open door again. Lycaste sat cross-legged and looked at Callistemon's face. It was a perfect likeness, if a little idealised. The man's curls had been scruffier, even when he'd made an effort before dinner, and his neck had perhaps not been so heroically muscular as that. He stretched to see the thing better, observing the chipped paint around the nose and chin where it must have been dropped or thrown. Perhaps it was rage rather than sadness he was hearing through the carved shell-layers of the walls.

The trial required him to be alive, he remembered Rubus telling him that, alive enough to answer the flow of simple and perhaps predictable questions that the Intermediary had assured him would be posed. His head might necessarily have to be left in a reasonable condition, but little else. He examined the bucket in the middle of the floor, stirring its water with a shaking fingertip. No gold flecks. He smirked even as he trembled, thinking he ought to complain and tell them he was used to finer stuff.

Everything but his head, and maybe his heart, was surplus to understanding and response. He took stock of his arms as if seeing them for the first time, his long skinny legs, bony knees sticking out like bolts. His eyes drifted between his thighs, absently cupping himself as he visualised some of the depraved things his vengeful gaolers might wish to try on him.

A key turned in the lock. Lycaste removed his hand guiltily from his groin and hid it behind his back. One by one, a pallid collection of people entered the chamber. Penstemon and Xanthostemon pushed past and directed them to a perpendicular bench with carved animal feet that Lycaste had assumed was ornamental in its ridiculousness, and the three women sat to examine him. The elderly lady dabbing at her eyes with a shining piece of silk was clearly the matriarch, Callistemon's mother. Her body was mercifully mostly folds, making her look more like some rotund weeping slug. The overpowering smell of cinnamon that had accompanied them into the room was most likely coming from her hair, which was powdered and piled into what must have been the latest fashion. Wedged on either side of her were two daughters, one of them monkeyish and sickly looking, as if she hadn't seen sun all year, the other rather attractive, if only by comparison. Lycaste studied them in return through the bars since he had nowhere to hide, a caged and wary animal. He could see Callistemon in all of them, five sets of his victim's eyes staring at him.

“What a poor, bedraggled creature,” declared the mother softly in Plain Second, her voice hoarse. “I see no beauty in it, I don't care what everyone's saying.”

The fairer daughter was looking intently at him. She stood from the ottoman, stepping closer to the cage.

“Cassiope,” murmured Xanthostemon.

She glanced back at her brother, who was standing by the doorway. “I just want to see him properly.”

Lycaste watched the sway of her hips and the lines of her body as she came to the bars, meeting her small eyes as she looked up at him. Her hair, bunned and curled like her mother's, was an unpowdered burnished gold.

Cassiope ran her gaze over his face and neck, casually dropping it to his lower half and up again. “I don't think they exaggerated, Mother,” she said, angling her head slightly back towards the bench. “You must admit, he's very … unusual.”

Lycaste let his eyes drift across her, taking in the small, pale nipples and blonde down that wandered south of her navel, hair so scantly suggested that it might not be there at all.

“They say you killed my brother for a woman, Cherry,” she said quietly, so nobody else could hear. “That's what they say. You must have loved her with all your heart.”

Her hand slipped something small and slim and white out of her bunned hair. Lycaste only noticed after a moment that it wasn't white, but reflective.

“That was the trouble with Callistemon—he always got what he wanted.”

She snarled and thrust the blade between the bars at Lycaste's midriff, stabbing as far as she could before he could react. Xanthostemon's arms appeared swiftly around Cassiope's to drag her away from the cage. She struggled and swore, twisting to spit at Lycaste. Her brother swung her off her feet and carried her out in screams of fury. The other daughter scampered to follow, panic-stricken, leaving Penstemon and his mother in the chamber.

Lycaste put his hands to his stomach, watching the blood well between his fingers. It was deep, the wound stinging somewhere far inside him. Already he could feel the pain beginning to take root at the end of the cut, though the bleeding had stopped. His knees gave way as the mother approached, dabbing her dry eyes occasionally with the silk, her son following closely behind, a small smile stretching the unlined skin around his mouth. With Penstemon's help she manoeuvred the black bust of Callistemon until it was against the centre of the cage's door, looking in at him. Lycaste rolled to watch them, clutching his wet stomach, the burning agony doubling with each heartbeat, as if the knife had been dipped in something caustic. Perhaps it had.

When she had finished, the fat lady looked at him once more, then dropped her handkerchief through the bars. She shook her head and took her son's arm to leave.

Lycaste tried to roll himself towards the bucket, but something inside him was snipped, broken. It felt as if a giant pair of garden shears were cutting him in half every time he twisted his torso, so he stopped, lying and listening to the waves of pain pulse through him.

“
Sotiris
,” he whispered to himself, eyes squeezed shut.

A convulsion caused him to press too hard on the wound, reopening it. Lycaste cried out, clamping his teeth together and groping for the silk handkerchief, jamming it into the hole in his belly. Darkness settled around the edge of his vision, mischievously darting this way and that. Gradually it won more ground until it grew bored of the game, and the lights went out.

Elatine

The small, sturdy bridge across the water looked like the best option, the booming detonations still coming from farther down where the lake broadened. The crossing was undefended save for a cannon some distance off, the walled city of Yuvileiene still standing guard between the bridge across the narrowest point and Elatine's attacking regiments. Sotiris strolled along, trying to enjoy the autumnal chill, watching the dark blue waters course alongside the banks. He had swapped his Utopian feather cloak for one of the lighter, verdigris-weathered Dongral coats of armour, actually pleasantly cool where the holed plates allowed air to circulate.

He crossed the bridge, noticing a company of Dongral—the legion dedicated to defending the borders of the Second—walking briskly towards him, probably with the intention of manning the heavy gun on the bank he'd just left. Sotiris passed to one side, letting the tall Melius breeze past. He sat for a little while on the stone wall of the bridge as one of them stopped to look back, the blind spots in the Melius's mind hiding Sotiris with room to spare. The Amaranthine hadn't been seen, merely felt, like something glimpsed out of the corner of your eye. The Melius stood for a while, unconvinced, and then sheepishly hurried after his companions.

He remembered, as he sat, the bridge he had crossed in his dream. He felt the rough growthstone between his fingers, his shoulders tense. What he had done to Lycaste was beyond reprehensible, perhaps one of the cruellest things he had ever done to another person—even if they were of a different, arguably lesser species. But it was all he could do, all he could think of doing, that might save the Firmament from what he saw when he slept.
No
Amaranthine had ever before gained the ability to infiltrate another's dreams; it was unheard of, unknown. But Sotiris's instincts had told him enough already—that Aaron was no Amaranthine. Wherever the Long-Life now resided, almost certainly west of here in the grand capital of the First, he wore the appearance of a kindly, middle-aged and anonymous fellow, betrayed only by eyes that could not decide on a colour when the light touched them. Sotiris had no idea what Aaron's true self—whatever lurked beneath that bland and accommodating façade—might really be, but he was determined to find out. And poor Lycaste was to be his bait.

He gazed over the plantations towards the city, hearing the thud of heavy guns as he removed his helmet. He'd have to remind himself to put it back on once he'd crossed the battlefield, for random shells remained considerably less susceptible to trickery than the Melius who fired them.

The battle, though still in its infancy,
was
spectacular, in its own way. The gleaming city, pinkish against the miles of plantations from which it rose, was only being struck lightly so far, the cannon on the far hill more interested in the massed troops dug in among the palms. There, across the fields, huge fanned bursts of smoke smudged the whitish sky, brown clouds drifting with the brisk wind before the crack and thunder followed across the air. He could actually see the shells, incredibly fast, arcing and slamming into the fields, and wondered how many were hitting their targets.

Sotiris scanned the fretting city, seeing twinkling guns and troops crowding the ramparts, looking for a way around that wouldn't involve wading through the shallow trenches of the plantation. In an hour or so, the regiments camped in their temporary paper city on the far line of hills—themselves just a thicker line in the smoky distance—would be moving forward to engage the foot-soldiers as their guns targeted Yuvileiene itself. Sotiris wasn't sure how effective the soldiery of this strategy was, but Elatine's luck wasn't failing yet. He'd fought across vast tracts of eastern jungle to get this far, the fingers of his legions finding the last soft spot into the rural fringes of the Second here at Yuvileiene. Sotiris got the sense that many of the outlying Provinces had held out only long enough to convince the First of their loyalty, great swathes exhaling in relief at last as Elatine's legions marched through, triumphant in the conquest of their new territories. Of course he'd heard of the atrocities, but Sotiris had chosen to believe they were greatly exaggerated. He needed this army; turning a blind eye here and there was all that would secure it for him. For the hundredth time his thoughts returned to Aaron's offer at the café, the promise he had made. It was in those subjective dream-moments that Sotiris had begun to fear his own weaknesses, and to strengthen his resolve.

He stood, fastening his wide helmet and considering the possibilities of waiting out the battle here, on the bridge. It might take a day or two for the army to finish its siege, and Elatine would likely be getting drunk on his success in the ruined city by the time the paper encampment had been relocated to the far bank. He decided to get it over with, before any major skirmishes started and while the warlord's head was still clear. It would be more dangerous to leave for the encampment now, but the feeling that time was somehow running out was returning to him.

Once on the other bank, he spotted a large heap of ordnance stacked in the sun-browned grasses. Shells twice as long as he was—relatively liftable for a strong Melius (and light enough for their giant Jalan adversaries in Elatine's army on the hill to pick up one-handed)—were laid out ready for use, the first fallen leaves already having drifted into some of the gaps between their tubing. The gun on the far bank had its own piles of ammunition, so these must be meant for something else that he hadn't seen, unless the Second had given up supplying weapons at all now to its outlying regions. He wouldn't be surprised.

Sotiris looked around for any sign of troops and began carefully tipping the ammunition down the bank into the river, leaving the largest shells until last. They wouldn't budge, so he walked off a fair distance into a line of oil palms at the edge of the plantation, then turned back to look at the piled shells. He concentrated, watching the sun blink on the faded blue casings until a spark leapt from one of the metal surfaces and danced away into the grass. He gritted his teeth, rubbing his hands together absently. A complicated-looking hinge popped at the back of one of the shells at the top of the stack. It clattered away, some more parts falling out after it. Sotiris frowned. They were useless, too old to explode properly even while the materials inside them were being frantically agitated. Elatine wouldn't need much of a helping hand against the Second after all.

Voices began drifting through the trees. Sotiris turned and walked east, jumping across a pungent-smelling trench trap disguised with rushes. A thought occurred to him as he came upon the outer walls, avoiding a line of armed Melius carting some equipment quickly along a painted line between the orderly foliage: land-mines. They had grown in popularity as the war progressed along with other, more desperate measures as each outer Province fell.